There are two things I am absolutely sure of. I learned them from my dad. The first is this: Regardless of how things appear, life is hard for everybody.

Shortly before COVID hit, my dad passed away. He was married to my mom for 68 years and had 7 kids, 19 grandchildren, and 20 great-grandchildren. The numbers are not what impress me. It’s how the impact of one perfectly imperfect life, permeates generations. I often wonder if fathers know the profound role they play and how very much we need them.

On my dad’s birthday, my siblings and I shared a group chat recalling memories of him. We laughed and cried in gratitude for a loving dad, warts and all, who gave life his best shot.

When Dad saw us struggling, he didn’t preach or give unsolicited advice. Instead, he’d lighten the mood and encourage us by saying, “Stay in the fight. The first hundred years are the hardest.”

Dad was a human “Eveready Battery.” At age 35 his body and mind were forever changed after being tragically hit by a van. At 52, he sustained radical neck surgery for lymphoma and emergency abdominal surgery at 80, along with numerous melanoma growth removals. Despite it all, his standard answer to, “How ya doin,’ Dad?” was always, “Very good. Very good.”

No wonder he perpetually prompted us to enjoy each moment, each cup of coffee, each scrambled egg and bacon breakfast!

With chronic pain, Dad plugged along, loving my mom, attempting to hold down a job, and address the ever-clogging toilet and endless home repairs. He made us feel safe. Even if he didn’t know how to fix something, we knew he’d figure it out somehow.

When I was young and starting to wimp out, he’d say, “Stiff upper lip, Berni.” (I still pull that out of my back pocket whenever I need it.)

By example, my dad demonstrated how to follow the rules, but know when to break them. He coached us to be safe but unafraid to take a calculated risk.

He loved a good joke, a cold beer, a few extra bucks and going to mass on Sunday. He enjoyed taking his time and doing things right the first time. (At 62, I’m finally getting the hang of that.)

Always a gentleman, he demanded respect but gave us the freedom to get our message across. Even our pets sensed their unassuming alpha and were often found at his feet getting stroked.

He nurtured curiosity and a love of hobbies even if we weren’t ideally gifted. His favorite pastimes were reading, collecting garage sale tools and gardening. While mentioning an article he read, his face would light up. What he created with his tools wasn’t always the smoothest. What he harvested grew among overgrown weeds. But he got a kick out of the whole thing.

On and off the field, Dad pulled for the underdog (unless of course, the Giants were playing). He had so many jobs, we couldn’t go anywhere without running into a past acquaintance.

During the last two years Dad was with us, he seemed to have transcended the noise and cares of this world. He knew there is much more going on than meets the eye. And that’s the other thing I’m sure of.

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From the get-go, my role as “Mom” was crystal clear: There is a human being growing inside your body for whom you are responsible. Everything you do will affect your little one. Got it?

As for the role of “Dad” I’ll never know. Yet, from years of observation, there seems to be quite a bit of navigating involved. I was blessed to have a dad who weathered life’s storms and did his best to steady the pace. Always a gentleman, and by nature a cheerleader for the underdog, he looked you in the eye and gave you the benefit of the doubt.

Dad was all about getting us seven kids “outside the box.” He was forever telling us, “Life is about now. Enjoy the moment.” After surviving a debilitating car accident at the age of 35, he seemed to approach life without fear.
Dad loved the ocean and taught us how to maneuver the waves. Petrified yet thrilled, the crashing breakers washed us up onto the sand. With outstretched arms, Dad coaxed us back, to try again.

Dad loved his tools. He drove Mom crazy collecting “great deals” he found at garage sales. My favorite was his wood lathe. Standing on a wooden stool, sporting goggles, and grasping the chisel with both hands, I watched the square block of wood spin into a blur. Dad coached, “Now, take your time. Just touch the wood with the chisel.” Too eager to listen, I extended the tool forward. The chisel hit the wooden block and went airborne across the room. Wide-eyed, I thought, “If Mom knew what we were doing, we’d be in big trouble!”

Dad never encouraged us to “fit in” and rejected the idea wholeheartedly. As an 8th grader, I was invited to boy/girl parties. My friend Diane and I asked our fathers for rides.

On occasion, my dad enjoyed cigars. When it was our turn to drive to the parties, I begged Dad not to smoke his cigar. Diane and I wanted to smell pretty for the boys! Dad growled, “Who cares?” So, Diane and I found a solution. Her dad would drive us to the parties, and my dad would drive us home.

I mention the cigars, because all my life, I’ve shunned popular trends and do not try to “fit in.” I still want to smell pretty, but my dad was right. Who cares?

At age 16, Dad let me drive from our home on Long Island to the Bronx to visit my grandparents. While crossing the Throggs Neck Bridge, Dad said, “You’re too close to the box truck in front of you. You can’t see what’s ahead of it.” Confidently keeping up with the heavy traffic, I rolled my eyes and ignored him.

Suddenly, the box truck hit his brakes in response to a broken-down vehicle. To avoid a collision, I yanked my wheel to the left which caused the car in the left lane to hit his brakes. With all the screeching and swerving, I started to cry. Dad murmured, “Not a good idea to drive behind a box truck.” He never mentioned this again. He didn’t need to.

So, to all you Navigators who do your best to steady the pace as you cheer, coax, coach, and chauffeur your kids, Happy Father’s Day!

U.S. policymakers need to come up with a better space strategy after China sent a three-member crew to its unfinished space station on Thursday, warned space and security expert Brandon Weichert.

“To fight and win a space war against the Americans, the first thing that they [the Chinese regime] will do is to knock out or blind our satellites in a space Pearl Harbor-type event,” Weichert said in an interview with NTD on June 19.

He added, “We are not yet prepared to defend ourselves, let alone retaliate, in the way that would deter China or Russia from trying this during a geopolitical crisis.”

The agency in charge of China’s manned space program, the China Manned Space Engineering Office (CMSEO), is not a civilian agency like NASA. CMSEO is subordinate to China’s Central Military Commission (CMC), an agency of the Chinese Communist Party that oversees the Chinese military.

Currently, CMSEO is currently headed by Hao Chun, but the country’s manned space program is commanded by Gen. Li Shangfu, who is also a department director at the CMC.

Underscoring how the Chinese manned space program is inseparable from the Chinese military is the fact that the three crew members—Nie Haisheng, Liu Boming, and Tang Hongbo—are former air force pilots of the Chinese military, formally known as the People’s Liberation Army.

The three members will stay in the station’s main living module for three months, the longest stay for any Chinese nationals in space since Beijing launched an astronaut into Earth orbit in 2003. The Chinese space station, named Tiangong, will receive additional modules in 2022.

The International Space Station (ISS), launched in 1998, is a partnership between the United States, Canada, Japan, Russia, and member nations of the European Space Agency. China has been barred from taking part in the ISS since 2011 when the United States passed a law banning space cooperation between NASA and Chinese organizations, due to national security concerns.

China’s own actions also spurred distrust leading to its ban from the ISS. In January 2007, China fired an anti-satellite missile against one of its inactive weather satellites, drawing international concern.

Weichert pointed to two Chinese space technologies that could cripple U.S. satellites. Firstly, he said a giant robotic arm—10 meters in length, which can lift objects weighing up to 20 tons, according to Chinese state-run media—is attached to the Chinese space station and poses a serious threat.

“So China in peacetime could use that grappling arm to help ships dock. But in wartime, they could use that to pluck our satellites from nearby orbits and push them out of orbit or sabotage them,” Weichert said.

In April, Army Gen. James Dickinson, commander of the U.S. Space Command, told a Senate hearing (pdf) that China’s robotic arm technology in space “could be used in a future system for grappling other satellites.”

The second Chinese technology that poses a threat to U.S. satellites is lasers, according to Weichert.

“China planners have talked about installing a large laser when their [space] station is completed in orbit. Now they say in peacetime, the laser would be used to clear orbital debris. But in wartime, that laser could potentially be used to blind sensitive American satellites in orbit,” Weichert said.

In 2018, researchers at China’s Air Force Engineering University published a paper proposing how a giant laser would be effective to clean space junk and old satellites.

Satellite communication is not only critical for Washington to effectively deploy its forces, but it is also vital for the U.S. economy. Weichert explained that the United States would see its economy sent back to the “pre-1970s era” without satellites, given most modern electronic transactions, such as exchange-traded funds (ETFs), rely on them.

More importantly, China is gaining on the U.S. leadership in space, according to Weichert.

“They’re [China] still behind us. But rather than being 18 years behind us, 20 years behind us, they’re only about six or seven years behind us now,” he said.

Currently, U.S. policymakers are “too small-minded” with regard to their space policies, Weichert said, and they need to “develop systems and doctrines” not just to defend U.S. satellites but also U.S. commercial interests in the future.

Members of the Antifa extremist group targeted an annual conservative summit in Denver on Saturday, with videos posted on social media showing Antifa protesters shoving and scuffling with what appear to be summit attendees.

Two videos posted by Washington Examiner reporter Emily Brooks show a shouting match between a bearded man and the Antifa crowd. A member of the crowd is seen smacking a phone from the man’s hand. The man then attempts to chase the assailant, only to be pushed, shoved, and brought to the ground by people from the Antifa crowd.

Brooks also shared a photo of a “Denver Communists” flyer distributed by the Antifa crowd, which says “Nazi scum off our streets.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) attended the summit. Boebert told Brooks that the Antifa protesters should “get a job.”

“Maybe this is their job. Maybe they’re paid to do it,” Boebert said on June 19. “You see this from extreme leftist progressives because either this is their job, either they are paid to do it, or they have nothing better to do, they’re sitting at home collecting a check, and this is their life.”

“I mean, I don’t have time for that,” Boebert continued. “You don’t see conservatives doing things like this because we have families to take care of, we have jobs to work at, we have communities to grow. And that’s our focus—not to destroy, but to build.”

The Antifa group harassed people entering and leaving the hotel venue and blocked traffic. A video recorded by The Blaze reporter Elijah Schaffer showed a woman confronting the crowd for throwing a bottle at her car because she honked when the crowd blocked traffic. In another video by Schaffer, Antifa protesters are seen shouting profanities at police officers guarding the entrance to the hotel.

Andy Ngo, a prominent chronicler of Antifa violence, also attended the conference. Schaffer captured a video of the Antifa crowd’s reaction to spotting Ngo, wearing a leg brace due to injuries he suffered in an Antifa attack. He later posted a video showing the Antifa crowd blocking a street outside the venue.

“Antifa view events like this and even just this speech as extremely threatening to them, which is why they’ve organized the so-called protests outside,” Ngo said at the summit.

The U.S. has pumped millions of dollars into researching how to extract rare-earth minerals from abandoned coal fields, an approach some say won’t work. The Pentagon has invested in a U.S.-based rare-earth magnets manufacturer that sources many of its products from China. Canada has put money into a 21-year-old mining company that has never mined and handed an option to control its main asset to a business run by the chief executive’s son.

“There were many ventures we had questions about in terms of their claims and what they were doing,” said Drew Horn, a former senior official at the Department of Energy, the White House and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence who specialized in critical minerals during the Trump administration.

The U.S. and other Western governments are rushing to secure domestic supplies of materials including rare earths, lithium and boron, which are essential for growing technologies such as electric vehicles, satellites and wind turbines. They also want to develop the capability to process them.

The Senate this month approved a bipartisan, $250 billion bill to boost government spending on technology research and development to catch up with China, including funds for digging up and processing critical minerals at home and with allied nations.

Analysts said the bill was a breakthrough given how comprehensive it was but said the problem now was finding the right projects to take the strategy forward.

“As a strategy it’s a turning point because until now there had been a haphazard approach,” said Abigail Seadler Wulf, director of critical minerals strategy at Securing America’s Future Energy, a nonprofit. “The difficulty comes with what happens with that money on the ground,” she said.

The Energy Department is already investing $19 million in projects in former coal communities to support research into extracting rare earths from coal waste and ash, the detritus left when the fuel is mined or burned.

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In 2019, the U.S. Geological Survey published a study concluding that it was too hard to free rare earths from coal ash on a commercial scale and that there weren’t enough minerals in coal waste to make extraction worthwhile.

“It’s a general consensus that this is low-grade material,” said David Henderson, founder of Rittenhouse International Resources LLC, a critical-minerals consulting firm.

A DOE spokesman said it is a priority to provide disadvantaged communities with know-how to recover rare earths and other critical minerals from coal and byproducts, and create jobs.

The Pentagon and DOE have put money directly in several companies working with critical minerals, though some in the industry said they were baffled by some investments because of recipients’ links to China or lack of an established record.

In November, the Pentagon said it would invest $2.3 million in a California-based company called TDA Magnetics.

On its website, TDA describes itself as a U.S.-based manufacturer of magnets. The company doesn’t manufacture magnets, but imports blocks of rare- earth-based magnetic material, often from China, which is then fabricated into customized pieces, according to a person familiar with the matter and customs documents.

Rare-earth magnets can be key in military hardware, such as missiles and aircraft, and the U.S. has strict rules governing where such components are made and customized, and who can see data related to procurement.

TDA shares ownership, and at least one manager, with another company called Tridus Magnetics and Assemblies, which is part of a joint venture with a Chinese magnet manufacturer, according to public records and the person familiar with the matter.

The two share a compound in the Los Angeles area, and calls to TDA are answered by a message from Tridus.

The Pentagon hasn’t yet visited the site, according to the person familiar with the matter.

The Defense Department declined to comment on any connection with China but said that it didn’t require TDA to manufacture magnets.

“TDA will research and develop a viable supply chain capable of establishing and maintaining a secure, domestic source of qualified” rare-earth magnetic material, a department spokeswoman said.

China’s dominance of critical minerals—it mines and processes the majority of the world’s rare earths—means the country is hard for the U.S. to avoid.

For instance, the Pentagon is helping fund a rare-earths processing facility at the Mountain Pass mine in California. Shenghe Resources Holding Co. 600392 0.93% , a Chinese state-backed company, owns around 8% of that mine’s owner, MP Materials Corp.

Faced with a scarcity at home, the federal government is looking to allied nations to help sponsor production and processing.

“To secure a reliable, sustainable supply of critical minerals and materials, the United States must work with allies and partners,” the White House said in a fact sheet.

The Pentagon is already helping fund Australia-listed Lynas Rare Earths Ltd. LYC 1.47% , which wants to build a rare-earths processing plant in Texas. Elsewhere, the U.S. International Development Finance Corp., a state-funded lender and investor, has invested $25 million in Ireland-based TechMet Ltd. for critical- mineral-recycling projects.

Other governments are also seeking to invest in rare-earth projects.

Authorities in the Canadian province of Quebec have put around $1.5 million into Commerce Resources Corp. CCE 1.89% , which has also received Canadian government support. The Vancouver, British Columbia-based company has yet to mine or publish feasibility studies of its assets after more than two decades in operation.

Commerce President Christopher Grove said that while the project has taken longer than expected, it was affected by a slump in rare-earth prices.

The Race for Minerals

More WSJ coverage, selected by the editors.

The company in 2018 said it had agreed to give a 75% interest in its main asset to another miner, Saville Resources Inc., if Saville spent $5 million on developing the asset over five years.

At the time, Mr. Grove said in a statement that Saville’s chief executive, Mike Hodge, “is very well known and well regarded by Commerce.” Mr. Grove didn’t disclose that Mike Hodge is his nephew and the son of David Hodge, Commerce’s chief executive. The company also didn’t disclose that Mr. Grove and David Hodge own shares in Saville.

Under International Financial Reporting Standards, which Commerce says it follows, close family relationships should be disclosed to investors.

Commerce’s finance chief, Jody Bellefleur, said disclosures related to the Saville deal were signed off on by the company’s lawyers and auditor. She added that Saville’s Mike Hodge had a long involvement with Commerce’s projects, experience that others wouldn’t have.

A spokeswoman for Investissement Quebec, the province’s investment arm, said it wasn’t informed of the family relationship. The British Columbia Securities Commission declined to comment on individual companies.

Write to Alistair MacDonald at [email protected]

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WASHINGTON—Amtrak and the Biden administration have a $75 billion plan to transform passenger train travel across America—but aside from funding, the biggest challenge might be getting the nation’s freight railroads to get on board.

The nation’s seven major freight carriers have long resisted calls to make more room on their tracks for trains carrying people rather than coal, grain and steel. Current and former federal officials say the greatest impediment to Amtrak’s national expansion could be finding a way to work with freight carriers.

Amtrak owns most of the tracks where it currently offers its flagship service—the Northeast Corridor between Washington and Boston—but it relies in most of the rest of the country on access to the tracks owned by freight railroads.

That arrangement is a result of Amtrak’s DNA. Congress created the company in 1970 as railroads faced financial ruin. Amtrak bailed the railroads out of the least profitable portion of their business: moving people from place to place.

By law, Amtrak trains can take precedence over freight when running over those networks. In practice, according to Amtrak, its customers frequently suffer delays caused by freight-train interference. The two sides have battled for years over new standards for on-time performance.

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In interviews, freight and Amtrak executives said the two sides work cooperatively to balance passenger and freight traffic. In practice, conflicts are frequent.

Amtrak is seeking legal changes to force the freight carriers to provide better access for passenger trains, and some lawmakers are ready to intervene. The House Transportation Committee’s latest authorization bill would grant Amtrak the right to ask a federal court to adjudicate disputes with freight railroads, rather than seeking relief from the existing regulator, the Surface Transportation Board.

“Right now they’ve got it the way they want it,” said Rep. Peter DeFazio (D., Ore.), the committee chairman, in a recent interview, referring to freight railroads. “So we’re going to change the law and give Amtrak better access.”

Jessica Kahanek, a spokeswoman for the Association of American Railroads, a trade group that includes Amtrak and the freight railroads, said Amtrak’s success relies on the freight railroads, since the passenger railroad runs on their tracks across most of the country.

“Passenger and freight railroads share the same goal: dependable, on-time passenger service coupled with efficient, reliable freight service,” she said.

Amtrak officials have said their corridor plan would use the model of regular intercity service that has worked on the Northeast Corridor to new pairs and groups of cities around the country, especially in regions where population and traffic congestion are growing the fastest.

“All we’re really proposing is to connect the major cities in the U.S. with their near neighbors and economic regions,” Amtrak President Stephen Gardner said in an interview in April.

Mr. Gardner acknowledged that there is skepticism, given that most of the country hasn’t had viable intercity train service for decades.

“But you look at the facts: What really is different about Charlotte to Atlanta and Philadelphia Washington? If you can establish something like a trip-time competitive service—there is population there, there are opportunities that can come from that service.”

With capital funding from the Biden administration’s proposed infrastructure plan, Amtrak management now says the expansion can be done without reducing service on its national network of long-distance trains—a prospect that had triggered bipartisan opposition to its corridor vision in the past.

New routes would link Phoenix and Tucson, Ariz., with Southern California. More trains would run from Oklahoma City to Fort Worth, Texas, and new corridors would link Dallas, Houston and San Antonio.

Enhancing passenger service requires adjustments by the freight carries, and nowhere is the struggle to share space more clear than the Gulf Coast. An effort there to restore train service that was halted in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina has turned unusually bitter, notwithstanding support from powerful politicians intent on helping people ride the rails.

In April, after years of negotiation with the freight companies that own the tracks, Amtrak filed a petition with federal regulators to compel access to the rails, allowing passenger trains to run between New Orleans and Mobile, Ala.

Amtrak’s decision to file took the major freight companies on the Gulf Coast route— CSX Corp. and Norfolk Southern —by surprise.

Shippers “are not opposed to passenger service” on the Gulf Coast, an attorney for CSX wrote in a recent Surface Transportation Board filing. “They simply want to ensure that any new passenger service will not damage the quality of existing freight service,” the attorney wrote.

Spokesmen for Norfolk Southern and CSX argued that Amtrak should continue working with an external consultant to study how passenger rail service would affect freight movement, rather than asking the Surface Transportation Board to intervene. An Amtrak spokeswoman said that the freight railroads haven’t provided “real cooperation” during years of study and that the Surface Transportation Board “is now the right forum to get this issue resolved for the people of the Gulf Coast to get the passenger train service they desire and deserve.”

In its own filing with the board, Amtrak noted that Gulf region travelers “have had to wait 15 years for the restoration of passenger rail service as CSX and NS continually move the goal posts, imposing ever-higher burdens they claim Amtrak must meet before they will agree to allow even a single passenger train to run between New Orleans and Mobile.”

The two sides are far apart on the cost it will take to share the rails.

The Transportation Department sided with Amtrak, noting that the federal government thought that $118 million in investment would be required to resume passenger service, while CSX estimated $2.3 billion.

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The gap is partly from different expectations. Before Hurricane Katrina, the Sunset Limited traversed the Gulf Coast three days a week, with little conflict with freight traffic. Amtrak plans to resume service with two round trips a day between New Orleans and Mobile.

The freight railroads and shippers want to continue to study potential impacts, which they say would likely show billions of dollars would be needed to lengthen sidings to prevent passenger trains from snarling traffic.

“My fear is they’re going to start something before knowing the full impact,” said John Driscoll, director and chief executive of the Alabama State Port Authority, which runs the large and growing port in Mobile.

In a Surface Transportation Board filing, the Southern Rail Commission, an interstate panel representing Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi, alleges that CSX has exaggerated the potential costs of restoring service.

The commission has secured $66 million in federal and local funds to improve infrastructure, including lengthening tracks and upgrading switches to allow trains to pass.

On the Gulf Coast, said Mr. Gardner, Amtrak is asking the Surface Transportation Board to decide an existential question.

“Either Amtrak’s right of access is real and we really do have rights to use the nation’s rail infrastructure, and freight carriers do have an obligation to support us, or it’s not,” he said. “It’s either real or it isn’t.”

Write to Ted Mann at [email protected]

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Like other manufacturers struggling with wobbly supply chains, sports-vehicle maker Polaris Inc. PII -0.40% is deciding what to produce based on what parts it has on hand.

Polaris is changing its manufacturing and sales strategies on the fly to cope with shortages of materials and parts and an unreliable global transportation system that has disrupted precise production planning.

The company said it is juggling 30 or so supply-chain constraints for its all-terrain vehicles, motorcycles, snowmobiles, boats and off-road utility vehicles. Polaris changes its plans sometimes daily for what it produces. The company switches models for a while as supply-and-logistics managers scrounge for parts and materials for other models it is unable to build.

When there aren’t enough seats in the supply pipeline to produce four-seat versions of utility terrain vehicles because of a shortage of foam padding, for example, Polaris shifts production to two-seat or three-seat models. When more seats become available, factories circle back to four-seat models or add the missing seats to vehicles that have already been assembled.

“If you’re mixing and matching, eventually you’ll attain a good product mix,” said Kenneth Pucel, operations chief for the Medina, Minn.-based company.

Companies spent decades conditioning their supply chains to deliver just enough components and materials to match production schedules to hold down costs for storing parts. The absence of backup stocks of parts left manufacturers more exposed if a few large suppliers couldn’t deliver on time.

Tight markets typically provide opportunities for some companies to siphon customers away from competitors. But retail dealers say the supply-chain disruptions, transportation bottlenecks and labor shortages for manufacturers are now so pervasive that it is hard for anyone to capitalize. Polaris dealers sold out and the company couldn’t resupply them at their normal levels; instead, customers are now placing deposits on orders sent to factories.

Chris Watts, owner of America’s Motor Sports dealership in Nashville, Tenn., said he carries Polaris and other brands. But his stocks of those brands are mostly depleted as well. “Customers are buying whatever they can get their hands on,” Mr. Watts said.

Like many manufacturers, Polaris had an unexpected surge in sales during the Covid-19 pandemic. When restaurants, movie theaters and fitness centers closed, consumers shifted their spending to boats, motorcycles, all-terrain vehicles and other outdoor vehicles. Polaris’s retail sales in North America last year grew by 25% from 2019 and increased by 70% in the first quarter from last year.

Polaris, which last year had sales of $7 billion, has a leading share in off-road vehicles with about 40% of the North American market, according to industry analysts.

Before the pandemic, Polaris could increase orders to its parts suppliers when needed. But this time, suppliers were less responsive. After a weekslong shutdown of factories last spring to slow the spread of the Covid-19 virus, stocks on hand were depleted. Making matters worse were clogged ocean ports, the freak winter storm that struck Texas in February and a ship blocking the Suez Canal that delayed vessels hauling shipping containers with Polaris’s parts and products from Asia.

Polaris said it devised workarounds to ease the company’s reliance on the hardest-to-get components, including semiconductor chips used in vehicle gauges. The company said its engineers redesigned the gauges on the fly to operate with different chip sets that are more readily available than the chips the company had been using.

When the supply of foam for seats tightened following the storm in Texas in February, Polaris built vehicles without seats for weeks and installed them later when resin for making plastic foam became available again.

About one-third of the vehicles coming off the company’s assembly lines are being held back until missing parts arrive, the company said. That is about twice the volume of new vehicles that typically need to be reworked.

The availability of shock absorbers has been particularly erratic. When shocks for snowmobiles ran out during the fall production season, Polaris shipped some snowmobiles to dealers without them and sent the shocks later for the dealers to install.

“It wasn’t efficient from a cost standpoint, but it bought us time,” Chief Executive Michael Speetzen said.

Shock absorbers for single-seat all-terrain vehicles became so scarce late last year that production managers at the Roseau, Minn., plant switched to a two-seat variant of the four-wheel motorcycles instead that used different but available suspension components. The production lines at the factory that welded metal frames and produced plastic moldings for ATVs were reset overnight to allow production of the two-seat models to begin the following morning.

“You pivot away from parts shortages. Our team is good at building what we can,” said Mr. Pucel.

Mr. Pucel said at least 10% of the company’s suppliers have been under stress since the pandemic, often struggling to obtain enough materials from their own suppliers or to come up with the money needed to purchase additional equipment to increase production. He said the number of suppliers struggling would be greater if Polaris hadn’t culled underperforming companies from its supplier base a couple of years before the pandemic.

Polaris has intervened to purchase equipment and materials for some suppliers in exchange for reduced prices. When production of plastic resin in Texas stopped because of the February storm, Polaris allocated some of its own resin to its suppliers.

In anticipation of extended higher demand, Polaris is expanding its Monterrey, Mexico, plant where some of its most popular utility terrain vehicle are assembled. The company is increasing boat production at its Elkhart, Ind., plant and reopening another in Syracuse, Ind. It has hired about 1,000 more employees in the past year, a 7% increase in the workforce.

Maintenance on equipment and rush jobs to realign assembly lines to produce different models often happen overnight or on weekends. Disruptions in production and the social-distancing procedures in plants because of Covid-19 have been rough on employees.

“The whole organization has been on high alert,” CEO Speetzen said. “It’s one of the things I worry about.”

Write to Bob Tita at [email protected]

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Meghan Markle will today appear on US radio to give her only interview about her children's book The Bench in a Father's Day interview recorded before the birth of her daughter Lilibet.  

The Duchess of Sussex will be speaking to NPR Weekend between 1pm-3pm (8am-10am EST) to talk about her £12.99 book, which topped the New York Times Bestsellers List for children's picture books but sold just 3,212 copies in the UK its first week since publication on June 8. 

It marks her first interview since she and Prince Harry accused the Royal Family of racism and not helping the duchess when she was suicidal in their chat with Oprah in March - the first of a string of bombshell allegations which rocked the foundations of the House of Windsor. 

Announcing the NPR broadcast, the Sussexes' friend and preferred journalist Omid Scobie tweeted: 'Fresh off the heels of her first children's book becoming a certified #1 New York Times bestseller, Duchess Meghan will be giving her only interview about #TheBench to @samanthabalaban at the renowned @NPRWeekend show, this Sunday between 8am-10am Eastern.'

Speaking to producer Samantha Balaban, Meghan said the book is a poem which she was inspired to write after watching Harry and their son Archie together. The duchess said she got Harry a bench for his first Father's Day and wrote the poem on a little plaque on the back of the bench.  

The duchess revealed: 'As most of us do, you go, what am I going to get them as a gift? And I thought I just wanted something sentimental and a place for him to have as a bit of a home base with our son.  

'I often find, and especially in this past year, I think so many of us realized how much happens in the quiet. 

'It was definitely moments like that, watching them from out of the window and watching [Harry] just, you know, rock him [Archie] to sleep or carry him or, you know... those lived experiences, from my observation, are the things that I infused in this poem.' 

She added: 'It's a love story. It's really just about growing with someone and having this deep connection and this trust so that, be at good times or bad, you know that you had this person. I really hope that people can see this as a love story that transcends the story of my family.'  

Lilibet 'Lili' Diana Mountbatten-Windsor - Harry and Meghan's second child, who was born on June 4 in Santa Barbara - also features in the book, which was illustrated before her birth.  

Early reviews were not universally positive, although one cooed that 'the book's storytelling and illustration give us snapshots of shared moments that evoke a deep sense of warmth'. 

Meghan Markle at the University of Johannesburg, Johannesburg, South Africa, October 1, 2019

The duke and duchess with their then baby son Archie during a photocall in St George's Hall at Windsor Castle in Berkshire

Meghan Markle has written a children's book, The Bench, about the relationship between fathers and sons

Omid Scobie, the Sussexes' preferred royal reporter, tweeted: 'Fresh off the heels of her first children's book becoming a certified #1 New York Times bestseller, Duchess Meghan will be giving her only interview about #TheBench to @samanthabalaban at the renowned @NPRWeekend show, this Sunday between 8am-10am Eastern'

Another described it as 'soothing, loving, although a little schmaltzy in places', while a third said it read 'as if it has been penned as a self-help manual for need parents rather than as a story to entertain small kids'.

A further review said: 'One wonders how any publisher could have thought fit to publish this grammar-defying set of badly rhyming cod homilies, let alone think any child anywhere would want to read it. But that's planet Sussex for you, where even the business of raising a family is all about the brand.' 

An illustration shows the entire Sussex family in the garden of their Californian mansion.

Harry can be seen feeding their rescued battery hen chickens - who also featured in the couple's bombshell interview with Oprah Winfrey earlier this year - with son Archie, two, with their two dogs, beagle Guy and black Labrador Pula, running around in the grounds.

And Meghan can been seen amidst her vegetable patch with a baby in a sling around her chest.

Another illustration features a bearded ginger father - who bears a resemblance to the duke - cradling a smiling baby on a bench under a tree. The text reads: 'This is your bench, where life will begin, for you and our son, our baby, our kin.' 

In another illustration, a father and son duo each wear pink tutus while performing ballet poses. The accompanying words read: 'You'll love him. You'll listen. You'll be his supporter.'

Alongside a picture of a father and son playing with toy dinosaurs, Meghan wrote: 'When life feels in shambles, you'll help him find order.' 

A father using a wheelchair also features in The Bench. He is drawn fixing his son's shoes alongside the text: 'This is your bench, for papa and son.' It continues on the next page alongside a father and son wearing turbans: 'To celebrate joys and victories won.' 

Harry and Meghan revealed they were expecting a girl in March during their explosive tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey. It was a lighter moment during a series of bombshells that left the monarchy in crisis.

Meghan accused an unnamed member of the royal family - not the Queen nor Duke of Edinburgh - of racism, saying they expressed concern about how dark Archie's skin tone might be before he was born.

The duchess also called out the institution for not helping her when she was suicidal.

The Queen responded by saying the issues were taken 'very seriously' but that 'some recollections may vary' and the matter would addressed by the family privately. 

Harry has gone on to accuse the royal family of 'total neglect' when his wife Meghan was feeling suicidal amid harassment on social media. 

In his Apple TV mental health series with Winfrey he lambasted the parenting skills of the Prince of Wales, criticising his father for expecting his sons to endure the pressures of royal life, just as Charles has done, instead of protecting them. 

The duke told Winfrey he felt 'really let down' by his father and how 'there's a lot of hurt that's happened' but he wanted to try to heal the relationship. 

He said of his rift with his brother the Duke of Cambridge that the 'relationship is 'space' at the moment' and that he hoped time would make things better. The duke later appeared to suggest that his father and the Queen and Philip had failed as parents. 

Speaking on the Armchair Expert podcast that was broadcast in May, the duke said he wanted to 'break the cycle' of 'genetic pain and suffering' for the sake of his own children. He said of Charles: 'He's treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?'  

Harry and Meghan stepped down as senior working royals in March 2020 in a quest for personal and financial freedom after struggling with royal life. They have signed multimillion-pound deals with Netflix and Spotify, and set up their Archewell Foundation.

It comes amid claims that Prince William split his household from Prince Harry's following an angry phone conversation over claims Meghan Markle was bullying palace staff in 2018.

Harry and Meghan, holding Archie, at the Desmond and Leah Tutu Legacy Foundation in Cape Town, September 25, 2019

A friend of the Sussexes said 'William threw Harry out', according to Robert Lacey's book Battle of the Brothers which is featured in the Sunday Times, after the furious phone call which allegedly ended with the Duke of Sussex hanging up on his brother.

The book claims that William suspected Meghan was 'hostile' to the royal system and possibly planned on leaving the monarchy from the very start and returning to America.

Staff claim in the book that Meghan 'played the victim, but was a bully' and treated courtiers poorly in line with her experiences in Hollywood, a modus operandi allegedly passed on to Harry who was heard 'screaming' at his staff. Meghan and Harry have always denied the bullying allegations.

William is alleged to have told a friend he thought she had an 'agenda' and felt 'hurt' and 'betrayed' by the rift, with the heir to the throne telling a friend his wife Kate 'had been wary of Meghan from the start'.

He said he felt Meghan was 'stealing his beloved brother away from him', according to extracts from the book, and believed that she did not understand how the Royal system worked.

Lacey quotes a Kensington Palace courtier as saying: 'Meghan portrayed herself as the victim, but she was the bully. People felt run over by her. They thought she was a complete narcissist and sociopath — basically unhinged.'

The author also writes that he believes that William thought that Meghan had an 'agenda' and had voiced his reservations to Harry before their engagement, but that the row after Meghan and Harry's trip to Australia in 2018 sealed his decision to split their households.

In their infamous Oprah interview, Harry cited the Australia 2018 tour as the moment 'the family got to see how incredible she is at the job' while comparing her and the alleged treatment she received by the royal family to his mother Princess Diana.

The rift was sparked by an official email claiming Meghan was bullying palace staff, which was sent by Jason Knauf, communications secretary to the Cambridges and Sussexes, in October 2018. Staff had already been allegedly coined a 'half joke' #freeHarry. 

A spokesman for the Sussexes has since said the couple are the target of a smear campaign, and denied allegations of bullying.

William heard the allegations from Simon Case, his private secretary, who was sent the email. He immediately picked up the phone to call his brother, but the conversation ended with Harry slamming down the phone, the book claims.

Lacey also dwelled on the Sussex' interview with Oprah Winfrey, where the author wrote Prince Harry claimed the brothers' falling out began because the Firm was jealous his wife Meghan was so good with people, something he said echoed his mother Princess Diana's treatment.

But the brothers were no longer on speaking terms before Harry and Meghan left for Australia, the book states, adding that it was bullying allegations that sparked a brutal row.

Meet the Sussex Sultans of Spin: How a nine-strong team including Nick Clegg's ex-aide, the producer of a revenge movie and a celebrity lawyer are trying to help Harry and Meghan win the royal briefing war

The Duchess of Sussex has famously bemoaned the 'men in grey suits' – faceless courtiers who supposedly run Royal life. Now, though, Harry and Meghan have assembled their own team of backstairs advisers to help them win the transatlantic briefing war.

Known as the LA Spin Machine, they are prolific in their dealings with the press, ensuring that the Sussex point of view is ever-present in British and US media.

So prolific, in fact, that the Queen and Buckingham Palace have been driven to respond. As revealed in last week's Mail on Sunday, the Palace has abandoned its policy of 'never complain, never explain' and is now determined to correct any 'mistruths' that distort the Queen's private conversations or those of other senior Royals.

This very significant change of heart followed competing claims over whether or not Harry and Meghan had sought the Queen's permission to call their new daughter Lilibet – Her Majesty's childhood name.

The Sussexes' advisers are described, with typical hyperbole, as part of 'a rapidly expanding team that's deeply dedicated to advancing systemic cultural change and supporting compassionate communities across the world'.

What that means in practice is they update the couple's Archewell website, brief friendly journalists, post positive messages about Harry and Meghan on their social media channels... and are on hand to instruct lawyers.

They can also call on a wider web of unpaid celebrity friends and associates to play their part to boost Brand Sussex.

Like their Palace counterparts, the spin doctors hired to get the Sussex 'truth' out into the world prefer to remain in the shadows.

But they are unlikely to wear grey suits. For, as The Mail on Sunday can reveal, this influential team is largely female, stiletto-heeled, sleek-haired, and drawn from the highest echelons of film, showbiz, politics, sport and law…

TOYA HOLNESS

Global press secretary

Toya Holness (pictured) had to calm an international media storm over the Sussexes' decision to name their newborn daughter Lilibet Diana

Toya Holness had to calm an international media storm over the Sussexes' decision to name their newborn daughter Lilibet Diana. When asked, Ms Holness, 33, briefed journalists that Harry and Meghan would not have chosen the name without the Queen's backing.

The American spin doctor issued a statement, saying: 'The Duke spoke with his family in advance of the announcement, his grandmother was the first family member he called. He shared their hope of naming their daughter Lilibet in her honor [sic]. Had she not been supportive, they would not have used the name.'

But that's not the same version of events that was shared by those at the Palace who told this newspaper that Harry's conversation with his grandmother was a 'telling not an asking'.

Ms Holness, who has a degree in strategic PR from the University of Southern California, joined the Sussexes in October and was promoted in March to oversee their PR on both sides of the Atlantic.

She is one of a small band who speak to Harry and Meghan daily. She may well know who bought the internet domain name LilibetDiana.com just a few days before their daughter's name was made public.

In the biography section of her Twitter account, Ms Holness writes: 'I get to help people tell their stories for a living' and uses the hashtag #FightOn.

She played football at the University of California, Riverside, between 2006 and 2008. A profile of her on the university website records that her career goal was 'to make more money than her husband'.

Jane Austen and the modern American novelist Nicholas Sparks are listed as her favourite authors, she enjoys teaching dance classes and designing clothes, and says that the ITV drama The Palace – about a fictional version of the Royal Family – is one of her favourite shows.

CHRISTINE SCHIRMER

Head of communications

Christine Schirmer's (pictured) experience working for the image-sharing website Pinterest in California's Silicon Valley was no doubt a selling point for Harry and Meghan

Bilingual in English and French, Christine Schirmer's experience working for the image-sharing website Pinterest in California's Silicon Valley was no doubt a selling point for Harry and Meghan.

The 42-year-old also speaks fluent 'Sussex' and is responsible for ensuring 'diverse and open access to their work by engaging with credible global, specialist and grassroots outlets'.

Her strength is said to be 'launching a global brand' and on her LinkedIn page, Ms Schirmer says she loves 'building teams, learning new things and making the conversation interesting'.

She is a graduate of Northwestern University in Chicago, where Meghan also studied. It's not known whether their paths crossed there. Christine then worked as a corporate communications manager at Apple and for San Francisco-based marketing company Digg.

JENNY AFIA

Senior media and privacy lawyer, and partner at Schillings

Cambridge graduate Jenny Afia works closely with celebrity clients on privacy issues, often when paparazzi are involved. She is a go-to solicitor for Meghan and Harry in any legal dispute.

She won the Young Solicitor of the Year title at the 2008 British Legal Awards, and has been ranked as a leader in her field in the Chambers and Partners legal directory ever since.

She says 'privacy is to do with control' and believes, intriguingly, that 'how you behave impacts on how much privacy you get'.

In a recent newspaper profile she admitted sending a legal notice to her future husband after their second date. 'He was a journalist for a tabloid newspaper at the time and found himself on my wrong side early in our relationship,' she has said. But he got his own back. When a Twitter user recently asked 'Who is Jenny Afia?', he replied: 'A woman who hasn't emptied the dishwasher all day.'

Cambridge graduate Jenny Afia (pictured) works closely with celebrity clients on privacy issues, often when paparazzi are involved. She is a go-to solicitor for Meghan and Harry in any legal dispute.

Afia's firm, Schillings, was called in by the Sussexes when the BBC reported that the couple had not asked the Queen for permission before naming their daughter Lilibet. A legal letter said the story was 'false and defamatory'. The Palace is said to take a different view.

JAMES HOLT

Executive director of Archewell Foundation

Publicity guru James Holt is a major part of Team Sussex.

Formerly a local newspaper reporter in Shropshire, he became an adviser to Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister. 

Holt was promoted to head of Government communications at Downing Street before taking on a job with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. 

Publicity guru James Holt (pictured in 2018 at the Sussexes wedding) is a major part of Team Sussex. Formerly a local newspaper reporter in Shropshire, he became an adviser to Nick Clegg when he was Deputy Prime Minister

He defected to Team Sussex and spent five years working for the couple – latterly as their UK spokesman – before being promoted in March to executive director of their Archewell Foundation.

It's thought Holt will soon move to the US to be close to the Sussex epicentre in Montecito, California.

BEN BROWNING

Head of content, Archewell productions and Archewell Audio

British film-maker Ben Browning was hired in March to lead Harry and Meghan's film and podcast work.

His recent credits include the Emerald Fennell feminist revenge film, Promising Young Woman.

British film-maker Ben Browning (pictured) was hired in March to lead Harry and Meghan's film and podcast work

Another former project – which might have left Harry uncomfortable – was when Browning bought the rights to a film script about the death of Princess Diana.

 Provisionally titled Inquest, the movie is still classed as 'in development', although Browning has wisely now removed it from a list of his work on film industry website IMDb.

Browning's latest release was a documentary about US pornography baron Larry Flynt, while he has several films in post-production, including Red Rocket about a washed-up adult movie star, and comedy Sharp Stick, written and directed by Lena Dunham, notorious for her sexually explicit work.

KELEIGH THOMAS MORGAN

PR adviser and partner at Sunshine Sachs & Associates

Keleigh Thomas Morgan is a long-time friend of Meghan's and was instrumental in setting the Sussexes up in LA, sharing her contacts and a strong network of advisers and famous friends. 

She also helped devise the strategy for the couple's African tour in 2019, when they were still working members of the Royal Family.

The 45-year-old was a guest at their wedding and has also represented US actor Tyler Perry, whose LA mansion Harry and Meghan used as a base while house-hunting.

Keleigh Thomas Morgan (pictured) is a long-time friend of Meghan's and was instrumental in setting the Sussexes up in LA, sharing her contacts and a strong network of advisers and famous friends

Although not on the Archewell staff, her role as head of the West Coast office of New York-based celebrity agency Sunshine Sachs has been crucial for establishing the Sussexes in California.

NICK COLLINS

Consultant and Meghan's former talent agent

A partner at the Gersh talent agency, Nick Collins names 'former Suits star Meghan Markle' on his formidable roster of clients.

He is said to have given her advice as she made the shift from TV star to member of the Royal Family and reportedly also helped her extricate herself from The Firm not long afterwards.

A partner at the Gersh talent agency, Nick Collins (left) names 'former Suits star Meghan Markle' on his formidable roster of clients

When it was announced in March that he was no longer working with Meghan, it was made clear that there was 'no bad blood' between the pair and that he remains a consultant.

JANINA GAVANKAR

Loyal Meghanista

Actress Janina Gavankar, another long-time friend of Meghan, isn't on the Sussex payroll but she frequently appears as a voluntary spin doctor battling to contradict criticism of the Duchess.

At the height of Meghan's Palace 'bullying' controversy, 40-year-old Gavankar called the Duchess 'kind, strong, open', adding: 'Here's what she's not: 'a bully.' ANY of us who know her, feel the same thing from her broken silence: Relief.'

Actress Janina Gavankar (pictured with Meghan), another long-time friend of Meghan, isn't on the Sussex payroll but she frequently appears as a voluntary spin doctor battling to contradict criticism of the Duchess

CATHERINE ST-LAURENT

Adviser and former chief of staff

After less than a year as the Sussexes' chief of staff, Catherine St-Laurent stepped down from her position but is said to continue to act as a 'senior adviser', providing 'daily guidance and support' to the couple.

Her LinkedIn page describes her as a 'global, multilingual executive with nearly two decades of experience across multiple sectors and geographies developing, executing and managing philanthropic and communications strategies and campaigns to drive social impact'.

Previous experience includes 'communications activities' for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and roles at HSBC and sports consultancy Vero Communications.

After less than a year as the Sussexes' chief of staff, Catherine St-Laurent (pictured) stepped down from her position but is said to continue to act as a 'senior adviser'

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Charles won't let Archie be a prince, even when he's King: Prince of Wales's plan not to include grandson among slimmed-down, lower cost frontline royals is revealed as row that ignited Oprah outburst

Prince Charles is to ensure that his two-year-old grandson Archie will never be a Prince, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.

The heir to the throne has made it clear that Harry and Meghan's son will have no place among frontline Royals as he plans a slimmed-down Monarchy after he becomes King. 

The move has incensed the Sussexes and is thought to have prompted the series of bitter accusations the couple have levelled at Charles and the Royal Family from across the Atlantic.

A grandchild of the sovereign has long had the right to be a Prince, but Charles is determined to limit the number of key Royals, believing the public does not wish to pay for an ever-expanding Monarchy.

Charles has told the Sussexes that he will change key legal documents to ensure that Archie cannot get the title he would once have inherited by right, according to a source close to the couple.

The decision, which follows months of fraught discussion behind the scenes, has plunged relations between Harry and his relatives to a dangerous new low.

'Harry and Meghan were told Archie would never be a Prince, even when Charles became King,' confirmed the source.

Prince Charles is to change the monarchy to ensure that his two-year-old grandson Archie will never be a Prince

Charles has told the Sussexes that he will change key legal documents to ensure that Archie cannot get the title he would once have inherited by right

The revelation comes amid a series of explosive claims by respected Royal biographer Robert Lacey whose newly revised book Battle Of The Brothers states:

• Prince William in effect threw Harry out of their combined Royal household following complaints that Meghan had been bullying their aides – a claim she has denied as a 'calculated smear';
• William had been horrified by Meghan's alleged bullying and confronted his brother in person;
• One Kensington Palace staffer described Meghan as 'a narcissist and sociopath – basically unhinged';
• William believed Meghan was 'stealing his beloved brother away from him' and felt hurt and betrayed by Harry.

Meanwhile, The Mail on Sunday has learned that Harry demanded the right to approve at least one writer or journalist to work alongside the usual 'press pack' of Royal reporters at the unveiling of the statue to Princess Diana next month, so deep is his distrust of the British media.

The full details of Charles's plan for a slimmed-down Monarchy have never been revealed, but it has been speculated that only heirs to the throne and their immediate families will receive full titles, financial support from the public purse through the Sovereign Grant and police protection funded by the taxpayer. 

Charles and his younger brother, the Duke of York, have already been at loggerheads about what security Andrew's daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie should receive in future. Now Harry and Meghan have found themselves caught up, too.

Insiders suggest they hadn't seen the move coming, and were shocked to find that Charles will take the active step of changing legal instruments known as the Letters Patent in order to exclude Archie and others.

The loss will be all the more galling as the Sussexes havemade a point of refusing to use another, lesser title for their son, who is technically the Earl of Dumbarton. They took that decision safe in the knowledge that Archie would become a Prince in due course. Or so they thought.

Earlier this year, a source close to the Sussexes confirmed they did indeed expect Archie to be named a Prince when Charles, Archie's grandfather, acceded to the throne. Their spokesman at the time was even instructed to remind journalists of that 'fact'.

The Sussexes finally learned that would not be the case just before sitting down with Oprah Winfrey for their first bombshell interview in March.

Insiders suggest the issue was still raw at the time of the recording – which might help account for the devastating criticisms they unleashed on the show, including the damaging implication that an unnamed senior member of the Royal Family had referred to Archie in a racist way.

The move has incensed the Sussexes and is thought to have prompted the series of bitter accusations the couple have levelled at Charles and the Royal Family

Charles is determined to limit the number of key Royals, believing the public does not wish to pay for an ever-expanding Monarchy

It also throws a spotlight on one section of the interview which had raised eyebrows at the time. Speaking to Oprah, Meghan recalled how, when she had been pregnant, 'They [the Royal Family] were saying they didn't want him to be a Prince or a Princess'.

She continued: 'You know, the other piece of that convention is, there's a convention – I forget if it was George V or George VI convention – that when you're the grandchild of the monarch, so when Harry's dad becomes King, automatically Archie and our next baby would become Prince or Princess, or whatever they were going to be… But also it's not their right to take it away.'

This puzzled Royal watchers, who reminded the Sussexes they had very publicly declared that they didn't want a title for their son, who would be known as Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.

Some pointed out that a son of Prince Harry's – a great-grandchild of the Queen – had no automatic right to be titled a Prince, or receive a security allowance. But that was to ignore the real drama taking place behind the scenes. Because Meghan was actually referring to the secret news that Archie would never become a Prince, not even when Charles was King.

A source said: 'This is what nobody realised from the interview. The real thing was that Charles was going to take active steps to strip Archie of his ultimate birthright.'

Charles and his younger brother, the Duke of York, have already been at loggerheads about what security Andrew's daughters, Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie should receive in future

The existing rules for Royal titles were established in Letters Patent dated November 20, 1917.

In these, King George V, the Queen's grandfather, allowed the title of Prince and Princess to be given to the children of the sovereign, the children of the sovereign's sons and the eldest living son of the eldest son of the Prince of Wales – in this case, Prince George.

Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis, William's daughter and younger son, received their titles not by right but as gifts of the Queen, who issued new Letters Patent to that effect in 2013. Similarly, when King, Charles will have the power to change George V's Letters Patent how he sees fit – and so streamline The Firm.

An insider said: 'Charles has never made any secret of the fact that he wants a slimmed-down Monarchy when he becomes King.

'He realises that the public don't want to pay for a huge Monarchy and, as he said, the balcony at Buckingham Palace would probably collapse.'

Even now, not all grandchildren of the Queen are titled Prince or Princess. As she is a daughter, not a son, of the sovereign, Princess Anne's children had no automatic right to the title but out of choice she also declined lesser titles for her children Peter and Zara.

The Queen's youngest son, Prince Edward, thought it prudent not to name his daughter and son as Princess and Prince. Instead, they are titled Lady and Viscount respectively.

A Royal source said last night: 'We are not going to speculate about the succession or comment on rumours coming out of America.'

Harry wants to have his own journalist at Diana memorial: Prince is set to appoint approved writer to work alongside him when he returns to UK - after author revealed furious clash with William over Meghan 'bullying' claims

Sitting side by side, leafing through a photo album, William and Harry are sharing cherished memories of their mother. Their conversation is easy, unconstrained, charming. It is a rare window on a fraternal dynamic and evidence, if it were needed, of an unshakeable bond.

That was four years ago, the occasion a TV documentary on the 20th anniversary of Diana's death. Today, with the publication of a book revealing extraordinary new details of their toxic rift, the gulf between the brothers seems unbridgeable. Quite how it has come to this seems bewildering.

In less than two weeks, on what would have been Diana's 60th birthday, the brothers will reunite for the unveiling of her statue, but what should have been a simple, unfussy act of commemoration will doubtless turn into something altogether different.

Take Harry's approach to the event. The Mail on Sunday has learned that the Duke of Sussex now wants his own journalist to cover the day.

Harry and Meghan have long decried the coverage they receive from the British media, claiming it is UK-biased and lacks diversity. Not wishing to leave the statue unveiling at Kensington Palace to the official 'Royal Rota' of journalists, they are now expected to 'appoint' at least one approved writer to work alongside them.

In less than two weeks, on what would have been Diana's 60th birthday, the brothers will reunite for the unveiling of her statue, but what should have been a simple, unfussy act of commemoration will doubtless turn into something altogether different. Pictured: Anzac Day service in 2018

It is just the kind of imperiousness that rankles with the Duke of Cambridge.

The Times reported yesterday that a blistering row between the Duke and his brother over bullying claims led to them splitting their households, with a friend of the future King noting: 'William threw Harry out.'

Previously, it was assumed that Harry precipitated the separation.

The account of how William and Harry fell out appears in the paperback edition of Battle Of Brothers by historian and biographer Robert Lacey, which is being serialised in The Times.

The newspaper revealed in March how Jason Knauf, communications secretary to the Cambridges and Sussexes, claimed in October 2018 that Meghan had been bullying members of staff. Lawyers for the Sussexes have denied the allegations.

After William heard the bullying allegations, he rang Harry, according to Lacey. The conversation was heated and Harry 'shut off his phone angrily' so William went to speak to him personally.

Lacey writes: 'The Prince was horrified by what he had just been told about Meghan's alleged behaviour, and he wanted to hear what Harry had to say. The showdown between the brothers was fierce and bitter.'

Separately, The Mail on Sunday has been told there have been other, equally intense clashes. None more so, according to a source, than on the eve of Harry's wedding. Details are sketchy but this row was said to have been particularly ferocious.

The Times revealed in March how Jason Knauf, communications secretary to the Cambridges and Sussexes, claimed in October 2018 that Meghan had been bullying members of staff. Lawyers for the Sussexes have denied the allegations

The Princes had already fallen out before Harry and Meghan's engagement after William had expressed doubts about the speed at which their relationship was progressing. Lacey writes that William believed Meghan was following an 'agenda' and Kate, too, according to a friend, was wary of her from the outset.

The author quotes one Kensington Palace staffer as saying: 'Meghan portrayed herself as the victim, but she was the bully. People felt run over by her.

'They thought she was a complete narcissist and sociopath – basically unhinged.'

According to the book, jealousy is at the heart of the brothers' rift. Or at least that is how Harry sees it. The Duke views his triumphant October 2018 return with Meghan from their Australian tour as a defining moment in their deteriorating relationship.

William, of course, would reject any notion that he and his wife resented the Diana-like popularity Meghan enjoyed at the time. In any case, the book says, the brothers were no longer on speaking terms before the Sussexes set off for Australia, owing to William's anger over the bullying allegations.

PR man Knauf, 34, was concerned by stories of mistreatment brought to him by colleagues and resolved to set down the facts, as he saw them, for the record.

In an email to William's private secretary, Knauf wrote: 'I am very concerned that the Duchess was able to bully two PAs out of the household in the past year.'

His office had received 'report after report', he wrote, from people who had witnessed 'unacceptable behaviour' by Meghan towards this member of staff.

As early as 2017, around the time of the couple's engagement, according to a report in The Times, a senior aide had spoken to the couple about the difficulties caused by their treatment of staff. 'It's not my job to coddle people,' Meghan was said to have replied.

Today, with the publication of a book revealing extraordinary new details of their toxic rift, the gulf between the brothers seems unbridgeable. Quite how it has come to this seems bewildering

It is significant that it was Knauf – whose PR expertise Meghan valued and who was one of her most senior advisers – that raised the issue. Until this point, Lacey says Texas-born Knauf had taken 'considerable stick from some of his non-royal contacts' who criticised him for being overly protective of the Duchess.

But numerous colleagues were bringing stories of what they said they had suffered at Meghan's hands, including emotional cruelty and manipulation, and he could not remain silent.

The Times reported that several people maintained they had been 'humiliated' by the Duchess, and that criticism also extended to Harry. 'I overheard a conversation between Harry and one of his top aides,' one Kensington Palace courtier told Lacey. 'Harry was screaming and screaming down the phone. Team Sussex was a really toxic environment. People shouting and screaming in each other's faces.'

It is unclear whether Knauf brought his dossier to William personally or whether it was submitted via an aide. Either way, the troubling stories astonished and horrified the Duke, who knew and liked all the individuals named in the dossier. After all, they were his staff too.

Taking their cue from the Queen, William and Kate had always treated their staff like family. What William heard, or possibly read, crystallised a long-held suspicion –that Meghan was fundamentally hostile towards the Royal system.

This interpretation, said Meghan, was wholly wrong.

In a statement issued to The Times early in March this year, her lawyers denied all allegations of bullying as inaccurate and defamatory and the product of what they called a 'smear campaign'.

The Duchess wished to fit in and be accepted, they insisted. She had left her life in North America to commit herself to her new role.

The Times reported yesterday that a blistering row between the Duke and his brother over bullying claims led to them splitting their households, with a friend of the future King noting: 'William threw Harry out.'

Lacey stresses that his account of this period is based on Knauf's written accusations and 'William's personal account of these events to one of his friends, who then spoke to this author'.

He writes that while the showdown between the brothers was fierce, William's pre-engagement questioning of Meghan's suitability had been quite reasonable. Some of William's reservations chimed with the allegations in Knauf's dossier. Lacey says William felt that Meghan was 'undermining some precious principles of the Monarchy if she really was treating her staff in this way'.

Not only that, she seemed to be stealing his brother away from him. Courtiers would later coin a hashtag – #freeHarry.

William felt deeply wounded. 'Hurt' and 'betrayed' were the two feelings he described to his friend. The elder brother had always felt so protective. He had seen it as his job to look out for Harry.

'At the end of the day, the British Crown and all it stood for with its ancient traditions, styles and values – the mission of the Monarchy – had to matter more to William than his brother did,' writes Lacey.

Fiercely combative in his wife's defence, Harry meanwhile was equally furious that William should believe the accusations against Meghan. Whether claims of racism surfaced during these heated discussions is not known.

But Harry made clear to the world in his interview with Oprah Winfrey that he considered his family's response to Meghan to have been essentially 'racist'.

Lacey writes: 'William, for his part, felt just as strongly about Meghan and the need for her subversive 'agenda' to be removed from the operations of the British Monarchy, which she did not appear to understand or respect.

Harry made clear to the world in his interview with Oprah Winfrey that he considered his family's response to Meghan to have been essentially 'racist'

'He certainly wanted Meghan removed, for a start, from the hitherto harmonious joint household that he and his brother had operated together for the best part of a decade. William simply did not want her or Harry around any more.'

It is little surprise, then, that Meghan will not accompany Harry to the statue unveiling. Indeed it is far from clear when she will return to these shores.

There was some speculation that Archie would travel with his father but that it not now expected to happen.

The statue, created by Ian Rank-Broadley, has been years in the making. William and Harry, who were just 15 and 12 when their mother was killed in a car crash in Paris, announced the idea in 2017.

At the time, a Palace statement said that it was 'hoped' that the statue would be 'unveiled… before the end of 2017'. Questions over the design and where it should be displayed led to delays.

Later that year, when the Princes announced that Rank-Broadley had been chosen as the sculptor, the Duke of Cambridge tweeted that the statue was 'expected to be unveiled in 2019'.

The brothers convened a committee to oversee the project and sought funds from private investors. Those with a key role on the committee included trusted adviser Jamie Lowther-Pinkerton, the Princes' former private secretary and Prince George's godfather; Diana's sister Lady Sarah McCorquodale and Julia Samuel, a close friend of their mother.

Gerry Farrell, co-owner of London's Sladmore Contemporary gallery, was brought in as an artistic adviser. Towards the beginning of the process, he described it as a 'challenging commission'.

It would take another two years and many more transatlantic discussions between the brothers before the statue would finally be made public.

Mr Farrell said: 'The Princes remember her as a mother, and publicly she meant so many different things to different people. It was important for the princes to convey the depth of her character and variety of her interests.'

There were other concerns, too.For William, and particularly young Harry, the public reaction to their mother's death baffled them.

William felt deeply wounded. 'Hurt' and 'betrayed' were the two feelings he described to his friend. The elder brother had always felt so protective. He had seen it as his job to look out for Harry

In a recent documentary series on Apple+ with Oprah Winfrey, Harry spoke of being unable to 'process' his mother's death. Speaking about walking behind his mother's coffin at the funeral, he said: 'Sharing the grief of my mother's death with the world, for me the thing I remember the most is the sound of the horses' hooves going along the mall. The red brick road.

'By this time, both of us were in shock. It was like I was outside of my body and walking along just doing what was expected of me. Showing one tenth of the emotion everyone else was showing.

'I was like, 'This is my mum. You never even met her.'

Worried that the statue might draw crowds and a sea of flowers, the Princes agreed to erect it in the Princess Diana Memorial Garden at Kensington Palace, where the Princess of Wales lived until her death and where Harry and Meghan announced their engagement.

The Princes are understood to be 'impressed' with the finished design.

Whether they will ever be able to find common ground on the issues that divide them is another matter entirely. 

A newly-married couple have shaved their heads instead of partaking in a first dance at their wedding in a heartwarming gesture of solidarity with the bride's mother suffering from cancer.

Jony Lee and her husband posted the footage to TikTok, which starts with a speech by Ms Lee before her new husband sits on a chair in front of her.

'My parents think we're going to be doing a traditional Filippino dance where you stick money in our clothes to get more money,' she says in the clip.

'If you do have a bit of cash on you we're going to be shaving our heads for cancer, and whatever money you lay in front of us we will be donating it tonight.'

Jony Lee and her husband shaved their heads to support her mother who is battling cancer

'We love you so much and we want to show our solidarity with you,' Jony says

Jony begins shaving her husband's head as another couple emotionally embrace the groom.

Another man and the groom rub each other's shaved heads after Jony is finished.

Ms Lee then gets in the chair herself as her husband shaves off her luscious, long brunette locks.

'We love you so much and we want to show our solidarity with you,' she says to her mother..

An older woman wearing pink then joins the freshly-shaved couple on stage as they embrace. 

The video has received more than 3.8million likes on the social media platform, with over 26,000 comments praising the couple for their 'selflessness'. 

Organisers of the Tokyo Olympics opened the athletes' village to the media on Sunday, showing off apartments and a timber-laced shopping plaza where 11,000 athletes would stay and mingle during the sporting extravaganza.

The once-delayed Games are due to start on July 23 despite concern that the influx of thousands of people from around the world would contribute to the spread of Covid-19.

Japan has avoided the kind of explosive outbreaks that crippled many other countries. But its vaccination programme has been slow and the medical system pushed to the brink in parts of the country. 

Organisers of the Tokyo Olympics unveiled the large athletes' village to the media on Sunday

Members of the media pack are seen snapping photographs of a sign placed inside the village

The main dining hall is seen above, but athletes will now be expected to eat alone and distance

The government's drive to hold the Games has been criticised by hospitals and doctors' unions.

Underscoring the concern, a Ugandan athlete arriving in Japan late on Saturday for a preparation camp ahead of the Olympics was found to be infected with the virus, public broadcaster NHK said.

Athletes will be shuttled in and out of the village and be tested for the coronavirus every day.

The athletes will all stay inside tall residential buildings for the duration of their time in Japan

A typical bedroom in one of the residential units features a bed, storage space and a good view

11,000 athletes will fly to Tokyo for the showpiece and set up camp inside buildings like above

Olympic rules ban singing and chanting during events, with masks required at almost all times.

'We want this to be an athletes' village that the athletes will remember, but at the same time they must follow very strict rules about masks,' said Saburo Kawabuchi, mayor of the Tokyo 2020 athletes' village.

'Except when eating, training, competing and sleeping, they must wear masks constantly, which is a very trying circumstance for global athletes.'

Organisers were originally planning to feed residents of the village in vast dining halls, with the largest holding the capacity to seat 4,500 people.

The outside of the village has drawn on minimalistic designs and follows the Olympics' theme

A bank will be available in the plaza with athletes able to make use of a sizeable shopping area

Athletes can also use a dry cleaning booth whilst on site, helping them to focus on the Games

But now, organisers will ask athletes to dine alone, maintain social distancing from others and wipe down surfaces after eating to curb the spread of the virus.

The shopping area of the village features an automatic teller machine, dry cleaner, post office, bank and courier counter.

The wooden plaza, which draws on Japanese minimalist design aesthetics, follows the Tokyo 2020 theme of using timber in the construction of Olympics venues, including the National Stadium.

The 2.4 billion yen (£15.7 million) shopping area was made from 40,000 pieces of timber donated by 63 Japanese municipal governments. Each donated piece is marked with the name of the area that provided the wood.

A replica of a bedroom, including its furniture and carboard beds, is pictured in a display room

A number of chairs and a table are placed around the communal spots in the residential rooms

The beds (pictured) are all recyclable, and each athlete will also have their own table nearby 

After the Olympics, it will be dismantled and the timber returned to the donating cities for reuse in local facilities.

The apartment complex abutting the shopping plaza was built on reclaimed land and designed to house about 12,000 people in 23 buildings. It includes shops, a park and a school. The buildings will be converted into flats after the Olympics.

The development of the housing project cost the Tokyo government 54 billion yen, including road work and infrastructure.

 The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday with a Catholic foster care agency, saying its religious views prevent it from working with same-sex couples.

The city of “Philadelphia wrongly limited its relationship with the group as a result of the agency’s policy,” as argued by the court.

According to the ruling, it was specific to the facts of the case. The ruling did not, however, address the bigger questions “about how to balance religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws,” according to Yahoo News.

“Instead, the outcome turned on the language in the city’s foster care contract. Three conservative justices would have gone much further, and LGBTQ groups said they were relieved that the decision was limited,” according to the Yahoo News column.

FROM THE REPORT:

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority of the court that Catholic Social Services “seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”

Roberts concluded that Philadelphia’s refusal to “contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents … violates the First Amendment.”

Yahoo News Report

For more on this story go here.

Former White House doctor Ronny Jackson sent a letter Thursday requesting that President Biden undergo a cognitive test “so the American people know the full mental and intellectual health of their President.” Thirteen Republican congressional members signed onto the letter with Jackson, asking Biden to make the results available to the American people.

“The American people should have absolute confidence in their President,” Jackson’s letter reads. “They deserve to know that he or she can perform the duties of Head of State and Commander in Chief. They deserve full transparency on the mental capabilities of their highest elected leader.”

On Thursday night Jackson told Fox News host Sean Hannity that “after this most recent embarrassing performance overseas, I thought it was time to come out (with the letter).”

“We can’t sit on this any longer,” Jackson told Hannity.

The letter was copied to chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and current White House Physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor.

Jackson said Biden’s “mental decline and forgetfulness have become more apparent over the past eighteen months.”

The Letter

Rep. Ronny Jackson Letter by Sara on Scribd

After President Biden spent roughly four hours in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden gaffed and mixed up his name in a press conference Wednesday. Instead of saying he watched Putin’s press conference he said he “caught the end of Trump’s.”

This is the latest of Biden’s many gaffes during the president’s first international trip to Europe this week. Another moment that gained traction on Twitter was during another press conference, where Biden took a long, awkward pause in the middle of speaking.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

Fox News’ The Five discussed President Biden’s recent meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. Fox News host Jesse Watters said the meeting was proof that Biden would rather “be loved more than respected” because Putin got off with “no consequences.”

“The way I saw it, the Russians hack and Biden invite Putin to a summit and gives him a list of things he’s not allowed to hack? You gotta be kidding me!” said Watters. “No consequences, no deal, nothing concrete.” Watters was referring to the recent cyber attack that shut down international meat suppliers only weeks ago.

Instead, Biden would go on to tell reporters: “Putin’s innocent, just some criminals in Russia did it, we will see if he can stop it, calls it a constructive summit.” Meanwhile, Facebook named Russia it’s number one global threat when it comes to influence operations on the platform. The social media giant even named Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency as a top bad actor. Prigozhin has a reportedly close relationship with Putin.

When a reporter asked the president, what makes him think Putin is going to stop Russia hacks, he responded: “Because Vladimir cares about world opinion and he wouldn’t want to hurt his popularity and the rest of the world.” To Watters, that sounded all too familiar.

“I’m thinking to myself that’s actually Biden, Biden cares about what the Russians think about us, the Chinese think about it and the Europeans think so he is not America first because he doesn’t want to be the bad guy even if being the bad guy is good for America,” Watters said. “He wants to be loved more than respected and that’s the key to the Biden doctrine.”

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

CNN host Jeff Zeleny commented on President Biden’s address to the press following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden was criticized for getting testy after some reporters’ questions, but Zeleny said he was glad to see him answer tough questions like these for once.

“What we’ve not seen [Biden] do is answer questions like that without his aides screaming at him to stop,” Zeleny said. “I’ve never seen a president, covering the last four of them, who is so protected by his aides in terms of often not wanting him to answer some questions.”

Zeleny has worked for CNN since 2015, but covered elections with various news organizations for over 20 years.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appeared on Hannity Wednesday to break down President Biden’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meadows accused Biden of “throw[ing] down the white surrender flag when traveling abroad.”

Host Sean Hannity asked Meadows to share his opinion about what Putin thought of the meeting.

“He is thinking it is a new day for him,” Meadows said, “an open door, basically, for him to do what he wants to do.”

Meanwhile, “He didn’t get that kind of response from President Trump, I can tell you,” Meadow said. “It was always firm, it was always America first. And candidly, that is not the message that Putin got tonight, and it is a sad day for the American people when we throw down the white surrender flag when traveling abroad.”

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

By Jenny Goldsberry

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) appeared on Fox News’ America Reports Wednesday to discuss President Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. Scalise says he hopes Biden stands up to the Russian President, but Biden’s track record so far doesn’t hold up to the President before him.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of weakness from President Biden as it relates to Russia,” Scalise said. I mean, you look, [on] day one, President Biden kills the Keystone pipeline, kills thousands of American jobs, undermines our relationship with Canada, and then he [turned] around just a few weeks ago and [gave] financial incentives to Russia so that Russia can build a pipeline to Germany. So, he helps Russia create Russian jobs and Russian energy dominance with Germany, and he undermines America’s energy dominance that we had under President Trump.”

Biden was defensive of his meeting with Putin during a following press conference. A reporter asked him if he thought the meeting was constructive, considering Putin still denies human rights abuses and cyber attacks. The 46th President simply responded: “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”

But, Scalise had the same question: “Is [Biden] going to stand up to President Putin on the hacking that’s been done from Russians?”

“The disinformation — remember President Biden was Vice President when Russia tried to interfere with our 2016 election — I didn’t see President Biden stand up to him then,” Scalise said.

You can follow Jenny on Twitter @jennyjournalism

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Former President Donald Trump suggested that the next step for the Republican party should be to remove Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from the Senate after failing to keep the party unified and losing two Senate seats in Georgia, he said in an interview with me on the The Sara Carter Show podcast.

He said the best way to get the Republican Party back on track and possibly unified is to remove the old establishment leadership, like McConnell, who Trump said, is responsible for the loss of two Senate seats in Georgia and failing to unify the party.

“You start it off by getting somebody to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate,” said Trump, referring to how the GOP could reinvigorate the party. “You get somebody with a voice that that is a modern day voice that understands what the party is all about, because Mitch doesn’t know right now.”

Following Jan. 6th, McConnell pinned the Capitol riots on Trump. “The mob was fed lies,” he said on the senate floor days following. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.” After McConnell’s floor speech, Trump reportedly called the then majority leader a “dumb son of a b—” and a “stone cold loser.”

President Trump, however, did not call or incite violence.

He said told me that there are “some leadership in the Republican Party that doesn’t do a good job.” He said it’s partially McConnell’s failure.

“McConnell should have never lost those two seats in Georgia,” he said. “He lost them pure and simple. And there’s sort of never allowed that to happen ever. But they were angry from the presidential you know, fairness to the Republican voters.”

He said during the 2020 election the Republican voters in Georgia were angry at Governor Brian Kemp “because he hasn’t done the job…on the election stuff, what he’s done has been so bad, but they’re angry at Georgia, they were so in all fairness.”

“When you when you go and you take a look at what’s happened in many, many states, it could have been stopped so easily,” said Trump. “And the Republicans just need a philosophy” to back MAGA but he said instead, “they get away from America first.”

“They get away from who we really are and who the Republicans want to be,” he said. “They’ve gotten away from it. And you take a look at some of the as an example.”

Trump told me that he will work to back Republican candidates that he believes will put the nation and the American people first. He added that those he has backed have won, 100 percent of the time.

On Wednesday, the Save America PAC announced that Trump will hold a major rally in Wellington, Ohio on Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 7:00PM EDT. This will mark “Trump’s first of many appearances in support of candidates and causes that further the MAGA agenda and accomplishments of President Trump’s administration. The rally is to support Max Miller, who President Trump has endorsed for election in Ohio’s 16th Congressional District.”

Jenny Goldsberry contributed to this report. You can follow her on her Twitter @jennyjournalism.

By Jenny Goldsberry

North Korean defector Yeonmi Park spoke to Fox News Tuesday about her experience studying at Columbia University. Turns out ivy league schools have a lot in common with North Korea’s brand of communism. Park transferred to Columbia from a South Korean university in 2016.

“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”

Fellow students and staff at the university scolded her for things like not using the correct pronouns and liking Jane Austen books despite their “colonial mindsets.”

“Even North Korea is not this nuts,” Park said. “North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”

Read more here.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry @jennyjournalism.

By Jenny Goldsberry

Former President Donald Trump joined The Sara Carter Show podcast Tuesday, warning that the current policies under the Biden Administration are putting “America last” and will prove “disastrous” for the nation. He spoke in detail about how President Biden reversed the most effective Trump administration policies saying, almost everything is totally opposite from when he was on office.

“We had the greatest economy,” Trump told Carter. “All the opposite of what’s going on right now. We’re gonna have tremendous inflation, the economy is going to be in big trouble, all of the things that we see now, it’s almost the opposite.”

Since Carter recently returned from Guatemala, she asked the former president what he thought about the ongoing border crisis. He called the border “an open sieve.” Meanwhile, while he was president, it was under control. According to him, the border wall he built his campaign on only needed a couple more months of work on it. But, the Biden administration stopped all work on it.

“And so we have little sections of wall we have openings,” Trump said. “And now, you look at what’s going on with the floods of 1000’s and 1000’s of people right now, as we talk, they’re heading up to our country, we have no idea who those people are.”

Biden attended the G-7 Summit this week, making international promises while gaffing all the while. Carter asked Trump for his opinion on Biden’s global diplomacy recently. Trump says G-7 leaders are not to be trusted.

“They’re stealing our country,” Trump said. Meanwhile, “he’s going into deals that are disaster, costing us trillions of dollars. And we have to rebuild our own bridges and our own roads. He wants to rebuild the world.”

The one thing the Democrats are doing right, according to Trump, is loyalty. He says the Republican party should take notes from their opponents. During the applauded the removal of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from her position as GOP Conference Chair, but said more replacements are in order.

“You start it off by getting somebody to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate,” Trump told Carter. “You get somebody with a voice that that is a modern day voice that understands what the party is all about, because Mitch doesn’t know right now.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats win policy battles “because they stick together better than the Republicans stick together,” Trump said. “Frankly, they don’t have Romney’s over there. They don’t have guys that that are like little Ben Sasse of Nebraska.”

But Trump remains hopeful, saying that there is a bright future in 2024. “As far as the election, as far as 2024 is concerned, I think everyone’s going to be very happy,” Trump said.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

We all miss 2016…those rallies were some of the best.

But I think the 2021 and 2022 (and 2023, and 2024) rallies will be barn burners, too.

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But there will always be something very special about 2016.

The Trump campaign was one of the best movements this country has ever seen – talk about “unity.”

It was amazing, and one of the great icons from those fantastic days is Trump Force One.

MORE NEWS: You’re Going to Notice Something Very Different on “The View”

Trump Force One was retired when President Trump won the White House, and I remember a lot of us were sad to see her go – she was such a huge part of the movement…but the good news is, as Trump gets ready to hit the “rally road” again this month, and he wants everyone to know that Trump Force One is making a comeback!

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Here’s his statement:

And, in case you need a refresher in Trump Force One, he’s a video that shows off the inside.

Watch:

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She’s a beauty.

I can’t wait to see her back in action again!

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Things are going to be changing on ABC’s toxic mess of a show “The View.”

The reason why is because things have gotten so nasty, negative, and mean on this awful show, that the president of ABC actually had to step in and say “ENOUGH.”

Apparently, things have gotten so bad on the show with all the screaming and telling and personal jabs, that viewers have complained – and complained so much, that the actual president of ABC had to have a pow-wow with the cat ladies.

The biggest source of angst is between Joy Behar and Meghan McCain  – and a couple of weeks back, they got in yet another huge fight over anti-semitism.

Apparently, that was the final straw for the head of ABC, who finally stepped in to tell the two women to cool it with the personal attacks.

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Production sources told TMZ that ABC News President Kim Godwin called a last-minute meeting of “The View’s” co-host and producers telling them they need to improve the behind-the-scenes culture of the show immediately. The virtual meeting was called after ABC was flooded with pleas to fire McCain over her attacks on Behar, who it should be noted attacks the conservative quite a bit as well.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] Ted Cruz Just Crushed Critical Race Theory Into a Pile of Dust

The insiders said that Godwin, who only just took over as head of ABC earlier this month, told the women that things have gotten way too personal on the show, not with the issues being debated, but with the personal attacks. She added that it’s coming off as toxic to viewers and that she does not want the program to move in this direction any further.

McCain, however, was not having any of it. Sources said that she stormed out of the meeting before it ended because she felt like she was being “attacked.”

During the segment on Monday that sparked this fight, expressed her desire to see the same energy put into actions against Jews from the left.

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“I would love Democrats to put that same type of energy on to what’s happening on the left, because, quite frankly, this is how people get red-pilled,” she said. “They’re red-pilled when they see the blatant bias in the media because the media doesn’t want the ‘Squad’ to look bad. They just want [Marjorie Taylor Greene] to look bad.”

Behar responded by saying that she resented what the conservative was saying. She said she’s been fighting against anti-Semitism on the show for “25 years,” and that McCain should have some “respect.” That’s when things really exploded, as McCain was not having any of it.

Check out the segment that went too far…

REP. GREENE SLAMMED OVER HOLOCAUST REMARKS: The co-hosts react to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandates on the House floor to the Holocaust. https://t.co/FkUKJndPCY pic.twitter.com/UPCwXui2Fq

— The View (@TheView) May 24, 2021

I am definitely no “fan” of Meghan, but it’s absurd to think that it’s her that’s the most toxic one.

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Joy Behar is literally one of the most miserable-looking people I’ve ever seen.

Granted, Meghan is not far behind her – but still, she’s nowhere near as awful as Joy.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Well, what do we have here…more proof Fauci was up to something sinister behind COVID?

That’s what it looks like.

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This new plot involving Dr. Fauci is getting thicker and cloudier than mud.

What did he know, when did he know it, and what was he funding, and why?

Well, a new report claims that Dr. Fauci hid something very important and very damning from President Trump back in 2017…and what he hid is showing that Fauci really was up to noo good.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] This Latest Info Proves Bill Barr Was in On All Of It…

This information that Fauci held back, looks extremely suspicious right now, given everything we’re learning about him and his “gain of function” research.

And speaking of “gain of function” research…that’s precisely what Fauci hid from President Trump.

Daily Wire reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reportedly did not warn senior White House officials in the Trump administration when the ban ended on gain-of-function research in 2017. Fauci also previously argued that the benefits of conducting gain-of-function research outweighed the risk that it could spark a pandemic.

Investigative reporter Sharri Markson reports:

An investigation by The Weekend Australian has also confirmed Dr Fauci, the director of the Nat­ional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not alert senior White House officials before lifting the ban on gain-of-function research in 2017.
Markson, who is the author of the upcoming book “What Really Happened In Wuhan,” also highlighted previously unreported remarks from Fauci in 2012 where Fauci argued that the benefits of doing gain-of-function research outweighed the risk that it could spark a pandemic. Gain-of-function research tries to create more infectious strains of diseases before they arise in nature in an effort to defend against them.

Gee, another case of incredible “timing” and “coincidence,” right?

How many strange things can just keep lining up for Dems? Especially when it comes to this stinkin’ virus?

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Think about this: Dems needed something to take down Trump’s mighty economy, and out of nowhere along came a COVID virus and did just that…

And man-oh-man, those mail-in ballots really helped Dems as well, right?

Then we have Dr. Fauci, who was the face of the entire virus – who just so happened to forgot to tell the current President that the creepy “Frankenstein research” on Coronavirues had started up again – 3 years before the pandemic hit.

But, nothing to see here folks – it’s just a bunch of random coinky dinks.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

One of the great Newtonian Third Law aspects of the Biden administration is that it has revivified Republicans in the attack. And their best rhetorical fighter? Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

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The man should be president. No doubt about it. His smarts, courage, and solid conservatism make him a presidential dream walking. But in a time when the bases of both parties want bias confirming mediocrity, can a man with a brain and the guts to use it actually get to the top of the American greasy pole? That remains to be seen.

However, his quest for the Resolute desk has not stopped Cruz from speaking out on the vicious racist travesty that is critical race theory. It is blatant discrimination against anyone who does not meet a PC racial standard. As we’ve pointed out numerous times and as Cruz points out here, those who advocate it are the ideological descendants of the Klan. We’ll throw in Governor Maddox and Bull Connor just for good measure. Racism and discrimination are wrong, no matter who the targets are. A truly level playing field judges merit and nothing more. Democrat racists want to rig the game. Cruz wants to stop them. Bully for him.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] This Latest Info Proves Bill Barr Was in On All Of It…

Critical Race Theory is bigoted. It is a lie. And it is every bit as racist as a Klansmen in white sheets. pic.twitter.com/i2lDGVLfkw

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 18, 2021

FNC: “Senator Ted Cruz on Friday blasted critical race theory as a ‘lie’ and said the school of thought is as racist as ‘the Klansman in white sheets.’ The Texas Republican took the stage at the Faith and Freedom Foundation’s Road to the Majority conference where he took critical race theory head-on, recalling a reporter who he said tried to ‘gotcha’ the senator about “what is critical race theory.’ ”

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“I explained to him and I said, ‘Well, it’s a theory that derives from Marxism. Karl Marx viewed the entire world as a conflict between classes, between the owners of capital and the working men and women, the proletariat,” Cruz said. “A fundamental battle in society…Critical race theory takes that same Marxist concept except it replaces ‘class’ with ‘race,’” he continued. “And it says all of America and all of the world is a battle between the races.”

Cruz correctly said that critical race theory “seeks to turn us against each other” and looks to stoke hatred among people if they have “different-colored skin…And let me tell you right now: critical race theory is bigoted. It is a lie,” the Texas Republican continued. “And it is every bit as racist as the Klansman in white sheets.”

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The senator said that, “as a Christian and an American,” he loves his neighbor regardless of the color of their skin, sex, faith, creed or ethnicity, adding that “we are commanded to love…Period. The end,” Cruz said. “And those who would divide us, those who would spread lies. It is evil.”

This piece was written by David Kamioner on June 19, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Coronor Releases New Details About Alleged Suicide Of Clinton Tarmac Reporter Christopher Sign
Trey Gowdy Torches The Media For Not Even Trying To Stay Neutral
Kayleigh McEnany Says That ‘As A Woman Of Faith’ She ‘Never Lied’ As Trump’s Press Secretary

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Well, this is certainly telling…

According to a very popular retired intel officer and staunch Trump supporter, by the name of Tony Shaffer revealed a bombshell about Bill Barr.

Shaffer is now revealing that Bill Barr actually called him up and told him to stop personally investigating the 2020 election.

What the heck?

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Check it out:

Tony Shaffer told me that Bill Barr called him personally and asked him to stop investigating 2020 election fraud.

Have you ever heard of an AG calling a private citizen and asking them to quit looking into something?!

Here's the full video 👇https://t.co/XrZqopyTen pic.twitter.com/4CJn79PJCW

— Chase Geiser (@realchasegeiser) May 28, 2021

MORE NEWS: Obama Just Admitted What We Everyone Suspected All Along…

And here are some receipts to back up the fact that Barr appeared to be on a personal mission to stop the election investigation.

what does that tell you?

The list is long, to be sure Emerald. Tony Shaffer simply had the courage to say it out loud. "Attorney General" Bill Barr sent in cover up crews, not investigators.

Prove me wrong. https://t.co/zeEaHqjGwo pic.twitter.com/8qXhOm6koa

— Lori (@LJT_is_me) May 30, 2021

This is the full Tony Shaffer’s interview on the matter…very interesting stuff:

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This isn’t really a huge shocker.

Especially when you take into consideration what an unbelievably half-hearted investigation Bill Barr conducted on the 2020 election.

If you remember correctly he found “no widespread election fraud,”  despite the fact that there were several signed affidavits claiming wrongdoings in the election in key swing states.

Something just doesn’t add up here…

From AP

Barr’s comments, in an interview with the The Associated Press, contradict the concerted effort by Trump, his boss, to subvert the results of last month’s voting and block President-elect Joe Biden from taking his place in the White House.

Barr told the AP that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The comments, which drew immediate criticism from Trump attorneys, were especially notable coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voting could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

Bill Barr was such a massive disappointment.

Even his John Durham appointment has amounted to nothing. He’s an absolute swamp creature.

I don’t care what anyone says, this is all the proof you need to show that he was in on it.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

A renowned royal biographer is speaking out this week to say that Prince Harry is “constantly” worried that he’ll lose his wife Meghan Markle like he lost his mother, Princess Diana.

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Angela Levin, who interviewed Harry for her 2018 book “Harry: Conversations with the Prince,” immediately noticed how anxious the royal seemed in his new mental health docuseries “The Me You Can’t See.” In fact, she was so worried by how she saw him acting that she is now recommending that Harry “back away” from the spotlight so that he can better himself.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] O’Reilly’s Got One Word For Dems: “Backlash”

“How dreadful if Harry constantly thinks that he will lose Meghan like he did Diana and blames racism,” Levin wrote on Twitter. “Plus can’t get rid of M’s threat to commit suicide. His life sounds too much for him and he should back away from being a woke lecturing celebrity.”

How dreadful if Harry constantly thinks that he will lose Meghan like he did Diana and blames racism. Plus can't get rid of M's threat to commit suicide. His life sounds too much for him and he should back away from being a woke lecturing celebrity.

— Angela Levin (@angelalevin1) May 24, 2021

This came after Harry revealed in the docuseries that Meghan decided not to commit suicide because she did not want him to lose another woman in his life the way he lost his mother.

This is horrific emotional manipulation and a ghoulish control mechanism Meghan is using on Harry.

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“The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now be put in a position of losing another woman in my life, with a baby inside of her, our baby,” Harry said, according to Page Six.

Harry was only 12 years old when his mother was killed in a car crash in Paris, France back in 1997. In his docuseries, Harry opened up about just how serious Meghan was about potentially committing suicide before they stepped down as senior royals last year.

“The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought,” he said. “She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of the night, these thoughts woke her up.”

In Meghan’s explosive tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey back in March, she claimed nobody in the royal family was willing to help her because it “wouldn’t be good for the institution.”

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This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

Read more at UpliftingToday.com:
Ellen DeGeneres Humiliated As Former Producer Claims She’s A ‘Kiss A**’ Who Doesn’t Care About ‘Real’ People
Bill Gates Admits Marriage To Melinda Was ‘Loveless’ – ‘Living Separate Lives’ For Some Time
Barack Obama Reveals Malia And Sasha Will Stay Out Of Politics Because Of ‘PTSD’

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Obama just said the “quiet” part out loud.

The part that we already all knew, but he just confirmed it.

Former President Barack Obama spoke out recently to brag that Joe Biden is “finishing the job” that his administration started.

Yep. Barry’s lousy “third term…”

This has been the plot all along.

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“I think that what we’re seeing now, is Joe and the administration are essentially finishing the job,” Obama told the New York Times. “And I think it’ll be an interesting test. Ninety percent of the folks who were there in my administration, they are continuing and building on the policies we talked about, whether it’s the Affordable Care Act or our climate change agenda and the Paris [climate deal], and figuring out how do we improve the ladders to mobility through things like community colleges.”

Obama then talked about why he feels so many voters elected Donald Trump in 2016 after eight years of him being in power.

MORE NEWS: President Trump Just Did a Little Jig on US Media’s Grave…

“It’s hard to just underscore how much the bank bailouts just angered everyone, including me,” Obama said, referring to the remedy for the 2008 financial crisis he helped lead. “And then you have this long, slow recovery. Although the economy recovers technically quickly, it’s another five years before we’re really back to people feeling like, ‘OK, the economy is moving and working for me.’”

“… Let’s say a Democrat, a Joe Biden, or Hillary Clinton had immediately succeeded me, and the economy suddenly has 3% unemployment, I think we would have consolidated the sense that, ‘Oh, actually these policies that Obama put in place worked,'” he added. “The fact that Trump interrupts essentially the continuation of our policies, but still benefits from the economic stability and growth that we had initiated, means people aren’t sure. Well, gosh, unemployment’s 3.5% under Donald Trump.”

Obama went on to discuss Biden’s alleged ability to reach voters, particularly in post-industrial midwestern states, who voted Obama then switched to Trump.

“By virtue of biography and generationally,” Obama said, adding that Biden “can still reach some of those folks”.

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“People knew I was left on issues like race, or gender equality, and LGBTQ issues and so forth,” Obama said. “But I think maybe the reason I was successful campaigning in downstate Illinois, or Iowa, or places like that is they never felt as if I was condemning them for not having gotten to the politically correct answer quick enough, or that somehow they were morally suspect because they had grown up with and believed more traditional values.”

Obama also predicted that a successful Biden presidency “will have an impact” on a deeply polarized political landscape.

“Does [success for Biden] override that sort of identity politics that has come to dominate Twitter and the media, and that has seeped into how people think about politics?” Obama questioned. “Probably not completely. But at the margins, if you’re changing 5% of the electorate, that makes a difference.”

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Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

On June 12th it was Trump’s birthday, and boy did he celebrate it in grand style.

He took to Twitter with one of his most epic victory laps yet, and it sent the fake news media reeling.

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Trump literally went through point-by-point and highlighted everything that he was right about which the media constantly doubted him on, but is now reporting as “true.”

President Trump just did a little jig on the dying media’s grave…which is really fitting, since he helped bury them.

Check it out:

Trump takes a well-earned victory lap, and tramples all over the fake/CIA propaganda news in the process 🤣

Happy Birthday, President Trump🎂 pic.twitter.com/NF2lVgsM2b

— Amy (@RestingTwitFace) June 14, 2021

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] O’Reilly’s Got One Word For Dems: “Backlash”

Yes, all of these are huge wins, but his biggest one could be the hydroxychloroquine, which has recently been touted as increasing the COVID survival rate by almost three times.

But of course, while he was in office the media never even gave this drug a second glance.

From KUSI

A new study published by MedRxiv found that hydroxychloroquine and zinc treatments in patients increased COVID survival by almost three times.

The study “looked at 255 COVID19 patients who required invasive mechanical ventilation (IMV) during the first two months of the US pandemic. Through comprehensive, longitudinal evaluation and new consideration of all the data, we were able to better describe and understand factors affecting outcome after intubation.”

As you know, former President Trump touted hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for COVID, and was shunned by Dr. Fauci and the mainstream media for doing so. Trump told the world he even took hydroxychloroquine himself, and urged Americans to speak with their doctors.

“I started taking it, because I think it’s good,” Trump said. “I’ve heard a lot of good stories.” He dismissed reports of side effects, saying, “All I can tell you is, so far I seem to be OK.”

Once again, it turns out Trump was right.

>>>FOLLOW US ON GAB<<<

The media has gotta be absolutely pulling out their hair right now.

It’s hilarious that Trump isn’t even in office, or on social media, but yet he keeps on smearing his wins in their faces.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

As we all know, the U.S. is headed towards an absolute disaster under Biden’s shaky leadership.

We can all see the writing on the wall, but for those who don’t question the message that the mainstream media spoon-feeds them, this upcoming crash will probably come as a surprise.

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Bill O’Reilly is predicting major Biden retaliation is coming once these people see their cost of living skyrocket once this economy that Biden has slowly been chipping away at, finally crumbles.

Of course, this crash is something that not even the mainstream media will be able to spin; as many Americans will experience some of the worst strife we’ve seen since the recession.

Watch Bill’s prediction here:

The Biden-backlash is building and it could hit a fever-pitch by the midterm elections, says @BillOReilly.

Media bias can mask the public's resentment but it is still bubbling underneath, he contends.

"And once that economy goes south– OVER." pic.twitter.com/67UVu3en0w

— The First (@TheFirstonTV) June 11, 2021

MORE NEWS: We Now Know Why Guatemalans Were So Angry With Kamala…She Was Actually There On a “Secret Mission”

O’Reilly is right on the money here, but what’s surprising is that it’s not just him and other conservative pundits who are sounding the alarm off on Biden’s starved economy as the New York Post just published a piece that absolutely slams Biden’s economic game plan.

From The New York Post

Reality check: The COVID shutdowns are nearly over, and many were regionally based to begin with (Florida and Texas have been open for months). That’s why when you talk to most mainstream economists, they will tell you Biden and Powell are throwing money at a problem that doesn’t exist.

They are spending so much money on unemployment benefits that it’s keeping people out of the work force, despite companies desperate to hire.

Biden is playing with fire, both economically and politically. Again. I remember the 1970s and the reason Jimmy Carter was a one-term president. Then-Fed chairman Paul Volcker induced a recession to cure massive inflation during the Carter presidency, all but guaranteeing Ronald Reagan’s victory and his free-market revolution.

So why are our policy makers looking to repeat the sins of the past? Because Biden is listening to the progressive members of his party, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who don’t believe inflation exists, and that the government should be spending massively on every social program there is.

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The U.S. is sadly heading towards a complete disaster under Biden and will, unfortunately, experience another big setback.

We can only hope that from these ashes the American people will rise up again and fight to save our country.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

While everyone is focused on the border and telling Kamala to go there, we missed the real reason she was in Guatemala…She was on a secret political mission, and it’s not about the “border.”

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It’s about overthrowing the conservative party that’s currently in power…and the people of Guatemala know it…that’s why they were standing there when she arrived, telling her to go home, and that “Trump won.”

Frontpage Mag reported that President Giammattei is a staunch law and order conservative, and if he appeared to be undermining Kamala, it was because she had spent months undermining him.

MORE NEWS: Damning Photos of Banquet Inside Kamala’s House Ignite Firestorm of Online

In May, Kamala met with a number of leftist opponents of Giammattei, including former Attorney General Thelma Aldana, who had targeted conservative politicians with corruption charges, before herself being charged with corruption. Instead of returning home to face those charges, she received political asylum in the United States. Her social media is full of praise for Kamala Harris’ trip to Guatemala, and her promises to end “corruption” in Guatemala.

Behind the mutual charges of corruption is a struggle between the Left and Right, with socialists and narcoterrorists on one side and military officers and free marketers on the other.

Kamala and the Biden administration are choosing to stand with the Left.

That’s not exactly surprising. Neither were the angry protesters that greeted Kamala at the airport waving banners and signs reading “Kamala, Mind Your Own Business”, “Kamala, Go Home”, “Kamala Trump Won”, and “Kamala Stop Funding Criminals”.

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Those signs might have been confusing to Americans who get their news from the media bubble which left them completely unprepared to understand what was really going on.

Guatemalans saw her as prepping a leftist coup by backing leftist organizations and activists.

And they were fighting back.

Kamala Harris blamed the migrant crisis on “corruption, violence and poverty, the lack of economic opportunity, the lack of climate adaptation and climate resilience, the lack of good governance.” Two of those are very obvious code words for regime change.

A few days ago it was announced that Kamala’s trip would be about “anti-corruption” efforts.

Aside from some leftist prosecutors, Guatemalans are not coming here over government corruption. But did anyone really think that Biden wanted to reduce illegal migration?

The Left is adept at killing two birds with one stone.

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In this case, it’s using a border crisis to impose leftist regimes on Latin America.

Kamala Harris was quick to announce that Biden’s DOJ will create an anti-corruption task force that will provide “case-based mentoring to the Guatemalan Public Ministry, including the Special Prosecutor Against Impunity (FECI)” and “a rapid response capability to deploy U.S. prosecutors and law enforcement experts to provide mentorship to develop corruption cases.”

What this is, is Kamala deploying DOJ assets to help local left-wingers to take down conservative politicians.

This is the real reason why Biden said that Kamala was “the most qualified person to do it.”

You have to remember, Kamala has the “prosecutor” background needed for this misssion and that’s her “real job” in Guatemala….to overthrow the conservatives.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Garcetti’s admission to the Los Angeles Times came on the same day he announced the formation of the L.A. Reparations Advisory Commission to develop “a pilot reparations program targeted at a cohort of Black Angelenos.”

The Times article said, “Exactly who would benefit from a local reparations program and how any financial compensation would be made are details the commission would have to decide.”

More from The L.A. Times:

Commission members, which were named by Garcetti and Black City Council members, include Michael Lawson, a former ambassador and head of the Los Angeles Urban League; Khansa Jones-Muhammad, co-chair of the Los Angeles chapter of the National Assembly of American Slavery Descendants; Mandla Kayise, an expert on economic and land use development; Cheryl Harris, a leading scholar of critical race theory and systemic discrimination at UCLA School of Law; Dr. Katrina VanderWoude, president of Los Angeles Trade-Technical College; Charisse Bremond-Weaver, president chief executive of Brotherhood Crusade; and Mark Wilson, founding executive director of the Coalition for Responsible Community Development.

Garcetti said the L.A. advisory commission will not look at “all racism” but will “look specifically at reparations around where laws held back” Black Angelenos’ ability to build wealth.

Garcetti also announced the creation of the National Coalition of Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity. The 11 mayors from cities including Denver, Austin, Texas, St. Paul, Minn., and Sacramento committed to establishing advisory commissions in their own cities that would also probe making pilot programs.

Garcetti’s announcements came a day after President Joe Biden signed a bill into law establishing June 19 as Juneteenth National Independence Day, commemorating the end of slavery in the United States.

During a virtual press conference on Friday with mayors of other cities who have committed to lead reparations pilot programs, Garcetti said, “to address racism in America, America has to address racism.”

“This year has shown us in some of the starkest possible terms that while America is a land of opportunity for some, it remains a place of injustice, inequality, and indignity for too many of our black brothers and sisters,” he continued. “It remains unequal for the descendants of those who were forced onto slave ships, uprooted from their lives, uprooted from their loves, stripped of their humanity and their dignity and their rights.”

Garcetti said pilot programs in cities would be a model for the federal government.

Members of a Hollywood VIP pedophile ring, including Jeffrey Epstein and a number of his famous clients, repeatedly raped a 7-year-old girl and multiple other children, according to bombshell testimony in a Pornhub lawsuit.

The lawsuit against Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek, and other related organizations reveals that a “ring of Hollywood men and New York financiers, including Jeffrey Epstein” engaged in raping, trafficking and exploiting young girls. One of the accusers, Jane Doe #1, claims she was just seven when it all started and continued for 21 years.

According to the lawsuit:

Beginning at age 7, and continuing for more than 21 years, Jane Doe  No. 1 was raped, trafficked, and exploited by a ring of Hollywood men and New York financiers, including Jeffrey Epstein. These interactions were often recorded and since no later than 2007 have been widely and continuously distributed on Pornhub.

The first recording was made in a garage in Maryland in or about 2001-2002 when Jane Doe No. 1 was 10 years old. The next year, Jane Doe No. 1 was “sold” to another trafficker in New York. She was trafficked by this man and his organization in various states along the East Coast, and was forced to provide escort services and film pornographic videos and livestreams. The videos were produced in various warehouses.

In 2004, Jane Doe No. 1 was transported to Florida, where she was introduced to Jeffrey Epstein and other men. Jane Doe No. 1 was directed to give Epstein “massages,” which the New York Times explained was a known code word for sex among Epstein’s inner circles. She was transported to Epstein’s properties in New York, Palm Beach, Florida, and his private island, Little St. James in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which she visited on multiple occasions. This went on throughout her middle school and high school years and ended right before she started college.

Jane Doe No. 1 is aware of at least seven explicit videos of her on Pornhub between 2011 and 2016, as well as at least one recording from a livestream. The videos were filmed in warehouses in multiple locations in California. The seven videos were uploaded multiple times on Pornhub. In some instances, Jane Doe No. 1’s traffickers forced her to actually upload and reupload old videos of herself as a form of punishment.

Jane Doe No. 1’s therapist assisted her with takedown requests, but she was not successful in having them all removed.

The years of sexual abuse and exploitation caused Jane Doe No. 1 to suffer from an eating disorder and substance abuse. These conditions forced Jane Doe No. 1 to take a leave of absence from college. She continues to receive medical treatment for the emotional distress she suffered.

Thelibertydaily.com reports: For background, here’s the report from NBC News:

More than 30 women sued Pornhub on Thursday, accusing it of violating federal sex trafficking laws, distributing child pornography, racketeering and other crimes.

The suit alleges that Pornhub’s parent company, MindGeek — and its constellation of porn brands — is a criminal enterprise that purchases, launders and uploads illegal content often obtained through human trafficking and sexual assault.

The women say in their suit that MindGeek used nonconsensual content to “become the dominant online pornography company in the world.” The women were victims of sexual exploitation, rape and trafficking, and they were “victimized first by their original abuser, and then repeatedly by the defendants in this case,” the suit alleges.

Serena Fleites and more than 30 Jane Does allege in the suit that they were victimized by unauthorized videos uploaded and disseminated by Pornhub. Pornhub denied the allegations, calling them absurd and reckless.

For over two years, mainstream media and Big Tech have focused on stifling QAnon’s “Save the Children” focus, claiming it’s all a wild conspiracy theory. These women and girls are not theoretical. How many are not helped because of media bias?

Google silently funded EcoHealth Alliance founder and Wuhan lab collabroter Peter Daszak’s research for over a decade, according to a new report.

“The decade-plus relationship is evident in a 2010 study on bat flaviviruses, which lists Daszak and EcoHealth Alliance Vice President Jonathan Epstein as authors, that thanks Google.org for funding,” Natalie Winters wrote.

“A 2014 study on henipavirus spillover, which was authored by Daszak, similarly declares it was partly ‘supported by Google.org.’”

Infowars.com reports: Notably, one Google-backed study Daszak conducted in 2018 called “Serologic and Behavioral Risk Survey of Workers with Wildlife Contact in China”, puts forward the theory that SARS-like coronaviruses could originate in a wet market near the city of Wuhan.

From the introduction:

Handling, transporting, and butchering of hunted or farmed wildlife poses a risk of pathogen spillover into humans. In southern China provinces, including Guangdong, a significant percentage of the population obtains fresh meat for consumption from wet markets, community markets that specialize in selling and butchering live animals, including animals that are rare and endangered. Research has demonstrated that human-animal interfaces, such as within these wet markets, provide an ideal environment for infectious disease emergence, transmission, and amplification.

Read the study here.

What business does a Silicon Valley tech company have funding virological research, specifically research with indirect connections to the Wuhan Institute of Virology through Daszak?

Remember that Daszak’s EcoHealth Alliance group sent taxpayer money earmarked by the National Institute of Health to the Wuhan lab for gain of function research.

Additionally, Daszak was almost single-handedly responsible for shaping the COVID-19 narrative by pressuring The Lancet, a British medical journal, to issue a statement that the coronavirus came from a wet market in Wuhan.

Finally, Daszak was the only American member of the World Health Organization’s investigative tour of Wuhan, who finally admitted on “60 Minutes” in March that the global body simply took it on China’s word that COVID-19 originated from a wet market.

“There’s a limit to what you can do and we went right up to that limit. We asked them tough questions. They weren’t vetted in advance. And the answers they gave, we found to be believable — correct and convincing,” he said.

SB0825, a bill that moved next year’s primary elections from February to June, bans the word “man” or “men” statewide.

Democratic state Rep. Maurice West told WTTW that it was time to change the language, and the lawmaker even mentioned those who don’t identify as either male or female don’t feel excluded.

“We see a lot of ‘hes’ and ‘hims’” West said. “And now we have, you know, not just women in office, but we have people who may not identify with any gender. We want to make sure that our voting and our election cycle process is inclusive for everyone.”

Illinois Democrats are not the first to take on words this year that identify people by their gender.

A resolution from the Committee on Rule announced it would change “pronouns and familial relationships in the House rules to be gender neutral or removes references to gender, as appropriate, to ensure we are inclusive of all Members, Delegates, Resident Commissioners and their families — including those who are nonbinary.”

“Chairman” was changed to “chair.

Familial pronouns such as son, daughter husband, wife, father, mother and other words for family members were proposed to be nixed in favor of supposedly inclusive words such as “parent, child, sibling, spouse, or parent-in-law.”

Pelosi, in a statement, called the affront on traditional language “bold.”

“Thanks to the leadership of Chairman McGovern and our Members, Democrats have crafted a package of unprecedented, bold reforms, which will make the House more accountable, transparent and effective in our work to meet the needs of the American people,” Pelosi said.

On Friday, Biden downplayed the vote, insisting that he would continue to receive Communion despite his pro-abortion stance.

“That’s a private matter, and I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he told reporters at the White House.

The bishops had cast their votes privately on Thursday after nearly three hours of impassioned debate.

Supporters of the measure said a strong rebuke of Biden was needed because of his recent actions protecting and expanding abortion access, while opponents warned that such action would portray the bishops as a partisan force during a time of bitter political divisions across the country.

As a result of the vote, the USCCB´s doctrine committee will draft a statement on the meaning of Communion in the life of the church that will be submitted for consideration at a future meeting, probably an in-person gathering in November.

One section of the document is intended to include a specific admonition to Catholic politicians and other public figures who disobey church teaching on abortion and other core doctrinal issues.

Bishop Donald Hying of Madison, Wisconsin, said during Thursday’s debate that he speaks with many people who are confused by a Catholic president who advances ‘the most radical pro-abortion agenda in history,’ and action from the bishops´ conference is needed.

‘They´re looking for direction,’ Hying said.

Bishop Robert McElroy of San Diego countered that the USCCB would suffer ‘destructive consequences’ from a document targeting Catholic politicians.

‘It would be impossible to prevent the weaponization of the Eucharist,’ McElroy said.

Biden, who attends Mass regularly, says he personally opposes abortion but doesn´t think he should impose that position on Americans who feel otherwise. He´s taken several executive actions during his presidency that were hailed by abortion-rights advocates.

The chairman of the USCCB doctrine committee, Bishop Kevin Rhoades of Fort Wayne-South Bend, Indiana, said no decisions have been made on the final contents of the proposed document. He said bishops who are not on the committee will have chances to offer input, and the final draft will be subject to amendments before it is put up to a vote.

Rhoades also said the document would not mention Biden or other individuals by name and would offer guidelines rather than imposing a mandatory national policy.

That would leave decisions about Communion for specific churchgoers up to individual bishops and archbishops. Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the archbishop of Washington, has made clear that Biden is welcome to receive Communion at churches in the archdiocese.

A third wave is under way in England, whilst the rollout of the covid vaccine still provides cause for optimism, according to Government advisers.

Public Health England claim there has been a 79% rise in cases of the covid Delta variant in just one week and that the increase was being driven by the unvaccinated particulary the younger age groups.

Inews reports: Professor Adam Finn, who advises the Government on the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said a “third wave” of coronavirus infections “is definitely under way”.

The University of Bristol academic told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It’s going up, perhaps we can be a little bit optimistic it’s not going up any faster, but nevertheless it’s going up, so this third wave is definitely under way.

“We can conclude that the race is firmly on between the vaccine programme, particularly getting older people’s second doses done, and the Delta variant third wave.”

Prof Finn said the JCVI is still working to decide whether children should be vaccinated, but said that effort would not be the immediate priority if it was approved.

He said: “Even if some decision were made to immunise children it wouldn’t be appropriate right now, either here or anywhere else in Europe, to give our doses predominantly to children because it’s adults that get sick, so vaccinating adults is clearly the priority right now.”

Prof Finn was asked if he feels confident that we are going to outpace the Delta variant with the current rate of vaccination, and he told Times Radio: “No, I don’t feel confident, but I think there’s some grounds for optimism.

“The latest ONS figures continue to show a rise, but that rise has not accelerated quite as much as I’d feared over the last week.

“So, the race is on. The sooner we can get, particularly second doses, into older people, the less of a hospitalisation wave we’ll see this time around.

“That’s the critical thing, that’s what’s grounded us all in the past, and if we’ve managed to protect enough older people that we can avoid a great big surge of hospitalisations and deaths, then things will be able to move back towards normal.”

Dr Mike Tildesley, epidemiologist and a member of the SPI-M modelling group, said he is “cautiously hopeful” that the number of Covid-19 hospital admissions over the next few weeks will not be on the same scale as happened in January.

He said those going to hospital at the moment tend to be slightly younger and “slightly less sick”.

He told BBC Breakfast: “Currently we’re seeing slightly younger people are becoming infected, and actually the people going to hospital tend to be slightly younger, and therefore also slightly less sick, which is again quite a good sign that even if we’re starting to see more people going into hospital they tend to be younger people who have higher likelihood of recovering successfully.

“I realise I’m being slightly cautious here. All of these are cautiously good signs but, of course, we do need to keep an eye on this over the next couple of weeks so that we can give as much information as we can to the Government prior to the 19 July reopening.”

Meanwhile, giant jab clinics are open in London this weekend, with the Olympic Stadium, Tottenham Hotspur FC, Chelsea FC and Charlton Athletic FC among those that will host large scale pop-up clinics for residents, with smaller events taking place in local community venues.

It comes as officials are reportedly considering scrapping the 10 days of self-isolation for people who have been double vaccinated and come into contact with someone infected with Covid-19.

The Times reported that Health Secretary Matt Hancock is said to be keen to replace quarantine with daily testing, but that the policy will be approved only after Professor Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, is satisfied with the results of a study of 40,000 people

Billionaire globalist George Soros has expressed interest in financing a local reparations program, according to Democratic LA Mayor Eric Garcetti.

In an interview on Friday the mayor told the Los Angeles Times that an L.A. Reparations Advisory Commission had been formed and that many private entities, including Soros’ Open Society Foundations, were interested in being involved in the funding.

According to the report, Garcetti said “the L.A. advisory commission will not look at ‘all racism’ but will ‘look specifically at reparations around where laws held back’ Black Angelenos’ ability to build wealth”

Gateway Pundit reports: Garcetti told the paper that he also hoped corporations and banks would participate “to begin to make some amends and to push this movement forward.”

However, it would not be considered a way for institutions to “buy forgiveness but to reckon with a complicity that we saw in American capitalism, slavery and post-slavery racism,” Garcetti said.

Garcetti also announced the creation of the National Coalition of Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity. Which includes eleven mayors from cities including Denver, Austin, Texas, St. Paul, Minn., and Sacramento.

There is currently a battle over whether all black people should be eligible for the liberal city’s reparations program, or just descendants of slaves.

President Biden is pleading with Americans who have not yet been vaccinated against Covid to do so as soon as possible.

He cited the danger posed by the new delta variant saying it remains a serious and deadly threat” and claimed that that the new variant leaves unvaccinated people, especially the young, “even more vulnerable than they were a month ago.”

Echoing advice given by his chief medical adviser Dr Fauci, Biden said: “Please, please, if you have one shot, get the second shot as soon as you can,” he said. “If you haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, get vaccinated. Now. Now. Don’t put it off. It’s free, it’s easy. It’s convenient.”

He added that the “science and the data are clear” that vaccinations are the most effective form of protection against the variant.

The Hill reports: Biden encouraged Americans who have lingering questions about the vaccine to consult friends, family members and their doctors. He noted the various steps the administration has taken to make getting the vaccine as convenient as possible, such as partnering with Uber and Lyft to offer free rides to vaccination sites through July 4.

“We’re heading into, God willing, the summer of joy, the summer of freedom,” Biden said. “On July 4, we are going to celebrate our independence from the virus as we celebrate our independence of our nation. We want everyone to be able to do that.”

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky said earlier Friday that the delta variant would likely become the dominant strain in the U.S. over the next two or three months. The variant is the most contagious yet and more likely to cause severe illness in those who have not been vaccinated.

Biden also used the remarks to tout the progress that the U.S. has made in vaccinating its population, noting the decline in cases, hospitalizations and deaths. He marked a new milestone of 300 million coronavirus vaccine doses administered in his first 150 days in office.

The president has set a goal of having 70 percent of U.S. adults with at least one dose of vaccine by the Fourth of July, though he appears increasingly likely to fall short of that goal. Currently, 65 percent of Americans 18 years old and over have had at least one dose of vaccine.ADVERTISEMENT

Biden emphasized on Friday that 15 states have met the benchmark so far.

He balanced the positive message of progress with a warning, noting that the states where vaccination rates are lower are not seeing the same sharp declines in cases and hospitalizations.

“As I promised you from the beginning, I’ll always give it to you straight, the good, the bad and the truth, and the truth is that deaths and hospitalizations are drastically down in places where people are getting vaccinated, but unfortunately cases and hospitalizations are not going down in many places in the lower-vaccination-rate states. They’re actually going up in some places,” Biden said. 

“Please, please, if you have one shot, get the second shot as soon as you can,” he said. “If you haven’t gotten vaccinated yet, get vaccinated. Now. Now. Don’t put it off. It’s free, it’s easy. It’s convenient.” 

Texas officials have begun emptying a prison in South Texas to make room for a massive surge of illegal immigrants who were arrested amid efforts to stop illegals crossing the U.S.-Mexico border.

A spokesperson for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) confirmed the decision on Thursday, saying officials will move inmates from the Dolph Briscoe Unit prison in Dilley to other prisons.

“The state of Texas continues to deal with a record-high influx of individuals illegally crossing the border,” spokesman Jeremy Desel stated.

“To address the ongoing crisis, Governor Abbott is directing state resources to arrest and confine those individuals crossing the border unlawfully and who have committed a state or federal crime.”

Theepochtimes.com reports: Desel added that top Texas officials “assured” the Department of Criminal Justice that Dolph Briscoe Unit prison would only hold the arrested illegals on a “temporary” basis and that “the money will be reappropriated without a negative impact on TDCJ.”

The Dolph Briscoe Unit will be transformed to “serve as a central holding facility” for detainees who have been arrested and charged for state offenses, Desel added. “While in the custody of TDCJ, the agency, in conjunction with the Windham School District and the University of Texas Medical Branch, will provide appropriate services to the population,” the spokesman said.

The move comes after more than 180,000 illegal immigrants attempted to cross the border in May alone—the highest number reported in decades—according to data provided by Customs and Border Protection. Republicans, including Abbott, have raised alarm over the immigration surge, pointing to the Biden administration as the cause, in particular its reversal of key Trump-era border policies.

Earlier this week, Abbott announced his administration would attempt to construct a state- and private donor-funded border wall along Texas’s border with Mexico. Along with Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey, Abbott also called on other states to send extra law enforcement officials to help a struggling Border Patrol arrest illegal immigrants who cross into the United States. Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is the first to have sent state law enforcement to the border.

Construction of the border wall was a signature campaign promise of President Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential bid, but President Joe Biden issued dozens of executive orders to rescind Trump’s immigration orders, including the border wall construction. Biden has said that the wall is wasteful spending and directed some of the funds to be returned to the Department of Defense for other projects.

Biden’s policies have spurred hundreds of thousands of people—mostly from Central America and Mexico—to rush to the southern border, drawing criticism even from Democrats who represent areas along the border.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, responding to GOP-led criticism of his handling of the border, told a House panel on June 17 that “we have a strategy, we execute our strategy … I have confidence in our strategy.”

Anybody living in Florida who was unconstitutionally arrested or fined for not “social distancing” or wearing a face diaper will be pardoned of their “crime,” thanks to Gov. Ron DeSantis.

In a 3-1 vote, the four-member Board of Executive Clemency approved the Republican governor’s decision to pardon anyone who was unfairly punished by state or local government officials for making their own health decisions throughout the course of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“This action is necessary so that we can recover, have a good transition to normal operations, and also just a recognition that a lot of this stuff was way, way overboard,” DeSantis declared.

Naturalnews.com reports: The pardon applies to both civil and criminal penalties levied on individuals and businesses that were “punished for breaking unscientific, unnecessary directives.”

The only board member who voted no on the pardon was Democrat Nikki Fried, who currently works as Florida’s State Agriculture Commissioner. Fried is also running for governor next year as a challenger to DeSantis.

“Our local governments stepped up to protect the people of our state,” Fried claims. “They did what was best for the interests of their communities.”

When asked how many people will be pardoned as a result of the decision, DeSantis’ office did not respond.

No human being should ever be forced to take “medicine,” no matter the perceived threat

The decision follows an executive order issued by DeSantis back on May 3 suspending all local pandemic emergency mandates effective July 1. That order is coming into effect in just a few short days.

DeSantis also signed Senate Bill 2006 last month, passed by Florida lawmakers back in April, granting himself the power to override local emergency orders. The bill also bans so-called “vaccine passports” and imposes a fine of $5,000 per violation for any person or business that attempts to enforce them.

Both of these moves represent the “evidence-based thing to do,” DeSantis says, adding that any further restrictions “really are saying you don’t believe in the vaccines, you don’t believe in the data, you don’t believe in the science.”

“We’ve embraced the vaccines,” DeSantis further stated. “We’ve embraced the science on it.”

We hope that resident Melanie Joseph, an asthmatic mother who had her child taken away from her by Broward County District Judge Dale C. Cohen after she was spotted without a mask outdoors, will be one such person who is pardoned and reunited with her family.

It is important to clarify that DeSantis’ executive order suspending local emergency mandates only applies to governments, and not businesses.

“Floridians like Mike and Jillian Carnevale should have never faced criminal charges for not requiring mask in their businesses,” DeSantis stated about the Broward County gym owners who were targeted for refusing to enforce mask orders on their patrons.

“Today, we took action in Florida to reject the overreach of local authorities through unnecessary and unscientific mask mandates.”

DeSantis went on to talk about how no business should ever be forced into economic ruin for violating any government order that is “unreasonably restrictive of rights and liberties.”

The Biden administration’s unprecedent assault on immigration law and border security involves allied leftist groups in the private sector, as our Corruption Chronicles blog reports.

The Biden administration has confirmed leftist groups are picking hundreds of illegal immigrants daily to enter the U.S. to request asylum and the comeback of an Obama-era program to woo more Central American minors though there are already tens of thousands in government shelters nationwide. The double whammy was delivered just weeks apart as the migrant crisis reaches a boiling point and the nation sees record high illegal immigration along the nearly 2,000-mile Mexican border. High-ranking administration officials call it a “legal alternative to irregular migration.”

First, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally verified to Congress that it conceded to the demands of the leftist national organization American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to admit approximately 250 illegal aliens daily, or 7,750 a month. DHS officials explained that certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are helping it identify potential illegal immigrants for asylum, veteran members of Congress revealed in late May. They include ranking members of the House Oversight, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. The lawmakers disclose the information in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding the criteria being used by the administration for humanitarian exception for illegal immigrants as well as the NGOs that are determining eligibility of those seeking the exception.

This week a mainstream newspaper reports that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants chosen by leftist NGOs were granted exceptions and allowed to cross the border in May. Citing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, the article documents a steady rise in exemptions even as the administration claims the border is closed. In April CBP let 1,790 migrants enter legally, up from about 719 in March. “In prior months, the numbers were in the low hundreds,” the story reads. In May alone, CBP encountered 180,034 illegal aliens attempting entry along the southwest border, agency figures show. In Tijuana more than 10,000 have requested to enter the U.S. seeking asylum under the Biden administration’s expanded exemption program. An open borders group called Al Otro Lado (on the other side) that promotes “justice for migrants” is screening the candidates along with the International Rescue Committee, which helps people whose lives are shattered by conflict and disaster, and the ACLU. To facilitate the process Al Otro Lado has an online form in Spanish to screen candidates. Questions include if asylum seekers have ever been deported from the U.S., if they identify as indigenous or LGBTQ, have experienced sexual abuse, kidnapping, homelessness, or hunger. To promote its new process, the group has distributed fliers at the Tijuana encampment and area shelters, the article says, adding that a popular mobile messaging app is also used to spread the word.

Also this week the Biden administration announced it is bringing back a program started under Obama in 2014 to allow more Central Americans under the age of 21 to come to the U.S. legally. Never mind that the administration is already housing tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors seeking asylum in hundreds of facilities around the country. Data obtained by a national newswire shows the number of migrant youths, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), in U.S. custody more than doubled in the last two months and the government is currently housing more 21,000. Reinstating the Obama program will make tens of thousands of minors from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador eligible to come to the U.S. A statement issued jointly by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and DHS Secretary Mayorkas describes it as “reinstituting and improving the Central American Minors (CAM) program.” The presidential cabinet officials add that they “are firmly committed to welcoming people to the United States with humanity and respect, as well as providing a legal alternative to irregular migration.” They also claim that they are delivering on their promise to promote safe, orderly, and humane migration from Central America through this expansion of legal pathways to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.

(Washington, DC) – Judicial Watch announced it filed a brief yesterday in support of its request for a preliminary injunction to immediately prevent Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot from denying Daily Caller News Foundation reporter Thomas Catenacci’s interview request on the basis of race. The filing comes in response to an admission filed by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office last week that confirms her office engaged in a two-day “press tour” involving six interviews that was “exclusively” limited to “journalists of color.”

The lawsuit was initially filed on May 27, 2021, in the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Catenacci et al v. Lightfoot (No. 1:21-cv-02852)).

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after Catenacci, a white journalist, emailed Mayor Lightfoot’s office requesting a one-on-one interview with the mayor. The office never replied to the request or to two additional follow-up emails from Catenacci. Catenacci’s request came on one of the days that the mayor admittedly was discriminating based on race.

The lawsuit and subsequent preliminary injunction request assert that Lightfoot’s refusal to be interviewed by Catenacci violates the Daily Caller News Foundation’s and his First Amendment rights and Catenacci’s right to equal protection.  In its most recent filing, Judicial Watch notes its journalist clients continue to suffer irreparable injury because of Mayor Lightfoot’s admitted racist interview policy:

While other journalists may be relieved that Mayor Lightfoot has asserted that she will not discriminate against them on the basis of race going forward, the mayor’s assertion that she has stopped discriminating on the basis of race does nothing to remedy the irreparable harm Plaintiffs suffered on May 20, 2021 and continue to suffer. And absent an injunction or other order of this Court, nothing compels Mayor Lightfoot from not discriminating on the basis of race in the future. A preliminary injunction is necessary to prevent continuing irreparable harm caused by Mayor Lightfoot’s violation of Plaintiffs’ First Amendment rights and Catenacci’s right to equal protection.

“Mayor Lightfoot admits she discriminated based on race on the day I requested an interview,” said Thomas Catenacci.  “The Court gave her the chance to say she didn’t discriminate against me because I am white. She did not do so. Every day my interview request is not granted because of my race, my Constitutional rights are violated. This is simply unacceptable,”

“Mayor Lightfoot should just grant our interview request and commit to never again discriminate on the basis of race,” said Daily Caller News Foundation Editor-in-Chief Ethan Barton. “What’s to stop her from using this racist policy to block the freedom of the press in the future?”

“Mayor Lightfoot confessed to a racist interview policy,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton. “The court should refuse to give Mayor Lightfoot a day pass for racial discrimination and issue an injunction immediately protecting our clients and the public this outrageous abuse.”

###

The Biden administration has confirmed leftist groups are picking hundreds of illegal immigrants daily to enter the U.S. to request asylum and the comeback of an Obama-era program to woo more Central American minors though there are already tens of thousands in government shelters nationwide. The double whammy was delivered just weeks apart as the migrant crisis reaches a boiling point and the nation sees record high illegal immigration along the nearly 2,000-mile Mexican border. High-ranking administration officials call it a “legal alternative to irregular migration.”

First, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) finally verified to Congress that it conceded to the demands of the leftist national organization American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) to admit approximately 250 illegal aliens daily, or 7,750 a month. DHS officials explained that certain non-governmental organizations (NGOs) are helping it identify potential illegal immigrants for asylum, veteran members of Congress revealed in late May. They include ranking members of the House Oversight, Judiciary and Homeland Security committees. The lawmakers disclose the information in a letter to DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas demanding the criteria being used by the administration for humanitarian exception for illegal immigrants as well as the NGOs that are determining eligibility of those seeking the exception.

This week a mainstream newspaper reports that nearly 4,000 illegal immigrants chosen by leftist NGOs were granted exceptions and allowed to cross the border in May. Citing Customs and Border Protection (CBP) data, the article documents a steady rise in exemptions even as the administration claims the border is closed. In April CBP let 1,790 migrants enter legally, up from about 719 in March. “In prior months, the numbers were in the low hundreds,” the story reads. In May alone, CBP encountered 180,034 illegal aliens attempting entry along the southwest border, agency figures show. In Tijuana more than 10,000 have requested to enter the U.S. seeking asylum under the Biden administration’s expanded exemption program. An open borders group called Al Otro Lado (on the other side) that promotes “justice for migrants” is screening the candidates along with the International Rescue Committee, which helps people whose lives are shattered by conflict and disaster, and the ACLU. To facilitate the process Al Otro Lado has an online form in Spanish to screen candidates. Questions include if asylum seekers have ever been deported from the U.S., if they identify as indigenous or LGBTQ, have experienced sexual abuse, kidnapping, homelessness, or hunger. To promote its new process, the group has distributed fliers at the Tijuana encampment and area shelters, the article says, adding that a popular mobile messaging app is also used to spread the word.

Also this week the Biden administration announced it is bringing back a program started under Obama in 2014 to allow more Central Americans under the age of 21 to come to the U.S. legally. Never mind that the administration is already housing tens of thousands of illegal immigrant minors seeking asylum in hundreds of facilities around the country. Data obtained by a national newswire shows the number of migrant youths, known as Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC), in U.S. custody more than doubled in the last two months and the government is currently housing more 21,000. Reinstating the Obama program will make tens of thousands of minors from Guatemala, Honduras, and El Salvador eligible to come to the U.S. A statement issued jointly by Secretary of State Antony J. Blinken and DHS Secretary Mayorkas describes it as “reinstituting and improving the Central American Minors (CAM) program.” The presidential cabinet officials add that they “are firmly committed to welcoming people to the United States with humanity and respect, as well as providing a legal alternative to irregular migration.” They also claim that they are delivering on their promise to promote safe, orderly, and humane migration from Central America through this expansion of legal pathways to seek humanitarian protection in the United States.

Col. Joseph Gasper, director of the Michigan State Police, was involved in the discussions, including sending an email that introduced Gordon to Bob Stevenson, executive director of the police chiefs’ association, and Matthew Saxton, executive director of the sheriffs’ association.

Gordon forwarded some of the messages to Mark Totten, Whitmer’s chief legal counsel, including a final note from Saxton, in which he declined to participate in the plan. The request by the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services was for the police chiefs’ association and sheriffs’ association to issue statements of support for helping to enforce COVID-19 epidemic orders and to appear at a press conference where the plan would be detailed.

In an Oct. 19 message, Gordon described the proposal as “people who see local violations regarding masks or social distancing can contact local police or sheriffs as appropriate, and they will handle them (with default pathway as report and referral as civil matter; criminal only for egregious).”

Read More Here.

From Fox News:

Spare me the pious lecture and phony indignation.

Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., threw an apoplectic fit the other day when he learned that what he did to others was done to him.  There is some perverse irony in all of this.  But, of course, Schiff neglected to mention his own hypocrisy.

Schiff’s tantrum was triggered by the recent disclosure that the Trump Department of Justice obtained his phone records, along with another California Democrat, Eric Swalwell and several journalists.  Their data was seized pursuant to grand jury subpoenas served on Apple in 2017 and 2018 when Schiff was the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and Swalwell was his lackey-in-chief.

At the time, the DOJ was trying to track down government leaks to reporters of classified information involving sensitive national security matters, which constitutes crimes.  The Intel Committee was a natural focus, given Schiff’s reputation for politically motivated leaks aimed at harming then-President Trump.

When Schiff learned last Thursday that his phone records had been collected he predictably accused Trump of using the DOJ as a “cudgel against his political opponents and members of the media.”  The House Democrat called it “a blatant attack on our democracy.”  Cue the feigned outrage and sanctimony.

The insufferably self-righteous Schiff didn’t bother to note that he was guilty of engaging in the exact same tactics.  Moreover, he was counting on the mainstream media to conceal it.  Naturally, they complied.

Read More Here.

Top Headlines of the Week

Press Releases

Judicial Watch: Chicago Mayor’s Office Confirms Racially Discriminatory Interview Policy in Sworn Court Filing

Judicial Watch filed the lawsuit after Catenacci, a white journalist, emailed Mayor Lightfoot’s office requesting a one-on-one interview with the mayor. The office never replied to the request or to two additional follow-up emails from Catenacci. Catenacci’s request came on one of the days that the mayor admittedly was discriminating based on race.

Judicial Watch Sues for Records Regarding Official Reported COVID-19 Deaths in New York

In January 2020 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration was reported to have “confirmed thousands more nursing home residents died of COVID-19 than the state’s official tallies had previously acknowledged,” and according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, “the nursing home death count could be off by about 50%.”

Judicial Watch Sues for Records Regarding Official Reported COVID-19 Deaths in New York

In January 2020 New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration was reported to have “confirmed thousands more nursing home residents died of COVID-19 than the state’s official tallies had previously acknowledged,” and according to New York Attorney General Letitia James, “the nursing home death count could be off by about 50%.”

Investigative Bulletin

Judicial Watch Warns of Election Integrity Crisis

Judicial Watch has long been at the forefront of the fight for election reform, battling to clean up voter rolls and informing the public about threats to the integrity of the electoral system. Today, clashes over election laws are raging in state legislatures and Congress. The fight is often ugly, with cries from the Left of a new “Jim Crow” regime—the laws that suppressed and segregated Blacks in the aftermath of the Civil War—echoing across the land.

In The News

The Daily Caller: Chicago Lawyers Say Lightfoot Only Discriminated Against White Reporters For Two Days

Lightfoot is being sued by the Daily Caller News Foundation (DCNF) and Judicial Watch for not granting an interview to DCNF reporter Thomas Catenacci, who is white. In their most recent court filing, Lightfoot’s attorneys state that her policy of only granting interviews to journalists of color was in place for a specific two-day window, and therefore their request for a preliminary injunction is moot.

The Washington Times: Fauci Should Drop the Mask on Wuhan 

Scientists have learned a great deal about the coronavirus, including how it transmits and attacks the body and crucially, how to treat patients and create seemingly effective vaccines. However, scientists are requesting more information that they say is necessary to determine how COVID-19 originated and became a pandemic in order to develop strategies to prevent such a pandemic from ever again visiting such destruction upon humanity. But to this day, Dr. Fauci and NIAID have steadfastly refused to release documents that would help answer this and many other important questions.

CNS News: Judicial Watch Sues to Obtain Records in Fatal Shooting of Ashli Babbitt by Capitol Police Officer

Babbitt was shot and killed by an unidentified Capitol police officer as she, reportedly, was climbing through a broken interior window outside the Speaker’s Lobby off of the House Floor. She was unarmed, and a 14-year Air Force Veteran.

Video Highlights

From The Daily Signal:

Mexican criminal cartels—not U.S. border communities, nor illegal immigrants—are the beneficiaries of President Joe Biden’s open border policies.

Biden’s neglect of border security is feeding the money-making machine of the Mexican cartels, a criminal enterprise that exploits immigrants by taking their money—and sometimes their lives.

“[The cartels] have the northern border of Mexico sealed,” Jay Whetten, a rancher residing in Cochise County, Arizona, told me in an interview. “Nobody comes through that border illegally without their authorization.”

In May 2021, Border Patrol encounters with illegal immigrants from the Mexican border increased 674% as compared to May 2020, demonstrating the magnitude of the increase in business for Mexican cartels. And, according to a veteran Department of Homeland Security law enforcement officer, these are only the crossings of which Border Patrol is aware.

The officer, who wished to remain anonymous, has extensive border experience and estimates the number to be 20% higher. He told me in an interview, “The cartel makes more money on people than they do on dope.”

…

Chris Farrell, director of investigations and research at Judicial Watch, explained to me in an interview how the cartels’ control of the Mexican border is driven by profit and dehumanizes the people they traffic. Farrell, a former Army counterintelligence officer, has over 18 years of experience investigating the U.S.-Mexican border, including a narco terror plot against Chicago launched from Juarez, Mexico.

“When Americans hear about the humanitarian crisis at the border,” said Farrell, “they should remember that it is fueled by a sophisticated criminal enterprise that is subsidized by the Biden administration’s failure to secure our border.”

Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman, former head of the Sinaloa Cartel, was listed in Forbes magazine as one of “The World’s Most Powerful People” from 2009 to 2014 and in Forbes “World’s Billionaires List” in 2012. “The Mexican cartels have a valuation greater than Walmart,” said Farrell. “They are not a bunch of thugs hanging out in a trailer someplace.”

As Farrell explained, illegal immigrants who pay cartels are considered “contraband units” that must be moved across the border, not valuable human beings.

 “Once they cross the border… humans are a commodity that are expendable. If they die in the desert, the ‘coyotes’ won’t be held accountable,” Farrell said. “Let’s say an alien is injured and can’t continue. They will leave them to die in the desert. A coyote would never leave a bundle of drugs out in the desert.”

Read More Here.

From The Washington Examiner:

Five Senate Republicans are urging the leaders of the Department of Health and Human Services and the National Institutes of Health to hand over records related to the origins of COVID-19 and China‘s Wuhan Institute of Virology following recent revelations within heavily-redacted emails from Dr. Anthony Fauci.

Sen. Ron Johnson, ranking member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, along with Sens. Josh Hawley, James Lankford, Rand Paul, and Rick Scott, sent a letter obtained by the Washington Examiner to HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra and NIH Director Francis Collins on Monday. In the letter, Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee members wrote they wanted answers about NIH’s “handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.”

“The recent release of approximately 4,000 pages of NIH email communications and other documents from early 2020 has raised serious questions about NIH’s handling of COVID-19,” the GOP letter said. “Between June 1 and June 4, 2021, the news media and public interest groups released approximately 4,000 pages of NIH emails and other documents these organizations received through Freedom of Information Act requests. These documents, though heavily redacted, have shed new light on NIH’s awareness of the virus’ origins in the early stages of the COVID19 pandemic.”

Newly released emails from early 2020 sent by Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and chief medical adviser to President Joe Biden, show he seemed aware of the looming gain-of-function research and Chinese collaboration controversies. They also indicate Fauci worked behind the scenes to promote the natural origins hypothesis.

Read More Here.

From Fox News:

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot was slammed by a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights (USCCR) over her policy that barred White reporters from being granted interviews to mark the midway point of her first term in office.

In a letter sent to Lightfoot that was shared by The Daily Caller’s Thomas Catenacci, USCCR Commissioner Peter Kirsanow invoked the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment which prevents “official conduct discriminating on the basis of race,” something “any elected official in the United States should know.”

“A government official, such as yourself, depriving individuals of opportunities, on the basis of their race is explicitly discriminatory,” Kirsanow wrote. “Government-sanctioned bigotry is the same sort of horrid behavior that Americans of all stripes rejected, fought against, and ultimately conquered decades ago. An objective observer cannot help but wonder why such immoral and un-American attitudes are coming from the Office of the Mayor of Chicago.”

Read More Here.

The nation’s federal prison system is in hot water again, this time for security failures that allow inmates to escape undetected. In some cases, the prisoners who slip away place dummies in their bed to deceive correctional officers and in other instances they simply have other inmates pose as them during counts. Details of the breaches are offered in a Management Advisory Memorandum issued this month by the Department of Justice (DOJ) Inspector General (IG). The document focuses on the Federal Bureau of Prisons (FOB) minimum security facilities, known as Federal Prison Camp (FPC) and Satellite Prison Camp (SPC) locations. The watchdog’s findings should embarrass FOB officials at every level. “Gaps in security at FPCs and SPCs present risks that inmates will escape and, if they return, smuggle contraband back into facilities undetected, which endangers the community, other BOP inmates, and correctional staff,” the IG writes in its memo to prison officials.

Seven of the FOB’s 122 facilities are minimum security and fall under the category of FPC. They have dormitory housing, a low staff-to-inmate ratio and limited perimeter fencing. SPCs are small camps adjacent to the main facility and provide inmate labor to the main institution, according to the FOB website, as well as off-site work programs. Security weaknesses found by investigators vary by facility and are serious enough to enable inmates to escape undetected. They include unsecured outer building doors within some FPCs and SPCs, even during times when inmates were not permitted to move freely; door locks and sensors that were susceptible to tampering, thus leading to alarms failing to function when locked doors were opened without authorization; limited or no outer perimeter fencing; and limited video surveillance. The lapses allowed four inmates at a Beaumont, Texas facility to slip away undetected for more than 12 hours despite three overnight inmate counts conducted by officers. “The evidence showed that the 4 inmates escaped the facility after the 4:00 p.m. stand up count (for which they were present) and that, despite the Correctional Officers conducting counts at 12:00 a.m., 3:00 a.m., and 5:00 a.m., they were not discovered missing at those times,” the management advisory memo states.

Incredibly, investigators found that correctional officers did not violate policy because they were essentially fooled by the inmates. “The evidence showed that the inmates who escaped may have had other inmates pose as them or placed dummies in their beds to deceive Correctional Officer during nighttime counts,” the DOJ IG memo says, adding that “evidence showed that the Correctional Officers likely complied with BOP and FCC Beaumont policy when conducting the nighttime counts.” This indicates that standards are quite low for trained federal prison officers so easily duped by the convicted criminals they are charged with guarding. The DOJ watchdog seems to defend the officers, instead attributing the lapse on “security concerns that enabled the inmates’ escape.” Furthermore, BOP policy discourages correctional officers from using excessive light when conducting inmate counts allowing inmates to deceive officers into counting them when they are not actually present, the DOJ IG reveals. “We were told that as long as inmates return to their assigned building and bunk before the correctional officers conduct stand-up inmate counts, they can escape the SPC undetected,” according to the advisory memo.

The minimum security report comes on the heels of a more serious lapse involving the FOB’s failure to monitor terrorist inmates amid a huge spike in radicalized convicts in its custody. Part of the nation’s federal prison system is to keep America safe by, among other things, monitoring all social communications of high-risk inmates, especially those with terrorist ties. It is a crucial part of the BOP’s duties considering that in the last decade the number of inmates with known links to terrorism increased by an astounding 250%. Incredibly, the BOP, which has a $7.1 billion annual budget, doesn’t adequately check the communications of terrorist prisoners and hasn’t even bothered identifying all terrorists in its custody, according to a report issued earlier this year by the DOJ IG. Even when the BOP monitors the communications of high-risk inmates, it does not do it consistently and the inspector general found that “thousands of terrorist inmate communications” are only partially checked. Investigators offer the consequences of this negligence, writing that the disbursement of sensitive information—including videos, pictures, and other documents—helps “radicalize other inmates.”

Less than a year earlier the BOP came under fire after its elite riot teams committed embarrassing gaffes during training exercises that made the highly trained officers seem like amateurs. BOP staff members were seriously injured because there was “inappropriate and dangerous” use of force and pepper spray during the mock exercises, according to an audit conducted by the DOJ IG. The units, known as Special Operations Response Teams (SORT), gained national media attention because they were deployed by the attorney general to respond to violence and looting after George Floyd’s death. They are specialized tactical squads trained to respond to emergency situations such as prison riots, hostage taking, assaults on jail staff and inmate escapes. All federal prisons have their own SORT and they usually have 15 members led by a commander or captain.

Scouting Report: Coco Reef's Wrap Bikini is the most supportive and flattering bathing suit I've tried. It's adjustable and fits like a bra.

Prior to this year, I have never loved a single bathing suit I’ve owned, and that’s kind of sad. I don’t think I’m alone in feeling this way, but I do have my own specific reasons: Every bathing suit I’ve ever tried on felt improperly sized, overly revealing, blindingly colorful, or not at all supportive. And then, out of pure desperation, I’d buy it anyway. After 29 years on this earth, however, I’ve finally broken that streak. I’ve officially fallen in love with Coco Reef’s wrap underwire bikini — and even though I didn’t try it on prior to getting it, it still fits like a glove.

How, exactly, could that be possible? Unlike traditional swim sizing (small, medium, large, etc.), Coco Reef does things a bit differently. Instead of a full set in one size, they often sell the tops and bottoms separately, with the tops sized like most bras. Most of them even have underwire, adjustable straps, and covered hook-and-eye closures with multiple adjustment levels, so even when you’re eyeballing it from behind a computer screen, it’s designed to feel custom-made when it arrives. They also carry a wide range of sizes, including plus.

Coco Reef Classic Solids Wrap Underwire Bikini Top

The Coco Reef wrap top has all of the aforementioned features, plus built-in side boning, contoured foam cups, and soft, stretchy microfiber that’s reinforced to retain its shape despite salt and chlorine. (You can check out the plus-size version here, which goes up to a 42G). In terms of looks, it’s stylish while also offering a surprising amount of coverage, all thanks to the peek-a-boo cut-outs and larger cups. It’s also black, so it immediately won me over, but for those who prefer some color, it comes in tropical patterns and animal prints, too.

Personally, I paired this bikini top with Coco Reef’s Diva bottoms, which are ruched and high-waisted with a subtle V-shaped dip. (When I say high-waisted, I mean it; on me, they stretch all the way up to my ribs, so if I wanted it to, this set could pass as a one-piece, and I love it.) Since the top is so versatile, though, you could combine it with just about any black bottoms. For more coverage, opt for a swim skirt, and for less, go with a bikini cut.

Finally, if you love the idea behind the suit, but not the suit itself, Coco Reef has a pretty big selection.

Sometimes, when the weather isn’t great and the lake is off-limits, I put this suit on just to stand in front of the mirror and remind myself that the impossible has, in fact, happened

Scouted selects products independently and prices reflect what was available at the time of publish. Don’t forget to check out our coupon site to find activewear deals from Nike, adidas, and more. If you buy something from our posts, we may earn a small commission.

The solar panels on your roof are not perfect machines.

They are made up of individual solar cells, where the sunlight is converted to electricity, but there is inevitably a little bit of space between each cell—more or less wasted real estate. So what if you could take the light hitting that dead space and repurpose it to produce more energy? And, even cooler, what if you could do it using rainbows?

Researchers at the University of Arizona have created a holographic system designed to reduce some of the lost efficiency in solar panels due to those blank spots between the cells. A holographic light collector is inserted into the solar panel just over the dead space; the sunlight passes through this collector and splits into its ROYGBIV colors (because only certain wavelengths of light are of most use to a solar cell, in this particular case those producing yellow to red light). The useful colors are then bounced back up and off the glass covering the panel, and down into the solar cell itself.

This bit of extra light, scientists say, could make a big difference in the solar industry..

“If you [ask] solar cell engineers and physicists, if they get a tenth of a percent or two-tenths of a percent increase in performance, they go wild,” said Raymond Kostuk, a professor of electrical and computer engineering and of optical sciences at the University of Arizona. By adding in the hologram, Kostuk and his fellow scientists were able to improve a panel’s performance by almost 5 percent, at its best. A hypothetical solar power system that normally generates 100 kilowatt-hours of electricity per year could expect an additional 4.5 kilowatt-hours thanks to the rainbows.

“Extracting more electrical energy out of the system by optical methods, I think, has a really potentially very high payoff for a lot of these systems,” Kostuk said.

Kostuk, along with PhD students Jianbo Zhao and Benjamin Chrysler, published their results in the Journal of Photonics for Energy. The efficiency improvements with the holographic system can depend on several factors, most importantly the actual amount of dead space on a given solar panel. This can vary depending on the specifics of the panels’ design and manufacturing process, Kostuk said, but at times it can be as high as 10 percent; for the new study, the researchers modeled their work on a panel with just over 8 percent wasted space.

An improvement of 5 percent may not sound like much, until you start to ponder just how many solar panels are out there already, and how many more are coming. That extra 4.5 kilowatt-hours, stretched out to the 42 billion kilowatt-hours that small solar systems generated in the U.S. in 2019, would mean enough extra power for more than 175,000 homes—and that doesn’t even include the massive solar farms out in the desert. In 2020, the U.S. installed more than 19 gigawatts of new solar power capacity, accounting for almost half of new electricity generation.

“If you think about the 20-year lifetime of the module, that’s a lot more energy production,” Kostuk said.

R.K. Kostuk, University of Arizona

Stuart Bowden, an associate professor at Arizona State University and author of an online photovoltaics textbook, was not involved with the new research, but he agreed that even a small boost in efficiency goes a long way. “Even if we’re being pessimistic and they’re only getting half the gain that they claim they’re getting, a couple of percent in a commercial silicon module is huge,” he said. One challenge of commercialization, he added, is that manufacturing processes often require small compromises that could reduce the gains incrementally. “Say they got 3 percent improvement, that’s still pretty cool,” he said. “We would really fight for that.”

Kostuk holds no illusions about his holograms showing up in the millions of panels rolling out of factories right away. “If you want to incorporate this into a production line, that’s going to take a lot of effort,” he said. “It depends how serious, I think, manufacturers are on extracting as much performance out of the systems as possible.”

The holographic component itself is not particularly expensive. A company Kostuk used to work with, Prism Solar, was able to make a similar device at about two dollars per square meter, which he said wouldn’t dramatically alter solar panel manufacturing costs—but the efficiency bump may not be quite enough to justify changing entrenched manufacturing processes. (“Never trust an academic when they do costing,” Bowden, of ASU, joked.) Still, improved efficiency can lower other costs associated with solar power. For example, a 5 percent boost in electricity output means you need less land in order to generate the same amount of power, or less wiring and racking material for a rooftop system.

Though he thinks there is ample potential to improve standard solar panels if manufacturers did come around, Kostuk also said that a better early market for the holographic system may be in some specialty solar applications, like those known as agrivoltaics, where solar power and agriculture are combined. Though agrivoltaic systems have not yet been rolled out in substantial amounts, Kostuk has partnered with a solar start-up called Sunesta to develop the idea, with some funding from the National Science Foundation.

When pressed on a time frame for holograms entering into widespread use, Kostuk chuckled. “I could give the standard answer and say five to 10 years,” he joked, before offering some optimism. “Given the climate in the government, and elsewhere around the world, [we’re] really now trying to solve problems with renewable energy and to make it more efficient,” he said. “You know, some of these ideas may go into service much quicker.”

Fast fashion has grown to saturate much of the fashion market. It made trends readily available to the masses at a fraction of the cost of designer items, and turned companies like Zara and H&M into multi-billion-dollar enterprises.

Of course, with that level of mass production came many environmental costs ranging from pollution to supply chain issues, compounded by eco-related labor issues. Fast fashion proved itself to be ethically questionable, although companies have begun making amends for their past environmental missteps. Brands have begun using more sustainably sourced materials, creating clothing recycling programs, and reorganizing their supply chains to be eco-friendlier.

As fast fashion has started cleaning up its act, a new frontier has emerged: fast beauty. Fast beauty companies like Kylie Cosmetics, Winky Lux, and Deciem, churn out products at a pace never before seen in the beauty industry. Typically in beauty, products are developed over a very long course of time with a chemist to ensure quality is met. With fast beauty, products are produced very quickly with immediate customer satisfaction uppermost in manufacturers’ minds.

A representative for Kylie Cosmetics declined to answer this reporter’s questions, but indicated that sustainability would be addressed as the brand evolves.

Fast beauty may not result in—as fast fashion does—discarded clothing in landfills across the globe, or burned adding to environmental damage. WinkyLux is known for making very small products, which allows them to avoid overproduction and decrease risk of inventory loss. (WinkyLux did not reply for further comment at the time of this article.) Deciem has said that they are working on a project to shed light on ingredient and product safety. They also said they promise to “keep it clean.”

According to Meredith Holland, a sustainability consultant with experience working in renewable energy and international climate change research, the global cosmetics industry produces more than 120 billion units of packaging every year, contributing greatly to the growing plastic waste and ocean plastics problem.

Deforestation and diminished soil viability are environmental impacts associated with the fast beauty industry, because of the farming practices used to source ingredients, such as palm oil that hasn’t been ethically sourced.

Another problem with fast beauty products is the amount of plastic they use. Even if they were to have a biodegradable container, a lot of plastic usage goes into beauty products from the spoons to scoop out products, plastic packaging around the box, and the stickers that come on products.

“There will be issues if companies are moving at a very fast pace and if they haven’t prioritized sustainability,” said Dr. Christopher Helt, a specialist in home and beauty care at Sustainability Consortium. “If a company doesn’t make sustainability a priority from the get-go and take a fast pace with whatever they are doing, there’s a risk of shortcuts contributing to environmental impacts.

“If you start out with sustainability as a pillar, and are focused on products that are safe and ensuring the supply chain is transparent, that’s a different story. A lot of big players in the beauty field would like to move as fast as the fastest company out there, but if you would ask them why they aren’t, it’s because of reasons like prioritizing a certain amount of transparency and doing things sustainably.”

The worst of fast beauty takes shortcuts with ingredients and using less sustainable raw materials. Ingredients that can pose certain environmental hazards, like palm oil, are easy to formulate but come at an environmental cost.

Tara James Taylor, senior vice president of beauty and personal care at NielsenIQ, told The Daily Beast, “Roughly a quarter of U.S. adults are considered to be sustainable CPG (consumer packaged goods) shoppers. Overall, this segment tends to be younger, college-educated, and possesses disposable income. This group’s usage of goods and services are significantly affected by their concern for the well-being of the world around them, as well as their own internal health.”

Sustainable shoppers evaluate corporations based on their transparency and involvement in environmental and social justice issues, and are willing to put their money where their mouth is, said James Taylor. About a third of shoppers say they’re willing to pay more for sustainable CPG products. “We can expect other consumers to follow suit as calls for a sustainable world becomes increasingly pressing, and additional sustainable brands emerge to satisfy a diverse range of beauty and personal care needs.”

Holland said that fast fashion and fast beauty were alike “in that they make products available to consumers as quickly as possible. This drastically reduces the turnaround time typically required from product conception to launch, to capitalize on current trends. This leads to overconsumption by consumers and environmentally damaging production ingredients and practices used to facilitate the warp speed time to market.”

However, in fast fashion’s case, the dying and manufacturing of fabric is a very dirty process, said Holland. “Often in fast fashion, the clothing is made up of synthetic materials derived from plastic. Even though fast beauty uses its fair share of plastic for its packaging, it uses far less than fast fashion, comparatively, when taking into account the plastic that makes up most of today’s clothing.”

A major drawback of fast beauty, Holland said, was its shorter shelf life than fast fashion products, “leading to consumer waste based on product expiration dates. Other than discarding one fashion trend for the next, there's no ‘expiration date’ on a clothing item.”

Then there is the question of how to dispose of fast beauty containers sustainably, said Holland. “Small containers are hard to clean, multi-compositional packages need separating at the material level, color and opaque plastics have low demand in the recyclables market, and the small size of the caps, pots, wands, and trays of makeup and skin care fall through the cracks at recycling facilities.”

Holland says to never rinse fast beauty goods down the drain. Doing so only sends the chemicals the product is made of right into our surface water.

Inevitably, fast beauty has an environmentally friendlier nemesis: clean beauty. Azadeh Valanejad, a blogger and sustainable fashion and clean beauty advocate, points to the ‘greenwashing’ of brands who claim to be green, but are often far from so. “There needs to be more advocacy and education of the dangers of fast beauty because once people are made aware, there will be a much bigger call to action,” Valanejad said.

To bring awareness of the issues with fast beauty to the general public, Valanejad says that education is the most important answer.

“In 83 years, the FDA has not updated their cosmetic regulations,” Valanejad said. “Organizations like the Environmental Working Group are in the business of trying to educate consumers on the quality of their cosmetics. You can search a brand on their website and they will break it down for you and give it a rating. The smaller the rating number, the cleaner and more eco-friendly it is, the higher the rating, the more dangerous it is. They break down every ingredient for you and tell you why it is harmful.”

Valanejad believes that it is possible for fast beauty to go the clean and environmentally friendly route. “It’s really not that hard to make a clean product, but companies have to be more transparent,” she said. “The first step is removing fragrance. Fragrance is one of the most harmful things you can have in a product. Anything with fragrance in it that says they are eco-friendly is one of the most immediate signs of greenwashing.”

Authored by Sam Jacobs via Ammo.com,

Of course you’ve heard the name “George Soros,” often invoked as a sort of folk demon on the American and international right, it’s likely that you have some vague notion of why you think he’s a bad guy, or maybe you think the whole thing is a bunch of hype.

However, if you’re a freedom lover, there’s nothing “hype” about the influence that George Soros has around the world attacking your freedom. Indeed, you probably vastly underestimate the influence that he has on politics.

From the perspective of someone who values life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, there is no more dangerous man today than George Soros. This is not hyperbole, it is the simple truth. While we don’t plan to paint a picture of a man standing behind the scenes, rubbing his hands together and cackling as he plays puppet master over each and every attack on freedom around the world, Soros acts as a strawman and a caricature of what is actually going on in the world.

George Soros, his money, and his NGOs are bankrolling and influencing public policy and opinion from the local level all the way up to the national level. Entire nations have been made to bow to the Soros agenda, but perhaps more importantly for our purposes, key local officials in government are increasingly wholly owned subsidiaries of the Soros machine.

Ever wonder why urban terrorists can burn down cities with no consequences but the McClaskys are prosecuted for defending their home against the same? The answer is George Soros, his money, and his influence.

Do You Know Who Your District Attorney Is?

American political culture focuses almost entirely on Presidential elections, with Congressional and gubernatorial races getting much less attention from the general public. When it comes to local politics, unless you live in a large city, chances are good that you don’t know much about city politics. For example: Who is your local district attorney or county prosecutor?

Most people have no idea. It’s a low-key office, generally staffed by someone looking to do public service, not advance their career. There is little glamor, low pay, and lots of thankless work to be done at this level, which means that for the most part, this is not where social climbers begin their careers.

That being said, these elected officials have enormous amounts of power because they decide who gets prosecuted, who doesn’t, and what charges are levied against them. If your DA decides that the local band of looters are actually peaceful protesters, they won’t ever see the inside of a courtroom. Similarly, if the local DA isn’t a fan of the right to self-defense, one must consider this when choosing whether or not to pull your firearm if a mob of them shows up on your lawn.

George Soros understands this and has been quietly funding a campaign to place district attorneys amenable to his agenda across the United States.

The Los Angeles Times – hardly the Epoch Times – describes this as “a years-long campaign by liberal groups to reshape the nation’s criminal justice system.” You should believe them when they tell you this, because that is precisely the goal. Not the litigation of the 10-yard fight that is the minutiae of law in America, but the radical reshaping of the legal system as we know it.

Part of this is just the very nature of bureaucracy, the plainer term for what people mean when they talk about “the deep state.” The government rests on men doing things, chief among these are what Vladimir Lenin called “special bodies of armed men”: cops, courts, and jails. According to Lenin, this is the very essence of the state. Libertarians will sympathize with this definition of the state. At its core, the state is a man with a gun who will throw you in a cage or kill you if you fail to comply. Everything else is just window dressing.

The local prosecutor is a chokepoint in the special bodies of armed men. The attorney general isn’t euphemistically called “top cop” for no reason and in his own way, the local prosecutor is also a “top cop,” albeit with a much smaller jurisdiction. This also means that he has more direct control over the individuals in his district, as the attorney general deals more in broad brushstrokes.

Who is your local DA? George Soros knows. He might very well be his paymaster.The campaigns for local DAs and the like aren’t shy about stoking racial resentment and animosity. The Democratic Party’s playbook hasn’t changed much since the days of Jim Crow, it’s just that it has found new ways to make political hay out of sowing racial divisions among Americans. One Soros-produced ad for Noah Phillips campaign for District Attorney of Sacramento County, focuses almost exclusively on a black boy in a hoodie.

It is of course unrealistic to expect that even highly bureaucratic roles are entirely apolitical, however, the Soros DAs have ratcheted up the partisanship, not just in the race, but in the actual execution of the office. As of September 2020, there were 31 Soros-backed DAs in the United States. That might not sound like a lot, but it includes the DAs of Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Portland, San Francisco, and St. Louis. All told, tens of millions of Americans are now victims of the Soros racket in the form of their local top prosecutor.

Some examples of the Soros machine at work in America’s DA offices include:

• After the last round of rioting, looting, and arson in St. Louis, Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner dismissed charges against all 36 people arrested. She’s on the take from Soros for $307,000. This is also the prosecutor who filed charges against the McCloskeys.

• Los Angeles County District Attorney George Gascon got over $2 million from the Soros operation, he ended cash bail and is no longer prosecuting the crimes of trespassing, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, prostitution, or driving without a license.

• Kim Foxx is the Illinois State’s Attorney and has received $807,000 from Soros. She also declined to prosecute rioters, saying “The question it comes down to is, is it a good use of our time and resources? No, it’s not.” Foxx likewise declined to prosecute hate crime hoaxer, Jussie Smollett.

• Philly District Attorney Larry Krasner has received $1.7 million from Soros. He won’t be prosecuting rioters, looters, and arsonists. Krasner was very open about the ideology driving his permitting chaos in the city: “Prosecution alone will achieve nothing close to justice—not when power imbalances and lack of accountability make it possible for government actors including police or prosecutors to regularly take life or liberty unjustly and face no criminal or career penalty.”

• Krasner is worth calling out for special attention because he filed 75 cases against the police and has represented both Occupy Philadelphia and Black Lives Matter. At his victory party, supporters chanted, “F*** the police! F*** the police!” He generally declines to call himself a “prosecutor,” instead labelling himself a “public defender with power.”

• The results in Philadelphia are stunning as charges are dropped in 60 percent of all shooting cases – though we suspect your odds of being a conservative self-defense case and having your charges waived are rather slim. Shootings in Philadelphia were up 57 percent year over year from 2019 to 2020.

• San Francisco District Attorney Chesa Boudin, who’s working off $620,000 in Soros money, proclaims that “[t]he criminal justice system isn’t just massive and brutal, it’s also racist.” He doesn’t prosecute crimes such as solicitation, public camping, or public urination, which has certainly transformed San Francisco into a paradise on earth. Homicide rates have increased, burglary cases have increased by 42 percent, motor vehicle theft increased by 31 percent, and arson rates increased by 45 percent. He was formerly an advisor to Hugo Chavez and his parents were members of the Weather Underground, a far-left terrorist organization who directly participated in the robbery of an armored car. His victory party included obscene anti-police chants.

• DA Mike Schmidt of Portland, who’s received $230,000 in Soros money, also declined to prosecute rioters who burned the city for months while besieging a federal building. He openly sympathized with the rioters saying that they “represent the instinctive reactions of people who have been gassed repeatedly, who have been struck with kinetic projectile weapons.”

If the Soros machine can capture a District Attorney’s office in San Francisco, which is extremely expensive, there is little preventing them from capturing prosecutorial powers in Omaha, Annapolis, or Colorado Springs – or indeed your hamlet.

The Soros Machine and Racial Unrest

Much like the Democrat Party he supports, George Soros is not the slightest bit afraid to go into the mud of the politics of racial resentment. The Open Society Foundations are the primary mechanism for Soros delivering money to political activists in the United States and around the world. In 2020, The Open Society Foundations unveiled plans to spend $220 million on “efforts to achieve racial equality in America.”

To show you the relative priority that the Soros machine places on “racial equality” as opposed to electoral politics, the Soros machine only spent $28 million on the Democrat Party in 2020.

When Soros says “racial equality,” he means something very different from what you or the average American means when they say it. What Soros deems “racial equality” might more accurately be called “racial revenge,” though the left prefers to use the term “racial equity.” We will dive more into the ideology motivating Soros later, but our article on the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism is also an excellent resource on the deep philosophy of the Soros machine.

What Are the Open Society Foundations?

It’s important to know how the Soros machine operates so that you can learn to look for it. The Open Society Foundations is the main umbrella under which Soros distributes money. It includes a number of organizations, most of which you’ve probably never heard of and most of which feature very innocuous, even bland-sounding, names. The think tank used to generate the ideology is New America, formerly known as the New America Foundation, the name of which is much more direct about what it intends to create.

So what is an “Open Society?” Well it’s based on a phrase used by Karl Popper, a somewhat obscure 20th Century thinker known best for his “paradox of tolerance,” which essentially says that liberals should stop tolerating diversity of opinion when it begins to threaten liberalism.

Where does the Soros operation put its money in America in order to transform the country into an “open society?” It aims to abolishing the police and invest $1.5 million into the Community Resource Hub for Safety & Responsibility, another one of these blandly named organizations working to undo the American way of life. Additionally, his money has been linked to the urban unrest in Ferguson in 2014. In total he spent $33 million fomenting chaos in the formerly safe suburb of St. Louis.

Of course, no rogue’s gallery of the radical left would be complete without mentioning Black Lives Matter (BLM), another one of these vaguely innocuous-sounding organizations that Soros spends his money on. And boy howdy, did he spend money on BLM - George Soros spent $33 million on BLM alone.

What Is the Philosophy of the Open Society Foundations?

We’ve seen the modus operandi of the Soros machine, but what is the ideology that motivates it?

Soros’ umbrella organization is The Open Society Foundations. The phrase “open society” is one of those things that sounds so unassailable that no one could be against it. After all, are you for a closed society?

This is the framing trick used by the left since time immemorial. Something vague and innocuous sounding is picked as a name which means something very, very different to those in the know. So what is an “open society” to Soros and his retinue?

It is a concept developed by Karl Popper, Soros’ intellectual hero. Popper was not a Cultural Marxist, in fact he was highly critical of Marxism. However, there is so much overlap in terms of end results that it becomes a distinction without a difference.

Karl Popper didn’t invent the concept of the open society, despite his association with the term and his development of the idea – that dubious honor falls to a Frenchman by the name of Henri Bergson. However, we can credit most of what the open society is understood as today as springing from the mind of Karl Popper.

There are some key takeaways about what an open society actually is. First, the open society is an atomized society. People are to be seen not as part of any kind of social organism, but rather as radically separate individuals. The individual is not an essential building block of society, it is the end to itself. Social norms and traditions are seen as necessarily oppressive.

The open society is hostile to the notion of natural law and instead puts man-made laws, properly called “legislation,” over and above a more natural law flowing from a set of first principles, most notably God. Again, like Cultural Marxism, it seeks to “dethrone God” from society, replacing it with a cult of human judgment.

Popper also believed in a culture of constant critique, this is a point of overlap with Cultural Marxism; and humanitarianism, which is a loaded word designed to sound innocuous, but which actually means something far more specific than “being nice to people.”

Perhaps most frighteningly, the “open society” is just that – open. That is, entirely without any sort of privacy. While the notion of a “right to privacy” as interpreted by United States courts as a justification is troubling in practice, far more troubling is Popper’s conception of a society where every facet of a person’s life is in the public sphere, irregardless of their consent.

Free speech and free elections were seen as a necessity for such a society, however, Popper and the Open Society Foundations had different interpretations for this. Free speech does not apply to opponents of the open society unless they are critiquing society from the left – the only way to complain about Comrade Stalin is to say how much better we would all be if there were but two of him. Similarly, free elections means that of the kind we had in 2020 – one with absolutely no safeguards against abuse and taking place behind closed doors under the supervision of ideologically motivated “monitors” with rampant fraud.

It’s not just in America, it’s a worldwide phenomenon.

George Soros: King of the Color Revolution

George Soros’ primary weapon for changing countries to be more pliable to his desires is the “color revolution.” You’ve probably heard of revolutions occurring, generally in post-Soviet states, but also elsewhere. They have names like the Yellow Revolution (the Philippines), the Rose Revolution (Republic of Georgia), the Orange Revolution (Ukraine), and the Saffron Revolution (Myanmar).

There are some common themes to a color revolution which are worth noting for those wishing to prevent such a thing from happening in their own country. A disputed election where there is widespread cheating on the part of the “opposition” candidate generally kicks things off. The “opposition” is controlled by the Soros machine and friendly to NATO or other Atlantacist political organizations. There are then street rallies where violent operatives hide in crowds of otherwise peaceful protesters.

The government then responds and there is outcry from “humanitarian” organizations that the government has dealt sternly with what are effectively terrorists using human shields. There are generally operatives within the command structure who are sympathetic to Soros and his allies in Western governments.

There have been mixed success with color revolutions. They fail more often than they succeed. But they do succeed, especially where one defines success not so much as overthrowing the existing government, but forcing it to accept radical concessions that dramatically remake the political culture in the country. Color revolutions have resulted in what was effectively regime change in the Republic of Georgia (twice), Ukraine, the Arab World, and Belarus.

George Soros is deeply embedded in color revolutions around the world through the auspices of his Open Society Foundations NGO. The playbook should look somewhat familiar to most Americans after the summer riots of 2019 and 2020, as well as the aftermath of the 2020 elections.

It’s important to remember that George Soros is not a god. He is simply a man with a lot of money. Thus, we should be cautious in attempting to attribute each and every action on the far left to him, particularly in the view that he is some kind of micromanaging puppet master who is involved in the trenches of making policy or street activism. He is not.

He is a real-world supervillain and he is able to direct the law, constitutional, and political culture of entire nations using his money and his vision for what society ought to look like. He is able to get away with it thanks to general ignorance of just how effective he is and a coordinated effort by the media to smear anyone who calls him out as a dangerous fanatic.

It is George Soros, however, who is the dangerous fanatic. He is gunning for you, your property, your children, and ultimately your way of life.

Cristiano Ronaldo sent shockwaves across the beverage industry and the football world this week when, at a press conference in Monday, he took two bottles of Coca-Cola sitting in front of him and placed them aside in favor of a bottle of water.

The gesture - which would be deemed perfunctory and meaningless almost anywhere else in the world - sent shares of Coca-Cola plunging later in the week. The company lost about $4 billion from its valuation in the sell off. 

The incident not only echoed throughout the sports and beverage worlds, but was then covered extensively by international media. 

Ronaldo's snub of Coca-Cola highlighted the "flipside of the rise of sports influencers", according to a new Bloomberg Op-Ed. Ronaldo's seemingly meaningless gesture showed how "individual star power, amplified by huge social media followings, can upend partnerships that companies have struck with teams and events," author Andrea Felsted wrote this week. 

And the logistics of the incident represented a major backfire for Coca-Cola, who is one of the official sponsors of UEFA Euro 2020, the tournament that Ronaldo was playing in prior to the presser. However, the company doesn't sponsor Ronaldo, who is the world's most followed footballer online, himself. 

"The sheer clout of influencers today means that companies even on their periphery can’t escape the perils that come with them," the op-ed argues. Ronaldo has 300 million followers online.

Companies are becoming divided about how best to allocate capital to influencers and athletes.

Brands like Adidas and Coca-Cola have cut spending on individual athlete sponsorships and have focused more on team-wide/tournament-wide sponsorships, the op-ed notes. Meanwhile, Nike has continued to rely on the star power of a few massive celebrities to help drive its brand: Michael Jordan, Serena Williams, Naomi Osaka and LeBron James, to name a few.

And while there are usually strict rules regarding company sponsorships and while companies will sometimes adhere to players' personal preferences, the piece notes...

For example, some object to being associated with alcohol and gambling. Paul Pogba, who is a practicing Muslim, on Tuesday removed a bottle of Heineken from the press conference held after he was named Man of the Match following France’s win against Germany.

...there are no rules governing the exact situation Ronaldo placed Coca-Cola in this week. 

Thus, the op-ed concluded by pointing out the continuing "obvious risks" of influences misbehaving or leaving for other sponsors. You can read the full op-ed here. 

Authored by Tom Luongo via Gold, Goats, 'n Guns blog,

Jon Stewart is the High Priest of Barely Functional Millennials. Not all Millennials, just the ones he’s personally destroyed. I’ve hated him from the moment my younger friends/family told me they got their news from him rather than you know, the news.

And saying this is not an endorsement of the news, then or now.

Stewart’s agitprop was the stuff of legend during his run on The Daily Show. He programmed an entire generation to think he was the truth-telling court jester when he was really always The Davos Crowd’s Pied Piper. All he had to do was bust open a few easily-busted lies while mugging for the camera.

That’s instant credibility with a generation incapable of real critical thinking.

He was funny when he got his first break on Dennis Miller Live on HBO back in the early 90’s. I didn’t have cable back then and had a co-worker tape them for me. Stewart stood out. He’s a talented guy, always has been. I don’t begrudge him his talent. It’s one of the hallmarks of evil people, most of them are admirably talented at something.

I also remember back then Miller was a leftie, especially him trying to desperately pin down Charlton Heston on gun control. He was outmatched by Chuck. Miller tapped brilliantly into the Gen-X iconoclasm of the time. He was our high priest of irony. He was also smart in a way that didn’t give a damn whether you got the reference or not.

Can’t keep up, Cha-chi? Go melt some Ice-9 in a Sanka to chill out on Harvey Weinstein’s casting couch while jerking off to reruns of I Dream of Jeannie while getting ready for your closeup.

“Stop me before I sub-reference…. again.” Classic Miller.

My hatred for Stewart is nearly two decades old now. And the comparison to Miller should be clear. Stewart took The Daily Show and did Miller’s SNL’s Weekend Update routine and subverted the meta-narrative of fake news to steadfastly promote a very particular establishment point of view.

Democrats smart and good, Republicans stupid and bad.

He used that Gen-X iconoclasm and his prodigious talent to imprint the impressionable. Meanwhile Gen-X grew up. They grew out of their punk/post-punk adolescence and got more cynical, a lot more cynical. Stewart became a joke. Miller grew up too, shedding his Boomer roots, and was excommunicated for it.

At least today he’s still funny, if only as an avuncular crazy uncle version of himself rather than the razor sharp wit he once was.

Stewart faked cynicism and just became more partisan after he’d sunk the tap into the vein deep enough to do the whole body adrenochrome transfusion. But he knew exactly what he was doing and had the chops to pull it off. His partner in thought crime, Stephen Colbert, was only truly ever funny when he was doing voice work for the Adult Swim guys on Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law.

And that was all the more apparent when Stewart went on Colbert’s late show recently to declare to the world he now believed in the lab-leak origin story of COVID-19 and Colbert tried so hard to rein him in.

Peter Spiliakos, writing for the National Review, thinks this is because Colbert didn’t know when to leave the scene and has been ground down by the vocal minority of the Loony Left.

In the wider America, the vast majority either believe in the lab-leak theory or are agnostic on the subject. But for the Very Online Left, the lab-leak theory isn’t about true or false. It’s about in-group vs. out-group, and anyone who volunteers that the lab-leak theory might be true is part of the out-group.

It’s a nice theory, but I think it’s deeper than that. Colbert just isn’t that funny and lives in real fear of everyone figuring that out. He couldn’t hack it if he actually had to appeal to an audience that wasn’t as much of a sanctimonious prick as he is.

When Stewart left the scene and handed the reins to the inept Trevor Noah, there was no hope for the show because Noah, unlike Stewart, doesn’t know where the act begins and the lie ends. When you’ve only grown up with fake irony, fake outrage, how are you supposed to keep things straight when you don’t know where the line is drawn?

Stewart and Colbert told an entire generation that comedy can only be valid IF it takes a side in the culture war.

And the net result was far more damaging than even what our pathetic media did then and still does today.

Because humor and iconoclasm are meant to be the foils to the self-seriousness of the establishment.  It’s not supposed to be the establishment. The jester is supposed to be the only guy who can tell the truth, because he’s the lowest of the low.

And The Daily Show, on Comedy Central was supposed to be the antipode to 60 Minutes and Nightline, the kings of news.  So, what Stewart did, becoming a literal mouthpiece of DNC talking points, practically becoming a member of the DNC itself, is doubly egregious. 

For years I said if I could fight one person I’d fight Milton Friedman because he perverted liberty into neo-slavery economics through advocating for a floating fiat currency standard, our current hell.

I’m revising that and saying I’d fight John Stewart, because 1) he’s alive and 2) he’s pure evil.  His is the charismatic face designed to sell-out an entire generation so that they have no escape route, no counter culture.  

Stewart is the opposite of Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and Richard Pryor.  He’s not going to jail for being subversive, he’s the one telling us we should be in jail for not towing the party line.

He’s the guy who led the way to political correctness as orthodoxy by setting the table for the rest of the shitlibs to enforce after he left the scene. And here we are today.

Does anyone actually think Trevor Noah is funny? Talented? Really?

Now Stewart comes out at this moment to pull his schtick on Colbert’s show to rally the libs to the whole WuFlu, “China Did It To Us” Narrative The Davos Crowd is pushing on us now?  

If you squint hard enough you can see where they missed editing out the puppet strings in the video feed.

They’ve pulled out the Jon Stewart card to convince the squishy Millennials that China is our enemy.  Google will now whitewash all references to Ft. Detrick, their October 2019 exercises and all the rest of it.  Remember, Millennials, in general, don’t know anything.  They just Google shit and think they’re informed.  

Jon Stewart is the foundation on which their basic lack of inquisition is built on while at the same time telling them they are cynical and informed.  That’s why the cognitive dissonance over this was so thorough.  They now have to side with the evil Republicans and Trumptards over the ‘China Virus’ because John Stewart told them so.  

It’s as predictable as it is pathetic.  

I don’t want to go off on a rant here, but it’s clear that Davos is burning bridges left and right, they are accelerating their plans and calling in all the markers.  They are burning their accumulated political capital very quickly because they now realize they have a little more than a year to do all the damage they are going to do.

There will be political surprises all across Europe this year and next.  By the time they are done the Democrats will look like Labour in the UK, a brittle shell of a party built on equal parts envy and smarm, and the Republicans, guided by Trump, will return to power with a vengeance we’ve never experienced in U.S. politics.  It will not be pretty.  

And if Jon Stewart had any effect the other day he will be one of the reasons why this plan will work. If it doesn’t work then James Cameron better stop working on those Avatar sequels and begin development of Titanic 2: Zombie Boogaflu.

Then again, by the time it comes out it’ll be more Ken Burns than Kurosawa anyway.

Because the goal of this little theatrical display is nothing less than the reunification of the broken American electorate. Both Left and Right, animated by the virus of American exceptionalism, will need someone to blame for the tragedies of today and the hardships of tomorrow.

That’s the script anyhow. It’s what passes for good writing these days in Commie-wood.

If Chinese Premier Xi Jinping is smart he will not take advantage of the paralysis and vacuum at the top of the U.S. political system as led by the Olden Girls and make a move on Taiwan.  He should just do nothing and let Davos’ plans to get the two countries to fight fall flat.  That would honestly be the best possible outcome at this point.  

The good news is Stewart’s curtain call was a bit too much needle scratch and not enough Honest Injun. The bad news is that most of the people he was targeting can’t tell the difference.

And even if they do see through his schtick that just leaves us even more angry and divided than before while Nancy Pelosi forces struggle sessions over Juneteenth in Congress, organizing election fraud in Georgia may get Stacey Abrams the Nobel Peace Prize and the government is trying to make the X-Files a documentary.

Ah, fuck it, who wants pie?!

*  *  *

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Authored by James Bovard via JimBovard.com,

The Biden administration revealed on Tuesday that guys who can’t get laid may be terrorist threats due to “involuntary celibate–violent extremism.” That revelation is part of a new crackdown that identifies legions of potential “domestic terrorists” that the feds can castigate and investigate. But there is no reason to expect Biden administration anti-terrorism and anti-extremism efforts to be less of a farce and menace than similar post-9/11 campaigns.

Since the French Revolution, politicians have defined terrorism to stigmatize their opponents, a precedent followed by the Biden administration’s National Strategy for Countering Domestic Terrorism. The report labels the January 6 clash at the Capitol as a “domestic terrorism” incident but fails to mention it spurred a mushroom cloud of increasingly far-fetched official accusations. Capitol Police acting Chief Yogananda Pittman told Congress that January 6 was “a terrorist attack by tens of thousands of insurrectionists.” Less than a thousand protestors entered the Capitol that day but apparently any Trump supporter who hustled down the Mall towards the Capitol became the legal equivalent of Osama Bin Laden. Unfortunately, this “seen walking in the same zip code” standard for guilt could be the prototype for Biden era domestic terrorist prosecutions.

The Biden report did not bestow the same “terrorist” label on the mobs who burned U.S. post offices in Minneapolis or assailed a federal courthouse in Portland last year. In its litany of terrorist incidents, the report cites “the vehicular killing of a peaceful protestor in Charlottesville” at the 2017 Unite the Right ruckus but omits the 49 people killed in 2016 by a Muslim enraged by U.S. foreign policy at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando. Maybe that case was excluded because the murderer was the protected son of a long-term FBI informant and FBI falsehoods derailed the subsequent trial of his widow. Nor did the report mention the worst terrorist incident since 9/11—the Las Vegas bloodbath where a single shooter killed 58 people and injured 900 others. The FBI claimed it could never find a motive for that slaughter and its “final report” on the incident was only three pages long. Never mind.

The White House claims its new war on terrorism and extremism is “carefully tailored to address violence and reduce the factors that… infringe on the free expression of ideas.” But the prerogative to define extremism includes the power to attempt to banish certain ideas from acceptable discourse. The report warns that “narratives of fraud in the recent general election… will almost certainly spur some [Domestic Violent Extremists] to try to engage in violence this year.” If accusations of 2020 electoral shenanigans are formally labeled as extremist threats, that could result in far more repression (aided by Facebook and Twitter) of dissenting voices. How will this work out any better than the concerted campaign by the media and Big Tech last fall to suppress all information about Hunter Biden’s laptop before the election?

The Biden administration is revving up for a war against an enemy which the feds have chosen to never explicitly define. According to a March report by Biden’s Office of the Director of National Intelligence, “domestic violent extremists” include individuals who “take overt steps to violently resist or facilitate the overthrow of the U.S. government in support of their belief that the U.S. government is purposely exceeding its Constitutional authority.” But that was the same belief that many Biden voters had regarding the Trump administration. Does the definition of extremism depend solely on which party captured the White House?

The report notes that the “Department of Defense is reviewing and updating its definition of prohibited extremist activities among uniformed military personnel.” Bishop Garrison, the chief of the Pentagon’s new Countering Extremism Working Group, is Exhibit A for the follies of extremist crackdowns on extremism. In a series of 2019 tweets, Garrison, a former aide to Hillary Clinton, denounced all Trump supporters as “racists.” Garrison’s working group will “specifically define what constitutes extremist behavior” for American soldiers. If Garrison purges Trump supporters from the military, the Pentagon would be unable to conquer the island of Grenada. Biden policymakers also intend to create an “anti-radicalization” program for individuals departing the military service. This initiative will likely produce plenty of leaks and embarrassing disclosures in the coming months and years.

The Biden report is spooked by the existence of militia groups and flirts with the fantasy of outlawing them across the land. The report promises to explore “how to make better use of laws that already exist in all fifty states prohibiting certain private ‘militia’ activity, including…state statutes prohibiting groups of people from organizing as private military units without the authorization of the state government, and state statutes that criminalize certain paramilitary activity.” Most of the private militia groups are guilty of nothing more than bluster and braggadocio. Besides, many of them are already overstocked with government informants who are counting on Uncle Sam for regular paychecks.

As part of its anti-extremism arsenal, DHS is financing programs for “enhancing media literacy and critical thinking skills” and helping internet users avoid “vulnerability to…harmful content deliberately disseminated by malicious actors online.” Do the feds have inside information about another Hunter Biden laptop turning up, or what? The Biden administration intends to bolster Americans’ defenses against extremism by developing “interactive online resources such as skills-enhancing online games.” If the games are as stupefying as this report, nobody will play them.

The Biden report stresses that federal law enforcement agencies “play a critical role in responding to reports of criminal and otherwise concerning activity.” “Otherwise concerning activity”? This is the same standard that turned prior anti-terrorist efforts into laughingstocks.

Fusion Centers are not mentioned in the Biden report but they are a federal-state-local law enforcement partnership launched after 9/11 to vacuum up reports of suspicious activity. Seventy Fusion Centers rely on the same standard—“If you see something, say something”—that a senior administration official invoked in a background call on Monday for the new Biden initiative. The Los Angeles Police Department encouraged citizens to snitch on “individuals who stay at bus or train stops for extended periods while buses and trains come and go,” “individuals who carry on long conversations on pay or cellular telephones,” and “joggers who stand and stretch for an inordinate amount of time.” The Kentucky Office of Homeland Security recommended the reporting of “people avoiding eye contact,” “people in places they don’t belong,” or homes or apartments that have numerous visitors “arriving and leaving at unusual hours,” PBS’s Frontline reported. Colorado’s Fusion Center “produced a fear-mongering public service announcement asking the public to report innocuous behaviors such as photography, note-taking, drawing and collecting money for charity as ‘warning signs’ of terrorism,” the ACLU complained.

Various other Fusion Centers have attached warning labels to gun-rights activists, anti-immigration zealots, and individuals and groups “rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority.” A 2012 Homeland Security report stated that being “reverent of individual liberty” is one of the traits of potential right-wing terrorists. The Constitution Project concluded in a 2012 report that DHS Fusion Centers “pose serious risks to civil liberties, including rights of free speech, free assembly, freedom of religion, racial and religious equality, privacy, and the right to be free from unnecessary government intrusion.” Fusion Centers continue to be bankrolled by DHS despite their dismal record.

The Biden report promises that the FBI and DHS will soon be releasing “a new edition of the Federal Government’s Mobilization Indicators booklet that will include for the first time potential indicators of domestic terrorism–related mobilization.” Will this latest publication be as boneheaded as the similar 2014 report by the National Counterterrorism Center entitled “Countering Violent Extremism: A Guide for Practitioners and Analysts”?

As the Intercept summarized, that report “suggests that police, social workers and educators rate individuals on a scale of one to five in categories such as ‘Expressions of Hopelessness, Futility,’ … and ‘Connection to Group Identity (Race, Nationality, Religion, Ethnicity)’ … to alert government officials to individuals at risk of turning to radical violence, and to families or communities at risk of incubating extremist ideologies.” The report recommended judging families by their level of “Parent-Child Bonding” and rating localities on the basis in part of the “presence of ideologues or recruiters.” Former FBI agent Mike German commented, “The idea that the federal government would encourage local police, teachers, medical, and social-service employees to rate the communities, individuals, and families they serve for their potential to become terrorists is abhorrent on its face.”

The Biden administration presumes that bloating the definition of extremists is the surest way to achieve domestic tranquility. In this area, as in so many others, Biden’s team learned nothing from the follies of the Obama administration. No one in D.C. apparently recalls that President Obama perennially denounced extremism and summoned the United Nations in 2014 to join his “campaign against extremism.” Under Obama, the National Security Agency presumed that “someone searching the Web for suspicious stuff” was a suspected extremist who forfeited all constitutional rights to privacy. Obama’s Transportation Security Administration relied on ludicrous terrorist profiles that targeted American travelers who were yawning, hand wringing, gazing down, swallowing suspiciously, sweating, or making “excessive complaints about the [TSA] screening process.”

Will the Biden crackdown on extremists end as ignominiously as Nixon’s crackdown almost 50 years earlier? Nixon White House aide Tom Charles Huston explained that the FBI’s COINTELPRO program continually stretched its target list “from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.” At some point, surveillance became more intent on spurring fear than on gathering information. FBI agents were encouraged to conduct interviews with anti-war protesters to “enhance the paranoia endemic in these circles and further serve to get the point across that there is an FBI agent behind every mailbox,” as a 1970 FBI memo noted. Is the Biden castigation campaign an attempt to make its opponents fear that the feds are tracking their every email and website click?

Biden’s new terrorism policy has evoked plenty of cheers from his Fourth Estate lapdogs. But a Washington Post article fretted that the administration’s report did not endorse enacting “new legal authority to successfully hunt down, prosecute, and imprison homegrown extremists.” Does the D.C. media elite want to see every anti-Biden scoffer in the land put behind bars? This is typical of the switcheroo that politicians and the media play with the terms “terrorists” and “extremists.” Regardless of paranoia inside the Beltway, MAGA hats are not as dangerous as pipe bombs.

The Biden report concludes that “enhancing faith in American democracy” requires “finding ways to counter the influence and impact of dangerous conspiracy theories.” But permitting politicians to blacklist any ideas they disapprove won’t “restore faith in democracy.” Extremism has always been a flag of political convenience, and the Biden team, the FBI, and their media allies will fan fears to sanctify any and every government crackdown. But what if government is the most dangerous extremist of them all?

*  *  *

James Bovard is the author of Lost Rights, Attention Deficit Democracy, and Public Policy Hooligan. He is also a USA Today columnist. Follow him on Twitter @JimBovard.

Imagine if F1 racing ever dabbled in air racing - it would likely involve some sleek, high-performance flying car, zooming over a fixed course in the sky as the crowd, dazzled not by the roar of a petrol high-performance motor but rather the buzzing of propellers. 

There appears to be new extreme motorsport on the horizon, and it involves the world's first flying electric cars series. 

According to Airspeeder, a proposed motorsport series for electric flying vehicles, founded by Matt Pearson and powered by performance eVTOL manufacturer Alauda, their prototype electric racing vehicle called EXA has successfully completed its first flight. 

Airspeeder EXA is the flying car's name and will be remotely piloted in three global races this year. Races will be brought to the public from professional minds at Brabham, McLaren, Jaguar, F1, Boeing, and Rolls-Royce.

The racing vehicles aren't designed to carry a pilot inside, which means pilots from aviation, motorsport, and eSports backgrounds will be able to operate the world's only racing electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft.

Augmented reality sky-tracks will be displayed for pilots as their flying race cars will show the audience, via live steams, the potential of these full potential of these powerful flying machines that have a greater thrust-to-weight ratio than a McDonnell Douglas F-15 Eagle fighter jet. 

The company says this is a "sport for the digital era. It needs no physical infrastructure for spectators or tracks. We race and with minimal ecological impact." 

Give this sport a high ESG rating while you're at it! 

What would be cooler if this sport paves the way for crewed electric flying car racing series. 

It seems like F1, IndyCar Series, and NASCAR might have a new competitor, one that is ESG friendly. 

Without further ado, flying racing cars are here. 

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Authored by Meiling Lee via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A laboratory at the University of Florida that recently analyzed a small sample of face masks, detected the presence of 11 dangerous pathogens that included bacterias that cause diphtheria, pneumonia, and meningitis.

Gainesville parents in Florida concerned about the harm caused to their children wearing face masks all day at school in 90 °F weather sent out six masks—five that were worn by children ages 6 to 11 for five to eight hours at school, and one worn by an adult—to be analyzed for contaminants at the University of Florida’s Mass Spectrometry Research and Education Center.

Of the six masks, three were surgical, two cotton, and a poly gaiter. Masks that have not been worn and a t-shirt worn at school acted as the control samples.

Five of the masks were found to be contaminated with parasites, fungi, and bacteria, according to Rational Ground. Only one mask was found to contain a virus that can cause a fatal systemic disease in cattle and deer. Other less harmful pathogens that can cause ulcers, acne, and strep throat were also detected.

None of the controls were contaminated with pathogens, while “samples from the front top and bottom of the t-shirt found proteins that are commonly found in skin and hair, along with some commonly found in soil.”

Amanda Donoho, a mother of three elementary school children, teamed up with other parents to send the masks to the lab because her sons broke out in rashes from prolonged mask-wearing.

“Our kids have been in masks all day, seven hours a day in school,” Donoho told Fox & Friends on June 17. “The only break that they get is to eat or drink.”

Donoho said that while students do not have to wear a mask outside at school since April 2021, masks were still required when they were within six to eight feet of each other. Masks must also be worn on school buses.

Further research is needed to better understand what is being put on children’s faces, says Donoho.

Superintendent Carlee Simon at the Alachua County Public Schools (ACPS) in Gainesville, Fla. did not respond to a request for comment.

The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says that kids should continue to wear masks and social distance until they are able to get vaccinated, despite data showing that children are minimally affected by COVID-19 and are not super-spreaders of the virus.

Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, signed an executive order on May 3, suspending all COVID-19 emergency restrictions, including mask-wearing. However, certain school districts like ACPS kept their mask policy in place for the remainder of the school year, while masks were optional within the community.

ACPS says masks will be optional for the 2021–22 school year but would continue to be required on school buses until mid-September unless the federal transportation regulation changes.

The CDC says masks are still required on planes, trains, buses, and at airports.

In an updated June 17 guidance, masks are no longer required in “outdoor areas of a conveyance (like a ferry or the top deck of a bus)” and fully vaccinated individuals may resume everyday activities that were done prior to the pandemic without mask-wearing or physically distancing unless required by federal or state law.

People are considered fully vaccinated two weeks after their second shot of a messenger RNA vaccine or after a single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The CDC did not give guidance for people who’ve recovered from COVID-19 and have natural immunity.

The Epoch Times has contacted the CDC for comment.

A new patent filed last week appears to show PepsiCo Inc. wants to dive headfirst into the hard seltzers market via its "Rockstar" brand.

PepsiCo filed a trademark application on Monday (June 14) for the "Rockstar" trademark registration that indicates the beverage company plans to sell it as a beer, alcoholic fruit cocktail drinks, alcoholic malt beverages, and hard seltzer.

The filing was first tweeted by Josh Gerben, founder of Gerben Intellectual Property, said:

"Pepsico has filed a new trademark application for its ROCKSTAR brand (the energy drink). In the USPTO filing (made on June 14) Pepsico says it now plans to sell ROCKSTAR-branded beer and hard seltzer. Coming to stores near you soon..."

We noted Wednesday that hard seltzers are singlehandedly transforming the alcohol industry. 

According to IWSR Drinks Market Analysis, alcohol sales soared during the pandemic, and hard seltzers led most of the growth. They found seltzers and canned cocktails jumped 43%, and overall alcohol sales rose about 2% in 2020. 

NielsenIQ data provided Business Insider with data on the hard seltzer industry, only to reveal that it has become a multi-billion dollar industry over a short period, with $4.5 billion in sales in just 52 weeks ending on May 22. For the month, sales jumped 80% over the same month in 2020. In 2017, hard seltzers had sales of only $39 million. Already, sales this year are around $3 billion, more than doubling 2019's. 

If Pepsi wants to stay relevant and one step ahead of Coca-Cola, the latest "Rockstar" hard seltzer trademark filing will do that just for them. Only a matter of time before Coca-Cola files a trademark registration of its own hard seltzer. 

Authored by Matt Taibbi via TK News,

On May 23, 2017, not so long ago in real time but seemingly an eternity given the extraordinary history we’ve lived through since, a group of 50-odd students at Evergreen State College arrived at the classroom of a biology professor named Bret Weinstein, demanding his resignation. He stepped into the hall to talk, believing he could work things out.

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He was wrong. Weinstein’s offense had been to come to work during an event called the “Days of Absence,” in which white students, staff, and faculty were asked to stay home. This was an inverted version of a longstanding Evergreen event of the same name that, based on a Douglas Turner Ward play, invited students of color to stay home voluntarily, to underscore their value to the community. As he would later explain in the Wall Street Journal, Weinstein thought this was a different and more negative message, and refused to comply. When that group of 50 students he’d never met arrived at his door and accused him of being a racist, he assumed he could find common ground, especially when his own students (including students of color) spoke on his behalf.

“I was one of Evergreen’s most popular professors,” he later testified to the House of Representatives. “I had Evergreen’s version of tenure. Did they really think they could force my resignation based on a meritless accusation? They did think that, and they were right.”

Weinstein was a Bernie Sanders supporter who described his politics as unabashedly liberal, even leftist. Like many, he’d grown up steeped in the imagery of sixties protest culture, probably imagined himself on its side, and therefore thought he could find solidarity with protesters. He didn’t realize was that he was the canary in a coal mine for a new movement that understood free speech as a stalking horse for the exercise of institutional power. When Weinstein opened his mouth to defend himself, what the crowd heard was him attempting to exercise authority, and they exercised theirs back.

They’d won over Evergreen’s new president, George Bridges, who refused to intercede in Weinstein’s behalf and later even asked college police to stand down, when protesters began stopping traffic and searching cars for someone, presumably Weinstein. The police told Weinstein they couldn’t guarantee his safety, and ultimately he was, in fact, forced to resign.

Frequently portrayed as the involuntary protagonist of the first of a series of campus free speech crises, in fact Weinstein was one of the first to understand that a rollback of “free speech” in cases like his was incidental to the larger aims of the movement.

“What is occurring on college campuses is about power and control. Speech is impeded as a last resort,” he told the House Oversight Committee.

He described the new movement as like a cult, in which members sincerely believed they were acting to stop oppression, but leaders understood they were simply “turning the tables” on oppression. They were exercising authority to achieve what may be presented as social justice goals, while the actual end is the authority itself, with the teardown of due process and other protections a critical part of the picture. “This committee,” he said, “should take my tale as cautionary.”

Fast forward three years. Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying have become prominent figures in independent media, co-hosting a popular podcast called DarkHorse. Identified in the New York Times as one of the main dramatis personae of the so-called “Intellectual Dark Web,” a group of heterodox intellectuals not aligned with the traditional right or left, he appeared for a time to find a home on YouTube. Maybe he would never go back to academia, but this seemed a more secure replacement. After all it’s one thing to be dependent on the whims of a college president or even a faculty board, but surely there’s safety in subscriber numbers?

Not so fast. As detailed in “Why Has ‘Ivermectin’ Become a Dirty Word?”, Weinstein is on the verge of becoming one of the more prominent casualties to a censorship movement that it’s hard not to see as part of a wider Evergreening of America. He and Heying’s two YouTube channels have been hit with multiple warnings for two brands of speech offenses, and are on the verge of having their business shut down entirely as a result (YouTube has a “three strikes and you’re out” policy). One offense involves interviews with the likes of Dr. Pierre Kory about the potential benefits of the repurposed drug ivermectin, and the other involves interviews with guests like Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of the mRNA vaccine technology used in the Covid-19 vaccines. One video with Malone this week had 587,331 views before it was shut down.

In the years since Weinstein left Evergreen, the American cultural and political establishment has undergone a change in thinking, tracking with the warning Weinstein delivered to congress. The Trump election inspired a loss of faith in democracy, Charlottesville defamed speech rights, and Russiagate was an ongoing argument against due process, with many of the same people who opposed Dick Cheney’s spy state suddenly seeing themselves as aligned with the FBI, the NSA, and the CIA in the war on Trump.

Weinstein in his testimony talked about a movement that targeted the liberal concepts that traditionally bound us together, one being the “marketplace of ideas.” By 2021, the “marketplace of ideas” was regularly being portrayed as a trick, a tool for repression designed to conceal the fact that, as the New York Times put it last year, “good ideas do not always triumph in a marketplace of ideas.”

Thus instead of argument and debate, many now believe we should use force and influence to achieve objectives. This is just what Weinstein described at Evergreen: eschewing argument, accumulating power for its own sake instead. It’s in light of this cultural shift that we’ve seen a movement in favor of censorship, with erstwhile opponents of corporations posturing as libertarians, filling social media with arguments about how private companies should be free to do what they want.

When Facebook, Apple, YouTube and Spotify teamed up to kick Alex Jones off the Internet in the summer of 2018, most of the left cheered. The obvious fear, however, was that moderators would develop mission creep. The DarkHorse incidents show we’re there. Whether or not one agrees with Weinstein about the efficacy of ivermectin, or the idea that the Covid-19 vaccines carry unreported dangers, anyone who follows his show recognizes that his is nearly the opposite of an Alex Jones act. He and Heying’s shows are neither frivolous nor abusive, and they clearly make an effort to be evidence-based, interviewing credentialed authorities, typically about subjects ignored by the corporate press.

This is exactly what independent/alternative media is for: tackling third rail subjects that, for one reason or another, can’t find a home in traditional media. Often, it takes scoops initially dismissed as silly conspiracies by what ABC reporter Jon Karl recently described as “serious people,” a classic example being Gary Webb’s famous CIA cocaine trafficking story.

A Time magazine editor in rejecting that one told reporters on that “if this story were about the Sandinistas and drugs, you’d have no trouble getting it in the magazine,” while Newsweek years later called a U.S. Senator, John Kerry, a “randy conspiracy buff” for saying the Contras in Nicaragua were engaged in drug trafficking. Only years later, in the small San Jose Mercury-News, did the story come out, and even then it took years before the coke-for-guns tale truly broke through in popular media.

With the Covid-19 story, Weinstein and Heying were among the first to openly consider the so-called “lab leak hypothesis” of how the pandemic began. In fact, in the days before people like Dr. Anthony Fauci appeared to change their minds about the theory’s feasibility, and before beloved mainstream figures like Jon Stewart declared that if there was “an outbreak of chocolatey goodness near Hershey, Pennsylvania” you’d know “it’s the fucking chocolate factory,” Weinstein and Heyer were roundly denounced as Covid-19 misinformation peddlers.

In January, after they went on Real Time With Bill Maher, they were blasted for pushing a “Steve Bannon Wuhan Lab Covid Conspiracy” by a Daily Beast writer who mostly seemed upset that Weinstein and Heying had soiled Maher with the ick of unconventional thinking. However, since conventional wisdom on the lab leak theory changed, criticism on that front has died down, especially now that platforms like Facebook have announced they “will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps.” Still, the shift in consensus thinking about lab origin has only seemed to accelerate the vigilance about ivermectin and other issues.

This is a significant moment in the history of American media. If a show with the audience that Weinstein and Heying have can be put out of business this easily, it means that independent media going forward will either have to operate outside the major Internet platforms, or give up its traditional role as a challenger of mainstream narratives. There are plenty of people out there who take a sarcastic view of the “Intellectual Dark Web,” just as they roll their eyes at lots of YouTubers or Instagram stars or even the “Substackerati,” but even those critics should realize the seriousness of this moment, not just for this show, but for all media.

I reached out to Weinstein about his fight with YouTube:

TK: Can you sketch out the structure of your media business?

Weinstein: Heather and I have been doing livestreams since March, 2020. They began as bi-weekly and were originally focused on COVID. The topic quickly broadened, and streams were reduced to once a week in September, 2020. We have done 83 livestreams as of June 5th. Livestreams consist of 1-2 hours of presentation and discussion between Heather and Bret, followed by 1-2 hours of audience Q and A.

The remainder of the podcasts are discussions between me, Bret, and one or more guests. Some have been done in studio, others over zoom. The maximum number of guests was The Black Intellectual Round Table with seven guests. All guest discussions have been taped, with two recent exceptions (with Pierre Kory, and Steve Kirsch/Robert Malone), and generally the content is not edited with respect to substance. The main channel has 329,000 subscribers. Revenue on the main channel is generated by YouTube ads at the beginning of the podcast, by Superchat questions, and recently we have done spoken ads for carefully chosen sponsors. Podcasts also drive subscribership on each of our Patreon pages, and channel/podcast merchandise is also available from Teespring linked through YouTube. 

The clips channel was created in July 2020, and consists of clips made by a video editor/producer who watches our podcasts and selects highlights. Subscribership on the clips channel is rapidly growing and stands at 182,000. All revenue on the clips channel is from YouTube ads.

The main livestreams (but not the Q&As), and the podcasts that I have with other guests, are also uploaded to audio-only podcast platforms. Combining YouTube and podcast downloads, episodes tend to get above 200,000 views/listens each. The audio-only podcast has reliably been in the top 10 in Apple’s “Science podcasts” category, and goes in and out of top 100 in “overall” podcasts. Currently it is #77.

TK: Tech company executives have consistently said they intervene on this subject only for safety reasons, to prevent misleading information that might cause someone to avoid a lifesaving treatment. What is your answer to that? Are you an anti-vaxxer? Could a reasonable person infer from your broadcasts that you're recommending that adults not get vaccinated?

Weinstein: We are biologists engaging material that is inherently evolutionary. Our upcoming book is on the problem caused by the interface of people with novel technology for which we are not evolutionarily prepared. No one is trained in even a majority of the disciplines relevant to the COVID Pandemic. Virologists aren’t clinicians, aren’t epidemiologists, aren’t evolutionary biologists, aren’t pharmacologists, aren’t data scientists. We state repeatedly that we are not medical doctors and are not making recommendations, but we are sharing our view of scientific material that we are qualified to analyze.

It is true that some may become hesitant about the Covid vaccines from our discussions. That may cost lives, as we have taken pains to point out repeatedly. We also surely save lives. For example, it is especially likely that DarkHorse viewers who have had COVID would skip being vaccinated, greatly reducing their risk of adverse reactions without increasing their risk of future COVID.

The question is one of net effect. We have been way ahead of official guidance throughout the pandemic, and we have been very sharp in our criticism of those who have treated SARS-CoV2 casually. We have clearly sobered many up about the issue. Our refrain has been that although the case fatality rate from COVID is moderate, the damage to the body from a case of COVID—even if mild—is often substantial and likely implies reduced longevity. And we have given prescient advice on prevention. We were extremely early in recognizing that conducting business outside, opening windows (especially in cars), keeping conversation with strangers brief, wearing masks, removing masks outside, spending time in the sun, supplementing with vitamin-D, all have protective effects.

The best defense of what we have done on DarkHorse is simply to compare our prevention model with the official guidance. It is the low quality and slow improvement in the official model that constitutes the greatest danger. It takes far too long for official guidance to catch up to the evidence.

As to the questions of whether we are vaccinated and/or would get vaccinated again: we (and our children) are more fully vaccinated than most people, in part due to the exposures that our (former) jobs as tropical biologists gave us. We are, for instance, vaccinated against yellow fever, typhoid, and rabies. We are not vaccinated against Covid, and do not intend to get vaccinated against Covid (unless, perhaps, a traditional vaccine were to be produced).

TK: Jon Stewart made the lab-leak hypothesis mainstream last week. You were one of the first media figures to try to bring attention in that direction. What was the response when you raised your own concerns, and what's your reaction now, given the way that discussion has suddenly become permissible?

Weinstein: The lessons of the lab leak are many. Of course, those of us who could see that the official narrative was wildly inconsistent with the evidence were aggressively stigmatized. Many were driven to self silence. And the official narrative could easily have held, causing dissenters to be recorded in history as cranks. This is standard for such a situation. Unfortunately, there is no appetite for extrapolating from the lab leak to other COVID questions. Today Tony Fauci announced a multi-billion dollar initiative to search for new drugs to treat COVID, and Carl Zimmer dutifully reported the story with excitement in the NYT, even as the revelations about Fauci’s apparent corruption and responsibility continue to surface. There was no mention of the danger implied in new drugs and EUAs. The idea of repurposed drugs doing the job safely and cheaply is elided with the baseless assertion that a search for useful existing drugs was essentially fruitless. There is simply no update to the public’s trust in authority based on the lessons of the lab leak, no recognition that officials are often mistaken, or lying or both.

And that’s the core of the problem with YouTube’s policy. Official consensus has been frequently laughable in the context of Covid, often with deadly consequences. If ever there was a moment for scientific generalists to help their audience understand the evidence, this is it.

Consider this bizarre fact. In Sept. 2020, Politifact “fact checked” the lab leak hypothesis and declared it a “pants on fire lie.” Politifact was forced to walk that conclusion back in May 2021. My flow chart had a lab leak at almost 90% as of April 2020. In June of 2021 Politifact “fact checked” the assertion (made on the DarkHorse Podcast by Dr. Robert Malone, inventor of mRNA vaccine technology) that “spike protein is cytotoxic.” They declared it false. How did they end up the arbiter of factual authority in this case? Shouldn’t the presumption be with Dr. Malone, and with DarkHorse?

TK: Don't tech companies and health officials have a responsibility to try to prevent dangerous speech during an emergency like a pandemic? Do you feel that any discussion on a topic like this should be allowed, or do you believe there should be a minimal factual standard? What's the proper way to regulate this dilemma in your opinion?

Weinstein: I don’t think it works this way. Once you create the right to shut down speech for the good of the public, that tool becomes a target of capture and true speech is silenced. Furthermore, humans are stuck with the fact that heterodoxy exists at the fringe with the cranks. No one has a way to sort one from the other, except in retrospect. So if you regulate the cranks out of existence, you also shut down meaningful progress. The price of that is incalculable. Heather had a great piece on this published recently (What If We’re Wrong? In the on-line magazine Areo).

TK: Even if there are serious risks to your business, do you intend to stop talking about the subject? 

Of course not. Lives are on the line. Too many have been lost already. This is an absolute moral obligation. That doesn’t mean we won’t pick battles strategically, but even loss of our channels is acceptable if the madness surrounding COVID treatment and prevention can be stopped. 

An enormous diamond has been unearthed in Botswana, according to a series of tweets by the Botswana government. 

On Wednesday, the government of Botswana tweeted that 1,098-carat stone, believed to be the third-largest diamond ever found, was presented to President Mokgweetsi Masisi by Debswana Diamond Company's acting managing director Lynette Armstrong. 

Debswana is a mining company located in Botswana and is the world's top producer of diamonds by value. The company is a joint venture between the government of Botswana and the South African diamond company De Beers; each party owns an equal share of the company. 

"The diamond which is the third-largest in the world after the first and second that were discovered in South Africa and Lucara Botswana respectively, was discovered on June 1st from Jwaneng mine's South Kimberlite pipe, making it the largest diamond in the company's history since diamonds were discovered in Botswana in 1967," the government said. 

Masisi said the diamond would be sold, and "proceeds will be used to advance national development in the country."

He added, "Debswana should use this latest discovery as an inflection point, for the mine to use its technology to realize more of these large discoveries." 

The announcement of the diamond's discovery comes as IDEX Diamond Index, real-time global diamond asking prices, has risen to a five-year high. 

For years, we've noted diamonds have become unpopular as millennials were saturated with debt, unable to realize the American dream of marriage and a house. But thanks to global central banks and governments worldwide pumping trillions of dollars into the global economy, diamond demand has surged, and prices are way up. 

Authored by Alexander William Salter via The American Institute for Economic Research,

A specter is haunting the Federal Reserve: the specter of political activism. 

It’s no secret that something strange is happening at the Fed.

Visitors to the New York Fed’s homepage are greeted, not with a description of the Fed’s important monetary and regulatory mandates, but an affirmation of the Fed’s commitment to economic justice.

“We are firm in the belief that economic equality is a critical component for social justice,” the banner reads. 

Social equity is important.

It’s certainly a valid area for policy action. But why it’s any concern of the Fed’s is a mystery.

In addition, the Fed recently waded into environmental policy. It’s started putting soft pressure on the banks it oversees to disclose what they’re doing about climate risk and is gearing up for a significant climate-related regulatory extension. There’s no serious economic model or regulatory paradigm linking climate change to financial crises, of course. And the Fed’s poor track record at forecasting big economic shocks means we have scant reason to give it the benefit of the doubt.

This is bureaucratic overreach, plain and simple. The Fed has no mandate to pursue these goals. 

In late May, I wrote a public letter of concern about how the Fed’s vital monetary and regulatory missions are in danger of morphing into something sinister. The letter was warmly received by experts in monetary and financial policy. It has more than three dozen co-signatories, including distinguished academics, former high Fed and Treasury officials, members of the Shadow Open Market Committee, and prominent CEOs.

The letter expresses my worry that “the Fed’s behavior renders it increasingly sensitive to political interference.” Recent public statements by Fed Governor Lael Brainard and Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari give us strong reasons to suspect the Fed is pursuing partisan agendas. This lessens the Fed’s credibility, weakens its independence, and makes it less capable of serving the public.

It’s time to put the Fed back on track. I believe Congress can and should act to rein in the Fed. 

We know all too well that when it comes to bureaucratic mission creep, it’s incredibly difficult to put the genie back in the bottle. That’s why we must work to right the Fed’s course starting now. Its roles in fighting recessions and preventing financial panics are too important to be hijacked by partisanship.

The Fed can’t function as an effective macroeconomic steward unless it stays in its lane. Americans have a right to demand the central bank focus on its core duties.

I think I can still hear them partying in the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin and his inner circle are toasting each other with shots of vodka and loud singing.

I can’t understand Russian, but I recognize the tune – “Happy Days Are Here Again.”

After the thrashing Putin gave to President Joe Biden at their “summit” meeting in Switzerland this week, the devilish former KGB operative has every reason to celebrate.

Someone asked me on a scale of 1 to 10 what score I’d give to Biden for his G7 meeting in Britain and his one-on-one meeting with Putin in Geneva.

I gave Biden a five for just showing up in Europe. Then I started subtracting – all the way down to zero, because that’s what the U.S. got from Biden’s trip.

The G7 leaders were a joke.

All they did, besides welcome Joe into their club of declining countries, was issue a weak communique after three days of posing for group photos on a beach in a posh holiday spot on the Cornish seacoast.

Biden supposedly wanted the G7 to join him and be tough on China for its human rights abuses, its takeover of Hong Kong and its non-market economic policies and practices.

But the leaders of the world’s most advanced countries – who are deep in the economic pocket of China – chickened out.

Instead of ripping into China for unleashing a virus that killed 3.5 million people around the world, they meekly urged its Communist rulers to be more transparent and show more respect for human rights.

The G7, which was more interested in showing how progressive it is, pledged to vaccinate poorer countries, create a global tax for corporations and spend many billions to fight climate change.

The G7 was a useless three-day publicity stunt for mediocre prime ministers and presidents, but Biden’s meeting with Putin in Geneva was the diplomatic disaster it was predicted to be.

Russia and Putin got everything they wanted – and paid nothing for it. Plus, they got it all before Biden even left the ground in Washington.

We – i.e., Biden – had already shut off our oil pipeline, begun destroying our booming energy sector and okayed Russia’s natural gas pipeline to Germany.

What did Biden get from Putin – whose military is closing in on Ukraine and playing war games off the coast of Hawaii?

Nothing.

President Biden let Putin off the hook about Ukraine.

Okaying the natural gas pipeline to Germany has already given Russia enormous economic and political leverage over the European Union.

(Unlike Biden, Putin knows that in 2021 whoever has the oil and gas still calls the shots – and no one is going to take away that geopolitical weapon with windmills and Parisian climate treaties.)

For good measure, Biden – trying to get tough? – gave Putin a list of 16 places in America that are off limits to cyberattacks by Russians in or out of the government.

Hello? Does that mean everything else is OK to attack, Putin might ask? To his credit, Biden didn’t send Putin the 16 URLs.

After the so-called summit, Biden made things worse by letting Putin hold a press conference by himself where he trashed America – and no one could challenge him.

Then, as Biden was leaving his own solo press conference, he got mad at a CNN reporter who had the nerve to ask him why he was so confident that “killer” Putin would change his behavior and turn into the Russian equivalent of Old Joe Biden.

Will someone please tell me what good came out of Biden’s un-summit for America?

Apparently, our president doesn’t know that when you go into a negotiation with a foreign adversary you don’t give them everything they want beforehand.

When my father was negotiating with the Soviets in the 1980s, someone asked him to sum up his strategy on the Cold War. He answered, “We win, they lose.”

If President Biden had been asked the same question before meeting Putin this week, he should have answered “They win, we lose.”

Because that’s exactly the message he conveyed.

Nearly a dozen mayors in towns and cities across the United States are moving forward with local plans to offer reparations in one form or another to black Americans in an attempt to rectify the alleged lingering effects of U.S. slavery.

The group, Mayors Organized for Reparations and Equity, consists of high-profile U.S. mayors such as Eric Garcetti of Los Angeles and Steven Adler of Austin, Texas, along with executives from smaller cities such as Asheville, N.C.’s Esther Manheimer and Keisha Currin of Tullahassee, Okla. 

The mayors “are committed to moving that needle with action and advocacy that points toward justice and healing the wounds of history,” the group says on its website. 

“Our coalition stands on the belief that cities can — and should — act as laboratories for bold ideas that can be transformative for racial and economic justice on a larger scale,” they continue, arguing that the project could “demonstrate for the country how to pursue and improve initiatives that take a reparatory approach to confronting and dismantling structural and institutional racism.”
 

Even police departments are feeling the squeeze of the U.S.’s historic ammo shortage, a crunch that began last year amid the COVID-19 pandemic, ratcheted up during the Black Lives Matter-led demonstrations last summer, and has not let up since.

Police from Detroit to Florida to Illinois have all reported struggling to acquire ammunition for basic police work like range-training exercises. 

Chief John Blair of the Taylor Police Department in Michigan recently said his officer’s firearm proficiency is tested three times a year, but one test had to be canceled because of the ammunition shortage. The COVID pandemic also cut down on officer’s range practice.

"The officers don’t have enough trigger time and we are always concerned where those rounds go if we do have to fire that weapon," Blair told local TV station WDIV Channel 4. 

Prices have also spiked amid the record demand, with officials and citizens lucky enough to find ammo paying top dollar. 

The spike was last year initially driven by fears of the COVID-19 crisis before being spiked higher as the demonstrations last summer sparked spawned violence and property damage. 

The shortage has also spilled over into businesses that rely on guns – and ammunition – to keep up a cash flow. One firearms training company owner in Alaska told a local news outlet: "If we don’t have ammo, we don’t have students. So it’s pretty serious for us."

Jobs data released Thursday shows New York gained private-sector jobs in May but not at the same rate as the rest of the country.

The New York State Department of Labor said the number of jobs grew by 17,500, or 0.2%, last month as there are now nearly 7.5 million jobs in the state.

Nationally, the number of private-sector jobs grew at a 0.4% clip, meaning 492,000 new jobs were created.

New York’s unemployment rate went from 8.2% in April to 7.8% last month. That’s still significantly higher than the U.S. average of 5.8%.

In addition, while the state’s unemployment rate went down, so too did its labor participation rate, which accounts for the percentage of working-age individuals - people 16 or older - who are either working or actively seeking a job. It went from 61.4% in April to 60.9% last month.

New York City continues to be the main drag on the statewide numbers. According to the DOL, the city’s unemployment rate was 10.9% for the month. That’s down from 11.4% in April, but outside of the nation’s largest city, the rest of the state reported a 5.5% unemployment rate for May.

DOL data does show that the state is regaining the jobs it lost more than a year ago due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the job recovery is happening slower than the COVID-caused freefall.

In May 2020, the state reported a loss of more than 550,000 leisure and hospitality jobs from the previous year. From May 2020 to last month, the number of jobs in that sector grew by more than 255,000.

The next biggest gainer, in terms of job numbers, was trade, transportation and utilities. After losing nearly 359,000 jobs from May 2019 to May 2020, that industry has picked up 204,000 jobs from May 2020 to last month.

It didn’t last long, but Barstool Sports President Dave Portnoy was suspended from Twitter for two hours on Friday evening.

The suspension did not have an obvious cause. Still, it had an immediate impact as thousands of Twitter followers flooded the site with shocked and angry comments, and #FreeDave Portnoy appeared in the trending column on accounts worldwide.

“The will of the people will be heard. #freeportnoy,” Portnoy told Fox News while his account was still suspended. Then, at around 9:10 EST, Portnoy tweeted: “I’m back.”

I’m back. #freeportnoy pic.twitter.com/EeY0hnelrO

— Dave Portnoy (@stoolpresidente) June 19, 2021

Portnoy replied, “I don’t know,” when asked by Fox News to explain the reason for his suspension.

One of the more popular theories for why Barstool’s “El Presidente” was suspended was put forth by conservative Ian Miles Cheong, who seems to believe that Twitter shut Portnoy’s account down for telling someone he would drop his “nuts” on their head in response to a post. The possibility exists that Twitter could have seen Portnoy’s response as a threat.

The legend Dave Portnoy was suspended for promising to drop his nuts on someone's forehead. pic.twitter.com/DKzmhIRzYX

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 19, 2021

As of this writing, Twitter has not given the reason for suspending Portnoy’s account.

The Force will be with the Smithsonian in 2022 as the esteemed museum in Washington D.C. rolls out their latest prize artifact next year in the form of an actual "Star Wars" X-Wing fighter.

This iconic mosquito-like spaceship prop has been generously loaned to the Smithsonian by Lucasfilm Ltd. for an indefinite period. 

"Despite taking place a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, 'Star Wars' introduced generations of fans here on Earth to outer space as a setting for adventure and exploration," said Margaret Weitekamp, space history chair at the museum, in a statement. "All air and space milestones begin with inspiration, and science fiction so often provides that spark — the iconic X-wing displayed amid our other spacecraft celebrates the journey from imagination to achievement."

It's currently getting a proper shakedown and full conservation effort at the Restoration Hangar in Virginia beside a complement of World War II warbirds and assorted historic planes and spacecraft. Then sometime late next year, the sleek T-70 X-wing will go on public display at the entrance to the Albert Einstein Planetarium at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall.

Related: Our Favorite 'Star Wars' Ships from a Galaxy Far, Far Away

"We are thrilled to have an X-Wing on exhibit," Weitekamp told Smithsonian Magazine. "It is a real screen-used vehicle from the 2019 film "Rise of Skywalker." This display speaks to that crossover connection between people who are excited about space flight and have been inspired by the visions "Star Wars" has been putting out since 1977."

The Smithsonian's awesome new resident sports a wingspan of 37 feet (11 meters) and was carefully transported to museum caretakers in pieces by the folks at Industrial Light and Magic.

"'Star Wars' is a lived-in universe," Weitekamps told Smithsonian Magazine. "This is a battle-scarred X-Wing fighter. We want to distinguish between any scratches that occurred during shipping versus something that was built into the vehicle.

"I was on the floor looking at it and I pointed out a place where it looked like it had what pilot's would call 'hangar rash.' That's where you get scrape marks on the side of aircraft when they are moved around. I pointed it out to the conservator, who had a big smile and said, 'No, that's simulated. It's part of the detail by the artist!'"

This isn't the first "Star Wars" dance for the Smithsonian as the museum presented a collection of screen-used props and costumes for the "Star Wars: The Magic of Myth" exhibition in 1997.

From the moment it was initially seen in the original "Star Wars: A New Hope" in 1977, the fighter has taken flight in eight other "Star Wars" films in various incarnations, most recently in 2019's "The Rise of Skywalker" and episodes of Disney's "The Mandalorian."

"This is a T-70 X-Wing," Weitekamp told Smithsonian Magazine. "It's the next generation. The one Luke Skywalker flew in the original trilogy was a T-65B. The big visible difference is the X-foils that split apart. Each had an engine. The T-70 was designed to include one large engine on each wing. When X-attack formation is deployed, the engine splits into two semi-hemispheres."

Stay tuned for more details as this rare X-Wing gets a fitting restoration and VIP treatment for a planned Smithsonian unveiling in 2022.

Correction: Due to an editing error, the original headline for this story cited the X-wing headed to the Smithsonian as Luke Skywalker's. It appeared in Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

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We all miss 2016…those rallies were some of the best.

But I think the 2021 and 2022 (and 2023, and 2024) rallies will be barn burners, too.

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But there will always be something very special about 2016.

The Trump campaign was one of the best movements this country has ever seen – talk about “unity.”

It was amazing, and one of the great icons from those fantastic days is Trump Force One.

MORE NEWS: You’re Going to Notice Something Very Different on “The View”

Trump Force One was retired when President Trump won the White House, and I remember a lot of us were sad to see her go – she was such a huge part of the movement…but the good news is, as Trump gets ready to hit the “rally road” again this month, and he wants everyone to know that Trump Force One is making a comeback!

>>>FOLLOW US ON GAB<<<

Here’s his statement:

And, in case you need a refresher in Trump Force One, he’s a video that shows off the inside.

Watch:

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She’s a beauty.

I can’t wait to see her back in action again!

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Things are going to be changing on ABC’s toxic mess of a show “The View.”

The reason why is because things have gotten so nasty, negative, and mean on this awful show, that the president of ABC actually had to step in and say “ENOUGH.”

Apparently, things have gotten so bad on the show with all the screaming and telling and personal jabs, that viewers have complained – and complained so much, that the actual president of ABC had to have a pow-wow with the cat ladies.

The biggest source of angst is between Joy Behar and Meghan McCain  – and a couple of weeks back, they got in yet another huge fight over anti-semitism.

Apparently, that was the final straw for the head of ABC, who finally stepped in to tell the two women to cool it with the personal attacks.

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Production sources told TMZ that ABC News President Kim Godwin called a last-minute meeting of “The View’s” co-host and producers telling them they need to improve the behind-the-scenes culture of the show immediately. The virtual meeting was called after ABC was flooded with pleas to fire McCain over her attacks on Behar, who it should be noted attacks the conservative quite a bit as well.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] Ted Cruz Just Crushed Critical Race Theory Into a Pile of Dust

The insiders said that Godwin, who only just took over as head of ABC earlier this month, told the women that things have gotten way too personal on the show, not with the issues being debated, but with the personal attacks. She added that it’s coming off as toxic to viewers and that she does not want the program to move in this direction any further.

McCain, however, was not having any of it. Sources said that she stormed out of the meeting before it ended because she felt like she was being “attacked.”

During the segment on Monday that sparked this fight, expressed her desire to see the same energy put into actions against Jews from the left.

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“I would love Democrats to put that same type of energy on to what’s happening on the left, because, quite frankly, this is how people get red-pilled,” she said. “They’re red-pilled when they see the blatant bias in the media because the media doesn’t want the ‘Squad’ to look bad. They just want [Marjorie Taylor Greene] to look bad.”

Behar responded by saying that she resented what the conservative was saying. She said she’s been fighting against anti-Semitism on the show for “25 years,” and that McCain should have some “respect.” That’s when things really exploded, as McCain was not having any of it.

Check out the segment that went too far…

REP. GREENE SLAMMED OVER HOLOCAUST REMARKS: The co-hosts react to Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene comparing Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s mask mandates on the House floor to the Holocaust. https://t.co/FkUKJndPCY pic.twitter.com/UPCwXui2Fq

— The View (@TheView) May 24, 2021

I am definitely no “fan” of Meghan, but it’s absurd to think that it’s her that’s the most toxic one.

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Joy Behar is literally one of the most miserable-looking people I’ve ever seen.

Granted, Meghan is not far behind her – but still, she’s nowhere near as awful as Joy.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Well, what do we have here…more proof Fauci was up to something sinister behind COVID?

That’s what it looks like.

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This new plot involving Dr. Fauci is getting thicker and cloudier than mud.

What did he know, when did he know it, and what was he funding, and why?

Well, a new report claims that Dr. Fauci hid something very important and very damning from President Trump back in 2017…and what he hid is showing that Fauci really was up to noo good.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] This Latest Info Proves Bill Barr Was in On All Of It…

This information that Fauci held back, looks extremely suspicious right now, given everything we’re learning about him and his “gain of function” research.

And speaking of “gain of function” research…that’s precisely what Fauci hid from President Trump.

Daily Wire reported that Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, reportedly did not warn senior White House officials in the Trump administration when the ban ended on gain-of-function research in 2017. Fauci also previously argued that the benefits of conducting gain-of-function research outweighed the risk that it could spark a pandemic.

Investigative reporter Sharri Markson reports:

An investigation by The Weekend Australian has also confirmed Dr Fauci, the director of the Nat­ional Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, did not alert senior White House officials before lifting the ban on gain-of-function research in 2017.
Markson, who is the author of the upcoming book “What Really Happened In Wuhan,” also highlighted previously unreported remarks from Fauci in 2012 where Fauci argued that the benefits of doing gain-of-function research outweighed the risk that it could spark a pandemic. Gain-of-function research tries to create more infectious strains of diseases before they arise in nature in an effort to defend against them.

Gee, another case of incredible “timing” and “coincidence,” right?

How many strange things can just keep lining up for Dems? Especially when it comes to this stinkin’ virus?

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Think about this: Dems needed something to take down Trump’s mighty economy, and out of nowhere along came a COVID virus and did just that…

And man-oh-man, those mail-in ballots really helped Dems as well, right?

Then we have Dr. Fauci, who was the face of the entire virus – who just so happened to forgot to tell the current President that the creepy “Frankenstein research” on Coronavirues had started up again – 3 years before the pandemic hit.

But, nothing to see here folks – it’s just a bunch of random coinky dinks.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

One of the great Newtonian Third Law aspects of the Biden administration is that it has revivified Republicans in the attack. And their best rhetorical fighter? Senator Ted Cruz of Texas.

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The man should be president. No doubt about it. His smarts, courage, and solid conservatism make him a presidential dream walking. But in a time when the bases of both parties want bias confirming mediocrity, can a man with a brain and the guts to use it actually get to the top of the American greasy pole? That remains to be seen.

However, his quest for the Resolute desk has not stopped Cruz from speaking out on the vicious racist travesty that is critical race theory. It is blatant discrimination against anyone who does not meet a PC racial standard. As we’ve pointed out numerous times and as Cruz points out here, those who advocate it are the ideological descendants of the Klan. We’ll throw in Governor Maddox and Bull Connor just for good measure. Racism and discrimination are wrong, no matter who the targets are. A truly level playing field judges merit and nothing more. Democrat racists want to rig the game. Cruz wants to stop them. Bully for him.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] This Latest Info Proves Bill Barr Was in On All Of It…

Critical Race Theory is bigoted. It is a lie. And it is every bit as racist as a Klansmen in white sheets. pic.twitter.com/i2lDGVLfkw

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) June 18, 2021

FNC: “Senator Ted Cruz on Friday blasted critical race theory as a ‘lie’ and said the school of thought is as racist as ‘the Klansman in white sheets.’ The Texas Republican took the stage at the Faith and Freedom Foundation’s Road to the Majority conference where he took critical race theory head-on, recalling a reporter who he said tried to ‘gotcha’ the senator about “what is critical race theory.’ ”

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“I explained to him and I said, ‘Well, it’s a theory that derives from Marxism. Karl Marx viewed the entire world as a conflict between classes, between the owners of capital and the working men and women, the proletariat,” Cruz said. “A fundamental battle in society…Critical race theory takes that same Marxist concept except it replaces ‘class’ with ‘race,’” he continued. “And it says all of America and all of the world is a battle between the races.”

Cruz correctly said that critical race theory “seeks to turn us against each other” and looks to stoke hatred among people if they have “different-colored skin…And let me tell you right now: critical race theory is bigoted. It is a lie,” the Texas Republican continued. “And it is every bit as racist as the Klansman in white sheets.”

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The senator said that, “as a Christian and an American,” he loves his neighbor regardless of the color of their skin, sex, faith, creed or ethnicity, adding that “we are commanded to love…Period. The end,” Cruz said. “And those who would divide us, those who would spread lies. It is evil.”

This piece was written by David Kamioner on June 19, 2021. It originally appeared in LifeZette and is used by permission.

Read more at LifeZette:
Coronor Releases New Details About Alleged Suicide Of Clinton Tarmac Reporter Christopher Sign
Trey Gowdy Torches The Media For Not Even Trying To Stay Neutral
Kayleigh McEnany Says That ‘As A Woman Of Faith’ She ‘Never Lied’ As Trump’s Press Secretary

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

Well, this is certainly telling…

According to a very popular retired intel officer and staunch Trump supporter, by the name of Tony Shaffer revealed a bombshell about Bill Barr.

Shaffer is now revealing that Bill Barr actually called him up and told him to stop personally investigating the 2020 election.

What the heck?

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Check it out:

Tony Shaffer told me that Bill Barr called him personally and asked him to stop investigating 2020 election fraud.

Have you ever heard of an AG calling a private citizen and asking them to quit looking into something?!

Here's the full video 👇https://t.co/XrZqopyTen pic.twitter.com/4CJn79PJCW

— Chase Geiser (@realchasegeiser) May 28, 2021

MORE NEWS: Obama Just Admitted What We Everyone Suspected All Along…

And here are some receipts to back up the fact that Barr appeared to be on a personal mission to stop the election investigation.

what does that tell you?

The list is long, to be sure Emerald. Tony Shaffer simply had the courage to say it out loud. "Attorney General" Bill Barr sent in cover up crews, not investigators.

Prove me wrong. https://t.co/zeEaHqjGwo pic.twitter.com/8qXhOm6koa

— Lori (@LJT_is_me) May 30, 2021

This is the full Tony Shaffer’s interview on the matter…very interesting stuff:

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This isn’t really a huge shocker.

Especially when you take into consideration what an unbelievably half-hearted investigation Bill Barr conducted on the 2020 election.

If you remember correctly he found “no widespread election fraud,”  despite the fact that there were several signed affidavits claiming wrongdoings in the election in key swing states.

Something just doesn’t add up here…

From AP

Barr’s comments, in an interview with the The Associated Press, contradict the concerted effort by Trump, his boss, to subvert the results of last month’s voting and block President-elect Joe Biden from taking his place in the White House.

Barr told the AP that U.S. attorneys and FBI agents have been working to follow up specific complaints and information they’ve received, but “to date, we have not seen fraud on a scale that could have effected a different outcome in the election.”

The comments, which drew immediate criticism from Trump attorneys, were especially notable coming from Barr, who has been one of the president’s most ardent allies. Before the election, he had repeatedly raised the notion that mail-in voting could be especially vulnerable to fraud during the coronavirus pandemic as Americans feared going to polls and instead chose to vote by mail.

Bill Barr was such a massive disappointment.

Even his John Durham appointment has amounted to nothing. He’s an absolute swamp creature.

I don’t care what anyone says, this is all the proof you need to show that he was in on it.

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

A renowned royal biographer is speaking out this week to say that Prince Harry is “constantly” worried that he’ll lose his wife Meghan Markle like he lost his mother, Princess Diana.

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Angela Levin, who interviewed Harry for her 2018 book “Harry: Conversations with the Prince,” immediately noticed how anxious the royal seemed in his new mental health docuseries “The Me You Can’t See.” In fact, she was so worried by how she saw him acting that she is now recommending that Harry “back away” from the spotlight so that he can better himself.

MORE NEWS: [VIDEO] O’Reilly’s Got One Word For Dems: “Backlash”

“How dreadful if Harry constantly thinks that he will lose Meghan like he did Diana and blames racism,” Levin wrote on Twitter. “Plus can’t get rid of M’s threat to commit suicide. His life sounds too much for him and he should back away from being a woke lecturing celebrity.”

How dreadful if Harry constantly thinks that he will lose Meghan like he did Diana and blames racism. Plus can't get rid of M's threat to commit suicide. His life sounds too much for him and he should back away from being a woke lecturing celebrity.

— Angela Levin (@angelalevin1) May 24, 2021

This came after Harry revealed in the docuseries that Meghan decided not to commit suicide because she did not want him to lose another woman in his life the way he lost his mother.

This is horrific emotional manipulation and a ghoulish control mechanism Meghan is using on Harry.

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“The thing that stopped her from seeing it through was how unfair it would be on me after everything that had happened to my mum and to now be put in a position of losing another woman in my life, with a baby inside of her, our baby,” Harry said, according to Page Six.

Harry was only 12 years old when his mother was killed in a car crash in Paris, France back in 1997. In his docuseries, Harry opened up about just how serious Meghan was about potentially committing suicide before they stepped down as senior royals last year.

“The scariest thing for her was her clarity of thought,” he said. “She hadn’t ‘lost it.’ She wasn’t crazy. She wasn’t self-medicating, be it through pills or through alcohol. She was absolutely sober. She was completely sane. Yet in the quiet of the night, these thoughts woke her up.”

In Meghan’s explosive tell-all interview with Oprah Winfrey back in March, she claimed nobody in the royal family was willing to help her because it “wouldn’t be good for the institution.”

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This piece originally appeared in UpliftingToday.com and is used by permission.

Read more at UpliftingToday.com:
Ellen DeGeneres Humiliated As Former Producer Claims She’s A ‘Kiss A**’ Who Doesn’t Care About ‘Real’ People
Bill Gates Admits Marriage To Melinda Was ‘Loveless’ – ‘Living Separate Lives’ For Some Time
Barack Obama Reveals Malia And Sasha Will Stay Out Of Politics Because Of ‘PTSD’

Attn: Wayne Dupree is a free speech champion who works tirelessly to bring you news that the mainstream media ignores. But he needs your support in order to keep delivering quality, independent journalism. You can make a huge impact in the war against fake news by pledging as little as $5 per month. Please click here Patreon.com/WDShow to help Wayne battle the fake news media.

 The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Thursday with a Catholic foster care agency, saying its religious views prevent it from working with same-sex couples.

The city of “Philadelphia wrongly limited its relationship with the group as a result of the agency’s policy,” as argued by the court.

According to the ruling, it was specific to the facts of the case. The ruling did not, however, address the bigger questions “about how to balance religious freedom and anti-discrimination laws,” according to Yahoo News.

“Instead, the outcome turned on the language in the city’s foster care contract. Three conservative justices would have gone much further, and LGBTQ groups said they were relieved that the decision was limited,” according to the Yahoo News column.

FROM THE REPORT:

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for a majority of the court that Catholic Social Services “seeks only an accommodation that will allow it to continue serving the children of Philadelphia in a manner consistent with its religious beliefs; it does not seek to impose those beliefs on anyone else.”

Roberts concluded that Philadelphia’s refusal to “contract with CSS for the provision of foster care services unless it agrees to certify same-sex couples as foster parents … violates the First Amendment.”

Yahoo News Report

For more on this story go here.

Former White House doctor Ronny Jackson sent a letter Thursday requesting that President Biden undergo a cognitive test “so the American people know the full mental and intellectual health of their President.” Thirteen Republican congressional members signed onto the letter with Jackson, asking Biden to make the results available to the American people.

“The American people should have absolute confidence in their President,” Jackson’s letter reads. “They deserve to know that he or she can perform the duties of Head of State and Commander in Chief. They deserve full transparency on the mental capabilities of their highest elected leader.”

On Thursday night Jackson told Fox News host Sean Hannity that “after this most recent embarrassing performance overseas, I thought it was time to come out (with the letter).”

“We can’t sit on this any longer,” Jackson told Hannity.

The letter was copied to chief White House medical adviser Dr. Anthony Fauci and current White House Physician Dr. Kevin O’Connor.

Jackson said Biden’s “mental decline and forgetfulness have become more apparent over the past eighteen months.”

The Letter

Rep. Ronny Jackson Letter by Sara on Scribd

After President Biden spent roughly four hours in a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Biden gaffed and mixed up his name in a press conference Wednesday. Instead of saying he watched Putin’s press conference he said he “caught the end of Trump’s.”

This is the latest of Biden’s many gaffes during the president’s first international trip to Europe this week. Another moment that gained traction on Twitter was during another press conference, where Biden took a long, awkward pause in the middle of speaking.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

Fox News’ The Five discussed President Biden’s recent meeting with President Vladimir Putin on Wednesday. Fox News host Jesse Watters said the meeting was proof that Biden would rather “be loved more than respected” because Putin got off with “no consequences.”

“The way I saw it, the Russians hack and Biden invite Putin to a summit and gives him a list of things he’s not allowed to hack? You gotta be kidding me!” said Watters. “No consequences, no deal, nothing concrete.” Watters was referring to the recent cyber attack that shut down international meat suppliers only weeks ago.

Instead, Biden would go on to tell reporters: “Putin’s innocent, just some criminals in Russia did it, we will see if he can stop it, calls it a constructive summit.” Meanwhile, Facebook named Russia it’s number one global threat when it comes to influence operations on the platform. The social media giant even named Yevgeny Prigozhin’s Internet Research Agency as a top bad actor. Prigozhin has a reportedly close relationship with Putin.

When a reporter asked the president, what makes him think Putin is going to stop Russia hacks, he responded: “Because Vladimir cares about world opinion and he wouldn’t want to hurt his popularity and the rest of the world.” To Watters, that sounded all too familiar.

“I’m thinking to myself that’s actually Biden, Biden cares about what the Russians think about us, the Chinese think about it and the Europeans think so he is not America first because he doesn’t want to be the bad guy even if being the bad guy is good for America,” Watters said. “He wants to be loved more than respected and that’s the key to the Biden doctrine.”

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

CNN host Jeff Zeleny commented on President Biden’s address to the press following his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Biden was criticized for getting testy after some reporters’ questions, but Zeleny said he was glad to see him answer tough questions like these for once.

“What we’ve not seen [Biden] do is answer questions like that without his aides screaming at him to stop,” Zeleny said. “I’ve never seen a president, covering the last four of them, who is so protected by his aides in terms of often not wanting him to answer some questions.”

Zeleny has worked for CNN since 2015, but covered elections with various news organizations for over 20 years.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) and former White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows appeared on Hannity Wednesday to break down President Biden’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. Meadows accused Biden of “throw[ing] down the white surrender flag when traveling abroad.”

Host Sean Hannity asked Meadows to share his opinion about what Putin thought of the meeting.

“He is thinking it is a new day for him,” Meadows said, “an open door, basically, for him to do what he wants to do.”

Meanwhile, “He didn’t get that kind of response from President Trump, I can tell you,” Meadow said. “It was always firm, it was always America first. And candidly, that is not the message that Putin got tonight, and it is a sad day for the American people when we throw down the white surrender flag when traveling abroad.”

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

By Jenny Goldsberry

House Republican Whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) appeared on Fox News’ America Reports Wednesday to discuss President Biden’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Geneva, Switzerland. Scalise says he hopes Biden stands up to the Russian President, but Biden’s track record so far doesn’t hold up to the President before him.

“Unfortunately, we’ve seen a lot of weakness from President Biden as it relates to Russia,” Scalise said. I mean, you look, [on] day one, President Biden kills the Keystone pipeline, kills thousands of American jobs, undermines our relationship with Canada, and then he [turned] around just a few weeks ago and [gave] financial incentives to Russia so that Russia can build a pipeline to Germany. So, he helps Russia create Russian jobs and Russian energy dominance with Germany, and he undermines America’s energy dominance that we had under President Trump.”

Biden was defensive of his meeting with Putin during a following press conference. A reporter asked him if he thought the meeting was constructive, considering Putin still denies human rights abuses and cyber attacks. The 46th President simply responded: “If you don’t understand that, you’re in the wrong business.”

But, Scalise had the same question: “Is [Biden] going to stand up to President Putin on the hacking that’s been done from Russians?”

“The disinformation — remember President Biden was Vice President when Russia tried to interfere with our 2016 election — I didn’t see President Biden stand up to him then,” Scalise said.

You can follow Jenny on Twitter @jennyjournalism

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Former President Donald Trump suggested that the next step for the Republican party should be to remove Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-KY) from the Senate after failing to keep the party unified and losing two Senate seats in Georgia, he said in an interview with me on the The Sara Carter Show podcast.

He said the best way to get the Republican Party back on track and possibly unified is to remove the old establishment leadership, like McConnell, who Trump said, is responsible for the loss of two Senate seats in Georgia and failing to unify the party.

“You start it off by getting somebody to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate,” said Trump, referring to how the GOP could reinvigorate the party. “You get somebody with a voice that that is a modern day voice that understands what the party is all about, because Mitch doesn’t know right now.”

Following Jan. 6th, McConnell pinned the Capitol riots on Trump. “The mob was fed lies,” he said on the senate floor days following. “They were provoked by the president and other powerful people.” After McConnell’s floor speech, Trump reportedly called the then majority leader a “dumb son of a b—” and a “stone cold loser.”

President Trump, however, did not call or incite violence.

He said told me that there are “some leadership in the Republican Party that doesn’t do a good job.” He said it’s partially McConnell’s failure.

“McConnell should have never lost those two seats in Georgia,” he said. “He lost them pure and simple. And there’s sort of never allowed that to happen ever. But they were angry from the presidential you know, fairness to the Republican voters.”

He said during the 2020 election the Republican voters in Georgia were angry at Governor Brian Kemp “because he hasn’t done the job…on the election stuff, what he’s done has been so bad, but they’re angry at Georgia, they were so in all fairness.”

“When you when you go and you take a look at what’s happened in many, many states, it could have been stopped so easily,” said Trump. “And the Republicans just need a philosophy” to back MAGA but he said instead, “they get away from America first.”

“They get away from who we really are and who the Republicans want to be,” he said. “They’ve gotten away from it. And you take a look at some of the as an example.”

Trump told me that he will work to back Republican candidates that he believes will put the nation and the American people first. He added that those he has backed have won, 100 percent of the time.

On Wednesday, the Save America PAC announced that Trump will hold a major rally in Wellington, Ohio on Saturday, June 26, 2021 at 7:00PM EDT. This will mark “Trump’s first of many appearances in support of candidates and causes that further the MAGA agenda and accomplishments of President Trump’s administration. The rally is to support Max Miller, who President Trump has endorsed for election in Ohio’s 16th Congressional District.”

Jenny Goldsberry contributed to this report. You can follow her on her Twitter @jennyjournalism.

By Jenny Goldsberry

North Korean defector Yeonmi Park spoke to Fox News Tuesday about her experience studying at Columbia University. Turns out ivy league schools have a lot in common with North Korea’s brand of communism. Park transferred to Columbia from a South Korean university in 2016.

“I expected that I was paying this fortune, all this time and energy, to learn how to think. But they are forcing you to think the way they want you to think,” Park said. “I realized, wow, this is insane. I thought America was different but I saw so many similarities to what I saw in North Korea that I started worrying.”

Fellow students and staff at the university scolded her for things like not using the correct pronouns and liking Jane Austen books despite their “colonial mindsets.”

“Even North Korea is not this nuts,” Park said. “North Korea was pretty crazy, but not this crazy.”

Read more here.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry @jennyjournalism.

By Jenny Goldsberry

Former President Donald Trump joined The Sara Carter Show podcast Tuesday, warning that the current policies under the Biden Administration are putting “America last” and will prove “disastrous” for the nation. He spoke in detail about how President Biden reversed the most effective Trump administration policies saying, almost everything is totally opposite from when he was on office.

“We had the greatest economy,” Trump told Carter. “All the opposite of what’s going on right now. We’re gonna have tremendous inflation, the economy is going to be in big trouble, all of the things that we see now, it’s almost the opposite.”

Since Carter recently returned from Guatemala, she asked the former president what he thought about the ongoing border crisis. He called the border “an open sieve.” Meanwhile, while he was president, it was under control. According to him, the border wall he built his campaign on only needed a couple more months of work on it. But, the Biden administration stopped all work on it.

“And so we have little sections of wall we have openings,” Trump said. “And now, you look at what’s going on with the floods of 1000’s and 1000’s of people right now, as we talk, they’re heading up to our country, we have no idea who those people are.”

Biden attended the G-7 Summit this week, making international promises while gaffing all the while. Carter asked Trump for his opinion on Biden’s global diplomacy recently. Trump says G-7 leaders are not to be trusted.

“They’re stealing our country,” Trump said. Meanwhile, “he’s going into deals that are disaster, costing us trillions of dollars. And we have to rebuild our own bridges and our own roads. He wants to rebuild the world.”

The one thing the Democrats are doing right, according to Trump, is loyalty. He says the Republican party should take notes from their opponents. During the applauded the removal of Rep. Liz Cheney (R-WY) from her position as GOP Conference Chair, but said more replacements are in order.

“You start it off by getting somebody to replace Mitch McConnell in the Senate,” Trump told Carter. “You get somebody with a voice that that is a modern day voice that understands what the party is all about, because Mitch doesn’t know right now.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats win policy battles “because they stick together better than the Republicans stick together,” Trump said. “Frankly, they don’t have Romney’s over there. They don’t have guys that that are like little Ben Sasse of Nebraska.”

But Trump remains hopeful, saying that there is a bright future in 2024. “As far as the election, as far as 2024 is concerned, I think everyone’s going to be very happy,” Trump said.

You can follow Jenny Goldsberry on Twitter @jennyjournalism.

"I'm thinking, hot dog, let's sit back and wait for all this magic change to happen. We're still waiting. It really did not happen. It seems like every five years or so, there's another movie starring women that's a huge hit and people say, 'Well now certainly everything is going to change,' and it really hasn't."

Voter turnout was at a record low for this election, with less than 50% of registered voters going to the polls, compared to more than 70% in 2017. Many people shunned the vote, believing that it had been engineered in favour of Mr Raisi, who is a staunch ally of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

There’s something about God’s creation that is so incredibly humbling to us humans.

As societies grapple with conflict, culture wars and political battles, out in the wild, the circle of life continues as it has for millennia.

One of the world’s most famous grizzly bears, dubbed 399, was recently captured in a series of stunning photographs chasing and taking down an elk calf with her four youngsters in tow.

Outdoor Life explains that Grizzly 399 is a 7-foot, 400-lb sow who lives in Wyoming’s Grand Teton National Park and Bridger-Teton National Forest. While she lives near humans, she’s never had a bad run-in with them. But she has made quite the impact on the local elk population; for the sake of feeding her cubs, of course!

399 was born in a den in Pilgrim Creek, Wyoming, when she was given the tracking number 399 by the Yellowstone Interagency Grizzly Bear Study Team. She has since reared 16 cubs and attracted quite an admirable following for a bear.

The massive creature is so well-known, in fact, that she has her own Facebook and Twitter accounts — unbeknownst to her, I’m sure.

No, the big mama is certainly far more interested in the things that concern bears, namely, the basics of survival.

While many a city-dwelling modern these days will balk at the idea of a human hunting down prey to consume, there’s actually nothing more natural, and 399 just put on a glorious display of what this looks like in the animal kingdom.

The Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance recently published incredible photographs of the grizzly mother hunting down an elk calf, which was captured by naturalist and guide Rafael Sandoval.

These images will surely take your breath away:

“So this just happened last night and my heart is still racing,” the photographer was quoted as saying on the group’s Facebook page.

“This grizzly sow #399 bagged an elk calf for a dinner for five after an intense chase For the past few months, bears in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem have been browsing on nutrient dense vegetation such as grasses, flowers and roots,” he explained.

“However, as prey species like elk, bison and deer begin dropping calves like it’s going out of style, the bears have begun to switch over to more savory menu options. The CALFeteria is open, folks!”

One commenter who said she also witnessed the incredible event was in awe of the triumph — and tragedy — on display.

“We were there and witnessed the whole thing. I’m not sure if we were close to this photographer but we were by the ranger’s truck and she was coming straight for us initially before the calf turned. I will be forever ‘shook’ and amazed at the power of the Grizzly Bear,” she wrote.

“Also, watching her let her cubs eat first and making sure they were ok was amazing. The mother elk crying for her baby was also tough. It was definitely a National Geographic moment in real life!” she added.

As a wildlife enthusiast and the wife of a hunter, it has always amused me when people try to claim there is something “cruel” about stalking and taking down an animal in the wild — when there are few means of obtaining sustenance that could possibly be more natural.

Grizzly bears don’t waste time worrying about whether it might be more ethical or environmentally friendly to simply continue to rely on vegetation and let the elk live. Were they to do so, it would be humans who would grow concerned about the issues that arose with an overpopulation of elk, as it happens, something which could end up being harmful to the elk themselves!

No, 399 was designed by God to hunt and consume creatures who happen to fall below her on the food chain, and that’s exactly what we see her doing for the sake of feeding her cubs and teaching them how to hunt so they can do the same for their young when they grow up, too.

This was an incredible moment to capture on camera, and it is a blessing to be able to witness such a stunning display of the power of nature in action — quite literally, in this case!

Contributor, Commentary

It turns out old age, guile and flashcards don’t beat totalitarianism and ice-water for blood. Who could have guessed?

Other than everybody, that is.

President Joe Biden’s first meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin wasn’t exactly a hit. In fact, it was bad enough that the Navy SEAL who killed Osama bin Laden thought that Putin was “winning” the summit in Geneva partway through this week.

Robert O’Neill’s Twitter profile is pretty blunt. It reads thusly: “I wanted to shoot bin Laden in the face. @joebiden didn’t. We won.”

He’s referring, of course, to the fact that our current president probably didn’t want to go after the terrorist mastermind behind 9/11. Ask Joe Biden whether or not he did and you’ll get a different response, at least now that bin Laden has been shot in the face (and other body parts, as well) and been given a proper burial where he belongs.

But I digress, since there was a different class of adversary for Biden to meet this week. So, how did it go?

You weren’t supposed to say it went badly. After all, to do so would imply that you were against the United States — or so said liberal pundit Chris Hahn.

Don’t call yourself a patriot if you’re rooting for Putin.

— Chris Hahn (@ChristopherHahn) June 16, 2021

O’Neill let him know how things were actually going: “I’m a Patriot. Putin is winning.”

I’m a Patriot. Putin is winning. https://t.co/c4j8ID3ibB

— Robert J. O’Neill (@mchooyah) June 17, 2021

How so? Let’s take a look at the scoreboard.

First, flashcards. Who needed them? This guy:

Telling. pic.twitter.com/knaUP7dx9Q

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) June 16, 2021

And then there were uncomfortable questions. Take this one, from ABC News’ Rachel Scott. She asked Putin, “What are you so afraid of?”

She was referring to, among other totalitarian faux pas, the poisoning of dissident Alexei Navalny in 2020.

Instead of answering this directly, Putin deflected to the United States’ own issues, talking up the “looting and violations and riots” that happened post-George Floyd.

“We sympathize with the Americans, but we do not want for the same thing to happen on the Russian soil, and we’ll do anything possible to prevent this,” Putin said.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEBYU1aGXMA?feature=oembed&w=500&h=281]

When Scott pressed Putin for a further answer, he leaned into the shooting death of Ashli Babbitt during the incursion into the Capitol on Jan. 6.

“People went into U.S. Congress with political demands,” Putin said.

“Four hundred people are now facing criminal charges,” he continued. “They are facing prison terms of up to 20, maybe 25 years. They are called home-grown terrorists. They are being accused of many other things.”

Alas, Scott didn’t have flashcards to save her. If only, if only.

And then there was CNN’s Kaitlan Collins, who asked as the president was walking away how Biden could describe his meeting with Putin as “constructive.”

Collins noted how Putin “downplayed human rights abuses” and “denied any involvement” in Russian cyberattacks — and, in fact, even “refused to say Alexei Navalny’s name.”

“Why are you so confident he’ll change his behavior, Mr. President?”

“If you don’t understand that,” Biden tells a reporter pushing him to explain how it was a constructive meeting with Putin if he still denies human rights abuses and cyber attacks, “you’re in the wrong business.”
pic.twitter.com/M4QmK7hKYd

— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) June 16, 2021

Uncle Joe went off, but not before having his say. Or, well, trying.

“I’m not confident — What the hell? What do you do all the time?” Biden responded. “When did I say I was confident?”

“I said what will change their behavior is if the rest of the world reacts to them and it diminishes their standing in the world. I’m not confident of anything,” he continued.

White House reporter Philip Wegmann, of right-leaning RealClearNews, put it best:

Narrator: @kaitlancollins was, in fact, in the right business.

— Philip Melanchthon Wegmann (@PhilipWegmann) June 16, 2021

How dare you, sir? Don’t call yourself a patriot anymore — you called out the obvious.

Contributor, Commentary

SummaryMore Biographical InformationRecent PostsContact

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.

C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).

Birthplace

Morristown, New Jersey

Education

Catholic University of America

Languages Spoken

English, Spanish

Topics of Expertise

American Politics, World Politics, Culture

Ken Bennett, Senate liaison to the Maricopa County, Arizona, election audit, stated on Friday there are more than 33,000 ballots from November’s election where voters made no selection for president, or at least no votes that were detected by the voting machines.

“There were over 33,000 undervotes,” Bennett told The Western Journal. “There may be, you know, a certain number of people that didn’t want to vote for [Democrat Joe] Biden or [Republican Donald] Trump or [Libertarian Jo] Jorgensen or anyone else, so they may, in fact, be undervotes.”

“But if someone circled their oval or made a check next to it or did something other than get pixels of blackness inside the oval, almost one percent of the 3.4 million people that voted in Arizona, the machines did not record any vote for president,” he added.

Bennett, who served as Arizona’s secretary of state from 2009 to 2015 after a stint as the state’s senate president, said the hand count of all Maricopa County’s 2.1 million ballots, which was completed this week, included reviewing the undervote ballots.

“If we find some people that circled their oval or made a checkmark next to it, not every one of those is probably going to be for Trump or not every one is going to be for Biden. So will it make a difference in the outcome? Maybe, maybe not.”

According to the Maricopa County recorder’s office, the number of undervotes in November’s election was 8,475 within its jurisdiction.

Maricopa County, which encompasses the Phoenix metropolitan area, makes up over 60 percent of the state’s population, but apparently only accounted for about 25 percent of the over 33,000 undervote ballots.

He noted just how narrow Biden’s win over Trump was in Arizona. Just 0.3 percent, or approximately 10,500 votes.

Maricopa County was the only county in the state to flip from red to blue from 2016 to 2020.

To better illustrate just how close the race was, Bennett offered the example of a shire in medieval England which were originally broken up into communities of approximately 1,000. Many counties in England today still bear the name shire: Yorkshire, Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, etc.

If Arizona were a shire, and 80 percent of the citizens voted, as happened in November’s contest, that would be 800 people, and the final election result would have been 401 for Biden to 399 for Trump, he said.

However, if there were an additional one percent of ballots cast, eight votes bringing it to the total of 808, but only 800 were counted, that raises some questions, especially for the losing side.

“So that’s exactly like the actual election in Arizona,” Bennett said.”You got 3.4 ballots, but the machines only read a little bit less than that and votes. So if you were either the winner or especially the loser in a race that was decided by two out of 800 votes, I think one of the first things you’d want to do is make sure that every one of those one percent of the ballots” was reviewed.

“I mean, this is a race that was decided by three tenths of one percent. And so you would probably want to make sure that the election department had done a perfect job seeing if all the votes were counted, especially when one percent of the ballots supposedly weren’t counted for any ballot for president by the machines.”

Bennett said the audit team’s first order of business has been confirming through a hand count that the overall tally in Maricopa County matches what the Dominion Voting Systems machines recorded.

“But when you’ve got a race that was essentially, not essentially, it was literally as far as the percentage, two out of 800 is the same exact percentage as the margin of victory, which was 10,000 to 3.4 million,” it deserves close scrutiny, he argued.

“To me whenever I have shared the shire story…everyone who’s heard that says, ‘Oh, now it makes it perfectly clear why we’re doing an audit. We’ve got a race that was decided by two out of 800 votes,” Bennett said.

With the hand count finished, the audit’s attention has shifted to completing an examination of the ballots themselves for abnormalities using high-resolution cameras that allow a microscopic review.

Some of the issues auditors are looking at include the authenticity of the paper itself and whether the ovals were filled in by hand or machine, Bennett explained. They will also look to see whether the ballots were printed, as the official ones are, or photocopied.

Additionally, official ballots all have alignment marks on the front and back that should match up.

I see 4-5 ballot counting tables still operating, so recount continues

~50 inspection tables

And 5 teams of two people each sorting ballots in some way. Not sure what they are doing there. pic.twitter.com/RGVDojUlp7

— Jen Fifield (@JenAFifield) June 16, 2021

Further, approximately 1.9 million voters in Maricopa County received their ballots in the mail, so that number should all have fold lines.

Asked, if he could say whether the hand count has yielded a number that more or less jibes the official November count in Maricopa County, Bennett answered he could not yet.

“We can’t say, because we are now going through the very meticulous process of double and triple-checking every tally sheet that’s been counted over the last two months,” he said, but added the spreadsheets with those numbers will all be made public.

“The auditors recognize that the scrutiny on their work is going to make the scrutiny on the election look like [a] cakewalk,” Bennett stated.

He anticipates that the paper evaluation will be completed by the end of the month.

At our current rate of examining over 100k ballots per day, we will complete the paper examination phase of the audit by Saturday, June 26.

— Maricopa Arizona Audit (@ArizonaAudit) June 16, 2021

“So I think we’ve got a few to several weeks of work on other aspects of the audit that the two that have been working on here, that the subcontractor that’s looking at the machines and all of the data that was downloaded from the machines and the hard drives are still looking at all of that,” Bennett said.

He believes a report of the findings may be out as early as the end of July, but could be as late as Labor Day.

“I think Arizona wins either way,” Bennett contended. “If we find that the election was run very smoothly and complied with all of the rules and requirements in state law, then good for Arizona. We win. But if we find other things that are weaknesses and need to be improved before the next election in 2022 or the presidential in 2024, then we get those things fixed, and we win there too.”

Senior Staff Writer

SummaryMore Biographical InformationRecent PostsContact

Randy DeSoto has written more than 1,000 articles for The Western Journal since he joined the company in 2015. He is a graduate of West Point and Regent University School of Law. He is the author of the book "We Hold These Truths" and screenwriter of the political documentary "I Want Your Money."

Birthplace

Harrisburg, Pennsylvania

Nationality

American

Honors/Awards

Graduated dean's list from West Point

Education

United States Military Academy at West Point, Regent University School of Law

Books Written

We Hold These Truths

Professional Memberships

Virginia and Pennsylvania state bars

Location

Phoenix, Arizona

Languages Spoken

English

Topics of Expertise

Politics, Entertainment, Faith

Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia outlined a list of policy demands on election legislation, adding to a compromise several provisions that have historically been opposed by Democrats.

The three-page memo circulated by Manchin’s office suggests that the Democrat is willing to support key provisions of the For the People Act, House Resolution 1, that passed the House in March, The Washington Post reported.

The bill includes provisions mandating at least two weeks of early voting and measures to eliminate partisan gerrymandering of congressional districts, among other things.

The three new major provisions would make election day a public holiday, ban partisan gerrymandering and require voter ID in order to vote, while providing alternative acceptable ID forms (like utility bills).

Only seven states have strict photo ID requirements in order to vote on election day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

Manchin’s support for mandatory ID laws could create divisions within the Democratic Party as its members seek to push the bill through the Senate.

Two Democratic aides familiar with Manchin’s views told The Post that he opposes the controversial public financing system for congressional elections present in the For the People Act.

“I’ve been sharing everything that I support and things I can support and vote with and things that I think is in the bill that doesn’t need to be in the bill, that doesn’t really interact with what we’re doing in West Virginia,” Manchin said on Wednesday.

“We’ll have to see what changes are made.”

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer announced that the Senate will take an initial vote on the legislation next week.

Senate Democrats need Manchin’s support in order to pass the bill, NBC News reported.

Manchin has voiced his opposition to the For the People Act, saying that it is too partisan and voting changes need to have bipartisan support.

He also opposed changing the filibuster rules to push bills through the Senate despite opposition from most republicans.

“Congressional action on federal voting rights legislation must be the result of both Democrats and Republicans coming together to find a pathway forward or we risk further dividing and destroying the republic we swore to protect and defend as elected officials,” Manchin wrote in his memo.

NBC reported that Adam Bozzi, a spokesman for the progressive group End Citizens United, said, “We know that Senator Manchin cares deeply about protecting our democracy and limiting the influence of special interests and this will continue to be an on-going negotiation that everyone should let play out.”

However, Republican support for the bill — even with Manchin’s compromise — may prove hard to scrounge up.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell said that no Republicans will vote in favor of the For the People Act, even if Democrats support Manchin’s changes, according to The Washington Post.

“All Republicans, I think, will oppose that … if that were to be surfaced on the floor,” he said.

Contributor, News

SummaryMore Biographical InformationRecent PostsContact

Erin Coates was an editor for The Western Journal for over two years before becoming a news writer. A University of Oregon graduate, Erin has conducted research in data journalism and contributed to various publications as a writer and editor.

Erin Coates was an editor for The Western Journal for over two years before becoming a news writer. She grew up in San Diego, California, proceeding to attend the University of Oregon and graduate with honors holding a degree in journalism. During her time in Oregon, Erin was an associate editor for Ethos Magazine and a freelance writer for Eugene Magazine. She has conducted research in data journalism, which has been published in the book “Data Journalism: Past, Present and Future.” Erin is an avid runner with a heart for encouraging young girls and has served as a coach for the organization Girls on the Run. As a writer and editor, Erin strives to promote social dialogue and tell the story of those around her.

Birthplace

Tucson, Arizona

Nationality

American

Honors/Awards

Graduated with Honors

Education

Bachelor of Arts in Journalism, University of Oregon

Books Written

Contributor for Data Journalism: Past, Present and Future

Location

Prescott, Arizona

Languages Spoken

English, French

Topics of Expertise

Politics, Health, Entertainment, Faith

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The path to a federal holiday

Trump's Juneteenth

Major airlines are racing to add new trans-Atlantic service now that tourist-reliant countries like Croatia, Greece, Iceland and Italy have started allowing visitors from the U.S. and other nations for the first time in a year.

Delta Air Lines started service to Reykjavik, Iceland from Boston on May 20. It then restarted nonstops to the Icelandic capital from Minneapolis a week later. Service from New York started May 1. United Airlines' first service to Dubrovnik starts July 1 from its Newark, New Jersey hub. The airline plans to add July-October flights to Athens from Washington-Dulles next month on top of its service from Newark that started earlier this month.

Carriers are also beefing up schedules to Spain, Portugal and Italy as those countries open up, too. American Airlines, for example, pushed up service from Philadelphia to Athens to the second half of August, and to Rome from both Philadelphia and Chicago in September — routes it expected to resume next summer.

The European Union this week recommended adding the United States to a list of safe origin countries, which could make it easier for U.S. visitors to enter the 27-country bloc this summer. The EU banned them since early in the pandemic and the change is fueling airlines' efforts to avoid another lost European summer.

The quick flight launches show airlines' scramble to drive up revenue and stem pandemic losses that total more than $32 billion for Delta, United and American combined.

Airlines generally like to unveil new international destinations with fanfare several months and sometimes close to a year in advance. The long lead time gives airline marketing departments time to spark customer interest with campaigns featuring images of sun-soaked cobblestone streets or sweeping views of the Adriatic Sea. It also gives government affairs and airport teams time to secure permits and contractors to handle everything from check-in to wheelchair service to fuel on the ground long before the first flights take off.

That's out the window in the pandemic era. Airlines instead have been waiting for green lights from governments to lift travel restrictions to help rebuild international networks. Travelers have also waited longer before booking because of uncertainty caused by the pandemic.

American would normally take about a year to launch a new international route like its new Miami to Tel Aviv, said Brian Znotins, American Airlines' vice president of network and schedule planning. Planning new routes involves hundreds of employees, he said.

"Those timelines have all been compressed. People weren't booking eight and 12 months in advance. They were booking two to three months in advance," said Znotins. His team is "moving at light speed."

Patrick Quayle, United's vice president of international network and alliances, said demand for Dubrovnik Croatia, a new market for United, was so high after the airline announced it, he called up the carrier's vice president of global airport operations, David Kinzelman, with a request: "I would like to start it a week earlier. Can you do it?"

"We're loading it relatively late and we're putting it out there on the hope that people will book," Quayle said. He said that demand for Croatia, Greece and Iceland has "dwarfed" demand to the U.K., which is usually its biggest trans-Atlantic destination, "because those three countries were first out of the gate."

Domestic leisure bookings this summer are near 2019 levels — with fares to match — but usually lucrative international travel continues to lag as many travel restrictions remain in place. That has forced U.S. carriers to focus more on U.S. destinations, where, in some cases they've deployed their largest jets that would normally fly across oceans.

United said its international capacity this July is 36% of its total, down from a 45% share in 2019. And its domestic flights are only a quarter lower than two years ago, while international capacity is off by twice as much.

But demand is rising for trips to Europe. Fare-tracking app Hopper said Friday that searches for Europe flights have nearly doubled from this time last month. Travel site Kayak said searches for European travel searches are down 11% compared with 2019 and that July airfares between the U.S. and Europe are averaging $929, about 6% below fares two years ago.

Even as airlines add more service to Europe, demand and service are still off 2019 levels because the U.S. still bars most non-citizens who have been either in the European Union or the U.K. in the last two weeks, despite pleas from the airline and travel industry to governments on both sides of the Atlantic. U.S. citizens can visit the U.K. but still have to quarantine.

But airlines are looking for any flights they can launch, and their starting point is very low.

Passenger volumes between the U.S. and the top 25 destination countries in May were down more than 90% from 2019, with numbers between the United States and Italy, the U.K. and Spain down 95% or more, according to Airlines for America, an industry trade group that represents most large U.S. carriers.

Covid travel restrictions have also posed challenges to airlines as they set up new flights with organizing on-the-ground facilities and staff remotely.

Kinzelman, United's global airports vice president, said that was the case ahead of the airline's launch of Dulles to Accra, Ghana flights this year.

"We couldn't get people who normally would travel in ahead to do site audit and station visit," he said. "In many cases just videos like this where we would say: Take your camera and let's walk through the space. What's a customer experience going to look like? And it was super helpful."

Kinzelman added the airline wouldn't want to do that indefinitely but said "necessity is the mother of invention."

Higher profits

1 million sales?

Grand Cherokee L

On Monday at New York City's swanky Standard hotel, about 100 people sat around picnic tables and munched on small bags of popcorn for the screening of a short film about restaurants in the city during the pandemic, including those that had been forced to close locations.

The film was made by DoorDash, one of a number of film screenings in recent weeks that was made or sponsored by a brand.

"Brand films" aren't a new concept, but they are gaining cachet as marketers increasingly seek ways of reaching consumers who are trying to avoid advertising, and consumers increasingly seek out brands that appear to share their values. A recent Advertiser Perceptions study found more than half of advertisers surveyed view and treat branded or sponsored content as more important now than it was before the pandemic. 

This type of content is not necessarily a glorified commercial full of product placements. Notable examples include Patagonia's documentary-style films about issues like land use, or Dove's sponsorship of the Oscar-winning animated short "Hair Love" without any stipulations around product placement. 

The recent examples are many: Last week, NBCUniversal said it was working with sponsor Target and producer Will Packer on short films from emerging Black filmmakers to run on NBCU's channels and digital platforms. Companies like Indeed, 3M and HP showed off films this week around the Tribeca Film Festival. On Friday, top executives from brands like Google and Walmart gathered for Tribeca X, a one-day conference about the combination of advertising and entertainment, including formats like brand films. Roku, the conference's sponsor, also just launched its own brand studio to produce creative ad formats and programming tailored for marketers.

"I think this is a huge trend," said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. "The core challenge for brands now is that it's very difficult to reach people. The decline in television advertising has taken away one of the main ways that brands would tell their story, and help people learn about their business. And as a result, brands are looking for ways to help people understand what their brand is really all about." 

DoorDash's film, "Soul of the City," features New York City restaurant owners. The company had identified restaurants around the city that had been closed or were struggling due to the pandemic, then worked to help them to open. The company worked with partners including Interpublic Group's The Martin Agency on the film.

Before long, DoorDash VP of marketing Kofi Amoo-Gottfried said the marketing team was doing all sorts of new functions. 

"There's people on my team that were figuring out how to buy a smoker," he said. "Things that are not marketing's job, but it became our job." 

Though DoorDash is running paid advertising behind its film on channels like YouTube, the video contains little branding and focuses far more on the restaurateurs than itself. 

"Brands, for all intents and purposes, are relatively self-serving organisms, right?" Amoo-Gottfried said. "I think the thing that's been super clarifying for us at DoorDash… is we've always said we're in business to support local economies." 

And yes, if restaurants and communities are thriving, that's good business for DoorDash. 

"If you look at the DoorDash spot, that's not going to encourage anybody to rush out at that moment and order delivery or takeout," Calkins said. "So they don't drive short-term action. It's all about the long-term brand … it's a different sort of investment." 

But it's an investment brands seem to be increasingly making. 

"As audiences continue to change, as there continues to be a proliferation of streaming options and choice in what people watch and how people watch, brands are looking to find breakthrough ways of reaching audiences that feels authentic, because they know that that authentic connection with the brand is more powerful than than just one single tactic," said Steven Rummer, SVP of strategy and creative partnerships, advertising & partnerships at NBCUniversal.

He said NBCUniversal's research studies have found 81% of people are more likely to buy or use brands who help others when it's needed most, and that 79% of consumers are more loyal to brands who prioritize communities' well-being over business as usual. 

"We have all this great research that shows the power and impact of doing these longer form brand films, or branded content and the connection that it has with actual results on the advertiser side," he said.

Of course, this content actually has to be good, Marcus Peterzell, CEO of entertainment marketing agency Passion Point Collective, said during a panel at Tribeca X.

"It's gotta be a great film. And if any consumers..." (he paused to twist his face into a grimace) "...because there's a Samsung phone stuck in their face, you lose. A good film is a good film. It doesn't matter if Sony funded it, or HP funded it. It's still a great film." 

Peterzell used the example of 3M's new film, "Not The Science Type," which discusses stereotypes and how they can hurt STEM diversity, equity and inclusion. He said that there are plenty of great film ideas out there, and if a brand is the catalyzing force for making an important film happen, "that alone is a win for a brand."

With so many options, a brand film has to be something someone will press play on, despite infinite options.

"When you think about creating content with a brand or for a brand, how do we make sure it's entertaining first and actually content first," said Chris Bruss, head of the Roku Brand Studio, said in a panel during Tribeca X. "If it's not entertaining, then it can't appropriately live on a Roku Channel or a Hulu."

Disclosure: NBCUniversal is the parent company of CNBC.

Three men engaged in a brazen scheme to "surreptitiously hijack" and take over dormant shell companies, whose stock they then fraudulently inflated to dump to unwitting investors, according to charges in an indictment that was unsealed Friday.

The men from 2017 through 2019 allegedly used fake resignation letters to seize control of four shell companies and then used the Securities and Exchange Commission's EDGAR public filing system and bogus press releases to fraudulently "pump up" their share prices by claiming new business opportunities, the indictment says.

Millions of shares of those stocks, which the defendants had bought in many cases for less than 1 cent per share, then were sold on the over-the-counter market by the men and others for profits of as much as 900%, according to the court filing.

The defendants — Mark Allen Miller, Christopher James Rajkaran and Saeid Jaberian, also known as Andre Jaberian — are charged with 15 criminal counts of securities fraud, conspiracy to commit securities fraud and wire fraud.

The indictment says that Minnesota residents Miller and Jaberian, as well as an unidentified person who is a relative of Miller, actually became the nominal CEOs and presidents of companies targeted in the scam.

Prosecutors believe the men made hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit profits just from the conduct detailed in the indictment, according to a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Minnesota.

The indictment, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Minnesota, was first reported Friday by the Twitter account of Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the Program on Extremism at George Washington University.

Hughes regularly trawls the PACER online federal court filing system for interesting criminal and civil case documents that have not been previously reported.

The Securities and Exchange Commission did not immediately respond when CNBC asked whether the agency had taken any action against the defendants and whether it has made any changes to the EDGAR filing system to prevent its manipulation by alleged fraudsters.

None of the defendants could be reached for comment.

Rajkaran, a resident of Queens, New York, and Guyana, was ordered detained as a possible flight risk after appearing in court in Brooklyn, New York, on Friday.

The other two defendants, Miller and Jaberian, are due to appear in Minnesota federal court on July 2.

The four shell companies targeted by the alleged conspiracy were Digitiliti, Encompass Holdings, Bell Buckle Holdings and Utilicraft Aerospace Industries.

While the companies had purported business operations — online data protection services, computer software, debt collection and aerospace, respectively — all were actually dormant shell companies "without any significant operations or revenue," the indictment says.

The companies all had stopped filing required documents with the SEC and secretary of state offices, but their stocks were traded publicly on the over-the-counter market.

After identifying the quartet of companies, "The conspirators then bought stock in the dormant public shell companies at low prices in the OTC market," the indictment said.

"The conspirators were able to obtain hundreds of thousands or even millions of shares because the stocks traded at only a fraction of a penny per share."

In the case of Digitiliti, the indictment said, Miller in September 2017 drafted a fake resignation letter and board minutes falsely stating that the company's prior CEO had resigned and that Miller had been appointed president and CEO.

Miller then submitted to the SEC paperwork that falsely identified himself as the new boss at the company and asked for "the filing codes allowing him to access the company's SEC EDGAR filing account."

That in turn "allowed Miller to make public filings with the SEC on behalf of the company."

The EDGAR system is used by public companies to disclose material events, including quarterly and annual financial results, changes in executive leadership, and sales and purchases of significant amounts of company stock by insiders and others.

The indictment says Miller in November 2017 bought 50,000 shares of Digitiliti stock.

"After hijacking Digitiliti, defendant Miller used his control over the company to issue a false and misleading press release on behalf of the company," the indictment says.

"On or about JuIy 9, 2018, Miller issued a press release falsely claiming that Digitiliti had 'entered into negotiations' with a private company looking to 'buy-out' Digitiliti."

The release also falsely claimed that the private company "has a proven track record of revenue generation and success in a highly desirable market sector," according to the indictment.

Miller sold his 50,000 shares of Digitiliti three weeks after that.

During the alleged hijacking of Encompass Holdings from June through November 2017, Miller and Rajkaran together purchased more than 40 million shares of the company's stock at low prices, the indictment says.

Miller, as he did with Digitiliti, claimed in a false resignation letter and board minutes that he had become president and CEO, the indictment says.

Rajkaran then began posting about the company on investorshub.com in an effort "to promote and inflate the price of ECMH stock," the indictment says.

"For example, he posted that the new CEO was 'probably worth close to 20 million in real estate holding[s] and construction equipment ... heard he owns several stripmalls in mn,'" the indictment says.

Miller then issued a press release that falsely claimed Encompass "had signed a letter of intent to acquire the assets of DDG Properties that were worth approximately $6.4 million. The press release further claimed that Encompass would be assuming DDG Properties' gross revenues of $534,000," according to the indictment.

"None of this was true."

The stock price rose in reaction to the claims, and Miller shortly after sold 12 million shares of company stock at fraudulently inflated prices, earning a profit of more than 300%, the indictment says.

Rajkaran earned a return of about 150% in profits after dumping more than 34 million shares, according to the indictment.

Determine what you plan to purchase and how much you'll spend before you start shopping.

Neal Stern

CPA

DETROIT, Mich., May 18, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — UBX Cloud, a U.S. based cloud provider headquartered in Madison Heights, Mich., has been awarded “10 Most Promising Cloud Solution Providers 2021” by CIOReviewIndia. UBX leverages proven, off-the-shelf technologies in its private cloud operations arena, globally. The technologies offer clients enhanced performance, while leveraging the power of automation with unmatched uptime.

“UBX provides its services in affordable and simple right-sized packages,” said Steve Panovski, UBX Cloud President.

“If you can order a mobile data plan, you can order the cloud service that provides the core building blocks of your business.”

Services include Platform as a Service (PaaS) – helping clients migrate server infrastructure to a cloud-based solution – and Cybersecurity as a Service (CaaS)- protecting business data with the latest AI-based threat detection, mitigation and alerting. These services are offered as add-ons to its cloud services at no additional cost.

Business continuity with managed backups and Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS) – backing up or replicating data and virtual servers to its private clouds across India – are also included in UBX Cloud’s array of services.

UBX Cloud offers an excellent proposition for the India market with value additions, such as the built-in state-of-the-art cybersecurity solutions powered by Syntervision Oasis and CybrHawk.

“We are expanding our cloud points of presence and capacity to deliver thousands of cloud workspaces and infrastructure services to the entire PAN India region,” Panovski said.

About UBX Cloud

UBX Cloud is a Michigan-based cloud service provider with data centers in the United States and India. Our services include Managed IT-as-a-Service, Private/Hybrid Cloud, Disaster Recovery, Cloud Workspaces, Veeam Cloud Backup, and a variety of custom IT consulting services. Our team of IT Engineers helps organizations of all kinds maintain uptime and ensure business continuity.

For more information, please visit us at https://www.ubxcloud.com or call 1-888-509-2568.

News Source: UBX Cloud

MCLEAN, Va., April 27, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — By Light Professional IT Services LLC (By Light) announced today that it has achieved Trusted Integrator status within the National Security Agency’s (NSA) Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program. In addition to our ISO9001, 20000-1 and 27001 registrations and CMMI Level 3 Dev and Services ratings, we demonstrated the staff and processes necessary to architect, design, integrate, test, document, field, and support systems that meet the requirements of the CSfC program.

Trusted Integrator status enables NSA, Authorizing Officials (AOs)/Designated Approving Authorities (DAAs) to utilize By Light’s System Integration Development and Support Services for lifecycle CSfC solution support.

“CSfC’s use of conforming commercial products in layered solutions to protect National Security Systems (NSS) data improves design, integration, and deployment timelines,” says Jeff Adelman, By Light Vice President of Integration Services. “But the solution does not end with deployment; sustainment actions including continuous testing and security incident response are critical to the lifecycle success of any CSfC Capability Package implementation.”

Trusted Integrator status complements By Light’s capabilities in tactical and strategic networking, cloud architecture, cyber security, and synthetic training environments.

About By Light

By Light Professional IT Services LLC, headquartered in McLean, Virginia, is an ISO 9001, 20000-1, and 27001 registered and CMMI Level 3 rated systems integrator that provides secure, turn-key systems by incorporating exceptional engineering, project management, telecommunications, and cyber capabilities to safeguard mission success. Founded by industry professionals with extensive knowledge in the DoD, DISA, and other US Government agencies, By Light successfully implements technical solutions that integrate commercial best practices to meet the needs of government. For more information, visit http://www.bylight.com/.

News Source: By Light Professional IT Services

HALF MOON BAY, Calif., April 6, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Treadstone 71 announced today the release of the much-awaited and industry-leading Strategic Intelligence Analysis training certification. The in-depth, on-demand course breaks down intelligence collection and analysis complexities over 12-weeks of lectures, exercises, quizzes, and hands-on case studies.

The certification includes all aspects of the pioneering Cyber Intelligence Tradecraft, Certified Cyber Intelligence Analyst course combined with comprehensive instruction on all strategic intelligence elements. The course also includes extended lectures and exercises for analytic writing and structured analytic techniques.

“The Strategic Intelligence Analysis Certification covers all aspects of building cyber intelligence programs, interacting with stakeholders, building intelligence requirements, establishing adversary threat matrices, planning for intelligence collection through execution of analytic methods,” said Jeff Bardin, Chief Intelligence Officer for Treadstone 71.

He adds, “Students and corporate teams completing this program of study are ready to analyze, write, and forecast adversary activities that can prevent cyber-attacks. We believe this course is a game-changer that shifts the paradigm away from after-the-fact indicators of compromise analysis to what Intelligence is intended to be.”

The course provides instruction in a crawl-walk-run method that gives students the confidence to execute tasks throughout the cyber intelligence lifecycle. Templates and examples show students effective practices that are both descriptive and prescriptive while at the same time allowing for adapting the practices to corporate culture.

Organizations looking to build or mature their cyber intelligence program find this course of study a natural next step in establishing resilient and sustainable intelligence capabilities that assist leadership in decision-making.

“We deliver several hands-on exercises complete with templates and examples,” continued Bardin. “We intend to send each student back to their corporate environments armed with the knowledge necessary to immediately enhance their existing programs or start new programs with a foundation rooted in excellence. Teams taking the course learn how to think independently, establishing strong unit bonds crossing technical, tactical, and strategic boundaries.”

About Treadstone 71 LLC:

Treadstone 71 ( https://www.treadstone71.com/ ), founded in 2002, is a woman and veteran-owned small business delivering cyber Intelligence, counterintelligence, strategic analysis, clandestine cyber HUMINT, OSINT training and analysis, cyber psychological and target acquisition operations.

For more information, call (331) 999-0071 or email [email protected].

MULTIMEDIA:

VIDEO (YouTube): https://youtu.be/syBv4k0pJXQ

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News Source: Treadstone 71

DALLAS, Texas, April 5, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Baxter Clewis Consulting, an international consultancy on cyber security, announced today that it has joined the PCI Security Standards Council (PCI SSC) as a new Participating Organization. Baxter Clewis will work with the PCI SSC to help secure payment data worldwide through the ongoing development and adoption of the PCI Security Standards.

The PCI SSC leads a global, cross-industry effort to increase payment security by providing flexible, industry-driven and effective data security standards and programs. The keystone is the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), which provides an actionable framework for developing a robust payment card data security process and preventing, detecting and mitigating criminal attacks and breaches.

As a Participating Organization, Baxter Clewis adds its voice to the standards development process and will collaborate with a growing community of more than 800 Participating Organizations to improve payment security worldwide. Baxter Clewis will also have the opportunity to recommend new initiatives for consideration to the PCI Security Standards Council and share cross-sector experiences and best practices at the annual PCI Community Meetings.

“In an era of increasingly sophisticated attacks on systems, PCI Security Standards and resources help organizations secure payment data and prevent, detect and mitigate attacks that can lead to costly data breaches,” said Lance Johnson, Executive Director of the PCI Security Standards Council. “By joining as a Participating Organization, Baxter Clewis demonstrates they are playing an active part in improving payment security globally by helping drive awareness and adoption of PCI Security Standards.”

“Using third-party service providers is an organizational risk from a supply chain, security, and compliance standpoint. Companies should have the assurance that their systems and PCI data is appropriately managed and secured by third-party service providers,” said Boyd Clewis, VP of Baxter Clewis Consulting. Baxter Clewis enables service-providers to enhance security and compliance programs while reducing risk with systems, processes, and automation. We are proud to partner with PCI Standards Council, and we look forward to helping address risk related to third-party service providers.

About the PCI Security Standards Council

The PCI Security Standards Council is a global forum that is responsible for the development, management, education, and awareness of the PCI Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) and other standards that increase payment data security. Connect with the PCI Council on LinkedIn. Join the conversation on Twitter @PCISSC. Subscribe to the PCI Perspectives Blog.

About Baxter Clewis Consulting

Baxter Clewis Consulting is an international cybersecurity firm specializing in helping service providers meet security and compliance requirements to secure vital company data, enhance efficiency, and protect profitability. Learn more about Baxter Clewis Consulting by connecting on LinkedIn and visiting the Baxter Clewis website at https://www.baxterclewis.com/.

MEDIA CONTACTS:

Baxter Clewis Consulting
Boyd Clewis
469-547-5652
[email protected]

PCI Security Standards Council
Lindsay Goodspeed
781-258-5843
[email protected]

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News Source: Baxter Clewis Consulting

HERNDON, Va., March 26, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Aristi Technologies, Inc. announced that it is among the first firms to become an accredited Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) Third-Party Assessor Organization (C3PAO) and Registered Provider Organization (RPO) by the CMMC Accreditation Body (CMMC-AB). C3PAOs are the only organizations authorized to conduct CMMC assessments.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) created the CMMC program to enhance the protection of sensitive data, namely, controlled unclassified information (CUI) and federal contract information (FCI), within the Defense Department’s multi-tiered supply chain of more than 300,000 companies. CMMC is specifically designed for small and mid-sized suppliers as they are more vulnerable to cyber threats in the supply chain.

These small and mid-sized contractors are increasingly being targeted by nation-state attackers; they have limited internal resources and cybersecurity expertise to adequately secure their systems and safeguard sensitive customer data.

“Aristi is honored to achieve C3PAO and RPO credentials, demonstrating our commitment to the CMMC program in supporting the DoD’s mission to secure the defense supply chain,” said Neel Gopalani, Aristi’s vice president, and a CMMC-AB Registered Practitioner (RP). “Our CMMC practice is a natural extension of our cybersecurity compliance and assessment services that we’ve provided for more than a decade.”

Over the last year, Aristi has helped small and mid-sized government contractors prepare for complying with CMMC security requirements. Aristi’s CMMC consulting services include: boundary scoping, gap assessments, remediation support, security documentation and readiness assessments. As a C3PAO and RPO, Aristi will continue to help federal contractors effectively navigate the DoD’s new cybersecurity certification process.

About Aristi Technologies

Aristi Technologies is a cybersecurity consulting firm based in the Washington DC metro area. For more than a decade, it’s provided cybersecurity risk and compliance services to organizations, nationwide, including federal agencies, government contractors, and cloud-service providers.

Aristi delivers tailored and affordable solutions to achieve compliance with federal cyber compliance standards including National Institute of Standards & Technology (NIST) 800-53, NIST 800-171 (the core of the CMMC framework), Federal Information Security Management Act (FISMA) and Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP).

MEDIA CONTACT:
Neel Gopalani
of Aristi
+1-703-459-6268
[email protected]

News Source: Aristi Technologies Inc.

DETROIT, Mich., March 18, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — UBX Cloud is the first U.S. based cloud services provider to offer Cybersecurity Maturity Model Certification (CMMC) cloud enclaves.

The CMMC represents the Department of Defense’s continued effort to protect Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) in the defense supply chain. Building on the 110 controls set forth in NIST SP 800-171, the CMMC specifies 173 security practices across five maturity processes. Starting in fiscal year 2021, the department will pilot the implementation of CMMC requirements for Level 3 and below.

UBX Cloud now includes CMMC-compliant Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) cloud enclaves in their service offerings, as a way for suppliers and contractors to fast-track themselves into CMMC compliance. UBX Cloud promises full service at a flat rate and per user basis for an easy comprehensive package.

“Our company and our team is always focused on the simplest approach and solution to things, and in this case with our CMMC enclaves there is no difference,” said Steve Panovski, UBX Cloud president. “UBX Cloud brings a tremendous amount of value to simplify the path to compliance while providing modern cloud solutions and simplifying IT complexity, or as just a bonus.”

UBX Cloud caters specifically to the IT MSPs and MSSPs market, as well as corporate IT and Chief Technology Officers, taking the complexity out of the CMMC process with flat rate assessment services and fast deployment. The all-in white label packages include Cybersecurity services, CMMC consultancy, and VMWare-powered cloud infrastructure to provide deeper discounts, and eliminates the need for any heavy upfront investment.

About UBX Cloud

UBX Cloud is a Michigan-based cloud service provider with data centers in the United States, South America and India. Our services include Managed IT-as-a-Service, Private/Hybrid Cloud, Disaster Recovery, Cloud Workspaces, Veeam Cloud Backup, and a variety of custom IT consulting services. Our team of IT Engineers helps organizations of all kinds maintain uptime and ensure business continuity.

For more information, please visit us at https://www.ubxcloud.com or call 1-888-509-2568.

MEDIA ONLY CONTACT:
Sora Maria Childress
UBX Cloud
[email protected]

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News Source: UBX Cloud

PITTSBURGH, Pa., March 5, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Valentis today announced that Martha Hunter will become the company’s first-ever Vice President of Strategy, effective March 2021. She fills a new position helping the company meet growing demand for expansion. Valentis is committed to an aggressive plan that focuses on messaging and education to advance its security solution, supply chain, and risk management consulting services worldwide.

Martha Hunter comes from the marketing industry where she was a Business Development Executive for six years. Hunter’s new position will be responsible for developing and implementing the strategic growth initiatives for Valentis using her experience and resolve to meet objectives to Valentis.

“Valentis already has a reputation for breaking the mold in the security and investigations industry. I have spent my career challenging people and companies to think differently and ask the question ‘Why not us? Valentis’s culture, values and leadership style embodies that spirit,” says V.P. of Strategy Hunter.

She adds, “Strategy development is not a once-a-year thing anymore, it’s ongoing and needs to come with recommendations and actions and the company needs to be willing to act. I’m honored to have the opportunity to play a role in the execution piece of strategy, and I’m thrilled to join a women-owned, purpose driven company and look forward to driving new possibilities for our people, our customers and our stakeholders.”

Marnie Sutch, CEO, of Valentis welcomed Martha to her new position, stating, “The addition of Martha to our team is about her ability to bring innovation and change to Valentis. The ability to deliver a professional service that delivers a driven result for our clients is a team effort and having Martha strengthens our team.”

About Valentis:

Valentis is a fully operational security logistics and risk management solution for a variety of clients and security concerns. We are growing domestically, and envision global ventures, with services and products under development to create a network of global affiliates, lead through branding, and expand our clients; financial institutions, governments, religious facilities, maritime, cybersecurity, combined with specially developed training, software and telecommunication consultancy, and more. We are mindful and committed and care about our clients, team, and shareholders.

More information:

https://www.valentissecurity.com/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/marthahunter/

CONTACT: Shannon Wright, [email protected]

News Source: Valentis International

ALAMO, Calif., March 2, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — Essential to managing today’s and the future electric grid is data—its movement and security. GRIDEON developed by GridBright (gridbright.com) under an award from the US Department of Energy (DOE) Advanced Research Project Agency (ARPA-E) addresses this need.

It was created in collaboration with a team of cybersecurity and utility industry experts from BetterGrids Foundation (Bettergrids.org), Midcontinent Independent System Operator (misoenergy.org), and Mid-Carolina Electric Cooperative (mcecoop.com). Over 40 organizations across the grid value chain have contributed to defining the requirements for GRIDEON.

“MCEC needed to share critical data with a strategic partner. Internet and email were not sufficiently secure. For years the method was walking a USB key to the partner for exchange. GRIDEON is a better way,” says Keith Sturkie, VP of IT at MCEC. “GRIDEON improved our security posture and lowered our costs.”

GRIDEON is an open-source-based suite of easy-to-use cloud-based Software as a Service (SaaS) applications, technologies, enablement and support services, and standards that provide the full set of capabilities required to instantiate any type of secure grid data exchange.

GRIDEON efficiently ensures secure and compliant grid data exchange among all-electric ecosystem participants encompassing the entire electric value chain from generation to consumers (prosumers) spanning business and real-time operations.

It accommodates the creation of multiple types of exchanges necessitated by the utility industry’s grid data sharing applications such as collaboration, real-time system integration, publication-subscriber, one-to-many, among just a few.

Secure Grid Collaboration is the second service established on GRIDEON. The first is the BetterGrids Grid Model Repository that is presently used in 45 countries. BetterGrids.org is a free library of curated, non-sensitive grid models shared voluntarily by grid researchers. It includes synthetic and anonymized grid models and uses a rigorous curation process to ensure data quality. AI tools for semantic and natural language searching allow researchers to find their desired test data easily.

Secure Grid Collaboration extends the GRIDEON service reach. It establishes core grid data exchange standards that drive cost efficiency and management efficacy for foundational exchange artifacts such as nondisclosure agreements (NDA) between counterparties. It provides the foundation for future process management and real time services in emergency management and DER integration and beyond.

It also implements the enabling processes for secure grid data exchanges such as participant registration and advanced encryption key services that support exchange operations, security, and compliance.

Girding these key elements is a support organization providing 24 x 7 help, operations, and technical support functions required by the operational nature of many of the exchanges a typical utility will implement.

Learn more at http://www.grideon.com/.

ABOUT GRIDBRIGHT

GridBright Inc. – https://www.gridbright.com/ – specializes in secure grid integration. Its services and solutions span the full electric value chain, safely interconnecting renewable and distributed energy resources to the grid, implementing and integrating modern computer applications for grid operations and planning, and providing solutions for the secure exchange of grid data among grid value chain participants.

MEDIA ONLY CONTACT
Stephen J Callahan
CMO, GridBright
+1-415-846-6018 (media only)
[email protected]

News Source: GridBright Inc.

PHOENIX, Ariz., Feb. 23, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) –- TAG CXO, a provider of fractional IT executives, appointed Dan Streufert to lead its new IT Infrastructure practice area located in Phoenix, Arizona. In this role, Streufert is responsible to lead and develop the delivery teams helping TAG CXO clients build the robust and durable IT operating environments needed for growth and efficiency.

By optimizing critical IT infrastructures, clients benefit from much greater simplicity, overall security, and scalability. As practice lead, Streufert will serve existing clients, develop new clients and build the delivery bench, leading TAG CXOs infrastructure services across its national network of fractional executives.

Mr. Streufert comes to TAG CXO with broad experience designing, engineering, and implementing optimized IT infrastructures across large multi-national, multi-site businesses in the manufacturing and real estate industries. Most recently, Streufert was Principal Systems Architect for co-working giant WeWork, and formerly directed global IT operations for medical device manufacturers, Viant Medical and The Tech Group, as Head of IT. His clients have also included companies in the construction industry such as Buesing Corporation, Centuri Construction and NPL Construction. He holds a Bachelor of Business and Information Systems from the University of Phoenix.

“Dan Streufert is easily one of the best hiring decisions I made during my corporate career, and it’s a joy to be working together again,” said Paul Theisen, enthusiastically. “Dan is always professional, technically current, insatiably curious, humble yet driven, and has a very astute business mind,” Theisen described. “Now, 25 years into his career and seasoned with a depth of global-enterprise experience, Dan’s unique qualifications are available to the benefit of TAG CXO clients.” “To sum it all up,” Theisen concluded, “Dan has a certain techno-functional-engineering-business-leadership genius he brings into every interaction; and he really exemplifies the TAG CXO promise – to provide our clients with the best enterprise-level, industry-trained, battle-tested IT leaders…not career consultants.”

To learn more visit: https://tagcxo.com/about/dan-streufert/ and https://tagcxo.com/services

About TAG CXO:

Based in Phoenix, Arizona, TAG CXO is a privately held company, providing Interim and Fractional IT leadership executives, founded in 2019. The company maintains a bench of industry-trained, enterprise-level executives, available on-demand to mid-market CEOs. TAG CXO executives help to round-out a firm’s leadership team and close the IT talent gap with fully qualified expertise, offering a more affordable, lower-risk option than hiring full-time staff. Learn more at: https://tagcxo.com/.

VIDEO (Vimeo): https://vimeo.com/492583832

TAG CXO, 7000 N 16th Street, Suite 120-167, Phoenix, AZ 85020.

MEDIA ONLY CONTACT
Paul Theisen, CEO
+1-602-962-6200
[email protected]

Tags: #ITOps #Cybersecurity #ITInfrastructure #TAGCXO #fractionalCIO #interimexecutives

News Source: TAG CXO

SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., Feb. 2, 2021 (SEND2PRESS NEWSWIRE) — EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants is pleased to welcome John Prentis and Larry Bowlus to its Executive Risk and Cyber practice. Joining from a global broker, Prentis and Bowlus will focus on large public, technology, and financial institution executive liability coverages, including Directors & Officers Liability as well as Errors & Omissions, General Partnership Liability, Employment Practices Liability, Fiduciary, Crime, and Kidnap & Ransom.

The senior team of Prentis and Bowlus brings a combined experience of 50 years in the industry. Prentis most recently co-led Aon’s Financial Services Group in San Francisco, providing advisory and placement services for a variety of executive lines. Bowlus served as senior vice president and team leader within the same group, specializing in D&O and management liability insurance programs for public and private companies. Both bring a breadth of experience across industry groups, with deep experience handling executive risks for technology, life science companies and financial institutions, among many others in the public and private sectors.

“We are extremely pleased to welcome John and Larry to EPIC,” said Steve Denton, EPIC CEO. “Their experience serving large publicly traded clients and deep expertise in the technology sector fits perfectly with our deep resources currently deployed in the large account risk management sector. In fact, they will work closely with our Policy Response Unit focused on complex shareholder claims and our Analytics practice where we perform risk modeling and benchmarking analysis.”

Prentis and Bowlus will lend significant expertise to EPIC’s Executive Risk and Cyber practice, which emphasizes a holistic approach to identifying, understanding and managing risks.

“We’re fortunate to add two senior risk advisors and brokers in John and Larry to our team of experts,” said Kelly Geary, EPIC National Practice Leader, Executive Risk and Cyber. “Our clients will benefit instantly from their perspective and expertise, particularly in today’s challenging and dynamic marketplace.”

Prentis and Bowlus will work from the firm’s San Francisco office.

John Prentis
[email protected]
Cell: 415.238.4575

Larry Bowlus
[email protected]
Cell: 415.254.5918

About EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants

EPIC Insurance Brokers & Consultants has more than 2,600 team members operating from more than 80 offices across the U.S., providing Property and Casualty, Employee Benefits, Specialty Programs, and Private Client solutions to EPIC clients. For more information on EPIC, visit: https://epicbrokers.com/.

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News Source: EPIC Insurance Brokers and Consultants

With the arrival of summer, now is a good time to take on some home improvement projects and to spruce up your living areas with some fresh looks. Whether you’re looking for a new vacuum cleaner, a floor lamp, or a new mattress, we’ve got a collection of items to choose from at special pricing so low it’s better than you can find on Amazon.

AquaSprouts Garden — $148.98

This kit allows you to combine your garden and aquarium into a self-sustaining, desktop ecosystem. The grow bed rests on top of a 10-gallon aquarium, which must be purchased separately.It comes with a light bar, pump and timer to give you a living, breathing plant/aquarium combination.

You can get the AquaSprouts Garden for just $148.98 (reg. $179), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Bamboo Comfort Luxury Six-Piece Sheet Set — $38.99

You can’t get sheets much more comfortable than this white, queen-size set. These luxury sheets are made of an eco-friendly bamboo fiber blend, are hypoallergenic and wrinkle-free. You’ll get a fitted sheet, flat sheet, and four standard pillowcases. They fit mattresses up to 16 inches thick.

You can get the Bamboo Comfort Luxury Six-Piece Sheet Set for just $38.99 (reg. $119), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

GhostBed Luxe 13-Inch Cooling Mattress — $1,221.99

This queen-size mattress features ghost ice fabric that is cool to the touch; soft and soothing. One-inch cooling fiber is woven into the cover of the mattress, while gel memory foam gives the comfort you are seeking. The multiple layers of foam and gel bring comfort to your spine and ensure good sleep.

You can get the GhostBed Luxe 13-Inch Cooling Mattress for just $1,221.99 (reg. $1,745), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Jashen V18 350W Cordless Vacuum Cleaner — $189.99

This vacuum cleaner is perfect for both carpet and hard floors thanks to its 2-in-1 dusting brush. It is powered by a 350W digital brushless motor that provides strong suction while also reducing noise. Thanks to a built-in filter sensor, the LED screen shows power mode, remaining run time, and a filter cleaning alert.

You can get the Jashen V18 350W Cordless Vacuum Cleaner for just $189.99 (reg. $350), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

VentiFresh ECO: Next Generation Odor Eliminator — $50

Get rid of the bad odors floating around your house from the litter box, refrigerator, diaper pail, and other locations with this compact air freshener. The VentiFresh doesn’t just mask the odors but decomposes them through natural photosynthesis. And at just 2.5 inches, you can hide it anywhere in the house.

You can get the VentiFresh ECO: Next Generation Odor Eliminator for just $50 (reg. $72), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Cielo Breez Eco Smart AC Controller — $62.99

This little device makes your air conditioner or heat pump smart. Cielo Breez Eco works with all ductless air conditioning systems that come with an IR-based remote control and instead allows you to control them with your phone. It will give you features such as scheduling, global control, location-based control, automation and more.

You can get the Cielo Breez Eco Smart AC Controller for just $62.99 (reg. $99), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Yedi Total Package 6-In-1 Grill — $106.99

If you can think of it, the Yedi grill can make it. The Yedi grill is a contact grill, waffle maker, panini press, full grill, full griddle and half grill/half griddle with temperature ranges from 175 to 450 degrees. It comes with waffle plates, egg rings, tongs/spatula, and the parts are dishwasher safe for easy cleaning.

You can get the Yedi Total Package 6-In-1 Grill for just $106.99 (reg. $115), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

EcoVacs Deebot 601 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner — $109.99

You’ll get an enormous deal on this refurbished vacuum cleaner that can scan and map your living space to automatically clean while you’re out and about. You can control and manage it with either Amazon Echo or Google Home, or by using an app on your phone.

You can get the EcoVacs Deebot 601 Robotic Vacuum Cleaner for just $109.99 (reg. $349), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Lamp Depot Minimalist LED Corner Floor Lamp — $89.99

This minimalist lamp stands 55 inches tall in the corner of any room and features soft-white, integrated LEDs that will provide customized illumination. Use the remote control makes to easily shuffle through 16 million colors and more than 300 multi-color effects to find your perfect lighting. The metal finishes and design will make a big impact on any room.

You can get the Lamp Depot Minimalist LED Corner Floor Lamp for just $89.99 (reg. $149), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Protean Color Changing Wall Light — $84.95

Designed as a wall lamp, the color-changing device also works as a ceiling or floor lamp. It features high-efficiency LEDS that allow you to choose from more than 16 million color options. You can make it bright or dim, and never have to worry about it breaking thanks to shatterproof construction.

You can get the Protean Color Changing Wall Light for just $84.95 (reg. $139), a price better than you can find on Amazon.

Prices subject to change.

The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.

Are you looking to learn a new skill to help your career or develop a hobby? Whether you need help starting your own business, need to learn difficult computer software, or just want to learn to play the guitar, we’ve got.  selection of 15 different online classes that will help you find your way. And each bundle of classes and the lifetime access that goes with them are just $20 for a limited time. And these deals are not anything you’ll find on Amazon.

Professional Microsoft Excel Certification Training Bundle — $20

These eight classes will give you more than 45 hours of training on Excel, an essential skill for a wide range of jobs. You’ll start with the basics and advance to charts and graphics, formulas, data models, pivot tables and more. Each is yours for less than $3 per class.

You can get the Professional Microsoft Excel Certification Training Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,600) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Complete Stock and Cryptocurrency Investment Toolkit Bundle — $20

Learn the ins and outs of investing in the stock market and the emerging cryptocurrency market with this series of 11 classes covering more than 54 hours of training. You’ll learn investment strategies, technical analysis and every type of investing from penny stocks to real estate,

You can get the Complete Stock and Cryptocurrency Investment Toolkit Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,815) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Fundamentals of Real Estate Investment Bundle — $20

You’ll get five classes and 17 hours of training to give you a basis for diving into the real estate market. You’ll learn pre-investment steps to take, how to do proper analysis, commercial and wholesale investing, and how to go into deals with partners.

You can get the Fundamentals of Real Estate Investment Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,000) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Ultimate Financial Accounting and CPA Certification Training Bundle — $20

These eight classes give you 25 hours of training in financial accounting. You’ll learn how to handle debits and credits, depreciation, inventory, payroll. ledgers and special journals, closing out an item and more, all taught to you by an actual CPA.

You can get the Ultimate Financial Accounting and CPA Certification Training Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,592) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Ultimate Candlestick Trading and Analysis Masterclass Bundle — $20

Over the course of five classes and 136 individual lessons, you’ll learn what it takes to be a trader and how to make good choices with your investments. Much of the material is geared toward the skills and pitfalls associated with day trading.

You can get the Ultimate Candlestick Trading and Analysis Masterclass Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,000) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Google Analytics Master Class Bundle — $20

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Managing and understanding the traffic on your website requires a working knowledge of Google Analytics, and that’s what you’ll get with these five courses and 12 hours of training. You’ll start with the basics and work your way up to preparing to become certified.

You can get the Google Analytics Master Class Bundle for just $20 (reg. $995) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

2021 Complete Amazon Dropshipping and Private Label Master Class Bundle — $20

If you’re looking to launch your own business on Amazon where shipping is involved, this class is an absolute must. You’ll get just shy of 100 hours of training on 11 different topics, ranging from product research to advertising to suspension prevention, all for less than $2 per class.

You can get the 2021 Complete Amazon Dropshipping and Private Label Master Class Bundle for just $20 (reg. $2,189) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Premium 2021 Project and Quality Management Certification Bundle — $20

Become a pro at managing projects as you learn Six Sigma, Agile, Jira and other programs that will make you more organized and efficient. There are more than 2,200 individual lessons included and 22 courses, all helping you prep for certification.

You can get the Premium 2021 Project and Quality Management Certification Bundle for just $20 (reg. $4,400) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

2021 Complete Shopify Dropshipping Bundle — $20

Learn to start, promote, grow and manage your business on Shopify with this series of seven courses and nearly 500 individual lessons. You’ll learn how to start and scale a business, the basics of e-commerce, how to build a highly converting store and more.

You can get the 2021 Complete Shopify Dropshipping Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,400) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Master Learn to Code 2021 Certification Bundle — $20

Jump-start a career in information technology with nearly 120 hours of training in coding. The 13 courses will cover everything from Python, Java, Apache and Ruby on Rails, giving you the basics on each before moving on to more complex theories over the course of nearly 1,200 individual lessons.

You can get the Master Learn to Code 2021 Certification Bundle for just $20 (reg. $2,594) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Complete 2021 Beginner to Expert Guitar Lessons Bundle — $20

Whether you’re picking up a guitar for the first time or looking to expand your abilities, this bundle has got you covered. Fourteen different courses cover everything from the very basics to learning how to play jazz, the blues and more. You’ll learn chords, picking, acoustic and electric guitars and more.

You can get the Complete 2021 Beginner to Expert Guitar Lessons Bundle for just $20 (reg. $2,800) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

2021 Complete ll-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Certification Course Bundle — $20

Boost your creativity for personal use or professional advancement with more than 80 hours of instruction on Adobe products. You’ll learn Spark, After Effects, Illustrator and, of course, PhotoShop. In total there are 12 courses and more than 600 individual lessons.

You can get the 2021 Complete ll-in-One Adobe Creative Cloud Suite Certification Course Bundle for just $20 (reg. $2,400) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

2021 Complete Creative Writer’s Workshop Bundle — $20

Learn how to get those ideas out of your head and onto paper with this series of 10 writing classes. You’ll learn how to overcome writer’s block and how to self-publish, as well as tackling different forms of writing from novels to mysteries to science fiction to non-fiction and more.

You can get the 2021 Complete Creative Writer’s Workshop Bundle for just $20 (reg. $2,000) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Create Your Own T-Shirt Side Business Bundle — $20

Designing t-shifts is the easy part. This series of seven different classes will help you turn your creative energy into an actual business. You’ll tackle how to set up a t-shirt business, how to market it to grow your profits, how to get included on Amazon, and how to build an effective website.

You can get the Create Your Own T-Shirt Side Business Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,393) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

2021 Productivity Master Class Bundle — $20

This series of 12 classes can help you make better use of your time. You’ll tackle everything from speed reading to meditation to overcoming procrastination. You’ll even discover how to reveal your life’s purpose and to influence other people.

You can get the 2021 Productivity Master Class Bundle for just $20 (reg. $1,188) with this deal you won’t find on Amazon.

Prices subject to change.

The Daily Caller is devoted to showing you things that you’ll like or find interesting. We do have partnerships with affiliates, so The Daily Caller may get a small share of the revenue from any purchase.