The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently revised its definition for vaccine and vaccination on one of its web pages, saying that the new definition is “more transparent” and can’t be misinterpreted.

“While there have been slight changes in wording over time to the definition of ‘vaccine’ on CDC’s website, those haven’t impacted the overall definition,” a CDC spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

“The previous definition at Immunization Basics | CDC could be interpreted to mean that vaccines are 100% effective, which has never been the case for any vaccine, so the current definition is more transparent, and also describes the ways in which vaccines can be administered.”

From 2015 to Aug. 31, 2021, a vaccine was defined as “a product that stimulates a person’s immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease, protecting the person from that disease” and vaccination was “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce immunity to a specific disease.”

Earlier versions of a vaccine definition also included “immunity” in its definition.

The new definition for the vaccine now reads, “A preparation that is used to stimulate the body’s immune response against diseases,” while vaccination is “the act of introducing a vaccine into the body to produce protection from a specific disease.”

While supporters of the CDC’s revision say that it’s natural to revise the definition as the science evolves, opponents say the changes have nothing to do with the evolution of science. Rather, the CDC is making the revision in response to the current COVID-19 vaccines being less effective against the Delta variant.

Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter and Epoch Times contributor Sharyl Attkisson said the new definition was made to “meet the declining ability of some of today’s ‘vaccines,’ including the COVID-19 vaccine,” adding that “after the COVID-19 vaccines were introduced, and it was discovered they do not necessarily ‘prevent disease’ or ‘provide immunity,’ CDC altered the definition of vaccines again to say that they merely ‘produce protection.’”

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) took to Twitter about the CDC’s definition change and compared it to George Orwell’s “1984,” writing, “They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth.”

Check out @CDCgov’s evolving definition of “vaccination.” They’ve been busy at the Ministry of Truth: pic.twitter.com/4k2xf8rvsL

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 8, 2021

The effectiveness of the vaccines to keep people out of the hospital had dropped to between 75 percent and 95 percent, according to CDC on Aug. 30. The health agency said the largest decline occurred in the most vulnerable group, people older than 75. However, the vaccines are still effective against severe illness.

Several studies have found that the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines is waning. An ongoing study in the United States found that the COVID-19 vaccines’ effectiveness dropped to 66 percent from 91 percent after the Delta variant became dominant in the country. A different study said so-called breakthrough infections increased to 25 percent of all infections in Los Angeles County between May 1 and July 25.

Israel, with the highest vaccination rates around the world, will administer a fourth dose of the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine to its citizens after offering a third booster shot to people 12 and older in August. The country with a population of more than 9 million and with more than 5 million fully vaccinated, is experiencing the fourth wave. More than 2.7 million Israelis have received the third dose as of Sept. 8.

The CDC’s updated definition of vaccine and vaccination is the same as in the Merriam-Webster dictionary, which had revised the words earlier this year in February to include the messenger RNA vaccines.

In January, Merriam-Webster still defined a vaccine as “a preparation of killed microorganisms, living attenuated organisms, or living fully virulent organisms that are administered to produce or artificially increase immunity to a particular disease.”

The “older” definition of vaccine can still be found in other online dictionaries, including Oxford Languages.

“It’s also important to note that the modifications to the definition of ‘vaccine’ don’t change the fact that vaccines and the act of vaccination have prevented millions of illnesses and saved countless lives,” the CDC spokesperson said.

CDC Changes Definition of Vaccine So It Can’t Be ‘Interpreted to Mean That Vaccines Are 100% Effective’ (theepochtimes.com)

Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder on Wednesday vowed to “save California” shortly after he was forced to prematurely end a walk-through of his planned campaign stop at Venice Beach, when over 10 hecklers harassed him, throwing projectiles.

Elder, who is vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom if he is recalled this month, was touring Venice Beach’s homeless encampments with campaign team members when he was harassed.

Footage of the incident uploaded to social media shows two hecklers repeatedly shouting racial slurs at Elder. A lady in a pink gorilla mask, riding a bike, appeared on video throwing an egg that appeared to narrowly miss Elder’s head.

One of Elder’s security staff attempted to separate the woman from the crowd, to keep her from continuing to throw projectiles.

In videos surfacing on Twitter, the woman slapped the security staff in the face. Another protester hit the same security staff member seconds later.

A white SUV drove up to the crowd, which was walking down Hampton Drive towards Sunset Avenue.

Elder’s team escorted him to his vehicle and drove away.

“Today I kicked off the Recall Express bus tour. Before we even left Los Angeles, my security detail was physically assaulted, shot with a pellet gun, and hit with projectiles. The intolerant left will not stop us. We will recall Gavin Newsom. We will save California,” Elder said in a statement on Twitter late Wednesday, responding to the attacks.

Elder, 69, is an Epoch Times contributor and host of “Larry Elder with Epoch Times” on EpochTV.

The conservative talk radio host first announced in July that he will run in California’s recall election of Democratic Gov. Newsom, which has been set for Sept. 14.

He said in a statement on his campaign website that he’s running for governor “because the decline of California isn’t the fault of its people,” adding: “Our government is what’s ruining the Golden State.”

On his website, Elder calls for “returning to the bedrock Constitutional principles of limited government and maximum personal responsibility.”

Other top Republican candidates include businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and state Rep. Kevin Kiley. Nine Democrats are running, including financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and actor Patrick Kilpatrick.

The recall election of Newsom, a first-term Democrat, follows mounting criticism from within his party and across the aisle over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.

He faced intense backlash after he was seen dining at the French Laundry restaurant with lobbyists after telling Californians to stay home. Newsom apologized for his actions.

The last time a governor was recalled in the state was Gray Davis in 2003. Residents voted “Yes” on recalling Davis by 55.4 percent and selected one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace him.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is one of 19 states where recalls are permitted.

Last month, President Joe Biden publicly backed Newsom, saying in a statement that he the Democratic governor “is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better.”

“To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward,” Biden added.

The California Republican Party has declined to endorse a candidate, however, several recent polls show that Elder is in the lead.

Jack Bradley contributed to this report.

Larry Elder Responds to Venice Beach Walk-Through Assault, Vows to ‘Save California’ (theepochtimes.com)

Company’s top scientist says China’s use of AI is ‘chilling’

Microsoft’s top scientist is warning Congress about the dangers of Chinese artificial intelligence even as his company deepens its collaboration with China. 

Dr. Eric Horvitz this year reported to Congress that “China’s domestic use of AI is a chilling precedent for anyone around the world who cherishes individual liberty.” The report was the result of Horvitz’s work on a panel tasked with advising Congress on artificial intelligence. The report comes as Microsoft CEO Brad Smith is meeting with top Chinese officials to discuss deepening ties in digital technology and Microsoft’s work in China.

Microsoft is one of many companies that capitulate to China in exchange for access to the country’s lucrative market. The National Basketball Association supports political activism among its players and coaches but remains silent on China’s human rights abuses and suppression of free speech. Apple allows Chinese officials to physically monitor its facilities and data centers in the country. Tech companies have also faced pressure from within their ranks to downplay Chinese human rights abuses. Apple employees have called on the company to condemn Israel for its actions in the Gaza Strip but not China for its use of slave labor.

Microsoft allows China to heavily censor LinkedIn, a Microsoft subsidiary. LinkedIn creates both a Western and a Chinese profile for Western users and shutters the Chinese versions when users post phrases banned by the Chinese government. In March, LinkedIn took a step further and banned a China critic based in the United Kingdom.

Smith continued his engagement with the Chinese government in a meeting last week with Xiao Yaqing, a top regulator at China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. According to Xiao, the two discussed expanding Microsoft’s work with China.

Horvitz sounded the alarm about China as part of his work for the National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence. The commission’s report repeatedly warns that China’s AI use is a threat to both liberty and American national security. China’s “employment of AI as a tool of repression and surveillance—at home and, increasingly, abroad—is a powerful counterpoint to how we believe AI should be used,” the report’s authors say.

The report also highlights the dangers of China’s use of artificial intelligence to more effectively leverage facial recognition technology. The authors write that China’s use of AI to repress its Uyghur minority “foreshadows how authoritarian regimes will use AI systems to facilitate censorship, track the physical movements and digital activities of their citizens, and stifle dissent.” Microsoft has expanded data centers in China for its Azure cloud service, which includes a facial recognition software package.

China in March hacked hundreds of thousands of Microsoft servers, an attack that some scholars believe was an attempt to collect data to train AI models. Microsoft responded to the attacks by expanding its business in China. The Biden administration refused to sanction Chinese actors for the attack.

Microsoft did not respond to requests for comment.

Rep. Jim Langevin said he made decision after Supreme Court did not interfere with Texas’s heartbeat law

A Democratic congressman who campaigned as pro-life for years pledged to support a bill to permanently legalize abortion. 

Rep. Jim Langevin (D., R.I.) on Thursday said he will vote to codify Roe v. Wade in a Thursday op-ed in the Providence Journal, despite insisting on the campaign trail that he is a committed pro-life Christian. Langevin said he made this decision after the Supreme Court decided not to interfere with the enactment of a six-week abortion ban in Texas.  

“In light of this inaction by the Court—and as the conservative majority seems increasingly likely to take the extraordinary step of overturning Roe v. Wade—I have reconsidered my position on reproductive rights,” Langevin wrote. 

Langevin’s announcement drew sharp rebukes and cries of betrayal from activists and longtime supporters. Kristen Day, executive director of the Democrats for Life of America, said Langevin seemed passionate about representing pro-life Democrats in Congress when she met him. But his views on abortion shifted more toward pro-choice the longer he was in office, which she attributed to the radical leadership in the party. 

“I think a lot of these members still do believe life begins in the womb,” Day told the Washington Free Beacon. “The political pressure is brutal.” 

Langevin said in his op-ed that he will support House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D., Calif.) drive to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would make legalized abortion permanent in federal law. Pelosi said she will soon introduce the bill in response to the enactment of Texas’s heartbeat law. 

Langevin was elected in 2000 with the support of prominent abortion opponents. He entered office with a 0 percent rating from NARAL Pro-Choice America, which shifted to 100 percent by 2007 and has fluctuated slightly since then. The National Right to Life Committee rated him at 88 percent during his first year, then dropped him to 0 percent by 2008. Langevin has consistently supported expansion to abortion access in the past decade. He did, however, support the Hyde Amendment, which bans federal funding of abortion, as late as 2016. 

The Susan B. Anthony List, a pro-life organization, donated to Langevin’s original campaign in 2000 when he opposed abortion. Mallory Quigley, vice president of communications for the group, said the Rhode Island Democrat should be ashamed for allowing his once pro-life views to flip in the most radical manner possible. 

“Langevin once supported common sense, common ground pro-life proposals including stopping taxpayer funding of abortion—but how the times have changed,” she told the Free Beacon. “Rep. Langevin is now a pro-abortion extremist who votes in lockstep with Speaker Pelosi.”

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) was the only Democrat in the Senate to vote in favor of a provision to keep the Hyde Amendment in August. The House voted to remove the Hyde Amendment from appropriations bills in the same month. Day said the key for pro-life Democrats moving forward is to make their voices known and support the few elected officials they have left. A quarter of Democrats identify as pro-life.

“It’s very unfortunate that my party says we need to include everybody then takes this position against pro-life Democrats,” Day told the Free Beacon. “That’s exactly against what they’re for, which is diversity and inclusion.”

The Supreme Court is expected to hear oral arguments over a Mississippi abortion ban in the coming weeks. State officials have asked the Court to not only uphold the law, but overturn Roe v. Wade and subsequent federal rulings preventing states from restricting abortion.

Former Pro-Life Dem Wants To Enshrine Abortion in Federal Law (freebeacon.com)

The LAUSD Board of Education voted 7–0 on Sept. 9 to require students over the age of 12 to receive a COVID-19 vaccination in order to attend in-person classes in the LA Unified School District (LAUSD).

Students with “qualified and approved exemptions under LAUSD’s existing immunization policies” are exempt from the vaccine requirement, according to the district.

“Today’s decision furthers our longstanding commitment to ensure the safety of our students, families, and staff,” Board President Kelly Gonez said in a statement.

“The vaccine is the single best way to protect students and schools from COVID-19. Los Angeles Unified is committed to meeting our families where they are and providing them with reliable medical information about this safe, effective vaccine.”

First, students who participate in extracurricular activities will be required to get at least one dose of the vaccine by Oct. 3 and are expected to be fully vaccinated by the end of the month. Then, all students over the age of 12 must receive the first dose by Nov. 21 and be fully vaccinated by Dec. 19.

Other students must get their first vaccine dose no later than 30 days after their 12th birthday, and their second dose no later than 8 weeks after their 12th birthday.

Currently, the two-dose Pfizer vaccine is the only vaccine to have received emergency approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for 12- to 15-year-olds; it is fully approved for those over 16.

According to the statement, the LAUSD will require proof of vaccination to be uploaded to the LAUSD’s Daily Pass system by Jan. 10. So far, the Daily Pass system has been used to track COVID-19 tests after the LAUSD mandated weekly tests for students and employees regardless of vaccination status in July.

“Eligible students who do not have proof of vaccination against COVID-19 will not be permitted on school campuses and referred to the District’s independent study program at City of Angels,” according to the district’s FAQ page.

The mandate would affect approximately 225,000 middle school and high school students, 80,000 of whom are not yet vaccinated, according to district officials.

LAUSD staff are required to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 15.

PALM COAST, Fla. – (FCSO) – On Tuesday, September 7, 2021, the Flagler County Sheriff’s Office (FCSO) executed a Search Warrant for 17 Blasdell Court in Palm Coast, resulting in the seizure of 916 grams of fentanyl. The owner of the home, identified as Brian Pirraglia and a tenant of the home, Michael Connelly, were arrested on various Drug Paraphernalia charges.

Connelly resides at the home and was located in the front right bedroom of the home. During the search, 41.2 grams of Sulfamethoxazole and Trimethoprim, a prescription-only narcotic, were recovered, as well as used hypodermic syringes, multiple spoons with white powdery residue, a silicone smoking pipe with burnt cannabis residue, and multiple glass containers with residue.

Pirraglia was located in the master bedroom of the home. During the search of the bedroom, deputies recovered multiple used hypodermic syringes, multiple spoons with white powdery residue, a glass vial and metal grinder located in a black backpack on the floor, and multiple plastic bags with residue. During a search of the kitchen, deputies recovered a large plastic baggie containing 510 grams of fentanyl and a plastic jar labeled “Protein” containing 406 grams of fentanyl. Upon questioning, Pirraglia stated the white powdery substance in the plastic jar was “Protein” and that the plastic baggie was a gift from his neighbor and he was unaware of the contents. Pirraglia advised he does not allow drugs to be sold in his home.

Connelly’s criminal history with the FCSO dates back to 2007. He’s previously been charged with Violation of Probation, Fail to Return Leased/Hired Property, Fraud, Failure to Appear, Grand Theft of a Motor Vehicle, Possession of Cocaine, Possession of Hydromorphone, and Unlawful Use of a Two-Way Communications Device. Pirraglia’s criminal history with the FCSO dates back to 2014. He’s been previously charged with Shoplifting, Violation of Probation, Failure to Appear, Driving While License Suspended with Knowledge, Possession of Fentanyl, Possession of Drug Paraphernalia/Equipment, and Resisting Officer Without Violence.

“These two are frequent guests at the Green Roof Inn and have yet to learn their lesson,” Sheriff Staly said. “Between these two poison peddlers, they had enough fentanyl to kill 481,000 people, which is more than the population of Flagler and St. Johns County combined! This is another great job by our Special Investigations Unit. I’m proud of their persistence to get 916 grams of poison off our streets and of our SWAT team that safely served the search warrant.”

Both Connelly and Pirraglia were arrested and transported to the Sheriff Perry Hall Inmate Detention Facility. Connelly is being charged with Possession of Drug Paraphernalia/Equipment and Possession of a Legend Drug Without Prescription. He is being held on a $3,000 bond. Pirraglia is being charged with Possession of Drug Paraphernalia/Equipment. He is being held on a $500 bond. Additional charges for Trafficking Fentanyl are pending Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) lab results.

Florida Drug House With Enough Fentanyl to Kill 481K People Raided by Police – Breaking911

A new National Geographic chronicling the life and career of Anthony Fauci featuring interviews with Bill Gates and former President George W. Bush is set to be released on September 10th.

The hagiographic film, which also includes exclusive interviews with Fauci, his wife, and his children, praises the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director as “one of our most vital public servants, whose work saved millions while he faced threats from anonymous adversaries” in its summary:

“With his signature blend of scientific acumen, candor and integrity, Dr. Anthony Fauci became America’s most unlikely cultural icon during COVID-19. A world-renowned infectious disease specialist and the longest-serving public health leader in Washington, D.C., he has valiantly overseen the U.S. response to 50 years’ worth of epidemics, including HIV/AIDS, SARS and Ebola. FAUCI is an unprecedented portrait of one of our most vital public servants, whose work saved millions while he faced threats from anonymous adversaries.”

The documentary comes amidst controversy over Fauci’s National Institutes of Health (NIH) agency’s documented relationship – via personnel and funding –with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The Chinese Communist Party-controlled lab is believed by many, including the former Director of National Intelligence and Center for Disease Control and Prevention Chief, to be the source of COVID-19.

The documentary, however, portrays the criticism of Fauci in a different light.

“When COVID hit, he became this target,” a narrator posits in a recently released trailer.

“I don’t understand the hate that people have,” Fauci’s wife Christine Grady, NIH Clinical Center Bioethics Department Chief, laments before former President Bush adds “Fauci says here are the facts, and here’s my recommendation for a way forward.”MUST READ:  Top Wuhan Lab Theory Denier Reverses Stance, Reveals He Knew Of Virus Weeks In Advance.

“If you’re a public servant, you don’t do it because you want to make money,” former Obama-era National Security Advisor Susan Rice comments despite Fauci’s position as the highest-paid federal government employee.

WATCH: NatGeo Documentary Lauds Embattled Fauci, Stars George Bush & Bill Gates. – The National Pulse

A report highlighting Chinese government-backed influence campaigns on social media platforms found that the effort sought to mobilize protests against “racial injustice,” CNN has finally admitted.

The network’s summary of the recently released Mandiant Threat Intelligence and Google report notes how bot accounts linked to a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) disinformation network attempted to incite Asian Americans to protest against racism and those claiming COVID-19 originated in China.

“US officials believe the operation is linked to the Chinese government,” the article adds.

As the CNN article admits:

In April for example, experts saw thousands of fake accounts calling on Asian Americans to protest racial injustice in the US and “disinformation about the virus’ origins.” While experts found no evidence these posts were successful in mobilizing protesters, the report says “it does provide early warning that the actors behind the activity may be starting to explore, in however limited a fashion, more direct means of influencing the domestic affairs of the US.”

The report identifies how the bot network attempted to catalyze a protest on April 24th in New York City:

In April 2021, thousands of posts in languages including English, Japanese, and Korean, images, and videos were posted across multiple platforms by accounts we assess to be part of this broader activity set that called on Asian Americans to protest racial injustices in the U.S. The accounts specifically called on Asian Americans to protest on April 24 in New York City and “fight back” against the purported “rumors” caused by Dr. Li-Meng Yan, Guo Wengui, and Steve Bannon, and in some instances provided an address that they claimed Guo lived at.

Posts shared by the fake accounts included messages such as “the racism is the virus.”

MUST READ:

High School Teacher With Antifa Flag in Classroom Praises Chinese Communist Party.

“This direct call for physical mobilization is a significant development compared to prior activity, potentially indicative of an emerging intent to motivate real-world activity outside of China’s territories,” the report says.’

“While experts at Mandiant and Google say they have not seen these specific pro-Chinese accounts wade into election specific content to date, they did warn that the actors responsible could be gearing up for a more expansive disinformation push,” CNN adds. Platforms such as TikTok, however, have been used to sabotage Trump rallies during the 2020 election cycle.

The National Pulse first reported on the existence of a Beijing-backed, online bot army in early 2020, which, at the time, was used to criticize former President Donald Trump and his COVID-19 response.

More recently, over 20 advocacy groups comprising the “Stop AAPI Hate” coalition sent a letter demanding the Biden White House terminate the Department of Justice’s Trump-era “China Initiative” – which identifies and prosecutes Chinese Communist Party espionage operations – and publicly discredit the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory.

No evidence of a quid pro quo over the CCP’s attempts to bolster these campaigns digitally and the campaigns’ attempts to shift U.S. government policy on China has yet emerged.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) declined emergency use authorization for a lenzilumab monoclonal antibody drug to treat COVID-19, according to Humanigen.

Humanigen, the developer of the drug, sought the FDA’s emergency use authorization for the medication to treat newly hospitalized COVID-19 patients. The firm filed its petition with the drug regulator in May 2021.

“In its letter, FDA stated that it was unable to conclude that the known and potential benefits of lenzilumab outweigh the known and potential risks of its use as a treatment for COVID-19,” the Burlingame, California-based company said in a statement.

The head of Humanigen, Cameron Durrant, said that the company will attempt to keep trying to develop the drug.

“We believe the ongoing ACTIV-5/BET-B trial, which has been advanced to enroll up to 500 patients, may provide additional safety and efficacy data sufficient to support our efforts to obtain an [emergency use authorization] to treat hospitalized COVID-19 patients,” he said.

COVID-19 is the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Monoclonal antibody treatments for COVID-19 drew headlines last week after podcaster Joe Rogan wrote on social media that he contracted the virus and was taking monoclonal antibodies and a cocktail of other medication to treat it, although it’s not clear what exact medications Rogan took. Former President Donald Trump also took monoclonal antibodies from Regeneron when he contracted COVID-19 last year.

Rogan later confirmed on social media that he tested negative for the virus. “Tested negative today! Thanks for all the kind wishes!” he wrote on Sept. 3

“We immediately threw the kitchen sink at it. All kinds of meds,” Rogan said two days prior to that, adding that he underwent the treatment for three days. “Monoclonal antibodies, ivermectin, Z-pak, prednisone, everything. And I also got an NAD-drip and a vitamin drip.”

The FDA is currently investigating the use of monoclonal antibodies to prevent CCP virus sufferers from being hospitalized. Monoclonal antibodies, which are commonly used to treat cancer patients, are proteins created in a laboratory that bind to specific substances in the body.

In May, the agency issued an emergency use authorization to GlaxoSmithKline for “monoclonal antibody therapy sotrovimab for the treatment of mild-to-moderate COVID-19 in adults and pediatric patients,” according to a news release. In November, the FDA provided emergency authorization for casirivimab and imdevimab, also monoclonal antibodies, for the virus, according to a release.

The Epoch Times has contacted the FDA for comment.

FDA Denies Emergency Use Authorization for New COVID-19 Drug (theepochtimes.com)

United Airlines employees who are granted a medical or religious exemption have been informed that they’ll be automatically placed on unpaid leave, a policy that one expert described as the harshest in America.

In memorandums to workers who have applied for an exemption to United’s COVID-19 vaccination mandate, workers were told that they must become fully vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 within five weeks if their submission is denied or they will “be separated from the company.”

Employees whose accommodation requests are granted will be placed on leave for an undetermined amount of time, the memos, obtained by The Epoch Times, added.

“Given our focus on safety and the steep increases in COVID infections, hospitalizations, and deaths, all employees whose request is approved will be placed on temporary, unpaid personal leave on October 2 while specific safety measures for unvaccinated employees are instituted,” United told workers.

“We can no longer allow unvaccinated people back into the workplace until we better understand how they might interact with our customers and their vaccinated coworkers,” the company added, citing federal statistics that show a rise throughout the summer of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations, though those metrics have fallen in some areas recently.

United, based in Chicago, informed workers in early August that they would need to get vaccinated against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus unless they were approved for an exemption from the mandate.

The Air Line Pilots Association declined to comment on the new unpaid leave policy. Other airline worker unions, which have generally been supportive of vaccine mandates, did not respond to requests for comment.

Roger Gannam, assistant vice president of legal affairs at Liberty Counsel, a nonprofit legal education and policy group, said the policy is the harshest the organization has seen in the United States so far.

“It certainly appears to be a bullying tactic and a continuation of United’s policy of making a religious exemption as difficult as possible,” he told The Epoch Times.

United workers who applied for exemptions have told Liberty Counsel that United asked a multitude of questions in an apparent effort to discourage the efforts. Workers who decide to file legal challenges will have a strong argument that the company is not using the least restrictive means to accommodate exemption requests, which is required by federal law, Gannam added.

Religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccines most commonly center on objections to how aborted fetal cells were used in the testing or manufacturing process. Medical exemptions typically include a physician’s recommendation that a person not get a vaccine due to a certain underlying condition.

United Airlines Staff With Vaccine Exemptions Told They’ll Be Placed on Unpaid Leave (theepochtimes.com)

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday signed into law a bill that sets a goal for all new passenger cars and light-duty trucks to be zero-emission models by 2035, joining the state of California in attempting to eliminate gasoline-powered vehicles.

The law directs setting regulations requiring higher numbers of zero-emission vehicles with a goal of “100 percent of in-state sales by 2035,” and a similar target for medium-duty and heavy-duty vehicles by 2045 if feasible.

The U.S. government is seeking to promote the sales of electric vehicles to reduce the consumption of fossil fuels and help meet global goals to slow human-caused climate change.

In August, President Joe Biden took a step toward his goal of slashing greenhouse gas emissions with an executive order aimed at making half of all new vehicles sold in 2030 electric, a goal made with backing from the biggest U.S. automakers.

But Biden has repeatedly refused to endorse proposals to phase out the sale of all new gasoline-powered vehicles by 2035, despite pressure from some Democrats in Congress.

Last year, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed an executive order that set a goal of banning the sale of new gasoline-powered passenger vehicles starting in 2035.

In April, New York, California, and 10 other states asked Biden to set standards to ensure that all new passenger cars and light duty trucks are zero-emission by 2035.

New York City said on Wednesday that to meet its climate goals it would need 400,000 of the city’s 2 million vehicle owners to switch to EVs by 2030. The city vows to install a network of 10,000 curbside charge points by 2030.

The state of New York said it was proposing regulations requiring an increasing percentage of all new medium and large trucks sold in New York to be zero-emissions beginning with the 2025 model year.

The legislation signed Wednesday also seeks to require all off-road vehicles be zero-emission models by 2035.

New York Sets 2035 Zero-Emission Passenger Car Goal (theepochtimes.com)

An increase in wages has prompted concerns about growing inflation among economists as businesses attempt to entice employees back to work amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

It comes after the Labor Department released its disappointing August jobs report which showed the U.S. economy added just 235,000 jobs during the month, versus expectations of around 750,000, while the unemployment rate declined by just 0.2 percent to 5.2 percent.

However, the report also showed that wages continued to rise, with average hourly earnings increasing to 4.3 percent on a year-over-year basis, up from 4 percent a year ago, and jumping 0.6 percent on a monthly basis, double of what Wall Street had anticipated.

In an effort to counteract shortages and attract workers amid nationwide labor shortages and hiring difficulties owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, numerous companies, particularly those in the dining and hospitality sector, as well as small-business owners, are increasing pay for employees.

Last week, Walmart announced that it will be raising the hourly wages for more than 565,000 of its store workers by at least $1 amid fierce competition among companies for skilled workers.

The world’s largest retailer said in a memo to staff that the move marks the third investment the company has made in salaries in the past year.

Low-price retailer Dollar General Corp. also announced it is offering a $5,000 sign-on bonus to drivers as it expands its private fleet, while Rival Dollar Tree is offering a $1,000 sign-on bonus to ensure its distribution centers are sufficiently staffed ahead of the holiday season.

Target, CVS Health, and Walgreens Boots Alliance are just a handful of other companies who have all said they are boosting starting wages to $15 an hour.

However, economists fear that the sharp rise in wages versus a declining employment rate could contribute to increased levels of inflation, adding extra pressure on central bankers trying to steer their countries out of economic turmoil.

“The 5.2 percent unemployment rate and rapidly rising wages suggest building inflationary pressure that will ultimately lead to more hawkish policy,” Citigroup economist Andrew Hollenhorst wrote in a detailed analysis of the current jobs situation.

Hollenhorst noted that he expects federal officials to focus more of their attention on the high level of job openings and increasing wages in an upcoming September Federal Open Market Committee meeting, as opposed to total payroll gains.

The U.S. Federal Reserve and many economists maintain that the recent spike in inflation is “transitory,” and merely reflective of the ongoing effects of supply chain breakdowns during the pandemic and shifts in consumer demand as more activities like travel become safer again.

Still, it is expected that the Fed will likely announce the tapering of its asset purchases in November and begin the process a month later, in an attempt to address building inflationary pressures.

It comes as economic historian Niall Ferguson warned that inflation could be repeating the trajectory of the late 1960s, which set in motion sustained high inflation in the following decade.

Speaking to CNBC on Sept. 3, Ferguson said that policymakers are now facing a new challenge in the form of rising inflation after responding to the COVID-19 pandemic in a manner similar to the 2008 Global Financial Crisis.

He called into question the Federal Reserve’s statement regarding the “transitory” inflation spike, and noted that an “inflation lift-off would be a problem.”

“How long is transitory? At what point do expectations fundamentally shift, especially if the Federal Reserve is telling people, ‘we have changed our inflation-targeting regime and we don’t mind if inflation goes above target for a while?’” Ferguson said.

“My sense is that we are not heading for the 1970s but we could be re-running the late 1960s, when famously the Fed Chair then, McChesney Martin, lost control of inflation expectations.”

Reuters contributed to this report.

Sharp Increase in Wages Contributing to Growing Concern Over Rising Inflation: Economist (theepochtimes.com)

A Maryland-based biotechnology company on Wednesday announced the launch of a clinical trial that will examine the efficacy and safety of a combined flu/COVID-19 vaccine.

The early stage phase 1/2 study will examine a combination of a seasonal influenza vaccine candidate from Novavax and a COVID-19 vaccine candidate the company makes, neither of which have been authorized or approved for use in the United States.

Approximately 640 healthy adults between the ages of 50 and 70 will participate in the trial, which will take place in Australia. Only people who have been previously infected with the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, or have been vaccinated with an authorized COVID-19 vaccine at least eight weeks prior to enrollment will be considered.

Results are expected during the first half of 2022.

“This study is the first-of-its-kind to evaluate the vaccine’s potential to induce a robust immune response, augmented by our Matrix-M adjuvant, against two life-threatening diseases simultaneously,” Dr. Gregory M. Glenn, president of research and development at Novavax, said in a statement. “The combination of these two vaccines, which have individually delivered outstanding results with favorable safety and tolerability profiles, may lead to greater efficiencies for the healthcare system and achieve high levels of protection against COVID-19 and influenza with a single regimen.”

Earlier findings suggested the combination of the shots could be a “viable immunization strategy,” the company said over the summer. Preclinical trials of the combo vaccine showed good results, Novavax scientists said in a study that has not yet been peer-reviewed.

NanoFlu, the company’s flu vaccine, has been studied for years but has never been authorized or approved. Work on the COVID-19 vaccine began last year but the company has still not applied for emergency use authorization in the United States, though it did in India and the Philippines last month.

Novavax received $1.6 billion from the Trump administration to develop the COVID-19 vaccine.

A phase 3 trial for the COVID-19 vaccine showed 100 percent protection against moderate and severe disease and 90.4 percent efficacy overall, according to a June release from the company.

The vaccine is in the subunit class, meaning it does not contain live components of the CCP virus. Subunits instead contain components, or antigens, of the pathogen that are believed to best trigger the immune system.

The two most widely used COVID-19 vaccines in the United States are based on messenger RNA technology. The new type of vaccine also does not contain the virus. Instead, the messenger RNA is utilized to teach teach cells how to make a protein that triggers an immune response.

The third, from Johnson & Johnson, is an adenovirus-based vaccine that uses a common virus combined with a gene from the CCP virus’s spike protein to stimulate the immune system.

If the Novavax COVID-19 vaccine ultimately gains authorization, it would offer an option to people “that are uncomfortable with the genetic vaccine strategy,” Dr. Robert Malone, a vaccine inventor, told The Epoch Times in a recent interview.

Novavax Launches Trial for Combined Flu/COVID-19 Vaccine (theepochtimes.com)

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued tighter mask guidance after a prominent teachers union pressured the agency to include more rigorous mask recommendations in school buildings, according to newly-obtained emails by watchdog group Americans for Public Trust.

The emails, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request by the watchdog and published by Fox News, show a string of communications between the National Education Association (NEA) and White House staffers.

The NEA is the largest teachers union in the United States and advocates for education professionals including public school teachers, support personnel, and faculty members at colleges and universities.

Email correspondence includes a draft statement from the NEA to the White House in which the teachers union criticizes the CDC over its masking guidance after it announced on May 13 that vaccinated people could stop wearing masks indoors and outside.

“We appreciate the developing nature of the science and its implications for guidance, but releasing the guidance without accompanying school-related updates creates confusion and fuels the internal politicization of this basic health and safety issue,” the draft statement reads.

“CDC has consistently said, and studies support, that mitigation measures, including to protect the most vulnerable, remain necessary in schools and institutions of higher education—particularly because no elementary or middle school students, and few high school students, have been vaccinated.”

“This will also make it hard for school boards and leaders of institutions of higher education to do the right thing by maintaining mitigation measures,” it continues. “We need CDC clarification right away.”

The union said it was prepared to issue the critical statement and called for the CDC to issue new guidance providing greater clarity over masks in schools and release more rigorous mask recommendations.

One day after the CDC’s guidance went live, Erika Dinkel-Smith, the White House director of labor engagement, said she stopped the NEA from releasing its critical statement.

Following discussion and coordination with the White House, the NEA eventually released a much more relaxed statement, which reads, “CDC’s current recommendation that schools continue to implement existing school-related guidance, including the mandatory and correct use of wearing masks and continuing of social distancing, is an important and welcome clarification about the protections that need to be in place in our schools.”

On May 15, the CDC also released updated masking guidelines noting that schools should maintain both masking and physical distancing, as well as other mitigation measures, through the end of this school year, regardless of vaccination status.

The latest string of emails comes just months after the New York Post alleged that the CDC altered its guidance on when and how schools should reopen after being influenced by the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the nation’s second largest teachers union and one of the top donors to the Democratic Party.

AFT President Randi Weingarten later said the CDC had asked her organization to recommend “language” to be used in school opening guidelines.

“The CDC in February and March basically asked all sorts of different organizations to sit down with them and give them comments about what they thought was important,” Weingarten said in an interview with C-SPAN’s Washington Journal. “They talked to parent organizations, they talked to the two [teachers] unions.

“This is normal rule-making,” Weingarten added. “Frankly, this is the way every administration used to do, the problem with the last administration is that they didn’t do it.”

The Epoch Times has contacted The White House and the National Education Association for comment.

CDC Tightened School Mask Guidance After Pressure From Teachers Union, Newly-Obtained Emails Show (theepochtimes.com)

Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday returned to her home state of California to campaign for Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who faces a recall election in the country’s most populous state.

Harris appeared with Newsom in San Leandro and urged voters to vote against the recall effort. The area is not far from Oakland, where Harris was born.

Prior to her appointment as vice president, Harris was a U.S. senator representing California. Before that, she served as the state’s attorney general for six years.

She sought to portray the election as one where Democrat and Republican priorities clash, while echoing Newsom’s campaign message that the impact of the recall will not be limited to just California.

“What’s happening in Texas, what’s happening in Georgia, what’s happening around our country with these policies that are about attacking women’s rights, reproductive rights, voting rights, worker’s rights,” Harris, a Democrat, told a crowd of about 200 volunteers and labor union members in San Leandro, just six days ahead of the gubernatorial recall election day on Sept. 14.

“They think if they can win in California they can do this anywhere. Well, we will show them you are not going to get this done. Not here, ever.”

“California, let us send a message to the world that these are the things we stand for, these are the things we fight for, and we will not give up,” she added.

In her speech of just over 10 minutes, Harris praised the incumbent governor for his handling of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic.

She said that Newsom, who won in a landslide in 2018, “led with courage” during the pandemic’s early days by issuing a statewide stay-at-home order in March 2020 ahead of other states to limit the CCP virus’s spread, reported The Sacramento Bee.

Harris also mentioned Newsom’s time as mayor of San Francisco in 2004, when he issued same-sex marriage licenses at a time when same-sex unions were not recognised as marriage in any state, saying that he “has had the courage to believe in and know what is possible,” according to KGO.

The vice president praised Newsom’s stance on abortion access, saying that those who oppose him “wouldn’t be trying to recall him but for the fact that he has always stood for reproductive rights.”

At the same time, Harris criticized Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican, for his comments earlier this week on a Texas law that bans abortions after a fetal heartbeat is detected.

Abbott was asked why the law didn’t make exceptions for cases of rape and incest, to which he responded that the state “will work tirelessly to make sure that we eliminate all rapists from the streets of Texas by aggressively going out and arresting them and prosecuting them and getting them off the streets.”

Harris accused Abbott of having “arrogantly dismissed concerns about rape survivors.” She attempted to draw a distinction between Abbott and Newsom, asserting that “to speak those words that were empty words, that were false words, that were fueled with not only arrogance but bravado—that is not who we want in our leaders. We want in our leaders someone like Gavin Newsom who always speaks the truth.”

Outside the outdoor venue, more than a dozen protesters loudly chanted “Free, free Afghanistan!” and “No deals for the Taliban,” reported the New York Post. Others held signs to push for Newsom’s recall, and to support Larry Elder, the leading Republican challenger in the recall election.

Elder is among 46 candidates seeking to replace Newsom if the governor is removed via the recall effort. The recall election will ask voters to decide whether Newsom should be recalled, and if so, who should replace him.

The recall election was made possible after a petition drive by a group called the Patriot Coalition. A total of 1,719,900 verified signatures in favor were gathered, which met the threshold needed to trigger the election.

Those seeking to oust Newsom from office are unhappy with a slew of issues and policies in the state, including Newsom’s handing the CCP virus pandemic. Business owners and parents have expressed disapproval over prolonged restrictions on businesses and shutdowns on in-person schooling. Others had been frustrated with mask and vaccination mandates, which Newsom has returned to embracing amid the spread of the more contagious Delta variant. Some also cite the time when Newsom attended a gathering at a Michelin-starred restaurant while telling Californians to stay home in late 2020.

Elder and other leading Republican candidates all say they would undo mask and vaccine mandates in favor of recommendations for communities to self-implement.

Residents have also expressed disapproval over Newsom’s handling of the economy. The state has some of the highest taxes in the nation and a homelessness problem that is spiraling out of control.

On June 23, an investigative report by CapRadio showed that Newsom had misled the public about his wildfire prevention efforts. The report concluded that Newsom had overstated by 690 percent the number of acres treated with firebreaks and prescribed burns. Newsom said fire prevention work was conducted on 90,000 acres, but the state’s own figures say the number was 11,399, according to the report.

Other prominent Democrats have also thrown their support behind Newsom against the recall, with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) having campaigned with Newsom last weekend.

Former President Barack Obama released an ad on Wednesday that focused on Newsom’s actions amid the CCP virus pandemic. It urged residents to vote “no” on what it said was a partisan recall effort.

“Governor Newsom has spent the last year and a half protecting California communities. Now Republicans are trying to recall him from office and overturn common sense COVID safety measures for healthcare workers and school staff,” Obama said in the video.

An Emerson College poll in March found that 58 percent of Democrat and 55 percent of Independent voters would “be open to another Democratic candidate besides Newsom.”

President Joe Biden is also expected to campaign for the governor in California before the election.

Meanwhile, billionaire donor George Soros has given $1 million to a group called “Stop the Republican Recall of Governor Newsom.”

This is the second recall election in California’s history. The first recall election was in 2003, when Gov. Gray Davis, a Democrat, was replaced with Arnold Schwarzenegger, who ran as a Republican.

Ivan Pentchoukov and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Harris Rallies for California Governor Facing Recall Election (theepochtimes.com)

Newly released U.S. government documents show that Dr. Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) provided funding for the gain-of-function research conducted at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) that created novel coronaviruses with the ability to infect humans, and one previously undisclosed SARS-related coronavirus engineered at the Wuhan lab was reportedly demonstrated to be more pathogenic to humans than the virus from which it was originally constructed.

The 900 pages of documents – obtained by The Intercept through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit – prove that Fauci’s NIAID provided funding to EcoHealth Alliance, which in turn funded the controversial gain-of-function research at the Wuhan lab that created novel coronaviruses that could infect humans.

The Intercept’s report on the documents quotes Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, who said that the viruses the Wuhan lab constructed “were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell.” And these viruses included both SARS-related and MERS-related coronaviruses.

Ebright later posted an eight-part thread on Twitter explaining in greater detail the document’s revelations concerning the “enhanced pathogenicity” of one of the “novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses” created by the Wuhan lab. He noted that this particular Wuhan lab-generated SARS-related coronavirus had not been “previously disclosed publicly” and that it was found to be “more pathogenic” to humans than “the starting virus from which it was constructed.”

Ebright’s Twitter thread reads:

The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present.

(This had been evident previously from published research papers that credited the 2014 grant and from the publicly available summary of the 2019 grant. But this now can be stated definitively from progress reports of the 2014 grant and the full proposal of the 2017 grant.)

The materials confirm the grants supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (“humanized mice”).

The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses–one not been previously disclosed publicly–was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed…

…and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.

The materials further reveal that the the grants also supported the construction–in Wuhan–of novel chimeric MERS-related coronaviruses that combined spike genes from one MERS-related coronavirus with genetic information from another MERS-related coronavirus.

Ebright concluded his thread by stating: “The documents make it clear that assertions by the NIH Director, Francis Collins, and the NIAID Director, Anthony Fauci, that the NIH did not support gain-of-function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at WIV are untruthful.”

As The Intercept’s article noted, “The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is a virus found in bats, making the animals a focal point for efforts to understand the origins of the pandemic. Exactly how the virus jumped to humans is the subject of heated debate.”

Thus, the fact that these documents reveal the existence of a previously undisclosed “novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related” coronavirus with “enhanced pathogenicity” to infect humans should be a matter of intense interest to anyone searching for the potential origins of Covid-19.

…and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.

— Richard H. Ebright (@R_H_Ebright) September 7, 2021

The fact that a U.S. government agency led by Fauci provided funding for that research should also spark a much-needed debate. Sen. Rand Paul (R-IN), a fierce critic of Fauci, has continued to call for an investigation into this funding and a ban on any future funding of the Wuhan lab.

“I forced a vote about a month ago in Senate, and we actually won unanimously no longer to fund the Wuhan Institute, no longer to fund this research in China,” Paul said in a radio interview Tuesday. “Yet it hasn’t been signed by the president; it hasn’t been passed by the House yet.”

White House Chief Medical Adviser on Covid-19 Dr. Anthony Fauci looks on as President Joe Biden tours the Viral Pathogenesis Laboratory at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, on February 11, 2021. (SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)

As Ebright noted, the fact that the Wuhan lab was conducting gain-of-function research with coronaviruses was well established.

In an article last May documenting the evidence behind the “lab leak theory” that Covid-19 originated at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, New York Times writer Nicholas Wade detailed the Wuhan lab’s extensive research into genetically engineering coronaviruses that could attack human cells.

Wade explained that the Wuhan lab’s “methodical approach was designed to find the best combination of coronavirus backbone and spike protein for infecting human cells. The approach could have generated SARS2-like viruses, and indeed may have created the SARS2 virus itself with the right combination of virus backbone and spike protein.”

Wade further noted:

It cannot yet be stated that Dr. Shi [head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology] did or did not generate SARS2 in her lab because her records have been sealed, but it seems she was certainly on the right track to have done so. “It is clear that the Wuhan Institute of Virology was systematically constructing novel chimeric coronaviruses and was assessing their ability to infect human cells and human-ACE2-expressing mice,” says Richard H. Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and leading expert on biosafety.

“It is also clear,” Dr. Ebright said, “that, depending on the constant genomic contexts chosen for analysis, this work could have produced SARS-CoV-2 or a proximal progenitor of SARS-CoV-2.” “Genomic context” refers to the particular viral backbone used as the testbed for the spike protein.

Wade concluded, “The lab escape scenario for the origin of the SARS2 virus, as should by now be evident, is not mere hand-waving in the direction of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. It is a detailed proposal, based on the specific project being funded there by the NIAID.”

Rebecca Mansour is Senior Editor-at-Large for Breitbart News. Follow her on Twitter at @RAMansour.

Expert: Documents Show Fauci-Funded Wuhan Lab Created Novel Coronavirus with ‘Enhanced Pathogenicity’ for Humans (breitbart.com)

The Covid ‘forever war’ has just begun. First, it was ‘15 days to slow the spread.’ Then, it was at least 70% of adults need to be vaccinated for ‘herd immunity’ (ignoring at least 135 million people with natural immunity). Then, it was at least 85%-90% of adults need to be vaccinated, according to Dr. Anthony Fauci. If everyone humanly possible gets vaccinated, then maybe America can get back to ‘normal’ after two full years of lockdowns, mask mandates, and now, vaccine mandates.

The fine print in the FDA’s authorization documents for the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine, now being marketed as “Comirnaty,” reveals a timeline of vaccine study benchmarks extending to 2027.

On Tuesday, the Food & Drug Administration gave what has been touted as a full authorization of the Covid vaccine, although there are still population cohorts that remain under clinical study, such as pregnant women and children under age 16.

“On December 11, 2020, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued an Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for emergency use of Pfizer-BioNTech COVID‑19 Vaccine for the prevention of COVID-19 for individuals 16 years of age and older pursuant to Section 564 of the Act,” the FDA stated in a letter to the Global Senior Director of Pfizer Ms. Elaine Harkins. “FDA reissued the letter of authorization on: December 23, 2020, February 25, 2021, May 10, 2021, June 25, 2021,  and August 12, 2021.”

“On August 23, 2021, FDA approved the biologics license application (BLA) submitted by BioNTech Manufacturing GmbH for COMIRNATY (COVID-19 Vaccine, mRNA) for active immunization to prevent COVID-19 caused by SARS-CoV-2 in individuals 16 years of age and older.”

There are continuing benchmarks that will almost certainly be accompanied by fresh demands to get more Americans vaccinated for Covid-19 and its emerging “variants.”

In a letter to Amit Patel in Pfizer’s regulatory department, the FDA lays out that a series of clinical trials are needed to assess further risks to target populations in order to expand its Covid vaccine coverage. The FDA mentions “known serious risks” to younger populations, particularly those ages 16 and under.

“We have determined that an analysis of spontaneous postmarketing adverse events reported under section 505(k)(1) of the FDCA will not be sufficient to assess known serious risks of myocarditis and pericarditis and identify an unexpected serious risk of subclinical myocarditis,” the FDA states, before issuing its proscribed course of future clinical studies and accompanying deadlines.

The deadline for assessing the risks of pericarditis and myocarditis in a ‘Post-Approval Safety Study’: October 31, 2025. This suggests that the ‘full authorization’ for those 16 and up was rushed, given the known risks.Advertisements

The FDA also requested more research on the long-term effects of myocarditis after vaccination, which suggests there are still unknown risks. The study’s completion is due December 31, 2026. The final report submission is May 31, 2027.

The Covid vaccine’s risks to pregnant mothers will continue to be under study until at least December 31, 2025.

“For each postmarketing study subject to the reporting requirements of 21 CFR 601.70, you must describe the status in an annual report on postmarketing studies for this product,” the FDA stipulated. “Label your annual report as an Annual Status Report of Postmarketing Requirements/Commitments and submit it to the FDA each year within 60 calendar days of the anniversary date of this letter until all Requirements and Commitments subject to the reporting requirements of section 506B of the FDCA are fulfilled or released.”

Remarkably, in the FDA’s documents, it states outright: “In the U.S., there are no licensed vaccines or anti-viral drugs for the prevention of COVID-19.” The acknowledgment underscores that the “vaccines” are essentially treatments to lower symptom severity, and are therefore a tool for physicians to instrumentalize on a patient-by-patient basis, according to various known health risks.

The prevailing issue is whether or not the viral transmission vectors of animal reservoirs, in other words, wildlife that can host SARS-CoV-2 and produce mutated strains, as well as the vaccines and boosters themselves, hypothetically lead to the development of new variants. These new strains very well could annually relegate Covid vaccines to glorified ‘flu shots,’ whose predominate use is to reduce symptom severity in the elderly, immunocompromised, and the clinically obese.Advertisements

Mass vaccinations for everyone in the population, regardless of health risk, could therefore not only be a relatively fruitless expenditure of immense effort, but actually sow the seeds for vaccine and drug-resistant strains that pose more of a threat.

The Covid-19 virus ultimately leading to the Covid-27 virus, and beyond, is a series of events that the American people need to countenance now. Whether or not they want to trade the freedom to make their own health choices with their personal doctors for the illusion of security being offered by public health bureaucrats is a consequential decision that now faces them all.

FDA’s Authorization Docs Suggest Covid Vaccine Pushes Until at Least 2027 – Becker News

Republican gubernatorial candidate Larry Elder on Wednesday vowed to “save California” shortly after he was forced to prematurely end a walk-through of his planned campaign stop at Venice Beach, when over 10 hecklers harassed him, throwing projectiles.

Elder, who is vying to replace California Gov. Gavin Newsom if he is recalled this month, was touring Venice Beach’s homeless encampments with campaign team members when he was harassed.

Footage of the incident uploaded to social media shows two hecklers repeatedly shouting racial slurs at Elder. A lady in a pink gorilla mask, riding a bike, appeared on video throwing an egg that appeared to narrowly miss Elder’s head.

One of Elder’s security staff attempted to separate the woman from the crowd, to keep her from continuing to throw projectiles.

In videos surfacing on Twitter, the woman slapped the security staff in the face. Another protester hit the same security staff member seconds later.

A white SUV drove up to the crowd, which was walking down Hampton Drive towards Sunset Avenue.

Elder’s team escorted him to his vehicle and drove away.

“Today I kicked off the Recall Express bus tour. Before we even left Los Angeles, my security detail was physically assaulted, shot with a pellet gun, and hit with projectiles. The intolerant left will not stop us. We will recall Gavin Newsom. We will save California,” Elder said in a statement on Twitter late Wednesday, responding to the attacks.

Elder, 69, is an Epoch Times contributor and host of “Larry Elder with Epoch Times” on EpochTV.

The conservative talk radio host first announced in July that he will run in California’s recall election of Democratic Gov. Newsom, which has been set for Sept. 14.

He said in a statement on his campaign website that he’s running for governor “because the decline of California isn’t the fault of its people,” adding: “Our government is what’s ruining the Golden State.”

On his website, Elder calls for “returning to the bedrock Constitutional principles of limited government and maximum personal responsibility.”

Other top Republican candidates include businessman John Cox, former San Diego Mayor Kevin Faulconer, and state Rep. Kevin Kiley. Nine Democrats are running, including financial analyst Kevin Paffrath and actor Patrick Kilpatrick.

The recall election of Newsom, a first-term Democrat, follows mounting criticism from within his party and across the aisle over his handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and other issues.

He faced intense backlash after he was seen dining at the French Laundry restaurant with lobbyists after telling Californians to stay home. Newsom apologized for his actions.

The last time a governor was recalled in the state was Gray Davis in 2003. Residents voted “Yes” on recalling Davis by 55.4 percent and selected one of 135 candidates on the ballot to replace him.

According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, California is one of 19 states where recalls are permitted.

Last month, President Joe Biden publicly backed Newsom, saying in a statement that he the Democratic governor “is leading California through unprecedented crises—he’s a key partner in fighting the pandemic and helping build our economy back better.”

“To keep him on the job, registered voters should vote no on the recall election by 9/14 and keep California moving forward,” Biden added.

The California Republican Party has declined to endorse a candidate, however, several recent polls show that Elder is in the lead.

Jack Bradley contributed to this report.

Larry Elder Responds to Venice Beach Walk-Through Assault, Vows to ‘Save California’ (theepochtimes.com)

This amazing sand sculpture of the 575-year-old King’s College Chapel is the result of 48 hours of painstaking work.

Talented sculptors used more than a metric ton (1000 kg) of building sand to craft the scale model, which is 7 feet long and 3 feet tall.

The artists went into immaculate detail to recreate the iconic Cambridge University building, which is home to the world-famous King’s College Choir.

Artists Jamie Wardley and Mark Lewis, from sand sculpting company Sand in Your Eye, worked through the night to create the model in Cambridge’s main shopping center.

Liz Warrington, a creative at the firm, said: “We had to go down to very fine detail with King’s. Because the architecture is so intricate, it took two full days of working through the night and day.

“We got all the sand into the shopping center and compacted it down.

“Using sculpting and carving tools, the sculptors started very roughly and got more detailed using finer and finer tools.

“Carving took place during the day so that shoppers could watch what was going on.”

King’s College Chapel itself was built in phases from 1446 to 1515 and was finally completed with stained glass windows under King Henry VIII’s rule in 1531.

Jamie and Mark also recreated Cambridge’s Bridge of Sighs, a near-300-year-old crossing point over the River Cam, the main river that flows through Cambridge.

Liz said that sculptors prefer to use building sand rather than beach sand for their models as it’s more durable.

“Beach sand is the worst sand to make sculptures with because it’s been washing in and out and it’s so smooth. It won’t last longer than a day,” she said.

“Building sand has lots of clay and jagged edges so it’s much stronger. The models could stay there indefinitely.”

The two sculptures, commissioned by the Grand Arcade shopping center in Cambridge, will remain in place until the end of the summer.

Epoch Times staff contributed to this report.

Photos: Intricate Sand Model of the 575-Year-Old King’s College Chapel in Cambridge (theepochtimes.com)

At its core, artificial intelligence involves statistical discrimination; that is, AI algorithms extract decision-making insights from statistical information. In contrast to run-of-the-mill statistical discrimination techniques, AI algorithms are able to “learn” through a process that involves training on data. The key to the success of AI is that the algorithms can generalize from the training data, as opposed to simply memorizing information.

The quest for AI is not new, as the original work in artificial neurons dates to the 1940s, with some basic models that still find use today having been developed in the 1950s. However, the widespread deployment of AI is a recent trend—a trend that is likely to increase exponentially in the coming years.

Since AI has such a long history, why has it burst onto the scene only recently? With apologies to Andrea True, the answer is “more, more, more.” Specifically, we have more computing power and more data, which enables us to build models with more layers of artificial neurons. This “deep learning” approach has produced much more powerful and useful models than was previously possible.

Claims of AI being biased are fairly common today. In response, there is a movement afoot in academia and industry to root out some types of biases by building AI systems that incorporate various concepts of fairness. In my opinion, such efforts are likely to hobble AI in many application domains and, at worst, could turn AI into little more than a pseudo-science.

The old adage of “garbage in, garbage out” certainly applies to AI. If the data used to train an AI model is biased, the resulting model will learn to faithfully reproduce the bias.

In contrast to the data used for training, an AI algorithm has no inherent bias, as it pursues the same learning strategy, regardless of the training data. So, it might seem obvious that charges of AI unfairness would boil down to obtaining better data on which to train our AI models.

But this is not the case, as current research into fairness largely focuses on constructing models that will not produce specified outcomes, irrespective of the training data. This can involve either modification to the training data or tinkering with the inner workings of AI training algorithms.

In either case, the goal is to prevent the resulting model from producing certain undesirable results, regardless of what the data might be telling the model.

For example, suppose that we collect data consisting of various statistics for a large number of people (height, weight, shoe size, etc.). Further, suppose that we want to be sure that our model does not discriminate against tall people. We could simply ignore the tallness feature in our data, and thereby prevent our AI model from directly using height as a discriminating feature.

Yet shoe size and weight might indirectly indicate height, resulting in tallness still being a factor in the AI decision-making process. So, the crude act of simply blotting out a feature from the training data might not be sufficient to prevent a specified bias from leaking through into a trained AI model.

An alternative is to modify the training process itself, which is at the heart of any AI algorithm. Depending on the particulars of a specific AI technique, there are a variety of ways that we could modify the training algorithm so that it will not discriminate based on, say, the height of the subjects in our training sample.

Whether we modify the data or the algorithm, we have artificially limited the information available to our AI models. Modifying the algorithm is likely to be the more direct and effective approach.

The deep learning algorithms that dominate AI today are notoriously opaque, in the sense that it is difficult to understand how the models are making their decisions. By fundamentally altering these models to eliminate supposedly undesirable results, we open the door to manipulations that will—unintentionally or not—introduce their own set of biases.

After all, statistical discrimination is at the core of AI, and our models will still discriminate based on some aspects of the training data. And since these models are opaque, after the fact, it may be well-nigh impossible to ferret out the source of an introduced bias.

Using such fairness principles, it is not hard to imagine AI models designed to detect ill-defined concepts, such as “fake news” or “hate speech,” being constructed in ways that are biased towards one side of the political spectrum. Such models would add a sheen of scientific respectability to their (biased) results, and it would be difficult to unearth the source and degree of any built-in bias.

While the goals may be laudable and the research problems are indeed interesting, fairness in AI dramatically increases the scope for mischief making. Ultimately, these types of manipulations would threaten to weaken trust in AI.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously said, “Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not his own facts.”

AI models that include “fairness” hold out the prospect of entangling facts and opinions at a level that could make it virtually impossible to separate the two. In such cases, the opinions of the AI developer might be promoted to the level of objective “scientific” facts, at least by those who agree with the developer’s opinions.

In contrast, those who disagree with the developer’s opinions would be justified in their suspicion that the AI was rigged so as to produce a predetermined outcome.

Reward China- the world’s largest polluter by far- by sending trillions of dollars to China for solar panels. Democrat logic. [US Patriot]

On Sept. 8, the Biden administration’s Department of Energy issued a new report, “The Solar Futures Study,” which claims solar energy could power 40 percent of the U.S. grid by 2035 and 45 percent of the grid by 2050.

The report, produced by the DoE’s Solar Energy Technologies Office (SETO) and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), proposes this could be done without raising the cost of electricity, thanks to continued technological improvements and “demand flexibility.”

Expanding on what “demand flexibility” would mean, the report hints at the possibility of expanded real-time changes to electricity pricing, “enabled by Internet-of-things appliances and communications.”

Solar capacity would have to reach 760-1,000 gigawatts by 2035 to realize either of the report’s two decarbonization scenarios (the report also includes what it calls a “business as usual” scenario).

For context, the United States had installed roughly 80 gigawatts of solar capacity in 2020 according to the report.

By 2050, solar capacity would need to reach 1,600 gigawatts to achieve what the report calls a “fully decarbonized grid.” Its third and most ambitious scenario, a preliminary modeling of total energy system decarbonization, would require 3,000 gigawatts of solar power by 2050.

The report projects that its maximum deployment scenario could require up to 0.5 percent of the contiguous U.S. surface area—roughly 15,600 square miles, an area slightly smaller than the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and the state of Connecticut combined.

It notes that “land acquisition poses challenges,” though it claims contaminated land, waterbodies, farms, and grazing areas could all be used.

A SETO press release on the report stated that “aggressive cost reductions” would be essential to realizing either of the two decarbonization scenarios.

The report itself argues that “soft costs,” including permitting, customer acquisition, and installation labor, are major contributors to the high cost of solar energy. The hard costs of solar power have rapidly declined, with International Energy Agency reportedly claiming that some solar power systems can now offer the “cheapest… electricity in history” in its World Energy Outlook 2020.

Notably, the report assumes that the costs of both decarbonization scenarios would be offset by benefits to air quality and avoided climate change damages, which it calculates at more than $1 trillion for both scenarios.

The report did not appear to calculate the pollution or other environmental damage associated with producing or using solar panels, which may contain lead, cadmium, arsenic, and other toxic heavy metals mined in countries with laxer environmental standards than the United States. The new solar infrastructure could potentially occupy land used by other organisms or ecological processes.

Although the report does note that producing and disposing solar power technologies could negatively impact “[low- and medium-income] and communities of color,” it asserts that such harms “are trivial relative to the existing energy system,” arguing they could be mitigated through the repair, reuse, and recycling of solar panels.

The NREL did not respond to questions about the potential environmental costs of large-scale solar deployment.

The report met with a range of reactions on Twitter.

“Ramping up clean, solar power means lower energy bills, good-paying jobs and less pollution,” wrote Rep. Kathy Castor (D.-Fla.), chair of the House Climate Crisis Committee.

“This is a terribly weak goal. Horrible,” wrote Margaret Klein Salamon, executive director of the Climate Emergency Fund and self-described “climate warrior.”

“I think solar should be a large part of the energy mix. If it gets to 20 percent, I’d be really happy. Set achievable goals and you won’t have to deal with large scale policy failure,” wrote Jeff Terry, a professor and energy researcher at the Illinois Institute of Technology.

“Utterly impossible. Let me guess, Hunter’s starting a solar panel company?” wrote conservative commentator Jon Gabriel.

“Here’s what happens: Energy costs will skyrocket. The poor will be semi-shielded by massively expanded low-income energy welfare programs. Middle class? Will be paying for drastic funding increases for those programs AND stupid-high energy bills. Intentional destruction,” wrote an anonymous Twitter user, “Oilfield Rando.”

Biden Administration Envisions Solar Power Decarbonizing the Grid (theepochtimes.com)

The COVID pandemic offered an unprecedented excuse for want-to-be authoritarians to stifle liberty.

To fight disease, once unthinkable government controls abound. Entire economies have been shut down, businesses closed involuntarily, and people thrown out of work.

Contact tracing apps were invented to alert the user when exposed to someone with the virus, but which also kept a clear record of individual movements.

Vaccine mandates enforced through phone app-facilitated “passports” are now proliferating. Soon, continued employment or ability to participate in society freely may depend on proving one has received the jab.

Ok, Wesley. That’s admittedly tough medicine, but it was necessitated as a public health measure to defeat a dangerous communicable disease. Once COVID fades away or becomes endemic like the flu, everything returns to normal. Right?

Not if the technocrats get their way. COVID whetted their appetite for power, and now they want their existing “temporary” sway over how we live to become a permanent fixture of society.

The question is how to get people to surrender more of their liberty. One potential plan would impose an international technocratic control in the name of preventing future pandemics.

One such approach was laid out last year by Dr. Anthony Fauci in a co-authored piece in a science journal advocating that the UN and the WHO be empowered to enact measures that would “rebuild the infrastructure of human existence.”

Fighting global warming presents an even more ominous pretext for establishing the system of rule by experts. Restrictions on personal liberty have long been promoted as a necessary prophylactic to prevent environment degradation. But now, they are being peddled as a means of protecting human health and wellness.

And the “good news”— from the autocratic perspective—is that unlike COVID, the goal of “net zero” carbon emissions, which we are told must be imposed to keep us from boiling like a lobster in the pot, could never be achieved. Genius! That means, the technocracy would never end.

A recent editorial in the Journal of Medical Ethics lays out the mindset. “Many governments met the threat of the COVID-19 pandemic with unprecedented funding,” the editors write. “The environmental crisis demands a similar emergency response.” See what I mean?

But it wouldn’t just be about spending more money. Only the most radical refashioning of society will do. “Governments must make fundamental changes to how our societies and economies are organized and how we live…Governments must intervene to support the redesign of transport systems, cities, production and distribution of food, markets for financial investments, health systems, and much more.” If that reads suspiciously like Dr. Fauci, that because technocrats all think alike.

The plans being laid by “the experts” would also constrain our freedom by subjecting us all to a system of high-tech surveillance—disturbingly similar to the tyrannical Chinese social credit system. An advocacy article in the prestigious science journal Nature by four environmental “experts,” lays out one such very disturbing proposal—a means of restricting individual behavior known as “personal carbon allowances,” or PCAs, for short.

They write, “A PCA scheme would be “a national mandatory policy” that would entail all adults receiving an equal tradable carbon allowance that reduces over time in line with national [carbon] targets.” Think World War II-style rationing coupons that limited individual purchases of gasoline and other commodities gone high tech, with lower allowances allowed with each passing year.

How would PCAs work? Individual allotments would be “deducted from the personal budget with every payment of transportation fuel, home heating oil fuels and electricity bills.”

But what if you exhausted your individual carbon allotment? “People in shortage would be able to purchase additional units in the personal carbon market from those with excess to sell,” the authors assure us. What that really means is that the rich could avoid giving up their private planes since they could just buy up other people’s carbon allowances.

Apps would play a central role in enforcing PCAs. “Recent studies show how COVID-19 contact tracing apps were successfully implemented with mandatory schemes in several East Asian countries such as China, Taiwan, and South Korea,” the authors applaud. “In these countries, the apps assessed the user’s travel history and health status, playing a key role in tracking infection.”

That technology would now be the means for imposing even more profoundly intrusive information gathering about our personal conduct. The authors sigh that “the many digital-tracing algorithms that were developed and tested provide initial valuable information for the design of future apps that—for example—estimate emissions on the basis of the tracking the user’s movement history.”

In other words, Big Expert would know where you have been, what you have bought, and who you have seen.

It wouldn’t just be apps. “Advances in AI…promise to improve personalized feedback and advice. Recent advances in smarter home and transport options make it possible to easily track and manage a large share of individuals’ emissions.”  (And don’t forget about facial recognition technologies!)

“AI could be especially beneficial for PCA designs that also include food-and-consumption-related emissions.” In other words, if you eat that hamburger, we will know and deduct from your PCA accordingly! Good grief.

All of this would have once been beyond belief, the authors admit. But because millions cooperated with COVID restrictions, “people may be more prepared to accept the tracking and limitations related to PCAs to achieve a safer climate.” In other words, emboldened by our compliance with supposedly temporary public health measures, our would-be technocrat overlords see a chance to seize permanent autocratic control.

Let’s not let them. We still have the power to thwart rule by experts through democratic means. But if we lack the courage, if we acquiesce—again—to significant liberty constraints in the name of protecting health, the soft totalitarianism we will have facilitated will not be their fault. It will be ours.

Award winning author Wesley J. Smith is chairman of the Discovery Institute’s Center on Human Exceptionalism.

‘Personal Carbon Allowances’ Pushed to Fight Global Warming (theepochtimes.com)

Democrats in the House Education and Labor Committee revealed how their committee would use the $761 billion from the $3.5 trillion budget resolution package, saying that among other things, the money will be used to lower the cost of childcare and provide free preschool and community college.

“The Education and Labor Committee’s portion of the Build Back Better Act makes historic investments that will lower costs for nearly every family, create good-paying jobs for American workers, and provide our nation’s children the strong foundation they deserve,” said Chairman Robert C. Scott (D-Va.) in a press statement Wednesday.

The committee will begin marking up the legislation on Thursday with members offering amendments in an attempt to change how the $761 billion is spent.

The legislation would subsidize childcare programs, making it so most families would not have to pay more than 7 percent of their income for each child’s daycare. The funding would also subsidize a pay increase for childcare workers, so facilities could hire more workers.

The funding would also subsidize universal pre-K, so all 3- and 4-year-olds could go to school.

The funding allots $111 billion to provide two years of free community colleges, invest in the Pell Grant program, and fund educational institutions that cater to blacks, Hispanics, and minorities to make quality degrees more affordable for those groups.

The committee’s bill provides $82 billion to public schools for repairs and upgrades. It will invest close to $80 billion in workforce development programs including training people for climate change energy-related jobs.

The funding will also include about $35 billion for school food programs during the school year and the summer months, as well as provide money to upgrade school kitchens.

Ranking Member of the committee Rep. Virginia Foxx (R-S.C.) slammed the committee’s bill, calling it a part of Biden’s “reckless,” “partisan” spending.

“Congressional Democrats could empower individuals and entrepreneurs to make the financial, professional, educational, and parental decisions that work best for them. Instead, Democrats are pushing an irresponsible spending scheme that will double down on the inflation crisis and allow the federal government to infringe on Americans’ liberties,” Foxx said in a press statement Wednesday.

Democrats are pressing forward with their $3.5 trillion budget resolution even though there is opposition within their own party, with some moderates saying this level of spending will increase inflation and saddle future generations with federal debt.

Senators Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has repeatedly said he does not think that this level of spending is wise and his party should put a pause on the legislation until after the pandemic and after assessing the recent inflation.

Republicans have all said they will oppose the budget resolution, but Democrats do not need the GOP to vote in favor of the bill if they get all 50 Democrat senators to vote in favor of the package.

Top Democrat leaders have shared confidence that their party will rally together to pass the massive funding bill.

Schumer was asked by a local ABC news reporter on Sunday if he can convince all members of his party, particularly Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who has also said she will not support the resolution, to vote in favor of the massive spending bill.

“I’m going to do my best and you know so far, after some discussion, and some compromise they have gone along with previous bills. Let’s hope it happens again,” said Schumer. “I have a caucus that runs from Bernie Sanders on the left to Joe Manchin, on the right. How do I bring them all together when you only have 50 votes and every one of them counts?”

Meanwhile, Sanders said he speaks directly to caucus members, in an effort to further negotiations on the budget bill.

“After a lot of negotiations and pain—and I’m going to be on the phone all week—what we are going to do is pass the most comprehensive bill for working families that this country has seen,” Sanders told The New York Time

House Education and Labor Committee Reveals How They Would Spend Their Portion of the $3.5 Trillion (theepochtimes.com)

Actress Rose McGowan is not afraid to speak her mind when it comes to Democratic politicians, and one of her latest tweets takes aim at former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

“@HillaryClinton You are a shadow leader in service of evil. You are the enemy of what is good, right and moral,” McGowan said.

“You represent no flag, no country, no soul. You eat hope, you twist minds. I’ve been in a hotel room with your husband and here comes the bomb.”

@HillaryClinton You are a shadow leader in service of evil. You are the enemy of what is good, right and moral. You represent no flag, no country, no soul. You eat hope, you twist minds. I’ve been in a hotel room with your husband and here comes the bomb. https://t.co/K3ZDQYBXPn

— Rose 🌊McGowan (@rosemcgowan) September 3, 2021

Trending

White House Staffers Can’t Bear to Watch ‘Gaffe Machine’ Biden, So They Mute His Speeches: Report

In the tweet, the actress linked a Breitbart story titled “Hillary Clinton Rages over Texas Abortion Law: ‘We’ll Fight’ for Abortion.”

She is certainly not winning the trophy for politeness, but McGowan has not shied away from sharing what she truly thinks in recent months.

Although McGowan is not a conservative, she has stood tall against Hollywood elites and the Democratic Party — referring to them as a “cult.”

Following the Texas heartbeat bill, which has banned abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, the left has lost its collective mind.

McGowan has called out the faux outrage from both Clinton, a seasoned politician, and celebrities when it comes to the Lone Star State’s pro-life legislation.

“This is really going to help for sure- absolute moron achievement unlocked,” she tweeted with a screenshot of a Deadline article headlined “Reese Witherspoon, Kerry Washington, and Alyssa Milano Among More Than 100 Stars Expressing Outrage Over Texas Abortion Law.”

This is really going to help for sure absolutely moron achievement unlocked pic.twitter.com/eVxnapMNWm

— Rose 🌊McGowan (@rosemcgowan) September 3, 2021

The “Charmed” and “Scream” star publicly said in 2019 that she had an abortion and is “not ashamed”, so it appears that her anger is catered toward the lack of authenticity liberal elites have when expressing outrage over social issues.

Related:

Hillary 2.0: Biden Used Private Email While VP to Send Government Intelligence to Hunter Biden – Report

I do not regret my decision and it was not made lightly. If you do not want an abortion, don’t get one. My body, my choice, my life. Have you had to make a choice? Let’s talk and use hashtag #HonestAbortion

— Rose 🌊McGowan (@rosemcgowan) March 1, 2019

However, based on her comments toward Clinton, it would not be surprising if McGowan is now against abortion.

McGowan should be applauded for her courage to speak out against the Democratic establishment and its grip on the entertainment industry, as much of Hollywood’s political fervor is staged.

There are plenty of non-leftists in entertainment, but the mob mentality of the industry has left them terrified to share their opinions for fear of being cancelled and blacklisted.

While her comments are certainly provocative, hopefully McGowan is prompting others to make their voices heard.

Are you a racist?

All white people are, says “White Fragility” author Robin DiAngelo.

Race explains everything, says bestselling “How to Be an Antiracist” author Ibram X. Kendi. “Every policy is either racist or anti-racist.”

Kendi’s and DiAngelo’s books are now recommended reading at schools, corporations and in the military. Both authors command high speaking fees.

Isn’t that good? It’s important to educate people about racism.

But John McWhorter, author of “Woke Racism,” says, “The way we’re being encouraged to think, hurts Black people.”

In my new video, he gives this example: “There is a disproportionate number of suspensions of Black boys in schools for violence. (Kendi says) that must be racist … a stereotype of Black men as violent. But … the data makes it very clear that Black boys do commit more violent acts in schools. If you don’t suspend those boys, the violence is being perpetrated (mostly) against other Black kids.”

Kendi’s positions “leave Black kids in the lurch,” says McWhorter.

Kendi and DiAngelo call most every disparity between races “systemic racism.”

White people live longer than Black people? Racism.

Income inequality? Racism.

White and Asian students get higher test scores? Systemic racism.

In the past, says McWhorter, civil rights leaders asked, “How can we make it so that Black kids are better at the test?” Now they want to “eliminate the tests” because they “make Black people unhappy.”

This just makes the problem worse, he says, because it encourages people to think of themselves as victims. If you believe you are a helpless victim of racism, why study?

The idea that it is “unreasonable to expect Black kids to use analytical thinking in a rigorous way. … This is a new way of thinking. It’s a religious way of thinking.”

Blaming racism for low test scores ignores “aspects of Black culture that don’t stress getting good at those tests — the way that South Asian immigrant culture clearly does.”

Nigerian and Caribbean culture, too. People from those places are often just as dark or darker than Black Americans. They “come here and deal with the same racism that everybody else does. Yet they make the best of the worst. That means: so could Black Americans.”

The media label Kendi and DiAngelo “leading scholars,” but their arguments are rarely tested in the marketplace of ideas. Both refuse to debate opponents. McWhorter calls their work far from scholarly — “more like a toxic religion, a cult.”

In fact, he adds, “Kendi is dim.”

I argue that, even if Kendi is “dim,” he’s winning hearts and minds. Companies now donate millions to his Center for Antiracist Research. His book sales and success with students show that his arguments convince people.

McWhorter disagrees. “As we come out of the pandemic and we’re less bored, less anxious, I suspect that a lot of the extremes that we saw are going to start retreating because there’s going to be pushback.”

The idea of anti-racism is “charismatic,” he adds. “It makes it seem like you’ve got one answer to a bunch of things that look disparate and difficult. But all disparities between white people and Black people are not due to something unfair that was driven by whites.”

I’m puzzled that DiAngelo’s and Kendi’s message is so popular today, when life for racial minorities seems to be better than ever before. With some exceptions, there’s less racism, more intermarriage, more opportunities for minorities, etc.

“Why now?” I ask.

There’s an advantage to being identified as a victim, says McWhorter. “An emotional balm to be treated as this victimized person. The problem is that it’s anti-Black.”

Anti-white too.

If the “systemic racism” cult wins, says McWhorter, “we all lose.”

Toxic Victimhood :: Right & Free (rightandfree.com)

A radical left-wing activist group organizing a pro-abortion protest outside the home of Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh had some interesting advice for prospective attendees. An addendum to the notice announcing the protest urged activists “to be as inclusive as possible in your language” while making a ruckus outside Kavanaugh’s home in Washington, D.C.

“Women and girls are not the only people who can get pregnant and need abortions,” the organizers from ShutDownDC wrote. That’s going to be rather inconvenient for anyone who was planning to reuse old signage about stopping the “war on women,” but at least they’ve been given a few days to prepare. Alas, “Stop the war on people who can get pregnant” has far too many syllables to incorporate into a catchy chant.

Additionally, the protest organizers cautioned attendees to “please avoid comparing U.S. abortion-restricting politicians to the Taliban” because it would be unfair to the Taliban. (No, seriously.) “The former are a distinctly homegrown phenomenon and ignoring that in favor of such comparisons is Islamophobic,” they explained.

Since the Taliban’s rapid takeover in Afghanistan, even prominent Democrats have delighted in comparing people they don’t like to the militant Islamist group. “Have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and actions are between the suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport, and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here?” wrote Arne Duncan, an Islamophobe who served seven years as former president Barack Obama’s secretary of education.

The protest is scheduled to take place on the evening of Monday, Sept. 13. ShutDownDC, a left-wing activist group that purports to use “strategic direct action to advance justice and hold officials accountable,” said they intend to “make our voices heard” by calling for Kavanaugh’s resignation and telling him to “keep your oppressive ideology out of our bodies.”

Earlier this year, ShutDownDC organized a small gathering outside the Virginia home of Sen. Josh Hawley (R., Mo.), where protesters used a bullhorn to yell at his wife. (The senator wasn’t there.) They also left a copy of the U.S. Constitution on his doorstep. It was very sad.

Lib Activist Group Warns Protesters: Men Can Have Abortions Too, Comparing GOP to Taliban is ‘Islamophobic’ (freebeacon.com)

Two GOP representatives are calling on Congress to pass legislation that would require schools that receive federal funding to make the curriculum they use to teach students available to parents and the public.

Education and Labor Committee Ranking Member Virginia Foxx (R-N.C.) and Rep. Scott Fitzgerald (R-Wis.) introduced the Curriculum Review of Teachings Transparency Act (pdf). The bill stipulates that federal funding can be denied if K-12 schools do not comply with the rule.

Making the K-12 curriculum openly available to parents is an effort by Foxx and Fitzgerald to counter what they call controversial and factually inaccurate ideas being taught in schools under the name of critical race theory (CRT).

“Decisions about what to teach students in school are being made by bureaucrats and teachers unions, often without the input from parents. As a result, parents across the country are flocking to their local school board to demand transparency and to oppose dangerous ideologies, like critical race theory,” said Fitzgerald said in a press statement.

CRT is rooted in the Marxist theory of class struggle, but with a particular focus on race. Proponents of CRT see racism in every aspect of the American public and private life and seek to dismantle American institutions—such as the Constitution and legal system—which they claim to be inherently and irredeemably racist.

While schools have for years been quietly infusing CRT into their curriculums, it wasn’t until last year, during lockdowns enacted in response to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic, that parents were able to see what their children were being taught. Since then, parents have been increasingly stepping forward to oppose CRT due to its racially divisive and anti-American concepts.

There has been fierce debate over whether CRT or similar initiatives—including The New York Times’ “1619 Project” or diversity, equity, and inclusion training—should be taught to schoolchildren. Parents across the United States have held protests against school boards that have increasingly started to promote CRT or CRT-aligned viewpoints in class.

Meanwhile, some media outlets have claimed that CRT is only taught in higher education settings, such as in colleges and universities, and isn’t being widely adopted by teachers. However, critics of CRT have said there are plenty of examples of young children in school being taught to believe that white people are inherently racist—a key CRT tenet—and that “systemic racism” permeates every U.S. institution.

Foxx wrote in a recent op-ed that education’s goal was originally to produce virtuous citizens who would make the country stronger, adding, “The future of our country depends upon a high-quality education system dedicated to equipping the next generation with the knowledge needed for an active civic life. Critical race theory is incompatible with this mission.”

Jack Phillips contributed to this report.

US Reps. Introduce Bill to Mandate Public Access to Schools’ Curriculum (theepochtimes.com)

House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) likely put a smile on President Joe Biden’s face on Sept. 7, with an extraordinarily ambitious schedule for completing the key panel’s part of the president’s $3.5 trillion “Build Back Better” spending plan.

“On Thursday, Sept. 9, 2021, and Friday, Sept. 10, 2021, at 10:00 a.m., the committee will mark up measures spanning from universal paid family and medical leave and access to child-care to strengthening retirement savings and trade programs that prioritize American workers,” the committee said in a statement.

“This is our historic opportunity to support working families and ensure our economy is stronger, more inclusive, and more resilient for generations to come,” Neal said in the statement.

What followed in the statement were 16 promises to create new benefits, greatly expand existing ones, and increase funding for a host of federal programs targeted by Biden to combat global warming, the CCP virus (also known as the novel coronavirus), the affordable housing shortage, and homelessness, among many other issues.

Other Democratic committee chairmen who head panels with mark-up roles on the spending plan are following similar paths. The fact that virtually all House members are back home in their districts on recess and won’t return until Sept. 20 is just one of a host of problems Democratic leaders must confront.

Much of the markup work will be done via virtual committee meetings.

The biggest of the problems, however, are likely to be Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.). The Senate is split 50-50 between the parties, meaning Democrats have no margin for error in counting votes. The House is only slightly more favorable to Democrats, with a 221–213 margin, meaning Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) can lose no more than four votes.

Manchin and Sinema have both expressed reservations about the massive spending and expansion of government in the $3.5 trillion Biden plan. Lose either one, and Vice President Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) is no longer the Senate’s tie-breaking vote for Democrats unless at least one Republican crosses the aisle.

The next big obstacle is how to pay for the biggest expansion of federal spending since the Great Society in the 1960s at a time when inflation is increasing, employers can’t find workers, small and medium-sized businesses are struggling to stay afloat, and only one in three Americans thinking the country is headed in the right direction.

Republicans such as Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the ranking minority member of Neal’s committee, sees nothing but bad economic news being generated by the Biden plan, especially in the area of tax increases.

Brady issued a scathing statement just before the Labor Day weekend, in which he predicted Democrats will have to raise taxes on middle- and lower-class taxpayers due to the Biden plan.

“The left-leaning Tax Policy Center found that Biden’s tax plan will raise taxes on 75 percent of middle-class families next year, rising to 95 percent of middle-class families by 2031—contradicting his pledge not to raise taxes on middle-class Americans.

“The Joint Committee on Taxation says that within 10 years of a corporate tax increase, 66.3 percent of the corporate tax burden would be borne by lower- and middle-income taxpayers.

“Studies show that the capital gains tax alone would shrink the economy, and the left-leaning Tax Policy Center finds that Biden’s proposal raises taxes far past the amount necessary to maximize revenue. Past analyses by the Congressional Budget Office and the Joint Committee on Taxation agree.

“Democrats’ second death tax will destroy more than 1 million jobs over the next 12 years, slash paychecks for workers, and shrink our economy by $100 billion over the next decade.”

If Democrats don’t raise taxes and choose instead to fund the new spending with bigger deficits, they will add an estimated $4.3 trillion to the national debt that now approaches $30 trillion, according to the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. That estimate includes the $1.1 trillion infrastructure bill that’s a companion to the spending plan.

In such a scenario, there is no guarantee that Democrats will be able to force through Congress an increase in the national debt ceiling by Sept. 30, the end of the current fiscal year.

Democratic campaign strategists know that a contracting economy with spiraling consumer prices and fewer jobs being created could move voters to restore Republican control of either or both chambers of Congress in November 2022.

Then there is the planned Sept. 18 protest demonstration at the Capitol in support of the Jan. 6 detainees being organized by a group known as Look Ahead America (LAA), which is led by former Trump campaign strategist Matt Braynard.

The LAA has previously organized protests that included a few conservative Republican House members, but multiple senior House Republican aides speaking on background told The Epoch Times they don’t expect any to be present for the Sept. 18 event.

Congressional correspondent Mark Tapscott may be contacted at mark.tapscott@epochtimes.nyc. Follow him on Twitter at @mtapscott and on Parler at @Mtapscott.

New Capitol Hill Protest Looms as Democrats Face September Packed with Big Obstacles to Passing Biden Agenda (theepochtimes.com)

All “anti-racism” and “social justice” writings and campaigns are predicated on the claim that certain races and sexes are being treated unfairly. The only evidence presented to support this assertion is statistical disparities between different census categories of races and sexes.

But statistical disparities don’t prove unfair treatment; they only prove unequal outcomes. Race advocates and feminists claim that statistical disparities reflect racist and sexist discrimination. This is a factual question, and so we must consider the evidence.

But before we address the relevant evidence, it’s important to note the revolutionary change in raising census race and sex categories to the utmost importance. Western Enlightenment culture, particularly in the English-speaking world, has always placed the individual as of prime importance. In this view, collectivities such as governments, churches, and business are meant to serve individuals and their interests, rather than individuals being measured by their service to collectivities. But at least collectivities do have some existence, while the census categories of race and sex to which we are asked to bow are empty labels. This is why racism and sexism are so obnoxious: they honor labels rather than actual human beings.

Is it Discrimination?

Race and sex activists claim that statistical disparities reflect racist and sexist discrimination. With no further proof of actual discrimination, activists claim that any membership or benefit that doesn’t see 13.4 percent representation of black Americans, 18.5 percent of Hispanics, and 50 percent of female Americans—their percentages of the general population—must have resulted from racial and sexist discrimination. For example, the fact that blacks make up 5 percent and Hispanics make up 5.8 percent of medical doctors means that blacks and Hispanics are statistically underrepresented, and that this result is the consequence of racist discrimination against blacks and Hispanics.

Similarly, females make up 15 percent of the American engineering workforce, and are thus statistically underrepresented. For race and feminist activists, these statistical underrepresentations are in and of themselves proof of discrimination. But do feminists then grant that the demographic dominance of females among students and graduates generally, with females making up close to 60 percent, is proof that the underrepresentation of males is the result of sexist, anti-male discrimination? As most students in the social sciences, humanities, education, and social work are females, apparently they prefer these fields to others, including engineering and some other STEM fields. In the most gender-egalitarian societies, such as Sweden, females make up the lowest percentages of STEM students in the world, presumably because they feel free to follow their preferences. Discrimination doesn’t come into it.

If statistical underrepresentation is the result of discrimination, so too must overrepresentation be a result of discrimination. Let us consider a few cases. National Football League players are 70 percent black (compared to their 13.4 percent of the general population), while 74.2 percent of National Basketball Association players are black, 16.9 white, 2.2 Latino, and 0.4 Asian. Are these statistical levels of participation the result of racial discrimination? Are the NFL and NBA actively discriminating against white, Latino, and Asian players? Rather, it appears that teams are competing for the best players so that they can succeed in their fields of competition. The selection is based on athletic merit, rather than race. No racial discrimination is evident.

Asian Americans, with 5.9 percent of the population, provide 17.1 percent of the medical doctors. This is a major statistical disparity. Does it result from racial discrimination against whites, blacks, and Hispanics? Who exactly is discriminating in favor of Asian Americans, people who themselves have long suffered discrimination? Is there any evidence of discrimination in favor of Asian Americans?

If racial discrimination does not explain the dominance of black athletes in professional sport, or the high level of Asian Americans in the medical field, what does explain these successes? We are warned by Ibram X. Kendi that “racial-group behavior is a figment of the racist’s imagination.” Yet, if we consult evidence rather than racialist ideology, it’s beyond dispute that family structure, community culture, and crime level do differ markedly among members of different racial categories.

What Might Be the Reasons for Different Outcomes?

We know that two-parent families, in comparison with one-parent families, are associated with children’s higher educational achievement and with a lower level of criminal activity and incarceration. Members of different census race categories differ in their family structure: the percentage of single-parent families among African Americans, in 2019, was 64 percent; among American Indians, 52 percent; among Hispanics, 42 percent; among whites, 24 percent; and among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, 15 percent.

Educational achievement correlates with family structure. In all standardized tests, Asian Americans achieve the highest scores, then, well behind, are whites, and well behind are Hispanics, and finally blacks. This reflects not only family structure, but also family and community culture. Asian American families have a high level of discipline and respect for parental authority, and their families and communities are notoriously committed to education.

Crime follows a similar pattern: According to 2019 FBI homicide data, “When the race of the offender was known, 55.9 percent were Black or African American, 41.1 percent were White, and 3.0 percent were of other races.” Among murder victims in 2019 for whom race was known, “54.7 percent were Black or African American, 42.3 percent were White, and 3.1 percent were of other races.”

This means the per-capita offending rate for African-Americans was around six times higher than that of whites. As a result, African Americans are highly overrepresented in prisons by demography, although not overrepresented in terms of criminal activity.

The pattern of economic success, as measured by income, is much the same. Median household income of Asian Americans was, in 2018, $87,243, of whites $67,937, Hispanics, $51,404, and blacks, $41,511. Race, however, does not seem to be a determinant, as Nigerian immigrants to the United States have an average income of $52,000, while 35 percent of Nigerian immigrant households earn $90,000.

All of these statistical disparities that indicate difficulties in the African American community have resulted after 50 years of legalized discrimination on behalf of African Americans. “Affirmative action” has made black Americans a preferred category of applicants, and has granted special conditions and benefits for black Americans. Now “diversity, equity, and inclusion” intensifies pro-black discrimination, and, incidentally, anti-white and anti-Asian discrimination. But the disparities remain, because even 50 years of racial discrimination in favor of black Americans has not addressed the social pathologies of their community.

Now, Ibram X. Kendi has warned us that “One either believes problems are rooted in groups of people, as a racist, or locates the roots of problems in power and policies, as an antiracist.” Thus, referring to different characteristics of family structure, community culture, and criminality in different race categories is, according to Kendi, racist. Kendi is advocating for black Americans, and rejects the evidence that blacks bear some responsibility for their levels of achievement and for social pathologies such as crime. The problem, according to Kendi, is “power and policies,” and in taking this stand, he’s robbing black Americans of their agency as human beings, of their capability to achieve and to seek their own ends. This is not “anti-racism,” it’s undermining the constituency Kendi claims to champion by no expectations of performance.

Kendi’s solution to “racism” and alleged discrimination is to increase the preferences and benefits for blacks, in perpetuity: “The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination.” Kendi aims to disaggregate rewards from performance, so that his favored racial category gets the rewards irrespective of performance. This is not anti-racism; it’s reverse racism, as well as the negation of achievement and merit, and the advancement of mediocrity in all of our fields of knowledge and service.

Attributed to V.I. Lenin is a statement to the effect that the fastest and surest way to communism or socialism—it varies according to the citation—is through the healthcare system.

The statement seems to be apocryphal. I say “seems” because no one appears able to locate it.

But, like so many possibly apocryphal statements (“A republic if you can keep it” and so forth), does anyone doubt its meaning is really true? That’s the reason such remarks continue to haunt us.

Since this is Rosh Hashanah, I will put it the way the old Jewish bubbes (grandmothers) did when I was a child. Apply the proper Yiddish accent: “So long as you’re healthy, it’s the main thing.”

And, to be clear, when I assert we live under healthcare communism, I don’t mean communism the way ye olde Karl Marx dreamed it up. I mean something even worse, more insidious—total state control of our lives, who wins and loses, who profits and who fails, who becomes a billionaire and who a pauper, even who survives… in other words communism as practiced in today’s People’s Republic of China and, increasingly, the United States.

Powerful evidence for this can be found in a brilliant article—“The Great Ivermectin Deworming Hoax”—by a Justus R. Hope M.D., a highly-credentialed doctor writing under a pseudonym, one would assume for professional preservation, which in itself tells a significant part of the story.

The medical establishment—as do a great many, close to most, of our major corporations—lives in fear of the state, consciously or unconsciously.

“Dr. Hope” begins as follows:

“’In a normal year, the Kentucky Poison Control Center might receive one call from someone who has taken ivermectin, a drug commonly used to treat parasites in livestock. But amid increasing misinformation about the drug’s ability to both treat and prevent COVID-19, that number has increased to six this year.’

“This alarming news was published in Spectrum News—formerly known as Time Warner Cable—on Aug. 24, 2021, and should be a lesson to every American.

The lesson is not about Ivermectin being poisonous because it isn’t, but about the pervasiveness of a type of new internet propaganda termed ‘informational flooding.’”

The doctor goes on to cite other institutions high (NPR, of course) and low that promoted or “flooded” the scabrous prevarication about Ivermectin. It’s so easy to do now. Churchill’s line about a lie going around the world before the truth gets its pants on has been reduced to a microsecond by the internet.

To give you an idea of how this works, “Dr. Hope,” who has done considerable research, writes: “For example, google the news on Ivermectin poisoning articles, and you will find almost all of them were published within the last few weeks. Nothing before then.”

This is when interest in the drug began to pick up steam.

Notable among the chief liars regarding Ivermectin—with an absurd on its face story out of Oklahoma, which they have now walked back—is unsurprisingly Rolling Stone, famous for their nine thousand word article on a University of Virginia frat house rape that never occurred. Anyone would be foolish to trust “The Stone” as a legitimate news source about their health, or anything for that matter, but apparently many do. After all, the former rebels always adhere to the party line.

More importantly, “Dr. Hope” notes the degree that Ivermectin’s use has made parts of India, including Uttar Pradesh (population approximately two-thirds ours), nearly COVID-free. This victory, he adds, has been subject to a near blackout by our mainstream media—again, no surprise, since they act consistently as an adjunct of government when Democrat.

Only this time it’s about something that affects everyone’s life and death, including their own and their children’s. Go figure. (By the way, the doctor cites statistics showing how Ivermectin is vastly, I mean vastly, safer than Tylenol.)

“Dr. Hope’s” article is a must-read and must-disperse to any and all, if there ever was one, but what’s going on here but inches below the surface?

It’s the familiar duo—greed and control.

Regarding greed, you may have heard that Pfizer et. Al. are working on a pill to take as a preventative for COVID-19, known increasingly accurately here as the CCP-virus.

And what drug is already known to share active ingredients with the pill Big Pharma is working on?

I’ll give you twenty questions. No, I’ll give you one, because it’s too obvious—Ivermectin.

As for control, well, you already know that speaks to my premise. We live under a form of healthcare communism. It’s Big Pharma and the “liberal” government working together, exercising control, for their own advantage.

It’s been a sad thing to watch over the last year and a half, the near total politicization of medicine. Some of us have seen our own treasured providers under the thumb of the diktats of massive institutions. It’s the rare few, like “Dr. Hope,” who have been able to overcome it.

And even he cannot write under his own name.

I guess Lenin was right, whether or not he said it verbatim.

America Lives Under Healthcare Communism (theepochtimes.com)

The paths of the Senate-passed Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJ) and Sen. Sanders’ (I-Vt.) $3.5 trillion spending package have been fraught with difficulties since their introduction, facing pushback by moderate Democrats and conservative Republicans in the House and Senate. Now, Democrats are looking to a new strategy to pass these broad pieces of legislation: Louisiana’s humanitarian crisis in the aftermath of the Category 4 Hurricane Ida.

Both pieces of legislation are packed with new environmental programs. For example, the IIJ would direct millions towards research and development of low-emission school buses and ferries and millions more towards expanding electric car charging locations.

After the Senate’s passage of the legislation, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said in a press conference that the IIJ had some good provisions for addressing climate change, but that it didn’t go far enough.

Sanders’ budget resolution would indeed do much more. In total, the proposal would devote a total of $265 billion toward what Sanders called an “extremely aggressive [transformation] away from fossil fuels in the U.S.”

Sanders also proposed that with the funding in the proposal Democrats would create a “Civilian Climate Corps,” which he said would give young people the opportunity “to get decent pay and to roll up their sleeves … in order to combat climate change.” Sanders implied that this “Climate Corps” would help in the “extremely aggressive” transformation away from fossil fuels, but he did not elaborate on the way that the group would help achieve that.

Initially, Pelosi planned on bringing both pieces of legislation through the House for a vote at the same time as part of what Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer has called a “two-track approach.”

This approach has met with far more challenges than Democrat leadership originally expected. While the IIJ, passed by all 50 Democrats and 19 Republicans in the Senate, has faced comparatively few challenges, this expansive budget resolution has proved far more controversial.

Throughout the August recess, the White House and Democrat House leaders were in drawn-out negotiations with a group of moderates who threatened to derail the process. They refused to vote for the budget resolution before passing the infrastructure bill, recoiling at the thought of making what they saw as a “bipartisan victory for our nation” linked to the much more partisan budget. Pelosi originally brushed off these efforts as “amateur.”

The moderates refused to relent, however, and Pelosi was forced to make an eleventh-hour deal with the moderates the morning of the House vote to advance the resolution. This deal satiated the moderates, who voted unanimously with their party to advance the resolution on the evening of Aug. 24.

But trials are not over for President Biden nor congressional leadership. Because of the deal that Pelosi made with the moderates, House Democrats now need to work at a breakneck, unheard of speed to draft legislation before Sept. 27, when Pelosi promised a vote on the IIJ. Moderates in the House still pose a challenge, as they likely will not vote for the resolution before the IIJ is passed.

Beyond this, the quickly-crafted bill must satisfy moderate members of the Senate. This will be difficult, as both Sens. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) and Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) have emphatically rejected the huge spending package.

So Democrats are turning to a new excuse to get these new moderate holdouts on board: Hurricane Ida.

Chuck Schumer said in a press conference: “Global warming is upon us, and it’s going to get worse, and worse, and worse unless we do something about it. That’s why it’s so imperative to pass the two bills.”

On Twitter, President Biden expressed the same sentiment. Biden wrote: “The past few days of Hurricane Ida, wildfires in the West, and unprecedented flash floods in New York and New Jersey are another reminder that the climate crisis is here. We need to be better prepared. That’s why I’m urging Congress to act and pass my Build Back Better plan.”

Tuesday morning, President Biden met briefly with reporters outside the south portico of the White House on his way for a visit to New York and New Jersey.

When asked what he hopes to see on the trip, Biden said, “I’m hoping to see the things we’re going to be able to fix permanently with the bill that we have for infrastructure.”

Asked how he’s going to convince hesitant Democrats to vote for his broad policy agenda, Biden expressed optimism that both bills would pass, saying, “The sun is going to come out tomorrow.”

In spite of the president’s optimism, the challenges facing his party in Congress are great. Over the next month, Democrats will need to draft the spending and tax bill, deal with a brewing battle with Republicans over the debt ceiling, and get moderate holdouts on board. This last will be the most difficult challenge, as Manchin and Sinema have expressed opposition to the price of the bill rather than its contents. On the other hand, progressives are unlikely to support any lower than $3.5 trillion—Sanders’ original proposal was a veritable progressive wishlist, with almost $6 trillion in spending; for these progressives, accepting the lower limits of the final cut of the resolution was already a significant compromise.

It is unclear whether Manchin and Sinema will be swayed by these efforts to link the budget resolution to the ongoing disaster in the gulf coast states, but because of their expressed opposition to the price tag, the effort is unlikely to be successful.

Rather, it is likely that moderates in both chambers will join with Republicans to call for a pause on the spending bill in order to craft hurricane relief legislation. For many, especially in affected areas, immediate relief will likely seem far more pressing than efforts at long-term prevention.

Democrats Use Ida to Push $5 Trillion of Spending (theepochtimes.com)

“What constitutes a family?”

That’s one of the “Sample Guiding Questions” for Kindergarten to 2nd-grade students in the project called the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap (pdf). The Roadmap is a well-funded, amply sponsored initiative to boost civics learning in primary and secondary education, which everyone agrees is in poor condition. The goal is to get the Roadmap adopted in one way or another in school districts across the country, and it looks like the initiative has good odds of succeeding.

I have written about the Roadmap in City Journal and on RealClearPolicy, and I debated the project leader, professor Danielle Allen, in a webinar moderated by the Fordham Institute, each time arguing that the Roadmap is an ideological endeavor that will inject progressivist ideas into the classroom in a seemingly neutral way.

I won’t rehearse all those points here. But just consider the question above. The Roadmap advises teachers to bring it into class presentations and encourage discussion, which might raise immediate questions about the civic goal of the exercise. To be sure, the Roadmap contains many traditional topics such as the content of the Constitution and historical takes on immigration, expansion, voting rights, and political parties. But this query about the family doesn’t quite fit. Why would civics sessions with 7-year-olds turn on the definition of something many would regard as both irrelevant to civics learning and inappropriate to children of that age?

After all, the family is a contentious subject. The traditional conception of it—father, mother, married and with children, all in the same home—has been one of the left’s prime targets in the 50-year Culture War that continues today. That nuclear model is accused of being sexist, heteronormative, homophobic, reactionary, and denigrating to all those households that don’t have a traditional mother-father set-up. It is said to put down single mothers and same-sex couples. The controversies have been heated, as we saw in the 2008 passage of Proposition 8 in California. The current mandates against the nuclear preference, in fact, will prevent you from getting a job in certain fields if you don’t reject the old-school notion as the best family formation (jobs in academia, for instance, require of applicants a “diversity-equity-inclusion” statement in which you better not signal anything but a liberal attitude toward social issues).

Why bring those tensions to children who haven’t the equipment to understand them? For the obvious reason: This is good old-fashioned proselytizing. It follows a standard leftist tactic: get ‘em while they’re young. For let’s not be callow enough to believe that “What constitutes a family?” is a genuine question. Imagine what would happen if a student were a fundamentalist Christian, an Orthodox Jew, or a devout Muslim. That student would rise and state a definition of the family that runs squarely against the liberal one, and the teacher wouldn’t let that stand. The ideology of the social studies profession and of the schools in general wouldn’t allow it. A refutation would begin; it would have to in a world that has embraced diversity and tolerance as binding norms. The adoption of critical race theory (CRT) in public schools (and many private ones) tells you where all the momentum is going, notwithstanding scattered incidents of parents fighting back. This traditionalist child will have to be disabused and re-educated. The teacher will lead the process and lots of fellow students will join in. No diversity on this one, no pluralism.

We know that’s what will happen because we’ve seen it a thousand times before. More than any other site in our country, for the last half-century the classroom has been the place where traditional conceptions of family, men and women, God and country, marriage and parenting have begun to slip and fall. When guests on CNN speak of Western Civilization as white supremacy, they may believe that they are cutting-edge commentators, but in truth they are parroting ideas that had become academic dogma (and cliché) by 1995. When young, energetically left-wing members of Congress opine about imperialism, they say nothing you couldn’t find in every average “studies” class in the 1980s.

For a long time, with a few exceptions such as William Bennett, prominent Republicans paid little attention to the advance of political correctness in the classroom. Or, rather, while all of them realized the bias going on, they did nothing about it. Either they didn’t fully understand how it was happening, or they didn’t know what to do to counter it, or they didn’t want to take action and face the inevitable smears of the media and activists.

And so the leftist colonization of the classroom inched forward, sometimes in dramatic ways, such as the widespread adoption of the 1619 Project, but more often, however, in small incursions such as this little family question in the Roadmap. It will move ahead, I’m sure, as progressivism has so triumphantly done in the education sphere, and we will see more of this indoctrination of schoolchildren into the new dispensation. Republican politicians have shown that they can’t stop it. They don’t want to fight this battle. It’s now quite clear that what happens in classrooms comes to happen in the public square 20 years later, but Republican leaders are too old or too poorly equipped to think in “long march” terms (as the left does). Besides that, their corporate donors have signaled their compliance with progressivism on social matters, and they don’t want their politicians to cross lines of political correctness. If the leftist momentum is to be stopped, it will have to be the people who do it.

That means getting them to recognize the tendentiousness, the tactical character, of small gestures such as “What constitutes a family?” We have people going to school board meetings and denouncing overt CRT exercises, which are easy to recognize as abominations. It’s not so easy to see the small ones as likewise dangerous. But they are. I can hear the leftist educator scoffing at the worry, claiming that the family question is just a discussion prompt about an important topic. Relax—lighten up!

But in cases such as this one, we have two renditions, one ideal and one actual. The ideal one, which progressives offer the public, is benign and non-partisan and open-ended. “We’re just talking about important things—that’s all,” we’re told. And then there’s the truth, what really goes on in real situations. There, the direction of righteousness is clear, and it’s always to the left. The curt query, “What constitutes a family” signifies one thing in the abstract—in the Roadmap document, for instance. It signifies a whole other thing in a classroom with a left-leaning teacher at the front and a captive group of 7-year-olds looking to her for guidance.

Do not believe the promises of the educators—they have broken their promises too many times in the past. Progressives regard the schools as an opportunity to spread the word, their word. Most liberals don’t see the classroom that way, but they have decided to let progressives call the shots when it comes to the social contents of the curriculum. The Woke Revolution is the result of decades of this leftist push in higher and lower education. Conservatives, then, must accept themselves as counter-revolutionaries. No more compromises, no more benefits of the doubt. Flood those school board meetings, yes, and tell the authorities that you don’t trust them and you don’t like them—and you’re going to stop them.

Progressive Classrooms, Subtler Than You Think (theepochtimes.com)

A New Jersey student has said he is barred from taking online classes at Rutgers University because he hasn’t received a COVID-19 vaccine.

Logan Hollar, 22, told the New Jersey Advance Media that he largely ignored the school’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate because his “classes were remote” and he attended them online from his home in Sandyston, located about 70 miles from the Rutgers campus in New Brunswick.

Hollar said that he was locked out of his Rutgers email and other accounts due to his vaccination status. When Hollar tried to pay his tuition last month, he was told by a representative that he needed to get vaccinated even though he doesn’t plan to attend classes in person.

“I’ll probably have to transfer to a different university,” Hollar the paper, adding that he knows of at least one other student who is in the same position. “I find it concerning for the vaccine to be pushed by the university rather than my doctor,” he told the outlet.

“I’m not in an at-risk age group. I’m healthy and I work out. I don’t find COVID to be scary,” he added, likely referring to the numerous studies that show the COVID-19 death rate among young adults in his age group to be far less than 1 percent. “If someone wants to be vaccinated, that’s fine with me, but I don’t think they should be pushed.”

Rutgers was the first college in the United States to mandate vaccines for students at its campuses, although it did not require the shots for students in online degree programs or online-only programs.

But Hollar said that he’s not part of the online-only programs.

“When they put out the guidance in March, I was reading through all the verbiage, which was if you plan to return to campus, you need to be vaccinated,” he told the outlet. “I figured I wouldn’t be part of that because all my classes were remote.”

Keith Williams, his stepfather, told the paper that he is vaccinated but is “dumbfounded” by Rutgers’ move.

“I believe in vaccines, but I am highly confident that COVID-19 and variants do not travel through computer monitors by taking online classes,” Williams said.

“He chose to remove himself from an on-campus experience so he would not need to be vaccinated,” Williams said. “Now to be removed and shut down from his Rutgers email and online classes during the start of his senior year seems a bit crazy.”

The Epoch Times has contacted Rutgers for comment.

In March this year, Rutgers said that all students will have to get a COVID-19 vaccine before returning to campus in the fall.

“We are committed to health and safety for all members of our community, and adding COVID-19 vaccination to our student immunization requirements will help provide a safer and more robust college experience for our students,” said Rutgers President Jonathan Holloway at the time.

A spokesperson for Rutgers, in response to Hollar’s comments, told news outlets the college’s policy hasn’t changed since March, when it was announced.

“Since March, we have provided comprehensive information and direction to students to meet vaccine requirements through several communications channels, including our university websites, direct emails, and messages relayed throughout the registration and enrollment processes,” spokeswoman Dory Devlin said.

Rutgers Student Says He’s Being Stopped From Taking Online Classes Because He’s Unvaccinated (theepochtimes.com)

Some of us are old enough to recall a time when freedom of speech was regarded as essential to the maintenance of a functional democracy.

In democratic nations like Canada and the United States, we once understood that in contests of cultural or political will, all citizens, especially candidates for political office and other leadership positions, should be permitted to have their say and test their ideas against the arguments of others.

Throughout our national history, government censorship was generally limited to preventing the disclosure of sensitive military secrets or forbidding the publication of pornographic material that violated customary moral standards and had no serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

In schools, universities, and public forums, we once sought to examine all sides of civic issues. We regarded it as unfair and counter-productive to collude with some in order to exclude the opinion of others.

As free citizens, we were at liberty to form judgements regardless of the dictates of the conventional wisdom. We actually valued debate and taught the art of debating in our schools.

The Temptation to Censor

Today, the disposition toward freedom of expression appears to have been reversed. Pornography is ubiquitous and readily available to anyone of any age with access to a computer or cellphone.

On the other hand, advocates of free speech, freedom of the press, and academic freedom are generally relegated to the margins civil discourse. This is especially true when speakers are regarded to be on the conservative side of the political spectrum.

In Canada, the state-funded media agency sets the tone for almost all network news and opinion programming, while cosmopolitan newspapers dominate the print media, and social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook act as surrogate censors for progressive policymakers.

Canada’s prestige media often depicts the very idea of free speech and full truth-telling as tenants of the extreme-right. News outlets inclined to take conservative editorial positions are portrayed as unworthy of attention and frequently denied access to public figures or important political events.

More than ever, Canada’s prestige media flies on a single wing. Opinions on the right have been jettisoned. Balance is no longer required. The craft is kept aloft by a powerful re-centred cultural engine fuelled by plenty of public money, government regulatory advantage, and a proclivity for censorship.

Free Debate and the Election Campaign

In our present cultural straitjacket there was never much hope that freedom of speech and the spirit of open-ended debate would regain traction in the 2021 federal election.

Last week, TVA, a media group that boasts of having the capacity to reach every household in the country, broadcast the first French-language leaders’ debate of the campaign. TVA’s designated “main party” leaders were Justin Trudeau (Liberal), Erin O’Toole (Conservative), Jagmeet Singh (NDP), and Yves-François Blanchet of the Bloc Québécois, a party that fields federal candidates only in one province.

Almost all of the debate revolved around the ever-increasing role of government in the lives of ordinary Canadians.

The first half of the event was dominated by talk of government policy related to the COVID-19 pandemic. Other matters raised throughout the evening, like government childcare, medical assistance in dying, gun control, and climate change, framed the discourse almost entirely around progressive talking points.

Trudeau presented himself as the nation’s vaccine champion, pushing mandatory shots for public servants and the travelling public.

As Canadians pour into city streets in opposition to mandatory vaccination passports and lockdowns, O’Toole parried with an alternative “federal government plan” for rapid testing of Canadian travellers.

Regarding the longstanding debate over re-introducing for-profit medical services in Canada, Trudeau pointed accusingly at O’Toole’s past support for private care options. When Trudeau pressed O’Toole to say whether or not he favoured introducing a so-called “two-tiered” system into the country, the Conservative leader declined to take up the debate or give a direct answer. Mr. O’Toole could only say that he wanted to see more private “innovation” in health care, but supports the system we have.

With regard to the left’s signature issue, climate change, it was business as usual. The imagined environmental horrors connected with Harper-era oil and gas development were invoked against present Conservative proposals to modestly roll back carbon emission regulations. At the same time, Singh, the socialist New Democratic Party leader, noted that over recent years Canada has had the worst results on emissions of all G7 countries and even accused the country’s climate warrior-in-chief, Justin Trudeau, of not delivering on his environmental promises.

No one on the debate stage dared to challenge the orthodox progressive assertion that “climate change” is the most critical issue of our times.

Silenced by Omission

At the outset of the 2021 campaign, the Leaders Debates Commission selected five parties to participate in the official election debates. Unsurprisingly, they were the Trudeau Liberals, O’Toole Conservatives, Singh New Democrats, Paul Greens, and Blanchet Bloc Québécois.

The most notable candidate to be left out was former Harper government cabinet minister Maxime Bernier. Bernier’s more recently formed People’s Party of Canada is a committed coalition of former Harper conservatives, libertarians, and populists who describe their founding principles as “Freedom, Responsibility, Fairness, and Respect.”

Reviewing the PPC platform, one is struck by elements which have deep roots in classical liberal traditions as well as populist elements similar to the American MAGA movement. The PPC takes clear and unequivocal positions on controversial issues like freedom of speech, immigration, trade, supply management, and national health care.

Bernier himself is a trained economist in the tradition of Adam Smith, Frédéric Bastiat, and Friedrich Hayek. Like them, he believes that the prosperity of society is driven by creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation, which are possible only in a society with free markets and limited government.

Open-minded citizens seeking to cast an informed vote might be well-served by debates that include Bernier’s point of view. But according to the rules of the Leaders Debates Commission, at the outset of the campaign the PPC fell short of a 4 percent threshold of public polling required to qualify for a place on the stage.

In mid-campaign, the PPC is actually polling above 4 percent and ahead of the Green Party. But for Canada’s Woke Laurentian establishment, “rules are rules”—especially when they support the silencing of an articulate political opponent.

These days, one is inclined to conclude that a Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which supposedly guarantees “freedom of expression,” is worth about as much as the paper it’s printed on.

Are Freedom Charters Worth the Paper They’re Printed On? (theepochtimes.com)

OB-GYN association touts fetal pain study repudiated by co-author

One of Planned Parenthood’s top medical allies cites debunked scientific studies to advocate for late-term abortions, according to medical experts. 

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, the leading membership organization for OB-GYNs with deep ties to the abortion industry, cites two studies to support its position that fetuses are unable to feel pain until roughly 24 weeks—a widely held view contradicted by recent studies. Dr. Stuart Derbyshire, who helped write the 2010 study cited by ACOG, has since repudiated his findings. In 2020, Derbyshire co-authored a peer-reviewed analysis that concludes fetuses begin to feel pain at 12 weeks, the end of the first trimester. The National University of Singapore neuroscientist, who is pro-choice, said ACOG’s stance fails to acknowledge updated scientific understandings of pain.

“If they want to maintain a webpage on fetal pain then they probably should update it and start rethinking it,” Derbyshire told the Washington Free Beacon. “They’ve dug a bit of a hole for themselves because they’ve indicated that in some sense [fetal pain] does matter—I think that’s a tactical error.”

ACOG’s position on fetal pain could play a major role in setting abortion policy as the Supreme Court case prepares to decide a legal challenge to Mississippi’s fetal pain law, which prohibits abortion after 15 weeks. The state contends the law reflects updated scientific understandings of fetal development since the Court established the trimester approach to regulation when it legalized abortion nationwide in Roe v. Wade. ACOG has called for the Supreme Court to strike down the ban—a position that could shape how justices approach the issue. The Supreme Court cited ACOG research on abortion safety in the majority opinion of Whole Woman’s Health v. Hellerstedt, which ruled against a Texas law that required abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at a nearby hospital. The late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg cited the organization for its expertise in her opinions on issues ranging from contraception to late-term abortion.

A spokeswoman for ACOG told the Free Beacon that the organization maintains its position that fetuses are unable to feel pain prior to viability. That position, according to the group’s Website, is based on Derbyshire’s 2010 paper, as well as a 2005 Study that collected and reviewed medical literature dating back Decades. The 2005 study, which was led by a lawyer, was dogged by ethical and conflict of interest Scandals. Two of its authors failed to disclose their abortion-industry ties to the medical journal prior to publication. Its lawyer worked for abortion lobbyist NARAL and one of its doctors was a practicing abortionist.

ACOG released a joint statement Wednesday with other medical lobbying organizations in opposition to the Texas law banning abortion after six weeks, which the Supreme Court declined to block in a 5-4 decision.

ACOG advocates for legal abortion until fetal viability at roughly 24 weeks. The group insists that fetuses cannot detect pain until viability because the cerebral cortex of the brain, which activates when pain is detected, does not develop until 24 weeks. This understanding has been contradicted by two more recent scientific discoveries: Those without a cerebral cortex feel pain, and those unable to feel pain still have an active cerebral cortex. The organization has ignored such findings even as it Lobbies Congress to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act, which would overturn pro-life state laws.

Dr. Donna Harrison has practiced as an OB-GYN for more than three decades. She said doctors are aware of the reality of fetal pain. They administer pain medications when performing surgeries in the womb and have long seen unborn children physically react to needles and other painful medical instruments since the dawn of the ultrasound in the United States in the 1970s. Harrison said ACOG’s position on fetal pain proves the group is more focused on promoting abortion than providing accurate medical expertise.

“ACOG has positioned itself as a rabidly pro-abortion organization,” Harrison, CEO of the American Association of Pro-Life Obstetricians and Gynecologists, told the Free Beacon. “Their abortion advocacy has blinded them to scientific reality. … It’s clear that fetuses react to pain.” 

ACOG has spent $15.5 million on lobbying since 2010, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The group spent $2.7 million on elections since 2010, with roughly two-thirds going to Democrats.

ACOG has advocated in recent years to protect government funding of Planned Parenthood, which it has been heavily connected to for decades. One of its founding fellows, Jane Hodgson, was convicted in 1970 of performing an illegal abortion and was later awarded the Planned Parenthood Federation of America Margaret Sanger Award for her advocacy. An extensive list of the group’s presidents worked with Planned Parenthood before, during, and after their tenures.

Derbyshire and Harrison emphasized that there is still much to learn on the topic of fetal pain. The idea of what exactly defines pain is a much-disputed question at the core of this debate. The definition of pain can vary from the signal sent to the brain, to the reaction from the body, or more simply to the personal feeling.

“It’s something that’s way beyond and way deeper than something we can express,” Harrison told the Free Beacon.

Derbyshire’s co-author of the 2020 study, John Bockmann, said he has no problem with groups like ACOG advocating on certain medical issues, but is concerned when that advocacy disregards crucial information.

“What I do have a problem with is distorting their authoritative role in the debate in favor of something that is not right,” he told the Free Beacon. “And I think that to the extent that this information is out there, they owe it to the medical community and the public at large to state the facts.”

The Supreme Court is set to take up a key abortion case later this year, Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which regards a 15-week abortion ban. Defendants for the case filed a brief to the Court detailing the updated science of fetal development, which they argue proves the necessity to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Top Medical Group Pushes Late-Term Abortion With Misleading Studies (freebeacon.com)

Progressivism makes inroads into public health’s lingua franca

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released a set of “guiding principles for inclusive communication” on Aug. 24. The word salad included statements like “health equity is intersectional” and described “diabetics” and “the homeless” as “dehumanizing language.” Public health communications, the guide said, “should reflect and speak to the needs of” a wide range of identities.

To that end, the guide compiles a list of “preferred terms for select population groups,” as well as a list of proscribed terms deemed insufficiently inclusive. “Assigned male/female at birth” is preferable to “biologically male/female,” “people with undocumented status” is preferable to “illegal immigrants,” and “people who are incarcerated” is preferable to “inmates,” according to the guide—which also stresses that public health officials should “avoid jargon and use straightforward, easy to understand language.”

It might seem odd for the CDC to be ironing out the finer points of woke vernacular while COVID-19 is killing over a thousand Americans each day. But the agency wasn’t starting from scratch. Rather, its guidance drew on a network of nonprofits that are institutionalizing progressivism as public health’s lingua franca.

The guide’s preferred terms for gender, for example, come straight from the LGBT activist group GLAAD, whose “Media Reference Guide” says phrases like “biologically male” are “problematic” and “reductive.” And the CDC’s “health equity lens” takes inspiration from a report by the Racial Equity Institute, which is listed at the end of the guide as an “explanation about the root causes of racism and racial inequity.” The report urges policymakers to “confront the reality that all our systems, institutions, and outcomes emanate from the racial hierarchy, on which the United States was built,” and denies that any inequalities are caused by “people’s culture or behavior.”

Reached for comment, the CDC said that its link to the report did not “constitute an endorsement.”

The guide is the latest illustration of how progressive nonprofits capture public health agencies through a kind of technocratic activism, burrowing their ideology into medical language by framing social controversies as settled scientific fact. Government officials, like those at the CDC, then cite those activists alongside professional health associations, many of which have gone woke themselves. That boosts the activists’ credibility while undermining the government’s own: The CDC may be insulated from certain kinds of political pressure, but it is hardly immune to the ideological contagion of medical nonprofits.

Further eroding that immunity is the revolving door between those nonprofits and the CDC. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, for example, appears three times in the guide’s list of “resources and references.” Its CEO, Richard Besser, was the acting CDC director at the start of Barack Obama’s first term. When Americans are told to “follow the science,” they aren’t just being told to socially distance; they’re being told to adopt the values of an activist class and the Democratic donors who power it.

The GLAAD guide offers a case study in this sleight of hand. Since terms like biologically male and female “overly-simplify a very complex subject,” the guide suggests, retiring them will help readers “form their own conclusions based on factual information”—the implication being that talk of scientific realities is itself anti-science.

Professional medical associations have largely blessed this marriage of evangelism and expertise. The CDC’s list of links includes the American Heart Association’s “Racial Equity in Public Policy Message Guide,” which offers “research-based messages” to “dismantle structural racism,” and the American Public Health Association’s “health equity fact sheets,” which cover “environmental justice” and “COVID-19’s impact on housing instability.” The housing sheet calls on federal authorities to “expand, extend, and enforce eviction and rent moratoriums”—exactly what the CDC was doing until the Supreme Court ruled it unconstitutional in August.

“Nothing in the guiding principles is prescriptive,” the CDC told the Washington Free Beacon. That might come as news to whoever wrote the first sentence of the guide: “To build a healthier America for all, we must confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities.”

These sorts of buzzwords permeate the guide’s listed resources. The idea that “racism exists only in individuals crowds out any consideration of systemic solutions,” according to the FrameWorks Institute. The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation warns that health equity is imperiled by “institutional discrimination,” which is “not necessarily conscious, intentional or personal.” Several resources also make reference to the “social determinants of health,” a concept to which the CDC devotes an entire section of its website.

This focus on so-called systemic forces explains the guide’s preference for terms that avoid attributions of personal responsibility. “People who refuse vaccination” become “people who have yet to receive [the vaccine],” while “the obese” become “people with obesity,” a term favored by the Obesity Action Coalition. That coalition, which aims “to eliminate the negative stigma associated with obesity,” is the guide’s only recommended resource on issues of “weight bias.”

The CDC’s use of such euphemisms is likely good news for the nonprofits that peddle them. It is likely bad news for public health.

That’s because many medical conditions are in fact under the control of individuals. The risk of severe COVID-19, for instance, drops dramatically with vaccination, a free, two-minute procedure that is now available at almost every pharmacy in the country. And while obesity is sometimes due to thyroid problems or genetic predispositions, it is “generally caused by eating too much and moving too little,” according to the British National Health Service—meaning the best treatments for obesity are “a healthy, balanced diet and regular physical activity.”

The obesity rate for adults in Britain is 28 percent. In the United States, it’s 42 percent—the highest in the developed world. With woke nonprofits at the helm of America’s public health bureaucracy, it is likely to stay that way.

Once again, popular opinion of pro-murder is surrendered to… (US Patriot)

The CEO of an American video game developer stepped down after he issued a statement supportive of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of a law in Texas that bans abortions after detection of a fetal heartbeat.

The company, Tripwire Interactive LLC, announced in a statement on Monday that John Gibson “has stepped down as CEO” of the company, effective immediately.

Gibson said via Twitter on Saturday, “Proud of #USSupremeCourt affirming the Texas law banning abortion for babies with a heartbeat.”

He added, “As an entertainer I don’t get political often. Yet with so many vocal peers on the other side of this issue, I felt it was important to go on the record as a pro-life game developer.”

Two days later, Tripwire issued a statement distancing itself from Gibson’s views.

“The comments given by John Gibson are of his own opinion, and do not reflect those of Tripwire Interactive as a company,” said the statement.

“His comments disregarded the values of our whole team, our partners and much of our broader community. Our leadership team at Tripwire are deeply sorry and are unified in our commitment to take swift action and to foster a more positive environment.”

Alan Wilson, the current vice president of Tripwire, will take over as interim CEO.

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled in favor of the Texas Heartbeat Act (Senate Bill 8), signed into law by Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in May. It bans doctors from performing or inducing an abortion unless he or she has determined whether the unborn child has a detectable fetal heartbeat, which can be detected as early as six weeks after conception.

If a heartbeat is found, the doctor can only carry out the abortion in a medical emergency. The measure does not have an exception for a pregnancy due to incest or rape.

Under the law, state officials cannot enforce the measure.

The legislation bans state officials from enforcing the provisions. Instead, private citizens—except for an individual who impregnated a woman through incest or rape—may file lawsuits against doctors, clinics, and anyone who is allegedly involved in an abortion that violates the law.

Those found to have violated the law would have to pay $10,000 to the private citizen who filed the lawsuit.

The law went into effect on Sept. 1. The Supreme Court on the same day denied an effort to stop the measure from taking effect, in a 5-4 ruling. A district court and an appeals court had also previously declined to intervene.

“The applicants now before us have raised serious questions regarding the constitutionality of the Texas law at issue,” the majority said. “But their application also presents complex and novel antecedent procedural questions on which they have not carried their burden” to get a preliminary injunction issued.

Zachary Stieber contributed to this report.

Game Developer CEO Steps Down After Pro-Life Tweet on Texas Abortion Law (theepochtimes.com)

A civilian exposed China’s black market involving the trafficking and selling of newborn babies under the guise of adoption after a year-long voluntary undercover investigation.

According to The Paper, a Chinese state-owned digital newspaper, a civilian played a critical role in the anti-trafficking effort. The civilian, Zhengyi Shangguan, joined a baby trafficking WeChat group disguised as a barren woman who desired a daughter. After prolonged undercover work, Shangguan gradually gained the trust of the middleman and was later considered to be a suitable buyer.

There were about 100 members in the WeChat group, consisting of people from various cities and provinces in China. Due to WeChat’s sensitive vocabulary recognition, the group often disbands and reassembles itself. New members must clearly state their needs or be removed from the chat group.

Shangguan was able to identify the encrypted terms used by the group to avoid vocabulary detection. For example, the slang “bao” represents “baby.” The English letter “S” represents “sending for adoption,” and “L” represents “acceptance of adoption.” The two English letters corresponded to selling and buying.

On June 11, Shangguan received an encrypted message on WeChat suggesting that a baby girl would be available, followed by a phone conversation. The party that reached out to Shangguan was Ms. Zhu, one of the alleged orchestrators.

Zhu said the baby girl was expected to be delivered around July 20 at a hospital, and the price would be $17,000. She then guaranteed the baby’s health with a clean genetic history and offered to be there for the entire delivery process. To further dispel buyer worries, Zhu also suggested that payment could be made on the delivery day, but only cash would be accepted.

In addition, Zhu repeatedly stated that a birth certificate was not recommended because it could easily be obtained afterward. However, if requested, the birth certificate would be an additional $6,000. She explained that getting a birth certificate at the time of delivery would require the birth mother to use the buyer’s identity to register the baby, which is not ideal because if the birth mother knows who the buyer is, she may decide to look for her child in the future. According to Zhu, it would be worrisome to know the birth mother could find her child one day.

After thorough communications, Shangguan learned the entire delivery process and transaction details: A pregnant woman is usually admitted to the hospital’s delivery room in the morning. For the next three days, the newborn will be looked after by the nurses and screened for diseases and defects. After the examinations are completed, the baby is ready to be discharged. Upon discharge, the nurses will hand the baby directly to Zhu. After collecting payment, Zhu then passes the baby to the buyer along with a “consent to adoption letter” signed by the birth mother—then the transaction is complete.

Zhu appeared to be detail-oriented in her operations and even provided the buyer tips in advance. She suggested that it’s best to pretend to be pregnant months before the transaction occurs. Otherwise, friends and neighbors might question when a child suddenly appears. “It may cast a shadow in the child’s future” if not done properly, Zhu said, according to Beijing-backed media ifeng.

To ensure smooth operations, Zhu claimed that she had connections in the local hospitals and that doctors and nurses generally turned a blind eye. “You have to spend what you have to spend to make things work,” Zhu added, and suggested that there are other staff that are part of the operation.

Zhu claimed to have graduated with a master’s degree and was formally a teacher. After remarrying, she was unable to conceive and started her 10-year-journey to have a child and accidentally entered the business of trafficking. The middleman in the WeChat group once helped her get a surrogate, and the two became partners.

Black Market Baby Trafficking Organization Exposed by Civilian in China (theepochtimes.com)

Patriots are mobilizing all over the country to defeat Joe Biden and reverse his failed policies. As America’s Sheriff, I’m supporting Create Change Now’s nationwide effort to stop the oncoming socialism train in its tracks by educating, motivating, and mobilizing American conservative patriots. There’s too much at stake in 2022 and beyond for us to leave anything to chance. The professional progressive left spends millions of dollars organizing, training, and mobilizing their socialist foot soldiers, and we must beat them at their own game. I’m proud to support Create Change Now as I travel the country firing up American patriots. So join me by making your immediate, direct investment of $25, $50, $100, or even $1,000 toward their work today! The integrity of our elections is in question. Radical leftist politicians are loosening reasonable voter protections, and unaccountable, unelected bureaucrats are changing the rules of elections while voters are casting ballots. Joe Biden and Kamala Harris have blown open the gates at our Southern Border as waves of unvetted illegal aliens stream into our country. And Joe Biden’s failed withdrawal from Afghanistan further destabilizes the Middle East and sends a poor message to our allies while emboldening our enemies. A little more than a week before the 20th Anniversary of the horrific terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. All while far-left politicians are demoralizing and defunding law enforcement in Congress and State Capitols across the nation. Failed progressive “leadership” is an absolute nightmare! Create Change Now is slamming the brakes on the far-left’s radical agenda by empowering and equipping patriots like you and me with the tools to fight and win. The radical left has an army of Saul Alinsky-inspired professional activists who mobilize voters in their communities. All too often, that organizational capacity gives them an edge over patriots like you and me. While we don’t have an army of paid, professional agitators to get out the votes of the Silent Majority, we do have an influential organization called Create Change Now that’s working overtime to stem the tide of progressivism on our shores. To save the greatest nation in the history of mankind from the clutches of radical progressives, we must organize millions of patriots and stop the left at the ballot box. I support Create Change Now’s mission, and I hope you’ll join me with your generous investment of $25, $50, $100, or even $1,000. Anything you can give would be a shot in the arm for Create Change Now’s mission to train, organize, and mobilize millions of patriots and stop socialism in its tracks. You and I have a lot of work to do between now and November 2022, and it starts with supporting my friends at Create Change Now. Join me by supporting Create Change Now before Joe Biden and the radical left drives our country off the cliff! Thank you. In Liberty, Sheriff David Clarke, Jr. American Patriot FIGHT THE RADICAL LEFT

PAID FOR BY CREATE CHANGE NOW. NOT AUTHORIZED BY ANY CANDIDATE OR CANDIDATE’S COMMITTEE.

Contributions or gifts to Create Change Now PAC are not deductible as charitable contributions for Federal income tax purposes and will be used in connection with federal elections. Contributions from foreign nationals or entities are prohibited. The use of the name and/or likeness of any candidate, officeholder, or other individual is for the purpose of CCN’s political communication only and does not indicate any authorization by, affiliation with, direction from, or endorsement by that person.

Thank you for your support of 1776Coalition.com.
© 2021 1776 Coalition
8 The Green, Suite 7217 | Dover, DE 19901

The Thomas More Society filed the lawsuit on September 3 on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation — the organization that fought against California’s affirmative action bill — and taxpayers at large. 

On August 26, the Thomas More Society penned a letter demanding that the State Superintendent of Public Instruction remove the Aztec prayer from the state’s curriculum. After no response, the organization submitted its lawsuit. 

The lawsuit alleges that the curriculum is illegal to teach in taxpayer-funded institutions as government aid of religion is “prohibited” in California. 

Paul Jonna, special counsel for the Thomas More Society, said that children should not be forced or pressured to partake in Aztec prayer, especially if their parents have religious and civic objections. 

“Our clients have both a religious and civic objection to the Aztec prayer, and they do not want their children chanting it, being asked or pressured to do so, or risking ostracism if they refuse,” Jonna said. “Under both the California and the United States Constitutions, they have the right to expect all branches of the state government, including the State Board of Education and the Department of Education, to respect this choice. Furthermore, all Californians have the right to expect that tax-supported public schools will not aid or promote this religion.”

California introduced a new “ethnic studies” curriculum in March 2021. The curriculum was promoted by a man who believes that one way to rectify colonialism is to support a “counter-genocide” of “white Christians.” Part of the model curriculum calls on students to “challenge racist, bigoted, discriminatory, imperialist/colonial beliefs and practices on multiple levels.”

The curriculum also has a chant that worships the Aztec gods Tezcatlipoca and Huitzilopochtli, the god of war, among others. 

The chant reads in part:

In order to be warriors of love, of love, for our gente, representin’ justice, justice, local to global, global to local, global to local, ecological and social, social, justice, justice. 

Not just thinkin’ and takin’ but makin’ things happen, with agency resiliency, and a revolutionary spirit. 

Transformation, liberation, education, emancipation, imagination, revitalization, liberation, transformation, decolonization, liberation, education emancipation.

Frank Xu, the President of Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, claims that the chants signify the state’s “unlawful government preference” towards the Aztec religion. 

“The curriculum’s unequivocal promotion of five Aztec gods or deities through repetitive chanting and affirmation of their symbolic principles constitutes an unlawful government preference toward a particular religious practice,” Xu said. “This public endorsement of the Aztec religion fundamentally erodes equal education rights and irresponsibly glorifies anthropomorphic, male deities whose religious rituals involved gruesome human sacrifice and human dismemberment.” 

Related: California’s Proposed ‘Ethnic Studies’ Curriculum Calls For Stronger Connection To Social Justice Movements 

California Education Board Faces Legal Challenges To New ‘Ethnic Curriculum,’ Aztec Gods Chant | The Daily Wire

T

he Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a guide last week for “Inclusive Communication,” cautioning against using words like prisoner, smoker, illegal immigrant, disabled or homeless, which the agency says could imply blame or stigma.

The guide’s opening line says, “We must confront the systems and policies that have resulted in the generational injustice that has given rise to health inequities.” The CDC is now about fighting injustice, not disease.

The agency says instead of gender-specific pronouns like him or her, use “they,” even when referring to one person. And talk about “parents” or “expectant parents” instead of mothers or fathers.

After making the hundreds of language changes the CDC recommends, who has time to defeat COVID-19?

The CDC’s got mission confusion. With parts of the U.S. considering more COVID lockdowns, Americans don’t need language lessons on political correctness. They need scientific information on how to reduce the risk of being infected by this virus indoors. That’s key to reopening workplaces and returning to normal.

Numerous new technologies are said to destroy airborne viruses, including ionization, dry hydrogen peroxide, far UV light and others. But school administrators and office building managers don’t have a clue which ones actually work. They’re flying blind.

The CDC’s thousands of scientists could provide guidance. Not that they should endorse specific brands, but they can assess competing technologies. The CDC flatly refuses. Instead, it cautions against using them because they lack “an established body of peer-reviewed evidence.”

What planet is the CDC on? Peer-reviewed evidence can take years. Here’s the process: An academic journal sends a submitted article to scientists around the world for review and suggested changes. Once that input is received and the article is approved, the wait goes on because many of these journals only publish four times a year.

Glacial slowness doesn’t work in a pandemic. That’s why former President Donald Trump designed Operation Warp Speed for vaccines. The CDC’s timetable isn’t warp speed. It’s warped. The CDC’s tacit premise that yesterday’s technology is good enough will doom us to failure.

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told the Washington Post last week that the CDC has the wrong mentality to respond to a crisis. “Their mind set is we should polish it, vet it, peer-review it.”

The result is the CDC offering 50-year-old information: Open windows, space desks apart and use HEPA filters where possible. HEPA filters were devised for gas masks during World War II, and commercialized for buildings in the 1950s.

Tried and true methods are not necessarily wrong. But the public deserves the latest science, too.

Eighteen months into the pandemic, giant employers like Apple and Amazon again are delaying reopening workplaces. They need help. Only 33% of U.S. office workers are back, according to Kastle Systems. New York City is far worse off, with only 22% back. That kills retail stores, coffee shops and restaurants that serve workers.

If it were possible to get back to normal without technological breakthroughs, it would have happened already. Eric Adams, the city’s likely next mayor, needs scientific information on how to reduce aerosolized COVID-19 virus in transportation hubs, public buildings, offices and schools.

Citing the importance of speed in a pandemic, Gottlieb has been urging the FDA to establish a fast-track way of determining what works and what doesn’t. The CDC should be doing the same using its own scientists.

As for schools, the medical journal Lancet’s COVID task force has chastised the CDC for focusing on masking and social distancing instead of air quality.

A CDC study of 169 Georgia K-5 schools found COVID cases were reduced more by improving air quality than any other intervention. Mandating masks for students produced no statistically significant improvement.

A Kaiser Health News headline in June read: “More than 100 Missouri Schools Have Bought ‘Often Unproven’ Air Cleaning Technology.” The words “often unproven” come from CDC guidance. If school districts are rushing in desperation to buy equipment without enough information, blame the CDC, not the school administrators.

A spokesperson for the company that sold ionization equipment to Missouri schools explained that peer-reviewed research on its equipment doesn’t exist yet. That is why CDC scientists should get to work assessing new technologies themselves instead of writing speech manuals.

If the CDC wants to be politically correct, it can call its new air quality guidance “Indoor Environmentalism.” That almost sounds green.

CDC’s Mission Confusion :: Right & Free (rightandfree.com)

National Institutes of Health officials and researchers funded by Anthony Fauci are contributing to documentaries produced by Chinese Communist Party-run media outlets seeking to absolve the regime of blame for COVID-19.

China Global Television Network (CGTN) relies on participation from American experts – even from the taxpayer-funded National Institutes of Health (NIH) – to grant a facade of credibility to its propaganda operation.

The state-run broadcaster’s hour-long documentary – “The Next Pandemic” – posits that COVID-19 developed naturally, criticizing proponents of the “lab leak” theory as conspiracy theorists. To do so, the documentary relies on interviews with Chinese Communist Party-funded researchers including the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “bat lady” Shi Zhengli and American academics with extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party who prematurely insists the virus has a natural origin.

Also key to the documentary’s anti-lab leak narrative is an interview with Director of the NIH Office of Emergency Care Research Jeremy Brown. The NIH official speaks to the severity of the 1918 influenza pandemic in the middle of the film:

“One of the most chilling aspects of the influenza virus was of course the realization that nobody knew what was killing them. They had no identification of what this bug was. People called it influenza, but they didn’t know what it was, how it was transmitted. They had some ideas, but really, and modern medicine was in its infancy even 100 years ago, and the disease would come on very, very quickly. It uncharacteristically targeted young, healthy adults.”

“The exact origin of the 1918 pandemic influenza is still not known,” CGTN host Mike Walter immediately follows up after Brown’s commentary. The clip comes from a longer interview conducted at the NIH’s Maryland campus published on March 21st, 2020

Another CGTN documentary – “Transforming the Coronavirus into a ‘Political Virus’” – blames the U.S. for starting the COVID-19 pandemic and rebukes China-focused investigations into its origins,

Among the Western experts appearing in the documentary are two researchers that counting sizable funding from Fauci: Dr. Robert Garry and Dr. Frederic Bushman.

Garry has received 70 grants from NIAID, with several sums totaling over $1 million in taxpayer funds. Recently, Garry was selected as a lead investigator for an $8.9 million NIAID-funded program to combat the spread of COVID-19 and other viruses with pandemic potential globally.

Bushman has similarly received nearly 90 grants from NIAID.

Garry definitively asserts that COVID-10 is neither “a bioweapon” nor a product of a lab leak in the film:

“This is not a bioweapon. Nobody made this virus in a laboratory. This is a product of nature.” 

Bushman pushes a similar, premature conclusion:

“There’s no reason to think that it’s a deliberately engineered weapon or something like that.”

EXC: Fauci-Funded Researchers & U.S. Officials Star In Chinese State Propaganda Documentary. (thenationalpulse.com)

A former lead scientist for Corning Inc. – a technology company manufacturing glass vials for COVID-19 vaccines – was indicted for stealing company technology for use in China, including Chinese Communist Party-sanctioned business ventures. 

Corning’s Wang Ji was indicted on charges of economic espionage, theft of trade secrets, and unlawful exports. Wang, who worked for the company from 1998 to 2019, was a lead scientist on a Corning project developing optical laser fibers to attack hostile drones, which counted $16 million in funding from the U.S. government’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).

He allegedly stole files relevant to the project to set up a business using the same technology in China and was in negotiations with several Chinese Communist Party authorities in the city of Tianjian to set up the company.

The indictment follows Corning, which supplies pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from the U.S. government to manufacture glass vials for COVID-19 vaccines. The Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) granted Corning $204 million and the company received another $57 million infusion from the federal government in March of 2021.

If convicted, Wang will face a maximum penalty of 20 years in prison and a maximum fine of $5 million.

Lead Scientist For COVID Vaccine Vial Maker Indicted For Stealing Technology For China. – The National Pulse

Or what I call, “The True White Supremacists” [US Patriot]

For years now, the left has demonized President Donald Trump as a right-wing authoritarian who’s dragging America down into a dark pit of tyranny and oppression. Democrats and the media continue to push this narrative, even with him out of office. Yet, Trump champions free-market enterprise and individual liberty—in other words, freedom, the opposite of authoritarianism. In reality, the true authoritarian threat to America comes from the left.

The great irony is that so many on the left used their argument that Trump is an authoritarian to justify acting as authoritarians themselves. For starters, look at the mainstream media.

For years, the media was biased, slanting its coverage in favor of Democrats and left-wing positions. But at least journalists were doing their basic jobs of reporting the news. Today, however, they’re openly partisan liberals with press credentials.

The political rise of Trump caused members of the media to see themselves as the guardians of democracy, protecting us all from the predations of Trump the dictator. Because Trump was so terrible and the stakes were so high, journalists believed their job was to advocate a cause, not to report the news.

As a result, the media has published a torrent of misleading if not outright false stories about Republicans and conservatives, deceiving the public in order to paint the right as evil. This is a classic authoritarian tactic: pushing misinformation to undermine and demonize one’s political opponents.

Of course, the media isn’t alone. Corporations are now reflecting the whims of the woke mob, adopting causes such as Black Lives Matter and the left’s push to federalize elections. Corporate executives are imposing a far-left ideology not because they believe in critical race theory or universal mail-in voting, but because they’re cowardly and succumbing to the pressure and bullying from the mob. Here is another example of leftists overtaking a key institution.

This leftist onslaught is compounded by Big Tech, which is clearly waging a war to silence conservatives and snuff out dissent. Indeed, the oligarchs running the likes of Google, Twitter, and Facebook claim they’re merely targeting misinformation, but this has consistently manifested as a political witch hunt against one side. “Misinformation” is a catch-all phrase that allows the titans of tech to censor anything they don’t like in a way that doesn’t look like blatant suppression. Of course, much of this began in 2016 with Donald Trump’s tweeting.

To make matters worse, Democrats are effectively pressuring social media companies to ramp up the censoring of this right-wing material, saying they’ll remove Big Tech’s liability protections if Silicon Valley doesn’t take down “misinformation.” This is authoritarianism in the most classic sense: the government using its power to violate individual rights.

The list of left-wing authoritarianism threatening American freedom is long and unending, from COVID-19 lockdowns run amok to the growing imposition of cradle-to-grave socialist government. I discuss it all with Ben Shapiro on this week’s episode of my podcast, “Newt’s World.” Shapiro, the editor in chief of the Daily Wire and host of “The Ben Shapiro Show,” just wrote an important book on this topic titled, “The Authoritarian Moment: How the Left Weaponized America’s Institutions Against Dissent.”

As Shapiro explains, the left, led by the woke mob, specializes in bullying to get what it wants. One recent example is Major League Baseball moving its annual All-Star Game from Georgia to Colorado because of the former’s voting law, which sparked leftist outrage and calls to boycott the state. Yet, these same leftists have the audacity to cry victim and claim they’re the victims of right-wing bulling.

To the left, everything is both personal and political. There’s no compromise, no middle ground. That’s why Parler gets banned and teachers get fired for opposing critical race theory. Leftists want submission and conformity, not debate. They want diversity of appearance but not diversity of thought. In short, the left seeks raw power to impose a radical, divisive vision on the country.

There are certainly authoritarians on the right, but they live in obscurity, on the fringe, without any institutional control. But the authoritarians on the left control our society’s most powerful institutions—and they’re ascendant in the Democratic Party. They are the authoritarians truly threatening America.

From Gingrich360.com.

The Real Authoritarians Threatening America (theepochtimes.com)

New research found that natural immunity offers exponentially more protection than COVID-19 vaccines.

A newly published medical study found that infection from COVID-19 confers considerably longer-lasting and stronger protection against the Delta variant of the virus than vaccines.

“The natural immune protection that develops after a SARS-CoV-2 infection offers considerably more of a shield against the Delta variant of the pandemic coronavirus than two doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to a large Israeli study that some scientists wish came with a ‘Don’t try this at home’ label,” Science reported Thursday. “The newly released data show people who once had a SARS-CoV-2 infection were much less likely than vaccinated people to get Delta, develop symptoms from it, or become hospitalized with serious COVID-19.”

Put another way, vaccinated individuals were 27 times more likely to get a symptomatic COVID infection than those with natural immunity from COVID.

In Israel, vaccinated individuals had 27 times higher risk of symptomatic COVID infection compared to those with natural immunity from prior COVID disease [95%CI:13-57, adjusted for time of vaccine/disease]. No COVID deaths in either group.https://t.co/hopImCD1D0— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) August 25, 2021

A Death Blow to Vaccine Passports?

The findings come as many governments around the world are demanding citizens acquire “vaccine passports” to travel. New York City, France, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec and British Columbia are among those who have recently embraced vaccine passports.

Meanwhile, Australia has floated the idea of making higher vaccination rates a condition of lifting its lockdown in jurisdictions, while President Joe Biden is considering making interstate travel unlawful for people who have not been vaccinated for COVID-19.

Vaccine passports are morally dubious for many reasons, not the least of which is that freedom of movement is a basic human right. However, vaccine passports become even more senseless in light of the new findings out of Israel and revelations from the CDC, some say.

Harvard Medical School professor Martin Kulldorff said research showing that natural immunity offers exponentially more protection than vaccines means vaccine passports are both unscientific and discriminatory, since they disproportionately affect working class individuals.

“Prior COVID disease (many working class) provides better immunity than vaccines (many professionals), so vaccine mandates are not only scientific nonsense, they are also discriminatory and unethical,” Kulldorff, a biostatistician and epidemiologist, observed on Twitter.

Prior COVID disease (many working class) provides better immunity than vaccines (many professionals), so vaccine mandates are not only scientific nonsense, they are also discriminatory and unethical. https://t.co/d14kTPnCWk— Martin Kulldorff (@MartinKulldorff) August 27, 2021

Nor is the study out of Israel a one-off. Media reports show that no fewer than 15 academic studies have found that natural immunity offers immense protection from COVID-19.

“Among the most fraudulent messages of the CDC’s campaign of deceit is to force the vaccine on those with prior infection, who have a greater degree of protection against all versions of the virus than those with any of the vaccines.”

15 studies show…https://t.co/oXaI3L0Y3S— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) August 26, 2021

Moreover, CDC research shows that vaccinated individuals still get infected with COVID-19 and carry just as much of the virus in their throat and nasal passage as unvaccinated individuals

“High viral loads suggest an increased risk of transmission and raised concern that, unlike with other variants, vaccinated people infected with Delta can transmit the virus,” CDC Rochelle Director Walensky noted following a Cape Cod outbreak that included mostly vaccinated individuals.

These data suggest that vaccinated individuals are still spreading the virus much like unvaccinated individuals.

The Bottom Line

Vaccine passports would be immoral and a massive government overreach even in the absence of these findings. There is simply no historical parallel for governments attempting to restrict the movements of healthy people over a respiratory virus in this manner.

Yet the justification for vaccine passports becomes not just wrong but absurd in light of these new revelations.

People who have had COVID already have significantly more protection from the virus than people who’ve been vaccinated. Meanwhile, people who’ve not had COVID and choose to not get vaccinated may or may not be making an unwise decision. But if they are, they are principally putting only themselves at risk.

Harvard Epidemiologist Says the Case for COVID Vaccine Passports Was Just Demolished – Foundation for Economic Education (fee.org)

FedEx Corp shareholders should reject founder and CEO Fred Smith’s $54 million pay package because the logistics company gave him stock options after scrapping a cash bonus in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, only to reinstate it later, the Teamsters labor union said on Friday.

Smith, whose net worth is pegged by Forbes at $5.8 billion, was given a special option award “for motivation and retention purposes” in June 2020 after FedEx canceled a $3.4 million cash bonus for him, citing uncertainty around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Those options were worth $6.4 million as of the end of May, the close of FedEx’s fiscal year, more than doubling in value since Smith received them. As more people shipped and received items during the pandemic and FedEx’s business rebounded, the Memphis, Tennessee-based company reinstated Smith’s $3.4 million cash bonus in December but also allowed him to keep the special stock options.

This amounted to “double-dipping” that undercuts the pay-for-performance structure of Smith’s compensation, the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, which is bargaining on behalf of FedEx employees at a freight facility and is an investor in FedEx through pension and benefit funds, argued in a letter to shareholders on Friday, which was seen by Reuters.

“Having founded the company, been chief executive since 1998 and holding an 8 percent equity stake, surely CEO Smith has the appropriate incentives to drive shareholder value,” the Teamsters general secretary-treasurer, Ken Hall, wrote in the letter.

The union is urging shareholders to vote against the company’s executive pay plan at the company’s annual meeting on Sept. 27. As with most companies, the vote at FedEx is non-binding.

FedEx declined to comment beyond what it has disclosed on executive pay in securities filings. In its informational disclosure to investors, FedEx said a significant portion of executive compensation is “at risk” and dependent on the company hitting performance goals and share price targets.

FedEx Chief Operating Officer Rajesh Subramaniam, the company’s highest-paid executive after Smith, also had his $2 million cash bonus reinstated after he received a similar special option award and stock grant worth approximately $6 million at the end of May.

Many U.S. companies tweaked the pay of executives during the pandemic, easing performance targets and even giving them pay raises. Investors then voted down a record number of CEO pay packages at their annual shareholder meetings earlier this year.

Although most shareholder votes on pay are non-binding, some companies have tweaked executive pay when faced with investor opposition. For example, in 2018 Walt Disney Co renegotiated the compensation of its chief executive at the time, Bob Iger, to toughen performance targets after shareholders voted down his pay.

The Teamsters acknowledged in the letter that Smith’s options had yet to vest and that there was still uncertainty over the value of that grant. Smith also accepted a 91 percent cut in his annual salary during some of the last fiscal year. His salary was $966,125.

FedEx Faces Labor Union Challenge Over Billionaire CEO’s Pay (theepochtimes.com)

Friday’s non-farm payrolls report—a barometer of America’s labor market health—not only reflected below-expectations job growth in August but also showed unemployment rising for black workers, teenagers, and those with some college or an associate degree.

The Labor Department’s jobs report, released Sept. 3, showed that non-farm payroll employment rose by 235,000 in August, down from an upwardly revised 1.05 million jobs added in July and far below the FactSet-provided consensus forecasts of 750,000.

“With a big shortfall in jobs creation or recovery in August, it appears the Delta variant has infected the U.S. economy. Payrolls growth came in well below expectations and at the lowest level since January,” Bankrate senior economic analyst Mark Hamrick said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.

The overall unemployment rate fell to 5.2 percent in August from 5.4 percent in July, while the total number of unemployed people edged down to 8.4 million.

“This latest employment snapshot interrupts the process of substantial further progress as called for by the Federal Reserve as it considers dialing back on boosting the economy. The unemployment rate at 5.2 percent still has some way to before matching the 3.5 percent low notched before the pandemic. Even so, it is the lowest level since the pandemic began,” Hamrick added.

Yet the decline in unemployment was not universal across all groups surveyed for the report. From July to August, the unemployment rate rose for blacks (from 8.2 percent to 8.8 percent), teenagers aged 16–19 (from 9.6 percent to 11.2 percent), and those with some college or an associate degree (from 5.0 percent to 5.1 percent), according to the report’s more granular breakdown.

While it’s normal for unemployment rates among all groups to see upward reversals amid a broader downtrend, some economists expressed concern about the latest figures.

“The rise in Black unemployment in August is certainly troubling, considering their unemployment rates were already much higher than any other group,” Elise Gould, senior economist at the Economic Policy Institute, wrote on Twitter.

The slowdown in jobs growth was most notable in the leisure and hospitality sector, which recorded 2.1 million job gains between February and July but came in flat in August.

Retail trade led the way in employment losses, shedding 28,500 jobs, followed by temporary help services (-5,800 jobs), and health care and social assistance (-4,600).

Private-sector job growth contributed 243,000 in job gains, while the government sector shed 8,000 positions, for a net gain of 235,000 in August.

So far this year, non-farm job growth has averaged 586,000 per month and, while employment has risen by 17 million since April 2020, it remains down by 5.3 million, or 3.5 percent, from its pre-pandemic level in February 2020.

Commenting on the report, President Joe Biden said at a Sept. 3 briefing at the White House that the overall picture the report paints is one of “an economic recovery that is durable and strong.”

“While I know some wanted to see a larger number today, and so did I, what we’ve seen this year is a continued growth, month after month, in job creation,” Biden added. “We are adding jobs, not losing them.”

Biden blamed the Delta surge for why the jobs report wasn’t stronger.

Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), ranking member of the House Ways and Means Committee, reacted to the jobs report, writing on Twitter, “There’s more than just COVID behind this terrible jobs report.”

“President Biden’s ‘worker-less recovery’ is hammering both Main Street and families as businesses fight to fill jobs and families struggle with rising prices. No wonder the recovery is stalling, and consumer optimism has dropped alarmingly,” he stated, noting also “no progress” on lifting the labor force participation rate, which in August held steady at 61.7 percent.

The uptick in black unemployment challenges the Federal Reserve’s goal that its “maximum employment” objective also be “broad and inclusive.” The figure creates tough optics for the Fed as it considers pulling back on stimulus at its upcoming policy meeting at the end of September.

Unemployment Rises Among Blacks, Teenagers, and Those With Associate Degree (theepochtimes.com)

Rep. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) was in a plane circling the U.S.-held airport in Kabul with Special Forces last week on a mission to rescue Americans stranded in Afghanistan.

Mullin had learned American citizens were stuck in the Taliban-controlled country and wanted to help get them out before U.S. troops withdrew before President Joe Biden’s Aug. 31 deadline.

But the attempt failed, the congressman said on Friday.

“They would never let us in Afghanistan,” he said on Fox News, blaming Biden administration officials.

The 20 Americans the flight was aimed at rescuing haven’t been in contact since, Mullin said.

The secretive trip led to reports that Mullin’s whereabouts were unknown and claims he threatened staff members at the U.S. Embassy in Tajikstan as he tried to enter Afghanistan for a rescue mission.

Mullin and a spokesperson issued brief statements earlier this week saying he was safe, but the television appearance was the first-term representative’s first time getting into detail on what unfolded.

The chaos in Kabul, where tens of thousands of Afghans and thousands of Americans tried to brave Taliban checkpoints before convincing U.S. troops and other personnel to let them into the airport, unfolded over 17 days after the terrorist group barreled through U.S.-backed Afghan forces and assumed control of the country.

Some Americans reported being unable to reach the airport, with reports of scattered beatings being confirmed by the Pentagon. That led to appeals to outside parties, including Mullin, to carry out rescues.

Mullin said people started calling him to ask for help evacuating Americans and Afghans. One phone call concerned 20 U.S. citizens who needed a State Department or another government entity, such as a member of Congress, to sponsor a flight. That’s how he ended up on board a plane that was set to touch down in Kabul before taking off with more passengers on board.

Mullin and those with him were aware of the danger. “We felt like we probably had a 50–50 chance of coming back,” he said.

But he feels no regrets about the attempt, which did not culminate with a rescue.

“How do you say no when you have the option to do something?” he wondered. “I’d do it again tomorrow.”

Mullin targeted Biden and other top officials, saying that they lied when they said all Americans who wanted out would be evacuated before U.S. troops left.

The withdrawal ended on Aug. 30, leaving behind between 100 and 200 Americans, according to administration officials. A chunk of those were schoolchildren from California.

Mullin, who said his flight received a humanitarian plan from the Federal Aviation Authority, accused the State Department of interfering with the mission.

The authority told The Epoch Times via email that any operators flying into the airport were told Aug. 18 that they must obtain permission from the U.S. Department of Defense.

The Department of Defense and the State Department did not respond to requests for comment.

The congressman also denied the anonymously-sourced report that claimed he threatened American staffers in Tajikstan. He said he did have a large sum of cash, because of the prediction money might be needed to get through Taliban checkpoints. He said the U.S. ambassador in Tajikstan refused to help.

Two other members of Congress did make it into Afghanistan, but they went to oversee the evacuation, not carry out a rescue mission.

Reps. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Peter Meijer (R-Mich.) reached Kabul on Aug. 24 and spent several hours at the airport before leaving, Pentagon officials have confirmed.

House of Representatives leaders from both parties said the trip shouldn’t have happened, though House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) said he understood why it did.

“They’re both veterans, they’re both frustrated, they have an administration that won’t tell them the answers to how many Americans are left,” he told reporters in Washington.

‘I’d Do It Again Tomorrow’ Congressman Says After Attempt to Rescue Americans Stranded in Afghanistan (theepochtimes.com)

Twitter’s former communications guru is now advising the Franklin Project, a dark money offshoot of the scandal-plagued Lincoln Project, the Democratic-aligned super PAC widely suspected of enabling a sex pest who preyed on young men and at least one child.

Brandon Borrman spent more than three years as vice president of global communications for Twitter, the controversial tech firm. He left that position in June to serve as a communications adviser for the Franklin Project, a shadowy group that aims to “unify people opposed to partisan dysfunction” in part by developing a “K-12 civics education program it will offer free to local school districts.”

Borrman was working at Twitter in February 2021 when the Lincoln Project appeared to violate the company’s terms of service by sharing hacked materials from its official account. In an ill-advised act of retaliation against former Lincoln Project cofounder Jennifer Horn, the super PAC posted screenshots of Horn’s private messages with a reporter. Neither Horn nor the reporter consented to sharing the messages. Lincoln Project cofounder Steve Schmidt subsequently admitted that he ordered staff to post the questionably obtained materials. Former senior adviser Kurt Bardella admitted he posted the materials online.

Twitter’s policy states that “posting hacked content” is not permitted. Nevertheless, a company spokesman told the Washington Free Beacon and other media outlets the Lincoln Project’s posting of hacked content was not a violation of that policy.

Horn resigned from the Lincoln Project in February, citing the “sickening” behavior of fellow cofounder John Weaver, who left the group amid numerous allegations of sexually inappropriate behavior toward young men. Horn described a culture of toxic masculinity at the disgraced super PAC, alleging she was “never part of, or included in, the Lincoln Project’s inner circle” and was “earning a small fraction of what some of my male counterparts did.” While attempting to negotiate her exit, Horn said, she was repeatedly “yelled at, demeaned, and lied to.”

Since joining the Franklin Project, Borrman’s social media activity has been conspicuously at odds with his employer’s alleged “non-partisan, non-political” status and stated mission of promoting “collaboration tailored to build consensus.” For example, he recently compared the state of Texas to East Germany under communist rule and urged his followers to support Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) in the upcoming recall election.

Borrman started working for the Franklin Project shortly after its so-called launch in May, which was glowingly covered by the news blog Axios. The 501(c)(4) nonprofit group is not a new organization but rather a rebranded version of the dark money group Lincoln Project cofounder Reed Galen secretly operated during the 2020 election. Public records indicate that Galen’s dark money group, Project Yellowstone, changed its name to the Franklin Project earlier this year.

Project Yellowstone was, at least on paper, involved in voter education initiatives during the 2020 campaign. Critics have alleged that its true purpose, however, was to funnel cash to the Lincoln Project founders and their associates and to shield these financial activities from public scrutiny. The Franklin Project will be similarly exempt from financial disclosure requirements.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced today that it filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit against the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for all emails National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins related to gain of function research, hydroxychloroquine and the Wuhan Institute of Virology (Judicial Watch v U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (No. 1:21-cv-02302)).

This lawsuit was filed after the National Institutes of Health failed to respond to a June 8, 2021, FOIA request for:

All emails sent to and from Director Francis Collins related to “gain of function”, “hydroxychloroquine”, “HCQ”, and/or “Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

When challenged about whether the National Institutes of Health supported gain of function research, Collins released a statement on May 19, 2021, claiming:

Based on outbreaks of coronaviruses caused by animal to human transmissions such as in Asia in 2003 that caused Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS), and in Saudi Arabia in 2012 that caused Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS), NIH and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) have for many years supported grants to learn more about viruses lurking in bats and other mammals that have the potential to spill over to humans and cause widespread disease. However, neither NIH nor NIAID have ever approved any grant that would have supported ‘gain-of-function’ research on coronaviruses that would have increased their transmissibility or lethality for humans.

An August 26, 2021, report by the Washington Post claims the NIH has been funding gain of function research for years. According to the report:

In the United States, NIH Director Francis S. Collins and Anthony S. Fauci, director of the agency’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, have led the federal funding and oversight of gain-of-function research.

Eight years ago, Collins and Fauci helped put in place high-level reviews and other safeguards in response to concerns raised by Relman [David A. Relman, a Stanford University physician and microbiologist] and aides to President Barack Obama, who were alarmed by what they saw as insufficient scrutiny of the research with ferrets. The NIH leaders and the Department of Health and Human Services pledged to subject the work to increased transparency and vetting. This included forming a review group of federal officials — known informally as a “Ferrets Committee” — to vet proposed projects for safety and worthiness.

However, Collins and Fauci in recent years have helped shape policy changes, directly and through their aides, that undercut the committee’s authority, according to federal documents, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of present and former officials and science experts.

***

Since then, the experiments have continued to unfold amid secrecy, and HHS, which administers the review committee, has kept its work confidential: No agendas, meeting minutes or other records of its proceedings are public. Even the names of the federal officials assigned to serve on the committee, which has spanned the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, are kept secret

On Sunday, March 7, 2021, Collins argued to CBS News that hydroxychloroquine was a “bust:”

“Basically it was a bust … maybe it got in the way of trying other kinds of repurposed drugs. All the enthusiasm about hydroxychloroquine was basically dependent on anecdotal reports,” Collins said. “And that did leave everybody with kind of a sour taste in their mouths … we had to get over that. I think we’re over it now.”

“The NIH is in full cover-up mode about the COVID-19 controversies and politics. Where are the emails?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

On August 25, 2021, Judicial Watch made public 129 pages of records from HHS that included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci” email chain which cites ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”

In July, Judicial Watch obtained records from NIAID officials in connection with the Wuhan Institute of Virology revealing significant collaborations and funding that began in 2014. The records revealed that NIAID gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself.

Also in July, Judicial Watch uncovered CDC records revealing that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control the COVID narrative and “misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in free advertising has been given to the CDC by social media companies.

In June, Judicial Watch announced that it filed FOIA lawsuits against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the State Department for information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Also in June, Judicial Watch obtained records from HHS revealing that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.

In March, Judicial Watch publicly released emails and other records of Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from HHS showing that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the WHO conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020. Additionally, the emails reveal an independent journalist in China pointing out the inconsistent COVID numbers in China to NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Lane.

In October 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered emails showing a WHO entity pushing for a press release, approved by Fauci, “especially” supporting China’s COVID-19 response.

HHS Sued For New Emails Over Whuhan Institute and Hydroxychloroquine – The Independent Citizen

WH report says US ‘not adequately prepared’ for future biological threats

The White House on Friday announced a plan costing over $65 billion to handle future pandemics, with a report from the Biden administration saying that the United States is “not adequately prepared” for future biological threats.

“We need better capabilities also because there is a reasonable likelihood that another serious pandemic that could be worse than COVID-19 will occur soon, possibly even within the next decade,” Eric Lander, the president’s science adviser, said at a teleconference on Friday.

“The next pandemic will very likely be substantially different than COVID-19. So, we must be prepared to deal with any type of viral threat,” he added.

Lander, who is also the director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), shared the administration’s new plan (pdf) titled, “American Pandemic Preparedness: Transforming our Capabilities,” to protect the country against biological and pandemic threats.

The cost of the plan is $65.3 billion over seven to 10 years.

“It’s vital that we start with an initial outlay of $15 to $20 billion to jumpstart these efforts,” Lander said. “Accordingly, we’re proposing that the current budget reconciliation provides at least $15 billion towards this goal.”

The plan calls for a centralized “Mission Control” office that acts as a “single, unified program management unit” to oversee the plan. The office is intended to draw on expertise from multiple federal agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as other departments such as Defense, Energy, and Veterans’ Affairs.

Discussions continue about what federal entity should house Mission Control, Lander said.

According to the Biden administration’s 27-page plan, the investments include those in “critical scientific goal areas,” including “vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and early warning—as well as associated investments in strengthening disease surveillance, health systems, surge capacity, personal protective equipment (PPE) innovation, biosafety and biosecurity, regulatory capacity, and global pandemic preparedness.”

The bulk of the administration’s plan includes investing some $24.2 billion to have the United States be prepared to “rapidly make effective vaccines against any virus family.” This effort would include vaccine design and testing, development, and distribution.

Some $11.8 billion would be invested to develop therapeutics, and another $5 billion to develop diagnostic tests for large scale use in potential future pandemic response.

Beth Cameron, the senior director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, said she and her office will cooperate to implement the plan.

“We continue to take stock of our full range of biodefense, pandemic readiness, and global health security needs, including capabilities, policies, and practices that we need to update and refresh, building on our lessons from COVID-19 and other outbreaks,” she said in the teleconference on Friday.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than than 640,000 people have died in America related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

Lander said that the pandemic has “exposed fundamental issues with America’s public heath that go far beyond pandemic preparedness.”

“The issues include the need to increase overall public health funding, strengthen the public health workforce, eliminate barriers to access, improve data systems, address disparities, improve communications, and improve coordination across federal, state, local, and Tribal authorities,” he said.

The CCP virus pandemic continues to spread across the globe. The United States on Sept. 3 has a 7-day average of 153,246 new cases and 1,047 deaths daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biden Admin Releases $65 Billion Plan to Handle Future Pandemics (theepochtimes.com)

Facebook apologizes after its AI put ‘primates’ label on video about black men

Facebook has promised to fix its auto-generated recommendation system after the company’s AI linked a video that heavily featured black men to primates, shocking viewers.

“We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations,” Facebook said in a statement to the media, adding that the entire topic recommendation feature has been disabled.

https://www.rt.com/usa/533942-facebook-apology-video-recommendation/

Facebook has promised to fix its auto-generated recommendation system after the company’s AI linked a video that heavily featured black men to primates, shocking viewers.

“We apologize to anyone who may have seen these offensive recommendations,” Facebook said in a statement to the media, adding that the entire topic recommendation feature has been disabled. 

As we have said, while we have made improvements to our AI, we know it’s not perfect, and we have more progress to make.

Darci Groves, a former content design manager at Facebook, said a friend sent her a screenshot of a video featuring black men, which included the company’s auto-generated prompt asking viewers if they wanted to “keep seeing videos about primates.” 

Um. This “keep seeing” prompt is unacceptable, @Facebook. And despite the video being more than a year old, a friend got this prompt yesterday. Friends at FB, please escalate. This is egregious. pic.twitter.com/vEHdnvF8ui— Darci Groves (@tweetsbydarci) September 2, 2021

 The video, uploaded by UK tabloid the Daily Mail in June 2020, contained clips of two separate incidents in the US – one of a group of black men arguing with a white individual on a road in Connecticut, and one of several black men arguing with white police officers in Indiana before getting detained. 

According to The New York Times, Groves posted the screenshot in question to a product feedback forum for current and former Facebook employees. A product manager then called the recommendation “unacceptable” and promised to investigate the incident. 

Last year, Facebook formed a team at Instagram to study how different minority users are affected by algorithms. The move was made after the social media giant was criticized for overlooking racial bias on its platforms. 

Algorithms used by tech giants have come under fire for embarrassing mistakes in the past. In 2015, Google apologized after its Photos app labeled a picture of black people “gorillas.”

Facebook apologizes after its AI put ‘primates’ label on video about black men — RT USA News

COVID-19

WEEKLY REMINDER

COVID HAS A SURVIVAL RATE OF 99.91+% FOR THOSE UNDER 60

THIS GENE EXPERIMENTAL JAB DOES NOT

LATEST VAERS COVID VACCINE DATA THROUGH AUGUST 23, 2021

650,075 Total Reports of adverse effects

REPORTED / vs. / ESTIMATED

• DEATHS: 13,911 / 139K – this is after CDC deleted some death reports (https://t.me/westcoastintel/13200)
• HOSPITALIZATIONS: 56,912 / 569K
• URGENT CARE: 76,159 / 761k
• OFFICE VISITS: 103,837 / 1M
• ANAPHYLAXIS: 5,752 / 57k
• BELL’S PALSY: 4,832 / 48k
• MISCARRIAGES: 1,709 / 17K
• HEART ATTACKS: 6,217 / 62K
• MYOCARDITIS/PERICARDITIS: 5,222 / 52K
• PERMANENTLY DISABLED: 18,098 / 181k
• LOW PLATELET: 2,870 / 28k
• LIFE THREATENING: 14,328 / 143k
• SEVERE ALLERGY: 26,655 / 266k
• SHINGLES: 7,578 / 75k

California schools are deliberately keeping parents in the dark about inclusion policies that allow children to change genders without their consent, says a teacher and former school board member in Orange County.

Brenda Lebsack, a teacher in Santa Ana Unified School District (SAUSD) and former Orange Unified School District (OUSD) school board member, recently sent an email to the California School Boards Association (CSBA) demanding that it clearly define the meaning of “nonbinary” to school board members and parents.

In the Aug. 26 email, Lebsack alleges CSBA knowingly withheld from school boards across the state the definition of the term “nonbinary” which is now a choice on student data forms. She claims “nonbinary” means “unlimited gender choices.”

Calling “nonbinary” a third gender “is like calling Baskin Robbins an ice cream flavor,” Lebsack wrote.

If unlimited gender choices are allowed, students could theoretically identify themselves as having both genders, no gender or list their preferred pronouns as “tree,” for example, Lebsack told the Epoch Times.

“We have books that tell them that starting in preschool,” she said.

The National Association for the Education of Young Children (NAEYC) glossary states that “gender identity is viewed by current science as fluid and expansive.”

Troy Flint, CSBA Chief Information Officer, denied that CSBA has deliberately held back information but admitted that CSBA has not actually “spelled out” in detail what the term nonbinary means.

“I guess I just don’t understand how it’s complicated. I mean, binary is a pretty basic English word. Why is that hard to figure?” Nonbinary, he said, means “not limited or restricted to two categories.”

Flint told The Epoch Times in a phone interview that Lebsack has been on a three-year-long “crusade” criticizing state policies on gender identity and sex education.

“She’s not even a trustee. She’s formerly a trustee in one district out of a thousand in California, and I don’t think that her critique carries any particular authority on this issue as an individual,” he said.

“Why does Ms. Lebsack get to determine exactly what terms need to be defined explicitly?” he asked.

In a written statement, Flint said: “CSBA categorically refutes the claim that we have failed to inform members about the gender choice option on student data forms. This is the latest allegation in Ms. Lebsack’s long-running crusade to cast a cloud over and obstruct any effort at updating board policies related to sexual orientation and gender identity, merely because these policies conflict with her personal views.”

“Fortunately, CSBA’s actions and model policies are not determined by the outlook of any individual school trustee, instead they are designed to ensure that local education agencies can effectively serve their students and comply with state and federal laws and regulations,” Flint said in the statement.

Students’ Needs Unclear

OUSD school board member Rick Ledesma told The Epoch Times that school board members need a full and clear explanation of what “nonbinary” means in order to properly do their jobs, especially if nonbinary does mean “unlimited gender choices.”

“If they say it’s going to be unlimited gender categories, then explain to me as a board member, how I’m going to direct my school district from a curriculum standpoint and from a psychological services standpoint. I don’t even know if this is going to necessitate psychological services or health services, right? Define what I’m supposed to operationally be prepared for,” he said.

“How do you prepare for unlimited gender choices? How do we fund it?” he asked.

Ledesma has made his own inquiries to CSBA but hasn’t received a response.

“If it’s so easy to define nonbinary … then tell me what it means,” he said. “We need to know it, because we have to have some level of educational services provided for tree or guppy or whatever the case may be.”

Ledesma suggested CSBA’s attempt to “discredit” Lebsack is designed to prevent her from getting media attention.

“It’s a political tactic,” he said.

He supports Lebsack’s efforts to bring the gender inclusion discussion to the table so that parents know what’s going on. “She’s brought it to my attention, and I get it now,” Ledesma said.

The state is not only trampling on parental rights but “even to a certain extent the maturation and psychological makeup of a child,” Ledesma said.

“Does that mean all rights go to the state and up from there in terms of the gender aspect? That’s what we’re being told right now: all rights for gender designation, the state gets to dictate. They dictate by saying the kid gets to dictate.”

In her email, Lebsack states “nonbinary is an ‘umbrella term’ to encompass unlimited genders that are ever-expanding and ever-evolving according to CDE’s Health Framework passed in May 2019 by the State Board of Education.”

She alleges that CSBA has not told California school trustees that school personnel and mental health workers can change a student’s gender in the California Longitudinal Pupil Achievement Data System (CALPADS) solely based on a student’s request without parental consent or specifying the child’s age.

Withholding this information from school boards prevents trustees from properly doing their job to inform parents and is “absolute deception,” Lebsack wrote. She blasted the CSBA for failing to properly do its job.

Lebsack pointed out that the California Department of Education (CDE) refers to “nonbinary” as a third gender and then lists several other genders.

California Senate Bill 179, passed in 2017, recognizes three genders—female, male, and nonbinary—and allows individuals to amend their gender designation on state-issued identification documents. The Gender Recognition Act describes nonbinary as “an umbrella term for people with gender identities that fall somewhere outside of the traditional conceptions of strictly either female or male.”

It also states: “People with nonbinary gender identities may or may not identify as transgender, may or may not have been born with intersex traits, may or may not use gender-neutral pronouns, and may or may not use more specific terms to describe their genders, such as agender, genderqueer, gender fluid, Two Spirit, bigender, pangender, gender nonconforming, or gender variant.”

In her email to CSBA, Lebsack cites a 2018 press release announcing Tom Torlakson, former California Superintendent of Public Instruction, partnered with the top education officials from Oregon and Washington to send a letter opposing “federal attempts to redefine the concept of sex and gender government-wide, making that definition purely biological.”

“The assumption underlying California policy is that gender is a spectrum that is not necessarily linked to biological sex. State legislation allows all individuals, including students, to self-certify to their chosen gender category of male, female, or nonbinary—starting on January 1, 2019,” the release states.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) verifies this assumption by defining “gender nonbinary” as “gender creative,” which means “students can create or make up their own genders” Lebsack said.

The CDC calls these other genders, “gender minorities,” that, based on critical race theory (CRT), “may be considered marginalized and oppressed, while biological male and female genders may be considered privileged oppressors,” Lebsack told the CSBA.

By failing to fully define what nonbinary means, the CSBA has caused school trustees and districts to violate state education laws which obligates districts to inform parents, she alleged.

California Education Code 51101, states “parents and guardians of pupils enrolled in public schools have the right and should have the opportunity, as mutually supportive and respectful partners in the education of their children within the public schools, to be informed by the school, and to participate in the education of their children,” she pointed out.

Lebsack said parents deserve to be respected and informed, and she urged the CSBA to immediately “right this wrong” so they can better participate in their children’s education.

Lebsack sent the email to CSBA’s top executives including CEO and Executive Director Vernon Billy and Keith Bray, General Counsel and Chief of Staff, as well as more than 100 executives and staff.

Flint reiterated that CSBA has updated its policy in newsletters and other communications materials but did not cite a specific of a full definition of “nonbinary.”

“I do refute her accusation that we have not informed members about this. We updated the policy. Perhaps Ms. Lebsack feels that that we should have sent some sort of separate communication parsing the exact language because this is an issue of concern to her, but the fact remains that we did provide policy updates which were responsive to the law that she mentioned,” he said.

“Maybe she feels, we should have done it differently. That’s not surprising, because she’s striving for a particular outcome.”

When asked if the CSBA also had a particular outcome in mind, Flint replied, “Yes, we do have a certain outcome. Our outcome is to follow the law. Everything we have put out is in alignment with state and federal law.”

“What we are trying to do is give board members the information they need to uphold the law, and the policy updates that we have provided members allow them to do that,” he said.

“And as far as the word ‘nonbinary’ goes, people can have a debate about this, but I think nonbinary quite literally means not limited or restricted to two categories. So, I think one can extrapolate from that there are multiple options. And importantly, the policy updates we provide guide trustees in what’s required of them.”

Gender and Critical Race Theory

In her email to CSBA, Lebsack attached an image of a Black Lives Matter (BLM) coloring sheet, which she said is designed to teach elementary students gender concepts. It depicts a bearded, bespectacled man with flowers on his T-shirt and a bow in his hair partially blocking the words “BLACK LIVES MATTER” in large capital letters behind him.

There are two versions of the BLM coloring sheets, which The Epoch Times has obtained.

One reads: “Everybody has the right to choose their own gender by listening to their own heart and mind. Everyone gets to choose if they are a girl or a boy or both or neither or something else, and no one else gets to choose for them.”

The other reads: “We make space for transgender people to participate and lead. We know that cisgender (not transgender or gender nonconforming) people in our society have privilege, and we want to uplift transpeople, especially black trans women who often experience violence.”

Flint said it’s up to each school district to decide if they want to use BLM materials in their lessons.

“The state is not prescriptive about whether an individual teacher or a district would have incorporated Black Lives Matter into their curriculum. It certainly doesn’t advocate for specific position on that. I mean, the state law obviously encourages a certain diversity of curriculum but as for targeting Black Lives Matter or any other groups specifically, no. These are decisions that are made at the local level,” he said.

Lebsack contends that “gender inclusion” is more aptly gender “confusion and delusion,” and could have lifelong consequences, such as such as sterility for students. “Public schools are intentionally confusing kids about their gender and encouraging the use of puberty blockers which lead to infertility,” she states on her website, Brenda4Kids.com.

She is fighting against what she sees as “extremist ideologies and unethical medical practices” being promoted in the education system.

Lebsack has accused the state government and its agencies of child abuse and psychological exploitation. In a six-minute video, Lebsack shows examples of gender inclusion ideology that many schools have embraced and claims parental rights are rapidly eroding in California. She also advocates for school choice to be put on the 2022 election ballot.

Lebsack’s video shows a short clip of a cartoon used to teach students about gender inclusion in San Diego Unified School District (SDUSD) and other districts that use the Advocates RRR, or 3Rs, (Rights, Respect, Responsibility) curriculum endorsed by the CDE.

“These elementary cartoons also glorify non-biological genders and stigmatize biological male and female genders,” Lebsack says in her video.

The cartoon “compares gender to a tossed salad,” Lebsack says in the video. “Biological males and females are considered old school like a boring rock hard wedge of Iceberg lettuce and a stinky old dried up tomato, while other nonbinary genders are compared to exciting salad ingredients,” she says.

The salad used to represent nonbinary genders is described as “a romaine and kale salad with avocado, cucumber, shishito peppers, and four kinds of cheese sprinkled in balsamic straight from Italy.”

Define Nonbinary, Teacher Tells California School Boards Association (theepochtimes.com)

Nine days after the Supreme Court ordered the Biden administration to restart the Remain in Mexico program, no information is available on new enrollees, and border agents are saying the program hasn’t yet been reinstated.

The program, also known as the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP), was launched during the Trump administration and terminated by President Joe Biden on his first day in office.

The program required asylum-seekers and other illegal aliens to remain in Mexico while their cases were adjudicated. It was “​​the most significant game changer” and largely responsible for a 75 percent drop in illegal crossings, Mark Morgan, who was acting commissioner of Customs and Border Protection at the time, told The Epoch Times.

As of Sept. 2, more than a week after the decision, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) hasn’t responded to multiple requests for information. The agency did respond to the Supreme Court decision, stating in an Aug. 24 press release that it “will comply with the order in good faith,” while it appealed the original 5th Circuit ruling.

“Alongside interagency partners, DHS has begun to engage with the Government of Mexico in diplomatic discussions surrounding the Migrant Protection Protocols,” DHS stated. “DHS remains committed to building a safe, orderly, and humane immigration system that upholds our laws and values.”

One Border Patrol agent in the Rio Grande Valley Sector told The Epoch Times on Sept. 2 that nothing has changed as far as how illegal immigrants are processed—agents are still releasing many into the United States with a Notice to Report or a Notice to Appear. The majority of single adults and some families are still being turned back under the Title 42 health provision put in place in March 2020.

The agent said nothing has come down the chain of command regarding restarting the Remain in Mexico program.

Another two Border Patrol agents from the Rio Grande Valley confirmed that nothing is happening regarding the program.

“The Supreme Court said to do it, but does the president listen to anyone?” the agent told The Epoch Times on Sept. 2. The agents spoke on condition of anonymity for fear of repercussion.

MPP originally was slowly rolled out along the southern border from late 2019 and was touted as a breakthrough in stopping the phenomenon of “catch-and-release.”

“Overnight, it sent a clear message that that no longer was a child going to be able to be exploited and be utilized as a passport to gain entry to the United States to be released, never heard from again,” Morgan told The Epoch Times on Aug. 25.

“We knew that 90 percent of those coming illegally—that were released and not detained—were either filing fraudulent asylum claims and/or they wouldn’t show up for court. We shut that down.”

Morgan said “there’s no reason” why DHS can’t start sending people back to Mexico under MPP “today,” at least in one or two sectors to start. But he said his sources in the agency have said DHS intends to “slow roll the implementation” of the program.

Mexico President Andrés Manuel López Obrador responded to the Supreme Court order on Aug. 24, saying his government doesn’t take a position on the ruling.

“However, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs emphasizes that such a judicial decision does not bind Mexico and that its immigration policy is designed and executed in a sovereign manner,” López Obrador said in a statement.

“In the spirit of responding in a humanitarian manner to the needs of migrants, in the context of a complex regional situation, the Government of Mexico will initiate a technical dialogue with the Government of the United States with the central objective of evaluating the scenarios for the management of migratory flows at the shared border in a orderly, safe and regular manner.”

On Sept. 2, López Obrador said he intends to contact Biden by letter next week to discuss the causes of migration, “because we cannot only be detaining, holding back.”

“Cooperation is required for development, both feet, there needs to be investment in Central America, that is what we are proposing,” the Mexican president said.

He hopes the United States will invest in a tree planting program in Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador that he says will produce 330,000 jobs.

Biden tapped Vice President Kamala Harris to lead border security efforts, with the main focus being to address the “root causes” of illegal immigration. Harris has visited Mexico and Guatemala in recent months.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during a Jan. 21 briefing, “Immigration, we consider, is part of racial equity—which is a broad issue, but that’s how the president has spoken about that crisis over the past several months.”

The U.S. Agency for International Development, which assisted with the Remain in Mexico program under the Trump administration, told The Epoch Times, “We will have to refer you to the State Department and DHS as to whether the MPP program has restarted.”

DHS Quiet on ‘Remain in Mexico’ Restart After Supreme Court Order (theepochtimes.com)

It’s usually a good thing when a person has leaned from an experience. While times of crisis cause damage, they also can bring about innovation and wisdom. We can come out of a struggle with insight and be stronger for it.

Considering the actions and words of some of our political leaders however, I fear that they are coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic having learned all the wrong lessons.

While it may be coincidence, the language coming from President Joe Biden’s administration and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been strikingly similar this week.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just launched the new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. This wasn’t surprising as it was in response to an executive order from President Biden last January. The terminology used was interesting though. HHS claimed that it would use “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic to address climate change and health issues.

Meanwhile on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a crowd of supporters “What we learned from this COVID crisis, we will be applying to the climate crisis, the housing crisis, to reconciliation, to making sure that everyone has good jobs and careers that carry them through and create good opportunity for their kids.”

What I fear is that the lesson these political leaders are referring to is confirmation of just how easily and willingly the populace will give up its civil rights in the face of a health crisis. Authoritarian-minded politicians now know that if they can package an initiative as a response to a public health crisis, they won’t need to bother with worrying about the individual rights of citizens when implementing it.

In referring to a “climate crisis” and in tying it to health issues, politicians are setting the stage to continue to implement policies without regard to individual rights. They just need to act under the guise of responding to an immediate crisis.

The “Great Reset” concept is often dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but it is very real. It is a plan to use a world crisis in order to implement massive changes in political policies and government structures. It wants to reconfigure capitalism, and not for the better. Proponents of the Great Reset speak to the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Again, this is no deeply hidden conspiracy or secret. It is all laid out on the World Economic Forum website in plain text.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a supporter of the World Economic Forum and he addressed their annual conference in 2018. Last November while addressing the U.N., Trudeau said “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset, This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change.”

We should be very concerned when ideologically driven politicians see the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity rather than a calamity. When leaders see times of crisis as a means to pursue radical change, they may feel inspired to drag out or even cause emergencies. It certainly is an easier way to bring the public on board than democratic exercises are.

In challenging times like now, citizens need to keep their governments in check. Constitutions and documents such as the Canadian Charter of Rights were designed specifically to protect the rights of individuals from government overreach. Section 1 of the Canadian Charter allows the government to suspend individual rights as it says our rights are subject to “reasonable limits.” Our government felt that it was reasonable to limit several our Charter rights in the name of protecting us from COVID-19. The courts and a large proportion of our citizenry agreed.

Having learned how easily the government can suspend Charter rights, we can rest assured that unprincipled and ideologically driven leaders will concoct future emergencies to bypass the rights of citizens again. We have heard everything from racism to firearm crimes to climate change being referred to as health issues now. That is no mistake. It sets the stage for state intervention that may bypass legislated rights protection.

Some of the world’s most horrific governments emerged from hard times. We saw that clearly enough just after the Great Depression. Citizens are too concerned with simply getting by to realize what their politicians may be getting up to. We always need to be vigilant and when we see world leaders referring to the pandemic as an opportunity, we need to sit up and take notice. An opportunity for whom, and at what cost?

Politicians Are Learning All the Wrong Lessons From the Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is calling out East Kodak CEO James Continenza for apologizing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over an Instagram post featuring images of Xinjiang—where the regime is accused of committing genocide—after some complaints on heavily censored Chinese social media platforms.

The Republican lawmaker sent Continenza a letter on Wednesday in response to the company’s decision last month to pull 10 images by French photographer Patrick Wack taken of life in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, where at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being held in a sprawling network of detention and reeducation camps.

Wack described his photographs as a visual narrative of Xinjiang’s “abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia” over the past five years, which sparked backlash from Chinese Instagram accounts. Kodak subsequently apologized for “any misunderstanding or offense” that the post may have caused.

“For a long time, Kodak has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government and has been in close cooperation with various government departments,” Kodak also said in a separate statement posted to China’s social media platform WeChat. “We will continue to respect the Chinese government and the Chinese law. We will keep ourselves in check and correct ourselves, taking this as an example of the need for caution.”

Scott in a Twitter post said it is “shameful” that New York-based Kodak “covered-up abuse to appease Communist China.”

“After sharing photos shedding light on Communist China’s brutal human rights abuses against Uhygur [sic] Muslims, @Kodak cowered, deleted them & apologized,” Scott said.

In his letter, Scott questioned Kodak’s “close cooperation” with the CCP as described in the apology.

“The ongoing abuses in Communist China are despicable,” Scott wrote. “Kodak’s decision to delete these photos, essentially censoring its own content, only empowers Communist China to continue these abuses against the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.”

Scott gave the company 30 days to answer his questions, including whether all of Kodak’s supply chains are free from Uyghur forced labor, why Kodak apologized to the CCP, and whether Wack’s images will be reposted.

“As an American company headquartered in New York and incorporated in New Jersey, Kodak should be standing for American values and against our foreign adversaries,” wrote Scott. “I am deeply concerned by Kodak’s decision to not only delete Mr. Wack’s photos from Instagram, but also to issue gross apologies to the Chinese Communist Party.”

Addressing the issue in an interview with Hong Kong Free Press, photographer Wack said Kodak’s conduct is “disappointing,” particularly as a company that has been for a century “one of the main traders in the photography industry” that “prides itself on helping people record important events.”

“I think that’s what upsetting most people,” Wack said.

“Once they made the post, even if they were harassed by Chinese trolls … they should have stayed with it,” he added. “It was starting to get ugly for them and that’s why they panicked. They didn’t see that they were actually going to unleash something even worse by doing this.”

The Chinese regime’s army of Internet trolls, dubbed the “50 cent army” as they are paid by the CCP (pdf) to make posts, works to dominate online thought and discussion by echoing the party line.

Kodak didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.

Sen. Rick Scott Calls Out Kodak CEO for Apologizing to CCP Over Xinjiang Instagram Post (theepochtimes.com)

Mask mandate and use efficacy for COVID-19 containment in US States

Damian D. Guerra^1,*, Daniel J. Guerra²

¹Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, United States of America;
²Authentic Biochemistry, VerEvMed, Clarkston, Washington, United States of America

Background: COVID-19 pandemic mitigation requires evidence-based strategies. Because COVID-19 can spread via respired droplets, most US states mandated mask use in public settings. Randomized control trials have not clearly demonstrated mask efficacy against respiratory viruses, and observational studies conflict on whether mask use predicts lower infection rates. We hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use were associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States.

Methods: We calculated total COVID-19 case growth and mask use for the continental United States with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We estimated post-mask mandate case growth in non-mandate states using median issuance dates of neighboring states with mandates.

Results: Earlier mask mandates were not associated with lower total cases or lower maximum growth rates. Earlier mandates were weakly associated with lower minimum COVID-19 growth rates. Mask use predicted lower minimum but not lower maximum growth rates. Growth rates and total growth were comparable between US states in the first and last mask use quintiles during the Fall-Winter wave. These observations persisted for both natural logarithmic and fold growth models and when adjusting for differences in US state population density.

Conclusions: We did not observe association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states. COVID-19 mitigation requires further research and use of existing efficacious strategies, most notably vaccination.

https://escipub.com/irjph-2021-08-1005/

How does a leader decide what to do?

The most logical response is: “Cui bono?”—”Who benefits?”—from the decision.

If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.

If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.

I’d be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan—conservative or liberal—would give to the question, “Cui bono?”

I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.

“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.

It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.

The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.

The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21, and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.

So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.

The damage to the reputation of America—as an ally and as a strong country—is not easily overstated.

The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn’t bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump—whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO—was alleged to have done.

On the other hand, “Cui bono?” has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.

In the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro compiled a list of recent Western weakness in the face of tyrants and the commensurate strengthening of those tyrants:

“The West’s abandonment of Hong Kong in the face of Chinese aggression last year.

“The West’s continuing desire for a rapprochement with the Iranian mullahcracy.

“The West’s routine appeasement of Russia.

“All speak to the unwillingness of the West—and the West’s leader, the United States—to stand up for allies anywhere on earth.

“Afghanistan is simply the latest, and by far the most stunning, example of abandonment of an American ally …

“China’s Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, chortled, ‘From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won’t come to help. As a result (Taiwan) will quickly surrender.’

“Indeed, given the window presented by the Biden administration, it would be somewhat of a surprise if China didn’t attempt some sort of action against Taiwan in the next few years …

“Foreign policy abhors vacuums, and the United States has now created one. That means that erstwhile American allies will begin to play footsie with countries like Russia and China, believing that American commitments mean little. They have reason for such suspicions, obviously.”

The effects on Americans’ perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan. More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth. This is new. And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military. One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military? (Perhaps that’s the goal.)

It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.

There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II. And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world’s real evils.

Cui Bono? Who Benefits From the Afghanistan Withdrawal? (theepochtimes.com)

Facebook and Instagram removed Shana Chappell’s posts criticizing Biden

A Republican congresswoman is pushing Facebook and Instagram to explain why they censored posts critical of President Biden by the mother of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.

Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri to explain why the social media sites removed posts by Shana Chappell that criticized Biden for the debacle in Afghanistan and his allegedly callous behavior at the transfer of her son’s remains.

Chappell’s Instagram account was suspended and one of her Facebook posts was hidden, although both were later restored. Facebook, which owns Instagram, said Chappell’s Instagram account was “incorrectly deleted.” When asked for clarification on why Chappell’s Instagram account was removed, a spokesman said the platform does not “comment on how enforcements occurred.”

Tenney wants the companies to explain their behavior. “Our Gold Star families and the American public deserve better than this,” she wrote. “After sacrificing so much for the safety and security of our Nation, their speech should not be stifled by faceless Silicon Valley censors.”

Facebook and Instagram have come under fire for unclear or partisan content moderation. Facebook has “downranked” articles that argued COVID-19 escaped a Chinese lab. Tenney serves on the House GOP’s “Tech Task Force,” which is preparing a legislative package to tackle the power of major tech companies.

In the letter, Tenney expressed concerns about politically motivated censorship. “I am aware that the White House acknowledged it would be flagging for Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, posts it deemed ‘problematic.’ Weaponizing the power of the Executive Branch against an open public discourse is wholly un-American, and it would be a crucial error for Instagram to assist in this.”

Biden has not shied away from exerting leverage over Facebook. In June, he accused the platform of “killing people” by allowing “misinformation” about COVID on the site. Multiple former Facebook executives serve in the Biden White House.

According to a Facebook spokesman, Chappell’s “tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies.” Chappell said that after she posted about her son, Instagram began flagging her older posts and warned that her account would be deleted if she continued posting. It is unclear what triggered the warnings on older posts.

GOP Congresswoman Asks Facebook To Explain Suspension of Gold Star Mother (freebeacon.com)

CalPERS has $490 million tied up in companies funding Belt and Road

California’s state pension invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese state-owned enterprises linked to the People’s Liberation Army, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) had more than $3 billion invested in Chinese companies, including 14 state-controlled enterprises blacklisted by the Trump administration, as of June 2020. Many of these companies are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project Beijing is using to expand its geopolitical and military influence.

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), who recently praised a Chinese-owned media company for its “journalistic integrity,” has not commented on CalPERS’s Chinese investments. It is a notable silence from the embattled governor, who has called on CalPERS, the country’s largest public pension system, to divest from tobacco companies and companies linked to the Turkish government. Newsom faces a recall election on Sept. 14.

CalPERS had more than $450 million invested in 14 Chinese companies the Trump administration put on an investment blacklist last year because of their ties to the Chinese military. President Donald Trump’s executive order, which the Biden administration has continued, prohibited Americans from investing in companies that aid the Chinese military.

It is unclear whether CalPERS has complied with the executive order by divesting in the blacklisted companies. The pension fund declined the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment. CalPERS had more than $490 million invested in seven Chinese state-owned enterprises that, while not on the U.S. blacklist, are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, according to its 2020 investment report. CalPERS invested in some of the Chinese companies as early as 2016, records show.

Two companies in the CalPERS portfolio—China Merchants Port and CITIC—control ports in Sri Lanka and Myanmar that the People’s Liberation Army has used for military exercises. CalPERS had $3.7 million invested in China Merchants Port and $110 million in CITIC as of June 2020.

CalPERS, which has more than $400 billion in assets under management, also had $5 million invested in China State Construction Co., which has built roads and bridges in Asia, Africa, and the United States as part of Belt and Road. China State Construction is one of the firms on the Trump administration investment blacklist.

CalPERS had another $6 million invested in China Communications Construction Company, a state-owned company that U.S. officials have said is building military installations in the South China Sea in violation of agreements that China has with its neighbors. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo singled out China Communications Construction last year as one of the “weapons” Beijing uses to impose an expansionist agenda.

The pension fund has hundreds of millions of dollars more invested in some of China’s largest lenders, including $185 million invested in China Construction Bank. China Construction has invested $405 billion in 176 Belt and Road projects. China Merchants Bank and Bank of China, two other state-owned enterprises in the CalPERS portfolio, are invested heavily in Belt and Road projects.

CalPERS has come under scrutiny from state and national lawmakers over its investments in Chinese companies. The fund’s critics say the investments not only aid the Chinese Communist Party but also create financial risk for the state’s pensioners because of the lack of transparency into the operations of Chinese firms.

“CalPERS would do well on its own to reconsider some of its billions of dollars of investments in China just for the fact that immediate international turmoil produces large uncertainties for California retirees,” said Lance Christensen, the chief operating officer at the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank.

Some investment managers are reportedly reconsidering investments in China because of the government’s crackdown on tech companies and other for-profit companies. Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges lost $400 billion in value in July amid a series of regulatory crackdowns orchestrated by the Chinese government, the Wall Street Journal reported.

CalPERS’s former head under Newsom, Ben Meng, is an American citizen of Chinese origin. Prior to leading CalPERs, he worked in China as the deputy chief investment officer of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In that role, he oversaw $3 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves.

During Meng’s time at CalPERS, Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) criticized Meng’s membership in China’s Thousand Talents Program, which the nation uses for espionage. Banks wrote to Newsom suggesting the governor fire Meng, a power Newsom does not technically have.

“Governor Newsom, if it were up to me, I would fire Mr. Meng immediately,” Banks wrote in a February 2020 letter. Banks took specific issue with Chinese companies like Hikvision, for example, that are used by China to further its detention of Uyghurs. CalPERS responded by calling Banks’s letter a “politically opportunistic attempt to force us to divest, undermining our ability to perform our fiduciary duty to provide retirement security to California’s public employees.”

Last year, Banks and Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) called on Newsom and CalPERS to divest from Chinese state-owned companies. CalPERS rejected the requests, saying that its portfolio largely mirrors investments in the MSCI and FTSE stock indices. MSCI has said it is divesting from the 14 companies on the federal blacklist, but it is not clear whether CalPERS plans to follow MSCI’s lead.

While Newsom does not directly control CalPERs, he has actively used his bully pulpit as a statewide elected official to force the agency’s investment decisions in the past. In 2019, he signed an executive order directing CalPERS and other state pension funds to invest in green energy companies in order to fight climate change.

In 2016, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom urged CalPERS not to reverse a decision to prohibit investment in tobacco companies. He said CalPERS would be “investing in death” if it allowed investments in Big Tobacco. CalPERS voted later that year to expand its prohibition on tobacco investments.

As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Newsom called on CalPERS to divest from Turkish companies because of the regime’s refusal to recognize the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.

“It is wrong of us as a state … to invest in Turkish businesses. It’s time for divestment at the [University of California] and CalPERS,” Newsom said at a rally outside the Turkish consulate in Los Angeles.

Newsom has not made a similar demand of CalPERS regarding China, even though both the Trump and Biden administrations have said that the government is carrying out genocide against Muslims in Western China.

“Gov. Gavin Newsom is quick to leverage his position on issues like climate change by outlawing gas-powered cars or other similar mandates, but slow to speak out on government investments in China, where their environmental and labor record is abysmal,” said Christensen, the official at the California Policy Center.

Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.

California’s State Pension Invests Millions in Chinese State-Owned Companies (freebeacon.com)

“Abracadabra!” “Alakazam!” “Presto-chango!” These common refrains are employed by magicians to signal the climax of their seemingly supernatural trick. As a child, I was fascinated by masters of deception. Among other magician’s tricks, the “sleight of hand” was my obsession. Equally stunning and perplexing, I was left puzzled time and again by the clever illusion. Try as I might, I could not manage to figure it out.

With study, I discovered the mastery behind the sleight-of-hand ploy: deception. The phrase refers to a clever act designed for two purposes—entertainment and manipulation of the onlooker. Drawing the spectator in by an intimate and captivating movement of the hands, the spectator never captures the moment they are duped into thinking they were not tricked. The bottom line is that, if you do not closely observe the magician’s hands, you will be fooled into looking in the wrong direction. Ultimately, you will believe what the magician wants you to think—that magic made the trick happen.

Today, I am often reminded of the sleight of hand when I feel drawn into false narratives perpetuated by our state and nation’s elected officials. Among our nation’s leaders, Governor Gavin Newsom has claimed center stage in attempting to deceive California residents that the Sept. 14 Gubernatorial Recall Election is nothing more than a “Republican” brainchild.

You will note that every ballot mailed to California voters is accompanied by a voter’s guide that describes the recall as the result of machinations at the national level by the Republican Party and supporters of former President Donald Trump. More precisely, the guide includes a statement from Governor Newsom asserting that this election is happening because the Republican National Committee (RNC) is determined to seize power in California.

This kind of talk is nothing new. Back in March, Newsom was quoted as saying the push for the vote was a “Republican recall backed by the RNC, anti-mask and anti-vax extremists, and pro-Trump forces who want to overturn the last election and have opposed much of what we have done to fight the pandemic.”

Again, this was hardly an isolated incident. Newsom has consistently described the upcoming election in speeches, public statements, and social media posts as a “Republican-led recall.” He’s also made regular digs at the national Republican Party, linking his own political fortunes to developments in other parts of the country. On Aug. 16, for example, he wrote in a Twitter post: “Republicans want to drive CA off the same cliff as FL and TX.”

Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder that Orrin Heatlie and Mike Netter, the leading proponents of the recall campaign, took to the courts recently.

In early August, Heatlie and Netter sued Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the language of the voter’s guide. They argued in their initial petition that Newsom ought to be ordered to revise the text of his statement in the guide to remove claims that the recall election was being spearheaded on a national level by the Republican Party and by Trump supporters. They called those claims “at best misleading, at worst flat-out false, and in all events a hyperbolic outrage,” and they requested that the court instruct the governor to remove text that accuses Republicans of abusing California’s recall laws in a bid to grasp power in the state.

Instead of holding Newsom’s false narratives accountable, Presiding Judge Laurie Earl issued a tentative ruling approving of Newsom’s false propaganda. As a result of Judge Earl’s ruling, households across California are receiving false and deceptive information about the movement behind the recall election.

What those households will not read about is the fact that many of the 46 candidates named as possible alternatives to Newsom in the second section of the recall ballot are not Republicans.

They will not read about the fact that neither the RNC nor the California Republican Party has endorsed any candidate in the recall election.

They will not read about the fact that the Democratic Party has taken up Newsom’s cause on a national level, with top-level politicians such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) making public statements urging voters in California to support the governor.

They will not read about the small business owners who resent Newsom’s embrace of restrictive public health measures that leave them struggling to keep their doors open and keep their employees on the roster.

They will not read about the parents who are worried about their kids’ ability to make up for all the learning they missed while Newsom closed the doors to public schools, all the while sending his own children to private school.

They will not read about the many individual voters—Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and others—who have been willing to go on record urging that Newsom be recalled.

Of course, they will be able to read what proponents of the recall say in their own statement. (After all, the voter’s guide gives space to both sides.) But they will also be presented with Newsom’s narrow and distorted assertions about the nature of the recall campaign.

That’s a shame. The governor should not downplay the numerous and imminent reasons California voters of all stripes have found to vote him out of office.

We ought to remember that California residents elect its governor to invoke truth, promote accountability and transparency, regardless of where their party loyalties lie. The governor should not deceptively control narratives behind elections and ignore the obvious plight of so many in the Golden State. With an unprecedented homelessness crisis, rising unemployment, and a broken education system, Newsom is in no position to suggest that a recall election was conceived only by members of the Republican Party.

The bottom line is that, like the sleight-of-hand trick, Governor Newsom wants you to blindly buy into his “Republican power grab” recall narrative while distracting you from the truth many of us already know: Californians across the political spectrum are collectively calling for a change in leadership.

Governor Newsom’s ‘Sleight of Hand’ (theepochtimes.com)

A reconfigured global elite are shaping up around a new kind of vision for transforming our world. They’ve called their neo-socialist and multilateral vision the Green New Deal.

Joe Biden’s White House team are core players in this vision, as they seek to reinvent Roosevelt’s original 1930s New Deal into a contemporary twenty-first century Democratic Party platform.

But there are also other important players pushing this neo-socialist dream.

One has been the European Union’s large and well-organised green lobby. Another has been Klaus Schwab (economist and founder of the World Economic Forum), who has used Davos to push his vision of a “Great Reset” of the global economy.

Those getting on board with the Green New Deal are the usual advocates of state interventionism, big government, and multilateral globalism. But surprisingly this new elite is a mix of left-liberals, socialists, Greens, bureaucrats, and university researchers/experts. More surprising is that sections of the business elite are also climbing on board what they believe will be a gravy train.

It appears business is motivated by two factors. First, they are afraid of activist pressure. Second, their marketing departments are telling them there are great public relations kudos to be had in signing up to the now fashionable narratives of saving victims, saving the planet, and distancing themselves from left-leaning stereotypes of greedy uncaring capitalists.

So now we have woke businesses greenwashing their brands plus learning to make profits out of the Green New Deal’s neo-socialist strategy to tear up our old infrastructure and replace them with new ones at great expense to the taxpayer. Who knew socialism could be profitable.

But one of the most fascinating features of this trend is how enthralled legacy media journalists are with the green narratives underpinning this emergent global elite.

Journalists who would normally ask questions about self-interest, crooked narratives, and obvious propaganda now meekly buy into the trendy narratives. Indeed journalists are now being told that applying the journalistic principle of balance is a bad thing when reporting on issues like climate change.

Instead, journalists are being taught that it is fine to advocate for green climate change messages. We even have global media like the BBC instructing their journalists not to be balanced on climate change.

In a climate when green activism is now normalised in media newsrooms, it is hardly surprising that we see journalists treating green experts as media darlings, and as a result, those same green experts are no longer challenged by probing journalistic questions.

Instead, what emerges is a de facto partnership between the media, climate change scientists, and activists wherein journalists start to construct pro-green (propaganda-like) stories.

One way of explaining this partnership is to see it as part of the phenomenon of an emergent global elite for whom left-wing “progressivism” has become a kind of secularised religion, built around saving the many kinds of victims we apparently have today.

These victims can be those conventionally beloved by socialists—the poor. They can also be the new victims beloved by identity politics—LGBTQI, Indigenous or ethnic minorities. Or victims beloved by feminists—women persecuted by the patriarchy. Or the victims can now even be non-human—whales, polar bears, coral reefs, nature, or the planet.

What binds all these victims is that they need to be saved by a self-selecting elite of people who have married elements of the narratives of left-liberalism and neo-Marxism.

This elite first emerged in the United States and then spread to the rest of the western world. And now, like a virus, it is also spreading to places like the European Union (EU).

It is an elite who have proven highly susceptible to catching the green virus. Significantly, enormous progress has been made in capturing western universities, the global media, the education system, and the many bureaucracies across the Anglo world and EU.

The result has been the growth of an alliance between left-liberal, progressive politicians; academics; journalists; and bureaucrats.

Once the universities were captured by this progressive-left, universities were used to teach a new “way of seeing” and a “new way of speaking about” the world.

Thus, universities become the source of what is termed ‘woke’ and green narratives; while the media and internet are used to disseminate their tales. In addition, as universities produced more of these progressive and Green “experts,” journalists rely on them to justify their own work—creating an ongoing cycle.

Importantly, since universities teach journalism, public relations and marketing the communication industries are filled with those taught the woke discourses beloved by the globalised elite.

Not surprisingly, the resultant spread of progressivism within the communications industry means progressives are also becoming well placed—and more skilled—at spreading their own ideologies, while shutting down opposing views.

Indeed the Left are so successful that much of the world in the Biden era is starting to feel a bit like a mixture of the hard authoritarianism of George Orwell’s 1984 and the soft authoritarianism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

The proliferation of both discourse around the Green New Deal, and the expanding power of a medical autocracy calling the shots over COVID-19, are two indicators of the way the global elite are becoming successful at promoting only their views while undercutting all others.

The universities have also given birth to “experts” who believe that secular science can fix everything thereby removing the need for religion or traditional knowledge.

At a deeper level, German existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw this rot beginning when Western thinkers “killed God” in the 19th century, and from that wrong turn has evolved the secularist, social engineers of today.

But at a more institutional level, I think American conservative philosopher Paul Gottfried was correct that the problem lies in today’s overly interventionist governments imposing social therapy measures upon their citizens.

His argument was that this began during the post-second World War era in the United States—specifically with Paul Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in the 1940s to 1950—and in the growth of the 1960s U.S. government-led social engineering policies (for example, affirmative action new migration laws).

And today, we see the modern manifestation of such a long-running trend in state-run welfare systems, the Green New Deal, and the COVID-19 medical autocracy.

Significantly, Lazarsfeld’s behavioural science was built on the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School’s idea of an “Authoritarian Personality”—a personality type that is submissive and obedient to authority—as well as the notion that experts should learn to manage and control the population better (using psychology, behavioural sciences, public opinion research, public relations, and spin-doctoring). This, in turn, can help stop the re-emergence of “bad ideas” like nationalism or traditionalism.

Lazarsfeld founded an American tradition of academic thinking about how the media could be used to promote “good” (progressive) ideas and shut down “bad” ideas.

Lazarsfeld’s centre employed many Frankfurt School members and so opened the door to the merging of left-liberal and neo-Marxist ideas, which has further contributed to the growth of the progressive elite.

With Biden in office, this elite now has a great base to work from to disseminate their preferred ideological narratives including the virtues of big government, green activism, and multilateral interventionism to save its so-called “victims.”

And because the 2000 anti-Trump crusade helped cement the alliance between left-leaning politicians, activists, mainstream liberal media journalists, U.S.-owned tech giants; and the university sector, we can now expect to see a period of intensified dissemination of “progressive” narratives plus simultaneous attempts at discourse closure aimed at closing-down and disrupting narratives that the Left loves to hate.

Global Elite Latches Onto Neo-Socialist Vision: The Green New Deal (theepochtimes.com)

A great number of people were shocked by the result of the 2020 presidential election, but Curtis Bowers (former Republican member of the House of Representatives) might not have been. Although he never described himself as a prophet, he indeed foresaw in 2015, or earlier, that 2016 would be the last time in his lifetime to see a conservative president elected. In other words, he worried that the political environment in the United States would continue to deteriorate or radicalize unless a miracle were to happen.

Bowers and his interviewees in the documentary “AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit“ talked about possible electoral manipulation and fraud, but that was not the main factor that led him to make such a judgment about the future of America’s political arena. The basis for his conclusion was simply demographic trends.

According to Bowers’ study, in 1980, about 40 percent of the U.S. population held conservative political views, 50 percent were undecided, and only 10 percent were liberal. The trend was that both the conservative and undecided populations were shrinking. In 2012, the conservative dropped to 30 percent, while the liberal grew to 30 percent, making the two evenly matched. By 2036, the conservative and undecided are projected to fall further to 10 percent and 20 percent respectively, while the liberal might grow to 70 percent accordingly.

For conservatives, if Bowers’ analysis and predictions are accurate, it will indicate the United States is becoming a socialist or communist country. Could there be anything more frightening than that?

Bowers himself was not willing to accept this too. However, he was aware that American conservatives must force themselves to rationally recognize this dire situation and act vigorously to salvage it, rather than simply pinning their hopes for a turnaround on the next election.

What has caused this trend in the proportion of political leanings? The direct answer from Bowers is the left is capturing 85 percent of young Americans each year. They achieved this not because they had magic powers. Rather, they had a long-standing agenda, a communist agenda, to undermine, infiltrate and control the family, the church, the state, the media, the schools, and many more institutions that influence the worldview of the youth.

In the “Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx called on his followers to destroy all traditional political systems, economic models, religious beliefs, moral values, family structures, and so on. And these did prevail in the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and some other countries.

At the end of the Cold War, many Americans once believed they had defeated or even eliminated communism. Bowers was one of them. But the first-hand experience in 1992 changed his view. He attended a communist strategy meeting at the campus of the University of California, Berkley. He was shocked to learn that the communists were still or had always been seriously planning to change America to be more in line with their views. What surprised him more was the rapidity with which the Communists were achieving their goals. This led him to drop his prior work and devote himself to researching and exposing the Communist destruction in the United States.

In his first award-winning documentary “AGENDA: Grinding America Down,” Bowers uses a wealth of facts and data to demonstrate that communism is not dead or gone, but has deliberately, yet unwittingly, orchestrated and driven changes in American values over the past decades.

The most convincing witnesses were the communists themselves. In 1958, W. Cleon Skousen listed 45 goals of the communists to infiltrate and convert the United States, in his book “The Naked Communist.” These 45 goals cover everything from influencing specific policies to corrupting American culture. Examples include capturing one or both of America’s political parties; controlling key positions in radio, TV, and pictures; presenting homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as normal and healthy; replacing revealed religion with social religion; discrediting the American founding fathers; encouraging easy divorce, and more. Please watch the documentary for details.

The sequel documentary “AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit” explains the reasons why communism has not died out. In defiance of moral principles, the communists and those who were duped masterfully kept changing their names, coining new terms, and winning the cognitive war repeatedly like a duck to water. For example, in Fabian socialism, a denomination of communism, deception is their motto. Another branch, the Frankfurt School, boasted they could convince students that snow is black through distorted interpretations and truth subjectivism in education.

Bowers notes that no matter how catchy the slogans of the communists and the left are, they aim to establish big government and foster dependence on it. Julia Irish, a family therapist, gave “AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit” five stars and commented, “Our children are being lost. We are well into creating a third generation of state dependents.” But Julia believes all people want self-esteem, so she doesn’t think young people will spontaneously and willingly rely on and support big government, instead, they have been simply indoctrinated to think that way. “The result is depression, anxiety, drug dependence, domestic abuse and poverty.”

Bowers’ remark that 2016 would be the last time in his life to see a conservative president elected may leave many in despair. It was like a lady in the audience crying sadly after a screening of the documentary “AGENDA.” The reason was that a male audience member affirmed Bowers’ research, declaring, “I am a professor at this college, I am a communist, and we will win because we are taking all of your children.”

Tanya Wright, an author for the Natural Homeschool, has a different feeling. “I don’t think this is a fear-mongering documentary,” Wright writes, “it was a desperate call to arms to those who have ears to hear.” I agree.

If Bowers were that pessimistic, he wouldn’t have his entire family committed to going around and presenting these documentaries. He clarified his genuine thought by quoting Sun Tzu, “If you know yourself, you will have a 50 percent chance to win the battle. If you know your enemy, you will have a 50 percent chance to win. But, if you know yourself AND your enemy, you will have a 100 percent chance to win.” Bowers hopes Americans rediscover their identity and values, understand the dangers they are in and who their enemies are, and then act quickly to defend themselves and finally win.

The change in the demographic ratio of conservatives, undecideds, and liberals in the United States is ongoing. In the documentary “AGENDA 2,” Star Parker suggests, “The only way you are going to reverse the trend is to begin to interject a biblical worldview back into the hearts and minds of our youth.” I agree, while it is easier said than done. People who believe in God must also consider the cunning and temptations of satan to walk their path steadily. In this regard, “The Specter of Communism” series from The Epoch Times illustrate it best. So my suggestion is to watch both Agenda documentaries and “The Specter of Communism” series as a collection.

The Terrifying Prophecy of Bowers and the Only Way to Stop It (theepochtimes.com)

Hillhouse Capital – a private equity firm funded by America’s top universities and is invested in companies including Zoom and Apple – struck a $1.5 billion deal with a Chinese Communist Party-owned investment fund.

Hillhouse Capital partnered with the “wholly state-owned” Hangzhou Capitol on a billion-dollar fund “to invest in sectors including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and new energy vehicles,” according to Chinese state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN).

Hillhouse Capital, which was funded with $20 million in seed capital from the Yale University Endowment, is reported to be backed by America’s most prestigious universities. Following a Stanford University investment of $200 million in 2015, the fund was “investing money for at least six of the 10 wealthiest universities in the U.S.,” including Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has also invested nearly $1 billion with the Beijing-based fund.

These investments are now being used, however, to contribute to the growth of the Chinese Communist Party.

A press release from Hangzhou Capital – which pledges to be “guided by Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era” – reveals that its partnership with Hillhouse Capital is part of a broader Chinese regime-backed effort to turn the city into a “leading and exemplary benchmark for national advancement.”

“The implementation of the “National Digital Economy First City” strategy focuses on value investment to empower outstanding enterprise development, optimizes industrial layout and accelerates the cultivation of new kinetic energy, and creates new impetus for Hangzhou to become a model city ​​for high-quality development and construction of a common prosperity demonstration zone in Zhejiang Province,” the group adds. 

Hillhouse Capital’s partnership with a Chinese state-owned enterprise also calls into question its sizable investments in companies such as Zoom, Uber, Apple, TikTok parent company ByteDance.

MUST READ:  Biden White House Approves Licensing Deal For Chinese Communist Party-Linked Huawei, Reversing Trump-Era Hardline.

Article Seven of China’s National Intelligence law stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.”

Investment Firm Backed By Top American Universities Partners With ‘Socialist’ China-Backed Fund. – The National Pulse

After previously ignoring their Advisory Committee, the Biden Admin FDA didn’t even bother to “hold a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss Pfizer’s application for full approval of its covid-19 vaccine” See: “Covid-19: FDA set to grant full approval to Pfizer vaccine without public discussion of data” BMJ 2021; 374 (20 August 2021) BMJ 2021;374:n2086 By Gareth Iacobucci, The BMJ- https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2021/08/23/covid-19-fda-set-to-grant-full-approval-to-pfizer-mrna-covid-vaccine-without-public-discussion-of-data-there-is-no-control-group-either/

Update: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2021/08/25/fda-only-renewed-emergency-use-authorization-for-pfizer-approval-was-for-biontechs-comirnaty-with-years-of-additional-safety-studies-required-thru-2027/

“Three experts have now resigned from a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee after the agency approved an Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm against the wishes of nearly every member on the panel.” https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005567149/3-experts-have-resigned-from-an-fda-committee-over-alzheimers-drug-approval It may be four, because there are four vacancies listed: https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/peripheral-and-central-nervous-system-drugs-advisory-committee/peripheral-and-central-nervous-system-drugs-advisory-committee-roster

From Dr. Aaron Kesselheim’s resignation letter from the FDA Advisory Committee (June 10, 2021):

“For both eteplirsen and aducanumab, the decisions by FDA administrators to ignore the Advisory Committee’s clear recommendations led to their approval of two highly problematic drugs that offered little evidence that they would meaningfully benefit patients suffering from these devastating conditions. This will undermine the care of these patients, public trust in the FDA, the pursuit of useful therapeutic innovation, and the affordability of the health care system.”

“With eteplirsen, the AdComm and FDA’s own scientific staff reported that there was no convincing evidence that the drug worked; both groups were overruled by FDA leadership, which approved the drug based on considerations (including concerns about the sponsor’s finances) that were not part of the Advisory Committee’s discussions.

This week, the aducanumab decision by FDA administrators was probably the worst drug approval decision in recent US history. At the last minute the agency switched its review to the Accelerated Approval pathway based on the debatable premise that the drug’s effect on the brain amyloid was likely to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease. But, this pivotal question was not discussed at the Advisory Committee meeting and its premise was specifically excluded from discussion, as the FDA said “We’re not using the myeloid as a surrogate for efficacy.” At our public meeting, concerns about trial data from one of the FDA’s own reviewers were not given adequate time for discussion, and some of the questions FDA asked the committee were worded in a way that seemed slanted to yield responses that would favor the drug’s approval.

“I believed in the value of Advisory Committees to provide a way for outside experts to provide science-based guidance to the agency on its drug approval decisions. But after my experience on this Advisory Committee for both the eteplirsen and now the aducanumab discussions, it is clear to me that the FDA is not presently capable of adequately integrating the Committee’s scientific recommendations into its approval decisions.” (Retyped, to facilitate reading, from the original letter found below and here: https://archive.ph/uPSXj There could be a typo. We make no guarantees. The original is always the original.)

The original letter is here:

It’s also found here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3jKN4GWYAUGj9U.png

IS BIDEN USING THIS DRUG? THAT MIGHT PROVIDE A CLUE AS TO ITS EFFECTIVENESS.
After reading the letter, now see FDA’s blah, blah, blah:
“FDA Grants Accelerated Approval for Alzheimer’s Drug
For Immediate Release:
June 07, 2021

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm (aducanumab) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, a debilitating disease affecting 6.2 million Americans. Aduhelm was approved using the accelerated approval pathway, which can be used for a drug for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides a meaningful therapeutic advantage over existing treatments.

Accelerated approval can be based on the drug’s effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients, with a required post-approval trial to verify that the drug provides the expected clinical benefit. 

“Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating illness that can have a profound impact on the lives of people diagnosed with the disease as well as their loved ones,” said Patrizia Cavazzoni, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Currently available therapies only treat symptoms of the disease; this treatment option is the first therapy to target and affect the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s. As we have learned from the fight against cancer, the accelerated approval pathway can bring therapies to patients faster while spurring more research and innovation.”

Alzheimer’s is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually, the ability to carry out simple tasks.

While the specific causes of Alzheimer’s disease are not fully known, it is characterized by changes in the brain—including amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary, or tau, tangles—that result in loss of neurons and their connections. These changes affect a person’s ability to remember and think.
Aduhelm represents a first-of-its-kind treatment approved for Alzheimer’s disease. It is the first new treatment approved for Alzheimer’s since 2003 and is the first therapy that targets the fundamental pathophysiology of the disease.

Researchers evaluated Aduhelm’s efficacy in three separate studies representing a total of 3,482 patients. The studies consisted of double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled dose-ranging studies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Patients receiving the treatment had significant dose-and time-dependent reduction of amyloid beta plaque, while patients in the control arm of the studies had no reduction of amyloid beta plaque.

These results support the accelerated approval of Aduhelm, which is based on the surrogate endpoint of reduction of amyloid beta plaque in the brain—a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid beta plaque was quantified using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to estimate the brain levels of amyloid beta plaque in a composite of brain regions expected to be widely affected by Alzheimer’s disease pathology compared to a brain region expected to be spared of such pathology. 

The prescribing information for Aduhelm includes a warning for amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA), which most commonly presents as temporary swelling in areas of the brain that usually resolves over time and does not cause symptoms, though some people may have symptoms such as headache, confusion, dizziness, vision changes, or nausea. Another warning for Aduhelm is for a risk of hypersensitivity reactions, including angioedema and urticaria. The most common side effects of Aduhelm were ARIA, headache, fall, diarrhea, and confusion/delirium/altered mental status/disorientation.  

Under the accelerated approval provisions, which provide patients suffering from the disease earlier access to the treatment, the FDA is requiring the company, Biogen, to conduct a new randomized, controlled clinical trial to verify the drug’s clinical benefit. If the trial fails to verify clinical benefit, the FDA may initiate proceedings to withdraw approval of the drug.

Aduhelm was granted Fast Track designation, which seeks to expedite the development and review of drugs that are intended to treat serious conditions where initial evidence showed the potential to address an unmet medical need. 
Aduhelm is made by Biogen of Cambridge, Massachusetts”. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-grants-accelerated-approval-alzheimers-drug

FDA Ignored Advisory Committee Recommendations & Approved Drugs that “Offered Little Evidence That They Would Meaningfully Benefit Patients” (June Resignation Letter); FDA Didn’t Bother to Convene Advisory Committee for Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA Covid Vaccine Approval | Mining Awareness + (wordpress.com)

Democrats have several major crises hurting the country spinning out of control at the same time.

But what are they concerned with? Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have, and taxing Americans into oblivion.

The border is a mess, inflation is out of control, the Biden just handed Afghanistan to the Taliban on a silver platter, plus $85 billion of our military equipment.

Yet Democrats instead want to expand socialism in America. They’re even admitting that their big spending push will transform the American economy.

But they have a big problem. In order to push their radical spending, they need to raise the debt ceiling.

Obviously, taxes can’t pay for all the crazy stuff Pelosi wants. But she doesn’t want the blame for our massive national debt.

She’s pressuring Republicans to own the debt. But they are firing back, “You’re on your own.”

From Fox News:

More than 100 House Republicans signed a letter Monday promising not to vote to increase the debt ceiling under any circumstances…

“In order for this spending to occur, our nation’s debt limit will have to be increased significantly. Because Democrats are responsible for the spending, they need to take responsibility for increasing the debt ceiling.”

Republicans in the House were bypassed by Pelosi when she approved Biden’s radical $3.5 trillion expansion of the welfare state.

Not one Republican voted for this radical spending bill. Now, they are telling Pelosi they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling to make this spending possible.

It’s no secret Democrats seem to love spending other people’s money. But Biden’s radical socialist agenda is just too expensive.

Even with all the tax increases he’s planning, he can’t pay for it all.

So, Pelosi and her cohorts have to approve raising our nation’s debt ceiling. Meaning, of course, we will be spending even more money we don’t have.

The nation will have to borrow that money from global lenders, to avoid more inflation and other problems.

What happens when our credit runs dry? What if China (our biggest lender) demands we pay them back?

Democrats are running out the clock by expanding our debt, getting more Americans hooked on welfare while importing more workers from over the border.

Pelosi doesn’t seem to care. Rumors suggest she’s bailing after 2022, anyway. She did her damage to the country and will probably retire to Martha’s Vineyard or something.

The rest of us? We’ll have to live with all the damage she’s caused.

Key Takeaways:

• Over 100 House Republicans are refusing to support Pelosi’s raised debt ceiling.
• The nation’s debt ceiling must be raised to push Biden’s socialist agenda.
• Democrats wanted to share the blame with Republican lawmakers.

Nancy Pelosi Just Ran Into 100-Strong GOP Brick Wall – House Republicans Sign Letter Refusing To Raise Her Debt Ceiling (thepatriotjournal.com)

In Washington, things have gone off the rails in a hurry. Many blame an invigorated unthinking progressive agenda for broken government. And they are correct. Think about it.

How else would you characterize the utterly failed “Let’s get out of Afghanistan overnight” move by a president who seemingly had little interest in the advice of his generals or diplomats?

Speaking of which, who made the call to shut down the contractors who maintained American-made Afghan air assets?

You do not have to be a West Point graduate to question why we would give away our dominant advantage (air power) and leave the critical airbase at Bagram on a battlefield populated by seventh-century religious warriors. Or why we would leave so many military assets (vehicles, weapons, helicopters, night-vision goggles, etc.) to the Taliban. Or why our soldiers were ordered to abandon the country before every last U.S. citizen was accounted for and safe.

This last question is, of course, the most important and the most baffling.

Today, the president’s press flack won’t even admit Americans are “stranded,” but the anguished calls for help by trapped Americans and our Afghan allies in and around the Kabul airport (and Thursday’s horrific bomb attacks) speak to a terribly broken policy.

How else would one characterize the chaos at our southern border as an estimated two million people will have migrated by the end of the year?

To make matters worse, an understaffed Border Patrol and a declawed ICE are in no position to stop the tons of fentanyl, COVID-positive migrants and sex traffickers that are the tangible results of a broken policy.

Note that the person allegedly in charge of border security has been on her second foreign junket to Southeast Asia.

How else would you characterize the historic level of violence in cities that have indulged the ludicrous crime-producing “defund the police” movement?

A glance at murder and other violent crime statistics from any of these progressive cities reminds us that the suspension of enforcement against so-called minor crimes and the pro-offender mindset of so many big-city (Soros-sponsored) prosecutors has made life significantly worse off for the good and law-abiding people living in deteriorating marginal neighborhoods.

Whatever did happen to that “let’s replace the police with social workers” initiative?

How else would you characterize a president who just last week begged OPEC to increase its (fossil fuel) oil production in the face of rapidly spiking gasoline prices and increasing world demand?

This pitiful picture is juxtaposed against the greatest accomplishment of the Trump administration: an American natural gas revolution. America’s vast supply of natural gas and modern drilling techniques helped achieve independence (production of more domestic energy than we consume) by Trump’s third year in office. And all during a time greenhouse gas emissions continue to decline.Related:Dennis Prager: Who Benefits from Biden Deserting Afghanistan? America’s Enemies, That’s Who

How else would you characterize school systems that no longer care to teach the three “Rs” and no longer engage in objective measures of academic performance?

You can blame social justice warriors (and their compatriots in the teachers unions) who have infiltrated our local public school boards in order to indoctrinate our kids (as young as kindergarten age) with their unique curriculum of sex- and race-based instruction.

That their campaign is playing out against a backdrop of consistently underperforming (what used to be called “failing”) public schools in our most marginal neighborhoods is not lost on the commonsense majority.

Hence, a newly invigorated parent-teacher resistance to the woke mob’s agenda is born, as well as a new front in America’s culture wars.

How else would you characterize voting “reforms” that eliminate photo identification, scrubbing of voter rolls, signature matches on the inside and outside of mail-in ballots, and vote-counting transparency requirements?

Mistrust of our voting processes ran high among Democrats in 2016 and even higher among Republicans in 2020. Why in the world would either the states or the federal government want to further complicate the way we cast and count votes in our country?

How else would you characterize our out-of-control federal spending and the sudden re-emergence of inflation — that terrible debilitating tax on our nation’s poor that so many in Washington are soft-peddling?

There is a method to the madness, however, as today’s spiking inflation numbers bring back memories of the bad ‘ol days of the 1970s.

A bottom line emerges: What had been working during the Trump era had to be broken (such was the principle and all-consuming commitment of Biden 2020) regardless of consequence.

Indeed, from an incremental, secure withdrawal in Afghanistan to “Stay in Mexico” at the border to re-funding the police in our cities to real American energy independence from the gas fields to school choice in our classrooms, America was heading in the right direction. And then there was a worldwide pandemic — and an election. And now there are predictable short and long-term consequences.

Today, the breaking of Trump-era initiatives proceeds apace. This is what happens under single-party government. It is not a pretty sight. Broken never is.

Bob Ehrlich: We’re Suffering Because Biden Had to Reverse Every Trump Decision, Especially the Successful Ones (westernjournal.com)

As the world watches events in Afghanistan unfold, many have started to wonder what the Taliban rule means for the future of the country’s opium production.

Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of the opium poppy, which is the raw material for heroin, one of the world’s deadliest drugs. The country accounted for nearly 83 percent of global opium production between 2015 and 2020, according to estimates of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). And it’s a key supplier for heroin markets across Europe and Asia.

The U.S. military presence failed to curtail opium production throughout the Afghan countryside. For two decades, opiate economy, which includes cultivation of the poppy, processing into heroin, and trafficking, has been a major source of cash for Afghanistan.

Despite its anti-heroin rhetoric, the Taliban has benefited greatly from this opium poppy economy and become a major player in the world’s drug trade.

In its first official press conference in Kabul, the Taliban pledged to end opium cultivation in Afghanistan, in an effort to gain acceptance from the international community.

“Today, when we entered Kabul, we saw a large number of our youth who was sitting under the bridges or next to the walls and they were using narcotics. This was so unfortunate,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters on Aug. 17.

“From now on, Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country, but it needs international assistance,” he said, adding that foreign aid is needed to help Afghan farmers switch to alternative crops.

Afghanistan is noted for its high-quality fruits including pomegranates, grapes, and melons. Various international organizations in the past have helped Afghan families grow pomegranates, for example, as an important alternative to opium.

Despite its agriculture sector and rich mineral resources, the country has been critically dependent on foreign aid, which has dried up with the Taliban takeover.

International donors had been providing 75 percent of the Afghan government’s operating budget, Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a Chatham House report.

The Biden administration froze nearly $9 billion in Afghan government reserves that were held in the United States. The International Monetary Fund also blocked Afghanistan from receiving nearly $440 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent earlier. And the German government announced a suspension of $300 million in development aid budgeted for this year.

Financial sanctions will also make it difficult for international organizations to provide humanitarian aid to Afghan families.

Hence, the country is expected to drift into a humanitarian and financial crisis soon, according to experts, which may lead the new regime to increase illicit activities, including drug trafficking.

“The immediate effects of the financial squeeze in place is that cash liquidity in Afghanistan may drop, which will drive up inflation—including food prices—while disadvantaging Afghanistan’s poorest and the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people,” Felbab-Brown wrote.

As in the past, she noted, those who attempt to ban poppy cultivation in rural areas can “find themselves facing significant losses of political capital and violent opposition.”

Gretchen Peters, executive director at the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime, believes the Taliban shouldn’t be trusted when it comes to its promises to eradicate the poppy trade.

“They pulled a maneuver like that back in the ’90s. They did actually succeed in banning farmers from growing poppy for a year,” she told NPR.

“But the secret was the Taliban were actually sitting on these huge, vast stores of opium. The price of opium went through the roof, and they sold it and made a lot more money than they had the year previous.”

According to Peters, the Taliban will now have full access to the capacities and institutions of state, including its banking system, airlines, and border crossings, which would make its drug trafficking a lot easier.

Recently, poppy cultivation has expanded in most regions of the country, soaring 37 percent in the past year alone, according to UNODC.

Amid Sanctions, Taliban Expected to Double Down on Drug Trafficking (theepochtimes.com)

Tanner Cross refused to call students by pronouns divergent from their biological sex

The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of an elementary school teacher who was suspended for criticizing the district’s proposed transgender policies.

The commonwealth’s highest court on Monday rejected Loudoun County Public Schools’ appeal to suspend Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher who was placed on administrative leave in May for criticizing the district’s proposed policies for transgender students. Cross won a temporary injunction in the state’s 12th circuit court in June and subsequently was allowed to return to the classroom.

The district did not make an adequate case for reversing the lower court’s June decision, reaffirming Cross’s win, the Virginia Supreme Court said Monday.

In its appeal, Loudoun County Public Schools claimed that Cross’s religious and speech protections are secondary to students’ rights to comfort.

“While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment,” the district claimed.

Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.) last year approved a measure requiring public schools to create and implement protections for transgender students by the 2021-2022 school year. Pursuant to that law, Loudoun school officials proposed updated guidelines that would allow transgender students to access traditionally sex-discriminated spaces like restrooms and sports teams.

The updated policies, which the school board approved on Aug. 11, also require teachers to call students by selected names and pronouns that align with their “gender identity.” Cross spoke out against that provision in a May 25 school board meeting, days before he was suspended.

“I love all of my students, but I would never lie to them regardless of the consequences,” Cross said. “I’m a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion, it’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”

District officials claimed Cross’s statement had a “disruptive impact” on the school community.

Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal nonprofit that defended Cross, says teachers should not be forced to comply with such policies.

“Teachers shouldn’t be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that their beliefs are false, nor should they be silenced for commentating at a public meeting,” senior counsel Tyson Langhofer said in a statement on Monday.

Langhofer said Alliance Defending Freedom amended its lawsuit after the district updated its policies for transgender students.

Students in Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the wealthiest districts in the country, returned to the classroom on Aug. 26.

Virginia Supreme Court Backs Teacher Ousted for Rejecting Trans Policies (freebeacon.com)

The deletion of an Instagram account belonging to a mother whose Marine son was killed in Afghanistan last week was a mistake, parent company Facebook said Tuesday.

Shana Chappell raised an alarm on Facebook on Monday after she said her account was removed.

Chappell said she believed the deletion was “because [I] gained so many followers over my [son’s] death due to Biden’s negligence, ignorance and him being a traitor!”

She was referring to President Joe Biden.

The post in question described “my heart break [sic] over my son,” according to Chappell.

Facebook acknowledged the account was deleted but said it has now been restored.

“We express our deepest condolences to Ms. Chappell and her family. Her tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson told news outlets.

“While the post was not removed, her account was incorrectly deleted and we have since restored it,” the spokesperson added.

Chappell did not respond to a request for comment and had not posted about the development as of Tuesday afternoon.

Chappell is the mother of Kareem Nikoui, who was one of 13 U.S. service members who were killed in the suicide bombing attack on the Kabul airport on Aug. 26.

Steve Nikoui, the father of Kareem Nikoui, 20, also blamed Biden for the death.

“They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security,” Steve Nikoui told The Daily Beast. “I blame my own military leaders … Biden turned his back on him. That’s it.”

Read the remarks during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that there were “no words that I can say, that I think anyone can say, to assuage the grief that a parent is feeling at the loss of their child—nothing.”

“And if I were in his shoes, probably I would feel exactly the same way,” he added.

Facebook: Deletion of Marine Mother’s Account a Mistake (theepochtimes.com)

A full-page advertisement that called for the world to hold the Chinese communist regime to account for the COVID-19 pandemic was pulled at the last moment by The New York Times in March 2020. The paper said the ad didn’t meet its standards, but the ad was pulled after it had already passed the paper’s vetting process. The businessman who paid for the ad suspects the paper’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) played a role. He only revealed the details of the incident to The Epoch Times earlier this year.

The ad was scheduled to run on March 22, 2020. It was already approved, paid for, and even printed and distributed in some locations when the paper pulled the plug in the middle of the night, preventing the ad from being published in some of the paper’s main markets, including New York and Florida.

The decision was so abrupt that the sales representative responsible for the ad wasn’t informed, and the client only found out the next morning when he couldn’t find the ad in the paper.

The client, Brett Kingstone, is a real estate agent in Florida. He backed up his story with email threads documenting his correspondence with the newspaper as well as images of the contract he signed, details about the payment and subsequent refund of the $55,000 ad fee, and photos of the ad as it ran in some locales.

New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said the ad ran in “an early edition of Sunday’s paper and was removed from all later editions, which account for the vast majority of copies.”

“The ad in question did not meet our standards and should not have appeared in The New York Times,” she told The Epoch Times via email.

She didn’t respond to a question about whether the paper faced any CCP pressure regarding the ad.

“It was removed after being flagged internally by [New York] Times staff,” she said.

Kingstone, a prolific donor to charitable and conservative causes, had contacted The New York Times via email on March 18, 2020, with an advertorial placement request.

He said he placed an advertorial in the paper’s Sunday edition back in 2018 and the staff “did an excellent job in delivering what was promised both in performance and placement.”

“I am interested in doing the same again,” he said, submitting a draft of the ad.

The text urged the U.S. government to organize and initiate investigations and lawsuits regarding the origins and repercussions of the CCP virus pandemic.

“This virus was the direct result of the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Chinese Government. They showed as much disregard for their own population as they have for ours,” the ad stated.

It called for “massive liability lawsuits” against the CCP as well as investigations into two Chinese labs close to the epicenter of the pandemic, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was treated as a taboo subject by social media and the corporate press at the time. Only earlier this year have establishment actors acknowledged that the inquiries were legitimate and that the virus could have escaped from the lab.

On March 19, 2020, the ad placement representative informed Kingstone that it had been accepted.

“My Ad Acceptability team has approved the message as long as we include the footnotes, your email address, a border around the ad, and advertisement slugs,” the representative said.

The two then exchanged several emails regarding technical edits to the ad as well as proof of payment of the ad fee required before publication.

Everything seemed to go smoothly.

Then, on the morning of March 22, 2020, Kingstone was surprised to learn the ad was nowhere to be found in the Florida edition of the paper.

In his inbox, he found an email from the sales representative:

“I wanted to let you know that I was informed late last night that our production team had pulled the ad from the production run, without my knowledge. I’m investigating this now and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with any updates,” it read.

“I just wanted to assure you that I’m working on this and I will hopefully be able to share additional context on Monday after I speak to the necessary people. I will be in touch on Monday!”

The representative has since left the paper. The Epoch Times is omitting her name for the sake of her privacy.

Kingstone didn’t hide his disappointment.

“I would like to know the reason why they did this,” he said in an email response to the representative, requesting a refund.

He asked whether the paper’s executives concluded that his particular message needed to be silenced.

“I was very pleased with how the NYT treated me on my first advocacy advertisement. They were more than fair. Now my fears about bias are being realized,” he wrote.

The cancellation was all the more a slap in the face given that The New York Times used to regularly publish propaganda advertorials paid for by a company directly controlled by the CCP.

After receiving his refund, Kingstone didn’t leave it at that.

As it happened, his website, which was listed on the ad, came under a cyberattack around the same time the copies of the paper that did include the ad landed on people’s doormats, he said.

This was too much of a coincidence for Kingstone, who has had his share of run-ins with the CCP. It was his company that years earlier won a precedent-setting lawsuit against Chinese counterfeiters. In 2005, he published a book detailing his story, called “The Real War Against America.”

Kingstone started to inquire with his contacts and eventually reached the conclusion that the CCP must have been involved in the ad’s cancellation.

One New York Times executive told him a CCP official called the paper’s leadership, demanding the ad be pulled, he said. The Epoch Times wasn’t able to independently confirm that the phone call took place. Attempts to reach the executive for comment were unsuccessful. The paper’s spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that such a phone call took place.

In any case, the situation carries “an earmark of how China would operate,” according to Pat Laflin, a former FBI agent who upon retirement led a series of lectures for the bureau to American businesses and research entities on economic espionage by adversarial nations, including China.

It’s “impossible” that the CCP let the ad slide, he told The Epoch Times.

“If there’s anything negative about China, China’s going to scream,” he said in a phone call.

It would just be the question of what form the pressure took, he said.

“Exactly what they said and how subtle it was or how not-so-subtle, that’s all speculation. I don’t know. But did the call come in? Yes.”

The New York Times has over the years repeatedly faced criticism over its relations with the CCP. The controversy reaches back to at least 2001, when the paper’s publisher at the time, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., met with then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, whose power faction within the communist regime exerts influence even to this day, long after his retirement.

The paper actively discouraged reporting on one of the most gruesome atrocities committed by the CCP—the harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience, mainly practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice—as indicated by former New York Times Beijing correspondent Didi Kirsten Tatlow in her testimony to the independent China Tribunal in the United Kingdom.

Last year, the paper finally cut ties with the CCP-controlled China Daily and quietly deleted hundreds of paid propaganda pieces from its website, The Washington Free Beacon reported. China Daily disclosed to federal authorities one $50,000 payment to The New York Times in 2018. It’s not clear how much total revenue The New York Times drew from CCP advertorials.

NY Times Pulled Ad Calling CCP to Account for Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

This is a strange thing to have to tell someone, but here’s some advice that could have saved Kristin Pitzen’s some problems: Social media reaches beyond California.

Given that’s the whole point of social media, it seems like an odd bit of knowledge to relay. Even when you have your account on Twitter or Facebook set to private, if you post something particularly cretinous, if it rubs one of your friends wrong and you’re in a position of authority, there’s a good chance that it’s going to go wide, with decided swiftness.

In this case, Pitzen apparently didn’t even try to hide it. When the teacher in Southern California’s Newport-Mesa Unified School District posted about what she thinks of the American flag in her classroom on TikTok (there isn’t one), it was entirely public.

While she didn’t identify herself on her account, it didn’t take long for her identity to be sussed out. Her opinion might play well in Southern California. It probably doesn’t do so well when exported outside of the Golden State, however.

Here’s a brief summary about what she said regarding Ol’ Glory: She doesn’t have it in her classroom because she “lost” it, but if her students want to say the Pledge of Allegiance they can say it to the LGBT rainbow flag.Trending:US Special Forces Vets Go Rogue in Middle of Night, Rescue Afghan Allies That Biden Won’t

According to the U.K. Daily Mail, the school district is now investigating Pitzen after the high school English teacher’s clip about the Pledge of Allegiance got attention this week.

“OK, so during third period, we have announcements and they do the Pledge of Allegiance,” Pitzen said at the beginning of the video.

“I always tell my class, stand if you feel like it, don’t stand if you feel like it, say the words if you want, you don’t have to say the words.”

“So my class decided to stand but not say the words — totally fine,” she said. “Except for the fact that my room does not have a flag.”Do you think this teacher should be fired?Yes No
 Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.

“It used to be there,” she said, pointing and laughing. She said that while the school was closed for the pandemic, she took it down — adding, in a stage whisper, that she did it “because it made me uncomfortable.”

“And I packed it away, and I don’t know where, and I haven’t found it yet,” she added, laughing in a way that indicated she wasn’t exactly looking for it — if, indeed, she had “lost” it in the first place.

When one of her students said it was “kinda weird that we stand and then we say it (the Pledge of Allegiance) to nothing. And I’m like, ‘Oh, well, I’ve got to find it, I’m working on it, I got you.’”

At this point, a laughing Pitzen makes it clear she had not intention of looking for the flag.

“In the meantime, I tell this kid, ‘We do have a flag in the class that you can pledge your allegiance to.’ And he like, looks around and goes, ‘Oh, that one?’”Related:Listen: Hot Mic Catches Democrats Making Fun of Pledge of Allegiance

She then points to the LGBT pride flag.

Teacher mocks the American Flag and suggests to students they can say the Pledge of Allegiance to the pride flag: pic.twitter.com/1QTS5xjPln

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2021

In a separate video, she showed off all of the flags she had collected and put around her classroom for Pride Month back in June, putting her hand over her heart and saying, “I pledge allegiance to the queers.”

She shows off all the pride flags in her classroom and says “I pledge allegiance to the queers” pic.twitter.com/eQXe1OfPoW

— Libs of Tik Tok (@libsoftiktok) August 27, 2021

Even in the People’s Republic of California, this is a bit iffy — particularly given she teaches in Orange County, not known for being the bluest part of the state. But the social part of social media means people who don’t live in Pitzen’s bubble got to see it. Shocker of shockers, they thought the disrespect for the flag — as well as coercing a student to pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag — was appalling.

What’s so disturbing is that these people post this thinking no one will care — like she’s not doing something wrong.

Well, now the district is investigating her.

Parents: remember to have conversations with your kids about their teachers, what they teach and how they teach it. https://t.co/3wN1kppBGe

— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) August 29, 2021

She should move to Afghanistan and strictly adhere to Sharia law. https://t.co/jvWz0yB71F

— Matthew Kolken (@mkolken) August 28, 2021

I’ve been reading about our fallen heroes all day, and then to see this…it made me weep. https://t.co/TaARsaWGHm

— Patricia Heaton (@PatriciaHeaton) August 28, 2021

Even in inside California, conservatives — notably Richard Grenell, former President Donald Trump’s acting director of national intelligence — were outraged at the video.

What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko?

Why are parents turning their kids over to someone they don’t know?

I’d like to talk to people who think this is good?!? https://t.co/VnNxeBWLjA

— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) August 28, 2021

“What kind of parent would allow their child to be taught by this wacko? Why are parents turning their kids over to someone they don’t know? I’d like to talk to people who think this is good?!?” Grenell tweeted.

Apparently, the school district is talking to people, too.

“We are aware of this incident and are investigating,” Annette Franco, public relations officer for the district, told Fox News.

“While we do not discuss employee related matters, we can tell you that showing respect and honor for our nation’s flag is a value that we instill in our students and an expectation of our employees. We take matters like this seriously and will be taking action to address it.”

That doesn’t exactly sound like they were pledging allegiance to the queers.

From the early stage of the fallout, it seems like even Pitzen might be getting the idea that the video wasn’t such a great idea.

“The original TikTok has since been taken down – along with all of Pitzen’s social media accounts – but has been viewed on Twitter more than 1.2 million times,” the Daily Mail reported.

I know this might come as a surprise to some in California, but yes, many millions of Americans still do respect the American flag. Possibly not knowing anyone who feels like that, Pitzen decided to tell the world her feelings, and how she manipulates her students.

To her, itt was all a great big laugh — particularly the part where she had a student pledge allegiance to the LGBT flag. LOL, amirite?

Perhaps — if you’re a liberal social media influencer and not a teacher. Pitzen isn’t getting paid to have yuks with the American flag or coerce the students in her charge to pledge allegiance to her pet cause. Hopefully, once the investigation is complete, she won’t be getting paid with public money at all.

Teacher Brags She Has No American Flag in Class, Here’s What She Tells Students to Pledge Allegiance To (westernjournal.com)

A recent Government Accountability Office (GAO) survey shows that at least 10 federal agencies have plans to expand their use of facial recognition technology over the next two years—a prospect that alarms privacy advocates who worry about a lack of oversight.

The GAO released the results of a survey of 24 federal agencies, finding that 18 of them use facial recognition technology. Fourteen of those agencies use the tech for routine activity, such as unlocking agency-issued smartphones, while six reported using facial recognition software for criminal investigations and five others use the technology for surveillance, the Aug. 24 report found.

“For example, [U.S. Department of Health and Human Services] reported that it used an FRT system (AnyVision) to monitor its facilities by searching live camera feeds in real-time for individuals on watchlists or suspected of criminal activity, which reduces the need for security guards to memorize these individuals’ faces,” the GAO said. “This system automatically alerts personnel when an individual on a watchlist is present.”

According to the GAO, at least 10 government agencies plan to expand their use of facial recognition technology through 2023. To do so, many agencies are turning to the private sector.

For example, “[the] U.S. Air Force Office of Special Investigations reported it began an operational pilot using Clearview AI in June 2020, which supports the agency’s counterterrorism, counterintelligence, and criminal investigations,” the GAO said.

“The agency reported it already collects facial images with mobile devices to search national databases and plans to enhance searches by accessing Clearview AI’s large repository of facial images from open sources to search for matches.”

The GAO’s Aug. 24 report follows June research that focused specifically on law enforcement’s use of facial recognition technology. The GAO’s June report revealed the vast troves of data held by federal law enforcement, including 836 million images held by the Department of Homeland Security alone.

The June report also revealed the lack of oversight regarding facial recognition technology. According to the report, 13 of the 20 federal law enforcement agencies that use the technology didn’t know what systems they use.

“For example, when we requested information from one of the agencies about its use of non-federal systems, agency officials told us they had to poll field division personnel because the information was not maintained by the agency,” the report said.

“These agency officials also told us that the field division personnel had to work from their memory about their past use of non-federal systems and that they could not ensure we were provided comprehensive information about the agency’s use of non-federal systems.”

The lack of oversight of the government’s use of surveillance technology is an issue that has drawn the attention of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle. Democrats have largely focused on the racial disparities in the accuracy of facial recognition, while some Republicans have expressed concerns about domestic surveillance.

Michigan resident Robert Williams, a Black man who was wrongly arrested in January after Detroit police incorrectly identified him as a felon based on shoddy facial recognition technology, testified about such problems at a U.S. House Judiciary Committee hearing.

“Why is law enforcement even allowed to use such technology when it obviously doesn’t work?” Williams said to lawmakers July 13. “I get angry when I hear companies, politicians, and police talk about how this technology isn’t dangerous or flawed or say that they only use it as an investigative tool.

“If any of that was true, I wouldn’t have been arrested.”

Williams said he supports the Facial Recognition and Biometric Technology Moratorium Act, which would halt the use of facial recognition technology by federal agencies until that use was authorized by Congress. However, little action has been taken on the measure—though Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) reintroduced the legislation in June.

With inaction on the federal level, states and localities have taken to curbing the use of facial recognition technology.

The state of Washington enacted a law in March 2020 that requires government agencies to obtain a warrant to run facial recognition scans. Local jurisdictions such as Oakland, San Francisco, and King County, Washington, have also banned government use of the technology.

Groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) support such efforts, arguing that the expansion of facial recognition technology must be halted until lawmakers can enact safeguards.

Others have cautioned against banning useful technology in the zeal to protect privacy.

“Critics miss the fact that the benefits of law enforcement use of facial recognition are well-proven—they are used today to help solve crimes, identify victims, and find witnesses—and most of the concerns about the technology remain hypothetical,” the Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, a largely pro-tech industry think tank, stated.

“In fact, critics of the technology almost always make a ‘slippery slope’ argument about the potential threat of expanding police surveillance, rather than pointing to specific instances of harm. Banning the technology now would do more harm than good.”

Federal Use of Facial Recognition Technology Expanding: GAO Report (theepochtimes.com)

Twitter has permanently suspended former New York Times journalist and author Alex Berenson, an outspoken critic of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus mandates and lockdowns—as well as Big Tech censorship.

“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” a Twitter spokesperson told news outlets on Aug. 28, referring to the disease caused by the CCP virus.

Berenson, on his Substack page, also confirmed the suspension, writing: “Goodbye, Twitter.”

“This was the tweet that did it,” he wrote, referring to a now-deleted tweet that downplayed the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. “Entirely accurate. I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this. Meantime, guess you’ll be getting more Substacks.”

Berenson later noted that the ban didn’t come as a surprise to him.

“I expected this day was coming,” he wrote. “And Twitter can’t touch my Substack (in fact, it reportedly tried to buy Substack last year, but Substack fortunately said no).”

Berenson also hinted at possibly filing a lawsuit against Twitter over the suspension.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies have said that COVID-19 vaccines “are safe and effective” after clinical trials and say that side effects are rare. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walenksy and others have cited studies saying that vaccines don’t necessarily prevent transmission of COVID-19, but have stated that the shots limit the severity of the illness.

Berenson worked for The New York Times from 1999 until 2010 before becoming a full-time author.

In July, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisors, criticized Berenson for his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“It’s horrifying … I just don’t get that. I mean, and I don’t think that anybody who is thinking clearly can get that,” he said of the crowd’s response to Berenson’s speech.

Right before his suspension, Berenson had often made note of the results of a preprint Israeli study that found that previous COVID-19 infection provides better protection against the Delta variant than any COVID-19 shot.

“SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021,” the study reads.

SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP virus.

Those who were vaccinated, the study found, were also at a higher risk of being hospitalized when compared to individuals who were previously infected.

Berenson also assailed what he described as Big Tech censorship, writing for the Wall Street Journal in December that the pandemic has ushered in a “new age of censorship and suppression.”

“Information has never been more plentiful or easier to distribute. Yet we are sliding into a new age of censorship and suppression, encouraged by technology giants and traditional media companies. As someone who’s been falsely characterized as a coronavirus ‘denier,’ I have seen this crisis firsthand,” he wrote, with Amazon having twice allegedly blocked the publication of his book.

Twitter Permanently Suspends Alex Berenson Over Viral COVID-19 Tweets (theepochtimes.com)

Google reported to the Australian federal government that it has removed around 800,000 YouTube videos concerning COVID-19, and 275 million COVID-19 apps from across its platform as part of its $1 billion (US $726 million) global campaign to “counter COVID-19 misinformation.”

It has also launched a US $3 million fund to wipe out alleged vaccine misinformation.

Google regards official government information from national health departments or the World Health Organization as reliable sources. Meanwhile, the WHO has noted that information changes over time as the world “learns more about the virus.”

Lucinda Longcroft, Google’s director of government affairs and public policy for Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate committee on foreign interference through social media in July that Google has extensive automated systems and a global network of staff to remove “false or misleading” COVID-19 content “as rapidly as possible.”

This is combined with algorithmic tools to help promote government-approved COVID-19 information and bury “borderline” content, which was defined in a January blog post by Youtube as content that “comes close to—but doesn’t quite cross the line of—violating our Community Guidelines.”

“This has been a broad campaign and activity across our organisation,” Longcroft said. “We have deployed significant resources and developed innovative tools, both human-based and machine-based, to curb harmful information and promote authoritative information.”

During the Senate meeting, Longcroft also confirmed that Google had “engaged very closely” with the Australian government, giving it AU $3.6 million worth of free advertising, resulting in 20.6 million impressions of government-approved COVID-19 information for Australian users.

Big Tech Censorship Concerns

Big tech’s efforts to remove public discourse around COVID-19 from online platforms has raised the ire of some researchers working on understanding the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, who have voiced concerns that big tech is stifling scientific debate around the pandemic, calling it censorship.

For example, in June, YouTube removed a video in which Stanford professor of medicine John Ioannidis discussed data related to COVID-19 and the negative impacts of the ongoing lockdown. Despite numerous challenges to the censorship, YouTube did not reveal which part of Ioannidis’s interview it construed as misinformation.

In May, Facebook deleted a post linking to a peer-reviewed Lancet article, which reported that SARS-CoV-2 spreads by airborne transmission. The article had criticised a claim made by a review funded by World Health Organization (WHO) that there were no firm conclusions to be drawn about airborne transmission.

Authors of the Lancet article included world-renowned experts on aerosols, including American scientist Kimberly Prather and the highly cited aerosol researcher Jose-Luis Jimenez from the University of Colorado. 

“We absolutely recognise that measuring misinformation is a real challenge,” Facebook’s head of policy in Australia Josh Machin told the Senate last month.

“First, because people’s views on whether a post on Facebook is misinformation or not can vary, and also because, particularly since the pandemic began last year, we’ve had to really rapidly scale up our policies and continue to consult with experts, and they have been shifting.”

Machin disclosed that Facebook had removed 18 million posts containing “harmful misinformation” about COVID-19 and vaccines, attached “false” labels to 167 million posts on these topics, and collaborated with 80 fact-checkers around the world.

But while social media companies usually turn to the WHO, local health officials, and governments for authoritative information, “this does not imply that they are unerring,” wrote Swedish bioethics researcher Emilia Niemiec in a scientific report last year.

Niemiec argued that because knowledge about COVID-19 is “currently limited and unsettled,” the medical community is still debating “various topics,” such as the lockdown policies and vaccines.

She also noted that while the censorship on social media might seem like an “effective and immediate” solution to the problem of misinformation, it can also limit the sharing of constructive critique of the current evidence and opinions.

These types of information, the medical researcher pointed out, is “necessary” to identify and correct potential errors, as well as further the understanding of complex issues surrounding the pandemic.

“A major question regarding the policies of the communication platforms is who exactly defines … which information is deemed to be false or harmful? And can we rely on these judgements?” Niemiec asked.

She added that if the “exclusive authority” to define what is scientifically proven or medically substantiated is left to social media providers or certain institutions, there is potential for errors and miscalculation, or even the potential abuse of this power to “foster political, commercial, or other interests.”

“The censorship is not based solely on science,” the researcher added. “An analysis of content banned on social networks suggests that the moderation is often politically biased.

“If we add to this the fact that Google is the most popular search engine, it becomes clear that a few tech companies have huge power over what information Internet users can see and how their views are shaped.”

Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts asked in the Senate on Aug. 11 whether there was a potential “conflict of interest” giving Google the final say in how COVID-19 vaccine information is screened and approved.

Roberts noted that Google and YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, owns 12 percent of Vaccitech Ltd. through a venture capital fund GV (formerly Google Ventures). Vaccitech is a UK-based biotechnology company that co-invented the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Epoch Times has contacted Alphabet, Vaccitech, and Google for comments but did not receive a response.

Google Tells Australian Government of $1 Billion Global Campaign to Censor ‘COVID-19 Misinformation’ (theepochtimes.com)

Deborah Seligsohn – an American academic frequently cited by Western media outlets to debunk the COVID-19 “lab leak” theory – has extensive ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including delivering lectures at the regime’s Central Party School and accepting fellowships from state-run universities. 

When cited, mainstream media outlets routinely fail to disclose Seligsohn’s deep ties to Beijing, which call into question her ostensible status as a neutral arbiter of COVID-19’s origins. Currently an Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Villanova University, Seligsohn was formerly in charge of science and health issues at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing during the SARS epidemic in the early 2000s.

Since her job in the U.S. State Department, Seligsohn has lectured and participated in fellowships at institutions led by the Chinese Communist Party. She addressed the Central Party School of the Chinese Communist Party – the “exclusive training ground for the elite apparatchiks groomed to govern China” – in December of 2011. She also spoke at the regime-sponsored Shanghai World Expo in 2010.

Seligsohn also served as a research fellow at the state-run Nanjing University before leveraging her credentials to contribute to a host of mainstream media outlets including NPR, Foreign Policy, Associated Press, and more.

In a Foreign Policy op-ed titled “Demands for a Lab Leak Investigation Are a Dangerous Distraction,” Seligsohn posits there “is no actual evidence for the lab leak allegation” despite the theory counting support from scientists and government officials including former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Chief Dr. Robert Redfield and former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe. Seligsohn’s op-ed was then utilized by Chinese state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN), amplifying her words in its article “Expert: Demands For Lab Leak Investigation Are Dangerous Distraction.

“Although virologists have said over and again that there is no actual evidence for the lab leak allegation of the coronavirus, some people in the U.S. just won’t let it go. The demands for a lab leak investigation are a dangerous distraction, warned Deborah Seligsohn, an assistant professor of political science at Villanova University, in an article published recently on the website Foreign Policy,” CGTN wrote in a summary of Seligsohn’s article.

Seligsohn has peddled similar sentiments in outlets including the Associated Press and NPR, both of which failed to include her Chinese Communist Party ties.

In addition to dismissing the lab leak theory, she has also defended scientific collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party, arguing that “joint US-China research on bat coronaviruses is going to be more important after this pandemic, not less” in the Financial Times.

Seligsohn has participated in exclusive interviews with Chinese state-run media outlets decrying officials who trace COVID-19 to the Wuhan Institute of Virology and defending National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded collaboration with Chinese Communist Party-run labs.

U.S. Republicans claim the virus causing COVID-19 escaped from a Wuhan lab. Assistant Professor Deborah Seligsohn of @VillanovaU says such conspiracy theories are very damaging. #covid #coronavirus @DebSeligsohn pic.twitter.com/Id9rffa4e1

— CGTN America (@cgtnamerica) August 24, 2021

She joins the ranks of more and more former U.S. government employees and so-called “experts” who have quietly been aiding the Chinese Communist Party for years.

EXC: Media’s ‘Lab Leak’ Denial Darling Is Actually Ex-Chinese Communist Advisor. (thenationalpulse.com)

The Federal Reserve’s preferred inflation gauge, the so-called core personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, vaulted in the 12 months through July to levels not seen in 30 years.

The Commerce Department said in a release Friday that core PCE rose 3.6 percent over the year in July, matching last month’s level, which was an increase from 3.5 percent in May and 3.1 percent in April.

The last time the core PCE inflation gauge saw a similar year-over-year vault was in July 1991, while the highest level the measure has hit is 10.2 percent in February 1975, when the economy was gripped in a troubling upwards wage-price spiral fueled by rising inflation expectations on the part of consumers.

The Fed looks to core PCE as a key inflation measure that informs its monetary policy, which has an inflation target of a longer-run average of 2 percent.

On a monthly basis, the core PCE gauge rose 0.3 percent between June and July, after rising 0.5 percent the prior month, suggesting inflationary pressures may have peaked.

It comes as Fed officials are meeting virtually for an annual economic symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, on Friday, with investors watching closely for signs of when and how the central bank may begin to roll back its extraordinary support measures for the economy. In response to the pandemic hit to the economy, the Fed last year dropped interest rates to near zero and set out on a massive asset purchasing program, buying around $80 billion in Treasury securities and $40 billion in mortgage securities per month.

In a speech Friday, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell addressed inflationary pressures, acknowledging a “sharp run-up in inflation” driven by the rapid reopening of the economy while reiterating his oft-repeated view that price pressures would moderate once supply-side shortages and bottlenecks further abate.

Powell acknowledged the relatively high level of Friday’s core PCE print, noting it’s “well above our 2 percent longer-run objective” and that both businesses and consumers “widely report upward pressure on prices and wages.”

“Inflation at these levels is, of course, a cause for concern. But that concern is tempered by a number of factors that suggest that these elevated readings are likely to prove temporary,” he said, arguing that the current spike in inflation is largely driven by a relatively narrow group of goods and services that have been directly impacted by the pandemic and the reopening of the economy.

“We are also directly monitoring the prices of particular goods and services most affected by the pandemic and the reopening, and are beginning to see a moderation in some cases as shortages ease. Used car prices, for example, appear to have stabilized; indeed, some price indicators are beginning to fall,” Powell said.

Powell added that officials have not, so far, noted broad-based inflationary pressures but acknowledged that evidence of such pressures spreading more broadly through the economy would be concerning and would prompt a swift policy response.

The Fed chief also addressed wage pressures. In the 1970s, upward pressure on wages combined with growing consumer expectations of further price increases to push prices higher, prompting the Fed to raise interest rates. Powell said there is little evidence of this phenomenon today.

“If wage increases were to move materially and persistently above the levels of productivity gains and inflation, businesses would likely pass those increases on to customers, a process that could become the sort of ‘wage-price spiral’ seen at times in the past,” Powell said.

“Today we see little evidence of wage increases that might threaten excessive inflation. Broad-based measures of wages that adjust for compositional changes in the labor force, such as the employment cost index and the Atlanta Wage Growth Tracker, show wages moving up at a pace that appears consistent with our longer-term inflation objective,” he said.

Powell also noted disinflationary forces like technology and globalization, arguing that there is little evidence these have suddenly reversed or abated, arguing that “it seems more likely that they will continue to weigh on inflation as the pandemic passes into history.”

He said the baseline economic outlook is for the economy to continue progressing towards maximum employment, with inflation returning closer to the Fed’s goal of averaging 2 percent over time.

Key Inflation Gauge Posts Fastest Annual Price Gain in 30 Years (theepochtimes.com)

When I was young and inexperienced, with no money and no career, I nonetheless made a firm assumption about people who’d made it, who’d risen to the top of their fields. They were daring individuals, I thought, outspoken and candid, willing to go against the crowd. These were people with a skeptical eye on the conventional wisdom, ever ready to challenge and dispute whenever they sensed a stale assertion of it.

When I worked for Dana Gioia at the National Endowment for the Arts, he told me once that when he was in advertising his team would meet at the end of the year to review themselves, and they spent five times as many minutes discussing what they did wrong as they spent on what they did right. That was the kind of toughness I imagined happened in every elite circle.

Look at the leaders of institutions, today, however, and you witness a pageant of conformity and timidity, guardedness ever present, the most powerful people in politics, education, entertainment, media, and business speaking in well-rehearsed terms, mouthing standard pieties with an air of solemnity that is one millimeter thick. Political correctness has turned them into cliche machines.

Did you notice the apology written recently by Mike Richards, the man who was to replace the late Alex Trebek as host of “Jeopardy!”? Richards is a big deal in the game show world, the executive producer of “Jeopardy!” and of “Wheel of Fortune,” winner of three Emmy Awards, too. But after he was selected as “Jeopardy!”‘s new host, some comments that he’d made on his 2013–14 podcast surfaced and set him up for what is now a familiar ritual: the high-profile cancellation. The ritual meant the loss of his post, and also a confession/contrition/plea on the accused’s part that is painful to read—not because of the sentiments themselves, however, but because of their dispiritingly banal expression.

Richards might have said, “Yeah, I made some dumb remarks just trying to get a laugh—I don’t regard them as cause for termination eight years later, though—let’s ease up, okay.”

No, instead we got the nauseatingly customary script:

“It is humbling to confront a terribly embarrassing moment of misjudgment, thoughtlessness, and insensitivity from nearly a decade ago,” he said.

It sounded like every other public apology we’ve heard in recent years, with studied humility and sober drama of self-confrontation. The words follow with all the formulaic layout of an algebraic equation. We have the expected family invocation as well, and role model talk: “My responsibilities today as a father, husband, and public personality who speaks to many people through my role on television means I have substantial and serious obligations as a role model, and I intend to live up to them.”

I don’t blame Richards for this, though. It’s the environment he’s in, a tiresome and phony place that the rest of America recognizes instantly for its mendacity. These declarations sound so sincere, but we know how calculating they are. To the material loss suffered by the penitent one, we have the pain of self-emasculation added in the most predictable language. Can’t any of these people think for themselves? Richards’ public career is over, at least for the near future and maybe the far. What does he have to lose? Why go official and betray his own heart (which is precisely what a man who adopts the idiom of his executioners is doing), even when you know it won’t save you?

Again, these are not people beaten down by life, their egos crushed by poverty and disappointment.  They have all the trappings of self-determination—money, education, worldliness, competitiveness, achievement—and yet the working-class guy and gal show a heckuva lot more independent spirit than Mr. Success ever does.

I think that this conformist atmosphere among the elite has played a significant role in the rise of populist anger in America. The contempt that the elite feel for the non-elite in our country is on display every day in the opinion pages and the liberal cable news shows. Just the recently, while driving through the South and listening to NPR, I heard the host introduce interviewee Robin D’Angelo with the question, “Why is it so hard for white people to talk about racism?” The willingness to cast an entire racial group as deficient in some way used to be called “stereotyping,” and enlightened folk universally rejected it. Here, however, it was offered as an enlightening observation. The condescension was thick and gleeful. The host wasn’t aware of how smug she sounded, but ordinary Americans have seen and heard such sentiments over and over, and they discern the contempt more acutely than elites realize.

How irritating it is, then, for these judgmental elites to appear so weak and obedient and cookie-cut at times that call for bold presentation. They’re avid about their superiority, but feeble in their individuality. They profess to be the best and the brightest, but they sink into stupid politically correct truisms when the pressure’s on. Liberalism claims to honor the individual voice, the lone dissenter, but never does a prominent 21st-century liberal wish to fall out of step with his fellows. The guns of cancellation are always primed, and he knows it.

A country whose leadership class is fearful and wary is in trouble. Insecurity makes for bad decisions, and for bad symbolism, too. A leader who stands up and apologizes for the “systemic” sins of the institution he leads doesn’t come off as properly sensitive and constructively progressive. He’s just weak. The celebrity who gets down on his knees and apologizes for some “phobic” remark made years earlier on the internet isn’t rightly repentant and newly enlightened. He’s just humiliating himself. Ordinary Americans draw a pat conclusion: These figureheads make a lot of money and they’re awfully full of themselves and down on us, but when you get down to it, they’re not so great, not at all.

This is the end of a great American tradition of rebelliousness. Ben Franklin ran away from Boston and struck out on his own as a mere teenager. Emerson praised self-reliance as the essence of genius. Thoreau headed to the woods because he couldn’t stand the copycat mentality of fellow citizens. Huck at the end aims to light out for the territory, knowing he’ll never fit in with civilized society. Those figures are the opposite of today’s Americans aspiring to the realms of the elite. Ambitious ones sense at an early age that climbing the ladder means fitting in and filtering impulses. The pipeline has sensors attuned to pick up the maverick spirit and mark it as suspect. Our leaders are tame souls whose wills are triggered mainly by the appearance of a rogue in their midst.

Therein lies the aversion to Donald Trump. It wasn’t Trump’s politics or policies that disturbed the elite. It was, instead, his headstrong personality and outspoken words. The content of his thought and speech they might have opposed in the normal political ways, but the character of the man couldn’t be handled that way. His performances could be received by them only as an admonishment. He spoke his mind, they didn’t, and that made them feel bad about themselves—as it should. Let us hope that more untamed figures surface and do the same thing.

Our Tame Leaders (theepochtimes.com)

Los Angeles Police Department officers patrol on bicycles past a homeless man on a downtown sidewalk in Los Angeles, California on June 7, 2017. 

As drug overdose deaths rise in California, state leaders are considering paying addicts to stay sober, but a former drug addict questions the efficiency of the incentive known as SB 110.

Yolanda Terrazas, a former addict and current secretary for The Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Center in Anaheim told The Epoch Times the proposed legislation provides only a temporary solution as addicts will use the money to purchase drugs.

“Giving money to an individual that has an addiction problem, doesn’t give them coping skills, doesn’t give them ways to manage their feelings and emotions,” Terrazas said.

“All they’re doing is giving them money to temporarily stop and they’ll just turn around and spend that money and find another way to receive funds. Somebody else will pay for their addiction, while they temporarily stop using, they won’t gain anything. If they don’t have skills, knowledge, or tools to use.”

Terrazas stated addicts need more proactive solutions, such as organizations that provide programs that allow addicts to find sobriety to last a lifetime. Rather than giving funds to addicts, the money should be used to assist in finding employment for individuals who complete addiction programs, she said.

Before finding employment at The Salvation Army eight months ago, Terrazas joined the organization’s six-month rehab program to get sober. The program taught her communication and employment skills while providing a structured schedule she accredits to helping her get sober.

Every day, the beneficiaries of the program are tested. Terrazas is approaching her two-year sober anniversary next month.

While discussion contingency management payments to encourage addicts to remain sober continues, similar legislation is supported by both Republicans and Democrats.

According to co-author of the substance use contingency bill Assemblymember Laurie Davies, studies have shown contingency management programs have been effective for veterans that are meth addicts.

“California’s opioid epidemic shows no signs of slowing down, even during the Covid-19 pandemic,” Assemblymember Laurie Davies told The Epoch Times in an email. “For years, our state has struggled to get a handle on this crisis and for years we have seen preventable suffering and loss.”

Davies said SB 110 is a “common-sense measure to try an all-of-the-above approach to really incentive people to get away from substance abuse.”

The legislation proposes that through MediCal, low-income residents can receive substance use disorder services and care.

Through the proposed contingency management services outlined in SB 110, beneficiaries will be limited to the number of incentives received.

Former Drug Addict Questions California’s Bid to Pay Addicts to Sober Up (theepochtimes.com)

U.S. investors cut their use of leverage in July, marking the first month since the onset of the pandemic that saw a reduction in the use of margin debt to buy securities such as stocks, potentially a warning sign for markets buoyed by heavy use of borrowed money.

Data from the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) on the use of margin debt, which is money borrowed by investors from brokers to buy securities, show $844 billion borrowed against portfolios in July. That’s the first month the metric has dipped since embarking on a steady month-over-month climb in March 2020, when it stood at $479 billion. Margin loans had hit a record high of $882 billion in June 2021, according to FINRA figures.

A separate data point from Interactive Brokers, which serves about 1.5 million clients, showed that margin debt among its customers fell 2 percent from June to July, according to the Financial Times.

Some see the reduction in borrowing as an ominous sign for markets, coming as some analysts believe the stunning bull run in U.S. equities is due for a correction.

Stephen Suttmeier, technical research strategist at Bank of America, wrote in a recent note cited by Fortune that “rising leverage tends to confirm U.S. equity rallies” and that it’s not new record highs for margin loans that are cause for worry, but “we get concerned when margin debt stops rising to suggest that investors have begun to reduce leverage.”

Nick Reece, portfolio manager at Merk Investments, told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement that the buildup in margin debt since the end of 2019 has matched the rise in the market, and “that’s nothing to be concerned about.”

In his view, “what would be concerning is to see a major buildup in margin debt relative to the market,” which ties into the idea that if asset prices continue to rise, then a commensurate rise in borrowing is nothing to worry about, particularly when—as now—borrowing costs are low.

At the same time, Reece believes the feverish bull run for the benchmark S&P 500, which has continued to push to new all-time highs, is ripe for a pullback.

“I continue to think the market is due for a short-term correction or sideways consolidation,” he said. “The market is trading at the top end of the bull market trend channel. And there hasn’t been a 10 percent correction since the March 2020 lows—it’s always worth being mentally prepared for one.”

“Of course, a 10 percent correction might only start 10 percent higher from here, so trying to time it is a fool’s errand in my view,” he said, noting that a positive medium-term market outlook for equities continues to be supported by a number of data points, including the business cycle expansion and the so-called TINA effect, an acronym for “there is no alternative,” which is the notion that frothy markets will keep rising despite showing signs of weaker fundamentals because there are no other options for yield-seeking investors.

Suttmeier argued in his note that the dial-back in leverage sends an ominous signal.

“Although peaks in margin debt don’t always coincide with highs for the [S&P 500], they tend to be bearish for equities,” he said.

Investors Borrow Less to Buy Stocks for First Time Since Pandemic Began, an Ominous Sign (theepochtimes.com)

America is underwriting its own demise.

Woke Capital apparently wants to hasten it.

Coming on the heels of a letter from titans of American industry to the Biden administration calling for it to jettison punitive China tariffs post-haste, and resume trade negotiations with Beijing, BlackRock’s research arm recently urged investors to increase their exposure to the PRC by two-to-three times.

The world’s leading asset manager of some $10 trillion in assets did so 18 months after China helped foist a pandemic on America and the world that has caused incalculable damage in blood, treasure, and sacrificed liberty and justice.

It did so after China crushed Hong Kong, clashed with India, antagonized Australia, and as it threatens a takeover of Taiwan.

It did so in spite of the fact that Xi Jinping is currently waging a jihad—euphemistically referred to as a “regulatory crackdown”—against China’s largest businesses, U.S.-listed ones of which saw $400 billion of market value lopped off this summer.

It did so surely knowing those funds ultimately redound to the benefit of the sworn adversary of the United States that seeks to supplant it and reign as the dominant world power.

It did so notwithstanding all the U.S. government has done for it, BlackRock having been dubbed the “fourth branch of government” for its political and pecuniary ties to the feds generally, and the quasi-public Federal Reserve in particular.

And it did so irrespective of its claimed fealty to progressive investing principles.

Former Trump administration Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger, one of the principal architects of the administration’s China strategy, broadly captured the symptoms of Woke Capital’s China addiction, and exposed the hypocrisy of the likes of BlackRock, in a recent piece in Foreign Affairs.

Pottinger noted:

“The retirement savings of millions of Americans currently finance Beijing’s military modernization and support Chinese companies that are complicit in genocide and other crimes against humanity. Even as Beijing was systematically expelling foreign journalists from China and making the country’s investment climate increasingly opaque, stock index providers such as FTSE Russell and MSCI continued to add Chinese companies to their indexes, sometimes under pressure from Beijing. Because many American funds benchmark their investments to those same indexes, billions of U.S. dollars automatically flow to Chinese companies, including those that Washington has sanctioned or subjected to export controls.”

This issue is so systemic that until the Trump administration forbade it, the retirement funds of federal employees were being funneled into malevolent Chinese companies as well.

Meanwhile, many financial firms pledging allegiance to “ESG”—prioritizing investments in companies that adhere to progressive environmental, social, and governance standards—demonstrate those concerns do not stretch beyond America’s shores.

As Pottinger adds:

“Some money managers…eschew investing in Western companies that don’t meet…’ESG criteria’…but happily invest in Chinese companies that feature atrocious records in all three categories. There are U.S. university endowments, for instance, that could deliberately decide to invest in only ESG-compliant companies in the United States but simultaneously invest in a raft of Chinese firms that flout all accepted standards of corporate governance and environmental stewardship. Chinese firms contribute more to greenhouse gas emissions, ocean plastic pollution, and illegal fishing than do the companies of any other country on earth. As for social responsibility, a wide variety of Chinese companies—from leading technology firms to manufacturers that export globally—work with Beijing’s security apparatus to track, incarcerate, and extract forced labor from ethnic Uyghur and Kazakh Muslims. With respect to corporate governance, CCP cells, operating mostly in secret, wield significant and often decisive control over Chinese companies—making a mockery of Western standards of corporate transparency and independence.”

When it comes to the likes of BlackRock, and its peers, it’s “ESG for thee, but not for Xi.”

American—increasingly in-name-only—financial firms, which lubricate the global economy, epitomize the Woke elite, who reject the very system from which they have so richly benefited.

That the rest of that elite—our political class, media, academic institutions, and so on—are literally and figuratively invested in, beholden to, or at minimum afraid of running afoul of China, is at root a symptom of an existential crisis that threatens to undo America far before we ever get around to doing all that is necessary to counter Beijing.

The existential crisis concerns our understanding of who we are as a nation, our confidence in its purpose, and our resolve to do whatever is necessary to defend and protect it, and cultivate its greatness.

A pervasive America Last mentality of Wokeism, decadence, and decline prevails over the commanding heights of society. It is born of a sort of moral narcissism, as Roger Simon has termed it, under which our elites confess their sins of power and privilege, while supporting paternalistic policies falling hardest on those for whom they claim to care most. The elites virtue-signal without bearing any cost—on the contrary, they end up further ensconced in their preeminent societal position.

Unserious as this cynical charade is, it may prove fatal.

A nation that prioritizes politics over merit; rewards mediocrity over excellence; protects the connected and targets the contrarian; permits tyranny under the guise of health and safety; privileges foreigners over citizens; and inculcates an ethos of national self-loathing aimed at undoing the system on which it is based, no matter the resources and capabilities of those laboring under it, will be poised to crumble well before it gets around to confronting its global foes.

Domestic peace and prosperity will erode; morale will recede; the will to survive, let alone thrive, will be extinguished.

The zeitgeist of Wokeism, decadence, and decline will defeat us before China has a chance to say “kowtow.” That our putative leaders already kowtow in word and deed—indeed are actively aiding, abetting, and enabling our worst enemy—demonstrates the extent of the rot that has already set in.

Woke Capital Hastens America’s Demise by Backing China (theepochtimes.com)

In light of the Biden Administration encouraging employers to mandate vaccines in order to retain employment while ironically not requiring vaccination mandates for their own staff, Gab has created a No Vax Mandate Job Board group.

You can view and join the group here.

This job board is for sharing job openings that do not require employees to inject themselves with an experimental substance or violate their bodily autonomy and religious beliefs in order to retain employment. This is also a board for job seekers to share their resume, skills, and story.

Related resource: DOWNLOAD COVID VACCINE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION DOCUMENTS HERE

At Gab we do not require our employees to be vaccinated. In fact we don’t pry into any of the personal health choices of our team because frankly it’s none of our business. We know there are many businesses who share these values with us and many people looking to work for those businesses.

This job board aligns with Gab’s vision of building infrastructure for a parallel economy and we hope to expand further on this job board initiative in the coming months.

As Facebook and other Big Tech giants work to silence and “fact check” any and all vaccine dissent Gab remains committed to mission of being the home of free speech, individual sovereignty, and the free flow of information online.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

The No Vax Mandate Job Board – Gab News

The Biden White House granted the Chinese Communist Party-linked firm Huawei – which was crippled by Trump-era sanctions – licenses to purchase American auto chips, according to reports. 

The decision follows the Beijing-backed tech firm hiring several lobbyists, including the brother of Joe Biden’s White House Counselor Steve Ricchetti and CNN guests who have pushed the Trump-Russia collusion hoax.

“U.S. officials have approved license applications worth hundreds of millions of dollars for China’s blacklisted telecom company Huawei to buy chips for its growing auto component business, two people familiar with the matter said,” Reuters reported.

The reported approval follows a Trump-era crackdown on the telecommunications firm, which has extensive links to both the Chinese Communist Party. Labeled a “national security threat” by the Trump administration and a decades-long Chinese military collaborator by the U.S. Department of Defense, Huawei routinely provides the regime backdoor access to its products, networks, and devices.

Former President Donald Trump’s State Department also emphasized that the Chinese Communist Party uses Huawei as an “instrument not only for making money but also for pursuing the Party-State’s agenda and fulfilling its strategic objectives […] deeply enmeshed in Beijing’s system of oppression at home and its increasingly assertive strategic ambitions globally.”

The Biden White House, however, has taken a considerably softer approach to the company, as Reuters notes:

Huawei, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment maker, has been hobbled by trade restrictions imposed by the Trump administration on the sale of chips and other components used in its network gear and smartphones businesses. The Biden administration has been reinforcing the hard line on exports to Huawei, denying licenses to sell chips to Huawei for use in or with 5g devices. But in recent weeks and months, people familiar with the application process told Reuters the U.S. has granted licenses authorizing suppliers to sell chips to Huawei for such vehicle components as video screens and sensors. 

Biden White House Approves Licensing Deal For Chinese Communist Party-Linked Huawei, Reversing Trump-Era Hardline. – The National Pulse

Oregon Governor Kate Brown has participated in events sponsored by Chinese Communist Party propaganda groups flagged by the U.S. State Department for “directly and malignly influenc[ing]” American officials, The National Pulse can reveal.

The unearthed Chinese Communist Party links follow Oregon Democrats calling for the cancellation of an upcoming event featuring The National Pulse’s Raheem Kassam and Natalie Winters due to the site’s promotion of “China-centric conspiracy theories” and “toxic beliefs.”

The Oregon Democratic Party is attempting to ban China-focused news reporters while one of the party’s most high-profile members – Governor Kate Brown – recently established links with one of the regime’s chief influence groups abroad.

Brown, in fact, has a long history of collaboration with groups tied to Beijing’s United Front Work Department.

Propaganda 101.

China’s billion-dollar “United Front” effort aims to “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission. United Front groups such as the China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF) have used tactics including free trips to China to garner “favorable coverage” from mainstream media outlets according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings.

Scarcely a “China-centric conspiracy theory” as the Oregon Democratic Party insist.

Brown also has deep ties to the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), dubbed the “public face” of the United Front and “avowedly an arm of the party-state.” The U.S. State Department has even described the CPAFFC as seeking to “directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders.

MUST READ:  Chinese Regime Takes Financial Stake In TikTok, Now Directly Linked to Facebook Fact-Checker ‘Lead Stories’.

Brown attended the group’s 2015 China-U.S.Governors Forum, an event the State Department has singled out for its subversive influence on U.S. politics:

“CPAFFC’s actions have undermined the Governors Forum’s original well-intentioned purpose.”

As the CPAFFC recounts, Brown emphasized that “Oregon hopes to enhance cooperation with China” at the event, which counted Chinese Communist Pary leader Xi Jinping as its top speaker. Following the forum, Brown was one of six governors to ink a deal with Beijing to collaborate on “clean technology and economic development.”

While taking a private meeting with CPAFFC Vice President Lin Yi the month following the forum, Brown reportedly described Xi’s remarks as “encouraging” while pushing to “strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in education, science and technology, health, tourism and sports”:

Governor Brown said it was her great honor to attend the Governors’ Forum held in Seattle last month. President Xi’s remarks were encouraging and the Forum helped provide great opportunities for U.S.-China cooperation. The State of Oregon regards China as the most important international partner and has  willingness to strengthen pragmatic cooperation with China in education, science and technology, health, tourism and sports, etc. 

REVEALED: Oregon Democrat Governor Kate Brown Has Long-Standing Ties to Chinese Communist Influence Groups. (thenationalpulse.com)

Liberal author Naomi Wolf’s DailyClout channel was abruptly deleted by YouTube after she posted an interview with a prominent critic of mandatory masking policies in schools.

“This censorship highlights the extreme clampdown on free speech and public discourse prevailing in the United States,” Wolf said in an Aug. 24 statement after the channel was eliminated.

Wolf, a co-founder of the DailyClout website, is a widely published journalist and bestselling author of books such as “The Beauty Myth: How Images of Beauty Are Used Against Women” (1990) and “The End of America: Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot” (2007). She was an adviser to then-President Bill Clinton’s 1996 reelection campaign and to then-Vice President Al Gore, both Democrats.

Twitter banned Wolf, who has been critical of vaccine passports and media coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, earlier this summer, as The Epoch Times reported at the time. Twitter said Wolf had disseminated vaccine misinformation in violation of the microblogging website’s policies, a claim she denies.

Wolf said she can’t state with certainty why YouTube suppressed the DailyClout channel.

“I can’t possibly know what YouTube’s motives are. There’s no appeal, as with Twitter, there’s no appeal process. There’s no one I can call,” she told The Epoch Times in a follow-up interview.

The DailyClout website’s mission “couldn’t be more pure and altruistic—to explain democracy,” Wolf said.

“We’re not partisan. We don’t support one side or the other. We literally exist to explain legislation and the legislative process and what’s in a bill. We read the stimulus bill and point out what’s in it. We read the health care bill and bullet point what’s in it,” Wolf said.

“We do the hard work of making civic engagement easy and accessible for everybody.”

YouTube sent DailyClout an email that advised that a video titled “Dr Naomi Wolf and Leslie Manookian speak about her award-winning documentary ‘The Greater Good,’” had been removed for violating YouTube’s “medical misinformation policy.”

“YouTube doesn’t allow claims about COVID-19 vaccinations that contradict expert consensus from local health authorities or the World Health Organization (WHO),” stated the Aug. 21 email, obtained by The Epoch Times.

The video featured an interview Wolf conducted with Manookian, who is president and founder of Health Freedom Defense Fund Inc. (HFDF). In the video, the two discussed apparent conflicts of interest at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is run by Dr. Anthony Fauci. NIAID is part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), which, in turn, is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

The NIAID holds patents on COVID-19 vaccines, which has been documented by Public Citizen and Axios.

Manookian noted that NIH allows employees who hold patents to receive up to $150,000 per year per patent, and Wolf said there was a need for an open public discussion of this issue.

Wolf was deplatformed by Twitter after sharing with 146,000 followers the resume of UNC senior researcher Dr. Ralph Baric, which shows that his work on gain-of-function research had been funded by NIAID under Fauci. Vanity Fair also reported on the funding.

“I can’t stress enough … [that] I was reporting … on primary source public documents … reporting matters of public record,” as opposed to breaking actual news, Wolf said in the interview.

Wolf said both the Twitter and YouTube bans came as she was merely “reporting on successful legal efforts or legislative efforts to ban vaccine passports, to ban vaccine discrimination, or to change policy around mask mandates.”

“I don’t know why a successful channel that was bringing matters of public importance to viewers was deplatformed,” Wolf said.

“Many, many, many credible important voices are being deplatformed, a good proportion on the right—I happen to be on the left … and I am part of a lawsuit against big tech.”

Wolf said she’s concerned about governmental collaboration with Big Tech.

“I believe that government is not allowed to use private industry to go around the First Amendment … and so if there’s any coordination there, that is unlawful and that’s what [the legal process of] discovery is for.”

Wolf said she was disturbed when President Joe Biden and his aides have raged against what they call misinformation.

“In a democracy, when a head of state … [engages in that] kind of finger-pointing, [such a thing] has no place in an open democracy with a First Amendment. It’s very dangerous,” she said.

“I think something very serious indeed is happening if a channel devoted to educating people from all walks of life, all political persuasions, every age, about democracy in America is closed down. That’s really serious.”

Officials at YouTube, which is owned by Google, didn’t immediately respond to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

YouTube Bans Forced-Vaccination, Big Tech Critic Naomi Wolf (theepochtimes.com)

Business headquarters are leaving the state at an accelerating rate. That’s according to a new report (pdf) for the Hoover Institution by Joseph Vranich and Lee E. Ohanian, “Why Company Headquarters Are Leaving California in Unprecedented Numbers.” Ohanian is a Hoover research fellow and professor of economics at UCLA.

Vranich has been one of my sources for 20 years. His Spectrum Location Solutions used to be in Irvine. Now it’s in McKinney, Tex., near Dallas. Just like so many ex-California firms and people.

The new report’s shocking news: For the first six months of 2021, company headquarters exiting California has doubled from the same period in 2018. And in the first half of this year, 74 headquarters skedaddled, more than all last year.

The reasons: “High tax rates, punitive regulations, high labor costs, high utility and energy costs, and declining quality of life for many Californians which reflects the cost of living and housing affordability.”

However, the authors caution the 2020 numbers were affected by COVID-19, which slowed planning and scouting for new locations.

From 2018 to 2021, here are the main destinations for company HQs:

Texas 114;

Tennessee 25;

Arizona 17;

Nevada 15;

Colorado 14;

Florida 13;

North Carolina 8;

Georgia 5;

Idaho 4;

Kentucky 4;

Virginia 4;

Indiana 4;

Alabama 3;

Missouri 3;

Minnesota 3;

Oregon 3.

The study notes of this and other data: “Additional companies have relocated their headquarters to other states, but the only states listed above are those where such events are public knowledge. The states listed have likely experienced more wins.”

Anecdotal evidence also supports the data. I know many people who have left, mainly for Texas and Tennessee. Almost everybody I know talks about getting out, although it’s still difficult to depart the balmy weather, family, friends, and local connections.

No Awareness

I asked Vranich if there’s any awareness of this exodus among Gov. Gavin Newsom and the state’s other top political leaders. “No,” he replied. He said the state isn’t even thinking about cutting taxes, despite what Newsom claims is a $78 billion budget surplus (but which the Legislative Analyst pegged at a still hefty $38 billion).

And he pointed to this July 2021 statement by Ohio Lt. Gov. John Husted: “Fifteen years ago we began reforming our tax plan—we eliminated the corporate franchise tax … eliminated the death tax—we went from a high-tax state to a lower-tax state. We absolutely do see it as a time to compete. Capital will ultimately go where it can be the most appreciated.”

The Hoover report itself noted: “Ohio is gaining popularity as the place where more companies call home. Five states lowered corporate income tax rates for 2021—Arkansas, Colorado, Indiana, Iowa and Mississippi.”

And: “Gov. Newsom’s strategy is not to reduce taxes but to increase incentives offered to companies, thus increasing taxpayer burdens…. Since the start of the Newsom Administration in January 2019, GO-Biz awarded 147 businesses a total of $593,844,974 in California Competes Tax Credits.”

I asked Vranich if there were any good signs. He said, “An honest politician would admit that the only bright spots include growing tax revenue from Silicon Valley’s billionaires and also from film-making that is being preserved thanks to the state’s generous economic incentives.”

Dismal Rankings

The study cited Chief Executive magazine’s ranking of state business climates, which pegged California the worst of the 50 states and Texas the best—in each case, for the 17th year in a row.

On the Tax Foundation’s 2021 State Business Tax Climate Index, California did better—49th place, after New Jersey. Their analysis: “California’s poor position is unlikely to improve considering that its businesses routinely face threats of increases in income taxes, property taxes, and sales taxes along with higher county and municipal taxes and fees.”

They key to what’s left of California’s once tolerable tax climate is Proposition 13, the property tax limitation passed by voters in 1978.

Vranich and Ohanian warn: “Pro-tax coalitions launch continual efforts to eliminate or weaken Proposition 13’s protections—coalitions comprised of legislators, deep-pocketed special interests, and interests such as government contractors and state and local government-employee unions. Such entities have spent millions of dollars to overturn Proposition 13. Thus far they have not been successful, but they certainly will try again.”

Losses By County

The largest California counties also suffered the largest losses of business HQs:

Los Angeles 54;

San Francisco 47;

Orange 29;

Santa Clara 28;

Alameda 20;

San Diego 17;

San Mateo 13;

Sacramento 8;

Contra Costa 6;

San Bernardino 6;

Riverside 5.

However, San Francisco’s population is 873,965 (2020 U.S. Census) compared to Los Angeles’s 3.9 million. That’s 4.5 times higher. So the per capita San Francisco HQ loss is about four times that of Los Angeles.

By contrast, Orange County’s population of 3.2 million (2020 U.S. Census) is just behind L.A.’s 3.9 million. But OC suffered only about half L.A.’s headquarters losses.

OC’s business and tax climate is well known as more welcoming than Los Angeles. For example, the City of Los Angeles’ sales tax rate is 9.5 percent. By contrast, most OC cities’ rates are 7.75 percent.

The study especially scorches California’s addiction to litigation. They charge, “Lawmakers in Sacramento continually enact laws designed to expand civil liability on business and property owners … California’s statutes and regulations are so unreasonable that companies have reported in confidence that their legal costs in California are disproportionate to the number of employees they have in the state.”

No wonder the American Tort Reform Foundation brands California a “legal hellhole.”

Workers Compensation Costs

California reformed workers compensation laws in 2003 under Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. It worked for a while. But a friend of mine in the industry said since then the reforms have been undercut by laws, court rulings and new legal maneuvers devised by plaintiff attorneys.

The Hoover study listed the average workers compensation costs, per $100 in 2020:

Worst:

New Jersey $2.52;

New York $2.23;

Vermont $2.21;

California $2.16;

Hawaii $2.08.

Best:

North Dakota $0.67;

Arkansas $0.72;

West Virginia $0.79;

Utah $0.85;

Texas $0.98.

Shocking Energy Costs

Business energy costs also are excessive. All that “green energy” doesn’t come cheap. Here are the electricity prices paid in March 2021, cents per kilowatt-hour:

Worst:

Hawaii $30.76;

Alaska $18.89;

California $17.20;

Connecticut $16.98;

Massachusetts $16.81.

Best:

Oklahoma $6.36;

Nevada $7.15;

Idaho $7.76;

Virginia $7.77;

Utah $8.01.

It’s going to get worse for California: “Customers in all parts of California are likely to see energy cost increases by virtually every utility. PG&E Corp. submitted a proposal to regulators for a rate increase totaling $3.6 billion starting in 2023 to help make its system more reliable and safer by sparking fewer fires.

“Southern California Edison in April 2020 increased its rates by approximately 7 percent overall. In 2021, SCE requested an additional residential rate increase of 14 percent, while commercial rates are estimated to rise between 9 and 11 percent.”

Major Firms Leaving

The report identified large and medium firms whose relocation can be found in news accounts. But many small firms just up and leave with no notice.

At the end the report lists all the corporate HQs that have left from January 1, 2018 to June 30, 2021. Some of those include:

Charles Schwab, from San Francisco to Westlake, Tex.;

DailyWire (Ben Shapiro’s website), from Los Angeles to Nashville, Tenn.;

Dole Food Co., from Los Angeles to Charlotte, N.C.;

Hewlett Packard Enterprise, from Santa Clara to Houston, Tex.;

Joe Rogan Experience, from Los Angeles to Austin, Tex.;

Kaiser Aluminum, from Lake Forest to Franklin, Tenn.;

Lockheed Martin FBM, from Sunnyvale to Titusville, Fla.;

Musk Foundation (Elon’s nonprofit), from Menlo Park to Austin, Tex.;

Mitsubishi Motors, from Cypress to Franklin, Tenn.;

National Hot Rod Association, from Glendora to Indianapolis, Ind.;

Nestle USA, from Glendale to Arlington, Va.;

Conclusion

In sum, it’s a dismal report. The state budget currently is buoyed by the bounty from Silicon Valley, whose revenues just keep growing and growing.

But for just about any other firm in California, the times are tough and getting tougher. And when the going gets too tough, even the tough get out.

California Businesses Exiting Faster than Ever (theepochtimes.com)

SEATTLE—A Washington state tech executive has been sentenced to two years in prison after fraudulently obtaining nearly $1.8 million in federal COVID-19 disaster relief loans.

Mukund Mohan, of Clyde Hill, previously worked for Microsoft and Amazon and was making more than $200,000 a year as the chief of technology for the Canadian e-commerce company BuildDirect when he was arrested in July 2020.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle said he submitted eight fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan applications seeking $5.5 million for companies he purportedly ran, and he actually received almost $1.8 million.

Mohan’s attorneys sought a six-month sentence, noting Mohan had no criminal history and had spent only $16,500 of the money. They said his actions, possibly triggered by mental health issues, were such an aberration for him that he fainted when federal agents knocked on his door.

Federal authorities were able to seize the money from Mohan’s accounts. He paid back the amount he had spent and was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.

As part of the scheme, Mohan submitted fake and altered documents, including phony federal tax filings and altered incorporation documents. He said one of his companies had dozens of employees when in reality it had none.

In a news release, Corinne Kalve, acting special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigation, attributed the crime to Mohan’s greed, saying that when people abuse such benefit programs “they are stealing from those that are most vulnerable.”

Tech Exec Sentenced to 2 Years for $1.8 Million COVID Fraud (theepochtimes.com)

Andrew Cuomo granted clemency to Kathy Boudin’s partner, David Gilbert

Former Weather Underground member David Gilbert may be poised for a jailbreak thanks to former New York governor Andrew Cuomo (D.), but progressives have long supported his terrorist wife, who has for the past seven years operated a criminal-justice reform think tank at Columbia University.

The Center for Justice, Kathy Boudin’s think tank at Columbia, is bankrolled by left-wing billionaires, including George Soros, Facebook cofounder Dustin Moskovitz, and Peter Buffett, the son of billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Their philanthropy has collectively poured millions into the Center for Justice, which Boudin cofounded in 2014 to push criminal justice reform.

Boudin and several Weather Underground members were convicted in 1983 on murder charges for their role in a robbery of a 1981 Brinks truck in Nyack, N.Y. Two police officers and a security guard were murdered during a shootout that followed the robbery. Cuomo, who resigned Tuesday in the wake of sexual harassment charges, granted clemency to Boudin’s partner Gilbert, who is serving a 75-year sentence for second-degree murder connected to the robbery.

Boudin and Gilbert are the parents of San Francisco district attorney Chesa Boudin (D.), who called on Cuomo last year to commute his father’s prison sentence.

Kathy Boudin rose through the ranks of academia after she was paroled in 2003. She joined Columbia University as an adjunct professor before she began the Center for Justice. The center says it partners with government agencies, universities, and advocacy groups to end mass incarceration and advance “alternative approaches to justice and safety through education, research, and policy change.”

The center also partners with the Manhattan district attorney’s office on a program called “Inside Criminal Justice.”

The NoVo Foundation, a charity founded by Buffett, contributed $2.5 million to the center in 2018. Buffett launched NoVo Foundation in 2008 with seed money from his billionaire father.

Soros’s Open Society Foundations in 2019 gave $150,000 to the Center for Justice. Moskovitz’s charity, the Open Philanthropy Project, sponsored the Center for Justice’s “Beyond the Bars” events in 2018 and 2019. The Ford Foundation, which sponsors a variety of left-wing causes, contributed $15,000 to “Beyond the Bars.”

Other backers are the Tow Foundation and Robert Sterling Clark Foundation.

Soros has backed progressive prosecutors across the country, many of whom have come under fire amid crime spikes in their cities. While Chesa Boudin has not received any direct support from Soros, he faces a recall effort from opponents who fault his policies for a dramatic increase in crime in San Francisco. Boudin ended the use of cash bail, supports cutting the jail population, and declines to prosecute crimes such as prostitution and public urination.

Boudin faced a recall effort after a career criminal, whom he declined to prosecute, killed two pedestrians while driving drunk on New Year’s Eve. The Moskovitz-funded Real Justice PAC, which supports the defund-the-police movement, has contributed more than $2 million to support progressive prosecutors, including Boudin. The political action committee contributed $100,000 to oppose the Boudin recall effort.

It is unclear whether the Center for Justice benefactors are aware of Kathy Boudin’s terrorist acts. In addition to her role in the Brinks robbery, she was at a Weather Underground hideout in 1970 when a bomb the group was building accidentally exploded. Three Weather Underground members died in the blast, though Boudin escaped without injury. The terrorists had hoped to kill Army personnel by setting off the bomb at a social event at New Jersey’s Fort Dix.

Billionaire Progressives Fund Weather Underground Terrorist’s Ivy League Think Tank (freebeacon.com)

I woke up to yet another hit piece about both Gab and myself this morning. You know you are over target when you’re taking flak on a weekly basis. The funny thing is the “hit piece” actually made Gab look pretty great.

The journo who wrote it admitted that Gab is positioned for success, admitted that Gab doesn’t answer to the powers that be, and admitted that I am personally authentic with my belief in Jesus Christ, free speech, and defending Christian values. It’s nice when even your enemies can’t help but to admit that you are authentic and poised for success if nothing else. You can watch my full response and breakdown of this latest attack on our community below. 

Click here to watch the video

This hit piece follows the recent defamatory attacks from the New York Times and the Washington Post after I dared to remind people that they have religious liberty and bodily autonomy in this country. Sharing vaccine religious exemption forms, which can be found here, is apparently “disinformation” according to the powers that be. Many people have reached out to let me know that the exemption forms worked at their school or place of employment, praise God for that! Maybe they will work for you too. 

So I’m going to keep sharing them and I encourage you to do so as well, especially now that employers seem likely to force vaccine mandates after the rushed FDA “approval.” Note that 100 million people who are already skeptical of every branch of government aren’t likely to be compelled by the approval of another three letter government agency which has so often in the past approved dangerous drugs that were later recalled. 

FDA approval means nothing to me. I don’t look to our failing secular and wicked institutions for validation, I have God for that. 

Remember when the FDA approved Quaaludes, which are now considered a Schedule 1 drug like heroin?

The FDA also approved DES, a “synthetic form of estrogen, was marketed to the expecting mother who preferred to have a healthy baby. It claimed to prevent spontaneous abortion, miscarriage, and premature labor. Studies soon showed that mothers who took DES during the first five months of pregnancy were more likely to suffer from complications with their reproductive systems. The FDA finally banned it in 1971.”

The FDA approved Vioxx, “an anti-inflammatory medication intended to treat arthritis, was the subject of one of the largest recalls in history. After it was approved in 1999, it was prescribed to over 20 million people and was one of the most widely prescribed drugs of 2003. The following year, it was recalled. One of the FDA’s own scientists, Dr. David Graham, estimated that Vioxx had been associated with more than 27,000 heart attacks or deaths linked to cardiac problems.”

There are many more examples that you can research yourself. The bottom line is that this is predicatably being used as an excuse for the government and employers to force experimential vaccinations on people. Meanwhile Israel, one of the most fully vaccinated countries in the world, is struggling with a surge of the Delta variant of Covid. 

The best part about all of these attacks is that Gab is so big now that this post you are reading will get more views than all of these hit pieces on us combined. That’s really what they are mad about: our distribution is now larger than some of the top “news” outlets in the world and there’s nothing they can do to stop me from hitting the publish button on this blog. 

I’m getting private messages from hundreds of people on Gab who are afraid of what these vaccine mandates will mean for their families and personal health. I don’t have all the answers, but I do have faith that God is using this time of trial to draw us closer to Him. Please know that I am praying for each and every one of you and am doing my best to share your stories and make sure that Gab is the one place on the internet where you can get access to information that is banned everywhere else. 

God bless you and God bless America,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

We need your help now more than ever. Gab is funded by people like you and has been for five years now. As our community continues to grow, our operational costs grow with it. We rely on The People to pay for our data centers, engineers, lawyers, accountants, customer service team, and more. If you got any value from Gab this year please consider upgrading to GabPRO for just $15 a month or making a one-time purchase/donation from our shop.

Hit Piece on Gab Falls Flat, Makes Gab Look Based – Gab News

My friend Owen Shroyer was forced to turn himself in yesterday.

While he never stepped foot inside the Capitol on January 6th, he’s been charged with “illegally entering a restricted area on Capitol grounds”, along with disorderly conduct.

Owen is a journalist and was covering the event with a news crew from InfoWars.

They never entered the Capitol, never jumped any barricades, and never disobeyed orders from law enforcement – because they were given none!

So why are the Feds going after Owen?

Because he’s an influential conservative media figure, and they can take him down despite having no evidence of wrong-doing!

Nancy Pelosi and House Democrats are leading this charge with the intent to dismantle the activist wing of the conservative movement.

And it’s working!

Families are being broken up, careers are being destroyed, and everyone else is being terrified into silence or submission.

But not me – and that’s why I’m asking for your support for my run for Congress.

We have to stand up and tell the truth about what is happening, and it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the majority of Republicans in Congress are silent as Nancy Pelosi is literally taking political prisoners around the nation!

Do you think Democrats in Congress would have the same reaction if BLM and Antifa had swarmed the Capitol with Molotov cocktails and bricks like they did in Portland?

No! Pelosi, AOC and Ilhan Omar would be defending their right to protest, despite the fact that their actions are far from being “mostly peaceful”!

While over 600 Patriots have been charged with crimes from January 6th, nearly every BLM rioter is getting their charges dropped!

We need members of Congress brave enough to stand up to partisan plots like this . . . and that’s why it’s so important to send patriots to Congress who have a spine!

Help me get there today by funding my campaign.

And please, take a moment to give your thoughts and prayers to Owen Shroyer and the hundreds of other men and women whose lives have been upended by this partisan political power play.

Thanks so much for your time.

Respectfully,


Laura Loomer

National security officials fear newly freed Afghan terrorists may exploit border crisis

The Taliban’s release of prisoners throughout Afghanistan poses a security threat on the U.S.-Mexico border, according to senior Department of Homeland Security officials and national security experts.

The Taliban freed thousands of prisoners, many of whom either worked directly with or had ties to al Qaeda and ISIS, when it captured Bagram Air Base on Aug. 15. Afghan soldiers surrendered the base with virtually no resistance, leaving U.S. intelligence officials with little ability to track suspected terrorists. The crisis at the southern border could prove an inviting target for terrorists, according to the DHS official, who requested anonymity to speak candidly.

“We’ve always been surprised by the countries of origin we see individuals coming from along our southwest border. It’s more than likely some Afghans will arrive now as well,” the official told the Washington Free Beacon. “It’s definitely a national security threat, and the strain of forces currently along the border would make it more likely that some would slip through illegally.”

The intelligence community warned the administration about terror threats at the southern border just weeks after President Joe Biden announced the planned withdrawal from Afghanistan. National security officials warned the White House in a classified memo, first reported by the Free Beacon, that border patrol officers had arrested two Yemeni nationals on the terrorist watch list as they attempted to cross into the United States from Mexico. One of the two men was also on the FBI’s no-fly list. Their names have not been released to the public.

The Biden administration did not respond to a request for comment.

Senators from both parties pressed Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Gen. Mark Milley on whether the Pentagon would change its terror assessment of Afghanistan following the collapse of the U.S.-backed government. The two acknowledged their report to Congress in June—that Afghanistan contained only a “medium” risk of terror groups—was likely obsolete. 

Individuals who had worked on assessing terror threats at the southern border told the Free Beacon that the surge of migrants has left border patrol officers ill-equipped to face the new terror challenge. Former Immigration and Customs Enforcement chief of staff Jon Feere said the record-setting influx of illegal border crossings will only exacerbate the threat.

“When it comes to cross-border illegal immigration that goes undetected, there is obviously no background check taking place,” Feere, who now works at the Center for Immigration Studies, said. “Customs and Border Protection apprehended foreign nationals from countries across the globe and that means there are likely many aliens from problematic countries getting past the border patrol already.”

Border patrol agents already complain about a lack of resources to adequately police the southern border. Biden administration officials have also come to acknowledge the strain. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas privately told border agents, “If our borders are the first line of defense, we’re going to lose and this is unsustainable,” according to Leaked Audio of his remarks. 

More migrants were recorded crossing into the country in July—212,000—than at any point in the last 21 years. Illegal crossings jumped 13 percent from June, which previously held the 21-year record. 

DHS Braces for Terror Threat on Southern Border (freebeacon.com)

On Saturday 18 RINOs joined Democrats to pass the Democrat Party’s infrastructure bill. Democrats never allowed a similar bill to reach President Trump’s desk last year.

The RINOs gave Joe Biden a rare win at a time when the illegitimate president is sinking in the polls and continues to struggle with his diminishing faculties.

Mitch McConnell led the charge of the RINOs.
Here are the 18 GOP members who voted for this monstrosity on Saturday:

** Mitch McConnell
** Roy Blunt of Missouri,
**Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia,
**Bill Cassidy of Louisiana,
**Susan Collins of Maine,
**John Cornyn of Texas,
**Kevin Cramer of North Dakota,
**Mike Crapo of Idaho,
**Chuck Grassley of Iowa,
**John Hoeven of North Dakota,
**Deb Fischer of Nebraska,
**Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,
**Rob Portman of Ohio,
**Jim Risch of Idaho,
**Mitt Romney of Utah,
**Thom Tillis of North Carolina,
**Todd Young of Indiana
**Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

On Sunday morning Senator Kevin Cramer joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss his vote for the Socialist infrastructure plan. Big mistake. Maria Bartiromo chewed him up and spit him out — as he deserved.

TRENDING: MUST SEE: Mike Lindell on War Room Lays Out Day-by-Day Schedule on What to Expect at Much Anticipated Cyber Symposium This Week (VIDEO)

Bartiromo pointed out in the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” monstrosity there is not a single dime for a border wall during the worst border crisis in US history. Cramer had no response. Instead he started spouting off about the globalists at the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable who support the Uniparty spending plan.

Cramer was outmatched and looked ridiculous.
Maria destroyed him.

On Monday the War Room panel pointed out that there is not a dime in the trillion dollar plan supported by RINOs for border security.
And yet 18 Republicans voted for it.
It is clear these dirty RINOs DO NOT support their constituents.

Below are the 17 REPUBLICAN Senators and links to EMAIL THEM, keep your messages short, but let’s flood their email boxes with messages like “VOTE NO on Trillion Dollar Infrastructure bill”, “NO to Socialism”, “NO to GREEN NEW DEAL”.

Via Midnight Rider:

Contact Sen Blunt
https://www.blunt.senate.gov/contact/contact-roy
Senator Burr
https://www.burr.senate.gov/contact/email
Senator Cassidy
https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/contact
Sen Capito
https://www.capito.senate.gov/contact/share-your-opinion
Senator Collins
https://www.collins.senate.gov/CONTACT
Senator Cramer
https://www.cramer.senate.gov/contact/contact-kevin
Senator Crapo
https://www.crapo.senate.gov/contact/email-me
Senator Graham
https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-senator-graham
Senator Grassley
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/contact
Senator Hoeven
https://www.hoeven.senate.gov/contact/email-the-senator
Senator McConnell
https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=contact
Senator Murkowski
https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/contact/email
Senator Portman
https://www.portman.senate.gov/meet/contact
Senator Risch
https://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email
Senator Romney
https://www.romney.senate.gov/contact
Senator Tillis
https://www.tillis.senate.gov/email-me
Senator Young
https://www.young.senate.gov/contact

Read More

THEY HATE YOU: Mitch McConnell and 17 RINO Senators Vote for Infrastructure Bill that Included ZERO DOLLARS for Border Security During Greatest Border Crisis in History – Orwellian Post

The city’s enforcement against shoplifters has dwindled, and these are the results.

San Francisco ranks as the fifth-worst city in the US when it comes to retail theft. Now, the problem is getting so bad that businesses like Target and Walgreens are being forced to make drastic changes in response.

“For more than a month, we’ve been experiencing a significant and alarming rise in theft and security incidents at our San Francisco stores,” a Target spokesperson said. “With the safety of our guests, team members and communities as our top priority, we’ve temporarily reduced our operating hours in six San Francisco stores.” 

Target stores normally stay open to 10:00 pm, but many in the San Francisco area will now close their doors at 5:00 pm or 6:00 pm. Meanwhile, Walgreens stores are faring even worse, with some shutting their doors altogether.  

“Representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable,” the New York Times reported. 

This isn’t just a problem at big-box retailers, either. The California Retailers Association has decried the rampant theft, which is hurting Golden State businesses small and large. Theft has gotten so bad in some parts of San Francisco that it is beyond belief. 

“I’m new to San Francisco,” Times journalist Thomas Fuller told a grocery store clerk shortly after moving to the city. “Is it optional to pay for things here?” It sounds like an absurd thing to ask, but Fuller explains that he was genuinely forced to wonder what was going on after he witnessed people walk into Walgreens and Safeway, grab stuff, and walk out.

The dysfunction-driven closures and scale-backs at major retailers will hurt everyday Californians. From the workers whose hours are cut to the customers who can’t get the products they need, this undermining of the market will have many victims beyond just those who are directly robbed. 

The sad affair is another reminder of the timeless truth described by economist Thomas Sowell, who said that property rights “belong legally to individuals, but their real function is social, to benefit vast numbers of people who do not themselves exercise these rights.”

Protecting property rights is a necessary precursor for basic economic activity to function. As I previously explained on FEE.org:

“When property rights are insecure or routinely violated—widespread looting and arson are prime examples—the very foundation of a community’s economy is undermined. Investors understandably balk at the uncertainty and forgo investing there, while entrepreneurs cannot launch new enterprises or even continue current ones without the knowledge that they will be secure in their property. As a result, job opportunities and income streams dry up.” 

This is why millions of our taxpayer dollars are given to police departments and other government agencies tasked with enforcing property and protecting our rights. But in San Francisco, they’ve woefully failed this most basic responsibility. 

A 2014 ballot referendum downgraded theft of goods less than $950 in value to just a misdemeanor, a slap on the wrist, and the city’s enforcement against shoplifters has dwindled in the years since.

That’s why Target and Walgreens are being forced to take drastic actions to protect their stores. But if widespread violation of property rights continues unpunished, they won’t be the last businesses in San Francisco to close their doors in response.

Target and Walgreens Are Making Drastic Changes Amid Skyrocketing Shoplifting in San Francisco – Foundation for Economic Education (fee.org)

The pandemic was and remains brutal for average people. But not for the rich: central bank policies created 5 million new millionaires during the pandemic. It’s the latest sign that our economy is rigged for the wealthy.

A new report from Credit Suisse has revealed that more than five million people have become millionaires over the course of the pandemic, while the number of people worth over $50 million increased by over a quarter. The main driver of this shocking increase in wealth has been rising equity and residential property prices, which increased aggregate household net worth to around $418.3 trillion. Meanwhile, more than half of the world’s population had less than $10,000 in net assets.

Most of the increase in wealth was concentrated in already wealthy countries, with the United States accounting for a third of the new millionaires. The number of millionaires in China is increasing and has now reached around one in two hundred; but in the United States, 8 percent of the population are now millionaires.

How is it that the countries worst affected by the pandemic were also those that registered some of the largest increases in wealth over the course of the last year? One reason stands out above all others: central bank asset purchases.

Over the course of the pandemic, central banks have pumped around $9 trillion worth of new money into the global financial system. This comes on top of the $10 trillion added between the financial crisis and the pandemic. The world is awash with central bank money, and it’s all flowing up rather than trickling down.

Central bankers initially argued that quantitative easing — as the policy of creating new money to purchase assets such as government bonds is known — would boost lending by providing commercial banks with more cash. Of course, the issue banks were facing in the wake of the financial crisis was not a lack of access to cash, but a lack of viable investment opportunities in the context of chronically deficient demand, exacerbated by austerity.

It ultimately became clear that QE worked, but not in the way we had initially been told. Rather than boosting lending, QE came to operate through a portfolio rebalancing effect — in essence, when governments purchased long-dated government debt, they provided private investors with cash that needed somewhere to go.

Investors responded by rebalancing their portfolios away from government bonds, which were providing negligible yields thanks to increased central bank demand, and toward other assets like equities, corporate bonds, and real estate.

In the United States, the result of this increased demand for equities was the longest bull run (a bout of optimism and rising stock prices) the world had ever seen. Cash flooding into high yield corporate bonds had also inflated a corporate debt bubble — it was so easy for even the most poorly managed companies to access cash that economists were pointing to the problem of the “zombie” corporation, which could only afford to service the interest payments on its outstanding debt.

The main impact of QE in the UK has been felt in the housing market, where prices have skyrocketed to far above where they were prior to the financial crisis of 2008 — particularly in London, the South East, and Manchester.

The pandemic has been a recession like no other — rather than falling, as they have during all previous recessions, house prices have risen. Thanks to the closure of offices and resulting emigration from cities, house prices in the countryside are now rising at a rate of around 14 percent per year next to 7 percent for urban areas.

What’s more, with interest rates at rock bottom and pensioners able to draw down their entire pensions in one go, many more older people have decided to purchase second homes to rent out to younger people. The Conservatives have created seven hundred thousand new landlords over the course of the last decade, shoring up their voter base while exacerbating the housing crisis.

Absent rent controls or a functioning social housing system, young people are being forced to pay extortionate amounts — often half to two thirds of their salaries — on rent just for the privilege of living within commuting distance of their jobs.

Meanwhile, huge international asset managers like Blackstone are taking advantage of the plentiful cash now available in the international financial system to buy up huge swathes of real estate to rent out themselves. The rise of the corporate landlord was first evident in the United States, then in Ireland, and now it is becoming increasingly visible in the UK.

In other words, the most powerful states in the capitalist world system are now in the business of creating millionaires. Undemocratic and unaccountable central banks are using the power of signories to inflate the fortunes of the wealthy; meanwhile the UK Treasury tries to prevent people from accessing sick pay.

The dramatic increases in the fortunes of the superrich during a pandemic in which millions have died and millions more have been pushed into poverty provide yet more evidence that we live in a warped economy and a sick society. But observing the irrationality of the current system is not enough; unless working people organize to hold the powerful to account, the capitalist state will continue to support the interests of the millionaires over the millions of people who work for them.

While Average People Suffered, 5 Million People Became Millionaires Under COVID-19 (jacobinmag.com)

‘Crime Is Skyrocketing In Many Big Cities,’ But Some Jurisdictions Have Cut Police Budgets In Response To ‘Defund The Police’ Demands And Many Others Are Rapidly Losing Police Officers

SENATE REPUBLICAN LEADER MITCH McCONNELL (R-KY): “From coast to coast, American families are facing an explosion of violent crime on their streets and in their neighborhoods. 2020 saw homicides skyrocket nationwide. The sharpest one-year increase in decades. And 2021 is already shaping up to be even worse…. Crime and delinquency have many causes. In some ways, the pandemic likely contributed. But it is impossible to ignore that these terrible trends are coming precisely as so-called ‘progressives’ have decided it’s time to denounce and defund local law enforcement. Seattle cut police funding by 20%. Minneapolis defunded cops by millions of dollars. The District of Columbia’s city council approved $15 million in cuts. These bone-headed decisions are the direct result of an anti-law-enforcement fad that has swept through the political left like a wildfire…. So, look, I’m not sure exactly how the rantings of far-left Twitter about crime and policing became official Democratic Party dogma in so many places across America. What I do know is that ordinary Americans cannot bear much more of this. And that goes double for the most vulnerable neighborhoods.” (Sen. McConnell, Remarks, 5/27/2021)

FLASHBACK: Far-Left Democrats: ‘No More Policing,’ ‘We Need To Disinvest From Police,’ ‘Defunding Police Means Defunding Police’

REP. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-NY): “Defunding police means defunding police.” (“Ocasio-Cortez Dismisses Proposed $1B Cut: ‘Defunding Police Means Defunding Police’,” The Hill, 6/30/2020)

REP. ILHAN OMAR (D-MN): “I will never stop saying, ‘Not only do we need to disinvest from police but we need to completely dismantle the Minneapolis Police Department.’” (“‘Defund The Police’ Movement Hits Semantics Roadblock,” The Hill, 6/14/2020)

REP. CORI BUSH (D-MO): “Defunding the police isn’t radical, it’s real.” (Rep. Bush, @CoriBush, Twitter, 1/27/2021)

REP. RASHIDA TLAIB (D-MI): “… Policing in our country is inherently & intentionally racist. … I am done with those who condone government funded murder. No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.” (Rep. Tlaib, @RashidaTlaib, Twitter, 4/12/2021)

REP. AYANNA PRESSLEY (D-MA): “From slave patrols to traffic stops. We can’t reform this.” (Rep. Pressley, @AyannaPressley, Twitter, 4/12/2021)

And Sure Enough, Left-Wing Activists ‘Successfully Pushed For $840 Million In Police Spending Cuts Across The U.S.’

“According to Interrupting Criminalization, an initiative at the Barnard Center for Research on Women that supports defunding the police, organizers successfully pushed for $840 million in police spending cuts across the U.S., and $160 million in shifts to other social programs. Cities cut another $35 million by canceling contracts with police departments to patrol schools, the center said.” (“Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime,” The Wall Street Journal, 5/26/2021)

• “Last summer, nearly half of 258 police agencies surveyed by the Police Executive Research Forum, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said their budgets had been cut or were likely to be cut. The cuts hit purchases of new police equipment hardest, followed by training, hiring new officers and overtime spending, the survey found.” (“Cities Reverse Defunding the Police Amid Rising Crime,” The Wall Street Journal, 5/26/2021)

In 2020, The United States Had ‘The Largest Single One-Year Increase In Homicides Since The Country Started Keeping Such Records’

“2020 has been a killer year in every way, including murder. The United States has experienced the largest single one-year increase in homicides since the country started keeping such records in the 20th century, according to crime data and criminologists.” (“2020 Saw An Unprecedented Spike In Homicides From Big Cities To Small Towns,” The Washington Post, 12/30/2020)

• “It is a trend mirrored across the country, where crime is skyrocketing in many big cities, putting liberal leaders under pressure to balance the demands of activists against the concerns of some residents about rising violence. In New York, where homicides grew by nearly 45 percent last year, crime is dominating the discussion in the race for mayor…. Even smaller cities haven’t been spared the rise in violence: Louisville last year set a record for homicides, with 173, and this year is on pace to surpass that.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

“A group of 34 of America’s biggest cities suffered a 30 percent total increase in homicides in 2020, according to a new survey published Monday, with police in four Midwestern cities reporting increases of more than 60 percent over 2019. In Milwaukee, homicides rose from 97 to 189, a 95 percent increase. In Louisville, homicides increased from 90 to 173, a 92 percent increase. Of the 34 cities surveyed by the National Commission on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice, a project of the D.C.-based Council on Criminal Justice, only four — Raleigh, N.C.; Baltimore; St. Petersburg, Fla.; and Virginia Beach — saw declines in 2020.” (“Homicides Rose 30 Percent In 2020, Survey Of 34 U.S. Cities Finds,” The Washington Post, 2/03/2021)

“[In March], the F.B.I. released preliminary statistics showing a major increase in murder last year, with a 25 percent rise in agencies that reported quarterly data. The F.B.I. did not receive data from several cities with known big increases in murder like New York, Chicago and New Orleans, but cities of all sizes reported increases of greater than 20 percent. A 25 percent increase in murder in 2020 would mean the United States surpassed 20,000 murders in a year for the first time since 1995. (The final official numbers for 2020 will not be released until late September.)” (“Murder Rate Remains Elevated as New Crime Reporting System Begins,” The New York Times, 3/16/2021)

Over The First Three Months Of 2021, The Murder Rate In 37 Cities Is Up 18 Percent Compared To The Same Period In 2020

“The big increase in the murder rate in the United States in 2020 has carried over to 2021. A sample of 37 cities with data available for the first three months of this year shows murder up 18 percent relative to the same period last year.” (“Murder Rate Remains Elevated as New Crime Reporting System Begins,” The New York Times, 3/16/2021)

As Murders Surged In 2020, Seattle Cut Its Police Department’s Budget ‘By Nearly 20%’

“Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan signed off on the 2021 budget, after months of debate and public outcry.  It includes a significant cut to the Seattle Police Department (SPD), and puts new money in new hands. … The 2021 budget sliced SPD’s budget by nearly 20% …” (“Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan Signs City’s 2021 Budget With 20% Cut To Police,” King5, 12/01/2020)

“Calling 2020 a year like no other, interim Seattle police Chief Adrian Diaz said Monday his department’s homicide detectives investigated 50 homicides last year, representing a 61% increase over the 31 people killed as a result of homicidal violence in the city in 2019. Citing data that shows homicides across the country were up 36% in 2020 compared to the previous year, Diaz said Seattle’s 50 homicides were the most investigated in the city in 26 years.” (“50 People Died From Homicidal Violence In Seattle In 2020, The Largest Number In A Quarter Century, Police Chief Says,” The Seattle Times, 1/11/2021)

The LAPD Had Its Budget Slashed By $150 Million In 2020 As Murders In Los Angeles Reached The Highest Number ‘In More Than A Decade’

“Now, a year after Mr. Floyd’s death, Los Angeles and other American cities face a surge in violent crime amid pandemic despair and a flood of new guns onto the streets. The surge is prompting cities whose leaders embraced the values of the movement last year to reassess how far they are willing to go to reimagine public safety and divert money away from the police and toward social services…. A year after streets echoed with calls to ‘defund’ law enforcement and city leaders embraced the message by agreeing to take $150 million away from the Los Angeles Police Department, or about 8 percent of the department’s budget, the city last week agreed to increase the police budget to allow the department to hire about 250 officers. The increase essentially restores the cuts that followed the protests. On the streets of South Los Angeles, where residents have historically suffered the most from aggressive policing and gang violence and where much of the current surge in shootings is happening, officers are ramping up patrols and stopping more cars to look for guns. ‘We’ve lost more than a decade of progress,’ Chief Michel Moore of the Los Angeles Police Department said in an interview, referring to the significant drops in crime in the years before the pandemic…. [T]he number of murders in Los Angeles last year — 350 — was the highest in more than a decade …” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

• “If the old crop of activists sought changes by partnering with the police, the defining view of the new movement is a focus on money, and trying to pull as many dollars as possible away from police budgets and toward other programs that address systemic racism.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

Following A $15 Million Cut To Washington, D.C.’s Police Department Budget, 2020 Ended With The District’s Highest Number Of Homicides In 16 Years

“Homicides in the District rose for the third consecutive year in 2020, reaching nearly 200 for the first time since the previous decade and further stressing a city rattled by the pandemic and social and political unrest. The number of killings stood at 198 Thursday evening, making the past year the deadliest in the city since 2004. More than 920 people were shot in D.C. in 2020, a 64 percent increase from three years ago.” (“Homicides In D.C. Hit 16-Year High; Shootings Also Have Spiked,” The Washington Post, 12/31/2020)

• “In 2020, homicides in D.C. hit a 16-year high. If current trends continue, 2021 could be even deadlier. D.C. Police data reports a 43% increase in homicides from the same time last year, with 2021 totaling 63 as of April 28, compared to 44 on this date in 2020.” (“DC’s Homicide Rate Already Is Outpacing 2020, Which Saw A 16-Year-High,” WUSA, 4/28/2021)

“D.C. lawmakers [in June] advanced measures to cut $15 million from the police department budget, a change that defund-the-police activists dismissed as insufficient and the police chief warned could result in the loss of hundreds of officers. The D.C. Council’s Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety unanimously approved a plan to reduce the $533 million police budget proposed by Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) by cutting vacant positions and rejecting an expansion of the police cadet program. The committee also voted to cut the department’s capital budget and reallocate funds to alternative violence-reduction programs.” (“D.C. Activists And Lawmakers Confront Challenges Of ‘Defund Police’ Movement,” The Washington Post, 6/25/2020)

‘Last Year, The Homicide Rate In Minneapolis Hit Highs Not Seen Since The Mid-1990s’ And Still The City Council Voted To Cut $8 Million From The City’s Police Department

“Last year, the homicide rate in Minneapolis hit highs not seen since the mid-1990s, when killings led the city to be derisively called ‘Murderapolis.’ The bleak trend has continued into this year. According to police data, nearly 200 people have been shot this year — more than double the number in the same period last year and the most recorded in more than a decade. There have been 31 homicides, compared with 15 at this point in 2020.” (“A Year After George Floyd’s Death, Minneapolis Remains Scarred, Divided,” The Washington Post, 5/23/2021)

“Months after their pledge to dismantle the Police Department fell apart, members of the Minneapolis City Council voted [December 10^th] to divert nearly $8 million from the proposed policing budget to other city services … Trimming of those items raised alarm bells among the police chief and some lawmakers, as the department has lost 166 officers this year — some permanently, others because they are on disability, and still others saying they have post-traumatic stress from the massive protests that swept the city over the summer.” (“Minneapolis City Council Votes to Remove $8 Million From Police Budget,” The New York Times, 12/10/2020)

• “Steven Belton, the president of the Twin Cities chapter of the Urban League, called the cuts to the police budget misguided and misinformed. He said council members made it an either-or proposition between funding the police and other services when he believed everything was needed…. [In 2020], the city has logged 5,164 violent crimes, up 25.7 percent from last year, according to data from the Minneapolis Police Department. The cuts to the police budget could embolden criminals to think that policing was going away, Mr. Belton said. ‘It’s the wrong optics to the communities that are most impacted detrimentally by violence and the absence of policing and poor policing,’ he said.” (“Minneapolis City Council Votes to Remove $8 Million From Police Budget,” The New York Times, 12/10/2020)

‘The Number Of Slayings In 2020 Dwarfs Anything Louisville Has Seen’

“In 2020, 173 people in Louisville were victims of criminal homicides, according to metro police — shot, bludgeoned, strangled or stabbed to death. Another 20 people were slain in homicides investigated by other Jefferson County police agencies or in cases that didn’t result in criminal charges. The number of slayings in 2020 dwarfs anything Louisville has seen — obliterating the previous record of 117 criminal homicides in 2016…. Of last year’s homicides, 160 were shootings. Another 585 people were shot and survived — another grim milestone.” (“170-Plus Killings And Few Answers: Louisville Besieged By Record Homicides And Gun Violence,” Louisville Courier Journal, 1/01/2021)

• “Louisville is on pace to have another record year for homicides in the city [in 2021]. Community activist Christopher 2X said — as of the end of April — Louisville has now seen the deadliest four-month stretch of gun violence in the city’s history. ‘In four months and three days, we’re at 59 fatals, 218 nonfatals, and we’ve never been in this space before,’ 2X told WDRB News on Monday. ‘We’ve never reached almost 60 homicides this fast.’ 2X said April was the 15th consecutive month with double-digit homicides…. In the first weekend in May, LMPD responded to at least six separate shootings, two of them ending with fatalities.” (“Several Weekend Shootings Put Louisville On Pace For Another Record Year For Homicides,” WDRB, 5/03/2021)
• “As of [April 25], there had been 84% more non-fatal shootings so far this year, with 201, compared to the 109 instances reported during the same time in 2020, LMPD statistics show. There were 56 murders reported as of Sunday — a 75% increase from the 32 reported by April 25, 2020.” (“Louisville Police Department Staffing ‘In Dire Straits’ Amid High Crime Rates, Recruitment Woes: Union,” Fox News, 4/27/2021)

“In November, Louisville social justice organizer Travis Nagdy met with another local leader, Kenneth Forbes, to discuss turning attention to the city’s seemingly intractable violence. ‘The people dying look just like you,’ Forbes, founder of the group Mothers of Murdered Sons and Daughters United, told the 21-year-old Nagdy. ‘We are just asking for help, for compassion, for people to open up their ears and listen. For people to talk about it.’ Days after their meeting, Nagdy was dead, fatally shot in an apparent carjacking.” (“170-Plus Killings And Few Answers: Louisville Besieged By Record Homicides And Gun Violence,” Louisville Courier Journal, 1/01/2021)

“It’s a complicated problem, said Christopher 2X, founder of the Louisville nonprofit Game Changers, which tracks gun violence and supports victims…. 2X noted, Black men haven’t been the only victims. The majority of homicides each year, he said, take place in areas covered by LMPD’s First, Second and Fourth divisions, downtown and in Louisville’s West End. In 2020, though, 51 homicides were reported in areas patrolled by LMPD’s Third, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth divisions — on the outskirts of the city and in some of Louisville’s more upscale neighborhoods. In 2019, just 22 homicides were reported in areas covered by those five divisions. Just as striking, 2X said, is 34 female homicide victims in 2020, a higher number than in previous years. ‘That’s a number that we’ve got to be concerned about,’ he said.” (“170-Plus Killings And Few Answers: Louisville Besieged By Record Homicides And Gun Violence,” Louisville Courier Journal, 1/01/2021)

In New York City, Shootings Nearly Doubled In 2020 While Murders Rose Around 45%

“Homicides and shootings in New York City rose sharply in 2020, New York Police Department officials said Thursday, as police resources were stretched thin by the Covid-19 pandemic and responses to large-scale protests over the killing of George Floyd. The number of murders in the city rose to 462 last year, up nearly 45% from 319 in 2019, according to the NYPD. The increase accompanied a steep rise in gun violence more intense than any seen in the previous 20 years, according to police statistics. The city recorded 1,531 shootings in 2020, 97% more than the 777 in 2019. Data showed the number of shooting victims in the city more than doubled to 1,868 in 2020 from 923 in 2019. The number of shooting victims exceeds the number of shootings because multiple people may be shot in a single incident.” (“New York City Homicides And Shootings Rose Dramatically In 2020,” The Wall Street Journal, 1/07/2021)

• “The major rise in gun violence in the city began in 2020, after a period in which violent crime dropped to its lowest levels in more than six decades. Now, even as New York City emerges from the pandemic, the spike that began as the virus spread last spring has shown no sign of receding: As of the second weekend in May, the city had recorded 505 shooting victims, the most through that point of any year in the last decade. … Murders in New York are at 146 this year, up from 104 over the same period in 2019 and 115 in 2020. … This year, about 96 percent of shooting victims have been Black or Latino, police data shows, similar to previous years. One percent, or seven victims, have been white.” (“The Spike in Shootings During the Pandemic May Outlast the Virus,” The New York Times, 5/14/2021)

“A shooting in Times Square, a spike in gun violence and a spate of high-profile attacks on subway riders have pushed concerns over crime and public safety to the forefront of the New York City mayor’s race, altering the trajectory of the contest as the June 22 primary approaches. A year after the rise of the ‘defund the police’ movement amid an outcry over racial injustice, the primary will offer one of the first tests of where Democratic voters stand as the country emerges from the pandemic but confronts a rise in gun violence in major cities like New York…. As of May 2, 132 people have been killed compared with 113 this same time last year, a 17 percent increase, according to Police Department statistics. There have been 416 shooting incidents compared with 227 this time last year, an 83 percent increase…. Even before the Times Square shooting, there were mounting signs that public safety was intensifying as a concern in New York: a Spectrum News NY1/Ipsos poll released late last month found that ‘crime or violence’ was a major concern for New York Democrats, second only to the coronavirus.” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

New Yorkers: ‘Are We Back In The ‘70s And ‘80s?,’ ‘I Want Someone [For Mayor] Who Can Make Us Feel Safer’

“Jade Lundy, a child-care worker who lives in the Bronx, said she has begun taking more precautions because there seems to be an uptick in crime, which she blamed on economic hardship caused by the pandemic. ‘I don’t take out my phone anymore,’ she said Monday afternoon as she headed for the subway to the Bronx, from Times Square. Ms. Lundy, who recently turned 18, said she plans to vote in the mayoral election and has just begun learning about the candidates. ‘I want someone who can make us feel safer,’ Ms. Lundy said. ‘Especially for the women. We have it harder out here.’” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

“A spate of crimes targeting Asian-Americans have also alarmed New Yorkers across the city, some candidates say. ‘That makes them very worried about the city, and particularly for people who have lived here a long time,’ said [Kathryn] Garcia, the former sanitation commissioner. For those New Yorkers, she said, some wonder, ‘Are we back in the ‘70s and ‘80s?’” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

“‘Back in the ‘80s and ‘90s, people that lived here, including myself, you know, we witnessed some pretty nasty stuff,’ said Representative Adriano Espaillat, a New York Democrat. ‘We don’t want to slip back to that. So I think that that’s going to be a major issue with this year’s mayoral race.’ … Diana Ayala, a councilwoman representing East Harlem and the Bronx … said the response from the mayoral candidates to addressing crime will determine if she endorses anyone else for mayor. ‘Citywide, people are alarmed at the numbers of shootings but quite frankly, those numbers have been pretty consistent in my district for the last three and a half years,’ Ms. Ayala said. ‘Every summer, even as we speak, we are planning for what’s to come.’” (“Shootings and Subway Attacks Put Crime at Center of N.Y.C. Mayor’s Race,” The New York Times, 5/11/2021)

San Francisco Is Suffering From A ‘Shoplifting Epidemic’ That Has Forced Stores To Shutter And Even City Officials Now Admit Is ‘Out Of Control’

“[T]he shoplifting epidemic in San Francisco has only worsened. At a board of supervisors hearing [in early May], representatives from Walgreens said that thefts at its stores in San Francisco were four times the chain’s national average, and that it had closed 17 stores, largely because the scale of thefts had made business untenable. Brendan Dugan, the director of the retail crime division at CVS Health, called San Francisco ‘one of the epicenters of organized retail crime’ and said employees were instructed not to pursue suspected thieves because encounters had become too dangerous. ‘We’ve had incidents where our security officers are assaulted on a pretty regular basis in San Francisco,’ Dugan said. The retail executives and police officers emphasized the role of organized crime in the thefts. And they told the supervisors that Proposition 47, the 2014 ballot measure that reclassified nonviolent thefts as misdemeanors if the stolen goods are worth less than $950, had emboldened thieves. ‘The one trend we are seeing is more violence and escalating — and much more bold,’ said Commander Raj Vaswani, the head of the investigations bureau at the San Francisco Police Department. ‘We see a lot of repeat offenders.’” (“San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge,” The New York Times, 5/21/2021)

• “The cost of business and shoplifting led Walgreens to shut 17 locations in San Francisco in the past five years — an ‘unpopular and difficult decision,’ Jason Cunningham, regional vice president for pharmacy and retail operations in California and Hawaii, said at the hearing…. Theft in Walgreens’ San Francisco stores is four times the average for stores elsewhere in the country, and the chain spends 35 times more on security guards in the city than elsewhere, Cunningham said. At CVS, 42% of losses in the Bay Area came from 12 stores in San Francisco, which are only 8% of the market share, Brendan Dugan, director of organized retail crime and corporate investigations, said at the hearing…. CVS security guards in San Francisco have been assaulted, especially at the now-closed Seventh and Market streets location, Dugan said. Some businesses instead hire costly off-duty police officers.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)
• “A statement from Safeway read at Thursday’s hearing blamed Proposition 47, which lowered penalties for thefts under $950, for ‘dramatic increases’ in shoplifting losses…. Professional shoplifters can work the system by stealing items under the threshold from one store and hitting several retailers in the same day.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

“Retailers attributed a majority of losses to professional thieves instead of opportunistic shoplifters who may be driven by poverty, with one CVS leader calling San Francisco a hub of organized retail crime. Losses have shuttered drugstores providing vital services, even more critical during the pandemic as some stores give out vaccines.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

• “For years, John Susoeff walked from his home two blocks to the Walgreens at Bush and Larkin streets — to pick up prescriptions for himself and for less mobile neighbors, to get a new phone card, and to snag senior discounts the first Tuesday of the month. That changed in March when the Walgreens, ravaged by shoplifting, closed. Susoeff, 77, who sometimes uses a cane, now goes six blocks for medication and other necessities. ‘It’s terrible,’ he said. On his last visit before the store closed, even beef jerky was behind lock and key. A CVS nearby shuttered in 2019, with similar reports of rampant shoplifting. ‘I don’t blame them for closing,’ Susoeff said.” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

“‘This has been out of control,’ said Supervisor Ahsha Safaí, who held a hearing [May 13^th] with retailers, police, the district attorney and probation departments. ‘People are scared to go into these stores — seniors, people with disabilities, children. It’s just happening brazenly. We can’t just as a city throw up our hands and say this is OK. We have to come up with solutions.’” (“‘Out Of Control’: Organized Crime Drives S.F. Shoplifting, Closing 17 Walgreens In Five Years,” San Francisco Chronicle, 5/25/2021)

• “On Thursday I called Ahsha Safaí, the member of the board of supervisors who organized the hearing. We talked about the thefts we had witnessed in the city and the sidewalk thieves’ markets where steaks, bicycles and other stolen goods are fenced. Safaí said he had recently stopped to inspect one of these markets at 24th and Mission. ‘Half of Walgreens was on the sidewalk. I’m not kidding,’ Safaí said. ‘I was blown away. I’ve never seen anything like it in this city.’ He talked about what he called a laissez-faire attitude in San Francisco. ‘It has become part of the landscape,’ he said of thefts. ‘People say, “Oh, well, that just happens.”‘ Thieves ‘are obviously choosing locales based on what the consequences are,’ Safaí said. ‘If there are no consequences for their actions, then you invite the behavior. Over and over.’” (“San Francisco’s Shoplifting Surge,” The New York Times, 5/21/2021)

As Violent Crime Surges In Cities, Metro Police Departments Are Hemorrhaging Officers While The Remaining Cops ‘Are Demoralized And Pulling Back On Patrolling High-Crime Areas’

“In some liberal cities like Minneapolis, where gun violence is surging and where the Police Department is depleted after so many officers quit or retired, some elected leaders and older clergy members and civil rights leaders are echoing the sentiments of conservative commentators who claim a link between the violence and the movement to defund police departments, saying officers are demoralized and pulling back on patrolling high-crime areas.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

• “From the crucible of 1992, former gang members in South Los Angeles worked to make peace, often working alongside a new force of police officers dedicated to ‘community policing,’ in which officers worked in specific neighborhoods to establish close relationships with residents. Leon Gullette, who was drawn to activism after 1992, now works for Community Build, which was co-founded by Maxine Waters, a local congresswoman. Mr. Gullette’s specialty is working to achieve truces between rival gangs. Unlike the younger activists with Black Lives Matter, he says working with the police is essential. ‘We can’t operate without the police, so I wouldn’t say defund the police,’ Mr. Gullette said.” (“A Year After George Floyd: Pressure to Add Police Amid Rising Crime,” The New York Times, 5/23/2021)

SEATTLE: “Seattle Police Department (SPD) officers are leaving the job at a ‘record pace’ — with at least 249 people leaving over the past year alone — as statistics show manpower has been declining in recent years, according to union and city officials. SPD boasted a police force of 1,276 uniformed members at the end of February 2020, but staffing levels dropped by 249 people to 1,027 by the end of February 2021, according to the most recent department statistics available to Fox News. … As of last week, 66 officers had left SPD so far this year, Solan said, confirming previous reports from local news. ” (“Seattle Police Department Losing Officers At ‘Record Pace’ Amid Budget Uncertainty, Lack Of Support: Officials,” Fox News, 5/01/2021)

• “Last June, three months into the pandemic and as the protests exploded in Seattle and around the country, officer-initiated calls plunged to a 10-year low. Mostly for that reason, the department’s overall call load dropped by almost half, to about 16,000, by June, according to a Seattle Times analysis. At the same time, the department’s monthly average response time for all remaining calls more than doubled, climbing from about 20 minutes in May to 41 minutes in June. Response times for the most serious 911 calls — known as Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls — increased 48% and 84% respectively, even though commanders repeatedly ordered the department to operate on ‘priority call status.’ That means dispatchers send officers only to Priority 1 and Priority 2 calls such as homicides, robberies and assaults, skipping other calls, such as break-ins.” (“Seattle 911 Response Times Climbed In Summer 2020. Now, Police And Activists Debate What Comes Next,” The Seattle Times, 5/11/2021)

LOS ANGELES: “Like in many major cities, homicides and other forms of violent crime in Los Angeles have risen sharply in the past year, and the LAPD is facing an unexpected staffing shortage. The LAPD was expected to have roughly 9,750 officers at the end of June 2021 — but an increase in retirements and resignations have left the department with about 9,450 officers, which [Mayor Eric] Garcetti is hoping to expand with this year’s budget.” (“Defund The Police Encounters Resistance As Violent Crime Spikes,” CNN, 5/25/2021)

WASHINGTON, D.C.: “The D.C. police force has already grown smaller, from about 3,850 officers in 2019 to around 3,650 today, because of budget cuts lawmakers imposed last year and an increasing number of resignations and retirements. About 90 percent of the department’s budget is spent on personnel.” (“Commission To Reimagine Police In District Grapples With Effort To Defund,” The Washington Post, 3/21/2021)

MINNEAPOLIS: “Nearly 200 Minneapolis police officers have left the department since Floyd’s death, including dozens who filed PTSD claims after the unrest.” (“Minneapolis To Bring In Outside Help To Deal With Surge In Violence,” Star Tribune, 5/24/2021)

• “Minneapolis police are bringing in outside help as they try to temper violence that killed four people this weekend alone, including a college senior who was out celebrating graduation. Mayor Jacob Frey said the city has asked state and federal agencies for assistance, citing the city’s shortage of officers. ‘Safety in our city has to be a priority,’ Frey said at a news conference Sunday, calling the reinforcements ‘really, really critical.’” (“Minneapolis To Bring In Outside Help To Deal With Surge In Violence,” Star Tribune, 5/24/2021)

LOUISVILLE: “Nearly 190 cops left the Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) in 2020 and 43 have stepped away from the Kentucky city’s agency so far in 2021, either choosing to retire or resign altogether, as law enforcement officials struggle to recruit new members to make up for a deficit in manpower, authorities and a union spokesperson told Fox News on Tuesday.” (“Louisville Police Department Staffing ‘In Dire Straits’ Amid High Crime Rates, Recruitment Woes: Union,” Fox News, 4/27/2021)

• “Statistics provided by LMPD on Tuesday show the department has hired 26 new members so far this year, while 43 have left. The 1,069-person department falls 255 people short of its ‘authorized strength’ of 1,324 — the number of personnel it is authorized to employ, statistics show.” (“Louisville Police Department Staffing ‘In Dire Straits’ Amid High Crime Rates, Recruitment Woes: Union,” Fox News, 4/27/2021)

NEW YORK: “More than 5,300 NYPD uniformed officers retired or put in their papers to leave in 2020 — a 75 percent spike from the year before, department data show. The exodus — amid the pandemic, anti-cop hostility, riots and a skyrocketing number of NYC shootings — saw 2,600 officers say goodbye to the job and another 2,746 file for retirement, a combined 5,346. … Through April 21 of this year, 831 cops have retired or filed to leave…” (“Are NYPD Officers Rushing To Retire Amid City’s Anti-Cop Climate?,” New York Post, 4/24/2021)

Research | The Leader Board | THE NEWSROOM | Republican Leader (senate.gov)

Almost two years ago I published an article on the Gab News blog about Silicon Valley building a social credit system for the West. Exactly one year later I experienced this social credit system personally when my business and family were blacklisted by Visa after also being banned by Paypal, Stripe, Coinbase, and many other payment processors.

Around this time I wrote a warning letter to Christians about what was happening to me and what would soon be happening, and is now happening, to many more people like me. Earlier this year I wrote about the Silent Christian Secession and the need to build our own economy to escape the pending tyranny of the global elite.

In April I wrote that the vaccine was becoming a religious ceremony–cultish even– and that Christians had an absolute right to reject it. That same month I defended the right of everyone to speak freely on Gab and openly discuss, question, and criticize the vaccines in the face of a censorship crackdown on dissent from Big Tech.

God has blessed me with tremendous foresight and discernment about the Enemy’s next move. It’s why I started Gab in 2016 long before censorship became the center of cultural and political debate that it is today. It’s why I wrote these many warnings to Christians and freedom lovers everywhere about what was happening to me because I knew that it would soon be happening to all of you too.

I don’t take this blessing lightly. These things weigh on my heart heavily as a husband and father of two young children. Everyday I hear stories from Gabbers about how they are being forced and coerced into taking the vaccine when they do not want to.

I am praying that God gives them the peace and discernment they need right now. It sickens me that the Enemy is making my brothers and sisters in Christ choose between feeding their families and retaining their bodily autonomy and being true to their deeply held religious beliefs.

This week we published several religious exemption document templates for people who need them and the response was unbelievable. Many people sent emails, Gab comments, and direct messages thanking us for publishing these and I pray to God that they helped even one person facing an impossible decision to make the right one.

The people in power don’t care about Covid. They don’t care about the vaccines. They care about control. This entire situation is one giant demoralization campaign designed to grind us all down spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. If they can get us all to submit once, they can get us all to submit fully and forever.

We can’t let that happen. Do not let them get in your head with the fear mongering, the lies, and the shapeshifting narratives. They are exposing themselves like never before in human history and we are living through a period of immense spiritual warfare.

We must remember that we are human beings, made in the image of God. We always have choices. We always have hope. Darkness cannot and never will consume the light of Christ.

Do not look to political leaders for help. There is no political solution to a spiritual problem. Look to Jesus Christ. Open your Bible. Pray. Put on the full armor of God and get to work building something new. They have left us no choice. We can and must rebuild from scratch and it starts in your own heart and in your own local community.

God bless you all,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

I Tried My Best To Warn You This Was Going To Happen – Gab News

When Gab was banned from several banks earlier this year it inspired us to get right to work building our own free speech-friendly financial infrastructure. The age of financial censorship has long been coming and Gab was the canary in the coal mine on this issue over three years ago. When the financial censors came for us, few stood up to defend us. We were told to “go build our own” if we didn’t like it, so that’s exactly what we have been doing.

Facing financial censorship is nothing new for Gab.

Gab has been banned from Paypal since 2018 along with many other payment processors including Stripe, Square, Coinbase, and more.

We are even banned from accepting Visa and Mastercard despite operating a fully legal American business that sells software services and merchandise like hats, mugs, and shirts as our business model.

Gab literally cannot accept credit or debit card transactions to sell you a hat on the internet. Thankfully we had options: checks and bitcoin. New and old technology coming together to defeat financial censorship. It’s not perfect, but it works and we are about to take it to the next level.

If you’re reading this it’s inevitable that one day all of these things can and will happen to you too, which is why we have been working so hard to build a solution for everyone.

As I’ve been writing about for a while now: we need to build an alternative economy. In wake of this vaccine mandate madness that fact has never been more clear. Our human rights are being ripped from us and I’m not going to stand by and watch it happen.

Businesses, venues, sports teams, employers, and even our own federal government are all moving towards forcing people to choose between living and working in the existing economic system or being cast out for refusing to inject an experimental substance into their bodies.

Choosing between feeding your family and retaining your bodily autonomy while remaining true to your religious convictions shouldn’t be a choice any human being has to make. It’s evil, it’s wrong, and you should be speaking boldly against it.

If they want us out of their system, then so be it: we will build our own. Now is the time to stand up tall and walk away from this chaos. With our dignity and self-respect in hand we will work together to forge a new path forward that secures a future of freedom for our children.

At Gab we are making great progress on GabPay, our Paypal alternative, as one of our many initiatives in the fight against the tyranny of the global elites.

At the moment we are jumping through a lot of legal and regulatory hoops, but things are moving quickly. Building your own Paypal is not as simple as “build the software and ship it.” The software side for GabPay is actually done already and works great. It’s the red tape that takes time.

An alternative to Paypal has never been more important now that the ADL will be combing through your financial transactions and ruining people’s lives for financially supporting people and organizations they don’t like.

I’m actually really glad that Gab has been banned from Paypal for years, because it protects all of our customers from the prying eyes of the demons at the ADL. As always, God had a plan and getting banned only led us to build GabPay.

We are waiting on the lawyers to do their thing and aiming for a launch by end of the year, but I just want you all to know that something is actually being done about this madness.

Everyone loves to whine and complain about Big Tech censorship, and politicians–including President Trump— love to raise money on the issue, yet no political or legal “solutions” ever result in any concrete change or substantive action.

At Gab we are builders. We don’t sit around and whine about problems, we actively build solutions to those problems. Gab is the only community with a proven track record of not bending the knee to groups like the ADL and we’ve paid the price dearly for it by getting banned from every app store, payment processor, and even banks because of it. Despite it all we continue to survive and thrive by the grace of God and thanks to the support of people like you.

If you want to help fund our efforts in building GabPay you can upgrade to GabPRO for 15 bucks a month or make a purchase/donation on the Gab Shop. We have been testing out an early version of GabPay on our PRO upgrade system and Shop, so you can take an early look at it there if you decide to make a purchase. 

Thank you for your continued support and prayers! Keep the faith. I know many of you are scared, tired, anxious, stressed, and uncertain about our future. I believe that God is using this time to draw us closer to Him and to reveal the wicked underbelly of the global elite for all of us to see. Ultimately He is in control and that brings me tremendous peace. I pray it does for you as well.

God bless,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

An Alternative To Paypal Is Coming – Gab News

This evening I received an email (shared below) from Davey Alba at the New York Times. Davey explained that “researchers” from two organizations with direct connections to and funding from Facebook were defaming both myself personally and Gab as a whole for spreading “misinformation.”

I’ll get into the baseless and defamatory claims, but first I’d like you to tell you a little more about these two organizations.

Stanford Internet Observatory is led by Alex Stamos who is the former Chief Security Officer for Facebook. The CTO of Stanford Internet Observatory, David Thiel, also worked at Facebook before starting at SIO. Stanford itself is of course widely known as the Ivy League snob school that the “best and brightest” in Silicon Valley all attended and have deep connections to.

The second organization is Graphika. Graphika is a Facebook-funded “research” group whose executive leadership team includes Camille Francois, a woman worked at Google’s infamous censorship technology incubator “Jigsaw,” and Lauren Pencek who previously worked for the National Security Agency (NSA) among others.

The New York Times own reporting confirms that Graphika receives its funding from Facebook and Facebook is also listed as one of Graphika’s top clients right on the front page of their website. Aside from Facebook, Graphika also partners with DARPA, a research and development agency of the United States Department of Defense, along with Google, TikTok, and Pinterest.

Gab will never work with organizations like these and will never subject our community members to the slimy eyeballs of people who wish to “research” them. In fact we have spent years and a considerable amount of our engineering resources to stop these type of “reeeesearchers” from treating our community like lab rats.

Perhaps that’s another reason why Graphika has spent almost an entire year attacking Gab, but I suspect it has more to do with their deep connections to our competitors.

Let’s dive into the email from the New York Times, shall we?

Hi Andrew,
I’m a reporter from The New York Times, where we are writing about some viral posts about the coronavirus that have gained traction online in the past few weeks. I wanted to get your comment on a post by you that the Virality Project — a consortium of research groups focused on misinformation, including the Stanford Internet Observatory and Graphika, among others — identified as misinformation.
You can find their assertions here: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/60025974f9f7920e6b40885b/t/61097813bdc29713648c24bf/1628010515835/Virality+Project+-+0803+Weekly+Briefing+.pdf

I’ve also screenshotted the relevant portion in the document:

Would you have a response to this being labeled as misinformation by this group of researchers?
Hope to hear from you as soon as possible — my deadline is on Monday, Aug. 9, at 12nn ET.
Feel free to call me at XXX-XXX-XXX if you have any questions about our story.
Best,Davey

My response to Davey is as follows:

The news that Lloyd Austin intends to make vaccinations mandatory in the military is two days old: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/sec-of-defense-austin-to-announce-mandatory-vaccine-policy-for-all-active-duty-military

Furthermore, Pfizer and Moderna tested their vaccines on fetal cell lines and J&J used fetal cell lines in vaccination development. https://www.nebraskamed.com/COVID/you-asked-we-answered-do-the-covid-19-vaccines-contain-aborted-fetal-cells

I’m telling the truth. Your Facebook-funded “fact checkers” like Graphika are wrong and are the people peddling disinformation here. My response to them is that they can get bent. I’m reminding tens of millions of people that they have religious liberty and God-given human rights in this country. Deal with it. Jesus is King. 

Andrew Torba

I spent all week posting the many dozens of direct messages that I have been receiving on Gab from Military service members and their families who shared their personal stories and experiences with me. I also posted similar stories from those working in healthcare and other various industries.

People are scared, but not of Covid. They are scared of being forced to choose between violating their religious beliefs and giving up control of their own bodily autonomy or losing their livelihood. It’s a position that no human being, let alone a citizen of the United States of America, should have to be in. I choose to share their stories because no one else is.

I then drafted a blog post about my experience reading and sharing these heartbreaking stories and reminded millions of people that in the United States of America we have God-given human rights, including religious liberty. I did this by providing a set of religious exemption templates for Christians to use in the Military and in their workplace.

The post went wildly viral on Gab, Facebook, and Twitter. I also emailed it to millions of people, because people deserve to know that they always have options and the dignity of bodily autonomy and religious liberty.

For doing this both Gab and myself are being defamed for spreading “misinformation,” a totally subjective and ambiguous term that can mean anything the tyrants in power want it to mean.

Ultimately what we are seeing here is an anti-Christian, anti-competitive attack on Gab by organizations who partner with, are funded by, and are staffed by people who worked for our direct competitors.

I am sharing this all with you now to let you know how these wicked people operate and to shine a light on their lies, deception, and anti-Christian attacks. They aren’t just attacking me, they are attacking any and all dissent and opposition to their libido dominandi (lust for power.)

I’m also beating the New York Times to print by emailing this information to millions of people over the weekend. This is how you beat these people at their own game. The time to stand up and speak the truth boldly is now.

God bless you and thank you for reading.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King
August 6th, 2021

Facebook-Funded “Researchers” and the New York Times Team Up to Attack Gab – Gab News

Jihadists disseminate messages to Afghan residents on social media platforms

Taliban leaders used Twitter and WhatsApp to spread propaganda and establish control over Kabul as they stormed the Afghan capital over the weekend. 

On Monday, Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid tweeted that residents welcomed the Taliban and that “the situation in Kabul is under control.” The jihadist group used WhatsApp to disseminate a similar message to Kabul residents as it entered the city. In recent days, Taliban leaders have circulated WhatsApp numbers that Afghan regime officials or soldiers could call to negotiate their surrender.

The Taliban has swept across Afghanistan in the weeks following Biden’s withdrawal of U.S. troops, capturing major cities with little resistance. The Pentagon on Sunday deployed an additional 1,000 troops to Afghanistan to aid evacuation efforts as Afghans and Americans swarmed Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul. Administration officials said in July that they expected a Taliban takeover to take months. 

The Taliban has used WhatsApp and Twitter for years to share official statements, but in the past week it has escalated its use of the platforms, using WhatsApp to announce new rules for Kabul residents.

On Monday, Mujahid tweeted a warning against looting and unauthorized intimidation of Afghan officials. The Taliban’s “complaint commission” posted WhatsApp numbers for city residents to call “if they face threats from anyone” and set up an emergency broadcast system via the app as well.

Twitter and Facebook, which owns WhatsApp, regularly banned ISIS members from their platforms. But the sites appear to let the Taliban broadcast its messages without incident. 

A Twitter spokeswoman told the Washington Free Beacon that it was “proactively removing content that violates our policies.” The spokeswoman linked to a policy banning “hateful conduct” and another that bans “threatening or promoting terrorism.” The spokeswoman did not comment on whether Twitter considers the Taliban a terrorist organization. A Facebook spokesman told the Free Beacon it would take action against accounts maintained by sanctioned groups in Afghanistan, but would not comment on specific cases.

Several Taliban spokesmen have maintained Twitter accounts for years, regularly tweeting updates on negotiations and regional battles. The accounts often post photos and videos from frontlines, which are then copied and shared by pro-Taliban accounts. Only 15 percent of the Afghan population has access to the internet.

Both Twitter and Facebook removed former president Donald Trump after the Jan. 6 riots and have not restored his account, citing “incitement to violence.” 

Taliban Leaders Used Twitter and WhatsApp to Help Capture Kabul (freebeacon.com)