President Joe Biden issued a series of vaccine mandates Thursday night that applies to federal employees and private employers, directly contradicting comments he made in December 2020.

“Do you think both vaccines should be mandatory?” asked one reporter in December 2020.

“No, I don’t think it should be mandatory. I wouldn’t demand it be mandatory, but I would do everything in my power, just like I don’t think masks have to be made mandatory nationwide,” said then President-Elect Biden.

Republican Governors are planning new lawsuits to stop the mandates that could impact upwards of 100 million workers.

“This is not about freedom, or personal choice,” Biden said during his 5pm address. “It’s about protecting yourself and those around you — the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love … We cannot allow these actions to stand in the way of protecting the large majority of Americans who have done their part, who want to get back to life as normal.”

“This is not a power that is delegated to the federal government,” South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem told Sean Hannity Thursday night. “This is a power for states to decide. In South Dakota, we’re going to be free and we’re going to make sure that we don’t overstep our authority. So we will take action. My legal team is already working, and we will defend and protect our people from this unlawful mandate.”

“COVID-19 is a contagious disease, it is still with us and it will be for the foreseeable future,” added Arizona Governor Doug Ducey. “President Biden’s solution is hammering down on private businesses and individual freedoms in an unprecedented and dangerous way … How many workers will be displaced? How many kids kept out of classrooms? How many businesses fined?”

FLASHBACK 2020: Joe Biden Says ‘I Don’t Think’ Vaccines ‘Should Be Mandatory’ | Sean Hannity

More than a dozen governors and two attorneys general late Thursday issued statements defying the Biden administration’s impending vaccine mandates for federal workers and private-sector workers.

President Joe Biden earlier in the day signed an executive order to require all federal workers to be vaccinated against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. There would be no option to opt out via COVID-19 testing. The mandate also applies to government contractors and their employees.

The president later announced he would direct the Department of Labor to create a rule to have companies with over 100 employees mandate vaccinations or weekly testing, a move that impacts more than 80 million workers in the private sector.

At least 19 governors and two attorneys general immediately issued statements disagreeing with the administration’s move, with several vowing to defy it.

They include the governors of Arizona, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Missouri, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming.

They were joined by at least two state attorneys general as of Thursday night—Sean D. Reyes from Utah and Todd Rokita from Indiana.

Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, the chair of the National Governors Association, said in a statement, “I fully support continued efforts to increase vaccination rates across our nation, but the federal government mandates on private businesses are not the right answer.

“I have been consistent in freedom of businesses to require their employees to be vaccinated, and I have opposed the government from saying businesses cannot exercise that freedom,” he added. “The same principle should protect the private sector from government overreach that requires them to vaccinate all employees.”

Multiple Republican governors, including for Arizona, Georgia, and South Dakota, hinted or announced that they would seek legal avenues to resist the mandates.

“The COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective tools to prevent the disease, but getting the vaccine is and should be a choice,” Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said in a statement. “These mandates are outrageous. They will never stand up in court. We must and will push back.”

“I will pursue every legal option available to the state of Georgia to stop this blatantly unlawful overreach by the Biden administration,” Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp said on Twitter.

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem issued a statement on Twitter, saying, “South Dakota will stand up to defend freedom. @JoeBiden see you in court.” She later shared another Twitter post saying that her legal team is prepared to stand up to the Biden administration’s mandates.

The Biden administration did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Biden earlier in the day commented on the issue of vaccine mandates in schools, saying, “if these governors won’t help us beat the pandemic, I’ll use my power as President to get them out of the way.”

Biden said the matter of getting more shots into arms is “is not about freedom or personal choice. It’s about protecting yourself and those around you—the people you work with, the people you care about, the people you love.”

Statements from the remaining governors and attorneys general as of late Thursday are as below:

• Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey (in part): “I support the science and encourage folks taking the vaccine. However, I am absolutely against a government mandate on the vaccine, which is why I signed the vaccine passport ban into law here in Alabama. This is not the role of the government.”
• Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy: “This is ridiculous and unenforceable. If there was ever a case for the 25th Amendment…”
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (at a press conference): “I do not believe that people should lose their jobs over this issue, and we will fight that. If they try to do that through a rule like the Department of Labor, I don’t think they have the legal authority to do that, but we obviously would want to support protections for people who are just trying to earn a living.”
• Idaho Gov. Brad Little: “Today’s actions from President Biden amount to government overreach. Government should stay out of decisions involving employers and their employees as much as possible. I’ve advocated for and championed fewer government regulations and mandates on business.”
• Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds: “President Biden is taking dangerous and unprecedented steps to insert the federal government even further into our lives while dismissing the ability of Iowans and Americans to make healthcare decisions for themselves. Biden’s plan will only worsen our workforce shortage and further limit our economic recovery. As I’ve said all along, I believe and trust in Iowans to make the best health decisions for themselves and their families. It’s time for President Biden to do the same. Enough is enough.”
• Missouri Gov. Mike Parson (in part): “Vaccination protects us from serious illness, but the decision to get vaccinated is a private health care decision that should remain as such. My administration will always fight back against federal power grabs and government overreach that threatens to limit our freedoms.”
• Mississippi Gov. Mike Reeves: “The President has no authority to require that Americans inject themselves because of their employment at a private business. The vaccine itself is life-saving, but this unconstitutional move is terrifying. This is still America, and we still believe in freedom from tyrants.”
• Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte: “President Biden’s vaccination mandate is unlawful and un-American. We are committed to protecting Montanans’ freedoms and liberties against this gross federal overreach.”
• Nebraska Gov. Pete Ricketts: “President Biden’s announcement is a stunning violation of personal freedom and abuse of the federal government’s power. This plan isn’t about public health—this is about government control and taking away personal liberties.”
• North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum: “President Biden’s misguided plan steers our country down a dangerous path away from states’ rights and the freedom of private businesses to make their own decisions on vaccinations. We stand opposed to this blatant federal overreach.”
• Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt: “It is not the government’s role to dictate to private businesses what to do. Once again President Biden is demonstrating his complete disregard for individual freedoms and states’ rights. As long as I am governor, there will be no government vaccine mandates in Oklahoma. My administration will continue to defend Oklahoma values and fight back against the Biden administration’s federal overreach.”
• South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster: “The American Dream has turned into a nightmare under President Biden and the radical Democrats. They have declared war against capitalism, thumbed their noses at the Constitution, and empowered our enemies abroad. Rest assured, we will fight them to the gates of hell to protect the liberty and livelihood of every South Carolinian.”
• Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee: “‘This is not about freedom’ is a phrase that should never come out of a U.S. President’s mouth. For a fight that requires working together, a lot of cynical and divisive edicts came out of the White House today pitting the vaccinated against the unvaccinated, businesses against employees, and the federal government against states.”
• Texas Gov. Greg Abbott: “Biden’s vaccine mandate is an assault on private businesses. I issued an Executive Order protecting Texans’ right to choose whether they get the COVID vaccine & added it to the special session agenda. Texas is already working to halt this power grab.”
• Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (in part): “I have asked the Attorney General to stand prepared to take all actions to oppose this administration’s unconstitutional overreach of executive power. It has no place in America. Not now, and not ever.”

19 Governors, 2 AGs Resist Biden’s Vaccine Mandates (theepochtimes.com)

The White House signaled Thursday its continued support of the nation’s top infectious disease expert, Dr. Anthony Fauci, following the release of documents detailing U.S.-funded coronavirus research in China.

Statements Fauci made to Congress have come under review following the release of more than 900 pages of documents, obtained by The Intercept, detailing the use of federal money by the U.S.-based health organization, EcoHealth Alliance, to fund bat coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

Critics say the documents show Fauci misled Congress when he repeatedly asserted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has never funded the controversial gain-of-function (GOF) research at the Chinese lab.

When asked at Thursday’s White House Press Briefing if she would retract a previous statement that under “no circumstances” President Joe Biden would consider firing Fauci, White House press secretary Jen Psaki doubled down in support of the doctor.

“NIH has never approved any research that would make the coronavirus more dangerous to humans,” said Psaki.

“A reminder that there are previous and different coronaviruses than the existing one we’re battling, and the body of science produced by this research demonstrates that the bat coronavirus sequences published from that work the NIH supported were not the strain, the COV-2 strain. So, what [Fauci] said was correct.”

The newly released documents include two grant proposals funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

One of which, “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” totaled $666,422. It outlines a plan, led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak, to “investigate the ecology, evolutionary biology, and transmission dynamics of bat coronaviruses at the human-wildlife interface.”

It is unclear if the second grant awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance, “Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emergent Infectious Disease Hotpots of Southeast Asia,” was withdrawn or suspended by the government after being awarded in August 2020 to extend through 2025.

The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans, according to The Intercept.

In an email to The Epoch Times, an NIH spokesperson reiterated Psaki’s comment writing: “The research we supported in China, where coronaviruses are prevalent, sought to understand the behavior of coronaviruses circulating in bats that have the potential to cause widespread disease. The body of science produced by this research demonstrates that the bat coronavirus sequences published from that work NIH supported were not SARS-CoV-2. More importantly, because of similar research to understand coronaviruses, we were able to move swiftly to develop vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 and save lives.”

Fauci has sparred repeatedly with Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul (R) on the issue of GOF research during congressional hearings, including one instance in July where Paul suggested Fauci lied to Congress about whether the NIH funded GOF.

Fauci responded by saying he “never lied before the Congress” and that the NIH did not fund GOF research at the Wuhan lab. Fauci told Paul, “you do not know what you’re talking about, quite frankly.”

Paul seemed to see the release of documents by The Intercept as a victory when he tweeted out Tuesday: “I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan.”

Paul’s tweet was a re-tweet of Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, who wrote: “The materials confirm the grants supported the construction—in Wuhan—of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

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

The documents also shine a light on the theory that the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan. The regime has faced criticism from the international research community and has been accused of engaging in a cover-up.

White House Stands by Fauci Over Gain-of-Function Research Controversy (theepochtimes.com)

A couple of weeks before the completion of the catastrophe of the American presence in Afghanistan—or, if you believe President Joe Biden, the “extraordinary success” of the American evacuation—a Russo-British comedian named Konstantin Kisin published a brilliantly funny thread on Twitter headed: “You’re struggling to understand why some people are vaccine hesitant. Let me help you.”

The “let me help you” megathread, as he called it, consisted of example after example of so-called “expert” opinions that have turned out to be completely wrong—beginning with the British vote for Brexit and the American vote for President Donald Trump in 2016, both of which elections the top experts at the time confidently assured us would go the other way.

Actually, Kisin’s spiel could be considered as a belated gloss on one of the most famous quotations to come out of the Brexit referendum, that of the Brexiteer and veteran government minister Michael Gove who said: “I think the people of this country have had enough of experts.”

I think that Trump was striking the same responsive chord with Americans when he disparaged what he called “political correctness”—still ravaging the county after four years of his administration—which was also the product of that breed of experts who call themselves “intellectuals.”

If people were fed up with experts in 2016, think how much more reason they have to be so five years later! Kisin does, and he goes ruthlessly through the whole catalog of errors from Russian collusion to “systemic racism” and “white supremacy” to “toxic masculinity” and the abolition of sex in favor of the nebulous idea of “gender.”

And of course we mustn’t leave out the conflicting and often mendacious pronunciamentos of “the Science” on the coronavirus, which have culminated in the distrust, not so much of the vaccines themselves, but of “the experts’” attempts to demonize those who remain skeptical about them.

And all this was before the collapse of the Afghan government and army under the onslaught of the Taliban gave us what may be the best reason ever for thinking that we, too, have had enough of experts in this country.

“Afghanistan: the graveyard of experts,” wrote Tim Black at Spiked Online.

“US ‘experts’ who created Afghanistan mess should be fired for malpractice,” wrote Rebekah Koffler for The New York Post—though of course they won’t be. They never are. They’re the experts.

A writer on Substack named Richard Hanania compared the galaxy of American Ph.D.’s (including the now-deposed president of Afghanistan himself, Ashraf Ghani, who has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia) who got us into Afghanistan with the madrassa-educated Taliban and wrote that, “It’s as if Wernher von Braun had been given all the resources in the world to run a space program and had been beaten to the moon by an African witch doctor.”

Unsurprisingly, there were a great many negative comments appended to Kisin’s bonfire of the experts, most of them to the effect that, just because some people have been wrong about some things it doesn’t mean that other people are going to be wrong about other things—especially when those things include vaccines which, as there are sound scientific reasons for believing, can be life-saving.

Nor should we neglect to consider that the lives saved are not only of those who receive the vaccines but also those of the immunosuppressed and other vulnerable people who come in contact with them.

They have a point. But so has Kisin. The latter is certainly right in thinking that the experts, particularly those who write for the partisan media, have taken too little care of their own credibility in the past, instead expecting to be trusted and believed as right, just because of who they are. When they then turn out to be wrong, they have no one but themselves to blame if people don’t believe them the next time.

Some people are always going to be wrong about almost everything, but the case is altered when the people who are wrong have set themselves up in the profession of being right. These are the people we call “experts” solely because they have the recognized credentials of experts—advanced degrees from top universities or awards for their expertise from other experts—whether or not they have any real-world experience or expertise.

Their authority is what the anthropologists call “positional”—like that of the parent who answers a child’s question of why? by replying: “Because I said so!” or “Because I’m your mother.”

The experts treat us all like those children—and then they wonder why they are resented and distrusted.

They are the people who identify themselves with their beliefs to the extent that they can never admit it—and so never learn from their mistakes—when those beliefs turn out to be wrong.

That’s how you get to Biden’s calling an obvious disaster of the first water an “extraordinary success”—with no more than an occasional raised eyebrow from the compliant media.

Much publicity in the last week or so was given to a Reuters report of a conversation between Biden and Ghani in the dying days of the latter’s government, as the Taliban were closing in. What he had to worry about, said the American president to the Afghan one, was the “perception” that he was losing the war, not the fact that he actually was losing it.

All he had to do to get American help, said Biden, was change this perception, “whether it is true or not.”

I think a lot of the criticism of this extraordinary conversation was misdirected. The problem wasn’t that Biden told Ghani to lie. Lying to the enemy has a long and honorable tradition in the history of warfare.

No, the problem was that he was foolish enough to think he could lie in that situation: that he (or Ghani) could get away with spinning the enemy as he himself was used to spinning the American media—as, of course, he would go on to do again with the claim of an “extraordinary success.”

A man whose self-assurance and self-absorption is such that he believes reality can make no claim against him that he can’t pay off with the experts’ counterfeit currency of interpretive ingenuity and rhetorical sleight-of-hand is a man who can only lead his country and himself into more disasters.

Bonfire of the Experts (theepochtimes.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Thomas Massie (@RepThomasMassie) September 8, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

President Joe Biden will direct the Department of Labor to develop a rule that companies with more than 100 employees will require vaccinations or once-per-week testing for their workers, potentially affecting tens of millions of U.S. private-sector employees, according to the White House.

The administration’s rule will require that “all employers with 100 or more employees to ensure their workforce is fully vaccinated or require any workers who remain unvaccinated to produce a negative test result on at least a weekly basis before coming to work,” which will affect more than 80 million workers in the private sector.

During remarks on Sept. 9, Biden said that the United States “can and will turn the tide” against COVID-19 by mass vaccinations, while casting blame “at the 80 million” people who haven’t been vaccinated. “We’re in a tough stretch,” he said. “This is not about freedom or personal choice” but is about protection against COVID-19.

The president further claimed the “unvaccinated” are “crowding our hospitals” and said vaccines provide protection against COVID-19 hospitalizations.

The Department of Labor’s Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) will issue an Emergency Temporary Standard to implement the requirement, the White House document stated. It didn’t mention religious exemptions or individuals whose doctors have recommended against getting COVID-19 shots.

Biden will sign an executive order requiring most federal employees and contractors to get a COVID-19 vaccine without the option of getting regular testing, according to the document. Federal workers unions suggested on Sept. 9 that they would accept the vaccine mandate. It isn’t clear if the U.S. Postal Service will be under the new mandate.

“As part of this effort, the Department of Defense, the Department of Veterans Affairs, the Indian Health Service, and the National Institute of Health will complete implementation of their previously announced vaccination requirements that cover 2.5 million people,” the document states.

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

The new measures are being unveiled as part of a more aggressive attempt to push for vaccination.

Such mandates will likely create more opposition. A recent Gallup poll found that about 52 percent favored employer vaccine mandates but 38 percent opposed, with 29 percent saying they were strongly opposed.

A number of unions also have issued statements in recent weeks saying they are opposed to vaccine mandates, including some hospital workers unions, firefighters unions, and police unions.

Some other unions have voiced opposition to vaccine mandates. Hospital workers with Service Employee International Union 1199 held a rally in July to oppose a mandate imposed by New York-Presbyterian Hospital in Manhattan. Firefighter and police unions from Chicago to Newark, New Jersey, are also opposing mandates.

The plan has received widespread criticism from Republicans and conservatives who said that it’s tantamount to federal overreach.

“My legal team is standing by ready to file our lawsuit the minute [Biden] files his unconstitutional rule. This gross example of federal intrusion will not stand,” South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem wrote on Twitter.

Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.) wrote that he’ll introduce a measure to block what he called an “egregious assault on Americans’ freedom and liberty,” adding that “we must fight against these attempts to force vaccine mandates on the American people.”

Under the plan, the administration would also require vaccinations for some 17 million health care workers at hospitals and other institutions that participate in Medicaid and Medicare programs, or for programs serving disabled and older Americans.

Biden also will use the federal government’s authority under the Defense Production Act to spur companies to produce COVID-19 tests, which will then be sold at large retailers around the country.

Meanwhile, the plan is also calling on entertainment venues such as arenas, concert halls, and others to mandate vaccine passports or show a negative test to enter.

“Our overarching objective here is to reduce the number of unvaccinated Americans,” White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said on Sept. 9. “We want to reduce that number, decrease hospitalizations and deaths, and allow our children to go to school safely.”

The White House also plans to offer booster shots for “fully vaccinated” individuals and has a goal of Sept. 20 to begin rolling them out. The World Health Organization and other groups have said that with limited global vaccine supplies and production, wealthier countries need to issue a moratorium on boosters until more people are vaccinated around the world.

According to the White House fact sheet, the administration also will continue to mandate masks on federal property and aboard public transportation.

Previously, the White House stated that the federal government can’t mandate vaccines nationwide, but it has pressured school districts, businesses, and other entities to require shots.

Reuters contributed to this report.

Biden Plans COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for 80 Million Private-Sector Workers (theepochtimes.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Epoch Times has contacted the FDA for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Results are expected during the first half of 2022.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ebright’s Twitter thread reads:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Wade further noted:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ahead of President Joe Biden’s announcement Thursday about new COVID-19 measures, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said that there may be new measures that will be imposed on unvaccinated people.

“There are six steps the president’s announcing, there will be new components,” Psaki told reporters on Wednesday. “Some of that will be related to access to testing, some will be related to mandates, some will be related to how we ensure kids will be protected in schools.”

When asked about how the new steps would impact Americans’ lives, Psaki said that “it depends on if you’re vaccinated or not.”

Psaki provided few details on what mandates could be imposed on unvaccinated Americans. On Tuesday, she told reporters on Air Force One that the federal government lacks the authority to mandate vaccines for everyone.

“There will be new components that sure, will of course impact people across the country, but we’re also all working together to get the virus under control, to return to our normal lives,” Psaki also said, without elaborating, on Wednesday.

Biden, who was scheduled to meet with his COVID-19 advisers on Wednesday, delivered a speech about six months ago saying the United States has “made real progress” against the virus.

Since that date, about 142 million Americans have received COVID-19 vaccines and about 950,000 people are getting vaccinated each day, according to data provided by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

Data released daily by the CDC’s COVID-19 tracker suggests that the United States’ new cases and deaths may have hit a plateau or is on the decline. The seven day-average for cases as of Tuesday was 140,000 and deaths were 1,022, respectively, while as of Sept. 1, the seven-day average for cases was 156,000 and deaths were 1,141, respectively.

The president’s speech on Thursday could make reference to a recent announcement from the heads of several federal health agencies that third doses of the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, or booster shots, would be provided around Sept. 20. However, the Food and Drug Administration has yet to approve the booster doses.

Already, Biden required all federal employees and contractors to get the COVID-19 vaccine or adhere to strict testing and social distancing protocols. He also ordered nursing homes to require their staff to get the vaccine to continue getting Medicare and Medicaid funding.

One of Biden’s top confidants, White House chief of staff Ron Klain, during a CNN interview over the weekend, was reluctant to provide a specific date when the boosters would be made available to the public.

White House Signals New COVID-19 Measures Coming for People Who Are Unvaccinated (theepochtimes.com)

We’re literally shaking

Adhering to stereotype, a liberal journalist attended a WNBA game over Labor Day weekend and violated the mask mandate imposed by local authorities. Aaron Rupar, an associate editor at Vox, posted a photo of himself without a mask as he attended a Chicago Sky game on Sunday with his brothers.

Only one of Rupar’s brothers was wearing a mask in the photo, which was taken during the Chicago Sky’s 92-86 upset victory over the Las Vegas Aces. Sky forward Candace Parker notched a double-double on 4-13 shooting (0-4 from 3-point range; 4-8 from the foul line), while Kelsey Plum led the Aces with 23 points off the bench.

Regrettably, the lib journo and his bearded brother were in violation of the indoor mask mandate imposed last month by the Chicago Department of Public Health. The mandate, which went into effect on August 20, states that “all individuals aged 2 and over, regardless of their vaccination status, will be required to wear a mask as of Friday, August 20, while indoors in public settings.”

WNBA games are played indoors and are in most cases attended by enough people to qualify as a public event. It is not yet known how many lives were endangered by the Rupars’ reckless disregard for a government order imposed by health and safety experts. (Editor’s note: We are literally shaking.)

It wasn’t the only time Rupar implicated himself and his family members in blatant violation of Chicago’s mask mandate. One day before the now-infamous WNBA contest, the journo and his brothers were seen dining at a restaurant. This time, all of them were maskless.

Chicago’s mandate allows restaurant patrons to remove their masks “when they are actively eating and drinking.” In the photo Rupar posted on his Twitter account, however, the only thing he and his brothers are actively doing is posing for the camera.

It gets worse. The previous night, Rupar and his brothers attended an All Elite Wrestling event at the NOW Arena in the Chicago suburbs. Photos from the packed venue suggest that hundreds, if not thousands, of fans in attendance were not wearing masks.

Because Rupar has a history of scolding others for gathering in crowds or neglecting to wear masks, the lib journo was criticized for flaunting his irresponsible behavior on social media. Rupar tried to defend himself by claiming to support “personal responsibility” and “responsible” socializing.

“I don’t pretend to have all the answers about Covid but castigating vaxxed/masked people for taking part in some semblance of social life doesn’t seem very constructive,” the journo huffed on Twitter while failing to address the photos of his maskless face.

According to Urban Dictionary, the word rupar is a verb that means “to lie with impunity; a brazen statement with a focus on misleading, usually with intention of a predetermined outcome.”

More than 236,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 on President Joe Biden’s watch.

ALERT: Lib Journo Aaron Rupar Spotted at WNBA Game Without a Mask (freebeacon.com)

An appearance by Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Victory Boyd to perform the National Anthem at the NFL’s Sept. 9 season-opening game in Tampa Bay was canceled by the league because she declined for religious reasons to be vaccinated against the CCP Virus.

“As I understand that Victory will not be fully vaccinated by the time of the Kickoff game, she would not have been able to comply with the terms of the Game Day Field Access Policy,” NFL Senior Director for Media and Entertainment Events Seth Dudowsky told Boyd’s father and manager, John Boyd, in an Aug. 31 email made available to The Epoch Times.

“And as a result, we unfortunately will not be able to invite Victoria to perform the national anthem at this year’s Kickoff game,” Dudowsky said.

The defending Super Bowl-champion Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ home field is Raymond James Stadium, an open-air venue. The 2021 season-opening game is to be played against the Dallas Cowboys.

“The NFL’s Game Day Field Access Policy requires that all individuals accessing the playing field and surrounding sideline areas within the stadium bowl (including individuals involved in game presentation elements such as the singer of the national anthem) be fully vaccinated.

“Under the Policy, ‘fully vaccinated’ means 14 days have passed since the individual received the final dose required in the vaccine sequence, in accordance with guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. This requirement is mandatory and fully complies with the laws applicable to the type of business relationship contemplated here, and we are not in a position to make an exception,” Budowsky told Boyd in the email.

Dudowsky thus ended weeks of negotiations that initially excited both Boyds because, in addition to a $20,000 performance fee, the occasion provided invaluable national television exposure on one of the NFL’s most-watched games other than the Super Bowl.

The NFL also agreed to cover the travel costs of Boyd and her entourage, “as well as all costs, expenses and fees related to the services of all of Artist’s support personnel in connection with the Performance and all related obligations,” according to a copy of the contract reviewed by The Epoch Times. The contract was the result of the negotiations but had not yet been officially signed by the parties to it.

The 27-year-old singer/songwriter blends soul and folk music and has twice before sung the National Anthem at NFL games. She was a member of the team that produced Kanye West’s Grammy Award-winning “Jesus Is King,” 2020’s top contemporary Christian album.

Boyd was the primary lyricist for the album’s “Closed on Sunday” and “God Is” songs and she made additional contributions to “Water.” Her music is available on the Roc Nation label of Jay-Z.

Her grounds for declining to be vaccinated are rooted in her Christian faith, she told The Epoch Times:

“The Bible admonishes Christians to appreciate their bodies as being sacred and a temple of the Holy Spirit and to not participate in things that can defile the body or render the body dysfunctional.

“I am in prayer to make sure that the Lord guides me into the right decision concerning receiving an unproven injection with artificial properties that can potentially have a longterm effect on my reproductive health.

“If I want to take the vaccine, the decision will be between myself, my doctor and my God. At this point, the Spirit of God is leading me to take a stand for freedom of choice.”

She also told The Epoch Times that she worries the NFL decision to cancel her for not being vaccinated may herald more disheartening restrictions throughout the music and entertainment industries.

“Throughout my life I have overcome many obstacles, but now I was faced with a new glass ceiling that I couldn’t break through. It feels like we’re going backwards to a familiar place that I thought we had overcome as a country,” Boyd told The Epoch Times.

“To be disqualified because of a discriminatory policy that had nothing to do with my talent made me feel alarmed because of what it implies for not only myself but millions of others,” she said.

Dudowsky declined to respond to The Epoch Times’ email request for comment, referring it instead to Brian McCarthy, a league spokesman. McCarthy declined to say if the NFL places a higher value on ratings and entertainment than on First Amendment rights, including freedom of religion.

John Boyd told The Epoch Times he was mystified by the NFL’s adamant refusal to make any accommodation of his daughter’s religious and medical rights.

“My response to the final position of the NFL was one of utter disbelief because I didn’t understand why a single person that was willing to comply with all other NFL COVID protocols and submit verification of a current COVID-19 negative test was not allowed to sing the National Anthem in an open-air stadium. It made no common sense to me that the NFL was not willing to make any accommodation,” John Boyd said.

John Boyd added in a separate email that he believed “if accommodations were made for tens of thousands of mask-less, unvaccinated fans screaming over the field and many unvaccinated players running back and forth on the field, surely an accommodation could have been made for a single singer (standing alone distanced from all other people) to sing the National Anthem on the sidelines for only a minute and 45 seconds.”

The immovable NFL policy was first announced to franchise owners and officials, coaches and players, in a July 1, 2021, memo that detailed processes to be followed by everybody involved with a game, including NFL staff, members of the news media, game coaches and officials on the field and the sidelines, and entertainers.

Significantly, NFL players are not required to be vaccinated, but those who decline to do so are required to submit to a daily test. A positive result means the player cannot play in a game or participate in practice sessions until he has five consecutive negative daily tests.

In a tense telephone conversation prompted by Dudowsky’s Aug. 31 email, the NFL official told John Boyd that while he understood the manager’s concerns, “unfortunately, that is the NFL’s policy that the NFL has stated both privately and publicly, this is not something we’re running from or hiding.”

Dudowsky told Boyd that “there are players pushing back on this policy,” but “the league does feel it has control over its venues, the fields and the protocols.”

Dudowsky said the NFL’s decision to not accommodate Boyd’s request to be allowed to perform in an alternative setting on the sidelines or elsewhere in the stadium was not a legal issue.

“That is a decision by the NFL, by our events team and our entertainment team,” Dudowsky told Boyd. He also acknowledged that the NFL made extensive accommodations to entertainers and others during the 2020 season due to the virus that causes COVID-19.

“This is our first big one for a national broadcast and it is important that we are showcasing a singer on the field for the first time, other than the Super Bowl, in the last year,” Dudowsky told Boyd.

Recording Artist Victory Boyd Refuses Vaccine for Religious Reasons, NFL Cancels Her National Anthem Opening Day Performance (theepochtimes.com)

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) and the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden, is facing calls to answer for a shocking report, published by the Intercept, about the so-called “gain of function” research that the National Institute of Health funded at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The WIV is thought to be a possible origin point for COVID-19.

In May of 2021, Dr. Fauci, in his testimony to a Senate committee investigating whether the U.S. funded “gain-of-function” research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, claimed that the NIH “has not ever and does not now fund gain of function research in the Wuhan Institute of Virology.”

The Intercept, however, found, through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request, evidence that the NIH issued a “bat coronavirus grant” to a group called the EcoHealth Alliance for “$3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans.”

As The Daily Wire reported Tuesday, Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University and an expert who spoke to The Intercept, elaborated on the findings on Twitter.

“The materials show that the 2014 and 2019 NIH grants to EcoHealth with subcontracts to WIV funded gain-of-function research as defined in federal policies in effect in 2014-2017 and potential pandemic pathogen enhancement as defined in federal policies in effect in 2017-present,” Ebert noted. “The materials confirm the grants supported the construction — in Wuhan — of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.”

“The materials reveal that the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses also could infect mice engineered to display human receptors on cells (‘humanized mice’),” he added. “The materials further reveal for the first time that one of the resulting novel, laboratory-generated SARS-related coronaviruses — one not been previously disclosed publicly — was more pathogenic to humanized mice than the starting virus from which it was constructed and thus not only was reasonably anticipated to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity, but, indeed, was *demonstrated* to exhibit enhanced pathogenicity.”

That puts Dr. Fauci in the spotlight. Dr. Ebright even suggested that Fauci was being “untruthful” in his remarks to the Senate.

Several Republicans have already suggested that Dr. Fauci must face a full investigation and be totally forthcoming about his agency’s — and the NIH’s — involvement in funding research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) suggested that Dr. Fauci is “hiding” something and should face an investigation.

Your tax dollars funded coronavirus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China.

What is Fauci hiding?https://t.co/TDcwOHZpNP

— Rep. Jim Jordan (@Jim_Jordan) September 7, 2021

Former White House physician-turned-Congressman Rep. Ronny Jackson (R-TX) also demanded answers — and for Dr. Fauci to be terminated from his role as a top health advisor to the president.

Fauci’s NIH funded DANGEROUS gain-of-function research in the Wuhan Laboratory. The same man that wants to mask your kids and keep us LOCKED DOWN forever helped cause this pandemic. How does he still have a job? Fauci needs to be FIRED and INVESTIGATED immediately! pic.twitter.com/BkCvMD1gDt

— Ronny Jackson (@RonnyJacksonTX) September 3, 2021

Rep. Josh Hawley (R-MO) had the harshest criticism, demanding that Dr. Fauci resign immediately.

Anthony Fauci has repeatedly and deliberately mislead Congress and the American people. Resign. And face a congressional inquiry https://t.co/o8Bxfvb8jt

— Josh Hawley (@HawleyMO) September 7, 2021

Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) has already referred Dr. Fauci for an investigation for possible perjury related to his testimony in front of Congress.

This article has been revised for clarity. 

Dr. Fauci Faces Call To Resign, Answer For Shocking Report About U.S. Government Funded Wuhan Research | The Daily Wire

More than 900 pages of materials related to US.-funded coronavirus research in China were released following a FOIA lawsuit by The Intercept.

NEWLY RELEASED DOCUMENTS provide details of U.S.-funded research on several types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China. The Intercept has obtained more than 900 pages of documents detailing the work of EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund bat coronavirus research at the Chinese laboratory. The trove of documents includes two previously unpublished grant proposals that were funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates relating to EcoHealth Alliance’s research, which has been scrutinized amid increased interest in the origins of the pandemic.

The documents were released in connection with ongoing Freedom of Information Act litigation by The Intercept against the National Institutes of Health. The Intercept is making the full documents available to the public.

“This is a road map to the high-risk research that could have led to the current pandemic,” said Gary Ruskin, executive director of U.S. Right To Know, a group that has been investigating the origins of Covid-19.

One of the grants, titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” outlines an ambitious effort led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to screen thousands of bat samples for novel coronaviruses. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals. The documents contain several critical details about the research in Wuhan, including the fact that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment — and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed. The documents raise additional questions about the theory that the pandemic may have begun in a lab accident, an idea that Daszak has aggressively dismissed.

The bat coronavirus grant provided EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans. Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments. The grant proposal acknowledges some of those dangers: “Fieldwork involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”

Alina Chan, a molecular biologist at the Broad Institute, said the documents show that EcoHealth Alliance has reason to take the lab-leak theory seriously. “In this proposal, they actually point out that they know how risky this work is. They keep talking about people potentially getting bitten — and they kept records of everyone who got bitten,” Chan said. “Does EcoHealth have those records? And if not, how can they possibly rule out a research-related accident?”

According to Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University, the documents contain critical information about the research done in Wuhan, including about the creation of novel viruses. “The viruses they constructed were tested for their ability to infect mice that were engineered to display human type receptors on their cell,” Ebright wrote to The Intercept after reviewing the documents. Ebright also said the documents make it clear that two different types of novel coronaviruses were able to infect humanized mice. “While they were working on SARS-related coronavirus, they were carrying out a parallel project at the same time on MERS-related coronavirus,” Ebright said, referring to the virus that causes Middle East Respiratory Syndrome.

Asked about the grant materials, Robert Kessler, communications manager at EcoHealth Alliance, said, “We applied for grants to conduct research. The relevant agencies deemed that to be important research, and thus funded it. So I don’t know that there’s a whole lot to say.”

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period — from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.

The closest relative of SARS-CoV-2, which causes Covid-19, is a virus found in bats, making the animals a focal point for efforts to understand the origins of the pandemic. Exactly how the virus jumped to humans is the subject of heated debate. Many scientists believe that it was a natural spillover, meaning that the virus passed to humans in a setting such as a wet market or rural area where humans and animals are in close contact. Biosafety experts and internet sleuths who suspect a lab origin, meanwhile, have spent more than a year poring over publicly available information and obscure scientific publications looking for answers. In the past few months, leading scientists have also called for a deeper investigation of the pandemic’s origins, as has President Joe Biden, who in May ordered the intelligence community to study the issue. On August 27, Biden announced that the intelligence inquiry was inconclusive.

Biden blamed China for failing to release critical data, but the U.S. government has also been slow to release information. The Intercept initially requested the proposals in September 2020.

“I wish that this document had been released in early 2020,” said Chan, who has called for an investigation of the lab-leak origin theory. “It would have changed things massively, just to have all of the information in one place, immediately transparent, in a credible document that was submitted by EcoHealth Alliance.”

The second grant, “Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emerging Infectious Disease Hotspots of Southeast Asia,” was awarded in August 2020 and extends through 2025. The proposal, written in 2019, often seems prescient, focusing on scaling up and deploying resources in Asia in case of an outbreak of an “emergent infectious disease” and referring to Asia as “this hottest of the EID hotspots.”

Details Emerge About Coronavirus Research at Chinese Lab (theintercept.com)

Newly disclosed documents detailing U.S. funding of Chinese research into coronaviruses show that Dr. Anthony Fauci, a top public health official, lied when claiming the United States did not fund “gain of function” research, critics say.

The documents made public this week shed new light on how much money the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and one of its subagencies, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which Fauci heads, granted to the EcoHealth Alliance.

The alliance, in turn, funneled the money to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, a top-level lab that sits a block away from the reported location of the first detected cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

At issue is whether the U.S. money went to fund so-called gain of function research, research that includes modifying biological agents so they become more transmissible or lethal.

Fauci and Dr. Francis Collins, the head of the NIH, have insisted that the grants did not back such research. Fauci insisted so during multiple congressional hearings, resulting in tense exchanges with Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who is also a doctor.

According to Dr. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and professor at Rutgers University, the new documents, which include grant proposals that had never been made public, show that the grants to EcoHealth meet the federal definition of gain of function research.

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

Both Ebright and Paul say the new documents confirm that Fauci was not truthful with the public regarding the grants, with Ebright also charging that Collins lied as well.

Collins and Fauci were “untruthful” when they claimed that the NIH did not support gain of function research or potential pandemic pathogen enhancement at the Wuhan lab, Ebright wrote.

Paul also reacted on social media.

“Surprise surprise—Fauci lied again. And I was right about his agency funding novel Coronavirus research at Wuhan. Read this thread and the papers released,” he said, pointing readers to a series of posts from Ebright.

“The U.S. did fund ‘gain of function’ research in Wuhan. Fauci lied,” added Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.).

Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), another doctor, wondered how people could still trust Fauci.

“Either he’s completely misinformed or has intentionally lied to Congress & the American people multiple times,” he alleged.

Fauci and Republicans have clashed during congressional hearings on multiple occasions. In July, Paul said Fauci lied to Congress when he said two months prior that the NIH did not fund gain of function research. He asked Fauci to retract his previous comments.

Fauci, visibly shaking with anger, refused, charging that he did not lie and accusing him of not knowing what he was talking about.

Shortly after the hearing, Paul sent a criminal referral of Fauci to the Department of Justice.

The newly disclosed documents “make it abundantly clear that he needs to be held accountable,” the senator added on Tuesday.

People convicted of lying to Congress can be imprisoned for up to five years.

Fauci previously admitted he misinformed members of the public about the efficacy of masks out of concern that there wouldn’t be enough masks for healthcare workers.

Spokespersons for the NIH and Fauci’s agency did not respond to requests for comment. Fauci appeared on CNN on Tuesday morning but was not asked about the newly released documents.

Newly Disclosed Documents Show Fauci Lied: Sen. Paul (theepochtimes.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Dr. Hope” begins as follows:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It’s the familiar duo—greed and control.

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

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

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

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

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

And even he cannot write under his own name.

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

America Lives Under Healthcare Communism (theepochtimes.com)

A COVID-19 vaccine mandate that was handed down by the Tucson government for its employees was deemed unconstitutional by Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s office, according to a Tuesday news release.

The mandate, he said, violates state law and goes directly against a law—Senate Bill 1487—passed by the Arizona Legislature earlier this year, meaning Tuscon must amend or repeal the ordinance or lose state funding. The law bars local and state government entities from imposing COVID-19 mandates on employees, although it does not go into effect until Sept. 29, creating what Brnovich described as a loophole that was exploited by Tucson’s government.

“The Legislature’s intent was clear when it passed S.B. 1824 earlier this year—government entities from the local to state level cannot mandate COVID-19 vaccines,” said his office, adding that the “City of Tucson could subject itself to potential liability claims if it were to take adverse action against an employee who relies on” the state law or an executive order handed down by Gov. Doug Ducey (R-Ariz.) to refuse the vaccine.

What’s more, Tucson has 30 days to rescind or amend the ordinance otherwise the attorney general’s office will notify the Arizona Treasurer to withhold funds from the city, which is located in Pima County, the release said.

The announcement from Brnovich comes about three weeks after Tucson’s government adopted the ordinance that required public employees to give proof of vaccination against COVID-19, the disease caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, by 4 p.m. on Aug. 24. Those who refuse or cannot provide vaccination proof will face a five-day suspension without pay, the city said.

As a result, Ducey issued an executive order to stop cities from imposing vaccine mandates until Senate Bill 1824 goes into effect later this month. However, Tucson has continued to mandate employees to either get the vaccine or face a suspension without pay.

Private businesses in Arizona have to allow medical or religious exemptions for employees when it comes to COVID-19 vaccine mandates, the attorney general’s office said in an opinion issued last month.

“A sincerely-held religious belief includes a moral or ethical belief against receiving a COVID-19 vaccination that has the strength of a traditional religious view. The sincerity of that belief should be judged based on the employee’s words and conduct at the time the conflict about the COVID-19 vaccine arises and not based on prior words or conduct,” said Brnovich’s office on Tuesday.

The Epoch Times has contacted the City of Tucson for comment. The city hasn’t issued a public response to Brnovich’s Tuesday announcement.

When the ordinance was handed down, Tucson Mayor Regina Romero, a Democrat, said the government has a “legal duty and legal obligation to provide and maintain a safe and healthy workplace for its employees” and claimed that unvaccinated people “unjustly” expose COVID-19 to others.

A Pima County judge in August rejected a request by the Tucson police union to stop the city’s vaccine mandate. Tucson’s city attorney previously has said that Ducey’s executive order doesn’t block the COVID-19 vaccine mandate.

Arizona Attorney General: COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for City Employees Is Unconstitutional (theepochtimes.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In May 2021, President Joe Biden gave the intelligence community 90 days to write a report on the origins of COVID-19. The declassified version of that assessment has now been released.

The report is only 493 words long and curiously ignores readily available information, instead choosing to focus on and reinforce questions that are, for the most part, unknowable.

Specifically, the Intelligence Community (IC) claimed that in order to reach a conclusive assessment, it required “clinical samples or a complete understanding of epidemiological data from the earliest cases.”

This China-reliant approach aligns with a recent response from Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID). When he finally conceded in June of this year that the virus might have originated in a Wuhan lab, Fauci also said that clinical samples of the earliest cases were needed.

At the same time, while the IC claims that China’s cooperation is needed to determine the origins of COVID-19, it acknowledges that China has refused to cooperate with any true investigation.

Fauci and the IC both understand that if there was information helpful to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), that information would have been released immediately.

The report, unsigned but issued under a Director of National Intelligence letterhead, appears to be structured in a manner designed to avoid upsetting China. More importantly, the report effectively protects China, repeatedly giving weight to the lack of foreknowledge of the outbreak on the part of China officials. The report ignores that if the pandemic resulted from a lab accident, no official would have had foreknowledge.

The IC also appears to conflate cause and effect by claiming that China’s failure to cooperate with an investigation is motivated by “frustration” that the international community is “using the issue to exert political pressure on China.”

Notably, the IC has shown a marked lack of interest in the copious amount of data that is already available and does not require CCP assistance.

Perhaps the most obvious fact pointing at a lab leak is simply that Wuhan is at least 1,000 miles from natural bat habitats—a point not even mentioned in the IC’s report. 

Additionally, Wuhan was the only location in China where bat virus experiments were taking place. In fact, Wuhan had at least three labs conducting such work—the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), the Wuhan CDC Lab, and the Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment. 

The director of the WIV, Shi Zhengli, herself admitted that she never expected this kind of virus to emerge in Wuhan. When viruses emerged naturally in the past, they emerged in Southern China.

Also ignored by the IC Report was the type of research being conducted at WIV since at least 2007, which has been well documented. Research papers provide direct evidence of increasingly sophisticated gain-of-function experiments—a process whereby viruses are deliberately made more virulent in order to predict emerging diseases—being carried out by the WIV lab in the years leading up the pandemic, including a number of experiments specifically designed to make coronaviruses more transmissible to humans.

Some of these gain-of-function experiments were also detailed in a Nov. 9, 2015, article in the journal Nature about experiments that were being conducted at the Wuhan lab using “chimeric viruses” in mice.

Notably, In 2014, Fauci’s NIAID awarded a $3.7 million grant to the New York-based EcoHealth Alliance, headed by Peter Daszak. According to Francis Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), some of the grant funds “went to Wuhan” as part of “a subcontract from EcoHealth.” In August 2020, after President Donald Trump canceled the first grant, Fauci awarded Daszak’s EcoHealth a new grant of $7.5 million. 

Only one section of the report refers to animal handling and sampling by the WIV. This section is in reference to one intelligence agency that concluded that it was moderately confident that the virus may have leaked from a Wuhan lab. Notably, all other agencies leaned toward natural origins for the virus’s outbreak. 

The report ignores that live bats were kept at the WIV, apparently the only location in Wuhan where bats could actually be found. The report also fails to note that thousands of bat samples were brought from Southern China to Wuhan by lab scientists.

The huge depository of bat samples in Wuhan was confirmed by Daszak in July 2020, when he discussed the early discovery of a close genetic match to COVID-19, noting that “It was just one of the 16,000 bats we sampled. It was a faecal sample, we put it in a tube, put it in liquid nitrogen, took it back to the lab. We sequenced a short fragment.”

Daszak, the person through whom Fauci was providing funding for the WIV, denied that live bats were kept at the Wuhan lab, claiming that that was not the way science worked. Daszak later deleted his tweet denial without explanation. Pictures from inside the WIV Lab have since emerged, confirming that live bats were indeed held by laboratory staff.

The report also fails to address the fact that the director of the WIV, Shi Zhengli, tried to cover up the fact that she had maintained possession of the closest known relative to COVID-19 for more than seven years. Shi suddenly renamed the virus in early 2020 at the onset of the pandemic, thereby obscuring that her lab had held a closely related virus.

Shi also obfuscated the virus’s origin. The location where Shi originally found the COVID-like virus was later discovered to be the Mojiang Mine where three miners had died with COVID-like symptoms in 2012. Shi would later admit that the Mojiang Mine was indeed the source of her virus.

Shi’s research on bat coronaviruses had previously drawn the attention of diplomats at the U.S. Embassy in China. In 2018, after visiting the WIV, they sent a number of cables to the State Department warning of the inadequate safety conditions at the lab. 

Fauci’s own official representative in China, Chen Ping, had herself sent multiple messages to Fauci’s office—all of which should have raised red flags. Chen noted that research papers detailing gain-of-function experiments at the WIV were being published as NIH-funded work.

Her inquiries with Fauci’s office appear to have gone unanswered. Chen also complained that she was being denied access to the WIV. When, after two years, Chen was finally allowed to visit the facility, she was forbidden from taking any pictures inside the lab.

Since the start of the pandemic, unearthed video footage taken by Chinese TV crews inside the lab has been used to pinpoint a number of biosafety lapses, as well as the fact that the lab was keeping live bats.

In 2015, an article in Nature specifically warned about the pandemic potential from the WIV experiments. Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist and biodefense expert at Rutgers University, presciently stated, “The only impact of this work is the creation, in a lab, of a new, non-natural risk.”

There is no mention of any of these pre-pandemic warnings in the IC’s report. Nor is there any mention of the warnings from the French government, which had initially helped with the construction of the WIV’s BSL-4 (biosafety level 4) lab as part of a joint venture with the Chinese regime.

However, the French government later refused to certify the WIV’s lab based on bioweapon concerns from military officials. France also denied China access to safety equipment and viruses over similar concerns that these could be used for bioweapons research.

Additionally, in 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was warned in a diplomatic cable of the construction of the WIV BSL-4 lab and the potential for biological weapons proliferation.

The IC report also failed to note that both the WIV and the Wuhan CDC were conducting bat coronavirus experiments in BSL-2 labs, a low biosafety environment that falls below the accepted threshold of safety for coronavirus research levels. A minimum of BSL-3 is required for working with coronaviruses, including isolation, culture, and amplification.

When Shi Zhengli finally admitted to conducting coronavirus experiments at BSL-2, a prominent natural origins supporter, Ian Lipkin, changed his view on the pandemic’s origin. Lipkin now thinks the virus did come out of a Wuhan lab, saying that “It shouldn’t have happened. People should not be looking at bat viruses in BSL-2 labs. My view has changed.”

A more recent development also ignored in the IC’s report is that the World Health Organization’s (WHO) lead origins investigator, Peter Ben Embarek, has now claimed in a Danish documentary that a lab leak is likely and “may well have been started by an employee at one of the city’s laboratories.”

Embarek, who headed the WHO’s team that visited Wuhan in February of this year, had earlier claimed that a lab leak was extremely unlikely. But he now admits that that claim was the result of pressure from the Chinese regime. Embarek told the Danish documentary team that after two days of negotiations, a deal was struck between the Embarek’s team and their Chinese counterparts. 

Under the deal struck with the CCP, Embarek would be allowed to mention the lab leak theory—but only on condition that it was determined to be “extremely unlikely” and that there would be no further studies into the issue.

The IC report also fails to address a Feb. 1, 2020, teleconference that was hastily organized by Fauci and Dr. Jeremy Farrar, director of the British Wellcome Trust. The teleconference took place after the previous night’s public reporting of a potential connection between COVID-19 and the WIV.

Fauci and Farrar were concerned about previous U.S. involvement with the lab, and that they had knowledge of public statements made by the Wuhan lab’s director about U.S. funding being used for controversial gain-of-function research conducted there.

Following the teleconference, public discussion of the source possibly being a lab leak was actively suppressed by social media platforms, health officials, and the WHO.

Teleconference participants were also instrumental in publishing two influential articles that were used extensively by media organizations to push the natural origins theory. Simultaneously, alternative theories—including that of a possible lab leak—were widely discredited as conspiracy theories.

Another related area of focus that the IC report failed to address was funding of the WIV from domestic sources in the U.S. government and how those funds were being utilized. The funding agencies, including Fauci’s NIAID and NIH, have responsive records and documentation in their possession, as does Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance, through whom funding of the WIV was arranged.

Indeed, EcoHealth documents recently released under the Freedom of Information Act have confirmed that Fauci’s NIAID funded gain-of-function experiments—including the construction of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses at the WIV. Those engineered viruses were tested on humanized mice showing that the viruses could infect humans and were more pathogenic than the original virus.

Publishers such as Springer-Nature and Lancet, both of whom aggressively advanced the natural origins narrative, have archives of early drafts, data, and review reports of the many papers submitted by WIV staff. The Wellcome Trust, with whose help Fauci orchestrated his secret teleconference, has records pertaining to both its role in the teleconference as well as in funding the WIV.

The lab that trained WIV staff, the Galveston National Laboratory in Texas, has detailed information both on the training and the staff. The government of France has records on the construction of the lab and on the disputes that ultimately led France to withdraw from the WIV. The EU also funded the WIV and has pertinent records. 

There are also whistleblowers from Western countries. While it is not realistic to gain direct access to Chinese whistleblowers such as Xiao Botao, a scientist from Wuhan, who was the first to publicly blame a lab leak for the pandemic on Feb. 6, 2020, there are many others—including some scientists who may have been initially misled by their peers.

Andrew Huff used to work as associate vice president at Daszak’s EcoHealth. He has since posted a number of statements on LinkedIn blaming a lab leak for the pandemic and also blaming international scientists for collaborating in the lab leak cover-up.

In response to the claim that the virus’s origin could not be determined, Huff stated that “you can read the peer reviewed studies, patent filings, grant applications, and Fauci emails, and it is very clear what Fauci’s role was.”

There are also a number of scientists involved in initial efforts to push the natural origins theory who have since had a change of heart. Stanley Perlman now says that the lab leak theory is “back on the table.” And signatory Charles Calisher claims that it was “over the top” to call the lab leak a conspiracy theory.

Another signatory, Peter Palese, is now demanding a proper investigation. Most notably, University of Chicago professor Bernard Roizman has stated that the virus originated from the lab due to “sloppiness,“ claiming that Wuhan lab personnel “can’t admit they did something so stupid.”

The intelligence community’s report has stated that “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19.”

But there is a wealth of information in the public realm that is readily available and does not require the vast resources of our nation’s intelligence communities or the CCP’s cooperation.

If the IC’s intention was to provide the public with an answer to the origin of the virus, that answer could easily be found.

Intelligence Community Assessment on COVID-19 Origins Ignores Readily Available Information (theepochtimes.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Epoch Times has contacted Rutgers for comment.

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

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

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

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

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

New documents have been released detailing U.S.-funded research on various types of coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in China, where the first outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus occurred.

More than 900 pages of materials were obtained by The Intercept in connection with a Freedom of Information lawsuit by the publication against the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

The documents detail the work of the EcoHealth Alliance, a U.S.-based health organization that used federal money to fund research into bat coronaviruses at the Chinese lab.

They include two previously unpublished grant proposals funded by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, as well as project updates related to EcoHealth Alliance’s research.

One of the grants awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance is titled “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence,” and amounts to $666,422.

It outlines an ambitious plan led by EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak to “investigate the ecology, evolutionary biology and transmission dynamics of bat coronaviruses at the human-wildlife interface.”

“Specifically, we will conduct field studies in China to obtain high quality samples from bats, and identify, characterize and isolate known and novel coronavirus. We will analyze the patterns of coronavirus transmission among bats and other wildlife, and the risk of spillover to humans,” the proposal reads. The research also involved screening people who work with live animals.

The documents also note that key experimental work with humanized mice was conducted at a biosafety level 3 lab at Wuhan University Center for Animal Experiment, and not at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, as was previously assumed, The Intercept reported.

The grant proposal also acknowledges the potential dangers of the study, including during fieldwork, stating that it “involves the highest risk of exposure to SARS or other CoVs, while working in caves with high bat density overhead and the potential for fecal dust to be inhaled.”

“There is also some risk of exposure to pathogens or physical injury while handling bats, civets, rodents or other animals, their blood samples of their excreta,” the document states. “Virus isolation may be a challenge,” researchers note.

The bat coronavirus grant provided the EcoHealth Alliance with a total of $3.1 million, including $599,000 that the Wuhan Institute of Virology used in part to identify and alter bat coronaviruses likely to infect humans, according to The Intercept.

The grant was initially awarded for a five-year period from 2014 to 2019. Funding was renewed in 2019 but suspended by the Trump administration in April 2020.

The second grant awarded by the NIH to EcoHealth Alliance is titled “Understanding Risk of Zoonotic Virus Emergence in Emergent Infectious Disease Hotpots of Southeast Asia,” and was awarded in August 2020 and extends through 2025.

The proposal states it “will bring leaders in emerging disease research from the U.S., Thailand, Singapore and the three major Malaysian administrative regions together to build an early warning system to safeguard against pandemic disease threats.”

The team would “identify novel viruses from Southeast Asian wildlife, characterize their capacity to infect and cause illness in people, and use serological assays of samples from people in rural communities with high wildlife contact to identify the background rate of exposure, and risk factors that drive this.”

In-depth surveillance at hospitals serving these communities would be used to examine if cryptic outbreaks are caused by these novel agents, which researchers hoped would help them develop a rapid response to outbreaks in such regions.

Even before the pandemic, many scientists were concerned about the potential dangers associated with such experiments, and the newly-released documents will no doubt raise further questions regarding the theory that the CCP virus pandemic originated from a lab leak in Wuhan.

Following the release of the documents, Richard Ebright, a molecular biologist at Rutgers University wrote on Twitter, “The materials confirm the grants supported the construction—in Wuhan—of novel chimeric SARS-related coronaviruses that combined a spike gene from one coronavirus with genetic information from another coronavirus, and confirmed the resulting viruses could infect human cells.

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

Last month, the World Health Organization (WHO) urged China to share raw data from the earliest COVID-19 cases, saying it is “vitally important to know how the COVID-19 pandemic began” and to set an example for establishing the origins of all future animal–human spillover events.

A WHO-led team spent four weeks in and around the central city of Wuhan with Chinese researchers in January 2021 to investigate the origins of the pandemic.

In March, researchers said that the virus had probably been transmitted from bats to humans through another animal and that “introduction through a laboratory incident was considered to be an extremely unlikely pathway.”

However, the Chinese communist regime has faced fierce criticism from the international community, who have accused them of engaging in a cover-up.

In July, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus told reporters that investigations into the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic in China were being hampered by the lack of raw data on the first days of spread there and urged the regime to be more transparent.

Newly-Released Documents Detail US-Funded Coronavirus Research at Wuhan Institute of Virology: Report (theepochtimes.com)

Once again, residents of 1% of a state believe they should mandate what is done in 100% of the state (US Patriot)

A group of parents sued the state of Minnesota asking a judge to order Gov. Tim Walz (D) to impose a statewide school mask mandate.

The group filed the complaint (pdf) in Ramsey County District Court on Friday. The parents want Walz to declare a state of emergency and use the authority to impose a mask mandate on public schools statewide, the Pioneer Press reported.

“This action is brought to protect the health, safety and lives of Minnesota students, school personnel, and others by requesting a court order directing Defendant Governor Walz to declare a peacetime emergency … and issue an executive order directing all school districts and schools in the state to impose and enforce a mask mandate to protect against the spread of COVID,” the complaint states.

The Epoch Times contacted Walz’s office for comment.

The lawsuit argues that the state’s Constitution entitles students to a “right to an adequate education,” which is purportedly undermined by the lack of a statewide school mask mandate.

“This fundamental right to an adequate education requires at a minimum that Minnesota students be allowed to attend schools that provide a healthy and safe environment for them, educators, and staff and the public, including the students’ parents,” the lawsuit states. “Schools that do not impose mask mandates do not provide such a healthy and safe environment and thereby deprive students of their fundamental right to an adequate education.”

The complaint further argues that the lack of a mandate creates a “public and private nuisance” and accused Walz of breaching his fiduciary duty.

Walz used his emergency powers last year to impose a statewide mask mandate. He has not declared an emergency or imposed a mandate as the Delta variant of the CCP virus fueled a resurgence of COVID-19 beginning in July this year.

Minnesota health and education officials recommended in late July that all students, teachers, and staff wear masks in schools this fall, regardless of whether or not they are vaccinated against COVID-19. The state’s guidance followed that released days earlier by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“More and more evidence is mounting that the Delta variant is a very different and more challenging virus than the original strain,” Health Commissioner Jan Malcolm told reporters at the time.

The 139 hospitals which report child COVID-19 hospitalizations to the federal government said that a total of 16 children were hospitalized with the virus as of Saturday, according to data maintained by the COVKID project. That’s far below the peak of 43 hospitalizations reported in November last year.

Nearly 42 percent of U.S. states have school mask mandates in place, including populous New York and California, according to a tally maintained by Burbio. Every state with a mask mandate in place is led by a Democratic governor.

The national discussion over school mask mandates is split sharply among political lines, with Democrat voters and executives heavily favoring mask requirements. Republicans are pushing back against the mandates, including with outright bans on such measures enacted in nine Republican-led states.

In Missouri, the state’s attorney general sued to declare mask mandates unlawful, citing studies that show that masks impair learning, cause headaches, lead to lowered happiness, and hinder verbal and non-verbal communication, and other negative effects.

Parent Group Lawsuit Seeks Statewide Mask Mandate in Minnesota Schools (theepochtimes.com)

Dr. Ian Lipkin – an American virologist who once claimed there was “no evidence” COVID-19 could have come from the Wuhan Institute of Virology – appeared to reverse his premature stance on the origins of COVID-19 in a new interview. 

“If they’ve got hundreds of bat samples that are coming in, and some of them aren’t characterized, how would they know whether this virus was or wasn’t in this lab?” Lipkin asked in reference to the Wuhan Institute of Virology in June before answering, “they wouldn’t.”

The unearthed comments come amidst Lipkin revealing he was informed of a “new outbreak” in Wuhan on December 15th, 2019 in Spike Lee’s documentary miniseries “NYC Epicenters.” The mid-December date, which Lipkin defends when pressed by the interviewer, is at odds with the Chinese Communist Party’s public COVID-19 timeline, first informing the World Health Organization of an outbreak on December 31st, 2019.

The National Pulse has previously exposed Lipkin’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party, including the Columbia Professor receiving awards and consultancy positions from the regime.

Lipkin was heavily quoted by mainstream media outlets including CBS and USA Today in an effort to “debunk” former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Chief Dr. Robert Redfield’s explosive claim linking the virus to a Chinese lab.

“We should be moving away from finger-pointing,” Lipkin told CBS after adding there is “no evidence to suggest that it was created in a lab.”

Top Wuhan Lab Theory Denier Reverses Stance, Reveals He Knew Of Virus Weeks In Advance. – The National Pulse

T

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bushman has similarly received nearly 90 grants from NIAID.

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

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

Bushman pushes a similar, premature conclusion:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

From Gingrich360.com.

The Real Authoritarians Threatening America (theepochtimes.com)

Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said on Sunday that a lack of clear guidance from the Biden administration could undermine its effort to have Americans take COVID-19 vaccine booster shots.

During an interview on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” Hogan was asked to “give some advice” to President Joe Biden’s pandemic response team on the issue of extra doses of vaccine against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus. Specifically, he was asked about how should they talk to “Trump folks,” or supporters of former President Donald Trump, many whom are skeptical about the vaccine and unlikely to receive the booster shot.

“I don’t think it’s just about the Trump folks,” Hogan said, adding that he is being as critical towards the Biden administration over the handling of the pandemic as he has been toward the Trump administration.

“I mean, we’re getting some mixed messaging out of the administration, out of the CDC, the FDA, and the White House,” he continued. “And, you know, we need clear guidance on these booster shots because it undermines the credibility of it.”

Hogan noted that there people are confused about who should get which COVID-19 booster shot due to mixed messages from health officials and the White House. The Biden administration had initially said that those who had received both doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccine could begin having their third dose in the week of Sept. 20. Earlier this week, however, heads of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reportedly told the White House they may be able to recommend boosters for only some recipients of the Pfizer vaccine.

“I guess they slipped and pre-leaked an announcement about booster shots with all three vaccines and then had to backtrack it and say you can only use Pfizer,” Hogan said. “What about the people that took J&J? What about the people that took Moderna? They haven’t messaged properly about how to take care of these breakthrough infections.”

Hogan’s comments come after Trump said he will “probably not” get a COVID-19 booster shot. Trump contracted the CCP virus in October 2020 and briefly left the White House for Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, where he quickly recovered from mild COVID-19 symptoms.

“I feel like I’m in good shape from that standpoint—I probably won’t,” Trump, who received a vaccination shot before leaving the White House this year, said in an interview with Wall Street Journal. “I’ll look at stuff later on. I’m not against it, but it’s probably not for me.”

Maryland Governor: ‘Mixed’ Messages From Biden Admin Undermines Credibility of Vaccine Boosters (theepochtimes.com)

Typically, employees are allowed to opt out of things such as vaccination mandates for one of two reasons—health concerns or religious exemptions.

However in the new world of adios personal liberty courtesy of power-hungry governors, we take you to Washington State, where incompetent Gov. Jay Inslee (D) has decided that religion is no longer an adequate excuse to avoid the jab.

According to Jason Rantz of 770 KTTH in Seattle, Inslee has now told troopers with the Washington State Patrol (WSP), who have successfully worked for the past 18 months without a vaccine by wearing PPE (personal protective equipment) to avoid the ‘rona, that the religious exemptions no longer apply.

In an email sent to WSP staff Thursday, Inslee wrote that “there is no accommodation that can be provided for the religious exemption requests.” A subsequent email sent by a WSP captain confirmed the directive.

So as a result of the decision, which impacts any “public-facing” position, troopers must be fully vaccinated by Oct. 18 or state dictator Inslee says they will be fired. Rantz said the decision was made after human resources consulted with the Attorney General’s office. The email specifically puts the blame for the decision on Inslee’s office.

This decision could have a significant negative impact on staffing within the Washington State Patrol, which Rantz notes could “cripple the entire department.”

According to the email obtained by the Jason Rantz show on KTTH, a high-ranking official within the WSP confirmed that “there is no accommodation that can be provided for the religious exemption requests.”

“I wish I had better news on this as I know many of us have been waiting to hear back regarding accommodation requests,” the email, sent to some WSP staff read.

“I know this is hard news to hear for many of us. I wanted to share this with you directly as soon as I found out instead of waiting for the daily bulletin to come out.”

Rantz said that WSP troopers can expect to see their religious exemption requests denied in the coming days.

The second email, sent on Friday morning and written by a WSP captain noted that the guidance was provided by state human resources from “guidance provided by the Governor’s Office.”

“At this time, it has been confirmed that for any public-facing position, there are limited accommodations available,’ the email reads, and continued that “there is no accommodation we can provide for their religious exemption requests.”

Continuing, the email read, “I have already asked how this is possible and I’m seeking clarification on how we have been working in this Covid environment for the past 17-months utilizing the appropriate PPE and social distancing protocols to complete our mission.”

Leaked emails obtained showing correspondence between Inslee and representatives for Attorney General Bob Ferguson showed the state of Washington wrote the religious exemption form to be as “narrow as possible.”

This was done in order to prevent religious staffers from receiving accommodation. However the forms provided to assorted staff members noted that any exemption would be subject to the ability to provide accommodations.

They are not only trying to limit religious exemptions but also medical exemptions. According to the email, “the employee [seeking medical exemption] will have to take leave during that waiting period until they can come back to work fully vaccinated.”

While the email left a small opening that perhaps things might change, many state employees are preparing to lose their jobs.

One such person is a Washington State Trooper, Phillip Berg who is only five years into his career with the WSP. Berg previously served in the military and felt the call to join the state patrol and give something back to the community. He said that he is being forced out over the vaccine mandate.

“The public needs to be made aware of the repercussions of what October 19 looks like if medical exemptions and religious exemptions are not granted,” Berg said on Rantz’s show on KTTH, speaking in his personal capacity and not as a state trooper.

Berg believes the mandate will have a devastating effect on WSP staffing if accommodations are not provided.

“I disagree with the premise of [a] mandate on its face, [but] I decided to put in my religious exemption form for a specific reason,” he said.

“That it’s a chance to stand up for the unborn. That is my objection to it. The fetal cell lines used in the process to create this vaccine. So it’s an opportunity for me to have a voice for the unborn that didn’t have a choice in this.”

He emphasized that he will not let the feckless Inslee take that away from him.

“There’s nothing that anyone or any governmental entity can to do get me to disregard what God has placed on my heart,” Berg said.

“There’s nothing that can be done to me, promised to me, or taken away from me to dissuade me from my God-given convictions. So, yes, I’m 100% ready to be terminated October 18, and I can’t be swayed from that.”

Rantz said that if employees who seek accommodation or are ideologically opposed to Inslee’s mandate are fired, the Washington State Patrol will suffer what he describes as an “unprecedented staffing crisis.”

In a poll taken of members between Aug 9-17, troopers were asked if they plan to refuse the vaccination, even under threat of termination, 296 said yes. A more general question which asked troopers if they disagree with mandatory vaccinations showed 449 troopers in opposition to the plan while only 19 supported it.

In an email sent to members last week by the State Patrol’s association that was obtained by Rantz, they asked:

“Important questions need to be addressed, including what the agency will look like with a 20-35 percent loss of employees? How will the agency deploy resources to the areas that are most impacted?” the letter asked.

One trooper who said he will not take the vaccine and will accept termination is Robert LaMay, a 22-year department veteran who is refusing the vaccine. Also speaking in his personal capacity, LaMay warned of the implications of terminating so many troopers much as Berg did.

“I don’t know if people understand the amount of numbers, we’re talking about for state employees that are looking at leaving, LaMay told Rantz.

“I mean, we’re talking, just patrol, 400 or 500, 600 people. We have probably 800 guys that actually work the road, the rest of them are management positions, things of that nature…detectives. So if just a quarter of those types of people actually refused to get the vaccination and they are terminated on [Oct. 18]? That’s what the citizens of the state are actually looking at.”

This is something that bears watching. A number of power-hungry governors and mayors have decided to push mandatory vaccinations on their employees, and a number of those employees are going to push back. Even in a case such as Washington State, you’re talking to a substantial decimation of its authorized strength. 

Extrapolate that out to a city such as New York or Chicago and the results would be absolutely devastating. In a battle of wits, our money is on the cops. 

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Inslee is no stranger to screwing over law enforcement in Washington State. In May, he signed a police “reform” bill that will significantly impact (in a negative way) police in the state. For more on that, we invite you to:

DIG DEEPER

OLYMPIA, WA – On Tuesday, May 18th, Democratic Washington State Governor Jay Inslee signed a dozen bills that are designed to improve accountability for law enforcement. 

According to the Associated Press (AP):

“The dozen bills Inslee signed include outright bans of police use of chokeholds, neck restraints, and no-knock warrants such as the one that helped lead to Taylor’s killing in Louisville, Kentucky.”

Washington Gov. Inslee signs sweeping police reform measures https://t.co/ScdooL7Vl5

— Daniel Shunra (@shunradan) May 19, 2021

The legislation requires officers to intervene if their colleagues engage in excessive force, which is reportedly a demand that was inspired by the officers indirectly involved in the George Floyd incident. 

The bills also create an independent office to review the use of deadly force by police, making it easier to de-certify police officers for bad acts, and require officers to use “reasonable care,” including exhausting de-escalation tactics in carrying out their duties.

The bills make the use of tear gas and car pursuits restricted and it is now easier for individuals to sue officers when they inflict injury.

Before signing the bills, Inslee said in a statement:

“As of noon today, we will have the best, most comprehensive, most transparent, most effective police accountability laws in the United States.”

He added:

“These bills are all going to work in coordination with one another to create a system of accountability and integrity stronger than anywhere else in the nation.”

A bold move towards serious police reform by Jay Inslee.

The Associated Press: Washington governor signs sweeping police reform measures.https://t.co/FJyHloUuLN

via @GoogleNews

— James Sayer_The Breakdown (@JamesSa75888275) May 19, 2021

In 2020, Inslee convened a task force to suggest ways to guarantee independent investigations of police use of deadly force. This task force was put together after community outrage over the death of Manuel Ellis, who was reportedly claiming he could not breathe while being restrained by Tacoma police.

When signing the bills, Inslee did so at a community center in Tacoma. Under the legislation recommended by the task force, the state will have an independent office that will hire regional teams to review such cases.

There are also restrictions on hiring police or former police officers as investigators and eventually the investigations will be conducted by civilians with other areas of expertise, such a behavioral health.

Reportedly, the measures were driven by Democrats, who control both houses in Olympia and several of the key lawmakers pushing the bills were people of color.

According to Rep. Jesse Johnson of Federal Way, these individuals worked closely with families of people killed by police, community activist groups, and police groups themselves, such as the Washington Fraternal Order of Police, in developing some of the other bills.

He said:

“This process was deeply collaborative, deeply visionary, and deeply intentional about lifting up every voice from community to law enforcement.”

Washington Gov. Inslee signs reform measures banning police chokeholds, no-knock warrants https://t.co/28PNU7WaXN pic.twitter.com/YkYdE0JcNQ

— Jairo Rodriguez (@RealtorJairo) May 19, 2021

Some of the bills, including one signed earlier by Inslee that reforms the private arbitration system by which officers can appeal discipline, had bipartisan backing. 

A coalition of Washington state law enforcement unions, representing more than 14,000 officers, said it could accept some measures, including the arbitration reform and duty-to-intervene bills.

However, the coalition did express concern that the decertification bill threatened the due-process rights of officers.

The Washington Council of Police and Sheriffs, which represents 60% of the states fully commissioned law enforcement officers, opposed the bill restricting police tactics and the measure requiring” reasonable care” in using force.

Marco Monteblanco, Washington State FOP’s President, said that the organization worked hard to bring these bills into a place that is workable to allow officers to still do their duties and keep communities safe.

He said:

“We need to go out there and do things to make sure ALL citizens, including our law enforcement professionals, are safe.”

Governor Inslee Signs 12 Police Reform Bills, Local Police Respond https://t.co/aw6de6RsYR pic.twitter.com/pVD720bdEF

— TriCities WA News (@tricitieswanews) May 19, 2021

Rep. Johnson, who is also a member of the legislature’s Black Members Caucus, said in a statement:

“All of these bills together I think are a constellation of efforts to create accountability and justice within the system and I think it’s going to make things safer.”

Many Republicans have disagreed. Sen. Mike Padden, the ranking Republican on the Senate Law and Justice Committee, went so far as to call the package of bills “hostile to law enforcement.”

Padden specifically criticized the ban on the Lateral Vascular Neck Restraint, a technique used by many departments nationally, which he argued if applied properly, can be safe and effective.

He stated:

“It’s a shame to see that tool take out of the tool box.”

Monteblanco, who is also a Kennewick Police Department detective, also said:

“I’m optimistic, even with the bills I didn’t particularly agree on.”

Monteblaco was reportedly involved in the entire process of these laws, communicating with lawmakers and community members and giving his input from a police perspective.

He said:

“We are having these discussions on a local and national level and it is an obligation of police to listen and be at the table of those discussions. We may not agree on everything, but we are listening and that helps build trust and open communication from all sides.”

Religious, health accommodations for Washington state troopers rejected (lawenforcementtoday.com)

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

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

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

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

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

A Death Blow to Vaccine Passports?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Bottom Line

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

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

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

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

A group of Pennsylvania parents and Republican state lawmakers filed a lawsuit on Sept. 3 challenging the school mask mandate imposed by the administration of Democratic Gov. Tom Wolf and seeking an injunction against the order.

The plaintiffs sued Acting Secretary of Health Alison Beam in Commonwealth Court, arguing that Beam did not follow state law in issuing a mask mandate requiring children at public and private schools to wear masks, according to The Associated Press. The lawsuit also claims that Wolf circumvented Pennsylvania’s new limits on the governor’s emergency powers.

The governor’s spokeswoman dismissed the lawsuit as a Republican “effort at undermining public health.”

“The Secretary of Health’s order subjects healthy, non-infected teachers, children, students, staff, and visitors … to the wearing of face coverings,” the lawsuit states, according to AP.

Pennsylvania Senate President Pro Tempore Jake Corman and state Rep. Jesse Topper, both Republicans, are the lead plaintiffs.

The other plaintiffs include two private Christian schools, Calvary Baptist Church and Hillcrest Christian Academy, and parents from three public school districts.

The parents assert they will send their children to school without masks since Beam’s order is illegal.

Beam’s executive order (pdf) goes into effect on Sept. 7, the first day of school. Students, teachers, and staff will all be required to wear masks, regardless of vaccination status.

The order allows for masks not to be worn when playing sports or exercising outside. It also allows for exceptions where a mask “would either cause a medical condition or exacerbate an existing one, including respiratory issues that impede breathing, a mental health condition or a disability.”

The nationwide debate over mask mandates for schoolchildren is split sharply among partisan lines. Democrats strongly favor universal school mask mandates while Republicans oppose them. In Florida, the administration of Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis is withholding funds from school districts that run afoul of the restriction on mask mandates. In Illinois, the administration of Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker is threatening to “unrecognize” school districts that do not impose mask mandates in line with state guidelines.

In Missouri, the state’s attorney general sued to declare mask mandates unlawful, citing, among other evidence, studies that show that masks impair learning, cause headaches, lead to lowered happiness, and hinder verbal and non-verbal communication, and other negative impacts.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A federal judge this week sent home jurors who weren’t vaccinated against the virus that causes COVID-19 during jury selection for the trial of Elizabeth Holmes, the founder of Theranos.

U.S. District Judge Edward Davila, an Obama nominee, dismissed on Thursday in California nine jurors who had not received a COVID-19 vaccine.

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

Davila said his aim was to keep jurors and their families healthy.

Both the prosecution and defense in the Holmes’ trial backed the decision.

Experts said the decision may fall within the court’s ability but could reduce the fairness of trials.

“If you excuse those people, you no longer have a representative jury,” said Christina Marinakis, a jury consultant with litigation consulting company IMS.

“Any unusual restrictions on who is eligible to serve on the jury in a particular case could raise issues on appeal,” added Kaspar Stoffelmayr, of the law firm Bartlit Beck.

Stoffelmayr confronted the question earlier this year, as the lawyer for Walgreens Boots Alliance in litigation over the pharmacy operator’s alleged role in fueling the opioid epidemic.

The Ohio federal judge overseeing that case initially ordered that all jurors be vaccinated, but reversed course after Walgreens and other defendants argued that requirement would skew the jury.

Defendants said a vaccination requirement did not appear to be required by any statute, rule, or policy, and noted the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts recently told the media that “[w]hile courts may ask jurors COVID-19-related questions as part of their safety protocols, providing litigants with a jury selected at random from a fair cross section of the community remains of greatest importance.”

Less than 43 percent of Ohio’s population was fully vaccinated against the CCP virus as of June 16, meaning a substantial portion of the potential jury pool would not be vaccinated when the trial starts in September. That would “skew the pool,” defendants wrote, citing state data that show white and Asian residents were more likely to be vaccinated than black citizens, and other evidence that indicates conservatives were less likely to be vaccinated than liberals.

U.S. District Judge Dan Polster, a Clinton nominee, said the defendants made good points and reversed his order.

Jurors in the Holmes case were asked in the jury questionnaire whether they had received a COVID-19 vaccine or were scheduled to be vaccinated.

Holmes, the founder of a medical sciences company called Theranos, is facing wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud counts.

Holmes and her co-defendant, former romantic partner Ramesh Balwani, are accused of perpetrating a scheme that defrauded investors of millions of dollars as they claimed Theranos’s blood testing laboratory services were revolutionary and readily available despite knowing Theranos could not consistently produce accurate and reliable results for some blood tests.

The next court date is slated for Sept. 8. in San Jose.

Approximately 81.9 percent of residents 12 or older in Santa Clara County, which includes San Jose, have been fully vaccinated against the CCP virus, the county said on Sept. 3. Statewide, 67 percent of all residents were fully vaccinated, with another 10 percent partially vaccinated according to the California Department of Public Health.

Federal Judge Dismisses Jurors Who Haven’t Gotten COVID-19 Vaccines (theepochtimes.com)

A coalition of Oregon police officers and firefighters have sued Gov. Kate Brown over a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for state employees.

The plaintiffs—including the Oregon Fraternal Order of Police and the Kingsley Firefighters Association—argued in a lawsuit filed Friday in a Jefferson County court (pdf) that Brown’s executive order violates a number of laws and want it blocked.

“Plaintiffs seek an order declaring EO No. 21-29 is unenforceable because it conflicts with Oregon statutes, would result in a common law wrongful discharge of the Plaintiffs, conflicts with the Oregon Constitution’s guarantee of free expression, and conflicts with the United States Constitution guarantee of equal protection, free exercise, and due process,” the complaint states.

Brown issued an executive order (pdf) on Aug. 13 that imposed a mandatory vaccine requirement on all executive branch employees. In the order, Brown said that, to date, around 70 percent of the state’s executive branch employees had taken the vaccine voluntarily, prompted in part by state efforts like organizing onsite vaccine clinics and financial incentives.

Citing the rise in COVID-19 infections and noting that both private and public employers across the United States have imposed mandates, Brown said it was time for tougher measures in Oregon.

“With the Delta variant raging in Oregon, with the state’s ability to fully return to in-person work continuing to be hampered by the risks from COVID-19, having implemented a series of incentives aimed at achieving voluntary compliance, and with full FDA approval of the COVID-19 vaccine expected within weeks, the time has come for any remaining state employees and those who work alongside them in state government to get vaccinated,” she wrote in the order.

Ten days after Brown’s order, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave full regulatory approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech COVID-19 vaccine.

The order gives Oregon state workers until Oct. 18 to provide proof of vaccination or face consequences that could include dismissal.

The plaintiffs argued in the complaint that enforcement of the order would result in wrongful termination, and they have asked the court to declare it unlawful and block its enforcement.

“The individual plaintiffs are Executive Branch employees … who want to exercise control over their own medical treatment and are being forced to choose between their rights privileges and liberties as citizens on the one hand and their employment, careers, and financial futures on the other,” the complaint states.

The Epoch Times has reached out to the governor’s office for comment on the suit.

Brown’s spokesperson Liz Merah defended the executive order in a statement to The Associated Press.

“Given the seriousness of the situation, employer vaccine requirements have become an important tool, and state government plays a part. It’s critical to protect state workers, workplaces, and facilities, as well as members of the public who use state services,” she told the outlet.

The lawsuit comes as Oregon has faced a sharp rise in COVID-19 infections in recent weeks, with a seven-day average of 2,222 daily cases on Sept. 2, compared to fewer than 500 in mid-July, according to state health authorities.

Oregon Police and Firefighters Sue Governor Over COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate (theepochtimes.com)

It is essential that we refocus our capabilities on the demonstrably highest probability source of the next global pandemic: genetically-engineered viruses that are being increasingly created in labs in China.

Aggregating Disparate Information

Over the course of late-2019 to the present, humanity has experienced the most disruptive series of events since World War II. However, unlike the World War II period, many of those affected remain bewildered and lacking access to even fundamental information regarding the origin, current status, or what success even looks like in this situation. The COVID-19 pandemic has altered the strategic environment in the Asia-Pacific, caused massive economic hardship, and generated domestic chaos across multiple systemically important nations in Asia, the Middle East, and the West. Over the course of this period, there are several previously disparate pieces of information that, when logically aggregated, generate a clear signal from what is otherwise a sea of undefined noise.

COVID-19 Relevant Patent Filings Since 1998

Dr. David Martin is the founder and chairman of M-Cam, the world’s leading international intangible asset underwriter that specializes in innovation finance, trade finance, and intangible asset finance. Since 1998, Martin and his team have developed a unique database and other related data assets focused on patent activity that is directly related to coronaviruses. The M-Cam team conducted a disciplined and comprehensive study that reviewed coronavirus-related patent filings since 1998. Martin’s findings, all of which can be independently verified through publicly available patent databases, are astonishing.

Fundamentally, Martin has clearly demonstrated that the virus that causes COVID-19 is neither genetically nor clinically novel in any sense and has not been so in over 20 years. He and his team also identify, isolate, and assess an April 19, 2002 U.S. patent filing (U.S. Patent Number 72279327) that clearly demonstrates that American researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill literally engineered the SARS virus. For some historical context, the first officially identified case of the alleged SARS outbreak in China was in Guangdong Province in November 2002.

The patent record itself shows that SARS is not a natural progression of a zoonotic (animal origin) modification of coronavirus. In other words, Martin’s research suggests that the patent record demonstrates that the first SARS virus may not have originated in nature. The April 2002 U.S. patent describes the bioengineering work as producing an infectious, replication-defective coronavirus that was specifically targeted for human lung epithelium—that is a description of SARS. Martin notes that this patent lays out the fact that these researchers knew that the ACE receptor, ACE2 binding domain, the S1 spike protein, and other elements could be synthetically modified in laboratory settings. This could be done using existing gene sequencing technologies (even back in 2002) to utilize computer code to turn this genetic sequence into a pathogen or an intermediate host of a pathogen.

This work was funded in its critical early stages in the United States under the scientific rationale that this SARS virus could be a vector to distribute a universal HIV vaccine, the lifelong (and still unrealized) pipe dream of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden and the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. However, it was also noted by these scientists that this same exact research had bioweapons applications as well.

Serious Lab Security Incidents Occur Much More Often Than We Think

Dr. Marc Lipsitch of Harvard has been at the forefront of systematically identifying and determining the risk of high-risk pathogen research in quantifiable, and therefore independently verifiable, terms. His works cover various open-source case studies of serious errors made in advanced Biosafety Level 3 (BSL3) and even Biosafety Level 4 (BSL4) settings in countries such as the United States, United Kingdom, and China.

Lipsitch’s work has also revealed that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) receives on average two reports per week regarding serious incidents pertaining to Select Agents (high-risk biomaterials that pose clear risks to public health) from labs in the United States alone.

If this is the general rate of these events in the United States, it is not an unreasonable or unfair assumption that this rate also likely remains (at a minimum) consistent in China as well. This is due to the (at least officially) globally consistent engineering, lab management, and other related protocols and standards of BSL3 and BSL4 labs. It should also be noted that many of China’s leading scientists who engage in multiple forms of high-risk pathogen research have been trained in the United States with some even having worked inside the CDC before returning to China.

When considering Martin’s patent-based evidence that the SARS virus was likely initially created in a laboratory in 2002, the above-mentioned statistic becomes problematic. This U.S. patent filing combined with multiple linked scientific publications enabled critical knowhow to become globally accessible for the first time. Also problematic is the fact that the lead researcher on this patent, Dr. Ralph Baric, has an extensive track record of joint research and publications with like-minded Chinese counterparts, including Dr. Shi Zhengli from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, amongst multiple others.

Advances in Reverse Genetics Have Rendered Engineered Coronaviruses Indistinguishable From Natural Origin Coronaviruses

Dr. Xiaoxu Sean Lin, a former U.S. Army Officer and biodefense expert, has determined that recent advances in reverse genetic engineering technologies, such as those that have been developed by Dr. Shi Zhengli and a range of her Chinese and international collaborators, render synthetic lab-created coronaviruses indistinguishable from coronaviruses originally found in nature. The implications of these developments are difficult to overstate. For one, this injects a fundamental degree of uncertainty and unreliability into the countless investigations that are occurring across the world that seek to determine the origins of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

Secondly, these advanced technologies enable a strong degree of plausible deniability in the event of a lab leak when engineering synthetic coronaviruses, conducting gain-of function experiments on previously-natural coronaviruses, and/or other high-risk pathogen research. The use of these technologies in laboratory settings has traditionally been confined to a relatively finite number of research groups in China and several Western countries. However, my colleague and I have recently identified a broader diffusion process that appears to be underway within China itself. Continuous monitoring, risk assessment, and the development of concrete response options must be an absolute priority.

Many Other Naturally Occurring Zoonoses Pose Serious Risks to Human Health, But Most Are Not Human-to-Human Transmissible

Billions of dollars continue to be spent on government- and NGO-administered infectious disease surveillance and control programs in frontier environments across the world, and in the tropics in particular. These funds are often justified on the grounds that these programs represent an early warning detection system to rapidly identify and prevent global pandemics. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is particularly active in this domain and has previously worked extensively in China. However, SARS-CoV-2 appears to have flown right past them.

This is not to suggest that the infectious disease surveillance and control work done by the USAID and others is not valuable. However, it must be noted that the majority of zoonotic pathogens that infect humans with the highest statistical frequency, such as malaria, dengue, scrub typhus, melioidosis, leptospirosis, and others are not transmissible between humans. Therefore, they do not pose a high risk of causing a global, or even regional, pandemic.

A Targeted Early Warning System Must Be Developed

The fact pattern outlined in this piece leads to an inescapable fact-based conclusion. We have spent billions with countless dedicated clinicians, scientists, and others working tirelessly to protect public health. However, we do not presently have a global pandemic risk surveillance system that corresponds to the current threat environment let alone the new rapidly emerging one. It is essential that we recalibrate and refocus our capabilities on the demonstrably highest probability source of the next global pandemic: synthetic viruses that are increasingly being created in labs in China. American and other Western scientists were fundamental in the early stages of this process, but they have now been relegated to the sidelines. This structural shift needs to be broadly recognized and directly acted upon immediately.

Emerging Pandemic Risks Come From Engineered Viruses in Chinese Labs, Not the Jungle or Bat Caves (theepochtimes.com)

As Afghanistan falls to the Taliban, U.S. deaths from COVID-19 reach grim milestone

President Joe Biden promised the American people the U.S. military withdrawal from Afghanistan would not in any way resemble the humiliating end to the Vietnam War. He broke that promise.

“The Taliban is not the south—the North Vietnamese army. They’re not—they’re not remotely comparable in terms of capability,” Biden said during a press conference on July 8. “There’s going to be no circumstance where you see people being lifted off the roof of an embassy in the—of the United States from Afghanistan. It is not at all comparable.”

Several weeks later, American forces were scrambling to evacuate diplomats and staff from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Kabul as the Taliban advanced toward the capital. Chaos ensued as thousands gathered at Hamid Karzai International Airport, where 13 American service members were killed in a suicide bombing attack, and hundreds of American citizens and Afghan allies were left behind. Earlier this week, Biden hailed the disastrous withdrawal as an “extraordinary success” that went exactly “as designed.”

Meanwhile, back in the United States, another human-rights disaster has been unfolding on Biden’s watch. More than 235,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since Biden took office in January. That is more than quadruple the number of Americans who died during the Vietnam War (58,220) from 1964 to 1975. On average, COVID-19 has killed more than 1,000 Americans every day that Biden has been president.

The horrific death toll marks another broken promise for Biden, who insisted during the 2020 presidential campaign that he would “shut down the virus” in the United States. In fact, the number of COVID-19 deaths on Biden’s watch is even greater than the American death toll was on October 22, 2020, the date of his final presidential debate against former president Donald Trump.

“Two-hundred twenty-thousand Americans dead,” Biden said. “Anyone who’s responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States of America. We’re in a situation where there are a thousand deaths a day.”

Once again, Biden promised that electing him president would halt the deadly pandemic in its tracks. “The way this president has responded to this crisis has been absolutely tragic,” he said. “So, folks, I will take care of this. I will end this. I will make sure we have a plan.”

Fact check: He did not.

Biden’s Other Vietnam (Times Four) (freebeacon.com)

Biden administration official Samantha Power violated federal law on Friday by riding an Amtrak train without a properly positioned face mask. Photos obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show the USAID administrator texting on her phone with a mask covering her chin, which the CDC has identified as incorrect and potentially dangerous.

The Amtrak website makes clear that not wearing a mask while onboard its trains is a violation of federal law:

Federal law requires all customers and employees to wear a mask at all times while onboard trains and in stations, regardless of vaccination status or state or local laws. Refusing to wear a mask is a violation of federal law; passengers may be subject to penalties under federal law, denied boarding, removed from the train and banned from future travel in the event of noncompliance.

The Free Beacon has learned that Power was not removed from the train despite her callous disrespect for not only the law, but also the health and safety of her fellow passengers.

Power is merely the latest example of a prominent Democrat flouting the mask requirements they frequently champion. See also:

Elizabeth Warren Violates New Mexico Mask Mandate at Biden Cabinet Member’s Wedding

DCCC Chairman Partied Maskless at Billionaire’s Estate in France After State Dept. Issued ‘Do Not Travel’ Warning

BUSTED: Habitual Parking Violator AOC Shuns Pelosi’s Mask Mandate, Puts Lives at Risk

Democrats Praise Lawmakers Who Violated Biden Mask Mandate

BUSTED: Biden Adviser Samantha Power Shuns Federal Law, Rides Amtrak WITHOUT A MASK (freebeacon.com)

Afghans are tested after arrival in the United States

Afghan refugees coming to the United States did not receive COVID-19 tests before departing Kabul, the State Department told the Washington Free Beacon.

The State Department’s disclosure comes amid increased scrutiny of the Biden administration’s handling of more than 100,000 Afghans, who fled the country following the Taliban’s takeover. The agency requires COVID tests before it allows foreign travelers to arrive in the United States, but it waived the requirement for those who evacuated from Afghanistan.

“Given the extraordinary circumstances, a blanket humanitarian exemption was issued for the requirement of pre-departure COVID testing for all individuals the U.S. government transported by aircraft from Afghanistan,” an agency spokeswoman told the Free Beacon on Friday. 

Reports indicate other significant lapses in the State Department’s handling of the Afghan evacuation efforts. The Associated Press reported Friday that officials are investigating cases of Afghan men bringing their child brides into the United States. “Intake staff at Fort McCoy reported multiple cases of minor females who presented as ‘married’ to adult Afghan men, as well as polygamous families,” a document obtained by the AP says. “Department of State has requested urgent guidance.”

Both the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security have defended the refugee-vetting process that has been criticized for leaving behind hundreds of Americans and thousands of Afghan translators and allies. Special Immigrant Visa applicants, who spent years waiting on agency background checks and other bureaucratic hurdles, were stranded as others boarded flights at the Kabul airport on a seemingly first-come, first-serve basis under the supervision of the Taliban. Republicans, as well as DHS officials, say the sheer number of refugees coming into the country makes it impossible for comprehensive background checks to take place.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.) and 26 other GOP senators sent a letter to the White House on Thursday demanding specifics on the refugees who are arriving in the United States, citing the high number of SIV applicants left behind in Afghanistan. Cotton estimated more than 57,000 of the Afghans evacuated were not green card holders, visa applicants, or U.S. citizens.

“Joe Biden cynically used the plight of those loyal Afghans who served alongside American troops to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans who had no right to be in the country and is now bringing them into the country to the tune of thousands every day, with no ability to vet whether or not they’re a security threat at all,” Cotton said.

Afghans received COVID tests after their arrival at Dulles International Airport in Virginia and Philadelphia International Airport. The State Department official declined to elaborate on the quarantine procedures for those who test positive.

Afghan Refugees Not Tested for COVID Before Landing in US (freebeacon.com)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

However, Collins and Fauci in recent years have helped shape policy changes, directly and through their aides, that undercut the committee’s authority, according to federal documents, congressional testimony and interviews with dozens of present and former officials and science experts.

***

Since then, the experiments have continued to unfold amid secrecy, and HHS, which administers the review committee, has kept its work confidential: No agendas, meeting minutes or other records of its proceedings are public. Even the names of the federal officials assigned to serve on the committee, which has spanned the Obama, Trump and Biden administrations, are kept secret

On Sunday, March 7, 2021, Collins argued to CBS News that hydroxychloroquine was a “bust:”

“Basically it was a bust … maybe it got in the way of trying other kinds of repurposed drugs. All the enthusiasm about hydroxychloroquine was basically dependent on anecdotal reports,” Collins said. “And that did leave everybody with kind of a sour taste in their mouths … we had to get over that. I think we’re over it now.”

“The NIH is in full cover-up mode about the COVID-19 controversies and politics. Where are the emails?” asked Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton.

On August 25, 2021, Judicial Watch made public 129 pages of records from HHS that included an “urgent for Dr. Fauci” email chain which cites ties between the Wuhan lab and the taxpayer-funded EcoHealth Alliance. The government emails also reported that the foundation of U.S. billionaire Bill Gates worked closely with the Chinese government to pave the way for Chinese-produced medications to be sold outside China and help “raise China’s voice of governance by placing representatives from China on important international counsels as high level commitment from China.”

In July, Judicial Watch obtained records from NIAID officials in connection with the Wuhan Institute of Virology revealing significant collaborations and funding that began in 2014. The records revealed that NIAID gave nine China-related grants to EcoHealth Alliance to research coronavirus emergence in bats and was the NIH’s top issuer of grants to the Wuhan lab itself.

Also in July, Judicial Watch uncovered CDC records revealing that Facebook coordinated closely with the CDC to control the COVID narrative and “misinformation” and that over $3.5 million in free advertising has been given to the CDC by social media companies.

In June, Judicial Watch announced that it filed FOIA lawsuits against the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) and the State Department for information on the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the origins of the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Also in June, Judicial Watch obtained records from HHS revealing that from 2014 to 2019, $826,277 was given to the Wuhan Institute of Virology for bat coronavirus research by the NIAID.

In March, Judicial Watch publicly released emails and other records of Fauci and Dr. H. Clifford Lane from HHS showing that NIH officials tailored confidentiality forms to China’s terms and that the WHO conducted an unreleased, “strictly confidential” COVID-19 epidemiological analysis in January 2020. Additionally, the emails reveal an independent journalist in China pointing out the inconsistent COVID numbers in China to NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’ Deputy Director for Clinical Research and Special Projects Lane.

In October 2020, Judicial Watch uncovered emails showing a WHO entity pushing for a press release, approved by Fauci, “especially” supporting China’s COVID-19 response.

HHS Sued For New Emails Over Whuhan Institute and Hydroxychloroquine – The Independent Citizen

Weeks after government whistleblowers exposed “widespread” COVID-19 infections at a major shelter housing illegal immigrant youths, a Texas county reports a startling 107% increase in cases among underage migrants in facilities within its boundaries. The government classifies the young migrants as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) and the U.S. is currently caring for about 14,319, according to figures provided by the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), the agency in charge of the madness. American taxpayers provide the illegal immigrants with a variety of costly services, including a classroom education, mental and medical health services, and an array of recreation activities.

Government shelters across the nation are overcrowded because the number of UAC has increased dramatically in the last few months. Nearly half (46%) are from Guatemala, government figures show, with 25% from Honduras, 14% from El Salvador and 8% classified as “other.” The overwhelming majority (72%) are over 14 years old and 68% are boys. Reports indicate that COVID-19—and probably other ailments—is rampant among this impoverished population, which arrives at the U.S. border with an unknown health history in the middle of a global pandemic. For a Texas county near the Mexican border, it has become a serious problem. Officials in Cameron County, with a population of around 423,000, release weekly Covid-19 statistics on their government website and the numbers are scary. The figures include the county’s general population broken down by city, gender, and age. They also include infections among UAC and the adults that care for them.

In the latest breakdown, the county figures reveal that the number of UAC in area detention centers and shelters infected with COVID-19 rose 107% in less than a week. An online publication dedicated to covering the U.S.-Mexico border reported the story this week based on the latest distressing health stats posted on the Cameron County website. The figures show that just a few days ago the county had only 28 COVID-19 cases among UAC and this week there are 58. The UAC infections constitute about 20% of the 300 new COVID-19 infections reported in the county in a period of just three days. The records show that all but two of the infected UAC were between the age of 10 and 19. HHS evidently did not return the media outlet’s calls requesting information on the facilities where the UAC are being held and what precautions, if any, are being taken to stop COVID-19 from spreading further.

In late July two federal employees who volunteered to work at a UAC shelter under a Biden administration initiative to increase staff to handle the influx went public with the COVID-19 crisis at another Texas facility. This one is at Fort Bliss in El Paso, and it has the capacity to hold 10,000 UAC. In a federal whistleblower complaint the employees, Arthur Pearlstein and Lauren Reinhold, write that COVID-19 is widespread among children at the facility and eventually spread to many employees. “Hundreds of children contracted COVID in the overcrowded conditions,” the complaint, which is addressed to various congressional committees, states. “Adequate masks were not consistently provided to children, nor was their use consistently enforced. Every effort was made to downplay the degree of COVID infection at the site, and the size of the outbreak was deliberately kept under wraps.” The document also trashes two private contractors hired by the government to run the facility and says the whistleblowers “witnessed significant waste, fraud and abuse.”

As early as March, data released by the Texas Health and Human Services Department exposed the COVID-19 outbreak in state shelters housing UAC. At the time 37 of the 44 facilities in Texas reported COVID-19 infections among illegal immigrant youths. At a converted camp for oil field workers in west Texas, more than 10% of the population tested positive for COVID-19 in its first four days, according to a national news story, and at least one UAC had to be hospitalized. Dozens of facilities in Texas house illegal immigrant minors for the federal government and many have been embroiled in controversy. Texas Governor Greg Abbott wants them shut down and has issued an order to revoke their licenses, asserting that the “unabated influx of individuals resulting from federal government policies threatens to negatively impact state-licensed residential facilities, including those that serve Texas children in foster care.”

WH report says US ‘not adequately prepared’ for future biological threats

The White House on Friday announced a plan costing over $65 billion to handle future pandemics, with a report from the Biden administration saying that the United States is “not adequately prepared” for future biological threats.

“We need better capabilities also because there is a reasonable likelihood that another serious pandemic that could be worse than COVID-19 will occur soon, possibly even within the next decade,” Eric Lander, the president’s science adviser, said at a teleconference on Friday.

“The next pandemic will very likely be substantially different than COVID-19. So, we must be prepared to deal with any type of viral threat,” he added.

Lander, who is also the director of White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), shared the administration’s new plan (pdf) titled, “American Pandemic Preparedness: Transforming our Capabilities,” to protect the country against biological and pandemic threats.

The cost of the plan is $65.3 billion over seven to 10 years.

“It’s vital that we start with an initial outlay of $15 to $20 billion to jumpstart these efforts,” Lander said. “Accordingly, we’re proposing that the current budget reconciliation provides at least $15 billion towards this goal.”

The plan calls for a centralized “Mission Control” office that acts as a “single, unified program management unit” to oversee the plan. The office is intended to draw on expertise from multiple federal agencies at the Department of Health and Human Services, as well as other departments such as Defense, Energy, and Veterans’ Affairs.

Discussions continue about what federal entity should house Mission Control, Lander said.

According to the Biden administration’s 27-page plan, the investments include those in “critical scientific goal areas,” including “vaccines, therapeutics, diagnostics, and early warning—as well as associated investments in strengthening disease surveillance, health systems, surge capacity, personal protective equipment (PPE) innovation, biosafety and biosecurity, regulatory capacity, and global pandemic preparedness.”

The bulk of the administration’s plan includes investing some $24.2 billion to have the United States be prepared to “rapidly make effective vaccines against any virus family.” This effort would include vaccine design and testing, development, and distribution.

Some $11.8 billion would be invested to develop therapeutics, and another $5 billion to develop diagnostic tests for large scale use in potential future pandemic response.

Beth Cameron, the senior director for Global Health Security and Biodefense, said she and her office will cooperate to implement the plan.

“We continue to take stock of our full range of biodefense, pandemic readiness, and global health security needs, including capabilities, policies, and practices that we need to update and refresh, building on our lessons from COVID-19 and other outbreaks,” she said in the teleconference on Friday.

According to data from Johns Hopkins University, more than than 640,000 people have died in America related to the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19.

Lander said that the pandemic has “exposed fundamental issues with America’s public heath that go far beyond pandemic preparedness.”

“The issues include the need to increase overall public health funding, strengthen the public health workforce, eliminate barriers to access, improve data systems, address disparities, improve communications, and improve coordination across federal, state, local, and Tribal authorities,” he said.

The CCP virus pandemic continues to spread across the globe. The United States on Sept. 3 has a 7-day average of 153,246 new cases and 1,047 deaths daily, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Biden Admin Releases $65 Billion Plan to Handle Future Pandemics (theepochtimes.com)

Forbes has removed an article that alleged psychological damage in children due to mask-wearing and dared to contradict the govt and public health bodies advice.

“Do the benefits of masks and social distancing truly outweigh the long-term psychological, physical, social, and academic harm we are inflicting on a whole generation of American schoolchildren?” Wrote the article’s author Zak Ringelstein.

Forbes is yet to comment as to why it removed the post.

COVID-19

WEEKLY REMINDER

COVID HAS A SURVIVAL RATE OF 99.91+% FOR THOSE UNDER 60

THIS GENE EXPERIMENTAL JAB DOES NOT

LATEST VAERS COVID VACCINE DATA THROUGH AUGUST 23, 2021

650,075 Total Reports of adverse effects

REPORTED / vs. / ESTIMATED

• DEATHS: 13,911 / 139K – this is after CDC deleted some death reports (https://t.me/westcoastintel/13200)
• HOSPITALIZATIONS: 56,912 / 569K
• URGENT CARE: 76,159 / 761k
• OFFICE VISITS: 103,837 / 1M
• ANAPHYLAXIS: 5,752 / 57k
• BELL’S PALSY: 4,832 / 48k
• MISCARRIAGES: 1,709 / 17K
• HEART ATTACKS: 6,217 / 62K
• MYOCARDITIS/PERICARDITIS: 5,222 / 52K
• PERMANENTLY DISABLED: 18,098 / 181k
• LOW PLATELET: 2,870 / 28k
• LIFE THREATENING: 14,328 / 143k
• SEVERE ALLERGY: 26,655 / 266k
• SHINGLES: 7,578 / 75k

As a physician, I think it’s incredibly important for patients to have access to as much life-saving information as possible, especially as we still continue to see COVID-19 cases across the country.

In a commonsense move last week, Florida’s surgeon general announced that any Floridian is now eligible to receive monoclonal antibody treatment for COVID-19, without having to deal with the bureaucracy of a doctor’s office. 

Since then, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has opened nearly 15 state-run COVID-19 treatment clinics in an effort to relieve overrun hospitals. These clinics offer access to monoclonal antibody cocktails which are highly effective in treating COVID-19 patients before their condition worsens. The treatment is an IV infusion but is done as an outpatient. 

Rather than follow the lead of DeSantis, our governor in Kentucky continues to only support more mandates with the ever-looming threat of lockdowns as the last line of defense against COVID-19.

For quite a while now I’ve publicly praised the benefits of monoclonal antibodies and urged Kentuckians and Americans to be aware of this remarkable and effective treatment.

While Dr. Anthony Fauci and his friends at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have failed to adequately promote this treatment, that hasn’t stopped me from speaking out about it – both in media interviews and while traveling across Kentucky.

You deserve to have this critical information. 

If you are infected with the COVID-19 virus and begin to have a bronchitis-like cough, and you’re not yet sick enough to be hospitalized but are continuing to get sicker, you should ask your doctor about receiving monoclonal antibodies as a treatment. 

Monoclonal antibodies are designed to block the virus’ attachment and entry into the cell. 

Bad news:After worst week for COVID-19 cases in Kentucky, state sets more hospitalization records

If you have the virus, this treatment could potentially save your life. It helped President Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and Chris Christie when they were battling the disease and it could help you too. 

These antibodies are proteins that mimic the immune system’s ability to fight off harmful antigens that have also been modified to directly fight against the spike proteins of COVID-19. 

At this point in the fight against COVID-19, we have developed many groundbreaking treatments. Unfortunately, Dr. Fauci and the Biden administration continue to downplay monoclonal antibody treatment and promote mitigation strategies such as cloth masks, which peer reviewed studies have shown are ineffective.

Think about it, if there’s a patient in the hospital with COVID, and you ask the doctors and nurses what kind of mask they wear, none of them wear cloth masks when caring for a COVID patient. They all wear an N95 mask, as it’s the only mask that effectively filters out virus particles. 

More:Delta-driven surge enters deadlier phase in US – and who’s dying is changing; Fauci promotes monoclonal antibodies

Every day now we find that immunity is not perfect and breakthrough infections are increasing. Fortunately, the community immunity developed from both natural infection and vaccination has greatly reduced the current hospitalization and death rate. Once everyone becomes aware of the benefits of other treatments such as monoclonal antibodies and corticosteroids even more lives will be saved.

Vaccines and natural immunity are, in my opinion, the primary reason why hospitalizations and death rate have plummeted. To be clear, my opinion on vaccines has not changed. I’m still pro-vaccine, as I’ve always been, especially for those with high risk factors like older age and increased weight. However, I’m also pro-freedom, and in a free country people will evaluate their personal risk factors and are smart enough to ultimately make medical decisions themselves.

So, rather than only offering or promoting one treatment and instituting illogical lockdowns, I urge Gov. Beshear to follow suit of Gov. DeSantis and the people of Florida.

Monoclonal antibodies are an effective treatment for this virus that little attention has been paid to. This has to change. It is another effective tool in the fight against COVID and could help save countless lives.

Rand Paul is a Republican U.S. senator from Kentucky.

Rand Paul: Monoclonal antibodies could save your life from COVID-19 (courier-journal.com)

Pfizer revealed on Wednesday that it gave its first dose to a patient participating in its phase 2/3 clinical trial examining the efficacy of an orally administered drug that is designed to combat COVID-19.

CEO Albert Bourla on Wednesday night wrote on Twitter that “success against COVID19 will likely require both vaccines [and] treatments” and said the pharmaceutical giant started a “Phase 2/3 study of our oral antiviral candidate—specifically designed to combat SARS-CoV-2—in non-hospitalized, low-risk adults.”

The drug, which has been dubbed PF-07321332, is designed for COVID-19 patients who haven’t been hospitalized but who have symptoms of the virus and are at low risk of seeing it progress to become a severe disease.

The randomized, double-blind trial will enroll about 1,140 participants, who will get either PF-07321332 or a placebo orally every 12 hours for five days, according to a press release from Pfizer (pdf).

“Protease inhibitors, like PF-07321332, are designed to block the activity of the main protease enzyme that the coronavirus needs to replicate,” the release said. “Co-administration with a low dose of ritonavir is expected to help slow the metabolism, or breakdown, of PF-07321332 in order for it to remain in the body for longer periods of time at higher concentrations, thereby working continuously to help combat the virus.”

Currently, the only three COVID-19 drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) are the vaccines made by Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson.

Earlier this week, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that the vaccines’ efficacy for keeping people out of the hospital has dropped. In an update, the agency said that against the Delta variant, the vaccines’ effectiveness at keeping people out of the hospital was between 75 percent and 95 percent in July—a drop from 97 percent in June.

It comes as the American Medical Association (AMA) called for “immediate end” to the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19, and for doctors to stop prescribing it after podcast host and comedian Joe Rogan confirmed he took the drug in combination with other medications to treat COVID-19.

“We are alarmed by reports that outpatient prescribing for and dispensing of ivermectin have increased 24-fold since before the pandemic and increased exponentially over the past few months,” the AMA said on Thursday.

Ivermectin has been labeled as a “horse dewormer” by some mainstream media outlets, but the drug has been used for decades to treat river blindness and intestinal roundworm infection in humans. Over the course of the pandemic, some doctors have prescribed it for COVID-19, and several Indian states authorized the drug’s usage to treat the virus earlier this year.

Variations of the drug are given to pets and livestock, and federal officials have warned people against taking animal ivermectin for COVID-19, saying it could lead to hospitalization or even death. In veterinary medicine, the drug is designed to prevent and treat heartworm.

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

While there is technically no federal COVID-19 vaccine mandate in the United States, widespread vaccine mandates among public and private institutions have formed a “de facto…nationwide mandate” that is “creating a two-tier society” in which the unvaccinated are systematically ostracized, warns economist and author Jim Rickards.

“Whether you had [COVID-19] or not, need [the vaccine] or not, young or not, vulnerable or not, you have to take it, or you’re going to be pushed to the margins of society,” Rickards, author of “The New Great Depression: Winners and Losers in a Post-Pandemic World,” told The Epoch Times.

In addition to government institutions mandating vaccines—including the Pentagon recently requiring that military members get vaccinated—private companies requiring employee vaccinations include Walmart, Google, Netflix, Disney, and Tyson Foods. President Joe Biden specifically thanked these companies in an August press briefing “for their recent actions requiring vaccination for employees,” and said, “I know this isn’t easy—but I will have their backs.”

“One by one, these private institutions, think tanks, universities, state and municipal governments, the military, federal police … federal contractors … uniformed military, etc. … when you add up all these individual mandates, public and private, they’re tantamount to a federal mandate, even though there’s no single federal mandate,” Rickards said.

“This is just a drive, almost a monomaniacal drive, to get everybody in America to take the vaccine. Everybody,” he added. “If you want to participate in society, whether it’s going to school, dining out, social life, sports, whatever, you have to be vaccinated. If you’re not vaccinated, you’re going to be, in effect, in the basement. You’re going to be crammed down in the basement. You’ll be treated like a leper.”

Rickards further described a new societal dynamic that he sees taking shape, saying that there is an institutional drive to make life difficult for those who resist receiving a COVID-19 vaccine.

“[Institutions are] not content. They’re saying, well, in some situations, we can’t force you to take the vaccination, but we’re going to make your life miserable in the meantime by saying you have to be tested once a week or you have to sit apart,” he said, using sporting events as an example. Earlier this year, Major League Baseball’s Seattle Mariners provided special “vaccinated-only” seats without social distancing for fans who had received a COVID-19 vaccination, while those who had not been vaccinated were seated in socially distanced “unvaccinated” sections. Other perks for vaccinated fans included access to special sections in the Mariners’ stadium, including a space next to the bullpen in center field and a terrace above left field.

“Some places, they say, ‘Well, [unvaccinated fans] can come to the sporting event, but we have a special seating section in the upper deck, and the hot dog guy doesn’t go there. So, you can go to the ballgame, but you get the worst seat and no hot dogs and no beer, etc.’ But that’s what we’ve done.”

Rickards said that there are major questions about why so much institutional pressure is being brought to bear to enforce blanket COVID-19 vaccinations, pointing out that there has been serious discussion in the United States about potentially needing a vaccine passport for interstate transportation.

He asked, “Is it about pharmaceutical company profits? Is it about basically using COVID vaccination as a handle for a national ID system?”

Censorship and Mandates

On Aug. 28, former New York Times journalist and author Alex Berenson, who is a noted critic of COVID-19 vaccine mandates and lockdowns, was permanently suspended from Twitter after posting: “It doesn’t stop infection. Or transmission. Don’t think of it as a vaccine. Think of it—at best—as a therapeutic with a limited window of efficacy and terrible side effect profile that must be dosed IN ADVANCE OF ILLNESS. And we want to mandate it? Insanity.”

Rickards considers that available COVID-19 treatments commonly referred to as vaccines are, by definition, not actually vaccines.

“It doesn’t stop you from getting [COVID-19], and it doesn’t stop you from spreading [COVID-19]. And so, that’s not a vaccine as it’s understood, and it’s not a vaccine as it’s defined in law,” Rickards said of available COVID-19 treatments. “So, is it a treatment? Yeah. Is it effective in some ways? Yes. I don’t deny that.”

In his book, Rickards cites Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, professor of medicine at Stanford University, who previously said, “There aren’t any vaccines for human coronaviruses … We don’t have a single vaccine for any of them.”

“Dr. Bhattacharya makes a point that is often lost in the Wall Street chatter and hype about ‘silver bullets’ and ‘miracle drugs,’” Rickards writes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies have said that COVID-19 vaccines “are safe and effective” after clinical trials and say that side effects are rare. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walenksy and others have cited studies saying that the vaccines don’t necessarily prevent transmission of COVID-19, but have stated that the shots limit the severity of the illness.

The CDC, on its website, also says that mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, are considered vaccines.

“mRNA vaccines, such as Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna, work differently than other types of vaccines, but they still trigger an immune response inside your body. This type of vaccine is new, but research and development on it has been under way for decades,” it states.

Pfizer and Moderna did not return requests for comment.

Berenson, the former New York Times journalist, also hinted that he will be filing a lawsuit related to his suspension from Twitter, writing on his Substack page, “I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this.”

Prior to his Twitter suspension, Berenson had also posted tweets about university COVID-19 vaccine mandates. In July, after a federal judge rejected a request by eight Indiana University students to block the university’s requirement that students be vaccinated against COVID-19 or receive an exemption, Berenson noted in a tweet, “Another court ruling in favor of vaccine mandates/quasi-mandates – this time for a public university.”

Later, in August, Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett refused an emergency request from the eight students to block Indiana University’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The students had argued that they “have a constitutional right to bodily integrity, autonomy, and of medical treatment choice in the context of a vaccination mandate.”

Regarding university COVID-19 vaccine mandates, Rickards said: “Basically the entire class, the entering or returning class of 2021, is being told, ‘you can’t go back to school without a vaccine.’ By the way, [these students] are college kids, you know they’re 18, 19, 20 years old. They’re the least vulnerable [to COVID-19] other than children.”

The author, who completed his undergraduate studies in the 1970s, said that those who are older statistically have different risk calculations with respect to COVID-19 vaccination than university students.

“My chance of a severe case of COVID is much higher … Statistically that’s just true, and I’ll take my chance with the vaccine, but 18- and 19-year-olds have no business taking the vaccine because the trade-off is different, your risk of a serious case is very low and [of] side effects—they could be a lifetime—are high,” he said.

Rickards predicted that there will likely be more cases similar to the lawsuit brought by Indiana University students in the near future, with “inconsistent decisions” in various courts and “one or more landmark rulings over the course of the next year.”

“The history of cases like this when you get back to other vaccines … in terms of public school admissions and so forth, has tended to favor the vaccine requirement. Not in every case,” he said. “I’m not highly optimistic that the courts are going to come down on the side of the individuals in these cases. But again, these cases have a long way to go.”

‘Live Free or Die’

Rickards noted that, in addition to vaccine mandates, “mask mandates are back in a lot of places” in the United States, and are impacting interstate travel.

“I live in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and our motto here is ‘Live Free or Die,’” Rickards said, referencing the state’s motto, which was originally written by John Stark, a Continental Army general during the American Revolution. “And I’ll give the [New Hampshire] governor [Chris Sununu] a lot of credit. So far we’re standing up for that … right now there’s no mask mandate, there’s no vaccination requirement for indoor dining.”

In other parts of the country, however, mask mandates are in effect. Rickards described a recent mask-related standoff that he experienced in Los Angeles: After landing at Los Angeles International Airport, Rickards rented a car to drive to his hotel, and pulled up to an airport parking lot checkpoint, staffed by an attendant who would open a gate to let Rickards drive the rental car out of the parking lot.

“I pull up to the booth, I’m not wearing a mask, and the guy says, ‘Put a mask on.’ I said, ‘I’m in a car by myself. Why do I need a mask?’” Rickards recounted. “And he said, ‘If you don’t put the mask on, I’m not opening the gate.’ And he was 10 feet away. He had a mask on.”

Rickards was carrying a mask in his pocket, and put it on to comply with the attendant’s demand.

“He opened the gate, and I ripped it off before I drove through to let him know what I thought of it,” Rickards said.

He stated that varying and inconsistent pandemic-related rules across the United States discourage travel and create an “enormous” economic headwind.

“There are all kinds of constitutional and curtailment-of-liberty-and-freedom-of-choice issues all around this,” Rickards said, referring to pandemic-related mandates. “But if you just want to convert it to dollars and cents, this hurts business, travel, leisure, resorts, restaurants, cruise ships, airlines, hotels, you name it. It’s hurting all of it.”

Vaccine Mandates ‘Creating a Two-Tier Society’ in the US: Expert (theepochtimes.com)

With the recent release of Congress’ official inquiry into the origins of SARS-CoV-2 and the half-expected declaration that the virus was equally as likely to have natural origins as man-made origins, it seems increasingly certain that we’ll never know where COVID-19 actually came from. Not only have scientists still not found the “missing link” animal that allowed the virus to jump from bats to humans, presuming it has a natural origin, but there are two separate labs in Wuhan, China, that deal with bat coronaviruses, and neither of them are talking. It sadly isn’t surprising that Congress couldn’t get any straight answers on this issue after waiting over a year to start asking questions, and were thus left to put out another report whose findings amounted to, “Oh well.”

While the Wuhan Institute of Virology has long been the chief suspect in the lab leak theory, there is a second lab located in Wuhan that has a lower biosafety level and seems to have been quietly swept off the list of suspects between the time Trump first mentioned the potential lab leak and a few months ago, when our media overlords finally decided we’re allowed to talk about it. Thankfully, “Truth Over News” hosts Jeff Carlson and Hans Mahncke not only remember this second lab, they have devoted an entire episode to it so you’ll remember it, too. “There’s Another Lab in Wuhan That’s Received Far Less Attention: The CCP’s Lab” deals primarily with the main players at this second lab, but also shows its ties with the Wuhan Institute of Virology. The main takeaway from the episode is that anyone who believes China will ever tell us anything about the origins of COVID-19 is, at best, a fool.

Carlson starts off introducing the viewer to the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention Lab and its own bat enthusiast, Tian Junhua, who was in charge of studying coronaviruses. After giving a teaser about the lab’s proximity to the Huanan Seafood Market that took initial blame for the COVID-19 outbreak, Carlson drops an early bombshell about the date the lab opened, which is enough in itself to hook the audience into instantly wanting to know more. Mahncke picks it up from there and doesn’t disappoint, diving into Junhua’s background with the Chinese CDC and studying bats in particular with a starting timeline of 2012 and stomach turning details. The year 2012 may seem innocent at first, but it comes back into play later in the episode so keep it in mind as you watch.

Despite knowing very little about bats, Junhua trapped them for research with seemingly great enthusiasm. In addition to providing the viewer with his analysis, Mahncke also shows the referenced media story on Junhua so any interested audience member can pause and read for themselves exactly how reckless he was when collecting his specimens.

After revealing the stunning carelessness Junhua employed in capturing bats, Mahncke begins to connect him to other dots in the coronavirus pandemic. Junhua is not just an arbitrary scientist with no regard for safety protocols plucked from a list to support the idea that COVID-19 may have leaked from the Chinese CDC lab. He’s an accredited scientist and an internationally published author, who has written at minimum three papers in conjunction with, among other people, virologist Edward C. Holmes. Holmes was on the teleconference with Anthony Fauci in February 2020 that no one was ever supposed to find out about, where the initial plan to bury the idea that the virus originated in a lab was hatched.

As if this wasn’t enough to raise alarm bells about Junhua and the Chinese CDC lab, Carlson presents an article from a whistleblower in 2018 that outlined not only the deplorable conditions in the level-2 biohazard lab, but how many bats were still in captivity for research purposes. It will come as a surprise to no one that the article quickly vanished from the internet and the whistleblower vanished as well. Carlson then moves on to the date the lab was moved into close proximity to both the wet market and Union Hospital, which both saw COVID-19 outbreaks in the earliest days of the pandemic. Little is known about when or why the lab was moved, but Peter Ben Embarek, lead investigator for the WHO into the origins of COVID-19, was concerned enough about the lab’s recent move to speak with Danish documentary filmmakers about it.

Mahncke picks up Embarek’s trail from there, noting that he joined the “it wasn’t a lab leak” chorus in February 2020, and that his Chinese equivalents were just lovely, helpful people who never stonewalled him or tried to twist his arm into keeping his mouth shut. Again, what he said behind closed doors told the opposite story, even as he continued with the accepted natural origins narrative. Embarek even appears to have fudged the timeline with the WHO of the first coronavirus case happening in mid December 2020.

Holmes and Junhua come back into play as Carlson returns to fill in more of the timeline of the effort to squelch the lab leak theory. They published a joint paper in February 2020 to establish Dec. 26, 2019 as the official date of the first coronavirus case. In what feels a little too much like a planned coincidence, the head of the Wuhan Institute of Virology, Shi Zhengli, published a paper on the exact same day claiming she just happened to stumble across a bat virus that was similar in genetic structure to SARS-CoV-2. Zhengli tried to hide the fact that the virus came from samples taken in 2012 (the same year Junhua started working for the Chinese CDC lab) and had managed to kill three miners working where the bats lived.

It’s at least worth asking more pointed questions, which is exactly what Carlson and Mahncke do at the end of the episode. They don’t accuse anyone of a specific cover-up, but rightly point out that there are enough red flags not to just leave this at, “We can’t be sure what happened.” Given the evidence laid out in “There’s Another Lab in Wuhan That’s Received Far Less Attention: The CCP’s Lab,” not wanting to ask questions feels more like a conspiracy theory at this point than speculating about a lab leak. The straightforward, no-nonsense reporting in this episode of “Truth Over News” is more than worthy of watching and sharing, and may finally help put to rest the ridiculous idea that anyone worried about the two labs in Wuhan is just xenophobic.

“Truth Over News” premiers every Tues & Thur at 5 p.m.—exclusive on EpochTV.

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Epoch TV Review: Something is Rotten in Wuhan (theepochtimes.com)

The European Union’s counterpart to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), said there’s no urgent need to deploy COVID-19 vaccine boosters, coming a week after federal health officials recommended them and set a Sept. 20 deadline.

On Sept. 2, the European CDC stated that booster doses for individuals who are fully vaccinated aren’t needed for the time being.

“Based on current evidence, there is no urgent need for the administration of booster doses of vaccines to fully vaccinated individuals in the general population,” the EU agency stated, adding that its “report also notes that additional doses should already be considered for people with severely weakened immune systems as part of their primary vaccination.”

The agency stated that the priority now is to “vaccinate all those eligible individuals who have not yet completed their recommended vaccination course” and stressed that there’s a difference between booster shots and additional doses provided for individuals with weakened or compromised immune systems.

The European Medicines Agency last month concluded that more data is needed on the duration of the protection conferred by COVID-19 vaccines before it could recommend booster shots for non-immunocompromised people.

Besides the United States, Germany and France have announced that they would provide boosters to immunocompromised individuals and vulnerable people starting in September. They cited the spread of the Delta COVID-19 variant as a reason to push the third doses out.

After top officials with the CDC and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) last week announced they would try to start rolling out booster shots by Sept. 20, the World Health Organization issued a sharp rebuke against wealthier nations and accused them of pushing for booster shots rather than providing vaccines to poor countries. U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, however, said that the United States can provide both booster shots for its own residents and distribute the vaccine to poorer nations.

As booster shots are being rolled out, meanwhile, concerns have been raised that the extra doses would shift the definition of what it means to be “fully vaccinated.”

For example, in Israel, which is one of the most vaccinated countries in the world, health officials recently began declaring that individuals who have received three—not two—COVID-19 vaccine doses are “fully vaccinated.” Holders of Israel’s vaccine passports have to get a third dose of the Pfizer mRNA vaccine within six months of their second shot or they could lose the pass.

“We are updating what it means to be vaccinated,” said Israel’s COVID-19 response coordinator, Salman Zarka, during a recent news conference, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Stocks for AstraZeneca, which administers the majority of vaccines in EU countries, were up by about 1.19 percent as of mid-day trading on Sept. 2.

Europe’s CDC Breaks With Biden Admin, Says COVID-19 Vaccine Boosters Not ‘Urgent’ (theepochtimes.com)

On Aug. 31, the Hernando County School Board convened an emergency meeting and voted by a measure of three to two to impose a mask mandate for students in the Hernando County School System. This makes Hernando County the 11th Florida school board to impose mask mandates on children. In response, a 10-year-old Hernando County student urged citizens to “be like Power Rangers and fight back.”

Nearly 100 residents, mostly parents and grandparents of Hernando County school students, waited hours, standing in shifts in the sweltering heat, to have their chance to express their opinions about the proposed mask mandate. The overwhelming majority adamantly opposed the measure. Less than five came to express support. In the tense aftermath of an Aug. 24 school board meeting, where citizens began shouting at the board and each other, there was a notable presence of law enforcement outside of the building as well as inside the board room. Speakers were placed outside for the overflow crowd to hear proceedings inside.

Following public comments, the board engaged in discussion before casting their votes. Board Chair Linda K. Prescott (District 2), Susan Duval (District 5—who attended by phone) and Kay Hatch (District 1) voted to impose the mask mandates. Vice Chair Gus Guadagnino (District 4—also in attendance by phone) and Jimmy Lodato (District 3) voted against the measure.

In a leaked email, sent to a “concerned” parent before the meeting, Duval made it clear she had already made up her mind to impose the mask mandate before hearing any of the public comments.

“Our district is in crisis and I don’t see a reasonable way out without masks, better sanitation measures, better social distancing, etc.,” Duval stated in her email. “My support is for a 30 day mask mandate with a medical exemption. If after 30 days, the positivity drops [to] five percent or less, the masks become optional. If the rate is six percent or higher, we go for another 30 days. I hope that clarifies my position.”

Prior to public comments, Hernando County General Counsel Dennis Alfonso advised that not allowing parents to opt out of a mandatory mask mandate for students would not only place the board in violation of Florida’s Parents’ Bill of Rights (pdf), it would subject them to the governor’s promise to withhold the salaries of school board members who imposed a mask mandate for children.

A prepared statement, read prior to the vote, suggested Lodato had already decided to vote against the measure because it would violate the governor’s July 30 executive order (pdf) reinforcing the Parents’ Bill of Rights.

However, on Aug. 27, a Leon County judge struck down the governor’s executive order. DeSantis has vowed to appeal the ruling.

The Legal Battle

“It’s not surprising that Judge Cooper would rule against parents’ rights and their ability to make the best educational and medical decisions for their family, but instead rule in favor of elected politicians,” Taryn Fenske, Communications Director for Governor DeSantis, said in a statement. “This ruling was made with incoherent justifications, not based in science and facts—frankly not even remotely focused on the merits of the case presented. We are used to the Leon County Circuit Court not following the law and getting reversed on appeal, which is exactly what happened last year in the school reopening case. We will continue to defend the law and parents’ rights in Florida, and will immediately appeal the ruling to the First District Court of Appeals, where we are confident we will prevail on the merits of the case.”

Jared Ochs, Director of Communications and External Affairs for the Florida Department of Education, told The Epoch Times they “are immensely disappointed” that the ruling issued by the Second Judicial Circuit “discards the rule of law.”

“This decision conflicts with basic and established rights of parents to make private health care and education decisions for children,” Ochs stated further. “We will continue to fight to make sure every child has access to education. We are committed to the fundamental rights of parents and will push forward on appeal to ensure that this foundation of democracy is upheld.”

Orange and Indian River County recently joined Broward, Alachua, Duval, Hillsborough, Leon, Miami-Dade, Sarasota, and Palm Beach counties in implementing mask mandates.

On Aug. 30, Florida’s Department of Health announced that it is withholding funds from Alachua and Broward County following their defiance of the governor’s ban on mask mandates that do not permit parents to opt out.

“Unlike some other counties that are violating Florida law, the Hernando County School Board has enacted a mask policy that complies with state law, by ensuring all parents have the right to opt out their own kids from forced masking,” Christina Pushaw, Press Secretary for the Executive Office of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis told The Epoch Times. “We will be closely monitoring all districts that adopt mask policies like Hernando’s, to ensure that the choices of parents are respected by everyone in the school community. We have zero tolerance for unequal treatment, including discrimination against children based on their parents’ choices about masks.”

“There is no scientific basis for forced-masking children,” Pushaw said further. “Sadly, some school board members around the state are focused on playing politics instead of doing their research and doing the right thing for kids and families. By the way, if you compare counties in Florida that mandate masks versus those that respect parents’ rights, the data doesn’t support the idea that mask mandates are effective in any way. For example, the infection rate in Martin County (mask optional) is 1.37 percent while that of Palm Beach County (mask mandate) is 1.82 percent. If mask mandates work, why is Palm Beach reporting higher COVID prevalence than Martin?”

Citizens Speak Out

“I’m a mother and a front-line worker,” Carella Kara told The Epoch Times. “I have had the vaccination, Moderna, but was against it. So far, it has kept me safe along with proper PPE. I feel this virus and its changes [are] happening too fast for bodies to handle. If we cover with masks we protect ourselves and others from spreading it so fast. This is crazy not to help protect our kids.”

Kara was unable to attend the meeting. She was at home caring for her eldest daughter, who has contracted COVID-19. “I almost lost my youngest daughter [to COVID-19],” Karra said. “and now my oldest is on oxygen.” Kara’s husband has also had COVID-19.

“I still say parent choice,” Pam Everett told The Epoch Times. Everett was one of those who spoke against the mask mandate at the meeting. “They pay the taxes to the schools. They need to be in control about their children’s health. This is just one way of control and their hold is just going to get stronger and stronger.”

“It has no teeth,” Krysia Bailey told The Epoch Times as a message to other Hernando County citizens regarding the School board’s decision. “You can still send your children in without a mask. Don’t be afraid of the online form. Take a stand. Fill out the form. Let them know they do not have the authority to tell our children that they cannot breathe fresh air. Be there at the October 12 meeting. We must draw the line in the sand. Our children have been used as pawns for the last 20 months. It’s time to stop.”

“You have not earned the right to make medical decisions for my children,” Bailey admonished the board during public comments at the Aug. 31 meeting. “You haven’t earned the right to make any medical decisions for any child in this county. Even Vladimir Putin today said that he can’t force people to wear a mask in Russia. Are you less pro-choice and liberal than Vladimir Putin? Do we need to move to Russia for our children to breathe free?”

Bailey told the board on Aug. 31 she recently moved to Florida from Maine because she wanted “to be free.”

“I did not vote for Dr. Fauci or the Center for Disease Control, so the local leaders have to stop hiding behind useless recommendations from the people who have gotten it wrong from the beginning and make the tough decisions the constituents elected them to make,” Jose David, a Hernando County resident and “proud father of three wonderful boys” told The Epoch Times. “Hernando County lately doesn’t feel like the county I came to love when I moved here nine years ago.”

“We need to fight back,” 10-year-old Vincent Soto shouted over the podium on top-toe as cheers and applause filled the room at the Aug. 31 meeting. “I know I’m a kid, and to be honest, we need to be like Power Rangers and fight back! We need to fight back against evil!”

‘DeSantis Trusts Floridians’

“Governor DeSantis stands for parents’ rights, makes data-driven decisions, and follows the science,” Pushaw told The Epoch Times.”There is no empirical evidence to support the assertion that the benefits of forced masking of schoolchildren outweigh the potential harms. Masking kids under 12 is not recommended in many European countries, because their health authorities have found that the risks are not well understood—and the data shows that forced—masking of young children has a negligible impact on COVID prevalence and spread.”

“There is no authority more ‘local’ to children than their own parents,” Pushaw explained. “Governor DeSantis trusts Floridians to make the best choices for themselves and their families.”

“Thank you for your coverage of this masking issue in Hernando,” Pushaw told The Epoch Times. “I am SO happy to hear that parents are speaking out for their rights to make health and education decisions for their own kids, and Governor DeSantis fully supports them.”

10-Year-Old Urges Citizens to ‘Be Like Power Rangers and Fight Back!’ After Florida School Board Imposes Mask Mandate (theepochtimes.com)

It’s usually a good thing when a person has leaned from an experience. While times of crisis cause damage, they also can bring about innovation and wisdom. We can come out of a struggle with insight and be stronger for it.

Considering the actions and words of some of our political leaders however, I fear that they are coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic having learned all the wrong lessons.

While it may be coincidence, the language coming from President Joe Biden’s administration and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been strikingly similar this week.

The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) just launched the new Office of Climate Change and Health Equity. This wasn’t surprising as it was in response to an executive order from President Biden last January. The terminology used was interesting though. HHS claimed that it would use “lessons learned” from the COVID-19 pandemic to address climate change and health issues.

Meanwhile on Monday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told a crowd of supporters “What we learned from this COVID crisis, we will be applying to the climate crisis, the housing crisis, to reconciliation, to making sure that everyone has good jobs and careers that carry them through and create good opportunity for their kids.”

What I fear is that the lesson these political leaders are referring to is confirmation of just how easily and willingly the populace will give up its civil rights in the face of a health crisis. Authoritarian-minded politicians now know that if they can package an initiative as a response to a public health crisis, they won’t need to bother with worrying about the individual rights of citizens when implementing it.

In referring to a “climate crisis” and in tying it to health issues, politicians are setting the stage to continue to implement policies without regard to individual rights. They just need to act under the guise of responding to an immediate crisis.

The “Great Reset” concept is often dismissed as a conspiracy theory, but it is very real. It is a plan to use a world crisis in order to implement massive changes in political policies and government structures. It wants to reconfigure capitalism, and not for the better. Proponents of the Great Reset speak to the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity rather than a crisis. Again, this is no deeply hidden conspiracy or secret. It is all laid out on the World Economic Forum website in plain text.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is a supporter of the World Economic Forum and he addressed their annual conference in 2018. Last November while addressing the U.N., Trudeau said “This pandemic has provided an opportunity for a reset, This is our chance to accelerate our pre-pandemic efforts to re-imagine economic systems that actually address global challenges like extreme poverty, inequality and climate change.”

We should be very concerned when ideologically driven politicians see the COVID-19 crisis as an opportunity rather than a calamity. When leaders see times of crisis as a means to pursue radical change, they may feel inspired to drag out or even cause emergencies. It certainly is an easier way to bring the public on board than democratic exercises are.

In challenging times like now, citizens need to keep their governments in check. Constitutions and documents such as the Canadian Charter of Rights were designed specifically to protect the rights of individuals from government overreach. Section 1 of the Canadian Charter allows the government to suspend individual rights as it says our rights are subject to “reasonable limits.” Our government felt that it was reasonable to limit several our Charter rights in the name of protecting us from COVID-19. The courts and a large proportion of our citizenry agreed.

Having learned how easily the government can suspend Charter rights, we can rest assured that unprincipled and ideologically driven leaders will concoct future emergencies to bypass the rights of citizens again. We have heard everything from racism to firearm crimes to climate change being referred to as health issues now. That is no mistake. It sets the stage for state intervention that may bypass legislated rights protection.

Some of the world’s most horrific governments emerged from hard times. We saw that clearly enough just after the Great Depression. Citizens are too concerned with simply getting by to realize what their politicians may be getting up to. We always need to be vigilant and when we see world leaders referring to the pandemic as an opportunity, we need to sit up and take notice. An opportunity for whom, and at what cost?

Politicians Are Learning All the Wrong Lessons From the Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

Mask mandate and use efficacy for COVID-19 containment in US States

Damian D. Guerra^1,*, Daniel J. Guerra²

¹Department of Biology, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky, United States of America;
²Authentic Biochemistry, VerEvMed, Clarkston, Washington, United States of America

Background: COVID-19 pandemic mitigation requires evidence-based strategies. Because COVID-19 can spread via respired droplets, most US states mandated mask use in public settings. Randomized control trials have not clearly demonstrated mask efficacy against respiratory viruses, and observational studies conflict on whether mask use predicts lower infection rates. We hypothesized that statewide mask mandates and mask use were associated with lower COVID-19 case growth rates in the United States.

Methods: We calculated total COVID-19 case growth and mask use for the continental United States with data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. We estimated post-mask mandate case growth in non-mandate states using median issuance dates of neighboring states with mandates.

Results: Earlier mask mandates were not associated with lower total cases or lower maximum growth rates. Earlier mandates were weakly associated with lower minimum COVID-19 growth rates. Mask use predicted lower minimum but not lower maximum growth rates. Growth rates and total growth were comparable between US states in the first and last mask use quintiles during the Fall-Winter wave. These observations persisted for both natural logarithmic and fold growth models and when adjusting for differences in US state population density.

Conclusions: We did not observe association between mask mandates or use and reduced COVID-19 spread in US states. COVID-19 mitigation requires further research and use of existing efficacious strategies, most notably vaccination.

https://escipub.com/irjph-2021-08-1005/

A pair of top Food and Drug Administration vaccine regulators are reportedly planning to resign in protest over the Biden administration’s push to encourage booster shots for COVID-19 vaccine recipients.

The two regulators, Dr. Marion Gruber and Dr. Philip Krause, are stepping down in October and November, respectively, according to The New York Times.

The resignations come after weeks of an aggressive blitz by the Biden administration to encourage Americans to get a booster shot if they’ve received the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines.

An @US_FDA spokesperson confirms departure of @FDACBER‘s Dr. Marion Gruber and Dr. Phil Krause

Email from Dr. Peter Marks announcing the “two retirements” calls Dr. Gruber’s departure “a huge loss” and thanks Dr. Krause for “incredible contributions to public health” https://t.co/Ko5KzfhZzc pic.twitter.com/e5aolUwQ6v

— Alexander Tin (@Alexander_Tin) August 31, 2021

Trending:Biden Officials Turn on Him, Reveal How They Really Feel About Afghanistan Withdrawal

Gruber, the director of the vaccines office at the FDA, and Krause, her deputy, do not believe there is enough data to justify booster shots for the public, the Times reported.

Both had reportedly seen the White House’s push for booster shots as putting unnecessary pressure on the FDA to quickly authorize the doses without the needed data.

The pair were also frustrated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and its advisory committee for playing a large role in decisions they believed were solely up to the FDA, CNBC reported.

Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine regulator, announced in an email to employees that he would serve as acting director of the vaccines office until a permanent successor is found, according to the Times.

“Thank you so much to Marion and Phil for all that they have contributed and continue to contribute to the agency, and thanks so much to each of you for all that you do every day,” Marks wrote in the email, according to CNBC.

The White House coronavirus response coordinator, Jeffrey D. Zients, when asked by reporters about the resignations, said booster shots were dependent on FDA review.

“As our medical experts laid out, having reviewed all the available data, it is in their clinical judgment that it is time to prepare Americans for a booster shot,” Zients said in a briefing, according to the Times.

The FDA is planning to hold a public panel meeting to discuss the booster shots, the outlet reported. The agency is also planning to determine whether vaccines should be made available to children under 12.

Johnson & Johnson last week became the latest company to announce the results of booster shot trials, claiming that participants had a ninefold increase in antibodies after the booster.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has also reportedly discussed a recurring vaccine schedule with the White House.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin recently required all military service members to get vaccinated against COVID-19, but has not yet mandated the booster shots.

Zients has hinted that the Biden administration is seeking to require employers to implement vaccine mandates to drive up vaccination numbers.

The FDA fully approved the Pfizer vaccine for those 16 and older last month, paving the way for vaccine mandates and possibly booster shots.

Top FDA Vaccine Regulators Resign in Protest, Reportedly Point the Finger at White House (westernjournal.com)

A reconfigured global elite are shaping up around a new kind of vision for transforming our world. They’ve called their neo-socialist and multilateral vision the Green New Deal.

Joe Biden’s White House team are core players in this vision, as they seek to reinvent Roosevelt’s original 1930s New Deal into a contemporary twenty-first century Democratic Party platform.

But there are also other important players pushing this neo-socialist dream.

One has been the European Union’s large and well-organised green lobby. Another has been Klaus Schwab (economist and founder of the World Economic Forum), who has used Davos to push his vision of a “Great Reset” of the global economy.

Those getting on board with the Green New Deal are the usual advocates of state interventionism, big government, and multilateral globalism. But surprisingly this new elite is a mix of left-liberals, socialists, Greens, bureaucrats, and university researchers/experts. More surprising is that sections of the business elite are also climbing on board what they believe will be a gravy train.

It appears business is motivated by two factors. First, they are afraid of activist pressure. Second, their marketing departments are telling them there are great public relations kudos to be had in signing up to the now fashionable narratives of saving victims, saving the planet, and distancing themselves from left-leaning stereotypes of greedy uncaring capitalists.

So now we have woke businesses greenwashing their brands plus learning to make profits out of the Green New Deal’s neo-socialist strategy to tear up our old infrastructure and replace them with new ones at great expense to the taxpayer. Who knew socialism could be profitable.

But one of the most fascinating features of this trend is how enthralled legacy media journalists are with the green narratives underpinning this emergent global elite.

Journalists who would normally ask questions about self-interest, crooked narratives, and obvious propaganda now meekly buy into the trendy narratives. Indeed journalists are now being told that applying the journalistic principle of balance is a bad thing when reporting on issues like climate change.

Instead, journalists are being taught that it is fine to advocate for green climate change messages. We even have global media like the BBC instructing their journalists not to be balanced on climate change.

In a climate when green activism is now normalised in media newsrooms, it is hardly surprising that we see journalists treating green experts as media darlings, and as a result, those same green experts are no longer challenged by probing journalistic questions.

Instead, what emerges is a de facto partnership between the media, climate change scientists, and activists wherein journalists start to construct pro-green (propaganda-like) stories.

One way of explaining this partnership is to see it as part of the phenomenon of an emergent global elite for whom left-wing “progressivism” has become a kind of secularised religion, built around saving the many kinds of victims we apparently have today.

These victims can be those conventionally beloved by socialists—the poor. They can also be the new victims beloved by identity politics—LGBTQI, Indigenous or ethnic minorities. Or victims beloved by feminists—women persecuted by the patriarchy. Or the victims can now even be non-human—whales, polar bears, coral reefs, nature, or the planet.

What binds all these victims is that they need to be saved by a self-selecting elite of people who have married elements of the narratives of left-liberalism and neo-Marxism.

This elite first emerged in the United States and then spread to the rest of the western world. And now, like a virus, it is also spreading to places like the European Union (EU).

It is an elite who have proven highly susceptible to catching the green virus. Significantly, enormous progress has been made in capturing western universities, the global media, the education system, and the many bureaucracies across the Anglo world and EU.

The result has been the growth of an alliance between left-liberal, progressive politicians; academics; journalists; and bureaucrats.

Once the universities were captured by this progressive-left, universities were used to teach a new “way of seeing” and a “new way of speaking about” the world.

Thus, universities become the source of what is termed ‘woke’ and green narratives; while the media and internet are used to disseminate their tales. In addition, as universities produced more of these progressive and Green “experts,” journalists rely on them to justify their own work—creating an ongoing cycle.

Importantly, since universities teach journalism, public relations and marketing the communication industries are filled with those taught the woke discourses beloved by the globalised elite.

Not surprisingly, the resultant spread of progressivism within the communications industry means progressives are also becoming well placed—and more skilled—at spreading their own ideologies, while shutting down opposing views.

Indeed the Left are so successful that much of the world in the Biden era is starting to feel a bit like a mixture of the hard authoritarianism of George Orwell’s 1984 and the soft authoritarianism of Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World.”

The proliferation of both discourse around the Green New Deal, and the expanding power of a medical autocracy calling the shots over COVID-19, are two indicators of the way the global elite are becoming successful at promoting only their views while undercutting all others.

The universities have also given birth to “experts” who believe that secular science can fix everything thereby removing the need for religion or traditional knowledge.

At a deeper level, German existential philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche saw this rot beginning when Western thinkers “killed God” in the 19th century, and from that wrong turn has evolved the secularist, social engineers of today.

But at a more institutional level, I think American conservative philosopher Paul Gottfried was correct that the problem lies in today’s overly interventionist governments imposing social therapy measures upon their citizens.

His argument was that this began during the post-second World War era in the United States—specifically with Paul Lazarsfeld’s Bureau of Applied Social Research at Columbia University in the 1940s to 1950—and in the growth of the 1960s U.S. government-led social engineering policies (for example, affirmative action new migration laws).

And today, we see the modern manifestation of such a long-running trend in state-run welfare systems, the Green New Deal, and the COVID-19 medical autocracy.

Significantly, Lazarsfeld’s behavioural science was built on the neo-Marxist Frankfurt School’s idea of an “Authoritarian Personality”—a personality type that is submissive and obedient to authority—as well as the notion that experts should learn to manage and control the population better (using psychology, behavioural sciences, public opinion research, public relations, and spin-doctoring). This, in turn, can help stop the re-emergence of “bad ideas” like nationalism or traditionalism.

Lazarsfeld founded an American tradition of academic thinking about how the media could be used to promote “good” (progressive) ideas and shut down “bad” ideas.

Lazarsfeld’s centre employed many Frankfurt School members and so opened the door to the merging of left-liberal and neo-Marxist ideas, which has further contributed to the growth of the progressive elite.

With Biden in office, this elite now has a great base to work from to disseminate their preferred ideological narratives including the virtues of big government, green activism, and multilateral interventionism to save its so-called “victims.”

And because the 2000 anti-Trump crusade helped cement the alliance between left-leaning politicians, activists, mainstream liberal media journalists, U.S.-owned tech giants; and the university sector, we can now expect to see a period of intensified dissemination of “progressive” narratives plus simultaneous attempts at discourse closure aimed at closing-down and disrupting narratives that the Left loves to hate.

Global Elite Latches Onto Neo-Socialist Vision: The Green New Deal (theepochtimes.com)

No mention of US-funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology

The U.S. Intelligence Community (IC) “remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19,” according to an unclassified report released on Aug. 27. “Two hypotheses are plausible,” the report explains, “natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.”

In May, when President Joe Biden urged the agencies to “redouble” their efforts to find the origin of the virus, the IC had “coalesced around two likely scenarios but has not reached a definitive conclusion on this question,” he said in a statement. To reach essentially the same conclusion now, the IC must have ignored major revelations, and there’s more to the story.

For Angelo Codevilla, a former staffer with the Senate Intelligence Committee, Biden’s call to redouble efforts was “a comical attempt to avoid being discredited by the unraveling narrative that China’s role in the pandemic is another manifestation of racism.” In addition, “U.S. intelligence does not possess hard facts to prove exactly what happened in that lab, nor does U.S. intelligence have sources in China, human or technical, placed and uncompromised, capable of yielding such information.”

Codevilla, a former professor of international relations at Boston University, predicted that “the report will stop short of a full-on indictment of China, instead urging increased transparency through ‘cooperation.’ The chances of this report mentioning U.S. funding for ‘gain of function’ research are zero.”

True to form, the Aug. 27 report contends that “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment of the origins of COVID-19.” Gain-of-function research is not mentioned, an unforgivable oversight.

Gain-of-function research manipulates viruses to make them more lethal and transmissible. Dr. Anthony Fauci, chief medical adviser and head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), funded the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) to conduct gain-of-function research, once banned in the United States.

Money is fungible and the WIV is not accountable to American taxpayers. Fauci initially opposed President Trump’s ban on travel from China and maintained the theory that the virus that causes COVID-19 developed naturally in the wild. When scientists found evidence that the virus had been engineered, the NIAID boss pressured them to change their view.

Dr. Robert Redfield, director of Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), believed “the most likely etiology of this pathology in Wuhan was from a laboratory. You know, escaped.” For holding that view, Redfield began to receive death threats. As he told reporters in March of 2020, “I was threatened and ostracized because I proposed another hypothesis.” Embattled Americans might expect the vaunted intelligence community to take notice of such threats, along with other developments now a matter of record.

Chinese national Dr. Xiangguo Qiu transferred a cargo of deadly pathogens from Canada’s National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) to the WIV. One of the pathogens was the Henipah virus, and samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, according to The Epoch Times.

The genetic manipulation was the finding of Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician, scientist, and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the WIV shortly after China informed the World Health Organization about the outbreak, Quay found “genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus [a type of Henipah virus], which is more lethal than Ebola,” he told The Epoch Times.

Quay also co-authored an opinion piece, titled, “The Science Suggests a Wuhan Lab Leak,” noting that the COVID-19 pathogen has a genetic footprint never observed in a natural coronavirus. “In gain-of-function research, a microbiologist can increase the lethality of a coronavirus enormously by splicing a special sequence into its genome at a prime location.” The result of similar experiments “has always been supercharged viruses.”

Quay is also the author of the manuscript, “A Bayesian analysis concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that SARS-CoV-2 is not a natural zoonosis but instead is laboratory derived.”

Embattled Americans might expect their intelligence community to take notice of major scientific developments like that. Americans might also wonder what the nation’s “medical CIA” might know.

The Epidemic Intelligence Service (EIS), a division of the CDC, is tasked to prevent dangerous viruses from arriving on American soil. Despite boots on the ground in China, the EIS failed to prevent the virus from arriving stateside. What the medical CIA knows about the origin of the virus would be of great interest, but nobody from the EIS has testified to Congress under oath.

Dr. Nancy Messonnier began her career with the EIS and in early 2020, as director of the CDC’s National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases (NCIRD), she briefed reporters on a “novel” coronavirus from China. When asked about travelers from Wuhan to the United States, Messonnier told reporters that was “not something that I’m at liberty to talk about today.” Americans might expect their intelligence agencies to identify the official or politician who slapped that gag order on the CDC official, and explain what it was intended to hide.

Messonnier suddenly resigned from the CDC in May and has yet to testify. Another missing witness is Peter Daszak of the EcoHealth Alliance. A recent report by the House Foreign Affairs Committee found “strong evidence that Daszak is the public face of a CCP [Chinese Communist Party] disinformation campaign designed to suppress discussion about a possible lab leak.”

The Aug. 27 report claims the intelligence community examined “all available intelligence reporting and other information.” That is clearly a stretch, and embattled Americans could be forgiven for regarding it as a coverup, or worse.

According to the Aug. 27 report, “the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.” In addition, “the IC assesses China’s officials did not have foreknowledge of the virus before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.” That ignores the experience of Qiu, who worked closely with four facilities believed to be involved in China’s biological weapons development, including the WIV, where she transferred the cargo of deadly pathogens.

Most agencies involved with the report believe “SARS-CoV-2 probably was not genetically engineered.” That ignores the published work of Quay, who found “genetic manipulation” of the Nipah virus, and showed how gain-of-function research makes viruses “supercharged.”

Had the intelligence agencies investigated the latest scientific evidence, the death threats to Redfield, the resignation of Messonnier, and the mysterious Epidemic Intelligence Service, they might not remain divided on the origin of COVID-19.

As it stands, a dubious and evasive report will help China hinder investigation of the pandemic that has harmed millions of Americans and people around the world.

Latest US Intel Report Helps China Hinder Probe Into COVID-19 Origin (theepochtimes.com)

After previously ignoring their Advisory Committee, the Biden Admin FDA didn’t even bother to “hold a formal advisory committee meeting to discuss Pfizer’s application for full approval of its covid-19 vaccine” See: “Covid-19: FDA set to grant full approval to Pfizer vaccine without public discussion of data” BMJ 2021; 374 (20 August 2021) BMJ 2021;374:n2086 By Gareth Iacobucci, The BMJ- https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2021/08/23/covid-19-fda-set-to-grant-full-approval-to-pfizer-mrna-covid-vaccine-without-public-discussion-of-data-there-is-no-control-group-either/

Update: https://miningawareness.wordpress.com/2021/08/25/fda-only-renewed-emergency-use-authorization-for-pfizer-approval-was-for-biontechs-comirnaty-with-years-of-additional-safety-studies-required-thru-2027/

“Three experts have now resigned from a Food and Drug Administration advisory committee after the agency approved an Alzheimer’s drug called Aduhelm against the wishes of nearly every member on the panel.” https://www.npr.org/2021/06/11/1005567149/3-experts-have-resigned-from-an-fda-committee-over-alzheimers-drug-approval It may be four, because there are four vacancies listed: https://www.fda.gov/advisory-committees/peripheral-and-central-nervous-system-drugs-advisory-committee/peripheral-and-central-nervous-system-drugs-advisory-committee-roster

From Dr. Aaron Kesselheim’s resignation letter from the FDA Advisory Committee (June 10, 2021):

“For both eteplirsen and aducanumab, the decisions by FDA administrators to ignore the Advisory Committee’s clear recommendations led to their approval of two highly problematic drugs that offered little evidence that they would meaningfully benefit patients suffering from these devastating conditions. This will undermine the care of these patients, public trust in the FDA, the pursuit of useful therapeutic innovation, and the affordability of the health care system.”

“With eteplirsen, the AdComm and FDA’s own scientific staff reported that there was no convincing evidence that the drug worked; both groups were overruled by FDA leadership, which approved the drug based on considerations (including concerns about the sponsor’s finances) that were not part of the Advisory Committee’s discussions.

This week, the aducanumab decision by FDA administrators was probably the worst drug approval decision in recent US history. At the last minute the agency switched its review to the Accelerated Approval pathway based on the debatable premise that the drug’s effect on the brain amyloid was likely to help patients with Alzheimer’s disease. But, this pivotal question was not discussed at the Advisory Committee meeting and its premise was specifically excluded from discussion, as the FDA said “We’re not using the myeloid as a surrogate for efficacy.” At our public meeting, concerns about trial data from one of the FDA’s own reviewers were not given adequate time for discussion, and some of the questions FDA asked the committee were worded in a way that seemed slanted to yield responses that would favor the drug’s approval.

“I believed in the value of Advisory Committees to provide a way for outside experts to provide science-based guidance to the agency on its drug approval decisions. But after my experience on this Advisory Committee for both the eteplirsen and now the aducanumab discussions, it is clear to me that the FDA is not presently capable of adequately integrating the Committee’s scientific recommendations into its approval decisions.” (Retyped, to facilitate reading, from the original letter found below and here: https://archive.ph/uPSXj There could be a typo. We make no guarantees. The original is always the original.)

The original letter is here:

It’s also found here: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E3jKN4GWYAUGj9U.png

IS BIDEN USING THIS DRUG? THAT MIGHT PROVIDE A CLUE AS TO ITS EFFECTIVENESS.
After reading the letter, now see FDA’s blah, blah, blah:
“FDA Grants Accelerated Approval for Alzheimer’s Drug
For Immediate Release:
June 07, 2021

Today, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Aduhelm (aducanumab) for the treatment of Alzheimer’s, a debilitating disease affecting 6.2 million Americans. Aduhelm was approved using the accelerated approval pathway, which can be used for a drug for a serious or life-threatening illness that provides a meaningful therapeutic advantage over existing treatments.

Accelerated approval can be based on the drug’s effect on a surrogate endpoint that is reasonably likely to predict a clinical benefit to patients, with a required post-approval trial to verify that the drug provides the expected clinical benefit. 

“Alzheimer’s disease is a devastating illness that can have a profound impact on the lives of people diagnosed with the disease as well as their loved ones,” said Patrizia Cavazzoni, M.D., director of the FDA’s Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. “Currently available therapies only treat symptoms of the disease; this treatment option is the first therapy to target and affect the underlying disease process of Alzheimer’s. As we have learned from the fight against cancer, the accelerated approval pathway can bring therapies to patients faster while spurring more research and innovation.”

Alzheimer’s is an irreversible, progressive brain disorder that slowly destroys memory and thinking skills, and eventually, the ability to carry out simple tasks.

While the specific causes of Alzheimer’s disease are not fully known, it is characterized by changes in the brain—including amyloid plaques and neurofibrillary, or tau, tangles—that result in loss of neurons and their connections. These changes affect a person’s ability to remember and think.
Aduhelm represents a first-of-its-kind treatment approved for Alzheimer’s disease. It is the first new treatment approved for Alzheimer’s since 2003 and is the first therapy that targets the fundamental pathophysiology of the disease.

Researchers evaluated Aduhelm’s efficacy in three separate studies representing a total of 3,482 patients. The studies consisted of double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled dose-ranging studies in patients with Alzheimer’s disease. Patients receiving the treatment had significant dose-and time-dependent reduction of amyloid beta plaque, while patients in the control arm of the studies had no reduction of amyloid beta plaque.

These results support the accelerated approval of Aduhelm, which is based on the surrogate endpoint of reduction of amyloid beta plaque in the brain—a hallmark of Alzheimer’s disease. Amyloid beta plaque was quantified using positron emission tomography (PET) imaging to estimate the brain levels of amyloid beta plaque in a composite of brain regions expected to be widely affected by Alzheimer’s disease pathology compared to a brain region expected to be spared of such pathology. 

The prescribing information for Aduhelm includes a warning for amyloid-related imaging abnormalities (ARIA), which most commonly presents as temporary swelling in areas of the brain that usually resolves over time and does not cause symptoms, though some people may have symptoms such as headache, confusion, dizziness, vision changes, or nausea. Another warning for Aduhelm is for a risk of hypersensitivity reactions, including angioedema and urticaria. The most common side effects of Aduhelm were ARIA, headache, fall, diarrhea, and confusion/delirium/altered mental status/disorientation.  

Under the accelerated approval provisions, which provide patients suffering from the disease earlier access to the treatment, the FDA is requiring the company, Biogen, to conduct a new randomized, controlled clinical trial to verify the drug’s clinical benefit. If the trial fails to verify clinical benefit, the FDA may initiate proceedings to withdraw approval of the drug.

Aduhelm was granted Fast Track designation, which seeks to expedite the development and review of drugs that are intended to treat serious conditions where initial evidence showed the potential to address an unmet medical need. 
Aduhelm is made by Biogen of Cambridge, Massachusetts”. https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-grants-accelerated-approval-alzheimers-drug

FDA Ignored Advisory Committee Recommendations & Approved Drugs that “Offered Little Evidence That They Would Meaningfully Benefit Patients” (June Resignation Letter); FDA Didn’t Bother to Convene Advisory Committee for Pfizer-BioNTech mRNA Covid Vaccine Approval | Mining Awareness + (wordpress.com)

Attendees violated New Mexico’s indoor mask mandate, putting lives at risk

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, the first Native American cabinet secretary in history, married her longtime partner Skip Sayre on Saturday at a tribal resort in New Mexico. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.), the failed presidential candidate best known for pretending to be Native American, was among the celebrities in attendance.

Photos obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show Haaland, Warren, and other wedding guests partying indoors without masks in blatant violation of New Mexico’s public health restrictions. On Aug. 17, Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham (D., N.M.) issued a statewide order reimposing an indoor mask mandate to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

“The re-implemented mask requirement applies to all individuals aged 2 and older in all indoor public settings—except when eating or drinking,” the governor’s press release for the order states. “The indoor mask requirement will be effective Friday, Aug. 20. It will remain in effect until at least September 15.”

An Interior Department spokesman, who is a former employee of Media Matters for America, told the Free Beacon guests at the wedding “were required to be vaccinated and wear masks” in accordance with “CDC guidance and New Mexico’s public health orders,” but did not comment on the photographic evidence that contradicted this claim.

Lujan Grisham’s office did not respond to a request for comment about the apparent violation of the state’s mask mandate.

Politico‘s Playbook newsletter also reported, without evidence, that “guests were required to be vaccinated and wear masks.” The news blog published two photos of the married couple posing outdoors, but none from the ceremony or reception, which appears to have taken place indoors.

In one photo, Haaland and Sayre are embracing on the dance floor. Neither are wearing masks, though Haaland appears to be holding one in her hand. Another photo shows Haaland sitting next to Rep. Sharice Davids (D., Kan.), an actual Native American who has bragged that “all my heroes killed colonizers.” The women were unmasked, even though they were not eating or drinking. Another photo shows Warren smiling without a mask as she poses with a fan.

“Bruce and I were so happy to celebrate Deb and Skip this weekend,” Warren wrote on Facebook. Her office did not return a request for comment on the countless lives endangered by the senator’s reckless behavior.

Haaland’s wedding is the most recent example of Democratic politicians flouting government-imposed COVID-19 restrictions while insisting that everyone else follow the rules. Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D., N.Y.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, lectured Americans about the importance of wearing masks, yet defied a State Department “do not travel” warning by attending a maskless wedding in France earlier this month.

Former president Barack Obama threw himself a massive birthday party at his $17.5 million estate on Martha’s Vineyard, which coincided with a spike in COVID-19 that is threatening to overrun the island’s only hospital. Muriel Bowser, mayor of Washington, D.C., attended a maskless indoor wedding earlier this summer, less than 24 hours after she mandated the use of masks indoors. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.) has violated his own health and safety guidelines on numerous occasions.

More than 227,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since President Joe Biden took office.

PHOTOS: Elizabeth Warren Partied Maskless With Actual Native Americans at Interior Secretary Deb Haaland’s Wedding (freebeacon.com)

A Florida-based coalition of lawyers says that it’s going to represent thousands of U.S. airline workers seeking a religious exemption from mandatory COVID-19 vaccines.

Liberty Counsel, an international group that advocates for religious freedom, said at least 3,000 employees representing 15 airlines in the United States and abroad have come forward asking for legal help.

“We’re working with people in a lot of different airlines,” Liberty Counsel founder and Chairman Mat Staver told The Epoch Times. “They come directly to us to contact us. [The number is] quite large.”

Staver said the airline workers include pilots, flight attendants, baggage handlers, and gate checkers—“all are represented.”

“We basically walk them through the process,” he said. “These people were working during the pandemic. Now they’re being told to get the shots or they’re being terminated.”

On Aug. 6, United Airlines became the first major U.S. airline to require mandatory vaccinations for all 67,000 employees by Oct. 25 under threat of termination.

The Chicago-based airline estimates 80 percent of employees have received the shot, while more than 95 percent of pilots have already done so.

A United Airlines media relations spokesperson told The Epoch Times that the company has a “very narrow reasonable accommodation process for those who qualify for medical or religious exemptions.”

“We do not have additional information to share at this time beyond what was sent to employees earlier this month in [a corporate] memo,” the spokesperson said.

Staver noted that the vaccine mandates are causing severe mental stress among airline employees industrywide, resulting in accidents on the ground in some cases.

Staver said United Airlines is also challenging employees to prove their religious conviction to qualify for a religious exemption. To be eligible, he said, they have to show they’re a follower of a recognized religion with a history of opposition to vaccines. They also need to include a letter from the clergy stating their sincere religious belief.

“They’re trying to intimidate them, and in some cases, [employees] believe they have no other alternative,” he said.

On Aug. 24, Delta Air Lines announced vaccines would be required for an estimated 68,000 employees and that about 75 percent have complied. Those that refuse the vaccines will be subject to a $200 monthly surcharge.

“We’ve always known the vaccinations are the most effective tool to keep our people safe and healthy in the face of this global health crisis,” Delta Chief Executive Officer Ed Bastian said in a statement. “That’s why we’re taking additional, robust actions to increase our vaccinations rate.”

Earlier in August, Hawaiian Airlines and Frontier Airlines announced mandatory vaccines for their employees. Alaska Airlines is considering implementing a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for its 20,000 employees.

Staver said that despite full legal immunity granted to COVID-19 vaccine manufacturers, private employers could still be held liable for any adverse reaction to the shots.

As of Aug. 30, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported more than 13,500 deaths associated with COVID-19 injections through its voluntary reporting system.

Lawyers Helping Airline Workers Land Religious Waivers Against COVID-19 Vaccines (theepochtimes.com)

On Sunday morning, former President Barack Obama’s Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, compared Americans who oppose getting vaccinated or wearing masks to the Islamic terrorists who attacked Kabul airport and killed 13 members of the United states military.

Duncan tweeted, “Have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and actions are between the suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport, and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here? They both blow themselves up, inflict harm on those around them, and are convinced they are fighting for freedom.”

Have you noticed how strikingly similar both the mindsets and actions are between the suicide bombers at Kabul’s airport, and the anti-mask and anti-vax people here?
They both blow themselves up, inflict harm on those around them, and are convinced they are fighting for freedom.

— Arne Duncan (@arneduncan) August 29, 2021

Rep. Dan Crenshaw took no prisoners in his response, snapping, “Wow you’re a real piece of human garbage.”

Wow you’re a real piece of human garbage. https://t.co/xN7ZbKOWHt

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) August 29, 2021

He added, “Btw this guys was Secretary of Education under Obama/Biden. Will Biden denounce him?”

Btw this guys was Secretary of Education under Obama/Biden.

Will Biden denounce him?

— Dan Crenshaw (@DanCrenshawTX) August 29, 2021

Crenshaw wasn’t alone in his criticism:

GOP Congresswoman Mary Miller: “Secretary Duncan, this is a very sick thing to say during the dignified transfer of 13 US service members lost in the attack.”

Secretary Duncan, this is a very sick thing to say during the dignified transfer of 13 US service members lost in the attack. https://t.co/InRkOTmk6t

— Congresswoman Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) August 30, 2021

Former Congressman Jason Lewis: “Well no…you miserable son-of-a-bitch. But I have noticed how ISIS and the Obama/Biden 2.0 administration both seek to create fear in the minds of their neighbors in order to take away freedom of choice and push an oppressive agenda. But of course I would never compare the two…”

Well no…you miserable son-of-a-bitch. But I have noticed how ISIS and the Obama/Biden 2.0 administration both seek to create fear in the minds of their neighbors in order to take away freedom of choice and push an oppressive agenda. But of course I would never compare the two… https://t.co/SQivA9uVg7

— Jason Lewis (@LewisForMN) August 29, 2021

Daily Wire Editor Emeritus Ben Shapiro:  “Feel free to travel to Kabul any time and report from on the ground about those similarities.”

Feel free to travel to Kabul any time and report from on the ground about those similarities https://t.co/HPOTrNz7AB

— Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) August 30, 2021

Human Events’ Jack Posobiec: “This was an Obama Cabinet member. This is what they think of you.”

This was an Obama Cabinet member. This is what they think of you. https://t.co/4yAV6d02KZ

— Jack Posobiec 🇺🇸 (@JackPosobiec) August 29, 2021

Ryan Petty, whose daughter Alaina was murdered in the Parkland massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in 2018: “When you ran the Department of Ed your policies encouraged districts to ignore threats to our nation’s schools where they festered. It led to Parkland. Delete your account.”

When you ran the Department of Ed your policies encouraged districts to ignore threats to our nation’s schools where they festered. It led to Parkland.

Delete your account. https://t.co/x6WHdK2Yil

— Ryan Petty (@rpetty) August 29, 2021

Journalist Beverly Hallberg: “So because I have an autoimmune disease and waiting for clinical trials (also have natural immunity), the former Secretary of Ed thinks that I’m just as bad as suicide bombers. Got it.”

So because I have an autoimmune disease and waiting for clinical trials (also have natural immunity), the former Secretary of Ed thinks that I’m just as bad as suicide bombers. Got it. https://t.co/vK01nqG0Qe

— Beverly Hallberg (@BeverlyHallberg) August 30, 2021

Real Clear Investigations’ Mark Hemingway: “This man was in charge of public education in America.”

This man was in charge of public education in America. https://t.co/AAaSi3fi1S

— Mark Hemingway (@Heminator) August 30, 2021

The Atlantic’s Conor Friedersdorf: “If they were actually ‘strikingly similar’ many people would have no preference as to which to share a community with but in fact, no one is ambivalent on that question.”

If they were actually “strikingly similar” many people would have no preference as to which to share a community with but in fact, no one is ambivalent on that question. https://t.co/nitHM2uZUM

— Conor Friedersdorf (@conor64) August 30, 2021

WEX Magazine’s Jay Caruso: “It is not surprising that Duncan blew through $7 billion in five years to ‘fix crumbling schools’ and failed.”

It is not surprising that Duncan blew through $7 billion in five years to “fix crumbling schools” and failed.

— Jay Caruso (@JayCaruso) August 30, 2021

Radio host Dan O’Donnell: “Have you noticed how strikingly similar both your intelligence level and logical reasoning capability are to those of a tree stump?”

Have you noticed how strikingly similar both your intelligence level and logical reasoning capability are to those of a tree stump? https://t.co/yYaM02F3CL

— Dan O’Donnell (@DanODonnellShow) August 29, 2021

Duncan went to college with Robert Runcie, later the superintendent of Broward County Public Schools (BCPS) at the time of the Parkland shooting. Duncan hired Runcie to run Chicago Public School district’s IT office, then later when Runcie applied for the superintendent job in Broward gave Runcie a glowing reference.

As The Daily Wire reported:

As superintendent, Runcie convinced the Broward County taxpayers to fund an $800 million bond initiative called “Safety, Music, Renovation, and Technology,” or “SMART.” According to Florida TaxWatch, in the first four years of the SMART bond’s existence, the district only spent 5% of the money on safety projects, which was far below what the district was claiming to be spending.

Obama Education Secretary Compares Anti-Maskers To Kabul Terrorists. Crenshaw: ‘Wow. You’re A Real Piece Of Garbage’ | The Daily Wire

A full-page advertisement that called for the world to hold the Chinese communist regime to account for the COVID-19 pandemic was pulled at the last moment by The New York Times in March 2020. The paper said the ad didn’t meet its standards, but the ad was pulled after it had already passed the paper’s vetting process. The businessman who paid for the ad suspects the paper’s ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) played a role. He only revealed the details of the incident to The Epoch Times earlier this year.

The ad was scheduled to run on March 22, 2020. It was already approved, paid for, and even printed and distributed in some locations when the paper pulled the plug in the middle of the night, preventing the ad from being published in some of the paper’s main markets, including New York and Florida.

The decision was so abrupt that the sales representative responsible for the ad wasn’t informed, and the client only found out the next morning when he couldn’t find the ad in the paper.

The client, Brett Kingstone, is a real estate agent in Florida. He backed up his story with email threads documenting his correspondence with the newspaper as well as images of the contract he signed, details about the payment and subsequent refund of the $55,000 ad fee, and photos of the ad as it ran in some locales.

New York Times spokeswoman Danielle Rhoades Ha said the ad ran in “an early edition of Sunday’s paper and was removed from all later editions, which account for the vast majority of copies.”

“The ad in question did not meet our standards and should not have appeared in The New York Times,” she told The Epoch Times via email.

She didn’t respond to a question about whether the paper faced any CCP pressure regarding the ad.

“It was removed after being flagged internally by [New York] Times staff,” she said.

Kingstone, a prolific donor to charitable and conservative causes, had contacted The New York Times via email on March 18, 2020, with an advertorial placement request.

He said he placed an advertorial in the paper’s Sunday edition back in 2018 and the staff “did an excellent job in delivering what was promised both in performance and placement.”

“I am interested in doing the same again,” he said, submitting a draft of the ad.

The text urged the U.S. government to organize and initiate investigations and lawsuits regarding the origins and repercussions of the CCP virus pandemic.

“This virus was the direct result of the incompetence and irresponsibility of the Chinese Government. They showed as much disregard for their own population as they have for ours,” the ad stated.

It called for “massive liability lawsuits” against the CCP as well as investigations into two Chinese labs close to the epicenter of the pandemic, including the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

Scrutiny of the Wuhan Institute of Virology was treated as a taboo subject by social media and the corporate press at the time. Only earlier this year have establishment actors acknowledged that the inquiries were legitimate and that the virus could have escaped from the lab.

On March 19, 2020, the ad placement representative informed Kingstone that it had been accepted.

“My Ad Acceptability team has approved the message as long as we include the footnotes, your email address, a border around the ad, and advertisement slugs,” the representative said.

The two then exchanged several emails regarding technical edits to the ad as well as proof of payment of the ad fee required before publication.

Everything seemed to go smoothly.

Then, on the morning of March 22, 2020, Kingstone was surprised to learn the ad was nowhere to be found in the Florida edition of the paper.

In his inbox, he found an email from the sales representative:

“I wanted to let you know that I was informed late last night that our production team had pulled the ad from the production run, without my knowledge. I’m investigating this now and I’ll get back to you as soon as I can with any updates,” it read.

“I just wanted to assure you that I’m working on this and I will hopefully be able to share additional context on Monday after I speak to the necessary people. I will be in touch on Monday!”

The representative has since left the paper. The Epoch Times is omitting her name for the sake of her privacy.

Kingstone didn’t hide his disappointment.

“I would like to know the reason why they did this,” he said in an email response to the representative, requesting a refund.

He asked whether the paper’s executives concluded that his particular message needed to be silenced.

“I was very pleased with how the NYT treated me on my first advocacy advertisement. They were more than fair. Now my fears about bias are being realized,” he wrote.

The cancellation was all the more a slap in the face given that The New York Times used to regularly publish propaganda advertorials paid for by a company directly controlled by the CCP.

After receiving his refund, Kingstone didn’t leave it at that.

As it happened, his website, which was listed on the ad, came under a cyberattack around the same time the copies of the paper that did include the ad landed on people’s doormats, he said.

This was too much of a coincidence for Kingstone, who has had his share of run-ins with the CCP. It was his company that years earlier won a precedent-setting lawsuit against Chinese counterfeiters. In 2005, he published a book detailing his story, called “The Real War Against America.”

Kingstone started to inquire with his contacts and eventually reached the conclusion that the CCP must have been involved in the ad’s cancellation.

One New York Times executive told him a CCP official called the paper’s leadership, demanding the ad be pulled, he said. The Epoch Times wasn’t able to independently confirm that the phone call took place. Attempts to reach the executive for comment were unsuccessful. The paper’s spokesperson neither confirmed nor denied that such a phone call took place.

In any case, the situation carries “an earmark of how China would operate,” according to Pat Laflin, a former FBI agent who upon retirement led a series of lectures for the bureau to American businesses and research entities on economic espionage by adversarial nations, including China.

It’s “impossible” that the CCP let the ad slide, he told The Epoch Times.

“If there’s anything negative about China, China’s going to scream,” he said in a phone call.

It would just be the question of what form the pressure took, he said.

“Exactly what they said and how subtle it was or how not-so-subtle, that’s all speculation. I don’t know. But did the call come in? Yes.”

The New York Times has over the years repeatedly faced criticism over its relations with the CCP. The controversy reaches back to at least 2001, when the paper’s publisher at the time, Arthur Sulzberger Jr., met with then-CCP leader Jiang Zemin, whose power faction within the communist regime exerts influence even to this day, long after his retirement.

The paper actively discouraged reporting on one of the most gruesome atrocities committed by the CCP—the harvesting of organs from prisoners of conscience, mainly practitioners of the Falun Gong spiritual practice—as indicated by former New York Times Beijing correspondent Didi Kirsten Tatlow in her testimony to the independent China Tribunal in the United Kingdom.

Last year, the paper finally cut ties with the CCP-controlled China Daily and quietly deleted hundreds of paid propaganda pieces from its website, The Washington Free Beacon reported. China Daily disclosed to federal authorities one $50,000 payment to The New York Times in 2018. It’s not clear how much total revenue The New York Times drew from CCP advertorials.

NY Times Pulled Ad Calling CCP to Account for Pandemic (theepochtimes.com)

The intelligence community’s (IC) recently declassified non-assessment of the origins of the Chinese coronavirus should be seen as part of a continued charade by the Biden administration that—in effect—protects Communist China.

It enables Team Biden to present the appearance of concern over China’s malign behavior, while absolving itself of any responsibility to forthrightly confront it.

More than a year-and-a-half after the coronavirus began spreading, the IC declared that it “remains divided on the most likely origin of COVID-19. All agencies assess that two hypotheses are plausible: natural exposure to an infected animal and a laboratory-associated incident.”

This conclusion seemed almost preordained. The Office of the Director of National Intelligence released a highly reminiscent statement on May 27, just after President Joe Biden called for the 90-day review into the origins of the coronavirus, asserting that: “The U.S. Intelligence Community does not know exactly where, when, or how the COVID-19 virus was transmitted initially but has coalesced around two likely scenarios: either it emerged naturally from human contact with infected animals or it was a laboratory accident.”

As then, in the final assessment, different agencies gave different weights to these hypotheses.

The IC claimed it could not provide a more definitive conclusion without better clinical samples and the like, and that “China’s cooperation most likely would be needed to reach a conclusive assessment.”

Interestingly, but perhaps unsurprisingly, the IC was only unequivocal on the most provocative thesis regarding the origin of the coronavirus: “We judge the virus was not developed as a biological weapon.” Chinese officials, per the IC, had no “foreknowledge of the virus” before the initial outbreak of COVID-19 emerged.

The report, in short, generated precisely the answer one would have expected from increasingly hyper-politicized bureaucracies keen to hedge on vital questions—and likely even more so given the geopolitical implications at play—when seeking out sensitive information from a closed country in which they lack visibility, where they have frequently found themselves blindsided, and on which they have allegedly gone soft in the recent past.

Occam’s Razor suggests President Biden got exactly the review one would have expected, and therefore that he would have wanted.

We may never fully know why the lab leak thesis became politically correct months after officials across the federal government, in the medical field, and media had gone to such great lengths to pooh-pooh it. But we know that this created a political issue for the Biden administration after it had punted the origin question originally to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-dominated World Health Organization (WHO) for a futile Potemkin inquiry, and reports surfaced that it had quashed a Secretary of State Mike Pompeo-directed investigation into the matter.

The IC review was a necessary sideshow.

Why?

Because in the final analysis, how the coronavirus came about is of secondary importance to what China did once it was literally or figuratively out of the bottle.

Yes, the lab leak thesis is more than plausible based on a mass of circumstantial evidence, including that catalogued by the Secretary Pompeo-led State Department, the writings of prominent scientists and science journalists, and a House Republican-led report on the origins of the coronavirus. The president’s statement subsequent to the release of the IC review that “We will do everything we can to trace the roots of this outbreak…so that we can take every necessary precaution to prevent it from happening again” though banal and toothless, is fine insofar as prudence demands learning from catastrophes.

But set aside how the coronavirus came about.

We know it came from China.

We know the CCP silenced whistleblowers who might have had valuable knowledge and insight into the coronavirus that could have saved lives (and certainly, including those associated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where we know China engaged in dangerous gain-of-function research—one of the only places in the world where such work is conducted—that could very well have resulted in COVID-19).

We know it lied about human-to-human transmission.

We know it shut down internal travel but permitted Chinese citizens to fly all over the world and encouraged other nations not to halt such travel.

We know it hoarded personal protective equipment and then sold shoddy versions of it to peoples worldwide.

We know it pressed the WHO to push its favored narratives—including casting anyone who dared finger China for the coronavirus’s spread as racist and bigoted.

We know its mouthpiece threatened to “plunge” America “into the mighty sea of coronavirus” by withholding vital drugs as the crisis metastasized.

We know it sought to stymie investigations into the coronavirus’s origins at every turn.

We know it aimed to take advantage of the pandemic in service of its hegemonic ambitions in myriad ways, from the very start of the pandemic.

One could rattle off infinitely more such points.

But the bottom line is this: The CCP lied, deceived, and in effect weaponized the coronavirus that began on its soil. It did everything possible to conceal what was transpiring subsequent to the outbreak, stop other nations from taking necessary precautions—but advocating they shut down human life for months on end—and encourage its spread globally, which it has tried to exploit and leverage at every point to increase its power and influence.

The Biden administration has never made this point clear—that a hostile China weaponized the virus, and used it to pursue its ambitions. Consequently, it has never vowed to make China pay for it. And this in turn substantiates the point that the Biden administration’s punting of the question of the origin of the coronavirus to the intelligence community was part of a charade.

The review was the best the Biden administration could do if it wanted to create the impression of holding China to account out of political necessity, without doing anything about it.

And remember who the Biden administration’s core constituency is: The elite. Elites in government who have egg on their face over the gain-of-function research they funded by proxy at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, and who again refused to investigate the lab leak thesis when smoking guns may still have been hot; elites in the medical field who appear to have been influenced by China into ignoring or dismissing the lab leak thesis—that Big Tech even banned talk of; elites in the business community, who are wedded to trading with China forever no matter the CCP’s evils; and elites in the media who themselves are complicit in refusing to investigate the coronavirus’s origins, and often running CCP-favorable coronavirus propaganda.

This is to say nothing of President Biden’s well-documented kowtowing to Communist China for nearly 50 years, made all the more disturbing and dangerous given the business activities of son Hunter and other family members.

The losers of this charade are the American people, who are seeing China once again appeased by their leaders, which will only invite further aggression.

The Chinese Coronavirus Origin Charade (theepochtimes.com)

How can you think straight and make rational decisions when each and everyday you hear conflicting and contradictory information from “authoritative” sources? You can’t. No one can. That’s the whole point. That’s why the powers that be are doing this. Welcome to the secular hell of a post-truth world.

We don’t need to wear masks. No wait, now we do. Hold up now we need to wear two masks. We can stop wearing masks now. Surprise, we need to wear masks again. Actually it turns out masks aren’t as effective as we thought.

We just need 15 days to slow the spread. Now we need a month. Maybe a year. Never mind, we didn’t need to lockdown at all and it caused more harm than good.

Don’t take any vaccine that Donald Trump rushed to market. You didn’t get the vaccine, are you nuts? The vaccine is highly effective. Oops it looks like highly vaccinated Israel is having a major outbreak. Get the vaccine or lose your job.

Are you keeping up? This is the reality of living in a post-truth world.

They want us shell shocked with rapidly changing information overload which leads to option paralysis and fear. When people are in a state of fear coupled with option paralysis they are very susceptible to manipulation and easy to control.

While we are all dazed and confused they are destroying families, small businesses, and entire nations. They are rigging elections, they are botching troop withdrawals to flood western countries with refugees, the American border is being invaded by hundreds of thousands of people, they are buying up single family homes and pricing you out of the market, they are printing endless money and inflating your currency.

They are transferring trillions of dollars in wealth to themselves and shutting up each and every last voice of dissent to it all while doing it.

All while the while you worry about a virus that statistically you have a 99% chance of surviving with the immune system God gave you.

It’s exhausting and impossible to keep up with by design. It’s meant to drain you mentally, physically, and spiritually so that you submit to their control. Don’t.

In the post-truth world anything goes. Chaos reigns. Those who create the chaos manifest their means of control. Do not comply. Do not give them one inch. Stand your ground. Hold the line.

Christians reject the post-truth world. We have absolute Truth in Jesus Christ and His Gospel as a firm foundation on which to stand. God is our authority. Not the CDC. Not the Biden administration. Not the WHO. Nor the talking heads on CNN and Fox News.

In the darkness of chaos Jesus is the Light that leads us to salvation. Jesus saves. That is the fundamental Truth of the Gospel. Now more then ever we need saving. We need Truth. We need Order.

The battle rages on, but the war has already been won and we must never forget that. We must cling to the cross and stand firm in our convictions. We must love one another, obey God, and humble ourselves enough to fully depend on Him in this time of great trial.

I know we can do it, because we serve the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords, the Creator of the universe. May you find comfort in His Truth and keep the faith.

God bless you and God bless America,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

How To Survive In a Post-Truth World Of Chaos – Gab News

Presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden has been dinged several times by fact-checkers over claims he has made during the coronavirus crisis, including a total of 11 “Pinocchios” from the Washington Post.

Over the course of three weeks between March 13 and April 3, Biden was fact-checked five separate times for making false or misleading claims concerning the Trump administration’s handling of the pandemic.

A Washington Post fact check on March 13 awarded Biden four Pinocchios, the fact-checker’s most severe rating, for two manipulated videos the Biden campaign circulated.

The first video claimed to show Trump at a Feb. 28 rally saying Democrats were turning the coronavirus into “their new hoax” after they failed to bring Trump down through impeachment. Biden’s video was edited to make it appear that Trump was calling the coronavirus a hoax. Trump, however, was referring to the Democrats’ attempts to blame him for the virus, not the virus itself.

The second Biden campaign video showed Trump saying the phrase “the American Dream is dead,” which the Post found was taken out of context and missing the second part of Trump’s statement where he promised to “bring it back bigger and better and stronger than ever before.”

Another Post fact check on March 24 gave the campaign four Pinocchios after adviser Ron Klain accused Trump of silencing Dr. Nancy Messonnier of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“The president and the White House sent a clear message to scientists in the government—there would be a price for speaking out and speaking up,” he said in a campaign video released on March 21.

Messonnier continued to hold routine phone briefings with reporters in the weeks after she raised the alarm about the virus at a press conference with Trump.

Post fact-checker Glenn Kessler wrote that Klain’s framing was “simply wrong.” Messonnier’s alarming rhetoric did irritate Trump, but the idea that she was silenced was a “false narrative,” Kessler added.

At a CNN town hall on March 27, Biden repeated an earlier claim that Trump had eliminated the White House pandemic office. He also claimed Trump made “no effort” to put any pressure on Chinese president Xi Jinping and reduced the CDC’s staff in China prior to the outbreak. Biden added he called for China to admit medical experts from the United States when the outbreak in China was still in its early stages.

The Post‘s fact check gave Biden three Pinocchios due to his imprecise language. The Trump administration sought access for CDC experts, and the administration told the Post that Trump offered to send experts to China to help with the outbreak. Biden also did not specifically call for experts to be sent until late February.

Those weren’t the only times Biden has been fact-checked for rhetoric during the crisis.

On March 15, during the Democratic presidential debate, Biden falsely claimed that Trump refused coronavirus testing kits from the World Health Organization. The kits were never offered in the first place. PolitiFact rated his statement “Mostly False.” CNN, after initially deeming his statement factual, retracted its rating after a report by the Washington Free Beacon.

On March 19, Biden first tweeted that Trump “eliminated” the pandemic response team. The Washington Post fact check found this claim “overstated” due to the fact that the global health directorate was folded into another office under the guidance of former national security adviser John Bolton. Citing “dueling narratives,” however, it didn’t give a rating to Biden’s claim.

Biden Has Earned 11 Pinocchios From Fact-Checkers During Coronavirus Crisis (freebeacon.com)

California voters have long been excoriated by commentators for the 1994 passage of Proposition 187, which severely limited state services for illegal immigrants. Among other things, it required teachers and nurses to report suspected illegal immigrants to the Immigration and Naturalization Service, effectively becoming INS agents. Those were among the reasons the initiative was thrown out of federal court.

Now Prop. 187-style enforcement requirements could be imposed due to COVID-19. A measure by Assemblymembers Buffy Wicks (D-Oakland), Akilah Weber (D-San Diego), and Evan Low (D-Campbell) would mandate proof of vaccination “before entering restaurants, bars, movie theaters, gyms, hotels, stadiums and other indoor establishments.” That’s according to a draft summary of the law obtained by the Sacramento Bee. There’s no bill number or text yet available to read.

If passed, the state Department of Health would be required to develop an enforcement plan by Nov. 1.

It would mean waitresses, bartenders, movie ushers, gym workers and stadium ticket-takers would be turned into police officers for the Department of Health. Would they be fined severely for doing their jobs poorly, or not at all? Would they receive special training? Who would pay for that?

In a state with an ongoing labor shortage, it’s easy to see these employees quitting to do something else. And if they’re fired, would they be given unemployment? If not, would there be thousands of lawsuits against the already overburdened and only partly reformed Employment Development Department?

According to the Bee, “The new law would exempt children who aren’t eligible for vaccines and people who aren’t eligible due to a medical condition or disability, subject to verification.” Would that include the controversial “conscience” exemption some religious groups have advanced? What about the First Amendment guarantee of freedom of religion, also guaranteed in the California Constitution?

The proposal comes with the rise of the Delta variant of COVID-19. But will the increase in infections recede by November, when the law would go into effect, the way previous surges have receded after a couple of months? Nobody knows.

Meanwhile, Assemblyman Marc Levine (D-Greenbrae) on Wednesday proposed a resolution suspending all member of the Legislature who have not been vaccinated. The suspensions would be imposed just ahead of the Legislature’s Sept. 10 adjournment date.

At the end of session, the Assembly and state Senate camp out in their separate chambers for many hours a day to hammer out legislation. “No other job has people locked up in a room for two weeks,” Levine said. “There’s only one bathroom off the chamber. There’s only one place to get coffee off the chamber. Even if we don’t get sick, we can be carriers.”

The Los Angeles Times reported its survey of the 40 senators and 80 assemblymen and found 12 of them refused to disclose their vaccination status, 11 being Republicans. That’s 39 percent of the GOP’s already minuscule representation of 28 legislators. So their ranks would be reduced to 17.

Moreover, even if the unvaccinated got the jab today, according to the CDC, “It typically takes 2 weeks after vaccination for the body to build protection (immunity) against the virus that causes COVID-19. That means it is possible a person could still get COVID-19 before or just after vaccination and then get sick because the vaccine did not have enough time to build protection.”

That means the Levine resolution would expel the 11 members for the rest of the 2021 session, with no recourse for those affected. It’s hard to think of anything more anti-democratic.

Here’s a better idea: The Legislature should adjourn until next January. It already passed the key budget bills. Few of the hundreds of bills left on the calendar should be passed anyway. Anything worthwhile can wait until January.

California Legislature Planning to Use Pandemic to Shred Democracy (theepochtimes.com)

Newly sworn-in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is wasting no time taking sides in the school mask wars. Even before taking the top job, she told NBC’s “Today” that she intends to mandate masks for all public school students in the state.

She’s got President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party on her side, but the science is against her. There are no studies that demonstrate forcing young kids to wear masks reduces the spread of COVID-19 in schools.

Mandating masks also ignores the fundamental fact that not all masks are created equal. That should be the basis for a truce in the mask wars breaking out all over the nation. Mandates that settle for cloth masks with cartoon characters on them are a joke.

Most of the masks kids are wearing are laughably ineffective. A cloth mask blocks only 3% of viral particles from reaching the wearer, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. For such a minuscule difference, who would force kids to struggle with masks all day?

Instead of mandating masks, school districts should hand out effective masks, such as N95 or KN95 masks, at the beginning of the school day to kids whose parents request them. These masks block 95% of incoming viral particles. The masks were in short supply at the beginning of the pandemic, but no longer.

Flat surgical masks made from nonwoven polypropylene would be an improvement over what most kids wear. They block out 56% of virus particles, according to the same British study. But note that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns a surgical mask “does NOT provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection from inhaling smaller airborne particles and is not considered respiratory protection” in a health care setting.

Helping families who favor masking is smarter than producing classrooms full of kids with soiled, ineffective masks and many outraged parents.

The delta variant accounts for 98% of U.S. cases now and appears to be more dangerous to children. But would masks at school make a difference?

Not according to a CDC study of 169 Georgia elementary schools last winter. CDC researchers found that schools requiring staff and teachers to mask up had 37% fewer cases of COVID, and schools that improved air quality and ventilation had 39% fewer cases. Those approaches work. But mandating that students wear masks had no statistically significant impact on the spread of COVID. Mandating masks and letting masks be optional produced the same results. Not surprising considering the kinds of masks most kids wear.

Yet a week after releasing the Georgia study, the agency reversed course and recommended universal masking in school without offering new findings to justify that 180-degree flip. Perhaps the agency looked at the rising cases among children and panicked.

No surprise. Over the course of the pandemic, the CDC has earned a reputation as the “Centers for Disease Confusion.” The agency should have been guided by its own research.

Instead, it kowtowed to political correctness. Only a minority of Republicans support mandating masks, while 92% of Democrats agree, according to an Aug. 17 Axios/Ipsos poll.

Ten states — mostly blue states like Connecticut, New Jersey and California — mandate masks. Other states leave it up to local school boards. And eight red states, including Florida, ban local school boards from mandating masks, insisting parents get to decide.

Last week, Biden escalated the mask wars by threatening federal Department of Education lawsuits against the seven states. The New York Times followed with a full-throated endorsement of Biden’s maneuver, calling mandatory masking a “common-sense public health” policy.

Sorry. The science doesn’t support it.

Hochul argues that the New York Health Department has the authority to require masking in the state. According to the letter of the law, she’s right. But the Health Department has lost credibility after forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients and covering up the deadly results. The Health Department can’t be trusted.

Instead, Hochul should put parents in charge and provide effective masks for families who want them.

That’s good advice for governors in every state. Mandating masks that don’t work is a farce.

The Mask Mandate Farce :: Right & Free (rightandfree.com)

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak – the disgraced proponent of the COVID-19 “natural origins” theory and longtime collaborator of the Chinese Communist Party – deleted a tweet revealing his attendance at an event sponsored by Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases featuring Wuhan Institute of Virology researchers.

Posted on December 10th, 2019, just weeks before the Chinese government reported its first case of COVID-19, the tweet revealed Daszak’s attendance at the Nipah Virus International Conference in Singapore.

“The two-day session was co-hosted by Duke-NUS Medical School (Duke-NUS) and the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations (CEPI). Also listed as organizers are the World Health Organization and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases,” reports the site Some Bitch Told Me. CEPI was founded with a sizable investment from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

In the now-deleted tweet, Daszak details how Shi Zhengli, the Wuhan Institute of Virology’s “bat lady,” calls for “open and transparent international scientific collaboration on pandemic risk pathogens” at her lab’s Biosafety Level 4 (BSL-4) facility. He follows up with a slide explaining how “you can train in the BSL-4 lab in Wuhan.”

Daszak’s deletion of the tweet follows The National Pulse unearthing the scientist’s extensive conflicts of interest with the Chinese Communist Party and its Wuhan Institute of Virology. These ties ultimately led to his recusal from the Lancet COVID-19 commission, where he used his position to discredit the “lab leak” theory and spread disinformation about the origins of the virus.

The unearthed post also follows Fauci, whose NIAID sponsored the event, denying affiliation with the Wuhan lab.

EcoHealth’s Peter Daszak Deletes Tweet Revealing Wuhan Lab Researchers At Fauci-Funded Conference. – The National Pulse

Twitter has permanently suspended former New York Times journalist and author Alex Berenson, an outspoken critic of CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus mandates and lockdowns—as well as Big Tech censorship.

“The account you referenced has been permanently suspended for repeated violations of our COVID-19 misinformation rules,” a Twitter spokesperson told news outlets on Aug. 28, referring to the disease caused by the CCP virus.

Berenson, on his Substack page, also confirmed the suspension, writing: “Goodbye, Twitter.”

“This was the tweet that did it,” he wrote, referring to a now-deleted tweet that downplayed the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. “Entirely accurate. I can’t wait to hear what a jury will make of this. Meantime, guess you’ll be getting more Substacks.”

Berenson later noted that the ban didn’t come as a surprise to him.

“I expected this day was coming,” he wrote. “And Twitter can’t touch my Substack (in fact, it reportedly tried to buy Substack last year, but Substack fortunately said no).”

Berenson also hinted at possibly filing a lawsuit against Twitter over the suspension.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and other health agencies have said that COVID-19 vaccines “are safe and effective” after clinical trials and say that side effects are rare. CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walenksy and others have cited studies saying that vaccines don’t necessarily prevent transmission of COVID-19, but have stated that the shots limit the severity of the illness.

Berenson worked for The New York Times from 1999 until 2010 before becoming a full-time author.

In July, Dr. Anthony Fauci, one of President Joe Biden’s COVID-19 advisors, criticized Berenson for his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

“It’s horrifying … I just don’t get that. I mean, and I don’t think that anybody who is thinking clearly can get that,” he said of the crowd’s response to Berenson’s speech.

Right before his suspension, Berenson had often made note of the results of a preprint Israeli study that found that previous COVID-19 infection provides better protection against the Delta variant than any COVID-19 shot.

“SARS-CoV-2-naive vaccinees had a 13.06-fold increased risk for breakthrough infection with the Delta variant compared to those previously infected, when the first event (infection or vaccination) occurred during January and February of 2021,” the study reads.

SARS-CoV-2 is another name for the CCP virus.

Those who were vaccinated, the study found, were also at a higher risk of being hospitalized when compared to individuals who were previously infected.

Berenson also assailed what he described as Big Tech censorship, writing for the Wall Street Journal in December that the pandemic has ushered in a “new age of censorship and suppression.”

“Information has never been more plentiful or easier to distribute. Yet we are sliding into a new age of censorship and suppression, encouraged by technology giants and traditional media companies. As someone who’s been falsely characterized as a coronavirus ‘denier,’ I have seen this crisis firsthand,” he wrote, with Amazon having twice allegedly blocked the publication of his book.

Twitter Permanently Suspends Alex Berenson Over Viral COVID-19 Tweets (theepochtimes.com)

Google reported to the Australian federal government that it has removed around 800,000 YouTube videos concerning COVID-19, and 275 million COVID-19 apps from across its platform as part of its $1 billion (US $726 million) global campaign to “counter COVID-19 misinformation.”

It has also launched a US $3 million fund to wipe out alleged vaccine misinformation.

Google regards official government information from national health departments or the World Health Organization as reliable sources. Meanwhile, the WHO has noted that information changes over time as the world “learns more about the virus.”

Lucinda Longcroft, Google’s director of government affairs and public policy for Australia and New Zealand, told a Senate committee on foreign interference through social media in July that Google has extensive automated systems and a global network of staff to remove “false or misleading” COVID-19 content “as rapidly as possible.”

This is combined with algorithmic tools to help promote government-approved COVID-19 information and bury “borderline” content, which was defined in a January blog post by Youtube as content that “comes close to—but doesn’t quite cross the line of—violating our Community Guidelines.”

“This has been a broad campaign and activity across our organisation,” Longcroft said. “We have deployed significant resources and developed innovative tools, both human-based and machine-based, to curb harmful information and promote authoritative information.”

During the Senate meeting, Longcroft also confirmed that Google had “engaged very closely” with the Australian government, giving it AU $3.6 million worth of free advertising, resulting in 20.6 million impressions of government-approved COVID-19 information for Australian users.

Big Tech Censorship Concerns

Big tech’s efforts to remove public discourse around COVID-19 from online platforms has raised the ire of some researchers working on understanding the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, who have voiced concerns that big tech is stifling scientific debate around the pandemic, calling it censorship.

For example, in June, YouTube removed a video in which Stanford professor of medicine John Ioannidis discussed data related to COVID-19 and the negative impacts of the ongoing lockdown. Despite numerous challenges to the censorship, YouTube did not reveal which part of Ioannidis’s interview it construed as misinformation.

In May, Facebook deleted a post linking to a peer-reviewed Lancet article, which reported that SARS-CoV-2 spreads by airborne transmission. The article had criticised a claim made by a review funded by World Health Organization (WHO) that there were no firm conclusions to be drawn about airborne transmission.

Authors of the Lancet article included world-renowned experts on aerosols, including American scientist Kimberly Prather and the highly cited aerosol researcher Jose-Luis Jimenez from the University of Colorado. 

“We absolutely recognise that measuring misinformation is a real challenge,” Facebook’s head of policy in Australia Josh Machin told the Senate last month.

“First, because people’s views on whether a post on Facebook is misinformation or not can vary, and also because, particularly since the pandemic began last year, we’ve had to really rapidly scale up our policies and continue to consult with experts, and they have been shifting.”

Machin disclosed that Facebook had removed 18 million posts containing “harmful misinformation” about COVID-19 and vaccines, attached “false” labels to 167 million posts on these topics, and collaborated with 80 fact-checkers around the world.

But while social media companies usually turn to the WHO, local health officials, and governments for authoritative information, “this does not imply that they are unerring,” wrote Swedish bioethics researcher Emilia Niemiec in a scientific report last year.

Niemiec argued that because knowledge about COVID-19 is “currently limited and unsettled,” the medical community is still debating “various topics,” such as the lockdown policies and vaccines.

She also noted that while the censorship on social media might seem like an “effective and immediate” solution to the problem of misinformation, it can also limit the sharing of constructive critique of the current evidence and opinions.

These types of information, the medical researcher pointed out, is “necessary” to identify and correct potential errors, as well as further the understanding of complex issues surrounding the pandemic.

“A major question regarding the policies of the communication platforms is who exactly defines … which information is deemed to be false or harmful? And can we rely on these judgements?” Niemiec asked.

She added that if the “exclusive authority” to define what is scientifically proven or medically substantiated is left to social media providers or certain institutions, there is potential for errors and miscalculation, or even the potential abuse of this power to “foster political, commercial, or other interests.”

“The censorship is not based solely on science,” the researcher added. “An analysis of content banned on social networks suggests that the moderation is often politically biased.

“If we add to this the fact that Google is the most popular search engine, it becomes clear that a few tech companies have huge power over what information Internet users can see and how their views are shaped.”

Australian Senator Malcolm Roberts asked in the Senate on Aug. 11 whether there was a potential “conflict of interest” giving Google the final say in how COVID-19 vaccine information is screened and approved.

Roberts noted that Google and YouTube’s parent company, Alphabet, owns 12 percent of Vaccitech Ltd. through a venture capital fund GV (formerly Google Ventures). Vaccitech is a UK-based biotechnology company that co-invented the AstraZeneca vaccine.

The Epoch Times has contacted Alphabet, Vaccitech, and Google for comments but did not receive a response.

Google Tells Australian Government of $1 Billion Global Campaign to Censor ‘COVID-19 Misinformation’ (theepochtimes.com)

Terminations, job walk-offs could be ‘devastating’ to communities

A nationwide shortage of nurses and health care workers may soon worsen as thousands of medical staff face losing their jobs by refusing to obey new COVID-19 vaccine mandates.

“It will be really terrible. We’re already understaffed,” said one veteran registered nurse who works at a health care facility north of Seattle.

She said she will lose her job after her employer’s Aug. 31 mandated vaccine goes into effect unless she complies with the requirement.

She estimates that as many as 400—20 percent—of the health center’s 2,500 employees refuse to take the vaccine. That number will likely shrink due to the financial hardship of job loss, she said, though “even losing 5 percent would be devastating to the community,” she told The Epoch Times.

The nurse, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said her only solution is if her employer grants her a religious exemption, which appears unlikely at this point.

“It looks like they’re going to reject my religious exemption. They need more information, but they’re not telling me what information they’re going to need. It puts me in a really tough situation,” she said. “I have two [elderly] parents who live with me. It would be extraordinarily disruptive to move them. It’s extremely scary trying to start again somewhere else.”

Stephanie Thorpe, a registered nurse in the UCHealth Colorado system, is also stuck between an employee rock and a medical hard place over her company’s pending vaccine mandate.

Thorpe said she, too, could lose her job if her application for a religious exemption is denied.

UCHealth reports more than 92 percent of 26,000 employees systemwide are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.

That leaves a reluctant 8 percent who refuse the shots.

These medical professionals—Thorpe included—will have until Sept. 1 to comply with UCHealth’s Oct. 1 vaccine mandate, or else they will face disciplinary action up to and including termination.

“We do allow if there is a religious exemption or a medical exemption as well,” said UCHealth spokeswoman Kelly Tracer. “UCHealth has been facing the same staffing challenges that hospitals around the country are, definitely. It’s a national shortage.”

Thorpe estimates “a couple hundred” staunch opponents to the vaccine mandate “are willing to walk away” because of the vaccines.

“Right now, [UCHealth] is working short-staffed at many facilities,” she told The Epoch Times.

Thorpe said that even if a small percentage of UCHealth employees are fired or walk off the job, their departure could be significant.

“I’m concerned that the people who are vaccinated and are going to stay are going to take the majority of the workload,” Thorpe said. “We can’t even get people now to fill positions. It could get very scary.”

UCHealth, however, states that over the past six months, more than 4,400 new employees, including 1,100 new nurses, have been hired.

“Our new employee orientations often have hundreds of people in each class, and today, we have about 7 percent more employees than at this time last year,” UCHealth said in a statement. “These new employees are making a difference, but especially when our hospitals are as full as they are right now, recruiting employees and retaining our current employees are top priorities for us.”

However, it’s not only UCHealth employees that refuse the vaccine that may soon join the ranks of the unemployed.

A partial list of other U.S. hospital systems that have mandated or plan to mandate vaccinations for their employees includes Allegheny Health Network (19,000 employees) in Pennsylvania, Banner Health Network (52,000) in Arizona, Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (13,000) in New Hampshire, Kaiser Permanente (216,000) in California, Ascension Health (160,000) in Missouri, Advocate Aurora Health (75,000) in Illinois, Bay State Health (12,000) in Massachusetts, and New York-Presbyterian (20,000) in New York.

Ballad Health Care CEO Alan Levine told reporters that mandating shots on the 22-hospital system’s remaining 38 percent of unvaccinated workers would likely worsen an ongoing nursing shortage.

While at least one media outlet referred to those medical professionals who refuse to take the vaccines as “unlikely” to be hesitant because of their knowledge and medical training, several nurses interviewed by The Epoch Times said it’s their scientific training that gives them pause.

The nurse in Washington said there’s “a lot of distrust of the vaccine and the media narrative ‘safe and effective.’”

“There are a lot of credible doctors out there,” she said, “and they’re being shunned” by the medical community because they oppose the mRNA shots.

Another registered nurse, in Virginia, said she chose to give notice to her employer rather than be compelled to take the vaccine.

“This is a new type of vaccine—an mRNA vaccine that has never been used on humans before,” she told The Epoch Times on condition of anonymity. “It’s different from any of the other vaccines.”

“I am not against vaccines,” she said. “I encourage people to get vaccines that have been studied for years. I don’t think I’m being hypocritical by saying I’m pro-vaccine, but not pro this vaccine.”

Like Thorpe, the nurse said COVID-19 vaccine mandates will make the shortage of health care workers much worse.

“Who is going to take care of people with the [COVID-19] influx? You can only work short-staffed to a degree without compromising patient safety,” she said.

To illustrate her point, the nurse said she was recently offered a position at a health care facility without an interview ever taking place. The offer was rescinded when she refused to comply with the company’s vaccine mandate.

“I’ve been in health care over 10 years. I’ve never been given a job offer prior to an interview,” she said.

Currently, there are nearly 4 million registered nurses in the United States. However, the need to hire thousands more qualified staff was present even before the pandemic.

“Without decisive action, nurses will practice under increased stress. As the health care system is strained by an aging population and broadened access to public health care, it will be nurses that feel the weight of patient responsibility on their shoulders,” according to the American Nurses Association (ANA).

The ANA adds that by 2022, there will be “far more registered nurse jobs” than any other profession.

With more than 500,000 seasoned registered nurses (RNs) anticipated to retire by 2022, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the need for 1.1 million new RNs to replace those that have retired and to avoid a nursing shortage.

According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the United States will also see an estimated shortage of 37,800 to 124,000 physicians by 2034, including shortfalls in both primary and specialty care.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted many of the deepest disparities in health and access to health care services and exposed vulnerabilities in the health care system,” said AAMC President and CEO David J. Skorton in a statement.

To bridge the gap, hospitals and health care systems now offer various incentives to lure qualified nursing staff.

At Duke University Hospital in North Carolina, for example, a recent job posting sought an experienced RN Clinical Team Lead with a $15,000 sign-on bonus.

Nationwide, a skilled RN can earn anywhere from $70,000 to $130,000, and even more in states such as California.

In Arizona, there are currently 75,600 total nurses to serve an aging population that continues to grow.

Ann-Marie Alameddin, president and CEO of the Arizona Hospital and Health Care Association, said the shortage is mainly due to nurse retirement and normal attrition, as well as COVID-19 burnout.

Only “a handful” of hospitals in Arizona currently require a COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of employment, Alameddin told The Epoch Times.

“This is becoming a pandemic of the unvaccinated,” she said, and likened those employees who get vaccinated to honoring a “social contract” to keep people safe.

Jennifer Bridges, a former nurse at Houston Methodist Hospital, said: “The thing that’s really scary is now [hospitals] are mandating [the vaccine], like everywhere.”

“I mean, nurses and other staff are contacting me from so many different states and all over the place right now. And a lot of them are not going to take [the vaccine]” or they’re getting fired or seeking an exemption. “A lot of times they deny exemptions, so it’s just going create more of a shortage all the way around the board,” Bridges said.

In June, a federal judge threw out a lawsuit brought by 117 employees at Houston Methodist who were suing the hospital system over its COVID-19 vaccine requirement.

The social cost of the vaccine mandates being felt, however, has nothing to do with public health or safety, the nurse in Washington said.

“It’s really shocking and devastating to me. I’m going to lose a whole number of [vaccinated] people I consider friends. I feel like I’m going through this feeling of grief. I’m really scared what this means for society,” she said.

Nurses Warn of Staff Shortages Due to COVID-19 Vaccine Mandates (theepochtimes.com)

In light of the Biden Administration encouraging employers to mandate vaccines in order to retain employment while ironically not requiring vaccination mandates for their own staff, Gab has created a No Vax Mandate Job Board group.

You can view and join the group here.

This job board is for sharing job openings that do not require employees to inject themselves with an experimental substance or violate their bodily autonomy and religious beliefs in order to retain employment. This is also a board for job seekers to share their resume, skills, and story.

Related resource: DOWNLOAD COVID VACCINE RELIGIOUS EXEMPTION DOCUMENTS HERE

At Gab we do not require our employees to be vaccinated. In fact we don’t pry into any of the personal health choices of our team because frankly it’s none of our business. We know there are many businesses who share these values with us and many people looking to work for those businesses.

This job board aligns with Gab’s vision of building infrastructure for a parallel economy and we hope to expand further on this job board initiative in the coming months.

As Facebook and other Big Tech giants work to silence and “fact check” any and all vaccine dissent Gab remains committed to mission of being the home of free speech, individual sovereignty, and the free flow of information online.

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

The No Vax Mandate Job Board – Gab News

Matt Cartwright, Susan Wild called for federal aid to assist landlords while raking in rental income

Two Pennsylvania Democrats who collected tens of thousands of dollars in rental income in 2020 pushed for taxpayer-funded relief for landlords without acknowledging that they could profit from the policy.

Reps. Matt Cartwright and Susan Wild collected up to $130,000 in combined rental income in 2020, their latest financial disclosures show. In December, Cartwright deemed a Democratic-led effort to extend the CDC’s eviction moratorium insufficient, writing, “We also need to pass an aid package to assist landlords.” Wild, meanwhile, called federal assistance for landlords “a key part of our state recovery” in March. Neither Democrat acknowledged their status as landlords in their public remarks.

Neither Democrat returned a request for comment.

Cartwright and Wild are far from the only House Democrats who raked in thousands of dollars during the pandemic as they advocated federal landlord relief. “Squad” members Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) and Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) reported up to $65,000 in combined 2020 rental income. At the same time, both Democrats backed legislation that would cancel rent and create a “landlord relief fund,” which would require the federal government to reimburse landlords for lost income.

According to their financial disclosures, both Cartwright and Wild reported earning the same range of rental income in 2020 as they did in 2019. Many small landlords, however, struggled to collect rent amid the eviction moratorium, which the Pennsylvania Democrats supported throughout 2020. Cartwright and Wild also reported millions of dollars in assets and enjoy a $174,000 congressional salary—roughly a third of individual landlords earn less than $90,000 a year, according to the left-leaning Brookings Institution.

Neither Democrat returned a request for comment.

Cartwright’s rental income stems from three sources, the Democrat’s financial disclosures show: a Scranton, Pa., office building; a Hague, N.Y., “property trust”; and a Massachusetts holding company based in Nantucket. Cartwright earned up to $115,000 from the properties in 2020.

According to Wild’s financial disclosure, the Democrat owns a Washington, D.C., rental property worth between $250,000 and $500,000. Local real estate records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon show that Wild inherited the property from her late mother, Susan Ellis, in 2015. She earned up to $15,000 in rental income from the property in 2019 and 2020. Wild used the property’s address to register a D.C.-based limited liability corporation in 2015, according to the city’s business records. The Democrat then listed the LLC on her financial disclosure to report the rental income, rather than reveal the property’s address.

Both Cartwright and Wild face contentious reelection battles in 2022, having narrowly defeated their Republican challengers by just 3 points each in November. Cartwright is one of seven House Democrats who represent a district that voted for Donald Trump in 2020. He outperformed President Joe Biden by 8 points in the district, which includes Biden’s hometown of Scranton.

Two Pennsylvania Dems Pushed for Taxpayer-Funded Landlord Relief. Both Are Landlords. (freebeacon.com)

Samples from early Wuhan COVID-19 patients show the presence of genetically modified Henipah virus, an American scientist has found.

Henipah was one of the two types of viruses sent to China by Chinese-born scientists from a Canadian laboratory at the centre of a controversy over the firing of the scientists and collaboration with Chinese military researchers. It is not clear whether the virus found in the Chinese samples is related to the virus samples sent by the Canadian lab, which were shipped in late March 2019.

The finding was confirmed for The Epoch Times by another qualified scientist.

The evidence was first found by Dr. Steven Quay, a Seattle-based physician-scientist and former faculty member at the Stanford University School of Medicine, who looked at early COVID-19 samples uploaded by scientists at the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) shortly after China informed the World Health Organization about the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak.

The samples from the patients, who reportedly were found to have an “unidentified pneumonia disease” in December 2019, were uploaded to the genetic sequence database, GenBank, on the website of the U.S. National Institute of Health (NIH).

Quay says that while other scientists around the world were mostly interested in examining the genome of SARS-CoV-2 in the samples uploaded by the WIV scientists, he wanted to see what else was in the samples collected from the patients.

So he collaborated with a few other scientists to analyze sequences from the samples.

“We started fishing inside for weird things,” Quay told The Epoch Times.

What they found, he says, are the results of what could likely be contamination from different experiments in the lab making their way into the samples, as well as evidence of Henipah virus.

“We found genetic manipulation of the Nipah virus, which is more lethal than Ebola.” Nipah is a type of Henipah virus.

The Epoch Times asked Joe Wang, PhD, who formerly spearheaded a vaccine development program for SARS in Canada with one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies, to verify the finding. Wang is currently the president of NTD Television Canada, the sister company of The Epoch Times in Canada.

After examining the evidence, Wang said he was able to replicate Quay’s findings on the Henipah virus. He explains that the genetic manipulation of the virus was likely for the purposes of vaccine development.

Documents released by the Canadian government state that the WIV’s intended use of the virus samples sent by Canada was “stock virus culturing,” which in simpler terms means storing the viruses while keeping them alive. Genetic manipulation would not be within the scope of this description.

Winnipeg Lab

The firing of Chinese-born scientist Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng, from the National Microbiology laboratory (NML) in Winnipeg has been the subject of much controversy in Canada, with opposition parties pressing the government for more details on the case, and the government refusing to release information citing national security and privacy concerns.

Qiu and Cheng along with several Chinese students were escorted out of the NML, Canada’s only lab designated at containment level 4—or P4, the highest level of biosafety—amid a police investigation in July 2019. The two scientists were formally fired in January 2021.

The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), which is in charge of the NML, said the termination was the result of an “administrative matter” and “possible breaches of security protocols,” but has declined to provide further details, citing security and privacy concerns.

During her time at the NML, Qiu travelled several times to the WIV in an official capacity, helping train personnel on level 4 safety. The Globe and Mail later reported that scientists at the NML have been collaborating with Chinese military researchers on deadly pathogens, and that one of the Chinese military researchers worked at the high-security Winnipeg lab for a period of time.

Documents and emails released by PHAC show that the shipment of Henipah and Ebola samples was done with the permission of NML authorities.

In one of the emails sent in September 2018, David Safronetz, chief of special pathogens at PHAC, informs then-head of NML Matthew Gilmour and other lab administrators about the request from the WIV for the shipment of the samples, saying “I trust the lab.”

In response, Gilmour asks about the nature of the work that will be done at the Wuhan lab, and why the lab doesn’t get the material from “other, more local labs.” He also tells Safronetz that it’s “good to know that you trust this group,” asking how the NML was connected with the group.

In his reply, Safronetz doesn’t specifically say what the samples will be used for in China, but notes that they will only be sent once all paperwork and certification are completed. He also says the WIV is requesting the material from NML “due to collaboration” with Qiu.

He adds, “Historically, it’s also been easier to obtain material from us as opposed to US labs. I don’t think other, closer labs have the ability to ship these materials.”

Gilmour resigned from his position at the NML in May 2020 and joined a UK-based bioresearch company.

MPs have asked NML management why shipment of the samples was allowed and whether they knew if China performs any gain-of-function (GoF) research at the WIV. GoF research involves increasing either the lethal level (virulence) or the transmissibility of pathogens or both.

The NML’s acting scientific director general Guillaume Poliquin told MPs during a parliamentary committee meeting on March 22 that the lab only sent the samples to the WIV after receiving assurance that no GoF research would take place.

Conservative MP John Williamson pressed for more answers, saying the word of the state-run Chinese lab can’t be trusted as the Chinese regime “has a history of theft and lies.”

The issue of GoF research at WIV has been a point of contention in the United States between lawmakers and Dr. Anthony Fauci, the NIH’s head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Fauci’s organization has funded research (through EcoHealth Alliance) on coronaviruses at the Wuhan lab. U.S. Sen. Rand Paul says published work from WIV on coronaviruses shows the lab is conducting GoF research, a charge that Fauci denies.

The Epoch Times sought comment from PHAC, including a response as to how the agency addressed issues of intellectual property and collaboration of the development of any products such as vaccines with WIV, but didn’t hear back by time of publication.

Despite repeated requests by the opposition parties for more details related to the firing of the two NML scientists, the Liberal government has refused to provide records, saying there are national security and privacy concerns.

After the House of Commons issued an order requiring the government to disclose the information, the government took the Speaker of the House to court to obtain confirmation from a judge that it can withhold the documents. The government later dropped its court case once Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called an election and Parliament was dissolved.

Exclusive: Samples From Early Wuhan COVID Patients Had Genetically Modified Henipah, One of Two Types of Viruses Sent From Canadian Lab (theepochtimes.com)

California auditors raised concerns on the homeless housing department for its role as a statewide leader in addressing the homelessness crisis, citing it failed to properly allocate millions in COVID-19 pandemic funding.   

A state audit of the California Department of Housing and Community Development (CDHCD) released Aug. 24 found $316 million in federal funding received through the CARES Act failed to be expedited to address and respond to the state’s homeless population during the COVID-19 pandemic.   

“The department did not take critical steps to ensure that the $316 million in ESG‑CV (Emergency Solutions Grant) funds promptly benefited the vulnerable population for which it was intended,” state auditors said.  

“Its lack of efforts to measure the outcomes of the programs to which it provides funding raise serious concerns about its ability to provide the leadership the State needs to address its ongoing homelessness crisis.”   

There were an estimated 161,548 homeless people living in the state in 2020, a 7 percent increase from 2019. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office responded to the audit findings and told The Epoch Times the state’s response to protecting the homeless during the start of the COVID-19 pandemic was efficient. 

“Governor Newsom acted quickly and comprehensively to protect people experiencing homelessness during the pandemic, which is why California’s approach has become the national model,” spokesperson Erin Mellon told The Epoch Times in an email.  

“Unprecedented resources, deployed at a quick clip has resulted in safely housing 42,000 individuals the construction of permanent shelter for 8,000 more individuals. To suggest anything else is to fundamentally misunderstand how impactful our response was at protecting unsheltered people’s lives from the worst ravages of COVID.”  

While Newsom’s office opposed the audit’s finding, the delay in fund dispersals hindered the ability for organizations through the Continuum of Care entities (COCs)—which assist in providing homeless services and prevention tactics—from receiving monetary necessities provided by the CARES Act. 

According to the audit, while the funding was passed in March 2020, most CoCs did not receive access to the first round of funding until December 2020, seven months after the funding was announced. The second round of funding was not distributed to CoC’s until recently.  

“Recognizing it lacked the capacity to manage this emergency funding, the department hired a contractor to manage the program although it did not do so until 14 months after the CARES Act passed,” the report read.   

As a result of the department’s delays, the funding is at risk of being lost as the Sept. 22 spending deadline approaches, California State Auditor Elaine Howle said in the report.   

The report also found the department is not gathering essential data to note the effectiveness of the allocation of the funds. Furthermore, the audit concluded there are no plants to evaluate and determine the overall effectiveness of the COCs’ homelessness crisis projects.   

While the department disagrees with the audit’s findings, a plan to implement the outlined recommendations is currently underway.   

California Fails to Allocate Millions in CARES Act Funding to Homeless Services (theepochtimes.com)

Newly sworn-in New York Gov. Kathy Hochul is wasting no time taking sides in the school mask wars. Even before taking the top job, she told NBC’s “Today” that she intends to mandate masks for all public school students in the state.

She’s got President Joe Biden and the Democratic Party on her side, but the science is against her. There are no studies that demonstrate forcing young kids to wear masks reduces the spread of COVID-19 in schools.

Mandating masks also ignores the fundamental fact that not all masks are created equal. That should be the basis for a truce in the mask wars breaking out all over the nation. Mandates that settle for cloth masks with cartoon characters on them are a joke.

Most of the masks kids are wearing are laughably ineffective. A cloth mask blocks only 3 percent of viral particles from reaching the wearer, according to a study in the British Medical Journal. For such a minuscule difference, who would force kids to struggle with masks all day?

Instead of mandating masks, school districts should hand out effective masks, such as N95 or KN95 masks, at the beginning of the school day to kids whose parents request them. These masks block 95 percent of incoming viral particles. The masks were in short supply at the beginning of the pandemic, but no longer.

Flat surgical masks made from nonwoven polypropylene would be an improvement over what most kids wear. They block out 56 percent of virus particles, according to the same British study. But note that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention warns a surgical mask “does NOT provide the wearer with a reliable level of protection from inhaling smaller airborne particles and is not considered respiratory protection” in a health care setting.

Helping families who favor masking is smarter than producing classrooms full of kids with soiled, ineffective masks and many outraged parents.

The delta variant accounts for 98 percent of U.S. cases now and appears to be more dangerous to children. But would masks at school make a difference?

Not according to a CDC study of 169 Georgia elementary schools last winter. CDC researchers found that schools requiring staff and teachers to mask up had 37 percent fewer cases of COVID, and schools that improved air quality and ventilation had 39 percent fewer cases. Those approaches work. But mandating that students wear masks had no statistically significant impact on the spread of COVID. Mandating masks and letting masks be optional produced the same results. Not surprising considering the kinds of masks most kids wear.

Yet a week after releasing the Georgia study, the agency reversed course and recommended universal masking in school without offering new findings to justify that 180-degree flip. Perhaps the agency looked at the rising cases among children and panicked.

No surprise. Over the course of the pandemic, the CDC has earned a reputation as the “Centers for Disease Confusion.” The agency should have been guided by its own research.

Instead, it kowtowed to political correctness. Only a minority of Republicans support mandating masks, while 92 percent of Democrats agree, according to an Aug. 17 Axios/Ipsos poll.

Ten states—mostly blue states like Connecticut, New Jersey, and California—mandate masks. Other states leave it up to local school boards. And eight red states, including Florida, ban local school boards from mandating masks, insisting parents get to decide.

Last week, Biden escalated the mask wars by threatening federal Department of Education lawsuits against the seven states. The New York Times followed with a full-throated endorsement of Biden’s maneuver, calling mandatory masking a “common-sense public health” policy.

Sorry. The science doesn’t support it.

Hochul argues that the New York Health Department has the authority to require masking in the state. According to the letter of the law, she’s right. But the Health Department has lost credibility after forcing nursing homes to take in COVID-positive patients and covering up the deadly results. The Health Department can’t be trusted.

Instead, Hochul should put parents in charge and provide effective masks for families who want them.

That’s good advice for governors in every state. Mandating masks that don’t work is a farce.

Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.

The Mask Mandate Farce (theepochtimes.com)

SEATTLE—A Washington state tech executive has been sentenced to two years in prison after fraudulently obtaining nearly $1.8 million in federal COVID-19 disaster relief loans.

Mukund Mohan, of Clyde Hill, previously worked for Microsoft and Amazon and was making more than $200,000 a year as the chief of technology for the Canadian e-commerce company BuildDirect when he was arrested in July 2020.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office in Seattle said he submitted eight fraudulent Paycheck Protection Program loan applications seeking $5.5 million for companies he purportedly ran, and he actually received almost $1.8 million.

Mohan’s attorneys sought a six-month sentence, noting Mohan had no criminal history and had spent only $16,500 of the money. They said his actions, possibly triggered by mental health issues, were such an aberration for him that he fainted when federal agents knocked on his door.

Federal authorities were able to seize the money from Mohan’s accounts. He paid back the amount he had spent and was ordered to pay a $100,000 fine.

As part of the scheme, Mohan submitted fake and altered documents, including phony federal tax filings and altered incorporation documents. He said one of his companies had dozens of employees when in reality it had none.

In a news release, Corinne Kalve, acting special agent in charge of IRS Criminal Investigation, attributed the crime to Mohan’s greed, saying that when people abuse such benefit programs “they are stealing from those that are most vulnerable.”

Tech Exec Sentenced to 2 Years for $1.8 Million COVID Fraud (theepochtimes.com)

On Wednesday, Fox News’ meteorologist Janice Dean, who had relentlessly pursued New York Democrat governor Andrew Cuomo for his mishandling of the coronavirus pandemic, targeted celebrities who had lavished praise on Cuomo but still have not apologized for their championing of him.

She tweeted, “It would be very helpful if some of these celebrities that fawned over @andrewcuomo fessed up to their terrible judgement and apologized to the women and families affected by their tone deaf comments last year. But they won’t. “

It would be very helpful if some of these celebrities that fawned over @andrewcuomo fessed up to their terrible judgement and apologized to the women and families affected by their tone deaf comments last year. But they won’t.

— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) August 25, 2021

Dean then named some celebrities who had lauded Cuomo last year, including Whoopi Goldberg, Billy Joel, Billy Crystal, Rosie Perez, Ben Stiller, Chelsea Handler, Sarah Silverman, and Cher.

.@WhoopiGoldberg @billyjoel @BillyCrystal @rosieperezbkln (who blocked me) @RedHourBen @chelseahandler @SarahKSilverman @cher

— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) August 25, 2021

In November 2020, when the Emmys gave Cuomo the Founders Award “in recognition of his leadership during the Covid-19 pandemic and his masterful use of television to inform and calm people around the world,” host Bruce Paisner stated:

Last spring, when the virus was new and out of control, and the people of New York were frightened at its relentless spread. One man took it upon himself to use technology to spread reliable information and tell citizens what to do. … And as spring turned into summer this year, the people of New York went from fear of the unknown to increasing knowledge of what was known and a sense that somebody had a plan.

Billy Crystal breathed, “In the darkest days of the pandemic, your daily briefings, live from New York, gave us hope, gave us clarity, gave us the truth, and gave us something we were not getting from Washington: Leadership.”

Billy Joel added, “In the midst of this storm, Andrew Cuomo became the nation’s governor. People across the country tuned into his press conferences every day.” Perez stated, “Governor Andrew Cuomo, you are the man.” Stiller: “I look up to you still.”

Joel wrote of Cuomo on his website in March 2020, “We are not at all surprised by his leadership during such a chaotic time and we are so proud of him. We’re lucky to call him ‘The Godfather,’ his favorite title, and our friend.”

In March 2020, Handler penned an article in Vogue with the gushing title,“Dear Andrew Cuomo, I Want to Be Your First Lady.” She wrote:

Between watching episodes of Tiger King and episodes of Trump’s daily press briefings and trying to find more marijuana to ingest, I quicken to something that cuts through the insanity. Out of the darkness, you, Andrew Cuomo, walk into my life, looking remarkably like the Incredible Hulk.… Thank you, Andrew Cuomo. Thank you for reminding us that there are men who can lead and be clear and tell the truth—even when the news is bad. Who practice benevolent ruthlessness. (Thanks, Maureen Dowd.) Who speak to Americans with respect. Thank you for being a leader at a time when so many of us were desperately looking for one.

Cher had her moment of gushing in April 2020, tweeting, “I’m in love with Andrew Cuomo.”

I’m in Love With Andrew Cuomo 💋
“ANDY”🎶

— Cher (@cher) April 15, 2020

The same month, Sarah Silverman wrote, “I really hope @NYGovCuomo sees this awesome @RandyRainbow video from one great New Yorker to another.”

I really hope @NYGovCuomo sees this awesome @RandyRainbow video from one great New Yorker to another (@chelseahandler you got competish) https://t.co/nms03dutck

— Sarah Silverman (@SarahKSilverman) April 6, 2020

The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a member. 

Janice Dean Names Celebrities Who Lauded Cuomo: Apologize To The Women And Families | The Daily Wire

New footage appeared on social media Monday allegedly showing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi addressing a crowd at a lavish Napa Valley fundraiser, delivering her address mask-free despite California’s strict COVID advisories.

“Speaker Pelosi wants to lock you down again while she wines and dines with her political donors. It’s utter hypocrisy,” posted House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy on Twitter.

Speaker Pelosi wants to lock you down again while she wines and dines with her political donors. It’s utter hypocrisy. https://t.co/PmiygfqN7F

— Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) August 22, 2021

Pelosi made national headlines last week when she largely dismissed thousands of pieces of US-made military equipment falling into the hands of the Taliban.

“This is what happens when you withdraw,” Pelosi said in an interview with KPIX 5 News Tuesday. “Some stuff is left there. It was thought that would be used. It was hoped that would be used by the Afghan military to defend its own country.”

“The fact that it did not and could not,” Pelosi added, “was all more the reason for us to leave.”

The United States Ambassador to the United Nations weighed in this week on the unfolding chaos in Afghanistan, saying the UN Security Council issued a “very strongly worded press statement” that the Taliban must respect human rights.

“We have expressed in no uncertain terms, here in the United Nations, through a very strongly worded press statement from the Security Council that we expect the Taliban to respect human rights, including the rights of women and girls,” said Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield.

Watch Pelosi’s lavish address above.

FANCY NANCY RETURNS! Video Shows Mask-Free Pelosi Speaking at Lavish Napa Valley Fundraiser | Sean Hannity

US Border Patrol agents are reportedly suffering low morale, to the point they feel “almost dead inside,” as President Joe Biden’s policies leave only skeleton crews working in the field to intercept national-security threats.

“Everyone shows up to work sort of downtrodden, almost dead inside, for lack of a better term,” Jon Anfinsen, a spokesman for the Border Patrol’s union, told the Washington Examiner in an article published on Sunday. 

They’re not allowed to [do] the job, and they know that people are getting away every single day, every hour.

The US has set new 20-year highs in each of the past two months for the number of illegal aliens encountered by Border Patrol, including 213,000 in July, after Biden dismantled the policies of his predecessor Donald Trump, which he called “an assault on the dignity of immigrant communities.” Agents know that many more people are crossing the border undetected, as hundreds of agents have been pulled from the field to process and care for the crushing flow of migrants.READ MORESuspected terrorists are crossing into US at ‘level we have never seen before,’ outgoing Border Patrol chief tells agents – report

“Agents are primarily indoors, processing, and we’re dealing with the people who are flagging us down – the ones who are walking up to us and turning themselves in,” Anfinsen said. “Meanwhile, the immigrants who don’t want anything to do with us, they’re running away, although sometimes they’re walking because they have no need to run because we’re not there.”

In one 245-mile stretch of the southwest US border, there are only 12 agents patrolling, a record low, the Examiner said. On one recent day, the busy McAllen, Texas, Border Patrol Station had just one person and a dog working in the field because all other agents were needed for non-enforcement tasks, such as processing and transporting illegal migrants.

That’s especially troubling to agents, knowing that drug traffickers and suspected terrorists, among other threats, are exploiting the porous border. People on the FBI’s terrorist watchlist are crossing into the US at an unprecedented level, according to Rodney Scott, whom the Biden administration forced out as Border Patrol chief earlier this month. Also this month, Mark Morgan, a top border official in the Obama and Trump administrations, said the Biden administration has dropped at least 40,000 illegal aliens infected with Covid-19 into US cities.

The Examiner said many field agents have been turned into corrections officers, being jammed into crowded holding facilities with dozens of migrants packed in small rooms. Morgan said 37 employees have died from the virus since the pandemic began.ALSO ON RT.COMBiden administration has dumped 40,000 Covid-positive migrants into US cities, former border chief tells newspaper

The newspaper said its reporting was based on interviews with five current agents and three former senior officials who worked in the Biden administration. The administration has prohibited Border Patrol employees from speaking to media outlets without permission and stopped allowing reporters to do ride-alongs with enforcement agents.

“The mission is no longer deter, detect, detain,” one agent said. “It is wait until they have all crossed, Uber them to the station and process. Morale is below the Mason-Dixon line. We need more agents on the line, not at hospital or processing.” 

The agent added that more operatives are also needed to do intelligence work to target the cartels that are smuggling migrants.

Asked about the alleged plunge in morale, the US Customs and Border Patrol sent a statement to the Examiner, saying it’s fortunate to have agents who “remain resilient as we seek to improve enforcement efforts along the border.” The statement added, “Day in and day out, our Border Patrol agents continue to meet the need to protect our nation’s border as well as process migrants safely and expeditiously.”

Morale among ‘downtrodden’ Border Patrol agents PLUMMETS as Biden policies leave them unable to protect national security – report — RT USA News

On Saturday 18 RINOs joined Democrats to pass the Democrat Party’s infrastructure bill. Democrats never allowed a similar bill to reach President Trump’s desk last year.

The RINOs gave Joe Biden a rare win at a time when the illegitimate president is sinking in the polls and continues to struggle with his diminishing faculties.

Mitch McConnell led the charge of the RINOs.
Here are the 18 GOP members who voted for this monstrosity on Saturday:

** Mitch McConnell
** Roy Blunt of Missouri,
**Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia,
**Bill Cassidy of Louisiana,
**Susan Collins of Maine,
**John Cornyn of Texas,
**Kevin Cramer of North Dakota,
**Mike Crapo of Idaho,
**Chuck Grassley of Iowa,
**John Hoeven of North Dakota,
**Deb Fischer of Nebraska,
**Lisa Murkowski of Alaska,
**Rob Portman of Ohio,
**Jim Risch of Idaho,
**Mitt Romney of Utah,
**Thom Tillis of North Carolina,
**Todd Young of Indiana
**Mike Rounds of South Dakota.

On Sunday morning Senator Kevin Cramer joined Maria Bartiromo on Sunday Morning Futures to discuss his vote for the Socialist infrastructure plan. Big mistake. Maria Bartiromo chewed him up and spit him out — as he deserved.

TRENDING: MUST SEE: Mike Lindell on War Room Lays Out Day-by-Day Schedule on What to Expect at Much Anticipated Cyber Symposium This Week (VIDEO)

Bartiromo pointed out in the $1.2 trillion “infrastructure” monstrosity there is not a single dime for a border wall during the worst border crisis in US history. Cramer had no response. Instead he started spouting off about the globalists at the Chamber of Commerce and Business Roundtable who support the Uniparty spending plan.

Cramer was outmatched and looked ridiculous.
Maria destroyed him.

On Monday the War Room panel pointed out that there is not a dime in the trillion dollar plan supported by RINOs for border security.
And yet 18 Republicans voted for it.
It is clear these dirty RINOs DO NOT support their constituents.

Below are the 17 REPUBLICAN Senators and links to EMAIL THEM, keep your messages short, but let’s flood their email boxes with messages like “VOTE NO on Trillion Dollar Infrastructure bill”, “NO to Socialism”, “NO to GREEN NEW DEAL”.

Via Midnight Rider:

Contact Sen Blunt
https://www.blunt.senate.gov/contact/contact-roy
Senator Burr
https://www.burr.senate.gov/contact/email
Senator Cassidy
https://www.cassidy.senate.gov/contact
Sen Capito
https://www.capito.senate.gov/contact/share-your-opinion
Senator Collins
https://www.collins.senate.gov/CONTACT
Senator Cramer
https://www.cramer.senate.gov/contact/contact-kevin
Senator Crapo
https://www.crapo.senate.gov/contact/email-me
Senator Graham
https://www.lgraham.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/e-mail-senator-graham
Senator Grassley
https://www.grassley.senate.gov/contact
Senator Hoeven
https://www.hoeven.senate.gov/contact/email-the-senator
Senator McConnell
https://www.mcconnell.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?p=contact
Senator Murkowski
https://www.murkowski.senate.gov/contact/email
Senator Portman
https://www.portman.senate.gov/meet/contact
Senator Risch
https://www.risch.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/email
Senator Romney
https://www.romney.senate.gov/contact
Senator Tillis
https://www.tillis.senate.gov/email-me
Senator Young
https://www.young.senate.gov/contact

Read More

THEY HATE YOU: Mitch McConnell and 17 RINO Senators Vote for Infrastructure Bill that Included ZERO DOLLARS for Border Security During Greatest Border Crisis in History – Orwellian Post

The U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Border Patrol’s apprehension numbers of illegal migrants broke records in July for the sixth consecutive month following Joe Biden’s taking office as president, with the numbers reaching an “historic crisis level.”

While the “sweltering” heat of June and July usually slows down illegal immigration at the southern US border, according to Todd Bensman of the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), in June and July of 2021 border traffic actually increased. Bensman said:

“For the sixth consecutive month since President Joe Biden took office and followed through on campaign promises to dismantle his predecessor’s deterrence-based policies, the number of illegal immigrants encountered by U.S. Customs and Border Protection broke records, reaching 210,000 in July, the Associated Press reported Monday. The outlet cited a court filing by David Shahoulian, assistant secretary for border and immigration policy at the Department of Homeland Security. Based on past trends, the vast majority of those encountered were likely illegal immigrants apprehended by the Border Patrol.”

Authorities encountered on average 6,770 individuals every single day of July, and many of these people were families and “unaccompanied alien minors.” Single adult “runners” were also driving the wave of immigration. Border Patrol is struggling to push these people back into Mexico over and over again, its resources “strained.” The CBP encountered 210,000 illegal aliens in July, and it is estimated that 37,000 migrants evaded Border Patrol altogether, a number which Bensman calls a “likely… significant undercount.”

While June’s apprehension number of 188,829 illegal migrants was the largest for one month in 21 years, July’s number of 210,000 exceeded that record. Overall, in this fiscal year, which ends September 30, CBP encounters reached the staggering number of 1.3 million. The last time border apprehension numbers hit the mark of a million was back in 2006.

In the border crisis “epicenter” of the Rio Grande Valley, Texas, the numbers of illegal migrants stopped by Border Patrol were 51,149 in May, 59,380 in June, and 78,000 in July.

“The July numbers, once finalized and released in the next couple of weeks, will show that the border crisis is going from record high to record high in an upward climb into a red-zone crisis that will defy any control, short of a radical about-face by the Biden administration. Few signs point to any such policy reversal, although the White House has tentatively begun long-haul deportations to Central America aboard ICE jets.

Border Patrol and CBP facilities, meanwhile, are overrun in the crisis’s Texas epicenter, as are hundreds of border communities that have rarely experienced anything like the steadily worsening chaos of wandering immigrants; high-speed car chases; crime; fear of Covid; and widespread insecurity.”

Bensman explained that promises by Democrat candidates for president in 2019 and 2020 to welcome illegal immigrants and institute policies highly favorable to those migrants caused migrants to begin massing in southern Mexico and even increase CBP apprehension numbers, despite then-President Trump’s “tough turn-back policies.” Individuals who had previously been “unable to advance through Trump’s border restrictions” saw a chance to be successful migrants. As polls pointed to a Biden win, migrants continued to cross in increasing numbers. Some of the migrants in Mexico told Bensman they were planning to “wait out” what they expected to be the last few months of Trump’s presidency.

Bensman calls this steadily growing surge of illegal immigration the “Biden effect,” and said that the border crisis was predicted by an October 2020 national threat assessment from the Department of Homeland Security. Biden’s exemption of “unaccompanied alien minors from pandemic-related ‘Title 42’ instant expulsions to Mexico” and effective ending of interior removals for all those migrants who had successfully evaded Border Patrol as soon as he took office made the crisis rapidly worse.

“The exempted family groups and unaccompanied alien minors have driven the crisis, because they have forced Border Patrol agents ‘off the line’ to deal with their care and processing. Agents processed a whopping 80,000 illegal family unit immigrants in July, Shahoulian said, a leap from June’s 55,805. Reports coming from the border in recent days indicate they have been showing up in individual groups of 500, and even 1,000.

U.S. officials probably picked up more than 19,000 unaccompanied children in July, exceeding the previous record of 18,877 in March.”

If the Biden administration continues its failed border policies, apprehension numbers are likely to continue in an upward trend.

Border Patrol Apprehension Numbers Point To Historic, Crisis Levels At American Border. – The National Pulse

Border officers are releasing illegal immigrants who test positive for COVID-19 to a nonprofit organization, Texas authorities said this week.

The immigrants were handed over to the Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley, which arranged for their stay in a La Joya, Texas, hotel that it had rented out entirely, La Joya police officials said.

“We did not know this. No one told the city of La Joya. No one told the police department that these people were here. And no one told us that these people were possibly ill,” La Joya Sgt. Manuel Casas told reporters at a July 27 press conference.

The situation came to light on July 26, after a concerned citizen reported to a police officer that she saw members of a family who were coughing and sneezing without covering their mouths at a Whataburger location, and they weren’t wearing masks. Management at the restaurant where the incident was reported said they wanted the family to leave because they were disregarding other people’s health.

The officer went to the family, who told the officer they had been apprehended by Border Patrol agents just days before, but were released because they had COVID-19. The family was being housed at the Texas Inn Hotel, which authorities later learned had been completely booked to house such immigrants.

“The information we have is that everybody that is staying in that hotel is COVID-19 positive,” Casas said.

Officers later witnessed a group of 20 to 30 people staying at the hotel outside. Most of them weren’t wearing masks.

Officers also later learned that the illegal immigrants being detained by Border Patrol were given over to the nonprofit to be placed in hotels in the La Joya and McAllen, Texas, areas.

“We have been doing well as a community in slowing the spread of this deadly virus. But ill-conceived policies by both the federal and state governments are beginning to have serious consequences on Hildago County. I call on federal immigration officials to stop releasing infected migrants into our community,” Richard Cortez, the county judge, said in a statement.

A Catholic Charities of The Rio Grande Valley representative didn’t return a request for comment by press time.

The charity’s executive director, Sister Norma Pimentel, told Border Report that the group has been helping house COVID-positive immigrants in hotels. Pimentel said that a security guard is now at the La Joya hotel to keep the immigrants inside.

A spokesperson for Customs and Border Protection told The Epoch Times via email that the agency in the Rio Grande Valley (RGV) Sector “continues to encounter significant numbers of undocumented migrants crossing the border.”

Undocumented migrants is a term for illegal aliens.

“RGV continues to expel individuals under Title 42 authorities as part of COVID mitigation efforts and utilizes pathways under Title 8 proceedings to remove those amenable to their home countries,” the spokesperson wrote. “During these challenging times, our federal, state, and local partnerships are indispensable as we work to secure our borders and to quickly move individuals out of USBP custody and through the appropriate immigration pathway.”

Border agents in the Rio Grande Valley apprehended more than 20,000 illegal immigrants in a single week this month, part of a dramatic rise in apprehensions seen during President Joe Biden’s first term.

Texas authorities have begun taking matters into their own hands, arresting immigrants on trespassing charges. The city of Laredo, Texas, sued the Biden administration last week in a bid to stop the transfer of thousands of illegal immigrants from among those apprehended in the Rio Grande Valley and Del Rio to the city.

US Releasing Illegal Immigrants Who Test Positive for COVID-19: Texas Police (theepochtimes.com)

Data from Public Health England (PHE) shows that, while the overall chances of getting reinfected are very low, the Delta variant, first identified in India and which accounts for around 99% of cases in the UK, poses a higher risk.
It came as new figures showed the breakdown of how many people in hospital with the Delta variant have had one or both doses of a Covid-19 vaccine.

While it is “possible” to identify that someone may have the DELTA variant, THERE IS NO DIRECT TEST.
So, I repeat my question–how the hell do we know that most of the new cases are “DELTA” when there is no DIRECT test?

How is the Delta Variant Spreading If There is No Direct Delta Variant Test? | Dude Pac | dudepac.com

Almost two years ago I published an article on the Gab News blog about Silicon Valley building a social credit system for the West. Exactly one year later I experienced this social credit system personally when my business and family were blacklisted by Visa after also being banned by Paypal, Stripe, Coinbase, and many other payment processors.

Around this time I wrote a warning letter to Christians about what was happening to me and what would soon be happening, and is now happening, to many more people like me. Earlier this year I wrote about the Silent Christian Secession and the need to build our own economy to escape the pending tyranny of the global elite.

In April I wrote that the vaccine was becoming a religious ceremony–cultish even– and that Christians had an absolute right to reject it. That same month I defended the right of everyone to speak freely on Gab and openly discuss, question, and criticize the vaccines in the face of a censorship crackdown on dissent from Big Tech.

God has blessed me with tremendous foresight and discernment about the Enemy’s next move. It’s why I started Gab in 2016 long before censorship became the center of cultural and political debate that it is today. It’s why I wrote these many warnings to Christians and freedom lovers everywhere about what was happening to me because I knew that it would soon be happening to all of you too.

I don’t take this blessing lightly. These things weigh on my heart heavily as a husband and father of two young children. Everyday I hear stories from Gabbers about how they are being forced and coerced into taking the vaccine when they do not want to.

I am praying that God gives them the peace and discernment they need right now. It sickens me that the Enemy is making my brothers and sisters in Christ choose between feeding their families and retaining their bodily autonomy and being true to their deeply held religious beliefs.

This week we published several religious exemption document templates for people who need them and the response was unbelievable. Many people sent emails, Gab comments, and direct messages thanking us for publishing these and I pray to God that they helped even one person facing an impossible decision to make the right one.

The people in power don’t care about Covid. They don’t care about the vaccines. They care about control. This entire situation is one giant demoralization campaign designed to grind us all down spiritually, emotionally, physically, and financially. If they can get us all to submit once, they can get us all to submit fully and forever.

We can’t let that happen. Do not let them get in your head with the fear mongering, the lies, and the shapeshifting narratives. They are exposing themselves like never before in human history and we are living through a period of immense spiritual warfare.

We must remember that we are human beings, made in the image of God. We always have choices. We always have hope. Darkness cannot and never will consume the light of Christ.

Do not look to political leaders for help. There is no political solution to a spiritual problem. Look to Jesus Christ. Open your Bible. Pray. Put on the full armor of God and get to work building something new. They have left us no choice. We can and must rebuild from scratch and it starts in your own heart and in your own local community.

God bless you all,

Andrew Torba
CEO, Gab.com
Jesus is King

I Tried My Best To Warn You This Was Going To Happen – Gab News

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is partnered with a self-described “socialist” internet foundation run by the branch of the Chinese Communist Party spearheading its digital campaign to censor factual narratives and push fraudulent information about COVID-19.

The two foundations inked a memorandum of understanding in 2015, pledging cooperation in areas including “public health”:

According to the cooperation memorandum of understanding, the two parties will rely on new technologies such as the Internet to promote pragmatic cooperation in the fields of charity, public health, and international development, and work together to improve the quality of life of the poor and promote poverty reduction in developing countries.The China Internet Development Foundation (CIDF) operates under the Chinese Communist Party’s Ministry of Civil Affairs and is managed by the Cyberspace Administration of China.Given its close relationship to the Chinese Communist Party, CIDF’s charter pledges to “adhere to the guidance of Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”

“Consciously maintain a high degree of consistency with the Party Central Committee with Comrade Xi Jinping at the core in ideological and political actions, and earnestly fulfill the historical mission of building a network power to promote the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation,” are among the foundation’s other objectives.

“The Foundation adheres to the overall leadership of the Communist Party of China and, in accordance with the provisions of the Constitution of the Communist Party of China, establishes an organization of the Communist Party of China, carries out party activities, and provides necessary conditions for the activities of the party organization,” the group’s charter adds.

The CIDF also openly admits to “practicing the core values of socialism.”

CIDF’s oversight body, the Cyberspace Administration of China, also played a critical role in deploying Chinese bot armies on social media platforms to spread propaganda about the origins and severity of COVID-19.

In addition to controlling thousand-person legions online, the body was also responsible for dictating pro-government editorial lines of Chinese state-run media outlets regarding COVID-19 stories.

“All Cyberspace Administration bureaus must pay heightened attention to online opinion, and resolutely control anything that seriously damages party and government credibility and attacks the political system,” reveals a government memo obtained by ProPublica.

Gates Foundation Partnered With ‘Socialist’ Internet Group Running China’s COVID-19 Propaganda Operation. – The National Pulse

State health departments are using the Chinese Communist Party-linked social media platform TikTok to encourage children as young as 12 to get vaccinated against COVID-19.

In West Michigan, Kalamazoo County’s Health and Community Services Department is specifically using the app to “better reach people ages 12 to 29 years old.”

Lyndi Warner, public information officer for the department, reveals the platform is being used to target the young demographic: “When we look at who’s being vaccinated and where are we wanting to make those strides… the 12- to 29-year-old age group is where we really wanted to try and focus in on.”

“We are seeing these videos do really well so far. I was pleasantly surprised to see how well that they’re doing,” she added.

The Alabama Department of Health (ADH) also sponsored a contest on TikTok for individuals aged 13 to 29 to “encourage vaccination against COVID-19 before the beginning of the school year.”

“To participate, contestants are to submit a TikTok video showing themselves getting vaccinated or include a creative message explaining, “This is why I got vaccinated.” All videos must tag @alcovidvaccine, #getvaccinatedAL and #ADPH. […] A panel of judges composed of advertising professionals and ADPH personnel will select four winners who will each be awarded a $250 Visa gift card,” a contest summary continues.

TikTok’s parent company ByteDance employs former Chinese Communist Party officials, including individuals with military ties, to executive roles and grants party members preferential treatment in hiring processes. Its founder has also pledged to use ByteDance to “promote socialist core values” and devotion to the Chinese.

The app’s threat to national security and data privacy prompted the Trump administration to attempt to ban the platform from operating in the U.S. – an effort recently quashed by the Biden White House.

Illegal immigrants are crossing into the United States from Mexico in record-shattering numbers, but the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is ignoring a congressional request for information regarding where the government is relocating them, lawmakers say.

“On April 15, 2021, 34 Members of the House of Representatives sent a letter requesting important information regarding the destinations within the interior of our nation of the heavy illegal migration over our nation’s border,” Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.) and Rep. Louie Gohmert (R-Texas) told DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in an Aug. 5 letter.

The letter was also addressed to Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Xavier Becerra. The two departments are responsible for implementing President Joe Biden’s open border policies on immigration.

“As of the date of this letter, the response from [HHS] deferred to [DHS], and regrettably, DHS has not responded to the Congress’ letter,” Braun and Gohmert told Mayorkas and Becerra.

The lawmakers said the repeated requests for relocation information were made because “border crossings remain unsustainably high. In July, it was reported that attempted crossings at the U.S.–Mexico border remain at a historically high level not experienced in at least 21 years.

“In June, more than 188,829 individuals were taken into custody by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP), including 15,018 unaccompanied children. This former figure represents an alarming 141 percent increase from January 2021. Like so many in our nation, we remain deeply concerned about this unlawful, manmade humanitarian and national crisis that is being facilitated on our southern border.”

In addition to Braun and Gohmert, the April and August letters were signed by Sens. Kevin Cramer (R-N.D.), Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-Miss.), and Cynthia Lummis (R-Wyo.).

Members of the House of Representatives who signed the letters include Reps. Diana Harshbarger (R-Tenn.), Matthew Rosendale (R-Mont.), Glenn Grothman (R-Wis.), Greg Steube (R-Fla.), Randy Weber (R-Texas), Ben Cline (R-Va.), Jeff Duncan (R-S.C.), Bob Good (R-Va.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Andy Biggs (R-Ariz.), Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), Chip Roy (R-Texas), Jodey Arrington (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), Kevin Hern (R-Okla.), Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.), Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), Ted Budd (R-N.C.), Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.), Scott Perry (R-Pa.), Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), Bill Posey (R-Fla.), Vicki Hartzler (R-Mo.), and Pete Sessions (R-Texas).

Representatives from DHS didn’t respond to a request for comment by press time.

The information sought by the lawmakers includes the following:

“The locations where illegal immigrants have been sent, transported, or provided ability or funding to travel to, or allowed to travel to by other funding including their own or private funding for all individuals who entered the U.S. without visas.

“For each named location, the total number of immigrants who have been sent, transported, or provided ability or funding to travel to, or allowed to travel to by other funding, including their own or private funding to such city.

“The number of immigrants tested for the novel coronavirus (COVID-19), the number of immigrants that tested positive for COVID-19, and [DHS’s] course of action to respond to immigrants that test positive for COVID-19.”

The signers noted that “this requested information is critical to understanding how the unabetted flow of illegal aliens over the Southern border affects all Americans in each of the 50 states.”

“It must be reiterated that members of the executive branch have a duty, and many have sworn an oath that would include the requirement to carry out the lawfully enacted legislation under the Constitution,” the letter reads.

“With an open border facilitating illegal entry into our nation and the manifold resulting criminalities, the executive branch is failing miserably in its duty.

“Your failure to provide this requested information over the past three months, an eminently reasonable amount of time, raises further concerns about the lack of transparency and your unwillingness to provide this important information to elected representatives of the people of this nation.”

Homeland Security Ignoring Congressional Requests for Info on Where Illegal Immigrants Are Being Sent (theepochtimes.com)

Fellow American:

Did you see the news? 

Joe Biden released 50,000 illegal immigrants into the United States without even giving them a court date. 

We don’t know how many are violent criminals, how many work for the drug cartels, or how many are infected with Covid-19. All we know is that the Left’s plan is working.

They don’t see the lawless humanitarian crisis on the border as the problem. To Democrats, the crisis is the solution. 

ONLY A CONSERVATIVE HOUSE CAN SEAL THE BORDER. CLICK HERE TO GIVE TO HOUSE FREEDOM FUND TODAY!

Democrats want chaos at the border so that they can sneak in as many illegals as possible, right under your nose. So far, more than 1 MILLION illegals have crossed the border since Joe Biden took office! 

Biden isn’t turning them back to Mexico. He’s letting them into our towns, without Covid tests or court dates, while telling American citizens we have to start wearing masks again!

What happened to our country? America belongs to the people who love her, and it’s time to take her back.

Support the House Freedom Fund today, and join the fight to win America back.

HFF is the only organization in the country exclusively committed to electing TRUE CONSERVATIVES to the U.S. House.
      
HFF only supports fighters – men and women like Jim Jordan, Scott Perry, and Lauren Boebert. These are leaders ready to take on the socialist Left, the establishment GOP, the Big Tech billionaires, and the mainstream media.

I know because HFF supports me, and that’s no small thing. I’ve learned that when conservatives truly fight the liberals, even many of the leaders in our own party will abandon them.

Electing more Republicans won’t change anything. Only electing conservatives can make the House great again. HFF is the Right’s secret weapon against the woke socialist Left.

As you know, under our Constitution, the House holds the power of the purse over the federal budget. If we nominate and elect enough conservatives next year, we can cut off Biden’s allowance:

❌ No more money to relocate illegal immigrants into our hometowns;
❌ No more money to poison our children with Critical Race Theory;
❌ No more money to get Big Tech to spy on American citizens;
❌ No more money for new mask mandates or school closures; and
❌ No more money to finance coronavirus experiments by Communist scientists in Chinese labs.

If Democrats won’t turn away illegal immigrants, then the American people have to turn away the Democrats.

Please join me in supporting HFF today!

Thank you for considering this urgent request and doing so much to help fight for America’s future.

Sincerely,

Marjorie Taylor Greene
U.S. Congresswoman (R-GA)

Obama’s super-spreader birthday bash may have ruined the fall party scene in our nation’s capital

Regular Americans love to complain about how the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected their lives. The plebs throw temper tantrums when members of the political élite flaunt their privilege by throwing massive parties and ignoring the rules they put in place for everyone else.

Regular Americans, who as we all know are to blame for ruining democracy and botching the Afghanistan withdrawal, should try to take a deep breath and put their so-called suffering in perspective. They shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that the political élite are also suffering, and élite suffering is, for obvious reasons, even more tragic than regular suffering.

Politico reports that members of the Washington, D.C., élite are the victims of a grave injustice perpetrated by one of their own. Former president Barack Obama’s 60th birthday party in Martha’s Vineyard earlier this month was a confirmed super-spreader event. The “Obama variant” has wreaked havoc on the island’s only hospital system.

Thanks, Obama. His insatiable narcissism may have ruined the fall party scene in our nation’s capital. Democratic power players, shocked at the (relatively) critical tone of the media coverage surrounding the Martha’s Vineyard affair, are worried they might have to wait a few months before it’s socially acceptable to hang out with celebrities again:

The bashing of the bash is having a chilling effect on the D.C. party scene as (especially Democratic) pols and their staffers scramble to figure out when and where — or even if — they can party again.

“Who wants to throw a party right now when Obama hired a doctor to make sure everyone’s vaccinated and passes a Covid test and he still gets shamed for it?” said JOHN ARUNDEL, former associate publisher of Washington Life magazine and managing director of Perdicus Communications.

“I just think there’s a stigma to throwing any kind of event,” he added. “The optics of throwing the party or being at the party, it can be chilling.”

The results have been almost as tragic as the chaos unfolding at the Kabul airport. Democratic lobbyist Heather Podesta, for example, was planning to host a lavish gala in September at the French ambassador’s residence. She was forced to reschedule the event for November.

“What we could do six weeks ago, we can’t do now,” lamented Adrienne Elrod, a former Hillary Clinton adviser. “We have to be so cognizant because Republicans are looking for any reason to call us hypocrites or to call us liars.”

All is not lost, however, as a number of swanky gatherings are still on track. House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn (D., S.C.) will be honored at the March on Washington Film Festival on Sept. 30; hundreds are expected to attend. The Halycon Awards, a fundraising gala for a prominent liberal nonprofit organization, is scheduled for the following day.

A number of Democrats are refusing to let Obama’s bad vibes prevent them from raising money from left-wing billionaires. Kathy Hochul, who is (at least in theory) set to replace disgraced governor Andrew Cuomo (D., N.Y.), attended a series of high-dollar fundraisers in the Hamptons this weekend.

Journalists and lobbyists, meanwhile, are suffering an almost unfathomable hardship:

Some lobbyists are panicked about shrinking guest lists at fundraisers, especially with the infrastructure and reconciliation bills on the table. Fundraisers are prime opportunities to corner a member and press their interests.

Journalists might suffer too, with the Washington book party circuit in limbo. Lobbyist and D.C. hostess JULEANNA GLOVER was slated to have a book party at her Kalorama home in September for GAYLE TZEMACH LEMMON’s new tome, but she’s going to make the call the week before on whether to have the party based on the CDC’s guidance.

Perspective: Stop Whining, Plebs, the DC Élite Are Also Suffering (freebeacon.com)

Fellow Conservative:

We were right all along. It is becoming more and more apparent that Communist China directly caused COVID and that liberals – from the World Health Organization to the United Nations, to Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer – aren’t going to do anything about it.

Joe Biden is terrified of angering Communist China.

Millions are dead, the American economy in shambles and all of it can be tied back to Communist China. Joe Biden’s only response is capitulation and shaming anyone who dares to tell the truth.

Remember all the times Republicans – President Trump especially – were mocked for saying that China caused COVID-19? Remember all the times last year when we fought to close our borders to Chinese travelers, but Joe Biden and his friends on the left mocked us and called this common-sense move racist?

If they won’t do anything, then it is up to us. I am working overtime to expose the truth, save lives, do my part to take back the U.S. Senate for the Republican Party, and I need you to help me in this fight.

The outcome could decide the direction of our nation for generations and our ability to hold China accountable for harming the world.

I have been saying this for months, here is a clip of me on Fox News– if you aren’t angry after watching this, then you aren’t paying attention.

Multiple issues are being covered up:
• The “gain of function” research being conducted on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology;
• Big Tech’s censoring of the evidence for the lab-leak theory during last year’s election campaign;
• The three Wuhan scientists who got seriously ill in late 2019;
• The APPALING conditions at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
• China no longer holding its Military Games in Wuhan.
• The bid for new repairs at the Wuhan Institute of Virology that are going unquestioned…until now.

It is disgusting to see such weakness in the Oval Office. But, if we don’t take back the Senate to add some balance and strength to our government, I don’t know what will happen.

Please, your donation of $1,000, $500, $250, $100, even just $50 to do your part to take back the Senate could make a HUGE difference.

Republicans are fighting to hold China accountable for the lives it has destroyed. Every day, every hour, we cannot stop working to protect our families and the nation I love and served in the U.S. Navy to protect.

China must be held accountable. With your help, I will continue the fight to protect our great country. Please stand with me today.

For our children,

Rick Scott
U.S. Senator, Florida

Attendees paid thousands to enjoy cocktails while local hospitals complained of ‘bursting at the seams’

Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe held a swanky fundraiser on Martha’s Vineyard as the liberal vacation hotspot struggled to battle a spike in coronavirus cases that follows former president Barack Obama’s birthday party.

McAuliffe charged attendees thousands of dollars to attend the Wednesday event, which he held at Sen. Mark Warner’s (D., Va.) $7 million island mansion, according to a copy of the invitation obtained by New York Times reporter Ken Vogel. While donors enjoyed “cocktails and conversation in support of” McAuliffe, however, local medical professionals rushed to deal with a spike in COVID-19 cases nearly two weeks after Obama held his celebrity-filled soirée on the island. After the former president pledged to “scale back” the party over coronavirus concerns, hundreds of guests, including celebrities John Legend, Chrissy Teigen, and Don Cheadle, flocked to the island to attend.

“We’re bursting at the seams,” Martha’s Vineyard Hospital president and CEO Denise Schepici told reporters Wednesday. “We are pretty jam-packed. … We’re hoping there will be a reprieve in September. But that’s a prayer right now.”

Cases in the island’s surrounding county have increased 179 percent since Obama’s “sophisticated” guests began to arrive for the birthday bash.

The fundraiser marks McAuliffe’s latest attempt to nationalize his fundraising efforts as he works to defeat GOP opponent Glenn Youngkin. Last week, the Democratic candidate attended a Las Vegas fundraiser with Nevada governor Steve Sisolak (D.). McAuliffe ditched a candidate forum hosted by a disabilities advocacy group to fly to the event, a decision that drew a swift rebuke from Virginia’s disabled community.

Warner purchased his Martha’s Vineyard mansion from the late 60 Minutes journalist Mike Wallace in 2011. The waterfront estate consists of “two dwellings connected by a covered brick veranda and two car garage” and boasts six bedrooms, five bathrooms, a private dock, and private beach, as well as a screen porch that provides “unsurpassed water views to the shores of Cape Cod.” Warner’s residence is just miles away from Obama’s $11.75 million, 29-acre estate.

At the fundraiser, Warner announced his intention to investigate President Joe Biden’s disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal, according to Vogel. Event “hosts” paid $10,000 to attend, while “co-hosts” and “sponsors” paid $5,000 and $2,500, respectively, the invitation shows.

McAuliffe Holds Martha’s Vineyard Fundraiser as COVID Hits Island Hard (freebeacon.com)

A Spanish-language flyer by the Red Cross provides detailed routes to the US southern border, shelter locations, and instructions on how to jump off a moving train safely

UVALDE, Texas—Rancher John Sewell recently picked up a pamphlet that had fallen from the backpack of an illegal immigrant who was trespassing on his property near Uvalde, Texas—about 50 miles from the U.S.–Mexico border.

On one side is a map that details transport routes from Panama to the United States. It pinpoints in great detail where migrants can find shelter or get medical help along the way. The other side is full of useful information, in Spanish, including how to more safely travel through forests and jungles, find shelter, get medical help, and deal with immigration authorities.

It was published by the Red Cross and is titled “Messages of Self-Help for Migrants.”

The pamphlet crosses a line beyond providing life-saving information to facilitating illegal immigration, according to Jessica Vaughan, director of policy studies at the Washington-based Center for Immigration Studies.

“It’s practically a road map or a TripTech for an illegal migrant,” she told The Epoch Times. “It’s one thing to give out water to migrants. It’s quite another thing to help them migrate illegally—and breach the sovereignty of a border.”

The pamphlet includes advice such as that “it’s always safer to travel in a group, especially for women,” and to stay in contact with relatives and friends, “especially before crossing the border.”

It warns against getting on or off a train when it’s moving or wet, but then advises: “If you do get off a train when it’s moving, keep running so that others don’t fall on top of you,” and “Try not to get on a train if you haven’t eaten or rested. You may fall off if you are sleepy.”

It goes on to say: “Don’t hide in vehicles or in small places where you might suffocate, drown, or get sick. Be sure you have enough space to breathe.”

In Uvalde, where Sewell obtained the pamphlet, Border Patrol has seen a 911 percent increase this year in stowaway illegal aliens on freight trains traveling from the border to San Antonio.

On Aug. 13, on one train inspected by Border Patrol, agents found 20 illegal aliens hiding in the beds of new pickup trucks being hauled in two different train cars. Several of the aliens had been apprehended the previous day by the same agent at the same location. All were single males from Mexico and Honduras.

The map also highlights Red Cross shelters in Mexico and other places that are run by religious organizations, such as the Good Samaritan House in Oaxaca, Mexico, and Catholic Charities in Tucson, Arizona.

Vaughan said that, rather than being a “benign underground railroad-type of exercise,” the pamphlet is “enticing criminal behavior that is also very, very dangerous and illegal.”

She said the Red Cross and other humanitarian organizations should be telling migrants not to come. She said most illegal immigrants entering the United States don’t meet the criteria for asylum and won’t be granted asylum status by an immigration judge. Many Central Americans, the largest population of illegal immigrants, don’t end up claiming asylum once they’re in the United States, and of those who do, less than 15 percent are granted relief.

A spokesperson for the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said the organization doesn’t prevent or encourage migration.

“As an impartial, neutral and independent organization, our actions are focused on addressing the humanitarian needs of migrants to ensure they are treated with dignity, both in their countries of origin, transit and destination, and regardless of their immigration status,” the spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email.

The ICRC didn’t respond to a question asking where it makes the pamphlets available, but the Red Cross logos from seven countries are printed on the flyer, including the United States, Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Costa Rica, and Panama.

The spokesperson said the organization provides humanitarian assistance at key points along the route.

“We also inform them of risks they’re undertaking while using the migration route,” the spokesperson said.

“It is essential to prevent the loss of lives and to promote a humanitarian approach. Addressing the needs of this vulnerable population is a shared responsibility, of the authorities in the countries of origin, transit and destination, and of the international community.”

The Geneva-based ICRC operated in 100 countries in 2019 and spent more than $2 billion, according to its latest annual report. It is funded mainly by voluntary donations from governments, and national Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, according to its website.

Vaughan said the United States should investigate how the flyer came to be published and with whose funding.

“They should be helping people in the countries where the migrants live, not aid and abet this illegal migration that is so dangerous and has created so many problems for all of the countries where it occurs,” she said.

Red Cross Pamphlet Facilitates Illegal Immigration, Says Expert (theepochtimes.com)

‘Squad’ member collected rent as she vilified landlords

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) collected up to $50,000 in rent payments last year, even as she publicly criticized landlords and supported an eviction moratorium that has hurt other small landlords.

Tlaib—who in December stressed the need to protect Americans from “landlords and bill collectors in the midst of a pandemic”—disclosed in an annual financial statement this month that she took in between $15,000 and $50,000 in rent on a Detroit property.

Tlaib is not the only “Squad” member who has raked in thousands of dollars as a landlord. Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D., Mass.) collected up to $15,000 in rental income in both 2019 and 2020 through a Boston property she owns, her financial disclosures show. Like Tlaib, Pressley slammed landlords for collecting rent during the pandemic, calling the issue “literally a matter of life and death.”

While Tlaib collected rent from her tenants, other small landlords in the United States have not been so lucky. Numerous reports have detailed small landlords’ struggles to make ends meet amid the eviction moratorium, which Tlaib has supported since early last year. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention implemented a ban on evictions last September. The Biden administration extended the eviction freeze through October of this year.

Tlaib, Pressley, and other “Squad” members introduced legislation to cancel rent and mortgage payments. The bill would require the federal government to reimburse landlords for lost rent during the pandemic, allowing Tlaib and Pressley to recoup any potential losses.

“Cancelling rent and mortgage payments for the duration of the COVID-19 virus pandemic would relieve financial pressure, allow residents to stay home from work without the added concern of losing their housing and limit the spread of the virus,” Tlaib said in March 2020.

Tlaib has at times portrayed landlords as preying on their renters.

“Always tons of agreement for tools of war and destroying families abroad, but never this much enthusiasm for protecting American families at home from landlords and bill collectors in the midst of a pandemic,” she tweeted in December.

Tlaib did not disclose the address for the rental property on her financial statement, though details from her filings and local real estate records obtained by the Washington Free Beacon suggest she purchased the property using a $118,600 loan in 2016. Two years later, Tlaib listed the property for $2,000 a month rent before lowering the asking price to $1,800. Assuming Tlaib has not changed the monthly price, she collected rent for at least eight months in 2020, meaning she received payments throughout the pandemic.

According to local real estate records, Tlaib refinanced the three-bedroom home as a multifamily investment property in April 2019. The designation requires the Democrat to maintain rent loss insurance.

Neither Tlaib nor Pressley returned requests for comment.

Rent Cancellation Advocate Rashida Tlaib Cleaned Up as Landlord During Pandemic (freebeacon.com)

My Fellow American:

Dr. Anthony Fauci has been wrong time and time again during this COVID-19 Pandemic, and we need to stop allowing him to set public policy.

He was wrong about closing the schools.

He was wrong about mask mandates.

He was wrong about the origin of this disease.

He is wrong to support eviction moratoriums.

I am working to ensure our rights are never taken away like this again, and I need your help.

In the coming months, you will hear politicians explain away their unconstitutional lockdowns and mandates as “following the science.” Don’t let them get away with it.

They are scaredy-cats who abdicated their responsibility to lead our nation because they were afraid of being made fun of on Saturday Night Live or at the DC Cocktail parties.

I am sick of these cowards taking away our liberties and then throwing their hands up when we prove them wrong AGAIN.

I won’t forget, and we need to make sure that the rest of the nation doesn’t either. I am working with the Republican Liberty Caucus – and that’s why I am asking you to stand with me in support of their organization.

Put simply, the RLC is the conscience of the Republican Party – something we need now, more than ever. A group of freedom-loving individuals focused on ensuring no elected or appointed member of our government can trample on our Constitutional Rights.

Just as we need to rebuild our nation’s economy, we need to rebuild the Republican Party and those who represent us in government. That hard work begins right now, and with your support, it will be led by the Republican Liberty Caucus.

We seem to have forgotten the principles that make us great during the Pandemic. You, me, and the Republican Liberty Caucus are going to remind them.

Please, your donation of $45 or more could make all the difference as we seek to Take Back America.

If you believe in America, if you believe in the Republican Party, and if you believe in finding out the truth about COVID-19 and putting our economy back on track, then please donate today.

Thank you for your time. God Bless America.

Rand Paul
U.S. Senator, Kentucky