The idea that Putin is a “strongman” or that Russia is a major global player are still hotly debated topics. Writing in Foreign Affairs, the Carnegie Endowment’s Alexander Gabuev says Putin’s Russia is now little more than China’s vassal…and perhaps more pointed for the diminutive Putin, a “junior partner” in China’s globe-spanning plans:
Beijing is unlikely to bail Moscow out or significantly help modernize the Russian economy. China will, however, do enough to sustain a friendly regime in the Kremlin—and advance Chinese national interests—by purchasing Russian natural resources at knockdown prices, expanding the market for Chinese technology, promoting Chinese technological standards, and making the renminbi the default regional currency of northern Eurasia. Given its growing leverage, Beijing will be able to extract from Moscow something that was unthinkable a year ago: access to the most sophisticated Russian weapons and their designs, preferential access to the Russian Arctic, the accommodation of Chinese security interests in Central Asia, and Russia’s support—as a permanent member of the UN Security Council—for China’s positions in all regional and global issues, most notably in territorial disputes between China and its neighbors. In effect, the Kremlin will have protected itself from Western pressure at the expense of losing a very high degree of its strategic autonomy. This state of affairs is likely to persist potentially beyond Putin’s rule.
In other words, China gets the resources it needs to fuel its ambitions, while Russia gets…more economically and politically dependent upon that big friend. (RELATED: China’s Supersized Marines Could Invade Taiwan)
That’s how vassal states work. And for Russia, it puts them on a level of the old Warsaw Pact nations, say, East Germany (where Putin was a KGB agent in the last years of the Cold War), or Hungary, or Bulgaria…utterly dependent on a larger, stronger, richer patron.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the positions of American Liberty News.
REVIEW: ‘Dr. Fauci: A Little Golden Book Biography’
Sometimes a book’s mere existence has an eminently greater cultural significance than its content. Such is the case of Dr. Fauci: A Little Golden Book Biography. The 24-page illustrated work, billed as “an inspiring read-aloud for young children,” does not exist to entertain America’s toddlers, but rather to soothe the secular souls of Millennial parents whose mental and emotional well-being have steadily deteriorated since November 8, 2016. It belongs in the adult “self care” section with a disclaimer urging prospective buyers to seek help.
Dr. Anthony Fauci, a career bureaucrat who rose to national prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, is merely the latest liberal icon to be featured in a Little Golden Book. The children’s series dates back to 1942 but has only recently started targeting the aforementioned demographic of #Resistance nerds. Recent subjects include Ruth Bader Ginsburg (2020), Kamala Harris (2021), Betty White (2021), Sonia Sotomayor (2022), and Beyoncé (due out in 2023). Other titles are dedicated to more conventional religious figures such as God, Jesus, and Barack Obama.
This is the second children’s book published about the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. The authors of Dr. Fauci: How a Boy from Brooklyn Became America’s Doctor got their product to market in June 2021, when President Joe Biden’s approval rating was still comfortably above 50 percent. Theirs is “the definitive picture book biography” of Fauci, who contributed a section outlining his “five tips for future scientists.” Tip number one—”Keep an open mind. Science is discovery, which means that from the beginning, you don’t know what the answer is. Leave open all the possibilities of what you might find”—is arguably more honest and sensible than anything he’s ever told American adults about COVID-19.
The biography itself is not particularly offensive. The illustrations are fine. But seriously, what kind of lunatic would subject a child to the details of Fauci’s conventional childhood in postwar Brooklyn, or his crippling work addiction? “He worked fourteen hours a day, as well as on weekends,” the author writes of Fauci. “His family waited until he got home at nine p.m. to eat dinner together. After his daughters went to sleep, Tony worked more.” It would take a special kind of psychopath to be able to hold a two-year-old child in one’s lap and read to them about AIDS, SARS, swine flu, Ebola, and COVID-19.
The book concludes with an astonishing pronouncement: “The world is a healthier place because of Dr. Anthony Fauci!” No one who buys this book would disagree, just as they would never admit that buying this book is a cry for help, that they aren’t any less deranged than Robert Kennedy Jr., author of The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health. Reasonable people might argue that Fauci and his fellow “experts” have put our health at risk by setting their credibility on fire.
Fauci’s so-called leadership during the pandemic enabled a cult of hysterical doomsayers whose greatest legacy will be the generation of children who suffered greatly from having their educations put on hold for the better part of two years. Throughout the pandemic, Fauci and other experts gave wildly conflicting opinions about the virus while maintaining an air of righteous certainty. Democratic politicians who claimed to “follow the science” were routinely exposed for violating their own safety guidelines. (Fauci himself was also busted.) At times, the scientific community shed all pretensions to objectivity by embracing left-wing activism. Not surprisingly, the federal response to the ongoing monkeypox outbreak has been disastrous, marred by “identity politics” and a reluctance to speak the truth for fear of promoting “stigma.”
Just last month, Fauci said he regrets that the government did not impose “much, much more stringent restrictions” to combat the COVID-19 pandemic. Good luck with that in the next pandemic. It will be his own damn fault when Americans completely disregard what government “experts” are telling them. Then again, Fauci’s response to his improbable rise to elite liberal celebrity suggests he has no regrets. Last week, for example, Fauci accepted an award typically reserved for active Major League Baseball players and joked about creating COVID-19 in his kitchen.
While the past several years may have irreparably damaged the American public’s confidence in the scientific establishment, Fauci’s confidence in his own greatness and capacity for self-aggrandizement has not wavered. He’s appeared on the cover of countless magazines. “With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective,” he toldIn Style. Sick freaks are reading books about him to their kids. Last week, while being interviewed after accepting MLB’s Hutch Award in Seattle, the doctor discussed the “Fauci Effect,” explaining how he had come to symbolize “consistency,” “integrity,” and “truth” in this crazy world of ours.
Fauci, who turns 82 in December, refuses to set a date for his retirement. When that day comes, he will not be missed.
Tony Vargas supports tax hikes on individuals making $100K per year
A Nebraska Democrat running to unseat a Republican in a purple district is gunning to raise income taxes on anybody making more than $100,000, backing a plan that would make Nebraska’s income tax rate one of the highest in the country.
Tony Vargas, who is running against incumbent Rep. Don Bacon (R.) for Nebraska’s Second Congressional District, introduced a bill in 2019 that would give Nebraska the fifth-highest state income tax rate in the country, vaulting it ahead of blue states like Vermont.
The plan proved unpopular in Nebraska, where the state legislator never put it up for a vote after it faced steep opposition and where it remains “indefinitely postponed,” according to the Nebraska State Legislature’s office.
That bill also puts Vargas at odds with President Joe Biden, who has pledged never to support legislation that increases taxes on the middle class. Biden has defined the middle class as individuals making less than $400,000 a year. Few, if any, Democrats have called for targeting individuals with low-six-figure incomes to fund government programs. Even the party’s most radical lawmakers, such as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D., N.Y.), direct their ire at millionaires or billionaires.
Vargas did not respond to a request for comment.
Vargas faces an uphill battle against Bacon in November. Although Biden won the district in 2020, Bacon beat his challenger by nearly 5 points. Despite Vargas’s low odds, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has included the race in its “Red to Blue” initiative.
Although Vargas framed his legislation as a tax hike on the wealthy, the first rate increase would hit individuals earning more than $100,000 a year or married couples earning more than $200,000 a year. An additional tax would be placed on incomes of more than $1 million a year.
Vargas said his plan would generate $478 million in new revenue over five years. Critics of his bill said revenue projections for tax hikes rarely come true and that many small businesses file as individuals. Those businesses, groups such as the Nebraska Chamber of Commerce said, would leave the state. Nebraska currently has the 16th-highest income tax rate in the country.
Both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris endorsed Vargas in 2020 during his run for the Nebraska state senate, and the candidate called their support “an honor.” Their endorsement came just days before Vargas donated $250 to Biden’s presidential campaign.
But Vargas now is mum on Biden, who has seen his approval rating plummet. Biden won the Nebraska second district by 7 points in 2020, although a recent poll found Bacon narrowly beating Vargas among likely voters there.
Vargas has also not taken any positions on Biden’s legislative agenda. His campaign website calls for tax cuts and mostly focuses on social issues such as abortion. Neither Biden nor the Democratic Party are mentioned.
Mandela Barnes, the Wisconsin Democratic Senate candidate, has talked up his support for Israel on the campaign trail. Left unmentioned in his stump speeches is his membership, until 2019, in one of the most vocal anti-Israel groups in the state.
“I had an incredible opportunity to visit Israel 10 years ago, got to bear witness to the harsh reality of Israel’s national security,” Barnes told the Jewish Democratic Council of America forum in June, adding that he opposes the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement (BDS) that seeks to isolate Israel.
But for years after his 2012 Israel trip, Barnes was a member of the Wisconsin chapter of Peace Action, a fringe anti-war group that has promoted boycotts of the Jewish state, defended Palestinian terrorist groups, and lobbied the U.S. government to open diplomatic ties with Iran and North Korea.
His work with the group raises questions about his stance on Israel—which has shifted during his Senate campaign—and is likely to increase scrutiny into his far-left foreign policy positions as he faces off against incumbent Republican senator Ron Johnson in the competitive race.
During Barnes’s first year as a state representative in 2013, he listed himself as a member of Peace Action Wisconsin in the “Blue Book,” the state government’s official handbook that includes legislator biographies.
“He used to come here and sit at our meeting table and be part of our meetings,” Pam Richard, Peace Action Wisconsin’s office manager, told the Washington Free Beacon on Tuesday.
She said Barnes’s involvement ended around the time he became Wisconsin lieutenant governor in 2019. He has appeared to distance himself from the group since then.
Barnes skipped Peace Action Wisconsin’s “WI Senate Candidate Peace Forum” in July—which featured several of his long-shot former primary competitors—but told the organization that he would send a recording responding to its questions.
Richard said she is still waiting for Barnes to send his answers.
“He hasn’t sent it yet,” said Richard. “We’re kind of frustrated but I just have to wait for him to be ready to do it.”
Barnes’s campaign spokeswoman declined to comment on his membership in Peace Action Wisconsin, and referred the Free Beacon to “his on the record positions on the policy issues you reference.”
Barnes has appeared to shift his position on Israel during the course of the campaign. Last year, he indicated that he would oppose military assistance to Israel if it didn’t abide by certain conditions, which he declined to specify. But he appeared to walk back these comments in June, saying he would have voted to fund Israel’s missile defense system.
“Israel needs to be able to defend itself. And I don’t support movements that would deny that, like BDS,” Barnes said in June.
Peace Action Wisconsin has a long history of promoting boycotts of Israel. Since July, the group has posted calls to boycott Pillsbury and Hyundai for their work in the Jewish state. Earlier this month, the group published a press release on its website from Samidoun, a designated terrorist group in Israel.
The statement called for “resistance in all forms” and a “campaign to isolate the Israeli regime at all levels, including through boycott.” It also condemned Israel’s assassination of a military leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad—a U.S.-designated terrorist group funded by Iran—and described him as one of the “martyrs of the Palestinian cause.”
Peace Action Wisconsin’s anti-Israel activism was the subject of media attention before Barnes joined. The group organized a protest of the local Jewish Community Center’s Israeli Independence Day celebration in Milwaukee in 2008, according to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
The next year, Peace Action Wisconsin sponsored a conference at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee that promoted “boycott and divestment as tools to work toward equality for [P]alestinians.”
One of the speakers was the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee’s Bob Ashmore, who told the audience that “Israel should be destroyed as a Jewish state just as South Africa was destroyed as an apartheid state,” according to the Jewish Chronicle.
In 2014, Barnes was photographed attending the group’s Lanterns for Peace event, a vigil for victims of the U.S. nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Lanterns at the event featured slogans such as “Stop Supporting Israel.”
The most recent Peace Action Wisconsin event Barnes is listed as attending is a June 2019 potluck dinner, which protested U.S. travel and economic restrictions in Cuba.
At the time, Peace Action Wisconsin was lobbying state lawmakers to “repeal Wisconsin’s Anti-BDS Law,” which prohibited state funding from going to companies that boycott Israel. The group compared the BDS movement to Rosa Parks’s Montgomery bus boycott, and told its supporters to “contact your state legislator to urge them to repeal this unconstitutional law” in its June 2019 newsletter.
One month prior, Peace Action Wisconsin defended Minnesota Democratic congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s claim that U.S. support for Israel is “all about the Benjamins baby,” which was widely denounced as anti-Semitic by Omar’s own party.
“Ilhan Omar spoke the truth about the influence of [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] and the state of Israel on United States elected officials,” said Peace Action Wisconsin’s May 2019 newsletter.
Two months before the event with Barnes, the group also hosted a film screening of TheOccupation of the American Mind, a documentary that claims “the U.S. government and the pro-Israel lobby” are colluding to “shape American media coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Israel’s favor.”
As the religion of “wokism” continues to grow, censor, and demand sacrifices in the form of shame-induced public apologies at its alter, former leftist-turned-conservative podcasters seek to unapologetically question its pervading narratives.
“We are seeing young people grow up with the mindset that they need to reduce themselves down to race, gender, and their sexuality,” Amala Ekpunobi, host of the podcast “Unapologetic,” told The Epoch Times. “Those three very superficial identities have become so pivotal in how people introduce themselves and whether they are viewed as victims or champions. The more we go down the path of this false narrative, the more we are oppressing them and entertaining a culture of victimhood that is sheerly unsustainable.”
Ekpunobi found herself a voice on PragerU’s (Prager University) conservative media platform with her podcast after her left-leaning worldview began to crumble under the scrutiny of her own critical thinking.
“I think the most hard-hitting issue for me was race,” Ekpunobi said. “I grew up in a white family. I’m biracial. My father is from Nigeria, and my mother, who works with the political left, is white.”
As a child, Ekpunobi aligned herself with her mother’s views, becoming an activist throughout middle and high school, she said, until she became a paid activist after graduating.
‘A New Journey’
It was then when she began observing hypocrisy within the organization, she said.
“I heard a lot of racism toward white people behind the walls of this organization,” she said.
Ekpunobi confronted the organizers about it, asking how they could claim to be the tolerant, anti-racists when they themselves were making racist comments.
“I was told that I was simply unaware of how oppressed I was and that it wasn’t their fault that I wasn’t angry, but that I should be because of how I was treated in this country,” Ekpunobi said.
From there, Ekpunobi researched ideas that didn’t reinforce but instead challenged her preconceived notions, she said.
She discovered social theorists and commentators such as Thomas Sowell and PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager, she said, which, for her, “started a new journey,” she said.
“I had always grown up with the idea that white people carry these inherent biases and that they were a part of a structure of oppression that was working against me, whether they knew it or not,” Ekpunobi said. “So, it was really difficult there toward the end to justify having those opinions, then going home to a family who cared for me.”
‘I Was Becoming Increasingly More Conservative’
The worldview is limiting and distorted, Ekpunobi explained, and it’s robbing young people of their opportunity to have fulfillment in life and a vision of a future in which they can choose from a wide range of vocations, unlimited by their race and gender.
After leaving the left, Ekpunobi also exited the political conversation to pursue a nursing degree, she said.
“I did that for a while, but in the background, I was becoming increasingly more conservative,” Ekpunobi said.
The view from the conservative angle presented a new issue, she said, in that the majority of media platforms cater to cultivating a liberal mindset, even on seemingly insignificant social media apps such as TikTok.
“The app has a ‘For You’ page that shows content based on my demographic, and it was sending me videos that had a liberal political message,” she said. “This is a platform for millions of impressionable young people, and they’re all getting similar content.”
To provide an alternative message, Ekpunobi made her own videos in which she discussed her journey and how she arrived at her conservative belief system.
“Out of nowhere, they just blew up, and some of them landed on the desk at PragerU,” she said. “They reached out to me, flew me to Los Angeles to tell my story, and offered me this job.”
Open Discourse
On “Unapologetic,” Ekpunobi examines news stories, pop culture, and social issues through a rational lens in an attempt to make sense of what is becoming a social climate of irrationality that has infected too many facets of life.
One of the key problems, Ekpunobi said, is the absence of open discourse.
“When I started making these political videos with conservative takes, they were met with a lot of hate and censorship,” she said. “If ideas that are dissident to the wokeness that we are experiencing right now are unavailable, wokeness is going to thrive. That’s why we need to foster conversations, especially with people who have different values and beliefs.”
Questioning Everything
Like Ekpunobi, ex-Democrat Judith Rose’s shift from woke to awake took place after an investigation into her own programming and its sources.
For Rose, it began in 2020 when, just as media narratives weren’t adding up on the outside, her own personal narratives weren’t making sense on the inside.
“I had not been in a great place in my life, so I think that had a lot to do with why I was accepting of programming before that,” Rose said. “I think a lot of our popular social movements today capitalize on people’s mental illness.”
Similar to how Ekpunobi got on the radar of PragarU, Rose made a TikTok video in which she addressed her transforming belief system, which she described as “the hardest pill to swallow of the century.”
It went viral, and she found herself in the media limelight, giving several interviews on alternative media platforms throughout a six-month period in 2020.
Judith Rose, host of Questioning Everything, 2022. (Courtesy of Judith Rose)
‘I’m Coming Up for Air After not Even Realizing I Was Drowning’
Rose had begun to see an agenda behind every message broadcasted from legacy media outlets, she said, and those messages appeared to be making people sick.
Instead of clinging to old ideas that stopped working, she looked toward changing her perspective by listening to other views, such as conservatives, she said.
“I had to admit I was wrong on a lot of issues and re-examine things,” she said. “I’ve had to do that multiple times over the last couple of years, so it’s been quite a journey.”
It wasn’t only about researching new ideas, but also about making changes in her own life, she said.
“It wasn’t fun,” she said. “People I thought were my friends reached out to me to say it sounded like I was going crazy. The people I was around I just didn’t align with anymore.”
However, for Rose, she said she had never felt saner.
“I feel a lot better than I used to because it’s like I’m coming up for air after not even realizing I was drowning,” Rose said. “It’s bizarre to understand so many perspectives at once. A lot of people feel disconnected when that happens to you, and they don’t see you the same way because you don’t see them the same way.”
‘It’s Very Orwellian’
Like Ekpunobi’s discovery that TikTok was curating narratives to particular demographics, Rose observed that—just as she had been in her own life—certain websites were radicalizing people into believing and behaving in ways that weren’t congruent with reality.
“Even after getting off social media, I could see that I was being radicalized through fake media news that crafts these emotional, opinion-based headlines,” she said. “That’s what was happening to me: I had been flipping through these headlines and basing my opinions on those.”
What passes for so many as education and news, Rose said, is in fact propaganda designed as a component of manipulative social experiments with the endgame of dehumanizing and controlling people.
“People are being introduced to ideas that they normally would have no reason to look at, and then there’s this mechanism that’s adopting new terms and changing language,” she said. “It’s very Orwellian, and it’s very unsettling.”
A Spiritual Sickness
Rose also observed what she believed to be not only a mental illness, but a spiritual sickness behind the “extreme emotional reactions” in herself and in others when their ideologies came into conflict with opposing views.
“I had to sit down and acknowledge that I was overly angry and didn’t understand why,” Rose said. “I had to do a lot of meditating, and reaching out to God and say, ‘Hey, I don’t understand this world, can you help me?’”
In recognizing and addressing the spiritual side of her journey, Rose said she was eventually able to achieve wellness that brought clarity.
“I had this one meditation in which I felt like a weight had lifted,” she said. “Suddenly, I was more level-headed and ready to move forward in my life.”
Former beliefs turned inside out, perceptions changed, and her discernment increased, she said.
“I don’t know how that happened, but I credit God for that,” she said.
From this new place in her life, Rose said she believes that there’s a system working against the human race with the intent of dividing and conquering.
‘A Voice of Reason’
Since her shift, Rose said she’s felt called to share her insight on her platform, which includes her podcast, “Questioning Everything.”
On her podcast, she doesn’t shy away from going down the more esoteric and supernatural topics covered by journalists like the late Jim Marrs and connecting them to current events.
“I’m just trying to be a voice of reason to help people continue to question and discuss things so we don’t all feel so crazy and alone,” Rose said. “That’s been the main goal of my platform: to let people know, ‘Hey, it’s not just you. I see it, too.’”
WHICH BRINGS THE RUNNING TOTAL OF DEMOCRAT APPOINTEES WILLING TO SELL AMERICA OUT TO CHINA TO ABOUT 100%.
A chief advisor to the U.S. Department of Agriculture during the presidency of Barack H. Obama recently headlined an event sponsored by a Chinese Communist Party influence group targeting American farmers and farmland, The National Pulse can reveal.
The incident is the latest example of high-level, left-wing government aides ending up in the orbit of the Chinese Communist Party and comes amidst the regime’s attempt to purchase massive amounts of farmland in the U.S.
Joseph W. Glauber – who served as Obama’s Chief Economist at the Department of Agriculture from 2008 to 2014 – was a featured speaker for an August 15th event hosted by the U.S.-China Heartland Association (USCHA).
Glauber, who also served as America’s Chief Agricultural Negotiator in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative from 2007 to 2009, spoke on a panel hosted by the group titled “Finding Security: US-China Agriculture Trade in a Changing World.”
“As a global food security crisis is looming large over the horizon, what is the future of U.S.-China Ag trade, and how can the two countries collaborate to address global food security?” explained a summary of what participants would learn from attending the event.
The group hosting Glauber – who is now a Senior Research Fellow at the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) – has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party and its vast efforts to subvert American politicians, academics, and journalists. The D.C.-based IFPRI is also funded in part by U.S. taxpayer dollars and China.
Founded by former Democrat Governor of Missouri Bob Holden, the USHCA purports to be a “bipartisan organization committed to building stronger ties between USHCA Region (20 states located in the USA between the Great Lakes to the Gulf) and the People’s Republic of China.”
“Our focus will be on Trust Building efforts connecting government officials; business leaders; educational and community interests with like-minded institutions between the Heartland Region and the People’s Republic of China,” the group’s mission statement euphemizes.
In reality, the group is leveraged by several Chinese Communist Party-controlled organizations to gain access to American agricultural officials and company representatives.
Among the Chinese Communist Party influence groups that collaborate with USHCA are the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC) and China United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF), both of which are part of Beijing’s United Front Work Department.
The United Front Work Department is a billion-dollar operation executed by the Chinese Communist Party seeking “to co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign individuals and the policies of foreign states to serve Beijing’s interests,” according to the federal U.S.-China Security and Economic Review Commission.
Also referred to as “avowedly an arm of the party-state,” CPAFFC has been flagged by the U.S. State Department for its campaigns to “directly and malignly influence” American officials and business leaders.
The conference raises concerns about the Chinese Communist Party’s intensive efforts to subvert American farmers, as United Front Work Department Groups have leveraged free trips to China and business deals to individuals working in other industries to have them push policies favored by the regime.
Former President Donald Trump responded to recent comments issued by Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) about the GOP possibly not retaking the Senate during the 2022 midterms.
In a post on Truth Social, Trump said the Kentucky senator is a “broken down political hack” and challenged his loyalty to the Republican Party. “Why do Republicans Senators allow a broken down hack politician, Mitch McConnell, to openly disparage hard working Republican candidates for the United States Senate,” Trump asked on the platform.
He added: “This is such an affront to honor and to leadership. He should spend more time (and money!) helping them get elected, and less time helping his crazy wife and family get rich on China!” Trump was making reference to McConnell’s wife, Elaine Chao, owning a shipping company that does extensive business in China, according to reports.
Trump’s critical comment came days after McConnell told reporters that the GOP likely won’t retake the Senate because, according to him, there are problems with certain Republican candidates running for office in this election cycle. He didn’t elaborate.
“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate,” McConnell told reporters in Kentucky last week. “Senate races are just different, they’re statewide, candidate quality has a lot to do with the outcome.”
McConnell did not say whether he has a plan or will try to help certain Republican candidates win their races.
Republicans need a net gain of one Senate seat to retake control of the congressional body. The Senate now stands at 50–50, with Vice President Kamala Harris serving as a tie-breaker for the Democrats.
“In the Senate, if you look at where we have to compete in order to get into a majority, there are places that are competitive in the general election,” McConnell also said in April. “So, you can’t nominate somebody who’s just sort of unacceptable to a broader group of people and win. We had that experience in 2010 and 2012.”
Since he left the White House, Trump has often panned the leadership of McConnell, who in 2020 happily touted the former president’s endorsement to win his Senate race.
While McConnell has issued few statements in response to Trump’s criticisms of the senator’s leadership, he believes he will be reelected as GOP leader regardless of whether Republicans or Democrats take over in 2022.
“Well, look at it this way: I have been elected eight times without opposition. If I have an opponent—I don’t own this job, and there’s always an election every two years for leader—if anybody wants to challenge me, have at it,” McConnell told Fox News earlier this month. McConnell then said he is confident about being reelected as GOP leader.
Nearly 5 million illegal immigrants have crossed U.S. borders in the 18 months since President Joe Biden took office, according to a new report.
A total of 4.9 million illegal aliens, including some 900,000 “gotaways” who evaded apprehension and have since disappeared into American communities, have entered the country by the end of July, the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) said in a statement on Aug. 16.
“Roughly the equivalent of the entire population of Ireland has illegally entered the United States in the 18 months President Biden has been in office, with many being released into American communities,” FAIR President Dan Stein said in the press release.
He blamed Biden for putting the unprecedented surge down to external factors, not the administration’s own “sabotage” of immigration laws. After rolling back key Trump-era policies, Biden presided over the largest number of apprehensions of illegal immigrants at the U.S.–Mexico border in a calendar year in history, recording almost 1.9 million arrests last year.
“The endless flow of illegal aliens and the incursion of lethal narcotics pouring across our border will not end until this administration demonstrates a willingness to enforce our laws,” Stein said.
The White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.
New Surge
Two million illegal aliens have entered the country in the first 10 months of this financial year, according to data from U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). In June, more than 207,000 illegal immigrants were apprehended attempting to cross the U.S.–Mexico border, making this the highest number of June apprehensions in history.
Although July saw a slim decline in CBP encounters at the southwest border of nearly 200,000, it turned out to be the 17th straight month with more than 150,000 encounters, representing a 325 percent increase over the average number of July apprehensions under the Trump administration, the statement reads.
Among the over 213,000 illegal aliens deported from the border in July, only 37 percent of the arrests led to expulsions under Title 42—a 7 percent drop from last month. Border agents processed the majority of the rest under Title 8, which oftentimes lets illegal aliens be released into the U.S. interior while their cases sit in backlogged immigration courts.
The Biden administration announced it would end the Trump-era Title 42, a border policy put in place on public health grounds amid the COVID-19 pandemic, which it had been forced to keep in place owing to a lack of notice.
CBP also reported 10 individuals on the FBI’s terror watchlist were apprehended in July between ports of entry at the southwest border, pushing the total for the current fiscal year to 66.
Meanwhile, CPB seized 2,130 pounds of the synthetic opioid fentanyl last month, more than three times that intercepted in June, and topping the previous monthly record of nearly 1,300 pounds set in April.
It nearly equals the total amount of fentanyl confiscated throughout 2019.
A veteran former police officer and former 2022 Republican candidate for Oklahoma governor said he “wouldn’t be surprised” if the federal Department of Justice brought charges against Donald Trump following an “unprecedented” raid of the former president’s Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida by the FBI.
“You don’t go to this level with a person of this level if you don’t or are not thinking about filing charges. You don’t do it,” said Dr. Mark Sherwood, a retired 24-year veteran of the Tulsa Police Department and 10-year member of the department’s SWAT Team.
“I wouldn’t be surprised if some charges are filed—even if the evidence is not thoroughly vetted,” Sherwood said.
“The timing of it is curious, to say the least. You’re coming into the tail end of the mid-term primaries,” with Republicans poised to reclaim both chambers of Congress, he said.
Dr. Mark Sherwood, a veteran police officer, naturopathic doctor, and candidate for Oklahoma said the FBI raid on Donald Trump’s home in Florida was “unprecedented.” (Courtesy of Dr. Mark Sherwood)
As a former law enforcement officer, Sherwood served many search warrants and knew the legal process for obtaining them.
What he finds “highly unusual” was the FBI’s decision to search the home of a former sitting president against all historical precedent.
Sherwood told The Epoch Times that not even the Watergate scandal that surrounded former president Richard Nixon or the impeachment of former president Bill Clinton prompted such unprecedented action.
“I don’t know of anything else in history” that reaches the same level, he said.
“What we don’t know is the total contents of the affidavit” used to obtain the search warrant, Sherwood said.
“I know there’s a lot of discussion on what parts of the affidavit to release. We don’t know what precipitated this acceleration” leading up to the Aug. 8 raid.
‘Extremely Broad’ Scope of Search Warrant
Sherwood said that search warrants are specific and limited in their scope as a rule. “It has to be so specific that there can be no other residence like [Trump’s] in the world. It also has to be very specific about what you are looking for and where it is [located].”
Sherwood said that the search warrant signed by Florida Judge Bruce Rinehart was “extremely broad” in scope. Many Republican lawmakers accused the DOJ of conducting a “fishing expedition” to dig up incriminating evidence against Trump.
“What information is out there that we don’t know? There’s a lot. The question is, how much of the information out there is true? That’s up for debate,” Sherwood said.
“I would hope that wouldn’t be the case” regarding an alleged fishing expedition. “That would mean that the affidavit was completely falsified and that the person that did that is guilty of perjury,” he said.
“Every law enforcement in the land has the potential to get compromised. Nobody in this country would want to believe an entire agency is compromised. But as we all know today, there is a complete deterioration of trust in law enforcement. Part of that is pre-Donald Trump,” Sherwood said.
A local law enforcement officer in front of the home of former President Donald Trump at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 9, 2022. (Giorgio Viera/AFP via Getty Images)
Political Backlash Brewing
Sherwood said he believes “absolutely” there could be compromised individuals within the FBI but is hesitant to paint the entire agency with a broad brush.
“I can’t get to the point where the whole batch is spoiled. A local FBI branch office did not make this decision [to search Trump’s home]. You don’t go doing this knowing the political storm that’s going to follow,” Sherwood said.
Federal investigators had permission to search the “45 Office,” all storage rooms and areas used by Trump and his staff to keep records.
The search warrant pertained to any classified government or presidential record created between Jan. 20, 2017, when Trump took office, and Jan. 20, 2021, when he left the White House.
During the raid, federal agents seized many items, including the Executive Grant of Clemency for conservative political consultant and lobbyist Roger Stone, and information regarding the president of France, Emmanuel Macron.
They also confiscated a handwritten note, two photo binders, a leather-bound box of documents, a potential presidential record, and three passports.
Trump also claims that investigators took privileged legal documents and executive materials kept in boxes and opened a safe.
“Grabbing passports that presumably are not part of the search—completely improper, shouldn’t do it. Never,” Sherwood said.
However, if there’s evidence in plain view that law enforcement believes is part of or connected to an investigation, “they can seize that.”
Sherwood said he views it as “highly irregular” that investigators turned off surveillance cameras during the raid.
“If it were me, I would want the camera on to protect the integrity of what I’m doing as an officer—as an agent,” he said.
Sherwood said federal agents seized large swathes of evidence without vetting what they were taking.
Issue of Probable Cause
What was the threshold of proof used to obtain the search warrant?
“That’s probably the trillion dollar question,” Sherwood said. “Probable cause is a preponderance of the evidence—51 percent of a crime would have been committed.”
“It’s always based upon what’s presented in front of a judge. The question to ascertain is whether the evidence presented is valid or not. That’s the real attack point here. That is not beyond a reasonable doubt. That’s for court purposes” to determine.
Security officers guard the entrance to the Paul G. Rogers Federal Building & Courthouse as the court holds a hearing to determine if the affidavit used by the FBI as justification for the search of former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago estate should be unsealed, at the U.S. District Courthouse for the Southern District of Florida in West Palm Beach, Fla., on Aug. 18, 2022. (Chandan Khanna/AFP via Getty Images)
Sherwood questioned the Department of Justice’s timing to launch the raid nearly two years after Trump’s departure from office.
“The unclear thing is what is exactly in the affidavit. [The DOJ] is probably going to release some of it.”
Sherwood said the media is mainly responsible for stoking fear and anger on both sides. However, the seeds of civil unrest began during the Obama administration and the riots of 2020.
He warned against any renewed acts of violence that might undermine positive conservative gains.
“In the court of public opinion, it’s a tough deal right now. In today’s world, it doesn’t take much to get people fired up about this issue,” Sherwood said.
“There’s going to be a lot of people rallying around this. If it’s politically motivated, it will backfire [and] galvanize both sides,” further dividing the country, he said.
The U.S. Department of Education said it has terminated Accrediting Council for Independent Colleges and Schools (ACICS) as a nationally recognized college accreditor, capping the agency’s long-running battle with the federal government to retain its accrediting powers.
Deputy Secretary of Education Cindy Marten on Aug. 19 issued a final decision to deny an appeal by ACICS to retain its federal status as an accrediting agency.
Marten’s decision means that the two dozen or so schools approved by ACICS have to find a new accrediting agency or lose access to federal financial aid.
“Her decision is considered final and officially starts an 18-month period for schools currently accredited by ACICS to find another accreditor to continue offering federal student grants, loans, or work-study funds,” the Education Department said in a statement.
ACICS said it was “disappointed” with the decision, which the agency called “deeply flawed.”
“We believe it is deeply flawed and that ACICS has been in substantial compliance with any objective, consistent, and reasonable interpretation of the recognition criteria,” ACICS said in a statement, adding that it’s considering whether to appeal in federal court.
In her decision (pdf), Marten said that “despite its best efforts to improve its operations,” ACICS had failed to comply with a range of criteria for accreditors.
Marten said that the review leading up to termination was carried out properly and was not procedurally deficient, insisting that ACICS has received a “full and fair hearing on its petition for recognition.”
The federal government doesn’t accredit colleges directly but relies on accrediting agencies to do vetting and issue approvals.
ACICS, which was founded in 1912 and was once one of the biggest college accreditors in the country, currently accredits 27 institutions with some 5,000 students.
It accredited ITT Technical Institute and dozens of schools operated by Corinthian Colleges, both institutions that were shut down several years ago, at significant cost to taxpayers.
Federal authorities recently forgave over $10 billion in student debt for ITT and Corinthian students.
California Attorney General Rob Bonta said in a statement that ACICS accredited “predatory” for-profit colleges like Corinthian, which he said targeted low-income California students with false advertising and “saddled them with debt.”
Marten’s decision caps a years-long process that began in 2016, when the Department of Education first stopped recognizing ACICS, prompting a lawsuit.
In 2018, then-Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos reinstated ACICS after a federal judge ordered the Education Department to consider new evidence.
A staff report carried out by the Education Department and released in January 2021 recommended that the department revoke the recognition, prompting ACICS to appeal, with Marten’s decision bringing that process to an end.
Marten’s decision was hailed by Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
“ACICS has repeatedly showed that it is not a reliable authority on educational quality, which is why the Obama Admin rescinded its authority in 2016. I commend @usedgov for today’s decision to terminate ACICS’ federal recognition once again,” Durbin said in a statement.
A pediatric program at Yale University has sparked an outrage after its director said it helps children as young as 3 with their “gender journeys” through “medical intervention.”
Dr. Christy Olezeski, a clinical psychologist who co-founded and directs the Yale Pediatric Gender Program, was filmed describing the program as one that works with “gender expansive individuals, 3 to 25, and their families.”
“We help individuals who are questioning their gender identity or who identify as transgender or non-binary, and we help them with their gender journey,” Olezeski says in a video posted on Yale School of Medicine’s official YouTube channel. The video has been set to private.
Yale Pediatric Gender Program director says she treats kids as young as THREE on their “gender journey” including medical intervention pic.twitter.com/WoCrr9Utnb
Specifically, the program will help individuals “think through the risks and benefits of medical intervention, starting medical intervention, and also building supports around them,” according to Olezeski.
“I love what I do,” the professor continued. “It’s really, really wonderful to be working in this field and to be working with individuals who are gender diverse and gaining their support and helping them on their gender journeys.”
Yale Medicine launched the Gender Program in October 2015. According to its website, a family that brings their child to the clinic will first meet with a consultation team, including a pediatric endocrinologist and a mental health specialist, who are “experienced in dealing with gender variance” and will learn more about the family’s needs.
“We will discuss the risks and side effects of any proposed care options, and work together to learn what support systems are already in place and determine what else our patients may need,” the website states.
Following that, the child will be given a “readiness assessment,” which includes “obtaining information from patients and their families.” After the evaluation, the program will offer a variety of “care options related to gender affirmation,” such as puberty-blocking treatments, cross-hormone therapies, and “gender-affirming” surgeries.
The website specifies that the surgery options are only available to patients aged 18 and older, but doesn’t say how old a patient must be to get cross-sex hormones or puberty blockers.
A clip of the video featuring Olezeski became widely circulated on Twitter this week, triggering a backlash against the program.
“Society has lost its marbles,” commented Kelli Ward, chair of the Republican Party of Arizona.
“Kid’s memories are just starting to work at 3. Kids think they’re dinosaurs or a dog. There is no ‘gender journey’ at 3, this is child abuse,” wrote stand-up comedians the HodgeTwins.
The controversy comes as a growing number of pediatric health care providers embrace “gender affirmation care,” a concept rooted in the progressive gender ideology.
The American Academy of Pediatrics, the national organization of pediatric health professionals, in its latest guidelines encourages pediatric providers to adopt a “gender-affirmative care model” and offer services that are “oriented toward understanding and appreciating the youth’s gender experience.”
In such a model, transgender identities and “diverse gender expressions” are not considered a mental disorder, but “normal aspects of human diversity.” The model also recognizes gender identity as something that “evolves as an interplay of biology, development, socialization, and culture.”
Yale Medicine didn’t respond to a request for comment. Dr. Olezeski couldn’t be immediately reached for comment.
“Same pollution. Better Marketing.” Great quote (see below). Climate change in a nutshell. [US Patriot]
Increased domestic lithium production plays a crucial role in President Joe Biden’s green energy plan, as 2021 marked the largest rollout of solar, wind, and electric batteries in the history of the United States.
Nevertheless, lithium mining has quietly revealed itself to be a significant contributor to environmental pollution in the frantic rush to abandon fossil fuels.
On May 2, the Biden administration announced the investment of more than $3 billion to make more lithium batteries and their components. It’s a pivotal part of the president’s goal to have at least half of all vehicle sales in the United States be electric by 2030.
Currently, there are two main ways to obtain the sought-after element: Hard rock ore mining and brine extraction.
Controlled Thermal Resources drilling rig in Calipatria, California. Lithium reserves have been discovered in the nearby Salton Sea on Dec. 15, 2021. (Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)
While much of the carbon emitted from mining depends on the rock it’s extracted from, this technique still produces at least 15 tons of CO2 for every ton of lithium harvested.
Generally speaking, mining is a dirty business. Mineral extractions like lithium and coal—a fossil fuel—both fall under this umbrella. Collectively, the mining industry generates between 1.9 and 5.1 gigatons of carbon emissions annually.
The other approach to accessing lithium involves removing the metal from brine in areas with salt flats. However, this approach requires, on average, 500,000 gallons of water to procure a single ton of lithium. While it’s a less carbon-intensive process, brine extraction still results in tens of thousands of gallons of highly toxic wastewater needing proper storage or disposal.
And this is just the tip of the iceberg of green energy manufacturing behind the scenes.
Elements like cobalt and nickel are also crucial for renewable technologies like electric car batteries, which is another pollution-heavy withdrawal.
Same Pollution, Better Marketing
Open pit hard rock mining is the method scheduled for use at Thacker Pass, the largest lithium reserve in the United States.
Wind, solar, and electric-car batteries are dependent on the world’s lightest metal to function.
In the meantime, some experts are sounding the alarm over the not so green reality of renewable energy.
“While lithium-ion batteries are light-weight and convenient for modern-day electronics, they not only emit a large amount of carbon dioxide to produce, but they also tap into precious water reserves,” chief operating officer of Greenly, Matthieu Vegreville, told The Epoch Times.
Vegreville explained the carbon footprint of lithium mining, in comparison to other fossil fuel extractions like coal and oil, typically produces more carbon emissions. That’s because lithium products such as batteries require a more material-intensive process.
“And as the demand for battery material increases, it doesn’t make the process any easier,” he added.
President of the National Mining Association, Rich Nolan, noted during a press statement that Biden’s push for ramped-up domestic lithium production will make America more energy independent as the country continues shifting away from fossil fuels.
Nolan added the United States needs to build on this green momentum and approve new hard rock mines or face the continuation of geopolitical mineral dependence that is “completely dominated by China.”
Workers at a factory for Xinwangda Electric Vehicle Battery Co., on March 12, 2021. (STR/AFP via Getty Images)
Secretary of Energy Jennifer Granholm said Biden’s historic investment in electric battery production and recycling would give the United States “the jolt it needs to become more secure and less reliant on other nations,” in a May 2 press release.
Though some environmental experts believe that when it comes to lithium extraction, the end doesn’t justify the means.
“Our position is: mining is very destructive to the environment and communities. It needs to be approached judiciously,” John Hadder, director of Great Basin Resource Watch, told The Epoch Times.
Hadder has fought for Nevada to address regulation oversights and environmental blowback from the controversial Thacker Pass project in that state. He also maintains that if politicians were really concerned about reducing greenhouse gasses quickly, there are cheaper, faster, and easier ways to do it.
“If you want to reduce greenhouse gasses quickly, we can do that by changing existing energy and public transportation usage,” he said before adding, “We already know it’s possible. We did it during COVID.”
The Thacker Pass project has been met with considerable resistance from environmentalists.
In March, Hadder’s organization filed an appeal with the Nevada State Environmental Commission, challenging the state’s water pollution control permit. The appeal was denied on June 28 after the State Environmental Commission affirmed the contested permit.
Though due to concerns over groundwater contamination, the Nevada government only approved drilling above the water table for Thacker Pass.
Hadder added that the lithium ore extraction will use what’s called an acid-leech process, which requires the use of sulfuric acid.
Ironically, the majority of the sulfur needed for this will be purchased from the oil and gas industry since it’s the cheapest way to acquire the chemical.
Compounding this is the absence of a leak analysis for the project, which Hadder believes creates an environmental powder keg.
“How long will it be seeping and what does the management look like down the road? This hasn’t been adequately addressed,” he said.
Vegreville added that the problem with lithium extraction is similar to the problem with plastic, “Once it’s created, it can’t be destroyed.”
In November 2021, United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres remarked, “We’re digging our own graves” with mining, drilling, and burning during a world leader’s summit on climate change.
Regardless, the data and impacts of lithium production have been ignored in favor of rebranding the same heavy polluting industries with the label “green energy.”
The Battery Problem
At the other end of the lithium debate are the spent electric batteries. Improperly disposed lithium batteries can be very unstable, causing landfill fires that can go on for years. The resultant toxic chemicals released into the air can also impact air quality and carbon emissions.
Vegreville explained batteries can be recycled, but lithium-ion units are especially dangerous due to fire hazards.
“One of the most ecologically friendly ways to dispose of a lithium-ion battery is to dismantle it,” he said.
Though the demand for lithium batteries is set to become a $116 billion industry by the year 2030, leaving some experts concerned that production may outstrip the industry’s ability to properly handle waste on the back end.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency admits special recycling and hazardous waste facilities are needed to deal with the influx of electric batteries. One standard electric car battery on average weighs over 1,000 pounds.
In other words, the recycling end will need to be a highly regulated, multi-million dollar industry in its own right to reduce pollution and fire hazards.
Moreover, Hadder says the current political demand for lithium could end with a push for more toxic, unsustainable projects in the long run. And while he supports a transition to renewable energy overall, the current gold rush mentality for lithium is anything but green.
“What we’re seeing now is a repeat of patterns and practices of the past,” Hadder said.
Today Gab received the letter below from Congress. We weren’t going to publicize it, but given that the Committee went to the press before we did there’s no point pretending that we didn’t get it.
We are considering our response to the House Oversight Committee.
For the rest of you, know that we cooperate with law enforcement regularly on public safety matters and we never comment on non-public communications with law enforcement, even when it would be convenient to do so for public relations purposes, such as today or in any response to Congress we may choose to send at a later date.
We will add one thing for the public and the media to chew on in the meantime, given that the relevant case is now public. The House’s letter makes reference to a Gab user who posted threats against law enforcement on our platform. The implication of the letter is that we are somehow complicit in those threats. The posts in question were made on or about August 11th and an arrest was made on August 15th.
In that case, as the now-public affidavit supporting the arrest warrant states, we received an emergency data request for the subject through our law enforcement disclosure portal at 6:10 PM on August 11th. We responded at 6:10 (i.e., within one minute) to inform the FBI the issue was being actioned. Responsive records were provided to the FBI by 8:20 PM, or 130 minutes later.
We know for a fact that this is orders of magnitude faster responding to law enforcement than companies like Twitter and Facebook, on whose platforms far more threats against law enforcement – and far more hate, pornography, and other unpleasantness – can be found. Just yesterday for example a man was arrested and found with “buckets of human organs and skin” which he purchased on Facebook.
We don’t scream about how seriously we take public safety. We don’t publicize it. We don’t use it to make political statements. We just do the work, try to be as responsible a corporate citizen as we can, and provide all lawful assistance to law enforcement as efficiently as we can given that Gab is a small business with limited resources. We like to think we do a good job at this.
We would recommend that the members of the Committee call up their friends over at the DOJ to verify our bona fides. In the meantime, as we consider our formal response, for all the commentators out there who have been calling for Gab to be shut down for years on end, just because you don’t know about the public safety work we do doesn’t mean it isn’t happening.
The U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) has ended a subgrant to the laboratory in China located where the first COVID-19 cases were identified in 2019.
U.S.-based EcoHealth Alliance was granted $3.7 million, starting in 2014, to study bat-related coronaviruses. It conveyed some of the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), located in China.
The grant was renewed in 2019, but suspended in 2020 because of concerns the grantees were failing to comply with conditions attached to the money.
The NIH’s review of the concerns has concluded, Dr. Michael Lauer, an NIH deputy director, revealed in a letter on Aug. 19. It determined that all of the problems cannot be fixed.
Therefore, the NIH informed EcoHealth Alliance that the subaward to the Wuhan lab is terminated “for failure to meet award terms and conditions requiring provision of records to NIH upon request,” Lauer wrote to Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.), the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee.
‘Cannot Be Remedied’
Grants from the U.S. government come with certain conditions, including timely reporting of results, and adequate monitoring of experiments.
The NIH asked for plans to correct the failures, which was provided on Feb. 4, Lauer said Friday, and the NIH determined that the plans were sufficient.
Separately, though, the NIH asked EcoHealth in late 2021, and again in January, for lab notebooks and original files from the research conducted at the Wuhan lab. It has not received them, according to the new letter.
EcoHealth executives have said that it passed along the request but have not heard back from WIV.
The refusal to provide the materials led to the just-announced termination of the subaward.
“NIH has determined that WIV’s refusal to provide the requested records, and EHA’s failure to include the required terms in WIV’s subaward agreement represent material failures to comply with the terms of award,” Lauer told Drs. Aleksei Chmura and Peter Daszak, the executives, in a letter released on Friday by Comer. “NIH has further determined that in these circumstances, WIV’s refusal to provide records cannot be remedied by imposing additional conditions, and that a partial termination of award (i.e., termination of the subaward to WIV) is the only appropriate action.”
EcoHealth did not respond to requests for comment. An email sent to the Wuhan lab bounced back.
Will Keep Funding EcoHealth
The NIH is not terminating any of the awards in question, R01AI110964, 1U01AI151797-01, and 1U01AI153420-01—at least for now.
When grantees are not compliant with requirements, the preference is to work with them to bring them into compliance rather than termination, Lauer said.
EcoHealth has successfully implemented the NIH-approved corrective plans for the latter two awards, according to the NIH. While EcoHealth will be forbidden to dole money out to WIV under the other grant, it will be able to renegotiate the objectives of the grant with the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, led by Dr. Anthony Fauci.
If an agreement is reached, the revised grant will move forward. If it is not, the grant may be terminated.
EcoHealth was asked to outline within 30 days how it will accomplish the purpose of the grant without WIV. That will require a change in scope but the change may not depart significantly from the original project, Lauer said.
Comer said the NIH should have ended the award entirely.
“Terminating EcoHealth Alliance’s partnership with the Wuhan Lab is the bare minimum. It’s unacceptable that the NIH continues to allow EcoHealth Alliance to receive taxpayer dollars even though it is confirmed EcoHealth violated the terms of its grant contract,” he said.
“EcoHealth’s dangerous experiments in Wuhan and possible efforts to cover up any evidence may have started the pandemic. EcoHealth should not receive a penny of American taxpayer dollars for their gross mismanagement of Americans’ hard-earned money,” he added.
The motto “In God We Trust” is being displayed in a growing number of Texas schools thanks to a law that recently went into effect requiring its display in a prominent location in public schools and institutions of higher education in the Lone Star state.
Texas state Sen. Bryan Hughes, a Republican, co-authored Senate Bill 797, which was passed last year and requires schools to display the motto as long as the signs featuring it came from private donations, at no cost to taxpayers.
“The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God,” Hughes said in an Aug. 17 statement on Twitter following an appearance for a Northwest Austin Republican Women’s Club event earlier in the week.
Hughes shared a photo of one of the signs, saying he’s encouraged by people “coming forward to donate these framed prints to remind future generations of the national motto.”
The national motto, In God We Trust, asserts our collective trust in a sovereign God.
I co-authored the bill in 2003 that allowed schools to display the motto, and last year I authored the “In God We Trust Act,” which requires a school to display the motto if there… pic.twitter.com/YWyopJZ11f
The law states that Texas public schools and institutions of higher learning must display the national motto in a “conspicuous place,” and an increasing number of signs featuring the words have been donated to school districts across Texas.
Patriot Mobile, a Texas-based cellphone company, donated several “In God We Trust” signs to Carroll Independent School District (ISD) campuses, saying in a statement on social media that they’re “proud to be a part of having our nation’s motto hung in our public schools.”
“Our mission is to passionately defend our God-given, Constitutional rights and freedoms, and to glorify God always,” the company added.
The company later clarified that they donated framed “In God We Trust” posters to “many other school districts in the Dallas-Fort Worth area and we will continue to do so until all the schools in the area receive them.”
“We are honored to be part of bringing God back into our public schools!” the company said.
Carroll ISD shared a photograph of the donated signs in a post on Twitter.
During the presentation, the Board receives a signage donation pursuant to SB 797 by Patriot Mobile LLC. pic.twitter.com/Gju3NP0xpR
Similar signs have gone up in Austin and the Houston area, according to the Houston Chronicle.
But not everyone is pleased with the law that requires the display of the “In God We Trust” signage.
Anya Kushwaha, founder of the Southlake Anti-Racism Coalition, told NBCDFW in an interview that the law is problematic as it blurs the line separating church and state.
“I feel like they don’t have a choice right now to put them up, but hopefully this will spark larger conversations about having more freedom of expression, so if they are allowed to put up signs like this there should be no reasons that other students or people can’t put up signs that have different messaging,” Kushwaha told the outlet.
Despite some objections, the signs are increasingly popping up in Texas schools, with The Yellow Rose of Texas Republican Women saying in a recent post on social media that they had donated a number of the signs to Houston area school districts.
“In God We Trust” became the official motto of the United States in 1956 when President Dwight D. Eisenhower put his signature on a bill that gave it the force of law.
