Ten scientists are suing an academic journal that retracted major studies on the potential harm of abortion pills, saying that the retractions were “politically motivated.” The Charlotte Lozier Institute scientists, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom and Consovoy McCarthy, say that Sage Publishing violated California contract law when it yanked three studies, including two on the dangers of the abortion pill, earlier this year. The retractions, which occurred weeks before the Supreme Court heard arguments on the availability of abortion pills, were first reported by The Daily Wire. The lawsuit seeks to compel Sage to commit to arbitration over the scientists’ complaints about the retractions, which were issued in February. “By retracting three studies by Charlotte Lozier Institute scholars without any legitimate objection to any of the findings, Sage put politics over publication ethics and blatantly disregarded the principles of open inquiry and commitment to science,” said Dr. James Studnicki, vice president and director of data analytics at Charlotte Lozier Institute. “The authors’ well-earned reputations as highly qualified scientists and researchers have been immeasurably harmed. We’re hopeful this opportunity to compel Sage to arbitrate in good faith will shed light on their meritless actions to silence our research.” The retraction notice from Sage stated that an independent review of the studies was conducted due to a single reader’s complaint that the studies included misleading data and that the authors were affiliated with a pro-life organization, the Charlotte Lozier Institute. Studnicki, one of the authors on the papers, was also kicked off the editorial board of Sage’s Health Services Research and Managerial Epidemiology journal, months before the retractions actually took place. “Sage’s wrongdoing has been causing enormous and incalculable harm to the Authors’ professional reputations, as Sage intended. Because of Sage’s retractions, the Authors and their research have been attacked by the media and by other authors, and the Authors have had new research proposals inexplicably turned away by other publications that now fear associating with them,” lawyers for the scientists wrote in a petition in Ventura Superior Court. “The Authors have years—even decades—of fruitful research ahead of them, but they are now being treated as pariahs.” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! One of the now-retracted studies, published November 9, 2021, found that the rate of emergency room visits following chemical abortions had spiked 500% from 2002-2015, according to Medicaid claims data. Another one of the studies, published May 20, 2022, analyzed the likelihood of recurring emergency room visits for women who did not disclose to doctors that they had a chemical abortion. These two studies were cited in Federal Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk’s decision to suspend FDA approval of mifepristone. “Politics should never sway science, especially when that science is vital for saving and protecting lives,” said Alliance Defending Freedom Senior Counsel Phil Sechler. “Sage punished these highly respected and credentialed scientists simply because they believe in preserving life from conception to natural death.” In addition to ending the life of an unborn baby, the abortion pill can also come with serious complications for the women who take them. A Georgia woman died in 2022 from complications with the abortion pill because she developed an infection after taking a pill to end the lives of twins she was carrying and the babies remains stayed in her uterus.

Senator J.D. Vance (R-OH) revealed the hilarious “Boss Man” game his kids have been playing since he became former President Donald Trump’s running mate. On Thursday, Vance sat down with the guys on “The Ruthless” podcast for his first post-vice presidential debate interview to talk about how this election compares to when he ran and won his Senate seat in 2022 and how much his life has changed since Trump put him on the ticket. Vance said he’s gotten calls from friends asking how he’s doing, noting all the traveling he and Trump have been doing to reach voters before the election. “You know, I’m honestly having a great time and the fact that I get to bring my kids with me on some of this stuff is very cool,” Vance said. “But honestly, when I ran for Senate [in the] state of Ohio … I’d ride around in Patrick’s used Subaru, driving five hours to Youngstown and then back to Cincinnati.” “Now I fly in a 737 with my kids, like, it’s a much easier life to run for vice president actually than it is to run for the Senate,” he added. “So, you’re never going to hear me complain about it.” The podcast hosts asked Vance’s if his three kids (ages 7, 4, and 2) understand what’s happening, and he joked they have no idea, pointing to a game his kids have started playing at school, which they call “Boss Man.” Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! “The best part is, you know, the kids have a secret service detail now,” Vance said. “We learned from one of my son’s friends, his parents were like, ‘Do you know the kids play this game in school called ‘boss man?’ And I was like, ‘No, what is boss man?’” “He’s like, ‘Well, it’s where one kid walks down the hallway flanked by four other kids on each side,’” he added. “So, they kind of get, like, that part of it — at least my seven-year-old does.” At one point, Vance also addressed his viral “Jim from The Office” moment from the VP debate. “The one thing I didn’t realize, this thing that’s gone super viral of me kind of doing the ‘Jim from The Office’ thing looking into the camera,” Vance said. “I wish I could take credit for it, but it’s because the, I guess the timer is right by the camera, so I was just, you know, I was trying to, like, pay attention to what he’s saying.” “But then you have to be ready for when his time’s up because then it’s your turn to speak,” he added. “And so I was looking at the timer figuring … it spawned a million viral memes. So I’m glad they did it like that.” You can catch Vance’s “Ruthless” appearance in its entirety here: ? JD VANCE GETS RUTHLESS ? On this special edition of Ruthless, JD Vance joins the fellas in his first post-debate interview to recap his stellar performance in the recent Vice Presidential debate. pic.twitter.com/SE27C4n8DA — Ruthless Podcast (@RuthlessPodcast) October 3, 2024 Related: ‘You Don’t Have To Tell Anybody’: Vance Trolls Walz In Podcast Interview

One of the excuses you always hear when there’s a massive failure by the Biden-Harris administration is that no one could have seen it coming. No one could have predicted that the Inflation Reduction Act would actually increase inflation. No one could have predicted that the Afghan government would collapse immediately after we pulled out our troops, leading to a security breakdown and the deaths of 13 U.S. military personnel. No one could have predicted that shipping pallets of cash to Iran would provide funding for a new campaign of terrorist attacks by Iran’s proxies, and so on. The truth though is that all of these disasters were easily foreseeable. The problem is that the people in charge of predicting the consequences of all of these policies are either grossly incompetent, or malicious. At every step, they have lied to Americans about what they know — or should know — was about to happen. And there is maybe no better illustration of this problem than the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene, which has now killed more than 200 people. Take a look at what the DHS Secretary, Alejandro Mayorkas, was saying just three months ago. Mayorkas, as head of the DHS, oversees the federal disaster relief agency, FEMA. On June 21st, Mayorkas went in front of the cameras to boast that FEMA was, “tremendously prepared” for the upcoming hurricane season. In fact, he doesn’t just say that FEMA is tremendously prepared for hurricanes. He says they’re prepared for wildfires, extreme heat, and a variety of other disasters. We can handle all of it, he said. Watch:   “This is what we do,” says Mayorkas as he smiles. It’s all very reassuring. Now, admittedly, the words “tremendously prepared” can be interpreted in a few different ways. And unfortunately, Mayorkas wasn’t more specific. But ordinarily, when the official overseeing a disaster relief agency says that they’re “tremendously prepared”, they’re saying that, at a minimum, they have all the resources they need to quickly and effectively respond to whatever natural disasters may occur. So it was more than a little surprising to hear the DHS Secretary on Wednesday, announcing that actually, FEMA is out of money. They don’t even have the cash to make it through hurricane season. Watch:   It’s easy to become desensitized to all the lying that we’ve heard from this administration. It’s easy to roll your eyes when you see even more evidence that these people, at a minimum, are grossly incompetent. But this is truly another level. Imagine this kind of thing happening in literally any business in the country. Imagine the cook at iHOP telling his boss that he’s “tremendously prepared” for the breakfast rush, and then the customers show up and actually, it turns out that there’s no flour or eggs or bacon in the kitchen. They need an emergency shipment because they’re all out of ingredients. How long do you think that cook would have a job exactly? Five seconds? Less?  As you just heard at the tail end of that Fox News report, this is starting to look like something much worse than incompetence. It looks a bit like embezzlement, actually.  First of all, didn’t the government’s fiscal year just start on October 1st? How are they out of money already? And why exactly was FEMA administering billion-dollar “services” to foreign nationals, including illegal aliens living inside this country? As The New York Post reports:  The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) allocated $640.9 million this year in FEMA-administered funds to aid state and local governments coping with the influx of asylum seekers … [And] DHS allocated $780 million for the migrant crisis last year through the FEMA Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which funds relief not associated with natural disasters, and the FEMA Shelter and Services Program, which was authorized in late 2022 by Congress to respond to the migrant crisis. That money, according to the DHS website, goes to ““families and individuals encountered by the Department of Homeland Security.” There doesn’t need to be an emergency or a natural disaster or anything like that. These people just need to come into this country illegally, and they’re eligible. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show In response to this reporting, the DHS claimed that Congress didn’t authorize that $1.4 billion to go to American citizens. It was supposedly earmarked for “the migrant crisis,” meaning it was never intended for Americans. I guess that’s supposed to be reassuring, somehow. But that still doesn’t explain why the DHS secretary said FEMA was well-prepared just three months ago. And more importantly, it doesn’t explain why we’re spending so much money on providing “food and shelter” to illegal migrants when we don’t even have enough money to fund disaster relief for American citizens. And that’s not even getting into the hundreds of billions of dollars we’ve spent on Ukraine, which comes out to more than $5,000 per Ukrainian. By comparison, American citizens aren’t getting much. As the Post reports: A relatively paltry $4 million has been paid directly to families and individuals in the week since Hurricane Helene ravaged the Southeast, killing at least 202 people and causing severe flooding damage from Florida to North Carolina. For her part, acting president Kamala Harris has announced that affected families in this country are eligible for a grand total of $750 in FEMA assistance. Watch:   A whole $750. That’s what FEMA can give American citizens who just lost their homes. And to be clear, that’s not because this hurricane season was unusually catastrophic. And it’s not because FEMA has been doing heroic work that turned out to be far more expensive than they could’ve possibly anticipated.  In reality, FEMA has reported that it’s been running out of money for a long time now. A year ago, in the middle of hurricane season, FEMA disclosed that it was experiencing a massive budget shortfall of several billion dollars. This is a report from July of 2023. Watch:   FEMA’s excuse last year was that there were a lot of unexpected disasters — fires, mudslides, and so on. So you’d think that, after running out of money, they’d make sure to cover the budget shortfall in time for the next hurricane season. After all, the federal government can print money out of thin air for whatever reason it wants. They don’t care about inflation, as we’ve learned. They’ll just print it, if they care enough. Why didn’t that happen here? Was there some issue with the money printer? Did Congress reject the budget for some reason? If so, at the very least, you’d expect that the DHS secretary would complain about that. You wouldn’t think he’d go on television to brag about how “tremendously prepared” they are. That’s especially true after FEMA’s failed handling of the Maui fires last year. As you might remember, residents said that FEMA’s assistance was both scattershot and insufficient after the blaze. They were also outraged that FEMA officials were hanging out in luxury hotels instead of helping. Watch:   “It’s not what it looks like,” says FEMA. And maybe that’s true. Maybe it was vitally necessary for FEMA to rent out a bunch of luxury hotels in Hawaii. We really don’t know. But every indication we have now is that this agency isn’t capable of managing its budget or responding effectively to disasters. So there are a lot of reasons to ask questions about this whole arrangement, especially after-the-fact. Will anyone in the media ask about any of this? Probably not. Deanne Criswell is the woman who runs FEMA. She happens to be the first woman to ever hold that job. So she has the whole identity politics angle going for her. Maybe that’s why, as FEMA suffers one humiliation after another, no one’s even suggesting that she should lose her job, along with the DHS secretary. Or maybe Deanne Criswell is untouchable because the Biden-Harris administration wants her to do exactly what she’s doing, which is to sabotage recovery efforts. Maybe that’s what the government wants. Am I Racist? Is In Theaters NOW — Get Your Tickets Here! They’re certainly doing everything they can to create that impression. The local CBS affiliate in North Carolina just reported that 1,000 soldiers in the state are sitting around and doing nothing, instead of assisting in disaster relief: President Joe Biden activated 1,000 U.S. Army soldiers for deployment to western North Carolina. More than 24 hours later, troops are still waiting to deploy from Fort Liberty. The soldiers are supposed to assist with delivering food and essential supplies to isolated communities devastated by Helene. … The U.S. Army said soldiers with the 18th Airborne Corps at Fort Liberty are standing by and ready if the request for support comes. … The North Carolina Army National Guard, which is leading the ground recovery efforts, tells CBS17 they are still assessing the needs in the area and they have not made an official request for support from the U.S. Army. So the Army hasn’t been called in for some reason. A thousand soldiers have been activated, but they’re not doing anything. Meanwhile civilians who try to help are being prevented from doing so.  Here’s congressman Cory Mills, explaining that because Joe Biden was in the area, the federal government just prevented civilian rescue pilots and aid workers from saving lives in the aftermath of this disaster. Watch:   So, to recap: FEMA doesn’t provide early warning, or a timely mandatory evacuation order. They don’t provide any significant assistance after the storm. They divert huge amounts of resources to foreign nationals who have no legal justification for being in this country. They shut down the air space to block civilian rescue flights. They say they’re out of money. And just three months ago, they told us they were “tremendously prepared” for hurricane season. Watching all this, you have to ask why we’re even paying taxes. Why are we paying FEMA billions of dollars every year, only to make disasters even more deadly? Why are we funneling our money to people who clearly hate us? Ask yourself: If the Biden-Harris administration wanted to go out of its way to punish American citizens, what exactly would they be doing differently? At some point, complete and total incompetence is indistinguishable from malice. And anyone who’s been paying attention to FEMA over the past year — as well as everyone living in the areas that have been decimated by this hurricane — knows that we are now well past that point. WATCH THE TRAILER FOR ‘AM I RACIST?’ — A MATT WALSH COMEDY ON DEI

A post made on Facebook claims that Elon Musk pulled a $1 billion show from CBS following alleged bias at the 2024 vice presidential debate. Verdict: False The claim appears to originate from a satirical story. There is no credible evidence that Musk ever owned the rights to a CBS show. Fact Check: A post made on […]

'They're going to keep hemorrhaging'

Biden-Harris was caving to increased antisemitism

'Spirals of vandalism and violence'

Warning: This review contains spoilers for the Amazon series “The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power,” Season 2. The second season of Amazon’s “Rings of Power” somehow managed to be worse than the first season of the show, which is a rather high bar. The first season showed a disrespect for J.R.R. Tolkien’s world, but this season made things worse. It seems as if the showrunners don’t understand the basics of fantasy—or even storytelling. Before I get into the great sins of the season, I’ll address a few smaller quibbles. The second season introduced “the Faithful,” a religion in the kingdom of Numenor, and failed to give even the slightest taste of what the religion involves. It also introduced the barrow-wights (which the Peter Jackson movie adaptation of Tolkien’s “The Fellowship of the Ring” cut out). There’s just one problem: the barrow-wights shouldn’t exist until far in the future of Middle Earth, because the person responsible for them—the Witch King of Angmar—hasn’t received his ring of power yet. It also presented the Palantiri, the seeing stones that made a big appearance in “The Lord of the Rings,” as corrupted when they don’t become corrupted until far in the future. Yet these sins against Middle Earth pale in comparison to the great solipsisms of storytelling the show commits. 1. Sauron Everyone and their mother in this show somehow knows that Sauron (the main villain in “The Lord of the Rings”) represents a vast ethereal evil on the horizon, yet the show doesn’t bother to give the audience a reason to fear Sauron. Charlie Vickers gives Sauron a great presence on the silver screen, but the show’s horrible writing prevents the audience from truly fearing him. Season 2 opens with a scene in which Sauron gives a speech to orcs, and Adar (Sam Hazeldine) proceeds to betray him, killing him with the very crown he was supposed to receive. Adar’s motive for that remains unclear, and Sauron transforms into a black goo—rightly mocked online as “Soupron”—only to slowly reemerge after eating a centipede, a rat, and a person. The showrunners seemed to think this scene provided a cool backstory for the ultimate villain, but in reality, it made the audience see Sauron as impotent, unimpressive, and rather comical. “The Rings of Power” never spends time giving the brief mythic backstory of evil in Middle Earth, and it suffers for it. The Peter Jackson adaptation of “The Lord of the Rings” begins with an excellent introduction to the world and the evil of Sauron, and it presents him as powerful and wicked, doing the work to establish the villain the audience almost never sees throughout that film trilogy. “The Rings of Power,” by contrast, never gives the impressive and dark backstory, instead presenting Sauron as a schemer and deceiver. Only in a later episode of Season 2 does the audience see Sauron’s true power to deceive through illusions—and by then, the audience can’t help but think of Sauron as a pitiful pile of black goo. 2. The Orcs “The Lord of the Rings” and Tolkien’s Legendarium always presented orcs as evil. They are fundamentally corrupt, and the audience should cheer when heroes slaughter them. “The Rings of Power” attempts at many points to humanize them, showing orcs with families and having one orc plead with the orc leader Adar to stop leading them to war. In storytelling, subverting the audience’s expectations can be very powerful. Suddenly suggesting that characters the audience thought of as mindless drones are actually human beings with wills and lives can be effective, if the storytellers commit and actually strive to make a point. Similarly, redemption arcs can strongly resonate with audiences, and if an orc truly rejected evil and could somehow be redeemed, that might be an interesting story. “The Rings of Power” never pursues either of these avenues. Instead, it resorts to a cheap trick, as the orc who expressed concern about the constant wars later betrays Adar in favor of Sauron, for no reasons given by the show. The humanization of orcs is nothing but a bait-and-switch in “The Rings of Power,” and it’s a particularly unsettling one. This narrative device suggests that Tolkien and the heroes have been wrong to cheer the deaths of orcs all along, and then it reverts to form as if nothing had changed. Suddenly, later in the season, the heroes are slaughtering orcs left and right, and it’s supposed to be noble again. Middle Earth is not the place to humanize orcs, and anyone remotely familiar with the source material should know that. 3. Why, Oh Why, Does Adar Hate Sauron? The main conflict in Season 2 revolves around the elf Celebrimbor (Charles Edwards) forging the rings of power in the city of Eregion, under Sauron’s influence, while Adar leads a huge orc army to attack Eregion and kill Sauron. Adar hates Sauron, for some reason, and he is even willing to team up with the elf heroine Galadriel (Morfydd Clark) to defeat him. Adar tells Galadriel that he wants to kill Sauron so that he can lead the orcs back into Mordor and no longer attack the other peoples of Middle Earth. Galadriel understandably does not believe him. At the end of the show, the orcs suddenly turn on Adar for no reason, just as Adar turned on Sauron for no reason at the beginning, killing him and pledging their fealty to Sauron. Adar’s No. 1 lieutenant carries out the killing blow, but the show never explains how Sauron got him to betray his master. The entire plot feels pointless and unearned. 4. A Completely Nonsensical Battle Episode 7, “Doomed to Die,” features the massive battle of Eregion, which pits the elves under Sauron’s control against the orcs under Adar. Other elves—Galadriel, Elrond (Robert Aramayo), and the High King Gil-Galad (Benjamin Walker)—arrive to fight against the orcs and save the city. While fantasy, as a genre, does require certain willing suspension of disbelief, such as the idea that magic exists and there are elves, orcs, trolls, etc., it doesn’t usually involve suspending the laws of physics. That, however, is exactly what this battle does. First, the orcs turn their trebuchets on a mountain, which immediately crumbles, causing huge boulders to fall into a river. These boulders somehow dam up the river completely, turning the river into dry ground. Yet anyone remotely familiar with rivers knows that not only is this a nearly impossible feat, but the riverbed would not immediately be dry—and it certainly wouldn’t be dry enough for the orcs, and then an army of elves on horseback—to march across it easily. Second, when the elves charge on their horses, they get within a few feet of the orcs before Elrond sees that the orcs have Galadriel hostage. In order to save Galadriel, Elrond brings the entire army of cavalry to an immediate halt before they would charge into the orcs. Note to the showrunners: That’s not how horses work. If the war horses are charging, and you try to pull them back, it’s going to take time for them to slow down, and most likely, they are just going to keep charging. Yes, Tolkien created a fantasy world where there are orcs, elves, dwarfs, hobbits, and more mythical creatures. But his horses never stopped being horses, his mountains never stopped being mountains, and his rivers never stopped being rivers. Fantasy requires the willing suspension of disbelief, but “The Rings of Power” requires the willing suspension of common sense. It’s a shame the name of Tolkien has any connection to this monstrosity. The post The 4 Great Sins of Season 2 of ‘Rings of Power’ appeared first on The Daily Signal.

United Airlines’ DEI committee head is also a trans-identifying male.