Month: March 2024

Authored by Victor Dalziel via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

In a significant blow to patient autonomy, informed consent has been quietly revoked just 77 years after it was codified in the Nuremberg Code.

On the 21st of December 2023, as we were frantically preparing for the festive season, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issued a final ruling to amend a provision of the 21st Century Cures Act. This allowed

“… an exception from the requirement to obtain informed consent when a clinical investigation poses no more than a minimal risk to the human subject …” [emphasis added]

This ruling went into effect on January 22nd, 2024, which means it’s already standard practice across America.

So, what is the 21st Century Cures Act? It is a controversial Law enacted by the 114th United States Congress in January 2016 with strong support from the pharmaceutical industry. The Act was designed to

“… accelerate the discovery, development, and delivery of 21st-century cures, and for other purposes [?] …”

Some of the provisions within this Act make for uncomfortable reading. For example, the Act supported:

• High-risk, high-reward research [Sec. 2036].

• Novel clinical trial designs [Sec. 3021]

• Encouraging vaccine innovation [Sec. 3093].

This Act granted the National Institutes of Health (NIH) legal protection to pursue high-risk, novel vaccine research. A strong case could be made that these provisions capture all the necessary architecture required for much of the evil that transpired over the past four years.

Overturning patient-informed consent was another stated goal of the original Act. Buried under Section 3024 was the provision to develop an “Informed consent waiver or alteration for clinical investigation.”

Scholars of medical history understand that the concept of informed consent, something we all take for granted today, is a relatively new phenomenon codified in its modern understanding as one of the critical principles of the Nuremberg Code in 1947. It is inconceivable that just 77 years after Nuremberg, the door has once again opened for state-sanctioned medical experimentation on potentially uninformed and unwilling citizens.

According to this amendment, the state alone, acting through the NIH, the FDA, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), will decide what is considered a “minimal risk” and, most concerning, will determine:

“… appropriate safeguards to protect the rights, safety, and welfare of human subjects.”

Notice the term subjects, not patients, persons, individuals, or citizens… but subjects. In asymmetrical power relationships such as clinician/patient, it is understood that the passive subject will comply with the rulings and mandates of their medical masters. The use of the term subjects also serves to dehumanise. The dehumanisation of populations was a critical component of Nazi human experimentation and, as Hannah Arendt argued, is an essential step toward denying citizens “… the right to have rights.”

This ruling also allows researchers and their misguided evangelical billionaire backers to potentially pursue dangerous experimental programs such as Bill Gates’ mosquito vaccines, mRNA vaccines in livestock, and vaccines in aerosols. This Act encourages these novel and high-risk programs, with medical studies approved as “minimal risk” by the regulators no longer requiring researchers and pharmaceutical companies to obtain patient consent. Yet, the histories of pharmacology and medicine are plagued with clinical investigations and interventions that were thought to pose no more than minimal risk to humans but went on to cause immeasurable pain, suffering, and death.

This amendment represents merely a first tentative step as the U.S. government tests the waters to see what it can get away with. Given the lack of attention this ruling received in both the corporate press and independent media, the government is likely to feel emboldened to widen its scope. Thus, this decision represents the beginning of a chilling revisionism in Western medical history, as patient autonomy is again forsaken.

This ruling, to be actioned by potentially corrupt scientists, health bureaucrats, and captured health and drug regulators, is another step toward a dystopian future unimaginable just five years ago. No doubt the infrastructure to implement this decree is already being constructed by the same groupthink cultists responsible for the nightmarish pandemic lockdowns, continuing to place the pursuit of profit and the greater good above individual choice, bodily autonomy, and informed consent.

From the Brownstone Institute

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist’s Marcus Lu, visualizes the best and worst car brands in terms of brand loyalty. This is measured by the % of current owners who would buy from the same brand for their next vehicle.

Data comes from Consumer Reports’ owner satisfaction survey, which includes responses from owners of more than 330,000 vehicles.

Car Brands With the Most Loyal Customers

Rivian takes the top spot in this ranking, with 86% of owners saying they would buy from the brand again. The EV startup has carved an interesting niche for itself with its outdoor adventure-focused models, and despite several recalls, appears to have won the hearts of its early customers.

It’s interesting to note that Tesla held the #1 spot in last year’s ranking.

Car Brands With the Least Loyal Customers

At the other end of the spectrum we have brands with the least loyal customers, suggesting that owners are less satisfied with their purchase.

At the bottom of this table is Nissan’s luxury marque, Infiniti, with only 43% of owners saying they would revisit the brand for their next car.

Infiniti dealerships are aware of this alarming trend, and have attributed it to the brand’s aging lineup. In a recent interview, Steve Lapin, Chairman of the Infiniti National Dealer Advisory Board, said: “Product is king. Infiniti doesn’t have the right products right now to compete in the marketplace.”

Authored by Kevin Stocklin via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A federal effort to register voters using the government’s vast reach, including throughout the U.S. prison system, is raising concerns from critics who have said it won’t benefit Democrats and Republicans equally.

Mississippi Secretary of State Michael Watson wrote to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on March 6 alleging that agencies under the attorney general’s charge are “attempting to register people to vote, including potentially ineligible felons, and to co-opt state and local officials into accomplishing this goal.”

The allegation relates to President Joe Biden’s Executive Order 14019, which states, “The head of each agency shall evaluate ways in which the agency can, as appropriate and consistent with applicable law, promote voter registration and voter participation.”

Among other things, this order has forced U.S. Marshals to modify more than 900 contracts with prisons and jails to provide voter registration documents and facilitate mail-in voting for inmates, Mr. Watson wrote.

“We have worked extremely hard to restore the confidence of Mississippi voters in our election process,” Mr. Watson told The Epoch Times. “To have the Biden administration and the DOJ purposefully undermine these efforts and jeopardize the integrity of Mississippi’s elections is unacceptable.”

The secretary of state is the chief election officer in Mississippi.

The work by the Department of Justice to register voters in prisons, critics say, is just the tip of the iceberg.

Other agencies, including the Department of Education, the Department of Agriculture, the Department of Health and Human Services, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, are also carrying out campaigns to sign up new voters.

On Feb. 26, Vice President Kamala Harris lauded a federal plan to use work-study grants to pay students to register voters.

In addition, President Biden’s executive order directed federal agencies to select “approved, nonpartisan third-party organizations and state officials to provide voter registration services on agency premises.”

President Biden’s executive order was called “visionary“ by Ceridwen Cherry, a former staff attorney on the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Voting Rights Project, who said, ”In a democracy, governments at all levels should be doing everything they can to help eligible people register to vote.”

However, critics say elections are under the purview of states, not the federal government.

“The reason it’s such a big problem is that, with the president, it’s only one political party that’s in power,” Stewart Whitson, legal director of the Foundation for Government Accountability (FGA), a conservative think-tank, told The Epoch Times.

“If you allow the president to be the one to decide where all these massive resources are channeled, that’s problematic,” he said, adding that this is why the Founders gave election authority to states and not to the federal executive.

Implementation Questions

The plan has been called “Bidenbucks” by some of its detractors, referencing the injection into state election programs of $400 million in 2020 from Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg, dubbed “Zuckerbucks.”

“This is Zuckerbucks on steroids because instead of $400 million, it’s unlimited funding and resources and the reach of the federal government and all its offices located across the country,” Mr. Whitson said.

Previous efforts to federalize elections through Congress have failed.

In 2022, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) attempted to eradicate the legislative filibuster in order to pass H.R. 5746, the “Freedom to Vote: John R. Lewis Act,” which would have given the federal government authority over parts of state election systems, expanded voting by mail, and eliminated security protocols such as requiring voter identification.

Democrats claimed the bill was necessary to fight “voter suppression” by state governments.

President Biden’s executive order includes the directive for federal agencies to find ways to distribute “vote-by-mail ballot application forms” as well as assist applicants in completing the application “in a manner consistent with all relevant State laws.”

In 2020, nearly 45 percent of voters used mail-in-ballots.

Since the president signed EO 14019, a number of attempts have been made to obtain information about how federal agencies will implement it, particularly which private organizations it has selected to work out of federal offices alongside government officials.

Federal departments refused to release this information, and requests were followed up with FOIA filings and subsequently by lawsuits; however, the Biden administration continues to defy the requests.

In July 2021, the FGA filed a FOIA request regarding President Biden’s Voting Access plan. The group sought information about what federal agencies were doing to implement the plan, as well as records from planning and strategy meetings among President Biden’s staff, federal agencies, and the architects of EO 14019.

“These documents, in any other context, would be handed over much more quickly,” Mr. Whitson said. “So this indicates to us that there’s something there the Biden administration really does not care to share, because they’ve withheld it for nearly three years now.”

The America First Legal foundation, another plaintiff in a FOIA suit, characterized EO 14019 as “the president’s unprecedented effort to deploy federal agencies in support of partisan voting operations and fortify politically aligned private organizations working to circumvent state election integrity laws.”

More than two years later, court battles over the information requests are ongoing. The administration has brought in White House counsel and the Department of Justice to fight the requests.

How Federal Agencies Enact EO 14019

Prominent among the many federal agencies carrying out the executive order is the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which announced in 2022 that federal health centers across the nation now have the discretion to participate in activities—including voter registration—that are outside the scope of core department activities.

“Such voter registration activities may include making available voter registration materials to patients, encouraging patients to register to vote, assisting patients with completing registration forms, sending completed forms to the election authorities, providing voter registration materials in waiting rooms, and allowing private, non-partisan organizations to conduct on-site voter registration,” the HHS website says.

The Department of Housing and Urban Development instructed more than 3,000 public housing authorities managing some 1.2 million public housing units across the country to run voter registration drives in those units.

The Department of Education sent a letter to universities, directing them to use Federal Work Study funds “to support voter registration activities.”

The letter states, “If a student is employed directly by a post-secondary institution, the institution may compensate a student for [Federal Work Study] employment involving voter registration activities that take place on or off-campus.”

The Department of Education has been particularly active in turning out likely Democrat voters, according to Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center.

“Every college campus is massively dependent on Department of Education largesse, from Pell grants to every other kind of aid,” Mr. Walter told The Epoch Times.

“The Department of Education in 2022 was threatening campuses that you better be registering students or you could lose your federal funds.”

The Department of Agriculture issued letters to state agencies administering the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Women’s Infants and Children’s low-income food program, instructing them to carry out voter registration activities with federal funds.

Read more here…

The “Black Mayors’ Coalition on Crime” gathered this week in Memphis, Tennessee to discuss the dangers of crime across the US, as well as apparent solutions to the growing threat.  The question is, was the meeting really about stopping crime, or, was it all about maintaining optics and making the public believe crime is going down when it’s not?

It’s difficult to say because public and media access to the event was strictly limited.  In many states private meetings between public officials related to policy are illegal.  However, in Tennessee the regulations are a bit more lax in terms of what constitutes a “meeting subject to law.”  

The Tennessee Open Meetings Act defines a “meeting” as “the convening of a governing body of a public body for which a quorum is required to make a decision or to deliberate toward a decision.” A “governing body” is “any public body [consisting] of two or more members, with the authority to make decisions for or recommendations to a public body on policy or administration.” 

In other words, a quorum is required, which means Tennessee was very carefully chosen by the Black Mayor’s Coalition (the vast majority of them Democrats) because it allowed them more legal room to hold closed door meetings.  But why not include the press and the public in this discourse?  

Perhaps because the event is in itself an admission that crime is rising; a reality which Democrat representatives have tried to deny for the past few years.  Another reason may be because the solutions being discussed are not something the voting population would agree with. 

In the interview below the Mayor of St. Louis, Tishaura Jones, mentions that gas stations and convenience stores attract a high rate of crime and asks how the business owners can be ‘held accountable’ for this, rather than how they can be protected from it? 

“We have a lot of violence around convenience stores and gas stations…So how can we hold those business owners accountable and also bring down crime? Some of the things are already doing, we’re finding other mayors are doing as well.”

In other words, how can these mayors blame businesses for the crime rate instead of taking responsibility as elected representatives?   

There are the obvious ironies to mention here, including the fact that many of these mayors supported far-left measures to defund police departments, only to quietly remove those measures a few years later.  Then there’s the plethora of statistical tricks used by city politicians to hide real crime data. 

This includes greatly reduced prosecution and conviction rates; in many Democrat controlled cities the conviction rate is less than 5 out of every 100 arrests.  From 2018 to 2023, conviction rates dropped over 58%, and convictions sharply declined specifically from 2020 onward.  From 2011 to 2021 prison populations dropped over 22%, despite the fact that criminal activity increased over the same period.     

The less prosecutions, the less convictions, the lower the crime stats.  It’s that simple.  Democrats have also taken advantage of a change in the FBI criminal reporting policies which was conveniently initiated in 2020.  Because of this change, numerous US cities will not be reporting full numbers to the FBI until 2025.  This is why the FBI recently reported a “drop” in violent crime nationally – Because they don’t have complete statistics. 

Then of course there’s the disproportionate number of crimes committed by minorities in these same cities.  Black on black crime rates in places like St. Louis are stunning.  Studies from 2022 show that 92% of homicide suspects and 86% of victims in St. Louis and St. Louis County were black.  Around 84% of them were repeat offenders.  Blacks make up 43% of the population in that region.     

Leftist mayors have long suggested that public perception of crime deviates from the reality of crime; yet, here they are holding closed-door meetings to discuss the growing crime problem in their own towns.  Perhaps the issue is not public perception mismatching reality,  maybe the issue is political spin mismatching reality.  The populace deals with these crimes on a daily basis; it’s going to be hard to gaslight people into thinking criminal activity isn’t a problem. 

Authored by Scott Farmer via RealClear Politics,

As the 2024 election heats up, now is the time for campaigns to invest wisely. Questions abound: Do you invest in cable news advertising? Door-to-door canvassing? Social media? Something else?

For answers, I look back to the past. In 2000, I oversaw the South Carolina Republican Party’s history-making effort to post real-time presidential primary results online. The election night vote-counting for the epic Bush vs. McCain battle played out on screens across the world – not just in the South Carolina GOP’s vote tabulation center. On that night, the ground shifted beneath our feet.

Over more than two decades of working on Senator Lindsey Graham’s campaigns, first as his finance director and then as his campaign manager for multiple elections, I watched digital operations transform from a backwater oddity to the beating heart of modern campaigns. To outsiders, this revolution seemed obvious, given the meteoric rise of social media, data collection, and mobile devices. However, for an industry steeped in “retail politics” that values handshakes, parades, and stump speeches, embracing the Internet’s intangible nature was a massive culture shock.

Many candidates didn’t understand the social media platforms that can decide elections, and many still don’t. But the digitization of politics is now undeniable, with digital ad spending alone expected to increase by about 30% in 2024. Billions of political dollars are now spent on digital ads without even taking into account the organic reach of a given candidate.

The tide turned when digital proved it could raise money. In the early 2000s, campaigns dabbled with websites and a few email donations. Digital was seen as a minor complement to traditional fundraising, not a replacement. Today, large grassroots-fueled campaigns often generate a majority of their funding from small-dollar donors. In fact, we raised a whopping 84% of Senator Graham’s record-breaking $110 million in 2020 from generous digital and direct mail donors. Again, we felt the ground shift beneath our feet.

But fundraising is only the tip of the iceberg. The Obama campaign’s pioneering use of technology in 2008 opened the floodgates, reaching more voters, organizing more efficiently, and raising more money thanks to an unmatched digital operation. Fast forward to 2024, and digital is intertwined with every aspect of a political campaign.

Want to recruit volunteers or distribute yard signs? Utilize your website and social media. Need to map out the most effective door-knocking routes? There’s an app for that. Want to encourage donations during a debate? Send out a text. Looking to target voters on social media and streaming TV? Digital advertising has it covered. “Retail politics” still happens in person, but campaigns are now powered by data and analytics. Digital rules behind the scenes.

The central role of digital highlights one of its most critical values: Real-time metrics. Digital is the canary in the coal mine, detecting a message’s effectiveness long before polls or pundits reflect it. If a strategy shows early success, data quantifies and scales it. If you’re falling behind the metrics, your campaign is doomed. We saw this real-time impact in 2020 when Senator Graham raised over $5 million in only 24 hours due, in part, to standing up for then-Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett. On that day, the ground again shifted beneath our feet.

In 2024 and beyond, the digital team can no longer be siloed off. It must be fully integrated into every aspect of a winning campaign, so digital should be part of every strategic decision through constant collaboration. Future campaigns will be won or lost based on which candidates have digital in their DNA – and invest in it. Leaders who fail to embrace this truth do so at their own peril.

Scott Farmer serves as chief operating officer at Push Digital Group.

Authored by Tom Ozimek via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

U.S. cases of tuberculosis, a deadly infectious disease that typically strikes the lungs, have soared to their highest level in a decade, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), with the largest relative increase among children.

After 27 years of declining tuberculosis rates in the United States, cases of the disease started to climb again in 2020—and they’ve continued to rise every year since, the CDC said in a March 28 report.

In 2023, tuberculosis case counts jumped by 1,295 from the prior year to 9,615, the agency said. This represents an increase of 16 percent and is the highest level since 2013.

While the CDC expected cases to rise, the extent of the increase came as somewhat of a surprise to the agency.

Dr. Philip LoBue, director of the CDC’s Division of Tuberculosis Elimination, told The Associated Press that the 2023 case count was “a little more” than expected.

Tuberculosis incidences increased in every age group in 2023 compared to the year prior, but for reasons unknown children aged 5–14 experienced the largest relative increase—42 percent.

Infections Most Common Among Non-US-Born Individuals

The vast majority—76 percent—of tuberculosis cases in the United States in 2023 were in non-U.S.-born persons.

Among 9,573 tuberculosis cases in persons for whom birth origin was known, 7,259 occurred among those who were born outside the United States, the CDC said. This represents an 18 percent increase compared to 2022.

Tuberculosis, which is caused by a bacteria that typically attacks the lungs, is one of the deadliest infectious diseases in the world.

Nearly 4,400 people globally die each day from tuberculosis, which is spread through the air when someone is infected with the disease sneezes or coughs.

The United States has one of the lowest rates of tuberculosis in the world, but the CDC said in its report that the uptick in cases means that capacity should be strengthened in public health programs to carry out “critical disease control and prevention strategies.”

California With Highest Number of Cases

As was the case in 2022, California reported the highest number of tuberculosis cases in 2023, with 2,113 infections.

Alaska reported the highest infection rate, at 10.6 per 100,000 people.

An estimated 85 percent of the people counted in 2023 were infected at least a year or two earlier and had what’s known as latent tuberculosis. This is when the bacteria enters the body and hibernates in the lungs or other parts of the body, and then becomes reactivated.

Health experts estimate as many as 13 million Americans have latent tuberculosis. People with latent tuberculosis don’t feel sick or have any symptoms, nor can they spread the bacteria to others.

The CDC says that, in order to prevent transmission and reduce fatalities, the disease must be detected quickly and treatment must be initated promptly.

Last November, California health officials said that at least 10 cases of tuberculosis were linked to a casino in Contra Costa County.

“TB can live inside someone for years without showing signs of its presence,” Dr. Meera Sreenivasan said of the disease, according to an earlier report from The Epoch Times.

“That is why it’s important to take a test, even if you do not feel sick. TB can cause serious illness, but it is treatable and curable with medicine, especially when caught early,” he added.

In another widely reported incident, an outbreak of tuberculosis cases at a migrant shelter on Cape Cod was the subject of an alleged coverup.

Types of Tuberculosis And Symptoms

Tuberculosis can be categorized into different types based on its stage (active versus latent) and the part of the body it affects (lungs or outside the lungs), with the two main categories being pulmonary and extrapulmonary.

Pulmonary tuberculosis is an infection involving the lungs, though this form of the disease can also spread to other organs.

Extrapulmonary tuberculosis originates in organs outside the lungs and never enters the lungs. This type often arises from the spread of infection through the bloodstream or directly from other organs. Unlike the type that involves the lungs, extrapulmonary tuberculosis is generally not contagious.

While latent tuberculosis is asymptomatic, people with the active form of the disease typically have symptoms that include chills, fever, profuse night sweats, weight loss, general malaise, loss of appetite, weakness, and fatigue.

Pulmonary tuberculosis also often involves difficulty breathing, chest pain, persistent cough lasting over three weeks, swollen glands, and sore throat.

A YouTube and Twitch star known as “YourFellowArab” was reportedly kidnapped by a ruthless Haitian gang. The Gen-Zer attempted to interview gang leader Jimmy ‘Barbecue’ Cherizier earlier this month amid the Caribbean nation’s descent into civil war. 

Local media outlet Haiti24 reports Addison Pierre Maalouf traveled from his home in Atlanta to interview Barbecue, the leader of the G9 Family and Allies, abbreviated as “G9” or “FRG9”, a coalition of over a dozen Haitian gangs based in Port-au-Prince. 

But on March 14, the YouTuber was kidnapped by a group of armed men from the “400 Mawozo” gang. 

Haiti24 reports: 

The incident took place when he was returning from Cap-Haïtien, accompanied by his Haitian colleague, Sacra Sean. Adisson Pierre Maalouf went to Delmas 6 to do an interview with Jimmy Cerisier, aka “Barbecue,” a spokesperson for Viv Ansanm.

The outlet continued: 

According to information, the kidnappers, acting under the orders of the fearsome gang leader “Lanmò 100 jou”, member of the “Viv Ansanm” coalition, demanded an exorbitant ransom of $600,000 for the journalist’s release. Despite the payment of an initial tranche of $40,000, the kidnappers demanded a much larger sum for his complete release.

Addison makes videos about his experiences with gangsters all over the world. In one recent video, he lived with the Mexican cartel for days. He’s hunted pirates in the Red Sea and toured the favelas in Rio de Janeiro. 

Earlier this month, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince urged all American citizens still in the country to “leave as soon as possible” while other embassies restricted services. The US State Department placed the nation on the “Do not travel” list for Americans. 

Another Twitch streamer, Lalem, said on X, “Tried keeping it [kidnapping] private for 2 weeks, but it’s getting out everywhere now. Yes Arab has been kidnapped in Haiti, and we’re working on getting him out. Love ya’ll, he’ll be out soon.”

Here are some of the YouTuber’s last posts on X:

Going on another one of those trips 🤫

If I die, thanks for watching what I’ve put out. If I live, all glory to God.

— Arab (@YourFellowArab) March 11, 2024

My taxi just got in an accident in the middle of the Dominican while I was asleep.

Everything good, just another sign that God is watching over 🙏🏻 pic.twitter.com/NeQAQNryqY

— Arab (@YourFellowArab) March 12, 2024

Dominican Republicans are by far the worst drivers in the entire world.

Worse than Indians, worse than Asians, worst in the world 🇩🇴

— Arab (@YourFellowArab) March 12, 2024

Imagine all the shit I’ve done that should’ve killed me & I die to a car accident 😂

I’d be the biggest pussy of all time. Light scratches keep moving.

— Arab (@YourFellowArab) March 12, 2024

Youngsters will do anything for those clicks… 

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Stripe, the only payment processor Substack writers can use, has backed off a demand that Dr. Robert Malone link his bank account, according to the law firm Dr. Malone retained.

Stripe earlier in March asked Dr. Malone, who has an EpochTV show, to “link the primary bank account for your business to your Stripe account,” which would enable Stripe to review the account’s “current account balance and transactions, as well as historical transactions,” according to emails reviewed by The Epoch Times.

The request was part of “a routine credit review” of Dr. Malone’s Substack, one email stated.

Stripe said that if the bank account was not linked, then it might block Dr. Malone from being paid.

The request “which deviated from Stripe’s standard operating procedures, would have compelled Dr. Malone to provide extensive financial information from his business banking activities, including transactions and account balances spanning the entire history of his business bank account,” Dhillon Law Group, which Dr. Malone hired to represent him in the matter, said in a statement.

After the legal firm reached out to Stripe, the company rescinded the demand, the law firm said.

“Financial service providers must tread carefully when requesting client data. It is critical to uphold the delicate balance between regulatory requirements and an individual’s right to financial privacy,” Mark Meuser, an attorney with the group, said in a statement. “We are satisfied with Stripe’s decision to withdraw its request, allowing Dr. Malone to continue his valuable work without unnecessary intrusion into his business affairs.”

Stripe has not responded to requests for comment. A Stripe spokesperson told The Federalist, “Stripe may, in certain instances, request users to link their bank account to assess businesses’ liquidity as part of the underwriting process, but also allows businesses to submit a form with relevant information in lieu of linking their bank account.”

That alternative was not presented to Dr. Malone, according to his lawyers.

Dr. Malone said retaining lawyers was expensive but a move he felt he had to make after neither Stripe nor Substack provided any options other than linking his account.

“It was a hard and costly decision to justify this level of cost and risk, but the risk of losing a business that had been developed over years of careful, daily customer service was too high to not take this seriously,” he wrote on his Substack.

The result was the disclosure that, instead of linking his account, Dr. Malone could provide certain information on a form. The form requested information on which services Dr. Malone is selling through Stripe, and whether Dr. Malone accepts payments from customers before the customers receive the services, according to a screenshot of the document.

“In my opinion, it is very unfortunate that Stripe and Substack are pursuing these policies, which are absolutely contrary to the principles of support of free speech upon which Substack was founded. Stripe has apparently modified those web-based resources in which they has [sic] previously indicated that this policy was being implemented in response to Federal US Government pressure to delete any reference to Federal US Government actions prompting these policies,” Dr. Malone wrote.

Dr. Malone was referring to a recent U.S. House of Representatives report that detailed how the U.S. government is conducting surveillance of financial providers, although neither Stripe nor Substack were mentioned in the report.

Substack responded in an automatic message to an inquiry, stating, “If you’re a journalist reaching out with a press request, a member of our communications team will be in touch.” No Substack employees ever responded to the inquiry.

“In this case, we were able to obtain prompt revision of the Stripe/Substack action by spending considerable funds to obtain highly qualified legal representation,” Dr. Malone said. “But what of the average author who is either caught unaware by such policies or who cannot justify such legal costs? This appears to be a new normal, weaponization of finance and financial transactions to restrict and control free speech.”

The White House has released a statement celebrating “Transgender Day of Visibility,” which President Joe Biden ‘proclaimed‘ in 2021 as March 31 – and which has been celebrated by activists on this day since 2014 after this individual ‘founded and organized’ it.

According to the White House:

“NOW, THEREFORE, I, JOSEPH R. BIDEN JR., President of the United States of America, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States, do hereby proclaim March 31, 2024, as Transgender Day of Visibility. I call upon all Americans to join us in lifting up the lives and voices of transgender people throughout our Nation and to work toward eliminating violence and discrimination based on gender identity,” the statement read. 

And where Easter is typically held the first Sunday after the full moon that occurs on or after the spring equinox, while “Transgender Day of Visibility” is on the same date each year, many have taken offense to the day’s proximity to the Christian holiday.

They hate us and our Christianity.

— UnipartyBomber (@magajcs) March 30, 2024

Declaring EASTER to be
‘Transgender Day of Visibility’

Translation:
They Hate You
They Hate Our Children
They Hate Christians …..
They Hate America !!!

We the People see you 🤛🏼

— Cyndexia America Truther 💯🥂 (@TrutherAmerica) March 30, 2024

They are mocking us

— Steve Ferguson (@lsferguson) March 30, 2024

Trending on X:

“The Submission must not include any questionable content, religious symbols, overtly religious themes,” a flyer with instructions from the White House stated.

But, of course, the White House is fine with this… 

The demonic Biden White House is banning religious symbols from this year’s Easter egg hunt because they don’t want to offend anyone.
The same demonic Biden White House during a Pride Month celebration last summer 👇 pic.twitter.com/zyudS3sxGU

— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) March 30, 2024

You know what should have been covered up is this …
Now this was pure trash at the White House … Easter twerking, topless trans thingy and whateve the fvck that was at Christmas … pic.twitter.com/eHwnssP50D

— The Ms Francesca (@TheMsFrancesca) March 25, 2024

145 calendar days celebrating LGBTQ+ pic.twitter.com/kxtGx9Scg1

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 30, 2024

The Bidens have stated that Decency is on the ballot .. last year we saw the Easter Rabbit “twerking” at the White House and a trans topless and fondling itself on the White House lawn. Ther was no decency, no dignity, no respect and no class … just a vile and disgusting… pic.twitter.com/AV8QllMd20

— The Ms Francesca (@TheMsFrancesca) March 29, 2024

But it’s ok to display the trans flying the prestigious white house‼️
We are the laughing stock of the world‼️ pic.twitter.com/CorAa7fH2a

— MnM13 (@mnmbes13) March 30, 2024

And Google… 

Easter/Good Friday: Pride Month: pic.twitter.com/m2N3TVa4Xm

— End Wokeness (@EndWokeness) March 29, 2024

Former President Trump wasn’t thrilled with the woke activism coming from the White House:

The radicals in the White House might have overplayed their hand in their crusade against Christianity, as even the most left-leaning centralists are appalled by Biden’s new declaration.

This seems to be a miscalculated move as blowback nears.

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Oh Say Can You See?

“A modern nuc can fit in the trunk of a compact car. When millions of people can walk across our border with impunity what do you think the chances are we would catch something that size?”

– Sam Faddis, Retired CIA

Who was not impressed seeing the sudden and total collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge after getting its pylon bonked by the container ship Dali a few hours before the dawn’s early light in Baltimore harbor? In America’s ongoing death-of-a-thousand-cuts, that one literally severed a major artery, but it may take a while to know how badly the wounded colossus known as the USA is bleeding out.

“Joe Biden” emerged from his crypt pronto to state that the federal government would pony-up the cost of building the bridge back better, meant to reassure the public, you’d suppose. But perhaps the real reason was to obviate an otherwise requisite investigation of the crash by ship-owner Grace Ocean’s insurance company — since legal wrangling over responsibility would add more years to the already years-long estimated bridge replacement time-frame. And Gawd knows what else they might discover about how the darn thing came to pass. . . rumors of a Ukrainian captain at the Dali’s helm. . . stuff that the ruling intel blob might not want to get out there, especially given the still-murky role of the joint USA-UK black-op blobs in the Moscow Crocus Theater Massacre just a week earlier.

The Crocus op, you understand, was probably the worst clusterfuck qua Three Stooges blob operational procedure in memory, since four of the six surviving Tajiki shooters were nabbed in a car enroute to the Ukraine border (where they would’ve been whacked into silence, since they failed to martyr themselves at the scene-of-the-crime), and by now had surely sung their hearts out to persuasive interrogators of Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) — the take-away being that President VV Putin has got to be mighty pissed-off and itching for revenge. Was the FSK Bridge take-down the first repayment for that, lots of people inside and outside Blob Central were probably wondering?

You’d also have to wonder, qua the bridge disaster itself, about the implied reverberations through the insurance industry. Consider that the insurance industry is a major cog in the machinery of finance and banking, since insurance company reserves are traditionally allocated in supposedly safe sovereign treasury bonds. Liquidations anyone? Maritime insurance was already groaning under the burden of all that monkey-business in the Red Sea, thanks to Houthi rocket and drone attacks on the shipping of Western Civ. Are the banks quaking harder now? Many across Western Civ were already trembling before the FSK Bridge job.

While the awesome spectacle of the bridge collapse traumatized the country, it also brought to mind the fantastic flow of ten-thousand illegal border crossings a day, stage-managed by the “Joe Biden” Homeland Security team. Did you kind of wonder how many in that 10K-a-day flow might be the same species of Central Asian mutts who volunteered to slaughter over 150 (so far) Russian concert-goers? Nobody is checking who they are, you realize. They just step on US soil, get issued smartphones, loaded debit cards, walking-around cash money, airplane and bus tickets and, voila, there they are in your home town tomorrow, looking for something to occupy themselves. Thanks a bunch, Alejandro Mayorkas!

Are you wondering what sort of mayhem they might be capable of unleashing any place from Bangor to Burbank in the weeks and months ahead? (And, while you’re at it, think about all the food processing plant fires, train wrecks, and other mysterious tribulations around the country the past couple of years.) Consider that this very week alone, following the FSK Bridge disaster, absolutely nothing has been done by our government to stem that flow of countless potential saboteurs into the country. The news media isn’t even talking about it (of course).

The prospects might look a bit unnerving, wouldn’t you agree? Things catching fire, blowing up, and falling down here, there, and everywhere. . . more of those thousand cuts adding up. Just maybe, the dazed-and-confused (possibly hypnotized) American public, a.k.a., the “voters,” might put together that “Joe Biden” and the Party of Chaos that owns him, are actually responsible for the on-going take-down of our country. After a certain point — now apparently passed — sheer incompetence is no longer a plausible explanation for what you are seeing.

Oh, one other thing, look out for on-the-ground economic reverberations from the FSK Bridge disaster. For instance, Baltimore is the USA’s top port for importing and exporting automobiles. Also, earth-moving and large farm equipment, fertilizer, lumber, coal, and steel. Other arrangements must be made, for years ahead, considering the trucking links. It’s especially an interruption for trucking between the mid-Atlantic / New England states and much of Dixieland. It will affect the transport of fruits and vegetables to the Washington-Boston corridor. Things are going to cost more and we are already in an inflationary trouble-zone. How will this thunder elsewhere through an economy which, despite the japes of “Joe Biden’s” statisticians, is actively disintegrating? The fluttering wings of this black swan already throw a chill on spring’s incoming zephyrs.

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