Yale Law School professor: “Please correct the record — I would not want to have to do it for you.”

Yale Law School dean Heather Gerken on Monday promised an investigation into the controversy surrounding Trent Colbert, the second-year law student and Federalist Society member who sent a lighthearted email inviting classmates to his “trap house.”

Gerken vowed not to “act on the basis of partial facts reported out in a charged media environment”—though dozens of primary-source documents corroborating the incident have emerged—and announced that Yale Law School deputy dean Ian Ayres would “assess the situation” and “help us think how best to move forward.”

It is unclear whether administrators will issue an apology for their conduct along the lines of the one they drafted for Colbert, as the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education has proposed.

Yale Law School told the Washington Free Beacon that Ayres’s investigation would not result in any further action against Colbert. “As our statement last week made clear, this is protected speech,” said Debra Krozner, the law school’s managing director of public affairs. “It will not lead to any action against the student.”

Gerken’s announcement comes in the wake of widespread outrage over the administration’s aggressive handling of the incident and its tendentious response to news reports about it, including from two prominent Yale Law professors who lambasted the university’s official statement.

That earlier statement, released Oct. 13 in the wake of a Free Beacon report about the process to which Colbert had been subjected, denied that the second-year law student faced “any disciplinary investigation” or action over his email.

The denial sparked fierce blowback from two Yale Law School professors who lambasted the dishonesty of their own university. One of those professors, corporate legal scholar Roberta Romano, threatened to “correct the record” if the law school did not do so itself. The administration’s actions toward Colbert, Romano wrote Krozner, are “in direct and total conflict with what you stated,” noting that the school’s diversity director had made “a sly threat” about the student’s career.

“Please correct the record,” she added. “I would not want to have to do it for you.”

Another Yale Law professor, who asked to remain anonymous, said the initial statement was “appallingly disingenuous and full of falsehoods.” Yale Law School “stated ‘no student is investigated or sanctioned for protected speech,'” the professor told the Free Beacon. “It’s hard to square that statement with the Dean of Student Affairs summoning a student for questioning in response to allegations by other students, with the Diversity Director ominously warning the student that if he doesn’t apologize his admission to the bar could be threatened, or with the Law School sending a message to the entire second-year class condemning the student’s email as ‘racist.’ If all that isn’t an ‘investigation,’ then it’s even worse—a pronouncement of guilt without investigation.”

The outrage has bubbled over into other elite universities. Keith Whittington, a legal theorist at Princeton and a member of the Academic Freedom Alliance, said Yale Law’s actions were “highly inappropriate and completely incompatible with maintaining a free speech culture in a law school.”

“There is no question that such actions send a chilling message across the student body and convey clearly that the law school is a hostile environment for conservative students,” Whittington told the Free Beacon.

The imbroglio started when Colbert, a member of the Native American Students Association and the Federalist Society, invited classmates to a happy hour cohosted by the two groups. In a Sept. 15 email, he announced that Popeyes chicken would be served at his “trap house,” a slang term for a place where people buy drugs.

The message elicited nine discrimination complaints in under 12 hours, according to administrators, which prompted Associate Dean Ellen Cosgrove and Diversity Director Yaseen Eldik to summon Colbert to a series of meetings in which they pressured him to apologize for his email—with Eldik going so far as to imply that Colbert could face trouble with the bar if he didn’t apologize. When Colbert didn’t send a written apology drafted by the administration, Cosgrove and Eldik emailed the second-year class about his initial message, which they characterized as “pejorative” and “racist,” adding that the administration condemned it in “the strongest possible terms.”

The student complaints emphasized Colbert’s membership in the Federalist Society, a conservative legal group that Eldik said was “oppressive to certain communities.” Those complaints intensified after the Free Beacon published audio of Eldik’s meeting with Colbert: Between Oct. 17 and Oct. 18, several students sent law school-wide emails denouncing Colbert and the Federalist Society, which one student group characterized as “violent.”

“The pooled legal knowledge of our membership cannot name every [Federalist Society] decision that has harmed our communities,” Yale’s Dred Scott Society wrote in a 2,555-word email on Oct. 18—”a testament to the extensiveness of this violence.”

Colbert’s actions, the society members continued, “are yet another example of the way that [Federalist Society] members attempt to weaponize discourse against the very people trying to have conversations in community with him”—conversations Colbert says were only initiated after the student complaints had been filed.

“Trent’s narrative of being a victim of cancel culture based on his membership in [the Federalist Society] attempts to both diminish the harm that he caused and erase the role that his own actions played in causing the harm in the first place. “

The president of the Black Law Students association, Marina Edwards, likewise rejected the idea that Colbert had been “cancelled.”

“Black students did not attempt to cancel Trent,” she wrote in an Oct. 17 email to the law school. “Calling out someone who behaves irresponsibly toward historically marginalized communities, regardless of their own identity, is not an act of oppression; it is an act of love and compassion for those whose lives are daily ripped apart and trampled upon by systems (and people) of oppression.”

Edwards did not respond to a request for comment.

If students are not attempting to cancel Colbert, they are attempting to remove him from his position as a student representative. In response to “concerns surrounding Trent Colbert’s conduct,” the law school’s student government said in an Oct. 16 email that it drafted an entirely new set of procedures for removing student representatives. It remains unclear whether the student government will use those procedures against Colbert.

Another student group, the First Generation Professionals at Yale Law School, sent an email on Oct. 18 to “affirm” Edwards’s message and “condemn the racist email sent by Trent Colbert.” The group said it “recognize[d]” the “harmful impacts” of “hostile media coverage” on black students and thanked Eldik for attempting to “educate Trent and repair harm within the [Yale Law School] community.”

The emails from Edwards and the Dred Scott Society also invoked the concept of “dialogue” pioneered by Paulo Freire, a Brazilian Marxist who praised Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution as “the most genial solution” to “oppressive” pedagogy.

“Critical dialogue is about holding space for positive growth and change,” Edwards wrote, citing “Freirian praxis.”

But, the Dred Scott Society clarified, “to engage in dialogue, we must all hold all of the cards.”

Fwd a Message About the Media Coverage in the Recent Days by Washington Free Beacon on Scribd

Fwd a Message About the Med… by Washington Free Beacon

Fwd a Reflection on the Federalist Society and Dialogue From the Dred Scott Society by Washington Free Beacon on Scribd

Fwd a Reflection on the Fed… by Washington Free Beacon

Fwd FGP Board Statement on Critical Dialogue at YLS by Washington Free Beacon on Scribd

Fwd FGP Board Statement on … by Washington Free Beacon

Update 8:15 p.m.: This piece has been updated with some corrections to the Scribd documents.

https://freebeacon.com/campus/convulsions-at-yale-law-school-administrators-do-damage-control-as-faculty-members-slam-schools-dishonesty/

A coalition of 17 state attorneys general is demanding that the U.S. Department of Justice immediately rescind a recent memo they say would “chill lawful dissent by parents voiced during local school board meetings.”

The DOJ memo, which has been the center of much criticism since its Oct 4 release, directs the FBI to work with state and local governments to address an alleged “disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence” against teachers and school leaders. It came shortly after National School Boards Association (NSBA) urged the Biden administration to invoke counter-terrorism laws to handle “angry mobs” of parents seeking to hold school officials accountable for the teaching of the Marxist critical race theory and for imposing COVID-19 restrictions on their children.

In a letter (pdf) sent on Monday to President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland, the chief legal officers argued that the memo doesn’t appear to be based on facts, but on a flawed NSBA narrative, which described disruptions at school board meetings as violent threats akin to “domestic terrorism.”

“The vast majority of incidents that NSBA cites involved disruptive and disorderly conduct rather than threats,” the letter reads. “In fact, in no known instance, has there been anything like the burning, looting, police assaults, vandalism and other criminal activity that occurred in the summer of 2020.”

The letter was referring to riots involving anarcho-communist group Antifa and Marxist group Black Lives Matter.

“Actual threats and violence towards school administrators, board members, teachers, or staff are rare,” the attorneys general noted, adding that there are already sufficient criminal and civil remedies available, without the need for FBI to intervene in “what is a quintessential local issue.”

The attorneys general further stated that the DOJ memo “is likely intimidating to parents,” who in many cases are, for the first time, exercising their First Amendment right to speak in a public forum.

“We as a country should celebrate their participation in our system of self-government, not silence them by accusing them of ‘domestic terrorism’ and threaten them with the prospect of the FBI knocking on their door to investigate their activities,” they added.

The letter was written by Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, and co-signed by the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Georgia, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Utah.

The letter comes as school board organizations in at least a dozen states distance themselves from the NSBA, citing disagreement over the way it characterized concerned parents. School boards in Alabama, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, have released statements opposing the NSBA letter to the Biden administration or Garland’s memo or both.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/17-state-ags-demand-doj-cease-attempt-to-silence-parents-at-school-board-meetings_4055506.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-10-19&mktids=20531d34ef6623de9f28c4ac5de04d42&est=MXNescXAhp8HjCgmzkO7biTS%2FbYM%2BPZIeIGdxXw%2B1zbdVmqZmf5M6e1T%2F7290KwAxA%3D%3D

• Aaron Stevenson, DHS Insider and Intelligence Research Specialist for the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “An email sent out by the Director of USCIS, which notified us about a rule change coming forward, is going to shift the adjudicative authority of defensive asylum away from immigration judges and giving it to asylum officers, which are USCIS.”
• Ur Jaddou, Director of U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services: “The proposed system seeks to reduce processing times by transferring the initial responsibility for adjudicating certain protection claims from immigration judges to USCIS asylum officers. This rule would simplify the adjudication process for certain individuals who are encountered at or near the border, placed into expedited removal proceedings, and determined to have a credible fear of persecution or torture.” 
• Stevenson: “This is going to be the biggest change to immigration policy in my lifetime. It’s being done without anybody knowing what’s going on about it and there’s been no coverage for the American people to know what’s going on.”
• Stevenson: “[This new policy] leaves very little accountability to the public when this kind of operation exists. And when you couple that with giving the adjudicative authority away from an immigration judge to an asylum officer, you are removing any type of public pressure that they could apply on policies that they’re creating.”
• Stevenson: “If the asylum officers get this ability, I will say it’s going to be a rubber stamp of immediately getting ‘credible fear’ or ‘reasonable fear’ [asylum seekers] to be able to stay in the country if they’re going to be deported…also their path to citizenship.”
• Stevenson: “I will lose my job” for going public.

[WASHINGTON, D.C. – Oct. 18, 2021] Project Veritas released a new video today featuring an interview with current U.S. Department of Homeland Security [DHS] insider Aaron Stevenson, who serves as an Intelligence Research Specialist for the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services [USCIS].

Stevenson decided to go public with information about a “reasonable fear” loophole that exists in the federal government’s immigration policy, which could allow potentially dangerous migrants to stay in the United States under false pretenses. He had previously sat down with Project Veritas for an interview in the shadows.

“An email sent out by the Director of USCIS, which notified us about a rule change coming forward, is going to shift the adjudicative authority of defensive asylum away from immigration judges and giving it to asylum officers, which are USCIS,” Stevenson said.

“If the asylum officers get this ability, I will say it’s going to be a rubber stamp of immediately getting ‘credible fear’ or ‘reasonable fear’ [asylum seekers] to be able to stay in the country if they’re going to be deported…also their path to citizenship,” he said.

Stevenson explained why he is so concerned with this latest federal government policy. He said that USCIS asylum officers are far less accountable to the American people than immigration judges.

“[This new policy] leaves very little accountability to the public when this kind of operation exists. And when you couple that with giving the adjudicative authority away from an immigration judge to an asylum officer, you are removing any type of public pressure that they could apply on policies that they’re creating,” he said.

“This is going to be the biggest change to immigration policy in my lifetime. It’s being done without anybody knowing what’s going on about it and there’s been no coverage for the American people to know what’s going on,” he said.

Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe asked Stevenson what kind of retaliation he expects as a result of going public while blowing the whistle on the federal government:

James O’Keefe, Project Veritas founder and CEO: “So, what do you think they [federal government] are going to do to you in response to you speaking to me?”

Aaron Stevenson, DHS Insider: “I will lose my job.”

O’Keefe: “Are you afraid of that?”

Stevenson: “No, because I think this is more urgent for people to realize — because this policy change is going to continue to drive in any alien that they [federal government] deem fit. This will drive a massive swing in immigration law.”

The DHS whistleblower also said that the public can go to www.regulations.gov to make their voices heard on immigration issues such as these. 

If more federal government employees have information that the public should know about, particularly encompassing vaccines and immigration issues, contact VeritasTips@protonmail.com. 

About Project Veritas

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

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

Subscribe to Project Veritas on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/veritasvisuals

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https://www.projectveritas.com/news/dhs-insider-who-exposed-reasonable-fear-migrant-asylum-loophole-goes-public/

We now know Democrats used several means to score illegal votes in several states. We witnessed them counting ballots behind closed doors, bringing in endless piles of ballots days after the election, locking Republicans out of the counting rooms, pulling boxes of ballots out from under tables when all the observers were sent home, driving in vanloads of ballots in the early hours of the morning after Joe Biden fell far behind.

And now we have another clue on how they stole the election and who they stole their votes from.

Huffington Post today credited “low-income voters” with giving Joe Biden the win.

This is preposterous on its face since everyone knows Trump connected to working-class voters like no other president in the last 100 years.

But it does give us a clue on where they found these mysterious votes.

High turnout among low-income voters in the 2020 election — especially in battleground states — helped deliver victories for Joe Biden and Democrats in the Senate and House, concluded the study, “Waking the Sleeping Giant,” by the Poor People’s Campaign. The organization, an advocate for low-income Americans, launched a nonpartisan voter registration drive ahead of the 2020 vote across 16 states…

…But the 2020 elections saw the highest voter turnout in U.S.history, including among poor and low-income voters, noted the study.

Of the 168 million Americans who voted last year, 59 million of them— 35% of the total — had an estimated annual household income of less than $50,000, classifying them as “poor” or low-income, the analysis found.

https://dudepac.com/articles/democrats-reveal-big-clue-in-the-big-steal-operatives-manufactured-votes-from-low-income-voters-to-steal-the-battleground-states-start-the-canvassing

The Mismanagement of Man

San Francisco has a poop problem. Between 2011 and 2019, reports of human feces on public sidewalks quintupled, rising from roughly 5,500 to more than 30,000. Incidents have been on the decline since the COVID pandemic began, but residents still reported an average of 76 turds per day in the first half of 2021.

The Golden Gate city’s intestinal troubles are not news—conservative commentators have made a joke, and a talking point, out of them for ages. But they are metonymic for a dysfunction increasingly apparent in America’s big cities, from the West Coast to the East. Many major municipalities are marred by violent crime, homelessness, uncontrolled mental illness, and general disorder. This all in spite of an ever-advancing cadre of progressive leaders, who promise their latest tax hike will finally target the “root causes” of the breakdown.

Why are these big, blue cities breaking down? Climate scientist and Berkeley, Calif., resident Michael Shellenberger tackles the question in his latest book, San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities.

At core, Shellenberger’s answer is political. Though he takes pains to assure the reader of his liberal bona fides, Shellenberger insists that big cities, particularly San Francisco, have been captured by a too-progressive ideology. City leaders have begrudgingly embraced the priorities of the activist class that staffs the various NGOs providing key services, including support for the homeless, the mentally ill, and the drug addicted.

The result is urban disaster. Shellenberger covers the vogue for “housing first” policy, which emphasizes placing homeless people in housing without sobriety or medication requirements, and which he argues does not consistently reduce the pathologies that lead to homelessness. He discusses the “harm reduction” approach to drug policy, which can mean providing users with the materials to use without “coercing” them into treatment. And he outlines the rising skepticism of policing and public safety, alongside decarceral reforms, which have created an atmosphere supportive of criminal offending.

Of course, disentangling cause and effect in policymaking is hard. But California is one of just a handful of states to see dramatic increases in its homeless population over the past decade, and the state’s deliberate reduction in the punishment for minor property offending is associated with a spike in shoplifting. And the Golden State is proudly progressive—a progressivism doubtless even more common among the people who staff the NGOs that actually manage its big cities’ streets.

As far as a liberal’s case to liberals against the excesses of liberalism goes, San Fransicko is a useful contribution to the genre. It suffers from some of the usual flaws of popular nonfiction: Some chapters seem unnecessary, and one suspects the whole thing could have been slashed down to a 10,000-word essay. But the book does well the thing it is meant to do: set out the key contradictions in contemporary liberalism, as underscored by the governance failures of the places it is most common.

One of the peculiar features of American liberalism is the selectiveness of its paternalism. Liberals are happy to embrace coercive policies that affect the average citizen—vaccine mandates, say, or soda taxes. But when it comes to the least of us—the drug addicted, the mentally ill, the chronically homeless, the repeated victims of crime—it adopts an inexplicably laissez faire stance. This approach, sociologist Neil Gong has argued, is dramatically at odds with how those with means ask to be treated. While the mentally ill rich seek maximum paternalism, the mentally ill poor are afforded the freedom to be mad.

This tendency runs in apparent contradiction to the left’s usual statist bent. The anti-psychiatry movement, the push to deinstitutionalize and ban compulsory drug treatment, and of course the movement to defund the police, are all basically libertarian, inasmuch as they work to reduce the capacity of the state to regulate certain kinds of antisocial conduct. These regulations are considered per se illegitimate, because they fail to target the “root causes” of this behavior—racism, sexism, capitalism, etc.

Such “root causes” thinking is, of course, fallacious: Nothing about a cause’s proximity to an effect makes it more or less suited to policy intervention. But more important, it confuses the question of whom it is fair to manage—average citizens are fair game, whereas the oppressed are oppressed enough as is—with whom it benefits society to manage. The public dispute becomes over how to be compassionate to the schizophrenic (where compassion is always synonymous with license), wholly obviating discussion of the harms done to society by his camping out on the sidewalk, harms for which we increasingly lack moral language.

The sort of policies Shellenberger endorses at the end of the book—a statewide psych authority, expanded conservatorship, a more carrot-and-stick approach to mental health and drug abuse treatment—would probably benefit their objects. But they would also benefit the other members of society, who are entitled to be free of antisocial behavior. That entitlement, of the average American, has fallen out of fashion. But it is the entitlement at the core of the social contract, and governments of all sizes forget it at their peril.

San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities
by Michael Shellenberger
Harper, 416 pp., $28.99

https://freebeacon.com/culture/review-san-fransicko-why-progressives-ruin-cities/

Internal communications show staffers privately complaining about overtures from Catholic school officials

The Nebraska Department of Education (NDE) shut out religious groups from a controversial curriculum development process, according to internal documents obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

The original draft of the agency’s sex education standards included plans to teach elementary school students about gender identity and transgender hormone therapy. Internal emails obtained by a concerned parent show the NDE added a Planned Parenthood ally to the 28-member advisory team for the standards, while it excluded input from religious education groups. The documents show NDE employees were privately aggravated that Jeremy Ekeler, the associate director of education policy at the Nebraska Catholic Conference, wanted to be included in the curriculum process because they suspected he would be critical of their approach.

“Jeremy is coming on pretty strong,” one NDE employee emailed with a frowning face symbol.

“I know. I really think they want to advocate for abstinence only education as well as gender identity, sexual orientation, etc.; but that is only my assumption,” another employee responded.

Ekeler, a former principal at a Nebraska Catholic school, was able to schedule a Zoom meeting with the NDE after inquiring three times about the development process. Ekeler said the NDE told him in August 2020 that the advisory team was already full—a claim he said in hindsight feels like a cop-out.

“To know that a tax-funded state entity boxed out the beliefs of such a huge portion of our population is sadly ironic,” Ekeler told the Free Beacon. “The NDE has preached inclusion and diversity through this whole thing and then they excluded anybody who doesn’t fit with their agenda.”

Ekeler vouched for three Catholic experts with relevant experience to be on the advisory team, which the NDE told him was handpicked with no formal application process. Two told the Free Beacon the NDE never reached out. The third did not respond. Planned Parenthood activists, however, had no trouble getting access to policymakers.

Internal emails show that Deborah Neary, a state board of education member, pressured the NDE to include Lisa Schulze, a Friends of Planned Parenthood board member and former Planned Parenthood employee, in the curriculum draft process. “I am very disappointed that none of the folks that I recommended to participate in the Nebraska Department of Education Standard Writing Team were selected,” Neary said in an email. Schulze and two other activists—the executive director of OutNebraska and a local professor dedicated to the “intersection of sexuality and social justice”—requested by Neary were eventually added to the advisory team, which provided feedback on the standards to the writing team.

The NDE did not respond to questions on how it selected the advisory team. The agency has denied any influence from activists in drawing up the standards.

The first draft of the health standards, published in March, detailed a curriculum to teach gender identity in first grade, transgender hormone therapy in fifth grade, oral and anal sex in seventh grade, and abortion in eighth grade. Fr. Sean Kilcawley is a Nebraska priest who is certified as a Pastoral Sexual Addiction Practitioner Supervisor. Ekeler recommended him to be on the standards advisory team, but Kilcawley never heard from the NDE. Kilcawley said the radical nature of the sex education standards can be attributed at least in part to the fact that there was no Christian representation in the drafting process.

“Young people are going to be googling the content they are learning in class,” he told the Free Beacon. “So if they’re teaching about overt sexual actions in class it can lead to more pornography exposure, which leads to compulsive sexual behavior, which has led to an uptick on child to child sexual abuse.”

The original Nebraska sex education curriculum proposed in March was nearly identical to the 2020 National Sexuality Education Standards. These national standards are a collaboration between three deep-pocketed progressive advocacy groups: the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States (SIECUS), Advocates for Youth, and Answer. SIECUS and Advocates for Youth have raked millions annually from the CDC and abortion-focused nonprofits for decades, a Free Beacon review of 990 forms found.

All three of the national sex education groups have ties to the Nebraska curriculum process. Schulze worked for Answer at the University of Rutgers. Emails show Neary scheduled a meeting between NDE members and a policy director at SIECUS. The Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation has given $20 million to Advocates for Youth since 2008. Warren Buffett, the billionaire progressive philanthropist who heads the foundation, is an Omaha native. The Women’s Fund for Omaha, where Schulze works as an education and training manager, owns $12 million worth of stock in Buffett’s company, Berkshire Hathaway.

Neither Schulze nor Neary responded to requests for comment.

The state’s board of education in September suspended the health standards after months of pushback from parents. Ekeler compared the dispute between parents and the school system to the battle of David and Goliath.

“Two things happen before David casts the stone with the sling,” Ekeler told the Free Beacon. “First he’s made aware of the battle and then, in one of my favorite Bible verses, he ran to the giant. Our parents, once they were made aware, ran to the battle—and I don’t think they’re going anywhere.”

https://freebeacon.com/campus/nebraska-department-of-education-excluded-religious-groups-from-sex-ed-curriculum-team/

The Biden administration’s vaccine mandate for companies with over 100 employees through the Occupational Safety and Health Administration is expected to be put in place soon, and Republican governors around the country are prepared to take legal action against the measure.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis made it clear that his state will be suing the administration for the invasive policy.

“I think that the mandate is going to lose in court,” he said at a news conference Thursday. According to Fox News, a lawsuit from the state would be filed through the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“No one should lose their job over these shots. I think we want to protect people’s jobs,” DeSantis said. “These are folks that have been working throughout this whole time, they were put in situations where they were exposing themselves to risk knowingly to help others, and we did that, and we considered them heroes just a year ago.

“Now, you’re gonna let them go by the wayside?”

Some Americans Already Pulling Their Accounts from Credit Unions Over Dems’ IRS Spying Plan

Floridians should not lose their jobs due to heavy-handed mandates. pic.twitter.com/zhgYZYsrIL

— Ron DeSantis (@GovRonDeSantis) October 15, 2021

In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott took preventive action by signing an executive order banning a requirement for vaccines by any person or group in the public or private sector.

“No entity in Texas can compel receipt of a COVID-19 vaccine by any individual, including an employee or a consumer, who objects to such vaccination for any reason of personal conscience, based on a religious belief, or for medical reasons, including prior recovery from COVID-19,” the order states, directly bucking both President Joe Biden and companies that want to mandate the coronavirus vaccine.

Should the government mandate COVID-19 shots?

A criticism of Abbott’s order is that is interferes with the freedom of private businesses to determine health guidelines for their employees, which explains why many Republican governors are not considering that level of action.

Regardless, there is almost uniform consensus from conservative state leaders that the government should not be forcing the vaccine onto the public through employers.

An example of the nuanced difference between Abbott’s approach and other governors was articulated in Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt’s remarks earlier this week about the imminent mandate.

“This action is not just federal overreach, it’s unconstitutional,” Stitt said. “I’ve talked this over with Attorney General John O’Connor, and I know he’s on our side. He’s ready to take President Biden to court the second the rules are made public.”

“I don’t believe it’s the government’s job to dictate policies to private companies. Just as I believe Joe Biden can’t tell businesses they have to mandate a vaccine, I don’t believe the government should tell a company they can’t. Businesses should have the freedom to make decisions based on their circumstances. When the government starts to pick winners and losers, we are headed down a slippery slope.”

NFL Great, Trump Supporter Leads GOP Field in GA Senate Race

While the debate over how far bans on vaccine mandates will rage on, one thing is being made perfectly clear by Republicans: They will fight back against the Biden administration’s overreach.

The argument that this is not truly a vaccine mandate because companies also have the option to conduct weekly tests does not hold much weight.

It’s a major hassle to require weekly testing, especially at large companies, so many will likely take the easy way out and lay off employees that reject the shot.

As Stitt mentioned, this is not about the effectiveness of the vaccine or whether somebody “should” get the shot. It’s about the principle.

It is possible for someone to be vaccinated and also understand that it is a personal health decision, but the divisive nature of left-wing politicians has encouraged a caste system based on vaccination status.

I am sure it is a totally unfounded rumor that the Central Intelligence Agency, the world’s most lavishly funded bastion of spooks, is about to shorten its name to “The Central Agency,” retiring the embarrassing and divisive word “intelligence.”

I don’t know how the rumor got started, but the news, reported Saturday by The Financial Times, that in August the Chinese had successfully tested a nuclear-capable hypersonic missile lit a fire under the rumor mill.

It was not so much the fact of the test as the ignorance of our so-called intelligence services that did the trick.

According to the FT, “The test has raised new questions about why the US often underestimated China’s military modernization.”

When it came to the Soviet Union, the CIA typically overestimated not only its military capabilities but also its economic strength. With China, the opposite seems to be the case.

“We have no idea how they did this,” said one spokesman quoted by the FT.

But why? Why didn’t we know?

The budget of the CIA is classified, but we know, thanks to Edward Snowden, that a few years ago it was somewhere north of $50 billion. But what do we get for all that dough?

This summer, we got a total misreading of the situation in Afghanistan.

Now we get a situation in which the deployment of a weapon designed to circumvent our missile defense capabilities catches the CIA “by surprise.”

As the FT reported, the United States and Russia are also developing hypersonic weapons, “including glide vehicles that are launched into space on a rocket but orbit the earth under their own momentum.”

These devices “fly at five times the speed of sound, slower than a ballistic missile. But they do not follow the fixed parabolic trajectory of a ballistic missile and are manoeuvrable, making them harder to track.”

So what are we paying for?

The Chinese launched a rocket that carried a hypersonic glide vehicle that, traveling at about Mach 5, circled the globe a couple of times in a low orbit before homing in on its target.

The device missed its target by more than twenty miles, but when you are talking about something capable of carrying a nuclear payload that is definitely too close for comfort.

Moreover, this was only a test. Presumably, succeeding missiles will be more accurate.

People familiar with the test said that it showed that China had made “astounding” progress on hypersonic weapons.

But again, the issue is not so much Chinese technical progress as U.S. ignorance.

Increasingly, it seems, the institutions we have relied on to protect us have degenerated into a state of politically correct rancidness.

The FBI seems to spend enormous resources infiltrating, egging on, and indeed fomenting the very plots they are supposed to be guarding against.

At least a dozen FBI agents were part of the plot to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer.

Were they there to protect the governor or to orchestrate the caper?

Julie Kelly has just shown that the Jan. 6 demonstration at the Capitol could well have been part of the FBI’s “Operation Cold Snap.”

(See also Darren Beattie’s story on possible FBI involvement in the events of Jan. 6 in Revolver News.)

Quoting a story from Buzzfeed, Kelly notes that the operation was a “‘far-reaching, multi-state domestic terrorism investigation’ to surveil—or more likely entrap, … people tied to the FBI’s hit list of right-wing militias.”

Meanwhile, the U.S. military seems more interested in combatting “white rage,” circumventing the chain of command to combat the Bad Orange Man, or complaining about the Army policy regarding fingernail polish, than actually protecting U.S. citizens and interests.

And the CIA? Besides missing threats (a habit that goes back at least to 9/11), they seem expert mostly to be creating their fair share.

Remember the story of that training exercise in Virginia at which they accidentally left some plastic explosive in the engine compartment of a school bus?

Yes, that’s right. “The CIA accidentally left a ‘putty-type’ battlefield explosive beneath the hood of a Loudon County, Virginia school bus after a training exercise . . . As a result, elementary and high school students spent two days riding the bus as the explosives bounced around under the hood.”

Oh dear. More and more, it seems, Lil Abner had it right: “The Country’s in the Very Best of Hands.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/china-develops-hypersonic-missiles-while-us-intelligence-agencies-cultivate-political-correctness_4053721.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Sin City has no shortage of stages that suffered mightily amid the COVID-19 pandemic, and according to payouts of a federal grant program meant to help them and their employees, a significant portion went to a handful of wealthy magicians.

The U.S. Small Business Administration’s Shuttered Venue Operators Grant has distributed more than $16 billion nationally. In Nevada, 206 entities have been promised more than $193 million in two waves of grants.

The list of businesses is reflective of Nevada’s flashy entertainment industry. Included in the grant-winners are a high-flying trapeze act, exclusive nightclubs, dance troupes, festivals, and others.

Four organizations were awarded the maximum $10 million allotted; Vegas mainstay David Copperfield’s Disappearing Inc. being one. Magician duo Penn and Teller’s business entity received more than $7.5 million.

Illusionist Criss Angel’s Magic Revolution not only received $6,964,936, but his production house, Angel Productions Worldwide, received $6,502,920 in a separate grant. Angel, whose real name is Christopher Sarantakos, is worth an estimated $50 million.

Also among the state’s top 10 recipients is Meleco Records, the Incline Village recording label belonging to Beach Boy founder Mike Love. The musician is reportedly worth $80 million. Meleco received $7,517,320.

According to the grant criteria, the magicians and others appear to qualify under the “live venue operator or promoter” classification. Reoccurring acts such as Copperfield’s and others have large organizations working behind the scenes to ensure the stage shows go off without a hitch.

Applicants are eligible to receive 45 percent of their 2019 gross revenue up to $10 million per grant. To qualify for the grant, businesses had to have been open on Feb. 29, 2020. Any federal Paycheck Protection Program loans the companies had forgiven would have to be subtracted from the total grants.

Top ten recipients in Nevada:

• $10 million: Brenden Theatre Corporation;

• $10 million: David Copperfield’s Disappearing Inc.;

• $10 million: Life Is Beautiful LLC (an annual festival held in Las Vegas);

• $10 million: The Smith Center for the Performing Arts;

• $7.6 million: Steve Beyer Productions Inc. (a promoter for cover bands and others);

• $7.52 million: Meleco LLC (the record label of Beach Boy member Mike Love);

• $7.3 million: Buggs & Rudy Discount Corp. (Penn and Teller);

• $7.15 million: MB BC Limited Liability Company (a Las Vegas nightclub);

• $6.96 million: Magic Revolution LLC (Criss Angel, who also received another grant for $6.5 million);

• $6.88 million: Galaxy Sparks LLC (a movie theater chain).

By Cole Lauterbach

https://www.theepochtimes.com/famous-las-vegas-magicians-get-millions-in-federal-shuttered-venue-grants_4054039.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Attorney General Merrick Garland has now repeatedly and clearly demonstrated his intention to tow the party line, as it drifts inexorably from Constitutional principles and the Bill of Rights—in lieu of serving as an independent and objective enforcer of federal law.

He first exposed his partisan contempt for objective facts in a speech given back on June 15. There he stated that “In the FBI’s view, the top domestic violent extremist threat comes from racially or ethnically motivated violent extremists, specifically those who advocate for the superiority of the white race.” Not Antifa. Not BLM.

As FBI field agents are well aware, the domestic threat posed by white supremacists was successfully dissipated in the ‘80s and ‘90s, largely as a result of high-risk large-scale undercover operations targeting the Aryan Nations and other white militia organizations. Garland’s speech parroted statements made in congressional testimony by FBI Director Christopher Wray on Sept. 17, 2020, wherein much the same conclusory statements were made, unsupported by data, reflecting Democrat talking points rather than independent determinations based on articulated facts.

Garland’s and Wray’s statements have lent credibility to the newly expanded definition of white supremacy to include all those who disagree with progressive policies—the moral justification thus being created for repressive tactics directed at eliminating dissent. And—significantly—at ostracizing dissenters.

Garland has now taken another step in the politicization of the Department of Justice, by categorizing parents disturbed by progressive indoctrination of their children as domestic terrorists. And the FBI, whose resources are already overtaxed—approximately 10,000 special agents to protect a nation of 330,000,000 plus—has been directed to investigate this imminent threat to national security.

In his Oct. 4 memorandum to the FBI Director, Garland warns parents that “in the coming days, the Department [of Justice] will announce a series of measures designed to address the rise in criminal conduct directed toward school personnel.”

Missing in the memo is any clue as to the federal jurisdiction that might justify the FBI’s involvement in what appears to be in essence the suppression of opposing views—suppression of the expression of opinions which are contrary to the views propagated by individuals and institutions currently wielding the reins of power. Garland’s misuse of the government’s overwhelming power—proscribed by the First Amendment to the Bill of Rights—is barred precisely because the Framers anticipated such abuse of power, and went to great lengths to prevent it.

The assault on the Bill of Rights appears to be coordinated and nearly overwhelming in nature.

From the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial, denied to the Jan. 6 unarmed Capitol Hill trespassers, to the utilization of tech companies as proxies to circumvent First Amendment limitations on government action, the onslaught has many fronts.

Apple is now monitoring and reviewing the images maintained by millions of customers on the cell phones that it sells. Ostensibly a measure to identify pedophiles, this is realistically a first step to monitor the public at large—actions by a powerful corporation that would be clearly illegal if conducted by the government without a warrant.

The right to a fair trial by a jury of one’s peers—the Sixth Amendment—was effectively eviscerated by the Biden administration’s declaration that mounted Customs and Border Protection officers were guilty of whipping illegal Haitian immigrants prior to any formal charges being brought

The administration’s disregard for free speech rights of millions of federal employees is evidenced by the White House’s list of prohibited words and phrases—a list that altogether too many corporate entities are quick to incorporate into their own private sector cultures.

Thus the Government achieves its proscribed goal of controlling speech through indirect means. And as is, or should be, self-evident, controlling permissible language is the first step toward controlling permissible thought.

An assault on property rights—heretofore secured by the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments’ due process clauses—has utilized the back door of COVID-19 to justify regulation of small businesses, circumventing the legislative process, and severely restricting the exercise of business decisions by small entrepreneurs.

Civil rights have been curtailed by the insidious substitution of equity for equality—and by the insertion of critical race theory in lieu of the content of character theory of Martin Luther King.

The constitutional right to “security of person,” guaranteed in Article Three, along with the pursuit of happiness , as articulated in the Declaration of Independence, are being subtly undermined by the defund the police movement. How can happiness be pursued in an insecure, crime-ridden environment?

Rather, the assault on law-enforcement authorities has been ramped up. In the military, police, and in the Department of Homeland Security, witch-hunts are underway, with the search for dissenting opinion—mislabeled as a search for white supremacist conspirators—being encouraged and pursued by the media and left-wing think tanks. And the failure to provide secure borders undermines security on a number of levels, from the entry of violent criminals to the propagation of the dreaded virus.

Diversity of opinion is being routed out, and replaced by unquestioning obedience and propagation of dogma. How can the First Amendment’s freedom of religion be pursued when church and synagogue doors are barred whenever lock-downs are declared, while the doors to taverns remain open?

Powerful political leaders on the left—House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton—continually question the relevance of the Constitution, while enthusiastically supporting movements, such as the 1619 rewriting of American history, questioning the Framers’ relevance in the modern age.

The Second Amendment’s right to bear arms has been under constant attack from the Democrat Party. The attempt to place David Chipman, one of its most fervent opponents as head of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms proved beyond the pale, even for middle of the road supporters of firearm bans. However, individuals such as Mark and Patricia McCloskey of St. Louis, who have exercised their Second Amendment rights in the defense of their security and their property, have been ridiculed by the media and prosecuted by local authorities.

The elephant in the room regarding blatant disregard of our precious rights is of course COVID-19. The Biden administration, as well as state executive officers, have used the pandemic to justify the sweeping away the right to privacy that justice William Douglas interpreted into the Constitution, as emanating from the “penumbra of rights“ that the founding document enshrined as guarantees for future generations.

These privacy rights have for years been used to justify the legalization of abortion as part of a woman’s “right to choose.” Yet these privacy rights and the right to choose are disregarded entirely when it comes to the right to choose as to whether or not a medical product is to be injected into one’s body.

Although members of the military have historically been bound by certain limitations on their ability to communicate personal views, the imprisonment of Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Stuart Scheller subsequent to his statements dissenting from disastrous decisions made by general command officers with regard to Afghanistan, is chilling indeed.

The move, in addition to being clearly intended to send a message to others in the military who might be so inclined, is additionally another step in the administration program to suppress and eliminate dissenting voices in the military and federal agencies.

To further enforce the message, Marine officials are also investigating Lance Corporal Hunter Clark for having consented to appear at the podium with non-candidate Donald Trump at a rally on Saturday, Sept. 25. Clark received national attention after rescuing an infant in the course of the chaotic evaluation at Kabul airport in Afghanistan.

What we are witnessing is a purge.

The true purpose of using vaccination mandates to fire employees from schools, civil service positions, hospitals, airlines, law enforcement, has nothing to do with COVID-19 and everything to do with disenfranchisement and diminution of our previously inalienable rights. The purpose is to weed out dissent.

It is the next step, following and building upon the redefinition of white supremacy to include any who disagrees with the party line, anyone who dissents. Just as the labeling of angry parents as domestic terrorists is simply a subterfuge to weed out dissent. It is a campaign to disempower, to eliminate those with dissenting ideas, ideas that diverge from authorized, “correct” thought. Those who could pose a threat to the power elite.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-purge-is-starting-with-the-bill-of-rights_4048928.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

A prominent, nonpartisan state think tank is warning about what the billions in coronavirus stimulus money headed for Wisconsin will mean for government spending in the years to come.

The Institute for Reforming Government’s CJ Szafir said the American Rescue Plan and the CARES Act are flooding state and local governments with more money than they know what to do with. But he said, the money has to be spent, so local governments are looking at all the ways they can find to spend it.

La Crosse is considering dropping out of Wisconsin’s Expenditure Restraint Program in order to spend all of its $22 million in stimulus money.

Mayor Mitch Reynolds earlier this week said in order to stay within the ERP, La Crosse would have to cut its budget.

“We are really reaching a point that it’s so confusing that we’re making cuts, and we really have quite a significant amount of money coming in,” the mayor said at a meeting Monday.

The ERP program was created in the 1990s to incentivize local governments to spend within their means in exchange for unlimited state help.

Szafir said the federal stimulus packages are now erasing the idea of spending less.

“This is a clear example of federal government overreach and how the trillions of dollars of government spending has created bad incentives for local communities,” Szafir told The Center Square. “The Common Council even admits that they are not sure how they would spend the federal taxpayer money. And yet, as we see time and time again, politicians rarely turn down ‘free’ federal money.”

While dropping out of the Expenditure Restraint Program may cost La Crosse some state money over the next two or three years, the city will likely see more money from the state when it re-enrolls in the ERP.

“The policy question that taxpayers and state lawmakers should contemplate is how this will impact future budget debates. If the Common Council opts out and takes the stimulus money, the ‘restart’ should not reward them by artificially inflating their numbers for next year. Otherwise the Council will start from a much higher number in later years with taxpayers eating that increase without it even being substantively debated later on,” Szafir explained.

La Crosse’s Common Council left the opt-out question pending earlier this week.

Szafir expects the impact of the billions in coronavirus stimulus dollars in Wisconsin to impact budget and tax questions at all levels of government for years to come.

By Benjamin Yount

https://www.theepochtimes.com/irg-free-federal-money-will-change-how-local-state-governments-spend-going-forward_4054034.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

Black lives matter unless they’re dressed in blue, apparently.

This became all too clear in the early hours of Saturday morning, when police say an ambush-style attack hit three black off-duty deputies working a side job together.

The attack happened at a Houston, Texas, nightclub and left one of the deputies, Kareem Atkins, dead according to KTRK-TV. The other two men survived, but are now fighting to recover from serious injuries. Atkins’ best friend, Deputy Darryl Garrett, was also shot in the same attack.

Garrett’s fiance says the two men were like brothers and she is keeping the news of Atkins’ death from him so as to not jeopardize his recovery. A third deputy, Juquaim Barthen, was also injured in the shooting with non-life-threatening wounds.

The incident started as Atkins and Garrett were responding to a suspected robbery in the nightclub’s parking lot. Once they had the suspect on the ground, a second man emerged and gunned the deputies down. Barthen responded to the resulting commotion and was hit in the leg by gunfire.

Some Americans Already Pulling Their Accounts from Credit Unions Over Dems’ IRS Spying Plan

Atkins had just returned from paternity leave for his second child.

The suspected shooter is still on the loose.

If there was ever a place for Black Lives Matter to stand up for someone, this is it. One black man was killed and his family left without a father, while two other black men were hit in the same apparent ambush.Is Black Lives Matter a divisive organization?Yes No

Unfortunately, the organization has been completely silent on the matter.

The last couple of posts on the BLM’s Twitter account celebrate an award given to the group and another urges for “true justice” on George Floyd’s 48th birthday. These posts predate the shooting, and nothing has been uploaded to the account since.

Today is George Floyd’s 48th birthday. Remember: true justice means that he would still be here today, celebrating with his friends and family. Follow @GFMFoundation to stay up to date on how you can honor his birthday this week pic.twitter.com/ABowDMD1KZ

— Black Lives Matter (@Blklivesmatter) October 14, 2021

The group’s Facebook page did make a post after the shooting, however.

Obama-Apointed Judge Ignores DOJ, Jails Jan. 6 Defendants: ‘There Have to Be Consequences’

Instead of bringing attention to the senseless anti-cop violence in Houston and the lives it has destroyed, Black Lives Matter was instead pushing for the full removal of police from schools.

Thankfully, Americans can step up for their own countrymen where Black Lives Matter fails to do anything but utterly divide.

According to KPRC, The 100 Club, a group that helps the families of fallen law enforcement and firefighters, is giving $20,000 to the wife of Atkins and will continue to help with education and other finances.

Donations to The 100 Club’s “Survivor’s Fund” can be made here.

It isn’t the best time to be living in a large American city.

Throughout the country, it has become trendy to blame law enforcement for everyone’s problems, and community safety has suffered as a result.

Look no further than St. Paul, Minnesota, for an example of this phenomenon.

Alpha News reported last month that Ramsey County, which encapsulates the city, no longer will prosecute felonies stemming from “low-level” traffic stops. The county claims these procedures have a history of harming minorities.

George Floyd, a black man, was killed in St. Paul’s twin city, Minneapolis, by white police officer Derek Chauvin while under Chauvin’s knee for several minutes on May 25 of last year in a killing that set off nationwide protests and calls for police reform.

Some Americans Already Pulling Their Accounts from Credit Unions Over Dems’ IRS Spying Plan

This past April, Chauvin was convicted of second-degree unintentional murder, third-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter.

“As leaders in the justice system, we must step forward and fundamentally change a longstanding systemic injustice that has impacted generations of people in our community and across this country,” Ramsey County Attorney John Choi said in a statement on Sept. 8 of this year.

“Recognizing the role we play as prosecutors in perpetuating racial inequities that often result from these types of stops is an important first step in charting a new, less harmful course.”

These statements were corroborated by a collection of county officials and left-wing activists.

Has your community considered defunding the police?

“We have a vision of a vibrant community where all are safe and healthy and valued and thrive,” added Toni Carter, the Ramsey County board chair, according to Alpha News.

“And we know we can’t get there with an us-them mentality. We are working to listen to those who have been involved in these traffic stops, who have experienced the building of records, based upon one incident after the other, to determine what really works for all of us.”

Choi said the policy would apply only for traffic stops based solely on consent. If there is a “dangerous condition” involved, authorities may continue to make arrests, according to the statement.

Nevertheless, the clarification didn’t win the county many friends beyond the police chief. After all, lawlessness is lawlessness.

State Sen. Warren Limmer, who represents portions of nearby Hennepin County, was particularly furious.

‘Black Lives Matter’ Silent as Ambush Attack Kills Black Deputy, Injures His Two Fellow Lawmen

“It’s (Choi’s) job to put criminals away, not leave them on the streets,” Limmer told Alpha News. “Violent crime is still on the rise, and this is absolutely the wrong direction prosecutors should be going.”

The Minnesota Police and Peace Officers Association, one of the most powerful police unions in the state, sided with Limmer.

“Basically, the county attorney just announced his office won’t uphold the law and won’t prosecute those who break it,” the union said in a statement.

“Ramsey County residents be warned: those that break the law won’t even get a slap on the wrist — they’ll get a high-five from the county attorney and be left to commit more, and more serious, offenses. Reduction of crime and public safety for all should be our focus as the crime rate escalates — and this isn’t it.”

It remains to be seen how Ramsey County’s crime rates and general welfare will evolve. One thing is for sure, though: St. Paul residents are less safe now than before this mess started.

Portland, Oregon, businesses and residents may be at the mercy of rioters and looters, but it’s not because their police don’t want to do anything.

It’s that they can’t.

According to KOIN-TV, the Portland Police Bureau told residents of the city’s downtown Pearl District that their hands were tied during a riot this past week that caused a half-million dollars worth of damage. The culprit? Democrats in the state legislature who limited their ability to use crowd dispersal tactics.

In a media release, the PPB said “around 100 anarchists caused substantial damage to businesses and government buildings in downtown Portland Tuesday night.

“Investigations into the criminal behavior are underway. No arrests have been made yet. At this point the damage is believed to be in excess of $500,000, and reports are still being compiled,” the media release read.

Some Americans Already Pulling Their Accounts from Credit Unions Over Dems’ IRS Spying Plan

“There were 35 separate locations that were targeted, including banks, retail stores, coffee shops, and government buildings.”

Portland Police eventually gave verbal dispersal orders to the antifa at the end of their riot last night. pic.twitter.com/xEvjT9ZmqR

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) October 13, 2021

Should HB 2928 be repealed?

While dispersal orders were given, there was no way to actually effect a dispersal. Why? It comes back to House Bill 2928, a piece of state legislation that prohibits police from using pepper spray, rubber bullets and other similar tools unless the use of deadly physical force would otherwise be justified, according to The Post Millennial.

That’s why KOIN saw police officers in their cars on Tuesday as the riot raged on.

“The reason that we did not intervene goes back to what we talked about last month with HB 2928 and the restrictions placed on us in a crowd control environment,” Lt. Jake Jensen told the Pearl District Neighborhood Association during a meeting on Thursday night, two nights after the destruction.

“That’s the way our legislature has said we need to operate in a crowd control environment. So that’s the way we are going to operate in a crowd control environment.

“The fact of the matter is without being able to use pepper spray, without being able to use our 40mm less-lethal devices in that kind of environment, it really prevents us from having access to the tools we need in large part to keep ourselves safe,” he added.

‘Insurrection’? Climate Change Protesters Attempt to Storm Interior Department Building

And that doesn’t matter how many police officers the department has, either.

“This issue, if I’m understanding, will not be solved no matter how many officers you bring back — yes or no?” said Bill Bagnall, secretary and director of communications of the Pearl District Neighborhood Association, during the meeting.

“Yes, that is correct,” Jensen said.

Another resident asked if the law meant “we are now like a lawless city, anyone can come in and just bash around and do all the damage they want without any repercussions whatsoever?”

Jensen said that arrests could be made and charges could be filed later.

“In these cases, the consequences are going to come not on the night of, but in the follow-up investigation,” he said.

That’ll convince the mob to stay away.

Keep in mind this is the second time in the past week a neighborhood group in Portland has asked the city for help dealing with lawlessness.

According to KATU-TV, a group of businesses in the Old Town neighborhood sent a letter to Mayor Ted Wheeler and Portland’s city commissioners with concerns about both their staff and visitors.

In the letter, the businesses said they were “writing to put on the record our profound concerns regarding the rapidly deteriorating conditions in our neighborhood and to demand immediate action to safeguard our visitors, staff and volunteers.”

“Old Town and the New Chinatown/Japantown Historic District was once home to the largest population of Cantonese-Chinese outside of San Francisco and one of the two Japantowns in Portland. Jewish merchants managed and owned businesses in the neighborhood. Our four organizations were founded to preserve an important part of Portland’s history and to celebrate the diversities of our city. Local government’s inability to protect this neighborhood disrespects this history.”

At one restaurant, the letter said, three staff members “experienced a combination of physical and verbal assaults” in a single day.

“It makes all of us want to cry. That’s what we were trying to communicate to our leaders of this city and this county. Our hearts are broken,” said Elizabeth Nye, executive director of the Lan Su Chinese Garden, one of the businesses that signed the letter.

Of all the cities in the United States that were consumed with antifa-related violence and defund-mania last summer, Portland stood head and shoulders above the rest. The chickens have long since come home to roost, however — and the state legislature has handcuffed the police with HB 2928.

Lt. Jensen claimed Portland isn’t a de facto lawless city, at least when it comes to rioters. Its residents might beg to differ.

A Walmart training program denounces the United States as a “white supremacy system,” according to a new report.

Writing in City Journal, Christopher Rufo, who has written about race-based indoctrination programs in other organizations, said a whistleblower gave him internal company documents upon which he based his report.

The Walmart program began in 2018 when Walmart inked a deal with the Racial Equity Institute of  Greensboro, North Carolina. It is recommended for hourly workers and mandatory for executives and has trained more than 1,000 people.

The program is based on foundational principles Rufo lists as “internalized racial oppression,” “internalized racial inferiority,” and “white anti-racist development.” Walmart said it “engaged REI for a number of training sessions since 2018” and has “found these sessions to be thought provoking and constructive.”

The program says the United States is a “white supremacy system,” crafted by Europeans “for the purpose of assigning and maintaining white skin access to power and privilege.”

American history is portrayed through a racial lens, claiming it began with the “construction of a ‘white race’” by colonists in 1680.

Walmart launched the program with the Racial Equity Institute in 2018 and has trained more than 1,000 employees on the core principles of critical race theory, including “intersectionality,” “internalized racial oppression,”and “white anti-racist development.” pic.twitter.com/Fy6wrMxb9U

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2021

The program hammers home that white Americans were raised amid “racist conditioning” that indoctrinates them into “white supremacy,” or the view “that white people and the ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions of white people are superior to People of Color and their ideas, thoughts, beliefs, and actions

The program prescribes “white anti-racist development” as a treatment for all those terrible attitudes whites hold.

All white people, the program claims, are guilty of “white privilege” and “internalized racial superiority,” by falsely believing that “one’s comfort, wealth, privilege and success has been earned by merits and hard work” when all the time a racist system was showering benefits upon them.

Qualities including “individualism,” “objectivity,” “paternalism,” “defensiveness,” “power hoarding,” “right to comfort” and “worship of the written word.” These “promote white supremacy thinking” and “are damaging to both people of color and to white people,” according to the program

Segregation is essential to discussing this, the program says, because “people of color and white people have their own work to do in understanding and addressing racism.”

The program claims that minority workers at Walmart suffer from “constructed racist oppression” and “internalized racial inferiority” by being subjected to the racist world around them.

Students at a Private School in DC Could Face Expulsion for ‘Misplaced Humor’

The Walmart program claims that whites are inherently guilty of “white privilege” and “internalized racial superiority,” or the belief that “one’s comfort, wealth, privilege and success has been earned by merits and hard work” rather than through the benefits of systemic racism. pic.twitter.com/hRz4LoXafL

— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 14, 2021

According to the program, minority Americans have beliefs that include  “we believe there is something wrong with being a person of color,” “we have lowered self-esteem,” “we have lowered expectations,” “we have very limited choices” and “we have a sense of limited possibility.”

Minority Americans develop “self-hate,” “anger,” “rage” and “ethnocentrism” because of the racism that surrounds them.

To solve the problem, white workers are taught to embrace “guilt and shame,” support the concept that “white is not right” and acknowledge their part in racism.

So long to “truth, justice and the American way.”

Instead, Superman will now be seeking “a better tomorrow” as “America” is wiped away by DC Comics, which announced the change in a statement on Saturday.

“Superman’s new motto of ‘Truth, Justice and a Better Tomorrow’ will better reflect the global storylines that we are telling across DC and to honor the character’s incredible legacy of over 80 years of building a better world,” said DC Chief Creative Officer and Publisher Jim Lee.

“Superman has long been a symbol of hope who inspires people from around the world, and it is that optimism and hope that powers him forward with this new mission statement.”

According to The Hollywood Reporter, the “American Way” phrase began in 1940, debuting on a radio series called “The Adventures of Superman.”

The motto continued in the TV version of Superman that was crafted in the 1950s, but it was not universally used in the various versions of the superhero that came in the 1960s, according to Yahoo.

When Superman hit the big screen in a 1978 movie starring Christopher Reeve, the motto returned.

Many objected to the change.

DC Comics decide it’s time for Superman’s motto to “evolve”, so they ditch “American” from it. His motto changes from “Truth, Justice, and the American Way” to “Truth, Justice, and a Better Tomorrow”. And just like that, we lose a little bit more of our childhood. pic.twitter.com/yEfA9xr0y3

— Mike Sington (@MikeSington) October 17, 2021

This is how you say you hate America without saying you hate America. https://t.co/0AFawMhsiF

— Katrina Pierson (@KatrinaPierson) October 17, 2021

DC Comics removing ‘the American way’ from Superman slogan: report,
American Way is being canceled right before our eyes https://t.co/aZpaOJBVpQ

— Patriots United!!!🇺🇸🙏🏻🇨🇱!!! (@MichaelDilmore) October 17, 2021

First a token bi Superman and now DC completely abandons the ‘American Way’ for Superman’s motto.

Though lets be honest, modern woke comics stopped caring about ‘Truth and Justice’ a long time ago as well.
They rather endorse riots and division instead. https://t.co/ADT8xr6P3A

— Spooky Juno Maxwell 🎃 (@Goddess_Maxwell) October 16, 2021

Ron DeSantis Triggers Leftists by Issuing the Perfect Columbus Day Proclamation

LOL. No. No matter the amount of anti-American ideology that plagues @DCComics and @warnerbros, Superman will ALWAYS represent Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Shame on you @JimLee https://t.co/joqdA2OBR3

— André Hutchens (@ac_hutchens) October 16, 2021

Are you tired of ‘woke’ changes that ruin everything?

D.C. Comics jolted Superman fandom earlier this month when it announced that Jon Kent, the son of Superman, would be portrayed as bisexual in a separate story line, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Tom Taylor, who wrote the tale of the bisexual superhero, said the time was right for the character, according to Variety.

“I’ve always said everyone needs heroes and everyone deserves to see themselves in their heroes, and I’m very grateful DC and Warner Bros. share this idea,” Taylor said.

“Superman’s symbol has always stood for hope, for truth and for justice. Today, that symbol represents something more. Today, more people can see themselves in the most powerful superhero in comics,” he said.

The U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow (COP26) is great news for corrupt governments in the developing world because it looks set to transfer huge sums of money into their hands.

Dambisa Moyo, a Zambian-born economist, has long warned the West against sending aid to Africa because of the corruption it creates.

Moyo’s book “Dead Aid” explained how foreign aid produces terrible outcomes in the developing world, such as economic laziness, cultures of dependence, and rampant corruption. She argued aid was killing Africa.

Warnings by Moyo, and others, have helped reduce the flows of foreign aid to third world governments know to be kleptocracies. But that has simply meant corrupt governments have had to work harder to get the West to send them money.

How have they done this? The method that has been widely used is playing the guilt card or the victim card.

The guilt card tells Westerners they should feel guilty because European empires and colonialism allegedly exploited the third world. But, unfortunately, the Left has so widely propagated this anticolonial mythology that it is becoming almost impossible to have a sensible discussion about the age of imperialism.

The victim card tells Westerners that the developing world is full of poor and starving people because villainous Western capitalists exploit them. Unfortunately, this socialist myth has been sold to many well-meaning but naïve, liberals through journalists and celebrities, or by screening heart-wrenching and sensationalist television images.

Since well-meaning liberals lack personal experience of the third world, they have no reality against which to measure the myths fed to them by left-leaning media and educators.

Playing the guilt and victims cards have also been routinely used by leaders of multilateral organizations like the U.N. and WHO. 

More recently, we have also witnessed third world leaders increasingly using China’s Belt and Road initiative to turn the foreign aid tap back on. Today’s version of great power competition has seen Western countries handing out aid to try and stop developing countries from aligning with China.

Sadly, this sort of aid is especially likely to lead to corruption—just as it did during the Cold War.

But now we are facing a new explosion of third world corruption, caused this time by the way Greens have successfully mobilized the politics of climate change. If governments in Africa and Asia get their way, the Glasgow conference on climate change will transfer huge amounts of money into their hands.

With the Glasgow summit in mind, the South African government (known for its corruption) has promised to go beyond its Paris greenhouse gas targets.

But there is a catch—along with other third world elites, South Africa expects taxpayers in the West to pay them to implement their targets.

So we see the South African government, a well-known kleptocrat regime, brazenly asking the developed world to hand over to them $269 billion to pay for proposed decarbonization projects. The South African document lodged with the U.N. said “substantial multilateral support” would be required for measures such as “a very ambitious power sector investment plan.”

So Glasgow funds will be used to fix South Africa’s broken Eskom electricity supply system, plus fix the country’s catastrophic debt-repayment problem created by Eskom’s corruption and maladministration. Eskom has been unable to supply the country with enough electricity since 2007.

Further, ending the country’s energy crisis by building giant new power plants at Medupi and Kusile failed because of corruption, looting, and planning incompetence. Glasgow funds could fix all these problems, but it would also provide new corruption opportunities.

Effectively, the developing world is putting forward yet another neo-socialist wealth transfer scheme, but this one is dressed up in the language of saving the planet from climate change.

But the developing world says they will only help save the planet on condition that Western governments help them meet their Glasgow promises by transferring billions (if not trillions) of dollars from Western taxpayers to developing world elites so they can meet over-blown targets.

There are two problems with this. Firstly, the developing world has a record of poor governance, meaning these governments can seldom deliver on promises or targets. Even worse, developing world elites generally spend the foreign aid monies they receive to enrich themselves rather than to actually build the intended projects.

So the reality is, the U.N. climate change conference in Glasgow looks set to become just another mechanism to feed the corrupt gravy train that third world elites have been running for decades. Far from paying for green decarbonization projects, any wealth transfers flowing from Glasgow are more likely to end up buying four-wheel drives for the children of the third world elites.

To understand what is likely to happen to the $269 billion for climate change projects asked for by the South Africans, one only needs to look at what happened to their $4.3 billion COVID-19 relief funding from the IMF. One corrupt government Minister alone was involved in COVID-19 fraud valued at $10 million, while other politicians and African National Congress-aligned cronies looted another $700 million out of PPE funds.

If South Africa’s elite were even prepared to steal from funds geared to saving lives by fixing a health system shattered by COVID-19, imagine what they would do with climate change aid (where no lives are at stake).

By bringing together third world elites carrying begging bowls with Western greens which are willing to be taken advantage of, the U.N. climate change summit seems almost certain to deliver a bonanza for all those corrupt elites with a legacy of running gravy trains.

But this still begs the question; will Western governments ever learn?

https://www.theepochtimes.com/mkt_morningbrief/un-climate-change-funding-to-feed-corruption-gravy-train-of-developing-world_4050207.html?utm_source=Morningbrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=mb-2021-10-17&mktids=c140660d60f5031e37d861563fe83854&est=4kO6Ff%2F34Onnr30p%2Fdp7sjys9TTm9jr0cSEvEV9MVB8Rno2bI%2BnSEt6vo76ZGE2xpA%3D%3D

No matter what you think happened on Capitol Hill on Jan. 6, there is no denying that it has been a gift, politically speaking, to the establishment left.

It bolstered leftists’ longstanding claims that the nation is filled with white supremacist terrorists just chomping at the bit to bring back the lynch mob and impose the vague form of fascism that anyone even remotely right-leaning is so often accused of supporting.

What is truly terrifying about those who stand accused of participating in the Capitol incursion, however, is the way they’re being treated.

There have been multiple reports of mistreatment and civil rights violations among the Jan. 6 defendants awaiting trial, none of whom, by the way, are facing charges of treason or sedition.

These are serious accusations — as they would be if we were talking about antifa insurgents or Black Lives Matter protesters, as well.

US Marshals Could Begin Rounding Up Trump Supporters Targeted in House Jan. 6 Committee

Thankfully, it appears a federal judge agrees.

U.S. District Judge Royce C. Lamberth found Washington, D.C., jail officials to be in contempt of court this week over their treatment of a Jan. 6 defendant and has called on the Department of Justice to investigate whether the rights of other incursion suspects are being violated.

The director and warden of the D.C. Department of Corrections, Quincy Booth and Wanda Patten, respectively, failed to see that defendant Christopher Worrell received necessary medical treatment, The Washington Post reported.

Worrell faces four felony charges, including rioting and spraying pepper gel at law enforcement officers during the Capitol incursion.

He was arrested in March and has been held at the D.C. facility without bail. After breaking his wrist in May, it was recommended that he receive surgery, which has yet to happen thanks to the officials’ neglect.

During a hearing, Lamberth said this failure was “more than just inept and bureaucratic jostling of papers,” suggesting that it could have even been deliberate mistreatment.

“I find that the civil rights of the defendant have been abused. I don’t know if it’s because he’s a Jan. 6 defendant or not, but I find this matter should be referred to the attorney general of the United States for a civil rights investigation into whether the D.C. Department of Corrections is violating the civil rights of Jan. 6 defendants,” he said.

This is a disturbing example of what many fear could happen to our justice system if we are not careful.

For months, attorneys representing Jan. 6 defendants have been crying foul about how their clients are being treated. The allegations sound like they’re right out of the third world and include lack of access to clean water, lengthy periods of time in solitary confinement, and limited legal counsel.

‘Insurrection’? Climate Change Protesters Attempt to Storm Interior Department Building

By many accounts, the alleged rioters are being treated like political prisoners in a corrupt, illiberal system — and, sadly, I’m sure many would agree that that is essentially what they are.

However, the Post pointed out that the D.C. Department of Corrections has been accused of creating inhumane conditions before and not-so-subtly implied that it’s only now receiving any attention because the Jan. 6 defendants are white and conservative.

“Some veteran defense lawyers privately noted that complaints raised on behalf of mostly White and conservative Jan. 6 defendants [appear] to have won more traction from some political quarters than abuse claims brought by poorer Black and Hispanic defendants who make up the bulk of the jail population,” the outlet reported.

This is an interesting angle from the Post, considering it’s not exactly uncommon in today’s political climate for lawmakers and pundits to draw attention to all manner of alleged civil rights violations, particularly against minorities.

Of course, the left’s leveraging of such grievances for political purposes is not always proportionate to the actual wrongdoing, so we can take the claim at face value.

If the Jan. 6 defendants are not being singled out and this facility really is so atrocious, well, then it’s a good thing that their cases are bringing attention to gross and widespread civil rights abuses, right? Certainly.

Yet what is unique in the case of these supposedly privileged defendants is that their crime, which has been characterized by the establishment as a carefully coordinated and treasonous affair, seems to have had a suspicious degree of FBI involvement.

No matter how you look at it, the way the Jan. 6 defendants are being treated reeks of swamp corruption. We need to fight for a justice system that defends the rights of even the most politically polarizing prisoner.

Let’s sincerely hope that, no matter who is being mistreated in this D.C. prison, this incident will rip the mask off the people responsible.

It’s another day ending in “Y,” so there’s more upside-down, crazy stuff from the left.

As in — let’s all be Holocaust deniers.

That’s what Gina Peddy last week told Texas teachers in a school district near Fort Worth.

Peddy, an executive director of curriculum for Carroll Independent School District in Southlake, was training teachers on how to stock their classroom libraries in light of new legislation requiring schools to present varied viewpoints on controversial subjects, according to the Southlake podcast of NBC News Digital.

The details are contained in Texas Senate Bill 3, set to go into effect in December, and in House Bill 3979, which went into effect last month. The laws require the teaching of essentially traditional civics in Texas schools. They allow teachers to opt out of addressing controversial subjects, but if they choose controversy, they must present a balanced viewpoint.

US Marshals Could Begin Rounding Up Trump Supporters Targeted in House Jan. 6 Committee

That’s where Peddy decided that, somehow, the Holocaust is controversial. Peddy, in effect, said there’s more than one viewpoint to genocide.

“Just try to remember the concepts of [House Bill] 3979,” Peddy said, as she was secretly recorded, with the recording given to NBC. “And make sure that if you have a book on the Holocaust that you have one that has an opposing … that has other perspectives.”

Right.

Does Peddy really believe there’s more than one viewpoint on whether or not the Holocaust was justified? Or was she just using a juvenile way to object to the new Texas legislation, which tempers indoctrination in topics like critical race theory? Education professionals are supposed to teach the children, not act like them.

Actually, there’s a backstory to Peddy’s nonsense. At the macro level, it’s about what’s going on nationwide in public schools — parents are realizing the indoctrination that is taking place and are objecting.

And the priests and priestesses of Big Education are responding by telling parents to butt out.

At a local level, in Southlake and elsewhere, some parents have been concerned about the school district’s elevation of diversity and inclusion teaching.

Texas law prohibits teaching that could make individuals feel “guilt or anguish,” regarding their race, according to NBC.

There has been concern about the teaching of CRT, and some Southlake teachers are incensed that the school board voted to reprimand a fourth-grade teacher who had in her classroom a book on “anti-racism.”

Teacher Allegedly Threatens to Shoot School Administrators After Maintenance Staff Removes Plastic COVID Barrier from Classroom

(For those having trouble keeping up, you can consider the term anti-racism to be as against racist attitudes as Antifa is against fascism).

Not surprisingly, Peddy’s Holocaust comment has brought reaction.

Karen Fitzgerald, a spokeswoman for the school district, said the district is trying to aid teachers in compliance with the new legislation, not only in teaching but in books they provide students, according to NBC.

“Our district recognizes that all Texas teachers are in a precarious position with the latest legal requirements,” she said. “Our purpose is to support our teachers in ensuring they have all of the professional development, resources and materials needed. Our district has not and will not mandate books be removed nor will we mandate that classroom libraries be unavailable.”

Union spokesman Clay Robinson of the Texas State Teachers Association said the new legislation doesn’t cover classroom libraries. And he criticized what Peddy had said.

“We find it reprehensible for an educator to require a Holocaust denier to get equal treatment with the facts of history,” Robison told NBC. “That’s absurd. It’s worse than absurd. And this law does not require it.”

Republican State Sen. Bryan Hughes, who wrote Senate Bill 3, concurred. Schools don’t have to present both sides of “good and evil,” and there’s no requirement to ban books with only one perspective of the Holocaust.

“That’s not what the bill says,” according to Hughes.

Following publicity surrounding Peddy’s teacher training, Carroll school superintendent Lane Ledbetter posted on Facebook: “We recognize there are not two sides of the Holocaust,” and said the district would work to clarify expectations for teachers.

Some teachers have expressed concern over what they have in their classroom libraries. One anonymous interview conducted with two teachers by NBC addressed the statement that the district is not pressuring teachers to purge their bookshelves. “That’s a lie,” one responded. “It is a flat-out lie … How could you even make that statement?”

Asked by NBC what was at stake, the anonymous teacher said: “In books, children see what the world can be. And to have that taken away because we’re afraid of a few parents getting upset about a word or two or an idea that they have imagined is in a book is unthinkable.”

And true to form for ongoing militancy among those in the education establishment, one teacher’s classroom library has been covered with yellow caution tape, similar to what is seen at police or construction sites.

Ever think that maybe what we call public schools are really private schools, as in what Big Education thinks is its own private domain?

Being on leave during a major crisis is a good thing, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Friday.

The Department of Transportation let slip Thursday that Buttigieg, who adopted twins with his husband, Chasten, has been on paternity leave since August.

“For the first four weeks, he was mostly offline except for major agency decisions and matters that could not be delegated,” a spokesman for the Department of Transportation said. “He has been ramping up activities since then.”

Buttigieg will “continue to take some time over the coming weeks to support his husband and take care of his new children,” the spokesman said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said the openly gay Cabinet member is a role model for the “importance of paid leave for new parents,” according to The Hill.

US Marshals Could Begin Rounding Up Trump Supporters Targeted in House Jan. 6 Committee

Not everyone was as fawning.

“Pete Buttigieg has been on leave from his job since August after adopting a child. Paternity leave, they call it. Trying to figure out how to breastfeed, no word on how that went,” Fox News host Tucker Carlson said Thursday.

Buttigieg was stung by the remark and said he is on call “24/7.”

“In his case, I guess he just doesn’t understand the concept of bottle feeding, let alone the concept of paternity leave,” Buttigieg said of Carlson. “But what is really strange is that, you know, this is from a side of the aisle that used to claim the mantle of being pro-family. What we have right now is an administration that’s actually pro-family.”

“I’m blessed to experience that as an employee, being able to have the flexibility to take care of our newborn children, which is by the way, work. It’s a joyful work. It’s wonderful work, but it’s definitely work,” Buttigieg added.

But Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee noted that Buttigieg has taken time off when America’s transportation sector is under scrutiny as a key cause of supply chain issues that are impacting Americans.

“We’re in the middle of a transportation crisis and the White House was hiding that Pete Buttigieg was on paid leave. Why did we just learn of this?” Blackburn tweeted, adding the secretary “should do his job.”

We’re in the middle of a transportation crisis and the White House was hiding that Pete Buttigieg was on paid leave. Why did we just learn of this?

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 15, 2021

Biden Has Allowed Transportation Sec. Pete Buttigieg to Take Months-Long Paid Leave as Crisis Rages

Pete Buttigieg should do his job.

— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) October 15, 2021

Carlson, on Fox News, did not allow Buttigieg to have the last word, according to Newsweek.

“We made a brief, offhand joke about the Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg, and this morning we discovered our error,” Carlson said.

“It turns out that Buttigieg is not a dwarfish fraud whose utter mediocrity indicts the class that produced him. No, not at all,” he said.

“Pete Buttigieg was once the mayor of South Bend, Indiana. So understandably, going forward, we are under strict orders from the Biden administration to take Pete Buttigieg very, very seriously. And of course we will. Our mistake,” he said.

U.S. climate envoy John Kerry has admitted that, at least in his role as the carbon-cutting evangelist to the world, he’s not terribly interested in China’s human rights abuses — including the oppression of the Uyghur people of Xinjiang province that some have called genocide.

According to Fox Business, when asked by an interviewer last month about “the process by which one trades off climate against human rights,” Kerry’s answer struck many as shockingly cold: “Well, life is always full of tough choices and the relationship between nations.”

That statement will come under additional scrutiny after financial records revealed Kerry and his wife have a stake in a controversial Chinese investment group that has funded work on facial recognition technology used by the Chinese Communist Party to identify Uyghurs.

The financial disclosure documents filed at the beginning of this year and reviewed by The Washington Free Beacon indicate that the climate czar holds “over $1,000,000” in an investment group called Hillhouse China Value Fund L.P.

“Kerry’s Hillhouse stake is through a trust in which his wife is the beneficiary,” the Free Beacon reported. “While Kerry’s wife is a beneficiary of the trust, he stated in the disclosure that they are not involved in managing the investments.”

US Marshals Could Begin Rounding Up Trump Supporters Targeted in House Jan. 6 Committee

Hillhouse, described by Bloomberg as “a $100 billion behemoth that’s made prescient bets on stocks, venture capital and private equity deals,” has made a big bet (prescient or not) on YITU Technology, a firm that is blacklisted by the U.S. because it helps President Xi Jinping’s regime track Uyghurs virtually anywhere.

“The facial recognition technology, which is integrated into China’s rapidly expanding networks of surveillance cameras, looks exclusively for Uighurs based on their appearance and keeps records of their comings and goings for search and review,” The New York Times reported in 2019.

“Chinese authorities already maintain a vast surveillance net, including tracking people’s DNA, in the western region of Xinjiang, which many Uighurs call home. But the scope of the new systems, previously unreported, extends that monitoring into many other corners of the country.”Does John Kerry have credibility on the world stage?Yes No
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What’s more, YITU reportedly has plans to expand overseas — meaning other oppressive governments looking to crack down on ethnic minorities could use the software as well.

The U.S. Department of Commerce placed YITU on its trade restriction blacklist in 2019, saying the company is “implicated in human rights violations and abuses in the implementation of China’s campaign of repression, mass arbitrary detention, and high-technology surveillance against Uyghurs, Kazakhs, and other members of Muslim minority groups.”

Intelligence analyst Anders Corr told the Free Beacon that Kerry’s investment in YITU is an “astonishing and disappointing revelation.”

“Kerry leads on the China issue, not just climate talks, and he and his family should be forbidden from investing in a manner that creates even the appearance of a conflict of interest,” Corr said.

Corr added that China’s AI industry is “one of a very few most important strategic sectors for its economic and military development,” and its growth would “enable the achievement of its goal to become globally hegemonic.”

“No American should invest in China’s AI capabilities, which only empower the country in its economic growth, and ultimately the military strength with which it will challenge the benign leadership of the United States,” he said.

Forget Ukraine, New Hunter Biden Emails Tie Him to Completely Different Country: Report

By the by, there’s another person in the orbit of the Biden administration who owns a stake in a Chinese AI company implicated in human rights abuses. Want to take a guess at who it is? C’mon, just guess. You’re probably not wrong.

“The president’s son, Hunter Biden, continues to own a 10% stake in a Chinese private equity firm that invested in another Chinese facial recognition company, Megvii, that was also sanctioned by the U.S. government in 2019,” the Daily Caller reported Thursday.

“While White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said in early February that Hunter Biden was in the process of divesting his ownership stake in the Chinese private equity firm BHR Partners, business records accessed Thursday shows he still owns his 10% stake in the firm through his personal company, Skaneateles LLC.”

Perhaps Megvii wants to buy some paintings from a certain up-and-coming artist before Hunter officially ends their business relationship. But I digress.

Hunter isn’t going to be doing much of great importance for the next few years, whereas Kerry is tasked with getting China — the world’s biggest polluter — to go along with carbon reduction plans. He’s also seemingly looking the other way as China commits genocide.

Yes, one assumes his money is being invested in something akin to a blind trust, but Kerry of all people should have made it clear to his financial planners that putting money into firms that invest in companies like YITU is strictly off-limits.

Does that narrow one’s range of investment options? Well, life is always full of tough choices.

The intra-Democrat power struggle intensified this week as two top senators clashed over what one of their states needs.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.)—technically an independent, but who ran for the Democratic presidential nomination twice and regularly votes with the party—started the spat by penning an op-ed in a West Virginia newspaper that’s essentially a press release for President Joe Biden’s agenda, promoting what supporters say would be accomplished if Democrats ram a $3.5 trillion budget package through Congress.

The bill “is an unprecedented effort to finally address the long-neglected crises facing working families,” he wrote.

Sanders noted that the package is opposed by virtually every Republican and thus requires all Democrats in the upper chamber to support it, even using a process called reconciliation that lowers the threshold in the Senate from 60 to 50 votes. Democrats can break ties because they hold the White House.

“Poll after poll shows overwhelming support for this legislation. Yet, the political problem we face is that in a 50-50 Senate we need every Democratic senator to vote ‘yes.’ We now have only 48. Two Democratic senators remain in opposition, including Sen. Joe Manchin,” Sanders wrote.

Manchin (D-W.Va.) about an hour after the piece was published fired off a statement to reporters and on social media.

“This isn’t the first time an out-of-stater has tried to tell West Virginians what is best for them despite having no relationship to our state,” he said.

“Millions of jobs are open, supply chains are strained and unavoidable inflation taxes are draining workers’ hard-earned wages as the price of gasoline and groceries continues to climb. Senator Sanders’ answer is to throw more money on an already overheated economy while 52 other Senators have grave concerns about this approach,” Manchin said.

The longtime moderate reiterated his call for Congress to “proceed with caution on any additional spending” and vowed not to vote for “a reckless expansion of government programs,” adding, “No op-ed from a self-declared Independent socialist is going to change that.”

The public fight is the latest in a series of spats that have spilled from behind closed doors to the public sphere as so-called progressives and radical lawmakers like Sanders try to pressure Manchin, Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), and other moderates to support the budget package.

Manchin and Sinema have stood strong and have called on the House of Representatives to pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill that was passed with votes from both parties in the upper chamber.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has delayed a vote on that bill multiple times because the Congressional Progressive Caucus said its members would not support it unless the House first passed Biden’s package. Most Republicans in the lower chamber also oppose the bill, meaning there’s not enough votes to approve it.

Sanders publicly urged colleagues in the House not to vote for the infrastructure bill as they try to leverage the legislation to get the larger piece passed. Manchin, meanwhile, has refused to approve a budget package totaling more than $1.5 trillion, an amount progressives say is too low.

The back-and-forth Friday was presaged by Sanders dinging Manchin in a press conference on Wednesday, claiming it is “not fair” that “one or two people think that they should be able to stop what 48 members of the Democratic caucus want, what the American people want, what the president of the United States wants.”

Manchin has downplayed the rift in previous comments before his latest statement.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/manchin-responds-to-socialist-sanders-over-disparaging-op-ed-in-west-virginia-newspaper_4052673.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

WASHINGTON—Republican U.S. senators led by Marco Rubio on Thursday called on the Biden administration to blacklist Honor, a former unit of embattled Chinese telecoms giant Huawei, describing the firm as a threat to national security.

In a letter dated Thursday, seen by Reuters, Rubio described Honor as essentially an “arm” of the Chinese government with newly unfettered access to the same prized U.S. technology currently denied to Huawei. The letter adds to a growing chorus of China hawks calling for the blacklisting.

By spinning off the Chinese telecom giant’s budget smartphone brand in November 2020, “Beijing has effectively dodged a critical American export control,” Rubio wrote in the letter also signed by Senators John Cornyn and Rick Scott.

“By failing to act in response, the Department of Commerce risks setting a dangerous precedent and communicating to adversaries that we lack the capacity or willpower to punish blatant financial engineering by an authoritarian regime.”

Honor and the Department of Commerce in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Huawei declined to comment beyond noting a prior statement that said it would not hold any shares or be involved in managing Honor following the spinoff. The Chinese Embassy in Washington said the U.S. had kept “smearing” Huawei without presenting solid evidence to support its accusations.

The Trump administration placed Huawei on a trade blacklist in 2019, arguing the company posed a national security threat, which Huawei denies. Putting the company on the so-called entity list has meant its U.S. suppliers have had to obtain special licenses to sell key items like semiconductors to the firm.

Google was also barred from providing technical support to new Huawei phone models and access to Google Mobile Services, the bundle of developer services upon which most Android apps are based.

As sanctions against the company began to bite amid tighter controls, Huawei announced the Honor sale to a consortium of over 30 agents and dealers.

In August a group of 14 Republican Congressmen led by Michael McCaul, the ranking member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, also called on the Commerce Department to blacklist Honor, alleging the company was spun off to evade U.S. export controls and to give Huawei access to blocked semiconductor chips and software.

On Monday, Honor said on Twitter it had “succeeded in confirming cooperation with a number of supplier partners in the early stage” and that its Honor 50 smartphones would be equipped with Google Mobile Services.

By Alexandra Alper

https://www.theepochtimes.com/rubio-calls-on-biden-administration-to-blacklist-huawei-spin-off-honor_4052261.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

SAN FRANCISCO—An Apple employee who led fellow workers in publicly sharing instances of what they called harassment and discrimination at the company said on Thursday that she had been fired.

Janneke Parrish, an Apple program manager, said the iPhone maker informed her on Thursday that she had been terminated for deleting material on company equipment while she was under investigation over the leaking of a company town hall to media. She told Reuters she denies leaking.

Parrish said she deleted apps that contained details of her finances and other personal information before handing her devices in to Apple as part of the probe.

Parrish said she believes she was fired for her activism in the workplace.

“To me, this seems clearly retaliatory for the fact that I was speaking out about abuses that have happened at my employer, pay equity and, generally, about our workplace conditions,” she said.

Apple said Friday it does not discuss specific employee matters.

Apple has recently experienced other examples of employee unrest. Last month, two Apple employees told Reuters they had filed charges against the company with the National Labor Relations Board. The workers accused Apple of retaliation and halting discussion of pay among employees, among other allegations.

Apple has said that it is “deeply committed to creating and maintaining a positive and inclusive workplace” and that it takes “all concerns” from employees seriously.

U.S. law protects the right of employees to openly discuss certain topics, including working conditions, discrimination, and equal pay.

Over the summer, current and former Apple employees began detailing on social media what they said were experiences of harassment and discrimination. Parrish and some colleagues began publishing the stories on social media and a publishing platform in a weekly digest titled ‘#AppleToo.’

Parrish said she was careful to respect company rules and never shared information that she believed to be confidential. She said she continued to publish the ‘#AppleToo’ digest after coming under investigation at the end of September.

“If anything, it’s made the importance of that work clearer than ever, when Apple’s response to criticism is to start internal investigations into those that it wants to see gone,” she said. “It’s easier for them to terminate people than it is for them to actually listen.”

https://www.theepochtimes.com/apple-worker-says-she-was-fired-after-leading-movement-against-harassment_4052338.html?utm_medium=epochtimes&utm_source=telegram

PHILADELPHIA—The Philadelphia parade celebrating Columbus Day ended at Marconi Plaza in South Philadelphia on Oct. 10. Marconi Plaza’s iconic Christopher Columbus statue was still covered by a wooden box and could not be displayed during the parade and celebration.

In addition to the active participation of different Italian American organizations, marchers include Mummers String Bands, and high school and elementary school marching bands. Hundreds of people watched the parade on-site and celebrated the Italian American heritage together.

“We’re honoring Christopher Columbus and the many contributions that Italian Americans have made to America in our history, and this is a great day,” Lou Barletta, a former congressman who is running for Pennsylvania governor, told The Epoch Times.

This year, the official name of the parade has been changed to “Italian­ American Day Parade.” While in many people’s eyes, it’s still the Columbus Day Parade.

Stephen D’Emilio, who grew up in South Philadelphia and is now the Commissioner of Haverford Township, told The Epoch Times: “I’m celebrating Columbus Day. That’s how I look at it. I’m not celebrating Italian Heritage Day. I came back to be here with my family and friends.”

The Wooden Box Covering Philadelphia Columbus Statue

Last summer, the 145-year-old Christopher Columbus statue was encased in a wooden box after it became a focal point for people who protested the death of George Floyd. The City of Philadelphia said the decision to cover the statue was based on public safety concerns and past violence.

But on Oct. 8, Common Pleas Court Judge Paula Patrick ruled that the city of Philadelphia must remove the box around the statue and issued an order allowing contractors to do the work immediately. However, the City of Philadelphia filed an emergency petition in Commonwealth Court and appealed the decision. Consequently, the Commonwealth Court reversed Judge Patrick’s ruling and ordered the boxes covering the statue to remain in place.

Many parade-goers argued that the city of Philadelphia should remove the box around the statue.

“It’s a disgrace that they have covered up the Columbus statue. It is an insult not only to the great Christopher Columbus, but it’s an insult to Italian Americans who are so proud of their heritage. And that box needs to come down,” said Barletta.

Louis Lanni, a candidate for Congress in the fifth district, also agrees that the wood box around the statue needs to come down: “it’s time to understand that we are one people of many different cultures. And among them are Italian people who appreciate the heritage and culture that Christopher Columbus brought to the American experience.”

The box could remain in place until appeals are heard. This case could go all the way up to the Supreme Court. As an Italian American, the Philadelphia city councilmember Mark Squilla feels a little frustrated because “it takes away from everything we’re talking about, the contributions of Italians and what they’re doing.”

George Bochetto, a nationally acclaimed trial attorney in Philadelphia, represents the appeal. He prefers to wait a few days to see the outcome of the appeal, “the box is going to stay for the time being. But we’re eventually going to get the box removed.”

History Can’t Be Changed: Columbus Day vs. Indigenous Peoples’ Day

The Philadelphia city officially recognized Indigenous Peoples’ Day on Oct. 11, effectively erasing Columbus Day. The actions were considered part of Mayor Jim Kenney’s response to the 2020 protests after the death of George Floyd. The Mayor’s order triggered a federal lawsuit seeking to reverse it and maintain Columbus Day as an officially recognized holiday. The city’s request to dismiss the federal case is still pending.

On Oct. 8, President Joe Biden became the first U.S. president to issue an official proclamation commemorating Indigenous Peoples’ Day. So far, there are 130 cities across the country that have ditched Columbus Day for Indigenous Peoples’ Day, and the list grows each year.

Many of the parade-goers opposed Philadelphia’s decision to rename Columbus Day.

“That’s the day that we, again, celebrate the contributions of Christopher Columbus and discovering America. And that name will never change in my eyes and many other millions of Americans,” said Barletta, who thinks the renaming of Columbus Day is an insult. “Columbus Day is for all of Italian Americans and should be for all Americans.”

“It won’t change. They can’t change history; they can’t rewrite history. And I can tell you these Italian Americans will not allow it to happen,” Barletta added.

Squilla and dozens of Italian American groups sued Kenney’s administration in federal court after his order to rename Columbus Day earlier this year: “We’re going through this controversy. What we want to do is to continue to celebrate Italian Americans’ contributions and make sure that people know that we will be proud of who we are, proud of our heritage, and proud of where we came from.”

Bochetto doesn’t think celebrating Indigenous Peoples’ Day should be at the expense of Columbus Day, “of course, our position is we’re happy to have an Indigenous Peoples’ Day. We want people to celebrate their ethnicity but don’t take ours away in the process. Let’s all have our holidays.”

Part of Cancel Culture Across the Country

Last year Philadelphia took down the statute of law-and-order Mayor Frank Rizzo, the first and only Italian-American to hold the city’s highest office.

From statues to monuments, symbols of the past are being torn down and renamed across the country. Some say this is righting the wrongs committed in the past, but others say it’s going too far.

Commenting on the covering up of the Columbus statue and renaming the holiday, Barletta said: “There’s no question they want to rewrite history; they want to change history. They want to keep the history that they like and then somehow try to erase the other history. It doesn’t work like that.”

He said he is glad that people are getting more aware of what is going on: “Eventually, people are going to see through what’s happening, and I’m glad that not only Italian Americans, but others should also rise up because their history can be wiped out as well.”

“It’s part of the cancel culture,” Bochetto said. “Not everything that happened in the past was so pleasant or wonderful, but we’re supposed to learn from it. And this is how we become a better society with a better outlook on life. We don’t just forget about it. We learn from it.”

Pharmacist Vincent Dibacco participated in the day’s celebration. He said: “If you oppose something that the minority wants, you’re no good, you’re nefarious, you’re wicked, but that’s not the way it is.”

He called on people to respect each other’s traditions and live in harmony: “This is a melting pot. Everyone’s going to have different opinions. We’re a little bit too sensitive. With things going on today, [we need] to be a little more tolerant of other people.”

Diane Pelosi, another parade participant, who works in a school said: “It’s our American history, and they’re trying to take it out of our schools. You can never wipe out history. And this is our Italian heritage. “

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