Go Woke, Go Broke: Target Hit w/ Lawsuit over Gender Peddling for Children

Luis Cornelio
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Go Woke, Go Broke: Target Hit w/ Lawsuit over Gender Peddling for Children

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) America First Legal, a well-known conservative legal group, has announced a lawsuit against Target and its board of directors.

According to a press release on Tuesday, AFL’s legal action stemmed from the company’s controversial full-fledged support of radical left-wing ideology on gender.

The lawsuit, filed with support from co-counsels Boyden Gray PLLC and Lawson Huck Gonzalez PLLC, is on behalf of shareholder Brian Craig. It alleged that Target’s embrace of Environmental, Social, and Governance and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives have resulted in substantial losses exceeding $12 billion.

AFL said these left-wing initiatives touched on contentious issues that deserved careful consideration. An AFL press release explained, “In its 2022 and 2023 Proxy Statements, Target assured shareholders and investors that the Board was monitoring social and political issues and risks arising from the company’s ESG and DEI mandates.”

AFL argued that Target prioritized the interests of leftist stakeholders while neglecting the potential concerns of customers and shareholders.

The legal group put it this way, “[M]anagement was only concerned with satisfying its leftist ‘stakeholders,’ disregarding the possibility that customers and shareholders might hold different perspectives.”

The lawsuit brought attention to Target’s polarizing “Pride” marketing campaign in May 2023. This campaign drew criticism for its focus on radical gender and transgender ideology aimed at children.

The campaign included “tucker-friendly” bathing suits for children, which reportedly led to a significant stock value drop of $12 billion, which AFL deemed the largest decline in stock price in the past two decades.

In the damning lawsuit, AFL also highlighted Target’s boycott of a North Carolina law aimed at preventing biological males from using women’s bathrooms.

Gene Hamilton, AFL’s vice president and general counsel, emphasized the key point of the lawsuit. He underscored the alleged inconsistency between Target’s public statements and its actions.

“Target failed in its obligation to its shareholders by making statements that led them to believe that political and social risks were being evaluated,” Hamilton said, “when, in reality, Target’s Board and Management were primarily focused on satisfying the preferences of various metrics advocated by left-wing ‘stakeholders.'”

Corrupt Special Counsel Plotting 3rd Indictment over Trump’s PAC Fundraising

Luis Cornelio
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Corrupt Special Counsel Plotting 3rd Indictment over Trump’s PAC Fundraising

(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) The Biden-led DOJ, under the disguise of special counsel Jack Smith, has focused its attention on the finances of a campaign PAC that supports Biden’s primary opponent, former President Donald Trump.

Biden’s prosecutors conducted an interview with Bernard Kerik regarding the expenditures and fundraising activities of the Save America PAC, according to Politico.

Tim Parlatore, an attorney representing Kerik, confirmed the meeting with Politico and described it as having a “laser focus from Election Day to Jan. 6.”

According to Politico, federal prosecutors are investigating allegations regarding potential violations of the law by Trump and the PAC. These allegations revolve around claims of voter fraud that the Biden DOJ considers to be false.

Although Trump’s indictment related to his efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election did not encompass fundraising violations, Politico noted that the DOJ could still pursue charges linked to fundraising activities.

According to Parlatore, Boris Epshteyn, a Republican attorney and campaign advisor who served in Trump’s 2020 campaign, became a topic of discussion. In contrast, Jenna Ellis and Mark Meadows were not discussed.

“Investigators,” as reported by Politico, “posed several questions about Justin Clark, the deputy campaign manager for Trump’s re-election bid.”

During the 2020 election, Clark and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani clashed, with the latter even resorting to yelling at Clark and labeling him a “liar.”

The special counsel’s focus on campaign efforts that support Trump has the potential to raise concerns about allegations that Biden is directly intervening in the campaign of his primary rival, Trump.

Numerous prominent Republican lawmakers have taken to Twitter to criticize Biden for pursuing charges against Trump.

In an interview with CNN, Parlatore, who also served as a former attorney for Trump, stated that the Save America PAC is covering the legal expenses of Trump staffers who have been questioned by federal prosecutors.

“They are obviously covering the legal fees for the various legal teams representing President Trump, as well as those representing all the witnesses and employees,” Parlatore said on July 30. He went on to explain that mounting a legal defense against federal prosecutors could prove to be highly expensive.

Huge 2020 Voter Fraud Reportedly Uncovered in Michigan

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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Huge 2020 Voter Fraud Reportedly Uncovered in Michigan

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The town of Muskegon, Michigan, greatly contributed to the steal of the 2020 presidential election by reportedly committing massive voter fraud through faking signatures and addresses, printing voter registration forms and buying guns.

Only one month before the 2020 general election, on Oct. 8, 2020, City Clerk Ann Meisch noticed a black female — who later identified herself as Brianna Hawkins — dropping off between 8,000 to 10,000 completed voter registration applications at the city clerk’s office, the Gateway Pundit reported.

Meisch then contacted the Muskegon Police Department so that they would investigate the crime. Chief of Investigations for Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel’s Office Tom Fabus contacted both First Lieutenant Mike Anderson and Michigan State Police on Oct. 21, 2020. Eventually, an investigative task force was formed and an investigation was initiated.

Meisch said that the quantity of voter registration forms was highly suspicious and possibly fraudulent because numerous forms were completed by the same person and addresses on multiple forms were either invalid or non-existent in the Muskegon City house numbering system, Gateway Pundit reported.

In addition to that, phone numbers on multiple forms were “erroneous” and signatures on multiple forms didn’t appear to match signatures on file with the Department of Secretary of State, the Pundit wrote.

Hawkins spoke to the Michigan State Police investigator who was assigned to the case and said that she was being paid $1,150 per week “to find unregistered voters and provide them with a form so they can get registered to vote or obtain their absentee ballot.” She also said that she was given a rental car and a “reloadable pay card.”

Hundreds of pre-paid cards from “different” companies, along with “dozens of new [burner] phones were found in the Southfield raid in Michigan,” police said.

The police additionally reported that, during the investigation, they found partially completed voter registration forms and “pelican cases in the room with semi-automatic rifles joined with suppressors and optics and customized pistols.”

State Attorney General Dana Nessel, who as the Gateway Pundit noted is “currently attempting to prosecute 15 senior citizens and the former MI GOP co-chair for casting an alternate set of electoral votes in the 2020 election,” even asked state police to join the voter-fraud investigation.

Despite all that, the Gateway Pundit wrote, Nessel is “still claiming there was no evidence of widespread voter fraud in Michigan, despite the fact that she knew her office and the office of her friend, Michigan’s crooked SOS Jocelyn Benson, were involved with the MI State Police in a large scale investigation that took place across the state before it was taken over by the FBI.”

Report: Swiss Authorities Helped FBI Spy on Peaceful Pro-Trump Election Protestor

Ken Silva
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Report: Swiss Authorities Helped FBI Spy on Peaceful Pro-Trump Election Protestor

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In the wake of the controversial 2020 election results, a Trump supporter reportedly used the Switzerland-based Proton Mail to email Claire Woodall-Vogg, the executive director of the Milwaukee Election Commission.

“Hello Marxist Bitch. Thankfully the The Gateway Pundit brought your betrayal of Wisconsin and America to my attention, Fox News and Breitbart don’t do shit these days,” the Proton Mail user reportedly wrote, referencing The Gateway Pundit’s publication of an internal email from an election consultant Woodall-Vogg about “delivering just the margin needed at 3:00 a.m.”

“I hope you know there are consequences for your actions. I know a lot of information about you. I will have to think about what comes next,” the Trump supporter said.

The Trump supporter’s email didn’t contain a specific threat to Woodall-Vogg.

Nevertheless, the FBI began looking for the identity of the Trump supporter as part of an investigation into “harassment” against the Milwaukee election official. According to a report Tuesday from Forbes, the FBI managed to acquire data from Proton Technologies, the owner of Proton Mail, to kick off the hunt for the anonymous emailer.

“The FBI didn’t get much back from Proton, but it did receive the recovery and associated email addresses linked to the Proton Mail user,” Forbes reported, citing a warrant that it obtained.

“They proved crucial, enabling the FBI to find more information about the person online and conduct a sweep across the suspect’s internet accounts, including on Amazon, Apple, Coinbase, Google, PayPal and Spotify,” the publication said.

“The FBI didn’t make clear in the warrant why it needed to get account activity across the various platforms, though it was likely to gather further evidence.”

The Trump supporter was never charged over the matter, and Forbes withheld his name as a result.

Woodall-Vogg told Forbes that the case did not end up with any “breakthrough.” She reportedly said she was told that the suspect was “deemed not to have the means or intent to actually carry out any violent acts against me.”

As Forbes noted, Proton Mail touts itself as a pro-privacy service. Because it’s based in Switzerland, it boasts of not having to kowtow to American authorities.

But in this case, the FBI apparently went through Swiss authorities to obtain the Trump supporter’s data.

“The warrant didn’t detail what specific legal process the FBI used to get the information and Proton declined to comment on specific cases,” Forbes reported.

“Proton did say, however, that by Swiss law, for U.S. agencies to get information on Proton accounts, they have to go through Swiss authorities.”

Proton spokesperson Betsy Jones reportedly told Forbes that “illegal activity has no place on Proton’s platforms as is clearly stated in our terms and conditions. We employ several well-staffed teams that handle instances of abuse of our terms and conditions and swiftly and proactively disable accounts that are found to be in breach.

“Any information received would be limited to metadata, since email contents, attachments, files, calendar entries, etc. are all end-to-end encrypted and no-one, not even Proton, can access them.”

Ken Silva is a staff writer at Headline USA. Follow him at twitter.com/jd_cashless.

Feds Still Borrowing Over $5B per Day Despite Credit Downgrade

Wire Editor
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Feds Still Borrowing Over $5B per Day Despite Credit Downgrade

(By Casey Harper, The Center Square) The federal government is borrowing an average of $5.3 billion per day this fiscal year, the U.S. Congressional Budget Office estimated Tuesday. The new estimate come just days after a top international creditor downgraded the U.S. credit rating.

“The federal budget deficit was $1.6 trillion in the first 10 months of fiscal year 2023, the Congressional Budget Office estimates – more than twice the shortfall recorded during the same period last year,” CBO said. “Revenues were 10 percent lower and outlays were 10 percent higher from October through July than they were during the same period in fiscal year 2022.”

Fitch, considered one of the top three rating agencies in the world, raised concerns about the U.S. debt-to-GDP ratio in its announcement of the credit downgrade from a perfect AAA to AA+, the next tier down.

CBO projects that the U.S. debt will be nearly twice the size of the U.S. economy in 30 years.

“The deficit this year and next year are on track to be 50 percent larger than before the pandemic, despite the fact that the pandemic is over and the economy seems to be growing at a steady clip,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget.

“No matter what one thinks of Fitch’s recent downgrade, it is clear that they are right that there are plenty of things to worry about when it comes to the government’s finances.”

As The Center Square previously reported, CBO data show that interest payments on the national debt are on pace to become the largest expense for the U.S. government.

In its downgrade announcement, Fitch pointed to the soaring spending over the last decade and Congress’ repeated near-shutdown events as well as its failure to address major financial challenges such as entitlement spending.

“In Fitch’s view, there has been a steady deterioration in standards of governance over the last 20 years, including on fiscal and debt matters, notwithstanding the June bipartisan agreement to suspend the debt limit until January 2025,” Fitch said. “The repeated debt-limit political standoffs and last-minute resolutions have eroded confidence in fiscal management. In addition, the government lacks a medium-term fiscal framework, unlike most peers, and has a complex budgeting process.”

Experts have been raising the alarm about the skyrocketing federal debt for years.

The CRFB has released reports showing that the trust funds for Social Security, Medicare and highways face insolvency within the next decade.

For now, though, it seems little change is on the horizon.

“How do we begin to tackle rising debt and deficits, growing interest costs, and Social Security and Medicare approaching insolvency?” MacGuineas said. “It won’t be easy, but a bipartisan fiscal commission could provide the right opportunity to get those conversations started. With everything on the table – including all parts of the budget and tax code – our leaders should show the American people that they are capable of making the tough decisions to put our fiscal house back in order.”

Suit Against Tech Giant Shines Light on U.S. Complicity in Chinese Torture

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Suit Against Tech Giant Shines Light on U.S. Complicity in Chinese Torture

(By Susan Crabtree, RealClear Wire) The wheels of justice often turn slowly, but when it comes to U.S. corporate complicity in China’s record of religious persecution, human rights activists say they are finally picking up speed and moving in the right direction.

Top reformers in Washington, D.C., are heralding a recent twist in a 12-year legal battle that could have far-reaching implications for all U.S. companies that have sold surveillance or tracking technology to China.

Last month, the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that a lawsuit accusing technology giant Cisco Systems Inc. and two former executives of assisting the Chinese government in identifying and targeting Falun Gong practitioners for arrests, torture, and execution could proceed to trial. The ruling largely reversed a lower district court’s 2014 decision to dismiss the claims against Cisco and John Chambers, its former chief executive officer, and Fredy Cheung, the former vice president of its Chinese operations.

The three-judge appellate panel’s July ruling did not determine the validity of the claims. Instead, it found that the Falun Gong practitioners had presented enough evidence for their case to proceed to trial in California where it was filed.

The legal turn of events is encouraging human rights advocates who have spent decades scrutinizing U.S. corporate involvement in China’s repression of dissidents and religious minorities and its genocide against the Uyghur Muslim population.

“Far too long, many elite leaders of America’s most profitable corporations have aided and abetted the Chinese Communist Party’s heinous human rights abuses, including genocide,” Rep. Chris Smith, a New Jersey Republican, told RealClearPolitics. Smith, who chairs the Congressional-Executive Commission on China, has spent three decades in Washington fighting for human rights.

“This long overdue and wrongly delayed lawsuit underscores the excruciating pain and suffering that corporations like Cisco enable by deliberately cooperating and turning a blind eye to the Chinese Communist Party and its inherent egregious human rights violations and repression in order to make a profit,” Smith added.

Cisco has denied any wrongdoing and has labeled the allegations in the lawsuit baseless. But U.S. Circuit Judge Marsha Berzon, writing for the appellate court, said that the plaintiffs had presented sufficient evidence to proceed to trial and that Cisco’s actions amounted to “aiding and abetting” China’s Falun Gong repression, and had a “substantial effect on the commission of violations of international law, including torture.”

Smith last month held a hearing scrutinizing current U.S. companies’ complicity with China’s forced labor and persecution of many religious and ethnic minorities, as well as dissidents. Testimony from human rights experts highlighted a high-profile case involving forced labor used to make Milwaukee Tool products at Chishan Prison in China. With China’s recent aggression against Taiwan and its military build-up, other witnesses testified about sales by U.S. defense giants, such as Boeing and Raytheon, to the Chinese government.

The National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball ties to China also came under scrutiny in the form of testimony from Enes Kanter Freedom, a former NBA player for the Boston Celtics and New York Knicks. Kanter Freedom was dropped from the NBA in early 2022 after speaking out about China’s human rights abuses and for wearing shoes emblazoned with the words “Free Tibet” and “Free the Uyghurs.”

Tencent, a Chinese tech company that partnered with the NBA to live-stream the games, abruptly pulled all Celtics games from the Chinese internet after Kanter Freedom, who played for the Boston team at the time, called Chinese President Xi Jinping a “brutal dictator.” Tencent and the MLB in 2017 announced a wide-ranging partnership that includes live-streaming 125 games, including the All-Star Game and the World Series.

“It’s shocking that some American corporations are leaving ethics behind and adopting CCP values in China,” Nina Shea, director of the Center for Religious Freedom at the Hudson Institute, told RCP. “That’s what China demands, and too many are willing to comply.”

In 2006, Rep. Smith first started investigating charges from Falun Gong members that Cisco helped construct, operate, and maintain China’s so-called Golden Shield, better known as the Great Firewall of China, an Internet surveillance system put in place by China’s Ministry of Public Security for the surveillance of dissidents, human rights defenders and those practicing banned religions, such as the Falun Gong.

In the late 1990s, the Chinese government labeled the Falun Gong a dangerous cult that threatened Communist control of the country and banned it, setting up an office specifically designed to persecute Falun Gong followers.

China then pursued large-scale detentions, torture, forced conversions, and executions of Falun Gong members, which have been well documented by the U.S. State Department, the United Nations, and many other respected organizations around the world. In 2019, the China Tribunal, a government commission in the U.K., found that forced organ harvesting from Falun Gong victims and other prisoners had taken place on a significant scale throughout China for years.

In the current case, brought on behalf of several Falun Gong practitioners by the D.C.-based Human Rights Law Foundation, the plaintiffs argue that Cisco purposefully customized its router technology to allow the Chinese government to identify, track, and detain Falun Gong members. The evidence that Cisco executives specifically helped design the technology to target Falun Gong followers includes Cisco marketing material touting its highly advanced video and image analyzers as the “only product capable of recognizing over 90% of Falun Gong pictorial information.”

The lawsuit also accused Cisco of providing the Chinese government with a library of carefully analyzed patterns of Falun Gong Internet activity, or “signatures,” that enable the Chinese government to identify Falun Gong Internet users; several log/alert systems that provide the Chinese government with real-time monitoring and notification based on Falun Gong Internet traffic patterns; applications for storing data profiles on individual Falun Gong practitioners for use during interrogations and “forced conversions” that included torture; and a nationwide video surveillance system which enabled the Chinese government to identify and detain Falun Gong practitioners.

Cisco was not only aware that its customizations would be used to repress the Falun Gong, but it also geared all of its work to further that goal, the plaintiffs argue. The lawsuit partly stemmed from an internal Cisco document leaked to reporters on the eve of a 2008 U.S. Senate human rights hearing.

The 90-page document, an internal Cisco presentation, showed that the company’s engineers regarded the Chinese government’s extensive Internet censorship program as an opportunity to expand its business with the CCP and marketed its routers to China, specifically as a tool of repression.

The Senate hearing also examined the role of other U.S. companies, including Yahoo, Microsoft and Google, for cooperating to varying degrees with China’s and other foreign governments’ censorship programs.

The Cisco presentation directly acknowledged that one of Golden Shield’s stated goals was to “combat ‘Falun Gong’ evil religion and other hostiles.” It attributed the quote to Runsen Li, the Chinese government’s then-information technology chief in charge of developing the project.

Mark Chandler, Cisco’s senior vice president of legal services, testified to the Senate that he was “appalled” and “disappointed” when he saw that quote in the presentation.

“It is very regrettable that one of our engineers quoted directly from Mr. Runsen Li, the Chinese government’s head of IT for the Golden Shield project,” Terry Alberstein, a senior director of corporate communications at Cisco, told Wired.com in 2008.

“They do not represent Cisco’s views, principles, or its sales and marketing strategy or approach. They were merely inserted in that presentation to capture the goals of the Chinese government in that specific project, which was one of many discussed in that 2002 presentation.”

Cisco acknowledged selling roughly $100,000 worth of routers and switches that became part of the Golden Shield project, according to Alberstein. However, he denied that the company customized them for China’s censorship goals.

Sen. Dick Durbin, an Illinois Democrat, chaired that 2008 hearing and argued that U.S. companies have a “moral obligation” to protect freedom of expression.

Terri Marsh, who filed the suit in her capacity as executive director and senior litigation partner of the Human Rights Law Foundation, said unique aspects of the case showed that Cisco was not providing “generic” products to a totalitarian regime. Instead, Cisco created features “to facilitate torture and track the progression of efforts to forcibly convert practitioners.”

“Importantly, the complaint alleges that China could not create similar tools at the time, so the timing of the assistance was significant,” Marsh said in an emailed statement to RCP. And, she said, this is not a case where a tool just happened to be misused.

“Plaintiffs allege that Chinese officials made clear to Cisco that it needed features to further the violent crackdown of Falun Gong believers in China, and Cisco made those features to gain a lucrative foothold in the Chinese market.”

Marsh added that the decision hinges on the specific allegations of conduct that took place in the United States. “The complaint alleges that the heart of the claims – designing the tools, manufacturing components, and providing ongoing assistance – largely took place in California,” she said.

Cisco’s communications team did not respond to RCP’s inquiry. In a statement last month to the Los Angeles Times, a company spokesperson denied that the company customized its products to assist China’s Falun Gong persecution.

“We build our products to global standards, which promote the free flow of information, privacy, and freedom of expression,” the company said. “Cisco has a longstanding commitment to uphold and respect human rights for all people, and we are strongly committed to an open global Internet.”

Smith and other human rights experts point to Cisco’s internal 90-page presentation and other evidence to discount the tech giant’s defense.

“Companies must be exposed and brought to justice if they have blood on their hands from partnerships with businesses and offices controlled by a ruthless ruling party working to crush China’s religious believers, ethnic minorities, and dissidents on their hands,” Nina Shea said. “This case will be important in shining the light on this problem and in deterring others.”

Scientists Seek Retraction of Fauci-Endorsed COVID Paper, Citing ‘Fraud,’ ‘Scientific Misconduct’

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Scientists Seek Retraction of Fauci-Endorsed COVID Paper, Citing ‘Fraud,’ ‘Scientific Misconduct’

(Jon Miltimore, FEE) A growing number of people, including prominent scientists, are calling for a full retraction of a high-profile study published in the journal Nature in March 2020 that explored the origins of SARS-CoV-2.

The paper, whose authors included immunology and microbiology professor Kristian G. Andersen, declared that evidence clearly showed that SARS-CoV-2 did not originate from a laboratory.

“Our analyses clearly show that SARS-CoV-2 is not a laboratory construct or a purposefully manipulated virus,” the authors wrote in February.

Yet a trove of recently published documents reveal that Andersen and his co-authors believed that the lab leak scenario was not just possible, but likely.

“[The] main thing still in my mind is that the lab escape version of this is so friggin’ likely to have happened because they were already doing this type of work and the molecular data is fully consistent with that scenario,” Andersen said to his colleagues, according to a report from Public, which published a series of Slack messages between the authors.

Anderson was not the only author who privately expressed doubts that the virus had natural origins. Public cataloged dozens of statements from Andersen and his co-authors—Andrew Rambaut, W. Ian Lipkin, Edward C. Holmes, and Robert F. Garry—between the dates January 31 and February 28, 2020 suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 may have been engineered.

” …the fact that we are discussing this shows how plausible it is,” Garry said of the lab-leak hypothesis.

“We unfortunately can’t refute the lab leak hypothesis,” Andersen said on Feb. 20, several days after the authors published their pre-print.

To complicate matters further, new reporting from The Intercept reveals that Anderson had an $8.9 million grant with NIH pending final approval from Dr. Anthony Fauci when the Proximal Origin paper was submitted.

‘Fraud and Scientific Misconduct’?

The findings have led several prominent figures to accuse the authors of outright deception.

Richard H. Ebright, the Board of Governors Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University, called the paper “scientific fraud.”

“The 2020 ‘Proximal Origin’ paper falsely claimed science showed COVID-19 did not have a lab origin,” tweeted Ebright. “Newly released messages from the authors show they did not believe the conclusions of the paper and show the paper is the product of scientific fraud and scientific misconduct.”

Ebright and Silver are among those pushing a petition urging Nature to retract the article in light of these findings.

Among those to sign the petition was Neil Harrison, a professor of anesthesiology and molecular pharmacology at Columbia University.

“Virologists and their allies have produced a number of papers that purport to show that the virus was of natural origin and that the pandemic began at the Huanan seafood market,” Harrison told The Telegraph. “In fact there is no evidence for either of these conclusions, and the email and Slack messages among the authors show that they knew at the time that this was the case.”

Only ‘Expressing Opinions’?

Dr. Joao Monteiro, chief editor of Nature, has rebuffed calls for a retraction, The Telegraph notes, saying the authors were merely “expressing opinions.”

This claim is dubious at best. From the beginning, the Proximal Origin study was presented as authoritative and scientific. Jeremy Farrar, a British medical researcher and now the chief scientist at the World Health Organization, told USA Today that Proximal Origin was the “most important research on the genomic epidemiology of the origins of this virus to date.”

Dr. Anthony Fauci, speaking from the White House podium in April 2020, cited the study as evidence that the mutations of the virus were “totally consistent with a jump from a species of an animal to a human.” Fact-check organizations were soon citing the study as proof that COVID-19 “could not have been manipulated.”

Far from being presented as a handful of scientists “expressing opinions,” the Proximal Origin study was treated as gospel, a dogma that could not even be questioned. This allowed social media companies (working hand-in-hand with government agencies) to censor people who publicly stated what Andersen and his colleagues were saying privately—that it seemed plausible that SARS-CoV-2 came from the laboratory in Wuhan that experimented on coronaviruses and had a checkered safety record.

Indeed, even as media and government officials used the Proximal Origin study to smear people as conspiracy theorists for speculating that COVID-19 might have emerged from the Wuhan lab, a Defense Intelligence Agency study commissioned by the government questioned the study’s scientific rigor.

“The arguments that Andersen et al. use to support a natural-origin scenario for SARS CoV-2 are based not on scientific analysis, but on unwarranted assumptions,” the now-declassified paper concluded. “In fact, the features of SARS-CoV-2 noted by Andersen et al. are consistent with another scenario: that SARS-CoV-2 was developed in a laboratory…”

Despite the many problems with the study’s findings, Monteiro continues to resist calls for retraction—perhaps because Monteiro himself publicly inferred that the lab leak hypothesis was a conspiracy theory in March, 2020.

Whatever the case, it remains unclear how long Monteiro can resist calls for a retraction in face of overwhelming evidence of scientific misconduct.

“There can be no doubt the Proximal Origin authors consciously and inappropriately downplayed the #COVID19 research-related origin hypothesis and coordinated efforts manipulating media coverage,” said Jamie Metzl, a former Clinton administration official and a WHO expert advisory committee on human genome editing appointee.

Power, Accountability, and Impunity 

Why there was such intense pressure to declare that SARS-CoV-2 was of natural origin is obvious today.

The federal government was funding risky coronavirus research at Wuhan Institute of Virology, which would make officials complicit to some degree in a leak of a deadly virus. This is no doubt why the government had an interest in funding the study, which gave them a measure of control over its results.

“Jeremy Farrar and Francis Collins [then director of the National Institutes of Health] are very happy. Works for me,” Holmes Slacked his colleagues after the pre-print was submitted.

The Proximal Origin paper increasingly looks like a whitewashing job, and some influential people have noticed.

“This is a huge scandal,” said statistician and FiveThirtyEight founder Nate Silver. “Scientists like @K_G_Andersen believed a lab leak was extremely plausible, if not likely, they concocted a plan to deceive the public about it, and they’ve been caught red-handed.”

Silver is not wrong; yet so far, no one has been held accountable.

This lack of accountability is concerning, and to understand why it’s worth consulting age-old concepts of power and justice. As FEE’s Dan Sanchez has observed, power is not the mere exertion of unjust force. True power lies in the use of force and the absence of any accountability.

“Systematically getting away with it—or impunity—is where power truly lies,” wrote Sanchez.

In his famous work Republic, Plato showed what raw power looked like. The legendary “Ring of Gyges” did not make one strong. It made one invisible. This did not mean the wearer could do anything he wanted, but it did mean he would never be held accountable for his acts of injustice.

This is the most frightening part of raw state power. The greatest danger is not that people will act unethically. It’s not even that state actors will commit crimes to serve “a greater good.” The real danger begins when people are not held accountable—even when they are caught “red-handed.”

Another Sanctuary State Declares Emergency over Tsunami of Illegals

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Another Sanctuary State Declares Emergency over Tsunami of Illegals

(Headline USA) Massachusetts Democrat Gov. Maura Healey declared a state of emergency Tuesday, citing an influx of illegal immigrants seeking shelter at a time when the cost of housing — already in short supply — continues to rise.

Healy’s frantic SOS comes amid a national crisis of illegal aliens pouring into the country, streaming across President Joe Biden’s open border and spurred the incitement extended by sanctuary cities like Boston.

There are nearly 5,600 families or more than 20,000 people – many of whom are migrants — currently living in state shelters, including infants, young children and pregnant women. That is up from around 3,100 families a year ago, about an 80% increase, Healey said.

Many of the migrants are arriving by plane from other states. In the past 48 hours alone, she said, 50 migrant families have landed in the state in need of shelter.

“It’s exponentially more than our state has ever served in our emergency assistance program,” she said. “These numbers are being driven by a surge in new arrivals in our country who have been through some of the hardest journeys imaginable.”

The illegals arriving in Massachusetts are the face of the international migrant crisis and are coming at a time when the state is already experiencing a housing crunch, Healey said.

She called on the federal government for financial help, and more urgently, expedited work authorizations to allow the new arrivals to more quickly find jobs and start earning a living, she wrote in a letter to Alejandro Mayorkas., the Homeland Security chief who has consistently denied there is a border crisis, despite being presented with overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

In the letter, Healey pointed to work authorizations as a primary driver of the crisis. Currently, she said, it can take weeks, months or more than a year to receive the authorizations.

“Our new arrivals are most eager to work. The last thing they want is to be dependent,” she said.

As part of the emergency declaration, Healey said she is renewing a call to local organizations that can assist those seeking shelter as well as to people interested in sponsoring a family in their home.

The state has also launched a new migrant relief fund to help raise money to aid migrants. The contributions will be used to help pay for a range of goods and services for migrants, including food, clothing, diapers and transportation as well as health screenings, translation services, legal assistance and English classes.

As a right-to-shelter state, Massachusetts is legally required to provide eligible families shelter through its emergency assistance program. Geralde Gabeau, executive director of the Immigrant Family Services Institute, has worked with immigrants arriving from Haiti and said they are ready to get to work.

“The new families coming to our communities are wonderful human beings,” she said. “They are ready to work. They are ready to contribute to our economies.”

Healey and state lawmakers should rescind the state’s right-to-shelter policy, said Paul Diego Craney of the Massachusetts Fiscal Alliance, a conservative group.

“Perhaps it is time for the governor to take a trip to the southern border to see firsthand the open southern border crisis,” he said in a statement.

More than 80 cities and towns across the state have already felt the impact of new illegals and support the emergency declaration, said Geoff Beckwith, executive director of the Massachusetts Municipal Association.

“Community leaders want state and federal agencies to step in to provide these families with the services and support they need to be safe and healthy,” he said.

Other states have faced challenges with soaring numbers of migrants.

On Monday, New York Mayor Eric Adams announced a plan to house as many as 2,000 migrants on an island in the East River where a migrant center was set up last year and then taken down weeks later.

Some states led by Republicans — including Texas and Florida — have bused or flown immigrants to states and cities led by Democrats, after having their own states overrun by illegals taking advantage of Biden’s open border. Those sanctuary states now decrying the illegals tsunami include including California, Massachusetts, New York and Chicago. Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis last year flew 49 Venezuelan migrants to the upscale Massachusetts enclave of Martha’s Vineyard.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

DOJ Threatens to Prosecute Reporter over J6 Coverage

Jacob Bruns
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DOJ Threatens to Prosecute Reporter over J6 Coverage

(Jacob Bruns, Headline USA) President Joe Biden’s militarized Department of Justice has threatened to prosecute an independent journalist for his coverage of the January 6, 2021 rally in Washington, DC, the Epoch Times reported.

Steve Baker, the journalist in question, was served a subpoena demanding the full footage of a video that he shot on the day of the rally. According to Baker, this subpoena indicates that the DOJ is investigating him for potential felonies.

“They want to silence me,” Baker said Monday, noting that the DOJ gave him the option to either show up in person to turn over the footage on August 16, or hand it over to his local FBI chapter in North Carolina.

In Baker’s account of his own actions that day, he observed, but did not participate in any chants or large crowd movements.

According to the journalist, one of his friends received a call from a high-profile DC journalist, warning him that he was on the radar of the feds.

‘Your friend in Raleigh, tell him to be careful,’” the message said. “‘He has awakened a couple of people’s attention to his work, and they’re not happy about it at all.’”

Baker, however, has found himself in the crosshairs of the DOJ before. In 2021, the DOJ attempted to threaten him with interstate racketeering charges. He was told that he would be “charged within the week.”

Now, 20 months later, the DOJ is back at his throat.

“Fact is … ‘they’ know the story I’ve been working on for ten months and am about to drop,” Baker noted. “They are not going to stop it from coming out. Their timing for this action is fully transparent.”

He also said that he does not plan to “go gentle into that good night.”

Vivek Ramaswamy Blasts Juneteenth As ‘Useless’ Holiday

Contributing Author
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Vivek Ramaswamy Blasts Juneteenth As ‘Useless’ Holiday

(Headline USA) Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy blasted Juneteenth this week as a “useless” holiday that should be canceled.

Speaking at a campaign event in Iowa on Saturday, Ramaswamy argued that Juneteenth, which is meant to celebrate the end of slavery in the U.S., was only established as a national holiday “under political duress” in the wake of the Black Lives Matter riots in 2020.

“It was a political hostage situation on the back of the death of George Floyd and I think that should not be how we create holidays,” he said.

He also said the spirit of Juneteenth is already celebrated on various other national holidays, such as Martin Luther King Day.

“I think that if we made a national commemorative holiday for everything that’s important that happened in our history, we’d have no working days left,” Ramaswamy said. “We shouldn’t have redundant holidays that celebrate overlapping purposes. It should have a distinct purpose.”

Instead of Juneteenth, the U.S. should designate Election Day as a national holiday, he said.

“Single day voting on Election Day. We will make Election Day a holiday. Cancel Juneteenth or one of the other useless ones we made up,” he continued.

Ironically, on Juneteenth of this year, Ramaswamy posted a video discussing the holiday and the importance of celebrating the ability to “get ahead in this country based on your own hard work.”

“What we celebrate is how far we’ve come,” Ramaswamy said in the video. “And as a first-generation American myself, you better believe I’m proud of it. Happy Juneteenth, everybody.”

When asked in a follow-up interview whether he still believes Juneteenth is a “useless” holiday given his past statements on the holiday, Ramaswamy told NBC News: “I basically do.”

President Joe Biden signed the Juneteenth National Independence Day Act into law in 2021, declaring June 19 a federal holiday.

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