Controversy over “herd immunity” has been with us since beginning of Covid-19. “Herd immunity” is defined as a critical percentage of people who are immune to the virus, that is so high that the pathogen does not have enough susceptible hosts to jump to and from to sustain transmission, and thus the pandemic stops or remains at extremely low level.
Narratives of mainstream media and the so called “health experts” about herd immunity changed several times. Before vaccines, “herd immunity” and the Great Barrington Declaration, calling for smart ways to reach herd immunity, were vilified and declared to be a very dangerous concept:
Later, during the period of promoting “Covid Vaccine’“, herd immunity was declared to be the a desirable, but elusive goal requiring higher and higher percentage of people to be vaccinated:
Lastly, as vaccine failure became most evident to all except the most ardent supporters, herd immunity was declared unattainable by the same “health experts”:
It turns out that all three of these messaging campaigns were false:
Herd immunity is a good thing when it is reached
Herd Immunity is attainable
Many countries in the world reached herd immunity already
Look at the chart: the herd immunity countries listed above, barely register on the bottom of this graph. You have to make a visual effort even to identify their recent curves, way below the crazy infection curves of vaccinated countries.
The Mistake of Vaccination is NOT Reversible.Unfortunately, there is no way to “un-vaccinate” people. The highly vaccinated countries and regions will have to suffer endless Covid infections and reinfections for a long time.
California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst Gabe Petek had some bad news for the Legislature last week. His office conducted an analysis of 10,000 possible scenarios of tax revenue collections to see how the state’s general fund would be affected.
“In 95 percent of our simulations, the state encountered a budget problem by 2025-26,” Petek wrote.
The “budget problem” is that the state has taken in so much revenue from its high tax rates that it has triggered the so-called Gann limit, a state appropriations limit that was approved by voters in 1979. An “appropriation” is a legislative authorization for spending, and the Gann limit, named after its proponent, Proposition 13 backer Paul Gann, was intended to prevent local and state government from intentionally raking in surplus tax revenue and then spending it all.
The Gann limit, also known as 1979’s Proposition 4, has specific and complicated rules about how revenue is counted and which types of appropriations are limited, but what it means is that surplus revenue can’t simply be spent on anything lawmakers choose.
Voters have had their say more than once about the state should be allocating tax dollars. Under 1988’s Proposition 98, a percentage of revenues must be spent on education, and under 2014’s Proposition 2, the Legislature must put money toward budget reserves. The Legislative Analyst’s Office determined that once the state appropriations limit (SAL) is reached, the “budget problem” kicks in with a vengeance. “We estimate that for every dollar of tax revenue above the SAL, the state faces approximately $1.60 in constitutional funding obligations,” Petek wrote.
So if the economy is strong and revenues continue to rise, the budget is in trouble by 2025-26, and if the economy goes into a recession and revenues fall, the budget is in trouble by 2025-26.
While this would seem to indicate that nothing lawmakers do will change the outcome, that’s not the case. The recommendation from the Legislative Analyst’s Office is for the Legislature to reject “the lion’s share” of $10 billion of proposals in the governor’s budget.
You might as well try to get a raw steak out of a lion’s jaws. Even the LAO admits that rejecting new spending programs is “the most jarring of the options” for the Legislature.
Still, the governor’s budget plan “is not a fiscally sustainable starting point,” Petek writes. Rejecting $10 billion of the governor’s “non-SAL-excludable spending proposals” would help by “constraining growth of the state’s spending base,” another way of saying new programs are an ongoing commitment, not a one-time expense. Rejecting the governor’s spending proposals would also help by “saving the unspent funds” to put the state on “more solid fiscal footing for whatever economic conditions the future holds.”
In a worse-case scenario, the LAO’s analysis found, the state’s budget reserves, estimated at $25 billion, “would be depleted within one year.”
It would be a good idea, Petek, wrote, for lawmakers to apply “close scrutiny to the governor’s spending proposals,” and if it’s not possible to reject them all, to at least adopt a “high threshold for new programs.” The LAO recommends approving only proposals that “address a well-defined problem with a policy strategy that has been evaluated and found to be cost-effective.”
As long as we’re indulging in daydreams, the state should cut its highest-in-the-nation tax rates and stay within the spending limits in the state constitution.
Attorney Brad Geyer seeks information on unidentified “suspicious actors” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Brad Geyer/Graphic via The Epoch Times)
By Joseph M. Hanneman May 6, 2022Updated: May 7, 2022
Defense attorneys are seeking to identify and investigate 80 suspicious actors and material witnesses, some of whom allegedly ran an entrapment operation against the Oath Keepers on January 6, 2021, and committed crimes including the removal of security fencing, breaching police lines, attacking officers, and inciting crowds to storm into the Capitol.
In a motion (pdf) and supplement (pdf) filed after 11 p.m. on May 5 in federal court in Washington, attorney Brad Geyer listed 80 people, some of whom he said could be government agents or provocateurs. The people are seen on video operating in a coordinated fashion across the Capitol grounds on January 6, the attorney alleged.
Geyer’s suggestion of an entrapment scheme will resonate with dozens of January 6 defense attorneys, coming shortly after two men were acquitted of an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D). There was a hung jury on charges against two other defendants. The jury in that case was allowed to consider FBI entrapment as a defense.
Geyer, who represents Oath Keepers defendant Kenneth Harrelson, is seeking a court order from U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta compelling federal prosecutors to help identify the individuals and disclose whether they were working for law enforcement or any government agency on January 6. Geyer wrote that the information is exculpatory, which compels the government to produce it. Other Oath Keepers defendants are expected to join in the motion.
The May 5 filing comes on the heels of an April 12 Oath Keepers motion that alleged at least 20 “assets” from the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) were embedded in the crowds on January 6.
More than a dozen ‘suspicious actors’ flagged by defense attorneys line up on the east steps of the U.S. Capitol, shortly before they pushed past police and climbed to the Columbus Doors on Jan. 6, 2021. (Attorney Brad Geyer/Screenshot via The Epoch Times) According to the new filing, video evidence the defense gained access to only recently shows that some of the 80 people attacked police, other people, and members of the Oath Keepers; entered the Capitol on the west side “with apparent permission or acquiescence of government actors”; opened the Columbus Doors on the east side of the Capitol “from the inside, possibly with even further assistance of government actors”; and deployed “sophisticated crowd-behavior techniques,” orienting themselves between protesters and police.Suspicious actors are seen on video “associating, conferring and traveling with others, engaging in behavior to confuse law enforcement through body masking, facial masking, clothing changes, and disorienting skirmishing behavior,” Geyer wrote.
The suspected people used earpieces, satellite phones, and other communication equipment. “Often it appears that these communications devices do not seem to be affected by capacity restriction or sophisticated jamming that was evident throughout the day,” Geyer wrote.
“If it can be established that these SAs [suspicious actors] were government agents, this could amount to entrapment defense that will dispose of this 7th indictment prior to trial,” the motion said.
“If it can be established that SAs, even without established government agency, from the west or elsewhere, were let into the Capitol and/or were assisted in opening the Columbus Doors from the inside—a reasonable inference from video evidence—a reasonable jury might conclude that one or more SAs had government sponsorship,” Geyer wrote.
Eleven members of the Oath Keepers were charged on January 12 with seditious conspiracy, obstruction of a government proceeding, and other counts. The government alleged the Oathkeepers committed the crimes to prevent the certification of Electoral College votes from the 2020 presidential election.
Two Oath Keepers defendants of the original 11 accepted deals offered by prosecutors and pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy and obstruction. Another Oath Keepers member from North Carolina was charged May 4 with the same counts and pleaded guilty on May 5. All three are expected to assist the FBI with its ongoing January 6 investigations.
Geyer suggested the Oath Keepers who entered the Capitol Rotunda through the famous Columbus Doors atop the east stairs were entrapped by suspicious actors who boxed them in and attempted to push them into the Capitol after the doors were opened from the inside.
“Prima facie evidence of an entrapment scheme (very possibly without formal government agency) is becoming impossible to ignore on video,” Geyer wrote.
Video shot by a French television crew, and surveillance footage under court seal raise “significant concerns of informants, influencers, and inciters whose activities are now clearly observable,” said a footnote in the motion.
Suspicious Examples
“The now observable behavior suggests the exact kind of specialized training, coordination, logistical support, timing, and common goals and objectives that the government attributes to the Oath Keepers,” Geyer wrote. “Conduct alleged against the Oath Keepers seems to have been perpetrated by others before the Oath Keepers were brought in front of the Columbus Doors.”
The new video evidence “not only exculpates defendant Harrelson and the Oath Keepers in compelling ways, it also shows a large group of SAs that actually carry out the crimes of which the Oath Keepers are accused and which is the centerpiece of the government’s case,” the motion said.
The many unidentified individuals in the court filing are referred to by the hashtag nicknames assigned by the Sedition Hunters website.
“James Dean Wannabe” stood on a column near the Columbus Doors and led “vicious attacks by SAs on police with chemicals and mace,” Geyer wrote.
As soon as the inner doors to the Rotunda opened, James Dean Wannabe shot inside the door and began violently pulling protesters into the Capitol, the document said. He also helped to trap Oath Keepers member James Dolan into a tight space with a Capitol Police officer, the report alleged. He was later seen on the east steps after changing clothes and removing his hat.
“Lemony Kickit” and “Lemon Zest,” both known for their colorful hats, appeared at the first and second breach points of the day near Ray Epps, the alleged provocateur who was captured on video on January 5 and 6 imploring protesters to go into the Capitol.
Video also showed Lemony Kickit and Lemon Zest pushed at police and breached the police line on the east steps before they moved up the stairs to the Columbus Doors.
Columbus Doors Were Closed
Videos referenced in Geyer’s motion show that the 17-foot-high, 20,000-pound bronze Columbus Doors were closed when the crowd gathered at the bottom of the steps and then breached the police line. When the crowd reached the top, the fortress-like doors were still shut. It’s not clear when, or why, the doors were opened.
That significant revelation backs up arguments made in January by attorney Jonathon Moseley, who told prosecutors his client, Kelly Meggs, could not have breached the doors because they are controlled from inside the Capitol.
“The outer doors cast from solid bronze would require a bazooka, an artillery shell, or C4 military-grade explosives to breach,” Moseley wrote in a letter to federal prosecutors. “That of course did not happen. You would sooner break into a bank vault than to break the bronze outer Columbus Doors.”
The 17-foot-high bronze Columbus Doors at the U.S. Capitol were closed when protesters and suspicious actors pushed past police on the east steps on Jan. 6, 2021. The 20,000-pound doors can only be opened from inside. (Attorney Brad Geyer/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
The towering Columbus Doors that lead into the Rotunda on the east side of the U.S. Capitol are secured by magnetic locks that can only be opened from the inside by using a security code controlled by Capitol Police, Moseley wrote in an eight-page memo in January.
The two inner doors are secured by magnetic locks and cannot be opened from the outside. Twice within an hour on January 6, suspicious actors opened the inner doors from inside the Rotunda, surveillance video shows.
According to Geyer’s filing, a large number of suspicious actors controlled the scene directly in front of the Columbus Doors after the giant doors were opened. They chased away regular protesters with pepper spray and moved other actors into place. The Oath Keepers, each of whom was shadowed by at least one suspicious actor, were positioned and coaxed toward the entrance.
Six to eight suspicious actors attacked police with mace in preparation to breach the entrance, Geyer wrote.
“The dynamic of the crowd makes this almost invisible or fleeting to almost all publicly available camera angles, so most people in the crowd could not have known these chemical assaults occurred and certainly no one could have known who was standing on the steps which is where the Oath Keepers were positioned at exactly this moment.”
The net effect is that the Oath Keepers, who had come up the east stairs, were swept into the Capitol with the group of suspicious actors, the document alleged. The actors attacked police, breached the doors, and led a crowd inside the Rotunda.
Members of the Oath Keepers were flanked and followed into the U.S. Capitol by suspicious actors on Jan. 6, 2021. (Attorney Brad Geyer/Screenshot via The Epoch Times)
Some of the video evidence referenced in the court motion was redacted from the document because it is part of the more than 14,000 hours of video under a protective court seal.
The court filing will bring fresh attention to the issue of provocateurs at the U.S. Capitol. Epps, a former Oath Keepers member from Arizona, denies he was working as a government informant on Jan. 5 and 6.
Federal prosecutors announced earlier this year they would disclose more information about Epps, whose photo was removed from the FBI’s Jan. 6 most-wanted list. He has not been arrested or charged, despite urging crowds to enter the Capitol and being present when police lines were breached by protesters.
Some of the suspicious actors on Geyer’s list were also seen in the hallway outside the Speaker’s Lobby where Ashli Babbitt was shot at 2:44 p.m. on Jan. 6. There are a number of other unidentified individuals who stood near Babbitt before she tried to climb out of the hallway and was shot and killed by Capitol Police Lt. Michael Byrd.
Three witnesses to the Babbitt shooting were removed from the FBI’s most-wanted list in April 2021 without explanation. Those men have not been identified or charged.
Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas dismissed the idea of pressuring the court for desirable outcomes at a judicial conference Friday.
Thomas spoke at the 11th Circuit judicial conference in Atlanta this week, where he discussed the Supreme Court’s leaked draft opinion for the first time. The opinion would overturn Roe v. Wade if made official, sparking panic among Democrats and protests against the court.
“We can’t be an institution that can be bullied into giving you just the outcomes you want. The events from earlier this week are a symptom of that.,” Thomas said, according to reports.
Chief Justice John Roberts agreed with him:
“A leak of this stature is absolutely appalling,” Roberts said. “If the person behind it thinks that it will affect our work, that’s just foolish.”
Immediately after the leak, Democrats attempted to bully the court into ruling in favor of Roe v Wade.
A far-left group doxxed the addresses of Supreme Court Justices who are votes against Roe v Wade – they have protests planned at their houses.
Plus, Democrat Chuck Schumer announced that a vote would be held attempting to make abortion up to birth a federal law.
Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) on Thursday announced the Senate will vote on abortion legislation, via the Women’s Health Protection Act, Wednesday.
This legislation “would enshrine abortion on demand and up-to-birth in federal law as well as void all state laws aimed at protecting the lives of the unborn.”
The vote is likely to fail bigly. Democrats need 60 Senate votes to pass the legislation. And polling shows that public opinion may be at odds with Schumer: Democrats have failed to secure a majority consensus among voters to enact abortion legislation, a Wednesday Politico/Morning Consult poll revealed. Only 47 percent support codifying Roe v. Wade. Fifty-three percent of the electorate either oppose abortion legislation or have no opinion.
On Wednesday, Joe Biden falsely characterized MAGA Republicans as the “most extremist” political group in U.S. history. Later that day, White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed that Biden meant what he said.
The name-calling started on Wednesday morning, when Joe Biden sent up a test balloon for a new way to attack conservatives, Republicans and Trump supporters by calling them “ultra MAGAs.”
It isn’t likely his new sobriquet will be echoed by many, but later in his address, he made an even worse attack on half of America’s voters by calling the MAGA movement the “most extremist political organization … in recent American history.”
“What are the next things that are going to be attacked?” Biden said, attacking the idea of eliminating Roe v. Wade. “Because this MAGA crowd is really the most extreme political organization that’s existed in American history — in recent American history,” Biden said.
On Thursday’s “Wake Up America,” @RepTimBurchett (R-TN) blasts President Biden for calling the ‘MAGA crowd’ ‘extremists.’
This is truly an outrageous — not to mention false — claim.
Later, during her White House press conference, Biden spokeswoman Jen Psaki essentially noted that Biden meant what he said. Psaki reiterated that Senator Rick Scott, the Republican from Florida, has offered an extreme economic plan, according to the White House transcript.
When asked directly about his attack on MAGA, Psaki did not back down, and added, “I think he — I answered this a little bit earlier, but I’m happy to reiterate. You know, he has been struck by the hold his predecessor seems to have on far too many members of the party.”
Do you think Biden’s statement reveals what Democrats really think of Americans?
Yes: 98% (1205 Votes)
No: 2% (20 Votes)
“But he is still going to call out where he sees extremist actions and extremist rhetoric,” Psaki exclaimed.
This really is a disgusting calumny. RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel had it right when she tweeted in reply to Biden saying, “Outrageous! This is from a man who repeatedly praised segregationists. Biden promised to unite the country, but it’s been smears and lies instead.”
Outrageous! This is from a man who repeatedly praised segregationists.
Biden promised to unite the country, but it’s been smears and lies instead.https://t.co/Q8ZRJ3EwKI
Regardless of whether Biden is serious about his name-calling, it is certainly a serious accusation, one that is outrageously partisan and false. MAGA followers and Trump voters are in no way “extremists.” Indeed, they epitomize a century of conservative policy ideals of low taxes, small government, local control, Christian and family values and rugged individualism.
Further, the MAGA movement has been marked by peaceful protests since it inherited that mantle from the peaceful, non-violent Tea Party movement that preceded it. And that is even if one does blame MAGA for the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.
Contrast the MAGA movement with the two decades of protests spawned by the leftist Occupy Wall Street, Antifa, Defund the Police and Black Lives Matter movements — each of which have resulted in billions in property damage, an erosion of trust in both government and fellow citizens, rapes and even murders. If you want extremism and danger, those currently active groups will give it to you by the handful.
But those political extremist movements are far from the only ones in recent memory that are built on hate, anti-Americanism, property damage, bombings and murder. One must only remember the many outrages of groups like the Weather Underground, the SDS, the Black Panthers, the Animal Liberation Front, the Earth Liberation Front, and the Nation of Islam, to name just a few. And that is not to even mention the ages-old Ku Klux Klan and the American Nazi Party. Each and every one of those groups has real — not figurative — blood on their hands, and all have been plying their extremism in recent memory.
Indeed, if you look throughout U.S. history, at nearly every dangerous extremist group that has been responsible for murders, bombings and mayhem, you will find they are leftists and anarchists. Rarely does one find center-right groups sponsoring violence.
Going back to the 1880s, when the anarchist movement began to spread across Europe and the U.S., bombings, assassinations and militant attacks hit Americans hard. Who now remembers when anarchists destroyed the Los Angeles Times headquarters building in 1919, killing 21 and injuring another 100? Or the 1920 Wall Street bombing that killed 30 and injured 143? If you are interested, a history of these attacks can be seen at Breitbart News.
In light of facts and history, Joe Biden has no historical grounds to call today’s MAGA movement the most extreme in U.S. history. It is simply a lie.
Meanwhile, Biden himself is arguing in support of abortion on demand for any reason at any time during a pregnancy, fostering the creation of a Ministry of Truth that will have police powers to shut down the free speech of Americans, teaching radical sexual identity politics to tiny children, putting an end to American sovereignty and opening the southern border to the entire world, and more.
An Associated Press investigation published Wednesday found Russia’s March 16 bombing of the Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater in Mariupol actually killed closer to 600 civilians, about double the number of casualties originally reported. The United Nations’ Human Rights Office has confirmed 3,238 civilian deaths and 3,397 civilian injuries since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began—but it continues to believe the actual figures are “considerably higher.”
European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen on Wednesday outlined the bloc’s sixth Russian sanctions package, proposing an EU-wide ban on imports of Russian crude oil within six months and a ban on more refined oil products by the end of 2022. The package—which will require sign off from all 27 member states—would also remove three major Russian banks from the SWIFT financial-messaging system, ban several Russian state-owned broadcasters from the EU, and impose sanctions on Russian military officials accused of war crimes in Bucha and elsewhere. Hungary and Slovakia have signaled they won’t support a broader ban on Russian energy.
Several thousand Finnish troops are conducting a two-week military exercise alongside American, British, Estonian, and Latvian soldiers in anticipation of Finland’s forthcoming NATO application. Major General Joe Hartman—head of U.S. Cyber National Mission Force—told reporters yesterday the United States sent cyber forces to Lithuania to help defend against Russian cyber threats.
North Korea conducted another ballistic missile test on Wednesday, according to Japanese and South Korean military officials. The projectile reportedly traveled about 310 miles before landing in the sea, and the launch comes just days before South Korea is set to inaugurate its new, more hard-line president.
President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed an executive order and issued a national security memorandum aiming to advance the United States’ development of quantum computing technologies, establishing a National Quantum Initiative Advisory Committee and directing federal agencies to “pursue a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach” toward harnessing the economic and scientific benefits of quantum information science. The memorandum also directs government agencies to update their cybersecurity capabilities by transitioning to quantum-resistant cryptographic standards.
The Census Bureau reported yesterday the United States’ international trade deficit in goods and services hit a record high in March, increasing 22.3 percent month-over-month to $109.8 billion. Imports increased more than 10 percent in March, with clothing, computers, and cars driving much of the surge.
Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell had some shocking news yesterday: “Inflation is much too high.”
In fairness, Powell wasn’t trying to break new ground. He was emphasizing the Fed’s shift from months of “don’t worry, this inflation is transitory” to the more recent “OK, yikes, inflation is eating Americans’ wallets and we should do something.”
“We understand the hardship it is causing, and we’re moving expeditiously to bring it back down,” Powell said. “We have both the tools we need and the resolve it will take to restore price stability.” And so, as previously telegraphed, the Fed hiked interest rates on Wednesday by 50 basis points, or half a percent—the highest jump since 2000.
The Fed had already raised rates a quarter percent in March, its first hike since 2018. But it’ll take much more than that to bring inflation under control. The central bank’s favored price index reported 6.6 percent year-over-year inflation in March, more than triple the Fed’s goal of 2 percent. Powell said continued strong employment numbers—U.S. job openings reached a record-high 11.5 million in March—give him confidence the Fed has room to cool the market and slow hiring without triggering mass unemployment.
Punditry With Sen. Mitt Romney
Sen. Mitt Romney had some choice words for the Federal Reserve on Wednesday. “The Federal Reserve is primarily responsible for maintaining the integrity of our monetary system,” he told Steve on yesterday’s Dispatch Podcast. “They were far too loose, far too long.” Here are some additional highlights from the conversation:
On the Biden administration’s contributions to today’s inflationary environment.
My guess is that would not have been the problem it was but for the fact that COVID threw off the supply chain in ways that were far more extreme than any would’ve anticipated. But then added to that, you had the president do a couple of things that really added fuel to the fire. One was the $1.9 trillion that went out in March, and that was just after the $900 billion that had gone out in January. So just a couple of months after $900 billion went out, he sent out $1.9 trillion.
I was speaking yesterday with the Secretary of Health and Human Services in one state, not my state, but another state. She said that her state’s budget for childcare for the indigent was $55 million a year. She received a check on the American Rescue Plan for $500 million for that program. She said, “What are we supposed to do with all this money?” And that happened in state after state.
I don’t think the White House anticipated the impact of what they had done, what the Fed had done, and the supply chain would be as great as it is. And the American people are suffering as a result of that.
Worth Your Time
It may seem like everything’s coming up Republican ahead of November’s midterms, but Noah Rothman argues in Commentary the GOP could very well still blow it. “Despite the many advantages Republicans enjoy today, a bad candidate can still lose a winnable race,” he writes. Robert Regan—GOP candidate for a Michigan House seat—pushed to decertify the 2020 election, suggested Ukraine deserved to be invaded by Russia, pushed antivaxx rhetoric, dabbled in anti-Semitism, and “joked” about telling his daughters to “lie back and enjoy it” if they are raped. And this week, he lost a special election in a +26 Republican district that had never elected a Democrat. “The GOP’s primary voters got what they wanted: not a lasting political victory at the polls but a thumb in the eye of those who dared warn against touching that hot stove. This cautionary tale could have broader relevance with primary season now fully upon us.”
In a piece for National Review, Kevin Williamson does his best to answer pro-choice critiques of overturning Roe v. Wade. “The Constitution says what it says even if 70 percent of Americans wish it said something else. The Constitution says what it says even if 99 percent of Americans wish it said something else,” he writes. “If 95 percent of Americans don’t like the First Amendment or 100 percent want to reinstitute slavery, that doesn’t change what the Constitution says. It means that the majority can go jump in a lake—which is what constitutions are there to do. That being said, if it really were the case that overwhelming majorities of Americans wanted the same abortion rules that Planned Parenthood wants (meaning, essentially, none) then having the elected representatives of the people take up the question in the legislatures and vote on it seems like it would be a winning outcome for the pro-abortion side. The fact that the pro-abortion side is terrified of working out the question democratically tells you that they know they do not have the support they claim to have.”
In this week’s Capitolism (), Scott is starting to wonder if the Biden administration is actively trying to boost inflation. “Inflation may be the nation’s top economic challenge and may be top of mind for most American voters, but it plays second fiddle to the narrow interests of certain groups—unions, environmentalists, college grads, etc.—that the White House sees as essential for political success this fall and beyond,” he writes. “So those squeaky wheels will continue to get the oil, regardless of the insular decisions’ broader economic effects.”
President Biden publicly said the word ‘abortion’ out loud this week for the first time in his presidency. “I think the reason for this is pretty obvious. Most people don’t like abortion,” Jonah writes in Wednesday’s G-File(). “[Biden] may be locked in, as a political matter, to abortion rights maximalism, irrespective of his personal views. But the White House has decided that this is not the way it wants to frame the issue. Democrats want to say that if ‘they’ come for abortion tomorrow, ‘they’ll’ also come for privacy, gay marriage, etc., tomorrow. … And because Biden can’t say ‘safe, legal, and rare,’ he’s blocked off from a popular position on abortion.”
What can J.D. Vance’s victory in Ohio tell us about Trump and the 2022 midterms? “Based on my read of the available data, Trump’s endorsement was worth about 3-5 percentage points in terms of people who immediately switched their vote,” Sarah writes in this week’s Sweep (). “But the real value was with undecided voters.” Plus: The electoral effects of overturning Roe, 2024 GOP primary “lanes,” Evan McMullin and Mike Lee in Utah, and which political coalition has shifted more in recent years.
In a bonus Wednesday Uphill, Haley uncovers another House Democrat abusing proxy voting to campaign for higher office back home. “[New York Rep. Tom Suozzi] has voted in person only five times since the start of the year, over the course of three days in January,” she writes. “Suozzi voted in person once on January 18, once on January 19, and three times on January 20. Beyond those three days, Suozzi has had colleagues cast votes on his behalf under the House’s proxy rules 134 times out of 141 roll call votes in 2022 thus far.”
Anyway, it turns out that Pfizer’s COVID vaccine was not 95% effective: the data shows it has a 12% efficacy rate.
Let me repeat: 12%. That’s a “1” followed by a “2.”
But wait: it gets worse.
There were no human clinical trials to determine if the experimental COVID vaccines were safe for pregnant women. They were excluded from all the trials.
None. Zero. Zilch. Nada.
Instead, they tested it on 44 rats.
Sean Conway – UAP 🇦🇺 ACT Bean Candidate @seancondev
Pregnant women in the U.S. military who were coerced into taking the jab have suffered horrific side effects and “congenital malformations” in their babies. There were more than 18,900 babies born with abnormalities in 2021.
There’s much more news to come out about the COVID vaccines — and all of it is bad. For example, doctors around the world are starting to notice an explosion in the cancer rates among the vaccinated.
Like I said: lots of doctors are noticing that cancers are increasing dramatically. Here’s a chart with data pulled from VAERS that will make your heart sink.
Let me finish with this thought: perhaps it wasn’t a good idea to re-program the DNA of half the world to produce spike proteins to “fight” a virus with a 99% survival rate?
MAY 04: White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki speaks during a White House daily press briefing at the James Brady Press Briefing Room at the White House on May 04, 2022 in Washington, DC. Psaki held a daily press briefing to answer questions from members of the press. (Photo by Alex Wong/Getty Images).
By Frank Fang for Epoch TimesMay 5, 2022
President Joe Biden has been “struck” by the influence former President Donald Trump has over the Republican Party, according to White House press secretary Jen Psaki.
“He’s been struck by the hold his predecessor seems to have on far too many members—not all, but far too many members of the party.”
Her comment comes a day after two candidates endorsed by Trump, J.D. Vance and Max Miler, won in Republican primaries.
J.D. Vance secured a victory in the Ohio Republican Senate primary on May 3. The race was the first sign of Trump’s influence in the midterm elections in November.
“They wanted to write a story that this campaign would be the death of Donald Trump’s America First agenda,” Vance said at a victory party in Cincinnati on Tuesday. “Ladies and gentlemen, it ain’t the death of the America First agenda.”
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-Mo.) took to Twitter to call Vance’s victory “a big moment for the Republican Party.”
“JD represents the future of the conservative movement, as a coalition of working people, families, and people of faith, welcoming every American who believes in this nation. On to victory in Nov!,” Hawley wrote.
Currently, the Senate is split 50–50 between Republicans and Democrats. In November, Ohio voters will choose one new member to the Senate, a seat to be vacated by retiring Sen. Rob Portman (R-Ohio).
Max Miller, a former aide to Trump, won the Ohio Republican House primary on Tuesday, becoming the Republican nominee for Ohio’s 7th congressional district in the midterm elections. The district is reliably Republican.
Aside from Vance and Miller, pro-Trump candidates Jennifer-Ruth Green and Erin Houchin won the Republican primaries in Indiana’s 1st and 9th Congressional Districts, respectively, on May 3.
Earlier on May 4, Biden harshly criticized MAGA supporters, characterizing the “MAGA crowd” as the “the most extreme political organization that’s existed “ in recent American history. The president made the remark during a speech on the U.S. economy.
Biden also criticized what he called “MAGA” Republicans, whom he charged for wanting to raise taxes on millions of working-class Americans while protecting billionaires and big corporations.
After his speech, Biden was asked about the leaked draft opinion penned by Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito, which indicates that the nation’s top court has decided to undo the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. If undone, it would return the power to decide abortion policy to state governments.
“This is about a lot more than abortion,” Biden said, before reflecting on the Supreme Court’s confirmation process for Robert Bork in 1987, who was nominated by former President Ronald Reagan to be an associate justice at the U.S. top court. At that time, Biden was chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
“This reminds me of the debate with Robert Bork. Bork believed the only reason you had any inherent rights was because the government gave them to you,” Biden said. “When I was questioning him as the chairman, I said, ‘I believe I have the rights that I have not just because the government gave them to me, which you believe, but because I’m just a child of God; I exist.’”
The issue of abortion also came up during Psaki’s daily briefing on May 4.
When asked if Biden believed the states should have the right to determine the issue of abortion, Psaki said, “ The president believes that it should continue to be federal law, that women have the right to make choices with their doctors, as it has been for 50 years.”
January, February, and March saw the three highest months ever of deficit spending. Also Biden spending is over 600 billion n the red. Forget the fact that the Treasury is seeing record breaking revenue coming in. So why is Joe saying that he will cut the deficit by $1.5 trillion? Trump and congress had allocated over 2 trillion for the masks, gowns, ventilators, etc. Items that Obama-Biden never replenished. according to CNBC.
So those trillions are now gone. That’s why Joe’s asking for hundreds of billions more. For COVID, Ukraine, etc.
The Public Interest Legal Foundation went to Pennsylvania with a list of tens of thousands of people who were likely dead, but still on the state’s voter rolls in the weeks before the 2020 election. (Associated Press/File) ** FILE **
I used to do these recaps a few years back. I’m going to try this again to see how it works. Fell free to comment on all or one or two.
Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed yesterday that the leaked draft of an opinion that would overturn Roe v. Wade is authentic—though not final—and ordered the Marshal of the Court to conduct an investigation into the source of the leak.
Ohio and Indiana conducted their 2022 primary elections on Tuesday, with competitive races taking place in both states. Republican author and venture capitalist J.D. Vance will face off against Democratic Rep. Tim Ryan in Ohio’s U.S. Senate race, and incumbent GOP Gov. Mike DeWine will be challenged by Nan Whaley, the Democratic former mayor of Dayton. In Indiana, state Sen. Erin Houchin won the GOP bid to succeed the retiring Rep. Trey Hollingsworth.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Tuesday that U.S. job openings reached record highs at the end of March, when there were 11.5 million unfilled jobs nationwide, up from 11.3 million a month earlier. The quits rate—the percentage of workers who quit their job during the month—hit a record high 3 percent as well, though many of these workers quit for different or better opportunities.
U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) announced Tuesday it will extend the work permits of most immigrants whose authorization recently expired or is about to expire, citing the agency’s inability to process applications quickly enough to keep pace with existing labor shortages. The extension—up to a year and a half—is expected to affect about 420,000 immigrants over the course of the policy.
That doesn’t mean the ruling itself is set in stone—justices could still change their votes or narrow the decision’s scope before it’s issued later this summer—but Chief Justice John Roberts confirmed yesterday the document published by Politico this week was written by Justice Samuel Alito and circulated in early February.
“To the extent this betrayal of the confidences of the Court was intended to undermine the integrity of our operations, it will not succeed,” he said in a statement. “The work of the Court will not be affected in any way.” The marshal of the court will launch an investigation into the source of the leak.
If the final numbers reflect the split as seen in the leak—again, an important if—Alito’s opinion will overrule nearly five decades of abortion jurisprudence. But as we noted in a recent TMD, a full overturning of Roe and Planned Parenthood v. Casey wouldn’t outlaw abortion nationwide—it would return the power to regulate the procedure to state legislatures and governors, who can be as permissive or restrictive as their voters will allow. At least 17 states have preemptively moved to guarantee abortion’s legality, while at least 13 others have passed “trigger laws” that would implement new restrictions in the event Roe and Casey are reversed. Monday’s news will certainly spur more into action, one way or the other.
Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, for example, called on the legislature this week to amend California’s constitution—a process that requires voter approval—so “there is no doubt as to the right to abortion” in the state. “We know we can’t trust the Supreme Court to protect reproductive rights, so California will build a firewall around this right in our state constitution,” he said in a statement. California accounted for about 15 percent of all abortions in the United States in 2017, and in 2019, Newsom signed a proclamation “welcoming women to California” for the procedure.
For as much attention as Monday’s leak has understandably received, it’s far from certain how such a ruling would affect the overall abortion rate. What percentage of women seeking an abortion in states where it’s illegal will undergo the procedure illicitly, or travel to another jurisdiction? Will states actually be able to crack down on abortion pills, in light of last December’s Food and Drug Administration decision allowing providers to prescribe the pills—used up to 10 weeks’ gestation—via telemedicine and mail them to women?
A 2019 analysis from the pro-abortion Guttmacher Institute and university researchers estimated the United States’ abortion rate would fall between 25 and 40 percent in the year after a Roe reversal, but that potential drop fell to about 14 percent when the researchers updated the analysis in 2021. Thanks to Texas’ implementation of a six-week abortion ban last year, we have some real-world data on how this might play out. Two groups of researchers at the University of Texas released studies this spring showing the state’s new restrictions reduced the total number of abortions in the state by about 10 percent when accounting for women traveling to nearby states or ordering abortion pills online.
“A post-Roe United States isn’t one in which abortion isn’t legal at all,” Middlebury College economist Caitlin Knowles Myers told the New York Times. “It’s one in which there’s tremendous inequality in abortion access.”
Progressives expressed immense frustration with Alito’s leaked draft. “How dare they tell a woman what she can and cannot do with her own body?” Vice President Kamala Harris said at an EMILY’s List conference on Tuesday. “How dare they try to stop her from determining her own future? How dare they try to deny women their rights and their freedoms?” President Joe Biden issued a statement promising his administration would be prepared to respond to “the continued attack on abortion and reproductive rights.”
But a series of similar articles published yesterday pointed to a purported silver lining for the Democratic Party.
Politico: Democrats hope draft abortion opinion will jolt midterm elections
NBC News: Democrats energized after leaked abortion decision jolts midterms
Washington Post: A decision to overturn Roe v. Wade might upend the midterms
Reuters: Democrats look to abortion-rights threat to boost midterm election prospects
Roll Call: Democrats see midterm election boost from abortion ruling leak
Axios: Dems look to abortion fallout to salvage midterms
Maybe. Most of the stories point to recent polling—from Washington Post/ABC News, CNN, etc.—that shows a majority of voters oppose overturning Roe v. Wade, and it’s certainly possible a sweeping Supreme Court decision could prove a vulnerability for the GOP in November. Several elected Republicans were cagey about the implications when asked about it on Tuesday. “I don’t know [that] it’s necessarily a party issue,” Sen. John Thune of South Dakota told CNN. Sen. John Cornyn of Texas wouldn’t say whether he backed his own state’s restrictions, simply saying it’s up to the legislature.
Well, Republican primary voters in Ohio still very much care what Donald Trump has to say. “Without the Trump endorsement, we’re not talking tonight about Vance winning the nomination,” said David Cohen, political science professor at the University of Akron. “He would’ve had no shot.”
Vance, in this instance, refers to J.D. Vance, the U.S. Senate candidate who was polling at 10 percent three weeks ago—a distant third place—when the former president decided to make his choice in the race. The author-turned-venture-capitalist-turned-populist-bomb-thrower won the state GOP primary last night with slightly more than 32 percent of the vote, handily beating former state Treasurer Josh Mandel (24 percent), state Sen. Matt Dolan (23 percent), businessman Mike Gibbons (12 percent), and former Ohio GOP Chair Jane Timken (6 percent). All of the losing candidates conceded the race—that’s not a given anymore!—and each pledged their support to Vance in November, when he’ll take on Rep. Tim Ryan, the Democratic nominee who ran away with his own primary on Tuesday.
Vance was magnanimous in victory, expressing gratitude to each of his opponents for the races they ran. “A lot of disagreements with Matt Dolan—let’s just be honest,” Vance said of the only major candidate in the race who wasn’t courting Trump’s endorsement. “He could have ran an ugly campaign, but instead he ran a campaign about issues, about substance. He has been a great public servant for this country, and I think our party was better for the campaign that Matt Dolan ran.”
But that magnanimity comes after a vicious campaign that saw a record $66 million spent on TV and radio ads—many of them negative. In a particularly suggestive 30-second clip, Timken accused her rivals of trying to “overcompensate” for their “inadequacies.” A Gibbons ad labeled Mandel as a “con man.” The conservative Club for Growth—which was supporting Mandel—dropped millions on TV spots reminding Ohioans that Vance in 2016 called himself a “NeverTrump guy,” said he “might have to vote for Hillary Clinton,” and suggested that some of Trump’s voters “definitely” supported him for racist reasons.
Vance sought to neutralize those attacks early in the campaign. “I ask folks not to judge me based on what I said in 2016, because I’ve been very open that I did say those critical things and I regret them,” he told Fox News last summer. “I regret being wrong about the guy.”
It was good enough for Trump—who not only believed Vance to be Republicans’ best shot in November, but reportedly viewed Mandel as “f—— weird”—and the pretty transparent flip-flop may have actually worked to Vance’s advantage. “A lot of Ohioans had the same feelings about all of this, which is, ‘You know, I changed my mind on Trump after he was president, because he was a fighter for the team,’” David Kochel—a Republican political strategist—told The Dispatch. “John Kasich won the primary there in 2016, and he’s a NeverTrumper. There were a lot of NeverTrumpers in Ohio in that coalition, and they all had the same sort of conversion that J.D. did.”
Speaking at the Reagan Library as part of its Time for Choosing series, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan on Tuesday presented what he sees as the GOP’s best path forward. “Republicans will likely make big gains this year, simply because of the complete failures of the Democrats in Washington, but we can’t let that fool us into complacency,” he said. “The problems that have caused our party to repeatedly lose have not been addressed. It’s easy to make excuses for the failures on our side by simply pointing out that the other side is often worse. But better than the Democrats isn’t good enough. That is not a winning strategy or a long-term roadmap to success. Americans are completely disgusted with the toxic politics, and they’re sick and tired of all the lies and excuses. Excuses, lies, and toxic politics will not win elections or restore America. Only real leadership will do that.”
), Scott is starting to wonder if the Biden administration is actively trying to boost inflation. “Inflation may be the nation’s top economic challenge and may be top of mind for most American voters, but it plays second fiddle to the narrow interests of certain groups—unions, environmentalists, college grads, etc.—that the White House sees as essential for political success this fall and beyond,” he writes. “So those squeaky wheels will continue to get the oil, regardless of the insular decisions’ broader economic effects.”
