Newly-released documents suggest that one of the country’s most powerful teachers’ unions shaped Biden administration policies on the reopening of schools, despite President Joe Biden’s pledge to “follow the science” on pandemic policy.
The documents, obtained by the conservative group Americans for Public Trust through a Freedom of Information Act request, were reported Saturday by the New York Post. They show the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) lobbying the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — and succeeding in having some of their recommendations adopted.
The teachers’ unions had long opposed a rapid reopening of schools, even when science said there was no significant risk. The Los Angeles teachers’ union also claimed that a statewide school reopening plan would reinforce “structural racism.”
The powerful teachers union’s full-court press preceded the federal agency putting the brakes on a full re-opening of in-person classrooms, emails between top CDC, AFT and White House officials show.
A former head of the British Secret Intelligence Service insisted it was “far more likely” COVID-19 leaked from a Chinese lab as opposed to originating in nature, calling out “significant Chinese influence” from preventing an open debate on virus origins.
Sir Richard Dearlove, who headed the agency between 1999 and 2004, added that aspects of the virus “point in the direction of it being somewhat tailored.” Dearlove also slammed the Chinese Communist Party’s cover-up of relevant data and the recent World Health Organization investigation as “farcical.”
The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Corlett, represents the first time in more than a decade that the high court will hear a Second Amendment case.
On Monday, the Supreme Court agreed to hear an appeal by two petitioners challenging New York’s denial of their applications for concealed-carry firearm licenses. The case, New York State Rifle & Pistol Association, Inc. v. Corlett, represents the first time in more than a decade that the high court will hear a Second Amendment case. Here’s your lawsplainer for the case—and Second Amendment jurisprudence.
The Second Amendment provides: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” In 2008, in District of Columbia v. Heller, the Supreme Court held the Second Amendment protects “the individual right to possess and carry weapons in case of confrontation.” The Heller decision further held that an individual’s right exists regardless of his service in a militia, reasoning that the “militia” clause served as a prefatory clause, explaining the purpose of the protection contained in the operative clause, but not limiting the individual right.
The court in Heller reached these conclusions after a detailed examination of the origins of the Second Amendment: “Heller explored the right’s origins, noting that the 1689 English Bill of Rights explicitly protected a right to keep arms for self-defense, and that by 1765, [William] Blackstone was able to assert that the right to keep and bear arms was ‘one of the fundamental rights of Englishmen.’”
The nation is gripped with a public health crisis, but apparently, the bureaucrats over at the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) think what we really ought to be focusing on right now is banning menthol-flavored cigarettes.
Their justification?
“Banning menthol—the last allowable flavor—in cigarettes and banning all flavors in cigars will help save lives, particularly among those disproportionately affected by these deadly products,” Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock said. “With these actions, the FDA will help significantly reduce youth initiation, increase the chances of smoking cessation among current smokers, and address health disparities experienced by communities of color, low-income populations, and LGBTQ+ individuals, all of whom are far more likely to use these tobacco products.”
There are a few major problems with this ban and the paternalistic thinking that underlies it.
1. Adults Should Be Able to Make Consumption Choices for Themselves
Yes, smoking cigarettes is bad for your health, increasing the risk of lung cancer, emphysema, and chronic bronchitis. But these risks are public knowledge. Adults have the right to weigh costs and benefits and make their own decisions about what they do with their bodies. In particular, it’s wildly paternalistic for FDA bureaucrats to condescendingly claim that racial minorities and LGBT people are incapable of deciding things for themselves and need the government to be their nanny.
2. Banning Popular Products Will Create Dangerous Black Markets
Just last year, we saw widespread concern over Americans dying and getting sick from black-market THC vaping products, which only exist due to existing marijuana prohibition laws. Nothing similar has occurred with legal market vaping products. We would likely see something similarly dangerous happen with popular menthol-flavored cigarettes if the FDA goes through with its ban. By trying to save lives, the feds could open the door to other deaths.
Clear majority of Republicans don’t buy the narrative that Joe Biden fairly won the 2020 with 81 million votes.
A CNN poll that will surely enrage the establishment has found that a whopping 70% of Republicans don’t think Joe Biden legitimately won the 2020 election.
CNN correspondent Donie O’Sullivan lamented the poll results in a segment on Sunday, calling it “quite remarkable.”
“Seventy percent. Seventy percent of Republicans do not believe that Joe Biden had enough votes to win the presidency, that he didn’t legitimately win the election.” O’Sullivan said.
“I mean, it’s really quite remarkable when you see that number.”
O’Sullivan went on to slam the Arizona election audit as “farcical” that only gives Trump supporters a “false sense of hope.”
“In Arizona right now, the numbers have been checked and checked and checked again,” he continued. “This so-called audit, which has been described as farcical essentially, even by Republican election officials in that state, is still giving some Trump supporter online and offline the false sense of hope that the election could still be overturned.”
CNN’s poll was conducted last week with among a random national sample of 1,004 adults, with a margin of sampling error of ± 3.6%.
“I was disappointed in the lack of truth and the election fraud that took place within it,” a Trump supporter told CNN. “It’s coming out right now in Arizona, and it’s gonna be a domino effect to the truth. What happens after that, I don’t know, but I know that the truth is there’s only so many voters in one county that can vote, and the numbers far exceed that. It’s common sense mathematics.”
It’s not difficult to see why Republicans don’t see him as legitimate, especially when the Democrats claim he won 81 million votes, the most of any U.S. president in history.
The gaffe-prone 78-year-old Democrat can barely get any viewers to watch his speeches, and when he does, the videos are always downvoted to oblivion.
Joint-Session Address Ratings:
2021: 11.6 million (Biden) 2020: 37.2 million (Trump) 2019: 46.8 million (Trump) 2018: 46.0 million (Trump) 2017: 48.0 million (Trump)
It’s one thing to have policies against violence, abuse, and harassment. But in “protecting” users, Twitter is hell-bent on censoring voices that rock the boat, even when all they have tweeted is a peer-reviewed scientific paper.
Last week, Simon Goddek, who has a PhD in biotechnology and researches system dynamics, tweeted a link to a scientific study titled, “Is a Mask That Covers the Mouth and Nose Free from Undesirable Side Effects in Everyday Use and Free of Potential Hazards?”
Some time later, his account was frozen and he received a notice from Twitter that it would remain frozen until he deleted the offending tweet, and for the 12 hours following that.
I was put into Twitter jail for citing a peer-reviewed scientific paper. Cancel science is real.
What’s especially concerning is that I didn’t make any personal comment on the paper’s content. I only said that regarding that paper, masks CAN lead to massive health damages. It’s the conclusion of a scientific piece of work that has been peer-reviewed by at least 2 experts in the field.
According to Twitter, Goddek violated their policy on, “spreading misleading and potentially harmful information related to Covid-19.”
The article in question wasn’t even as risqué as others and merely addressed undesirable side effects of mask wearing. How is that “misinformation”?
I spoke with Goddek to learn more about what happened. Turns out, it’s not the first time.
The first time I got censored because I cited a scientific, peer-reviewed paper on masks. I was just citing their work, and I got put into Twitter jail. In that tweet, I was saying, ‘Look, it seems masks don’t work.’ So, I also said my opinion.
This time, I found another study on masks, which says there are adverse effects if you wear masks. So, I was citing the paper without putting my own opinion, and they censored me again, made me delete it and put me into Twitter jail again.
On April 17, Naomi Wolf tweeted she had been locked out of Twitter for the fourth time for sharing a Stanford study, “proving the lack of efficacy of masks.” That study was also peer-reviewed.
China’s communist authorities are continuing their crackdown on Christianity by removing Bible Apps and Christian WeChat public accounts as new highly restrictive administrative measures on religious staff went into effect Saturday.
Father Francis Liu from the Chinese Christian Fellowship of Righteousness said in a tweet that some Christian WeChat accounts, including “Gospel League” and “Life Quarterly,” were no longer available online, the U.S.-based persecution watchdog International Christian Concern reported.
When someone tries to access those accounts, a message reads, “(We) received report that (this account) violates the ‘Internet User Public Account Information Services Management Provisions’ and its account has been blocked and suspended.”
Bible Apps have also been removed from the App Store in China, and Bibles in hard copy are no longer available for sale online either, ICC added. Bible Apps can only be downloaded in China with the use of a VPN.
Another sign of the ongoing crackdown is that bookstores owned by the state-sanctioned Three-self churches have increasingly been selling books that promote President Xi Jinping’s thoughts and communist ideology.
The BBC has been accused of reimagining British history to make it more woke-friendly after it emerged that a children’s programme will teach that the nation’s earliest inhabitants were black.
An episode of the BBC children’s series Horrible Histories will focus on the role of black people in Britain’s past. Launched in 2009, the series uses comedy sketches to help young people familiarize themselves with troubling chapters from history.
Set to air on May 7, the episode dedicated to black history will feature abolitionists rapping that “our lives matter,” in a nod to the Black Lives Matter movement.
Speaking to the Telegraph, the show’s creative lead, Richard Bradley, said that the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, as well as the toppling of a statue of 17th century slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol, created a need to “reevaluate” how Britons think about the past.
He said that the events provided an opportunity for the programme to “tackle the whole area of black history” and explained that the episode in question would explore how Britain has “always been a country with many races and ethnicities.”
In an effort to illustrate to young people that the nation had black inhabitants “from the start,” one of the show’s sketches will document how African troops were stationed along Hadrian’s Wall, when the country was under Roman occupation in the third century AD. The programme will also feature a song about how prehistoric Britons had dark skin “before these Isles were British.” The tune is a reference to a fossil, known as Cheddar Man, which dates back 10,000 years. A recent DNA analysis of the remains concluded that the prehistoric man had dark skin and black curly hair.
Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said that the FBI surveilled his and former President Donald Trump’s iCloud chats during impeachment hearings in 2019.
In an interview over the weekend, Giuliani, whose home was searched by federal agents last week, said that his lawyer, Robert Costello, was told by the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan that the alleged wiretapping took place.
“He asked [the prosecutor] to repeat it because he couldn’t believe it was true,” he told WABC radio in New York. “To me they just trashed the president of the United States.”
When House Democrats launched their impeachment inquiry against Trump over his phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, Giuliani, who had been Trump’s personal attorney, said he was communicating with the president.
