WORLD NEWS
Putin Orders Russian Nuclear Deterrence Forces to Be on High Alert
President Vladimir Putin put his country’s nuclear deterrence forces on high alert on Sunday, announcing the move in a televised meeting with top ministers, coming as Russian troops and tanks continue to wage a conflict in Ukraine.
“Western countries are not only taking unfriendly actions against our country in the economic area. I’m speaking about the illegitimate sanctions that everyone is well aware of. However, the top officials of the leading NATO countries also make aggressive statements against our country as well,” Putin said on Sunday, according to state-run media.
As a result, Putin said that he has ordered “the minister of Defense and the chief of the general staff [of the Russian armed forces] to transfer the deterrence forces of the Russian army to a special mode of combat duty,” according to televised comments he made. The deterrence forces include command of Russia’s vast arsenal of nuclear weapons.
It is not immediately clear what the “special mode of combat duty” means. Previously, when Putin announced the Russian invasion earlier this week, he warned that if other countries get involved, they will face “consequences they have never seen.”
Later on Sunday, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said via social media that he will send a delegation to the Ukraine-Belarus border to hold talks with Russian officials “without preconditions” about the ongoing conflict. Zelensky said he spoke with Belarus’s leadership and said they would allow the negotiations.
But Putin’s order means Russia’s nuclear weapons prepared for increased readiness to launch, raising the threat that the tensions between Moscow and NATO could boil over into nuclear strikes.
Russia Pursued Deeper Military Relations in Latin America Days Before Ukraine Invasion
During recent official visits to Venezuela, Nicaragua, and Cuba, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Yury Borisov spoke of deepening economic and military ties with the respective socialist and communist governments of its allies in the Americas.
Russia’s chairman of the State Duma, Vyacheslav Volodin, also visited Cuba on Feb. 23—and Nicaragua on Feb. 24—making it Russia’s second official diplomatic meeting with anti-U.S. regimes in Latin America in a week.
Volodin’s state visit occurred within hours of Russia’s attack on Ukraine.
Some experts believe a new Cold War-era stage has been set in the Western Hemisphere, and Latin America political analyst Fernando Menéndez said, “That’s exactly what they want us to think.”
He noted that it makes sense to get Russia’s allies in the U.S.’s backyard on the same page diplomatically and militarily, especially given the full-scale invasion Russia launched on Ukraine.
US Sanctions Putin, Lavrov, Other Russian Officials
The United States on late Feb. 25 imposed sanctions on Russian President Vladimir Putin, Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergei Lavrov, and other members of Russia’s Security Council, marking the latest U.S. actions against Russia following previous rounds of sanctions announced earlier this week since Russia invaded Ukraine.
The European Union, the United Kingdom, and Canada have also announced sanctions on Putin and Lavrov.
In addition to designating Putin and Lavrov, the U.S. State Department designated more individuals it deems directly responsible for the further invasion of Ukraine: Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation Sergei Shoigu and Chief of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, First Deputy Minister of Defense, and General of the Army Valery Gerasimov.
The Treasury Department noted that it is “exceedingly rare” for it to designate a head of state, and that Putin now joins “a very small group that includes despots such as Kim Jong Un, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, and Bashar al-Assad.”
Treasury separately designated 11 members of the Russia Security Council in previous actions.
Ukrainian President Rejects US Offer of Evacuation: ‘I Need Ammunition, Not a Ride’
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rejected an evacuation offer from the United States and is remaining in his country as Russian forces capture more ground, Ukrainian officials said on Feb. 26.
“The fight is here; I need ammunition, not a ride,” Zelensky said in a statement.
A State Department spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an email, “We are aware of President Zelenskyy’s location and are in close contact with him and his team.”
“We continue to provide support to him and the democratically-elected government of Ukraine, but I’m not going to go into security matters,” the spokesperson added.
U.S. President Joe Biden said Friday he spoke with Zelensky following an emergency North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) summit. Biden said he “commended the brave actions of the Ukrainian people who were fighting to defend their country” and “conveyed ongoing economic, humanitarian, and security support being provided by the United States as well as our continued efforts to rally other countries to provide similar assistance.”
The Biden administration has also reportedly asked Congress for $6.4 billion to provide support to Ukraine.
Zelensky spoke to Ukrainians while standing in Kyiv, the capital of the country, on Saturday as fighting broke out in the streets there.
“Good morning Ukrainians. Do not believe fake news. I am here. We will not lay down our weapons. We will defend our country. Our weapons are our strength. This is our land. Our country. Our children. We will protect all of them,” Zelensky said in the video, which he posted on social media.
Germany to Send Anti-Tank Weapons, Missiles to Ukraine in Major Policy Reversal
Germany will provide anti-tank weapons and surface-to-air missiles to Ukraine, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced Saturday.
“The Russian attack marks a turning point. It is our duty to do our best to help Ukraine defend against the invading army of Putin. That’s why we’re supplying 1,000 anti-tank weapons and 500 Stinger missiles to our friends in Ukraine,” he wrote in a Twitter post.
This is a major reversal of Berlin’s longstanding policy of banning weapon exports to battle zones.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky welcomed Germany’s change of stance: “Keep it up, Chancellor Olaf Scholz! Anti-war coalition in action!”
Berlin Saturday authorized NATO partners the Netherlands and Estonia to deliver German-made weapons to Ukraine.
The batch of weapons included 400 RPGs from the Netherlands and old GDR howitzers from Estonia.
Germany has a long-standing policy of not exporting weapons to war zones, rooted partly in its bloody 20th-century history and resulting pacifism. Countries aiming to pass on German weapons exports need to apply for approval in Berlin first.
Scholz had repeatedly referred to this policy in recent weeks when refusing to deliver weapons to Ukraine.
West Inches Closer to ‘Financial Nuclear Option’ of Ejecting Russia From SWIFT
Western partners are inching closer to ejecting Russia from the SWIFT global interbank payments system over the Kremlin’s aggression in Ukraine, according to Lithuania’s prime minister.
“Our goal is that the decision is taken as early as possible. I cannot give a particular date. From what I’m hearing it seems that there is no strong opposition left,” Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte told a news conference on Feb. 26 in Vilnius.
Spurred to action by Russia’s large-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western leaders have pressed ahead with a raft of tough sanctions this week, including targeting Russian banks and restricting the country’s ability to raise capital in international markets.
But they’ve been divided over cutting off Russia’s access to SWIFT, a secure messaging system banks use to settle cross-border payments and that serves as a key mechanism for financing international trade.
A SWIFT ban would make it harder for Russian companies to get paid for goods they export to other countries and they’d find it more difficult to invest overseas or borrow from foreign lenders.
Yet removing Russia from SWIFT would also make it harder for foreign buyers of Russian oil and gas to settle transactions, with implications for energy security and prices. There are also concerns that the move could boost the adoption of rival interbank messaging systems, including one from China.
The Plandemic Enters Final Stage, Real Purpose Exposed
February 21, 2022, the Canadian Parliament approved Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s motion to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to the peaceful trucker protest against vaccine mandates
Under the Act, Canadian banks can seize the personal bank accounts of anyone suspected of participating in or supporting the protest, and these financial surveillance powers are intended to become permanent
February 14, 2022, Canadian finance minister Chrystia Freeland said the government was using the Emergencies Act to broaden Canada’s anti-money-laundering and terrorist financing rules to cover crowdfunding platforms and their payment service providers. The broadened surveillance power requires all digital transactions, including cryptocurrencies, to be reported to the Financial Transactions and Reports Analysis Center of Canada. (Fintrac)
What’s happening in Canada should be a sobering wakeup call for the whole world. Governments intend to control dissent through financial blackmail, which is why they’re also pushing for programmable central bank digital currencies (CBDCs)
Programmable currency is digital cash programmed to ensure it can only be spent on essentials or goods that an employer or government deems to be sensible. In other words, the issuer of the money would have complete control over how you spend your own money, and could punish you for undesirable opinions or behavior by restricting your purchasing ability or seizing your funds altogether
World’s First Plant-Based COVID-19 Vaccine Approved
The Canadian government has become the first country in the world to authorize a plant-based COVID-19 vaccine.
Canadian regulators said on Feb. 24 that Medicago’s two-dose vaccine is approved for adults aged 18 to 64. There is not enough data to give to adults aged 65 and older, officials said.
In clinical trials cited by Health Canada, the vaccine was found to be 71 percent effective against symptomatic infection and 100 percent effective against severe symptoms associated with COVID-19, which is caused by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
“These studies were conducted while there were multiple variants in circulation,” Health Canada claimed. “The data suggest efficacy against multiple variants, including Delta. Clinical trials with Covifenz showed efficacy against the Delta and Gamma variants, and data also suggesting efficacy against Alpha, Lambda, and Mu variants.”
The vaccine, the agency added, appears to produce neutralizing antibodies against Omicron, which is the dominant strain worldwide.
“Health Canada has placed terms and conditions on the authorization,” said the Canadian agency. “Medicago must continue to provide information to Health Canada on the safety and efficacy of the vaccine, including protection against current and emerging variants of concern as soon as it is available.”
It continued: “The vaccine is authorized for use in adults 18 to 64 years of age, based on the data that was reviewed by Health Canada. There was limited enrolment of participants older than 65 years of age in the clinical trials because a large proportion of older individuals were already vaccinated. Medicago is currently gathering data in older individuals to support regulatory authorization for this age group.”
The home-grown vaccine, branded Covifenz, is based on a technology that uses plants in its development process to produce non-infectious particles that mimic the virus. Medicago plans to test the shot as a booster dose and among children, Marc-Andre D’Aoust, an official with Medicago, told Reuters.
Medicago’s vaccine uses products that don’t involve animal products, according to the Canadian Press. It also uses recombinant technology, involving the genetic sequence of a virus, which employs living plants as a host.
The virus-like particles mimic the shape and dimensions of a virus, allowing the human immune system to trigger a response, according to the report.
The government of Canada, which has drawn criticism in recent weeks for how officials handled widespread trucker protests, has approved several vaccines including those based on mRNA technology from Moderna and Pfizer.
Last week, the country cleared Novavax’s protein-based shot for use in adults. Medicago intends to apply for approval of the shot in Japan and is also in talks with the U.S. government and regulatory authorities in Europe and Asia for the vaccine, D’Aoust said.
Elon Musk Says Starlink Activated in Ukraine After Internet Cut During Russian Invasion
Entrepreneur Elon Musk announced Saturday that his company SpaceX’s satellite broadband service, Starlink, has been activated in Ukraine, after the Internet was disrupted in the country due to Russia’s invasion.
“Starlink service is now active in Ukraine. More terminals en route,” Musk wrote on Twitter in response to Ukrainian Vice Prime Minister Mykhailo Fedorov.
“[Elon Musk], while you try to colonize Mars—Russia try to occupy Ukraine! While your rockets successfully land from space—Russian rockets attack Ukrainian civil people!” Fedorov had written to the SpaceX billionaire.
Internet monitors said Saturday that connectivity in the southern and eastern parts of Ukraine were particularly affected by the Russian invasion.
Starlink is a space-based system that SpaceX has been building for years to bring high-speed broadband Internet to underserved areas of the world, such as rural or hard-to-serve places where fiber optic cables and cell towers do not reach. It can also serve as a backup if natural disasters affect communication.
SpaceX has almost 2,000 Starlink satellites orbiting the earth at an altitude of 340 miles (550 kilometers). The company hopes to have 4,425 Starlink satellites in orbit by 2024.
Hong Kong’s COVID-19 Infections Continue to Soar, Medical System on Verge of Collapsing
Hong Kong’s COVID-19 outbreak continues to rapidly worsen, with infected cases exceeding 10,000 per day two days in a row.
With the city following China’s zero-COVID-19 policy and many concerned residents testing positive for the virus, the city’s medical system and facilities are reaching their limit.
Doctors say that while most patients have mild or no symptoms, thousands of people have been flocking to the city’s hospitals seeking medical assistance after testing positive.
“This is a big problem,” said David Chan, who heads the union Hospital Authority Employees Alliance. “The government messaging has been that COVID is a very dangerous disease … so it is very hard to blame the people.”
The government has also been requiring that residents who test positive and their close contacts to isolate in designated quarantine facilities.
On Feb. 26, Hong Kong authorities reported 17,063 new COVID-19 cases, 66 more deaths, and 40 people in critical condition. Except for 6 imported cases, all others were from local transmission.
On Feb. 25, there were 10,010 new cases reported, setting a new record in Hong Kong since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. It was the first time that the number of cases in a single day exceeded 10,000, of which 10,006 were from local transmission.
Edwin Tsui, director of the Hong Kong Centre for Health Protection, said at the time the total number of confirmed cases in the city had reached over 126,000.
Sofia Chan, director of the Hong Kong Food and Health Bureau, said that the fifth Omicron-led wave of the COVID-19 pandemic in Hong Kong has been a lot worse than previous waves of infections, with more than 81,000 new confirmed cases so far, accounting for 86 percent of the city’s total cases. She added that experts do not believe infections have reached their peak, with some experts predicting up to 180,000 daily cases in March.
Tsui said that the current spread of COVID-19 in hospitals was most concerning. On Feb. 25, there were confirmed cases reported in 50 hospital rooms, and a total of 470 hospital rooms with COVID-19 patients. In this fifth wave of COVID-19 infections, 1,943 patients in Hong Kong hospitals and more than 600 hospital employees have been infected.
As the COVID-19 outbreak continues to spread, many arrivals at emergency wards have had to wait outside the hospitals due to a lack of manpower.
The Hong Kong Hospital Authority warned for two consecutive days that the emergency department of Queen Elizabeth Hospital was severely overloaded.
Chan Kwok Shing, chairman of the Hospital Authority Employees Alliance, also warned of a similar situation at the Caritas Medical Centre’s ER department. There, the two employees on duty during the night shifts are unable to provide enough care for the 80 patients in the ward. He also expressed concern over the health of his colleagues, and said he does not know how long they can last.
Kwok Kin-an, assistant professor at Chinese University of Hong Kong’s School of Public Health and Primary Care, told local media on Feb. 26 that the medical system is overloaded, and urged the government to continue exploring the feasibility of allowing some patients with mild to moderate COVID-19 symptoms to be treated and isolated at home.
U.S. NEWS, POLITIC & GOVERNMENT
Nations around the world reacted to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine by banning Russia-owned aircraft from their skies.
As the European Union and other nations, such as Canada, announced bans, American skies were still open.
As of Sunday afternoon, Reuters reported that the U.S. was still considering what to do.
“Our European skies are open skies,” Belgian Prime Minister Alexander De Croo said, the The Washington Post reported. “They’re open for those who connect people, not for those who seek to brutally aggress.”
As of Sunday, Italy, Norway, France, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, Belgium, Ireland, and the Netherlands were barring Russian planes. Britain, Germany, Romania, Spain, Hungary, Bulgaria, Greece, Moldova, Luxembourg, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia had also acted to ban Russian aircraft, leaving Russian ally Belarus and Switzerland the only European nations not joining in the ban, according to the Post.
White House Responds After Putin Raises Russia’s Nuclear Alert
White House and NATO officials on Sunday responded to a statement issued by Russian President Vladimir Putin that he would activate his strategic deterrence forces, which includes his country’s nuclear arsenal.
“If you combine this rhetoric with what they’re doing on the ground in Ukraine, waging war against an independent sovereign nation, conducting a fully-fledged invasion of Ukraine, this adds to the seriousness of the situation,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg told CNN.
The secretary-general added: “That’s the reason why we both provide support to Ukraine, but also why we over the last weeks and months have significantly increased the presence of NATO in the eastern part” as “allies are now stepping up with more troops, more ships, more planes, and why we also have to realize that we are now faced with a new normal for our security.”
On Sunday morning, Putin said in a televised address with his top ministers that he would increase the readiness of his deterrence forces. The move, he said, was in response to European Union sanctions and economic penalties, including removing some Russian banks from the SWIFT banking information service.
“Top officials in leading NATO countries have allowed themselves to make aggressive comments about our country, therefore I hereby order the minister of Defense and the chief of the general staff [of the Russian Armed Forces] to place the Russian Army Deterrence Force on combat alert,” Putin said.
Later Sunday, Ukrainian officials said they would send a delegation to hold talks along the Ukraine-Belarus border.
“This is really a pattern that we’ve seen from President Putin through the course of this conflict, which is manufacturing threats that don’t exist in order to justify further aggression—and the global community and the American people should look at it through that prism,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told ABC on Sunday, adding that the United States is prepared to send more economic, humanitarian, and defensive military aid.
“I would note that the sanctions that we announced yesterday put Russia on par with Iran, cutting them off from a banking system with the global community,” Psaki also remarked.
Rep. Jim Banks: Putin Was Waiting for ‘Weak American President’ Like Biden
Republican Indiana Rep. Jim Banks said Friday that Russian President Vladimir Putin waited to invade Ukraine until he could work around a “weak American president” like Joe Biden.
The Indiana congressman weighed in on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine during a Friday interview with The Daily Signal, critiquing Biden’s “weak” sanctions of Russia thus far.
“If America is truly serious about backing off Russia from invading Ukraine and causing this conflict to go any further or removing them from Ukraine, to begin with, then why not hit Russia where it counts?” asked Banks, proposing four solutions to “very quickly and easily cripple Russia’s economy.”
“We could sanction their energy-dependent economy, which the sanctions don’t do,” he said. “We could remove them from the SWIFT banking system, the international banking system. We could sanction Putin directly, hit him where it hurts. And we could go after the oligarchs around Russia, around Putin, that prop him up.”
Banks’ fourth suggestion is to name Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism for “helping Hezbollah and a lot of our other enemies.”
“This president, who is so weak in this moment, has refused to do all of those things, and that’s why we have this conflict continuing to get worse,” he said.
The Indiana congressman said that he believes the Biden administration’s withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan contributed to the present crisis, telling The Daily Signal, “I served in Afghanistan. It still makes me sick to my stomach what happened last summer.”
“Truly, a debacle that caused so much embarrassment for America on the world stage,” he added, “and make no mistake about it, Putin was waiting for a moment like this. He was waiting for a weak American president.”
Former President Donald Trump made the world more safe and secure through his “strong American foreign policy,” Banks said.
Trump announces another run at CPAC: ‘We’ll do it again’
Leading Republicans spent much of three days avoiding Donald Trump’s chief grievances or ignoring him altogether as they unified behind a midterm message designed to win back the voters the polarizing former president alienated while in office.
That changed Saturday night.
Facing thousands of cheering activists at the Conservative Political Action Conference’s annual meeting, Trump falsely blamed his 2020 election loss on widespread voter fraud, for which there is no evidence. As Russian troops advanced on the Ukrainian capital in an invasion widely condemned by Western leaders, Trump described Russian President Vladimir Putin as “smart.”
“Of course he’s smart,” Trump said, doubling down on praise of the Russian leader that many other Republicans have avoided in the wake of the invasion. “But the real problem is our leaders are dumb. Dumb. So dumb.”
While Trump expressed support for the Ukrainian people and called the country’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a “brave man,” he also noted his ties with other leading autocrats. He specifically pointed to his friendly relationships with Xi Jinping of China and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.
Trump then left no doubt he is the most powerful voice in Republican politics by indicating he will run for president a third time in 2024. “We did it twice, and we’ll do it again,” Trump said. “We’re going to be doing it again, a third time.”
Jan. 6 Defendant Takes His Own Life Days Before Sentencing
Matthew Perna, 37, was prosecuted for his 20-minute walk through the US Capitol
Matthew L. Perna, a Pennsylvania man prosecuted for his 20-minute walk through the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, took his own life on Feb. 25 due to “a broken heart” and a justice system that “killed his spirit and his zest for life,” his family said.
Biden Nominates Ketanji Brown Jackson to Supreme Court
President Joe Biden has nominated U.S. Circuit Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court.
Biden, a Democrat, announced the nomination on Feb. 25. If confirmed, Jackson will fill a seat that is set to be vacated by Justice Stephen Breyer.
Jackson, 51, was confirmed by the Senate in June 2021 to the post she now holds after being nominated by Biden. Before that, she was unanimously confirmed by the upper chamber to serve as a U.S. District Court judge in Washington.
Biden in a statement called Jackson “one of our nation’s brightest legal minds” and said she’ll be “an exceptional justice.”
Biden was scheduled to deliver remarks and introduce Jackson at 2 p.m. Eastern in Washington after meeting with NATO leaders and receiving the president’s daily brief.
Biden restricted his search to black women, a choice supported by many Democrats but described as racist by Republicans. Biden conducted “a rigorous process” to identify Breyer’s replacement, according to the White House.
If confirmed, Jackson would be the first black woman to serve on the nation’s highest court, the sixth woman, and Biden’s first nominee.
Who Is Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s Supreme Court Nominee?
Born Ketanji Onyika Brown, Jackson turns 52 this Sept. 14. She would replace retiring Justice Stephen Breyer, who will be 84 on Aug. 15. Jackson previously clerked at the Supreme Court for Breyer, who sings her praises. She is related by marriage to former Speaker of the House Paul Ryan (R-Wisc.), who ran for vice president in 2012 opposing the incumbent at the time, Biden. After hearing of the nomination, Ryan said in a Tweet: “Our politics may differ, but my praise for Ketanji’s intellect, for her character, and for her integrity, is unequivocal.”
Born in the nation’s capital, Jackson moved with her family to Florida when she was young. Her father was chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board. Her mother was principal at a public magnet school. She attended the same high school as Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, where she was student body president and excelled in debating. She graduated from Harvard College and Harvard Law School. She was a reporter and researcher at Time magazine, worked at four elite law firms, and served in three federal judicial clerkships, as well as a lawyer and commissioner on the U.S. Sentencing Commission as it moved to reduce sentences for drug crimes. In an experience not typical for Supreme Court justices, Jackson worked for two years as a public defender, reports Amy Howe at SCOTUSblog.
When the Washington Post reviewed cases Jackson handled as a federal defender, it reported “she won uncommon victories against the government that shortened or erased lengthy prison terms.”
Her experience as a public defender is a selling point for Democrats. “Before Biden became president, only about 1 percent of federal appellate judges had previously done the kind of work Jackson has done,” reports Joel Mathis at The Week.
Jackson was one of the lawyers on a 2001 friend-of-the-court brief arguing in favor of a Massachusetts law that formed a floating “buffer zone” around pedestrians and automobiles nearing abortion clinics. A federal appeals court allowed the law to stand.
Jackson is now a judge on the influential U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has served as a kind of farm team for the high court. Eight other judges from the D.C Circuit have gone on to the Supreme Court, among them the late Antonin Scalia and Ruth Bader Ginsburg. The current Supreme Court justices to come from that court are Clarence Thomas, John Roberts, and Brett Kavanaugh, Ballotpedia reports.
Biden nominated Jackson to the D.C. appellate court on April 19, 2021, and the U.S. Senate confirmed her the following June 14 on a 53-44 vote. She replaced Merrick Garland, who went on to become Biden’s attorney general.
Before that, Jackson was nominated by then-President Barack Obama to be a judge of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. She was confirmed by senators on a voice vote. She served in that post from March 2013 to June 2021.
While a district court judge, Jackson found that parts of three of then-President Donald Trump’s executive orders were in conflict with federal employees’ rights to collective bargaining. Her decision was unanimously reversed by the D.C. Circuit.
In 2019, Jackson rejected Trump White House arguments that executive privilege shielded White House Counsel Don McGahn from a congressional subpoena in connection with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. Jackson wrote in a court opinion that “Presidents are not kings” and that for a president’s senior aides “absolute immunity from compelled congressional process simply does not exist.” Trump’s assertion that he could prevent top advisers from testifying “is a proposition that cannot be squared with core constitutional values, and for this reason alone, it cannot be sustained.” Later, congressional investigators and McGahn’s lawyers cut a deal and he agreed to be questioned in a closed-door session, according to a media outlet’s analysis.
On the same court, the same year, Jackson temporarily prevented the Trump administration’s moving forward with plans to enlarge a program that expedited deportation of illegal aliens. Previously, the program had primarily been used to speed up removals of those who were detained shortly after illegally entering the country from Mexico. It bothered Jackson that the government seemed not to be factoring in how the expanded program would affect illegals and their families who had been residing in the country for as long as two years.
“There is no question in this Court’s mind that an agency cannot possibly conduct reasoned, non-arbitrary decision making concerning policies that might impact real people and not take such real life circumstances into account,” Jackson wrote. The D.C. appeals court, that she would later be elevated to, overturned her decision, finding that the Homeland Security secretary had a free hand to ramp up the program.
Also in 2019, Jackson sided with the Trump administration, turning away environmentalists’ arguments that the administration, in its zeal to expand the border wall with Mexico, had failed to follow environmental laws before moving forward with construction.
Soon after arriving on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, Jackson ruled in favor of government employee unions who were fighting a Trump-era regulation that gave government agencies a freer hand to make changes in the workplace.
It is unclear when the Senate will take up Jackson’s nomination.
Former presidential candidate and celebrated neurosurgeon Ben Carson says he is disappointed with how President Joe Biden selected Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
“When we start making the criteria for public positions something that people have no control over—they have no control over their race … it goes against all the work, the blood that has been shed by people who are trying to achieve equality, who are advocating, people like Dr. Martin Luther King,” Carson told The Daily Signal in an interview Friday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.
Two years ago, during his presidential campaign, Biden promised that if given the opportunity, he would appoint a black woman to the Supreme Court.
Earlier Friday, the president nominated Jackson, a judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, to succeed retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Carson, without commenting on Jackson’s qualifications, said it is troubling to see a president nominate someone based upon his or her race.
“People will assume that she got the position because of her color and not because of her qualifications,” Carson told The Daily Signal. “That may not be the case, but that will be a natural assumption.”
“We’ve made so much progress that there really is no need … the fact of the matter is there are so many qualified black women, Hispanic women, all kinds of people in our society, and the natural process is going to land them in positions,” Carson added. “You don’t have to do something that violates the whole concept of fairness and equality.”
As a small crowd watched Carson’s conversation with “The Daily Signal Podcast,” he also shared his opinions on Biden’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“You can’t mix science and medicine with politics,” Carson, the former secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development in the Trump administration, said.
As a distinguished neurosurgeon and respected statesman, Carson has a unique perspective on the fields of medicine and politics.
When it comes to the Biden administration’s handling of COVID-19, he said, it “actually saddens me to say that the way that they’ve handled it has created tremendous distrust of government agencies like the CDC [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention] and National Institutes of Health.”
Carson said this distrust “could be very detrimental” in the future should another pandemic or similarly serious situation occur, and Americans don’t believe the words of their elected officials.
The Biden administration’s efforts to vaccinate children against COVID-19, and its failure to acknowledge natural immunity, have fostered such distrust, he said.
It’s especially concerning that the Biden administration “won’t recognize natural immunity,”
Whistleblower Sues Delaware Over Election Laws That Unconstitutionally Extend Voting Time
An election integrity group is representing a state government whistleblower who claims in a new lawsuit that Delaware is playing fast and loose with state election laws, enforcing statutes that violate the state’s constitution.
The Delaware General Assembly passed a law in 2019 that allowed early voting in person at least 10 days before the day of a general election. The state constitution stipulates that the general election must be held on one specific day only.
A Delaware statute also allows registrants to apply to the Department of Elections for something called “permanent absentee status,” even though the state constitution only allows absentee voting with strict restrictions on eligibility.
This law violates the constitution because it grants an individual eligibility to vote by absentee ballot in perpetuity, without consideration of the applicant’s eligibility in each subsequent election, according to Michael Mennella, an inspector of elections who argues he is being forced to choose between enforcing the Constitution of Delaware or the unconstitutional statutes.
Sen. Inhofe Announces That He Will Retire at End of 2022
Sen. Jim Inhofe (R-Okla.) has confirmed that he will retire at the end of 2022, confirming scattered reports that such an announcement was imminent.
“It is bittersweet, but with a clear heart, that Kay and I announce that at the end of the year, I will retire from the United States Senate,” Inhofe, who will turn 88 in November, said in a statement posted on Twitter.
“Going into public service was never in my plan,” Inhofe said. “Then, one day, I needed a dock permit. I had to visit 27 government offices to get a single dock permit, and realized if we wanted the government to work for the people, not against the people, it was up to us to make a change.”
Inhofe, who started his career in the mid-1960s in the Oklahoma legislature, and eventually rose to the U.S. Senate in 1994, said, “Throughout our years there has been one constant—making the world safer and better for our 20 kids and grandkids and the next generation of Oklahomans.
“It is now time for that next generation of Oklahomans to have the opportunity to serve the state in the U.S. Senate.”
His imminent retirement, Inhofe insisted it “is not the end of the road. I have work yet to do for Oklahomans over these next nine months, including passing the National Defense Authorization Act and holding the Biden administration accountable.
“Thank you to everyone who has trusted me with your vote over these many years. It has been an honor to serve you in the Senate. May God bless you and God bless Oklahoma.”
In a statement posted immediately following Inhofe’s retirement, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) said, “When Senator Jim Inhofe retires, the Senate will lose one of its foremost experts on defense policy, and Oklahoma will lose one of its fiercest advocates. I am glad our friend will continue to serve with us through the end of this Congress.”
McConnell continued, “from improving transportation infrastructure to harnessing abundant American energy, the fruits of Jim’s labors are recognizable across Oklahoma and across the country.”
“But Jim’s legacy of consequential public service extends even beyond our borders,” McConnell said of Inhofe, who has long served on the Senate Armed Forces Committee.
“His advocacy for his fellow veterans and for the men and women serving today in uniform has helped make America safer and our power more respected around the world. … And his commitment to rock-solid conservative principles has helped improved accountability and efficiency at the Department of Defense on behalf of American
taxpayers.”
McConnell’s statement concluded, “while the Senate will miss one of its foremost experts on defense policy, I am glad our friend will continue to serve with us through the end of this Congress.”
Oscar-Nominated ‘M*A*S*H’ Star Sally Kellerman Dies From Heart Failure
Sally Kellerman, an actress known for playing U.S. Army Major Margaret “Hot Lips” Houlihan in director Robert Altman’s 1970 film “M*A*S*H,” died on Thursday. She was 84.
The Oscar and Emmy nominated actor died of heart failure at her home in the Woodlands Hills section of Los Angeles, her manager and publicist Alan Eichler said.
In addition to her work in “M*A*S*H,” she also guest-starred in a number of TV series, including “Star Trek.” She also made appearances in “The Twilight Zone” and the American anthology series “The Outer Limits.”
One of her last roles was in the fourth season of the web series “Decker”—where she played a parody of former First Lady Hillary Clinton. The veteran award-winning actress had a career of more than 60 years in film and television.
Kellerman’s appearance as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in the second pilot of the original “Star Trek” series: “Where No Man Has Gone Before” produced in 1965 won the actress her cult status among fans. But for many fans, she will always be best remembered as Houlihan, a straitlaced, by-the-book Army nurse who is tormented by rowdy doctors during the Korean War in the army comedy “M*A*S*H.”
While Americans are preoccupied with the ongoing crises in Ukraine and Canada, Senate Republicans joined Senate Democrats to quietly pass a “continuing resolution” to fund the federal government for another three weeks.
The move averts a shutdown of the federal government, but it also highlights the insanity of the way Congress decides how to spend our money.
Rather than creating separate bills to fund the various agencies and branches of the federal government, our wise and responsible leaders in Washington pass “omnibus” bills.
These spending packages are thousands of pages long, so none of our “representatives” actually read them. This is part of the reason congresspeople love omnibus bills. Politicians can vote for a bill but claim that they aren’t voting for all of it. Omnibus bills provide political cover to both Democrats and Republicans, who claim to have been forced to vote in favor of an omnibus bill despite all the useless and irresponsible spending.
What do omnibus bills have to do with the latest “continuing resolution” that temporarily funds the federal government? Since omnibus bills are so large and so complicated, they require weeks to hammer out. Republicans and Democrats negotiate the deal behind closed doors as they decide which concessions they’ll grant to the other party.
In order to give themselves time for these negotiations before the yearly funding runs out, they pass continuing resolutions to keep paying federal employees and funding federal programs until they can pass a more “permanent” measure.
Here’s the real problem with omnibus spending bills: there’s no incentive to ever cut spending. Republicans demand that their priorities be funded. Democrats demand in the same thing. In the end, both parties force the American people to pay for every priority, and the federal government grows larger and more powerful as a result.
No federal official can fix this problem. They don’t even believe it’s a problem. That’s why we must look to the people and the states, and our most powerful tool is a Convention of States.
An Article V Convention of States is called and controlled by the states and has the power to propose constitutional amendments. These amendments can limit the scope and size of the federal government and force Congress to be fiscally responsible.
How? By requiring a balanced budget without raising taxes. By forcing Congress to pass spending bills one issue at a time. By doing away with pork barrel spending and by forcing Congress to cut useless “social welfare” programs.
We must take action now, before Congress spends our country into the ground. It’s not too late, but we must come together and convince our state legislatures to call the first-ever Article V Convention of States.
Seventeen states are on board. We only need 17 more to make it happen. Sign the petition below to join the movement!
‘Big Mistake’ for Biden Administration to Shut Down China Initiative: Trump
The recent move by the Biden administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ) to terminate the China Initiative is a “big mistake,” former President Donald Trump said at a Feb. 26 press conference prior to his speech at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
Trump also issued remarks on the current situation in Ukraine during the press conference.
The DOJ announced on Feb. 23 that it was ending the China Initiative program, which was spearheading an unprecedented crackdown against economic espionage, trade theft, and technology transfer by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) against the United States. The program was launched in 2018 by the Trump administration.
“I’m surprised to see that. I don’t think we should be doing that. … I think it’s a big mistake,” Trump said of the DOJ’s decision to terminate the program, in response to a question from Epoch Times senior editor Jan Jekielek. “China, as you know, is a very big player, but it can be a very dangerous player in so many different ways.”
DOJ Assistant Attorney General Matthew Olsen told a press briefing on Feb. 23 that the China Initiative was designed as a coherent approach to the challenges posed by the CCP and was “driven by genuine national security concerns.”
Under the initiative, the FBI was conducting roughly 1,000 investigations by February 2020 across 56 regional offices into China’s attempted theft of trade secrets, FBI Director Christopher Wray said at the time. China has also been implicated in about 80 percent of all economic espionage charges brought forward by the DOJ, and the country is connected to 60 percent of all trade-secret theft cases. The initiative has led to dozens of prosecutions since its inception, according to the DOJ’s 2021 year-end report.
But there have been growing concerns from the civil rights community that the program was fielding “a narrative of intolerance and bias,” Olsen said. He also said the academic and scientific community had raised concerns over the department’s prosecutions of certain fraud cases involving research grants, alleging that the prosecutions could ultimately “lead to a chilling atmosphere for scientists and scholars” and threaten academic research and economic development in the long term.
As such, the program will be replaced by a broader, new approach to tackle threats “from a range of hostile nation-states,” and the DOJ “will continue to prioritize” threats from the CCP, Olsen said.
Secret Service Unable to Locate Multiple Years of Hunter Biden Travel Records
The U.S. Secret Service (USSS) says it can’t locate years of records on communications regarding agents guarding Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden.
Hunter Biden was a Secret Service protectee from Jan. 29, 2009, to July 8, 2014, and traveled extensively during that time, including to Russia, China, and India, a congressional investigation found.
As part of the probe, which is ongoing, Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) have sought records from the Secret Service in the lawmakers’ roles as the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and ranking member of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, respectively.
The Secret Service provided 261 heavily redacted pages (pdf) concerning Hunter Biden’s travel, but didn’t provide any records from 2010, 2011, or 2013.
“The USSS’s lack of communications during these years raises questions given that USSS travel records show that Hunter Biden made trips to China and other destinations around the world, including, Russia, Italy, Spain, and Mexico,” Grassley and Johnson wrote in a letter to USSS Director James Murray in January.
Murray responded in a letter dated Feb. 14 that was obtained by The Epoch Times.
He said a search for the records “did not yield communications for the years 2010, 2011, or 2013.”
The USSS and an attorney for Hunter Biden didn’t respond to requests for comment.
Murray said the Secret Service and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, “remain committed to working with Congress to meet its oversight responsibilities and be responsive to requests for information.”
Chris Farrell, director of investigations and research for Judicial Watch, told The Epoch Times that it’s “highly improbable” that the USSS lost the records in question.
“I would not be surprised if there was political pressure on the service to withhold the records because it would be politically damaging to President Biden,” Farrell said.
Judicial Watch, one of the most prolific record-seeking nonprofits, has also sought Hunter Biden’s travel records from the Secret Service and obtained some of them through a Freedom of Information Act request. Those records showed the countries and territories that he visited while under the agency’s protection.
The records the senators and Judicial Watch are now seeking would likely shed more light on the younger Biden’s actions during that period of time, according to Farrell.
Both Judicial Watch and Sens. Grassley and Johnson say that Hunter Biden leveraged his father’s position as vice president to benefit himself personally, even conducting business while on trips with his father.
“Past performance doesn’t always guarantee exact reproduction or the same details, but I think it’s reasonable, given the pattern and practice, that we would see more of the same—lots of instances where Hunter was traveling with his father and essentially leveraging his father’s position as vice president for his own personal business benefit,” Farrell said.
Judicial Watch could file a lawsuit over the records.
14 Highlights From America’s Biggest Conservative Conference
What are the most important issues facing Americans today? How should we respond to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine? How is President Joe Biden’s term going so far?
The Daily Signal team attended the Conservative Political Action Conference, held Feb. 24-27 in Orlando, Florida. There we interviewed dozens of top conservative newsmakers, including lawmakers and former White House officials, getting their insights on the pandemic, the Jan. 6 committee, critical race theory, and much more.
Check out some of our interview and speech coverage highlights below. And if you want to watch all the interviews, check out our Rumble or YouTube Daily Signal channels.
- Rep. Jim Jordan Talks Jan. 6 Committee
- Rep. Andy Biggs on Our Border Crisis
- Mike Pompeo on Russia’s Attack Against Ukraine
- Rep. Jim Banks: Putin Was Waiting for ‘Weak American President’
- Peter McCullough Talks Early Treatment for COVID-19
- Hogan Gidley: Trump Administration Faced ‘Real Witch Hunt’ From Media
- Trump: If I Was President, Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine, a ‘Horrific Disaster,’ Wouldn’t Have Happened
- Rep. Ted Budd: Vaccine Mandates Violate Constitution
- Jason Rantz Talks Demise of Seattle, Portland
- Nigel Farage on Why NATO Matters Now
- Michele Tafoya Discusses Being Courageous Enough to Speak Out
- Matt Whitaker Criticizes Biden’s Justice Department
- Texas AG Ken Paxton Calls Hormone Treatment for Kids ‘Child Abuse’
- Sen. Marco Rubio: Marxists Lie
Federal Judge Rules Against High School’s ‘Patently Unconstitutional’ Racial Admission Policy
A federal judge has ruled against an elite Virginia high school’s revised admissions policy pushing for “racial equity,” judging it discriminatory against Asian American students.
The Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology (TJ), which focuses on the fields of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, is a Governor’s School in the Fairfax County Public Schools system. It requires prospective students to go through a rigorous entrance exam; Asian students have secured the most admissions, making up roughly 72 percent of students in the 2020–21 school year.
Before the new admission system was introduced in fall 2020, applicants for TJ were required to fulfill five criteria: They had to reside in one of the five participating school divisions, have a minimum core 3.0 grade point average, be enrolled in eighth grade, be enrolled in or have completed Algebra I, and pay a $100 application fee.
The applicants then had to go through standardized tests—ACT Inspire Reading, ACT Inspire Science, and Quant-Q. Students who attained minimum scores moved forward into a semifinalist pool from which they were granted admission based on their test scores, GPA, teacher recommendations, and responses to a problem-solving essay and three writing prompts.
In the new system, the standardized tests were removed and the minimum requirements to apply altered. To be eligible for admissions, students had to meet four new criteria. They needed a GPA of 3.5, they had to register in an honors science course, enroll in a full-year honors Algebra I course or higher, and sign up for at least one more honors course or the Young Scholars program.
The next-stage evaluation was changed to a one-round holistic evaluation. It looked at the student’s GPA, a student portrait sheet, a problem-solving essay, and “experience factors” that include attendance at a middle school deemed historically underrepresented at TJ, and eligibility for free and reduced-price meals.
As a consequence, the proportion of Asian American students admitted to TJ declined. For the class of 2025, the first year of class at the school under the new admission policy, the number of students admitted increased by 64.
However, TJ admitted 56 fewer Asian American students compared to the prior year, according to a lawsuit filed against the school by a coalition of students, alumni, and parents represented by the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF).
For each of the previous five years, Asian Americans comprised at least 65 percent of the admitted class, with a 73 percent admission rate for the 2024 class. But for the 2025 class, the admission rate for Asian American students slipped to 54 percent.
In the judgment, U.S. District Court Judge Claude Hilton ruled that the board instituted “a system that does not treat all applicants to TJ equally,” warning that the move would have a “substantial” racial impact.
“It is clear that Asian-American students are disproportionately harmed by the Board’s decision to overhaul TJ admissions. Currently and in the future, Asian-American applicants are disproportionately deprived of a level playing field in competing for both allocated and unallocated seats,” Hilton wrote.
“Placing the Board’s actions in historical context leaves little doubt that its decision to overhaul the TJ admissions process was racially motivated,” he added, pointing out that racial balancing for its own sake was “patently unconstitutional” and that the school board can’t transform racial balancing into a “compelling interest” just by relabeling it as “diversity.”
The Texas Military Department and Department of Public Safety officials issued a warning to law enforcement officers and soldiers working along the state’s border with Mexico. The warnings of possible retaliation from members of the Gulf Cartel follow the arrest in recent days of a key leader.
The Texas Military Department (TMD) command staff and officials with the Texas Department of Public Safety issued a warning to the National Guard soldiers and DPS troopers working the border security mission about possible retaliation from the Matamoros faction of the Gulf Cartel, Operation Lone Star, according to information obtained by Breitbart Texas. The warnings follow the arrest of Alfredo “El Contador” Cardenas, the head of the Gulf Cartel organization in Matamoros, Tamaulipas, and Obed Pena, on Saturday, as first reported by Breitbart Texas.
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
What You Need to Know About Vax Passports, Digital IDs, CBDCs
A key concern that vaccine passports bring to the fore is related to privacy. If implemented, they will strip us of most of the privacy we’re used to, as they are a precursor to digital identity and a far more invasive digital surveillance apparatus
Another key concern is that vaccine passports and digital IDs can force compliance in any area of life
The vaccine passport is a platform to which they can add a digital ID and central bank digital currencies (CBDCs). This would give them near-total control over your life, as they can “cancel” your existence and ability to live if you dissent
If we accept vaccine passports, we’re basically giving our consent to everything that comes after
Another global economic crisis is a mathematical inevitability, so work on improving your resiliency, food security and self-reliance through community
‘All About Money’: GOP Lawmaker Slams US Corporations For Aligning with CCP’s Values
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said he has “tremendous concerns” that American corporations have aligned themselves with the values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“You see some companies that tout all this social justice here in the United States, but they certainly turned their eye towards China,” said Wenstrup.
“It’s all about money,” he said. “There’s no patriotism involved with these, especially these companies that are American born and bred.”
“It’s a tremendous concern that I have,” Wenstrup said in a recent interview on “Capitol Report” program on NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times. “And I think all Americans should have.”
Rep. Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) said he has “tremendous concerns” that American corporations have aligned themselves with the values of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
“You see some companies that tout all this social justice here in the United States, but they certainly turned their eye towards China,” said Wenstrup.
“It’s all about money,” he said. “There’s no patriotism involved with these, especially these companies that are American born and bred.”
“It’s a tremendous concern that I have,” Wenstrup said in a recent interview on “Capitol Report” program on NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times. “And I think all Americans should have.”
Freedom believes that his activism cost him his NBA career. Since October, the player has publicly called out the CCP on a range of human rights violations, including its suppressions in Xinjiang and Tibet, and the forced organ harvesting against prisoners of conscience.
After Freedom’s first tweet in October criticizing the CCP for its repression in Tibet, Chinese internet giant Tencent swiftly pulled its video broadcast of all Celtics games from the platform.
Tencent has exclusive rights streaming NBA in China, and the five-year deal is worth $1.5 billion.
“Apparently, the NBA makes quite a bit of money by having them seen in China, so if you say anything about China, and you’re in the NBA, you’re going to get squashed,” Wenstrup told NTD, an affiliate of The Epoch Times.
HEALTH
Study Links Cellphone Radiation to Heart and Brain Tumors
In 2011, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer research arm of the World Health Organization, declared cellphones a Group 2B “possible carcinogen”
Two government-funded studies brought renewed attention to this link in 2016. The studies, in which 3,000 animals were exposed to the type of radiation emitted by 2G and 3G cellphones, were said to be the most extensive to date
Male rats were more likely to develop heart tumors, while female rats and newborns exposed to high levels of radiation during pregnancy and lactation were more likely to have low body weight
DNA damage and damage to heart tissue was also observed in both male and female rats but not mice. Other types of tumors occurred in both types of animals, including brain, prostate, liver and pancreatic tumors
The primary hazard of cellphone radiation is not brain cancer but, rather, systemic cellular and mitochondrial damage, which threatens health in general and can contribute to any number of health problems and chronic diseases
As COVID-19 Slogs On, Seniors Suffer Growing Malaise
Many older adults report their fortitude is waning while others find new sources of support and determination
Despite recent signals that COVID-19’s grip on the country may be easing, many older adults are struggling with persistent malaise, heightened by the spread of the highly contagious Omicron coronavirus variant. Even those who adapted well initially are saying that their fortitude is waning or wearing thin.
Like younger people, they’re beset by uncertainty about what the future may bring. But added to that is an especially painful feeling that opportunities that will never come again are being squandered. Time is running out, and death is drawing ever nearer.
“Folks are becoming more anxious and angry and stressed and agitated because this has gone on for so long,” said Katherine Cook, chief operating officer of Monadnock Family Services in Keene, New Hampshire, which operates a community mental health center that serves older adults.
Henry Kimmel, a clinical psychologist in Sherman Oaks, California, who focuses on older adults, said, “I’ve never seen so many people who say they’re hopeless and have nothing to look forward to.”
To be sure, older adults have cause for concern. Throughout the pandemic, they’ve been at much higher risk of becoming seriously ill and dying than other age groups. Even seniors who are fully vaccinated and boosted remain vulnerable: More than two-thirds of vaccinated people hospitalized from June 2021 through September 2021 with breakthrough infections were 65 or older.
The constant stress of wondering, “Am I going to be OK?” and “What’s the future going to look like?” has been hard for Kathleen Tate, 74, a retired nurse in Mount Vernon, Washington. She has late-onset post-polio syndrome and severe osteoarthritis.
“I guess I had the expectation that once we were vaccinated the world would open up again,” said Tate, who lives alone. Although that happened for a while this past summer, she largely stopped going out as first the Delta and Omicron variants swept through her area. Now she said she feels “a quiet desperation.”
This isn’t something that Tate talks about with friends, although she’s hungry for human connection.
“I see everybody dealing with extraordinary stresses in their lives, and I don’t want to add to that by complaining or asking to be comforted,” she said.
Tate described a feeling of “being worn out” and “flatness” that saps her motivation.
“It’s almost too much effort to reach out to people and try to pull myself out of that place,” she said, admitting that she’s watching too much TV and drinking too much alcohol. “It’s just like I want to mellow out and go numb, instead of bucking up and trying to pull myself together.”
Pine Bark Extract Found Effective To Naturally Improve Varicose And Spider Veins Following Pregnancy
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ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
Sen. Josh Hawley Proposes Congress Reopen US Energy Production ‘Full Throttle’
Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) on Feb. 28 vowed to introduce legislation that will reopen energy production in the United States “full throttle” as the cost of oil continues to skyrocket amid record inflation and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Announcing the legislation, dubbed The American Energy Independence Act of 2022, Hawley said on Twitter that the bill will “reverse President Biden’s shutdown of the American energy sector and return American energy to full production.”
“Tomorrow, I will introduce legislation in the Senate to reopen American energy production full throttle and reverse Joe Biden’s disastrous capitulation to our enemies,” Hawley said.
The bill comes as oil prices surged above the $100 per barrel mark on Feb. 23 after Russian President Vladimir Putin announced in a televised address that a military operation was set to get underway in Ukraine. The last time the price of oil rose over $100 per barrel was in 2014.
Meanwhile, gas and energy prices have steadily been rising in the United States where total domestic gasoline stocks have declined and demand for gas has increased, with experts warning that Americans could face more pain ahead at gasoline pumps.
Russia’s invasion of Ukraine prompted President Joe Biden to issue sanctions against the company building the Nord Stream 2 pipeline after Germany announced a freeze on the project. The pipelines would carry around 55 billion cubic meters of natural gas from Russia to Germany each year.
Subsequent “massive and targeted” sanctions against Russia were also announced by the EU, which includes targeting the country’s oil financial, energy and transport sector, among others.
Experts fear that such sanctions will drive up energy prices even more, with many NATO countries such as Germany dependent on Russian oil to fuel their countries while Russia remained the largest supplier of natural gas and petroleum oils to the EU in 2021, according to Eurostat.
COVID RELATED NEWS
Italy Recommends Fourth COVID Vaccine Dose for Immunocompromised
Italy’s health ministry has recommended that people with a severely compromised immune system receive a fourth mRNA vaccine shot against COVID-19, provided that at least 120 days have passed from their previous booster, it said on Sunday.
The special commissioner appointed by the government for the COVID-19 emergency will set the date for the recommendation to come into force based on the needs of the vaccine campaign, the ministry said.
CDC Under Fire for Not Publishing All COVID-19 Data It Collects
A top U.S. agency is under fire for withholding some of the COVID-19 data it collects.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) confirmed to The Epoch Times that it has not published some of the data it collected on COVID-19 reinfections.
The spokesperson said it dropped plans for publishing a paper based on the data “given other response priorities” because a part of the same data was already presented in a published manuscript.
An agency representative told the New York Times that it has also withheld other information, including details on how booster doses have affected young people.
The data has not been released or has been released slowly because it takes time to make sure “it’s accurate and actionable,” the representative said, adding that there are fears the information might be misinterpreted.
Multiple experts say the CDC should make all the data available.
Dr. Robert Malone, who helped create the messenger RNA technology some of the vaccines are built on, says the CDC’s actions are a type of fraud.
“Withholding data, key data, is scientific fraud,” Malone told The Epoch Times.
Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine at Stanford University, said that the CDC shouldn’t “withhold information in order to manipulate behavior.”
The agency should “help Americans understand the data in context and provide guidance to improve the lives of all Americans,” he wrote on Twitter.
Paul Mango, a former official at the CDC’s parent agency, the Department of Health and Human Services, said that the CDC’s role should be collecting and disseminating data, not analyzing it itself.
“The CDC just doesn’t have the capacity to conduct research as quickly as the pandemic is moving,” Mango told The Epoch Times.
FDA Shifts Authorizations for Two COVID-19 Therapies Because of Omicron Subvariants
U.S. drug regulators have shifted language on two monoclonal antibody medicines because of emerging subvariants of the Omicron virus variant.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in recent days stipulated that an antibody treatment from GlaxoSmithKline and Vir Biotechnology cannot be used in regions where COVID-19 cases are likely to be caused by a variant “non-susceptible” to the drug.
“Sotrovimab is not authorized for treatment of mild to moderate COVID-19 in geographic regions where infection is likely to have been caused by a non-susceptible SARS-CoV-2 variant, based on available information including variant susceptibility to this drug and regional variant frequency,” the FDA said in an updated emergency use authorization letter (pdf) to a GlaxoSmithKline executive.
At this time, sotrovimab, the treatment, is still authorized in every U.S. region “until further notice,” the agency says.
Several preprint studies published in February indicate that sotrovimab performs worse against BA.2, a subvariant of Omicron. Both are strains of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19 and is also known as the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
Researchers with Columbia University tested samples from patients who were infected by the original CCP virus strain or had received a COVID-19 vaccine and found BA.2 exhibited “marked resistance to 17 of 19 neutralizing monoclonal antibodies tested, including S309 (sotrovimab),” which had retained a strong reaction against Omicron. Sotrovimab “was active against BA.2,” but showed decreased neutralizing ability, New York University researchers found.
Ben Carson at CPAC: Saying No to COVID-19 Vaccines for Kids ‘Makes You a Very Good Parent’
Between fiery speeches from conservative heavy-hitters throughout Day Two of CPAC 2022, soft-spoken Ben Carson, M.D. emphatically put forth a belief almost certain to ignite ire from some and more praise from others in a largely partisan split.
It was nothing but love for Carson at CPAC on Feb. 25. Between bursts of enthusiastic and prolonged cheers, the retired pediatric neurosurgeon spoke in his signature quiet way at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Orlando. During his 15-minute talk, he described what he says have been dangerous effects of COVID-19 policies on children.
Without question, Carson, 70, is well-qualified to speak on children’s health. A highlight of his career as a doctor was performing the first successful separation of conjoined twins attached at the back of the head in 1987.
After retiring from medicine, Carson ran for President against a packed field of Republicans. He was appointed by the ultimate victor in that race, former President Donald Trump, to the post of U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development.
At the sold-out, four-day CPAC event, Carson told the audience of conservatives that risking possible long-term negative effects to children from the COVID-19 vaccine “makes absolutely no sense.” That’s because the risk of healthy children dying from the virus is 0.025 percent.
“But we have no idea of the long-term effect of these spike proteins are going to be,” Carson said, referring to the controversial vaccine now approved in children. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) now recommends “everyone ages 5 years and older get a COVID-19 vaccine to help protect against COVID-19.”
The mRNA COVID-19 vaccines instruct the body “to produce a harmless piece” of spike protein, according to an informational page on a CDC web page dedicated to the topic.
“The spike protein is found on the surface of the virus that causes COVID-19,” the CDC page explains. When the immune system detects the proteins manufactured as a result of the vaccine, an immune response is triggered, and antibodies to fight the infection are produced.
“At the end of the process our bodies have learned how to protect against future infection from the virus that causes COVID-19,” the CDC page continues. “The benefit of COVID-19 mRNA vaccines, like all vaccines, is that those vaccinated gain this protection without ever having to risk the potentially serious consequences of getting sick with COVID-19.”
How to Detox Spike Protein After COVID or Vaccine
Whether you’ve had a COVID injection or the natural infection, you likely have dangerous spike protein remaining in your tissues and organs, including your brain.
STORY AT-A-GLANCE
- If you had COVID-19 or received a COVID-19 injection, you may have dangerous spike proteins circulating in your body
- Spike proteins can circulate in your body after infection or injection, causing damage to cells, tissues and organs
- The World Council for Health has released a spike protein detox guide, which provides straightforward steps you can take to potentially lessen the effects of toxic spike protein in your body
- Spike protein inhibitors and neutralizers include pine needles, ivermectin, neem, N-acetylcysteine (NAC) and glutathione
- The top 10 spike protein detox essentials include vitamin D, vitamin C, nigella seed, quercetin, zinc, curcumin, milk thistle extract, NAC, ivermectin and magnesium
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Poison Control Centers Warn About Toxic Chemical in At-Home COVID-19 Test Kits
Some at-home rapid COVID-19 tests contain a toxic chemical that may be harmful to both children and adults, according to health officials.
The Cincinnati Drug and Poison Information Center reported an uptick in accidental exposures to a possibly toxic substance, sodium azide, in at-home COVID-19 test kits, according to a blog post. Meanwhile, the National Poison Control Center issued a warning about the chemical.
“It is important to know that the extraction vial in many rapid antigen kits includes the chemical sodium azide as a preservative agent,” the center said. “The BinaxNow, BD Veritor, Flowflex, and Celltrion DiaTrust COVID-19 rapid antigen kits all contain this chemical.”
Sodium azide is a colorless, odorless powder that testers dip cotton swabs into. The chemical is found in herbicides, pest control agents, and airbags for cars.
“Small doses of sodium azide can lower blood pressure, and larger doses may cause more serious health effects,” an advisory from Health Canada also said. “ProClin is also found in many kits. It contains chemicals that can cause skin and eye irritation, as well as allergic reactions.”
Some hospitals around the United States say they have received a surge in phone calls about exposures to the chemical.
“We started getting our first exposures to these test kits around early November,” said Sheila Goertemoeller, pharmacist and clinical toxicologist for the Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. “It was, really, all ages.”
“Mostly, I’ve been very worried about our young children.”
Accidental exposure is occurring among both children and adults, said Dr. Kelly Johnson-Arbor, with the National Capital Poison Center in Washington, told WNEP over the weekend.
“People might mistake them for eye drops. Children might drop it onto their skin. Adults will sometimes mistakenly put them into their eyes,” she said.
“You don’t want to leave it on the skin because it could potentially cause an allergic reaction or a skin rash.
“If someone drinks the solution, it’s really important to contact poison control right away. The solutions have different ingredients. Some have non-toxic ingredients and others have more dangerous ingredients.”
Officials told WNEP that there’s no need to throw away the test kits, but people should be mindful when using them.
“Use them properly, dispose of them properly, and it won’t cause an issue,” Dr. Jeffrey Jahre, with St. Luke’s University Health Network, told the outlet.
GARDENING, FARMIN, & HOMESTEADING
Food Prices Approach Record Highs, Threatening the World’s Poorest
The prices have climbed to their highest level since 2011, according to a U.N. index. It could cause social unrest “on a widespread scale,” one expert said.
Wheat, other American food prices could rise because of Russian invasion of Ukraine
Wheat and seed oil exports could be dramatically impacted, and it could take years before a return to normalcy because of disrupted planting schedules.
Our sponsor The Grow Network has a free webinar on how to grow your own food, even if you have no experience or may be older.
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