Month: July 2024

The housing market is shifting from a shortage of homes for sale to one with increasing inventory levels. Supply is rising for both new and existing homes. This added supply and high mortgage rates will likely put pressure on sky-high home prices. 

Drilling down into the inventory story, Nick Gerli, CEO and Founder of real estate analytics firm Reventure Consulting, pointed out on X that all eyes should be on the “Florida housing downturn” because it “keeps getting more intense by the day.” 

Gerli noted housing inventory across the Orlando metro area has spiked to levels not seen since 2007. 

“With active listings skyrocketing 82% over the last year. To 10,759 homes on the market. That’s the highest level of supply since at least 2017. Suggesting: home prices will be going down in Orlando. And potentially by a lot,” he said. 

Housing inventory in Orlando is now spiking like it’s 2007.

With active listings skyrocketing 82% over the last year. To 10,759 homes on the market.

That’s the highest level of supply since at least 2017.

Suggesting: home prices will be going down in Orlando. And potentially… pic.twitter.com/OzY3BIQjD7

— Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) July 22, 2024

The analysts warned: 

“This Florida housing downturn keeps getting more intense by the day. With a combination of investors, builders, and inflation-burdened homeowners off-loading houses at a historically fast clip. This increase in listings is now corresponding with a slowdown in demand, which is pushing inventory levels through the roof.”

1) This Florida housing downturn keeps getting more intense by the day. With a combination of investors, builders, and inflation-burdened homeowners off-loading houses at a historically fast clip.

This increase in listings is now corresponding with a slowdown in demand, which is…

— Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) July 22, 2024

With inventory rising, he said home values in Orlando are 28% overvalued compared to their long-term averages using data from Reventure. 

“That’s a similar level of overvaluation to the previous peak in mid-2000s,” he said, adding, “The more that inventory climbs, the greater the likelihood that prices fall.”

2) The more that inventory climbs, the greater the likelihood that prices fall.

Especially given the heavily overvalued home prices across Florida today.

For instance – home values in Orlando are currently 28% overvalued compared to their long-term norms acc to data on… pic.twitter.com/xmIEcE1oC7

— Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) July 22, 2024

He lists the ten most overvalued housing markets across the Sunshine State.

Last month, Gerli said Austin, Texas’ housing inventory has “now spiked to the highest level on record. He said, “Values down nearly 20% already and could have another 15% decline to go.”

The downturn in Austin, TXs housing market is remarkable.

Inventory has now spiked to the highest level on record.

More than 25% higher than the previous, pre-pandemic high.

And the listings just keep coming.

Values down nearly 20% already and could have another 15% decline… pic.twitter.com/Jb8UOSZG0A

— Nick Gerli (@nickgerli1) June 21, 2024

Low inventory has plagued the overall US housing market in recent years, but the US existing home sales inventory shows a nearing reversal. This also comes as the number of news stories featuring ‘housing inventory’ in corporate media has spiked to record highs. 

High mortgage rates and rising supply are needed in the second half to reverse sky-high housing prices. However, if the Federal Reserve’s cutting cycle begins in September or the end of the year, a lower rate environment could drive demand, pushing prices higher. A continuation of higher rates for longer periods, with rising inventory, would likely begin to pressure home prices.

Authored by Ian Miller via The Brownstone Institute,

By late 2020, the media and public health establishment had two obsessions.

• One of their obsessions involved forcing the public to wear masks, even though the mountains of data and several studies had already confirmed that they don’t stop the transmission of respiratory viruses.

• The second obsession was forcing everyone to take Covid vaccines, regardless of their actual efficacy, risk of side effects, age or underlying health, or the vaccines’ rapidly waning efficacy.

Neither of those obsessions has abated, though even the most extreme, hardened Covid extremists have acknowledged that the vaccines were flawed, mandates were a mistake, and side effects should be acknowledged.

The media, unwilling to give up on the increased power, influence, and moral judgment it gained during the pandemic, has refused to accept that it effectively ended years ago. 

So it’s no surprise that media outlets have noticed that, as we’ve seen every single summer since 2020, cases have increased, predominantly across the Western and Southern United States. Thankfully though, Los Angeles media, of course it had to be Los Angeles, has determined the culprit. 

The Media Refuses to Accept Covid Reality

Turns out it’s not seasonality causing the increase, it’s outdated Covid vaccines and a lack of public masking, of course!

NBC Los Angeles “reported” that Covid cases in California and Los Angeles have “doubled” in the last month. This sounds horrifying and scary, doesn’t it? Yet it again, as is so often the case with Covid coverage, is misleading.

Let’s take a look at the current daily average of new cases in Los Angeles County:

Cases are so low they’re functionally indistinguishable from zero.

You can see why the media is scared, given how dramatic this surge appears to be compared to those in the previous four years. And thanks to NBC’s crack reporting and expert analysis, we know why this terrifying increase is happening. Spoiler alert: it’s all your fault that you haven’t controlled an uncontrollable respiratory virus with individual behavior that has no impact whatsoever on the spread of the coronavirus.

“People aren’t necessarily wearing masks; they’re not required to in certain places,” nurse practitioner Alice Benjamin, referenced as an expert by NBA LA said.

“We’re traveling, we’re getting out for the summer. We also do have some reduced immunity. The vaccines will wane over time.”

Nowhere in the story is it mentioned that the massive jump in Covid cases in late 2021 and early 2022 happened immediately after LA County Public Health issued a press release celebrating the county for achieving 95+ percent masking rates at indoor businesses. No one seems willing or able to ask this nurse practitioner why she believes wearing masks would reduce this “surge,” if it failed so spectacularly in previous surges.

Endless Misinformation from ‘Experts’

She wasn’t done with the misinformation though. Benjamin warned that not enough Angelenos are getting the “updated” vaccine, which explains the summer increase.

“If you got it in October and later, that’s generally the updated vaccine,” Benjamin said.

“If you got it prior to October, double check because if you did get the bivalent which has not been phased out, we recommend you do get an updated vaccine.”

And according to her, everyone should get it. Because the CDC said so.

“Per CDC recommendations, anyone 6 months or older should have at least one of the updated Covid vaccines,” Benjamin said.

Though, of course, no one on the crack NBC Los Angeles team thought to ask Benjamin why the “updated” October vaccine would help against the now common FLiRT variant when it emerged six months after the “updated” vaccine was released. Especially when the “study” process for booster doses is effectively nonexistent anyway. Pfizer and Moderna churn out a “targeted” dose that is supposed to protect against a variant that’s no longer circulating, never has to show any real-world benefit, and the regulatory agencies sign off on it, while the CDC recommends everyone get it.

Rinse, repeat.

Nor did anyone ask her what possible rationale there could be for forcing six-month-old babies to get vaccinated with a booster that has no studied efficacy against the currently circulating variant.

Her comments and the media reaction exemplify the problems with Covid discourse that started in 2020 and will apparently continue forever. A complete and purposeful ignorance of the facts, the data, and the evidence base. A willingness to advocate for the same sort of restrictions and interventions that have already failed. Ignorance of the booster process and endless appeals to public health authorities. Even though those authorities have made countless mistakes and refused to update their findings after being proven wrong.

The obvious question is: How does this type of absurdist discourse ever end? The answer, as we continue to see, is it doesn’t.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Get woke, go…well, let’s just say Disney World is slashing prices.

The amusement park run by Disney, which has been at the center of innumerable woke controversies including cranking out one DEI flop of a movie after another, is now being forced to cut prices due to “customer dissatisfaction”, according to Local 12. 

Disney has quietly reduced admission and hotel prices in recent months. Starting in May, the company began offering discounted three-day ticket packages for $89 per day, including access to Disney’s Hollywood Studios, Animal Kingdom, and EPCOT, Local 12 wrote, citing Quartz.

Magic Kingdom admission isn’t included in the package and must be bought separately. The discount lasts until September 24, reports Quartz. The $89 tickets are a significant drop from the previous high of $254 for a single-day Park Hopper pass.

Lindsey Robertson told Bloomberg: “I think Disney has lost our family for good. We’ve had back-to-back negative experiences with staff, the stand-by lines are out of control, and the cost has become insurmountable.”

“Many cast members have become condescending and outright rude. During my last visit, cast members were also on their cellphones and disengaged from guests, and one was dripping with attitude when we had a misunderstanding,” said Katy Dean, a mother of six. 

Disney is also reducing costs at its All-Star resorts, with rooms starting at $100, depending on booking times, offering up to a 27% discount, according to Bloomberg.

Despite these efforts, increased dining costs have lowered guest satisfaction. To address this, Disney reintroduced dining plans, allowing guests to buy meal credits for about $30 per child and $95 per adult, potentially saving families 20% to 30% on food expenses.

However, not everyone is convinced the magic has returned post-COVID-19, with some guests planning to spend their vacation dollars elsewhere.

Recall, last month we published “How Bob Iger, DEI and Wokism Broke Disney’s Trust With America”.

That piece concluded: “The Walt Disney Company is broken, and until it gets new leadership at the top and refocuses on its core mission, to entertain, it is headed in only one direction: down. And that’s a shame for baby boomers like me who grew up with Walt Disney when our parents could trust the company to deliver wholesome entertainment not tainted by an agenda or ideology.”

Authored by Alex Berenson via ‘Unreported Truths’ substack,

Once again, the elite media is trying to rewrite history in real time.

Not even 24 hours after a Democratic and public rebellion forced President Joe Biden to give up his desperate quest for a second term, the spinning and gaslighting began.

Biden is an “American hero,” one New York Times opinion piece claimed yesterday. What he did is “utterly extraordinary,” another said. The New Yorker referred to his “act of selflessness.”

(You misspelled zero. And gaslight.)

Funny, no one called Richard Nixon selfless when he resigned rather than face impeachment in 1974. Or Lyndon B. Johnson a hero for quitting his reelection bid in 1968 after a national rebellion over Vietnam.

The media’s effort to whitewash the collapse of Biden’s campaign and pretend his allies and its own pressure did not make him quit is stunningly brazen. It must be confronted immediately.

Its consequences go far past how history will view Biden.

Most importantly, pretending Biden quit the race on his own gives a pass to Vice President Kamala Harris, his replacement as the Democratic nominee. It lets Harris avoid explaining how much she knew about efforts to hide Biden’s mental decline from the public, as well as her role – if any – in forcing him out.

Consider the bizarre timeline of the last two months.

On May 15, Biden’s campaign agreed to a debate with Donald Trump on CNN on June 27. The debate was set for almost 20 weeks before Election Day, months before presidential debates normally occur. In fact, it was scheduled early enough to happen before the conventions at which Trump and Biden would be officially nominated.

Almost no one had publicly suggested such an early debate, and Biden’s camp took credit for the timing. As the Washington Post reported:

“President Biden made his terms clear for two one-on-one debates, and Donald Trump accepted those terms,” campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement.

What made the early debate even more unusual is that Biden faced no public pressure from Democrats to hold it before the convention. As President, he towered over any and all potential opponents in his party. He had the Democratic nomination locked up.

Republicans had suggested for years that Biden’s mental fitness might be fading, pointing to his speaking lapses, vacant stares, near-falls, and unwillingness to face the media or public at unscripted events. In February, a federal prosecutor who had interviewed Biden at length in fall 2023 released a report calling him an “elderly man with a poor memory.”

But Democrats and the media brushed off these objections and blasted Biden’s skeptics as conspiracy theorists and ageists. He had faced no serious primary challengers and won more than 14 million primary votes.

In May, he was neck-and-neck with Trump, who was being tried in a Manhattan court for misclassifying business records. On some days, Trump seemed to have a slight edge; on others the race effectively seemed even.

So why did Biden – or the people speaking for him – push a debate before the convention, when a public meltdown represented the only threat to a nomination Biden had already secured?

No one has ever properly answered that question.

Then June 27 arrived…

And Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. showed the world that – once again – the elite media had failed completely, or hidden the truth to serve the Democratic Party, or both.

Biden appeared worse than merely lost onstage. He was vacant, unable to finish his sentences or express coherent thoughts.

And his party – which until that moment had backed him unequivocally – turned on him ferociously.

Day by day, the feeding frenzy worsened.

Biden sat for interviews and even spoke at an hour-long press conference. But Democratic confidence in him appeared shattered, and he could not regain it. Large Democratic donors stopped giving money, and lawmakers said he should not run.

On Sunday, July 21 – 24 days after the debate – Biden bowed to the inevitable and announced on X he would not run for a second term.

Meanwhile, stories that top Democrats had seen Biden’s decline long before the debate – or even this year – belatedly emerged. On Sunday night, after Biden withdrew, the Wall Street Journal published an article that opened with a stunning anecdote about a meeting he had had with House Democrats:

In 30 minutes of remarks on Capitol Hill, Biden had spoken disjointedly and failed to make a concrete ask of lawmakers, according to Democrats in the room. After he left, a visibly frustrated Pelosi told the group she would articulate what Biden had been trying to say…

That was October 2021. That month was the last time Biden met with the House Democratic caucus on the Hill regarding legislation. 

That was October 2021.

Biden – who spent more than 35 years as a senator – stopped meeting with his allies on Capitol Hill less than a year into his term.

He stopped having full Cabinet meetings in 2023.

Other stories emerged too, of Biden unable to recognize lawmakers he had known for years, of conferences scripted to the minute and the question, of a man who seemed to slide in and out of consciousness during meetings.

Whether Joe Biden should serve out his Presidency is a pointless question.

Fewer than six months remain until Inauguration Day. The Democrats are not going to try to remove him, and they would need to participate actively in any effort to do so. Republicans will focus their energies on electing Trump and J.D. Vance.

But whether Joe Biden should have run for a second term – and whether the people around him, including Kamala Harris, should have allowed him to do so – is a question with a very definite answer.

The answer is no.

Had Americans seen the full extent of his decline, they would have resoundingly rejected his bid.

Of course Biden and the people closest to him were well aware of this fact, which is why they went to such great lengths to hide it.

This is more than a tragedy; it is a Presidential scandal at least as serious as Watergate, an unforgivable stain on Joe Biden’s record.

Just as the first sentence of Nixon’s 1994 obituary in The New York Times explained he “was the only President in more than two centuries of American history to resign from office,” so too should the first sentence of Biden’s obituaries-to-come point out he was the only President to be forced to quit a reelection bid because of concerns he had hidden his cognitive decline.

But Biden is a Democrat, and the media was complicit, and questions about the last few months will be very awkward for Harris, so the gaslighting has already begun.

Don’t fall for it.

Hold on the truth.

Joe Biden was the opposite of a hero.

Ugly Micro (Mag7 earnings fail to impress…enough) and Ugly Macro (home sales and manufacturing meltdown) left an Ugly day for stocks and bonds (the long-end) while the dollar, crypto, and commodities were all relatively unch by the close.

As UBS notes, similar to last Wednesday, today seems very much an Equity event which suggests that technicals and positioning are the major drivers.

All the major US equity indices were lower today but mega-cap tech was hit hardest, smashing Nasdaq down over 3.5% for its worst day since Dec 2022. Ugly close did not help at all. The Dow was the least ugly horse in the abattoir today…

The S&P 500 ‘no-2%-drop’ streak is over…

The Mag7 basket of stocks suffered its biggest daily loss since Oct 2022 (having lost almost $1.75 trillion in market cap from their highs 10 days ago)…

Source: Bloomberg

All 7 of the Mag7 were lower today (unusual in itself)…

Source: Bloomberg

The focus for selling pressure appeared on Google’s inline/reiterating capex is causing concern in some of the AI pockets of the market with VRT – 10%, AI Semis (GSCBSMHX) -420bps, Data Centers (GSTMTDAT) -330bps.

Source: Bloomberg

Goldman Sachs trading desk noted that volumes were explosive today (tracking +18% vs the trailing 20 days). Liquidity remains in focus with S&P top of book avg ~$13mm today (this has almost HALVED in the past week).

• LOs driving most of our supply tracking -8% better for sale (Tech, Fins, and Industrials with the largest sell-skews). LOs buying Hcare + Discretionary.

• HFs also better for sale led by supply in Tech, Industrials, & Fins. Short ratios elevated across Utes and Cons. Discretionary. Seeing HF buying in Hcare.

But the pain didn’t end in stocks as the long-end of the Treasury curve was clubbed like a baby seal…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve is inflecting rapidly with 2s30s at its most disinverted since July 2022 (and 5s30s at its steepest since May 2023)…

Source: Bloomberg

Rate-cut expectations pushed higher again today with 4 full cuts priced back inf or 2025 (and a 50-50 chance of 2 or 3 cuts in 2024)…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar ended the day basically unchanged, rallying during the US session, recovering European losses…

Source: Bloomberg

Major Yen carry unwind continues…

Source: Bloomberg

Gold was a mirror of the dollar with overnight strength sold during the US session to basically end unchanged…

Source: Bloomberg

Another strong day for ETH ETF volumes…

Source: Bloomberg

…but ETH underperformed BTC, reversing yesterday’s outperformance…

Source: Bloomberg

Oil prices limped higher off their 200DMA but remain near six-week lows…

Source: Bloomberg

It’s different this time…

Source: Bloomberg

Right?

Authored by Darlene McCormick Sanchez via The Epoch Times,

At least four Texas nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) operating on the U.S. southern border have come under scrutiny from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton for their role in aiding illegal immigrants in recent months.

The latest action involves petitions filed by the attorney general’s office to depose officials at Catholic Charities of the Rio Grande Valley (CCRGV) and Team Brownsville Inc.

The attorney general’s office could shut down the NGOs if it can prove they broke the law.

Earlier this month, a judge in El Paso, Texas, dismissed Mr. Paxton’s lawsuit seeking to close Annunciation House, a Catholic NGO, over allegations that it was facilitating illegal immigration.

Mr. Paxton’s office contends that it is unlawful to “encourage or induce” a person to enter or remain in the United States illegally and that concealing, harboring, or shielding a person from detection is also a violation of federal law.

In December 2022, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott called for an investigation into whether NGOs may have planned and assisted illegal border crossings on both sides of the Texas–Mexico border.

NGOs traditionally have offered humanitarian aid to illegal aliens, but Mr. Abbott and other Republicans have questioned whether some organizations have crossed the line into “unlawfully orchestrating” border crossings.

Also in 2022, Rep. Lance Gooden (R-Texas) introduced the Stop Federal Funding for Human Trafficking and Smuggling Act “to defund U.S. non-profit organizations that are complicit in human smuggling and exacerbate the border crisis,” which was noted in the state’s court documents surrounding its probe of NGOs.

In a letter to Mr. Paxton, the governor highlighted the need for Texas to respond to the border crisis, for which he blamed the Biden administration.

Since 2021, some 10 million immigrants from around the world have entered the United States illegally. The Biden administration repealed Trump-era policies that curtailed illegal immigration, such as “Remain in Mexico,” which required asylum-seekers to stay in Mexico during immigration proceedings.

Many Democrats have said they believe immigration is positive for the United States economy and that it’s a human right.

“We need immigrants in this country,” Rep. Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) said in January during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing on immigration.

He said vegetables “would rot in the ground if they weren’t being picked by immigrants, illegal immigrants.”

“The fact is the birth rate in this country is way below replacement level,” Mr. Nadler said.

On July 17, attorneys for Catholic Charities in South Texas asked a court to block the state’s deposition request, calling it a “fishing expedition into a pond where no one has ever seen a fish.”

David Garza, a Brownsville attorney representing CCRGV, said the state failed to prove a deposition was necessary, according to court documents obtained by The Epoch Times.

A woman sits with her son at the Catholic Charities Humanitarian Respite Center after crossing the U.S.–Mexico border in McAllen, Texas, on June 21, 2018. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

“The Attorney General’s investigation of CCRGV is based solely on CCRGV’s religiously motivated provision of charitable services to asylum seekers, which do not violate any law,” he wrote.

The state’s petition lacks any evidence that would justify a deposition, according to Mr. Garza.

CCRGV is one of the more prominent NGOs operating on the Texas border. During surges in unlawful crossings, it provides shelter and food for up to 2,000 people a day.

In May, Sister Norma Pimentel, executive director of CCRGV, gave a sworn statement in hopes of avoiding a formal deposition.

The NGO’s Humanitarian Respite Center in McAllen is for illegal immigrants released by Border Patrol or Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents, she stated.

CCRGV contacts the sponsors of the illegal immigrants to arrange travel to their final destination, she said.

“While they wait for their bus or flight tickets to be purchased by their sponsor, asylum seekers are provided with warm meals, water, warm shower, and medical care if needed,” she wrote.

Security and staff are paid through grants from the federal government’s Emergency Food and Shelter Program, which is administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, according to the statement.

Migrants walk along the highway through Arriaga in Chiapas state, southern Mexico, on Jan. 8, 2024. (Edgar H. Clemente/AP Photo)

CCRGV attorneys said a deposition was not needed because the group already had turned over more than 100 pages of documents to state investigators.

State District Judge J.R. Flores said he would likely rule on the state’s deposition request this week.

On July 8, the attorney general’s office filed another request to depose a representative of Team Brownsville in Travis County, according to court records. The attorney general’s office said the NGO’s border operation is “assisting immigrants seeking to enter the United States” and questioned the use of grant money in Mexico.

Team Brownsville performs work in Mexico and has been a part of U.S. and Mexican NGO efforts to provide humanitarian support for migrants, according to court documents.

The move to depose NGO administrators comes on the heels of a July ruling that stopped the state from shuttering Annunciation House in El Paso, which serves immigrants.

Because Annunciation House allegedly provided shelter to immigrants regardless of their legal status, Mr. Paxton said it was facilitating illegal immigration and human smuggling and operating a stash house, which is a building that hides drugs, firearms, or illegal immigrants.

District Judge Francisco X. Dominguez called the state’s accusation that the shelter encourages immigrants to enter the country illegally “outrageous and intolerable,” according to court documents.

Judge Dominguez ruled that Mr. Paxton’s attempts to enforce a subpoena for records of border crossers aided by Annunciation House in the last few years violated the shelter’s constitutional rights.

“The record before this court makes clear that the Texas Attorney General’s use of the request to examine documents from Annunciation House was a pretext to justify its harassment of Annunciation House employees and the persons seeking refuge,” the judge said in his July 1 ruling.

Mr. Paxton announced that he would appeal the dismissal of his lawsuit, saying Annunciation House “directly facilitates illegal immigration.”

Mr. Paxton said that the NGO has admitted in court that “its employees enter Mexico to retrieve aliens, including aliens who have been denied entry by Border Patrol, to bring them into the United States.”

The attorney general contends that Annunciation House’s executive director admitted under oath that he would not let law enforcement into the facility, saying the presence of law enforcement would “frighten” the illegal aliens.

Neither Mr. Garza, representing CCRGV,  nor attorneys for the Texas Civil Rights Project, representing Team Brownsville, responded to a request for comment from The Epoch Times.

In another dangerous close call with Russia on a NATO border, Romania scrambled fighter jets overnight in response to Russian military actions very close to the Ukraine-Romanian border.

Romania’s Defense Ministry said Wednesday that it scrambled the fighter jets in response to a series of Russian drone attacks near the border. It confirmed two F-16 aircraft took off just after 2am local time from the 86th Borcea Air Base, which lies east of the capital of Bucharest.

The Romanian fighter jets were given a mission to monitor “the aerial situation.” The fighter jets returned to their base two hours later, and reportedly did not engage any targets or hostile cross-border threats.

There was a separate incident elsewhere in which Romanian authorities feared drone parts or debris may have fallen within Romania’s sovereign territory: 

Around the same time, Romania’s Tulcea County — which borders southern Ukraine’s Odesa region — was put on alert as Russian forces were said to have been carrying out drone attacks “against certain targets” near the NATO member’s border with Ukraine. Authorities did not specify where those attacks had taken place.

…“The Ministry of National Defence has ordered measures to conduct investigations in the field, in the vicinity of Plauru, to search for possible objects that have fallen on the national territory,” the defense ministry’s statement said, referring to a town located just 300 meters from the Ukrainian city of Izmail on the Danube River.

Romania has reported several times throughout the course of the war that drone debris fell on its territory. For example, last year in a very dangerous moment, Ukraine claimed that a Russian suicide drone attacked Romanian territory, something which Romania itself later rejected.

“This is yet another confirmation that Russia’s missile terror poses a huge threat not only to Ukraine’s security, but also to the security of neighboring countries, including NATO member states,” Ukraine’s foreign minister said at the time.

But this was widely seen as an attempt by Kiev to drag Romania directly into the conflict on its behalf: “The Ministry of National Defense categorically denies information from the public space regarding a so-called situation that occurred during the night of September 3 to 4 in which Russian drones allegedly fell on the national territory of Romania,” Bucharest had responded at the time.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

Below is my column in the New York Post on the ruling against Nina Jankowicz in her defamation case. It turns out that calling opposing views defamation is no better than calling them disinformation.

Here is the column:

For free speech advocates, there are few images more chilling than that of Nina Jankowicz singing her now-infamous tune as “the Mary Poppins of Disinformation.”

The woman who would become known as the “Disinformation Czar” sang a cheerful TikTok parody of “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious” to rally people to the cause of censorship.

When the press caught wind of President Biden’s plan to appoint Jankowicz as head of the Department of Homeland Security’s new “disinformation board,” Fox News said she “intended to censor Americans’ speech.”

The backlash was swift. Plans for the board were suspended, and Jankowicz resigned in 2022. She then sued Fox News for defamation.

On Monday, the case was dismissed. But Chief Judge Colm Connolly, a Delaware Democrat, didn’t just say it was legally unfounded — he demolished the claims of figures like Jankowicz that they are really not engaged in censorship.

I was one of Jankowicz’s earliest and most vocal critics and she is discussed in my new book, “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage,” as part of the current growing anti-free speech movement in the United States.

The Biden administration has coordinated with social media and targeted the revenue of conservative, libertarian and other sites.

These figures gleefully worked to silence others with the support of millions in public dollars for years. Yet, when exposed to criticism, they often portrayed themselves as victims with an obliging and supportive media.

They all took a page from Mary Poppins, who “taught us the most wonderful word!” In this case, the word is “disinformation” and it is certainly not connected to “censorship.” Rather you are supposed to call the barring, blacklisting and throttling of opposing views “content moderation.”

Jankowicz took that not-so-noble lie to a new level. After losing her job, she launched a campaign soliciting funds to sue those who called her a censor.

I was highly critical of these efforts as trying to use defamation as another tool to chill critics and shut down criticism.

It was a telling lawsuit, as Jankowicz simply labeled criticism of her as “defamation” — just as she labeled opposing views “disinformation.”

The objections to her work were called false and she insisted that she was really not seeking to censor people with her work.

Connolly made fast work of that effort. After holding that people are allowed to criticize Jankowicz as protected opinion, the court added:

“I agree that Jankowicz has not pleaded facts from which it could plausibly be inferred that the challenged statements regarding intended censorship by Jankowicz are not substantially true. On the contrary … censorship is commonly understood to encompass efforts to scrutinize and examine speech in order to suppress certain communications.

“The Disinformation Governance Board was formed precisely to examine citizens’ speech and, in coordination with the private sector, identify ‘misinformation,’ ‘disinformation,’ and ‘malinformation.’ … that objective is fairly characterized as a form of censorship.”

Of course, in America’s burgeoning censorship infrastructure, the entire decision is likely to be viewed as some form of disinformation, misinformation or malinformation.

After all, even true facts can be deemed censorable by the Biden-Harris administration.

I testified previously before Congress on how Jen Easterly, who heads the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, extended her agency’s mandate over critical infrastructure to include “our cognitive infrastructure.”

The resulting censorship efforts included combating “malinformation” — described as information “based on fact, but used out of context to mislead, harm, or manipulate.”

Thus, referring to Jankowicz as engaged in censorship on this defunct board may be true, but could still be treated as “malinformation.”

As I discuss in my book, these setbacks are unlikely to deter the corporate, academic and government figures aligned in our current anti-free speech movement. Millions of government and private dollars are flowing to universities and organizations engaged in targeting or blacklisting individuals and groups.

It is now a growing industry unto itself.

The new censors have gone corporate and mainstream. Silencing others is now a calling, a profession. They have literally made free speech into a commodity that can be packaged and controlled for profit.

Yet Confucius once said that “the beginning of wisdom is the ability to call things by their right names.” This opinion takes a large step toward such wisdom.

If figures like Jankowicz want to continue to make money silencing others, we can at least call them for what we believe they are: censors.

*  *  *

Jonathan Turley is a Fox News Media contributor and the Shapiro professor of public interest law at George Washington University. He is the author of “The Indispensable Right: Free Speech in an Age of Rage.” (Turley appears as a legal analyst on Fox, but nothing in this column is written on behalf of Fox Corp.)

Here is the decision:  Jankowicz v. Fox News Network

Democrat donation platform ActBlue has been accused of a engaging in a “MASSIVE money laundering operation,” by which contributions from large donors are being funneled through hundreds of thousands of small donations made in the name of people who have no clue they’ve donated.

I’m told Harris campaign is already using ActBlue money laundering scheme, $20 million from Johann Georg Wyss known as Hansjörg Wyss, born 19 September 1935, a Swiss billionaire, and was broken down into over 1,600,000 donations across 400,000 donors. Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! pic.twitter.com/pHaJr3lzwC

— Tony Seruga (@TonySeruga) July 22, 2024

The accusation comes as the platform says it had its best day of 2024, and possibly of all time, in the wake of President Biden abandoning his reelection campaign on Sunday.

ActBlue has been previously been fined for facilitating nearly $44,000 in illegal contributions.

Meanwhile, journalist James O’Keefe approached alleged donors with hundreds of thousands of contributions listed in their name, who knew nothing about them.

This is how Kamala Harris raised all that money in one day.

Silver Throat’s donors mostly had no idea they even donated.

Watch every second of this: pic.twitter.com/vidc0D9uu7

— Joey Mannarino (@JoeyMannarinoUS) July 24, 2024

In related news, the Trump campaign filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission (FEC) on Tuesday accusing President Biden and VP Kamala Harris of violating campaign finance laws with the transfer of $91 million in fundraising cash to her new campaign.

According to the complaint, Harris is “seeking to perpetrate a $91.5 million dollar heist of Joe Biden’s leftover campaign cash.”

Trump campaign general counsel David Warrington called the act a “brazen money grab that would constitute the single largest excessive contribution and biggest violation in the history of the Federal Election Campaign Act of 1971, as amended,” adding “Kamala Harris is in the process of committing the largest campaign finance violation in American history and she is using the Commission’s own forms to do it.”

“The Commission must not and cannot sit idly by while one candidate takes nearly one hundred million dollars from the authorized committee of another, in violation of the Act and the will of the donors who gave the money in the first place.”

The complaint names Biden, Harris, “Biden for President (aka Harris for President) and Keana Spencer, as treasurer, for flagrantly violating the Act by making and receiving an excessive contribution of nearly one hundred million dollars, and for filing fraudulent forms with the Commission purporting to repurpose one candidate’s principal campaign committee for the use of another candidate.”

The complaint argues that if “Kamala Harris were a candidate for something in 2024, federal law requires her to have filed a Statement of Candidacy and for her name to have appeared in the name of her authorized committee. But Kamala Harris’s name does not appear in the name of her purported authorized committee, ‘Biden for President,’ and, until Sunday, no Statement of Candidacy existed for her. Then Sunday, rather than filing her own Statement of Candidacy, she merely altered Joe Biden’s to replace his name with hers. There is no mechanism under the Act for one individual to end another’s federal candidacy by simply amending the other’s Form 2. Moreover, in that purported amended Form 2 Harris designated ‘Biden for President’ as her principal campaign committee and then renamed it. Altering a document submitted to a federal agency is a violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1519.3.” -Fox News

According to the Harris campaign, the complaint is “baseless.”

Authored by Madelynn McLaughlin via The College Fix,

Twenty United States colleges continue to require their students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the watchdog organization No College Mandates.

These mandates face increasingly heavy criticism from medical doctors and scholars who point to concerns regarding the vaccine’s safety, efficacy, and necessity.

Lucia Sinatra, co-founder of No College Mandates, an organization that tracks and advocates for the abolition of vaccine mandates, told The College Fix that such policies are “unreasonable and discriminatory.”

“One can only assume the purpose of this monthly testing is to discriminate against those who choose against COVID-19 vaccination and put undue pressure on them with the hopes they will tire of both the cost and routine of the monthly testing and succumb to the coercion to take COVID-19 vaccines,” Sinatra said in a recent email.

Both @waynestate and @SDSU finally dropped their ridiculous residential student C19 vaccine requirements and then there were 20. https://t.co/FXyuWjLfJI

— No College Mandates (@NCM4Ever) July 19, 2024

Many schools have been quietly retiring their vaccine mandates over the past year. The most recent of these include Wayne State University, which announced this month that it “strongly” recommends but no longer requires the vaccine.

San Diego State University also ended its mandate recently, according to No College Mandates. The number is down from approximately 100 colleges one year ago, according to an August 2023 report by The Fix.

However, 20 schools continue to require their students to receive the vaccine, including the Southern University System based in Louisiana and three California State University campuses, the watchdog reports.

SUS, a public university system, requires all students to receive the vaccine. Students may opt out through a letter of dissent or an exemption form but must submit a negative COVID test monthly, according to a vaccine protocol page on its website.

Professor Todd Zywicki, a law professor at George Mason University and senior scholar with the Brownstone Institute, told The Fix the motivation for colleges to continue vaccine mandates “is reflexive authoritarianism.”

“You see among the left their paranoia, trying to force students to conform to their arbitrary will without asking questions,” Zywicki told The Fix in a recent email.

He likened the futility of the mandates to “Japanese soldiers in the mountains of Okinawa thinking that World War II is still going on and charging out of the woods every so often.”

Four years after COVID-19 first began to spread, scientists are beginning to change their classification of the virus from pandemic to endemic, meaning it is here to stay, according medical scholars at Boston University.

A 2023 study in the Journal of Infection and Public Health found natural immunity is “equivalent” to vaccine-induced immunity in protecting against infection. According to the CDC’s COVID-19 Data Tracker, about 97 percent of the population has virus antibodies of some kind.

Dr. Paul Offit, an internationally recognized virology expert and physician at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, told The Fix that while there were legitimate concerns about COVID-19 at first, it no longer carries the same threat.

“Covid-19 has entered the pantheon of respiratory viruses. Covid-19 has become similar in effect to the flu, so why treat it differently?” Offit said in a recent email.

A January study by the Centers for Disease Control found far fewer COVID-19 related cases of severe illness and death than there were four years ago. The study compared COVID-19 to the flu and found them to be quite “similar” in terms of severity.

Dr. Clayton Baker, a physician and former medical professor at the University of Rochester, pointed out the negative effects of vaccinations. A number of recent studies have linked the COVID-19 vaccines to “serious adverse event” risks, including myocarditis, pericarditis, and Guillain-Barre Syndrome.

He told The Fix in an email, “There are over 1.6 million VAERS [Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System] reports of adverse effects and over 38 thousand reports of deaths related to the COVID-19 injections.”

Baker expressed his frustration with colleges continuing to require the vaccinations, saying: “It’s not only unnecessary, I believe it is criminal. I would not send my child to any school still mandating COVID-19 vaccines. Who else requires it in any aspect of society? No one.”