FBI Informant Testifies for Proud Boys Defense: ‘Did Not Do It, nor Inspire’

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FBI Informant Testifies for Proud Boys Defense: ‘Did Not Do It, nor Inspire’

(Headline USA) An FBI informant who marched to the U.S. Capitol with fellow Proud Boys members on Jan. 6 testified on Wednesday that he didn’t know of any plans for the anti-socialist group to invade the building and didn’t think they inspired any violence that day.

The informant, who was identified in court and in a court record only as “Aaron,” was a defense witness at the trial of former Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio and four lieutenants charged by the far-left Biden Justice Department with “seditious conspiracy” for what prosecutors claimed, without evidence, was a plot to keep Donald Trump in the White House after the disputed 2020 presidential election.

The informant was communicating with his FBI handler as the throng of Trump rally-goers approached the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, writing in a text message that police barriers were down and the crowd was almost at the building.

He also told his handler that the Proud Boys “did not do it, nor inspire.”

“The crowd did as a herd mentality. Not organized,” he wrote. The handler’s response was redacted from a screenshot that a defense attorney showed to jurors.

A prosecutor later suggested that the informant sent that text only after it became clear that he and other members could be in serious trouble. The prosecutor also suggested that the informant wasn’t a mere observer to the uprising, showing video that captured him helping another Proud Boy use a podium to block a security gate from closing.

The Jan. 6 event resulted in four deaths—including the violent killing of veteran Ashli Babbitt at the hands of Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd, who lay waiting in ambush as she crawled through a broken entrance in the the Speaker’s Chamber.

Since then, the Biden DOJ has arraigned at least 1,000 tourists who entered the Capitol believing they were respectfully abiding by the law. It recently suggested that it may seek to arrest some 1,200 additional Capitol tourists.

Democrats have shamefully claimed that several police officers who died in the days and weeks afterward of unrelated causes were casualties of the mostly peaceful protest.

To the extent that there was violence and vandalism, theories abound that members of the federal intelligence community itself may have been involved in a so-called psy-op campaign to ensure that legislative challenges to Democrat Joe Biden’s legitimacy could not be brought forward during the Joint Session of Congress to certify the Electoral College votes.

The presence of government informants in the Proud Boys has repeatedly come up in the lengthy trial, as defense lawyers seek to undermine prosecutors’ claim that the Proud Boys plotted to attack the Capitol.

“Aaron,” who was allowed to withhold a last name when he testified, is one of several Proud Boys associates who were informants before or after the Jan. 6 attack. He is the first to testify at the trial, one of the most important to emerge from the Justice Department’s massive dragnet of right-wing political dissidents.

The informant, who joined the Proud Boys in 2019, said he wasn’t a group leader and didn’t know Tarrio or any of the other leaders on trial. He was not in any Telegram chats the Proud Boys leaders on trial were accused of using to organize an alleged insurrection.

The informant told jurors that his relationship with the FBI began around 2008. He said investigators didn’t ask him to join the Proud Boys or direct him to gather information about the group. The FBI also didn’t ask him to go to Washington on Jan. 6 or march with the Proud Boys that day, he added.

The informant planned his travel to Washington with members of a Kansas City chapter of the Proud Boys, including at least four who were charged with conspiring on Jan. 6, he said.

The informant told jurors that marching from the Washington Monument to the Capitol appeared to be a photo opportunity for the Proud Boys. He said he reached out to his handler when skirmishes between rally-goers an Capitol Police erupted outside the building because he saw it as an “emergency situation.”

“If there was any violence and all that, they would have wanted to know,” he said of the FBI.

The police have been criticized for instigating and fomenting unrest by firing cannisters of tear-gas as part of their crowd-control efforts.

On cross-examination, prosecutor Conor Mulroe showed videos of the informant near two of the Proud Boys members who breached police lines. In one video, the informant is seen pumping a fist.

Asked why he didn’t try to de-escalate the situation, the informant said he couldn’t believe the rally-goers would ignore police officers guarding the building.

“At that point, it was almost a circus before things got serious,” he said.

The trial was briefly disrupted last week when prosecutors told defense attorneys that another person the defense had wanted to put on the witness stand secretly worked as a government informant for two years after the Jan. 6 uprising.

Defendents accused the DOJ of attempting to plant a mole within the group’s legal defense team, undermining its constitutional right to due process.

Prosecutors insisted that the alleged mole was never told to gather information about the defendants or their lawyers. They further claimed the FBI ended its relationship with her in January 2023 after it learned she might testify.

Tarrio’s lawyers ultimately decided not to put her on the witness stand after the judge said attorneys couldn’t ask about her relationship with the FBI because it’s not relevant to the trial.

Alongside other Proud Boys members, Tarrio, a Miami resident who served as national chairman of the group, could face up to 20 years in prison if convicted of seditious conspiracy—even though he wasn’t in Washington on Jan. 6.

Tarrio had been arrested in a separate case days earlier, but authorities say he helped put into motion the alleged violence that day.

Two other former Proud Boys members, who agreed to cooperate with the government, also testified they didn’t know of any specific plan to rush the Capitol.

But Bertino, a former regional leader from North Carolina who pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy, told jurors that the group was trying to “save the country” from what they feared would be a tyrannical government.

Hundreds of privately exchanged messages shown to jurors show the Proud Boys becoming increasingly agitated as Trump’s legal challenges failed in the weeks leading up to Jan. 6—and subsequently celebrating their role in the uprising.

“Do what must be done,” Tarrio wrote on social media as the crowd breached the Capitol.

Later that day, someone asked in an encrypted group chat what they should do next.

“Do it again,” Tarrio responded.

Also on trial with Tarrio are Ethan Nordean, Joseph Biggs, Zachary Rehl and Dominic Pezzola. Nordean, of Auburn, Washington, was a Proud Boys chapter leader.

Biggs, of Ormond Beach, Florida, was a self-described Proud Boys organizer. Rehl was president of the Proud Boys chapter in Philadelphia. Pezzola was a Proud Boys member from Rochester, New York.

Prosecutors rested their case on March 20. Jurors are expected to hear several more days of testimony from defense witnesses before they hear closing arguments.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

GOP Rep. Stuns D.C. Councilman by Reading Crime Stats Aloud

Molly Bruns
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GOP Rep. Stuns D.C. Councilman by Reading Crime Stats Aloud

(Molly Bruns, Headline USA) In a House Oversight and Government Accountability Committee hearing devoted specifically to the governing of our nation’s capitol, Republican Rep. Russell Fry of South Carolina confronted a city councilman on the city’s rising crime rates.

Fry listed off some alarming statistics to Councilman Charles Allen, who sat in apparent shock and awe of the horrifying numbers and rendered incapable of defending his actions.

“Let’s talk about homicides in D.C.,” Fry said to the councilman. “They’re up 40% over last year. On March 6, the D.C. police chief, Robert Contee, was asked what D.C. can do differently to keep homicides down. He replied, ‘keep violent people in jail.’ Well, that sounds like a pretty good idea to me.”

2022 set a record in homicides for the city with 203 citizens killed; 2023 is set to be another record-breaking year.

Fry also stated that the city’s average for daily carjackings is one per day. The Metropolitan Police Department also started distributing wheel locks to locals who own Kia or Hyundai owners as a prevention measure for carjackings.

Fry also showed a video of one of his staffer’s text alerts for the month of March, which showed several notifications of stabbings, carjackings and other crimes in the Capitol Hill area.

Fry also called out the councilman for his lack of support for the MPD, which Allen is working very difficult to minimize.

“According to [Police] Chief [Robert] Contee, he said, ‘Right now the average homicide suspect has been arrested eleven times prior to committing a homicide,’” Fry said. Do you think the men and women who serve the Metropolitan Police Department feel supported by D.C. Council to keep D.C. safe and to stay safe themselves?”

Allen, along with D.C. City Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, voted to reduce criminal penalties within the city. President Joe Biden signed the bill, but only after it won the support of several prominent Democrats.

Fry concluded by frankly stating that Washington D.C. is highly unsuited for statehood because it is so poorly run.

“If D.C. were a state, it would have far and away the highest per capita murder rate of any other state,” Fry noted. “In 2014-2020, D.C. ranked the highest with a homicide rate of 19.84 per 100,000 people. D.C. wants to be a state; they can’t even be a city.”

Twitter Relapses into Censorship Mode by Suppressing Critics of Trans Terrorist Event

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Twitter Relapses into Censorship Mode by Suppressing Critics of Trans Terrorist Event

(Headline USA) Twitter says it has removed thousands of tweets showing a poster promoting a “trans day of vengeance” protest in support of transgender rights in Washington, D.C., on Saturday.

Ella Irwin, Twitter’s head of Trust and Safety, said in a tweet Wednesday that the company automatically removed more than 5,000 tweets and retweets of a poster promoting the event.

“We do not support tweets that incite violence irrespective of who posts them,” Irwin claimed, despite the platform’s long history of selectively condoning violence involving left-wing terrorist groups and those outside the U.S., including Muslim extremists in the Middle East.

“Vengeance does not imply peaceful protest,” Irwin continued. “Organizing or support for peaceful protests is ok.”

The move followed shortly after Monday’s tragic school-shooting in Nashville, during which a trans-identifying woman targeted a Christian school, killing three adults and three 9-year-olds before being neutralized by police.

The massacre, along with Saturday’s planned terrorist event in the nation’s capital, helped to fuel a growing dialogue about the threat posed by radicalized leftist within the LGBT community.

That proved too sensitive and politically incorrect for the still-left-leaning Twitter, despite its recent takeover by red-pilled billionaire Elon Musk, who promised to restore free speech to the platform—much to the chagrin of anti-freedom Democrats.

In addition to its automatic removal of the “trans day of vengeance” tweets, Twitter censored other post critical of transgender terrorism.

A post from a Headline USA writer calling on California Gov. Gavin Newsom to disarm all transgender individuals, in response to Newsom’s calls for stricter gun control, resulted in a 12-hour lock on the account.

In removing the tweets, Twitter claimed it used automated processes to do it quickly at a large scale, without considering what context the tweets were shared in.

Because of this, both tweets that were critical of and those that supported the protests were removed.

This roiled conservative Twitter users who said the rules were unfairly applied to them because they were posting the image of the protest flyer to speak out against it.

Among those censored were Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and investigative journalist Andy Ngo.

Trans activists rushed to claim “trans day of vengeance” was a meme that has been around in the trans community for years and insisted that despite the obvious implications, it did not endorse violence.

It is “a way of expressing anger and frustration about oppression and violence the trans community faces daily,” claimed Evan Greer, director of the far-left Fight for the Future. “Context is everything in content moderation, which is why content policies should be based in human rights and applied evenly, not changed rapidly based on public pressure or news cycles.”

The poster in question is a largely text-based digital flyer. It reads “we want more than visibility” on top, followed by “trans day of vengeance” and “stop trans genocide” as well as the date and time of the planned protest.

On its website, the group organizing Saturday’s protest insisted it does not condone violence.

In a statement posted on the site, the Trans Radical Activist Network and other organizers also strongly rejected any connection between the school shooting in Nashville and Saturday’s protest, which organizers said was planned before the shooting took place.

“Vengeance means fighting back with vehemence,” the protest’s organizers claimed. “We are fighting against false narratives, criminalization, and eradication of our existence.”

In early March, Twitter announced what it called a new policy prohibiting “violent speech” on its platform, though the new rules appear similar to guidelines against violent threats that the company had on its books before Musk took over.

Among the updates, Twitter had expanded its policy to include a ban on “coded language,” which is often referred to as “dog whistles,” used to indirectly incite violence.

It also added a rule that prohibits “threatening to damage civilian homes and shelters, or infrastructure that is essential to daily, civic, or business activities.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Commerce Dept. Revises Down Last Quarter’s Growth to 2.6% as Recession Looms

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Commerce Dept. Revises Down Last Quarter’s Growth to 2.6% as Recession Looms

(Headline USA) The Commerce Department admitted that it once again had over-projected the strength of the Biden economy as bank failures, inflation and skyrocketing interest rates leave the U.S. on the cusp of a devastating recession.

Meanwhile, the Democrat-led government continues its wasteful spending on dubious priorities like the war in Ukraine and a green-energy agenday that largely benefits China.

The U.S. economy grew at a 2.6% annual pace, the government said Thursday in a slight downgrade from its previous estimate. But consumer spending, which drives most of the economy’s growth, was revised sharply down.

The government had previously estimated that the economy expanded at a 2.7% annual rate last quarter.

The rise in the gross domestic product—the economy’s total output of goods and services —for the October–December quarter was down from the 3.2% growth rate from July through September.

For all of 2022, the U.S. economy expanded 2.1%, down significantly from a robust 5.9% in 2021, when the numbers were artificially bolstered by the pandemic recovery as businesses were allowed to end their lockdowns.

The report suggested that the recovery economy was losing momentum at the end of 2022.

Consumer spending rose at a 1% annual rate last quarter, downgraded from a 1.4% increase in the government’s previous estimate. It was the weakest quarterly gain in consumer spending since COVID-19 slammed the economy in the spring of 2020.

Spending on physical goods, like appliances and furniture, which had initially surged as the economy rebounded from the pandemic recession, fell for a fourth straight quarter.

More than half of last quarter’s growth came from businesses restocking their inventories, not an indication of underlying economic strength.

Most economists say they think growth is slowing sharply in the current January–March quarter, in part because the Federal Reserve has steadily raised interest rates in its drive to curb inflation.

The resulting surge in borrowing costs has walloped the housing industry and made it more expensive for consumers and businesses to spend and invest in major purchases. As a consequence, the economy is widely expected to slide into a recession later this year.

The central bank has raised its benchmark interest rate nine times over the past year. The Fed’s policymakers are betting that they can stick a so-called soft landing—slowing growth just enough to tame inflation without tipping the world’s biggest economy into recession.

However, the Biden administration’s ongoing spending problem—including a proposed $7-trillion budget for the next fiscal year—has complicated matters by sustaining the root cause of inflation.

As higher loan costs spread through the economy, analysts are generally skeptical that the United States can avoid a downturn. The main point of debate is whether a recession will prove mild, with only minor damage to hiring and growth, or severe, with waves of layoffs.

The financial conditions that led to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank on March 10 and Signature Bank two days later—the second- and third-biggest bank failures in U.S. history—are also expected to slow the economy.

Banks are likely to impose stricter conditions on loans, which help fuel economic growth, to conserve cash to meet withdrawals from jittery depositors.

“The economy ended 2022 with marginally less momentum,” Oren Klachkin and Ryan Sweet of Oxford Economics wrote in a research note. ”Looking ahead, the economy will face the full brunt of tighter credit conditions and Fed policy this year, and inflation is set to stay above its historical trend.”

They added: “We expect a recession to hit in the second half of 2023.”

Thursday’s report from the Commerce Department was its third and final estimate of GDP for the fourth quarter of 2022. On April 27, the department will issue its initial estimate of growth in the current first quarter.

Forecasters surveyed by the data firm FactSet have estimated that growth in the January–March quarter is decelerating to a 1.4% annual rate.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

NHL Might Ice ‘Pride Nights’ after Players Revolt

Dmytro "Henry" Aleksandrov
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NHL Might Ice ‘Pride Nights’ after Players Revolt

(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) The Nationah Hockey League may re-evaluate its pro-LGBT policy and stop forcing hockey players to wear rainbow jerseys during so-called Pride nights because of an increasing number of players engaging in silent protests against it.

As of now, all NFL teams hold Pride nights, according to the Post Millennial. However, some now do so without the themed jerseys because the events are planned by the individual teams, not the league.

“This is the first time we’ve experienced that, and I think it’s something that we’re going to have to evaluate in the offseason,” NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman said in an interview with CTV News.

Several players declined to participate in pre-game warmups while wearing rainbow jerseys, saying that it goes against their religious beliefs.

“This is one issue where players, for a variety of reasons, may not feel comfortable wearing the uniform as a form of endorsement,” Bettman said.

“But I think that’s become more of a distraction now, because the substance of what our teams and we have been doing and stand for is really being pushed to the side for what is a handful of players basically have made personal decisions, and you have to respect that as well,” he added.

Among the players who refused to wear the jerseys that support LGBT were Florida Panthers players Eric and Marc Staal who announced it last Thursday night.

“We carry no judgment on how people choose to live their lives and believe that all people should be welcome in all aspects of the game of hockey,” the Staal brothers said in a statement. “Having said that, we feel that by us wearing a Pride jersey, it goes against our Christian beliefs.”

Other players who refused to wear the jerseys were Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Ivan Provorov, San Jose Sharks goalie James Reimer and Buffalo Sabres defenseman Ilya Lyubushkin. Provorov’s jerseys were sold out immediately after his announcement.

W.Va.’s Watered-Down Ban on Trans Surgeries for Minors Carves Out Suicide Exception

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(Headline USA) West Virginia Republican Gov. Jim Justice on Wednesday signed a bill banning transgender surgery for minors, joining at least 10 other states that have enacted laws restricting or outlawing medically supported treatments for transgender youth.

The bill outlaws those under 18 from being prescribed hormone therapy and fully reversible puberty blockers. It also bans minors from receiving irreversible genital-mutilation surgery—something physicians say doesn’t even happen in West Virginia.

Unlike measures passed in other states, however, West Virginia’s law contains a unique exemption: It permits doctors to prescribe medical therapy if a teenager is considered at risk for self-harm or suicide.

Under the law, which will take effect in January 2024, a patient can be prescribed puberty blockers and hormone therapy after receiving parental consent and a diagnosis of severe gender dysphoria from two clinicians, including a mental-health provider or an adolescent medicine specialist.

Both practitioners must be trained to diagnose and treat young people with severe gender dysphoria and provide written testimony that medical interventions are necessary to prevent or limit possible or actual self-harm.

The provisions were added at the urging of Senate Majority Leader Tom Takubo, who is a physician.

“These kids struggle. They have incredible difficulties,” the Republican said on the Senate floor earlier this month.

Takubo cited more than a dozen peer-reviewed studies showing a decrease in rates of suicide ideation and attempts among youth with severe gender dysphoria who had access to medication therapy.

Gender dysphoria is defined by medical professionals as severe psychological distress experienced by those whose gender identity differs from their sex assigned at birth.

The bill also prohibits minors from being prescribed hormone therapy before the age of puberty, something West Virginia physicians say doesn’t happen anyway.

The medication dosage for any adolescent must be the lowest possible necessary to “treat the psychiatric condition and not for purposes of gender alteration,” according to the bill.

The West Virginia law comes as Republican lawmakers across the U.S. have pursued several hundred proposals this year to push back on an increasingly aggressive LGBT agenda.

Lawmakers in West Virginia and other states moving to enact bans on transgender health care for youth and young adults often characterize treatments as medically unproven, potentially dangerous in the long term and a symptom of “woke” culture.

A 2017 study by UCLA Law’s The Williams Institute estimated West Virginia had the highest per-capita rate of transgender youth in the country.

The rate of suicide ideation, or having suicidal thoughts or ideas, for transgender youth in West Virginia is three times higher than the rate for all youth in the state, according to West Virginia Youth Risk Behavior Survey data.

Natalie Frazier, who oversees underage genital mutilations for Planned Parenthood in North Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia and West Virginia, said the bill Justice signed Wednesday was “better than it could have been.”

“But it’s still unnecessary—just an unnecessary barrier to care that is going to end up harming people,” she claimed, adding that not every child’s family will have the resources to travel to two different clinicians for a gender dysphoria diagnosis.

West Virginia’s ban also includes exemptions for people who are born intersex and for people taking treatments for infection, injury, disease or disorder that has been “caused by or exacerbated by the performance of gender transition procedures.”

Surgeries can be performed if a child is at risk for “imminent danger of death or impairment of a major bodily function.”

At least 11 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning trans surgery for minors: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Iowa, Kentucky, Mississippi, Tennessee, Utah, South Dakota and West Virginia. Federal judges have blocked enforcement of laws in Alabama and Arkansas, and nearly two dozen states are considering bills this year to restrict or ban care.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Minn. Residents Told to Evacuate after Fiery Derailment of Train Carrying Ethanol

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Minn. Residents Told to Evacuate after Fiery Derailment of Train Carrying Ethanol

(Headline USA) A train hauling ethanol and corn syrup derailed and caught fire in Minnesota early Thursday and nearby residents were ordered to evacuate their homes, authorities said.

The BNSF train derailed in the town of Raymond, roughly 100 miles west of Minneapolis, about 1 a.m., according to a statement from Kandiyohi County Sheriff Eric Tollefson.

BNSF said in a statement that 22 cars derailed with four catching fire, but that no injuries were reported due to the accident. It wasn’t immediately clear how many cars that derailed were carrying ethanol.

“The main track is blocked and an estimated time for reopening the line is not available,” according to the statement from BNSF spokesperson Lena Kent. “The cause of the incident is under investigation.”

Homes in an area 0.5 miles around the site were evacuated, according to Tollefson, and residents were taken to a shelter in nearby Prinsburg.

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told CNN that about 14 cars were carrying hazardous materials. BNSF said the only hazardous material on board was ethanol.

“We’ve been in touch with the governor,” Buttigieg said, and Environmental Protection Agency officials were en route to the site “given the hazardous material situation.”

Gov. Tim Walz said he would visit the site of the derailment with state emergency management officials Thursday morning.

The Federal Railroad Administration, the Pipelines and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration and the National Transportation Safety Board are all responding to the derailment, and the NTSB said a team will conduct a safety investigation into the derailment.

It doesn’t appear likely that this BNSF train would have been covered by the additional safety regulations for high-hazardous flammable trains because those rules only apply when a train has either a block of 20 flammable liquid cars or more than 35 total flammable liquid cars on the train.

Those rules that require additional safety measures and notice to states were developed after a string of fiery crude oil and ethanol derailments a decade ago.

This latest derailment happened as the nation has been increasingly focused on railroad safety after last month’s fiery Norfolk Southern derailment that prompted evacuations in East Palestine, Ohio, near the Pennsylvania border.

Harsh scrutiny has fallen on the Biden adminstration, which railroaded through a multi-trillion-dollar infrastructure package in 2021 as one of its first priorities, dishonestly using the back-door reconciliation process to lower the threshold for Senate votes in the then-evenly-split chamber.

Instead of focusing on roads, bridges and other core government functions, however, the bill funneled funding to Biden’s wasteful environmental agenda and to entitlement spending, much of that going to subsidize a flood of newly repatriated illegal immigrants.

Criticism also has befallen Buttigieg, a diversity hire due to his LGBT identity, who has demonstrated little interest in the job at hand.

As a shipping crisis due to labor shortages gave way to inflationary ripple effects that continue to resonate in the Biden economy, Buttigieg was slammed for being on maternity leave with his gay husband, Chasten.

Most recently, the slogan “Where’s Pete” was invoked after Buttigieg spent weeks refusing to visit the devastating toxic spill in Ohio.

Residents in that town of about 5,000 remain concerned about lingering health impacts after officials decided to release and burn toxic chemicals to prevent a tank car explosion. State and federal officials maintain that no harmful levels of toxic chemicals have been found in the air or water there, but residents remain uneasy.

The major freight railroads have said they plan to add about 1,000 more trackside detectors nationwide to help spot equipment problems, but federal regulators and members of Congress have proposed additional reforms they want the railroads to make to prevent future derailments.

Earlier this month, another BNSF train derailed in Washington and spilled 3,100 gallons of diesel fuel near the Swinomish Channel on that tribe’s reservation after a safety device meant to keep a train from crossing onto an open swinging bridge malfunctioned.

The Association of American Railroads trade group likes to tout that 99.9% of all hazardous materials shipments that railroads haul reach their destinations safety, but this Minnesota derailment and the one in Ohio demonstrate how even a single crash involving hazardous materials can be disastrous. Railroads say that safety has generally been improving over the years, but there were still more than 1,000 derailments last year, according to Federal Railroad Administration data.

Hazardous materials account for about 7% to 8% of the 30 million shipments that railroads deliver across the country every year.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Radical Union Boss Calls for Gun Confiscation after Trans Terrorist Attack

Mark Pellin
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Radical Union Boss Calls for Gun Confiscation after Trans Terrorist Attack

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) Turning what should have been a somber occasion to honor the victims of a transgender mass shooter this week at a Christian school in Nashville, activist teachers union chief Randi Weingarten used the tragedy to shamelessly pimp for gun confiscation.

“Today, we renew our call for common sense gun safety legislation, including a ban on assault weapons. This is an epidemic,” Weingarten said during a press conference for the American Federation of Teachers. Weingarten at least had the decency to call for a moment of silence for the victims, before launching into her diatribe calling for gun confiscation and alluding to revoking the 2nd Amendment.

“How many lives will be shattered before we have the courage to do what Scotland did, what Australia did, what New Zealand did, what other great democracies do?” Weingarten blustered. “We must solve this epidemic, and that’s up to us.”

The go-to checklist included countries where guns were either outright banned or mandatory buyback programs were implemented that require the confiscation of guns, reported Fox News.

“None of them had a Second Amendment, but we know that’s what Weingarten was implying,” wrote mrcTV’s Nick Kangadis. “The leader of a teachers union wants to dictate what rights Americans should and shouldn’t have. Although, to be fair, they already try and dictate what public schools indoctrinate your children with, so there’s that.”

Along with aggressively pushing leftist agendas into classrooms, Weingarten and her union minions have been roundly criticized for disrupting schools with wild demands during the pandemic, leading to historic learning losses across the country.

“The same people who masked your children, closed your schools, and silenced parents who questioned their policies now want to take your guns under the guise of safety,” wrote Matthew Kolken, former director of the American Immigration Lawyers Association Board of Governors.

Biden Regime Taps $150B to Fund Army of Mini-Greta Thunbergs

Mark Pellin
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Biden Regime Taps $150B to Fund Army of Mini-Greta Thunbergs

(Mark Pellin, Headline USA) The Biden administration is planning to spend copious amounts of tax dollars for troops of Greta Thunberg clones to spread climate alarmism, while rooting out new green-energy boondoggles ripe for additional funding.

In a bureaucratic loop of spending, the U.S. Agency for International Development has budgeted $150 billion to indoctrinate budding climate activists in developing countries, while simultaneously conceding that an increasing number of young people suffer from “climate-related mental conditions,” the Washington Free Beacon reported.

One solution to fighting the stress and mental unease over what USAID paints as the catastrophic consequences of climate change, of course, is to spend more money on programs to help ease the angst that they’re creating.

USAID aims to confront the “growing importance” of young people suffering from “eco-anxiety.” That would include what the American Psychology Association described as “the chronic fear of environmental cataclysm that comes from observing the seemingly irrevocable impact of climate change.” As such, USAID is looking to spend billions of dollars “supporting programs at scale that address these issues.”

The overall goal of USAID’s 2022-2030 “Climate Strategy” is to create an “unprecedented ‘whole-of-Agency’ approach” to “work on the ground with partner governments and local actors to set the global trajectory toward our vision of a resilient, prosperous, and equitable world with net-zero greenhouse gas emissions.”

To that end, Biden officials are pushing “behavior change and communications campaigns” that “encourage youth’s active participation” as they “have emerged in recent years as key actors … in demanding government action to tackle the climate crisis.”

Agency officials claimed that starts with “Promoting safe, secure, and enabling political environment at all levels of governance for Indigenous Peoples, human rights and environmental defenders, and local communities to participate in climate actions.”

Policy analysts contend those “climate actions” are ultimately counter-productive to the developing nations USAID purports to help. Pushing and mandating a move to green energy “punishes the developing world by refusing them to have what we have, which is the prosperity that comes from fossil fuels,” Daniel Turner, founder and executive director of energy advocacy group Power the Future, told the Free Beacon.

“It’s just horrifying to think we spend tax dollars, giving it to poor countries, to create more Greta Thunbergs,” Turner said. “There’s nothing charitable about that—if anything, it’s the epitome of first world privilege.”

This isn’t the first time USAID has come under fire for funding questionable projects and agendas of suspect motive. The agency forked over nearly $5 million in 2021 to the Anthony Fauci-linked EcoHealth Alliance, despite widespread concerns that the group was reportedly involved with gain-of-function and virus research at China’s Wuhan lab, where growing evidence indicates the COVID pandemic originated.

EXCLUSIVE: FBI Undercover Agent ‘Red’ Fomented Crime in BLM and Militia Movements

Ken Silva
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EXCLUSIVE: FBI Undercover Agent ‘Red’ Fomented Crime in BLM and Militia Movements

(Ken Silva, Headline USA) In August 2020, an FBI undercover agent code-named “Red” unsuccessfully tried to foment a plot to assassinate Colorado’s attorney general. The next month, an FBI undercover agent with the same code-name and physical description played a major role in the conspiracy to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

After reviewing audio recordings and other information, three people involved in the Whitmer case have concluded that the “Red” in Colorado is the same person as Michigan “Red,” whose real name is special agent Timothy Bates.

Indeed, in both cases, “Red” is described as 6 feet 2 inches tall with facial hair and a tattoo sleeve going down his arm. “Red” was also introduced to BLM activists and militiamen alike as an ex-military, outlaw munitions expert. And moreover, “Red” took each of his targets on surveillance car rides.

The information about Colorado Red and the short-lived association plot was recently revealed in a new podcast, “Alphabet Boys,” which details how the FBI infiltrated the BLM movement.

According to Alphabet Boys, an FBI informant introduced Red to a BLM activist who had expressed interest in assassinating Colorado’s attorney general. Red and the activist met in August 2020, and then went on a car ride to surveil the AG’s home—but the activist suspected Red of being a fed, and never contacted him again.

The next month, “Red” would figure prominently in the Whitmer case, attempting to goad militia members into buying explosives in the weeks before they were arrested. Former Whitmer defendant Brandon Caserta met Red in person and said he listened to his voice “hundreds of times” on audio throughout his legal proceedings.

After listening to the Alphabet Boys, Caserta—who was exonerated of all charges—said he’s 100-percent certain that Colorado Red and Michigan Red are one in the same.

“I’m only 10 minutes in. I don’t need to go any further. That’s Red—100 percent,” he said.

Likewise, the family of Adam Fox—who was convicted in the Whitmer plot—thinks it’s the same person. Fox’s family has heard audio of Bates, and watched him testify against Fox.

“Literally the minute I heard the voice I knew it was him,” said Fox’s sister, Gabrielle, whose last name Headline USA is withholding for privacy reasons. “I am in complete agreement with Brandon: That sounds just like Red.”

Fox’s mom, Christina, added, “It does sound like him.”

Not only does the Colorado Red’s voice sound the same as Bates, according to Caserta and Fox’s family; he also matches the same physical description.

A video obtained by Alphabet Boys creator Trevor Aaronson purportedly shows a tattoo sleeve on the agent’s arm—but doesn’t capture his face. One of Aaronson’s sources reportedly described this Red as about 6 feet 2 inches tall with a goatee.

Red flashes a tattoo sleeve
A suspected undercover FBI agent code-named “Red” flashes a tattoo sleeve. / PHOTO: Alphabet Boys

When asked to describe Michigan Red, Caserta provided similar information.

“He has one [tattoo] sleeve … and it’s on his right arm. And it’s all black and white. He has no color tattoos, whatsoever. And then, when he grows a beard, he grows a long, grayish-white beard,” Caserta said. “And he’s bald. And he’s probably 6 feet 2 [inches tall] and in really good shape.”

Moreover, Caserta noted that the Colorado Red had the same cover story and modus operandi as Bates.

“His M.O. is essentially the same as it appears to be in this podcast. He’s an ex special forces guy—the guy who can get the good shit; the ‘no fuck around guy,’” said Caserta, referencing how Red was introduced to BLM protestors. “It’s the same role he played in our case.”

Additionally, “Red” engaged in similar activities in Colorado and Michigan. In Colorado, he went on a car ride with a BLM protestor to surveil the attorney general’s house, while in Michigan he took Fox on a car ride to supposedly examine a bridge that the plotters were going to detonate as part of their getaway.

Headline USA presented some of the above similarities to Alphabet Boys creator Trevor Aaronson, who replied that he has indeed considered the possibility that Colorado “Red” is also Michigan Red. However, Aaronson said he couldn’t find enough solid evidence to report the similarities.

“I think there’s a chance it’s the same agent,” he said. “But I have not seen enough evidence yet to make that call.”

Unfortunately for Aaronson and others, the evidence that could directly prove whether the two undercover Reds were the same person remains under court-ordered secrecy. Caserta said he had access to recordings during his legal proceedings, but now that evidence is held by defense attorneys, who could be disbarred if they release the sealed material.

Furthermore, two other people who could potentially identify Red—Fox and Barry Croft—are incarcerated in supermax facilities that are specifically designed to prevent inmates from talking to media.

The FBI, for its part, did not respond to an email query about the matter.

Questions about Red and the FBI’s role in fomenting violence in both right- and left-wing movements could ostensibly be answered by the House Weaponization Subcommittee, which was formed specifically to investigate federal agencies that target political dissidents.

But despite touting itself as the next “Church committee”—a reference to a 1970s-era congressional body that uncovered illegal FBI undercover operations—and despite the fact that Fox and Croft were sent to supermax immediately after they recorded messages for Congress, the Weaponization Subcommittee has yet to comment on the matter.

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

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