Max Blumenthal: Trump is afraid of Netanyahu – Israel spies on the US
If Americans Knew | September 18, 2025
Max Blumenthal is an American journalist and editor of The Grayzone.
Judge Andrew P. Napolitano is a graduate of Princeton University and the University of Notre Dame Law School. He is the youngest life-tenured Superior Court judge in the history of the State of New Jersey. He sat on the bench from 1987 to 1995, when he presided over more than 150 jury trials and thousands of motions, sentencings, and hearings. He is the author of nine books on the U.S. Constitution, two of which have been New York Times Best Sellers. 
/ @judgingfreedom
Original video aired on Sept 15, 2025: • [BREAKING NEWS EXCLUSIVE ] – Max Blumentha…
Germany Faces Challenging Winter Of Power Outages As Energy Supply Struggles
By P Gosselin | No Tricks Zone | September 17, 2025
The head of transmission system operator Amprion, Christoph Müller, warns that Germany’s energy supply is facing a challenging winter due to a lack of power plant capacity as the nuclear and planned coal continue to get phased out. This could lead to targeted power outages and soaring electricity prices, he warns.
Müller paints a serious picture: in a scenario where energy demand outstrips supply, pre-defined groups could experience power cuts lasting around 90 minutes. This is not only a concern for the industrial sector; but it would mean hospitals relying on emergency generators, supermarkets closing their doors, and homes going without power. This is the stage that Germany’s energy supply has deteriorated to.
The crisis highlights a significant gap in Germany’s energy strategy. Müller argues that new, flexible gas-fired power plants are essential to maintain grid stability and prevent a supply shortfall. He expresses serious doubts about the feasibility of the coal phase-out by its 2028 deadline, citing the lack of viable alternatives.
While he dismisses nuclear power as a solution due to its long construction timeline, the overall message is clear: without immediate and massive investment in new power sources, Germany’s energy transition is at risk.
Grid under immense strain
Müller’s assessment is grim and unfortunately realistic. While he doesn’t anticipate a nationwide blackout, he warns that the grid is under immense pressure. The next two winters may be manageable, but the long-term outlook is one where blackouts, rising electricity prices, and a stalled energy transition could become the new reality.
Hat-tip: Blackout News here.
‘Shut out’: Journal fires editor after publishing research refuting ‘warming climate’
By Gabriel Zylstra – The College Fix – September 17, 2025
The American Journal of Economics and Sociology recently removed special editor Marty Rowland from his position for publishing a paper refuting climate change argument about carbon dioxide, according to the paper’s authors.
“The standard response of the mainstream climate science community these days to papers that somewhat challenge the CO2-is-dangerous-narrative is to immediately ask for retraction,” Marcel Crok, a co-author of the paper and director of the climate science group Clintel, told The College Fix.
“It’s a strategy because it gives the signal that the paper is really bad and most people don’t have the time and knowledge to assess the situation,” Crok said in an email Tuesday.
The paper in question, “Carbon dioxide and a warming climate are not problems,” was published in the journal in May 2024. Crok co-authored it with Andy May, a retired petrophysicist and developmental geologist who worked for Exxon and other oil and energy companies.
Rowland, a lecturer at the Henry George School of Science and environmental engineer, was the editor at the journal who approved it.
According to May’s blog, the journal fired Rowland in August, and the reason it gave was “his publication of our paper.”
An archived version of the journal editorial board webpage shows Rowland was the special editions editor at least since 2023. The current page no longer lists him as an editor.
The Fix reached out to the editorial team at the American Journal of Economics and Sociology several times by email over the past two weeks to ask about the reason for Rowland’s departure. None responded.
Since being published, the paper has been cited 25 times according to google scholar, and scientists David Wojick, Kenneth Richard, and H. Sterling Burnett gave positive reviews, according to May’s blog.
“In short there was no legitimate reason to fire Dr. Rowland for publishing our fully peer-reviewed, and well received, paper,” May wrote.
May told The Fix via email this week that the paper was peer-reviewed prior to publication.
“The two scientists that liked the paper, both are very famous scientists with decades of climate science publications and well over 16,000 citations between them, had many suggestions and I made all their suggested changes to the paper and the changes improved the paper a lot,” May said.
“Post-publication, the response was mostly favorable, but there was a lot of published criticism,” he told The Fix. “But, these critical responses to our paper are swamped by the favorable critiques. The paper is very popular and in the top 0.1% of all papers followed by Wiley… It is also the #2 paper published in AJES.”
Crok told The Fix that others responded to its publication with calls for retraction.
However, May said none of the critics “identified any errors” in their article, which is why it hasn’t been retracted.
The publisher, Wiley, “disagreed with our conclusions and wanted to censor our paper, thankfully the board did not do that, but they did fire Marty, which was a very bad move” May told The Fix.
May told The Fix, “The pressures are huge. Basically, if a climate researcher does not toe the ‘consensus’ line he will receive no funding for his work and will be ostracized. He or she is then often forced to resign or fired.”
Crok agreed, saying scientists whose research does not fit the predominant climate change narrative often are unfairly maligned.
These include Dutch scientist Hessel Voortman, “who published a paper in 2023 about sea level rise along the Dutch coast (showing no acceleration), which led to a group of Dutch scientists asking for retraction,” Crok said.
Clintel, Crok’s foundation based in the Netherlands, focuses on climate education and policies from the standpoint that climate science should be less political. In 2023, Clintel organized a petition of more than 1,600 scientists world-wide, including Nobel Laureates, that argues there is no climate change crisis.
Meanwhile, environmental policy expert H. Sterling Burnett expressed similar concerns about Rowland’s firing when contacted by The College Fix.
“Unfortunately, I’m not surprised at all by the American Journal of Economics and Sociology (AJES) firing of Dr. Rowland,” Burnett said. He is the director of the Arthur B. Robinson Center on Climate and Environmental Policy at The Heartland Institute.
“If anything, I’m surprised at how brave he was in publishing the study,” he said.
Burnett said the field of climate research is heavily censored and not open to dispute. “No one should suffer for their belief in open inquiry that is at the heart of the scientific endeavor, but in the field of climate science, far too many academics do.”
According to Burnett, academics are commonly ostracized or fired “for daring to raise perfectly legitimate questions about the causes and consequences of climate change, and about the policies proposed by the ‘settled science’ community as a response to climate change.”
Burnett said climate research was relatively open to dissenting views up until about 20 years ago when “influential climate alarmists moved to shut down continued debate and discussion about the causes and consequences of climate change, by having open minded journal editors removed from their positions or reined in by journal publishers.”
“[C]limate skeptics were increasingly shut out of the peer review process, and papers openly skeptical of the anthropogenic climate disaster narrative found it nearly impossible to get published in top journals,” he said.
Burnett told The Fix that politicians and media also contributed to disenfranchising so-called “climate deniers” under the guise of protecting scientific consensus.
When asked about claims of consensus to justify scientific censorship, he responded, “Consensus is a political term, not a scientific one and should have no legitimate place in scientific discovery. ” He said that science “is a method, a way of explaining phenomena and discovering facts, not a conclusion set in stone for all time.”
Burnett expressed hope that things are starting to change for the better following the publication of a recent report by the U.S. Department of Energy that pushes back on “climate alarmists.”
The report “is forcing alarmists to address, rather than dismiss out of hand because the ‘science is settled,’ realists long-standing questions, concerns, and critiques of the argument that humans are causing dangerous climate change,” he said.
Crok also mentioned the DOE report in his interview with The Fix, noting that the authors are now facing “severe,” negative pressure for their work.
“This battle will go on, they will try to get the report retracted as well,” Crok said. “This is a worrisome trend in which the mainstream instead of engaging with skeptical scientists simply try to get skeptical papers removed immediately.”
California governor set to sign bill restricting teaching of Palestinian history in schools
By Brooke Anderson | The New Arab | September 16, 2025
Rights advocates are raising concerns over what they say could be a troubling precedent if a bill is signed restricting the teaching of Palestinian history in classrooms in California.
The bill, AB 715, was voted through in the state’s Democratic-majority senate and assembly late Friday night and is now set to be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom.
Those opposing the measure have argued that it could stifle classroom discussions on Palestinians, Islamophobia and other sensitive topics; equate criticism of Israel with antisemitism; and make instructors vulnerable to complaints by imposing vague rules.
Over the last several months, it has faced strong opposition from more than 100 grassroots organisations, including the California Teachers Association, the California Faculty Association, California Federation of Teachers, Association of California School Administrators, California School Boards Association, California Nurses Association, and the American Civil Liberties Union. They have staged regular demonstrations at the state capitol in Sacramento.
Those supporting the bill include the Jewish Federation, the Jewish Community Relations Council, Mosaic United and the Anti-Defamation League. Though they were far fewer, they were able to exert more influence.
“They’re passing anti-education bills. The organising around it has been strong. The entire education community is against it, but it was still passed,” Mirvette Judeh, chair of the Arab American Caucus of the California Democratic Party, told The New Arab.
“They’re not listening to voters. This is a bill that’s unconstitutional. Today it’s education about Palestinian history. Tomorrow it could be something else. To punish teachers to teach about genocide is absolutely insane,” she said.
“History is history. It has to be taught. If people were taught about this in school, the mass dehumanisation of Palestinians would not be happening. They’re taking our rights here at home. This is your America. Take it back,” said Judeh, herself a Palestinian American.
So far, the governor has not indicated whether he will sign the bill, and civil rights advocates that oppose it are hoping there’s still a chance he will not sign it.
“Lawmakers heard overwhelming opposition—8 to 1 from public commenters—and warnings from their own colleagues about the bill’s chilling effect on education. Yet they advanced it anyway,” Hussam Ayloush, CEO of the California chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a public statement.
“This is now Governor Newsom’s test. He can either side with educators, civil rights advocates, and students whose voices are at risk of being silenced—or he can greenlight censorship that will make classrooms less free and less inclusive,” Ayloush added.
If signed, which could happen as early as this week, the bill’s supporters hope that it could be a blueprint for other states to pass similar legislation. This bill comes four years after the introduction in grade schools of ethnic studies, which have included material on Palestine, leading to controversy and the introduction of AB 715.
In other news related to free speech, a new bill introduced in Congress by Representative Brian Mast of Florida would allow Secretary of State Marco Rubio to strip immigrants of US citizenship if what they say is deemed to be terrorism. The move, which has been condemned by free speech advocates such as the ACLU, appears to be aimed at student activists.
Israel Wants ‘Aerial Corridor’ Over Syria to Strike Iran
By Kyle Anzalone | The Libertarian Institute | September 17, 2025
Tel Aviv’s primary objective in discussions with Damascus is to establish an aerial corridor over Syria so Israel can restart its war against Iran.
Axios reports that Israel presented the Syrian government, led by Ahmed al-Sharaa, with a maximalist agreement that would establish a no-fly zone over Syria. Additionally, Tel Aviv wants a large swath of Syria, from the Israeli border to Damascus, to become a demilitarized zone.
An Israeli source told the outlet that an essential part of the agreement will be maintaining the ability to use Syrian airspace to attack Iran. “A central principle of the Israeli proposal is maintaining an aerial corridor to Iran via Syria, which would allow for potential future Israeli strikes in Iran,” they said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu started an unprovoked war with Iran in June. Tel Aviv targeted leadership in Tehran, nuclear facilities, and scientists. President Donald Trump joined the war by striking three Iranian nuclear sites that Israel lacked the military capability to destroy.
Israeli forces currently occupy southern Syria. Israel promised to withdraw its troops from Syria if Damascus accepted the agreement. On Wednesday, Sharaa said a deal with Israel was possible “in the coming days.”
Tel Aviv made a similar agreement with Hezbollah, where Israeli soldiers were scheduled to withdraw from South Lebanon after Hezbollah moved its forces out of the region. However, after the Hezbollah withdrawal, Tel Aviv maintained its occupation. Israel is now demanding that Hezbollah entirely disarm.
The Israeli invasion of Syria began after President Bashar al-Assad was overthrown by al-Sharaa last year. Al-Sharaa, formerly Abu Mohammad al-Jolani, is the founder of al-Qaeda’s Syria affiliate. President Donald Trump has met with Sharaa and lifted some sanctions on Syria in a push to get Damascus to make a deal with Tel Aviv.
VIGILANT: British Cops Push Censorship Technology at Trinity College Dublin
By Tadhg MACDONNELL | The Burkean | September 15, 2025
Tucked away inside its Pearse Street labs and offices, Trinity College Dublin quietly plays host to a variety of initiatives and interests blurring the lines between academia, the private sector and security realm. The VIGILANT project is just one of them.
A €4 million EU-funded scheme run out of the campus’ ADAPT centre for emergent technologies, VIGILANT (Vital Intelligence to Investigate Illegal Disinformation) is a pan-European initiative bringing together the private and public sector to create and fine tune an AI-driven platform for monitoring hate speech.
Commencing work in 2022 and lasting until late this year, VIGILANT ropes in the PSNI as well as policing services of Moldova, Greece and Estonia in the fight against hate speech and disinformation.
Alongside policing services VIGILANT partners include the Spanish technology giant ATOS and GLOBSEC (a Slovakian registered Atlanticist think tank) both with their own funding streams and political agendas.
Treating online speech as a potential security threat, part of VIGILANT’s remit includes establishing an informal intelligence for officers to share information on threats. Central in its pitch is its ability to counter so-called far right extremism with the VIGILANT website listing its ability to neutralise the spread of alleged migrant crime videos as chief among its selling points.
In effect, VIGILANT creates a pan-European surveillance consortium, mixing public police powers with private data-driven expertise, headquartered in Dublin but reaching deep into continental security networks. Publicly, VIGILANT is sold as a tool to help protect democracy yet the technology’s scope flagging “hate speech” puts it squarely in the camp of shutting down civic dissent.
As readers no doubt know, “Hate speech” and “disinformation” are infinitely expandable categories. Today it’s neo-Nazis; tomorrow it’s farmers protesting carbon taxes, parents objecting to gender ideology, or critics of NATO policy or the EU.
Let’s not ignore the symbolism: the PSNI, a British police force with its own chequered legacy, is now a partner in dictating what Europeans may say online, under the banner of an Irish university. Trinity’s prestige provides the camouflage, but the reality is murky.
AfD calls for ‘Germany first’ policy
RT | September 17, 2025
Germany’s interests do not match those of its “Ukrainian partners,” and Berlin should pursue a “Germany first” policy, deputy head of the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) party’s parliamentary group, Markus Frohnmaier, has said.
Frohnmaier made the remarks on Wednesday in an interview with Rossiya 24, suggesting that Berlin should admit its economic woes largely stem from breaking ties with Russia and try to fix them.
“We are genuinely interested in normalizing relations with Russia,” Frohnmaier stated. “We simply have to acknowledge that energy prices for industry, as well as for private individuals in Germany, are now too high.”
Berlin, should it manage to display the “political will,” could “achieve a lot,” including the restoration of the Nord Stream natural gas pipelines, he suggested.
“The interests of our Ukrainian partners, for instance, do not match those of Germany. And I call for a final return to a policy that puts Germany’s interests first,” he stressed.
Germany should not get involved in the Ukraine conflict in any fashion, Frohnmaier said, arguing that it should not even consider deploying its military since most Germans strongly oppose such an idea. The politician also lamented that Berlin had abandoned its longstanding “tradition” of not supplying weapons to war zones.
Berlin has asserted itself as one of the key backers of Kiev in the conflict against Moscow, which has been raging since February 2022. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has repeatedly rejected the idea that Ukraine should make any concessions to Russia to settle the conflict, calling upon the West to pursue the “economic exhaustion” of Moscow instead.
However, Merz admitted last month that Germany is experiencing a “structural crisis” rather than just temporary “weakness.” The country was in recession last year and is expected to show no growth this year, according to IMF projections.
Still, the Merz government is planning to cut social spending and take on large loans to sustain military expansion and weapons deliveries to Ukraine. While Berlin argues those measures are necessary to deter Russia, Moscow maintains that it poses no threat to Germany.
Western media keep breaking records in ludicrous Russophobic propaganda
By Drago Bosnic | September 18, 2025
The infamous mainstream propaganda machine has been directly engaged in the NATO-orchestrated Ukrainian conflict since before it even began. It’s quite clear that Western media are an integral part of the warmongering agenda, either by promoting and trying to justify wars before they start or covering up actual NATO war crimes after the hostilities commence. One major part of this process is dehumanizing the opponent. For instance, during the kinetic phase of NATO aggression on Yugoslavia/Serbia (1991-present), Serbs were presented in the worst possible light. This one-sided viewpoint was used to justify the political West’s crawling invasion of virtually the entire former Yugoslavia, ending in a total disaster for the vast majority of the population, irrespective of ethnic, religious, cultural or any other background.
This was made possible thanks to the nearly universal dominance of the mainstream propaganda machine. They liked the results so much that they simply had to try it out during dozens of other, truly unprovoked and illegal Western invasions, particularly in the Middle East. By the early 2000s, the “evil Serbs” were replaced by “evil Arabs” and “evil Iranians” (or other predominantly Muslim ethnic groups and nations). After killing millions and destroying the lives of tens of millions, particularly across the Middle East, the political West decided it was time to “rekindle” its rivalry with Russia. Thus, after 2014, the previously implicit Russophobia became much more apparent. However, after 2022, it degenerated into mindless, pathological hatred. Suddenly, even Russian trees and cats were banned in Western countries, their vassals and satellite states.
In the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, Australia, etc., Russia was the “pariah” and simply had to be “cut off from the rest of the world”. Obviously, this failed because the multipolar bloc comprises more than 70% of the global population (in other words, the actual world). However, within the confines of Western geopolitical space, Moscow remains the “root of all evil”, particularly thanks to constant media coverage that aims to perpetuate Russophobia. As previously mentioned, this sort of hatred is reaching truly pathological levels. Nowadays, institutionalized Russophobia has gone so far that it could easily be considered a serious mental condition (perhaps even a medical emergency). This was particularly evident in the opening months of the special military operation (SMO) in NATO-occupied Ukraine.
For instance, the claims about alleged “Russian war crimes”, including supposedly “against children”, turned out to be blatant lies, with even the Kiev regime firing its children’s rights commissioner Lyudmila Denisova for spreading fakes about “Russian soldiers raping preschool kids”. However, while the mainstream propaganda machine widely published these blatant lies on front covers, they refused to apologize for this after it became clear these were all fakes. In other words, just like in the case of Serbs during the 1990s, it doesn’t matter whether the stories are true, as long as the majority of the population hears about this. For the warmongers, war criminals, plutocrats and kleptocrats in Washington DC, London and Brussels, dehumanizing the current opponent (whoever that may be) and fomenting mindless hatred is all that really matters.
Then came the role of the so-called “international justice institutions” of the “rules-based world order”. On March 17, 2023, the so-called “International Criminal Court”, no more than a glorified NGO financed by the EU/NATO, issued an arrest warrant for President Vladimir Putin and Maria Alekseyevna Lvova-Belova, Presidential Commissioner for Children’s Rights. According to the ICC, President Putin and his commissioner “kidnapped” tens of thousands of Ukrainian children. Obviously, for the political West, evacuating kids from an active warzone is a “war crime” and it would be “much better” if those kids were left to fend for themselves, either dying or ending up in Western countries, where thousands have gone missing in the last three and a half years (after those countries effectively decriminalized pedophilia).
However, that’s not the end of Russophobic propaganda. On the contrary, it needs to continue, at all costs. On September 16, numerous Western media outlets published reports about a supposed “study” by the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab claiming that “Ukrainian children have been taken to over 200 different facilities across Russia, including locations where they have been subjected to forced re-education and military training in a clear violation of international law”. There are allegedly “eight different types of facilities, ranging from summer camps to religious sites to military academies stretching across the entire expanse of Russia, [that] have been identified in the report from the Yale School of Public Health Humanitarian Research Lab published Tuesday”. However, as noted, the ludicrous propaganda doesn’t end there.
Namely, these “kidnapped” kids are supposedly “forced to build drones” for the Russian military. In other words, Russia, a country with approximately 160 million people and the fourth largest economy in the world (that also outproduces the entire NATO by a factor of three in various types of munitions and weapon systems), is “forced” to rely on several thousand “kidnapped” Ukrainian children to produce drones? That makes perfect sense, right? Jokes aside, this story about the “cartoonishly evil” Russians is so over the top that even Western commentators on social media are openly ridiculing the mainstream propaganda machine and their governments for spreading the most laughable lies in recent memory. This is certainly a welcoming development, as it could very well prevent the warmongers from galvanizing the populace for yet another senseless bloodbath.
Drago Bosnic is an independent geopolitical and military analyst.
Former CDC Officials Take Aim at RFK Jr. During Senate Hearing
By Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D. | The Defender | September 17, 2025
The U.S. Senate hearing that began today as an investigation into the firing of the CDC director and the resignations of other key agency officials morphed quickly into a forum for accusing U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. of posing a threat to public health.
“Today should not be about me,” former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Susan Monarez, Ph.D., told senators. “Today should be about the future of trust in public health.”
Monarez testified that she was fired for “holding the line of scientific integrity.” Dr. Debra Houry, former chief medical officer of the CDC who resigned after Monarez’s firing, also testified.
“Trust and transparency have been broken” under Kennedy’s leadership, Houry told members of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP), which held the hearing.
She criticized Kennedy’s handling of the recent measles outbreak and the changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations.
The committee will hold another hearing in the future to allow Kennedy and current CDC officials to refute allegations made by Monarez and Houry, said Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the committee chair. “I want President Trump to have the best CDC in our nation’s history,” he said.
According to Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), minority chair, the hearing was really about Kennedy’s “dangerous war on science, public health and the truth itself.”
Sanders praised Monarez for standing up for the “scientific method” and refusing to “rubber-stamp” Kennedy’s “dangerous agenda.”
Monarez testified that “vaccines are not controversial because they work.”
She also recounted how the CDC was attacked by a gunman who, in her words, was “driven by vaccine distrust.”
Sen. Roger Marshall (R-Kan.) called out the agency for creating public distrust during the COVID-19 pandemic. “The CDC is the cause of vaccine hesitancy,” he said.
Sanders refuses to have Monarez, Houry sworn in
The hearing came as no surprise. The day Monarez was fired, Cassidy posted on X that the sudden departure of top CDC officials “will require oversight” by the committee.
Cassidy wanted Monarez and Houry to be sworn in before their testimony. However, Sanders — whose approval was needed as minority leader — refused, saying Kennedy wasn’t sworn in at a prior hearing.
When another senator challenged Sanders’ refusal, Cassidy pointed out that Kennedy would be sworn in for future hearings related to today’s testimony.
Sanders still refused.
Cassidy reminded the witnesses that it’s illegal to lie to senators, even without explicitly vowing to tell the truth. Yet throughout the hearing, several senators questioned whether Monarez and Houry were being honest.
A U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) spokesperson told The Defender that Monarez’s prepared remarks contain “factual inaccuracies and leave out important details,” adding:
“Here’s the reality: Susan Monarez was tasked with returning the CDC to its core mission after decades of bureaucratic inertia, politicized science and mission creep corroded its purpose and squandered public trust.
“Instead, she acted maliciously to undermine the President’s agenda and was fired as a result. Some of her biggest offenses include neglecting to implement President Trump’s executive orders, making policy decisions without the knowledge or consent of Secretary Kennedy or the White House, limiting badge access for Trump’s political appointees, and removing a Secretarial appointee without consulting anyone. When she refused to acknowledge her insubordination, President Trump fired her.”
Children’s Health Defense CEO Mary Holland said Monarez represented the CDC’s “old guard” and that her termination was “necessary and proper.” She said:
“Monarez is assiduously following the pharma-funded script to attempt to oust Kennedy as HHS Secretary. Yet the obvious reality is that the CDC has lost the trust of the nation and the world, and radical reform is absolutely required if the agency is to continue at all.”
Senators, Monarez dispute details surrounding her firing
Senators at the hearing attempted to clarify disputed details surrounding Monarez’s firing.
The White House confirmed on Aug. 27 that she was fired after Kennedy tried to force her resignation and she refused to leave. Shortly after, Monarez wrote in an op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that she was fired because she “held the line and insisted on rigorous scientific review.”
She reiterated the claim in today’s hearing, saying Kennedy had given her a choice: accept the recommendations of the new Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices and fire top CDC officials responsible for vaccine policy, or resign.
According to Kennedy, he fired her because she responded “no” when he asked her, “Are you a trustworthy person?”
Monarez said the conversation went differently. “He told me he couldn’t trust me,” she said. “I told him that if he could not trust me, he could fire me.”
Sen. Markwayne Mullin (R-Okla.) pressed Monarez on details of the conversation, saying it had been recorded. However, he reportedly backtracked on the claim. “If HHS has a recording, I ask them to release it,” Cassidy said.
Cassidy also asked for all documentation related to the conversation for the committee to review.
Houry testified that she resigned because Kennedy “censored CDC science, politicized its processes and stripped leaders of independence.”
Andrew G. Nixon, an HHS spokesman, told The New York Times that Kennedy “has insisted that decisions be evidence-based, open to scrutiny and free from the kind of closed-door processes that undermined confidence in the C.D.C. during the pandemic.”
Monarez evasive on COVID and Hep B vaccines
Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) asked Monarez if the COVID-19 vaccine prevented transmission or reduced children’s risk of hospitalization or death.
She replied, “It can.”
Paul cited research contradicting Monarez’s answer. He pointed out that children who get the COVID-19 shot face a heightened risk of myocarditis, and the shot fails to lower their risk of hospitalization or death.
James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., criticized Monarez in a Substack post, saying she was unable to provide substantive answers to Paul’s questions.
Lyons-Weiler also noted that Monarez offered “no credible defense” when Paul asked why it was important for newborns to get the hepatitis B vaccine if their mother was hepatitis B negative.
The CDC’s vaccine advisory panel is expected to vote Thursday on certain childhood vaccine recommendations, including the hepatitis B (Hep B) vaccine.
Critics have long raised concerns about the safety and necessity of giving the vaccine to newborns, particularly those not at risk for the disease. Today, the Hep B vaccine contains at least 250 micrograms of aluminum, and aluminum exposure has been linked to autism.
Paul asked Monarez, “What is the medical, scientific reason and proof for giving a newborn a hepatitis B vaccine if the mom is Hep B negative?”
Monarez refused to answer the question.
Paul called out Monarez for evading questions about specific vaccines and hiding behind vague assertions that all vaccines are “safe and effective.”
He said the burden should be on the CDC and its staff to prove that the benefits of giving babies COVID-19 and Hep B vaccines outweigh the risks. “That’s what the debate ought to be about,” he said. “Not on whether all vaccines are good.”
Monarez repeatedly said that the CDC doesn’t “mandate” vaccines; the agency only makes “recommendations.”
While technically correct, her answer overlooks the reality that many states use the agency’s recommendations when mandating vaccines for school entry.
Monarez was first CDC director in 70 years without medical degree
In March, Trump nominated Monarez for director of the CDC, where she had served as acting director until her nomination.
She was the first CDC director confirmed under a law passed in 2023 that requires Senate confirmation for the position. She was also the first person, in more than 70 years, without a medical degree to serve in the role. She has a doctorate in microbiology and immunology.
Trump nominated Monarez after withdrawing the nomination of Dr. Dave Weldon, who reportedly failed to secure enough votes because of comments he made suggesting a possible link between autism and vaccines.
Monarez, a biosecurity veteran, was previously deputy director of the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), an agency within HHS created by the Biden administration to accelerate “high-risk, high-reward” biomedical research.
ARPA-H is modeled after the U.S. military’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency or DARPA. Monarez also previously held positions with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and in the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy.
During her confirmation hearing before the Senate committee, Monarez affirmed her belief that “vaccines save lives,” and pledged to prioritize vaccine availability. She said mRNA vaccines are “safe and with demonstrated efficacy,” and she said she was unaware of any confirmed scientific link between vaccines and autism.
In her WSJ op-ed about why she was fired, Monarez said:
“Those seeking to undermine vaccines use a familiar playbook: discredit research, weaken advisory committees, and use manipulated outcomes to unravel protections that generations of families have relied on to keep deadly diseases at bay.”
Mark Crispin Miller, Ph.D., professor of media studies at New York University, told The Defender that Monarez is playing an old trick called “accusation in the mirror,” in which a person accuses their enemy of doing what the person has been doing.
He said:
“The trick usually works because it’s so disorienting, and most people have a hard time believing that anybody as ‘respectable’ as Susan Monarez — a woman with a Ph.D., who worked at CDC — could be so utterly dishonest. The only way to fight it is to call it out immediately, loud and clear.”
Watch the hearing here.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
Court Rejects Former Disinformation Board Chief Nina Jankowicz’s Defamation Suit Against Fox News
By Dan Frieth | Reclaim The Net | September 17, 2025
A federal appeals court has ruled against Nina Jankowicz in her defamation lawsuit against Fox News, finding that the network’s coverage, while harsh and frequently personal, was protected under the First Amendment as opinion or substantially true.
The Third Circuit issued its decision on Friday, affirming a lower court’s dismissal of the case.
Jankowicz, who served briefly as Executive Director of the Department of Homeland Security’s Disinformation Governance Board in 2022, argued that Fox News had targeted her with a smear campaign that misrepresented her role as being pro-censorship.
The court concluded that Fox’s statements did not meet the legal standard for defamation.
Jankowicz held the DHS position for less than three months. Her role was confined to coordinating and recommending best practices regarding disinformation threats to national security.
After the Board’s public announcement in April 2022, Fox News repeatedly criticized both the Board and Jankowicz.
Network hosts and guests aired segments calling the Board a “Ministry of Truth” and warned that it posed a danger to free expression.
Jankowicz claimed her photo was frequently shown during these broadcasts and that she was personally attacked, described as someone intent on censoring Americans.
DHS, along with other officials and even the White House Press Secretary, said that the Board had no enforcement authority.
Fox News continued to run segments making the same accusations. One point of focus for Fox was an interview in which Jankowicz discussed Twitter’s Birdwatch initiative.
On May 18, 2022, DHS announced that the Board would be paused. Jankowicz was offered a position as a policy advisor but chose to resign.
Fox personalities celebrated her departure, claiming she was “booted” or “yanked,” and suggested that her presence had embarrassed the administration.
Jankowicz brought a defamation suit against Fox, citing three primary claims.
According to the opinion by Judge Restrepo, the court found that the statements highlighted by Jankowicz fell into three categories: that she intended to censor speech, that she was fired from DHS, and that she supported verified Twitter users being able to edit others’ tweets.
The judges agreed with the lower court that none of these statements constituted defamation per se under the law.
The ruling emphasized that statements must be clearly “of and concerning” the plaintiff to be considered defamatory.
Despite Jankowicz’s argument that her image and name were frequently used during Fox’s segments on the Disinformation Governance Board, the court held that this was insufficient.
Referencing Rosenblatt v. Baer and New York Times Co. v. Sullivan, the court reiterated that criticism of government entities cannot be automatically equated with personal attacks on individuals within those entities. The panel wrote:
“Nor does merely referencing an official in the same segment that a critique of government is made—nor using an official’s photo as ‘a visual placeholder’… show that an ‘attack was read as specifically directed at the plaintiff.’”
On the claim that Fox had falsely accused her of pushing censorship, the court concluded the network’s statements fell under constitutionally protected opinion, especially given the political nature of the discourse.
The court noted that accusations of “censorship,” “thought control,” or calling Jankowicz “our new disinformation minister” are the kind of “hyperbolic descriptions” commonly found in political debate.
The judges ruled that these were not provable statements of fact and thus not defamatory under New York law.
“Such an amorphous political accusation cannot be assessed as true or false until the term is given a more precise meaning and thus, these statements lack the precision to give rise to a defamation claim,” the opinion stated.
Jankowicz also objected to Fox’s framing of her departure from DHS as a firing. Fox hosts had described her as having been “booted” or “yanked” from her post, while she argued she had voluntarily resigned after the board was paused.
But the court found no meaningful difference. It pointed out that the board was effectively shut down and that although she was offered a reassignment, she declined. The opinion concluded:
“There was no error in the District Court’s determination that this turbulent departure from DHS had the same gist and sting as a firing.”
Finally, the court reviewed statements about Jankowicz’s remarks on Twitter’s “Birdwatch” program, which allows users to add context to tweets.
Fox hosts had claimed she wanted to let verified users “edit” other users’ posts. The court said that interpretation was “substantially true,” quoting her own words where she described Birdwatch as a system that would let users “essentially start to ‘edit’ Twitter.”
Even though she included caveats about the limitations of the program, the court concluded that her comments amounted to a partial endorsement.
“Because Jankowicz expressed appreciation for the Birdwatch feature—even though she noted it was not a global solution to Twitter’s problems—it was substantially true to say she had ‘pitched’ it and that the feature was ‘her fix.’”
The court’s decision ultimately reaffirmed long-standing First Amendment protections, particularly for speech about public officials and government programs.
The ruling cautioned against stretching defamation law to silence media commentary on public affairs, no matter how intense or one-sided that coverage may appear.
“Jankowicz’s position—that criticism of government is transformed into actionable defamation when a television program displays an image of a government official or references a government official’s name in the same segment—is precisely the sort of attack on core free expression rights that Sullivan sought to avoid,” the court wrote.
The judgment signals a robust defense of political commentary and journalistic expression, particularly when it targets those in or associated with government power.
Chat Control will bring totalitarian communication regulation to so-called free Europe
By Ahmed Adel | September 18, 2025
European Union member countries will soon vote on the “Chat Control” law, which aims to end privacy when texting. Instead of a message going directly from sender to recipient, it will first be sent to a large database, where it will be thoroughly checked for eligibility. Essentially, this bill would require private providers of proprietary software to scan for anything they deem offensive or illegal. Many security experts argue that this would compromise the encryption algorithms currently protecting private messages from being read or viewed by anyone other than the intended recipient.
Since there is very little information available about what is technically envisioned for the implementation of this regulation, it appears to be more of an attempt to legalize post-hoc wiretapping schemes that already exist. For example, there was last year’s scandal involving the arrest of Pavel Durov, the founder of Telegram, a messaging app renowned for its data protection and encryption. The arrest of Durov was intended to pressure him into providing French intelligence services with a so-called “back door,” or special access to those communications.
Corporations, fearing lawsuits and their own liability, insist that the current arrangement, which has existed informally since the beginning of social media, be legalized in some way. The problem is that this is now difficult to impose because, although the idea has no open technical issues, it entails several fundamental problems, particularly the normalization of mass wiretapping and the erosion of what little trust people have in corporations. Take, for example, Google, which introduced Gmail and boasted about the security of its email service, which humans never read. However, although humans do not read them, they are monitored by Artificial Intelligence.
There is little difference whether humans or AI is monitoring communication, as the effects are still devastating for privacy. No police or intelligence service has enough people to monitor such a volume of messages. Algorithms now do that, and when human control is replaced with algorithmic control, public speech becomes severely limited, destroying not only the possibility of freedom of speech but also that of normal communication. As human communication on social media has become increasingly difficult due to bots and AI, people are now turning to chat apps, such as Viber, Telegram, and WhatsApp.
Corporations recognize that they are losing money due to the decline in interest in public debate, which is precisely a result of totalitarian control. For this reason, the EU now wants to establish the same type of control over the private part of our communication. Many people have adopted a mechanical, robotic logic of thinking because they have been coerced into self-censorship. However, many people who are aware of this situation still consider it unacceptable that the EU wants control over our communication.
The EU is notorious for precisely this unanimity and the ease with which the vast majority of citizens accept any position that is current at that moment, such as accepting increasing electricity prices, vaccinations, illegal immigrants, and sanctions against Russia.
A large portion of humanity uses social media. Therefore, even under ideal circumstances, AI will inevitably make many terrible mistakes. It is impossible for hundreds of millions of people communicating in different languages, making jokes or being ironic, to be constantly flagged and then monitored.
At the same time, people will stop using platforms that deny them freedom of speech and thought. Just as people boycott newspapers and television stations that participated in fake news and disinformation, they will boycott platforms where their privacy is eroded.
These are all processes that are already underway, and the debate over Chat Control is more about legalizing and normalizing surveillance of the public than proposing something important or new to people.
Chat Control was first proposed in 2022 but was voted down in 2023. This latest version, put forward by Denmark, which currently holds the rotating presidency of the EU Council, would require chat services to allow AI-based message screening before encryption in an effort to detect the sharing of child abuse material.
To pass, the Chat Control bill needs at least 65% support of the EU population. Although France, Spain, and Italy support Chat Control, Germany became the key opposition because its population ensures the impossibility of reaching the needed 65%, even if Estonia, Greece, Romania, and Slovenia – the four undecided countries – choose to support the law, as it would only add up to roughly 59% of the total EU population. Although it is evident that EU technocrats and the leading countries of the bloc, with the exception of Germany, are desperate for Chat Control, it appears that this draconian bill will not pass at this stage.
Ahmed Adel is a Cairo-based geopolitics and political economy researcher.
Fugitive Scientist Behind Vaccine and Autism Studies Arrested for Stealing $1 Million From CDC
By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender |September 16, 2025
Danish scientist Poul Thorsen, who co-authored influential papers in 2002 and 2003, used to argue against the link between vaccines and autism, was arrested in Germany and may be extradited to the U.S. on charges of stealing nearly $1 million in research money, Breitbart News reported.
Thorsen was listed as a fugitive on the U.S. Office of the Inspector General’s most wanted list for over a decade.
He reportedly was arrested in June following an Interpol Red Notice, a request to international law enforcement to locate and provisionally arrest a wanted person. The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) is working with German authorities to extradite him to the U.S., an unnamed DOJ official told Breitbart.
Thorsen allegedly absconded with over $1 million from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) as part of a scheme to steal grant money awarded to governmental agencies in Denmark for autism research.
A federal grand jury indicted Thorsen in Atlanta in 2011 on 22 counts of wire fraud and money laundering. However, Denmark previously refused to extradite him, so he wasn’t prosecuted, Forbes reported.
‘Number one’ on the HHS most wanted list
Thorsen’s research, allegedly “debunking” the link between autism and the measles-mumps-rubella or MMR vaccine and other thimerosal-containing vaccines, was cited by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) as proof of no link.
His research was also used as evidence in the National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program’s (VICP) proceedings to deny the injury claims of more than 5,000 families.
Thorsen’s findings have been widely criticized by safe vaccine advocates as seriously flawed and potentially fraudulent.
“Thorsen has been number one on the Health and Human Services (HHS) most wanted list for the past 10 years,” HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., a long-time critic of Thorsen’s studies, told Breitbart following reports of Thorsen’s arrest.
HHS did not respond to The Defender’s request to confirm whether Thorsen had been detained.
Author James Grundvig told The Defender that Thorsen’s arrest has the potential to expose a long history of misconduct within the CDC.
Grundvig wrote “Master Manipulator: The Explosive True Story of Fraud, Embezzlement, and Government Betrayal at the CDC,” which details the story of Thorsen’s alleged role in a broader CDC manipulation of vaccine safety studies.
“It is not just Thorsen,” Grundvig said. “It won’t be just taking down one guy.” If Thorsen is compelled to testify, “he will be pointing fingers and naming names.”
Children’s Health Defense Chief Scientific Officer Brian Hooker said:
“I really want to emphasize that this crime is much bigger than Thorsen. His collaborators need to be brought to justice as well. They partied on the backs of many autistic children. Frankly, jail time is too good for Thorsen and the many other fraudsters at CDC, IOM and the VICP!”
Thorsen used grant money to buy home, motorcycle, cars
Beginning in the 1990s, Thorsen, who worked as a visiting scientist at the CDC when the agency was soliciting grant applications for research about infant disabilities, advocated for grants on behalf of Danish scientists and institutions.
Between 2000 and 2009, the CDC awarded over $11 million to two Danish government agencies to study the relationship between vaccines and autism, and other infant developmental issues, according to a 2011 press release by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia and Grundvig’s book.
In 2002, Thorsen relocated to Denmark to serve as principal investigator on the grant, overseeing the distribution of research money. The research was done by Aarhus University and Odense University Hospital in Denmark.
Between 2004 and 2008, Thorsen allegedly submitted more than a dozen fraudulent invoices on CDC letterhead to the medical facilities conducting the research for costs incurred for work related to the grant.
The facilities transferred hundreds of thousands of dollars in payments to fake CDC accounts at the CDC Federal Credit Union in Atlanta. However, the money actually was deposited into Thorsen’s personal accounts.
Thorsen allegedly used the money to purchase a home in Atlanta, a Harley Davidson motorcycle and cars, among other items. Overall, he withdrew more than $1 million, according to reports.
The indictment charged Thorsen with 13 counts of wire fraud and nine counts of money laundering, each carrying potentially long prison sentences and heavy fines. It also sought forfeiture of all property purchased with the fraudulently obtained funds.
Fabricated results seem ‘all but certain’ in research involving Thorsen
Mainstream media writers have mocked the long-term critiques of Thorsen’s work as “conspiracy theories,” and argued that, as a co-author, his contributions to the papers didn’t skew the results.
In a Substack post detailing Thorsen’s history and the studies he co-authored, scientist James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., said Thorsen’s influence on the research was concerning and the studies themselves were flawed.
He said:
“Although his scientific findings must be evaluated on their own merits, including data sources, design, and replicability, his case may be critical in revealing decision-making and could produce evidence of wrong-doing by Thorsen and others. Defrauding the US Government of research dollars is a crime. (This includes misuse and scientific fraud).
“Results fabrication in the Danish registry results seems all but certain given the clear evidence of those practices in other studies on the topic of vaccines and autism.”
The Danish government, since 1968, has maintained an extensive registry of birth and health records on all of its citizens. This provided a rich database for research on childhood disabilities, Grundvig said.
According to Lyons-Weiler, the Danish registry studies published by Thorsen and others were riddled with methodological flaws, including vulnerability to confounding variables over time, shifting diagnostic categories that distorted the data, misclassification and reporting biases and conflicts of interest.
Lyons-Weiler called for greater transparency in that research, including access to the original datasets, registries, study methods and peer review processes.
He said the studies should be replicated, the policies derived from them should be reexamined, and the public should be provided clarity on which studies Thorsen influenced.
This article was originally published by The Defender — Children’s Health Defense’s News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please consider subscribing to The Defender or donating to Children’s Health Defense.
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The lies about the 1967 war are still more powerful than the truth
By Alan Hart | June 4, 2012
In retrospect it can be seen that the 1967 war, the Six Days War, was the turning point in the relationship between the Zionist state of Israel and the Jews of the world (the majority of Jews who prefer to live not in Israel but as citizens of many other nations). Until the 1967 war, and with the exception of a minority of who were politically active, most non-Israeli Jews did not have – how can I put it? – a great empathy with Zionism’s child. Israel was there and, in the sub-consciousness, a refuge of last resort; but the Jewish nationalism it represented had not generated the overtly enthusiastic support of the Jews of the world. The Jews of Israel were in their chosen place and the Jews of the world were in their chosen places. There was not, so to speak, a great feeling of togetherness. At a point David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s founding father and first prime minister, was so disillusioned by the indifference of world Jewry that he went public with his criticism – not enough Jews were coming to live in Israel.
So how and why did the 1967 war transform the relationship between the Jews of the world and Israel? … continue
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