This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., serving as President Donald Trump's secretary of Health and Human Services, appeared before a Senate finance committee for a hearing on Thursday, and some reports described him as having brought with him a flamethrower.
Given his responses to some of the claims made by Democrats, those descriptions were not far wrong.
The fight, of course, is over the massive failures in America's health care industry that allowed COVID to kill millions, and the "vaccines" for the China virus, which actually are treatments, to injure, even kill, more. Democrats are insisting he push for more "boosters" even though the data doesn't necessarily support such a need.
All factors of the nation's health care were on the table, and Sen. Ron Wyden, D-Ore., deliberately tried to provoke Kennedy with, "I hope you tell the American people how many preventable child deaths are an acceptable sacrifice."
Kennedy responded by pointing out Wyden "sat in that chair for 25 years while the chronic disease in our children went up to 76% and you said nothing … You never asked the question why is this happening."
Kennedy also had a pointed exchange with Sen. Maggie Hassan, a Democrat from New Hampshire.
She accused him of working behind closed doors making it harder for children to get a vaccine.
He responded, "This is crazy talk. You're making stuff up… It's not behind closed doors." And he said the vaccines are available.
Further, he delivered a bombshell, that the pharmaceutical industry could not deliver a study that documented a shot's effectiveness on children.
It was the FDA that said it would start requiring additional evidence for what has been described as the "repeat-booster-shots-forever" plan that suggests even healthy adults get an annual COVID shot, like a flu shot.
Vice President JD Vance soon sounded off on the badgering Democrats were delivering.
"When I see all these senators trying to lecture and 'gotcha' Bobby Kennedy today all I can think is: You all support off-label, untested, and irreversible hormonal 'therapies' for children, mutilating our kids and enriching big pharma. You're full of s— and everyone knows it," he said.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., didn't escape Kennedy's barbs, either, citing the massive cash totals she's gotten from pharmaceutical companies.
The Daily Caller News Foundation reported, in fact, Warren got nearly $820,000 from employees or political action committees linked to the industry during the 2020 election cycle alone.
Kennedy, with her, turned blunt: "We're not going to recommend a product for which there's no clinical data for that indication. Is that what I should be doing?"
Kennedy pointed out America "became the sickest country in the world," and he's there to "make sure this doesn't happen again."
He said the science is a priority for his decision-making.
That contrasts with Anthony Fauci, Joe Biden's COVID adviser, who claimed that he actually was the science, even as he was recommending treatments for COVID that left behind side effect injuries, and discounting treatments that were documented to be helpful.
Kennedy put the safety of "76 million children" above any recommendation, plan or scheme pushed by Democrats.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
As Americans learn that their nation's immigration and visa laws have been subject to phenomenal levels of abuse, particularly the H-1B visa, more subtle and tricky forms of abuse are being employed.
For example, the most powerful tech and finance brands don't just hire workers on H-1B visas directly. They also buy labor from layers of outside "consultancies" that recruit abroad, place people at client sites and skim a margin. Those layers, in turn, create a gray zone of accountability that invites wage theft, benching without pay and even classic kickback schemes in broader contracting.
The secondary-employer trap
Here's how it works: Big companies keep their "headcount" lean and shift cost and legal risk to outside vendors. Those vendors then subcontract to smaller "body shops," so the person coding in a blue-chip office may legally work for a tiny shop two layers down.
When layoffs hit or projects pause, the end client says the worker is not their employee and the vendor says the worker is "non-productive," which is where the abuse really starts.
Senators sounded this scheme out a decade ago when Southern California Edison replaced hundreds of its staff via outsourcers, an arrangement justified by claiming the utility was not the legal employer.
When layoffs hit or projects pause, the end client says the worker is not their employee and the vendor says the worker is "non-productive," which is where the abuse really starts.
Senators sounded this scheme out a decade ago when Southern California Edison replaced hundreds of its staff via outsourcers, an arrangement justified by claiming the utility was not the legal employer.
How secondary employers squeeze workers
Once a worker is on the vendor's payroll, the leverage flips. The Department of Labor has repeatedly found "benching" without pay and underpayment relative to required wages. Those violations are common in layered placements because time between client projects becomes unpaid "non-productive" time. Examples include multiple wage-recovery actions and guidance barring these tactics outright.
Wage theft at scale is not theoretical
The Economic Policy Institute's document-based investigation into HCL, a major supplier to big brands, found at least $95 million in apparent underpayments to H-1B workers through internal pay-level manipulations and off-books adjustments. The business model works because vendors can bill the client one rate yet quietly pay the worker another.
Kickbacks thrive in opaque vendor chains
When major corporations source labor through multiple layers of subcontractors, it opens the door for abuse. Intermediaries can demand "placement fees" or under-the-table payments in exchange for securing or keeping a project role. The Department of Justice has prosecuted kickback and bribery schemes in staffing and contracting, where vendor managers steered jobs in return for personal payoffs, even in cases that had nothing to do with immigration.
The risk multiplies as the number of middlemen increases. In parallel, DOJ investigations have also uncovered consultancy firms hoarding H-1B workers without real assignments, stockpiling them simply to gain leverage over competitors.
In the Cloudgen, LLC case, for example, a classic consulting "body shop" pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit H-1B fraud, admitting it placed workers on phony client letters and mismatched roles to game approvals. Cases like this reveal how easy it is to feed a layered labor market with questionable petitions.
The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) itself has acknowledged that the H-1B system can depress wages and displace U.S. workers when contractors flood client sites. Rulemaking over the last few years tried to tighten definitions of "third-party worksite" and "U.S. employer," but the layered model still lets brand-name clients claim they are not the employer of record.
The vast vendor ecosystem: A look into the success of the business model
All employer-to-vendor visuals are produced by the Red Line Project, using data pulled directly from employer applications filed with the Department of Labor. Each employer's secondary profile exposes a detailed roster of vendors operating behind the scenes. The takeaway is unmistakable: At many of America's largest brands, the individuals writing code and managing sensitive data are not direct employees at all, but are legally employed by third-party consultancies that specialize in visa staffing and subcontracting.
Every extra layer between the badge and the building is a place where wages can be shaved, fees shifted to workers and kickbacks demanded for a seat on a project. The end client gets the work and plausible deniability. The middlemen get the spread. And American workers get squeezed out of job interviews that should have been theirs.
The pattern is identical across telecom, finance, health care, banking and big tech. Different industries, same architecture. When the stacks grow, accountability shrinks. When the rosters lengthen, transparency fades. Americans are looking at a pipeline that turned their nation's visa program into a profit center for intermediaries.
These images are not abstract graphics. They are the footprint of a business model that is scaled by routing critical jobs through secondary employers. Clean up the layers and the unfair incentives disappear. Until then, the pictures tell the story better than words.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. recently announced that his agency would be "launching studies on the potential contribution of some of the SSRI [antidepressant] drugs and some of the other psychiatric drugs that might be contributing to violence."
The announcement came one day after the Aug. 27 mass shooting of children in a Minneapolis Catholic School. Kennedy specifically said HHS would investigate whether drugs taken by transgender mass-shooter Robin Westman played a role in his church attack, during which Westman murdered 2 children and wounded 18 other people, 15 of them children.
Immediately, the establishment media went into high gear defending both the controversial drugs and transgenders with headlines like this from MSNBC: "RFK Jr. is propagating a dangerous myth about mental health treatment and violence." And the Washington Post led its coverage with, "Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suggested that psychiatric drugs may have played a role in the Minnesota Catholic school shooting – a statement widely criticized as unsupported by science." Likewise, Google's search AI is entirely dismissive of RFK Jr.'s commitment to research the obvious link, denigrating the HHS secretary as a conspiracist and skeptic, whose "decision to launch the investigation has drawn sharp criticism. Opponents argue he is using a tragedy to promote disinformation and attack a vulnerable population."
In reality: 1) Individuals identifying as transgender very commonly are prescribed antidepressants and other psychiatric drugs due to high levels of anxiety and depression stemming from their "gender dysphoria"; and 2) Putting people on a regimen of powerful cross-sex hormones in a vain attempt to change their gender – something that is scientifically impossible – is well known to create havoc in both body and mind.
Indeed, as summarized below, there is a shocking and near-total correlation between psychiatric medications – particularly so-called SSRI and SNRI antidepressants – and America's most infamous and gruesome mass shooters in recent decades.
* * * * *
*"When I was lying in my bed that night, I couldn't sleep because my voice in my head kept echoing through my mind telling me to kill them."
The words are those of 12-year-old Christopher Pittman, struggling to explain why he murdered his grandparents, who had provided the only love and stability he'd ever known in his turbulent life. He was angry with his grandfather, who had disciplined him earlier that day for hurting another student during a fight on the school bus. So later that night, he shot both of his grandparents in the head with a .410 shotgun as they slept and then burned down their South Carolina home, where he had lived with them.
"I got up, got the gun, and I went upstairs and I pulled the trigger," he recalled. "Through the whole thing, it was like watching your favorite TV show. You know what is going to happen, but you can't do anything to stop it."
His lawyers would later argue that the boy had been a victim of "involuntary intoxication," since Pittman's doctors had him taking the powerful antidepressants Paxil and Zoloft just prior to the murders.
Paxil's known "adverse drug reactions" – according to the drug's FDA-approved label – include "mania," "insomnia," "anxiety," "agitation," "confusion," "amnesia," "depression," "paranoid reaction," "psychosis," "hostility," "delirium," "hallucinations," "abnormal thinking," "depersonalization" and "lack of emotion," among others.
Pittman, who was sentenced to 30 years to life in prison for murdering his grandparents, would later "transition" to the female gender and change his first name to Kristen. "I, as well as my family, know that I have identified as a 'female' most of my life," Pittman wrote in a lawsuit against South Carolina prison officials, "but due to my incarceration at twelve (12) years old I was not able to take the steps of transition that I needed over the years."
* Andrea Yates, in one of the most horrifying and heartbreaking crimes in modern history, drowned all five of her children – aged 7 years down to 6 months – in a bathtub. Insisting inner voices commanded her to kill her children, she had become increasingly psychotic over the course of several years. At her 2006 murder re-trial (after a 2002 guilty verdict was overturned on appeal), Yates' longtime friend Debbie Holmes testified: "She asked me if I thought Satan could read her mind and if I believed in demon possession." And Dr. George Ringholz, after evaluating Yates for two days, recounted an experience she had after the birth of her first child:
"What she described was feeling a presence … Satan … telling her to take a knife and stab her son Noah," Ringholz said, adding that Yates' delusion at the time of the bathtub murders was not only that she had to kill her children to save them, but that Satan had entered her and that she had to be executed in order to kill Satan.
Yates had been taking the SNRI antidepressant Effexor. (SNRIs, short for serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, are similar to SSRIs, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, in that both chemically elevate the levels of neurotransmitters in the brain). In November 2005, more than four years after Yates drowned her five children, Effexor manufacturer Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (since acquired by Pfizer) quietly added "homicidal ideation" – that is, murderous thoughts and feelings – to the drug's list of "rare adverse events."
And what exactly does "rare" mean in the phrase "rare adverse events"? The FDA defines it as occurring in less than one in 1,000 people. But since that same year a staggering 19.2 million prescriptions for Effexor were filled in the U.S., statistically that means over 19,000 Americans might have been experiencing "homicidal ideation" as a result of taking just this one brand of antidepressant drug during that time period.
* Columbine mass-killer Eric Harris was taking Luvox – like Paxil and Zoloft (and trendsetter Prozac) a modern and widely prescribed type of antidepressant called selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors or SSRIs. Harris and fellow student Dylan Klebold went on a hellish school shooting rampage in 1999 during which they killed 12 students and a teacher and wounded 24 others before turning their guns on themselves.
Luvox manufacturer Solvay Pharmaceuticals concedes that during short-term controlled clinical trials 4% of children and youth taking Luvox – that's 1 in 25 – developed mania, a dangerous and violence-prone mental derangement characterized by extreme excitement and delusion.
The inescapable truth is, perpetrators of many of the most horrendous murder rampages in recent years were taking, or just coming off of, prescribed psychiatric drugs.
Pharmaceutical manufacturers are nervous about lawsuits over the "rare adverse effects" of their powerfully mood-altering medications. To avoid costly settlements and public relations catastrophes – such as when GlaxoSmithKline was ordered to pay $6.4 million to the family of 60-year-old Donald Schnell who murdered his wife, daughter and granddaughter in a fit of rage shortly after starting on Paxil – drug companies' legal teams have quietly and skillfully settled hundreds of cases out-of-court, shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars to plaintiffs. Pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly fought scores of legal claims against Prozac in this way, settling for cash before the complaint could go to court while stipulating that the settlement remain secret – and then claiming it had never lost a Prozac lawsuit.
Meanwhile, the list of killers who were taking prescribed psychiatric medications is long and chilling. Some prominent examples most people will remember:
* Nikolas Cruz, the 19-year-old former student who in 2018 murdered 17 people – 14 students and 3 staff members – at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., was on psychiatric medications "to deal with his emotional fragility," his mother's sister, Barbara Kumbatovich, told the Miami Herald.
* In 2017, Las Vegas mass shooter Stephen Paddock had benzodiazepines (e.g. Valium and similar anti-anxiety drugs) in his system when, out the window of his 32nd-floor hotel room, he shot 58 people to death and wounded hundreds more in the worst mass shooting in modern U.S. history.
* Patrick Purdy went on a schoolyard shooting rampage in Stockton, Calif., in 1989, which became the catalyst for the legislative frenzy to ban "semiautomatic assault weapons" in California and the nation. The 25-year-old Purdy, who murdered five children and wounded 30, had been on Amitriptyline, an antidepressant, as well as the antipsychotic drug Thorazine.
* Adam Lanza, the school shooter who massacred 26 people – 6 teachers and 20 first-grade children – at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut in 2013, was on psychiatric meds, according to Mark and Louise Tambascio, family friends of Lanza and his mother. As Louise Tambascio told correspondent Scott Pelley on CBS' "60 Minutes," "I know he was on medication and everything, but she (Cruz's mother) homeschooled him at home 'cause he couldn't deal with the school classes sometimes, so she just homeschooled Adam at home. And that was her life." Tambascio likewise told ABC News, "I knew he was on medication, but that's all I know."
* Kip Kinkel, 15, murdered his parents in 1998 and the next day went to his school, Thurston High in Springfield, Ore., and opened fire on his classmates, killing two and wounding 22 others. He had been prescribed both Prozac and Ritalin.
* In 1988, 31-year-old Laurie Dann went on a shooting rampage in a second-grade classroom in Winnetka, Ill., killing one child and wounding six. She had been taking the antidepressant Anafranil as well as Lithium, long used to treat mania.
* In Paducah, Ky., in late 1997, 14-year-old Michael Carneal, son of a prominent attorney, traveled to Heath High School and started shooting students in a prayer meeting taking place in the school's lobby, killing three and leaving another paralyzed. Carneal reportedly was on Ritalin.
* In 2005, 16-year-old Native American Jeff Weise, living on Minnesota's Red Lake Indian Reservation, shot and killed nine people and wounded five others before killing himself. Weise had been taking Prozac.
* Kurt Danysh, 18, shot his own father to death in 1996, a little more than two weeks after starting on Prozac. Danysh's description of own his mental-emotional state at the time of the murder sounded strikingly similar to that of 12-year-old Christopher Pittman, who had shot his grandparents while on psychiatric meds. "I didn't realize I did it until after it was done," Danysh said. "This might sound weird, but it felt like I had no control of what I was doing, like I was left there just holding a gun."
* John Hinckley, age 25, took four Valium two hours before shooting and almost killing President Ronald Reagan in 1981. In the assassination attempt, Hinckley also wounded press secretary James Brady, Secret Service agent Timothy McCarthy and policeman Thomas Delahanty.
* In still another famous case, 47-year-old Joseph T. Wesbecker, just a month after he began taking Prozac in 1989, shot 20 workers at Standard Gravure Corp. in Louisville, Ky., killing nine. Prozac-maker Eli Lilly later settled a lawsuit brought by survivors. Since then, Eli Lilly has reportedly paid out an estimated $50 million to settle 300 lawsuits filed as a result of homicides, suicides and suicide attempts connected with use of Prozac.
These are just some of the better-known offenders who had been taking prescribed psychiatric drugs before committing their horrendous crimes – there are many others.
Today, despite the fact that literally all modern antidepressants prescribed for Americans carry an FDA-mandated black box warning of increased risk of suicidal thinking and behavior ("behavior," of course, meaning actually killing oneself, or trying to), antidepressants are nevertheless wildly prescribed to the American public. As psychiatrist and antidepressant expert Josef Witt-Doerring, M.D., recently explained to Tucker Carlson, approximately 1 in 5 Americans are currently taking SSRIs.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
In a situation in California, a teacher at Cal State Channel Island has been indicted for assaulting U.S. Border Patrol agents with a deadly or dangerous weapon – a tear gas canister.
And a constitutional expert, Jonathan Turley, points out it appears to be just the latest scenario in which professors have gone ballistic, and beyond what the law allows.
The Los Angeles Times reported the federal grand jury returned an indictment of Jonathan Caravello, 37, of Ventura, on a felony count of assault "after he was arrested at a protest against an immigration raid at a Ventura County marijuana farm."
The raids are part of President Donald Trump's agenda to secure America's borders and crack down on illegal aliens who entered, by the millions, under the tenure of Joe Biden.
In fact, there even were gang members and terrorists allowed into the U.S. under Biden's practices.
"Prosecutors say that agents deployed the tear gas as a crowd control measure during the July 10 protest and that Caravello picked up a canister and lobbed it back at officers. If convicted as charged, he faces up to 20 years in federal prison," the report explained.
The fight developed as protesters confronted federal agents enforcing the law at Glass House Farms' marijuana grow site in Camarillo.
The immigration enforcement action resulted in the arrests of more than 300 illegal alien workers.
The Department of Homeland Security said one worker died after falling from a greenhouse roof while trying to escape from federal agents.
Protesters by the hundreds gathered at the site, and allegedly impeded federal law enforcement, also throwing rocks at government vehicles.
Prosecutors said the tear gas was used, "For agents' safety."
Caravello allegedly chased a tear gas canister that rolled past him and threw it back at Border Patrol agents.
Constitutional expert Jonathan Turley pointed out that authorities during their operation found at least 14 child workers there.
And he noted Caravello was defended by faculty at his school.
"The night before he was arrested, Caravello spoke at a city of Camarillo council meeting and declared that he was 'patrolling the city streets following armed masked thugs trying to kidnap my [undocumented] neighbors,'" Turley wrote.
"The California Faculty Association (CFA) claimed Professor Caravello was 'kidnapped' in a reel on Instagram: 'Four masked agents dragged Jonathan away into an unmarked car without identifying themselves, without giving the reason for arrest, and without disclosing where they are taking him,'" he noted.
"This is not the first time that faculty have rallied around faculty who have allegedly taken violent action during protests. At the University of California, Santa Barbara, professors actually rallied around feminist studies associate professor Mireille Miller-Young, who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. Despite pleading guilty to criminal assault, she was not fired and received overwhelming support from the students and faculty. She was later honored as a model for women advocates."
And, Turley noted, "At Hunter College in New York, Professor Shellyne Rodríguez was shown trashing a pro-life display of students. She was captured on a videotape telling the students that 'you're not educating s–t […] This is f–king propaganda. What are you going to do, like, anti-trans next? This is bulls–t. This is violent. You're triggering my students.'"
He noted Hunter College didn't consider the violence sufficient reason to fire her, and only did so later when she chased reporters with a machete.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center
Get ready for Democrats and other leftists, who long have called for gun limits, gun restrictions, gun bans and gun confiscations. to start defending the Second Amendment.
It's because there are reports the Department of Justice is considering the idea of banning transgenders from buying weapons.
After all, they could be argued to fall under existing restrictions on guns for those who have confirmed mental health conditions.
It is the Daily Wire that noted, "In the wake of the latest deadly attack on a school by a transgender-identifying individual, President Donald Trump's Justice Department is considering blocking trans-identifying people from buying firearms."
A DOJ source explained, "Individuals within the DOJ are reviewing ways to ensure that mentally ill individuals suffering from gender dysphoria are unable to obtain firearms while they are unstable and unwell."
The reasoning is that those who say they are transgender suffer from gender dysphoria, a mental disorder.
Specifics were not yet being discussed.
But the DOJ official said, "Under Attorney General Bondi's leadership this Department of Justice is actively considering a range of options to prevent mentally unstable individuals from committing acts of violence, especially at schools."
The most recent gun violence by a transgender happened last week at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis. Trans-identifying Robert Westman, who changed his name to Robin, but also admitted he regretted brainwashing himself, shot up a school, killing two students and injuring many more.
"Westman's actions came only two years after another trans-identifying killer, this one a woman who identified as a man, targeted Christian school children in Nashville," the report said.
The report continued, "A review by The Daily Wire found that the Annunciation school shooting and the Covenant Christian school shooting are just two examples of a steady stream of transgender-related violence over the past decade."
It continued, "The move would undoubtedly infuriate those on the left who believe that men can become women and women can become men — and that people who identify as transgender are not mentally ill but merely living in the wrong body. These critics argue that transgender identification is irrelevant when discussing school shootings and that even discussing the topic puts trans-identifying people in danger and should be off limits.
"In recent years, doctors, therapists, activists, and even President Joe Biden's administration have argued that people experiencing gender dysphoria will benefit from so-called 'gender-affirming care' — transgender surgeries, hormones, and puberty blockers — claiming that these gender dysphoric people are more likely to kill themselves if they don't receive such 'care.' Opponents of these measures, including young people who underwent the procedures as teenagers like Chloe Cole, argue that 'gender-affirming care' does not mitigate the distress that gender dysphoric people have, but actually often exacerbates mental health issues."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Democrats have used redistricting in states where they are the majority for years already, eliminating as many Republican members of Congress as they can.
Republicans recently took up the agenda, with the now-approved plan in Texas that changes five districts that were seen as secure for Democrats into districts where GOP candidates will have more support.
California Gov. Gavin Newsom, a Democrat, has threatened to respond in kind in his state.
But a new analysis at the Washington Stand warns the leftist party to pull back before it loses too much more.
It cites the ironic threats from Massachusetts Gov. Maura Healey, responding to Texas' moves, to punish Republicans in her state by redistricting there.
"Only for the media to point out that they have no Republican districts," the analysis noted.
The facts reveal that Democrats already have pushed their schemes to redistrict Republicans out of Congress whenever and wherever they can, and now are, more or less, backed up to a wall.
Their "tantrum" over Texas "may have made for good television, but it's turning out to be a terrible strategy," the analysis noted.
"Part of the price of painting Republicans as gerrymandering cheats is exposing the Democrats' own years-long hustle of rigging congressional maps. Now that the spotlight is on, Americans are finally getting a good look at how badly the Left has abused the system in blue states. And it isn't pretty," the analysis said.
"In one of the truest silver linings of this unexpected storyline of 2025, Republicans are finally pulling back the curtain on how liberal leaders have spent decades scamming the system. While governors like Gavin Newsom, D-Calif., are showing plenty of bravado in their threats to retaliate, the reality is this: they're picking a fight they'll almost certainly lose."
Rep. Marlin Stutzman, R-Ind., noted the "injustices" that Joe Biden introduced during his lone term in office.
"We're starting to learn a lot more of what happened through the 2020 election and what happened through the redistricting that took place in 2021," he said. "And if you look at some of these states like California, Illinois, [and] New York, they have all redistricted in a way that has really made the balance of power very unfair."
Take Illinois, he said. "Out of the 17 districts in Illinois, only two are Republicans. Look at California. They've got over 50 some seats, and the minority is, of course, Republican."
Rep. Doug LaMalfa, R-Calif., being put in the bull's-eye by Newsom's agenda, said in that state Democrats, are "going to draw the maps first, and then they say they're going to go to the ballot and ask people for permission to set aside the Constitution on that."
That would, he said, be in violation of existing state law.
"There [are] 52 members of the House in our state, [and] it's 43 [Democrats] to nine [Republicans] right now," he said. Noting that Democrats want to eliminate another five Republicans, he said, "Whatever the word democracy [means], this isn't it. This is … the most blatant example, I think, of a power play I've seen in all the years I've ever observed politics in, at least in my home state here."
Now other states, with more evenly distributed representations, are looking at their district maps – because of California's agenda.
Stutzman said, in fact, Republicans just now are beginning an effort that the Democrats long have used.
"We're looking at the numbers from the elections over the past several cycles and realizing that California, Illinois, and New York have already done this, and it gives them a huge advantage," he confirmed.
He blames the media for being complicit, because, "They didn't say anything about the fact that Republicans in Illinois [are] underrepresented in Washington, D.C. and [in] states like Indiana. … We're stepping back and saying, 'You know what? If this is the way that the game is going to be played, the Democrats have started this process already. We're going to push back, and we're going to fight back,'"
The Washington Times has warned, "Things could get worse for Democrats. … Republicans face fewer hurdles in the red states of Indiana, Missouri and Ohio, where they are considering the Trump-inspired mid-decade map changes that could boost the GOP's chances of defending their thin House majority in the midterm elections next year."
As FRC Action Director Matt Carpenter cautioned, "Democrats would be wise to do everything in their power to tamp down the 'redistricting war,' as some have called it, simply because they do not have as deep of a reservoir of potential new districts to draw in the states they control as Republicans do. Most Democratic states have already maxed out the party's share of their congressional delegations by aggressively gerrymandering over the years."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
An American Olympic star who helped put competitive diving on the map has sold two of his gold medals and moved out the United States.
"I told the truth; I needed the money. While many people may have built businesses and sold them for a profit, I had my medals, which I am grateful for," explained Greg Louganis, diving legend from the 1980s.
In a Facebook post, Louganis says he also sold his home in preparation for moving to Panama.
One of the honored Wheaties box athletes, Louganis, 65, won four gold medals and one silver in the 1976, 1984 and 1988 Summer Games.
According to the New York Post, Louganis made $437,000 auctioning the three medals.
In his post, the diving champ explained he is getting rid of more possessions than just the medals.
"I decided to donate, sell what can be sold, give gifts, and give where things might be needed or appreciated," Louganis noted.
He likened the downsizing to friends who lost all their possessions in the Los Angeles fires earlier this year.
Part of Louganis' move to Panama is a desire for self-discovery.
"Now I get to discover who is Greg Louganis? Without the distraction and noise from outside. At least this is my goal, and hey, I may not find that," he wrote.
"I think I may find it at times, in moments, my goal is to live it! Discover, allow, and nurture that human spirit through the experiences of life. To be joyful in the moments, embrace the grief, the anger, and the laughter, and embrace it all, feel it all in this experience we call our lives."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
For sure pharmaceutical companies made hundreds of billions of dollars during the COVID pandemic on their experimental shots, mostly mRNA creations that actually were "treatments" more than "vaccines," and ultimately have proven to carry with them a multitude of side effects, including multiple side effects that are fatal.
But now a newly released study from Germany, a peer-reviewed assessment, has shown that a cheap nasal spray, going for maybe $10 a bottle, used three times a day is mostly effective at stopping the China virus.
The study appeared in the JAMA Internal Medicine publication and was cited in a report in the Gateway Pundit.
That report said, "For years, Americans were told their only hope was to roll up their sleeves for Pfizer, Moderna, and the rest of the vaccine cartel. Trillions of dollars flowed into their coffers while dissenting doctors were silenced, families were divided, and countless workers lost their jobs under vaccine mandates."
But, it said, now the study of azelastine nasal spray confirmed it reduced COVID infections by two-thirds.
The JAMA publication confirmed, "In this randomized placebo-controlled clinical trial that included 450 participants, the incidence of laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infections was significantly lower with application of azelastine nasal spray compared with placebo treatment."
The spray already has been in use "for decades to treat allergic rhinitis," and "has in vitro antiviral activity against respiratory viruses, including SARS-CoV-2," JAMA reported.
"A phase 2, double-blind, placebo-controlled, single-center trial was conducted from March 2023 to July 2024. Healthy adults from the general population were enrolled at the Saarland University Hospital in Germany," it explained. "Participants were randomly assigned 1:1 to receive azelastine, 0.1%, nasal spray or placebo 3 times daily for 56 days. SARS-CoV-2 rapid antigen testing (RAT) was conducted twice weekly, with positive results confirmed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR). Symptomatic participants with negative RAT results underwent multiplex PCR testing for respiratory viruses."
The study had 227 patients assigned to azelastine and 223 to placebo treatment.
"In the intention-to-treat (ITT) population, the incidence of PCR-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection was significantly lower in the azelastine group (n = 5 [2.2%]) compared with the placebo group (n = 15 [6.7%]).
"As secondary end points, azelastine demonstrated an increase in mean (SD) time to SARS-CoV-2 infection among infected participants (31.2 [9.3] vs 19.5 [14.8] days), a reduction of the overall number of PCR-confirmed symptomatic infections (21 of 227 participants vs 49 of 223 participants), and a lower incidence of PCR-confirmed rhinovirus infections (1.8% vs 6.3%)," the report said.
The study was done at Saarland University Hospital in Germany.
The reduction in risk of infection amounted to 67%.
"Not only were fewer people infected, but those who did get sick had longer protection before infection (31 days on average versus 19 days in the placebo group) and shorter illness duration when measured by rapid tests (3.4 days vs 5.1 days)," the Gateway Pundit explained.
"The spray didn't just block COVID. It also: Cut symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infections from 6.3% (placebo) down to 1.8%. Reduced rhinovirus (common cold) infections from 6.3% to 1.8%. Slashed the overall number of PCR-confirmed infections (COVID + other respiratory viruses) from 22% in placebo to 9.3% with azelastine."
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
Two federal appeals court judges have decided to second-guess President Donald Trump's "foreign affairs and national security" decisions, ruling that the Alien Enemies Act is not available for him to use to deport members of an invading criminal gang.
The decision came from Leslie Southwick and Irma Carrillo Ramirez, of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.
There already is a division among federal courts on the issue, as a federal judge in Pennsylvania has ruled that Trump is allowed to use the AEA to deport members of the Venezuelan force, Tren de Aragua, whose troops already have invaded America with their drugs and human trafficking, and even, in leftist Colorado, the armed and organized forces simply took over apartment buildings and demanded residents pay rent to them.
A report at Fox News said Southwick and Ramirez wrote in the majority opinion of the 2-1 decision that Venezuela sending "its residents and citizens" to enter the U.S. "illegally," "is not the modern-day equivalent" of sending an army.
"A country encouraging its residents and citizens to enter this country illegally is not the modern-day equivalent of sending an armed, organized force to occupy, to disrupt, or to otherwise harm the United States."
U.S. Circuit Judge Andrew Oldham argued in dissent that the majority was second-guessing Trump's conduct in foreign affairs and national security, and those are topics on which courts should give the president great deference.
"The majority's approach to this case is not only unprecedented—it is contrary to more than 200 years of precedent," Oldham wrote.
The case already had been to the Supreme Court, which in an unsigned order said the Trump DOJ didn't give members of the Venezuelan criminal force enough time to challenge their deportations, and it sent the case back down to the 5th Circuit.
The Supreme Court had said, "Under these circumstances, notice roughly 24 hours before removal, devoid of information about how to exercise due process rights to contest that removal, surely does not pass muster."
The law has been used before to repel members of invading organizations, but only during wartime, the report said.
Lee Gelernt, a lawyer for the pro-illegal alien American Civil Liberties Union, said, "This is a critically important decision reining in the administration's view that it can simply declare an emergency without any oversight by the courts."
The Trump administration had argued that the courts cannot second-guess the president's decisions on foreign policy and international affairs, specifically his determination that Tren de Aragua was connected to Venezuela's government and represented a danger to the U.S., which warrants using the law.
The appeals court claimed that the organized crime operations by Tren de Aragua in the United States represented "no invasion or predatory incursion."
The fight is expected to be presented to the full 5th Circuit, and possibly then the Supreme Court again.
This story was originally published by the WND News Center.
PALM BEACH, Florida – Survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's sexual abuse announced on Wednesday they're preparing their own list of high-profile names who allegedly sexually abused them, and one of the victims indicated Donald Trump was the pedophile's "biggest brag forever" when it came to friendship, though she did not suggest the president was among the perpetrators.
"Let me announce now," said Lisa Phillips, a model brought to Epstein's Caribbean island in 2000, "several of us Epstein survivors have been discussing creating our own list of names. We know the names. Many of us were abused by them. Now together as survivors, we will confidentially compile the names we all know were regularly in the Epstein world. And it will be done by survivors and for survivors, no one else is involved. Stay tuned for more details on that."
"I'm demanding justice," Phillips added. "Congress must choose. Will you continue to protect predators? Or will you finally protect survivors?"
Another victim of Epstein's sexual abuse, Chauntae Davies, pointed out how Jeffrey would brag about being friends with fellow Palm Beacher Donald Trump.
"His biggest brag forever was that he was good friends with Donald Trump," Davies said. "He had an 8-by-10 framed picture of him on his desk, with the two of them."
"Epstein surrounded himself with the most powerful leaders of our country and the world."
"He abused not only me, but countless others and everyone seemed to look away. The truth is, Epstein had a free pass. He bragged about his powerful friends, including our current president, Donald Trump. It was his biggest brag, actually."
Davies also mentioned former President Bill Clinton, saying: "I was just one of the many young women trapped in his (Epstein's) orbit. I was even taken on a trip to Africa with former president Bill Clinton and other notable figures. In those moments, I realized how powerless I was. If I spoke out, who would believe me? Who would protect me?"
"One thing is certain, unless we learn from this history, monsters like Epstein will rise again. There are files, government files that hold the truth about Epstein … ."
When asked about the Epstein case in the Oval Office Wednesday, President Trump said: "This is a Democrat hoax that never ends."
"From what I understand, thousand of pages of documents have been given, but it's really a Democrat hoax because they're trying to get people to talk about something that's totally irrelevant to the success that we've had as a nation since I've been president."
Survivor Haley Robson addressed Trump's "hoax" comment, saying: "Mr. President, Donald J. Trump, I am a registered Republican – not that that matters, because this is not political – however, I cordially invite you to the Capitol to meet me in person so you can understand this is not a hoax. We are real human beings. This is real trauma."
"It's being gutted from the inside out," Robson explained, when asked about the emotional impact.
"It feels like you just want to explode inside because nobody again is understanding that this is a real situation. These women are real. We're here in person. … Please humanize us. … There is no hoax, the abuse was real."
"I would be more than happy to meet with him (Trump), and I will meet him halfway."
"We are the keys to this situation," Robson added. "We have the truth, and the FBI knows the truth, the government knows the truth. You may pull the wool over the sheep's eyes. But we are the keys. We know who was involved. We know the game. We know the players, and we are sitting here for 20 years waiting for you to get up and do something. Well, guess what? Your time is up and now we're doing it."
Anouska De Georgiou, another Epstein victim, said: "The days of sweeping this under the rug are over. We the survivors say 'no more.'"
"I'm no longer weak, I am no longer powerless and I'm no longer alone. And with your vote, neither will the next generation," she said. "President Trump, you have so much influence and power in this situation. Please use that influence and power to help us, because we need it now, and this country needs it now."
Marina Lacerda, a survivor who was named as Minor Victim One in Epstein's 2019 federal indictment, spoke publicly for the first time about the horror, noting there are many parts of her story she can't even remember.
"It's so hard to begin to heal knowing that there are people out there who know more about my abuse than I do," she said.
"The worst part is that the government is still in possession right now of the documents and information that could help me remember and get over all of this, maybe, and help me heal. They have documents with my name on them that were confiscated from Jeffrey Epstein's house, and could help me put the pieces of my own life back together. But I don't have any of it, and I know the same is true for many of these women."
Sky Roberts, the brother of well-known Epstein survivor Virgina Giuffre who died by suicide in April, laid out three demands: "Ghislaine Maxwell must remain in a maximum security prison for the rest of her life," Roberts said.
"No leniency, no deals, no special treatment. The Epstein documents must be unsealed. Every name, every detail, no more secrets, no more protection for those who preyed on the vulnerable. And finally, we demand full accountability from every enabler, every accomplice, every person in power who turned a blind eye."
The victims are urging Congress to support a bipartisan push from Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Democrat Rep. Ro Khanna of California to compel the U.S. Justice Department to publicly release all the Epstein files.
At Wednesday's news conference, U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia said she personally would be fearless in naming the names of Epstein's friends and clients on the floor of the U.S. House Of Representatives.
"Yeah, it's a scary thing to name names, but I will tell you I'm not afraid to name names," Greene said.
"And so if they want to give me a list, I will walk in that Capitol on the House floor, I'll say every damn name that abused these women."