This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The Associated Press, which stunningly still claims to be a source of "unbiased" news, now has banned journalists from using the word "transgenderism," a new report says.

It's because that "frames transgender identity as an ideology."

It is Tyler O'Neil who has explained in a commentary at the Daily Signal that the organization, which publishes a stylebook used by many journalists, is demanding journalists abide by the transgenderism ideology, but they are not allowed to think of it as an ideology.

The AP, he said, recently updated its requirements, and moves way beyond "bathrooms or pronouns."

"In a classic example of '1984'-style doublethink, good journalists are required to abide by transgender ideology, while denying that such an ideology exists," he explained. "AP's most recent style guide update—published Thursday—instructs them to use a person’s 'preferred' pronouns, deny that sex is a biological fact recognized at or before birth, and use the euphemism 'gender-affirming care' when describing experimental medical interventions that leave patients stunted, scarred, and infertile."

O'Neil explained, "The most recent update to the AP style guide is quite clear: 'Do not use the term transgenderism, which frames transgender identity as an ideology.' Yet the entire document is dripping with this ideology."

For example, it states, "Avoid references to a transgender person being born a boy or girl, or phrasing like birth gender. Sex assigned at birth is the accurate terminology."

Then it points out that sometimes sex assigned at birth isn't accurate.

It concedes that gender is a social construct, but says "the use of the phrase 'sex assigned at birth' implies that biological sex is also socially constructed, rather than a central reality of humanity that enables people to reproduce."

O'Neil said, "Transgender ideology relies on muddying the waters in this way, suggesting that transgender identity is the real fact, so changing a person’s body to match a gender identity opposite his or her biological sex is 'affirming,' rather than destructive."

"The document states that children can take 'puberty blockers,' which it describes as 'fully reversible prescription medication that pauses sexual maturation.' It does not note that the Food and Drug Administration has not approved drugs such as Lupron for that purpose, nor that authorities use Lupron to chemically castrate sex offenders."

The news organization "accuses 'opponents of youth transgender medical treatment' of citing 'widely discredited research,'" but doesn't let on that many pro-trans studies are, in fact, widely discredited.

The AP tells reporters to "avoid the word mutilation," because that's politicized and subjective. But it also applies accurately to the surgical removal of healthy body parts.

O'Neil also notes AP orders reporters to avoid terms like "biological sex," in light of the fact that opponents of transgenderism use that term to emphasize the truth of biology.

And there are no "preferred pronouns," only those that "they use."

Transgenderism is been put in the spotlight in recent months because of the fact that the Joe Biden administration has made promoting the ideology, along with abortion, a main agenda point for his tenure in office. Further, economic disasters that Anheuser-Busch and Target have brought on themselves in recent weeks – each corporation losing tens of billions of dollars in value – have been over their advocacy for the transgenderism ideology.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

It's well documented now that the federal government, through the FBI and DOJ, under Barack Obama, targeted an individual, Donald Trump, who was running for president.

He was accused, without any evidence, of colluding with Russia, among other things.

Then under Joe Biden, Trump has been targeted, individually, many times, with various investigations, a raid on his private home, claims he caused a riot when he asked for a peaceful protest, and much, much more again.

Now James Comey, the fired FBI chief who was in power during many of those attacks on Trump, says that's not a good thing.

At least, it would not be a good thing when he's thinking about the prospect of a Trump presidency starting in January 2025.

In the past, he doesn't address it.

See his comments, to a leftist on television:

He said, "Think about what four years of a retribution presidency might look like. He (Trump) could order the investigation and prosecution of individuals who he sees as enemies. I'm sure I'm on the enemies list. Because the president does constitutionally oversee the executive branch entirely which includes the Department of Justice, prosecutors, and investigators. So he could commission directly that individual be pursued. He could also direct all kinds of conduct that people would maybe take to court to try to stop. But who enforces court orders? Mostly the U.S. Marshal's Service which is part of the executive branch."

He said, "President Trump could say I don't care what the Supreme Court says or these district judges say. I'm telling the Marshal's Service don’t enforce the court order."

He said, "I want the American people to stare at the threat that we're facing, and understand that they cannot take the next election off."

It was a commentary on Twitchy that pointed out the failure of his arguments.

"James Comey sounds nervous about the idea of another Trump presidency. Almost as if he's worried Trump might be looking for a little retribution for everything Comey and others put him through while he was president and since."

The commentary cited Comey's reference to Trump's "threat" to the rule of law.

"He has GOT to be kidding us," Twitchy said. "Someone get this man a mirror. Maybe two. Has he NOT been paying attention to what the Biden DOJ has been doing?"

Social media comments included "Isn't that what u do, Jen?" and "Two coup foot soldiers." Also, "Almost like what they did to him…"

The irony meters were dinging a lot.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Evidence already has confirmed that the FBI had open channels through which it worked to lobby social media companies to suppress information it disliked in recent elections, despite the apparent violations of the First Amendment those campaigns involved.

One incident involved the revelations about the laptop computer abandoned by Hunter Biden at a repair shop that outlined many Biden family scandals, including international business schemes.

The FBI warned social media it could be Russian "disinformation" and those companies then suppressed the details that accurately were being reported.

Now the FBI has moved to shut down the release of any more information about its dealings with Twitter.

The Washington Examiner reports the FBI is blocking the release of records of its officials "advising" Twitter workers how to attack information they disliked.

"Officials at the FBI repeatedly flagged alleged examples of election 'misinformation' in early 2020 and late 2022 to Twitter under its then-CEO Jack Dorsey, with the platform in some cases removing accounts shortly after government outreach, according to emails published by journalist Matt Taibbi in December 2022 as part of the 'Twitter Files,'" the Examiner said.

But now it has closed a records request from the watchdog Protect the Public's Trust that sought to obtain more details.

The FBI claims the information if released, could create an "unwarranted invasion of personal privacy."

According to the Examiner, PPT's director, Michael Chamberlain, described the FBI's response as "nothing short of bizarre."

"They twisted the substance of the requests and then asserted the right to deny acknowledging if records even exist based upon their mangled interpretation, and even though they have already admitted that the records exist," he said.

And that, Chamberlain continued, only raises "suspicion" about what the FBI actually did.

The report confirmed Yoel Roth, formerly of Twitter, "emailed over 150 times from January 2020 to November 2022 with officials at the FBI, according to Taibbi, who published emails providing examples of the bureau calling for accounts spreading purported 'misinformation' to face repercussions."

The report explained, "In one instance, the [FBI] sent an email in November 2022 to the FBI's San Francisco office with a list of 25 accounts that were allegedly promulgating 'misinformation' and asked for the office to engage in 'coordination' with Twitter to see if they violated the 'terms of service,' emails show. That same day, assistant special agent in charge Elvis Chan at the FBI's San Francisco office wrote to the social media platform and requested to be informed if Twitter 'decide to take any actions against these accounts based on our tipper to you,' according to emails."

Within two days, Twitter confirmed it had suspended some of those accounts.

Such evidence prompted PPT to launch a vast request for information, seeking communications from 2020 to 2022 involving the FBI and Twitter.

The FBI recently said the request was "closed."

But the PPT said it has filed appeals of that determination because of the "tremendous public interest in knowing how the FBI interacted with Twitter, particularly with respect to suppressing speech by American citizens."

Under the First Amendment, the government is not allowed to censor Americans' speech. Private corporations can, on their own platforms, and the issue has developed that the government has been using private companies to do its censorship chores.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

President Trump often has called the legacy media in America the enemy of the people.

He repeatedly was in conflict with reporters over their biased questions, implications of wrongdoing, and more – all because of their questions that often took on the attitude like the infamous no-win query: "When did you stop beating your children?"

Now a poll shows he was right.

Rasmussen Reports reveals 59% of respondents to a new poll confirm they consider those publications, broadcasters, and more their "enemy."

"A majority of voters don’t trust the news they’re getting about politics and still agree with former President Donald Trump’s denunciation of the news media as 'the enemy of the people'" Rasmussen said.

Its survey found "30% of Likely U.S. voters say they trust the political news they’re getting – down from 37% in July 2021 – while 52% say they don’t trust political news, and 19% are not sure."

The survey of 1,002 U.S. Likely Voters was conducted on May 16-18, 2023 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points.

A column from Paul Bedard of the Washington Examiner explained, "Maybe it’s the softball questions lofted to top administration officials. It could have been the applause and laughter from reporters that greeted President Joe Biden at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner when he bragged about ignoring them.

"Whatever it is, more and more people are growing impatient and distrustful of the stories coming out of Washington."

He explained, "One reason may be the left-wing bias they see in those stories. An equal 52% said that the media favors Democrats by more than 2-1. … The survey is similar to some that continue to ask if, as former President Donald Trump once said, the media is the enemy of the people."

The pollster said it's actually a majority of every racial category – "58% of whites, 51% of black voters and 68% of other minorities" – who at least somewhat agree that the media are "the enemy of the people."

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

“Election denier.” “Science denier.” “Climate-change denier.” “Conspiracy theorist.” “Hate speech.” “Fake news.” “Disinformation.” “Misinformation.” “Malinformation.”

A bizarre new lexicon has been conjured up by America’s elites, the sole purpose of which is to discredit and ridicule – and if at all possible, censor entirely – speech that doesn’t support their increasingly dark and deranged agenda.

In the greatest of ironies, the nation once boasting the most robust culture of freedom of speech and the press, undergirded by the strongest constitutional protections for those rights, is now ground zero for a total war on free expression.

How could this happen in the United States of America?

One fundamental reason lies at the very heart of today’s radical and unprecedented compulsion to crush free speech: The elites – from the permanent “ruling class” in Washington D.C. (aka “the Deep State”) to their propaganda ministry called the “mainstream media” to the Big Tech oligarchs controlling the internet to Big Pharma and other corporate giants, all obsessed with ever-increasing power and wealth – are all lying to Americans continually.

It follows, then, that truthful speech, especially the kind that serves to expose, undermine and annihilate the elites' self-serving agendas, constitutes the greatest threat to their reign, which in turn compels them to crush dissent at all costs – the very essence of totalitarianism.

Whether the forbidden speech comes from a courageous public official, a genuine journalist, a principled doctor, a concerned parent at a school board meeting or a Christian praying outside an abortion clinic, the response of the ruling class is the same: Demonization, suppression and persecution.

Thus are moral, honest Americans daily smeared as “violent extremists,” “domestic terrorists,” “white supremacists” and “ultra-MAGA insurrectionists,” or – as Joe Biden characterized tens of millions of Republicans during a major speech last summer – “semi-fascists.” Biden’s blanket attack on the great American middle class echoes Hillary Clinton’s on-camera remarks just prior to the 2016 election, when she described a very large number of Americans (i.e., those opposing her) as “deplorable” and “irredeemable” – one of the rare times when leaders of the ruling class speak publicly about how they really feel about regular Americans.

Sometimes, as with many of the approximately 1,000 Americans arrested after the Jan. 6, 2021 Capitol riot, decent people are unjustly incarcerated as in brutal Third World dictatorships, simply for holding – and expressing – political views condemned by the ruling elites.

Bottom line: Today’s powers-that-be simply cannot stand truthful expression because it exposes them for what they really are. Thus, truthtellers must be censored and “canceled.”

Take Tucker Carlson, hands-down the most popular conservative TV commentator in America, ousted by Fox News Channel’s ruling Murdoch family on Monday, April 24 with no prior notice nor reason given. The cable news giant has been seriously hemorrhaging viewers ever since. Recently, insider reports have claimed that despite official denials from all sides, Carlson’s expulsion was part of Fox’s $787.5 million out-of-court settlement of the Dominion voting machine lawsuit.

Regardless, many of America’s elites were delighted to see Fox News kill off its top show, since in their minds, the host was a purveyor of extreme rightwing conspiracy theories, an “election denier,” an ally of Vladimir Putin, and – of course – a racist. Consider:

* Tucker freely expressed the still-forbidden, though wildly obvious, truth that the 2020 presidential election was rigged. After all, totally aside from the mountain of proven election “irregularities” (the last-minute unconstitutional rule changes, the unsavory “ballot harvesting,” the double-counted ballots and so much more), Elon Musk’s public release of the previously suppressed “Twitter files” prove conclusively that the “Deep State” colluded with Big Tech to alter the outcome of the 2020 election. Period. Just weeks prior to the election, the guardians of the internet knowingly suppressed overwhelming evidence of rampant corruption and criminality on the part of the Biden family, very much including “the big guy.” Post-election polling revealed that Biden would have lost and Trump would now be president had Americans simply been allowed to hear the truth about Joe Biden before they cast their ballots.

* Carlson also exposed the Biden administration’s supremely reckless Ukraine policy of sending gargantuan amounts of taxpayer money and advanced weaponry to the epically corrupt eastern European country with no accounting required, while secretly pursuing the overthrow of Russian President Vladimir Putin – that is, a war of regime change in Moscow – thereby risking all-out global nuclear war.

* He exposed the ultra-dark insanity of the current transgender child-grooming craze, including the fact that not only are Hitlerian doctors surgically mutilating untold numbers of mentally fragile American children pursuing the impossible dream of “gender transition,” they are also plying countless more children with the same drugs used to chemically castrate convicted child rapists.

* During the COVID-19 pandemic, Carlson frequently featured experts blowing the whistle on the Biden administration’s heedless and shockingly authoritarian response to the viral outbreak, including its corrupt and incestuous relationship with Big Pharma, who together are still attempting to pressure every American man, woman and child to be injected with an experimental drug they all know is not only ineffective, but dangerous.

* He likewise exposed some of the many outrageous lies and injustices associated with the January 6 Capitol riot, dramatically airing for the first time long-suppressed surveillance video from that fateful day, the aftermath of which saw thousands of essentially innocent people accused of being terrorists, insurrectionists, white supremacists and Nazis.

“Times have radically changed when it comes to free speech in America,” comments author and longtime Whistleblower Editor David Kupelian. “Forty-five years ago, the American Civil Liberties Union took a highly controversial stand for free speech when it defended a group of swastika-wearing neo-Nazis intent on marching through Skokie, Ill., a Chicago suburb where many survivors of the Holocaust resided. Although the electrifying case induced many ACLU members to resign, it ultimately came to exemplify the legal group’s unwavering commitment to the quintessential American principle of nonviolent free speech – for everyone.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A congressional hearing on the "weaponization" by Joe Biden and Democrats of the FBI and the Department of Justice revealed, stunningly, that the agency attacked not just its own employees, but American citizens, over its leftist ideological agenda.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, chaired the hearing, and cited the Durham report, which revealed that the FBI with "no probable cause, no predicate, no evidence whatsoever," opened its war against President Trump, using a "dossier" "they knew was false."

It actually was a Hillary Clinton-funded opposition research document that the FBI used as "evidence" to spy on the Trump campaign and create the now-debunked Russia collusion conspiracy theory.

It's even worse now, Jordan confirmed, as the FBI is targeting American citizens if they happen to be parents at a school board meeting, or Catholics attending mass.

Jordan's warning to Americans was echoed by FBI Special Agent Garret O'Boyle during the hearing.

He described having been transferred across the country, then being suspended on his first day at his new location. The FBI left his family without a home, furniture, or even clothing as it was locked up in a storied facility.

He explained begging for coats to keep his family warm.

He had a serious – very serious – warning for Americans. "The FBI will crush you. This government will crush you and your family, if you try to expose the truth about things they are doing that, are wrong."

Democrats attempted to disrupt the proceeds with claims that they had to have copies of testimony from a whistleblower who had agreed to speak only with Republicans.

Jordan set them straight, explaining they were not entitled to anything that the whistleblower was not happy with.

"When it comes to whistleblowers you are not [entitled]," Jordan said.

When Rep. Dan Goldman, D-N.Y., protested, Jordan pointed out that Goldman himself had been "part of an investigation with an anonymous whistleblower" during the first failed impeach and remove campaign by ex-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi against Trump.

"And I told you that when it comes to whistleblowers you are not entitled. It is at the discretion of Mr. Allen," Jordan said.

Democrats claimed then that the individuals were not "whistleblowers" because that's what the FBI, the agency they accuse of attacking them, determined.

At the outset of the hearing before the House Select Committee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government, Jordan released a report about the agency's known misbehavior.

After all, it worked with Democrats to create the now-debunked Russia collusion conspiracy theory against President Trump. A special counsel report this week confirmed that was based on no evidence – bringing accusations that it was all political.

In fact, there already have been calls to disband the FBI and give its responsibilities to other agencies.

The report charged that the FBI, under Chief Christopher Wray and Attorney General Merrick Garland, who both are being targeted by impeachment efforts, is broken.

The report said, "The leadership at the FBI and Justice Department have weaponized federal law enforcement against everyday Americans, seeking to silence those who dare to have a different viewpoint."

It charges the political interests inside the federal agencies have revoked security clearances and suspended without pay agents who have objected to its anti-family, anti-faith political agenda.

Jordan said, "If you're a parent attending a school board meeting, you're pro-life or praying at a clinic or you're a Catholic simply going to Mass you are a target of the government, target of the FBI."

The Daily Mail reported the FBI revoked security clearances for several whistleblowers just as they were preparing to testify to the committee.

They had charged earlier they were ordered to pursue various Jan. 6 cases and ignore sex crimes cases because they were no longer a priority. And the agents said they were told to inflate statistics on "domestic violent extremism" to comply with Joe Biden's agenda.

The Mail report explained, "One of the largest accusations lobbed at the FBI in the report is that the agency has worked to force out conservative employees. According to O'Boyle, the FBI has 'allowed itself to be enveloped in this politicization and weaponization' so much so that it is a cancerous point..'"

In fact, the FBI and DOJ have previously considered parents at school board meetings and Catholics attending mass as potential domestic terrorists.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

America would be better off without a Federal Bureau of Investigation rather than having the corruption that evidence confirmed has grown inside the agency, according to the senior editor at the Federalist.

"The Russia-collusion hoax was concocted and brought to life only because the most powerful people in the U.S. intelligence and law enforcement community wanted an excuse to weaponize the federal government against Donald Trump," explained John Daniel Davidson. "They didn’t want him to be president, simple as that. It didn’t matter to them what voters wanted; they thought they knew better. So they felt any abuse of power was justified in preventing Trump from winning the White House."

He was responding after Special Counsel John Durham released a report of his years-long investigation into the source of the "Russia collusion" claims against President Trump. He found the FBI violated its own procedures and attacked Trump and his campaign with no discernible evidence at all.

Davidson continued, "It means, too, that it would be better if we had no FBI at all than the corrupt agency we have now, which sees fit to traffic in actual disinformation, spread conspiracy theories, and throttle the democratic process whenever a candidate comes along who threatens the status quo. That’s the real lesson of the Durham report, and we ignore it at our peril."

Davidson, the senior editor at The Federalist, previously has written for the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, and others.

He wrote, "The big takeaway from the report is that the Obama-era FBI launched a full investigation of the Trump campaign, codenamed Crossfire Hurricane, in the summer of 2016 despite having zero evidence of any collusion between Trump and Russia."

He added, "Not only that, but officials at the highest levels of the U.S. government, including President Obama, knew that the entire false narrative that Trump was colluding with Moscow was completely made up by the Clinton campaign in an effort to weaponize the federal government against Trump and distract from Hillary Clinton’s own email server scandal."

He said the investigation confirmed, "In August 2016, CIA Director John Brennan briefed Obama, Vice President Joe Biden, Attorney General Loretta Lynch, FBI Director James Comey, and other senior administration officials on what the report calls the 'Clinton Plan intelligence,' a scheme Clinton approved in July 2016 'to vilify Donald Trump by stirring up a scandal claiming interference by the Russian security services.'"

All of them knew the claims to be lies, and "all of them ignored this important fact," he said.

The lies eventually were leaked to a " compliant and incurious new media, and voila! Clinton’s Trump-Russia scandal was born — without a shred of evidence, and indeed despite significant evidence to the contrary," he said.

He said most concerning is the fact that while the conspiracy participants failed to stop Trump's election in 2016, the same people during the next election "were back at it, using their power and influence to shape public perceptions of the campaign and push outright falsehoods on the American people."

He also noted that America's media were rewarded for pushing the lies of the Russia-collusion hoax with Pulitzer prizes, and "None of them have recanted their fake stories, and nearly all of them reacted Monday to the Durham report by dismissing it as a 'big fat nothing.'"

"When the law enforcement and intelligence agencies of the federal government can be used as a weapon to undermine an outsider candidate for high office, it means our republic is in grave danger," he warned.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

Special Counsel John Durham, in a report that is devastatingly critical of the FBI, the Department of Justice and others who conspired to create a "Russia collusion" investigation into President Trump when he was a candidate in 2016, says there was no evidence to support that collusion.

In fact, the nation now knows from the evidence that members of the Deep State in Washington worked with Democrats in the Hillary Clinton campaign to create claims of collusion against Trump.

Durham was assigned to review how those claims came to be, after Special Counsel Robert Mueller spent years of time, millions of dollars, and a good share of Trump's first term, finding no evidence of that collusion.

Durham's report said the agenda before there were claims regarding comments by George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, "the government possessed no verified intelligence reflecting that Trump or the Trump campaign was involved in a conspiracy or collaborative relationship with officials of the Russian government. Indeed, based on the evidence gathered in the multiple exhaustive and costly federal investigations of these matters, including the intant investigation, neither U.S. law enforcement nor the Intelligence Community appears to have possessed any actual evidence of collusion in their holdings at the commencement of the Crossfire Hurricane investigation."

That investigation by the FBI was slated for termination when FBI agents, including one who boasted they would make sure that Trump never was elected president, demanded that it be continued, even without evidence.

That agent, Peter Strzok, "had pronounced hostile feelings toward Trump. The matter was opened as a full investigation without ever having spoken to the persons who provided the information. Further, the FBI did so without (i) any significant review of its own intelligence databases, (ii) collection and examination of any relevant intelligence from other U.S. intelligence entities, (iii) interview of witnesses essential to understand the raw information it had received or (iv) using any of the standard analytical tools typically employed by the FBI in evaluating raw intelligence."

The report announced no further charges, the apparent punishment being the massive shaming by being named in the blast at the incompetencies of the FBI and DOJ.

Shortly after the report appeared, Trump released a statement calling for former FBI Director James Comey and Democrats to be held to account for their collusion and conspiracies that resulted in the years-long investigations.

"I, and much more importantly, then American public have been victims of this long-running and treasonous charade started by the Democrats — started by Comey," he said in a statement to Fox News Digital. "There must be a heavy price to pay for putting our country through this."

He said Durham's report took a long time because he is "thorough." But he said the result is "unequivocal and an absolute disaster in terms of justice. … The national security implications of what they did are very grave."

Had ordinary procedures been followed, instead of a "get-Trump" agenda, the FBI would have found immediately that "their own experienced Russia analysts had no information about Trump being involved…"

Durham found that instead of providing a "defensive briefing" to Trump, as would have been normal, the FBI launched immediately into its pursuit of special court permission to spy on the campaign. To obtain that permission, the FBI made up stories and presented them to the courts as facts.

Additionally, the FBI was unable to corroborate "any of the substantive allegations contained in the Steele reporting, which was funded by the Hillary Clinton campaign.

The Washington Examiner said Durham concluded the DOJ and FBI "failed to uphold their mission of strict fidelity to the law."

Durham also said "Senior FBI personnel displayed a serious lack of analytical rigor towards the information that they received, especially information received from politically-affiliated persons and entities."

"This information in part triggered and sustained Crossfire Hurricane and contributed to the subsequent need for Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation," the report said. "In particular, there was significant reliance on investigative leads provided or funded (directly or indirectly) by Trump's political opponents."

"The Department did not adequately examine or question these materials and the motivations of those providing them, even when at about the same time the Director of the FBI and others learned of significant and potentially contrary intelligence," the report said.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

At least one active CIA official may have been involved in getting signatures from ex-intelligence officials for the letter by 51 ex-intelligence officials that was used to fool the public into dismissing a New York Post story on Hunter Biden's laptop as likely "Russian disinformation," according to a report by two House's committees digging into the forces behind the letter's creation and its distribution.

The 64-page report shows how Tony Blinken, Biden's secretary of state but at the time acting as candidate Biden's top campaign aide, recruited ex-Acting CIA Director Mike Morell to generate the letter with the goal of creating a "talking point" to help Biden during the last presidential campaign in October 2020.

According to the report, "One signer of the statement, former CIA analyst David Cariens, disclosed to the Committees that a CIA employee affiliated with the agency’s Prepublication Classification Review Board (PCRB) informed him of the existence of the statement and asked if he would sign it."

The interim report, "The Hunter Biden Statement: How Senior Intelligence Community Officials and the Biden Campaign Worked to Mislead American Voters," concluded what millions of conservatives had already suspected: "The public statement by 51 former intelligence officials was a political operation to help elect Vice President Biden in the 2020 presidential election."

It was released Wednesday by the GOP-led House Committee on the Judiciary's Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government and the House's Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

Among the other key findings in the document are:

• "The Biden campaign took active measures to discredit the allegations about Hunter Biden by exploiting the national security credentials of former intelligence officials";
• "Blinken’s outreach to Morell was the impetus for the public statement," with the goal of creating a debate "talking point" to counter a New York Post story about the laptop. Biden ended up distorting the letter by saying the Russians had a "plan" to use the laptop as "disinformation" to manipulate America's election – effectively fibbing further to expand the political deception;
• Morell "rejected wholesale" the statement by then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, the "top intelligence official in the United States," that "Hunter Biden's laptop is not part of some Russian disinformation campaign";
• "The Biden campaign coordinated dissemination of the statement to members of the media," with Morell tasking Nick Shapiro, his former deputy chief of staff and senior advisor at the CIA, to pitch the skewed assessment of the laptop's origins to the media. Ultimately, Politico reporter Natasha Bertrand took the bait, and her October 19, 2020 story ran under the erroneous headline, "Hunter Biden story is Russian disinfo, dozens of former intel officials say." That headline, like Biden's debate line, actually distorted the letter's contents by making the "Russia disinfo" claim definitive.
• The CIA has ignored requests by the House subcommittee for more information about the possible involvement of an active employee in the letter. The committees wrote to the CIA requesting documents on March 21 with a deadline of April 4, but never received a response. "Secretary Blinken provided none of the documents that Committee requested. ... Notably, the Biden Administration has declined to cooperate with the oversight to date," it states.
• Although many of the ex-intelligence officials who participated in the creation and circulation of the letter testified to House investigators that they did not actually claim that the Post's Hunter Biden laptop story was "Russian disinformation" – only that there was a good chance it could be – they showed no interest at the time in correcting distorted claims about it, like Politico's blatantly false story asserting the laptop *was* Russian disinformation.

Laptop from hell

The so-called "laptop from hell" shows Hunter Biden smoking crack and consorting with prostitutes, creepily recorded on film by the then-wayward son of Obama's VP, Joe Biden. But the most explosive information in the laptop were emails from Hunter revealing that "Hunter Biden was to receive $10 million annually for three years from CEFC Energy for 'introductions alone,' presumably meaning to his father and other influential U.S. officials," as WND reported in September 2021.

It was left to Tucker Carlson to go big with the story as the only major broadcast media player to expose the contents of the laptop. Tucker conducted an interview on Fox News with one-time Hunter Biden associate Tony Bobulinski, who exposed Biden's lucrative deal with the CCP-connected energy conglomerate and confirmed the deal's "very special condition: that '10 percent' of the profits would be 'held by H [Hunter] for the big guy,'" as WND reported last month, quoting RNC chair Ronna McDaniel. Bobulinski made clear to Carlson that the "big guy" was Joe Biden.

Later it would be revealed the FBI worked directly with Twitter and other social media companies to keep the laptop story squelched.

A Media Research Center poll "found that nearly one-third of voters who chose Joe Biden were not aware of the evidence linking the former vice president to corrupt financial dealings with China and other nations through his son. Had they known, according to the survey, President Trump would have won at least 289 Electoral College votes," WND reported.

A book by a Politico reporter ultimately confirmed the authenticity of the laptop but only well after the propaganda damage had already been done in undermining Trump's bid for re-election.

Just the News reported regarding the House document: "In at least some instances Morell's own solicitations expressly referenced the Biden campaign's intent to use the letter. An Oct. 19, 2020, email that Morell sent to former CIA Director John Brennan explicitly noted the partisan nature of the effort.

"Morell told Brennan he was 'trying to give the campaign, particularly during the debate on Thursday, a talking point to push back on Trump on this issue,'" JTN reported.

This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

A tiny 5.5 percent of transsexual "chest reconstruction" surgeries – radical procedures performed on healthy bodies and designed to make gender-confused people feel and look more like their opposite-sex "gender identity" – were "self-paid" by the individuals themselves, a new study has found.

Conversely, nearly 31 percent of those same surgeries were paid for by government health insurance, and almost 60 percent were covered by private health insurance, according to the study in Aesthetic Surgery Journal, which focuses mainly on plastic surgery research.

The December 2022 study, "Nationwide Estimates of Gender-Affirming Chest Reconstruction in the United States, 2016-2019," is the largest study to date of its kind, examining an estimated 21,293 "chest reconstruction" encounters over those three years.

"Generally, most TGD [transgender and gender-diverse] patients were covered by either public or private health insurance for these procedures," it states, "representing a shift from a predominance of self-payers reported in previous studies."

The study analyzed a "weighted estimate of 21,293 encounters for [transsexual] chest reconstruction" from 2016-2019, with 17,480 persons, or 82.1%, getting "masculinizing" surgery – i.e., women having their healthy breasts surgically removed to look like a man's chest.

The study estimated that 3,813 persons, or 17.9%, sought "feminizing" procedures, which translates to a plastic surgeon inserting breast implants into a gender-confused man's body to accommodate his self-perceived "gender identity" as a "trans woman."

The study's authors listed are all affiliated with Vanderbilt University: Rishub Das, Adam Evans, Christopher Kalmar, Salam Al Kassis, Brian Drolet, and Galen Perdikis.

The almost 60% coverage by private health insurance plans for controversial procedures testifies to the immense lobbying power of LGBT activists. A two-decades-long campaign led by the leftist, LGBT group Human Rights Campaign Fund, using its skewed "Corporate Equality Index," has successfully pressured an increasing number of major corporations such as Walmart and the Walt Disney Company into providing ever more comprehensive "health" coverage for their "trans" employees, as WND and Whistleblower magazine recently reported.

The ASJ academic article was unearthed by COVID-19 "frontline doctor" Peter McCullough, who wrote about it on May 7 in his Substack, "Courageous Discourse."

Dr. McCullough, whose views on transsexual "gender surgeries" appear to be the polar opposite of the pro-trans Vanderbilt research team's, said the study indicates the number of body-mutilating procedures could be reduced if the government health insurance payments for them were removed.

"The bottom line is only 5.5% of transgender individuals pay for their cosmetic surgery, which is very different from normal male or female plastic surgery, which is almost always self-funded," McCullough writes. "Repeal of payment for gender-affirming surgeries would be expected to markedly reduce this disfiguring and unnecessary cost to the health-care system."

In the background section of the study's abstract, it states that "Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act [aka Obamacare], introduced in 2016, increased access to gender-affirming surgeries for transgender and gender diverse individuals. Masculinizing chest reconstruction (e.g., mastectomy) and feminizing chest reconstruction (e.g., augmentation mammaplasty), often outpatient procedures, are the most frequently performed gender-affirming surgeries."

The study reports that the median total charge for the "female-to-male" "masculinizing" operations is $30,537. For the "feminizing chest reconstructions," the average cost was $29,887.