Willis began her investigation into Trump in February 2021. Yet, she waited until the 2024 election season was in full swing to charge the former president and current leading GOP candidate.
A menorah lighting was scheduled for the 2nd Sundays Art and Music Festival on Dec. 10. Each month from March to December, the community event hosts artisans, street performers and food vendors, and Jewish leaders were told that the board was not comfortable allowing the lighting at the festival.
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Dec. 7 marks the first night of Hanukkah. According to a statement from the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula, the lighting was going to be held by a local rabbi and had nothing to do with the Israel-Hamas war. The statement says Jewish leaders were told the event would appear to choose sides in the conflict, and organizers would reschedule the celebration if it were held under a “ceasefire” banner.
In a statement, the United Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula said:
The Jewish Community of the Virginia Peninsula is shocked and alarmed at LoveLight Placemaking’s decision to cancel a menorah lighting scheduled for the Second Sundays Art and Music Festival on Dec 10 in Williamsburg – claiming it did not want to appear to choose sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict. To be clear, the menorah lighting, which was to be led by a local community rabbi, had nothing to do with Israel or the conflict.
Yet, appallingly, the event organizer claimed that a Chanukah celebration would send a message that the festival was “supporting the killing/bombing of thousands of men, women, and children,” — and even went a step further, by offering to reinstate the event if it was done under a banner calling for a ceasefire.
We should be very clear: it is antisemitic to hold Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s policies and actions, and to require a political litmus test for Jews’ participation in community events that have nothing to do with Israel. Those standards would never be applied to another community.
Since October 7th, we have repeatedly seen cases of Jewish people and institutions – including synagogues, Jewish homes and businesses – being targeted, sometimes violently, by those opposed to Israel or its actions. At a time of well-documented, rising antisemitism, the singling out and targeting of Jews is dangerous and harmful, serving to further exclude and alienate our community.
The Second Sundays Art & Music Festival has been a meaningful and important community event that brings people together under a powerful message of unity, love and light. Excluding Jewish participation from a festival that should welcome everyone undermines its very message. We call on LoveLight Placemaking to reconsider our request to engage in dialogue, educate themselves on the harmfulness of their decision, and reinstate the apolitical Menorah ceremony at the event.
We all know that the main side effects are hospitalization, and sometimes death. The true numbers may never be released, but hopefully people will contimue to tell their story.
Jack Smith request to hide evidence from Trump legal team is denied. Last month Jack Smith’s lawyers asked Judge Cannon to keep documents under seal because it is considered “highly sensitive classified information.”
Aileen Cannon, the judge presiding over former President Donald Trump’s classified documents case, on Monday ordered the unsealing of documents filed by Special Counsel Jack Smith, who had asked that they be kept under wraps because they could reveal his trial strategy.
On Monday, Cannon ordered the unsealing of documents filed by Smith in the case, making them public, adding that she was “mindful of the strong presumption in favor of public access to judicial documents.”
On November 22, Smith asked that the filing be kept under seal because it contained government plans to delete “highly sensitive classified information” from sharable discovery.
Cannon said that Smith had not provided “sufficient justification” for his filing because the motions did not “contain or otherwise reveal classified information.”
Additionally, a Friday court document revealed the response to the initial order of unsealing in which Smith’s team agreed to unseal the documents, as requested by the defense, though prosecutors insisted on some redactions.
“The defendants did not oppose the Government’s request, but reserved the right to challenge them later,” Smith wrote, adding that a full unsealing could disclose classified defense counsel information about how government’s CIPA motion.
“This is the same information that the Government proposed redacting. Because the Court rejected that position and ordered the Government to provide unredacted versions of the two docket entries to defense counsel, there is no justification for keeping them from the public.”
Is the Biden administration just using the weaponization of the DOJ against Republicans? We’ve been hearing about how ehis administration was focusing on Trump and Republican groups, but some say that they’re not the only ones.
In the past 24 months, New Jersey Sen. Bob Menendez, former California Congressman TJ Cox, former Louisiana Democratic Party chief Karen Carter Peterson and former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum have all been arrested and charged by the DOJ.
For time reasons, I had to cut my actual address a bit short Thursday. This statement, which began with a nod to Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, is what was entered into the congressional record:
November 30, 2023
Chairman Jordan, ranking member Plaskett, members of the Committee, thank you for the opportunity to speak.
Exactly one year ago today I had my first look at the documents that came to be known as the Twitter Files. One of the first things Michael, Bari Weiss and I found was this image, showing that Stanford’s Dr. Jay Bhattacharya had been placed on a “trends blacklist”:
This was not because he was suspected of terrorism or incitement or of being a Russian spy or a bad citizen in any way. Dr. Bhattacharya’s crime was doing a peer-reviewed study that became the 55th-most read scientific paper of all time, which showed the WHO initially overstated Covid-19 infection fatality rates by a factor of 17. This was legitimate scientific opinion and should have been an important part of the public debate, but Bhattacharya and several of his colleagues instead became some of the most suppressed people in America in 2020 and 2021.
That’s because by then, even true speech that undermined confidence in government policies had begun to be considered a form of disinformation, precisely the situation the First Amendment was designed to avoid.
When Michael and I testified before the good people of this Committee in March we mentioned this classically Orwellian concept of “malinformation” — material that is somehow both true and wrong — as one of many reasons everyone should be concerned about these digital censorship programs.
But there’s a more subtle reason people across the spectrum should care about this issue.
Former Executive Director of the ACLU Ira Glasser once explained to a group of students why he didn’t support hate speech codes on campuses. The problem, he said, was “who gets to decide what’s hateful… who gets to decide what to ban,” because “most of the time, it ain’t you.”
The story that came out in the Twitter Files, and for which more evidence surfaced in both the Missouri v. Biden lawsuit and this Committee’s Facebook Files releases, speaks directly to Glasser’s concerns.
There’s been a dramatic shift in attitudes about speech, and many politicians now clearly believe the bulk of Americans can’t be trusted to digest information. This mindset imagines that if we see one clip from RT we’ll stop being patriots, that once exposed to hate speech we’ll become bigots ourselves, that if we read even one Donald Trump tweet we’ll become insurrectionists.
Having come to this conclusion, the kind of people who do “anti-disinformation” work have taken upon themselves the paternalistic responsibility to sort out for us what is and is not safe. While they see great danger in allowing anyone else to read controversial material, it’s taken for granted that they’ll be immune to the dangers of speech.
This leads to the one inescapable question about new “anti-disinformation” programs that is never discussed, but must be: who does this work? Stanford’s Election Integrity Project helpfully made a graphic showing the “external stakeholders” in their content review operation. It showed four columns: government, civil society, platforms, media:
One group is conspicuously absent from that list: people. Ordinary people! Whether America continues the informal sub rosa censorship system seen in the Twitter Files or formally adopts something like Europe’s draconian new Digital Services Act, it’s already clear who won’t be involved. There’ll be no dockworkers doing content flagging, no poor people from inner city neighborhoods, no single moms pulling multiple waitressing jobs, no immigrant store owners or Uber drivers, etc. These programs will always feature a tiny, rarefied sliver of affluent professional-class America censoring a huge and ever-expanding pool of everyone else.
Take away the high-fallutin’ talk about “countering hate” and “reducing harm” and “anti-disinformation” is just a bluntly elitist gatekeeping exercise. If you prefer to think in progressive terms, it’s class war. The math is simple. If one small demographic over here has broad control over the speech landscape, and a great big one over there does not, it follows that one group will end up with more political power than the other. Which one is the winner? To paraphrase Glasser, it probably ain’t you.
It isn’t just one side or the other that will lose if these programs are allowed to continue. It’s pretty much everyone, which is why these programs must be defunded before it’s too late.
WHO, CDC, FDA, and the NIH, You have no one to blame but yourself. Now as we enter what’s called the cold and flu season, the four organizations that have given us a renewal of the little chicken sky is falling.
Ever since 2020 these organizations have been all over the map with what to do or how to do things when it comes to COVID. Tony the Fauch was the ringleader in all of this.
Now we’re hearing about this new Chineese virus that again has the world in a panic Some say that the recent cases of this virus is what showed up in Ohio and Massachutes.
Of course China and the CDC are saying that it’s just a case of ‘white lung syndrome’. Now this virus is attacking mostly children. Anyone seeing another lockdown?
by https://www.breitbart.com/author/heartbeatinternational/
Visits: 33
Proof that Progressives aren’t prochoice. The State of California Attacks a Woman’s Right to Choose Life. I’ve always said that the left is supported of killing babies as long as it isn’t their or their family member.
The comeback has always been that being prochoice means that they at times will choose life. Not in California it isn’t. What these folks are doing is sickening. We have this from Heartbeat International.
In May 2020, Kayla initiated a chemical abortion, only to be haunted by a moment of hesitation — a “still small voice.” That voice, barely audible, guided her to reconsider.
Fueled by determination, Kayla turned to Heartbeat International’s Abortion Pill Reversal website, connecting her with compassionate healthcare professionals who guided her through the reversal protocol, which ultimately saved her daughter Serenity’s life.
The AG’S lawsuit seeks to halt the use of the lifesaving procedure used to save the baby’s life.
Will this go anywhere? Attorney General Ken Paxton Files Lawsuit Against Pfizer for Misrepresentation of COVID-19 Vaccine Efficacy and Information Censorship. Another lawsuit against one of the COVID 19 drug makers. This time it’s Pfizer.
BREAKING:🚨 I am suing Pfizer for misrepresenting Covid-19 vaccine efficacy and conspiring to censor public discourse. pic.twitter.com/63mZ1y6FNC
In a press statement, Paxton claimed that his office would look into whether or not “profit motive or political pressure” played a role in any “pandemic interventions forced on the public.”
“The development of the Covid-19 vaccine, and the representations made by and knowledge of Pfizer, Moderna, and Johnson & Johnson, are of profound interest to the public’s health and welfare. This investigation aims to discover the truth,” said Attorney General Paxton in the news release.
I’ve just finished reading the hilariously terrible book “What’s Left Unsaid” by Melissa DeRosa, secretary to former Gov. Andrew Cuomo (New York) that is so unself-aware, so arrogant, so embarrassing that I have to review it.
I only read it in the first place because I wanted to interview Cuomo on my Substack, figuring that after his defenestration, he’d be a fun interview. But I’m willing to sacrifice that possibility just to wallow in the awfulness of this book. (Plus, recent press reports say he’s thinking of running for mayor of New York, so it’s topical.)
Most dumbfounding, DeRosa brags about Cuomo bullying everyone into implementing his tyrannical COVID policies — all of which, as we now know, accomplished absolutely nothing (other than causing half a million New Yorkers to flee the state, making 2020-2021 New York’s largest single-year population loss in history).
— First, Cuomo bulldozed the legislature into giving him emergency powers to “institute mass quarantines, order businesses to close, suspend laws and issue sweeping directives.”
His COVID diktats did squat to slow the spread of COVID, but they did destroy businesses, annihilate cultural institutions, kill budding careers, stunt children’s educational development and delay urgent medical care, among other things. (What’s the word for that, again? It begins with an “A” … describes a strongman …)
— Next, Cuomo closed all public colleges in the state and browbeat private universities into doing the same.
In the first year of the pandemic, there were a grand total 648 deaths among 15-to-24-year-olds in the entire country — and we don’t know what other health problems those kids had. Cuomo ruined hundreds of thousands of young lives for no reason.
— Then, he badgered Mayor Bill de Blasio into shutting down public schools in New York City — over the objections of the (wildly left-wing) mayor and the teachers union. As DeRosa puts it, both “were adamantly opposed to closing schools in the city, no ifs, ands or buts about it.”
One week after the governor had demanded that de Blasio close the schools, DeRosa writes, “the governor was done waiting.” He peremptorily called into a local TV station and simply announced that the city’s public schools were closed.
This was the single worst decision made during COVID, as even The New York Times has admitted. The little tykes were at essentially zero risk from COVID. But shutting down schools did irreparable harm to their cognitive and psychological development.
— Next, Cuomo bullied President Trump into sending the military to convert the Javits Center and the USS Comfort into field hospitals for New York City.
“’This will get Trump’s attention,’” Cuomo predicted of his op-ed. “The piece ran [in the Times] the next day under the headline: ‘ANDREW CUOMO TO PRESIDENT TRUMP: MOBILIZE THE MILITARY TO HELP FIGHT CORONAVIRUS.’”
A kazillion dollars later, it turned out these temporary hospitals were completely unnecessary. They were shuttered after about a month, at which time the Javits Center had a grand total of 72 patients for its 2,500 beds.
— Finally, Cuomo demanded that upstate hospitals send all their ventilators to New York City, leaving upstate residents high and dry. He even forced recalcitrant private hospitals to relinquish their ventilators by calling the CEOs and threatening: “I will personally pull your operating license.”
Everyone now knows that ventilators were wildly overused and killed a lot of patients because COVID confused the oxygen readings, meaning the mechanical breathing tubes were unnecessary.
It could be argued that some of these policies were not known to be utterly catastrophic when Cuomo imposed them. But 1) That’s why it’s not a good idea to give one man the authority to “institute mass quarantines, order businesses to close, suspend laws and issue sweeping directives”; and 2) Now that we do know, why would you write a book reminding everyone that it was your boss who forced these policies on the public? It’s like bragging that he was the guy who made doctors give Thalidomide to pregnant women.
DeRosa seems quite pleased with herself for her own contribution to New York’s ludicrous COVID rules. She was the one, for example, who pushed for a quarantine on travelers from states like Texas, Florida and Arizona.
To his credit, Cuomo initially rejected the idea, saying, “Isn’t that exactly what we opposed back in March when Rhode Island threatened to quarantine New Yorkers?” To his discredit, he then acceded to Madam Ceausescu.
DeRosa was also the one whose bright idea it was to wreck New Yorkers’ 2020 Christmas holidays by insisting on a 10 p.m. curfew on bars and restaurants. She says she’d have preferred to “unilaterally close all bars, restaurants and other State Liquor Authority–licensed establishments” but was worried that “there would be no public buy-in.” (You think?)
To really nail down the nuking of everyone’s holidays, she also “advocated that we limit indoor and outdoor gatherings at private residences to no more than 10 people.”
Again, at first, Cuomo objected, on the grounds that the idea was insane, but quickly deferred to his drunk-with-power assistant.
Amazingly, DeRosa still doesn’t understand the virus she dedicated a year of her life to suppressing. In humble-brag fashion, she recounts her conversation with a senior health official early in the pandemic:
Health official: “'[A]ccording to top medical professionals at the CDC and WHO, by all accounts, this virus acts like, well, the flu,’ he said.
“’The flu?’ I asked, honestly confused.
“’Yes, the flu; that’s what the federal government is saying.’
“’Okay, accepting that premise, can I ask you a stupid question?’ I went on. [This is always the tip-off that sheer brilliance is coming.]
“’Of course.’
“’Isn’t the major difference between this and the flu that the flu has a vaccine?’”
Although the “health official” agreed (naturally), that was a stupid question. A vaccine is not the main difference at all. The difference is: Our immune systems were familiar with the flu but had never encountered anything like COVID before.
The 1918 flu virus is still in circulation, and yet 50 million people don’t die of it every year because our immune systems recognize it. Now that we’ve all been exposed to COVID, it is just like the flu. (Also, FYI, only about half of adults in America get the flu shot anyway, and its effectiveness, year to year, is a crapshoot.)
Finally, it’s nice that DeRosa’s COVID lockdown was a blast, but kind of annoying to have her tell us about it. While poor families were jammed like sardines into tiny living quarters for a year, DeRosa spent her lockdown living like a queen.
She moved into the “Princess Beatrix suite” at the governor’s mansion, which, she says, had “a large bedroom and a separate sitting room with its own fireplace. There was an en suite bathroom, multiple closets to hang my perpetually wrinkled clothing in and an antique vanity.”
While gyms were closed throughout the state, she worked out in the mansion’s gym every day. While pools were closed and gatherings of more than 10 people banned, she regularly worked, dined and hung out by the mansion’s pool.
Once a week, DeRosa helicoptered with the governor to New York City. Whizzing through the city in the governor’s car one day, she describes the deserted streets of the once-bustling metropolis as “haunting and yet somehow beautiful.”
I’m sure little Pedro, who spent his lockdown in a one-bedroom apartment with his abusive father, drunk mother and seven siblings, appreciates these poetic reflections on the empty city created by you, Melissa. It makes you sound like a really swell person.
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