Over 1 Million Deaths and Injuries Following COVID “Vaccines” Reported to CDC
By Megan Redshaw | The Defender | January 21, 2022
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) today released new data showing a total of 1,053,830 reports of adverse events following COVID vaccines were submitted between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 14, 2022, to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). VAERS is the primary government-funded system for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S.
The data included a total of 22,193 reports of deaths — an increase of 448 over the previous week — and 174,864 reports of serious injuries, including deaths, during the same time period — up 4,418 compared with the previous week.
Excluding “foreign reports” to VAERS, 732,883 adverse events, including 10,162 deaths and 66,059 serious injuries, were reported in the U.S. between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 14, 2022.
Foreign reports are reports foreign subsidiaries send to U.S. vaccine manufacturers. Under U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) regulations, if a manufacturer is notified of a foreign case report that describes an event that is both serious and does not appear on the product’s labeling, the manufacturer is required to submit the report to VAERS.
Of the 10,162 U.S. deaths reported as of Jan. 14, 19% occurred within 24 hours of vaccination, 24% occurred within 48 hours of vaccination and 61% occurred in people who experienced an onset of symptoms within 48 hours of being vaccinated.
In the U.S., 525.2 million COVID vaccine doses had been administered as of Jan. 14, including 307 million doses of Pfizer, 200 million doses of Moderna and 18 million doses of Johnson & Johnson (J&J).
Every Friday, VAERS publishes vaccine injury reports received as of a specified date. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before a causal relationship can be confirmed. Historically, VAERS has been shown to report only 1% of actual vaccine adverse events.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Jan. 14, 2022, for 5- to 11-year-olds show:
- 6,722 adverse events, including 147 rated as serious and 3 reported deaths.
The most recent death involves a 7-year-old girl (VAERS I.D. 1975356) from Minnesota who died 11 days after receiving her first dose of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine when she was found unresponsive by her mother. An autopsy is pending.
- 14 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis (heart inflammation).
- 22 reports of blood clotting disorders.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Jan. 14, 2022, for 12- to 17-year-olds show:
- 27,205 adverse events, including 1,559 rated as serious and 35 reported deaths.The most recent death involves a 15-year-old girl from Minnesota (VAERS I.D. 1974744), who died 177 days after receiving her second dose of Pfizer from a pulmonary embolus. An autopsy is pending.
- 65 reports of anaphylaxis among 12- to 17-year-olds where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death — with 96% of casesattributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 594 reports of myocarditis and pericarditis with 583 cases attributed to Pfizer’s vaccine.
- 152 reports of blood clotting disorders, with all cases attributed to Pfizer.
U.S. VAERS data from Dec. 14, 2020, to Jan. 14, 2022, for all age groups combined, show:
- 19% of deaths were related to cardiac disorders.
- 54% of those who died were male, 41% were female and the remaining death reports did not include the gender of the deceased.
- The average age of death was 72.7.
- As of Jan. 14, 4,879 pregnant women reported adverse events related to COVID vaccines, including 1,560 reports of miscarriage or premature birth.
- Of the 3,450 cases of Bell’s Palsy reported, 51% were attributed to Pfizer vaccinations, 40% to Moderna and 8% to J&J.
- 849 reports of Guillain-Barré syndrome (GBS), with 41% of cases attributed to Pfizer, 30% to Moderna and 28% to J&J.
- 2,272 reports of anaphylaxis where the reaction was life-threatening, required treatment or resulted in death.
- 1,522 reports of myocardial infarction.
- 12,543 reports of blood clotting disorders in the U.S. Of those, 5,574 reports were attributed to Pfizer, 4,455 reports to Moderna and 2,467 reports to J&J.
- 3,761 cases of myocarditis and pericarditis with 2,316 cases attributed to Pfizer, 1,271 cases to Moderna and 162 cases to J&J’s COVID vaccine.
40% rise nationwide in excess deaths among 18- to 49-year-olds, CDC Data Show
Death certificate data from the CDC show excess deaths increased by more than 40% among Americans 18 to 49 years old during a 12-month period ending in October 2021, compared to the same time period in 2018-2019 before the pandemic. COVID caused only about 42% of those deaths.
Excess deaths are defined as the difference between the observed number of deaths during a specific time frame and the expected number of deaths during that same period.
State-level data for the same 12-month period also show increases. For example, in Nevada, excess deaths were as high as 65%, with COVID accounting for only 36%. The District of Columbia saw an increase of 72% — with COVID not being a factor in any of the deaths.
Increases in excess deaths were most noticeable in the Midwest and western and southern states, while states seeing the lowest increases were primarily from the Northeast.
US nearly wiped out tens of thousands of civilians with dam strike in Syria
The Tabqa Dam in Syria. ©Claude Salhani / Sygma via Getty Images
RT | January 21, 2022
In 2017, the US bombed a piece of strategic infrastructure in Syria, the Tabqa Dam on the Euphrates River, despite it being on a no-strike list, the New York Times reported.
A B-52 bomber dropped some of the heaviest weapons in the US Air Force arsenal on the target, including at least one BLU-109 bunker buster, which is designed to destroy fortified concrete targets. This bomb pierced through five stories in one of the dam’s towers, but didn’t explode.
If the Soviet-designed earth-and-concrete structure had failed, tens of thousands of people living in a valley below would likely have died.
The dam wasn’t immediately destroyed, but damage to its equipment rendered it inoperational and at risk of overflowing. An unprecedented truce involving the terrorist group Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS), US-backed forces on the ground, and Syrian government forces was hastlily struck with Russia’s help to allow a crane controlling emergency floodgates to be repaired.
After the work was done by a crew of 16 workers, a drone strike ordered by the same taskforce that called in the initial strike obliterated a van carrying some of them back. It killed a mechanical engineer, a technician, and a Syrian Red Crescent worker.
The events were described by the Times based on interviews with unnamed US military officials as well as people in Syria, including an engineer who was present at the dam on the day of the strike. It is the newspaper’s latest expose of Talon Anvil operations, which critics call reckless. The taskforce was created to coordinate the war effort against IS and was staffed by US Army Delta Force commandos, according to previous reporting.
The March 26 strike on the Tabqa Dam was attributed to US forces by Russia and Syria, but then-Lt. Gen. Stephen J. Townsend, under whose purview the taskforce operated, dismissed it as “a lot of crazy reporting.”
“The Tabqa Dam is not a coalition target and when strikes occur on military targets, at or near the dam, we use non-cratering munitions to avoid unnecessary damage to the facility,” he assured journalists.
According to Times sources, Talon Anvil routinely used a trick to circumvent the airstrike vetting process by senior command, citing the urgency of defending US allied forces from an imminent attack. The strike on the dam was also justified that way, but witnesses said no major fighting in the area was taking place before the bombs hit.
US Central Command acknowledged dropping three 2,000-pound bombs, but said they were targeting towers, not the dam itself. And that the fact it didn’t fail proved the safety of the operation, a spokesman for the military suggested. He denied that the usual procedures were sidestepped in authorizing the strikes.
The Times said a report requested from specialized engineers in the Defense Intelligence Agency’s Defense Resources and Infrastructure office prior to the strikes recommended against using any sort of explosives in the vicinity of the dam. Even relatively small munitions like Hellfire missiles could damage concrete structures controlling the flow of water, the four-page assessment said, according to the newspaper.
Talon Anvil had not reported the dam strikes. The US military had to piece together what had happened by reviewing logs from the B-52 bomber, a source told the Times. No disciplinary action was taken against members of the secret unit, the newspaper reported.
Court deals Biden another blow on vaccine mandates
FILE PHOTO © AP / Susan Walsh
RT | January 21, 2022
President Joe Biden has suffered another legal setback to his efforts to coerce Americans into getting vaccinated against Covid-19 – this time with a federal court blocking mandated jabs even for employees of his own administration.
US District Court Judge Jeffrey Vincent Brown in Texas ruled on Friday that the mandate overstepped Biden’s authority as president. After finding that the plaintiffs will likely prevail at trial, the judge issued a nationwide injunction, meaning the Biden administration will be barred from enforcing its vaccine order anywhere in the US.
The mandate applied to more than 3.5 million federal workers. It provided no option for submitting to regular Covid-19 testing in lieu of vaccination. White House press secretary Jen Psaki said on Friday that 98% of government employees had either been vaccinated or sought medical or religious exemptions. “We are confident in our legal authority here,” she said.
Brown disagreed, saying that it was a “bridge too far” for Biden – “with the stroke of a pen and without the input of Congress” – to force millions of employees to undergo a medical procedure as a condition of employment. The judge cited last week’s US Supreme Court ruling striking down Biden’s order requiring private-sector employers to force their workers to get inoculated.
The president clearly has authority to regulate employment policies, Brown said, but “the Supreme Court has expressly held that a Covid-19 vaccine mandate is not an employment regulation.” Interpreting the high court’s ruling in that way could set a significant legal precedent in claims against other employers that force their workers to get vaccinated.
While some private employers, such as Starbucks, have nixed their vaccine mandates in light of the Supreme Court’s ruling, others have said they’ll continue to require vaccination against Covid-19 without any government order. Carhartt, a maker of popular work clothes, is facing a boycott after its decision to double down on forced vaccines angered conservatives.
Brown served on the Texas Supreme Court from 2013 until 2019, when he was appointed by then-President Donald Trump for a federal court judgeship.
Unruly numbers
By Thorsteinn Siglaugson | January 20, 2022
Shortly before Christmas, the 14 day Covid-19 infection incidence in Iceland by vaccination status started to change dramatically as the new omicron variant of the coronavirus began to gain the upper hand. By the end of the year, the 14-day incidence of infection among double-vaccinated people had increased sevenfold and was now double that of the unvaccinated, while increasing elevenfold for those with three jabs.
This information, published on the official Covid-19 information site run by the Directorate of Health, began tocirculate at the start of this year and attracted quite some attention. On January 7th, data updates on the website were temporarily halted, explained by planned restructuring of the site. The next day I published an article in Iceland‘s main newspaper, Morgunblaðið, drawing attention to this sudden change in the infection rates. Chief Epidemologist Þórólfur Guðnason responded the same day, quoting a systematic error in the numbers; many who were registered as living in Iceland did not actually live in the country, had been vaccinated abroad but were registered unvaccinated locally. Therefore, he claimed it was not possible to draw the conclusions the data clearly supported, that the double-vaccinated were more likely to become infected than the unvaccinated.
As I pointed out in another article in Morgunblaðið on January 11th, in order for his explanation to be correct, the Chief Epidemologist would have had to previously overestimate the number of unvaccinated people by 90% to get an infection rate equal to the rate for the double-vaccinated. As I explained, such a huge overestimation would hardly go undetected for over half a year.
Change in 14-day incidence of infections for unvaccinated, original vs. updated values
It was finally on the morning of January 13th that the data appeared again. However, there was a snag: While the 14-day incidence of double- and triple-vaccinated adults and children was virtually unchanged, for the unvaccinated, the previously published numbers had taken an unexplained jump, starting on December 27 with a 4% increase, 11% the next day, then 12%, 14%, 15% and ending in a 20% increase on January 4th!
What might justify such a huge and sudden change in previously published data? Either a large group of unvaccinated people would have had to disappear without a trace during the second half of December, or a large number of infections, all among the unvaccinated, would have had to be lost and then found again. But no such explanations have been made.
This sudden and significant change in official data took place immediately after the data started to show a development that was in direct contradiction to the Chief Epidemologist‘s repeated claims that the vaccines were highly effective for preventing infections. Is this a mistake, or is there a different explanation? This is something the Directorate of Health will have to answer.
Saying No: The Winter of My Non-Consent
The prerogative to refuse medical intervention is a basic human right
By Claire O’Driscoll | OffGuardian | January 21, 2022
As parents with young children will attest, the most frequently uttered word your toddler will use is not ‘mama’ or ‘dada’, or any word you desperately want them to say, but the word ‘no’.
At around 2 years, this word will issue from your child’s mouth at an astonishing and infuriating rate. ‘Yes’ isn’t any real competition in the pantheon of formative words for a two-year-old.
It would seem that this right to refuse is hard-wired into us, long before we develop a sense of self or begin to retreat into that private, internal landscape that becomes so important as we move away from childhood and into our teenage years.
So important is this formative word, that it has become enshrined in our laws and our culture. The right to refuse, to say ‘no,’ is the mark of a civilised, democratic society.
We had the Nuremberg trials and the civil rights movement. We said ‘no more’ and ‘never again’ to segregation, apartheid, eugenics and forced medical experimentation.
Any society that historically abused these most fundamental of human rights has been paraded in front of us (and rightly so) as a cautionary tale of what ‘not’ to do and what should ‘never’ be repeated.
In more recent history, the citizens of Northern Ireland said ‘no’ to sectarian violence and voted for the Good Friday Agreement; we said ‘no’ to homophobia and the awful violence that was perpetrated against our gay citizens.
We said ‘no’ to misogyny, sexism, ageism. We said ‘no’ and ‘never again’ to the horrific crimes perpetrated against children by those who chose to abuse their power and authority within the Catholic Church.
In fact, we said ‘no more’ to the historical interference of church within the State. We legalised contraception and divorce. Let us not forget that divorce only became legal here in 1995, a fact that often shocks those international students I teach Irish history to. And even in 1995, the ‘yes’ vote in the divorce referendum was only narrowly won with 50.3% voting in favour and 49.7% against.
This separation of church and state in an Irish context is perhaps best exemplified by the 2018 abortion referendum. Whatever your opinions may be on this subject, Irish people voted ‘yes’ for a woman’s right to say ‘no’ to a pregnancy. “My body, my choice” became the mantra of the pro-choice movement.
This referendum was won by a much larger majority than the divorce referendum of 1995, with 66.4% voting ‘yes’ to the legalisation of abortion, dealing perhaps the final blow to any significant influence the Catholic Church might have had in matters of state.
In the ever-changing world of today’s identity politics and its fluid nomenclature, it’s now ok to say ‘no’ to the gender you were born with and ‘no’ to the gender specific pronouns others label you with. I have learnt that words like ‘sex change’ or even ‘gender realignment’ are considered offensive to many trans citizens and that ‘gender confirmation’ is the appropriate description to use.
My point is that the right to say ‘no’ to something you fundamentally disagree with or which you feel is threatening to your person or liberty or identity is absolutely sacrosanct.
Or at least I thought it was, until now.
I have chosen not to participate in the Irish state’s Covid 19 injection programme. I am not going to try and convince anybody of the merit of my reasons. I know they are sound reasons, and my decision not to participate is not based on right wing, crazy conspiracy theories as the mainstream media repeatedly and disimulatively asserts, but on many months of research: reading and listening to epidemiologists, virologists and medical doctors with different specialities (from both sides of the argument).
It is not a decision I have taken lightly, and that decision to say ‘no’ has changed my life and affected my relationships with those around me so dramatically I barely recognise it anymore.
Since July 2021 I have become persona non grata. I got my first taste of what this feels like while on holiday in Wexford at the end of last summer. Myself and my brother were refused entry into a rural pub after a long walk during which we’d worked up quite an appetite. It was both embarrassing and humiliating.
Now I can’t go into bars, restaurants, cafes, nightclubs, cinemas, theatres or even a gym to get a bit of exercise. Arranging to meet a friend in winter in Ireland is challenging to say the least.
Dublin’s hospitality is no longer extended to all citizens
Last Christmas, the twinkling lights on Grafton Street felt like a personal rebuke. I walked the streets, permitted the luxury of spending money in crowded shops, but not allowed to take a load off by sitting down and having a coffee.
I ended up getting a takeaway sandwich and eating it standing up outside, alone in the cold on Grafton Street, until I was joined by a homeless man who convinced me to buy him some cigarettes.
And it got me thinking. I am not trying to compare my situation with the horrific life of somebody living on the streets in our capital. I do have a home, and I’m not alienated from my family (as so many homeless people so sadly are), but it gave me a small taste of what it must be like: the exclusion, the judgement, the physical moving away from you, as if you’re unclean or diseased in some way.
But luckily our free, democratic and liberal society would surely never discriminate against or encourage discrimination against its citizens for a personal medical decision?
Let’s just recap what our global leaders have been saying recently, shall we?
In France, president Emmanuel Macron says if you are unvaccinated you are “not a citizen” and that he wants to “piss (you) off.”
In America, Joe Biden advises parents to keep kids away from the unvaccinated and asserts that “this continues to be a pandemic of the unvaccinated.”
In Canada, Justin Trudeau blames lockdowns on the unvaccinated and claims that this group is “extremist”, “racist” and “misogynist” (this coming from a man who thought dressing up in blackface was hilarious in his student days).
Justin Trudeau (pictured above) claims the unvaccinated are racists
In Australia, Michael Gunner (Northern Territory Chief Minister) says that “work is not a reason to leave the home for the unvaccinated.”
And we all know how the world’s number one tennis player has been treated in Australia: leaving his detention centre (ahem ‘hotel’) to go to work was clearly not a good enough reason for him either.
I suppose Leo Varadkar’s remark that the 5% of the population who are not vaccinated are causing “a lot of the trouble” is relatively mild in comparison.
What is beyond dispute at this stage is that the State and mainstream media have been systematically encouraging (and applauding) vitriolic discrimination against Irish citizens for what should be a personal and private medical decision.
In March of last year, barrister and chairman of the ICHR (Irish Council of Human Rights), Tracey O’Mahony, initiated an email campaign to encourage Irish citizens to lobby Irish MEPs to vote against digital green certificates on the basis that they were unconstitutional and would potentially cause serious divisions among the population.
Irish MEPs received at that time an unprecedented number of emails from concerned citizens. Yet, we were portrayed in Irish mainstream publications such as the Irish TImes as crazed, right-wing lunatics, somehow intent on preventing others from being able to travel freely, while the same outlets totally ignored the very real human rights violations the introduction of these passes would mean.
Hindsight is a great thing as they say, so I can’t help but include a quote from MEP Billy Kelleher, who voted in favour of the digital green certificates. This is taken from his response, on 24th March 2021, to my email, which of course is a bulk response to all those who lobbied him:
Those who do not want to be vaccinated are free to choose to do so. However, for those that do choose to be vaccinated, we need a system that is secure and robust to allow those who have chosen to be vaccinated to travel unhindered.
In terms of the vaccine certificate, it should not be used for domestic purposes i.e.allowing access to gyms, restaurants etc. It should only be used for international travel purposes where a country requires an incoming traveller to prove they have been vaccinated in order to avoid a mandatory quarantine period.
So here we are, ten months later, and the use of the vaccine certificate for domestic purposes looks here to stay.
Perhaps I can look forward to being banned from public transport or a fine for every month I’m unvaccinated; locked down again and told not to leave my house; maybe my next holiday will be spent in an internment camp for the unvaccinated like in Australia, or maybe just prison. Who knows?
(Forgive me if I am not reassured by the recent vague comments made by Leo Varadkar about this matter).
Recently the ICHR published an online survey to find out if people have suffered any form of discrimination, since March 2020, arising from the Covid 19 pandemic. In only 2 weeks, 26,472 people responded.
If the Government’s figures are correct (the unvaccinated adult population of the Republic of Ireland is claimed to be somewhere between 5% – 7% by official sources), this means that between 10-14% of the unvaccinated adult population in the State responded to this survey.
The results are shocking and damning: 83.62% of those who participated (that’s 19,201 people) said they had experienced some form of discrimination arising from their health status.
Nearly 95% of respondents (22,243 people) said they believed discrimination in the provision of, or access to, goods and services has been on the rise since March of 2020, while 96% believed that discrimination based on health status has become more acceptable in this country since March 2020.
Nearly 90% (21,097 people) answered “yes” to the question “Has the prospect of being discriminated against prevented you from going about your daily life, since March of 2020?”
As Tracey O’Mahony notes in her analysis of the survey:
The government response to the pandemic has created an entirely new category of discrimination based on a person’s health immunistation status (and that) the evidence gathered through this survey suggests that it has become a virtuous act to seek out the personal medical information of strangers through uncomfortable and public interrogation.”
She says a lot more and I strongly urge anybody reading this to both read the survey and listen to Tracey O’Mahony’s astute and powerful analysis of it.
However, it is the personal descriptions of suffering that people who responded to the survey provide that for me had the biggest effect, and I’m so glad that a snapshot of these were included. It is alarming the number of references that are made to suicidal thoughts arising as a direct result of the discrimination people have experienced both personally and towards their families, and how that has seriously and negatively affected the mental health of their children.
So to read Fintan O’Toole’s article (O’Toole writes for both The Irish Times and The Guardian) from the 11th December 2021 in which he cruelly labels “The three anti-vaccine types” as “an ascending order of purposeful malignancy: the egoists, the paranoiacs and the fascists”, really puts into context the level of prejudice encouraged by the mainstream media in relation to those who are being punished by the state for a personal medical choice.
I shall repeat those words again: “purposeful malignancy,” as though we are a cancerous scourge that needs to be removed from society. That is the kind of language usually reserved for paedophiles, rapists, serial killers or war criminals.
O’Toole begins by stating that:
Vaccine sceptics form an objective threat to society, undermining the effectiveness of public health measures and, when they get sick with the virus whose existence they do not believe in, putting a dangerous burden on the hospital system.”
O’Toole, who has often championed various issues related to identity politics, seems to have no problem labelling and othering those who make a different decision about what is best for their health to his own.
I don’t think incitement to hatred is an unfair or inaccurate description of what O’Toole is saying and I think it is absolutely disgraceful that the Irish Times ever chose to publish this bigoted diatribe. So much for ‘we’re in this together.’ It’s now abundantly clear that we most certainly are not.
I and many others like me are sick to the teeth of being scapegoated and blamed for everything. We did not cause this crisis and we are not responsible for its continuation.
Even Doctor Fauci has admitted that a “fully vaccinated” individual with a “breakthrough infection” has a similar viral load (the concentration of infection present in the throat or nose) to an unvaccinated individual who contracts Covid-19.
In early 2021, Leo Varadkar said,
The vaccine passports don’t yet stack up scientifically or medically because we just don’t know at this stage what extent vaccines reduce transmission.”
Despite the fabulous claims made back then on behalf of Covid-19 vaccines, we know now that they do not stop transmission.
Bill Gates let this information slip during an interview with Jeremy Hunt last November, and CDC director Rochelle Walensky confirmed it last week.
Yet the vaccine certificate system remains in place, with absolutely no justification for its existance other than to coerce people into getting inoculated.
It seems to me that a person’s worth, measured in 2021 by one’s immunisation status, is now determined solely by one’s willingness to comply with the arbitrary and ever changing demands made by the State.
And that, in spite of no evidence that the domestic use of vaccine certificates offers any kind of benefit to the wider community, the act of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine is considered in and of itself the most noble of civic acts; one so righteous, in fact, that only those who have performed it are now permitted the full benefits of Irish citizenship.
Masked up with useless pieces of cloth on our faces, kept two metres apart at all times, obediently following ridiculous yellow lines on the floor as if the whole world has become one giant institution and we, in turn, institutionalised.
The constant and neurotic testing of ourselves when we have so much as a hint of a sniffle (or our smartphones pinging to tell us we’ve been in ‘close contact’ with somebody else who has); the excited waiting with bated breath to see if that antigen or lateral flow test is positive or negative. The abject horror of realising all the shops have run out of our precious tests. What have we become? When will this ever end?
It ends with one little word: no. No to it all and never again. So keep having the courage to say it. Keep repeating it like a two year old having a hissy fit. Don’t allow anybody to bully you or shame you, and call out anybody who thinks they can. No matter how powerful or influential they may be, you still have the power to tell them no.
How Billions in COVID Stimulus Funds Led to Dangerous, Tyrannical Policies in U.S. Schools
The Defender | January 20, 2022
In a January interview on Del Bigtree’s “The Highwire” —“COVID-19: Following the Money” — policy analyst A.J. DePriest, a member of the grassroots Tennessee Liberty Network, shared the group’s jaw-dropping findings about the undue influence of federal relief monies on school and hospital policies.
In this article, The Defender covers how federal money affected schools. We will cover the impact of federal money on hospitals in a separate article to follow.
In 2020 and 2021, Congress passed trillions in COVID-related stimulus through the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act, the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations (CRRSA) Act and the American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act.
Sizeable portions of those funds went to schools.
Digging into the education allotment, the Tennessee network discovered public, charter and nonprofit private schools in the U.S. received nearly $190.5 billion during three rounds of Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief (ESSER) funding (called ESSER I, II and III).
One of DePriest’s disquieting take-home messages is that this education lucre came with major strings attached — federal strings that are persuading ignominious school board members to adopt policies unfavorable and even dangerous to student health and well-being.
While DePriest characterized the stimulus bonanza as a “BIG carrot” for cash-strapped schools, that assessment may be too generous. If one examines the disturbing conditions attached to the U.S. Department of Education’s (DOE’s) dazzling largesse, the government billions seem closer to a godfather-like “offer they can’t refuse.”
The $190 billion ‘carrot’
The size of the federal “carrot” increased with each ESSER iteration. The $1.9 trillion ARP package alone assigned state educational agencies and school districts a whopping $122 billion (ESSER III).
On Jan. 18, the U.S. Department of Education (DOE) crowed about its disbursement of the final chunk of ESSER III monies, claiming the funds were “critical” for addressing “recent challenges” such as the putative and much-ballyhooed Omicron variant.
In Tennessee, the state’s initial take from ESSER I was nearly $260 million, but ESSER II quadrupled that amount to over $1.1 billion. By ESSER III, Tennessee’s educational haul had reached almost $2.5 billion.
The school district encompassing Memphis received roughly three-quarters of a billion dollars, DePriest noted, while Nashville schools pocketed a cool half a billion.
Schools and COVID vaccines
In DePriest’s view, there’s a catch that explains why school boards in every state have been so coldly unresponsive to parental pleas to unmask their children and abandon other COVID restrictions.
The catch is that federal generosity for state educational agencies is contingent on states proving to DOE (in reports submitted twice a year through fall 2023) they are meeting requirements synced with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) “safety recommendations.”
The CDC’s aggressive “recommendations” include:
- Enforcing “universal and correct wearing of masks”
- Physically modifying schools to facilitate “distancing”
- Ensuring “respiratory etiquette” and handwashing (likely with carcinogenic sanitizers)
- Implementing strenuous cleaning protocols to maintain “healthy facilities”
- Facilitating contact tracing, “in combination with isolation and quarantine”
- Conducting testing (both screening and diagnosis), helped along by additional resources from a federal-CDC-Rockefeller Foundation partnership to “ensure that all schools can access and set up screening testing programs as quickly as possible”
- Coordinating with state and local health officials
- Engaging in “efforts to provide vaccinations to school communities”
In its Jan. 18 press release, DOE took pains to emphasize that expanding access to vaccinations is “critical” for “safely reopening schools and sustaining safe operations.” And it furnished two ominous illustrations of how its stimulus monies are supporting vaccination efforts on the ground.
First, DOE noted, the Vermont Agency of Education is partnering with other statewide agencies “to vaccinate all Vermonters, including eligible students.” DOE approvingly stated that three-fourths of 12- to 17-year-olds in Vermont already received at least one dose.
DOE also considered the Hawaii Department of Education’s hosting of dozens of vaccination clinics for students, staff and “school communities” to be exemplary.
Further evidence of the feds’ hold over schools comes from the fact that some school districts have already taken steps to mandate COVID shots for some or all K-12 students, even in advance of formal U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval.
Weaponizing HVAC systems?
More than 40% of school districts plan to spend some of their ESSER funds on “improvements” to heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems.
This raises a potential red flag in light of the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) authorization in February 2021 — through a slippery “Public Health Emergency Exemption” — of a potentially hazardous, nanoparticle-based “air treatment” called Grignard Pure.
Dispersal of the chemical, authorized for indoor use in public spaces, occurs primarily “in-duct” via HVAC systems.
EPA’s authorization allows for Grignard Pure’s use in indoor spaces “when adherence to current public health guidelines … is impractical or difficult to maintain.”
As examples of spaces where the chemical’s use is permitted, the agency lists government facilities, healthcare facilities, food processing facilities and public transit.
EPA’s definition of “government facilities” does not appear to include schools, but the agency does admit to studying use of “air treatment technologies” on school buses.
A senior EPA scientist conceded last August, “how safe [the technologies] are, particularly for sensitive populations such as children, is not fully understood.” Given the experimental use of “air treatments” on school buses, it would behoove parents to query schools’ motives for upgrading their HVAC systems.
Moreover, though EPA initially green-lighted Grignard Pure in just two states (Georgia and Tennessee), it added four more states — Maryland, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Texas — last July.
The manufacturer’s website indicates that applications for Public Health Emergency Exemption are pending in another 15 states.
Nor does EPA’s vaguely worded list of indoor spaces seem to preclude use of the chemical in facilities not on that list. For example, Grignard Pure’s CEO is openly publicizing his product’s use in religious spaces, and a member of the company’s engineering steering committee elatedly stated last year, “There’s no limit to where we can use it!”
St. Simons Presbyterian Church in Georgia paved the way for church use, with the facility’s HVAC vents, which “run the length of both sides of the sanctuary’s ceiling,” apparently having been deemed ideal for spritzing congregants during services. This generates “a light haze [that] comes from the air vents and settles over the sanctuary.”
According to news accounts, the Georgia church’s pastor views Grignard Pure as “an added layer of safety,” a fact that the church emphasizes in its weekly bulletins. The pastor also is considering using the chemical-dispensing system during flu season.
Health risks associated with triethylene glycol
As The Defender previously reported, Grignard Pure’s supposedly virus-killing active ingredient is triethylene glycol (TEG), a chemical whose prior claim to fame was its use in theatrical fog machines.
Shortly before EPA reached its upbeat decision to approve TEG, the UK’s Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) recommended against TEG’s use as a virucide due to its limited effectiveness and “potential health effects for those exposed over a long period of time.”
After WWII and in the early 1950s, there was an attempt to deploy TEG for “air disinfection” purposes in school settings. However, “wartime and post-war authors would not have had access to much of the toxicological and health data now available for this chemical,” said the UK SAGE group.
These data show “a number of potential acute health effects,” including respiratory tract irritation in case of inhalation.
A Berkeley, California lab — the Indoor Air Quality Scientific Findings Resource Bank — recently expressed multiple concerns about TEG in relation to air disinfection.
The indoor air quality experts cautioned, “careful attention should be given to dosage of triethylene glycol in indoor settings in order to minimize potential health effects caused by chemical exposure,” particularly in light of evidence of health effects with repeated exposure.
The Berkeley group also warned “TEG could react with other indoor chemicals” — including common disinfectants — “leading to additional and perhaps unexpected adverse health effects,” including toxic effects on human airway epithelial cells.
In light of these “uncertainties about TEG dosing, chemical mixtures, and health risks,” they suggested TEG should be viewed as a “lower priority” option.
In similar comments about the use of TEG “or other similar chemicals” for air disinfection (p. 23), SAGE wrote in November 2020:
“There is currently no strong evidence that using a continuous spray chemical in the air will be an effective control against SARS-CoV-2 transmission. … [T]here is no precedent for such an approach to be used as a continuous spray in an occupied space for infection control. Cleaning the air by spraying it with a chemical is a misnomer – it is simply swapping one contaminant for another.”
TEG’s cousin polyethylene glycol (PEG)
As The Defender reported a year ago, TEG is a chemical cousin to and sometime-component of polyethylene glycol (PEG), a synthetic, nondegradable polymer of questionable biocompatibility.
PEG is known to be associated with adverse immune responses, including anaphylaxis.
Both the Pfizer and Moderna COVID jabs use PEG to make their mRNA “carrier systems” work, and the compound is also present in numerous other drugs and consumer products.
Up to 72% of the U.S. population may have anti-PEG antibodies — including an estimated 8% with highly elevated levels — that could lead to life-threatening anaphylactic reactions. Research is needed to assess potential TEG-PEG cross-reactivity.
Children’s Health Defense (CHD) in August 2020 first sounded the alarm about the risks of PEG in COVID shots, pointing out that well before COVID, PEG had already been flagged, including by Moderna itself, for its potential to trigger immediate hypersensitivity reactions.
CHD was so concerned about the potential for anaphylaxis that it followed up with a letter to the FDA on Sept. 25, 2020, outlining the need for critical safeguards for Moderna clinical trial participants.
Those concerns have since been borne out by repeated reports of PEG-linked anaphylaxis that began surfacing concurrent with the two mRNA vaccines’ rollout.
Resistance is NOT futile
In mid-August, Tennessee’s governor issued an executive order giving parents ultimate decision-making authority over their children’s masking behavior at school.
U.S. Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona evinced no compunction about immediately chastising the governor and his education commissioner for taking matters into their own hands.
In a letter dated two days later, Cardona wrote that the Tennessee governor’s action was “at odds with the school district planning process embodied in the U.S. Department of Education’s. . . interim final requirements,” pointedly adding that CDC safety recommendations include “universal and correct wearing of masks.”
Meanwhile, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen warned Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey on Jan. 14 that the Biden administration is prepared to take back Arizona’s relief funds — and also withhold future federal aid — due to the state’s active discouragement of school mask mandates.
Yellen offered no explanation as to why the Treasury Department, rather than DOE, was issuing the warning.
In response, Ducey emphasized Arizona’s focus on “things that matter” — math, not masks. Attorney General Mark Brnovich urged Yellen to rescind the threat, arguing that Treasury is “trying to overstep its constitutional bounds” by dictating how the state should run and fund its schools.
These types of intimidation tactics are also evident at the school-district level, prompting parents’ growing frustration.
Rather than continue to beg for mask lenience, DePriest reminds parents they have every right to confront school board members about the feds’ cash-in-exchange-for-obedience arrangements.
“They’re getting the money to mask your kids. It has nothing to do with health and safety,” DePriest said.
As evidenced by the quadrupling of homeschooling since the beginning of COVID, many families have simply had it. However, for parents for whom homeschooling is not an option, there is every reason to push local school boards to address their student-unfriendly behavior more transparently.
Here are a handful of possible questions and actions:
- Borrowing DePriest’s no-nonsense wording, a first step is to ask, “How much money are you taking from the federal government to commit this egregious, tyrannical behavior on our kids?” If school board members profess not to know, prepared citizens can easily present them with the financial information listed here.
- As one state describes it, “The governance of local school boards by democratically-elected individuals remains at the heart of two vital United States structures: the public education system and democracy itself.” Remind school board members that when they put politics and financial arm-twisting ahead of their relationship with the public and the students they are supposed to serve, they are engaging in a fundamental betrayal of trust and ethics.
- Emphasize to school board members that the damage caused by COVID restrictions has far outweighed any threat from the illness, turning schools into “a physically, spiritually, and emotionally unsafe place” for children. Moreover, none of the restrictions are genuinely evidence-based.
- Continue to present school board members with evidence about the experimental COVID injections’ dangers (see sample talking points here).
- Ask schools whether they are planning for or engaging in HVAC “improvements.” If yes, ask them to describe the purpose of the “improvements” and whether schools intend to use HVAC systems to disseminate unsafe chemicals. Tell them EPA is doing research on “air treatments” in school buses, and let them know about the risks — both known and hypothesized — of chemicals like TEG.
- Finally, for officials who claim that their hands are tied, A.J. DePriest has a ready solution: Tell them to “give the money back”!
© 2022 Children’s Health Defense, Inc. This work is reproduced and distributed with the permission of Children’s Health Defense, Inc. Want to learn more from Children’s Health Defense? Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. Your donation will help to support us in our efforts.
SCOTUS failed to debate the key Constitutional issues raised by the OSHA and CMS cases
Decided on narrow technical grounds to appease certain powerful institutions
By Toby Rogers | January 18, 2022
I am grateful to the U.S. Supreme Court for granting a stay that blocks enforcement of the OSHA vaccine mandate and disappointed that they split the baby in half by allowing the vaccine mandate to continue for healthcare workers in facilities that receive funding from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). As the Babylon Bee noted, now “healthcare workers are the only people who can’t make decisions about their own health.”
What initially seemed like a heavyweight boxing match between two radically different worldviews was decided on narrow technical grounds and the larger Constitutional issues were mostly avoided.
I understand why the Supreme Court wanted to make the narrowest possible ruling — they do not want to be seen as making law and they do not want to get too far out front on any issue lest they risk the credibility of the court. The problem with this approach is that if we are not going to debate the big issues at the Supreme Court, then where exactly are these debates going to take place? They are not happening in the media (completely captured), nor Congress (completely captured), nor within medical societies (completely captured). So how, as a society, are we supposed to come to clarity about a new and novel virus and how best to respond to it if we are never allowed to have a robust public debate about it in any venue?
In this article I want to try to walk through some of the big issues left unaddressed by the Supreme Court’s narrow rulings in these cases.
No findings of fact and no Jacobson
Jeff Childers at Covid & Coffee wrote the best initial take on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decisions in the OSHA and CMS mandate cases.
Childers notes that there were no real findings of fact — the three Democratic appointees gestured toward the claims submitted by OSHA and HHS and left it at that and the six Republican appointees did not make any attempt at determining the facts at all. This is very strange. Findings of fact are a standard part of any trial. And here we have a new, novel, and likely man-made virus; several vaccines that have never worked in humans before; and unprecedented vaccine failure and yet neither side wanted to discuss the facts!? In the highest court in the country? Even though one cannot make rational decisions about these matters in the absence of facts? We’ll return to this issue below.
Childers also points out that there is no mention of Jacobson v. Massachusetts in either decision. Jacobson is the 1905 case regarding a state vaccine mandate that has been used incorrectly ever since to justify all sorts of heinous state actions including forced sterilization of poor women. See analysis from former NYU law professor and current President of Children’s Health Defense Mary Holland, Esq. (here) and (here) for further explanations of why Jacobson was wrongly decided and how it has been misinterpreted.
Childers seems to suggest that the Democratic appointees did not want to cite Jacobson because that would acknowledge that this power rests with the states (not the federal government). Republican appointees may not have wanted to mention Jacobson because, well it’s not quite clear. Perhaps they think it was wrongly decided and want to overturn it but the court is hesitant to overturn precedent too often lest they be seen as activist and illegitimate — and they are likely to overturn precedent in the pending abortion decisions (Texas and Mississippi) so perhaps they are saving their powder for that battle.
I want to add three important issues to the conversation:
A product under Emergency Use Authorization cannot be mandated
In the U.S., the FDA has granted Emergency Use Authorization for three coronavirus vaccines.
21 U.S. Code § 360bbb–3 clearly states that medical products under Emergency Use Authorization cannot be mandated and a federal district court has confirmed this.
The FDA has only given so-called “full approval” to Pfizer’s Comirnaty coronavirus vaccine which is used in Europe and is not available in the U.S.
Pfizer claims that the European and U.S. formulations of their coronavirus vaccines can be used interchangeably but the courts have rejected this assertion.
If the Supreme Court wanted to rule on narrow technical grounds, it should have rejected the mandates because they clearly violate the rules in connection with Emergency Use Authorization of medical products.
However, as I explain below, all vaccine mandates are unconstitutional, regardless of their FDA status.
The Constitutional rights of the individual
Across two majority opinions, one concurring opinion, and three dissents (44 pages in all) there is no mention of the Constitutional rights of individuals. This is very strange. The question at hand was whether the federal government, acting through unelected bureaucratic agencies can force 84 million private sector workers and 10 million healthcare workers to have a sharp metal object plunged into their body that will inject a genetically modified substance that hijacks the RNA inside individual cells for an uncertain period of time with unknown short- and long-term health impacts. And not a single member of the Supreme Court had anything to say about the Constitutional rights of individuals? In a country built on the notion of individual freedoms? Really? What’s going on!?
It appears that the Democratic appointees to the court (Kagan, Sotomayor, and Breyer) did not want to acknowledge a constitutional right to privacy and bodily sovereignty because then they would have had to reject both mandates. As Naomi Wolf points out a Constitutional right to privacy and bodily autonomy has been the bedrock principle of liberal jurisprudence for the last 50 years and so it is more than a little odd that the three liberal justices suddenly pretended that they had never heard of this idea. But worshipping the golden calf of vaccines has become the only issue in the Democratic imagination and so apparently all other principles be damned. When it comes to injecting toxic substances into the peasants, Democrats want the federal government to be all-powerful, never mind what they said before about “My body, my choice.”
Republican appointees to the court (Roberts, Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett) however do not want to acknowledge a Constitutional right to bodily sovereignty or privacy because they are likely to curtail such rights in their upcoming decisions in the two abortion cases (regarding Texas Senate Bill 8 and the Mississippi law that blocks abortions after 15 weeks of pregnancy). Said differently, regardless of how they might feel about individual rights in this case, when it comes to abortion, Republicans want the state to have the power to make these decisions rather than individuals.
It is not my intention here to weigh in on the abortion debate but rather to point out that no one on the court is looking out for our rights as individuals. I suppose one could argue that Thomas, Alito, and Gorsuch are at least aware of the fact that vaccines involve some risks and that individuals have rights — but their reasoning was indirect and between the lines (writing that one could not remove a vaccine at the end of the workday or that vaccination could not be undone rather than saying that individuals have sovereignty over their own bodies). In these rulings none of the nine justices are being consistent in their judicial philosophy.
This glaring omission of any discussion of individual liberties is apparent in the concurring opinion from Justice Gorsuch in the OSHA case (that was joined by Justices Thomas and Alito). He writes:
The central question we face today is: Who decides?… The only question is whether an administrative agency in Washington, one charged with overseeing workplace safety, may mandate the vaccination or regular testing of 84 million people. Or whether, as 27 states before us submit, that work belongs to state and local governments across the country and the people’s elected representatives in Congress.
Given this menu of options, I’m glad that Gorsuch (and 5 other justices) came down on the side of the states and Congress. But this is the wrong menu. Neither an administrative agency in Washington nor state and local governments and Congress should decide this matter. Vaccination is a matter that can only be decided by individuals weighing their potential individual risks and benefits. Mandatory one-size-fits-all medicine is, by definition, tyranny and savage barbarism because every individual body is unique. And no level of government has the right to trespass my body. This is not complicated and it is strange that no one on the court stood up for these fundamental individual rights.
Arguments from authority and so-called experts are a logical fallacy. SCOTUS wants to sidestep this thorny problem but they should not
This is a return to the issue mentioned above about the absence of any real findings of fact in this case. It is very important and I have not heard others comments on it thus far. My argument has two steps to it:
1. The problem of deferring to institutions. It appears that the Supreme Court decided this case based on the institutions involved, not the Constitutional principles. In the OSHA case the majority noted that 27 states and a majority of the U.S. Senate were on record as opposing this workplace mandate. And in the CMS case, the majority (Roberts and Kavanaugh were in the majority on both cases) noted that the American Medical Association and the American Public Health Association were on record as supporting the mandate for healthcare workers and the plaintiffs were not a well-recognized institutional body. So it seems that they just weighed up the power of the various institutions in each case and gave the victory to the more powerful institutions. That is politics — not justice — and it is the wrong way to decide the case.
2. The problem of deferring to experts. In their dissent in the OSHA case, Justices Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan speak to the question of “Who decides?” Writing about the Supreme Court they argue:
Its Members are elected by, and accountable to, no one. And we “lack[] the background, competence, and expertise to assess” workplace health and safety issues. South Bay United Pentecostal Church, 590 U. S., at ___ (opinion of ROBERTS, C. J.) (slip op., at 2). When we are wise, we know enough to defer on matters like this one. When we are wise, we know not to displace the judgments of experts, acting within the sphere Congress marked out and under Presidential control, to deal with emergency conditions.
It is preposterous to claim that anyone at OSHA or CMS are “experts” on these matters because this is a new and novel virus (so it is unclear who has the correct answers at this point) and these agencies, like all bureaucracies in D.C., are captured by industry.
But I want to make a larger point. It is not just Democrats who do this. Oh heavens me, I could not possibly decide such weighty scientific matters, let’s leave it to the experts is a standard flex by politicians of both political parties and judges across the country — and it is entirely wrong.
Nothing in the Constitution supports this approach. The Seventh Amendment to the Constitution articulates the right to trial by jury. The founders of this country wanted legal matters decided by everyday citizens — as a check against corruption. The Constitution did not envision a society of technocrats making decisions on behalf of society. The founders were well aware of the fact that power corrupts everyone and so they returned decision-making on matters of fact to ordinary citizens. In a democracy, no one can side-step their individual responsibility to evaluate the evidence for themselves. If the matter is over the heads of U.S. Supreme Court Justices then it must be left to individuals to decide — rather than giving totalitarian powers to bureaucrats.
But it’s more than that. From a scientific and medical perspective, institutions and “experts” tell you nothing about the data. It’s the wrong epistemology. Institutions and “experts” tell you about the politics surrounding the data, they do not necessarily tell you if the data is more likely to be correct than not.
Respondents should have to make their case publicly in ways that everyone can understand and they should have to present their data for the entire society to comb through if they wish. The notion that we are going to contract out the findings of fact to unelected bureaucrats who are almost always captured by the pharmaceutical industry is an affront to democracy and entirely unscientific. It would be extremely beneficial for society for us to have these scientific debates out in the open — in the courtroom, in the digital public square, and in our living rooms — so that as a society we can grow, learn, and sort out fact from fiction. The idea of leaving these matters to captured technocrats has been catastrophic for public health and it must stop.
Furthermore, it’s not like these justices even believe this flex themselves. The so-called Special Masters on the vaccine court include a former tax specialist, a military judge, and a sex crimes prosecutor — these people are not scientific experts — and yet they decide thousands of vaccine injury cases involving intricate matters of science and medicine. So on the one hand, the Supreme Court (and lots of elected officials) claim that they could not possibly decide weighty scientific matters and then they punt to people who know even less than them (corrupt bureaucrats or Special Masters) — entirely bypassing the system set up by our founders — ordinary citizens, on juries, using common sense and reason.
It is time for the U.S. to return to the founding principles of individual liberty and trust in the common sense and reason of individual citizens. If you don’t believe in that then you don’t believe in democracy.
Conclusion
The OSHA case now returns to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. Some legal analysts think OSHA may withdraw the rule rather than continue with a case that it is expected to lose.
The CMS case returns to the Fifth and Eighth Circuit courts where legal analysts believe that the challenges to the CMS mandate will be dismissed.
But the enormous Constitutional issues remain. I think there is ample opportunity for the Fifth and/or Eighth Circuit courts to re-examine the government’s shoddy reasoning in the CMS case. I also think citizens should come together to fund new litigation to defend the Constitutional right to bodily autonomy for all Americans, including the healthcare workers who are under assault by the CMS rule right now.
Both the OSHA and the CMS mandates are clearly unconstitutional. The First (freedom of speech), Fourth (freedom to be secure in my person…), Seventh (right to trial by jury), and Fourteenth (equal protection under the law) Amendments to the Constitution can all be used to strike down this totalitarian government overreach. Any honest examination of the scientific evidence will reveal that coronavirus shots do not work as claimed and the risks outweigh the benefits. If the courts are wise, they will leave these decisions up to individuals acting within their conscience as sovereign citizens.
Congress’s 1/6 Committee Claims Absolute Power as it Investigates Citizens With No Judicial Limits
By Glenn Greenwald | January 20, 2022
In its ongoing attempt to investigate and gather information about private U.S. citizens, the Congressional 1/6 Committee is claiming virtually absolute powers that not even the FBI or other law enforcement agencies enjoy. Indeed, lawyers for the committee have been explicitly arguing that nothing proscribes or limits their authority to obtain data regarding whichever citizens they target and, even more radically, that the checks imposed on the FBI (such as the requirement to obtain judicial authorization for secret subpoenas) do not apply to the committee.
As we have previously reported and as civil liberties groups have warned, there are serious constitutional doubts about the existence of the committee itself. Under the Constitution and McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases interpreting it, the power to investigate crimes lies with the executive branch, supervised by the judiciary, and not with Congress. Congress does have the power to conduct investigations, but that power is limited to two narrow categories: 1) when doing so is designed to assist in its law-making duties (e.g., directing executives of oil companies to testify when considering new environmental laws) and 2) in order to exert oversight over the executive branch.
What Congress is barred from doing, as two McCarthy-era Supreme Court cases ruled, is exactly what the 1/6 committee is now doing: conducting a separate, parallel criminal investigation in order to uncover political crimes committed by private citizens. Such powers are dangerous precisely because Congress’s investigative powers are not subject to the same safeguards as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies. And just as was true of the 1950s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) that prompted those Supreme Court rulings, the 1/6 committee is not confining its invasive investigative activities to executive branch officials or even citizens who engaged in violence or other illegality on January 6, but instead is investigating anyone and everyone who exercised their Constitutional rights to express views about and organize protests over their belief that the 2020 presidential election contained fraud. Indeed, the committee’s initial targets appear to be taken from the list of those who applied for protest permits in Washington: a perfectly legal, indeed constitutionally protected, act.
This abuse of power is not merely abstract. The Congressional 1/6 Committee has been secretly obtaining private information about American citizens en masse: telephone records, email logs, internet and browsing history, and banking transactions. And it has done so without any limitations or safeguards: no judicial oversight, no need for warrants, no legal limitations of any kind.
Indeed, the committee has been purposely attempting to prevent citizens who are the targets of their investigative orders to have any opportunity to contest the legality of this behavior in court. As we reported in October, the committee sent dozens if not hundreds of subpoenas to telecom companies demanding a wide range of email and other internet records, and — without any legal basis — requested that those companies not only turn over those documents but refrain from notifying their own customers of the request. If the companies were unwilling to comply with this “request,” then the committee requested that they either contact the committee directly or just disregard the request — in other words, the last thing they wanted was to enable one of their targets to learn that they were being investigated because that would enable them to seek a judicial ruling about the legality of the committee’s actions.
But now the committee is escalating its aggressive investigative actions. They have begun sending subpoenas to private banks, demanding the banking records of private citizens, and doing so such that either the person never finds out or finds out too late to obtain a judicial order about the legality of the committee’s behavior. In one case, they targeted JP Morgan with these subpoenas while knowing that that bank is being represented by former Obama Attorney General Loretta Lynch; Lynch — unsurprisingly — then directed her client not to accommodate any requests from its own customers to ensure they can seek judicial review.
On November 22, the 1/6 Committee served a subpoena on Taylor Budowich — a former spokesman for the Trump campaign who never worked for the U.S. Government — that requested a wide range of documents as well as his deposition testimony. On December 14, Budowich voluntarily complied by handing over a large amount of his personal records, and then, on December 22, he flew to Washington at his own expense and submitted to questioning. There is no suggestion that Budowich was engaged in any violence or other illegal acts at the Capitol on January 6. Their only interest in this private citizen is his connection to the Trump campaign and his stated view that he believed the 2020 election was marred by fraud.
After he furnished the committee with those documents and then testified, Budowich learned from others that the committee was issuing subpoenas directly to the banks used by other individuals for their personal accounts. He thus requested that his lawyer notify his own bank, JPMorgan Chase, that he would object to their cooperation with any subpoena without first providing notice to him so that he can have time to seek a legal ruling in court.
Typically, citizens learn when law enforcement agencies such as the FBI serve subpoenas to third-party providers such as banks or internet companies. That allows a crucial right: to contest the legality of the action in court before the documents are supplied. But when such a subpoena is concealed from the person, it prevents them from obtaining judicial review. In general, citizens learn of FBI subpoenas, and the FBI (with rare exceptions) has the power to impose a “gag order” or otherwise prevent the person from learning about it only if they first persuade a court that such an extreme measure is warranted (by arguing, for instance, that a terror suspect will flee or destroy evidence if they learn they are being investigated). That safeguard ensures that in most cases, a citizen has the right to seek judicial protection from an illegal act by an investigative body.
But the 1/6 Committee recognizes no right of any kind and no limits on its power. On November 23 — the day after it served a subpoena on Budowich himself — it served a subpoena on Budowich’s bank, JPMorgan. The original date for the bank to produce the records was December 7, but JPMorgan — advised by Loretta Lynch as its legal counsel — bizarrely requested that the deadline be extended until December 24: the day before Christmas, knowing that courts would be closed that day and the next. It was only on December 21 — when Budowich was in Washington for his testimony before the committee — did JPMorgan send him notice at his home that it had received a subpoena and intended to produce the requested documents on December 24: just three days later. As JPMorgan and Lynch knew would happen, Budowich did not see the letter until he arrived home on the evening of December 22: less than forty-eight hours before the bank told him they were going to give up all of his financial records to the committee.
Upon discovering that the committee had subpoenaed his bank, Budowich’s lawyers immediately advised JPMorgan that they had legal objections to the subpoena, and requested that — given it was about to be Christmas Eve and the courts would be closed — the bank seek an extension from the committee to enable Budowich to seek a judicial ruling. But the bank, advised by Loretta Lynch, refused — and told him they intended to turn the documents over on Christmas regardless of whether that gave him time to request judicial intervention. The bank even refused to provide a copy of the subpoena they received from the committee, which Budowich, to this very day, has not seen.
Budowich’s lawyers did everything possible to seek judicial intervention before JPMorgan gave all his financial documents to the committee, but the timing agreed to by the committee, Lynch and the bank — documents produced on Christmas Eve, with notice to him arriving just a couple days before when he was testifying in Washington — made it impossible, by design. As a result, JPMorgan gave all of his banking records to the committee without even seeking an extension.
Budowich was therefore left with no alternative but to file an after-the-fact lawsuit against House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and the committee members, seeking an emergency injunction against the committee’s use of his banking records. In response, both the committee and JPMorgan argued that the entire question was “moot” given that they already handed over the documents.
In other words, lawyers for the committee and Loretta Lynch created a plot whereby JPMorgan would notify Budowich of its intent to hand over the documents right before Christmas, so as to purposely deny him time to seek a court ruling, and then used the fact that he was “too late” in filing as a ground for arguing that the court should shut its doors to him and refuse to even give him a hearing. The court agreed that Budowich’s request for an emergency injunction was “moot” given that the bank already supplied the documents, but agreed to rule on the merits of the arguments about whether the subpoena was legal.
The parties’ briefs on this question were submitted to an Obama-appointed federal judge, James Boasberg, in Washington. The oral argument on Budowich’s request to enjoin the use of his banking records by the committee was held earlier on Thursday, and Judge Boasberg quickly rejected Budowich’s objections to the subpoena. It will now be appealed to the Court of Appeals, but the issues presented by the committee’s arguments are chilling.
At the hearing, the committee’s lawyers essentially repeated the same argument they advanced in their legal brief: namely, that none of the legal safeguards imposed on the FBI and other law enforcement agencies to guard against abuse of power apply to this Congressional committee, which therefore enjoys virtually absolute power to do what it wants.
That is not an exaggerated summary of the committee’s argument. The primary law on which Budowich is relying is The Right to Financial Privacy Act (“RFPA”), which prohibits any “financial institution, or officers, employees or agent of the financial institution” from “provid[ing] to any Government authority access to or copies of, or the information contained in, the financial records of any customer” unless they have first complied with the requirement of that law. Among the key requirements is that a “financial institution shall not release the financial records of a customer until the Government authority seeking such records certifies in writing to the financial institution that it has complied with the applicable provisions of this chapter.” As Budowich’s lawyers argued, the key to the law is that a person whose financial records are sought must receive notice of that attempt and be given sufficient time to challenge it in court:
Both 12 U.S.C. §§ 3405 (administrative subpoena or summons) and 3408 (formal written request) require that a copy of the subpoena or request “have been served upon the customer or mailed to his last known address on or before the date on which the subpoena or summons was served on the financial institution” together with a formal statutory notice allowing ten (10) days from the date or service or fourteen (14) days from the date of mailing the required notice. See 12 U.S.C. §§ 3405, 3408. Additional provisions of RFPA establish the right of a financial institution customer to challenge a request for their financial records in an appropriate United States District Court, and that proceedings involving such challenges should be completed or decided within seven (7) calendar days of the filing of any Government response. See 12 U.S.C. § 3410(a)-(b).
The committee did not deny that it failed to meet these requirements. Obviously, they could not argue that, given that the plan they created with JPMorgan and its lawyer, Loretta Lynch, was designed to ensure that Budowich have no time to obtain a judicial ruling before his bank records were handed over. Instead, the committee’s response is they do not have to comply with this law. “The Act restricts only agencies and departments of the United States, and the Select Committee is neither,” the committee’s lawyer contended. In fact, they explicitly argued that these safeguards were meant to be imposed only on the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, but were intended to exempt Congress even when, as here, they are clearly engaged in investigating private citizens for potential crimes. “Multiple provisions of the statute underscore that Congress intended ‘Government authority’ to mean an executive branch agency or department,” the committee’s lawyers wrote in an assertion of power breathtaking in its scope and limitlessness.
All of the other committee’s arguments are similarly designed to bestow on itself absolute and unlimited power in how it investigates private citizens, and to insist that the judiciary is without power to impose limits on it. The committee insists, for instance, that it can investigate anyone it wants in connection with 1/6 even if its motive is not to enact new laws and even if the documents it seeks (Budowich’s financial records) have no relationship to any proposed new laws. That is because, it says, “Congressional committees are not required to identify a specific piece of legislation in advance of conducting an investigation of the pertinent facts. It is sufficient that a committee’s investigation concerns a subject on which legislation ‘could be had.'”
Such a principle, if accepted, would destroy any limits on Congress’s ability to investigate citizens (clearly, it was possible for the McCarthy-era Congressional investigations to lead to new laws even though, as the Supreme Court twice ruled when striking them down, that was clearly not its primary purpose). But Judge Boasberg nonetheless accepted the committee’s argument on the ground that an appellate court had already ruled that the 1/6 Committee had a valid legislative purpose and he was therefore bound by that decision.
The committee’s other arguments are even more extreme: namely, that “the Constitution’s Speech or Debate Clause provides absolute immunity to Members and committees when performing legislative acts” and that “sovereign immunity prohibits litigation against Congress to which it has not consented, and no such consent has been.” That would mean that the 1/6 Committee could literally do whatever it wanted to citizens, and no court would have the right even to review the legality or constitutionality of what it is doing let alone put a stop to it.
What happened during the first War on Terror — and so many other events that were perceived as traumatic — is instructive here. So many Americans were so horrified by the carnage of that day that, for years, many did not care or want to hear about legal niceties, constitutional limits or civil liberties regarding the government’s actions. Anything the government did in the name of responding to or retaliating for 9/11 became inherently justified, and anyone who objected — no matter the principles cited — was deemed to be on the side of the terrorists.
The same dynamic is prevailing here. There are serious constitutional limits on the ability of Congress to investigate private citizens. It is blatantly abusive to scheme with JPMorgan and its counsel Loretta Lynch to ensure that a citizen has no time to seek judicial relief regarding the committee’s attempt to obtain mounds of his personal and financial records. And, in general, the committee has been on a rampage targeting not only Trump officials or people who engaged in criminal behavior at the Capitol on January 6 but a wide group of citizens whose only crime appears to be their political beliefs and associations — exactly what the Supreme Court cited when striking down the excesses of Congress’s McCarthy-era probes of citizens.
But with the media overwhelmingly cheering anything done in the name of stopping the Trump movement and those who supported 1/6 in any way, all of these civil liberties concerns and constitutional protections are run roughshod over in the name of safety. The latest arguments from the Congressional 1/6 Committee amount to little more than an assertion of unfettered power for Adam Schiff, Liz Cheney and the rest of the committee members to dig into the lives of anyone they want without limits.
YouTube puts bogus age restriction on Andrew Napolitano and James Bovard discussion challenging ‘insurrection’ narrative
By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | January 20, 2022
YouTube or its owner Google sure seems keen on preventing people from learning about holes in the “insurrection” narrative being pushed by big money media and many politicians from President Joe Biden on down regarding protest and riot activity at the United States Capitol on January 6, 2021.
Legal commentator Andrew Napolitano, who is an Advisory Board member for the Ron Paul Institute, posted Tuesday at YouTube an episode of his show Judging Freedom titled “The FBI’s possible role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.” In the episode, Napolitano and journalist James Bovard discuss many apparent problems with the heavily pushed January 6 insurrection narrative. But, when you try on Thursday to watch the video at YouTube, you cannot just push play and watch as you can with most videos at YouTube. Instead, you are presented with a warning.
Where normally an image from the video with a play video button in the center would appear, the video screen is all black with over it at its center a circled exclamation point followed by this message:
Sign in to confirm your age
This video may be inappropriate for some users.
Click on the “SIGN IN” button below that message and you are taken to a page to sign in to your Google account, or to create a Google account if you do not have one, in order to watch the discussion.
Once you have done all this and YouTube seemingly has been satisfied that you are old enough, you are still not presented with the video ready to play. Instead, you encounter another all black video screen with a warning on it — again the circled exclamation point followed by “This video may be inappropriate for some users.” Below the warning is a button labeled “I UNDERSTAND AND WISH TO PROCEED.” Only after clicking on this button can you finally watch the video of Napolitano and Bovard’s discussion.
Of course, all the warnings, button clicks, age verification, and account sign in or creation requirements create a major impediment to people watching the video. Google and YouTube can say that they did not censor the video (at least for adults), but their imposing of special hurdles people must jump over to watch can be expected to much reduce viewership. Many adults will not trudge through all this. Children are barred from watching the video.
Should you go through all this and finally watch the video, you will see that the warnings and the action requirements that precede the video are without any justification, especially considering YouTube’s rather lenient approach generally to placing age restrictions on videos. So why all the effort to discourage people from watching? It sure looks like YouTube, or its owner Google, instead of trying to protect children from harm, is trying to protect the January 6 insurrection narrative from criticism.
Copyright © 2022 by RonPaul Institute.
Germany’s Interior Ministry accuses Google and Apple of inciting “conspiracy theories” for allowing Telegram
By Didi Rankovic | Reclaim The Net | January 21, 2022
Germany seems determined to try to undermine Telegram under the fairly absurd pretext that among its hundreds of millions of users are also some “extremists” (same logic applies to the whole of the internet – so will Berlin try to heavily regulate *that* as well?)
And the definition of “extremist” and “radical,” as mentioned in reports about the latest push to get Telegram to cooperate – or else – also includes people who have been unhappy with extreme and radical Covid restrictions.
But given the apparent financial independence of the company that develops the messaging app, the suppression bid doesn’t seem like it will be a straight-forward task.
Judging by the news coming out of Germany now, the route the Interior Ministry would prefer to take is roundabout – to possibly get an uncooperative Telegram banned on the two biggest app stores, those operated by Google and Apple, and thus severely limit its exposure to users.
However, this doesn’t make sense either – because a dedicated “dangerous right-wing extremist” or “conspiracy theorist” would surely find out how to sideload Telegram, and march on.
But by removing the app from the most widely used official app stores, it is those hundreds of millions of everyday users in search of secure and private ways to communicate, without any malicious actors – be they governments or hackers – interfering, who would suffer the most.
For that reason, when Germany’s Interior Minister Christian Pegel recently spoke about the need to get Telegram “cooperating” with law enforcement in order to suppress extremism and threats of violence – or Berlin will pressure Google and Apple – what it really comes down to is trying to put another brick in the ongoing “war on encryption” wall.
Among the members of the security/encryption purist community, Telegram is not even regarded as the best solution – but the benefits provided by this messaging app overall as a secure and privacy-friendly alternative to mainstream competitors still far outweigh any of its flaws. As a result Telegram has seen a strong uptake in recent years.
In Germany, Facebook’s WhatsApp and Messenger are both shedding users, Signal is holding steady – but behind Telegram, that has been growing.
Join the global rally for freedom
By Kathy Gyngell | TCW Defending Freedom | January 20, 2022
THIS Saturday, January 22, will see another worldwide freedom rally. It starts at 1pm in London and other UK cities as well as globally.
To find the details of where, please join the Together Declaration’s Telegram Channel for updates. The Together organisers will be in London and will have placards available on the day. You can find the details on Twitter @togetherdec and on Instagram: @togetherdeclaration […]
Please continue to share Together links to drive their message home. They are doing a vital campaigning and lobbying job. It’s essential that we all keep pushing to end all restrictions on January 26 and to insist on the revocation of an end to all vaccine mandates and coercion.
Together ask us to use the following hashtags in our Twitter communications:
#WorldWideDemo
#StandTogether
and to follow their news and share it on the following platforms:
Twitter: @togetherdec
Instagram: @togetherdeclaration
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Psychiatric drugs kill 500k+ Western adults annually, few positive benefits – leading scientist
RT | May 13, 2015
Psychiatric drugs lead to the deaths of over 500,000 people aged 65 and over annually in the West, a Danish scientist says. He warns the benefits of these drugs are “minimal,” and have been vastly overstated.
Research director at Denmark’s Nordic Cochrane Centre, Professor Peter Gøtzsche, says the use of most antidepressants and dementia drugs could be halted without inflicting harm on patients. The Danish scientist’s views were published in the British Medical Journal on Tuesday.
His scathing analysis will likely prove controversial among traditional medics. However, concern is mounting among doctors and scientists worldwide that psychiatric medication is doing more harm than good. In particular, they say antipsychotic drugs have been over-prescribed to many dementia patients in a bid to calm agitated behavior.
Gøtzsche warns psychiatric drugs kill patients year in year out, and hold few positive benefits. He says in excess of half a million citizens across the Western world aged 65 and over die annually as a result of taking these drugs.
“Their benefits would need to be colossal to justify this, but they are minimal,” he writes.
“Given their lack of benefit, I estimate we could stop almost all psychotropic drugs without causing harm.”
Gøtzsche, who is also a clinical trials expert, says drug trials funded by big pharmaceutical companies tend to produce biased results because many patients took other medication prior to the tests.
He says patients cease taking the old drugs and then experience a phase of withdrawal prior to taking the trial pharmaceuticals, which appear highly beneficial at first.
The Danish professor also warns fatalities from suicides in clinical trials are significantly under-reported. … continue
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