Category Archives: Corona Virus

Americans should start paying closer attention to theongoing farmer protests in the Netherlands, which this week transformed long swaths of Dutch highways into what looked like a post-apocalyptic warzone: roadside fires raging out of control, manure and farming detritus heaped across highways, traffic stalled for miles, and massive protests across the country in support of the farmers.

Why is the Netherlands, of all places, experiencing such unrest? Americans need to understand whats happening over there because the ruinous climate policies that triggered these protests are precisely what President Joe Biden and the Democrats have in mind for the United States.

Specifically, Dutch farmers are protesting a government plan to cut fertilizer use and reduce livestock numbers so drastically that it will force many farms out of business. Earlier this month, farmers used tractors and trucks to block highways and entrances to food distribution centers across the country, saying their livelihood and way of life are being targeted by the government.

And they more or less are. The ruling coalition government claims its radical plan, pushed by Prime Minister Mark Rutte, who branded the protests unacceptable, is part of an unavoidable transition to improve air, land, and water quality. The goal is to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxide and ammonia, which are produced by livestock but which the government is labeling pollutants, by 50 percent nationwide by the year 2030.

The only way to do that, many Dutch farmers say, is to slaughter the vast majority of their livestock and shutter their farms. The government knows this and admitted as much earlier this year, saying in a statement, The honest message is that not all farmers can continue their business, and that farmers have three options: Becoming more sustainable, relocating or ending their business.

The genesis of the scheme was a court ruling from 2019 that said the Dutch governments plan for reducing nitrogen emissions violated EU laws protecting itsNatura 2000network of supposedly vulnerable and endangered plant and animal habitats basically a bunch of EU-governed wildlife preserves. These sites span the EU, covering 18 percent of the blocs land area and 8 percent of its marine territory.

To protect these wildlife preserves, Dutch farmers are being told they must submit to their governments ruinous emissions plan.

But the Natura 2000 preserves are only part of the story. European leaders such as Rutte are environmental ideologues who want to transform global food production and eliminate private land ownership, and he sees an opportunity in this court order to reshape agriculture and land use in the Netherlands.

Indeed, Rutte a walking embodiment ofthe Davos Manif there ever was one is a big proponent of the United Nations Agenda 2030 and its Sustainable Development Goals, which aim to squeeze farmers and ranchers around the world in order to reduce emissions. The policies that flow from these goals, such as drastically reducing the use of fertilizer, contributed to the recent economic collapse of Sri Lanka, which triggered mass protests that toppled Sri Lankas government and ousted its president earlier this month.

Last year, Ruttespoke to the World Economic Forumabout transforming food systems and land use at Davos Agenda Week, announcing that the Netherlands would host something called the Global Coordinating Secretariat of the World Economic Food Innovation Hubs, whose job would be to connect all other food innovation hubs.

In Davos-speak, that means agricultural production and the supply of food will be centrally controlled by intra-governmental bodies and stakeholders consisting mainly of the worlds largest food corporations and international NGOs. Private farms and independent farmers will be a thing of the past, supplanted by global bodies making decisions about how much and what kinds of food are produced. The private sector and the independent farmers will have no place in the future that the UN and the WEF are planning.

Dutch farmers understand this. They know Rutte and his ministers want above all to eradicate their farms and way of life. But theyre not going down without a fight.

All of which brings us back to the U.S. This week news broke that congressional Democrats had finally reached a deal on thelargest piece of climate legislation in American history. The bill is a tax-and-spend cornucopia of some $369 billion for wind, solar, geothermal, battery, and other industries over the next decade, along with generous subsidies for electric vehicles and incentives to keep nuclear plants open and capture emissions from industrial plants.

After pretending to oppose Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumers climate legislation, West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin relented this week, clearing the way for the bill to proceed. Senate Democrats say the bill will allow the U.S. to cut greenhouse emissions by 40 percent below 2005 levels by 2030 matching up nicely with the UNs Agenda 2030.

Understand that the Senate bill isnt the end, its the beginning. Climate activists and ideologues are working at the highest levels to transform not just the global food supply, but the nature of private property and property rights, all in the name of saving the planet. What Rutte and his government are doing to Dutch farmers, Schumer and Biden are planning to do to American farmers and American industries.

So pay attention to the roadside fires and blocked highways and mass civic unrest in places like the Netherlands and Sri Lanka. America is next.

John Daniel Davidson is a senior editor at The Federalist. His writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, the Claremont Review of Books, The New York Post, and elsewhere. Follow him on Twitter, @johnddavidson.

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Pay Attention To The Dutch Farmer Protests. America Is Next - The Federalist

If you think that Democrats tax-and-spending bill wouldnt expand government, have I got news for you. Believe it or not, the Build Back Better legislation would more than double the size of the IRS.

Thats one of the hidden details in the agreement that Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., cut with Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., behind closed doors. And of course, Democrats want to ram it through Congress within a matter of days. As House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., once said about another big-government scheme, we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.

The draft bill contains an $80 billion investment in the Internal Revenue Service. Of that amount, more than half, or over $45.6 billion, will go towards enforcement activities.

Even as it doles out such vast sums for the IRS, the bill contains only a few short pages of text explaining the provisions. In other words, the IRS will have a relatively wide berth to spend the new funding as it likes.

But last May, the Treasury Department released its tax compliance agenda, showing where it would like to spend that money. And on page 17 of that document, it helpfully included a chart demonstrating the IRS agents it would hire with that additional cash. All told, the Biden Administration wants to hire 86,852 agents, expressed in this chart as FTEs, or full-time equivalent employees:

By comparison, the most recent version of the IRS Data Book shows that in the fiscal year that ended last September 30, the agency had a total of 78,661 full-time equivalent employees. (See Table 32 on page 87 here.) In other words, hiring an additional 86,852 agents would more than double the size of the IRS.

Language on page 39 of the bill states that nothing in this subsectionthat is, the portion of the bill appropriating the $80 billion for the IRSis intended to increase taxes on any taxpayer with a taxable income below $400,000. A one-page fact sheet summarizing the tax provisions makes the same claim.

But, as previously noted, the Biden Administration intends to use the funding in the bill to hire over 86,000 new employees. Does anyone really believe that more than doubling the IRS the same agency that spent years harassing conservative groups, and still hasnt explained the public leak of confidential tax return information to the liberal website ProPublica means that all those new employees will exclusively focus on the rich, and wont spend some or all of their time targeting middle-class and working Americans?

Admittedly, the Treasury Department claimed in its compliance agenda last May that audit rates will not rise relative to recent years for those with less than $400,000 in actual income. But the bill itself includes no statutory prohibition on the IRS harassing middle-class taxpayers. It merely says the bill intends not to increase their tax burden. It doesnt prohibit the legislation from having that effect in practice, and it doesnt prohibit the IRS from burying struggling families in a mountain of new audits and paperwork.

All this focus on IRS enforcement comes with a profound irony: Many tax experts, including one from the liberal Tax Policy Center, believe that Joe Biden himself cheated on his 2017 and 2018 taxes, paying himself an absurdly low salary (while using a loophole that his Administration now wants to close) to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in Medicare and Obamacare taxes.

In what will come as a shock to absolutely no one who understands how Washington works, the Democrats who claim to support giving more power to the IRS to audit the rich have said precious little about Bidens tax shenanigans. Of course, if they really believed in the accountability they claim to support, they would be sending letters to the IRS demanding that the Service audit Bidens 2017 and 2018 returns.

Instead, the principle of audits for thee, but not for me rules the Democratic roost. All of which suggests that the 86,852 new IRS agents the Biden Administration wants to hire will end up making life miserable not for the rich, but for ordinary Americans, for years to come.

Mr. Jacobs is Founder and CEO of Juniper Research Group and the author of the book The Case Against Single Payer. He is on Twitter: @chrisjacobsHC.

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'Build Back Better' Bill Would Double IRS Agent Army By 86000 - The Federalist

One day after the U.S. officially entered a recession, something the White House has repeatedly denied, the partisan cheerleaders at Politico shamelessly declared that Joe Biden is back in the game.

After enduring a brutal year, Biden is suddenly on the verge of a turnaround that, the White House believes, could salvage his summer and alter the trajectory of his presidency, Politico authors Adam Cancryn, Jonathan Lemire, and Christopher Cadelago wrote.

Despite Politicos insistence that the tides are turning for the commander in chief, President Biden was never in the game. Unless, of course, the game was hurting Americans, their liberties, and their pocketbooks from day one.

Even Politicos tone-deaf puff piece admits that Bidens term is tainted by economic angst, legislative setbacks and sinking approval ratings, which the corporate media outlet pegged at just 37 percent this week. Thats in addition to a growing border crisis, disastrous foreign policy including the fatal Afghanistan withdrawal, rampant inflation, a formula shortage, forced Covid-19 jabs, abortion radicalism that contradicts most Americans feelings about life in the womb, energy dependence, a war on parents concerned about indoctrination in schools, and a shady family business thats under federal investigation.

Nothing marks success like an administration marred with endless catastrophes, right?

That doesnt seem to matter to Politico, however, which argued thatthe reconciliationbill agreed upon by DemocratSens. Joe Manchin and Chuck Schumer on Wednesday could be the saving grace for Biden and his party. This expensive legislation will only exacerbate inflation and aggravate voters already frustrated with rapidly rising costs, yet Politico hailed it as the agreement the White House needed to play a more significant role in convincing a handful of remaining Democrats to take the victory thats in front of them.

How convenient to suggest that mere months before the upcoming midterms, Biden can magically save the Democrats national agenda from the ashes of his failed administration.

Polling says Americans arent buying what the Always Be Closing president and his cronies in the corrupt press are selling. According to the latest AP-NORC survey, 85 percent of American adults think the country is headed in the wrong direction. Even 78 percent of Democrats, Bidens base, say they are dissatisfied with the direction of the nation.

Biden is a benchwarmer who will be the face of the regime until he isnt useful for the Democrats and the corporate media who installed him anymore. For now, Biden is protected by media lapdogs such as Politico and the promise of a legislative deal.

But he was never in the game and after one and a half years of catastrophes at home and abroad including a recession, its safe to say he wont get into it anytime soon.

Jordan Boyd is a staff writer at The Federalist and co-producer of The Federalist Radio Hour. Her work has also been featured in The Daily Wire and Fox News. Jordan graduated from Baylor University where she majored in political science and minored in journalism. Follow her on Twitter @jordanboydtx.

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No, Politico, Joe Biden Was Never In The Game - The Federalist

In preparation for the close of the years second economic quarter, the White House Council of Economic Advisers has already started the spin: Were not in a recession if we just redefine what a recession is.

While some maintain that two consecutive quarters of falling real GDP constitute a recession, that is neither the official definition nor the way economists evaluate the state of the business cycle, the supposedly nonpartisan group said in a blog post on Thursday.

Its doubtful the verbal smoke and mirrors will persuade the average Americans whose grocery bills keep growing as fast as their gas tanks empty. A recession is a sustained downturn in economic activity, and many Americans can feel it without knowing what the Q2 numbers are. But its far from the first concept the left has simply redefined to deflect the consequences of their failed policies and ideas.

One of their favorite words to redefine, apparently as full and unchallenged political control, is democracy. When actual democratic processes are at work such as when an elected majority votes not to pass a pet piece of legislation, or when issues such as abortion law are left to elected representatives of the people at the state level leftists scream their favorite catchphrase and call it a threat to democracy. Theyve levied that smear at everything from our bicameral legislature to the Supreme Court to the other party in our two-party system. Its obvious theyre not really talking about democracy in any honest sense of the word. When democracy is a threat to their power, it simply gets redefined.

Another word thats undergone a 180-degree redefinition is racism. No longer is it considered racist to treat someone differently based on his or her skin color, and not racist to value all human beings equally. Instead, if youre not promoting theories that remedy past discrimination [with] present discrimination, as critical race theorist Ibram X. Kendi suggests, you are clearly a racist according to the lefts new dictionary. Do you believe in meritocracy? Racist. Think people are responsible for their own choices, and its neither possible nor beneficial for the government to dole out equivalent outcomes to everyone by force? Doubly racist. The new liturgy says that true equality lies in teaching some children that theyre part of a hopelessly oppressive system and other children that theyre hopelessly oppressed.

On the subject of pitting people against each other, the term vaccine has been ridiculously redefined to cover for the incompetence of the people who profit from them. After the shot that was promised to protect people from Covid transmission and infection failed to ward off either, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention simply changed the definition of vaccine to fit the narrative. A product that stimulates a persons immune system to produce immunity to a specific disease was quietly altered to a preparation that is used to stimulate the bodys immune response against diseases. Barely a week later, Merriam-Webster followed suit by changing the definition of anti-vaxxer from someone who opposes vaccines to someone who doesnt believe the government should mandate Covid shots.

Just last week, as part of the trans-crazed campaign to redefine what a woman is, Merriam-Webster added having a gender identity that is the opposite of male to its definition of female. Categories such as men and women that are based in biological reality dont suit the agenda that seeks to abolish those realities from minds and bodies. So rather than advocate their agenda within the bounds of reality, the left simply attempts to redefine reality itself. Its apparent in the push to call women by the objectifying terms pregnant persons, menstruating people, etc. We saw it when then-Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson told Congress she couldnt define what a woman is, and its obvious in the attempts to put confused men in womens prisons, shelters, and bathrooms. The reality of womanhood is in the way, so its being redefined out of existence.

And while abortion advocates lately have been willing to defend the act of killing a baby in the womb even with the understanding that it takes a human life, for years theyve pushed their agenda by redefining an unborn baby as a clump of cells or some other dehumanizing description.

On any of those topics and more, leftists and their allies in Big Tech also persistently redefine any dissenting opinions or perspectives as disinformation, using that disingenuous label to erase opposition from channels of discourse.

Of course, many people who hear them prattle about disinformation, birthing persons, anti-racism, threats to democracy, and their host of other buzzwords know those words are nonsense. We can tell, as George Orwell wrote in 1946, that political language is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable.

But, as he noted, the worst thing one can do with words is to surrender them. The danger is in allowing these redefinitions of reality to be said, unchallenged, until enough people forget they could ever be challenged at all.

Elle Reynolds is an assistant editor at The Federalist, and received her B.A. in government from Patrick Henry College with a minor in journalism. You can follow her work on Twitter at @_etreynolds.

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The Left's Response To Failure Is To Redefine It As Success - The Federalist

Nothing captures just how bizarre and unearthly Democrats have become than when they get to talking about police and law enforcement. (Their fixation with gender bending is a close second.)

It would honestly do them a lot of good to just stop discussing the issue altogether. You can see it on their faces how hard it is to articulate simple concepts like, criminals should be in jail, or, police deserve respect.

They would rather complicate the issue by talking about the history of slavery, disadvantaged communities, and my favorite systemic oppression.

All the data show that across the board, regardless of race, the overwhelming majority of police and civilian interactions are fine; that minorities call on cops for help at a far higher rate than whites; and that the chance of an unarmed black man being killed by police is next to nonexistent (and when such an incident does occur, its because he was resisting arrest or attempting to flee in a life-threatening, high-speed chase).

But liberals refuse to leave it alone, instead writhing in pain as they try to find some existential problem with our law enforcement.

To wit, New York Times columnist-in-training Charles Blow wrote Wednesday that former president Trump and his voters arent genuine supporters of the policeokay, whatever you say. But Blow couldnt make the point without first offering a winding, tedious lecture on the theory of policing.

In a system of accountability and consequences, there must be first points of contact, people who are charged with preventing and stopping the rule breaking, he prattled. In our society, those people are police officers. Their role, in the abstract, is essential. However, the way that we have constructed it is problematic.

Recall Missouri Democrat Rep. Cori Bush, a champion of zeroing out police budgets, last year attempting to explain why she spends hundreds of thousands of dollars on private, armed security. I have private security because my body is worth being on this planet right now, she said, somehow, without laughing. I have private security because they, the white supremacist, racist narrative that they drive into this country the fact that they dont care that this black woman that has put her life on the line they cant match my energy, first of all. This black woman who puts her life on the line. They dont care that I could be taken out of here. They actually are probably okay with that. But this is the thing, I wont let them get that off. You cant get that off.

That is a direct transcript of what she said on national television.

Listening to Democrats talk about law enforcement is like watching that In Living Color skit with the Oswald Bates character, a prisoner who confidently uses a slew of multisyllabic words that ultimately mean nothing, but he thinks hes smart for using them anyway. (First of all, we must internalize the flatulation of the matter by transmitting the effervescent of the Indonesian proximity in order to further segregate the crux of my venereal infection.)

Free tip for Democrats: Really just shut up. Youve turned all of our big cities into war zones where theft and vandalism continue with impunity in no small part because a fentanyl addict died in a freak accident. No matter how you cut it, no matter how complicated you try to make it, law enforcement is not your issue and youre scaring everyone.

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The Creepy Weirdness Of Democrats Is Best Understood When They Talk About Law Enforcement - The Federalist

Now that anonymous sources are leaking to The Washington Post that the Department of Justice is officially targeting former President Donald Trump with criminal charges, this is a good time to ask: Just how crazy are the occupants of Washington, D.C.? Do they really think they will indict, prosecute, convict, and imprison the Republican frontrunner for president in 2024 without creating a massive amount of public backlash?

For half the country, trying to take down Trump for giving a speech over a mile away from the Capitol on Jan. 6 while hardly anybody has been held accountable for the atrocious Russia collusion hoax that nearly destroyed his presidency will be nothing less than total confirmation of a two-tiered and irreparably corrupt justice system and could permanently tear the nation in two.

This may come as a shocker to Washington, but Congresss J6 obsession is not high on Americans list of critical issues. Polls show the American peoples top concerns are skyrocketing inflation and economic uncertainty, not what happened on Jan. 6. To say that the American government and the American people are not speaking the same language right now is an understatement.

Had Attorney General Merrick Garland felt that Trump had potentially committed a crime before leaving office, he should have pursued an investigation free from the overtly political atmosphere created by Congresss J6 committee hearings. Whatever Nancy Pelosis Jan. 6 Committee is, it has not been a courtroom pursuing justice. Though witnesses are brought before the committee to confess, as Rep. Liz Cheney, R-Wyo., so Stalin-esquely put it, there is no one cross-examining their testimony for truth or accuracy.

While one side presents a damning case against anyone who even thought about attending rallies near the Capitol that day, there is no defense counsel to challenge evidence, offer competing explanations, or provide mitigating circumstances on the accuseds behalf. No one is present to contest the committees allegations at all. Third-party hearsay evidence, normally inadmissible in courts of law, is used to advance the committees narratives. For that matter, long-winded and rhetorical political speeches from admittedly biased committee members advance theories of the case not grounded in evidence at all. Exculpatory evidence that might call into question the committees grave charges is regularly excluded.

Still, the whole proceeding is conducted with such an air of legal seriousness that an ordinary observer could be excused for mistaking it as a place for justice. It is difficult to watch a spectacle such as this one in America, a nation that has generally managed to avoid the kind of theatrical show trials we normally associate with Soviet Russias Iron Curtain days. Yet here we are. The end result is that the Jan. 6 Committee has permanently destroyed any veneer of objectivity and effectively tainted any potential jury pool by flooding primetime television viewing audiences with misinformation and salacious gossip.

While Pelosi, Garland, and President Joe Biden all insist that J6 investigations into Trump are serious legal matters, the nearly two-year public spectacle is so over-the-top that it is difficult not to conclude that the J6 committees principal concern is keeping Trump from running for president again in 2024. Rep. Cheney has gone so far as to explicitly make this point by asserting that he must never again be anywhere close to the Oval Office. In a nation with democratic elections, that would presumably be a decision for the voters to make.

Cheney and her colleagues, however, either fear that the American people will make the wrong choice, or they dont really believe in the value of democratic elections as much as they claim. Either way, the J6 Commissions efforts to turn President Trump into a criminal target for the Justice Department seem like a cynical bureaucratic workaround for depriving the people of their chance to decide Trumps fitness for office on their own.

Should Congresss J6 committee hearings not succeed in keeping Trump off the 2024 ballot, they may ironically be seen years from now as having done much to help Trump get reelected. Its interesting to go back in time to the fall of 2015 when the Republican primaries were still months away and Republican voters had a veritable all-star class of candidates from whom to choose. According to an Associated Press-GfK poll at the time, an overwhelming 77 percent of Republican voters preferred an outsider candidate who will change how things are done, rather than someone with experience in Washington who can get things done. Republicans were so committed to choosing an outsider that their top two choices for the White House according to the poll were Ben Carson and Donald Trump.

Although political pundits expected primary voters to change their minds as the 2016 state contests arrived, Republicans desire for an outsider not only clinched Trumps nomination but also assured his general election victory. Nothing about the electorates mood today suggests that Republican voters are eager to return to mainstream establishment political candidates.

Washingtons vast Never Trump coalition would have been most successful in tanking Trumps political chances in either 2020 or 2024 had they found a way to embrace him as one of their own, force him to compromise his goals and betray his promises, and leave Americans with the impression that Trump had played voters seeking an outsider as fools. Instead, nonstop attacks from D.C.s permanent bureaucracy have been the hallmarks of the Trump presidency.

From the Russia collusion hoax, the two-year Mueller inquisition, two congressional impeachments, countless administration betrayals, and now two additional years of J6 investigations intent on seeking his prosecution and conviction, it is unmistakably clear that Trump is just as much an outsider today as he was before his first victory. And should voters appetites for an outsider candidacy remain as high as they were in 2016, then nobody will have greater tried and true credibility than Trump.

J.B. Shurk is a freedom-minded, anti-establishment, sometimes unorthodox, committed generalist and a proud American from Daniel Boone country.

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Is The J6 Committee Trying To Get Trump Re-Elected? - The Federalist

Abortion proponents have embraced a drastic shift in messaging over the past few decades. In the 1990s, Bill Clintons safe, legal, and rarewasthe standard line which isa far cry fromtodays well-traveled maxims like Free Abortion on Demand Without Apology and Shout Your Abortion. Indeed, in the heart of abortions most ardent base, the strategy entails encouraging pride over shame and celebration over regret. But does this shift reflect the experiences of those who are disinclined to shout their abortions?

Theresan accusation lurking in the subtext of the abortion debate over abortion regret, implying that no woman should feel bad terminating a pregnancy if it was never suggested that abortion itself is bad. How paternalistic. First, Big Abortion sells women short by suggesting they will never be able to handle both a career and a family, and then they sell them an abortion. And now, abortion zealots make themselves the masters of how women must feel about it.

The pro-life movement at large has consistently perceived two victims in an abortion scenario a child whose life is on the line, and a mother who is vulnerable toan industry that profits from violence and deceit. Those sellingabortionmust sever the one-of-a-kind physical relationship between mother and gestating child through abortion lethal pregnancy violence that will be painfully understood by a mother when she finds herself empty of life.

Widespread abortion regret issupported by data, yet seldom reported.Thephysical and psychologicalrisks of abortion are well known to those of us who support post-abortive women.New studieshave shown that women who have abortions are 81 percent more likely to experiencesubsequentmental health problems. This includes being110 percentmore likely to abuse alcohol and 115 percent more likely to develop suicidal behavior following abortion. Another study notes women who ended their first pregnancy by abortion arefive times more likelyto reportsubsequentsubstance abuse than women who carried the pregnancy to term and four times more likely to report substance abuse compared to those whose first pregnancy ended naturally.

But the bestsource for understanding abortion regret is the women who have experienced it firsthand.Consider an entire legionof both men and women who were traumatized by abortion yet feel unwelcome in the Shout Your Abortion era.

For every handful of celebrities shouting their abortions,theresone who courageously goes against the abortion-loving mob to tell a different truth. In 2015, Nicki Minajsaid in an interviewthat her high school abortion has haunted her all her life. Eminems 2017 song Riverputson full display his abortion regret as a father. In 2020, Kanye Westbroke down in publicwhile explaining how much pain he suffers for even considering aborting his daughter, North, as well as his wrestling with the knowledge that he himself was almost aborted.

From our own work at Students for Life of AmericasStanding with You program. We know that women struggle for years to grapple with the loss of their child through abortion or the fallout of abortion fathers and families experience. Healing ministries likeProject Rachel,Rachels Vineyard, andSupport After Abortion exist to offer loving care to those experiencing grief.

But the second flaw in the argument against the realities of abortion regret is in who is making it.Consider that those encouraging the celebration of abortion are also in the abortion business. This is further evidenced by the fact that a disproportionate number ofabortionresearchers are funded by pro-abortion entities.

If, for example, the everyone loves abortion research comes from the Bixby Centerat the University of California(asitoften does),itshighly relevant that the Center is funded and organized to find in favor of abortion.The Bixby Centertrains abortionists through itsRyan Residency Training Programand is funded by population control-loving Warren Buffett, along with Planned Parenthood and their Guttmacher Institute andGynuity Health Projects, which profits from chemical abortion sales and so on.The Bixby Center is as unbiased on abortion as The Tobacco Instituteis on cigarettes.

Even worse than the clear and present bias in abortion data is the audacity of those blaming pro-lifers for abortion regret to cite TheTurnawayStudy, which isfamously so flawedthat a Planned Parenthood exec could drive their Lamborghini through the holes in its reasoning.

The studywas published in 2015 by the abortion group ANSIRH and, in simplest terms, is an attempt to dismiss the trauma and long-standing pain many women feel following an abortion. It tries to conclude that women are hurt by being denied an abortion, but as explored at lengthby Live Action,Turnawayhas four glaring problems: a bad study sample, no true control group, a lackluster assessment of physical health, and misleading questions.

The study tracks only a small number of women fewer than 200 who were denied abortions. Additionally, the results were only presented at an academic conference. This data has not appeared in an academic journal nor gone through the peer-review process. Finally, the study and the full results do not appear to be publicly available. Thus, despite shamefully poor research practices and an utter failure to prove the claim it set out to, that womendontregret abortion,itsstill propped up Weekend at Bernies style by abortion proponents.

Furthermore, these women were denied abortions not because of legal restrictions, but because many facilities do not carry out late-term abortions.

Itsfascinating that a movement once sold as pro-choice refuses to allow women the freedom to feel loss after receiving an abortion.Every parent who made an abortion decision, from the main streets of pro-life communities to the pro-abortion hills of Hollywood, deserves the freedom to be honest about their experience. And for those who want to process those feelings, the pro-life community is heretohelp.

Working mother Brenna Lewis is a staff writer with Students for Life of America.

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Pro-Abortion Crowd Silences Women Who Regret Them - The Federalist

Two new studies provide more evidence that the coronavirus pandemic originated in a Wuhan, China market where live animals were sold further bolstering the theory that the virus emerged in the wild rather than escaping from a Chinese lab.

The research, published online Tuesday by the journal Science, shows that the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market was likely the early epicenter of the scourge that has now killed nearly 6.4 million people around the world. Scientists conclude that the virus that causes COVID-19, SARS-CoV-2, likely spilled from animals into people two separate times.

"All this evidence tells us the same thing: It points right to this particular market in the middle of Wuhan," said Kristian Andersen a professor in the Department of Immunology and Microbiology at Scripps Research and coauthor of one of the studies. "I was quite convinced of the lab leak myself until we dove into this very carefully and looked at it much closer."

In one study, which incorporated data collected by Chinese scientists, University of Arizona evolutionary biologist Michael Worobey and his colleagues used mapping tools to estimate the locations of more than 150 of the earliest reported COVID-19 cases from December 2019. They also mapped cases from January and February 2020 using data from a social media app that had created a channel for people with COVID-19 to get help.

They asked, "Of all the locations that the early cases could have lived, where did they live? And it turned out when we were able to look at this, there was this extraordinary pattern where the highest density of cases was both extremely near to and very centered on this market," Worobey said at a press briefing. "Crucially, this applies both to all cases in December and also to cases with no known link to the market And this is an indication that the virus started spreading in people who worked at the market but then started to spread into the local community."

Andersen said they found case clusters inside the market, too, "and that clustering is very, very specifically in the parts of the market" where they now know people were selling wildlife, such as raccoon dogs, that are susceptible to infection with the coronavirus.

In the other study, scientists analyzed the genomic diversity of the virus inside and outside of China starting with the earliest sample genomes in December 2019 and extending through mid-February 2020. They found that two lineages A and B marked the pandemic's beginning in Wuhan. Study coauthor Joel Wertheim, a viral evolution expert at the University of California, San Diego, pointed out that lineage A is more genetically similar to bat coronaviruses, but lineage B appears to have begun spreading earlier in humans, particularly at the market.

"Now I realize it sounds like I just said that a once-in-a-generation event happened twice in short succession," Wertheim said. But certain conditions were in place such as people and animals in close proximity and a virus that can spread from animals to people and from person to person. So "barriers to spillover have been lowered such that multiple introductions, we believe, should actually be expected," he said.

Many scientists believe the virus jumped from bats to humans, either directly or through another animal. But in June, the World Health Organization recommended a deeper probe into whether a lab accident may be to blame. Critics had said the WHO was too quick to dismiss the lab leak theory.

"Have we disproven the lab leak theory? No, we have not," Andersen said. "But I think what's really important here is there are possible scenarios and there are plausible scenarios and it's really important to understand that possible does not mean equally likely."

The pandemic's origins remain controversial. Some scientists believe a lab leak is more likely and others remain open to both possibilities. But Matthew Aliota, a researcher in the college of veterinary medicine at the University of Minnesota, said in his mind the pair of studies "kind of puts to rest, hopefully, the lab leak hypothesis."

"Both of these two studies really provide compelling evidence for the natural origin hypothesis," said Aliota, who wasn't involved in either study. Since sampling an animal that was at the market is impossible, "this is maybe as close to a smoking gun as you could get."

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New studies bolster theory coronavirus emerged from the wild - CBS News

Cough, sore throat, fever, and chills: Not again! When a positive COVID-19 test comes back, you may feel like you just had it.

As time passes, immunity wanes, and new virus variants emerge. So, reinfections are certainly possible. But can you get COVID-19 twice in just 1 month?

While that specific scenario is pretty unlikely, the risk of reinfection is increasing. In this article, we discuss what we know so far about COVID-19 reinfections.

Generally, a number of factors contribute to COVID-19 reinfections. These include the:

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), were still learning many things about COVID-19 reinfections. This includes how soon reinfection can happen.

Before the arrival of the Omicron variant, reinfections werent that common. Researchers in a May 2022 study looked at reinfections from the start of the pandemic until Omicron. Overall, they found that reinfection risk was 6.7% in the 18 to 22 months after a first infection.

However, now Omicron and its subvariants have changed the landscape of reinfections. Heres what the research has found.

Reinfections werent that common before Omicron. Research found that protection from reinfection typically lasted for at least several months.

A 2021 study looking at PCR testing data from 2020 found that a prior infection still gave about 80% protection 6 months after a first infection.

A February 2022 study brought vaccination into the mix. Researchers looked at the effect of vaccination on reinfection from December 2020 to September 2021.

Immunity from a prior infection waned after 1 year in unvaccinated people. However, in people vaccinated after having COVID-19, immunity stayed high, even if a prior infection was over 18 months ago.

Viruses can change over time, and thats certainly been true with this coronavirus. As changes accumulate, they can make it easier for a virus to escape immunity generated by vaccination, a previous infection, or both.

A July 2022 study, still in preprint, looked into the qualities of protection that a pre-Omicron infection provided:

A June 2022 study looked at the protection previous infection and vaccination provided on symptomatic infections with the original Omicron variant (BA.1) or its first subvariant, BA.2. Overall, there was no difference in protection between people who were vaccinated, who had had a previous infection, or both.

The new BA.4 and BA.5 Omicron subvariants are now the main drivers of COVID-19 in the United States. Theyre also very good at escaping the immune system.

A July 2022 study looked into the neutralization of BA.4 and BA.5 by antibodies from vaccination or a previous COVID-19 infection. Neutralizing antibodies prevent the virus from binding to a host cell.

Antibodies from vaccinated people had a harder time neutralizing these subvariants. Neutralization was also lower with antibodies from people with a prior infection, including BA.1, the original Omicron variant that was dominant in late 2021 and early 2022.

Another July 2022 study supports this. Researchers found that neutralization of BA.4 and BA.5 was lower than that of BA.1 or BA.2 in both vaccinated people and those with a prior infection.

What this means is that if you had COVID-19 during the first or most recent (BA.2) Omicron wave, reinfection with BA.4 or BA.5 is possible now. However, its still pretty likely youre well protected at this point in time.

Researchers in a July 2022 study, still in preprint, found that while the effectiveness of a pre-Omicron infection against symptomatic BA.4 or BA.5 infections was only 15.1%, it was still rather high (76.1%) if you had a previous Omicron infection.

COVID-19 reinfections appear to be less severe than first infections. A 2021 study looked at the risk of serious illness or death from reinfections. Compared with first infections, reinfections had a 90% lower risk of serious illness or death.

An April 2022 study also found that COVID-19 reinfections carried a lower risk of death than first infections. Similar to first infections, age, sex, and underlying health conditions were risk factors for severe illness from reinfection.

However, theres some evidence that reinfections may increase the risk of lasting health effects. A June 2022 study, still in preprint, found that, compared with first infections, reinfections boosted the risk of:

These effects were seen regardless of vaccination status. The level of risk was also found to increase in line with the number of infections study participants reported.

One limitation of this study is that it may not reflect risk in the general population. Researchers focused on people using Veterans Affairs (VA) healthcare resources. As such, the study population is more likely to be older and male, and have poorer health.

Paxlovid is an antiviral drug doctors prescribe to treat mild to moderate COVID-19 in people at high risk of severe illness. To be effective, Paxlovid needs to be started within 5 days of symptom onset.

Rebounds of COVID-19 have been reported after Paxlovid treatment. While its still unclear why this happens, its possible that the coronavirus isnt completely cleared from the body while taking Paxlovid, allowing it to replicate again after treatment ends.

Increasing reports of these rebounds prompted the CDC to release a health advisory. In this advisory, the CDC noted that Paxlovid rebounds:

Rebounds after Paxlovid are rare. A June 2022 study found that, of 483 people treated with Paxlovid, only 4 (0.8%) had a rebound. Another June 2022 study, still in preprint, found a higher rebound rate: about 3.5% in the 7 days after treatment.

People experiencing COVID-19 rebound after Paxlovid may also be able to transmit the infection to others. A small May 2022 study, still in preprint, involving 10 people documented transmission to family members during rebounds.

The amount of virus during a rebound was also similar to where it was before Paxlovid treatment. Researchers stated that these findings support that people who are having a rebound should isolate until their symptoms go away.

COVID-19 rebounds may also happen without taking Paxlovid. A June 2022 research article mentions anecdotal reports of rebounds in people who never took Paxlovid. Authors note that perhaps Omicron takes longer to clear in some people than earlier virus variants.

Yes. A study published in March 2022 signaled an increased risk of reinfections due to Omicron. Within the study population, researchers noted that an increase in third infections was seen beginning in November 2021.

Researchers stated that people who had third infections had their first infection early in the pandemic and a second infection during the Delta variant wave. Their third infection was from Omicron.

The best way to prevent getting COVID-19 reinfections is to continue to take steps to protect yourself, including:

According to the CDC, we know little about the risk of transmission during COVID-19 reinfections. Overall, its best to err on the side of caution and assume you can transmit the virus to others.

A July 2022 study found that viral shedding (aka the contagious period) among people with Omicron infections can last up to 10 days.

So, its a good idea to isolate and quarantine for at least 10 days or until you are symptom-free and test negative from a rapid COVID-19 test.

According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), boosters targeting Omicron are slated to be available starting in fall 2022. The FDA has also recommended a BA.4 and BA.5 component be included in this booster.

Moderna has announced that its Omicron booster yields a significantly higher neutralizing antibody response to BA.4 and BA.5 than its current booster.

Pfizer-BioNTech stated that, compared with their current booster, their Omicron booster gave higher levels of neutralizing antibodies against BA.1. Neutralizing antibodies for BA.4 and BA.5 were present but to a lesser extent.

The risk of COVID-19 reinfections is increasing. Because of this, you may hear of more and more people in your life getting COVID-19 for a second time, sometimes not too long after their first infection.

The latest reinfections are largely driven by the Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants, which can escape immunity from vaccines and prior infections. Things like naturally waning immunity and reduced COVID-19 precautions also contribute.

Reinfections of COVID-19 are typically less severe than first infections. However, some research says that repeat infections increase the risk of health issues later. As such, its important to continue to take steps to prevent COVID-19.

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Can You Get COVID-19 Twice in a Month? Reinfections and Rebounds - Healthline

Hospitals have reported the largest sustained decline in coronavirus hospitalizations since March, with 64 fewer patients occupying hospital beds Wednesday than when the current surge peaked 10 days ago at 464 hospitalizations.

Hospital space remains in short supply, however, with only 8% of intensive care units available for patients statewide and 7% of regular hospital beds available.

Health officials warned Oregonians last week that the hospital system is again facing a crisis, even though COVID-19 hospitalizations amount to less than half of what they were during the delta and omicron surge peaks. The strain on hospitals is driven at least in part by delays in getting people out of hospitals, staff burnout and patients coming in for issues they had left untreated during the worst of the pandemic.

COVID-19 community levels are high in 19 Oregon counties, according to federal benchmarks that incorporate hospitalizations, hospital admissions and new case counts. They include Multnomah County, though not Washington and Clackamas counties, which were previously listed, too. At high levels, health officials recommend that everyone wear masks when in indoor public places.

New reported coronavirus cases fell for the second consecutive as of Wednesday, though the 5% decline this week coincided with a 10% decline in testing. The 8,751 cases reported over the last seven days are considered a profound undercount, as have all cases reported since at-home tests became widely available.

The share of positive tests, reported at nearly 13% Wednesday, has remained above 10% since May.

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Since it began: Oregon has reported 848,046 confirmed or presumed infections and 8,061 deaths.

Hospitalizations: 400 people with confirmed coronavirus infections are hospitalized, down 24 since Wednesday, July 20. That includes 43 people in intensive care, down two since July 20.

Vaccinations: As of July 25, the state has reported fully vaccinating 2,937,559 people (68.8% of the population), partially vaccinating 302,252 people (7.1%) and boosting 1,714,863 (40.2%).

New deaths: Since July 20, the Oregon Health Authority has reported 80 additional deaths connected to COVID-19.

Fedor Zarkhin

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Coronavirus in Oregon: Hospitalizations fall in welcome sign of receding surge - OregonLive