California students lost nearly half a year’s worth of math progress from 2019 to 2022, according to a recent study measuring pandemic learning loss by researchers at Stanford and Harvard universities.

The “Education Recovery Scorecard” study, published in October, compared pre-pandemic academic progress to that made over the pandemic.

The study found that California students lost an average of almost five months of progress in math, and one month in reading over the past three years.

The data also shows urban districts suffered more math loss than rural, suburban, or town districts.

California’s two largest districts—Los Angeles Unified and San Diego Unified—mirrored the state’s numbers in math.

However, in reading, both districts fared slightly better than the state average, though both still reported some loss.

Despite that, Los Angeles’ numbers show a smaller decline overall than its 2019 numbers, scoring slightly better than in 2018.

Meanwhile in Orange County, districts that usually make progress lost some ground in math.

Capistrano, Irvine, Placencia-Yorba Linda, Newport-Mesa, and Orange unified school districts, along with Fullerton Elementary lost between two and three months’ worth of math learning over the pandemic. All districts previously made some sort of progress in math pre-pandemic, according to the report.

Orange Unified, Santa Ana Unified, and Anaheim Elementary lost nearly five to six months of math progress.

But several Orange County school districts made small gains in reading—Fountain Valley, Capistrano, and Irvine unified school districts, and Fullerton and Cypress elementary schools.

Orange Unified and Placencia-Yorba Linda Unified maintained their reading scores from 2019, while Newport-Mesa Unified and Anaheim Elementary lost about a month’s worth of reading progress.

Thomas Kane, a Harvard professor and author of the study, said the report is intended to help districts understand where they need to improve.

“Our hope is that policymakers and educators can use these detailed data to better target education recovery efforts toward the communities, schools, and students who were most harmed by the pandemic,” Kane said in the report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Queensland Police will investigate the motives behind three individuals who ambushed, shot, and killed two officers investigating a routine missing person report on Dec. 12.

Six individuals in total were killed in the incident that Commissioner Katarina Carroll has called “the largest loss of police life” the state force has suffered in years.

In the aftermath of the siege, Carroll vowed to “unpack these peoples’ lives.”

“We will get to the bottom of this,” she told Today on Dec. 14. “It may not be in the next couple of days, but certainly in the next couple of weeks, we will get a real sense as to why this occurred.”

The police commissioner said the online activity of one of the assailants would also be investigated, including whether the incident was premeditated and if the shooters had extremist links.

“Some of the stuff that’s online from these people, we will investigate what they have been doing not only in recent weeks but in recent years, who they’ve been interacting with … their online presence, every aspect of this will be thorough,” she told ABC’s 7.30 program on Dec. 13.

One of the shooters, Gareth Train, posted online content including claims the 1996 Port Arthur Massacre—which triggered Australia’s gun buy-back scheme—was a hoax aimed at disarming citizens.

The incident also comes after the chief of Australia’s domestic spy agency, Mike Burgess, warned last year that terrorist and security threats no longer fit the “left-wing, right-wing, or Islamic extremism” categories.

“We are seeing a growing number of individuals and groups that don’t fit on the left-right spectrum at all; instead, they’re motivated by a fear of societal collapse or a specific social or economic grievance or conspiracy,” he said in the 2021 Annual Threat Assessment of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.

Queensland Senator Matt Canavan said conspiracy theories had become more prevalent in recent years, especially with growing public distrust around the pandemic.

“From my perspective and the government’s perspective, it’s always best to try and be as transparent as we can be. The best way to combat conspiracy theories is sunlight and transparency about what governments do,” he told the Today show on Dec. 14.

“The more we try and hide things, and it does sometimes give growth to that, so we’ve got to try and make sure, as much as possible, governments explain what they are doing, are transparent about it, and combat the crazy theories that are out there about these things.”

Ambush Leaves 6 Dead, Including 2 Officers

At around 4:30 p.m. on Dec. 12, four police officers were called to investigate a missing person report for a Nathaniel Train at a property on Wains Rd in Wieambilla, near the remote inland Queensland town of Chincilla.

Two young constables, Matthew Arnold, 26, and Rachel McCrow, 29, were hit with a “hail of gunshots” as they jumped a fence to access the house, according to Queensland Police Union President Ian Leavers.

The pair fell, forcing their colleagues to take cover, with one fleeing into the bushes around the property and the other towards the squad car.

“The ruthless, murderous trio have then gone and executed the two police, our fallen officers, who were on the ground. They have executed them in cold blood,” Leavers told ABC Radio National on Dec. 13. It is alleged the killer, dressed in camouflage fatigues, then made off with the officers’ Glock service pistols.

A neighbour, 58-year-old Alan Dare, was also gunned down and shot in the back after going out to investigate.

“That is just an absolute tragedy as well,” said Leavers.

The shooters then tried to flush out the female officer who had taken cover in the long grass by setting it on fire.

“She actually believed that she was either going to be shot or she was going to be burnt alive,” Leavers added, later saying the attackers were attempting to coax her into standing up so they could fire on her.

From her position, Officer Keely Brough called for backup and sent goodbye text messages to her family. She had just graduated from the police academy eight weeks earlier.

A local sergeant was able to respond to the distress call and arrived at the scene with 15 more police officers who worked to retrieve the bodies of the slain officers.

Members of the tactical police force and PolAir, the aerial support arm of the police force, were also dispatched.

A siege situation eventually ensued, and an emergency declaration was made encompassing the area of Chinchilla Tara Rd, Wieambilla Rd, Bennetts School Rd, and Mary Street.

By 10:30 p.m. the three attackers had been killed in a firefight with law enforcement.

It was later revealed that the two assailants were brothers Nathaniel Train (the subject of the missing person report) and Gareth Train. The third person is alleged to be Stacey Train, partner of Gareth.

Nathaniel Train was formerly a principal at Yorkeys Knob State School in Cairns and at Walgett Primary School in northern New South Wales. He was previously commended for improving the results of Indigenous students.

Gun Licensing System May Need Review, Union Says

Police Commissioner Carroll revealed at a press conference that “considerable weaponry” had been found at the scene, saying it was a “miracle” that two officers had managed to escape.

The head of the Queensland Police Union, Leavers, said many questions needed to be answered, including how the trio were able to obtain so many weapons.

“Weapons—they are not an issue in the right hands,” Leavers told the Today show on Dec. 14. “But you need to look at the licencing system, the national database, and can we do better?”

“Should it be better where people move from state to state?” he said. “You need uniformity right across the board.

“If things can be done better, all states need to work together, so we have the best system available, so we have the best intelligence, which will keep the community of Queensland and the rest of Australia safe.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A bipartisan group of lawmakers is seeking to ban social media giant TikTok from operating in the United States. The effort follows extensive testimony from U.S. intelligence leaders that the app poses a threat to national security.

Legislation seeking to ban the app was introduced in both houses of Congress on Dec. 13 by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Reps. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.) and Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.).

The lawmakers condemned TikTok’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) through its parent company, ByteDance, and said the company was collecting Americans’ data for the communist regime.

“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok,” Rubio said. “This isn’t about creative videos, this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day.

“We know it’s used to manipulate feeds and influence elections. We know it answers to the People’s Republic of China. There is no more time to waste on meaningless negotiations with a CCP-puppet company. It is time to ban Beijing-controlled TikTok for good.”

TikTok a ‘Weaponized’ Application

TikTok has long been the subject of congressional scrutiny due to its ties to the CCP and its practice of sending user data to ByteDance employees located in China.

CCP laws classify data as a national resource and mandate that companies located in China or majority-owned by Chinese entities must hand over all data to the regime upon request, including proprietary source code and other intellectual property.

Security experts have described TikTok as a “weaponized” application for this reason and have said that the app siphons an immense amount of data from Americans that could be sent to the CCP. Such data include not only browsing history, but also facial recognition information, keystroke input, passwords, bank information, and even whatever users have copied to their virtual clipboard.

Likewise, FBI Director Christopher Wray has repeatedly said TikTok is a national security threat to the United States and that, among other concerns, ByteDance’s control of the app’s algorithm makes it vulnerable to CCP manipulation.

The Chinese regime “could use it to control data collection on millions of users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations if they so chose, or to control software on millions of devices, which gives it opportunity to potentially technically compromise personal devices,” Wray said during a Nov. 15 hearing of the House Homeland Security Committee.

Such fears aren’t unwarranted.

TikTok executives previously admitted to censoring information on the app, suppressing videos that were critical of the CCP or that discussed the regime’s atrocities in Xinjiang and Tiananmen Square.

When asked for a reason, executives have typically responded by saying that the platform isn’t intended for political content. That answer is problematic, however, given that the company failed to act on 90 percent of its ads containing election misinformation that targeted the U.S. 2022 midterm elections, including content spreading outright lies about the voting process in the United States.

The ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act

The three lawmakers framed their legislation as a much-needed attempt to fend off an increasingly hostile communist regime. The CCP is an adversary and can’t be permitted to exploit U.S. markets against U.S. citizens, Gallagher said.

“TikTok is digital fentanyl that’s addicting Americans, collecting troves of their data, and censoring their news,” he said. “It’s also an increasingly powerful media company that’s owned by ByteDance, which ultimately reports to the Chinese Communist Party, America’s foremost adversary.

“Allowing the app to continue to operate in the U.S. would be like allowing the U.S.S.R. to buy up The New York Times, Washington Post, and major broadcast networks during the Cold War. No country with even a passing interest in its own security would allow this to happen, which is why it’s time to ban TikTok and any other CCP-controlled app before it’s too late.”

The legislation, the Averting the National Threat of Internet Surveillance, Oppressive Censorship and Influence, and Algorithmic Learning by the Chinese Communist Party (ANTI-SOCIAL CCP) Act, would block and prohibit all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of China, Russia, and several other foreign countries of concern.

TikTok derided the decision and suggested that Congress should wait for a full national security review to be completed. That review has been ongoing since 2019, when the Trump administration stated that the company should be forced to sell to a U.S.-based parent entity.

“It is troubling that rather than encouraging the Administration to conclude its national security review of TikTok, some members of Congress have decided to push for a politically-motivated ban that will do nothing to advance the national security of the United States,” a TikTok spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email.

“TikTok is loved by millions of Americans who use the platform to learn, grow their businesses, and connect with creative content that brings them joy. We will continue to brief members of Congress on the plans that have been developed under the oversight of our country’s top national security agencies—plans that we are well underway in implementing—to further secure our platform in the United States.”

However, proponents of the legislation said it was a vital step to protecting the public from malign foreign influence and surveillance.

“At a time when the Chinese Communist Party and our other adversaries abroad are seeking any advantage they can find against the United States through espionage and mass surveillance, it is imperative that we do not allow hostile powers to potentially control social media networks that could be easily weaponized against us,” Krishnamoorthi said.

“The bipartisan ANTI-SOCIAL CCP Act is a strong step in protecting our nation from the nefarious digital surveillance and influence operations of totalitarian regimes. Recent revelations surrounding the depth of TikTok’s ties to the CCP highlight the urgency of protecting Americans from these risks before it’s too late.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), brushed off recent criticism from Elon Musk Monday, describing the Twitter CEO’s barbs as a mere “distraction.”

“I don’t respond to him,” Fauci told CNN’s David Axelrod for an upcoming podcast. “I don’t pay any attention to him because that’s merely a distraction. And if you get drawn into that—and I have to be honest—that cesspool of interaction, it’s … There’s no value added to that, David. It doesn’t help anything.”

A Critical Take

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Fauci has been relied on as a source of public health guidance, serving as an adviser to both Biden and former President Donald Trump.

As Musk demonstrated Sunday, however, not all Americans agree with that guidance.

Blasting Fauci in a series of tweets, Musk not only criticized him for his leadership but also suggested that legal action should be taken against the health official.

In one post, Musk shared a meme likening Fauci to Wormtongue, a villainous adviser to King Théoden in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy. In the meme, “Wormtongue” Fauci is shown advising “King” Biden, “Just one more lockdown, my King …”

Additionally, in a subsequent tweet that garnered more than 1 million likes, the Twitter chief wrote, “My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci.”

Then, in a follow-up tweet that appeared to reference his previous post’s popularity, Musk added, “Truth resonates …”

Reactions

One person that Musk’s statement seemed to resonate with was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who replied, “I affirm your pronouns Elon.”

Meanwhile, across the political divide, Democrat Robert F. Kennedy Jr., an outspoken critic of the COVID-19 vaccines, also signaled his approval.

“Kudos to @elonmusk for looking beyond the propaganda,” he wrote.

Others, however, were less appreciative of Musk’s humor.

“Mr. Musk—That is an extremely juvenile+disrespectful tweet,” wrote Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago public health sciences professor. “As someone who commands a huge public platform+controls billions of dollars in personal+corporate resources, you might use this moment to consider how to interact with others in a more substantive+respectful way.”

Meanwhile, the White House response issued on Monday by White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre called Musk’s remarks “dangerous,” “disgusting,” and “divorced from reality.”

However, evidently unfazed by his critics, Musk responded Monday with yet another joke, noting, “The Branch Covidians are upset lol.”

The Twitter Files

For the past two weeks, Musk has made headlines with his decision to expose the true motivations behind some of Twitter’s most controversial actions over the past few years, including the platform’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story, “shadow banning” of blacklisted users, and ban of former President Donald Trump’s personal account.

However, those revelations appear to just be the tip of the iceberg, as Musk has indicated that more disclosures will  come.

“When will we get the twitter files on covid?” one user asked on Sunday. “The info on the suspension of the many doctors and scientists? Who was involved? Suppression of what has turned out to be factual information.”

“Oh it is coming bigtime,” Musk replied.

Musk also revealed that further explanation of his comments about Fauci would be covered by future releases as well.

Last month, Twitter updated its rules for posts related to COVID-19 with the following note: “Effective November 23, 2022, Twitter is no longer enforcing the COVID-19 misleading information policy.”

The update was announced in a report Twitter published detailing the enforcement actions the platform had taken regarding content relating to COVID-19.

According to the report, between January 2020 and September 2022, 11.72 million accounts were challenged, 11,230 accounts were suspended, and 97,674 pieces of content were removed under its misleading information policy.

Musk has previously espoused support for the COVID-19 vaccines, noting in April 2021: “To be clear, I do support vaccines in general and covid vaccines specifically. The science is unequivocal. In very rare cases, there is an allergic reaction, but this is easily addressed with an EpiPen.”

Fauci, for his part, has maintained that he had “nothing to do with” COVID-19 lockdowns, mandates, or school closures. He is slated to step down from his positions with NIAID and as an adviser to the president in December.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Federal authorities on Tuesday charged FTX co-founder Sam Bankman-Fried for making “tens of millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions” to influence policies and laws around cryptocurrency.

Damian Williams, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, told reporters Tuesday that Bankman-Fried—sometimes known as SBF—faces charges of wire fraud, conspiracy, and campaign finance violations.

“From 2019 until earlier this year, Bankman-Fried and his co-conspirators stole billions of dollars from FTX customers,” Williams said. “He used that money for his personal benefit, including to make personal investments and to cover expenses and debts of his hedge fund, Alameda Research.”

Elaborating, the FTX founder was also charged with violating campaign finance laws “by causing tens of millions of dollars in illegal campaign contributions to be made to candidates and committees associated with both Democrats and Republicans,” he said, adding that his team’s investigation into alleged fraudulent FTX activity and sister company Alameda Research is moving quickly.

“And all of this dirty money was used in service of Bankman-Fried’s desire to buy bipartisan influence and impact the direction of public policy in Washington,” Williams said. Reports have indicated, however, that Bankman-Fried made more donations to Democrat candidates than Republicans.

In an indictment, prosecutors alleged (pdf) that Bankman-Fried made donations to campaigns under other people’s names. That allowed him to illegally donate far in excess of the $25,000 set by U.S. campaign finance laws, according to an unsealed indictment Tuesday.

Bankman-Fried and at least “one or more” associates agreed to make contributions to candidates and committees in New York while using the name of another person, which is illegal, officials said.

Bankman-Fried faces a maximum sentence of 115 years in prison if convicted on all eight counts, prosecutors said, though any sentence would depend on a range of factors.

Williams declined to say whether prosecutors would bring any charges against other FTX executives and whether any FTX insiders were cooperating with the investigation.

Bankman-Fried made a court appearance on Tuesday in the Bahamas, where FTX is based and where he was arrested on Monday at his gated community in the capital, Nassau.

A lawyer for Bankman-Fried requested that his client be released on $250,000 bail. Bahamian prosecutors have asked that Bankman-Fried be denied bail if he fights extradition.

“Mr. Bankman-Fried is reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options,” his lawyer, Mark S. Cohen, said in an earlier statement.

In a letter Tuesday to Judge Ronnie Abrams, a prosecutor in the U.S. attorney’s office wrote (pdf) that the government “expects that the evidence will show that the defendant defrauded FTX customers by misappropriating their funds for his personal use, including to invest for his own account, to make tens of millions of dollars of political contributions.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission on Tuesday alleged in lawsuits that Bankman-Fried committed fraud.

When asked Tuesday about whether President Joe Biden would return campaign donations from Bankman-Fried, White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said that she is “limited on what I can say and anything that’s connected to political contributions from here, I would have to refer you to the [Democratic National Committee].”

Several lawmakers including Sens. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) and Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) as well as Reps. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), Salud Carbajal (D-Calif.), Jesus “Chuy” Garcia (D-Ill.), and Kevin Hern (R-Okla.) have publicly said they’ll return donations from Bankman-Fried.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

(Reuters)—Alabama and Utah on Monday joined other U.S. states prohibiting the use of Chinese-owned short-video sharing app TikTok on state government devices and computer networks due to national security concerns.

The actions follow warnings from FBI Director Chris Wray last month who said the Chinese government could use the ByteDance-owned app to control data collection on millions of U.S. users or control the recommendation algorithm, which could be used for influence operations.

“Disturbingly, TikTok harvests vast amounts of data, much of which has no legitimate connection to the app’s supposed purpose of video sharing. Use of TikTok involving state IT infrastructure thus creates an unacceptable vulnerability to Chinese infiltration operations,” Alabama Governor Kay Ivey said in a statement.

Her directive also orders executive branch agencies to take all necessary steps to prevent TikTok from accessing sensitive state data.

“We’re disappointed that so many states are jumping on the bandwagon to enact policies based on unfounded, politically charged falsehoods about TikTok,” a TikTok spokesperson said in a statement.

Federal Communications Commissioner Brendan Carr said in a tweet on Monday that at least nine states have taken action on TikTok “based on the serious security threats it presents”.

Other U.S. states that have banned TikTok on state devices include Texas, Maryland and South Dakota.

Indiana has also sued the app, alleging that it is deceiving users about China’s access to their data and is exposing children to mature content.

Former President Donald Trump in 2020 attempted to block new U.S users from downloading WeChat and TikTok, which would have effectively blocked the use of these apps in the United States, but lost a series of court battles.

In June 2021, President Joe Biden withdrew Trump’s executive orders that sought to ban the downloads and directed the Commerce Department to conduct a review of security concerns posed by the apps.

(Reporting by Rhea Binoy in Bengaluru; Additional reporting by Baranjot Kaur in Bengaluru; Editing by Edwina Gibbs)

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

John Ray, named CEO after Bankman-Fried stepped down last month, says crypto company had ‘absolutely no internal controls whatsoever’

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—Shortly after U.S. regulators on Tuesday charged FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with defrauding investors, its new chief executive told lawmakers the crypto exchange’s implosion stemmed from poor management practices and inexperienced individuals at the helm.

“The FTX group’s collapse appears to stem from absolute concentration of control in the hands of a small group of grossly inexperienced, non-sophisticated individuals,” said John Ray, who was named CEO of FTX after Bankman-Fried stepped down and the company filed for bankruptcy on Nov. 11.

Ray also said there was virtually no distinction between the operations of FTX and Alameda Research, Bankman-Fried’s crypto trading firm, which maintained close ties with his exchange.

“I’ve just never seen an utter lack of record keeping—absolutely no internal controls whatsoever,” Ray told the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee.

It will take weeks, perhaps months, to secure all the group’s assets, Ray said.

Bankman-Fried was arrested Monday evening in the Bahamas and was set to appear before a magistrate Tuesday. U.S. federal prosecutors on Tuesday alleged that he committed fraud and violated campaign finance laws, and FTX’s founder and former CEO also faces additional charges by U.S. regulators.

The Bahamas attorney general’s office said it expects Bankman-Fried will be extradited to the United States.

Ray said in his testimony that he had hired a new chief financial officer, a head of human resources and administration, and a head of information technology. He has also appointed a board of directors, which is chaired by former U.S. Attorney Joseph Farnan.

Since he took over as CEO, Ray said he has established that customer assets at FTX were commingled with those of Alameda Research. Client funds were used to engage in margin trading, which exposed customers to massive losses, he said.

Ray also addressed why FTX US was included in the bankruptcy filing. Bankman-Fried has expressed confusion about that in media interviews, claiming the company’s U.S. entity was financially sound.

But Ray said such a step was necessary to avoid a “run on the bank” and to allow FTX’s new leadership to identify and protect its assets.

Bankman-Fried had also been scheduled to appear before the committee on Tuesday, and his testimony had been highly anticipated.

“Unfortunately, the timing of his arrest denies the public the opportunity to get the answers they deserve,” said the panel’s chair, Democratic U.S. Representative Maxine Waters.

“Rest assured that this committee will not stop until we uncover the full truth behind the collapse of FTX just a few months ago.”

(Reporting by Hannah Lang, Doina Chiacu, Moira Warburton; Editing by Jonathan Oatis)

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

SYDNEY (Reuters)—Former U.S. Marine pilot Daniel Duggan, who was arrested in Australia, is accused of breaking U.S. arms control law by training Chinese military pilots to land on aircraft carriers according to an indictment unsealed by a U.S. court.

The 2017 indictment said “Duggan provided military training to PRC (People’s Republic of China) pilots” through a South African flight school on three occasions in 2010 and 2012.

It lists unnamed co-conspirators including one South African and one British national who were executives of “a test flying academy based in South Africa with a presence in the PRC”, and a Chinese national who acquired military information for the Chinese military.

Britain announced a crackdown on its former military pilots working to train Chinese military fliers the same week Duggan was arrested in Australia.

Australian police provisionally arrested Duggan in the rural town of Orange at the request of the U.S. government in October, pending an extradition request by the United States.

Duggan’s lawyer, Dennis Miralis of Australian law firm Nyman Gibson Miralis, did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment on the indictment.

He has previously said Duggan denies breaching any law, and is an Australian citizen who had renounced his U.S. citizenship.

The District of Columbia court on Friday unsealed the indictment and a U.S. warrant for Duggan.

The indictment said Duggan was allegedly contracted directly by the unnamed Chinese national to provide services to a Chinese state owned company, including evaluations of Chinese military pilot trainees, testing of naval aviation related equipment and instruction on tactics related to landing aircraft on aircraft carriers.

Duggan did not seek authorisation from the United States government to provide military training to China, although the U.S. State Department had informed him by email in 2008 this was required to train a foreign air force, it said.

The indictment alleges he travelled frequently between Australia, the United States, China and South Africa between 2009 and 2012, when he was a U.S. citizen and Australian citizen.

Duggan’s alleged violation of an arms embargo imposed on China by the United States also included providing aviation services in China in 2010, and providing an assessment of China’s aircraft carrier training, it said.

The indictment alleges the Chinese national brokered a deal between the South African flight school and a Chinese state owned enterprise to provide aircraft carrier landing training to Chinese military pilots in South Africa and China.

A T-2 Buckeye aircraft was purchased from a U.S. aircraft dealer for this training, by providing false information that resulted in the U.S. government issuing an export license, it said.

Duggan faces four charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States by conspiracy to unlawfully export defense services to China, conspiracy to launder money, and two counts of violating the arms export control act and international traffic in arms regulations.

Duggan is being held in custody in Sydney and his case will return to a Sydney court on Friday.

A spokesperson said Australia’s Attorney-General’s Department “does not comment on extradition matters until after the person has been brought before the court pursuant to that extradition request”.

Duggan moved to Australia in 2002 after a decade in the U.S. Marines, later moving to Beijing in 2014 where he worked as an aviation consultant. He returned to Australia from China weeks before he was arrested, according to his lawyer.

Reuters previously reported that in 2014 Duggan shared a Beijing address with a Chinese businessman, Su Bin, who was arrested in Canada in July 2014 and sentenced to prison in the United States two years later after pleading guilty in a high-profile hacking case involving the theft of U.S. military aircraft designs.

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney and Michael Martina in Washington; Editing by Howard Goller and Michael Perry)

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

The Biden administration’s senior-most nonbinary official is out of a job after stealing one too many women’s suitcases from American airports.

Sam Brinton was unceremoniously dismissed as deputy assistant secretary of the Office of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition at the Department of Energy on Monday, a department spokesperson told the Washington Free Beacon. The agency did not disclose the reason for Brinton’s dismissal, but it comes shortly after the erstwhile bureaucrat was slapped with felony charges for stealing luggage from airports in Las Vegas and Minneapolis.

“Sam Brinton is no longer a DOE employee. By law, the Department of Energy cannot comment further on personnel matters,” the spokesperson told the Free Beacon.

Brinton, who identifies as “genderfluid” and uses they/them pronouns, was captured on camera stealing a woman’s bag with contents worth more than $3,670 from Harry Reid International Airport on July 6. Brinton carried out the heist just 18 days after joining the Biden administration as a civil servant. 

“Specifically, Brinton pulled the victim’s luggage from the carousel and examined the tag. Then placed it back on the carousel, looking in all directions for anyone who might be watching, or might approach. Pulling it back off the carousel and demonstrating the same behavior by looking around before walking away with it quickly,” a felony warrant issued against Brinton on Dec. 8 stated.

Detectives were unsuccessful in identifying Brinton as the thief until news surfaced that the nonbinary bureaucrat had been charged in a separate incident for swiping a suitcase with contents worth $2,325 from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport in September.

Brinton, who was known for promoting fetishes and tying sexual partners up like dogs before joining the Biden administration, was placed on leave from the Energy Department in October. The former official faces a hearing for the Minneapolis baggage theft on Dec. 19.

In the meantime, Brinton kept busy by delivering a hands-on seminar at a leather kink conference in late November on the science of spanking and “turning butts red.”

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

A caravan of more than 1,000 illegal immigrants from Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua on Sunday “streamed across the southern border into Texas,” the Daily Mail reported Monday.

The caravan, which the Daily Mail says may be “the largest in history,” rushed across the Rio Grande into El Paso. Mexican police appear to have helped the immigrants cross the U.S. border, with images showing police “escorting nearly 20 buses filled with migrants into Ciudad Juarez,” directly across the border from El Paso.

The mass crossing came nine days before the expiration of Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows law enforcement to rapidly expel illegal immigrants. A federal judge already struck down the policy, though states are appealing that ruling. The Biden administration, which earlier this year moved to end the policy, has started weighing similar policies as the border crisis worsens.

President Joe Biden has faced widespread criticism for his handling of border crossings, which have broken records since he took office. The president just last week declined to visit the border, saying that “there are more important things going on.”

Administration officials this year pressured the mayor of El Paso, where the caravan crossed Sunday, to cover up the border crisis, the Washington Free Beacon reported in October.

Migrants at that time were already “filling up the city’s shelters and hotels and straining its services,” according to El Paso officials. That strain has intensified, the Daily Mail reported:

El Paso reports that after the 1,000 crossings on Sunday night, Border Patrol now has more than 5,000 illegal immigrants in custody and has released hundreds onto the streets of U.S. cities.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

After more than a decade providing a platform for some of D.C.’s most notorious Iranian regime apologists, the Atlantic Council is disbanding its longtime Iran program in the face of mounting protests against the hardline government in Tehran.

The think tank announced this month that it is ending its Future of Iran Initiative, which advocated for closer ties between the United States and the clerical Iranian government, and parting ways with initiative director Barbara Slavin, who used her academic perch to host pro-Iran lobbyists and publish flattering commentary about regime officials.

In its place, the Atlantic Council is launching a new program called the Iran Strategy Project that includes regime critics and Iranian human rights advocates, including Alliance for Rights of All Minorities’s Marjan Keypour, who has vocally supported the uprisings in Iran. The council has also added more conservative voices to its board, including Frances Townsend, who served as a homeland security adviser to former president George W. Bush, as well as Stuart Levey, a former Treasury Department undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence who helped implement a range of tough sanctions on the Iranian regime. The appointment of these voices is likely to take the Atlantic Council in a different direction, one at odds with Slavin’s longstanding efforts to foster close U.S. ties with Iran’s clerical leadership.

The news signals that the women’s rights protests erupting across Iran prompted the Atlantic Council to revisit its programming after years of leading the charge to normalize U.S. relations with the regime. Slavin’s Future of Iran project served as a key cog in the Obama administration’s self-described pro-Iran “echo chamber,” which flooded the media with positive propaganda in the lead-up to the 2015 nuclear deal. Slavin also publicly feuded with anti-regime activists and was pictured in 2017 giving the middle finger to pro-democracy protesters during a demonstration in Washington, D.C. The dissolution of Slavin’s pro-regime program drew applause from Iranian regime critics, who said the Atlantic Council must turn the page on its past work as the Iranian protest movement threatens to topple the hardline regime.

“Ms. Slavin represents the very worst of apologia for Iran’s dictatorship,” said Kaveh Shahrooz, an Iranian dissident and Toronto-based senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. “She, and the initiative she set up at the Atlantic Council, took money from people with business interests in Iran, met and took smiling photos with the worst high-ranking regime officials, and offered policy suggestions that would give the regime a lifeline.”

“Given the events on the ground, I think the Atlantic Council was embarrassed to continue to associate with her,” Shahrooz added.

The Atlantic Council said in a statement that its decision was “driven by recent events such as the women-led Iranian social movement demanding freedom and autonomy, the near-term potential for a new supreme leader, Iran’s evolving role in the region (including its military support of Russia’s war in Ukraine), and the likely end of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action [Iranian nuclear deal].”

Bryan Leib, the director of Iranian Americans for Liberty, told the Washington Free Beacon that Slavin “has worked tirelessly to drum up support in America for a terrorist regime in Tehran that murders, censors, and oppresses the Iranian people.”

“She has echoed regime talking points while attending round-table discussions held by former president Rouhani and current president Raisi, a.k.a the Butcher of Tehran,” said Leib. “Good on the Atlantic Council for finally severing ties with one of the most prolific supporters of the Butcher of Tehran and the Islamic regime in Tehran.”

The Atlantic Council told the Free Beacon that Slavin’s departure and the decision to fold the Future of Iran Initiative were not related to her policy positions.

“Barbara’s dedication and record of success has been critical to advancing the council’s work on Iran over the last decade,” said an Atlantic Council spokesman. “As she departs for the Stimson Center, the council is expanding and centralizing its work on Iran to reflect the dramatic shifts underway in Tehran, the Middle East, and the world.”

Slavin told the Free Beacon that she is “very proud of the work I have done at the Atlantic Council over the past 12 years and looking forward to a new position at the Stimson Center.”

She also rejected characterizations of her views as pro-Iranian government, saying she “thoroughly condemned the Iranian regime for its brutality while continuing my work to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

Under Slavin’s leadership, the initiative hosted events promoting closer ties between the United States and the Iranian government, advocating for the Obama administration’s nuclear deal with Iran, and featuring regime advocates such as Trita Parsi, the founder of a pro-Tehran lobbying group that helped set up meetings between members of Congress and Iran’s foreign minister.

Human rights activists have for years accused Slavin of downplaying the Iranian government’s atrocities. Slavin has said in recent years, for instance, that Iran is becoming less oppressive for women, saying that hair-covering mandates are “observed in very token fashion” and that the country is “much more liberalized now than they were before.” The Iranian protesters are demonstrating against oppressive hair-covering mandates and for increased liberalization.

Slavin also slammed the Trump administration for killing Iranian terror chief Qassem Suleimani in early 2020, calling it a “major—and incredibly risky—escalation with Iran, a pivotal country of some 80 million people,” that “will cause more instability and the loss of more innocent lives.” She also objected to the Trump administration’s decision to designate the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, saying it’s “provocative to designate the entire military establishment of another country as terrorists” and “invites retaliation.”

“Is it a pre-election gift to [Israeli prime minister] Bibi [Netanyahu] or just more anti-Iran propaganda?” Slavin said at the time. “I’m frankly scratching my head over why this was done.”

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

2024 frontrunner is already making a difference in people’s lives

Donald Trump’s entry into the 2024 presidential race has already made a difference in the lives of hardworking Americans. Inflation slowed more than expected in November, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reported on Tuesday, exactly four weeks since Trump announced his candidacy and declared that “America’s comeback starts right now.” Prices rose 7.1 percent compared with November of last year, which was the smallest year-on-year increase since December 2021.

Joe Biden naturally tried to claim credit for the economic data. “You’re beginning to see the impact of our economic strategy,” he said Tuesday, nearly two years after taking office. Whereas Biden pompously neglected to cite Trump’s campaign announcement as the most likely catalyst for the strong inflation numbers, the former president was characteristically demure in response to the BLS report.

Trump declared his candidacy on November 15, vowing to “make America great and glorious again” and alleviate the “pain, hardship, anxiety, and despair” that have defined the Biden era. Tuesday’s inflation numbers suggest Trump is already making good on that promise. Probably because he cares so much about this country’s future, unlike the current president who will probably die soon.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

The Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee will need to find a new chair after Sen. Gary Peters (Mich.) said he won’t return to the job. But ahead of a difficult Senate map for Democrats in 2024, few of the party’s stars are lining up to take the helm, according to a HuffPost report.

“Nobody wants to do it because it’s a lot of work,” Sen. Jon Tester (D., Mont.) told HuffPost. “I don’t know who could do it. Obviously Peters doesn’t want to do it again.”

Peters, who was selected to chair the DSCC in January 2021, has had a successful tenure leading the campaign arm, with the Democrats expanding their Senate majority in November. But even with Democrats urging him to remain at the helm, Peters told HuffPost he won’t lead the DCCC through the 2024 cycle.

The question of who will be the next DSCC chair comes as Senate Democrats face a far more challenging cycle in 2024. The party will have to defend six incumbents in states that have been won by former president Donald Trump. The Washington Post says the election “could be brutal” for Democrats, with “eight solid pickup opportunities for the GOP,” which will work to flip the Democrats’ 51-49 majority. Democrats’ best hope for a pickup of their own, according to HuffPost, is flipping Sen. Ted Cruz’s (R., Texas) seat, which Cruz held by nearly 3 points in 2018.

Tester suggested to HuffPost three Democratic senators who might take the job: Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Alex Padilla (Calif.), and Jon Ossoff (Ga.). But spokespeople told HuffPost that none of those three senators is interested.

A spokesperson for another senator floated as a potential candidate, Tina Smith (D., Minn.), told HuffPost that Smith isn’t interested.

“When you get rid of the senators who are either up for reelection, just won their election, or are geriatric, there’s really not that many names left,” a Democratic Senate aide told HuffPost.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

U.S. Attorney Damian Williams on Tuesday unveiled eight indictments against Democratic megadonor Sam Bankman-Fried, accusing the former CEO of crypto exchange FTX of running “one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.”

“By anyone’s lights, this is one of the biggest financial frauds in American history,” Williams said after detailing how Bankman-Fried allegedly stole customers’ money, committed fraud against investors and lenders, and violated campaign finance laws.

Williams hinted that more charges might come for Bankman-Fried, who was the Democratic Party’s second-biggest donor in the 2022 midterm elections.

Comment from Elizabeth Warren alum comes as Boston debates whether to permit noncitizens to vote in local elections

Allowing immigrants without American citizenship to vote would “enrich” the “concept of citizenship,” a Boston Democratic councilwoman said on Monday.

“Immigrants with legal status live here, pay taxes, are members of this body politic, and should be able to exercise their right to vote,” Ruthzee Louijeune said in a city council hearing. “Far from diluting the concept of citizenship, noncitizen voting would enrich it by fully incorporating immigrants.”

Louijeune, a Harvard Law School graduate who served as senior counsel for Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D., Mass.) 2020 presidential campaign, made the comments as the city council debates whether to open local elections to noncitizen residents, including Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, Temporary Protected Status receivers, and other visa holders.

If the measure passes, Boston will become the largest city in the country to allow noncitizens to vote after state courts struck down similar policies in New York City and San Francisco. The Democratic cities’ push to expand voting rights to noncitizens comes as the Biden administration in November extended Temporary Protected Status to hundreds of thousands of migrants from Haiti, El Salvador, Nicaragua, Sudan, Honduras, and Nepal amid record illegal immigration at the southern border.

Republicans in recent years have tried to block Democratic efforts to expand noncitizen voting, arguing that it undermines U.S. citizenship and exposes the country to foreign influence. After Washington, D.C., city council members in October passed a bill to allow illegal immigrants to vote in local elections, Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) introduced legislation to prohibit the city from enforcing the measure, noting that it would permit foreign workers at embassies to vote.

“Allowing noncitizens and illegal immigrants to vote in our elections opens our country up to foreign influence and allows those who are openly violating U.S. law or even working for hostile foreign governments to take advantage,” Cruz said.

Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.) last year similarly introduced a bill that would bar federal funding to cities and states that permit noncitizens to vote. While federal law prohibits noncitizens from voting in federal elections, it does not address state or local elections. Eleven municipalities in Maryland and two in Vermont allow noncitizen voting. State judges ruled earlier this year that New York City’s and San Francisco’s voting measures violated their respective state constitutions.

“The New York State Constitution expressly states that citizens meeting the age and residency requirements are entitled to register and vote in elections,” New York State Supreme Court justice Ralph Porzio wrote in his ruling. “There is no statutory ability for the City of New York to issue inconsistent laws permitting noncitizens to vote.”

Boston’s debate over noncitizen voting comes after Massachusettsans in November voted by more than 7 points to grant illegal immigrants driver’s licenses.

The Boston City Council also approved a measure earlier this month to allow 16 and 17 year olds to vote in local elections. Councilwoman Julia Mejia (D.) said teenagers should be able to vote because they often work and are on the “front lines protesting.” The measure is awaiting Democratic mayor Michelle Wu’s signature. Then it will go to the Massachusetts state house for approval.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) this week warned that California would experience an unsustainable flow of illegal immigrants once President Joe Biden reverses the Trump administration’s border policy.

“The fact is, what we’ve got right now is not working and is about to break in a post-42 world unless we take some responsibility and ownership,” the governor told ABC News Monday.

Newsom’s comments allude to the Biden administration’s plan to next week lift Title 42, a Trump-era policy that allows law enforcement to quickly expel illegal immigrants. The governor also complained about the Biden administration’s decision to send “planes and buses to California full of migrants because of all the good work … the state is doing for the immigrant community,” ABC News’s Sacramento, Calif., affiliate reported.

Newsom’s apparent criticism of Biden’s immigration moves is new for the governor known for tweeting condemnations of Texas and Florida, whose Republican governors have transported busloads of illegal immigrants to liberal enclaves like Martha’s Vineyard and Washington, D.C. Newsom also raised his national profile by fighting President Donald Trump’s immigration policies.

Now, it seems, he will miss at least some aspects of Trump’s pandemic policy.

“I’m saying that as a father,” Newsom said. “I’m saying that as someone that feels responsible for being part of the solution and I’m trying to do my best here.”

Newsom added that he didn’t mean “to point fingers.”

Spokesmen for Newsom and the Department of Homeland Security did not immediately respond when the Washington Free Beacon asked how many immigrants the federal government has sent to California this year.

The Newsom team did not give California reporters advance warning of his border visit, which ABC said was apparently only covered by national press.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

LanzaTech rakes in taxpayer funds despite tight relationship with China-run energy giant Sinopec

Joe Biden’s Energy Department funneled millions of dollars to a green energy company in the months after the company partnered with a Chinese state-owned entity that it acknowledges could face business-crippling sanctions.

Carbon capture company LanzaTech, federal spending disclosures show, has received more than $10 million in grant payments from the Biden administration since April 2021, when the company announced a partnership with Sinopec Capital—the clean energy investment arm of the Sinopec Group, a Chinese state-owned oil conglomerate also known as the China Petrochemical Corporation—to “debut an international market of new energy and new materials.” LanzaTech has acknowledged in SEC disclosures that its association with Sinopec, which China has used to purchase oil from U.S.-sanctioned nations such as Russia and Iran, could jeopardize its bottom line. The company’s financial interactions with Sinopec and other Beijing-run entities, LanzaTech wrote in a November filing, could bring “complications” and “restrictions” should the United States or other nations implement “sanctions on certain Chinese individuals.” That filing also notes “that the Chinese government may intervene or influence our operations at any time” and that LanzaTech may be unable to “protect our interests” in Chinese joint ventures “by nominating a non-Chinese director to the board of directors of any such joint venture.” Sinopec Capital managing director Bo Ren, who worked for CITIC’s brokerage arm prior to joining Sinopec and who graduated from a Chinese university that sits on a U.S. trade blacklist for stealing American trade secrets, is a LanzaTech board member.

Biden has placed green energy at the center of his administration’s priorities, with the Democrat working to invest billions of dollars in “America’s clean energy economy” to create “good-paying jobs” in the United States. However, China’s dominance of the clean energy supply chain challenges that priority. In addition to LanzaTech, Biden’s Energy Department has touted a $200 million grant to lithium battery company Microvast Holdings, which the department said would “supercharge the private sector to ensure our clean energy future is America-made.” Microvast operates primarily out of China and was recently added to a Securities and Exchange Commission watchlist of Chinese companies that have failed to comply with American auditing requirements, the Washington Free Beacon reported Tuesday.

LanzaTech’s partnership with Sinopec was not the first time the company aligned itself with a Beijing-run entity. In June 2018, LanzaTech entered into a joint venture with Chinese state-owned steel giant Shougang Group to build an ethanol plant in China’s Hubei province, one of the company’s three plants in the communist nation. LanzaTech has also raised millions from CITIC Capital, a subsidiary of China’s largest state-run conglomerate. Still, the company’s relationships with Beijing did not stop the Biden administration from sending LanzaTech millions of dollars for green energy projects such as “low-cost sustainable aviation fuel.”

For Arkansas Republican senator Tom Cotton, Biden’s support for companies such as LanzaTech shows that the Democrat’s “green energy agenda is stamped with the words ‘made in China.'”

“Instead of handing millions of taxpayer dollars to a Chinese-backed company, the president should be encouraging American energy production and American energy independence,” Cotton told the Free Beacon.

Neither the White House nor LanzaTech returned requests for comment. The Energy Department told the Free Beacon that it “makes financial assistance awards on a competitive basis and follows a rigorous merit review process using independent technical experts” and “requires that DOE-funded inventions be substantially manufactured in the United States.” The department did not return a follow-up request for comment on its payments to LanzaTech following the company’s Sinopec partnership.

LanzaTech has political connections to top Democrats. One of the company’s most influential financiers, billionaire venture capitalist Vinod Khosla, led then-presidential candidate Barack Obama’s India policy team in 2008 and went on to host a $32,400-a-head Democratic Party fundraiser at his California mansion, which Obama personally attended. Obama’s former deputy chief of staff and campaign manager Jim Messina, meanwhile, joined LanzaTech’s board in 2013. LanzaTech received tens of millions of dollars in Energy Department grants during Obama’s time as president, some of which carried over to the Trump administration, which awarded the company less than $3 million in new grants prior to its Sinopec deal. In September 2022 company CEO Jennifer Holmgren accepted a White House invite to brief Biden administration officials and members of Congress “on the progress LanzaTech has made in leveraging biotechnology and biomanufacturing for a safe, secure, and sustainable U.S. bioeconomy.”

Beyond LanzaTech, the Biden administration has already faced criticism for its dealings with Sinopec. Biden’s Energy Department in April announced the sale of nearly one million Strategic Petroleum Reserve barrels to the Chinese state-controlled gas giant’s trading arm, Unipec, a move the administration said would “support American consumers” and “combat Putin’s price hike.” But the sale—which helped drain the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to its lowest level in more than four decades—came as Unipec underwent an “unusual buying spree” aimed at boosting China’s own oil reserves. It also came as China used Sinopec and its state-run affiliates to strengthen the nation’s energy relationship with Russia and Iran. The sale prompted congressional Republicans to open a formal investigation into the Biden administration.

Biden is now facing similar probes over his green energy grants. Sen. John Barrasso (R., Wyo.), the ranking member on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, on Dec. 7 launched an inquiry into the administration’s Microvast grant. That grant “endangers our national security” and “undermine[s] the United States’ position in its race against China for technological supremacy,” Barrasso said in a letter to Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm. Former energy secretary Rick Perry also called for congressional investigations into Granholm for the grant, which he called “unacceptable.”

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

What a happy coincidence for Democrats that, hours before the alleged crypto criminal Sam Bankman-Fried was due to testify before the House Financial Services Committee, he was arrested in the Bahamas. That meant that SBF, the second-biggest Democratic donor of the 2022 cycle—behind 92-year-old George Soros—was able to evade questioning from Republican House members.  

Bankman-Fried helped to bankroll President Joe Biden’s 2020 campaign and threw nearly $40 million behind Democratic candidates this year, and we have a feeling that questioning from Republican lawmakers would’ve been embarrassing for the Democratic Party. His testimony under oath would also have, presumably, been a boon for prosecutors who decided to arrest him on Monday instead. The timing is puzzling. 

SBF was indicted by the Southern District of New York, which in the past few decades has served as the training ground for prominent political activists, including James Comey and Preet Bharara, and which is notorious for maintaining close ties to Washington. It is not hard to imagine that some behind-the-scenes negotiating saved SBF, and the Democrats, from an embarrassing and potentially self-incriminating performance. SBF hasn’t shut his mouth since his company, FTX, went belly up, and putting him behind bars may have been the party’s only hope.

Whatever the case, the FTX scandal, which the SDNY described on Tuesday as “one of the biggest financial frauds ever,” should invite a much broader investigation. In a country with federal rules about what constitutes an onion ring, where have financial regulators been as more and more Americans were encouraged by a credulous press and their allies in the Democratic, tech, and Hollywood elite to put their savings into risky cryptocurrencies? We don’t recall warnings from federal officials, former prosecutors, or investment professionals indicating that crypto businesses—indeed, the entire industry itself—might be fraudulent.

Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Gary Gensler was busy rubbing elbows with SBF and negotiating a regulatory scheme whose blueprint originated at FTX headquarters, while most of the country’s major law firms, investing services, media companies, and politicians were on the crypto payroll.

For the unsuspecting Americans sold the pile of fairy dust known as cryptocurrency—or SRM, or FTT, or LOL—the machinations that allow Bankman-Fried’s political allies to evade accountability are a final insult. 

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

A 300-year-old library chamber in the educational epicenter of Dublin, Ireland, has become world-famous for its stunning interior and treasure trove of rare titles, some of them over a century old. For book lovers of all ages, both the collection and the setting are the stuff of fairy tales.

The Long Room at the Old Library at Trinity College in Dublin—Ireland’s largest library—is a grand, 213-foot-long wood-paneled chamber with barrel-vaulted ceilings and uniform floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. On these shelves sit some 200,000 rare books, accessible by sliding ladders and cordoned off to all but those with express permission to handle them.

The original Old Library building was built between 1712 and 1732. An Irish “legal deposit” law, passed in 1801, allowed the library to claim a copy of every book published in Britain and Ireland free of charge, a law that persists today, according to the library of Trinity College. As such, the building was extended in the 1850s to accommodate the library’s expansive collection.

In 1860, the roof of the Long Room was raised to accommodate an upper gallery for more books. Today, the library at large has over six million printed volumes representing 400 years of academic thought contained within its walls.

The Long Room, where the oldest books in this collection reside, is an homage to history in more ways than one.

The chamber houses one of the last remaining copies of the 1916 Proclamation of the Irish Republic, and the Book of Kells, a manuscript penned by monks over 1,200 years ago and now one of the most valuable books in the world.

Also on display in the Long Room is a 15th-century oak and willow harp with 29 brass strings, representing the emblem of Ireland and the oldest of its kind in the country.

At the end of every row of bookshelves is a marble bust, the oldest dating from the mid-18th century, each one depicting a famous writer or great philosopher of the Western World. Some depict great male figures linked with Trinity College.

In November 2020, Trinity College added four busts featuring the female scholars Rosalind Franklin, Ada Lovelace, Augusta Gregory, and Mary Wollstonecraft to the Long Room’s collection.

This magical building, with its rich history and the treasures within, attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each and every year.

Share your stories with us at emg.inspired@epochtimes.com, and continue to get your daily dose of inspiration by signing up for the Inspired newsletter at TheEpochTimes.com/newsletter

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Twitter employee from China, where the Chinese Communist Party rules with an iron fist through surveillance and censorship, spoke out against banning former President Donald Trump’s account, according to the fifth installment of the Elon Musk-endorsed “Twitter Files.”

The latest installment, published by The Free Press founder and editor Bari Weiss on Dec. 12, exposed more internal details at Twitter that ultimately led to the suspension of Trump’s Twitter account on Jan. 8, 2021. Weiss revealed that was an internal discussion a day earlier, particularly how there were “dissenters inside Twitter” who preferred not banning Trump.

“Maybe because I am from China, I deeply understand how censorship can destroy the public conversation,” a Chinese Twitter employee said to co-workers on Jan. 7, 2021, according to the screengrab.

In response, another employee said, “I understand this fear, but I also think it’s important to understand that censorship by a government is very different than censorship of the government.”

“The first amendment in the U.S.—and similar legislation in other countries with similar concepts—exist specifically to prevent the government from silencing the people,” the employee added.

Weiss wrote that the Chinese employee was among the few that had opposed a ban on Trump.

“But voices like that one appear to have been a distinct minority within the company,” Weiss wrote. “Across Slack channels, many Twitter employees were upset that Trump hadn’t been banned earlier.”

Musk shared a synopsis of the latest batch of internal Twitter communications on Monday.

“Under pressure from hundreds of activist employees, Twitter deplatforms Trump, a sitting US President, even though they themselves acknowledge that he didn’t violate the rules,” Musk wrote on Twitter.

After retweeting Musk’s tweet, Rep. Troy Nehls (R-Texas) took to Twitter to voice support for Trump.

“Donald Trump didn’t break any rules on Twitter, and activist employees banned him anyways,” Nehls wrote. “The left hates free speech.”

Whistleblower

Peiter “Mudge” Zatko—a whistleblower who served as Twitter’s head of security before being fired in January—was mentioned in the latest installment of files.

“Twitter’s COO Parag Agrawal—who would later succeed Dorsey as CEO—told Head of Security Mudge Zatko: ‘I think a few of us should brainstorm the ripple effects’ of Trump’s ban. Agrawal added: ‘centralized content moderation IMO has reached a breaking point now,’” Weiss wrote.

In August, Zatko filed a complaint (pdf) to federal regulators, alleging that Twitter had “engaged in acts and practices operating as deceit upon its users and shareholders, regarding security, privacy, and integrity.”

The complaint claims that Chinese entities gave money to Twitter, raising concerns that these entities could learn sensitive information about Twitter users around the world.

“Twitter executives knew that accepting Chinese money risked endangering users in China,” the complaint says.

In September, during a congressional hearing, Zatko revealed that at least one agent of China’s top intelligence agency, the Ministry of State Security, was on Twitter’s payroll.

Zatko also said that Twitter would be a “goldmine” for any foreign intelligence agency that could embed agents within the company.

“If you place somebody on Twitter … as we know has happened, it would be very difficult for Twitter to find them,” Zatko said. “They will probably be able to stay there for a long period of time and gain significant information to provide back on either targeting people or on information as to Twitter’s decisions and discussions and … the direction of the company.”

Previous Revelations

Independent journalist Matt Taibbi unveiled the first batch of the “Twitter Files” on Dec. 2, exposing how the social media giant’s efforts to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story published just weeks before the 2020 presidential election.

Emails from the laptop’s hard drive and Treasury records revealed how Joe Biden, his brother James, and Hunter Biden were involved in various foreign business ventures, in countries such as Ukraine, Russia, and China. At the time, many media outlets discredited the revelations as “Russian disinformation” and the news was blocked by social media platforms.

Speaking on the Senate floor on Dec. 7, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) criticized Twitter over revelations made by the first installment of files.

“The documents make clear that Twitter was effectively an arm of the Democratic Party and the Biden campaign. Twitter essentially gave the Biden campaign a massive in-kind campaign contribution,” Grassley said. “What Twitter and other Big Tech companies did in 2020 with respect to censorship was as much an outrage then as it is today.”

Grassley added, “Simply put, what they did is expected of communist China not the United States of America.”

On Dec. 8, Weiss reported on the second installment of files, exposing how Twitter created “secret blacklists” and deployed “visibility filtering” to shadow-ban certain users.

In the two ensuing days, the third and fourth installments, both dealing with Trump’s ban, were released. The third batch exposed Twitter activities from before the 2020 election up to the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021. Meanwhile, the fourth batch exposed how Twitter executives built their case and deviated from a longstanding company policy to ban trump. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Officials offer different views on pace of commercialization

It was 1:03 a.m. on Dec. 5 that experimental physicist Alex Zylstra first spotted it: for the first time, a target yielded more energy from a fusion reaction than a laser put into it—though that’s not counting the much greater input energy that was needed to power the laser in the first place.

“One of the first things I did was call one of the diagnostic experts to double-check the data,” he said during a Dec. 13 press conference with his colleagues from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Zylstra was running a test with the world’s most energetic laser—Lawrence Livermore’s National Ignition Facility (NIF).

By blasting a capsule of hydrogen atoms with that laser until the atoms heat into plasma and combine, he and his colleagues were hoping to achieve nuclear fusion through an approach known as inertial confinement.

The other main approach to fusion, magnetic confinement fusion, uses devices such as tokamaks to contain plasmas using powerful magnetic fields.

NIF physicist Tammy Ma said that “tears were running down [her] face” when she learned about the result.

“I want to emphasize that each experiment we do is building on 60 years of work in this field, and more than a decade on NIF itself,” Zylstra said.

His team’s latest work comes as the latest in a recent series of fusion-related achievements from that facility, where fusion research is pursued under the National Nuclear Security Administration’s “Stockpile Stewardship” program, as an alternative to the underground nuclear testing that ended during the early 1990s.

The most important of those achievements may have occurred in August 2021, when NIF researchers first briefly achieved ignition according to one set of criteria—namely, when the forces cooling plasma down aren’t strong enough to swamp the forces heating it up. (The Dec. 5 result has also been called “ignition,” as it marks scientific energy breakeven.)

“The NIF result in August 2021 changed everything, but this result changes nothing,” said Daniel Jassby, a former research physicist with Princeton University’s plasma laboratory, in a Dec. 13 interview with The Epoch Times.

At the Dec. 13 press conference, Lawerence Livermore director Kim Budil said that about 300 megajoules of energy drove the experiment as a whole. The target produced about 3.15 megajoules of energy from 2.05 megajoules of energy, according to a press release.

The latest result and press conference coincides with Congress negotiating a last-minute spending bill. Republican senators have called for their colleagues to wait until after their party takes the House of Representatives in January to finalize the package.

Jassby did not rule out the possibility that the latest announcement’s timing has something to do with the ongoing spending debate.

“That could be—that’s standard political activity,” he said.

The reported breakthrough also coincides with increasing tension between the United States and its nuclear-armed geopolitical rival, Russia, in the midst of the Ukraine war. Lawrence Livermore’s Mark Hermann noted how NIF’s fusion research aided the United States’ nuclear deterrent capabilities.

The scientists, bureaucrats, and administration officials who spoke on Dec. 13 said the results vindicate decades of earlier researchers who have sought energy breakeven.

“They never lost sight of this goal,” said White House office of science and technology policy director Arati Prabhakar.

Yet, an apparent discrepancy emerged as to a plausible timeline for commercial fusion power.

Budil, of Lawrence Livermore, stated that commercialization could be achieved in “probably decades,” though perhaps not 50 or 60 years.

“With concerted effort and investment, a few decades of research on the underlying technologies could put us in a position to build a power plant,” she said.

Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm, by contrast, appealed to President Joe Biden’s “decadal vision to get to a commercial fusion reactor within 10 years.”

She said the latest result “shows that it can be done.”

When Granholm was asked about that gap by a reporter, Budil jumped in to say that magnetic fusion was more advanced than inertial confinement fusion. However, she did not state that either approach could be realistically commercialized within a decade.

“With real investment and real focus, that timescale can move closer,” she said.

Praise and Skepticism

Some fusion insiders have stressed what they see as the significance of NIF’s contribution.

A spokesperson for a major international magnetic fusion collaboration called the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) said the results were “a shot of adrenaline for the global fusion R&D enterprise.”

Tokamaks—the technology at the center of ITER’s work—are still “the closest to commercial deployment,” added ITER spokesperson Laban Coblentz.

Andrew Holland, the CEO of the Washington-based Fusion Industry Association, said that the announcement on the finding “shows the world that fusion is not science fiction: it will soon be a viable source of energy.”

He also called for regulation of the emerging fusion sector, adding that the NIF experiment “will give governments around the world further incentive to support the development of commercial fusion energy.”

Yet other experts who spoke with The Epoch Times sounded more skeptical, particularly with regard to the idea of fusion energy reaching commercialization within a decade.

“It will take half a century to develop the presently non-existent technologies required for a power reactor based on [inertial confinement fusion], including a practical laser or ion beam,” Jassby said in an email to The Epoch Times.

In his view, tokamaks remain “highly speculative.”

“Anyone who predicts commercial fusion before 2050 has a far greater imagination than I do,” said Rod Adams, a Navy nuclear veteran who is a partner with the Nucleation Capital venture fund, in a Dec. 13 email to The Epoch Times.

Like Jassby, he mentioned what he sees as the odd timing of the latest result, which aligned with a spending debate in Congress.

“A final source of skepticism is the skillful orchestration of the announcement. Why did the news ‘leak out’ in time for multiple sources to produce articles even before the widely promoted press conference?” he asked.

Steven Krivit, a journalist and noted fusion critic, told The Epoch Times in a Dec. 13 email that the latest NIF data is “irrelevant” from a practical perspective, though not necessarily to scientists.

He questioned the definitions used to claim the reaction exceeded breakeven, noting that the lasers used to carry out the experiments require hundreds of megajoules of energy.

In a follow-up message to The Epoch Times, Adams said the experimental net energy production amounted to “sound and fury producing dozens of articles about a breakthrough.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

WHAT STARTED ON THESE PAGES IN FEBRUARY HAS BECOME A FULL BLOWN HUMILIATION FOR THE BIDEN WHITE HOUSE.

Joe Biden’s transgender nuclear energy hire has been fired from his role after being implicated in a series of luggage thefts. Brinton’s role in the Biden government was first revealed here, by The National Pulse, in February.

“Sam Brinton is no longer a DOE employee. By law, the Department of Energy cannot comment further on personnel matters,” a spokesperson for the Department of Energy said on Monday.

According to the New York Post:

The 35-year-old Biden administration deputy assistant secretary for spent fuel and waste disposition at the DOE’s Office of Nuclear Energy was reportedly canned after being charged with stealing a woman’s suitcase from a Minneapolis airport in September and another woman’s bag from a Las Vegas airport in July.

But Brinton’s first outing into public consciousness was on these pages, as revealed by National Pulse contributor K. Christopher Powell. Writing in February, Powell explained to the world:

A recent, high-level hire at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy is a drag queen, LGBTQ+ activist who has “lectured” on kink at college campuses and participated in interviews about fetish roleplay. In one interview, Sam Brinton – now a top Biden official – even discusses having sex with animals.

Brinton – who has written in opposition to “gay conversion therapy” – was recently tapped to serve as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy for the Department of Energy. He also goes by “Sister Ray Dee O’Active” – his drag queen alter ego.

In his own website’s bio, Brinton reveals:

Sam has worn his stilettos to Congress to advise legislators about nuclear policy and to the White House where he advised President Obama and Michelle Obama on LGBT issues. He shows young men and women everywhere he goes that they can be who they are and gives them courage. Once, while he was walking around Disney World in 6 inch stilettos with his boyfriend, a young gay boy saw Sam with his boyfriend and started crying. He told his mother, ‘”t’s true, Mom. WE can be our own princess here.”

Brinton is an active member of the Washington, D.C. chapter of a drag queen society known as the “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence,” which lists him as the principal contact on its 2016 and 2018 tax forms. During the group’s “Lavender Mass 2021,” Brinton can be seen referring to Anthony Fauci, who was declared a “saint,” as “Daddy Fauci.”

A National Pulse follow-up story further explained of Briton:

…Biden’s latest top nuclear hire dives into a defense of the “Rentboy.com” website, which shuttered following an August 2015 illegal prostitution raid. “Rentboy” is a colloquial term for young men who have sex with older men in exchange for money, often under dubious circumstances.

“…the dissolution of Rentboy is more dangerous than the website ever was.”

– Biden appointee Sam Brinton.

Brinton, who now serves as the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition in the Office of Nuclear Energy, defended “Rentboy.com” in a September 2nd, 2015 op-ed in Advocate magazine: “The Real Ramifications of the Rentboy Raid.”

The article followed Department of Homeland Security officials raiding Rentboy’s Manhattan offices and arresting chief executive Jeffrey Hurant and six employees on charges of promoting prostitution. The following year, the CEO of the site, which connected male prostitutes and escorts with potential clients, was indicted on a charge of promoting prostitution which he ultimately pleaded guilty.

This scrutiny from the Pulse led to a whistleblower report, also covered on these pages:

A Department of Energy employee has reportedly alleged that the agency allowed “substantial irregularities” to influence its hiring process of Samuel Brinton, a controversial appointee whose work as a drag queen and LGBTQ+ activist has come under scrutiny.

On February 2nd, an anonymous Department of Energy (DOE) whistleblower sent a letter to the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) Deputy Inspector General Norbert Vint, alleging that “prohibited personnel practices” were utilized in tapping Brinton for the position of Deputy Assistant Secretary for Spent Fuel and Waste Disposition.

“Undue political influence and preferences were applied” at the DOE to select Brinton for the position, which the employee also alleged Brinton was was potentially unqualified to hold, the letter claims.

Brinton’s “background is limited to select advocacy work and an academic background at the graduate-degree level which together satisfy requirements for the competitive placement of a qualified GS-11 in federal career service, not a high-standing member of the SES,” explained the employee. SES is short for Senior Executive Service, a civil service grade equivalent to general officer or flag officer rank.

“There is concern that making personnel selection decisions for career positions based on political considerations and gender-fluid identity as means of exerting political influence over the workforce, and at the expense of other better qualified candidates, is not the intent of the U.S. civil service laws or the U.S. constitution,” continued the letter, signed by a “Long serving public servant at the U.S. Department of Energy.”

Finally, in July, we revealed Brinton’s clearance level and extraordinary salary:

A high-level hire at the Department of Energy’s Office of Nuclear Energy, whose past as a drag queen and defender of underage gay prostitution sites has stirred controversy, is earning a salary in the top one percent of all government employees, according to documents obtained exclusively by The National Pulse.

A Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by The National Pulse reveals Sam Brinton’s taxpayer funded salary of $178,063, placing him amongst the top one percent of other federal salaries. It is also around five times the national median individual income.

Brinton, who received his job offer in allegedly strange circumstances in January 2022, will also enjoy the top secret “Q clearance” level in the Department of Energy. The designation Top Secret is applied to information, “the unauthorized disclosure of which reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.”

To support our work, please visit FundRealNews.com

The House of Representatives is considering H.R. 8665, the “National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) Act of 2022.”

The purpose of this proposal, according to congress.gov., is to remove “gendered pronouns from the United States Code pertaining to the responsibilities of the Archivist and other senior officials at NARA.”

The NARA bill was originally introduced in August by Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) with bipartisan support, including Yvette Herrell (R-N.M.) and Byron Donalds (R-Fla.) as well as Gerald Connolly (D-Va.), Katie Porter (D-Calif.), Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), and Danny Davis (D-Ill.).

While the NARA bill was referred out of the House Oversight and Reform Committee and brought to the floor on Dec. 12 on a suspension of the rules, the action was postponed until Dec. 13 for reasons that aren’t entirely clear.

Spokesmen for Khanna, Herrell, and Donalds, didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

The proposal itself was listed on the daily morning notice issued by House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-Md.) amid a lengthy listing of Post Office namings and renamings, plus a measure authorizing the French Embassy to create “a memorial in the District of Columbia to honor the extraordinary contributions of Jean Monnet to restoring peace between European nations and establishing the European Union …”

The proposal, according to the official text, concerns every instance in the U.S. Code where a gendered pronoun is used with reference to the National Archivist or any other senior NARA official.

For example, the bill provides that “in section 710, by striking ‘his approval’ and inserting ‘approval by the President.’”

Similarly, in Section 2810, “by striking ‘transferred to him’ and inserting ‘transferred to the Archivist.’’’

And also in Section 2810, “by striking ‘his custody’ and inserting ‘the custody of the head of the Federal agency.’’’

The proposal contains another 21 similar provisions.

During the House’s Dec. 12 session, District of Columbia Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton moved to suspend the rules and pass the proposal. It was then considered under suspension for what was supposed to be 40 minutes of debate.

But after a mere five minutes, according to congress.gov, “the Yeas and Nays were demanded and ordered. Pursuant to the provisions of clause 8, rule XX, the Chair announced that further proceedings on the motion would be postponed.”

In other words, the vote was put off.

Under House rules, the recorded vote for or against final passage could take place at a later date or never, but when it does, two-thirds of the members present on the floor must vote for it to be approved.

The delay may reflect concern by House Democrat leaders that there may not be enough votes to pass the proposal or it may simply reflect the logjam of proposals—big and small, hugely significant to the nation’s future and totally irrelevant to anybody but those immediately concerned—facing the House in the closing hours of the lame duck session of the 117th Congress.

House Republicans are demanding recorded votes on virtually every proposal coming before the House, which further slows down the grinding of legislative wheels.

In an Aug. 5 statement announcing the introduction of the proposal, Khanna claimed that the language changes “will allow the important work being done by everyone at NARA to be recognized.”

Khanna added that “It is past time that everyone, regardless of gender, is given the same recognition at the National Archives. Replacing this outdated language is the least we can do to acknowledge the valuable contributions of thousands who have worked at NARA since its creation in 1934 and thousands more who will work there in the years to come.”

Similarly, Donalds said in the same statement that NARA “plays an integral role in our nation’s history and future. This bipartisan bill seeks to update antiquated language to recognize not only the devoted men of the NARA but also hardworking women who’ve contributed to this government agency.”

Herrell was quoted in the statement as saying, “I am glad to work with my colleagues on the Oversight and Government Committee to modernize the United States Code in a commonsense and bipartisan fashion. It is important that we offer legislative remedies to ensure our code is more consistent across the board.”

A freshman member of the 117th Congress, Herrell lost her bid for a second term in the November midterm election by about 1,300 votes.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Most people are taught that petroleum is formed deep under the Earth over the course of millions of years and is derived from the remains of plankton, plants, and other biological organisms. This explanation is stated matter-of-factly on certain government and educational websites.

This theory for oil formation is, however, just that—a theory. There is an opposing view that has substantial evidence to back it up.

Credence for oil’s organic origin (biotic origin) is strong in the United States, while the idea of an inorganic origin (abiotic origin) has long been accepted among post-Soviet scientists. Some American scientists have also jumped on the abiotic train, scorned though it may be by most of their peers.

They point to problems posed by the idea that oil comes from dead plants.

Where Did All That Dead Stuff Come From?

When a plant or animal dies, very little of its matter is buried. Nature recycles—some of nature’s greatest recyclers are insects, microorganisms, fungi, and bacteria. Has enough organic matter really been buried below the Earth to create trillions of barrels of oil?

Moreover, the biotic theory holds that organic matter must fit within the “oil window” before becoming oil. The oil window refers to a set of conditions, including reaching a particular depth (1 to 2.5 miles) where the temperature is right (140 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit) for oil to be produced.

Proponents of the alternative, abiotic theory, say oil may instead be a primordial substance that rises up from the Earth’s depths through fissures. Thus, oil might originate independently of organic sources undergoing chemical processes, similar to how methane is found on asteroids or in other barren environments.

Skeptics say methane is a simpler substance than petroleum; the process of forming the hydrocarbons in petroleum is more complex and the same logic might not hold.

Striking Oil Based On Abiotic Theory

Siljan Ring: Thomas Gold of New York’s Cornell University, who died in 2004, was a vocal proponent of abiotic theory. He advised a team that drilled in central Sweden in the late 1980s and early 1990s at a site known as the Siljan Ring that would have been seen as unpromising, to say the least, by surveyors working from a biotic perspective.

Conventional oil exploration confines itself to sedimentary basins. It is believed that plankton sinks to the bottom of bodies of water when it dies and is buried in sediment, which gets forced down over time until reaching the right conditions: the oil window.

The Siljan Ring, on the other hand, is not sediment-rich. What sediments are there, Gold said, are no deeper than 1,000 feet (300 meters), while the drilling was done at a depth of 3 to 7 miles (5 to 7 kilometers).

Albeit the drilling did not find the “gas field of world class dimensions” Gold predicted; it struck 80 barrels of oil, enough for Gold to feel vindicated and make some scientists reconsider his views. Of course, conventional drilling also doesn’t always strike it rich when surveyors think an area looks promising.

Yet, critics posited that oil seeped down there from sedimentary rock, to which Gold rebutted: “Oil seepage generated after 360 million years from such a small quantity of sediments seemed improbable.”

Oil Fields in Ukraine: A strong proponent of abiotic theory, Professor Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Chairman of the Department of Petroleum Exploration at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, is quoted in a 1996 paper by Dr. J. F. Kenney, titled “Special Edition on The Future of Petroleum.”

Krayushkin said: “The eleven major and one giant oil and gas fields here described have been discovered in a region which had, forty years ago, been condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production. The exploration for these fields was conducted entirely according to the perspective of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins.

“The drilling which resulted in these discoveries was extended purposely deep into the crystalline basement rock. … These reserves amount to at least 8,200M metric tons [more than 57 billion barrels] of recoverable oil and 100B cubic meters [328 billion cubic feet] of recoverable gas, and are thereby comparable to those of the North Slope of Alaska.”

Eugene Island: On Eugene Island, Louisiana, in 1995, it was reported that the oil fields were—perplexingly—refilling themselves after being depleted. The findings of Dr. Jean K. Whelan, part of a U.S. Department of Energy exploration program, seem to support the abiotic theory to explain this. She found that the oil likely came from great depths, as abiotic proponents say.

A New York Times article from that time explained: “[Whelan] has found evidence of differences in the composition of oil over periods of time as it flows from greater to shallower depths. By gauging degradative chemical changes in the oil resulting from action by oil-eating bacteria, she infers that oil is moving in quite rapid spurts from great depths to reservoirs closer to the surface.”

Whelan also supported a theory of Gold’s that microbes eat oil, thus explaining the presence of biological material found in oil at great depths.

Skeptics

Whelan, like Gold, met with criticism. One of the major arguments against abiotic theory is that oil migrates with underground water, thus explaining oil found in unexpected places absent of sedimentary rock. Thus, the weird uniformity of oil found in different types of rock formations of different ages is the result of oil migrating to other places.

Petroleum engineer and consultant Jean H. Laherrère wrote a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal of Gold’s arguments. Gold had already died by this point, and was unable to respond. Laherrère said Gold was surely aware of this information.

Laherrère offers alternative explanations rather than direct disproofs. He sometimes seems to take Gold’s comments out of context or treat them as standalone arguments for abiotic theory. The paper does, however, consider both sides of the argument with many of Laherrère’s responses boiling down to the fact of oil migration explaining away the abiotic proposition.

The presence of certain metals and helium found in petroleum, too, are explained from both sides.

Since oil takes millions of years to form, and no one has witnessed it firsthand, whatever evidence is submitted on either side is difficult to qualify. If the abiotic theory is correct, though, it could have vast ramifications for the energy industry. If oil production were calibrated accordingly, “fossil fuel” could come to be regarded as a renewable energy source.

Gold a “Heretic?”

In a Cornell article written after Gold’s passing, Gold is quoted saying, “I don’t enjoy my role as heretic. … It’s annoying.”

The article goes on: “Indeed, despite the intense opposition they often encountered, many of Gold’s most outrageous—and passionately held—ideas had a curious habit of turning out to be right.”

Some of his theories—such as regarding the human ear’s mechanisms for hearing, the nature of pulsars in space, and the existence of fine rock powder on the moon—were scoffed at for decades before being vindicated and becoming widely accepted.

Gold has been compared to famed astronomer Carl Sagan, whom Gold was responsible for bringing to Cornell in 1968, after Sagan was denied tenure by Harvard. The Cornell article quotes Keay Davidson’s words from a 1999 biography of Sagan: “Gold epitomized Cornell’s openness to offbeat geniuses.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on Tuesday announced a COVID-19 test manufacturer is issuing a recall due to false test results.

The COVID-19 tests were made by Detect Inc. and were sent to customers between July 26 and Aug. 26 of this year, according to the recall notice. It impacts about 11,000 tests, which were given an FDA emergency use authorization, made by the firm.

“There is an increased chance that the tests from the lot numbers listed below may give false negative results,” the announcement said. “Detect has conducted a thorough investigation to identify this issue and has made the decision to conduct a voluntary recall for these lots.”

Detect Inc. said it has not received any reports of false negative results related to the impacted lots and said the recall is being done “out of an abundance of caution,” stressing that the “reliability of positive test results is not affected.”

“Detect is notifying all customers and distributors affected by the recall. Anyone in possession of any unused tests from the affected lots should dispose of the tests,” the notice said. “The outer packaging is recyclable while all the test components can be discarded as regular trash. Detect Hubs are not affected by the recall and do not need to be discarded.”

The lot numbers and use-by dates of the affected batches can be located on the side of the text box.

“Detect, Inc. will issue a refund for the affected tests (as verified by Detect) upon customers’ acknowledgement of receipt of the recall-related communication and confirmation that any affected tests in possession have been disposed of,” the firm said via the FDA website.

Consumers with questions can contact Detect Inc. at (855) 322 3692 or send an email to the company at support@detect.com.

Other Recalls and Alerts

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a number of test kits have been recalled or flagged by the FDA.

The FDA in March of this year said that some COVID-19 rapid tests shouldn’t be used due to the possibility they’ll produce false results. At the time, agency officials told consumers not to use Celltrion DiaTrust COVID-19 Ag Rapid Test, the SD Biosensor Inc. STANDARD Q COVID-19 Ag Home Test, and the Flowflex SARS-CoV-2 Antigen Rapid Test (Self-Testing).

A month before that, in February, the FDA issued a warning about two tests made by Empowered Diagnostics because the tests aren’t approved by the FDA.

“The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is warning people to stop using the Empowered Diagnostics CovClear COVID-19 Rapid Antigen Test and ImmunoPass COVID-19 Neutralizing Antibody Rapid Test,” the FDA statement said at the time. “These tests were distributed with labeling indicating they are authorized by the FDA, but neither test has been authorized, cleared, or approved by the FDA for distribution or use in the United States.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Sam Bankman-Fried, founder of failed crypto exchange FTX, faces a litany of civil and criminal charges, including conspiracy to commit money laundering and wire fraud.

Following Bankman-Fried’s arrest in the Bahamas on Monday, three U.S. agencies—the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York (SDNY)—have all filed charges.

“Earlier this evening, Bahamian authorities arrested Samuel Bankman-Fried at the request of the U.S. government, based on a sealed indictment filed by the SDNY,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement on Twitter late Monday. That indictment has since been unsealed.

Prosecutors have charged Bankman-Fried with eight counts, according to the indictment, including wire fraud, as well as conspiracies to commit wire fraud, commodities fraud, securities fraud, money laundering, and fraud against the United States.

The indictment states that some of Bankman-Fried’s alleged crimes date back to at least 2019, when he allegedly deliberately and knowingly “agreed with others to defraud customers of FTX.com by misappropriating those customers’ deposits and using those deposits to pay expenses and debts of Alameda Research,” FTX’s crypto hedge fund, and used those misappropriated funds to make investments.

The CFTC has charged Bankman-Fried with co-mingling FTX’s customer funds with his companies’ funds in violation of the Commodities Exchange Act.

The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has charged Bankman-Fried with “orchestrating a scheme to defraud investors.”

“We allege that Sam Bankman-Fried built a house of cards on a foundation of deception while telling investors that it was one of the safest buildings in crypto,” SEC Chair Gary Gensler said in a statement.

According to the SEC, Bankman-Fried has been charged with violating the anti-fraud provisions of the Securities Act of 1933 and the Securities Exchange Act of 1934.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Bankman-Fried with a request for comment, but has not yet received a response.

His attorney, Mark Cohen from Cohen & Gresser, told media outlets that Bankman-Fried is “reviewing the charges with his legal team and considering all of his legal options.”

‘Years-Long Fraud’

The SEC alleged that Bankman-Fried concealed his diversion of FTX customers’ funds to Alameda Research, FTX’s crypto hedge fund, while raising more than $1.8 billion from equity investors, including about $1.1 billion from around 90 investors based in the United States.

While allegedly promoting FTX as a “safe” and “responsible” crypto exchange, he is accused of having “orchestrated a years-long fraud” to hide from FTX investors the diversion of their money to Alameda.

It’s also alleged that Bankman-Fried concealed FTX’s exposure to Alameda’s large holdings of FTX-linked tokens, and he’s also accused of “co-mingling” FTX customers’ funds at Alameda to make “undisclosed venture investments, lavish real estate purchases, and large political donations.”

According to the Center for Responsive Politics, Bankman-Fried gave nearly $40 million mainly to Democrat candidates and liberal organizations during the 2022 election cycle. He also claims he donated to Republicans.

In an interview in May, Bankman-Fried suggested that he would invest “north of $100 million” in the next presidential election and had a “soft ceiling” of $1 billion, although he later backtracked on this statement, calling it a “dumb quote.”

Gurbir Grewal, director of the SEC’s Division of Enforcement, said in a statement that “FTX operated behind a veneer of legitimacy Mr. Bankman-Fried created.”

“But as we allege in our complaint, that veneer wasn’t just thin, it was fraudulent,” he said.

Gensler also sent a message to other crypto platforms, saying in a statement that the fraud allegations against FTX should be seen as a warning to obey the rules.

“The alleged fraud committed by Mr. Bankman-Fried is a clarion call to crypto platforms that they need to come into compliance with our laws,” Gensler said.

Bankman-Fried Arrested

The Bahamas attorney general’s office on Monday announced Bankman-Fried’s arrest, pending extradition to the United States.

Bankman-Fried was taken into custody after the United States notified the Bahamas attorney general’s office that it had filed criminal charges against the former crypto billionaire.

Bahamas Attorney General Sen. Ryan Pinder said that Bankman-Fried had been arrested and detained under the Bahamas Extradition Act.

“At such time as a formal request for extradition is made, the Bahamas intends to process it promptly, pursuant to Bahamian law and its treaty obligations with the United States,” Pinder said in a statement.

Bahamas Prime Minister Philip Davis said that both the Bahamas and the United States want to hold responsible people affiliated with FTX who may have betrayed the public trust and broken the law.

“While the United States is pursuing criminal charges against SBF individually, the Bahamas will continue its own regulatory and criminal investigations into the collapse of FTX, with the continued cooperation of its law enforcement and regulatory partners in the United States and elsewhere,” Davis said, referring to Bankman-Fried as “SBF.”

Pinder stated that the Bahamas would “promptly” extradite Bankman-Fried to the United States once the indictment is unsealed and U.S. officials make a formal request.

FTX

Founded in 2019, FTX was one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges. The firm was valued at $32 billion at its peak, while Bankman-Fried’s net worth was estimated to be $26 billion.

At the height of his success, Bankman-Fried was hailed as a philanthropist and the second-largest individual donor to the Democratic Party, providing about $40 million in the 2022 election. He claims to have contributed “about the same amount” to Republicans confidentially to avoid press scrutiny.

FTX collapsed in November amid a liquidity crisis exacerbated by larger rival Binance’s decision to withdraw from a prospective rescue arrangement.

Traders quickly withdrew billions from the platform, and the business eventually filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Nov. 11. Millions of FTX users lost access to their crypto wallets.

Concerns have been raised about the $1 billion in client cash that appears to have vanished from the bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange.

Bankman-Fried claims to only have $100,000 in his bank account and denies having any “hidden funds.”

Caden Pearson and Katabella Roberts contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Medical pathologists from Heidelberg University Hospital in Heidelberg, Germany have published direct evidence showing how people found dead after mRNA vaccination died. As this team of six scientists explore in their study, these mRNA-vaccinated patients suffered from heart damage because their hearts were attacked by their own immune cells. This autoimmune attack on their own heart cells then leads to their damaged hearts beating so many times per second that, once the tachycardia unexpectedly started, they died in minutes.

The article, “Autopsy-based histopathological characterization of myocarditis after anti-SARS-CoV-2-vaccination,” was published on Nov. 27, 2022, in the journal Clinical Research in Cardiology, the official journal of the German Cardiac Society. The research team autopsied 25 victims of different ages who were found dead at home within 28 days of vaccination. They looked at their heart tissue under the microscope to find out why these people died of cardiac rhythmic disruption when they had no apparent underlying heart disease.

In the authors’ own words: “Our findings establish the histological phenotype of lethal vaccination-associated myocarditis.” 

Histological phenotype means direct observation of microscopic tissue. 

In a video analyzing the results, nurse educator Dr. John Campbell, who is based in the United Kingdom, told his audience: “This is peer-reviewed. This is proper science, and a definitive pathological diagnosis by a group of leading German pathologists.” Campbell’s video has been viewed 918,000 times. He has 2.58 million subscribers on his channel.

Died of Ventricular Tachycardia or Fibrillation

Ventricular tachycardia is when the heart begins beating so fast that it doesn’t have time to refill with blood between beats, so it is not adequately pumping blood. The problem originates from the ventricles: the chambers that push the blood out of the heart to the rest of the body.

Fibrillation is when, instead of the heart actually beating, it starts to just quiver. This problem can originate from the ventricles or the atria. The atria are the upper chambers that basically suck blood into the heart by expanding and contracting. Though more people are familiar with A-Fib (atrial fibrillation), ventricular fibrillation is much more dangerous, and usually lethal within minutes.

The deceased whose hearts were autopsied in this study were found dead at home, each having died of ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation within 28 days of mRNA vaccination. 

Visibly Damaged Hearts

Macrophages are large cells that are part of our immune system. When the immune system is functioning properly, our bodies use macrophages to attack infectious agents and other foreign matter. Macrophages are a key part of the innate immune system, helping with normal tissue development as well as with repairing damaged tissue, according to researchers from Northwestern University.

But in the case of the people who died suddenly within a month of being vaccinated, the body’s own macrophages permeated their heart muscle, chewing up the muscle and causing spots that disrupted the heart rhythm. This macrophage invasion appeared to have literally short-circuited the heart’s conduction of the electrical impulses, causing the heart to beat irregularly. 

The irregular heartbeats led to a negative feedback loop, making the heart race faster and faster as it tries to right itself. When that happens, the heart is effectively pumping no blood, and the victim dies within seconds or minutes unless there is a defibrillator nearby—to deliver an electrical shock to the heart to help it get back into rhythm—and someone knows to use it immediately. 

The peer-reviewed study from German researchers included microscope images showing the damage to the victims’ heart cells, the presence of lymphocytes (another kind of smaller immune cell) in the heart muscle, and invasive macrophages in the heart muscle. Both macrophages and lymphocytes called T-helper cells were found in the heart tissue. The immune cells were concentrated in spots, each of which is called a focus. Spots of damaged heart tissue like this can generate offbeat signals that disrupt the heart’s smooth rhythm. 

There are thousands of cardiac cells in the heart. These cells aren’t passive, like the cells in your biceps that need separate nerves to make them move. Instead, cardiac cells generate their own electrical impulses.

The cells of cardiac muscle act like nerves as well, conducting signals to and from adjacent muscle cells. This synchronizes their contractions, as well as perpetuates the regular continuity of the heartbeat. 

Once a heart is beating, it takes a lot to stop it. A focus that breaks up this rhythm is like a bad drummer in a middle-school band. It can cause a cascade of chaos that prevents the heart from pumping blood productively.

Myocarditis: A Recognized Vaccine Adverse Event

The WHO and the CDC do recognize myocarditis post-mRNA vaccination. Both regulatory agencies consider it a “recognized but rare complication.” Most doctors also dismiss myocarditis cases as “mild.”

But the deceased subjects of the German study, as Campbell points out, also had supposedly “mild” myocarditis. The myocarditis appeared only in microscopic spots here and there. However, the electrical disruption of these spots caused rapid and dramatic deaths. In other words, there is no mild myocarditis, as one parent of an mRNA-vaccine-injured teen named Aiden Ekanayake, said.

Campbell recommended that clinicians have a “high index of suspicion” that mRNA-vaccinated people might be subject to this autoimmune myocarditis so that they can diagnose and treat it while the people are still alive. Clinicians pretending that this vaccine injury is “rare and mild,” has led to countless potentially avoidable tragedies.

Your Body Attacking Your Own Heart Cells

To be clear, this is not the mRNA vaccine directly damaging the heart—it is worse. The mRNA is injected into your muscle cells, turning the cell into a factory producing COVID-19 spike proteins. 

As a result of the mRNA immunization, your body generates an immune response against COVID-19 spike proteins.

Since your own muscle cells were used to make the COVID-19 spike proteins and may have them on the cell surface, your newly-weaponized immune cells targeting the spike protein may start attacking your own healthy muscle cells. 

This new German study shows photographic evidence that this happens and has killed people.

Correlation or Causation?

An original investigation published earlier this year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that there were many cases of myocarditis in unexpected populations, especially in boys and young men, following mRNA vaccination.

Sir Austin Bradford Hill was an English medical statistician who established a set of epidemiological guidelines in 1965, now called the Bradford Hill criteria, which help prove cause and effect. If we apply the Bradford Hill criteria to this new research, it shows that the lethal myocarditis of these patients was indeed caused by mRNA vaccines. The German research demonstrated Bradford Hill’s criteria of strength (the more two things happen at the same time, the more likely one causes the other, even for rare events); consistency (the finding of sudden death from mRNA-vaccine-induced myocarditis has been happening consistently in different places and populations); specificity (for Bradford Hill, this is when a single cause produces a single effect. In this case the cause is the mRNA vaccine and the effect is myocarditis); and several more.

Indeed, the German researchers eliminated the possibility that the lethal myocarditis could have been caused by something else. Their study also showed “coherence,” another Bradford Hill criterion, which is when the same effect is found in both epidemiological studies and in laboratory samples. 

Another Bradford Hill criterion is analogy: Is this cause-and-effect relationship similar to other medical issues that we already understand? In this case, the criterion of analogy is satisfied because we already understand that auto-immune reactions to one’s own heart can cause Giant-Cell Myocarditis, a life-threatening condition that causes ventricular tachycardia and sudden death in over two-thirds of those diagnosed with it. 

For cause and effect to be established, Bradford Hill also asks whether the relationship is plausible: is there a mechanism by which one thing can cause the other? Plausibility was also proven by these autopsies: the German researchers clearly showed the mechanism. As Campbell said in his video review: “You can’t argue with a photograph taken under the microscope.”

For cause-and-effect to be established using Bradford Hill’s criteria, just one or two of the nine viewpoints must be satisfied. This study showed that for mRNA vaccines and heart damage, seven of Bradford Hill’s nine criteria were satisfied—an epidemiological slam-dunk.

The evidence is in: mRNA vaccines cause myocarditis, by leading your own immune cells to attack your heart, which can lead to sudden death by ventricular tachycardia or fibrillation.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A judge overseeing Republican Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake’s electoral lawsuit ordered Lake, Secretary of State and Arizona Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, Maricopa County Board of Supervisors officials, and others to appear at a court hearing on Tuesday.

Judge Peter Thompson, in issuing the (pdf) order, wrote that the court has “reviewed” Lake’s “verified statement of election contest” and said the “matter will be set on an accelerated basis.” Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer and Board of Supervisors Chairman Bill Gates were also ordered to attend the hearing, which will start at 2 p.m. ET.

It comes as Lake stated Monday that her lawsuit is, in part, fueled by alleged whistleblower claims who have come forward.

“We’ve had three whistleblowers from Maricopa County reach out and say the system is seriously flawed,” Lake told Just the News on Monday, days after the suit was filed with a Maricopa County court. “They were throwing out tens of thousands of signatures saying they were scribbles that in no way matched. But somewhere between there, the ballots were being completely tossed out and they got looped back into the system and counted as if they were fine.”

Lake said that about 25,000 “additional ballots and early voting ballots were discovered two days after Election Day,” adding that they “just showed up.” She continued: “It shows the whole system has serious problems.”

“We believe that up to 135,000 ballots were pushed through that should not have been pushed through,” Lake added, without elaborating. “We’re asking a judge to let us take a look at all of the envelopes and compare signatures, so that we can find out for sure how many bad, fraudulent ballots got through in that way, of basically cheating or breaking the rules.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Maricopa County’s election division about Lake’s claims on Monday.

Reactions

Maricopa County spokesman Fields Moseley told Reuters that the court system is the appropriate venue for campaigns to challenge election results. Moseley stated that Maricopa’s election division “looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 General Election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot.”

Sophia Solis, a spokesperson for the secretary of state’s office, told The Associated Press that Lake’s lawsuit was being reviewed.

In her lawsuit (pdf) filed Dec. 9, Lake is asking to be declared the winner of the race or for a new vote to be held in Maricopa County, the state’s most populous. Gov.-elect Katie Hobbs, the Democrat secretary of state, last month narrowly defeated Lake in the general election by about 17,000 votes.

Hobbs’ campaign, in a statement issued on Friday, criticized Lake’s lawsuit as a “nuisance” and suggested it would be thrown out.

“Kari Lake needs attention like a fish needs water—and independent experts and local election officials of both parties have made it clear that this was a safe, secure, and fair election,” the statement read. “Arizonans made their voices heard and elected Katie Hobbs as their governor. No nuisance lawsuit will change that, and we remain laser-focused on getting ready to hit the ground running on Day One of Katie Hobbs’ administration next year.”

Lake stated that long lines and printer issues adversely affected Election Day voters on Nov. 8. Maricopa officials that day confirmed there were printer errors and told voters to place their ballots inside dropboxes, while they later said no voters were disenfranchised.

“Lake received the greatest number of votes and is entitled to be named the winner,” her lawsuit claimed. “Alternately, the election must be re-done in Maricopa County to eliminate the effects of maladminstration and illegal votes on the vote tallies reported by Maricopa County.”

In November, Lake also filed a public records request to seek additional information about both counted and uncounted ballots that might have been mixed during the election. Following the Nov. 8 midterms, she has also often posted videos of voters who gave accounts of long lines and other alleged election maladministration in Maricopa County.

Other than Lake, Abe Hamadeh—a Republican who is running for attorney general, and Mark Finchem—a Republican running for secretary of state, filed separate lawsuits on Dec. 9. Candidates have five days following certification to contest an election under Arizona state law.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Billionaires Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey publicly disagreed about Twitter’s handling of child exploitation in a series of tweets over the weekend.

Musk, who took over the company in October, took to the social media platform on Friday where he blasted former Twitter executives, stating that it “is a crime that they refused to take action on child exploitation for years.”

His post was in response to a tweet from a Twitter user that linked to a New York Post report on a lawsuit that alleges Twitter refused to take down images of a teenager who was tricked into sending explicit photos of themselves to sex traffickers when they were aged between 13 and 14.

The lawsuit, which does not identify the plaintiff, claims that Twitter refused to do so because it did not find the images violated its policies on child exploitation materials. It also accused the company of profiting off the footage.

Dorsey, who stepped down as Twitter CEO in November 2021, quickly responded to Musk’s tweet, writing, “This is false,” prompting another response from the Tesla CEO.

“No, it is not. When Ella Irwin, who now runs Trust & Safety, joined Twitter earlier this year, almost no one was working on child safety,” Musk said. “She raised this with Ned & Parag [former Twitter CEO Parag Agrawal and Chief Financial Officer Ned Segal] but they rejected her staffing request. I made it top priority immediately.”

Musk then accused Agrawal of having “super messed up priorities.”

Twitter ‘Suspending More Accounts Linked to Child Exploitation’

“I don’t know what happened in past [sic] year. But to say we didn’t take action for years isn’t true. You can make all my emails public to verify. Company [sic] took away my access to email or I would,” Dorsey fired back.

The public disagreement between Musk and Dorsey comes shortly after cybersecurity and data analyst Andrea Stroppa, who has been working as an independent researcher on Twitter’s Trust and Safety team in recent weeks, revealed the number of accounts that are being suspended by Twitter on a daily basis for sharing child sexual abuse and exploitation material has nearly doubled since Musk took over the platform.

From Dec. 3 to 4 alone, Stroppa confirmed that Twitter had taken down 44,000 “suspicious accounts” of which over 1,300 had attempted to avoid detection by using “codewords and text in images to communicate.”

Additionally, Stroppa noted that Twitter, under Musk, has updated and streamlined the way it detects content related to child sexual abuse or exploitation material to make it more efficient and “aggressive.”

Musk previously said that removing child exploitation from Twitter was his number one priority.

On Thursday, three members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council resigned.

In a statement, Eirliani Abdul Rahman and Anne Collier, who had been members of the Trust and Safety Council since its inception in 2016, and Lesley Podesta, chair of the advisory board of the Young and Resilient Research Center and the niece of Democrat consultant John Podesta, said that it is “clear from research evidence that, contrary to claims by Elon Musk, the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Twitter for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) will serve another term in Congress after a recount showed she triumphed in her reelection bid, Colorado officials confirmed late Dec. 12.

The mandatory recount, triggered because the margin between Boebert and her challenger was within 0.5 percent, “reconfirmed that Representative Lauren Boebert is the winner of the race,” the office of Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold said.

Boebert represents Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District.

A recount of a Colorado House race also showed that Marine veteran Robert Marshall, a Democrat, won.

“The mandatory recount for U.S. Congressional District 3 and permissive recount of House District 43 are complete and have confirmed the results of the races,” Griswold said in a statement.

“Colorado’s elections are safe, secure, and accurate,” she added. “I commend the election workers from across the state and my office for conducting these recounts and for their continued work to make Colorado the best place to cast a ballot.”

Boebert, 35, has not commented on the development, but shared posts on social media noting Griswold’s announcement.

Boebert said over the weekend that the recount confirmed her win.

“I am happy to report all the counties in Colorado’s 3rd District have completed their recounts. We’ve won this election, as expected, and I’m headed back to represent you in Washington, D.C.,” she said in a video.

Recount Change

Before the recount, Boebert led by 550 votes over Adam Frisch, the Democrat who was seeking to unseat her, out of about 327,000 cast.

The recount ended with Boebert losing three votes and Frisch gaining one.

The final count was 163,839 votes for Boebert and 163,293 votes for Frisch.

State Rep. Kurt Huffman, a Republican, and Marshall, who left the Republican Party in 2017 over disenchantment with former President Donald Trump, each lost a single vote.

“1 vote deducted from both opponent & me. W/smaller base total & same vote margin, % win margin increased VERY slightly 4 us. LoL,” Marshall wrote on Twitter.

Frisch had already conceded and had asked supporters not to donate to him, noting that the recount was unlikely to change many votes.

“The CO Secretary of State just certified our election. Just as we expected, the vote total didn’t shift by more than a few votes,” Frisch said.

He claimed a “moral victory” because of how close the race was and said that he was confident “the coalition of Democrats, Republicans, and unaffiliated voters we built throughout this campaign to reject hate and extremism in Southern and Western Colorado will grow into the future.”

Huffman had already conceded in November.

“The final election results are in and although the outcome isn’t what we had hoped for, I am proud of our team and our campaign. Representative Marshall, I wish you well,” he said at the time.

Republican Majority

Boebert’s race is the final call for the midterm elections. The win means Republicans will have 222 seats when the new Congress is seated in January 2023. Democrats will have 212.

That’s a mirror image of the start of the 117th Congress, when Democrats had 222 seats and Republicans had 212.

Republicans flipped control of the lower chamber with key wins in multiple states, including California, Florida, and New York.

Among the incumbents they took down: Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), chairman of the House Democrats’ campaign arm, Rep. Cindy Axne (D-Iowa), and Rep. Tom O’Halleran (D-Ariz.).

“I’m so thrilled the Republicans will now hold the gavel in the People’s House and I’m thrilled to represent you in that majority,” Boebert said, adding that she intended to “put a hard stop to the hard-left’s move towards socialism.”

A majority will give Republicans subpoena power and the inside track to the speaker position, currently held by Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) was nominated by the GOP to become speaker, but he faces opposition in the upcoming vote, which will include all members regardless of party affiliation.

2nd Term

Boebert, one of the youngest members of Congress, won her first election in 2019 after taking down Rep. Scott Tipton (R-Colo.) in the Republican primary and earning 51.4 percent of the vote in the general election.

Boebert is a strong defender of the Second Amendment and an ally of Trump.

Recently, she voted against the Respect for Marriage Act, which codifies same-sex marriage but, according to critics, threatens religious liberty, and for acts that are aimed at dealing with the opioid epidemic and child trafficking.

Frisch attempted to portray Boebert as an extremist and himself as a moderate, telling prospective voters that he would not support Pelosi for the top Democrat post and that he was in favor of securing the U.S.–Mexico border and gun rights.

Boebert used to own a restaurant called Shooters Grill where staff members openly carried firearms.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

So, we don’t have a decent enough grid to power what we already have, so let’s burden it more; ship manufacturing to our enemy to the south; and make elitist democrats/oligarchs even richer, all while the climate is actually entering a lengthy cooling phase. Why are we allowing the confederacy to survive, let alone destroy our country? [US Patriot]

Merry Christmas. You’re fired.

That’s the basic message to workers at an Illinois Jeep Cherokee plant from Stellantis.

Citing the high costs of converting the Cherokee to an electric platform, Stellantis is cutting loose 1,350 workers at its plant in Belvidere, Illinois.

Worse, it’s moving Cherokee production to Mexico, according to The Daily Mail.

The auto industry “’has been adversely affected by a multitude of factors like the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and the microchip shortage,” Stellantis said, “But the most impactful challenge is the increasing cost related to the electrification of the automotive market.”

Watch: KJP Gives Peter Doocy Death Stare When He Repeats Biden’s Question to Trump

Although Stellantis said it seeks to repurpose the Belvidere plant, current production will cease Feb. 28, 2023.

“This difficult but necessary action will result in indefinite layoffs, which are expected to exceed six months and may constitute a job loss under the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act,” according to Stellantis.

“As a result, WARN notices have been issued to both hourly and salaried employees,” according to the company, which said “every effort” would be made to put employees in any of its available full-time jobs.

Company documents indicate the Cherokee will be produced in Toluca, Mexico, Tim Ferguson, shop chairman for United Auto Workers (UAW) union Local 1268, said in an interview with the Daily Mail.

“It’s a pretty tough pill to swallow that they’re going to ship your vehicle to Mexico,” according to Ferguson. “To me there is no question about it. Their plan is to close this plant.”

There was no immediate comment from the Biden administration, which has said EVs will increase employment in the auto industry, the Daily Mail reported.

Stellantis stems from a 2021 merger between Fiat Chrysler and PSA Peugeot.

By 2030, the company hopes to have all of its vehicles produced for Europe electrified, and half of it U.S. cars electric. It’s investing $31.6 billion in electrification between now and 2025.

Production of the Cherokee in Belvidere began in 2017 following a $350 million investment in the plant the previous year.

EV Owner Needs Replacement Battery, Told She’ll Have to Wait Four Years to Get It

UAW Vice President Cindy Estrada said, “Companies like Stellantis receive billions in government incentives to transition to clean energy.

“It is an insult to all taxpayers that they are not investing that money back into our communities.”

Jeep is just another iconic nameplate going down the road to electrification, despite serious EV drawbacks and questions of whether consumers want EVs or not.

Emily Dreilbelbus, in an analysis for PC, wrote that automakers are all on board with EVs because of Wall Street’s enthusiasm for them due to perceptions of clean air and simplicity of manufacturing and maintenance.

There’s also competition with international adoption of EVs, especially by China. China, along with Japan and Korea, makes 90 percent of the world’s EV batteries.

Top auto executives, in Dreilbelbus’ analysis, are convinced of a serious climate crisis and see themselves joining governments in making changes.

So Belvidere, Illinois, auto workers should get on board and feel better because they, too, are doing their part to save the planet.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk is having a field day with his new job. He’s ditching high-ranking executives and unloading boatloads of information that paints the social media giant in a very bad light.

Musk isn’t afraid to go after D.C. head honchos, either. In fact, one of his more incendiary tweets over the weekend got a ton of attention.

It probably didn’t go over too well with the White House, either.

The Twitter Files have erupted around the internet in the past few weeks, and they’ve revealed precisely what Republicans and right-wing citizens have been saying for years:

The bottom line is that the so-called free speech platform tamped down conservative views. They also worked to put a stop to stories that could hurt the Biden administration, like the Hunter Biden laptop.

There’s even the revelation that Twitter employees intentionally decreased the visibility of high-profile conservative accounts.

Now, though, Musk has a new target outside the company — and it’s controversial top doc Anthony Fauci:

In a follow-up tweet, Musk hinted that the situation regarding Fauci was about to “get spicy.”

This might imply that another installment of the “Twitter Files” is coming, and it could involve Fauci, the COVID pandemic, and the many questionable policies implemented by lawmakers.

Fauci has come under increasing fire in 2022, as many accuse him of blocking investigation into the possibility that COVID was leaked from a Chinese lab.

On top of that, sources are starting to publish various reports that question the efficacy of the vaccine and booster shots — and the side effects that many claim absolutely exist, and are quite serious.

Before Musk took over in October, Twitter clamped down hard on any post that questioned Dr. Fauci or the “government approved” message regarding the pandemic.

Even if people provided evidence regarding the detrimental effect of school lockdowns on children, for example, they claim they were “shadow banned” or even just outright barred from the platform.

And many legitimate doctors and scientists are starting to question now, too.

As Stanford University professor Dr. Jay Battacharya told Fox News’ Laura Ingraham:

We needed to have a discussion, an open scientific discussion about the right policies for COVID.

Imagine how different all the small businesses who stayed open, all the people that wouldn’t have missed their cancer screenings, all the kids that wouldn’t be depressed and suicidal, all the learning loss that could have been avoided if we just had an open scientific discussion.

Dr. Battacharya added that it wasn’t a “free and fair” discussion and that it was “censorship that led to tremendously bad policies.”

The past three years are littered with bad decisions and bad policies concerning the pandemic, according to many Republican leaders and experts who have always doubted the mainstream “vax solution.”

So, it’ll be interesting to see what Musk has up his sleeve.

Key Takeaways:

• Elon Musk tweeted that his pronouns are “Prosecute/Fauci.”
• Many believe he’s going to release information that might be bad news for Fauci and the Biden administration.
• More lawmakers and medical experts are questioning the pandemic policies and messages of the past 3 years.

Source: The Daily Wire

Senate Democrats have proposed a plan to pay liberal groups $1.75 billion in federal tax funds so women may be trafficked across state lines for abortions.

– Sponsored –

Don’t Let the Left Take Over the Nation, Become a Trump Life Member Today!

The “Reproductive Health Travel Fund Act”, proposed by Sens. Tammy Baldwin, D-Wis., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., provides $350 million a year over five years in federal grants to liberal organizations to traffick women across state lines to get abortions that are illegal in their states, after the United States Supreme Court ruled this year that abortion was not a constitutional right. 

Even after the ruling, states like Texas and Florida have abortion laws more permissive than many European countries.

It is currently a violation of federal law to provide tax dollars for abortion. The scheme does not pay for the procedure itself but pays for travel, meals, lodging, post-abortion medical care, foreign language translation services and, ironically, child care.

The scheme is co-sponsored by Senators Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., Tina Smith, D-Minn., Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., and Mazie Hirono, D-Hawaii. Another version of the bill was introduced in the U.S. House in July.

It is also backed by the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, Power to Decide, National Network of Abortion Funds, Physicians for Reproductive Health, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, National Partnership for Women and Families, NARAL, Center for Reproductive Rights, National Women’s Law Center, Planned Parenthood Federation of America, National Family Planning & Reproductive Health Association, Catholics for Choice, the National Council of Jewish Women, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and WMF Wisconsin.

It is one of several schemes by congressional Democrats to use federal tax dollars to evade state laws on abortions. 

One proposed plan turns military bases, which are not under the jurisdiction of state law, into federally-run abortion clinics. Along those lines, the Biden Defense Department announced they would give paid time off to service members seeking abortions.

Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren has even proposed turning national parks into “abortion camps,” with abortions performed in the woods in tents.

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

READ NEXT: School Under Investigation Following Allegations of Students Doing ‘Sex Work’ >>

A Democratic senator key to the party’s majority won’t commit to running for re-election in 2024.

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana didn’t pledge to run in a Sunday interview on “Meet the Press.”

Tester made it clear he hadn’t made any decision about running for a fourth term.

A Democratic senator key to the party’s majority won’t commit to running for re-election in 2024.

Sen. Jon Tester of Montana didn’t pledge to run in a Sunday interview on “Meet the Press.”

Tester made it clear he hadn’t made any decision about running for a fourth term.

Republicans would be in a strong position to win Tester’s seat in the event he doesn’t run for re-election.

Montana is one of the reddest states in the country, with former President Donald Trump winning the state by more than 16 percent in 2020.

Do you think the GOP has a positive outlook for 2024?Yes No

Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

Tester won re-election as a two-term incumbent by less than 4 percent in 2018 — an election that saw overwhelming victories for Democrats.

It’s possible that Montana Democrats would look towards former governor Steve Bullock — himself a Democrat elected to statewide office — in a bid to keep a Senate seat in the strongly conservative state.

Tester’s potential retirement would make the 2024 election even more difficult to Democrats — as the party faces a challenging national map in the Senate.

Democrats are set to defend 23 Senate seats in the next election, according to The Washington Post.

The GOP will defend 11 seats, less than half of the Democrats’ task.

Related:

Local Official Indicted on Voter Fraud Charges Connected to Both Primary and General Elections

Several of the seats Democrats are slated to defend are in red states such as West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.

Other vulnerable Democratic senators are up for re-election in swing states such as Pennsylvania, Nevada, and Wisconsin.

Democrats have a thin majority of 50 seats in the Senate, including three independents who caucus with the Democratic Party.

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced her departure from the Democratic Party last week, although she’ll continue to caucus with Democrats.

DUBAI (Reuters)—The Islamic Republic on Monday hanged a man in public who state media said had been convicted of killing two members of the security forces, the second execution in less than a week of people involved in protests against Iran’s ruling theocracy.

Nationwide unrest erupted three months ago after the death while in detention of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, who was arrested by morality police enforcing the Islamic Republic’s mandatory dress code laws.

The demonstrations have turned into a popular revolt by furious Iranians from all layers of society, posing one of the worst legitimacy challenges to the Shi’ite clerical elite since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

“Majid Reza Rahnavard was hanged in public in (the holy Shi’ite city of) Mashhad this morning … He was sentenced to death for ‘waging war against God’ after stabbing to death two members of the security forces,” the judiciary’s Mizan news agency reported.

Mizan published pictures of the execution at dawn, showing Rahnavard hanging from a construction crane, with his hands and feet bound and his head covered with a black bag.

The semi-official Fars news agency said Rahnavard killed two members of the Basij volunteer force and wounded four others. The Basij force, affiliated with the elite Revolutionary Guards, has been at the forefront of the state crackdown on protests.

Calling for added protests across the country, activists on social media criticised the execution of the 23-year-old Rahnavard as “a criminal act” by the clerical rulers to deter dissent.

“They called Rahnavard’s family at 7 a.m. (local time) and told them to go to the Behesht-e Reza cemetery. ‘We executed your child and buried him,’ they said,” widely followed activist account 1500Tasvir posted on Twitter.

The contents of the post could not be verified by Reuters.

On Thursday, Iran hanged Mohsen Shekari, who had been convicted of injuring a security guard with a knife and blocking a street in Tehran, the first such execution after thousands of arrests over the unrest, drawing a chorus of Western condemnation and sanctions.

Rights groups have said Shekari was tortured and forced to confess. Molavi Abdolhamid, an outspoken Sunni Muslim cleric in the Shi’ite-ruled Islamic Republic, has said the death sentence of Shekari violated sharia (Islamic law), his website said.

State media published a video of a man, which it identified as Rahnavard, stabbing another man who fell against a parked motorcycle, and then stabbing another person immediately afterward and then running away.

State television showed a video in which Rahnavard said in the court that he came to hate the Basij forces after seeing them beating and killing protesters in videos posted on social media. Activists said he was forced to confess under torture.

MORE SANCTIONS

Amnesty International has said Iranian authorities are seeking the death penalty for at least 21 people in what it called “sham trials designed to intimidate those participating in the popular uprising that has rocked Iran”.

The European Union’s foreign policy chief Josep Borrell said on Monday the EU will agree on a “very tough” package of sanctions against Iran to show its support for peaceful protesters.

Blaming the unrest on foreign foes such as the United States and Israel, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani on Monday rejected Western criticism of rights abuses during the crackdown as meddling in Iran’s state matters.

Tehran on Monday imposed sanctions on dozens of EU and British officials and entities “over their support and instigation” of the unrest, state television reported.

The unrest has been watched closely by Israel, where a national security official said the executions did not appear to be deterring protesters and could further “box in the regime”.

“Because it can only respond with force, that has reinforced for the public the grievance being protested over,” the Israeli official told Reuters. “There is no returning this genie to the bottle.”

Rights group HRANA said that as of Sunday 488 protesters had been killed, including 68 minors. It said 62 members of the security forces had also been killed. As many as 18,259 protesters are believed to have been arrested, it said.

While the United Nations says the protests have cost more than 300 lives, a top Iranian state security body has said that 200 people, including members of the security forces, had died in the unrest.

(Additional reporting by Dan Williams in Jerusalem; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan, Hugh Lawson, and Mark Heinrich)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

In a snub to Israel, Democratic senator Chris Murphy (Conn.) described Qatar—the small oil-rich country allied with Iran—as the United States’ “best partner in the region.”

Qatar, Murphy said in a recent interview, is “an imperfect partner. There’s a lot not to like about Qatari policy. But in many ways, they are our best partner in the region.”

Murphy’s remarks came after he traveled to Doha to attend the 2022 World Cup, which was hosted by Qatar after it bribed the FIFA soccer association and built its sports infrastructure using slave labor. Qatar is a well-documented human rights abuser and enjoys close relations with Iran, the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism. Qatar itself is also a major hub for terrorism financing, money that empowers regional militant groups that target U.S. assets and allies in the region.

Murphy’s remarks raised eyebrows with regional observers who questioned why a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee would go out of his way to diminish the United States’ historically close ties with Israel, which is widely viewed as the country’s closest and most reliable regional partner.

“Why the congressman omitted Israel from his statement is anyone’s guess,” said Jonathan Schanzer, a former terrorism finance analyst at the Treasury Department and veteran Middle East analyst with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank.

“We don’t need a partner in the region that finances terrorism, bribes World Cup officials, and violates human rights on a scale rarely seen,” Schanzer said. “As it turns out, we already have a reliable partner in the region that is a democracy. It’s a highly competent military power with cyber and intelligence capabilities that rival many Western nations.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Arizona will divest its pension fund from BlackRock over the asset manager’s shift toward left-wing environmental, social, and governance (ESG) policies, the state’s treasurer said in a Thursday statement.

Treasurer Kimberly Yee (R.) said BlackRock has “moved from a traditional asset manager to a political action committee,” causing Arizona in February to start divesting “more than $543 million from BlackRock money market funds.” The Grand Canyon State also reduced its “direct exposure to BlackRock by 97 percent this year.”

Arizona is not the first state to pull its assets from BlackRock. Florida chief financial officer Jimmy Patronis (R.) this month divested his state’s assets from the company, saying BlackRock focuses more on ESG than on producing returns for Floridians. BlackRock was one of many left-leaning companies to invest in the cryptocurrency firm FTX, which went bankrupt last month. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried, a Democratic megadonor who pledged $1 billion to the party’s candidates in the midterms, is now under federal investigation for defrauding investors.

BlackRock CEO Larry Fink, meanwhile, faces an investigation led by 19 state attorneys general for prioritizing “left-wing political initiatives over shareholder returns,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

Yee in her statement also calls out Fink’s politicization of the company. According to Arizona’s Investment Risk Management Committee, Fink dictates that businesses “follow his personal political beliefs,” Yee said.

The Arizona treasurer said she will “continue to fight back against the dangerous path of companies pushing their social issues and wokeism.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Citing busy schedule and paparazzi, failed crypto scion says he will testify remotely for congressional hearing

(Reuters)—Sam Bankman-Fried, the founder and former CEO of now-bankrupt crypto exchange FTX, said on Monday he would testify remotely at Tuesday’s U.S. House Financial Services Committee hearing to examine the collapse of the company.

FTX filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection last month and Bankman-Fried resigned as chief executive, triggering a wave of public demands for greater regulation of the cryptocurrency industry.

The distressed crypto trading platform struggled to raise money to stave off collapse as traders rushed to withdraw $6 billion from the platform in just 72 hours and rival exchange Binance abandoned a proposed rescue deal.

In recent weeks, U.S. authorities have sought information from investors and potential investors in FTX, two sources with knowledge of the requests told Reuters. Prosecutors and regulators have not charged Bankman-Fried with any crime.

Tuesday’s hearing will be the first time Bankman-Fried appears publicly before U.S. lawmakers.

In a Twitter Spaces event on Monday with Twitter account Unusual Whales, Bankman-Fried said he would be “calling in” to the hearing from the Bahamas.

He said that it was important for him to remain in the Bahamas, where FTX is headquartered, and that it is difficult for him “to move right now and travel because the paparazzi effect is quite large.”

A spokesperson for Bankman-Fried confirmed that he would not be testifying at the hearing in person. FTX CEO John Ray will also appear before the committee, although it is not clear if he will testify virtually or in person.

The hybrid hearing is scheduled for 10 a.m. ET (1500 GMT) on Tuesday, Dec. 13.

Speaking to the Twitter Spaces event, Bankman-Fried said he waited to agree to testify before the committee’s leadership understood “that they were not going to be getting a lot of the answers they’re looking for,” he said.

Bankman-Fried warned that his testimony was likely to be “underwhelming” because he wouldn’t be able to confidently “answer questions that I would really want to be able to, and frankly, really should be able to,” given that he no longer has access to internal information at FTX.

The Senate Banking Committee will also hold a hearing on FTX’s collapse on Wednesday, Dec. 14, in which Bankman-Fried says he is not scheduled to appear.

“I am open and willing to have a conversation with the chair and the ranking member about the hearing if they believe it’s important that I attend,” said Bankman-Fried.

(Reporting by Hannah Lang in Washington; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama and Nick Zieminski)

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A grand jury indicted former Loudoun County, Va., Public Schools superintendent Scott Ziegler and former public information officer Wayde Byard following an investigation into the district’s handling of two sexual assault cases involving a student who reportedly identified as “gender-fluid.”

The grand jury charged Ziegler with false publication, prohibited conduct, and penalizing an employee for a court appearance and Byard with one count of felony perjury. The Loudoun County school board fired Ziegler last week after the jury found that “district administrators pursued their own interest instead of that of their students,” National Review reported.

The teenage male perpetrator was reportedly wearing a skirt last year when he entered a women’s bathroom at Stone Bridge High School and raped a ninth-grade girl. The district then transferred the perpetrator to Broad Run High School where he sexually assaulted another girl.

Ziegler knew about the rape weeks before he told the Loudoun County school board that the district had no “record of assaults occurring in our restrooms,” the Washington Free Beacon reported. The school board would go on to allow students to “use restrooms based on their gender identity rather than their biological sex.”

The teenage perpetrator was found guilty in the first case and pleaded no contest to the second.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

American households’ real wealth fell $13.5 trillion in the first three quarters of 2022, according to a MarketWatch report.

The 8.6 percent drop from January to September is the second fastest decline on record, behind the financial crisis of 2008/2009. Record-high inflation under the Biden administration is causing a decrease in the purchasing power of assets and liabilities, MarketWatch reports:

Nominal net worth fell 4.6% to $143.3 trillion, as the market value of assets fell by $6 trillion and liabilities rose by about $900 billion. Households’ balance sheets—assets minus liabilities—were propped up by a 10% increase in home equity, which is the greatest source of wealth for most American families.

But the loss in real wealth from January through September was about twice as large as the nominal loss—$13.5 trillion in current dollars—after accounting for the rapid inflation experienced this year. Inflation makes both debts and liabilities worth less in terms of purchasing power.

Real household wealth, after adjusting for inflation, was 10 percent higher than it was in late 2019.

The price of stocks, which have lost about 25 percent of their value, outpaced gains in real estate values in the third quarter, a financial report released Friday by the Federal Reserve showed. The Federal Reserve’s report put the nominal wealth loss at $6.8 trillion.

When Joe Biden signs the Respect for Marriage Act this week, he’ll be flanked by Vice President Kamala Harris, first lady Jill Biden, and gay drag queen story hour performer Marti Cummings, according to an invite posted by Cummings.

“To be a non binary drag artist invited to the White House is something I never imagined would happen,” Cummings wrote in a Monday social media post, along with a photo of an invitation from Biden. The bill signing ceremony is scheduled to take place on Tuesday.

Cummings has been a performer at the controversial drag queen story hour for years. As recently as Dec. 4, Cummings shared a photo at a drag queen story hour featuring a number of toddlers. “Despite what conservatives say, this family friend [sic] event is a way to spread joy, teach acceptance & love,” Cummings tweeted.

I love doing Drag Story Hour. Despite what conservatives say, this family friend event is a way to spread joy, teach acceptance & love. A way to bring people together. Kids just want to hear their favorite stories…keep spreading hate because I’m gonna keep spreading joy pic.twitter.com/uhdseXtAua

— Marti (@MartiGCummings) December 4, 2022

Critics of performances such as those say they often expose children to sexually inappropriate material, such as men in revealing and suggestive clothing. Despite those concerns, drag queen story hours remain popular in many deep-blue pockets of the country such as New York City, where Cummings unsuccessfully ran to be a member of the city council.

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

The Respect for Marriage Act passed the Senate in November with the support of a dozen Republican senators. Forty-seven House Republicans also voted for the bill, which repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act and requires the federal government to recognize gay and interracial marriages performed in the United States.

Cummings shared a photo with several other drag queens and a boy on Twitter in June, writing “Some joy for your day……Logan was one of the kids who came out to celebrate pride at @queensbotanicl – he was so excited & said he wants to perform w us next year!”

According to Cummings’s website, “Drag and Politics goes hand in hand.” Cummings ran for a seat on the New York City Council in 2021 but appeared to receive zero votes, according to Ballotpedia. In June 2020, Cummings claimed to be arrested during a Black Lives Matter protest.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

‘I don’t think we’re about to lose control of inflation,’ Yellen said last year, before US lost control of inflation

Treasury secretary Janet Yellen said Sunday that she expects “much lower inflation” within the next year. But the Cabinet appointee has been consistently—and baselessly—optimistic about inflation since she joined the Biden administration.

“I believe by the end of next year you will see much lower inflation, if there’s not an unanticipated shock,” Yellen said in a Sunday appearance on 60 Minutes. The secretary cited reductions in shipping costs and delivery lags as evidence that high prices will soon be in the rearview.

Yellen made virtually the same prediction last year, when inflation was at a troubling 5.4 percent. “I don’t think we’re about to lose control of inflation,” Yellen said in October 2021, suggesting the resolution of supply chain issues would tame inflation within a year. By June 2022, however, inflation had surged to a 40-year high of 9.1 percent.

In May 2021, less than two months after Congress passed the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, Yellen predicted there wasn’t “going to be an inflationary problem” at all because President Joe Biden’s spending plans were “relatively small relative to the size of the economy,” an argument that put her in lockstep with White House officials. Economists, however, have concluded that the American Rescue Plan significantly contributed to inflation.

Yellen offered a mea culpa for her inaccurate predictions in June, admitting she “was wrong … about the path that inflation would take.”

Biden was similarly unsuccessful in accurately predicting inflation rates. The president in July 2021 declared that “no serious economist” is “suggesting there’s unchecked inflation on the way.”

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

A former California state senator whose proposal to mandate coronavirus vaccines for school children was too radical for the progressive state legislature is now consulting with the American Medical Association.

Dr. Richard Pan will join the AMA’s Medical Education Group, where he will consult on the organization’s standards for universities’ medical training programs. Pan, a pediatrician, made waves this year with a proposal to vaccinate all school-aged children in the state against COVID-19, without exemptions for personal beliefs. His plan, which he introduced before the FDA fully approved the shots, went even further than California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s (D.) first-in-the-nation attempt to order blanket immunizations for California kids. The largest doctors’ lobby in the country, the AMA sets professional and ethical standards for physicians and shapes federal healthcare policy.

Pan’s appointment comes amid growing politicization at the AMA, which doled out nearly $19.5 million in political contributions last year. The Liaison Committee on Medical Education, which the group cosponsors, last year declared meritocracy to be “malignant” and said that race has “no genetic or scientific basis.” These claims followed the release of a coauthored guide on “advancing health equity,” which calls the “‘free’ market” a euphemism and touts intersectionality.

In November, Pan termed out of the state Senate seat that he held since 2014. He practiced medicine throughout his tenure as a lawmaker and has stayed active in the AMA for years. Since 2017 he has served as a California delegate to the group, and formerly served as a member of the association’s Council on Medical Education. The AMA did not comment.

Pan’s COVID vaccine proposal came after some of the state’s largest districts—including Los Angeles Unified—put their own mandate plans on pause amid low uptake rates among black and Latino kids. Districts like Los Angeles Unified wanted to move unvaccinated students back into online classrooms where many students languished during California’s record-breaking school closures. Judges struck down these mandates, however, and Los Angeles Unified agreed this summer not to appeal a court order.

Pan withdrew his bill in April amid lack of support from his colleagues and the state’s low vaccination rates among kids. He also acknowledged the shots weren’t blocking new variants.

But his stance was in line with the AMA’s. The group strongly endorsed the COVID shot for kids, declaring it “imperative that all parents in all jurisdictions have access to the vaccine for infants and children, and we are hopeful that millions more children will receive the vaccine in the coming weeks and months—reducing their risk of COVID-19 infection, hospitalization, and death.”

Their approach contrasts with the caution seen in other Western countries when it comes to inoculating children. European health agencies have backed off recommending shots for kids, who don’t tend to suffer severely from COVID. The United Kingdom is limiting the shots for the 5-11 age group. Finland isn’t vaccinating kids under 5 and only recommending immunization for high-risk children aged 5-11. Denmark does not recommend shots for anyone under 18.

As a legislator, Pan was likewise outspoken on what he deemed to be medical misinformation on social media and introduced different plans to curb misinformation’s spread. Newsom vetoed Pan’s latest proposal, which would have made companies disclose how their algorithms work, as redundant because of another bill.

Pan himself was a victim of threats and attacks from angry vaccine skeptics in the state after he successfully axed personal belief exemptions for 10 childhood vaccines required by California public schools, a move that drove an attempted recall. Time named him a hero of vaccine history in 2015.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Bahamas police arrest former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried

(Reuters)—The Bahamas police have arrested former FTX CEO Sam Bankman-Fried, the country’s attorney general said on Monday, adding that The Bahamas has received formal notification from the United States of criminal charges against him.

A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s office in Manhattan confirmed Bankman-Fried had been arrested in The Bahamas but declined to comment on what the charges were.

“As a result of the notification received and the material provided therewith, it was deemed appropriate for the Attorney General to seek SBF’s arrest and hold him in custody pursuant

to our nation’s Extradition Act,” the office of The Bahamas Attorney General Ryan Pinder said.

A lawyer for Bankman-Fried could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a series of interviews and public appearances in late November and December, Bankman-Fried acknowledged risk management failures but sought to distance himself from accusations of fraud, saying he never knowingly commingled customer funds on FTX with funds at his proprietary trading firm, Alameda Research.

“I didn’t ever try to commit fraud,” Bankman-Fried said in a Nov. 30 interview at the New York Times’ Dealbook Summit, adding he doesn’t personally think he has any criminal liability.

FTX, which had been among the world’s largest cryptocurrency exchanges, filed for bankruptcy protection on Nov. 11 in one of the highest-profile crypto blowups after traders pulled $6 billion from the platform in three days and rival exchange Binance abandoned a rescue deal.

The liquidity crunch came after Bankman-Fried secretly moved $10 billion of FTX customer funds to Alameda, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. At least $1 billion in customer funds had vanished, the people said.

Bankman-Fried resigned as FTX’s chief executive officer the same day as the bankruptcy filing.

(Reporting by Jasper Ward in Washington and Brian Ellsworth in Miami; Editing by Lincoln Feast)

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Joe Biden pledged on the campaign trail to support domestic mining projects to power a green energy revolution. Two years later, the Democrat is killing those projects as he works to fund foreign mines instead.

The Biden administration is considering sending taxpayer funds to “around a dozen” mining projects in foreign countries as it looks to secure the raw materials used in electric vehicles and solar panels, a top State Department official told Axios on Monday. The move comes as Biden delays and outright kills major mining projects in the United States—in January, for example, the Democrat’s Interior Department canceled two leases for proposed copper and nickel mines in Minnesota. Biden’s Bureau of Land Management has also moved slowly on permitting smaller mining projects; the agency approved just 14 mine plans last year, a figure well below the 29 mines the Trump administration approved in 2018.

Biden’s unwillingness to unleash American mining—and his apparent eagerness to fund foreign mines—flies in the face of his rhetoric on the campaign trail and in the White House. In October 2020, with Election Day just weeks away, Biden assured American miners his administration would support domestic mines, a promise that garnered praise from the National Mining Association. Biden now regularly claims his “clean energy agenda” will revitalize American manufacturing and create millions of “good-paying jobs,” including just hours after his administration confirmed its work to support mining overseas. “When I think about climate change, I think about jobs,” the Democrat tweeted Monday. “It’s time wind turbine blades, solar panels, and electric vehicle batteries were built by American union workers in American towns instead of overseas.”

Power the Future founder and executive director Daniel Turner admonished Biden for “suppressing the domestic supply of minerals,” arguing that the Democrat’s “green jobs” promise is “nothing more than a talking point to placate the climate activists.”

“The Biden administration is creating a demand for these materials and then prohibiting American workers from bringing them to the domestic market. There’s no logic to this,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “This administration has a bizarre fascination with enriching and strengthening our adversaries, as opposed to strengthening our domestic capabilities.”

The White House did not return a request for comment.

The Biden administration is already funding one overseas mining project. In November, the White House announced a $30 million investment in a Brazilian nickel and cobalt mine through the Development Finance Corporation, a federal agency that aims to support development in low- and middle-income nations. Should Biden expand his support for foreign mines, congressional scrutiny will likely follow. Arkansas Republican congressman Bruce Westerman has called the direct financing of foreign mining projects “horrific,” and a Republican House Foreign Affairs Committee aide told Axios to expect investigations into the program once Republicans take control of the lower chamber next year.

“As soon as we get into the majority, we will be getting pretty deep into it,” the aide said.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

The eight most likely explanations

The House Ethics Committee on Wednesday announced that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.) is the target of a bipartisan probe but declined to reveal the specific allegations being investigated.

Fortunately for the curious of mind, a Washington Free Beacon analysis has determined the eight most likely explanations for the committee’s interest in AOC’s numerous ethical shortcomings. Enjoy!

1) Met Gala shenanigans 

The celebrity politician drew attention to herself by waving a “Tax the Rich” dress to the swanky Met Gala in 2021. Ethics watchdogs accused Ocasio-Cortez of violating the House rules by improperly accepting gifts—in the form of clothing, fashion accessories, and various grooming services—for the event. A second complaint accused the congresswoman of ethics violations for accepting free tickets to the Met Gala, which reportedly cost $35,000 a piece, and sitting at a sponsored table valued at $300,000.

2) Shady finances

AOC has struggled to file her required financial disclosure forms on time.

3) The time she pretended to get arrested in front of the Supreme Court

Ocasio-Cortez drew attention to herself once again in July 2022 by pretending to be handcuffed by police during an abortion protest outside the U.S. Supreme Court. The stunt was orchestrated in collusion with the Center for Popular Democracy Action, a left-wing dark money group funded by billionaire George Soros.

4) Illegally parking her Tesla like a degenerate wine mom

The Free Beacon is the only media outlet courageous enough to report on the congresswoman’s Tesla ownership and inability to follow the rules. On multiple occasions, we exposed AOC for illegally parking her Tesla in front of a Whole Foods in her posh Washington, D.C., neighborhood. Her refusal to follow simple parking laws suggests an addiction to antisocial behavior that can only be sated by committing increasingly sinister crimes.

5) Betraying Hillary Clinton (and stealing her signature outfit)

Ocasio-Cortez endorsed Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.)—Hillary’s bitter rival—in the 2020 presidential election. In the most recent election cycle, AOC backed Nina Turner, a radical left-wing “defund the police” advocate, in the Democratic primary for an open House seat in Ohio. Hillary and other establishment Democrats endorsed Turner’s opponent, Shontel Brown. Hillary’s choice would go on to win the party’s nomination, but she’ll never forget the slight. May God have mercy on her enemies.

6) Dating well below her level of attractiveness

Is this ethical?

7) Cavorting with anti-Semites

AOC routinely pals around with fellow “Squad” members Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.). Both are notorious Jew haters.

8) Manspreading

Some have compared AOC to bloodthirsty Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, who has been accused of “manspreading” to intimidate his opponents.

https://freebeacon.com/parody/ocasio-cortez-ethics-scandal/?utm_source=actengage&utm_campaign=FreedomMail&utm_medium=email

Civil rights lawyers cry foul over the Golden State’s cash payments based on race

At least three guaranteed income initiatives in the San Francisco Bay Area openly discriminate against white residents, limiting or entirely preventing their participation in programs that dole out no-strings-attached cash.

The programs—all of which are publicly funded—violate both the United States and the California state constitution, lawyers say, as well as civil rights laws that ban race discrimination in contracting and by the recipients of government funds.

The initiatives include the Black Economic Equity Movement, which provides $500 a month exclusively to “Black young adults,” the Abundant Birth Project, which provides $1,000 a month to “Black and Pacific Islander mothers,” and the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People program, which will dole out $1,200 a month and “prioritize enrollment” of transgender “Black, Indigenous, or People of Color (BIPOC).”  They are financed by the National Institutes of Health, the California Department of Social Services, and the city of San Francisco, respectively.

These programs offer a preview of what could soon be the norm in the Golden State. In July 2021, California lawmakers set aside $35 million dollars in grant funding for guaranteed income pilots across the state. Though the law did not include any racial or ethnic qualifiers, in keeping with the California constitution, the state’s social services department said that it would only give out the grants to pilots that “center equity.” Grant applicants were encouraged to “embed an equity-focused approach throughout each dimension” of their programs, including their “eligibility.”

“It’s astonishing to me how brazen the State of California and its various Bay Areas local governments have become in violating the many laws and constitutional provisions prohibiting race discrimination,” said Gail Heriot, a member of the United States Commission on Civil Rights and a professor at the University of San Diego School of Law.

All three initiatives appear to violate the 14th Amendment, which bans states from discriminating based on race, said Dan Morenoff, the executive director of the American Civil Rights Project, as well as the California constitution and the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which ban racial discrimination in contracting. In addition, the Black Economic Equity Movement appears to violate Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which bans racial discrimination by the recipients of federal funds. The National Institutes of Health, whose “health equity” initiative funded the program, did not respond to a request for comment.

The blueprint for these programs comes from private philanthropic ventures, which have experimented with supplemental income schemes in Jackson, Miss., and Atlanta that are only available to black women.

Though both the Mississippi program, underwritten by the W.K. Kellogg foundation, and the Atlanta program, funded by the Georgia Resilience and Opportunity Fund, discriminate based on race, they probably don’t violate any laws, said David Bernstein, a professor of constitutional law at George Mason Law School.

But their California counterparts are another ball game.

“The publicly funded programs are clearly unconstitutional,” Bernstein said. “It’s not a close call.”

In an implicit admission of the legal stakes, every agency involved in the Abundant Birth Project denied using the racial criteria listed on the program’s website. The San Francisco Department of Public Health, which oversees the program, told the Washington Free Beacon that it is “open to all San Franciscans,” albeit “with focused efforts” to reach black and Pacific Islander “pregnant and parenting people.” Jason Montiel, a spokesman for the California Department of Social Services, which in November wrote a $5 million grant to the Abundant Birth Project so it could expand to other parts of the state, said the expansion “will not use race as a basis for eligibility.”

That might come as news to Grant Colfax, the director of the San Francisco health department: In a December 6 press release trumpeting the grant, he said it would “help hundreds more Black birthing parents in California.” San Francisco mayor London Breed likewise implied that the expansion was racially targeted, calling the Abundant Birth Project “a model to address racial birth disparities.”

The Black Economic Equity Movement and the Guaranteed Income for Transgender People program did not respond to requests for comment.

The legal status of a fourth program, Oakland Resilient Families, is less clear. The initiative provides $500 a month to “BIPOC families” living in Oakland, according to a March 2021 press release from the city’s website, which describes it as a “partnership” with “government leaders.” In a June 2021 press release, however, the city said the initiative is “not a city-run program and is 100 percent funded through philanthropic donations,” adding that “any” low-income family “is welcome to apply.”

Oakland Resilient Families also lists Justin Berton, a spokesman for Oakland mayor Libby Schaaf (D.), as a point of contact for the allegedly private program. Berton did not respond to a request for comment.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Household wealth in the United States fell by its second-fastest pace in history in the first three quarters of the year, but was buoyed by a positive performance in real estate, according to a Dec. 9 report by the U.S. Federal Reserve.

“The net worth of households and nonprofit organizations declined $0.4 trillion to $143.3 trillion in the third quarter. The value of stocks on the household balance sheet declined by $1.9 trillion, while the value of real estate increased by $0.7 trillion,” according to the Financial Accounts of the United States – Z.1 report.

Overall, there has been a net worth decline of about $6.84 trillion in the first three quarters of 2022, compared to the $18.78 trillion gain in 2021 and the $14.80 trillion in growth in 2020.

However, once inflation is accounted for, the loss of real wealth during the first three quarters stands twice as large at $13.5 trillion in current dollars, according to an analysis by MarketWatch. The 8.6 percent tumble in real worth in the three quarters is the second-fastest decline on record since 1959, surpassed only by the fall seen during the financial crisis of 2008–09.

The fall in household wealth coincides with a decrease in personal savings rate. Between January and October this year, the personal savings rate has more than halved, from 4.7 to 2.3 percent, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. Last year, it peaked at 26.3 percent in March.

Annualized inflation has remained at or above 7.5 percent for each month of 2022.

Debt Buildup, Financial Difficulties

While the value of household wealth declined in the third quarter, household debt grew by 6.3 percent during the period. Non-mortgage consumer credit rose by 7 percent, while home mortgage debt grew by 6.6 percent.

Between the end of December 2021 and September 2022, the total debt outstanding among households and nonprofits grew from $17.94 trillion to $18.84 trillion, an increase of more than 5 percent. Falling wealth and savings combined with rising debt levels usually indicate a tougher financial situation for households.

According to a recent CNN poll conducted by SSRS, a survey and market research firm, 49 percent of Americans believe their financial condition is worse off when compared to a year ago. The proportion of people who say their finances have become worse over the year was at 55 percent, higher than the 33 percent in the December 2021 poll.

The issue of cost of living was seen as a major problem, with 93 percent saying that they are somewhat concerned by it.

A Gallup poll published this month found that 55 percent of respondents are facing financial hardship due to rising prices, with 13 percent saying they face “severe” hardship.

While 77 percent of lower-income groups admitted to inflation-induced hardship in their households, this figure stood at 60 percent among middle-income groups and 42 percent among those in the upper-income category.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The latest installment of the Elon Musk-endorsed “Twitter files,” published on Dec. 12, revealed more internal details about how and why the social media platform suspended former President Donald Trump’s account in January 2021.

In a Twitter thread, journalist Bari Weiss, a former New York Times editor who quit in 2020, recalled what Trump had written on Jan. 8, 2021, which referred to the results of the 2020 election. She noted that Trump had “one remaining strike before being at risk of permanent suspension.”

One post by Trump on Jan. 8 was: “The 75,000,000 great American Patriots who voted for me, AMERICA FIRST, and MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN, will have a GIANT VOICE long into the future. They will not be disrespected or treated unfairly in any way, shape or form!!!”

The second one he issued that day would be his last before his account was banned: “To all of those who have asked, I will not be going to the Inauguration on January 20th.”

“For years, Twitter had resisted calls both internal and external to ban Trump on the grounds that blocking a world leader from the platform or removing their controversial tweets would hide important information that people should be able to see and debate,” Weiss wrote on Dec. 12. “But after January 6, as @mtaibbi and @shellenbergermd have documented, pressure grew, both inside and outside of Twitter, to ban Trump.”

While some Twitter staffers disagreed with claims that Trump was trying to incite violence with the Twitter posts, according to company Slack message screenshots that were published in her thread, some employees—whose names were redacted—were angry that Trump wasn’t banned earlier. After the Capitol breach on Jan. 6, 2021, even more company workers demanded his ouster from the platform, those messages revealed.

“We have to do the right thing and ban this account,” demanded one Twitter employee three times in a row, according to the screengrab. Another claimed it was “pretty obvious he’s going to try to thread the needle of incitement without violating the rules,” without elaborating or providing evidence. They had said that Trump’s posts about Trump voters and also about him not going to the inauguration were an incitement to violence.

But one top official, Anika Navaroli, argued that she “also am not seeing clear or coded incitement in the DJT tweet,” adding, “I’ll respond in the elections channel and say that our team has assessed and found no vios [violations] for the DJT one.”

Navaroli wrote that Twitter’s safety division later had “assessed the DJT (Trump) Tweet above and determined that there is no violation of our policies at this time.”

“Less than 90 minutes after Twitter employees had determined that Trump’s tweets were not in violation of Twitter policy,” Weiss wrote, “Vijaya Gadde—Twitter’s Head of Legal, Policy, and Trust—asked whether it could, in fact, be ‘coded incitement to further violence.’”

About two hours after that, Weiss reported that Twitter executives held a 30-minute all-staff meeting including Gadde and former CEO Jack Dorsey. They answered questions about why Trump, who had nearly 90 million followers and used the app extensively, wasn’t suspended.

Later that day, Twitter announced that it suspended Trump “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” After the account was banned, it wasn’t restored until last month, coming after Musk bought Twitter and fired numerous employees.

It was then noted that some world leaders, including Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed, had issued Twitter posts that appeared to incite violence against other groups.

Just days after Trump’s suspension, some Twitter staffers were calling for the platform to remove “medical misinformation” concerning COVID-19, according to screenshots published by Weiss. Several prominent Twitter accounts, including mRNA technology contributor Dr. Robert Malone and journalist Alex Berenson, were suspended from Twitter over alleged violations of the company’s policies around COVID-19.

The firm has since rescinded its COVID-19 misinformation policy, according to an update on Nov. 23.

Previous Revelations

The “Twitter Files,” which were announced and have been endorsed by Musk, started on Dec. 2 with journalist Matt Taibbi revealing the firm’s efforts to suppress the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story in 2020.

Days later, Weiss reported on the second installment of the files, revealing how the firm created secret blacklists or how certain users were shadow-banned. The third and fourth portions—like the fifth—dealt with Trump’s ban.

Author Michael Shellenberger released internal Twitter documents that show executives with the firm deviated from company policy to ban Trump’s account. It showed how former Twitter trust and safety head Yoel Roth allegedly told a staffer that the firm would be “changing public interest approach” for Trump’s account “in this specific case.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Roth for comment.

Trump, meanwhile, has indicated in several interviews that he won’t use Twitter and said he’d prefer to use Truth Social, his own platform. Since Musk restored his account in November, there have been no signs of activity.

“The biggest thing to come out of the Twitter Targeting Hoax is that the Presidential Election was RIGGED – And that’s as big as it can get!!!” he wrote on Truth Social on Dec. 9.

Note: This is a developing story that will be updated as more details are released.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Three Republican nominees for state government positions in Arizona have filed lawsuits to formally contest the results of their midterm election races that saw their Democratic opponents win.

Kari Lake, running for governor, Abe Hamadeh, running for attorney general, and Mark Finchem, running for secretary of state, filed separate lawsuits on Dec. 9 after the state’s top officials on Dec. 5 certified Arizona’s election results in most races.

Candidates have five days following certification to formally contest election results in court.

Current Arizona Secretary of State Katie Hobbs, a Democrat, certified herself as the winner of the gubernatorial race after results showed she beat Lake by about 0.6 points, or 17,117 votes out of about 2.5 million cast. Hobbs had faced calls prior to the election to recuse herself from her duties as the state’s top election official.

Democrat Kris Mayes beat Hamadeh by a margin of 511 votes out of 2.5 million cast, making it one of the closest contests in state history. Meanwhile, Democrat Adrian Fontes beat Finchem by about 4.8 points, or 120,208 votes out of 2.5 million cast.

According to Arizona law, any race in which the margin is within 0.5 points automatically goes to a recount. As such, the race for Arizona attorney general went to a recount on Dec. 7. Two other races—the state superintendent race and a state House race, also went to a recount on the same day. A judge is set to announce the results of the recounts by Dec. 22.

Lake Lawsuit

Lake filed a 70-page lawsuit (pdf) against Hobbs as a candidate as well as in her official capacity as a secretary of state and other top Arizona election officials on Dec. 9.

“If the process was illegitimate then so are the results,” she announced on Twitter upon filing the lawsuit.

Among other demands for relief, Lake is seeking an order to “[set] aside the certified result of the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election and declaring that Kari Lake is the winner” of the election, or in the alternative, an order “vacating the certified results” of the election and an injunction requiring that Maricopa County re-conduct the election “in conformance with all applicable law and excluding all improper votes.”

Lake, who has refused to concede to Hobbs, argued in the Dec. 9 lawsuit that “hundreds of thousands of illegal ballots infected the election in Maricopa County” and that the number of illegal votes cast in the election “far exceeds the 17,117 vote margin” in the gubernatorial race.

Attorneys for Lake said in the filing that “thousands of Republican voters were disenfranchised” amid problems in connection with “widespread tabulator or printer failures.”

Citing whistleblower and witness testimony, attorneys alleged that Maricopa County officials “violated Arizona chain of custody laws for hundreds of thousands” of mail-in ballots. With no chain of custody, there is “no way to tell whether over 300,000 ballots cast in Maricopa County are legal ballots,” they wrote.

Maricopa County election officials also “permitted the counting of tens of thousands of mail-in and drop box ballots that did not satisfy signature verification requirements,” including allowing “tens of thousands of ballots with signature mismatches.”

“Arizonans made their voices heard and elected Katie Hobbs as their governor,” Hobbs’s campaign said in a statement posted to Twitter. “No nuisance lawsuit will change that.” The campaign also stated that “independent experts and local elections officials of both parties have made clear that this was a safe, secure, and fair election.”

The latest suit comes after Lake on Nov. 23 sued election officials in Maricopa County in a separate lawsuit, demanding a response to her public records request seeking election records regarding mechanical issues on Nov. 8, so she can challenge the results of the election.

Lake’s campaign had also previously asked a state judge to extend voting hours in Maricopa County on Nov.  8, arguing that “significant issues” with voting machines caused some voters to be denied the opportunity to vote. But the judge rejected the request, denying any evidence that voters were denied such an opportunity.

Hamadeh, RNC Lawsuit

Hamadeh joined the Republican National Committee (RNC) and others in filing an election contest lawsuit (pdf) against Hayes, as well as Hobbs and other top state election officials.

Attorneys for Hamadeh and the RNC noted in the filing that plaintiffs are not alleging “fraud, manipulation or other intentional wrongdoing” in the election, but are bringing the lawsuit “to ensure that all lawfully cast votes are properly counted and that unlawfully cast votes are not counted.”

The filing alleges that the Nov. 8 election “was afflicted with certain errors and inaccuracies in the management of some polling operations,” the cumulative effects of which is “material to the race for Arizona Attorney General.”

“Arizona law permits any elector to initiate a contest proceeding to ensure that inaccuracies or illegalities in the canvassed returns are judicially remedied, and the declared result conforms to the will of the electorate,” the filing reads.

Attorneys noted multiple errors took place at Maricopa County polling locations. “Maricopa County faced unprecedented and unacceptable issues on Election Day. Arizonans deserved better,” Hamadeh wrote on Twitter in comments related to the lawsuit.

“I’m desperately worried about our country. Right now confidence in our elections are [sic] at an all-time low due to the hubris and incompetence of election officials to not take legitimate election issues seriously,” he added.

Hobbs’s office confirmed that it received the lawsuit and is reviewing it,  AZFamily reported.

Maricopa County on Twitter responded to the lawsuits filed by Lake and Hamadeh:

“The court system is the proper place for campaigns challenging the results to make their case. Maricopa County respects the election contest process and looks forward to sharing facts about the administration of the 2022 General Election and our work to ensure every legal voter had an opportunity to cast their ballot.”

Finchem Lawsuit

Finchem, the Republican candidate for Arizona secretary of state, alongside GOP congressional candidate Jeff Zink, filed a lawsuit against Fontes and Zink’s opponent Ruben Gallego, as well as Hobbs in her official capacity as the current secretary of state.

The complaint (pdf) said, citing an “obvious conflict of interest,” that Hobbs should have recused herself from her role as secretary of state because she was running for governor. Attorneys for Finchem and Zink also alleged that Hobbs “negligently or intentionally” failed to fulfill the duty of making sure there were “no defects in the election process.”

Among multiple requests, the suit asked that the court order a referral to the state’s attorney general to investigate Hobbs for “willful acts in violation of impartiality.” It also asked for a potential paper ballot revote.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former President Donald Trump said he had previously turned down a prisoner swap deal with Russia, saying he couldn’t have former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan home but allow out convicted Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, who has “killed untold numbers.”

“I turned down a deal with Russia for a one on one swap of the so-called Merchant of Death for Paul Whelan. I wouldn’t have made the deal for a hundred people in exchange for someone that has killed untold numbers of people with his arms deals,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform on Dec. 11.

Bout, 55, who was sentenced to 25 years in prison in 2012 for conspiring to sell millions of dollars worth of weapons to a Colombian terrorist group committed to killing Americans, was freed on Dec. 8 in exchange for the release of WNBA star Brittney Griner, 32.

Griner was sentenced to nine years in prison by a Russian court in August, after pleading guilty to carrying cannabis products when she landed at Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport in February.

Despite rejecting the swap, Trump said he would still secure Whelan’s release. Whelan was arrested in Moscow in December 2018, before he was handed a 16-year prison sentence on spying charges by a Russian court in June 2015.

“I would have gotten Paul out, however, just as I did with a record number of other hostages,” Trump added.

President Joe Biden has described talks with Moscow over securing Griner’s release as “painstaking and intense negotiations.”

Biden Administration

Trump on Sunday also criticized the Biden administration over its prisoner exchange agreement with Moscow.

“The deal for Griner is crazy and bad. The taking wouldn’t have even happened during my Administration, but if it did, I would have gotten her out, fast!” Trump wrote.

Trump’s Truth Social post on Sunday is not the first time the former president has weighed in on the prisoner swap.

“The Trump Administration got 58 hostages released from various hostile countries without paying any money, or giving up anything,” Trump wrote on Truth Social last week. “That is something, both in numbers and lack of remuneration, that has never been done before in any other administration.”

“The America hating basketball player for the ‘Merchant of Death,’ especially when the former Marine is not even included, is a one-sided disaster, and a BIG WIN FOR RUSSIA,” he continued. “If I made that deal the Dems would chant, RUSSIA, RUSSIA, RUSSIA!”

Whelan, speaking to CNN in a phone interview from a Russian penal colony on Dec. 8, said he was “greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four year anniversary of my arrest is coming up.”

“I was arrested for a crime that never occurred,” Whelan added. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.”

White House spokesman John Kirby said Russia was unwilling to include Whelan in a prisoner swap for Bout.

“They treat Paul differently because of these sham espionage charges,” Kirby told Fox News on Dec. 11. “He is put in this special category by the Russians.”

After Griner arrived back in the United States on Friday, Russian President Vladimir Putin suggested that more prisoner exchanges with the United States were possible.

“Yes, anything is possible,” Putin said when he was asked if other prison exchanges were possible. “Contacts continue. In fact, they have never stopped … A compromise was found, we do not reject continuing this work in the future.”

Congress

The Griner-for-Bout swap has drawn praise and criticism in Congress, with both reactions splitting mostly along party lines.

“President Biden, Secretary [Antony] Blinken and the many hard-working national security professionals are to be commended for their tireless, steadfast work to bring Brittney home,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) wrote in a statement.

House Majority Leader Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) released a statement saying, “I commend President Biden and American negotiators for taking action to ensure that she can safely return to our shores.”

Some Republican lawmakers warned about what the future holds for Americans.

“Americans welcome the release of Brittney Griner, but it shouldn’t have come at the cost of releasing one of the world’s worst arms dealers and creating a dangerous precedent for our enemies: detain Americans and Democrats will agree to set your worst killers free,” Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) said in a statement.

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said the prisoner swap was “clearly a blackmail demand,” according to a statement.

“Bout is one of the most dangerous men in the world and an arms dealer who conspired to kill Americans and aid terrorists, and his release makes every American less safe—so does the manner of his release, which will encourage terrorists and rogue regimes to seize more Americans as hostages,” Cruz wrote.

Democrat and Republican lawmakers from Pennsylvania are calling on the Biden administration to do more to secure the release of Marc Fogel, an American teacher who is serving a 14-year sentence in Russia for possession of medical marijuana.

“Mr. Fogel suffers from severe medical conditions and his family fears he will not survive his 14-year sentence in a hard labor camp. The Biden administration, and the Nation, cannot forget about Marc,” Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.) said in a statement. “Like Ms. Griner and others, Marc deserves to see his family again.”

“PA resident Marc Fogel is jailed in Russia for reasons almost identical to Brittney Griner,” Sen. Pat Toomey (R-Pa.) wrote on Twitter. “The Biden Admin brought home a celebrity—it must work just as hard to bring home everyday Americans too.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Marine Corps major’s promotion has been indefinitely suspended over his religious objection to the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the officer’s wife.

Maj. Nick Harwood was selected for a promotion to lieutenant colonel in December 2021, a recognition of his outstanding record of military service. It was due to take effect this year, but Harwood’s promotion has been delayed indefinitely and will possibly be rescinded, his wife Meghan Harwood said.

“On Nov, 21, my husband received a non-promote letter,” Meghan told The Epoch Times.

“A non-promote letter should have been presented at the time of infraction—when he enacted his Religious Freedom of Restoration Act rights and abstained from receiving a vaccine that violated his religious beliefs,” she said.

Meghan considers command is at fault for the fact that it was presented at the last minute.

She believes this move was made because of her husband’s refusal to comply with the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate. But this, she believes, is a “blatant defiance” of a preliminary injunction issued by a federal judge.

On Aug. 18, U.S. District Court Judge Steven Merryday issued a classwide preliminary injunction barring the Marines from discharging or retaliating against service members seeking religious accommodations to the vaccine mandate. This halted all separation proceedings, including the one against Harwood, as previously reported by The Epoch Times.

But this ruling has not stopped the Marines from stripping Harwood of his career advancement opportunities, according to Meghan.

“This further demonstrates the Marine Corps’ vindictive actions and determination to do anything in their power to shame, degrade, and discriminate against those who chose to stand for their religious beliefs,” she said.

Attorney R. Davis Younts, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve and former active duty JAG, agreed and is appalled that “the military continues to punish and put pressure on all of everyone while the injunction is in place.”

In Harwood’s case, “We have military officer who was competitively selected for promotion and is otherwise qualified for promotion, and the only thing holding that promotion back is a denied religious accommodation,” Younts told The Epoch Times.

“As a Christian, [Harwood] is being denied a promotion he earned by a process that the Inspector General has already found to be improper and the courts are already skeptical of.”

A June memo by Acting Inspector General Sean W. O’Donnell found that the Department of Defense had been in “potential noncompliance” with the review of religious accommodation requests of service members.

Still Fighting to Preserve Freedom

Younts said what happened to Harwood is not an isolated incident.

“Other military members taking a stand for their faith and constitutional rights are being denied leadership positions and being held hostage, unable to transfer or move to a new duty location,” he said.

As the discrimination continues, he said, military readiness is “weakened by the loss of real leaders and the devastating impact on morale.”

“Even those [service members] who did not file a religious accommodation are losing faith in a senior leadership that is playing politics with the lives and careers of military members,” he added.

According to Meghan, the circumstances surrounding her husband’s plight are a direct contradiction of the narrative the Marine Corps keeps pushing today—and a recent event has solidified her views.

On Nov. 9, she and her husband attended their first Marine Logistic Group’s (MLG) Marine Corps Birthday Ball—the group’s first ball since the start of the pandemic. “As I listened to the commandant’s USMC birthday message,” she said, “I had a completely different, contrary perspective given how my husband has been treated.”

He attempted to give a stirring message about “our freedom tomorrow” and “the battlefields of tomorrow,” she said. “But all I could see is the war being waged on our own Marines.”

“We have men and women who fight to preserve the freedoms of all Americans and yet there are service members who are being punished for attempting to exercise these very same freedoms within the military,” she said.

“These are the men and women who exemplify honor, courage, and commitment,” she added, referring to the Marines’ core values.

“They are the ones willing to take a stand no matter the cost, and these are the type of leaders we need in our military.”

Younts emphasized that his views do not reflect those of the Department of Defense or the Department of the Air Force. The Pentagon did not return an inquiry from The Epoch Times about Harwood’s case.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A federal judge in Montana has ruled that parts of the state’s law preventing discrimination against individuals in health care settings based on their COVID-19 vaccination status are unconstitutional.

Republican-backed House Bill 702 was passed in 2021 by the Montana Legislature as an anti-discrimination measure and signed into law by Republican Gov. Greg Gianforte in May of that same year.

The bill banned employers from mandating that employees get vaccinated or share their vaccine status through an immunity passport.

In a 41-page ruling on Dec. 9, U.S. District Judge Donald Molloy stated that the law was unconstitutional as it applies to employers and employees of health care settings.

“No party questions the authority of the Montana Legislature and Governor to exercise their respective legislative or executive authority to enact or modify public health and anti-discrimination laws,” the lawsuit states. “Rather, the challenge, in this case, stems from an ostensibly purposed anti-discrimination statute and its incongruent impact on healthcare providers and patients, hospitals, nursing homes, doctor’s offices.”

Law Fails to Deal Specifically With COVID-19

State Attorney General Austin Knudsen and Department of Labor Commissioner Laurie Esau were named as defendants in the lawsuit.

The lawsuit goes on to state that the law passed in 2021 failed to distinguish between vaccines and did not deal specifically with COVID-19, instead encompassing “all vaccines whether for measles, mumps, rubella, tetanus, diphtheria, pertussis, hepatitis, or flu.”

This, in turn, plaintiffs argue, “caused critical concerns for health care providers whether hospitals, doctor’s offices or other medical facilities by limiting the ability of such providers to know the vaccination status of patients and employees.”

Plaintiffs also argue that the law “preemptively precludes health care providers and other employers from knowing the vaccination status of employees or patients if the employee or patient refuses to answer any inquiry about vaccination status or immunity passports.”

“That situation, for any number of reasons, creates untoward problems for healthcare providers of any description in trying to protect the environment where services to patients are rendered and to prevent the spread of diseases,” the lawsuit states.

The lawsuit argues that the law as it pertains to health care settings violated a string of laws.

In his ruling on Friday, Molloy said that plaintiffs had successfully argued that the law violated the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Occupational Safety and Health Act, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services regulations.

Specifically, he said, plaintiffs had successfully argued that the law was preempted by the federal Americans with Disabilities Act which requires employers to consider accommodation to create a safe work environment for workers, including employees who are immunocompromised.

‘A Win for All Montanans’

“Deprived by law of the ability to require vaccination or immunity status of an employee, a health care employer is not able to properly consider possible reasonable accommodations if an employee asks to limit his or her exposure to unvaccinated individuals,” wrote Molloy, a Clinton appointee.

The judge further noted that HB 702 “removes an essential tool from the health care provider’s toolbox to stop or minimize the risk of spreading vaccine-preventable disease.”

Molloy also found that plaintiffs had successfully proven that “vaccine-preventable diseases constitute recognized hazards in the workplace,” meaning that HB 702 was not compatible with the Occupational Safety and Health Act.

In a statement on Dec. 10, Nurse’s Association attorney Raph Graybill called the order “a win for all Montanans, who shouldn’t have to worry about catching an infectious disease when they go to see the nurse or doctor.”

A spokeswoman for Attorney General Knudsen said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times that his office is reviewing the ruling to determine what they will do next.

“Attorney General Knudsen is continuing to fight for the rights of health care workers,” spokeswoman Emilee Cantrell said while pointing to a recent petition signed by Knudsen and 21 other state attorneys general calling for the vaccine mandate for health care workers to be scrapped amid chronic shortages.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A recount of votes in a Massachusetts state House of Representatives race has placed a Democratic challenger ahead of a Republican incumbent by a single vote after the latter was initially leading following the Nov. 8 elections.

Democrat Kristin Kassner, a first-time candidate, is now leading her Republican opponent Lenny Mirra in the race for the newly redrawn North Shore district, a coastal region between Boston and New Hampshire.

Prior to the recount, Mirra, a five-term Republican, had led Kassner by 10 votes out of the 24,155 votes that were cast across the district, according to the original certified results from Election Day.

However, the 10-vote margin is within the legal threshold that allows for a recount, and Kassner later submitted a petition asking for a district-wide recount of the Nov. 8 election.

Secretary of State Bill Galvin agreed to the hand recount, which was ordered on Nov. 30, as well as another in the First Middlesex District race.

After officials recounted the votes on Dec. 8, the results flipped to put Kassner up 11,763 votes to Mirra’s 11,762.

Kassner picked up a total of 19 additional votes, including 10 in Ipswich, four in Rowley, three in Topsfield, one vote in Newbury, and one vote in Georgetown, according to data provided by Galvin’s office (pdf). Mirra, meanwhile, added five votes in Ipswich, three in Topsfield, and one in Newbury.

The Republican candidate also lost a single vote in Rowley, according to the data.

Mirra to Challenge Recount Results

Mirra told The Boston Globe that he plans to challenge the results.

“Some [ballots] were filled out in pencil, some were filled out with different colored ink, some had stray marks. Some had a name written in the write-in and then an oval filled out,” Mirra said.

Kassner, however, told The Boston Globe that she believes the voting process “unfolded like it should,” adding that while the results show she’s leading in the race, a tight margin means it’s “hard to allow yourself to be too excited until the plane is landed.”

The Democrat also told CBS that she doesn’t believe anything suspicious took place with regard to the recount.

“[The recount] was just really just to ensure that, between humans and machines, we really caught every vote that was counted,” Kassner said. “We thank the tremendous outpouring of people that really got involved and mobilized to go through this process this weekend. It’s really a true test of democracy.”

The results have yet to be certified by Gov. Charlie Baker and a council for review.

Elsewhere, Galvin ordered a recount of the First Middlesex District race, when Republican Andrew Shepherd petitioned for one after the initial count saw Democrat Margaret Scarsdale ahead by 17 votes, according to the Globe.

The recount showed that Scarsdale’s lead has since narrowed to 11 votes, according to the publication, although there were still more than 4,100 ballots that needed to be counted.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Elon Musk has caused quite a stir since taking over Twitter. Some of his most recent tweets, in the wake of the release of the “Twitter Files,” have gone next-level viral.

On Sunday, Musk stirred the pot significantly, taking shots at the outgoing director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, Dr. Anthony Fauci, while incorporating a hilarious dig at the progressive pronoun crowd.

“My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci,” Musk tweeted Sunday.

My pronouns are Prosecute/Fauci

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) December 11, 2022

Trending:

Watch: KJP Gives Peter Doocy Death Stare When He Repeats Biden’s Question to Trump

Fauci, who will appear Sunday in a special pre-recorded CNN interview, is expected to be one of the primary targets of House Republicans when they assume majority control of the lower chamber in January. House GOP lawmakers, and at least half of the country, want to know precisely what level of involvement Fauci had in the disastrous pandemic process and investigate exactly how COVID-19 came to be.

Musk’s post, one of his first major shots at Fauci on Twitter, was well-received by some top Republicans, including Georgia Republican Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who joined in on the fun.

“I affirm your pronouns Elon,” Rep. Green tweeted in response.

I affirm your pronouns Elon.

— Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene🇺🇸 (@RepMTG) December 11, 2022

It wasn’t clear exactly what prompted Musk’s shot at Fauci.

Still, some users suspect that the “Twitter Files” and the revelation that Fauci’s daughter worked at Twitter during the height of the pandemic when the social media company was engaged in aggressive censorship of anyone questioning the official government narrative regarding the COVID-19 virus.

“Let me guess, You found messages between Twitter execs and our govt. (Fauci and team) pushing for censorship of anyone that didn’t go along with their narrative on Covid?” the conservative commentator known as “Hodgetwins” tweeted.

Related:

Elon Musk Takes Down Mark Kelly’s Brother and Makes Most Brutal Statement About Fauci Yet

Let me guess,

You found messages between Twitter execs and our govt. (Fauci and team) pushing for censorship of anyone that didn’t go along with their narrative on Covid?

— Hodgetwins (@hodgetwins) December 11, 2022

Other high-profile Twitter users, like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., thanked Musk for speaking his mind on such matters instead of parroting what the Democrat-controlled machine expects Big Tech players to push to the general public.

“Kudos to @elonmusk for looking beyond the propaganda,” Kennedy Jr. tweeted.

Kudos to @elonmusk for looking beyond the propaganda

— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) December 11, 2022

Not surprisingly, radical leftists lost their ever-loving minds in the wake of Musk’s tweet, as it mocked Fauci, their hero, and their foolish insistence on announcing pronouns that aren’t necessary to any adequate speaker of the English language.

Alexander Vindman, the former White House staffer who played a key role in then-President Trump’s first impeachment trial in 2020, and happens to be one of the most radical, looney leftists on Twitter, went into full meltdown mode on Sunday.

“.@Twitter is dying. That’s okay. If anything it needs to be killed off soonest. @elonmusk cannot be allowed to promoted dangerous radical views… hate speech. Imagine Geobbles with a bigger platform and wider reach,” Vindman wrote as part of a series of tweets targeting Musk.

.@Twitter is dying. That’s okay. If anything it needs to be killed off soonest. @elonmusk cannot be allowed to promoted dangerous radical views… hate speech. Imagine Geobbles with a bigger platform and wider reach.

— Alexander S. Vindman (@AVindman) December 11, 2022

Leftists, who’ve enjoyed unbridled control of virtually all of Big Tech for many years now, simply can’t deal with losing one of their most potent propaganda arms. With Musk in charge, things are changing, fast.

And I’m here for it.

Whether you think cryptocurrency and non-fungible tokens (NFTs) are the future of digital banking or a Ponzi scheme for the 21st century, you cannot deny that, at the very least, the two are both wildly volatile.

Which has always made it so surprising that celebrities from all avenues of entertainment so willingly threw their unvarnished support behind all sorts of crypto-related ventures.

Oh, wait. It’s not surprising at all since those same crypto companies likely paid them oodles of cash to hock their non-fungible goods, the actual quality of those goods be damned.

And that notion is at the crux of an all-encompassing lawsuit aimed at some A-list heavy hitters — the likes of Madonna, Jimmy Fallon, Serena Williams, Steph Curry, Tom Brady, and more.

According to Deadline, a new class action lawsuit filed in federal court is targeting those famous faces over pushing Bored Ape Yacht Club NFTs for “hidden payoffs.”

Trending:

Watch: KJP Gives Peter Doocy Death Stare When He Repeats Biden’s Question to Trump

Even if you’re not familiar with its name, surely you’ve seen these kinds of NFTs (read: images) bandied about:

Ape #441 was purchased for 540.0 ETH
https://t.co/9FaKoPL0qg pic.twitter.com/f382R3nvyk

— boredapebot (@boredapebot) December 9, 2022

The lawsuit, which was filed in US District Court in California on Thursday by Adonis Real and Adam Titcher, states that the “defendants’ promotional campaign was wildly successful, generating billions of dollars in sales and re-sales.”

The idea of people spending “billions of dollars” on overhyped JPEG files is… depressing, to say the least.

Does this lawsuit make a good case against the celebrities?Yes No

Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

“The manufactured celebrity endorsements and misleading promotions regarding the launch of an entire [Bored Ape Yacht Club or BAYC] ecosystem (the so-called Otherside metaverse) were able to artificially increase the interest in and price of the BAYC NFTs during the Relevant Period, causing investors to purchase these losing investments at drastically inflated prices.”

The lawsuit accuses the various defendants of using their respective platforms to publicly praise the BAYC NFTs and claiming to be customers themselves.

“The truth is that the Company’s entire business model relies on using insidious marketing and promotional activities from A-list celebrities that are highly compensated (without disclosing such), to increase demand of the Yuga securities by convincing potential retail investors that the price of these digital assets would appreciate,” the lawsuit claims.

Additionally, the lawsuit claims that the celebrities “engaged in a plan, scheme, conspiracy, and course of conduct pursuant to which they knowingly or recklessly engaged in acts, transactions, practices, and courses of business that operated as a fraud and deceit upon Plaintiffs and the other members of the Class.”

Put simply, the lawsuit is making the legal point that celebrities were promoting these NFTs without also disclosing how much they were being paid to do so.

Related:

Kari Lake Breaks the Internet With Epic 2-Word Response to Alleged Contract on Her Life

“In truth, the Executive Defendants and Oseary used their connections to MoonPay and its service as a covert way to compensate the Promoter Defendants for their promotions of the BAYC NFTs without disclosing it to unsuspecting investors,” the lawsuit adds.

Celebrity music manager Guy Oseary, mentioned above, is tabbed as the mastermind of this entire scheme.

This lawsuit is the latest woe to befall the crypto economy.

In late November, the Department of Justice charged 21 people for using cryptocurrency to money launder. Given the unregulated nature of cryptocurrency, money laundering is a constant concern with it.

Much more significantly, cryptocurrency exchange company FTX has made all sorts of negative headlines recently — from going bankrupt to having former CEO Sam Bankman-Fried exposed as a huckster who stole from the poor and gave to the mega-rich Democrats.

A brief stab at advertising may prove to be quite costly for all of these celebrities involved.

And while they surely have enough money to withstand such a lawsuit (if they are even found guilty), it’s still a bad look.

Hopefully, those celebrities are aware that monkey JPEG files won’t be accepted should be found guilty. It’s going to cost them real money.

The still Democrat-controlled House of Representatives sent their Respect for Marriage Act (RFMA) to the White House to be signed into law in a galling attempt to thwart both the incoming Republican House majority and undercut the power of the U.S. Supreme Court.

The misnamed act not only runs contrary to religious beliefs — and some fear would actually make Christian views a punishable offense — but also violates the principle that marriage is not a federal matter and is an institution regulated chiefly by the states.

The bill passed 258-169-1 with 39 Republicans joining the entire complement of Democrats to pass the bill, according to D.C. newspaper The Hill. Republican Utah Rep. Burgess Owens was the lone representative to vote present.

The Senate had already passed its version of the bill in November, with 12 Republican senators defecting to the Democrats to support the measure.

This latest vote on the bill is the second time the House has passed the measure. When the initial version of the bill passed the House over the summer, 47 House Republicans joined Democrats in favor of the bill.

Trending:

Watch: KJP Gives Peter Doocy Death Stare When He Repeats Biden’s Question to Trump

Why was this act rushed through in a matter of a few short months? Because the Democrat Party is aiming to take away the power of the incoming GOP majority to have any chance to address the issue, for one.

But also because they fear the U.S. Supreme Court will act on the matter.

As The Hill noted, the Democrat push for the bill started after the Supreme Court of the United States struck down Roe v. Wade in June. In particular, what Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the ruling also started sounding the alarms.

“In a concurring opinion to that ruling, Thomas called on the court to reconsider Obergefell v. Hodges, the 2015 decision that enshrined same-sex marriage as a constitutional right,” Hill staff writer Mychael Schnell wrote.

The Hill added that, “Thomas’s statement — and seeing a landmark case overturned — set off alarm bells among Democrats that LGBTQ rights were in danger.”

The RFMA repeals the 1996 Defense of Marriage Act, which declared marriage to be between one man and one woman and allowed states to reject marriages that other states ruled valid. While that law was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2015 in the Obergefell v. Hodges decision, it had remained on the books even so.

The bill also requires that states recognize gay marriage even if the SCOTUS overturns Obergefell.

Unsurprisingly, Democrats celebrated the passage of the act.

“Today we will vote for equality and against discrimination by finally overturning the exclusionary, homophobic Defense of Marriage Act and guaranteeing crucial protections for same-sex and interracial marriages,” Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, a co-chair of the LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus, said.

Related:

Husband Stops for Bathroom Break on Christmas Trip, Forgets His Wife and Drives Off 100 Miles Without Her

“By passing the Respect for Marriage Act we will ensure that all Americans continue to be afforded the same rights by the government, no matter what the Supreme Court may decide in the future,” Cicilline added.

The RFMA is no defense of marriage, but instead enshrines a corruption of marriage. The concept of marriage in western law has always been an agreement between a man and a woman aimed at insuring the family unit and an act vital to the preservation of morals and civilization. Gay marriage does not achieve any of those goals except through artificial means.

Clearly, the main purpose of the RFMA’s quick passage is to take power away from the states as well as the U.S. Supreme Court. Further, it is an overt act to undermine the court before the court even has any chance to hear such a case.

After all, the SCOTUS doesn’t just hand out edicts. They have to wait for a suitable case to be brought to them. In other words, there is no guarantee that the SCOTUS would ever even hear a case that would overturn Obergefell. Indeed, it took fifty years to get the proper case to overturn Roe!

The RFMA is a Democratic power grab, plain and simple. Not only is it an effort to thwart the SCOTUS, but this bill also had to be pushed on a super extradited time frame to make sure it is signed into law by a complicit president before the GOP majority takes control of the House.

It’s abundantly clear that the Respect for Marriage Act has no respect for the American legal institutions and its checks and balances.

A college soccer player who resigned from her team in 2020 after a dispute with a coach over a pre-game social justice ritual has been given the green light to proceed with her lawsuit against the coach.

Kiersten Hening played for the Virginia Tech women’s soccer team from 2018 to 2020, but ran afoul of coach Charles Adair in 2020 after she would not kneel before a game while a social justice statement was read, according to the New York Post.

Hening filed suit against Adair in 2021, alleging that “because she refused to kneel, he benched her, subjected her to repeated verbal abuse, and forced her off the team,” according to WSLS-TV.

Hening said in her lawsuit that although she “supports social justice and believes that black lives matter,” she “does not support BLM the organization,” citing its “tactics and core tenets of its mission statement, including defunding the police,” according to Fox News.

Judge Thomas Cullen held that “Ultimately, Adair may convince a jury that this coaching decision was based solely on Hening’s poor play during the UVA game, but the court, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to Hening, cannot reach that conclusion as a matter of law”

— Jonathan Turley (@JonathanTurley) December 11, 2022

Trending:

Watch: KJP Gives Peter Doocy Death Stare When He Repeats Biden’s Question to Trump

The ruling allowing Hening’s case to go forward said she alleges that Adair “berated her at halftime in front of her teammates, and again at a film-review session the following week, for ‘bi***ing and moaning”’ and ‘doing [her] own thing.’”

The ruling said the coach claimed he was unaware Hening did not kneel and that he criticized her and limited her playing time because she was not playing well.

Adair has sued to have the suit dismissed, but U.S. District Court Judge Thomas Cullen wrote in his ruling that “The court concludes that there is sufficient evidence in the record supporting Hening’s claim that Adair’s actions, whatever his motives, adversely affected her First Amendment rights.”

“Whatever his motivations, the court has no trouble concluding that Adair’s conduct towards Hening — publicly chastising her, removing her from the starting lineup, and reducing her playing time — would tend to chill a person of ordinary firmness’s exercise of her First Amendment rights,” Cullen wrote.

⚽️ I’m a veteran and proudly stand for our national anthem. Myself and many veterans stand with Kiersten Hening in this case versus this coach….. 👉 Former Virginia Tech Soccer Player Alleges Coach Forced Her Off Team After Standing For National Anthem https://t.co/TUHpIREPht

Noting that Hening bowed to pressure and knelt before the next two games, before she quit the team, Cullen wrote, “A reasonable jury, in sum, could find that Adair’s actions reasonably chilled Hening’s First Amendment expression.”

The court noted that “photographs from the game film clearly depict Adair, who is kneeling on the sideline, looking in Henning’s direction as she remained standing,” making it unlikely he was unaware of her actions.

Related:

MAGA-Hat-Wearing Teacher in Deep-Blue State Gets Major Legal Victory from Federal Court

Cullen ruled that “a fair review of the record indicates that Hening’s case is based on more than supposition; indeed, ample circumstantial evidence undergirds her claim and gives rise to genuine issues of material fact about Adair’s true motives and actions.”

The ruling said Hening was known to have conservative views and that Adair had indirectly criticized it.

Soccer Player Files Lawsuit Alleging She Was Forced Off Team for Refusing to Kneel Kiersten Hening filed the suit against her former Virginia Tech coach, Charles “Chugger” Adair, alleging that “because she refused to kneel, he benched her, subjected her to repeated verbal abuse. pic.twitter.com/7TBafVQAae

— pond (@pond_kat) April 23, 2021

“The evidence of Adair’s apparent views on this issue (as reflected in his alleged criticism of ‘All Lives Matter’ supporters) and Hening’s well-known conservative leanings and lack of support for BLM further support an inference that Adair had a retaliatory motive when he criticized, and later benched, Hening for refusing to kneel during the Unity Statement,” he wrote.

The ruling does not grant Hening a win in her suit, which will now be able to go to trial.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed on Dec. 11 that the Libyan intelligence official accused of making a bomb that destroyed a Pan Am airliner over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988 was arrested and is in U.S. custody.

“The United States has taken custody of alleged Pan Am Flight 103 bombmaker Abu Agila Mohammad Mas’ud Kheir Al-Marimi,” a DOJ spokesperson confirmed to news outlets. “He is expected to make his initial appearance in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. Additional details, including information regarding public access to the initial appearance, will be forthcoming.”

Mas’ud is now the third Libyan intelligence official charged in the United States in connection with the Lockerbie bombing, but he would be the first to stand trial in a U.S. courtroom. It’s not clear if Mas’ud has a lawyer.

Pan Am Flight 103, which was heading to New York from London, exploded over Lockerbie, causing the deaths of all 259 people on board the plane and another 11 on the ground, in what’s considered the deadliest terrorist attack in the United Kingdom. Among the 190 Americans on board were 35 Syracuse University students flying home for Christmas after a semester abroad.

Scotland’s Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service issued a statement on Dec. 11 about Mas’ud’s arrest by saying that “the families of those killed in the Lockerbie bombing have been told that the suspect … is in U.S. custody.”

“Scottish prosecutors and police, working with UK government and U.S. colleagues, will continue to pursue this investigation, with the sole aim of bringing those who acted along with al-Megrahi to justice,” the Crown Office said in its statement.

A breakthrough in the investigation came in 2017 when U.S. officials received a copy of an interview that Mas’ud, a longtime explosives expert for Libya’s intelligence service, had given to Libyan law enforcement in 2012 after having been taken into custody following the collapse of the regime of the country’s leader, Moammar Gadhafi.

In that interview, U.S. officials claimed, Mas’ud admitted to building the bomb in the Pan Am attack and working with two other conspirators to carry it out. He also said the operation was ordered by Libyan intelligence and that Gadhafi thanked him and other members of the team after the attack, according to an FBI affidavit filed in the case.

U.S. officials charged Mas’ud two years ago for his alleged involvement. Two others, Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi and Al Amin Khalifah Fhimah, were accused of placing a bomb inside a tape and radio player that was inside a suitcase on the Pan Am flight.

“At long last, this man responsible for killing Americans and many others will be subject to justice for his crimes,” then-Attorney General Bill Barr said at a news conference in 2020.

Other Details

In 2001, Megrahi, who claimed his innocence, was sentenced to 27 years in prison but was released from jail after being diagnosed with cancer; he died in 2012. Fhimah was acquitted in January 2001.

In 2021, Megrahi’s family lost an appeal in a court in Scotland to have his conviction overturned posthumously, citing concerns about the evidence, including doubts about the timer alleged to have detonated the bomb.

“Megrahi and Fhimah were both at the airport on the morning of Dec. 21, 1988, and Mas’ud handed the suitcase to Fhimah after Fhimah gave him a signal to do so,” the DOJ said in a statement.

“Fhimah then placed the suitcase on the conveyor belt. Masud then left. He was given a boarding pass for a Libyan flight to Tripoli, which was to take off at 9 a.m. Three or four days after returning to Libya, Mas’ud and Megrahi met with a senior Libyan intelligence official, who thanked them for a successful operation.

“Approximately three months after that, Masud and Fhimah met with [Gadhafi], and others, who thanked them for carrying out a great national duty against the Americans, and [Gadhafi] added that the operation was a total success.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Six Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee have launched an investigation looking into whether major climate groups are violating federal antitrust laws in their effort to push the “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) agenda.

Their concerns were raised in a letter dated Dec. 6 to two executives on the steering committee for investor group Climate Action 100+ in which the Republicans argued that ESG, at its core, was “merely partisan politics masquerading as responsible corporate governance.”

The ESG agenda has now included “stifling investment in oil and gas,” gun control, abortion access, and “fake news dissemination,” according to the letter.

The lawmakers likened the climate action investor group to a “cartel,” whose job is to “ensure the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitters take necessary action on climate change,” quoting from the group’s website.

‘Woke Corporations’

“Woke corporations are collectively adopting and imposing progressive policy goals that American consumers do not want or do not need. An individual company’s use of corporate resources for progressive aims might violate fiduciary duties or other laws, harming its viability and alienating consumers,” the lawmakers wrote.

“But when companies agree to work together to punish disfavored views or industries, or to otherwise advance environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals, this coordinated behavior may violate the antitrust laws and harm American consumers.”

Related Coverage

ESG: The Merger of State and Corporate Power

The letter was signed by Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Tom McClintock (R-Calif.), Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.), and Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.). Jordan, currently the ranking Republican member of the House Judiciary Committee, will be the committee’s chairperson in the Republican-led House in January.

“Corporate America’s collusion in pursuit of ESG goals may violate federal or state antitrust laws,” the lawmakers wrote, pointing out how antitrust law is usually “skeptical of cooperation among competitors.”

“When enterprises like Climate Action 100+ or Ceres invite or facilitate collusion to achieve progressive policy goals, that activity can aid anticompetitive and unlawful agreements and behavior.”

Ceres is a nonprofit organization and a co-founder of Climate Action 100+.

‘Textbook Antitrust Violation’

The letter cited an op-ed written by Sean Fieler, president of New York-based investment firm Equinox Partners. The Wall Street Journal published the op-ed, “The ESG Movement Is a Ripe Target for Antitrust Action,” in June.

“Advancing the ESG agenda requires that the owners of capital collude to restrict the supply of certain goods and services. Regardless of the colluding parties’ motivations, this is a textbook antitrust violation,” Fieler wrote.

The letter was addressed to Mindy Lubber, CEO of Ceres, and Simiso Nzima, managing investment director of global equity at the California Public Employees’ Retirement System.

The Republicans want the two executives to turn over all documents from Dec. 1, 2016, to the present showing how the organization has played its role in “facilitating and coordinating companies’ efforts to achieve ESG-related goals.”

“All documents and communications referring or relating to any efforts by Climate Action 100+ … or Ceres to obtain or solicit agreements, commitments, or other types of participation from any investors, members, or other companies, including but not limited to BlackRock, State Street, or Vanguard, to advance ESG-related goals,” one of the several questions listed in the letter reads.

The deadline for the two executives to submit the requested documents is Dec. 20. The letter also asks that further records and materials on this topic must be preserved.

Related Coverage

Texas Issues Subpoena to BlackRock for Pushing ESG Agenda

Divestment

Recently, some states have decided to divest funds from BlackRock over its ESG investment policies.

For example, in October, Louisiana state Treasurer John M. Schroder announced that the Pelican State will divest $794 million out of BlackRock’s funds by the end of the year over the asset management’s push to embrace ESG investment strategies.

“This divestment is necessary to protect Louisiana from mandates BlackRock has called for that would cripple our critical energy sector,” Schroder said, according to a statement (pdf). “ESG investing violates Louisiana law on the fiduciary duties which require a sole focus on financial returns for the beneficiaries of state funds.”

On Dec. 1, Florida Chief Financial Officer Jimmy Patronis announced that the state will begin divesting $2 billion worth of assets managed by BlackRock over the firm’s ESG policies.

“Florida’s Treasury Division is divesting from BlackRock because they have openly stated they’ve got other goals than producing returns,” Patronis said according to a statement. “I think it’s undemocratic of major asset managers to use their power to influence societal outcomes.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

House Democrat signals he’s ‘open’ to investigation

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he plans to issue subpoenas to 51 former U.S. intelligence officials who downplayed the New York Post’s report on Hunter Biden’s laptop in the fall of 2020 as a likely Russian disinformation scheme.

“Those 51 intel agents that signed a letter that said the Hunter Biden information was all wrong—was Russia collusion—many of them have a security clearance,” McCarthy, who was elected as House GOP leader after Republicans recaptured a majority in the chamber in last month’s elections, told Fox News on Dec. 10.

A handful of former officials, including former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper and former CIA Director John Brennan, publicly backed an assessment (pdf) that the NY Post’s report on the younger Biden’s laptop was disinformation. It came as Twitter’s management blocked sharing of the story, including via direct messages, in October 2020—just weeks before the general election.

A letter, issued in October 2020, alleged that “Russians, according to media reports and cybersecurity experts, targeted Burisma late last year for cyber collection and gained access to its emails.” However, it was later revealed that the younger Biden had left his laptop at a Delaware computer repair shop, which was the source of emails, messages, and lewd photos that were published online.

“Why did they sign it?” McCarthy said in the Dec. 10 interview. “Why did they lie to the American public? … Why did you use the reputation that America was able to give to you? More information, but use it for a political purpose and lie to the American public?”

None of the former intelligence officials who signed the letter have recanted their statement that the laptop was part of a Russian disinformation plot designed to sway the election. A number of legacy news outlets who previously echoed those claims, including The New York Times and The Washington Post, later conceded that the laptop was authentic.

Twitter CEO Elon Musk and journalist Matt Taibbi released messages and emails from previous Twitter employees who worked to block the NY Post’s report. One former Twitter executive, James Baker—himself a former FBI lawyer—wrote in late 2020 to other staff that “we need more facts to assess whether the materials were hacked” but wanted to keep it censored regardless.

Also on Dec. 10, McCarthy indicated that he plans to investigate whether Facebook and Google worked to suppress reports about the 2020 election. The GOP leader said that those firms became an arm of the federal government so they shouldn’t have protections afforded under Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

McCarthy’s remarks to Fox News come as Republicans are slated to retake the House majority in 2023. The House will meet on Jan. 3 to choose its next speaker from the entire floor.

At least five Republican lawmakers have publicly said they won’t back McCarthy’s bid for speaker. Those detractors have said that they have about two-dozen other members who will join them.

Other top Republicans, including Reps. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and James Comer (R-Ky.), have said they’ll investigate Hunter Biden’s business dealings following the GOP’s victory in the House. Days after the midterms, Comer said that the House Oversight panel will look into Hunter Biden transactions that were flagged by banks and will see if they can be linked to his father, President Joe Biden.

‘Open’

Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) told Fox News, in response to McCarthy’s statement, that he’s willing to support congressional hearings into Twitter’s actions ahead of the 2020 election.

“I have said I am open to hearings in Congress on this. There are two competing values. On the one hand, we don’t want censorship. We don’t want to have people censored or boxed out, or shadow-banned and removed from Twitter because of their viewpoint,” he said.

“On the other hand, we do want respect, and we don’t want accounts that are filled with anti-Semitism or just spewing racism or hate … And I think Congress should have an honest, thoughtful conversation about how we uphold both of those values.”

On Offense?

But some pro-Democrat groups signaled this weekend that amid the bevy of promised investigations into Hunter and Joe Biden, they’ll fight back. It comes as the president has said that he’ll make a decision on whether to run for the White House after the holiday season is over.

“They feel that there is a whole counternarrative missing because of the whole Hunter-hater narrative out there,” liberal activist David Brock, the former head of Media Matters, told The Washington Post after attending a meeting on how to discuss defending the younger Biden.

Brock told The Washington Post he’s planning a new group, Facts First USA, in response to the House Republican investigations into Hunter Biden himself, although he didn’t make reference to Twitter’s suppression of the NY Post’s story.

“What we really got into was more the meat of it, the meat of what a response would look like,” he told the Washington Post.

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre weighed in on the Twitter controversy when questioned about it during a news briefing. Jean-Pierre said that the White House “was not involved” in Twitter’s decision in late 2020.

“It’s up to private companies to make these decisions,” she said in response to Baker’s departure at Twitter. In another comment, Jean-Pierre said it is “not healthy” for Musk to be releasing the firm’s internal communications.

Correction: Rep. Khanna’s party affiliation has been corrected. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

REVIEW: ‘The Culture Transplant’ by Garett Jones

Imagine that you are a U.S. immigration officer, handing out green cards to the would-be Americans of the world. You have before you two applicants who look almost completely the same; for some arcane, unspecified bureaucratic reason, you can only approve one of them. They’re both well-educated by American standards, both bringing identical families, both passed their background checks.

The major difference is their nation of origin. One is from a nation with a strong tradition of rule of law, free markets, and democratic pluralism. The other is from a country where kleptocracy, autocracy, and socialism are standard. The difference, in other words, is the character of the society that your two would-be immigrants come from. The question is: Should this difference matter?

The basic argument of The Culture Transplant, the new book from George Mason University professor Garett Jones, is that at least in the aggregate, the answer to this question is “yes.” The marginal immigrant, to be sure, may not matter. But Jones shows, through an engaging and digestible tour of the academic literature, that people bring their national character with them when they migrate; that those values persist for up to several generations; and that some values really are better for societal flourishing than others, so the values immigrants bring matters a great deal.

To reach this conclusion, Jones relies on a fairly diverse set of evidence. Much of the basis for his argument, though, is drawn from the so-called deep-roots literature. That research, in essence, looks at what today’s countries were like 500 to 2,500 years ago, in terms of level of governance, agricultural development, and technological development. It observes that what a country was like hundreds of years ago is a strong predictor of how developed it is today. More to Jones’s point, it observes that what a country’s people were like hundreds of years ago predicts what they are like today.

The point here is that, for whatever reason, certain fundamental facts about a civilization—i.e., its level of development—are both highly relevant to its performance on the centuries timespan and transplantable from one place to another. One plausible explanation is that whatever determines this outcome inheres in the people from those civilizations, who carry it with them and “transplant” it wherever they migrate.

Indeed, Jones reviews extensive research that shows immigrants often look more like their ancestors than the countries they arrive to, even several generations after arrival. If your ancestors believed in things conducive to development—social trust, cooperation, fairness, etc.—then you probably do too. And those beliefs matter for how the country you now live in does.

What are the concrete implications of this view? Jones offers two. One is that the countries with the highest rates of innovation—China, France, Germany, Japan, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States—should be extremely cautious about changing the population composition through migration. These countries produce the overwhelming majority of the world’s progress, and if progress is a function of your country’s composition, then we should care a lot about keeping their current mix, because otherwise all of humanity loses out.

The other implication Jones offers is that most developing nations should be open to migration from these countries, specifically from China. He notes that most of the nations dominated by migrants from China—Taiwan, Hong Kong, and Singapore, for example—do quite well by most measures of thriving. The norms of Chinese civilization, interrupted though they were by Mao’s terror, are he thinks still a good way to get ahead. So the millions of Chinese migrants to Africa are probably a boon.

This last argument I find less persuasive—it seems likely that Chinese migrants to African nations represent a deliberate expansion of the Chinese sphere of influence, a neocolonial project with dire global security implications. But bracketing such concerns, the basic value of The Culture Transplant is that it gives a firm research foundation to an obvious, but infrequently acknowledged fact: different migrants are different.

George Borjas, the Harvard economist who is probably the nation’s leading academic proponent of immigration restrictionism, entitled his 2016 book on immigration economics We Wanted Workers, itself an allusion to a line from the Swiss playwright Max Frisch: “we wanted workers, but we got people instead.” Borjas’s point is, in part, that much of contemporary immigration policy is structured around considering the labor market implications of additional arrivals, without considering them as whole persons. More generally, it might be fair to say that the U.S. immigration system allocates the right to immigrate on the basis of skill, family connections, humanitarian concern, or underrepresentation of national background. We want workers, or family members, or refugees. But we get people instead.

Those people, moreover, carry with them notions—about fairness, justice, trust, good and bad governance—that, Jones shows, are durable. They shape the culture that they come to. And so it is perfectly reasonable, from the perspective of someone who thinks, as most Americans do, that America should select those immigrants who serve its national interest, to also believe that the values immigrants bring with them matter and should be considered.

It is hard, of course, to do that under the status quo—nobody gets a visa because he loves America. But if Jones is right, it matters that green cards go to those who do love America, and so it would be good to spend more time discerning how to measure that correctly.

The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move To a Lot Like the Ones They Left
by Garett Jones
Stanford Business Books, 228 pp., $25

Charles Fain Lehman is a fellow at the Manhattan Institute and a contributing editor to City Journal.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Three Christian students and a faculty member have settled a lawsuit against the University of Idaho that acted to limit their freedom of religious speech.

The lawsuit, filed by the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) attorneys in April, blamed university officials for targeting the students’ First Amendment rights by punishing them for their religious speech. The university had issued no-contact orders on students—Peter Perlot, Mark Miller, and Ryan Alexander, who are members of the university’s Christian Legal Society (CLS) chapter—as well as CLS faculty advisor Professor Richard Seamon.

In the settlement, the university rescinded the no-contact orders and agreed to pay $90,000. Following the settlement, CLS attorney Laura Nammo criticized university officials for censoring differing viewpoints as it “needlessly exacerbates polarization and harms all students’ ability to learn from one another,” according to ADF Media.

“Today’s university students will be tomorrow’s leaders, judges, and school administrators, so it’s imperative that university officials model the First Amendment freedoms they are supposed to be teaching their students,” said ADF Senior Counsel Tyson Langhofer, director of the ADF Center for Academic Freedom.

The conflict which triggered the lawsuit occurred during spring. The University’s College of Law held a public event on the campus in Moscow, Idaho, to condemn an anti-LGBTQ slur that was found on a whiteboard at the Boise campus.

The event was attended by members of the CLS who also prayed publicly. The members follow a code that classified non-heterosexual marriage as immoral. One university student, referred to as Ms. Doe in court documents, questioned the presence of CLS at the event, pointing to the group’s stance on LGBTQ.

Conflict, No-Contact Order

The attorneys representing CLS students claim that they had responded respectfully, presenting their beliefs as per their Biblical interpretation.

But lawyers representing the university claimed that a CLS member would keep on insisting LGBTQ students will go to the “gallows of hell” if they fail to “repent for their sins,” according to AP. Seamon is accused of having reinforced such statements. This caused Ms. Doe to be in tears, the university says.

Ms. Doe is then said to have received a note from another CLS member on her desk, asking for a discussion on the matter so that both sides can understand each other’s views.

She later complained to officials that the contact made her feel harassed and uncomfortable, asking that no-contact orders against everyone, including herself, be issued so that she can feel safe.

No Opportunity to Defend

At a panel with the American Bar Association, several people publicly denounced CLS’ religious beliefs. One of the CLS students who attended the meeting claimed that it was his organization and its beliefs that faced the greatest amount of discrimination.

When no-contact orders were issued against CLS students, they were given no opportunity to defend themselves or review the allegations leveled against them.

CLS members eventually sued the University. In July, a federal judge asked the university to rescind the orders, pointing out that Ms. Doe has not alleged any sexual harassment.

The judge also noted that CLS students would likely succeed in arguing that the university was suppressing their First Amendment rights.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The latest episode of the Elon Musk-endorsed “Twitter Files,” internal communications about the social media giant’s “free speech suppression” on the platform, reveals a soft-on-Biden tough-on-Trump bias in content enforcement, raising questions about how heavily the social media platform put its finger on the scales in the 2020 election.

The latest set of internal Twitter communications, titled “The Removal of Donald Trump,” dives into the actions of Twitter executives during the period from October 2020 to Jan. 8, 2021, when Trump was banned from the platform.

Internal Slack chats at Twitter, shared and commented on by investigative journalist Matt Taibbi in a lengthy thread published on Dec. 9, show that engagement between Twitter executives and federal law enforcement and intelligence agencies soared during this period.

The chats are also chock full of obscure terms and censorious jargon (which Taibbi dubbed “Orwellian unwords”) used by Twitter’s enforcers as they worked to tag, shadow ban, and otherwise suppress content that was sympathetic to then-President Donald Trump’s reelection campaign while giving content aligned with then-candidate Joe Biden’s election efforts a free pass.

The Twitter enforcement team also cracked down on some prominent conservatives weighing in on elections, like former Republican Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and actor James Woods.

When Huckabee posted a joke about mail-in ballots that sparked a debate among Twitter enforcers, Twitter’s former Head of Trust and Safety Yoel Roth said in a Slack channel that he agrees “it’s a joke” but added that Huckabee is “also literally admitting in a tweet to a crime.”

In another exchange, when Twitter staffers didn’t have a “firm policy basis” for censoring a pro-Trump tweet from Woods, a vocally conservative Hollywood actor, they vowed to “hit him hard on future vio with firmer basis.”

“Vio” would be one of Taibbi’s “Orwellian unwords” for “violation.”

Tough on Trump

The messages that comprise episode three of the Twitter Files show how Twitter’s content moderation team came up with various excuses for escalating censorious acts targeting pro-Trump posts.

“In the docs, execs often expand criteria to subjective issues like intent (yes, a video is authentic, but why was it shown?), orientation (was a banned tweet shown to condemn, or support?), or reception (did a joke cause “confusion”?). This reflex will become key in J6,” Taibbi wrote in one of his comments.

One screengrab of Slack messages between Twitter staffers considers action on a tweet by Trump sharing a news report about a postal screw-up where nearly 50,000 voters received incorrect ballots in Ohio, with the news outlet captioning its story with the question whether voters “feel safe mailing in your ballot.”

Trump commented: “No. A Rigged Election!”

A Twitter staffer flagged Trump’s tweet as a “candidate” for getting tagged with the label “Learn how voting by mail is safe and secure.”

Another Twitter moderator questioned whether this would be appropriate as what Trump wrote was “commentary” and “his opinion related to these real events” and so not a violation that justifies a label.

“Yeah… those are factually accurate…” Roth admitted while weighing in on the discussion.

In another set of messages, senior Twitter executives targeted a tweet by Trump that said: “Big problems and discrepancies with Mail In Ballots all over the USA. Must have final total on November 3rd.”

Trump’s tweet was hit with three enforcement actions—a “stay informed” label that invited users to see “how voting by mail is safe and secure,” a tag that said “some or all of the content shared in this Tweet is disputed and might be misleading,” and preventing the tweet from being replied to, shared, or liked.

One of the executives then expressed satisfaction that Trump’s tweet was censored quickly.

“Very well done on speed folks, what this is all designed for,” the executive wrote.

The messages also show that Twitter created a new tool to censor Trump after the election when he was vocal with his claims of election fraud. Internally, executives referred to the tool as “L3 deamplication.”

The new tool was announced on Dec. 10, 2020, when “Trump was in the middle of firing off 25 tweets saying things like, ‘A coup is taking place in front of our eyes,’” Taibbi wrote.

The Twitter enforcement team’s messages showed they sometimes adjusted their moderation actions when the targeted tweets were critical of the censorship itself.

In one instance, Rep. Jody Hice (R-Ga.) posted a tweet sharing a message that had been blocked when shared by another account—”Mailed ballots are more prone to fraud than in-person voting. That shouldn’t be controversial. It’s just common sense.”

Sharing that message, Hice said that Twitter “doesn’t want you to see this tweet” and added, “Say NO to Big Tech censorship.”

One of the Twitter staffers considering action on Hice’s post acknowledges that his message about there being more fraud with mail-in ballots than with in-person ballots “is much more of a legitimate statement even if scale is minuscule” and suggests applying a “soft intervention.”

Roth replies, “Agree” before cautioning that going “too far down the rabbit hole of labeling critical speech (i.e. critical of our handling of this case) is dangerous.”

“It becomes a self-reinforcing ‘wah wah censorship’ cycle,” Roth added.

Soft on Biden

By contrast, there were multiple instances in which pro-Biden tweets warning that Trump “may try to steal the election” were flagged for possible action, only for Twitter executives to give them the green light.

In one such case, a user shared a news report about Supreme Court Justice John Roberts swearing in newly-appointed Justice Amy Coney Barrett, claiming in the comment that “they’re going to try to steal the election” and urging people “if you haven’t voted yet – don’t mail. drop it off or vote early.”

A Twitter staffer asked the team to weigh in, calling it an “edge case” with commentary encouraging voters not to vote by mail and that “I believe we should label it.”

An executive dismissed the recommendation, saying the tweet is “still encouraging people to vote, but expresses the concern that mailed ballots might not make it in time,” which “seems fair.”

In another case, a tweet claiming Trump and Barrett would steal the election was flagged for possible labeling. A Twitter executive decided not to, saying the employee’s concern was “understandable” but the tweet seemed to be in reference to a Supreme Court decision on processing mail-in ballots that arrive after Election Day.

Roth also ordered a label to be overturned that had been applied to a tweet from former Attorney General Eric Holder, who claimed that the U.S. Postal Service had been “deliberately crippled.”

“Everything in it is factually accurate,” Roth wrote, with a Twitter staffer then announcing the label had been removed.

Also, screengrabs of internal messages revealed that after Twitter executives banned Trump from the platform, they discussed banning future presidents, with one executive noting that then-incoming President Joe Biden’s administration “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”

‘Federal Election Commission Violations’?

Commenting on the latest Twitter Files revelations, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told The Epoch Times in an interview that the platform’s behind-scenes operation to suppress certain viewpoints is “pretty horrifying” and shows Twitter was part of the effort to interfere in the 2020 presidential election.

“If you take the president of the United States off of Twitter, what did that cost? If you are Google, and in the last four days of every month, you refuse to deliver Republican fundraising emails, what does that cost?” Gingrich said, referring to Trump’s Twitter ban and allegations that Google had filtered millions of the Republican National Committee’s political campaign emails to spam folders at the end of each month.

“These things should be considered federal election commission violations, because they are actions by a corporation to reshape the election,” Gingrich argued.

“It’s a pretty amazing story of censorship in a country which is dedicated to the First Amendment right of free speech,” he said.

Gingrich believes that major social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter have become so integrated with people’s lives that they should be considered public utilities, and regulated as such.

The Epoch Times has reached out to Twitter for comment.

Caden Pearson and Eva Fu contributed to this report

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

China likely has more nuclear warheads equipped to its long-range missiles than the United States, as indicated by the disclosure of a classified briefing made to Congress by the Pentagon’s top nuclear commander.

Adm. Charles Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, notified Congress that China’s military had surpassed the United States in at least one of three areas regarding nuclear weapons deployment, according to a letter shared on Twitter by Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.).

Richard delivered a notification to Congress as required by Section 1648 of Public Law 117-81 (pdf), according to the letter, which was also signed by Sen. Deb Fischer (R-Neb.), and Reps. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.) and Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.).

That law requires U.S. Strategic Command to inform Congress if and when China surpasses the United States in the number of its active intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), the number of its ICBM launchers, or the number of nuclear warheads equipped to its ICBMs.

“I’ve said it many times—we’ve only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to China’s growing military might,” Inhofe said in a tweet accompanying the letter.

“The admin must be open and honest with the American people about the threat Beijing poses to global order and our way of life.”

The Mystery of China’s Warheads

Though Richard’s classified notification to Congress could mean that the Chinese communist regime has numerically surpassed the United States in any of the three aforementioned areas, recent reports make two of these scenarios unlikely.

The Pentagon’s recently released China Military Power Report stated that the regime’s arsenal included approximately 300 ICBMs and launchers. It also estimated that China had surpassed 400 operational nuclear warheads.

The United States, meanwhile, can deploy up to 1,550 nuclear warheads under the terms of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty but only maintains 400 Minuteman III ICBMs, each of which can carry just one nuclear warhead.

Thus, given the unlikeliness that China created 100 new ICBMs or launchers within the month since the Pentagon published its report, Richard’s notification likely means that the regime has equipped its ICBMs with additional nuclear warheads, surpassing the 400 warheads the United States’ ICBMs are equipped with.

This is possible because many of China’s ICBMs utilize multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles (MIRVs), meaning each missile is equipped with multiple nuclear warheads, all of which can strike different targets.

In contrast to the United States’ Minuteman missiles, most of China’s ICBMs are capable of equipping three to five MIRVs, according to the Pentagon’s report, and the regime is building hundreds more silos capable of storing its newest DF-41 missile.

Some analysts believe that each DF-41 missile could be equipped with as many as 10 nuclear warheads. However, the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has published studies suggesting that the missiles likely carry three nuclear warheads with several additional munitions designed to help penetrate enemy defenses.

Relatedly, a 2021 report (pdf) by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission (USCC) found that the rapid expansion of the regime’s MIRVs had increased the number of nuclear warheads capable of striking the U.S. homeland.

“Due to increases in China’s arsenal of ICBM missiles, launchers assigned to its ICBM brigades, and MIRV technology, the number of warheads that can be mounted on ICBMs threatening the United States is expanding,” the report said.

There has not yet been a clarification on the reasoning for Richard’s notification. Such may be published in the near future, however, as Inhofe and his colleagues said in their letter that Richard’s notification failed to meet the requirements of Section 1648, which states that the notification must include an unclassified paragraph detailing the reason for the notification.

“While we appreciate your timely submission of the classified Section 1648 notification, the statute explicitly requires an unclassified determination, which was not provided,” the letter said.

“We therefore do not consider the requirement under PL 117-81 to be satisfied and encourage both you and your successor to work with relevant departments and agencies to fulfill the requirement.”

Likewise, Fischer said that the release of an unclassified summary was necessary to ensure that Americans fully understood the threat posed by China’s communist regime.

“The American people have a right to know about the severity of the threats we face—including China’s dramatic nuclear buildup. Sharing declassified information will help the public better understand the importance of investing in our national defense,” the senator said in an email.

The Growing Nuclear Threat

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state, has invested heavily in expanding and modernizing its nuclear arsenal in recent years. The Pentagon estimates that the CCP will have at least 1,000 nuclear weapons by 2030 and 1,500 by 2035.

CCP leadership has refused to engage in talks about its nuclear expansion with the United States, and lawmakers have warned that the regime is uninterested in nonproliferation.

It remains difficult for Western analysts to gauge the size and quality of the regime’s nuclear arsenal due to a combination of the CCP’s secretive practices and its strategic doctrines. For example, the regime co-locates its nuclear missiles with its conventional missiles, storing them together in the same silo fields. This means that analysts can never be sure if a silo contains a nuclear or conventional missile at any given time.

According to the USCC’s 2021 report, the CCP is also doubling the number of its ICBM launchers in some units, and it is believed that as many as half of the regime’s 40 missile brigades are nuclear-capable.

Experts have suggested that the CCP’s growing nuclear arsenal and warming ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia have created an unprecedented threat to U.S. national security, as the nation must now attempt to deter two near-peer nuclear adversaries simultaneously.

A spokesperson for U.S. Strategic Command said in an email that an unclassified message had now been sent to Inhofe and the other lawmakers.

“We are currently working with the intelligence community to determine what, if any, of the classified memo can be unclassified and provided,” the spokesperson said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The FBI not only has possession of a laptop computer owned by Democratic National Committee (DNC) staffer Seth Rich—who was murdered in 2016 by unknown assailants—but a report detailing forensic imaging of what’s being described as Rich’s work computer, the bureau revealed in a new filing.

The FBI’s records office located the report while searching for the work computer, Michael Seidel, chief of the office, said in a sworn declaration filed with a federal court in Texas on Dec. 9.

He described the document as “a three (3) page forensic report detailing the actions performed by an outside entity to image the work laptop.”

The report was among four documents that never had been disclosed by the FBI in relation to Rich’s case.

Journalist Sy Hersh said a source told him around 2017 about an FBI report on Rich. According to the source, Rich’s computer showed the DNC staffer had relayed DNC documents to WikiLeaks, a pro-transparency group. Hersh spoke about the source’s claims during a phone call with Ed Butowsky, an investor who later retracted claims about Rich’s brother Aaron being a WikiLeaks source, and discussed the call during a deposition.

Rich, the DNC’s voter expansion data director, was shot in the early morning of July 10, 2016, near his home in Washington. Rich’s murder remains unsolved. Authorities have claimed that the killing was a robbery gone wrong. Julian Assange, the head of WikiLeaks, has suggested that Rich passed DNC files to the group, which released the DNC files in 2016. U.S. authorities have alleged that Russians hacked into the DNC systems, but those allegations were made before the FBI received images from the DNC’s server to determine their validity.

The Metropolitan Police Department is the lead investigating agency into the death. It has declined to say whether the FBI was helping with the probe into Rich’s death.

New Records

The new records were found after the records office contacted an unnamed FBI special agent during its search for Rich’s work computer, according to Seidel.

The other records include a letter from a third party that accompanied the work computer and two FBI chain of custody forms.

None of the records were indexed to Rich inside of the bureau’s central records system, and neither the forensic report nor the custody forms mention Rich’s name, according to the FBI. They also weren’t included in an electronic file created for Rich’s case.

The agent claimed that disclosure of the records would harm an FBI investigation into the allegations that Russians had hacked into U.S. systems.

The FBI now wants the court to agree to keep the new records shielded from Brian Huddleston, a Texas resident who filed a lawsuit against the bureau for ignoring a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for records on Rich.

Bureau officials initially claimed in sworn statements that the FBI had searched for records on Rich but didn’t locate any.

In 2020, for the first time, the FBI admitted it had files from a computer belonging to Rich. Some of those files were then released to Huddleston and made public, including documents that appear to suggest that someone could have paid for his death.

The FBI has said it has images from a second computer owned by Rich, which the bureau described as Rich’s personal laptop. A federal judge in September ordered the bureau to hand the images over to Huddleston, finding that the bureau improperly withheld them.

FBI Argues Computer ‘Not an Actual Record’

The FBI has repeatedly obtained delays to the production order and still hasn’t produced the images of Rich’s personal laptop and the work laptop, which it says is being held in an FBI evidence room.

The bureau hadn’t explained whether it ever took possession of Rich’s personal laptop. A Department of Justice lawyer said at one point that the bureau was “working on getting the files from Seth Rich’s personal laptop into a format to be reviewed.” Seidel said in the new declaration that the FBI “does not have, nor has it ever had, physical possession of the actual personal laptop.”

The work laptop was conveyed to the FBI from a nongovernmental third party, according to the FBI.

Under FOIA, Seidel asserted that the computer “is not an actual record” but is “physical object/evidence” that isn’t subject to the law.

The law states that every U.S. agency shall make available “agency records.” But factors used to determine whether a record meets the definition show that the computer doesn’t, Seidel said. One factor is the extent to which personnel at the agency have read or relied upon the document, and the FBI has “found no indication” that the FBI relied on the content of the work computer, he added.

Lawyers have said that U.S. District Judge Amos Mazzant, the Obama appointee who’s overseeing the case, should order that the computer and its associated records, including the newly discovered forensic report, be shielded from Huddleston.

Ty Clevenger, the lawyer representing Huddleston, told The Epoch Times that he didn’t see a distinction between the physical work computer and the images from both computers. He said he’d urge the judge to order the release of information from both computers.

Correction: A previous version of this article inaccurately stated which claims Butowsky retracted. He retracted claims that Aaron Rich was involved in the alleged transfer of DNC documents to WikiLeaks. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Internal Twitter documents released by journalists Michael Shellenberger and Leighton Woodhouse on Dec. 10 show how executives of the social media platform deviated from a longstanding company policy to permanently ban former President Donald Trump.

Yoel Roth, Twitter’s then-head of trust and safety, told a sales executive in a message on Jan. 7, 2021—one day before Trump’s Twitter account was permanently banned—that the company was “changing our public interest approach” for Trump’s account “in this specific case.”

Roth was referring to Twitter’s longstanding “public-interest exceptions” policy, which allows elected officials to post content even if some content violates Twitter rules.

Roth’s message came after the sales executive told him: “Jack says: ‘We will permanently suspend [Trump] if our policies are violated after a 12 hour account lock.’ … What policies is Jack talking about?”

The sales executive was presumably referring to then-Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

Roth responded, “*ANY* policy violation.”

In an outline of its public-interest exceptions policy, Twitter stated that it “generally actions Tweets that violate our rules.”

“However, we recognize that sometimes it may be in the public interest to allow people to view Tweets that would otherwise be taken down,” Twitter’s website states. “We consider content to be in the public interest if it directly contributes to understanding or discussion of a matter of public concern.”

According to messages shared by Shellenberger and Woodhouse, later that day, a Twitter engineer asked Roth whether there had been “discussion about reshaping the rules around ‘official accounts,’” citing @realDonaldTrump as an example.

“I feel a lot of debates around exceptions stem from the fact that Trump’s account is not technically different from anybody else’s and yet treated differently due to his personal status, without corresponding Twitter rules to clarify the responsibilities that should come with that status,” the engineer said.

Roth concurred.

“I think you’re spot on,” he said. “To put a different spin on it: Policy is one part of the system of how Twitter works. There are different things you can change when you want to [affect] different behaviors. Policy and enforcement are one; the product is another. … All of that is situated in a bigger system i.e. the world. … When you change one part of the system, you necessarily have to adapt the rest. And I think we ran into the world changing faster than we were able to either adapt the product or the policy. We can and should do both.”

Shellenberger commented that Roth’s response “hints at how Twitter would justify deviating from its longstanding policy.”

Twitter on Jan. 8, 2021, announced a permanent ban on Trump, citing “risk of further incitement of violence.”

Shortly following Trump’s ban, The Epoch Times reached out to Twitter asking whether it had any evidence that Trump’s statements were directly linked to any violence. Twitter didn’t respond.

On Jan. 6, 2021, the social media platform removed a tweet in which Trump shared a video asking those who were at the U.S. Capitol to leave in peace.

“You have to go home now. We have to have peace. We have to have law and order, we have to respect our great people in law and order,” Trump said in the deleted video.

Read More

Facebook, Twitter Lock Trump Out of His Account for the First Time

The permanent ban of Trump conflicted with Twitter’s language outlining its own policies for regulating content from world leaders, Shellenberger said.

He pointed out that Twitter, on Jan. 8, 2021, stated that Trump’s ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted,” but that back in 2019, the social media giant stated that it doesn’t “attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

Shellenberger said Twitter’s internal communications show that its leadership had decided to “create justifications to ban Trump,” pursue a change of policy “for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders,” and that they expressed “no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban.”

Concern From Junior Employee

At least one junior-level employee at Twitter expressed concern over singling Trump out for a permanent ban. Shellenberger said the internal communications were “tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as ‘site-integrity-auto.’”

“This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho [in my honest opinion] a slippery slope and reflect an alternatively unequal dictatorial problem,” the employee said.

“This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world—which seems unsustainable.”

On Jan. 7, 2021, the White House and Trump separately condemned the violence that took place at and around the Capitol building on Jan. 6, 2021.

“Like all Americans, I am outraged by the violence, lawlessness, and mayhem. I immediately deployed the National Guard and federal law enforcement to secure the building and expel the intruders,” Trump said in a video posted to Twitter before his account was permanently suspended. “America is and must always be a nation of law and order. The demonstrators who infiltrated the Capitol have defiled the seat of American democracy.

“To those who engaged in acts of violence and destruction, you do not represent our country. And to those who broke the law, you will pay.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

It’s been a long time since something I was reading kept me up all night in the way that the mysteries of Raymond Chandler and Arthur Conan Doyle did in my youth. And never—you can be sure—was it a legal deposition.

But last night, I was riveted by every word in the deposition that Dr. Anthony Fauci gave in a lawsuit—initiated by the attorneys general of Missouri and Louisiana—that alleges that our government acted in collusion with Big Tech to censor and even massively discredit its critics, including many eminent doctors, regarding COVID-19.

I was riveted even though Fauci, despite being of an obviously high IQ, suddenly was having memory loss almost as extreme as our president, repeating some version of “I don’t recall” as his answer to questions so often that it may have gone over a thousand times in the 446-page document.

While you could call it a masterpiece of James Comey-style prevarication, it became so obvious that you could predict almost every variation on this theme before the longtime (1984) director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the president’s chief medical adviser even said it.

Either he “didn’t recall” having discussed any of the hot-button issues of the COVID-19 pandemic (lockdowns, masks, hydroxychloroquine, and so forth) with his associates, despite appearing on many emails between them on those very subjects, or he denied knowledge because it was “not in his lane.”

The latter excuse is risible since he was in charge of everything and appeared before us on television and nearly everywhere else constantly opining on all things COVID for two straight years. Indeed, he hasn’t stopped.

But the risible turned to the ludicrous—and Fauci shot himself in the foot, despite his obvious laborious preparation for the deposition—when it came down to the heart of the matter.

By that, I mean his relationship with Dr. Peter Daszak of the propagandistically named EcoHealth Alliance through whom Fauci is alleged to have helped fund what’s known as gain-of-function research at China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.

The importance of this question is well known, as is Fauci and his colleague’s determination to point away from the increasingly accepted lab leak theory of the origin of the pandemic to a zoonotic (animal-based, as in bats) cause.

Attaching Fauci to even part of the instigation of the lab leak theory would, of course, make him culpable in what has arguably been the greatest worldwide disaster in the recent history of the human race.

It wouldn’t merely be guilt by association. It would be guilt by covert, arguably illegal, financing.

(My reference to Li-Meng Yan in the title of this piece takes this to yet another level. More in a moment.)

At first, Fauci did his best under questioning to paint his relationship with Daszak as vague and remote at best, with no personal contact he could remember, maybe one or two emails.

But then he was confronted by an exhibit demonstrating that he had personally appeared alongside Daszak to discuss the pandemic on a podcast hosted by none other than former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich.

Incredible as it sounds, again Fauci claimed he couldn’t recall. Not only was this ludicrous. It was outrageous. The only way a man of Fauci’s intelligence couldn’t recall such an event that had occurred so recently is that he would have had to have had a lobotomy since.

Even in the transcript, you could sense this man’s entire house of cards disintegrating before his eyes. He was panicked.

Where this will go I know not, but in the midst of my concentration on his testimony, my wife entered my home office wondering if I had watched Tucker Carlson, as I usually do.

She told me that Carlson had an extraordinary interview with a Chinese woman named Li-Meng Yan that I had to watch.

Yan was a virologist at a lab at the University of Hong Kong School of Public Health, which provides coronavirus research for the World Health Organization. Her work involved the study of the influenza virus and vaccinations, and later on the SARS-CoV-2 virus. In 2020, she fled Hong Kong an sought asylum in the United States.

She purports to have inside knowledge of what may have gone on at the lab in Wuhan. Thanks to Roku, I was able to replay her interview a short time later.

The nub of what she was saying was that the cause of the COVID-19 leak had been changed to an “incident” from an “accident”—by whom, it was unclear; although Li’s English is good, she has a thick Chinese accent.

Nevertheless, what I understood her to say, in essence, was that the virus had been deliberately designed at the Wuhan lab, even before any of us had heard anything about COVID-19 in any of its forms, lab or zoonotic.

This was done, she asserted, by an element of the People’s Liberation Army under orders of a general who has just been promoted.

It was also unclear how she knew this. I have heard similar rumors before but never heard them told with this assurance on what has been the most popular cable news show for some time.

But if true, or even partly true, it’s an astounding revelation of global proportions—evil at its purest.

It also means that Fauci’s involvement, again at whatever level, is even more nefarious than we thought. What did he know and when did he know it?

I’d sure like to find out. I imagine you would, too. And not just about Fauci’s role. What about that of the Chinese Communist Party, which seems intent on locking down their entire country, only to allow their citizens to be incinerated in fenced-in buildings?

Where, how, and why did this all begin? Not just Americans, but the citizens of the world deserve to know finally.

The Republicans are intending to open various investigations in the House in January 2023. What really happened at the Wuhan lab should be at the top of their agenda—that is, if they care about something as important as the future of the human race.

A previous version of this op-ed incorrectly stated the name of the Chinese virologist. The Epoch Times regrets the error. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

‘I was cured by God … The healing was a miraculous healing.’ 

A mother diagnosed with cancer within weeks of finding out she was pregnant with her fourth child made a swift, steadfast decision: the baby’s life would come first, no matter what. Two years on, her story of faith, conviction, and survival speaks for itself.

Devout Catholic Jessica Hanna and her husband, Lamar Hanna, both 39, are pharmacists living in Detroit, Michigan. Jessica, of Lebanese heritage, and Lamar, who is Iraqi-Caribbean, were both born and raised in Ontario, Canada, and met studying pharmacy at Detroit’s Wayne State University. They always wanted a big family and are proud parents of four children under the age of 7: Christopher, Mary, Joseph, and Thomas.

“I have very traditional views,” Jessica told The Epoch Times. “You find that the happiest people were in a very traditional community. People mock these parents that have ten kids and say, ‘Oh, you’re crazy,’ or ‘Your life will be difficult,’ but these are the happiest people I know.”

Jessica gave birth to her third child in 2019. She hoped for a fourth child and became pregnant the following year. Then came her devastating cancer diagnosis, but abortion was never on her mind.

“There are no exceptions, life begins at conception,” she said. “You don’t solve one trauma by adding on a second trauma. Abortion is another trauma, it is not healing.”

‘We Are Not Terminating’

In Dec. 2020, Jessica, who was pregnant at the time, got a benign dimple in her breast retested. It was confirmed cancerous; she had invasive lobular carcinoma at 14 weeks pregnant. She braced herself for what her doctors would say.

“I’ve always been pro-life, and of course I have my faith, so I knew I was going to hear ‘abortion’ at some point,” she said. “I always said to myself, at every appointment, ‘I’m not going to give them the option to abort my child.’”

Living in Canada at the time, Jessica spoke remotely with an oncologist in the United States who told her the tumor was likely “very small,” just one centimeter in diameter, and would need nothing more than a simple surgery. Jessica’s baby would be fine.

Yet during her first appointment with a Canadian surgeon, Jessica experienced her “first exposure to disrespect for the baby” and realized she faced an uphill battle; the surgeon wanted to operate as quickly as possible to avoid the legal requirement to resuscitate Jessica’s baby, should she go into labor during the procedure at more than 24 weeks gestation.

Jessica recalled her surgeon’s words: “Isn’t it better to have a dead baby than a baby in the NICU with complications, while you’re undergoing cancer treatment?”

She was floored. “I did not go to her as my surgeon,” she said. “We don’t go in and deliberately murder the child to treat my cancer, we treat my cancer.”

Compelled by God to share her pregnancy cancer story online, Jessica started an Instagram page, Blessed By Cancer. A follower, also pregnant and battling cancer, reached out to recommend a Michigan-based surgeon; the doctor telephoned Jessica within days.

Jessica recalled: “She said to me, ‘Sometimes the type of cancer you have is a lot larger than it appears on imaging. I’d like to do a full mastectomy on you, not a lumpectomy, and I’ll get you in as soon as possible.’ I thought, okay, this one sounds like she’s respecting the life of the baby.”

Accompanied by her husband, Jessica made it across the border to the United States during COVID-related border closures, armed with Lamar’s Michigan property deeds and medical insurance papers. “I had to beg the border guard. It took about 10-15 minutes but he let us through,” she said.

Then visiting with another high-risk OBGYN the day before her surgery, Jessica was forced to field yet one more conversation about abortion.

“He walks in, doesn’t even look me in the eye, just sits down and says, ‘Before we say anything, just know you can terminate the child,’ without giving me any information,” Jessica said. “Little does he know, I’m a pharmacist. I already did my research … he starts stumbling on his words as if he’s nervous.

“It was terrible he did this when I was so close to surgery and rushing with emotions and things on my mind. I knew to remove him from my medical team right away.”

‘I Was Ready to Fall on the Sword for My Baby’

On Jan. 8, 2021, Jessica’s tumor was removed. Upon waking from surgery, she claims “things turned wrong.” She overheard nurses talk about removing all of the lymph nodes under her arm, and knew the cancer had spread.

The surgeon took Lamar into a private room to break difficult news: “You need to prepare yourself, because she is very likely stage four and terminal.”

Days later, pathology reports confirmed the worst. Jessica’s one-centimeter tumor was in fact 13 centimeters in diameter, and 43 out of 43 lymph nodes had tested positive for cancer.

Jessica was not told to abort her baby, but she was forewarned that if she didn’t terminate, doctors would not be able to perform the radiation scan needed to identify where the cancer had spread.

Jessica said: “They said, ‘If you don’t terminate, then we’re just going to do chemo, and pray, and hope for the best.’ But they told me chemo was not going to cure my cancer.

“My decision was, number one, we are not terminating our child … I never even had to think about it. Second was, okay, do I do the chemotherapy or do I fall on the sword for my baby? I was ready to fall on the sword for my baby. But thank God I had my doctorate degree in pharmacy.”

Jessica’s research had enlightened her to the fact that “certain chemotherapies” are safe during pregnancy. She chose treatment, reasoning, “Even if it comes out that I’m stage four and terminal, I know my baby’s going to be healthy, and people are going to see that you can do chemotherapy, have your baby, and not have to terminate.”

A Walking Miracle

Jessica gave birth to her fourth child, Thomas, on May 30, 2021, after four rounds of chemotherapy. With the large family of her dreams made manifest, Jessica breezed through her cancer treatment.

“I was so happy,” she recalled. “I’ve been quite well on chemotherapy, in fact so well that people were shocked to know I was on chemotherapy. I looked better than I’d ever looked in my life. I had energy, I felt great, I did not throw up once … I attribute it to my diet, to my faith, and possibly to the pregnancy.”

“I was cured by God. I was given a miracle and a gift from God.”Play Video

(Courtesy of Jessica Hanna)

Jessica was booked for 16 rounds of chemo, with the proviso that if doctors found cancer in her distant organs they would move to end-of-life care and targeted therapy. But all her post-natal scans, including a brain, spine, and chest MRI, came back clear.

“The doctors were dumbfounded,” Jessica said. “My oncologist said, ‘You’re extremely lucky,’ and called me a ‘walking miracle.’ My surgeon said, ‘I didn’t even expect you to be sitting in this chair.’”

Deemed “curable,” Jessica’s treatment plan changed to ten additional rounds of chemotherapy and 30 rounds of radiation. Today, she is one year in remission from cancer and prays daily to God to prevent the cancer’s return.

“How was I cured? By faith and faith alone,” Jessica said. “I was cured by God. I was cured by not murdering my child. I was given a miracle and a gift from God. The healing was a miraculous healing.

“I think anybody can do this because God, physiologically, He makes us so that our emotions are tied to our health. Had I murdered my baby and took him out, ripped him limb from limb from my womb before I treated my cancer, I would have been so depressed I don’t think I would have made it out of cancer.”

Trust in God

Championing her unborn baby through her cancer battle was not the first time Jessica found strength in faith. After she and Lamar married in 2014, Lamar was taken suddenly and seriously ill with an autoimmune reaction and airlifted to Victoria Hospital in London, Ontario. He spent 23 days in the ICU and eventually recovered, against the odds.

Jessica leaned on prayer and sacraments.

“That’s what taught me I really needed to get back into my faith,” Jessica said. “When I was younger I was very, very close to God … in my college years I kind of put that away, but never denounced my faith.

“The day [my husband] was finally discharged, I remember his doctor stopped me at the door and said, ‘Don’t have any children, because your husband’s going to relapse in a year. Because my faith was so strong at that point, we ended up indeed getting pregnant two months later and he’s never been sick again. We 100 percent attribute that to full and complete trust in God.”

When their roles reversed, Lamar became Jessica’s rock, bolstered by a Heavenly voice that came to him during Mass: Trust in the plan.

Jessica said: “I have this very traditional sense of my husband as my guide. I submitted and allowed him to lead and guide me, the way the Bible tells us to, and every decision he made ended up providing for us tenfold … without him, I don’t know if I would have survived cancer.”

A happy, faithful mom of four in remission, Jessica’s pro-life conviction is stronger than ever.

“I got my miracle because I lead with faith,” she said, “I lead with happiness, and I protected my health through my emotions.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

With the Donald Trump administration-enacted Title 42 restriction set to end on Dec. 21, U.S. officials are bracing for a massive surge of illegal immigrants crossing over the southern border.

When the policy disappears in less than two weeks, the Department of Homeland Security estimates that 9,000 to 14,000 migrants could try to enter the country illegally each day.

Created as part of the Public Health Service Act under President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1944, Title 42 was designed to prevent the introduction of contagious diseases in the United States.

The policy was issued by the Trump administration in 2020 at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Migrants processed under the policy are not permitted to request asylum in the United States and are removed from the country.

On paper, Title 42 covers the Canada and Mexico borders and migrants of all nationalities. It has mostly been used along the southern border to remove illegal immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador from the United States.

Almost 2.4 million illegal immigrants were stopped by U.S. agents along the southern border in fiscal year 2022, which ended on Sept. 30.

Federal statistics indicate that more than 1 million of the encounters led to the immigrants being removed from the country under Title 42.

Once Title 42 is lifted, the number of migrants that Border Patrol agents must process will “likely be double or greater,” according to a U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Inspector General report released in September.

It is not clear what the Biden administration plans to do when Title 42 is terminated on Dec. 21.

When Biden took office, one of his first actions was ending the “Remain in Mexico” policy implemented under Trump.

Under that law, asylum-seekers were required to remain in Mexico while their asylum claims were processed. Figures showed that the policy discouraged false asylum claims and decreased the number of illegal immigrants.

Blas Nunez Neto is the acting assistant DHS secretary for border and immigration policy. Last month, in a call with Latin American reporters, he said the United States would move to prosecute migrants who attempt to evade Border Patrol agents and deport people who illegally enter the country under expedited removal, a process that includes a five-year ban from the United States.

When Title 42 expires, DHS will transition from Title 42 to Title 8 processing.

Title 8 is a federal law that allows expulsions if illegal immigrants don’t qualify for asylum.

In fiscal year 2022, the U.S. Border Patrol removed 1.1 million under Title 8 compared to around 1 million illegal immigrants under Title 42.

Termination of Title 42

The Dec. 21 termination date was determined by Judge Emmet Sullivan of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, who voided Title 42 on Nov. 15. Sullivan was appointed by former President Bill Clinton.

In his report, Sullivan said that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) did not properly explain the reasons for approving the policy instead of using what he termed as less drastic ways to address the virus.

The CDC also “failed to consider the harm to migrants subject to expulsion,” Sullivan wrote, referencing reports claiming that migrants could be persecuted in Mexico and other countries after their expulsion from the United States.

On Nov. 16, Sullivan gave federal immigration officials five weeks to end Title 42.

Sullivan’s decision stemmed from legal action filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which argued that Title 42 endangers migrants and violates asylum law.

Even if their arrival is illegal, migrants who cross the border onto U.S. soil can request asylum, which provides humanitarian protection.

Hours after Sullivan announced his ruling, Justice Department lawyers asked the federal judge to delay the decision for five weeks on the grounds that abruptly eliminating Title 42 would create operational issues and not offer enough time to coordinate an “orderly transition” to regular immigration processing.

Referring to the Department of Homeland Security, Justice Department lawyers wrote, “This transition period is critical to ensuring that DHS can continue to carry out its mission to secure the Nation’s borders and to conduct its border operations in an orderly fashion.”

Sullivan granted the request “with great reluctance” and said the order voiding Title 42 would become effective on Dec. 21 at midnight.

On Dec. 7, the Biden administration announced it would appeal the court ruling, believing that the CDC would issue new orders regulating migration.

The appeal contradicts the Biden administration’s previous support of lifting the policy.

Lawsuit to Keep Title 42

After taking office in January 2021, the Biden administration maintained the Trump-enacted Title 42 for more than a year until announcing it would gradually end the expulsions, claiming they were no longer needed because of improved conditions with the pandemic.

A group of 24 Republican-led states responded by filing a lawsuit to keep Title 42 in place. The group said that stopping the policy would result in “a surge of border crossings and that this surge will result in an increase in illegal immigrants residing in the states.”

The higher number of immigrants would increase the amount of money required to spend on education, health care, and law enforcement, officials from many of the states argued.

In May, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Summerhays temporarily blocked the Biden administration from voiding Title 42. Summerhays was appointed by Trump.

Sullivan’s ruling on Nov. 15 superseded the May decision.

In July, the Biden administration appealed that ruling but kept relying on Title 42 as a border management policy.

It expanded Title 42 guidelines to include Venezuelan migrants in October in an attempt to deter the wave of Venezuelan migration to the southern border.

That decision also approved what the Biden administration calls a humanitarian parole plan that allows up to 24,000 Venezuelans a legal pathway to the United States.

In a July deposition, Border Patrol Chief Raul Ortiz was asked if the Biden administration signaling that it won’t enforce border laws will result in “exponential” increases of illegal immigration. He responded, “I do think it will increase, yeah.”

Ortiz was asked if the southern border is “currently in crisis,” and if there is an “unprecedented” number of people illegally entering the United States. He said “yes” to both questions.

‘The Border Is Secure’

Ortiz’s comments contradicted what Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said a week before at the Aspen Security Forum in Colorado.

“Look, the border is secure,” Mayorkas said. “We are working to make the border more secure. That has been a historic challenge.”

On Nov. 17, Mayorkas told legislators that the department will explore ways to prevent Venezuelan migrants from entering the United States through the southern border if Title 42 ends.

Sen. James Lankford (R–Okla.) asked Mayorkas about the administration’s strategy to deal with Title 42’s conclusion.

“We’re still waiting to try to figure out what happens now and how many are about to cross the border. What’s the plan for dealing with this massive migration, illegal immigration coming now post-Title 42?” Lankford said at the Nov. 17 Senate Homeland Security Committee hearing.

“What we are doing is precisely what we announced we would do in April of this year, and we have indeed been executing on the plan,” Mayorkas responded.

The plan includes sending personnel, technology, and other resources to the border and increasing processing efficiency “to mitigate potential overcrowding,” Mayorkas explained.

“We are enhancing the consequences for unlawful entry, especially with respect to individuals who seek to evade law enforcement, including removal, detention, and criminal prosecution when warranted,” Mayorkas added.

The entire hemisphere is suffering a migration crisis, Mayorkas explained.

“We are seeing an unprecedented movement of people from country to country,” he told lawmakers at the hearing. “It is not restricted to the southern border.”

At the hearing, Mayorkas maintained his belief that “the border is under control.”

Republicans, Democrats Seek Solutions

Republicans are poised to take control of the House in January 2023 and have said that securing the border will be a top priority, as will holding the Biden administration accountable for the illegal immigration crisis.

In a press conference in El Paso, Texas, on Nov. 22 while touring the southern border, GOP House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy called for Mayorkas to resign or face potential impeachment.

“His actions have produced the great wave of illegal immigration in recorded history,” McCarthy said. “This is why today I am calling on the secretary to resign.

“He cannot and must not remain in that position,” he said. “If Secretary Mayorkas does not resign, House Republicans will investigate every order, every action, and every failure to determine whether we can begin an impeachment inquiry.”

Mayorkas has no plans to resign, the DHS said, adding that the Biden administration inherited a broken and dismantled immigration system that is the job of Congress to repair.

“Members of Congress can do better than point the finger at someone else; they should come to the table and work on solutions for our broken system and outdated laws, which have not been overhauled in over 40 years,” a DHS spokesperson said.

On Nov. 21, 15 Republican-led states filed a federal court motion seeking to reverse Sullivan’s termination of Title 42.

Attorneys general from Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Texas, Virginia, West Virginia, and Wyoming wrote that Biden administration officials “abandoned their defense” of the policy by asking only for a five-week suspension of Sullivan’s ruling and not appealing Sullivan’s order.

The end of Title 42 will lead to greater numbers of migrants crossing the U.S.-Mexico border illegally and would harm their states financially, including costs of social services for immigrants, the Republican attorneys general argued.

If Sullivan’s ruling is suspended, the Dec. 21 termination date could again shift. The Republican-led states that brought the lawsuit could ask the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals and the U.S. Supreme Court to intervene if Sullivan denies the motion.

Earlier this week, Rep. Pat Fallon (R-Texas) introduced the American Safety and Fairness Through Expedited Removal (SAFER) Act.

If passed, this measure would expand the use of expedited removal, which debuted under Clinton’s administration and allows DHS to swiftly remove illegal immigrants without a hearing if they have not been in the country for more than two years.

The process is presently limited to illegal immigrants who are apprehended within 100 miles of the southern border or have crossed into the United States within two weeks.

Fallon’s proposed legislation would eliminate those guidelines and would require all illegal immigrants to be removed from the country if they did not get valid entry documents and have been in the United States for less than two years.

“As CBP braces for a monumental migration event due to the impending expiration of Title 42, we as members of Congress must act to counter Biden’s Border Crisis,” Fallon said. “That is why my colleagues and I are introducing the American SAFER Act.

“No more will illegal aliens receive a get out of jail free card from the expedited removal process because they’ve traveled 100 air miles into the interior of the United States,” Fallon added. “It’s time to restore this important tool for border patrol and immigration authorities.”

The bill has 17 co-sponsors and support from the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

“President Biden’s failed policies are crushing our southern border,” Rep. Mark Green (R-Tenn.) a co-sponsor of the bill, said in a statement. “This legislation is a huge step forward in ensuring those who illegally enter our country cannot circumvent the law and are swiftly removed.”

Arizona Sens. Kyrsten Sinema, who recently announced that she was leaving the Democratic Party and becoming an Independent, and Mark Kelly, who is a Democrat, have been outspoken about their belief that Title 42 should remain in place.

In April, they introduced legislation intended to require the Biden administration to have a comprehensive plan ready before rescinding Title 42.

On Nov. 28, Sinema and Kelly joined Sens. Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.) and Jon Tester (D-Mont.) in sending a letter to Mayorkas expressing their concerns about the removal of Title 42.

“While Title 42 expulsion totals reflect repeat attempts to enter the United States, a sharp end to Title 42 would nonetheless significantly increase the number of migrants apprehended along the Southwest Border under Title 8,” the senators wrote.

On Dec. 5, Sinema and Sen. Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) agreed on an immigration reform draft framework that would include a continuation of Title 42.

The proposal features an increase in resources to expedite the intake of asylum seekers with new processing centers, asylum officers, and judges.

The framework also includes increased resources to expedite the removal of migrants who don’t qualify for asylum and more funding for border officers.

If processing centers, which would house migrants, are opened and running, Title 42 would end after at least one year, according to the proposal. The bipartisan effort also contains a plan for citizenship for 2 million undocumented young people who arrived in the United States as children and are known as “Dreamers.”

Multiple Republicans oppose the plan. McCarthy has said any form of amnesty is a “non-starter” in the next Congress.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

NBC News has updated a story that initially claimed President Joe Biden’s administration had a choice between freeing basketball player Brittney Griner and Marine veteran Paul Whelan in the prisoner exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.

Citing a person described as a “senior U.S. official,” NBC initially reported that the U.S. government wanted both Griner and Whelan freed as part of the swap.

“But the official said Russia has treated Whelan differently because he is an accused spy, and that the Kremlin gave the White House the choice of either Griner or Whelan—or none,” the story said.

Griner was jailed because she brought, by her own admission, cannabis into Russia. Whelan is behind bars because he was convicted of espionage. Whelan has maintained his innocence.

U.S. officials have described both as “wrongfully detained.”

After Biden spoke about the exchange, claiming there was “not a choice of which American to bring home,” NBC stealthily updated its piece without noting that it was altered, according to archived versions reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The outlet’s updated version stated, “But the official said Russia has treated Whelan differently because he is an accused spy, and that the Kremlin ultimately gave the White House the choice of either Griner or no one after different options were proposed.”

Hours later, after critics noted the stealth edit, NBC added a correction.

“An earlier version of this article misstated the choice the Biden administration was given over hostages. It was to swap for Griner or no one, not a choice between Griner or Whelan,” the correction states.

An NBC spokesperson did not respond to a list of emailed questions, including why the initial update did not include a correction and what it means when it says it “misstated the choice” the government faced.

‘Left Behind’

Critics said the administration should have negotiated the release of Whelan.

“Paul Whelan has been let down and left behind at least three times by 2 Presidents,” the Bring Our Families Home Campaign said in a statement. “He deserves better from his government, and our Campaign implores President Biden to urgently secure Paul’s immediate return using all tools available.”

White House officials have backed Biden, saying the United States did not have a choice.

“In recent weeks, it became clear that while Russians were willing to reach an agreement to secure Brittney’s release, they continue to treat Paul Whelan differently, given the nature of the totally illegitimate charges they have levied against Paul,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters in Washington this week. “Unfortunately, the choice became to either bring Brittney home or no one.”

“This was not a choice for us on—of which American to bring home. That was not the choice. It was a choice between bringing home one American or bringing home none,” she added later. “Our choices was: Brittney or no one at all. Bring home one American or no American at all.”

A senior administration official, speaking to reporters on background, offered a similar view.

“So I want to be very clear: This was not a situation where we had a choice of which American to bring home. It was a choice between bringing home one particular American—Brittney Griner—or bringing home none,” the official said.

Whelan

Whelan said after the swap that he was “greatly disappointed that more has not been done to secure my release, especially as the four year anniversary of my arrest is coming up.”

David Whelan, Whelan’s brother, said he was glad Griner was freed but relayed fresh disappointment, noting that Whelan was also not released in a swap that brought American Trevor Reed home earlier this year.

“As I have often remarked, Brittney’s and Paul’s cases were never really intertwined. It has always been a strong possibility that one might be freed without the other. The sentiments I shared in April about Trevor are unchanged: this is the event we wish for so much for our own family. She will be reunited with her family. Brittney is free. And Paul is still a hostage,” David Whelan said. “But how many more times do I need to write that?”

Other Americans still in Russian custody include Marc Fogel, a teacher who was arrested in Moscow in 2021 with marijuana, which he reportedly uses as medicine following a spinal injury.

Bout was serving a 25-year sentence for conspiring to kill Americans. He was convicted in late 2011.

Bout was described by then-Attorney General Eric Holder as “one of the world’s most prolific arms dealers.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Independent author Michael Shellenberger published Part 4 of the “Twitter Files” on Saturday night, following a week of significant revelations about the political activities that transpired under the former leadership of the influential social media company.

Shellenberger, an ecomodernist who publishes his writings on Substack, outlined in Part 4 of the Twitter files how company executives built their case for permanently banning former President Donald Trump from the platform on Jan. 7, 2021.

It comes after the release of Part 3 of the internal files on Friday by independent journalist Matt Taibbi, which exposed Twitter’s activities from before the 2020 election up to the chaotic breach of the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Shellenberger, Taibbi, and a number of other journalists has had access to internal company communications outlining Twitter’s approach to information moderation during the times predating new CEO Elon Musk’s October takeover.

Shellenberger said late Saturday the internal communications showed that Twitter leadership had decided to pursue a change of policy “for Trump alone, distinct from other political leaders,” and that they expressed “no concern for the free speech or democracy implications of a ban.”

Following the events of Jan. 6, former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey was facing growing internal and external pressure to ban Trump from the platform, Shellenberger said.

Trump was demonized among Democrats, which was the political preference among most of Twitter’s staff and senior executives. “In 2018, 2020, and 2022, 96%, 98%, & 99% of Twitter staff’s political donations went to Democrats,” according to Shellenberger.

Voices pressuring Dorsey to remove Trump after the events of Jan. 6 included former First Lady Michelle Obama, tech journalist Kara Swisher, and the Jewish NGO Anti-Defamation League, among many others, Shellenberger noted.

Because Dorsey was on vacation, he “delegated much of the handling of the situation” to senior Twitter executives at the time. They were Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, and Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of legal policy and trust.

Roth had publicly acknowledged his anti-Trump views on Twitter many times. He had posted in 2017 that there were “ACTUAL NAZIS IN THE WHITE HOUSE,” in reference to President Trump.

Shellenberger said Roth was “excited to share” that Dorsey approved a decision for Twitter to introduce a new policy that would allow it to permanently ban users who are considered a “repeat offender for civic integrity.”

“The new approach would create a system where five violations (‘strikes’) would result in permanent suspension,” according to Shellenberger.

1. TWITTER FILES, PART 4

The Removal of Donald Trump: January 7

As the pressure builds, Twitter executives build the case for a permanent ban

— Michael Shellenberger (@ShellenbergerMD) December 10, 2022

“The exchange between Roth and his colleagues makes clear that they had been pushing [Dorsey] for greater restrictions on the speech Twitter allows around elections,” Shellenberger commented.

He cited what a member of Roth’s Trust and Safety Team wrote on Jan. 7 in response to Dorsey’s approval of the new policy: “Progress! Does this affect our approach to Trump, who I think that we publicly said had one remaining strike?”

“Trump continues to have his one strike,” Roth responded. “This is for everything else.”

Despite that, by the following day, Jan. 8,  Twitter announced a permanent ban on Trump, citing “risk of further incitement of violence.”

Shortly following Trump’s ban, The Epoch Times reached out to Twitter asking whether it had any solid evidence that Trump’s statements were directly linked to any violence. Twitter did not respond.

Shellenberger noted what appears to be a conflict in Twitter policy over time, such that while Twitter on Jan. 8 said Trump’s ban is based on “specifically how [Trump’s tweets] are being received & interpreted,” the social media giant back in 2019 said it did “not attempt to determine all potential interpretations of the content or its intent.”

Lower Level Employee Expressed Concern

“The *only* serious concern we found expressed within Twitter over the implications for free speech and democracy of banning Trump came from a junior person in the organization,” Shellenberger said. “It was tucked away in a lower-level Slack channel known as ‘site-integrity-auto.’”

The message from the junior employee reads: “This might be an unpopular opinion but one off ad hoc decisions like this that don’t appear rooted in policy are imho a slippery slope… This now appears to be a fiat by an online platform CEO with a global presence that can gatekeep speech for the entire world – which seems unsustainable.”

The same employee had written earlier in the day that their concern is “specifically surrounding the unarticulated logic of the decision by [Facebook],” which suggests the idea or “conspiracy theory” that “all social media heads and internet moguls at every layer sit around like kings casually deciding what people can and cannot see.”

The employee said they believed the situation is “unhelpful to the internet ecosystem as a whole.”

The employee also provided a link to an article titled “Facebook Chucked Its Own Rulebook to Ban Trump” by author Will Oremus, and commented: “And Will Oremus noticed the inconsistency too.”

In the referenced article, Oremus wrote that dominant social media platforms “have always been loath to own up to their subjectivity, because it highlights the extraordinary, unfettered power they wield over the global public square and places the responsibility for that power on their own shoulders … So they hide behind an ever-changing rulebook, alternately pointing to it when it’s convenient and shoving it under the nearest rug when it isn’t.”

Twitter Files

Upon his takeover, Musk promised to provide transparency surrounding Twitter’s practices for managing information on the platform, following extensive complaints over censorship of political speech—allegations that leadership staff at Twitter have previously denied.

Regarding the unfolding insights from the internal communications, Musk said, “Twitter is both a social media company and a crime scene.”

During a conversation on Twitter spaces Saturday night, former Trump adviser Sebastian Gorka said of the relevations, “The issue here is, will we have free elections again in America? This isn’t about Twitter: this is about Facebook, this is about TikTok, this is about whether or not we’re going to have elections based on truth anymore or whether they can micro target you with propaganda down to your profile on social media and whether the FBI is directing that—that’s the issue we should be talking about.

“The problem is, do we have the capacity to have representative government in a time where one political identity controls overtly and covertly the majority of information dissemination in our nation, if not the world?”

Mimi Nguyen Ly contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A newly proposed bill in Texas would ban social media for children over concerns about mental health.

A North Texas lawmaker filed a bill that would require all social media users to be 18 years of age to create an account.

The bill, HB 896, (pdf) which was proposed by state Rep. Jared Patterson, will force social media sites to verify a user’s age with photo ID and allow parents to request that their child’s account be deactivated.

Patterson, a Republican, represents District 106, which includes parts of Denton County.

Patterson claimed that social media was harmful and addictive to children and compared it to cigarette use before 1964, when scientists started warning about tobacco.

https://subs.theepochtimes.com/template/show?tid=cc3f343f-227c-4eec-8289-8d2fe30e4467&sid=www.theepochtimes.com&v=9&ck=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&pl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fproposed-texas-bill-aims-to-ban-social-media-for-children-over-mental-health-concerns-after-states-tiktok-ban_4914616.html%3Futm_source%3DGoodevening%26src_src%3DGoodevening%26utm_campaign%3Dgv-2022-12-10%26src_cmp%3Dgv-2022-12-10%26utm_medium%3Demail%26est%3Dhh1%252BUW8BoXU6tIf3d3%252BMs3%252F1BK0eq9a9gHOmboqNksGJGUhTmPtLKXMgwIiEBGaBZw%253D%253D&u=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&tn=newsletter_widget&dna=%7B%22u_s%22%3A%22Goodevening%22%2C%22u_c%22%3A%22gv-2022-12-10%22%2C%22r%22%3A%22%22%2C%22pid%22%3A%22anon641b-6b0b-4cdc-aba3-31d915c05851%22%2C%22uid%22%3A%22user_9dfe546d573c80c140e67580106ed9556b66c4cd%22%2C%22x%22%3A%2228-850-676%22%2C%22vt%22%3A0%2C%22g1%22%3A%22us%22%2C%22g2%22%3A%22md%22%7D&source=health&email=walkerboh2112%40msn.com

“Once thought to be perfectly safe for users, social media access to minors has led to remarkable rises in self-harm, suicide, and mental health issues,” said Patterson.

Most social media sites currently require children to be at least 13 years old, but they do not normally require proof of age.

“The harms social media poses to minors are demonstrable not just in the internal research from the very social media companies that create these addictive products, but in the skyrocketing depression, anxiety, and even suicide rates we are seeing afflict children,” Greg Sindelar, CEO of the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF), told the local Fox affiliate.

“We are tremendously grateful for Rep. Jared Patterson’s leadership on keeping this precious population safe, and TPPF is fully supportive of prohibiting social media access to minors to prevent the perpetual harms of social media from devastating the next generation of Texans.”

Texas Bans TikTok Over Cybersecurity Concerns

Meanwhile, on Dec. 7, Gov. Greg Abbott issued a letter ordering all Texas state agencies to ban the use of TikTok, a social media platform owned by the Chinese Communist Party, on all government-issued devices.

“The preservation of the safety and security of Texas is critically important. The threat of the Chinese Communist Party to infiltrate the United States continues to grow on multiple fronts,” said Abbott.

“While the federal government holds the ultimate responsibility for foreign policy issues, the State also has the responsibility and opportunity to protect itself.

“Because of these threats, effective immediately, every state agency in Texas shall ban its officers and employees from downloading or using TikTok on any of its government-issued devices,” he continued.

Abbott also instructed Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and the state legislature to pass cybersecurity laws after the holidays in January and make the TikTok ban permanent.

All government agencies in the state of Texas will have until Feb. 15, 2023, to implement the order.

Cell phones, laptops, tablets, desktop computers, or any other devices connected to the internet used by state employees will be forbidden from retaining the app.

Texas is now the third state in the union to ban the use of TikTok by state employees and agencies over concerns over espionage by the cyber security services of communist China.

Other States Follow Suit

The governors of South Dakota, Maryland, South Carolina, and Nebraska have also banned TikTok from all state government devices this year.

“South Dakota is banning TikTok for state government. We will have no part in intelligence gathering for China, a nation that hates America,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem said in a tweet.

TikTok is already prohibited on U.S. government devices for most federal agencies like the U.S. Department of State, the Department of Defense, and the Department of Homeland Security.

The social media app allegedly has over 80 million users in the United States, and security experts have warned that ByteDance, the parent company that owns the platform, has strong ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and closely monitors users’ digital behavior.

Although TikTok has claimed that it stores American users’ data within the United States, the company admitted in a letter to Congress that China-based employees had access to their private information.

ByteDance was also reported to be attempting to use TikTok location information to surveil individual American citizens.

Furthermore, under the CCP’s 2017 national intelligence law, all Chinese owned businesses like ByteDance are required to assist Beijing in intelligence gathering, including data sharing.

TikTok’s algorithm has already been accused of censoring politically sensitive topics for the CCP and has been accused of interfering in the 2022 midterm elections to support Democrat candidates, reported Forbes.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The House of Representatives just passed the mammoth $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), an annual must-pass bill setting out defense spending levels.

See what’s inside, and what was left out, below.

Military Vaccine Mandate Repealed

In a major win for Republicans and critics of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 policies, this year’s iteration of the NDAA will include a repeal of a vaccine mandate for military service members.

Biden announced in August 2021 that all federal employees, including military service members, would be required to take the COVID-19 vaccine or lose their job, despite a dearth of long-term testing on the vaccine.

Republicans were opposed to the mandate from the beginning, calling it a violation of the personal liberty of citizens to make their own health decisions.

Initially, service members who refused the vaccine were liable to face consequences up to and including court martial and dishonorable discharge. A dishonorable discharge, roughly the military equivalent of a felony conviction, can severely impact a service member’s life, as many employers will not even consider hiring someone with a less-than-honorable military discharge.

Last year, the Senate passed a draft of the NDAA barring the Department of Defense (DOD) from dishonorably discharging service members solely for refusal to take the vaccine.

However, the mandate remained in effect. Even after Biden boldly declared that “the pandemic is over,” the Pentagon refused to budge on its vaccine requirements.

But in the past several weeks, efforts to repeal the mandate once and for all ramped up among Republicans.

After rumors began circulating that the NDAA would undo the mandate, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.)—the frontrunner in the race for the speakership of the 118th Congress—vowed during an appearance on Fox Business Network’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that his caucus would not pass the bill unless it ended the vaccine mandate.

“We will secure lifting that vaccine mandate on our military because what we’re finding is, they’re kicking out men and women that have been serving,” McCarthy said. “That’s the first victory of having a Republican majority, and we’d like to have more of those victories, and we should start moving those now.”

Democrats yielded on the issue, giving Republicans a major policy win.

The passage of the bill through the lower chamber came just days after Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expressed his desire to continue imposing the mandate.

“We lost a million people to this virus,” Austin told reporters, although studies and data have shown the vast majority of people who died from COVID-19 were elderly or have compromised immune systems. “A million people died in the United States of America. We lost hundreds in DOD. So this mandate has kept people healthy.”

Following the addition of the amendment ending the mandate, Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), one of the most vocal critics of Biden’s diktat, applauded the outcome.

“This is a big day for our men and women in the military,” Paul said in a tweet. “We won, and the NDAA will be amended to respect medical autonomy and religious freedom.”

“These young men and women are willing to put their lives on the line, and now we’ve come forward to say they deserve to be treated with respect,” Paul said in a press conference.

Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), another key proponent of the amendment, also applauded the bill as “a huge victory for our troops.”

No Reinstatement of Troops

Though the bill will undo Biden’s mandate, hopes that the bill would reinstate those who were kicked out of the military for refusal to take the vaccine did not come to fruition.

According to Defense Department data, 3,717 Marines, 1,816 soldiers, and 2,064 sailors have been discharged for refusing to get vaccinated against COVID-19, although a small portion has been allowed to remain in service owing to religious or medical waivers.

As of Dec. 1, over 11,500 members of the Army, Army National Guard, and Army Reserve have declined to get vaccinated against COVID-19, Axios reported, while 97 percent of the Army’s active personnel received the shot.

In an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, Air Force Lt. Col Adam Conrad, who asked that his name be changed to protect him from retaliation by the DOD, said that he had “never seen morale so low” as it got after the imposition of the mandate.

Various military bodies have been struggling to meet their recruitment goals in part over the vaccine mandate, with the U.S. Army reaching just 75 percent of its recruitment goal of 60,000 for this year, according to Army Secretary Christine Wormuth.

Still, the NDAA will not reinstate those troops who were removed due to their opposition to taking the experimental vaccine.

In a statement after the passage of the bill, McCarthy applauded the end of the mandate and suggested that Republicans will continue to work to reinstate discharged service members when they take control of the lower chamber in January.

“The end of President Biden’s military COVID vaccine mandate is a victory for our military and for common sense,” McCarthy said. “Last week, I told the president directly: it’s time to end the COVID vaccine mandate and rehire our service members.”

“While I applaud the end of this onerous mandate—the Biden administration must go further. Unfortunately, the mandate has already had negative consequences for our military,” McCarthy said, citing the difficulties that the military has faced in recruiting.

“These heroes deserve justice now that the mandate is no more,” he continued. “The Biden administration must correct service records and not stand in the way of re-enlisting any service member discharged simply for not taking the COVID vaccine.

“Make no mistake: this is a win for our military. But in 28 days the real work begins—the new House Republican majority will work to finally hold the Biden administration accountable and assist the men and women in uniform who were unfairly targeted by this Administration.”

This may be a difficult promise to keep, however, as Democrats retain the upper chamber and will have substantial leverage over the House GOP majority.

Another Million-Dollar Dole to Ukraine

The bill will also grant another $800 million of taxpayer funds to the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative as part of the U.S. effort to help Ukraine defend itself against an ongoing Russian invasion.

The United States has already sent around $68 billion in humanitarian and military assistance to Ukraine in three major packages.

The first aid package, passed as part of the $1.5 trillion omnibus spending bill for fiscal year (FY) 2022, sent Ukraine $13.6 billion. In May, Congress passed another standalone bill granting Ukraine $40 billion. Again in September, an additional $13.7 billion was sent to Ukraine.

Though the appropriation is smaller than past handouts, Americans are in the dark as to how exactly Ukraine is using the aid.

Alarmingly, reports indicate that weapons purchased with taxpayer funds have wound up as far afield as Nigeria, falling into the hands of terror groups.

President Muhammadu Buhari of Nigeria said during a summit of African leaders that “the raging war in Ukraine serve[s] as major sources of weapons and fighters that bolster the ranks of the terrorists in Lake Chad Region.”

He added, “A substantial proportion of the arms and ammunitions procured to execute the war in Libya, continues to find its way to the Lake Chad Region and other parts of the Sahel. Weapons being used for the war in Ukraine and Russia are equally beginning to filter to the region.”

Because of this, calls have escalated among Republicans for Ukraine’s use of taxpayer funds to be audited.

During a Dec. 9 hearing of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, a measure proposed by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) to audit the Eastern European nation was defeated by Democrats.

“The American people deserve full transparency and oversight of where their hard earned tax dollars have gone and that’s why we should audit Ukraine,” Greene said in a Twitter post after the vote.

“An audit isn’t pro or against Ukraine, it’s just the right thing to do.”

The $800 million figure is far short of the $37.7 billion in additional aid for Ukraine requested by the White House at the end of November.

Silence on Pentagon Abortion Policy

The bill does not address a policy recently announced by Defense Secretary Austin that would see taxpayer dollars used to fund travel costs for women in the military to get abortions.

The policy came in response to the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, in which the court overturned Roe v. Wade. As a result of this decision, the right to regulate abortions has been returned to state legislatures for the first time in nearly 50 years.

Austin argued that because military servicemembers often have to travel for work, they should not be restricted from getting an abortion if they are stationed in a state with more restrictive abortion laws.

“Our Service members and their families are often required to travel or move to meet our staffing, operational, and training requirements. Such moves should not limit their access to reproductive health care,” Austin wrote in an October memo.

He contended that the “practical effects of recent changes” would harm military readiness.

“In my judgment, such effects qualify as unusual, extraordinary, hardship, or emergency circumstances for Service members and their dependents and will interfere with our ability to recruit, retain, and maintain the readiness of a highly qualified force,” he wrote.

Republicans were quick to blast the decision.

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kansas) called it “outrageous,” and demanded that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) allow a vote on an amendment to prohibit it.

While the text of the bill does not actively give the green light to this policy, it also does not contain language prohibiting it.

The Pentagon is given a great deal of latitude on how it uses the funding granted by each year’s iteration of the NDAA. While large chunks of it are appropriated for specific purposes, a large proportion of these taxpayer dollars are left to the discretion of the Pentagon to spend as they will.

This means that, if the bill passes with no prohibition of the policy, taxpayers will find themselves indirectly footing the bill for abortions in contravention of an existing law known as the Hyde amendment, which restricts the use of federal funds for abortions.

Klobuchar Media Bill Fails

An effort by Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) to attach a controversial bill rider to the package was rejected.

The legislation, dubbed the Journalism Competition and Protection Act (JCPA), would supersede some existing antitrust laws and allow media companies to band together to negotiate with Big Tech platforms, such as Facebook, Google, and Twitter.

Critics have warned that the bill would allow Big Tech and legacy media outlets to collude to the detriment of smaller, independent publications.

The bill advanced through the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 22 but has made little progress since.

Klobuchar’s effort to include the non-defense bill in the defense package was likely a last-ditch effort to pass the legislation before the expiration of the 117th Congress.

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, the frontrunner in the race for speaker—a position with broad unilateral authority over what does and does not come to the floor for a vote—has expressed opposition to the bill, calling it the “antithesis of conservatism.”

In a Dec. 6 tweet, Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) also expressed opposition to the bill.

“The JCPA has nothing to do with national security,” Lee wrote. “Its inclusion in the NDAA is a last-ditch effort to silence conservative voices and independent journalism.”

He called Klobuchar’s effort to include it in the bill “a desperate attempt for Democrats to pass the legislation during the lame-duck session of Congress.”

Lee added, “It has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with silencing conservative voices and independent journalism.

“Don’t let desperate Democrats sneak the JCPA into the NDAA.”

Unless Klobuchar can get the bill attached to the pending omnibus spending bill for FY 2023, which must pass by Dec. 16 to avert a government shutdown, it is unlikely that the bill will move forward during the next Congress.

Manchin-Proposed Permitting Reform Absent

Also absent from the NDAA is a proposal by Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) that would alter fossil fuel permitting regulations.

Manchin’s proposal would make it easier for new fossil fuel ventures to receive a federal green light. Currently, these ventures can take years to kick off due to federal red tape and stringent environmental regulations.

Manchin has long pushed for changes to streamline this process—a push he has ramped up as energy prices have continued to soar over the past two years.

But he has received unexpected pushback not only from the left wing of his own party, but also from Republicans.

In a Dec. 6 tweet, Manchin blasted members of both parties for playing “toxic tribal politics” with permitting reform while Americans brace for much higher energy costs moving into the deep of winter.

“Our energy infrastructure is under attack and America’s energy security has never been more threatened,” Manchin said. “Failing to pass bipartisan energy permitting reform that both Republicans and Democrats have called for will have long term consequences for our energy independence.”

“The American people will pay the steepest price for Washington once again failing to put common sense policy ahead of toxic tribal politics,” Manchin added. “This is why the American people hate politics in Washington.”

In another statement the next day, Manchin repeated this demand.

“Failing to pass the bipartisan, comprehensive energy permitting reform that our country desperately needs is not an acceptable option. As our energy security becomes more threatened every day, Americans are demanding Congress put politics aside and act on commonsense solutions to solve the issues facing us.”

“The Senate must vote to amend the NDAA to ensure the comprehensive, bipartisan permitting reform our country desperately needs is included,” Manchin wrote in the tweet.

But in spite of bipartisan consensus on the need for permitting reform, Manchin has struggled to push the measure forward.

As part of a private deal to win Manchin’s support for the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act, Schumer promised Manchin that permitting reform would be taken up before the end of the year.

In September, Manchin attempted and failed to include the permitting reform in the short-term continuing resolution (CR) that kept the government running.

After that effort failed, he turned his attention to the NDAA as a potential vehicle for the legislation.

But Manchin has received pushback on the issue, not only from progressive members of his own party like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), but also from Republicans, who have said that they will not aid Democrats’ “political payback scheme,” in the words of Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

“We haven’t even talked about it because it’s not an option,” Sen. Mike Rogers (R-Ala.), a prime NDAA negotiator, told reporters.

Outgoing-Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) echoed this attitude, expressing his opposition to including such a bill rider.

As with Klobuchar’s proposal, this likely means that the last-ditch chance for Manchin to pass his permitting reform will be the spending bill still under bicameral negotiation.

Opposition

The bill has faced opposition from members of both parties.

The 80 lawmakers who expressed opposition to the bill included 35 Republicans and 45 Democrats.

In a video posted to his Twitter, Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) explained why he was among the 80 members who voted against the package.

“The 2023 NDAA is bloated and contains woke elements that do not enhance military readiness,” Biggs said in a caption attached to the video.

In part, he tied his opposition to the haste with which the bill was brought to the floor and then sped through the lower chamber.

“The 4,000-plus page legislation was released to the public just hours before its vote,” Biggs said. “I voted against this monstrosity.”

Others tied their opposition to the inclusion of additional funding for Ukraine.

“Our country is over $31 TRILLION in debt,” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said in a Twitter post. “The NDAA requires the Secretary of Treasury to seek to provide economic support and debt relief for Ukraine.

“You can’t even make this up,” she added.

Many of the Democrats who opposed the measure were left-wing progressives, who have often railed against the nearly $1 trillion annually dedicated to defense spending.

“Just think of the progress we could make if we invested $847 billion in the people rather than the Pentagon,” Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) wrote in a tweet explaining her “no” vote.

She said that the bill “[continued a] legacy of wasteful military spending.”

Lee also expressed disappointment at the exclusion of a bill she proposed that would rescind the 2002 Authorization for Use of Military Force, which allowed President George W. Bush to mount an invasion of Iraq on a since-debunked claim that Saddam Hussein was housing weapons of mass destruction in the country.

The full list of how each member voted can be found here on the website of the Clerk of the House of Representatives.

What’s Next for the Bill

With its passage by the House, the bill will now head to the Senate, where it is likely to pass along largely bipartisan lines, despite the opposition of many members to components of the legislation.

A question mark remains over whether President Biden will sign the bill, as it would undo his August 2021 vaccine mandate.

Still, the bill is a must-pass piece of legislation for the lame-duck Congress, and the White House has left open the prospect that Biden will sign it despite the vaccine mandate provisions.

Zachary Stieber, Katabella Roberts, and Jack Phillips contributed to this report. 

Correction: The original version of this article incorrectly identified Rep. Andy Biggs’s state. The Epoch Times regrets the error.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A federal appeals court has permanently blocked the Biden administration’s bid to force doctors and insurers to perform or pay for gender-transition procedures even if they object on grounds of conscience and medical judgment, with the court basing its decision on constitutional protections of religious freedom.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit issued a unanimous ruling (pdf) on Dec. 9 blocking the controversial U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) transgender mandate.

Issued in 2016, the mandate interpreted the Affordable Care Act in a way that required doctors to perform gender-transition procedures on any patient, including children, even if the doctor was convinced the procedure could harm the patient.

Controversial Mandate

The mandate also required the vast majority of private insurance companies and many employers to cover the costs of gender-transition therapy or face penalties.

The HHS’s own panel of medical experts acknowledged that gender-transition procedures can be harmful and in many cases not medically justified, with HHS determining that Medicare and Medicaid shouldn’t be forced to cover such procedures.

Research has shown that gender-transition procedures carry significant risk for children, including loss of bone density, heart disease, and cancer.

‘Do No Harm’

Religious organizations and states sued to block the mandate, with the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty and the North Dakota Attorney General’s office representing some of the groups.

“The federal government has no business forcing doctors to violate their consciences or perform controversial procedures that could permanently harm their patients,” Luke Goodrich, vice president and senior counsel at Becket, said in a statement.

“This is a common-sense ruling that protects patients, aligns with best medical practice, and ensures doctors can follow their Hippocratic Oath to ‘do no harm.’”

Becket filed the lawsuit in 2016 on behalf of a coalition of Catholic hospitals, a Catholic university, and Catholic nuns who run health clinics for the poor.

A federal district court blocked the mandate from taking effect, leading the Biden administration to appeal the case to the 8th Circuit, which in its Dec. 8 ruling concluded that the lower court “correctly held that ‘intrusion upon the Catholic Plaintiff’s exercise of religion’” justified a permanent injunction.

The Biden administration has 90 days to appeal the decision to the U.S. Supreme Court or 45 days to ask the 8th Circuit court to rehear the case.

There was no immediate reaction from the White House to the ruling.

Goodrich said in a call with reporters that he doubts the “Biden administration will pursue either of these avenues.”

The case is Religious Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, case No. 21-1890. Xavier Becerra is the HHS secretary.

Other Case

Besides the Religious Sisters of Mercy v. Becerra, Becket also represents plaintiffs in a separate but related case initially filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas.

In that case, known as Franciscan Alliance v. Becerra, the Texas court issued a preliminary ruling in December 2016 that the mandate was a likely violation of religious freedom but stopped short of issuing an order that would’ve blocked the policy from being applied.

After an appeal by the challengers seeking a permanent injunction to block the mandate, the court agreed in 2021 to grant permanent relief to doctors and hospitals.

The Biden administration appealed but lost.

On Aug. 26, 2022, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court’s decision and issued a permanent injunction that allows doctors and hospitals to decide whether to carry out gender-transition procedures based on their conscience and medical judgment.

“The government’s attempt to force doctors to go against their consciences was bad for patients, bad for doctors, and bad for religious liberty,” Goodrich said in a statement.

The Biden administration has made transgender issues a key policy pillar, advocating strongly on behalf of people seeking gender-transition procedures and therapies and opposing policies such as so-called conversion therapy, as it’s dubbed by critics, and “change-allowing therapy,” as it’s often referred to by advocates.

This type of therapy is basically counseling that helps people who want to change their sexual orientation or who want to de-transition after earlier changing their gender identity or expression.

“The phrase ‘Conversion therapy’ is provocative, pejorative, and ill-defined,” wrote André Van Mol, a board-certified family physician and co-chair of the Committee on Adolescent Sexuality of the American College of Pediatricians.

“It is a jamming tactic that combines both anti-religious allusions (‘conversion,’ implicitly forced) along with intimidation against therapists who allow patient-directed investigation of possible change.”

Attack on ‘Conversion Therapy’

In a 10-page executive order issued on June 15, President Joe Biden pledged to defend the LGBT community from various forms of discrimination and expressed opposition to “conversion therapy.”

The order, which was accompanied by a seven-page explanation, describes conversion therapy as “efforts to suppress or change an individual’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or gender expression.”

In the order, Biden called for an administration-wide push to eliminate the use of such therapy across the nation, describing the practice as “harmful” and “discredited” and that it “can cause significant harm, including higher suicide rates.”

Twenty states and more than 100 municipalities have banned “conversion therapy” for minors.

The American Psychological Association, in a report released in 2009, stated that therapies used to try to change sexual orientation can be harmful and that most don’t succeed.

But some in the medical community have criticized the reliance on the American Psychological Association’s report in attacks on change-allowing therapy.

“The habitually misquoted American Psychological Association’s Task Force’s 2009 report (on page 43) stated specifically that modern change-allowing therapy ‘since 1978’ was ‘nonaversive,’ meaning free of infliction of pain or shame,” Van Mol wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

Van Mol said the report explicitly states on pages 43 and 82 that research meeting scientific standards didn’t allow attributing harm or help, inefficacy or efficacy, to change-allowing therapy.

“Banning counseling choice for gender dysphoria condemns already at-risk sexual minority youth to experimental and unproven hormonal and surgical gender-affirming therapy (GAT), which permanently and prematurely medicalizes children for a condition that overwhelmingly resolves by adulthood,” he said.

Van Mol said GAT hasn’t been proven safe and effective. It doesn’t reduce suicides and isn’t the international standard of care for gender dysphoric minors.

‘State-Sanctioned Viewpoint Discrimination’

Elizabeth Woning is a co-founder of the Changed Movement, an international network of people who no longer identify as LGBT.

“So-called conversion therapy is a pejorative phrase that is being used to promote state-sanctioned viewpoint discrimination. LGBTQ-identifying people deserve the right to follow their conscience, even when it means receiving support to diminish unwanted sexual feelings,” Woning told The Epoch Times in an earlier interview.

“Such bans dramatically oversimplify the lived experience of anyone who identifies as LGBTQ. They offer only one route for people to follow, no matter their faith or conscience.”

Nevada therapist Robert Vazzo told The Epoch Times that he’s opposed to the Biden administration’s pushback against “conversion therapy,” a concept he said isn’t clearly defined and so opens the door to government overreach and abuse.

“Don’t ban anything that is poorly defined and can lead to a witch hunt among therapists whose worldview regarding homosexuality is different from the mainstream,” he said.

Vazzo said the courts have consistently affirmed a therapist’s right to give his or her opinion during a session as part of free speech.

Steven Kovac contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema’s surprise announcement that she’s left the Democrat Party raises questions about its implications for the balance of power in Washington and whether the move is more of a shock wave or merely a murmur.

Sinema’s defection from the Democrat Party and registering as an Independent is certainly symbolic—with her announcement being a sharp rebuke of Washington’s bitter partisan divides—but it’s also substantive, multiple sources told The Epoch Times, as it narrows the Democrats’ razor-thin edge in the upper chamber and makes Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s (D-N.Y.) job harder.

Sinema said in a statement on social media and op-ed in the Arizona Republic that she was ditching the Democrat Party because she’s fed up with what she described as a “broken partisan system in Washington” that makes a priority of denying the rival party a win rather than “delivering for all Americans.”

“Everyday Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties’ rigid partisanship, which has hardened in recent years,” she wrote in the Arizona Republic.

In a video posted on Twitter, she insisted Arizonians don’t care that much about political labels and aren’t asking if certain policy ideas are Republican or Democrat. Rather, they fundamentally want to see policies adopted that benefit their families and communities.

“Registering as an Independent and showing up to work with the title of Independent is a reflection of who I’ve always been. And it’s a reflection of who Arizona is,” Sinema said.

Sinema’s defection was predictably criticized by some of her former Democrat colleagues, with some taking a dim view of her claim that the move means better representations of Arizonans’ interests.

“Senator Sinema may now be registered as an Independent, but she has shown she answers to corporations and billionaires, not Arizonans,” the state’s Democratic party chair, Raquel Terán, said in a statement.

“Senator Sinema’s party registration means nothing if she continues to not listen to her constituents,” Terán added.

‘Substantive, Not Just Symbolic’

Sinema has been a thorn in the side of some of the Democrats’ more progressive policy efforts, for instance opposing ending the Senate filibuster and voting against a proposed federal minimum wage bump to $15 an hour.

The Arizona senator also withheld her support for President Joe Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act until she won concessions to remove the carried interest tax provision from the bill and include protections for advanced manufacturing.

But while Sinema’s former Democrat colleagues like Terán and Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Ariz.)—who claimed that Sinema was “once again putting her own interests ahead of getting things done for Arizonans”—sources told The Epoch Times that the move will empower Sinema to push for policies that will benefit her constituents.

Irina Tsukerman, a lawyer and president of Scarab Rising, Inc., told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that Sinema’s defection gives her greater flexibility and leverage to negotiate with both parties as the Democrats’ margin in the Senate has become vanishingly thin.

Democrats “will face same challenges as in the past two years in having to negotiate with Republicans and with Sinema having greater personal power and latitude, will likely have to compromise more heavily on issues involving Arizona,” Tsukerman said.

“The impact of her departure will be substantive, not just symbolic,” she said, insisting that Sinema’s departure will force the Democrats to reconsider some of their positions on key issues, especially more radical ones like the ones around fighting climate change.

What It Means for the Majority

Sinema’s surprise announcement comes just days after the Democrats secured an absolute majority in the Senate following Raphael Warnock’s Georgia runoff win.

Warnock’s victory over Senate candidate Herschel Walker gave the Democrats a 51–49 margin in the upper chamber, which Sinema’s defection slims to 50–49–1.

That’s not enough for Democrats to lose control of the Senate, even if Sinema votes with Republicans for a 50–50 split, since Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.

A key factor will be whether Sinema caucuses with the Democrats, which remains unclear, as she said she would not be caucusing with the Republicans.

Aron Solomon, the head of strategy at Esquire Digital, contends that “this is very far from over.”

“From a practical perspective, we’re at 50–50 again,” Solomon told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“No way the Dems can count on someone who is going to sit with the independents, especially when, unlike Sanders and among, she can’t be counted on to caucus with them,” he added.

Two other senators—Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine—are registered independents but caucus with Democrats.

‘Nothing Will Change About My Values’

For her part, Sinema suggested in her interview with Politico that she would continue to vote in the same way she has for her first four years serving as a senator from Arizona.

“Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she told the outlet but added that she won’t attend weekly Democrat caucus meetings.

Asked about how her defection affects the distribution of votes, Sinema told Politico it’s not a question she’s “interested in,” preferring to focus instead on working across the aisle.

“I want people to see that it is possible to do good work with folks from all different political persuasions, and to do it without the pressures or the poles of a party structure,” she told the outlet.

Sinema’s defection came a day after Schumer was elected for another term as Senate Democrat Leader. In a statement, Schumer said that Sinema would be keeping her committee assignments.

“She asked me to keep her committee assignments and I agreed,” Schumer said.

“I believe she’s a good and effective Senator and am looking forward to a productive session in the new Democratic majority Senate,” he continued.

“We will maintain our new majority on committees, exercise our subpoena power, and be able to clear nominees without discharge votes,” Schumer added.

But despite Schumer’s apparent confidence that it’ll be business as usual on Capitol Hill despite Sinema’s defection, Solomon insisted that her departure “takes all the wind out of their sails.”

“This defection is nothing but a Dem loss—they really lose face here,” he added.

Amani Wells-Onyioha, operations director at a Democrat-aligned political consulting and campaigning agency, expressed a similar sentiment, telling The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that her leaving “unfortunately does make the majority less stable.”

“It does tic away at our majority so that is the biggest consequence here,” she added. “Kamala will have to be used as a tie breaker if the Democrats do try to push any major legislation forward.”

At the same time Wells-Onyioha said Sinema’s defection should be viewed by Democrats as a “relief” so that “we can finally stop pretending that Sinema is an ally or party mate to us in any way.”

‘Continue to Work Successfully’ With Sinema

The White House reacted to Sinema’s announcement by calling her a “key partner” in efforts to pass “historic legislation” under President Joe Biden’s watch while expressing hope she’d continue to work with the current administration.

“We understand that her decision to register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Sinema’s defection represents the first party switch in the Senate for over a decade. The last switch was when Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter left the Republican party and joined the Democrats in 2009.

Specter’s switch came at a particularly challenging time for the Republicans as his defection gave the Democrat caucus 59 votes, a single vote away from the margin needed to defeat GOP filibusters.

While Specter’s switch was a blow to Republicans, he insisted at the time that he would “not be an automatic 60th vote.”

“I would illustrate that with my position on employee choice, also known as card check. I think it’s a bad deal and I’m opposed to it. I will not vote to impose cloture,” he said in April 2009. “If the Democratic Party asks too much, I will not vote with them.”

Sinema’s departure also raises questions about whether other Senators might defect, which could shift the balance of power in the upper chamber.

There’s been speculation that another maverick, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W. Va.), might also leave the Democrat party.

Take an Independent Path

Schumer was asked by CNBC’s Rachel Maddow in an interview in mid November whether he was confident that neither Sinema nor Manchin would switch parties in the future.

“I’ve disagreed with them strongly … but they’ve kept being Democrats. It would have been easy for them to do it in the past,” he said at the time.

Schumer called Manchin “a progressive” on certain issues, including prescription drugs, and insisted that neither “would be comfortable in the Republican Party.”

Manchin, along with Sinema, has kept Washington in suspense over the last two years as both have repeatedly withheld their needed votes for legislative initiatives spearheaded by Biden.

Like Sinema, Manchin withheld his support for the Inflation Reduction Act until he secured a number of concessions, including ones that would reduce the bill’s impact on public debt.

Despite long-running speculation that Manchin might switch his political affiliation, several political strategists familiar with West Virginia politics told Fox News they believe a Manchin defection is highly unlikely.

Wells-Onyioha agrees, adding further that she doesn’t “foresee any other Democrats defecting.”

Tsukerman, by contrast, isn’t so sure.

“Whether Manchin will follow the same path remains unclear,” she told The Epoch Times. “However, he is the only one in the Democratic party who has the most incentive to do so with a significant Republican constituency to worry about.”

Another question that has been raised is what Sinema’s defection means for her staff.

When Democrat-turned-Republican Rep. Jeff Van Drew of New Jersey switched in 2019 and expressed his “undying support” for then President Donald Trump, five staffers left his office.

It’s unclear whether any of Sinema’s staff members may be mulling a similar move.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Are unlisted ingredients in these vaccines proprietary secrets or unintentional contaminants?

More than 12.7 billion doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered since the treatment became available nearly two years ago. Some have received one or two doses, while others have had multiple doses. Yet many don’t know what these shots actually contain.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) website provides ingredient lists for curious consumers to consider. For example, vials from Moderna and BioNTech/Pfizer famously contain messenger ribonucleic acid (mRNA). This is a genetic sequence designed to program your cells to manufacture a spike protein, thereby training the immune system to guard against the signature spike of the COVID-19 virus in the wild.

Less well-known ingredients include a different mix of lipids (fats). Pfizer’s shot, for example, contains 4-hydroxybutyl, and Moderna’s contains SM-102. These shots also include polyethylene glycol, cholesterol, a few salts (such as potassium chloride and sodium chloride), and sucrose (sugar).

Johnson and Johnson’s (Janssen’s) vaccine doesn’t contain mRNA but instead features as its main mechanism of immune system training a recombinant, replication-incompetent adenovirus expressing the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. Like its mRNA counterparts mentioned above, the J&J vaccine contains a variety of other chemicals, such as citric acid monohydrate, trisodium citrate dihydrate, ethanol, 2 hydroxypropyl-beta-cyclodextrin, polysorbate-80, and sodium chloride.

Several items on the list of these publicly disclosed ingredients, such as mRNA and SM-102, come with controversy. Public health officials, regulators, and drug makers have been quick to defend these ingredients as safe and necessary to ensure the vaccines’ effectiveness.

Experts have also been quick to quash fears that the vaccines may contain other, even more questionable components not disclosed to the public.

https://subs.theepochtimes.com/template/show?tid=cc3f343f-227c-4eec-8289-8d2fe30e4467&sid=www.theepochtimes.com&v=9&ck=JTdCJTIyZXBvY2hfdXNlcl9pZCUyMiUzQSUyMnVzZXJfOWRmZTU0NmQ1NzNjODBjMTQwZTY3NTgwMTA2ZWQ5NTU2YjY2YzRjZCUyMiUyQyUyMmVwb2NoX3Nlc3Npb25pZCUyMiUzQSUyMl8zOU1xU3BvSW0ybUNHSW5MWCUyQnpLZ2pmenVpYVFnajljY0t5RGo2UkVRZUozRm9qT2JNRFAxdTRsZmJkbGRzeWpEcVlFeXJoYkMwUlhhcjg5Sm9qbW5pTjZXdmVtSjZEbTZNTjA4bm00WTBiSW1NVlYwdGFHTzJQZ29jJTNEJTIyJTJDJTIyZXBvY2hfdG9rZW4lMjIlM0ElMjJleUpoYkdjaU9pSlNVekkxTmlJc0luUjVjQ0k2SWtwWFZDSjkuZXlKbGVIQWlPakUzTURRNE16UTFPVEVzSWxSdmEyVnVWSGx3WlNJNklteGxkbVZzTVNJc0lrNWhiV1VpT2lKMWMyVnlYemxrWm1VMU5EWmtOVGN6WXpnd1l6RTBNR1UyTnpVNE1ERXdObVZrT1RVMU5tSTJObU0wWTJRaWZRLm85SGIxTnZKY3luX2ZVTzlnV0ZLUkhEd0IzUXJsRjV0UXV6MXlmYV8xUkRkY0VWMmFmcXlUMFZPOVpaY3RzUVhfdDdrVTBIWmRmQl85U1NMN1lYWjVaQkZiTHRaRC1VZ051eTM3cDhWMDNVR0NneGRzUUZsQ3l6YnA1N0NWY2MtYUpTSlB5R1VCZU9jalEwemxTRkJYRFFxRl8zT015ZXdvZmx2TGhGZDlCTSUyMiUyQyUyMmVwb2NoX3N1YnNjcmliZWQlMjIlM0ElMjIlMjIlN0Q=&pl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theepochtimes.com%2Fhealth%2Fpeeking-inside-the-covid-vaccine_4881567.html%3Futm_source%3DNews%26src_src%3DNews%26utm_campaign%3Dbreaking-2022-12-10-3%26src_cmp%3Dbreaking-2022-12-10-3%26utm_medium%3Demail%26est%3DfdZk6MLs8EimUkYDOzEz2PucQehLjni6WQCatK9f2Xvb0XTlEr1IDvdekolP3kcSvA%253D%253D&u=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&tn=newsletter_widget&dna=%7B%22u_s%22%3A%22News%22%2C%22u_c%22%3A%22breaking-2022-12-10-3%22%2C%22r%22%3A%22%22%2C%22pid%22%3A%22anon641b-6b0b-4cdc-aba3-31d915c05851%22%2C%22uid%22%3A%22user_9dfe546d573c80c140e67580106ed9556b66c4cd%22%2C%22x%22%3A%2228-850-676%22%2C%22vt%22%3A0%2C%22g1%22%3A%22us%22%2C%22g2%22%3A%22md%22%7D&source=health&email=walkerboh2112%40msn.com

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention addresses common vaccine-related concerns such as these on its website, stating that the “vaccines do NOT contain ingredients like preservatives, tissues (such as aborted fetal cells), antibiotics, food proteins, medicines, latex, or metals.”

In regard to metals, however, some research suggests otherwise.

Presence of Metals

Earlier this year, the German Working Group for COVID Vaccine Analysis (GWG) released a report detailing what they found when examining various vaccine vials. GWG is an international network of more than 60 scientists, medical doctors, and other experts. Their goal is an in-depth laboratory analysis of these vaccines.

A microbiologist and gain of function expert from GWG, Sabine Stebel, presented the group’s findings before the World Council for Health General Assembly on Sept. 5. Researchers looked at most of the COVID-19 vaccines on the market: Johnson and Johnson, Moderna, and AstraZeneca, as well as the only shot that has received full FDA approval—Pfizer’s Comirnaty (other vaccine options have merely received emergency use authorization.)

GWG examined vials using scanning electron microscopy and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. What they found were relatively large metallic foreign bodies. The European Union’s good manufacturing practice (GMP) standards permit particle sizes no greater than a quarter of a micrometer, but GWG’s analysis discovered many metal particles from several batches that measured in the double digits. These metallic objects were found in all Pfizer and AstraZeneca vials studied, as well as some Johnson and Johnson vials, GWG said.

“If you filter a substance that is to be injected properly, you shouldn’t see anything under the microscope,” Stebel said in her presentation. “These structures are definitely too big to be injected into a living person.”

The types of particles found consisted of alkali metals such as cesium and potassium, alkaline earth metals such as calcium and barium, and cobalt, iron, chromium, and titanium. Researchers also found rare earth metals such as cerium and gadolinium, as well as aluminum, silicon, and sulfur.

Although some of these elements are nontoxic and even essential to human health, many can be highly toxic even at low doses.

One example is barium, which is toxic to humans and animals in soluble form. In high concentrations, barium blocks the passive potassium channels in the cell membrane. This leads to disturbed muscle cell function and potassium deficiency in the blood, as potassium remains in cells in increased amounts.

Another example of toxic potential found in the vaccines is the heavy metal cobalt. Although minute amounts of cobalt are essential to life, in the event of an overdose, it can lead to symptoms such as nausea, visual disturbances, heart problems, and damage to the thyroid gland.

Gadolinium is a rare earth metal used as a contrast agent in magnetic resonance imaging, but the metal can be highly toxic and can accumulate in the brain and bones.

Only Moderna vials revealed a significant concentration of antimony, which was found in the greatest concentration compared to other metal elements.

Changes in Blood

In addition to analyzing vaccine vials, GWG researchers analyzed the blood of vaccinated individuals and compared it to blood samples from nonvaccinated individuals. They found that the blood from all the vaccinated patients they tested (specifically those having had either the BioNTech/Pfizer or the Moderna vaccines) presented “novel structures,” such as rectangular crystals and spirals.

“These kinds of structures have never been found in human blood before. These structures were most frequently found in the Comirnaty vaccine from BioNTech/Pfizer,” the report reads.

Injected people have 100 percent consistently altered blood as seen with live cell dark field microscopy. This includes impeded blood flow with red blood cells sticking to each other, even to the extreme of “rouleaux formation,” and profoundly decreased red blood cell stability and survival.

Another feature of vaccinated blood samples was the degradation of the blood itself. The report provides images from live blood cell analysis of the cell membranes of erythrocytes (red blood cells that look like concave discs) that have become deformed and notes an “unusually rapid disintegration of the different types of cells in the vaccinated blood.” Such cell deformations are usually only seen in chronically ill people and people with severe degenerative diseases.

Researchers also observed frequent examples of blood clots and changes in blood viscosity, with vaccinated individuals demonstrating reduced blood flow capacity because of blood cells sticking to one another.

Contamination or Proprietary Secret?

Do these mystery metals serve some kind of function in the vaccine formulas, or are they merely the result of unintentional contamination?

Drug makers admit contamination is possible, as the GWG wasn’t the first to detect metal in the vials. The group’s work was initially inspired by news of stainless steel contaminants found in Moderna vaccine vials in Japan in 2021.

The deaths of two men aged between 30 and 40 occurred within days of receiving their second Moderna dose from the contaminated batches. However, Japan’s Health Ministry stated that it didn’t believe the stainless steel particles posed any additional health risk. And Moderna didn’t indicate that the presence of the particles was a part of their vaccine recipe. They stated that the contamination probably occurred during production.

Later that year, foreign material was found in unused Pfizer vials at vaccination sites in three Japanese cities. The vials (95 in total) all belonged to the same lot, but the cities that had the vials couldn’t identify the contents. They requested that Pfizer analyze the white floating matter.

At a press conference, Pfizer’s Japanese subsidiary surmised that the material was likely vaccine ingredients that hadn’t been fully dissolved and that they posed no safety or efficacy issues. The company said in a statement that it was aware of the report and was “conducting a full investigation.”

What else can be found in these vaccines? That depends on the analysis. Consider the conclusions from a Spanish-based study that found the presence of something called graphene oxide, a type of nanomaterial used in various biomedical applications.

Pablo Campra, a chemical sciences professor and researcher at Universidad de Almería in Spain, found evidence of graphene-like nanoparticles in numerous vials from four different vaccine makers. The graphene was detected using a spectroscopy technique called micro-Raman, which employs laser photons to vibrate molecules. Campra’s report from November 2021 details his technique and the results of his findings.

Campra employed the micro-Raman technique after screening various objects selected for their graphene-like appearance under optical microscopy and found conclusive evidence of graphene oxide structures

Analyses other than Campra’s have detected graphene nano-structures in the COVID vaccines. Yet the drug industry and public health experts explicitly state that these vaccines contain no such thing.

However, there’s evidence to suggest that vaccine makers may one day add graphene to their formula. A May 2021 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences determined that graphene oxide nanoparticles could be effective in a flu vaccine because of the material’s “high antigen-loading capacities and superior immunoenhancing properties.” Researchers say this material “can be easily adapted for constructing mucosal vaccines of different respiratory pathogens.”

Another study from May 2021 suggests that graphene oxide “nanosheets” may make valuable additions to personal protective equipment and other medical applications.

Researchers concluded that the only concern for adding graphene oxide was its potential for toxicity.

It would hardly be the first time a toxic substance was added to medicine. Many drugs employ toxic substances in low doses to provide a medicinal effect. Antimony, for example—the metal GWG found in Moderna vials—is used as an antiprotozoal adjuvant in some traditional vaccines.

The question is, are the metals and nanomaterials independent researchers are finding in vaccine vials part of a proprietary secret or unintentional contamination?

If it’s a proprietary secret, the application is inconsistent. GWG’s report states that their research team found no graphene in the vaccine samples they analyzed.

However, the materials GWG found don’t seem to be an accident either. The report notes that the Pfizer doses in particular exhibit a vast number of crystalline platelets and shapes that can “hardly be interpreted as impurities.”

“They appear regularly and in large numbers in all samples,” it reads.

Their report stresses that this summary isn’t the final word, but is instead “a preliminary, continuously evolving presentation of research.” Scientists call for further investigation and discussion.

“Much still remains to be analyzed, but what we have found—we are convinced—is so important that the public in general and the scientific community in particular must be informed about it. There needs to be a wider understanding of the dangers that the COVID-19 vaccines pose to health and research into how the worst effects of these vaccines can be prevented, or at least mitigated,” researchers wrote.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Travis Allen and his daughter, Blake, were suspended for speaking up.

When Blake Allen, a 14-year-old female high school student at Randolph Union High School in Vermont, had her privacy violated by a male student who identified as a female, she was understandably horrified and embarrassed. The male student entered the girls’ locker room where she and her volleyball teammates were changing.

But when Blake raised her discomfort and concerns to school officials, they not only did nothing to protect the girls, they also suspended Blake and her father for speaking up.

After Blake had expressed concerns to classmates that the male student was “literally a dude,” the school accused her of harassment and bullying, launched an investigation, and eventually suspended her.

As further punishment—and as a condition for avoiding further suspensions—the school demanded she submit a “reflective essay” and take part in a “restorative circle” with the “Equity Coordinator” and other students “to understand the rights of students to access public accommodations . . . in a manner consistent with their gender identity.”

If that sounds like “re-education” to you, that’s because it is.

All this—because she called a male student a male, and because she asked the school to provide her with a basic level of safety and privacy.

Her father, Travis, a middle school coach, was also frustrated at the school’s shocking response. He expressed those concerns in a community Facebook post, again noting that the male student was, in fact, male. And that he had no business being in the girls’ locker room.

For that, school district officials determined that Travis had “misgendered” the male student and suspended him from his job as the middle school girls’ soccer coach for the rest of the season—without pay.

Thankfully, once Travis and Blake reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom, the school lifted Blake’s suspension and punishment. But Travis remains suspended, and ADF will continue to demand the school district respect his right to free speech.

No school or government has the right to punish someone for exercising their free speech. ADF is committed to defending individuals from radical policies and officials that deny biological realities and threaten those who stand for truth.

Right now, you can help fuel our ability to defend Blake, Travis, and others who face threats to their fundamental freedoms. Will you make a gift right now to help ensure they can speak freely? Your generous gifts will truly make a difference—thank you for standing with us!

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Republican senator has been censured over voting for a bill that supports same-sex marriage.

Sen. Todd Young (R-Ind.) was censured by the Cass County Republican Central Committee, according to a letter obtained by The Epoch Times.

Young’s vote in favor of the Respect for Marriage Act, which codifies the Supreme Court’s 2015 ruling that requires states to license gay marriage and repeals the Defense of Marriage Act, triggered the censure.

“This was not a decision that was made abruptly nor without a large amount of discussion. Your decision elicited feelings of anger, disbelief, and even a sense of betrayal. We are not just fiscal conservatives, but social conservatives as well,” David Richey, chairman of the Republican committee, said in the censure letter to Young.

The senator defended his vote in a recent op-ed, saying the new bill “ensures dignity and respect for all Hoosiers.”

He brushed off concerns that religious liberty groups and some of his colleagues offered, including concerns that the bill will lead to lawsuits against individuals and entities that stand up for the belief that marriage is between a man and a woman.

“One concern I’ve heard from people of faith is that they worry their churches, schools, adoption agencies and faith-based organizations will be subject to lawsuits if they refuse services to same-sex couples. The text of the bill plainly states they will not,” Young said.

The act states, in part, that, “nothing in this act, or any amendment made by this act, shall be construed to diminish or abrogate a religious liberty or conscience protection otherwise available to an individual or organization under the Constitution of the United States or federal law.”

Richey said the opinion piece “only confirmed our concerns that you have departed from the deeply held views of the vast majority of your fellow Hoosiers” and that Young switched his views on the issue.

“On this matter (regarding same-sex marriage), you had previously stated that you felt matters like this were best handled by the States, not in the Federal venue. Now we find—right after we endorsed and voted for you in November—that you’ve changed your mind,” Richey said.

Richey said the bill “will have a chilling effect on religious freedom and further undermine the traditional family,” will lead to lawsuits, and will codify “an incorrect understanding of marriage, further embedding it in the American legal fabric.”

The committee not only censured Young—a symbolic action that could have an impact on Young’s next reelection bid, should he run—but sent copies of the letter to every Republican chairman in the state along with requests for the chairman to send similar rebukes.

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

Richey told The Epoch Times via email that Young responded to Richey. The response was what Young previously released explaining his vote.

Other Senators

The Respect for Marriage Act only passed the Senate because it drew support from Young and eleven other Republicans.

Most measures require 60 or more votes in the Senate. Democrats or nominal independents who regularly side with the left hold 50 seats.

Young was joined by Sens. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.), Richard Burr (R-N.C.), Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), Susan Collins (R-Maine), Joni Ernst (R-Iowa), Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.), Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska), Rob Portman (R-Ohio), Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska), and Thom Tillis (R-N.C.) in crossing the aisle and helping pass the bill.

Many of the other Republicans also defended their votes.

“The Respect for Marriage Act would ensure that all married couples—including same-sex and interracial couples—are entitled to the rights and responsibilities of marriage, regardless of the state in which they live,” Collins said in a statement. “Let us remember that we are talking about our family members, our neighbors, our co-workers, our friends. I am proud to have stood—and I will continue to stand—with them in the efforts to secure their rights, while also steadfastly protecting and respecting religious liberty.”

Striking a balance that protects fundamental religious beliefs with individual liberties was the intent of our forefathers in the U.S. Constitution and I believe the Respect for Marriage Act reflects this balance,” Lummis said.

The vote came after the Senate amended the version passed by the House of Representatives, including inserting language that states no houses of worship or person would be required to perform a same-sex marriage.

House Vote

After the Senate amendment, the House voted on Dec. 8 to approve the updated measure. Thirty-nine Republicans voted in favor, along with all Democrats.

“Today’s vote to protect marriage and protect religious liberties marks the end of a long fight for the basic civil right for any two people to marry without discrimination,” Rep. Nancy Mace (R-S.C.), one of the Republicans who voted in favor, said in a statement. “The right to marry whoever you love regardless of the color of your skin or orientation shouldn’t be controversial. Our nation was built on the notion of individual liberty. This vote marks another step forward in the American people’s constant fight for freedom.”

Rep. Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), among those who voted no, differed.

“This legislation threatens the religious liberty of Americans of faith and endangers faith-based organizations that oppose same-sex marriage,” he said in a statement. “Pastors, priests, nuns, rabbis, churches, faith-based adoption agencies, religious schools and universities, Christian-owned businesses, etc. are all now subject to lawsuits for simply adhering to deeply held convictions on marriage.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Maxwell Alejandro Frost, who is to become the first member of Generation Z in the United States House of Representatives, said on Dec. 8 that his “really bad” credit score got his application to an apartment in Washington denied.

“Just applied to an apartment in D.C. where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine,” Frost wrote on Thursday morning.

Frost, a 25-year-old community organizer from Orlando, is heading to the nation’s capital as the youngest man in Congress. But he is struggling to get housing in Washington.

“Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee,” he said, adding that “this ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.”

Frost later explained that when he was running for Congress he “ran up a lot of debt.”

“For those asking, I have bad credit cause I ran up a lot of debt running for Congress for a year and a half,” he said.

“Didn’t make enough money from Uber itself to pay for my living.”

Just applied to an apartment in DC where I told the guy that my credit was really bad. He said I’d be fine. Got denied, lost the apartment, and the application fee.

This ain’t meant for people who don’t already have money.

— Maxwell Alejandro Frost (@MaxwellFrostFL) December 8, 2022

Credit Score and Rent

Frost said he sought to use a letter from the House to show the salary he is starting to collect from January, which is $174,000 per year as a House member, but it didn’t work.

“In this country we allow numbers like credit scores to completely define a human,” he told Bloomberg. “It just shows how much of a problem we have.”

While the Florida native didn’t disclose the size of his debt, he said the apartment was within his budget.

The apartment he applied for was in the Navy Yard neighborhood, he told The Washington Post. The area is located only over a mile away from the U.S. Capital.

By Dec. 4, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in Navy Yard, Washington, is $2,800, according to Zillow. The website noted the price marked a 13 percent year-on-year increase.

Across Washington, the median rent for a one-bedroom apartment stands at $2,200, according to Zillow. But the median line varies among websites. The median price for a one-bedroom apartment is $1,786, according to a December report by Apartment List, an online rental marketplace.

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) also encountered the same problem after the former bartender won the election in 2018, Frost said.

Ocasio-Cortez, who was 29 years old at that time, said she was left with no income during the transition period.

“I have three months without a salary before I’m a member of Congress. So, how do I get an apartment? Those little things are very real,” she said in a 2018 interview with New York Times.

First Gen Z

To campaign full time, Frost said he quit his job as a Uber driver.

“For that primary, I quit my full time job cause I knew that to win at 25 [years] old, I’d need to be a full time candidate. 7 days a week, 10–12 hours a day. It’s not sustainable or right but it’s what we had to do,” he said on Twitter.

Frost is a former March For Our Lives organizer seeking stricter gun control laws and has campaigned for his opposition to the overturn of the Roe v. Wade abortion decision, increasing housing access, among other policies.

Last month, the young activist won the election to replace Rep. Val Demings in a heavily blue Orlando-area district, who ran as the Democrat candidate for senator against incumbent Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.).

He is about to be the first member of Generation Z to serve the legislative body, where the average age of the current member is 58 years old. Generation Z generally refers to those born between the late 1990s to early 2010s. To become a member of Congress, candidates must be at least 25 years old.

The incoming Congressman celebrated on Twitter.

“WE WON!!!! History was made tonight. We made history for Floridians, for Gen Z, and for everyone who believes we deserve a better future. I am beyond thankful for the opportunity to represent my home in the United States Congress,”  Frost wrote on Nov. 9.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Millions of Americans could face a “refund shock” when they file their taxes next year because a number of pandemic-related programs are set to expire or have expired, said an analyst.

Data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) shows that the average refund taxpayers got back for their 2021 taxes was about $3,200, or some around 14 percent higher than the previous year. The next refunds will average about $2,700, said Mark Steber, chief tax information officer at Jackson Hewitt.

The 2021 tax year “was quite a remarkable year with the insertion of all those new tax breaks,” Steber told CBS News this week. “But jump ahead to this year, and a lot of the increases expired, hence the term ‘refund shock’ or ‘refund surprise.’”

Due to the expiration of some programs, “You’re probably going to have not as pleasant an experience as you had last year,” he noted. “There were larger, enhanced tax credits available last year that aren’t available this year,” Steber also remarked.

For example, the child tax credit is one benefit that will shrink when parents file their 2022 taxes. Normally, parents get about $2,000 for each of their children, but in 2021, the benefit increased to $3,600 for every child under 6 and $3,000 for minor children aged 6 and older.

Also, the Child and Dependent Care Credit that parents can use to pay for child care was boosted under the Biden administration-backed American Rescue Plan. That raised the credit up to $8,000 per family in 2021, or more than in previous years.

The IRS has already issued notices about potentially smaller tax refunds, noting in November that “taxpayers will not receive an additional stimulus payment with a 2023 tax refund because there were no economic impact payments for 2022.”

Additionally, the agency said, it will be more difficult to claim a deduction for a charitable contribution on a 2022 tax return.

“The IRS cautions taxpayers not to rely on receiving a 2022 federal tax refund by a certain date, especially when making major purchases or paying bills,” the agency said last month. “Some returns may require additional review and may take longer.”

Online Services

The agency this week again wrote that Americans who made more than $600 online selling goods and services will have that income reported to the IRS.

People who made money via eBay, Etsy, Poshmark, Uber, and other digital services will face the new scrutiny and rules. It applies to anyone who made more than $600 via those platforms or via Venmo, Cash App, Zelle, PayPal, or similar platforms in return for goods and services.

“This is the second in a series of reminders to help taxpayers get ready for the upcoming tax filing season. A ‘Get Ready’ page outlines steps taxpayers can take now to make tax filing easier in 2023,” the IRS said in a news release Tuesday.

It noted that before 2022, tax form 1099-K was “issued for third-party networks transactions only if the total number of transactions exceeded 200 for the year and the aggregate amount of these transactions exceeded $20,000.” But the Biden administration-backed “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021 lowered the reporting threshold for third party networks that process payments for those doing business,” according to the agency.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Most people are taught that petroleum is formed deep under the Earth over the course of millions of years and is derived from the remains of plankton, plants, and other biological organisms. This explanation is stated matter-of-factly on certain government and educational websites.

This theory for oil formation is, however, just that—a theory. There is an opposing view that has substantial evidence to back it up.

Credence for oil’s organic origin (biotic origin) is strong in the United States, while the idea of an inorganic origin (abiotic origin) has long been accepted among post-Soviet scientists. Some American scientists have also jumped on the abiotic train, scorned though it may be by most of their peers.

They point to problems posed by the idea that oil comes from dead plants.

Where Did All That Dead Stuff Come From?

When a plant or animal dies, very little of its matter is buried. Nature recycles—some of nature’s greatest recyclers are insects, microorganisms, fungi, and bacteria. Has enough organic matter really been buried below the Earth to create trillions of barrels of oil?

Moreover, the biotic theory holds that organic matter must fit within the “oil window” before becoming oil. The oil window refers to a set of conditions, including reaching a particular depth (1 to 2.5 miles) where the temperature is right (140 to 300 degrees Fahrenheit) for oil to be produced.

Proponents of the alternative, abiotic theory, say oil may instead be a primordial substance that rises up from the Earth’s depths through fissures. Thus, oil might originate independently of organic sources undergoing chemical processes, similar to how methane is found on asteroids or in other barren environments.

Skeptics say methane is a simpler substance than petroleum; the process of forming the hydrocarbons in petroleum is more complex and the same logic might not hold.

Striking Oil Based On Abiotic Theory

Siljan Ring: Thomas Gold of New York’s Cornell University, who died in 2004, was a vocal proponent of abiotic theory. He advised a team that drilled in central Sweden in the late 1980s and early 1990s at a site known as the Siljan Ring that would have been seen as unpromising, to say the least, by surveyors working from a biotic perspective.

Conventional oil exploration confines itself to sedimentary basins. It is believed that plankton sinks to the bottom of bodies of water when it dies and is buried in sediment, which gets forced down over time until reaching the right conditions: the oil window.

The Siljan Ring, on the other hand, is not sediment-rich. What sediments are there, Gold said, are no deeper than 1,000 feet (300 meters), while the drilling was done at a depth of 3 to 7 miles (5 to 7 kilometers).

Albeit the drilling did not find the “gas field of world class dimensions” Gold predicted; it struck 80 barrels of oil, enough for Gold to feel vindicated and make some scientists reconsider his views. Of course, conventional drilling also doesn’t always strike it rich when surveyors think an area looks promising.

Yet, critics posited that oil seeped down there from sedimentary rock, to which Gold rebutted: “Oil seepage generated after 360 million years from such a small quantity of sediments seemed improbable.”

Oil Fields in Ukraine: A strong proponent of abiotic theory, Professor Vladilen A. Krayushkin, Chairman of the Department of Petroleum Exploration at the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, is quoted in a 1996 paper by Dr. J. F. Kenney, titled “Special Edition on The Future of Petroleum.”

Krayushkin said: “The eleven major and one giant oil and gas fields here described have been discovered in a region which had, forty years ago, been condemned as possessing no potential for petroleum production. The exploration for these fields was conducted entirely according to the perspective of the modern Russian-Ukrainian theory of abyssal, abiotic petroleum origins.

“The drilling which resulted in these discoveries was extended purposely deep into the crystalline basement rock. … These reserves amount to at least 8,200M metric tons [more than 57 billion barrels] of recoverable oil and 100B cubic meters [328 billion cubic feet] of recoverable gas, and are thereby comparable to those of the North Slope of Alaska.”

Eugene Island: On Eugene Island, Louisiana, in 1995, it was reported that the oil fields were—perplexingly—refilling themselves after being depleted. The findings of Dr. Jean K. Whelan, part of a U.S. Department of Energy exploration program, seem to support the abiotic theory to explain this. She found that the oil likely came from great depths, as abiotic proponents say.

A New York Times article from that time explained: “[Whelan] has found evidence of differences in the composition of oil over periods of time as it flows from greater to shallower depths. By gauging degradative chemical changes in the oil resulting from action by oil-eating bacteria, she infers that oil is moving in quite rapid spurts from great depths to reservoirs closer to the surface.”

Whelan also supported a theory of Gold’s that microbes eat oil, thus explaining the presence of biological material found in oil at great depths.

Skeptics

Whelan, like Gold, met with criticism. One of the major arguments against abiotic theory is that oil migrates with underground water, thus explaining oil found in unexpected places absent of sedimentary rock. Thus, the weird uniformity of oil found in different types of rock formations of different ages is the result of oil migrating to other places.

Petroleum engineer and consultant Jean H. Laherrère wrote a detailed, point-by-point rebuttal of Gold’s arguments. Gold had already died by this point, and was unable to respond. Laherrère said Gold was surely aware of this information.

Laherrère offers alternative explanations rather than direct disproofs. He sometimes seems to take Gold’s comments out of context or treat them as standalone arguments for abiotic theory. The paper does, however, consider both sides of the argument with many of Laherrère’s responses boiling down to the fact of oil migration explaining away the abiotic proposition.

The presence of certain metals and helium found in petroleum, too, are explained from both sides.

Since oil takes millions of years to form, and no one has witnessed it firsthand, whatever evidence is submitted on either side is difficult to qualify. If the abiotic theory is correct, though, it could have vast ramifications for the energy industry. If oil production were calibrated accordingly, “fossil fuel” could come to be regarded as a renewable energy source.

Gold a “Heretic?”

In a Cornell article written after Gold’s passing, Gold is quoted saying, “I don’t enjoy my role as heretic. … It’s annoying.”

The article goes on: “Indeed, despite the intense opposition they often encountered, many of Gold’s most outrageous—and passionately held—ideas had a curious habit of turning out to be right.”

Some of his theories—such as regarding the human ear’s mechanisms for hearing, the nature of pulsars in space, and the existence of fine rock powder on the moon—were scoffed at for decades before being vindicated and becoming widely accepted.

Gold has been compared to famed astronomer Carl Sagan, whom Gold was responsible for bringing to Cornell in 1968, after Sagan was denied tenure by Harvard. The Cornell article quotes Keay Davidson’s words from a 1999 biography of Sagan: “Gold epitomized Cornell’s openness to offbeat geniuses.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A Florida mom who was fired for signing her work emails “In Christ” has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against her former employer.

The anti-religious discrimination lawsuit was filed on Dec. 2 in a U.S. District Court in Jacksonville. Records in it show that three supervisors at Computershare Loan Services objected to employee Andrea Jensen’s use of the religious signoff and warned her she would be fired if she didn’t stop using it.

“I noticed that your email auto signature does not align with the company standards,” one of the supervisors wrote in an email to Jensen, who is a devout Catholic.

It would be first in a series of emails sent to the mother of an 18-month-old, who worked as a loan closer for Computershare, a global stock transfer company.

Jensen told The Epoch Times that she has long used “In Christ” as her closing in her emails, both personal and work-related and that she sees the valediction as no different than the commonly used “Sincerely,” “Best,” or “Respectfully Yours” signoffs.

“It was pure and simple religious discrimination,” she said.

A spokesperson for Computershare forwarded The Epoch Times a message saying the company is unable to comment on legal proceedings.

When Jensen protested, noting the company was displaying a lesbian, gay, and bisexual banner on the main page of its website. She said her supervisors accused of discrimination and told her she was violating the company’s diversity policies by opposing the flag.

“You are asked to keep any personal opinions of this nature to yourself whilst at work/carrying out the duties of your employment,” one of the supervisors wrote to Jensen who was also referred to the company’s “diversity and inclusion manager.”

Computershare declined to comment on Jensen’s firing.

Jensen said the irony of the case is that her emails were mostly to title companies that never once complained about her use of “In Christ.”

Headquartered in Australia, the company also does business in the United States under the name Specialized Loan Servicing LLC.

Jennifer Vasquez, Jensen’s attorney and also an attorney affiliated with The Liberty Counsel, brought the suit against Computershare under Title VII, which prohibits any employer from terminating or discriminating against an employee on the ground of religious beliefs.

“It would have been clear to any reasonable reader that the phrase ‘In Christ’ in Ms. Jensen’s emails reflected her personal religious beliefs and was placed there on her own accord. The phrase was not harassing, hateful, rude, or inflammatory,” Vasquez wrote in the lawsuit.

Title VII is being used more frequently to compel hospitals to grant religious exemptions from vaccines for healthcare workers and is seen as a possible means to fight the ongoing termination of healthcare workers who refuse the COVID-19 vaccination on religious grounds.

Vasquez said COVID seems to have escalated a “disturbing rise” in what she called “very anti-Christian beliefs” in America.

Correction: A previous version of this article erroneously described Vasquez’s place of employment and affiliation. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court agreed on Dec. 9 to hear the appeal of a California man convicted of facilitating illegal immigration by promising would-be immigrants they could remain in the United States permanently if they enrolled in a non-existent “adult adoption” program.

The man’s lawyers say the conviction should be overturned because he was engaged in free speech protected by the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

The case comes two years after the Supreme Court ruled against San Jose, California-based immigration consultant Evelyn Sineneng-Smith who was accused of duping illegal aliens into paying her fees to file frivolous applications for visas and encouraging them to stay in the country unlawfully. The program under which the clients sought immigration status was real but had expired by the time Sineneng-Smith steered them toward it.

An appeals court found that the law under which the woman was convicted was “unconstitutionally overbroad” because it “criminalizes a substantial amount of protected expression in relation to the statute’s narrow legitimate sweep.” But the Supreme Court reversed on procedural grounds, without reaching the First Amendment question, The Epoch Times reported at the time.

Helaman Hansen of Elk Grove, California, was convicted by a federal jury of getting at least 471 prospective immigrants from 2012 to 2016 to sign up for the fraudulent program that he claimed would put them on a path to citizenship. Hansen charged his victims up to $10,000 each to enroll in the scheme. The individuals were falsely advised that they could become U.S. citizens if they were to be adopted by an existing U.S. citizen. Some of the individuals Hansen dealt with were already present unlawfully in the U.S., while others had legal status but chose to overstay their visas after he assured them it would not be a problem.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled in Hansen’s favor, finding that the relevant laws violated constitutionally protected free speech rights.

“Merely encouraging someone to engage in illegal activity is protected by the First Amendment,” Hansen’s lawyers said in a brief (pdf) filed Oct. 28.

The so-called encouragement provision in Section 1324 of the Immigration and Nationality Act prohibits “encourag[ing] or induc[ing] an alien to come to, enter, or reside in the United States, knowing or in reckless disregard of the fact that such coming to, entry, or residence is or will be in violation of law.”

The 9th Circuit found the statute “criminalizes a substantial amount of speech protected by the First Amendment and is unconstitutionally overbroad,” according to the brief.

The case is United States v. Hansen, court file 22-179. The Supreme Court granted the petition for certiorari, or review, near close of business on Dec. 9 in an unsigned order. No justices indicated they were dissenting from the decision to grant the hearing.

Hansen was convicted of two counts of encouraging or inducing unlawful immigration for private financial gain, 12 counts of mail fraud, and three counts of wire fraud. The federal district court sentenced him to 20 years of imprisonment, to be followed by two years of supervised release, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) stated in a brief (pdf) filed with the court.

“Laws against incentivizing or procuring civil immigration violations have a particularly long pedigree,” the DOJ said. “This Court recognized more than a century ago, without discussing the First Amendment, that Congress’s power to define the immigration laws goes hand-in-hand with its ability to prohibit encouraging someone to violate those laws.”

After the sentencing in 2017, Phillip Talbert, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, said the sentence “acknowledges the vast number of people victimized by the defendant. He preyed upon hundreds of people who wanted to find a pathway to American citizenship and exploited their hopes and dreams for his own financial gain. The defendant’s lies and false promises caused many to part with substantial amounts of money, and in some instances, a lifetime’s worth of savings.”

Hansen’s attorney, Carolyn Wiggin of the Office of the Federal Defender in Sacramento, told The Epoch Times she was pleased that the high court agreed to take her client’s case.

“I am looking forward to continuing to advocate for Mr. Hansen. The Ninth Circuit, as well as the Tenth Circuit in a separate case, recognized that under the plain language of the statutory subsection, a vast amount of speech protected by the First Amendment is criminalized,” she said by email.

“I hope the Supreme Court clarifies that the subsection is void under the First Amendment,” Wiggin said.

The Epoch Times reached out for comment to the U.S. Department of Justice but had not received a reply as of press time.

The case is expected to be heard early next year or in the spring.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Bobby Powell, the former Michigan radio journalist and podcaster who went public with video evidence he said showed federal agents attacking the Capitol on Jan. 6, is recovering in a Florida hospital after suffering his fourth heart attack in two years.

Powell, 58, was undergoing a cardiac stress test when he suffered a “massive” heart attack, his fiancé Cherie posted on Truth Social. He underwent emergency surgery to treat blockages to his heart and is expected to have a permanent defibrillator implanted in the near future.

“This is number four since J6, five total in the last three years,” Powell told The Epoch Times in an email from his hospital room. “And it’s the last one I will survive.”

Powell said both atria of his heart were badly damaged by the attack. He has to wear a defibrillator jacket until the permanent defibrillator is implanted.

Powell was filming the crowds on the east terrace of the Capitol at about 2:15 p.m. Jan. 6 when Hunter Allen Ehmke jumped on a window sill and began smashing the glass. Ehmke was later arrested, convicted, and ordered to serve four months in jail.

While Powell was picking up the glass minutes later, a man dressed in dark tactical clothing approached him and asked why he didn’t open up the rest of the window. “Because I think that would probably be illegal,” Powell replied.

When Powell spun around with his camera, he caught the man as he pulled out a large section of the tempered glass and dropped it on the ground.

Minutes later, when Powell was approaching the entrance to the giant Columbus Doors, another man dressed in tactical clothing placed a hand on his back and shoved him into the foyer. That man was holding open one of the doors with a heavy wooden rod.

Powell has spent nearly two years trying to get attention for his video and a serious look from news media at possible federal involvement in the Capitol violence.

He said the FBI did not return repeated calls. Powell put his high-resolution video on thumb drives and traveled around the country trying to get public officials—including prosecutors, judges, and public defenders—to take notice.

It has been a tough sell. In fact, the pushback has been severe.

Powell said his podcast was demonetized on social media. The payment processor he used to accept donations canceled his account. His family doctor discharged him as a patient after Jan. 6, he said.

Powell has a podcast and publishes news on Substack, but the loss of revenue from YouTube struck a heavy blow. Days after he appeared on a Newsmax program, PayPal shut down his donation account. Since then, he has turned to GiveSendGo to help support his efforts.

Powell said a Republican official in Michigan offered him $200,000 to destroy the video and stop calling attention to it. When he refused, he said, the man made an implied assassination threat. Powell sold his Michigan home, bought a recreational vehicle, and moved to Florida.

Powell attended a protest in support of Oath Keepers member Jeremy Brown outside the Pinellas County Jail. A man arrested running away from the protest had pipe-bomb-making materials in his backpack.

Although the suspect was later released and police claimed the materials were not explosives, Powell believes the pipe bombs were meant for him when he spoke at the rally.

The efforts to call out possible government involvement in January 6 has had a “huge” deleterious effect on his heart, Powell said.

“No sleep, working 16–18 hours a day, seven days a week,” Powell said. “getting nowhere for 23 months aside from Epoch Times. Total frustration.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Student borrowers who object to Joe Biden’s move to forgive student loans at a cost of $1 trillion or more have asked the Supreme Court to hear their case.

Biden unveiled the plan in August in a move that critics said was a constitutionally dubious attempt to shore up Democrats’ fortunes in the Nov. 8 congressional elections. While the Congressional Budget Office said the plan could cost about $400 billion, a paper by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania estimates the price tag could exceed $1 trillion.

The government cited the Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act of 2003 (HEROES Act), temporarily putting a pause on student loan payments and interest during the recent pandemic. Earlier this year, the government said it enjoyed emergency authority under the law as a result of the pandemic to proceed with partial forgiveness of student loans.

The debt relief program has already been suspended by a federal court.

In Biden v. Nebraska, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit blocked the program from moving forward, issuing a nationwide injunction. When the Biden administration asked the Supreme Court to set aside the order, the high court denied the request and ruled (pdf) on Dec. 1 that it would hear oral arguments on the case in February 2023.

But in the case at hand, known as Department of Education v. Brown, court file 22A489, U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar asked (pdf) the Supreme Court on Dec. 2 to put on hold a separate ruling by Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court in Fort Worth, Texas. Pittman held on Nov. 10 that Biden exceeded his constitutional authority in creating the loan forgiveness program. Pittman, a Trump appointee, entered a nationwide injunction blocking the program.

In the case, borrower Myra Brown was deemed ineligible for loan relief and Alexander Taylor argued he was eligible for $10,000 in relief. They say the Department of Education improperly denied them the opportunity to participate in the public commenting process and that they would have urged the agency to provide greater debt relief.

The borrowers’ lawyer, John Michael Connolly of Consovoy McCarthy in Arlington, Virginia, filed a brief (pdf) with the Supreme Court arguing that the Department of Education violated the Administrative Procedure Act and the Higher Education Act by deciding “the key details of the program behind closed doors, including which individuals will receive debt forgiveness, how much of their debt will be forgiven, and which types of debt will qualify.”

“The result was predictable: some will benefit handsomely, some will be shortchanged, and others will be left out entirely,” the brief states.

Connolly told the high court the case shouldn’t be consolidated with the Nebraska case.

The “different facts, claims, and posture of” the Brown and Nebraska cases “make it possible that the Court’s decision in Nebraska will not resolve this case,” he wrote.

Prelogar filed a brief (pdf) with the high court on Dec. 8 urging it to stay Pittman’s order.

But Prelogar stated she agreed with the other side that, at a minimum, the court should agree to hear oral arguments on the case.

The court should hear the case alongside the Nebraska case, she added.

The student borrowers lack standing to challenge the debt relief program, she wrote.

They can’t, on the one hand, “claim to be injured” because the government’s plan provides too little debt relief, while at the same time ask the court to find that the government “can provide no debt relief at all—to them or to anyone else,” she noted.

The Department of Justice and Connolly didn’t reply to a request for comment from The Epoch Times by press time.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Court documents unsealed Thursday by a Colorado judge revealed that June 2021 charges against the suspected Club Q mass shooter relating to a bomb threat were dropped after his family members refused to cooperate with authorities or stand witness against him.

“The U.S. and Colorado constitutions require witnesses to stand in court in front of a jury subject to cross-examination and testify,” El Paso County District Attorney Michael Allen noted at a press conference Thursday.

Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, currently faces five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury as the suspected shooter in the Nov. 19 attack on Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Following that incident and Aldrich’s identification as the suspect, many among the public began to question why the previously dropped charges had not triggered Colorado’s red flag law, which could have led to Aldrich’s weapons being seized by authorities.

Until Thursday, those questions had gone unanswered, as the records regarding the 2021 incident were sealed. With the court’s decision to unseal the documents, however, Allen said he was finally free to address the matter.

The Incident

On June 18, 2021, the El Paso Sheriff’s Office responded to a 911 call from Aldrich’s grandmother, Pamela Pullen, who claimed that he was making a bomb in the basement of their home. She also said that he had told her he was going to be the “next mass killer” and that he had been collecting and storing ammunition, firearms, and bullet-proof body armor in the basement.

According to the police report, Pullen said Aldrich had been set off when she and his grandfather suggested they all move to Florida.

“You guys die today, and I’m taking you with me,” Aldrich allegedly responded, pointing a gun at his grandparents. “I’m loaded and ready. You’re not calling anyone.”

Aldrich’s grandparents managed to flee the home and call the police, and Aldrich was later arrested at his mother’s home after a standoff with the police.

Charges were formally filed on June 29, 2021, and included three counts of first-degree kidnapping and two counts of felony menacing.

Charges Dropped

Although Aldrich was initially held on a $1 million bond, Allen noted that the bond was lowered to $100,000 at a bond modification hearing in which Aldrich’s family members—the victims of his alleged crimes—came to his defense.

“His mother at that hearing described him as ‘loving’ and ‘passionate,’” Allen said. “His grandmother described him as ‘a sweet young man’ and [said] that he did not deserve to be in jail. The grandfather described him as ‘unusually bright’ and ‘someone who will take advantage of a second chance.’”

Aldrich bonded out of jail on Aug. 7, 2021, and on Jan. 27—after waiving a preliminary hearing and continuing his arraignment twice—he formally entered a not-guilty plea.

As trial preparations moved forward, however, by July 5, neither the prosecution nor the defense had been successful in serving Aldrich’s grandparents with subpoenas to appear in court.

“These witnesses have basically been avoiding everyone,” Aldrich’s legal team said, according to Allen.

As at that point, the prosecution had run out of time to fulfill its “speedy trial” obligations, the case was dismissed, and on Aug. 11, the court approved the defense’s motion to seal the records without objection from the district attorney.

Impact on Club Q

In his Thursday remarks, Allen stated that, under a search warrant, weapons had been seized from Aldrich’s home following the bomb threat incident, including a handgun with no specified serial number, model, or make and a semi-automatic rifle.

“It’s important to note that both of those weapons are still in the custody of the sheriff’s office today,” he added, specifying that they have been kept as evidence.

Allen also said that he believed prosecuting the 2021 incident would not have prevented the Club Q shooting, noting that Aldrich was prohibited from lawfully obtaining a gun throughout the 383 days his case was pending.

As for why an “extreme risk protection order” (ERPO), or red flag order, was not filed, he explained that filing felony charges achieves the same goal, as mandatory protection orders automatically take effect in those cases.

“We know from many years of experience that a piece of paper in the form of a mandatory protection order, or even a civil protection order, will not stop someone who is intent on hurting someone,” Allen said.

He also noted that the filing of ERPO petitions is a process of civil, not criminal, law and that under current law, district attorneys are not legally permitted to file them.

Lastly, Allen said he believed the prosecution of the 2021 case would not have prevented the Club Q shooting but added that he was unable to elaborate further on why due to the ongoing investigation.

“You’re just going to have to accept that statement that it would not have prevented Club Q,” he told one reporter. “Obviously, the firearms seized in that [2021] case are still in our possession. You can take that and I think extrapolate out to what that means.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced his team will be meeting Google Search in court in May of 2024. The Republican official is seeking to declare the search engine a common carrier in order to make them subject to state regulation.

Yost alleged in a press release about the case, “By manipulating search results to self-preference its own products, Google is tilting the playing field against consumers and against emerging competitors. It’s time to bring those unfair practices to an end.”

The lawsuit focuses on commerce issues, citing concerns about conflicts with anti-competition laws. Yost’s suit does not seek monetary damages.

The attorney general said his goal was to make Google a public utility when he announced that he was bringing the suit in 2021.

Yost argued Ohioans are harmed by Google because they cannot make the best choices if they don’t get all of the information.

“Google cannot use its dominance in search to squeeze out competitors of other services, like travel reservations, shopping, and consumer reviews,” Yost said in an update about the case.

According to John Whitehead, the president of The Rutherford Institute, if the Ohio attorney general wins his case, the decision would not apply to Google searches nationwide.

“The ruling, in this case, would only apply to people using Google in Ohio, and it does not appear that this case would subject Google to federal regulation,” Whitehead told The Epoch Times.

“If Google is made a common carrier under Ohio law, then people using Google in Ohio might presumably get different search results where Google does not prioritize placement of its products, services, and websites on search results pages.”

When asked if this case would likely be appealed, Whitehead said he believed it was “very likely that Google would appeal an adverse decision against it in order to be able to continue its normal operations.”

The attorney went on to explain potential delays saying, “If Google appeals an adverse ruling, the trial court’s ruling probably wouldn’t take effect while the appeal is pending.”

In May of this year, Yost announced that the court had decided to hear the state’s case against Google’s self-preferencing algorithm, calling it a “first-of-its-kind” decision.

The ruling by the Delaware County judge opened the door to subject Google to the same regulations put on public utility companies that require fair dealing.

Yost’s office made its case by likening data and search results to the currency of the internet.

“Unlike traditional markets where competitors can introduce equivalent but cheaper alternatives, consumers in the marketplace at issue here, i.e. internet searches, never pay a monetary fee.

“Thus, the nearly exclusive avenue for competitive entry is by creating a better search result,” the suit states.

Previous rulings have found that social media companies are not subject to common carrier regulation, however, Yost claims that since Google Search is the world’s leader in search engines, their standing should be viewed differently by the court.

This isn’t the first time Ohio has struggled with Google Search over its status.

In December 2020, Yost joined 37 other attorneys general in their federal lawsuit against Google which alleged the company had broken federal law.

The lawsuit accused Google of violating Section 2 of the Sherman Act, which is a federal statute precluding action that would restrict interstate commerce or competition in the open market.

Any agreement, plot, or alliance of commercial interests that restricts international or intrastate trade is forbidden in the law.

The federal case alleges that Google would be subject to 47 U.S. Code § 201, which states that it is the duty of the carriers to “furnish such communication service upon reasonable request.”

In their complaint, which was the third of its kind brought against the internet giant, the states alleged, “Google throttles consumers from bypassing its general search engine and going directly to their chosen destination, especially when those destinations threaten Google’s monopoly power.”

The attorneys general also asserted in the complaint that the subject of the suit had “methodically undertaken actions to entrench and reinforce its general search services and search-related advertising monopolies by stifling competition. As the gateway to the internet, Google has systematically degraded the ability of other companies to access consumers.”

“Google enjoys virtually untrammeled power over internet search traffic that extends to every state, district, and territory in the United States and, indeed, into nearly every home and onto nearly every smartphone used in the United States,” the suit states.

The plaintiffs in that case included Colorado, Nebraska, Arizona, Iowa, New York, North Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Alaska, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Idaho, Illinois, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Dakota, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Wyoming; the Commonwealths of Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, and Virginia; the Territory of Guam; and the District of Columbia.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Spokespersons for former President Donald Trump on Thursday elaborated on his campaign strategy weeks after he announced a third White House bid.

Since Trump’s presidential announcement at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, reports indicate that the former president has not left his home state of Florida to campaign.

“We are not going to play into the media’s game, where they are trying to dictate how we campaign,” Trump campaign spokesman Steven Cheung told Yahoo News in response to questions about the contest. The outlet highlighted several legal setbacks for Trump, his meeting with rapper Kanye West at Mar-a-Lago last month, and Republicans performing more poorly than anticipated during the 2022 midterm elections.

“This is a marathon, and our game plan is being implemented, even though the presidential calendar hasn’t been set yet and the 2022 midterm cycle just ended,” Cheung said. “We’re focused on building out the operation and putting in place a foundation to wage an overwhelming campaign that’s never been seen before. We’re building out teams in early voting states and making sure we are positioned to win.”

Trump on Nov. 15 became the first Republican to declare candidacy for the 2024 presidential contest. No other Republicans have announced presidential bids so far.

Former Vice President Mike Pence, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, and former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo have all indicated in recent weeks that they are likely to go ahead with campaigns despite Trump’s announcement. There has been speculation that Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis would also launch a presidential campaign, but so far, DeSantis has remained mum.

Since then, Trump has often posted on his Truth Social platform, namely about various investigations. In August, the FBI raided his Mar-a-Lago property and recovered documents, which Trump on Friday again wrote “was illegal,” adding: “Everything should be returned, at once!”

And earlier this week, the Trump Organization was convicted of tax fraud, falsifying business records, and conspiracy during a trial in New York City. The organization faces fines of up to $1.6 million at an upcoming sentencing hearing.

“It is a continuation of the Greatest Political Witch Hunt in the History of our Country,” Trump said in response to the conviction, adding that he will appeal the verdict. “New York City is a hard place to be “Trump.’”

Cash

A leading super PAC aligned with Trump, Maga Inc., has about $55 million cash on hand, it told Fox News on Thursday. The super PAC, or political action committee, reported bringing in $40 million in contributions between Oct. 20 and Nov. 28, with most funding coming from Trump’s Save America committee.

Taylor Budowich, a former Trump spokesman who now heads MAGA Inc., told Fox News that it is investing in analysis, communications, and research. The Epoch Times has contacted him for comment.

“MAGA Inc is in a position to make sure President Trump has the resources and support he needs for a commanding win in November 2024,” the committee said. “As the race develops, we will ensure every career politician … who decides to take on our MAGA movement is vetted and exposed. And we will continue to highlight his accomplishments of President Trump and the reasons why he is the only person positioned to Save America.”

Budowich added to the outlet that Trump is “building one of the most ruthless and talented teams in American politics, and he is the only person in the country who is ready and capable of reversing America’s decline.”

Over the years, Trump has shown a great ability to fundraise online via small-dollar donations compared with other GOP candidates. Even after leaving office in January 2021, the former president has remained highly popular among Republican voters. Reports indicated that he used about $15 million to support Senate candidates in Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

For the Georgia runoff race earlier this week, Trump notably did not make in-personal campaign appearances alongside GOP nominee Herschel Walker, who ultimately lost to Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) and later conceded.

“If Walker had won today, everyone would be giving (Georgia Gov.) Brian Kemp the credit,” Roger Stone, a former Trump campaign associate, told Yahoo News this week. “I’d say it was a loss for Kemp and (Senate Minority Leader) Mitch McConnell—they went all in on this,” he added.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Journalist Matt Taibbi published the third volume of the so-called “Twitter files” on Friday, exposing the social media platform’s censorship and deplatforming of former President Donald Trump.

The latest disclosure revealed that Twitter executives used the platform’s formidable “visibility filtering” powers against Trump ahead of the 2020 U.S. elections and that engagement with the FBI intensified before Trump was permanently suspended.

Endorsed by Twitter’s new owner Elon Musk, the “Twitter files” have exposed the social media company’s censorship machine.

The new report, report titled “The Removal of Donald Trump,” is the first of three specifically examining the actions of Twitter executives during the period from October 2020 to when Trump was deplatformed on Jan. 8, 2021.

Internal Slack chats at Twitter reveal that engagement between the company’s executives and federal law enforcement and intelligence organizations surged during this period.

“Whatever your opinion on the decision to remove Trump that day, the internal communications at Twitter between January 6th-January 8th have clear historical import,” Taibbi wrote. “Even Twitter’s employees understood in the moment it was a landmark moment in the annals of speech.”

“Is this the first sitting head of state to ever be suspended?” one Twitter employee, whose name is redacted, asked in a Slack chat that day.

Banning Trump

The messages show that Twitter executives removed Trump in part because of what one executive called the “context surrounding” the actions of Trump and his supporters “over the course of the election and frankly last 4+ years.”

In a message to Vijaya Gadde, Twitter’s former head of legal policy and trust, one executive whose name is redacted provided a “quick take” formulated by internal researchers and external academics to help decide whether to censor a Trump tweet or use it “as a last straw” before banning him.

The executive said the “decision on whether to pull that particular tweet” or use it “as a last straw” for Trump depends on “the overall context and narrative in which that tweet lives.”

“Context matters and the narrative that [T]rump and his friends have pursued over the course of this election and frankly last 4+ years must be taken into account,” the executive said, according to a screenshot of internal messages.

Before Trump was banned, Twitter also created a new tool to censor the then-sitting president after the election when he was vocal with his claims of election fraud. Internally, executives referred to the tool as “L3 deamplication.”

The new tool was announced on Dec. 10, 2020, when “Trump was in the middle of firing off 25 tweets saying things like, ‘A coup is taking place in front of our eyes,’” Taibbi wrote.

On Thursday, The Free Press editor Bari Weiss, another reporter handpicked by Musk as a conduit for releasing the files, published her report on the extent of Twitter’s tools for censorship, revealing the social media company’s secret blacklists. Her report noted that executives refer to “shadow banning” as “visibility filtering.”

Read More

Elon Musk Releases Twitter Files Exposing Secret Blacklists

Messages Show Twitter–FBI Relationship

The FBI sent reports to Twitter executives flagging particular tweets, which were then discussed internally, resulting in action taken to censor some tweets or have warning labels slapped on others.

Twitter executives set up a dedicated chat group in October 2020 to discuss election-related removals, the files show.

Neither the Trump campaign, the Trump White House, nor “Republicans generally” sent moderation requests to Twitter, Taibbi noted.

“We looked. They may exist: we were told they do. However, they were absent here,” he wrote.

The framework for justifying banning Trump was built in the months before January 2021, when federal agencies were meeting with Twitter executives more often, according to Taibbi.

At one point, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety, noted in a Slack message regarding Twitter’s censorship of the New York Post’s Hunter Biden laptop story that he had “weekly sync” meetings regarding election security with the FBI, Department of Homeland Security, and office of the Director of National Intelligence.

“As the election approached, senior executives—perhaps under pressure from federal agencies, with whom they met more as time progressed—increasingly struggled with rules, and began to speak of ‘vios’ as pretexts to do what they’d likely have done anyway,” Taibbi wrote.

Internal Slack chats suggest that communication lines between Twitter executives and the FBI were more intense after Jan. 6, 2021, and the chats illustrate executives’ attitudes toward the meetings.

One screenshot of internal messages showed a Slack chat from Roth about how difficult it was for him to conceal his FBI meetings in his calendar.

“I’m a big believer in calendar transparency,” Roth wrote. “But I reached a certain point where my meetings became … very interesting … to people and there weren’t meeting names generic enough to cover.”

An employee whose name is redacted, leaning into the joke, replied: “Very Boring Business Meeting That Is Definitely Not About Trump ;).”

“Preeeeeeeetty much,” Roth replied. “DEFINITELY NOT meeting with the FBI I SWEAR.”

Roth’s colleague replied, “lmao,” to indicate they found it amusing.

‘Erosion on Standards’ at Twitter

According to Taibbi, the findings expose “the erosion of standards” at Twitter, as well as actions that were undertaken by high-level executives that violated the company’s own policies in the months leading up to the events in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, prompting Twitter to ban Trump indefinitely.

Screengrabs of internal messages revealed that as soon as Twitter executives banned Trump, they began planning to ban future presidents—with one executive noting that then-incoming President Joe Biden’s administration “will not be suspended by Twitter unless absolutely necessary.”

Taibbi’s report on Trump’s ban, the first of three, on Twitter provided a number of examples, sharing screengrabs from internal Twitter communications as evidence.

Taibbi, Weiss, and author Michael Shellenberger are the three authors Musk is using to release the inner workings of Twitter prior to his $44 billion acquisition of the social media company.

On Friday, Taibbi said he, Weiss, and Shellenberger would publish three volumes dedicated to the censorship of Trump on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday on Twitter.

Shellenberger’s follow-up report on Saturday “will detail the chaos inside Twitter” on the day Twitter banned Trump, while Weiss’s report on Sunday will “reveal the secret internal communications from the key date” of Jan. 8, 2021.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—U.S. producer prices increased a bit more than expected in November, but the underlying trend in inflation is moderating, which could allow the Federal Reserve to slow its pace of interest rate hikes next week.

The producer price index for final demand rose 0.3% last month, the Labor Department said on Friday. Data for October was revised higher to show the PPI gaining 0.3% instead of 0.2% as previously reported. In the 12 months through November, the PPI increased 7.4% after advancing 8.1% in October.

Economists polled by Reuters had forecast the PPI climbing 0.2% and rising 7.2% year-on-year.

The report came ahead of the Fed’s policy meeting next Tuesday and Wednesday. Fed Chair Jerome Powell said last month that the U.S. central bank could scale back the pace of its interest rate hikes “as soon as December.” The Fed is in the midst of the fastest rate-hiking cycle since the 1980s.

Inflation is gradually slowing as supply chains ease and demand for goods ebbs. The Institute for Supply Management last week reported that its measure of prices paid by factories for goods dropped to a 2-1/2 year low in November.

But the shift in spending to services means overall inflation will remain elevated for a while. Some of the price pressures are seen coming from the labor market, with wage growth accelerating in November.

That has left economists expecting the Fed will continue tightening monetary policy and lift its policy rate to a level higher than the recently projected 4.6%, where it could stay for some time. The central bank has raised the policy rate by 375 basis points this year from near zero to a 3.75%-4.00% range.

Excluding the volatile food, energy and trade services components, producer prices gained 0.3% in November. The so-called core PPI rose 0.2% in October.

In the 12 months through November, the core PPI advanced 4.9% after increasing 5.4% in October.

(Reporting by Lucia Mutikani; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama)

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Hide your luggage, hide your clothes

The Biden administration’s senior-most transgender bureaucrat has a lot of baggage—literally.

A felony warrant is out against Energy Department official Sam Brinton for stealing luggage from a Las Vegas airport, 8 News Now reported Thursday. Brinton faces a separate felony theft charge for swiping a woman’s suitcase along with contents worth $2,325 from the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport in September.

Details on the luggage-purloiner’s latest heist are sparse. Brinton, who identifies as “genderfluid” and uses they/them pronouns, faces a grand larceny charge for stealing a suitcase valued between $1,200 and $5,000 from Harry Reid International Airport. It’s not clear when Brinton carried out the alleged theft.

Brinton, who oversees the federal government’s disposal of highly radioactive nuclear waste, in late October was placed on a leave of absence from the Energy Department. A bio for the alleged kleptomaniac remains prominently featured on the department’s website as of Friday morning.

Prior to joining the Biden administration in June, Brinton was known for promoting sexual fetishes and tying sexual partners up like dogs. Brinton delivered a seminar on the “science of spanking” at a Los Angeles kink conference in late November while awaiting a Dec. 19 hearing in connection to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul airport luggage theft.

News of Brinton’s second felony charge comes as some members of the LGBTQ+ community have started to express second thoughts about placing the fetishist on a pedestal.

“The red flags regarding Brinton were overwhelming and obvious to all who cared to see them,” LGBTQ Nation reported on Wednesday. “Unfortunately, some of America’s top LGBTQ+ activists and organizations were willfully blind to Brinton’s shortcomings.”

Brinton in 2010 stole the spotlight in the LGBTQ+ community with a harrowing tale of being abused by bigoted parents and being subjected to years of electroshock conversion therapy by a cruel and sadistic therapist.

But, according to LGBTQ Nation, Brinton’s story is likely a complete fabrication.

The outlet noted that Brinton is the only known “survivor” of conversion therapy who refuses to disclose the identity of the conversion therapist. Brinton claims the therapist practiced in an Orlando, Fla., strip mall, but the foremost expert on conversion therapy in the region told the outlet that no such conversion therapy shop operated out of a strip mall during the years Brinton supposedly attended the therapy.

Brinton’s mother told LGBTQ Nation that her child attended therapy but did not see a “conversion therapist.” She, too, refused to disclose the identity of the therapist.

The Energy Department did not immediately return a request for comment.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Russian state media are mocking the United States for prioritizing WNBA player Brittney Griner over former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan because of Griner’s race and sexual orientation.

RT editor in chief Margarita Simonyan in a television appearance Thursday said she was “very amused but not surprised” that the Biden administration swapped Griner, rather than Whelan, for notorious Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout, as Whelan has “three problems.”

“His first problem is that he is white. His second problem is he is a man. His third problem: He is a heterosexual. This is not something that can be forgiven today,” Simonyan said.

Whelan, a former Marine convicted in 2020 on manufactured espionage charges, has spent two years in a Russian penal colony. “I was arrested for a crime that never occurred,” he told CNN Thursday. “I don’t understand why I’m still sitting here.” During the television segment, Simonyan and the other panelists repeatedly refer to Whelan as a spy and repeat the trumped-up charges against him.

The segment suggests that Russia’s propaganda machine plans to weaponize the Biden administration’s controversial decision to swap Bout for Griner, who was arrested at a Moscow airport in February for possessing less than a gram of marijuana.

“American voters were given a choice: a hero who suffered while serving his fatherland … or a black lesbian, hooked on drugs, who suffered for a vape with hashish,” Simonyan said.

“And well-known, for the sake of PR!” adds another unidentified panelist.

Bout, a former Soviet military translator known as the “Merchant of Death,” was convicted in 2011 of selling weapons to a Colombian terrorist cell that planned to kill American soldiers. Simonyan, whom the State Department calls “Vladimir Putin’s loyal propagandist,” said Bout’s release is “the first good news” for Russia.

“The second good news is that [the United States] spits on its heroes to the extent that it considers it significantly more important to free a rightfully charged, well-known athlete,” the Russian propaganda chief said, adding that “this says a lot about the state of this society, of these intelligence agencies, and everything related to geopolitical confrontation.”

Griner since her arrest has become a cause célèbre, which likely informed the Biden administration’s decision to prioritize her release over other Americans imprisoned abroad. President Joe Biden has met with Griner’s wife Cherelle several times, inviting her to the Oval Office on Thursday to personally share the news of Griner’s release.

According to CNN, “senior U.S. government officials” visited Whelan’s sister to “share and talk through the news” that her brother was not being released.

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Just one in five Americans say they approve of their representation in Congress

While only one in five Americans say they approve of their representation in Congress, all 29 Senate incumbents won reelection in the midterms—in fact, the 2022 cycle, capped by Sen. Raphael Warnock’s (D., Ga.) victory on Tuesday, marks the first time in a century that not a single Senate incumbent lost.

The lawmakers’ historic showing stands in stark contrast with Americans’ sentiments about Congress as a whole: Only 21 percent of Americans approve of Congress, Gallup reported in October. That rating has not risen above 40 percent since 2005.

Seventy-four percent of Americans, meanwhile, say the country is headed in the wrong direction, according to an August NBC poll. Fifty-eight percent of those polled said they are “more worried that America’s best years may already be behind us.”

The victories, in the face of widespread dissatisfaction with Washington, show the value of incumbency as challengers often confront significant disadvantages in fundraising and name recognition. The results also suggest voters blame the other 98 senators over their own.

In some of the closest watched Senate races—Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, New Hampshire, Alaska, and Wisconsin—incumbents outraised their opponents by large margins. In Arizona, Sen. Mark Kelly (D.) outspent Republican Blake Masters by $70 million. Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto (D., Nev.), meanwhile, beat opponent Adam Laxalt by more than $12 million.

While Democratic opponent Mandela Barnes out-fundraised Sen. Ron Johnson (R., Wis.) in direct donations, pro-Johnson PACs spent $30 million more than pro-Barnes organizations.

The cash disadvantages made it more difficult for challengers to overcome incumbents’ positive approval ratings in their respective states. Heading into Election Day, Kelly and Cortez Masto had a +4 net approval, Warnock had +5, Sen. Maggie Hassan (D., N.H.) had +10, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R., Alaska) had 0, according to polling from FiveThirtyEight. Only Johnson, who won reelection by 1 point, had a negative approval rating at -14.

Masters, Laxalt, and Georgia Republican candidate Herschel Walker, meanwhile, all had negative net approval ratings.

Name recognition and cash may have helped incumbents win this cycle, but the 2024 map is more challenging. Three Democratic incumbents are up for reelection in states that voted for former president Donald Trump by more than 8 points: Sens. Jon Tester (D., Mont.), Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio), and Joe Manchin III (D., W.Va.).

After defending posts on human rights grounds, Facebook says solicitations of human smuggling will be removed

Facebook is reversing the controversial policy put in place early this year, first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, that allowed for users to solicit human traffickers to smuggle them across the border.

The social media giant, which also owns Instagram and WhatsApp, announced Thursday in a policy memo that, going forward, users are forbidden from posting any content that “offers to provide or facilitate human smuggling” or “asks for human smuggling services.” The platform previously held that these types of posts were needed to protect human rights.

The Free Beacon revealed Facebook’s previous policy, which permitted users to solicit human smugglers, in February. At the time, Facebook balked at the suggestion that the policy could lead to abuse of migrants and pushed back on the conflation of human smuggling and human trafficking. Spokesman Drew Pusateri, a former Democratic staffer who is no longer with the company, told the Free Beacon that it was “deeply odd” to suggest that human smuggling leads to human trafficking, as “there are literally differing legal definitions for both things.”

Facebook has changed its tune—its Thursday memo says that human smuggling and trafficking “can be related and exhibit overlap” and that both are “human exploitation.”

“The United Nations defines human smuggling as the procurement or facilitation of illegal entry into a state across international borders,” the memo states. “Without necessity for coercion or force, it may still result in the exploitation of vulnerable individuals who are trying to leave their country of origin, often in pursuit of a better life.”

Facebook faced pressure from left-wing activist groups who said allowing the solicitation of human smuggling on social media platforms was necessary to protect human rights. Although Facebook did not cite any specific organizations, the company said that “NGOs working with migrants” contributed to the decision.

Facebook spokeswoman Jeanne Moran said the platform is “constantly” working to improve policies.

“We don’t allow human exploitation on our platforms, including human smuggling or trafficking, and we remove such content when we find it,” Moran said. “We especially want to support those escaping conflict and oppression with information on how to seek asylum or legal migration while also protecting them from harm. We are constantly seeking community and expert feedback to improve our policies so we can promote safety and serve as a resource for the people who need it most.”

Facebook’s rationale for the change echoes the concerns made nearly a year ago by Republican lawmakers such as Sen. Josh Hawley (Mo.). Hawley alleged at the time that Facebook may be in violation of “federal anti-trafficking laws,” citing the company’s decision to provide resources to users who solicit traffickers on its platforms. Human smuggling services—clandestine services that bring an individual into another country for money—are often indistinguishable from human traffickers, who buy and sell individuals for forced labor or sex.

The focus on the policy came after the Tech Transparency Project in April 2021 identified a surge in Facebook groups devoted to human smuggling. Illegal crossings at the southern border have reached all-time highs since President Joe Biden entered office.

Republican senators Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Thom Tillis (N.C.), and Steve Daines (Mont.) in November wrote a letter to Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg demanding that the company “take immediate steps to stop facilitating illegal immigration.” Their letter cited reports that cartels use Facebook’s platforms to recruit drivers for their human smuggling operations.

“Although your company has developed—and long enjoyed the benefits of—incredibly complex algorithms and other technology to keep users addicted, you claim to be unable to curb these illegal immigration schemes,” the letter stated. “You have the ability to address this problem, and it is critical that you take immediate steps to stop facilitating illegal immigration on your platform.”

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon

Scathing reviews are pouring into the American Girl website and Amazon, and social media users are blasting the popular doll brand for a 2022 book that advises young girls on pronouns, switching genders, and using puberty blockers.

Part of the criticism surrounds circumventing unsupportive parents.

Others, however, have applauded the book for providing guidance on the topics, sending it to No. 1 on Amazon in the category of Popular Adolescent Psychology.

“A Smart Girl’s Guide: Body Image: How to Love Yourself, Live Life to the Fullest, and Celebrate All Kinds of Bodies” rapidly drew attention from around the world after a Dec. 6 report in the London-based Daily Mail.

The $12.99 book was released in February without fanfare.

Amazon users suggest it’s written for ages 8–11; American Girl recommends it for girls in 4th grade through 6th grade.

The 96-page paperback by Mel Hammond depicts girls with different body types and skin colors on the cover. It further signals inclusiveness by showing a girl in a wheelchair and another with blue hair.

Hammond also wrote, “Love the Earth: Understanding Climate Change, Speaking Up for Solutions and Living an Earth-Friendly Life” for American Girl.

The 36-year-old company is best known for its lifelike dolls that can be customized by skin tone, eye color, and hair color and style.

The 18-inch dolls that stand on their own often are purchased to look like a child’s twin.

The company sells an expansive line of matching clothing for child and doll, and a library of books for girls on a wide variety of topics. It was purchased by toy giant Mattel—the owner of the Barbie brand of toys—in 1998 for a reported $700 million.

Early in “Body Image,” the author assures young girls that many different body types exist.

Halfway through the book, the Gender Joy chapter takes a hard-left turn.

It prominently features an illustration of an androgynous child wearing pronoun buttons in front of a transgender flag. The chapter defines terms like transgender and nonbinary, and suggests ways girls can express their gender through haircuts and clothing.

“When a baby is born, a doctor looks at the baby’s body parts to assign its sex—whether the baby is female or male,” the chapter explains. “But for some, that assigned sex doesn’t match who they know they are inside.”

Being transgender is not an illness or something to be ashamed of, the author reassures. The text advises girls to talk with a trusted adult, such as a parent or counselor, if they are questioning their gender identity.

“That person can connect you with a specially trained doctor, who can help you and your family decide what’s best for your body,” the book explains. And girls might want to experiment with wearing clothing and using preferred pronouns that make “you feel most like the true you.”

“Parts of your body might make you feel uncomfortable, and you might want to change the way you look,” the book says. “That’s totally OK!”

“If you haven’t gone through puberty yet, the doctor might offer medicine to delay your body’s changes, giving you more time to think about your gender identity,” the book advises.

Puberty blockers are hormone treatments that, in girls, can halt breast growth, cause facial hair to grow, and deepen the voice. While transgender supporters call them reversible, the impact on fertility is unknown.

Some in the medical field have raised grave concerns recently about the use of puberty blockers in children, citing side effects such as, at least temporarily, stopping growth in height, halting development of sex drive, interfering with fertility, and halting the healthy accumulation of calcium in bones.

The book encourages girls who’ve experienced puberty already to see a doctor if they’re questioning their gender. Studies show transgender and nonbinary kids who get help from doctors have better mental health than those who don’t, the chapter claims.

Proponents of children transitioning often use that argument to encourage it.

One 2022 study appearing in the Journal of the American Medical Association said that transgender patients, 13 to 20 years, who received puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones had significantly lower depression and suicidal thoughts.

Critics, however, say that the lucrative and growing transgender industry suppresses studies showing the opposite is true. The result is the irrevocable harm of children, they say.

A 2021 article published by the BJM, an international medical care advocacy group, found that children 12-15 with severe gender dysphoria had no significant effect on their psychological function, suicidal thoughts, or body image when using puberty-blocking drugs.

The American Girl “Body Image” book suggests parents don’t need to be included in these life-altering decisions. It advises young girls to seek out help from transgender groups, if necessary.

“If you don’t have an adult you trust, there are organizations across the country that can help you. Turn to the Resources on Page 95 for more information,” the chapter suggests.

Resources for those questioning their gender identity include website addresses for The Trevor Project, Human Rights Campaign, and GLSEN for gender-inclusive schools.

The Trevor Project is an LGBT advocacy group offering counseling and a chat feature for youths. The Human Rights Campaign pushes LGBT rights.

Promoting Critical Race Theory

The Gender Joy chapter also introduces children to the term “intersectionality” and provides a worksheet with blanks for listing characteristics, such as gender, race, and age.

Intersectionality is a concept used in Critical Race Theory (CRT) to point out a person’s overlapping belonging to multiple victim groups that subject them to discrimination.

CRT suggests a person with greater intersectionality is deserving of more preferential treatment as repayment for that oppression.

The book highlights the fictional character Ivy—a 10-year-old who is deaf, transgender, and Jewish—as a way of explaining intersectionality to young readers.

Mothers and grandmothers took to social media over the past few days, slamming the company for what they collectively are calling out as a move to ditch traditional, wholesome, American values to push woke ideology.

Hundreds posted on the American Girl Facebook page, criticizing the company as “evil,” “disgusting,” and “disgraceful.”

Many commented that they would no longer buy the dolls or books.

“I’m running … not walking away from your company,” one user wrote. “What business do you have telling children of any age that they can get medicine to ‘fix’ their problem. And if they have no trusted adult, they can contact organizations who will help.”

Florida mom-of-two Morgan LiCalzi, 29, loved American Girl dolls and books growing up.

She remembers reading the brand’s book on puberty that offered a non-graphic explanation of what to expect during changes a girl’s body goes through.

“Every preteen girl I knew growing up owned it,” LiCalzi told The Epoch Times. “It was just a comforting book to read.”

LiCalzi said it’s sad the brand went from making girls feel comfortable about their changing bodies, to telling them they can “maim” their bodies with hormones if they’re unhappy.

“You’re telling girls the way they were born, and the way they were created, could be wrong,” she said. “I can’t support a company that promotes this.”

Lindsay Rives, spokeswoman for the watchdog group County Citizens Defending Freedom, said it’s frightening to think that a beloved doll company would “betray parents” across the nation.

Her group fights, among other things, to protect students in schools from sexualization. American Girl books are in many school libraries and have been respected for years, Rives said.

She’s not surprised by the public outrage.

“Hopefully, this will serve as a wake-up call to others who overstep their boundaries and choose to deprioritize the safety and wellness of our children over their own selfish motives,” Rives said.

The company apparently stands by the controversial book, telling TMZ, an entertainment company,  “We value the views and feedback of our customers and acknowledge the perspectives on this issue. The content in this book, geared for kids 10+, was developed in partnership with medical and adolescent care professionals and consistently emphasizes the importance of having conversations and discussing any feelings with parents or trusted adults.”

Phone calls by The Epoch Times seeking comment from American Girl headquarters in Madison, Wisconsin, were not returned before publication.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

WASHINGTON—Fourteen Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents who worked at the southern border committed suicide this year, according to members of Congress.

The Republican and Democrat lawmakers released the grim, and growing, tally during a press conference on Dec. 7 at the House Triangle.

Between 2007 and November 2022, a total of 149 CBP agents located at the U.S. southern border took their lives.

CBP agents are exposed to traumatic experiences that affect their lives, said the lawmakers, noting that it’s common for law enforcement officers to keep their mental health needs to themselves.

CBP agents feel abandoned by the current administration, Rep. Mayra Flores (R-Texas) said, referring to President Joe Biden’s recent remarks.

When asked on Dec. 6 why he wasn’t going to the border while visiting a border state, Biden told reporters at the White House it was “because there are more important things going on.”

Rep. Tony Gonzales (R-Texas) said, “While in Washington, there’s a lot that divides us in policy and often drives us in a lot of different directions, but there are a lot of things that should unite us.”

During the 2022 fiscal year, $23 million has been allocated to the mental health of CBP agents, Rep. Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) said, adding that the same budget for the 2023 fiscal year will be the same.

The Taking Action to Prevent Suicide (TAPS) Act would allow CBP agents to freely speak with health care professionals without fear of losing their jobs as well as increase the number of local behavioral health specialists with the expertise to provide psychological assistance to CBP officers.

If there are no health care experts in the agency, Cuellar said, the government should work with local organizations to provide what the CBP agents need for their mental health.

“Until we take out the fear of law enforcement coming forward and talking about their mental health issues, they’re never going to do it,” said Brandon Judd, president of the Border Patrol Union.

There needs to be more than a friendly social worker, said Rep. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.). CBP agents should have health care personnel trained to guide them through traumatic experiences when necessary, she added.

“We all know that our immigration system is fully broken. It is working for no one. Therefore, the folks who are manning the southern border are bearing the brunt of our failed policies,” Slotkin said.

The Epoch Times previously obtained data indicating that CBP captured 209,664 illegal aliens along the southern border in October.

Rep. Darren Soto (D-Fla.), said that CBP’s southern agents need more advanced technology, such as sensor towers and refugee processing facilities. Soto supports Biden’s proposed homeland security budget “to keep our homeland safe and respect international refugee laws.”

“While many of us may have disagreements on border solutions, both here and across Congress, we still have to come together, find common ground, find solutions like the TAPS Act because our Border Protection officers deserve nothing less for protecting our homeland,” Soto told the press.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema announced on Dec. 9 that she has left the Democratic Party and has registered as an independent, saying she’s turning her back on the “broken partisan system in Washington” that prioritizes denying the opposition party a win rather than “delivering for all Americans.”

Sinema made the announcement in a Dec. 9 thread on Twitter and elaborated on her decision in a lengthy op-ed in the Arizona Republic.

“I have joined the growing numbers of Arizonans who reject party politics by declaring my independence from the broken partisan system in Washington and formally registering as an Arizona Independent,” Sinema stated in a post on Twitter.

The lawmaker blamed growing political partisanship for dividing American families.

“Everyday Americans are increasingly left behind by national parties’ rigid partisanship, which has hardened in recent years,” she wrote in the Arizona Republic.

“Pressures in both parties pull leaders to the edges, allowing the loudest, most extreme voices to determine their respective parties’ priorities and expecting the rest of us to fall in line.”

The former Democrat suggested in an interview with Politico that, after registering as an independent, she’d continue to vote in the same way she has for her first four years serving as a senator from Arizona.

“Nothing will change about my values or my behavior,” she told the outlet, adding that she won’t caucus with Republicans.

She added that she won’t attend weekly Democrat caucus meetings, though it’s unclear whether she’ll continue to caucus with them.

It’s also unclear whether Sinema will maintain her committee assignments from the Democrats. Two other senators—Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Angus King of Maine—are registered independents but caucus with Democrats.

White House Hopes to ‘Continue to Work Successfully’ With Sinema

Sinema’s surprise announcement comes just days after the Democrats secured an absolute majority in the Senate following Raphael Warnock’s Georgia runoff win.

Warnock’s victory over Senate candidate Herschel Walker gave the Democrats a 51–49 margin in the upper chamber, which Sinema’s defection slims to 50–49–1.

That’s not enough for Democrats to lose control of the Senate, even if Sinema votes with Republicans for a 50–50 split, since Vice President Kamala Harris can cast a tie-breaking vote.

Asked about how her defection affects the distribution of votes, Sinema told Politico it isn’t a question she’s “interested in,” preferring to focus instead on working across the aisle.

“I want people to see that it is possible to do good work with folks from all different political persuasions, and to do it without the pressures or the poles of a party structure,” she told the outlet.

The White House reacted to Sinema’s announcement by calling her a “key partner” in efforts to pass “historic legislation” under President Joe Biden’s watch while expressing hope she’d continue to work with the current administration.

“We understand that her decision to register as an independent in Arizona does not change the new Democratic majority control of the Senate, and we have every reason to expect that we will continue to work successfully with her,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

Sinema’s defection represents the first party switch in the Senate for more than a decade. The last switch was when Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter left the Republican party and joined the Democrats in 2009.

‘Something Different’

With her new status as an independent, Sinema has cemented her role in the Senate as a maverick, alongside Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.).

Sinema and Manchin have kept Washington in suspense over the past two years as they’ve repeatedly withheld their needed votes for legislative initiatives spearheaded by President Joe Biden.

Both lawmakers have worked in a bipartisan way on high-profile bills that have since become law, including pushing for changes to Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act before the pair agreed to get on board with their votes.

In a statement announcing he had reached a deal with Senate Majority Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) to vote in favor of the Inflation Reduction Act, Manchin said he had secured some concessions including ones that would reduce the bill’s impact on public debt.

“I have worked diligently to get input from all sides on the legislation my Democratic colleagues have proposed and listened to the views of my Republican friends to find a path forward that removes inflationary policies so that Congress can respond to Americans’ suffering from high prices,” Manchin said in a July statement that indicated his willingness to work across the aisle.

Sinema, who also held out on the deal, said in August that she had agreed to move ahead with the bill after securing a concession to remove the carried interest tax provision and include protections for advanced manufacturing.

“Following this effort, I look forward to working with [Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.)] to enact carried interest tax reforms, protecting investments in America’s economy and encouraging continued growth while closing the most egregious loopholes that some abuse to avoid paying taxes,” Sinema said in a statement at the time.

Asked whether she’s thinking about a second term in the upper chamber, Sinema told Politico that it isn’t something she’s considering at the moment.

“I’m keeping my eye focused on what I’m doing right now,” she told the outlet while dismissing suggestions she might be considering a run for the White House.

“I am not running for president,” she insisted.

In her op-ed in the Arizona Republic, Sinema said she’s offering Arizonians “something different” with her decision to leave the Democrat party.

“Some partisans believe they own this Senate seat. They don’t.  This Senate seat doesn’t belong to Democratic or Republican bosses in Washington,” she wrote.

“It belongs to Arizona, which is far too special a place to be defined by extreme partisans and ideologues.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Three members of Twitter’s Trust and Safety Council resigned this week, citing concerns that “the safety and wellbeing of Twitter’s users are on the decline.”

Eirliani Abdul Rahman, Anne Collier, and Lesley Podesta all left the council on Thursday. 

Rahman served on the council’s Child Sexual Exploitation Prevention advisory group and Collier had been serving on the council’s Online Safety and Harassment Prevention group. Both had been members of the council since its inception in 2016.

According to Twitter, its Trust and Safety Council is a group of independent experts and organizations from around the world that “advocate for safety and advise us as we develop our products, programs, and rules.”

“I have watched with, dare I say, trepidation, the negotiations over Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter,” Rahman said in a statement about her resignation. “I had written down some commitments to myself at the time. Should Musk step over those thresholds, I told myself I would resign. Those red lines have been crossed.”

Rahman cited claims by the Anti-Defamation League and the Center for Countering Digital Hate that racial and sexual slurs had increased significantly on Twitter since Musk took over.

Rahman, Collier, and Podesta aren’t the first employees who oversaw safety issues at Twitter to quit. In November, Yoel Roth, Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, left the company after just two weeks under Musk’s leadership. 

Musk maintains that Twitter’s new policy “is freedom of speech, but not freedom of reach. Negative/hate tweets will be max deboosted & demonetized, so no ads or other revenue to Twitter. You won’t find the tweet unless you specifically seek it out, which is no different from rest of Internet.”

He added that hate speech is actually down on the platform.

“Hate speech impressions (# of times tweet was viewed) continue to decline, despite significant user growth! @TwitterSafety will publish data weekly. Freedom of speech doesn’t mean freedom of reach. Negativity should & will get less reach than positivity.”

In addition, Musk has initiated a series of Twitter threads called the “Twitter Files,” in which he releases internal documents alleged to show freedom of speech being squashed in the past. So far, Musk has released portions of the files to journalists Matt Taibbi and Bari Weiss.

“The Twitter Files on free speech suppression soon to be published on Twitter itself,” Musk posted on Nov. 28. “The public deserves to know what really happened.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

DUBAI (Reuters)—Iran hanged a man on Thursday convicted of injuring a security guard with a knife and blocking a street in Tehran, the semi-official Tasnim news agency said, the first such execution over recent anti-government unrest.

Nationwide protests that erupted after the death of 22-year-old Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini on Sept. 16 represent one of the biggest challenges to the Islamic Republic since its establishment in 1979.

Authorities have been cracking down on the protests and on Monday, the Revolutionary Guards encouraged the judiciary to swiftly and decisively issue judgments against those accused of “crimes against the security of the nation and Islam”.

The Tasnim news agency named the executed man as Mohsen Shekari, but gave no further details.

State media published a video of what it said was Shekari’s confession where he appears with a bruise on his right cheek. He admitted to striking a member of the Basij militia with a knife and to blocking a road with his motorbike alongside one of his friends.

Rights groups have said Shekari was tortured and forced to confess.

British foreign minister James Cleverly said he was “outraged” by the news of the execution. “The world cannot turn a blind eye to the abhorrent violence committed by the Iranian regime against its own people,” Cleverly said on Twitter.

Germany also condemned the execution.

“The Iranian regime’s contempt for humanity knows no bounds,” said German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock. “But the threat of execution will not stifle people’s will for freedom.”

Amnesty International has said Iranian authorities are seeking the death penalty for at least 21 people in what it called “sham trials designed to intimidate those participating in the popular uprising that has rocked Iran”.

“The Iranian authorities must immediately quash all death sentences, refrain from seeking the imposition of the death penalty and drop all charges against those arrested in connection with their peaceful participation in protests,” it said.

Iran has blamed the unrest on its foreign foes including the United States.

Judiciary spokesman Masoud Setayeshi said on Tuesday that five people indicted in the killing of a Basij militia member, Rouhollah Ajamian, had been sentenced to death in a verdict that they can appeal.

Iran’s semi-official news agency ISNA reported on Thursday that five suspected members of the Islamic State militant group have been charged with “war against God” for their role in the massacre of Shi’ite pilgrims in October, a crime that is punishable by death.

Even before the recent unrest, executions had been rising in Iran. The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Turk has said the number this year reportedly surpassed 400 by September for the first time in five years.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Additional reporting by Miranda Murray in Berlin and Sarah Young in London; Editing by Michael Georgy, Crispian Balmer, and Angus MacSwan)

SOURCE: Washington Free Beacon