No, Fauci’s Records Aren’t Available Online. Why Won’t NIH Immediately Release Them?
Forbes by Adam Andrzejewski of openthebooks.org – It’s not public what Dr. Fauci’s salary was last year or this year. (The latest published salary is from FY2020.)
It’s not public what stocks and bonds Dr. Fauci bought and sold in 2020 or 2021, as he influenced Covid policies.
It’s not public what Fauci received – or didn’t receive – in royalties. (There are up to 1,000 current and former NIH scientists receiving royalties.) Each payment could be a potential conflict of interest.
Yes, all this information resides with the National Institutes of Health (NIH), but isn’t “public knowledge,” despite Dr. Fauci’s claims otherwise in his sworn U.S. Senate testimony.
These facts are known because an organization I lead, OpenTheBooks.com, is suing NIH for production of those records. In fact, NIH admits it holds approximately 1,200 pages relating to Fauci’s financial information and conflict of interest disclosures.
Transparency advocates say that NIH should post these documents online immediately.
At Forbes, last January, I published an OpenTheBooks’ investigation that Fauci was the most highly compensated federal employee and out-earned the President and four-star generals in the U.S. military.
Many people questioned how Fauci’s pay could exceed 4.3 million federal employees.
So Freedom of Information Act requests were filed starting on January 25, 2021 with the National Institutes of Health. Here is a list of Fauci’s documents that NIH refused to produce:
- employment contract (with all amendments, changes, or modifications)
- job description
- confidentiality agreements
- conflict of interest disclosures
- financial disclosures
- royalty payments.
In May, NIH was threatened with litigation and 51 pages of somewhat-redacted information was released. Within that release, I published at Forbes the important “permanent pay adjustment” memo from 2004 that revealed for the first time that Fauci was paid to prevent the next pandemic.
Vaccines Not Durable, Omicron Might Turn COVID-19 Endemic: Bill Gates
Epoch Times – Bill Gates, in a Twitter discussion Tuesday, said that the current COVID-19 vaccines were missing two key factors, and claimed that Omicron might bring about a wave of immunity in communities it passes through.
Microsoft co-founder and one of the world’s richest men, Gates has invested in vaccine research through his foundation and given prominent talks regarding the pandemic. Recently, he chatted regarding the current situation of COVID-19, vaccines, and related issues with Devi Sridhar, a professor at the University of Edinburgh where she holds a Personal Chair in Global Public Health.
When asked about a breakthrough that could result in the biggest difference in ending the pandemic, he talked about the efficacy of vaccines.
“The vaccines we have prevent severe disease and death very well but they are missing two key things. First they still allow infections (‘breakthrough’) and the duration appears to be limited. We need vaccines that prevent re-infection and have many years of duration,” Gates said.
RSV More Prevalent Than COVID-19 in Colorado Children: Chief Medical Officer
Epoch Times – The respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) is affecting children in Colorado more than COVID-19, according to a chief medical officer of Rocky Mountain Hospital for Children.
“RSV is very contagious and very prevalent in the school system as well as throughout daycare centers and in homes,” Dr. Reginald Washington told FOX31 KDVR-TV on Jan. 12, adding that “COVID is increasing in its prevalence” and impacting children the second most, with the adenovirus being third.
RSV is a common respiratory virus that causes cold-like symptoms in people of all ages. Doctors say that the virus is so common that many children will have been infected with it before they are two years old.
RSV is mild in most children and goes away in a week or two but for some—who are immunocompromised or have a lung or heart disease—it can be quite severe.
RSV outbreaks usually occur from the fall through the spring, but an increase in RSV cases across the Southern parts of the United States prompted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to issue a health advisory in June 2021.
Other countries also experienced a spike in RSV out of season. Public Health England, responsible for improving and protecting the country’s health and wellbeing, issued a notice encouraging parents “to look out for symptoms of severe infection in at-risk children” in July 2021. The agency says the increase was a result of the “various restrictions in place [during the winter of 2020] to reduce the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19), there were far fewer infections in younger people” that “many will not have developed immunity.”
Google Executive in Charge of ‘Tackling Disinformation’ Becomes DHS Senior Leader
Former senior advisor to ICE director calls the appointment ‘suspect’
Epoch Times – A past senior aide to former President Barack Obama, who became a Google executive in charge of “tackling disinformation”, has joined the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) as a senior leader from this week.
Kristie Canegallo, who was vice president of Trust and Safety in Google beginning March 2018, was appointed chief of staff in DHS on Monday.
“I am excited to share with you that Kristie Canegallo will join our Department as our new Chief of Staff on January 10, 2022,” DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said in a statement.
“I have worked closely with Kristie in the past and know firsthand that she will be a great colleague and of tremendous support to us all,” Mayorkas said.
Denial of Natural Immunity in CMS Vaccine Mandate ‘Unprecedented in Modern History’: Scott Atlas
Epoch Times – Denying natural immunity in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Service (CMS) vaccine mandates is “unprecedented in modern history,” a prominent public health expert said.
Dr. Scott Atlas, a former White House COVID-19 Task Force adviser during the Trump administration, made the remarks after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) decide to uphold the CMS vaccine mandates in a Thursday ruling.
He told The Epoch Times that the ruling is “another serious denial of scientific fact” specifically mentioning the denial of natural immunity in CMS vaccine mandates.
“Our continued denial of superior protection in recovered individuals, with or without vaccination, compared to vaccinated individuals who’ve never had the infection,” he said. “The denial of that is simply unprecedented in modern history, proven fact and decades of fundamental immunology are somehow denied.”
“If we are a society where the leaders repeatedly deny the fact, I’m very concerned about the future of such a society,” he added.
Military Grants First Religious Exemptions to COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate
Epoch Times – The Marine Corps is the first U.S. military branch to grant religious exemptions to the military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, nearly two months after the vaccination deadline for active-duty Marines.
The Marines approved two requests for religious accommodation from the mandate, the branch said in a statement on Thursday.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced the mandate in August 2021, but every branch had resisted granting religious accommodations, sparking lawsuits and allegations that the military was violating federal law by discriminating against religious troops.
The lack of approvals prompted a federal judge earlier this month to block the mandate for a group of Navy personnel, with the judge finding the record “overwhelmingly demonstrates that the Navy’s religious accommodation process is an exercise in futility.”
While the ruling didn’t directly apply to the Marines, it likely triggered the military’s first religious exemption approvals, Sean Timmons, managing partner of Tully Rinckey’s Houston office, told The Epoch Times.
“I think the Marines saw the opinion, saw them get just completely get ripped a new one, admonished, reprimanded judicially … and they saw that, now they’re reacting to it; they’re trying to correct it after the fact,” he said.
“They’re basically a bank robber who robbed the bank trying to return the money. ‘I’m not a bank robber. I’m just borrowing money.’ It’s laughable, comical,” he added.
A Marines spokesman declined to share details of the approved exemptions, telling The Epoch Times that the branch was “hamstrung by privacy considerations.”
“All I confirm that we had two approved religious accommodations,” he said.
Requests for religious accommodations are “meticulously reviewed” by multiple superiors, the spokesman added in an emailed statement. If they all clear the request it reaches the deputy commandant who decides whether to approve or deny it.
While the Marines are the first branch to approve religious exemptions, the pair that were cleared are a small fraction of the 3,350 religious exemption requests received. Over 3,200 have been rejected.
Epoch Times – Health departments in several states confirmed to The Epoch Times that they are looking into a steep surge in the mortality rate for people aged 18 to 49 in 2021—a majority of which are not linked to COVID-19.
Deaths among people aged 18 to 49 increased more than 40 percent in the 12 months ending October 2021 compared to the same period in 2018–2019, before the pandemic, according to an analysis by The Epoch Times of death certificate data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
The agency doesn’t yet have full 2021 figures, as death certificate data has a lag of up to eight weeks or more.
The surge differed greatly from state to state, with the most dramatic increase in young-to-middle age deaths in the South, Midwest, and the West Coast, while the northeastern states generally saw much milder spikes. Public health authorities in several states with some of the largest increases are examining the issue.
Texas saw the 18 to 49 age mortality jump 61 percent, the second-highest increase in the country. Of that, less than 58 percent was attributed to COVID-19.
“Our Center of Health Statistics is looking at the data,” said Chris Van Deusen, the head of Media Relations at the Texas Department of State Health Services, via email. “We’ll get back with you.”
Florida, which saw an increase of 51 percent, 48 percent of that attributed to COVID-19, is also probing the matter.
“I am looking into it to see if there is some sort of correlation/causation,” said Jeremy Redfern, spokesman for the Florida Department of Health via email.
Nevada saw the highest increase, 65 percent, of which just 36 percent was attributed to COVID-19.
Epoch Times – Satellite television provider DirecTV plans to decline renewing its contract with One America News (OAN) network, according to media reports and statements from groups that pushed for OAN to be dropped.
Bloomberg was first to report the news. DirecTV and OAN did not respond to requests for comment from The Epoch Times.
OAN is one of three television networks favored by former President Donald Trump.
Left-wing organizations and politicians have long pushed AT&T, the majority owner of DirecTV, to drop OAN’s channels from the satellite provider’s lineup.
Media Matters for America, GLAAD (formerly known as the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation), Greenpeace USA, and several other groups sent a letter to the CEOs of AT&T and DirecTV in November last year urging them to cut ties with OAN.
“We call on you to do the right thing and demand that DIRECTV take all available means to end its relationship with OANN, so that its customers are no longer forced to subsidize hate and disinformation,” the letter (pdf) said.
The groups took issue with OAN’s coverage of election integrity and COVID-19, alleging that the news network promoted misinformation on both topics.
Chanel Rion, OAN’s chief White House correspondent, responded to the news on Twitter.
“With moves like this, DirectTV will have to become state-owned to survive,” Rion said. “In the age of streaming, Cable is on its dying breath—Blockbuster on the eve of Netflix. They would have better luck in Pyongyang.”
‘The Supreme Court Dodged the Central Matter’: R.F. Kennedy Jr. on the OSHA/CMS Mandate Ruling
Epoch Times – The Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the Biden administration’s OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Act) vaccine mandate directed at private businesses be halted but allowed the CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) vaccine mandate to stay in place.
Attorney Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has been on the front lines fighting for medical freedom and recently authored the best-selling book “The Real Anthony Fauci,” has mixed feelings about the court’s decision, and believes that they dodged the central issue.
The blockage of the OSHA mandate is encouraging to him, but the ruling on the CMS vaccine mandate, which will continue to be litigated, is a “disappointment.”
“I think the most troubling thing is that the Supreme Court dodged the central matter, which is the Nuremberg issue,” Kennedy told The Epoch Times.
The Nuremberg Code is an international research ethics code that came into being during the trials of the Nazi war criminals after World War II. Its central ideas are voluntary consent and the prohibition of unnecessary, risky, or random experimentation on human beings.
“Can the government’s power force Americans to participate in a medical experiment?” he asked rhetorically.
“These are EUA (Emergency Use Authorization) vaccines, there’s no question they’re experimental. And can a government force people to take experimental products against their will? That should be the central question that we’re asking ourselves in a constitutional democracy. And it was the central concern during the Nuremberg trials.
“It’s a disappointment that the Court would dodge that.”
Virginia’s New GOP Governor Ends Vaccine Mandate for State Employees, Mask Mandates in Schools
Epoch Times – Glenn Youngkin, the first Republican to win the state of Virginia since 2009, was sworn in as the state’s 74th governor on Jan. 15.
Within hours of his inauguration, he signed 11 executive actions including lifting the mask mandate in Virginia schools and “ending divisive concepts, including critical race theory, in public education.”
He also signed an executive directive rescinding the vaccine mandate for all state employees.
The 55-year-old former business executive, in his inauguration speech at Richmond, emphasized a “common path forward” with “our deep and abiding respect for individual freedom.” Youngkin vowed to strengthen and renew the “spirit of Virginia” associated with the history of the state as the home of American democracy. He credited Virginians with the spirit of tenacity, grit, and resilience.
Youngkin said he was “ready to lead and serve, starting on day one,” and it would start in the classroom to get Virginia’s children “career and college ready.” The crowd of an estimated size of 6,000 burst into a loud cheer upon hearing from Youngkin that he would “remove politics from the classroom.”
“Virginia is open for business,” Youngkin promised to create 400,000 new jobs and 10,000 new startups in the four years of his administration by reducing regulations and increasing job-related training.
According to him, residents of the commonwealth will see the “largest tax rebate in Virginia’s history.” In addition, he promised to “fully fund” and “return respect to” law enforcement.
In Reporting Shift, Associated Press Tells Staff to ‘Avoid Emphasizing’ COVID-19 Case Counts
Epoch Times – The Associated Press (AP), a wire service used by numerous news outlets, told staffers recently to “avoid emphasizing” COVID-19 case counts in stories after the Omicron virus variant began infecting large numbers of vaccinated people.
The AP has written dozens of stories about cases surging in certain areas but has decided to shift its focus due to the rise of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which causes COVID-19, and the lack of inclusion in case counts among people who test themselves at home, the service said.
The shift means the wire will produce “no more stories focused solely on a particular country or state setting a one-day record for number of cases, because that claim has become unreliable,” AP reported.
COVID-19 case records have been set across the country and the world in recent days.
Omicron emerged in Africa late last year and has shown a better ability than earlier variants in bypassing the protection bestowed by vaccines as well as the protection from prior infection, also known as natural immunity.
In some areas, vaccinated people make up the bulk of cases or COVID-19 hospitalizations, sparking a shift in change in coverage of the pandemic among some outlets, which had previously printed stories attacking officials in locales where cases were rising.
Other news outlets are also changing the way they report on the virus, the AP reported, including NBC News and the Atlantic.
CDC Advises More Americans to Wear N95 Masks in Updated Guidance
Epoch TImes – The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) updated its mask guidance on Jan. 14, advising more Americans to wear masks such as the N95 or KN95 respirators largely used by health care workers, for the most protection against COVID-19.
The federal health agency removed concerns that those kinds of masks are in short supply and should only be used by those in the medical sector. In its update, the CDC underscored that properly fitted N95 and KN95 masks offer the most protection, saying that the shortages are no longer a concern.
White House COVID-19 response coordinator Jeff Zients said during a news conference on Jan. 12 that CDC Director Dr. Rochelle Walensky recommends that Americans to wear “a well-fitting mask,” which can include multiple-layered cloth masks, N95s, K95s, or other types.
Americans Will Be Able to Order Free At-Home CCP Virus Tests Next Week
Epoch Times – Starting next week, Americans can begin ordering free rapid COVID-19 tests through a new government-sponsored website, though with a limit of four tests per residential address, the Biden administration announced on Friday.
The tests will typically be shipped to households via the U.S. Postal Service (USPS) within 7 to 12 days of ordering them on the website: COVIDTests.gov—which will go live next Wednesday.
“To help ensure Americans have tests on hand if a need arises, the Biden Administration is purchasing 1 billion at-home, rapid COVID-19 tests to give to Americans for free,” the White House said in a statement.
“A half-billion tests will be available for order on Jan. 19 and will be mailed directly to American households,” it added.
The Biden administration also announced that in order to “ensure equity and access for all Americans,” there will be a call line available for those who are unable to access the website to place their order.
The batch of free tests is aimed at easing a shortage of COVID-19 tests across the country amid increased demand during the rapid spread of the Omicron variant of the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus.
American Postal Workers Union President Mark Dimondstein said the union had agreed to allow the USPS to use up to 7,000 temporary workers to label and package the test kits at 43 existing facilities. Many of those are holiday workers being held over for the project.
The Plan to Tag Us for the New World Order Slave System
Mercola – Dozens of peer-reviewed studies show that when COVID-19 is treated within the first few days of symptom onset, there’s an 85% reduction in hospitalization and death
With Omicron, we have been gifted a best-case scenario. The highly contagious virus can rip through the population, causing only mild cold symptoms, thus producing herd immunity without the risk of mass casualties
Two months before the rollout of the COVID shots, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration was aware that they could cause serious problems, including heart attacks, strokes, myocarditis, blood clots, neurological problems and more, yet they pushed them anyway
Dr. Vladimir Zelenko believes SARS-CoV-2 is a bioweapon. Patents spanning two decades support this view. Those who created the weapon also investigated and identified antidotes, which includes the zinc ionophore hydroxychloroquine
The antidote to COVID was intentionally suppressed to encourage people to get the COVID jab, which Zelenko believes is a tool to tag people for the New World Order slave system
Can These Foods Help Combat COVID?
Mercola – COVID-19, which may cause blood clotting degradation of elastic fibers in your lungs, may be positively influenced by vitamin K, known for its role in blood clotting
Both thromboembolism, which occurs when a blood clot obstructs a blood vessel, and coagulopathy, which is a condition in which your blood’s ability to form clots is impaired, are prevalent in severe COVID-19 cases and are linked to decreased survival rates from the disease
Vitamin K plays a role in coagulation, leading researchers to suggest that vitamin K levels may be low in people with severe COVID-19
The study found COVID-19 patients with unfavorable outcomes had significantly higher levels of dp-ucMGP, indicating low vitamin K, compared to those with less severe disease
COVID-19 patients were also significantly more likely to have low vitamin K levels compared to patients without the disease
How to Overcome Addiction to Fear
Mercola – In his book “United States of Fear,” psychiatrist Mark McDonald diagnoses the U.S. as suffering from mass delusional psychosis, driven by an irrational fear of what is now a rather innocuous virus
The fearful overreaction didn’t have its origin in what happened in 2020. Government, corporations and powerful individuals have engaged in a systematic “grooming” effort toward irrational fear addiction for decades
Without fear, they cannot rob us of our freedoms
The underlying motivation of this psychological campaign has been an attack on the core structures, foundations and institutions of society in order to nurture a sense of dependency on government
To overcome their addiction to fear, a person must still have a sense of curiosity and be willing to look at new information. If they’re not, they’re not treatable and cannot be stopped from trading their (and our) freedom for a false sense of security. So, the key is finding those who are still open and receptive to new information, so that we can reach a tipping point where there are more fearless people than fear addicted ones
Video: BREAKING FREE OF FEAR ADDICTION- INTERVIEW WITH DR. MARK MCDONALD
Joseph Mercola: Do More Children Die From the COVID Shot Than From COVID?
Mercola – Commentary – According to published research, children are at risk for potentially lifelong health effects from the jab. Read here to learn what the experts say.
The video above features Collette Martin, a practicing nurse who testified before a Louisiana Health and Welfare Committee hearing December 6, 2021. Martin claims she and her colleagues have witnessed “terrifying” reactions to the COVID shots among children—including blood clots, heart attacks, encephalopathy and arrhythmias—yet their concerns are simply dismissed.
Among elderly patients, she’s noticed an uptick in falls and acute onset of confusion “without any known ideology.” Coworkers are also experiencing side effects, such as vision and cardiovascular problems.
Martin points out that few doctors or nurses are aware the U.S. Vaccine Adverse Events Reporting System (VAERS) even exists, so injury reports are not being filed. Hospitals also are not gathering data on COVID jab injuries in any other ways, so there’s no data to investigate even if you wanted to. According to Martin:
“We are not just seeing severe acute [short term] reactions with this vaccine, but we have zero idea what any long-term reactions are. Cancers, autoimmune [disorders], infertility. We just don’t know.
We are potentially sacrificing our children for fear of MAYBE dying, getting sick of a virus — a virus with a 99% survival rate. As of now, we have more children that died from the COVID vaccine than COVID itself.
And then, for the Health Department to come out and say the new variant [Omicron] has all the side effects of the vaccine reactions we’re currently seeing — it’s maddening, and I don’t understand why more people don’t see it. I think they do, but they fear speaking out and, even worse, being fired … Which side of history will you be on? I have to know that this madness will stop.”
Companies Drop, Keep, or Reinstate Vaccination Requirement for Employees After SCOTUS Ruling
Epoch Times – Companies are reviewing their vaccination requirements after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruling, with some dropping them, some sticking with them, and some reinstating them.
A General Electric Co. spokesperson said on Friday that it will stop requiring the U.S. employees to be vaccinated with COVID-19 vaccines, the Wall Street Journal reported.
The Epoch Times reached out to General Electric for comment.
COVID-19 is the disease caused by CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, which started in Wuhan, China, and spread to the world. The pandemic has cost over 5.5 million lives and infected over 300 million people globally.
General Electric is a Boston-based maker of jet engines, wind turbines, and medical scanners. It had about 56,000 employees in the United States at the beginning of 2021.
The company’s decision came after the U.S. Supreme Court (SCOTUS) on Thursday blocked the Biden administration’s vaccine mandates for private businesses while upholding the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS)’s vaccine mandate for health care workers.
However, another vaccine mandate on federal contractors imposed by the White House may affect General Electric. The federal contractor vaccine mandate is currently suspended while litigation is proceeding.
Companies took different approaches after the ruling, some choosing to stick with vaccine mandates at the company level.
Citigroup Inc., a company with around 65,000 employees, is still urging the U.S. employees to meet the vaccination mandate deadline—Jan. 14.
“Going into the last day [of the deadline], we expect the number of employees who have not complied will decrease even further. Our goal has always been to keep everyone at Citi, and we sincerely hope all of our colleagues take action to comply,” Citigroup human resource chief Sara Wechter said in a LinkedIn post.
Wechter said the company had reached 99 percent compliance with the vaccine mandate on Jan. 14.
Epoch Times – The European Union’s drug regulator has indicated that a change to the product information for COVID-19 vaccines from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson has been recommended to include a warning of a rare spinal cord condition called transverse myelitis.
TM is a rare condition that involves inflammation of one or both sides of the spinal cord. Symptoms can include weakness in the limbs, and tingling, numbness, pain or loss of pain sensation, or issues with bladder and bowel function.
The Pharmacovigilance and Risk Assessment Committee (PRAC), the European Medicines Agency’s (EMA) committee that assesses the safety of human medicines, recommended the change on Jan. 14 after concluding that a causal link between the two vaccines and TM is “at least a reasonable possibility.”
It recommends changing the product information for the COVID-19 shots—AstraZeneca’s Vaxzevria and Johnson & Johnson’s Janssen–to include a warning of “very rare cases of transverse myelitis (TM) reported following vaccination.” TM will also be added as an adverse reaction with an unknown frequency to the vaccine profile.
Patients who recovered with alternative treatments tout their effectiveness
Epoch Times – A Florida family fighting to give their loved one on a ventilator alternative treatments for COVID-19 have lost another battle—this time in Florida’s First District Court of Appeal.
The wife and son of Daniel Pisano first squared off against Mayo Clinic Florida at an emergency hearing on Dec. 30 in Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit. Before that, they’d been begging the hospital to allow them to try treating Pisano—who’s been on a ventilator now for 28 days—with the controversial drug ivermectin, along with a mix of other drugs and supplements, part of a protocol recommended by the Front Line COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC).
The family’s request for an emergency injunction to force the Mayo Clinic to allow treatments recommended by an outside doctor was denied by Judge Marianne Aho. They appealed the decision.
On Jan. 14, Aho’s decision was upheld by Florida’s First District Court of Appeal. The three-judge panel deciding the case included Judge Thomas “Bo” Winokur, appointed by then-Gov. Rick Scott in 2015; Judge M. Kemmerly Thomas, appointed in 2016 by Scott; and Judge Robert E. Long, Jr., appointed in 2020, by Gov. Ron DeSantis.
“An opinion of this Court explaining its reasoning will follow,” the judges stated in the order they issued.
“So we wait to see what that looks like, unless it takes too long,” said Jeff Childers, an attorney for the family.
Seventy-year-old Daniel Pisano doesn’t have unlimited time, says Eduardo Balbona, M.D., an independent doctor in Jacksonville who’s been advising the family since they reached out to him while researching other treatments that could potentially help their loved one.
Balbona, who has been monitoring Pisano’s treatment at the Mayo Clinic through an online portal, testified on behalf of the Pisano family in the first hearing.
The Mayo Clinic has argued that the treatment plan doesn’t fit with the hospital’s standard protocol for treating COVID-19 patients and they don’t know what the effects of following Balbona’s recommendations would be. The hospital has told the family that Pisano has a less-than-five percent chance of survival, and all that’s left to do is wait and see if he recovers on the ventilator. The Mayo Clinic has not responded to requests for comment.
The family has begged the Mayo Clinic to simply step aside and let Balbona try what he thinks could work. But the Mayo Clinic doesn’t allow outside doctors to treat patients.
New Yorkers Protest Outside of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s Queens Office in Freezing Cold
Epoch Times – Protesters held a demonstration outside the Queens office of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) on Jan. 14.
The activists, not representing any one organization, said their purpose was to persuade Ocasio-Cortez, also known as AOC, to introduce legislation in the House of Representatives to stop U.S. military involvement in Yemen.
Several of the protesters who participated were senior citizens, giving the illusion of a Woodstock reunion.
Alice Sturm Sutter has been participating in anti-war demonstrations since she was 20, during the Vietnam War era.
“I’m here because I’m so horrified that we’re still in the war attacking the people of Yemen,” Sutter told The Epoch Times.
Sutter sees the situation as a “humanitarian catastrophe.”
‘Not driven by sound science’: EPA Reversal on Wyoming Coal Power Plant’s Plan Criticized
Former EPA regional administrator tells Epoch Times he had approved the plan in November 2020
Epoch Times – After more than a year of inaction, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced on Jan. 12 that it proposes to disapprove the State of Wyoming’s changes to its regional haze plan for PacifiCorp’s Jim Bridger coal power plant, potentially closing down Unit 2 of the facility for a year or more.
Yet in an exclusive interview with The Epoch Times, a Trump EPA official verified that he greenlit those changes in November 2020.
Greg Sopkin, former Region 8 administrator of the EPA, said that “to the best of [his] recollection,” he approved Wyoming’s revised submission “on or around Nov. 20, 2020.” Sopkin noted that he had stopped working for the EPA in November 2020.
In a statement, the EPA told The Epoch Times that the action didn’t take effect because it hadn’t yet appeared in the Federal Register, leaving it subject to the White House’s Jan. 20, 2021, Regulatory Freeze Pending Review Memorandum.
The EPA’s proposed rule comes just weeks after Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon issued an emergency suspension order to keep the unit open. That order came after Gordon and PacifiCorp notified the EPA of their intent to sue over its inaction on the proposal on Nov. 14, 2021, based on its alleged violation of a nondiscretionary duty under the Clean Air Act.
‘We Are Going to Take Back America’: Trump Holds 1st Rally of 2022 in Arizona
Epoch Times – Former President Donald Trump painted a positive picture of the future for Republicans during his first rally of 2022, held in Arizona on Jan. 15.
“A great red wave is going to begin here in Arizona and is going to sweep across this country, and it’s going to wash hundreds and thousands of Democrat socialists out of office with an unstoppable surge of Republican patriots. And they’re going to be doing it, you’re going to be heading to the polls,” Trump said at the Canyon Moon Ranch festival grounds, in Florence, Arizona, a Republican stronghold about 70 miles southeast of Phoenix.
“This is the year we are going to take back the House, we are going to take back the Senate, and we are going to take back America. This is so important. This is maybe the most important election we’ve ever had. I do believe that 2024 will be even more important. … In 2024, we are going to take back the White House!”
Thousands of supporters gathered at Trump’s rally, his second in Arizona since he left office.
The former president described the crowd as a “sea of people” that stretched “as far as the eyes can see,” and urged the media members present to turn their cameras around. Trump used the crowd size to question the results of the 2020 election.
“I ran twice, and we won twice, and we did better the second time. … This crowd is a massive symbol of what took place because the people are hungry for the truth, they want their country back,” Trump said.
FBI Identifies Texas Synagogue Hostage-Taker as British National Malik Faisal Akram
Epoch Times – The FBI has identified the hostage-taker who was killed by police after a lengthy standoff at a Texas synagogue on Jan. 15 as a British national named Malik Faisal Akram.
The old boys club is dead. But a new one—with its own litmus tests and landmines—is rapidly replacing it. ‘This is all going to end in a giant class-action lawsuit.’
Common Sense – A few years ago, the editor-in-chief of The Hollywood Reporter pitched a story to the newsroom. He had just come back from lunch with a well-known agent, who had suggested the paper take a look at the unintended consequences of Hollywood’s efforts to diversify. Those white men who had spent decades writing scripts—which had been turned into blockbuster movies and hit television shows—were no longer getting hired.
The newsroom blew up. The reporters, especially the younger ones, mocked the idea that white men were on the outs. The editor-in-chief, normally self-assured, immediately backtracked. He looked rattled.
It was a missed opportunity. The story wasn’t just about white guys not getting jobs. Nor was it really about the economics of Hollywood. It was about the stories Hollywood told and distributed and streamed on screens around the globe every day. It was about this massively lucrative industry that had been birthed by outsiders and emerged, out of lemon groves, into a glamorous, glitzy mosh pit teeming with chutzpah and broken hearts and unbelievable success stories that had made the American Dream a real, pulsating thing—for Americans and billions of other people who thought that if you could imagine something, anything, you could will it into being. It was a story about who we aspired to be.
After the meeting, a reporter approached another editor about pursuing it. The editor told the reporter to drop it. No one, he said, at The Hollywood Reporter—one of a handful of trade publications that covers the ins and outs of the entertainment industry—was going to risk blowing up their career over this.
‘Waste of Time’ to Keep Vaccinating People: Ex-Head of UK Vaccine Taskforce
Epoch Times – It is a “waste of time” to keep vaccinating people against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) virus, the former chairman of Britain’s Vaccines Taskforce has said.
Dr. Clive Dix, who played a key role in helping pharmaceutical firms create the COVID-19 vaccines, told LBC radio on Jan. 16: “The Omicron variant is a relatively mild virus. And to just keep vaccinating people and thinking of doing it again to protect the population is, in my view, now a waste of time.”
Dix said the focus now should be on protecting vulnerable people, such as those over 60, 2 percent of whom remain unvaccinated.
“We should have a highly-focused approach to get those people vaccinated and anybody else who’s vulnerable,” he said.
Though he supports the ongoing booster campaign, he said he has been “critical” of boosting everybody as he is not convinced “it was needed or is needed” for younger people.
Dix said, “I think the thinking of the time was very much to stop infection and transmission where clearly these vaccines don’t do that.”
He said the government needs to be “very focused” on educating itself for the “future vaccination programme” next winter.
He suggested that an “immune status study” should be conducted to “understand exactly where everybody’s immunity is,” so that “by next winter, we can really have a policy of vaccination that’s educated, using the right vaccines at the right time for the right people.”
Dix told The Observer newspaper last week that mass vaccination against COVID-19 should come to an end and the UK should focus on managing it as an endemic disease like flu.
“We now need to manage disease, not virus spread,” he said. “So stopping progression to severe disease in vulnerable groups is the future objective.”
The UK government’s medical advisers have already acknowledged that it is “untenable” to jab the population every three or six months.
Why Did US Deaths Shoot up 40 Percent Above Normal Last Year?
Epoch Times – Alarming even insurance companies, something has driven the death rate up 40 percent among working Americans within a one-year period, and it’s not COVID-19.
As we’ve seen over the past two years, data and statistics can be manipulated and skewed in a wide variety of ways.
One of the most reliable data points we have is all-cause mortality. It’s very hard to massage that statistic, as people are either dead or they’re not. Their inclusion in the national death index database is based on one primary criteria—they’ve died—regardless of the cause.
From there, their cause of death, as identified on their death certificate, is added in to more granular statistics, such as the number of people who died from cancer and heart disease in any given year, for example. But while the cause of any given death can be manipulated and altered, the fact that there was a death is more certain. What’s more, death rates tend to be very stable.
“We are seeing, right now, the highest death rates we have seen in the history of this business … death rates are up 40 percent over what they were prepandemic.” ~ Scott Davidson, CEO of OneAmerica
As noted in a (not peer-reviewed) study led by scientist Denis Rancourt, who looked at U.S. mortality between March 2020 and October 2021, “All-cause mortality by time is the most reliable data for detecting true catastrophic events causing death, and for gauging the population-level impact of any surge in deaths from any cause.”
Moral Panic, Class, and Our ‘Woke’ Media
Journalism used to be a blue-collar trade, but today’s elite media have abandoned the working class, says Batya Ungar-Sargon
Epoch Times – “Once a tool to comfort the afflicted and to afflict the comfortable, today American journalism comforts the comfortable, speaks power to truth, and insists on an orthodoxy that protects the interests of the elites in the language of a culture war whose burden is given to the working class to bear,” writes Batya Ungar-Sargon in her new book.
On a recent episode of “American Thought Leaders,” host Jan Jekielek discussed race, class, and our elite media’s abandonment of U.S. workers with Batya Ungar-Sargon, deputy opinion editor at Newsweek and author of the book, “Bad News: How Woke Media Is Undermining Democracy.”
Jan Jekielek: I’m reading your book, which is fantastic. So let’s start with this question: What happened to journalism?
Batya Ungar-Sargon: American journalism really began in the 19th century. Benjamin Day and Joseph Pulitzer were two journalists who showed up when America was deeply divided along income lines.
They noticed that the vast majority of working-class and poor Americans were literate, so they started the Penny Press. They started selling newspapers for one penny apiece, and they got rich because so many poor and working-class people were hungry for news. This was really the birth of American journalism.
Then, in the course of the 20th century, journalists underwent a status revolution. In 1937, the vast majority of American journalists didn’t have a college degree. Journalism was considered a blue-collar job that you picked up as you did it.
Fast forward to 2015 and 92 percent of American journalists now have a college degree. Along with this status revolution from a blue-collar trade to a highly educated caste, you saw journalists shift their ideas of who journalism was for and what it should be about.
The “woke” revolution we’re seeing is essentially the last stage in this status revolution among journalists.
That obsession masks the real class divide in America and the skyrocketing income inequality while allowing liberal journalists to feel like heroes, even as they contribute to the class chasm in America.
GOP Lawmakers Demand Ouster of Education Secretary Over Reported Role in Targeting Parents
Daily Signal – More than 40 House Republicans are calling for the ouster of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona after a report of his apparent role in a national schools group’s calling some concerned parents “domestic terrorists,” while 24 GOP senators are asking the nation’s top education official for answers.
The push comes after Fox News reported earlier this week on emails indicating that Cardona solicited a highly publicized letter to President Joe Biden from the National School Boards Association asking that officials apply the Patriot Act and other counterterror tools to dissenting parents.
An NSBA email said the letter to Biden was a “request from the secretary.” Cardona denied having anything to do with the group’s letter.
Rep. Lisa McClain, R-Mich., led a letter dated Thursday in which she and 40 otherw House Republicans ask Biden to fire Cardona.
“Your pledge to help bring unity will ring even more hollow if Secretary Cardona continues in his current position,” the letter from McClain and the others says. “As such, in order to uphold your promise to help bring unity and healing to a divided nation, you must fire Secretary Cardona effective immediately.”
The Sept. 29 letter to Biden from the National School Boards Association quickly led to Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Oct. 4 memo directing the FBI and Justice Department to target parents who speak out about education policies at school board meetings across the United States.
“Parents are not ‘domestic terrorists’ and it is appalling that anyone would suggest that exercising the constitutionally protected freedoms of speech and assembly would be characterized as a threat,” reads a letter to Cardona led by Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and signed by 23 fellow Senate Republicans.
The senators’ letter to Cardona, also dated Thursday, continues:
Fox News reported that in an Oct. 5 email from NSBA Secretary-Treasurer Kristi Swett to Marnie Maraldo, a member of the Issaquah School District school board in Washington, recounted that the national group’s interim CEO, Chip Slaven, “told the officers he was writing a letter to provide information to the White House, from a request by Secretary Cardona.”
The email exchange between Swett and Maraldo was obtained by the activist group Parents Defending Education through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., was among the 24 GOP senators signing Scott’s letter to Cardona. Other signers include conservatives such as Mike Lee of Utah and moderates such as Susan Collins of Maine.
‘I want him to become better in the future instead of sitting in jail for the rest of his life, but I also want him marked as a sexual predator,’ victim’s father says
Epoch Times – The teenage boy responsible for two sexual assault cases in Loudoun County schools on Jan. 12 was sentenced to probation at a residential treatment facility until his 18th birthday in July 2024.
Judge Pamela L. Brooks of the Loudoun County Juvenile Court also ordered him to be placed on the sex offender registry, a rare outcome for juveniles and a first for Brooks.
The 15-year-old will stay in the Loudoun County Juvenile Detention Center until his transfer to the locked residential facility, likely within the next week, according to the judge.
The boy was found guilty on Oct. 25 on accounts of forcible sodomy and forcible fellatio inside a bathroom at Stone Bridge High School on May 28.
On Nov. 15, he pleaded no contest to felony abduction and misdemeanor sexual battery charges for another case in a Broad Run High School classroom on Oct. 6.
“I felt relieved. I felt relieved that we got the ruling that is just,” Jessica Smith, mother of the victim in the May assault, said with a bittersweet smile to The Epoch Times.
Her 15-year-old daughter, the victim, echoed the sentiment. “I felt relieved that we got justice for both the other victim and me and that he’s going to serve his time.”
Visibly upset and with tears in her eyes, the defendant’s mother told The Epoch Times after the court ruling that placing the teenage boy on the sex offender registry was a move that adults made for political gain at the expense of her son’s future.
Cop Who Killed Ashli Babbitt Was Cleared of Criminal Wrongdoing Without Interview
Epoch Times – When U.S. Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd went on “NBC Nightly News” to tell his side of shooting and killing unarmed Jan. 6 rioter Ashli Babbitt, he made a point to note he’d been investigated by several agencies and exonerated for his actions that day.
“There’s an investigative process [and] I was cleared by the DOJ [Department of Justice], and FBI and [the D.C.] Metropolitan Police,” he told NBC News anchor Lester Holt in August, adding that the Capitol Police also cleared him of wrongdoing and decided not to discipline or demote him for the shooting.
In fact, investigators cleared Byrd of wrongdoing in the shooting without actually interviewing him about the shooting or threatening him with punishment if he did not cooperate with their criminal investigation.
“He didn’t provide any statement to [criminal] investigators and they didn’t push him to make a statement,” Babbitt family attorney Terry Roberts said in an RCI interview. “It’s astonishing how skimpy his investigative file is.”
Roberts, who has spoken with the D.C. MPD detective assigned to the case, said the kid-glove treatment of Byrd raises suspicions the investigation was a “whitewash.”
The lawyer’s account appears to be backed up by a January 2021 internal affairs report, which notes Byrd “declined to provide a statement,” D.C. MPD documents show.
Asked about it, a D.C. MPD spokeswoman confirmed that Byrd did not cooperate with internal affairs agents or FBI agents, who jointly investigated what was one of the most high-profile officer-involved shooting cases in U.S. history.
“MPD did not formally interview Lt. Byrd,” deputy D.C. MPD communications director Kristen Metzger said. And, “He didn’t give a statement while under the U.S. Attorney’s Office investigation.”
Still, USCP concluded in August that “the officer’s conduct was lawful and within department policy.” The agency launched its administrative investigation after the criminal investigation was closed.
In April, within four months of the shooting, Byrd was cleared of criminal wrongdoing by the Justice Department, which declined to impanel a grand jury to hear evidence in a departure from other lethal police-shooting cases involving unarmed citizens.
Epoch TImes – California education authorities have agreed to drop a policy encouraging public school students to pray to Aztec gods in response to a lawsuit filed months ago by angry parents.
Among Aztec religious practices were the cutting out of human hearts and the flaying of victims and the wearing of their skin.
Paul Jonna, partner at LiMandri & Jonna LLP and special counsel for the Thomas More Society, a national public interest law firm, said the “Aztec prayers at issue—which seek blessings from and the intercession of these demonic forces—were not being taught as poetry or history.”
Rather, the California State Board of Education’s nearly 900-page Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum (ESMC) “instructed students to chant the prayers for emotional nourishment after a ‘lesson that may be emotionally taxing or even when student engagement may appear to be low.’ The idea was to use them as prayers,” said Jonna, one of the lawyers for the plaintiffs.
The launch of the ESMC made California “the first state in the nation to offer a statewide ethnic studies model for educators,” the board boasted on March 18, 2021, when the curriculum was adopted.
“California’s students have been telling us for years that they need to see themselves and their stories represented in the classroom,” state Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said at the time. “Today’s historic action gives schools the opportunity to uplift the histories and voices of marginalized communities in ways that help our state and nation achieve racial justice and create lasting change.”
The ESMC contained a section on “Affirmation, Chants, and Energizers.” Among these was the In Lak Ech Affirmation, which calls upon five Aztec deities—Tezkatlipoka (God of the Night Sky), Quetzalcoatl (God of the Morning and Evening Star), Huitzilopochtli (God of Sun and War), Xipe Totek (God of Spring), and Hunab Ku (God of the Universe). The pagan prayers address the deities both by name and traditional titles, recognize them as sources of power and knowledge, invoke their assistance, and offer thanks.
According to the plaintiffs’ lawyers, even after the settlement, the ESMC “is still deeply rooted in Critical Race Theory (CRT) and critical pedagogy, with a race-based lens and an oppressor-victim dichotomy.” The Aztec chant component demonstrated “the politicized championing of critical consciousness, social justice, transformative resistance, liberation and anti-colonial movements in the state-sanctioned teachings of ethnic studies.”
Djokovic ‘must pay huge sum to Australia’ – report
The tennis icon’s legal wrangling with the Australian government over his Covid vaccination status and visa could leave him substantially out of pocket
RT – Novak Djokovic’s stare-down with Australian immigration officials looks set to hit the world number one financially, with a report claiming to reveal the vast costs he is said to have been ordered to pay the country’s government.
The unanimous decision by Australian judges to rubber-stamp Djokovic’s deportation ahead of the first Grand Slam of 2022 came with certain caveats including a potential ban for Djokovic on entering Australia for three years.
Djokovic is financially liable for “all the costs” associated with the case, which are expected to be around $500,000, according to Telegraf – a sum which would have likely fallen on the Australian taxpayer had the court reached a different conclusion on Sunday.
The world number one, who admitted afterwards that he was “extremely disappointed” with the outcome of the hearing which finally ruled out Djokovic’s drive for a record-breaking 21st Grand Slam title win and a tenth Australian Open crown – accolades that would have set him apart from his peers as the most successful player of the modern era.
Breitbart- Zionist Organization of America (ZOA) head Morton Klein expressed outrage after Florida Agriculture Commissioner and Democrat candidate for governor Nikki Fried compared her potential general election opponent Gov. Ron DeSantis to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, calling her remarks “the ugliest hate speech I’ve ever heard” while urging for her immediate resignation.
In response to the likening of Gov. Ron DeSantis to Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler by Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried, a Democrat candidate for governor in the Sunshine State, the nation’s oldest pro-Israel organization released an exclusive statement to Breitbart News on Sunday calling on Democrats to condemn her “sick, demented” comparison.
“Especially as a child of Holocaust survivors who lost aunts, uncles and grandparents to the horrors of Hitler, I urge that Florida Democrat Nikki Fried be condemned by Democratic Party officials in Florida and America for her sick, demented comparison of the great Republican Governor DeSantis to one of the Jew-hating monsters in history, Adolf Hitler,” Klein stated.
“This is not only absurd, it diminishes and even whitewashes what the Jewish people and the world endured for six long years,” he added.
He then called for Fried’s prompt departure, adding that her Jewish background made her remarks all the more infuriating.
“I also urge that officials join me in demanding that Fried should immediately resign,” he stated. “The fact that Fried is Jewish only increases my anguish. There is clearly something emotionally and intellectually very wrong with Nikki Fried.”
“She should be removed from public life and from having any say in people’s lives,” he added.
Calling for her to “go away,” Klein deemed her comments “especially insane” due to DeSantis’ time-tested support for Israel.
“Her beliefs are especially insane since Gov. DeSantis was the greatest congressional friend to the Jewish State and went to Israel as his first international trip as governor,” he stated. “And I’m proud to have accompanied him.”
Klein concluded by urging Jewish groups and leading figures to join in the ZOA’s condemnation and call for Fried’s swift removal.
“Every Jewish organization and its leaders must condemn Fried and demand her resignation immediately,” he stated, calling her remarks “the ugliest hate speech I’ve ever heard.”
“We dare not allow in this new era of woke irrationality for dangerous analogies like this to go unanswered,” he added.
Fried’s remarks, which included her deeming actions DeSantis’ has taken as governor “exactly what Hitler did to the Jews back during World War II,” were made during an interview that aired on Florida Public Radio’s “The Florida Roundup” on Friday.
During the interview, Fried was asked by host Melissa Ross if she regretted her past likenings of the Florida governor to an authoritarian and dictator, to which Fried doubled down, saying she did not.
“Not at all,” she replied. “Growing up in Miami, and having neighbors that were Cubans, hearing stories of so many of our Floridians who have left dictatorships, and communism, and socialist countries, and coming here to the state of Florida for capitalism, for open opportunities to succeed — he is doing everything possible to take away power from local governments, taking away people’s ability to protest, making it harder to vote, talking about banning books — that’s what dictators do.”
“Instead of listening and trying to govern with the people, he is trying to govern over the people,” she added.
The 44-year-old Fried then claimed to have seen Hitler’s ascension.
“I’m sorry — I’m a student of history, too,” she said. “I saw the rise of Hitler; I’ve learned of those stories.”
She was then interrupted by the host and asked if she was comparing DeSantis to the Nazi leader.
“In a lot of ways, yes,” she replied. “I have studied Hitler and how he got to power, wanting his own militia and having his own—.”
After Ross noted other states possessed militias, Fried said those states had different motivations.
“The reason why this governor wants it is different than the other states that have been utilizing it for emergency purposes,” she said. “This governor is doing it for the sole purposes of power and doing so to make fear and instill that — to blame people for what is happening in their lives, blaming certain parts of our society and our culture, and that’s exactly what Hitler did to the Jews back during World War II.”
After being informed her comparison could be viewed as offensive, Fried was unmoved.
“Do I think that we’re going to get to this extent of Hitler’s power? Of course not,” she said. “But the rise of his power and what he did to scapegoat certain parts, in especially the Jewish community, in Germany and how he utilized going after the media, going after and scapegoating people and blaming people and putting fear and then taking over the military — that’s what this governor is doing.”
After her remarks went public, political voices from Florida blasted Fried’s “dangerous,” “offensive,” and “false” equation.
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