(ChurchLeaders) “The audacity is breathtaking, and the threat to America’s first liberty is all too real.” That’s how Dr. Al Mohler describes the controversial Equality Act in an article for Public Discourse. Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, is among the many Christian leaders warning that passage of the legislation will spell disaster for religious freedom in America.
The Equality Act, or H.R. 5, which passed the U.S. House last month and now heads to the Senate, amends the 1964 Civil Rights Act to include protections for sexual orientation and gender identity (SOGI). President Biden supports the legislation, calling it “essential” to protecting LGBTQ+ rights. Under the Equality Act, organizations won’t be able to use the 1993 Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) to challenge or defend against claims of SOGI discrimination.
An organization heading a campaign for having Senate Democrats eliminate the filibuster is a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a powerful dark money network used by the left, according to a new report.
Fix Our Senate, which in recent days has added dozens of groups to its coalition as the call to eliminate the filibuster grows, is in charge of 60 progressive groups pushing to pressure moderate Democrats to eliminate the filibuster, reports The Washington Free Beacon.
According to business reports obtained by the publication, Fix Our Senate falls under the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a nonprofit incubator that is managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based consulting firm, whose funding network is used by wealthy liberal donors who are secretly bankrolling progressive initiatives.
“This coalition of groups is disingenuous when in reality these are just trade names of the Sixteen Thirty Fund — a branch of the overarching behemoth Arabella Advisors,” Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, told the Washington Free Beacon. “These groups are trying to imitate local grassroots groups, but are backed by Arabella to influence public policy.”
President Joe Biden says he supports filibuster reform, not cancellation, and wants to see the Senate return to a more traditional “talking filibuster” but White House press secretary Jen Psaki says Biden is still open to hearing other ideas on the filibuster.
Under current Senate rules, 60 votes are needed so that legislation can be debated and passed, meaning Democrats must have support from at least 10 Republicans before bills can advance.
Democrats say the filibuster will hold up agenda items on issues such as immigration reform and voting rights and are calling to either eliminate the procedure or change the rules. The filibuster has evolved since its beginnings to become a procedure invoked by the Senate’s minority party to stop bills that won’t pass without at least 60 votes.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has warned that if Democrats eliminate the filibuster, “we will make it difficult still in a 50-50 Senate for them to pass hard-left legislation.”
Meanwhile, the Fix Our Senate’s coalition has launched a six-figure ad buy nationally that makes the case that the filibuster is a racist tool that was a “long-favored procedural tool of segregationists (and) has prevented voting rights and civil rights from passing the U.S. Senate.
“We want to make sure voters understand that the filibuster, an abused and outdated ‘Jim Crow relic,’ is a big part of what is broken about our government and we are encouraging them to make their voices heard and call on their senators to choose progress, not more gridlock,” Eli Zupnik, spokesman for Fix Our Senate, said in a press release.
Fix Our Senate, as a subsidiary of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, also doesn’t have to register as a nonprofit with the IRS. This means it doesn’t have to disclose its donors or file tax forms that would have information about board members, contractors, or financial activities.
Liberal billionaire donor George Soros and others involved in the secretive donor club Democracy Alliance use the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Washington Free Beacon also reports, adding that the Sixteen Thirty Fund, New Venture Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund, all managed by Arabella, facilitated $715 million in dark money in 2019. Each of the funds provides its tax and legal status to the groups sitting beneath them.
The Fix Our Senate coalition includes groups involved in gun control, immigration, and healthcare, and one of the coalition’s members, Demand Progress, is also housed by the Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Fix Our Senate did not respond to the Washington Free Beacon’s request for comment.
With online gambling now legal in 25 states, the 2021 NCAA tournament will be a slam dunk for gaming sites—and the friendly office pool may never rebound.
Bob, a 34-year-old gambler from Illinois who works in logistics, has bet in his office March Madness pool for the last five years. With about 75 colleagues and a $25 buy-in, the pot will be just under $2,000 for this year’s NCAA men’s basketball tournament—but he’s not filling out a bracket.
For gamblers, the office pool has lost its luster. “It’s boring—I’d rather gamble other ways,” says Bob, who did not want to give his last name. “For Betty Sue, who runs the front desk, does she like the office bracket? Of course, she does; she’s not a gambler.”
March Madness is always big action for Bob, who says he lays out about 25% of his annual $20,000 bankroll during the three-week long, a single-elimination, seven-round college basketball tournament. This year, he’s placing bets on mobile betting services like DraftKings and Barstool Sports. Bob will also wager with his go-to bookie, a longstanding relationship he has decided to keep despite his access to legal options.
He is not alone. According to a study published by the American Gaming Association this week, the number of Americans—36.7 million—filling out a bracket is down 8% compared to the last NCAA Tournament in 2019. (March Madness was cancelled in 2020 due to the Covid-19 outbreak.) About 31 million Americans are placing more traditional bets on this year’s tournament, up from nearly 18 million in 2019.
“Brackets bring in about $2 million,” says DraftKing’s Johnny Avello. “I can’t tell you what March Madness will bring, but it will be exponentially bigger.”
VAERS data released today showed 38,444 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines, including 1,739 deaths and 6,286 serious injuries since Dec. 14, 2020.
On March 8, The Defender contacted the CDC with questions about how the agency is investigating reports of deaths and injuries after COVID vaccines. We provided a written list of questions asking the status of investigations on deaths reported in the media, if autopsies are being done, the standard for determining whether an injury is causally connected to a vaccine and the known issues with VAERS — namely whether healthcare providers are reporting all injuries and deaths that might be connected to the COVID vaccine, and what education initiatives are in place to encourage and facilitate proper and accurate reporting. We asked for a reply within two days.
As of today, 11 days later, the CDC has not answered our questions. Instead, when we call them, they respond saying, “they have received our email, they will escalate it and it is in the system.” When we asked if we could speak with the person reviewing the email, we were told that information could not be provided. When we emailed them to follow up, we received no response.
Every Friday, VAERS makes public all vaccine injury reports received by the system as of Friday of the previous week. The 34,444 adverse events reported between Dec. 14, 2020, and March 11 include 1,739 deaths and6,286 serious injuries.
In the U.S., 98.2 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of March 11.
VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed.
For the most part, today’s data reflect trends that have emerged since The Defender first began tracking VAERS reports related to COVID vaccines.
This week’s VAERS data show:
Of the 1,739 deaths reported as of March 11, 30% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination, 21% occurred within 24 hours, and 46% occurred in people who became ill within 48 hours of being vaccinated. By comparison, during the same period, there were only 85 deaths reported following flu vaccines.
Nineteen percent of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
Fifty-three percent of those who died were male, 44% were female and the remaining death reports did not include gender of the deceased.
The average age of those who died was 77.9 and the youngest death was an 18-year-old.
As of March 11, 289 pregnant women had reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 90 reports of miscarriage or premature birth. None of the COVID vaccines approved for Emergency Use Authorization has been confirmed safe or effective for pregnant women, although J&J said earlier this month it would begin testing on pregnant women, infants and the immunocompromised.
The average age of death reported remains 77.9, however the youngest reported death this week dropped from 23 to 18. According to VAERS, the teenager developed fatigue, body aches and a headache one day after receiving the Moderna vaccine on March 3. On March 5 he complained of chest pain, and died in his sleep later that day.
The latest data also includes the report of a 22-year-old woman with a “significant, lifelong underlying medical condition” who died 24 days after the vaccine.
According to the CDC’s website, “the CDC follows up on any report of death to request additional information and learn more about what occurred and to determine whether the death was a result of the vaccine or unrelated.”
To date, the only information the CDC has published related to the investigation of COVID vaccine-related deaths and how those investigations were conducted is a COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Update via the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) published on Jan. 27.
The safety update analyzed only the 198 reported deaths that occurred within the first month after the first COVID vaccine was administered in the U.S. It is unknown whether the CDC has investigated any of the 1,541 reported deaths since or, if investigations were conducted, what the results showed.
On March 16, The Defender reported that more than 20 countries suspended use of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine after reports of blood clots, some resulting in death, in healthy people who received the vaccine. The World Health Organization (WHO) said an ongoing analysis by its vaccines advisory committee had not established a causal link between the vaccine and blood clots and that countries should keep using it.
On March 18, the European Medicine Agency (EMA) released the results of its investigation into the AstraZeneca vaccine. The EMA said Thursday the vaccine “may be associated with very rare cases of blood clots,” but the agency still considers it to be “safe and effective” and countries should continue to use it.
The EMA determined AstraZeneca’s vaccine was not associated with an “overall risk” of blood clots in those vaccinated and there was no evidence of a problem related to specific batches of the vaccine or manufacturing sites, The Defender reported.
According to Reuters, about a dozen countries resumed use of AstraZeneca’s COVID vaccine today, including Germany, Indonesia and France as EU and British regulators said the benefits outweighed any risks of potential blood clots. AstraZeneca’s vaccine is not yet approved for emergency use in the U.S.
With migrant facilities being overwhelming by the massive surge of migrants, the Biden administration’s solution to the border crisis is to house migrants in hotels, but it will come at a hefty cost to the American taxpayer.
The Biden administration has awarded an $86 million contract to pay for hotel rooms to accommodate 1,200 migrant family members who cross the U.S.-Mexico border, Department of Homeland Security officials informed Axios. The hotel rooms in border states such as Texas and Arizona will originally lodge migrants for six months, but “could be extended and expanded.”
The hotel arrangements will be organized through a San Antonio-based non-profit organization called Endeavors, which “connects vulnerable populations across the United States to a wide range of helpful services.” The Endeavors website states that they offer: “Direct care, migrant wellness support, case management, home study and post-release services, staffing, and holistic programming for unaccompanied migrant children and families.”
Migrant families attempting to cross the U.S. southern border spiked massively in 2021, rising from over 7,000 in January to more than 19,000 in February, according to the U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas admitted this week that the U.S. government is “on pace to encounter more individuals on the southwest border than we have in the last 20 years,” a statement that was echoed by a senior official with Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
Also on Saturday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced that it is opening another facility to house unaccompanied child migrants. The new facility in Pecos, Texas, will provide housing for at least 500 unaccompanied minors to begin with, but will expand to 2,000 children, according to Fox News.
“While ORR has worked to build up its licensed bed capacity to almost 13,500 beds, additional capacity is urgently needed to manage both enhanced COVID-19 mitigation strategies and the increasing numbers of UC referrals from DHS,” a spokesperson for the Office of Refugee Resettlement said.
“I got notified about an hour ago from HHS, that they’re opening up a new unaccompanied minor facility in PECOS, which is in my district, out in West Texas. This facility is going to house between 500 to 2000, unaccompanied minors, it appears as if they’re targeting unused man camps. These are oil facilities where workers, temporary oil workers, house when they’re operating in the oil gas industry,” Rep. Tony Gonzalez (R-Texas) told Fox News on Saturday. “There is no end in sight, I’m told there’s two other facilities, and they’re also looking at attending this crisis is getting out of control.”
The Biden administration will reportedly send as many as 3,000 unaccompanied migrant teens aged 15-17 to the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Texas, for up to three months.
Earlier this month, a report found that one migrant facility was at 729% capacity, and there were allegedly children taking turns sleeping on floors and only allowed weekly showers.
On Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott lashed out at the Biden administration’s handling of the immigration crisis at the border. He slammed President Joe Biden for allowing a minor migrant facility to open despite having “unsafe water” and another facility with a COVID-19 outbreak.
The Northam administration was defeated in court and the business will stay open.
A Fredericksburg, Virginia restaurant owner who scrapped a state mask mandate has defeated the Northam Administration in court, successfully defending both his business and the freedom of choice after refusing to back down amidst health department efforts to shutter his business.
Judge Ricardo Rigual denied the state’s request to force the immediate and permanent closure of the Gourmeltz restaurant, writing that the state “has failed to clearly demonstrate the factors necessary to grant a temporary injunction,” nor has it demonstrated that Gourmeltz poses any actual threat to the general public. While the case may yet be brought to trial, the restaurant’s doors will stay open in the meantime, dealing a strong blow to the efforts of the Northam Administration’s shutdown agents.
As previously reported by National File, Gourmeltz owner Matt Strickland refused to back down from big government as he vowed to fight for his business against the state, raising over $9,000 for his legal defense and hiring former GOP Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia as his attorney.
It took Matt Strickland, a Marine Corps veteran of the War on Terror, five years to build his business up from a food truck to a popular brick and mortar eatery. Now, after scrapping Governor Northam’s mask mandate and giving his employees and customers alike the freedom of choice, he is at risk of losing his hard work as he prepares to fight for his livelihood in court against his own government.
“I’m not afraid of the state, I’m not afraid of the federal government,” Strickland says. “I spent most of my adult life fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. I have no problem coming home and fighting here in Virginia.”
Though his permit was revoked by the health department a month ago, Strickland has refused to close his doors. When blackface donning Attorney General Mark Herring decided to make an example of him, he hired former GOP Congressman Bob Barr of Georgia to represent him in court and raised over $9,000 for his defense.
“We are pleased with the judge’s ruling and happy for our client,” one of Strickland’s attorneys, Martha Norton told local reporters. “We look forward to having the merits of the case resolved in a full trial.”
“This is a HUGE win!,” read a post from the Gourmeltz Facebook account, thanking but also reminding supporters of looming court fights in the near future and once again vowing to never back down, and to continue to fight for the spirit of America.
“We will continue to stand for Old Glory and what she represents to all of us. As these so-called ‘leaders’ continue to try and chip away at our rights & freedoms, we will continue to stand for them. We’ll stand for them knowing all of you are standing with us!”
Richard Grenell, the Trump administration’s former acting director of national intelligence, is now president of the United States… at least according to some Google searches.
Multiple results listed Grenell as the US president on Saturday, claiming he had taken over the position from President Joe Biden “since 2021.”
Searches for ‘President of the United States’ also returned Grenell’s name alongside Biden’s.
The false information appeared to come directly from Wikipedia, which is automatically used by Google in searches where it is then often stated as fact.
Americans mocked the mistake on social media and Grenell himself also weighed in, jokingly issuing a series of ‘Executive Orders’ and referencing Biden’s accident on the stairs to Air Force One this week.
Apparently Google thinks Richard Grenell is now the President.
Kidding aside, the American People deserve to know far more about what’s really going on in the Biden Administration. pic.twitter.com/ZzEh3JyyDN
Grenell had a number of roles in the Trump administration, including a brief stint as acting director of national intelligence and as ambassador to Germany between 2018 and 2020. Grenell, who also previously worked in the George W. Bush administration, gained a reputation as a hawk in favor of US action against China, Iran, Syria, and other countries.
Google has previously faced backlash for listing false information taken from Wikipedia in search results, including in 2018 when it listed ‘Nazism’ as the ideology of the California Republican Party.
The incident drew condemnation from then-House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Google apologized, blaming the misinformation on Wikipedia. Despite this, Google has not since changed its system to prevent such cases, as is evident from the latest blunder.
“The Supreme Court and other Courts were afraid to rule, they were ‘gutless,’ and will go down in history as such,” he says.
“The New York Times did a story today saying that various Republican groups, many of them outstanding, are rallying on false claims that conservative activists are finding that the best way to raise money and keep voters engaged is to make Donald J. Trump’s biggest fabrication, Election Fraud, their top priority,” wrote President Trump.
Trump noted that the Democrats changed election rules without the approval of Legislatures, which is unconstitutional and therefore reason enough to declare the election “illegitimate.”
“Democrats could not get Republican Legislatures in Swing States to approve many of the voting changes which took place before the Election, which is mandated under the Constitution of the United States,” the 45th president added. “For that reason alone, we had an Illegitimate Election.”
Trump also blasted the Supreme Court for their failure to address the valid concerns about voter and election fraud.
“The Supreme Court and other Courts were afraid to rule, they were ‘gutless’, and will go down in history as such,” Trump concluded, “No wonder so much money is being raised on this issue, and law-abiding people have every right to do so!”
Since Trump has been given the Infowars treatment and been banned on virtually every social media platform, Trump released the statement in a Save America PAC email.
What’s Wrong with Wind and Solar? presented by Mark Mills
Have you ever heard of “unobtanium”?
It’s the magical energy mineral found on the planet Pandora in the movie, Avatar. It’s a fantasy in a science fiction script. But environmentalists think they’ve found it here on earth in the form of wind and solar power.
They think all the energy we need can be supplied by building enough wind and solar farms; and enough batteries.
The simple truth is that we can’t. Nor should we want to—not if our goal is to be good stewards of the planet.
To understand why, consider some simple physics realities that aren’t being talked about.
All sources of energy have limits that can’t be exceeded. The maximum rate at which the sun’s photons can be converted to electrons is about 33%. Our best solar technology is at 26% efficiency. For wind, the maximum capture is 60%. Our best machines are at 45%.
So, we’re pretty close to wind and solar limits. Despite PR claims about big gains coming, there just aren’t any possible. And wind and solar only work when the wind blows and the sun shines. But we need energy all the time. The solution we’re told is to use batteries. Again, physics and chemistry make this very hard to do.Volume 90%
Consider the world’s biggest battery factory, the one Tesla built in Nevada. It would take 500 years for that factory to make enough batteries to store just one day’s worth of America’s electricity needs. This helps explain why wind and solar currently still supply less than 3% of the world’s energy, after 20 years and billions of dollars in subsidies.
Putting aside the economics, if your motive is to protect the environment, you might want to rethink wind, solar, and batteries because, like all machines, they’re built from nonrenewable materials.
Consider some sobering numbers:
A single electric-car battery weighs about half a ton. Fabricating one requires digging up, moving, and processing more than 250 tons of earth somewhere on the planet.
Building a single 100 Megawatt wind farm, which can power 75,000 homes requires some 30,000 tons of iron ore and 50,000 tons of concrete, as well as 900 tons of non-recyclable plastics for the huge blades. To get the same power from solar, the amount of cement, steel, and glass needed is 150% greater.
Then there are the other minerals needed, including elements known as rare earth metals. With current plans, the world will need an incredible 200 to 2,000 percent increase in mining for elements such as cobalt, lithium, and dysprosium, to name just a few.
Where’s all this stuff going to come from? Massive new mining operations. Almost none of it in America, some imported from places hostile to America, and some in places we all want to protect.
Australia’s Institute for a Sustainable Future cautions that a global “gold” rush for energy materials will take miners into “…remote wilderness areas [that] have maintained high biodiversity because they haven’t yet been disturbed.”
And who is doing the mining? Let’s just say that they’re not all going to be union workers with union protections.
Amnesty International paints a disturbing picture: “The… marketing of state-of-the-art technologies are a stark contrast to the children carrying bags of rocks.”
And then the mining itself requires massive amounts of conventional energy, as do the energy-intensive industrial processes needed to refine the materials and then build the wind, solar, and battery hardware.
