The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is warning physicians and caregivers about an increase in respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) cases across some parts of the Southeastern United States in recent weeks.
In a Sept. 5 health advisory, the health agency said the rise in cases suggests a “continued shift toward seasonal RSV trends observed prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.”
“Historically, such regional increases have predicted the beginning of RSV season nationally, with increased RSV activity spreading north and west over the following 2–3 months,” the CDC said.
CDC data shows increases in weekly RSV levels since July but the agency said that nationwide, RSV test positivity had remained below the season onset threshold of 3 percent for two consecutive weeks.
However, more recent data show test positivity has increased in Florida since late July, and the three-week moving average has been greater than 5 percent for the last month.
RSV hospitalizations also increased in Georgia in August, the CDC said.
From Aug. 5 through Aug. 19, the rate of RSV-related hospitalizations increased from 2 in 100,000 kids aged 4 and younger, to 7 per 100,000, with the majority of those hospitalizations being in babies less than a year old, the CDC said.
In response to the rise in cases, the health agency urged clinicians to “prepare to implement new RSV prevention options” ahead of the 2023–2024 RSV season, including administering shots of monoclonal antibody products to patients as well as a preventative antibody treatment called nirsevimab.
“For all infants ages <8 months, and infants and children ages 8–19 months who are at increased risk of severe RSV, clinicians should start to offer Nirsevimab when it becomes available (expected by early October),” the CDC said.
A panel of outside advisers to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) voted unanimously in July to approve nirsevimab for RSV in newborns and infants up to 24 months of age.
Sold under the brand name Beyfortus, the treatment is made by AstraZeneca and marketed by Sanofi. The companies said the drug showed efficacy in several clinical trials.
Regulators in countries including Canada and the United Kingdom have already approved Beyfortus.
A month later in August, regulators with the FDA also approved the first vaccine to be taken by pregnant women to prevent RSV infections in babies and toddlers.
Made by Pfizer, the Abrysvo single-dose injection was approved for use at 32 through 36 weeks of pregnancy. According to the pharmaceuticals giant, pregnant women who receive immunity from the shot will pass that immunity along to their unborn baby before birth, thus protecting them from lower respiratory tract disease (LRTD) and severe LRTD caused by RSV until at least the age of 6 months.
In trials, a dangerous hypertensive disorder known as pre-eclampsia occurred in 1.8 percent of pregnant individuals who received Abrysvo compared to 1.4 percent of pregnant individuals who received a placebo, according to the FDA.
Fan Appeal: Could Basketball Kick Football Off Its Throne?
As the NFL season kicks off, millions of Americans will be glued to their television screens (or whatever screens their watching on), happy to finally see the return of their favorite sport.
According to Statista Consumer Insights, American football – or just football depending on where you live – is still the clear number 1 sport in the United States. 77 percent of U.S. adults who generally follow sports said they follow football, putting it far ahead of basketball, followed by 59 percent of respondents, and baseball at 50 percent.
But, as Statista’s Felix Richter reports, while football has been America’s true favorite pastime for decades (sorry baseball), that doesn’t necessarily mean things will stay that way forever.
In fact, there are some signs that football’s reign could eventually come to an end, as the sport has struggled to resonate with younger fans in the same way that the NBA has.
As the following chart shows, football has already lost its lead to basketball among 18- to 24-year-olds, while retaining a dominant lead in older age groups.
With game times of around three hours that aren’t exactly action-packed, NFL games just aren’t ideally suited for younger consumers who are no longer used to pay attention to anything for that long.
The NBA has been quicker to embrace the change in sports consumption, catering to an audience that is more likely to watch highlight clips on social media than sitting through entire games on ESPN. The fact that basketball is also easier to pick up and play casually adds to the sport’s popularity among young fans, not to mention the appeal of superstars such as LeBron James, who are deeply ingrained in popular culture.
Whether this trend will continue long enough for basketball to kick football off its throne remains to be seen, but for now basketball is winning the battle for young audiences.
Former President Donald Trump told former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon in a recent conversation on her podcast that pharmaceutical companies have an “obligation to be honest” about vaccine side effects and should disclose all relevant data on vaccine harms.
President Trump and Ms. Dixon discussed a range of issues in an episode on the Tudor Dixon Podcast last week, ranging from corruption allegations against President Joe Biden to claims of weaponization of federal agencies against the former president.
“This is the most corrupt president in history,” President Trump alleged, referring to his successor in the Oval Office.
“And the most incompetent at the same time. It’s pretty incredible,” President Trump added, insisting that the various criminal charges that have been levied against him are attempts to interfere in the 2024 election.
At one point in the discussion, Ms. Dixon asked about President Biden’s announcement to fund a new COVID-19 vaccine.
“He wants everyone to get this vaccine,” Ms. Dixon said.
“And we’re hearing about a lot of complaints from vaccine injured. To say a lot is an understatement.”
Studies have also revealed a number of other issues affecting vaccinated children. For example, one recent study, published in the journal Frontiers in Immunology, shows that the mRNA-based vaccine for COVID-19 reduced children’s immune responses to other infections, making them more prone to getting sick after coming into contact with other pathogens.
Another study published by Circulation showed that some children who experienced heart inflammation after COVID-19 vaccination had scarring on their hearts months later.
‘We’re All In This Together’
Ms. Dixon then asked President Trump about vaccine data transparency, citing reports of various adverse events, including heart inflammation and blood clots.
“Numerous pharmaceutical companies have refused to release their data on vaccine side effects,” she said.
“But we’ve seen cases of myocarditis, blood clots, and heart attacks; they’re all increasing. The research has never been released.”
She then asked if President Trump would “demand that the vaccine companies, that the pharmaceutical companies release their vaccine data to the public so that we can see what they’re actually seeing about the side effects of this vaccine?”
President Trump replied by saying that pharmaceutical companies “should do that,” adding that “we’re all in this together, and they should be doing that.”
In context of President Biden’s remarks about funding a new COVID-19 vaccine, the former president said that “anything new has got to be looked at very carefully.”
He then reiterated the point that pharmaceutical companies should release any data on vaccine side effects.
“They should be made public immediately. People should understand that, and they should know what research is showing,” President Trump said.
Ms. Dixon then noted that under the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, pharmaceutical companies are shielded from liability from vaccine injuries until December 2024.
“So once that sunsets, then they can be held liable for any type of vaccine injuries, will you tell these companies that they must be honest about what has happened with this vaccine?” Ms. Dixon asked.
President Trump replied by saying that the companies would be wrong to withhold any information on vaccine harms.
“They have to be honest with the numbers, the facts, and they have an obligation to be honest,” he said, “And if they are going to hold back, that means they’re holding back something that’s not good.”
“We’ll stand for them in many ways,” President Trump said of people who suffered vaccine injuries.
Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has been ordered to accelerate the pace at which it releases to the public data it relied on to license COVID-19 vaccines.
Watch the full interview below:
COVID-19 Vaccine Trial Data
In May, a federal judge in Texas ruled that the FDA must hurry up with disclosing data that underpinned its decision to license COVID-19 vaccines, ordering all documents to be made public by mid-2025 rather than, as the FDA wanted, over the course of about 23.5 years.
“Democracy dies behind closed doors,” is how U.S. District Judge Mark Pittman opened his order (pdf), which requires the FDA to produce the data on Moderna’s and Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines at an average rate of at least 180,000 pages per month.
The FDA had argued it would be “impractical” to release the estimated 4.8 million pages at more than between 1,000 and 16,000 pages per month: a rate which would see packets of information released for at least 23.5 years.
While the judge noted in his order that the court recognizes the FDA’s limited resources dedicated to freedom of information requests (FOIA), he stated that “the number of resources an agency dedicates to such requests does not dictate the bounds of an individual’s FOIA rights.”
“Instead, the Court must ensure that the fullest possible disclosure of the information sought is timely provided—as ‘stale information is of little value,'” Mr. Pittman wrote.
Confidence in the FDA over COVID-19 vaccine approvals was shaken by the disclosure that regulators sped up the approval of Pfizer’s vaccine in order to facilitate mandates.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) continues to recommend that people of all ages receive a COVID-19 vaccine, despite the risk of heart inflammation and other side effects.
Pentagon Aborts Flight Test Of 1st Hypersonic Missile At Last Minute, Cause Unknown
The US military canceled a planned test launch of a new hypersonic missile system, announced at the last minute on the day it was supposed to happen, on Wednesday.
It remains unclear what happened to cause the Department of Defense to abort the test, but the DoD put out this statement: “On Sept. 6, the Department planned to conduct a flight test at the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, to inform our hypersonic technology development. As a result of pre-flight checks, the test did not occur.”
According to a a review of the lead-up to the launch in Space.com: “Navigational warnings announcing the closure of Atlantic Ocean airspace east of Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida appeared earlier in the week that suggested a test launch would take place between Sept. 6 and Sept. 8.”
As agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) left Russell Fincher’s house with 50 legally-owned firearms and his freshly relinquished Federal Firearms License (FFL), they offered him a tip.
“They said, ‘Tell all your FFL friends we’re coming for them next,’” Mr. Fincher told The Epoch Times.
An ATF spokesman said he could not comment on the June 16, 2023, raid at Mr. Fincher’s home in Tuskahoma, Oklahoma.
“We are not allowed to comment pertaining to ongoing investigations. I can assure you once we can discuss the case, you will be notified,” Ashley N. Stephens, resident Agent in Charge of the ATF’s Tulsa Field Office, wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
According to Second Amendment advocacy groups, the raid indicates a coordinated effort by President Joe Biden’s administration to throttle legal gun sales to advance a gun control agenda.
Oklahoma state Rep. J.J. Humphrey is incensed over the raid.
He wrote to Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond, and Pushmataha County Sheriff B.J. Hedgecock on Aug. 17, demanding an investigation.
Mr. Humphrey told The Epoch Times that there is a legal term for what the ATF did to get Mr. Fincher to give up his FFL.
“It’s called extortion. The mob does it, criminals do it, and when you have a badge, that makes it worse,” Mr. Humphrey said.
Mr. Stitt’s office did not respond to emails or telephone calls seeking comment.
Spokespersons for the attorney general and Mr. Hedgecock said they are looking into the matter.
Phil Bacharach, a spokesman for the attorney general, confirmed that Mr. Drummond had seen the letter.
“We have received Rep. Humphrey’s request and are reviewing it,” Mr. Bacharach wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
Attorney General Reviewing Letter
Pushmataha County Undersheriff Dustin Bray said his office has the letter also. He said they plan to look into the matter further but have been focused on an Aug. 29 murder in Antlers, Oklahoma, Pushmataha’s county seat.
While it’s unusual for an agency to run such an operation without notifying local law enforcement, Mr. Bray said it does happen. He stressed that the ATF is under no legal obligation to tell anyone. He added that the sheriff’s office would have no official comment until it had more information.
“We actually didn’t have a clue that they were coming. We didn’t find out until everybody else did,” Mr. Bray told The Epoch Times. “We will try to get in contact with someone.”
The Fincher home is perched on the side of a hill in an unincorporated area of Pushmataha County. The sparsely populated county is popular with boaters and fishermen who ply the waters of Sardis Lake.
Fincher at Home in Tuskahoma
In the fall, the county and its Kiamichi Mountains are populated by hunters tramping the hills for white-tailed deer.
Mr. Fincher said Pushmataha County has been the perfect place to raise his family.
“We love it here,” he said, standing in front of his house on a late August afternoon.
Like many of his rural Oklahoma neighbors, part of his enjoyment of the outdoors involves firearms. In addition to traditional activities like hunting and target shooting, Mr. Fincher enjoys spending time with other firearms enthusiasts. So, he and his brother often attend gun shows in and around Oklahoma.
Contrary to what many believe, there is no “gun show loophole” allowing the sale of firearms by gun dealers with no background checks.
However, private transactions are and have always been legal regardless of when or where they occur. If each party in the transaction can legally own a gun, the sale or trade of legal firearms is allowed under the law.
Several years ago, Mr. Fincher legally traded a gun during a gun show. That transaction would return to haunt him, he said.
Russell Fincher stands in front of his house in Tuskahoma, Okla., on Sept. 1, 2023. (Michael Clements/The Epoch Times)
Mr. Fincher identifies himself as a Southern Baptist pastor, high school history teacher, youth sports coach, and small business owner who has always tried to be responsible. He said he is scrupulous when it comes to complying with the law.
“I don’t think I’ve had a speeding ticket in the past 20 or 25 years,” he said.
Still, as a regular gun show attendee, Mr. Fincher drew the attention of the ATF. He said the agency advised him to obtain an FFL based on how much he traded at the shows. So, in 2020, he became a licensed firearms dealer, believing it would help him avoid trouble.
While the new designation came with storage requirements and administrative responsibilities, Mr. Fincher also said there were some benefits. He was able to help friends and neighbors with their legal purchases. As an FFL holder, he could obtain some discounts and special pricing in addition to arranging for the shipment of his own gun purchases.
He said he never sold guns out of his home. His most common transactions were through online sales and arranging the transfer of firearms for people in his community.
“The only way I was really going to find an audience was through [online sales],” he said.
‘I Was Small Potatoes’
Mr. Fincher already had a small store to sell ammunition in the nearby town of Clayton. He briefly considered moving his gun business into the store. But that would require building renovation and more paperwork to transfer the FFL to the store’s address. Since he had no desire to be a full-time dealer, he decided to keep the gun business in his home.
“I was never a big dealer. Some dealers have hundreds of guns on their books, but I never had more than 90. I was small potatoes,” Mr. Fincher said. “There were a lot of shows when I made no money. You just did it because you liked the experience.”
He knew the importance of keeping accurate records and following the ATF rules. He said he had no concerns over his ATF paperwork, having done his best to follow all the rules. So, when he was contacted for a regular inspection in April 2023, he quickly agreed.
He said the two ATF agents were professional and polite. They looked over his gun safes and inspected his records, making a few notes. Not long after, he received a letter that found fault with some entries. Some were difficult to decipher, and a serial number for one pistol had not been recorded correctly.
ATF Adopts ‘Zero Tolerance’
The average person may consider these simple clerical errors. It is important to note that this inspection was performed under the ATF’s “zero tolerance” policy. Second Amendment proponents say the Biden administration is on a campaign to end the legal firearms trade in the United States.
Gun Owners of America (GOA) and the Gun Owners Foundation (GOF) claim in a lawsuit filed in July that the policy is to advance the Biden administration’s anti-Second Amendment agenda. The gun rights groups sued the ATF, the Department of Justice, and ATF Director Stephen Dettelbach over the policy (pdf).
GOA contends that on Jan. 28, 2022, the ATF issued a revised Administrative Action Policy (AAP) titled “Federal Firearms Administrative Policy and Procedures,” replacing a 2019 AAP.
GOA claims that the 2019 policy gave FFL holders some leeway for minor violations, but the January 2022 policy takes a more stringent approach.
“The 2019 AAP stated that ‘ATF may revoke a federal firearms license under appropriate circumstances,'” the lawsuit states. “The 2022 AAP states that ‘ATF will revoke a federal firearms license, absent extraordinary circumstances on initial violations.’”
GOA pointed out that in the past, the ATF looked for evidence of “willfulness” in violations by gun dealers. That has changed, the lawsuit states.
ATF Takes Harsher Stance
“The 2019 AAP stated that … ‘[a] single, or even a few, inadvertent errors … may not amount to ‘willful’ failures, even when the FFL knew of the legal requirement.’ The 2022 AAP eliminates this language, harshly warning that ‘ATF does not have to establish a history of prior violations,’” the lawsuit reads.
According to GOA, the ATF’s statistics from fiscal year 2022 show the agency’s hostility toward FFL holders.
ATF records show 3,806 violations reported in fiscal 2022 among firearm licensees, 606 warning letters issued, 131 warning conferences, and 93 revocations.
According to the ATF website, five FFL revocations occurred in 2021 between July and December. There were 51 revocations reported for the same period in 2022.
While the ATF agents that raided Mr. Fincher’s property didn’t specifically mention the previous inspection, Mr. Fincher said that in the weeks before the raid, the ATF was looking for a reason to pay him another visit.
Felon Asks For Gun
Just days before the armed agents showed up at his home, a man was in his ammo store acting “weird.” The man was not the usual rancher, outdoorsman, or hunter that normally patronized his business. Mr. Fincher didn’t know the man, sporting a prominent neck tattoo and appearing nervous.
“He said, ‘Man, I’m walking around naked out there.’ At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant,” Mr. Fincher said.
Then, the man asked if Mr. Fincher would sell him a gun.
“I told him I don’t sell guns from that store,” Mr. Fincher said.
The would-be customer pressed him, and Mr. Fincher agreed that he could sell him a gun. But he told him again that he didn’t run the gun business from the store. Then, the prospective customer announced that he was a felon. Mr. Fincher said that bit of information made his decision for him.
“I told him I would not sell him a gun because that’s illegal. I can’t sell guns to a convicted felon,” Mr. Fincher said.
The man with the neck tattoo bought a box of ammunition, which Mr. Fincher contends is not a crime, and left the store.
Banks’ Usage Of Fed’s Emergency Funds Jumps To New Record High, Money-Market Inflows Soar
Money-market funds saw inflows for the 7th week of the last 8 with a $42BN jump (the most in 2 months) to a new record high of $5.625TN…
Source: Bloomberg
The inflow was dominated by a $24BN increase in Institutional fund assets while Retail also saw a sizable $17.7BN increase…
Source: Bloomberg
And the divergence between money-market fund assets and bank deposits continues to grow…
Source: Bloomberg
And while we actually saw huge deposit outflows (on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis) – despite The Fed’s seasonally-adjusted deposits increase – The Fed balance sheet shrank by another $20BN last week to its smallest since June 2021…
Source: Bloomberg
The Fed’s QT program continues apace with$18.4BN sold last week to its smallest since June 2021…
Source: Bloomberg
Usage of The Fed’s emergency bank funding facility jumped by $328 Million last week to a new high of $108BN…
Source: Bloomberg
Fed BS weekly change:
Fed balance sheet QT (Notes and bonds decline): $4.255 trillion, down $18,2BN
Discount Window $2.1BN, down $800M from $.29BN
BTFP new record $107.9BN, up $400MM
Other Credit Extensions (FDIC Loans): $133.8BN, down $0.6BN from $134.4BN
Finally, US equity markets and bank reserves at The Fed have converged a little recently, but the gap remains wide (thanks to the plunge in reverse repo balances)…
Source: Bloomberg
Tick, tock, banks!
Source: Bloomberg
You have six months to figure out how to clean up the $108 Billion hole in your balance sheet that you’re currently paying The Fed’s exorbitant rates to fill.
Drivers in London will now face financial penalties if their cars don’t meet emissions standards. While the proposal isn’t without merit, it’s unlikely to make a difference even as it penalizes motorists.
In April 2019, the British capital instituted an Ultra Low Emission Zone (ULEZ) in central London. The rule required all vehicles to meet certain emissions standards. Certain vehicles, including taxis or certain historic vehicles, were exempt; for most noncompliant vehicles, drivers would face a fine of 12.50 pounds ($15.56 USD) per day. The rule is enforced by cameras that capture license plates.
Mayor Sadiq Khan’s office touted the rule as “the world’s toughest vehicle emissions standard.” Khan referred to the city’s air quality as an “invisible killer” that is “one of the biggest national health emergencies of our generation.” At the time, Silviya Barrett, research manager at the Centre for London think tank, told the BBC, “The ULEZ is really needed especially to help poorer Londoners who live in urban areas with high pollution,” though its effect was “limited at the moment due to its small area.” It was later expanded in 2021 to cover about one-fourth of the city.
Transport for London (TfL), the city’s transportation authority, expanded the ULEZ to the entire city on August 29, 2023. All noncompliant vehicles traveling within the city—including those not registered in the U.K.—will now have to pay the daily fine. Notably, the city already assesses a 15-pound ($18.69 USD) daily Congestion Charge to all motorists who drive in central London during peak hours.
The city is bullish on the proposal: In 2020, Khan’s office released a report showing that at the end of the ULEZ’s first 10 months, measured concentrations of nitrogen dioxide were 44 percent lower than was projected without the ULEZ, with an average compliance rate of 79 percent.
In February 2023, the office released another report, showing the results since the ULEZ expanded to cover 44 percent of the city’s population. It estimated that nitrogen dioxide levels were 46 percent lower in central London, and 21 percent lower in the other covered areas, than if the ULEZ had never been implemented.
But not everyone agrees. A 2021 study by the Centre for Transport Studies at the Imperial College of London found that the reduction in nitrogen dioxide was considerably smaller, perhaps less than 3 percent. “As other cities consider implementing similar schemes,” its authors concluded, “this study implies that the ULEZ on its own is not an effective strategy in the sense that the marginal causal effects were small.”
In a 2022 impact assessment, the mayor’s office claimed that expanding the ULEZ citywide would result in an annual savings of 214 “life years.” But Channel 4, the state-owned but privately funded network, noted that spread out across London’s population of 8.8 million, 214 life years means that the ULEZ adds about 13 minutes to each Londoner’s life per year.
And the proposal is not universally popular with the citizenry, either: Last week, Sky News reported that Londoners had stolen or damaged ULEZ cameras more than 500 times in the last few months. In the days immediately after ULEZ went citywide, activists smashed cameras, clipped their power cables, and spray-painted the lenses.
The Imperial College study did note that while air quality did improve overall since the ULEZ was introduced, “the ULEZ is one of many policies implemented to tackle air pollution in London….Thus, reducing air pollution requires a multi-faceted set of policies that aim to reduce emissions across sectors with coordination among local, regional and national government.”
Mitigating emissions that cause climate change is a noble and essential goal. Ironically, the ULEZ is one of the less intrusive solutions: Earlier this year, the European Parliament banned the sale of vehicles with internal combustion engines by 2035. The Environmental Protection Agency has proposed that two-thirds of all cars sold in the U.S. by 2032 should be electric.
A more effective and less proscriptive solution would be a more narrowly tailored system where users pay in direct proportion to their output. In a 2013 Cato Institute report, Bob Litterman wrote, “Relying on prices to allocate scarce resources is vastly superior to the command‐and‐control approaches of current policies, which rely on public subsidies and mandates to use particular alternatives to fossil fuels.”
Much of the banter surrounding the rise of China’s electric vehicle (E.V.) industry and the implication for the global economy is misleadingly alarmist. When our government gets involved in such narratives, it calls into question the sincerity of its insistence that E.V.s are essential to an existential battle against climate change. If China’s foray succeeds, the world gets cleaner cars and non-Chinese automakers are obliged to improve their own products.
A common concern among government officials is that while China faces strong headwinds, the country still might have what it takes to firm up its position and maintain dominance as an E.V. producer and exporter. Such worries aren’t confined to U.S. officials. Governments around the world are melding to cut China out of the E.V. market.
I find it bizarre. We are constantly reminded of the importance of investing in green technology as the world faces a pressing need to reduce carbon emissions and combat climate change. By dispensing gargantuan subsidies to support both U.S. electric car production and purchases, the Biden administration clearly wants American voters to believe that it’s taking climate change seriously and that more E.V.s are part of the answer.
We should rejoice in China’s increased focus on electric cars, which reflects the global shift toward cleaner and more sustainable transportation. Better yet, Chinese E.V. manufacturers seem to have moved beyond merely imitating American and European automakers. Chinese automakers are now producing vehicles that can compete with top-tier Western competitors in large part because their cars are so much cheaper.
Of course, there are questions about whether China will be able to maintain its dominance in E.V. production. For one thing, its heavy-handed approach, known as industrial policy, has never improved the overall economy of any country. A myriad of subsidies and support to the Chinese E.V. industry could end up hurting it by making it less flexible and subject to mal- or overinvestment. Beyond a self-inflicted economic slowdown and major fiscal and demographic troubles, China is also facing rising hostility from foreign nations, which could cause real troubles for its E.V. industry.
Yet the question remains: Does China’s current dominance in the E.V. market truly hurt us? After all, China is now producing lower-priced, decent-quality cars for consumers who, unlike Chinese citizens, aren’t shouldering the costs of the subsidies propping up the industry. If anything, Americans should be upset that their access to these E.V.s is obstructed by a 27.5 percent tariff on Chinese-made cars imposed by former President Donald Trump’s administration and maintained by President Joe Biden.
Rather than posing a national security threat, the growth of China’s E.V. industry is an opportunity for global innovation. Its engagement in the sector adds significantly to the international exchange of ideas, technology, and expertise. Cross-border collaboration can accelerate the pace of innovation, benefiting not only China but the entire global electric car ecosystem. U.S., Japanese, and European innovators have successfully done this for decades but have not yet delivered enough affordable clean vehicles. This approach is far more constructive than viewing China’s strides as a strategic problem and resorting to protectionist measures.
Furthermore, any related national security concerns are often rooted in misconceptions about the technologies themselves. It’s important to differentiate between civilian and military technologies. E.V. manufacturing primarily involves civilian tech that’s unlikely to have significant national security implications. The focus should instead be on enhancing international cooperation and dialogue to ensure that technologies with security implications are managed appropriately.
Finally, for all the alarmist talk from politicians about the threat of China’s E.V. dominance, many of their own policy inconsistencies make truly cutting ourselves off from these vehicles unlikely. E.V. batteries require a lot of lithium. While the U.S. is home to huge lithium reserves, new mining here is frowned upon by local communities, leaving America with only one active mine producing a whopping 1 percent of the global lithium output.
Even if it weren’t an uphill battle to mine much more, it would never be enough to satisfy all our needs. As such, we will likely continue to rely on some Chinese lithium batteries. China is also a manufacturing hub for many Western brands that rely on it to export to the rest of the world. All of this means that even if it were desirable, decoupling our economy from China is unlikely.
There are plenty of reasons why treating China’s growing E.V. industry as a strategic problem is a narrow and counterproductive perspective, especially if we claim that fighting climate change is a priority.
Certificate of Need (CON) laws, oftencriticized by libertarian thinkers, require that health care providers ask permission from state regulators before adding new programs and facilities. In practice, that often means running a gauntlet of objections filed by competitors. The result can be state-enforced cartel arrangements that protect inefficient incumbents, slow innovation, and leave consumers with fewer and less attractive choices.
Maryland has hit on a unique way to extend this bad idea. Not only does it have a CON law for health care, but it also applies the format to higher education. In particular, it requires colleges and universities that want to offer new degree programs to ask permission from the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) and invite objections from rival institutions.
The commission says it currently reviews and approves “on average approximately 250 certificate and degree programs” a year. Notably, its gatekeeping function is not limited to state colleges and universities but extends to private institutions as well.
One listed ground for objection gets straight to the point: “unreasonable program duplication which would cause demonstrable harm to another institution.” A competitor can also argue that there is no need for the contemplated new program because the employment picture for graduates in a specialty is only holding steady, not expanding—as if graduates do not find work across state lines.
There are many other potential trip-ups. As part of its approval process, the agency reviews whether the new program is consistent with Maryland’s quadrennial State Plan for Postsecondary Education, as well as the strategic plans that the state requires private and public institutions to have in place.
A university seeking to defend its new program proposal might have success arguing that it will serve new and different students, perhaps because its campus is geographically remote from that of the jealous incumbent. Quaintly, it is also permitted to argue, though with no guarantee of success, that letting it proceed would help with “the advancement and evolution of knowledge in the domain or field of study.”
Missing from the guidelines, as a reason for allowing competition, is any showing that an established program at some other institution is simply doing a poor job serving students—for example, that it scores badly on metrics such as degree completion or successful job placement. Such comparisons would hardly be sporting, would they?
The latest controversy erupted early this year when Towson University, a state institution in suburban Baltimore, applied to the MHEC to launch a doctoral program in business analytics. The program would emphasize specialties like supply chain management and enterprise software, which might seem a good fit for a region whose economic identity is defined in part by its port and logistics facilities. The bid drew prompt opposition from nearby Morgan State University, which said its own MBA program would be improperly competed with. Although a majority of the MHEC’s then-commissioners accepted Towson’s argument that the two programs differed substantially, advocates for Morgan State kept up legal and political pressure, seizing on a procedural slip-up. Last month, they successfully derailed the launch, at least for the time being. Students who had enrolled in the program were left holding the bag with classes set to begin in less than two weeks.
Intensifying the hard feelings is a racial angle. Morgan State is among the state’s four historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), which have long argued for special consideration in the screening process. As far back as 1999, the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights had reached an agreement with the state extracting a pledge to assign distinctive and popular programs to the HBCUs so as to bolster their enrollment since minority students had long been flocking to the state’s conventional institutions of higher education. Notwithstanding this help, the four historically black institutions have struggled to avoid extreme racial imbalance: Morgan State reports that only 1.8 percent of its student body identifies as white and 0.4 percent as Asian.
In a later lawsuit, advocates for the HBCUs argued that the state had underfunded them and had allowed excessive competition from the conventional colleges. A federal judge in 2013 dismissed the claim of underfunding but found merit in the complaints about undue competition. Rather than order the remedies demanded by the plaintiffs—which included forcibly relocating 10 successful degree programs from the other colleges to the HBCUs, as well as fencing off many other programs so as not to be competed with—the judge ordered mediation. That served to solidify the MHEC’s policy of deeming competition with Morgan State and the three other HBCUs even more suspect than competition with conventional colleges and universities. (The case was finally settled in 2021, when then–Attorney General Brian E. Frosh agreed to have the state step up its spending by half a billion dollars.)
One great irony is that the institutions targeted for complaint often exemplify successful higher education pathways for minority students. Towson, for example, with a student body that is about 46 percent white, 28 percent black, and 9 percent Hispanic, scores reasonably well on a variety of minority student outcomes such as retention rates. Or take the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), which has risen steadily in national rankings while winning acclaim for surpassing any other institution in the country in the number of African-American undergrads who go on to earn doctorates in the hard sciences. Its undergraduate body in 2022 was 31 percent white, 20 percent black, 8 percent Hispanic, 19 percent Asian, 5 percent multiracial, and 16 percent foreign.
Impressive as its track record is, however, UMBC doesn’t count as an institution with historically minority governance. And that is how it came to be that attorneys with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law demanded, as part of the now-settled lawsuit, that the court forcibly excise UMBC’s crown-jewel computer engineering department, with about 200 students, and relocate it to Morgan State. Fortunately, the judge didn’t go along.
“The insanity of it,” observed a 2013 Baltimore Sun editorial, is that the conflict “has everything to do with protecting the institutional prerogatives and egos of the schools and little to do with creating a system of colleges and universities that best meets the needs of as many of Maryland’s students as possible.”
Students deserve the benefits of competition and choice. Maryland’s absurd regulatory process stands in the way of that.
We are faced with a totalitarian cancer that will have to be confronted and defeated at every level.
Author’s Note: The complex patterns that have led to the greatest crisis of constitutional government and rule of law since the Civil War are far bigger, involve far more people, and are ultimately more dangerous to American freedom than the personal dishonesty and criminality of the Biden family. This “American Despotism” series in The American Spectator will provide a clear history of the weaponization of government, which has violated the Constitution and corrupted the rule of law. While each article will be complete and stand-alone, together they will combine to fully describe the patterns that now threaten to destroy the foundation of individual freedom — the hallmark of the American system.
America is now in the deepest, most dangerous constitutional crisis since the hostility in the 1850s that led to secession and civil war.
This constitutional crisis is so widespread and threatening that House Republicans must dramatically widen their investigations. Hunter Biden and President Joe Biden are only a tiny part of a spiderweb of corruption, dishonesty, criminal behavior, and state weaponization. The rule of law is steadily being replaced by a frightening new rule of power.
Of course, it is important to get to the bottom of the Biden corruption. It is critical that we understand how a drug-addicted, out-of-control drunk with no business experience attracted millions of dollars from Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, Romania, and Communist China. It is vital to learn what involvement the then–vice president and now-president had in the scheme. It seems clear President Biden was doing favors for foreign billionaires while publicly claiming he knew nothing of his son’s business dealings.
House Republicans must recognize, however, that they are currently focused on one tree in a forest of illegality and totalitarian behavior. A powerful and growing faction of the American Left would undermine the Constitution, turn the government into an instrument of coercing Americans to do what it wants, and use the law as a weapon to destroy its political opponents.
The Problem Is Much Bigger Than Hunter Biden
Most of modern American history can only be understood within this broader system of coercion and corruption. Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden are major players — but they are supported by a cast of hundreds and possibly thousands of eager totalitarians ready to impose their views on the American people. These would-be coercers have been enriching themselves with impunity because they know their establishment allies will never question them or hold them to account.
If you think I am exaggerating the distance between normal Americans and the totalitarians of the left, consider the reality in which we are all living.
A clear example of this split is the 84 percent who believe parents have the right to know what is being taught to their children in school. Meanwhile, teachers unions oppose parental rights, and the FBI investigates concerned parents as potential terrorists. This is a clear example of the left-wing minority’s effort to use government to force extreme cultural and societal change.
One of the great questions for our generation is whether a ruthless minority weaponizing government and destroying the American rule of law can use sheer force and threat of force to make Americans accept things in which they do not believe.
We established America’s New Majority Project to find and develop a set of issues on which most Americans agree. We were delighted to find a wide range of issues that have 70 percent to 90 percent support.
For example:
83 percent prefer to identify themselves as Americans rather than by their racial or ethnic backgrounds.
82 percent prefer free-market capitalism to big-government socialism.
79 percent believe that people who believe in the values found in the Bible have the right to express them publicly.
74 percent believe able-bodied adults should have to work to receive taxpayer-funded benefits such as food stamps, health care, or welfare.
If you go to our website, you will see a huge majority of Americans favor positions for which they would be canceled, ridiculed, fired, or even prosecuted by the current coercive left-wing dominated system.
Instead of having a government that serves the American people, we have degenerated into a government that wants the American people to serve and obey it. All of this has led to the rule of law being replaced by the rule of power.
The warnings in George Orwell’s 1984, Friedrich Hayek’s The Road to Serfdom, Arthur Koestler’s Darkness at Noon, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, and virtually all the works of Alexander Solzhenitsyn seem to all be coming true. A startling movement of totalitarian thought and behavior control is growing. It is eager to use government and the threat of prosecution to coerce the rest of us.
The Corruption Goes Deeper Than We Think
While focusing on Hunter Biden’s laptop and the trails of foreign corruption leading to President Biden, we have missed the vastly bigger, more frightening, and far more complex story of illegal and anti-constitutional behavior undermining the American system of law.
The turning point for me was reading Andy McCarthy’s remarkable book Ball of Collusion. Published in 2019, it should have been required reading for every American before the 2020 election. McCarthy is a solid professional prosecutor with almost two decades of experience in the Justice Department. He was the lead prosecutor in the trials of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing terrorists.
He used his prosecutorial skills to take apart the entire effort to tie candidate- and then-President Donald Trump to Russia. The Russian hoax was a deliberate lie funded by the Clinton campaign and seized upon by the FBI and the CIA. It was an opportunity for the system in power to defeat a candidate it didn’t like. After the lie failed to defeat Trump as a candidate, it was used to hamstring his presidency.
Ball of Collusion was a stunning revelation to me. I knew a lot about the general story — and had lived through it — but I had never connected the dots in such a methodical way. McCarthy’s research convinced him that the conspiracy to destroy Trump involved much more of the government than I would have thought possible. It was like looking through a kaleidoscope that suddenly came into focus.
Ball of Collusion opened a whole new line of thinking for me. Suddenly, many of the things I have lived through in American politics started to fit the pattern of corruption and coercion — Clinton’s cattle futures windfall, Lois Lerner’s weaponization of the IRS (on the advice of federal prosecutor Jack Smith), and the flagrant corruption of the Clinton Foundation.
Some policy decisions made by then–Secretary of State Clinton — including permitting the sale of 20 percent of America’s uranium to a Russian company that gave the Clinton Foundation a $2.3 million gift — made sense in this pattern. I then thought about Smith’s legal attack on Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell (which was unanimously overturned by the Supreme Court because Smith lied to the jury about the law). Unsurprisingly, this is the same Smith the Biden administration picked to attack Trump ahead of the 2024 election. The list goes on and on.
Importantly, McCarthy focused on a Jan. 5, 2017, meeting in which then-President Barack Obama personally coordinated the joint FBI–CIA effort to cripple and derail the Trump administration. It became clear to me this was an absolute smoking gun of guilt. The incumbent president of the United States openly coordinated the law enforcement and intelligence agencies in a deliberate, methodical effort to hinder the next president of the United States. It was an act verging on treason. Once I understood that Obama was capable of this level of viciousness and dishonesty, a lot of other things began to fall in place.
The Obama administration’s treatment of the Benghazi attack that killed an American ambassador was one example. Susan Rice appeared on five national news shows the Sunday after the attack to repeat a narrative that was completely false and misleading. After all, Sept. 11, 2012, was close to the election. Obama did not want Americans to understand that an Islamist terrorist group had just killed an American ambassador and three other Americans. That would have deflated the Obama triumphalism that asserted killing Osama Bin Laden had ended the terrorist threat.
Given Obama’s willingness to corrupt the Justice Department and the intelligence community, it is little wonder that Clinton deleted 33,000 emails and had her staff destroy her hard drive with a hammer. She knew she was never going to be prosecuted. The fix was in. In the post-Obama world, Democrats do not get prosecuted, and Republicans do not get protected. The sickness has become more institutional than personal. There are entire networks of people willing to lie for the Left and against the rest of us.
An Example of Corruption: The Biden Laptop Story
Consider the remarkable story of the Hunter Biden laptop. On Oct. 14, 2020, the New York Post broke the story about the laptop and its amazing revelations about international business deals and corrupt personal behavior on a grand scale. Within hours, the social media giants — advised by the FBI that the story might be a Russian disinformation effort — blocked the nation’s oldest and fourth-largest newspaper from being seen on the internet.
With a presidential debate coming up, the collective advocates of the left went to work. Within five days of the Post story, on Oct. 19, 2020, Antony Blinken (now secretary of state) got 51 former intelligence officials to sign a letter saying — with no evidence — that the Hunter Biden laptop was probably Russian disinformation.
During the presidential debate three days later, Joe Biden smugly said:
Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, he’s accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics — four/five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage. Nobody believes it except him and his good friend Rudy Giuliani.
What could have been a devastating disclosure about the Biden family’s corrupt behavior was turned into a non-event through censorship and lying. Even as president, how could Trump successfully discredit 51 intelligence officials in the middle of a debate — especially when most Americans did not know what he was talking about because the laptop story had been censored and suppressed?
And make no mistake: The laptop story would have made an impact. According to pollster John McLaughlin, “36% of Biden’s voters were not aware of Hunter’s laptop and if they had been, enough Biden voters would have left Biden so that Trump would have won AZ, GA, PA and WI.”
The Obama-created weaponized system had survived the Trump presidency. Within a few days, it could develop and validate a complete lie with professional legitimacy committed to defeating Trump and electing Biden.
On the Edge of the Totalitarian Takeover
The more you study these various events, the more you realize that there are entire systems and cultures of dedicated totalitarians who recognize that a Trump presidency could be a disaster for their worldview.
Their hatred and fear of Donald Trump is not a function of his personality or his tweets. They would hate and fear any candidate who was serious about disrupting the patterns of institutional corruption, coercion, and power. They would be equally offended by anyone who stood for a color-blind America or recognized two definable sexes. They would despise anyone who thought America was a good country (which, coincidentally, includes 88 percent of Americans).
Once you accept that we are dealing with much more than a few corrupt people, you begin asking a lot of questions. Why is the hatred so intense? Why do they think they can get away with blatant corruption? Why do they have contempt for the rule of law and relish the rule of power? Why are they so willing to coerce their fellow Americans to change their deeply held beliefs?
If you simply Google “the totalitarian impulse,” you will be stunned at the number of sophisticated, intelligent people who have been writing about it. There is a clear and growing understanding among many smart people that we are on the edge of a totalitarian takeover of our culture, institutions, and lives. It really is the greatest crisis of our constitutional system, individual liberty, and the rule of law that we have faced in 160 years.
I am writing this series about the weaponization of government and American despotism because I realized that the story is so complex, has such a long development time, and involves so many people that a clear narrative must be developed. The more you study modern American government, the more you realize that totalitarian efforts are all around us — and they have been winning on many fronts.
The Alinskyian Roots of American Totalitarianism
Behind the movement is a powerful belief system that opposes the American system of constitutional law. It is hostile to American history and patriotic pride, contemptuous of the American people, and dedicated to seizing power through any means.
The historic roots of this American despotism can be found in the French Revolution. That movement held a passion for uprooting and replacing everything (including the calendar). Its roots can also be found in Leninism and its effort to create a New Soviet Man to replace the failed types of personalities that it found occupying Russia before the revolution. The origins of rising totalitarianism can also be found in Maoism and its mass brainwashing, enforced conformity, groupthink, and the need to purge yourself of sins by confessing in front of the community.
However, there is also a powerful American source for this totalitarian drive to remake America. That drive can be found in the writings and teachings of Saul Alinsky. Obama and Clinton were both students of Alinsky or his disciples.
Obama’s first job in Chicago was with an Alinsky institution. He learned how to be a neighborhood organizer from the Alinsky disciples. This was so alien to our way of thinking that, in 2008, only Sean Hannity understood how deeply radical Obama was. The rest of us translated neighborhood organizer into something like a Boys and Girls Club worker. I am embarrassed to admit that even though I had studied all the major modern revolutions — and had read Alinsky — the concept of an Alinsky disciple pretending to be a pleasant, harmless, normal politician was too wild for me to grasp at the time.
Clinton knew Alinsky. She met with him and wrote her senior thesis about him. She agreed with his aims but thought his strategies were impractical. She wanted to change America from within — not by agitating from without.
Biden was just a lucky local politician from a small state. He was only a moderate Democrat when he got elected to the Senate at 29 years old in 1972. He was not particularly intellectual, but he was a chameleon. As the Democratic Party moved to the left, so did he. He also understood from watching Clinton and others that you could be corrupt — the Obama-politicized Justice Department would never bother you. He saw his chance, and he took it.
The Biden investigation will inevitably grow until all the horrors of the corruption, government weaponization, and destruction of the rule of law become known to the American people.
However, it is vital we understand that the Biden family corruption is a small piece of the larger crisis of our constitutional system. We are faced with a totalitarian cancer that will have to be confronted and defeated at every level. The Bidens’ corruption is merely a symptom.
