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US lawmakers spending summer break with AIPAC touring Israel

By Stavroula Pabst | Responsible Statecraft | August 7, 2025

As lawmakers increasingly challenge Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip, pro-Israel lobby group AIPAC is working around the clock to keep sympathetic lawmakers within arms’ reach.

Just in time for the congressional summer recess, AIPAC has arranged trips to Jerusalem for dozens of pro-Israel Democrats and Republicans, and a visit with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for scores of Republicans still in Washington.

But that’s not all. Other lawmakers are on their own, separate trips to Israel. Speaker of the House Mike Johnson (R.-La.) went there this week, including a stop at illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, with a cohort of four other pro-Israel Republicans: Michael McCaul (R-Texas), Michael Cloud (R-Texas), Claudia Tenney (R-N.Y.) and Nathaniel Moran (R-Texas). Their trip was sponsored by the U.S. Israel Education Association.

Meanwhile, Rick Crawford (R-Ar.), chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, led a bipartisan Congressional Delegation (CODEL) to Israel since its brief war on Iran earlier this summer.

Critics pounced on the reports, videos and photographs circulating across social media, pointing out that these lawmakers risk looking tone deaf and in the thrall of the Israel lobby on Capitol Hill.

“The debacle of both Republican and Democratic members of Congress traveling to Israel during August recess, when they would otherwise ostensibly be meeting with constituents in their districts, demonstrates the pervasiveness of the Israel lobby’s hold on American politicians,” Annelle Sheline, a research fellow for the Quincy Institute’s Middle East program, told RS.

Moreover, paying allegiance to a regime that “is literally withholding baby formula from starving infants — makes these photo ops all the more grotesque,” she added.

“Catastrophic optics that lends firepower to the impression, on the ascent among younger people on the right, that [Israel] is these politicians’ home district,” Curt Mills, the executive director at The American Conservative, told RS.

“Members of Congress, including Speaker Mike Johnson, are in Israel, not their districts. They visited an illegal settlement. Praised the IDF. Said nothing about the settlers terrorizing Palestinians,” founder of anti-war group CODEPINK Medea Benjamin wrote on X Monday. “Shame on them. They don’t serve us, they serve AIPAC.”

Josh Paul, the co-founder and Director of Washington-based think tank A New Policy, stressed to RS that the AIPAC-sponsored trips to Israel in particular are always lopsided in Jerusalem’s favor.

“The visit in question, it is important to note, is not a ‘CODEL’ arranged by the State Department to provide Members of Congress with the opportunity to understand the world better. Rather, it is what they call a ‘NODEL’ — an all-expenses-paid first class trip with five star hotels intended to present just one side of an issue,” he said. “That it involves a friendly meeting with a foreign leader who is currently under indictment for war crimes is just the icing on the cake.”

“The law may allow the loopholes that allow for what in any other context would clearly be the exertion of undue foreign influence and bribery to go by the name of an ‘educational trip,’ but that doesn’t mean that the Americans whose Members are spending their District Work Period on AIPAC’s dime should stand for it,” Paul added.

AIPAC may be ramping up the charm tours as more members publicly share concerns over the starvation and growing death toll, and increasingly challenge U.S. complicity through financial and military support.

To this end, pro-Israel lawmakers like Sens. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.), have demanded action on the aid situation in Gaza. Last week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) became the first Republican Congressperson to call Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip a genocide. And although a pair of bills introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) to block some arms sales to Israel last week failed in the Senate, they received more support from Democrats than similar efforts did in the past.

Meanwhile, Americans are becoming less sympathetic to Israel and its war on Palestinians, suggesting these trips fall flat with at least some of their constituents.

To this point, Sheline told RS: “Blind loyalty to Israel and dehumanization of Palestinians is no longer the sure electoral win it once was, as these politicians may learn in the midterms.”

August 12, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism | , , , | Leave a comment

AAP, AMA Booted From CDC Vaccine Advisory Working Groups

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 8, 2025

The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), the American Medical Association (AMA) and six other major medical associations will no longer participate in advising the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) on vaccine policy, Bloomberg reported.

The associations said they were informed via email last week that their vaccine experts were being disinvited from the workgroups that report to the CDC’s vaccine advisory committee.

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) decides which vaccines should be recommended to the public, who should take them and how often. Its recommendations help determine which vaccines will be covered by the CDC’s Vaccines for Children Program and insurers, and will be mandated by states for daycare and school attendance.

The medical association members will no longer be invited to participate in the working groups that review data and form policy recommendations. However, they will be able to participate in the open public meetings, like the rest of the public.

They are being eliminated because they are “special interest groups and therefore are expected to have a ‘bias’ based on their constituency and/or population that they represent,” according to one U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) email reported by The Associated Press.

HHS spokesperson Andrew Nixon confirmed the decision in an email. He said:

“Under the old ACIP, outside pressure to align with vaccine orthodoxy limited asking the hard questions. The old ACIP members were plagued by conflicts of interest, influence, and bias. We are fulfilling our promise to the American people to never again allow those conflicts to taint vaccine recommendations.

“Experts will continue to be included based on relevant experience and expertise, not because of what organization they are with.”

Groups call decision ‘irresponsible, dangerous’ to public health

The organizations responded in a joint statement, claiming the decision is “irresponsible, dangerous to our nation’s health, and will further undermine public and clinician trust in vaccines.” They called on the Trump administration to reconsider the decision.

“We are deeply disappointed and alarmed that our organizations are being characterized as ‘biased’ and therefore barred from reviewing scientific data and informing the development of vaccine recommendations that have long helped ensure our nation’s vaccine program is safe, effective, and free from bias,” they wrote.

In addition to the AAP and the AMA, the statement was signed by the American Academy of Family Physicians, American College of Physicians, American Geriatrics Society, American Osteopathic Association, Infectious Diseases Society of America and the National Medical Association.

The decision was the latest attempt by U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to address the problem of industry influence over ACIP.

In June, Kennedy announced that HHS was retiring all 17 members of ACIP to eliminate conflicts of interest. At the time, most members had financial ties to pharmaceutical companies marketing vaccines, or had worked with public health agencies to promote controversial vaccines, including the COVID-19, RSV and HPV shots.

Two days later, Kennedy named eight researchers and physicians to replace approximately half of the members. One nominee declined to participate.

At the first meeting of the new ACIP committee, the members voted to stop recommending flu shots that contain thimerosal, a mercury-based preservative linked to neurodevelopmental disorders. The AAP, which criticized the decision, maintains that thimerosal is “safe.”

The committee also voted to recommend Merck’s new RSV monoclonal antibody shot for newborns.

Every group kicked out of ACIP takes corporate money from Big Pharma

In July, several of the medical associations removed last week from the ACIP working groups sued Kennedy and other public health officials and agencies over the changes to COVID-19 vaccine recommendations for children and pregnant women.

The groups’ lead lawyer, Richard Henry Hughes IV, was vice president of public policy at Moderna from 2020-2022, when the vaccine maker developed and marketed the Spikevax COVID-19 vaccine, which has netted the company billions of dollars over the last four years. He also previously worked for Merck.

Last month, the AAP also called for an end to religious and philosophical vaccine exemptions for children attending daycare and school in the U.S.

In an updated policy statement published in Pediatrics, the AAP said universal immunization is necessary to keep children and employees safe. The organization said there is a place for “legitimate” medical exemptions, but nonmedical exemptions — part of the fundamental constitutional right to freedom of religion — are “problematic.”

In addition to working with lobbyists like Hughes, every organization expelled from the ACIP working group is funded by the pharmaceutical industry.

The AAP, the major professional organization representing 67,000 pediatricians in the U.S., has overseen the rising rates of chronic illness and medication of American children over recent decades. It is also a lobbying organization that, over the previous six years, has spent between $748,000 and $1,180,000 annually advocating for its members, according to the government website Open Secrets.

The organization’s funding for that work comes, in part, from annual contributions from corporate sponsors, including vaccine manufacturers Moderna, Merck, Sanofi, Abbott Laboratories, GSK and CSL Seqirus.

The AMA is also funded in part by corporate sponsorships. In the past, it came under fire for taking more than $600,000 from pharmaceutical companies to finance a $1 million campaign to promote ethical guidelines discouraging doctors from accepting expensive gifts from drug companies, The Lancet reported.

AMA funding also comes from the AMA Foundation, which is funded by “Roundtable members” from the pharmaceutical industry. Its largest donor is PhRMA, the primary lobbying organization for the industry — which spent a record $12.88 million lobbying for the industry in the first quarter of 2025.

Other AMA sponsors include Agmen, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, Genentech, GSK, Merck, Novartis, Pfizer, Sanofi and others.

The National Medical Association takes funding from Eli Lilly, Gilead, Regeneron, Pfizer, Merck, Amgen, Novo Nordisk, Vertex, AstraZeneca and others.

The Infectious Diseases Society of America partners with Abbvie, AstraZeneca, Gilead, GSK, Merck, Moderna, Pfizer, Sanofi and others.

A similar list of Big Pharma companies funds the American Academy of Family Physicians, which also partners with Amazon Pharmacy.

Pharma giants, including Pfizer and Johnson & Johnson, are on the long list of the American College of Physicians’ corporate sponsors, along with Big Food giants Tyson Foods and PepsiCo.

The American Geriatrics Society’s financial disclosure statement shows that it has various corporate sponsors, including Merck and Pfizer.

The American Osteopathic Association also has several corporate sponsors, including Pfizer, Astellas, Merck and Sanofi.

New ACIP committee member Retsef Levi, Ph.D., in a post on X, said that instead of these industry-sponsored organizations, the working groups plan to engage experts from a broader set of disciplines.

The working group participation will now “be based on merit & expertise,” he wrote, “not membership in organizations proven to have COIs [conflicts-of-interest] and radical & narrow view of public health!”

Related articles in The Defender

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.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Corruption | , , , | Leave a comment

The Moral Cost of Modern Transplant Medicine

By Joseph Varon | Brownstone Institute | August 9, 2025

In a time when trust in public health is already hanging by a thread, recent revelations from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have delivered another blow—one that strikes at the very heart of medical ethics.

“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Kennedy said. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”

Hidden beneath the surface and quietly ignored by corporate media is a story that should horrify every physician, patient, and policymaker: the commodification of human life in the American transplant system.

The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a coalition of physicians dedicated to restoring transparency and patient-centered care, has publicly denounced the findings of a recent HHS report. As President of IMA, I can tell you this: what we’ve uncovered is not a case of benign negligence. It is a deliberate erosion of the most sacred values in medicine—consent, dignity, and the inviolability of the human body.

A System That No Longer Sees the Patient

Organ transplantation is, in theory, one of the great achievements of modern medicine. When practiced ethically and transparently, it has saved countless lives. But like so many institutions corrupted by profit and policy, it has drifted far from its original mission.

In 2024 alone, over 45,000 organ transplants were performed in the United States. That number should inspire hope—but instead, it invites scrutiny. A substantial portion of those organs were harvested under ethically ambiguous conditions, including donation after circulatory death (DCD) and questionable determinations of brain death. The line between patient and donor is blurring—and not in a way that honors either.

Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) are incentivized not by patient outcomes, but by volume. The more organs they harvest, the more funding they receive. Hospitals, too, receive significant reimbursement for transplant procedures, creating a perverse system where terminal patients are seen less as individuals with complex medical stories and more as reservoirs of reusable parts. The New York Times has published a piece that urges standards of death to be liberalized even further. “We need to figure out how to obtain more healthy organs from donors… We need to broaden the definition of death.”

Where Are These Organs Coming From?

The public assumes, understandably, that most organ donors are willing participants—cadaveric donors who’ve signed cards or checked boxes. But the data doesn’t support that rosy picture. A growing percentage of organ procurement comes from patients who are not dead in the traditional sense but are declared brain dead or transitioned to DCD protocols under murky guidelines.

Let’s talk plainly: Who decides when a person is truly dead? And how confident are we, as physicians, that our criteria are airtight?

The Trouble with Brain Death

Brain death is defined as the irreversible cessation of all brain activity, including the brainstem. On paper, that sounds final. In practice, it’s anything but. There is no universal standard for determining brain death in the United States. Each state, and often each hospital, may have its own protocol.

Here’s how it’s supposed to be done:

  1. Prerequisites:
    • Establish cause of coma (e.g., trauma, hemorrhage, anoxic injury)
    • Rule out confounding factors: intoxication, metabolic disturbances, hypothermia
    • Ensure normothermia, normal electrolytes, and absence of sedatives or paralytics
  2. Neurological Exam:
    • No responsiveness to verbal or noxious stimuli
    • Absent brainstem reflexes:
      • Pupillary response to light
      • Corneal reflex
      • Oculocephalic reflex (“doll’s eyes”)
      • Oculovestibular reflex (cold calorics)
      • Gag and cough reflex
      • No spontaneous breathing on apnea testing (typically ≥8 minutes off ventilator with rising PaCO₂)
  3. Confirmatory Testing (if clinical exam incomplete or legally required):
    • Cerebral blood flow studies
    • EEG (flatline)
    • Nuclear medicine perfusion scans

It’s a thorough process—when done correctly. But that’s precisely the issue: it’s not always done correctly. There are documented cases where brain death was declared prematurely or without full testing. Hospitals under pressure to free up ICU beds or meet organ quotas may streamline protocols, sometimes performing incomplete assessments or skipping confirmatory imaging altogether.

In one documented case from a major metropolitan hospital, a patient declared brain dead still had spontaneous movements and reactive pupils—until a more experienced intensivist reversed the call and the patient recovered. That is not “rare.” That is underreported.

Even the apnea test, long considered a gold standard, is increasingly controversial. It requires removing the patient from mechanical ventilation long enough to provoke a rise in CO₂. But this test, by definition, stresses the brain and may worsen injury. In borderline cases, it can tip a patient from injured to truly nonviable. And it assumes that the absence of any spontaneous respiration equals death, a standard that conflates clinical irreversibility with absolute neurologic death.

The Rise of DCD and the Ethical Quagmire

Donation after circulatory death (DCD) is another increasingly common method of procurement. In DCD, life support is withdrawn, and after the heart stops—typically for just 2 to 5 minutes—organ harvesting begins. The ethical argument here is that the patient has died a “natural” death. But how natural is it when withdrawal of care is timed and orchestrated to maximize organ viability?

Imagine this scenario: a family is told their loved one is not brain dead but has “no chance” of recovery. They agree to withdraw support. Moments after the heart stops, a surgical team—already scrubbed and waiting—enters the room. The skin is still warm. The body is still perfused. And the scalpel goes in.

That’s not hypothetical. That’s protocol in many transplant centers today.

And it’s not only adults. Pediatric DCD cases are growing, too, with parental consent forms often filled out under stress, confusion, or duress.

This is not medicine. It’s logistics.

Incentives, Pressure, and Profit

The transplantation field has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. The average kidney transplant is reimbursed at over $300,000. Liver and heart transplants exceed $1 million. OPOs operate as pseudo-nonprofit organizations but are rewarded financially based on volume.

HHS oversight of these organizations is minimal. Even after several critical reports by the Office of Inspector General, no sweeping reforms have followed. In 2022, a Senate committee hearing revealed that one-third of OPOs had failed basic performance metrics—but not one was shut down.

Meanwhile, transplant candidates who refuse certain medical mandates—like Covid-19 vaccination—have been removed from waitlists, despite being otherwise viable recipients. So we will reject a healthy, unvaccinated patient but harvest a heart from someone whose family didn’t understand what “circulatory death” really meant?

That’s not health care. That’s institutionalized hypocrisy.

What Must Be Done

This is not a call to end transplantation. It is a call to reclaim the ethical foundation of organ donation before it’s too late. We can—and must—do better.

Policy Recommendations:

  • Standardized, federally mandated brain death protocols across all 50 states
  • Mandatory confirmatory testing (4-vessel cerebral angiogram or cerebral perfusion nuclear scan) for all brain death declarations
  • Real-time video documentation of brain death exams and DCD processes
  • Mandatory waiting period before DCD procurement to ensure true irreversibility
  • Full, informed consent recorded on video, with independent patient advocates present
  • Transparent audit logs from every OPO, published annually
  • Publicly searchable transplant registry, including donor status and procurement pathway
  • These are not radical ideas. These are the bare minimum requirements for a system that claims to respect life

Final Thoughts: Medicine Must Be Moral or It Is Nothing

There is no dignity in a system that cuts corners to save organs. There is no science in a system that calls someone dead based on arbitrary timelines and vague reflex testing. There is no trust in a system that silences physicians who speak up.

The medical profession is not a manufacturing line. Our job is not to optimize supply chains—it is to protect life, and when necessary, honor death. We must stop pretending that efficiency is equivalent to morality.

For years, I have trained residents and students to perform brain death exams. I’ve overseen transplants. I’ve supported grieving families and celebrated recipients. But I’ve also seen the shift—the slow erosion of principle under pressure. It’s time to draw a line.

Let us be the generation that doesn’t look away.

Joseph Varon, MD, is a critical care physician, professor, and President of the Independent Medical Alliance. He has authored over 980 peer-reviewed publications and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Independent Medicine.

August 9, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , | Leave a comment

California Hospital Concealed Evidence Linking ‘Catastrophic Surge’ in Stillbirths to COVID Vaccine, Lawsuit Alleges

By Brenda Baletti, Ph.D. | The Defender | August 4, 2025

A California hospital concealed data linking a “catastrophic surge” in stillbirths among women who received COVID-19 vaccines, according to a lawsuit filed last week in the Superior Court of California, Fresno County.

Michelle Spencer, a nurse at Community Medical Centers’ (CMC) Community Regional Medical Center, said the hospital “deliberately and selectively” concealed from staff, patients and regulators a spike in unborn baby deaths that began in spring 2021, and retaliated against her when she publicized the information.

The lawsuit also says the hospital concealed medical data related to the fetal deaths that showed a link to COVID-19 vaccination of pregnant mothers.

The data include hospital-wide medical records documenting the number of stillbirths and the vaccination histories of those babies’ mothers. One managing nurse at the hospital told a staff member that nearly all of the stillbirths occurred among vaccinated mothers.

According to the complaint, Spencer “witnessed firsthand the exponential increase in unborn baby deaths directly correlating with pregnant women who received a Covid vaccine and then would deliver a dead baby a close number of days or weeks following their injection.”

Spencer’s attorney, Greg Glaser, said:

“The essence of this case is that the truth shall set you free. The hospital possessed vaccinated versus unvaccinated comparison data. The numbers proved the vaccines were causing miscarriages and more in the vaccinated group.

“We know hospital management analyzed the data because they said so, and we see they concealed it from regulators because that file [requested by regulators] is empty.”

Children’s Health Defense is funding the lawsuit, which accuses the hospital of fraud, retaliation and unethical business practices.

Graphic email describes spike in ‘demise patients,’ or stillbirths

Spencer, who has been employed with the hospital since 2017, works in the antepartum, postpartum and labor and delivery units, all located on the hospital’s third floor. Before the COVID-19 vaccination rollouts, the hospital averaged one fetal death per month, she said in the lawsuit.

However, beginning in spring 2021, the number of stillbirths skyrocketed to about 20 per month, and remains at that level today, Spencer said. The number is an estimate because Spencer can’t access the hospital’s full medical records.

In September 2022, Julie Christopherson, a nurse manager specializing in perinatal care and bereavement, sent an email to the nursing and technical staff at the hospital describing the ongoing spike in stillborn babies, which she called “demise patients.”

“Well, it seems as though the increase of demise patients that we are seeing is going to continue,” Christopherson wrote. “There were 22 demises in August, which ties the record number of demises in July 2021, and so far in September there have been 7 and it’s only the 8th day of the month.”

She said the nurses hadn’t seen all of the deaths because the statistics included other units within the hospital, “but there have still been so many in our department.”

Christopherson said:

“It’s a lot of work for you as the bedside RN’s and it’s also a lot of work for me. Demises have taken a lot of my time away from the other groups of patients that I serve, so I hope this trend doesn’t continue indefinitely.

“I know of a few more that are scheduled to deliver in the week ahead, so unfortunately the process is going to be very familiar with all of you.”

According to the email, many parents requested autopsies of their babies. It also provided graphic details of the mishandling of a dead fetus, and reminded the staff of proper procedures for handling the babies’ remains and other associated biological material.

Hospital ‘aggressively’ promoted vaccines despite signs of risk, lawsuit alleges

The lawsuit alleges the spike in baby deaths began in spring 2021, as the hospital “was aggressively promoting Covid-19 vaccines to pregnant women, including requiring OBGYNs with hospital privileges (and their staff) to administer vaccines without knowing or disclosing risks or benefits.”

According to the lawsuit, Christopherson “expressed bias against unvaccinated children and their parents” and helped the hospital conceal data linking vaccines to the record-high number of stillbirths.

Nearly all of the deceased babies were born to mothers who received the COVID-19 vaccine, while the number of fetal deaths in mothers who didn’t get the vaccine remained at the pre-vaccine rollout level, averaging one per month, according to the lawsuit.

The hospital management ignored “multiple safety signals” for COVID-19 vaccine injuries among mothers and babies, according to the complaint, which states:

“Not only did the increase in unborn baby deaths occur, but mothers suddenly … began having more frequent and more significant health problems (i.e., vascular, clotting, hemorrhaging) that did not occur prior to Spring 2021 based on Plaintiff’s direct observations and conversations with colleagues. ….

“ … At the same time … the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) on the fourth floor also experienced such dramatic spikes in injuries that the patient population nearly doubled. … From direct observation and conversations with colleagues after March 2021, Plaintiff learned of increasing numbers of babies being born at CMC with conditions such as missing fingers and toes, heart murmurs, and jaundice.”

The hospital benefited financially from promoting the vaccines, the lawsuit says, while pushing the cost of that policy on patients and healthcare professionals by refusing to investigate the COVID-19 shot as the possible cause of its increasing injury and death rates.

Hospital retaliated by withholding her bonus, Spencer said

Spencer kept a copy of Christopherson’s email, which she shared with multiple independent news sources. She also appealed to clinical supervisors to investigate whether the vaccines were linked to fetal deaths.

In response, Spencer “was gaslit by management who continued to make unsubstantiated excuses such as ‘pesticides’ as a more likely cause of the record high dead babies at CMC,” according to the lawsuit.

Spencer said she followed the standards of ethical whistleblowing and did not violate hospital rules. However, when the hospital learned she had shared the email with the media, it opened what Spencer called a “biased investigation” into her, in an attempt to silence her and other concerned colleagues.

Spencer said the hospital wasted its resources investigating her, instead of investigating the cause of the stillbirths.

She appealed to the California Department of Public Health to investigate the deaths. However, the hospital used its influence to prevent any investigation, provided false medical information to the agency regarding the number of fetal deaths, and stated COVID-19 vaccines played no role in the stillbirths, according to the lawsuit.

In December 2022, the hospital declined to pay Spencer a $5,000 retention bonus, claiming she was no longer in good standing because she was under investigation.

This sent a message to staff that “whistleblowers will be punished,” she said.

By intentionally concealing the vaccine-correlated data regarding baby deaths, the hospital prevented her from fulfilling her responsibility as a nurse to properly inform her patients of their health risks, Spencer said.

She continues working at the hospital and informs patients of the risks associated with vaccines, including the Hep B vaccine. However, she has been reprimanded for those actions.

Spencer is asking the court to compel the hospital to have a qualified third party investigate the deaths. She also seeks lost wages and punitive damages.

Spencer said she hopes her lawsuit will “expose the evil that’s going on in the hospital system,” and will “wake up parents and educate nurses.”

Glaser said:

“The hospital chose financial gain over people’s lives, and the hospital retaliated against Ms. Spencer as the nurse who blew the whistle on all of this. Our goal with the case is to give the evidence to a jury to set the truth free. Only then can we really begin to heal. And God knows we need it.”

Related articles in The Defender

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.

August 5, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

American Academy of Pediatrics Goes To War Against Religious Exemptions, Parental Rights

By Jefferey Jaxen | July 29, 2025

The ability to practice ones sincere religious beliefs is woven into the very fabric of America and its founding ethos yet the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), a membership organization focusing on pediatricians, just declared war on this bedrock right.

Besides being morally objectionable, the concept is just plain unpopular in modern America. By 2023 only six U.S. states officially denied parents religious exemptions to vaccination for their children via laws that were enacted in the face of massive opposition from the public.

Since then, two of the states (Mississippi and West Virginia) have seen their religious denial laws overturned by court wins from the Informed Consent Action Network’s legal team in which judges deemed such laws to violate the First Amendment.

Meanwhile, public pushback saw Hawaii as the latest state to defeat a bill that would have removed its religious exemption option.

AAP’s new policy paper has stepped in with an attempt to stop the momentum of religious freedom in the medical and public health spaces – an idea whose time has come.

“The AAP recommends that all states, territories, and the District of Columbia eliminate all nonmedical exemptions from immunizations as a condition of school attendance.

With a flowery mission to ‘attain optimal physical, mental, and social health and well-being for all infants, children, adolescents and young adults,’ AAP fashions itself more as a continuous pipeline for industry products through overreaching, anti-science edicts.

The AAP recently floated a lawsuit against HHS Secretary Kennedy for his recommendation to remove pregnant women and healthy children from the Covid vaccine schedule.

Lets take a look at some of AAP’s greatest hits over the last 5 years.

In 2019, Washington D.C.’s B23-0171 (later named D.C. Law 23-193) sought to add a new section into the existing regulations that would allow a minor child to consent to receive a vaccine. The bill, and its hearing, signaled a new high-water mark towards the removal of parents from some of their children’s most important medical decisions – and AAP was there.

During the public hearing before it was signed into law, pediatrician Dr. Helene Felman, representing Washington D.C.’s chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), stated:

“As a pediatrician, I like the legislation as it stands because it offers the opportunity to capture those young adults who can make informed decisions at technically any age.”

Any age…

An ICAN legal victory halting D.C.’s overreach saw a D.C. district judge issue a preliminary injunction against the act in favor of parents who brought suit. The parents filed complaints and were able to demonstrate that the act likely violates federal law.

Next up AAP was on the wrong side of the push, against clear scientific evidence, to medically transition children. As Norway, Sweden, Denmark, U.K. and other countries officially backed off the practice. A 2025 review by HHS of the evidence and best practices found significant risks associated with gender dysphoria treatments.

One of the authors of the paper stated simply:

“… No reliable research indicates that these treatments are beneficial to minors’ mental health.”

In 2023, AAP reaffirmed its stance in a policy paper arguing for youth to have open access to gender-affirming health care fully funded by health insurance.

And finally, the AAP worked to influence public policy by advocating for new injectable weight loss drugs for children.

“Children struggling with obesity should be evaluated and treated early and aggressively, including with medications for kids as young as 12 and surgery for those as young as 13, according to new guidelines released Monday.”

The newly discovered harms of such drugs are unfolding on a weekly basis but that didn’t seem to matter to the AAP.

As an industry mouthpiece who see children as a profit margin and pipeline demographic for drugs and shots, AAP is unmatched in its corporate ‘advocacy.’

The organization appears to have chosen another losing battle siding against religious freedom in the United States of America and with it a further loss of relevancy for the organization.

July 29, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Science and Pseudo-Science | , | Leave a comment

Tucker Carlson & Darryl Cooper: Jeffrey Epstein and the culture of corruption

If Americans Knew | July 25, 2025

Tucker Carlson and podcaster Darryl Cooper discuss the Jeffrey Epstein case and its roots in a convoluted culture of corruption at the top of our political system. These are excerpts from an almost three-hour interview streamed live on July 17, 2025.

See the full interview: iakn.org/rottenDC

Wall Street Journal article: iakn.org/WSJEpsteinCalendar

Glen Greenwald video on Epstein’s ties to Israeli intelligence: iakn.org/EpsteinMossad

Darryl Cooper is the creator of The Martyr Made Podcast, and is the co-host of The Unraveling w/Jocko Willink, and Provoked w/Scott Horton. He lives with his family on his farm in Idaho.

July 26, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Video, Wars for Israel | , , , , | Leave a comment

FT hit job on Zelensky is a clue as to Trump’s thinking

By Martin Jay | Strategic Culture Foundation |  July 25, 2025

It’s finally happened. After months of pundits wondering when would the moment come when western media would finally take a clear and decisive stand against Ukraine’s venal president, it has finally happened – and by the most ardent pro-EU broadsheet to note. The all-out hit piece on Zelensky recently by the Financial Times should indicate that something is about to happen in Ukraine and it will probably involve the president either having his own Ceausescu moment or simply fleeing the country. How long has he got?

Legacy media always likes to be on the right side of history and for the FT to come out like this with the piece that they’ve written must be ominous. It was published at the same time as the British conservative political chronicle The Spectator did much the same thing. Timing seems to be worth noting given that a few days beforehand unconfirmed ‘reports’ on social media were claiming that Trump had indicated to Zelensky that he needs to step down with even suggestions of who would take his role. It also comes amidst a series of reports which show that Zelensky’s panicking has reached an all-time high with the recent arrest of the of the anti-corruption activist Shabunin. Interestingly, that same day, ex-Minister Oleksandr Kubrakov was also targeted. In both raids at their homes, armed men showed no warrants and blocked lawyers from attending the searches, it is claimed. The arrest of the anti-graft campaigner is significant as is the take of the FT itself: The article says: “A crackdown on the country’s most famous anti-corruption crusader can’t be happening without at least the silent approval from President Zelenskyy, if not active permission,” it explains.

The significance and timing of the FT piece should not be underestimated. It’s not simply that on the battlefield itself that the Russians are advancing and that it becomes more openly accepted that the Ukrainians simply don’t have the men to fight this war, but more about Zelensky himself who is beginning to be portrayed as a dictator now clinging onto power and using all of the vestiges of martial law to crack down on even the faintest trace of dissent. Ukraine is now a totalitarian state with the level of Zelensky’s paranoia now starting to become widely known and discussed. The FT, one of those media giants which largely supported Zelensky and which barely considered elements of his brutal measures worth even reporting, such as the appalling murder of U.S. blogger Gonzalo Lira, is now reporting on even campaigners merely being roughed up by Zelensky’s henchmen – a considerable U-turn and worth noting is the detail it goes into with its zeal. Indeed, it has been the FT which has chosen not to cover a number of stories since the beginning of the war which many would argue created a positive aura around Zelensky which can be noted even as recently as in May when a key opponent of Zelensky was assassinated in broad daylight by a gunman in front of the victim’s children’s school in Madrid. In this case, the murder of Andriy Portnov was covered, but he was portrayed as a criminal “wanted in Kiev for treason”.

The FT’s support of Zelensky is over, we can assume.

It noted that “Shabunin and Kubrakov labelled the recent raids as politically motivated, adding that the SBU had presented no court-issued warrants and would not allow time for their lawyers to be present for the searches”.

Vitaliy Shabunin even is quoted in the article as explaining what the stunt was supposed to achieve. He told the paper, “Zelenskyy is using my case to send a message to two groups that could pose a threat to him. The message is this: if I can go after Shabunin publicly — under the scrutiny of the media and despite public support — then I can go after any one of you”.

The FT goes even further in its analysis of the situation and could even be assessed of being a catalyst to a revolution in the making.

“This is a straight-up, Russian-style scenario of dividing society, which could lead to protests in the streets”, Oleksandra Ustinova MP was quoted in the piece as saying.

The author suggests that the West has little interest any more in keeping up any pretence up that Ukraine is some sort of western democratic country which has had to give up on some of its democratic tenets. This apathy, it claims, is responsible for Zelensky now pushing his authoritarian, brutal control to new levels.

A western diplomat in Kiev who has worked closely with Ukraine’s civil society said the cases of Shabunin and Kubrakov “aren’t isolated events”.

“There’s a sense inside Ukraine’s presidential office that the west and especially the U.S. has shifted its focus,” the diplomat said. “That rule of law and good governance no longer matter as much.” With U.S. attention elsewhere, Zelensky is testing how far he can go, the FT claims, but doesn’t say that this is because he is in his last days and believes he can stay in power if he cracks down even further against those who could potentially pose a threat to him or even question his strategy. The recent dispatch of anti-aircraft missiles from Trump is not expected to do anything as the gesture represents way too little, way too late for it to have any impact. The corner that Trump is backing himself into with this 50-day deadline with Putin is more likely going to result in the man child in the Oval office looking for an easy victim which can distract voters away from the real story of him having to back down from the outlandish threats he has made to Putin.

July 26, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | | Leave a comment

What Explains Washington’s and Israel’s Opposition to Questioning Ghislaine Maxwell?

By Paul Craig Roberts | Institute for Political Economy | July 24, 2025

Attorney Alan Dershowitz allegedly is on the Epstein client list, but he calls for the release of the Epstein files and for the release of Ghislaine Maxwell under “use immunity,” which compels her to testify. In other words Dershowitz wants to clear his name by getting to the bottom of the Epstein Saga.

The saga is that Epstein was a Mossad spy financed by Israel out of the billions of dollars that Israel extracts from American pocketbooks each year. Epstein’s job was to implicate the American ruling establishment in sex crimes that enabled Israel to blackmail Washington into conforming US Middle East policy with Israel’s policy.

That done, Washington destroyed at the expense of American lives, money and reputation five counties for Israel.

Now Netanyahu wants Americans to destroy Iran for Israel. Can Washington refuse when Netanyahu has the blackmail information accumulated by Epstein for Mossad?

The problem is that neither Washington nor Netanyahu want Ghislaine to testify.

How long will it be before we hear that Ghislaine has committed suicide in her suicide proof prison cell?

July 24, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Wars for Israel | , , , | Leave a comment

US congresswoman labels Zelensky ‘dictator’

RT | July 23, 2025

US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has labeled Ukrainian leader Vladimir Zelensky “a dictator” and called for his removal, citing mass anti-corruption protests across Ukraine and accusing him of blocking peace efforts.

Her comments came after Zelensky signed a controversial bill into law that places the Specialized Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office (SAPO) and the National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) under the authority of the prosecutor general.

Critics argue that the legislation effectively strips the bodies of their independence. The law has sparked protests across Ukraine, with around 2,000 people rallying in Kiev and additional demonstrations reported in Lviv, Odessa, and Poltava.

“Good for the Ukrainian people! Throw him out of office!” Greene wrote Wednesday on X, sharing footage from the protests. “And America must STOP funding and sending weapons!!!”

Greene, a longtime critic of US aid to Kiev, made similar comments last week while introducing an amendment to block further assistance. “Zelensky is a dictator, who, by the way, stopped elections in his country because of this war,” she told the House.

“He’s jailed journalists, he’s canceled his election, controlled state media, and persecuted Christians. The American people should not be forced to continue to pay for another foreign war.”

Her statements come amid mounting speculation over Zelensky’s political future. Journalist Seymour Hersh has reported that US officials are considering replacing him, possibly with former top general Valery Zaluzhny.

Senator Tommy Tuberville also called Zelensky a “dictator” last month, accusing him of trying to drag NATO into the conflict with Russia. Tuberville claimed that Zelensky refuses to hold elections because “he knew if he had an election, he’d get voted out.”

Zelensky’s five-year presidential term expired in 2024, but he has refused to hold a new election, citing martial law, which has been extended every 90 days since 2022.

US President Donald Trump has also questioned Zelensky’s legitimacy, calling him “a dictator without elections” in February.

Russian officials have repeatedly brought up the issue of Zelensky’s legitimacy, arguing that any agreements signed by him or his administration could be legally challenged by future leaders of Ukraine.

July 23, 2025 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Corruption, Full Spectrum Dominance | , | Leave a comment

How close was Jeffrey Epstein to Israel’s Mossad?

The Grayzone | July 18, 2025

The Grayzone’s Anya Parampil and Max Blumenthal discuss allegations that late financier and trafficker Jeffrey Epstein was an Israeli intelligence asset.

July 21, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception, Video, Wars for Israel | , , | Leave a comment

Trump administration ordered to restore funding to US propaganda outlet

RT | July 20, 2025

A federal judge has ordered the administration of US President Donald Trump to restore funding for state-run Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL), ruling that the decision to stop the support was “unprecedented” and lacked any basis.

RFE/RL was a key tool for spreading Western propaganda in the Soviet bloc during the Cold War and was funded by the CIA. The outlet currently receives nearly all of its funding from Congress.

The Trump administration has sought to cut funding for RFE/RL and several other state-linked outlets. It has denounced the United States Agency for Global Media (USAGM), the body that oversees state-funded media, saying it is “not salvageable,” while indulging in “obscene overspending.” The administration also claimed it is crawling with “spies and terrorist sympathizers.”

Consequently, the USAGM essentially froze funding for RFE/RL and refused to enter into a new contract with the outlet after the previous agreement expired in March. This led to staff furloughs and programming cuts, though the EU stepped in to fill the budgetary gap.

On Friday, Judge Royce C. Lamberth of the US District Court for the District of Columbia ruled that the Trump administration lacks the legal authority to refuse Congress-approved funding of more than $70 million, arguing that they provided no clear basis for the move.

”It is unprecedented for an agency to demand that entirely new terms govern its decades-old working relationship with a grantee entity,” he wrote. He went on to rebuke the USAGM for a lack of responses to RFE/RL to negotiate a new agreement, describing it as “stonewalling” and adding that the agency went dark for days or even weeks.

The “USAGM’s flagrant disregard for its funding responsibilities” caused RFE/RL to suffer “mass furloughs, cancelation of programming, and inevitable damage to the global influence that RFE/RL has built over decades,” the ruling said.

RFE/RL President and CEO Stephen Capus welcomed the court’s decision. “This victory provides our journalists with the momentum necessary to continue reaching the nearly 47 million people each week… With this ruling, RFE/RL can continue to advance US national security interests.”

July 20, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Deception | , , | Leave a comment

Just Six US House Members Vote Against Sending Israel Another Half Billion Dollars in Military Aid

By Adam Dick | Ron Paul Institute | July 18, 2025

Special interests are continually finagling to gain more support from the United States government that oversees a vast trove of money and power. A vote just after midnight Friday morning in the US House of Representatives suggests that the government of Israel is at the top of the heap of special interests when it comes to being able to extract benefits from the US with very widespread support from American legislators.

The vote was on an amendment Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) offered to the Department of Defense Appropriations Act (HR 4016) that was being considered on the House floor. Greene’s amendment would have removed the bill’s providing of 500 million dollars in military aid to the Israel government.

As Greene explained in her House floor speech introducing the amendment, this money would be doled out by the 37 trillion dollars in debt US government to the government of “nuclear armed Israel” that provides universal health care and college education subsides to Israelis while receiving US handouts. Further explained Greene, the half billion dollars in the bill is not a one-off payment. Rather, Greene explained that “the US already provides Israel with 3.8 billion annually in foreign aid” and provided an additional 8.7 billion dollars via just one other bill last year. Further, noted Greene, the US has spent enormous sums recently on taking military actions of its own in support of Israel. She provided as an example the US having spent over 800 million dollars shooting off “15 to 20 percent of our Terminal High Altitude Area Defense missiles stockpiles” in aid of Israel in the “twelve-day war” against Iran earlier this year.

Gather a random group of 435 Americans — the same number as there are voting members in the House — to vote on this matter, and Greene’s amendment would be sure not to lose in a landslide. But, the US House of Representatives, despite on occasion being referred to as the people’s house, has a membership whose views in regard to the US giving more and more to the Israel government are far askew from public opinion.

Just 1.4 percent of House members voted for Greene’s amendment. Here is the list of the six House members who voted in opposition to providing another half billion dollars in military aid to what is looking like the most successful special interest in America:

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA)
Rep. Al Green (D-TX)
Rep. Summer Lee (D -PA)
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY)
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN)
Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI)

July 19, 2025 Posted by | Corruption, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

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