The 14th Amendment vs. Trump

This will be my first installment to a legal challenge just getting underway in keeping Trump from office. Some say this is new, it is not. Some say Trump being charged with “insurrection” isn’t needed, it is. David Frum correctly says the Court will decide in the end. Frum also notes that if this tactic is opened up, our body-politic will be riddled with keeping our political foes from office. More distortions of the law will surely come as the Left uses Lawfare to attack the “Democracy” they say they want to protect. As more is written on these challenges and the hyperbole from the MSM and politicians splash into our lives, I will be posting on this more in the future.

This old challenge reignited “anew” by a couple Federalist legal scholars [as well as some Leftist scholars] is that Trump can be barred from future office positions due to “insurrection.”

This will be a thing.

THE CHALLENGE EXPLAINED A BIT

  • Two Federalist Society law professors have published their findings stating that Trump is disqualified from serving as President based on the originalist interpretation of the 14th amendment ban on anyone who has engaged in insurrection against the United States from running for office. (MTN)
  • Donald Trump is ineligible to become president again, leading conservative scholars argue. “The Fourteenth Amendment, Section 3 says that anybody who takes an oath to uphold the Constitution and thereafter engages in or gives aid and comfort to an insurrection cannot hold any office under the United States, period,” Harvard University Carl M. Loeb University Professor of Constitutional Law Emeritus Laurence Tribe tells Joy Reid. (YAHOO NEWS)

Firstly, as much as the Left opines that an insurrection conviction isn’t needed, it is, in reality, in order to bar Trump from office. If the Left tries to push this thru without a solid legal ground, the electorate will clearly note this and there will be hell to pay.

And, I assume, in the end the Supes will need to get involved. Especially if pushed thru before the election like Trump’s 2nd shampeachment.

More on SCOTUS from David Frum below.

COURT CASE ALREADY STARTED

Here is a recent news story of a Florida case already being pushed thru:

A Florida lawyer is challenging former President Trump’s ability to run for president in 2024 under the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment, citing the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol attack.

Lawrence Caplan, a tax attorney in Palm Beach County, filed the challenge in federal court Thursday, pointing to a clause in the amendment that says those who “have engaged in insurrection or rebellion” against the government cannot hold office.

(YAHOO NEWS)

Here is a video, also Left leaning, explaining the issue well:

  • MeidasTouch host Ben Meiselas reports on a new disqualification lawsuit filed against Donald Trump in Florida federal court under the 14th Amendment Section 3.

PUSHING BACK ON THIS IDEA

[As an aside: just to note officially on my site, the current cases against Trump are being rushed through the courts, however, Alan Dershowitz and Jonathan Turley both say isn’t going to happen.]

THE FEDERALIST has this response to a recent 126-page paper on Trump not being eligible for the Presidency:

….Despite the scenes of the attack on the Capitol and extensive investigations, the American people do not seem to agree that Trump took part in an insurrection or rebellion. Almost half the respondents in a THE HILL rejected the claim that the events of Jan. 6 were an actual “insurrection” (with the divide tracking partisan lines), and 76 percent viewed it as a “protest gone too far.”

Other considerations also call into question the claim that Trump instigated an “insurrection” in the constitutional sense. If it were clear that Trump engaged in insurrection, the Justice Department should have acted on the Jan. 6 Committee’s referral for prosecution on that charge. Special Counsel Jack Smith should have indicted him for insurrection or seditious conspiracy, which remain federal crimes. If it were obvious that Trump had committed insurrection, Congress should have convicted him in the two weeks between Jan. 6 and Inauguration Day. Instead, the House impeached Trump for indictment to insurrection but the Senate acquitted him.   

The Senate’s acquittal is the only official finding by a federal or state institution on the question of whether Trump committed insurrection. The failure of the special counsel to charge insurrection and the Senate to convict in the second impeachment highlights a serious flaw in the academic theory of disqualification.

According to Luttig and Tribe, it appears self-evident that Trump committed insurrection. They assume Trump violated the law without any definitive finding by any federal authority. According to their view, he must carry the burden of proof to show he is not guilty of insurrection or rebellion — a process that achieves the very opposite of our Constitution’s guarantee of due process, which, it so happens, is not just provided for by the Fifth Amendment, but reaffirmed in the same 14th Amendment that contains the disqualification clause. It would be like requiring Barak Obama to prove he was native-born (a constitutional prerequisite for being president) if state election officials disqualified him for being foreign-born.

The Electoral College Chooses Presidents, Not State Officials

If this academic view were correct, it would throw our electoral system into chaos. One of the chief virtues of the Electoral College system is that it decentralizes the selection of the president: State legislatures decide the manner for choosing electors, with each state receiving votes equal to its representation in the House and Senate. States run the elections, which means that hundreds, if not thousands, of city, county, and state officials could execute this unilateral finding of insurrection. A county state election official, for example, could choose to remove Trump’s name from printed ballots or refuse to count any votes in his favor. A state court could order Trump barred from the election. A state governor could refuse to certify any electoral votes in his favor. The decentralization of our electoral system could allow a single official, especially from a battleground state, to sway the outcome of a close race in the 2024 presidential election.

Allowing a single state to wield this much power over the federal government runs counter to broader federalism principles articulated by the Supreme Court. In our nation’s most important decision on the balance of power between the national government and the states, McCullough v. Maryland, Chief Justice John Marshall held that a single state could not impose a tax on the Bank of the United States. Marshall famously observed that “the power to tax is the power to destroy.”

Marshall may well have frowned upon single state officials deciding to eliminate candidates for federal office on their own initiative. The Supreme Court lent further support for this idea in United States Term Limits v. Thornton (1995), which held that states could not effectively add new qualifications for congressional candidates by barring long-time incumbents from appearing on the ballot. Writing for the majority, Justice Stevens argued that allowing states to add term limits as a qualification for their congressional elections conflicted with “the uniformity and national character [of Congress] that the framers sought to ensure.” Allowing state election officials to decide for themselves whether someone has incited or committed insurrection, without any meaningful trial or equivalent proceeding, would give states the ability to achieve what term limits forbid.

[….]

We are not apologists for Trump’s spreading of baseless claims of electoral fraud or his efforts to stop the electoral count on Jan. 6. But as with the weak charges brought by the special counsel, the effort to hold Trump accountable for his actions should not depend on a warping of our constitutional system. Prosecutors should charge him with insurrection if they can prove it and have that conviction sustained on appeal. Congress should disqualify Trump if it can agree he committed the crime. Ultimately, the American people will decide Trump’s responsibility for the events of Jan. 6, but at the ballot box in 2024’s nominating and general elections for president

TRUMP NOT CHARGED with INSURRECTION

Insurrection is still key in this endeavor, and, as mush as Laurence Tribe thinks it is self evident, the case has not been made. In THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR has a great little article worthy of noting,

For 31 months, the Democrats and their allies in the corporate media have characterized the Capitol Hill chaos that erupted on Jan. 6, 2021 as an “insurrection.” The House of Representatives reinforced this version of events by impeaching then-President Trump for “incitement of insurrection.” The Senate acquitted him, of course. Nonetheless, the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th attack referred the case to the Justice Department for further investigation. Consequently, it was something of a surprise that the formal indictment unsealed last Tuesday by Special Counsel Jack Smith failed to charge Trump with fomenting insurrection.

This must have been particularly frustrating for those who have long insisted that the 14th Amendment prohibits Trump from serving a second presidential term. The primary purpose of the 14th Amendment was, of course, to grant citizenship to emancipated slaves. However, it also includes language in Section 3 that bars anyone who has “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States]” from holding office in the federal government. This passage was included to prevent former officials of the Confederacy from returning to Congress and creating more mischief. The problem with using this clause against Donald Trump is explained by constitutional law professor Josh Blackman in Reason:

In some legal circles, advocates contend that it is so obvious that Trump committed insurrection. Yet, the special counsel, after studying the issue for months, opted not to bring that charge. Why? Perhaps Smith determined that he could not prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Trump engaged in insurrection. Or maybe Smith determined there were considerable legal questions about how to obtain such a conviction – most critically, was there an actual insurrection? (Yes, for the Supreme Court to knock Trump off the ballot, you need five votes to say that there was an insurrection as a matter of law – good luck with that!)

It evidently never occurred to the victims of Trump Derangement Syndrome that “insurrection” is a legal term with an actual definition in the U.S. Code. In order to convict former President Trump of this crime, the Special Prosecutor must prove that he fits the following description in 18 U.S.C. § 2383: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto.” Anyone convicted of insurrection can expect a long prison term and a hefty fine. It would be difficult to convict Trump under this statute, considering that not one participant in the Jan. 6 riot has been charged with insurrection…..

DAVID FRUM’S ATLANTIC PIECE

And it may be a 50-state attempt, which will push it to the Supes sooner rather than later. David Frum, a #NeverTrump guy, notes this will be a failed endeavor by simply stating in his ATLANTIC piece:

  • “The fourteenth amendment won’t save us from Donald Trump.”

Continuing he states:

….The least of these problems is the legal one: whether Trump’s scheme to seize the presidency by fraud, then violence, amounts to a “rebellion” or an “insurrection” under the amendment. There will be a lot of disagreement on that point, enough to generate litigation. But let’s suppose that the excluders win in court or that the courts abdicate altogether, kicking the dispute back to the elected branches of government as a “political matter.”

In that case, the use of the section to debar candidates would not stop at Trump. It would become a dangerously convenient tool of partisan politics.

LET’S RECONSIDER the text:

No person shall be a Senator or Representative in Congress, or elector of President and Vice-President, or hold any office, civil or military, under the United States, or under any State, who, having previously taken an oath, as a member of Congress, or as an officer of the United States, or as a member of any State legislature, or as an executive or judicial officer of any State, to support the Constitution of the United States, shall have engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the same, or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof. But Congress may by a vote of two-thirds of each House, remove such disability.

Because Section 3’s meaning seemed so obvious in 1866, a lot of the hard questions about its interpretation and application were shrugged off. I’ll nominate just two examples.

First, the section does not apply only to candidates for president—it does not even mention the president. It mentions senators, House members, electors, and civil and military officers of the United States or any state. The section appears to apply to the presidency only as part of that final catchall category.

Second, that phrase “aid and comfort to the enemies thereof”—what does that mean? The language is copied from Article III, Section 3 of the Constitution. But there, the language was drafted to make it difficult to convict an accused person of crime: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.”

David H. Gans: The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to be a protection against state violence

Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment strips away all of the 1787 restrictions: the overt act, the two witnesses, the requirement of public confession. The question of what constitutes “aid and comfort” is left to the judgment of … wait—Section 3 gives no clue about how it should be enforced or by whom. Again, that’s understandable. In 1866, none of this looked complicated. But in a modern context, that enforcement question of a reactivated Section 3 will be nasty.

Consider the scenario in which Section 3 is invoked against Trump in 2024. Although he has won the Republican nomination, Democratic secretaries of state in key states refuse to place his name on their ballots, as a person who engaged in insurrection against the United States. With Trump’s name deleted from some swing-state ballots, President Joe Biden is easily reelected.

But only kind of reelected. How in the world are Republicans likely to react to such an outcome? Will any of them regard such a victory as legitimate? The rage and chaos that would follow are beyond imagining.

And then what? If Section 3 can be reactivated in this way, then reactivated it will be. Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify, and not only for president, but for any race where Democrats present someone who said or did something that can be represented as “aid and comfort” to enemies of the United States. Didn’t progressive Representative Ilhan Omar once seemingly equate al-Qaeda with the U.S. military? Do we think that her political enemies will accept that she was making only a stupid rhetorical point? Earlier this year, Tennessee Republicans tossed out of the legislature two Black Democrats for allegedly violating House rules. Might Tennessee Republicans next deem unruly Democrats “rebels” forbidden ever to run for office again?

Where are the federal courts in all this? Do they actually stand aside as local officials exercise veto power over who’s a loyal enough American to be listed on the ballot for county commissioner? Do they really let the “elected branches” decide? And what would that mean in practice? The section transfers an otherwise presidential prerogative, the pardon power, to Congress. If the courts step back, does that not imply that the House and Senate must somehow find a way to wield the power of the section together?

That seems unlikely. But the alternative of judicial decision is fraught with institutional risks too. Imagine a serious effort to block Trump from appearing on ballots in 2024, and then suppose he challenges that block in court—and ultimately wins a ruling in his favor from the Supreme Court, by a margin of 5–4 or even 6–3. Now the rage and chaos would be reversed. A pro-Trump Thomas-Alito-Gorsuch-Barrett-Kavanaugh majority might obliterate whatever deference the Court still commands among Democrats and liberals. Although much is wrong with the present Court, this country will not be in a better or happier place if it loses its last, imperfect arbiter….

UPDATED ON 09/18/2023 | CNN Transcript

A CNN interview was just pointed out to me where a “not-fan of Trump” said rationally what David Frum said, and that is, allowing states to go down this path will create vindictive cross-fire that will spread through our body-politic:

STERLINGWhat we need to do is focus on the voters. We have a Constitutional Republic of laws that essentially empowers voters to make decisions. They make good ones. They make bad ones. They generally come out OK. We have to trust the voters in this. And anybody using an electoral scheme or a constitutional interpretation to remove anybody from the ballots is going to be a dangerous precedent.

Because I can guarantee you what happens, it start up from the Bork hearings in ’86. One side does one thing, the other side does something else. The other side blames the last side for doing it. There will be a Republican saying, you have violated your oath of office under the Constitution. I’m barring you from the ballot. That’s all we’re going to see happening. We need to have grown-ups in the room look at the long term implications of these things. Whether we disagree with the individual candidate or loved a individual candidate.

FRUM IS RIGHT

Bottom line?

IN THE END, SCOTUS SAVES THE DAY

And Frum is exactly right on this point as well: Republicans will hunt for Democrats to disqualify. As much as I love the GOP using the Dems tactics against them. Take for instance Mitch McConnell’s warning to Harry Reid, which came to fruition when the Republicans [thankfully] used to get judges onto the bench that were center-right. If this “insurrection/sedition” tactic is unleashed, our system will have a ton of these potholes, forever disrupting the turnover of power peaceably.

ALREADY TRIED

The WASHINGTON TIMES also notes that this effort has already been unsuccessful with other Republican candidates

….According to the Congressional Research Service, a nonpartisan shared staff to congressional committees and members of Congress, “Invocation of the Disqualification Clause raises a number of novel legal questions involving the activities that could trigger disqualification, the offices to which disqualification might apply, and the mechanisms to enforce disqualification.”

CRS’ analysis of the 14th Amendment relating to the Capitol events adds, “The clause has been seldom used, and the few times it has been used in the past mainly arose out of the Civil War—a very different context from the events of January 6.”

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington have joined Free Speech for People with plans to hit Mr. Trump‘s campaign with legal broadsides under Section 3 of the 14th Amendment.

They have written letters to state election officials requesting them to block Mr. Trump from the ballot and are preparing voter lawsuits and state election board complaints.

Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, enacted after the Civil War during Reconstruction, disqualifies someone from holding office after taking an oath to uphold the U.S. Constitution but later engages in “insurrection or rebellion” against the country.

The clause was intended to deal with Confederate rebels who went to war against the Union or provided aid or comfort to national enemies.

Throughout 2022, liberal organizations such as Free Speech for People and Our Revolution sent letters urging election officials in all 50 states to disqualify Mr. Trump and his allies from qualifying for the ballot.

The groups cited the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868, to make a case for barring lawmakers and the former president from running campaigns because of their perceived role in inciting the protest.

Liberal activists’ 2022 legal attempts under the 14th Amendment, however, to throw Republican House lawmakers they contended were “insurrectionists” off ballots in their home states were all unsuccessful.

These lawmakers were Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Tom Tiffany and Scott Fitzgerald of Wisconsin, Madison Cawthorn of North Carolina and Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin.

A law firm recently filed a lawsuit arguing that former President Donald Trump can be disqualified from the elections. And while this is new, it pulls from an agenda that the establishment has been proposing since 2021. The basis is Section 3 of the 14th Amendment, ratified in 1868 just after the Civil War. It says a person can be banned from election or appointment to any level of government office if they “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against the [United States], or given aid or comfort to the enemies thereof.” The establishment has been arguing this could apply to President Trump’s actions to challenge the 2020 election, and for his alleged role in Jan. 6.

HOWEVER, as pointed out, Joshua Philipp points out this has already been tried, and failed:

MORE TO COME IN THE FUTURE, FOR SURE.


Federalist Bonus
John Yoo & John Malcolm


Below are four excerpts from a longer FEDERALIST SOCIETY discussion between John Malcolm and John Yoo:A Conversation on the Right: The Current State of Presidential Power”.

EXCERPT ONE:
John Yoo Says That January 6th Was “Thee Most Important Legal Event”

In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes that the January 6th stuff is not nearly as strong as the Mara-Lago case (and in the fuller video he throws cold water on that as well). John Malcolm also discusses the ability of counsel to delve into all sorts of avenues of legal thought and advice. Jack Smith laid out an argument that undercuts his and Georgia’s entire case [should watch the above linked video for more]:

3. The Defendant had a right, like every American, to speak publicly about the election and even to claim, falsely, that there had been outcome-determinative fraud during the election and that he had won. He w6as also entitled to formally challenge the results of the election through lawful and appropriate means, such as by seeking recounts or audits of the popular vote in states or filing lawsuits challenging ballots and procedures. Indeed, in many cases, the Defendant did pursue these methods of contesting the election results. His efforts to change the outcome in any state through recounts, audits, or legal challenges were uniformly unsuccessful. (HERITAGE FOUNDATION)

EXCERPT TWO:
Insurrection and Sedition Not Part of Indictments | PLUS: Trump’s State of Mind

In this excerpted discussion John Yoo notes the lack of “insurrection” or “sedition” in the indictments. John Malcolm speaks to Trump’s clear words of “peacefully and patriotically marching” – which he says is not in the record of the indictment. Trump’s state of mind is discussed a bit.

EXCERPT THREE:
Brad Raffensperger/Trump Phone Call Dissected by John Malcolm

In this excerpted discussion John Malcolm quickly notes the failure of any criminal law breaking in the phone call between Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Donald Trump regarding the “finding” of votes. The worst of intentions is applied to Trump by those that dislike him, however, the law done well looks beyond people’s opinions of him.

EXCERPT FOUR:
A Question About What Type Of Legal Advice John Eastman Gave

This is a question regarding John Eastman’s legal advice from the Q & A portion of the video.

Checking Facebook Factcheckers (and More Dammit!)

JUMP TO….


(These are articles and excerpts — with some additional edits here — from my SITE’S FACEBOOK PAGE)

Okay, I have been doing posts here-n-there with a montage of recent articles about the Covid-1984 gang and what I call “vaccine wars.” In this edition I will start out with a fact check of Facebook’s (FB) “fact check” of a linked article. This is the article with a slight excerpt, followed by my fact check (with a couple additional article links in it for my readers here). The article is titled, “COVID-19 Vaccines: Scientific Proof of Lethality,” and all it is is links to journal articles or papers by specialists calling for caution in whatever aspect they studied of the vaccines. Some are mild observations, others are potentially lethal. But they link mainly to medical journal articles.

FACT-CHECKING FACEBOOK FACT-CHECKERS

Here is the “Fact Check” — on my site’s wall they blurred the links graphic, and when you press “See Why” it brings you to a pop out window where you can link to the article refuting what you (I) put on your FB wall:

Here is my own fact/fact check” if you will. Again, I will add articles for my readers to have more resources:

RUSHED

FACEBOOK says FALSE: because clinical trials under emergency use authorization showed them to be safe.

THREE THINGS.

First is that the trials were not nearly as long or under years long watch before fully approved, they were rushed. (CNN | WEB MD | HISTORY CHANNEL)

And nothing says “we trust these products” like not being able to sue or be compensated for severe side effects (CNBC | NEWS18)

55-YEARS

Two, the FDA has actively tried to block the “clinical trials” paperwork and studies from becoming public.

  • IN FACT: in November of 2021 the FDA has asked a federal judge to give them 55 years to release data related to the Pfizer COVID vaccines (ISRAEL NATIONAL NEWS); and later Pfizer ditched 55-years and asked for 75 years of secrecy (WASHINGTON EXAMINER)

These are from MEDIA’ITE

So for FACEBOOK to say this without the public having any insight into the clinical trials is itself FALSE. (SEE: WINNING: A Court Victory for Transparency on Pfizer Covid Vaccine Data | First 500-Pages Released In December Showed Problems [PDF])

And I will add a third. We do know that there have been many — publicly verified — issues with perfectly healthy people on a sports field that just drop dead or healthy young persons within days of the vaccine having major medical issues. One example is a young teen who was part of the clinical trials: https://tinyurl.com/yc6ehybj

(See also Pfizer Whistleblowers [RPT] | See more stories: 1000 COVID STORIES)

Nathan Emmanuel Esparza

HERE IS A STORY ABOUT A LOCAL KID

Nathan Emmanuel Esparza – Pfizer July 2021

Died 13th July 2021 – Heart Attack Aged 16 Years Old

Nathan was a young healthy 16 year old who was newly vaccinated with Pfizer.

Nathan Esparza, a Castaic High School student and football player, tragically and passed away in his home of a Heart Attack on the evening of Tuesday, July 13th.

Mauro Esparza (Nathan’s Dad) said “As I sit here and grieve for the loss of my best friend, and continue to hear my son, he left a great lasting impression on so many amazing souls….. this brings me some sort of comfort”.

Castaic, California, USA

I can personally confirm through neighbors he had just received the Pfizer vaccine. (More at NO MORE SILENCE)

JOHN STOSSEL

MORE EXAMPLES OF FB CHECKS:

(See more at REASON)

  • The 11 Worst Fact-Checks By Facebook’s New Fact-Checkers (DAILY WIRE, December 2016)
  • Here’s Where The ‘Facts’ About Me Lie — Facebook Bizarrely Claims Its ‘Fact-Checks’ Are ‘Opinion’ (NEW YORK POST, December 2021)
  • Facebook Fact-Checkers Caught Making Wrong Fact Checks, Exposing Liberal Bias (LIES.NEWS, July 2020)
  • Facebook’s Lab-Leak Censors Owe The Post, And America, An Apology (NEW YORK POST, May 2021)
  • Facebook Fact Checkers Just Censored Peer Reviewed Science (WATTS UP WITH THAT, September 2021)
  • Candace Owens Sues Facebook Fact-Checkers For Defamation: ‘I’m Sick Of The Censorship’ (WASHINGTON EXAMINER, November 2020) ||| Candace Owens Challenges Fact-Checker, And Wins (DAILY WIRE, November 2020)
  • Covid-19: Researcher Blows The Whistle On Data Integrity Issues In Pfizer’s Vaccine Trial — Open Letter From The BMJ To Mark Zuckerberg (BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL, Decmber 2021)
  • Medical Journal Blasts Facebook For Using Fake ‘Fact Checks’ To Justify Censorship (THE FEDERALIST, December 2021)
  • Facebook VP Concedes ‘Fact Checkers’ Have Own Agenda (VISION TIMES, June 2021)
  • et cetera, et cetera, et cetera

…MOVING ON…

I found this interesting… I came across info regarding FDA “approval” that shows the swarmy nature of government run procedures.

VACCINES ARE FDA APPROVED (LOL)

Here is the intro to the story via JUST THE NEWS:

Pfizer’s vaccine against COVID-19 has been fully approved by the Food and Drug Administration, yet the pharmaceutical giant is still providing distributors across the country with an earlier version of the vaccine that predates FDA’s full approval.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine allowed under federal Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) in December 2020 and the Comirnaty vaccine approved by the FDA in August are identical, according to Pfizer and several experts.

However, the two vaccines are legally distinct, raising questions over the legality of vaccine mandates….

SEN. RON JOHNSON

Here is Senator Ron Johnson’s key claim from the above interview:

  • SEN. RON JOHNSON: We do not have an FDA-approved vaccine being administered in the U.S. The FDA played a bait and switch. They approved the Comirnaty version of Pfizer drugs. It’s not available in the U.S. They even admit it. I sent them a letter three days later going “What are you doing?” What they did is they extended the emergency use authorization for the Pfizer drug vaccine that’s available in the U.S., here that’s more than 30 days later, they haven’t asked that very simple question. If you’re saying that the Pfizer drug is the same as the Comirnaty, why didn’t you provide FDA approval on that? So, there’s not an FDA-approved drug and, of course, they announced it so they could push through these mandates so that people actually think, “Oh, OK now these things are FDA approved.” They are not and again, maybe they should be, but the FDA isn’t telling me why. 

Another posting on this notes the BAIT-N-SWITCH aspect of this whole thing via Jordan Schachtel at his SUBSTACK: Shell Game? There remains no FDA approved COVID vaccine in the United States

I fact checked the fact checkers and couldn’t believe what I found. Despite the corporate press, Big Pharma, and the federal government telling us otherwise, it is absolutely true that there is no FDA approved COVID-19 vaccine available in the United States today. And there are no plans to make one available any time soon.

I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s 100% true. And this reality hints at an incredible scandal within both Big Pharma and the U.S. Public Health bureaucracy.

On August 23, the FDA granted full approval for a COVID-19 vaccine to Pfizer-BioNtech for a specific product sold under the brand name Comirnaty. The landmark moment — the “full approval” endorsement from the FDA — was heralded by the Biden Administration and countless states, and quickly leveraged to coerce millions into taking the shots. This product, Comirnaty, was fully authorized for the “prevention of COVID-19 disease in individuals 16 years of age and older.”

Yet Comirnaty itself has never made its way into the United States. The fully-approved version is nowhere to be found within our borders.

A separate product, which remains under emergency use authorization (EUA), is the only “Pfizer shot” available in the United States.

Early on, Pfizer and its government allies seemed to have a reasonable explanation for this issue. They claimed that Comirnaty was not yet available because the EUA shots were still lining the shelves, and claimed that the FDA-approved version would be available to all soon.

Now, it’s been over 4 months since full approval, and Comirnaty is still not being distributed…..

There is this story as well that I posted on my site’s Facebook that caught my eye, and it starts out by noting “There is a tectonic shift underway in the medico-scientific establishment: they are starting to walk back boosters.”

BACKING AWAY FROM BOOSTERS?

AMERICAN THINKER continues:

The first indication of this dramatic change of attitude came from the United Kingdom last week.

On January 7, Reuters ran a wire titled UK Says 4th COVID Jabs Not Needed for Now As Booster Effect Lasts. That piece featured the following sentence in its opening paragraph: “there is no need for now for people to have a fourth shot, British health officials said on Friday.”

Three days later, the UK Mirror published a piece titled What Is ‘Living With Covid’? Boris Johnson Drawing Up Plans ‘To Be Rolled Out In March. The article quoted Dr. Clive Dix, the former head of the UK’s vaccine task force, who said:

“It is pointless keeping giving more and more vaccines to people who are not going to get very ill. We should just let them get ill and deal with that.”

A mere day later, Bloomberg put out an article titled Repeat Booster Shots Spur European Warning on Immune-System Risks. The piece opened as follows:

European Union regulators warned that frequent Covid-19 booster shots could adversely affect the immune system and may not be feasible. Repeat booster doses every four months could eventually weaken the immune system and tire out people, according to the European Medicines Agency.

The piece goes on to quote Marco Cavaleri, the Head of Biological Health Threats and Vaccines Strategy at the European Medicines Agency (EMA), who said that boosters “can be done once, or maybe twice, but it’s not something that we can think should be repeated constantly.”

Cavaleri then went on to say something we had not yet heard from a high-level public health official:

“We need to think about how we can transition from the current pandemic setting to a more endemic setting.”

Around the same time, the World Health Organization (WHO) put out a statement which included this astounding sentence:

“[A] vaccination strategy based on repeated booster doses of the original vaccine composition is unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.”

This was a truly startling development since until a week before medical authorities world over were speaking about the need for the fourth (and even subsequent) shots. In fact, some countries like Britain and Israel have already started their administration.

This sudden change of course indicates that there is something in the data that has the powers that be seriously worried. When it came to the Covid vaccines, the medical authorities have displayed an astonishing level of tolerance for side effects and collateral damage. So much so that they were even willing to let some children die unnecessarily for the sake of their vaccine agenda…….

If true, then this IS BIG NEWS. Maybe this is why??

The vaccinated population in the UK account for nearly 75% of alleged Covid-19 deaths, according to the UK Health Security Agency.

Out of the over 3700 deaths reported from Dec. 6 to Jan. 2, over 2600 of them were fully vaccinated – over 70%, according to the data, and an additional 130 deaths attributed to the “partly vaccinated” brings the total up to nearly 75%.

(PDF: COVID-19 vaccine surveillance report [Week 1] 6 January 2022)

…TO WIT:

The NEW YORK POST says that the “UK Health Security Agency said people who received three doses of Pfizer’s vaccine saw their protection drop from 70 percent to 45 percent within 10 weeks.” CNBC notes the fact that:

Albert Bourla (PFIZER’S CEO and veterinarian)

Two-doses of Pfizer’s or Moderna’s vaccines are only about 10% effective at preventing infection from omicron 20 weeks after the second dose, according to the U.K. data.

A booster dose, on the other hand, is up to 75% effective at preventing symptomatic infection and 88% effective at preventing hospitalization, according to the data.

However, Bourla said it’s unclear how long a booster dose will provide protection against Covid. The U.K. Health Security Agency also found that boosters are only 40% to 50% effective against infection 10 weeks after receiving the shot….

 

CONSPIRACIES BECOME REALITY

MRNA CHANGES DNA

BLOOMBERG has an article touching on this once “conspiracy” becoming reality. (The full article is HERE):

….In the biggest of the trio, the drug giant agreed to pay as much as $1.35 billion, including $300 million upfront, to Beam Therapeutics to partner on a technique for editing DNA. Two other deals will give Pfizer access to technology for synthesizing genetic material and delivering it to cells.

“Clearly this is one of the top priorities that Pfizer and I myself have for this year,” said CEO Albert Bourla in an interview with Bloomberg Television. The New York-based drugmaker will “invest a lot of capital that has accumulated” through the sales of its Covid-19 vaccine back into this space, Bourla said.

Developed with German partner BioNTech, Pfizer’s Covid vaccine has become one of the biggest-selling and most important pharmaceutical products of all time. While relatively difficult to ship and store because of temperature requirements, the messenger RNA shot is expected to bring in more than $36 billion for 2021, far outselling inoculations from AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson that use other means to raise antibodies against Covid.

Producing an mRNA-based Covid vaccine gave Pfizer expertise to apply to other mRNA opportunities, such as base editing, Beam CEO John Evans said Monday in an interview with Bloomberg Television. Pfizer and Beam plan to use mRNA to deliver edits that, if successful, would change a person’s DNA to fix or possibly even cure genetic disease….

WITH OR OF COVID

RED STATE brings us this gem:

Since the beginning of the pandemic, a debate over the accuracy of the COVID-19 death totals has existed, with the attempt being to delineate who died directly from the virus vs. who died while having an incidental infection.

That debate emerged because there have been numerous examples of people wrongly labeled as dying of the coronavirus when they clearly died by other means and would have done so regardless of infection. Typically, when a limited dive into the data produces such results (such as just looking at Palm Beach County), you can bet there are a lot more examples out there that just haven’t been discovered.

Yet, for the better part of two years, any discussion of such miscategorizations resulted in a litany of derogatory responses. Either you were a conspiracy theorist, weren’t taking the pandemic seriously, or both. The press wrote countless articles insisting that the totals were completely accurate, especially during the Trump administration. The Washington Post even managed to call Sen. Joni Ernst, who is about as milquetoast of a Republican as you can get, a conspiracy theorist for asking questions. Meanwhile, social media companies would ban people for suggesting the totals were inaccurate.

But as has been the pattern the last few months, from the admission that the lab leak theory is probable to revisions about the vaccines not stopping the spread of COVID-19, another major shift is taking place. Per CDC Dir. Rochelle Walensky, the government is preparing to release revised COVID death figures that will show those who died from the virus instead of the broader total of those who died with it.

When taken in a vacuum, this announcement is a very good thing. Who wouldn’t want more accurate data regarding the pandemic? Especially when our inflated COVID death numbers are used to disparage the United States worldwide while other countries undercount their death totals.

Yet, I can’t help but notice how politically convenient this is. Literally, just a few days after Joe Biden took the mantle of presiding over the most COVID deaths from Donald Trump, the government suddenly decides now is the time to revise the numbers? Yeah, there’s no way that’s a coincidence.……

More and more evidence is showing what was called a conspiracy theory or xenophobia shows to be in fact reality.

COVID ENGINEERED IN LABORATORY 

TECHNO FROG has an excellent post on the matter — of which I will excerpt a portion from, but the ENTIRE article is worth your time:

Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, NIAID Director Anthony Fauci and NIH Director Francis Collins have decried the theory that the virus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology as a conspiracy theory.

Back in March 2020, Collins said claims that COVID-19 was engineered in a lab were “outrageous.” He pointed to a new study that “debunks such claims by providing scientific evidence that this novel coronavirus arose naturally.” Notably, one of the study’s authors, Kristian Anderson, had previously informed Fauci that some features of the virus “look engineered.”

Never to be outdone, in May 2020, Fauci told National Geographic that this virus “could not have been artificially or deliberately manipulated.” Could not. He left no room for doubt:

Everything about the stepwise evolution over time strongly indicates that [this virus] evolved in nature and then jumped species

Today, Congressional Republicans released e-mails revealing scientists and researchers – people who are certainly not conspiracy theorists – informing Fauci and Collins of their beliefs that the virus was man-made.

Notes from a February 1, 2020 conference call were forwarded to Fauci and Collins on February 2, 2020. Here are the excerpts from the Republican release.

Regarding the same February 1, 2020 phone conference, notes (likely communicating the position of Collins) state that experts needed to be convened to support the theory of “natural origin” or the “voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great harm to science and international harmony…” There was no concern for actually getting to the truth.

Another February 2 email (to which Fauci and Collins were copied) from Dr. Andrew Rambaut states “from a (natural) evolutionary point of view the only thing here that strikes me as unusual is the furin cleavage site.” Importantly, he observed the insertion “resulted in an extremely fit virus in humans.”

Then there were efforts to completely shut down debate. Dr. Ron Fouchier remarked that debate on the origins of the virus would be a distraction and cause harm to science.

And then in April 2020, we see Collins again asking government officials at NIH to “put down” the “very destructive conspiracy” that the virus was engineered…….

(READ IT ALL!)

Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH)

  • “If the American people put us back in charge, we are definitely going to do this because we now know without a doubt that Dr. Fauci knew on Jan. 31 and Feb. 1 that this thing [the COVID 19 virus] came from a lab,” said Rep. Jordan. (POST MILLENNIAL)

And PROJECT VERITAS had a huge release of what is weightier than The Pentagon Papers.

  • Military documents state that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018 seeking funding to conduct gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. The proposal, named Project Defuse, was rejected by DARPA over safety concerns and the notion that it violates the gain of function research moratorium.
  • The main report regarding the EcoHealth Alliance proposal leaked on the internet a couple of months ago, it has remained unverified until now. Project Veritas has obtained a separate report to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense, written by U.S. Marine Corp Major, Joseph Murphy, a former DARPA Fellow.
  • “The proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research,” a direct quote from the DARPA rejection letter.
  • Project Veritas reached out to DARPA for comment regarding the hidden documents and spoke with the Chief of Communications, Jared Adams, who said, “It doesn’t sound normal to me,” when asked about the way the documents were buried.

[WASHINGTON, D.C. – Jan. 10, 2022] Project Veritas has obtained startling never-before-seen documents regarding the origins of COVID-19, gain of function research, vaccines, potential treatments which have been suppressed, and the government’s effort to conceal all of this.

The documents in question stem from a report at the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, better known as DARPA, which were hidden in a top secret shared drive.

DARPA is an agency under the U.S. Department of Defense in charge of facilitating research in technology with potential military applications.

Project Veritas has obtained a separate report to the Inspector General of the Department of Defense written by U.S. Marine Corp Major, Joseph Murphy, a former DARPA Fellow.

The report states that EcoHealth Alliance approached DARPA in March 2018, seeking funding to conduct gain of function research of bat borne coronaviruses. The proposal, named Project Defuse, was rejected by DARPA over safety concerns and the notion that it violates the basis gain of function research moratorium.

According to the documents, NAIAD, under the direction of Dr. Fauci, went ahead with the research in Wuhan, China and at several sites across the U.S.

Dr. Fauci has repeatedly maintained, under oath, that the NIH and NAIAD have not been involved in gain of function research with the EcoHealth Alliance program. But according to the documents obtained by Project Veritas which outline why EcoHealth Alliance’s proposal was rejected, DARPA certainly classified the research as gain of function. 

“The proposal does not mention or assess potential risks of Gain of Function (GoF) research,” a direct quote from the DARPA rejection letter.

Major Murphy’s report goes on to detail great concern over the COVID-19 gain of function program, the concealment of documents, the suppression of potential curatives, like Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine, and the mRNA vaccines……

FEMINIST FATALE, NAOMI WOLF

And GATEWAY PUNDIT covers Steve Bannon’s WAR ROOM discussion about this with the old guard feminist Naomi Wolf:

On Tuesday morning Dr. Robert Malone, the inventor of the mRNA vaccine, and Dr. Naomi Wolf, a former Clinton adviser and democracy activist, joined Steve Bannon on The War Room to respond to the Project Veritas bombshell.

Dr. Malone called it “bigger than the Pentagon Papers.”

Dr. Wolf called it “manslaughter of millions of people coordinated at the highest levels.”
Boom!

NAOMI WOLF: The fact that Dr. Fauci grossly perjured himself is hugely apparent. It is the least of the crimes if indeed these are verified documents… I can’t overstate this, this is a premeditated kind of manslaughter of millions of people coordinated at the highest levels according to these documents. Treatments that would have saved lives were intentionally or reportedly intentionally suppressed.

Via The War Room:

[….]

READ THE DOCUMENTS

The DAILY WIRE joins the mix as well with an excellent article documenting “Top U.S. and British scientists reportedly thought that SARS-CoV-2, the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, likely escaped from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.” Continuing with their article, the reason they kept quite about it was due to international relations: “but some were hesitant to let the debate play out in the media because they were concerned about ‘international harmony.'”

THEY KNEW

“An email from Sir Jeremy Farrar, director of the Wellcome Trust, on February 2 2020 said that ‘a likely explanation’ was that Covid had rapidly evolved from a Sars-like virus inside human tissue in a low-security lab,” The Telegraph reported. “The email, to Dr Anthony Fauci and Dr Francis Collins of the US National Institutes of Health, went on to say that such evolution may have ‘accidentally created a virus primed for rapid transmission between humans.’”

However, a top Dutch scientist and a top U.S. public health official warned that discussing the lab leak theory could cause serious geopolitical issues and could harm China.

Dr. Francis Collins, the then-director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), replied to Farrar, writing: “I share your view that a swift convening of experts in a confidence-inspiring framework is needed or the voices of conspiracy will quickly dominate, doing great potential harm to science and international harmony.”

Another scientist, Dr. Ron Fouchier, a Dutch virologist and Deputy Head of the Erasmus MC Department of Viroscience, responded to Farrar, “Further debate about such accusations would unnecessarily distract top researchers from their active duties and do unnecessary harm to science in general and science in China in particular.”

The report added:

In the emails, Sir Jeremy said that other scientists also believed the virus could not have evolved naturally. One such scientist was Professor Mike Farzan, of Scripps Research, the expert who discovered how the original Sars virus binds to human cells.… The emails also show that Bob Garry, of the University of Texas, was unconvinced that Covid-19 emerged naturally.

Viscount Ridley, co-author of Viral: the search for the origin of Covid, said that the emails showed “a lamentable lack of openness and transparency among Western scientists who appear to have been more interested in shutting down a hypothesis they thought was very plausible, for political reasons.”….

BABYLON BEE’S PROPHECY

And here is a WEASEL ZIPPER’S story regarding hospital shortages due to laying workers off due to no vaccinations:

Science science and more science.

Via Politico:

Hospitals and long-term care facilities are so short staffed that many are compelling Covid-positive doctors and nurses to return to work, arguing that bringing back asymptomatic or even symptomatic staff is the only way they can keep their doors open amid a spike in hospitalizations.

The practice, allowed by the most recent CDC guidance, underscores the dire situation in which many facilities find themselves as more than 120,000 people nationwide are now hospitalized with the virus — almost three times the total from Thanksgiving when Omicron was first detected.

Keep reading

See more at: 5 Recent Babylon Bee Headlines That Were Surprisingly Believable

Hospital beds in some of the largest cities have cut beds:

And seemingly another political move to protect Biden, and that is to….

STOPPING REPORTING OF COVID-CASES

The WORLD SOCIALIST WEBSITE has the story:

The US federal government will no longer require hospitals to report the number of people who die from COVID-19 every day, according to new guidelines from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).

On January 6, the HHS published updated guidelines on which information hospitals provide to the agency. The guidelines note the “retirement of fields which are no longer required to be reported,” among which is “Previous day’s COVID-19 deaths.”

The guidelines note, “This field has been made inactive for the federal data collection. Hospitals no longer need to report these data elements to the federal government.” This change goes into effect February 2.

Another Biden Admin CYA was the hospitalization rates, which I dealt with just last week. ELECTION CENTRAL 

If you’re paying attention, you’ll notice that Covid-19 hospitalizations appear to be skyrocketing to new heights around the country. Hospital after hospital is suddenly once again filled with Covid patients, or so it seems. As it turns out, the numbers are not only lying, they’re being distorted in such a way that further lessens public trust in agencies like the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) to accurately and objectively provide information.

The issue has to do with what types of hospital admissions actually get counted as Covid-19 patients. Obviously, patients suffering from severe illness due to Covid are included in this count. However, so are patients who visit the hospital for a scheduled procedure or another acute emergency, yet then test positive for Covid-19 while they’re there. They could be asymptomatic, having no Covid issues, but suddenly they become a “Covid hospitalization” and greatly inflate and exaggerate the numbers.

[….]

In a recent interview, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky admitted that hospitalization numbers are greatly exaggerated, and the actual number of attributed Covid-19 deaths since the start of the pandemic may be exaggerated as well, but she doesn’t know by how much:

CNN anchor Jake Tapper has criticized as “misleading” the admission by the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that it counted COVID patients who had been admitted to hospital for something else.

Tapper was reacting to comments CDC director Rochelle Walensky made on Fox News on Sunday that “up to 40 percent” of patients had been admitted to hospitals with another medical emergency but had been later detected as having COVID.

When asked by Fox News anchor Bret Baier if there was a breakdown of how many of the 836,000 deaths in the U.S. were “from COVID” or “with COVID,” Walensky gave a non-committal answer in which she said “our death registrytakes a few weeks to collect,” and that “those data will be forthcoming.”

The numbers are repeating around the country, with at least 40%, perhaps higher, of non-Covid hospital admissions in New York City being incorrectly included in the count:…..

MEDIA BIAS TO PROTECT BIDEN

AMERICAN GREATNESS has an article about the Associate Press ordering “its staff to stop covering the total number of coronavirus cases in the country and around the globe.” Saying it is a “dramatic shift in focus… apparently shifting the parameters of what a ‘case’ truly means.” CONTINUING:

Fox News reports that the sudden change can be seen in a recent article from the AP titled “Omicron wave prompts media to rethink which data to report,” by author David Bauder. In the article, published on Wednesday, Bauder claims that, while the number of positive coronavirus cases and hospitalizations had previously been “barometers of the pandemic’s march across the world,” the ongoing spread of the Omicron variant from South Africa “is making a mess of the usual statistics, forcing news organizations to rethink the way they report such figures.”

“The number of case counts soared over the holidays, an expected development given the emergence of a variant more transmissible than its predecessors,” Bauder wrote. “Yet these counts only reflect what is reported by health authorities. They do not include most people who test themselves at home, or are infected without even knowing about it. Holidays and weekends also lead to lags in reported cases.”

As a result, the AP speculates that if every single positive test was included, then the total number of cases would be “substantially higher” as a result of dramatic inflation and exaggeration of many instances.

“For that reason, The Associated Press has recently told its editors and reporters to avoid emphasizing case counts in stories about the disease,” Bauder continued. “That means, for example, no more stories focused solely on a particular country or state setting a one-day record for number of cases, because that claim has become unreliable.”…..

LEFTIE MOMS RAGE AGAINST THEIR MACHINE!

This first article is via THE ATLANTIC: Why I Soured on the Democrats: COVID school policies set me adrift from my tribe.

MOM #1

Until recently, I was a loyal, left-leaning Democrat, and I had been my entire adult life. I was the kind of partisan who registered voters before midterm elections and went to protests. I hated Donald Trump so much that I struggled to be civil to relatives on the other side of the aisle. But because of what my family has gone through during the pandemic, I can’t muster the same enthusiasm. I feel adrift from my tribe and, to a certain degree, disgusted with both parties.

I can’t imagine that I would have arrived here—not a Republican, but questioning my place in the Democratic Party—had my son not been enrolled in public kindergarten in 2020.

Late that summer, the Cleveland school system announced that it would not open for in-person learning the first 9 weeks of the semester. I was distraught. My family relies on my income, and I knew that I would not be able to work full-time with my then-5-year-old son and then-3-year-old daughter at home.

Still, I was accepting of short-term school closures. My faith in the system deteriorated only as the weeks and months of remote-learning dragged on long past the initial timeline, and my son began refusing to log on for lessons. I couldn’t blame him. Despite his wonderful teacher’s best efforts, online kindergarten is about as ridiculous as it sounds, in my experience. I remember logging on to a “gym” class where my son was the only student present. The teacher, I could tell, felt embarrassed. We both knew how absurd the situation was.

Children who had been present every day the year before in preschool, whose parents I had seen drop them off every morning, just vanished. The daily gantlet of passwords and programs was a challenge for even me and my husband, both professionals who work on computers all day. About 30 percent of Cleveland families didn’t even have internet in their home prior to the pandemic.

I kept hoping that someone in our all-Democratic political leadership would take a stand on behalf of Cleveland’s 37,000 public-school children or seem to care about what was happening. Weren’t Democrats supposed to stick up for low-income kids? Instead, our veteran Democratic mayor avoided remarking on the crisis facing the city’s public-school families. Our all-Democratic city council was similarly disengaged. The same thing was happening in other blue cities and blue states across the country, as the needs of children were simply swept aside. Cleveland went so far as to close playgrounds for an entire year. That felt almost mean-spirited, given the research suggesting the negligible risk of outdoor transmission—an additional slap in the face.

Things got worse for us in December 2020, when my whole family contracted COVID-19. The coronavirus was no big deal for my 3- and 5-year-olds, but I was left with lingering long-COVID symptoms, which made the daily remote-schooling nightmare even more grueling. I say this not to hold myself up for pity. I understand that other people had a far worse 2020. I’m just trying to explain why my worldview has shifted and why I’m not the same person I was.

By the spring semester, the data showed quite clearly that schools were not big coronavirus spreaders and that, conversely, the costs of closures to children, both academically and emotionally, were very high. The American Academy of Pediatrics first urged a return to school in June 2020. In February 2021, when The New York Times surveyed 175 pediatric-disease experts, 86 percent recommended in-person school even if no one had been vaccinated.

But when the Cleveland schools finally reopened, in March 2021—under pressure from Republican Governor Mike DeWine—they chose a hybrid model that meant my son could enter the building only two days a week.

My husband and I had had enough: With about two months left in the academic year, we found a charter school that was open for full-time in-person instruction. It was difficult to give up on our public school. We were invested. But our trust was broken.

Compounding my fury was a complete lack of sympathy or outright hostility from my own “team.” Throughout the pandemic, Democrats have been eager to style themselves as the ones that “take the virus seriously,” which is shorthand, at least in the bluest states and cities, for endorsing the most extreme interventions. By questioning the wisdom of school closures—and taking our child out of public school—I found myself going against the party line. And when I tried to speak out on social media, I was shouted down and abused, accused of being a Trumper who didn’t care if teachers died. On Twitter, mothers who had been enlisted as unpaid essential workers were mocked, often in highly misogynistic terms. I saw multiple versions of “they’re just mad they’re missing yoga and brunch.”

Twitter is a cesspool full of unreasonable people. But the kind of moralizing and self-righteousness that I saw there came to characterize lefty COVID discourse to a harmful degree. As reported in this magazine, the parents in deep-blue Somerville, Massachusetts, who advocated for faster school reopening last spring were derided as “fucking white parents” in a virtual public meeting. The interests of children and the health of public education were both treated as minor concerns, if these subjects were broached at all.

Obviously, Republicans have been guilty of politicizing the pandemic with horrible consequences, fomenting mistrust in vaccines that will result in untold numbers of unnecessary deaths. I’m not excusing that.

But I’ve been disappointed by how often the Democratic response has exacerbated that mistrust by, for example, exaggerating the risks of COVID-19 to children. A low point for me was when Virginia Democratic gubernatorial candidate Terry McAuliffe inflated child COVID-hospitalization numbers on the campaign trail. It was almost Trumplike. (If I lived in Virginia, I admit I probably would have had to sit out the recent gubernatorial election, in which the Republican candidate beat McAuliffe.)

(READ IT ALL!)

MOM #2

And another Leftie mom wrote about an almost identical experience[s] in POLITICO: How School Closures Made Me Question My Progressive Politics: I’ve never felt more alienated from the liberal Democratic circles I usually call home.

June 26, 2020, was the day I went public with just how angry I was about my son’s school closing down for Covid, and my life hasn’t been the same since.

I had begun to sense a difference between my own feelings and those of my mom’s text group, which included nine of us whose kids had gone to preschool together since they were 2 years old; the kids were 8 at the time. These were the parents of my son’s closest friends. We even had a name for our group, the “mamigas”— as most of us were either Latinas or married to Latinos and shared a commitment to bilingual education.

I tweeted, “Does anyone else feel enraged at the idea that you’ll be homeschooling in the fall full-time? Cuz my moms group text is in full-blown acceptance mode and it bugs the shit out of me.” I didn’t know it yet, but this would be my first foray into school reopening advocacy, which eventually included helping lead a group of Oakland parents in pushing the school district to be more transparent about the process of reopening (particularly in negotiations with the teachers union) and writing several pieces on the topic.
I probably should have inferred that becoming a school-reopening advocate would not go over well in my progressive Oakland community, but I didn’t anticipate the social repercussions, or the political identity crisis it would trigger for me. My own experience, as a self-described progressive in ultra-lefty Oakland, is just one example of how people across the political spectrum have become frustrated with Democrats’ position on school reopenings.

Parents who advocated for school reopening were repeatedly demonized on social media as racist and mischaracterized as Trump supporters. Members of the parent group I helped lead were consistently attacked on Twitter and Facebook by two Oakland moms with ties to the teachers union. They labelled advocates’ calls for schools reopening “white supremacy” called us “Karens,” and even bizarrely claimed we had allied ourselves with Marjorie Taylor Greene’s transphobic agenda.

There was no recognition of the fact that we were advocating for our kids, who were floundering in remote learning, or that public schools across the country (in red states) opened in fall 2020 without major outbreaks, as did private schools just miles from our home. Only since last fall, when schools reopened successfully despite the more contagious Delta variant circulating, have Democratic pundits and leaders been talking about school closures as having caused far more harm than benefit.

Some progressive parents now admit they were too afraid of the blowback from their communities to speak up. And they were right to be wary. We paid a price.

So did Democrats, even if they didn’t realize it until later, or still don’t. Glenn Youngkin’s surprise gubernatorial win in Virginia in November was a wake-up call for the party. As has been recognized, Youngkin’s focus on school-related issues, especially after Terry McAuliffe made a dismissive remark about parents, was an effective tactic. Still, all over Twitter I saw progressives denying that parent anger at prolonged school closures was a major issue in that election — they claimed it was all about anti-critical race theory sentiment, despite research showing school pandemic policies were more to blame. Even more disturbing, as evidenced in the comments on a recent tweet by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), is that many still believe shutting down schools for a year or more was justified.
Some progressive parents now admit they were too afraid of the blowback from their communities to speak up. And they were right to be wary. We paid a price.

So did Democrats, even if they didn’t realize it until later, or still don’t. Glenn Youngkin’s surprise gubernatorial win in Virginia in November was a wake-up call for the party. As has been recognized, Youngkin’s focus on school-related issues, especially after Terry McAuliffe made a dismissive remark about parents, was an effective tactic. Still, all over Twitter I saw progressives denying that parent anger at prolonged school closures was a major issue in that election — they claimed it was all about anti-critical race theory sentiment, despite research showing school pandemic policies were more to blame. Even more disturbing, as evidenced in the comments on a recent tweet by Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), is that many still believe shutting down schools for a year or more was justified.

Some unions and districts are now using last year’s closures as a precedent. Recently, with the Omicron surge, several major school districts announced they were switching to remote learning for a week or more, including Newark and dozens of other New Jersey districts, Ann Arbor and Cleveland. Then last week, the Chicago teachers union voted for a sickout, followed by teachers in San Francisco and Oakland engaging in similar actions.

Spring 2020 had been a disaster for my son when his school in the Oakland Unified School District switched to emergency remote learning. He had recently been diagnosed with ADHD and did not do well with me at home — he often flatly refused to do any work. Although I saw a range of reactions by teachers to emergency remote learning that spring, and know that some went to great lengths to keep their students engaged, my son’s teacher only met with the kids one-on-one on Zoom for 15 minutes a week. Beyond that, parents were given worksheets to do with our kids; there was no actual instruction that spring.

When the new school year began in August 2020, Oakland provided only fully remote instruction. My incredibly bright but impulsive son found the temptation of having a computer screen in front of him irresistible — and would often open other windows or try to surf the internet.

By January 2021, with my son increasingly disengaged as Zoom school dragged on and no hope of an imminent return to school in Oakland, I promised him I wouldn’t make him go through another year like this. I knew that he desperately needed to learn alongside other kids.

I had until then resisted my dad’s suggestion that I consider sending him to private school. I was a proud alumna of San Francisco public schools and planned for my kids to attend Oakland public schools, despite their reputation for behavioral and academic problems. As an interracial, bilingual/bicultural family, what we wanted was for our son to attend a dual-language immersion program with plenty of other kids of color. My family was also in no way able to pay for private school.

But I began to fear that even in-person school in fall 2021 was at risk because of the impossible demands of the teachers union (that schools remain fully remote until there were “near-zero” Covid cases in Oakland) and apathy of the school board and district; even after teachers were prioritized for vaccination, there was no urgency to get kids back to the classroom. My dad offered to help pay for private school, and we applied. In March we were notified that my son was admitted to a private dual-language immersion school, and that we had been granted a 75 percent scholarship. There was still no deal in place between Oakland’s school district and the union to return to in-person school. I had lost all faith in the decision-makers to do what was best for my kid. So I made the only logical decision.

Even then, I feared what fellow parents might think of me. I’m well aware of the stereotypes of white parents choosing the private-school option when the going gets tough at public schools. I told myself that prioritizing being a “good leftist” at the expense of my son’s well-being wasn’t good parenting, but as a red-diaper baby myself, the white guilt dies hard. My own parents had sent me to an elementary school with a huge majority of Black and Pacific Islander students; while many might assume the white parents documented in the New York Times podcast “Nice White Parents” were pioneers, my parents reverse-integrated me into a “failing” school 40 years ago. Sending my kid to private school was accompanied by a lot of angst.

My fears were amplified by the backlash I and other school reopening advocates had faced throughout the school year, particularly on social media. There were a range of insults lobbed at us: We were bad parents who didn’t care about our own kids or teachers dying, we only wanted our babysitters back and our frustrations about school closures were an example of “white supremacy.” Los Angeles teachers union head Cecily Myart-Cruz stated that reopening schools was “a recipe for propagating structural racism.”

(READ IT ALL!)

CNN FAILS THE #SCIENCE TEST

Senate Hearing On Early Outpatient Treatment for COVID-19

Peter McCullough, MD and Sen. Ron Johnson Speak with Sean Hannity on November 20, 2020. Guide at http://covidpatientguide.com

Pierre Kory, M.D., Associate Professor of Medicine at St. Luke’s Aurora Medical Center, delivers passionate testimony during the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on “Early Outpatient Treatment: An Essential Part of a COVID-19 Solution, Part II.”

(The entire senate hearing can be seen HERE.)

Moments after speaking before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Dr. Pierre Kory joined NewsNOW from FOX. The President of the Frontline COVID-19 Critical Care Alliance (FLCCC) called for the government to swiftly review the already expansive and still rapidly emerging medical evidence on Ivermectin.

Democrats See Racists Under Every Bed (Sen. Rockefeller vs. Sen. Johnson)

Via HotAir:

Two noteworthy details here. One: Rockefeller couldn’t be more casual in lobbing his grenade. He’s not out at a fundraiser with a drink in his hand, mindlessly babbling to some reporter with his guard down. He’s at an actual Senate hearing with a Republican senator sitting right in front of him, and yet it’s bombs away — and not for the first time. Congressional rules of decorum forbid swearing and personal insults, but if you want to charge the other side with racism for questioning Obama’s pet boondoggle, fire away. Two: Unlike most instances where this accusation is made, the target was present and eager to respond. Watch the very beginning and then the last few minutes of the second clip to see Johnson hit back. I would have walked out if I were him, but admittedly, his approach is smarter.

Listening to Dr. Ben Carson on the talk show circuit, and he said something interesting, which we see an over-doing of via the above video:

…this type of infantile adolescent behavior is still quite prevalent in our current political environment. Instead of “capping” their opponents, many in the political class engage in hyperbolic demagoguery in an attempt to demonize those who disagree with them. This is not surprising, because in his book “Rules For Radicals,” Saul Alinsky, the original radical community organizer and societal change agent, says you should never have a rational discussion with your opponent. Doing so would humanize him, and your goal is to demonize him. With this tactic, he states that you can incur your opponent’s wrath, causing him to respond angrily, and in many cases, irrationally, which then provides an opportunity to use that irrational response against him.

What was Doc Carson speaking of? in part, one of the 12-Rules of Radicals is used by Democrats, here is the rule:

  • RULE 5: “Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.” There is no defense. It’s irrational. It’s infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions (Glen Beck);

Here is more of it explained… and exploited:

Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon. Conservatives have a tendency to try to win every debate with logic and recitations of facts which, all too often, fail to get the job done because emotions and mockery are often just as effective as reason. The good news is that liberals almost never have logic on their side; so they’re incapable of rationally making the case for their policies while conservatives can become considerably more effective debaters by simply adding some emotion-based arguments and sheer scorn to their discourse. This has certainly worked on Twitter, where conservatives keep making the Obama campaign look like buffoons by taking over its hashtags. (TownHall)

We see Democrats and liberals using this tactic all the time, in more-and-more frequency in fact. Well, that aside, here is the response by Republican Senator Ron Johnson to this smear: