Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) is demanding President Joe Biden’s Department of Justice (DOJ) provide the data behind its recent claim of “an increase” in “threats of violence” against local school officials, a charge the DOJ is using to justify mobilizing the FBI.
Boebert, a House Freedom Caucus member and outspoken critic of the Biden administration, wrote Thursday in a letter obtained by Breitbart News to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland that she wants a copy of current data and “all the data from previous years that can corroborate” Garland’s increased threats claim.
“I am alarmed by your decision to weaponize the Department of Justice (DOJ) against concerned parents, exercising their First Amendment rights, who dare to oppose the teaching of critical race theory, a repulsive and racist ideology, in their children’s schools,” Boebert wrote, adding her requests for data.
Read a full copy of the letter below:
Garland announced in a memo Monday that he was directing the FBI to meet with state and local officials because “in recent months, there has been a disturbing spike in harassment, intimidation, and threats of violence against school administrators, board members, teachers, and staff who participate in the vital work of running our nation’s public schools.”
The attorney general observed that such behavior is illegal, to which Boebert contended that the criminal activity Garland is referring to is in reality parents “expressing their frustrations about mask mandates and critical race theory which conveniently run counter to this regime’s agenda.”
The congresswoman also requested in her letter a copy of Garland’s recusal list, signed ethics pledge, and any other documentation the attorney general provided when he took office to communicate conflicts of interest he could encounter while in his position.
That portion of Boebert’s request comes after a report on Wednesday charged that Garland’s son-in-law, Xan Tanner, is cofounder of Panorama Education, a company that “promotes the tenets of Critical Race Theory.”
Boebert noted the family connection means Garland “is potentially benefiting” from his “new propaganda operation.”
She continued, “While your family is personally benefiting from the exact kind of propaganda these parents are protesting, you are using your immense power as Attorney General to stifle their First Amendment rights. While your actions are unconstitutional, you should have recused yourself from this matter given the clear conflict of interest.”
The Colorado Republican said in a statement provided to Breitbart News, “The United States Attorney General is weaponizing the DOJ to attack American parents who disagree with Critical Race Theory. Surprise surprise, his son-in-law is in the business of spreading CRT. This is wrong. This is corrupt. I’m demanding answers.”
Boebert asked that Garland meet her requests by November 1, 2021.
(Christian Today) Two trans-identified healthcare professionals are raising concerns about the rush to affirm children suffering from gender dysphoria and the longterm consequences of puberty blockers.
In an exclusive interview with Wall Street Journal contributor Abigail Shrier published on Substack, Dr. Marci Bowers and clinical psychologist Erica Anderson cast doubt on the effectiveness of puberty blockers and lamented the demands for conformity within the medical community regarding the transgender debate.
Both Bowers and Anderson are trans-identified men who go by female names and belong to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, which “sets the standards worldwide for transgender medical care.”
Bowers, a surgeon who performs gender reassignment surgeries and has been tapped to lead WPATH beginning next year, told Shrier that “We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases.”
The doctor alleged that within WPATH, “there are definitely people who are trying to keep out anyone who doesn’t absolutely buy the party line that everything should be affirming, and that there’s no room for dissent.”
Shrier noted that a similar mentality exists within corporate media: “Anderson told me [he] submitted a co-authored op-ed to The New York Times warning that many healthcare providers were treating kids recklessly. The Times passed, explaining it was ‘outside our coverage priorities right now.'”
While Bowers is the doctor who performed trans-affirming surgery on famous trans-identified reality star Jazz Jennings, the surgeon is speaking out about some of the consequences of the puberty blockers. Specifically, Bowers warned that “if you’ve never had an orgasm pre-surgery, and then you’re puberty’s blocked, it’s very difficult to achieve that afterwards.”
Bowers has come to believe that the risks of puberty blockers outweigh the benefits: “Believe me, we’re doing some magnificent surgeries on these kids, and they’re so determined, and I’m so proud of many of them and their parents. They’ve been great. But honestly, I can’t sit here and tell you that they have better — or even as good — results.”
“They’re not as functional,” Bowers added. “I worry about their reproductive rights later. I worry about their sexual health later and ability to find intimacy.”
Shrier reported that the U.S. began to adopt affirmation of trans-identified children with puberty blockers as the standard operating procedure by embracing the Dutch Protocol. The Dutch Protocol is based on research conducted in the Netherlands portraying puberty blockers in a favorable light.
According to Shrier, “the thinking behind the protocol was: Why make a child who has suffered with gender dysphoria since preschool endure puberty, with all its discomforts and embarrassments, if that child were likely to transition as a young adult?”
Shrier wrote that when a U.S. hospital first began relying on the Dutch Protocol in 2007, “researchers believed blockers’ effects were reversible.” When asked if puberty blockers were reversible, Bowers responded by saying, “I’m not sure,” adding, “I’m not a fan.”
The doctor also explained that the common use of tissue from the stomach and bowel to construct “neovaginas” in trans-identified males can cause colon cancer in addition to other complications: “If it’s used sexually, you can get this chronic colitis that has to be treated over time. And it’s just in the discharge and the nasty appearance and it doesn’t smell like vagina.”
Both Bowers and Anderson weighed in on the phenomenon of “rapid onset gender dysphoria,” which refers to the rise in the number of biological females seeking to change their gender.
A survey of 70,000 American college students conducted by the American College Health Association revealed that the share of biological female college students who identify as transgender rose from 1 in 2,000 in 2008 to 1 in 20 in 2021. At the same time, the number of gender clinics in the U.S. has grown from one in 2007 to hundreds today.
Shrier, who wrote a book about the phenomenon, titled Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters, and other researchers attribute the rise in “rapid onset gender dysphoria” to peer pressure stemming from the prevalence of trans influencers on social media.
Bowers agreed: “I think there probably are people who are influenced. There is a little bit of ‘Yeah, that’s so cool. Yeah, I kind of want to do that too.'”
Anderson predicted that “we’re going to have more young adults who will regret having gone through this process” as a result of medical professionals “rushing people through the medicalization” as well as failing to “evaluate the mental health of someone historically in current time, and to prepare them for making such a life-changing decision.” Bowers elaborated on some of the underlying mental health factors that may cause young girls to want to transition and urged parents to think twice about doctors rushing to confirm gender dysphoria.
“When you have a female-assigned person and she’s feeling dysphoric, or somebody decides that she’s dysphoric and says your eating disorders are not really eating disorders, this is actually gender dysphoria, and then they see you for one visit, and then they recommend testosterone — red flag!”
The authors of a study published Sept. 30, in the European Journal of Epidemiology Vaccines said the sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences “needs to be re-examined.”
A study published Sept. 30, in the peer-reviewed European Journal of Epidemiology Vaccines found “no discernible relationship” between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID cases.
In fact, the study found the most fully vaccinated nations had the highest number of new COVID cases, based on the researchers’ analysis of emerging data during a seven-day period in September.
The authors said the sole reliance on vaccination as a primary strategy to mitigate COVID-19 and its adverse consequences “needs to be re-examined,” especially considering the Delta (B.1.617.2) variant and the likelihood of future variants.
They wrote:
“Other pharmacological and non-pharmacological interventions may need to be put in place alongside increasing vaccination rates. Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real-world effectiveness of the vaccines.”
As part of the study, researchers investigated the relationship between the percentage of population fully vaccinated and new COVID cases across 68 countries and 2,947 U.S. counties that had second dose vaccine, and available COVID case data.
For seven days preceding Sept. 3, researchers computed COVID cases per one million people for each country, as well as the percentage of population that was fully vaccinated.
Relationship between cases per 1 million people (last 7 days) and percentage of population fully vaccinated across 68 countries as of September 3, 2021
Notably, Israel with more than 60% of its population fully vaccinated, had the highest COVID cases per 1 million people during the seven-day period.
Iceland and Portugal, with more than 75% of their populations fully vaccinated, had more COVID cases per 1 million people than countries such as Vietnam and South Africa, where only about 10% of the population is fully vaccinated.
Across U.S. counties, the median new COVID cases per 100,000 people during the seven-day period was similar across the categories of percentage of population fully vaccinated.
Percentage of counties that experienced an increase of cases between two consecutive 7-day time periods by percentage of population fully vaccinated across 2947 counties as of September 2, 2021
The researchers found a substantial county variation in new COVID cases within categories of percentage of population fully vaccinated. There also appeared to be no significant signaling of COVID cases decreasing in counties where a higher percentages of the population was fully vaccinated.
Of the top five counties with the highest percentage of population fully vaccinated (99.9% – 84.3%), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identified four as “high” transmission counties.
Three of the four counties classified as “high” transmission had fully vaccinated rates of 90% or higher. Conversely, of the 57 counties classified as “low” transmission by the CDC, 15 had fully vaccinated rates of 20% or lower.
The findings also showed no discernible association between COVID cases and fully vaccinated rates when a one-month lag was considered, to account for the 14-day period it takes for a vaccine to be considered effective.
The authors suggested a correction to the policy narrative is warranted, as increasing vaccination rates is not enough. “Such course correction, especially with regards to the policy narrative, becomes paramount with emerging scientific evidence on real-world effectiveness of the vaccines,” they wrote.
Emerging research also shows immunity derived from Pfizer’s COVID vaccine may not be as strong as natural immunity acquired through infection.
A substantial decline in immunity from mRNA vaccines six months post immunization has also been reported along with an increasing number of breakthrough cases among the fully vaccinated, the researchers said.
The authors said stigmatizing populations over vaccines can do more harm than good, and non-pharmacological prevention efforts needs to be renewed in order to learn to live with COVID “in the same manner we continue to live 100 years later with various seasonal alterations of the 1918 Influenza virus.”
Breakthrough cases significantly underreported as FDA reviews booster data
The number of vaccinated people testing positive for COVID is on the rise, and doctors in Ohio are reporting more breakthrough cases across hospital systems.
However, only certain types of COVID breakthrough cases are reported at both the state and federal level, leaving patients with mild cases underreported.
“We estimate anywhere from two to 10 times as many positives that are being reported is the real situation,” said Dr. David Margolius, division director of internal medicine at MetroHealth in Cleveland.
“It’s still rare, but I get a dozen COVID positive cases a day in my basket, and usually three or four of them have been vaccinated,” said Margolius.
The Ohio Department of Health and the CDC only report breakthrough cases in patients requiring hospital admission, or cases that resulted in death.
The CDC said it made the change in May in order to “maximize the quality of data collected on cases of greatest clinical and public importance.”
As of Sept. 27, the CDC had received reports from 50 U.S. states and territories of 22,115 patients with COVID vaccine breakthrough infection who were hospitalized or died.
The CDC said the number of COVID vaccine breakthrough infections reported to the agency are an undercount of all SARS-CoV-2 infections among fully vaccinated persons, especially of asymptomatic or mild infections.
In addition, national surveillance relies on passive and voluntary reporting, and data are not complete or representative, according to the CDC.
Massachusetts health officials on Tuesday reported nearly 4,000 new breakthrough cases over the past week, and 46 more deaths, according to NBC Boston.
In the last week, 3,741 new breakthrough cases were reported, with 125 more vaccinated people hospitalized.
This brings the total number of breakthrough cases in Massachusetts to 40,464 — out of 4.63 million vaccinated people — and the death toll among people with breakthrough infections to 300.
According to the Vermont Daily Chronicle, which cited statistics from Vermont’s Department of Health, 76% of the state’s COVID fatalities in September were breakthrough cases, with just eight of the 33 Vermonters who died being unvaccinated.
As of Tuesday, 88% of all eligible Vermonters age 12 and over had been vaccinated with at least one shot.
Health Department spokesperson Ben Truman said most of the vaccine “breakthrough” fatalities were elderly. Because they were among the first vaccinated, Vermont’s elderly “have had more time to potentially become a vaccine breakthrough case,” he said.
According to The Washington Post, Dr. Peter Marks, director of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, said Tuesday updated data might make a strong case in support of everyone 18 and older being eligible for COVID vaccine boosters, but the agency will have to see whether its outside advisers agree.
The remarks from Marks came during a webinar as the FDA prepares to meet Oct. 14 and 15 with its outside advisers to discuss authorizing Moderna and Johnson & Johnson COVID booster shots.
“Scared” Chinese manufacturers of Western electronics components are being starved of electricity by their own government, causing some to consider leaving the country — and putting a real pinch on this year’s Christmas shopping.
There’s a month’s backlog of ships to unload at the Port of Los Angeles as supply chains struggle to work out the kinks caused first by the collapse in consumer demand during the shutdown, and then by the surge in consumer demand when the shutdowns ended and Washington shoved all that funny money into our bank accounts.
The chaos in transport hubs like Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York was probably inevitable once governments around the world decided — against good sense and science — to shut down the global economy in April of 2020.
The chaos in China, however, is deliberate.
Beijing has been cracking down on energy use and production. Last month, the Communist government banned bitcoin mining, which can be done on souped-up personal computers but requires a lot of electricity. (They also banned the use of bitcoin, but I believe that was a purely political decision; can’t have the proles using their own currency in ways Xi Jinping can’t trace.)
But the power was cut — again, on purpose — to Chinese manufacturers, too, leading to fears of “shortages of global goods” this Christmas.
At the time, Chinese manufacturers had hoped the power cuts were temporary.
But Apple Insider reported on Friday that firms now get “weekly notifications of which days they will have no power,” making the cuts look permanent.
It must be nearly impossible for supply-chain management to work, even at a local level, when companies don’t know more than a week in advance which days they’ll be allowed to operate.
The growing chaos has some firms looking for the exit, according to Apple Insider:
“If you don’t bring as much value as, say, displays or high-end semiconductors but consume a lot of energy, sorry you are out!” said an executive in a company that provides Apple with printed circuit boards. “It’s better that you just shut down and move away.”
Left unsaid: What use are high-margin semiconductors without low-margin circuit boards to plug them into?
And it probably doesn’t need to be said that adding production woes on top of already snarled logistics in Los Angeles and elsewhere can mean only one thing: Whip out that Christmas shopping credit card right now because things are only going to get worse.
“It is very chaotic and confusing,” one executive told Nikkei Asia. “Some suppliers managed to secure power supplies based on their friendly relations and negotiations with the local governments, while some were affected badly.”
“Pay to plug-and-play” seems to be the official policy now.
If there’s a method to the madness, it might be the madness itself.
An iPhone supplier who preferred to remain anonymous told Nikkei, “From Jack Ma [the Alibaba billionaire who has disappeared after being a nuisance to Xi] to the crackdowns on gaming and education … these all suggest increasing uncertainty for enterprises operating in China. People are scared.”
My first thought on reading these stories was that perhaps local Chinese governments were using Beijing’s mandated power cuts — ostensibly about reducing pollution — as a way to extort money out of Western and Japanese firms like Apple, Sony, and Samsung.
And, given what you just read about how political pull and favoritism can get the power turned back on, maybe extortion is the name of the game.
But only at the local level.
Nationally, it might be that Xi is using the very madness he’s unleashed in the same way his spiritual and political predecessor Mao Zedong used the madness of his so-called “Cultural Revolution” to cement Communist Party control over every aspect of Chinese life.
That control loosened a bit after Mao’s death and Deng’s economic reforms.
Xi, however, has been on a mission to reduce or destroy any potential rivals to the Chinese Communist Party and to secure his position at the very top of it.
If doing so risks ruining Christmas for American shoppers, I can’t think of anything that would put a bigger smile on the face of Beijing’s own Grinch.
After Democratic activists stalked Sinema into a bathroom to harass her, one climate activist remarked, ‘Not being able to pee in peace is a reasonable consequence for betraying democracy.’
Watch the video for the monologue, plus an interview with Washington Free Beacon Senior Editor Billy McMorris on the corruption in our system, and why he’s optimistic.
Canada held an election a few weeks ago. Don’t worry that you missed it; you wouldn’t have heard much of anything in American media. Why not? Because it all went to plan, that’s why.
To catch up on the northern contest, the Conservative Party got the most votes, 5.7 million, compared to just 5.5 million for Justin Trudeau’s ruling Liberal Party — but Trudeau’s Party got more seats in the House of Commons. A lot more, in fact: 159 seats to just 119. Why? Canada uses the same system as the United Kingdom, or our own House of Representatives: It’s first-past-the-post in 338 single-member districts.
By the way, that’s the second time in a row this has happened. The Liberal Party lost the popular vote last time too, and still they got the most seats.
The point here isn’t to complain. This is the system Canada uses; every party understands it, and there isn’t anything innately unfair about using single-member districts and the regional representation they bring.
But notice something that hasn’t happened: Nobody has gone on TV, either in Canada or here in the United States, to moan about Justin Trudeau being a threat to democracy. There aren’t any left-wing non-profits producing reports about Canada being a “flawed democracy” or a “failing democracy” or “partly democratic” or a “democratic dictatorship.”
By the way, there are countries they say that about. Countries like this one. Remember all the wailing when Donald Trump won in 2016? People were literally screeching in the streets. “Trump isn’t the president — he’s illegitimate!”
They kept this lie up for four whole years. They made that lie the focal point of their mission to paralyze actual democratic government, using any means necessary — from unelected judges to unelected spies — to get their way, and all in the name of democracy.
In 2020, Foreign Policy magazine ran an article with 10 reasons President Trump was becoming a “dictator.” Reason number 3? “Politicizing the civil service, military, National Guard, or the domestic security agencies.” Author Stephen Walt’s example of Trump doing that was that he held a photo-op in a church that rioters set on fire, and that he appointed William Barr, a former attorney general, as his attorney general.
Reason number 4 was, “Using government surveillance against domestic political opponents.” His evidence was that Trump wanted to call Antifa a terrorist organization, which might have caused the FBI to monitor them.
Reason 6? Appointing justices to the Supreme Court when there were vacancies.
Now, if you go and check Walt’s Foreign Policy articles this year, you’ll notice there haven’t been any about the looming Biden dictatorship even though he’s actually politicizing the military by using it to teach critical race theory and conducting an ideological witch hunt for “extremists.”
And if it’s bad for Trump to appoint justices to the Supreme Court for normal vacancies, what does it mean that Democrats are loudly calling to pack the Supreme Court — and the Biden administration has openly considered the possibility?
If you want answers to those questions, you won’t get them from Professor Walt — he’s back to writing about U.S. foreign policy debacles. No shortage of material there, professor.
But you know what’s really going on here. You know why Professor Walt and so many others were freaking out about “democracy” last year and every year since 2016, but don’t seem to care about it this year, be it in Canada or the United States: It’s because they don’t care about “democracy.” At least not the way you might.
To most Americans throughout most of American history, democracy meant a system of government where we hold elections, cast votes, and choose lawmakers and leaders. For the left, however, democracy means something different. To them, “democracy” just means “the Democratic Party.”
Remember when Gov. Scott Walker survived a recall attempt back in 2012? The night that happened, a Democratic voter appeared on CNN and said, “This is the end of democracy. The end of the U.S. as we know it just happened. This is it. Democracy’s dead.” At the time, he meant it: A Republican was governor of Wisconsin and might do Republican things instead of Democrat things. We all know that’s not democracy.
When Kyrsten Sinema or Joe Manchin decide to represent their own constituents and say they’re not happy with a three-and-a-half trillion-dollar spending bill to remake the American social contract, that’s not “democracy” either, because true democracy is just Joe Biden doing whatever he wants when he wants to. To many on the left, “democracy” simply means neoliberalism. Right now, “democracy” also means the Deep State — so long as the Deep State is on their side; the side of “democracy.”
In the Arizona Republic, op-ed writer E.J. Montini complained Sinema is going to “squander her chance to save democracy.” After Democratic activists stalked Sinema into a bathroom to harass her, one climate activist remarked, “Not being able to pee in peace is a reasonable consequence for betraying democracy.” I suppose it beats tarring and feathering.
“I’d note,” MSNBC’s Medhi Hassan bravely tweeted, “that democracy continues to hang in the balance while we argue over the rights and wrongs of bathroom protests.” So brave, Medhi; so meta.
Or how about this: “They call themselves Democrats and they will be the ruination of this nation,” “The View’s” Joy Behar declared. “Manchin and Sinema must be brought to task; they are the enemies right now of the democracy.”
According to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the “Arizona Democrat’s unfathomable opposition to progress is a win for her hedge-fund, Big Pharma donors, and a huge loss for democracy.” Oh, and she and Manchin are “essentially political suicide bombers waging a jihad for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.” Not demented at all.
According to someone named John of the Young Turks, the “minimum bars for a functioning democracy include 1) not electing Donald Trump, and 2) not electing someone like Kyrsten Sinema.” He could have added “3) Doing what John says to do.”
Of course, nothing Sinema is doing is “betraying democracy” in any way whatsoever; what she’s doing is betraying the Democratic Party’s priorities. But of course that’s enough, isn’t it?
Sinema and Manchin join a long and distinguished line of enemies of democracy, stretching from President John Adams to Sen. Barry Goldwater, and of course stopping over President George W. Bush (who now opposes Trump so is once again a friend of democracy).
They’re joined on this list by every single person who ever attended a Tea Party rally, and the 74 million Americans who voted against democracy in the last election. In fact, it might be that a majority of Americans voted against democracy last year, but good luck finding the full truth: It’s only OK to question elections when the “democracy” loses.
But it’s not just democracy, of course; for the left, it’s any system. Take schools: Our generation churns out multiple generations of graduates unprepared for work and incapable of functional literacy. So is the system broken? Not at all. That system is only broken if the students come out conservative or religious, or if parents are given any semblance of choice about what their children learn. If any of those things happened, that would be un-American. Probably anti-democratic too.
Democracy means parents don’t get a say in what schools teach. Them there’s the rules.
Or how about the courts? The courts are great when they’re used to paralyze a White House simply trying to defend its borders and control who enters the country. Those are working courts; very democratic. But what if the courts rule against the left?
What if the Supreme Court says that we have a border? What if they say that affirmative action is illegal racial discrimination? What if the Supreme Court finally notices that, wait a minute, abortion is never mentioned in the Bill of Rights and calling it a constitutional right is absurd? Well, that would mean the system is broken and disgustingly undemocratic. Court-packing is back on the menu, boys!
Let’s not forget the Electoral College or its northern kin, Canada’s system of parliamentary representation. Prime Minister Trudeau is the result of a beautiful system; a fully functioning democracy. President Donald Trump? Well, then you get into another area.
Know this: Your role in this democracy is not actual opposition, but managed opposition. Most professional D.C. Republicans get that. If the Democrats, for example, want to pass a bill that completely remakes the government’s involvement with the citizenry from before birth until death, the GOP just asks them to cut back on the cost a little; make it cheaper. “Managed opposition.” Know your role, sort of thing.
Ronald Reagan didn’t know his place; Trump certainly wouldn’t play his part either — and they hated them for it. Don’t let any historic revisionism ever hide that: They treated Reagan with contempt, and called him a dangerous and psychotic dullard too.
We can go on and on, but you get the point: The system works when it works for the left, and only when it works for the left. You get the point — and so do they. Now it’s just time to stop playing the part you’ve been assigned.
President Joe Biden’s support among independents is falling fast.
CNN noted that Biden was victorious in 2020 in large part because he was able to win the center. He came away with a 13-point win with independent voters. It is the same group that Hillary Clinton lost in 2016 by 4 points.
The news network said Biden should be alarmed that the decline in his approval rating has come disproportionately from independents.
And columnist Henry Olsen, writing in The Washington Post, said, “Biden’s abysmal standing with independents spells disaster for Democrats in the midterm elections if it does not substantially improve.”
CNN pointed out that the president’s net approval rating among independents in polls completed in September and October now stands at -16 points.
In June and July polls, his rating among independents stood at +3.
The news network noted his net approval rating is much higher among Democrats (+79 points) and much lower among Republicans (-84 points).
And in the June and July polls, his approval rating was +88 points among Democrats and -72 points among GOP voters.
The major point here is that while the drop among Democrats (9 points) and Republicans (12 points) is obvious, it’s larger among independent voters (19 points).
A Gallup Poll published Sept. 22, found that approval for Biden was only 37% among independents. Notably, Gallup found independent approval has cratered 24 points (from 61%) since Biden took office and 18 points since June (55%).
And Olsen pointed out: “Progressives who say it’s more important to energize the base for the midterms are wrong. Democrats’ 2018 wave was fueled much more because they won independents by 12 points than by turning out more Democrats.
“The Republican 63-seat House pickup in 2010 was also fueled primarily by independents; the GOP won this demographic by a whopping 19 points that year. Tea party activists claimed the credit for the win, much as progressive women’s and youth groups garnered accolades for 2018, but in each case, it was the quiet independent voters who made the difference.”
Los Angeles County Sheriff Alex Villanueva has vowed not to enforce a local vaccine mandate, saying he’s not willing to lose employees by demanding that they get their Covid-19 shots or be fired.
“I’m not forcing anyone,” Villanueva said on Thursday. “The issue has become so politicized. There are entire groups of employees that are willing to be fired and laid off, rather than get vaccinated.” He added that he would lose 5-10% of his staff “overnight” if he enforced the mandate as enacted by the Los Angeles City Council on Wednesday.
LA Sheriff Villanueva says that he will not enforce a vaccine mandate, saying employees are willing to get fired over it. "I don't want to be in a position to lose 5, 10% of my workforce overnight on a vaccine mandate." pic.twitter.com/9DNJTeJUoY
The sheriff noted that the county’s slashing of his department’s budget would make a loss of staff over forced jabs all the more crippling. The budget was cut by $145.5 million in June 2020 amid the defund-the-police movement. At the time Villanueva said that his department was already underfunded, and that he would have to fire 345 employees due to the lack of funds.
Murders in Los Angeles County have surged, with the city reporting a 31% increase in homicides in the first six month of the year from the same period last year.
“This is like the worst of two worlds right here, so we have to pick and choose,” Villanueva said of the mandate.
The mandate passed by the City Council, one of the strictest in the nation, requires people entering such venues as bars, restaurants, gyms and sporting events to show proof of vaccination or a negative Covid-19 test. It will go into effect on November 4.
Los Angeles also has ordered that city employees get vaccinated. About 24% of the Los Angeles Police Department’s 12,000 employees last month sought religious or medical exemptions to the jab requirement.
Villanueva is no stranger to pushing back against Covid-19 mandates. He said in July that he wouldn’t enforce the county’s mask mandate, which made no exception for vaccinated residents, arguing that it wasn’t “backed by science.”
The sheriff in neighboring Riverside County, Chad Bianco, said last month that he won’t enforce any vaccine mandates on his employees. He reportedly called himself “the last line of defense from tyrannical government overreach.”
“I have a feeling and a fear that the left has become more authoritarian than we can really even imagine.”
Appearing on Fox News Wednesday, Senator Rand Paul warned Americans that they should now “be afraid of your government,” adding that watchlists of dissenters are actively being compiled by the Biden administration.
Paul addressed the ongoing saga with the Biden government’s plan to target angry parents who have spoken out against critical race theory being taught to their children, as well as opposing vaccinate mandates in schools.
“I think criminalizing dissent is something that we should all be appalled with,” Paul told host Ben Domenech.
“I would say be afraid,” Paul said. “Be afraid of your government. That’s a sad thing from someone in the government to say, but the thing is, is those lists already exist.”
The Senator continued, “For example, people in northern Virginia that have gone to [protests], have been then sought out by the school council, by the members of the school board and retaliated [against] in a sort of legalistic way to try to put them on some sort of list and chill their speech by letting them know there’ll be a penalty for showing up and protesting.”
Paul urged that the crackdown on free speech is exploding worldwide, noting “it’s become so normalized to use government to search out and seek out your opponents.”
“There are people I know on the left who should have stepped forward and should have said how wrong it is to use this foreign intelligence court – that uses a standard lower than the Constitution – to go after a political campaign,” Paul continued.
“Yet, the left — once it became about Trump, their hatred of Trump trumped everything else, and I have a feeling and a fear that the left has become more authoritarian than we can really even imagine,” the Senator further declared.
Watch:
Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki was asked by Peter Doocy about the National School Boards Association (NSBA) attempting to get the Justice Department to use the PATRIOT Act against parents.
Psaki predictably dismissed and avoided the question:
Psaki defends the DoJ acquiescing to teachers unions who want parents treated like “domestic terrorists”: "These were threats against public servants, threats against members of the school board. Regardless of the reasoning, threats & violence against public servants is illegal" pic.twitter.com/nPF6ZsVN4E
Pew Poll reveals GOP voters want President Trump, or someone who shares all of his beliefs.
A poll conducted by Pew Research reveals that 67% of Republicans either want President Donald Trump to run a third time or want another candidate who shares his policies and views.
According to results of a Pew Research survey conducted to find the beliefs of Republicans and independents who lean toward the party, over two thirds of the Republican Party’s voters either want President Trump or his message to remain a part of the party.
44% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say President Trump “should remain a major national public figure” and run for President in 2024. Another 22% of those surveyed say President Trump should remain a “major” voice in the party, but would “support another presidential candidate who shares his views.”
Thus far, this candidate seems elusive, though some think they may have found it in Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. When polled, the Florida Governor is usually placed behind President Trump, but well ahead of other candidates including former vice president Mike Pence.
Ironically, the results of the Pew Research survey closely mirror those of the unscientific CPAC 2024 straw poll held in Texas earlier this year. In that poll, President Trump won with 70% of the vote, while DeSantis placed in a distant second at 21%.
Other Republicans largely believed to be vying for the White House, with Pence being the most obvious and Abbott the second, received almost no votes in the straw poll. Sen. Rand Paul came in third with 1% of the vote, leading a crowded field of candidates unable to pass that number, including two Texans polled in their home state. Sen. Ted Cruz scored 1% of the vote, and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott received 0%.
Pew also explains that the share of voters who believe President Trump should continue to dominate politics “has grown 10 percentage points – from 57% to 67% – since a January survey” conducted in the wake of January 6, when support for the 45th President waned to its lowest level.
While Republicans seem to view President Trump and his policies with increasing fondness, Democrat views on President Trump have remained largely unchained since January, with the overwhelming majority preferring that he would leave politics.
Air Force Veteran and Congressional Candidate Billy Prempeh torched racist vaccine mandates in a new video that has gone viral.
William “Billy” Prempeh is running for the 9th congressional district of the state of New Jersey.
In his video, Prempeh explains that 28 percent of Black Americans age 18-44 in New York are vaccinated, leaving 72 percent of Black residents in New York being denied service due to new vaccine passport mandates.
Hundreds of thousands of Americans have watched my open letter to white liberals.
“Is this not racist? Or will liberals yet again get away with harmful and destructive policies for the black community?” Prempeh asked in a statement provided to the Gateway Pundit.
In an op-ed Prempeh wrote for the Gateway Pundit in June, he wrote “my name is William “Billy” Prempeh and I’ve decided to step up for the people of the 9th congressional district — because unlike Black Lives Matter, I will actually work to get justice and change the culture that is causing black lives to be taken on our streets.”
On September 1st, 2009 when Billy was 18, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. While most of his friends were enjoying their college experiences, Billy decided to swear an oath before God to defend his country, The Constitution of The United States, and the citizens of this great nation against all enemies foreign and domestic. He was stationed at RAF Mildenhall England specializing as an aerospace ground equipment journeyman (2A6X2).
To learn more about his campaign, you can visit his website here.
