Don’t let left-wing politicians and establishment news networks gaslight you.
For months on end, such people have been claiming that teaching critical race theory is akin to teaching the true, racist history of our country’s origins.
They claim that any opposition to intellectually inept ideas like “white privilege” and “systemic racism” is merely political fear-mongering.
Well, one Rutgers professor and pro-critical race theory activist showed the left’s true colors on Oct. 21 during an interview with The Root.
“I think that white people are committed to being villains in the aggregate,” educator Brittney Cooper said.
Cooper holds many of the titles typical of elitist leftist academics — she is a professor of women’s and gender studies and Africana studies at Rutgers University, according to the New York Post.
In her view, individuals should be judged by what racial group they happen to fall into. One look at a white person tells Cooper everything she needs to know.
“You know, their thinking is so murky and spiritually bankrupt about power that they … they fear this really existentially letting go of power because they cannot imagine another way to be,” she said of white people, according to the Post.
“The thing I want to say to you is we got to take these motherf***ers out,” Cooper said, before quickly adding that she “doesn’t believe in a project of violence.”
Is critical race theory racist?
In general, racial issues in the country are improving in Cooper’s view, but not for the reasons you might think.
She went on to claim that many white people today are “suffering,” which, to Cooper, is a good thing, because “they kind of deserve it.”
“White people’s birth rates are going down … because they literally cannot afford to put their children, newer generations, into the middle class … It’s super perverse, and also they kind of deserve it,” she said, according to the Post.
The professor believes victory for her racial justice movement is close at hand because kids are starting to truly understand the core tenets of critical race theory.
“Kids actually can grasp critical race theory because the issue that the right has, is that critical race theory is just the proper teaching of American history,” she said.
It is puzzling that so many academics like Cooper, fully set on ushering in racial equality in America, have found themselves spouting such vile and disgusting views.
Psychologist Jordan Peterson, in a speech given during one of his many tours around the country, pointed out the fundamental flaw in the thinking of academics like her.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=QCPDByRb4no
“The idea that there is more differences between groups than there is between individuals is actually the fundamental racist idea,” Peterson said.
He then gave an example of this racist mindset, the exact same kind of thinking that Cooper uses when she looks at white people.
“Let’s say you’re Asian,” Peterson said. “You’re so different from me that there’s no overlap between our groups. And you’re also so different — and there’s so little difference within your group — that, now that I know that you’re not me, you’re not one of mine, I actually know what you’re like.”
“No. Technically that’s incorrect. That’s wrong. That isn’t how you get diversity.”
The Democratic Party routinely discusses the “climate crisis” it claims our country and our world are enduring. Many Democrats go so far as to say we must drastically reduce carbon emissions in order to avoid a “climate apocalypse.”
President Joe Biden has used similar lines of rhetoric. According to CNBC, Biden said last year that climate change was “the number one issue facing humanity.”
“Climate change is the existential threat to humanity,” he said in an October 2020 episode of Pod Save America. “Unchecked, it is going to actually bake this planet. This is not hyperbole. It’s real. And we have a moral obligation.”
Judging by Biden’s own actions on Friday, he does not think that obligation applies to himself.
As he took in the scenery in Rome, Biden was escorted around in a huge motorcade. According to the New York Post, it included 85 vehicles.
To make the optics even worse, Biden is supposed to arrive in Glasgow, Scotland, on Sunday for a global “climate summit,” the Los Angeles Times reported. The outlet noted the summit aims to bring world leaders together to discuss how to “prevent the most catastrophic effects of global warming.”
For a president who goes around preaching to people about how we have a “moral obligation” to address climate change, cruising around in an 85-car motorcade is not a particularly good look.
The Post reported host countries are often responsible for providing protective detail to foreign leaders, so the White House may not have been in charge of the motorcade. Even so, the optics are rather damming for Biden.
While in Rome, Biden also held a meeting with Pope Francis at the Vatican. The two reportedly discussed climate change, and Biden claimed the pope reassured him of his status in the Catholic Church.
“We just talked about the fact he was happy that I was a good Catholic and I should keep receiving Communion,” Biden said, according to The Associated Press.
Before the trip, Biden unveiled a $1.75 trillion plan for social and environmental spending, the Post reported. It includes $555 billion for “green-energy and anti-pollution spending.”
Should Biden practice what he preaches on climate change?
In introducing the plan, he also repeated the obligation argument, saying we have an “obligation to our children and to our grandchildren” to stop using fossil fuels. The Post noted it’s unclear whether any of the cars in his motorcade were electric, but most of them looked to be gas-powered.
If Biden truly wants to convince Americans to at least decrease their use of fossil fuels, he might want to start by looking straight into the mirror.
Ever since the National School Board Association issued an open letter to President Joe Biden which essentially branded parents who protest mask policies, critical race theory and transgender bathrooms as “domestic terrorists,” it’s become abundantly clear that school boards aren’t particularly thrilled about this new rip-roaring form of American populism coming from concerned parents.
The organization has since had to walk back its inflammatory suggestion, as member groups around the country have been pushing back, but not before the Department of Justice has taken up the cause. It appears that plenty of school boards are still very disgruntled that tax-paying parents want to show up and let them know exactly what they think about infusing COVID tyranny and leftist indoctrination into public school curricula.
One Minnesota school board has gone way, way too far, however.
Alpha News reported this week that residents of Mankato, Minnesota, who might want to point school board members to, say, COVID-19 case rates among children or to read aloud from pornographic novels they’ve found in the school library, will have to state their home address before they participate in the public portion of the meetings.
On Oct. 18, Jodi Sapp, Mankato Area Public Schools board chair, detailed the new rules, which include the disclosure of one’s home address, a ban on addressing board members directly or discussing any issues not on the agenda for the meeting, and — oh yeah — if anyone cheers, claps, or even hollers, by George, she’s shutting the public forum down at once.
“Effective tonight, open forum participants are prohibited from calling out or addressing any individual school board or school district staff member. If this occurs, open forum will be closed,” Sapp stated during the meeting that evening. “Beginning at the Nov. 1 school board meeting, open forum will be limited to those individuals who wish to speak to an item on the board agenda.”
“Crowd noise, or any sort of grandstanding during open forum, including applause, talking, hollering or any outburst will result in open forum being closed,” she also said. “Further, beginning at the Nov. 1 school board meeting, open forum participation will be limited to those individuals who wish to speak to an item on the board agenda.”
As Alpha News noted, this effectively dictates that the public will not be allowed to address any topics the board hasn’t already decided are kosher and that individual members of the board will be shielded from any direct public criticism during board meetings.
Have school boards gone full tyrant?
Perhaps Sapp has observed from afar the fate of Loudoun County board member Beth Barts, who recently stepped down amid efforts to remove her from office over her alleged involvement with a left-wing parents’ group that was compiling lists of local parents who opposed the LGBT and “anti-racism” policies the board was attempting to pass.
Additionally, the Mankato board is now openly requiring that any parents that speak during the public portion of their meetings dox themselves prior to giving comments.
“Each speaker is asked to state his or her name and address for the record. Failure to do so will result in an individual not being allowed to speak,” Sapp stated during the meeting as reported by Fox News.
According to Alpha News, this appeared to be the first time such a policy was put in place. A meeting on Sep. 20 requested no such thing from members of the public.
Disturbingly, as the Minnesota-based outlet reported, one man initially refused to state his home address but finally acquiesced, turning away from the microphone in the hopes that it wouldn’t be captured and broadcast to online viewers of the meeting.
However, “Sapp was sure to restate his exact address into her microphone so all could know where he lives,” they noted.
The stringent new requirements for members of the public came after an Oct. 4 meeting during which fewer than 10 people spoke to the board for roughly 25 minutes altogether.
“The majority of this time was used by community members to speak out against the district’s mask mandate and policy on staff vaccination,” Alpha News noted. “Some speakers’ remarks were followed by modest applause, much to the chagrin of Sapp, who appeared uncomfortable in the face of criticism.”
On Oct. 18, Sapp credited these people, whose behavior she derided as “unacceptable,” as being the reason behind the new regulations.
I’m sorry, even if these people had been heckling, shouting, and knocking chairs over during the previous meeting, what sane person thinks that forcing members of the public to disclose their home address is an acceptable means of maintaining decorum during a school board meeting?
This is not only petty and vindictive, it’s highly disturbing. Tax-paying members of the public certainly ought to be able to publicly address the board of the local school district they’re required to support without worrying that some nutjob could easily come and find them and their family while they sleep at night.
How is it remotely sensible or acceptable to risk the safety of every single member of a person’s family, including their own children, because you’re irritated that people don’t like mask policies and vaccine requirements?
Besides, if we’re supposed to believe that parents who hate masking, critical race theory and transgender students are basically domestic terrorists, wouldn’t it put any members of the public who spoke out in support of these policies at serious risk at the hands of these maniacs?
This is exactly the kind of subtle tyranny that’s being implemented across the country, from private employers to the federal government to classrooms and everywhere in between.
Sure, no one is forcing you to take the vaccine, but you’ll lose your job if you don’t. Sure, no one is forcing your child to adopt the ideology of critical race theory, but they’ll be alienated by their peers and told in class they’re a racist if they don’t repent of their whiteness.
Sure, no one is banning you from speaking out against local school board policies, but just go ahead and tell everyone where your kids sleep if you’d like the opportunity to do so.
Federal workers who are fighting President Joe Biden’s coronavirus vaccine mandate on the grounds of religion have won a round in court.
U.S. District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District of Columbia on Thursday issued a temporary restraining order that protects military and civilian employees from being fired while their requests for religious exemptions to Biden’s vaccine mandate are being heard, according to Fox News.
“None of the civilian employee plaintiffs will be subject to discipline while his or her request for a religious exception is pending,” Kollar-Kotelly ordered.
The judge also ruled that “active duty military plaintiffs, whose religious exception requests have been denied, will not be disciplined or separated during the pendency of their appeals,” according to Fox News.
The court further ordered that Biden and the top administration officials named in the lawsuit file a notice Friday to indicate whether they will agree that no plaintiff will be disciplined or terminated until there is a final ruling on the question of religious exemptions.
Twenty people had sued Biden and his top officials over the executive order that mandated vaccinations for all federal workers, civilian and military alike.
“The Biden administration has shown an unprecedented, cavalier attitude toward the rule of law and an utter ineptitude at basic constitutional contours,” attorney Michael Yoder, who represented those suing the administration, said in a statement.
“This combination is dangerous to American liberty,” Yoder said “Thankfully, our Constitution protects and secures the right to remain free from religious persecution and coercion.”
“With this order, we are one step closer to putting the Biden administration back in its place by limiting government to its enumerated powers. It’s time citizens and courts said no to tyranny. The Constitution does not need to be rewritten, it needs to be reread,” he said.
BREAKING: @Yoder_Esq with a HUGE WIN in Church v. Biden.
(Yes, that’s the actual case caption. For those playing along, 1:21-cv-2815)
This is an amazing development from the DC District Court in the stand for OUR RIGHTS against the unconstitutional vaccine mandates. pic.twitter.com/kWus7XQ4pp
The complaint Yoder filed indicated that those filing it, and others, would face termination on Nov. 22.
“Contemporaneous with the commencement of this action Plaintiffs have filed an Application for a Temporary Restraining Order (‘TRO’) and Preliminary Injunction to maintain the status quo of our federal governmental operations and to put an end to this involuntary game of Monty Hall millions of Americans have been compelled to involuntary play,” the complaint said.
“And while the currency of this game is not exclusively money but also the rights to life, liberty, and property, it would be imprudent to not address the magnitude of the economic impact of this case,” it said.
The complaint said the stakes were high for those suing and the nation as a whole.
“Absent the injunctive relief Plaintiffs request herein, Plaintiffs will suffer irreparable harm as their fundamental rights are trampled and they lose their jobs for no reason beyond their sincerely held religious beliefs,” the complaint said.
When religious exemptions are denied and thousands of Americans lose jobs because of their faith in God…
Let me be clear: — I will sue you RELENTLESSLY
God is more important than money. — learn that lesson or I’ll teach it to you
“If Defendants are not enjoined from enforcing the Vaccine Mandates, hundreds of thousands of federal workers and military personnel will be forcibly removed from our government and Armed Forces, thrusting our nation into a state more vulnerable than the United States has experienced in a quarter of a millennium,” it said.
The complaint noted that abortion was central to the religious objections offered by those suing the Biden administration.
“Because all three of the currently available COVID-19 vaccines are developed and produced from, tested with, researched on, or otherwise connected with the aborted fetal cell lines HEK-293 and PER.C6, Plaintiffs’ sincerely held religious beliefs compel them to abstain from obtaining or injecting any of these products into their body, regardless of the perceived benefit or rationale,” the complaint said.
The only Food and Drug Administration vaccine advisory panel member to abstain from a major vote this week that essentially authorized Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for children as young as 5 said he did so because of limited safety and efficacy data.
All 17 others voted to advise the administration, or the FDA, to authorize the jab for children between the ages of 5 and 11. The agency already supported doing so and is expected to formalize the authorization soon. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention would then decide which children should get the shot.
The vote was preceded by nearly eight hours of discussions and presentations, with multiple members expressing concern about the scant data on how the vaccine will affect the age group.
But Dr. Michael Kurilla, an expert on infectious diseases and pathology who directs a division inside the National Institutes of Health, was the only one who didn’t support the recommendation.
Kurilla told The Epoch Times in an email that he opposed the specific, binary wording of the question, which opens up the possibility that any child between 5 and 11 will be able to get the Pfizer vaccine. He was also concerned about the longest follow-up for the clinical trial involving the age group being only three months, data that shows children experience severe cases of COVID-19 much less often than adults, and how a large chunk of them have already had the disease, giving them some level of immunity.
If the authorization goes through as expected, at least some of the age group will be able to get two doses of 10 micrograms each, spaced three weeks apart.
The same dosage interval, with a dosage level three times as high, is currently in place for adults. But adults have seen waning effectiveness, especially against infection, prompting the recent authorization of booster doses.
Because the interval is the same, it can be predicted that the effectiveness will also wane in children, Kurilla said. The lower dosage level, meanwhile, brings into question whether the protection against severe disease and hospitalization will be as strong as in adults.
“Real-world evidence involving adults suggest the 3-week dosing interval is suboptimal in terms of durability and is likely to be similar in children, leading to waning immunity within 4–6 months,” Kurilla said. “Because the Pfizer vaccine offers protection against serious disease even after antibody titers have waned, there is some other basis for immunity, but at the lower dose in children, there is no expectation that those same immune processes will behave similarly to the higher adult dose.”
Pfizer/BioNTech’s new pediatric COVID-19 vaccine vials are seen in this undated handout photo. (Pfizer via Reuters)
Low Hospitalization Rate
During the meeting, members heard that among children 5 to 11 in the United States, there have been over 1.9 million infections since the start of the pandemic, but just 0.4 percent, or 8,400 of those cases, have required hospital care. And just 94 of them ended up dying.
They also heard that an estimated 20 percent of the hospitalized children were admitted for a reason besides COVID-19 and that nearly seven out of 10 of the children had existing serious health conditions like heart disease, illustrating just how little risk COVID-19 poses to healthy children.
Further, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 40 percent of children in the age group have already had COVID-19. Recovery from COVID-19 bestows some level of immunity, studies show, with multiple studies indicating the level is actually higher than vaccines provide.
“The benefit here is assumed to be prevention of severe disease, which is what we’re all hoping for,” Kurilla said during the meeting. But among the recovered, he added later, “The question really becomes, does this vaccine offer any benefits to them at all?”
Kurilla signaled he would have voted “yes” if the FDA had proposed opening up access to the vaccine to a subset of the 5–11 group. He also explained why he abstained.
“My abstention was based on the specific question the FDA asked. A ‘no’ vote would have been misconstrued as my opinion about the vaccine,” he told The Epoch Times. “There are high-risk groups within the 5–11 age group that would benefit from the vaccine, suggesting a more tailored approach.”
In this image from video, Dr. Michael Kurilla (C) questions the CDC’s Dr. Fiona Havers (R) during an FDA advisory panel meeting on Oct. 26, 2021. (The Epoch Times via FDA)
Others Question Widespread Use
Additional panel members openly questioned whether all young children should get the vaccine.
“I’m torn. On one hand, we know that many mothers and fathers and parents are eager to administer this vaccine to children because they’re so frightened, perhaps overly so, … that they really are anticipating having access to this vaccine in children,” said Dr. Cody Meissner, the director of pediatric infectious disease at Tufts Medical Center.
“On the other hand, I think we saw that approximately 68 percent of the children who are hospitalized with COVID-19 have underlying comorbidities. That means about 32 percent do not. And then if we were to take 40 percent of that group that may have immunity already, we’re getting down to a very small percent of otherwise healthy 6- to 11-year-old children who might derive some benefit,” he added.
But others said they saw the need for the vaccination. The protection it gives would prevent more hospitalizations and ensure schools remain open, some argued.
“We don’t want children to be dying of COVID, even if it is far fewer children than adults, and we don’t want them in the ICU,” said Dr. Amanda Cohn, a CDC official.
Jeannette Lee, a biostatistics professor at the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, said she was impressed by the data presented by Pfizer, which relied on an approach called immunobridging. In this case, Pfizer’s trial showed the vaccine triggered antibodies in children. The antibodies were compared to those elicited in older groups, and that was used as proof the vaccine will protect the kids against COVID-19.
Kurilla, though, voiced disapproval with the approach, telling colleagues “it’s being based on an immunogenicity marker that we know wanes.”
He said he hoped for more flexibility in the authorization, including a single dose for some children and no doses for others, based on factors like prior infection.
“There are high-risk individuals and I think they do need to be attended to, that we do need to provide a vaccine for them. But for many others, one dose—or no dose, even, if they’ve had prior COVID infection. I think they may not need anything more,” he said.
A 14-year-old girl gets a Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine in Hartford, Conn., on May 13, 2021. (Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images)
Side Effects
Cases of heart inflammation after receipt of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are highest in youth, especially boys in their teens. Based on reports submitted to the federally run Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), the cases are higher than expected in males aged 12 to 49 after the second Pfizer dose and females 12 to 24 after the second Pfizer dose.
Over half of the children with confirmed myocarditis or pericarditis studied in the Vaccine Safety Datalink surveillance system required hospital care, though no post-vaccination deaths due to the conditions have been confirmed, according to federal authorities.
Pfizer said none of the 5- to 11-year-olds in its trials experienced post-vaccination heart inflammation. Using a third of the amount of that given to older people is, in part, an attempt to curb side effects, though how that will ultimately turn out is unknown.
FDA scientists said they determined the vaccine would prevent more COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths among the age group than vaccine-linked heart inflammation cases, hospitalizations, and deaths. They assumed a vaccine efficacy of 70 percent against COVID-19 cases and an efficacy of 80 percent against hospitalizations linked to the disease. Among young males, “the benefits appear to outweigh the risks,” Hong Yang, an FDA scientist, told members. Among young females, “the benefits clearly outweigh the risks,” she added.
“What will the actual myocarditis rate be in these younger kids?” Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital, wondered. That group “may be less susceptible to myocarditis, but right now that’s a speculation,” he added. “We don’t know that for sure.”
Members of the public also expressed concern, arguing the safety data wasn’t sufficient to authorize the vaccine for children so young.
But other members pointed to the trial data, the fact fewer reports have come in for 12- to 15-year-olds than 16- and 17-year-olds, and how, generally, fewer younger children experience heart inflammation versus older ones.
“I am not as concerned about myocarditis in this age group as I am in the older kids,” Dr. Melinda Wharton, another CDC official, said.
Surveillance systems like VAERS will help detect if inflammation becomes an issue in the younger children, members said.
“If the surveillance systems do start seeing severe outcomes and deaths from vaccination, I’m quite confident that those surveillance systems will tell us that we need to pause like we did with the J&J vaccine to really have a good idea of what the effects are vaccinating this age group,” said Dr. Patrick Moore, professor at the University of Pittsburgh Cancer Institute.
In this image from video, Dr. Eric Rubin (L) explains why he will vote to advise the FDA to authorize Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine for young children during an FDA advisory panel meeting on Oct. 26, 2021. (The Epoch Times via FDA)
The ‘Yes’ Votes
Ultimately, most members said the benefits and predicted benefits of the vaccine in the 5- to 11-year-olds outweighed the risks and potential risks.
“I think this vaccine will likely be effective in reducing pediatric COVID in this age group and may also help reduce transmission. On the safety end, I’m encouraged by the lower dose, … finding a dose that’s immunogenic and had not too much in terms of reactogenicity,” said Dr. Ofer Levy, director of the Precision Vaccines Program at Boston Children’s Hospital.
Dr. Eric Rubin, an adjunct professor at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said he wanted to give parents the choice to vaccinate their kids, imagining he had a child who was a transplant recipient, though he joined others in saying there are probably some younger children who shouldn’t get the vaccine.
“The question of how broadly to use it, though, I think is a substantial one. And I know it’s not our question, but I—and I know we’re kind of punting that to [the CDC’s advisory panel]—but I do think that it’s a relatively close call,” he said.
Soon after, in a comment that was widely distributed online, he added: “We’re never going to learn about how safe this vaccine is unless we start giving it. That’s just the way it goes. That’s how we found out about rare complications of other vaccines, like the rotavirus vaccine.”
Rubin told The Epoch Times in an email, responding to critics: “The clinical trial of the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine in children showed no adverse events. All data to date indicate that it is safe. It will prevent the hospitalization of children with severe disease, as it does with adults. The vaccine works, and saves lives.”
