Trump Trolls Biden in Old Pa. Backyard

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Trump Trolls Biden in Old Pa. Backyard

(Headline USA) Determined to keep Pennsylvania in his column, President Donald Trump took the fight to Joe Biden‘s old backyard Thursday and insisted his Democratic rival would be the state’s “worst nightmare” if elected president.

In a particularly in-your-face bit of campaign trolling, Trump staged a small rally just outside the former vice president’s birthplace in Scranton mere hours before Biden was to formally accept the Democratic presidential nomination.

Trump’s speech reviewed “a half-century of Joe Biden failing America,” and the location pointed to the importance of Pennsylvania as a battleground state.

“Joe Biden is no friend of Pennsylvania — he is your worst nightmare,” Trump declared.

Trump sought to diminish Biden’s ties to Scranton. The former vice president often spotlights his early years in the northeast Pennsylvania city as evidence of his middle-class upbringing.

Biden was born in Scranton but his family moved to Delaware when he 10.

“He’ll remind us that he was born in Scranton, but you know he left like 70 years ago, right?” Trump said.

Biden’s speech came hours later from his Delaware hometown and, as the culmination of the four-day convention, will surely dominate headlines and cable news chyrons. But Trump has offered a robust slate of competing activity, holding multiple in-person events this week meant to draw a contrast with the largely virtual campaign Biden has conducted during the coronavirus pandemic.

Trump visited two other battlegrounds — Wisconsin and Arizona — as well as Minnesota, one of the few blue states from 2016 that Trump’s team feels like he may have a chance to flip this fall. Trump planned more convention counterprogramming Thursday evening with an appearance on Sean Hannity’s Fox News Channel show just before Biden is to deliver his acceptance speech.

The so-called Blue Wall of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, meant to provide Electoral College insurance for Hillary Clinton, instead all broke for Trump by slim margins in 2016. He captured Pennsylvania by 44,000 votes four years ago and has since clashed with the state’s Democratic governor over efforts to reopen its economy.

Trump returned to northeastern Pennsylvania, where he did unexpectedly well in 2016, winning Luzerne County and nearly winning in Lackawanna County, both of which have a solid registration advantage for Democrats.

The number of GOP registrations in Pennsylvania has outpaced Democrats this cycle and many political observers believe the state, which has many white, older voters, could become stronger for Republicans.

To that end, Trump portrays Biden as out of touch with more moderate and conservative parts of the state, making the argument that Biden is a “puppet of the radical left,” considering the Democrat nominee’s embrace of extreme policies like the Green New Deal.

Trump said he’s best suited to return the country back to its pre-pandemic status, when unemployment stood at the lowest rates since the early 1960s and the economy was experiencing moderate growth. He said a Biden win in November would usher in economic pain for Americans and more chaos in U.S. cities that have endured violent protests in recent months, which Democrats across the board failed to decry during their convention.

“If you want a vision of your life under a Joe Biden presidency, imagine the smoldering ruins of Minneapolis, the violent anarchy of Portland and the bloodstained sidewalks of Chicago coming to every city and town in America,” Trump said.

Trump also took aim Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Tom Wolf, accusing him of slowing the reopening of the state’s economy to hurt the president’s reelection chances. Trump charged the Democratic governors of Michigan and North Carolina — two other battleground states — are employing similar tactics.

“Shut down Wolf,” Trump complained. “You can’t do this. He’s gonna destroy your soul.”

The outdoor rally drew a few hundred supporters.

The Biden campaign dismissed Trump’s visit as a lame campaign gambit.

“This sideshow is a pathetic attempt to distract from the fact that Trump’s presidency stands for nothing but crises, lies and division,” said Biden spokesman Andrew Bates.

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

WATCH: Dems Who Ignored Riots Fittingly Omit Key Part of Springsteen Song

Ben Sellers
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WATCH: Dems Who Ignored Riots Fittingly Omit Key Part of Springsteen Song

Bruce Springsteen’s songs have long been misappropriated and reinterpreted, as was the case with the anti-Vietnam “Born in the USA.”

The same was true of the song “My City of Ruins,” off his 2002 album “The Rising.”

The song was threaded through out the recent Democratic National Convention inspiring hope as they introduced each new talking point from their agenda.

But according to the Boss himself, it was originally about the economic hardships of Springsteen’s hometown, Asbury Park, NJ, which had fallen into disrepair.

Later used to inspire the rebuilding effort in post-Katrina New Orleans and post-9/11 New York, it seems apropos again in light of the rioting that has laid waste to several major urban landscapes in America, including Portland, Seattle, Minneapolis, Atlanta and Chicago.

The riots were not mentioned at the DNC convention.

Artists Formerly Known as Dixie Chicks Open Final DNC Night w/ Racist Anthem

Ben Sellers
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Artists Formerly Known as Dixie Chicks Open Final DNC Night w/ Racist Anthem

In many ways the former Dixie Chicks were ahead of their time.

They grew from niche country trio to artists of national significance on the Left by bashing Republican presidents before bashing Republican presidents was the entire platform.

Indeed, the rehabbing of George W. Bush as a moderate has made lead singer Natalie Maines’s vitriol seem a bit disproportionate.

But the artists, who recently dropped the “Dixie” from their name, proved yet again that they still harbor some of their racist bigotry of yore.

They opened the final night of the Democratic National Convention singing what many regard to be a racist ode, the “Star Spangled Banner,” also known as the national anthem.

Due to the nature of the virtual convention, it was unclear how many in the audience were kneeling as the chicks—now middle-aged women—serenaded viewers at the DNC, which has roughly half the turnout of its 2016 convention.

The group only sang the first verse, but it ignored the controversial lines of the four-verse anthem’s latter lyrics, including the controversial line in the third verse: No refuge could save the hireling and slave / From the terror of flight or the gloom of the grave.

Contrary to the multicultural, intersectional message of the convention, the song also promotes Christian propaganda with lines like “In God We Trust.”

The anthem’s author, Francis Scott Key, was also a slaveholder and, while critical of the cruelties of slavery, maintained a neutrality on its abolition and advocated a movement to recolonize slaves in Africa.

The Dixie Chicks were among other longtime franchises with mildly offensive brand names that decided only after the killing of George Floyd to make a change.

Similarly, Lady Antebellum, another unremarkable pop-country group, sought to take the lead in woke virtue-signaling by truncating its name to “Lady A” but was forced to sue an African–American blues artist who also used the name.

Biden Campaign ‘Condemns’ Linda Sarsour — AFTER She Speaks at DNC

Joshua Paladino
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Biden Campaign ‘Condemns’ Linda Sarsour — AFTER She Speaks at DNC

Linda Sarsour, a socialist Muslim who supports the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions Movement against Israel, spoke at the Democratic National Convention, but the Democrat presidential nominee’s campaign said she “has no role in the Biden campaign whatsoever,” The Clarion Project reported.

“Joe Biden has been a strong supporter of Israel and a vehement opponent of anti-Semitism his entire life, and he obviously condemns her views and opposes BDS, as does the Democratic platform,” Biden’s campaign spokesperson Andrew Bates said in a statement.

Sarsour’s support for the BDS Movement qualifies her as an antisemite, according to the State Department’s definition of the term.

Yet, Sarsour served as campaign surrogate for the presidential campaign of Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt, who is a “Jewish” atheist.

At the convention, she spoke on a panel for the Muslim Delegates and Allies Assembly.

Sarsour has made similar comments to Biden in regard to the identity of people and the things they believe.

In regard to women who do not share her radical Islamic beliefs, she said, “I wish I could take their vaginas away – they don’t deserve to be women,” which echoes Biden’s statement: “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black.”

Sarsour, who co-founded the radical socialist Women’s March organization, has ties to Louis Farrakhan, the Nation of Islam leader.

She has said that the Women’s March supports Jewish and LGBTQ people.

A Democratic Party official said that the DNC’s events and speakers are organized without input from Biden’s campaign.

“The caucus and council chairs come up with their own programming and select their own speakers,” the unnamed official said.

The Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Biden’s campaign for their decision to push aside Sarsour.

“Smearing her and other American Muslims as anti-Semitic for supporting Palestinian human rights is predictable, despicable and unacceptable. Our political leaders must stop doing it,” CAIR said in a statement.

Biden–Harris Hope to Make California’s Blackouts the ‘New Normal’ in Green Energy Policy

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Biden–Harris Hope to Make California’s Blackouts the ‘New Normal’ in Green Energy Policy

California’s recent electricity blackouts left millions of residents without power during a summer heatwave this weekend, putting vulnerable populations at risk while inconveniencing the highest utility ratepayers of any state.

The blackouts occurred over two days and the electric grid continues to teeter on failure.

What’s more, the blackouts are a feature, not a bug, of the “green” energy model that progressive Democrats want to impose on the entire country—and a Biden–Harris election victory would almost certainly turn that vision into reality.

Joe Biden, the Democrat presidential nominee, has already pledged a $2 trillion plan to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels toward renewable energy sources like solar and wind, which is exactly the cause of California’s energy problems.

The Democrat-controlled state government committed to 100 percent renewable energy by 2035, and a 60 percent transition by 2030.

State-regulated utility companies have been adjusting to anti-fossil mandates, but the plan has proved disastrous just two years out of the gate.

Nevertheless, Biden is expected to champion his California-based national energy proposal this week at the Democrat National Convention.

He previously vowed not to “tinker around the edges.”

“We’re going to make historic investments that will seize the opportunity,” Biden said in July.

Democrats and Republicans have both raised questions about Biden’s noticeable cognitive decline, and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, would become president if he resigned from office due to mental health concerns.

Harris is a progressive Democrat from California.

The influential far-left wing of the Democrat Party—led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio–Cortez, D-NY—is pushing a $16 trillion “Green New Deal” remake of the nation’s energy supply and economy.

In June, the DNC’s Environment and Climate Crisis Council, stacked with activists and “environmental justice” groups, went off-script and released a 14-page radical plan, eight-times the scope of Biden’s proposal, without consulting party leaders.

The power play was meant to drive Biden even farther left and force the DNC’s platform to include the extinction of all fossil fuels if Biden is elected. That includes across-the-board bans on natural gas, hydraulic fracturing (or “fracking”), and exports of oil and gas to other countries.

DNC leaders walked back the proposal when labor-union special interests complained, but the incident highlighted the power of the socialist Left and the old-guard Democrat establishment’s inability to restrain them—assuming they’ll even try if Biden wins in November.

California’s troubles center on the fiction that renewables are a reliable source of energy, according to Michael Shellenberger, a lifelong California climate activist who’s now sounding the alarm against climate-totalitarianism and environmental policies that are divorced from science.

In a Monday Forbes article, titled “Democrats Say California Is Model For Climate Action But Its Blackouts Say Otherwise,” Shellenberger, who ran for governor of California as a Democrat in 2018, said party elites have every intention of replicating California energy model despite its failures.

“Democrats seem determined to nationalize California’s experience. Speaking on the steps of the Capitol in late June, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who represents San Francisco, called a plan by House Democrats nearly identical to that of the Biden-Harris plan a ‘bold step for climate action now,’” he wrote, adding Pelosi’s vow to “turn this report into law.”

The direct cause of the state’s electricity blackouts has been an ever-increasing reliance on solar and wind energy coupled with a near-religious assault on natural gas and nuclear power.

The intractable problem with solar energy is that it evaporates during evening hours, nights, cloudy days and winter months, leaving California’s electricity grid short on power without a more reliable energy source, like natural gas, to take its place.

It’s no coincidence that the state utility regulator announced a “State 3 emergency” at 6:30 p.m. on Friday evening, and later announced that “we had thousands of megawatts of solar reducing their output as the sunset.”

Wind-generated energy has been a total flop during the heatwave. The same weather pattern that’s caused elevated temperatures, a stable high-pressure bubble, has involved little to no wind.

And after two days of rolling blackouts, a half-apology from Democrat Gov. Gavin Newsom—who laughably called for an investigation—and an affirmed commitment to “never come back into this position again,” Democrats appear wedded to the failed renewable plan while admitting it’s time to “sober up” and add “insurance.”

“We will be forced today to ask utilities to cut off power to millions today, and tomorrow, and beyond,” said Stephen Berberich, the President and CEO of California’s Independent System Operator, on a Monday morning conference call.

“Demand will greatly exceed supply,” Berberich said.

Republican Assemblyman Jim Patterson of Fresno, the vice-chair of the state Committee on Utilities and Energy, responded Monday afternoon by calling out what may soon become a national nightmare—that California’s assault on fossil fuels is the crux of its energy shortages and record-high consumer prices.

“I have been warning over and over again that the policies coming out of the Democrat-controlled legislature and governor’s office are creating the conditions for blackouts and brownouts and here we are seeing the evidence,” Patterson told FOX26 News.

“The governor says he wants an investigation. We don’t need an investigation. What we need more electricity available when we need it, and that’s gonna mean turn the natural gas plants back on,” he said.

President Donald Trump took to Twitter to tout his robust energy record and blast California’s blackout energy-model.

“Meanwhile, I gave America energy independence in fact, so much energy we could never use it all. The Bernie/Biden/AOC Green New Deal plan would take California’s failed policies to every American!” Trump wrote.

Amazon Censors Anti-Kamala Items; Allows ‘F*** Trump’ Apparel

Joshua Paladino
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Amazon Censors Anti-Kamala Items; Allows ‘F*** Trump’ Apparel

Amazon censored vulgar political speech this week by removing shirts that referred to Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris as a “hoe.”

A seller named The Oxygen Bandit promoted shirts that said “Joe and the Hoe,” which sold for $24.99 to $42.99 depending on the style.


“All sellers must follow our selling guidelines and those who do not will be subject to action including potential removal of their account,” an Amazon spokesperson said, according to USA Today.

“We are working to remove these products,” the spokesperson said.

From a brief search of the shirts that Amazon allows users to sell on its platform, it is clear that the company is blatantly discriminating against Republican political candidates and protecting Democratic political candidates.

On the first page of results after searching “anti-Donald Trump clothing,” there are shirts that:

  • Say “F— Trump” in some form.
  • Compare Trump to a sexually transmitted disease.
  • Call Trump a “turd.”
  • Slanderously call Trump a “racist.”
  • Slanderously call him Vladimir Putin’s “puppet.”
  • Calls him a “Luna Tick,” with a reference to other parasites.

One shirt goes as far as to say “F— Trump. If you like Trump, f— you too.”

For now, Amazon is allowing a shirt that says “Kamala smelled the best,” a reference to Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden‘s strange habit of smelling women.

The shirts that call Harris a “hoe” stem from her extramarital relationship with Willie Brown, a former San Francisco mayor who is 30 years her senior.

Harris benefited politically from her relationship with Brown, but the corporate news media describes this as “misinformation,” against all available evidence.

Even the far-left San Francisco Chronicle described Brown’s appointment of Harris to the Unemployment Insurance Appeals Board and the California Medical Assistance Commission as “patronage.”

Brown defended his political patronage to Harris by stating that he had aided many other people in launching their political careers.

Trump Vows to Put Tolls on Vehicles Coming From Mexico to Pay for Border Wall

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Trump Vows to Put Tolls on Vehicles Coming From Mexico to Pay for Border Wall

President Donald Trump reiterated this week that he does plan to make Mexico pay for the southern border wall, and to do that he plans to enact a toll on vehicles entering the U.S. from Mexico.

“They’re going to pay at the border, at the gate, cars going through, we’re going to do a toll — or we may do a toll,” Trump said during an event in Yuma, Ariz., where he was visiting new fencing that was recently installed along the U.S.–Mexico border.

Asked whether he still wants Mexico to foot the bill, Trump said: “Mexico is paying for the wall, yeah.”

Hundreds of miles of new border fencing have been put up since Trump first took office, according to the Trump administration.

Since March, the administration has completed 150 miles of border fence at various parts of the border, though other reports suggest progress has been much slower than that.

Even so, Trump said on Tuesday that his administration would set up an additional 300 miles of fencing in a matter of weeks.

The administration has funding for nearly 660 miles of fencing—most of which will replace old barriers that need to be repaired or are easy to climb over.

“Those are anti-climb plates at the top,” Trump said during a private walk-through of an 18-foot-tall fence in Yuma, according to the Washington Examiner.

“You see these guys climbing up with drugs on their back … They say … ‘Let’s take a pass on that.’”

The border wall that has been installed as decreased the number of illegal crossings, Trump claimed.

At the beginning of the year, that was true. But illegal crossings have increased 237% since April, according to Customs and Border Protection reports.

In July, Border Patrol agents arrested nearly 39,000 illegal immigrants.

Some immigration experts blame that spike on the coronavirus pandemic, since the Centers for Disease Control and prevention urged border officials not to detain immigrants during the shutdown.

In response, border patrol officers began expelling illegal immigrants as soon as they arrived rather than allowing them to try and claim asylum.

But because of the shutdown and the general lack of resources, border officials found it difficult to keep up with the influx of border crossings.

The massive caravans coming up from Central America, however, have stopped coming as frequently. Trump credited his agreement with Mexico and other negotiations he’s made with Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.

“The caravans don’t come up any more,” he said.

“We were paying hundreds of millions of dollars [to Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador],” he continued. “When we caught a murderer and we wanted to bring them back to one of those countries they wouldn’t take them. [Because of that,] we stopped paying them.”

Trump also said the end of the catch-and-release policy, which allowed illegal immigrants to remain in the country while they waited for their asylum case to be heard, has helped reduce illegal immigration.

“More important than these numbers is that we ended catch and release,” Trump said. “They say, ‘Come back in four years.'”

Trump Wants Supreme Court Approval to Block Critics on @realdonaldtrump

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Trump Wants Supreme Court Approval to Block Critics on @realdonaldtrump

(Associated Press) President Donald Trump is asking the Supreme Court to allow him to block critics from his personal Twitter account.

The administration said in a high-court filing Thursday that Trump’s @realdonaldtrump account with more than 85 million followers is his personal property and blocking people from it is akin to elected officials who refuse to allow their opponents’ yard signs on their front lawns.

“President Trump’s ability to use the features of his personal Twitter account, including the blocking function, are independent of his presidential office,” acting Solicitor General Jeffrey Wall wrote in urging the justices to review the case.

The federal appeals court in New York ruled last year that Trump uses the account to make daily pronouncements and observations that are overwhelmingly official in nature.

It held that Trump violated the First Amendment whenever he blocked a critic to silence a viewpoint.

A decision about whether even to hear the case is not likely before the November election.

The case grew out of a challenge brought by the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, which sued on behalf of seven individuals blocked by Trump after criticizing his policies.

Jameel Jaffer, the Knight Institute’s executive director, said the justices should decline to take up Trump’s appeal.

“This case stands for a principle that is fundamental to our democracy and basically synonymous with the First Amendment: government officials can’t exclude people from public forums simply because they disagree with their political views,” Jaffer said in a statement.

The administration argued in its appeal that the Supreme Court, not lower courts, “should decide where to draw the line between the President’s personal decisions and official conduct.”

The pace of the case was slowed by the coronavirus pandemic as well as Trump’s decision to ask the full 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review the ruling by a three-judge panel.

The court refused to do so by a 7-2 vote in March.

Two Trump appointees, Judges Michael H. Park and Richard J. Sullivan, were the only members of the court to side with the president.

The Supreme Court extended its deadline to file an appeal from 90 days to 150 days when it shut the building to the public and abandoned in-person meetings in favor of telephone conferences because of the virus outbreak.

De Blasio Plans 22K City Employee Layoffs as Wife Enjoys 14-Person Staff

Joshua Paladino
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De Blasio Plans 22K City Employee Layoffs as Wife Enjoys 14-Person Staff

New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio defended the $2 million that his wife, Chirlane McCray, spends on her 14-person staff, saying “this work is about the needs of the people of this city,” The Daily Mail reported.

McCray has this well-paid staff, despite not holding a position in New York City’s government.

Meanwhile, the city is bleeding money due to poor management, tax reform, and the lockdown orders, and de Blasio said the city plans to fire 22,000 public employees.

Eight people are officially listed as members of McCray’s staff, and they earn a combined $1.1 million a year.

Another six people are “shadow” staffers, who are not listed, and they earn a combined $900,000 a year.

“It is exactly what it is — people from different agencies working in common cause to address this crisis,” de Blasio vaguely explained at a news conference, New York Daily News reported. “Everybody in this government needs to understand that this is the priority and that’s where we’re going to put our energy.”

One of the people that de Blasio said is addressing the “needs” of New York City’s residents during the coronavirus lockdowns is a videographer who makes $70,000 a year.

As average New Yorkers lost their jobs due to de Blasio’s house arrest orders, this staffer stayed on the job to film a video of McCray baking ginger snaps.

De Blasio somehow connected this to the “mental health crisis” in New York City, which “is much deeper deeper because of the coronavirus.”

Staffer Dabash Negash earns $150,000 a year as a senior adviser.

She was hired a week after de Blasio declared a hiring freeze for public employees in April.

The mayor did not rule out cuts for his and McCray’s staffers.

“Unquestionably, there will be lay-offs at City Hall for my staff, her staff. Our job is to work together to try to avert it,” he said.

Health Official Uses Sneaky Trick to Justify Mask Mandates

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Health Official Uses Sneaky Trick to Justify Mask Mandates

(Jon Miltimore, Foundation for Economic Education) As of early August, 34 US states mandate the use of masks in public to limit the spread of COVID-19.

The efficacy of face masks has been a subject of debate in the health community during the pandemic. Because health experts disagree on their effectiveness, countries and health agencies around the world, including the World Health Organization and the CDC, have done a reversal on their mask recommendations during the pandemic.

Reasonable and persuasive cases can be made both for and against the use of masks in the general population. Unfortunately, the science of masks and viruses is becoming less clear because of the politicized nature of the debate.

A case in point is the Kansas public health official who made news last week after he was accused of using a deceptive chart to make it appear counties with mask mandates had lower COVID-19 case rates than they actually did.

At a press conference, Kansas Department of Health and Environment Secretary Dr. Lee Norman credited face masks with positive statewide COVID-19 trends showing a general decline in deaths, hospitalizations, and new cases.

Norman pointed to a chart (see below) that depicted two lines tracking cases per 100,000 people between July 12 and August 3. The red line begins higher than the blue line but then falls precipitously as it travels down the X-axis, ending below a blue line.

Norman explains that the red line represented the 15 counties with mask mandates, which account for two thirds of the state’s population. The flat blue line represented the remaining 90 counties, which had no mask mandates in place.

“All of the improvement in case development comes from those counties wearing masks,” Norman said.

The results are clear, Norman claimed. The red line shows reduction. The blue line is flat. Kansas’s real-life experiment showed that masks work.

It didn’t take long for people to realize something wasn’t quite right, however. The blue line and the red line were not on the same axis.

This gave the impression that counties with mask mandates in place had fewer daily cases than counties without mask mandates. This is not the case, however. In reality, counties with masks mandates have far higher daily COVID-19 cases than counties without mask mandates.

If the trends are depicted on the same axis, the blue and red lines look like this.

Many Kansans were not pleased with the trickery.

Kansas Policy Institute expert Michael Austin told local media that the chart clearly gives a false impression.

“It has nothing to do about whether masks are effective or not. [It’s about] making sure Kansans can make sound conclusions from accurate information,” Austin said. “And unfortunately, the chart that was shown prior in the week strongly suggested that counties that had followed Dr. Norman’s mask order outperformed counties that did not, and that was most certainly not true.”

Twitter was less diplomatic.

The chart is deceptive.

Worse, Norman also failed to note that the lines were on different axes until a reporter asked if the blue line “would get below the red line” if those counties passed mask mandates, which prompted Norman to mumble about different metrics and then admit that counties without mask mandates have lower case rates.

“The trend line is what I really want to focus on,” Norman said.

The deception prompted a non-apology from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment: “Yes, the axes are labelled differently … we recognize that it was a complex graph and may not have easily been understood and easily misinterpreted.”

Dr. Norman, meanwhile, vowed to do better next time.

“I’ll learn from that and try to [be] clearer next time,” he said following criticism from lawmakers.

The episode is unfortunate because it further clouds the science and erodes trust in the medical experts individuals rely on to make informed decisions.

It’s also ironic, because the controversy overshadowed the state’s positive data, which suggests masks may be working in Kansas. The chart may have been deceptive, but the data is correct and shows a 34 percent drop in COVID cases in counties with mandates in place.

It’s quite possible that drop is linked to county orders mandating the use of masks. Then again, the order may have nothing to do with the drop. Correlation, we know, doesn’t equal causation. If it did, the surge in COVID-19 cases in California following its mask order would be “proof” that masks increase transmission rates.

But science doesn’t work that way (at least it shouldn’t), and Dr. Norman knows this.

Maybe masks are an effective way to curb transmission of the coronavirus, or maybe it’s largely ineffective or even harmful, like the Surgeon General stated back in March. The truth is we don’t yet know.

What’s clear, as I noted last week, is that the top physicians and public health experts on the planet can’t decide if face coverings help reduce the spread of COVID-19.

In light of this, it seems both reasonable and prudent that public health officials should focus less on forcing people to “mask-up” and more on developing clear and compelling research which will allow individuals to make informed and free decisions.

This, after all, is the traditional role of public health: inform people and let them choose.

Allowing individuals to choose instead of collective bodies is the proper and more effective approach, because, as the great economist Ludwig von Mises reminded us, individuals are the source of all rational decision-making.

“All rational action is in the first place individual action,” Mises wrote in Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis. “Only the individual thinks. Only the individual reasons. Only the individual acts.”

Mask orders aren’t just about public health. They are a microcosm of a larger friction at work in our society: who gets to plan our lives, individuals or the collective?

Despite what many today seem to believe, society is best served by allowing individuals to plan and control their own lives.

But individuals benefit from sound and reliable information. Sadly, that is something public health officials increasingly appear incapable or unwilling to offer…Original Source…

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. He previously served in editorial roles at The History Channel magazine, Intellectual Takeout, and Scout.

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