WORLD NEWS
Netanyahu says no permanent ceasefire until Hamas is destroyed!
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on June 1 that the requirements for ending his country’s war or setting a ceasefire with Hamas “have not changed” amid questions about a possible peace deal.
His remarks came as U.S. President Joe Biden announced on May 31 that the Israeli government proposed a three-part deal for a Gaza ceasefire in exchange for Hamas releasing the remainder of the hostages who were abducted last October.
“Israel’s conditions for ending the war have not changed: The destruction of Hamas military and governing capabilities, the freeing of all hostages and ensuring that Gaza no longer poses a threat to Israel,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a statement.
“Israel will continue to insist these conditions are met before a permanent ceasefire is put in place. The notion that Israel will agree to a permanent ceasefire before these conditions are fulfilled is a non-starter.”
In a separate statement over the past weekend, Mr. Netanyahu accepted an invitation from U.S. congressional leaders to deliver an address at the Capitol. No date has been set.
In response, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he would boycott the Netanyahu speech at the Capitol, which drew a rebuke from House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.).
“If that’s the side he wants to choose, so be it,” Mr. Johnson told “Fox News Sunday,” referring to Mr. Sanders’s criticism. “Our Democrat colleagues have to make a choice: Are they going to stand with our most important ally in the Middle East at the most desperate time as has traditionally been the case in Washington … or are they going to take this new side and stand with Hamas and the Ayatollah?”
Globalists suffer upset in Geneva and WHO Chief urges aggressive crackdown on skeptics!
WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus and other globalists were met with failure at the May 27-June 1 World Health Assembly in Geneva, Switzerland. Rather than win over critics with reassurances ahead of the next stage of his campaign to promote the failed scheme, Ghebreyesus instead doubled down, urging a crackdown on skeptics.
The critics whom Ghebreyesus branded liars and conspiracy theorists include those who reckon the pact would undermine national sovereignty as well as those skeptical of the WHO’s competence. In the latter case, the WHO did itself no favors in recent years, particularly during the pandemic.
After all, the organization reportedly aided the Chinese communist regime in its cover up of COVID-19’s origins; told the nations of the world not to restrict travelers from China or close their borders even though China had domestically; granted Beijing a veto over the WHO’s COVID-19 origins report; and it endorsed vaccines that were not nearly as safe or as effective as advertised, including the blood clot-inducing Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine whose developer now faces a class-action lawsuit over injuries in the United Kingdom as well as a recent lawsuit in Utah, among other major nefarious issues.
Evidently, it was not enough for the WHO director to demean opponents of his grand scheme to see it through.
Security tight in Hong Kong amid the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown …
Security was tight and access restricted to Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on Tuesday, the 35th anniversary of the June 4 crackdown, while Hong Kong police detained several activists, as cities in Taiwan and elsewhere prepared to mark the date with vigils.
Chinese tanks rolled into the square before dawn on June 4, 1989, to end weeks of pro-democracy demonstrations by students and workers. Television news images of a lone Chinese man in a white shirt standing in front of a column of tanks spread around the world and became the iconic image of the demonstrations.
Decades after the military crackdown, rights activists say the demonstrators’ original goals including a free press and freedom of speech remain distant, and June 4 is still a taboo topic in China.
The ruling Communist Party has never released a death toll, though rights groups and witnesses say the figure could run into the thousands.
“The memory of June 4th will not disappear in the torrent of history,” Taiwan’s President Lai Ching-te said in a statement on Tuesday.
India launches nation’s 1st 3D-printed rocket engine
Indian space startup Agnikul Cosmos successfully launched the nation’s first 3D-printed rocket engine on Thursday (May 30), paving the way for reduced time and costs associated with building rockets and boosting the country’s spacefaring capabilities.
“It signals the ability to rapidly assemble rockets that is unparalleled,” Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy of Agnikul Cosmos, who is also a professor of aerospace engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology in Madras, said in a statement.
The maiden flight was also the country’s second private rocket launch and the first to demonstrate the use of a semi-cryogenic engine. Unlike cryogenic engines that require heavy tanks to hold pressurized liquid hydrogen and oxygen at very low temperatures, semi-cryogenic engines replace the liquid hydrogen with refined kerosene. As a result, such engines require lesser storage space and normal temperatures, allowing for increased payload capacity as well as higher thrust.
U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
Biden to issue order limiting asylum seekers from crossing US-Mexico border
President’s move comes amid voter dissatisfaction over migrant numbers as leftwing and Latino lawmakers express alarm
Joe Biden on Tuesday was set to announce an executive order that would reportedly temporarily shut down the US-Mexico border to asylum seekers attempting to cross outside of lawful ports of entry, when a daily threshold of crossings is exceeded.
The move comes amid rising public concern over the number of migrants crossing into the US, with polls showing a majority of Americans dissatisfied with the president’s handling of the border. The White House has been under immense pressure from Republicans and some Democrats to reduce the number of migrants arriving at the southern border.
Many progressive and Hispanic lawmakers expressed alarm at the sweep of the order, the most aggressive border move taken by the administration so far.
US Attorney General to House Republicans: “I will not be intimidated!”
U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland will take aim on Tuesday at Donald Trump’s Republican allies in the House of Representatives, where he will accuse them of peddling false narratives that endanger law enforcement and undermine the Justice Department’s integrity.
“I will not be intimidated,” Garland plans to tell lawmakers before the House Judiciary Committee, according to excerpts of his prepared testimony. “And the Justice Department will not be intimidated. We will continue to do our jobs free from political influence. And we will not back down from defending our democracy.”
Tuesday will mark the first time Garland has appeared before Congress since Trump was convicted by a jury on New York City on 34 counts of falsifying documents to cover up a payment to silence an adult film star ahead of the 2016 election.
Trump still faces three other looming criminal cases – two brought by Special Counsel Jack Smith over his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and his mishandling of classified documents – and a state case in Georgia also tied to his actions in the 2020 election.
Republicans have claimed all four cases are politically motivated and represent an effort by Trump’s rival President Joe Biden to interfere in the 2024 election on Nov. 5.
They have threatened to defund Smith’s two investigations into the former Republican president.
The House Judiciary Committee and the House Oversight Committee have also sought to advance contempt proceedings against Garland, after he refused to provide audio recordings of Biden’s interview with a second Special Counsel who investigated Biden’s retention of classified records and declined to press charges.
Wisconsin AG Josh Kaul charges former Trump associates in fake elector scheme
Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul has filed felony forgery charges against an aide and two attorneys who worked for former President Donald Trump in 2020 for their part in designing and executing a plan to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election by submitting false slates of electors for Trump.
The charges are the first to be filed by state prosecutors against anyone involved in the scheme that involved 10 Wisconsin Republicans meeting in the state Capitol in December 2020 to sign paperwork falsely claiming to be electors for Trump, despite Trump’s loss to Biden.
Georgia appeals court sets Fani Willis’s disqualification hearing for October!
The Georgia Court of Appeals has set a hearing in October for former President Donald Trump’s appeal of a Fulton County judge’s decision not to disqualify prosecutor Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis.
The defendants were notified to file their brief by June 23, and the district attorney has 20 days after that to file a reply brief. Oral arguments are scheduled for Oct. 4 before a three-judge panel.
President Trump and eight co- defendants had appealed Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee’s ruling that Ms. Willis would not be disqualified so long as Nathan Wade, the special attorney she contracted to lead the case, stepped down.
The state appeals court agreed on May 9 to review the decision and now possesses all materials related to the disqualification motion, including those from a sealed hearing.
Beyond the affair with then co-counsel Nathan Wade that initiated the disqualification efforts, defendants argue that Ms. Willis’s extrajudicial statements are disqualifying forensic misconduct. Furthermore, they argue that her allegedly false testimony during the evidentiary hearing on the disqualification motion warrants disqualification.
Ms. Willis has been outspoken about the case, giving media interviews and public speeches in which she references the disqualification motion and defendants.
U.S. Supreme Court reinstates racial gerrymandering lawsuit in Arkansas
The U.S. Supreme Court on June 3 revived a lawsuit that contested the boundaries of a congressional district in Arkansas that challengers say illegally diluted the voting strength of the black community. The ruling comes days after the court rejected a claim that a congressional district in South Carolina was an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.
The ruling, which returns the case to a lower court, comes after the Supreme Court made it harder last month to pursue racial gerrymandering claims. The nation’s highest court ordered a lower court to reconsider its decision in light of the ruling from last month.
The lead petitioner was Jackie Williams Simpson, a black voter. The respondent was John Thurston, Arkansas’s Republican secretary of state.
The decision sends the case back to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas, which previously dismissed the lawsuit on May 25, 2023.
A three-judge panel of the district court rejected the challengers’ argument that the electoral map violated Section 2 of the federal Voting Rights Act. Section 2 prohibits voting practices or procedures that discriminate on the basis of race, color, or membership in a large language minority group.
It’s unclear when the federal district court will begin reconsidering its decision.
Meanwhile, activist groups are pursuing a separate lawsuit about Arkansas redistricting that’s expected to be taken up next year.
Epoch Times CFO faces charges in $67-million money laundering scheme over 4 years!
Weidong Guan, known as Bill Guan, the Chief Financial Officer of The Epoch Times, was arrested for alleged involvement in a money laundering scheme, the DOJ said in a press release yesterday.
Guan, 61, was arrested and charged with participating in a money laundering scheme involving at least approximately $67 million of illegally obtained funds, according to the news release. This indictment was unsealed by the Southern District of New York, revealing the extent of the alleged criminal activities that spanned from 2020 to May 2024.
“As alleged, Bill Guan, the Chief Financial Officer of a global newspaper and media company, conspired with others to benefit himself, the media company, and its affiliates by laundering tens of millions of dollars in fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits and other crime proceeds,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.
Guan faces charges including one count of conspiring to commit money laundering and two counts of bank fraud. The money laundering charge could result in a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and each bank fraud charge could lead to a 30-year sentence, the news release stated. Guan managed the company’s “Make Money Online” team based in a foreign office.
Under his direction, the team allegedly engaged in buying crime proceeds, which included fraudulently obtained unemployment insurance benefits, using cryptocurrency, the indictment stated. These proceeds were loaded onto prepaid debit cards and purchased at a discount, effectively laundering large amounts of money through various accounts, including those of the media company.
The scheme came under scrutiny when banks raised concerns about a suspicious spike in transactions. Guan allegedly misled these banks by claiming the funds were legitimate donations to the media company. However, in a 2022 letter to a congressional office, Guan contradicted this by stating that donations were an “insignificant portion of the overall revenue,” which fueled further suspicions, according to the DOJ.
11th U.S. Circuit Chief Judge blocks complaints against Trump judge Aileen Cannon!
The chief judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit has blocked complaints against the judge overseeing one of former President Donald Trump’s criminal cases.
Chief Judge William Pryor Jr., in a newly released order dated May 22, instructed the circuit court’s clerk to stop accepting new complaints against U.S. District Judge Aileen Cannon after the clerk was flooded with complaints.
“Since May 16, 2024, the clerk of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit has received over 1,000 judicial complaints against Judge Cannon that raise allegations that are substantially similar to the allegations raised in previous complaints,” Judge Pryor, an appointee of former President George W. Bush, wrote in the order. “These complaints appear to be part of an orchestrated campaign.”
Judiciary rules enable each judicial council to act when a series of “many essentially identical complaints” from different people flood into the circuit in which the council is based. The council can instruct the circuit clerk “to accept only a certain number of such complaints for filing and to refuse to accept additional complaints.”
Hunter Biden’s Attorney Says He’ll Call President’s Brother as a Witness in Federal Gun Trial
Federal prosecutors are painting President Joe Biden’s son Hunter as a clear drug addict whose dark habits ensnared loved ones and who knew what he was doing when he lied on federal forms to purchase a gun in 2018
3rd-strike ‘trans’ rape suspect prompts rebellion against CA law after attack in women’s prison
A transgender-identified California convict with a lengthy record of criminal violence has been transferred out of a women’s correctional facility and back to a men’s prison after being indicted for rape.
Tremaine “Tremayne” Deon Carroll, 51, is an incarcerated biological male who identifies as a woman and faces two charges of forcible rape and one of “dissuading a witness from testifying” in Madera County, according to a criminal complaint first obtained by the website 4W, and later reported by Reduxx.
One of the alleged victims of the Jan. 30 incident is a biological female, identified as Jane Doe in court documents, who said Carroll attacked her in the shower at the Central California Women’s Facility and raped her. The complaint also mentions another unidentified victim. Carroll has since been transferred to Kern Valley State Prison, a male-only facility in Delano, online records show.
Women’s rights activists tell Fox News Digital that Carroll, who was the public face of a campaign to support California law SB 132, which allows transgender prisoners to be housed in a facility consistent with their gender identity, is a case in point why the law harms incarcerated women.
“Previous to SB 132, biological male inmates were allowed to, on a case-by-case individualized basis, be placed in women’s facilities. But not if they hadn’t had surgery, and it was always very individualized. What the bill did, what SB 132 did is it took away all of that safeguarding,” said Lauren Bone, legal director of the Women’s Liberation Front (WoLF).
WoLF is a self-described feminist organization that opposes policies that permit biological males in women-only spaces. The group currently represents four female inmates in a lawsuit against the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations (CDCR) that seeks to have SB 132, which is called the Transgender Respect, Agency, and Dignity Act, declared unconstitutional.
Michael Cohen’s Family Doxxed by Someone Saying He ‘Betrayed Trump’
The wife and children of Michael Cohen were doxxed by an individual accusing Cohen of having “betrayed Trump,” according to a report. The phone numbers and addresses were posted early Monday on a site previously associated with attempts to target people connected to Trump’s legal problems, according to nonprofit group Advance Democracy. Daniel J. Jones, the group’s president, told NBC News the person who doxxed Cohen’s family “likely had an intent to harm Cohen” and provided the personal details “in the context of calling Cohen a ‘lying bastard.’” Cohen, who was the prosecution’s star witness in the trial, which led to Trump’s conviction on 34 felony counts last week, said on MSNBC on Monday evening that his family had been receiving “unwanted phone calls and emails and text messages,” and that a pizza had been ordered to his building in his son’s name at around 11 p.m. the night before. “This is sort of the behavior that we are contending with simply because I testified,” Cohen said. “MAGA is unhappy with the results.”
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
NYSE Trading Halts; Berkshire Hathaway wiped out 100% of its market value; software glitch!
In a flashback to the early 2010s when markets broke on a daily basis, we are back to blaming “glitches” for broken markets and flash crashes.
Hours after a new generation of traders experienced a partial market flash crash that wiped out the entire market cap of Berkshire Hathaway and halted trading on about 40 other stocks after their circuit breakers were triggered, Bloomberg reports that the culprit was a “glitch” during a software update early on Monday.
The disruption, the third such episode to hit otherwise peaceful US markets in the past week, was resolved after roughly 45 minutes when the Consolidated Tape Association, whose systems are operated by a NYSE subsidiary, reverted to a backup data center running a different software version. NYSE said it will cancel the bad trades in Berkshire Hathaway and is reviewing the erroneous halts to determine whether to cancel any of those.
The forced pauses, which began shortly before 9:45 a.m. in New York, came as CTA was rolling out a change in the software that governs which opening prices display on the Securities Information Processor, the feed that consolidates bid and ask quotes made on various exchanges.
As noted earlier, about a dozen trades in Berkshire Class A shares went off at $185.10 around 9:50 am ET before trading was halted. The stock closed Friday at $627,400. NYSE said any trade between 9:50 and 9:51 at or below $603,718.30 will be canceled. NuScale Power had a similar glitch, with trades that printed at about 99% below the prior price.
After a cascade of circuit breakers pushed various NYSE stocks and instantly halted trading, the Exchange said in an email that the technical issue with industry-wide price bands published by the CTA SIP has been resolved and all systems are currently operational.
The desolate reality of San Francisco’s hollowed out city center has been laid bare by footage showing every store in an entire retail block shuttered and empty.
Lloyd Chapman of the American Small Business League visited the city’s once-thriving Union Square area at the heart of its retail district.
The prime real estate was once home to outlets including Uniqlo, H&M, Rasputin Records, and Lush, but all have disappeared in a city center plagued by crime, drugs and homelessness.
A shady financial tool from the housing-bubble era is making a comeback: 0-down mortgages!
Two weeks ago, one of the nation’s largest mortgage lenders rolled out a “new” program (I put new in quotation marks because, well, we’ve seen this movie before) that allows first-time homebuyers to secure their purchase with no money down.
This may be a huge red flag for anyone with passing understanding of the 2008 financial crisis. Under the deal being peddled by United Wholesale Mortgage, you can bypass that initial cash payment.
Instead, you borrow 3% of the home’s value (up to $15,000) as an interest-free loan, and pay for 97% of the home’s value with a standard mortgage.
Here’s the catch: That $15,000 won’t accrue interest, but it will need to be paid back — in full, all at once — when you either sell the home, pay off the mortgage or refinance.
That will work out great, assuming nothing bad happens to you or the economy and the value of your home keeps going up. And honestly, when has the value of the housing market ever gone anywhere but up up up up?
- The housing market, as we all remember from “The Big Short,” does not always go up. And because you didn’t put money down, you’d be instantly underwater — owing more than the home is worth — if the market sours.
- You don’t want to be underwater when tragedy strikes. Losing a job or falling into financial distress might prompt you to try to sell your house, which would put you on the hook to pay back the $15,000. But if the house isn’t worth what you owe, you’ll be in default. That scenario is “exactly what happened during the subprime crisis,” said Patricia McCoy, a professor at Boston College Law School. “It happened before and it could happen again.”
- Even under the rosiest economic scenario, you still have to pony up $15,000 at some point. And as any homeowner can attest, your house is going to be a constant financial drain from the moment you’re handed the keys. You are going to have projects. Lots and lots of projects. And they won’t always be the fun DIY bathroom renos you see on TikTok. Most of them will be the “holy crap we have to replace the entire roof before the winter” kinda projects. That’s going to slow your cash accumulation significantly.
UWM is pushing back on all those concerns, noting that borrowers must still go through strict underwriting guidelines, and lending standards have gone up significantly since the financial crisis.
“People who make these claims are uneducated about the current state of the industry,” Alex Elezaj, UWM’s chief strategy officer, told CNN. “In today’s environment, UWM is responsible for underwriting the loan, which gives us confidence that these are high quality loans.”
And sure, we’re not exactly doling out NINJA loans — no income, no job or assets — anymore.
But if there’s a morsel of wisdom mortgage companies should have tattooed on their foreheads it’s that lower-income people with no savings are likely to suffer more in a bad economy.
“One of the lessons of the subprime crisis,” said Jonathan Adams, an assistant professor at Saint Joseph’s University, “was that you are not doing any favors to borrowers by making it too easy to borrow.”
With Top Editor Abruptly Gone, Left-Leaning Wash Post Faces Hastily Announced Restructure
The struggling Washington Post found itself in some turmoil on Monday following the abrupt departure of the newspaper’s executive editor and a hastily announced restructuring plan aimed at stopping an exodus of readers over the past few years.
Post publisher Will Lewis and Matt Murray, a former Wall Street Journal editor named to temporarily replace Sally Buzbee, met with reporters and editors at the Post on Monday to explain changes that had been outlined in a Sunday night email.
The plan includes splitting the newsroom into three separate divisions with managers who report to Lewis — one that encompasses the Post’s core news reporting, one with opinion pieces and the third devoted to attracting new consumers through innovative uses of social media, video, artificial intelligence and sales.
Hypocritical Move: E*Trade Reportedly Considers Shutting Down Roaring Kitty
Welcome to the wild world of Wall Street, where the elite financial institutions play a game of high-stakes poker with the stock market, confidently knowing the house always wins. It’s a place where “market manipulation” is a dirty word—unless, of course, you’re the one doing the manipulating. When the tables turn, and the little guys start fighting back, those very same titans of finance who rig the game suddenly cry foul. This tale of hypocrisy and greed was never more evident than in the saga of Keith Gill, aka Roaring Kitty, and the army of retail investors who decided to make GameStop their battleground.
Entities like E*Trade and its overlord, Morgan Stanley, have reportedly considered shutting Roaring Kitty’s account down. Yes, Morgan Stanley, the same multinational investment bank that’s no stranger to being accused of bending the rules, now positioned itself as the guardian of market integrity. The hypocrisy would be laughable if it weren’t so infuriating.
Let’s pause and savor the irony here. E*Trade, along with its corporate master Morgan Stanley, is ostensibly concerned about “stock manipulation.” This is from an industry where the term “pump and dump” isn’t a cautionary tale, but a Tuesday afternoon. When Roaring Kitty orchestrates a rally that leaves hedge funds clutching their pearls, it’s market manipulation. When the suits engineer a short squeeze for profit, it’s just business as usual.
Roaring Kitty is the unlikely hero in a financial drama that captivated the world. Known online as Roaring Kitty, Gill isn’t your typical Wall Street player. He’s an independent investor with a knack for picking stocks and a penchant for sharing his insights on YouTube and Reddit. But when Gill set his sights on GameStop, a company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy and under relentless attack by short sellers, he inadvertently lit the fuse on a powder keg of small investor rebellion.
The GameStop saga was supposed to be a footnote in the annals of financial history. But Gill’s enthusiasm and the fervor of retail investors turned it into a full-blown insurrection. Thousands of small-time traders, tired of being pushed around by the big boys, rallied behind Gill’s battle cry to “stick it to the man.” And for a brief, shining moment, in 2021, they did just that, driving GameStop’s stock price to dizzying heights and inflicting billions in losses on the hedge funds betting against the company.
Predictably, the masters of the financial universe didn’t take kindly to this populist uprising. When the GameStop stock soared, the big players howled in indignation. The very institutions that manipulate markets with impunity—engaging in practices that would make Gordon Gekko blush—suddenly decried the actions of the retail investors as reckless and dangerous.
Keith Gill’s rise to prominence didn’t just make him a hero to the masses; it made him a target for the establishment. Reports surfaced that powerful entities were zeroing in on him, ostensibly to protect the sanctity of the financial markets. But let’s be real—this was about preserving their own hegemony.
By painting Gill and his fellow GameStop enthusiasts as rogue elements threatening the stability of the market, the financial behemoths hoped to regain control and continue their exploitative practices unchallenged. They couldn’t afford to let the precedent stand: that ordinary people, armed with information and a bit of courage, could outplay them at their own game.
According to insider gossip (courtesy of The Wall Street Journal), E*Trade is seriously mulling over whether to banish Roaring Kitty from its platform. The reason? Fears of stock manipulation, a crime so heinous it’s typically reserved for hedge fund titans and Wall Street wizards—not, God forbid, a retail trader who decided to fight fire with fire.
ENERGY & ENVIRONMENT
Firefighters make progress against California’s largest wildfire of the year
California’s largest wildfire so far this year was significantly surrounded Monday after blackening a swath of hilly grasslands between San Francisco Bay and the Central Valley.
The Corral Fire was 75% contained after scorching more than 22 square miles during the weekend, the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection said. One home was destroyed and two firefighters were injured.
The wind-driven fire erupted Saturday afternoon on land managed by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, one of the country’s key centers for nuclear weapons science and technology. The cause was under investigation.
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
OpenAI Employees Warn of a Culture of Risk and Retaliation
A group of current and former OpenAI employees have issued a public letter warning that the company and its rivals are building artificial intelligence with undue risk, without sufficient oversight, and while muzzling employees who might witness irresponsible activities.
COVID RELATED NEWS
“Because I said so!” … 5 takeaways from Fauci’s testimony at yesterday’s hearing …
Former director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Anthony Fauci was grilled by the Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic for 14 hours in January. In the lengthy interview, Fauci admitted that he was unaware of any scientific studies demonstrating that masking for children worked or that the 6-foot social distancing guidelines — which effectively shut down schools, churches, and businesses — were an effective way of curbing the spread of the coronavirus. Fauci also acknowledged that the lab leak theory was not a conspiracy theory as he previously suggested.
Committee Chairman Brad Wenstrup (R-Ohio) told Fauci at the outset, “Whether intentional or not, you became so powerful that any disagreements the public had with you were forbidden and censored on social and most legacy media time and time again. That is why so many Americans became so angry — because this was fundamentally un-American.”
“‘Because I said so.’ That’s never been good enough for Americans and it never will be,” added Wenstrup. “Americans do not want to be indoctrinated. They want to be educated.”
The hearing had the potential to be educational; however, Democratic committee members opted for the former, celebrating Fauci, defending his preferred narratives, and lobbing attacks on their political opponents.
Republican lawmakers, alternatively, attempted to hold Fauci’s feet to a low-heat fire, largely failing to get results.
- Not so effective after all
When asked straight out by Wenstrup whether the vaccine “stopped transmission of the virus,” Fauci answered, “That is a complicated issue because in the beginning, the first iteration of the vaccines did have an effect — not 100%, not a high effect — they did prevent infection and subsequently, obviously transmission.”
- Fauci: The blameless victim
Whereas Republican members blasted the former NIAID director for funding dangerous experiments of the kind that may have kicked off the pandemic as well as his years-long promotion of falsehoods, Democrats painted Fauci as a blameless victim and seized on the opportunity, as Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) did, to attack former President Donald Trump and other Republicans.
- Fauci hangs ‘inner circle’ out to dry
Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer (R-Ky.) noted that there is “a troubling pattern of behavior” in Fauci’s “inner circle,” naming Fauci’s David M. Morens, senior scientific adviser to the head of the NIAID, and Fauci’s former chief of staff as two offenders.
Comer pressed Fauci on whether Morens violated NIH policy by using a personal email for official purposes. Fauci appeared more than willing to throw his former adviser and frequent correspondent under the bus, indicating Morens’ personal email use to avoid transparency was indeed in violation of agency policy.
“Does it violate NIAID policy to delete records to intentionally avoid FOIA?”
“Yes,” said Fauci.
- Fauci denies funding gain-of-function research
Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-Ariz.) asked Fauci whether the National Institutes of Health funded gain-of-function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“I would not characterize it the way you did,” said Fauci, contradicting the NIH’s account. “The National Institutes of Health, through a sub-award to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, funded research on the surveillance of and the possibility of emerging infections. I would not characterize it as dangerous gain-of-function research.”
- Downplayed likelihood of lab leak
Fauci claimed Monday that the idea he covered up a lab leak was “preposterous.”
Fauci indicated in his opening statement that he was informed on Jan. 31, 2020, “through phone calls with Jeremy Farrar, then director of the Wellcome Trust in the U.K., and then with Christian Anderson, a highly regarded scientist at Scripps Research Institute, that they and Eddie Holmes, a world class evolutionary biologist from Australia, were concerned that the genomic sequence of SARS-CoV-2 suggested that the virus could have been manipulated in a lab.”
Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) later asked Fauci whether he downplayed the lab leak theory on account of having funded experimental viruses at the Wuhan lab — funding Fauci copped to but Ranking Member Raul Ruiz nevertheless cast doubt on in his closing remarks.
Fauci, prickled by the suggestion that he tried to downplay the possibility he had fingerprints on research that got millions of Americans killed, answered in the negative.
Meanwhile, the FDA is recommending updated COVID-19 jabs due to waning effectiveness!
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) on June 3 recommended updating the formulation of the COVID-19 vaccines because of studies that indicate their effectiveness is worse against circulating variants of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.
“In prior years there appears to have been an inverse relationship between the time since vaccination and vaccine effectiveness, such that COVID-19 vaccine effectiveness against SARS-CoV-2 sublineages appears to wane over time and that better matching of the vaccine to circulating strains is associated with improved neutralizing antibody titers,” FDA staffers wrote in a briefing document, citing two studies.
“Consistent with this observation, a decrease in effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines (2023-2024 Formula) against COVID-19 caused by JN.1 lineage viruses has been reported,” they added, pointing to one paper that found the currently available vaccines provided just 26.4 percent protection against hospitalization from five to nine weeks and another that found the shots provided just 23 percent protection against COVID-19 infection within 16 weeks of vaccination.
“While the majority of healthy, non-elderly adults may have minimal need for an updated vaccine, those who are elderly, immunocompromised, or have significant comorbidities clearly benefit from vaccination,” Dr. David Boulware, an infectious disease professor at the University of Minnesota’s Department of Medicine, told The Epoch Times via email. “A vaccine that most closely matches the currently circulating virus would be most protective.”
CANCEL CULTURE
10 NFL teams so far decline to bow to pride month messaging
Not every team appears to be celebrating Pride Month
The calendar flipped to June over the weekend and, in case you missed it, that makes it pride month on television and radio, in your stores, everywhere on the internet, on your streets, up your flagpoles, in your classrooms (like it or not), and at least one other place:
Throughout most of the NFL.
The practice of men sleeping with men, women sleeping with women, some men becoming women and some women becoming men – with the folks who say they are now neither men nor women also included – was celebrated by about two-thirds of the NFL’s teams on Saturday via social media.
The message, delivered on X via team timelines, was sent by 21 of the NFL’s 32 teams to their approximate 42 million total followers.
Some teams tweeted out their support that pride month has arrived. Some delivered expanded messages as part of that support.
The Washington Commanders, for example, said pride month is actually about love.
And some teams sent tweets and went the extra step by altering their logos or X banners.
The Commanders, Buffalo Bills, and Philadelphia Eagles changed the color of their logos to match a pride flag.
Support For Gay Agenda Is Widespread
All of that, by the way, is dog bites man. If this were 1970-to-perhaps 2010 there would be no outward support of a pride month by the NFL on a national scale. But it has been growing seemingly inexorably for perhaps a dozen years or more.
So, to no surprise, teams are sending messages that they’re for pride month in 2024.
The man bites dog factor, on the other hand, is seen when teams either oppose pride month or say nothing about it.
And for clarity’s sake, let it be known that no team has said it opposes pride month.
It is clear that many within the NFL – and society – don’t like pride month for varying reasons. Some people don’t abide with or agree with the gay lifestyle or agenda.
And some, while having no issues with gay people whatsoever, simply don’t like pride month being so ubiquitous, as if being shoved down people’s throats. These people would recoil if, say, a month-long puppy or a straight people celebration was shoved down their throats every year, too.
Regardless, in today’s world, mere silence is often deemed as both support or opposition by radicals on opposite sides.
So be warned here: Reporting what teams did not tweet an announcement joining the pride month support and celebrations is dispassionate. It does not convey opposition.
PET NEWS
Pet Health Concerns: Dog paws that smell like Fritos corn chips …
Thankfully, we can all continue to eat Fritos without feeling morally conflicted, as the similarity between the smell of your favorite snack and your pup’s toe beans is merely a coincidence. Dr. Carol Osborne, veterinarian and founder of the Chagrin Falls Veterinary Center and Pet Clinic, explains that this odor is due to a build-up of bacteria or fungi and, in most cases, it’s nothing to be too worried about.
“Bacteria and/or yeast are common inhabitants in and on pets’ feet and foot pads,” she says. Additionally, fluffier pups with longer hair around their paws are more susceptible to developing this scent because their fur can attract extra bacteria.
Dr. Valli Parthasarathy, a veterinary behaviorist and co-founder of Synergy Veterinary Behavior, adds that these bacteria and fungi are naturally present on the paws but the smell of corn chips reflects a larger-than-normal development.
“These yeasts are already present in the skin and there’s something that’s predisposing the skin to not have their natural population control going on. And so you start having an overgrowth of the yeast and bacteria,” she says.
One of the most common causes of this excess buildup is allergies. Dr. Parthasarathy explains that both environmental and food allergies irritate the skin, causing pets to scratch and pick at their paws. This, in turn, creates a more moist environment on the paws, which helps bacteria grow.
Naturally, Dr. Parthasarathy points to excessive paw-licking and itching as behaviors that could indicate a disproportionate number of bacteria or fungi is developing. For those who don’t sniff their dog’s paws every day, Dr. Parthasarathy also recommends keeping an eye out for redness between the toes, or what’s known as saliva staining.
This condition will see fur near or on the paws turning a reddish brown on white-coated pups due to being constantly nibbled at and is often the result of allergies. Even if a dog is frequently itching themselves on other parts of the body away from their feet, skin allergies affecting the paws could be present.
“If they’re itching themselves anywhere on their bodies excessively, shaking their heads because their ears are irritating them, or doing anything that indicates any sort of skin irritation, then I would take them to the vet,” Dr. Parthasarathy says.
The last bit is a particularly crucial step in preventing skin allergies and their lingering Fritos spores from progressing to a more serious problem. In the interim, Dr. Osborne suggests keeping pets and their paws clean by bathing them with hypoallergenic shampoo before rinsing and drying them thoroughly to help minimize the risk of bacteria growing. In the case of those fluffier pups, she notes their groomers can be unlikely allies in this fight.
“Ask your groomer to give your pooch ‘Poodle feet.’ The fur is clipped very short, so the skin of the feet and foot pads can breathe. Be sure to address the fur in between the toes, as that’s often where inflammation and redness are the most severe,” Dr. Osborne says. This will help eliminate all that fur’s ability to hold additional bacteria and yeast so it can be more easily managed.
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