House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) signaled she will not support Congressman Jerry Nadler’s (D-N.Y.) bill to expand the Supreme Court. On Thursday, Pelosi was asked about Nadler’s proposal to expand the High Court by four seats during a press conference.
Do not fall for the Left's game. Dems put forward a Supreme Court packing bill. Pelosi not there yet but says she supports Biden "bipartisan" commission
However, the House Speaker said she would support Joe Biden’s newly-formed Supreme Court commission, which will look into the impacts of the proposal. Pelosi responded with a concise and blunt: “No.”
NEW: Speaker Pelosi says she will not commit to bringing Rep. Jerry Nadler's bill seeking to expand SCOTUS by 4 seats to the floor.
Says she supports Pres. Biden's commission to study such a proposal, but doesn't know if packing the court is a good or bad idea.
Seventy-two percent of registered voters support the Second Amendment, according to a poll released Thursday by McLaughlin & Associates.
Additionally, 73.4 percent agreed that the Founding Fathers “understood the importance of law-abiding citizens right to legally own firearms for things like hunting, sport and personal protection” and that the Second Amendment is “one of our most important and cherished civil rights in the U.S. Constitution.”
The survey comes as President Joe Biden and Democrats consider gun control legislation in wake of mass shootings in Boulder, Colo., and Atlanta. The president last week issued a handful of executive orders that he says will address the nation’s “epidemic” of gun violence, including instructing the Department of Justice to issue new rules about the sales of “ghost guns” and pistol arm braces as well as model “red flag law” legislation for states.
The shootings in March left 18 people dead.
The poll also found:
58.1 percent said they were more likely to support a candidate “who supports the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms,” compared with 21.9 percent
55.6 percent said they believe enforcement of existing laws is more important than the passage of gun control, compared with 36.1 percent
A team of U.S. and Chinese scientists have produced a series of human-monkey hybrid embryos in a study released Thursday that is raising critical bioethical questions about its experiments and their implications.
In the study funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and published in the journal Cell, scientists took six-day-old macaque monkey embryos and injected 25 human cells into each of them.
The type of human cells used are extended pluripotent stem cells, which can help develop both embryonic and extra-embryonic tissues, according to a Cell news release.
One day following the injections, human cells were found alive in 132 of the hybrid embryos. Ten days later, 103 of them were still alive and growing. However, survival rates started dropping to the point that by day 19, only three of them were alive. The embryos that did survive, however, had a high percentage of human cells in their mix.
The researchers conducted this study as part of an effort to discover new methods of creating organs for those in need of transplants.
“This is one of the major problems in medicine — organ transplantation,” Juan Carlos Izpisua Belmonte, one of the study’s co-authors, told NPR. “The demand for that is much higher than the supply.”
Despite the supposedly altruistic goal of the researchers, the study raised important questions concerning its ethics.
U.S. retail sales rose by the most in 10 months in March as Americans received additional pandemic relief checks from the government and increased COVID-19 vaccinations allowed broader economic re-engagement, cementing expectations for robust growth in the first quarter.
The brightening economic prospects were underscored by other data on Thursday showing first-time claims for unemployment benefits tumbled last week to the lowest level since March 2020, when mandatory closures of nonessential businesses were enforced to slow the spread of the first COVID-19 wave.
Though output at factories rebounded modestly last month amid a global semi-conductor chip shortage that is hurting automobile plants, manufacturing remains underpinned by the strong domestic demand. The upbeat data, which followed on the heels of recent reports showing inflation heating up, will likely not shift the Federal Reserve’s ultra-easy monetary policy stance.
“Demand is booming right now. Fed officials up to now have said they expect this boost in demand to be fleeting, and will not consider changes in policy until the labor market is at full employment and price levels increase at a sustained pace,” said Chris Low, chief economist at FHN Financial in New York. “Their resolve will be tested in the next couple of months.”
Retail sales rebounded 9.8% last month, the largest increase since May 2020, the Commerce Department said. Data for February was revised higher to show sales dropping 2.7% instead of 3.0% as previously reported. March’s rise pushed the level of sales 17.1% above its pre-pandemic level and to a record high.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast retail sales would increase 5.9% in March. Retail sales surged a record 27.7% on a year-on-year basis.
The broad-based rebound was led by motor vehicles, with receipts at auto dealerships accelerating 15.1%. Sales at clothing stores soared 18.3%.
Consumers also boosted spending at restaurants and bars, leading to a 13.4% jump in receipts. Still, sales at restaurants and bars are 1.8% lower compared to March 2020.
Receipts at electronics and appliance stores increased 10.5% and sales at furniture stores rose 5.9%. There were also hefty gains in sales at sporting goods, hobby, musical instrument and book stores. Sales at building material stores vaulted 12.1%. Online retail sales increased 6.0%.
Many qualified households have received additional $1,400 checks, which were part of the massive stimulus package approved in early March. The package also extended a government-funded $300 weekly unemployment supplement through Sept. 6.
At the same time, temperatures have warmed up and the public health situation has been rapidly improving, allowing more restaurants to offer dining services.
The data, together with upbeat earnings reports from several companies, propelled the S&P 500 index (.SPX) and the Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI) to record highs. The dollar (.DXY) was steady against a basket of currencies. U.S. Treasury prices were higher.
Coinbase, the country’s largest cryptocurrency exchange, is expected to go public today at what could be a valuation north of $100 billion.
Why it matters: This gives crypto a Wall Street seal of legitimacy, after an early existence marred by ties to illicit goods.
Details: Coinbase is going public via a direct listing, rather than through an initial public offering (IPO) or special purpose acquisition company (SPAC). This means that early investors and employees will sell shares directly, with Coinbase itself not receiving any proceeds.
“It’s exactly in the spirit and ethos of crypto,” Coinbase president and COO Emile Choi tells the Axios Re:Cap podcast, in an episode posting later this morning. “Let the market determine what the price should be without intermediaries.”
Coinbase was valued at over $100 billion in private stock sales earlier this year, which the company launched to help determine a reference price for today’s trades.
The Nasdaq last night gave Coinbase a $250 per share reference price, which would work out to a $65 billion valuation, but direct listing reference prices are rarely close to initial trades. Slack, for example, began trading 48% higher than its reference price.
The big picture: Coinbase is going public in the midst of a Bitcoin price boom that’s lasted for more than a year.
The San Francisco-based company reports between $730 million and $800 million of net income for the first quarter of 2021, on a whopping $1.8 billion of revenue.
It had reported a $322 million profit on $1.28 billion in revenue for 2020, compared to a $30 million net loss on $534 million in revenue for 2019.
A bull case is that if crypto investing continues to grow in popularity among both retail and institutional investors, Coinbase is best positioned to capture the lion’s share of that growth.
A bear case is that if crypto investing continues to grow in popularity, it commoditizes the trading process, potentially rendering Coinbase as just another player.
Choi argues that Coinbase would offset commoditization by continuing to offer a wider range of cryptocurrencies than rivals. Plus, it is building a business whereby corporate treasuries can add large amounts of crypto assets to their balance sheets.
An alternate bear case is that Bitcoin prices plummet, creating what industry insiders refer to as a “Bitcoin winter.”
The bottom line: This is the stock that every tech and finance insider will be watching today.
Dr. David Fowler says he believes Floyd died as a result of a preexisting medical condition, carbon monoxide, and an extreme dose of fentanyl and meth
Dr. David Fowler, a retired medical doctor and forensic expert, testified this morning on behalf of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin that suspected fraudster and known drug user George Floyd’s death was caused by a combination of a preexisting heart condition, the inhuman amount of fentanyl and methamphetamine in his system, and exposure to carbon monoxide in the form of car exhaust from a nearby squad car.
“In my opinion Mr. Floyd had a sudden cardiac arrhythmia due to his atherosclerotic and hypertensive heart disease, you can write that down multiple different ways, during his restraint and control, restraint by the police,” Fowler explained after showing the court a slide show presentation.
“His significant contributory conditions, since I’ve already put the heart disease in part one, he would have the toxicology, the fentanyl and methamphetamine,” said Fowler. He added, “There is exposure to a vehicle exhaust, so potentially carbon monoxide poisoning, or at least an effect from increased carbon monoxide in his blood stream, and paraganglioma, or the other natural disease process that he had. So, all of those combined to cause Mr. Floyd’s death.”
CAUSE OF DEATH: Watch Defense medical expert Dr. David Fowler provide his findings on #GeorgeFloyd cause of death. Dr. Fowler now describing significance of Floyd's "enlarged" heart during the deadly arrest to this jury. #DerekChauvinTrialpic.twitter.com/7objm9CoBq
National File previously reported that the person in the vehicle with Floyd at the time of his arrested was confirmed to be his drug dealer by Floyd’s ex-girlfriend, a woman he saved in his phone as “mama.” The man later refused to testify, acknowledging that he could potentially incriminate himself.
The existence of the massive level of drugs in Floyd’s toxicology report led a prominent defense attorney to predict that Chauvin would be acquitted. National File reported:
“If you look at more of the video, [Floyd] was talking about how he couldn’t breathe… Right when he’s getting out of the car, and they’re trying to get him into the police car, he’s complaining he can’t breathe,” said Woodson. “That’s one of the signs of fentanyl overdose. The toxicology report has now come out, where he had 3 times the level of fentanyl needed to kill a human being, that and methamphetamine.”
“It’s interesting because if you look at Minneapolis and their manual, he was following textbook, exactly how they’re trained,” said Woodson. Peters, who spent years apprehending dangerous fugitives in partnership with law enforcement in Minneapolis, elaborated on the tactics used by Chauvin.
“This is part of Minneapolis procedures, use of force training, it’s in their policy. This is a lateral neck restraint, commonly referred to as an LNR, LVNR, or VNR, a lateral vascular neck restraint, which in this case was more of just a straight vascular neck restraint,” Peters explained. “It restricts blood flow to the brain, but does not commonly result in death. As a matter of fact, there are no cases where it’s proven that this restraint has caused any death.”
The defense team has since been able to prove that Floyd attempted to hide large amounts of methamphetamine and fentanyl in his mouth while being arrested by Chauvin.
Hayek’s logic is correct: social justice demands treating people unequally.
Social justice is one of those squishy terms that is not easy to define. One thing we know for certain: social justice is not the same thing as justice, an age-old idea that was the focus of such thinkers as Aristotle, Plato, Augustine of Hippo,Aquinas, and Hume. (After all, if social justice meant the same thing as justice, the word “social” would be superfluous.)
Many years ago, while speaking to William F. Buckley, Jr. on the idea of social justice, the Nobel Prize-winning economist F. A. Hayek observed the “meaningless conception” of the term.
“Everybody talks about social justice, but if you ask people exactly what they mean by social justice, what they accept as justice, nobody knows,” Hayek said. “I’ve been trying for the last twenty years, asking people ‘What exactly are your principles?’”
If one Googles the term social justice, this is what one finds:
Social Justice (noun): Justice in terms of the distribution of wealth, opportunities, and privileges within a society.
From this definition, one quickly sees a fundamental difference between justice and social justice. To Aristotle, Cicero, and America’s Founding Fathers, justice applies to individuals. To social justice advocates, justice is collective.
How Will Social Justice Be Implemented?
Implicit in social justice doctrine is the idea that improper imbalances in wealth and privilege must be corrected. But how?
Hayek knew very well. During his interview with Buckley (video below), he explained to a young Jeff Greenfield (13:00) that social justice demands treating people unequally.
The classical demand is that the state ought to treat all people equally in spite of the fact that they are very unequal. You can’t deduce from this that because people are unequal you ought to treat them unequally in order to make them equal. And that’s what social justice amounts to. It’s a demand that the state should treat people differently in order to place them in the same position. . . .To make people equal a goal of governmental policy would force government to treat people very unequally indeed.
The U.S. Capitol Police officer who shot dead an Air Force veteran during the tumultuous events on Jan. 6 will not be charged, the Department of Justice (DOJ) announced Wednesday.
The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia and the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division decided jointly not to pursue charges against the officer.
The decision came after a “thorough investigation” into the shooting of Ashli Babbitt, a 35-year-old who joined others in storming the U.S. Capitol in Washington during a joint session of Congress in January. Babbitt was shot while trying to climb through a broken window into the Speaker’s Lobby, adjacent to the House chamber.
If everything else was the same but Ashli Babbit was a liberal black woman, and the cop who shot her was a white man, there would be murals painted in her honor all across the country, and the cop would be on trial for murder. We all know that. It cannot be denied.
“Officials examined video footage posted on social media, statements from the officer involved and other officers and witnesses to the events, physical evidence from the scene of the shooting, and the results of an autopsy,” the DOJ said in a statement.
“Based on that investigation, officials determined that there is insufficient evidence to support a criminal prosecution.”
The officer remains unidentified in the public sphere. A lawyer representing him did not return a voicemail or an email.
Babbitt’s family was informed before the decision was publicly announced.
Terrell Roberts, an attorney for the family, told The Epoch Times that the decision was “baffling.”
“I find it to be baffling given the circumstances that it’s a clear case of shooting unarmed person without any legal justification, but I have no idea what went into their decision,” Roberts said.
Fox News commentator Tucker Carlson says health officials can’t have it both ways — either the vaccines are “highly effective” and the fully vaccinated can stop wearing masks and self-isolating, or the vaccines don’t work.
In the segment below on last night’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight,” the Fox News commentator said there are two things the public wants to know about COVID vaccines “and neither has anything to do with how many professional athletes or Netflix stars have been vaccinated.”
People want to know: Are the vaccines safe? And, are they effective?
Carlson said the public was assured the vaccines are safe, that the risks were so small we could ignore them completely. In fact, we were told that the clinical trials revealed “no evidence at all” that the vaccines could cause any life-threatening injuries,” Carlson said.
But after Tuesday’s decision by federal health officials to shut down the Johnson & Johnson vaccine rollout — because six people experienced blood clots, including one who died — Carslon had a lot of questions.
And those questions aren’t being answered by federal health officials, who are sending a lot of mixed messages these days, Carlson explained.
What about the question of effectiveness, Carlon asked.
After being told that everyone must get the vaccine, the rollout is “more important than the moon shot,” health officials are telling people even if they’re fully vaccinated, they must avoid crowds and wear masks.
“That’s not what we expected at all,” Carlson said. “If the vaccines work, why are the vaccinated still banned from living normal lives?”
It’s a “legitimate public health mystery,” Carlson said, adding: “Either it works, or doesn’t. But it can’t be simultaneously ‘highly effective’ and at the same time not restore people’s lives to normal.”
As for journalists asking these questions on behalf of the public, forget it, Carlson said. “Journalists have decided their job is to enforce the regime’s rules, no matter how often those rules change.”
Wisconsin Republican Rep. Mike Gallagher is leading an effort to save the Supreme Court by introducing a constitutional amendment to limit the number of justices to nine.
The proposed amendment is being co-sponsored by five other members of the House GOP, including Reps. Chris Jacobs of New York, Ken Buck of Colorado, Mo Brooks of Alabama, Ted Budd of North Carolina and Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma.
The move follows an executive order issued by President Joe Biden that will establish a commission to analyze so-called “reforms” to the Supreme Court, including court packing.
Though Biden has remained notoriously tight-lipped about his own opinions on expanding the Supreme Court, Democrats hope that they can use the commission to dilute the power of the conservative majority on the nation’s highest court.
Buck issued a scathing tweet on the issue Friday, saying that “President Biden is caving to far-left fringe activists and attacking the independence of the federal judiciary.”
President Biden is caving to far-left fringe activists and attacking the independence of the federal judiciary. https://t.co/l23QKDX2tu
Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell also blasted the thinly veiled attempt to pack the Supreme Court with leftist justices, according to The Associated Press, calling it “a direct assault on our nation’s independent judiciary and another sign of the Far Left’s influence over the Biden administration.”
Democrats have long accused Republicans of court packing, or manipulating the membership of the courts to fulfill partisan goals. All of former President Donald Trump’s nominations to the Supreme Court were made to fill an existing vacancy, however, whereas this new Democratic court packing effort is an overt attempt to manipulate the constitutional framework of the United States to ensure the supremacy of petty progressive politics.
