Daily News Roundup

Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes

NOTABLE QUOTES

Andrew Lowenthal contributor to Brownstone Institute: By legitimizing wide-ranging government intervention in the speech of everyday citizens, the anti-disinformation field and its ideological allies including Canada’s Justin Trudeau, America’s Joe Biden, and former New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern, have given authoritarian regimes much greater license to do the same to their own citizens. Disinformation does of course exist and does need to be addressed. However, the biggest source of disinformation are governments, corporations, and increasingly anti-disinformation experts themselves, who have through COVID-19 and many other issues gotten the facts wrong. Weaponizing anti-disinformation to censor and smear their opponents is resulting in exactly what the expert class feared: diminished trust in authority.

William Sullivan contributor to American Thinker: Entitled, credentialed professors at woke-infected universities are churning out entitled, credentialed woke-infected young people into the workforce of American corporations. But these young people, like their professors in many cases, have never actually produced any wealth in the private sector, and they likewise know nothing of the requirements of success in the world that they’re expected to lead.

Glenique Frank is a man who identifies as a woman competed in a female only marathon run: “If they want me to give my medal back, I’ll say, ‘OK, fine. No problem. If they really think I’ve stolen the place [of a female runner], I don’t mind giving the medal back, because I’ll run again next year for charity. But I don’t want to apologize, because I didn’t do anything wrong “

Martina Navratilova considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time: Lia Thomas Says Her Critics Using ‘Feminism’ Claims To Hide Transphobia- NEWSFLASH Lia- it’s not fair. We shouldn’t have to explain it to you over and over. Also- stop explaining feminism to feminists….

Dylan Mulvaney is the current transgender darling of corporations, media and Democrats: “Like, the articles written about me using ‘he’ pronouns and calling me a man over and over again, I feel like that should be illegal. I don’t know, that’s just bad journalism,”

Revolver.news: And speaking of Tucker’s future, OANN just made him an offer that he may not be able to refuse. The small conservative network has reportedly offered Tucker a whopping $25 million to join their operation and that mega offer is coming straight from the “big guy” at the network, according to reports.

GOBALIST CABAL & CENSORSHIP

Moran: Exclusive — Paul Fitzpatrick: Soros-Backed ‘Global Disinformation Index’ Is a Tool for Election-Swaying Censorship

Paul Fitzpatrick, the president of the 1792 Exchange, told Breitbart News Daily that the foreign disinformation advocacy organization Global Disinformation Index possibly changed some elections’ outcomes because it chokes off information. Fitzpatrick spoke to Breitbart News Daily host Alex Marlow about the increasing politicization of corporations. The 1792 Exchange is an alliance of families trying to drive corporate America back to neutrality to preserve free speech and free enterprise. Fitzpatrick and Marlow discussed how the Global Disinformation Index (GDI), a foreign think tank that receives funding from George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, has moved to target conservative news outlets under the guise of curbing “disinformation.”

Lowenthal: The Censorship-Industrial Complex

I knew things were bad in my world, but the truth turned out to be much worse than I could have imagined. My name is Andrew Lowenthal. I am a progressive-minded Australian who for almost 18 years was the Executive Director of EngageMedia, an Asia-based NGO focused on human rights online, freedom of expression, and open technology. My resume also includes fellowships at Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center and MIT’s Open Documentary Lab. For most of my career, I believed strongly in the work I was doing, which I believed was about protecting and expanding digital rights and freedoms. In recent years, however, I watched in despair as a dramatic change swept through my field. As if all at once, organizations and colleagues with whom I’d worked for years began de-emphasizing freedom of speech and expression, and shifted focus to a new arena: fighting “disinformation.” Long before the #TwitterFiles, and certainly before responding to a Racket call for freelancers to help “Knock Out the Mainstream Propaganda Machine,” I’d been raising concerns about the weaponization of “anti-disinformation” as a tool for censorship. For EngageMedia team members in Myanmar, Indonesia, India, or the Philippines, the new elite Western consensus of giving governments greater power to decide what could be said online was the opposite of the work we were doing.

DEMOCRAT PARTY MARXIST PLAYBOOK: CANCEL THE SECOND AMENDMENT

Mittelstadt: Gun rights advocates repurpose left’s arguments on minorities, class to defend 2nd Amendment

Gun rights advocates are repurposing the left’s rhetoric on minorities and class to defend the Second Amendment rights of those disproportionately affected by violent crime and gun permitting costs. For decades, the left has positioned itself as the champion of minorities and the poor by supporting policies such as slavery reparations for African-Americans and free health insurance for those who struggle to afford it. However, pro-Second Amendment groups argue that the left’s pro-gun control stance harms minorities and the working class, who are more likely to be victims of violent crime. […] Willes Lee, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel on the National Rifle Association’s board of directors, similarly argues that gun control disproportionately hurts the poor and minorities “Anytime you’re going to put a fee, anytime you’re going to charge people or keep people from exercising their Second Amendment rights, that’s racist, and it’s class warfare,” he told the John Solomon Reports podcast earlier this month

THE CORRUPT & DANGEROUS U.S. INTELLIGENCE/ADMINISTRATIVE STATE APPARATUS

Kelly: Outcome of Proud Boys Trial Could Decide Trump’s Fate

Guilty verdicts in the most consequential January 6 trial will be the green light the Justice Department has been waiting for to go after the former president. Of the hundreds of video clips used as evidence in the marathon trial of five members of the Proud Boys, prosecutors began closing arguments not with a clip of the defendants engaged in criminal activity but with a clip of Donald Trump. The government showed the jury a portion of the September 2020 presidential debate; goaded by Joe Biden and then-Fox News host Chris Wallace to condemn “white supremacists and militia groups” in an effort to downplay Black Lives Matter and Antifa violence, Trump asked them to “give me a name.” Biden quickly answered, “the Proud Boys.” “Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said in response. […] Prosecutors have used the clip at other points during the nearly four-month trial—a not-so-subtle reminder to jurors from a city that voted 93 percent for Joe Biden that the men on trial supported Trump.

Sundance: President Trump Lawyers Provide Key Insight on Background of Mar-a-Lago Raid via Letter to Legislative Gang-of-Eight

If you are deep in the political research weeds about the weaponization of government, there is a letter from lawyers representing President Trump to the chair of the House Intel Committee that is very interesting [pdf available here]. […] The letter is fascinating because it outlines how the process of moving documents from the White House was weaponized by a politically motivated National Archives and Records Administration (“NARA”), and the letter also gives fulsome context to the types of “classified materials” that have been insanely over emphasized by media.

REPUBLICAN U.S. HOUSE MAJORITY

The Center Square Staff: Congress members want answers about Chinese ‘police stations’ in the U.S.

In a letter to FBI Director Chris Wray, congressional members on the U.S. Select Committee on the Chinese Community Party on Wednesday expressed concerns about the FBI potentially not knowing about Chinese “police stations” operating in the U.S. They also asked Wray to provide information about the FBI’s efforts to investigate Chinese transnational repression in America. The committee received a classified briefing on March 30 after requesting information on Feb. 24. However, the briefing didn’t answer their questions, prompting them to formally ask 12 questions they want answered in writing. They also expect to have another classified briefing once they receive additional information. Rep. Mike Gallagher, R-Wisc., led a coalition of 12 members who signed the letter.

The Center Square Staff: House Republicans say regulators knew SVB was in trouble since 2021, did not step in

A closer look at the months leading up to the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank, the second-largest bank collapse in history, shows that regulators saw the warning signs since last year but did not step in. SVB’s collapse sent shockwaves through the markets, destabilized the economy, and raised fears of a domino effect of other banks. Seemingly backing those fears, other banks have recently collapsed as well. House Oversight Republicans are now reporting that the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco was well aware of SVB’s problems beginning in 2021 but did little to address them.

Kasperowicz: House rejects Gaetz resolution to remove US troops from Somalia

The House on Thursday rejected legislation from Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., that would require President Biden to remove most U.S. troops from Somalia, which opponents warned would hurt U.S. national security by making harder to fight al-Shabaab, a group the U.S. labeled a terrorist organization more than a decade ago. House lawmakers rejected Gaetz’s resolution in a 102-321 vote, despite Gaetz’s argument that about 900 U.S. troops are in Somalia on a permanent, undefined mission that will never be enough to bring peace to that country. During floor debate, Gaetz argued that to support Biden’s move last year to put troops back in Somalia, one would “have to believe that 900 U.S. troops is what is going to save a country of 17 million from a hardened group of 7,000,” referring to al-Shabaab’s approximate strength. […] But most Republicans and Democrats disagreed with him.

U.S. SUPREME COURT

Piper: ‘Vassal’ homeowners? Justices skeptical of states keeping full proceeds of seizures for back taxes

Justices across the ideological spectrum gave Neal Katyal, solicitor general in the Obama administration, a hard time in oral arguments Wednesday in a case with far-reaching consequences for property rights in America, perhaps as consequential as its 2005 Kelo decision that set off a wave of eminent-domain reform across the country. Minnesota’s Hennepin County, represented by Katyal, seized 94-year-old Geraldine Tyler’s condo as payment for $2,300 in back property taxes and $13,000 in penalties, interest, and costs, then sold it for $40,000 and kept the profit as allowed by law in Minnesota and a dozen other states including D.C. Others return the surplus from the sale to the owner. […] Other states have reaped even bigger windfalls from what critics call “home equity theft”: . . . […] Justice Neil Gorsuch twice brought up the hypothetical $5 tax bill on the million-dollar home, but Katyal said the threat of seizure would be a “reasonable condition” on property ownership. Justice Elena Kagan questioned . . .

CHINA: AMERICA’S MORTAL ENEMY

Williams: How the West Is Helping Train China’s Military

China is reportedly recruiting former air force pilots from the West to understand better how Western military aircraft and pilots operate. Up to 30 former UK military pilots are believed to have traveled to China since 2019 to work as instructors in the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).
“It’s taking Western pilots of great experience to help develop Chinese military air force tactics and capabilities. Money is a strong motivator.” — Unnamed Western official, BBC, October 28, 2022.
“It was very specific that it had to be frontline military aviators in current flying practice…. why send military pilots rather than teachers?” — Sky News, October 28, 2022.
Perhaps most incredibly, the US Army, as late as November 2020, conducted the Disaster Management Exchange (online, due to coronavirus) with China’s PLA…. Unbelievably, the November 2020 remote exercise took place just one month after President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien, had pronounced China to be the threat of the century….

BIDEN/HARRIS/OBAMA’S AMERICA LAST REGIME: RADICAL TRANSFORMATION OF AMERICA

Breaking 911: BIDEN: “The one thing I thought when I got to be President, I’d get to give orders, but I take more orders than I ever did.”

Watch the 10 second video clip: https://twitter.com/Breaking911/status/1651656470167953436?cxt=HHwWuICxteGz7ustAAAA

Greenfield: Biden’s 1st Ad Attacks GOP for Banning Book Featuring Child Sex Acts

Whose votes exactly is Biden trying to win? Biden’s first campaign video announcing that he was going to run again featured attacks on Republicans for being against “freedom”. As I wrote yesterday, Biden’s freedom pitch has a major problem. […] What sort of “bedrock freedoms” is he running to protect?

(The next declared pandemic?) Eastman: CDC Warns U.S. at Risk for Monkeypox Surge Even Worse Than the One in 2022

The last time I reported on monkeypox, House Republicans were demanding answers from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) related to research experiments they say could result in a “supercharged” monkeypox virus that the agency funded. While there is no update on any answers, there is news about monkeypox…which has now been rebranded “mpox” out of concern for woke sensibilities. Based on new modeling, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning that the US could see a renewed surge of mpox infections even worse than last year, new federal modeling has concluded. The agency is pushing for enhanced vaccination, especially in “at-risk” groups. […] With June’s Gay Pride Month a few weeks away, San Francisco is sounding the alarm. […] The actual CDC report contains an eye-popping list of woke reasons for personal choices regarding obtaining the mpox vaccination.

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY MARXIST PLAYBOOK: LEFTIST INDOCTRINATION, CHILD MUTILATION, CHILD SACRIFICE, CHILD SEXUALIZATION = CHILD ABUSE

Baumann & Karnowski: Washington, Minnesota become trans refuges, shield abortions

They’re the latest liberal states to enact legal safeguards as Republican legislators across the country are rushing to block or limit transgender and abortion health care. More than a dozen states have effectively banned abortion outright in the year since the Supreme Court’s conservative majority overturned Roe v. Wade. “Freedom of choice is a health care issue. We are protecting access to health care,” said Gov. Jay Inslee, who wore a pink tie to the outdoor bill signing ceremony in Seattle. The laws block other states from using Washington- or Minnesota-run courts or judicial processes to enforce their bans — things like warrants, subpoenas, extradition requests or other court orders.

Klavan: In a Barbie World

A new doll raises some fundamental questions about the value of human life. his Tuesday, the Mattel corporation revealed a new Barbie doll with Down’s Syndrome. She will join the “Fashionistas” line, alongside others with wheelchairs, prosthetic legs, vitiligo, and so forth. To this I say: Excellent! People with Down’s are indeed often delightful, creative, and virtuous. Independently of all that, they are endowed like the rest of us with a non-negotiable right to life. How nice that they have a doll to play with that looks like them. Perhaps as the next step in our campaign for their dignity we should stop executing them in the womb. […] . . . since Mattel has chosen to revise its message, to the effect that all kinds of people deserve celebrating, I’m only too happy that people with Down’s Syndrome will be in the mix. It’s better than making a non-binary doll for kids to play with and puzzle over. Down’s Syndrome, unlike gender fluidity, exists. Real people actually have it. And those real people, shamefully enough for the developed world, are in real danger of being devalued, despised, or even singled out as a class for elimination. A conservative estimate based on studies between 1995 and 2011 would suggest that parents aborted somewhere between 60 percent and 70 percent of babies diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome. That’s in the U.S.—in Denmark, only 18 babies were born with Down’s during all of 2019. One British woman reported aborting a baby with Down’s Syndrome at 20 weeks. “I have never regretted my decision,” she wrote, but “it was pretty harrowing.”

THE MEDICAL CARTEL CANCELLED THE HIPPOCRATIC OATH

Weaver: EXCLUSIVE: Children’s Hospital Offers Consultations On Transgender Treatments To Kids Younger Than 10

Doernbecher Children’s Hospital, a children’s hospital affiliated with Oregon Health & Science University, offers consultations on transgender treatments to children younger than 10, the Daily Caller has learned. Doernbecher’s Gender Clinic offers patients up to 18 years of age consultations with puberty specialists and experts on hormone therapy, as well as a “gender-affirming environment,” according to their website. The hospital notes that it follows the recommended guidelines for transgender-identified youth from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH).

EDUCATION INDOCTRINATION

Morris: One-in-Four High School Students Identify on ‘LGBQ’ Spectrum

Almost a quarter of American high school students identify on the “queer” spectrum, according to government data — a number that has more than doubled since 2015. As curricula across the country feature “LGBTQAI+” content and “Social Emotional Learning” methods, the numbers of students who are identifying as something other than heterosexual is rising to levels more than double seen historically and even dwarfing rates seen among adults, according to data collected by Centers for Disease Control. CDC data shows 12.1% of students 14-18 years old say they are bisexual, 3.2% say they are gay or lesbian, 3.9% say “other,” and 5.2% say they are “questioning” their sexuality. In the adult population, 7% identify as gay, bisexual, or “other.”

Reese: Schools Axe Homework, Deadlines In The Name Of Equity: REPORT

Several schools throughout the country are moving to axe homework and deadlines in an effort to increase equity, according to The Wall Street Journal. Under the philosophy of “equitable grading,” students are given more chances to show they have mastered a subject, a practice that downplays the importance of homework and eschews deadlines in an attempt to give kids who struggle with hardships at home more opportunities to learn the material, according to the WSJ. Schools in California, Nevada and Connecticut are moving to implement “equitable grading,” though opponents of the system, many teachers and students say it disincentives students and leads to a lack of accountability.

AS GOES CALIFORNIA SO GOES THE NATION

Brown: School required us to lie to parents about their kids’ gender identity, California teachers claim in lawsuit

Two California middle school teachers filed a federal lawsuit Thursday against school district administrators and the California State Board of Education over policies they allege required them to deceive parents about their children’s gender identity. Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, both of whom taught for decades at Rincon Middle School in Escondido, claim the school’s policies regarding transgender or “gender diverse” students effectively forced them to validate a child’s gender identity regardless of parental consent, according to their lawsuit filed against Rincon Middle School, the Escondido Union School District (EUSD) and the California State Board of Education. The teachers claim they were mandated under the K-8 school district’s policies to accept a child’s transgender or gender diverse identity without hesitation and to hide it from families.

OTHER NEWS, COMMENTARY, OPINION

Shurk: The Ruling Class’s Stalinist Purge

Like a hammer smashing anyone who seeks to “make America great,” the ruling class pounds Trump, his supporters, and now even Tucker Carlson. A “great America,” you see, is antithetical to the technocratic police State that the Marxist globalists are busy building. When individual rights and liberties are respected, self-sufficient Americans do not need government apparatchiks to fashion drab, one-size-fits-all, welfare-dependent, groupthink-dominated futures. When American families are independent and strong, there are no psychologically unstable, lost, “woke” generations to crave parenting from the State. When Americans choose God’s truth over the government’s lies, then man-made institutions look frail next to the divine. Anybody who does not toe the Establishment line must go because totalitarianism cannot survive even a whisper of condemnation. Lies built from sand can withstand no breeze.

I think this difficult period of American history — during which the Marxist globalists and their appeasers have openly embraced censorship, political persecution, and social “cancelation” — will be remembered as a kind of Stalinist “purge” long in the making. […] The ruling class — consisting of the political Uniparty, the permanent Deep State, and the financial oligarchy pulling the Leviathan’s strings — wasted no time demonizing Trump’s supporters as “Nazis” and “racists” and “insurrectionists” who deserve to have their families ripped apart and lives burned to the ground. It never mattered how absurd it was to defame patriotic Americans who seek limited government and human equality regardless of skin color as somehow anti-American Big Government types seeking to separate citizens by race. Reason and rationality are among the first victims of any purge.

INTERNATIONAL

Kogon: Meet the VLOPs! The EU Extends its Censorship Powers

On Tuesday this week, the European Commission announced its first list of designated Very Large Online Platforms – or VLOPs – that will be subject to “content moderation” requirements and obligations to combat “disinformation” under the EU’s Digital Services Act (DSA). As VLOPs, the designated services will be required “to assess and mitigate their systemic risks and to provide robust content moderation tools.” Or as a subheading in the Commission announcement pithily puts it: “More diligent content moderation, less disinformation.” As discussed in my previous articles on the DSA here and here, the legislation creates enforcement mechanisms – most notably, the threat of massive fines – for ensuring that online platforms comply with commitments to censor or otherwise suppress “disinformation” that they have undertaken in the EU’s hitherto ostensibly voluntary Code of Practice on Disinformation.

The Prickly Pear’s TAKE ACTION focus this year is to help achieve a winning 2024 national and state November 5th election with the removal of the Biden/Obama leftist executive branch disaster, win one U.S. Senate seat, maintain and win strong majorities in all Arizona state offices on the ballot and to insure that unrestricted abortion is not constitutionally embedded in our laws and culture.

Please click the TAKE ACTION link to learn to do’s and don’ts for voting in 2024. Our state and national elections are at great risk from the very aggressive and radical leftist Democrat operatives with documented rigging, mail-in voter fraud and illegals voting across the country (yes, with illegals voting across the country) in the last several election cycles.

Read Part 1 and Part 2 of The Prickly Pear essays entitled How NOT to Vote in the November 5, 2024 Election in Arizona to be well informed of the above issues and to vote in a way to ensure the most likely chance your vote will be counted and counted as you intend.

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