WIND TURBINE SLAUGHTER: Another Dead whale Washes Onto Jersey Shore — 9th One in NY-NJ Area in Just 2 months

/in , , , , , , , /by

“Renewables” are the most expensive, least effective and most destructive forms of energy on the planet.

How many pipelines and energy projects were stopped dead in their tracks over some innocuous environmental concern or obscure fish “endangerment.” Further proof of how full of garbage these cretins are.

These same destroyers are banning our cleanest forms of energy like natural gas and nuclear power.

Dead whale washes onto Jersey shore — 9th one in NY-NJ area in 2 months

By Allie Griffin, February 13, 2023:

Whale carcass washed up on a beach in Manasquan, NJ

The whale is the ninth dead whale to wash up in the NY-NJ area since

A dead whale was found on a New Jersey beach Monday — the ninth one to wash ashore in the New York-New Jersey area since early December in what activists are calling an alarming uptick.

The massive marine mammal ended up on Whiting Avenue beach in Manasquan after it was tossed around in the surf, according to Point Pleasant Mayor Paul Kanitra.

Clean Ocean Action, an environmental conservation organization, said that the high number of whale deaths in a roughly two-month period has not been seen in the region in about 50 years.

The group said it believes off-shore wind energy projects could be the culprit of the rising fatalities.

“This alarming number of deaths is unprecedented in the last half century, the only unique factor from previous years, is the excessive scope, scale, and magnitude of offshore wind powerplant activity in the region,” COA said in a statement.

AUTHOR

 

RELATED ARTICLES:

Turbines Kill the Sea: “Carpet Bombing the Ocean Floor”

Bald, Golden Eagle Deaths Permitted Under New U.S. Wind Energy, Power Line Rules

RELATED TWEET:

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

Democrat Calls Advocacy for Natural Family ‘Dangerous and Un-American’

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

A Democratic politician has received massive backlash after she called the scientifically attested belief that children suffer less abuse in nuclear families “dangerous and un-American.”

“Extremist group Family Heritage Alliance said this morning that the safest place for kids are in families that have a married mom and dad. What a dangerous and un-American belief,” tweeted State Representative Erin Healy (D) on Monday.

She had apparently been triggered by testimony offered on behalf of the natural family by the South Dakota family policy council. “In committee we made the claim that the home of a married mother and father is statistically the safest place for a child, and we stand by it 100%. We know that a strong, nuclear family is the safest, most beneficial place for a child to be. Research confirms our claim,” Family Heritage Alliance Director Norman Woods told The Washington Stand.

Enjoying news and commentary from a biblical worldview?

Stand with The Washington Stand by partnering with Family Research Council.

“Children living with two married biological parents had the lowest rate of overall Harm Standard maltreatment,” according to the most recent, congressionally mandated survey of child abuse, conducted in 2010. “This rate differs significantly from the rates for all other family structure and living arrangement circumstances. Children living with one parent who had an unmarried partner in the household had the highest incidence of Harm Standard maltreatment.”

Studies as far back as 1985 found toddlers living with a stepparent were 40 times more likely to be abused than those living with “two natural parents.” Children living with an unrelated parent were 50 times more likely to be killed than those living with their biological parents, according to a 2005 study by University of Missouri researchers Patricia Schitzman and Bernard Ewigman published in the journal Pediatrics. Four years later, Lawrence Berger of the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that “families in which the mother was living with a man who was not the biological father of all children … were significantly more likely to be contacted by [Child Protective Services] than those in which she was living with the biological father of all resident children.”

Children from fatherless homes are more likely to do poorly in school, join a gang, commit crimes, and be imprisoned, multiple studies show. In addition, “boys who came from a home without a father were more likely to use drugs than boys who came from a home where a father was present,” according to the Minnesota Psychological Association.

The science attesting to the success of the natural family “is well established, uncontroversial, and obviously not un-American to believe. How sealed does one’s echo chamber have to be to tweet something like this?” replied Jay Richards of the Heritage Foundation.

Yet Healy had lobbed multiple epithets at the defenders of the natural family. Three hours earlier, she complained, “The grip from fundamentalist groups who only believe in nuclear families is strong at our state legislature today. I am disgusted by the extremist opposition we heard today,” she said, adding she was “disappointed” a House committee voted down a “simple, important bill” (H.B. 1092) that would redefine marriage as any union “between two persons.”

Live-in boyfriends are not the only threat to children’s safety. The tweet came the same day South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem (R) signed the Help Not Harm Bill (H.B. 1080), which bars the transgender industry from administering puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, or committing surgeries “for the purpose of attempting to alter” the child’s gender identity in a way that is “inconsistent with the minor’s sex.” It allows children affected to sue the doctors and medical establishment involved.

“This bill is extremism at its finest,” Healy said, adding, “We know that kids are going to die because of this bill. We know that most Republicans realize that this bill and its testimony is full of lies and misinformation.”

The assertion that children suffering gender dysphoria will commit suicide without lifelong hormone injections or permanently life-altering surgeries is itself misinformation. Multiple surveys show that individuals who go through with gender-reassignment procedures have the same, or higher, risk of suicide as those who do not. Whistleblower Jamie Reed, who identifies as a lesbian supporter of “trans rights,” explained that employees of gender reassignment surgeries regularly use high-pressure tactics to convince parents to go forward with the controversial, and highly profitable, transgender procedures. Reed’s former clinic is now under multiple investigations for prescribing experimental cancer drugs to children and disregarding parental consent.

“Denying the truth that we are either male or female hurts real people, especially vulnerable children. By enacting this legislation, South Dakota has taken critical steps to protect children from radical activists that peddle gender ideology and pressure children into life-altering, experimental procedures and drugs,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Matt Sharp. “Science and common sense tell us that children aren’t mature enough to properly evaluate the serious ramifications of making certain decisions; the decision to undergo dangerous and likely sterilizing gender transition procedures is no exception.”

Ironically, Woods’s organization — and Woods personally — has also taken heat from Kristi Noem after Woods wrote a letter asking her to take action against a “kid-friendly” drag show sponsored by South Dakota State University. Noem responded by instructing the organization to “find an executive director” who does not “attack the most conservative governor in the country.”

Sanford Health, Noem’s top career donor, furnishes minors with puberty blockers and commits transgender surgeries, has received accreditation on the “Healthcare Equality Index.” The industry successfully killed a similar bill, the Vulnerable Child Protection Act, in the 2020-2021 legislative session.

Woods says his organization will continue advocating for nature and the natural family. “Any child who grows up without a mother has lost something. Any child who grows up without a father has lost something,” Woods told TWS. “We will not ignore this loss, no matter the political consequences.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

Communicating When Free Speech Is Curtailed

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Free speech and a free press. It’s American as apple pie…or so it used to be.

In 1875, President Ulysses S. Grant, declared: “Let us all labor to add all needful guarantees for the security of free thought, free speech, a free press.”

But today the left seems to have free speech in America by the throat. We see this in the recent example of corporate giant AT&T cutting off the conservative network Newsmax from satellite distribution through DirecTV, about which I commented recently. This appears to the tip of the iceberg.

Today there is ongoing debate on free speech. One headline proclaimed, “Analyst with PhD discovers conservative podcasters are out there, just saying whatever they please!”

“Free speech for whom?” writes law professor Jonathan Turley about Congressional hearings of fired Twitter executives grilled for their censorship of conservative speech. Elon Musk observed that in buying Twitter, he ended up with “both a social media platform and a crime scene.”

Examples abound. For instance, the Washington Examiner reports on the secret major push by the left to de-platform conservative voices in the media—in the name of fighting “disinformation.”

The Daily Caller directs attention to President Biden’s former press secretary declaring: “Psaki Urges MSNBC Viewers To ‘Think Of The Danger’ Posed By Free Speech.”

The Media Research Center keeps track of the ongoing censorship of conservative perspectives. They have thousands of examples to report.

World is a conservative, Christian magazine that has served its readers for at least three decades. Last week they opened an office in Washington, D.C., and had a speech for the occasion delivered by Dr. Peter Lillback, the founding president of Providence Forum (now a division of D. James Kennedy Ministries, for which I serve as the executive director).

Dr. Lillback said, “May the deadening force of monolithic Leftism with its cancel culture, ad hominem irrationality and suppression of reason and logic never find a foothold here, because the great freedom of the First Amendment is celebrated and defended.” Hear, hear.

But what happens when a free society is completely taken over by the forces of totalitarianism, dedicated to complete squelching of opposing viewpoints? Can citizens in such a society still find ways to communicate light in the darkness?

Bring the Nazis into any argument today, and you may be fulfilling “Godwin’s law,” which says, “the longer an internet argument goes on, the higher the probability becomes that something or someone will be compared to Adolf Hitler.”

However, what follows are examples of communicating despite an imposed blackout from the actual Nazis. My wife is from Norway, and I’ve been able to visit there multiple times.

From April 12, 1940 to May 8, 1945, the Nazis occupied Norway, though the Norwegians resisted the best they could.

When the Nazis took over Norway, a country full of “pure Aryans” (in the Nazi mind), they expected the Norwegians to fully participate in their attempts to glorify the “master race” and purge the “undesirables” from humanity, such as Jews, Gypsies, and Slavs.

The Norwegians would have nothing to do with this and with the curtailing of their freedoms.

In Oslo there is a museum dedicated to the resistance of the brave Norwegians against the Nazis during that time. The exhibits show the creativity of the Norwegians to communicate even as the Nazis controlled all levers of the press. The Nazis made shortwave radios highly illegal because through them one could receive the BBC or other forbidden sources of more accurate information—as opposed to the pervasive Nazi propaganda.

I took photos in that museum, showing such things as:

  • Microfilm hidden inside cans of fish, loaves of bread, the heels of shoes, metal containers to go in bodily cavities, etc.
  • Secret radio receivers with headphones hidden inside birdhouses, phone books, varnish cans, irons used to press cloths, and even dentures.
  • Home-made newsletters hidden inside logs.

The museum has a sign that says in English, “On all military fronts Hitler and his allies won great victories. In Norway Nazi ideology was defeated by the democratic forces rooted in a national, Christian culture.”

Obviously in modern America we’re still a long way from that kind of scenario. But the same impulse that silences free speech for the “greater good” can take us in unexpected directions. Once we have lost the true value of free speech—even for speech we find abhorrent—we have put the logical mechanism in place for propaganda to rule the day and dissenting speech to be punished. That punishment may begin as mere economic penalty—but it rarely stops there.

We live in a free society—for now. We need to stand up against those who claim to believe in “free speech,” but in reality they hold to “Free speech for me, but not for thee.”

©Jerry Newcombe, D.Min. All rights reserved.

The China Threat

/in , , , , , , , , /by

The Chinese spy balloon is a good reminder we cannot take our national security for granted.  Among the many threats we face is an increasingly assertive China which gives every appearance of preparing for war.

While America still leads in nuclear missiles and warheads, it was recently announced China now has more land-based fixed and mobile ICBM launchers than the U.S. does.

China claims it has become the third country – after the U.S. and Canada – to build a quantum computer.  It also claims it is breaking some tough encryption schemes and will have the ability to break them all once it builds a big enough quantum machine.  That’s a worry for the world financial system and U.S. national security.

The chief of U.S. naval intelligence warns China’s military is building up in every area for war.  He says the buildup is one of the fastest in human history and goes far beyond what China needs for its own defense.  He cited China’s new capabilities in missiles, long-range weapons, and electronic warfare.  He also cited China’s navy which now has a global reach and is pressing for control in parts of the Pacific.  This comes at a time when the U.S. is reducing air power in the Pacific because we no longer devote the resources necessary to sustain the effort.  “Weakness is provocative,” as former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to say.

Concern is growing over Chinese purchases of U.S. farmland and food production assets like Smithfield Foods, the largest pork producer in the U.S.   Steps are being taken to block China from purchasing 370 acres to build a corn processing plant near Grand Forks Air Force Base in North Dakota, but Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis remains concerned about Chinese ownership of farmland, especially near military bases, given that China is a hostile nations whose interests are opposed to ours.

Chinese ownership of farmland has gotten a fair amount of attention but Chinese ownership of private American high school military academies with officer training programs has not.  Chinese interests now own the New York Military Academy, Donald Trump’s alma mater.  They also own the Florida Preparatory Academy.  The New York school is getting federal contracts.  You have to wonder how these future military officers in these schools are being taught to regard China.

Lastly, China’s military poses an increasing threat in space.  China has developed reusable spacecraft, allowing it to build up its capabilities in space quickly.  According to a Pentagon report, China is deploying anti-satellite missiles, orbiting killer robots, lasers, and jammers which it will use to “blind and deafen” enemy forces – not only in space – but on the ground.

As you can see, Chinese spy balloons may be the least of our worries.  And worried we should be, given that Chinese officials have openly talked about world domination from Mao on down.

©Christopher Wright. All rights reserved.

Whistleblower Explains How the Transgender Industry Convinces Parents to Mutilate Their Kids

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

A whistleblower’s explosive account reveals that the transgender medical industry uses high-pressure techniques, employs its own cadre of “experts,” and lies about the impact of puberty blockers and other drugs to convince parents to authorize lifelong “gender-affirming care” that effectively, or literally, castrates their children. When the parents refuse, at least one transgender clinic disregarded the will of the custodial parent, the insider’s testimony states.

Allegations of illegal activity come from an affidavit and accompanying article by Jamie Reed, a far-Left LGBT activist who worked for four years at The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. The affidavit attests doctors in the university’s transgender clinic prescribed experimental drugs to young children, ignored the children’s physical and mental health concerns, and may have committed Medicaid and insurance fraud. Her heartrending report has touched off separate investigations by Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) and U.S. Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.).

Yet her record of the pediatric gender clinic’s actions during her 2018-2022 tenure also contains damning information about the way the industry overcomes wary parents’ concerns and traps children into decades of costly, harmful “treatments.”

Enjoying news and commentary from a biblical worldview?

Stand with The Washington Stand by partnering with Family Research Council.

The facility referred young people reportedly suffering “gender dysphoria” for an evaluation with a psychologist chosen from on a list of doctors they “knew they would say yes” to the gender transition, Reed states. One psychologist at the hospital was particularly “known to approve virtually everyone seeking transition,” she writes. If no outside psychologist signed the letter, the center referred the child to their two in-house psychologists, who would certify that the child should begin the gender reassignment process.

For the youngest patients, this meant beginning puberty blockers before administering a lifetime of cross-sex hormones. “The Center tells the public and parents of patients that the point of puberty blockers is to give children time to figure out their gender identity,” she writes. But in reality, the center uses those drugs “just until children are old enough to be put on cross-sex hormones. Doctors at the Center always prescribe cross-sex hormones for children who have been taking puberty blockers.” (Emphasis in original.)

The doctors’ insistence, rather than the children’s persistence, may explain another discrepancy: Left to their own devices, approximately 85% of children with gender dysphoria will identify with their birth sex by the time they reach adulthood. But nearly 100% of children placed on puberty blockers continue the gender transition process, notes Jennifer Bauwens, director of the Center for Family Studies at the Family Research Council.

Doctors lie to assure parents will approve the puberty blockers, Reed reveals. “The doctors at the Center tell the public and tell parents of patients that puberty blockers are fully reversible. They really are not. They do lasting damage to the body,” says Reed. Those damages include “sterilization, reduced bone density, cognitive problems, increased body fat percentage and body mass index, decreased lean body mass, and arterial hypertension,” writes Bauwens.

Reed describes meetings between concerned parents, who wanted answers to the scientific findings they had uncovered about the dangers of puberty blockers, and gender clinic employees, who sought to sell them a lifetime of medical interventions. “The clinicians would dismiss the research that the parents had found and speak down to the parents,” Reed testifies. The facility exhibited a thorough “lack of regard for the rights of parents,” as “doctors saw themselves as more informed decision-makers over the fate of these children.” Clinic employees “would also malign any parent that was not on board with medicalizing their children,” says Reed.

That echoes the experiences of relatives in the documentary “Dead Name,” especially Helen, who was told to “celebrate” her child’s transgender identity after her former lesbian partner had introduced Helen’s four-year-old son, Jonas, to transgender ideology. Helen recounts that a parade of preschool officials and therapists presented her preschooler’s decision as a fait accompli. “They never said, ‘We need to talk about this,’” Helen says. “It was always edicts by email.”

Parents who resisted received the ultimate high-pressure sales tactic: “Experts” said they must approve their child’s gender transition or witness the child’s suicide. “A common tactic was for doctors to tell the parent of a [girl], ‘You can either have a living son or a dead daughter.’ The clinicians would tell parents of a [boy], ‘You can either have a living daughter or dead son,’” Reed testifies. The employees made these comments “to parents in front of their children,” which “introduced the idea of suicide to the children” — something that equally violates known research and medical ethics, Bauwens says.

“It is entirely inappropriate and unethical for anyone in my profession to plant the idea that an inevitable outcome will be suicide (even in the absence of expressed suicidal ideation) if the clinician’s counsel for gender-affirming care is not followed,” Bauwens told Nebraska legislators last week while testifying on behalf of Bill 574, the Let Them Grow Act, which would protect minors from transgender injections and surgeries. “This is blatantly manipulative and has no part in promoting psychological or relational health.”

It’s also erroneous. Numerous studies have found gender transition procedures do not help, and sometimes harm, patients’ mental health. “There are no reliable studies showing” a positive correlation between transgender injections/surgeries and improved mental health, Reed writes.

When parents still refused, or withdrew consent for, the procedures employees at the gender transition clinic continued the treatment, Reed alleges. They would even intervene in custody disputes against parents who disagreed with plans to transition their children. “One of our doctors actually testified in a custody hearing against a father who opposed a mother’s wish to start their 11-year-old daughter on puberty blockers,” Reed notes. But they also ignored the judges’ orders and sided with anyone who brought a child into the office for a gender transition. “I was told not to ask for custody agreements because ‘if we have the custody agreement, we have to follow it,’” Reed notes in legal documents.

To make matters worse many, perhaps most, of the young people who entered the university’s gender clinic had not experienced gender dysphoria at all, Reed states, but a form of social contagion. During her four years at the center, the total number of calls the center received increased between 400% and 800%, and girls began to outnumber boys. Traditionally, most cases of gender dysphoria involved males who identify as female. When she began, she heard about 10 calls a month from teenage girls who identified as male; that had increased five-fold by the time she left, with this cohort making up 70% of the center’s calls.

“It became clear that many children coming to the Center had gender identities that were likely the result of social contagion,” Reed writes. A 2018 study from Dr. Lisa Littman found that rapid onset gender dysphoria (ROGD) can be “initiated, magnified, spread, and maintained via the mechanisms of social and peer contagion,” including peer pressure via online platforms. Reed concludes, “Social media is at least partly responsible for this large increase in children seeking gender transition.”

Yet the center lobbied these minors to begin puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones (typically testosterone injections) and ignored the side effects, Reed writes. “The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she says.

The industry is big business. “Certainly pubertal blockers could run thousands of dollars per month in out-of-pocket expenses,” says Dr. Michael Haller at the University of Florida’s department of pediatrics. Transgender surgeries are “a huge money-maker,” said Dr. Shayne Taylor of Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Clinic for Transgender Health in 2018.

The problems Reed identifies affect all cases of transgender identity, because ideological considerations have narrowed the medical standards and available “treatments” for gender dysphoria, Bauwens told The Washington Stand. “A multitude of treatments have been researched to help children through depression. Yet when it comes to gender dysphoria, there’s only one path currently being prescribed: that is to try to become someone else,” she told Nebraska lawmakers.

“These interventions are being endorsed based on consensus, not evidence: Practices were voted on rather than standing on the merits of solid research findings addressing gender dysphoria,” Bauwens noted. “The success rates for nonintervention for gender dysphoria already exceed most psychological interventions.”

Children need to be “protected from misdiagnosis and scientifically unsupported, highly invasive, and potentially irreversible interventions that will impact the rest of their lives.”

Surprisingly Reed — who says, “I support trans rights” — agrees. “Given the secrecy and lack of rigorous standards that characterize youth gender transition across the country, I believe that to ensure the safety of American children, we need a moratorium on the hormonal and surgical treatment of young people with gender dysphoria,” Reed concludes.

Lawmakers promise to act on the legally actionable items in her whistleblower testimony. “Accountability is coming,” Senator Hawley has promised.

But investigations and prosecutions cannot bring wholeness to the lives permanently altered by the gender transition industry.

“It’s important as others are affirming a false identity that we need to go out of our way, as parents and as a community of believers, to affirm our young people in who they are,” Bauwens told “Washington Watch with Tony Perkins” last fall. “Transing a child is never the answer.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Florida Medical Boards Confirm, Clarify Ban on Gender Transition Procedures on Minors

What Wokeness? Army Claims Extremism Has Nothing to Do with Recruitment Woes

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

The hidden truth behind China’s spy balloons

/in , , , , , , , /by

Washington is in a state of confusion about balloons and other unidentified flying objects, four of which have already been shot down. What is their purpose? Will there be more to deal with? Where are they all coming from and at who’s command?

The general consensus around Washington, voiced by Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer, is that all of the “objects” are balloons, even though the White House denounced Schumer for saying so.

Likewise, there is a general understanding that all of these “objects” were different types of Chinese balloons.

The latest shootdown, as of February 12, was a balloon hexagonal in shape that was shot down over Lake Huron. This balloon is known to have traversed Montana, like earlier ones, operating over US strategic missile emplacements at Malmstrom Air Force Base.

That is one of three sites on US territory where Minuteman III MIRV missiles are emplaced in underground silos. The other two are at Minot, North Dakota and Francis E Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming.

It would appear from the White House complaint to Schumer that there is keen interest at the level of the National Security Council, the State Department and Pentagon to try and downplay China’s balloon operations.

It is, for example, more than abundantly clear that these intrusions have been ongoing for at least a few years and have been systematically covered up. The only reasonable explanation for what amounts to a cover-up is to not end up in a confrontation with China.

The main question, however, is why is China so intent on surveilling US strategic bases and missile defenses?

The answer could be that China is either preparing a first-strike capability against the US homeland or is preparing to checkmate the US if it threatens to intervene in Chinese affairs, or both.

China now has a bigger ICBM capability than the US and most of them are solid-state rockets that can be launched quickly on demand.

Unlike US reliance on missile silos and nuclear submarines, neither of which is a first strike system, the Chinese deployment combines fixed hardened launch sites with ICBMs that can move about on rail lines or roadways, making them hard to find and destroy.

Historically, the US has relied on the mutually assured destruction paradigm for security against nuclear attack. Known as the MAD doctrine, it worked reasonably well during the Cold War period, so much so that both the US and Russia (USSR) agreed to limitations on missile numbers and ballistic missile defenses.

Unlike Russia and the US, however, China never participated in missile limitations and has recently been rapidly growing its tactical and strategic nuclear missile capabilities.

The latest balloon over Lake Huron that was shot down probably is only the balloon component. Pilots tasked with destroying the balloon saw “strings” or wires hanging from the octagonal object, suggesting that the payload had already been detached and perhaps destroyed.

The first large balloon that flew across the United States and was shot down over Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, appears to have had an explosives package designed to destroy the payload before it could be recovered.

In video of that balloon takedown, a secondary explosion can clearly be heard well after the AIM-9X disintegrated the balloon. The latest Lake Huron balloon may be a repeat performance. There is no public information on the other two shot down, one off Alaska’s northern coast and the other over Canadian airspace.

Until some of the instrumentation is recovered, US authorities won’t know about the balloons’ capabilities. It is even less likely that the public will get the straight story. To date, the US record is to hide the facts and admit far less than is already known.

Read more.

Originally published by Asia Times

AUTHOR

Stephen Bryen

Senior Fellow

RELATED ARTICLE: U.S. Shoots Down 3 Aerial Objects in 3 Days

“The appearance of U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) visual information does not imply or constitute DoD endorsement.”

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

State Department Funded Foreign Think Tank Working To Censor Americans

/in , , , , , , , , /by

  • The State Department funded the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a foreign organization that works to police online platforms.
  • ISD has partnerships with YouTube and Spotify to inform their content moderation decisions, and claims it helps platforms curb “misinformation.”
  • “By funding organizations – including foreign organizations, no less – that put their thumbs on the scale of hot-button domestic political debates, the federal government is wading into a dangerous Constitutional minefield,” Michael Chamberlain, director of government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. 

The U.S. State Department funds and partners with a U.K.-based think tank that collaborates with online platforms to censor perceived mis- and disinformation.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) is a British nongovernmental organization that styles itself as a research group working in partnership with several online platforms to combat extremism, hate and disinformation. However, the organization frequently classifies typical conservative discourse and journalism as hate and/or disinformation and has received funding from the U.S. government.

The State Department awarded the organization a grant in September 2021 to “advance the development of promising and innovative technologies against disinformation and propaganda” in Europe and the U.K. after it won the U.S.-Paris Tech Challenge. The event, which was held in collaboration with the “U.S. Embassy Paris, the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab (DFRLab), the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) [and] the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO),” was also won by the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), an organization which reportedly seeks to demonetize conservative news sites.

The State Department confirmed that its Global Engagement Center funded ISD to study Russian disinformation tactics against Wikipedia through a grant to Park Advisors. The department told the Daily Caller News Foundation that it plays no role in content moderation decisions on social media platforms.

“By funding organizations – including foreign organizations, no less – that put their thumbs on the scale of hot-button domestic political debates, the federal government is wading into a dangerous Constitutional minefield,” Michael Chamberlain, director of government watchdog Protect the Public’s Trust, told the DCNF. “The government cannot get around First Amendment restrictions by outsourcing or using surrogates or agents for prohibited activities.”

Additionally, the State Department and ISD partnered to create the Strong Cities Network, a United Nations-affiliated initiative that seeks to combat “hate, polarisation and extremism” abroad; the State Department solicited several grants as part of this arrangement, naming ISD as a sub-awardee.

The organization also lists as funders left-wing billionaire Pierre Omidyar’s Omidyar Group, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, along with several European government agencies.

ISD maintains several partnerships with platforms to inform their content moderation decisions, largely regarding extremist and terrorism-related content, but also, significantly, what it deems hate and misinformation.

The organization has a special advisory role with Spotify to “curb” misinformation on the audio streaming platform, and is tasked with flagging content for YouTube.

“The State Department’s partnership with the ISD is problematic at best and unconstitutional at worst,” Mike Davis, president of the Internet Accountability Project, told the DCNF. “Taxpayer dollars essentially funding the censorship of conservatives under the guise of ‘misinformation’ shouldn’t surprise anyone who’s followed the Biden administration’s assault on the marketplace of ideas.”

While much of ISD’s work focuses on various forms of extremism such as radical Islam and white supremacy, a significant portion involves “disinformation” and online hate. However, the organization frequently characterizes staples of conservative discourse as hateful and/or as disinformation.

For instance, ISD appears to consider the comparison of abortion to murder as misinformation, admonishing social media platforms for not enforcing their abortion misinformation policies against such claims.

Moreover, in a 2022 report on “climate disinformation,” ISD profiled a form of discourse it labeled “delayism,” which accepts as a premise the existence of climate change but does not, in ISD’s view, advocate strong enough or urgent enough policy solutions. Criticism of particular policies designed to address climate change, such as the promotion of electric vehicles, were also included within the “disinformation” report.

“In contemporary discussions on what actions should be taken, by whom and how fast, proponents of climate delay would argue for minimal action or action taken by others. They focus attention on the negative social effects of climate policies and raise doubt that mitigation is possible,” the report read.

ISD cited as an example a Facebook post from Republican Texas Rep. Dan Crenshaw that warned of the “radical obsession with wind and solar as the only clean energy solution” and argued instead for nuclear energy and natural gas with carbon capture technology.

Another example was a meme that compared an electric vehicle to a Flintstones-esque rock car.

“This outlandish form of censorship cannot be allowed to happen in America, such as simple policy preferences related to electric cars being labeled as misinformation,” Davis told the DCNF.

The organization characterized Libs of Tik Tok, a conservative Twitter account that publicizes examples of left-wing pedagogy including Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology, as a “prolific spreader of hate,” and classified conservative journalist Scott Morefield as an individual “known to spread disinformation and amplify hateful right-wing talking points.”

ISD also considered “misgendering” an example of “anti-trans hatred” in a report on social media discourse surrounding the participation of men in women’s sports. ISD concluded by urging platforms to take action against posts that misgender trans individuals.

While ISD’s work is primarily research-oriented, the organization has successfully embedded itself in roles informing content moderation decisions within hugely influential social media and technology companies. Much of ISD’s work with online platforms focuses on terrorism and violent extremism, but the organization’s purview also includes mis- and disinformation.

ISD is a member of Spotify’s Safety Advisory Council, formed in 2022 as a response to criticism of the audio streaming platform for Joe Rogan’s December 2021 interview with COVID-19 vaccine skeptic Dr. Robert Malone.

The council, though not tasked with directly making content moderation decisions, is nevertheless empowered to “inform” Spotify’s policies and enforcement actions regarding “misinformation.” In ISD’s own words, the group will help Spotify “curb the spread of misinformation” on its platform and “independently keep watch over the platform’s content and safety policies.”

Additionally, ISD is part of YouTube’s “Trusted Flagger program,” an initiative in collaboration with several nongovernmental organizations and government agencies designed to improve YouTube’s enforcement of its guidelines. Trusted Flaggers are able to flag more content than average users, The Wall Street Journal reported in 2014, and receive special treatment from YouTube.

“[O]ur teams prioritize flags from Trusted Flaggers for review,” Google’s description of the program reads.

ISD partnered with Google.org for its Impact Challenge on Safety grant initiative which distributed €10 million to organizations working to “counter hate and extremism” in Europe, and also received a $1.3 million grant from Google in 2017 to counter hate in the U.K.

The organization also boasts partnerships with Microsoft, Amazon’s audiobook platform Audible and Facebook.

“The State Department exists to represent the American public’s interests abroad,” Chamberlain told the DCNF. “If they are interested in countering concerns about weaponizing the government, they could start by not assisting outside groups that target the speech of American citizens.”

ISD did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

AUTHOR

AILAN EVANS

Associate Editor.

RELATED ARTICLE: A Dem-Linked Dark Money Network Is Quietly Funding The ‘Misinformation’ Research Industry

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

Tyrant Whitmer Calls DeSantis ‘Incredibly Destructive’ For Waging Culture War

/in , , , , , , /by

Sunday on CNN’s State of the Union, tyrannical Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D-MI) smeared Florida’s Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis, calling his governing style “incredibly destructive.”

Asked if DeSantis poses a real threat to Democrats if he ends up being the Republican presidential nominee, Whitmer replied, “I don’t really know Ron DeSantis, so it’s hard for me to say anything real substantiative, other than I’ll say this – when I took my oath of office, I took an oath to be the governor for all of the people of Michigan. I don’t wage culture wars. I fight culture wars because I’m focused on solving problems. I think it’s incredibly destructive when people just try to pit others against one another, stoke fear. I think that’s a really destructive way to lead. And so that, you know, we’ll watch and see what happens. As I said, I don’t know him.”

Host propagandist Jake Tapper said, “You just described him, in your view.”

The COVID lockdown queen Whitmer said, “I think that there are people who are out there that stoke fear and anger and misinformation to help themselves politically. And I’m not saying, you know, who I think falls into that category. I’m just saying, that’s not how I operate. Every governor takes an oath to serve all the people in their state, whether they voted for them or not. That’s what should drive every decision.”

The Democrats fear DeSantis precisely because he is effective at pushing back in the culture war that the Democrats themselves started and have been waging for half a century.

Gretchen Whitmer

6 Known Connections

Portraying Her Critics As Racists, Neo-Nazis, & Vigilantes

On May 1, 2020, Whitmer announced that her stay-at-home order would remain in effect through May 15, and she also declared a new 28-day state of emergency for her state. When hundreds of demonstrators subsequently gathered in Lansing to protest the governor’s ongoing emergency measures, the governor characterized the demonstrators as racists, neo-Nazis, and vigilantes:

“So, unfortunately right now in Michigan we see a small number of people – it looks large on television. But when you think about this is a state of 10 million people, this is a small contingent that came out and made political statements. They carried nooses and confederate flags and swastikas. And yet, while we’re focusing on their carrying – their open carrying automatic rifles, that is legal in Michigan. It is not advisable…. [T]he fact of the matter is, that kind of rhetoric, that kind of ugly political rallying is only making it harder for us to re-engage, which is the sad irony, is that demonstrations like that create the need to continue this aggressive stance that we’ve had to take to save lives.”

To learn more about Gretchen Whitmer, click here.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Begala: It’s the People Democrats ‘Supposedly Care About Who Are Victims of Crime’

Adams on Vax Mandates: It ‘Wasn’t Right’ for People to Do Whatever They Wanted

Culturally Suicidal EU Gives $3.5 Million to Soros’ Open Society Foundation

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Biden Admin Is Making It Easier For Illegal Immigrants To Roam The US Without Tracking Them

/in , , , , , , , , , , , /by

  • Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is employing methods to reduce tracking of illegal immigrants released into the country, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.
  • Under the Biden administration, ICE has increased its reliance on a phone application that only knows the location of an illegal immigrant at certain times, while lessening its reliance on GPS monitoring, which tracks illegal immigrants at all times or most of the time, according to ICE data.
  • “What’s happening is that the Biden administration is trying to move away from any form of serious monitoring under ATD to instead use this program as a way to provide services to illegal migrants to make them more comfortable while they’re here,” Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Jessica Vaughan told the DCNF.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has been quietly adopting a model for tracking illegal immigrants that is becoming less restrictive, a Daily Caller News Foundation investigation has found.

ICE’s Alternatives to Detention (ATD) program has been in place since 2004 to track those awaiting years-long court proceedings not in physical detention using GPS monitoring, phone applications and other forms of technology to track illegal immigrants released into the interior of the U.S. In recent years, the program has relied more on less restrictive and more expensive technology, according to ICE data and experts and foreign and current government officials who spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In fiscal year 2019, ICE was tracking 55,918 illegal immigrants using GPS monitoring and 5,706 illegal immigrants using SmartLINK, which is a phone application that only knows the location of a participant if and only when they check in periodically. In fiscal year 2020, the agency was tracking 36,647 illegal immigrants using GPSs and 18,915 illegal immigrants with SmartLINK.

The monitoring changed following those fiscal years.

In fiscal year 2021, ICE tracked 79,480 illegal immigrants with SmartLINK and 29,557 with GPS monitoring. In fiscal year 2022, ICE tracked 257,454 illegal immigrants using SmartLINK and only 9,324 with GPS monitoring.

Fiscal year 2023 was consistent with the previous year. ICE says its tracking 280,089 illegal immigrants with SmartLINK and 5,757 with GPS trackers. Currently, SmartLINK costs taxpayers $268,885.44 a day, while GPS monitoring costs taxpayers $15,774.18 a day.

“What’s happening is that the Biden administration is trying to move away from any form of serious monitoring under ATD to instead use this program as a way to provide services to illegal migrants to make them more comfortable while they’re here,” Director of Policy Studies for the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) Jessica Vaughan told the DCNF.

“This is not an enforcement program at all. It is a social services program for recently arrived illegal migrants. And it’s costly to taxpayers, and it’s undermining the integrity of our immigration system. It’s in effect the next step after giving all these illegal arrivals parole, make it easier for them to get in and make it easier for them to stay. It’s like come for parole, stay for the wraparound services,” Vaughan said.

Vaughan and a current ICE agent, who requested anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak, say the reliance on less restrictive tracking is part of ICE’s move towards appeasing anti-enforcement advocates, told the DCNF.

“Since ATD relies on ISAP [Intensive Supervision Appearance Program contractors] to monitor non-citizens, ISAP does not have the staffing to continue to conduct home visits and keep track of the GPS monitoring. Therefore, the app is the most efficient and least cost-effective way to monitor. With humanitarian groups complaining about how inhumane GPS monitors are for people who are asylum seekers, ICE found the alternative to move forward to expanding the use of the Smartlink app. That allows ISAP to efficiently keep up with the rising number of ATD enrollments,” the ICE agent told the DCNF.

In a Wednesday letter to Texas Republican Rep. Pat Fallon, ICE Deputy Director and Senior Official Performing the Duties of the Director Tae Johnson said that the agency has had success with ATD compliance. The data Johnson presented as evidence of success, however, is misleading at best, former Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott told the DCNF.

Of the 507 hearings illegal immigrants enrolled in ATD with GPS monitors, 500 appeared in court in the first three months of fiscal year 2023, Johnson wrote, adding that there’s a more than 99% hearing appearance rate during that same time frame for those tracked with other forms of technology or no technology at all.

Scott argued that the data only accounts for an illegal immigrant’s initial hearing while an illegal immigrant is enrolled in ATD, which is when they typically can get work authorization, and doesn’t account for the following court appearances and/or after they’ve been taken out of the program.

The average length an illegal immigrant is enrolled as an ATD participant is 380.7 days, while it takes an average of 1,621 days.

“I think it’s very misleading,” Scott said. “If you follow the full lifecycle, it’s not working. Only 6% of the people that are ordered deported at the end of the process actually leave the country. The main reason everybody shows up to the first hearing is so that they can get work authorization and they can get benefits in the United States because they basically just show the judge, ‘hey, the system is so backed up, It’s going to take years to finish this process. So how am I supposed to live here?’ They get work authorization, they live happily ever after. Even if they’re deported later, they don’t care because they’re not leaving, and no one’s looking for them,” Scott said.

ICE didn’t respond to a request for comment.

“The big problem with all this is you’re dealing with someone who has already shown that they’re more than willing to violate U.S. law to get away. Also, if you follow the process all the way through, even when a judge orders people deported at the end, less than 6% ever leave the country. The real issue is transparency through the whole process, not just picking a random spot in the middle,” Scott said.

Antonino Cambria contributed to this report.

AUTHOR

JENNIE TAER

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Biden Declared Victory In Handling Illegal Immigration While Mexico Sees Overwhelming Surges

New Poll Reveals What Americans Really Thought About Biden’s SOTU Speech

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

DeSantis Announces Plan To End ‘Woke Banking’ In Florida

/in , , , , , , , /by

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis announced proposed legislation Monday designed to end “ESG woke banking” in the state, slamming ESG as an “elite-driven phenomenon” that seeks to impose policies which would otherwise “never win favor” with the public.

ESG, or environmental, social, and governance standards, are a “mechanism to inject political ideology into investment decisions, corporate governance, and really just the everyday economy,” DeSantis said during the press conference. His plan aims to eliminate its influence in the state by withdrawing government support from banks that use it and creating protections for citizens.

DeSantis highlighted ways he believes the standards negatively impact the United States and its citizens, from increasing the country’s dependence on China to violating company’s duties to their shareholders and undermining the democratic process.

“This is a distortion of a government by and for the people,” DeSantis said. “They are not accountable to you.”

Part of DeSantis’ proposal would put into statute a resolution he issued last August banning state pensions from considering ESG.

The resolution directed Florida’s fund managers to “to invest state funds in a manner that prioritizes the highest return on investment for Florida’s taxpayers and retirees” without regard to ESG.

The proposal would also create protections for Florida citizens against discrimination by big financial institutions for their “religious, political, or social beliefs.”

DeSantis argued the standards often target “disfavored” groups, such as Second Amendment advocates and companies like The GEO Group, a Florida-based private corrections company that holds a contract with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Brandon Wexler, owner of Wex Gunworks, spoke during the press conference on his experience having his accounts shut down by Wells Fargo after banking with the company for 25 years.

Wexler said he received a letter stating the company does not lend to “certain types of industries.”

DeSantis’ proposed legislation will also prohibit financial institutions from using “Social Credit Scores” in banking and lending decisions, ban the housing of state or local funds in institutions that promote ESG and ensure ESG is not used in investment decisions or issuing bonds at the state and local level. Additionally, it will direct the Attorney General and Commissioner of Financial Regulation “to enforce these provisions to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Florida, as usual, is leading the charge against this,” DeSantis said.

Florida Senate President Kathleen Passidomo and House Speaker Paul Renner also joined the press conference.

“The goal of corporate activism seen in environmental, social, and governance investing (ESG) is to bypass democracy and transform capitalism to serve an ideological agenda,” said Renner in a statement. “We will not allow these martini millionaires to push unsafe and unsound investment practices that silence debate in the political process, weaken investment strategies for Florida retirees, and discriminate against any individual’s beliefs. I am proud to stand with Governor DeSantis and Senate President Passidomo to put taxpayers, investors, and Florida retirees first.”

AUTHOR

KATELYNN RICHARDSON

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLE: Republicans Plot Legislative Avalanche Targeting Progressive Big Biz

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All right reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

St. Louis Transgender Clinic Under Investigation for Using Experimental Drugs on Kids, Medicaid Fraud

/in , , , , , , , , , , , , /by

A pediatric gender clinic is under criminal investigation after a whistleblower charged the center with potentially defrauding Medicaid and private insurance to prescribe transgender hormones to children as young as 11. The sworn affidavit states the St. Louis facility administered cross-sex hormones to mentally ill children, sometimes against their parents’ wishes, and ignored children’s worsening physical and mental health conditions — including at least one suicidal teenager.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey (R) announced Thursday night that his office and two other agencies had opened an investigation into The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital. “We have received disturbing allegations that individuals at the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital have been harming hundreds of children each year, including by using experimental drugs on them,” said Bailey, citing an affidavit from a former employee, who switched to another area of the hospital after becoming convinced the center is permanently hurting the people it swears to help.

The whistleblower, Jamie Reed, describes herself as “a 42-year-old St. Louis native, a queer woman, and politically to the left of Bernie Sanders.” She says she is married to a woman who identifies as a male and affirms, “I support trans rights.” Reed details in her affidavit and in an article at Bari Weiss’ website, The Free Press, that she began working as an idealistic case manager at the center in 2018. By the time she left last November, she left convinced the center’s actions are “morally and medically appalling” — and is likely a systemic problem in the nation’s 100 pediatric gender clinics. “By the time I departed, I was certain that the way the American medical system is treating these patients is the opposite of the promise we make to ‘do no harm,’” she wrote.

“I was struck by the lack of formal protocols for treatment,” said Reed. Yet she kept her concerns private for months, because “anyone who raised doubts ran the risk of being called a transphobe.”

Reed states the center provides outside psychiatrists with a “template” form letter attesting that a child identifies as transgender. If the analyst will not sign it, the center uses in-house psychiatrists, Dr. Dr. Alex Maixner and Dr. Sarah Girresch-Ward, to confirm a child’s “gender dysphoria” after a one-to-two-hour consultation, rather than a full 10-12 hour assessment. They then begin children on a pipeline that results in lifelong hormones and potentially permanently disfiguring surgery before the age of 18.

She exposed potential perjury, as surgeons at the center testified before the Missouri legislature that transgender surgeries for minors are not “on the table” at their center. “This was a lie,” said Reed in the affidavit. She said the center claimed it provided minors with referrals to surgeons who are willing to remove teenagers’ healthy breasts and genitals “for educational purposes,” but they “were in fact referrals.” And Dr. Allison Snyder-Warwick performed at least one gender transition surgery in the hospital, apparently contradicting the doctors’ testimony.

Doctors at the center prescribed teenagers the prostate cancer medication Bicalutamide, which she says caused liver toxicity in a 15-year-old boy. (His mother agreed not to sue the center but warned her son’s condition “could be a huge PR problem.”) She related horrifying tales of physical and mental harm, including a graphic description of intense vaginal bleeding caused by the side effects of “gender-affirming care.”

Reed paints the picture of a center ignoring the real needs of its patients, and the real harms inflicted by the transgender regimen, in order to maximize its profits.

“[N]early all children who came to the Center here presented with very serious mental health problems,” including autism, ADHD, depression, anxiety, PTSD, trauma histories, OCD, and serious eating disorders, she said. Some erroneously identified as suffering from other psychosomatic maladies, such as Tourette Syndrome or blindness. “Privately,” the doctors recognized their other psychosomatic illnesses reflected “social contagion” … but not their gender dysphoria, even when groups came from the same high school. Others used pronouns identifying as a “mushroom” or a “rock”; one patient told employees she identified as a “communist, attack helicopter, human, female, maybe non-binary.” Despite these serious issues, the center “would not treat these mental health issues. Instead, children were automatically given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones.”

The center also ignored indications of parental coercion of physical abuse, Reed said. In one case, a parent was “forcing” a boy to dress as a female, but the center administered cross-sex hormones, as well. In another, a 17-year-old boy brought to the center by an unrelated male and given hormones upon turning 18. His mental health deteriorated, yet staffers continued administering hormones — even after it turned out the man who brought him to the facility “had been sexually and physically abusing” him.

The experimental nature of many of these drugs set children up for a lifetime of infertility, early menopause, bone thinning, and — contrary to their advertisements — worsened mental health. “I witnessed the Center cause permanent harm to many of the patients,” said Reed. “I doubt that any parent who’s ever consented to give their kid testosterone (a lifelong treatment) knows that they’re also possibly signing their kid up for blood pressure medication, cholesterol medication, and perhaps sleep apnea and diabetes.” She added “clinics like the one where I worked are creating a whole cohort of kids with atypical genitals.”

When parents or doctors would describe worsening mental health outcomes, the center ignored them and continued the hormones, she said. One mother, in a letter revoking consent for her son to receive hormone blockers, said her child “is a shell of his former self riddled with anxiety.”

The center even ignored pleas that their actions might contribute to a potential suicide. In one case, “a psychiatrist called the Center’s endocrinologist and explained that a child, who had already tried to commit suicide by threatening to jump off a roof, should not be given cross-sex hormones because the child was struggling with serious mental health issues,” Reed attested. “I witnessed the endocrinologist yell at the psychiatrist on the phone and speak down to this provider.”

“The Center never discontinues cross-sex hormones, no matter the outcome,” she said.

The center’s actions often lead to lifelong regret, Reed noted. A black teenager from a troubled family began receiving hormones at the facility at age 16 and had a double mastectomy at age 18. Three months later, she told the surgeon she would return to her birth gender, adding, “I want my breasts back” and asked a surgeon to have them “put back on.” Reed wrote, “The last I heard, she was pregnant. Of course, she’ll never be able to breastfeed her child.”

These are the same concerns that motivated Chloe Cole, the teenage detransitioner who now embraces her biological identity, as nearly nine out of 10 children with dysphoria eventually do. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to fully carry a child,” she told Florida legislators last July. “And because I do not have my breasts … I am not able to breastfeed whatever future children I have. That realization actually was one of the biggest things that lead to me realizing that this was not the path that I should have taken.” She’s now suing the Permanente Medical Group and the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan for breaching appropriate standards of care.

Even removing parental consent was not enough to stop the ideologically motivated doctors at the center according to Reed, who testified, “On several occasions, the doctors have continued prescribing medical transition even when a parent stated that they were revoking consent.”

The center also fudged the billing codes for many of these prescriptions, Reed said, sending erroneous invoices to private insurance and sometimes state or federal programs. Employees falsely claimed that one child who received puberty blockers was experiencing precocious puberty, Reed wrote.

The whistleblower’s comments have triggered a statewide investigation from the Missouri attorney general, the Missouri Department of Social Services, and the Division of Professional Registration. Sheila Solon, the director of the Division of Professional Registration, promised her agency will “take any necessary action against the licenses” of Missouri doctors involved in the center’s work that violates the “health, safety, and welfare of the citizens of Missouri.”

AUTHOR

Ben Johnson

Ben Johnson is senior reporter and editor at The Washington Stand.

RELATED ARTICLE: Abortion Is Not the Answer for Women with Disabilities

Enjoying news and commentary from a biblical worldview?

Stand with The Washington Stand by partnering with Family Research Council.

EDITORS NOTE: This Washington Stand column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. The Washington Stand is Family Research Council’s outlet for news and commentary from a biblical worldview. The Washington Stand is based in Washington, D.C. and is published by FRC, whose mission is to advance faith, family, and freedom in public policy and the culture from a biblical worldview. We invite you to stand with us by partnering with FRC.

DECEIT: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis Caves to Woke Disney, Pushes Bill to Quietly Restore Special Tax Breaks

/in , , , , , , , , , , /by

Ron DeSantis is restoring the special tax breaks Disney enjoyed after posturing and preening publicly against the woke corporation.

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is folding to woke Disney, pushing a bill in the state legislature to quietly restore their special tax breaks after posturing publicly against the megacorp.

By: Shaee Prejo, Big League Politics, February 1, 2023:

DeSantis is making the capitulation even as he and RINO Republican leaders in the state claim that they are punishing Disney – the exact opposite of what is happening.

“The bill maintains the current tax-exempt status of property of the district and bonds issued by the district,” the analysis of DeSantis’ measure states.

DeSantis is using sleight of hand to claim he is cracking down on Disney when he is really giving them what they want and enabling Disney’s campaign contributions to fill Republican coffers in the years to come.

Keep reading.

And Disney is still brainwashing our children:

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

NFL to Play ‘Black National Anthem’ at Super Bowl LVII

NYC Teachers Who Refused COVID Shot Had Their Fingerprints And Personnel Files Sent To The Corrupt FBI

Muslim Schoolchildren in London Sing Song Calling for Massacre of Jews

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

The Nazification of America by the Democrat Party

/in , , , , , , /by

 “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.” — Joseph Goebbels 

German National-Socialism had its certain features and one of them was vividly described by Joseph Goebbels. Moreover, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Introduction, Nazis Propaganda made it clearer:

“Shortly after rising to power in 1933, Adolf Hitler created the Reich Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda (RMVP), headed by Joseph Goebbels. Nearly all aspects of German culture were subject to the Propaganda Ministry’s control, including films, theater, music, the press, and radio broadcasts. Given tremendous leeway by Hitler, and utilizing modern techniques and technologies, Goebbels quickly set out an ambitious agenda to indoctrinate the German people in Nazi ideology and to influence the behavior of the entire society.” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Introduction, Nazis Propaganda.

Soviet Socialism or Soviet Fascism

I have been discussing the subject for forty years, especially today.

The Biden State of the Union Address has been a very successful two–folded theatrical performance. One part was his usual plagiarism: adopting the narratives of several Republicans like his own. The second and major part of the Address was very well familiar to me, I have been writing about it for decades—Socialist modus operandi: lies, deceit, fabrication, and fraud. In fact, it is understandable—Biden is implementing Socialism in America for two years of his entire presidency, as a legacy of the Dem Party. You will grasp it only if you know Socialism. I do know Socialism that always acted against its own people. In that, Biden has helped in implementing Socialism from the terrorist state of Russia, the “Squad,” George Soros, and other seventy Socialists in the U.S. Congress … Let me give you another quote from the mentioned above Introduction to wake you up:

 “The principles of Nazism, including the antisemitism at the core of much of its dogma, were incorporated into nearly every newspaper, radio broadcast, and film produced in the Third Reich.”

I reminded you about German national-socialism for a reason. Stalin had done the same Hitler did, by building his system of Soviet Socialism over the territory of the eleven time zones of the Soviet Union. He implemented all mentioned above in developing his Soviet Socialism. Thousands of Jews were forced to emigrate, including me. The Evil ideology of Soviet Socialism, which I called Soviet fascism has been inextricably tied to the State Security Apparatus: they presented one-whole gigantic Evil, merging the principles of Nazism, including antisemitism. Soviet people called the KGB—the Soviet Gestapo. Stalin weaponized the Soviet Government, all its actions had an operational control over election and all citizens by engaging the KGB—a Doer. Today our enemy is Stalinist KGB’s Mafia/Army, not a dead Marxism. The Putin/Biden collusion over the border is obvious. There are no Mexican Cartels, those are Russian Cartels established by Stalin in 1950-196O’s.

I mentioned the “Squad” and Soros for a reason: they are openly un-American, anti-American, and anti-Semitic. Just listen to the “Squad” and analyze what they are constantly doing to help Biden’s team to destroy our country. Woke is a censorship, a Sovietization of America. The plot is bigger and there are the prerequisites to understand it: Russia and China are leading the plot and both served by the KGB’s Mafia/Army. Our enemies are collaborating, it is an International Socialist Criminal Cabal and I suspect that Biden’s team is a part of it. I have been writing about A Global Spy Ring for the last forty years, but the infiltrated FBI sabotaged all my writings by submitting my name to the FISA Court. The Court made me a Foreign Agent in 2002. You will find my name in the list of the FISA Court cases in 2002.

Weaponization of the American Government

By intentionally suppressing information about my books and columns the FBI has exposed his face—they have been deliberately preventing you from learning the Truth. The FBI’s illegal actions cost $Trillions to the U.S. People’s awareness could’ve prevented the tragedy going on in America today. The event also gives the idea of who, personally, could initiate the violation of my rights provided with the American Constitution. As my main topic is the Russian Intel and Security Apparatus, the FBI didn’t want it to be known by the American people. Perhaps, the bad actor from Russia grasped the value of my writings and the damage it can do to the Russian Intel: they have initiated the crime against me. Doesn’t it remind you of a suppression of the information (Soviet style) about Hunter’s lob-top by the FBI in 2019? All of those had been done by the KGB’s Mafia/Army against you, the patriots of America the Beautiful! WWIII was waged against us by Socialist/Communist forces!

It was Stalin who established Socialist North Korea and started the Korean War under his usual motto “Divide and conquer” in 1950. The International chain of wars had never ended. You should remember those wars, as a lot of Americans had been killed and injured there, defending democracy and global stability. A devoted disciple of Stalin, Vladimir Putin was continuing the war involving China, Iran, Venezuela, and now fighting Ukraine to demolish a young Ukrainian democracy. The U.S. position in the war is very problematic, as Ukraine can’t win this war. To be aware why, please, read my three columns dated February 21, 2022, February 28, 2022, and April 4, 2022.

A couple of days prior to the Chinese Spy Balloon catastrophic breach of our national security, I wrote a column titled The Hidden Truth of Global Destruction: WWIII, February 1, 2023. As a matter of fact, our enemies have been fighting Capitalism and stealing our secrets for a century. Russia started it after the Socialist Revolution in 1917. The people who remember the Soviet Union, should remember the agency called the KGB. The Russian Dictator Stalin weaponized it making the agency an international force to spread the Evil ideology of Soviet Socialism throughout the world. What was done by the KGB, now transformed it to the KGB’s Mafia/Army, which continues to fight Capitalism and stealing our secrets by the countries-enemies under the Russian umbrella in all continents. Knowledge of Soviet Socialism is imperative to learn the current events in America…

For example in Africa Soviet Socialism uses child slaves in Congo to allow Biden’s team to implement the New Green Ideology to bankrupt Capitalism. Read Cobalt Red by Siddhartha Kara. The author is terrified by the conditions the children are working in and the book’s title Cobalt Red   warns humanity about Soviet Socialism. At the same time, America discusses electric vehicles, too: “The automotive industry’s shift to electric vehicles is producing a scramble for the raw materials needed to make the batteries and motors for those cars. Cobalt is a key material for EV batteries, but the rapid acceleration in demand for the element has led to questions about the availability of necessary supply and the ethics of that supply. ”How the Auto Industry Will Get Enough Cobalt for the EV Revolution. The cobalt industry has plans to address the auto industry’s insatiable demand while ensuring ethical working conditions. Dan Carney  July 14, 2022.

The Enemy Within

Exclusive: Top Jan. 6 investigator says FBI, DHS, Capitol Police could have repelled the Capitol mob had they acted on intelligence collected in the weeks before the attack. @KenDilanianNBC. I knew about the plot two years ago when the FBI participated in the seven years plot against Donald J. Trump. Today, Biden’s team is leading that exact plot against America the Beautiful:

“NBC News reports that former federal prosecutor Tim Heaphy, a Democrat and the committee’s chief investigative counsel, did continue to assert that former President Trump’s words incited the crowd to action. But for (Trump’s) words, and deeds, it wouldn’t have happened,” he contends. However – and this is the biggest however – he also accused the House select committee of leaving out information from their reports and televised hearings that security agencies could have stopped the mob that day regardless.”

“Law enforcement had a very direct role in contributing to the security failures that led to the violence.” He added. Top January 6th Lawyer Claims FBI Could Have Stopped Capitol Riot, House Committee Intentionally Concealed Information By Rusty Weiss, February 1, 2023. Even more:

Matt Taibbi, a former contributing editor for Rolling Stone, stated that “Hamilton 68 was and is a computerized ‘dashboard’ designed to be used by reporters and academics to measure ‘Russian disinformation.’ It was the brainchild of former FBI agent (and current MSNBC ‘disinformation expert’) Clint Watts, and backed by the German Marshall Fund and the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a bipartisan think-tank. The latter’s advisory panel includes former acting CIA chief Michael Morell, former Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, former Hillary for America chair John Podesta, and one time Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol.” Elon Musk’s Twitter Files just unveiled one massive fake news scandal, February 1, 2023, Unmuzzled News. This is, by itself, a very important revelation…

The KGB’s Mafia/Army—a Doer

There are two mind boggling sticking issues, “Russian Disinformation” and a list of actors from Hamilton 68. If you don’t know Russia, its Intel, and Security Apparatus, you can’t grasp Russian “Operation Disinformation.” It is a deliberate strategy to mislead and confuse the opponents, adversaries, and enemies. Socialist modus operandi is the basis of the “Operation Disinformation.” Writing about WWIII, I have discussed the issue many times. Implementing Socialism, the Biden WH has employed and used Russian “Operation Disinformation” against the American people and the Republicans. Second, the bad actors from Hamilton 68 who were helping the Democrats and the Biden team to implement Socialism in America also had been exposed many times. Read Socialist Revolution in America, XLIBRIS, 2021, or all my columns for free at www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/

Those bad actors, plus the infiltrated and dysfunctional FBI and CIA are responsible for all problems we have today. Their dysfunction has allowed the KGB to exercise a global invasion to America from outside and inside by the Putin/Biden collusion. We have a monumental border crisis which is destroying our country. I hope now you finally understand that the Biden’s White House is run by Vladimir Putin and his agenda. I have informed you about Biden’s staff running the White House two years ago. Yes, the surrender in Afghanistan had been designed by Putin and executed by the White House staff. A demented Biden recently blamed his staff for misplacing his top-secret documents. Maybe it means he has had the same staff since 1974? It is even more dangerous for America…

Have you noticed in my writings a constant refrain to Socialist modus operandi? I have refrained it purposely for you to remember. Try to compare and examine the behavior of Russia, China, and the Biden WH. You will be stunned: all three follow Socialist modus operandi: lies, deception, fabrication and fraud. That Socialist modus operandi has been brought to life by Stalin in the 20th century and spread throughout the world by a Doer—the KGB’s Mafia/Army. Watch Russia, China, and Biden’s White House: they all followed Socialist modus operandi. Please, also remember my definition of WWIII: Recruitment and Drugs, Infiltration and Assassinations. Watch and you will see them all in America…

This is unprecedented! We have four violations of our air-space in 8 days. The American and Canadian Air-Force shot down another three “High-Altitude Objects,” one Object over Canada and two over Alaska and Lake Huron. They could be launched to help Biden’s White House to correct its mistakes with the first Balloon. Maybe China is not alone. It could be the Russian, Korean or Iranian Objects looking for American weaknesses. They are arrogantly testing and threatening us, Soviet style. The Globalists of the KGB’s Mafia/Army have control and power over the globe and over Biden’s White House. Wake Up America!

Here is Stalin’s prediction made seventy years ago:

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is Threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual Life. If you can undermine these three areas, America will Collapse from within.” — Joseph Stalin.

To be continued www.drrichswier.com/author/spipko/or at www.simonapipko.com

There’s One Key Issue That Could Decide The 2024 GOP Primaries

/in , , , , , , , , /by

Education issues such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and gender ideology are likely to become a key factor in the 2024 Republican presidential primaries as candidates attempt to appeal to the GOP base, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

While only former President Donald Trump has officially declared, former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley is expected to announce a run, and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, as well as several other Republican governors and former governors, have either laid the groundwork or hinted at possible campaigns.  As state-level executives, these candidates have a proven track record on education that may prove pivotal as the issue has become a political and cultural flashpoint in recent years, experts told the DCNF.

“To win the GOP primary, this is a smart strategy,” Dr. Keith Gaddie, Oklahoma University professor and political scientist, told the DCNF, adding that candidates’ background in enacting state-level education policy would “no doubt” be a valuable asset to their campaigns.

In 2021, DeSantis expanded Florida’s school choice program and in March 2022 signed the Parental Rights in Education Act into law, barring teachers from educating K-3 students on topics such as sexual orientation and gender ideology. Most recently, he pressured the College Board to alter its AP African American Studies course and announced legislation to provide core curricula “rooted in Western tradition” and eliminate the emphasis on CRT and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) initiatives in Florida universities.

“Education is going to be a big issue in the Republican primaries mostly because it has (finally) dawned on folks on the right that the interests of State schools might not always align with the interests of the parents. That has probably been true for 100 years; not sure why it has taken so long for folks to figure that out,” Michael McKenna, president of MWR Strategies, told the DCNF.

Virginia Republican Gov. Glenn Youngkin has also been the subject of much speculation as to whether he will launch a presidential campaign, though the governor has yet to commit to a run. Youngkin won Virginia in 2021 on the back of a “parents’ rights” platform in a blue-leaning state, frequently arguing for parents to play a greater role in their child’s education.

Since his election, the governor has continued to stress education issues; recently, Virginia’s Attorney General Jason Miyares launched an investigation into Virginia high schools after certain schools withheld merit awards from students, allegedly out of concern for “equity,” while Youngkin proposed a “merit protection bill” that made it through the state’s House Education Committee on Jan. 25.

Youngkin has also made school choice a central part of his education policy, frequently pushing to expand Virginia’s program and investing in charter schools.

“It is pretty safe to say that the next Republican presidential nominee is going to be in favor of funding students not systems,” McKenna said.

Candidates will likely what cite what they’ve done on education within their state and their plans to nationalize these reforms if elected president, Dr. Charles Bullock, professor of political science at the University of Georgia and an American Enterprise Institute Fellow, told the DCNF.

“It would make sense, particularly for these individuals who have had terms in the governor’s desk, to talk about education and what they would do about it, and they would do it with some degree of expertise,” Bullock said.

He noted that that such state-level experience gives these potential candidates an advantage over Trump, and it would be wise to stress the issue.

“President Trump has not emphasized the issue, so it allows for some asymmetrical attacks from challengers, especially those who have been governors and been in the middle of the brawl,” McKenna said.

Trump released a preview of his education plan in January detailing proposed reforms should he win the presidency. The plan aims to “restore power to American parents” and remove CRT and gender ideology from American classrooms.

“Our public schools have been taken over by the radical left maniacs,” Trump said in the video. “At the end of the day, if we have pink-haired communists teaching our kids, we have a major problem.”

“Education will resonate well with the electorate, particularly those folks who have children, they’re desperately concerned about having their children prepared to succeed,” Bullock said. “It’s a good issue to run on.”

Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley has also leaned into the education issue, especially in recent years, targeting CRT and advocating for educational reforms.

“[M]ore school choice, more pathways to college degrees, more college alternatives, and more workforce training for people of all ages. Education can’t be allowed to hold anyone back. Every child deserves a world-class education that helps them get ahead – regardless of where they are born and raised,” the former governor said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation in 2021.

Haley released a video Wednesday teasing her entrance into the race, ahead of her expected official announcement on Feb. 15.

Similarly, DeSantis’ advisors have been holding preliminary meetings to discuss a 2024 presidential campaign, the most recent suggestion that the governor is likely to jump into the GOP primary, according to The Washington Post.

“Schools have become a hot plate for activism, at the expense of core academics. This will make a lot of parents single-issue voters in 2024; that issue will be the current state of public education in America,” Mailyn Salabarria, Director of Community Engagement for Parents Defending Education, said in a statement forwarded to the DCNF.

Republicans have also made up serious ground on Democrats on the education issue, with voters just barely preferring Democrats to manage education over Republicans, according to a polling memo from the Republican National Convention.

“Voters are most concerned with kids not learning enough basic life skills AND the long-term effects of COVID on emotional and educational development. While masks on seven-year-olds and CRT is a concern, it is not the driving force. If Republicans solely focus there, they are missing a wide swath of voters open to the Republican message on education,” the memo read.

AUTHOR

MARY LOU MASTERS

Contributor.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Parents, Advocates Call For Legislation After Utah Educators Admit On Video To Using ‘Loopholes’ To Push CRT

‘Everybody Can Be Racist:’ DoD Chief Diversity Educator Defends Tweets Targeted Toward White Educators

‘It’s Party Line’: Pivotal Parental Rights Bill To Face An Uphill Battle In The Virginia Senate

States Have Become The New Battleground For Religious Liberty

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved. All content created by the Daily Caller News Foundation, an independent and nonpartisan newswire service, is available without charge to any legitimate news publisher that can provide a large audience. All republished articles must include our logo, our reporter’s byline and their DCNF affiliation. For any questions about our guidelines or partnering with us, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.

“Kid-Friendly” Sexualized Drag Show In Arizona City Funded By Taxpayers

/in , , , , , , , , , /by

They’re coming for your children and they they expect you to pay for it. Deviants and pedophiles are driving the left’s culture war.

Save your children. First, pull them out of government schools.

All-Ages Drag Show In Arizona City Funded By Taxpayers?

It turns out that the local mayor not only manages the venue the event was held at, but also voted for $1.6M in tax funding for the tourism company promoting the show.

By: Ray Dietrich, Red Voice Media, February 9, 2023:

An all-ages drag show was held at the London Bridge resort in Lake Havasu City, Arizona on February 4th. Prior to the event taking place, protestors in the community made their voices heard and caused public discussion about children attending sexualized drag shows. The protestors made it clear they weren’t necessarily against drag shows but against children attending. Protestors compared the drag show to strip clubs where attendees must be adults. Of course, the local news ran with the leftist framed story, which goes something like “bigots hate trans people,” which isn’t the case.

Check out some video footage and pictures from the show:

As you can see in the video, during their quest to grab $1 bills, the performers shook what their momma didn’t make them, and some even pulled off, thrusting pelvis tricks on stage to the all-aged crowd.

I know what you’re thinking, another day, another drag show where children get to attend… but here’s where it gets weird(er). Lake Havasu City is in Mohave County, which happened to vote 74% for Trump in 2020, just to give you an idea of how ‘red’ it is. The Lake Havasu City mayor and city council are considered to be non-partisan but let their political leanings be known.

When you visit Mayor Cal Sheehy’s website, you see pictures of him with America First political superstars including Rep. Paul Gosar, Rep. Andy Biggs, AZ State Rep Leo Biasiucci, and AZ State Senator Sonny Borrelli. One would think this non-partisan mayor is attempting to show himself as a conservative Republican.

Yes, Cal, the non-partisan who pimps pictures hanging out with leaders of the America First movement runs the venue that held the drag show. Keep in mind Cal’s voters are overwhelmingly conservative. Unfortunately, this isn’t even the worst part.

Let’s take a look at the money trail. The event was promoted by Go Lake Havasu, which is under the parent company, Lake Havasu Tourism Bureau, Inc.

AUTHOR

Pamela Geller

RELATED ARTICLES:

California School Club To Host Lunchtime Screening Of Trans Documentary Featuring Full-Frontal Nudity

St. Louis Trans Clinic Investigated For Irreparably Harming 600 Teens, ‘Do You Want a Dead Daughter Ar An Alive Son?’

FINANCE Director For Boston’s Democrat Mayor Charged With MONEY LAUNDERING

How Obama and Biden Weaponized Even The National Archives….As More Biden Classified Docs Surface in Boston

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