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Biden Cabinet Secretaries, Local Mayors Collude With Chinese Communist Party on Agriculture Policy.

Several Chinese Communist Party-backed influence groups have sponsored events and trips to China for U.S. officials – including Joe Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack – as part of a broader crusade to increase collaboration between the two countries on agriculture and farming.

The unearthing of the United States Heartland China Association (USHCA) ties to Chinese foreign influence groups follow reports of Chinese Communist Party members and firms buying up American farmland, raising national security concerns among lawmakers.

Founded by former Democrat Governor of Missouri Bob Holden, the USHCA purports to be a “bipartisan organization committed to building stronger ties between USHCA Region (20 states located in the USA between the Great Lakes to the Gulf) and the People’s Republic of China.”

“Our focus will be on Trust Building efforts connecting government officials; business leaders; educational and community interests with like minded institutions between the Heartland Region and the People’s Republic of China,” the group’s mission statement euphemizes.

In addition to partnering with various branches of the Chinese regime, the USHCA also is “proudly working with” the China-United States Exchange Foundation (CUSEF).

The organization is an integral component of the Chinese Communist Party’s “United Front,” an effort that seeks to “co-opt and neutralize sources of potential opposition to the policies and authority of its ruling Chinese Communist Party” and “influence foreign governments to take actions or adopt positions supportive of Beijing’s preferred policies,” according to the U.S. government.

The USHCA has also co-hosted events alongside the Chinese People’s Association for Friendship with Foreign Countries (CPAFFC), regarded as the “public face” of the United Front and an “avowed arm of the party-state.” The U.S. State Department has described the group as seeking to “directly and malignly influence” U.S. state and local leaders.

Through USHCA’s partnerships with the National Governor’s Association and The United States Conference of Mayors, the aforementioned Chinese Communist Party-linked influence groups have courted several American representatives with sponsored speeches or travel. Joe Biden’s Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack has participated in events with the USHCA – which “celebrated” his appointment to Biden’s cabinet – as recently as May 2020.

The group also hosts an annual “U.S.-China Agriculture Roundtable”, which counted presentations from officials including Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds, Iowa Secretary of Agriculture Mike Naig, Director of the Missouri Department of Agriculture Chris Chinn, and Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Agriculture Thom Petersen in 2021.

In partnership with CUSEF, the USHCA has also sponsored trips to China for delegation consisting of American heartland mayors. CUSEF has also deployed this tactic on American journalists, offering free trips to the country in exchange for “favorable coverage,” according to Foreign Agent Registration Act (FARA) filings. The trips functioned as part of a broader effort to “effectively disseminate positive messages to the media, key influencers and opinion leaders, and the general public” regarding China.

USHCA delegation participants have also called for closer collaboration with the Chinese Communist Party on agriculture and farming, including Sioux Falls, South Dakota Mayor Paul TenHaken in an op-ed recently wiped from the internet, upon return:

It is time that Sioux Falls looks at developing deeper, more consistent relationships with key Chinese communities and businesses. Both the city leaders of Guangzhou and Shenzhen—with populations of 20 million each—expressed interest in forming some government partnership between Sioux Falls and one of their city districts. These relationships are critical first steps in establishing both trust and economic partnerships between our communities. One of our largest employers—Smithfield Foods—is owned by a Chinese parent company, and my office has had several other discussions with business development opportunities that have Chinese ownership ties. The Sioux Falls economy would strengthen via stronger cultural and business relations with key Chinese partners.

Among the other representatives joining USHCA’s inaugural 2019 delegation were Mayor of Carmel, Indiana James Brainard, Mayor of Youngstown, Ohio Jamael Tito Brown, and Mayor of Maumee, Ohio Richard Carr.

Piers Morgan calls to end ‘trans sport insanity’ before it ends up killing women

British commentator and former CNN host Piers Morgan castigated the idea of biological males competing in women’s sports as transgender women after a special forces combat veteran demolished a biologically female MMA fighter during a Friday match. 

What are the details? 

In a blistering op-ed published in the Daily Mail, Morgan pointed to Friday’s fight in which transgender fighter Alana McLaughlin, 38, used a “powerful chokehold” on a fellow MMA fighter who happened to be a biological female. 

McLaughlin, a special forces combat veteran, defeated 32-year-old Celine Provost after placing her in a match-winning chokehold on Friday. The Friday match was McLaughlin’s debut as a MMA fighter. McLaughlin easily ended the fight just three minutes and 32 seconds into the second round.

“It made me sick to watch a once-male special forces combat veteran beat up a woman on TV,” he wrote. “It’s time to stop this trans sport insanity before women start being killed.”

McLaughlin, who took up MMA training earlier in 2021, fought against Provost, who has competed in the extreme sport for at least a decade, but as Morgan pointed out, Provost simply “couldn’t compete with the overwhelming physical strength of her opponent.”

Instead, Provost was barely able to leave a mark on McLaughlin, who was once a muscle-bound special forces operative. 

“At this point let me be clear: McLaughlin was a war hero, rising through Army ranks to become a special forces medical sergeant who went to serve in Afghanistan in 2007 as part of an elite, 12-man team,” Morgan wrote. “There, she helped save many lives as she treated IED casualties in a highly dangerous combat zone. I have huge respect for her military service, during which she was awarded eight distinguished service medals.” 

A conflicted history

McLaughlin, who grew up in South Carolina, has said that her mother — who had a strongly religious background — disowned McLaughlin once she heard that her son would soon be her daughter.

She told the Guardian in a Wednesday interview that a neighbor’s son raped her when she was just 5 years old after having been subjected to what she referred to as “masculine time” with the neighbor’s sons. 

In the years following the incident, McLaughlin’s family reportedly sent her to various conversion therapies to change her outlook on sexuality and gender. It didn’t take, McLaughlin said, and she ended up begging her parents for gender reassignment surgery from a young age. 

Before shipping out to Afghanistan, McLaughlin told her mother during a particularly heated phone call, “Maybe I should just go get myself killed at war.” 

McLaughlin’s mother reportedly snapped, “Maybe you should.” 

Elsewhere in the interview, McLaughlin said, “My whole life I was a runt. I was undersized, I was bullied, I was raped, I was beaten, like I did not have an easy time. The story of my life has been trying to physically resist people that were larger and stronger and more skilled than me.” 

‘Sickening to watch’

Morgan continued, “Regardless of her military record or personal struggles growing up, none of this justifies what happened on Friday night. I found the bout sickening to watch.” 

“It was obvious very quickly that McLaughlin was too strong, and equally obvious that this strength came from the 33 years she spent as a biological man,” Morgan continued. “As I’ve said before, the restrictive hormone treatment that sports authorities make transgender women do before they can compete in women’s sport does not reduce muscle density or power.” 

Calling the disparity “potentially deadly,” Morgan added that such practices would end up killing women one day. 

Morgan, who added that he’s always supported trans rights to fairness and equality, said that while transgender men and women deserve fair treatment across the board, allowing mixed biological sexes to compete against one another in contact sports such as MMA will only lead to danger for biological women. 

“If you’re in any doubt about how unfair this all is, let me take you through a brief history of what’s happened when male athletes have transitioned to be women and then competed against women born with female bodies,” he wrote. “In 2017, American sprinter CeCe Telfer was ranked 390th among male NCAA Division II athletes in 400m hurdles. In 2018, Telfer transitioned, and in 2019, Telfer was national NCAA Division II women’s 400m champion.” 

He also pointed to New Zealand weightlifter Laurel Hubbard, who qualified for women’s tournaments and in the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, Hannah Mouncey, an Australian handball player who dominated on the country’s women’s team after scoring zero goals in 22 appearances for the men’s team, and more as examples of unfairness in competition. 

“We’ve already seen the same unfairness manifest itself with the first transgender MMA fighter, Fallon Fox, who served in the US Navy then transitioned, became an MMA fighter, and won all but one fights,” Morgan noted. “In one of them, she fractured a woman’s skull. I fear worse is to come.” 

“[McLaughlin is] a girl born with the massive physical advantage of a male body,” Morgan concluded. “Yet now she’s deliberately participating in a grotesquely unbalanced physical environment for other women. It’s unfair, unequal, and in the case of combat sport, incredibly dangerous. But the real crime going on here is against women’s sport.”

Trump says vaccine mandates ‘shouldn’t be necessary,’ blasts Democrats for ‘disparaging’ current Covid jabs under his presidency

Though Republicans are often blamed for lagging Covid-19 vaccination rates, former President Donald Trump is blaming Democrats like Kamala Harris for any hesitancy, for “disparaging” the vaccines while he was president.

Trump made it clear this week during an interview with Fox News that he believes Democrats have only themselves to blame for not being able to hit their vaccination goals, saying President Joe Biden’s recently announced mandate for companies with more than 100 employees “shouldn’t be necessary.”

Vaccination rates in Republican-leaning states have typically been lower than others, and polling has shown Democrats being far more willing to get inoculated, but Trump says it was the Democrats sitting in the current administration that turned vaccines into a partisan issue.

“Of course, they famously said, if Trump came up with it, I’ll never take it,” he said, referring to comments made by several Democrats, including now-Vice President Kamala Harris, questioning the vaccines’ connection to Trump when they were first developed under his Operation Warp Speed.

Harris specifically said in October of last year that she would take a coronavirus vaccine if it was promoted by Dr. Anthony Fauci or other health officials, but not if Trump was the only one pushing it. 

“If Dr. Fauci, the doctors, tell us that we should take it, I’ll be the first in line to take it,” she said. “But if Donald Trump tells us we should take it, I’m not going to take it.”

“If you remember, when I was president, there were literally lines of people wanting to take it,” the Republican said. “Now, you have a different situation, and it’s very bad.”

It is a “lack of trust” in Biden and the current administration that is keeping some from getting jabbed, Trump added. 

When announcing his new mandate – which is already facing numerous potential legal challenges – Biden grew visibly frustrated with the unvaccinated and said the administration’s patience was “wearing thin.”

“They disparaged the vaccine, and now they wonder why people aren’t wanting to take it?”Trump said in response to Biden’s comments. “It’s a disgrace.” 

Some critics have called on Trump, who is vaccinated himself, to do more to promote the jabs, though he has already been promoting them as safe. At a recent rally in Alabama, the Republican was even met with some boos from the crowd of his own supporters when he advocated getting inoculated. 

Despite concern from health officials about the unvaccinated, over 75% of US adults have received at least one dose of a vaccine, according to data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and nearly 65% are fully vaccinated. 

Rose McGowan Says She Is No Longer Democrat, Asks Voters To ‘Put A Stake In The Heart of Evil’ At Larry Elder Event

“Why not change? Why not go big? Why not put a stake in the heart of evil, because that’s what this really is, this is good and this is evil.”

Actress and social activist Rose McGowan appeared at an event on Sunday in support of radio host Larry Elder’s effort to defeat Governor Gavin Newsom in the upcoming recall election. McGowan slammed the Newsoms and other so-called liberal establishment elites, and announced that she is no longer a member of the Democrat Party.

“I’ve traveled the world and I’ve had so many people say to me, ‘Americans are the most uneducated,’ not wrong, but, they are wrong in this: It’s undereducated,” McGowan said. “It’s systematic, and it’s done to you all on purpose to keep you part of a complicity machine that benefits few that is not a country, or a state, for everyone. This is a country for people who like hair gel and the Bahamas. And I really wish I had better news, it gives me new pleasure to be the bearer of like, truth, which is sometimes ugly.”

McGowan continued, “but do you want a society that has gangrene on its leg, but puts on a fancy suit and pretends it’s not there while they hobble in pain, or do you want to just stop, look at reality, take your medicine, clean up the wound, and run. Run free. Why not change? Why not go big? Why not put a stake in the heart of evil, because that’s what this really is, this is good and this is evil.”

The activist and actress also added, “I know that this place has it in it to be better, I know it does. I’ve met so many good people in this country. not the elites, absolutely not. But the person I meet that’s the housekeeper at the hotel I’m staying at, who shouldn’t even have that title because she’s a queen of a woman. And then we have the Jennifer Seibel Newsoms of the world. Why? Why do you keep choosing that, why do you keep electing that?”

Capitol Police ‘covering up 14,000 hours of video about what really happened’

Looking for evidence regarding Jan. 6 vandalism

Judicial Watch is a government watchdog in Washington that routinely takes government entities to court for failing to supply information to the public that really belongs to the public.

It can’t do that with Congress, because Congress has decided the Freedom of Information Act law is one that it doesn’t need to follow.

So now Judicial Watch is asking a court for an order for “discovery,” a legal process through which evidence can be brought to the light in legal disputes.

The issue is the evidence that the U.S. Capitol Police agency has regarding the turmoil and violence that happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6.

That’s the day that President Trump held a morning rally, with tens of thousands of people. After that, thousands went to the Capitol, where Congress was scheduled to vote on the outcome of the 2020 presidential race.

Many hundreds walked into the building, often with the Capitol Police holding the doors open for them. They took selfies. But handsful of those eventually turned violent, and they broke windows and doors and vandalized parts of the facility.

Hundreds have since been arrested and mostly are facing trespassing charges and the like.

But there is security video – and estimated 14,000 hours of it – that would reveal in live action exactly what happened that day that Judicial Watch wants to see.

The organization reported, “This case concerns whether the public has a right of access to records about what Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi has described as ‘one of the darkest days in our nation’s history,’ ‘an attack on our very democracy[,]’ and ‘an attack on the peaceful transfer of power.’ Speaker Pelosi also has stated, ‘It is imperative that we find the truth of that day and ensure that such an assault on our Capitol and Democracy cannot ever again happen.'”

Several people died of natural causes on that day, and several police officers later died of natural causes. or suicide. The only person killed by violence was a protester who was shot and killed by a Capitol Police officer who will not face any punishment, officials have confirmed.

The trigger for the event was the suspect results of the 2020 presidential race. Joe Biden won by only a few thousand votes spread across multiple swing states. But the circumstances raised enough concerns that lawsuits were filed, and when they were unsuccessful, audits, which still are ongoing, proposed.

What isn’t in dispute is the fact that state and local officials arbitrarily changed voting laws in order to accommodate fraud-prone mail-in ballots, even though the Constitution allows only state lawmakers to do that.

Further, there were outside influences evidence, since the leftist Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook megawealth handed out cash prizes totaling about $350 million to local elections officials, mostly liberal, so they could run their operations.

Judicial Watch, in order “to find out the truth about what took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 and to understand how Defendant United States Capitol Police and other government entities responded on that day,” asked for access to those recordings.

It also wants access to emails between the police executive team and its board, the same between the board and the FBI, the DOJ and others, and “all video footage” from inside the Capitol on that day.

“As the Pelosi House seeks the confidential phone and social media records of countless Americans concerning January 6, its U.S. Capitol Police is covering up 14,000 hours of video about what really happened that day,” stated Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The U.S. Capitol Police should be required to explain under oath its reasons for refusing to turn over even one second of January 6 video to the American people.”

The police agency there has claimed that the videos and other records are not “public records” and the public really isn’t interested in their disclosure, so it will keep them concealed.

Business Activity Growth Slows While Labor Cost Inflation Hits Record High: Chicago Fed

A new report from the Chicago Federal Reserve on business conditions in the central bank’s seventh district paints a picture of slowing growth and historically high price pressures, with labor cost inflation at a record high.

The Chicago Fed Survey of Business Conditions, released on Sept. 13, shows that the headline business activity index fell to a reading of -2 in August from +14 in July, suggesting August growth fell below trend.

At the same time, labor costs rose to a series high of +42 in August, up two points from July and the highest reading in the eight-year history of the series. Nonlabor cost pressures—led by materials, shipping, and energy—held steady over the month at +23, a level not seen since mid-2018.

The report is based on a survey of over 800 business contacts in the Seventh Federal Reserve District and provides input into the Fed’s recently released so-called “Beige Book,” which provides an economic snapshot of the United States from early July through August, based on reporting from the central bank’s 12 districts.

While the Chicago Fed survey is limited in scope to the seventh district, it provides insight into the state of the broader economy. According to Thomas Walstrum, senior business economist at the Chicago Fed, the survey’s headline business activity index has tracked real GDP growth from 2013 to the present “quite well.”

“The index is less volatile than real GDP growth, so while it usually is right about whether growth sped up or slowed down from quarter to quarter, it often understates the degree of the pickups and slowdowns,” Walstrum wrote in an explainer note.

Despite the slowdown in the current business activity measure, respondents’ outlooks for the economy over the next 12 months remained optimistic, with 60 percent saying they expect an increase in economic activity in the coming year, the Chicago Fed report said. Still, the 12-month forward outlook deteriorated significantly in August compared to July, dropping over the month from a reading of +44 to +14.

The pace of hiring fell, as did respondents’ expectations for the pace of hiring over the next 12 months, although both indexes remained in positive territory.

Meanwhile, the Fed’s Beige Book, which was partly informed by the Chicago Fed’s data, showed that U.S. businesses were facing supply-crunch-driven inflation in input costs, with many saying they expect to pass those higher prices to consumers.

Resource shortages were “pervasive” and input price pressures “widespread,” with many businesses reporting difficulty sourcing key inputs, even at greatly increased prices, the Beige Book report indicated.
“Firms have continued to report exceptionally widespread increases in input prices—particularly in the construction, manufacturing, wholesale trade, and transportation and warehousing industries,” the report’s authors wrote, adding that contacts in all sectors expect widespread input price increases for the rest of the year.

Half of the districts described input price inflation as “strong,” while the other half characterized it as “moderate.” In many cases, higher input costs are likely to translate into higher prices for consumers.

“A sizable share of contacts in all sectors plan to increase prices over the next six months,” the Beige Book authors wrote, adding that several of the 12 districts indicated that businesses expect “significant hikes” in their selling prices in the months ahead.

Adding fuel to the inflationary dynamic were upward price pressures on wages, with most businesses characterizing wage growth as “strong” as demand for workers continued to climb.

“All districts noted extensive labor shortages that were constraining employment and, in many cases, impending business activity,” the authors of the report wrote.

Increased worker turnover, a rise in early retirements, child care needs, and enhanced unemployment benefits were all noted as factors driving the hiring crunch, according to the report, with businesses resorting to more frequent raises, bonuses, training, and flexible work arrangements to attract and keep staff.

Echoing the findings in the Chicago Fed’s business activity index, the Beige Book showed overall economic activity “downshifted slightly to a moderate pace” in the reporting period, with the softening mostly down to a pullback in dining out, travel, and tourism, mostly reflecting concern around the spread of the Delta variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.

Hot Mic Catches Israeli Health Minister Admitting Vaccine Passports Are About Coercion

Officials unaware comments were being broadcast live on television.

Unaware that he was on a hot mic and being broadcast live on a TV station, Israeli health minister Nitzan Horowitz admitted that vaccine passports were primarily about coercing skeptical people to get the vaccine.

“Imposing “green pass” rules on certain venues is needed only to pressure members of the public to get vaccinated, and not for medical reasons, Israeli Health Minister Nitzan Horowitz said on Sunday, ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting,” reports Jewish News Syndicate.

Unaware that his words were being broadcast live to the nation on Channel 12, Horowitz told Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked that not only should the green pass be removed as a requirement to dine at outdoor restaurants, but also, “For swimming pools, too, not just in restaurants.”

“Epidemiologically, it’s true,” said Horowitz, adding, “The thing is, I’m telling you, our problem is people who don’t get vaccinated. We need [to influence] them a bit; otherwise, we won’t get out of this [pandemic situation].”

The health minister went on to acknowledge that the system wasn’t even being enforced in most venues.

“There is a kind of universality to the ‘green pass’ system, other than at malls, where I think it should be imposed, [because] now it’s clear that it applies nowhere,” he said.

Israel was once lauded for its successful vaccine rollout and the speed with which it introduced vaccine passports.

The green pass was heralded as an “early vision of how we leave lockdown.” However, the country recently reported its highest ever number of daily COVID cases, with nearly 11,000 infections being recorded.

Although the early threat that the unvaccinated would be banned from entering numerous public venues convinced many younger people to get the vaccine, once it rolled out, the ‘green pass’ system was rarely even enforced and was subsequently scrapped at the end of May.

But once cases started rising again later that summer, Israel’s vaccine passport system was reintroduced and expanded.

Meanwhile, Sweden, which never imposed a hard lockdown, recently banned travelers arriving from Israel from entering the country.

Tearful ethics professor delivers emotional ‘lesson’ on vaccine mandates before being placed on leave

An ethics professor in Canada gave what could be her final lesson at the university she has been employed at for the past 20 years. The lesson was regarding vaccine mandates. The professor’s employer has implemented mandatory COVID-19 vaccinations, which she believes is unethical. 

Dr. Julie Ponesse is an ethics professor at Ontario’s Huron University College, which is affiliated with Western University. Ponesse, who holds a Ph.D. in ethics, delivered an emotional message about vaccine mandates in a video that has since gone viral. 

“Today, I’m going to teach you a short lesson on a universally accepted ethics of coercing people into medical procedures,” Ponesse said into the camera. “I’ll be the example.”

“My employer has just mandated that I must get a vaccine for COVID-19,” the professor said. “If I want to keep working at my job as a professor, I have to take this vaccine.”

“Here’s my conundrum. My school employs me to be an authority on the subject of ethics. I hold a Ph.D. in ethics and ancient philosophy and I’m here to tell you, it’s ethically wrong to coerce someone to take a vaccine,” she said. “If it happens to you, you don’t have to do it. If you don’t want a COVID vaccine, don’t take one. End of discussion. It’s your own business.”

“But that’s not the approach of the University of Western Ontario, which has suddenly required that I be vaccinated immediately, or not report for work,” she continued. 

“I am facing imminent dismissal after 20 years on the job,” Ponesse said for not wanting to get the COVID-19 vaccine. 

The professor explained that she is not an anti-vaxxer, and that she has had “plenty of vaccines in my life.” 

Ponesse noted she doesn’t work in a “high-risk environment.” 

“I’m a teacher. I’m a university professor. My job is to teach how to think critically; to ask questions that might expose a false argument,” she stated. 

Ponesse questioned the effectiveness of the vaccines, “Nobody is promising that I won’t get COVID, or transmit COVID if I get the vaccine.” 

“I’m entitled to make choices about what does and what does not enter my body regardless of my reasons,” she said. 

“This is my first and potentially my last lesson of the year,” Ponesse said as her voice cracked after getting emotional. “In the spirit of Socrates, who was executed for asking questions, this lesson will consist of only one question.”

The professor asked her students, “When a person has done the same job to the satisfaction of her employer for 20 years, is it right, or is it wrong to suddenly demand that they submit to an unnecessary medical procedure in order to keep their job?”

“The employee is not allowed to ask questions,” the professor said. “She may only submit to the procedure or be fired. To my first-year students, is this right or is this wrong?” 

Ponesse ended the video as she broke down into tears, and put her face in her hands. 

Ponesse was condemned for calling the vaccines “experimental” and questioning the effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccinations. 

Arthur Caplan, the founding director of the Division of Medical Ethics at New York University Langone Medical Center, told the Toronto Star, “I think she is flat out wrong and it’s not just a difference in opinion about morals, some of her facts are just incorrect. She’s impugning the vaccine, calling it experimental, those are just not true assertions.”

The National Post disputed the professor’s claims: 

Health authorities in Canada, and many other countries, approved the vaccines for emergency use after confirming their safety and efficacy. Almost three quarters of Canadians have received one dose of an approved vaccine — Pfizer, Moderna or AstraZeneca — and more than 67 percent are fully vaccinated. In the U.S., the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) gave full approval to the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine in August 2021. Preliminary studies have found that the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA vaccines are about 90 percent effective against COVID-19 and the vast majority of cases are now among the unvaccinated.

Ponesse emailed her department head on Tuesday to inform him that she would not get the COVID-19 vaccine, wear a face mask while teaching, or submit to coronavirus testing. 

“It was within, I think, half an hour of sending that email that I received an email from my dean stating that I would be dismissed and put on temporary paid leave,” Ponesse told the National Post.

The email reportedly informed the professor that she “will be placed on a temporary paid leave and you will not be allowed to attend campus.” 

Huron requires mandatory vaccination on campus, except for people who have received an exemption, but they must take a COVID-19 test twice a week.

“There is no testing option for those who choose not to be vaccinated,” the Huron website states. “Those without proof of vaccination or an exemption will not be permitted on campus.”

Ponesse explained that she is not seeking an exemption, “I want to be very clear in rejecting it in principle, I don’t think we ever should have been in the place where we’re looking at the situation of mandates, so I’m not just seeking an exemption to one, I’m challenging the very foundation of the idea.”

Ponesse did receive support from People’s Party of Canada leader Maxime Bernier, who called the administrators at Western University “fascist a**holes.”

The video has been removed from YouTube for violating community guidelines.

California Recall: Polling Center Tells Some Republicans They ‘Already Voted’

Some self-identified Republicans claim they arrived at their polling center to cast their ballots in the California recall election only to be told they had “already voted.”

“At El Camino Real Charter High School in Woodland Hills, some voters say they were told the computers showed them as already having voted, even though they had not,” reported KTLA.

Estelle Bender, 88, said poll workers informed her she and several friends of hers had already voted. She also allegedly witness another man arguing with a poll worker over the same issue.

“What happened today and how shocked are you?” a reporter asked Bender.

“Very. I went to El Camino High School to vote. Got there at 10:30. Gave her this [ballot] and she scanned and said ‘you voted,’ and I said, ‘no, I haven’t,” Bender told KTLA.

“She said this has been happening all morning,” Bender further alleged. “The man next to me was arguing the same thing,”

Bender filled out a provisional ballot and left feeling “really angry.”

“I saw two women walking toward me as I left and I said, ‘don’t be surprised if they tell you’ve already voted, and she said, ‘They’ve already done that. If I voted, how did I vote?”

According to Bender, the people she knew affected by the issue were “self-identified Republicans,” which gave her cause for suspicion.

“I asked the couple of young women that I talked to and I said, ‘Are you by any chance Republicans?’ And she said ‘yes’ and I said, ‘So am I,’” asserted Bender.

Watch below:

The Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder’s office said equipment was “replaced” at the polling center and that provisional ballots are a “failsafe option” for these kinds of glitches.”

“The voters who experienced this issue were offered and provided provisional ballots –  the failsafe option to ensure no one has turned away from voting,” the statement said.

“Provisional ballots are regular ballots and once the eligibility of the voter is verified, they are processed and counted. After troubleshooting the issue, the equipment at the locations was replaced and voting continued.”

62 percent of Self-Identified Christians Do Not Believe the Holy Spirit Is Real

A new study from the Cultural Research Center of Arizona Christian University found that of about 176 million Christians who identify as Christian, more than half of them do not believe that the Holy Spirit exists.

The study from the Arizona college was recently released as part of the American Worldview Inventory, an annual survey that looks at the worldview of U.S. adults.

According to the study, a majority of America’s self-identified Christians, including those who identify as evangelicals, believe that God is all-powerful, all-knowing and the Creator of the universe.

However, more than half of that do not believe in some notable biblical teachings, such as the existence of the Holy Spirit, and only about 6 percent hold a biblical worldview, The Christian Post reports.

A majority also said that they believe that all religious faiths are of equal value and that people are “basically good” and can use those “acts of goodness” to earn their way into Heaven.

“Too often, it seems, people who are simply religious, or regular churchgoers, or perhaps people who want a certain reputation or image embrace the label ‘Christian,’ regardless of their spiritual life and intentions,” George Barna, the lead researcher at the Cultural Research Center, said in a statement. “‘Christian’ has become somewhat of a generic term rather than a name that reflects a deep commitment to passionately pursuing and being like Jesus Christ.”

Some 62 percent of self-identified, born-again Christians said the Holy Spirit is not a real, living being but a “symbol” of God’s power, presence and purity.

“As the groundbreaking American Worldview Inventory surveys have demonstrated, just 6 percent of U.S. adults possess a biblical worldview. Labeled ‘Integrated Disciples’ for their demonstrated ability to assimilate their beliefs into their lifestyle, this group consistently — albeit imperfectly — comes closest to reflecting biblical principles into their opinions, beliefs, behaviors, and preferences,” Barna explained.

Overwhelmingly, 99 percent of the group said they believe the Bible is the “accurate and reliable words of God.”

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