WORLD NEWS
China Locks Down 21 Million in the Metropolis of Chengdu
The Chinese regime placed 21 million in the southern megacity of Chengdu under lockdown, the largest move to contain the COVID-19 flareups since Shanghai’s shutdown.
All residents must stay at home starting at 6 p.m. on Sept. 1, the city official said in a statement. Families are permitted to send one person—who has a negative result on a PCR test taken within 24 hours—per day to get groceries. There is no word on when the lockdown will be lifted.
Chengdu, the provincial capital of Sichuan Province, is the biggest city to be shut down since the financial hub Shanghai emerged from the two-month lockdown earlier this year.
The sweeping move came as Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials across the country stepped up restrictions to contain COVID-19 outbreaks in the run-up to the Party’s October conclave—considered to be a politically sensitive time. Chinese leader Xi Jinping is expected to secure an unprecedented third five-year term in office during the CCP’s 20th Congress set to begin on Oct. 16.
Millions in other Chinese cities, from the southern city of Shenzhen to Dalian in the northeast, have embraced lockdown this week. The Chinese regime holds tight to its zero-COVID policy, which aims to eliminate every infection among communities through digital surveillance, repeated testing, strict quarantine, and lockdown, despite the social and economic tolls.
On Thursday, Volvo Cars announced it would temporarily close its Chengdu factory, according to Reuters.
The southwest city, along with other regions in Sichuan, has already struggled with a record-breaking drought and extremely hot weather, which has dwindled the region’s hydropower output and led to power cuts in households and factories.
Argentine vice president survives assassination attempt when gun jams
Argentina’s vice president survived an assassination attempt late Thursday after a gunman’s weapon jammed as he tried to shoot her at close range outside her home, the country’s leader said.
Vice President Cristina Fernández was unharmed in the incident, which has rocked the South American nation already racked by turmoil due to spiraling inflation and her trial on corruption charges she denies.
The man attempted to kill the vice president as she was surrounded by large crowds of supporters outside her Buenos Aires residence around 9 p.m. local time (8 p.m. ET) Thursday, according to a statement by President Alberto Fernández.
Video footage of the incident verified by NBC News shows the vice president greeting boisterous supporters near a white vehicle when a hand appears from the crowd holding a black pistol. The hand appears to pull the trigger inches from her face and a click is heard, but no shot rings out. Members of the crowd then appear to turn and overpower the gunman.
Russian oil executive dies after falling from Moscow window: Reports
A prominent Russian oil executive died Thursday morning after reportedly falling out of a hospital window in Moscow, stoking suspicions of foul play, given how frequently vocal critics of the Kremlin have been shot, poisoned or defenestrated.
Ravil Maganov, 67, was chairman of the board at Lukoil, the Russian energy giant. His death was reported by Russian news agency Interfax and confirmed by Western outlets.
In March, Lukoil criticized the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine launched at President Vladimir Putin’s insistence in late February. “We fully support its resolution through negotiations, by diplomatic means,” that statement said. It was a remarkable show of dissent in a nation where, even in peacetime, corporations and their leaders are expected to never contradict the Kremlin.
G7 unveils plan to enforce Russian oil price cap
The Group of Seven agrees to block transport of crude sold above the set price
The finance ministers of the Group of Seven influential nations announced on Friday their intention to ban maritime services transporting Russian oil if its price is not approved by ‘international partners.’
“We commit to urgently work on the finalization and implementation of this measure,” representatives from the US, Canada, Germany, France, Italy, the UK and Japan said in a joint statement seen by AFP, without specifying the cap level.
“We seek to establish a broad coalition in order to maximize effectiveness and urge all countries that still seek to import Russian oil and petroleum products to commit to doing so only at prices at or below the price cap,” they added.
The move is aimed at slashing Moscow’s revenues while maintaining a flow of its crude to the international markets, to avoid a price surge.
“We will curtail [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s capacity to fund his war from oil exports by banning services, such as insurance and the provision of finance, to vessels carrying Russian oil above an agreed price cap,” British Finance Minister Nadhim Zahawi reportedly said, according to a tweet by a Sky News reporter.
—> Related: EU wants to set price for Russian gas
The EU needs a price ceiling on imports of Russian pipeline gas, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen announced on Friday, according to Reuters.
U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre was repeatedly asked Thursday to answer for President Biden likening former President Trump’s “extreme MAGA philosophy” to “semi-fascism.”
When asked Thursday whether the Biden administration was concerned it may be stoking the divisiveness that the president was ostensibly trying to heal, Jean-Pierre said Biden “is never going to shy away from calling out what he sees.”
Jean-Pierre tried to clarify that Biden’s criticism was directed at “those extreme MAGA Republicans, those who hold office.”
“We understand we hit a nerve. We get that,” Jean-Pierre said. “We understand that they’re trying to hide, and we understand that ultra MAGA office holders want to play games here and dodge accountability for their extreme proposals and actions.”
A reporter asked Jean-Pierre what Biden’s message would be to Americans who still considered themselves Republicans or supported former President Trump.
Jean-Pierre said that what was meant by “extremism” was directed at a “very small piece … of the American public” and a “very small component of MAGA Republicans in Congress.”
Fox News correspondent Mark Meredith later asked Jean-Pierre what percentage of the 74 million people who voted for Trump in the 2020 election the White House regarded as extremists.
“I’m talking about specifically MAGA office holders. That’s what we’re talking about,” Jean-Pierre said again. “We’re talking about MAGA office holders who have put forth an agenda that is extreme.”
By “extreme,” Jean-Pierre clarified that she meant cutting taxes for billionaires and corporations and calling for a national abortion ban.
“That’s an extreme agenda that is not in line with where a majority of Americans are,” Jean-Pierre said. “[I]f you look at the items that I just listed, a majority of Americans don’t support what the MAGA Republicans in Congress are doing.”
Jean-Pierre also said, “When you are not with what majority of Americans are, then you know, that is extreme. That is an extreme way of thinking.”
President Joe Biden delivered his sharpest rebuke yet of Republicans and their fealty to his predecessor in an evening speech in Philadelphia on Thursday, alleging they “thrive on chaos” and warning their attempts to undermine democracy could devolve into violence.
“They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” Biden said in front of a red-lit Independence Hall, harnessing the historic setting to call for a reckoning on the movement led by former President Donald Trump.
It was a strident and urgent call to Americans months ahead of midterm elections that will determine control of Congress. Biden’s remarks, while billed as an official address, provided the broad contours of his election message heading into the fall.
Even as he worked to balance a dose of optimism about the country’s future — and his own string of recent accomplishments — Biden painted a dark portrait of his political opponents, saying Trump and his followers are threatening the entire American experiment. He named his predecessor within minutes of taking the stage, and suggested Americans faced an existential choice in the coming elections.
Trump reaches settlement agreement over financial records with House committee, accounting firm
Nearly two months after the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals issued a ruling in a case about a House Oversight Committee subpoena on an accounting firm for former President Donald Trump’s financial records, Trump’s lawyers revealed that all parties involved have reached a settlement agreement.
Attorneys from the law firm Consovoy McCarthy notified the federal appellate court of the latest development in a Wednesday court filing.
“In light of the panel’s opinion, Plaintiffs, Mazars, and the Committee reached a settlement of this case on August 30, 2022,” the filing said, noting that as a result, Trump and his businesses were withdrawing a request to have the matter reheard by the full court in an en banc hearing.
The July 8 D.C. Circuit Court ruling reflected guidance from the U.S. Supreme Court, which said the appellate court should engage in “careful analysis” of the separation of powers issues in the case. In light of this, the court ruled that while the House Oversight Committee could properly subpoena certain of Trump’s financial records from accounting firm Mazars USA, the subpoena in question had to be narrowed in scope.
Judge Won’t Rule for Now on Trump’s Request for Special Master
A federal judge on Sept. 1 declined to rule immediately on whether to grant former President Donald Trump’s request to appoint a special master to review the documents the FBI seized from his Florida home in August.
At a hearing in West Palm Beach, U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon, a Trump appointee, said she would not rule yet on Trump’s request.
A special master is an independent third party sometimes appointed by a court in sensitive cases to review materials potentially covered by attorney-client privilege to ensure investigators do not improperly view them.
Cannon also said she would defer ruling now on whether to unseal a more detailed inventory of the seized property that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has filed under seal with the court.
It’s not clear when Cannon, a former federal prosecutor, will make her rulings.
Government officials have said that a DOJ filter team already processed the materials removed from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort on Aug. 8 and separated those that are potentially privileged.
They also claimed that Trump did not need a special master to protect his rights, and that he lacks standing.
Lawyers for the former president disagree.
Lawsuit uncovers army of feds censoring speech in America
‘Officials across at least 11 agencies have secretly communicated with social media’
A developing lawsuit that now is embroiled in arguments over what “discovery” is to be allowed has uncovered a long list of federal bureaucracies whose officials have been actively involved in telling social media companies what speech to censor.
It was just revealed in recent days that the FBI contacted Facebook and warned of “Russian disinformation,” causing the social media giant to suppress accurate reporting from the New York Post about the Biden family’s international business schemes that may have involved America’s enemies – and provided profit to Joe Biden.
A poll revealed 80% of Americans believe that actually changed the winner in the 2020 president race, and that without that censorship, President Donald Trump would be in the White House now.
All of which prompted Margot Cleveland, a senior legal correspondent for The Federalist, to warn, “It was the FBI and not social media that stole the election from Donald Trump.”
Now details being revealed in a lawsuit being handled by the New Civil Rights Alliance, which is challenging government influence over free speech, confirm that a long list of bureaucracies in the federal government have been contacting social media corporations in order to tell them what to censor.
The case, the NCLA said, “blows the lid off a sprawling federal censorship regime that will shock the conscience of Americans.”
Trump: DOJ ‘Never’ Contacted His Team After Mar-a-Lago Raid
A court filing submitted by former President Donald Trump’s lawyers said the Department of Justice (DOJ) never contacted his lawyers after FBI agents took documents during last month’s raid on his Mar-a-Lago.
“Never has an argument against ‘interference’ better underscored the need for judicial involvement,” the filing, submitted Wednesday, said. “All of this in the context of a unilateral filter team operation that to-date has never made any contact with counsel for the Movant, another historic first for DOJ.
“Left unchecked, the DOJ will impugn, leak, and publicize selective aspects of their investigation with no recourse for Movant but to somehow trust the self-restraint of currently unchecked investigators,” his lawyers further argued (pdf).
That filing came about a day after the DOJ asserted in court that a special master—or a neutral third-party—isn’t needed for the review of allegedly classified materials that were taken from Trump’s residence. The DOJ filter team, prosecutors said, already carried out a preliminary evaluation of the documents.
“The government’s investigative team has already reviewed all of the remaining materials, including any that are potentially subject to claims of executive privilege,” the DOJ wrote.
Arguing against appointing the special master, the government added said it would impede its “ongoing criminal investigation and—if the special master were tasked with reviewing classified documents—would impede the Intelligence Community from conducting its ongoing review of the national security risk that improper storage of these highly sensitive materials may have caused and from identifying measures to rectify or mitigate any damage that improper storage caused.”
Trump Lawyer Claims She ‘Diligently Searched’ Mar-a-Lago in May, Days Before DOJ Subpoenaed Trump
A lawyer for former President Donald Trump said she had entirely searched “each and every room” at Mar-a-Lago early in May, less than a week before the Department of Justice issued Trump a grand jury subpoena to recover alleged top secret records he removed from the White House.
Alina Habba, the attorney representing Trump in a tax fraud probe, told a New York state court in a May 6 filing (pdf) that she personally conducted a search of Trump’s private residence and office at Mar-a-Lago the previous day, looking for financial documents onsite. It was in reaction to a separate subpoena issued by New York Attorney General Letitia James who was then investigating the Trump Organization’s dealings.
“On May 5, 2022, I diligently searched each and every room of Respondent’s private residence located at Mar-a-Lago, including all desks, drawers, nightstands, dressers, closets, etc.,” Habba said in the months-old court document that recently resurfaced.
The search in Palm Beach was under the authority of Trump with access to “any and all documents responsive to the Subpoena,” as per the former president’s sworn affidavit included in the filing. Habba scoured residences and offices at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster the same day.
Six days later, the DOJ subpoenaed the 45th president (pdf) over his handling of alleged highly classified records, asking on May 11 for “any and all documents or writings in the custody or control of Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings.”
Although Habba said she “was unable to locate any documents responsive to the subpoena” related to her separate legal case, questions remain about whether the attorney had spotted or handled any documents that the DOJ later uncovered in many of the same places at Trump’s club. According to a new filing (pdf), certain documents that the FBI found during the Aug. 8 Mar-a-Lago raid had “colored cover sheets indicating their classification status.”
“Notwithstanding counsel’s representation on June 3, 2022, that materials from the White House were only located in the Storage Room, classified documents were found in both the Storage Room and in the former President’s office,” the DOJ disclosed on Tuesday.
“In the storage room alone, FBI agents found 76 documents bearing classification markings,” the papers read.
Déjà Vu? DOJ’s ‘Classified Documents’ Narrative Feels Like A Get-Trump Trick We’ve Seen Before
As has been the case with every previous get-Trump effort, the deep state seeks to convict Trump first in the court of public opinion.
Since news first broke of the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago, the Department of Justice has primed Americans to believe that former President Donald Trump hid classified documents at his Florida home in defiance of a grand jury subpoena. But even with leaks pushing claims that the documents seized included potential nuclear secrets, the public remains equally split on whether the Biden administration abused its power in targeting Trump.
With criticism of the raid remaining high nearly a month after the FBI executed the search at the former president’s home, the DOJ on Tuesday escalated its public-relations pitch by releasing several documents that seemingly establish that Trump failed to comply with the subpoena and that his representative lied to the government about the documents retained at Mar-a-Lago. While nothing is impossible, this narrative seems extremely unlikely.
To convince the country of the righteousness of its raid, the DOJ filed three seemingly damning exhibits in the separate lawsuit Trump had filed against the United States seeking the appointment of a special master to oversee the government’s handling of the seized documents. Specifically, the DOJ filed a copy of the subpoena issued to the “Custodian of Records” of “The Office of Donald J. Trump” that directed the custodian to provide “any and all documents or writings in the custody or control of Donald J. Trump and/or the Office of Donald J. Trump bearing classification markings.”
The DOJ attached as another exhibit the “Certification” of the “Custodian of Records,” which noted, “based on the information that has been provided to” the custodian, she was authorized to certify that “a diligent search was conducted of the boxes that were moved from the White House to Florida” and that “the search was conducted after receipt of the subpoena in order to locate any and all documents responsive to the subpoena.” The certification then noted that “any and all responsive documents accompany this certification.” A third exhibit filed by the DOJ depicted several sets of documents with various cover sheets showing their classification marking, such as “Top Secret.”
Together then, these exhibits seem to conclusively establish that Trump defied the subpoena and that either someone lied to the custodian or the custodian lied to the DOJ. And that is precisely the reason the DOJ included these exhibits — to convict Trump in the court of public opinion — as the exhibits are irrelevant to the question of the propriety of a special master. That fact alone should give the public pause, but there are other reasons to doubt the DOJ’s framing of the situation.
It’d Be Lunacy to Do What DOJ Suggests Trump Did
While the theory the DOJ paints seems simple enough, it just doesn’t pass a sanity test. The deep state and the FBI have been hounding Trump for six years straight. First came Crossfire Hurricane, followed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s carryover of that probe, coupled with a second one for obstruction of justice. Next, the Ukrainian impeachment hoax targeted the then-president. The Jan. 6 Committee’s attempt to criminalize Trump’s challenges to the 2020 election remains ongoing, while state prosecutors in New York and Georgia seek to see the former president behind bars. Further, the issuance of the grand jury subpoena and the DOJ’s correspondence with his attorneys establishes that Trump and his legal team know the Biden administration continues to target him.
Yet, knowing all of this, are we to believe Trump hid documents marked as classified, rather than comply with the subpoena, and then caused the signing of a false certification?
Could it have happened? Sure. Maybe Trump was so irate at what the FBI did in 2016 with the Russia-collusion hoax, or with its interference in the 2020 election, that he didn’t care. Or maybe he didn’t think Biden would dare come after him. But logic suggests the more likely scenario is that the DOJ is spinning the story again. And while we may not yet know how, the Russia-collusion hoax taught us there is a how. That history provides another solid reason to doubt the current storyline.
A further reason to suspect the DOJ is playing the American public stems from the misleading leaks that hit soon after news of the raid broke.
“CBS News has learned that weeks before the search, a Trump lawyer signed a document certifying that all classified materials had been removed from Mar-a-Lago, according to two sources familiar with the timeline of events and the decision to seek the search warrant,” the legacy network reported shortly after the Mar-a-Lago raid. “But after the Trump attorney certified that all classified materials had been removed from Mar-a-Lago, investigators gleaned that in fact, there might still be more classified documents at the Florida residence because they had spoken with a handful of individuals familiar with where and how the documents are stored at the compound,” the report continued.
A lawyer for Infowars founder Alex Jones testified in a show-cause hearing last week that the release of confidential medical records to opposing counsel in a defamation trial was due to a wrong link provided by his administrative assistant.
Houston lawyer F. Andino Reynal was surprised during Jones’ defamation trial Aug. 3, when opposing counsel Mark Bankston revealed in court that Reynal had accidentally sent a link to a digital copy of Jones’ entire cellphone. Bankston said the data contradicted Jones’ claims that he didn’t have specific texts relevant to the defamation case.
The link also included confidential medical records for plaintiffs in another case in Connecticut, leading a judge in that state to seek an explanation.
Missouri Supreme Court Reprimands Radical St Louis Prosecutor Kim Gardner for Misconduct
The Supreme Court of Missouri ordered St. Louis Circuit prosecutor Kim Gardner, a high-profile left-wing Democrat, disciplined for misconduct in the 2018 prosecution of then-Gov. Eric Greitens, a Republican.
Gardner is one of several prosecutors—accused of being soft on crime—in major population centers throughout the country elected with the support of left-wing billionaire George Soros.
Critics blame rising crime in part on the policies of these prosecutors.
Among the other Soros-backed prosecutors are Los Angeles District Attorney George Gascón, Chicago District Attorney Kim Foxx, Philadelphia District Attorney Larry Krasner, and Baltimore City State’s Attorney Marilyn Mosby.
The brief court order dated Aug. 30 was signed by Chief Justice Paul Wilson and states that the court found that Gardner violated three provisions of the Rules of Professional Conduct, “should be disciplined,” and “is hereby reprimanded” and fined $750.
The court ratified an agreement from April between Gardner and the Missouri Office of Disciplinary Counsel and accepted an advisory counsel’s decision that disbarring or suspending her from the practice of law wasn’t justified.
Gardner admitted that she failed to hand over documents as required to Greitens’s attorneys in a criminal case that led to the governor’s resignation in June 2018.
Greitens was charged with tampering with data in a campaign finance-related case. When he resigned, Gardner dropped the charges.
The agreement stipulated that Gardner’s behavior “was negligent or perhaps reckless, but not intentional” and urged a reprimand but left the final decision up to the Supreme Court of Missouri.
Gardner told a disciplinary panel earlier this year that she made mistakes because the case moved quickly.
“I’m pleased that our state’s highest court and disciplinary counsel has recognized that the ethics disciplinary process should not be weaponized for political gain,” Gardner reportedly said in a statement after the court rendered its decision. “I look forward to continuing the critical work of creating a safer, fairer, and just St. Louis.”
In another case Gardner pursued against the then-governor, Greitens had an affair with his hairdresser. The woman claimed that he took a compromising photograph and blackmailed her over it, threatening to use it if she spoke of their relationship.
Gardner investigated, which led to Greitens’s indictment for felony-level invasion of privacy. Greitens claimed that he was the victim of a political vendetta.
After jury selection got underway, the court ordered Gardner to testify about her conduct in the case. Instead, Gardner withdrew the charge.
Many of Fauci’s Emails With Zuckerberg Should Be Shielded, Government Says
The U.S. government is attempting to withhold many of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s email communications with Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Defendants object to this Request as overbroad because it calls for documents that are not relevant to Plaintiffs’ claims and that do not fall within scope of discovery authorized by the Court,” government lawyers said on behalf of Fauci and the agency he directs, the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), in a brief made public this week.
The suit, brought by two states, triggered the release of hundreds of emails between government officials and Big Tech workers.
But none of the released material came from Fauci, even though his agency was asked in a discovery request to provide all communications with Zuckerberg from Jan. 1, 2020, to July 18, 2022.
A federal judge ordered defendants to comply with discovery requests concerning “the identity of federal officials who have been and are communicating with social-media platforms about [misinformation and] any censorship or suppression of speech on social media, including the nature and content of those communications.”
The request for communications between Fauci and Zuckerberg is overbroad because it doesn’t specify communications concerning misinformation, the new filing states.
“Further, to the extent this Request seeks any purely internal documents or records, Defendants object to the Request as not proportional to the needs of the case, as it would require an extensive search of internal records that would not be possible to complete in the expedited period provided for current discovery and would be unnecessary in light of the external documents Defendants have agreed to produce,” they said. “Defendants also object to this Request to the extent it seeks documents protected by the deliberative process privilege, attorney-client privilege, law enforcement privilege, a statutory national security privilege, or any other applicable privilege.”
NIAID did reveal that Facebook approached it in March 2020 to discuss COVID-19 and an interview with Dr. Fauci, and noted that Fauci agreed to an interview that was aired on Facebook Live. Fauci’s name was redacted in the response, but his title was not.
Also among the emails released this week were several between Facebook and the White House, with a NIAID official copied. Rob Flaherty, a White House official, was asking Facebook to deactivate a fake Fauci account on Instagram, which Facebook did.
The Untold Story of the Flight Attendant Fired for Expressing Pro-Life Views
Although she was about to publicly reveal a nightmarish personal experience—and the worst mistake of her life—Charlene Carter strode confidently through a stately Dallas federal courtroom.
Carter knew her testimony would prove pivotal in her five-year quest to be reinstated as a Southwest Airlines flight attendant. But she also believed she was carrying the torch for freedom of speech, employee rights, and right versus wrong.
As muffled gasps rippled through the gallery, Carter disclosed the untold story that gave rise to the anti-abortion views that got her fired. At age 19, she aborted an unwanted pregnancy. The decision would haunt Carter in almost every facet of her life, touching off a chain reaction that thrust her into the national spotlight.
Last month, days after Carter testified in U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, a jury voted to award her more than $5 million—a unanimous verdict declaring that Carter’s ex-employer trampled her rights and illegally fired her for “protected speech” about religious beliefs and opposition to her union, Transport Workers Union of America Local 556.
The jury also decided that Local 556 breached its duty to represent Carter. Instead of protecting Carter’s interests, the union president sought to get Carter fired for social media activities. On Facebook, Carter railed against the union’s participation in the 2017 Women’s March—a massive protest that abortion provider Planned Parenthood sponsored in Washington, D.C., the day after President Donald Trump’s inauguration.
Now, as lawyers spar over how the will of Carter’s jury should be imposed, Carter still doesn’t know whether she’ll get her job back—and concerns are mounting over the alleged unholy alliance that Carter’s case exposed: union leaders and company management working in concert to target union dissidents for terminations.
“For a long time, Charlene stood by herself, with very few people by her side … people misunderstood the nature of the lawsuit,” said a Southwest worker who asked not to be identified for fear of losing her job.
Now that Carter’s trial transcripts are publicly available, many airline employees have been reading them. “And they see this is much bigger than her, and that she’s not just some crazy right-wing, pro-life nut,” the Southwest employee said. “This is about freedom of speech for all of us, freedom to oppose the union, and to stand up for what you believe in.”
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Majorities oppose canceling federal student debt if it raises their taxes, primarily benefits the wealthy, increases college prices, or causes more employers to require degrees.
The Cato 2022 Student Debt Cancellation National Survey, a new national poll of 2,000 U.S. adults, finds 64% of Americans support the federal government forgiving up to $10,000 in federal student loans for people who earn less than $150,000 a year or less than $300,000 per year for married couples. However, support for canceling federal student loan debt plummets when Americans consider its trade offs.
Nearly two‐thirds of Americans oppose cancellation if forgiving $10,000 per borrower raises their taxes (64%) or if it primarily benefits higher income people (68%). Even more Americans oppose if cancellation incentivizes colleges and universities to further raise prices, as research has shown it may. About three‐fourths of Americans would oppose student debt cancellation if it caused universities to raise their tuition and fees (76%) or if it caused more employers to require college degrees even if not needed to do the job (71%), also known as “credential inflation.”
“These data show that Americans don’t like the costs that many experts believe are associated with federal student loan forgiveness” said Cato’s Director of Polling Emily Ekins, Ph.D.
Some older Americans who took out relatively modest student loans are finding themselves saddled with ballooning loan balances that can result in garnishment of tax refunds, wages and Social Security payments.
The New Yorker has a story on the issue that includes interviews with older people whose debt is emblematic of the problem.
“In an era of declining wages and rising debt, Americans are not aging out of their student loans—they are aging into them,” the article reports.
One person struggling with student debt is identified only as Betty Ann. She enrolled at the New York University School of Law at age 52 in 1983. Later, she worked for about 30 years at a nonprofit that paid her close to the minimum wage.
Betty Ann took out about $29,000 in federal loans but owes $329,000 today at age 91.
“Mounting interest, looming balances, faulty relief methods and declining wages all force borrowers to carry loans for longer and longer, pushing student debt across generations,” according to the story.
The story cited these statistics:
- People age 62 and older are the fastest-growing group of student borrowers. In 2015, more than one-third of borrowers in that group defaulted on their loans.
• One out of five of the 45 million Americans with student debt are older than age 50. Student loan balances for the older-than-50 group increased by 512% between 2004 and 2018.
• One-third of older student borrowers took out the loans for children or grandchildren under a program called Parent Plus that often carries “punishing terms, such as significantly higher interest rates and scant options for relief.”
One debt-relief program called income-driven repayment, which expanded during the Obama administration, has good and bad aspects. On the plus side, the program allows borrowers to make monthly payments that are based on their income and to have their loans canceled after 20 or 25 years of payments.
But the lower loan payments “allow interest to fester and capitalize, swelling balances to amounts far greater than the original,” the article reports. And because of bookkeeping problems, debt cancellation “has proved to be mere mirage.” More than 4 million borrowers could have accessed loan cancellation as of 2021, but only 157 borrowers obtained relief.
ATTOM Webinar Summary: What’s Ahead for Real Estate Investors
Smooth Sailing or Stormy Seas? This ATTOM webinar, featuring industry thought leaders, Rick Sharga, ATTOM EVP of Market Intelligence, Mike Hambright, CEO of Investor Machine, and Eric Abramovich, Co-Founder of Roc360, addresses what’s on the horizon for real estate investors, covering these key areas of focus:
- What’s happening in the U.S. Economy
- A look at the housing market
- Foreclosure activity & outlook
- Investor activity
Rick Sharga begins this presentation by looking at GDP trends, illustrating its negative impact in the second quarter. He then dives into more data, including employment recovery and wages stats, as well as inflation and possible recession trends.
Also, during Rick’s portion of the presentation, he discusses existing home sales stats, price reductions, inventory, housing starts, new home sales, housing demand, and purchase loan trends. Rick also touches on delinquencies, foreclosure starts, and overall foreclosure activity.
Rick examines investor purchase activity trends as well during this webinar, along with home flipping activity and profits and profit margins.
Mike Hambright jumps into the discussion, looking at the various types of investors and related real estate investor activity, the difference between wholesale flips and other investor sales, as well as potential risks and bridge loans.
Eric Abramovich also weighs in on financing fix-and-flips, repair value, price stability, after-repair profits, equity, affordability, and supply. Eric also addresses rent increases, investment opportunities for landlords, and investor financing.
SURVEILLANCE STATE
Secretive Geofence Surveillance Software Being Snapped Up By Law Enforcement
Local law enforcement agencies from suburban Southern California to rural North Carolina have been using an obscure cellphone tracking tool, at times without search warrants, that gives them the power to follow people’s movements months back in time, according to public records and internal emails obtained by The Associated Press.
Police have used “Fog Reveal” to search hundreds of billions of records from 250 million mobile devices, and harnessed the data to create location analyses known among law enforcement as “patterns of life,” according to thousands of pages of records about the company.
Sold by Virginia-based Fog Data Science LLC, Fog Reveal has been used since at least 2018 in criminal investigations ranging from the murder of a nurse in Arkansas to tracing the movements of a potential participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The tool is rarely, if ever, mentioned in court records, something that defense attorneys say makes it harder for them to properly defend their clients in cases in which the technology was used.
The company was developed by two former high-ranking Department of Homeland Security officials under ex-President George W. Bush. It relies on advertising identification numbers, which Fog officials say are culled from popular cellphone apps such as Waze, Starbucks and hundreds of others that target ads based on a person’s movements and interests, according to police emails. That information is then sold to companies like Fog.
“It’s sort of a mass surveillance program on a budget,” said Bennett Cyphers, a special advisor at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a digital privacy rights advocacy group.
The documents and emails were obtained by EFF through Freedom of Information Act requests. The group shared the files with The AP, which independently found that Fog sold its software in about 40 contracts to nearly two dozen agencies, according to GovSpend, a company that keeps tabs on government spending. The records and AP’s reporting provide the first public account of the extensive use of Fog Reveal by local police, according to analysts and legal experts who scrutinize such technologies.
“Local law enforcement is at the front lines of trafficking and missing persons cases, yet these departments are often behind in technology adoption,” Matthew Broderick, a Fog managing partner, said in an email. “We fill a gap for underfunded and understaffed departments.”
Because of the secrecy surrounding Fog, however, there are scant details about its use and most law enforcement agencies won’t discuss it, raising concerns among privacy advocates that it violates the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, which protects against unreasonable search and seizure.
What distinguishes Fog Reveal from other cellphone location technologies used by police is that it follows the devices through their advertising IDs, unique numbers assigned to each device. These numbers do not contain the name of the phone’s user, but can be traced to homes and workplaces to help police establish pattern-of-life analyses.
“The capability that it had for bringing up just anybody in an area whether they were in public or at home seemed to me to be a very clear violation of the Fourth Amendment,” said Davin Hall, a former crime data analysis supervisor for the Greensboro, North Carolina Police Department. “I just feel angry and betrayed and lied to.”
Hall resigned in late 2020 after months of voicing concerns about the department’s use of Fog to police attorneys and the city council.
HEALTH
Fake news giant Forbes has published a propaganda piece declaring vitamin D to be “worthless” and even “dangerous” for humans.
Steven Salzberg, a professor of biomedical engineering at Johns Hopkins University and the article’s author, argues that people need to “Stop Taking Vitamin D Already!” – this being the title of his piece.
Salzberg is so against vitamin D that he added it to his top five list of vitamins that people should never take, making it a top six list of “useless vitamin supplements,” as he calls them (the other five are vitamin C; vitamin A and beta carotene; vitamin E; vitamin B6 (pyridoxine); and multivitamins).
Even though upwards of 75 percent of the American population is deficient in vitamin D, Salzberg argues that people should avoid it like the plague because a paper published in The Lancet supposedly found that it “did not help to prevent heart disease, weight gain, mood disorders, multiple sclerosis, and metabolic disorders, all of which had been linked to lower vitamin D.”
Since vitamin D has gained a lot of traction due to the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) – check out the evidence showing that vitamin D works against infectious diseases – Salzberg and others like him are trying to nip it in the bud and scare people away from taking it.
“The only prophylactics the corporate media ever apparently want to promote are masks and vaccines – tools of social control and biomedical profiteering, respectively,” writes Ben Bartee for The Daily Bell.
“Johns Hopkins is the undisputed Heart of COVID-19 Darkness – the progenitor of lockdown policies and the most-cited authority for the corporate media and government to justify mask and vaccine mandates.”
While it may be true that vitamin D supplements are not the most optimal form of intake – natural sunlight, without sunscreen, is your best option – Salzberg is of the persuasion that the vitamin is useless and even harmful, which is laughable.
Johns Hopkins, it turns out, is Big Pharma central. The school touts the “benefits” of nanobot “theragrippers” that latch onto the intestines like parasites in order to deliver pharmaceuticals to the bloodstream, all while denigrating natural vitamins.
It is no surprise, in other words, that Salzberg is writing hit pieces against natural vitamins on behalf of Johns Hopkins, which is an enemy of natural remedies and health freedom, which don’t make Big Pharma any money.
What Salzberg conveniently failed to address in his hit piece is the fact that vitamin D deficiency is linked to a host of health problems, not the least of which include chronic fatigue, muscle twitching, confusion, nausea, weakness, constipation, paresthesia and poor appetite.
A lack of vitamin D also makes a person more prone to developing an infectious disease, as well as multiple sclerosis, autoimmune rheumatic diseases (ARD), cancer, osteoporosis, arthralgia, myalgia and type 1 diabetes.
“But that’s all golden for Big Pharma,” Bartee further writes. “They’ve got vaccines for acute infections and drugs to hook you on for life to treat chronic illnesses.”
“They’ll drain you of your life savings as you slowly die, all the while never getting to the root cause of your illness – which, in many cases, might well be a vitamin D deficiency. Cured patients don’t pad Pfizer’s bottom line.”
In the year 2022, it is simply astounding that any media outlet, no matter how corrupted, would be so foolish as to publish anti-vitamin D propaganda. The cat is long out of the bag, and Forbes, Salzberg and Johns Hopkins are unsuccessfully trying to stuff it back in.
Three Supplements That Can Lower Your Risk for CVD
Krill oil, astaxanthin and berberine may be among the best treatments for those with high trimethylamine-N-oxide (TMAO) levels, which can be a reflection of insulin resistance in the liver
You’d also want to normalize your weight. Two strategies that are most helpful in this regard are a cyclical ketogenic diet and intermittent fasting
TMAO is a metabolite of dietary choline and carnitine from animal-based foods such as eggs and meat; some research suggests elevated TMAO may be a risk factor for cardiovascular disease
There’s virtually no evidence to suggest dietary intake of TMAO or its precursors — fish being one of the richest sources — actually promotes CVD, provided your renal function is normal
The likely true cause of elevated TMAO levels is hepatic insulin resistance; poor liver function has been shown to significantly elevate TMAO by increasing FMO3
—> Power Mall Products of Interest: AstaXanthin with DHA & Super Krill Oil 1000 mg
Ban on gender-affirming procedures for transgender youths is sex discrimination, 8th Circuit says
A federal appeals court has upheld an injunction blocking Arkansas’ ban on “gender transition procedures” for youths younger than age 18.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at St. Louis said in its Aug. 25 decision the ban on such medical procedures amounts to discrimination on the basis of sex. The preliminary injunction blocks enforcement of the Arkansas law pending a final ruling on the plaintiffs’ claim that the treatment ban violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
The record in the case so far does not support the state’s claim that its law, known as Act 626, protects children from experimental medical treatment, the appeals court said in a unanimous panel decision by Judge Jane Kelly.
The 8th Circuit cited research on hormone treatment for adolescents with gender dysphoria that showed positive effects on mental health and quality of life. The appeals court also said there is substantial evidence that the Arkansas law bans medical treatment that conforms with the recognized standard of care.
Act 626 bans health care professionals from providing gender transition procedures to anyone younger than age 18 or from referring those youths to other health care professions for such treatment.
The law defined gender transition procedures to mean medical and surgical services intended to “alter or remove physical or anatomical characteristics or features that are typical for the individual’s biological sex” or to “instill or create physiological or anatomical characteristics that resemble a sex different from the individual’s biological sex.” The banned services include puberty-blocking drugs and gender-reassignment surgery.
The plaintiffs in the case are four transgender youths, their parents and two Arkansas doctors.
The Arkansas law was the first in the country to ban gender-affirming medical care for transgender youths, according to an Aug. 25 press release by the American Civil Liberties Union. The ACLU and the ACLU of Arkansas filed the lawsuit. Law firms working on the case are Sullivan & Cromwell, Gill Ragon Owen and the Walas Law Firm.
Chase Strangio, deputy director for transgender justice at the ACLU’s LGBTQ & HIV Project, said in the press release the decision is a critical victory for transgender adolescents in Arkansas.
“The 8th Circuit was abundantly clear that the state’s ban on care does not advance any important governmental interest and the state’s defense of the law is lacking in legal or evidentiary support,” Strangio said.
The case is Brandt v. Rutledge. The ACLU has more information here.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
Thousands in Colorado locked out of home thermostats by Xcel
‘Rare energy emergency’ cited
It’s not like Colorado regularly sees the triple-digit temperatures of Arizona, or Texas, but still when it hits 90 or 95 degrees residents know it.
That’s why many have air conditioning, like those in southern states.
But a report now confirms that thousands of Xcel customers were locked out of their home thermostats for hours this week because of a “rare energy emergency.”
Thousands of Xcel customers locked out of thermostats during ‘energy emergency’ https://t.co/QpZLxRBCoy
— SemperFidelity (@semper_fidelity) September 1, 2022
The Denver Channel reported 22,000 people “lost control” of temperatures in their homes for hours Tuesday.
“Temperatures climbed into the 90s Tuesday, which is why Tony Talarico tried to crank up the air conditioning in his partner’s Arvada home. ‘I mean, it was 90 out, and it was right during the peak period,’ Talarico said. ‘It was hot,'” the report explained.
Then he saw the message on his digital thermostat warning him he was locked out.
Multitudes of Xcel customers reported similar hazards on social media, and Xcel confirmed that tens of thousands who signed up for the Colorado AC Rewards program were affected.
Emmett Romine, a utility VP, said, “It’s a voluntary program. Let’s remember that this is something that customers choose to be a part of based on the incentives.”
Under the program, customers get $100 by enrolling, and then $25 a year, if they “give up some control to save energy … and make the system more reliable.”
He said the “emergency” was triggered by an outage in Pueblo, some 100-plus miles south of the Denver metro area.
The lockouts are what many Americans have concerns about as the nation’s politicians demand more and more “green” programs, such as programmable digital thermostats that can be locked to prevent consumer use.
Such cases are feared to get worse, too, as the Democrats in power in Washington direct the nation away from reliable fossil fuels and nuclear power and to unstable wind and solar energy sources.
Already, California, which announced in a few years it will ban sales of new gasoline powered vehicles, had to warn owners of electric vehicles not to charge them for a time this week because the grid was unable to provide the energy.
Legend says that if you displeased the King of Siam, he would give you a white elephant. These rare and protected elephants were incredibly expensive to keep. So a “White Elephant” came to mean a possession that is useless, troublesome, expensive to maintain and difficult to dispose of – like a Sacred Cow, but much bigger.
Today the deluded rulers of the Western world are gifting us and future generations with plagues of Green Elephants – useless, expensive, protected, green rubbish.
The biggest green elephants in Australia are the five desalination plants built hurriedly when climate catastrophist Tim Flannery forecast that burning hydrocarbons would create perpetual drought. He forgot La Nina with its cycles of rain and floods for Australia. Flannery’s complex expensive de-sal plants have largely sat idle.
The sun powers the greatest desalination plant on earth, all for free. If we had spent all that desalination money on dams we could have moderated La Nina flood damage, insulated against El Nino droughts and provided naturally desalinated water for many towns and industries.
Australia was also conned into a war on hydrocarbons by American climate catastrophist, Al Gore, and his animated cartoon. This generated another epidemic of Green Elephants – solar panels, wind turbines and spider-webs of power lines that squander capital, uglify our landscapes and destroy grasslands, forests and birdlife, as well as destroying our once-cheap and reliable electricity supply. Future generations will be faced with removal and disposal of these Green Monuments to Stupidity.
Another Green Elephant is being suckled in the Snowy Mountains – Snowy 2 Pumped Hydro. Its plant and transmission lines will cost $10 billion for a facility that is a net consumer of electricity. More huge batteries are required to “solve” the chronic intermittency of wind/solar energy.
More Green Elephants are being planned by hydrogen speculators. These net consumers of energy will guzzle huge quantities of fresh water to produce a dangerous explosive gas that cannot be used by motorists or industry without much research and new infrastructure. Some even dream of exporting our precious fresh water via hydrogen (nine tonnes of water for every tonne of hydrogen).
Perhaps the world’s biggest Green Elephant is being bred in Australia’s Northern Territory. This green folly would connect the world’s biggest collection of solar “farms”, wind turbines and batteries to Singapore via the world’s longest under-sea extension cord across a deep submarine trench that is subject to many earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions.
These disastrous Green adventures are driven by the UN Billionaires’ club and promoted endlessly by government media and education bureaucracies, and vocal vested interests.
This plague of Green Elephants will destroy our industries, our farms and our access to cheap reliable fuels and electricity.
It is time for a Green Elephant Hunt.
GARDENING, FARMING & HOMESTEADING
Ellen Brown: How to Green Our Parched Farmlands and Finance Critical Infrastructure
There are work-arounds the U.S. can use to fund affordable housing, drought responses, and other urgently-needed infrastructure that was left out of the two recent spending bills.
Congress has passed two major infrastructure bills in the last year, but imminent needs in infrastructure funding remain. The 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law chiefly focused on conventional highway programs, and the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 (IRA) mainly centered on energy security and combating climate change. According to the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), over $2 trillion in much-needed infrastructure is still unfunded, including projects to address drought, affordable housing, high-speed rail, and power transmission lines. By 2039, per the ASCE, continued underinvestment at current rates will cost $10 trillion in cumulative lost GDP, more than 3 million jobs in that year, and $2.24 trillion in exports over the next 20 years.
Particularly urgent today is infrastructure to counteract the record-breaking drought in the U.S. Southwest, where 50% of the nation’s food supply is grown. Subsidies for such things as the purchase of electric vehicles, featured in the IRA, will pad the coffers of the industries lobbying for them but will not get water to our parched farmlands any time soon. More direct action is needed. But as noted by Todd Tucker in a Roosevelt Institute article, “Today, a gridlocked and austerity-minded Congress balks at appropriating sufficient money to ensure emergency readiness. … [T]he US system of government’s numerous veto points make emergency response harder than under parliamentary or authoritarian systems.”
There are, however, other ways to finance these essential projects. “A work-around,” says Tucker, “is so-called off-balance sheet money creation.” That was the approach taken in the 1930s, when commercial banks were bankrupt and the country faced its worst-ever economic depression; yet the government succeeded in building infrastructure as never before.
COVID RELATED NEWS
Did Lockdowns Cause Increased Mortality Rates?
Emerging statistics on excess mortality rates paint an alarming picture. Far more people died in 2021, after the rollout of the COVID shots, and in 2022, than during the height of the COVID pandemic in 2020
Mainstream media are trying to divert your attention from the elephant in the room — mass injection with experimental gene transfer technology — to anything and everything but that
The Telegraph blames the unexplained excess deaths on lockdown effects. Many didn’t have access to routine medical care during lockdowns, and are now dying from chronic diseases that went untreated
U.K. Office for National Statistics (ONS) data released August 16, 2022, show excess deaths in England and Wales were, as of August 5, 14.4% higher than the five-year average, which works out to 1,350 more deaths per week than normal. A majority of these excess deaths were cardiovascular in nature — a primary adverse effect of the COVID jabs
In the U.S., we lost 349,000 younger Americans to something besides COVID and non-natural death between April 3, 2021 and August 13, 2022, and that’s not counting the tens of thousands of death records that the CDC has inexplicably deleted. As much as 15% to 25% of the death reports that could indicate a COVID jab death are missing. Other data show that during the fall of 2021, Millennials, aged 25 to 44, had an 84% increase in excess deaths
CDC Recommends Updated COVID-19 Boosters
The director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on Sept. 1 recommended updated COVID-19 boosters for all Americans aged 12 years and older.
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the director, adopted advice from the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the CDC on vaccine guidance.
“The updated COVID-19 boosters are formulated to better protect against the most recently circulating COVID-19 variant. They can help restore protection that has waned since previous vaccination and were designed to provide broader protection against newer variants,” Walensky said in a statement.
“This recommendation followed a comprehensive scientific evaluation and robust scientific discussion. If you are eligible, there is no bad time to get your COVID-19 booster and I strongly encourage you to receive it,” she added.
The recommendation is for Pfizer’s booster for Americans aged 12 years and up and for Moderna’s booster for American adults.
People are advised to get the updated boosters as soon as two months after their most recent shot, down from five months.
Many institutions, including schools, cite the CDC’s recommendations when imposing vaccine mandates.
The old boosters will no longer be available. The primary series of the vaccines will remain the same, or based on the original Wuhan COVID-19 strain. The updated boosters contain components of the spike protein from the BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants. BA.5 is the dominant strain in the United States at present.
U.S. drug regulators authorized the new boosters this week, based on clinical data from different products and preclinical data from mice.
CANCEL CULTURE
More than 50 officials in President Joe Biden’s administration across a dozen agencies have been involved with efforts to pressure Big Tech companies to crack down on alleged misinformation, according to documents released on Aug. 31.
Senior officials in the U.S. government, including White House lawyer Dana Remus, deputy assistant to the president Rob Flaherty, and onetime White House senior COVID-19 adviser Andy Slavitt, have been in touch with one or more major social media companies to try to get the companies to tighten rules on allegedly false and misleading information on COVID-19, and take action against users who violate the rules, the documents show.
In July 2021, for instance, after Biden said that Facebook was “killing people” by not combating misinformation effectively, an executive at Meta reached out to Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, a Biden appointee, to say that government and Meta teams met after the remarks “to better understand the scope of what the White House expects from us on misinformation going forward.”
The same executive later wrote to Murthy saying, “I wanted to make sure you saw the steps we took just this past week to adjust policies on what we are removing with respect to misinformation, as well as steps taken to further address the ‘disinfo dozen,’” including removing pages linked to the group.
The White House publicly pressured social media companies to take action against a group that officials dubbed the “disinformation dozen,” which a nonprofit claimed were producing the bulk of “anti-vaccine misinformation” on the platforms. Also in July 2021, Murthy said Facebook hadn’t done enough to combat misinformation.
California Lawmakers Pass Bill to Punish Dissenting Doctors for ‘Misinformation’
Legislation that would punish doctors who dissent from the California government’s messaging on COVID-19 has passed the state Legislature. Gov. Gavin Newsom has until Sept. 30 to either veto the bill or sign it into law.
The final amendments to Assembly Bill 2098 (AB 2098), introduced by Assemblyman Evan Low (D-Campbell), were passed by a 56-20 vote on Aug. 30 in the Assembly.
The bill would amend the state’s Business and Professions Code to give the Medical Board of California (MBC) the discretionary power to discipline physicians or surgeons who spread “misinformation or disinformation” related to COVID-19. The MBC currently has the power to punish doctors charged with unprofessional conduct under the Medical Practice Act for violations including gross negligence, incompetence, dishonesty, or corruption.
“Misinformation,” according to the Aug. 23 Senate Floor analysis, means “false or misleading information about the nature and risks of the virus; COVID-19 prevention and treatment; and the development, safety, and effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines.”
In response, Sen. Melissa Melendez (R-Lake Elsinore) told The Epoch Times, “Doctors should be neither controlled nor prohibited by government from giving relevant health information to their patients.”
“Californians deserve to make informed decisions about their health without their doctors being threatened with disciplinary actions over what some state board deems ‘misinformation,’” Melendez said in a text message on Aug. 31.
Speaking out to articulate sincere and honest belief is the best way to break the social phenomenon known as mass formation, whereby many individuals believe in an unreasonable narrative but are unable to think critically of it, said Mattias Desmet, a professor of clinical psychology at Ghent University in Belgium.
A very important characteristic of mass formation is that people gripped by it become radically intolerant of dissonant voices to the point of committing atrocities against the people who disagree with them, including their own children, Desmet told EpochTV’s “Crossroads” program in an Aug. 18 interview.
To illustrate this, the professor provided an example of a mother who, during the Iranian revolution in 1979, reported her son to the government and helped to execute him.
The phenomenon of mass formation has existed in society since ancient times and manifested itself in the Crusades, the French Revolution, and on a large scale in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, said Desmet, a leading expert on mass formation.
The first time a worldwide mass formation emerged was during the coronavirus crisis, Desmet said. “That’s never happened before in history.”
During the COVID-19 pandemic, two new groups emerged in the society: the mass and a group of people that don’t go along with the masses, he said.
The group that doesn’t side with the mass is usually extremely diverse, and it runs through every preexisting social group such as families, companies, friendships, and political parties, Desmet said. “It comes from all social backgrounds, from all professions, from all races and colors.”
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