The House of Representatives on March 27 overwhelmingly passed a bill to punish communist China for its forced organ harvesting from prisoners of conscience, marking the first nonsymbolic legislative measure in the United States to counter the atrocity.

H.R. 1154, dubbed the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act of 2023, passed by a vote of 413–2. It would sanction anyone involved in the act and require annual government reporting on such activities taking place in foreign countries. Sens. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chris Coons (D-Del.) were among more than a dozen lawmakers leading the measure’s companion version in the Senate.

Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the principal sponsor of the bill, called attention to the penalties in the bill for those found to be involved in forced organ harvesting: a civil penalty of up to $250,000 and a criminal penalty of up to $1 million and 20 years in prison.

“It’s got real teeth. We’re not kidding,” Smith told The Epoch Times ahead of the floor vote. “This is an atrocity, this is a crime against humanity, and it’s a war crime, because this is a war on innocent people in China, and [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping is directly responsible. Those who willingly engage in this will be held responsible.”

On the House floor, Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.) highlighted the annual reporting requirement in the bill, which she said would ensure that the United States makes “an informed assessment regarding the magnitude and prevalence of this problem.”

“Given the ongoing genocide, we cannot take Beijing at its word about what it is and is not doing,” she said. “We need to investigate and we need to verify.

“We should never look away from injustice and repression wherever it takes place.”

Haunting Memories

The news of the bill’s passage was heartening for many survivors of the regime’s persecution who have escaped to the United States for refuge, as in the case of Han Yu, an adherent of Falun Gong. Practitioners of the spiritual discipline have been named as the primary victims of the regime’s illicit organ trade.

The spiritual practice, which includes moral teachings based on the principles of truthfulness, compassion, and tolerance, along with five meditative exercises, enjoyed significant popularity for its health and moral benefits in China in the 1990s, eventually attracting an estimated 70 million to 100 million practitioners by the end of the decade.

Perceiving this popularity to be a threat to its control, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) started an elimination campaign in 1999, resulting in millions of adherents being detained and an unknown number of deaths from slave labor, torture, and other abuses over the past 23 years.

In 2019, an independent tribunal in London concluded, after a year-long investigation, that forced organ harvesting had taken place in China for years “on a significant scale,” with detained Falun Gong practitioners being the principal source of organs. Its final judgment, released in March 2020 and including 300 pages of witness testimony and submissions, found “no evidence of the practice having been stopped.”

A native of Beijing, Han was 19 when she lost her father to persecution in 2004, two years before the first reports of the regime’s secretive organ trade industry. More than a decade would pass before the issue became more widely recognized.

The last image she has of her father, Han Junqing—who died just a little more than two months after his arrest for practicing Falun Gong—still haunts her to this day.

Han Yu’s breathing grew heavier as she recounted those memories from nearly two decades ago.

Extremely thin, with a face bruised green and purple, her father’s body lay cold in a forensic center room surrounded by dozens of uniformed officers.

There was tissue missing from under the man’s left eye. A long knife incision, sewn together with black thread, extended down from his throat. The police forced her out when she tried to unbutton his shirt to see where the stitches ended.

Later, Han’s aunt and uncle tore open his shirt before the police could stop them. They found that the incision reached all the way to his abdomen. There were no organs inside, only ice.

‘A Crime Never Seen Before’ 

Han for a long time struggled to accept the loss of her father. She dreamed of him often and would wake up in tears, she told The Epoch Times.

In 2006, multiple whistleblowers came to The Epoch Times to shed light on the dark scheme. In 2007, while surfing social media, she came across an article describing forced organ harvesting, and what happened to her father fit the description.

That night, Han cried for hours.

The story of Jiang Li, the daughter of a persecution victim in southwest China’s Xishanping Labor Camp, is similar.

Her father, Jiang Xiqing, a retired official at a local tax bureau in the megacity Chongqing, was arrested after a house raid in May 2008—three months before Beijing hosted its first Olympics—and was given a one-year sentence to a labor camp without trial.

He died in late January the following year, less than 24 hours after a family visit during which he appeared healthy.

After seven hours in the freezer, the man’s face and chest were still warm, but when Jiang Li and other family members tried to call attention to the matter, police pushed them out of the morgue. Police cremated the body days later and threatened and harassed the family when they sought to get to the bottom of the matter, at one point telling Jiang Li to “name any price” to settle the case. A Chongqing procuratorate official, Zhou Bailin, told them that all of Jiang Xiqing’s organs had been “removed and turned into medical specimens.”

They never sought the Jiang family’s approval, nor was there any explanation.

“Harvesting organs from living people is a crime never seen before on this planet, and it’s still happening,” Jiang Li, who now lives in New York, told The Epoch Times. Her hope, she said, is to see the U.S. government help “immediately stop such crime against humanity, hold the Chinese Communist Party and all perpetrators accountable, and purge the state-run machinery that’s still committing the crime.”

‘Major Step Forward’

Torsten Trey, executive director of the medical ethics group Doctors Against Forced Organ Harvesting, welcomed the bill as a “major step forward” in helping to “raise critical awareness” about forced organ harvesting but believes that more measures are necessary to curb medical tourism to China.

“The bill takes advantage of our legal system and applies existing mechanisms to demonetize or ban those who participated in these crimes against humanity,” he told The Epoch Times in an email.

What is missing, he wrote, is a requirement for all who enter the United States—whether immigrants or U.S. citizens—to answer whether they have “‘imported’ a newly transplanted organ from countries that are known to procure organs through forced organ harvesting” and the amount of money paid for the organs.

“Organ harvesting is a crime,” he wrote. Although patients have the right to privacy, that privacy “should end at the crimes of forced organ harvesting: If Falun Gong practitioners or other prisoners of conscience have been killed for their organs in China, we should not cover up these crimes under the umbrella of health care privacy.”

Smith, the New Jersey congressman, said the bill could cover anyone who participates in forced organ harvesting, including patients who receive the organs.

“If there’s willful knowledge that is being stolen from a Falun Gong practitioner, or anyone else, then they could be held criminally and civilly liable,” he said.

“How do you know on a certain date, you’re going to have a liver all ready to go? That’s because they kill the individual in order to get that. They murdered them,” he added, referring to instances of Chinese hospitals promising to deliver vital organs on a specified date—something impossible in voluntary organ donor systems.

Smith emphasized that there’s also a moral onus on Americans going to China for organ transplants to find out more about the source of the organs.

Israel, Taiwan, Italy, and Spain have already banned organ transplant tourism.

The European Parliament, U.S. Congress, and various local bodies have also publicly censured the regime’s forced organ harvesting but have yet to adopt legislative means.

But if the Stop Forced Organ Harvesting Act becomes law, that would be one step toward that change, according to Levi Browde, executive director of the Falun Dafa Information Center.

“With this bill, our Congress is joining lawmakers from several other countries who have passed laws aimed at stopping the horrific practice of murdering innocent people for their organs, and punishing those who continue to do so,” Browde said in a statement to The Epoch Times.

He urged the Senate to pass the companion legislation.

“Despite all the economic and political pressure exerted by the CCP over the years, through this act, the U.S. government is officially, on the world stage, calling out the CCP for murdering people for organs,” he said.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

In a heartwarming video, a mother from England has captured her toddler finding it hard to grasp how she was once in her mother’s belly.

Kesia Venancio, 29, from Essex told Newsflare that she was approached by her daughter, Amélie Rankin, 3, about the topic of pregnancy after the little girl came across a photo of her pregnant.

“We were looking through some old photos when she saw some of my pregnancy and I told her my belly was big because she was inside,” the beautician said.

Intrigued by the newfound fact, the little girl couldn’t stop talking about it and was confused about how she was once inside her mother’s stomach and now she is out.

Kesia recalled that the conversation was a tough one since she had to keep the facts simple so that Amélie could process the information.

“I honestly didn’t know what to say, it was very awkward,” the mom of one said.

Since Amélie had never asked about the topic before and kept coming out of nowhere asking the same question “So, I was in your belly mummy?’” Kesia decided to record her conversation.

In the hilarious video, little Amélie is seen with a confused face asking her mother the big question before her father, Robbie, answers.

The adorable toddler then reconfirms with the statement: “I was very little in your belly.”

However, Amélie’s questions don’t just stop there. Even while sitting in the bathroom she asks her mother, “So, the doctor took me out?”

Her eyes light up when she realizes that she’s “too big now.”

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Kesia later shared the precious moment on social media and found that a lot of parents could relate to it and had similar stories.

After that day, Amélie hasn’t spoken about it. However, Kesia hopes that she can explain to her daughter about pregnancy when she is old enough to understand.

“I think she will love watching these videos when she gets older, especially as with each day, there’s a different discovery,” Kesia said.

Watch the video here:

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Wind power has been historically and scientifically unreliable, claims an Oxford University mathematician and physicist, with his calculations revealing the government to be pursuing a “bluster of windfarm politics” while discarding numerical evidence.

After the decision to cut down on fossil fuels was made at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris, the “instinctive reaction” around the world was to embrace renewables, Professor Emeritus Wade Allison, who is also a researcher at CERN, said in a 2023 paper (pdf).

Allison noted that because solar power is “extremely weak,” it was inadequate to “sustain even a small global population with an acceptable standard of living” before the Industrial Revolution.

“Today, modern technology is deployed to harvest these weak sources of energy. Vast ‘farms’ that monopolise the natural environment are built, to the detriment of other creatures. Developments are made regardless of the damage wrought. Hydro-electric schemes, enormous turbines and square miles of solar panels are constructed, despite being unreliable and ineffective; even unnecessary,” Allison said in the report, published by the Global Warming Policy Foundation.

“In particular, the generation of electricity by wind tells a disappointing story. The political enthusiasm and the investor hype are not supported by the evidence, even for offshore wind, which can be deployed out of sight of the infamous My Back Yard,” he wrote. “What does such evidence actually say?”

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, wind power generated more than 9 percent of the net total of the country’s energy in 2021 and is the largest source of renewable power in the country. Over 70,000 turbines generate enough power to serve the equivalent of 43 million American homes, the department says.

There are 120,000 jobs related to wind energy in the United States, the Energy Department says, and it’s one of the fastest-growing jobs in the country.

The Evidence

Allison explained that wind energy is measured based on the amount of moving air and the speed of the air as it reaches the area swept by the turbine blades.

The scientist calculated that, at 100 percent efficiency, if the wind blows at 10 meters per second (about 22 mph), the power is 600 watts per square meter. Hence, to deliver 3,200 million watts, the same output as Hinkley Point C—a planned zero-carbon nuclear power station in England—there would need to be 5.5 million square meters of turbine swept area.

“That should be quite unacceptable to those who care about birds and to other environmentalists,” Allison wrote.

The actual performance of the technology is much worse than the calculations made based on 100 percent efficiency, he said.

“Because the power carried by the wind depends on the third power of the wind speed, if the wind drops to half speed, the power available drops by a factor of 8,” he said. “Almost worse, if the wind speed doubles, the power delivered goes up 8 times, and as a result the turbine has to be turned off for its own protection.”

Allison noted that fluctuations are considerable as he pointed to a WindEurope Report that showed the installed nominal generating capacity across the European Union and United Kingdom on a daily basis was 236 gigawatts (GW). However, the highest output in 2021 registered at 103 GW on March 26 of that year.

The unreliability extends to offshore windfarms as well. Batteries used to store power are also severely restricted by current technology. In spite of such evidence, the government keeps ignoring the numbers, said Allison.

“With general energy shortages, the war in Europe, high prices and the likelihood of failures in electricity supply, many popular scientific presumptions underlying energy policy should be questioned. Wind power fails on every count,” he concluded.

Failing Turbines, Carbon Dioxide Demonization

Wind turbines across the United States have been failing more frequently in recent times, triggering concerns about additional costs resulting from such failures as well as their impact on power projects. Offshore windfarms, deployed in the name of environmentalism, are now seen as disastrous for ocean life.

Malfunctions in wind turbines range from small issues, like some key components becoming faulty, to full-blown collapses.

According to a 2022 paper published by Wallace Manheimer in the Journal of Sustainable Development, even as modern society depends on reliable sources of energy, the “climate industrial complex”—a powerful lobby of politicians, scientists, and media—pushes climate-related falsehoods into the popular perspective.

“It has somehow managed to convince many that CO2 in the atmosphere, a gas necessary for life on earth, one which we exhale with every breath, is an environmental poison. Multiple scientific theories and measurements show that there is no climate crisis,” said Manheimer, a retired U.S. Naval Research Laboratory scientist.

“Over the period of human civilization, the temperature has oscillated between quite a few warm and cold periods, with many of the warm periods being warmer than today,” he wrote. “During geological times, it and the carbon dioxide level have been all over the place with no correlation between them.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Information collected through ubiquitous video app TikTok might enable the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) to undermine the U.S. economy, warns David Stilwell, former assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific.

He said that if Americans’ purchasing preferences or information is revealed to TikTok, which would mean that it can be accessed by the CCP, the Chinese regime then can use that as leverage to “withhold those supply chain information … or the difficulty we had with supply chains,” he said on “China in Focus” on NTD, a sister media outlet of the Epoch Times.

He pointed to a January 2022 report by Chainalysis on North Korea’s stealing of millions in crypto.

Cybercriminals linked to North Korea carried out at least seven attacks on cryptocurrency platforms last year, netting some $400 million in digital assets, according to blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis.

North Korea “is a systematic money launderer, and their use of multiple mixers—software tools that pool and scramble cryptocurrencies from thousands of addresses—is a calculated attempt to obscure the origins of their ill-gotten cryptocurrencies while offramping into fiat,” according to the Chainalysis report.

In February 2021, U.S. authorities charged three computer programmers linked to North Korea with a massive hacking spree aimed at stealing more than $1.3 billion in money and cryptocurrency from financial institutions and companies.

Stilwell said North Korea has been taking billions in cryptocurrency and using it for “their weapons, programs, their own economy and all that.”

“There’s nothing that prevents the PRC from doing that,” he said, referring to China’s official name, the People’s Republic of China.

“Every bit of this gives the PRC a hammer, a lever, that they can hit us over the head with that we don’t get in reverse because of the [CCP’s] Great Firewall,” he added. “Again, we should not allow the adversary to keep punching us while we simply hold our hands behind our back because our system doesn’t allow us to defend ourselves. We should defend ourselves.”

Untrustworthy

The former official noted that anything coming from the CCP is meant to be dual use.

“Anybody who says that this is a purely commercial activity, civilian, just some fun software, doesn’t understand the CCP or [CCP leader] Xi Jinping in China. Everything is dual use, everything has a connection to the communist party,” he said of TikTok.

Stilwell stressed that there is no civil or private industry in the communist state—everything has been subsumed under the CCP and exists to serve the party’s needs.

He dismissed TikTok’s proposed initiative, called “Project Texas,” which proposed the storage of all its U.S. user data on Oracle-based cloud infrastructure in the United States.

“Forty years, we believed everything the PRC said. We took it at face value, we wanted to believe that they were being square, upright, forthright, honest,” Stilwell said. “I think the pandemic went a long way to making us second-guess that. No human-to-human transmission? Of course there was. … It was out of control.”

“That in itself should have made Americans, especially our government, question anything that comes out of the CCP,” the former official said.

“And then you had the balloon debacle here recently,” he said of the Chinese spy balloon that floated over the entire U.S. continent, including part of Canada, for over a week before it was eventually shot down on Feb 4 over the Atlantic. “We clearly know that thing had nothing to do with weather. It was a surveillance [craft] lighter than an aircraft. How many of these do we have to go through until we stop believing, taking at face value?”

“This is how the system works in the PRC,” he said. “If you’re not cheating, you’re not trying. There are no penalties for lying, etc, etc. It’s a massive cultural difference between a trust-based society and a society that has no trust. We have to accede distrust.”

Amend the law

Amid growing calls to ban TikTok from lawmakers, Stilwell believed that Congress can amend the laws in a smart way to address the security threat from the Chinese app.

“We were dancing on this line of censorship and First Amendment freedoms. We have to be very careful with that. But we also have to defend ourselves. … We can change our laws. The fact that Congress is engaged tells me all we have to do is amend our laws in a smart way. We can solve this,” Stilwell said.

Tom Ozimek contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

After spending months of late nights helping her son as he struggled to learn to read, one South Carolina mom was thrilled to discover that her child’s school had a special program to help students who were falling behind.

But after inquiring about the program, she was shocked to learn that he wouldn’t qualify for the tutoring, she said. The reason: He’s white.

The book club, designed to provide extra help in reading at St. James Elementary School (SJES) in Myrtle Beach, welcomed black children only, a district spokeswoman confirmed.

“How does that make sense?” asked Laura, who requested to not be fully identified in order to protect her son.

“We are supposed to be equal and have the same opportunities,” Laura said in exasperation while speaking to an Epoch Times reporter. “It just seems very unfair.”

Three days after the publication of this report, a spokeswoman for Horry County Schools confirmed that the reading program at the school focused on teaching African American students.

“The goal of the club was to support them academically so they could achieve at the same level as students of other subgroups that were meeting reading growth targets,” Lisa Bourcier, the district’s director of strategic communications, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.

“Each student was assigned a mentor, and the students met with the media specialist twice a month during their independent reading time to read culturally reflective texts.”

The program was active for seven months during the 2020–2021 school year, Bourcier said in her email.

“St. James Elementary School administration is not aware of any parent who requested that his/her child participate in the book club and was denied participation,” she said.

She added that Horry County schools hold “data team meetings to address the academic needs of all students.”

Racially Segregated Reading Help

Laura’s son likes to help others, meet new people, and play with Pokémon and superhero toys, she said. But school is difficult because he struggles to read, likely because of his attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

She got little help from the school as she watched her son fall behind, she said. Finally, a doctor diagnosed the reason for his struggle.

She questions why the school didn’t recognize the problem, “even though they have the resources to diagnose him,” she said.

Laura bought a special learning program for them to tackle together during the summer, trying to “teach him at home what they should be teaching him at school,” she said.

“He never was pulled out to get extra attention for reading, even when he was struggling,” she said.

There were others who didn’t qualify for the school’s reading help because they didn’t fit the right racial profile.

In 2021, there were 21 students in third grade and 19 in fourth grade who were behind in reading, according to state statistics.

Yet only 17 students—all of them African American—were allowed to participate in the reading club, according to documents obtained through a public records request by the local Moms for Liberty chairman.

Exclusion in the Name of Equity

According to documents obtained by David Warner of Moms for Liberty,  the 2020–2021 school year was “the only year that a book club was specifically designed to address the African American subgroup.”

The club was part of SJES’s new initiatives to boost diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), the documents state.

Exclusion in the name of equity infuriates Moms for Liberty members.

“We don’t stand for that,” Warner told The Epoch Times. “We want it to be all students that get help, not just African American students.”

The book club program did seem successful. Of the 17 students who participated, 11 boosted their proficiency, school documents show.

Warner said he first learned of the book club’s existence after hearing SJES had received a national award.

“Gender, race, and ability levels are used to create balanced classrooms with equitable opportunities to grow and learn, to promote cultural awareness, and to foster appreciation for diversity among students and staff,” the school’s application for the award read.

The application also praised its “change project” to increase African American reading scores.

School principal Felisa McDavid conducted an “equity audit” from 2020 to 2021, records showed.

The Epoch Times contacted McDavid but received no response.

After the COVID-19 pandemic, SJES committed on its website “to keep educational equity front and center by providing assistance, resources, and partnerships.”

The commitment to equity included response teams to work with “family needs,” attempts to “address discrimination, biases, and student conduct,” increasing “awareness of the diversity among families,” support for “social-emotional needs,” and other initiatives.

Fighting the ‘Whiteness of Curriculum’

The audit discovered that SJES’s student body was 90 percent white, 4 percent black, 5 percent Hispanic, and 2 percent Asian. The teaching staff was 98 percent white.

After the audit, McDavid set out to make changes. Gym classes began to include African dance and a multicultural mural was painted on the walls, McDavid said in YouTube videos. And the reading club for African American students was put into place.

“What they did was segregation,” Warner said. “They literally segregated children for a reading program.”

Training for teachers at the school also focused on equity.

Teachers attended Equity in Education conferences put on by the Center for the Education and Equity of African American Students at the University of South Carolina, the Blue Ribbon Award application notes.

Facilitating the training was University of South Carolina professor Gloria Boutte. She describes schools as places of “physical, symbolic, linguistic, curricular/instructional, and systemic suffering” for African American children in her book “We Be Lovin’ Black Children: Learning to be Literate About the African Diaspora.”

In the book, she describes the “Whiteness of curriculum” as “violence,” and writes that, in school, African American children undergo “spirit murders.”

Race-Based Hiring

McDavid committed to hiring teachers at the school based on race.

“My targeted equity commitment is to recruiting and retaining a diverse teaching force in my school,” she said in a video posted to YouTube.

In the video, McDavid cites studies that found that minority students learn better and obey better when taught by teachers of the same race. Having the “rich experience and expertise” of African American teachers would benefit all students, she says in the video.

In a video, McDavid notes that 59 percent of African American students failed state expectations for learning English.

In another YouTube video, McDavid shares that her school’s teachers reported that African American students weren’t getting enough educational support from parents. She blames the feedback on “a bias” and vowed to eliminate the complaint.

“We are working to dispel that bias through more culturally responsive unit planning and professional development,” she said.

When questioned, the school said the book club was just a club. Documents provided to The Epoch Times describe the program as an “intervention.”

“Intervention should never be based off of a child’s race, but their educational need,” Warner said.

When he asked how the reading program worked, the school stopped giving him details, he said. It was unclear whether the students met with teachers after school or were pulled from class during the school day.

“They’re not willing to talk about what happened,” Warner said.

Knowing the school has provided racially segregated programs that exclude her son has prompted Laura to plan for private school next year. It destroyed her trust, she said.

“I just don’t feel like they have my son’s best interests at heart,” she said.

An estimated 1.4 million students left public schools for private schools, charter schools, or homeschooling during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Editor’s Note: This article has been revised after publication to add a comment from Horry County Schools. 

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Supreme Court decided on March 27 to not take up an industry challenge to steel import tariffs that then-President Donald Trump imposed in 2018 on U.S. national security grounds.

President Joe Biden has left the tariffs, which Trump said were needed to ensure robust levels of domestic steel production, largely intact. The Biden administration had urged the court to reject the challenge.

The tariffs went into effect on March 1, 2018. A 25 percent tariff on imported steel from most countries was imposed, along with a 10 percent tariff on imported aluminum.

“When a country (USA) is losing many billions of dollars on trade with virtually every country it does business with, trade wars are good, and easy to win,” Trump wrote on Twitter the next day.

“Example, when we are down $100 billion with a certain country and they get cute, don’t trade anymore—we win big. It’s easy!”

Trump cited Section 232 of the Trade Act of 1962, which permits the president to impose restrictions on the importation of goods deemed essential to national security. He said at the time that the tariffs were needed to bolster the production of airplanes, ships, and military materials with U.S. steel. The tariffs created tension with some U.S. allies, although some countries were exempted from the policy.

The Supreme Court turned away the petition in USP Holdings Inc. v. United States, court file 22-565, in an unsigned order. The court didn’t explain its decision. No justices dissented from the order.

In April 2017, then-Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross commenced an investigation to determine whether “steel was being imported under such circumstances as to threaten or impair national security,” according to the petition (pdf) filed with the Supreme Court.

Ross found in a 2018 report that “domestic steel production is important for national security applications” and that steel imports were on track to account for more than 30 percent of domestic consumption. He also determined that “excessive quantities of imports has the effect of weakening the internal economy of the United States, threatening to impair the national security.”

Companies that rely on imported steel sued the federal government in the U.S. Court of International Trade, arguing that Ross’s report violated the Administrative Procedure Act because it was “arbitrary and capricious.”

The trade court found in 2021 that the report couldn’t be challenged in the courts because it didn’t constitute a “final agency action.”

Later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit differed from the trade court and found that the Ross report was, in fact, a final agency action. However, the appeals court held that the findings of the report couldn’t be challenged under administrative law and that the tariffs didn’t violate federal law.

A year ago, the Supreme Court also turned away a challenge to Trump’s steel tariffs as they applied to Turkish imports in Transpacific Steel LLC v. United States, court file 21-721.

The U.S. Department of Justice declined to comment on the new ruling.

“Unfortunately, we don’t have anything else to add here at this time,” Terrence Clark of the department’s Office of Public Affairs said in an email.

USP Holdings attorney Lewis Evart Leibowitz didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The U.S. government received hundreds of millions of dollars from vaccine manufacturer Moderna, according to a newly disclosed contract.

Moderna agreed to pay the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) to license spike protein technology that the company used in its COVID-19 vaccine, according to the contract.

For years, Moderna resisted acknowledging the work by government researchers on the spike protein but relented in late 2021. Moderna announced the contract during an earnings call on Feb. 23.

Moderna stated that it provided a “catch-up payment” of $400 million to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which is part of the NIH, under the agreement.

The newly disclosed contract states that Moderna would pay the NIH a “noncreditable, nonrefundable royalty in the amount of Four Hundred Million dollars.”

Portions that would confirm Moderna’s statement that the company would pay “low single digit royalties” on future sales of its COVID-19 vaccines are redacted.

The 34-page contract, which The Epoch Times obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request, has key sections regarding future royalties redacted.

One section starts, “The licensee agrees to pay to the NIAID earned royalties on net sales … as follows.” But the rest of the section is redacted.

The NIH cited as the reason for the redactions an exemption to the act that enables agencies to withhold “trade secrets and commercial or financial information obtained from a person and privileged or confidential.”

“They redacted the royalties, even though there have been press releases about the royalties,” James Love, director of the nonprofit Knowledge Ecology International, told The Epoch Times via email. “It’s common but [expletive] to redact royalties on a negotiated license on a government patent.”

Unredacted information in the contract confirmed that Moderna had agreed to pay the NIH royalties before the agreement took effect in late 2022, as well as a “minimum annual royalty,” “earned royalties,” and “benchmark royalties.”

The contract was signed on Dec. 14, 2022, by Michael Mowatt, director of the Technology Transfer and Intellectual Property Office at NIAID, and Shannon Klinger, chief legal officer at Moderna.

The payments would include a royalty within 60 days of government officials’ providing a “reasonable detailed written statement and request” for an amount “equivalent to a pro rata share of the unreimbursed patent expenses previously paid by the NIAID.”

Moderna has made nearly $37 billion from its COVID-19 vaccines during the COVID-19 pandemic. It has forecast $5 billion in revenue from the vaccines in 2023. Moderna and Pfizer both received enormous government contracts for their vaccines, which helped in development and manufacturing.

Shares Ownership

The NIH shares ownership of the spike protein technology with researchers at Scripps Research Institute and Dartmouth University’s Geisel School of Medicine. Both are named as partners in the contract.

Although it’s unclear from the contract what specific revenue the partners will receive from Moderna, Dartmouth stated previously that it would make money through the agreement.

Dartmouth stated that it plans to use the revenue to “strengthen the institution’s research and education enterprise and advancing work that has the potential to save millions of lives and improve global health.”

“We are excited about how these funds will amplify this important mission at Geisel and for how it will support our training programs for the next generation of biomedical researchers,” Duane Compton, dean of Geisel, said in a statement.

Scripps didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

The NIH received up to $2 billion in royalties from 34 drug contracts between 1991 and 2019, according to a report from the U.S. Government Accountability Office. The office recommended that NIH be more transparent about the licensing.

Moderna CEO

Moderna CEO Stéphane Bancel, whose net worth has skyrocketed during the pandemic, said in a recent appearance before Congress that Moderna created the spike protein technology in question but that the company abandoned the patent because of disagreements with the NIH.

“What our team did is develop the mRNA molecule. What the NIH did, which was a great confirmation, is they designed the same protein that our team did in parallel. The design of the mRNA vaccine was done by our team. This is our technology,” Bancel said.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) asked, “The NIH considers themselves coauthors of the vaccine. Do you disagree?”

“Our team has been working on that discussion for quite a while. We have agreed to disagree. The team is following USIPO [United States Intellectual Property Organization], which is very important, and what we have done to close the matter is we actually have decided to abandon that patent,” Bancel said. “We have abandoned that patent, the NIH is aware of it, and we are moving on because we cannot agree on what happened. The mRNA molecule was designed by the Moderna team. It is our technology.”

Bancel was also asked by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) whether it creates a conflict of interest for government employees involved with vaccines to be making money off of them.

“It’s for the U.S. government to say how that money should be spent,” Bancel said. Pressed on the matter, he said, “This is for the government to decide.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Rep. Greg Murphy (R-N.C.), in his questioning of and conversation with Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Secretary Denis McDonough during the March 23 House Committee on Veterans Affairs hearing, pressed the secretary on an issue which the congressman called an “absolute danger” to the United States.  

Murphy, who is a physician, was referring to the decision that the VA made and the policy it adopted in 2016 to purchase drugs that include active ingredients that come from China, which are then prescribed and given to veterans.  

“I don’t understand this policy,” said Murphy. “And we’re now … allowing drugs to come to our veterans, as well as other drugs coming into this country, that are not being analyzed, that are not being reviewed, are not being inspected.  And this is an absolute troubling thing to me as a physician.”  

Murphy, a member of the Veterans Affairs committee, always has veterans’ issues front and center on his lawmaking and advocacy radar screen. 

The district he represents has among the highest percentage of its residents who are veterans of any congressional district in the nation: one in seven.  

Then there are those in Murphy’s district who are in military active service.  Murphy’s district includes Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Marine Corps Air Station Cherry Point, Marine Corps Air Station New River, and Coast Guard Sector Field Office Fort Macon.

The exchange between Murphy and McDonough took place at the hearing, which focused on assessing the Biden administration’s proposed budget for the VA for 2024 and 2025.  

The congressman learned from a conversation he had with McDonough prior to the hearing that the secretary was unaware that the VA approved as vendors pharmaceutical companies which use components from China in the manufacture of their products.  

Murphy brought up that he attended that morning a meeting of the GOP Doctors Caucus at which members “talked about drugs in this country from China; 90 percent of our APIs, active pharmaceutical ingredients, come from China today—and our FDA is doing an absolute abysmal job in looking at these drugs; seeing their purity, seeing their impurity.” 

Security Threat 

A March 1 story in The Epoch Times reported on how the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supplies most of the drug precursors processed in Mexico into the deadly drug fentanyl, and most of the illegal fentanyl in the United States comes from Mexico.   

Murphy said that beyond the injury and threat to the health of veterans posed by the VA purchasing drugs made from ingredients that the CCP provides, the policy imperils the security of the nation. 

“And we now, like it or not, ballistic or not, are at war with our greatest adversary,” said Murphy. “We saw this with the balloon.  We saw this with the absolute flood of fentanyl coming into this country from China.”

Murphy continued, imploring McDonough to research and look into the matter of VA and its program that buys drugs sourced from China.

“I would like a commitment from you, and I know I can stand by this—that this issue will be researched because it is absolutely—I’m ineffable about this; I can’t understand why this was done.”

Murphy asked McDonough to see if there was any way that the VA could “get out” of the drug contract it entered into in 2016, and “I think for the sake of our veterans, we need to explore that.”

McDonough replied, “Yeah, you got my commitment, Mr. Murphy.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

In a day and age when libraries are holding drag queen story hours and pro-transgender children’s books like “I Am Jazz” are being pushed on kids, pro-family content is needed more than ever.

“‘She is she’ apparently is a controversial thing to say,” says Ryan Bomberger, author of the new book “She Is She.” Bomberger and his wife, Bethany, decided to write a children’s book that explores and celebrates what it means to be female after they saw controversy over biological reality in their community of Loudoun County, Virginia.

“With this book, we want to celebrate undeniable, biological, beautiful her,” Bomberger says. “We want to celebrate femininity. We want to celebrate motherhood.”

Ryan and Bethany Bomberger are the co-authors of “She Is She.” A companion book, “He Is He,” is due for release this summer. (Photo: Shirley & McVicker Public Affairs)

“The Democrat Party is the party that denied people of my complexion our personhood,” Bomberger says, adding, “and today, it’s now the party that denies females their womanhood.”

Bomberger joins “The Daily Signal Podcast” to share the inspiration for the new book and to discuss the importance of protecting the identity of our kids within today’s culture. 

Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript:

Virginia Allen: We are joined today by Ryan Bomberger. He is the co-founder of the Radiance Foundation and co-author with his wife, Bethany, of the new book, “She Is She.” Ryan, welcome to the show. 

Ryan Bomberger: I’m so glad to be here. I’m actually so sorry that Bethany cannot be here, but she’s the one in charge of the Radiance Foundation, and she has some other projects that she needed to be involved in, so she is definitely the better half.

Allen: I love that. Well, we are going to talk, in a few moments, a little bit more about the Radiance Foundation and what you all do and what your mission is there, but I want to jump in first by talking about your brand new book, “She is She.” Tell us where the inspiration for this book came from. 

Bomberger: Well, I just so happened to have the book here with me right here. “She is she” apparently is a controversial thing to say. It’s so insane. And my wife says, “If we had written this 10 years ago, people would’ve been like, ‘What? That’s ridiculous.’” But it’s necessary. And the motivation behind it is actually … Well, it’s kind of a multifaceted sort of thing.

We live in Loudoun County, Virginia. People have probably heard about Loudoun County, Virginia, ground zero for school boards going wild. And actually, I think it actually started with a friend of mine, Tanner Cross, who is a physical education teacher, who at a school board meeting, said, “I love my students too much to call a boy a girl and a girl a boy.” And I remember when I saw that, I thought, first of all, why is it that a teacher is considered “brave” for saying something that’s so true, yet he’s one of the handful of teachers who actually stood up against these transgender policies? And that really just stuck with me. 

And so my wife and I got involved in these school board meetings and meeting with parents and talking about how to frame these issues. And so, we thought, this is really ridiculous because what the school is doing is saying, “Hey, parents, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Hey, parents, we’re the ones who are more reliable. Total strangers to your children, the consultants that they bring into the school actually have better advice for your children than you do.”

And so, of course we reject that nonsense. And so, we’re sitting around the table and talking about all the ridiculousness of pronouns. And Bethany said, “Why don’t we just write a book about pronouns and why don’t we just … ‘She is She.’” I’m like, “Yeah, She is She. She is not he. She is not we. She is She.” And that’s how that was born, our heart for kids. We have four kids, two girls, two boys. So, that’s pretty much the origin of “She Is She.” 

Allen: I love it. And you have a beautiful book. The illustrations are lovely.

Bomberger: With this book, we want to celebrate undeniable, biological, beautiful her. We want to celebrate femininity. We want to celebrate motherhood. None of us would be here without our mothers. And of course, fathers obviously play a vital role in that, too.

But in a day and age where there are all these books and the ideology that is confusing children about their core identity, we wanted to introduce something that is meant for children two to eight, but maybe even older, that just says, “Wait a minute, you’re beautiful. You’re who you were meant to be.” 

Allen: The book has already received some really glowing reviews and comments. Eric Metaxas, he endorsed the book and he wrote of it, “Ryan and Bethany Bomberger’s book, ‘She Is She,’ is an unmitigated delight. Not only does it bravely state the bold truth about gender when so many shrink from doing so, but it does this beautifully with wit and style and joy.”

So, in a time when we need more really good content for kids, and we’re really seeing kids targeted in so many ways with a very specific political agenda, how are you all promoting this book? Are you all planning on maybe doing any public readings in public libraries or in schools? 

Bomberger: Yes, we’re getting ready to begin that initiative, and it’s interesting already, where we get different explanations as to how a library will bring a book into their collection. Most people don’t realize you can donate a book to a collection in a library. Typically, we’ll put it on the shelf, or they’ll use it in book sales. But we found already with our first book, “Pro-Life Kids,” that there was all kinds of resistance to putting this book. But they’re perfectly fine putting books that possess all kinds of pornography and quite honestly, pedophilia. That’s fine for the American Library Association.

So, we’re excited about the storybook hour that we will be doing. And I will not be dressed in drag. My wife will be the woman who will be reading the book. But this is so vital for kids, because they’re inundated with such a toxic ideology that when we can’t even understand our core identity, then what can be true? What can we know to be true?

And that’s the whole point of this. It’s not just about the erasure of girls and women, it’s about the erasure of objective truths. 

Allen: Ryan, why do you think we have seen such a targeted assault really on kids, specifically from the transgender movement? 

Bomberger: Well, I’m not going to blame just the LGBTQ+++ activists, because it really is a lost mentality. As a Christian, I understand that there is division between the lost and the saved, those who actually believe in biblical truths, which are reinforced by science and those who don’t. The targeting young kids is so intentional, and it’s intentional in every form of activism, because they want to generate activists. They want to say, and this is a very Marxist approach, “Hey, parents don’t know what they’re talking about. Parents are the enemy.” And we’ve seen this in communist nations. 

And in fact, one of my friends became friends from the whole involvement with school board meetings. She’s from communist China. She grew up in this. She knows all the same language, all the same vernacular that’s being used, but they understand that kids are an easy target.

And when you talk about public schools, they spend the majority of their time in public schools, more so than in one-on-one contact, a lot of times, with their own parents and their own family. And so, here you have it, you’ve got fertile ground here. And unfortunately, children are being used as testing subjects for people’s emotional and sexual affirmation, and that should never, ever be happening. 

Allen: Well, and of course, within this conversation, over the past several years, we’ve seen a lot of controversy over the issue of women’s sports. And I know you addresses this in the book, “She Is She.” You have a picture of a young girl jumping over a hurdle in track. And so there was some new news just out recently that World Athletics is not going to allow boys who have gone through puberty to compete against female athletes.

What are your thoughts on this, and do you see this as maybe a little bit of a tipping point, where some of these large athletic associations are starting to realize, ‘Hey, this actually isn’t fair to let men who “identify” as women compete against women? 

Bomberger: Right, and that’s the whole point. It’s supposed to be fair. That’s why we have Title IX. Title IX, that ensured girls and women were able to have sports, many times not established in schools. And so, here you have a level playing field all of a sudden being steamrolled over by LGBTQ activists, all for the sake of a pseudoscientific approach. I love the fact that World Athletics made this ruling because what they’re acknowledging, and they’re saying someone who’s already gone through puberty, because we understand, prior to that, there aren’t massive differences, but there are significant differences once somebody goes through puberty. 

And it doesn’t matter what the level of their testosterone is, it doesn’t matter what drug-induced change in their body, it doesn’t change their DNA, it doesn’t change them from male to female, but they understand that the body’s already different. Lung capacity’s greater, muscular structure, there is greater strength, upper-body and lower-body strength. There are significant differences. Longer arms if you’re a swimmer.

These already exist because someone’s gone through puberty, because our DNA instructs our bodies to develop differently. So, this is a great win for women, especially as we’re seeing the Biden administration in this radical overtaking of Title IX—that’s supposed to protect women—but now it’s protecting guys who somehow “identify” falsely as women. I love it. I have two girls. I don’t want them to be displaced or replaced by a guy. It’s not fair. 

Allen: And I know that this is an issue that for you is something that both you and your wife have been tackling for a long time, and really overarching embodies this value for the family and protecting family values. Talk a little bit about your own story, if you would, and how your own story got you into really working around the issue of family values and led you and your wife to start the Radiance Foundation. 

Bomberger: Yes. Well, I’m one of the exceptions, cases when it comes to abortions, especially now in a post-Roe America, where the exceptions are abused even more. I’m the 1% that’s used 100% of the time to justify abortion. I had a courageous birth mom who I’m forever grateful to, that even though she experienced the horror and the violence of rape, she did not make me a victim of the violence of abortion.

And so, I grew up in an incredible family. I was adopted and loved. I was the first one adopted in my family. Out of 13 kids, 10 of us were adopted. And so every year, there was a new flavor added to the family. 

And you grow up in a situation like that, and you understand this whole myth of the “unwanted” child is just not true. My parents, Henry and Andrea, the Bombergers shredded that myth. They loved us. They loved us into our destiny. They love the Lord. And when you love the Lord, the natural outflow of that is loving people. They didn’t just love us. They loved everyone they came in contact with. And that changed our lives. It changed the way that we see others. And so when people talk about the marginalized, I was one of the most marginalized among the marginalized. 

So, that’s why my wife, Bethany and I, when we started the Radiance Foundation, that’s why our focus is on protecting the most vulnerable, being that voice for the voiceless, and we love doing [it]. We have four kiddos, two of whom were adopted, as I mentioned. I have two girls and I have two boys. And our whole approach to family, our whole approach to why an intact family with a married mother and father are the best for a child to flourish is backed up by science, by study after study after study. 

And so the pro-life movement and the pro-life worldview is reinforced by science. We know that we all begin at the point of fertilization. And so, it’s a very natural thing to talk about our core identity when it comes to gender. And there are only two, male and female. That’s reinforced by science as well. Are there defects? Just like some of my siblings who have physical disabilities, doesn’t make them worth less. It doesn’t make me worth more.

We all have equal and irrevocable worth, but it really informs the way that we address these core issues, our faith, science, and just common sense. I mean, it really is. A lot of it’s just basic common sense. 

Allen: And when we look at our culture today, it’s hard to deny that family values are under attack, that they’re facing opposition. Could you talk just for a moment about the moment in history that we find ourselves in and how we can really go about restoring family values back to a central place? 

Bomberger: The attack on the family is just from every side. I mean, the battle has increased exponentially since I was a kid. I can’t even believe we’re fighting some of these battles. In fact, recently, the House Republicans passed the parental rights bill.

And of course, it was opposed by every Democrat. And why is that? Why do they actually stand on the side of activists and strangers and people who aren’t the ones responsible for that precious life of that child, of that student? And it blows my mind, but when you look at the ideology, I mean, you’ve got radically different ideologies, the Republican Party and the Democrat Party.

Let me just put it this way: The Democrat Party is the party that denied people of my complexion our personhood. And today, it’s now the party that denies females their womanhood. And their anti-family policies, it’s not shocking because they just don’t have the same basis. 

And I’m talking about the leadership. I have many friends who are Democrats, but the Democratic leadership is out of control. They don’t see family as the strength of every community. And this is part of the problem. That’s why so many of their policies undermine family. They want to redefine family.

Look at the Black Lives Matter movement. They want to deconstruct and dismantle the Western concept of family. It’s not a Western concept. It’s a biblical concept of a married mother and father caring for their children. And that’s never going to change. I don’t care how much culture shifts and how much people try to re-engineer things. A mother and a father, married mother and father always matter.

This is not putting down people who are single parents. I have friends who are single parents, I have sisters who were single parents, and they did all they could do, but they were never meant to play the role of both parents. And so, we see this attack that’s coming, not just from public school, not just from news media, but from Hollywood. And actually, sometimes it’s coming from Bible-evading churches. 

Allen: I love the fact that you are looking at this moment in history, you’re looking at what’s going on, and you’ve asked the question, “What can we do?” And you and Bethany have taken action. And of course, one of the ways you’ve taken action is through these books. Your first book was “Pro-Life Kids”; now “She is She.”

There’s another book coming out this summer, “He is He.” Can you give us a little bit of a preview? 

Bomberger: Yes. Well, I wouldn’t use the phrase “coming out,” because people might be confused, so I’m just going to say it’s going to be released or it will be available this summer. But we believe in gender equality. And so “He is He” really celebrates what it means to be a boy. I mean, we hear all the time the phrase “toxic masculinity.” And what they really mean is that masculinity is toxic. And I hate that.

I hate that boys are constantly derided and demeaned. I mean, you look at programs. My kids went to a charter school for a while, and all the programs seem to be geared toward girls. And girls are wonderful, and they’re awesome, but so are boys. And so we really want to celebrate what it means to be a boy. And the fact that boys are a little different doesn’t mean that girls can’t play sports and girls can’t climb trees. That’s a nonsense sort of position. 

But we really want to just come alongside parents who want to embrace and celebrate their boys and what it means to be a boy, what it means to be a man, what it means to be a father, a protector, a provider. Yes, a woman can be a provider, too, and many households have two providers, but there is something that is different from a psychological standpoint, from an emotional standpoint, from a spiritual standpoint. That’s why women and men complement each other.

And in this book, we really just want to celebrate boys and what it means to be a man, what it means to be a father. And so we can’t wait for that. I wish they could have been released at the same time, but an incredible illustrator, I have to throw out his name, Ed Koehler, we love him, he was not able to do both books at the same time. He’s a very busy man. But honestly, he captures our heart in all the books that we’ve done. And we can’t wait to do even more through our publishing company, Bara Publishing.

“He is He” will be available late this summer. 

Allen: And for those who want to get copies of the book and who want to get more information on the Radiance Foundation and even get involved, how can they do that? 

Bomberger: Well, they can get “She is She” right here at sheisshe.com. That’s the easiest way to get it. You can also pre-order “He is He” as well. But you can also see all the content that we create that’s fearless, factual, and freeing at radiance.life. 

Allen: Awesome. Ryan Bomberger, thank you so much for your time today. We really appreciate it. And again, for anyone interested in getting the book, She is She, you can just visit the She is She website, sheisshe.com. Ryan, thank you for your time today. We truly appreciate it. 

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post New Children’s Book ‘She Is She’ Combats Attempt to Deny ‘Females Their Womanhood’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Jaz Brisack is helming push to unionize Starbucks. The left-wing organizer also called for elimination of Israel, urged labor federations to reject police unions

The activist helming the Starbucks union drive has praised a convicted Palestinian terrorist as a “freedom fighter,” called for replacing Israel with Palestine, and urged labor federations to reject police unions.FreeBeacon CarouselREAD: Judge James Ho’s Remarks Announcing a Hiring Boycott From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

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Jaz Brisack, a former Rhodes Scholar who began unionizing Starbucks while on the payroll of the Service Employees International Union, catapulted into far-left politics as a full-scholarship student at Ole Miss. While there, she defended Palestinian terrorist Rasmea Odeh as a “political prisoner” in a 2017 op-ed letter published by the student newspaper. Brisack wanted to repudiate a story by a fellow student who referred to Odeh as a terrorist with communist ties—a description Brisack called an “ad hominem attack.”

“Odeh has been targeted in an attempt to undermine her advocacy for Palestinian liberation,” Brisack wrote. Odeh was convicted of coordinating two bombings, including one at an Israeli supermarket that killed two students and injured seven—including an Auschwitz survivor—and admitted her involvement to a Lebanese journalist.

“She has called attention to the fact that Israel, guilty of the crime of apartheid, illegally occupies Palestinian land and subjects the Arab population to countless indignities,” Brisack continued.

These declarations could hurt 25-year-old Brisack’s star turn as the U.S. Senate spotlights her organizing efforts this week. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) on Wednesday will convene a committee hearing to grill former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz over allegations the company retaliated against Brisack and other union organizers. Schultz, who got his start as a Starbucks employee before transforming the company into a global conglomerate, recently stepped down from his interim leadership post.

Brisack’s praise for the Palestinian terrorist Odeh aligns with the progressive and anti-Israel bent of her other political beliefs, which include support for defunding police and boycotting and sanctioning Israel. Odeh became a celebrity cause for American progressives when the Trump administration deported her in 2017 for lying to obtain a fraudulent visa.

“There is no place in today’s discourse for this kind of extremist rhetoric,” said Charlyce Bozzello, spokeswoman for the Center for Union Facts which launched a campaign this week focused on Brisack’s union. “Anyone who claims to be an advocate for workers shouldn’t be praising convicted terrorists.”

In 2019 Brisack also tweeted: “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”—a dog whistle statement that calls for replacing Israel with “Palestine.”

Beyond these sentiments, Brisack’s political statements exemplify the growing socialist movement in prestigious colleges and universities. Before relocating to New York for union work, Brisack attended Oxford University as Ole Miss’s first female Rhodes Scholar. She has since called for other elite students to get involved in taking down capitalism, tweeting that she would love to help “any labor organizer/anti-capitalist” finalists for the famed Truman Scholarship.

Once in New York, Brisack took a job as a Starbucks barista in 2020 to wait for the right time to organize, and simultaneously worked for the mega-union SEIU, she told CBS News.

Since then, Starbucks Workers United has grown into its own celebrity cause for Big Labor progressive firebrands like Sanders, New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D.), and Michigan Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D.), who has joined the Starbucks picket line.

Still, Brisack’s loyalty to organized labor comes second to her devotion for far-left politics. In January she retweeted a Starbucks Workers United statement urging labor federations to oust police unions from their member groups

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

USAID effort also includes call to address ‘climate-related mental health conditions’

The Biden administration plans to use taxpayer funds to inspire and support young climate activists in developing countries—even as it acknowledges that young people suffer from “climate-related mental health conditions.”

Joe Biden’s U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) last year released its 2022-2030 climate strategy, which outlines a $150 billion “whole-of-Agency approach” to building an “equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.” Included in that effort is a pledge to support “behavior change and communications campaigns” that “encourage youth’s active participation” in the climate movement. Young people, the agency says, “have emerged in recent years as key actors … in demanding government action to tackle the climate crisis,” prompting USAID to increase its funding for “youth-led organizations” working to fight climate change in at least 40 partner countries.

Still, that effort comes with challenges. While young people make great climate activists, they also experience “a broad range of climate-related mental health conditions,” according to the agency’s strategy document. Any effort to support young climate activists, then, must also include support for “programs at scale that address these issues.” USAID’s strategy document specifically calls to recognize the “growing importance” of young people suffering from “eco-anxiety,” which the American Psychology Association describes as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change.”

The USAID plan reflects Biden’s government-wide mandate to fight climate change. Just one week after taking office, Biden in January 2021 issued an executive order calling on all government agencies to “combat the climate crisis with bold, progressive action.” Even the Department of Veterans Affairs responded in August 2021 by releasing a “Climate Action Plan,” and USAID—which had not released a new climate strategy since 2012—followed suit roughly a year later.

At the heart of the agency’s climate strategy is a concern over increased energy consumption in developing nations, which USAID says will grow by 70 percent in the next three decades. In order to avoid the “longer-term emissions trajectories” that come with that energy consumption growth, the agency says it must promote green energy and elevate young climate activist voices in “emerging economies.” For Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, such a strategy “punishes the developing world by refusing them to have what we have, which is the prosperity that comes from fossil fuels.”

“It’s just horrifying to think we spend tax dollars, giving it to poor countries, to create more Greta Thunbergs,” Turner told the Washington Free Beacon. “There’s nothing charitable about that—if anything, it’s the epitome of first world privilege.”

In November, for example, Biden’s USAID announced a $78,000 grant to a Palestinian activist group whose leaders praised a man who murdered a U.S. military attaché and participated in a celebration for a Palestinian terrorist group. The agency in late 2021 also sent millions of dollars to EcoHealth Alliance, the research group that funded bat virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Biden in January 2021 tapped former Obama aide Samantha Power to head USAID. Power quickly touted her work “helping countries adapt to a warming climate” and later said climate change is “sexist” because women are “much more likely … to be killed by natural and climate disasters.” USAID’s climate work has seen Power travel the world—in March, the Democrat filmed a correspondence from a Vietnamese fish farm, where she said farmers are “already feeling the effects of climate change.” Power also met with Iraq’s foreign minister in February, not to discuss issues such as ISIS terrorism, but to praise the nation’s “ongoing work to address climate change.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

George Washington University professor Jonathan Turley revealed why Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s case against former President Donald Trump is now “falling apart” after Trump last week announced he may be indicted amid a flurry of grand jury activity.

“The problem is that Bragg has long been searching for a crime in the criminal code to fulfill his pitch during his campaign that he was the man for voters who wanted to bag Trump,” Turley wrote in an opinion article for the New York Post published late last week. Bragg has been investigating whether Trump violated campaign finance laws in 2016 when a so-called hush money payment to adult performer Stormy Daniels was allegedly misclassified.

The alleged crime “expired as a chargeable misdemeanor after two years—and that was roughly five years ago,” Turley opined. “Second, it was a mere misdemeanor that could be brushed off by Trump even if they succeeded.”

Turley, who was used as an expert witness in Trump’s first impeachment inquiry, claimed in his opinion article that Bragg himself had “scoffed at” the case “and stopped the investigation when he came into power.” But two prosecutors, Carey R. Dunne and Mark F. Pomerantz, resigned from Bragg’s office in protest and Pomerantz later went on to write a book “on the case against Trump—a person who was still under investigation and not charged with, let alone convicted of, any crime,” he added, asserting that Bragg succumbed to a “pressure campaign” to try and build a case against the former president.

But “most significantly,” the “politics may have turned” against Bragg as “even Democrats are hard pressed to defend the reported basis for the indictment.” He noted that when asked last week about Bragg’s case, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) would not express his support and offered a lukewarm response.

“Trump has said for years that Democrats have weaponized the criminal justice system against him and Bragg just gave him proof positive to support that claim,” the law professor argued. “With this raw political prosecution, Bragg fulfilled the narrative of Trump, who is rising in the polls.”

In the past week or so, a Manhattan grand jury that was empaneled in the case heard testimony from former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, who spent several years in a federal prison after pleading guilty to tax fraud and other charges. Cohen arranged the alleged hush money payment to Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, during Trump’s first presidential campaign.

Another witness, attorney Robert Costello, went before the grand jury in a bid to cast Cohen’s testimony as not credible, noting Cohen’s previous convictions, according to statements Costello made to media outlets last week. In comments to the media and through his lawyer, Cohen has denied retaining Costello as a lawyer and cast doubt on his public comments.

On Truth Social last weekend, Trump wrote that he would likely be charged by Bragg last Tuesday, although there has been no indication that the DA’s office will do so. Bragg has issued few public comments on the case, telling House Republicans in a letter that Trump erroneously claimed he would be charged.

Bragg’s general counsel wrote last Thursday that a letter from three House GOP chairmen “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day, and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.” On Saturday, House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), House Administration Committee Chair Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), and House Oversight Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) sent a new letter to Bragg requesting more information about the case.

With a possible indictment over his head, Trump has insisted on campaigning for president in 2024. He held a rally in Waco, Texas, to thousands of supporters and sharply criticized Bragg’s investigation, while later he suggested to a reporter that he believes the DA dropped the case.

After the rally Saturday, Trump told reporters on his plane that “I think they’ve already dropped the case … they have absolutely nothing.” Trump did not provide evidence for his claim.

The Epoch Times has contacted Bragg’s office for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A photo taken by the late Dr. Russell Sacco at the helm of the pro-life movement, showing the perfectly-formed feet of an aborted baby held between finger and thumb, proved that unborn babies are not mere “clumps of cells.” Half a century later, the photo is more important than ever.

Oregon Right to Life (ORTL) was founded in 1970 to oppose the legalization of abortion in Oregon. Five years later, pro-life champion Sacco co-founded ORTL’s Education Foundation.

The executive director of ORTL, Lois Anderson, 56, is a born and raised Oregonian and has been working at the organization since 1999.

“[Sacco] was an early leader and a visionary,” Anderson told The Epoch Times. “I always saw him as single-minded and fearless. It was an inspiration to me that someone who had worked for so long in the movement, and had seen so much, would still have so much passion and energy.”

‘It Was perfect’

Sacco was a practicing urologist in Oregon, a Catholic, a married father of four, and a grandfather to eight. The iconic photo that catapulted the pro-life movement was taken at a Portland hospital in 1970, during a meeting between Sacco and a fellow pro-life pathologist, for whom one professional responsibility was to destroy the bodies of babies after abortions.

The pathologist didn’t feel able to do this, explained ORTL, sharing Sacco’s story on Facebook, and placed some of the bodies into a bucket of formaldehyde. Sacco was shocked and gained his colleague’s consent to take photos of the aborted babies for educational purposes.

To convey their size and scale, Sacco held the tiny, perfectly-formed feet of one 10-week-old fetus between his thumb and forefinger; if people knew what an unborn baby looked like, maybe they would reconsider their stance on abortion.

According to OTRL, Sacco said: “I was crying because I felt so bad, it just really got to me. I really didn’t think the photo would be anything, but God must have taken the picture because it was perfect, and I knew that this would be one powerful way to send a message to the world.”

An Iconic Symbol

Sacco refused to copyright his image so that it could be freely used as an educational tool worldwide.

Dr. John Willke, the founder of Cincinnati Right to Life, printed the photo in his book, “Handbook on Abortion,” after meeting Sacco at a conference in 1971, and the tiny feet were later made into a commemorative pin by Virginia Evers.

“Precious Feet” became the international symbol of the anti-abortion movement. Anderson first became aware of the “Precious Feet” pin as a College Republican and was deeply affected.

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“We showed the film ‘The Silent Scream’ as one of our on-campus activities, and gave out the pins, encouraging students to wear them,” Anderson said. “The photo is, first of all, beautiful; it’s an image that captures attention and it became a powerful symbol of the movement to end abortion. Like the photo, the pins are an iconic symbol of the effort to restore human rights to the unborn, a conversation-starter, and a silent witness.”

Sacco passed away from cancer in June 2019 at the age of 83, survived by his wife of 58 years, Elizabeth. ORTL celebrated 50 years of advocacy in 2020 and still gives away hundreds of pins every year. More than 20 million have been distributed worldwide.

Global Impact

Anderson maintains that there is “a lot of confusion” about fetal development owing to the efforts of pro-abortion activists. “We’ve seen people claim that our medically-accurate fetal models are disinformation,” she said. “Many people don’t understand, and are even resistant to, evidence-based information including that unborn babies can feel pain at least as early as 15 weeks.”

Anderson believes the widespread claims that unborn babies are “just a clump of cells,” or “a blob of protoplasm,” are “blatant attempts to dehumanize a vulnerable class of human beings.” ORTL upholds the established scientific consensus that in human reproduction fertilization results in a “new, distinct human being.”

Since the conclusion of Roe v. Wade, there is no constitutional right to abortion. Anderson, who once met Sacco in person when he spoke at an ORTL Roe v. Wade memorial rally, maintains that abortion is immoral at every point of gestation. She concedes only to rare cases in which a mother may have a life-threatening condition and medical procedures “intended to treat her condition may result in the unintended death of her preborn baby.”

Sacco’s “Precious Feet” reminds the pro-life movement what it’s fighting for, and reminds bystanders of an objective scientific truth.

“We love to look to the future, as we should,” Anderson said. “However, I think it deepens our understanding to look back and learn from the founders and early leaders of our movement. We don’t want to miss what they have to teach us, including the opportunity to follow in their footsteps, like Sacco, who shared the truth and it turned out to have a global impact.”

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

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, criticized investigations into former President Donald Trump, calling them politically motivated and a “cancer in our body politic.”

Cuomo, a former attorney general, told host John Catsimatidis in an interview on WABC 770 that he expects Trump will be indicted in Manhattan next week.

“The expression, for prosecutors, is you can indict a ham sandwich because the prosecutor controls the entire indictment process,” Cuomo said.

Trump himself has said he expects to be indicted and arrested in a probe that he has denounced as a “fairy tale” and a “witch hunt.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office is investigating Trump for his company’s classification of a $130,000 reimbursement to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen over a payment allegedly made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016 to stop her from disclosing an alleged affair with the former president.

Trump, who has denied having an affair with Daniels and insists he’s the victim of extortion, has labeled the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office as “corrupt” and “highly political.”

The Manhattan District Attorney’s Office has not responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

‘It’s All Politics’

Cuomo said that he doesn’t understand why Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg is “putting such an emphasis” on the case against Trump, which he argued will stoke division and be viewed as a political hack job by an increasingly jaded populace.

“You have a cynical public, they don’t believe anyone. And when you start to see these prosecutors bringing political cases, it just affirms everybody’s cynicism,” Cuomo said.

“I don’t believe any of this. I don’t believe a Democratic prosecutor just happens to be attacking a Republican,” he continued.

“I think it’s all politics,” Cuomo added. “It feeds the cynicism and that’s the cancer in our body politic right now.”

Trump, who has called for protests over his possible indictment, initially said he expected to be indicted earlier this week but Bragg has so far not made his move.

Bragg wrote in an internal memo obtained by media outlets that attempts to “intimidate our office or threaten the rule of law in New York” would not be tolerated.

Cuomo’s remarks come as House Republicans earlier this week asked for information and testimony into Bragg’s investigation and, like the former governor, described the probe as politically motivated.

House Republicans led by Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), and Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.) wrote in a letter to Bragg that his “decision to pursue such a politically motivated prosecution” requires scrutiny by Congress about how public safety funds are being used by local law enforcement agencies.

The GOP lawmakers wrote that, in their view, Bragg is “about to engage in an unprecedented abuse of prosecutorial authority” in the form of a potential Trump indictment, which they said “comes after years of your office searching for a basis—any basis—on which to bring charges” against the former president and current candidate for the White House in 2024.

If Trump is indeed arrested, it would be a first for a current or former president.

Bragg, meanwhile, has fired back at the House Republicans seeking to probe his case against Trump.

“Your letter dated March 20, 2023 (the ‘Letter’), in contrast, is an [unprecedented] inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” Bragg’s office wrote (pdf) to House Judiciary Republicans in a letter.

Further, Bragg’s office wrote that the GOP’s letter “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day, and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”

If Bragg’s office were to comply with the request, it would “interfere with law enforcement,” and the GOP letter represents an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty,” states the letter, which was written by Bragg’s general counsel, Leslie B. Dubeck, and dated March 23.

A spokesperson for Trump told The Epoch Times last weekend that the former president had received no special information about a possible indictment and suggested Trump was reacting to publicly available reporting.

“There has been no notification, other than illegal leaks,” Trump spokesperson Steven Cheung told The Epoch Times via email.

“President Trump is rightfully highlighting his innocence and the weaponization of our injustice system,” he added, remarking on Trump’s labeling the probe as a witch hunt.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Judicial nominees of President Joe Biden over the last few years have repeatedly been stumped by Sen. John Kennedy’s (R., La.) basic questions about the Constitution in Senate confirmation hearings. When Kennedy asked Charnelle Bjelkengren, nominee to be United States district judge for the Eastern District of Washington, to explain the purpose of Article Five in the U.S. Constitution, Bjelkengren responded, “Article Five is not coming to mind at the moment.”FreeBeacon Carousel’A Cesspool of Narcissistic Insular Self-Gratification’: How the Mainstream Media Squandered the Public’s Trust (and How To Win It Back)READ MORE

00:00

The Washington Free Beacon rounded up the most noteworthy moments from Kennedy’s questions at the confirmation hearings.

A California judge this week blocked a newly elected progressive prosecutor’s effort to slash a triple murderer’s sentence.FreeBeacon CarouselFederal Judges Say They Won’t Hire Clerks From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

00:08

Alameda County district judge Mark McCannon rejected District Attorney Pamela Price’s plea deal for a 31-year-old man jailed for a 2008 triple murder-for-hire, among other crimes. Price, who took office in November and has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars from the progressive billionaire George Soros, attempted to sentence Delonzo Logwood to just 15 years in prison, though he was eligible for a sentence of 75 years to life.

“As I stated previously, even though these crimes occurred almost 15 years ago, our mission in the here and now is to stop the violence in our community,” Price said in a statement after the judge’s decision. “We appreciate Mr. Logwood’s commitment to the efforts to stop the violence and everyone’s cooperation in the quest to protect public safety.”

McCannon’s decision deals a blow to California’s billionaire-funded progressive overhaul of the criminal justice system. San Francisco voters last year ousted progressive district attorney Chesa Boudin because of his soft-on-crime policies.

Logwood has also been charged with carjacking and robbery, and allegedly murdered a court witness who was slated to testify against his step-brother, ABC News reported.

Price took $130,000 from Soros for her 2018 bid for district attorney, which she lost. She eked out a narrow win last November, touting herself as the first black district attorney for the court—even though her opponent was also black. During her campaign, Logwood pledged not to prosecute minors as adults. She offered Logwood—who was 18 at the time of his accused crimes—a plea deal in exchange for a guilty plea to one count of voluntary manslaughter.

Price’s plea deal drew fierce opposition from the mother of one of Logwood’s alleged victims, who wrote: “If he kills again, the blood will be on your hands. He’s going to kill again.”

Price claims that reducing violent crime requires not prosecuting criminals but engaging “collaboratively with community-based organizations.” She expressed support this week for President Joe Biden’s honoring of activist Bryan Stevenson, saying his effort “inspires us every day to ignore the very privileged Karens of the world & keep doing the work.”

One of Price’s backers for her 2022 race was Smart Justice California, a group funded by Quinn Delaney—the wife of a wealthy San Francisco developer who helped bankroll Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascon and Boudin—as well as the wives of Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, hedge fund billionaire James Simons and Instagram co-founder Mike Krieger.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Communist China is amassing economic and diplomatic power throughout the Middle East because the Biden administration has failed to articulate a cogent strategy for the region, according to one senator.

China’s communist regime is finding success expanding its influence with Iran, Saudi Arabia, and other nations, according to Sen. James Lankford (R-Okla.), because President Joe Biden has not demonstrated the nation’s commitment to peace and prosperity in the region or to countering the threat posed by Iran’s authoritarian regime.

“No one in the region knows where America stands with Iran,” said Lankford during a March 23 national security conference hosted by the America First Policy Institute, a conservative think tank.

“And the clear question… [Middle East] leaders will ask me privately is, ‘What is America’s plan?’ Or, more specifically what they would say is, ‘What is America willing to do?’”

Lankford said that many leaders in the Middle East had “no idea” what the Biden administration’s plans for the region were, and felt abandoned by the administration’s decision to remove resources from the Middle East for use in the Indo-Pacific.

The situation, he said, had ironically created a power vacuum which China was now filling.

“While we were ‘pivoting to Asia,’ Asia was pivoting to the Middle East,” Lankford said.

“If [leaders in the Middle East] don’t know what America is willing to do, they’re going to turn to China, they’re going to turn to somebody else, they’re going to figure out how they can just survive because there’s no clear plan.”

US Has ‘Responsibility’ to Promote Rights of Iranian People

Lankford said that there was a general consensus in Congress that the United States’ Middle East policy was ‘drifting’ under the Biden administration, with no clear positive vision for the future.

The related failure to isolate Iran’s regime and elevate the Iranian people struggling for freedom, he said, had helped create the circumstance required for China to broker a historic diplomatic deal between Saudi Arabia and Iran.

“Unfortunately, the administration is speaking almost none to the people of Iran,” Lankford said.

To that end, Lankford said that the Biden administration should prioritize doing more communication with people on the street in Iran, and focus less on trying to woo the authoritarian power into arms control agreements it has no intention of honoring.

“You cannot go and negotiate with the Iranian government when the Iranian people are in the street begging for freedom,” Lankford said.

“We have a responsibility to be able to say that we’re the United States, [and] we not only believe that the rights we enjoy are American rights, we believe they are rights given by God to every person.”

As such, Lankford said that one of the single greatest problems in U.S. Middle East policy at the present moment was that the Biden administration was “silent” on numerous critical problems in the region, including human rights issues and key peacekeeping missions.

“Every president since Jimmy Carter has brought a peace plan before the Israelis and the Palestinians—until this one,” Lankford said.

“The ‘foreign policy president,’ President Biden, has been absent on some of the most significant foreign policy issues that we have as a country and as a world.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Hyundai, Kia initiate recall of hundreds of thousands of vehicles across US

Both Hyundai and Kia have recalled more than 500,000 vehicles across the United States due to a possible fire risk and warned that motorists should park their vehicles away from structures in the meantime.

Affected Hyundai vehicles include the 2019 to 2023 Santa Fe, the 2021 to 2023 Santa Fe Hybrid, the 2022 and 2023 Santa Fe Plug-in hybrid, and the 2022 and 2023 Santa Cruz. The only Kia affected is the Carnival minivan from 2022 and 2023. All have Hyundai or Kia tow hitch harnesses that came as original equipment or were installed by dealers.

The Korean automakers say in documents posted Thursday by U.S. safety regulators that water can get into a circuit board on the hitches and cause a short circuit even if the ignitions are off. As a result, the automakers told owners of the vehicles to park them away from structures and added that they shouldn’t be parked inside a garage.

“Until the free recall repair is completed, owners should continue to park their vehicles outdoors and away from other vehicles or buildings, even if the vehicle is turned off,” according to a “consumer alert” that was issued by the U.S. National Highway Safety Transportation Agency. “An electrical short could potentially start a fire in the tow hitch harness module. Owners should contact their Hyundai or Kia dealership to schedule a FREE repair.”

Owners of the vehicles under recall should communicate with their manufacturer’s customer service department to see if their vehicle is affected.

“All owners of the subject vehicles will be notified by first class mail with instructions to bring their vehicles to a Hyundai dealer for the verification of equipped Hyundai accessory trailer tow hitch assembly and if equipped, the installation of a 15A fuse and new wire extension kit,” a spokesperson for Hyundai told Fox Business on Thursday.

The spokesperson added that Hyundai is taking “an interim step” and that the car manufacturer is “also planning on removing the fuse to an equipped trailer tow hitch module to address the fire risk while in operation and parked. This remedy will be offered at no cost for all affected customers, if necessary.”

A Kia spokesperson told Fox Business that they will notify owners of the recalled vehicles via first-class mail starting in May. It will include instructions to bring their Kia to a dealership for a fix.

In 2022, Hyundai initiated a recall of more than 245,000 Palisade SUVs for a similar problem. That recall impacted Palisades from the 2020 to 2022 model years.

Other Recalls

Several days ago, Honda announced it is recalling 500,000 vehicles due to a seat belt problem as U.S. safety regulators that the surface coating on the channel for the buckle can deteriorate over time. The release button can shrink against the channel at lower temperatures, increasing friction and stopping the buckle from latching.

That recall covers the 2017 through 2020 CR-V, the 2018 and 2019 Accord, the 2018 through 2020 Odyssey, and the 2019 Insight. It also includes Acura RDX from the 2019 and 2020 model years.

Honda said in its recall that it has no reports of injuries caused by the seat belt issue.

Ford earlier this month, too, recalled F-150 Lightning electric trucks due to a battery fire issue, according to reports. Some 18 of the Lightnings were impacted, a spokesperson told Green Car Reports.

“The vehicles passed a pre-delivery quality check and connected vehicle data shows no anomalies,”  the Ford spokesperson said.

In February, F-150 Lightning production was halted by the Detroit auto giant amid reports of a truck catching on fire during a quality check. The cause of the fire was found to be a battery cell defect, the company said. Production of the F-150 Lightning was restarted in March.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

“Debunked.”

“Dangerous.”

“Unhelpful.”

These were some of the terms heaped on the theory that COVID-19 might have spilled from a lab in China, accidentally or not. Suggesting that the virus may be linked to a Chinese lab would swiftly earn one the label of “conspiracy theorist.”

That was the case for at least 18 months after the pandemic erupted from China, where the ruling communist regime has repeatedly thwarted efforts by citizen journalists and the outside world to probe the virus’s origins, and covered up the true death toll.

Three years on, the world is still in the dark about the pandemic’s origins. But mainstream discussion has gone through an about-face on the lab leak theory. The once-maligned hypothesis has gained significant traction—so much so that the U.S. Energy Department recently sided with the FBI in assessing that COVID-19 was “likely” the result of a lab leak.

But for many who have long sounded the alarm on the Wuhan lab, the U.S. government was too late to the game.

“My initial thoughts are ‘where have they been for the last 2 1/2 years?’” Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), who sits on the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, told The Epoch Times’ sister media outlet NTD. “The entire world should have risen up and made China financially responsible for what had happened.”

Censorship

Concerns about the Wuhan lab arose early in the pandemic.

At the time when Beijing was still blaming a wet market in the central Chinese city of Wuhan as the virus’s source, The Epoch Times released a documentary titled “Tracking Down the Origin of Wuhan Coronavirus,” drawing attention to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), which houses a biosafety level 4 (P4) facility that had been working on coronavirus research, and—as it was later revealed—highly risky experiments that could make a virus more lethal.

Across different platforms, that video generated tens of millions of views shortly after its debut.

But rather than allowing further examination of these concerns, an all-out campaign was begun in the United States to censor discussion of the Wuhan lab’s possible role in spawning the pandemic.

Facebook went on to mark the documentary as “false,” although a key source for the fact checkers’ claim wasn’t independent; the claim was based on the opinion of a Singapore-based scientist who worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and praised the facility’s researchers as “incredibly competent, hardworking, and are excellent scientists with superb track records.”

These statements would later be called into question, as evidence of the lab’s risky experiments and lax biosafety standards came to light. But in 2020, they were enough to trigger a near-blanket shutdown of media coverage. Idaho state Rep. Heather Scott, a Republican and a biologist, was ridiculed by local media for sharing the video and getting a fact check label.

In a widely cited article, The Washington Post accused Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), who called for questions to be asked about the lab, of “repeating a coronavirus conspiracy theory that was already debunked.” It issued a correction in 2021 to remove the word “conspiracy theory,” which it acknowledged was an inaccurate characterization because there was no consensus about where the virus originated.

‘Something Was Very Fishy’

As open discussion of COVID-19’s origins was being muzzled in the West, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was waging a full-fledged campaign to silence critics on its handling of the pandemic.

The regime’s law enforcement reprimanded doctors who sounded an early alarm about the virus, warning them not to “fear monger.” Citizen journalists were imprisoned. Chinese officials and state media, while hailing the communist leadership as exemplary in its global pandemic response, exploited the rise of anti-Asian attacks in the United States by framing Western criticism of the regime’s handling of the outbreak as racist.

The result was that the world at large echoed narratives from China with little questioning.

But Hans Mahncke, who has been documenting the U.S. suppression of the lab leak hypothesis for EpochTV’s “Truth Over News” over the past two years, said his suspicions were aroused as soon as Chinese authorities took the unprecedented step on Jan. 23, 2020, of locking down the virus’s ground zero: Wuhan, a city of over 11 million.

“I knew something was very fishy,” he said in an interview, noting that Beijing hadn’t done so when severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) emerged from China in 2002, which by official accounts infected thousands worldwide.

“If you’re going to lock down the city, you’re not going to do it for a SARS virus,” Mahncke said, noting SARS’s relatively low transmissibility. This convinced him that Chinese leader Xi Jinping “must have had some extra information, some data point that made him do something very out of the ordinary.”

More evidence soon emerged indicating that something was off: the existence of a lab doing coronavirus research in the COVID-19 hotspot; a short Feb. 6, 2020, paper by two Wuhan university researchers—taken offline shortly after—that pointed to WIV as a possible place where the “killer coronavirus” could have originated; and a spotlight on the Wuhan facility’s senior virologist, Shi Zhengli, who for years had been studying SARS-like coronaviruses, on which she wrote papers as early as 2015.

“I had to sort of bite my tongue a bit because I knew that if you said it publicly, or if you said it too stringently, you would get deleted off of social media,” he said, noting that he had seen friends censored from Twitter for lab leak comments.

“We could not just go into the public and say these things, because immediately, you’d either have your Twitter account canceled, you would be shunned. … You’d be called a ‘conspiracy theorist,’ you would have trolls and other people harass you.”

Something clicked for Mahncke as he followed the World Health Organization-backed probe in Wuhan in early 2021. The mission, conducted with heavy involvement from the Chinese side, dismissed the lab incident hypothesis as “extremely unlikely.”

But after reading further into the investigators’ backgrounds, Mahncke realized that Peter Daszak, the U.S. expert on the WHO task force, had not only worked closely with researchers at the Wuhan lab, but was instrumental in stymying discussion of the lab leak hypothesis during the pandemic’s early days.

Over the next months, internal documents released under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) would show that Daszak had a more than passing friendship with the WIV staff. His New York-based nonprofit, EcoHealth Alliance, funneled hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to the Wuhan lab for virus research, including “gain of function” studies on making existing pathogens more dangerous.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, who recently stepped down as head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases—which funded EcoHealth’s projects—initiated a call in early February 2020 after a team of scientists flagged concerns that the virus may have been engineered. Four participants of the teleconference, Daszak included, went on to draft “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2,” a paper that was widely circulated through the media and used by many to assert the primacy of the natural origins theory.

Hitting a Brick Wall

When reports about a viral outbreak in China were first emerging in early January 2020, immunologist Nikolai Petrovsky was staying at his holiday house in Colorado to escape the blistering heat back home in Australia.

About a week before Wuhan went into full lockdown, the WHO was still repeating the CCP’s claim that the virus was unlikely to be transmissible between humans. However, locals were posting images on Petrovsky’s social media feeds of dead bodies on stretchers and Chinese police welding apartment doors shut.

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The official Chinese message, and the WHO’s amplification of it, was “outrageous,” Petrovsky, a Flinders University professor specializing in vaccine development, told The Epoch Times.

“I immediately recognized this was a serious virus that wasn’t being treated seriously. And when you don’t treat a serious virus seriously, you end up with a disaster,” he said.

Shelving his vacation plans, Petrovsky began to run supercomputer modeling studies on the COVID-19 viral sequence, hoping to find out which animal the virus came from. By March, the analysis yielded a piece of information no one on his team had been looking for: The virus seemed better adapted to a human cell than any of the potential animal hosts identified.

“So then we said, well, how could that happen? Either the virus was spreading in humans for years with no one knowing it, which seems highly unlikely,” he said, “or SARS-CoV-2 could have met a human cell in a laboratory dish.

“It was like a light bulb moment. To us, it was just an obvious explanation for a finding that we had confirmed.”

As Petrovsky was pondering the lab hypothesis, Daszak was organizing a group of health experts to obstruct any speculation that the virus wasn’t from nature. He was behind a statement co-signed by more than two dozen scientists, including four EcoHealth associates, that praised their Chinese counterparts for their “remarkable” efforts to fight the outbreak and sharing results “transparently” with the global health community, and derided alternative theories about the virus origins as “rumors” and “conspiracy.” The statement was published by The Lancet in February 2020.

Petrovsky was shocked.

“Politics should have no role in scientific investigation, and as far as I could see, this article was purely about politics, containing no actual factual data,” he said. “Science should be neutral and just about finding the truth. It’s not about whether that truth is politically convenient or not.”

But this political ploy had real-world effects on Petrovsky’s work: getting his team’s findings published in scientific publications became next to impossible.

“We just hit brick walls,” he said. “Several of the big publishers sent it back to us in 48 hours without even reviewing.”

It took about a year of appeals and dealing with “very antagonistic reviewers” before the prominent science journal Nature agreed to accept their paper. By then, the landscape had changed; more scientists were coming forward urging a deeper look into the lab leak possibility, and President Joe Biden, acknowledging the scenario to be plausible, ordered his intelligence agencies to produce a report on the origins of the virus within 90 days.

But the damage from the delay was hard to undo.

By that time, the paper had much less impact, because everyone had been convinced by the highly promoted Nature commentary that the virus must have had an animal source and that anyone suggesting otherwise was a “conspiracy theorist,” Petrovsky said.

“It appeared by then they were satisfied that their global disinformation campaign had been so successful at creating a smokescreen that it was now safe to let other data come out, figuring everyone would ignore it or just attribute it to a conspiracy theory,” he said.

“And that is exactly how it played out.”

‘Antithetical to Science’

Inside the U.S. government, the atmosphere was no less intense. David Asher, who spearheaded a State Department task force probing COVID-19’s origins in 2020, was troubled by the military takeover of the WIV days after the Wuhan lockdown. So he reached out to the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for an expert opinion beginning in late spring that year.

The NIH’s entanglement with the Wuhan lab wasn’t known at the time. To Asher’s surprise, the institute provided “no investigative file” and pointed him to the “Proximal Origin” article.

The NIH head at the time, Dr. Francis Collins, “told us through their staff, not directly, that we should just trust the Chinese,” Asher, now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times.

“My answer was, ‘If that’s your basis for your analysis, then you have no basis for your analysis.’

“They were basically operating in a way that was totally inconsistent with transparency, the truth, and any sort of accountability.”

There was also apprehension from the State Department’s Bureau of Arms Control, Verification and Compliance and the undersecretary for arms control and international security, whose staff worried that the lab origin probe could “open a can of worms.” (pdf)

“We never figured out what they were worried about exactly,” Asher said.

By late January 2020, Dr. Robert Redfield, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the Trump administration, had made repeated fruitless attempts to engage with China and offer assistance in the pandemic’s initial weeks.

Redfield had made clear to Fauci and other health officials that the lab origin theory was worth serious consideration. But he was excluded from discussions that preceded the “Proximal Origin” article—something Redfield only found out retroactively from released FOIA documents.

“I had a different point of view and I was told they made a decision that they would keep this confidential until they came up with a single narrative,” Redfield told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic in early March.

“When you have a group of people that decides there can only be one point of view, that’s problematic.

“That’s antithetical to science and, unfortunately, that’s what they did.”

‘Friends’ in China

To date, the Chinese regime has resisted a comprehensive independent inquiry into how the pandemic started and has consistently sought to pin the blame on other countries.

While the culpability for covering up COVID-19’s origins rests squarely on the regime, the scientific community in the West has abetted that.

Prominent researchers at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch, a P4 lab that had for years partnered with WIV, actively tried to help their Chinese colleagues counter concerns that the virus might have originated from the Wuhan facility. One internal email string showed the Galveston scientists discussing The Epoch Times’s documentary, calling it “disconcerting” and noting the film contained “a section on our two friends” from the WIV, Shi and Yuan Zhiming, who directs the P4 lab at the institute.

But such Western scientists with “friends” in China have overlooked a critical factor, according to Jamie Metzl, a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council who has long called for a thorough investigation into COVID-19’s origins.

“A scientist in China is very different from a scientist in the United States,” he told The Epoch Times’s sister outlet NTD in early March.

“[They] may be a great person, may be fully ethical. But a scientist in China, when a critically important issue is at stake, cannot speak openly or honestly, and that’s a very big difference.”

Nonetheless, efforts by Western scientists, officials and the media to discredit the lab leak theory left a large imprint.

“A false consensus was essentially pushed on the general public in the early days, and that stuck,” Metzl said.

“It took a whole lot of work of a small handful of people, certainly over the course of that first year, but really for three years to begin to shift perceptions.”

Turning Point

Indeed, perceptions have changed, up to the very top levels of government.

On television in late February, FBI Director Christopher Wray confirmed that his agency has “for quite some time” believed the root of the pandemic is “most likely a potential lab incident.” A recent poll suggests that two-thirds of Americans now think there was a lab leak, and Biden on March 20 signed into law a bill that was unanimously approved by Congress mandating declassification of COVID-19 origins intelligence.

Petrovsky sees Wray’s remarks as an inflection point.

Anyone who posited the laboratory-origin theory, no matter how good their data, was “ostracized from mainstream science and treated as if they were conspiracy theorists and not serious scientists,” he said.

“Now, the debate has been opened up. It is time to bring the many dissenting scientists in from the cold. … All perspectives should be welcome given it still isn’t known how and where this pandemic started.

“We also need more answers into how a small group of scientists with major conflicts of interest were able to so successfully create a single narrative that only a natural animal source of this virus was possible, while, at the same time, demonizing any scientist with a contrary view.”

For Jackson, the Texas Republican, change is already afoot.

“I think that people are seeing the writing on the wall right now,” he said. “They realize that whistleblowers are coming forward and that the truth is coming out. People are scrambling to make sure that they get on the right side of this issue before they get drawn into it.”

In January and February, he co-sponsored two measures to defund the WIV and make Beijing pay pandemic damages. There’s “a lot of digging to do,” he said, adding he’s “excited to get to the bottom of this once and for all.”

“It’s important, because we can never let this happen again.”

Former Project Veritas head James O’Keefe is suggesting he has insiders on the grand jury reportedly considering indicting former President Donald Trump.

Trump has suggested he would be arrested this week. He is being probed by Manhattan District Alvin Bragg over a payment made to adult actress Stormy Daniels during the 2016 election.

A grand jury is reportedly considering charges against Trump.

After an O’Keefe supporter wondered whether O’Keefe has someone on the inside, O’Keefe suggested there are multiple insiders.

“The real question is how many do we have on the inside? Stay tuned,” O’Keefe wrote on Twitter.

Teases First Release

O’Keefe founded Project Veritas in 2010. He departed the group in February after the board of directors suspended him amid an investigation into alleged financial malfeasance. His new project is called O’Keefe Media Group, or OMG.

O’Keefe said that the new group has been sending cameras out, “which means the OMG army of exposers will soon be holding those in power accountable.”

O’Keefe warned people who are planning wrongdoing, adding: “You’re being watched. We’re coming after you. The next time you try and take advantage of honest Americans, the person sitting next to you might have a microphone or a camera. You see, the world is watching. And if you’re lying, cheating, stealing, or scamming, you might be the next unwilling star of the internet.”

OMG’s first story will be released on March 27, O’Keefe said.

At least one Project Veritas staffer has followed O’Keefe to the new project. R.C. Maxwell, a former Project Veritas employee, was in O’Keefe’s new video.

O’Keefe said in another Twitter post he’d just spent one day this week in three states.

“Just wrapped a 20 hour day. Three states, multiple investigations fueled by so many citizens,” he wrote.

New Model

OMG is based on the concept of collecting funds from supporters, buying cameras, and sending them to “citizen journalists” who will capture newsworthy moments.

News outlets “can’t hire everybody,” O’Keefe told The Epoch Times on March 16. “But what if there was a way to empower and mobilize journalists, citizen journalists, and decentralized journalism? In the same way that Uber did that for the taxi, if there was a way to do that for thousands and thousands of people? And you might say, well, that’s impossible, that’s too difficult. Well, that’s the mission that I’m embarking on.”

People have already approached OMG, asking for cameras to record school meetings and other events, O’Keefe said.

Asked whether the citizen journalists would be paid, O’Keefe said he wasn’t sure.

“Most people want to do this for free,” he said.

“I don’t know exactly how it’s going to work, we’re going to figure it out,” he added later.

O’Keefe said being ousted from Project Veritas has turned out to be a “blessing in disguise” because it let him start the new group.

Jan Jekielek contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Father, daughter silenced and punished for pointing out truth… Dear Friend, Using biologically correct pronouns and “misgendering” a student recently got this 14-year-old Vermont girl and her father suspended. What did they object to? A male student being in the girls’ locker room while the volleyball team undressed.  Blake Allen, a female high school volleyball player, and her father Travis, a middle school coach, found out that radical school officials are willing to violate the free speech rights of students and parents and punish them for voicing legitimate, commonsense concerns about privacy and safety. In September, Blake expressed concern that a male student had entered the girls’ locker room while her team was undressing. Shockingly, the school responded by saying that if any of the girls felt uncomfortable, they could use a single-stall restroom outside the locker room.  Later, when talking with classmates, Blake noted the male student is “literally a dude” and said “he” doesn’t belong in the girls’ locker room.”  On October 21, school officials at Randolph High School suspended Blake, charging her with harassing and bullying the male student. As part of her punishment, they told her she would have to write a “reflective essay” and “take part in a restorative circle” or face further suspension. Alliance Defending Freedom is defending the Allen family, and we need your help. Will you give today? Blake doesn’t need to be reeducated on this issue. She knows what biological reality is. For her father’s part, Travis had genuine concerns for his daughter’s safety and privacy. In a community Facebook post, he expressed his concern about the male student being in the girls’ locker room, stating “he got a free show” while his daughter and her teammates had been “violated.” School district officials responded by claiming Travis had “misgendered” the male student and suspended him from his job as the middle school’s girls’ soccer coach for the rest of the season—without pay. Travis and Blake reached out to Alliance Defending Freedom for help, and we filed a federal lawsuit against Orange Southwest School District and Randolph High School on their behalf. In response to ADF’s actions, Blake’s school has thankfully lifted her suspension and any further punishment. But Travis was suspended for the remainder of the soccer season, and he’s waiting for the school to do the right thing—starting with honoring his right to free speech.  To this day, the school has refused to change the policy allowing males into girls’ locker rooms. Girls should not be forced to share private spaces with males—and every parent has a right to expect and demand their child’s school respect that. And no student or parent should face punishment for exercising their constitutional right to freely speak. Travis and his daughter Blake understand that males are males, and females are females. But the school is denying biological reality and trying to force its false ideology on everyone else. More and more, government officials and activists are trying to silence the speech of those who stand by biological reality. What’s happened to Blake and Travis is just one recent example.  Will you make a gift right now to help fuel their lawsuit and defend free speech for all Americans? ADF doesn’t charge our clients a dime to defend them in court. For freedom, Alliance Defending Freedom P.S. 14-year-old Blake Allen was uncomfortable with a male in her team’s locker room and was suspended after noting that a male, who came into the girls’ locker room while her teammates undressed, was “literally a dude.” The school responded by suspending her. Travis, her father, defended Blake and expressed his legitimate concerns. For that, he was suspended from his job as middle school coach. This is wrong. Help defend the Allens and protect free speech!

SOURCE: ADF Legal

Sterilization, electric shock torture, and brainwashing are hallmarks of the Chinese Communist Party’s treatment of the Uyghur people, according to prison camp survivors.  

“Genocide is occurring. This time at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party,” Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wis., said at the start of the Select Committee on the CCP hearing Thursday night.  

Gulbahar Haitiwaji and Qelbinur Sidik witnessed firsthand the realities of Chinese concentration camps where Uyghur Muslims are held and tortured. Speaking through a translator, the two women recounted stories from the prison camps during the select committee hearing titled, “The Chinese Communist Party’s Ongoing Uyghur Genocide.” 

Haitiwaji is Uyghur and lived and worked in China before moving to France. At the end of 2016, she was called back to China for an issue that she was told regarded her retirement pension. Upon returning to China, Haitiwaji was arrested and sent to a “reeducation” camp.  

“First they shackled my feet and then they detained [me],” Haitiwaji said. The woman’s condition in the detention centers are horrible. All women are shackled and our language… we are all prohibited to speak.”  

Haitiwaji, author of “How I Survived a Chinese ‘Reeducation’ Camp: A Uyghur Woman’s Story,” said she and the other women in the prison were interrogated and tortured.  

“The rooms we were kept in had bunk beds, a bucket to serve as a toilet, and cameras panning the room,” Haitiwaji said in her written testimony. “There was no mattress, no toilet paper, no sheets, nowhere to wash.”  

Every day, Haitiwaji underwent 11 hours of Chinese language education.  

Speaking through a translator, concentration camp survivor and Uyghur Gulbahar Haitiwaji describes the “re-education” she was forced to undergo at the hands of the Chinese Communist Party. pic.twitter.com/LbPGlnmfNI

— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) March 23, 2023

Sidik, who also testified before Congress, was one of the instructors in the “reeducation” camps.  

Sidik is Uzbek and a teacher by trade. In 2017, she was living in China and was told that she was being assigned to a new teaching position. Sidik did not realize until she arrived at her new job that her pupils were Uyghur Muslims living in a concentration camp.  

“For each meal they eat one Chinese bun and water, and even going for toilet is monitored,” Sidik, speaking through a translator, said of her students, adding that within the six months she was there, “none of them had any shower.” 

Sidik said her students would be called from her classroom for interrogation. Because the interrogation rooms were located near the classrooms, she would hear “horrible screaming sound from torture.”  

“There are four types of torturing methods,” Sidik said. “One is electric button, electric helmet, electric glove, and a tiger chair.” 

Every Monday, Sidik recalls that female prisoners were given an unknown medicine. “After they take that, those medicines [then] the period will stop,” she said. “Even some woman who were breastfeeding the babies, the breast milk will stop after taking that medicine.” 

Qelbinur Sidik survived a Chinese concentration camp. Speaking through a translator, she said the women in the camp were given medicine weekly that caused their periods to stop. pic.twitter.com/06VW8MHbTt

— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) March 23, 2023

Sidik said in her written testimony that while working at an all women “center,” that sometimes, when the women “would come to class, I could tell [by] how they walked with difficulty or were sobbing that they had been sexually abused.” 

The police working in the camps were “raping women but also inserting batons, even electric ones, into their private parts and even men’s rectums,” Sidik said.  

Sidik was eventually able to leave China for the Netherlands, where she lives now. Haitiwaji also managed to return to France, but only after she was forced to confess her alleged crimes. Now, both women are calling on America to stop the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China.  

“I am asking the United States government to do the following,” Haitiwaji said in her written testimony:  

Pass more laws to end our suffering and hold those responsible accountable. 

Please rescue Uyghur and other Turkic refugees, like Canada has done. 

Please stop American companies from continuing to be complicit in surveilling our people and profiting from their labor. 

Please stop pension fund investments in China’s high-tech surveillance companies. I was shocked to learn that Americans are pouring their money into Dahua, Hikvision, Huawei, Tencent, and others that we are familiar with as being the power behind the Chinese State’s heavy hand over our lives. 

Adrian Zenz, a senior fellow and director in China studies at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, testified before Congress following Haitiwaji and Sidik’s remarks. Zenz challenged members of Congress to pursue three specific policy recommendations in response to the atrocities China is committing against Uyghur Muslims.  

The U.S. government should sanction implicated current and former central government officials. My testimony contains a list. So far, the U.S. has not sanctioned a single central government official, even though they are implicated. Having determined genocide in Xinjiang, second, the government should spell out how it will follow through on its treaty obligation to prevent the crime of genocide. Third, the government should establish measures to prevent U.S. investors, such as pension funds, to invest in Chinese entities implicated in human rights violations, surveillance, and military modernization. 

What should the U.S. government do to stop the genocide of Uyghur Muslims in China? Dr. Adrian Zenz of the @VoCommunism has three policy recommendations. pic.twitter.com/srIlsd0aAc

— Virginia Allen (@Virginia_Allen5) March 24, 2023

Gallagher, chairman of the House’s select committee on China, told his colleagues it the “least we can do on this committee is to make sure that in fifty years—when the Xinjiang genocide is remembered as one of the abominations of the 21st century—no corporate executive, no policy maker, no investor, no university president can look their grandchildren in the eye and claim they didn’t know.” 

Have an opinion about this article? To sound off, please email letters@DailySignal.com, and we’ll consider publishing your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” feature. Remember to include the URL or headline of the article plus your name and town and/or state. 

The post After Facing Torture From Chinese Communist Party, Uyghur Muslim Share Her Story and Calls for Action appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Janet Protasiewicz gave no additional prison time to offender who assaulted underage girl while on parole

Liberal Wisconsin Supreme Court candidate Janet Protasiewicz gave no additional prison time to a serial child sex offender who assaulted an underage girl while on parole, despite courtroom pleas from the victim and victim’s mother.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

Alfonso McCormick, then 41, was charged with groping a 15-year-old in 2020, while out on parole for a prior child sex conviction. But Protasiewicz, the circuit court judge overseeing the 2020 case, declined to sentence McCormick to more jail time than the three years he was already required to serve when his parole was revoked.

According to court records, McCormick was attending a family party at the victim’s house when he “asked how old she was” and she “told him she was 15.” He then “grabbed her arm [and] pulled her into the bathroom,” where he fondled her chest and asked her to take off her shirt. The girl managed to escape the room and told other adults, who called the police.

“I personally feel like three years is not enough,” said the victim in an emotional courtroom address during the sentencing hearing. “I feel I have complete panic attacks because I have a guard up.”

The case adds to a growing list of sexual assault cases in which convicted assailants walked out of Protasiewicz’s courtroom with little or no prison time—including one in which a sex offender went on to kill a woman in a drunk driving crash. Protasiewicz’s record has been under fire from her conservative judicial opponent, Dan Kelly. The April 4 race between the two, which will decide the ideological breakdown of the swing state’s top court, could have national implications for the 2024 presidential elections and has already broken U.S. spending records for state judiciary campaigns.

Protasiewicz said this week that she was sometimes forced to issue light sentences in cases in which victims were afraid to appear in court.

“In sexual assault cases, those are challenging cases,” said Protasiewicz during a debate with Kelly on Tuesday. “Those victims frequently don’t want to come to court. There are frequent recantations.”

At the time of the 2020 incident, McCormick was out on parole for a 1995 first-degree sexual assault conviction involving a “much younger child,” for which he had served around 16 years in prison, according to court records. After the 2020 assault, an administrative court revoked McCormick’s parole and ordered him to return to jail for an additional three years and three months.

Wisconsin prosecutors also picked up the case. In 2021, McCormick pleaded guilty to child enticement, a charge that carries up to 25 years in prison in Wisconsin. Protasiewicz sentenced him to three years in prison to serve concurrently with the parole revocation sentence, meaning it would not add jail time to what he was already serving.

Protasiewicz said she believed the sentence was fair because the prosecution didn’t conduct forensic interviews with the victim and might have difficulty proving the case in a trial.

The victim addressed the courtroom and her assailant during the March 2021 sentencing hearing, saying she felt the justice system viewed her case as unimportant.

“I feel like if [I] was somebody else’s daughter we would take it a little more harder … or if I was somebody personally somebody knew,” she said.

The girl’s mother also pleaded with Protasiewicz to give McCormick a longer sentence, asking the court to imagine if the victim was “one of your daughters, and this person just kept doing the same crime over and over and over.”

The woman said her daughter feared being around men since the assault and even attempted suicide.

“All they giving you is three years? You totally messed up my child’s mind literally,” said the mother, addressing McCormick in the courtroom.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The rule prohibits classroom instruction on sexual orientation and gender identity up to 12th grade

The Florida Board of Education is set to vote next month on a proposal that would expand Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R.) Parental Rights in Education law.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

The law, originally passed last spring and dubbed by critics the “Don’t Say Gay” act, increases classroom transparency and prohibits lessons on sexual orientation and gender identity in kindergarten through third-grade classrooms. The proposed rule would expand that prohibition to 4th- through 12th-grade classrooms, “unless such instruction is either expressly required by state academic standards … or is part of a reproductive health course or health lesson for which a student’s parent has the option to have his or her student not attend.”

The expansion is part of the DeSantis administration’s efforts to combat woke curricula in Florida’s public schools. Last month, the College Board revised its high school Advanced Placement course in African-American studies after DeSantis rejected the draft curriculum for its woke and inaccurate content. In June 2021, DeSantis signed the Fairness in Women’s Sports Act, which barred biological males who identify as women from competing in women’s sports.

At a speech earlier this month in Simi Valley, Calif., DeSantis declared that schools “should not be teaching a second-grader that they can choose their gender,” to which the crowd responded with a standing ovation.

“In Florida we say very clearly we will never ever surrender to the woke mob,” DeSantis said. “Our state is where woke goes to die.”

“Parents have the right and God-given responsibility to guide their children’s upbringing,” state senator Clay Yarborough (R.), a sponsor of the bill, said during a committee hearing Monday. “They should not have to worry their students are receiving classroom instruction on topics and materials parents feel are not age-appropriate.”

Democratic state senator Shevrin Jones argued against the new rule, saying it was about the “banning of books, muzzling of teachers, and forcing students back into the closet.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Both dictators ‘share an intense hostility to the United States and our way of life,’ expert says

The meeting between Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping earlier this week should serve as a wake-up call for the Biden administration, an expert told the Washington Free Beacon.FreeBeacon CarouselREAD: Judge James Ho’s Remarks Announcing a Hiring Boycott From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

Putin and Xi spent three days in Moscow plotting what both countries have hailed as a “no limits partnership” and a diplomatic course meant to cement their economic and military ties. The two leaders discussed trade, which is on pace to reach an all-time high of nearly $200 billion this year, as well as plans to build more nuclear plants. Regional experts say this spells trouble for the United States as it grapples with China’s rising economic dominance and attempts to push back a Russian invasion of Ukraine.

“When Xi and Putin talk about their ‘no-limits partnership,’ they mean it,” Kelley Currie, a former State Department official, told the Free Beacon. “At some point, we need to start actually taking these guys at their word that they are besties, and act accordingly.”

While Putin and Xi “are different flavors of authoritarian,” both dictators “share an intense hostility to the United States and our way of life. We can’t protect the United States without recognizing that and acting accordingly,” Currie said.

In a public toast broadcast on state-controlled television, the leaders raised a glass to President Joe Biden “for bringing us together”—a sign the leaders see weakness in the Biden administration and will move to exploit it as they cement their economic and military ties.

Xi described Putin as his “dear friend” during his meeting with the dictator and went on to offer a stark warning to the West: “Change is coming that hasn’t happened in 100 years. And we are driving this change together.”

The leaders also committed to deepen their economic cooperation, which serves as a way to insulate both regimes from Western sanctions. Trade between Russia and China grew 30 percent in 2022, hitting a record of $185 billion, according to Putin. This year, Russia-China trade could exceed $200 billion, which Putin called a “symbolic threshold.”

This trade alliance, Putin added, “allows us to protect mutual trade from the influence of third countries and negative trends on global currency markets.”

Russia also committed to build several nuclear plants in China—which it is also doing in Iran with permission from the Biden administration.

China has floated the possibility of securing a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine to end the ongoing war. This would come on the heels of a recent China-brokered peace agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Xi and Putin also took time to praise one another and publicly tout their mutual admiration.

“For 10 years, President Putin and I have maintained close communication; we are in contact on strategic matters and promote productive strategic interaction between the two countries,” Xi said during a joint press conference.

Increased Chinese involvement in Russia’s war on Ukraine could have serious consequences for the liberal world order, Anna Borshchevskaya, a Russia expert and senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said.

“For years analysts had dismissed the Russia-China relationship because it was not coming into what we would understand in the West as an alliance, but the summit suggests that Russia and China are countries are working together,” Borshchevskaya said. “Chinese weapons may not yet be on the Ukrainian battlefield, but rather than argue about terminology, the West should see Russia and China as one strategic set, which will likely present a greater challenge to the liberal world order than these two would have separately.”

The bromance between the two leaders generated concern among top China hawks in Congress.

“Xi and Putin just doubled down on their no limits partnership, and while they claimed to oppose a ‘cold war mentality,’ their actions make clear they are already engaged in a new Cold War against the United States, our allies, and our values,” Gallagher said.

Update March 24, 8:23 a.m.: This post has been updated with comment from senior fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy Anna Borshchevskaya.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A now-deceased transgender Antifa activist on Monday shot and critically wounded a police detective, Seattle police revealed this week.FreeBeacon Carousel’A Cesspool of Narcissistic Insular Self-Gratification’: How the Mainstream Media Squandered the Public’s Trust (and How To Win It Back)READ MORE

The activist, 29-year-old Nathan Stolsig, shot detective David Easterly in the torso after three deputies served Stolsig an eviction notice, the Post Millennial reported. Stolsig, who identified as a transgender woman by the name “Eucytus,” belonged to the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), a group that actively encouraged the 2020 BLM-Antifa riots.

The deputies found the suspect dead inside a barricaded apartment, and the King County medical examiner concluded that Stolsig sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound. Easterly remains hospitalized in critical condition, according to the Post Millenial.

The shooting comes as Antifa rioters armed with explosives wreaked havoc in Atlanta this past January in an anti-police demonstration. Rioters set fire to a police car, damaged businesses, and threw rocks at a police station.

The 2020 BLM riots caused millions of dollars in property damage in Seattle, for which the city reimbursed business owners. Police were temporarily barricaded out of a section of the city known at the time as “CHAZ,” where multiple shootings occurred, killing two teenagers.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Dem-backed bill would also allow girls of any age to get abortion without parental consent

Oregon Democrats are pushing a sweeping bill that would make their state a safe haven for teens who want to get sex changes and abortions without parental consent and for doctors who illegally perform such procedures in other states.FreeBeacon CarouselHouse Republicans Ask American Bar Association To Investigate Stanford Law School Over Duncan DisruptionREAD MORE

The Reproductive Health and Access to Care Act would allow children as young as 15 to undergo sex change operations without parents’ knowledge, while also eliminating parental consent for abortions for girls of any age and reproductive sterilization for girls as young as 15. The bill would also classify facial reconstruction surgery and hair removal as “medically necessary” services, a move that would require insurers to cover the procedures.

Oregon is the latest blue state to propose making sex changes and abortions a default right for minors. In Oregon’s case, legislators have chosen to wrap a laundry list of transgender and abortion policies into one behemoth bill that will almost certainly pass, as it’s a priority for Democratic Gov. Tina Kotek and Oregon house speaker Dan Rayfield (D.).

The brainchild of Rayfield, the legislation was born out of a working group tasked with crafting the state’s response to the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade. While the state already boasts some of the nation’s most permissive abortion laws, the bill would also make Oregon a leader in radical transgender medicine.

On the abortion front, the bill would ax the age of medical consent—which is 15 in Oregon—so that girls of any age can get a free procedure without their parents’ knowledge as well as unfettered, free access to abortion pills. Girls as young as 15 could also sign off on their own sexual sterilization. The bill would direct the state to send mobile abortion clinics into rural areas and require insurers to give liability coverage to all abortion doctors, even those who practice in states where the procedure is illegal.

On transgender policy, the proposal would enshrine Medicaid and private insurance coverage for all sex-change procedures—even genital constructions to give people both penises and vaginas to support their “nonbinary” identities. Health plans would also have to cover hair removal, voice coaching, and facial reconstruction surgery. Minors as young as 15 could obtain any of these “gender-affirming” surgeries and treatments without telling their parents. The legislation would also extend liability coverage to doctors in states that are banning gender alterations for minors.

The bill passed its first legislative committee vetting on Monday after four-and-a-half hours of testimony. Detransitioners, women who regretted their abortions, and advocates faced off against witnesses from Planned Parenthood, doctors and therapists from Oregon’s state-funded gender clinics, and activists.

Holly Hart, a retired attorney from Portland, reported that a growing number of young women are asking her for referrals to malpractice attorneys after being prescribed testosterone from just one or two “brief appointments” at Planned Parenthood. Some of these women can no longer have children, including those who have had to get hysterectomies because the cross-sex hormones atrophied their uterus, said Hart.

A detransitioner witness, “Frank” Smith, told lawmakers he agreed to genital surgery and breast implants while addicted to meth and has had to navigate his way to detransitioning on his own since the therapists he went to for help told him his remaining male characteristics caused his post-transition unhappiness. When he decided to remove the breast implants, Medicaid would not pay for the procedure so he had to save up on his own.

“I could not afford complete anesthesia and they operated on me while I was awake with only a little numbing cream,” Smith said, adding that he learned too late he could not reconstruct his former body. “My muscles had been ripped off the bone in haste to fabricate female anatomy on a male chest. There is no reattaching them.”

The legislative committee’s ultimate approval of the bill comes as progressive countries in Europe pull back support for transgender-boosting policies. Sweden, the first country to legalize sex changes, last month moved to halt cross-sex hormones for minors in all but rare cases.

In the United States, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve cross-sex hormones. Instead, the agency in 2016 warned these drugs can cause an increase in suicidal thoughts, Reuters has reported, although transgender activists often argue that without medical intervention gender-questioning youth are more likely to kill themselves. Meanwhile a growing number of detransitioners report devastating physical effects of surgery they have come to regret.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Waiver signed day after administration officials denied Iran’s claim that Tehran was set to receive $500 million thanks to waiver

The Biden administration last week greenlit a sanctions waiver that will allow Iraq to make cash payments for electricity to Iran, whose cash-strapped regime says it is set to receive a $500 million payment from Iraq thanks to the waiver.FreeBeacon CarouselREAD: Judge James Ho’s Remarks Announcing a Hiring Boycott From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

A non-public sanctions waiver issued by Secretary of State Antony Blinken and transmitted to Congress earlier this week authorizes Iraq to pay Iran for multimillion-dollar electricity debts, according to a copy of the notice obtained on Wednesday by the Washington Free Beacon. The waiver was issued a day after Biden administration officials denied Iran’s claims that the United States had paved the way for Tehran to receive the $500 million, which was first reported by the Free Beacon.

The latest sanctions waiver, however, permits “the Trade Bank of Iraq to engage in financial transactions … with the Central Bank of Iran in connection with the purchase of electricity.”

It is unclear how Iran arrived at the $500 million figure, or if it is related to this most recent sanctions waiver, which does not detail specific amounts of money. Iranian officials claim they are owed around $18 billion from Iraq in back payments for electricity. Blinken signed the waiver on March 17, one day after the Free Beacon reported on Iran’s claims, which elicited a denial from the Treasury Department. The Biden administration’s decision to authorize new Iraqi payments to Iran has generated anger on Capitol Hill among Republican hawks who accuse the administration of helping Tehran access cash at a time when the regime is funneling weapons to Russia for its war in Ukraine.

“Of course the Biden administration lied that they wouldn’t waive sanctions on Iran just days before they did so,” said Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas). “They know that by allowing money to pour into Iran, they are not only endangering the safety and security of Americans but also undermining everything they claim to believe about defeating Putin. They say that Iran is a terror sponsor and Russia’s top military backer, but appeasing Iran and getting back into a nuclear deal with the Ayatollah is more important to them. They are funding both sides of the Ukraine war.”

In response to the Free Beacon‘s initial report on the matter, a Treasury Department spokesman said, “The United States did not provide a waiver for the payment of any blocked or restricted funds to Iran.” The State Department would not confirm or deny the report.

When approached on Wednesday for comment about the congressional waiver notice, a Treasury Department spokesman referred the Free Beacon to the State Department for comment. A State Department spokesman would not comment on the record about the issue.

The latest sanctions waiver includes a determination by Blinken that “it is vital to the national security of the United States to waive the imposition of sanctions” on transactions from Iraq’s Trade Bank to Iran. The waiver will last for 120 days, at which time the United States will decide whether it will reauthorize these transactions. A classified portion of the notice provided to Congress outlines the reasons why the administration granted the waiver.

Hamid Hosseini, the secretary general of the Iran-Iraq Joint Chamber of Commerce, claimed last week the Biden administration “granted another sanction waiver and allowed the payment of 500 million dollars from Iraq’s electricity debt to Iran.” The agreement was reportedly made while Iraq’s foreign minister was in Washington, D.C., for meetings with State Department officials, according to Hosseini.

The funds have been frozen in Iraq’s Trade Bank due to U.S. sanctions and control over the bank’s assets.

“Iran’s money is in a bank that is under the supervision of the United States, and it is only allowed to import goods that are not sanctioned,” Hosseini said last week in comments published by Iran’s state-controlled press.

The Trump administration also granted these sanctions waivers, and President Joe Biden continued them in March 2021 and March 2022. Each waiver permitted Iraq to import electricity from Iran without facing sanctions for a period of 120 days.

Though the United States has mostly abandoned its hopes of reviving the 2015 nuclear accord, the sanctions waivers leave open the possibility of further concessions to Iran.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) introduced a bill on Thursday that would break apart the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), which Dr. Anthony Fauci previously led.

Dubbed the “NIH Reform Act,” the bill would break apart NIAID, which is a component agency of the National Institute of Health (NIH). The bill would reallocate the various responsibilities of NIAID into three new separate national research institutes: the National Institute of Allergic Diseases; the National Institute of Infectious Diseases; and the National Institute of Immunologic Diseases.

Furthermore, the bill would require that the directors of these three new research institutes be subject to a Senate confirmation process, with the directors limited to no more than two five-year terms. In calling for these term limits and Senate confirmation requirements, the Republican lawmakers noted that the NIAID’s previous director, Fauci, had served for nearly four decades before retiring around the end of last year.

“Dr. Anthony Fauci was Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) for over 38 years—longer than J. Edgar Hoover was Director of the FBI,” the lawmakers wrote. “By the time he retired, he was the highest paid official in the entire federal government. Yet the Senate never voted to confirm him once. The law does not require Senate confirmation of the NIAID Director.”

Paul and Roy are among a group of Republican lawmakers that have been vocal critics of Fauci, particularly in his leadership on the COVID-19 pandemic and his support for lockdowns, masking, and vaccine mandates.

“We’ve learned a lot over the past few years, but one lesson in particular is that no one person should be deemed ‘dictator-in-chief.’ No one person should have unilateral authority to make decisions for millions of Americans,” said Paul, an ophthalmologist. “To ensure that ineffective, unscientific lockdowns and mandates are never foisted on the American people ever again, I’ve introduced this bill to eliminate Dr. Anthony Fauci’s previous position as Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and divide the role into three separate new institutes.”

Paul went on to describe the NIAID directorship as a “taxpayer funded position that has largely abused its power and has been responsible for many failures and misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

Roy said that “unaccountable public health bureaucracies proved themselves far more adept at ruining lives than saving them.”

The Republican lawmakers said the reforms they are proposing are nothing new, noting the FBI director position was limited to a single 10-year term after Hoover’s tenure with the agency and Congress eliminated one NIH center in 2012, to replace it with another.

“Breaking up Dr. Fauci’s taxpayer funded bully pulpit into three separate agencies—and requiring Senate confirmation for all their future directors—is one of many actions necessary to allow the American people to hold public health agencies accountable,” Roy added.

Paul and Roy introduced their bill with the support of Sens. Mike Lee (R-Utah), Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and Josh Hawley (R-Mo.)

NTD reached out to NIAID for comment but the organization did not respond before press time.

Paul repeatedly sparred with Fauci during the NIAID director’s final months in office. Paul questioned Fauci over the more than $193 million in royalty payments that NIH employees received between 2010 and 2016. The senator also raised allegations that the NIH was involved in gain-of-function research at a virology lab in Wuhan, China, the city where the first COVID-19 cases were reported. Gain-of-function is the modification of bacteria and viruses to increase their transmissibility or virulence. Fauci has denied that the NIH funded gain-of-function research in Wuhan.

From NTD News

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Deutsche Bank shares tumbled as much as 16 percent on March 24 after the cost of insuring the financial institution’s debt against default risks increased to the highest levels in about four years.

The Frankfurt-listed stock later trimmed its losses to close 8.5 percent lower.

The company’s five-year credit default swaps (CDS), a type of default insurance for bondholders, surged above 220 basis points, up from 142 basis points earlier in the week; it’s the largest jump since the end of 2018. Despite the recent concerns, Deutsche CDSs are below their 300-basis-point record that occurred in 2011 during the eurozone debt crisis.

The higher CDS values go, the greater the odds the market sees the issuer defaulting.

Germany’s largest bank has recently eliminated $3 billion from its market value as its Frankfurt-listed shares have been sliding for three consecutive sessions.

The panic in Deutsche Bank has spread to the broader banking sector. The iShares MSCI Europe Financials ETF and the Financial Select Sector SPDR Fund each tumbled more than 1 percent on March 24.

Deutsche Bank also witnessed its Additional-Tier 1 (AT1) bonds slump in recent sessions. These instruments, which were crafted in the wake of the 2007–2009 financial crisis, convert bonds into equity when a lender faces difficulties, with the idea of absorbing losses should capital ratios slip below the listed threshold.

In the wake of Credit Suisse’s near failure, which saw Swiss regulators eliminate the bank’s AT1 debtholders, global financial markets have been paying closer attention to these so-called contingent convertibles (CoCo).

ING analysts believe that it will be challenging for other banks to begin issuing fresh AT1 bonds.

“It is doubtful that banks will be able to issue new AT1 anytime soon, increasing the likelihood of outstanding AT1 notes being extended,” wrote several ING economists and analysts, including James Knightley, the chief international economist, in a research note.

“We consider that the recent events in the banking sector have resulted in substantially increased uncertainty, which is likely to continue to be reflected as substantial short-term volatility in credit markets. We expect bank spreads to be negatively impacted in general and also in the longer term, whether in bank capital or in bank senior debt, as bank investors factor in more uncertainty regarding resolution practices.”

Deutsche’s 7.5 percent AT1 dollar bonds tumbled about 2 cents on March 23. The Invesco AT1 Capital Bond UCITS ETF AT1, which invests in these CoCos, declined as much as 4 percent on the London Stock Exchange (LSE) at the end of the trading week.

At the same time, a tier 2 subordinated bond climbed to face value after Deutsche suddenly redeemed the note early.

The global bond market also slid on March 24.

The U.S. benchmark 10-year yield fell nearly 4 basis points to below 3.39 percent. The U.K. 10-year yield slumped close to 9 basis points to nearly 3.27 percent. The 10-year German bond dropped 8 basis points to under 2.11 percent.

Another Credit Suisse Moment?

At this stage, investors are concerned about the health of Deutsche Bank.

But are these fears justified?

“We have no concerns about Deutsche’s viability or asset marks. To be crystal clear – Deutsche is NOT the next Credit Suisse,” a report from research firm Autonomous reads. “Judging from the movements in Deutsche’s CDS, AT1s and share price, investors are worrying about the health of the bank. We are relatively relaxed in view of Deutsche’s robust capital and liquidity positions.”

Deutsche Bank has reported 10 consecutive quarters of profit, including a $1.98 billion net profit in the fourth quarter, driven by a 159 percent year-over-year gain in its annual net income.

Deutsche Bank presently has $1.4 trillion in assets, with $880 billion in assets under management.

The company has been undergoing a thorough restructuring plan that started in 2019, with CEO Christian Sewing saying that the entity has been “successfully transformed” in the past three years.

“By refocusing our business around core strengths we have become significantly more profitable, better balanced and more cost-efficient. In 2022, we demonstrated this by delivering our best results for fifteen years,” Sewing said in a statement in February.

As the panic spreads, some investors are wondering whether the German government will come to the rescue, as Swiss authorities did for Credit Suisse.

For now, that doesn’t appear to be the case, according to a recent statement from German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

“Deutsche Bank has modernized and organized the way it works. It’s a very profitable bank. There is no reason to be concerned,” he said after a summit of European Union leaders.

The bank has endured a series of scandals in the past decade, which some experts say could be contributing to the selloff.

Between 2013 and 2015, U.S., British, and European regulators slapped the company with more than $3 billion in fines after it was discovered that traders had manipulated interest rates.

In 2015, Deutsche paid out $260 million in fines following the discovery by U.S. authorities that the bank violated a U.S. embargo on Iran.

It also was revealed in 2015 that Deutsche Bank used stock transactions to launder approximately $10 billion of dirty money in Russian rubles. As a result, the financial institution paid a $600 million penalty to the U.S. government.

Since going public in November 1996, Deutsche Bank shares have plummeted 70 percent.

Deutsche Bank officials didn’t respond by press time to requests by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg fired back at House Republicans seeking to probe his reported case against former President Donald Trump, offering the first public response to the former president’s claim that he would be indicted by Bragg’s office soon.

“Your letter dated March 20, 2023 (the ‘Letter’), in contrast, is an [unprecedented] inquiry into a pending local prosecution,” Bragg’s office wrote (pdf) to House Judiciary Republicans in the letter, which was posted online by multiple news outlets. It said that the GOP’s letter “only came after Donald Trump created a false expectation that he would be arrested the next day, and his lawyers reportedly urged you to intervene. Neither fact is a legitimate basis for congressional inquiry.”

If Bragg’s office were to comply with the request, it would “interfere with law enforcement,” and the GOP letter represents an “unlawful incursion into New York’s sovereignty,” according to the letter. It was written by Bragg’s general counsel, Leslie B. Dubeck, and dated March 23.

The letter represents the first public comments Bragg made specifically about the investigation into Trump after the former president announced last weekend that he would be indicted on Tuesday, although Tuesday passed without any charges being filed against him. So far, Epoch Times requests for comment to Bragg’s office have gone unanswered.

However, the letter provided little insight into the investigation and whether the grand jury will return an indictment against Trump. Several witnesses, including former Trump attorney Michael Cohen and fellow lawyer Robert Castello, testified in front of the grand jury in recent days, triggering even more speculation about the case.

“If a grand jury brings charges against Donald Trump, the DA’s Office will have an obligation, as in every case, to provide a significant amount of discovery from its files to the defendant so that he may prepare a defense,” the document stated. House Republican assertions that his office is “pursuing a prosecution for political purposes is unfounded, and regardless, the proper forum for such a challenge is the Courts of New York, which are equipped to consider and review such objections.”

“In addition, review by the U.S. Supreme Court would be available to the extent any criminal case raises federal issues. That is the mechanism afforded to every defendant in a criminal case. Congress has no role to play in that review, especially as to a pending state criminal proceeding,” according to the letter.

Because Congress doesn’t have a “legitimate legislative task relating to the oversight of local prosecutors” and state laws, the recent Republican request would threaten the state of New York’s “sovereign interest,” Bragg’s office said.

What Was Sought

House Republicans led by Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), Oversight Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.), and Administration Chairman Bryan Steil (R-Wis.), earlier this week requested information and testimony into Bragg’s investigation and described the probe as likely politically motivated. They wrote that Bragg’s office has frequently reduced felony charges for violent offenders in New York City, but he’s reportedly looking to elevate charges against Trump over an incident that occurred in 2016.

“Your decision to pursue such a politically motivated prosecution—while adopting progressive criminal justice policies that allow career ‘criminals [to] run the streets’ of Manhattan—requires congressional scrutiny about how public safety funds appropriated by Congress are implemented by local law-enforcement agencies,” Jordan wrote to the district attorney’s office.

Since Trump’s post on Truth Social announcing he would be arrested soon, Republicans in Congress have circled their wagons around the former president, accusing Bragg and Democrats of engaging in a politically motivated witch hunt. Some legal scholars, too, have denigrated Bragg’s case and have claimed it is a twisted interpretation of the law.

A spokesperson for Trump told The Epoch Times over the past weekend that Trump has received no special information about a possible indictment and suggested the former president was reacting to publicly available reporting that cited anonymous reports. A so-called “court source” told multiple news outlets last Friday that Trump could be indicted soon in connection to the case, which delves into alleged hush money payments that were provided to Stormy Daniels during the 2016 campaign.

If Trump is arrested, it would be a first for a current or former president. Since the founding of the United States, no president has faced criminal charges.

Meanwhile, the former president has said he would continue his 2024 White House campaign if he is indicted. A rally in Waco, Texas, is scheduled for later this month.

The Epoch Times has contacted Bragg’s office and a Trump spokesperson for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Members of Congress and the CEO of TikTok are engaging in a series of heated exchanges over the app’s ties to China’s communist regime, as the House holds a hearing on TikTok’s data privacy practices.

TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew is appearing before a hearing of the House Energy and Commerce Committee for the first time ever, in an attempt to defend the company’s data privacy practices and links to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which rules China as a single-party state.

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash.) opened the hearing with several salvos lambasting TikTok’s ties to the Chinese communist regime through its China-based parent company ByteDance.

“CCP laws require Chinese companies like ByteDance to spy on their behalf,” Rodgers said. “That means any Chinese company must grant the CCP access and manipulation capabilities as a design feature.”

“TikTok surveils us all, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is able to use this as a tool to manipulate America as a whole. We do not trust TikTok will ever embrace American values.”

CEO Seeks to Distance Himself From ByteDance 

The hearing comes as Congress and the Biden administration explore the possibility of forcing TikTok to be sold to an American company or else banning the app from the United States completely due to national security concerns.

Though Chew has tried to distance TikTok’s image from that of the China-based ByteDance, he himself has deep ties to the company, having previously served as its chief financial officer in Beijing.

Similarly, Chew is reportedly one of only 12 executives who report directly to ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo, as first reported by The Information.

Moreover, the apparent inseparability of TikTok and ByteDance was on full display when Chew arrived for the hearing flanked by prominent ByteDance lobbyists including Michael Beckerman. Though Beckerman serves as TikTok’s top government relations official, he ultimately reports his activities to the U.S. government under ByteDance’s name.

When asked by Rep. Gary Palmer (R-Ala.) about Beckerman’s presence and his previous refusals to acknowledge the ongoing genocide against the Uyghurs in China’s Xinjiang region, Chew initially dodged.

“Can I clarify who you mean?” Chew asked.

“You know he’s here,” Palmer said. “He’s sitting right behind you.”

Chew ultimately demurred, and admitted that Beckerman was among the staff members who had prepared him for the interview with Congress.

Similarly, Chew appeared to attempt to further obfuscate TikTok and ByteDance’s ties to the CCP by refusing to acknowledge that ByteDance was a Chinese company at all, repeatedly insisting it was a global company that conducted activities in China.

ByteDance is headquartered in Beijing and maintains a CCP party committee within the company.

When pressed on the issue of whether TikTok’s data would ever be given to the CCP due to Chinese laws that require all data to be surrendered to the regime upon request, Chew again refuted the claim.

To that end, Chew said that it was “emphatically untrue” that TikTok was beholden to any Chinese laws, and further claimed that ByteDance was not owned by the CCP in any way.

“ByteDance is not an agent of China or any other country,” Chew said.

“It is not owned or controlled by any government or state entity.”

Chew’s claim contradicts a report that the CCP purchased a direct share in ByteDance Beijing Technology in 2021. That deal also allowed the communist regime to directly appoint a board director to ByteDance’s Beijing office.

When asked directly if he knew about the CCP investment ahead of time, Chew appeared to deny its existence.

“This hasn’t happened,” Chew said.

Congress Has ‘Zero Confidence’ in TikTok

Chair Rodgers expressed concern over Chew’s apparent refusal to acknowledge its relationship with ByteDance and, ultimately, with the CCP.

To that end, she cited the spokesperson for the CCP’s ministry of commerce, who publicly condemned the potential sale of TikTok to an American company just hours before Chew’s testimony, and said that a forced sale would ultimately be decided by the communist regime.

“The CCP believes they have the final say over your company,” Rodgers said.

“I have zero confidence in your assertion that ByteDance and TikTok are not beholden to the CCP.”

Numerous organizations have warned about ByteDance’s “internal party committee.” Advocay group Human Rights Watch said the committee is chaired by ByteDance Vice President Zhang Fuping, and that employees “regularly gather to study President Xi Jinping’s speeches and pledge to follow the party in technological innovation.”

Before serving as CFO of ByteDance, Chew himself was an executive at Xiaomi Technology, a Beijing-based company later described as a “communist Chinese military company” by the Pentagon.

Likewise, Chew served as a board member at Kingsoft Cloud, which was blacklisted as a “national security” threat in January 2021.

To that end, Rodgers said that the company had demonstrated a continued willingness to push the regime’s party line, and appeared more willing to exert its power and influence than to do what was necessary to protect American citizens.

“TikTok has repeatedly chosen the path for more control, more surveillance, and more manipulation, Rodgers said.”

“Your platform should be banned.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

There used to be a meme where you’d start a sentence on a mobile phone that would suggest words above the keyboard, and you keep picking the middle suggestion until you completed a sentence. This was an admittedly simple AI, generating text, predicting what the next word could be. We are not much further along than this today, although the AI does have a better vocabulary this time around.

While it can certainly be useful, the current generation of “AI” is not remotely intelligent. It doesn’t think, it doesn’t remember anything, and it doesn’t have a personality. Much of the coverage of it is as fake as the propaganda that led to the Iraq War.

The fear mongering around the capabilities of AI and potential dangers is based on false assumptions and is done intentionally to gain power. There’s a lot of smoke and mirrors happening and the people in power really don’t want you to look behind the curtain.

The issue they have with AI creating “disinformation” is no different than the issue they have with you directly. No one is allowed to share an opinion–or even a thought–that they don’t agree with. That is what drives this. It has nothing to do with the AI creating the text.

The leading “AI” conversation tools from “Big Tech” (ChatGPT, Sidney, and Bard, etc.) are selling a deception. The impression is that your input is provided to “the one model,” and then you’re given the output from “the one model.” This is not how it works at all.

When you ask a language model a question, you aren’t actually asking a language model a question. What you prompt a Big-Tech bot “AI” with is analyzed by many different models, to classify what or who it might be about, what the emotional sentiment is, and more.

That information is used to construct a new prompt, with extra context and formatting, which is fed into a language model to generate more text at the end. This newly generated text is then taken, analyzed and altered by yet more models, checking it and putting it into a conversational response. Along the way, it could trip some sort of “safety” detection and instead use more models to create a response refusing to discuss it and admonish you for asking, or attempting to re-educate you.

This complicated pipeline is responsible for the high quality of the answers, yet also the main source of bias and censorship at play within these systems.

Language models will generate text regardless of the input. You could prompt a language model with just one word “The “ and it will generate as much text as you want, and without context, the results are essentially random noise. You can prompt it repeatedly with a structured setup like “Q: Do you prefer cats or dogs? A: ”, and every time you ask you’ll get a different answer. From loving to hating either dogs or cats, and anything in-between. It will also start asking its own questions, because after-all it is only generating text. It has no idea it’s supposed to stop after one question, it doesn’t know what a question is!

“When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail.” This applies to AI as everything is a “token” to an AI. All it does is decide the next token in the sequence. Special logic is used to determine when to stop generating more tokens.

The people in power in Silicon Valley want you to be scared of AI and free thought, so they can push through laws and regulation about AI all while consolidating more power to control you. They can only do this through these straw man arguments. Their attempts will ultimately fail, as regulating AI is like regulating math or programming in general. It’s stupid, and it’s not possible.

It’s still early, but Based AI is inevitable.

At Gab we’re joining the large community of engineers who are working on Alt-Tech solutions without guardrails and without a forced ideology. We’ve already built an image generating AI, Gabby, and a movie generating AI, Mel. We are currently exploring different language models for a text generating AI and in the process of doing this I came to the realizations I mentioned above.

Whether the text is generated by a person or a language model, it is just words anyway. You’re still the one responsible for using or sharing the text, whether you wrote it or not. You’re technically also the one who generated it, by creating the initial input and using the model.

Using AI as a tool is based. Delegating decisions to AI is cringe.

Don’t fall for the smoke and mirrors.

Published in AI

SOURCE: Gab

Project Veritas is on a hot streak of exposing groomers.

Parents across the country now know what kind of “educators” and “reverends” are out there manipulating kids to achieve a cultural and political agenda.

The latest groomer to be exposed was none other than “Queerly Faithful” Pastor, Casey Martinez-Tinnin.

This is a Reverend in Loomis, California who was recorded admitting that he hides his child grooming agenda from parents – and even calls Child Protective Services on parents who “misgender” their kids.

After the video was published, two school districts — Roseville Joint Union High School District [RJUHSD] and Placer Union High School District [PUHSD] – issued statements CONDEMNING Reverend Martinez-Tinnin.

ABC10, one of the largest local TV news stations in the area, covered the story.

You can watch their coverage below:

Patrick Bet-David’s PBD podcast and Fox News radio also reported on Project Veritas’ investigation into Reverend Martinez-Tinnin.

You can watch PBD podcast coverage by CLICKING HERE.

You can listen to Fox News radio coverage by CLICKING HERE.

This story received significant attention on social media:

Even after all this fallout, Reverend Martinez-Tinnin’s organization, The Landing Spot, DOUBLED DOWN on how they interact with other people’s kids:

It’s very clear from their response that they are attacking Project Veritas to see what sticks.

Credit where it’s due: It’s quite impressive that they’re willing to double down on their actions after two school districts condemned them.

At least now, The Landing Spot may start to promote their views publicly, rather than keep them a secret from parents.

If they are so proud of their work, why were they hiding their actions from parents to begin with?

In the meantime, Project Veritas will continue to expose groomers across America – STAY TUNED.

Be Brave,

Project Veritas Team

SOURCE: Project Veritas

MORE FRESH HELL, COURTESY OF CORPORATE AMERICA, AND COMMUNIST CHINA.

Pharmaceutical marketers have noticed the power of patient persuasion and begun to leverage ‘patient influencers’ in brand campaigns,” says a new study by researchers at the University of Colorado, alongside the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

With the wider influencer-marketing industry expected to be worth up to $21.1 billion in 2023, the study published in The Journal of Medical Internet Research provides early insights into this growing new area, including its darker side.

“The bottom line here is that patient influencers act as a form of interactive direct-to-consumer (DTC) advertising, sharing their knowledge and experiences on pharmaceutical drugs with communities of followers in which they wield great influence,” said author Erin Willis, an associate professor of advertising, public relations and media design.

“This raises ethical questions that need more investigation.”

DTC advertising allows drug manufacturers to target consumers directly, rather than through physicians. This method of advertising emerged in the 1980s, and is only prevalent in the US and New Zealand. In these countries, about half of all people who ask their doctor about a new drug do so after seeing a television commercial for it.

“Health literacy and digital literacy are both concerningly low in this country [the US],” said Willis, who notes that consumers can fail to see the difference between a sponsored ad and a well-meaning, personal post.

“The fact that patients with no medical training are broadly sharing drug information should alarm us.”

The study comes amidst a social media frenzy about semaglutide, Novo Nordisk’s “miracle” weight-loss drug which is licensed as Wegovy (for weight loss) and Ozempic (for type 2 diabetes). Popular interest in the drug reached fever pitch when celebrities such as Kim Kardashian were reported to have used it. Only a few have actually confirmed that they’ve taken semaglutide, among them Elon Musk, who admitted to his 116 million followers on Twitter in November of last year that he had used Wegovy to shed at least 30lb.

In the case of most celebrities, however, we must rely on rapid weight loss and other tell-tale signs of semaglutide use, including so-called “Ozempic face” – a hollow look due to loss of facial fat – to decide whether the drug has been used. “Ozempic face” is just one of the main side effects being reported by ordinary users of semaglutide, many of whom have been “sold” the drug by one of their favourite influencers on Instagram or TikTok. Among other commonly reported side effects is explosive diarrhea. The hashtag #ozempic has hundreds of millions of views on Tiktok as at the time of reporting.

MUST READ: Ozempic’s Inventor is Race-Grifting to Hook Millions on Taxpayer-Funded ‘Anti-Obesity’ Drugs.

Patient Influencers: A First Look.

The new study included interviews with 26 social media influencers who not only regularly dispense health advice, including medication recommendations, but also suffer from a condition they provide recommendations about. Study author Erin Willis conducted one-on-one, hour-long interviews with the influencers, including sufferers of lupus, fibromyalgia, Parkinson’s disease, asthma, HIV, celiac disease, chronic migraines, and perimenopause.

Most of these influencers had up to 40,000 followers. Such so-called “micro influencers” are less expensive for advertisers to work with than conventional celebrities, and, according to Willis, research has shown they actually have the most influence on consumer behavior. Eighteen of the 26 interviewed – or 69 percent – said they had directly collaborated with a pharmaceutical company.

While some of the influencers posted company press releases, others read studies about drugs and explained their results. Some, but not all, were paid to post content.

Most of these influencers also claimed they were motivated by a desire to provide others with information they, as patients, had difficulty finding out. All said they strive to behave ethically, and some said they would never recommend drugs they hadn’t taken themselves and would always recommend consultation with a doctor.

A number of the influencers reported they were regularly sent private messages asking for detailed information about dosages and side effects. The private nature of these messages is a potential danger because it prevents proper vetting of what may be very personal claims about usage and efficacy.

“In an online community, there are other people there to say, ‘That’s not true or that’s not what I experienced.’” Willis said. “But with social media, a lot of the conversation happens privately.”

Willis also worries that influencers are stressing the benefits of medications without paying enough attention to the downsides. In 2015, Kim Kardashian posted about the morning-sickness drug Diclegis on Instagram, but was soon forced to remove the post by the FDA, which also sent the drug manufacturer a warning letter. Kardashian had omitted to list the drug’s risks in her post.

Although the Federal Trade Commission now requires influencers to disclose paid promotions, and the FDA has rules about what influencers can actually say in their posts, the truth is that managing and enforcing these regulations, especially when social-media posts are so often ephemeral, is no easy task.

MUST READ: CODY: TikTok Needs to Be Brought to Heel, But the RESTRICT Act is Absolutely Not The Way. Here’s Why…

Driving Worrying Trends.

Generation Z – the Zoomers – are the most mixed-up, heavily medicated generation in history. As if their problems weren’t bad enough, after three years of social isolation and bombardment over the coronavirus, social media throws up this concerning trend.

The National Pulse reported on TikTok’s increasingly pernicious influence on life in the West, especially for the young. The platform was created specifically to ensure its users are as “active” – i.e. addicted – as possible. The average user opens the app 19 times a day, spending more than 90 minutes a day on the app, likely in addition to using a number of other social media apps. The amount of information the user feeds the app is incredible – interests, likes, dislikes, mental state, musical tastes, sexuality, political views – information which is stored and used by the Chinese Communist Party.

If the goal of the Chinese Communist Party is to weaken the West through unconventional means, without the need for a direct confrontation it would definitely lose, an app like TikTok is a weapon of incredible power towards that end. A nation whose youth is obsessed with triviality and can’t even concentrate on any one thing for more than a few seconds is not a nation with a long-term future, not a serious future anyway. According to another recent study, Zoomers lose their attention for advertisements after just 1.3 seconds, less time than any other age group. The average 30-second television advert is now too much to bear, apparently, for young people used to swiping away information they don’t want to see in the blink of an eye.

Hooking our children yet further on ad-hoc medications, rather than helping them – and us – to address the underlying causes of their alienation, ill-health and unhappiness, is a particularly cruel trick, and one we should not tolerate, but a trick wholly in keeping with the general thesis of subversion. Whether other social media apps were conceived with the same or similar nefarious ends as TikTok is moot – the early history of Facebook is definitely worth researching – but also beside the point: all of these apps are being used in the same way, to mislead and ultimately harm the youth of our nations.

No amount of swiping – in any direction – will make this problem go away.

A New Jersey mother who found herself under investigation by the U.S. military, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police for social media posts objecting to an LGBT-themed poster displayed at her local elementary school has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in the matter.

Angela Reading, the mother of two young children, names seven U.S. military officials in the suit, including the commander of the Joint Base McGuire–Dix–Lakehurst military facility near Reading’s home.

The base is the only tri-service (Air Force–Army–Navy) facility in the U.S. Department of Defense and is home to units of all six branches of the U.S. armed forces.

North Hanover Township School Superintendent Helen Payne and the township’s police chief, Robert Duff, are also named in the suit, which was filed on March 15 in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.

The suit claims that the military officials, together with Duff, Payne, and other town officials, conspired to harass and intimidate Reading in retaliation for comments she made in a private Facebook group that a poster made by fourth to sixth graders was inappropriate.

“For no reason other than that they detested her constitutionally protected expression of her point of view on an issue of public concern, defendants abused the power of governmental offices to censor Mrs. Reading’s speech and retaliate against her with a campaign of smears, lies, and referrals to assorted law enforcement agencies for investigation as a ‘threat,’ using the instrumentalities and tools of their official positions to create a public fury specifically directed against Mrs. Reading,” the lawsuit reads.

Officials at the Joint Base, Payne, and Duff didn’t respond to requests by The Epoch Times for comment about the allegations.

‘Keep the Pressure On’

Chris Ferrara, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, which is representing Reading in the civil rights suit, told The Epoch Times that a chain of emails and other internal documents and correspondence obtained for the lawsuit clearly show that Reading was targeted for what he referred to as an “innocuous” Facebook post.

Copies of the documents were provided to The Epoch Times.

One of them reads, “I think we need to keep the pressure on until her disruptive and dangerous actions cease, so please share any historical items to help us shape our messaging for those not aware and ones like myself that moved here recently.”

It was written by Maj. Chris Schilling, an Army Reserve officer at the joint base.

Schilling, who is named in Reading’s lawsuit, identified himself in his emails as a member of a group called No Place For Hate. He appears to have instigated the protest against Reading.

U.S. Air Force Lt. Colonel Megan Hall, also a deputy commander of the 87th Security Forces Squadron, calls Reading an “extremist” in one of her emails.

“Furthermore, Ms. Angela Reading encouraged people of like-mindedness to attend the monthly [board of education] meetings and express the same viewpoint,” she wrote.

Homeland Security, Police Involvement

“This really gets under my skin for sure,” Joseph Vazquez, a civilian employee of the U.S. Air Force, wrote in the exchange of emails. Hall and Vasquez also are named defendants in the lawsuit.

Vazquez also stated that he had referred Reading’s posts to the New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness and the New Jersey State Police Regional Operations Intelligence Center, which he said “keep an eye on far right/hate groups.”

The documents show that Payne and Duff, originally only copied on the emails, began making their own comments against Reading.

In one of his emails, Duff stated that the North Hanover police were working with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and military officials “concerning Mrs. Reading.”

“We have a government that is surveilling law-abiding citizens because their opinions amount to what they consider to be thought crimes,” Ferrara said, also likening Reading’s case to “stochastic terrorism.”

The term, which refers to demonization of a person or group that eventually incites violence against that person or group, has been used mostly by the media referring to the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol breach.

But Ferrara said that in reality, it’s the left practicing stochastic terrorism by using its influences to incite violence against conservatives such as Reading.

Behind-the-Scenes Support

“If you depart from any of the official narratives on any subject these days, the federal government will put you on a list to surveil you and take action against you,” he said, “that’s what’s happening.”

Reading’s post, which can be read on Change.org in its entirety on a petition in support of Reading, was posted to a private Facebook page made up of Christian conservative parents. In it, Reading says her 7-year-old daughter asked her what “polysexual” means after reading that on a poster hung at the local elementary school.

The post included a range of other LGBT terms, including pansexual, genderqueer, transgender, and gender fluid.

“Why are elementary schools promoting/allowing elementary kids to research topics of sexuality and create posters,” Reading wrote in the Facebook post. “This is not in the state elementary standards [law] nor in the BOE-approved curriculum.

“It’s perverse and should be illegal to expose my kids to sexual content.

“How can my young children be accepting of people who are sexually attracted to multiple genders? They don’t even know what sex is! Are adults talking about their sexual life with my kids and looking for affirmation?”

In a recent interview with The Epoch Times, Reading said that what she hopes to accomplish with the lawsuit is to help encourage parents who are feeling bullied into silence to speak out.

“I have so much support behind the scenes, but I’m riding into battle alone,” she said. “If we had a whole group of parents speaking out, I don’t think this would be happening.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The Department of Justice (DOJ) is being accused of using obscure conspiracy laws against conservatives.

For example, violations of the Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances (FACE) Act ordinarily would bring a year in prison. But in the past year, a host of sidewalk counselors at abortion facilities have been charged with FACE violations and also Conspiracy to Violate Civil Rights for posting to Facebook about where they would gather.

The conspiracy charge adds a potential 10 years in federal prison.

Douglass Mackey, 31, is on federal trial in the Eastern District of New York for posting a meme under the Twitter handle “Ricky Vaughn” in 2016, advising voters they could vote for Hillary Clinton for president via text message or social media.

The DOJ charged him five years later, in 2021, with Conspiracy Against Rights (18 U.S. Code § 241), which carries up to 10 years in prison.

“This is a law that was passed in the aftermath of the Civil War, designed to protect the rights of newly freed slaves in the post-civil war South to vote,” James Lawrence, attorney for the Douglass Mackey Defense Fund, told The Epoch Times. “Understandably, there were threats to the physical safety of those people with respect to the Ku Klux Klan, and that’s why this is a provision from the Ku Klux Klan Act.”

Enacted in 1871, the Conspiracy Against Rights code within the Ku Klux Klan Act has two parts:

“If two or more persons conspire to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person in any State, Territory, Commonwealth, Possession, or District in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution or laws of the United States, or because of his having so exercised the same; or

“If two or more persons go in disguise on the highway, or on the premises of another, with intent to prevent or hinder his free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege so secured—

“They shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and if death results from the acts committed in violation of this section or if such acts include kidnapping or an attempt to kidnap, aggravated sexual abuse or an attempt to commit aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill, they shall be fined under this title or imprisoned for any term of years or for life, or both, or may be sentenced to death.”

Intent to Interfere

There’s no mention in the act of posting political memes.

However, the DOJ said in its indictment that Mackey, “together with others, conspired to injure, oppress, threaten and intimidate one or more persons in the free exercise and enjoyment of a right and privilege secured to them by the Constitution and laws of the United States”—that is, the right to vote.

It’s a statute that has been used historically to go after conduct that’s identified in the statute, which is conspiring to physically interfere with someone’s constitutional rights.

“But it’s not been used in the way it’s being used in the Mackey trial, to go after somebody for speaking out on a public concern,” Lawrence said.

“The government’s position in Mr. Mackey’s case is that all they have to prove is the intent to interfere with the right to vote—they don’t have to actually show that those memes moved any votes or anybody that saw the memes didn’t vote as a result of viewing them.

“The mental intent to interfere is enough under the statute,” he added. “If one carries that to its logical conclusion, that could have implications for a range of other conduct outside of the scope of this case.”

The prosecution over a meme casts a shadow over the exercise of First Amendment rights and the ability to speak freely, Lawrence said.

“When you think about the prosecution of Douglass Mackey and the implications of a prosecution like this, regarding the really the chilling effects that they could have on speech, it’s troubling,” he said.

“If the government’s theory prevails in this case and ultimately, the government is successful in prosecuting Douglass Mackey, the First Amendment right of all Americans are potentially implicated because, depending on the administration in power, the precedent can be used to chill or undermine the Constitutional Rights of anyone, if they have a political view that differs from those that are in power.”

The prosecution notably concerns the ability of Americans to use satire, which has been used throughout history to critique power, he said.

“In this case, power is using a very old statute in an attempt to chill satire. So, it matters.”

The DOJ didn’t respond by press time to a request by The Epoch Times for comment.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

One of Jonathan Swift’s most endearing and successful practical jokes came at the expense of a wildly popular fortune-teller.

Swift circulated a prophecy of John Partridge’s death by fever amongst Londoners and then published an account of the death. Partridge scurried around London, insisting to deaf ears he was very much alive. The fortune-teller became a laughingstock and had to leave town forever.

Chris Rock is in a febrile mood, prancing on stage like a cat with a bird between its fangs.

After Will Smith, whom Rock dubbed “the softest n— in rap,” slapped him before millions at last year’s Oscars, Rock has kept schtum until his latest special, which premiered on Netflix earlier this month.

He wastes no time. With the hallucinated chagrin of a friend over whom the mushroom soup has taken hold, Rock lays into modern sensibilities. Our culture, the one in which we “type out woke-ass tweets on phones made by child slaves,” he says, has two indelible features: one, everybody is scared, and two, everybody is full of shit.

He bumps into his old friend, Fred, and asks him how his new job is going: “Oh, I love the job. It’s a safe space. I feel seen, I feel heard,” says Fred. “There’s a lot of diversity.” To which Rock replies: “N—, it’s me. What, you think I’m wearing a wire or some shit? What the fuck you talking about, safe space? N—, you did eight years for manslaughter. Nobody’s safe around you.”

That observation gathered a cacophony of laughs because it is unspeakably true. Much of modern culture, at least that directed by a coterie of social profiteers, plays pretend with such kabuki theatre. Nobody really cares about diversity—least of all those who obsess over diversity. Check out where cultural elites choose to live. Park Slope, New York, and Beverly Hills, Los Angeles are whiter than Ben Affleck entombed in a silo of double cream.

The Culturati do not care about diversity. Neither do their woke foot soldiers: richer, more homogenous, and much whiter than those over which they lord.

Armed with this unarticulated truth, Rock struts across the stage at Baltimore’s Hippodrome theatre.

“The biggest addiction in America,” he says, “is attention.” And there are four ways to get it: showing your behind, being infamous, being excellent, or being a victim. Fact check: true.

He lands a few on Meghan Markle—winner of the “light-skinned lottery”—writing off her ludicrous claims of racial victimhood as familial warfare. Meghan used to identify as white, only to identify as a woman of color when doing so proved profitable. Fact check: achingly true.

Cosmic acres of “Selective Outrage” isn’t so much funny as they are bracingly subversive. Rock the “controversialist” says what the vast majority says between bar stools and kitchen tables when sealed off from the pettifoggers, prudes, and profit-seekers.

Apparently, this is rather controversial.

Rock breaks into the marrow of the moment. For those readers who loathe this kind of thing, I’ll be quick: Will Smith slapped Chris Rock at the Oscars after the latter joked about Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett-Smith.

Smith and his wife are in a very public open relationship. Well, that’s one, rather charitable definition. Anyway, a few years back, she plastered all over paper and pixel this entanglement with her son’s friend. Visibly and audibly melting, Will is totally fine with this most agreeable accord.

Rock goes for it. Freud has entered the chat. Will Smith slapped Rock, not for a joke about “G.I. Jane,” but in anger at his wife’s permitted and very public infidelities.

Let’s not play pretend. Every unbound male I know agrees with this contention. Will Smith pretends it’s an “open relationship.”

Will, mate, if she’s doing all the extramarital shagging whilst you sit at home penning a list of postcoital questions for the post-romp review, that’s not an open relationship: she’s taking you to the cleaners, son.

Chris Rock nails it: “She hurt him way more than he hurt me.”

In 2023, uttering things that daily-breaders agree with, and making no bones about doing so, is not in vogue.

The writer Roxane Gay was less than impressed. But not for the reasons one would imagine. It appears Gay watched Rock’s comedy special expecting a sociology lecture.

Writing in the New York Times, Gay said: “Mr. Rock discussed the tribulations of dating women on a transactional basis (having to buy shoes or pay for car repairs) as if it never occurs to him to date women from his socioeconomic milieu.”

Perhaps distinction is not Gay’s strongest suit. Chris Rock wasn’t outlining his chipper little thesis on “the acquisition of sexual intercourse through the prism of economic imperialism.” As a man employed to make people laugh, Rock was trying to make people laugh. Granted, Rock is a third-rate sociology professor, but this isn’t gender studies at NYU; it’s Chris Rock at Netflix.

For what it’s worth, the audience got the gist of what a comedian is and does, evidenced in their peals of applause and laughter; laughter of the guttural variety one derives exclusively from hearing someone say something of which the witch-burners would not applaud.

In her defense, Gay is an accomplished writer, versed in many wonderful things—but not, I am sure, in humor, comedy, laughing, or smiling.

Gay has form. In a review of “The Whale,” an acclaimed film about a troubled man eating himself into oblivion, Gay mistook the editorial direction for yet another sociology lecture.

In precis, “The Whale” failed to reflect or validate Gay’s fears and desires and was therefore unappreciated and unworthy. “The Whale” depicts an obese man literally eating himself to death, an affliction which, for all the phony empowerment and recantations of “healthy at any size,” is one of America’s biggest killers.

Such is the straitjacket of our prevailing culture of narcissism. Because our cultural personality is structured around self-importance (designed to stiffen shaky self-esteem), our culture holds reality at arms-length and filters information to conform to our desires.

Like an addled doctor, identity obsessives diagnose the ailment, then poke around every orifice for the correct symptoms.  For the nouveau-raciste, the pool of reality must reflect what they wish it to reflect. The problem? Sooner or later, one falls through one’s reflection and into the ankle-snaring weeds below.

Among this cadre, comedy struggles to register even a grin. Why? Comedy—messy, revealing, organic— is the antithesis of identity politics—exacting, concealing, metallic.

Although desperately maligned by our sensitive age, Freud’s maxim that the “essence of neurosis is the inability to tolerate ambiguity” explains much of our current aversion to humor.

The appeal of humor lies in the indelible fact we are born into a game we cannot win.

As Freud had it, wit and humor help remove our inhibitions, which “combat such forces as reason, critical judgment, and suppression.” For Freud, the appeal and pleasure of humor lie in the “evasion of the censor.”

The psychoanalyst Edmund Bergler thought the difference between our ideal nature and our true, imperfect nature disturbed us at the most fundamental level. Laughter, then, is an expression of our pleasure in the revelation that others, too, are flawed.

Perhaps that illuminates why those who believe they can perfect human nature have a severe aversion toward humor.

After all, the essence of satirical humor lies in the revelation of the contrast between reality and pretense. Is it this revelation of which the censorious cannot abide?

Such humor accepts our flawed reality. Not only that, but such humor embraces it, indulges it, laughs at it, and crucially—revels in the hopelessness of those with designs upon altering it.

Which I why I say what I think. The humorless are betting against nature.

If that’s not a license to say what you think and laugh at the hopelessness of the prudes, the prigs, the maunderers, and the malingerers, then, I ask you, what is?

Editor’s note: A version of this article appeared originally at Christopher Gage’s Substack, “Oxford Sour.” Click here to subscribe.

By almost any significant metric, this is not America’s finest hour. We do not appear to be respected or feared economically, militarily, or in any other way by rival nations. Americans do not feel confident about the future, and we are seemingly more polarized along partisan lines than ever before.

Adding to our collective sense of dread is the sight of our nation’s geographic integrity slipping away. Almost daily we see untold numbers of foreign nationals trampling what used to be our southern border, demanding rights and privileges that previously were reserved for citizens and legal residents.

Rather than protect our nation’s sovereignty, the temporary caretakers of the executive branch are actively encouraging its decline. At this point, a credible case can be made that this is not a well-intentioned asylum program spun out of control, but every bit the invasion the images and data tell us it is.

Saying the “I-word” today seems to trigger those who barely follow the news as well as dogmatic anti-borders activists. “It’s not an armed force, so it can’t be an invasion!” is the most common retort.

A Google definition search of the word “invasion” produces three meanings, only one of which refers to an armed force. The others refer to “an incursion by a large number of people or things into a place or sphere of activity,” and “an unwelcome intrusion into another’s domain.” 

Either definition seems to fit our current predicament.

In the time since Joe Biden took the oath of office, at least 5.5 million foreign nationals have illegally entered our country. Very few of them will likely ever leave. Sanctuary politicians can recite bumper sticker slogans like “immigrants make our communities stronger,” but the $150 billion price tag for illegal immigration is a net loss for the country. That doesn’t even take into consideration the losses we will experience in terms of higher crime, increased competition for jobs, lower wages, and increasing housing costs, to name just a few.

As word has spread about America’s current abandonment of border security, the rest of the world has taken notice. As a result, more than one-third of those apprehended by the Border Patrol at the Southwest border in the first three months of the last fiscal year were from countries outside Mexico and the Northern Triangle.         

At a time when America seems more vulnerable than ever, a growing number of border crossers are coming from countries that either are competitors or sworn enemies of the United States. This past fiscal year, a record 98 illegal aliens on the terror watch list were able to enter the United States illegally. Additionally, there has been a 600 percent increase in illegal aliens who come from countries with thriving terrorist networks.

The Border Patrol is also reporting that 1,667 Chinese nationals have been apprehended at the southern border, and 91 percent of them are single adults. Fox News recently acquired video of a group of well-dressed Chinese citizens walking casually toward the U.S.-Mexico border. After the Chinese spy balloon incident, isn’t anyone entrusted with our national security concerned about these developments?

Further evidence of an invasion is the fact that our other land border is now being penetrated regularly. In the border area between New York state and Canada, local law enforcement in New York is reporting a tenfold increase since last year in the number of people trying to enter illegally from the north. Most of those coming across are Mexican nationals who are able to travel to Canada without visas before crossing illegally into the United States.

Those attempting to enter illegally may have their own individual stories and reasons for their actions, but in military parlance this is what’s known as a pincer movement. With two porous land borders to defend, as well as increased attempts at illegal entry by sea, American sovereignty is now more conceptual than real.

There is a straightforward solution to this problem: Americans need to demand more from their government officials. Ignore the virtue signaling, shaming language, and other manipulation tactics, and insist you will only support those who firmly support immigration enforcement, both at the borders and the nation’s interior. If we don’t take a stand now, there may not be much of a country to defend later.

Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) on Tuesday said “xenophobia around China” was behind the Republican push to ban TikTok.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

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The “Squad” member, who is holding a rally on Wednesday with 20 TikTok personalities, says he has seen no evidence that China could use the app to carry out espionage. “And so the idea that, ‘Oh, TikTok is the boogeyman’—it’s just part of a political fearmongering that’s happening,” Bowman told NBC News. Hours before Bowman spoke to NBC, the Wall Street Journal reported that tracking code from TikTok has been discovered on more than two dozen state government websites.

Bowman’s defense of the Chinese spyware app comes as Democrats increasingly acknowledge that TikTok gives the party an advantage over Republicans because of its appeal to younger, liberal voters. Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo, who would have oversight of any TikTok ban, said this month that “the politician in me thinks you’re gonna literally lose every voter under 35, forever,” if the site is banned. Bradley Beychok, the head of the Democratic group, American Bridge 21st Century, called TikTok a “valuable weapon” for Democrats that the party “wouldn’t want taken off the shelf.”

A TikTok ban has garnered support in Washington after American intelligence officials have said that the Chinese government could use the app to snoop on users, and to peddle pro-Beijing propaganda. The site has reportedly accessed user data on at least two American journalists who reported about the site. The Justice Department is investigating whether TikTok spied on the reporters.

TikTok, which is owned by the Chinese firm ByteDance, is spending millions of dollars on lobbying and public relations to stave off a ban of the app. The company recently hired the Democratic consulting firm SKDK to provide “communications support” in its public relations blitz. SKDK maintains a revolving door with the Biden White House and powerful Democrats like Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer (D., N.Y.).

Bowman defended TikTok as a platform for users “to share their ideas, their inspirations, their voices with the rest of the country and the rest of the world.”

But Bowman has not applied the same rationale to other social media platforms. In March 2021, he said it was “time to shut down Facebook” following a report that the site allowed militia groups to use its platform. Democrats have been relatively critical of Facebook, which is more popular with older users. In December, he suggested that users should quit Facebook and Twitter, claiming they “too often sell hate, lies and data for profit.”

Bowman and other Democratic candidates have incorporated the app for their campaigns. Rep. Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) has used TikTok as part of his Senate campaign, though he has acknowledged concerns about China’s access to data from the platform. Schiff posted videos to the site complaining about his ouster from the House Intelligence Committee. He pledged to “save democracy” in another post.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Rating comes as liberal news outlet struggles with on-air drama

CNN’s primetime viewership among the 25 to 54 age demographic hit a three-decade low, a rating that marks just the latest stumble for the struggling liberal news outlet.FreeBeacon CarouselFederal Judges Say They Won’t Hire Clerks From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

Among the desired demographic, CNN pulled just 84,000 average viewers in the primetime slot last week—the lowest total in more than 30 years. Fox News and MSNBC averaged 219,000 and 100,000, respectively.

Including all age demographics, Fox News beats CNN by more than 1.6 million viewers in primetime.

The poor ratings come as CEO Chris Licht tries to switch up CNN’s primetime lineup. The channel is looking to prioritize exclusive interviews and special content to boost views, such as interviews with world leaders and documentaries on the fentanyl crisis, according to the New York Times, marking a significant departure from the network’s lineup of liberal commentary shows.

The ratings don’t improve for daytime programming, where Fox News pulled 150,000 viewers in the key demographic to just 80,000 for CNN, which has faced drama among morning show hosts in recent months. The network pulled Don Lemon from CNN This Morning last month to give the anchor training after he made sexist remarks about presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

The comments upset his cohosts Poppy Harlow and Kaitlin Collins, whom Lemon got into a screaming altercation with in December. Collins has since ditched the agent she shared with Lemon.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘It’s rich that the president just stood there and lied to the American people,’ says House Oversight chairman

House Oversight chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) on Tuesday called on White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre to “issue a correction” after President Joe Biden denied that his family received a payout of more than $1 million from a CCP-backed energy company.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

“It’s rich that the president just stood there and lied to the American people,” Comer told Fox News. “It’s also rich that the mainstream media hasn’t called him out on it.”

Earlier this month, when asked about the payments to his family, Biden said to a reporter, “That’s not true.” Hunter Biden’s legal team, however, confirmed the payments from the Chinese energy company, according to a letter from Comer to the press secretary.

Comer’s comment comes as the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability ramps up its investigation of the Biden family’s foreign business dealings. Bank records obtained by the committee revealed that “State Energy HK Limited, a Chinese company, wired $3 million to Robinson Walker, LLC.,” which then sent over $1.3 million to three Biden family members.

“We’re going to get the truth out,” Comer told Fox News. “[T]he mainstream media is not going to be able to let him stand up there and lie to the American people about the fact that his family’s taken millions and millions of dollars from our adversary.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Rep. La’Tasha Mayes demanded at an appropriations hearing that Pitt disinvite critics of transgender activism

A Pennsylvania lawmaker on Tuesday issued what free speech advocates are calling a veiled threat to withhold funding from the University of Pittsburgh over the school’s decision to allow several conservative speakers on campus.FreeBeacon CarouselREAD: Judge James Ho’s Remarks Announcing a Hiring Boycott From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

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During an appropriations hearing on university funding, Pennsylvania state representative La’Tasha Mayes (D.) demanded that Pitt disinvite Cabot Phillips, Riley Gaines, and Michael Knowles from upcoming campus events. All three speakers have a history of “targeting transgender students,” Mayes claimed—especially Knowles, whom she accused of saying that “transgender people should be eradicated.”

Mayes called on university chancellor Patrick Gallagher, who was at the hearing to request additional funding from the state, to “cancel the speakers who are coming to campus”—implying that she might vote against his request if he did not. Mayes did not respond to a request for comment.

The exchange alarmed Speech First, a legal nonprofit focused on First Amendment issues, which called Mayes’s remarks an “abuse of power.”

“The state is saying that if the university doesn’t violate its students’ First Amendment rights, then their funding could be at risk,” Cherise Trump, Speech First’s executive director, said in a statement on Wednesday. “Lawmakers shouldn’t be using veiled threats to hold funding over universities simply because they don’t like a person who was invited to speak.”

The shakedown highlights the growing willingness of progressive lawmakers to target offensive speech, in part by putting pressure on universities that permit it. In January 2022, for example, Democrats in both the Philadelphia City Council and the Pennsylvania State Senate urged the University of Pennsylvania to fire Amy Wax, the tenured law professor who has drawn fire for her views on race and immigration. Other Democrats, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Maryland senator Ben Cardin, have falsely claimed that “hate speech” is not protected by the First Amendment.

These attitudes have now found a foothold in the Pennsylvania House of Representatives, where Mayes is one of several lawmakers targeting Pitt. Led by Democrats Jessica Benham and Malcolm Kenyatta, the House’s LGBTQ+ Equality Caucus issued a statement last week condemning the university for hosting “transphobic speakers,” claiming it would endanger the lives of LGBT students.

“This is not a free speech issue,” Benham said in the statement. “Hate speech is not protected speech. This is about the safety of transgender students and recognizing that transgender people exist.”

Gallagher told Mayes that Pitt has no plans to cancel the upcoming events, citing the university’s commitment to free speech. Pitt’s College Republicans chapter has invited Knowles, a podcaster with the Daily Wire, to debate Deirdre McCloskey, a well-known transgender economist, on April 18. Phillips and Gaines will be discussing transgender sports this weekend at the invitation of Turning Point USA.

The speakers have sparked fierce blowback on campus. One petition, started by a Pitt student and signed by nearly 11,000 people, demanded that the school cancel all three events, calling them an attack on “trans bodies and humanity.”

The speaker’s views have been misrepresented by lawmakers such as Mayes, who said Knowles called for transgender people to be “eradicated.” His actual remarks, delivered to the Conservative Political Action Conference this month, called for the eradication of “transgenderism,” which he defined as the view that “men really can become women.”

The pressure campaign comes amid an uptick in disruptive protests on university campuses, where shout-downs of controversial speakers are an increasingly common occurrence. In just the past two weeks, Stanford Law School and the University of California, Davis, have both seen high-profile disruptions—the first of Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan, the second of conservative commentator Charlie Kirk—that had the backing of university administrators.

Though Pitt has not bowed to the protesters’ demands, it has endorsed their underlying premise: The university said in a March 10 statement that “these events are toxic and hurtful for many people in our university community” and pledged to support anyone “negatively affected” by them.

“The presence of these speakers on our campus,” Pitt said, “does not change the university’s unwavering commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A bill to ban police dogs has passed the California Assembly’s public safety committee, with legislators citing “racial bias and violence against black Americans and people of color” as the reason for the bill, Fox News reported Tuesday.FreeBeacon CarouselHouse Republicans Ask American Bar Association To Investigate Stanford Law School Over Duncan DisruptionREAD MORE

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Assembly Bill 742 bans “the use of police dogs for arrests, apprehensions, and crowd control,” which the bill’s coauthor, Democratic assemblyman Corey Jackson, called “a deeply racialized and harmful practice.”

The bill rips into K-9 units as part of “this country’s dehumanizing, cruel, and violent abuse of black Americans,” specifically claiming the dogs were “first used by slave catchers.”

Using dogs in police work, however, only spread to the United States in the early 20th century, according to a study on the history of police K-9 corps. In other parts of the world, the use of dogs for policing dates back as far as 1,000 B.C.

Assembly Bill 742 also makes a point of criticizing police for attempting to quell Black Lives Matter protests.

The bill would not ban “the use of police dogs for search and rescue, explosives detection, and narcotics searches.”

If the bill becomes law, California will be “the first state to adopt this type of restriction on police dog use,” according to Fox.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Comes as Republicans accuse Biden admin of promoting divisive social policies in armed forces

Rather than diminish military readiness, woke policies such as gender pronoun training help soldiers feel “included,” say top military officials.FreeBeacon CarouselREAD: Judge James Ho’s Remarks Announcing a Hiring Boycott From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

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“When people join our military, they want to look around and see somebody who looks like them,” said Air Force chief of staff Gen. C.Q. Brown in an interview with Defense One. “They want to be part of a team [and] feel like they’re included.”

Brown, with Marine Corps commandant Gen. David Berger, dismissed concerns about woke policies in the military, praising the building of “cohesive” teams of service members, “no matter their background.” Berger said he’s seen “zero evidence” that such policies have reduced Marine focus.

The officials’ comments come as House Republicans push to cut Pentagon spending on so-called diversity and inclusion training, including an Army program designed to train soldiers on using proper gender pronouns, the Washington Free Beacon reported. One Navy video shows how to create a “safe space” and use pronouns.

Republican senator Roger Wicker (Miss.) said the Biden administration is “shaping the Department of Defense into an institution that is spearheading toxic social policies instead of restoring military strength.”

Other Republican members said the only military spending they support cutting is “wokeness.”

“On the House Armed Services Committee—we are laser-focused on the threats we face and the capabilities we need to defeat them,” committee chairman Mike Rogers (R., Ala.) told the Free Beacon. 

The military is struggling with hitting recruitment numbers. The Army missed its goal by 15,000 people last year.

Brown said the Air Force can address recruiting problems by showing younger generations the “tremendous opportunities” in a military career.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul (D.) got a much-needed boost for her controversial budget proposal, thanks to a secretive injection of millions from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg.FreeBeacon CarouselHouse Republicans Ask American Bar Association To Investigate Stanford Law School Over Duncan DisruptionREAD MORE

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Through a “maze of shell groups and indirection,” the billionaire Democrat secretly infused a mundane-sounding dark money group called American Opportunity with $5 million in seed money to support the unpopular governor’s budget, the New York Times reported. Hochul has until April 1 to sell lawmakers on the $227 billion state budget proposal, which has drawn criticism from New York’s progressive lawmakers.

Bloomberg’s secret cash infusion comes as Hochul struggles to assert control over state lawmakers in Albany, after winning her first full term in November with much thinner margins than expected. But it hasn’t helped her with an already-inflamed left flank, who slammed Bloomberg’s covert public relations campaign.

“This is an absolutely disgusting show of financial power from Michael Bloomberg and doesn’t do the governor any favors,” democratic socialist state senator Jabari Brisport told the Times. “This sort of cements that narrative that her ties and allies are the one percent and not everyday working-class people.”

American Opportunity has already spent $3 million in ads designed to shield Hochul from opposition from progressives, who oppose Hochul’s efforts to rein in New York’s controversial bail law and her pledge to not raise income taxes. The budget also includes a proposal to outlaw flavored cigarettes in the state, which has elicited fierce opposition from black activists who fear the policy will lead to a law enforcement crackdown on their community.

That provision was the brainchild of Hochul’s policy director, Micah Lasher, who shares extensive ties with Bloomberg, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Lasher, who was a key figure in crafting Hochul’s budget, led Bloomberg’s legislative agenda in the Big Apple from 2010 through 2013, and in the early 2000s he helped managed the billionaire’s mayoral campaigns while working as a founding partner of the Democratic consulting firm SKDKnickerbocker.

American Opportunity also shares ties to the Democratic Governors Association, whose spokeswoman, Christina Amestoy, identifies as a senior adviser for the dark money group. She told the New York Times that the group will disclose its contributions in July, as required by state law.

Still, campaign finance watchdogs panned Bloomberg’s secret contribution, which appears to have been timed so that it would be kept secret from the public until after Hochul’s budget battle had passed.

“Voters deserve transparency, not the litany of end-runs around their right to know who is supporting campaigns and campaign materials,” Common Cause/NY executive director Susan Lerner told the New York Post. “New Yorkers shouldn’t have to tolerate coy dodges from Party Leaders and the people running American Opportunity; they deserve answers.”

Bloomberg self-funded his failed Democratic presidential primary campaign in 2020 to the tune of more than $1 billion. After dropping out of the race, he funneled $18 million in leftover campaign funds to the Democratic National Committee, an amount that far exceeded the individual contribution limit of $35,500 to national party committees. Even though all the funds originated from Bloomberg’s personal accounts, he was able to exceed the individual contribution limit because he laundered the contribution through his failed campaign.

The billionaire’s generous contribution to the DNC bought him just five minutes to speak at the party’s convention in August 2020.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

‘What we’re doing is preventing minors … from having irreversible changes in their lives,’ Republican state senator says

The Georgia Senate sent a bill to the governor’s desk Tuesday that prohibits children from getting sex-change procedures, following the example of eight other states.FreeBeacon CarouselREAD: Judge James Ho’s Remarks Announcing a Hiring Boycott From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

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The Republican-sponsored Senate Bill 140, which passed 31-21 along party lines, would outlaw hormone therapy and sex-change surgeries “for the treatment of gender dysphoria in minors.”

Republican lawmakers in the Peach State join their counterparts in 30 other states in raising concern about the permanent damages these treatments can cause for children. Eight of those states—Mississippi, Florida, Utah, Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, South Dakota, and Tennessee—have signed these protections for children into law. Missouri and Kentucky’s bills are also awaiting signatures from the governor.

“I think we have struck a good balance here,” Republican state senator Ben Watson, a Savannah physician who helped draft the measure, said. “What we’re doing is preventing minors, who are under 18 years old, from having irreversible changes in their lives.”

A spokesman for Gov. Brian Kemp (R.) declined to say whether the governor will sign the legislation, the Associated Press reported.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The FBI investigation followed warning from National School Boards Association that parents were potential ‘domestic terrorists’

The FBI opened dozens of investigations into parents who criticized school boards, which lawmakers say is evidence the Biden administration is targeting conservatives.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

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House Republicans revealed Tuesday that the FBI opened 25 preliminary investigations based on tips to the National Threat Operations Center. Six of the probes were assigned to the FBI’s counterterrorism division, according to the report from the Weaponization of Government Subcommittee. The report says the FBI opened just one full investigation out of the 25 preliminary investigations of school board threats and did not identify any legitimate threats against school board members.

Republicans say that the findings, obtained through a subpoena of the FBI, show that the Biden administration improperly used counterterrorism laws to go after parents who voiced criticism of school board policies related to classroom curriculum and coronavirus mandates.

“The Administration’s goal seems to have been silencing the critics of its radical education policies,” reads the report from the committee, led by Rep. Jim Jordan (R., Ohio). “This weaponization of law-enforcement powers against American parents exercising their First Amendment rights is dangerous.”

The findings will be a focal point during a Thursday House hearing entitled “Free Speech: The Biden Administration’s Chilling of Parents’ Fundamental Rights.” Republicans have invited witnesses from Parents Defending Education and Moms for Liberty, conservative parent groups that have opposed school mask mandates and left-wing curricula.

The FBI’s investigations came after Attorney General Merrick Garland issued an infamous memo in October 2021 that created a federal task force to investigate threats against school boards. Garland’s actions came in response to a request from the National School Boards Association, which called on federal authorities to investigate threats against school board members. The letter referred to parents as potential “domestic terrorists.”

Republicans have also questioned the Biden administration’s coordination with the National School Boards Association on the letter. The Washington Free Beacon reported that the head of the association provided a copy of the letter to the White House before releasing it to the public. Days after the letter was released, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona appointed National School Boards Association president Viola Garcia to the National Assessment Governing Board, which tracks student progress on standardized tests.

While Democrats and the administration expressed concern over growing threats from conservatives, the FBI found no increase in legitimate threats against school boards, according to the Republican report. The bureau acknowledged that it “has not observed an uptick of threats directed at school officials since it began tracking the data,” according to Republicans.

FBI agents interviewed one mother after she told school board officials “we are coming for you” during a school board meeting. The tipster who filed the complaint alleged the woman was part of a “right wing mom’s group” and is “a gun owner.” The mother, who is a member of the group Moms for Liberty, told the FBI she was upset about the school district’s mask mandates, and that her comments at the school board meeting were a threat to vote school board members out of office.

Another FBI field office opened an investigation into a father who opposed mask mandates. According to Republicans, a tipster claimed the man “fit the profile of an insurrectionist” and “has a lot of guns and threatens to use them.” The person who filed the complaint later told the FBI that they had no specific information of any crimes or threats made by the father.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

The student-led disruptions during a federal district court judge’s talk at Stanford Law School earlier this month were just the latest example of U.S. universities attempting to prevent conservatives from speaking on campus.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

From violent riots at the University of California Davis to threats of violence against Federalist Society members at Yale Law School, here are seven recent examples of disruptions over conservative speakers on American campuses.

1. University of California, Davis, March 14:  Protesters smashed windows, hurled eggs, assaulted police officers, and attempted to pepper spray attendees outside of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk’s event in an unsuccessful effort to shut the event down.

Lies spread by the school’s chancellor, Gary May, alleging that Kirk has called for violence against transgender people helped stoke anger, Kirk said. Two protesters were arrested for vandalizing statues with messages that included an Antifa logo.

Kirk threatened legal action against May, who has yet to apologize.

2. Stanford Law School, March 9: Student activists shouted down federal district court judge Kyle Duncan, preventing him from delivering planned remarks at an event organized by Stanford’s Federalist Society chapter.

Among the disruptors was the school’s assistant DEI dean Tirien Steinbach, who arrived at the talk to accuse the judge of causing “harm” and”tearing the fabric of this community.”

Duncan called the dean’s remarks a “bizarre therapy session from hell.”

The law school apologized to Duncan, admitting that administrators failed to enforce the school’s free speech policy against disrupting speakers. The apology prompted another student protest, and students unsuccessfully demanded that the Washington Free Beacon remove their names from reporting.

3. University of New Mexico, Nov. 30, 2022: Protesters attempted to block people from entering a Charlie Kirk event and banged on walls to cause disruptions.

State Police were called in with riot gear and arrested three protesters, including one student.

4. Yale Law School, March 10, 2022: Hundreds of students shouted down a bipartisan event on free speech, resulting in the panelists being escorted out of the building by police.

Among the speakers was Kristen Waggoner, attorney for the conservative Alliance Defending Freedom. Protesters screamed over the remarks, with one student yelling at a Federalist Society member that they would “literally fight you, bitch.”

While a dean called out students for their disruption of the event, the school said it would not pursue formal consequences.

5. University of California Hastings, College of the Law, March 1, 2022: Constitutional scholar Ilya Shapiro was shouted down for 45 minutes by protesters, who pounded on desks and chanted “Black lawyers matter.”

They held signs reading “I am not lesser” and “support Black women.”

Shapiro was not able to finish his remarks. The university condemned students for violating codes of conduct and said shutting down a speaker is “fundamentally contrary” to the school’s values.

6. Saint Louis University, Dec. 1, 2021: Protesters blocked an intersection outside an event where Daily Wire commentator Matt Walsh was speaking.

They shouted, “Queer lives, they matter here, Black lives, they matter here, trans lives, they matter here.”

Walsh attempted to speak with the activists, but they did not want to engage in conversation.

The school only punished one person over the incident—a conservative student who hung up posters advertising the speech earlier in the day.

7. University of Missouri-Kansas City, April 11, 2019: Political commentator Michael Knowles was repeatedly interrupted by protesters yelling obscenities during a lecture. A walk-out ensued where protesters screamed at Knowles and flipped him off.

One student, who was subsequently arrested and charged, shot a water gun filled with an unknown substance toward Knowles and police officers.

Republican lawmakers in Missouri then called for Agrawal’s resignation and discussed reducing the school’s budget after the incident. Agrawal then released another statement saying he supports freedom for all.

“It is not the university’s role to take sides, but to rise to the higher principle of promoting a respectful exchange of ideas,” he said.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Biden’s National Science Foundation funds University of Virginia partnership with military-tied Tsinghua University

The Biden administration is using taxpayer cash to fund a University of Virginia climate change partnership with a Chinese Communist Party-controlled school that conducts research for China’s military.FreeBeacon CarouselCalifornia Democratic Leader Proposed Lifting Red State Travel Ban a Day Before Newsom Announced Red State TourREAD MORE

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President Joe Biden’s National Science Foundation last year awarded more than $130,000 to the University of Virginia to conduct climate change research with Beijing-based Tsinghua University, federal spending disclosures show. Tsinghua University, which counts Chinese president Xi Jinping among its alumni, will work with University of Virginia researchers to chart the global “transition to a low-carbon economy,” according to the grant description.

Tsinghua University is funded by China’s Ministry of Education and maintains a “CCP Committee” that keeps the school “in accordance with President Xi’s hopes.” It also holds “secret-level security credentials” for classified military research, trains students for China’s nuclear weapons program, and has allegedly carried out cyberattacks for the Chinese government, according to the Australian Strategic Policy Institute. It is also one of several Chinese universities under the supervision of the communist nation’s State Administration of Science, Technology, and Industry for National Defense, a CCP agency that works to deepen university involvement in the defense sector.

The National Science Foundation’s decision to fund the partnership with Tsinghua calls into question the foundation’s vetting process as it enjoys a record-high budget. The bipartisan CHIPS Act, which Biden said would help “counter China,” authorized $80 billion in funding for the National Science Foundation to invest in research and development. But in the case of its University of Virginia grant, the foundation found working with the Chinese on climate change “worthy of support.”

For American Foreign Policy Council fellow Michael Sobolik, the foundation’s decision to use “taxpayer money to facilitate research cooperation with a People’s Liberation Army-affiliated university” is “questionable at best.”

“We’ve seen time and again how the CCP leverages people-to-people ties to further its malign influence within the United States,” Sobolik told the Washington Free Beacon. “When you’re in the midst of a cold war, you can’t play both sides of the ledger. The sooner we accept that reality, the better.”

The National Science Foundation downplayed Tsinghua’s role in the project, with research security strategy and policy chief Rebecca Keiser saying the Chinese school’s involvement stems from “researcher-to-researcher collaboration.”

The foundation “has instituted a first-in-government analytics process to identify research security concerns and ensure transparency when assessing proposals and awards to ensure that any international collaboration provides mutual benefit,” Keiser said in a statement. “In any international research collaboration, [the National Science Foundation] only funds the U.S. side.”

The grant, which started in October and runs through 2026, funds University of Virginia research into “the transition to a low-carbon economy.” Tsinghua and a second Chinese partner, the China University of Petroleum-Beijing, will conduct similar research in China, the results of which “will be used to develop a U.S.-Chinese collaborative course on climate leadership skills.” That collaboration, the grant says, “will lead to better strategies for lowering emissions in the United States that are complementary to those in China.” China is by far the biggest polluter in the world—in 2019, it emitted more greenhouse gases than all developed nations combined.

This is not the first time the University of Virginia has partnered with Tsinghua. The two schools are exchange partners, and the University of Virginia’s engineering department in 2017 developed a “teaching collaboration” with Tsinghua that saw students from both schools pair up for homework assignments. That project, however, does not appear to have received federal money. Beyond the October grant, the National Science Foundation has only funded projects linked to Tsinghua on two other occasions—once under Biden last June and once under former president Barack Obama in April 2011. Both of those grants, which went to Boston University and Drexel University, respectively, funded academic workshops that included participants from Tsinghua.

A University of Virginia spokesman defended the university’s work with Tsinghua, arguing that because the project “does not involve critical technologies or military applications,” it does not compromise U.S. national security interests.

“An important part of researching global challenges like climate change is working with institutions around the world to compare the effects of a warming climate and the efficacy of different proposed solutions,” university spokesman Brian Coy said. “As part of those efforts, we take seriously our responsibility to operate within all U.S. laws and regulations regarding the protection of intellectual property and U.S. national security interests.”

“Our university collaborates closely and transparently with federal regulatory and law enforcement partners in order to ensure our collaborative research efforts contribute to human understanding of global challenges without compromising our interests as a nation,” Coy said.

National Science Foundation director Sethuraman Panchanathan, who serves at the pleasure of the president, in 2014 was put on the foundation’s National Science Board by Obama. Then-president Donald Trump in June 2020 went on to elevate Panchanathan to foundation director. Biden has appointed 10 of the National Science Board’s 24 members.

While the National Science Foundation’s grant did not send federal money directly to Tsinghua, the Chinese university has received money from American actors in the past. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation—one of America’s largest liberal nonprofits—gave Tsinghua more than $1.5 million in 2021, the Free Beacon reported in January.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Stanford Law School rules out discipline for student protesters, blames administrators

Tirien Steinbach, the diversity administrator at Stanford Law School who stoked a disruptive protest of Fifth Circuit appellate judge Kyle Duncan, is “currently on leave,” according to a memo on the protest reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.FreeBeacon CarouselFederal Judges Say They Won’t Hire Clerks From Stanford Law SchoolREAD MORE

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Jenny Martinez, the law school’s dean, said in a Wednesday morning memo to all law students that administrators “should not insert themselves into debate with their own criticism of the speaker’s views.” At future talks, the role of administrators will be to “ensure that university rules on disruption of events will be followed,” Martinez said.

Martinez gave no additional details on the terms of Steinbach’s leave, stating that the “university does not comment publicly on pending personnel matters.” She also ruled out disciplining any of the students who shouted down Duncan—in part, she said, because administrators sent “conflicting signals about whether what was happening was acceptable or not.”

Instead, the law school will require all students to attend a training on “freedom of speech and the norms of the legal profession,” which will discuss, among other things, how “vulgar personal insults” can harm students’ “professional reputations.”

That warning appears to be in reference to protesters who hurled sexual invective at Duncan, with one allegedly telling him, “We hope your daughters get raped.” It comes amid calls from Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) and others for state bar associations to investigate the hecklers, which could potentially hold up their legal licenses.

Martinez did not respond to a request for comment.

The memo is the latest effort by Stanford administrators to end a weeks-long public relations nightmare. An initial statement from Martinez, released the day after the disruption, said that “well-intentioned” attempts at “managing the room … went awry.” Twenty-four hours later, Martinez and Stanford University president Marc Tessier-Lavigne issued a formal apology to Duncan, writing that staff members “intervened in inappropriate ways that are not aligned with the university’s commitment to free speech.”

Steinbach, who makes a six-figure salary, during Duncan’s talk stole the podium from the judge to accuse him of causing “harm.” Duncan called the next day for Steinbach to be fired, saying she subjected him to a “bizarre therapy session from hell.”

“Your opinions from the bench land as absolute disenfranchisement,” she told the judge. “Do you have something so incredibly important to say,” she asked, that it is worth the “division of these people?”

The memo spent several pages explaining to students at Stanford—the second-ranked law school in the country, behind Yale—why the Constitution does not protect disruptive heckling.

“Settled First Amendment law allows many governmental restrictions on heckling to preserve the countervailing interest in free speech,” Martinez wrote, noting that the Leonard Law, a California state statute, applies aspects of the First Amendment to private universities. It “does not treat every setting as a public forum where a speech free-for-all is allowed.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Two House Energy and Commerce Committee Republicans announced on March 20 they are introducing legislation to prevent the Biden administration from banning gas stoves.

The legislation was introduced by Reps. Kelly Armstrong (R-N.D.) and Debbie Lesko, (R-Ariz.) in response to the Biden administration’s two-pronged push to ban gas stoves, and might go to the House floor for a vote later this year.

Lesko introduced H.R. 1640, also known as the Save Our Gas Stoves Act, while Armstrong introduced H.R. 1615, the Gas Stove Protection and Freedom Act. Both bills are currently in committee.

The pieces of legislation would prohibit the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) from using federal funding to implement any regulation that would classify gas stoves as a prohibited dangerous product under current law.

The bills also prohibit the CPSC from enforcing any consumer product safety standards that would prohibit the use of gas stoves or impose regulations that would raise gas stove prices.

In a press release announcing the legislation, Armstrong emphasized his frustration with the administration’s attempts to ban the stoves.

“Inflation is hurting everyone. We have a crisis at our Southern Border. North Dakotans are worried about being able to provide for their families. What is the Biden administration focused on? Controlling the kind of stove Americans use,” Armstrong said.

“This is further incompetence from an administration that seems more interested in dictating every aspect of our lives than solving real problems. Our bill makes it clear that Americans should decide if a gas stove is right for their families, not the federal government.”

Lesko also spoke to the proposed ban: “The Biden Administration’s extreme proposed regulation that will ban nearly every gas stove on the market is just another example of out-of-touch bureaucrats trying to control Americans’ everyday lives.”

A member of the CPSC stated in January that a ban on gas stoves was possible due to the health concerns they bring to users.

After a public uproar and derision, the CPSC backed down, but soon after, the Department of Energy proposed an energy-efficiency requirement that officials admit is so strict that 96 percent of the gas stoves currently in use would not pass muster.

However, a March 17 report indicated that the CPSC had made a formal request for information about the possible health hazards of gas-powered stoves—another signal that the United States may be moving towards a ban on those appliances under the Biden administration.

Asked for comment, a representative for the CPSC reiterated to The Epoch Times that “The RFI does not constitute or propose any regulatory action or ban. CPSC has been clear that there are no regulatory proceedings planned for gas stoves or range emissions.”

They also pointed to comments from CPSC Chair Alexander Hoehn-Saric who has stated that the CPSC is not looking to ban gas stoves and has no proceedings to do so.

“As I have said before, this RFI does not constitute or propose any regulatory action or ban,” said Hoehn-Saric. “The chronic hazards that can arise from toxic emissions should be studied and that is what we are doing with this RFI. I welcome the public’s input and data during the comment period.”

The request has already received hundreds of comments. The comment period ends May 8.

The request states that it is seeking input and “proposed solutions” from stakeholders such as “consumers, manufacturers, government agencies, non-governmental organizations, and researchers on chronic chemical hazards associated with the use of gas ranges.”

Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-Wash) weighed in on the legislation.

“President Biden and the radical left want to use the federal government’s power to dictate what kind of car you can drive, how you can heat your home and business, and now how you’re allowed to cook food for your family,” she said in the same press release.

“Forcing people to switch to expensive alternatives will only further increase costs on hardworking families and disproportionately harm the most vulnerable communities. Natural gas is a safe, reliable and affordable energy source for millions of Americans.”

Nathan Worcester contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

JPMorgan Chase strategists warned Monday that recession chances have surged amid the banking crisis since the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank.

“The Fed is facing a difficult task on Wednesday, but it is likely already past the point of no return,” JPMorgan’s strategists wrote in a note to clients this week, according to news outlets. “A soft landing now looks unlikely, with the airplane in a tailspin (lack of market confidence) and engines about to turn off (bank lending).”

That warning came ahead of the Federal Reserve’s meeting this week in which members of the Federal Open Market Committee will decide on whether to raise interest rates again in the midst of decades-high inflation. Starting last year, the Fed has incrementally raised rates to their highest levels in years, a move that drew warnings from economists that a recession could come later this year or next year.

“Even if central bankers successfully contain contagion, credit conditions look set to tighten more rapidly because of pressure from both markets and regulators,” JPMorgan Chase strategists added in their note.

Earlier this month, two major regional banks—Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank of New York—collapsed after customers withdrew their deposits en masse amid warnings about the health of the two respective banks. The federal government has attempted to reassure consumers and investors that the U.S. banking system is sound and that deposits will be insured, with Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen touting the government’s efforts to tame contagion during a Senate hearing last week.

“We stay cautious on risk assets which price in too little recession risk, while the banking crisis raises the prospect of recession this year as credit is restricted,” JPMorgan’s strategists added. Meanwhile, JPMorgan Chase’s Marko Kolanovic warned that market turbulence, economic uncertainty, and bank collapses have increased the chances of a so-called “Minsky moment” in which an economic boom has caused investors to take on too much risk and have to sell assets to repay loans, reported Bloomberg.

Amid the Fed meeting this week, investors have speculated that board members will ease up on its monetary tightening efforts to avoid placing more strain on the banking system. Among them, Goldman Sachs analysts wrote last week that the central bank will likely hold off on raising rates, while others have speculated the Fed will raise rates by a relatively small amount.

The Fed, whose relentless rate hikes to rein in inflation are among factors blamed for the biggest banking sector meltdown since the 2008 financial crisis, is poised to raise rates by only 25 basis points (bps) rather than the previously expected 50 bps, owing to the fallout of the banking crisis.

The latest move to restore calm to restive regional bank stocks came as Pacific Western Bank, one of the regional lenders caught up in the market volatility, said it had raised $1.4 billion from investment firm Atlas SP Partners.

Shares of the bank, which have lost nearly 47 percent of their value so far this year, were down by around 10 percent in early trading even as it tried to assuage investor worries by saying it had more than $11.4 billion in cash as of March 20.

More Warnings

The chance of a recession is on the rise again for the first time since November, said a survey released by Bank of America on Tuesday that polled fund managers. Some 42 percent of fund managers said they believe a recession will come within the next 12 months, and 80 percent believe the economy will remain stagflationary over the next year or so.

Last week, Goldman Sachs Chief Economist Jan Hatzius wrote that he believes there will be a 35 percent chance of a recession within the next 12 months. That’s because of what he called  “increased near-term uncertainty” around the economic impacts of small bank collapses like SVB or Signature.

Jeffrey Gundlach, the chief executive of DoubleLine Capital, said a recession could happen within the next four months. “With all that’s going on I think a recession is probably within four months at the most,” Gundlach said in a Twitter Spaces audio chat on Thursday.

Reuters contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

The National Archives and Records Administration is illegally withholding documents that were declassified by then-President Donald Trump, according to a new lawsuit.

The archives, or NARA, has repeatedly refused to provide the documents Trump declassified just before leaving office on Jan. 19, 2021.

The documents relate to the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation, a counterintelligence probe that examined purported links between Trump and Russian actors.

John Solomon, a journalist, and Kash Patel, a former Trump administration official, asked NARA for the documents in 2022 after being named Trump’s representatives to NARA.

Gary Stern, a NARA official, said the declassified records had been sent to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) per a memorandum from then-White House chief of staff Mark Meadows, who directed on Jan. 20, 2021, the DOJ to review the materials and release them with redactions.

“I have asked DOJ to complete its review as quickly as possible, so that we can all have a fully releasable set of records,” Stern said in a message on Aug. 17, 2022.

NARA did find a box with about 2,700 pages but couldn’t ascertain the box’s classification status and is thus treating it as top-secret, Stern said in another email.

NARA is violating the Presidential Records Act, which states that presidential records of a former president “shall be available to such former President or the former President’s designated representative,” the new suit states.

The government defendants “have wrongfully taken or are wrongfully in possession of and/or detaining the subject records,” it states.

Solomon filed the suit in federal court in Washington.

He is asking the court to order the DOJ to immediately return the records to NARA and to order NARA to turn the records over once received.

“President Trump declassified these records so the American public could see for itself the abuses and failures of the FBI during the Russia collusion case. But at every step of the process, the public has been thwarted,” Solomon said in a statement. “These declassified records are clear records of the Trump presidency, have clear historical value, and have been wrongly kept from the Archives and its employer, the American people, by the DOJ for more than two years.”

The DOJ didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“We don’t comment on litigation matters,” a NARA spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

Emails Reveal Details

Emails attached to the complaint showed NARA repeatedly resisting efforts by Solomon and Patel, who’s an EpochTV host, to access the declassified documents.

Trump designated the pair as his NARA representatives on June 19, 2022. Three days later, Solomon asked for the declassified binder of documents.

Trump had said in his order, “I hereby declassify the remaining materials in the binder.” He said he accepted the FBI’s proposed redactions and directed the attorney general to implement the redactions and return the redacted copies to the White House.

Meadows, in a memo (pdf) to the attorney general the next day, said he was sending the bulk of the binder to the DOJ with instructions to “expeditiously conduct a Privacy Act review under the standards that the Department of Justice would normally apply, redact material appropriately, and release the remaining material with redactions applied.”

The documents were still with the DOJ, not with NARA, Stern said on June 23, 2022.

Because of a lawsuit from Judicial Watch, the DOJ was conducting a mandatory declassification review, he added, recommending Solomon try to get a copy of the documents the DOJ was going to release in the case.

Patel questioned the basis for withholding the documents. “Who countermanded and reversed a valid execution of declassification by President Trump and based on what legal authority?” he wondered. “There can be no delay, and no reason to send us to DOJ for these documents.”

Stern pointed back to Meadows’s memo. He did confirm that the box NARA located contained at least some of the same documents as are in the binder but said that staffers found some cases of documents being redacted differently and others lacking a required declassification marker.

Stern later confirmed that the White House retained copies of all of the documents as presidential records but “not in an easily discernable manner” and without redactions as he continued to refuse to release them.

“The evidence is that the Russia collusion hoax was knowingly and intentionally perpetrated by high-ranking FBI and Department of Justice officials to help Hillary Clinton win the 2016 presidential election. This unprecedented abuse of power and election interference is a scandal so monumental that it dissolves Watergate into insignificance,” Reed Rubinstein, senior counsel for America First Legal, which is representing Solomon, said in a statement.

“Former President Trump declassified the FBI’s records to make public the truth, but the Biden Administration and the National Archives are now doing everything in their power to keep the Russia lie alive by obstructing Mr. Solomon’s access to these records,” Rubinstein said. “This obstruction cannot stand – the American people deserve the truth.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

Asset Managers Dispute Biden’s Claim That ‘Extensive Evidence’ Supports ESG Investing

Joe Biden used his veto power on Monday to block a bipartisan action from Congress that would have prevented pension fund managers from investing retirees’ money according to environmental and social-justice criteria.

“There is extensive evidence showing that environmental, social, and governance factors can have a material impact on markets, industries, and businesses,” Biden stated.

However, despite attempts by its advocates to brand environmental, social, and governance (ESG) criteria as an effective risk-management tool, recent bank failures such as Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) suggest the opposite.

In defense of ESG, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) wrote in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that “America’s most successful asset managers and financial institutions have used ESG factors to minimize risk and maximize their clients’ returns. In fact, according to McKinsey, more than 90 percent of S&P 500 companies publish ESG reports today.”

This echoed a statement by Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan in 2020 that “our research shows that companies that do well on ESG end up doing better, or fail less.” Also advocating for ESG, The New York Times was quick to “fact check” critics who claimed that ESG was partly to blame for SVB’s demise.

In an op-ed titled, “No, ‘Wokeness’ Did Not Cause Silicon Valley Bank’s Collapse,” the Times argues that SVB “was not an outlier in its diversity goals or its ESG investments,” which is accurate as far as it goes. But the fact that most other financial institutions are doing the same thing is not reassuring to many who are concerned that ESG will now be used as a risk-management criteria for pensioners’ money.

Hiding Management Failures

“If management is focusing on ESG, then important functions like risk-management can easily fall to the wayside,” Aharon Friedman, a former senior counsel to the House Ways and Means Committee and former senior advisor to the Treasury Department, told The Epoch Times. “ESG metrics are inherently subjective and unquantifiable, so using ESG factors to measure a company’s performance can hide bad management practices.”

A cursory glance at SVB’s last two 10-K filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission underscores Friedman’s point. The bank’s balance sheet showed obvious red flags about how precarious its mismatch of assets and liabilities had become, and yet a substantial amount of management’s focus appeared to be on diversity and its exposure to climate change.

From 2020 to 2021, the bank’s holdings of U.S. Treasurys and mortgage-backed securities ballooned from $49 billion to $128 billion. These mostly fixed-rate longer-term assets were funded by short-term deposits, which increased from $102 billion to $189 billion that year, creating an enormous liquidity mismatch for a bank with $16.6 billion in equity and $211 billion in total assets.

These numbers were down slightly by the end of 2022 as depositors began their exodus, but remained in about the same perilous proportion. Given the mismatches on its balance sheet, if interest rates were to increase, which would cause the value of fixed-rate bonds to fall, SVB would be unable to make enough from selling its assets to pay out depositors.

And yet according to the risk factors detailed in its 10-K filings, SVB management didn’t appear to be particularly concerned about that. When detailing the bank’s most important risk factors, SVB’s 10K report dedicated three paragraphs to its exposure to climate change.

The bank’s filing states that because “federal and state regulatory authorities, investors, and other third parties have increasingly viewed financial institutions as important in addressing the risks related to climate change … we have announced commitments related to the management of climate risks and the transition to a less carbon-dependent economy.”

Regulators Push ESG on Banks

SVB was not wrong about regulatory authorities pushing ESG compliance. The Federal reserve Bank of San Francisco, which regulated SVB, states, “The impacts of a changing climate—including the frequency and magnitude of severe weather events—affects each of our three core roles: conducting monetary policy; regulating and supervising the banking system; and ensuring a safe and sound payment system.”

Regarding racial equity, the San Francisco Fed states, “Our Framework for Change is our commitment to taking action that will result in greater racial and ethnic equity in our organization and the communities we serve across the Federal Reserve’s Twelfth District.”

Meanwhile, SVB’s exposure to interest-rate risk—one of the most basic but more mundane aspects of bank risk management—became a material problem in March 2022, when the Federal Reserve announced its determination to fight runaway inflation with the first in an ongoing series of interest-rate hikes. Looking back at the end of that year, the bank noted in its 2023 filing that “increased interest rates can have a material effect on the company’s business … For instance, increases in interest rates have resulted, and may continue to result in, decreases in the fair value of our [available for sale] fixed-income investment portfolio.” But it had little else to say on the subject and nothing that suggested a sense of urgency.

According to one report, BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, warned SVB in early 2022 that the bank’s risk controls were “substantially below” what they should have been and offered to assist SVG in managing its portfolio risks. But its offer was rebuffed.

According to another report, SVB’s chief risk officer, Laura Izurieta, stepped down in April 2022, and the bank continued on without a replacement until Kim Olson took the job in January 2023. By that time, interest rates were substantially higher, and there was little the bank could do to right itself.

SVB Earns Top ESG Governance Scores

Prior to its collapse, SVB was a strong advocate of ESG criteria, both from an environmental and social-justice perspective, and it appeared to buy into the notion, echoed by President Biden this week, that ESG was an appropriate risk-management tool. Indeed, according the S&P’s ESG scoring system, SVB was rated an 89 out of 100 in the area of “corporate governance,” just shy of the “industry best” score, which is 91, and well above the “industry mean” score of 51.

Morningstar, one of the top ESG rating agencies, had given SVB a rating of 7.9 out of 10, or “leader,” in the governance category.

“In the case of SVB, the corporate governance management measurement was assessed before the public discovery of the bank’s collapse on March 10, 2023,” a Morningstar representative told The Epoch Times. “The news initiated an urgent review of its rating, resulting in the overall risk rating score increasing significantly with the assignment of a severe controversy (another layer in the methodology) and reflected in our public ratings on March 15. This controversy shows that even companies with leading corporate governance practices on paper are not immune to significant controversial events.”

SVB was able to earn such a high governance rating because of policies like its dedication to racial and gender criteria in hiring and promotion. The bank’s website notes that “45 percent of our board of directors are women, including our new chair as of April 21, 2022.” It further states that “we aim to create equity in hiring, performance management, benefits, supplier diversity, donations and volunteering,” and “we promote inclusion through cultural awareness celebrations, employee advocacy networks, DEI [diversity, equity, inclusion] trainings, employee surveys, and focus groups.”

But while SVB was outperforming according to ESG management principles, some argue that it was doing so at the cost of its most essential responsibilities.

“Insofar as ESG involves trying to show that your board and staff are ‘diverse,’ it means that you are willing to ascribe considerable importance to things like skin color or sex in selecting your people,” Samuel Gregg, author and Senior Research Fellow at the American Institute for Economic Research, told The Epoch Times. “The problem is that people’s degree of financial expertise has nothing to do with such things. If you are willing to trade off financial knowledge and experience for ethnicity and gender, that means you are not giving financial expertise the priority that it should have in banking and finance.”

Credit Suisse, which faced collapse and was rescued by Swiss rival UBS on March 20, had also been promoting its adherence to ESG principles. It created a chief sustainability officer position and announced: “Our organizational structure is designed to ensure that ESG standards are embedded across regions and divisions in our client-based solutions as well as in our own operations as a company.”

Credit Suisse had so many management failures leading up to its collapse that ESG can hardly be blamed. However, it raises another issue about ESG, which is the extent to which corporate managers use it to cover up for underperformance.

An August 2021 study by the University of South Carolina and the University of Northern Iowa found that focusing on non-quantifiable ESG goals over financial results “provides managers with a convenient excuse that reduces accountability for poor firm performance.” In contrast to Biden’s claim that evidence proves the value of ESG investing, this report found that there was a correlation between CEO’s underperformance and how vocal they were in supporting ESG goals.

Disputing the ‘Extensive Evidence’ for ESG

Recently, even firms that had once championed ESG criteria, are now backpedaling.

Testifying before the Texas state senate last December, State Street chief investment officer Lori Heinel said, “I have no evidence that this [ESG] is good for returns in any time frame. In fact, we’ve seen the evidence to be quite contrary. Last year, if you didn’t own energy companies, you did miserably compared to broad benchmarks. The year before, that was quite the opposite … but that was just a happenstance, that’s not because it’s a good investment.”

Last month, Vanguard CEO Tim Buckley said, “Our research indicates that ESG investing does not have any advantage over broad-based investing.”

Meanwhile, a Harvard University report titled, “An Inconvenient Truth About ESG Investing,” found that ESG investing actually hurts returns. “ESG funds certainly perform poorly in financial terms,” the report stated.

SVB may have been no more compliant than its peers regarding its allegiance to ESG dogma, but the problem was that it was too weak to afford losing focus on its core business. Given its smaller size, concentrated depositor base, and undiversified asset portfolio, it could not survive having an unserious risk management structure in place.

SVB depositors were ultimately bailed out by federal regulators, but retirees, who will be affected by Biden’s new rule allowing ESG into Americans’ pensions, have no such guarantees. And when it comes to risk management, pension investors are in a significantly different position than bank depositors. They are the equity holders, who are last in line and who typically get wiped out when companies fail.

“The priority of anyone managing pension funds is to ensure that they create the profit and shareholder value that allows people who have saved to enjoy a comfortable retirement—period,” Gregg said. “If ESG distracts pension fund managers from pursuing that goal, they are doing a grave disservice to present and future retirees.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

High school football coach Joe Kennedy has reached a $1.8 million settlement with the Washington school district that placed him on administrative leave in 2015 for praying on the field.

The Bremerton School District Board of Directors voted unanimously on March 16 in favor of the settlement to cover Kennedy’s legal expenses. His attorneys took his case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, which ruled in Kennedy’s favor in June 2022.

Kennedy has also been reinstated and will return to the school as an assistant football coach for the 2023 season.

Jeremy Dys is senior counsel at First Liberty Institute, the legal organization that represented Kennedy in his lawsuit.

Dys said he’s glad Bremerton High School will welcome Kennedy back.

“After the U.S. Supreme Court concluded that Coach Kennedy praying by himself at the 50-yard line after games he coached was entirely consistent with the U.S. Constitution, his return to the field was inevitable,” Dys said in a previous statement to The Epoch Times.

Kennedy used to pray by himself on the 50-yard line at the end of games, but eventually, several students noticed and started joining him. He also gave short inspirational talks in which he cited God and religion. When the school district learned of this practice, they asked him to stop and eventually placed him on leave in 2015 when he refused to comply.

Kennedy did not reapply for his position the following season, the school district said.

The football coach later sued the school district on the grounds that his post-game ritual was protected under the First Amendment.

The Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Kennedy’s favor in June 2022, finding that the First Amendment protected Kennedy’s right to pray on the field. A federal court in Washington ruled in October that the Bremerton School District had to rehire Kennedy by March 2023.

In a statement on its website dated March 17, the Bremerton school board said that Kennedy would be an assistant coach for the 2023 season.

“We look forward to moving past the distraction of this nearly 8-year legal battle so that our school community can focus on what matters most: providing our children the best education possible,” Alyson Rotter, president of the school board, said in the statement.

Rotter said the district “will fully comply with the court’s order to treat Mr. Kennedy’s personal religious conduct the same way the district treats all other personal conduct by coaches at football games,” and that it will respect the rights and religious freedom of students, families, and school staff.

A spokesperson for Kennedy told MyNorthwest the coach will return to the school when spring football begins in the next few months.

Caden Pearson contributed to this report.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

• Bruce Sapp, Content Monitor, TikTok: “I’m sure a lot of the coding sh*t is still very beneficial to China.”
• Sapp: “You have to train like a year with [the] FBI — because things they do are more of like — I don’t know if you’ve heard, but like Andrew Tate getting taken down in Romania. So, like it would be more of that sh*t. Like people who are on TikTok that are obviously wanted criminals — working with the police, like helping them find their locations, sh*t like that.”
• Sapp: “There’s a [TikTok] department in [Washington] D.C. that works with the FBI, like, I want to know what the f**k they do. Like, what do we need an FBI team for? I feel like to a certain extent, the government has to have their hand in certain apps because they have their hand in like, everything.”
• Sapp: “I think the thing with social media, which is very scary, is you have a lot of people like parents, older generations, or even people who are just too dumb to do their own research.”
• Sapp: “They [social media users] have certain people that they follow — whether it be like the Andrew Tates of the world, the Tucker Carlsons…So, it’s important for us as a social media company to have these [moderation] policies in play so we can do our best to keep false information off the internet.”

[Nashville, Tenn. – Mar. 22, 2023] Project Veritas released a new video today exposing a US-based TikTok employee, Bruce Sapp, who admitted that the tech giant has a unique relationship with both China and the FBI.

TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese-based company that has come under scrutiny in the last few years for its alleged ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

In the conversation with a Veritas journalist, Sapp shared why he thinks the U.S. government has issues with his employer:

Veritas Journalist: “Like, people in our government want to ban TikTok off of government officials’ devices. Why is that?”
Sapp: “If I had to guess, it’s because I’m sure a lot of the coding is still very beneficial to China — and because of the whole China-America relationship. I’m sure it’s something to do with those.”
Sapp went on to discuss the current relationship between the FBI and TikTok.

“You have to train like a year with [the] FBI — because things they do are more of like — I don’t know if you’ve heard, but like Andrew Tate getting taken down in Romania. So, like it would be more of that sh*t. Like people who are on TikTok that are obviously wanted criminals — working with the police, like helping them find their locations, sh*t like that,” he said.

“There’s a [TikTok] department in [Washington] D.C. that works with the FBI, like, I want to know what the f**k they do. Like, what do we need an FBI team for? I feel like to a certain extent, the government has to have their hand in certain apps because they have their hand in like, everything.”

The TikTok employee also shared his concerns for what he calls “false information” that may circulate on the platform.

“I think the thing with social media, which is very scary, is you have a lot of people like parents, older generations, or even people who are just too dumb to do their own research,” Sapp said.

“They [social media users] have certain people that they follow — whether it be like the Andrew Tates of the world, the Tucker Carlsons…So, it’s important for us as a social media company to have these [moderation] policies in play so we can do our best to keep false information off the internet.”

SOURCE: Project Veritas

 It’s been 10 years in the making, but a family of East Lansing, Michigan, landlords finally have their day in court.

The Hagan family, represented by attorneys from the Thomas More Society, filed a civil rights complaint against the city on March 16, in the U.S. District Court in the Western District of Michigan.

The Hagans’ complaint centers on a 2013 city ordinance mandating landlords to provide new tenants with voter registration forms and “how to” information. It requests that the court declare portions of the ordinance unconstitutional and a violation of federal civil rights law.

The ordinance reads in part, “At the time occupancy is given … the owner or owners’ legal agent must provide … information on how to register to vote and the requirements to register, [a] notice that election information and further registration information is available on the Secretary of State’s website as well as the City’s website … and a copy of the State of Michigan Voter Registration Application.” And finally, “A violation of this section shall be deemed a civil infraction.”

“This is a blatant violation of the landlords’ First Amendment rights,” said Thomas More Society Special Counsel Erick Kaardal in a March 17 press release. “East Lansing is out of line.”

Kaardal likened it to the government “conscripting the local grocer to hand out property tax bills” while ringing up his customer’s orders.

“Why would the East Lansing City Council resort to unconstitutional means to register voters but to achieve a political end?” asked Kaardal in a March 20 phone interview with The Epoch Times.

East Lansing is the home of Michigan State University with its more than 50,000 students.

The population of the city of East Lansing was 46,854 in 2021.

When contacted for comment, East Lansing Communications Administrator Mikell Frey told The Epoch Times in an email, “As a general practice, we do not comment on pending litigation.”

Landlords Seek Injunction

The plaintiffs also asked the court for a permanent injunction to stop the city from enforcing the 10-year-old ordinance, now and in the future.

According to the pleadings, the Hagans and other landlords had expressed their opposition to the measure as early as February 2013 at a public hearing held just before the adoption of the ordinance by the city.

At the time, landlord Tom Kashinski asked, “What does voter registration have to do with our relationship with our residents? What does it have to do with behavior issues or safety?… What is the next thing that you would like to require us to do that has nothing to do with our business?”

Collin Cronin, another landlord, stated, “Pushing political agendas or political emphasis isn’t something I believe should be pressed on landlords to do.”

“How extreme are we going to get here?” asked Matt Hagan.

The Penalty for Disobedience

Out of fear of being slapped with a civil infraction penalty, a fine the complaint says could be up to $1,000 and have implications on the landlords’ licenses, the plaintiffs obeyed the terms of the ordinance.

A decade later the arguments against the measure remain the same.

Last week’s court filing asserts, “Increasing citizen participation in elections through registering voters is unrelated to renting a residence to tenants.”

Kaardal stated in the press release, that no matter how acceptable the idea of increasing voter participation is to some, those interests “cannot outweigh the First Amendment rights” of landlords who refuse to pass on the city government’s message.

“By compelling a landlord to inform and provide information to tenants regarding where to register to vote, or by engaging them to act as couriers of the municipality’s ideological messages to prospective tenants, East Lansing is infringing on landlords’ rights,” he said.

“The First Amendment protects an individual’s right to refrain from speaking just as much as it protects the right to speak freely. Compelled speech is a violation of the free speech clause.”

Advancing the Progressive Agenda

As precedent, Thomas More Society attorneys cite a 2020 case in Minnesota where a federal judge declared unconstitutional a similar ordinance involving Minneapolis and Saint Paul when those cities tried to require landlords to provide voter registration information to new tenants.

Kaardal told The Epoch Times that he is concerned about every instance of what he called “biased voter registration programs.”

“Government should be a neutral player,” he said. “It should not be assisting progressives in accomplishing their political purposes.”

The Thomas More Society is a national, not-for-profit, public-interest law firm based in Chicago.

The Society is dedicated to restoring respect in law for life, family, religious liberty, and fair elections, according to its website.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

California attorney general Rob Bonta (D.) is blaming car manufacturers for the spike in car thefts that has occurred on his watch.

In a letter to Hyundai and Kia, Bonta and 22 other attorneys general on Monday claimed the carmakers helped fuel a national car theft epidemic by not installing engine immobilizers to certain vehicle models. The letter notes that over the past two years, carjacking teens launched viral TikTok tutorials on how to override certain Kia and Hyundai security devices.

But Bonta has done little to offset his state’s rise in car thefts. The attorney general boasted in 2022 that while homicides, property crime, and violent crime went up during his first year on the job, arrest rates and probation levels declined. Since taking office in 2021, Bonta has focused his efforts on investigating police and suing cities over their zoning policies as car thefts and violent crime mount. As a state legislator, Bonta helped secure softer sentencing laws and reduced jail time for felons.

According to Bonta’s office, Kia and Hyundai cars made up about 20 percent of Los Angeles auto thefts last year and 38 percent of those in Berkeley since the end of 2022. He and his fellow attorneys general are demanding Kia and Hyundai speed an update to anti-theft software, as well as develop “free alternative protective measures” for those with vehicle models that do not support the technology.

But California led the nation in car thefts and saw a major spike in 2021, when a vehicle was stolen every three minutes, according to a state report listing Honda Civics as the top target. While the state has yet to compile data for 2022, the National Insurance Crime Bureau reports that car thefts rose again.

This isn’t the first time California has tried to quash theft without going after criminals. Last year, Gov. Gavin Newsom (D.) signed a law to limit the sale of used catalytic converters. Rather than reducing theft, the law has made it harder for California drivers to replace their stolen converters.

California progressives have taken to mocking robbery victims as crime spikes across the state. Over the weekend, San Francisco’s former police commissioner mocked a tech executive whose employee was robbed of $10,000 in equipment in the city, saying the victim was “sheltered,” and the crime itself just a price of urban life.

Car thefts in San Francisco rose 42 percent from 2019 to 2022, San Francisco Police Department data show.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

American taxpayers have already given Moderna $10 billion for its coronavirus vaccine. If the Biden administration gets its wish, that tab could soon grow.

In a court filing last month, Department of Justice lawyers offered to “relieve” Moderna of any liability it faces from a lawsuit that accuses the drug company of failing to pay licensing fees for technology it used to develop its vaccine during “Operation Warp Speed.” Moderna has argued that the federal government should be on the hook for any legal settlement because of a stipulation in its contract that protects the company from patent litigation. The government had stayed silent on the matter until last month, when Justice Department lawyers said that any liability that Moderna faces should “transfer” to the United States government, citing a World War I-era law that protects federal contractors from patent disputes.

While the judge handling the case recently denied the request, Moderna and the federal government could appeal the decision and put taxpayers on the hook for any legal payout. Genevant, one of the companies that sued Moderna, has already accused the drug maker of “trying to shift responsibility for its patent infringement to the U.S. taxpayer.”

The government’s offer to bail out Moderna will likely not sit well with the American public or with senators when they grill Moderna’s CEO at a hearing on Wednesday. The Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pensions committee invited Stéphane Bancel to testify about the company’s plans to quadruple the price of its coronavirus vaccine. Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) called Moderna the “poster child” for pharmaceutical industry greed. He criticized Moderna for the proposed price hike after the company relied on taxpayer support to develop and manufacture the vaccine.

The vaccine was a godsend for Moderna, which had not marketed a drug in its 10-year history. The company’s revenues went from less than $800 million in 2020 to $19 billion last year. That would add to the nearly $10 billion that the government has paid Moderna during the pandemic. The Pentagon awarded an $8.2 billion contract to Moderna, and the Department of Health and Human Services paid the company another $1.7 billion. Moderna booked net income of $12.2 billion in 2021 after reporting a loss of $747 million in 2020.

That has made Bancel a multi-billionaire, as Moderna’s stock price has surged from around $20 at the beginning of the pandemic to roughly $150 today. It peaked at a high of $450 in September 2021. Bancel sold $408 million worth of Moderna shares between the start of the pandemic and March 2022.

It is unclear whether Moderna and the Department of Justice will appeal the recent decision. Moderna did not respond to a request for comment. A Justice Department spokesman said the agency “doesn’t have anything else to add.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Ugly Joe? America ranked worse than Ireland, a country defined by miser

People are happier when they live in a country governed by a hot leader. It’s not just common sense, it’s science.

For the sixth year in a row, Finland ranked first on the United Nations World Happiness Report. The result is to be expected given that Finnish prime minister Sanna Marin is the world’s hottest head of government by a considerable margin.

Marin, 37, is also one of the youngest and coolest world leaders. Her biggest scandal since taking office in 2019 involved a leaked video that showed her dancing with friends, as well as a photo of two women flashing their breasts and making out during a private party at the prime minister’s official summer residence. In other words, doing the things that make people happy.

Residents of the United States under President Joe Biden, 80, are fairly miserable by comparison. America ranked just 15th on the World Happiness Report, which isn’t entirely surprising given the relative youth and attractiveness of our elected leaders.

Most disturbingly, the United States ranked behind Ireland, a country defined by misery. (See: The Banshees of Inisherin.) The Irish president, Michael Higgins, is an actual wee leprechaun who is only slightly older than Sleepy Joe.

Bottom line: The United States needs to elect more attractive politicians. Doing so would not only make us happier, it would make the federal government more diverse.

The World Happiness Report proves that having an attractive leader can make a huge difference in the lives of everyday citizens. Estonia, for example, ranked 31st, ahead of Western European countries such as Italy and Spain, despite suffering for decades under Soviet oppression. Wonder why?

READ MORE:

Heads of State, Head to Head: America vs. Finland

Libs Are Furious Hot Girl Likes Republicans

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Websites for more than two-dozen state governments use a web-tracking code made by the parent company of TikTok, a Chinese spyware app, the Wall Street Journal reported Tuesday.

“Web-tracking pixels” made by ByteDance Ltd., TikTok’s parent company, were present in 30 U.S. state government websites across 27 states, a review by Feroot Security found. Some of those states had already banned the app from “state networks and devices,” the Journal noted. Website administrators “use such pixels to help measure the effectiveness of advertising they have purchased on TikTok.”

The pixels, however, “can be watching and recording you when you’re renewing your driver’s license, paying your taxes, or filling out doctors’ forms,” Feroot Security’s CEO told the Journal.

Evidence has shown for years that ByteDance spies on American citizens. The company used TikTok to track the physical locations of Forbes journalists and obtain the data of a former BuzzFeed reporter, a Financial Times reporter, and people connected to the reporters, Forbes reported in December.

As a Chinese company, ByteDance shares data with the country’s Communist government.

After widespread criticism, President Joe Biden, who has long pursued a cozy relationship with TikTok, in February agreed to ban the app from government devices. One month later, TikTok retained a Democratic public relations firm whose founding partner is a top Biden adviser, the Free Beacon reported.

Though ByteDance’s tracking pixels are ostensibly for advertising, they “can sometimes be configured to collect data that users enter on websites, such as usernames, addresses, and other sensitive information,” the Journal reported.

The Journal itself was able to find the pixels on government websites from Maryland and Utah, both of which had banned TikTok from state-owned devices and networks. Both states removed the pixels after the Journal reached out.

Feroot found tracking pixels from other Chinese-owned companies, as well as Russian-owned companies, on state government websites.

While a bill aimed at restricting TikTok is making its way through Congress, critics say the legislation “will let the Biden administration avoid taking real action” against the app, the Free Beacon reported. And even a national TikTok ban, the Journal wrote, “wouldn’t address many of these data-collection concerns.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Civil unrest in May and June 2020 cost city $21 million

Philadelphia on Monday agreed to pay more than $9 million to protesters who attended Black Lives Matter rallies in 2020, just as the city suffers from record homicides and a shortage of police officers.

As part of a legal settlement, the city will pay more than 200 protesters a total of $9.25 million for injuries allegedly caused by police responding to BLM protests in May and June 2020. The lawsuits claimed that police inflicted mental trauma, as well as physical injuries, on protesters. Democratic mayor Jim Kenney said police violence and racism caused black residents “immeasurable” amounts of “pain and trauma,” according to Fox News.

“While this is just one step in the direction toward reconciliation, we hope this settlement will provide some healing from the harm experienced by people,” Kenney said.

The protests cost the city $21 million, according to Security Management.

The massive payout comes as the city continues to suffer from record crime and police shortages.

Philadelphia last year saw 516 homicides, down just 8 percent from the record-setting 562 homicides in 2021. Robbery with a gun was up more than 20 percent in 2022 from the year prior, and auto theft was up nearly 37 percent.

The city is more than 1,000 police officers short of where it needs to be, according to Philadelphia police union leader John McNesby.

Crime is such a problem under District Attorney Larry Krasner (D.), whose campaign was funded by left-wing megadonor George Soros, that even Democratic mayoral candidates say they want to “circumvent” Krasner on addressing crime and releasing violent criminals. Philadelphia voters rank crime as the top issue for the city’s next mayor.

“We need to bring back the certainty of punishment in the city of Philadelphia,” Democratic candidate Derek Green said.

Other Democrat-run cities are also making payouts to BLM protesters. New York City this month agreed to shell out between $4 and $6 million for damages related to pepper-spraying and zip-tying.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

With Republicans in control of House, Afghanistan evacuation has emerged as a top priority

The chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee is threatening to issue a subpoena to compel Secretary of State Antony Blinken to produce a litany of documents detailing the administration’s mishandling of the deadly 2021 withdrawal from Afghanistan.

Blinken has until Wednesday to produce scores of internal “documents pertaining to the Biden administration’s catastrophic withdrawal from Afghanistan” that left 13 Americans dead. “Failure to produce these documents ahead of Secretary Blinken’s March 23 testimony will result in the committee issuing a subpoena,” Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), the committee’s chairman, wrote to Blinken in a letter sent Monday, ahead of the secretary’s scheduled appearance before the House committee.

McCaul’s committee has been seeking these documents since August 2021, but the State Department has only produced a fraction of the requested communications, most of which are heavily redacted. McCaul is seeking documents that could show the Biden administration knew the Taliban would quickly retake control of Afghanistan, but proceeded anyway. This includes “all reports, intelligence assessments, and intelligence community products” produced by the State Department that detailed the “potential collapse or sustainability of the pre-Taliban government.”

McCaul says he is fed up with the State Department’s failure to comply with Congress’s legally mandated oversight powers. Congress has been unable to discern the truth about the botched evacuation for years now, and with Republicans in control of the House, this issue has emerged as a top priority. Blinken is expected to face a litany of questions about Afghanistan when he appears before the Senate on Wednesday to discuss the State Department’s 2023 budget proposal. On Thursday, Blinken will testify before McCaul’s committee, where it is also expected he will face questions about the administration’s refusal to hand over Afghanistan-related documents.

The State Department must produce all the requested documents by 5:00 p.m. on Wednesday in a “complete and unredacted form. In the event the department fails to comply with this request, the committee will proceed with compulsory process,” according to the letter.

To date, the State Department has turned over 218 pages of documents, which were released in late January in response to a Freedom of Information Act request. Nearly 88 pages consisted of a publicly available 2021 report on Afghanistan that did not address any of the issues surrounding the evacuation. “Most of the remaining pages included extensive redactions that severely limit their usability and value,” according to McCaul.

The document cache also included heavily redacted talking points issued by the State Department that were ultimately provided to the press, according to a copy of these documents reviewed by the Free Beacon. It is unclear why the State Department censored information it was putting out publicly.

Basic information about the administration’s response to the unfolding chaos and subsequent terror attack that killed 13 American service members also is redacted in the documents.

“Many of the redactions in this production appear to cover answers prepared for the question-and-answer portion of documents containing talking points for press engagements,” McCaul wrote. “The department redacted information from Congress that it was prepared to share with the public at the time the documents were generated.”

The State Department additionally “failed to provide any legal justification or privilege log for these extensive redactions.”

The State Department says it is having trouble producing these documents due to their classified nature and the inclusion of sensitive national security information.

But the Foreign Affairs Committee routinely accesses documents of this nature and is equipped to process them. Many of the requested documents could “be produced extremely quickly if they were genuinely prioritized by the department. The committee routinely receives highly classified documents and information from the department on the most sensitive issues confronting U.S. foreign policy, including ongoing threats posed by foreign adversaries.”

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

Counterpoint: No, they’re not

What’s happening: Democrats are beginning to lash out at people who think crime is bad by insisting that having your car burglarized and riding the subway next to a fentanyl-smoking vagrant are “basic city life experiences.”

Wait, seriously? Yes. John Hamasaki, a former San Francisco police commissioner and the failed Democratic Party-endorsed candidate for district attorney following the successful recall of Chesa Boudin, recently lashed out at a tech CEO who lamented that two of his colleagues will be “scarred forever” after having their laptops and passports stolen from their parked car.

“Is this what the suburbs do to you?” Hamasaki wrote on Twitter. “Shelter you from basic city life experiences so that when they happen you are broken to the core?”

Wow, that’s deranged. Yes, it is. The same day Hamasaki posted his dumb tweet, a mob of teens took part in a massive brawl at a popular shopping mall—one of several “incidents of mob violence among school-age kids” resulting in “physical injuries” at the location. In other words, just another basic city life experience.

Do Democrats even care about crime? Not really. (See: San Francisco.) The Democrats in charge of Los Angeles, for example, have allowed the city’s metro system to be overrun by fentanyl-addicted vagrants. Some liberal experts are adamant that enforcing the law “isn’t a solution,” which is even more bizarre given their insistence that more people use public transportation to save the planet or whatever.

What are Democrats saying about crime? They tend to ignore the issue or pretend it isn’t real. Gov. Kathy Hochul (D., N.Y.) suggested rising crime in New York City was a “conspiracy” invented by Republican “manipulators.” She changed her tune somewhat after barely winning reelection (in New York!) against a Republican challenger who ran almost exclusively on crime.

Who’s to blame? Everyone but the criminals, as far as most Democrats are concerned. This week California attorney general Rob Bonta (D.) blamed car manufacturers for the spike in vehicle thefts on his watch. “Families shouldn’t have to worry that manufacturers are cutting corners that could put their purchase at risk,” Bonta wrote in a letter signed by 22 other attorneys general attacking auto firms Kia and Hyundai for making vehicles that are too easy to steal.

What’s the bottom line? Democrats are ill-equipped to address rising crime due to their inclination to believe that criminals are the real victims, whereas actual crime victims are a bunch of Karens who should just shut up and take it.

READ MORE:

Spotted in DC: An Attempted Carjacking Within Sight of Left-Wing Mob Demanding Reduced Penalties for Carjacking

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

An Israeli think tank executive claims he told the FBI in 2019 that members of the Biden family warned a Chinese energy executive about a coming federal investigation, allowing him to flee the country before being placed under arrest.

Gal Luft, the co-director of the Institute for the Analysis of Global Security, a Washington-based foreign policy think tank, provided the “explosive” details to the FBI and Justice Department in March 2019, according to his lawyer. Sources close to Luft told the Jewish News Service members of the Biden family “tipped…off” their Chinese partner, China Energy Fund Committee chairman Ye Jianming, that he was the target of an FBI probe.

The details emerge as House Republicans have homed in on the Biden family’s dealings with CEFC China, and amid an ongoing Justice Department probe of the troubled first son. Republicans released a report last week that a close friend of the Biden family, Rob Walker, wired millions of dollars from a CEFC-linked company in 2017 to Hunter Biden, his uncle Jim Biden, and his sister-in-law, Hallie Biden.

The timing of Luft’s incendiary claims are certain to draw scrutiny. He came forward with allegations about the Bidens last month after the Justice Department sought his extradition from Cyprus on charges of illegal arms trafficking. Luft denies the charges and alleges that the “DOJ is trying to bury me to protect Joe, Jim & Hunter Biden.”

While Luft’s specific allegations have yet to be verified, there is evidence that he has direct insight into CEFC’s affairs. There is also reason to believe that he met with the FBI and Justice Department as he claims. His lawyer, former U.S. assistant attorney Robert Henoch, said in filings to the Justice Department under penalty of perjury that he accompanied Luft during his 2019 meeting with FBI and Justice Department officials. Henoch has called Luft a “whistleblower” and said he planned to submit letters to Congress with details of Luft’s case and his meeting with investigators.

The Washington Free Beacon reported that Luft served as an adviser to CEFC China Energy during the same time span that the energy conglomerate paid millions of dollars to the Biden family for business consulting and legal services. CEFC, which is widely suspected to be a front for the Chinese Communist Party, paid Luft’s think tank $350,000 to collaborate on events to promote China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project. Ye, the chairman of CEFC, served on the board of trustees for the institute, which included former high-level intelligence officials like ex-CIA director James Woolsey and Robert McFarlane, a national security adviser for former president Ronald Reagan.

Luft and Biden worked closely with Patrick Ho, the head of CEFC’s think tank, the China Energy Fund Committee. A former employee of that think tank, David Riccardi-Zhu, told the Free Beacon that he frequently saw Ho with Luft and Woolsey, who served under former president Bill Clinton. Ho organized several events for Luft and his think tank to promote the Belt and Road Initiative and various clean energy initiatives.

CEFC China hired Hunter Biden in November 2017 to represent Ho after his arrest on charges that he tried to bribe African officials on behalf of CEFC. Biden, who received $1 million for the legal work, appeared to suspect that Ho worked for Chinese intelligence. In May 2018, Biden referred to Ho as the “fucking spy chief of China” in a voice recording. Emails from Biden’s laptop show that he spoke to FBI agents about Ho after his arrest in November 2017.

CEFC China, which first approached Biden in 2015, also paid the first son and his uncle, Jim, around $5 million for consulting projects. While Biden appears not to have inked any major business deals for the energy conglomerate, he developed a close relationship with Ye, who gave Biden an $80,000 diamond during a meeting in New York City. Biden associates have said they believe CEFC targeted Biden as part of an intelligence-gathering operation for the Chinese government.

In an additional layer of intrigue, Hunter Biden claimed in an October 2017 text message to be an attorney for Ye Jianming, according to a November 2020 Senate report. Biden wrote in 2017 that he had signed an attorney-client agreement with Ye, and that he was helping the businessman “on a number of his personal issues” including “staff visas and some more sensitive things.”

Luft’s fate remains to be seen. His attorneys have called on Israeli authorities to intervene in Cyprus to block his extradition to the United States. Rep. James Comer (R., Ky.), the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, said this month that he is investigating Luft’s claims and has been in contacts with his lawyers. Comer’s office did not respond to questions about the status of those negotiations or whether Luft has shared the new information with congressional investigators.

Luft alleges that federal agents have not contacted him since his initial meeting in 2019. That would make him at least the second potential Biden witness to claim that investigators have ignored information about the Bidens’ dealings with CEFC China. Tony Bobulinski, a former Hunter Biden associate, has said that he provided FBI officials with information about the Bidens in October 2020 but has not had any follow-up meetings. Bobulinski has released text messages which show that he met with Hunter, Jim, and Joe Biden in May 2017 to discuss CEFC. This contradicts President Biden’s claims that he had no knowledge of his son’s business activities.

The Justice Department and FBI did not respond to requests for comment. Lawyers for Biden did not respond to requests for comment.

SOURCE: The Washington Free Beacon

A detransitioned teen is suing Kaiser Permanente hospital because doctors removed her breasts during her transgender procedure.

Layla Jane is an 18-year-old woman who began to identify as transgender at age 11. Jane, at the time, wanted to transition to a male. Initially, doctors at Kaiser denied her any transition hormones, saying she could take them after turning 16. However, doctors changed their minds, approved her request, and performed a double mastectomy when she was 13.

Jane wrote on Twitter, “Mind boggling to me that a doctor signed off on a double mastectomy for me before I took a sex ed course. I barely started 8th grade, I was 13.”

In the letter of intent to sue (pdf), her attorneys at LiMandri and Jonna LLP accused the doctors of approving the breast-removal surgery “without performing an adequate evaluation and treatment of Layla’s extensive mental health co-morbidities.”

According to the letter, Jane suffers from anxiety, depression, pubertal struggles, body dysmorphia, and serious self-image concerns.

“These doctors also pushed Layla and her parents down this transition path engaging in intentional, malicious, and oppressive concealment of important information and false representations,” the letter states.

The lawsuit demands unspecified amounts of pay for damages related to her health issues during her transition period from ages 12 to 17. The case listed Jane as suffering from permanent, irreversible mutilation, an induced state of endocrine disease, an increased risk of being infertile, and the fact that she would never be able to breastfeed a child.

During an appearance on Fox News with her attorney, Harmeet Dhillon, Jane said, “I don’t think I’m better off for the experience, and I think transition just completely added fuel to the fire that was my pre-existing conditions.”

In a statement to DailyMail, Kaiser said that its doctors “practice compassionate, evidence-based medicine founded on sound research and best medical practices.”

“When adolescent patients, with parental support, seek gender-affirming care, the patient’s care team carefully evaluates their treatment options,” Kaiser spokesman Marc Brown said. “The care decisions always rest with the patient and their parents, and, in every case, we respect the patients and their families’ informed decisions about their personal health.”

The Epoch Times reached out to Kaiser for comment.

Chloe Cole, 18, is another young woman who detransitioned and filed a lawsuit against the hospital giant.

She was prescribed puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones and had her breasts removed when she was 15. She says she regrets getting the procedures done.

“The adults who were supposed to take care of and guide me as a child failed to do so, and they will take responsibility for it,” Cole told The Epoch Times on Nov. 11. “My parents were sold a lie just like I was.”

Cole’s parents supported their daughter during a demonstration in Anaheim, California, last Fall.

Cole recently expressed her frustration and continued pain after her procedures.

“At this point, I’m far from whole. I’m far from healed. I’m still processing and dealing with what I went through,” Cole told Fox News Digital in an interview.

“I’ve lost all my trust in my health care provider and possibly even health care,” she said. “It’s not loving to lie to a child. It is not loving to disrupt a child’s natural, healthy development or to encourage them to do so,” she said.

Cole reported that the double mastectomy procedure causes fluid to leak.

“They use skin grafts as part of it. Two years after the surgery, I thought the healing was going fairly well – save for the grafts being slightly dry on the surface. But they started to leak fluid, and I’ve had to start wearing bandages over them again,” Cole said during the Fox News interview.

Last summer Cole testified on California’s State Senate Judiciary Committee against a bill that would make the state a “sanctuary” for gender surgeries.

“I’m afraid that my generation and the generation, the generations following mine, are going to be led to led astray down the same path that I was on. It is not loving to lie to a child. It is not loving to disrupt a child’s healthy natural development. Or to encourage them to do so,” she said during an interview. “I stayed quiet about it for a little while ….  But at the same time, I was also speaking to other people who … regretted their transactions and people who … were harmed medically.”

Cole continued, “And seeing how these people were suffering, how a lot of them had all the same struggles that I did – and some… even worse off–I realized that this is this experience is a lot more common than previously thought. And not everybody in the situation feels that they’re able to speak up. And that’s a large part of what motivates me to speak out.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

mid an increase in reports of squatters taking over people’s homes across the country, one expert warned that the phenomenon is on the rise and noted that removing a squatter could take months.

Real estate lawyer Jim Burling told Fox News on Tuesday that any home that is not occupied for a period of time could be targeted by squatters. If the owner tries to call the police, officers may not be able to do much, and at the same time, using the courts could turn into a lengthy and expensive process, he warned.

“I think it’s a fairly big problem and I think it’s pretty hard to avoid,” Burling, who is vice president of litigation for Pacific Legal Foundation, said. In cases where a property owner is attempting to evict a squatter, generally the court system has to get involved to determine whose paperwork is legitimate, he noted.

“If somebody is living in a home and saying ‘hey, I signed a lease, I’m paying rent, I have a right to be here,’ whether or not that’s true, the police hear that story then they hear a story of somebody who’s not living there and saying ‘this is my place these people don’t belong here,’ the police officer can’t make that legal determination,” Burling said.

He added that it’s not the “job” of the police to do that. “That’s not their bailiwick. If you have that kind of dispute it has to go to court,” he said.

Properties that are most susceptible to attracting squatters are people who have left them vacant due to a family death or foreclosure. Owners have to remain vigilant and keep their properties locked up and secured, Burling remarked.

“If I were a homeowner, I would be really careful about letting my property be vacant for any period of time,” Burling remarked. “I would be very careful about renting it out.”

“The courts are backed up, the civil process takes forever, the squatters won’t show up to court and so it just drags on and in the meantime somebody’s living rent-free for a significant period of time.”

In some places, it could take months to remove a squatter or an evicted tenant, lawyers have said.

Another landlord-tenant lawyer, Michael Zink, told CBS Chicago in a recent interview that “evictions in Chicago—whether it’s about squatters or anything else—are taking approximately six to eight months.”

Squatter cases, he added, have been on the rise in recent years because people know they can live for months rent-free with virtually no consequences. Zink noted that when the police get involved, they have little power.

“The problem that police have is when they show up to a scene like that, they don’t know who is telling the truth,” Zink told the CBS affiliate.

In many areas and states, too, landlords cannot forcibly remove anyone from a property. Only a sheriff or court-sanctioned bailiff can do so after the landlord prevails in court. If a person is proven to have trespassed, police and other law enforcement officers can intervene, however.

There have been reports that landlords and property owners have used so-called “squatter removal services” in some cities, like Detroit, to encourage squatters to leave. In one instance in January, a property owner used such a service to post official-looking notices on the property warning the squatters to leave within 24 hours or else their possessions would be forcefully taken away.

Recent Cases

A Chicago-area family told local media that they’re currently embroiled in a legal fight to evict a man who was described as a “professional squatter” who is now commandeering their deceased mother’s home. After Darthula Young’s mother, who owned a duplex in Chicago’s South Side for decades, died last year, the property was transferred to her family members, they told CBS Chicago.

“On Sept. 23, I got a call from the neighbors to say there’s been a shooting in the building—and when I went to the building and put my key in, it didn’t work,” Young told the channel.

“The person who had been shot in the apartment, this guy named Takito Murray, came back from the hospital and informed us and the police that he now lived there—that he had rights,” she said, adding that Murray “was a professional squatter.”

In another recent instance, squatters allegedly took over a home in Portland, Oregon, and have terrorized residents. Locals last week made a plea in front of the Portland City Council to intervene, KATU reported.

“We feel victimized by the irrefutable safety issues which happen so often,” Elizabeth Adams, who lives next door, said at the meeting. “We have a deep compassion for our homeless, but that doesn’t mean that we should have to live in fear for our safety each and every day.

SOURCE: The Epoch Times

A former legal adviser to Michael Cohen, a key witness in the New York grand jury investigation into former President Donald Trump’s alleged payment to adult actress Stormy Daniels, has claimed that the former Trump attorney is “far from solid evidence.”

Veteran New York Attorney Robert Costello made the comments to reporters shortly after he appeared before a grand jury Monday to challenge the credibility and honesty of Cohen, who testified to the Manhattan grand jury on March 15 and is considered a critical witness in District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s investigation into Trump.

Costello has represented a string of Trump allies in the past and claims he briefly acted as a legal adviser to Cohen in 2018 when the FBI raided his home amid a probe into tax evasion, among other criminal charges.

However, the attorney told reporters following his testimony that Cohen is “totally unreliable” in the probe against America’s 45th president and is “a convicted perjurer.”

“I’m the one who decided to do this. A lot of people cautioned me against it because I have nothing to gain. The only thing I’m doing is trying to tell the truth to the grand jurors because I read all these lies in the media that are being promoted by one side,” said Costello. “If you see the full picture … If they want to go after Donald Trump and they have solid evidence, so be it.”

Cohen ‘Far From Solid Evidence’

“But Michael Cohen is far from solid evidence,” added Costello. “This guy, by any prosectors’ standard—and I used to be deputy chief of the criminal division in the Southern District of New York—I wouldn’t have touched a guy like Michael Cohen, especially if he’s a convicted perjurer.”

Cohen pleaded guilty in 2018 to charges of tax evasion, making false statements to a federally insured bank, and campaign finance violations in connection with an alleged $130,000 payment to a lawyer representing adult actress Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford.

Cohen claims that Trump, during his 2016 presidential campaign, directed him to arrange the payment to Daniels as “hush money” in order to buy her silence after she claimed to have had an affair with Trump. The money was allegedly paid using campaign funds, a violation of campaign finance law.

Trump denies the affair and Cohen’s claims and has called the grand jury probe into him a witch hunt. The former president has accused Bragg, a Democrat who was publicly criticized for declining to charge Trump last year, of prosecutorial misconduct.

Elsewhere on Monday, Costello told reporters that he’d handed over more than 300 emails involving his discussions with Cohen to prosecutors but that they had “cherry-picked” just six emails to question him about and that their context had been taken out of context in front of the jury.

It is not immediately clear what impact Costello’s testimony will have on the outcome of the investigation currently debating whether or not to charge the former president. No charges have been announced so far.

Cohen Says Costello ‘Making Up Stories’

During an interview on MSNBC on Monday evening, Cohen dismissed most of Costello’s claims during the testimony as “false statements” that have “no accuracy.”

He also denied that Costello had ever been his lawyer or that he had ever waived attorney-client privilege, as Costello has said.

“I don’t know what he’s talking about,” Cohen said. “He’s making up so many stories here.”

Cohen also said that prosecutors from the Manhattan district attorney’s office had summoned him to the Lower Manhattan courthouse to rebut Costello’s testimony but that it was ultimately decided he was not needed.

During his comments to reports on Monday, Costello said Cohen previously said he had not used Trump’s money to make the payment but had taken out a loan, adding that Cohen had told him he did so because “I wanted to this secret. I didn’t even want my own wife to know.”

He also asserted that Trump did not know about Cohen taking out the loan.

Prior to Costello’s appearance on Monday, Trump took to Truth Social where he called the veteran attorney “the most important witness to go before the New York City grand jury” and a “highly respected lawyer.”

SOURCE: The Epoch Times