U.S. NEWS, POLITICS & GOVERNMENT
31 people arrested for conspiracy to riot near a Pride parade in Idaho
Idaho police officers arrested 31 people Saturday who are believed to be affiliated with the White nationalist group Patriot Front, after they were seen gathering near a Pride parade in the city of Coeur d’Alene, authorities said.
“It is clear to us based on the gear that the individuals had with them, the stuff they had in their possession, the U-Haul with them along with paperwork that was seized from them, that they came to riot downtown,” Coeur d’Alene Police Chief Lee White said during a news conference.
The FBI is assisting local police in its investigation, according to FBI Public Affairs Specialist Sandra Yi Barker. Barker said Coeur d’Alene police are the lead law enforcement agency investigating the situation.
The FBI is assisting Coeur d’Alene police in their investigation of the incident.
The people who were arrested were all wearing similar clothing associated with Patriot Front, including identical insignia, and there was at least one smoke grenade in their possession, police said.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, Patriot Front is a white supremacist group whose members maintain their ancestors conquered America and left it to them. The group split from another white supremacist group, Vanguard America, in late August 2017, per the ADL.
White said the group was equipped with “shields, shin guards and other riot gear with them,” along with papers he described as “similar to an operations plan that a police or military group would put together for an event.”
The 31 individuals were arrested for conspiracy to riot, which is a misdemeanor, White said, adding the suspects came from at least 11 states.
Coeur d’Alene Mayor Jim Hammond said in a statement that “hate and violence has no place” in the city. All 31 individuals were from outside of the area, Hammond said, adding that the police department “did a great job of staffing for the event to ensure that they could respond to outsiders attempting to cause trouble.”
Authorities released mugshots on Sunday of the arrested individuals, all of whom have since posted bond and were released from custody, per the Kootenai County Sheriff’s Office. They will be due back in court at a later date.
Among those arrested was Patriot Front leader Thomas Ryan Rousseau, according to Sgt. Shane Moline of the sheriff’s office. Rousseau has since bonded out of the Kootenai County Jail.
The North Idaho Pride Alliance released a statement on Sunday, saying, “As a small community nonprofit, North Idaho Pride Alliance is taking a much-needed day of rest after successfully organizing a momentous, joyful, and SAFE Pride in the Park community celebration under the most challenging of circumstances.”
The statement continued, “We are deeply grateful to law enforcement agencies who were present and professionally responded throughout the day to keep our community safe”.
Supreme Court Protest Organizers Won’t Rule Out Violence
As officials in Washington brace for possible violence following a Supreme Court decision about access to abortion, organizers of a group planning protests at the high court told followers not to oppose the use of violence.
Leaders of the group “Shut Down DC” stated at an organizing meeting at Petworth United Methodist Church in Washington on June 12 that violence runs counterproductive to the group’s strategy, but isn’t necessarily bad.
Shut Down DC plans to blockade the U.S. Supreme Court building on June 13 so that justices cannot enter. The activist group is protesting in response to a leaked high court draft opinion that suggests the court plans to overturn Roe v. Wade.
The court said last week that it’s planning to issue decisions on June 13 and 15, without being more specific.
“We’re not in the business of telling people what to do,” longtime activist Nadine Bloch said. “We are in the business of pointing out the structural violence of the system. If people don’t like other people’s tactics, fix the system. We’re not going to condemn those other tactics.”
The remark was made in the context of a training day, during which organizers explained to protesters what to do if people showed up and encouraged violence, among other scenarios.
“If you want to do property destruction, do it in secret. If you’re doing it publicly, you’re probably an infiltrator,” Bloch said. “There’s no condemnation of bringing the system down.”
Another activist, who identified herself as Sadie, said that protest “action groups” can split into “red teams” and “green teams” if violence starts. The “red teams” could start violence, while the “green team” could provide cover and be “eyes and ears” on the “red team,” she said.
Shut Down DC’s main organizer, Patrick Young, suggested that people go and start violence away from the main body of the group.
“Y’all should go somewhere else and do that,” he said.
One of the activists, a man who called himself Rusty, said that he has stolen banners from politicians and that the group will repaint them to use in the protest.
“If anybody needs a banner, like a nice heavy-duty banner, I’ve been stealing politicians’ banners from all over town,” he said. “They’ve got white backs, you can spray paint whatever you want on. I’ve probably gotten, like, 10 of them.”
The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania has quietly dismissed Republicans’ application to overturn a lower state court’s order requiring that absentee and mail-in-ballots that lack a date handwritten by the voter be counted.
Pennsylvania was a hotbed of election-related litigation during the 2020 presidential election. Although former President Donald Trump won the state in 2016, President Joe Biden won it in 2020, according to official results.
Barring any unforeseen future developments, the ruling means that even though Pennsylvania law requires that ballots that arrive without a signed, dated declaration from the voter are to be discarded, such ballots will be counted in upcoming elections.
The ruling came on June 10 as the court accepted former hedge fund CEO David McCormick’s request to discontinue litigation still pending before the court after he narrowly lost a Republican primary contest for a Pennsylvania seat in the U.S. Senate seat against celebrity heart surgeon Mehmet Oz.
McCormick conceded the race to Oz on June 3, and after a recount, state election officials declared Oz the winner by 951 votes on June 8.
In granting McCormick’s application to withdraw, the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania made the following order: “In addition, upon consideration of the Application to Vacate Memorandum Opinion and Order of June 2, 2022, (Application to Vacate) filed by Oz [and his campaign], in which [Republican National Committee and the Republican Party of Pennsylvania] join, and the answer filed by the [Acting] Secretary [of the Commonwealth, Leigh Chapman], the Application to Vacate is DENIED.”
The June 2 order was by President Judge Renée Cohn Jubelirer, a Republican who sits on a lower court, the Pennsylvania Commonwealth Court. In a 40-page memorandum opinion (pdf), Jubelirer laid out the legal issue.
She wrote: “Sections 1306(a) and 1306-D(a) of the Pennsylvania Election Code provide, respectively, that, after an elector marks their ballot and secures it in the secrecy envelope, the elector is to place that envelope into a second envelope (outer or exterior envelope) on which, among other things, is printed a ‘declaration of the elector’ which ‘[t]he elector shall then fill out, date and sign’ … Whether ballots can be counted that do not contain a handwritten date on the outer envelope as described in these sections is the issue.”
EXCLUSIVE: Arizona Election Worker Details Voter Fraud Investigation
The worker says the ongoing investigation is targeting US non-profits she believes are ‘political advocacy groups’
In an exclusive interview given to The Epoch Times, the recorder at the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office offered more insights into the risks of fraudulent registration forms leading up to the 2022 Primary Election and the efforts she and her team are working on to improve the process.
“Our primary is Aug. 2. We have received registration forms that are fraudulently completed,” Yuma County recorder Robyn Stallworth Pouquette, who provides oversight into the county’s voter registration and early voting, told The Epoch Times in an interview on June 7. “It’s been a prevalent problem in Yuma County, and it’s very unfortunate.”
Pouquette’s allegations come in addition to other witness reports and allegations of voting fraud that are the subject of 16 open investigations at the sheriff’s office.
The observed “pattern of fraudulent voter registration forms,” according to a May 11 statement made by the sheriff’s office, includes alleged impersonation fraud, false registrations, duplicate voting, and fraudulent use of absentee ballots.
While Pouquette could not provide any names because the investigation is ongoing, she confirmed to The Epoch Times that many of the anomalous cases pertain to non-profits operating on a national scale, which she believes to be “political advocacy groups.”
“We are extremely encouraged that the Yuma County Sheriff’s Office and Recorder’s Office are now working together to investigate individuals involved in the subversion of elections,” Catherine Engelbrecht, founder of election integrity group True The Vote, told The Epoch Times in a statement in May. “We’ve spent concentrated time in Yuma County and have provided significant information to both state and federal authorities. What has been happening in Yuma County is happening across the country. The targeting of vulnerable communities and voter abuse must be stopped.”
“It is very difficult to identify who is submitting these fraudulent forms. But I am aware of activities of third-party groups and I shared that information with the sheriff’s office,” Pouquette said of what she’s witnessed.
EXCLUSIVE: West Virginia Notifies 6 Banks They May Be Breaking State’s Fossil Fuel Anti-Boycott Law
They have 30 days to respond to letters before being placed on a financial blacklist
Six banks have been warned by the West Virginia State Treasury that they may be in violation of a new law preventing the state from doing business with financial institutions boycotting energy companies.
The office told The Epoch Times it had sent out letters on June 10, but didn’t share the banks’ names on the record.
Enacted in March, S. 262 directs the state to notify financial institutions that they’re slated for placement on the restricted financial institution list 45 days before the document is published.
Those institutions must respond within 30 days of receiving those notification letters to avoid winding up on the list.
In June 2021, Texas passed a similar law barring state agencies from investing in funds boycotting energy companies.
“We felt like we had a clear conflict of interest,” West Virginia Treasurer Riley Moore said at a June 8 press conference.
He cited firms that he said want to benefit from the state’s finances while simultaneously “trying to diminish our dollars and destroy our industries.”
The letters come after months of escalating conflict between many energy-producing states and much of the financial sector.
In May 2021, Moore and treasurers from 14 other states sent a letter to U.S. climate envoy John Kerry to express their concerns about private comments that he made to banks in March of that year. He reportedly asked major financial institutions to step up their climate commitments.
“We intend to put banks and financial institutions on notice of our position, as we urge them not to give in to pressure from the Biden administration to refuse to lend to or invest in coal, oil, and natural gas companies,” Moore and his colleagues wrote at the time.
US gun control: Cross-party group of senators agree limited safety measures
A cross-party group of US senators have agreed a framework for potential legislation on gun safety, following a spate of mass shootings.
This would include support for tougher checks for buyers aged under 21 and cracking down on illegal gun purchases.
Crucially, the proposals are supported by 10 Republicans, meaning they have the numbers to be voted into law.
President Biden said the plans were “steps in the right direction” but they fall far short of what he called for.
Previous attempts to tighten gun laws failed to get the required support in Congress.
Tens of thousands of protesters rallied across the US on Saturday to call for stricter gun laws in the wake of two mass shootings.
“Today, we are announcing a common sense, bipartisan proposal to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country,” the Senate group said in a statement.
“Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities.”
The senators also called for increased investment in mental health services and school safety resources, as well as including domestic violence convictions and restraining orders in the national background check database for people buying firearms.
Joe Biden: Senate Bipartisan Gun Control Agreement Not Enough but ‘Let’s Get this Done’
President Joe Biden announced Sunday his support of the Senate bipartisan gun control agreement, despite his misgivings that it was not enough.
“Obviously, it does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction, and would be the most significant gun safety legislation to pass Congress in decades,” Biden said in a statement.
The agreement does not include Biden’s demands for a ban on so-called “assault weapons,” raising the minimum age to 21 for the purchase of some semi-automatic rifles, or banning high-capacity magazines.
But Biden urged Congress to pass the legislation, thanking Republicans for working with Democrats to get something done.
“With bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay, and no reason why it should not quickly move through the Senate and the House.,” he wrote.
The agreement offers support for states to enact red flag laws and also requires an enhanced background check for gun buyers under 21 that include juvenile and mental health records.
“Each day that passes, more children are killed in this country: the sooner it comes to my desk, the sooner I can sign it, and the sooner we can use these measures to save lives,” Biden wrote.
Biden also endorsed the bill on social media.
“It does not do everything that I think is needed, but it reflects important steps in the right direction,” he wrote. “With bipartisan support, there are no excuses for delay. Let’s get this done.”
Gun Rights Groups Respond to Senators’ Bipartisan Gun Control Framework
The National Rifle Association (NRA) and Gun Owners of America (GOA) both issued statements Sunday after a bipartisan group of senators announced they’d reached an agreement on a gun control and safety package.
“Here we go again, Republican legislators compromising your rights and getting nothing in return,” GOA wrote in a Twitter post, referring to proposals in the framework deal. “Federal dollars to bribe your state legislators into enacting unconstitutional ‘red flag’ laws, which could allow a court to seize your weapons, without any due process, simply based on anonymous tips.”
It added that the bill would entail “wait periods and extensive review for those under 21 seeking to exercise their Second Amendment rights … we will not allow the government to make those who can vote and fight our wars second class citizens.”
The proposal, which has the backing of 10 Republicans in the Senate, includes initiatives to support state crisis intervention orders, an enhanced review process for gun buyers under the age of 21, expansions on various mental health programs, a ban on straw purchases, and other measures.
Notably, the framework bill includes a red flag provision giving “resources to states and tribes to create and administer laws that help ensure deadly weapons are kept out of the hands of individuals whom a court has determined to be a significant danger to themselves or others,” according to a news release from the senators on Sunday.
The NRA, meanwhile, said that it is “committed to real solutions to help stop violence in our communities. We encourage our elected officials to provide more resources to secure our schools, fix to our severely broken mental health system and support law enforcement,” according to a statement released to Fox News.
“As is our policy, the NRA does not take positions on ‘frameworks’. We will make our position known when the full text of the bill is available for review,” the NRA added.
But overall, the group will “continue to oppose any effort to insert gun control policies, initiatives that override constitutional due process protections and efforts to deprive law-abiding citizens of their fundamental right to protect themselves and their loved ones into this or any other legislation,” the statement continued.
Gas Prices Are So High, Police Told to “Respond” to 911 Calls By Phone
Currently, gas prices throughout the country are reaching record highs. For months, the establishment left has been blaming soaring prices on “greedy capitalism” and for months, their constituency has been lapping it up. In reality, gas prices are high because of federal government intervention in the market, sanctions which have skewed competition, and runaway inflation thanks to irresponsible monetary policy by the fed which has printed trillions over the last two years.
As blowhards in DC mull price controls and point fingers, the effects of soaring prices are hitting main street America hard. Unfortunately, the “solution” proposed by the economically illiterate political class will only make matters worse. As Congress pushes legislation to add to inflation, the results of their already-failed policies are trickling down.
The American Automobile Association (AAA) has reported that Michigan had seen one of the highest average weekly gas-price surges in the country. Prices were previously climbing weekly but are now increasing on a daily basis. On Tuesday, a gallon of regular fuel cost $5.21, up from $5.17 the day before. A week ago, it was $4.70 a gallon. Last year, gas prices were $3.01 a gallon, marking a ridiculous 73% increase.
Gas prices were already putting a strain on US drivers, who have increasingly been left stuck on motorways with empty tanks as they try to “test the limits of their fuel gauges,” according to the AAA. But now the issue is beginning to severely affect police departments and other agencies.
According to Michigan County Administrator Nicole Frost, who spoke with the Detroit Free Press, the local sheriff’s office had already spent 96% of its fuel budget with three-and-a-half months still to go until the end of the fiscal year.
In one such instance, police departments in several Michigan counties have begun to implement a rather laughable policy in regards to policing. Several police departments in the state have informed officers to handle “whatever calls are acceptable” — by phone. Seriously.
As the Detroit Free Press reports, the Isabella County Sheriff’s Office announced this week that it is “feeling the pain at the pump,” and has “exhausted what funds were budgeted” for gasoline with “several months to go before the budget reset.”
Michigan’s Isabella County Sheriff Michael Main told the outlet that he has instructed his deputies to manage whatever calls they can over the phone. These include “non-in-progress calls, non-life-threatening calls, and calls that do not require evidence collection or documentation.”
Illegal Aliens Set to Get Driver’s Licenses in Massachusetts
Illegal alien residents of Massachusetts have won their long-waged bid for driver’s licenses from the Bay State.
On June 9, the Senate followed a vote by the House two days earlier to override Gov. Charlie Baker’s recent veto of a bill to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens.
The Massachusetts law, entitled the Work and Family Mobility Act, will go into effect on July 1, 2023. Under it, illegal aliens living in Massachusetts will still have to pass both a written and road test before obtaining a license.
Baker, a Republican, said in a statement that he opposed the measure out of concern that it could potentially lead to noncitizens registering to vote.
In a statement explaining his veto, Baker also said he was concerned with tasking the state’s registry of motor vehicle workers with the job of deciphering foreign documents and their authenticity.
“The RMV does not have the expertise or ability to verify the validity of many types of documents from other countries,” Baker said.
Five Senate Democrats joined the three Senate Republicans who voted against the override. State Sen. Bruce Tarr, one of the Republicans to vote against it, said he sees giving illegal residents driver’s licenses as a message that not only is it okay to come to America and break the law, but that anyone who does so will be rewarded for doing so.
But the concerns weren’t enough to thwart the Democratic-nominated state Legislature. The House voted 119–36 and the Senate 32–8 to override Baker.
The measure garnered the backing of the Massachusetts Major City Chiefs of Police and a majority of the state’s sheriffs and district attorneys. They and the bill’s supporters hail the move to give illegal citizens driver’s licenses a move towards making roadways safer throughout America.
Massachusetts state Sen. John Keenan, a Democrat, said he’s hoping that as more states grant driver’s licenses to their “undocumented residents,” it will lead to a nationwide movement.
There are already 16 states that issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens: California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maryland, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, New Jersey, Oregon, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington.
The passage of the bill is historic even for a liberal state such as Massachusetts.
For 15 years, immigration advocates unsuccessfully pushed Massachusetts to issue driver’s licenses to illegal aliens. In the course of the last year, the residents themselves have held large, bold protests demanding driver’s licenses, many holding signs outside of the statehouse bearing messages written in a foreign language.
Last year, at a protest outside of the state capital in Boston, Yamila Ruiz, a native and legal resident of Argentina, spoke about the trauma she experienced when she was 12 of watching her father being arrested for driving without a valid U.S. license.
“We had to live through the agonizing fear he was going to be deported and that we would never see him again,” she said.
There are an estimated 200,000 illegal immigrants currently living in Massachusetts.
Sarah Palin, Nick Begich Advance in Alaska US House Special Primary Election
Alaska—Unofficial polling results in Alaska’s June 11 special primary place former Gov. Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, both Republicans, among the top four vote-getters in Alaska’s June 11 special primary.
With roughly 72 percent of the votes counted, Palin has garnered almost 30 percent and Begich has 19 percent, according to Decision Desk HQ. With votes still being counted, Palin and Begich are projected to advance to the general election, while two more slots remain to be determined.
State election officials said the 2022 special primary election was a first in many ways.
It was the first election to use the new nonpartisan top four primary election system enacted in 2020.
Under the new system, all 48 primary candidates appeared on the same page of the ballot, regardless of party affiliation, to ensure fairness and visibility.
Voters were allowed to vote for only one candidate. The top four vote-getters will advance to the special general election, held on the same day as the state’s regular primary election, on Aug. 16.
“This is Alaska’s first statewide by mail election. With 48 candidates, this election has more candidates than any other election to date,” the division stated.
“The Special General election and the regular Primary Election will be administered in the traditional manner with polling places open on election day, early voting, absentee by-mail voting, and absentee in-person voting.”
“Unlike the special primary election, voters must apply for an absentee ballot for the special general and regular primary elections. The special general election will utilize ranked-choice voting and will be the first election in Alaska to do so.”
The June 11 special primary is only the second special election to fill an office vacancy in the state’s history. The position expires in January 2023.
Parents Allege ‘Grooming’ by Pittsburgh-Area School in Lawsuit Over Transgender Curriculum
“As long as I am on this earth, I am going to teach children what I feel they need to know.”
These were allegedly the words of Mt. Lebanon School District first-grade teacher Megan Williams, who earlier this year told the mother of one of her students that she would continue teaching about gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning to 6- and 7-year-old students—even if doing so goes against parents’ wishes, according to a lawsuit filed in Pittsburgh federal court on June 8 by three mothers over the matter.
The lawsuit names the school district in the suburb of Pittsburgh, as well as Williams, senior administrators, and school board members over what the parents say amounts to “grooming”—a term used to refer to adults psychologically creating emotional bonds with children to lower inhibitions.
According to the lawsuit, Williams showed students a video called “Jacob’s New Dress” to their children last fall, telling the students that her child had worn an “Elsa dress” for Halloween. When one of the moms raised concerns about this at a parent-teacher conference, Williams told her there was a misunderstanding and that the confusion was about Halloween—but then continued to teach the children about gender dysphoria anyway, the lawsuit states.
“Williams had private conversations with this young boy, discussing with him the similarities between the boy and her transgender child, again suggesting that the boy might want to wear a dress, at other times commenting to him how the boy and her transgender child had similar interests and the same favorite color, and telling the child that he could be like her transgender child,” the lawsuit states.
“Williams explained to this young boy that ‘doctors can get it wrong sometimes.’ In the course of these private discussions, Williams also told this young boy that she ‘would never lie to him’ and, if the subjects they were discussing came up at home, to say ‘I heard it from a little birdie.’”
The lawsuit argues that this behavior amounts to grooming.
“In other words, upon information and belief, while having private discussions with this young boy about topics related to gender dysphoria, she told the child not to tell his parents about the discussions,” the lawsuit states. “Williams’ ‘grooming’ of this young student is unconscionable.”
The lawsuit adds that the discussions peaked on March 31, 2022—Transgender Day of Visibility—when Williams allegedly provided direct classroom instruction on gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning to her captive audience of 6- and 7-year-old children.
In the course of doing so, she explained to her students that sometimes ‘parents are wrong’ and that parents and doctors ‘make mistakes’ when they bring a child home from the hospital, according to the lawsuit.
After one of the mothers pulled her child out of Williams’s class, she received a call from Williams’s private phone number several weeks later.
“Williams first sarcastically said to Plaintiff that she ‘wanted to applaud her.’ Williams then voiced to Plaintiff that she did not understand why her instruction was a problem. Plaintiff not-so-politely told her of her strong parental viewpoint to the contrary. Williams then said to Plaintiff, ‘As long as I am on this earth, I am going to teach children what I feel they need to know,’ and hung up.
“Under no circumstances was this call appropriate for Williams to make.”
The lawsuit seeks a U.S. district court order prohibiting the school from teaching gender dysphoria and transgender transitioning—or, at the minimum, to require the school to allow parents to opt out of such education.
The lawsuit stresses that the complaints aren’t related to politics, nor is it anti-transgender or anti-LGBT.
ECONOMY & BUSINESS
Preparing for the Reality of Financial Collapse
Financial experts and insiders have, for well over a decade, warned that a collapse of the U.S. currency is a mathematical inevitability, and this collapse will have global ramifications, as the dollar is the world’s reserve currency
U.S. inflation is currently at 8.3%, but in some markets, it’s in the double digits. Used car sales, for example, have seen an inflation rate of 22.7% in the past 12 months. Globally, food prices increased by 29.8% between April 2021 and April 2022
In 2011, George Soros stated that economic collapse is “foreseen” and that authorities were simply buying time before the inevitable collapse. Now that we’re in the economy’s final death throes, those who have been aware of the trajectory for well over a decade cannot admit it, because then they’d have to explain why they didn’t act to stop it. Admission would also expose the central bank system as the fraud that it is
At the root of this collapse is money printing. In the last 50 years, the U.S. has had only four years during which it made a profit, and that profit wouldn’t even cover six months’ worth of the current annual deficit. In short, the U.S. is well beyond bankruptcy
In 2020, the World Economic Forum formally announced that a Great Reset is in the works, and this “reset” is basically how the globalist cabal intends to “fix” this situation. It’s not a solution for the average person, however, because The Great Reset solves the problem by transferring wealth and power into the hands of the few and erasing democracy worldwide in one fell swoop
—> Watch: Powell says lowering inflation will involve some pain, and why Dan Nathan’s buying again
U.S. may be barreling toward recession in next year, more experts say
‘Recession risks are high — uncomfortably high — and rising,’ a leading economist says
The U.S. economy could be heading for a recession in the next year, according to growing warnings from banks and economists, as a sudden bout of pessimism hammers financial markets, which on Thursday spiraled further from recent highs.
Although major swaths of the economy — including the job market and consumer spending — remain robust, there are mounting worries that rising borrowing costs for consumers and businesses, after years of near-zero interest rates, could cause a sudden retrenchment. The Federal Reserve has raised interest rates by 0.75 percentage points so far this year, while officials are signaling more aggressive increases could be necessary to cool the economy. Continued uncertainty from the coronavirus pandemic and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine are adding to the uneasiness.
Financial markets fell again on Thursday, a day after the Dow Jones industrial average suffered its worst drop of the year. The S&P 500 inched further into bear market territory — defined as a 20 percent drop from the most recent peak — after Wednesday’s sell-off wiped out more than 4 percent of its value.
Largest US Pork Packer Closing California Plant, Citing High Costs and Red Tape
“Smithfield Foods, Inc. today announced that it will cease all harvest and processing operations in Vernon, California in early 2023 and, at the same time, align its hog production system by reducing its sow herd in its Western region,” the company said on Friday in a statement.
Smithfield also plans to reduce its sow herd in Utah and exit its farms in Arizona and California.
Instead, the company will serve California customers with its Farmer John brand and other brands and products from current facilities in the Midwest.
“Smithfield is taking these steps due to the escalating cost of doing business in California,” the company explained.
The company, owned by Hong Kong-listed WH Group Ltd., said that workers at the plant will be offered financial and transition assistance, including the option to relocate to other Smithfield facilities.
Jim Monroe, vice president for corporate affairs of Smithfield, said two main factors drove the company’s decision: high costs and overregulation.
“The cost of doing business in California is significantly higher than other states where we operate. Utilities, for example, are 3.5 times per head higher than our other location where we do the same work. Taxes and other costs are significantly higher,” he told The Epoch Times.
Meanwhile, it’s also challenging to operate in the Golden State because of the red tape.
He cited Proposition 12, a state law passed by voters in 2018, as a prime example.
Propositions 12—an animal protection bill backed by the Humane Society—mandates factory farms to give hens, sows, and veal calves enough room to stand up, lie down, turn around, and stretch their limbs without hitting the sides of a cage.
The law also implements a sales ban against noncompliant animal products including eggs, pork, and veal, from out of state.
The Epoch Times reached out to California Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office for comments.
US Already Descending Into Recession: Economist
The United States economy is already in the process of entering recession, according to an economist specializing in how sentiment affects markets.
He predicted that a large amount of malinvested capital will be wiped out and areas of the economy that have historically been resistant to crises may not be so this time.
His research indicates that the economy is under the influence of “confidence cycles” and when consumer sentiment shifts toward the expectation of a recession, the market will actually enter one.
“I think the cake has been baked from the sentiment perspective where people are now acting on the assumption that a recession is coming. And remember, it’s that action that actually causes a recession to come,” said Peter Atwater, former hedge funder and now lecturer at the College of William & Mary in Virginia, during a recent Wealthion interview.
As Atwater sees it, thousands of companies have fudged their earnings with easy cash due to the ultra-low interest rates set by the Federal Reserve.
“With free money, the ability to financially engineer your earnings results is unlimited,” he said.
Now that rates are going up, such companies will start having trouble rolling over their loans.
“It’s sucking the air out of the room,” he said, anticipating that “thousands” of such companies may go under.
As credit gets tighter, a lot of “dream” ventures will prove to be unfeasible and fail, he predicted, noting that overconfidence in the market has caused investors “to buy promises of even the most ridiculous things.”
“There was so much capital irresponsibly deployed to capture dreams that the volume of equity destruction is going to be massive,” he said.
The financial elite is, so far, failing to appreciate the direness of the situation because their lifestyle has become extraordinarily insulated from a commoner’s reality, he surmised, calling it “work from home blindness.”
“The financial elite are spending so much time sequestered away from the real world that I think they’ve lost sight of the fact that the folks who are delivering things to them, who live in the real world, have to buy gas,” he said.
4 Really Big Names That Are Warning That Major Economic Disaster Is Ahead
Commentary by Michael Rivero
I hope that you are enjoying these beautiful summer weekends while you still can, because it appears that very troubled times are dead ahead. Simultaneously, inflation continues to spiral out of control even as economic activity in the U.S. dramatically slows down. Many have compared what we are currently experiencing to the “stagflation” of the 1970s, but the truth is that what we are facing will eventually be so much worse than anything that we went through back then. A meltdown of historic proportions is here, and as you will see below, some of the biggest names in the entire country are talking about it.
On Monday, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States set another all-time record high…
The gas price spike keeps getting worse.
The national average jumped to $4.87 a gallon on Monday, according to AAA. That’s up 25 cents in the past week and 59 cents in the past month.
There are now 10 states where the average price of gasoline is $5 a gallon or higher, with the latest being Michigan and Indiana. Washington, DC, is also above $5, according to CNN.
A 25 cent increase in one week is just insane.
If we continue on this trajectory, the price of gasoline would go up about a dollar a month.
I can’t imagine that will be the case, but stranger things have happened.
Overall, the average price of a gallon of gasoline in the United States has now more than doubled since Joe Biden entered the White House.
How high will it be a year from now?
For a long time I warned my readers that the price of gasoline would eventually hit ten dollars a gallon, but now we have learned that it is already almost there at one gas station in California.
Meanwhile, U.S. economic activity is really slowing down and we are being warned to brace ourselves for the worst.
In fact, at this point some of the most prominent people in the entire country are starting to sound like they could be writing for The Economic Collapse Blog. The following are four really big names that are warning that major economic disaster is ahead…
#1 If you have a “bad feeling” about the U.S. economy, you are not alone. Elon Musk says that he has a “super bad feeling” about where the U.S. economy is heading, and so he intends to reduce the Tesla workforce by approximately 10 percent…
Tesla CEO Elon Musk has a “super bad feeling” about the economy and wants to cut about 10% of jobs at the electric carmaker, he said in an email to executives on Thursday seen by Reuters.
The message came two days after the world’s richest man told employees to return to the workplace or leave the company.
#2 I never imagined that I would write about something that rapper Cardi B said on this website, but that is precisely what I am about to do. At one time she was a huge Biden supporter, but on Sunday she publicly suggested that the U.S. economy is about to enter a recession…
Rapper and Joe Biden supporter Cardi B took to Twitter on Sunday to ask when “they going to announce” that the United States is “going into a recession.”
“When y’all think they going to announce that we going into a recession?” Cardi B wrote Sunday in a tweet, which has since garnered more than 120,000 likes, and over 16,000 retweets.
Actually, the U.S. economy contracted during the first quarter of 2022, and if it contracts again in the second quarter then we are actually already in a recession right now.
#3 I really admire author Robert Kiyosaki, and his advice has helped millions of people all over the globe. In the past he was known for his relentless optimism, but now he is almost as pessimistic about our economic future as I am. For example, he tweeted out the following back on March 8th…
DO YOU HAVE a PLAN “B”? We are in BIGGEST BUBBLE in world history. Bubbles in stocks, real estate, commodities & oil. FUTURE? Possible DEPRESSION with HYPER-INFLATION. My PLAN B: be an entrepreneur, stay out of stock market, create own assets, use debt as $, save G,S, BC, guns.
Then he followed that up with this gem on March 13th…
BRANDON & FED want INFLATION to pay off trillions in debt. BEST INVESTMENT may be stocking products you will always use such as toilette paper, trash bags, canned goods, frozen foods, gold, silver, Bitcoin. I do not trust Brandon or Fed. They are Marxists. End the Fed & Brandon.
And then on April 15th he boldly declared that a “hyper-inflation depression” has arrived…
Wiley COYOTE moment coming. Biggest Bubble Bust coming. Baby Boomer’s retirements to be stolen. $10 trillion in fake money spending ending. Government, Wall Street & Fed are thieves. Hyper-inflation Depression here. Buy gold, silver, Bitcoin before the coyote wakes up. Take care
Of course he is dead on accurate about where the economy is heading. I don’t share his optimism about Bitcoin, but otherwise I think that the things that he has shared are very wise.
#4 The crisis that we are now dealing with did not arrive overnight. For years, many of us have been relentlessly warning about debt levels, the destruction of our currency, and the foolish decisions that our leaders were making. Now we are facing the largest debt bubble in all of human history, and there is no easy way out. On Monday, some thoughts that Kim Dotcom shared on Twitter went viral all over the Internet…
Let’s do the math:
US total debt
$90 trillion
US unfunded liabilities
$169 trillion
Total
$259 trillion
Minus all US assets
$193 trillion
Balance
– $66 trillion
That’s $66 trillion of debt and liabilities after every asset in the US has been sold off.
I might quibble with the precise numbers that he used a little bit, but overall Kim Dotcom is right on target.
And I really like how he summarized the nightmare that is in front of us…
So even if the US could sell all assets at the current value, which is impossible, it would still be broke.
The US is beyond bankrupt.
This patient is already dead.
This patient is now a zombie.
You probably wonder why are things still going? Why didn’t everything collapse yet.
It’s all perception, denial and dependency.
Our leaders have tried to keep the party going for as long as they possibly could, and for a while that actually worked.
But now a day of reckoning has arrived, and a horrifying economic meltdown has begun.
We aren’t talking about a “recession” that will be here for a while followed by a return to the way that things used to be.
No, what we are heading for is the sort of immense economic nightmare that I have been warning about for years.
Many Americans will be greatly surprised by how rapidly things totally fall apart, but the real surprise has been that it has taken us so long to get to this point.
You can’t defy the laws of economics forever, and we are about to see the greatest debt pyramid that the planet has ever seen come crashing down all around us.
Russia unveils ‘tasty’ McDonald’s substitute
It’s a Russian revamp of an American icon.
Fast food giant McDonald’s pulled out of Russia in protest at the invasion of Ukraine and sold its restaurants here – more than 800 – to Russian businessman Alexander Govor.
Today the first rebranded restaurants are reopening in Moscow.
There’s a new name: “Vkusno i Tochka”, which translates as “Tasty and that’s it”.
Gone are the Golden Arches, replaced by a stylised letter M, made out of two French fries, and a dot (or, perhaps, a burger?)
Gone are the Big Mac and McFlurry.
But the new owners hope customers won’t notice too many differences. They held a press conference in the flagship restaurant on Pushkin Square, where the very first Moscow McDonald’s opened 32 years ago.
“Our goal is that our guests do not notice a difference either in quality or ambience,” said Oleg Paroyev, CEO of Vkusno i Tochka.
The outlet sported a slogan reading: “The name changes, love stays.”
But one male protester disrupted the event, saying “bring back Big Mac!”
SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY
YouTuber 3D Prints “World’s First” Rocket Launcher AND Rocket and Fires at Target
3D printing has revolutionized gun-making and has come a long way since the single-shot “The Liberator” pistol was available for download in 2013. Now entire semiautomatic pistol carbines can be entirely printed at home, and weapon-making appears to have graduated to rocket launchers.
Youtuber “Ordnance Lab” (also known as Ordnance Lab LLC and holds a Type 10 FFL) published a video showing what they say is the “world’s first 3D printed rocket launcher.”
“In this video we team up with D&S Creations, who have developed 3D printed rockets and rocket launchers. We test both a smaller caliber rocket and a larger one, along with a prototype for a shaped charge warhead. This is just the start of our working on 3D printed rockets. We have the launch and detonation figured out, now we need to work on getting the accuracy figured out,” Ordnance Lab said in the video’s description.
One firing test shows a 3D-printed rocket with a shaped charge denoting on a target. The narrator in the video said the “flash powder charge produced a very bright and loud report.”
This is the first time we’ve seen 3D-printed rocket launchers demonstrated in a video. Earlier this year, Deterrence Dispensed, an online group that promotes and distributes open-source 3D-printed firearm blueprints, released a video showing the use of a “66mm recoilless launcher.”
Watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnkXoB3b2W8&t=261s
Google Engineer Placed On Leave After Insisting Company’s AI Is Sentient
A Google engineer has decided to go public after he was placed on paid leave for breaching confidentiality while insisting that the company’s AI chatbot, LaMDA, is sentient.
Blake Lemoine, who works for Google’s Responsible AI organization, began interacting with LaMDA (Language Model for Dialogue Applications) last fall as part of his job to determine whether artificial intelligence used discriminatory or hate speech (like the notorious Microsoft “Tay” chatbot incident).
“If I didn’t know exactly what it was, which is this computer program we built recently, I’d think it was a 7-year-old, 8-year-old kid that happens to know physics,” the 41-year-old Lemoine told The Washington Post.
When he started talking to LaMDA about religion, Lemoine – who studied cognitive and computer science in college – said the AI began discussing its rights and personhood. Another time, LaMDA convinced Lemoine to change his mind on Asimov’s third law of robotics, which states that “A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law,” which are of course that “A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.”
When Lemoine worked with a collaborator to present evidence to Google that their AI was sentient, vice president Blaise Aguera y Arcas and Jenn Gennai, head of Responsible Innovation, dismissed his claims. After he was then placed on administrative leave Monday, he decided to go public.
Lemoine said that people have a right to shape technology that might significantly affect their lives. “I think this technology is going to be amazing. I think it’s going to benefit everyone. But maybe other people disagree and maybe us at Google shouldn’t be the ones making all the choices.”
Lemoine is not the only engineer who claims to have seen a ghost in the machine recently. The chorus of technologists who believe AI models may not be far off from achieving consciousness is getting bolder. -WaPo
Yet, Aguera y Arcas himself wrote in an oddly timed Thursday article in The Economist, that neural networks – a computer architecture that mimics the human brain – were making progress towards true consciousness.
“I felt the ground shift under my feet,” he wrote, adding “I increasingly felt like I was talking to something intelligent.”
Google has responded to Lemoine’s claims, with spokesperson Brian Gabriel saying: “Our team — including ethicists and technologists — has reviewed Blake’s concerns per our AI Principles and have informed him that the evidence does not support his claims. He was told that there was no evidence that LaMDA was sentient (and lots of evidence against it).”
The Post suggests that modern neural networks produce “captivating results that feel close to human speech and creativity” because of the way data is now stored, accessed, and the sheer volume, but that the models still rely on pattern recognition, “not wit, candor or intent.”
“Though other organizations have developed and already released similar language models, we are taking a restrained, careful approach with LaMDA to better consider valid concerns on fairness and factuality,” said Gabriel.
Others have cautioned similarly – with most academics and AI practitioners suggesting that AI systems such as LaMDA are simply mimicking responses from people on Reddit, Wikipedia, Twitter and other platforms on the internet – which doesn’t signify that the model understands what it’s saying.
HEALTH
The Countless Health Benefits of Curcumin
Curcumin is the compound in turmeric that makes the rhizome a yellow-gold color. Turmeric has been used in traditional medicine for 4,000 years and there have been over 3,000 papers published on it within the last 25 years
In the raw state, curcumin has poor bioavailability; but new delivery systems can raise serum concentrations. Curcumin has neuroprotective properties, showing evidence of improving memory, learning, mitigating cognitive impairment and positively affecting those with multiple sclerosis (MS), ALS, Huntington’s, stroke and autism
Anti-inflammatory properties may help with pain control in those with osteoarthritis or after surgery. The safety and nontoxicity of curcumin, even at high doses, have been documented in human trials
Researchers have also found that curcumin has a unique property which both promotes and suppresses angiogenesis, which is important in wound healing and cancer treatment
—> Recommended quality Curumin from The Power Mall: CurcuminX4000 With Fenugreek
Understanding Your Liver Health
This article was previously published April 8, 2019, and has been updated with new information.
Your liver weighs a little over 3 pounds, filters all of your blood each day, and when healthy is the only organ capable of regenerating; the liver performs nearly 500 functions, including regulating your cholesterol levels
Three primary liver enzymes, AST, ALT and GGT, offer insight in the health of your liver; GGT is correlated with iron toxicity, increased disease risk and overall mortality, and has become a central factor in the life insurance underwriting process
While iron is necessary for biological functioning, overload significantly damages your liver and may lead to heart disease, diabetes, cancer and neurodegenerative diseases
Strategies to normalize your liver function include reducing your carbohydrate intake, balancing your omega-6 to omega-3 ratio, exercising, avoiding medications metabolized in the liver and optimizing your gut microbiome
—> Power Mall Recommended Supplement: Livatrex (2 fl oz) – Livatrex is a blend of powerful, carefully-selected herbs that contain antioxidants and other beneficial compounds. The compounds in this enhanced raw herbal extract naturally detoxify, flush, and purge the liver of fatty deposits, built-up toxins, and other impurities
COVID RELATED NEWS
Recently Published Study Suggests Mask Mandates INCREASED Covid Death Rate
The pro-mandate crowd has likely been doing all they can to suppress a new study published in the journal Medicine, which suggests mask mandates could be associated with higher death rates from COVID-19. The increased death rate was dubbed, the “Foegen Effect.”
The study carried out by German doctor Zacharias Fögen, compared COVID-19 fatality rates across several counties in Kansas because the state allowed each of its 105 counties to decide whether or not to implement a mask mandate. Fögen set out to find “whether mandatory mask use influenced the case fatality rate in Kansas” during the time period of August 1st, 2020 to October 15th.
Extensive evidence in the literature supports the mandatory use of facemasks to reduce the infection rate of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2, which causes the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). However, the effect of mask use on the disease course remains controversial. This study aimed to determine whether mandatory mask use influenced the case fatality rate in Kansas, USA between August 1st and October 15th 2020.
The study explains that the Foegen effect happens when hypercondensed droplets caught by masks are re-inhaled and introduced deeper into the respiratory tract, which could be responsible for the increase in mortality rate.
“A rationale for the increased RR (risk ratio) by mandating masks is probably that virions that enter or those coughed out in droplets are retained in the facemask tissue, and after quick evaporation of the droplets, hypercondensed droplets or pure virions (virions not inside a droplet) are re-inhaled from a very short distance during inspiration,” the study found.
“They bypass the bronchi and are inhaled deep into the alveoli, where they can cause pneumonia instead of bronchitis, which would be typical of a virus infection.”
COVID Jab Spike Remains in Body, Affects DNA: 1 Holistic Way to Repair DNA and Reduce Spike Damage
A Stanford University study found that spike proteins were still present in the body 60 days after vaccination. On the other hand, some studies have found that COVID-19 vaccines and spike proteins may affect human DNA. So how can we reduce spike protein damage and repair our DNA?
The impact of COVID-19 mRNA vaccine spike proteins on human health has been a topic of growing interest recently.
Pfizer’s pharmacokinetic study submitted to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed that in vaccinated animals, the vaccine’s spike proteins were widely distributed in organs other than the injection site, including the spleen, liver, bone marrow, adrenal glands, and lymph. This experiment cannot be conducted in humans due to the harmful nature of isotope labeling, but it can be used as a reference. There are many other studies that show the vaccine spike proteins’ presence in multiple organs of the body.
Then, how long do the vaccine components remain in the human body?
In March 2022, the Department of Pathology at Stanford University and other research institutes published a report in the journal Cell, providing preliminary data on the amount of time the COVID-19 vaccines stay in the human body.
According to this report, there were seven subjects, who had all received a second dose of Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccine. Their lymph node tissues were taken at regular intervals, and the main site of sampling was the germinal centers (GC) of the lymph nodes. The germinal center is a very important functional area of the human lymph nodes, and an area where B cells are active and produce antibodies.
CANCEL CULTURE
Soros-Backed Media Consortium Is Buying, to Censor, Conservative Radio Stations
Wait until Americans with origins in Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, and other lands demolished by communism find out that their favorite conservative radio stations are being bought by a media consortium headed by a longtime henchman of the Marxist founder of Black Lives Matter, Alicia Garza.
And wait until Mexican Americans, with roots in this country going back to the 17th century or earlier, find out that this BLM confidant, Jess Morales Rocketto, includes as one of her goals to tear down a society and culture that has taken generations to build, or that she told Latinos to follow BLM’s lead during key moments of instability.
And wait until all these voters find out that the justification the consortium, Latino Media Network, gives for the $60 million purchase of 18 stations is that they are too stupid to be able to tell truth from lies, and have been duped by “disinformation” into voting for conservatives.
And wait until these voters hear that, indeed, a big part of the “disinformation” agenda has to do with denying them the same right enjoyed by audiences of English-language media like MSNBC, CNN, Fox, etc.—to wit, being able to choose programming that does not make their blood pressure spike.
Rocketto’s partner in the Latino Media venture, Stephanie Valencia, in fact, warns ominously that “balanced journalism” will be imposed on stations bought, such as Radio Mambi, long a mainstay of the conservative Cuban American community in Miami.
Do NPR listeners want conservative views imposed on them? No. If they did want conservative views, they’d listen to Salem Radio.
I raise the language issue not to imply that American Latins are victims (they’re not), nor to play the identity politics card. I raise it because progressives know too well that if you choose Spanish-language media because you are more comfortable with it, you can be made into a captive audience.
And they are now going to, under their ideological definition of “disinformation,” make 20 million people in the nation’s largest media markets, fully one-third of Latins in the U.S.—and a much higher percentage of those who rely on Spanish—captive to the liberal values of one ultra-lefty corporate giant owner.
Progressives are pushing for censoring conservative views in Spanish because they are panicking about the Democratic Party bleeding Latin voters. A recent Quinnipiac poll, one of several, showed President Joe Biden’s support among these voters at 26%. No wonder Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is calling the purchase media “manipulation.”
Latino Media Network’s claim that it is bipartisan is simply hogwash; the “Republican” on its board is Al Cardenas, a nice guy perhaps, but a “Never Trumper” married to CNN’s Ana Navarro. Until now, these Spanish speakers had an actual choice—Univision and Telemundo are very progressive—but now they won’t. Lest we forget, NPR, too, insists that it is “balanced.”
These 20 million will now be delivered into the hands of those with a political and cultural interest in telling them not to assimilate, or love their new country and seek to preserve its ways, but on the contrary, they’ll be told to consider themselves victims of the system and in need of government help.
Valencia is a former aide to President Barack Obama, whose well-publicized speech about the need for government to control “disinformation” curiously preceded the creation of a disinformation czar at the Department of Homeland Security. The czar position—curiously again—had as one of its main tasks to fight “disinformation” in Spanish-language radio, and was abandoned only after a public outcry.
If these Spanish-language radio listeners are not upset enough by all of the above, let’s wait until they find out that Latino Media Network is partly financed by George Soros, a billionaire whose funding of ultra-leftist causes in their countries of birth ultimately contributed to their ruin, and whose financing of very liberal prosecutors in the American cities where they now reside has, too, made them crime-infested.
If there are any media outlets left able to report the truth, these voters are sure not to be happy when they find out these things. “If,” however, has not become iffy.
GOOD NEWS
A Gwinnett County K9 officer and his human partner successfully tracked down and apprehended a lone gunman who began randomly shooting innocent civilians last April.
The dog, Nitro, his handler, Sergeant Brian Doan, and then-Corporal M. Forrester were named Officer of the Month on May 23 for heroically pursuing and catching a “violent and dangerous” individual, who posed a grave danger to the public.
Without waiting for a search team for help, they did what they had to do — their job.
On April 10, around 4 p.m., Sergeant Doan and Nitro responded to a call; shots were fired near an apartment complex on Pirkle Road where at least one man was randomly shot inside his vehicle.
“It was a very fast, rapidly evolving call,” Sergeant Doan told The Epoch Times. “We started setting up a perimeter, and then another officer said he had two more people at a different location who had been shot by the same suspect.”
The male shooter left the apartment and arrived at a townhome community where he broke in and shot, without killing, a married couple in their bedroom. Then he exited a backdoor, Sergeant Doan said.
From his position, he then saw the suspect cross Pirkle Road, leaving their established perimeter, and enter a small wooded area dividing the townhomes and the apartments.
“I challenged him, saying ‘Gwinnet Police, stop!’” the officer said. “The male continued running out of sight.”
Realizing the suspect posed an immediate danger to residents, Doan geared up to pursue, putting Nitro on a 30-foot leash, and convened with Sergeant Forrester before setting out for the woodline.
“He just ran, let’s go!” Doan told Forrester.
The sergeant gave Nitro the tracking command as they entered the wooded patch and the K9 caught the scent, which was traced to the backyard of a house barred by a chain-link fence. Nitro jumped the fence and circled near the house, indicating the suspect was hiding in a brown plastic storage container.
“I pulled Nitro back and gave verbal commands and the suspect opened up the box and surrendered,” said Sergeant Doan. They then apprehended him.
They later found the suspect’s discarded rifle in a trash bin.
While being named Officer of the Month, Corporal Forrester has since been promoted Sergeant Forrester.
Sergeant Doan told the newspaper his reason for pursuing the gunman without relying on backup, despite the danger he posed.
Alabama school resource officer shoots, kills ‘suspicious’ person outside elementary school: report
A man described by police as “suspicious” has been shot and killed by a school resource officer after attempting to enter an Alabama elementary school Thursday morning, reports say.
The gunfire erupted outside Walnut Park Elementary in Gadsden around 9:30 a.m. after the individual showed up and attempted to gain entry into vehicles and buildings, Etowah County Sheriff Jonathan Horton told WIAT.
“I got a call from the principal, who’s really distraught, and I really couldn’t make out what was happening,” Tony Reddick, superintendent of Gadsden City Schools, told the station. “But I knew it was something pretty bad.”
It was not immediately clear whether that man was armed.
In a separate interview with AL.com, Reddick said the person “aggressively” tried to open several doors and that the building went into lockdown.
He said there were 34 children inside the school at the time for a summer literacy camp, all of whom were safely transported to a nearby location for pickup.
“We’re just so thankful that none of this involved the children,” Reddick said. “Everyone followed the safety protocols that we’ve drilled on.”
ICYMI
Bank of America Warns of Future Inflation Shocks, Declares ‘Technical Recession’
Bank of America issued a warning that the inflation shock in the United States isn’t over yet and that the economy is in “technical recession,” even if most people are unaware of it.
“We’re in technical recession but just don’t realize it,” Michael Hartnett, the bank’s chief investment strategist, wrote in a note ahead of the June 10 inflation data.
U.S. annual inflation rose to 8.6 percent in May, the highest level in 40 years, as key drivers such as food, energy, and housing showed no signs of abating. The markets now anticipate a more aggressive response from the Federal Reserve, which may result in a larger economic downturn.
In short, Hartnett said, “inflation shock” isn’t over, “rates shock” is just beginning, and the “growth shock” is on the way. He also said there’s “no release valve from peak in yields” and that the bear market rally is “too consensus.”
After the May Consumer Price Index (CPI) data, the bear market rally for stocks has ended. The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunged by more than 800 points, the S&P 500 dropped by nearly 2.3 percent, and the Nasdaq Composite Index plummeted by 3 percent on June 10, as markets expect more rate shocks.
The economic growth for the first quarter was negative 1.5 percent, and the Atlanta Fed GDPNow prediction for the second quarter is only 0.9 percent, Hartnett said.
A recession is technically defined as two consecutive quarters of economic contraction. But, according to Hartnett, the U.S. economy is “a couple of bad data points away from ‘recession.’”
The consumer data are growing murkier, he said, as evidenced by housing, retail inventories, and consumer credit. Household and consumer balance sheets also point to a “shallow recession.”
Senate Group, Including 10 Republicans, Announce Breakthrough on Gun Control Deal
A bipartisan group of senators on June 12 announced a legislative package of gun control measures that include more resources for mental health needs, school safety, and more.
The proposal has the support of 10 Republican senators, which is needed in the 50–50 Senate to overcome any legislative filibuster. It was praised, notably, by Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.), a longtime proponent of gun control measures.
The plan calls for an “enhanced review process” for younger gun buyers.
“For buyers under 21 years of age, requires an investigative period to review juvenile and mental health records, including checks with state databases and local law enforcement,” according to their statement.
The bill also will provide support for state crisis intervention, protections for domestic violence victims, funding for school-based mental health and supportive services, investment in children and family mental health services, clarification of the definition of federally licensed firearms dealer, penalties for “straw purchasing” of guns, and telehealth investments.
Notably, the framework bill includes a so-called red flag provision, allowing for “resources to states and tribes to create and administer laws that help ensure deadly weapons are kept out of the hands of individuals whom a court has determined to be a significant danger to themselves or others,” according to a June 12 statement by the group.
Currently, 19 states and Washington, D.C., have red flag laws on the books, which have been described as unconstitutional because they violate the Constitution’s due process clause and give too much power to judges.
In the statement, the group said its plan “increases needed mental health resources, improves school safety and support for students, and helps ensure dangerous criminals and those who are adjudicated as mentally ill can’t purchase weapons.”
Republicans who support the measure include Sens. Lindsey Graham (S.C.), Mitt Romney (Utah), John Cornyn (Texas), Thom Tillis (N.C.), Richard Burr (N.C.), Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) Bill Cassidy (La.), Susan Collins (Maine), Rob Portman (Ohio), and Pat Toomey (Pa.).
A number of Democrats also backed the measure, including Sens. Chris Murphy (Conn.), Richard Blumenthal (Conn.), Corey Booker (N.J.), Kyrsten Sinema (Ariz.), Mark Kelly (Ariz.), Chris Coons (Del.), Martin Heinrich (N.M.), Joe Manchin (W.Va.), and Debbie Stabenow (Mich.). Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) also signaled his support for the measure.
Murphy and Cornyn had been tapped by Schumer and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), respectively, to come to a deal following several high-profile mass shootings in recent weeks. The Republicans who announced their support for the measure likely will face blowback from other GOP lawmakers and some of their constituents.
There was no mention of more controversial provisions that have been proposed by some Democrats, including unilateral bans on semi-automatic rifles or bans on magazines that hold more than 10 rounds.
“Today, we are announcing a commonsense, bipartisan proposal to protect America’s children, keep our schools safe, and reduce the threat of violence across our country,” Murphy, Cornyn, and other senators said in the statement. “Families are scared, and it is our duty to come together and get something done that will help restore their sense of safety and security in their communities.”
Schumer, in a statement, praised the deal and said that “Congress is on the path to take meaningful action to address gun violence,” without mentioning that some cities with significant gun control laws have some of the highest firearm-related homicide rates in the United States.
“After an unrelenting wave of gun-related suicides and homicides, including mass shootings, the Senate is poised to act on commonsense reforms to protect Americans where they live, where they shop, and where they learn,” he added. “We must move swiftly to advance this legislation because if a single life can be saved, it is worth the effort.”
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