No Charges for Antisemitic Cop: Joint Statement Released in Response

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Ismail Quran: Antisemitic Police Officer from Canary Mission on Vimeo.

On August 31, 2022, Cleveland Mayor Justin M. Bibb and Police Chief Wayne Drummond released a statement addressing the results of the internal investigation into Cleveland Police Officer Ismail Quran.

They stated, “We are frustrated and disappointed that no charges can be filed against Officer Ismail Quran, despite extensive internal investigations by the Cleveland Division of Police (CDP), the City Prosecutor, and the Law Department. Officer Quran’s hateful offenses were communicated years before he was hired, making it impossible to successfully enforce discipline.”

Though this is a strong statement by Cleveland’s leaders, the absence of action is the best outcome that Officer Quran could have hoped for.

While he is undoubtedly pleased that his antisemitism was dismissed on a “technicality,” the Jewish community is left to wonder – would Officer Quran still be employed if he had posted other forms of bigotry?

The lack of any meaningful consequences for Quran sends a disturbing message – discrimination against Jews is tolerated and excused.

  • We note that Officer Quran has not issued an apology to the Jewish community. Does he still hold the same opinions? We remain in the dark as to his current views.
  • We note that the Cleveland Division of Police did not rescind Quran’s 2019 Officer of the year award. This requires a detailed explanation.
  • Finally, we note that the Cleveland Division of Police has offered no assurance that Officer Quran does not present a risk and will not be biased against the Jewish community.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, Canary Mission and StopAntisemitism, therefore, call for the following actions:

  1. A full public apology from Officer Quran.
  2. The Cleveland Division of Police will rescind all awards given to Officer Quran.
  3. A statement of assurance by the Cleveland Division of Police that Officer Quran does not present a risk and will not be biased against the Jewish community.

Click to View the Official Joint Statement

Ismail Quran has glorified Hitler and spread anti-Semitism as well as anti-Semitic conspiracy theories. Quran has also equated Israel with Nazi Germany and defended the terror group Hamas.

Check out his full profile here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Canary Mission press release is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

ANTONI: A Massive Economic Storm Is Already Overhead And Nobody Seems To Notice

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When ominously dark clouds roll in on a hot afternoon driven by a stiff wind, it doesn’t take a crystal ball to know a storm is coming. Yet the economic equivalent is already overhead, and no one seems to notice.

Many people are worried about the economy, and rightly so. Investors looking to the stock market have no sense of direction as major indices and commodity prices fluctuate violently. Potential homebuyers and existing homeowners alike are seeing the housing market in freefall. Workers can find jobs, but it is difficult to find work where the pay keeps up with inflation.

While all the above are troubling, they are not the scariest harbinger today for a worsening recession.

It’s not the fact that the economy has already contracted for two consecutive quarters. Debating whether that should be considered a recession is, at this point, an academic exercise which ignores the reality of key factors that are already baked into the cake and whose impact will be felt in the coming months.

The biggest recessionary factor that should have alarm bells ringing is new orders for business, especially manufacturing, which are plummeting.

Manufacturing surveys from Federal Reserve Banks in New York, Dallas, Philadelphia, and Richmond show new orders for business falling fast, in some cases at the fastest pace on record. The corresponding service sector surveys show similar trends with deteriorating business conditions and declining new orders.

In the New York survey, current business conditions are rated worse than any time besides the depths of the 2009 crash and the pandemic. In July, future business conditions were worse than at any point besides September 2001, when the survey was taken right after 9/11. In other words, the coming economic storm is more worrisome to manufacturers than anything besides a terrorist attack.

And in case anyone thinks these may all just be regional phenomena happening in the respective Federal Reserve Bank districts, the Census Bureau’s most recent reports on new orders for durable goods and retail sales showed all growth vanished in July.

S&P’s Purchasing Manager’s Index (PMI) initial report for August shows new orders for the private sector falling at the fastest pace in over two years. The Institute for Supply Management’s PMI for both manufacturing and the hospital sector also showed new orders declining in the most recent reports.

Falling new orders are particularly troubling because it means businesses cannot sustain current output levels nor current employment levels.

Why is this not front-page news? Probably because it is being hidden. There is no conspiracy here; it is largely a numerical fluke left over from the pandemic. Government-imposed lockdowns severely curtailed production throughout the economy and created countless supply chain disruptions. That caused new orders at businesses to pile up, creating a record backlog of unfilled orders.

Today, those businesses are rapidly working through their unfilled orders, hiring additional employees to do so. Even though new orders coming in are declining fast, current output is still increasing, and the hiring spree continues. With nearly all the kinks worked out of the supply chain, the only missing ingredient for many businesses is labor.

But that raises a question as ominous as those storm clouds on a hot afternoon: what happens when the backlog of unfilled orders is gone?

At that point, businesses will have to scale back, output will decline and employees will be let go. Fewer people working and earning an income will mean reduced production and consumption, which means recession. Higher interest rates exacerbate the situation.

It’s no wonder that the Conference Board’s leading economic indicators have trended down for the last six months and show new orders slowing; new orders are the canary in the coalmine for this economy. Business leaders would do well to notice the bird is suffocating.

AUTHOR

E.J. ANTONI

E.J. Antoni is a research fellow for regional economics at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Data Analysis and a Senior Fellow at Committee to Unleash Prosperity.

RELATED ARTICLE: SHEFFIELD: While Biden Blames Others For His Failures, America’s Economy Continues To Nosedive

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Cato’s Letters Taught America’s Founders about Liberty

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So influential were Cato’s Letters that many of our founder’s most moving words echoed it closely. 

The 2016 campaign has been notable for its abundance of accusations, character assassination and other political invective. However, in the vast war of words, to anyone familiar with America’s founding, there has been one central issue strikingly ignored: liberty. Not only has liberty not been given serious attention, the word itself has barely been mentioned.

This tacit political conspiracy to ignore liberty makes some sense, in that both major party candidates propose to reduce liberty. For instance, one promises to reduce Americans’ economic freedom by forcing unwilling taxpayers to give others free college, the other by invading their right of association by way of severe protectionism. One promises to reduce freedom of speech (which the First Amendment says no law shall be passed to restrict) by overturning Citizens United, the other by making it easier to sue people who say things about him he finds offensive.

However, the deliberate omission of liberty from current political discussion puts us almost immeasurably far from our founders, such as Thomas Jefferson, who advocated that we “Fortify the public liberty by every possible means,” and Thomas Paine, who wrote “The American constitutions were to liberty what a grammar is to language: they define its parts of speech and practically construct them into syntax.”

In fact, Americans’ heritage of liberty traces much farther back before the revolutionary period. As Richard Ebeling recently emphasized, John Locke was the source of many of those ideas (so much so that Richard Henry Lee accused Thomas Jefferson of plagiarizing Locke in the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence). Jim Powell has also insightfully discussed those issues. However, while Locke’s ideas were incredibly formative for what became America, the language our founders employed was perhaps even more influenced by another source.

Linking Locke and the Founders

That source was Cato’s Letters, which was “the most popular, quotable, esteemed source of political ideas in the colonial period,” according to Clinton Rossiter. Beginning in 1720, Cato (pseudonym for John Trenchard and Thomas Gordon, in honor of Cato the Younger’s opposition to Julius Caesar on behalf of liberty) began writing “to maintain and expose the glorious principles of liberty, and to expose the arts of those who would darken or destroy them,” putting Locke’s ideas to work on the political issues of the day.

So influential were Cato’s Letters that many of our founder’s most moving words echoed it closely. For example, when George Washington allegedly wrote (as is frequently, if uncertainly attributed to him),  “Government is not reason; it is not eloquence; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master,” he didn’t go far from Cato’s “Power is like fire; it warms, scorches or destroys, according as it is watched, provoked, or increased. It is as dangerous as it is useful.” Similarly, when John Adams wrote that “an enemy to liberty [is] an enemy to human nature,” he could have been paraphrasing Cato’s assertion that we should “brand those as enemies to human society, who are enemies to equal and impartial liberty.”

One consequence of America’s pedigree in Locke, by way of Cato’s Letters, is that at a time candidates are fighting tooth and nail to get more votes by proposing ever-more strategic violations of liberty, revisiting Cato’s insights, even though it is now almost three centuries later, offers a valuable antidote to being swept away with rhetoric and promises that would sweep away our liberty.

Let People Alone

While a great deal can be gleaned from studying Cato’s Letters more thoroughly, as indicated by the fact that my Lines of Liberty chapter dealing with it is the longest in the book, it is of particular importance to consider Letter 62, “An Enquiry into the Nature and Extent of Liberty; with its Loveliness and Advantages, and the vile Effects of Slavery,” because it brings us back to the core of what is being threatened today.

By liberty, I understand the power which every man has over his own actions, and his right to enjoy the fruit of his labor, art, and industry, as far as by it he hurts not the society, or any members of it, by taking from any member, or by hindering him from enjoying what he himself enjoys. The fruits of a man’s honest industry are the just rewards of it, ascertained to him by natural and eternal equity, as is his title to use them in the manner which he thinks fit: and thus, with the above limitations, every man is sole lord and arbiter of his own private actions and property–a character of which no man living can divest him but by usurpation, or his own consent.

The entering into political society, is so far from a departure from his natural right, that to preserve it was the sole reason why men did so; and mutual protection and assistance is the only reasonable purpose of all reasonable societies. To make such protection practicable, magistracy was formed, with power to defend the innocent from violence, and to punish those that offered it; nor can there be any other pretense for magistracy in the world. In order to this good end, the magistrate is entrusted with conducting and applying the united force of the community; and with exacting such a share of every man’s property, as is necessary to preserve the whole, and to defend every man and his property from foreign and domestic injuries. These are the boundaries of the power of the magistrate, who deserts his function whenever he breaks them. By the laws of society, he is more limited and restrained than any man amongst them; since, while they are absolutely free in all their actions, which purely concern themselves; all his actions, as a public person, being for the sake of society, must refer to it, and answer the ends of it.

It is a mistaken notion in government, that the interest of the majority is only to be consulted, since in society every man has a right to every man’s assistance in the enjoyment and defense of his private property; otherwise the greater number may sell the lesser, and divide their estates amongst themselves; and so, instead of a society where all peaceable men are protected, become a conspiracy of the many against the minority…and violence may be sanctified by mere power.

And it is as foolish to say, that government is concerned to meddle with the private thoughts and actions of men, while they injure neither the society, nor any of its members. Every man is, in nature and reason, the judge and disposer of his own domestic affairs; and…every man must carry his own conscience. So that neither has the magistrate a right to direct the private behavior of men… government being intended to protect men from the injuries of one another, and not to direct them in their own affairs, in which no one is interested but themselves; it is plain, that their thoughts and domestic concerns are exempted entirely from its jurisdiction…where [the magistrate] meddles with such, he meddles impertinently or tyrannically.

Let people alone, and they will take care of themselves, and do it best; and if they do not, a sufficient punishment will follow their neglect, without the magistrate’s interposition and penalties. It is plain, that such busy care and officious intrusion into the personal affairs, or private actions, thoughts, and imaginations of men, has in it more craft than kindness; and is only a device to mislead people, and pick their pockets, under the false pretense of the public and their private good.

True and impartial liberty is therefore the right of every man to pursue the natural, reasonable, and religious dictates of his own mind; to think what he will, and act as he thinks, provided he acts not to the prejudice of another; to spend his own money himself, and lay out the produce of his labor his own way; and to labor for his own pleasure and profit, and not for others who are idle, and would live…by pillaging and oppressing him, and those that are like him.

Magistracy, amongst a free people, is the exercise of power for the sake of the people; and tyrants abuse the people, for the sake of power. Free government is the protecting of the people in their liberties by stated rules. Tyranny…would rob all others of their liberty.

By liberty [people] enjoy the means of preserving themselves, and of satisfying their desires in the manner in which they themselves choose and like best.

2016 offers Americans candidates who both seriously threaten our liberties. That is, they both pose a clear and present danger to the ideas that brought America into being, since as John Adams said, “The only maxim of a free government ought to be to trust no man living with power to endanger the public liberty.” Effective recourse requires returning to our first principles. For that, there are few better places to turn than Cato’s Letters, which applied John Locke’s ideas to underlying issues that still threaten Americans today.

AUTHOR

Gary M. Galles

Gary M. Galles is a Professor of Economics at Pepperdine University and a member of the Foundation for Economic Education faculty network. In addition to his new book, Pathways to Policy Failures (2020), his books include Lines of Liberty (2016), Faulty Premises, Faulty Policies (2014), and Apostle of Peace (2013).

RELATED ARTICLE: Virtue Signaling Isn’t Virtuous—and Actually Makes Political Tribalism Worse

Read Cato’s Letters.

Of Liberty and Necessity
(No. 110, Saturday, January 5, 1723; by John Trenchard)

Considerations on the Weakness and Inconsistences of Human Nature
(No. 31, Saturday, May 27, 1721; by Thomas Gordon)

Of the Passions: That They Are All Alike Good or All Alike Evil, According As They Are Applied
(No. 39, Saturday, July 29, 1721; by Thomas Gordon)

Considerations on the Restless and Selfish Spirit of Man
(No. 40, Saturday, August 5, 1721; by Thomas Gordon)

Of the Weakness of the Human Mind; How Easily It Is Misled
(No. 105, Saturday, December 1, 1722; by John Trenchard)

Inquiry into the Source of Moral Virtues
(No. 108, Saturday, December 22, 1722; by John Trenchard)

Liberty Proved to Be the Unalienable Right of All Mankind
(No. 59, Saturday, December 30, 1721; by John Trenchard)

All Government Proved to Be Instituted by Men, and Only to Intend the General Good of Men
(No. 60, Saturday, January 6, 1722; by John Trenchard)

An Enquiry into the Nature and Extent of Liberty; with Its Loveliness and Advantages, and the Vile Effects of Slavery
(No. 62, Saturday, January 20, 1722; by Thomas Gordon)

Of Freedom of Speech: That the Same Is Inseparable from Publick Liberty
(No. 15, Saturday, February 4, 1721; by Thomas Gordon)

The Rights and Capacity of the People to Judge of Government
(No. 38, Saturday, July 22, 1721; by Thomas Gordon)

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Peter Doocy Reads Karine’s Old Tweets Claiming Trump Stole 2016 Election To Her Face

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Fox News White House correspondent Peter Doocy read White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre’s old tweets claiming former President Donald Trump stole the 2016 election to her face Tuesday.

Doocy asked the press secretary about false claims that the 2016 election was “stolen” as the White House repeatedly argues that “MAGA [Make America Great Again] Republicans” pose a threat to democracy over their claims about the 2020 election was fraudulent. The press secretary said the White House will focus on the present rather than 2016.

Doocy then read 2016 tweets where Jean-Pierre said Trump and Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp “stole an election.”

“If denying an election is extreme now, why wasn’t it then?” he asked.

“So let’s be very clear that that comparison that you made is just ridiculous,” she said.

“How is that ridiculous?” Doocy interjected.

“You’re asking me a question, let me answer it,” she pushed back. “I was talking specifically at that time of what was happening with voting rights and what was in danger of voting rights. That’s what I was speaking to at the time and here’s the thing, I have said, Governor Kemp won the election in Georgia. I’ve been clear about that. I have said President Trump won the election in 2016 and I’ve been clear about that.”

The press secretary said the claims of a stolen election in 2020 led to the violence that took place on January 6, 2021. She claimed the riot led to the death of Capitol police officers, even though all of the officers died either from suicide or natural causes after the riot.

“What we are talking about right now is let’s not forget what happened on January 6, 2021, where we saw an insurrection, a mob that was incited by the person who occupied this campus, this facility at that time,” she said. “And it was an attack on our democracy. Let’s not forget people died that day. Law enforcement were attacked that day. That was the danger that we were seeing at the time. That’s what the president has called out and that’s what he’s going to do continue to call out.”

“So yes, when you have MAGA Republicans, an extreme part of Republicans, who just deny or do not want to really say what exactly happened on that day or say it was a protest when it clearly was not a peaceful protest. That’s not what we saw on that day. Yes, the president’s going to call that out.”

The only person killed at the riot was Ashli Babbitt, a self-described Trump supporter who entered the building during the riot. A Capitol police officer, Lt. Michael Byrd, fatally shot her in the left shoulder and neck.

Jean-Pierre told Doocy that the majority of Americans agree that democracy and the people’s rights must be protected.

AUTHOR

NICOLE SILVERIO

Media reporter. Follow Nicole Silverio on Twitter @NicoleMSilverio

RELATED ARTICLE: Jean-Pierre Says Biden’s Attacks On ‘MAGA Republicans’ Are ‘Not Political’

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

LGBTQ+ Activists Aim to Unseat DeSantis because he wants children to learn their ABC’s not their LGBT’s

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“Our students should go to school to learn their ABC’s, not their LGBT’s.” — Florida Lt. Gov. Jeanette Núñez

The LGBTQ+ community in Florida are a very small minority yet they think their attempts to indoctrinate our children with their thinking and behavior is a winning political issue. They think they should have special rights and privileges because of their sexual orientation. They are upset over Parents’ Rights being inculcated into law in Florida.

One just needs to have attended Polk County Public School Board meetings since last December as well as being aware of the plethora of Gay Pride proclamations passed by the school board. Most Polk county City and County Commissioners realize Governor DeSantis is right with his focus that we should be educating not indoctrinating our children.

Governor DeSantis is not a villain but is doing what the vast majority of parents and voters want him to do.

Parents do count and should be involved in the education, not indoctrination, of their children.

Among the 45 Goals of Communism read into the Congressional Record in 1962 are the following five (5) pointedly designed to take over our schools:

17. Get control of the schools. Use them as transmission belts for socialism and current Communist propaganda. Soften the curriculum. Get control of teachers’ associations. Put the party line in textbooks.

24. Eliminate all laws governing obscenity by calling them “censorship” and a violation of free speech and free press.

25. Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books, magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

26. Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

41. Emphasize the need to raise children away from the negative influence of parents. Attribute prejudices, mental blocks and retarding of children to suppressive influence of parents

Charlie Crist is a bought and paid for Marxist protégé’ who has stated publicly, “Thank God for Joe Biden.”

Every God loving, law abiding, conservative Florida voter knows Crist must be defeated and Gov DeSantis re-elected as our Governor on November 8th, 2022.

DeSantis targeted LGBTQ Floridians like no previous governor. Now they’re working to defeat him

Zac Anderson – USA TODAY NETWORK – FLORIDA

Zander Moricz started his freshman year at Harvard last month, but he’s still keeping an eye on Florida after clashing with Gov. Ron DeSantis throughout the last year.

The first gay student body president at Pine View School in Sarasota County, Moricz led a student walkout at the school to protest HB 1557, which was derided by critics as the “Don’t Say Gay” bill. He later sued to overturn the law signed by DeSantis.

Now Moricz is working to derail DeSantis’ reelection bid from his Harvard dormitory room in Cambridge, Mass. He plans to rally the 2,000 members of an activist group he organized in Florida and nationwide in opposition to DeSantis’ reelection campaign.

“As November approaches the 2,000 of us will be doing everything in our collective power to ensure Charlie Crist is our governor and DeSantis is not put in a position of power in any way ever again,” Moricz said, referencing DeSantis’ Democratic opponent.

That type of commitment to unseating DeSantis highlights the intense emotions the governor has stirred up over the last year with a steady stream of policies impacting Florida’s LGBTQ community. No governor in recent decades has centered his political agenda on LGBTQ issues more than DeSantis.

When Florida students headed back to school last month, DeSantis took to Twitter to tout his efforts to rid classrooms of alleged “transgender ideology.”

The governor then repeated one of his favorite refrains over the last year, saying schools will “educate children. Not indoctrinate them.”

A few weeks later, DeSantis’ Lt Gov. Jeanette Núñez told a crowd in Miami that “Our students should go to school to learn their ABC’s, not their LGBT’s,” according to the New York Times.

DeSantis has drawn national attention for actions on everything from transgender sports and health care to what school officials can say about sexual orientation and gender identity. He is leaning into that record in the final months of his reelection campaign against Crist.

Read the full article.

©Royal A. Brown III. All rights reserved.

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PODCAST: Why This East Coast State Is Becoming a Hub of Education Entrepreneurship

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New Jersey education entrepreneurs are embracing an ethos of permission less innovation, creating new learning solutions that work well for children and others in their communities rather than trying to change an entrenched traditional school system.

When Ben Ashfield and Tammy Tiranasar couldn’t find their preferred educational environment for their two younger children, they decided to build it. Ben works in advertising and Tammy is an artist, but first and foremost they are entrepreneurial parents who want the best for their children. Last fall, the couple took over a vacated classroom space in Mountainside, New Jersey, and created The Village Electric as a full-day, co-learning center for local children ages two to twelve, open five days a week. They launched with 45 kids and several teachers.

This year, their program continues to thrive, but Ben and Tammy aren’t content with creating just one alternative learning model that satisfies their family’s needs. They want their space to become an incubator for many other entrepreneurial parents and teachers who wish to build microschools and co-learning communities of their own.

“The benefit of The Village Electric is making it easier to get involved in education and to innovate in education,” said Ben, likening his vision to that of WeWork and related coworking spaces that help to foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing. I talked with Ben and Tammy on this week’s episode of the LiberatED podcast.

“We felt we could benefit from creating a community for kids where we are working together, but it’s also a place for entrepreneurial teachers to start their vision of what school can be,” Ben continued. “It’s a place for people to start co-ops if they’re homeschoolers. It’s a place where homeschoolers can find community on their schedule. It’s a place where people can do their online learning except do it in a community of people learning other things. I would love to see an explosion of innovation happening like what you saw in Silicon Valley 15 years ago where people are trying lots of different things.”

Over the past two years, the Garden State has emerged as an ideal spot to pursue education entrepreneurship and invent a variety of schooling alternatives. You may recall my conversation earlier this year with Jill Perez, a long-time teacher and supervisor of student-teachers at the university level, who created a “pandemic pod” in 2020 with other New Jersey families. She then shifted that into a full-fledged microschool last fall, opening with more than 40 students, along with teachers she recruited from the New York City public schools. She recently purchased a building for her microschool and her program continues to grow.

Similarly, last spring I spoke with Lorianne Bolotin, an immigrant physician and midwife who never thought she would be in the education business until school closures prompted her to homeschool her children. Like Jill, she created a pod with local families and turned that into an established microschool in leased commercial space in a New Jersey office park. Her program also continues to expand and evolve, including her efforts to support a network of similar microschools across the country.

What is it about New Jersey that is making it a developing hub of education entrepreneurship and creative learning options? Certainly prolonged school closures and related pandemic policies contributed to more families exiting district schools for private education options, including homeschooling. New Jersey public schools experienced lengthy closures and reopened with mask mandates and other policies that frustrated some parents. The New Jersey Department of Education reported that the state’s traditional public schools lost a record 18,000 students during the 2020/2021 and 2021/2022 school years, reflecting a larger trend in declining public school enrollment nationwide since 2020. Enrollment declines were steepest in school districts that remained closed longer and relied more on remote learning, as well as those that kept mask mandates, according to data from the American Enterprise Institute.

New Jersey is also one of the least restrictive states for homeschooling, with no notification requirement for parents who want to homeschool their children, and few regulations. This ease of homeschooling has contributed to the proliferation of microschools, learning centers, and similar schooling alternatives, and all of the New Jersey microschools I have spotlighted this year operate as full-time, drop-off programs for homeschoolers. Some also offer part-time options as well. This enables families to be integrally involved with their children’s education while providing the flexibility for parents to continue working full-time and allowing their children to have a consistent peer group and ongoing academic enrichment.

These New Jersey microschools also tend to be less costly than other private schools in the state. For example, The Village Electric’s annual tuition is $10,500 for a full-day, Monday through Friday program, while the average New Jersey private school tuition is 42 percent higher than that. If New Jersey adopted school choice policies like those in Arizona and West Virginia that enable education funding to follow students instead of going to school districts, then microschools and similar learning communities would be accessible to even more families.

Some New Jersey microschools, including The Village Electric, are recipients of microgrants from VELA Education Fund, a non-profit organization that provides funding to non-traditional education organizations and schooling alternatives. VELA grant recipients frequently use their funds to help provide scholarships and tuition assistance to families who need it.

New Jersey education entrepreneurs are embracing an ethos of permissionless innovation, creating new learning solutions that work well for their children and others in their communities rather than trying to change an entrenched traditional school system. “As parents, we need to exercise our right to educate our children in the way that we think they need to be educated, and not ask for permission for that,” said Ben. “If you’re going to your school board and fighting with your public school, while I so appreciate that and understand that, we also need to just exercise our right to educate our children. That’s what inspired Tammy and me. We asked: How can we do something productive where we don’t feel like we’re wasting our energy trying to change something that really has no interest in changing?”

More entrepreneurial parents and educators in New Jersey and beyond are asking, and answering, that question.

AUTHOR

Kerry McDonald

Kerry McDonald is a Senior Education Fellow at FEE and host of the weekly LiberatED podcast. She is also the author of Unschooled: Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children Outside the Conventional Classroom (Chicago Review Press, 2019), an adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute, education policy fellow at State Policy Network, and a regular Forbes contributor. Kerry has a B.A. in economics from Bowdoin College and an M.Ed. in education policy from Harvard University. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. You can sign up for her weekly email newsletter here.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Documentary ‘Keep This Between Us’ exposes sexual predators and ‘widespread grooming’ in our public schools

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On August 9th of 2017 we wrote about Jason Edward Meyers a teacher at Palmetto High School in Miami-Dade, Florida who is a pedophile who stalked his underaged students for sex for a decade. We wrote,

As Florida’s public school students are heading back to school, parents should be aware that Miami-Dade County Public Schools have been plagued by numerous sexual assault cases by teachers and administrators over the past five years, the most recent being the “Jason’s Girls” episode.

According to a legal complaint filed in federal court in Miami, Jason Meyers had molested numerous girls since 2004. When his principal at the time was told of a particular offense in 2008, the complaint alleges, he was transferred to another school. The complaint reads in part:

This action concerns the repeated sexual abuse and harassment of Plaintiff by her English and Creative Writing teacher, Jason Edward Meyers (“Meyers”), during Plaintiff’s junior and senior years at Miami Palmetto Senior High School (“Palmetto High School”), while she was 16 and 17 years old. Plaintiff is one of many underage female students that Meyers recruited, groomed, and exploited in a systematic fashion during his near decade-long tenure as a known sexual predator employed by Defendant. [Emphasis added]

Now there is a documentary titled Keep This Between Us about Jason Meyers and other predators in our public school classrooms.

In this documentary a woman re-examines her past relationship with a teacher, exposing the shocking statistics of widespread grooming in U.S. high schools.

On August 4th, 2022 we published an article titled It Took Over 6-Years and 9 Months to Bring to Trial a Teacher Accused of Being a Sexual Predator. Why?

The article was about Jason Edward Meyers and that he is still walking the streets of Miami, Florida, even though he is facing three felony charges of sexual battery. We wrote,

Many are questioning if our criminal justice systems are working properly and we are insuring that those accused of a crime are brought to trial quickly.  One Florida case caught our attention after a reader contacted us.

We were recently made aware of the criminal trial of Jason Edward Meyers in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Meyers is a former Palmetto High School teacher who is accused of 3 counts of felony sexual battery upon young girls, who were his students, in April of 2014.

Meyers is still walking the streets of Miami-Dade County on his own recognizance. To date there have been 572 docket hearings on the Meyers case. Unbelievable. If we can’t bring someone accused of sexual battery to trial what does that say about our criminal justice system?

We thought that justice must be swift in order to be effective in deterring crime.

We were wrong when it comes to Miami-Dade County. It seems justice is slow and favors the alleged perpetrator rather than his victim or victims

Jason Edward Meyers originally appeared in court on a bond hearing on February 19th, 2016 (read the details of State Case here: No. 132016CF0034080001XX.)

According to the Miami-Dade County Clerk of the Courts Meyers is now scheduled for a trial hearing on November 28th, 2022 at 9:30 a.m. (see Meyers, Jason Edward case file). That is 6 years and 9 months after the alleged crime of sexual battery upon a young girls.

Soviet Union prisoner Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn in his biography The Gulag Archipelago wrote, “When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations.”

We agree. Not punish sexual predators, pederasts, pedophiles and perverts rips apart the very foundation of our justice system. These criminals prey upon our most vulnerable children!

“Keep This Between Us” premiered on August 29th and is now streaming on Hulu.

©Dr. Rich Swier. All rights reserved.

Court Records Show Biden Is a Fascist Who Threatens Personal Rights

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Joe Biden continued his attacks on Trump supporters in a Labor Day speech in Wisconsin, claiming, among other things, they threaten personal rights.  The speech was a follow-up to Biden calling Trump supporters “semi-fascists” ten days ago.  Let’s set the record straight, shall we?

Documents obtained in a lawsuit brought by the Missouri Attorney General and others show that a dozen federal agencies participated in the Biden administration’s collusion with social media companies to suppress the free speech rights of Americans about COVID and elections. The Missouri Attorney General called it “a massive, sprawling federal ‘Censorship Enterprise’,” involving the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the CDC, and others.  If bringing the full weight of the federal government down on Americans who speak their minds isn’t a threat to personal rights, I don’t know what is, and Joe Biden’s in charge of it.

The scheme involves Leftbook and Fritter.  Leftbook was in weekly communication with Biden administration officials about what to censor, the documents obtained in court show.  This includes personal correspondence between Anthony Fauci and Mark Zuckerberg to suppress the lab leak COVID origin theory which has only gained credence with the passage of time.  Leftbook also wrote to the Surgeon General asking “what the White House expects of us.”  Fritter scheduled a meeting to brief White House officials on so-called “vaccine misinformation” and to discuss how to carry their “partnership” forward.

There’s more.  The CDC had a direct pipeline to Fritter to tell them what COVID information to take down.  The Cybersecurity Agency asked Fritter to remove accounts.  The actions of the ‘Censorship Enterprise’ go on for hundreds of pages and involve more than 50 Biden administration officials.  [Link to documents here] The White House even asked that Fauci parody accounts be taken down from Leftbook.  Making fun of the king is not allowed in Joe Biden’s America.

These are the results of the first six weeks of discovery in the lawsuit.  There’s more to come, but we can already see that the conspiracy between the Biden administration and Big Tech to deprive Americans of their free speech rights is much wider and deeper than anyone thought.  As more conspirators are discovered, they will be added to the lawsuit.  The White House is claiming its communications are privileged, although it is clear that its external communications are not.  Mark Zuckerberg has already admitted Leftbook suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story before the 2020 election, acting on a request from the FBI.  He has a whole lot more explaining to do as to why his supposedly neutral platform is in bed with the lying dog-faced pony soldier Biden administration.

Now let’s set the record straight on fascism.  Fascism is a dictatorship brought about by the combination of Big Business and Big Government.  The textbook example is Mussolini’s Italy where the CEOs of the biggest corporations in the country were also the cabinet ministers in Mussolini’s government.  You put Big Business together with Big Government and you have the kind of concentration of power our Founders warned us about.  Bad things happen when too much power gets in the hands of too few people.  Dissenting voices get silenced, for starters, as the documents obtained in the collusion lawsuit I’ve been discussing so thoroughly demonstrate.

So we’ve got a serious problem in this country, and it’s not 80 million Trump supporters.  It’s the Biden administration and its bosom buddies in Big Tech.  They are the ones threatening personal rights and suppressing free speech.  They are the ones threatening democracy by suppressing important information, like the Hunter Biden laptop story, that could have changed minds before the election.  A recent poll found most Americans believe Trump would have been reelected had there been “truthful” coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story.   If Big Tech collusion with political power brokers isn’t a threat to democracy, I don’t know what is.

Leftbook and Fritter have both censored me along with many, many others.  And now they can live with the consequences.  One of the consequences is that their entire Censorship Enterprise with the Biden administration – the whole stinking mess – is being dragged out into the open for all to see.  Who are the fascists, again?

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: Federal Judge Reveals Incumbent President Joe Biden Ordered FBI Access to Mar-a-Lago Documents

CHILD ABUSE: Reading, Math Scores PLUNGE for 9-year olds, Data Shows

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Epic fail on every level. Once we led the world, now we barely bring up the rear. The left has destroyed every great American achievement.

Get your children out of government schools. They are abusing your children.

Reading, math scores fell sharply during pandemic, data show

By: Colin Binkley, AP, Sep 1, 2022

WASHINGTON (AP) — Math and reading scores for America’s 9-year-olds fell dramatically during the first two years of the pandemic, according to a new federal study — offering an early glimpse of the sheer magnitude of the learning setbacks dealt to the nation’s children.

Reading scores saw their largest decrease in 30 years, while math scores had their first decrease in the history of the testing regimen behind the study, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, a branch of the U.S. Education Department.

The dramatic setbacks, which erased two decades of progress in American test scores, reflect years of upheaval for the country’s education system. Schools shut down for months at a time amid COVID-19 outbreaks. Many children spent a year or more learning from home. Virus outbreaks among staff and students continued the disruption even after kids returned to the classroom.

The declines hit all regions of the country and affected students of most races. But they were most dramatic for the country’s most vulnerable kids. Students of color saw some of the steepest decreases, widening the racial achievement gap.

Much of the nation’s standardized testing didn’t happen during the early days of the pandemic, so the findings released Thursday gave an early look at the impact of pandemic learning disruptions. Broader data is expected to be released later this year as part of the National Assessment of Educational Progress, also known as the Nation’s Report Card.

“These are some of the largest declines we have observed in a single assessment cycle in 50 years of the NAEP program,” said Daniel McGrath, the acting associate commissioner of NCES. “Students in 2022 are performing at a level last seen two decades ago.”

In math, the average score for 9-year-old students fell 7 percentage points between 2020 and 2022, according to the study. The average reading score fell 5 points.

The pandemic’s upheaval especially hurt students of color. Math scores dropped by 5 percentage points for white students, compared with 13 points for Black students and 8 points for Hispanic students. The divide between Black and white students widened by 8 percentage points during the pandemic.

Decreases were more uniform in reading: Scores dropped 6 points for white, Black and Hispanic students.

For Asian American students, Native American students and students of two or more races, there was little change in reading or math between 2020 and 2022, the study found.

The setbacks, especially among underprivileged kids, raised alarms in the education world. Denise Forte, interim CEO of the Education Trust think tank, called it “deeply disturbing.”

“Due to inequitable and unjust school systems, students who are the most underserved continue to struggle academically both before and during the pandemic,” Forte said. “Decision-makers at all levels have not done nearly enough to address the long-standing resource inequities that prohibit Black, Latino and students from low-income backgrounds from reaching their full academic potential.”

Read full article.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VILLAINY: Federal Prosecutors Waiting Until After Midterms to Take Any Action Against Trump

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If, for no other reason, get out the vote. rent a bus, pick up friends and family and VOTE. We need overwhelming numbers to overwhelm Democrat election fraud.

REPORT: Federal prosecutors waiting until after midterms to take any action against Trump

By: Laura Ramirez, RSBN Network, September 5, 2022:

Federal prosecutors are reportedly waiting until the midterm elections are over to announce whether they would bring any charges against President Donald Trump after storming his Florida home last month.

According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department’s policy bars prosecutors from furthering an investigation or filing charges within 60 days of an election to prevent influencing or affecting a candidate or party.

Federal prosecutors are reportedly waiting until the midterm elections are over to announce whether they would bring any charges against President Donald Trump after storming his Florida home last month.

According to Bloomberg, the Justice Department’s policy bars prosecutors from furthering an investigation or filing charges within 60 days of an election to prevent influencing or affecting a candidate or party.

However, the Department of Justice (DOJ) is likely to announce whether President Trump would be charged concerning the Mar-a-Lago raid, where the FBI confiscated documents from the president’s private residence, following November’s election, where Trump has endorsed numerous Republican candidates, the outlet added.

Fox News host Judge Jeanine Pirro called out the DOJ’s decision to announce the charges after the election, labeling it a “blatantly political move.”

“If you’re not convinced this is just another witch hunt, well, new reports say the DOJ is waiting past the midterms to reveal any Trump charges,” Pirro said on Jesse Watters Primetime. “This is a blatantly political move. The DOJ has a policy of not bringing charges against political figures so close to an election, but they don’t have to charge Trump in order to affect the election.”

President Trump and the DOJ are in the middle of a legal battle over the raid. Trump’s legal team requested a “special master” to review the seized documents with Trump-appointed U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon overseeing it, RSBN previously reported.

However, the DOJ voiced its opposition against appointing a special master in a 40-page filing Tuesday, saying Trump “lacks standing,” according to Fox News.

President Trump’s legal team then accused the DOJ of leaking information, reportedly of “a photograph of allegedly classified materials, pulled from a container and spread across the floor for dramatic effect,” Trump’s lawyers wrote in a filing Wednesday.

Keep reading……

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

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EDITORS NOTE: This Geller Report is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

What Drugs Have the Highest Risk of Causing Suicidal Thoughts?

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The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) reports that suicide is the 12th leading cause of death in the United States and that an estimated 1.2 million suicide attempts took place in 2020 alone. Our society must deal with this problem, but we have to know where to look. While many contributing factors are associated with attempted suicide or suicidal thoughts, one that deserves special consideration is drug use. Here’s what drugs have the highest risk of causing suicidal thoughts.

Who Are the Culprits?

Deciding which drugs have the highest risk of suicidal thoughts is tricky. This is because many illicit drugs affect the central nervous system (CNS), which is how the brain communicates with the rest of the body. CNS depressants work by slowing down or suppressing this messaging process. CNS depressants include benzodiazepines, opioids, sedative drugs, and even alcohol. Other drugs known as CNS stimulants work in the opposite way to CNS depressants by increasing central nervous system activity in the brain and the body. Stimulants include cocaine, crack, ecstasy, methamphetamine, and prescription stimulants, such as Adderall and Ritalin. Next to these, there’s marijuana, which is sort of a wild card drug because it can produce stimulant and depressant effects.

While it might sound like we’ve gone down the list of all available drugs rather than a list of drugs that cause suicidal thoughts, the reality is all these drugs, and many others, can lead to suicidal thoughts. Each of these drugs manipulates the central nervous system. As a result, they can influence our emotions, our cognitive decision-making, and our awareness. Additionally, underlying factors or mental health conditions can increase the possibility of experiencing suicidal thoughts from drug use.

Concerning Findings

With that said, it’s still true that certain drugs carry a higher potential for suicidal thoughts. While it is an oversimplification to associate stimulants or “uppers” with happiness and depressants or “downers” with sadness, the reality is that even uppers can cause severe depression, which can lead to suicidal thoughts. However, statistics show that most suicidal thoughts or acts are more commonly linked with depressants use. For example, a 2020 study revealed that suicidal drug overdoses ranked highest when people used opioids or barbiturates. Following those drugs, the third-ranking included antidepressant drugs. It is ironic that the medications that seem to carry a high risk for suicide and/or severe depression are, in fact, antidepressants. While benzodiazepines can treat anxiety-related depression, most instances of depression are treated with antidepressant medications, generally belonging to either the selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) or the serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs) class, though there are other less commonly used antidepressants as well.

Brand names that belong to these classes include drugs such as Cymbalta, Celexa, Prozac, and Zoloft. These drugs are more effective in treating depression than other options because they work in very specific ways to regulate serotonin in the body, which results in a stabilized mood. According to a study examining the link between SSRIs and suicidal thoughts, there is no clear connection between the two for adults. However, there was a higher risk of suicidal thoughts for children and adolescents. Researchers recommended that clinicians closely monitor and follow up with patients who use the medications they prescribed. In fact, this is exactly what we see in advertisements for antidepressant medications. The ads state the risk of the potential for depression and suicidal thoughts, followed by a warning to contact a doctor right away if these symptoms occur.

What to Do

Part of the controversy centered around the safety of antidepressant use concerns whether suicidal thoughts are pre-existing conditions of antidepressant drug use or if they are actually caused by taking the drugs. Additionally, mixing antidepressants with other drugs can create risks that can be detrimental to mental health. This information should not deter anyone from getting medical treatment for suicidal thoughts or depression-related symptoms. However, we can use it to educate ourselves about just how complex the problem is and what drugs to pay close attention to as we maintain our mental health and the mental health of others around us.

Sources

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention. (n.d.). Suicide Statistics. Retrieved https://afsp.org/suicide-statistics/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d). Guide to Drug Addiction: Symptoms, Signs, and Treatment. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/addiction/

Medical News Today. (2018 Oct 9). What is Central Nervous System (CNS) Depression? Retrieved https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/314790

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). Guide to Alcohol Detox: Severity, Dangers, and Timeline. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/alcohol/detox/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). Stimulant Addiction. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/stimulants/

Healthline. (2019 May 6). Is Weed a Depressant, Stimulant, or Hallucinogen? Retrieved https://www.healthline.com/health/is-weed-a-depressant

Vox. (2018 Jun 15). Depression and Suicide Risk are Side Effects of more Than 200 Common Drugs. Retrieved https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2018/6/14/17458726/depression-drugs-suicide-side-effect

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). A Guide to Dual-Diagnosis Treatment. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/treatment-guide/dual-diagnosis/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.). Guide to Cocaine Addiction and Treatment. Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/stimulants/cocaine/

JAMA. (2020 Mar 23). Incidence and Lethality of Suicidal Overdoses by Drug Class. Retrieved https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2763226

NIH. (2010 Sep 3). Antidepressants and Suicide Risk: A Comprehensive Overview. Retrieved https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4034101/

Delphi Health Group. (n.d.) Mixing Alcohol and Antidepressants – Can You Do It Safely? Retrieved https://delphihealthgroup.com/alcohol/and-antidepressants/

NIH. (2012 Jan). Suicide and Antidepressants: What Current Evidence Indicates. Retrieved https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3353604/

Medical News Today. (2017 Dec 14). What is Prozac (fluoxetine)? Retrieved https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/263773

NHS. (2021 Dec 8). Cautions- Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs). Retrieved https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/talking-therapies-medicine-treatments/medicines-and-psychiatry/ssri-antidepressants/considerations/#:~:text=Interactions%20with%20other%20medicines,known%20as%20%22serotonin%20syndrome%22.

Biden Fights 9/11 Victims in Court to Protect Taliban Cash

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The unspeakable betrayal over Afghanistan continues.

White House Democrats have a history of fighting against terror victims suing Islamic terrorists. The Obama administration battled American terror victims suing the PLO. In 2015, after they won a $218 million judgement against the terror group, Blinken, then only a deputy secretary of state, intervened claiming that the lawsuit threatened “several decades of US foreign policy.”

But now Biden is fighting 9/11 victims on behalf of the Taliban. At stake are billions being held by the Afghan central bank fund in the United States.

A decade ago, 9/11 families sued the Taliban, Al Qaeda and Iran. The court found that the Islamic terrorists were responsible and a judgement of $6 billion was handed down.

The verdict was described as “symbolic” at the time. CBS News commented that “it would be near impossible to collect any damages, especially from the Taliban or al Qaeda.” But that was before Biden turned over Afghanistan to the Taliban. Since Afghanistan has assets in this country, including $7 billion in bank funds, it’s now entirely possible to collect that money.

Or it would be if the guy who let the Taliban take over wasn’t also in the White House.

Biden officially announced that he was splitting the $7 billion between the families of the victims and a “trust fund” to provide “humanitarian aid” for the people of Afghanistan.

But that was just another one of his many lies and double crosses involving Afghanistan.

The $3.5 billion was placed in a separate trust that would be “separate and distinct” from the around $800 million the Biden administration has already spent on aid to Afghanistan. Officials admitted that the money could actually be used for matters other than “humanitarian aid”.

The media headlined it as, “Biden frees frozen Afghan billions for relief, 9/11 victims”. But a Biden official admitted that it was done to stop 9/11 families from getting access to the money.

“Absent action by us, these funds were likely to be tied up in courts for years, while the action we have taken stands the best chance of more quickly freeing up a large portion for humanitarian support,” the official argued. As a Lawfare blog post noted, “the administration’s plan would insulate nearly half of the Afghan assets at issue from these attachment efforts.”

What Biden actually did was take the money off the table for 9/11 victims. And it got worse.

Secretary of State Blinken claimed that the administration “will continue to support these victims and their families, recognizing the enduring pain they have suffered at the hands of terrorists, including those who operated from Afghanistan prior to the September 11 attacks. These victims and their families should have a full opportunity to set forth their arguments in court.”

Blinken, like his boss, lied.

While the 9/11 families would have their claims “heard in court”, neither Biden nor Blinken mentioned that the administration would be advocating against them.

On the same day as Biden’s executive order reserving $3.5 billion for the terrorists, his Justice Department filed a statement of interest in court arguing that the judgement for the victims of terrorism was too large and that actually turning over the money to them would interfere with the Biden administration’s foreign policy in Afghanistan.

Now a magistrate judge has repeated back most of the DOJ’s arguments, ruling against the 9/11 families who were laying claim to the other half of the money. Judge Sarah Netburn’s arguments closely mirror the contradictory positions of Biden and the DOJ. And they reveal the underlying corruption behind the ambiguous status of Afghanistan’s central bank.

Netburn, like the Biden administration, contends that the Afghanistan bank enjoys “sovereign immunity” because the country itself was not sanctioned as a terrorist state, only the Taliban were. And that the Taliban once again control Afghanistan is irrelevant, according to the judge, because Biden hasn’t recognized the reality that this is actually the case.

Banks don’t enjoy “sovereign immunity” and neither do the Taliban. Netburn and Biden act as if there were some entity representing Afghanistan that is not the Taliban. That position might make sense if they were backing a resistance movement to the Taliban. But they’re not.

Instead the Biden administration has maintained a deliberately ambiguous position for Afghanistan’s central bank as being both under and not under Taliban control. This is convenient because it allows the Biden administration to use the financial institution as a vehicle and to restrict its access at the same time. The bank’s leadership, a mixture of terrorists and wonks linked to the former government, maintains that same calculated ambiguity.

The deputy governor of the bank is Noor Ahmad Agha, a Taliban leader listed as a specially designated global terrorist. Shah Mohammad Mehrabi, a member of the board of governors of the bank, lives near Washington D.C. and teaches at Montgomery College, has made his own media tour demanding that the United States release funds to the bank.

Biden is unable to do that until he thoroughly defeats the 9/11 families in court.

If Biden releases the money to the Afghanistan bank before that happens, the 9/11 families will be able to argue that the administration is contradicting its own position. Biden wants to reserve all $7 billion for the terrorists and so he has to hold off long enough to defeat the terror victims.

The level of betrayal here is worse than even the Obama administration.

The Biden administration claims that the money will be used for “humanitarian aid” and will not go to the terrorists. That’s another lie and it’s been disproved by its publicly stated policies.

The Biden administration has issued global licenses authorizing financial transactions with the Taliban and the Al Qaeda allied Haqqani Network that include, in the Treasury Department’s own words, “delivery and provision of humanitarian aid or shipments”, “administrative issues”, “donor coordination meetings”, “sharing descriptions of projects”, “coordination with regard to travel”, “participation in technical working groups” and “sharing of office space”. Not to mention the “payments of taxes, fees, or import duties to, or the purchase or receipt of permits, licenses, or public utility services from, the Taliban, the Haqqani Network.”

While Biden and his corrupt cronies insist that they don’t recognize the Taliban, that’s purely a formality. Not only do they recognize the Taliban as the government, but they’ve been extensively coordinating with the Islamic terrorists and helping to fund them.

At the end of July, Biden’s representative met with “senior Taliban representatives” to discuss  “ongoing efforts to enable the $3.5 billion in licensed Afghan central bank reserves to be used for the benefit of the Afghan people”.

Even while the Biden administration and its allies insist that the other $3.5 billion set aside to meet the claims of terror victims can’t be released to them because that would “implictly” mean that the Taliban are being recognized as the government, Biden’s diplomatic representatives can meet with them and conduct negotiations about giving them the other $3.5 billion.

Releasing money to 9/11 terror victims would “implictly” recognize the Taliban, but engaging in sustained diplomatic negotiations with them as the governing authority somehow does not.

The Taliban privately understand that Biden can’t release the $3.5 billion to them until he beats the 9/11 families in court. And then they’ll potentially get access to the whole $7 billion. This corrupt charade is being played out for the benefit of the equally complicit judiciary and media which is cheering the downfall of the 9/11 families and waiting for the cash to go to the Taliban.

Reuters headlined its story, “Afghans outraged as 9/11 families lay claim to frozen billions”. There’s no real ambiguity as to which side Reuters, the media and Joe Biden are on.

In October 2001, Biden proposed that, “this would be a good time to send, no strings attached, a check for $200 million to Iran,” He’s managed to send much more money than that to the Islamic terror state since, but now he’s preparing to send a $7 billion check to the Taliban.

All he had to do to get that money was lie and cheat 9/11 families.

AUTHOR

DANIEL GREENFIELD

Daniel Greenfield, a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center, is an investigative journalist and writer focusing on the radical Left and Islamic terrorism.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Navy SEALs Are Fighting For Religious Exemptions To Vaccine Mandates, And The Battle Is Far From Over

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  • U.S. Navy SEALs continue fighting in the courts to obtain religious exemptions to the military’s mandatory COVID-19 vaccination while the Biden administration lets exemption requests stack up, unaddressed.
  • Legal experts argue that the administration’s argument to national security no longer applies in light of changing CDC guidelines.
  • “The Constitution, federal law, and DOD regulations all protect religious liberty in the military, and our courts have repeatedly reminded us that there is no [COVID-19] exception to the Constitution,” Mike Berry, senior counsel at the First Liberty Institute that is representing the SEALs, told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Some Navy SEALs’ case for religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccination trudges along in the Fifth Circuit court as defense leaders remain wedded to the Biden administration’s military vaccine mandate.

Pandemic restrictions have loosened significantly in most sectors, with federal guidelines changing to reflect the lessened threat of the virus, but the Department of Defense (DOD) continues to maintain that vaccination is critical to ensure readiness of the armed services. It will take continued litigation to convince the military to respect religious accommodation laws that would prevent thousands of service members from facing discharge or confinement to low-skill jobs, the SEALs’ attorneys told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

“The law is on our side. The Constitution, federal law, and DOD regulations all protect religious liberty in the military, and our courts have repeatedly reminded us that there is no (COVID-19) exception to the Constitution,” Mike Berry, senior counsel at the First Liberty Institute that is representing the SEALs, told the DCNF.

First Liberty filed suit in November 2021 on behalf of 26 Navy SEALs and other Special Warfare personnel against the Biden administration, arguing that the mandate violates servicemembers’ right to free exercise of religion.

In January, a Texas judge, relying on the Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA), temporarily blocked the Navy from considering vaccination status when making assignment decisions for the plaintiffs. The case reached the Supreme Court in March when the Biden administration asked the court to reverse the ruling, and the court granted a partial stay to the order.

“Generally, military members are required to follow orders, but in this case, the military has shown sheer hostility toward religious exemptions rather than using the least restrictive means possible. In its effort to be draconian, the military refused to even recognize the now proved science of natural immunity,” Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert told the DCNF.

Out of the 3,375 sailors who have requested religious exemptions to the COVID-19 vaccine as of Aug. 24, only 46 have been approved, according to Department of Defense data. So far, the Navy has recorded 105,277 COVID-19 cases and 17 deaths.

“Did the Navy, in good faith, apply the Religious Freedom Restoration Act in these cases, or did they predetermine that they were going to deny all religious accommodations?” R. Davis Younts, an Air Force reservist and attorney representing several military members seeking religious exemptions, told the DCNF. Referring to the latter possibility, he claimed, “It’s clear that they did, and I think the facts continue to bear that out.”

The military needs to consider exemption cases individually instead of stonewalling requests or issuing blanket denials that no longer reflect the Biden administration’s own COVID-19 guidance, Younts added. The compelling interest of the military to require vaccination — that COVID-19 posed a direct threat to military readiness — no longer exists.

Sailors, soldiers and airmen, many of whom have years of highly-specified training and experience under their belts, remain in limbo while court cases play out, unable to receive promotions or continue their training, Younts explained. Thousands of service members may be dragooned out of a force that is already falling vastly short of its recruiting goals amid blatant threats of war from foreign powers.

“We’re being treated like pariahs,” he said.

The only way forward is continued litigation and “individual military members taking a stand,” Younts said, adding that any policy change among DOD leaders is unlikely.

“This is a public interest issue with significant implications … that has to make a difference,” he added.

Virginia on Tuesday joined 21 other states in filing an amicus brief, dated Aug. 29, supporting the religious liberty of Navy SEALs and other U.S. Navy members to seek vaccine exemptions. The Biden administration has asked the court to give the military “extraordinary” deference in its decision to mandate and enforce vaccination, undermining the fundamental liberties of Navy service members, according to the brief.

“Navy SEALs are some of our best and brightest, willing to sacrifice their lives to protect our freedoms. Those who have filed religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine deserve to be heard and taken seriously,” Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said in a statement.

The states argued that they have effectively managed COVID-19 within their borders without infringing on religious liberties, and the government should be able to do the same. They decried the administration’s “overreaching and flawed claims of legal authority.”

“The Administration’s near-blanket refusal to grant religious exemptions is not credible … its denial in this case is not entitled to deference,” the brief stated.

“The evidence strongly favors the sailors. The Navy’s own testimony indicates that their decision was based on politics. There is no military or scientific justification for their assault on religious freedoms,” Gohmert said.

However, the Supreme Court had argued that the previous injunction overstepped the judiciary’s authority by overturning an order of the Executive made in an apparent effort to safeguard national security.

“RFRA does not justify judicial intrusion into military affairs in this case. That is because the Navy has an extraordinarily compelling interest in maintaining strategic and operational control over the assignment and deployment of all Special Warfare personnel — including control over decisions about military readiness,” Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the concurring opinion.

Discharges for sailors seeking religious exemptions have been postponed pending the court case, according to the Navy. Of those who either did not seek exemptions or whose requests were denied, 1,533 have been separated with honorable characterization of service.

The Navy and the White House did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s request for comment.

AUTHOR

MICAELA BURROW

Reporter.

RELATED ARTICLE: Pentagon Ignores Biden Admin Order To Stop Testing Unvaccinated For COVID-19

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Here’s How Much The Federal Government Has Spent Studying Impact Of Sex Change Meds We’re Already Giving Kids

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The National Institutes of Health (NIH) spent at least $17,576,200 since 2008 researching the impact of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, NIH records show, drugs that are already widely administered to children who identity as transgender.

Researchers used NIH funds to study the impact these medications have on bone density and strength, reproduction, immunity, cardiometabolism and mental health, along with several other issues. Most of these grants were issued after 2017 as interest in the subject grew, although some date back as early as 2008.

Although researchers are still learning about the long-term effects of these drugs and whether they actually help reduce depression and suicide rates for youths, they are already widely administered to children who identify as transgender; the Gender Identity Development Service at Tavistock in the U.K., the largest pediatric gender clinic in the world, has referred about 1,000 patients to endocrinologists to be assessed for puberty blockers, a spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The NIH gave the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles more than $7.7 million in grants for a project studying the impact of puberty-blocking drugs and cross-sex hormones on children as young as 8, according to various documents reviewed by the DCNF.

The study aims to determine whether early medical interventions for youths reduce the health issues that disproportionately impact transgender people, including anxiety, depression, substance abuse and suicide. Researchers observed 391 patients aged 8 to 20 at the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, the Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago and the Benioff Children’s Hospital; 90 went on puberty blockers and 301 went on cross-sex hormones, researchers reported.

“Ultimately, we aim to understand if early medical intervention reduces the health disparities well known to disproportionately affect transgender individuals across their lifespan,” researchers wrote. “The lack of data supporting medical interventions for transgender youth, combined with a shortage of providers knowledgeable of the complex psychosocial risk factors facing these young people, contributes to a health disparity and public health crisis of considerable magnitude.”

An activist who goes by Billboard Chris drew attention to the NIH grants online, highlighting the young age of some of the participants in this taxpayer-funded study.

Researchers in this observational study have been collecting data on existing models of care for trans-identified youths for about a decade in response to an Institute of Medicine report calling for further research on the subject, according to the study. The NIH contributed $7,748,467 to the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles in several separate grants for this project since 2015, according to the NIH website.

When undergoing medical sex change procedures beginning at an early age, children are administered puberty-blocking drugs then eventually put on cross-sex hormones such as testosterone or estrogen. The FDA has warned of a possible link between puberty-blocking drugs and serious symptoms like vision loss, and researchers in this study note the link between the drug and diminished bone density.

The drugs that are used to halt healthy puberty for transgender children have an official on-label purpose of delaying precocious puberty in young children, and they have also been used to chemically castrate sex offenders. Marci Bowers, a famous transgender surgeon, has publicly admitted that “every single child who was truly blocked at Tanner stage 2 [around 9 to 11 years old] has never experienced orgasm.”

Activists and medical professionals justify the administration of these drugs to children by claiming that, without them, transgender youths will commit suicide. Researchers have said that receiving these treatments in youth can reduce the risk of suicide and depression in numerous methodologically flawed studies which failed to control for confounding variables, failed to find causality and in some cases were funded by transgender activists groups and pharmaceutical companies that produce the drugs themselves, according to multiple DCNF investigations.

The DCNF calculated the sums of grants the NIH gave for projects specifically examining the effects of medications administered as part of the gender transition process; its funding of transgender-related research generally is far more expansive.

The NIH, the project’s contacts and the Children’s Hospital Los Angeles did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

LAUREL DUGGAN

Social issues and cultural reporter.

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Judge Grants Request To Appoint ‘Special Master’ To Review Trump Raid Documents

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U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon decided Monday to grant a request to appoint a “special master” to review the documents taken from former President Donald Trump’s Mar-A-Lago home in the FBI’s raid last month and determine if they were protected by legal privilege.

The Justice Department (DOJ) had reviewed materials seized in the raid and found some of them might be legally privileged. Trump’s attorneys asked Cannon for a “special master,” or third-party attorney, to review the documents contending it was not certain that the department identified all the possibly privileged documents.

Cannon granted Trump’s request, and also temporarily blocked the DOJ from further review of the seized documents.

“The Court hereby authorizes the appointment of a special master to review the seized property for personal items and documents and potentially privileged material subject to claims of attorney/client and/or executive privilege,” Cannon wrote. “Furthermore, in natural conjunction with that appointment, and consistent with the value and sequence of special master procedures, the Court also temporarily enjoins the Government from reviewing and using the seized materials for investigative purposes pending completion of the special master’s review or further Court order.”

Cannon said the court was “unsure” of the DOJ’s claim that its review team had picked out any potentially privileged materials.

Trump’s legal team had argued that the DOJ was politically motivated and would “leak” documents covered by attorney-client privilege.

“Left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for [Trump] but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators,” his attorneys wrote.

However, the DOJ had attempted to block the appointment of a special master, citing national security concerns.

“This Order shall not impede the classification review and/or intelligence assessment” to be performed by the DOJ, Cannon wrote.

Cannon unsealed the most detailed list of property seized in the raid yet on Friday, ABC News reported.

AUTHOR

TREVOR SCHAKOHL

Legal reporter. Follow Trevor on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tschakohl

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EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.