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WaPo Admits Biden’s Border Crisis “Is Out Of Control”; Mexico says Biden ‘creating business for organized crime’

Writing in the Washington Post, CNN anchor Fareed Zakaria admits Joe Biden’s border crisis and the wider issues with asylum in America are “out of control.”

The tone of the article is nothing less than scathing, as American liberals come to grips with the massive numbers flooding the borders after being invited by Biden and the left.



Zakaria even goes so far as to say the Trump administration’s policies were “practical.”

He writes:

Nearly 180,000 people have arrived at the southern border or tried to cross illegally in 2021, more than double as many as in the first two months of 2020. These numbers will increase as it gets warmer. Officials at the border are already overwhelmed.



He blasts the asylum industry:

The truth is the asylum system is out of control. The concept of asylum dates to the years after World War II, when the United States created a separate path to enter the country for those who feared religious, ethnic or political persecution — a noble idea born in the shadow of the United States’ refusal to take in Jews in the 1930s. It was used sparingly for decades, mostly applying to cases of extreme discrimination. But the vast majority of people entering the southern border are really traditional migrants, fleeing poverty and violence. This is a sad situation, but it does not justify giving them special consideration above others around the world who seek to come to the United States for similar reasons — but patiently go through the normal process.

The Daily Wire reports:

Mexico’s left-wing government is reportedly concerned that Democrat President Joe Biden’s policies are sparking a massive surge in illegal immigration to the U.S. and are providing business for the nation’s violent drug cartels.

Reuters reported this week that, according to government officials and reports, Mexico is “worried the new U.S. administration’s asylum policies are stoking illegal immigration and creating business for organized crime.” Biden’s policies have already significantly impacted the border situation as more than 100,000 migrants were detained last month for illegally trying to enter the U.S., the highest total for the month of February since 2006.

“They see him as the migrant president, and so many feel they’re going to reach the United States,” Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said of Biden. “We need to work together to regulate the flow, because this business can’t be tackled from one day to the next.”



The report said that Mexican intelligence has found that the cartels are “diversifying methods of smuggling and winning clients as they eye U.S. measures that will ‘incentivize migration.’”

Some key takeaways from the report include:

  • U.S. policies that Mexican officials believe are driving the criminal activity include “support for victims of gangs and violence, streamlining of the legalization process, and suspension of Trump-era accords that deported people to Central America.”
  • The Mexican cartels changed their modus operandi “from the day Biden took office” and are now showing “unprecedented” levels of sophistication in their criminal activity, which includes “briefing clients on the latest immigration rules, using technology to outfox authorities, and disguising smuggling operations as travel agencies.” The smugglers communicate with the migrants on numerous social media channels to update them on “impending checkpoints, when freight trains they can jump on pass, where to stay and how to navigate immigration laws.”
  • Those trying to enter the U.S. are now traveling in smaller groups and are taking less traveled routes to avoid detection, routes the report said were even more dangerous than the other ones.
  • The smugglers are telling the migrants to go to their local authorities and make complaints that they have been the victims of crime that way they can apply for asylum in the U.S. and the migrants are being told to bring children so it is easier for them to apply for asylum.
  • To ease their passage, smugglers advise Central American clients to register complaints with authorities saying they have been victims of extortion or, for young men, that they have faced death threats from street gangs, the assessments show.
  • Mexico is also concerned that “there could be a significant influx in migrants from outside the region – the Caribbean, Asia, Africa and the Middle East – as coronavirus-led border restrictions begin easing.”

The Washington Post reported this week that the scale of Biden’s border crisis is so severe that his administration is “holding record numbers of unaccompanied migrant teens and children in detention cells for far longer than legally allowed” and federal health officials have fallen “further behind in their race to find space for them in shelters.”


After pulling ‘Peter Pan,’ ‘Dumbo,’ family TV watchdog wants Disney to act on other ‘horrific content’

After Disney+ limited several classic children’s movies on the flagship streaming service, an expert from a leading parental media watchdog group is calling on Disney to have more consistency in limiting all inappropriate content for children so there is no double standard.

Melissa Henson, program director of the Parents Television Council, an organization that aims to protect children from harmful aspects in the media, spoke with The Christian Post in a Wednesday interview about Disney+’s decision to remove several movies from children’s profiles due to stereotypes and negative depictions of certain races.

“I’m not going to say that Disney is wrong …,” Henson said. “It is worthwhile to evaluate from time to time whether the messages that we are exposing our kids to are the ones that we, in fact, want them to be exposed to. And it’s worth evaluating.”

Henson argues that just because people grow up with certain films “doesn’t mean it’s great for us to continue showing to kids.” However, she would like to see the company show more uniformity when it comes to the content it deems inappropriate for children.

“I’m not going to take the position that we should continue to expose our kids to outdated, racist depictions, but I do think that the Disney company needs to have a degree of consistency when it comes to these things,” she said. “Is that an appropriate measure to take? Yeah, you can still watch it with your kids if you want to. It’s just that you have to go over certain obstacles or barriers to do that.”

Henson said Disney should take steps to impose barriers on platforms like Hulu, which allows children to switch over to an adult profile where they could view “horrific content.” 

This, she said, poses a double standard in what content is made available to children.

“It would be nice if Disney would also impose certain obstacles and barriers, for example, on Hulu, which is now a Disney company. [If] you’re watching on a kids’ profile, you can switch over to an adult profile and get exposed to some really adult content on an adult profile without jumping through as many hurdles as you have to jump through to watch ‘Peter Pan’ for example,” Henson shared. “So, a higher degree of consistency [regarding] inappropriate material or material parents have concerns about would certainly be welcomed.”

Last month, Henson published a column voicing concerns about Disney “directly profiting from explicit content” on Hulu. 

“As majority owner, and subsequently as sole owner, Disney green-lighted such programs as ‘Pen15’ – a suggestively titled series ‘teen comedy’ that included a scene of an adolescent girl masturbating in front of a mirror; ‘A Teacher,’ about an inappropriate relationship between a teacher and her student; ‘Harlots,’ a period drama about a London brothel; and, in development a series called ‘Bitches,’ and another called ‘Punk Ass Bitch.’

Disney was once the gold standard for wholesome, family-friendly entertainment. Today, the Disney corporation stands for targeting children and teens with inappropriate, highly-sexualized content. Disney once stood for fostering positive values and coming along side parents to keep children entertained while preserving their innocence. Today, Disney stands for thwarting parents’ efforts to filter inappropriate content from coming into their homes.”

Mississippi gov. signs law prohibiting biological males from competing in girls’ sports

Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeve has signed into law a measure that, among other things, prohibits biological males from competing in girls’ and women’s sports.

Reeves signed Senate Bill 2536, also known as the Mississippi Fairness Act, into law on Thursday, which is slated to take effect on July 1.

In a statement posted to Twitter on Thursday, Reeves explained that the law came in response to President Joe Biden issuing an executive order allowing trans-identified individuals to enter private spaces designated for the opposite sex and for boys who identify as female to compete in girls’ sports. 

“I never imagined dealing with this, but POTUS left us no choice. One of his first acts was to sign an EO encouraging transgenderism in children,” tweeted Reeves.

“So today, I proudly signed the Mississippi Fairness Act to ensure young girls are not forced to compete against biological males.”

Alliance Defending Freedom Legal Counsel Christiana Holcomb, whose law firm has fought transgender ideology in the courts, celebrated the signing of SB 2536.

“Comparably fit and trained males will always have physical advantages over females — that’s the reason we have girls’ sports. When we ignore science and biological reality, female athletes lose medals, podium spots, public recognition, and opportunities to compete,” stated Holcomb.

“We thank Mississippi’s elected leaders for promoting a solution where girls across the state will not face these losses and can continue to pursue their dreams.”

The Mississippi chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union denounced the new legislation, claiming in a statement that it was not “about protecting fairness in women’s sports.”

“It’s about erasing and excluding trans people from participation in all aspects of public life. It’s about creating solutions to problems that don’t exist,” stated the ACLU. “When elected leaders aren’t up to the real problems of our state, they tend to deflect and do anything to get people talking about something other than failing water systems, hospital closures, and teacher shortages.”

According to the new law, any sport sponsored by a public institution must be designated as either being open to only biological males, only biological females or labeled coed.

“Athletic teams or sports designated for ‘females,’ ‘women’ or ‘girls’ shall not be open to students of the male sex,” stated SB 2536, in part. “Any student who is deprived of an athletic opportunity or suffers any direct or indirect harm as a result of a violation of this act shall have a private cause of action.”

At the beginning of his administration, Biden signed an executive order advising federal agencies to interpret “sex” to include sexual orientation and gender identity.

“Every person should be treated with respect and dignity and should be able to live without fear, no matter who they are or whom they love,” began Biden’s order.

“Children should be able to learn without worrying about whether they will be denied access to the restroom, the locker room, or school sports.”

The order received criticism from conservatives and liberals alike who believed that the federal measure was effectively attacking women’s sports and privacy rights.

For example, the feminist group the Women’s Liberation Front submitted a petition calling on the Department of Education to protect women’s sports from transgender activism.

The petition, which the federal department has 60 days to respond to, asked the government to affirm that sex as defined in Title IX is strictly biological, while gender identity is “a person’s belief that they have an internal sense of self-identification as male, female, both, or neither, that is incongruent with one’s sex.”

Legendary Investor Reveals Bitcoin Fears After The Price Suddenly Soars Toward $60,000

Bitcoin has soared back this week after struggling to maintain its early 2021 momentum through the last week of February and into March.

The bitcoin price has added more than 10% in recent days, climbing back above $50,000 and toward its all-time high of $58,000 per bitcoin as the U.S. approved a huge $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus package.

With the bitcoin price up a blistering near-600% over the last 12 months, investing legend Mark Mobius has warned a sharp bitcoin decline could hit tech stocks “very badly.”

“One of the things I fear, believe it not, is a decline of the bitcoin price. I think the relationship between bitcoin prices and the tech market is very close,” Mobius, the founding partner of Mobius Capital Partners, told Bloomberg this week, adding investors should: “Watch that indicator.”

Bitcoin’s screeching rally has been put down to a combination of Wall Street institutional adoptioncorporate interest, and retail traders piling into the bitcoin and cryptocurrency market.

In early February, Tesla, the electric car-maker led by billionaire Elon Musk, set the bitcoin market alight when it revealed it had bought $1.5 billion worth of bitcoinSpeculation other tech companies could follow Tesla into bitcoin have fanned the flames, with cryptocurrency mania engulfing markets.

“Hopefully [bitcoin] stays up, I am not predicting or wishing it goes down,” Mobius said. “But I just hope it stays up because tech stocks then will be able to revive.”

Tech stocks that have taken a battering in recent weeks have climbed so far this week, moving higher in tandem with the bitcoin price, led by Tesla.

As the bitcoin price has climbed, bitcoin investors and cryptocurrency analysts are again feeling confident the recent bull run is not yet over.

“After dipping as low as $53,500, buyers have re-entered the main stage and pushed bitcoin to $57,000,” Alex Kuptsikevich, senior financial analyst at FxPro said in emailed comments. “There is a good chance that the benchmark cryptocurrency will head into territory above $60,000.”

Editor of prestigious medical journal fired for denying that structural racism exists in medicine

‘Many of us are offended by the concept that we are racist’

A deputy editor of one of America’s most prestigious medical journals was fired over statements he made expressing skepticism about structural racism in medicine on a podcast that has since been deleted.

Activists called for a boycott against the Journal of the American Medical Association after Deputy Editor for Clinical Reviews and Education Edward H. Livingston, MD said that no physician was racist.

“Structural racism is an unfortunate term,” said Livingston on the podcast. “Personally, I think taking racism out of the conversation will help. Many of us are offended by the concept that we are racist.”

Editor-in-chief Howard Bauchner, MD, later apologized for the podcast and said that he had asked for and received Livingston’s resignation. Bauchner said the comments made on the podcast did not reflect the values of the American Medical Association.

“I take responsibility for these lapses and sincerely apologize for both the lapses and the harm caused by both the tweet and some aspects of the podcast,” said Bauchner.

James Ladara, MD, the CEO and EVP of the American Medical Association, released a statement on Wednesday announcing more fallout from the podcast.

We have heard from many in our physician community and beyond this past week who expressed anger, hurt, frustration and concern about a harmful podcast that was posted on the JAMA Network™ and the AMA Ed Hub™, along with the tweet that promoted it. They both minimized the effects of systemic racism in health care and questioned its profound impact on millions of people across our country.

Ladara made clear that the AMA endorsed the idea that structural racism exists in the U.S. and in medicine.

As physicians, and as leaders in medicine, we have a responsibility to not only acknowledge and understand the impact of structural racism on the lives of our patients, but to speak out against racial injustices wherever they exist in health care and society.

The AMA’s Journal Oversight Committee (JOC) has launched an investigation into how the podcast and associated tweet were developed, reviewed, and ultimately posted. This investigation and report will be conducted via our general counsel’s office and an independent outside counsel to ensure the integrity and objectivity of its findings. The JOC was established in 1999 as an independent governance body to ensure JAMA‘s editorial independence from AMA, its fiscal accountability, and the journalistic responsibility for JAMA and JAMA Network publications.

“Dr. Bauchner reports to the JOC,” Ladara added ominously.

Much of the uproar centered around the now-deleted tweet that quoted from the podcast.

“No physician is racist, so how can there be structural racism in health care? An explanation of the idea by doctors for doctors in this user-friendly podcast,” read the tweet.

Here’s an interview of Dr. Fauci with Bauchner:

Meghan Markle Said Palace Confiscated Passport, But She Took 13 Trips

“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 Vows to Continue Censoring Books Questioning Transgenderism

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.

Gates Planned Social Media Censorship of Vaccine Safety Advocates With Pharma, CDC, Media, China and CIA

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.

Opinion: The Founders Warned Us About Abuses Like H.R. 1

Commentary

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.

South Dakota passes bill banning transgender athletes in women’s and girls’ sport

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.”

B​ackers 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.

“That’s a clear illustration (of biological differences),” Bolin said​, according to the Grand Forks Herald.

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.