For every American wanting to preserve their freedom and counter the unfolding communist revolution in the world, this must-watch episode of “Counterpunch” with Trevor Loudon is the place to start. The episode, entitled “How Pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) Communists Are Working to Flip North Carolina,” covers key strategies that communist activists and the CCP use to infiltrate and take over states through winning elections for Democrats. Loudon breaks down how this strategy could soon flip the balance of power in the United States completely in pro-CCP Democrats favor. “We have a world to win back and we don’t have much time,” he said.
Loudon uses the state of North Carolina as the key example in this episode, explaining that North Carolina is a big target for the left and communists. This is due to the number of universities there with cutting edge research, which makes it an ideal location to place spies and steal technology. North Carolina also plays a key role in the presidential election as a path to victory. The infiltration of minority communities and activist efforts there could result in flipping the state blue (Democratic), therefore making it very difficult for any Republican to ever win the presidency again.
Loudon explains how this method was done in Virginia—flipping the state from Republican to now a solid Democrat stronghold. This effort was done by a pro Communist Party organization that worked to give votes back to convicted felons. It was those votes that flipped Virginia. The organizations were well versed in the demographics needed to win, with the maps they used even being generated from the Geography Department of Wuhan University in China. This shouldn’t be a surprise. The important thing for Americans to understand is that the goal of the American pro-Chinese communists is to flip the south, as it is the stronghold of the Republican Party and Conservative Christians. This is the area for them to flip in order to destroy the Republican Party.
Liberation Road is the pro-CCP organization that Loudon delves into in this episode. This group is made up of many self proclaimed communists with ties to the CCP. These activists have been moving people in large numbers to areas of North Carolina and working to sway voter demographics in their favor as well as infiltrate local organizations. Many of the voter registration organizations they work with are in fact front groups that target different communities, such as rural or minority areas, and coordinate their efforts towards one specific goal.
The episode mentions key activists to be aware of in North Carolina, their pro-communist ties, and what role they are playing with these various front organizations. Loudon also gives examples of how activists have turned the teachers and union members of North Carolina into a voting block and increasingly militant force as well as how they mobilize targeted communities to win elections. The main pattern Liberation Road uses is to get involved in the minority communities and activate them to vote Democratic in big numbers. This strategy is how they intend to flip the state.
Durham, North Carolina, is a critical target to achieve this goal. Liberation Road has moved large numbers of people into that area and worked to elect people into local governing positions such as school board, sheriff, city council, and others. “Two organizations: The Durham People’s Alliance and Durham for All have basically put almost every serving member of the city council in their seats. And they call in favors.” Loudon says. This level of control gives these organizations key access to money, systems, information, and experience. Loudon points out that taking control of a city is a great way to learn how to take over and govern an entire state.
The episode even takes a look into the various city council members and mayors that communist fronts have elected, and their connection with the organizations. It is important to know backgrounds and affiliations before voting so that voters can be educated on who these candidates are connected with and what their motives are. Statewide, the Carolina Federation and Durham for All have supported the Democratic ticket top to bottom. Although they support all Democrats running for various positions, the main interest lies in the governor and United States Senate seats.
Right now the Senate is evenly balanced, with 50 Republicans, 48 Democrats and 2 Independents who caucus with the Democrats. That tie is broken by Vice President Kamala Harris, who Loudon points out also has a pro-CCP background. Every state, regardless of size, has two senators that serve in Washington. In the last year, Durham for All has put significant effort into flipping the two North Carolina Senate seats. If a Democrat were to win those seats, that would win the Democratic Party complete control of the United States Senate and allow them to basically accomplish whatever they want. The Democrats did almost flip one seat in a recent election, but thanks to a sexting scandal from their candidate, the Republican barely squeezed by with a victory. However, this setback was not for lack of trying.
Loudon says people need to understand that: “the communists are very strategic. They understand elections, they understand the balance of power, so they’re always trying to elect Democrats. This is the big reason they’re trying to get Washington, D.C. into a state.” If this Democratic stronghold became a state, the Democratic Party would get two more senators, making it virtually impossible for Republicans to ever control the Senate again. “A few hundred votes could decide the whole balance of power in the nation.” This power would extend to deciding the presidency as well.
The episode also covers North Carolina Governor Roy Cooper, who was elected by these pro-communist organizations. His actions of taking down confederate statues is in line with the Liberation Road ripping down and destroying monuments in the state, among other pro-communist agendas that he has pursued. Cooper is very active with pro-China causes, such as the Carolina China Council, which facilitates exchanges between China and Carolina businesses and academia. Liberation Road loves these partnerships. “That’s what they’re here to do. They’re here to give China an avenue to exert its influence in this country. That is their job.”
Loudon says that bringing Chinese companies into your county or your state is like bringing the mafia into your community. Yes there’s going to be a lot of money, but there’s also going to be a lot of corruption with it. “Every major Chinese business is affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party or the People’s Liberation Army or both. This is not like American businesses that hopefully work independently from the government,” says Loudon, stating that Chinese business and the CCP are directly and closely connected. “You do not get big in business in China unless you cooperate with the Chinese Communist Party.” By bringing Chinese companies into North Carolina, Cooper has brought the CCP into the state.
Loudon concludes the episode expressing hope that this information gives Americans a better understanding of what is happening not only in this critical state, but in every state across the country. He stresses that the same principles happening in North Carolina are also being applied all over America and all over the world. Wherever the CCP is involved, they are working with local activists to flip the seats of power in that state or community toward their own interests. “Giving the Communist Party of China access to your country at any level is going to have, openly or covertly, a big impact on your politics, and not in the right direction.”
Watch the full episode on Epoch TV, and be sure to share and spread this crucial information that others need to know.
Debate raged in the House Committee on Natural Resources during the markup of the committee’s $30-plus billion reconciliation instructions for the $3.5 trillion spending bill approved by the House on Aug. 24. Representatives introduced numerous amendments—including Rep. Lauren Boebert’s (R-Colo.) Amendment 223, which would cut roughly $3.5 billion in proposed funding for a new Civilian Climate Corps.
A letter by four Democratic Congress members making the case for the Civilian Climate Corps describes it as an updated version of the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps. A jobs program for 1.5 million people, the climate corps would “invest in natural climate solutions, clean energy, and resilience” and “address environmental justice.”
The program’s funding, detailed in Section 70201 of the committee’s bill, would include money distributed to subsidiary climate corps in the National Park Service ($1.7 billion), the Fish and Wildlife Service ($400 million), the Bureau of Land Management ($900 million), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration ($120 million), as well as to a Tribal Climate Corps ($500 million).
“There’s absolutely no need to funnel money toward a program like this when so many of our industries are already struggling to find workers,” Boebert said, noting that the climate corps’ duties were “vague and undefined.”
Rep. Joseph Neguse (D-Colo.) spoke in opposition, arguing that the climate corps would train the next generation of park directors and other leaders in natural resources management.
Neguse said he had spent the previous day with fire chiefs, scientists, and others who “made it clear to me—abundantly clear—the desperate need for treatments in our forests.”
“I would hope that we could get a bipartisan vote against this amendment,” he said.
Rep. Paul Gosar (R.-Ariz.) spoke in support of the amendment.
“We don’t need more people—we need people who do their job,” Gosar said. “Our forests are burning, and it is because we have neglected them.”
“Putting civilians in place here is just another aberration.”
Rep. Cliff Bentz (R-Ore.) echoed Gosar’s concerns, noting that the original Civilian Conservation Corps was conceived “when unemployment stood at 20 percent, and people couldn’t find a job anywhere.”
As of early August, CNBC reported that there were 1 million more job openings than job seekers in the United States.
“This is what I’d call one of many self-delusional parts of this bill,” Bentz said, noting that he had recently met with forest caretakers who couldn’t easily find employees.
Rep. Nydia Velázquez (D-N.Y.) spoke against the amendment, saying it would interfere with the Biden administration’s efforts to “build back better.”
Ranking member Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.) then voiced his support of the amendment, calling the proposed corps a “big government jobs program.”
“We don’t need another FDR-era program—and the idea that this is going to help land management is a false idea as well,” Westerman said, noting that many opportunities for hands-on forest management already exist in the private sector and among nonprofits.
“We should be focused on ways to actually manage our federal lands.”
Committee Chair Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) then recognized himself to speak in opposition to the Boebert amendment, noting that he was “violating [his] own rule” in so doing.
“The civilian corps targeting young people, targeting diversity, is not just about brawn,” he said, noting that jobs “also require people to know what they’re doing.”
“It’s an investment in the management and the stewardship of our public lands and waters for the future.”
Rep. Tom McClintock (R-Calif.) also spoke in support of the amendment, saying that he has noticed that “when one bill drops, we have a tendency to add more bureaucracy.”
“We’ve got a great many conservation corps already,” McClintock said, mentioning California’s state-level program, among others.
He voiced concerns about the purpose of the corps, wondering whether it would be a “taxpayer-funded community organizing effort” charged with monitoring “forbidden climate disinformation.”
“What exactly is this new bureaucracy going to accomplish?” McClintock asked.
Grijalva called a voice vote and judged that the amendment was voted down. Boebert requested a recorded vote, which was postponed by Grijalva.
Social Security and Medicare trust funds are in dire financial condition due to rising benefit costs, but the biggest problem facing the two largest federal entitlement programs is how they’re funded, according to a nonprofit that advocates greater government transparency and accountability.
“Our bottom line is the trust funds are all a shell game, there is no money in the trust funds. As [former U.S. Comptroller-General] David Walker says, trust funds have no funds and should be distrusted,” Truth in Accounting (TIA) President Sheila Weinberg told The Epoch Times on Sept. 2.
Weinberg was referring to the fact that the trust funds receive what are in effect IOUs from the Treasury Department that are called “securities”—promises to pay a specified amount at a future date.
On Social Security, for example, the government pays interest on the securities, generally about 2 percent, and the total value of the securities is presently just less than $3 trillion. Securities are paid out of general revenues when they come due.
“We would also highlight the massive underfunding. Social Security is underfunded by $40 trillion, Medicare by $55 trillion. This represents the amount of money the government has promised in benefits, and they have no idea where they are going to get the money to pay for those promises,” Weinberg said.
The official U.S. national debt is $29 trillion, but Weinberg’s group maintains that the true amount is more than $133 trillion when the costs of benefits such as those promised by Social Security and Medicare are included in the calculation, according to the Chicago-based TIA.
Private sector pension plans are required by federal law to account for future benefits and to properly fund them. But the federal government doesn’t follow the same law for its own pensions.
Medicare has the largest unfunded benefits total at $55 trillion, followed by Social Security at $40 trillion, and government employee and retiree pensions such as the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) at $9 trillion. The official public debt and assorted other federal liabilities such as loan guarantees make up the balance.
Trustee reports made public earlier this week show that the Medicare trust fund that pays for hospitalization is due to reach insolvency in 2026, while the Social Security trust fund will reach that point in 2033, barring major reforms in how the two programs are funded and pay benefits.
Weinberg is far from alone in pointing to the unfunded debts of Social Security and Medicare.
“Yesterday’s reports on the financial status of various Medicare and Social Security trust funds once again identify unsustainable benefit promises in Medicare and Social Security programs,” Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho) said in a statement on Sept. 1.
“The Hospital Insurance trust fund is projected to be exhausted around 2026; there are $60 trillion of unfunded liabilities in Social Security programs; and unfunded liabilities increased by trillions of dollars over the last year alone.”
Differences in unfunded liabilities calculations are typically due to differences in the number of years covered, how future benefits are estimated, and differences in demographic assumptions.
“While bipartisan efforts are necessary to make needed changes to address Medicare and Social Security long-term financial challenges, most Democrats want only to expand benefit promises further without generating sustainable trust fund solvency,” Crapo said.
“I agree with the report’s recommendation that ‘Congress and the executive branch work closely together with a sense of urgency to address these challenges,’ and urge bipartisanship and cooperation to do so.”
Crapo is the ranking minority member of the Senate Finance Committee, which would be a major player in any congressional or presidential initiative to reform the Social Security and Medicare trust funds.
President Joe Biden hasn’t offered any proposals to reform the funding underlying either Social Security or Medicare.
Dissatisfied with the American people’s lack of concern for their issue du jour, self-righteous coastal elites are moving on from slick PR campaigns and headline-grabbing protests to deploy a legion of climate activists across the nation—paid for by your tax dollars, whether you like it or not.
President Joe Biden’s proposed Civilian Climate Corps (CCC) would be the biggest mobilization of government labor since the New Deal, a massive and likely permanent expansion of government power cementing the radical climate agenda in our halls of government. It would also burden taxpayers with massive debt—without any impact whatsoever on the global climate.
Though the CCC is said to support such innocuous projects as solar panels and parks, it’s really a slush fund for progressive activism paid for by your tax dollars.
The CCC’s governing structure would allow unelected bureaucrats to funnel taxpayer money wherever they want to with almost no oversight. In fact, it explicitly endorses racially oriented decision-making, requiring at least half of projects to entail “environmental justice”—the murky idea that climate change is the culprit for all manner of racial disparities. This is the opposite of both equity and transparency, two goals the Biden administration claims to aspire to.
The CCC also plans (pdf) to extend taxpayer dollars to “providing education on climate change,” which is code for funding political activist groups like Greenpeace, the Sunrise Movement, and Movement for Black Lives. These organizations aren’t about the environment so much as providing an advertising arm for the climate doomsday narrative and progressive political agenda.
The CCC’s few potentially beneficial projects are better suited for private industry and charity than a bloated federal behemoth—and its overtly partisan provisions foretell a sinister future for our nation.
While the national economy is still struggling to recover from the COVID-19 lockdowns, with businesses large and small starving for talent, the federal government is preparing to pull 1.5 million workers out of the economy. Instead of embracing the power of the free market, the Biden administration seems set on destroying it.
What’s worse is that the CCC encourages hiring illegal immigrants and will give jobs, benefits, and even tuition reimbursements to people whose first act in the United States was flouting the law to cross the border illegally. A report by the American Accountability Foundation found taxpayers could expect to pay nearly $9 billion to provide illegal immigrants with jobs and benefits through the CCC. The Biden administration’s disastrous response to the border crisis will be significantly worsened by extending another carrot—taxpayer-funded, all-but-permanent jobs—to illegal immigrants instead of prioritizing law-abiding American citizens.
Of course, the CCC will also be required to use union labor—yet another arbitrary and costly provision that will make this progressive dream even more inefficient and even less helpful to the country.
Biden’s supporters might respond that all this is necessary to stave off the climate catastrophe. Surely we have to do something! But climate science—the real data lurking behind apocalyptic headlines and shrill sound bites—doesn’t support Biden’s argument.
There has been no documented increase in climate-related disasters of any kind. In fact, wildfires and floods have actually declined in recent decades. And here’s even better news: Climate-related deaths have fallen by around 98 percent even though the global population has quadrupled in the last century. Humanity in all parts of the world is becoming more resilient to our natural environment, even while activists cry that the end is near.
Even if all this weren’t so and action really was necessary, even the most radical climate rules would make no meaningful difference. Eliminating fossil fuel consumption nationwide—despite being unimaginably expensive while dismantling our economy and putting lives in jeopardy—would reduce global temperatures at the end of the century by less than two-tenths of a degree.
The CCC, like the Green New Deal and other socialist ideas before it, isn’t really about climate change. It’s not about protecting the American future or even about the environment. It’s about pushing America one step closer to socialism and a progressive dystopia where everyone works for the government, there is no free market, and only politically correct opinions are allowed.
It’s no wonder the American people don’t trust the government to spend their money wisely on climate change. Instead, they trust each other. They know that entrepreneurs and innovators willing to do what Americans have always done—roll up their sleeves and try new ideas—have a far better chance of success than inefficient government programs. That’s how the real issues of our time will be solved, from climate adaptability to more pressing concerns like fighting poverty and delivering modern health care to the developing world.
The Afghanistan withdrawal is worse than you think. Whatever level of incompetence you think was at play, however poorly you think the planning was, however avoidable you think this disaster should have been, it’s honestly so much worse. If you know anyone who thinks there was no way to pull out of Afghanistan without the country devolving into utter chaos, or if you know anyone who thinks Trump couldn’t have done any better, it is your duty to sit them down and make them watch the premiere of Season 2 of “Kash’s Corner.” I don’t care how you do it. Tie them to a chair. Tape their eyelids open. Offer them twenty bucks. Just make them watch “We Knew This Would Happen in Afghanistan and We Had a Strategy to Prevent It,” because they’re wrong.
Obviously it’s impossible to say with absolute certainty that the exit from Afghanistan would have gone better under former President Trump, because he isn’t the president and we don’t have access to alternate timelines. However, Kash Patel worked on Afghanistan under both the Obama and Trump administrations and the insight he provides into how those administrations tackled the problem of our longest war versus our current administration makes it difficult to believe Trump’s plan would have ended in such a catastrophe. The episode was clearly filmed before the worst day of the entire withdrawal, when 13 members of our armed forces—the bulk of them well under the age of 30—were killed by a suicide bomber, along with nearly 200 civilians.
The episode lasts just under 50 minutes, allowing Patel and Jekielek plenty of time to discuss in depth the steps President Trump had undertaken to ensure a successful withdrawal; the same steps President Biden completely ignored. Anyone not wholly consumed by Trump Derangement Syndrome likely knows that President Trump’s deal to withdraw was conditions- based, and that the Taliban knew full well that if they didn’t meet the conditions then the deal was off. Trump wanted to remove our troops sooner than the agreed-upon May 1st deadline, but had already delayed withdrawal once and was willing to do so again if necessary. He’d already proved to the Taliban that he wouldn’t pull our soldiers out on a fixed deadline if they weren’t holding up their end of the bargain, which was a strong incentive for them to do just that.
Patel’s explanation of the Trump administration’s handling of Afghanistan goes far beyond outlining the conditions and is infuriating. Trump ran on a platform that included ending the never-ending wars in the Middle East, with Afghanistan at the top of the list. However, he wanted to finally leave Afghanistan in such a way to hopefully allow for some modicum of peace between the Afghan government and the Taliban, which was the whole point of a conditions-based exit. The only way we were leaving was if both parties met these conditions, and since both the Taliban and Afghan government wanted us gone they were highly motivated to do so. The Taliban was required to renounce Al-Qaeda and come to the table with the Afghan government to negotiate an interim government, which they’d repeatedly done. We agreed to keep special forces in the country specifically to combat terrorism, and we made sure they knew we’d wipe anyone off the map who killed an American citizen or harmed an American interest.
This plan was already in place and working well when President Biden took office. As with many of Trump’s policies that Biden dismantled, all the incoming administration had to do was keep everything in place and the mission could have been, if not a rousing success, at least not a total failure. Patel says that he and his colleagues were instructed to share anything and everything they had on Afghanistan with the incoming administration, and in fact gave the Biden administration the most materials from the Department of Defense of any administration in transition history. Only the incoming administration wanted nothing to do with any of it. They refused to meet with the outgoing members of the Department of Defense. They weren’t interested in hearing about the intel the Trump administration had on what was happening on the ground. The best the outgoing staff could do was make sure the career military members they worked with had everything the Biden administration would need and hope for the best.
Patel goes on to explain that Afghanistan was a high priority for President Trump in ways that it clearly hasn’t been for President Biden. Trump took daily briefings on conditions on the ground, listened to his military commanders, and was willing to pivot to a different strategy on a moment’s notice. The Biden administration took a completely different tactic, deciding that the intelligence focus should be on the white supremacy boogeyman within the Department of Defense. Rather than looking outward, U.S. intelligence agencies were looking inward, so when Biden finally got around to getting back to Afghanistan, months had passed since the last time anyone had paid much attention to what was happening on the ground.
The idea that there was no way to know the Afghan army would immediately collapse is one that Patel completely refutes, as the intelligence they were collecting (which the Biden administration was not) was very clear that if we did something like, oh say, leave in the middle of the night, the country would collapse. Based on the daily briefings, President Trump believed it would happen in a matter of days, leading to the plan to withdraw based on conditions. All of this intelligence that led Trump and his administration to this conclusion was and still is readily available for the new administration to look at any time they want, but clearly they didn’t want to or they wouldn’t have been shocked when Afghanistan collapsed over the course of a weekend.
Biden deciding that he wasn’t going to be held to Trump’s timeline also damaged our ability to leave Afghanistan in one piece. Patel makes a point that isn’t widely discussed about Biden moving the deadline and how the Taliban interpreted that as the United States breaking one of the conditions. Since the incoming administration immediately scrapped the withdrawal date everyone had agreed to, the Taliban no longer saw any reason to continue negotiating with the Afghan government in good faith. Perhaps we should have sent a strongly-worded letter that they’d better hold up their end of the bargain even though we had no intention to hold up ours. Then we might have avoided this whole thing.
Jekielek then asks about the media’s role in this whole debacle, marveling at the fact that suddenly the media remembered to do their job. Patel agrees that the shift in tone is quite drastic from their previously glowing coverage of Biden’s Afghanistan plan to covering the breakdown of the country honestly, which just goes to show how bad the situation is. If the media can’t find some way to ignore it, gloss over it, or interest the American public in what kind of pudding Biden had for dinner, you know it’s truly a disaster.
That’s a 500 foot overview of just the first half of the episode. Patel also talks about just how unconscionable it is that Biden’s DoD went into the withdrawal with no plan on how to get Americans and our allies out beyond giving them a phone number, the plans Trump had in place to actually extract the Americans who are now stuck, and how monumentally boneheaded it was to let go of Bagram Airfield. Trump even had a plan to get our weapons and machines out after the civilians but before the military—the exact opposite of what the Biden administration did. Every subject Patel and Jekielek touch on made this reviewer want to bang my head on a desk until the list of stupid, ego-filled, politically-driven decisions by the current administration stopped. But the list doesn’t stop for nearly an hour, and it never gets any better.
No matter what the media says, or how White House talking heads try to spin it, Patel makes it very clear that the Biden administration’s plan to withdraw from Afghanistan was very clearly, “Whatever Trump was going to do, we’re not going to do that,” and that’s it. That’s literally it. That’s why it’s so egregious that President Biden continues to throw out straw man arguments to deflect the public’s anger on this withdrawal, by suggesting that Americans are upset that we left, not how we left, or somehow insisting we either had to get out or send in more troops indefinitely. It’s also appalling that Biden continues to try to blame President Trump for his utter surrender to the Taliban, and that he thinks he can simply walk away from the press without taking questions or shame the public for being outraged about the way this war ended. Every American should see this episode and share this episode, especially with blind partisans who still somehow buy the lie that the blood spilled in the last week in Afghanistan isn’t solely on Biden’s hands. It is, and everyone needs to know it.
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.
Michael Landsbaum hit bottom after his father lost his job and couldn’t pay rent, leaving the teenager homeless in Dallas. He slept on friends’ couches for months until he was rescued by an unlikely source: his high school.
But Pathways in Technology Early College High School did much more than provide him with a place to stay at a counselor’s home. Its accelerated program, including college courses, gave Landsbaum the drive to get through the tough times and the hope for better days.
“My goal was to get my associate’s degree, and when I got that, things got a whole lot easier,” he says.
Landsbaum, 20, is finishing his bachelor’s in computer science at the University of North Texas—a turnaround that’s typical of the school, part of a growing movement better known by its acronym P-TECH.
Founded in 2011 by IBM and the Bloomberg administration in New York City, P-TECH has spread to 10 states with 127 schools as of last year, achieving remarkable results for the low-income, black, and Latino students they serve. In Dallas, for example, 72 percent of students graduated with a high school diploma and an associate’s degree in about four years. That’s about eight times the national average for on-time community college graduation by students of color.
After decades of struggle in America to lift the fortunes of low-income students, an answer has emerged in P-TECH, which operates within public school systems, typically taking over all or part of existing schools.
“It’s one of the most transformative programs I’ve seen in my four decades in education,” says Don Haddad, the superintendent of Colorado’s St. Vrain Valley School District, which has three P-TECH schools. “Every major school district across the country should adopt the model. It really opens doors for disadvantaged students.”
What’s the secret sauce? It starts with an accelerated curriculum and frequent testing to keep students on track–the very things that progressive educators are trying to stamp out today. Students complete a two-year community college associate’s degree in addition to the typical high school program as early as 12th grade, a notable achievement. In another break from standard fare, schools bring on corporate partners who inspire students with the opportunity for jobs in hot fields like computer programming and health care technology—a boon for companies that can’t find qualified candidates to fill such positions.
An IBM logo is shown onstage at CES 2016 at The Venetian Las Vegas in Las Vegas, Nev., on Jan. 6, 2016. (Ethan Miller/Getty Images)
P-TECH’s success offers a counterpoint to critical race theory, a controversial academic movement increasingly adopted in schools that casts “systemic racism” and white supremacy as pervasive problems that students can counteract through racial awareness. P-TECH is showing that underperforming students from poor communities can master a race-neutral mainstream STEM curriculum, especially when they see a brighter future, in the form of a well-paying job, within their grasp.
The battle-tested program, which marks its first decade in September, has been hailed by Republican and Democratic governors, corporate chiefs, and superintendents across the country. It has enjoyed an early growth spurt, reaching tens of thousands of students in the states with the help of hundreds of U.S. corporate partners, from Microsoft to American Airlines.
But P-TECH’s expansion plans face pushback from the left and right in the heated politics of school reform. Among other objections, progressives oppose corporate partnerships as a corrupting influence on education. Republican politicians don’t want taxpayer dollars to pay for college that’s free to students and their families.
“It’s very difficult to innovate in the current toxic education environment,” says Stan Litow, the mastermind behind P-TECH. “Even if a school has amazing results, you run into resistance.”
The P-TECH Road Show
Nevertheless, Litow saw an opening to address the disconnect between what schools teach today and the advanced skills companies need. He had spent his career in education policy, rising to deputy chancellor of schools in New York City and then serving as the president of the IBM Foundation. With a foot in both the public and private sectors, he was well-positioned to design a model that reimagined traditional high schools.
But Litow had seen plenty of promising ideas in education amount to nothing. He found a cautionary tale in the failure of Common Core standards, an attempt like P-TECH to raise the academic bar that was advanced by the Bush and Obama administrations. For P-TECH to spread, he had to get early buy-in from the many stakeholders in education.
Undaunted, Litow and his IBM team began a years-long roadshow in 2011. Governors were his first line of attack, since they control education policy. He met with a dozen, including Gina Raimondo, then Rhode Island’s Democratic governor and now U.S. secretary of commerce, and Republican Larry Hogan of Maryland. They endorsed P-TECH as a win-win for corporations in need of skilled employees and inner-city students in need of a career.
When governors balked, it was usually about money. Gary Herbert toured a P-TECH school when he was governor of Utah and was impressed. But aides in the governor’s office told Litow that the state’s Republican lawmakers wouldn’t want to pay for a community college degree for high schoolers. That can cost $10,000 per student. Litow won over powerful principals and teachers’ unions by assuring them P-TECH schools would be public rather than nonunion charters. Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, signed on. Civil rights leaders also endorsed P-TECH as a big departure from the old and discredited vocational education that tracked kids of color through woodshop classes and into dead-end jobs.
Governor of Utah Gary Herbert speaks during Sundance Film Festival at Rose Wagner Theatre in Park City, Utah, on Jan. 25, 2019. (Neilson Barnard/Getty Images)
His most ambitious move was raising the academic standards. P-TECH would have no admission requirements to weed out weaker students who had fallen behind. They would have to quickly catch up in high school to enroll in rigorous engineering and scientific college courses and finish in no more than six years. It was a wager that underperformers can become high achievers with the proper motivation.
Corporate partners would provide that carrot. During paid internships students would see, often for the first time, a clear path from their bad neighborhood to a good job at a competitive salary of $50,000 or more.
But selling the idea of corporate partnerships wasn’t always easy. Progressive academics call career and technical education (CTE) like P-TECH aimed at poor students unfair and even racist. Researchers at the National Education Policy Center say low-income students, who are disproportionately black or Latino, deserve the same broad general education that white teens get in suburbia. They shouldn’t be funneled into technical specialties that benefit private companies.
“Today corporations have a more direct role inside schools and are taking control of the curriculum through CTE,” says Professor Ken Saltman at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who focuses on the privatization of public education. “So is this in the interest of everyone or those businesses? That’s a really big issue.”
States Jump Onboard
IBM’s home state of New York started the rollout of P-TECH schools a decade ago. Illinois was an early adopter after then-Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel got the P-TECH endorsement from New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg.
President Obama’s shout-out to P-TECH in his 2013 State of the Union—“We need to give every American student opportunities like this”—was a game-changer. Governors started calling Litow to get the ball rolling. Connecticut, Maryland, Colorado, Texas, Rhode Island, Louisiana, and New Jersey jumped onboard. California, the big prize, joined in 2018 at the urging of IBM. Minnesota will open its first school at the end of August as part of a small expansion to other states. IBM’s goal: 300 schools in 17 states by 2025. P-TECH is also expanding internationally, with schools in more than 20 countries in Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
They are signing up because of P-TECH’s off-the-charts performance. At the first school, which opened in Brooklyn in 2011, about half of its debut class earned an associate’s degree on time within two years of getting a high school diploma. Many finished by 12th grade or one year later. Across the country and a decade later, Colorado’s St. Vrain district saw 58 percent of its eligible students take home a degree. These results clobber the national average of about 9 percent for on-time graduation by students from similar backgrounds.
All innovations produce surprises. Litow never expected that most of the graduates, emboldened by the taste of academic success, would go on to get a bachelor’s degree. At least a dozen have earned graduate degrees too. One alum from New York is in a Ph.D. program and another is applying to medical school—outcomes that seem unimaginable without P-TECH.
President Barack Obama speaks at Pathways in Technology Early College High School, in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Oct. 25, 2013. (Mandel Ngan/AFP via Getty Images)
For the corporate partners, this is not just philanthropy. More than 300 U.S. companies large and small have jumped in because they are short on skilled employees. As part of the deal, companies typically pick the types of associate’s degrees, from biotech to marketing, that each P-TECH school offers. Companies also design and teach new classes in “soft skills,” covering dress codes, teamwork, and presentation-making, that students need to succeed at work.
But some businesses are not buying the P-TECH magic, posing another challenge to expansion. It’s a big commitment of time for companies obliged to provide mentors and paid internships with the hope of getting skilled employees six years later.
Companies are uncertain that struggling public schools will do their part. The health care company Ascension Texas is trying to instill a sense of urgency in the Austin school district to meet its P-TECH curriculum expectations, creating a “healthy tension,” says Geronimo Rodriguez, Ascension’s chief advocacy officer.
IBM, for one, is doubling down on P-TECH. This summer it brought on 1,000 paid interns, a big number. In the past, most graduates of schools sponsored by the technology goliath who wanted a job got one in areas like cybersecurity and data analysis. “They are first in line to interview for jobs,” says Justina Nixon-Saintil, global head of corporate social responsibility at IBM. “If there is a job that’s good for them, absolutely, we make that offer.”
Inside P-TECH’s Flagship School
When entering the nation’s first P-TECH school in Brooklyn, students can’t miss the large posters of smiling faces lining the hallways. These are the students who have passed state tests to qualify to take college classes in either computer systems or electromechanical engineering, the two specialties of the school.
The posters send a message to students, 97 percent of whom are black or Latino. “In a lot of urban communities, the perception is that you’re acting white if you’re excelling academically,” says Principal Rashid Davis. “So I want the students to see themselves on posters and realize there is nothing wrong with being smart and find motivation by their success in getting into college.”
More than half of the students entering the school are behind their grade level. So they have to work harder than their peers. The school day is two periods longer than normal. Summer break lasts only two weeks. The school designed its ninth-grade curricula to be an intensive year of catch-up. The time devoted to studying math and English is doubled, providing a foundation for the rigors of college ahead. The mostly black male students generally start on action novels before making their way to James Baldwin and Shakespeare.
Whip-smart teenagers like Nathan Alleyne excel from the get-go, taking courses at New York City College of Technology by 10th grade. By grade 12 he finished his associate’s degree in computer systems, learning Python, Java, and CSS. This fall he starts pursuing a bachelor’s in the same field. “I learned a lot about taking charge of my life and managing my time to make sure everything gets done,” he says. “I’m very grateful.”
What keeps students going is the awareness that Davis is expecting them to succeed—a new experience for many. He walks the halls, asking students why they didn’t do better on a recent test. “You got a 90. Why not a 95?” says Davis, laughing about such chats with students. “They need to know that they matter.”
Aaliyah Charles needed that push. Raised by her mother who struggled to pay the bills after Aaliyah’s father left the family, she came to P-TECH without much confidence at the urging of her mom because the college classes were free. But it was a challenge. She pulled all-nighters. Failing college algebra was a low point. Then she reached out to an unusual source of support: her mentor at IBM—the school’s corporate partner.
Founding Principal of Pathways In Technology Early College High School, Rashid Ferrod Davis, speaks during the 2014 Concordia Summit at Grand Hyatt in New York City, on Sept. 29, 2014. (Leigh Vogel/Getty Images for Concordia Summit)
“I could talk to her about my problems,” Charles says. “She said it’s okay, but next time I take the class, I have to dedicate myself and everything will be fine.” Charles aced the rest of her math classes, including calculus, and graduated in June with a degree in electromechanical engineering.
Her internship at IBM also set her on a career path. She worked in a program to encourage inner-city girls to pursue a career in a STEM field. Now a more self-assured leader, Charles aims to start a nonprofit to continue that work after finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology at Stony Brook University in New York.
New York City’s Cold Shoulder
New York City, the biggest school district in the U.S., has about eight P-TECHs and could fill dozens more. The Brooklyn school gets more than 1,000 applicants each year for about 125 seats. Mayor Bill de Blasio, a progressive who succeeded Michael Bloomberg, started a few schools, including one this year. But he backed away from a pledge to aggressively expand P-TECH in his two terms.
Instead, he joined progressive advocates in rejecting Bloomberg’s policy of accountability that replaced large failing schools with smaller ones like P-TECH. The Department of Education shifted its focus to address systemic racism as the root of the problem for students of color. Accelerated classes and schools—the DNA of P-TECH—are dismissed as discriminatory.
Principal Davis calls the de Blasio years “a political nightmare” for P-TECH. He says the department evaluates his P-TECH like a traditional high school and ignores its successful corporate partnership and college degrees earned after 12th grade. The department didn’t respond to RealClearInvestigations’ questions.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio speaks at Times Square in New York City on June 5, 2021. (Bryan Bedder/Getty Images for New 42)
“We were created to disrupt the system so they should evaluate us through a different lens,” Davis says. “I do things that are against their philosophical belief. We have proven that we can improve outcomes for brown children. And they hate me for showing this.”
Transforming Dallas Schools
As P-TECH hit a snag in liberal New York, it took off in business-friendly Dallas. Dallas’ public school district, the 16th largest in the country and made up almost entirely of disadvantaged Latino and black students, turned to P-TECH to solve a problem. Charter schools were poaching students. “So we decided to come up with some competition to beat them at their own game,” says Superintendent Michael Hinojosa.
The district, which had already brought college into a few high schools, was inspired by the Brooklyn partnership with IBM. So Hinojosa went all-in, spending $25 million to build the infrastructure, including placing an assistant principal and workplace coordinator devoted to P-TECH at every school. This helped assure businesses, which had concerns about the job readiness of the graduates, that the district was serious about making the partnerships work.
“I had to visit American Airline three times because they were so skeptical,” Hinojosa says.
As more than 80 partners (including American Airlines) signed on, the district installed P-TECH in 18 of its 21 comprehensive high schools—the most in any U.S. city. The superintendent is thrilled with the results—three-quarters of its inaugural class got an associate’s degree, the school retention rate is up and behavior problems are down.
“P-TECH has been transformational for the entire district,” he says. “I’ve been a superintendent for 27 years and I have never before seen anything else that can be such a catalyst for change.”
Initially some corporate partners tip-toed into the program. Accenture offered one internship in its first summer with P-TECH. Last summer it jumped to 30. Thomson Reuters completely bought in. The information-services company was so pleased with its first batch of 30 paid interns that it hired 23 of them to assist Fortune 500 clients with software issues. “They are thriving in their roles,” says Gabrielle Madison, the director of community relations.
This summer the firm almost doubled the number of interns in hopes of hiring them too. Thomson Reuters offices in Minneapolis, Michigan, and perhaps overseas also plan to tap the P-TECH pipeline for talent. What are the long-term prospects for P-TECH grads?
Radcliffe Saddler, who was part of the Brooklyn flagship’s first-class, immediately took an entry-level job at IBM as a marketing data analyst after graduation. Radcliffe says he experienced the “highs and lows” of being a black teenager from a poor neighborhood trying to fit into a buttoned-up white workplace. But he persevered, got his bachelor’s paid for by IBM, and won his first promotion this summer into a more creative role.
He uses his coding and design chops to build client interfaces for virtual assistants in the Watson artificial intelligence brand. He has also doubled his salary and now makes six-figures.
“P-TECH was a game-changer considering the community I came from,” he says. “It’s the reason I’m working on the Watson platform today.”
It is the beginning of a never-ending bad dream. Joe Biden and the Pentagon have managed to birth a new terrorist haven, destroy much of U.S. strategic deterrence, and alienate our allies and much of the country.
In the hours after the horrific deaths of 13 service members, we have been reassured by our military that our partnership with the Taliban to provide security for our flights was wise. We were told that the terrorist victors share similar goals to ours in a hasty American retreat from Kabul. We were reminded that Afghan refugees (unlike U.S. soldiers) will not be forced to be vaccinated on arrival. Such statements are either untrue or absurd.
On the very day of the attack that killed American troops, the sergeant major of the U.S. Army reminded us in a tweet that diversity is our strength, commemorating not the dead but Women’s Equality Day. If so, then is the opposite of diversity—unity—our weakness? Will such wokeness ensure that we do not abandon the Bagram air base in the middle of the night without opposition?
The chief of staff at the Office of Naval Intelligence warned the ONI’s active duty and retired service members that they must not criticize Biden, their commander in chief, over the Afghanistan fiasco. The office correctly cited prohibitions found in the Uniform Code of Military Justice barring any disrespect shown to senior government leadership.
Indeed, a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Marine Corps was relieved of his command for posting a video accurately blaming military and civilian leadership for the Afghanistan nightmare.
Yet until Jan. 20, retired top brass had constantly smeared their elected commander in chief with impunity.
Recently retired Gen. Michael Hayden retweeted a horrific suggestion that unvaccinated Trump supporters should be put on planes back to Afghanistan, where they presumably would be left to die. Hayden earlier had compared Trump’s border facilities to Nazi death camps.
Other retired high-profile military officials variously called their president an emulator of Nazi tactics, a veritable Mussolini, a liar, and deserving of removal from office sooner than later. None of these retired four-stars faced the sort of repercussions that the Office of Naval Intelligence just warned about.
More than 50 former intelligence officials on the eve of the November election signed a letter suggesting that incriminating emails found on Hunter Biden’s missing laptop might be “Russian disinformation.” They used their stature for political purposes to convince the American people that the story was a lie.
Retired Gen. Joseph Dunford and retired Adm. Mike Mullen recently blasted retired brass who had questioned Biden’s cognitive ability. OK. But they should have issued a similar warning earlier, when the violations of fellow retired officers were even more egregious in election year 2020.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, apologized for doing a photo op with Trump, erroneously buying into the narrative that Trump had ordered rioters cleared from Lafayette Square for the staged picture. Worse, he leaked to journalists that he was so angry with Trump that he “considered” resigning.
Think of the irony. If Milley considered a politicized resignation to rebuke Trump over the false charge, then surely he could consider a real resignation after overseeing the worst military disaster of the last half-century in Kabul.
Milley had promised to root out white supremacy from the ranks while recommending that his soldiers read Ibram X. Kendi’s racialist diatribes.
Something is terribly wrong in the ranks of America’s top commanders that reflects something wrong with the country.
The Pentagon needs to stop virtue-signaling about diversity days and culturally sensitive food for Afghan refugees. Instead, can it just explain why the Bagram air base was abandoned by night, or why Taliban terrorists are our supposed “partners” in organizing our surrender and escape?
Which general allowed more than $85 billion in American weapons to fall to the Taliban—a sum equal to the price of seven new U.S. aircraft carriers?
Who turned over to the Taliban the lists of Americans and allied Afghans to be evacuated?
Who left behind biometric devices that the Taliban are now using to hunt down our former Afghan friends?
Somehow our new woke Pentagon is hell-bent on losing the trust of the American people—along with the wars it fights abroad.
Republicans in the U.S. House and Senate are demanding a federal investigation into unemployment benefits money lost to fraudsters, calling it the “greatest theft of American tax dollars in our nation’s history.”
The members sent a letter to the Government Accountability Office, asking the federal oversight group to investigate the fraud and arguing structural issues exist within the federal government that make the theft possible.
“It is concerning that responsibility for determining how much fraud has occurred lies scattered throughout a web of bureaucracies,” the letter reads. “The scattering of responsibilities suggests that Congress will be ill equipped to have adequate information to assess future unemployment insurance responses to large economic shocks; and, at the same time, ensure they are not plagued by gaping security holes that allow fraudsters an open window to use to unlawfully obtained taxpayer funds.”
The question of unemployment fraud takes on extra weight as lawmakers are expected to debate in the coming days whether to extend $300 weekly federal unemployment benefits, which expire Saturday.
The letter is led by Sen. Mike Crapo (R-Idaho), who leads Republicans on the Senate Finance Committee, and Rep. Kevin Brady (R-Texas), the leading Republican on the House Ways and Means Committee. Rep. Jackie Walorski (R-Ind.) also has been a leader on the effort.
They estimate fraudulent efforts have stolen between $89 billion to $400 billion and request GAO finds out exactly how much has been taken.
The members point out they asked the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL) earlier this year to use funds to prevent this kind of fraud. Companion bills have been introduced in the House and Senate to address the issue but have not passed. Republican-led states around the country have turned away the extra federal benefits, citing evidence they have disincentivized many Americans from returning to work.
Businesses around the country have cited difficulty hiring workers despite widespread joblessness. Recent federal data showed there are more available jobs than workers in the United States.
“Yet, there is currently no federal effort in place to formally evaluate and estimate the true scope and severity of COVID unemployment fraud nationwide,” the letter reads. “We request that GAO, as part of its mission and ongoing work to reduce improper payments and safeguard federal funds, investigate, and provide a national estimate of funds lost because of fraudulent activity.”
The concern over unemployment fraud has been bipartisan. Senate Democrats expressed concern in June over a “fraudulent crime network” exploiting unemployment benefits.
“We all share a common goal of ensuring the integrity of the unemployment insurance (UI) program, and supporting a strong UI program is a critical component of the economic safety net during times of economic downturn, including during the COVID-19 pandemic,” several Democratic senators wrote in a letter to the USDOL. “Safeguarding state UI systems against unscrupulous actors who seek to exploit the current public health crisis for economic gain requires a holistic response by the federal government in partnership with states.”
The calls for investigation also come after a GAO report in July found states and territories overpaid unemployment benefits by $12.9 billion, though the GAO said most of those funds were overpayments, not fraud.
“The American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, enacted March 11, 2021, subsequently provided DOL with $2 billion to detect and prevent fraud, promote equitable access, and ensure the timely payment of UI benefits,” the report said. “As of May 20, 2021, DOL officials said that DOL was working to develop detailed plans for this $2 billion in coordination with the Office of Management and Budget, and noted that developing spending plans across 53 states and territories involves complex considerations.”
Whether an investigation will occur remains to be seen.
“Unemployment fraud takes resources away from American workers who deserve assistance and puts those resources directly in the pockets of fraudsters,” the Republicans’ letter reads. “Given that roughly a year-and-a-half has elapsed since the pandemic’s onset and given what appears to be the largest amount of unemployment fraud in history since March of last year, it is concerning that some seem almost indifferent to the massive fraud that has occurred.”
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.
The fall of Kabul to the Taliban on Aug. 15 was a shock to the world, as were images of U.S. cargo planes lumbering off the runway in “defeat” at the hands of the Taliban. Yet, there was no real Taliban defeat of America, which at its core is the idea of freedom. An idea can never be defeated.
And, America continues to be the most powerful nation in the world, both economically and militarily. The Taliban will struggle to feed themselves over the coming months, and America will probably end up helping them do so. For better or worse, that’s the kind of people we are.
Rather than experiencing defeat in Afghanistan, America is pivoting to its newest, greatest threat: China. After 20 years of defeating the Taliban, and keeping down other terrorists on their own home turf, it is time to accept that the democracy we sought for Afghans has not come to pass. It’s time to move on and demonstrate the power and opportunity of democracy elsewhere.
Yet, Beijing, which supported Pakistan and their Taliban proxies throughout the war, is trying to go further and present the fall of Kabul as evidence of not only an American defeat, but of a longer-term American decline. This couldn’t be further from the truth, at least for the moment.
Look at the last decade of stock performance to see that not only is America roundly beating China, but America is beating Europe as well. Together, America and Europe are leaving China in the dust, because the Chinese Communist Party’s communism, regulatory and tax takings, and erratic governance, are scaring off smart money.
It is true that since the fall of Kabul on Aug. 15, the Shanghai Stock Exchange (SSE) index outperformed America’s S&P 500 by about 1 percent. And, the pandemic hit American stocks harder than Chinese stocks.
Medical workers spray antiseptic outside of the main gate of Shanghai Stock Exchange Building in Shanghai, China, on Feb. 3, 2020. (Yifan Ding/Getty Images)
But take the longer view. Since 2011, the S&P rose 260 percent, beating the SSE’s 27 percent rise by a multiple of over nine times. And by August 2020, the S&P had entirely recovered from the pandemic slump and was back to America-sized growth.
Chinese equities are bringing down emerging market (EM) indexes, which also include India, Brazil, Turkey, and South Africa. These markets trail U.S. equities, which have the advantage of existing in a mature rule of law system that respects property. People want to put their money where it is safe and can be used, and it is safer in capitalist countries with a history of wealth accumulation, than in communist countries with a history of taking capitalists hostage.
International investors only benefit when they can freely withdraw their earnings, which is not the case in communist countries like China and Venezuela. Capital controls in those countries make investments forever, or nearly so, which make them more of a donation or foot in the door than an investment. Profits typically can’t be repatriated easily from communist countries.
According to the Financial Times, U.S. stocks have returned 356 percent over the last 10 years, beating European returns of 188 percent, and the emerging market’s (MSCI EM index) 66 percent. That makes the last 10 years a lost decade for emerging markets, and in particular, for investors in China.
“After starting 2021 on a bright note as investors bet on a global economic renaissance and commodity prices rushed higher, EM equities were thrown back into reverse by China’s regulatory clampdown on industries from financial technology to education,” according to the Times. “As a result, the MSCI EM index has slipped another 1.4 per cent this year, even as most other markets have soared.”
The Times continues, “Beijing’s crackdown [on technology and education companies, for example] has sent the Hong Kong stock market down more than 10 per cent since the beginning of July and the onshore CSI 300 index has slipped 6.4 per cent.”
The CSI 300 replicates the capitalization-weighted performance of the SSE and Shenzhen Stock Exchange’s top-300 stocks.
Conversely, vaccines in the United States and Europe are allowing for economic opening and growth, possibly closing the prior gap of China’s GDP growth outpacing that of the West. Governments are increasingly concerned about allowing investment and trade with China due to its relative lack of accounting standards, as well as environmental, social, and governance (ESG) lapses. China scores badly on these metrics, to which conscientious investors increasingly pay attention.
Many investors also fear more anti-capitalist crackdowns are coming from Beijing, making Chinese equities uninvestable, and leading its already-invested cheerleaders to wake up and give a few half-hearted cheers for China.
China optimists at Goldman Sachs, Standard Chartered Bank, and BlackRock, who do plenty of business with China and so may be just a tiny bit biased on the matter, keep pumping the totalitarian country.
“There are pockets of opportunities now,” Goldman’s Peter Oppenheimer told the Times. “Given how emerging markets have derated, if concerns about the Delta variant moderate a little bit and we don’t get more significant anti-market interventions in China, I think there will be a reasonable rebound.”
Goldman is one of the top-20 U.S. investors in China, at approximately $17.4 billion according to a 2021 government document, so it’s not surprising that its analysts would be pumping the value of their own investment.
Eric Robertson of Standard Chartered said in a note, “We believe this growth pessimism is overdone and that EM assets look attractive. The timing might still be premature, but we are looking for that entry point.”
Yet as recently as Aug. 24, Standard Chartered Wealth Management’s chief information officer said they preferred U.S. and European markets to emerging markets, and within emerging markets, preferred India to China.
On Aug. 17, BlackRock’s Wei Li told the Times that “China is under-represented in global investors’ portfolios but also, in our view, in global benchmarks.” Her BlackRock Investment Institute recommended doubling or tripling allocation to Chinese assets in diversified global portfolios. In the MSCI All-World index, that would mean increasing the weighting from its current 4.2 percent, to about 10 percent.
That’s a lot of money given the totality of U.S. investments in China.
The largest American institutional investors, including private equity firms and state pensions, already have $2.3 trillion invested in China, according to the government data. Tripling that would increase American capital at risk in China to almost $7 trillion.
The more money the banks have invested in China, the more pressure they will put on Washington to go easy on the totalitarian country. Going easy means China keeps pushing its territorial boundaries against our allies, we do and say nothing, and we keep slapping China’s wrist for up to $600 billion in IP theft annually.
BlackRock is America’s biggest investor in China, according to the government data cited previously, with approximately $155 billion in the country. Could that capital at risk have something to do with BlackRock’s support for other investors doubling or tripling investment in the country? It would sure make for a smooth unwinding of its position.
The trading symbol for BlackRock is displayed at the closing bell of the Dow Industrial Average at the New York Stock Exchange in New York, on July 14, 2017. (Bryan. R. Smith/AFP/Getty Images)
Already in 2021, investors have plowed $81 billion into emerging market equity funds. That’s setting up 2021 to be the biggest for EM equities since 2010.
What these investors and big banks aren’t accounting for is the macro-political risk at the end of it all. Once China is pumped up economically through American investment and technology, their military will be stronger than the U.S. military, and at that point, China will be in a position to gradually erode American influence globally.
Democracy, freedom, and capitalism, could become a thing of the past. All those billions that the big banks thought they made from China will then belong to China. Communism will have won, and there will be no more American bankers, and no more bank accounts stuffed with their Chinese earnings.
America will have sold China the rope with which they hang us, and which will be the end of democracy and freedom.
But, I’m not sure that American bankers can see past the next few financial quarters, or coordinate sufficiently through government controls on investments in China, to act strategically and avoid that sorry eventuality.
Israeli prime minister’s fears about new deal rebuffed in high-level meetings
The Biden administration is expanding the team dedicated to renegotiating the Iran deal, just days after Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett urged the United States to back out of negotiations, the Washington Free Beacon has learned.
Dan Shapiro, the Obama administration’s ambassador to Israel, is now working as an adviser on the Iran portfolio, the State Department confirmed to the Free Beacon. Shapiro is “the first of what we plan to be a small group of part-time advisers” who will work to solidify a new nuclear deal, the official said. The move demonstrates the administration’s commitment to push forward with talks as Iran demands full-scale sanctions relief.
Shapiro’s hiring signals the administration has no intention of heeding Israel’s warnings. Senior Biden administration officials told Bennett during his first U.S. visit that they will not back down from efforts to negotiate a return to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, according to a U.S. official familiar with the meetings.
“Certain requests were made regarding a return to the Iran deal during the recent visit by the Israeli prime minister, but the current administration has tunnel vision on this,” the official told the Free Beacon.
In meetings with President Joe Biden and top State Department officials, Bennett expressed concerns that the ongoing talks will provide Iran with economic sanctions relief and bolster the regime as it faces a cash crunch that has sparked nationwide protests. The Israelis fear a new deal will embolden Iran and its terror proxy groups operating on the country’s borders. These concerns have been amplified since the Taliban retook control of Afghanistan and reportedly moved leftover U.S. military equipment into the Islamic Republic.
A State Department spokesman told the Free Beacon that Shapiro will join Iran envoy Robert Malley’s negotiating team as it works to secure a new deal with Iran. America’s Iran policy “will benefit greatly from the participation of a diplomat of his caliber and experience,” the spokesman added.
Shapiro’s tenure in the Obama administration was mired in controversy, including allegations he assisted in election interference meant to undermine then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The Free Beaconreported at the time that a congressional investigation discovered emails it requested about the campaign had been destroyed by the State Department.
Biden and Bennett discussed the Iran threat at their meeting last week. The State Department, however, would not say whether the Israeli concerns about a new deal would factor into the administration’s approach.
“The president made clear his commitment to ensure Iran never develops a nuclear weapon,” the spokesman told the Free Beacon. Biden and Bennett “reviewed steps to deter and contain Iran’s dangerous regional behavior. They reiterated their commitments to work constructively and deepen cooperation to address all aspects of Israel’s security against Iran and other threats.”
The official said the State Department does “not have further comment” on the contents or outcome of those talks.
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 Floridaschool 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.
In a leaked email to a parent ahead of the Aug. 31, emergency school board meeting, Hernando County School Board member Susan Duval makes clear her position regarding a proposed mask mandate for children. (Patricia Tolson/The Epoch Times)
“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.
“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
Robert Christiansen holds a sign as he waits to attend the emergency school board meeting regarding a proposed mask mandate for students in Hernando County, Fla., on Aug. 31, 2021. (Patricia Tolson/The Epoch Times)
“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!”
A 10-year-old Vincent Soto addresses the members of the Hernando County School Board at Hernando County School Board Meeting on Aug. 31, 2021. (Patricia Tolson/The Epoch Times)
‘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.”
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?
Rep. Jim Banks’s (R-Ind.) on Wednesday introduced an amendment to the 2022 National Defense Authorization Act to ban the teaching of the quasi-Marxist critical race theory (CRT) or any related theories in the military.
“Today, I will be offering an amendment in the House Armed Services Committee to ban racist Critical Race Theory teachings in our military,” the Republican lawmaker, a vocal critic of CRT, announced on Twitter.
CRT advocates for critiquing social problems through the lens of racial struggle, and argues that racism is inherent in the foundational values of Western societies. As such, it seeks to fundamentally transform social institutions so as to end racial oppression.
Conservatives have expressed increasing concern that the U.S. military is becoming “woke” as it incorporates CRT in its training and education. They argue that promoting CRT weakens the armed forces’ ability to support and defend the U.S. Constitution.
Critics of CRT say its proponents apply the Marxist tactic of “class struggle” to race, dividing people along race, gender, and ethnic lines to label them “oppressors” and “oppressed,” which further divides society.
“Critical Race Theory is a dangerous and radical ideology that has no place in the U.S. military,” Study Committee Chairman Banks said in a statement. “I don’t know how anyone can justify teaching men and women, who are being asked to serve and protect our country and potentially pay the ultimate sacrifice, that America is a fundamentally evil or racist country.”
Among the amendment’s cosponsors so far are Reps. Stephanie Bice (R-Okla.), Mo Brooks (R-Ala.), Jerry Carl (R-Ala.), Pat Fallon (R-Texas), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Ronny Jackson (R-Texas), Doug Lamborn (R-Colo.), and Rob Wittman (R-Va.).
In a heated discussion, Gaetz called CRT “a poison.”
“It otherizes our fellow Americans,” Gaetz said. “It is not what we need in our military, in our schools, in our lives or anywhere in a great nation.”
“Every single one of us in this room know that this is the greatest country in the history of this world,” Banks added. “Are we perfect? No. Is our history perfect? Of course not. But there’s nothing that comes close to what we have in America. And it is not sustainable to tell our troops anything otherwise. In fact, it’s dangerous.”
Some Democrats have pushed back against the amendment, arguing that CRT addresses the racism in American history.
“[B]y being honest about our past, we can actually teach the hard truths about our country,” Rep. Steven Horsford (D-Nev.) said.
Sen. Rick Scott (R-Fla.) is calling out East Kodak CEO James Continenza for apologizing to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) over an Instagram post featuring images of Xinjiang—where the regime is accused of committing genocide—after some complaints on heavily censored Chinese social media platforms.
The Republican lawmaker sent Continenza a letter on Wednesday in response to the company’s decision last month to pull 10 images by French photographer Patrick Wack taken of life in China’s northwestern Xinjiang region, where at least one million Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities are being held in a sprawling network of detention and reeducation camps.
Wack described his photographs as a visual narrative of Xinjiang’s “abrupt descent into an Orwellian dystopia” over the past five years, which sparked backlash from Chinese Instagram accounts. Kodak subsequently apologized for “any misunderstanding or offense” that the post may have caused.
“For a long time, Kodak has maintained a good relationship with the Chinese government and has been in close cooperation with various government departments,” Kodak also said in a separate statement posted to China’s social media platform WeChat. “We will continue to respect the Chinese government and the Chinese law. We will keep ourselves in check and correct ourselves, taking this as an example of the need for caution.”
Scott in a Twitter post said it is “shameful” that New York-based Kodak “covered-up abuse to appease Communist China.”
“After sharing photos shedding light on Communist China’s brutal human rights abuses against Uhygur [sic] Muslims, @Kodak cowered, deleted them & apologized,” Scott said.
In his letter, Scott questioned Kodak’s “close cooperation” with the CCP as described in the apology.
“The ongoing abuses in Communist China are despicable,” Scott wrote. “Kodak’s decision to delete these photos, essentially censoring its own content, only empowers Communist China to continue these abuses against the Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in Xinjiang.”
Scott gave the company 30 days to answer his questions, including whether all of Kodak’s supply chains are free from Uyghur forced labor, why Kodak apologized to the CCP, and whether Wack’s images will be reposted.
“As an American company headquartered in New York and incorporated in New Jersey, Kodak should be standing for American values and against our foreign adversaries,” wrote Scott. “I am deeply concerned by Kodak’s decision to not only delete Mr. Wack’s photos from Instagram, but also to issue gross apologies to the Chinese Communist Party.”
Addressing the issue in an interview with Hong Kong Free Press, photographer Wack said Kodak’s conduct is “disappointing,” particularly as a company that has been for a century “one of the main traders in the photography industry” that “prides itself on helping people record important events.”
“I think that’s what upsetting most people,” Wack said.
“Once they made the post, even if they were harassed by Chinese trolls … they should have stayed with it,” he added. “It was starting to get ugly for them and that’s why they panicked. They didn’t see that they were actually going to unleash something even worse by doing this.”
The Chinese regime’s army of Internet trolls, dubbed the “50 cent army” as they are paid by the CCP (pdf) to make posts, works to dominate online thought and discussion by echoing the party line.
Kodak didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment by The Epoch Times.
A teacher who resigned her position at Rancho San Juan High School in Salinas, California, and moved to Florida this year after she said she was threatened and bullied on social media for opposing critical race theory (CRT) claims the school board has refused to read her public comments at meetings.
Kali Fontanilla told The Epoch Times that the Salinas Union High School District (SUHSD) hasn’t read her letter aloud during public comments since she submitted it to the board on July 13.
The letter, obtained by The Epoch Times, criticizes school board president Phillip Tabera, who attacked opponents of CRT on social media after a raucous June 22 board meeting at which he was called a racist.
“As a reaction to the many parents that spoke up and my own voice as a black teacher in the district, your board President, Phillip Tabera, stated publicly on Facebook the day after the meeting on June 23rd that the ‘anti people of color came out last night,’” Fontanilla wrote.
“I am disgusted and insulted that he would say such derogatory words about those that were brave enough to speak up about this indoctrination happening in the classroom,” she wrote. “Some of those that spoke up were people of color, including myself. To be told that we are ‘anti people of color’ because we are against the district forcing all of our students to receive lessons that are racist and divisive is disgraceful.”
Neither Tabera nor SUHSD Supt. Dan Burns have responded to inquiries about Fontanilla’s letter.
Meanwhile, information obtained through the Public Records Act indicates SUHSD dismissed “the actions and public comments” of parents opposed to CRT and ethnic studies at its June 22 board meeting as “part of a national, coordinated action inspired by right-wing, conservative media and political institutions.” The memo included links to “Politico” and the “Republican Study Committee.”
SUHSD then listed “Our Values,” with links to its resolutions on Black Lives Matter, civic literacy and engagement, DACA legislation, among others.
California lawmakers have proposed Assembly Bill 101 (AB 101) would make the state’s Ethnic Studies Modified Curriculum (ESMC) a graduation requirement for all high schools students. SUHSD already implemented its own ethnic studies program for all ninth-grade students ahead of the proposed state legislation.
Fontanilla said Tabera “should be removed from his position immediately for discrimination and racism.”
Kali Fontanilla, a former teacher at Rancho San Juan High School in Salinas, Calif., who moved to Florida after speaking out against critical race theory and Black Lives Matter. (Courtesy Kali Fontanilla)
She also blasted Burns for denying that the ethnic studies curriculum is based on CRT.
“I’ve also seen the way the district superintendent has denied that critical race theory is being taught in our schools to the press. This is a complete lie! He is not being transparent to the public and the parents who have kids in our schools,” Fontanilla wrote.
“Some of the words and concepts included in lessons taught to students are: critical whiteness studies, hegemony, white privilege, white fragility, white silence, white denial, the 4 I’s of oppression, internalized racism, anti-capitalism, counter-genocide, anti-heterosexism, anti-patriarchy, people of color power, decolonization,” she wrote in the letter.
“To deny that critical race theory is inserted into these lessons is completely dishonest!” she wrote.
Fontanilla said ethnic studies is not a history lesson or study of different cultures, but rather “pure divisive and racist brainwashing.”
“I never taught my students that they were victims or oppressed. I never told my white students that they are privileged and oppressors. I told all my students that they were strong, resilient, intelligent, and can do anything if they put their minds to it, despite their circumstances,” she wrote.
Students are a “captive audience” who should not be forced to study CRT in order to graduate, especially without their parents’ knowledge or consent, she said.
Burns said at the school board’s Aug. 10 meeting that SUHSD would no longer hear public comments about CRT or ethnic studies, after controversy erupted over those two issues at meetings this summer.
He announced that “without desiring to change the current course pathway of ethnic studies as a requirement” the school board “will not take public comments on these two topics in the future until there’s a future debate about this again. We’ve heard concerns from both sides. We appreciate the support of both sides in the debate and in the future, we’ll announce if we’re going to have this conversation further.”
But, at the school board’s Aug. 24 meeting, dozens of students and parents spoke in favor of CRT and ethnic studies after Salinas High School students were accused of posting crude photos of a black baby doll online on an Instagram account.
CRT opponent Kelly Schenkoske told The Epoch Times that looking back on the Aug. 10 meeting, Burns’s statement banning public comments on CRT and ethnic studies seems “incredibly strange” considering times limits were not enforced on those who spoke in favor of CRT and ethnic studies two weeks later.
She suggested SUHSD might be violating the Brown Act, which requires meetings to include a general comment period where the public is allowed to comment on anything of interest that is under the jurisdiction of a local government body.
“House Democrats just refused to recognize Republican veterans on the House Floor to read the names of our fallen service members in Afghanistan,” Florida combat veteran, Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL) said on Twitter. “That’s how far our nation has fallen.”
House Democrats just refused to recognize Republican veterans on the House Floor to read the names of our fallen service members in Afghanistan.
That’s how far our nation has fallen.— Congressman Greg Steube (@RepGregSteube) August 31, 2021
Rep. Carlos A. Giminez (R-FL) blasted Pelosi and the House Democrats on Tuesday, saying “how badly do Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats want to cover up this Afghanistan debacle? They just blocked Members of Congress from reading the names of the service members who sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan last week. Don’t you think our military deserves better?”
How badly do Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats want to cover up this Afghanistan debacle?
They just blocked Members of Congress from reading the names of the service members who sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan last week.
Don’t you think our military deserves better?— Congressman Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) August 31, 2021
Wounded combat veteran from Afghanistan, Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL), told The Floridian“during a Republican-only moment of silence, Speaker Pelosi refused to recognize them to read names or bring up bills or anything. We gaveled in, had a prayer, said the Pledge of Allegiance, took a moment of silence with pretty much all Republican veterans, then asked to be recognized to read names and bring up Afghanistan legislation. They did not acknowledge us, and just closed the House down.”
On Monday, Congresswoman Lisa McClain (R-MI) announced that she and 158 co-sponsors introduced legislation in the House of Representatives that would posthumously award the Congressional Gold Medal to the 13 slain US service members. This medal is Congress’ most distinguished award.
Today, I introduced bipartisan legislation, alongside 158 cosponsors, to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the 13 servicemembers killed in #Afghanistan last week. These valiant men and women will never be forgotten. https://t.co/voOU2yZuko— Representative Lisa McClain (@RepLisaMcClain) August 31, 2021
It was detailed in her press release that the legislation would award the Congressional Gold Medal to Staff Sgt. Darin Taylor Hoover, Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo, Sgt. Nicole Gee, Cpl. Hunter Lopez, Cpl. Daegan Page, Cpl. Humberto Sanchez, Cpl. David Lee Espinoza, Lance Cpl. Jared Schmitz, Lance Cpl. Rylee McCollum, Lance Cpl. Dylan Merola, Lance Cpl. Kareem Nikoui, Hospitalman Maxton Soviak and Staff Sgt. Ryan Knauss.
“These heroic men and women are gone far too soon, and we must honor them for their bravery in helping U.S. citizens and Afghan allies safely evacuate Afghanistan,” Rep. McClain said. “My heart aches for the families and loved ones of our servicemembers. We will always remember their service and pay tribute to their sacrifice.”
Mask mandate and use efficacy for COVID-19 containment in US States
Damian D. Guerra1,*, 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.
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/Ko5KzfhZzcpic.twitter.com/e5aolUwQ6v
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.
The most logical response is: “Cui bono?”—”Who benefits?”—from the decision.
If some policy benefits your country most, you should, within moral bounds, pursue it.
If your enemies benefit most, you should avoid it.
I’d be curious to learn what answer proponents of America leaving Afghanistan—conservative or liberal—would give to the question, “Cui bono?”
I can say that until this moment, I have not read or heard a single cogent argument from proponents of American withdrawal as to how exactly it benefits America.
“Twenty years is too long,” or its variant, “we have to end these endless wars,” the most commonly offered argument for withdrawal, has nothing to do with benefiting America.
It is an emotional sentiment, not a rational argument.
The withdrawal has already cost us in a single day more service members’ lives than we lost on any one day in Afghanistan since June 2014, seven years ago.
The number of American servicemen killed in Afghanistan per year from 2015 to 2020 is respectively 22, 9, 14, 14, 21, and 11. No one can seriously argue that we are leaving Afghanistan because of high American casualties.
So, while America doesn’t benefit at all from leaving Afghanistan, it does get hurt.
The damage to the reputation of America—as an ally and as a strong country—is not easily overstated.
The damage done to NATO, whose members President Joe Biden didn’t bother to consult, is greater than any damage former President Donald Trump—whom the left-wing mainstream media constantly attacked for damaging NATO—was alleged to have done.
On the other hand, “Cui bono?” has some very clear answers: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, every Islamic terror group in the world and every other anti-American regime and movement.
In the Daily Wire, Ben Shapiro compiled a list of recent Western weakness in the face of tyrants and the commensurate strengthening of those tyrants:
“The West’s abandonment of Hong Kong in the face of Chinese aggression last year.
“The West’s continuing desire for a rapprochement with the Iranian mullahcracy.
“The West’s routine appeasement of Russia.
“All speak to the unwillingness of the West—and the West’s leader, the United States—to stand up for allies anywhere on earth.
“Afghanistan is simply the latest, and by far the most stunning, example of abandonment of an American ally …
“China’s Global Times, a Communist Party mouthpiece, chortled, ‘From what happened in Afghanistan, those in Taiwan should perceive that once a war breaks out in the Straits, the island’s defense will collapse in hours and U.S. military won’t come to help. As a result (Taiwan) will quickly surrender.’
“Indeed, given the window presented by the Biden administration, it would be somewhat of a surprise if China didn’t attempt some sort of action against Taiwan in the next few years …
“Foreign policy abhors vacuums, and the United States has now created one. That means that erstwhile American allies will begin to play footsie with countries like Russia and China, believing that American commitments mean little. They have reason for such suspicions, obviously.”
The effects on Americans’ perceptions of the military constitute another terrible price paid by leaving Afghanistan. More and more Americans see the military as more concerned with fighting white supremacy in America and transphobia in the military than with fighting for the supremacy of freedom on earth. This is new. And it will have a devastating effect on both America and the military. One obvious consequence: Who will want to enlist in a woke military? (Perhaps that’s the goal.)
It seems that every generation has to relearn the basic laws of life, such as this one: There are many bad people and many bad countries in the world, and only a fear of good countries prevents them from conquering other countries.
There is less fear of good countries in the world today than at any time since World War II. And that is especially so because the good countries are preoccupied with their own alleged evils rather than with the world’s real evils.
State Department official ‘haunted’ by failure to assist special immigrant visa applicants
The majority of Afghan special immigrant visa applicants who aided U.S. forces did not safely exit Afghanistan before the Biden administration withdrew, the State Department said on Wednesday.
A State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, toldPolitico he and his team are “haunted” by the failure to assist applicants, many of whom were translators and aides for U.S. forces for decades in Afghanistan, often in life-or-death situations. The United States opened up 34,500 slots for SIV applicants, but an estimated 50,000 Afghans were interested in applying.
“There were days it did not work well,” a State Department official said. “We had a couple of instances where buses were a mix of foreign nationals and Afghan local employees of other missions, and the Talibs would only let pass the foreign nationals, and they turned away or they held at that location the Afghan citizens who were on that particular movement.”
Taliban checkpoints at the Kabul airport and nearby—as well as brutal killings of Afghans suspected of working with the United States—hindered the evacuation of some translators.
One Afghan interpreter who was left behind had rescued President Joe Biden during a 2008 visit to Afghanistan. Biden and former senators Chuck Hagel (R.) and John Kerry (D.) landed in a dangerous valley during a snowstorm and required evacuation with the assistance of the translator. He is now hiding out in Afghanistan with his wife and four children.
“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” the translator told the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday. “Don’t forget me here.”
Another translator who was unable to secure a safe exit from Afghanistan expressed fear to the Washington Free Beacon that he would be killed if spotted by the Taliban. Up to 200 Americans, including dozens of children, also remain in the Taliban-controlled country.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R., Texas) ripped the Biden administration’s botched withdrawal in a Tuesday statement.
“President Biden prioritized political considerations over American lives and national security,” Cruz said. “He imposed an artificial deadline untethered from conditions on the ground, and refused to adjust or adapt even as the Taliban swept across Afghanistan and catastrophes mounted. He met his artificial deadline but broke all the promises he made to the American people. … And he dragged our nation into a crippling, humiliating defeat that has shaken our allies and emboldened our enemies.”
Facebook and Instagram removed Shana Chappell’s posts criticizing Biden
A Republican congresswoman is pushing Facebook and Instagram to explain why they censored posts critical of President Biden by the mother of a Marine killed in Afghanistan, according to a letter obtained by the Washington Free Beacon.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.) called on Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram head Adam Mosseri to explain why the social media sites removed posts by Shana Chappell that criticized Biden for the debacle in Afghanistan and his allegedly callous behavior at the transfer of her son’s remains.
Chappell’s Instagram account was suspended and one of her Facebook posts was hidden, although both were later restored. Facebook, which owns Instagram, said Chappell’s Instagram account was “incorrectly deleted.” When asked for clarification on why Chappell’s Instagram account was removed, a spokesman said the platform does not “comment on how enforcements occurred.”
Tenney wants the companies to explain their behavior. “Our Gold Star families and the American public deserve better than this,” she wrote. “After sacrificing so much for the safety and security of our Nation, their speech should not be stifled by faceless Silicon Valley censors.”
Facebook and Instagram have come under fire for unclear or partisan content moderation. Facebook has “downranked” articles that argued COVID-19 escaped a Chinese lab. Tenney serves on the House GOP’s “Tech Task Force,” which is preparing a legislative package to tackle the power of major tech companies.
In the letter, Tenney expressed concerns about politically motivated censorship. “I am aware that the White House acknowledged it would be flagging for Facebook, Instagram’s parent company, posts it deemed ‘problematic.’ Weaponizing the power of the Executive Branch against an open public discourse is wholly un-American, and it would be a crucial error for Instagram to assist in this.”
Biden has not shied away from exerting leverage over Facebook. In June, he accused the platform of “killing people” by allowing “misinformation” about COVID on the site. Multiple former Facebook executives serve in the Biden White House.
According to a Facebook spokesman, Chappell’s “tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies.” Chappell said that after she posted about her son, Instagram began flagging her older posts and warned that her account would be deleted if she continued posting. It is unclear what triggered the warnings on older posts.
CalPERS has $490 million tied up in companies funding Belt and Road
California’s state pension invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Chinese state-owned enterprises linked to the People’s Liberation Army, according to records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon.
The California Public Employees’ Retirement System (CalPERS) had more than $3 billion invested in Chinese companies, including 14 state-controlled enterprises blacklisted by the Trump administration, as of June 2020. Many of these companies are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, a massive infrastructure project Beijing is using to expand its geopolitical and military influence.
Gov. Gavin Newsom (D., Calif.), who recently praised a Chinese-owned media company for its “journalistic integrity,” has not commented on CalPERS’s Chinese investments. It is a notable silence from the embattled governor, who has called on CalPERS, the country’s largest public pension system, to divest from tobacco companies and companies linked to the Turkish government. Newsom faces a recall election on Sept. 14.
CalPERS had more than $450 million invested in 14 Chinese companies the Trump administration put on an investment blacklist last year because of their ties to the Chinese military. President Donald Trump’s executive order, which the Biden administration has continued, prohibited Americans from investing in companies that aid the Chinese military.
It is unclear whether CalPERS has complied with the executive order by divesting in the blacklisted companies. The pension fund declined the Free Beacon‘s requests for comment. CalPERS had more than $490 million invested in seven Chinese state-owned enterprises that, while not on the U.S. blacklist, are funding the Belt and Road Initiative, according to its 2020 investment report. CalPERS invested in some of the Chinese companies as early as 2016, records show.
Two companies in the CalPERS portfolio—China Merchants Port and CITIC—control ports in Sri Lanka and Myanmar that the People’s Liberation Army has used for military exercises. CalPERS had $3.7 million invested in China Merchants Port and $110 million in CITIC as of June 2020.
CalPERS, which has more than $400 billion in assets under management, also had $5 million invested in China State Construction Co., which has built roads and bridges in Asia, Africa, and the United States as part of Belt and Road. China State Construction is one of the firms on the Trump administration investment blacklist.
CalPERS had another $6 million invested in China Communications Construction Company, a state-owned company that U.S. officials have said is building military installations in the South China Sea in violation of agreements that China has with its neighbors. Former secretary of state Mike Pompeo singled out China Communications Construction last year as one of the “weapons” Beijing uses to impose an expansionist agenda.
The pension fund has hundreds of millions of dollars more invested in some of China’s largest lenders, including $185 million invested in China Construction Bank. China Construction has invested $405 billion in 176 Belt and Road projects. China Merchants Bank and Bank of China, two other state-owned enterprises in the CalPERS portfolio, are invested heavily in Belt and Road projects.
CalPERS has come under scrutiny from state and national lawmakers over its investments in Chinese companies. The fund’s critics say the investments not only aid the Chinese Communist Party but also create financial risk for the state’s pensioners because of the lack of transparency into the operations of Chinese firms.
“CalPERS would do well on its own to reconsider some of its billions of dollars of investments in China just for the fact that immediate international turmoil produces large uncertainties for California retirees,” said Lance Christensen, the chief operating officer at the California Policy Center, a conservative think tank.
Some investment managers are reportedly reconsidering investments in China because of the government’s crackdown on tech companies and other for-profit companies. Chinese companies listed on U.S. stock exchanges lost $400 billion in value in July amid a series of regulatory crackdowns orchestrated by the Chinese government, the Wall Street Journalreported.
CalPERS’s former head under Newsom, Ben Meng, is an American citizen of Chinese origin. Prior to leading CalPERs, he worked in China as the deputy chief investment officer of China’s State Administration of Foreign Exchange. In that role, he oversaw $3 trillion of foreign-exchange reserves.
During Meng’s time at CalPERS, Rep. Jim Banks (R., Ind.) criticized Meng’s membership in China’s Thousand Talents Program, which the nation uses for espionage. Banks wrote to Newsom suggesting the governor fire Meng, a power Newsom does not technically have.
“Governor Newsom, if it were up to me, I would fire Mr. Meng immediately,” Banks wrote in a February 2020 letter. Banks took specific issue with Chinese companies like Hikvision, for example, that are used by China to further its detention of Uyghurs. CalPERS responded by calling Banks’s letter a “politically opportunistic attempt to force us to divest, undermining our ability to perform our fiduciary duty to provide retirement security to California’s public employees.”
Last year, Banks and Sen. Rick Scott (R., Fla.) called on Newsom and CalPERS to divest from Chinese state-owned companies. CalPERS rejected the requests, saying that its portfolio largely mirrors investments in the MSCI and FTSE stock indices. MSCI has said it is divesting from the 14 companies on the federal blacklist, but it is not clear whether CalPERS plans to follow MSCI’s lead.
While Newsom does not directly control CalPERs, he has actively used his bully pulpit as a statewide elected official to force the agency’s investment decisions in the past. In 2019, he signed an executive order directing CalPERS and other state pension funds to invest in green energy companies in order to fight climate change.
In 2016, then-Lt. Gov. Newsom urged CalPERS not to reverse a decision to prohibit investment in tobacco companies. He said CalPERS would be “investing in death” if it allowed investments in Big Tobacco. CalPERS voted later that year to expand its prohibition on tobacco investments.
As a gubernatorial candidate in 2018, Newsom called on CalPERS to divest from Turkish companies because of the regime’s refusal to recognize the mass murder of Armenians in 1915.
“It is wrong of us as a state … to invest in Turkish businesses. It’s time for divestment at the [University of California] and CalPERS,” Newsom said at a rally outside the Turkish consulate in Los Angeles.
Newsom has not made a similar demand of CalPERS regarding China, even though both the Trump and Biden administrations have said that the government is carrying out genocide against Muslims in Western China.
“Gov. Gavin Newsom is quick to leverage his position on issues like climate change by outlawing gas-powered cars or other similar mandates, but slow to speak out on government investments in China, where their environmental and labor record is abysmal,” said Christensen, the official at the California Policy Center.
Newsom’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Sen. Hagerty: ‘We have someone not even qualified for a security clearance at the center of Biden’s incompetently planned withdrawal”
Pentagon strategy chief Colin Kahl is in the hot seat over his role in the Biden administration’s bungled Afghanistan withdrawal, four months after Senate Republicans unanimously opposed his nomination and warned that his appointment would be disastrous for national defense policy.
Kahl, the civilian head of policy planning at the Department of Defense and third highest ranking department official, has been a key player in planning for the Afghanistan withdrawal and the day-to-day policy decisions on the ground. While several Biden administration officials have been publicly defending the president’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, Republican foreign policy leaders say Kahl is the behind-the-scenes player largely responsible for the botched evacuation of Afghanistan and decision to leave Americans stranded in the country. The GOP lawmakers, who also have criticized Secretary of State Antony Blinken and White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan, now say their fears about Kahl’s lack of fitness for the role are coming to pass.
Sen. Bill Hagerty (R., Tenn.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Washington Free Beacon that Kahl “should never have been nominated by the president or confirmed by the Senate” and should be held responsible for the Biden administration’s failures in Afghanistan, including for the hundreds of Americans who have reportedly been left behind. “In Kahl, we have someone not even qualified for a security clearance at the center of President Biden’s incompetently planned and disorderly withdrawal from Afghanistan.”
Sen. Marco Rubio (R., Fla.), another member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, told the Free Beacon that Kahl and Pentagon leadership “are more worried about woke messaging than combat readiness. And the entire White House national security team is being bullied by a band of medieval terrorists. They are overseeing America’s decline, and it is an absolute disgrace.”
The criticism of Kahl comes as lawmakers are demanding the resignation of Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin and Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mark Milley over the handling of the Afghanistan exit, which led to a Taliban takeover of the country and a chaotic and deadly evacuation effort. While senior State Department and Pentagon officials have come under the microscope in the wake of the Biden administration’s evacuation from Afghanistan, Kahl has largely avoided public scrutiny. Leading GOP foreign policy voices and national security establishment insiders, however, say that Kahl was not prepared for a senior Pentagon job and that this lack of preparation contributed to the administration’s failure to plan for the Taliban’s rise. The Biden administration rammed Kahl’s appointment through Congress this year, even in the face of significant Republican opposition. As Afghanistan fell apart in the past several weeks, Kahl’s opponents began to lay blame for the crisis on his office, which is tasked with providing day-to-day policy advice to the Pentagon’s military leaders.
As undersecretary of defense for policy, Kahl has played a leading role in crafting the withdrawal strategy. During a strategy call last week, military commanders warned Kahl and other Pentagon leaders about an imminent “mass casualty” attack expected to take place near Abbey Gate last week, according to notes from the classified session obtained by Politico. Kahl and the other officials reportedly declined to close the gate due to concerns that it would impede the evacuation process. The next day, a suicide bomber killed 13 service members in the same location.
On the call, Kahl and other officials were also reportedly told that the United States would not be able to evacuate every American from the country, an outcome that the Biden administration had promised to prevent. Kahl expressed concern about the optics, reportedly worrying that “history will judge us by those final images.”
Kahl “owns the [Department of Defense’s] failure to plan and implement a withdrawal that wouldn’t dishonor our veterans, our military, and our values,” said Josh Block, a foreign policy scholar at the Hudson Institute and former Clinton administration State Department official.
Block said Kahl is “unqualified for his job, a liability to American national security” and “needs to be removed or made to resign.”
Calls for Kahl’s resignation come just months after his bruising confirmation battle, during which he faced scrutiny for his Twitter attacks on Republicans, his advocacy for the Iran nuclear deal, and his record of inaccurate foreign policy predictions.
Kahl was confirmed in a divisive, party-line vote after he apologized for his years of inflammatory tweets, including blasting the GOP as the “party of ethnic cleansing” and a “clown show.”
Kahl, who served in the State Department under President Obama, was a top advocate of the nuclear deal with Iran and has spoken at multiple events hosted by the National Iranian American Council, a pro-Iranian regime lobbying group.
He opposed a 2017 bill to sanction the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the nexus for Iran’s global terrorism operations. Kahl also protested the Trump administration’s assassination of Iranian terror chief Qassem Soleimani, which he described as “the equivalent of another country taking out the director of the CIA, secretary of defense, and shadow secretary of state all rolled into one.”
Sen. Tom Cotton (R., Ark.), in a speech he made this spring in opposition to Kahl’s nomination, said the nominee was “wrong about nearly every important foreign policy decision of the last decade.”
Cotton noted that Kahl in 2010 dismissed concerns about a rapid withdrawal from Iraq, which he said was “very unlikely to trigger a dramatic uptick in violence”—a prediction that was proven wrong after terrorists seized a large portion of Iraq. Kahl also predicted that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would prompt a third intifada and that Trump’s withdrawal from the Iran nuclear deal and later assassination of Soleimani would spark a war with Tehran.
“Mr. Kahl’s inability to accurately assess these events almost defies probability,” said Cotton.
“Abracadabra!” “Alakazam!” “Presto-chango!” These common refrains are employed by magicians to signal the climax of their seemingly supernatural trick. As a child, I was fascinated by masters of deception. Among other magician’s tricks, the “sleight of hand” was my obsession. Equally stunning and perplexing, I was left puzzled time and again by the clever illusion. Try as I might, I could not manage to figure it out.
With study, I discovered the mastery behind the sleight-of-hand ploy: deception. The phrase refers to a clever act designed for two purposes—entertainment and manipulation of the onlooker. Drawing the spectator in by an intimate and captivating movement of the hands, the spectator never captures the moment they are duped into thinking they were not tricked. The bottom line is that, if you do not closely observe the magician’s hands, you will be fooled into looking in the wrong direction. Ultimately, you will believe what the magician wants you to think—that magic made the trick happen.
Today, I am often reminded of the sleight of hand when I feel drawn into false narratives perpetuated by our state and nation’s elected officials. Among our nation’s leaders, Governor Gavin Newsom has claimed center stage in attempting to deceive California residents that the Sept. 14 Gubernatorial Recall Election is nothing more than a “Republican” brainchild.
You will note that every ballot mailed to California voters is accompanied by a voter’s guide that describes the recall as the result of machinations at the national level by the Republican Party and supporters of former President Donald Trump. More precisely, the guide includes a statement from Governor Newsom asserting that this election is happening because the Republican National Committee (RNC) is determined to seize power in California.
This kind of talk is nothing new. Back in March, Newsom was quoted as saying the push for the vote was a “Republican recall backed by the RNC, anti-mask and anti-vax extremists, and pro-Trump forces who want to overturn the last election and have opposed much of what we have done to fight the pandemic.”
Again, this was hardly an isolated incident. Newsom has consistently described the upcoming election in speeches, public statements, and social media posts as a “Republican-led recall.” He’s also made regular digs at the national Republican Party, linking his own political fortunes to developments in other parts of the country. On Aug. 16, for example, he wrote in a Twitter post: “Republicans want to drive CA off the same cliff as FL and TX.”
Under these circumstances, it’s no wonder that Orrin Heatlie and Mike Netter, the leading proponents of the recall campaign, took to the courts recently.
In early August, Heatlie and Netter sued Secretary of State Shirley Weber over the language of the voter’s guide. They argued in their initial petition that Newsom ought to be ordered to revise the text of his statement in the guide to remove claims that the recall election was being spearheaded on a national level by the Republican Party and by Trump supporters. They called those claims “at best misleading, at worst flat-out false, and in all events a hyperbolic outrage,” and they requested that the court instruct the governor to remove text that accuses Republicans of abusing California’s recall laws in a bid to grasp power in the state.
Instead of holding Newsom’s false narratives accountable, Presiding Judge Laurie Earl issued a tentative ruling approving of Newsom’s false propaganda. As a result of Judge Earl’s ruling, households across California are receiving false and deceptive information about the movement behind the recall election.
What those households will not read about is the fact that many of the 46 candidates named as possible alternatives to Newsom in the second section of the recall ballot are not Republicans.
They will not read about the fact that neither the RNC nor the California Republican Party has endorsed any candidate in the recall election.
They will not read about the fact that the Democratic Party has taken up Newsom’s cause on a national level, with top-level politicians such as Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) making public statements urging voters in California to support the governor.
They will not read about the small business owners who resent Newsom’s embrace of restrictive public health measures that leave them struggling to keep their doors open and keep their employees on the roster.
They will not read about the parents who are worried about their kids’ ability to make up for all the learning they missed while Newsom closed the doors to public schools, all the while sending his own children to private school.
They will not read about the many individual voters—Republicans, Democrats, Libertarians, and others—who have been willing to go on record urging that Newsom be recalled.
Of course, they will be able to read what proponents of the recall say in their own statement. (After all, the voter’s guide gives space to both sides.) But they will also be presented with Newsom’s narrow and distorted assertions about the nature of the recall campaign.
That’s a shame. The governor should not downplay the numerous and imminent reasons California voters of all stripes have found to vote him out of office.
We ought to remember that California residents elect its governor to invoke truth, promote accountability and transparency, regardless of where their party loyalties lie. The governor should not deceptively control narratives behind elections and ignore the obvious plight of so many in the Golden State. With an unprecedented homelessness crisis, rising unemployment, and a broken education system, Newsom is in no position to suggest that a recall election was conceived only by members of the Republican Party.
The bottom line is that, like the sleight-of-hand trick, Governor Newsom wants you to blindly buy into his “Republican power grab” recall narrative while distracting you from the truth many of us already know: Californians across the political spectrum are collectively calling for a change in leadership.
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.
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.
A great number of people were shocked by the result of the 2020 presidential election, but Curtis Bowers (former Republican member of the House of Representatives) might not have been. Although he never described himself as a prophet, he indeed foresaw in 2015, or earlier, that 2016 would be the last time in his lifetime to see a conservative president elected. In other words, he worried that the political environment in the United States would continue to deteriorate or radicalize unless a miracle were to happen.
Bowers and his interviewees in the documentary “AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit“ talked about possible electoral manipulation and fraud, but that was not the main factor that led him to make such a judgment about the future of America’s political arena. The basis for his conclusion was simply demographic trends.
According to Bowers’ study, in 1980, about 40 percent of the U.S. population held conservative political views, 50 percent were undecided, and only 10 percent were liberal. The trend was that both the conservative and undecided populations were shrinking. In 2012, the conservative dropped to 30 percent, while the liberal grew to 30 percent, making the two evenly matched. By 2036, the conservative and undecided are projected to fall further to 10 percent and 20 percent respectively, while the liberal might grow to 70 percent accordingly.
For conservatives, if Bowers’ analysis and predictions are accurate, it will indicate the United States is becoming a socialist or communist country. Could there be anything more frightening than that?
Bowers himself was not willing to accept this too. However, he was aware that American conservatives must force themselves to rationally recognize this dire situation and act vigorously to salvage it, rather than simply pinning their hopes for a turnaround on the next election.
What has caused this trend in the proportion of political leanings? The direct answer from Bowers is the left is capturing 85 percent of young Americans each year. They achieved this not because they had magic powers. Rather, they had a long-standing agenda, a communist agenda, to undermine, infiltrate and control the family, the church, the state, the media, the schools, and many more institutions that influence the worldview of the youth.
In the “Communist Manifesto,” Karl Marx called on his followers to destroy all traditional political systems, economic models, religious beliefs, moral values, family structures, and so on. And these did prevail in the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, North Korea, and some other countries.
At the end of the Cold War, many Americans once believed they had defeated or even eliminated communism. Bowers was one of them. But the first-hand experience in 1992 changed his view. He attended a communist strategy meeting at the campus of the University of California, Berkley. He was shocked to learn that the communists were still or had always been seriously planning to change America to be more in line with their views. What surprised him more was the rapidity with which the Communists were achieving their goals. This led him to drop his prior work and devote himself to researching and exposing the Communist destruction in the United States.
In his first award-winning documentary “AGENDA: Grinding America Down,” Bowers uses a wealth of facts and data to demonstrate that communism is not dead or gone, but has deliberately, yet unwittingly, orchestrated and driven changes in American values over the past decades.
The most convincing witnesses were the communists themselves. In 1958, W. Cleon Skousen listed 45 goals of the communists to infiltrate and convert the United States, in his book “The Naked Communist.” These 45 goals cover everything from influencing specific policies to corrupting American culture. Examples include capturing one or both of America’s political parties; controlling key positions in radio, TV, and pictures; presenting homosexuality, degeneracy, and promiscuity as normal and healthy; replacing revealed religion with social religion; discrediting the American founding fathers; encouraging easy divorce, and more. Please watch the documentary for details.
The sequel documentary “AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit” explains the reasons why communism has not died out. In defiance of moral principles, the communists and those who were duped masterfully kept changing their names, coining new terms, and winning the cognitive war repeatedly like a duck to water. For example, in Fabian socialism, a denomination of communism, deception is their motto. Another branch, the Frankfurt School, boasted they could convince students that snow is black through distorted interpretations and truth subjectivism in education.
Bowers notes that no matter how catchy the slogans of the communists and the left are, they aim to establish big government and foster dependence on it. Julia Irish, a family therapist, gave “AGENDA 2: Masters of Deceit” five stars and commented, “Our children are being lost. We are well into creating a third generation of state dependents.” But Julia believes all people want self-esteem, so she doesn’t think young people will spontaneously and willingly rely on and support big government, instead, they have been simply indoctrinated to think that way. “The result is depression, anxiety, drug dependence, domestic abuse and poverty.”
Bowers’ remark that 2016 would be the last time in his life to see a conservative president elected may leave many in despair. It was like a lady in the audience crying sadly after a screening of the documentary “AGENDA.” The reason was that a male audience member affirmed Bowers’ research, declaring, “I am a professor at this college, I am a communist, and we will win because we are taking all of your children.”
Tanya Wright, an author for the Natural Homeschool, has a different feeling. “I don’t think this is a fear-mongering documentary,” Wright writes, “it was a desperate call to arms to those who have ears to hear.” I agree.
If Bowers were that pessimistic, he wouldn’t have his entire family committed to going around and presenting these documentaries. He clarified his genuine thought by quoting Sun Tzu, “If you know yourself, you will have a 50 percent chance to win the battle. If you know your enemy, you will have a 50 percent chance to win. But, if you know yourself AND your enemy, you will have a 100 percent chance to win.” Bowers hopes Americans rediscover their identity and values, understand the dangers they are in and who their enemies are, and then act quickly to defend themselves and finally win.
The change in the demographic ratio of conservatives, undecideds, and liberals in the United States is ongoing. In the documentary “AGENDA 2,” Star Parker suggests, “The only way you are going to reverse the trend is to begin to interject a biblical worldview back into the hearts and minds of our youth.” I agree, while it is easier said than done. People who believe in God must also consider the cunning and temptations of satan to walk their path steadily. In this regard, “The Specter of Communism” series from The Epoch Times illustrate it best. So my suggestion is to watch both Agenda documentaries and “The Specter of Communism” series as a collection.
Hillhouse Capital – a private equity firm funded by America’s top universities and is invested in companies including Zoom and Apple – struck a $1.5 billion deal with a Chinese Communist Party-owned investment fund.
Hillhouse Capital partnered with the “wholly state-owned” Hangzhou Capitol on a billion-dollar fund “to invest in sectors including artificial intelligence, semiconductors, and new energy vehicles,” according to Chinese state-run media outlet China Global Television Network (CGTN).
Hillhouse Capital, which was funded with $20 million in seed capital from the Yale University Endowment, is reported to be backed by America’s most prestigious universities. Following a Stanford University investment of $200 million in 2015, the fund was “investing money for at least six of the 10 wealthiest universities in the U.S.,” including Princeton and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB) has also invested nearly $1 billion with the Beijing-based fund.
These investments are now being used, however, to contribute to the growth of the Chinese Communist Party.
A press release from Hangzhou Capital – which pledges to be “guided by Xi Jinping’s thoughts on socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era” – reveals that its partnership with Hillhouse Capital is part of a broader Chinese regime-backed effort to turn the city into a “leading and exemplary benchmark for national advancement.”
“The implementation of the “National Digital Economy First City” strategy focuses on value investment to empower outstanding enterprise development, optimizes industrial layout and accelerates the cultivation of new kinetic energy, and creates new impetus for Hangzhou to become a model city for high-quality development and construction of a common prosperity demonstration zone in Zhejiang Province,” the group adds.
Hillhouse Capital’s partnership with a Chinese state-owned enterprise also calls into question its sizable investments in companies such as Zoom, Uber, Apple, TikTok parent company ByteDance.
Article Seven of China’s National Intelligence law stipulates that “any organization or citizen shall support, assist, and cooperate with state intelligence work according to law.”
With the United States completely withdrawn militarily from Afghanistan since the nation’s involvement after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks, and with the Taliban terrorist group having seized troves of U.S. weapons, Afghans living in New York hope that by force of miracle, stabilization can come to their home country.
The Epoch Times reached out to members of the Afghan community in New York to get their thoughts on the situation.
Fakhrudin Fakhrudin works in an Indian beauty salon, owned by his wife, who is originally from India.
His family cannot come to the United States, they have told him over the phone that the situation is “very bad.”
“One hundred percent bad. because you can’t find f0od, you can’t find anything. They’re scared of Taiban because they work with the government,” he told The Epoch Times.
His sister’s husband and son worked for the now overthrown Afghan government.
Fakhrudin said that the Taliban are systematically looking for people that worked for the government.
“Now they are looking [for the people who worked for the government] door to door,” Fakhrudin said.
“One girl worked with the police. She’s a neighbor of my sister. They took her eyes off with a knife, twice. The Taliban, I swear to God.”
Fakhrudin has been in the United States for 50 years. He wants to tell the U.S. government as a citizen that the Afghan people need help.
“[Afghan] people need help, they need help very badly because a lot of them worked with the government, and now they are hiding.”
“There’s nothing that we can do, people are just suffering over there,” he concluded.
Karimullah Faizy’s parents were born and grew up in Afghanistan and moved to the United States in the 90s. He runs a restaurant that is owned by his father in Long Island, New York.
“The U.S. government, the way they just left and they left everybody and they left their weapons, just for the Taliban to use it. And now they’re obviously using it against us,” said Faizy.
“Twelve soldiers just died. And it was a very bad decision for [America] just to leave, leave all their Blackhawk Hawk helicopters … And now we just left.”
Faizy’s father is gathering some money to send to his uncle in Afghanistan, whose house was bombed two weeks ago and only half of it remains.
He shared a video with The Epoch Times that shows the ruins of the home.
“They just surrendered, and now the Taliban are taking over the soldiers and using our own equipment. And sooner or later, they’re going to have to go back,” said Faizy.
“People and soldiers dying, and all the money being spent on this … is just very sad and tragic, especially for the people living there, the innocent civilians, and you can see they’re just leaving in helicopters … it’s sad [in] our hearts and we’re praying for them.”
Salimi Popal, originally from Kandahar, Afghanistan, has been living in the United States for 13 years, working 12 hours a day in his food cart in Flushing, Queens.
It was reported recently that the Taliban banned female voices and music from airing on the radio in Kandahar.
His brother, cousin, grandfather, and children all live in the United States. Any extra money he has, he sends to his family in Afghanistan.
He believes in peace and says all the people of Afghanistan are his family, and hopes that the situation can be stable in his home country.
“So bad,” he said, of his family’s situation, “there are no more doctors available.”
Nevertheless, he has hope that things might not go downhill.
“Now it’s too early, because I don’t know what will happen with this new regime,” Popal said.
He emphasized that “maybe,” gradually it would be ok.
“[Let’s] wait. He [the leader] said that ‘I don’t want to kill anybody, free everybody,’ everybody is ok now, the country is ok now, the cities are ok now, everybody is quiet, people are very happy now, because [people] like that nobody dies.”
“Afghanistan people are not terrorists, they are people like you, like me,” Popal asserted. “Taliban speak the same language, how could I think they are different people.”
“Let’s wait, everybody says ‘wait,’” he said. “Everybody, different countries are waiting to see what will happen—later.”
Court filings say John Pierce hospitalized with COVID-19, while others say he’s suffering from another condition
An attorney who’s representing 17 defendants accused of taking part in the Jan. 6 Capitol breach has disappeared, possibly suffering from COVID-19, according to am Aug. 30 court filing.
Acting U.S. Attorney Channing D. Phillips said in a court document (pdf) that nearly 20 cases related to the Jan. 6 incident aren’t proceeding after John Pierce, the lawyer for the defense, went missing.
Pierce is “reportedly ill with COVID-19, on a ventilator, and unresponsive,” according to the filing. Pierce’s law firm associate, Ryan Marshall—who isn’t a licensed attorney—has been appearing in Pierce’s place at court hearings and proceedings. Marshall was also the one who revealed Pierce’s alleged hospitalization and condition.
The lawyer, who generally posts on Twitter several times per day, hasn’t posted since Aug. 20.
“Because Mr. Pierce is unavailable and Mr. Marshall cannot ethically or legally represent Mr. Pierce’s clients, the government is making the court aware of Mr. Pierce’s reported illness so that it can take any steps it believes necessary to ensure the defendant’s rights are adequately protected while Mr. Pierce remains hospitalized,” Phillips said.
But later in the court filing, the U.S. attorney’s office said it had obtained “conflicting information about Mr. Pierce’s health and whereabouts.”
When it was revealed publicly that Pierce was hospitalized with COVID-19, a report from NPR, citing unnamed sources, said that he may have been suffering from dehydration and exhaustion and that he’s believed to have symptoms related to COVID-19.
And a colleague of Pierce, Brody Womack, told Business Insider that Pierce “appears to have been suffering from dehydration and exhaustion in relation to his tireless work on behalf of his clients, including the many defendants he represents in connection with the January 6, 2021, protest at the Capitol.”
On Aug. 26, Marshall appeared in place of Pierce, telling a U.S. attorney’s assistant that he hasn’t had any contact with Pierce and noting that one of his friends “had told him that Mr. Pierce was sick with COVID-19 and another had said he was not,” the filing states.
“From the government’s perspective, given Mr. Pierce’s reported illness and the fact that Mr. Marshall is not a licensed attorney, this case is effectively at a standstill,” Phillips’ office stated.
Even though Marshall “has been the government’s main or sole point of contact for many of the defendants represented by Mr. Pierce, the government does not believe it appropriate to continue to communicate with him in Mr. Pierce’s absence, during which he would necessarily be acting without supervision by a licensed attorney,” the court document reads.
Some of Pierce’s clients said they’re starting to become concerned.
Paul Rae, an alleged Proud Boy from Florida who has pleaded not guilty, told ABC News on Aug. 30 that he’s “a bit concerned” about his lawyer’s health and the overall situation regarding his representation. An associate of Pierce told him that the attorney isn’t on a ventilator and that he’s recovering, Rae said.
“Unless I’m being lied to, I’m hearing ‘Don’t be concerned,’” Rae told the network. “I don’t know what’s going on.”
The Epoch Times contacted Pierce’s office for comment. When reached for comment via telephone, the phone lines for his law firm appeared to be disconnected.
Democrat Minnesota Rep. Ilhan Omar has been accused of possibly committing a felony by not properly reporting her income and assets in the financial disclosure reports she sent to the House of Representatives.
The accusations came from the conservative watchdog group National Legal and Policy Center (NLPC), which demanded that the Office of Congressional Ethics (OCE) look into the reason Rep. Omar’s financial disclosures do not refer to the income she may have received from her memoir that she published in May 2020, The Daily Caller reported.
It also wants to know why, it believes, her new husband’s consulting firm was undervalued after it made around $3 million from Rep. Omar’s campaign from 2018 through 2020.
“Representative Omar’s apparent disclosure omissions and misreporting violate House ethics rules, the Ethics in Government act, and possibly 18 U.S.C. 1001, a felony with penalties up to five years in prison for making false statements in a matter before the legislative branch,” it said in its complaint. “There is clearly more than ‘reasonable cause to believe’ that disclosure violations may have occurred.”
In a message to the Daily Caller News Foundation a spokesperson for Rep. Omar accused NPLC of being a “far-right group.”
“The NPLC a [sic] far-right group with ties to the Trump campaign known for filing specious claims, including trying to challenge the constitutionality of the Mueller investigation,” spokesman Jeremy Slevin said. “We see this complaint for what it is: a completely political document, and not one with legal validity.”
The DCNF first reported on Aug. 17 that Omar did not report in her 2020 financial disclosure any income or royalties she may have received from her memoir, “This Is What America Looks Like,” which was first released in May 2020. Forbes reported in January 2019 that the lawmaker signed a deal for the memoir worth between $100,000 and $250,000
Lawmakers are required to report any income sources over $200 in their financial disclosures, the NLPC noted in its complaint.
Omar’s 2019 and 2018 financial disclosures also contained no reference to her book or any advance she may have received from it.
Slevin told the DCNF on Aug. 17 that Omar “has been in full compliance with House Ethics rules. She has reported everything that needed to be reported on the financial disclosure form accurately.”
But this is not the only time Rep. Omar has faced controversy. In June Rep. Omar made comments that many believed to be anti-Semitic.
During an interview on CNN, Omar told host Jake Tapper that she did not regret comparing the U.S. and Israel to terrorist organizations.
Below is a transcript of the exchange:
OMAR: “If you are in someone’s backyard, can you say you are defending yourself?”
TAPPER: “It’s a good question. On the subject of the Middle East, you have said, as you know, many of your fellow House Democrats after comments you made earlier this month about the U.S. and Israel, you were questioning Secretary of State Blinken about where victims of war crimes could get justice. You made comments to him and also you tweeted: ‘We must have the same level of accountability and justice for all victims of crimes against humanity. We have seen unthinkable atrocities committed by the U.S., Hamas, Israel, Afghanistan, and the Taliban.’ Ultimately, Democratic leaders said that equating the U.S. and Israel with Hamas and the Taliban ‘foments prejudice.’ And as you know, a group of Jewish House Democrats wrote a letter to President Biden saying that accusing Israel of acts of terror, as you and other members of the Squad have done, is anti-Semitic. Do you regret these comments?”
OMAR: “I don’t.”
Later in the segment, Tapper asked:
In 2019, you said lawmakers support Israel because it’s ‘all about the Benjamins,’ which implies that politicians only support Israel because of money. There was a tweet from 2012 when you said Israel had hypnotized the world. Do you understand why some of your fellow House Democrats, especially Jews, find that language anti-Semitic?
Omar responded by attacking her own colleagues and didn’t accept any responsibility for her comments.
“I have welcomed anytime my colleagues have asked to have a conversation to learn from them, for them to learn from me,” Omar said.
“I think it’s really important for these members to realize that they haven’t been partners in justice. They haven’t been equally engaging in seeking justice around the world and I think I will continue to do that,” she added.
Omar declared: “It is important for me as someone who knows what it feels like to experience injustice in ways that many of my colleagues don’t, to be a voice in finding accountability, asking for mechanisms for justice for those who are maligned, oppressed and who have had injustice done to them.”
Former Assistant Secretary of State Robert Charles spoke with Sean Hannity Tuesday night on the disaster unfolding in Afghanistan, saying he has never seen a President or administration turn its back on the American people like Joe Biden’s White House.
“In my history of government service, I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a constellation of officials from the National Security Advisor, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, President, and Vice President who have turned their backs on Americans,” said Charles.
“Some resignations are in line,” he added.
Charles’ assessment is not un-common. New polls show sagging support for Joe Biden and his administration.
A new survey from Morning Consult spells more bad news for Joe Biden, with roughly 6 in 10 saying the country has “seriously gone off on the wrong track.”
“The study, conducted from Saturday to Monday, found that 61 percent of respondents believe the country is on the wrong track, compared to just 39 percent who say the country is ‘going in the right direction,’” reports The Hill.
“The survey also found a record-low overall approval rating for Biden at 47 percent, with 49 percent saying they disapproved of the president’s job performance overall,” adds the website.
One small business owner in Florida has had enough with the Biden Administration and its supporters, posting an emotional message on the door just hours after more than a dozen US troops were murdered in Afghanistan.
Angie Ugarte, owner of the DeBary Diner, said felt compelled to make the statement after the deadly terror attack and President’s inept response.
“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless, inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House that is complicit in the death of our servicemen and women in Afghanistan, please take your business elsewhere,” stated the signage.
“God bless America and God bless our soldiers,” concluded the note.
The message was added to the door the same day a suicide blast killed 13 US Service Members at Kabul’s International Airport.
The owner of DeBary Diner, posted the sign.
“If you voted for and continue to support and stand behind the worthless , inept and corrupt administration currently inhabiting the White House… please take your business elsewhere.”https://t.co/rogEyWFo7Q
“I was just angry. I was just let down. I felt like one of those mothers, or wives, or sisters who were gonna get that knock on the door,” said Ugarte.
“If you really, really still stand behind what’s allowed this to happen and the way it happened – which was unnecessary then I really don’t want to be associated with you in any way and I certainly don’t want your business,” she added.
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 National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Canada, on May 19, 2009. (John Woods/The Canadian Press)
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.
The White House issued a major clarification in the transcript from Joe Biden’s address on Afghanistan Tuesday afternoon; stating the actual number of Americans that got out of the country was 98%, not 90% as said by the President during the speech.
“Now we believe that about 100 to 200 Americans remain in Afghanistan with some intention to leave. Most of those who remain are dual citizens, long-time residents who had earlier decided to stay because of their family roots in Afghanistan,” said Biden.
“The bottom line: Ninety [Ninety-eight] percent of Americans in Afghanistan who wanted to leave were able to leave,” states the transcript on the official White House webpage.
President Biden defended his disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan during the address, labeling the effort an “extraordinary success.”
“No nation has ever done anything like it in all of history. Only the United States had the capacity and the will to do it, and we did it today. The extraordinary success of this mission was due to the incredible skill and bravery and selflessness courage of the United States Military,” said the President.
The US Embassy in Afghanistan posted a dire message on its official webpage Tuesday, saying the office has “suspended operations” and Americans can no longer rely on “United States government assistance.”
“The U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on August 31, 2021. While the U.S. government has withdrawn its personnel from Kabul, we will continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar,” states the memo.
Biden pressured Ghani to ‘project a different picture’
President Biden stressed the need for changing the “perception” of the Taliban’s progress in Afghanistan, “whether it is true or not,” during a phone call with former Afghan President Ashraf Ghani less than four weeks before Kabul collapsed, according to a new report.
According to a transcript of the July 23 presidential call reviewed by Reuters, Biden didn’t anticipate the Taliban’s rapid advance across Afghanistan, which ended when they stormed Kabul on Aug. 15 and Ghani fled the presidential palace. Instead, Biden focused much of the 14-minute call on the Afghan government’s “perception” problem, Reuters reported.
“I need not tell you the perception around the world and in parts of Afghanistan, I believe, is that things are not going well in terms of the fight against the Taliban,” Biden said. “And there is a need, whether it is true or not, there is a need to project a different picture.”
At the time of the call, the Taliban controlled about half of Afghanistan’s district centers. Biden urged Ghani to hold a press conference with other prominent Afghan leaders to outline a new military strategy, which he argued would “change perception, and that will change an awful lot I think,” Reuters reported.
“We are going to continue to fight hard, diplomatically, politically, economically, to make sure your government not only survives, but is sustained and grows,” Biden said.
Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, echoed similar concerns in a follow-up call with Ghani later that day, which did not include Biden, Reuters reported.
“The perception in the United States, in Europe and the media sort of thing is a narrative of Taliban momentum, and a narrative of Taliban victory,” Milley reportedly said. “And we need to collectively demonstrate and try to turn that perception, that narrative around.”
The White House on Tuesday declined to comment on the call when reached by Reuters.
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.)
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.
Democrats have several major crises hurting the country spinning out of control at the same time.
But what are they concerned with? Spending trillions of dollars we don’t have, and taxing Americans into oblivion.
The border is a mess, inflation is out of control, the Biden just handed Afghanistan to the Taliban on a silver platter, plus $85 billion of our military equipment.
Yet Democrats instead want to expand socialism in America. They’re even admitting that their big spending push will transform the American economy.
But they have a big problem. In order to push their radical spending, they need to raise the debt ceiling.
Obviously, taxes can’t pay for all the crazy stuff Pelosi wants. But she doesn’t want the blame for our massive national debt.
She’s pressuring Republicans to own the debt. But they are firing back, “You’re on your own.”
From Fox News:
More than 100 House Republicans signed a letter Monday promising not to vote to increase the debt ceiling under any circumstances…
“In order for this spending to occur, our nation’s debt limit will have to be increased significantly. Because Democrats are responsible for the spending, they need to take responsibility for increasing the debt ceiling.”
Republicans in the House were bypassed by Pelosi when she approved Biden’s radical $3.5 trillion expansion of the welfare state.
Not one Republican voted for this radical spending bill. Now, they are telling Pelosi they will not vote to increase the debt ceiling to make this spending possible.
It’s no secret Democrats seem to love spending other people’s money. But Biden’s radical socialist agenda is just too expensive.
Even with all the tax increases he’s planning, he can’t pay for it all.
So, Pelosi and her cohorts have to approve raising our nation’s debt ceiling. Meaning, of course, we will be spending even more money we don’t have.
The nation will have to borrow that money from global lenders, to avoid more inflation and other problems.
What happens when our credit runs dry? What if China (our biggest lender) demands we pay them back?
Democrats are running out the clock by expanding our debt, getting more Americans hooked on welfare while importing more workers from over the border.
Pelosi doesn’t seem to care. Rumors suggest she’s bailing after 2022, anyway. She did her damage to the country and will probably retire to Martha’s Vineyard or something.
The rest of us? We’ll have to live with all the damage she’s caused.
Key Takeaways:
Over 100 House Republicans are refusing to support Pelosi’s raised debt ceiling.
The nation’s debt ceiling must be raised to push Biden’s socialist agenda.
Democrats wanted to share the blame with Republican lawmakers.
Throughout his long political career, President Joe Biden has interacted with countless people both at home and abroad. It would be impossible to remember each and every one of them, especially given his declining cognitive abilities.
However, you would think that a man who rescued him from a snowy valley 13 years ago might stick in his mind. If Biden does remember, his actions certainly don’t show it.
According to The Wall Street Journal, an Afghan interpreter named Mohammed assisted in the rescue of then-Sens. Joe Biden, Chuck Hagel and John Kerry in February 2008. Now Biden has stranded him in Afghanistan.
Mohammed, his wife and his four children have been trying unsuccessfully for years to safely leave the country.
When the last United States plane left Afghanistan on Monday, he and his family were left behind.
The family is now hiding from the Taliban as they hope to be rescued even after the U.S. effectively handed the country over to the radical extremist group.
“Hello Mr. President: Save me and my family,” Mohammed, who did not use his full name due to safety concerns, told The Wall Street Journal. “Don’t forget me here.”
Mohammed was 36 years old in 2008 and was working as an interpreter for the U.S. Army. During a trip to Afghanistan that year, two Black Hawk helicopters carrying Biden, Kerry and Hagel were forced to make an emergency landing due to a severe snowstorm.
“As a private security team with the former firm Blackwater and U.S. Army soldiers monitored for any nearby Taliban fighters, the crew sent out an urgent call for help,” The Wall Street Journal reported.
“At Bagram Air Field, Mohammed jumped in a Humvee with a Quick Reaction Force from the Arizona National Guard working with the 82nd Airborne Division and drove hours into the nearby mountains to rescue them.”
Thanks to Mohammed, the three U.S. senators escaped. One of them is now the president of the United States, and another serves in his administration. But when it came time for the American politicians to return the favor, they failed to do so.
Mohammed was trying to get out of Afghanistan well before the Taliban takeover. According to The Wall Street Journal, he originally applied for a special immigrant visa in June.
“His selfless service to our military men and women is just the kind of service I wish more Americans displayed,” Lt. Col. Andrew R. Till wrote in support of Mohammed at the time.
However, when the defense contractor who employed Mohammed lost necessary records, Mohammed’s visa application became one of many stuck in limbo.
Once the Taliban took over, Mohammed made his way to the Kabul airport to try to escape that way. U.S. forces then told him he could be allowed in the airport, but his wife and children could not.
“If you can only help one Afghan, choose [Mohammed],” said Shawn O’Brien, an Army combat veteran who served with him in 2008. “He earned it.”
Biden himself has attempted to use the 2008 incident as a political talking point.
“If you want to know where al-Qaida lives, you want to know where [Osama] bin Laden is, come back to Afghanistan with me,” he said on the campaign trail in October of that year.
“Come back to the area where my helicopter was forced down … in the middle of those mountains. I can tell you where they are.”
While Biden did not hesitate to reference the incident for political gain, he has conveniently forgotten about one of his rescuers in that hero’s darkest hour. It’s just another example of the utter lack of compassion in Biden’s heart.
Actress Rose McGowan pulled no punches recently when she discussed Oprah Winfrey’s connection to alleged sexual abuser and record executive, Russell Simmons.
At least 13 women say Simmons harassed, assaulted, or raped them. Several of those women say they were under 18 at the time of the incidents.
At one time, Winfrey was attached to executive produce a film titled “On the Record” about their claims, but she later backed out, reportedly at the behest of Tina Tchen, the former head of the MeToo non-profit Time’s Up. Tchen’s group was ostensibly founded to support victims of sexual abuse in Hollywood, but it became embroiled in scandal when it was revealed that she advised disgraced New York Governor Andrew Cuomo on a letter intended to discredit one of his accusers. Tchen, a former Obama White House staffer, and Roberta Kaplan, chairwoman of the Time’s Up board, ultimately resigned.
Winfrey admitted to Fox News that Simmons had pressured her to walk away from the documentary, but she insisted that that had nothing to do with her decision. “I want it to be known that I unequivocally believe and support the women,” she told The Hollywood Reporter at the time, adding, “Their stories deserve to be told and heard.”
After Winfrey announced she was backing away from the film, Apple dropped plans to air it on its streaming platform.
In apparent reference to this, McGowan tweeted Sunday, “I am glad more are seeing the ugly truth of Oprah. I wish she were real, but she isn’t. From being pals with Weinstein to abandoning & destroying Russell Simmon’s victims, she is about supporting a sick power structure for personal gain, she is as fake as they come.”
Alongside her comments, McGowan posted a photo of Winfrey kissing convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein’s cheek at an awards dinner.
That same day, McGowan retweeted a comment from a fan who said that many people already believed that Winfrey was a hypocrite, but because they lacked powerful positions, they were ignored.
“Love lots of people [saw] her for who she was,” said an account by the name of Miss Freethinking Independent. “The problem is those that saw her for who she was just happened to be poor. It wasn’t until you spoke out & never backed down that it became widely known. You gapped the bridges between the poor and the elites by exposing the corrupt.”
McGowan also struck out at A-lister Reese Witherspoon for her vocal support of Time’s Up.
In honor of Women’s Equality Day on August 26, Witherspoon tweeted, “HUGE appreciation for all the women who came before us that made this day possible … Let’s keep pushing for more ways to protect our rights and create equality for women everywhere.”
McGowan replied, “Maybe consider working with real activists instead of sham organizations like Time’s Up.”
Witherspoon has offered no comment about the revelations that Time’s Up assisted Cuomo.
In Washington, things have gone off the rails in a hurry. Many blame an invigorated unthinking progressive agenda for broken government. And they are correct. Think about it.
How else would you characterize the utterly failed “Let’s get out of Afghanistan overnight” move by a president who seemingly had little interest in the advice of his generals or diplomats?
Speaking of which, who made the call to shut down the contractors who maintained American-made Afghan air assets?
You do not have to be a West Point graduate to question why we would give away our dominant advantage (air power) and leave the critical airbase at Bagram on a battlefield populated by seventh-century religious warriors. Or why we would leave so many military assets (vehicles, weapons, helicopters, night-vision goggles, etc.) to the Taliban. Or why our soldiers were ordered to abandon the country before every last U.S. citizen was accounted for and safe.
This last question is, of course, the most important and the most baffling.
Today, the president’s press flack won’t even admit Americans are “stranded,” but the anguished calls for help by trapped Americans and our Afghan allies in and around the Kabul airport (and Thursday’s horrific bomb attacks) speak to a terribly broken policy.
How else would one characterize the chaos at our southern border as an estimated two million people will have migrated by the end of the year?
To make matters worse, an understaffed Border Patrol and a declawed ICE are in no position to stop the tons of fentanyl, COVID-positive migrants and sex traffickers that are the tangible results of a broken policy.
Note that the person allegedly in charge of border security has been on her second foreign junket to Southeast Asia.
How else would you characterize the historic level of violence in cities that have indulged the ludicrous crime-producing “defund the police” movement?
A glance at murder and other violent crime statistics from any of these progressive cities reminds us that the suspension of enforcement against so-called minor crimes and the pro-offender mindset of so many big-city (Soros-sponsored) prosecutors has made life significantly worse off for the good and law-abiding people living in deteriorating marginal neighborhoods.
Whatever did happen to that “let’s replace the police with social workers” initiative?
How else would you characterize a president who just last week begged OPEC to increase its (fossil fuel) oil production in the face of rapidly spiking gasoline prices and increasing world demand?
This pitiful picture is juxtaposed against the greatest accomplishment of the Trump administration: an American natural gas revolution. America’s vast supply of natural gas and modern drilling techniques helped achieve independence (production of more domestic energy than we consume) by Trump’s third year in office. And all during a time greenhouse gas emissions continue to decline.Related:Dennis Prager: Who Benefits from Biden Deserting Afghanistan? America’s Enemies, That’s Who
How else would you characterize school systems that no longer care to teach the three “Rs” and no longer engage in objective measures of academic performance?
You can blame social justice warriors (and their compatriots in the teachers unions) who have infiltrated our local public school boards in order to indoctrinate our kids (as young as kindergarten age) with their unique curriculum of sex- and race-based instruction.
That their campaign is playing out against a backdrop of consistently underperforming (what used to be called “failing”) public schools in our most marginal neighborhoods is not lost on the commonsense majority.
Hence, a newly invigorated parent-teacher resistance to the woke mob’s agenda is born, as well as a new front in America’s culture wars.
How else would you characterize voting “reforms” that eliminate photo identification, scrubbing of voter rolls, signature matches on the inside and outside of mail-in ballots, and vote-counting transparency requirements?
Mistrust of our voting processes ran high among Democrats in 2016 and even higher among Republicans in 2020. Why in the world would either the states or the federal government want to further complicate the way we cast and count votes in our country?
How else would you characterize our out-of-control federal spending and the sudden re-emergence of inflation — that terrible debilitating tax on our nation’s poor that so many in Washington are soft-peddling?
There is a method to the madness, however, as today’s spiking inflation numbers bring back memories of the bad ‘ol days of the 1970s.
A bottom line emerges: What had been working during the Trump era had to be broken (such was the principle and all-consuming commitment of Biden 2020) regardless of consequence.
Indeed, from an incremental, secure withdrawal in Afghanistan to “Stay in Mexico” at the border to re-funding the police in our cities to real American energy independence from the gas fields to school choice in our classrooms, America was heading in the right direction. And then there was a worldwide pandemic — and an election. And now there are predictable short and long-term consequences.
Today, the breaking of Trump-era initiatives proceeds apace. This is what happens under single-party government. It is not a pretty sight. Broken never is.
President Joe Biden waived a mandate in June that would have forced the Pentagon to provide a detailed report to Congress about the risks of leaving Afghanistan.
Under the federal statute, the administration was barred from reducing troops in Afghanistan below 2,000 without first briefing Congress about the expected impact on U.S. counterterrorism operations and the risk to American personnel. Biden waived the mandate in June, arguing that providing this information to Congress could undermine “the national security interests of the United States.”
The Biden administration spent months assuring Congress that the U.S.-trained Afghan forces would be able to forestall a Taliban takeover when American troops left the country on a pre-determined deadline. That assessment was proven wrong days after the withdrawal, when the Taliban overran the Afghan National Army and seized control of Kabul, forcing a chaotic evacuation of U.S. personnel and allies.
National security experts and Republican lawmakers told the Washington Free Beacon that the waiver blocked Congress and the public from reviewing the administration’s internal national security assessments prior to the withdrawal—details that could have been used to prevent or minimize the catastrophe currently unfolding in the war-torn country.
“If we had answers to these questions we might not be in the horrible debacle we’re in now,” said Bradley Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, who in April wrote about the statute and the likelihood that the administration would try to dodge it.
“I think the fact that they used the national security waiver to refuse to answer these questions in the light of day tells me their answers could not have stood up to scrutiny,” Bowman said.
Rep. Claudia Tenney (R., N.Y.), a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, said the administration should be held accountable for withholding this information from Congress.
“It is increasingly clear that President Biden never had a plan in place to safely withdraw from Afghanistan, so it is no surprise he never shared it with Congress like the law requires,” said Tenney. “As we work to complete the critical mission of bringing every American and Afghan ally home, we must also be pressing for answers and accountability. I am calling on Speaker [Nancy] Pelosi to begin the impeachment process in the House immediately to determine how this crisis became such a catastrophe and to hold Biden accountable for his failure to lead.”
A senior congressional aide said Biden’s waiver showed a “blatant disregard for conditions on the ground,” noting that a State Department cable in June warned about the potential for an imminent Taliban takeover of Kabul after the United States pulled out.
“Against the advice of the military, the [intelligence community], and our diplomats—as evidenced by the dissent cable—the Biden administration continued its blind rush to the exits without regard for the consequences,” said the aide. “Apart from the collapse of the Afghan government and the humanitarian catastrophe at the airport, we are just now seeing the long-term implications of this rushed withdrawal, to include a renewed terror threat against U.S. interests, the proliferation of captured equipment, and the loss of hard-earned rights for Afghanistan’s women and girls.”
The law, which was instituted as part of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act, prohibited the Department of Defense from using its budget to reduce troop levels without first providing Congress with a report about the impact a withdrawal would have on the “ongoing U.S. counterterrorism mission against the Islamic State, al Qaeda, and associated forces; the risk to U.S. personnel in Afghanistan; and the risk for the expansion of existing or the formation of new international terrorist safe havens inside Afghanistan.”
The Pentagon was also required to provide details on “the threat posed by the Taliban and other terrorist organizations in Afghanistan” and “the capacity of the Afghan National Defense and Security Forces to effectively prevent or defend against attacks by the Taliban.”
Biden said he would waive the requirement because he “determined that a waiver of the limitation under subsection 1215(a) is important to the national security interests of the United States” in a June 8 letter to Congress.
“We will withdraw responsibly, deliberately, and safely, in full coordination with our allies and partners,” wrote Biden. “Our NATO allies and operational partners, who have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with us for almost 20 years and who have also made great sacrifices, will now withdraw alongside our forces as we stand by our enduring principle of ‘in together, out together.'”
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 numerousoccasions.
More than 227,000 Americans have died from COVID-19 since President Joe Biden took office.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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 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.
On the heels of what sounded like a disastrous meeting between President Joe Biden and family members of those killed in a suicide bombing in Kabul last week, GOP members of Congress said that one of their Democratic colleagues blocked the names of the 13 deceased service members from being read on the floor Tuesday.
While members of one Gold Star family walked out of a meeting with President Joe Biden before he even got a chance to speak with them, one Democrat shut down Republican veterans who wanted to read off the names of those lost.
This is all terrible.
During a pro forma session, a group of Republicans gathered on the House floor to introduce a bill to demand accountability from the Biden administration over its handling of the withdrawal from Afghanistan.
On Monday, the last troops pulled out of the country, ending the 20-year war in which several of the GOP members served. The Taliban appeared to mark the occasion by hanging a person by the neck from one of the Black Hawk helicopters that Biden left behind.
The GOP contingent of Republican veterans said House leadership refused to recognize their attempt to read the names of the 12 Marines and one Navy corpsman who lost their lives in an ISIS-K suicide bomb attack outside an entrance to the Kabul airport on Thursday in the final days of the chaotic evacuation.
“We gaveled in, had a prayer, said the Pledge of Allegiance, took a moment of silence with pretty much all Republican veterans, then asked to be recognized to read names and bring up Afghanistan legislation. They did not acknowledge us and just closed the House down,” Florida Rep. Brian Mast, himself a combat veteran who was wounded in Afghanistan, told The Floridian on Tuesday.
Fox News reported that the bill was introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher of Wisconsin and would have required the Biden administration to establish a plan to bring the Americans still trapped in Afghanistan safely home. The State Department said Monday the number of Americans left behind when troops withdrew is in the “low hundreds.”
Yet when the group of roughly 30 Republicans tried to get recognition to introduce their bill and read the names of the deceased service members, they were gaveled out by Democratic Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan, who was presiding over the chamber.
“How can you not read the names?” one member shouted, according to the Washington Examiner. “Turn your back on our country,” another yelled.
Illinois Rep. Mary Miller called Dingell’s move “shameful” on Twitter.
Democrats just shut down the House Floor when Afghanistan veterans stood up to speak.
Shameful.
— Congresswoman Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) August 31, 2021
“Don’t you think our military deserves better?” Rep. Carlos Gimenez of Florida tweeted.
How badly do Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats want to cover up this Afghanistan debacle?
They just blocked Members of Congress from reading the names of the service members who sacrificed their lives in Afghanistan last week.
Don’t you think our military deserves better?
— Congressman Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) August 31, 2021
“We had hoped to have an opportunity to be recognized to move a bill by veteran Mike Gallagher. It’s very simple what we’re requesting,” House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy said at a news conference later in the day, according to Fox. “What is the plan to bring Americans home safely? Not some, but every single American?”
“Speaker Pelosi, now is not the time to act like you could not see us on the floor,” he added. “Now is not the time to hide. We are a co-equal branch.”
The Examiner noted that while Republicans had expected their bill to be blocked on the floor, they “hope that bipartisan support can grow for the bill as they start on a variety of actions to hold the Biden administration accountable for the chaotic withdrawal” and they have something else up their sleeve.
“The next opportunity is a committee markup session for the annual spending bill that funds the U.S. Military, the National Defense Authorization Act. Proposed Republican amendments include requiring an accounting of what equipment was left behind, an explanation for why Bagram Air Base was abandoned, and regular congressional briefings on the groups that will form because of the withdrawal,” the outlet explained.
These are all certainly pressing issues — and it doesn’t bode well for the Washington Democratic establishment that Pelosi’s cohorts in the House responded to this demand for accountability by not only ignoring the members who wished to speak, including veterans who served in the very war that Biden so disastrously ended, but also ignoring a request to read the names of those last 13 lives lost in the conflict.
It’s unthinkable that Americans were abandoned to the hands of a murderous terrorist regime, and you’d think that there would easily be bipartisan support for a bill demanding the Biden administration come up with a plan to recover them.
Will the Democrats just ignore the names of American civilians killed when the harrowing stories of what the Taliban has done to them start trickling in, like they ignored the names of our honorable service members on the House floor?
On Saturday, The Washington Post published a detailed account of events that occurred on Aug. 15, the day the city of Kabul fell to the Taliban.
Six writers collaborated on the article, which they inform readers is the result of “nearly two dozen interviews with U.S. and Afghan officials, a Taliban commander and residents of the city.” Most of these sources wished to remain anonymous.
Buried deep down in the lengthy piece came this startling revelation: “In a hastily arranged in-person meeting, senior U.S. military leaders in Doha — including [Gen. Kenneth] McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command — spoke with Abdul Ghani Baradar, head of the Taliban’s political wing.”
According to the U.S. official, Baradar said, “We have a problem. We have two options to deal with it: You [the United States military] take responsibility for securing Kabul or you have to allow us to do it.”
“McKenzie, aware of those orders, told Baradar that the U.S. mission was only to evacuate American citizens, Afghan allies and others at risk. The United States, he told Baradar, needed the airport to do that.
“On the spot, an understanding was reached, according to two other U.S. officials: The United States could have the airport until Aug. 31. But the Taliban would control the city.”
So, according to three U.S. officials, the Taliban offered U.S. military leaders the chance to secure the Kabul airport as they evacuated Americans and Afghan allies, and they declined. This is remarkable.
Although the Post did not report that President Joe Biden made this decision, I can’t imagine that McKenzie would have signed off on something so monumental without the authorization of the commander in chief.Do you think the Biden administration should have accepted the Taliban’s offer to control the airport during the evacuation?Yes No Completing this poll entitles you to The Western Journal news updates free of charge. You may opt out at anytime. You also agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use.
Given the opportunity to bring in the additional troops that would be necessary to control the city during the evacuation period, the Biden administration chose to rely upon terrorists to provide protection.
The gravity of this miscalculation cannot be overstated.
Afghan President Ashraf Ghani, fearing a grisly execution at the hands of the Taliban, had already fled the presidential palace, and lawlessness was spreading throughout the city when this fateful meeting took place. The unthinkable had happened. The U.S.-backed Afghan government, which the Biden administration had expected to hold on for at least six months, had surrendered to the terrorists without a single shot being fired.
Afghanistan was engulfed in crisis, and thousands of American lives were in danger — and an even larger number of Afghan lives.
When historians look back on pivotal events, they identify crucial decisions made at key moments that changed everything. This will be one of those.
The Biden administration’s previous blunders, such as withdrawing troops before evacuating U.S. and Afghan citizens and abandoning Bagram Airfield, had brought us to this point. The administration was fully aware the evacuation was going to be dangerous and messy, yet it foolishly turned down the chance to take control of the city.
Thirteen U.S. service members lost their lives Thursday after the Taliban allowed an ISIS-K suicide bomber through a checkpoint outside the airport, something that likely wouldn’t have happened if U.S. troops had controlled the city.
Retired U.S. Army General Don Bolduc joined Fox News’ Steve Hilton on his Sunday night show, “The Next Revolution.”
Hilton asked Bolduc to weigh in on this story. Bolduc said, “It’s complete and utter incompetence. … What a difference it would have made for us to have Kabul. They wouldn’t have been able to get close to the airfield. We wouldn’t have had this explosion. We wouldn’t have had these 13 deaths. We wouldn’t have Kabul, a city that was thriving, now is an utter cesspool.”
“If that was offered and the decision was not to accept that, then that is not only incompetence, but it’s absolute bad military judgment.”
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) fired off a letter Thursday, excoriating the Biden administration over their “reckless immigration policies” and demanded the “immediate” end of “unvetted” illegal immigrants being funneled into his state.
If Biden won’t deport the illegals, DeSantis suggested the administration direct them to a different state that supports the “flouting of our immigration laws” — not Florida.
“While Floridians are working to ensure that criminal aliens are not released back into our communities, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) appears to be hard at work resettling ever-larger numbers of illegal aliens who have no lawful status under federal immigration law from the southwest border to Florida,” the governor wrote in the five-page letter to Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “I ask that DHS immediately cease any further resettlement of illegal aliens in Florida and that the aliens instead be removed from the United States or resettled in states that support the administration’s continued flouting of our immigration laws.”
“Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of Florida and the American people, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that your department is aiding and abetting on the southwest border,” DeSantis said.
In a statement about the letter, the Republican further blasted: “President Biden, Vice President (Kamala) Harris, and their administration have refused to fulfill their responsibility to enforce immigration laws enacted by Congress and the resulting influx of unvetted illegal aliens endangers our national security and undermines the socioeconomic wellbeing of hardworking American citizens. Unfortunately, even though the federal government is responsible for immigration enforcement, it is the states who bear the brunt of this administration’s reckless immigration policies.”
“I have been to the border and I observed firsthand the chaos that this administration’s policies have created. To fill the void left by the federal government, Florida deployed its own law enforcement officers to the border, and they’ve (been) told that many of the illegal aliens apprehended there plan to end up in Florida. Floridians welcome responsible immigration that serves the interests of our citizens, but we cannot abide the lawlessness that this administration is aiding and abetting, and frankly encouraging, on the southwest border,” DeSantis elaborated.
The press release noted the following:
The number of encounters at the southwest border have skyrocketed from 78,417 in January 2021 to 212,672 in July 2021, a 171% increase and the highest in more than 20 years.
The number of illegal aliens who were issued a notice to appear or order of recognizance and subsequently released by the Border Patrol in July alone was a staggering 59,691, a massive increase from the 1,324 in this category who were released in January. By contrast, in the last full month of the Trump administration, only 17 aliens in this category were released.
DeSantis also requested DHS provide more information about the illegals to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) by September 30, 2021. The press released outlined the following matters:
the number of illegal aliens resettled in Florida;
the names and destination of the illegal aliens;
the number of illegal aliens resettled in Florida who were tested for COVID-19 and the results of such tests;
the identities of illegal aliens who have criminal records and who have previously entered the U.S. illegally; and
the number and identity of illegal aliens resettled in Florida who have failed to appear for their removal proceedings.
In the lengthy letter, the governor said he’s “under no illusion” the Biden administration will reverse course but emphasized that “the states, not the federal government, bear the brunt of this administration’s lawless immigration policies.”
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The United States shared lists of names with the Taliban, U.S. officials confirmed on Aug. 29, as they disputed accusations that the terrorist group was given the identity of many Americans and Afghans trying to flee Afghanistan.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken and national security adviser Jake Sullivan confirmed the information was shared with the Taliban.
Blinken said there were certain times when the Taliban was given lists of people on buses that were en route to the U.S.-held airport in Kabul and needed to get through Taliban checkpoints.
“You’ll share names on a list of people on the bus so they can be assured that those are people that we’re looking to bring in,” Blinken told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
“And by definition, that’s exactly what happened.”
Sullivan disputed a report that the United States gave a list of names to the Taliban but indicated that some identities were shared.
“We have given no list of all of the American SIV holders to the Taliban or any other kind of big list,” he said, referring to Special Immigrant Visas, which are given to Afghans.
But he didn’t deny that other lists were handed over and appeared to suggest that, in some cases, they had been.
Sullivan spoke about situations in which buses of Afghans and others were headed to the airport but had to go through Taliban checkpoints.
“That is the type of coordination we’ve done with the Taliban. That has resulted in journalists and women and pilots and other SIVs being able to get through and get on planes and out of the country,” he told CNN’s “State of the Union.”
President Joe Biden last week didn’t deny that his administration shared lists of American names with the Taliban, telling reporters: “There have been occasions where our military has contacted their military counterparts in the Taliban and said: ‘This bus is coming through with X number of people on it, made up of the following group of people. We want you to let that bus or that group through.’”
Biden also said he couldn’t confirm whether there’s been a list.
“There may have been, but I know of no circumstance. It doesn’t mean it didn’t exist, that, ‘Here’s the names of 12 people; they’re coming. Let them through.’ It could very well have happened.”
Asked about those remarks on Aug. 30, White House press secretary Jen Psaki said there may be cases in which commanders on the ground are sharing names with the Taliban.
“I think we can all agree there’s a big difference between providing the list of people who want to depart proactively and working at the moment on the ground in a coordinated tactical way to get people out and evacuated and save their lives,” she said.
Sen. Ben Sasse (R-Neb.), on ABC’s “This Week,” denounced the sharing of names with the Taliban.
“They passed a list of American citizens and America’s closest allies, people who fought alongside us, they passed those lists to the Taliban, relying on them, thinking they could trust on them. It was stupid then. It’s insane now. And their plan still seems to be ‘Let’s rely on the Taliban,’” Sasse said.
The U.S. military is leading an effort to evacuate tens of thousands of Afghans and nationals from various countries from Afghanistan before the military withdraws, a pullout currently slated to take place on Aug. 31.
U.S. troops hold the airport in Kabul, but the Taliban controls everywhere else in the city, making it a necessity to pass through Taliban checkpoints to reach the facility.
Asked if the United States would continue coordinating with the Taliban after the withdrawal, with an eye toward combating ISIS, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby declined to answer on Aug. 30.
“I don’t think it’s useful to get into hypothetical operations, future operations one way or the other,” he said.
As the world watches events in Afghanistan unfold, many have started to wonder what the Taliban rule means for the future of the country’s opium production.
Afghanistan is the world’s largest producer of the opium poppy, which is the raw material for heroin, one of the world’s deadliest drugs. The country accounted for nearly 83 percent of global opium production between 2015 and 2020, according to estimates of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC). And it’s a key supplier for heroin markets across Europe and Asia.
The U.S. military presence failed to curtail opium production throughout the Afghan countryside. For two decades, opiate economy, which includes cultivation of the poppy, processing into heroin, and trafficking, has been a major source of cash for Afghanistan.
Despite its anti-heroin rhetoric, the Taliban has benefited greatly from this opium poppy economy and become a major player in the world’s drug trade.
In its first official press conference in Kabul, the Taliban pledged to end opium cultivation in Afghanistan, in an effort to gain acceptance from the international community.
“Today, when we entered Kabul, we saw a large number of our youth who was sitting under the bridges or next to the walls and they were using narcotics. This was so unfortunate,” Taliban spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid told reporters on Aug. 17.
“From now on, Afghanistan will be a narcotics-free country, but it needs international assistance,” he said, adding that foreign aid is needed to help Afghan farmers switch to alternative crops.
Afghanistan is noted for its high-quality fruits including pomegranates, grapes, and melons. Various international organizations in the past have helped Afghan families grow pomegranates, for example, as an important alternative to opium.
Despite its agriculture sector and rich mineral resources, the country has been critically dependent on foreign aid, which has dried up with the Taliban takeover.
International donors had been providing 75 percent of the Afghan government’s operating budget, Vanda Felbab-Brown, director of the Initiative on Nonstate Armed Actors at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a Chatham House report.
The Biden administration froze nearly $9 billion in Afghan government reserves that were held in the United States. The International Monetary Fund also blocked Afghanistan from receiving nearly $440 million in funds that were scheduled to be sent earlier. And the German government announced a suspension of $300 million in development aid budgeted for this year.
Financial sanctions will also make it difficult for international organizations to provide humanitarian aid to Afghan families.
Hence, the country is expected to drift into a humanitarian and financial crisis soon, according to experts, which may lead the new regime to increase illicit activities, including drug trafficking.
“The immediate effects of the financial squeeze in place is that cash liquidity in Afghanistan may drop, which will drive up inflation—including food prices—while disadvantaging Afghanistan’s poorest and the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced people,” Felbab-Brown wrote.
As in the past, she noted, those who attempt to ban poppy cultivation in rural areas can “find themselves facing significant losses of political capital and violent opposition.”
Gretchen Peters, executive director at the Center on Illicit Networks and Transnational Organized Crime, believes the Taliban shouldn’t be trusted when it comes to its promises to eradicate the poppy trade.
“They pulled a maneuver like that back in the ’90s. They did actually succeed in banning farmers from growing poppy for a year,” she told NPR.
“But the secret was the Taliban were actually sitting on these huge, vast stores of opium. The price of opium went through the roof, and they sold it and made a lot more money than they had the year previous.”
According to Peters, the Taliban will now have full access to the capacities and institutions of state, including its banking system, airlines, and border crossings, which would make its drug trafficking a lot easier.
Recently, poppy cultivation has expanded in most regions of the country, soaring 37 percent in the past year alone, according to UNODC.
U.S. consumer confidence fell in August to its lowest level in six months, driven by concerns about the spread of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus and surging prices.
The Conference Board said in an Aug. 31 report that its consumer confidence index fell from a reading of 125.1 in July to 113.8 in August.
“Consumer confidence retreated in August to its lowest level since February 2021 (95.2),” Lynn Franco, Senior Director of Economic Indicators at The Conference Board, in a statement. “Concerns about the Delta variant—and, to a lesser degree, rising gas and food prices—resulted in a less favorable view of current economic conditions and short-term growth prospects.”
Two other gauges, one assessing current economic conditions and the other reflecting consumers’ future outlook over the short-term, also declined.
The present situation index, which measures consumers’ assessment of current business and jobs market conditions, fell from 157.2 in July to 147.3 in August. Broken down into their respective components, 19.9 percent of consumers said current business conditions were “good” in August, down from 24.6 percent in the prior month. At the same time, 24.0 percent said conditions were “bad,” up from 20.0 percent in July.
Consumers’ assessment of current labor market conditions remained largely unchanged over the month, with 54.6 percent saying jobs were “plentiful” in August compared to 55.2 percent expressing the same view in July. At the same time, 11.8 percent of consumers said jobs were “hard to get” in August, a slight drop from 11.1 percent in July.
The drop in consumers’ assessment of current labor market conditions comes despite businesses reporting difficulty hiring workers and as the number of job openings in the United States has surged to a record high. The Labor Department’s Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS), released Aug. 9, showed that the number of job vacancies jumped by 590,000 to 10.1 million on the last day of June, led by gains in professional and business services, retail trade, and accommodation and food services.
“This is by far the record amount of job openings the economy has ever had. This historically elevated level makes clear that we have a severe worker shortage that threatens what should be a prolonged economic boom,” Curtis Dubay, senior economist at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in a note.
At the same time, the JOLTS report showed that employers hired 6.7 million workers in June, with some economists saying the mismatch between vacancies and hiring is problematic.
“The biggest problem is getting workers to fill the historically large amount of open jobs,” Dubay wrote. “The enormous number of job openings is holding the economy back from reaching its potential.”
Future Outlook
The Conference Board’s expectations index, which is based on a short-term outlook for income, business, and labor market conditions, fell from 103.8 in July to 91.4 in August. As was the case with the present conditions index, the six months hence gauge saw the biggest decline in the area of business conditions, while both the labor market outlook and that of consumers’ financial prospects ticked down by smaller amounts.
In August, 22.9 percent of consumers expected business conditions would improve in six months, down from 30.9 percent in July. Short-term labor market optimism in August fell to 23 percent, down from 25.5 percent in July. Nearly 18 percent of consumers said in August they expect their incomes to increase over the short term, down from 20 percent in July.
“While the resurgence of COVID-19 and inflation concerns have dampened confidence, it is too soon to conclude this decline will result in consumers significantly curtailing their spending in the months ahead,” Franco said in a statement.
Consumer spending is a key driver of the U.S. economy, accounting for around two-thirds of economic output.
Recent Commerce Department data showed consumer spending in July grew by a tepid 0.3 percent, a far slower pace than the 1.1 percent pace of growth in the prior month and a sign that the economic recovery may be losing steam in the third quarter.
Still, the foundation for the economic recovery appears relatively solid, with the Commerce Department report showing wages rising and a boost in savings, giving American consumers more spending potential to unlock going forward, even as the rise in infections clouds the outlook.
A separate sentiment gauge published last week echoed the Conference Board’s findings, also citing the Delta variant and inflation as factors. The University of Michigan’s consumer sentiment index fell to 70.3 in August, the lowest level since 2011.
“Consumers’ extreme reactions were due to the surging Delta variant, higher inflation, slower wage growth, and smaller declines in unemployment,” Richard Curtin, the survey director, said in a statement. “The extraordinary falloff in sentiment also reflects an emotional response, from dashed hopes that the pandemic would soon end and lives could return to normal.”
While the spread of the Delta variant has led economists to trim their forecasts for growth in the current quarter, analysts still believe if COVID-19 cases fall in the final months of 2021, the country will experience its strongest growth this year in decades.
Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on Tuesday acknowledged that Americans were stranded in Afghanistan despite earlier comments to the contrary made by White House officials. He said it’s not clear how many remain.
“Right now I think the tools we have available to us and that we’re going to use as a U.S. government is going to be more in the diplomatic, economic lanes, and we don’t really see a military role right now,” Kirby told MSNBC on Tuesday morning when asked if the U.S. military would play a role in rescuing those individuals.
When asked about whether the State Department could help evacuate Americans from the country amid Taliban terrorist rule, Kirby said that it will be similar to how the United States extracts its citizens from other countries.
“It’s not completely unlike the way we do it elsewhere around the world. We have Americans that get stranded in countries all the time and we do everything we can to try to facilitate safe passage,” Kirby said, which appeared to contradict comments made by White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Aug. 23 when she said it is wrong to refer to Americans stuck in Afghanistan as being stranded there.
During an exchange with a reporter last week, Psaki said, “I think it’s irresponsible to say Americans are stranded. They are not. We are committed to bringing Americans who want to come home, home.” Meanwhile, President Joe Biden, during an ABC News earlier this month, vowed that the United States would evacuate every American who wanted to leave the country.
Also in the interview, Kirby said that the United States has “leverage” over the Taliban to “hold them to account,” adding “it’s going to be a whole-of-government effort, but I don’t see a military role at this time.”
Some Americans who remain in Afghanistan said they attempted to evacuate but weren’t successful.
“The last flight is gone and we’re left behind,” a U.S. citizen using a moniker said on Monday during a CNN interview.
Abound 6,000 U.S. citizens were flown out between Aug. 14 and Aug. 31, but “under 200, and likely close to 100,” are still in the country, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said Monday.
“We’re trying to determine exactly how many. We’re going through manifests and calling and texting through our lists, and we will have more details to share as soon as possible,” he said. “Part of the challenge with fixing a precise number is that there are longtime residents of Afghanistan who have American passports and who are trying to determine whether or not they wanted to leave.”
The remarks come as the final U.S. military flight out of Kabul was carried out on Monday, effectively leaving most of the country under Taliban control.
On August 18th 2021, The National Pulse exclusively reported that President Biden’s State Department had killed off plans for a “Crisis and Contingency Response” bureau which may have had “profound consequences,” according to a stunning new report by Vanity Fair published Monday.
“In July, at Antony Blinken’s State Department, bureaucratic decisions affecting the Afghan withdrawal, one insider said, were ‘slightly more organized than a Choose Your Own Adventure novel’,” the article begins, before detailing how newly minted Crisis and Contingency Response (CCR) bureau director Dr. William Walters had resigned on July 9th of this year.
Crisis and Contingency Response.
As the Taliban took Kabul, The National Pulse reported that a bureau green-lit by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and the Trump administration had been canceled by Biden’s pick for the role, Anthony Blinken.
Following our reporting, a number of left-wing outfits such as Politifact and Media Matters sought to discredit our reporting.
Now, a new report from Vanity Fair sheds more light on the “turf wars” inside the State Department that led to the rushed and botched evacuation from Afghanistan at departmental and political levels.
The Vanity Fairreport also notes that while Biden’s State Department is claiming the CCR never existed, it is also making moves to inform Congress of the bureau’s abolition, as required by U.S. law:
A week later, on August 19, State’s Ned Price would tell reporters, in a sort of semantic jujitsu, that CCR was never actually created, which begs the question: Why have Price’s colleagues at State been preparing to notify Congress of a decision to “abolish” something that never existed?
The academic debate over CCR’s existence, however, obscures a far more elemental issue, which, at this date, remains unresolved: Why did Antony Blinken and his lieutenants rejigger and possibly degrade State’s in-house crisis planning and response capabilities on the eve of ending the longest war in American history?
Profound Consequences.
While publicly refuting the claims that the CCR had been canceled, and simultaneously claiming no competencies were lost in the move, Antony Blinken lauded Dr. Walters’s work in running CCR’s predecessor and his team known as “Op-Med”. In May, while setting up to destroy the Trump-era plans for a formal response unit inside the State Department, Blinken told Vanity Fair the unit was a “lifeline for the Department of State and the American people. Though perhaps lesser known outside of the Department, it’s vital to our operations. That’s because OpMed provides the platform and personnel to save American lives around the world, especially in times of crisis.”
Shortly after, “Blinken approved a recommendation against upgrading OpMed into a bureau. A unit distinguished by its ability to blow through bureaucratic wickets would instead be forced to play ‘Mother May I,’ answering to a series of administrators: a director, an acting undersecretary, and on up to the deputy secretary for management and resources (DMR). To outsiders, this might seem like a low-stakes game of Jenga in reverse. But the move, which blindsided many, appeared to have profound consequences.”MUST READ: Joe Biden Must Resign.
It was at this point Walters chose to step down.
“I am resigning,” he told Blinken, face-to-face, explaining that the destruction of CCR bureau would “marginalize” his team and hinder State’s ability to respond to threats to U.S. citizens abroad.
“Sir, you deserve to have leaders who can get behind the decisions you make. I can’t do that. So I’m leaving,” he said.
Meta-Ignorance.
One source told Vanity Fair‘s Adam Ciralsky that the State Department was plagued by “pathologic optimism.” Other State Department sources said the problem was hubris.
Eliminating CCR and degrading OpMed, without clearly defined alternatives, was evidence, they said, of meta-ignorance (known in psychology circles as the Dunning-Kruger effect); America’s diplomats, in the view of these insiders, were ignorant of their own ignorance.
So while the Taliban captured city upon city, and Team Biden began plans for the evacuation of U.S. troops, civilians, diplomats, and those eligible for Special Immigrant Visas (SIVs), his State Department was hindering a potential response.
Never-Trumpism Kills.
“Though it was founded during Obama’s second term, OpMed found its footing during the pandemic, much of which coincided with Trump’s frenzied final year in office,” Vanity Fair asserts.
In fact, President Trump explicitly stated in a comment to The National Pulse:
“My Administration prioritized keeping Americans safe, Biden leaves them behind. Canceling this successful Trump Administration program before the withdrawal that would have helped tens of thousands Americans reach home is beyond disgraceful. Our withdrawal was conditions-based and perfect, it would have been flawlessly executed and nobody would have even known we left. The Biden execution and withdrawal is perhaps the greatest embarrassment to our Country in History, both as a military and humanitarian operation.”
By September 2020, Secretary Pompeo had advanced the plans for a dedicated bureau to “synchronize Department capabilities including aviation, logistics, and medical support to disasters abroad, both natural and man-made, including the outbreak of infectious disease.”
Never-Trumpism inside the State Department, coupled with Team Biden’s skepticism of anything Trump-related appear to have been the concoction that brought down the CCR:
The move to make OpMed a bureau continued right up until Trump left office. An Executive Resources Board met and approved establishing the position of CCR coordinator as well as Doc Walters’s promotion to the civil service’s senior executive ranks. An action memo, which Pompeo approved on January 15, describes Walters’s new role as follows, “The CCR coordinator is an assistant secretary-equivalent position responsible for the development, resourcing, deployment, maintenance, and oversight of the Department’s medical, aviation, and logistics support capabilities to address contingency planning and crisis preparedness and response in accordance with applicable laws and Presidential policy in those instances where traditional mechanisms are not available or cannot address the need.
Another source close to Pompeo put it this way, “We needed to have a world-class organization that was ‘fit for purpose.’ What we had been doing previously was playing pickup games. What the secretary recognized is [that] if we’re going to be agile and have the ability to proactively respond…we’ve got to have a unit that could do operational planning and contingency scenarios and have the right capabilities and skill set, all in one, so that we can go to them when the decision is made and they can execute the hell out of it and we we can do it well.” Pompeo, said the source, wanted to eliminate silos and create an outfit with “a clear chain of command on who’s got the operational execution.”
In discussions shortly after the Biden inauguration, Trump-era official Brian Bulatao would even warn his Biden-era counterpart Brian McKeon: “CCR needs to endure… There are those in the building that are going to tell you that it’s not necessary, that it’s redundant because they’re envious of [OpMed’s] capabilities and they want to protect their turf. But they don’t know how to do it [themselves].”MUST READ: CORTES: Mass Migration Was Never Part of America’s $2 Trillion Afghan Debacle.
The warning was not heeded, and neither Blinken nor McKeon have yet answered for, let alone resigned because of this decision.
‘Choose Your Own Adventure’.
A call hosted on July 14th 2021 saw Larry Padget, director of the Bureau of Medical Services, break the news that CCR would not be proceeding as planned by the Trump administration.
Tiffany Reeser, a senior policy official, explained: “I think there was an impression, given [Blinken’s] decision, with [McKeon’s] recommendation… that there was going to be a 25-point plan dropped on all of us for how this decision was going to be implemented. That’s not the case. This is, I would say, slightly more organized than a Choose Your Own Adventure novel.”
Manmeet Thind, an OpMed-adjacent attorney, warned: “Now, suddenly, you have more layers of bureaucracy, and as we all know, that’s going to slow response. And at the end of the day, that’s going to affect lives.”
It did.
The whole debacle led Texas Congressman Michael McCaul to tell Vanity Fair: “Call it OpMed, or CCR, or whatever you want… the point is the Department had these people, and their experience was a huge asset. We chose not to draw upon them until it was almost too late—after the Taliban had overrun the country, and tens of thousands of people had to be evacuated in a matter of days. We should have started sooner, and we should have used our A-team. The tragedy we’ve seen unfold—people stranded, American lives lost—reflects…disorganization, mismanagement, and, worst of all, utter neglect.”
Tanner Cross refused to call students by pronouns divergent from their biological sex
The Virginia Supreme Court ruled in favor of an elementary school teacher who was suspended for criticizing the district’s proposed transgender policies.
The commonwealth’s highest court on Monday rejected Loudoun County Public Schools’ appeal to suspend Tanner Cross, a physical education teacher who was placed on administrative leave in May for criticizing the district’s proposed policies for transgender students. Cross won a temporary injunction in the state’s 12th circuit court in June and subsequently was allowed to return to the classroom.
The district did not make an adequate case for reversing the lower court’s June decision, reaffirming Cross’s win, the Virginia Supreme Court said Monday.
In its appeal, Loudoun County Public Schools claimed that Cross’s religious and speech protections are secondary to students’ rights to comfort.
“While LCPS respects the rights of public-school employees to free speech and free exercise of religion, those rights do not outweigh the rights of students to be educated in a supportive and nurturing environment,” the district claimed.
Virginia governor Ralph Northam (D.) last year approved a measure requiring public schools to create and implement protections for transgender students by the 2021-2022 school year. Pursuant to that law, Loudoun school officials proposed updated guidelines that would allow transgender students to access traditionally sex-discriminated spaces like restrooms and sports teams.
The updated policies, which the school board approved on Aug. 11, also require teachers to call students by selected names and pronouns that align with their “gender identity.” Cross spoke out against that provision in a May 25 school board meeting, days before he was suspended.
“I love all of my students, but I would never lie to them regardless of the consequences,” Cross said. “I’m a teacher, but I serve God first and I will not affirm a biological boy can be a girl and vice versa because it’s against my religion, it’s lying to a child, it’s abuse to a child, and it’s sinning against our God.”
District officials claimed Cross’s statement had a “disruptive impact” on the school community.
Alliance Defending Freedom, the conservative legal nonprofit that defended Cross, says teachers should not be forced to comply with such policies.
“Teachers shouldn’t be forced to promote ideologies that are harmful to their students and that their beliefs are false, nor should they be silenced for commentating at a public meeting,” senior counsel Tyson Langhofer said in a statement on Monday.
Langhofer said Alliance Defending Freedom amended its lawsuit after the district updated its policies for transgender students.
Students in Loudoun County Public Schools, one of the wealthiest districts in the country, returned to the classroom on Aug. 26.
Anthony Eid now tasked with redrawing Michigan’s political districts
A Bernie Sanders-backing 29-year-old won a coveted position to redraw Michigan’s political districts as part of a self-described “independent” bloc of redistricting commissioners that could redefine the state’s electoral landscape for the next decade.
Medical student Anthony Eid applied to serve on the Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission as an independent in May 2020, stating that he does not “affiliate with either the Republican or Democratic Party.” A Washington Free Beacon review of his social media presence, however, shows that Eid has long supported members of the Democratic Party’s liberal wing.
Eid now holds a crucial vote on the 13-member commission, which consists of four Democrats, four Republicans, and five independents. In order to enact a proposed map, at least seven members—including two Democrats, two Republicans, and two independents—must vote for it. The boundaries will stay in place until the next census in 2030.
Eid acknowledged in May that commission applicants were asked to “self-identify” their partisan affiliation. He also said he did “not think anyone who was selected misrepresented themselves.” While Eid’s application states he supports “candidates in each party … for different reasons,” he has not publicly backed a Republican candidate for office. He did, however, write he was “proud to live in a state that voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary” in 2016.
Months later, the “independent” endorsed then-Minnesota congressman Keith Ellison (D.)—who Sanders also backed—for Democratic National Committee chair. Eid went on to repeatedly promote Sanders-supported candidates, including Abdul El-Sayed, who ran to the left of Democratic governor Gretchen Whitmer in a failed 2018 primary campaign.
Michigan Independent Citizens Redistricting Commission spokesman Edward Woods III told the Free Beacon the commission does not vet its commissioners’ stated political affiliations.
“The Constitution only requires the applicant to identify their affiliation,” Woods said. “In Michigan, it is either the Democrats, Republicans, or neither the Democrats nor Republicans. The Commission does not vet or choose candidates.”
The state legislature has historically handled redistricting in Michigan. But in 2018, voters passed a ballot initiative granting that power to a newly created redistricting commission. The change came as Republicans held control of both chambers of the state legislature.
The Michigan group behind the initiative, Voters Not Politicians, received $250,000 from the National Democratic Redistricting Committee, which is chaired by former Obama administration attorney general Eric Holder. The group is directly affiliated with the Democratic Party, and former president Barack Obama is also involved in its efforts.
Eid was one of more than 9,300 Michigan voters who applied to serve on the committee. An outside firm hired by the state then randomly selected 200 semifinalists, consisting of 60 Democrats, 60 Republicans, and 80 independents. After leaders in the state legislature removed 20 applicants, the state randomly selected the commission’s final 13 members.
As a commissioner, Eid will help determine which part of the state will lose a representative, as Michigan is set to lose a House seat prior to the 2022 midterms due to slow population growth.
Eid’s support of Ellison came just months after the Minnesota attorney general faced criticism over his ties to Nation of Islam leader and anti-Semite Louis Farrakhan. Ellison defended Farrakhan and embraced black separatism in a string of columns he wrote in the late 1980s and 1990s. While he renounced the Nation of Islam in 2006 and claimed he had “no additional involvement” with Farrakhan, Ellison attended a private event with Farrakhan and then-Iranian president Hassan Rouhani in 2013.
In addition to his support for Sanders, Ellison, and El-Sayed, Eid retweeted messages from Sens. Gary Peters and Debbie Stabenow that touted the Michigan Democrats’ opposition to the confirmation of Trump administration Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.
Voters Not Politicians and the National Democratic Redistricting Committee did not return requests for comment.
‘It is now time for a reckoning,’ Rep. Chip Roy says
Rep. Chip Roy (R., Texas) called on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D., Calif.) to reconvene Congress for hearings on President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“Madam Speaker, you have a duty to call Congress back to Washington and begin hearings immediately,” Roy wrote. “America does not run away. We do not leave our brothers and sisters behind. We do not aid and abet the enemy.”
Pelosi has stalled efforts to apply congressional accountability to the Biden administration for its missteps in the withdrawal from Afghanistan. Democrats blocked an oversight measure authored by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R., Wis.) on Tuesday, leaving questions unanswered for Republicans demanding transparency regarding the Afghan withdrawal. The House of Representatives has been out of session since July 30.
Pelosi did not return a request for comment.
The Texas Republican also called for the resignation of both Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, as well as senior national security staff for “effectively abandon[ing]” military service members who risked their lives in Afghanistan during the U.S. withdrawal.
Roy joins a growing chorus of Republicans and some Democrats who have expressed outrage over the Biden administration’s handling of the Afghanistan crisis. As many as 200 U.S. citizens remain stranded in the country. The terrorist group has held another American—Navy veteran Mark Frerichs—hostage for more than a year.
“We do know that the Taliban is now stronger than ever before; they now have access to the sensitive biometric database of our Afghan allies and now control billions of dollars’ worth of U.S. military equipment,” Roy wrote. “We know that 13 U.S. service members were killed in the process. … With an arbitrary and unnecessary deadline imposed by the commander-in-chief having come and gone, it is now time for a reckoning.”
“The president made the morally indefensible decision to leave Americans behind,” Sen. Ben Sasse (R., Neb.) said. “Dishonor was the president’s choice.”
Emergency evacuations operations coordinator resigned over decision
The State Department’s decision to abolish a crisis response bureau, as first reported by the Washington Free Beacon, “mucked up America’s exit from Afghanistan” and prompted the resignation of the department’s top physician, according to a new report in Vanity Fair.
The Free Beacon reported earlier this month that the State Department moved in June to dissolve the Contingency and Crisis Response Bureau (CCR), a Trump-era project that was meant to coordinate the evacuation of Americans from hotspots overseas. The decision was made just months before the Biden administration pulled U.S. troops out of Afghanistan and sparked a chaotic rescue effort that sources inside and outside of the State Department said could have been bolstered by the CCR.
The Biden administration’s decision to scuttle the CCR bureau prompted the resignation of William Walters, the State Department’s top physician and coordinator of emergency evacuation operations, according to Vanity Fair.
“I am resigning,” Walters reportedly told Secretary of State Antony Blinken in June, saying that Blinken’s “decision not to move forward with the establishment of the CCR bureau, which Walters had been slated to lead, was a mistake.”
“Given simmering tensions in Afghanistan and elsewhere, Walters said, he believed that throwing out plans for the new unit … would impact State’s ability to respond to threats to U.S. diplomats and citizens abroad,” Vanity Fair wrote.
These concerns came to fruition months later, as the State Department scrambled to evacuate Americans stranded in Taliban-controlled Kabul, where many Americans remain trapped after the Biden administration’s decision to not keep troops in the country past Aug. 31.
Blinken originally expressed support for the CCR bureau before delegating responsibility for it to his deputy, Brian McKeon, according to Vanity Fair.
The Free Beacon obtained a memo signed by McKeon authorizing the CCR bureau’s termination.
While the “fact checking” website PolitiFact attempted to downplay and undercut the Free Beacon’s reporting, the Vanity Fair article provides confirmation about the CCR bureau’s fate.
Jamaal Bowman has formed close ties to controversial Turkish group
Rep. Jamaal Bowman (D., N.Y.) attended a fundraiser hosted last month by a Turkish-American advocacy group with close ties to Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose members were on hand in 2017 when the Turkish leader’s bodyguards beat peaceful protesters in Washington, D.C.
Two officials with the Turkish American National Steering Committee, a nonprofit cofounded by a relative of Erdogan’s, hosted the “meet and greet” fundraiser for Bowman at a restaurant in New Jersey on Aug. 7. Bowman, an acolyte of the “Squad,” appeared at two of the committee’s events in May, the Washington Free Beaconreported.
The committee has been accused of working as an influence group for the Erdogan regime. Founded in 2016, the Steering Committee has hosted Erdogan at multiple events in the United States and frequently holds protests supporting Erdogan-backed causes. It lobbied aggressively against the U.S. government’s recognition of the Ottoman Empire’s genocide of Armenians. Officials with the Steering Committee, including Erdogan relative Halil Mutlu, accompanied Erdogan’s delegation in May 2017 when his bodyguards attacked peaceful protesters outside the Turkish ambassador’s residence in Washington.
“[The Steering Committee] operates as an Erdogan front, one of many astroturf groups advancing this dictator’s anti-American agenda in Washington, D.C.,” Aram Suren Hamparian, the executive director of the Armenian National Committee of America, told the Free Beacon in June.
Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute who has been targeted by the Erdogan regime, said Bowman was “siding with the most dictatorial elements in Turkey” by appearing at Steering Committee events.
Rubin said Bowman was “symbolically spitting on Turkish journalists and progressives imprisoned by the Erdogan regime, and giving solace to a group on the wrong side of the attack on Americans in the heart of Washington, D.C.”
Bowman’s blind eye to Erdogan’s crackdown in Turkey is a stark contrast to his support for left-wing causes at home. Bowman supports the movement to defund police departments and has said he wants to “disarm the police.”
Bowman posed for photographs with Mutlu at the recent fundraiser and at a previous event held by the committee. Mutlu and other officials with the committee contributed more than $6,750 to Bowman’s congressional campaign last year. The group supported Bowman’s primary challenge against former representative Eliot Engel (D., N.Y.), who was a staunch critic of the Erdogan regime.
Relations between the United States and Turkey have deteriorated in recent years as Erdogan has purged Turkish media companies, schools, and the military of his critics. Turkey has become one of the world’s worst jailers of journalists.
The Steering Committee’s close ties to the Turkish government were on display days before the group hosted the Bowman fundraiser. Mutlu, who is Erdogan’s cousin, met in Ankara on July 26 with Turkish foreign minister Mevlüt Çavuşoğlu and his deputy.
According to a post on the Steering Committee’s Facebook page, Mutlu told the Turkish officials that the group would “reach out to the U.S. political leaders, media, and public” regarding U.S.-Turkey relations. The Steering Committee also boasted that it has representatives throughout the United States “who communicate and educate the local leaders on issues related to Turkey and the Turkish community.”
Bowman’s office and the Turkish American National Steering Committee did not respond to requests for comment.
A recent interview with Joe Biden went viral on social media Tuesday showing the Commander-in-Chief vowing to keep troops in Afghanistan until all Americans can be evacuated from the country.
Despite the pledge, hundreds of Americans remain in the country after the President removed all US forces.
“Are you committed to making sure that the troops stay until every American who wants to get out, gets out?” asked ABC News George Stephanopoulos two weeks ago.
“Yes, yes!” insisted Biden. “If there’s American citizens left, we’re going to stay until we get them all out!”
Flashback … from two weeks ago:
Biden pledges to stay in Afghanistan until every American is out; “we’re going to stay to get them all out.” pic.twitter.com/94IKhNGMHR
The US Embassy in Afghanistan posted a dire message on its official webpage Tuesday, saying the office has “suspended operations” and Americans can no longer rely on “United States government assistance.”
“The U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on August 31, 2021. While the U.S. government has withdrawn its personnel from Kabul, we will continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar,” states the memo.
“Make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S. government assistance,” warns the message.
Latest security alert on US Embassy In Afghanistan website: “Make contingency plans to leave when it is safe to do so that do not rely on U.S. government assistance.” pic.twitter.com/d2DujvpSZ2
The U.S. Embassy in Kabul suspended operations on August 31, 2021. While the U.S. government has withdrawn its personnel from Kabul, we will continue to assist U.S. citizens and their families in Afghanistan from Doha, Qatar.
Almost 100 generals and admirals wrote a letter calling for the resignations of Secretary of Defense (SECDEF) Lloyd Austin and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) Mark Milley after the Biden administration’s disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan.
“The hasty retreat has left initial estimates at ~15,000 Americans stranded in dangerous areas controlled by a brutal enemy along with ~25,000 Afghan citizens who supported American forces,” the letter said. “What should have happened upon learning of the Commander in Chief’s (President Biden’s) plan to quickly withdraw our forces and close the important power projection base Bagram, without adequate plans and forces in place to conduct the entire operation in an orderly fashion?”
“As principal military advisors to the CINC/President, the SECDEF and CJCS should have recommended against this dangerous withdrawal in the strongest possible terms,” the letter continued. “If they did not do everything within their authority to stop the hasty withdrawal, they should resign. Conversely, if they did do everything within their ability to persuade the CINC/President to not hastily exit the country without ensuring the safety of our citizens and Afghans loyal to America, then they should have resigned in protest as a matter of conscience and public statement.”
“The consequences of this disaster are enormous and will reverberate for decades beginning with the safety of Americans and Afghans who are unable to move safely to evacuation points; therefore, being de facto hostages of the Taliban at this time,” the letter added. “The death and torture of Afghans has already begun and will result in a human tragedy of major proportions. The loss of billions of dollars in advanced military equipment and supplies falling into the hands of our enemies is catastrophic. The damage to the reputation of the United States is indescribable. We are now seen, and will be seen for many years, as an unreliable partner in any multinational agreement or operation. Trust in the United States is irreparably damaged.”
The letter warned that America’s primary adversaries would be strengthened by the withdrawal. “China benefits the most followed by Russia, Pakistan, Iran, North Korea and others,” the letter said. “Terrorists around the world are emboldened and able to pass freely into our country through our open border with Mexico.”
The article was from the California Globe, a publication I had never heard of, and was dated Aug. 17, ages ago in the whirlwind pace of today’s politics, but it caught my eye because it quoted extensively from Gavin Newsom’s stump speech, which ran in part:
“Though we defeated Trump, we didn’t defeat Trumpism. Trumpism is still alive and well, even here in the state of California. If you don’t believe me, just consider the likely person to enter an oath of office, to enter in the governor’s office in just a matter of weeks if we don’t reject this recall.”
“Don’t think for a second that this recall is not about all of you. It’s about each and every one of us and the values we hold dear.”
I immediately thought of an editor at the Los Angeles Times who, during a Zoom interview with Elder, accused the talk show host of much the same thing, being out of synch with the values of the state.
But just what are those California values everyone is supposed to hold so dear Newsom was speaking about? And are they in the process of changing or going back to something from years ago that was lost?
In a sense, the current governor and the editor of the state’s most prominent paper are correct, this recall election is about values.
But are they the values of a rich class that has, for years and years, sent their kids to private schools while they—at the insistence of all-powerful teachers’ unions—deny poor minority children “school choice” and force them into schools like the one Larry Elder attended years back in South Central, Crenshaw High, from which, just recently, but two percent of students passed a basic math proficiency test?
It would be interesting to know what Crenshaw was like when Elder attended compared to today.
And now these same supposed progressives want to teach Crenshaw students Critical Race Theory and the concurrent anti-racism, an approach to education likely to bring that two percent to zero.
There’s nothing like reverse racism to enlighten the young mind and develop responsible adults, according to Democrat (and Newsom) “values.” Don’t worry about fathers in the home. That’s so 1950s.
From their vocal, enthusiastic responses to Elder’s speech, it was clear CRT and the Afghanistan debacle were the two issues most on the minds of the fundraiser crowd Sunday night.
The escalating violent crime in the streets in every major California city, not to mention the rest of the country, came in a not-so-distant third with the myriad COVID duplicities, masks (no one there wore one) and the lockdowns just behind.
Only twice before in my life have I seen a candidate received with so much excitement and enthusiasm: Trump and Bobby Kennedy, the latter ironic since this Elder event occurred almost simultaneous to the release of Sirhan Sirhan, the man who shot Bobby and one of the first active jihadists on our soil.
Before the speech, I had wandered through the crowd, asking people, essentially at random, even though I knew this was a skewed sample, if they thought Elder could actually win.
Skewed or not, the answers were astonishingly uniform and direct: “Yes, if they don’t cheat.”
I discovered too that I wasn’t the only California ex-pat there, visiting from another state. There were others I met from Tennessee, as well as Texas, Florida, and South Carolina, flown in for the occasion.
When, in his speech, Elder mentioned that this was the first time in the history of California that more people were leaving the state than coming in, a woman screamed out “You win and we’ll come back!”
The crowd roared.
What everyone there seemed to know and clearly Elder himself knew from the content of his speech, his eagerness for the “bully pulpit” to talk about things that are almost never talked about honestly (i.e., race in America), is that this California gubernatorial recall election had morphed into a contest of truly epochal importance, almost the equivalent of a presidential election, even a crucial one, with the soul of the nation literally hanging in the balance.
If Elder wins, the people there clearly thought, the door is open to a renewed American freedom. If he loses, the uni-party continues on its merry way, turning the United States, like it or not, into a Chinese fiefdom.
It’s that serious, as my old friend Lionel Chetwynd and partner in PJTV’s “Poliwood,” told me at his house the next day. Chetwynd, whose encouragement Elder acknowledges in his stump speech was instrumental in convincing him to run, had been made the candidate’s campaign chairman, and I was interested in his view of how the campaign was progressing.
Lionel, after bemoaning the dominance of social media in the life of our country, the pervasive, often depressing, alienation that it has created among our citizens, especially among the young, turned to what it was about Elder’s campaign that inspired him on a human level.
“People are now finding each other through Larry’s candidacy and rediscovering the power the Founders put in their hands. We don’t have to be victims of the bureaucratic state. If we succeed, the impact will be global.”
“Larry is fighting our Dunkirk. If he can win, we can live to fight another day.”
I’ll leave it at that—except to remind readers who don’t know that Larry Elder is a contributor to Epoch TV.
The deletion of an Instagram account belonging to a mother whose Marine son was killed in Afghanistan last week was a mistake, parent company Facebook said Tuesday.
Shana Chappell raised an alarm on Facebook on Monday after she said her account was removed.
Chappell said she believed the deletion was “because [I] gained so many followers over my [son’s] death due to Biden’s negligence, ignorance and him being a traitor!”
She was referring to President Joe Biden.
The post in question described “my heart break [sic] over my son,” according to Chappell.
Facebook acknowledged the account was deleted but said it has now been restored.
“We express our deepest condolences to Ms. Chappell and her family. Her tribute to her heroic son does not violate any of our policies,” a Facebook spokesperson told news outlets.
“While the post was not removed, her account was incorrectly deleted and we have since restored it,” the spokesperson added.
Chappell did not respond to a request for comment and had not posted about the development as of Tuesday afternoon.
Chappell is the mother of Kareem Nikoui, who was one of 13 U.S. service members who were killed in the suicide bombing attack on the Kabul airport on Aug. 26.
Steve Nikoui, the father of Kareem Nikoui, 20, also blamed Biden for the death.
“They sent my son over there as a paper pusher and then had the Taliban outside providing security,” Steve Nikoui told The Daily Beast. “I blame my own military leaders … Biden turned his back on him. That’s it.”
Read the remarks during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that there were “no words that I can say, that I think anyone can say, to assuage the grief that a parent is feeling at the loss of their child—nothing.”
“And if I were in his shoes, probably I would feel exactly the same way,” he added.
In a short pro forma session on Tuesday, House Democrats blocked a Republican-sponsored bill that would put new obligations on the White House and military leaders as the Afghanistan crisis continues to unfold.
The bill, introduced by Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), requires the White House and military to send daily reports to Congress on the number of Americans trapped in Afghanistan. It also commits U.S. troops to Afghanistan until every American who wants to leave has been able to escape the country. It would also urge the president not to recognize the Taliban terrorist organization as the legitimate government of Afghanistan.
Last Thursday, 13 U.S. troops died in an attack claimed by the terrorist organization ISIS-K, the highest American death toll in over a decade.
On Tuesday, the House met in the first session since these deaths in Afghanistan; legislative business is usually not conducted at pro forma sessions. Still, in the wake of the deaths in Kabul, some members of the House GOP caucus made a desperate bid to use the session to consider Gallagher’s bill.
Democrats silently shot down the motion by refusing to recognize Republicans to speak about the legislation. Over loud objections, House Democrats quickly adjourned the meeting.
This was the bill’s second failure in the House.
On Aug. 24, the House met in an emergency session to vote on two pieces of expansive Democratic legislation: Sen. Bernie Sanders’ (I-Vt.) $3.5 trillion budget resolution and Rep. Terri Sewell’s (D-Ala.) “John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act.”
Early in that session, Gallagher put forward a motion to suspend considerations on these pieces of legislation and to instead consider his bill. Democratic Rep. Joe Neguse (D-Colo.) quickly shot the proposal down, explaining that acceding to this request would “hand the floor over to the Republican conference,” an unacceptable move given the “extremely important” legislation on the House docket for the day.
Democrats later pushed forward party-line votes on both pieces of legislation, a move that drew the ire of Republicans. Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) made a fiery speech excoriating Democrats for shooting down Gallagher’s bill at the first session of Congress since the fall of Kabul to Taliban terrorists.
In a brief press conference after the pro forma session Tuesday, Gallagher and other Republicans discussed this second failure of the bill.
Gallagher first referenced the House’s emergency meeting on Aug. 24, saying “Just last week we had an opportunity to come together as Democrats and Republicans, and pass a bill that would have prevented the administration from withdrawing troops on the arbitrary August 31 surrender date until we had gotten all of our Americans out.”
He continued: “Behind closed doors, this is exactly what many Democrats said they wanted. They pushed back on the administration, they begged and pleaded the president to abandon the Taliban’s surrender day.”
In fact, many Democrats—especially those in vulnerable seats—have distanced themselves from the president in recent days. Several Democrats across various congressional committees promised to investigate the administration’s failures in Afghanistan and pushed to extend the withdrawal deadline. But despite this positioning, Democrats rejected Gallagher’s bill to push the withdrawal date forward indefinitely until all Americans were out safely.
With this rejection, the future of Gallagher’s bill is uncertain, leading Republicans to strategize a path forward for the bill.
McCarthy said at the press conference that in light of Democratic opposition to the bill, the House GOP would consider using a discharge petition. A discharge petition is a U.S. parliamentary procedure that can expedite the consideration of a bill by immediately moving it out of committee and onto the floor for a vote.
There are some hurdles that GOP leadership would have to overcome before moving the bill on, however. For one, a discharge petition must get 218 signatures to advance; because the GOP only controls 212 seats, advancing the petition would require that at least 6 Democrats sign on with Republicans.
But even if the bill got through the House with this technique, it would still face stiff opposition from Democrats in the Senate, who may kill the bill with a filibuster.
Since the introduction of the so-called “For the People” election bill (S.2093) in the Senate, Republicans have criticized the bill for facilitating voting by illegal immigrants; Democrats have responded by saying they want to make it easier for “eligible voters” to register and attend the polls.
Despite these assurances, some still have concerns that several pieces of legislation introduced by Democrats would help ineligible voters bypass current security measures, get registered, and vote.
Before the Senate went on their month-long August recess, Democrats attempted to move S.2093 out of committee.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) blocked this effort.
Speaking about the legislation on the Senate floor, Cruz said, “It would strike down virtually every reasonable voter integrity law in the country, including voter ID laws … [and] prohibitions on ballot harvesting … [both of which are] supported by the overwhelming majority of this country.” He then criticized the provisions of the bill that “would mandate felons be allowed to vote, and would automatically register millions of illegal aliens to vote.”
In fact, the bill does have provisions that would explicitly bar states from withholding the vote to convicted felons. But voting for illegal aliens is not explicitly outlined in the text of the bill; rather, opponents argue that sections of the bill would make it easy for illegal immigrants to vote without explicitly giving them the right to do so.
A key concern for these critics is a provision buried deep within the bill that would establish an automatic voter registration system. By authorizing various government agencies to share information, the bill would create a system that registers voters automatically using that shared info. Below this section, S.2093 adds that there are to be no consequences for illegals who are automatically registered. Beyond this, the bill would allow people to register to vote on election day without a state-issued identification card—it would only require people to show a student ID, which many schools offer to illegal aliens, or to sign a form swearing that they are legally allowed to vote.
‘For The People’ Election Bill Shields Illegal Aliens
Preston Huennekens, the Government Relations Manager at the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), explained some concerns that the organization has towards S.2093.
FAIR is a nonpartisan organization that describes its mission as “seeking out solutions that help reduce the negative impact of uncontrolled immigration on the nation’s security, economy, workforce, education, healthcare, and environment.”
Huennekens called the bill “a deeply flawed piece of legislation.”
He said: “On immigration alone, it prohibits the prosecution of any illegal alien under Federal or State law if that alien illegally registered to vote or voted in elections. [It] leaves no room for doubt—this bill shields and excuses fraudulent voting by illegal aliens.”
Asked whether Cruz was correct that the bill would facilitate voting illegally, Huennekens said: “Senator Cruz’s warning that this bill would allow illegal aliens to vote is not far off of the mark. While the legislation itself does not specifically grant illegal aliens the right to vote, it prevents any enforcement taken against those who do. In this way, Section 1014 of the bill [by shielding illegal voters from penalties] is a de facto acceptance and endorsement of illegal voting.”
Higher Education Bill Bars Higher Tuition for Dreamers
In regards to Rep. Ruben Gallego’s (D-Ariz.) “Higher Education Dream Act,” Huennekens said the purpose is “to prohibit discrimination in higher education against certain noncitizen students on the basis of immigration status.” The group of “noncitizen students” protected under the legislation is limited to so-called Dreamers, a nickname for the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program, a program for people who entered the United States illegally as children. Dreamers have received temporary immunity from deportation under an Obama-era executive action.
Estimates of how many of these Dreamers have received this protection vary widely, from 600,000 on the low end to upwards of 800,000 on the high end. In any case, Gallego’s bill would be hugely consequential.
The short bill outlines several notably expansive protections for Dreamers.
The bill reads: “An institution of higher education that receives federal funds or financial assistance under any federal program shall not discriminate against or penalize in the admissions process a Dreamer student who is otherwise qualified for admission to the institution, on the basis of that individual’s immigration status, nor shall such an institution differentiate in the admissions process on the basis of residency between a United States citizen applicant and a Dreamer student applying from the same state.”
This would make it illegal for higher education institutions to even consider the legal status of these applicants; schools who violate this clause would be at risk of receiving federal penalties similar to existing penalties for discrimination.
The legislation also overturns a standing U.S. law from 1998 that makes it illegal for non-tax-paying illegal immigrants to receive in-state tuition rates, rates that are only possible because of subsidies from state-level taxes. Should the bill pass, schools would be barred from charging a higher rate of tuition to these applicants than they would charge their state or out-of-state citizen peers.
Finally, the bill would make it illegal for state, federal, or school officials to use information obtained from Dreamers’ admission application to “arrest, detain, or initiate removal proceedings against any person identified in that information.”
“FAIR opposes [Gallego’s bill],” Huennekens said. “The federal government should not force colleges and universities—whether private or public—to admit illegal aliens against the will of their admissions boards.”
He warned that the federal takeover of college admissions would compel universities—in some cases—to admit illegal aliens in place of American citizens.
This concern is well-founded. According to a New American Economy report, estimates drawn from a 2018 survey showed more than 450,000 illegal immigrant students were enrolled in postsecondary education, about two percent of all postsecondary students (pdf).
Admission of illegal aliens has been a policy long in place at many institutions. In an article discussing the situation, the College Board said: “Undocumented students may incorrectly assume that they cannot legally attend college in the United States. However, there is no federal or state law that prohibits the admission of undocumented immigrants to U.S. colleges, public or private.”
But it also notes that many institutions do require such a proof of residence. As an example, the organization points to requirements at four-year universities and colleges in Virginia. Other schools that do admit illegal aliens often require these students to pay out-of-state tuition rates.
Under this legislation, both policies would be a federal offense.
Because of these provisions, Huennekens said the bill “is a disturbing normalization of illegal immigration.”
However, both bills are far from becoming law.
The “For the People Act” has only recently managed to move out of committee in the Senate. Even with this victory for Democrats, the bill is unlikely to pass. With Democrats’ razor-thin majority, even a single vote against such partisan legislation would kill the bill. But it is already clear that Democrats are not unified behind the bill. Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) has publicly spoken out against the bill, saying that it would divide the country rather than unify it. But even if Manchin changed his mind, the bill would almost certainly be killed by a filibuster.
Gallego’s bill has an even bigger challenge. It has yet to be moved out of committee, and would likely face stiff opposition from both Republicans and moderate Democrats in the House. But even if Democrats united and made the bill a top priority, it would likely face the same failure by filibuster in the Senate.
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.
Afghan man who helped the US on the ground: ‘I have no idea how to leave’
Horrifying audio of distant gunshots appears to confirm reports of “house-to-house executions” as the Taliban asserts control of Kabul and Afghanistan after the U.S. military’s departure on Monday evening.
An Afghan man who worked with Americans on the ground provided Fox News with the chilling audio featuring distant gunshots.
“I think there’s a conflict between the Taliban, I have no idea where I’m located. From everywhere I hear the sounds of shooting, gunfire. I have no idea how to leave,” the Afghan man said in the audio clip, recorded around the time the final U.S. plane left Kabul.
Distant gunshots rang in the background in the audio clip.
Taliban militants were carrying out “house-to-house executions in Kabul” after the U.S. departure, a senior U.S. source told Fox News Investigative journalist Lara Logan.
President Biden did not deny a Politico report, confirmed by Fox News, that U.S. officials in Kabul gave the Taliban a list of American citizens, green card holders, and Afghan allies in an effort to grant them entry to the airport which resulted in outrage from military officials behind the scenes. The president said “there may have been” such a list. “Basically, they just put all those Afghans on a kill list,” one defense official told Politico.
“The last American soldier left Kabul airport at 9pm Afghan time tonight and our country gained full independence. Thank God and blessings,” the Taliban account tweeted.
Retired Army Maj. Gen. Vincent Boles told Fox News that the Taliban should not get too comfortable.
“Be careful what you ask for,” Boles said. “Now they have to show they can govern a nation and people that are very different than when they left power. Will the Taliban go forward to the future or pull Afghanistan back to the past? The answer will be in their behavior… behavior is believable.”
“From everywhere I hear the sounds of shooting, gunfire. I have no idea how to leave.”— Afghan source who worked with Americans on the ground.
Last Wednesday, a former translator for a high-ranking U.S. Army Ranger told Fox News the Taliban had started executing allies of the U.S. in public, in provinces away from the media attention of Kabul.
“They are not doing really bad stuff in Kabul right now because there’s a lot of media focus on Kabul, but they already started public execution in other provinces where a lot of media is not available or covering it,” the interpreter said.
What’s more, in holding to his Aug. 31 withdrawal deadline, President Biden appears to have broken his promise to stay in Afghanistan until every American has been evacuated.
“We did not get everybody out that we wanted to get out,” Marine Corps Gen. Kenneth F. McKenzie Jr., commander of U.S. Central Command, admitted Monday evening.
On Aug. 18, Biden had told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos that the U.S. military’s objective in Afghanistan was to get “everyone” out, including Americans, Afghan allies and their families.
“That’s what we’re doing now, that’s the path we’re on. And I think we’ll get there,” he said. “If there’s American citizens left, we’re gonna stay to get them all out.”
Yet a senior State Department official told Fox News that a “small number” of Americans remained in Afghanistan, putting the number at “below 250.”
Gabriel Gipe, AP Government Teacher, Inderkum High School: “I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries…Scare the f*ck out of them.”
Gipe: “I’m probably as far left as you can go.”
Gipe: “I post a calendar every week…I’ve had students show up for protests, community events, tabling, food distribution, all sorts of things…When they go, they take pictures, write up a reflection — that’s their extra credit.”
Gipe: “So, they [students] take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left…I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left.”
Gipe: “I have an Antifa flag on my [classroom] wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable. Well, this [Antifa flag] is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this [Antifa flag] is antithetical to.”
Gipe: “Like, why aren’t people just taking up arms? Like why can’t we, you know — take up arms against the state? We have historical examples of that happening, and them getting crushed and being martyrs for a cause and it’s like — okay well, it’s slow going because it takes a massive amount of organization.”
Gipe: “I think that for [left-wing] movements in the United States, we need to be able to attack both [cultural and economic] fronts. Right? We need to create parallel structures of power because we cannot rely on the state…Consistently focusing on education and a change of cultural propaganda. We have to hit both fronts. We have to convince people that this is what we actually need.”
Gipe: “There are three other teachers in my department that I did my credential program with — and they’re rad. They’re great people. They’re definitely on the same page.”
Gipe: “Sacramento, as a city itself, is incredibly diverse. But we’re surrounded by a bunch of right-wing rednecks.”
[SACRAMENTO, Calif. – Aug. 31, 2021] Project Veritas released shocking new video today of California AP Government teacher, Gabriel Gipe, boasting about politically indoctrinating his students at Inderkum High School.
Gipe said that his intention is to radicalize students into supporting Marxist ideas by using the public school system as an avenue to incentivize them to participate in fringe extracurricular events.
“I have 180 days to turn them [students] into revolutionaries…Scare the f*ck out of them,” Gipe said.
“I post a calendar every week…I’ve had students show up for protests, community events, tabling, food distribution, all sorts of things…When they go, they take pictures, write up a reflection — that’s their extra credit,” he said.
Gipe said he keeps track of his students’ political inclinations. He is also perplexed when a student expresses discomfort with the decorations in his public-school classroom.
“So, they take an ideology quiz and I put [the results] on the [classroom] wall. Every year, they get further and further left…I’m like, ‘These ideologies are considered extreme, right? Extreme times breed extreme ideologies.’ Right? There is a reason why Generation Z, these kids, are becoming further and further left,” he said.
“I have an Antifa flag on my [classroom] wall and a student complained about that — he said it made him feel uncomfortable. Well, this [Antifa flag] is meant to make fascists feel uncomfortable, so if you feel uncomfortable, I don’t really know what to tell you. Maybe you shouldn’t be aligning with the values that this [Antifa flag] is antithetical to.”
The public-school teacher went on to suggest that a viable solution for society’s problems is a violent overthrow of the U.S. Government.
“Like, why aren’t people just taking up arms? Like why can’t we, you know — take up arms against the state? We have historical examples of that happening, and them getting crushed and being martyrs for a cause and it’s like — okay well, it’s slow going because it takes a massive amount of organization,” Gipe said.
When asked about his views on the Chinese Communist Party, Gipe explained how lessons from China’s disastrous Cultural Revolution could be applied in the United States.
“You need a two-pronged system, which is exactly what Huey Newton and Fred Hampton [Black Panther Party] understood. You need propaganda of the deed — your economics — and cultural propaganda as well. You need to retrain the way people think. So, the Cultural Revolution in the 60s was fixing the problem that came about after the economic one,” he said.
“What can we do now to root out this culture that keeps perpetuating hyper-individualism, hyper-competitiveness, capitalist exploitation and consolidation of wealth…I do think that it’s important to understand that as an extension of an economic revolution, they [Chinese Communist Party] were changing the base, and then they went to change the superstructure. You cannot change one without the other. You can’t have cultural shifts without the economic shift, and vice versa,” he said.
“I think that for [left-wing] movements in the United States, we need to be able to attack both [cultural and economic] fronts. Right? We need to create parallel structures of power because we cannot rely on the state…Consistently focusing on education and a change of cultural propaganda. We have to hit both fronts. We have to convince people that this is what we actually need.”
Gipe admitted that he is not the only one in Inderkum High School’s faculty to hold these fringe beliefs.
“There are three other teachers in my department that I did my credential program with — and they’re rad. They’re great people. They’re definitely on the same page.”
Project Veritas encourages students and parents to contact VeritasTips@protonmail.com if they have evidence of political indoctrination and propaganda taking place in a classroom setting.
