“It’s unthinkable she didn’t carry it for personal and private trips…”
In her explosive interview with Oprah Winfrey, Duchess of Sussex Meghan Markle said that when she married Prince Harry, she had to hand over her passport and car keys to palace authorities.
“When I joined that family, that was the last time, until we came here, that I saw my passport, my driver’s license, my keys,” she said. Markle said she didn’t get them back until she stepped down from royal duty and moved to California.
But new reports say Markle was a world traveler throughout the time she dated Harry and after she joined the royal family, taking at least 13 trips.
“[T]he Duchess visited 13 countries as a tourist from when she started dating Prince Harry to September 2019 – when the couple jetted off to Italy for fashion designer Misha Nonoo’s lavish wedding,” The Daily Mail reported. “Meghan and Harry announced they were stepping back as senior members of the Royal Family the following January.”
Meanwhile, The Sun cited sources as saying Markle must have presented her passport to officials in her 12 of those countries.
Markle and Harry took their first trip together just six weeks after they began dating in 2016, when he took her to Botswana for a safari. They went back for a three-week tour a year later to celebrate their anniversary, also visiting Zambia.
In 2017, the couple took a trip to Norway to see the Northern Lights and go whale watching. They also went to Jamaica that year to attend the wedding of one of Harry’s friends.
In 2018, Markle traveled to Toronto to visit a friend, then jetted off to Lake Como to visit actor George Clooney and his wife Amal. That same year she went to Amsterdam to attend the launch party of the Soho House. The couple also took their two-week honeymoon in Seychelles.
In 2019, she and Harry also borrowed singer Elton John’s private jet to fly to the elite seaside city of Nice, France. The royal couple also flew to Rome to attend fashion designer Misha Nonoo’s wedding “at a 17th century villa with A-list stars,” said the Sun. That same year, the couple celebrated Meghan’s 38th birthday at the exclusive Vista Alegre villa complex in Ibiza.
“The family travelled with their chef and security was increased during their presence in the resort, dubbed a ‘billionaire’s playground.’ One of the most exclusive villas there costs up to £120,000 a week,” the Sun reported.
And that same year, Meghan also visited New York for a baby shower before the birth of their son, Archie. “Alongside several holidays, the couple also took trips to Morocco, South Africa, Australia and New Zealand as part of three Royal Tours,” said the Mail.
“Of course the royal family would want to keep Meghan’s passport safe,” royal author Margaret Holder told the Sun. “But it’s unthinkable she didn’t carry it for personal and private trips such as her New York baby shower, traveling to see friends in Canada, partying in Amsterdam, and going to Lake Como with George Clooney.”
Amazon has declared its intent to continue banning books that argue against the reigning progressive narrative on LGBT issues.
We “have chosen not to sell books that frame LGBTQ+ identity as a mental illness,” they declared.
Amazon’s letter came in response to an inquiry by the four senators — Rubio, Hawley, Braun, and Lee — as to why Amazon has decided to ban a bestselling book by conservative scholar Ryan T. Anderson on transgenderism.
As Breitbart News reported, in late February, Amazon digitally scrubbed Anderson’s 2018 book When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment, just days before a Congressional vote on the Equality Act.
In its letter, signed by Vice President for Public Policy Brian Huseman, Amazon repeated that it offers “customers across the political spectrum a wide variety of content that includes disparate opinions” but that “we reserve the right not to sell certain content.”
Amazon has chosen to censor “disparate opinions” regarding the nature of gender dysphoria, which refers to the psychological distress experienced by those who do not feel comfortable with their biological sex.
According to Mr. Anderson himself, the real debate centers on whether gender dysphoria should be treated as a psychological problem, to be dealt with through counseling, or a medical problem that should be dealt with using puberty blockers and sexual reassignment surgery.
“Everyone agrees that gender dysphoria is a serious condition that causes great suffering,” Anderson wrote on Twitter late Thursday. “There is a debate, however, which amazon is seeking to shut down, about how best to treat patients who experience gender dysphoria.”
“Gender dysphoria is listed in the APA’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which Amazon sells,” Anderson added. “So the real deciding factor seems to be whether you endorse hormones and surgery as the proper treatment or counseling.”
In a March 12 op-ed, the Wall Street Journal noted that Amazon’s decision to ban Anderson’s book “comes as the nation’s largest tech platforms are under increased scrutiny regarding the decisions they make over which content is acceptable.”
In their letter to Amazon, the senators characterized the decision to remove the book as a signal “to conservative Americans that their views are not welcome on its platforms,” the op-ed stated.
“Amazon is using its massive power to distort the marketplace of ideas and is deceiving its own customers in the process,” said Anderson and his publisher Roger Kimball in a joint statement Thursday.
In October 2019, shortly before the COVID outbreak, Gates and other powerful individuals began planning how to censor vaccine safety advocates from social media during a table-top simulation of a worldwide pandemic, known as Event 201.
Over the last two weeks, Facebook and other social media sites have deplatformed me and many other critics of regulatory corruption and authoritarian public health policies. So, here is some fodder for those of you who have the eerie sense that the government/industry pandemic response feels like it was planned — even before there was a pandemic.
The attached document shows that a cabal of powerful individuals did indeed begin planning the mass eviction of vaccine skeptics from social media in October 2019, a week or two before COVID began circulating. That month, Microsoft founder Bill Gates organized an exercise of four “table-top” simulations of a worldwide coronavirus pandemic with other high-ranking “Deep State” panjandrums. The exercise was referred to as Event 201.
Gates’ co-conspirators included representatives from the World Bank, the World Economic Forum (Great Reset), Bloomberg/Johns Hopkins University Populations Center, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, various media powerhouses, the Chinese government, a former Central Intelligence Agency/National Security Agency director (there is no such thing as a former CIA officer), vaccine maker Johnson & Johnson, the finance and biosecurity industries and Edelman, the world’s leading corporate PR firm.
At Gates’ direction, these eminences role-played members of a Pandemic Control Council, wargaming government strategies for controlling the pandemic, the narrative and the population. Needless to say, there was little talk of building immune systems, off-the-shelf remedies or off-patent therapeutic drugs and vitamins, but lots of chatter about promoting uptake of new patentable antiviral drugs and vaccines.
But the participants primarily focused on planning industry-centric, fear-mongering, police-state strategies for managing an imaginary global coronavirus contagion culminating in mass censorship of social media.
Oddly, Gates now claims that the simulation didn’t occur. On April 12, 2020, Gates told BBC, “Now here we are. We didn’t simulate this, we didn’t practice, so both the health policies and economic policies, we find ourselves in uncharted territory.”
Unfortunately for that whopper, the videos of the event are still available across the internet. They show that Gates and team did indeed simulate health and economic policies. It’s hard to swallow that Gates has forgotten.
Gates’s Event 201 simulated COVID epidemic caused 65 million deaths at the 18-month endpoint and global economic collapse lasting up to a decade. Compared to the Gates simulation, therefore, the actual COVID-19 crisis is a bit of a dud, having imposed a mere 2.5 million deaths “attributed to COVID” over the past 13 months.
The deaths “attributed to COVID” in the real-life situation are highly questionable, and must be seen in the context of a global population of 7.8 billion, with about 59 million deaths expected annually. The predictions of decade-long economic collapse will probably prove more accurate — but only because of the draconian lockdown promoted by Gates.
Gates’ Event 201 script imagines vast anti-vaccine riots triggered by internet posts. The universal and single-minded presumption among its participants was that such a crisis would prove an opportunity of convenience to promote new vaccines, and tighten controls by a surveillance and censorship state.
Segment four of the script — on manipulation and control of public opinion — is most revealing. It uncannily predicted democracy’s current crisis:
The participants discussed mechanisms for controlling “disinformation” and “misinformation,” by “flooding” the media with propaganda (“good information”), imposing penalties for spreading falsehoods and discrediting the anti-vaccination movement.
Jane Halton, of Australia’s ANZ Bank, one of the authors of Australia’s oppressive “no jab, no pay” policy, assured the participants that Gates Foundation is creating algorithms “to sift through information on these social media platforms” to protect the public from dangerous thoughts and information.
George Gao, the prescient director of the Chinese Center for Disease Control, worries about how to suppress “rumors” that the virus is laboratory generated: “People believe, ‘This is a manmade’… [and that] some pharmaceutical company made the virus.”
Chen Huang, an Apple research scientist, Google scholar and the world’s leading expert on tracking and tracing and facial recognition technology, role-plays the newscaster reporting on government countermeasures. He blames riots on anti-vaccine activists and predicts that Twitter and Facebook will cooperate in “identify[ing] and delete[ing] a disturbing number of accounts dedicated to spreading misinformation about the outbreak” and to implement “internet shutdowns … to quell panic.”
Dr. Tara Kirk Sell, a senior scholar at Bloomberg School of Health’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, worries that pharmaceutical companies are being accused of introducing the virus so they can make money on drugs and vaccines: “[We] have seen public faith in their products plummet.” She notes with alarm that “Unrest, due to false rumors and divisive messaging, is rising and is exacerbating spread of the disease as levels of trust fall and people stop cooperating with response efforts. This is a massive problem, one that threatens governments and trusted institutions.”
Sell reminds her fellow collaborators that “We know that social media is now the primary way that many people get their news, so interruptions to these platforms could curb the spread of misinformation.” There are many ways, Sell advises, for government and industry allies to accomplish this objective: “Some governments have taken control of national access to the Internet. Others are censoring websites and social media content and a small number have shut down Internet access completely to prevent the spread of misinformation. Penalties have been put in place for spreading harmful falsehoods, including arrests.”
Matthew Harrington, CEO of Edelman Public Relations agrees that social media must fall in line to promote government policy: “I also think we’re at a moment where the social media platforms have to step forward and recognize the moment to assert that they’re a technology platform and not a broadcaster is over. They in fact have to be a participant in broadcasting accurate information and partnering with the scientific and health communities to counterweight, if not flood the zone, of accurate information. Because to try to put the genie back in the bottle of misinformation and disinformation is not possible.”
Stephen Redd, the Admiral of the Public Health Service, has the sinister notion that government should mine social media data to identify people with negative beliefs: “I think with the social media platforms, there’s an opportunity to understand who it is that’s susceptible … to misinformation, so I think there’s an opportunity to collect data from that communication mechanism.”
Adrian Thomas of Johnson & Johnson announces “some important news to share from some of “our member companies [Pharma]”: We are doing clinical trials in new antiretrovirals, and in fact, in vaccines!” He recommends a strategy to address the problems to these companies when “rumors were actually spreading” that their shoddily tested products “are causing deaths and so patients are not taking them anymore.” He suggests, “Maybe we’re making the mistake of reporting and counting all the fatalities and infections.”
Former CIA deputy director, Avril Haines unveiled a strategy to “flood the zone” with propaganda from “trusted sources,” including “influential community leaders, as well as health workers.” He warns about “false information that is starting to actually hamper our ability to address the pandemic, then we need to be able to respond quickly to it.”
Matthew Harrington (Edelman CEO) observes that the Internet — which once promised the decentralization and democratization of information — now needs to be centralized: “I think just to build a little bit on what Avril said, I think as in previous conversations where we’ve talked about centralization around management of information or public health needs, there needs to be a centralized response around the communications approach that then is cascaded to informed advocates, represented in the NGO communities, the medical professionals, et cetera.”
Tom Inglesby (John Hopkins biosecurity expert advisor to the National Institutes of Health, the Pentagon and Homeland Security) agrees that centralized control is needed: “You mean centralized international?”
Matthew Harrington (Edelman) replies that information access should be: “Centralized on an international basis, because I think there needs to be a central repository of data facts and key messages.”
Hasti Taghi (Media Advisor) sums up: “The anti-vaccine movement was very strong and this is something specifically through social media that has spread. So as we do the research to come up with the right vaccines to help prevent the continuation of this, how do we get the right information out there? How do we communicate the right information to ensure that the public has trust in these vaccines that we’re creating?”
Kevin McAleese, communications officer for Gates-funded agricultural projects, observes that: “To me, it is clear countries need to make strong efforts to manage both mis- and disinformation. We know social media companies are working around the clock to combat these disinformation campaigns. The task of identifying every bad actor is immense. This is a huge problem that’s going to keep us from ending the pandemic and might even lead to the fall of governments, as we saw in the Arab Spring. If the solution means controlling and reducing access to information, I think it’s the right choice.”
Tom Inglesby, director of Bloomberg’s Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security concurs, asking if “In this case, do you think governments are at the point where they need to require social media companies to operate in a certain way?”
Lavan Thiru, Singapore’s Finance Minister suggests that the government might make examples of dissidents with “government or enforcement actions against fake news. Some of us, this new regulations are come in place about how we deal with fake news. Maybe this is a time for us to showcase some cases where we are able to bring forward some bad actors and leave it before the courts to decide whether they have actually spread some fake news.”
Read the attached transcript to see how Gates and his government, pharma and intelligence apparatus telegraphed their plans to censor and control the media during the pandemic. In yet another uncanny coincidence, COVID-19 began circulating among global populations within days of Gates’ meeting.
H.R. 1, the bill that would seize control of federal elections from the states, comes with an unusual twist. It supposedly promotes “access.” But it says anyone challenging its constitutionality is barred from every court in the nation but a single federal trial court in Washington, D.C.!
Under H.R. 1, some citizens get more access than others.
Mark Twain is said to have quipped that history doesn’t repeat itself, but often rhymes. And here’s one of those rhymes: Limiting challengers to one court in the nation sounds a lot like Founding-Era warnings that if Congress could regulate its own elections it might limit voters to one polling place per state. More on that shortly.
As my last essay noted, H.R. 1 claims to rely on three sections of the Constitution, two of which probably are irrelevant. The third is the Elections Clause (Article I, Section 4, Clause 1)—more appropriately called the Times, Places, and Manner Clause. It reads as follows:
“The Times, Places and Manner of holding Elections for Senators and Representatives, shall be prescribed in each State by the Legislature thereof; but the Congress may at any time by Law make or alter such Regulations ….”
H.R. 1 quotes some out-of-context Supreme Court language to the effect that the italicized language gives Congress broad authority to overrule state election law.
But the text of the Elections Clause tells a very different story, as does its history.
The text tells us that Congress’s power applies only to congressional elections. It doesn’t apply to presidential contests, as the drafters of H.R. 1 pretend.
In addition, the text focuses principally on the power of state legislatures. It adds Congress’s authority only in a subordinate clause. This subordinate clause is what lawyers and judges—both in the Founding Era and in modern times—call a “proviso.” Provisos traditionally are interpreted narrowly, leaving the earlier language (the state legislatures’ power) to be interpreted broadly. In this case, narrow interpretation means that if there’s reasonable doubt about whether Congress has authority, the issue is decided against Congress.
Now let’s look at the history:
When the Constitution was publicly debated, the proviso giving Congress power to revise state election laws was highly controversial. Even many of the Constitution’s supporters wanted it taken out. Dr. James McClurg of Virginia, who had served at the Constitutional Convention, was one of these. Another was Noah Webster, later famous for his American dictionary. Webster wrote an influential pamphlet strongly supporting the Constitution—but demanding that the proviso be removed.
Why the concern? They understood the danger of allowing incumbent politicians to dictate the laws governing their own re-election. Experience shows that if incumbents write the rules, they write the rules to suit themselves. A glaring example is how the Democrat sponsors of H.R. 1 seek to alter state voter registration systems to their own advantage.
Skeptical Founding-Era writers explained in detail how the proviso could be abused. They pointed out, for instance, that if Congress could fix a “Place” for election, it might severely limit the number of polling places and locate them to benefit incumbents. Thus, a congressman from Philadelphia might induce his colleagues to locate only one polling place in Pennsylvania—in the congressman’s own neighborhood in Philadelphia.
Sound familiar? It’s a lot like Democrat partisans providing that the one court where H.R. 1 can be challenged is in heavily Democrat Washington, D.C.
During the constitutional debates, there was so much public resistance to the proviso that advocates became very concerned. What if these few words led the public to reject the entire Constitution?
So advocates assured the public that Congress’s power over congressional elections would be extremely limited. They said the proviso was designed only for emergencies. As I reported in my 2010 study of the Elections Clause:
“[T]he proponents’ decisive argument … was one that had first been raised at the federal convention: that the Times, Places and Manner Clause was needed to enable Congress to preserve its own existence. In absence of a congressional power to regulate congressional elections, a group of states could destroy the House of Representatives by refusing to provide for those elections or by creating regulations designed to sabotage them. As a precedent, the Federalists alleged that Rhode Island had damaged the operations of the Confederation Congress by refusing to send delegates to that body. The Federalists made this argument over and over, using it to sway votes in crucial states.”
Moreover:
“In Maryland, convention delegate James McHenry added that … an insurrection or rebellion might prevent a state legislature from administering an election. As James Iredell told the North Carolina ratifying convention, ‘[a]n occasion may arise when the exercise of this ultimate power in Congress may be necessary … if a state should be involved in war, and its legislature could not assemble, (as was the case of South Carolina, and occasionally of some other states, during the late war).’”
Maryland’s famous jurist, Alexander Contee Hanson, added that Congress would exercise its “times, places, and manner” authority only in cases of invasion, legislative neglect, or obstinate refusal to pass election laws, or if a state crafted its election laws with a “sinister purpose” or to injure the general government. “It was never meant,” he wrote, “that congress should at any time interfere, unless on the failure of a state legislature, or to alter such regulations as may be obviously improper.”
Based on these assurances, the public accepted the proviso and ratified the Constitution.
Of course, the Constitution doesn’t actually say the proviso is limited to emergencies. But courts routinely consider the history behind a document’s words when deciding how broadly to interpret them. I explained above that the text tells us to construe the proviso narrowly. History backs this up.
Here’s an illustration of how the courts should apply Congress’s Election Clause authority. Suppose the question arises of whether “the manner of holding Elections” extends only to mechanics such as the form of the ballot, or also includes regulating campaigns. Narrow construction would give force to the Founding-Era evidence that “manner of holding” does not include campaigns.
Bottom line: The drafters of H.R. 1 were wrong to proclaim unlimited power to regulate federal elections and campaigns. On the contrary, the Elections Clause grants Congress only limited authority. A runaway Congress should never be permitted to seize more power than the Constitution gives it.
Robert G. Natelson, a former constitutional law professor, is a leading originalist scholar and senior fellow in constitutional jurisprudence at the Independence Institute in Denver. The Texas attorney general twice relied on his 2010 study of the Elections Clause in Supreme Court litigation earlier this year, and Chief Justice John Roberts used it in a 2015 Supreme Court case.
Gov. Kristi Noem says she will sign legislation passed by the South Dakota legislature banning transgender athletes from participating in women’s and girls’ sports, becoming the latest state approving similar bills to outlaw such competition.
“In South Dakota, we’re celebrating #InternationalWomensDay by defending women’s sports!,” Noem tweeted Monday, moments after the bill cleared the state Senate. “I’m excited to sign this bill very soon.”
Backers of the bill say it promotes “fairness in women’s sports.”
Republican Sen. Jim Bolin said he remembers track meets where the hurdles were raised after girls’ 100-meter races for boys’ heats.
But opponents said it will likely spark a series of legal battles.
No transgender girl currently competes in a female high school sports league in the state.
“The decision is going to be made in federal court,” said Republican Sen. V.J. Smith. “It’s not going to be made in the state senate of South Dakota.”
He noted that only one person born male took part in women’s sports in the past decade and that athlete did not dominate.
No transgender girl currently competes in a female high school sports league in the state, the high school athletics association said.
The legislation was rejected by a Senate committee over the consequences the state would have to deal with if it was passed, from the NCAA refusing to host tournaments, to legal challenges over discrimination to the administrative problems of gathering proof of every high school athlete’s gender at birth.
But it was revived on the Senate floor on Monday.
Gov. Kristi Noem speaks at the 2020 Republican National Convention.
Legislatures in Alabama and Mississippi have also passed bills this month banning teen transgender athletes from participating in female sports.
The state Senate in Alabama also voted to make the use of puberty-blocking hormone therapies and sex-reassignment surgeries on people under 19 a felony with penalties of up to 10 years in prison.
Feminist Jill Filipovic criticized stay-at-home mothers in a lengthy Twitter thread on Thursday, suggesting they are unambitious and a bad example for children.
Filipovic was reacting to a post from Slate concerning a man who was upset that his wife wanted to be a stay-at-home mother. Slate’s advice was to be more understanding with his wife.
“This is good advice, but man I feel for this letter-writer, because it’s exactly how I would feel if my spouse decided they wanted to be a stay-at-home parent,” Filipovic commented. “Also… is it really ONLY her decision whether to quit working when she’s then going to be entirely dependent on him?”
She then suggested stay-at-home mothers are unambitious — a remark she would later try to walk back.
“I realize this is like the third rail of the Mommy Wars, but yeah, lots of super-ambitious people marry other super-ambitious people because they’re attracted to ambition,” she wrote. “I would have a really, really hard time being married to a spouse who chose not to work.”
I realize this is like the third rail of the Mommy Wars, but yeah, lots of super-ambitious people marry other super-ambitious people because they're attracted to ambition. I would have a really, really hard time being married to a spouse who chose not to work.
The feminist noted that if she wanted to stay home to run the household, it would be unfair of her to take from her husband’s income.
“If I came to my husband and said I am going to quit my job and dedicate all of my time to keeping our household, now I need your income, I think he’s in his rights to say, uh, no,” she wrote.
Women staying home to raise their babies set bad examples for children, she argued.
“And now I am really going to get myself yelled at, but I also think the issue of example-setting for a kid is a totally fair one,” Filipovic said. “What example are you setting when dad works for pay and mom does the care work at home? Lots of reasons not to want to set that example for a child.”
“Among them: Girls with working moms do better in school,” she claimed. “Men with stay-at-home wives are less likely to promote & support women in their workplace. Sons with working mothers do more housework and childcare when they grow up. These aren’t just individual choices; they’re social.
Among them: Girls with working moms do better in school. Men with stay-at-home wives are less likely to promote & support women in their workplace. Sons with working mothers do more housework and childcare when they grow up. These aren't just individual choices; they're social.
Seemingly after getting some pushback, Filipovic circled back to her suggestion that raising children is not a real job. Her answer was muddled, highlighting the apparent importance of women working outside the home and simultaneously blaming our “our capitalist society” for not valuing stay-at-home motherhood.
“I can see that this is now going to around in the circles of ‘but being a stay-at-home parent IS a job’ and ‘why don’t you value care work?’ Care work should be valued much more than it is. It’s also good for people to work outside the home,” she wrote.
“The reality — in our capitalist society — is that if you are at home full time, your husband is your boss and there is no HR department. Should care work be valued much more? Yes! In the reality we live in, are women who stay home taking on significant risks? Also yes.”
The reality — in our capitalist society — is that if you are at home full time, your husband is your boss and there is no HR department. Should care work be valued much more? Yes! In the reality we live in, are women who stay home taking on significant risks? Also yes.
“I would also argue that I am not convinced that this division of labor — one full-time wage-earner, one full-time at-home carer — is a good or healthy one, even when you take out of it the (very salient) fact that it’s women who are overwhelmingly the at-home carers,” she said.
“At-home work is incredibly isolating. It also occupies a pretty unique space where it’s centered on one of the most fundamental familial relationships — parent/child,” Filipovic wrote. “No other job is like that, which is where ‘staying at home IS a job’ doesn’t quite tell the whole story.”
At-home work is incredibly isolating. It also occupies a pretty unique space where it's centered on one of the most fundamental familial relationships — parent/child. No other job is like that, which is where "staying at home IS a job" doesn't quite tell the whole story.
Viewing a woman’s choice to stay home and raise her children and manage the home as a win would be “shallow” thinking, she said, noting that it’s not “judgmental” for her to weigh-in.
“The point is, a lot of the go-to talking points on this issue are really insufficient. The shallowest among them is the dialogue around ‘choice’ and the claim this is all private family decision making — that it’s wrong to comment on this at all because that’s ‘judgmental.’”
“In the US we give families few options, that’s baked in. But in this specific instance, I do think it’s worth talking about ambition, attraction, and the fact that there are real and tangible benefits to children having a working mother — something we’re often hesitant to say,” she wrote.
In the US we give families few options, that's baked in. But in this specific instance, I do think it's worth talking about ambition, attraction, and the fact that there are real and tangible benefits to children having a working mother — something we're often hesitant to say.
Walking back her language about stay-at-home mothers and ambition, Filipovic said “plenty of them are ambitious,” noting of “intensive parenting.”
“‘Do you think stay-at-home moms aren’t ambitious?’ Plenty of them are! Welcome to intensive parenting. But to be honest I would have a really hard time being married to someone who decided they wanted to direct their ambition into the sole work of raising our child.”
“That’s not because I don’t think that work is important,” she concluded. “It is because it’s very inward-looking and wrapping one’s identity in one’s progeny. If you have a passion for child development, great, there are many paths to walk down that do a lot of good for lots of people.”
That's not because I don't think that work is important. It is because it's very inward-looking and wrapping one's identity in one's progeny. If you have a passion for child development, great, there are many paths to walk down that do a lot of good for lots of people.
12 House Democrats from New York — including the chairs of the powerful Oversight Committee and Judiciary Committee — issued statements within minutes of each other on Friday calling for New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo to resign in the wake of a sixth sexual harassment allegation.
Why it matters: Pressure for Cuomo to resign is now coming from Congress. 13 of the 19 House Democrats from the New York delegation have now called for his resignation, with the 10 on Friday joining Rep. Kathleen Rice — who called for the governor to step down on March 1 after a third accuser came forward.
The list includes:
House Judiciary chair Jerry Nadler
House Oversight chair Carolyn Maloney
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
Rep. Jamal Bowman
Rep. Mondaire Jones
Rep. Grace Meng
Rep. Yvette Clark
Rep. Adriano Espaillat
Rep. Nydia Velasquez
Rep. Anthony Delgado
Rep. Brian Higgins
Rep. Sean Maloney
Between the lines: As of 11:40 a.m., six Democratic members of the New York delegation had not appeared to join Friday’s coordinated campaign — Reps. Hakeem Jeffries, Gregory Meeks, Tom Suozzi, Ritchie Torres, Paul Tonko and Joe Morelle.
The big picture: The statements come one day after New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and 59 New York state lawmakers called for Cuomo to resign.
New York State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has authorized an impeachment investigation into Cuomo. 47 state senators have said Cuomo should step aside, more than the 46 needed to convict the governor if he’s impeached by the Assembly.
The governor is also facing an independent inquiry from the New York attorney general and a police inquiry in Albany.
The crusading Manhattan district attorney who is investigating former President Donald Trump’s finances said Friday he will not seek reelection for a fourth term.
In a memo released to his staff, District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who was first elected in 2009, did not provide a reason for his decision not to seek reelection.
“Representing the People of New York during this pivotal era for our city and our justice system has been the privilege of a lifetime,” he wrote in the memo released by his office. “Working in partnership with Manhattan communities, the D.A.’s Office we built together over the last decade has taken us beyond the ambitious blueprint we laid out in 2009.”
Mr. Vance wrote that he was most proud of building safer communities in New York and addressing what he sees as racial inequity in the city’s criminal justice system.
“We made enduring, systemic reforms — using the power of our discretion to massively reduce our criminal justice footprint and the inequities that underlie unnecessary prosecutions,” he wrote.
He is currently pursuing a wide-ranging probe into Mr. Trump’s family business and financial dealings.
It was reported this week that Mr. Vance was ramping up his investigation into Mr. Trump, zeroing on his Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York. Mr. Vance is said to be reviewing whether the former president inflated its value to secure loans or other financial benefits.
Mr. Trump has slammed the investigation as “a witch hunt.”
Oklahoma became the latest to lift virtually all Covid-19 restrictions on Thursday, bringing the total number of states that have chosen to fully reopen—despite warnings from public health officials—to seven, with a number of others also moving in that direction.
KEY FACTS
Oklahoma: Gov. Kevin Stitt (R) said he will be signing an executive order on Friday that will roll back his few remaining coronavirus restrictions, removing limits on events and public gatherings, as well as the state-wide mask mandate (the state averaged 643 cases and 23.9 deaths each day over the past week).
Wyoming: Gov. Mark Gordon (R) announced March 8 that the state would repeal its statewide mask mandate and allow “bars, restaurants, theaters and gyms to resume normal operations” on March 16, but stipulated face masks will remain mandatory inside the state’s schools (the state averaged 7,343 cases and 1.3 deaths each day over the past week).
Texas: The largest state to remove all restrictions, Gov. Greg Abbott (R) announced on March 2 that Texas would be nixing its mask mandate and allowing businesses to reopen “100%” this Wednesday, banning jurisdictions from implementing local mask mandates unless they meet certain hospitalization metrics (the state averaged 4,909 cases and 189.9 deaths each day over the past week).
Mississippi: Gov. Tate Reeves (R) also decided to drop the state’s mask mandate and all Covid-19 restrictions on March 2, with the limits lifted the next day (the state averaged 396 cases and 14.6 deaths each day over the past week).
Montana: Gov. Greg Gianforte (R) announced the end of Montana’s mask mandate on Feb. 12, removing the last of the state’s restrictions, though some local jurisdictions have kept face covering requirements in place (the state averaged 129 cases and 2 deaths each day over the past week).
North Dakota: The state opted not to renew its mask mandate, first enacted in November, when it expired in January 2021, ending North Dakota’s restrictions (the state averaged 78 cases and 0.4 deaths each day over the past week).
Iowa: Gov. Kim Reynolds (R) ended the last of the state’s restrictions, the mask mandate issued in November 2020, in early February (the state averaged 481 cases and 14.4 deaths each day over the past week).
SURPRISING FACT
All seven of the states that have fully reopened are run by Republican governors.
Persecution of Christian women worldwide has risen dramatically in the last year as a new study released by Open Doors International found that forced marriages have increased by 16%, and physical violence against women has increased 31%.
Global persecution watchdog group Open Doors International released the 2021 “Same Faith, Different Persecution” report on gender-specific religious persecution ahead of International Women’s Day finds(GSRP) to detail the plight of the global persecuted Church and how this especially affects women.
GSRP has risen to the highest level recorded in the three years since the report was first issued in 2018, as women face a higher potential risk of religious persecution than men. The report’s data comes from the top 50 countries on the group’s annual World Watch List between Oct. 1, 2019, and Sep. 30, 2020.
Helene Fisher, a global gender persecution specialist for Open Doors International and one of the authors of the report, told The Christian Post that the increased threat to women is often because women have fewer rights in most of the top 50 countries for religious persecution.
“Because [women] have fewer rights and fewer protections, they’re just an easier target,” Fisher said.
“They can also be targeted with impunity, which means that if there is a population that doesn’t want the Christians to thrive, they can go after the women and girls. And there aren’t consequences for those aggressors. So, it is a question of the women and girls having fewer rights for legal protections. [Women] are more vulnerable in the society, and they are just the easiest way to disable the Christian population.”
Fisher and the other authors of the report — Eva Brown, Elizabeth Lane Miller and Rachel Morley — highlight that faith, combined with their gender, puts women more at risk.
The five most common “pressure points” among women in the top 50 countries on the World Watch List for religious persecution are forced marriage, sexual violence, physical violence, psychological violence and forced divorce. Each category increased since last year’s study.
Ninety percent of the top 50 countries where Christians are most persecuted report forced marriage as a pressure point, and 86% of countries report sexual violence.
Reports of psychological violence among women in these countries rose from 40% to 74% from the 2020 report to the 2021 report. Forced marriages increased by 16%, and physical violence increased by 31%.
Women are often used as pawns to target the Christian community. Persecutors often target the daughters of pastors to weaken the core of the church community.
“It is a well-documented fact that rape can be used as a weapon of war,” the report reads. “Women’s bodies essentially become the second battlefield. The ‘capture’ of women in a community demonstrates to the men that they were unable to ‘protect’ them. Persecutors are seen as ‘dominant.’ In the midst of using these women as pawns, of course, real women are violently abused.”
Targeting women, the child bearers, and forcing them to convert is a tactic used to destabilize the future generation of the Church, the development of families and the raising of Christian children.
Trafficking women as a form of religious persecution is on the rise, particularly in Asia and Africa, the report finds. Christian refugees or internally displaced peoples are especially vulnerable to this.
“Trafficking as a form of religious persecution continues to pose a threat in all regions on the World Watch List and it is rising, particularly in Africa and Asia. Globally, 17 countries (up from 10 the previous year) reported incidents of trafficked women and girls,” the report adds. “Countries engaged in conflict were most likely to report instances of sexual violence and trafficking.”
Extremist groups in the Middle East and North Africa often weaponize trafficking by forcing or seducing Christians into marriage or sexual slavery and forced conversions to Islam.
Women who are able to escape their captors often struggle to reintegrate into their home society due to shame, stigma and damaged self-worth.
A young Nigerian girl named Ester was abducted by Boko Haram and was impregnated by one of her captors, the report chronicles.
When she returned home, she was shunned, and the community called her baby “Boko” after the militants who abducted her. This tactic of shame is sometimes part of the extremists’ goal.
Fisher said the narrative in Christian communities in response to this should use biblical truth to fight the false narrative Islam seeks to spread through the shame of rape and sexual exploitation of women. Doing so will foil the persecutors’ strategies, she said.
“Our value is not determined by what has been done to us, but is determined by what has been done for us by Jesus Christ. Just holding on to that truth can radically change the future of a community,” Fisher shared.
In China, the shortage of women due to gender-biased sex selection of males and the one-child birth policy has led to human trafficking webs that force women into marriages to produce male children. The U.S. State Department reported that traffickers increasingly sent girls to China for arranged marriages from impoverished Christian communities.
In its 2020 Trafficking Persons profile on Pakistan, the U.S. State Department noted that “traffickers increasingly targeted impoverished Christian communities to send females to China for arranged marriages.”
The persecution of men and women presents itself very differently due to structural vulnerabilities. Since women are more confined to the home, their persecution is less visible in nature.
“The religious persecution against men is focused, severe, and visible, whereas the religious persecution of women tends to be complex, hidden and violent,” Fisher explained.
Men are more likely to face imprisonment and are pressured by the government in the workplace or public sphere. But women are often held hostage in their own homes, Fisher stated.
Men are also likely to be killed or forced to join the military, while women are likely to be trafficked, forced to flee the country and have an increased chance of being abducted.
“When they are going after the women, they can accomplish the same ends in a much less visible manner. Now, if it’s less visible, it’s less of a risk to the persecutor …,” Fisher said. “We find that a lot of the ways women and girls are targeted tends to be hidden because it’s in the domestic sphere.”
The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated the situation as levels of persecution, especially domestically, have risen to produce a “shadow pandemic.” The pandemic has also led to a rise in abductions due to decreased security.
“We have noticed of course that COVID has made the vulnerable even more vulnerable,” Fisher shared.
In Latin American and sub-Saharan Africa, criminal groups especially intensified criminal activity against Christians during the vulnerabilities of the pandemic and lockdowns.
Oftentimes, Christians in heavily persecuted countries are met with backlash from the government when they report persecution inflicted on them. When governments turn a blind eye to violence, it takes “tremendous tenacity” from the Christians to even be acknowledged.
“[Governments] doing nothing is failing to provide justice and protection. That is doing something that is effectively aggressive against Christians by not providing those basic citizenry services or human rights services,” Fisher said. “And we do find that around the globe, we have so many cases where it is difficult for Christians to bring a case of individual attacks against someone.”
The attacks against Christian women especially target the family unit, marriage and the individual by targeting the woman’s worth. The GSRP report concludes that a multi-faceted solution is required to address such a complex problem.
The GSRP analytical team suggested that local faith actors develop a faith-based approach to respond to the toll on the church, family and community.
“Although someone’s choice to convert to Christianity may expose them to persecution, that faith can also be a resource for strength, comfort and forging a path forward as a response to the persecution and discrimination they might encounter as part of a minority religion,” the report stated.
Research from the World Watch List shows more than 340 million Christians globally endure high levels of persecution and discrimination for their faith, which amounts to one in eight Christians around the world.
