Alabama Senator Katie Britt praised the Trump administration for firing three more FEMA employees after it conducted an investigation into a supervisor’s directive for relief workers to skip homes with Trump flags or signs. Britt made the comments in response to a letter she received from Acting FEMA Director Cameron Hamilton telling her that he had fired three employees who had a supervisory role over Marn’i Washington, the woman who told federal relief workers in Lake Placid, Florida, to “avoid homes advertising Trump.” Hamilton wrote in response to a letter Britt sent on November 9, one day after The Daily Wire first reported on the guidance, demanding answers from then-Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas. “I am sincerely grateful for FEMA’s efforts along with President Trump and [Homeland Secretary Secretary Kristi] Noem to ensure every American in need of critical aid, regardless of political affiliation, receives impartial assistance,” Britt, the chair of the subcommittee that appropriates money for Homeland Security, told The Daily Wire. “I also appreciate FEMA taking necessary action to fire these individuals complicit in bypassing homes and conditioning aid as well as to provide additional training for the agency’s employees,” she added. “As I wrote in my letter to FEMA last November, the American people must have assurances this outrageous behavior never happens again.” Hamilton’s letter to Britt closely mirrored a letter that was sent to Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and the House Oversight Committee. He noted that the guidance, which led to around 20 homes being skipped, was investigated internally by the Office of Inspector General, the Office of the Special Counsel, and FEMA’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). “The OPR investigation found no evidence that this was a systemic problem, nor that it was directed by agency or field leadership,” he added. “However, it did determine that those in the immediate supervisor chain of the single staff member who engaged in this conduct should have had more direct control of their subordinates’ behavior. Thus, they failed to meet my expectations of leaders in this organization and have been terminated.” “This action has been taken both because of their failure to meet our standards of conduct and because it is essential that the entire workforce understand that this incident was reprehensible, and this type of behavior will not be tolerated at FEMA,” he added, saying that FEMA employees were given additional training to make sure they knew that politics were not an acceptable consideration during disaster relief operations. Britt’s initial letter to Mayorkas demanded answers on why the direction was given and that he make assurances that it would not happen again.

President Donald Trump on Monday reacted to the news that the first seven seasons of his hit reality TV series “The Apprentice” will be streaming on Amazon Prime starting March 10. “I look forward to watching this show myself — such great memories, and so much fun, but most importantly, it was a learning experience for all of us!” Trump said in a statement to the New York Post. The show launched Trump as a reality TV star, and it’s where his famous catchphrase, “You’re fired,” came from, which he used on the series and on the campaign trail as recently as during his 2024 presidential run. Originally airing on NBC in 2004, the non-celebrity versions of “The Apprentice” rolled out on Monday for Amazon viewers in the United States only, The Hollywood Reporter noted. “The Apprentice is one of the best shows that I ever produced. The charismatic onscreen presence of President Donald J. Trump made it a bona fide hit,” producer Mark Burnett said in a statement to THR. “Now, thanks to Prime Video, a whole new audience will experience a new season every Monday.” “This show is a love letter to New York City! ‘Survivor’ grew an entirely new massive audience as result of old seasons being binged during the pandemic,” he added. “On Monday, March 10, this same phenomenon will begin again… with ‘The Apprentice.’” While it is unclear how much Trump will be paid, he was an executive producer on the hit show and will likely receive some kind of compensation, THR noted. News of the re-airing of the Trump series comes following reports that the streaming site, headed by Amazon executive Jeff Bezos, is working on a documentary with first lady Melania Trump. The documentary has reportedly already started shooting in several locations, including at the White House, as previously reported. Variety previously reported that Melania was working on a documentary for Amazon Prime Video that she is executive producing with Fernando Sulichin. The documentary will be directed by Brett Ratner. Ahead of Trump’s second inauguration, the Wall Street Journal reported that the president received large donations from two of the top tech leaders in the country for his inaugural fund, as they looked to curry favor with him, Bezos and Meta Platforms CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Zuckerberg — whose company owns Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and more — gave a $1 million donation to the fund, The Wall Street Journal reported. The Journal separately reported that Amazon.com was also planning to donate $1 million to Trump’s inaugural fund. Related: Melania Trump’s Plans As First Lady Second Time Around: Report

A couple of months ago we discussed once again the travesty of justice that was the murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. This was a trial that was conducted just down the street from ground-zero of the BLM riots of 2020, which destroyed Minneapolis’ police precinct, caused $500 million in damage to more than 1,500 businesses, and resulted in several deaths. We’re talking about the single most destructive riot in United States history, after the Los Angeles riots of 1992. And it happened in the same place where Derek Chauvin’s trial was being held. But the judge — who later declared that “every case is about racial justice” in some way — didn’t move the trial to a different venue. Instead, he made sure that Chauvin’s fate was determined by jurors who knew well that their city would burn to the ground if they didn’t convict. They had security fencing and National Guard troops all around the courthouse throughout the trial, just in case that message wasn’t clear. And those jurors did exactly what you’d expect them to do, under those circumstances. They convicted Chauvin without even addressing the question of whether he had actually killed George Floyd. The jurors admitted it on CNN; they simply decided that Chauvin didn’t express enough concern for Floyd’s well-being. That was how they rationalized it. For their part, prosecutors repeatedly lied to the jury about the level of fentanyl in Floyd’s system at the time of his death. Specifically, prosecutors compared blood samples taken from Floyd before he was pronounced dead, to samples taken from overdose victims long after their deaths. And they pulled this off without the defense team noticing it. Their goal was clear: They wanted to downplay the sheer amount of fentanyl in Floyd’s system, which was well over a lethal dose.  That’s why Floyd kept telling officers that he couldn’t breathe, long before he was anywhere near the ground. It’s also why Floyd was violently resisting arrest, which is why Chauvin had to restrain him on the ground, as he was trained to do. And that’s not even getting into the evidence of Floyd’s heart tumor, which was withheld from Chauvin by his attorney. After Chauvin’s state conviction, federal prosecutors from the Biden administration pursued additional charges, on the theory that Chauvin had deliberately violated George Floyd’s civil rights. This case was somehow even more absurd than the original murder trial. It hinged on the theory that Chauvin had made the conscious decision to abuse his authority to harm George Floyd, even though he knew that about 20 people were recording him. But Chauvin signed off on a guilty plea to these federal charges for two reasons. First of all, it wouldn’t mean any additional prison time. His sentence would run concurrently with his state sentence. And secondly, Chauvin would be transferred to a federal prison, which are generally much safer (and better-run) than state prisons. In other words, no serious person sees this guilty plea as an actual admission of guilt. Chauvin was clearly making the best of what seemed to be a hopeless situation. WATCH: The Matt Walsh Show But in a matter of months, all of this logic — as reasonable as it seemed at the time — would fall apart. For one thing, Chauvin was stabbed 22 times in the law library of a federal prison in Arizona. So the safety justification for taking the plea wasn’t actually that compelling, in retrospect. Additionally, Chauvin learned about George Floyd’s heart condition — information that was being withheld from him at the time he signed the guilty plea. And more generally, Chauvin’s situation no longer seems hopeless, because the broader political environment has changed. Another victim of mob justice, Daniel Perry in Texas, received a pardon after he was convicted for defending himself from the BLM mob. Then Donald Trump was elected, promising full pardons for January 6 defendants. And then yet another victim of mob justice, Daniel Penny, was acquitted in New York. Given this background, you can see why Derek Chauvin has been fighting to have his federal guilty plea overturned. It’s an important step towards his ultimate goal of vacating his state murder conviction. Once the federal case is gone, then prosecutors can no longer use Chauvin’s admission of guilt — which was obviously coerced under the circumstances — against him. Additionally, Chauvin would probably be released from prison about two years earlier if the federal sentence was vacated, because of rules about how federal prisoners need to serve out most of their sentences. Despite the obvious injustices that Chauvin has endured throughout this process, he hasn’t had a lot of major voices lining up behind him with a specific, practical plan of action. But last week, as you may have seen, that changed. Ben Shapiro launched an effort to have Chauvin’s federal conviction pardoned by Donald Trump. Even aside from the more tangible benefits this might have for Chauvin — for example, getting him out of prison a few years earlier — a presidential pardon would also be a major step towards clearing Chauvin’s name, and rejecting the central, fraudulent BLM narrative that has done so much damage to this country in recent years. And even if the pardon never happens, it’s still good to advocate for one. It helps Chauvin to have people vocally supporting him. And it helps the country to have people repudiating the BLM narrative once and for all. But not all “conservative commentators” are on board with the idea. Yes, there are conservatives arguing against a presidential pardon for Derek Chauvin, who was clearly convicted in violation of his constitutional right to a fair trial. This is a man who was offered up as a sacrificial lamb on the altar of racial justice. He was sent to prison as a human sacrifice, because the mob demanded that someone must pay for the fact that a violent career criminal overdosed on fentanyl. And yet there are “conservatives” arguing that we should allow this injustice to stand. We should sit with our mouths shut as the sacrificial lamb is burned at the altar. So I’m going to go through all of their arguments, one-by-one, because this is an issue that implicates both the criminal justice system, and the state of the conservative movement. We’ll start with the alleged conservative commentator Rob Smith, and his analysis on the PBD podcast the other day. Watch: Notice what his priorities are. He’s primarily concerned about “race relations,” as if that’s somehow a justification for letting a fraudulent criminal conviction remain on a man’s record. He says it wouldn’t “benefit America” to pardon a man who’s clearly innocent. He also claims that it would somehow hurt Donald Trump, who just pardoned every single January 6 defendant because he understands how corrupt our criminal justice system has become. There were a lot of people saying Trump shouldn’t pardon the January 6 defendants because the Left would be really mad and start breaking things. And yet Trump did it anyway, and it was fine.  But as Rob goes on, his argument gets even more embarrassing. Let’s keep listening: What Rob is saying is pitiful and wrong-headed in the extreme. Arguing that we should let an injustice stand because the BLM mob will be mad if we don’t is repugnant, loathsome nonsense. It’s exactly the sort of pathetic, scared, gutless, limp-wristed mindset that allowed that mob to burn down cities and run roughshod over the culture for years. George Floyd was a violent drug addicted criminal who died because he took a lethal dose of fentanyl and then resisted arrest. I don’t care if it causes “racial strife” to speak this truth. Anyone who plays this emotional blackmail game is not worth listening to. We’ve seen what happens when we allow the Left-wing narrative to run unopposed all for the sake of avoiding “strife.” What happens is that the Left wins everything, we lose everything, and we end up with a whole lot more “strife” than we would have had if we had just spoken up. Chauvin is an innocent man. Rob can pretend that only “5 podcasters” have the knowledge of the trial to make a statement like that, but it’s not true. Anyone with a passing interest in the facts of this case understands what a travesty this trial was. Rob may not understand. He may be clueless. But he can’t protect his cluelessness onto the rest of us. You don’t put innocent men in prison to avoid “racial strife.” In fact, it only causes more, as we’ve all seen. Again: we have all seen what happens when you let falsehoods, injustices, and moral insanity stand just for the sake of appeasing the Left-wing mob. Conservatives tried that approach for decades. That’s how we got BLM to begin with. But Rob isn’t the only conservative who’s taking this approach. Someone named JD Sharp posted this response for example: I know a pardon of chauvin will result in the biggest black influencer campaign ever and will likely lead to a domestic race war worse than 2020, which will then lead to martial law and a totalitarian government controlled by artificial super intelligence. Can you imagine? Pardoning Derek Chauvin would lead to the “biggest black influencer campaign ever.” Which will then lead immediately to a sci-fi dystopia and the enslavement of mankind. How would that all work exactly? Fortunately we have JD to explain. He adds: My full position is pardoning chauvin will result in a massive social media influencer campaign led by Stephen a smith that leads to his presidential campaign run which will lead to the closest thing to a racially driven civil war we’ve ever had that will include actual domestic bloodshed, and very well could turn into martial law just as the most powerful population control tool m, artificial super intelligence, is arriving. Yes, he’s claiming that Stephen A. Smith could be the Democrats’ nominee if Trump pardons Derek Chauvin — which is probably the single best argument for pardoning Derek Chauvin. It would be a bigger blowout than Nixon in 1972. But we’re supposed to fear this outcome, apparently, because we’ll have a “racially driven civil war.” Of course, that’s nonsense as well. A Chauvin pardon (especially one that doesn’t even free him from prison) wouldn’t lead to widespread rioting like we saw in 2020. We’ve seen with the Daniel Penny acquittal and the pardon of Daniel Perry in Texas that BLM is demoralized and ineffective now. They’ve also lost all of their funding, because the people pulling the strings realize that race riots hurt the agenda they were supposed to be helping. Because even if riots did result from a pardon, that would only make the public despise Democrats more than they already do. It would be a political catastrophe for the Democrats. If I were really cynical, I’d say pardon Chauvin just so that it drives the Left deeper into madness and further from the mainstream. But I’m not saying that. I’m saying do it because it’s the right thing to do. It just so happens that the right thing and the politically smart thing are one and the same in this case.  Again, though, many conservatives disagree. Here’s Delano Squires for example: This is a textbook post hoc fallacy, where you look at the timing of events and determine causation solely from that. He concedes that Floyd had enough fentanyl to kill a horse in his system. But because Floyd didn’t die until after Chauvin restrained him, he’s concluding that Chauvin must be the cause. Nevermind the fact that Floyd didn’t actually die on the street, based on the government’s own autopsy report. Nevermind the fact that the coroner didn’t find any serious physical injury to Floyd’s body whatsoever. Nevermind that Floyd couldn’t breathe while he was still in the squad car. With the “post hoc fallacy,” all that matters is the order of events. For his part, Jason Whitlock responded to Ben Shapiro’s call for a pardon, as well as my own posts on the subject. So let’s start with his general thoughts:   I have no issue with the people arguing against a Chauvin pardon on technical grounds. The point that a federal pardon would actually hurt him because it would just land him in state prison instead of federal prison is perfectly reasonable. If Trump decided against a pardon for that reason, that’s understandable. If Chauvin himself doesn’t want the pardon for that reason, that would be obviously reason enough to not do it. Although, for the record, as I alluded to earlier, it’s not necessarily true that Chauvin would end up in state prison after a pardon. And it’s not clear that a pardon would have no practical effect otherwise. As CNN has conceded: JaneAnne Murray, a University of Minnesota criminal law associate professor who specializes in sentencing .. [said that] inmates such as Chauvin, who might need additional security, still might be allowed to remain in federal prison to serve a state sentence. Additionally, CNN reports that: If Chauvin were to receive a federal pardon, he could end up spending less time incarcerated than he would have, even though the state sentence is slightly longer than the federal sentence. … The reason: Prisoners are often required to serve a greater proportion of federal sentences than state sentences, and prisoners sentenced after 1987 are ineligible for federal parole. Again: Chauvin himself tried to vacate his federal conviction. That seems to indicate that he thinks it would benefit him to get rid of the federal conviction. Regardless, from what I can tell, Jason Whitlock’s primary argument against the pardon is actually more about the politics of the situation. For example, he posted on X: What is going on here? This seems out of nowhere from the Daily Wire, given the fact it separated from Candace Owens. If Trump took this on right now, it would sabotage and overshadow other agendas. I believe Chauvin was wrongly convicted… BUT… the timing of this campaign seems out of place. Whitlock went on to make a similar argument on his show: I like Jason and enjoy his work, but I must say that this is where the argument starts to come across as a bit disingenuous. Again, if you want to say that a pardon wouldn’t have much practical effect, that’s one thing. Reasonable people can disagree on that. But this is something else entirely. Whitlock has stated repeatedly that he believes Chauvin didn’t receive a fair trial. He believes the conviction should be overturned. If that’s your belief — and it happens to be the correct belief — then saying “now’s not the time for a pardon” is a dodge. If now isn’t the time, when is the time? If it’s true that pardoning him would be politically catastrophic, should we do it closer to midterms? Should we do it when the 2028 campaign is in full swing? If it’s politically unpopular but right, now is precisely the time to do it. If it’s politically popular and also right, now is still the time. If it’s the wrong thing to do in principle, there is no right time. Whichever is the case, “now’s not the time” is the kind of thing you say if you don’t want to say what you really think. And in this case, I think there are some conservatives using the “now’s not the time” dodge because they actually agree with the BLM narrative about the case but they don’t want to say it. And there are other commentators who disagree with the BLM narrative and would like to see Chauvin pardoned, but they don’t want to agree with Ben or give him any credit, so they’re finding a reason to object. Also, again for the record, the call to pardon Chauvin is not “out of nowhere” (as Whitlock and others have claimed). I have personally been calling for a pardon from the moment Trump was elected. I’ve been defending Chauvin since before he was even on trial. I have called out the BLM false narrative on this case from the very beginning. And I’ll continue to do so, while advocating for a full federal pardon. That’s because there is no question that a pardon is morally the correct course of action in this case. I also think it’s probably the correct course of action tactically. Chauvin is an innocent man who was offered up for the slaughter in the name of racial justice. His continued incarceration is a national disgrace. So is his coerced confession in federal court. The first step, therefore, is to nullify that conviction with a pardon that will get Chauvin out of prison several years earlier, at a minimum. Anything that gets us closer to the day when Derek Chauvin is free — joining the ranks of Daniel Penny, Daniel Perry, Kyle Rittenhouse and many other victims of the BLM mob — is something every conservative should support. That’s the best course of action for Derek Chauvin. And it’s the best course of action to ensure that no innocent man has to endure what he did, ever again.

A lot of people have been asking why I’ve focused on the pardon of Derek Chauvin. After all, he’s convicted on both federal charges as well as state charges. There are a few reasons.  The first and most obvious reason is that there is a likelihood he serves less time if the federal charges are relieved because federal inmates can earn good-time credit that reduces sentences. That happens at a much lower rate at the federal level than it happens at the state level. With Chauvin’s concurrent sentences, he has roughly a 22.5-year sentence on state charges and 21 years on federal charges. But under Minnesota state sentencing structure, inmates usually serve about two-thirds of their sentence behind bars and one third under supervised release. So he would serve roughly 15 years of the 22.5-year state sentence in actual confinement under the state charges, thus less time in jail. But the second reason I have focused on pardoning Chauvin is that when someone believed to be not guilty is languishing in prison, that is the time when the President of the United States ought to either commute his sentence or pardon him.  Chauvin is the perfect example. It is immoral to allow a person whom you believe is innocent to languish in prison just because that person was made into the face of American racism. With no evidence of such a claim, Chauvin was made the face of American racism before his trial. Every media outlet in the country decided he was guilty.  The governor of Minnesota decided he was guilty. The mayor of Minneapolis decided he was guilty. The presidential candidates on the Left side of the aisle at that time, including Joe Biden, decided he was guilty. Thus, it was necessary for the jury to convict him in order for an entire narrative structure to be created. That was wrong. WATCH: The Ben Shapiro Show There are many people who object to all of this. One of those people is Steven A. Smith, a loud-mouth on ESPN. When I say loud-mouth, I mean the man does not have a volume that goes below eight on the spinal tap scale. I’m not sure that there is such a thing as a normal Stephen Smith voice, and I say this as a long-time viewer of ESPN. Every time Smith comes on the TV, you have to turn down your volume significantly. Smith is very angry that I have suggested that Chauvin ought to be pardoned. He said on his show, “Would you have taken that position if George Floyd was a Jewish person? A white Jewish person? If a black cop had his knee on a white Jewish person for over nine minutes, Ben Shapiro, would you have called for that individual to be pardoned?”  First, let’s start with this: I don’t know why he believes that it would be important, even in his stupid example, for it to be a “white Jewish person” as opposed to just a Jewish person. His claim is that I am a tribal identitarian; thus, I would be just fine with the wrongful prosecution of a cop if a Jew died under the knee of that cop — even if the cop was not responsible and the fact patterns were exactly the same — and George Floyd’s name had been Harold Bernstein (or something equivalent), and the cop had been named George Floyd, a black man. That is intensely stupid. It’s intensely stupid for a variety of reasons. Why don’t we begin with the first? This would not have been a national news story if that were the case. The reason this entire story was national news is because of the race of the people involved. In fact, when black people were routinely beating up Orthodox Jews in Brooklyn, it was covered up by the New York Times. It was not a national story.  The reality is that this was made a national story specifically because the media had a preexisting narrative of race in America, and this fulfilled their narrative, even if the facts didn’t match. Second, if, in fact, the facts had matched, and this was a Jewish person who had been arrested for counterfeiting (for passing counterfeit bills), had been high on fentanyl with a preexisting heart condition, and then had died under the knee of a cop, would I have said that the cop was innocent? Yes, because if the cop is innocent, the cop is innocent. That’s the way this works. The race or religion of the pseudo-victim is irrelevant to the question of whether this person was in fact murdered or not. Stephen A. Smith is one of the deepest racial identitarians in our society. He does it all the time. All the time. He does it when he talks about sports — all the time. If you’re talking about Nikola Jokić, the greatest basketball center of our generation, he’ll talk about how Jokić should not be included in conversations for MVP specifically because of his race. The reason Smith makes these kinds of statements is because he is projecting. He is projecting a racial conversation where none exists. I’m a Boston Celtics fan, so the following example with Smith from just a couple of years ago springs to mind. Danny Ainge was the chief of basketball operations for the Boston Celtics; then, Brad Stevens was elevated to fill his position. Stevens is a really good president of basketball operations. How do we know this? The Celtics won an NBA championship last year, and he’s been one of the most successful NBA executives in all the NBA over the course of his tenure. But Smith was firmly convinced the only reason Stevens was elevated was because of his race, saying, “It’s moments like this where I get on people’s nerves, particularly white America and the NBA community specifically, because I point out it’s beautiful to be a white guy. It’s just beautiful. You know, you’re a question mark as a coach in some people’s eyes, including in Boston. But somehow, someway, you’re moving upstairs.” It’s worth noting that “it’s beautiful to be a white guy in America” has not precluded Smith from a five-year $100 million contract for ESPN, a failing network with plummeting ratings. The reason that Smith is exercised over the George Floyd situation is specifically because of a racial narrative that is not predicated on facts. Now, he’s projecting that onto me as being some sort of racist for suggesting the racial narrative should not predominate. This is the whole reason that Black Lives Matter was such a mistake and failure, because it was racializing of a question that was not, in fact, racial. This is just more evidence that what I’m saying about Chauvin is true, that the reason that Chauvin is in prison right now is because he was the wrong race and George Floyd was the wrong race. Because of that, Chauvin is in prison. Here’s the dirty little secret: It never would have been a national news story if the races had been reversed, or if both people had been white or both people had been black. And that means the officer would have been assessed on the facts of the situation rather than the racial narrative that people like Stephen Smith were propagating.

There are movies and shows we watch as kids that, eventually, we grow out of enjoying. Then there are those that stick with us for our entire lives. While they were originally made for little ones, these stories have the ability to touch the lives of folks of all ages. For many of us, one of those movies is Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. This DreamWorks film was released in 2002, and it focused on a horse with the same name, Spirit. The film is animated, but the dialogue is not at all what you would expect. Rather than having the horses speak, they communicate through whinnies and body language. The only “speaking” we get out of Spirit takes place through his thoughts, as voiced by Matt Damon. This movie had such a huge impact, videos like the one below immediately make people of all ages think fondly of Spirit. @jadeeeos A new spirit is born #spiritofthecimarron #childhoodmemories ♬ Here I Am – Bryan Adams Adorable Horse Perfectly Embodies the Energetic Personality of Spirit From the Hit DreamWorks Animated Movie “A new Spirit is born,” Jade, the woman who captured this moment, writes in the caption of her video. According to the many comments left on Jade’s video, this tiny horse truly embodies Spirit’s rambunctious and sweet personality. Meanwhile, nearby, it seems that the foal’s parents are enjoying a wholesome moment for themselves. Though, it’s clear that their little one would like their attention. “I was more focused on the cute horses that look like they were hugging at first. I hope he’s named Spirit,” someone shares, with another person adding, “Hahaha I feel like he stopped and said ‘Mom did you see that?'” A third person adds what so many of us are thinking now, “Ok, I’ll go watch Spirit again.” You can find the source of this story’s featured image here! The post “A New Spirit Is Born,” Foal Galloping Around Field Is The Cutest Thing You’ll See Today appeared first on InspireMore.

Education today is undergoing rapid transformation. One of the most promising educational approaches is international classrooms where students and teachers from around the world work together without the usual barriers like if they sat in the same room. Todays transformation of education happens not without cryptocurrency. With the growing number of people engaging in crypto […]

'beyond my craving for Doritos'

Canada’s Liberal Party has chosen a new prime minister in former economist Mark Carney, who will take over from outgoing PM Justin Trudeau. Carney received over 85% of the Liberal Party vote on promises of resisting President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The 59-year-old will now become the face of the Liberal Party shortly before federal elections, which will happen no later than Oct. 20. In his acceptance speech, Carney criticized President Donald Trump for his tariffs, calling the United States “a country we can no longer trust” and attempting to discredit Conservative Party opponent Pierre Poilievre’s ability to counter American trade policies. “Donald Trump thinks—thinks—he can weaken us with his plan to divide and conquer,” said Carney. “Pierre Poilievre’s plan will leave us divided and ready to be conquered, because a person who worships at the altar of Donald Trump will kneel before him, not stand up to him.” Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre (Andrej Ivanov/Getty Images) Carney will take the helm at a time of some uncertainty. Trudeau announced his intentions to resign and called for national elections in January as his approval rating fell at the height of Trump’s tariff threats. At the time, Conservative Party leader Poilievre appeared poised to succeed Trudeau, as he led in the polls.  But it appears the tariff fight has ended up empowering the Liberal Party—the antithesis of the Trump movement—as it has pulled ahead of the Conservative Party in recent polls. Carney has presented himself as just the man to take on Trump, saying in his Sunday night speech that Canada “is rightly retaliating with our own tariffs that will have maximum impact in the United States and minimum impact here in Canada. My government will keep our tariffs on until the Americans show us respect.” Despite his chest-beating Canada-first rhetoric, Carney has had a very international career. Educated at Harvard and Oxford, Carney worked at Goldman Sachs’ offices in the United Kingdom, Canada, the United States, and Japan.  Carney also holds citizenship in three countries: Canada, the United Kingdom, and Ireland. He has told the press he has begun the legal process of renouncing his non-Canadian citizenships. He served as governor of the Bank of Canada from 2008 to 2013, and also as governor of the Bank of England from 2013 to 2020—positions comparable to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve in the U.S.  Carney also has a long history of opposing American economic hegemony.  In 2019, as governor of the Bank of England, he suggested moving away from the U.S. dollar as the global currency standard. That same year, toward the end of his tenure at the Bank of England, he became U.N. special envoy for climate action and finance, advocating for government regulations and business practices that discourage fossil fuel use. Canadian Liberal leader Mark Carney has a history of anti-fossil fuel positions and opposition to U.S. monetary hegemony. (Andrej Ivanov/AFP via Getty Images) In an interview posted to the United Nations’ website, Carney applauded regulations against fossil fuel consumption and spoke of a global trend of countries pushing for net-zero emissions. “Companies, and those who invest in them and lend to them, and who are part of the solution, will be rewarded. Those who are lagging behind and are still part of the problem will be punished,” said Carney in a summary of global climate policies. Carney’s white-collar environmentalism, coupled with his pugnacious attitude toward the White House, may complicate Trump’s requests that the construction of Canada’s Keystone XL Pipeline be resumed as soon as possible. Additionally, Carney’s occasionally anti-American economic attitudes could indicate unwillingness to go along with the Trump’s Cabinet members proposals of Canadian tariffs against China in solidarity with the U.S. The post Canadian Liberals Pick Mark Carney as New PM appeared first on The Daily Signal.

This is the seventh in an eight-article series on “Restoring Trust in Public Health: Lessons from COVID-19.” Four years of the Biden-Harris administration has left Americans rightly skeptical of public health institutions. This series highlights key findings from several congressional oversight reports, including the final report of the U.S. House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, and offers lessons for Congress and the new administration on ways to restore trust in public health. The COVID-19 lockdowns, social distancing rules, and vaccine mandates had devastating effects for all Americans, and some will never recover from the long-term social, physical, and economic consequences they wrought. Many in the scientific community considered these measures excessive, unnecessary, and not based on any kind of scientific data. Yet the public health establishment worked overtime to crush any whiff of dissent. At the inception of the pandemic, public health authorities concerned about the rapidly rising rates of infection favored taking strong action to “flatten the curve” and thus allowing the health system to cope with the crisis. While the federal government had no authority to close local businesses, the states did. So, on March 16, 2020, President Donald Trump issued guidance to citizens and the states to “slow the spread” of the novel coronavirus for a period of 15 days. In April, on the advice of his public health advisers, Trump extended this temporary guidance. Few thought then, however, that these temporary federal guidelines would result in comprehensive state-imposed “lockdowns” lasting for years. Lest we forget, during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, there were also prominent policy analysts and medical scientists who opposed comprehensive lockdowns, stressing the profoundly different impact the coronavirus had on vulnerable older and sicker people as opposed to the less vulnerable younger and healthier people. The most notable were the authors of The Great Barrington Declaration. In October 2020, they argued for an alternative strategy, insisting that the power and growth of natural immunity was “a real thing” while proposing a strong program of “focused protection” for the elderly and those with underlying health conditions. In June 2020, the National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, sponsored by The Heritage Foundation, likewise focused its policy recommendations on protecting both “lives and livelihoods,” making a plea for a “balanced” policy response to COVID-19.   Regret In retrospect, there is an emerging consensus among public health analysts, liberal and conservative alike, that the lockdowns of millions of people not only damaged their social and economic life, but also their physical and mental health. In his 2022 book, “The Contagion Next Time,” Dr. Sandro Galea, the dean of the Boston University School of Public Health, commenting on his own research, says, “We found that lockdowns and socially restrictive policies can undermine health in both the short and long terms, creating particular challenges for vulnerable populations. Our work suggested that the harmful consequences of such policies should be considered in decision making about pandemic response.”    In 2023, California Gov. Gavin Newsom conceded in an NBC interview that in hindsight, criticisms of his own state’s restrictions were legitimate and he said, “ I think we would’ve done everything differently.” In its comprehensive report on the federal response to the pandemic, the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic details the impact of these policies on businesses, middle- and low-income workers, and the mental and physical health of the American population. Massive Economic Disruption As the select subcommittee reports, by August of 2020, as the lockdowns were implemented across the country, 163,735 American businesses were closed, and about 60% of them—almost 100,000—closed forever. The biggest impact, of course, was on the restaurant industry, where 17% of America’s restaurants closed either permanently or “long-term.”   Naturally, business revenue sharply declined and underemployment and unemployment soared as firms let workers go or reduced their hours. Early on, the national unemployment rate hit 14.7%, the largest jump in joblessness since the Great Depression of the 1930s. Small businesses and their employees and independent entrepreneurs suffered the most from the lockdowns, especially small businesses in rural and low-income and minority communities. While the upper-income, remote-working, “laptop” class weathered the crisis fairly well, millions of ordinary working-class folks did not. Larger corporations, as well as small firms and retail businesses, were also gravely affected by the pandemic, including experiencing breaks in supply chains for crucial goods, such as semiconductors and medical supplies. As the select subcommittee observed, “The COVID-19 pandemic exposed critical vulnerabilities in global supply chains, disrupting industries and economies around the world. In the U.S., the pandemic underscored the risks of highly concentrated and poorly diversified supply chains, leading to prolonged economic instability, shortages of essential goods, and widespread business closures.” In its report, the subcommittee further notes that 75% of American companies experienced “supply chain disruptions” and approximately 72% of pharmaceutical ingredients used in American drug manufacturing were imported from foreign countries, “primarily from China and India.” Declines in Mental and Physical Health In its report, the select subcommittee also found that “enduring COVID-19 lockdowns had drastic consequences on the mental health of many Americans, including elevated substance abuse, overdoses, and suicide.” Congressional investigators noted that just a sample of subsequent scientific investigations have confirmed the extent of the damage. By August 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in its Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report found that a stunning 40% of Americans claimed to have problems with mental health and substance abuse. In March 2024, researchers writing in Nature, a prominent professional journal, found that there was a 22% increase in mental health disorders over the period 2019-2020. By 2022, the CDC also reported a sharp and troubling upward trend in drug overdose deaths among American adolescents over the period 2019-2021. Citing findings in the professional literature, the select subcommittee confirmed that the lockdowns also damaged Americans’ physical health, resulting in “excess deaths” from a wide range of causes beyond viral infection, including deaths from alcoholism and hypertension to overdoses and even homicide. For example, in December 2022, researchers writing in the journal Inquiry found that from April 2020 to December 2021, the United States had 97,000 “excess” deaths from causes beyond COVID-19 infection. Moreover, Americans’ physical health was also compromised by delays and denials of care in hospitals and other health care facilities. Included among the delays were those for screenings and tests for cardiovascular disease and cancer and for the detection and prevention of myriad other diseases. The Six-Foot Rule On March 22, 2020, the CDC issued guidance designating six feet as the right distance for individuals to keep apart to reduce viral spread. The rule was imposed, along with lockdowns, virtually everywhere in the country. Once again, the rule was not based on any scientific standard. It was literally based on nothing. On Jan. 9, 2023, testifying under oath before the select subcommittee, Dr. Anthony Fauci told the subcommittee of the rule: “It sort of just appeared.” Two days later, Dr. Francis Collins, director of the National Institutes of Health also told Congress that he had not seen “any evidence” supporting the widely imposed six-foot rule.        Vaccine Passports Noting that the COVID-19 vaccines were generally effective in preventing severe illness and death, on Aug. 5, 2021, CDC Director Rochelle Walensky added a crucial qualification: “But what they can’t do anymore is prevent transmission” of the virus. Regardless of the emerging scientific evidence, officials in New York City, San Francisco, and many other localities imposed “vaccine passports,” requiring people to carry identification on them proving that they had been vaccinated against COVID-19 before they could enter certain facilities, both public and private. Depending on the locality and the state, this included restaurants, gyms, stores, movie theaters, and much more—thus further restricting citizens’ mobility and compounding the negative effects of their social and economic isolation. Looking Ahead Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his new teams at CDC and NIH can help heal public divisions and restore public trust in our public health agencies. That will require not only full transparency in agency operations and an openness to scientific debate, but also a firm commitment to relying on scientific data—and updates in that data—as the basis of public policy. Team Kennedy has a formidable task. The public has been poorly served by federal officials, particularly at the NIH, who attempted to discourage scientific debate on the appropriate response to the pandemic. As noted, prominent scientists from Oxford, Stanford, and Harvard universities issued The Great Barrington Declaration, arguing that “focused protection” of the vulnerable would be the most productive strategy while allowing the least vulnerable to participate in a normal social and economic life. If the least vulnerable became infected, generally, they would develop a natural immunity from the infection. This is a conventional and traditionally noncontroversial response supported by emerging data and the professional literature. In the case of COVID-19, however, Collins told Fauci and his colleagues that such a “focused attention” public health approach needed a “quick and devastating” takedown and that the declaration’s authors were “fringe” epidemiologists; a malicious charge that was absurd on its face. As the select subcommittee reported, “This kind of rhetoric and behavior created a scientific environment that fostered hostility and outright contempt for differing opinions. Scientists and doctors were demonized by colleagues and peers within their own community.” And the American people and the American economy suffered for it while those same demonized scientists and doctors would be proven right just a short time later. Concerning the discussion about natural immunity that federal  public health officials worked to ignore or even suppress, on Jan. 9, 2024, in sworn testimony before the select subcommittee, Fauci declared: “It’s a real thing.”   Testimony under oath, under the shadow of a perjury charge, can be a beautiful thing. The post Restoring Trust in Public Health: Next Pandemic, Protect Both Lives and Livelihoods appeared first on The Daily Signal.

DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—A Wisconsin school district on Friday agreed to pay out $20,000 to a teacher who was terminated for refusing to use preferred names and pronouns for transgender students. Jordan Cernek, an English teacher, sued the Argyle School District in July 2024 after his contract was not renewed, alleging the district violated his right to free exercise of his religion and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. “Mr. Cernek has a sincerely held religious belief that God makes no mistakes when it comes to sex and gender and that calling a transgender student by a name or pronouns at odds with their biological sex would cause Mr. Cernek to affirm that God made a mistake in creating a transgender person as a male or a female,” the lawsuit filed by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty stated. “In Mr. Cernek’s religious view, affirming a transgender person’s identity through the use of preferred names and pronouns would be speaking a falsehood and violate his religious beliefs.” While the district initially offered Cernek a religious accommodation exempting from the requirement to use students’ preferred name and pronouns, administrators later required him to adhere to the name policy, according to court records. Cernek voiced his objections during a meeting in August 2022 when the school district announced its policy. Two transgender-identifying students in Cernek’s classes requested that staff refer to them using preferred names at the beginning of the 2022-2023 school year, per court records. The case was dismissed in February after parties reached the settlement, according to court records. Several teachers fired for declining to adhere to transgender name policies have secured similar settlements in the past months. In September, a Virginia school board settled a lawsuit brought by a high school teacher fired for declining to refer to one of his students using preferred pronouns for $575,000. An Ohio school district reached a $450,000 settlement with a middle school teacher fired for the same reason in December after a federal court found the pronoun requirement equated to “compelled speech.” Originally published by The Daily Caller. The post Teacher Fired for Not Using Student’s Trans Pronouns Wins Settlement appeared first on The Daily Signal.