Category: Conservative Politics

SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/tech/computers/item/35851-trump-targets-big-tech-silencing-of-conservatives-christians

TRUMP CUTS AID TO BIG TECH, CITING BIAS & CENSORSHIP

BY ALEX NEWMAN

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

President Donald Trump issued an executive order on May 28 targeting Big Tech companies for discriminating against conservatives and Christians, vowing to end federal support as well as liability protections for the Deep State-controlled firms if they continue silencing viewpoints their bosses disagree with. The U.S. president, whose supporters have long been targets of the Silicon Valley elite, blasted the social-media giants for their discrimination and also threatened that federal legislation might be coming soon to help rein in the attacks on free speech. There are even potential national-security concerns at stake, the president suggested.

Trump’s new policy, known simply as “Executive Order on Preventing Online Censorship,” does not impose any new restrictions or mandates on the companies in question. Instead, it targets federal benefits that have long been offered to the giant Deep State companies, many of which were launched with crucial help from U.S. taxpayer funds and other federal assistance. In particular, the order calls on various federal agencies and departments to revisit the broad protections offered for social-media and other tech firms under section 230 of the Communications Decency Act (CDA) exempting them from liability if they act as neutral platforms.

“It is the policy of the United States that the scope of that immunity should be clarified: the immunity should not extend beyond its text and purpose to provide protection for those who purport to provide users a forum for free and open speech, but in reality use their power over a vital means of communication to engage in deceptive or pretextual actions stifling free and open debate by censoring certain viewpoints,” Trump’s order said. Among other concerns, the president explained that the statute was designed to address court rulings establishing that if an online platform restricted some content, it should be treated as a publisher, making it liable for the content posted there. In short, the measure was supposed to help foster a “forum for a true diversity of political discourse.”

But that is not what happened. As virtually everybody knows now, the companies dropped everything but the pretense of neutrality many years ago. That process accelerated amid and after the 2016 election, with multiple individuals and organizations, such as Alex Jones’ Infowars, being completely deplatformed. Instead of neutrality, Trump said the Big Tech firms were engaged in “inappropriate political activism” and were seeking to rig the upcoming election in favor of Democrats. It would not be the first time the Deep State-controlled firms would try to tip the electoral scales, as top experts in the field such as Dr. Robert Epstein and multiple whistleblowers have pointed out over the years.

The new White House measure begins by pointing out that freedom of speech is a “bedrock” principle underpinning American self-government. “Our Founding Fathers protected this sacred right with the First Amendment to the Constitution,” explained the president in the text of the order, an action that victims of Big Tech had been asking the president to take since at least 2018. “The freedom to express and debate ideas is the foundation for all of our rights as a free people.”

The order cites court cases establishing that these tech companies, which long deceived consumers into believing they were neutral platforms, have now become the modern equivalent of the public square. And that dominance, the president argued, was partly a result of the firms deceiving users into believing they were neutral venues for Americans to communicate and express themselves, rather than left-wing activists seeking to manipulate and control what Americans could see and say.

“Section 230 was not intended to allow a handful of companies to grow into titans controlling vital avenues for our national discourse under the guise of promoting open forums for debate, and then to provide those behemoths blanket immunity when they use their power to censor content and silence viewpoints that they dislike,” Trump declared in his executive decree. “When an interactive computer service provider removes or restricts access to content and its actions do not meet the criteria of subparagraph (c)(2)(A), it is engaged in editorial conduct.”

Trump also explained the importance of all this to America and self-government. “In a country that has long cherished the freedom of expression, we cannot allow a limited number of online platforms to hand pick the speech that Americans may access and convey on the internet,” the president’s order continues. “This practice is fundamentally un-American and anti-democratic. When large, powerful social media companies censor opinions with which they disagree, they exercise a dangerous power. They cease functioning as passive bulletin boards, and ought to be viewed and treated as content creators.”

The executive decree calls on the federal government to quit using tax money to support companies that censor free speech, including through the purchasing of ads. It orders the heads of various agencies to review their spending on social media sites, and to consider the statutory authorities available to them to stop spending the American people’s hard-earned money propping up companies that seek to silence a significant segment of those taxpayers while manipulating the entire population. The Department of Justice is instructed to review the viewpoint discrimination imposed by the companies to assess whether these companies are problematic in terms of communicating with the public.

The order also directs the U.S. Attorney General to establish a working group that would examine the potential enforcement of state statutes prohibiting online platforms from using unfair practices or deception. In short, if the companies lied to consumers, or misled them, they may be in violation of statutes prohibiting such deception. Another task for the group would be to consider possible model legislation that could be considered by state legislatures where there are no state laws protecting consumers from such abuses. State attorneys general will be invited to participate in the discussion and consultation, according to the order.

One task for the working group will be to examine algorithms that are used to suppress content or users based on their perceived political views, and whether users are prohibited from earning money on those platforms based on their viewpoints. Another will be to collect information on whether the firms are subjecting users to increased scrutiny based on whom they may follow on the platforms. And the group is supposed to gather facts concerning the reliance of these firms on biased third parties to review content. This is something that conservatives subjected to smears by anti-Christian hate groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center are only too familiar with.

Interestingly, considering recent revelations about the Big Tech firms’ cozy relations with the mass-murdering regime in China, the working group is also tasked with gathering information on whether accounts associated with the Communist Chinese Party are benefiting from differential policies that enable Beijing and other regimes to do what Americans are not allowed to do. Depending on what is found, this could have massive potential national-security implications. Indeed, YouTube and Google were recently accused of automatically censoring anti-communist comments in Chinese, something that multiple U.S. lawmakers have expressed outrage about. The company blamed an unspecified “error.”

“At the same time online platforms are invoking inconsistent, irrational, and groundless justifications to censor or otherwise restrict Americans’ speech here at home, several online platforms are profiting from and promoting the aggression and disinformation spread by foreign governments like China,” Trump said, adding that some have even peddled paid Communist Chinese propaganda enabling barbarous human rights abuses such as the mass internment of Muslims. “One United States company, for example, created a search engine for the Chinese Communist Party that would have blacklisted searches for ‘human rights,’ hid data unfavorable to the Chinese Communist Party, and tracked users determined appropriate for surveillance. It also established research partnerships in China that provide direct benefits to the Chinese military.”

The abuses against Americans are an enormous problem, the order suggests. A year ago, Trump said in the measure, the White House launched a “Tech Bias Reporting tool” that allowed Americans to report incidents of online censorship by the Big Tech firms. In a matter of weeks, more than 16,000 official complaints were filed accusing the companies of censoring or restricting users based on their political viewpoints. Those complaints will be submitted to the Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). Those agencies will be tasked with reviewing whether the Big Tech firms have used “deceptive practices,” which are illegal, to dupe users into using their services by pretending to be neutral.

Also key will be legislation, Trump said. In the U.S. Senate, more than a few Republicans and even some Democrats, including presumed presidential nominee Joe Biden, have taken aim at the broad protections for Big Tech giants under the CDA. U.S. Senator Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, even promised on Twitter that he would “introduce legislation to end these special government giveaways” to social-media companies that act as an unfair subsidy and were designed to protect neutral platforms from liability, not publishers pushing a political agenda. Trump’s order calls on Attorney General William Barr to develop a proposal for federal legislation, too. Barr suggested a lawsuit was being planned as well.

The day before signing the order, Trump dropped a major hint that it was coming on Twitter, putting it in the context of election meddling and efforts to censor GOP officials while boosting Democrats. “Republicans feel that Social Media Platforms totally silence conservatives voices,” the president said. “We will strongly regulate, or close them down, before we can ever allow this to happen. We saw what they attempted to do, and failed, in 2016. We can’t let a more sophisticated version of that happen again.” In particular, Trump’s order noted that Representative Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) was still peddling the debunked “Russia collusion” conspiracy on social-media even recently, while Republicans are targeted even for speaking the truth.

Indeed, Trump’s order came shortly after a high-profile spat with Twitter. The controversial company allowed Chief of Site Integrity Yoel Roth, a radical anti-Trump activist who has openly expressed his hatred and contempt for Trump supporters, to put out a “fact check” purporting to discredit one of Trump’s tweets. “Twitter is now interfering in the 2020 Presidential Election,” the president said about the incident. “They are saying my statement on Mail-In Ballots, which will lead to massive corruption and fraud, is incorrect, based on fact-checking by Fake News CNN and the Amazon Washington Post. Twitter is completely stifling FREE SPEECH, and I, as President, will not allow it to happen!”

Indeed, this is hardly a new phenomenon. According to top experts in the field such as Dr. Robert Epstein, himself a supporter of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Google dishonestly managed to shift millions of undecided voters toward Clinton through rigged algorithms that were imperceptible to users — almost all of whom were deceived into believing the search-engine was a neutral arbiter. Leaked videos and Project Veritas interviews with insiders and whistleblowers at Big Tech firms also offered additional proof that the companies were brazenly rigging their platforms against conservatives while tricking users into believing they were neutral. Such practices have been described as “fraud” by more than a few critics.

But there is even more to the story. According to longtime D.C. insider Mike Lofgren, broadly credited with popularizing the term “Deep State” in American political discourse, Silicon Valley is a crucial part of the Deep State, alongside the security agencies, the Treasury, Wall Street, and the secret courts. As numerous media outlets have documented, the so-called intelligence community, including the CIA and the NSA, sometimes through their investment arm known as “In-Q-Tel,” played a key role creating many of the companies. Also crucial was the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), which helped Google early on.

Naturally, the beneficiaries of social-media efforts to silence conservatives, Republicans, Christians, and others expressed outrage about Trump’s efforts to rein in federal benefits for the Big Tech titans. “The proliferation of disinformation is extremely dangerous, particularly as our nation faces the deadliest pandemic in history,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said in a statement blasting the executive order. “Clearly and sadly, the President’s Executive Order is a desperate distraction from his failure to provide a national testing strategy to defeat COVID-19.” Establishment Beltway “think tanks” taking in large contributions from Big Tech were also critical, falsely suggesting that ending unfair federal benefits to Big Tech was tantamount to attacking free speech.

In an upcoming report, this writer will detail some of the outrageous efforts by Big Tech companies including YouTube, Facebook, and Google to silence The New American magazine. This has ranged from shadow banning and slapping obviously phony “fact checks” on content to rigged algorithms making TNA content invisible or even outright deleting it forever. While private companies in a free society have a right to prevent people from using their services for any reason, they do not have a right to special protections or taxpayer money. Neither do they have a right to deceive users into believing they are neutral platforms when they are not. Nor do they have a right to trick naive consumers into surrendering their personal data.

It is past time for the federal government to quit funding, boosting, and protecting rogue economic actors that are hostile to America’s most important and fundamental principles, including privacy and freedom of speech. President Trump’s order is a step in the right direction. However, over the long term, once the feds quit rigging the marketplace in favor of the Big Tech giants, it will be crucial that the free market provide alternatives to the anti-American giants of Silicon Valley. The sooner that happens, the better.

Related articles:

Trump’s Feud With Twitter Takes a Serious Turn

Exploiting COVID19, Big Tech Censors Become Big Brother

If Trump Loses in November, Blame Google and Facebook?

Google Caught Red-handed: Tried to Get Clinton Elected

Senior Google Engineer: Google Manipulates Results to Manipulate Elections

Freeing the Web From Big Tech

Big Tech Under Fire

The Way Forward: Bypassing Big Tech Censorship

Big Tech Censors Alex Jones — Who’s Next?

Executive Order Coming Against Big Tech Censorship?

Big Tech and Big Government Censoring the Internet. Who’s Next?

U.S. Tech Giants Join EU to Censor the Internet

How Google Censors The New American (and Other Conservatives)

Facebook Fraud: Ex-workers Admit They Censored Conservative News

TRUMP FORCED TO WITHDRAW HIS “ATF” NOMINATION

SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/35856-trump-forced-to-withdraw-his-atf-nomination

TRUMP FORCED TO WITHDRAW HIS “ATF” NOMINATION

BY BOB ADELMANN

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

When the White House pulled the nomination of Kenneth Charles “Chuck” Canterbury, Jr. (shown) to head up the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) last week, it didn’t say why. But Canterbury’s confirmation was in jeopardy almost from the beginning.

The White House announced the nomination a year ago, but after hearing what Canterbury had to say about his commitment, or lack of, to the Second Amendment, it died in committee.

During that hearing, GOP Senator John Kennedy of Louisiana expressed his frustration at Canterbury’s lack of candor: “I like straight answers, and you are being evasive. You have been nominated to run the ATF. I think every member of this panel, both my Democratic friends and Republican friends who have feelings about the Second Amendment, are entitled to know both morally and legally what you believe.”

His nomination suffered at the hands of the Gun Owners of America, which said that, while Canterbury was head of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP), the FOP “backed Congressional measures to expand the unconstitutional and failing NICS [background check] system … and … supported Universal Background Checks and opposed Constitutional Carry.”

The FOP itself didn’t help any, either, when it made plain is opposition to the Constitutional Concealed Carry Reciprocity Act under Canterbury’s leadership.

Canterbury’s nomination stalled, but was returned and revived by the president in February when he renominated him for the position. But his chances were sunk into oblivion when a letter was uncovered, dating back to January 2013, that Canterbury wrote to the Senate Judiciary Committee on behalf of the FOP, not only urging support for expanded background checks, but for “reinvigoration” and additional funding for the ATF “to ensure that it has the tools and resources necessary to [fulfill] its mission.”

Canterbury’s letter also supported the gathering of mental-health records “in the context of firearms acquisition” (whatever that’s supposed to mean), and more federal funding of state and local law-enforcement agencies “to put more State and local law enforcement officers on the street.”

Canterbury buried his nomination when, in the 2013 letter, he gave his reasons for more unconstitutional infringements:

We believe the most logical starting point to address gun violence is the expansion of the background check system. Incomplete or absent background checks create a gaping hole in the wall between firearms and criminals. Loopholes in the background check system give criminals unprecedented opportunity to access firearms. This problem must be remedied quickly….

We encourage you to consider expanding the resources available to ATF to combat firearms trafficking.… As things stand now, ATF has been scraping by with a dwindling number of agents and other resources while ATF’s mission has expanded. Frankly, this is unacceptable.

Things are so bad, complained Canterbury, that “there are jurisdictions out there telling civilians bluntly that they will have to defend themselves.”

In anticipation that he would be confirmed, Canterbury resigned from the FOP after 26 years. It’s hoped that he will now disappear altogether from public view. In the meantime, Regina Lombardo will continue in place as the Bureau’s acting director.

JEN HATMAKER SAYS “LGBTQ CHRISTIANS” PREACH IN HER CHURCH; CALLS FOR MASS EXODUS OF CONSERVATIVE DENOMINATIONS

SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/05/27/jen-hatmaker-says-lgbtq-christians-preach-in-her-church-calls-for-mass-exodus-of-conservative-denoms/

JEN HATMAKER SAYS “LGBTQ CHRISTIANS” PREACH IN HER CHURCH; CALLS FOR MASS EXODUS OF CONSERVATIVE DENOMINATIONS

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Jen Hatmaker, who first publicly renounced Christianity in an interview with Jonathan Merritt — a gay activist and son of former Southern Baptist Convention president, James Merritt — and says she first questioned Evangelical Christianity because gay people couldn’t have sex with each other, is now calling for a mass exodus from conservative, biblical denominations.

Hatmaker writes on her Facebook page a scathing denunciation of conservative biblical beliefs referring to those who hold to a biblical sexual ethic and treat the Scriptures as the inerrant and authoritative Word of God as denominations and churches that “diminish women” and “harm or exile LGBTQ Christians” and “peddle shame and guilt and sorrow.”

What Hatmaker fails to understand is that “shame and guilt and sorrow” for the unregenerate — like her — are actually a sign of mercy from God and a call to repentance and faith in Christ. Instead, Hatmaker continues to lift her middle finger to God by peddling sin and rebellion to those who need to actually hear the gospel.

Hatmaker conflates freedom in Christ with freedom to sin. Her version of “freedom” is actually a bondage to sin — an inability to escape sin and its consequences — and she inflicts this eternal damnation upon those who need to be set free.

The wrath of God is inescapable. Jesus was very clear: lest you repent, you too will perish (Luke 13:3,5).

Instead, Hatmaker is glad that gays preach in her church. I wonder if the “LGBTQ Christians who preach in her church ever preach on 1 Corinthians 6 or Romans 1. The fact remains that those who are in bondage to sin have not been set free in Christ and will not inherit the Kingdom of God.

She is right about one thing though: those who remain in rebellion to God’s design for us have demonstrated themselves to not be part of the body of Christ and should, well, “come on out.” In fact, they should be purged from among us as the Scriptures command.

God will judge those on the outside; but as the Scriptures say, “You must remove the evil person from among you.” — 1 Corinthians 5:13

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER-THE BIGGEST BLACKLIST IN AMERICAN HISTORY

SEE: https://www.jihadwatch.org/2020/05/sharia-youtube-bans-david-wood-video-on-muslim-persecution-of-christians-as-hate-speech;

SOUTHERN POVERTY LAW CENTER-THE BIGGEST BLACKLIST IN AMERICAN HISTORY

How this anti-American scourge works.

BY JOHN PERAZZO

SEE: https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/biggest-blacklist-american-history-john-perazzo;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

The left-wing Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a $592 million non-profit. It is also the creator and leader of the largest blacklist, by far, in American history. Its infamous list of “hate groups,” which currently consists of 940 separate entities in all 50 U.S. states, is the centerpiece of a massive smear campaign that conflates a small number of mostly insignificant fringe groups with entities whose sin is being politically conservative, but which are not “hate” groups in any meaningful sense of the word.

By equating a smattering of actual hate groups with respectable conservative organizations, SPLC seeks to delegitimize conservatives as repugnant monsters whose viewpoints do not merit a hearing. And by labeling mainstream conservative individuals and organizations as “hate mongers,” it seeks to deprive them of the funding they need to reach an audience or even stay alive. Consider, for instance, the SPLC’s branding of David Horowitz, founder of the David Horowitz Freedom Center, as an “anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim extremist” and as one of the “10 Most Dangerous Hatemongers” in the United States — solely because he opposes illegal immigration and warns against the dangers of Islamic jihad.

After Horowitz gave a speech to the bi-partisan American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) in August 2018, SPLC organized a boycott that singled out his remarks as worthy of suppression and called on ALEC’s corporate sponsors to withdraw their support. The actual sin Horowitz committed was confined to one sentence in which he referred to Black Lives Matter as a “racist organization” and the Muslim Brotherhood as a “terrorist” group.[1] Within two weeks, 79 leftist organizations had joined the boycott. This led to the withdrawal of financial support by major corporations like Verizon, AT&T, and Dow Chemical, and the loss of tens of thousands of dollars for ALEC.

The following month, SPLC’s slurs were the basis of major media attacks smearing Republican gubernatorial candidate Ron DeSantis as a “white supremacist” for appearing at a Restoration Weekend event hosted by Horowitz, who was described as “an infamous racist” in a headline that appeared in the Huffington Post. (As a side note to this baseless slander, Horowitz is a friend of Arianna Huffington — who founded but no longer owns the Post — and was married in her home.)

The SPLC blacklist is enabled by — and could not be successful without — the mindless support of media outlets like the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Vanity Fair, and so-called “liberal” organizations like People for the American Way and Common Cause. It is also empowered by major support from billionaires like Apple CEO Tim Cook and JP Morgan chairman Jamie Dimon, and by the charitable arms of such major American corporations as Amazon.

Amazon’s alliance with SPLC is institutionalized in its popular “AmazonSmile” program, through which customers can purchase Amazon products at their regular prices and then indicate, at checkout, that they wish to have Amazon redirect 0.5% of the payment to a charitable nonprofit organization of the customer’s choice. In fiscal 2018, AmazonSmile funneled some $44 million to non-profits via this program.

But not every governmentally recognized non-profit is eligible to receive Amazon’s largesse. Amazon warns its customers that “organizations that engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities are not eligible to participate.” Among the organizations denied Amazon charity on these grounds is the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the chief legal non-profit group committed to protecting religious liberty. ADF is ineligible for Amazon’s program because it defends the First Amendment rights of religious organizations to hold views that SPLC doesn’t support.

ADF, by its own telling, provides legal advocacy “for the right of people to freely live out their faith,” with a specific focus on “cases involving religious liberty issues, the sanctity of human life, and marriage and family.” In other words, ADF thinks that if a religious organization opposes taxpayer-funded abortion-on-demand, or believes that marriage should be defined explicitly as a sacramental union between one man and one woman, such an entity should be allowed, in accordance with the First Amendment, to freely espouse those particular values.

But to the leftists at the Southern Poverty Law Center, the defense of the First Amendment by organizations like ADF is a “hateful” endeavor which merits the group’s inclusion in the SPLC blacklist. And AmazonSmile, in turn, has dutifully declared itself off-limits to ADF. As one AmazonSmile spokesperson has acknowledged: “We remove organizations that the SPLC deems as ineligible.” And by that chain of unexamined “evidence” — i.e., the mere word of SPLC — the blacklist works.

ADF is just one of scores of mainstream religious organizations that have been targeted by SPLC. In particular, SPLC depicts any entity objecting to transformative cultural changes involving homosexuals — such as gay marriage — as a “hate” group whose opinions have no more legitimacy than those of an Aryan militia. In this way, SPLC classifies the conservative Family Research Council, a Christian public policy ministry, as yet another purveyor of hate. And in accordance with SPLC’s guidance, AmazonSmile has removed the Council from the list of charities eligible to receive AmazonSmile donations.

The D. James Kennedy Ministries (DJKM), whose mission is to proclaim “the Gospel of Jesus Christ” as widely as possible, likewise opposes the notion that marriage should be redefined to include same-sex unions. Consequently, SPLC has defamed DJKM as yet another “active hate group.” And AmazonSmile, in turn, refuses to direct any of its customer funds to DJKM. But in fact, there is not the faintest trace of “hate” in DJKM’s message. As Ministries spokesman John Rabe has said: “We desire all people, with no exceptions, to receive the love of Christ and his forgiveness and healing. We unequivocally condemn violence, and we hate no one.”

Other noteworthy Christian groups blacklisted by both SPLC and AmazonSmile include the Religious Freedom Coalition (RFC), the Ruth Institute, and the Saint Benedict Center — all of which are guilty of the apparently unpardonable sin of opposing same-sex marriage on religious grounds. When a spokesman for the Saint Benedict Center, Brother André Marie, asked Amazon to explain why his Center had been barred from participating in AmazonSmile, the company told him candidly: “We rely on the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which charities are in certain ineligible categories. You have been excluded from the AmazonSmile program because the Southern Poverty Law Center lists Saint Benedict Center Inc. in an ineligible category.”

In stark contrast to its shabby treatment of the aforementioned Christian groups, AmazonSmile has had absolutely no objection to passing along 0.5% of its customer expenditures to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which was co-founded by individuals with close ties to Hamas — a proudly genocidal organization of murderous Jew-haters. Terrorism expert Steven Emerson, citing federal law-enforcement sources and internal documents, has bluntly described CAIR as “a radical fundamentalist front group for Hamas.”

AmazonSmile is likewise happy to funnel some of its customer funds to the Islamic Center of Jersey City (ICJC), an institution whose imam, in a recent sermon, not only characterized Israeli Jews as “apes and pigs,” but also besought Allah’s assistance in killing them, right “down to the very last one.” Moreover, a former ICJC imam was a Hamas activist who was named on a “List of Possible Unindicted Co-conspirators for the [1993] World Trade Center Bombing.”

The Islamic Circle of North America (ICNA) — a Jew-hating entity that praises terror attacks, supports the imposition of Sharia Law, promotes the establishment of an Islamic caliphate, has ties to the radical Pakistani group Jamaat-e-Islami, and is closely linked to the Muslim Brotherhood — is also an AmazonSmile member in perfectly good standing.

Similarly, the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA), which promotes Sharia Law and Islamic supremacism, is free to rake in loads of cash through AmazonSmile. Established by U.S-based members of the Muslim Brotherhood, ISNA was identified by declassified FBI memos as a Brotherhood front group as early as 1987. Four years after that, ISNA was explicitly named in a Brotherhood document as one of 29 likeminded Islamic organizations that shared the common goal of carrying out a “grand Jihad” in America and “destroying … Western civilization from within.” But it’s not a “hate group,” according to the cheerful, grinning folks at AmazonSmile and the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Obviously, the double standards of AmazonSmile are many. But perhaps most troubling is the fact that the single most noteworthy beneficiary of the program is none other than the Southern Poverty Law Center itself. That’s correct: The principal gatekeeper that determines who should, and who should not, be permitted to earn money through AmazonSmile, routinely stuffs its own deep pockets with AmazonSmile cash. Indeed, SPLC is currently the 33rd leading recipient of contributions through AmazonSmile. This of course is in keeping with SPLC’s legendary aptitude for wringing every last penny out of every cash cow in the proverbial barn. Today SPLC boasts a $592 million endowment, of which nearly 30% is sheltered in offshore tax havens.

In their crusade against conservative organizations, SPLC and AmazonSmile have plenty of company. For instance, Color of Change has pressured corporations to cut all business and commercial ties to entities that SPLC designates as “hate groups.”

Similarly, BloodMoney.org will not be satisfied until all “financial service companies” stop “profiting from hate” by “tolerating the use of their services by hate groups.” In short, BloodMoney favors the blacklisting and economic suffocation of conservative groups in much the same way as AmazonSmile does. Particularly remarkable is the fact that BloodMoney has named none other than Amazon as a company guilty of conducting business with various “hate groups” that pursue “dangerous agendas.” In other words, AmazonSmile’s blacklist doesn’t go far enough for BloodMoney, which boasts that, as a result of its own blacklisting efforts, “158 funding sources have been removed from white supremacist sites.”

In 2017, Discover, Visa, MasterCard, and PayPal — much like AmazonSmile — blacklisted a number of organizations deemed objectionable by self-anointed arbiters of “hate” like SPLC, Color of Change, and BloodMoney. As PayPal said in a statement at that time, its own objective was to “ensure that our services are not used to accept payments or donations for activities that promote hate, violence or racial intolerance.”

While aiming to deprive conservative organizations of funding from a host of sources, leftist entities like Amazon and SPLC unapologetically seek to pack as much cash as possible into their own massive coffers. Business Insider recently published an article speculating that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos is on track to become the world’s first trillionaire by the year 2026. And if present trends continue, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s holdings may surpass the $1 billion mark at just about that same time. Such a parallel would be a fitting reflection of AmazonSmile’s unique relationship with SPLC — one gang of reckless slanderers lining the pockets of another, in an obscenely crooked, rigged charade.

The SPLC’s massive blacklist is sustained by a powerful movement on the left and in the Democratic Party, which is determined to suppress its conservative opposition and create a one-party state — a feat it has already accomplished in our colleges and universities and in large swathes of our media institutions.

Notes:

[1] The full text of the speech is available HERE.

TIME TO CONFRONT THE TYRANNY OF SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP

May 29, 2020 John

TWITTER STOCK PLUMMETS AS TRUMP SIGNS EXECUTIVE ORDER

ON BIG TECH CENSORSHIP!!!

★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★ President Trump is officially signing an executive order dealing directly with the plague of social media censorship! That’s right; in this video, we’re going to take a look at the executive order and how it addresses Big Tech’s propensity towards censoring conservative and populist voices, and how both Twitter and Facebook, in particular, are ALREADY feeling its consequences; this is going to make your day, you’re not going to want to miss it!

TIME TO CONFRONT THE TYRANNY OF SOCIAL MEDIA CENSORSHIP

BY LARRY KEANE

SEE: https://www.nssf.org/time-to-confront-the-tyranny-of-social-media-censorship/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

It’s time the little blue birds of Twitter come home to roost. While we’re at it, clean out the henhouse of Facebook, Instagram, Google and the other plucky tech giants.

The Trump administration is laying the groundwork to fence them all in for their blatant discrimination. It’s about time. Where’s the “hell-yes” emoji?

Under consideration is the creation of a White House commission to explore allegations of anticonservative bias by social media businesses. Interestingly, it’s coming from the most prolific Twitter user to occupy the White House. It’s also not the first time President Donald Trump’s torched social media platforms, according to The Hill, which reported the president tweeted in 2019 the tech giants engage in, “tremendous dishonesty, bias, discrimination and suppression practiced by certain companies. We will not let them get away with it much longer.”

Vice President Mike Pence told Breitbart, “Well, the president has made it very clear that we are not going to tolerate censorship on the Internet and social media against conservatives. We’re just not going to tolerate it.”

The pressure is building. News broke last year that the Justice Department was investigating unspecified online platforms to consider concerns raised about “search, social media and some retail services online.” Independently, 47 state attorneys general are probing Facebook for antitrust violations.

The firearm and ammunition industry has more than a few instances of documented antigun bias by social media companies. There’s a love-hate relationship with the social media platforms. They’ve become so ubiquitous that it’s nearly impossible to reach customers without them. NSSF has argued they’ve become the virtual public square, where people from every walk of life can not only see pictures and video of friends and family, but express ideas, debate topics and participate in civic discourse. That is, of course, if they’re allowed.

Community Standards

Jessica Keffer, the marketing manager for the Sportsman’s Shop in East Earl, Pa., went on Fox and Friends to describe the discrimination her business faced from Facebook. She was booted for advertising on Facebook over American flags. Keffer’s ad wasn’t about gun sales, but with her attempt to boost an “Honor the Flag” promotion. The ad was approved and then rejected. The reason given was, “It’s because you have a link to your website on your page which does sell firearms. That’s also against our policies I’m afraid.”

The ad had nothing to do with selling guns and while the Sportsman’s Shop sells guns, all sales are completed in a face-to-face transaction, and with a background check, in accordance with federal and state laws.

Keffer was pointed to Facebook’s Prohibited Content section, a part of the social media giants Ad Policies. “Ads must not promote the sale or use of weapons, ammunition, or explosives,” one of the subsections reads. But Keffer’s ad was about flags, not guns. The Daily Caller dug deeper and Facebook told them since the page links back to the shop’s website, which advertises guns, they canned the ad.

Google It

It wasn’t just Mark Zuckerburg’s baby. Tech giant Google assigns a “Family Status” to every product in the Google Shopping function. In 2012, Google moved firearm-related content to the same “non family safe” category as adult content. The bias didn’t end there.

Google discriminated against Rocky Mountain Elk Foundation, a conservation organization that is dedicated to putting millions of acres into perpetual trusts and conservation lands and restoring wild elk populations across America. RMEF wanted to promote an eight-minute video about the benefits of hunting to conservation. Google labeled it “animal cruelty.”

It didn’t get turned around until U.S. Sen. Steve Daines (R-Mont.) and U.S. Rep. Greg Gianforte (R-Mont.) sent a letter to Google’s CEO demanding answers.

It wasn’t the first time, either. Google owns YouTube, which shut down Brownells’ channel without warming in 2018. Brownells’ 69,000 subscribers, and the company, were left in the dark. Brownells issued a social media call-to-arms and their customers responded and YouTube restored the channel. The whole dustup was for supposed “violating YouTube Community Guidelines.” Even founder of Ars Techica and former Wired editor Jon Stokes scratching his head. He’s plugged into all things in the tech world and he couldn’t make the connection to any community standard that would have possibly posed a hazard.

Stokes tweeted, “I gotta say something else about this. Brownells is like the stodgiest, old-schoolest, non-tactical, non- ‘assault rifle’, old-hunting-guy brand in the gun world. When your platform has summarily executed Brownells, you’ve just gone too far.”

Infringing Rights

These tech giants, for years, have been infringing First Amendment rights to quash Second Amendment rights. Buying and selling guns is a constitutionally-protected right. A three-judge panel at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit said as much in their ruling on Teixeira vs. Alameda County that reads “the right to purchase and sell firearms is part and parcel of the historically recognized right to keep and bear arms.”

Social media corporations have been suppressing the firearm industry, gun ownership, firearm safety and anything that could be related to guns in the name of “community standards” and what they determine to be in the best interests of Americans. That right doesn’t belong to virtual overlords. That free exchange of ideas belongs to the people.

It’s time the blue birds came home to roost.

___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

Sharia YouTube bans David Wood video on Muslim persecution of Christians as “hate speech”

BY ROBERT SPENCER

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

You can view the video that YouTube banned here. SEE: https://www.bitchute.com/video/Z5EtGvohkXY8/

As noted many times here, “hate speech” is not, contrary to the assumption of indoctrinated college students everywhere, a readily identifiable category. It is a subjective term that is used by the powerful to silence the powerless. The powers behind YouTube don’t want you to know about the Islamic persecution of Christians. Thus it is “hate speech” and must be banned.

As this continues, the freedom of society itself will be threatened. Once the social media giants can silence people unchallenged, they can wield absolute power, for who will have a platform to challenge them, even the President of the United States?

I warned about all this in my book The Complete Infidel’s Guide to Free Speech (and Its Enemies). But that book was, of course, “hate speech.”

_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

So Far, No Twitter Punishment for Kathy Griffin After Another Trump-should-die Tweet

BY R. CORT KIRKWOOD

SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/politics/item/35842-so-far-no-twitter-punishment-for-kathy-griffin;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Kathy Griffin, the has-been comedienne who wrecked her career after publishing a photo of herself holding a bloody, severed head that resembled President Trump, is at it again.

Apparently determined to finish what she started in 2017, the foul-mouthed redhead tweeted that the president should be injected with a syringe filled with air, which would cause an air bubble in his vein, and possibly, kill him.

Though the tweet was deleted because it violated Twitter’s rules, Twitter has not suspended the perpetually angry woman’s account, a not surprising pass given that the social-media platform, as The New American reported today, permits its own executives to violate its rules with impunity.

The Tweet
The occasion of Griffin’s latest outrage was her tweet that replied to one from CNN’s White House reporter, Jim Acosta, who had observed that Trump, speaking at an event about protecting seniors with diabetes, said he doesn’t use insulin.

Replied Griffin, “Syringe with nothing but air on the inside should do the trick. F*** Trump.”

Such an injection would result in a potentially fatal air or gas embolism, which might travel to the heart or brain.

When the Washington Examiner tweeted its story about Griffin’s remark, she was unchastened: “I SURE DID, F***ER.”

To another individual who tweeted that Twitter was looking into it, she was even nastier: “Go f*** yourself. Do you wanna tussle with me, you f***ing amateur?”

Regardless, the original tweet “is no longer available because it violated the Twitter Rules,” the social-media site’s replacement notice says.

Dox the Covington Kids
Twitter is, of course, selective in what it requires radical leftists to delete.

Example: Griffin’s crazy tweets after the media smeared Covington Catholic High School kids as racists. Using manipulated video, media leftists subjected the students to the usual Two Minutes Hate after a “Native American elder,” who falsely claimed to be a war hero, started a confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial after the March for Life.

Griffin didn’t wait to find out what really happened, and instead rushed to Twitter and called for a doxing and public humiliation:

The reply from the school was pathetic and impotent. Name these kids. I want NAMES. Shame them. If you think these f****rs wouldn’t dox you in a heartbeat, think again….

Names please. And stories from people who can identify them and vouch for their identity. Thank you.

Griffin’s tweets could have inspired a deranged follower to harm one or more of the students, but Twitter did nothing. The tweets are still available, though they clearly “violated the Twitter rules,” which say “you may not engage in the targeted harassment of someone, or incite other people to do so.”

The students sued Griffin for the attempted doxing, but a federal judge tossed the case because her tweets were not acts committed within the jurisdiction of the federal court in Kentucky.

Downward Spiral
Twitter rages, it seems, are Griffin’s only means of inviting publicity.

After she posed holding the bloody visage of Trump’s head two years ago, her career stopped cold.

Though she apologized, she lost her gig co-hosting CNN’s New Year’s Eve special with Anderson Cooper, and also piqued the interest of the Secret Service. Not surprisingly, she retracted her apology.

Griffin claimed the president made her “unemployable and insurable.”

Actually, Griffin made herself “unemployable and insurable,” but in any event she thought a documentary about her travails might earn some money. Last year’s Kathy Griffin: A Hell of a Story was a pathetic failure. It earned just $208,907 in 648 theaters over 301 days in release, Box Office Mojo reported.

That’s about $1.07 per theater per day.

Nor has Griffin’s career done much better since.

The comedienne’s website reports “NO CURRENT TOUR DATES.”

DEEP STATE “CONTACT TRACING” TO END PRIVACY~PHONE APPS, MICROCHIPS UNDER CHILDREN’S SKIN, HOME VISITS BY SWAT TEAMS

May 28, 2020 John

DEEP STATE “CONTACT TRACING”

TO END PRIVACY

In this episode of Behind the Deep State, host Alex Newman exposes the Deep State organizations and individuals working to shred privacy and invade your home with so-called “contact tracing.” From HR 6666 and phone apps for tracking you to microchips under the skin for children and home visits splitting up families, the agenda is totalitarian to the core. And yet, with very little resistance, this scheme is moving forward at the state and even global level under the World Health Organization. Clinton, Soros, Gates, and other globalist Deep Staters are involved. Humanity must resist to stay free. ▶️ More Videos: Bill Gates: Globalist Technocrat to “Save” You With Mandatory Vaccines? https://youtu.be/2YB1eAJtDEw Fighting Coronavirus With Tyranny & Globalism https://youtu.be/yU_vKl5LnU8 Deep State Weaponizing Coronavirus Against Freedom https://youtu.be/NCOMBWlYyr8 📰 Read Alex’s Full Article: https://bit.ly/contact-tracing-article 🇺🇸 The New American: http://www.thenewamerican.com/ 📲 Let’s Connect! http://www.facebook.com/TheNewAmerican https://twitter.com/NewAmericanMag https://www.instagram.com/newamerican… #ContactTracing #AlexNewman

CONNECTICUT: MICROSOFT BANS HEALTHCARE WORKER JOSIAH DAN FROM SKYPE 24 HOURS AFTER ALEX JONES INTERVIEW

May 27, 2020 John

MICROSOFT BANS HEALTHCARE WORKER

FROM SKYPE 24 HOURS AFTER

ALEX JONES INTERVIEW

Big Tech continues to censor anyone who doesn’t regurgitate the establishment narrative

SEE: https://www.infowars.com/microsoft-bans-healthcare-worker-from-skype-24-hours-after-alex-jones-interview/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

Microsoft-owned Skype has frozen the account of a healthcare worker a day after he appeared on The Alex Jones Show to discuss the coronavirus hysteria and misinformation.

The day after talking with Alex Jones on his Sunday show about the globalists’ coronavirus takeover plan, CT nurse Josiah Dan noticed he’d been locked out of his Microsoft account indefinitely after trying to interview someone on Skype.

“My interviewer sent me a link to connect with the call, I tried to connect and it wouldn’t let me access to my Skype,” Dan told Infowars Tuesday.

“It brought me to the login page, and when I tried to log in it sent me on a wild goose chase to try to find where to fix the problem.”

“When I went to try and fix it, it gave me that message that I violated their terms for use.”

“I still haven’t been able to access Skype,” he continued. “I just tried to do what the website suggested which was to give them my information and then they’d be sending a text message to be able to fix the error, and I haven’t received any text message yet.”

This should terrify everyone.

Microsoft has set a new precedent; they’re now censoring the private correspondence of individuals for the crime of wrongthink.

Catch the full Sunday interview with Josiah Dan below:

21 years as a Health Care Worker, RN Josiah Dan gives a great speech about what he is seeing on the front lines of the COVID Plandemic

__________________________________________________________________
SEE ALSO:

MEMORIAL DAY BALTIMORE, MARYLAND: GOD BLESS AMERICA-PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FULL SPEECH

May 27, 2020 John

MEMORIAL DAY BALTIMORE, MARYLAND:

GOD BLESS AMERICA-

PRESIDENT TRUMP’S FULL SPEECH

“MASS RESISTANCE” HELPING WEST VIRGINIA OFFICIALS CONFRONT PROPOSED LGBT ORDINANCE~BEING PUSHED ON TOWN BY NATIONAL MOVEMENT

“MASS RESISTANCE” HELPING WEST VIRGINIA OFFICIALS CONFRONT PROPOSED LGBT ORDINANCE~BEING PUSHED ON TOWN

BY NATIONAL MOVEMENT

“Transgender” activist leading the effort is exposed by MassResistance – as convicted child molester!

SEE: https://www.massresistance.org/docs/gen4/20b/WV-city-fighting-SOGI-proposal/index.html;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

"Dee Dee" McIntosh, a man dressed as a woman, surrounded by fellow LGBT activists,

addresses the city council of Star City, WV demanding that they pass a radical LGBT

non-discrimination ordinance.

It’s been happening in relatively conservative cities and towns across America: Massively funded LGBT organizations come in and force the local city councils to pass onerous “sexual orientation and gender identity” non-discrimination ordinances. They use sophisticated propaganda and intimidation tactics. They bring in crowds of angry LGBT “citizens” from surrounding areas (and even other states) to intimidate the politicians and local conservatives. Unfortunately, these campaigns have been successful across the country.

But this time our local MassResistance chapter is on the ground to turn their tactics around and derail the push!

Star City, West Virginia is a fairly conservative suburb of Morgantown. Although the state of West Virginia is relatively conservative, Morgantown (located just south of Pittsburgh) is dominated by West Virginia University and other local colleges. It has become a center for LGBT activism in that region.

The “SOGI” ordinance

Near the end of last year a local LGBT activist – a bizarre man who dresses as a woman and calls himself Dee Dee McIntosh – came to the City Council meeting and with a crowd of other LGBT activists. He presented a “sexual-orientation gender-identity” (SOGI) non-discrimination ordinance that his group wanted the city to enact.

Local TV screenshot of “Dee Dee” at the City Council meeting – clearly a very strange man!

Dee Dee McIntosh’s ordinance was written by PFLAG, a powerful national LGBT organization that also pushes homosexuality and transgenderism in public schools, colleges, and other public venues across the country. PFLAG has a very active chapter in Morgantown.

PFLAG is a powerful, well-funded national LGBT activist group.

The text of the ordinance is cleverly crafted to blend homosexuality and transgenderism with race, religion, and other common non-discrimination categories. It says it seeks to “promote the public health and welfare” and ensure that “all persons have equal access to employment, housing, and public accommodations.”

The legal penalties for violations of the proposed ordinance are vague. But the real muscle is in a clause that allows the ordinance to be enforced “through a private civil action” in court.

In other words, it sets up the national LGBT movement to do what they’re doing across America: Swoop in and sue individual businesses who refuse to toe the line on transgender or homosexual demands. And you can be sure that the LGBT activists will be aggressively seeking to entrap local businesses.

But even without the “private civil action” clause, getting homosexuality and transgenderism written into the city ordinance gives the movement the ability to be in everyone’s faces – from “gay” parades to “gay/trans” library books, LGBT school programs, and much more.

Working to get the ordinance passed

In late 2019, the radicals were already moving forward on their propaganda campaign, with their emotional appeal that the town desperately needed “civil rights protections to people of all sexual orientations and gender identities.” It’s a psychologically confusing approach that can be very effective, especially on weak-minded people who “just want to be fair.”

When the proposal was presented, the Council sent it to its Ordinance Sub-Committee, but did not subsequently put it on the full Council agenda for discussion. So at the February, 2020 City Council meeting, Dee Dee McIntosh came back with his LGBT group and also got a Morgantown TV station to show up and report on his demand. (Unfortunately for him, the TV report accentuates his deep male voice.)

The term “much-anticipated” is from the biased media, not the town’s citizens.

Dee Dee told the TV reporters he will keep coming to the City Council meetings until the ordinance gets passed. His LGBT activists clearly intend to do whatever it takes to intimidate the politicians into caving in.

The City Council of Star City is bracing to deal with the LGBT onslaught.

MassResistance gets involved

In late February, West Virginia MassResistance got word of all this and reached out to the City Council. The politicians who got back to us said they welcomed our help. They admitted that they were concerned that the LGBT movement was organizing in Star City and gaining momentum to force this through.

Our activists immediately began contacting local religious leaders and conservative activists to get our own momentum started.

MassResistance exposes “Dee Dee” as convicted child molester

MassResistance activists also decided to do some research on just who “Dee Dee McIntosh” really is. What they found was incredibly shocking – but unfortunately not so unusual.

“Dee Dee” is actually Donald David McIntosh. According to published records, he is a convicted child molester who served time in jail. McIntosh was a schoolteacher in Morgantown who was convicted on three counts of molesting elementary and middle school children.

This information wasn’t that hard to find. Only MassResistance cared to look for it!

But it gets even worse.

McIntosh attempted to vacate his conviction on appeal. In the appellate ruling obtained by MassResistance, The State of West Virginia v. David McIntosh, we discovered that according to testimony during the trial against him, McIntosh actually had a long history – nearly 40 years! – of abusing minor children who were under his care as a teacher.

According to our West Virginia MassResistance activists in the Morgantown area, Donald McIntosh’s predatory behavior against children was all too well known. The Monogalia County school district allegedly moved him around from school to school, providing cover for the perverted teacher’s predatory behavior. The testimony in his trial came from victims who were in elementary school, middle school, and one in ninth grade (high school) at the time of the crimes.

At one point in the late 1980s (according to court documents), in response to complaints the school system mandated that:

[McIntosh] was not to have physical contact with students, was not to be alone with a child in any part of the building, and was not to engage in one-on-one conversations with a child.

It appears that the mainstream media was too enamored with the LGBT movement to take the time to look into McIntosh’s background, as bizarre a person as he clearly is.

But in fact, it has become increasingly alarming how many LGBT activists are connected to the sex trade, sexual deviance, and even criminal conduct of a sexual nature.

These revelations about “Dee Dee” McIntosh should be enough to quash the City Council’s further interest in pursuing any kind of non-discrimination ordinance for LGBT behaviors and so-called identities. But of course, this won’t stop the local LGBT activists and the national groups like PFLAG from continuing to push their agenda – because it doesn’t bother them. And they know that most local news organizations and conservative groups would never bother to look into their criminal backgrounds. But MassResistance does!

Final thoughts

Our activists in the Morgantown and Star City area are definitely ready to roll on this!

You may recall our report this past February about our outstanding West Virginia Chapter in Morgantown – which stopped a hideous “Drag Queen Story Hour” from taking place in the public library. They did it by publicly revealing the depraved activity of the Drag Queens who would be reading to the children, and also the criminal conviction of one of them. With that information, they forced the politicians to completely back down – despite the fury of the LGBT activists.

(MassResistance has also uncovered past criminal activity by public library “Drag Queens” in Houston and Austin.)

Because of the COVID-19 virus, the next City Council meeting in Star City is not until July. We will be ready for it – and let you know what happens!

BIDEN’S “YOU AIN’T BLACK” DISASTER AS BLACKS BEGIN LEAVING THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

BIDEN’S “YOU AIN’T BLACK” DISASTER

AS BLACKS BEGIN LEAVING

THE DEMOCRAT PARTY

★★★ A NEW CONSERVATIVE AGE IS RISING ★★★

Joe Biden’s ‘You Ain’t Black’ flub is proving to be an abject DISASTER as more and more Blacks Begin LEAVING the Democrat Party; that’s right! In this video, we’re going to take a look at the fallout from Biden’s comments, how the mainstream media has done their best to cover-up for him, and the how media’s attempt at damage control has failed, with more and more blacks leaving the Democrat Party; you’re going to love it!

FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED FROM COVID-19

FIVE THINGS I’VE LEARNED FROM COVID-19

Reflections on the people you thought you could trust, the rise of the new neighborhood Gestapo – and much more.

BY KATIE HOPKINS

SEE:https://cms.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2020/05/5-things-i-have-learned-covid-19-katie-hopkins;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

Five things I have learned from COVID-19:

1. People Overreact.

In the absence of knowing what to do, people need to do something.

The masses feel better when they are preparing to defend themselves against an invisible threat, even if this makes no sense whatsoever. Like pregnant mums writing a birthing plan, only for it to go out the window the minute you realize pushing something the size of a watermelon out of something the size of a doughnut is going to sting a bit.

When the threat of coronavirus came, ordinarily sane people were caught doing the strangest things: freezing onions, fighting over toilet paper, putting beans in their loft space.

It is comforting to know that the most fearful in our society will never need to buy toilet paper again.

2. We Have Some Dodgy Friends.

The massive overreaction to coronavirus has been horrible to watch. What’s worse is seeing it happen in people you regarded as good friends, or at least solid people to turn to for advice. Those whose counsel you may have sought on matters ranging from marriage to kids are now driving their car with a mask on, dictating what you aren’t allowed to do on WhatsApp, and spraying their Amazon parcels with anti-bac.

It has been disturbing to learn that people you thought you could trust are as mad as the rest of the herd.

3. You Can Understand How Hitler Happened.

Too many people enjoy imposing rules on others. Corona has unleashed the militant side of busybodies who used to be harmless, grumpy old men and women and are now something akin to the neighborhood Gestapo. They enjoy telling you how to ride your bike, how far away you have to stand for their safety, and how many times you can walk your dog.

I took my children surfing at a local beach and residents were demanding to know ‘where we came from’ – like Germans checking papers in the war. My 15-year-old replied, ‘Wuhan,’ and that seemed to end the conversation quite effectively.

Stanley Milgram’s electric shock studies from the 1960s, in which volunteers were prepared to inflict pain on others when ordered to do so, now make perfect sense. I never really understood how Hitler brainwashed so many people for so long, until coronavirus came along.

4. Politicians Will Cover their Backs at all Costs.

And I mean all costs. The UK should never have been in lockdown.

All decisions made after 24 March 2020 have been about maintaining the myth that lockdown was necessary, solely to cover the backs of those who created it. The evidence is right there in our faces: enormous emergency hospitals opened to great applause, then quietly mothballed because they were never needed. You may try and argue that empty hospitals are a good thing, but if there was so much extra capacity, why did the British NHS send elderly patients with COVID-19 back to care homes and cancel all cancer and cardiac treatments?

As we “speak” here, yet another Zombie Hospital is being built for patients that don’t exist for a threat that never was. A team of 100 builders are working full-time to create 120 beds in a hospital that will not have its own staff, in a part of the country with the fewest cases of coronavirus. I went to visit the build-site to see for myself.

Watch Katie’s video: ‘Another Zombie Hospital for Invisible Patients’:

5. I Quite Like My Family.

It’s not that I disliked them before, you understand. But being on the road three weeks out of four fighting for the Conservative cause means I didn’t get to see a whole lot of them. Plus, they have their own busy lives regardless of what I am up to: school, friends, trips, work. In “normal times” our home was a buzzing hive of activity, and the little Hopkins tribe were like bees, sometimes angry, sometimes sleepy, passing each other on our way in or out.

Coronavirus has stopped all that. Like many other families, most of our time is now spent with each other.

I am not saying there haven’t been times I have locked myself in a bathroom and screamed silently into a bath towel. I absolutely lost it the other day when I felt my family was not taking our family quiz seriously enough, but, generally, it turns out my family is actually rather nice. And I know I am lucky.

We are wonky in all the wrong places, not so great at math challenges and pretty hopeless at looking cool. I suspect we are more Addams Family than Whole Foods Family, but my mother and I have spent proper time together having picnics in the sunshine, my father has built me the sweetest postbox in the world, and my children and I have cycled endlessly, like a little flotilla of ducks on the water. I know other families are not so lucky, and I wish I could take their children to the countryside and put them under my wing too.

I have hated coronavirus: the malevolence of China and its virus, the British Government’s reaction to it, the destruction of jobs, the vile behavior of my neighbors, the willingness of some to comply with idiocy.

But I have loved allowing myself to be a daughter and a mum, and letting those things matter more.

GOVERNMENT ACTION PUTS CHURCHES UNDER “THE GUN”

This article originally appeared on WHYY.org.

GOVERNMENT ACTION PUTS CHURCHES

UNDER “THE GUN”

BY ROGER KATZ

SEE: https://www.ammoland.com/2020/05/government-action-puts-churches-under-the-gun/#axzz6NXp4Okb7;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

U.S.A. –-(AmmoLand.com)- America is first and foremost a Christian Nation. This isn’t hypothesis, or hyperbole, or manifestation of hysteria. It is fact. This fact is the backbone and linchpin of our Constitution. It is the foundation of our natural rights; rights bestowed on man by a loving, Divine Creator. It is a self-evident truth.

In recent years, the would-be destroyers of our Nation have attacked this notion; and, with the intentional or reckless unleashing of a pandemic on our Nation and on other nations by the amoral, irreligious, autocratic, and diabolical, Communist regime of Xi Jinping of China, the would-be destroyers of our Nation have renewed their assault on the Christian Church. They have done so with unusual feral ferocity.

Who are these would-be destroyers of our Constitution; these betrayers of our National heritage, of our natural rights and liberties; these sowers of ill will; these destructive, hateful forces who disingenuously, hypocritically, coldly, callously, calculatedly assert a need, an impulse to tear down the Christian framework of our Nation, ostensibly, as they say, or so they claim, to save it? We know them. They are all around us. They comprise an heterogeneous, amorphous conglomeration of malcontents both here and abroad who seek to remake the world in their own image: Marxists, Communists, Socialists, Anarchists, Neoliberal Billionaire Globalists, and others. They share the same belief system, the same value system: distrust of the common man; a strong, tenacious, insatiable desire to subjugate humanity; and a bias toward and a disturbing penchant for Atheism, Agnosticism, Satanism, and concomitant amorality, immorality, or pseudo-morality albeit disguised as seemingly benign secularism, moral relativism, and nontheistic humanism.

A Modern Civil War

America is in the midst of a Civil War. This war isn’t fought with guns or bombs, at least for the moment. But it’s war, nonetheless. We see this war waged in the attempt to control the mind, the thoughts of Americans. The despoilers of our Nation have sought to drive a wedge between Americans and their sacred rights and liberties. If successful, our Nation will cease to exist, for the sovereignty of the American people exists and thrives only in the unfettered exercise of their God-given rights and liberties. For only in the exercise of those rights and liberties may the power of Government be restrained and constrained.

These would-be annihilators of our Nation use calamity to drive a wedge between the citizenry and their fundamental rights and liberties. They are adept at seducing many Americans to surrender their rights and liberties for security. Recall Benjamin Franklin’s famous, oft reiterated, prescient quote: “Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.”

After the attack on the World Trade Center, the assassins of our Bill of Rights said Americans don’t require freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures because Government must protect Americans from terrorists; ergo, Americans came to lose their sovereignty through a slow, inexorable process toward creation of the Surveillance State, and the concomitant whittling away of the sacred right embodied in the Fourth Amendment.

After some lunatics went on a shooting binge, in the last couple of decades the assassins of our Bill of Rights said Americans ought not exercise their unalienable God-given right to keep and bear arms because Government must promote public safety and ensure public order; ergo, we see the rapid evolution toward restricting ownership and possession of firearms, and the concomitant whittling away of the sacred right embodied in the Second Amendment.

And now, with the Chinese Communist Coronavirus unleashed upon us, the assassins of our Bill of Rights have said Government must constrain the free exercise of religion, restrain the freedom of speech, preclude the right of the people to peaceably assemble, and to curtail the right of the people to petition the Government for a redress of grievances; ergo we see the rapid evolution toward controlling the thoughts and actions of the citizenry; the subjugation of the people, and the concomitant whittling away of the sacred rights embodied in the First Amendment.

State Governments Prepared To Use Force To Demand Church Closures

Ironically, it isn’t the Federal Government, but the Governors of a few States who seek to curtail the free exercise of religion.

With all the bluster of the Radical Left that calls President Trump an autocrat, the actions of Radical Left Governors make plain who the autocrats really are.

Radical Left New York Governor, Andrew Cuomo, Illinois Governor, J.B. Pritzker, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, California Governor, Gavin Newsom, and Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer have closed churches claiming, as a rationale, the need to promote public health due to the Chinese Coronavirus.

Unsurprisingly, a website that calls itself, the “Friendly Atheist,” says, that State Governors can do this:

“ ‘Policies don’t violate religious freedom laws if they’re created in order to save people’s lives,’ said Michael Moreland, director of the Ellen H. McCullen Center for Law, Religion and Public Policy at Villanova University.” ‘So long as those restrictions are neutral and applicable to everybody, religious institutions have to abide by them,’ he said. . . . So, yes, governors can and should shut down church gatherings in the same way they’re shutting down public schools and restaurants. Treat them fairly. Treat them equally. There’s nothing illegal going on no matter how many pastors whine about religious discrimination.”

Let’s parse a couple of these comments. First, the “Friendly Atheist” draws a false dilemma, claiming that either Churches remain closed or people fall sick and die. That’s untrue. Churches are cognizant of the threat. They have been implementing proper protocols to preclude the spread of the Chinese Coronavirus. Second, the remark of the legal expert, Ellen McCullen is vague and ambiguous. She asserts, “So long as those restrictions are neutral and applicable to everybody, religious institutions have to abide by them.”

Is Ellen McCullen saying that, so long as State Governors force every religion to close its doors, not just Christian denominations, then Church closure orders are lawful? Or is McCullen saying that, as long as those restrictions apply to all political, social, and business organizations and establishments—truly, literally everyone, and every establishment, throughout a State, apart from hospitals, pharmacies, and food establishments—then Church closure orders are lawful? If the former statement is what McCullen means, then the Church closure actions are not “content-neutral,” and are therefore unconstitutional. If the latter statement is what McCullen means, then the Government ordered Church closure actions are likely still unconstitutional. Why? It comes down to what constitutes an “essential service,” terminology that State Governments themselves have concocted. No one would deny that severely ill people need the care of health care providers that, in many cases only hospitals can effectively provide. And no one can honestly deny that many people require prescription medicines to remain well. And no one can deny that everybody requires food sustenance to survive. What about Churches?

Is attendance at Church an essential service? Well, under both the test created by State Governors that like to draw distinction between essential and non-essential services, houses of worship do fall into the category of essential services, as spiritual need is arguably just as essential to well-being and survival as are food, medicine, and medical care. Moreover, the free exercise of religion isn’t a mere privilege, nor is it a minor right. It is a fundamental right. That right and the right of self-defense and personal autonomy are the most sacred of rights.

These State Governors are simply wrong. Churches must remain open in our free Republic.

Curiously, it is the U.S. President, not the State Governors who recognize the importance of our sacred rights and liberties. As just reported in the website, U.S. News, for one:

“President Donald Trump on Friday said he has deemed churches and other houses of worship ‘essential’ and called on governors to allow them to reopen this weekend despite the threat of the coronavirus.”

“ ‘Today I’m identifying houses of worship — churches, synagogues and mosques — as essential places that provide essential services,’ Trump said during a hastily arranged press conference Friday. He said if governors don’t abide by his request, he will ‘override’ them, though it’s unclear what authority he has to do so.”

Who is the autocrat? Who is the tyrant? It isn’t Donald Trump. The real autocrats and tyrants are those State Governors who usurp the sovereignty of the American people by daring to deny to them their fundamental right to worship the Divine Creator: the one Being who gave man free will, and who bestowed on man fundamental, unalienable, immutable rights.

There are those of us who adore the Divine Creator.

But for those who would deny the Divine Creator, there is no limit to their capacity for evil. They use a catastrophe as an excuse to destroy rights and liberties they never created yet have the effrontery to strike down. “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste:” Rahm’s Rule—the arrogant “first principle” of the deniers of the Divine Creator.

About The Arbalest Quarrel:

Arbalest Group created `The Arbalest Quarrel’ website for a special purpose. That purpose is to educate the American public about recent Federal and State firearms control legislation. No other website, to our knowledge, provides as deep an analysis or as thorough an analysis. Arbalest Group offers this information free.

For more information, visit: www.arbalestquarrel.com.

DELAWARE: GOP LAWMAKERS DEMAND EARLIER, WIDER REOPENING; CALL GOVERNOR CARNEY’S MOVES “UNCONSTITUTIONAL”

May 23, 2020 John

News 2020 - APR 03 - Delaware Governor John Carney answers questions regarding Delaware’s response to coronavirus disease

DELAWARE: GOP LAWMAKERS DEMAND EARLIER, WIDER REOPENING; CALL GOVERNOR CARNEY’S MOVES “UNCONSTITUTIONAL”

BY CHRIS BARRISH WHYY

SEE: https://www.phillytrib.com/news/health/coronavirus/gop-lawmakers-demand-earlier-wider-del-reopening-call-carney-moves-unconstitutional/article_6f45bf91-9f18-5d8e-937e-1ee3769c4a94.html

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

On Wednesday, Delaware officials reported 8,194 cases of the coronavirus, 310 related deaths and 220 current hospitalizations.

A chorus of downstate Republican legislators has taken aim at Democratic Gov. John Carney, demanding he reopen Delaware quicker and more broadly and asking U.S. Attorney General William Barr to review their claim that Carney’s shutdown orders have violated the constitution.

The complaints voiced in the two GOP letters reflect what has become growing disenchantment among some residents, business owners and politicians to Carney’s March 12 declaration of a State of Emergency in response to the coronavirus crisis. Thursday will mark 10 weeks that the emergency has been in effect.

“It is time to say, ‘Enough is enough.’ Your Phase One “reopening” of the Delaware economy is too little, and too late,’’ the letter from 15 state Senate and House members from Kent and Sussex counties wrote to Carney.

Among the moves the letter wants Carney to make:

Move up the first phase of reopening statewide to Friday, the start of Memorial Day weekend, instead of his target date, June 1.
Allow short-term rentals and stop blocking non-residents from coming to Delaware unless they quarantine for 14 days.
Let churches, child care centers, youth sports and other activities return to normal.
Audit hospitalizations and deaths in part because of “chatter in the medical community about deaths being classified as COVID-19 that perhaps should not be.”

“We urge you in the strongest possible terms to give people and business owners back their freedom and let them assume responsibility for themselves and their communities,’’ the lawmakers’ letter to Carney said.

The letter to Attorney General Barr was written by Sens. Brian Pettyjohn of Georgetown and David Wilson of Milford and Rep. Ruth Briggs King of Georgetown.

They contend that Carney’s emergency declaration and subsequent steps such as closing businesses, forcing visitors into quarantine and limiting public gatherings were “taken without legislative or judicial consent and without due process for the citizenry.”

One example they cited is Carney’s March 22 stay-at-home order except for work he deemed essential and shopping for necessary items such as groceries or medicine.

“This order strips the important constitutional rights of the citizens of Delaware,” amounts to “an unconstitutional restriction on travel liberties and imposes criminal penalties for actions not approved by the General Assembly.”

The letter charges that Carney “has usurped the authority’’ of citizens and Delaware’s legislative and judicial branches of government’’ and requests Barr’s “immediate attention to this broad, unconstitutional overreaching.”

Carney wouldn’t agree to an interview with WHYY about the letters, but criticized the one sent to him at his press briefing Tuesday.

Carney recently allowed non-essential retail businesses such as clothing and sporting goods stores to reopen with curbside service, and hair salons with strict sanitary guidelines and limitations. He’s permitting a limited reopening of beaches and boardwalks starting Friday for the holiday. Churches, which had been limited to gatherings of no more than 10 people, can open at 30 percent of capacity.

“I’m very disappointed in that letter,” the governor said. “It just sounds political. This is not a time for politics. This is a time when Delawareans pull together — Democrats, Republicans and independents … We’re a state of neighbors who treat one another like neighbors and we’re going to through this as neighbors.”

Carney said the letter contained “inaccuracies’’ he did not specify and noted that several Republicans did not sign it, “which tells me something in and of itself.’”

Nine of the 24 House and Senate Republicans did not sign the letter.

Republicans are in the minority of both chambers of the Delaware General Assembly and don’t hold a single statewide elective office in a state where registered Democrats far outnumber Republicans.

The governor derided the “divisive tone’’ and said he has been speaking regularly with many of the GOP lawmakers whose signatures are on it “and they never led me to believe’’ they objected so strenuously to his moves.

This is a situation like we’ve never experienced in our history,’’ Carney said. “It’s uncharted territory for all of us. We’ve tried to make decisions using the data and the science, to inform those decisions incorporating points of view across the spectrum.”

Carney spokesman Jonathan Starkey added that the GOP lawmakers “seem to be recommending the governor’s own strategy to him, saying he should be opening businesses as we can safely do so. That’s what the governor is doing. They know Delaware is implementing a ‘rolling reopening.’”

On the letter to Barr, Starkey said the GOP trio “expressed constitutional concerns to the federal government about Delaware implementing a contact tracing program. It was the federal government — the White House and the CDC — that recommended all states set up contact tracing programs before they safely reopen their economies.”

__________________________________________________________________

Republicans slam Carney, demand faster

state reopening

SEE: https://townsquaredelaware.com/2020/05/19/republicans-slam-carney-demand-faster-state-reopening/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Fifteen Republicans in the General Assembly are urging Gov. Carney to speed up the state’s reopening

Republican members of the Delaware House and Senate joined in a scathing letter to Governor John Carney today, saying results of the state’s shutdown had been “disastrous” and calling for a more aggressive lifting of pandemic-related restrictions imposed on businesses, churches and citizens.

Fifteen representatives and senators told Carney they were frustrated with being shut out of decision making and criticized “mixed messages and confusion.”

“We have fought tirelessly behind the scenes to impact the decisions you have made, largely because we believed that we needed to all be on the same team in combatting this virus. Unfortunately, our concerns have not been heeded and our suggestions have been adopted too late, if at all.”

Republicans signing the letter, including Senate minority leader Gerald Hocker and House minority leader Danny Short, came largely from Kent and Sussex Counties. The group said Carney had “favored large and powerful business interests over our local merchants” and his administration lacked individuals with business experience.

“Decisions over the future of thousands of Delaware small businesses [are] being made by a group of people who have little to no experience running a business, and to no one’s surprise, the results have been disastrous. The state needs to adopt a new decision framework – one that prioritizes opening those businesses that can be opened.”

The letter calls for specific actions, including beginning Phase One before Memorial Day weekend, lifting the short-term rental ban and the ban on out of state visitors, opening churches and allowing wider latitude for daycares, youth sports and camps.

“Our small businesses know how to operate safely. They know that the ultimate judge of their success will be public confidence. They just want a fair playing field in order to compete. It’s time to give them the chance to do so. It’s time to trust Delawareans to know what is best, and to act accordingly.”

The letter in its entirety follows below.

May 19, 2020

DELAWARE GENERAL ASSEMBLY STATE OF DELAWARE 411 LEGISLATIVE AVENUE DOVER, DELAWARE 19901

Governor John Carney Carvel State Office Building 820 N. French Street, 12th Floor Wilmington, DE 19801

Dear Governor Carney:

We write today with extreme concern over the impact of the decisions that have been made so far by your administration in an attempt to combat the coronavirus. We have watched as your administration favored large and powerful business interests over our local merchants. We have seen businesses shut down and their owners threatened with criminal charges. And we have listened as mixed messages and confusion have caused panic and fear to spread far and wide.

We have fought tirelessly behind the scenes to impact the decisions you have made, largely because we believed that we needed to all be on the same team in combatting this virus. Unfortunately, our concerns have not been heeded and our suggestions have been adopted too late, if at all.

It is time to say, “Enough is enough.”

Your Phase One “re-opening” of the Delaware economy is too little, and too late. Delawareans and the businesses they love have given so much during this time, in order to flatten the curve and to give our medical system time to prepare for the long haul. We have met that goal, and hospitalizations are declining. Meanwhile, we have decisions over the future of thousands of Delaware small businesses being made by a group of people who have little to no experience running a business, and to no one’s surprise, the results have been disastrous. The state needs to adopt a new decision framework – one that prioritizes opening those businesses that can be opened.

Our small businesses know how to operate safely. They know that the ultimate judge of their success will be public confidence. They just want a fair playing field in order to compete. It’s time to

give them the chance to do so. It’s time to trust Delawareans to know what is best, and to act accordingly.

Specifically:

Move the start date for Phase One to Friday, May 22. Memorial Day weekend is one of the largest weekends of the year for many businesses, especially those at the beach. To cut that flow of business off in favor of an arbitrary June 1 date, despite evidence that the virus is receding in Delaware is a major mistake that will have devastating consequences for Sussex County, especially.

Remove the restriction on short-term lodging, and the blockage of visitors from other areas.

Hotels, motels, campgrounds and rental housing add to the ability of people to properly distance themselves. With delivery and innovation, we can boost our economy and keep people safe. People want to spend money here. Nearby locations like Ocean City are safely doing so. We need to do the same.

Open the churches. Church leaders need to have the leeway to make decisions for their congregations. They know the heavy weight of the risks, and they will do the right thing.

Allow daycares, youth sports and children’s activities to return to normal. No one can go to work if they have young children at home. Children have been proven to be less susceptible to the virus, and there are questions about their likelihood to be spreaders, as well. Give people the choice in whether or not to send their kids to daycare or camp. Outdoor play is good for the body and mind, and there is strong evidence that outdoor transmission of the virus is very rare.

Audit hospitalizations and deaths. There are many doubts and concerns that have been raised anecdotally about the quality of the data that is being reported. While we do not question the intent of the hospitals, DPH and DHSS, there is a great deal of chatter in the medical community about deaths being classified as COVID-19 that perhaps should not be. If there is a discrepancy in the data, it is in everyone’s interest to find out.

In the end, we all want what is best for the people of Delaware. But the time has come to express our opinion on how to reach the best outcome. We urge you in the strongest possible terms to give people and business owners back their freedom and let them assume responsibility for themselves and their communities. This virus will be with us for some time. It is up to all of us to adjust to its existence. We believe in the people of the state of Delaware. We hope you will join us.

Sincerely,

Sen. Gerald Hocker (Senate Minority Leader) Rep. Danny Short (House Minority Leader)

Rep. Tim Dukes (House Minority Whip) Sen. Dave Lawson Sen. Brian Pettyjohn

Sen. Bryant Richardson Sen. Dave Wilson Rep. Rich Collins Rep. Ron Gray Rep. Ruth Briggs King

Rep. Shannon Morris Rep. Charles Postles Rep. Jeff Spiegelman Rep. Jesse Vanderwende

Rep. Lyndon Yearick

_______________________________________________________________

Group threatens lawsuit if right to worship isn’t restored in Delaware

BY AMY CHERRY

SEE: https://www.wdel.com/news/group-threatens-lawsuit-if-right-to-worship-isnt-restored-in-delaware/article_7586c404-955a-11ea-bc9f-dbb484683062.html; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

They’re calling themselves the “Committee to Save Christmas,” and they’re threatening legal action against the state and the governor if their right to practice religious freedom isn’t restored soon.

The group is wishing to remain anonymous for now, fearing retribution, but attorney Tom Neuberger, who represents them, said its comprised of about a dozen pastors, businessmen, and political figures.

They sent a six-page demand letter to Governor John Carney on Wednesday, May 13, 2020, calling Delaware’s State of Emergency and various modifications–which include stay-at-home orders, as well as bans on gatherings of 10 persons or more–a violation of the First Amendment.

“When it was Easter, out of fear of imprisonment, all the churches shut down for that most Holy day of the year, and the committee believes that that should never happen again. With eight months remaining before the celebration of Christmas, it’s time for Carney to allow religious worship back again inside churches, synagogues, and mosques, provided socially distancing and other generally applicable health-related precautions are responsibly practiced by the church.”

The committee noted in the last two months Delaware has moved to reopen secular businesses; some like barbers and hair salons, which were initially deemed non-essential, have re-opened their doors under strict guidelines.

“The big-box shopping, landscaping, laundromats, law firms, grocery stores [are all allowed to be open], but you can’t have soul-sustaining activities, and this is discriminatory under the First Amendment of our Constitution–our very first freedom.”

Churches and places of worship don’t directly appear on a list of state-sanctioned “essential businesses.” But “religious organizations” were deemed essential.

“You can go out to buy liquor, but you can’t go to church on Sunday,” said Neuberger. “Such a distinction cannot stand because if beer is ‘essential,’ so is Easter, and so shall be Christmas.”

Neuberger believes Carney made “honest” mistakes in the threat of the public health emergency.

“He had to act in hyper-pressurized environment; it’s been two months now. He can step back and think on these serious issues, and remove the serious precedents to our freedoms by stopping church services if people want to engage in social distancing and other safe practices that people are using in other venues.”

Other states have seen lawsuits challenging emergency orders that closed places of worship. The 6th Circuit Court of Appeals in Ohio has issued two affirmations of religious freedom along with two District Courts in Kentucky, according to Neuberger, to allow for worship inside a church building.

The demand letter cites the Lighthouse Fellowship Church on Chincoteague Island, Virginia, whose pastor was allegedly threatened with jail time and a $2,500 fine for holding a 16-person church service on Palm Sunday, with social distancing guidelines in place. The church sued, and the U.S. Department of Justice has intervened to protect it from was called “illicit religious content discrimination.” Matthew Schneider, the special U.S. Attorney reviewing state activities in this regard is quoted as saying:

“Unlawful discrimination against people who exercise their right to religion violates the First Amendment whether we are in a pandemic or not.”

“Or, in the words of the U.S. Attorney General on April 27th, ‘the Constitution is not suspended in times of crisis,'” the demand letter cites.

If Carney doesn’t act soon, Neuberger said they’ll file a lawsuit. He added he’d also challenge the stay-at-home orders which ban a person’s right to peacefully protest.

“I’m saying that the criminalization of peaceful protests…has to be lifted,” Neuberger said. “You’re allowed to protest on the streets, in the parks, in front of Legislative Halls. There should not be a six-month jail sentence…hanging over your head if you’ve got the guts to go out and violate the law.”

On May 1, as protesters gathered in both Wilmington and Dover, Governor Carney said at a bi-weekly coronavirus news conference he had concerns about the protests, but wanted to respect Delawareans’ rights.

“Obviously, they have free speech rights and so you always want to be careful, particularly with respect to that, but they don’t have the right to put other people at risk, which is what happens when they’re gathering, kind of illegally,” Carney said. “But I, just, as governor, don’t want to go around looking for…fights. I just don’t think it’s productive. I want people to work together. I would rather that they gather to make the case with me in a kind of reasonable way, and I hear them. They have every right to do what they’re doing. They do not have the right to do it in the way that they’re doing it. That’s counterproductive, I think, to pick fights. Obviously, we have to enforce some of the restrictions, and we’ve tried to do that respectfully, but seriously. And I think that’s the most effective way to do it “

No one has been arrested for protesting stay-at-home orders in Delaware.

When reached for comment Wednesday, a spokesman for the governor said they’ve “presumably” received the letter and are reviewing it.

Read the group’s full letter:

SEE: https://neubergerlaw.com/

______________________________________________________

Pastor Tobe Witmer of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Newark was one of 174 Delaware pastors who signed a letter to Carney on May 16 urging him to reopen churches in the state. (Courtesy of Lighthouse Baptist Church)

Del. leaders face divided backlash over reopening houses of worship

BY ZOE READ

SEE: https://whyy.org/articles/del-leaders-face-divided-backlash-over-reopening-houses-of-worship/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Delaware officials are facing a divided backlash from religious leaders, following an executive order allowing houses of worship to reopen, as long as they abide by several restrictions.

Some religious leaders say they should have the freedom to worship as they choose, while others say it’s too soon to open houses of worship under any conditions.

Gov. John Carney on Monday put out new guidance to worship leaders and congregants, encouraging them to continue virtual religious services and discouraging them from meeting in person.

Nonetheless, the governor allowed houses of worship to reopen as of Wednesday, so long as attendance is capped at 30% of fire occupancy requirements.

The guidance urges vulnerable populations like the elderly and those with underlying health conditions to stay home. Residents who do attend religious services must wear a face covering and maintain a six-foot distance from other congregants. Other requirements include disinfecting surfaces and offering hand sanitizer to congregants.

The decision to reopen followed complaints from some members of the religious community that their freedom of religion was being infringed upon, and a federal lawsuit asserting the closure of houses of worship discriminates against communities of color and low-income congregants.

Pastor Tobe Witmer of Lighthouse Baptist Church in Newark was one of 174 Delaware pastors who signed a letter to Carney on May 16 urging him to reopen churches in the state.

“A church, just by the very nature in scripture, requires face to face proximity through fellowship and interacting with each other, loving each other, worshiping together,” he said. “Livestream, we’ve been doing very successfully. But it’s not a proper substitute for what a church really is — that requires proximity.”

However, some religious leaders argue reopening houses of worship now flouts the advice of public health experts, and fear it could jeopardize public safety. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends states should not reopen until they see a downward trajectory of documented COVID-19 cases within a 14-day period. Delaware, which has had more than 8,000 positive cases, has not yet reported a downward trend.

According to the CDC, when two symptomatic congregants attended gatherings in a small Arkansas church in early March, 35 of the 92 participants later tested positive for COVID-19, which led to three deaths. Through contact tracing, an additional 26 confirmed cases were identified in the community.

“It’s too fast and too soon,” said Rev. Jason Churchill of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church in Wilmington.

“These are folks who haven’t seen each other in over two months. They’re going to hug, they’re going to touch and shake hands, and it’s going to be very hard to prevent that without a solid plan put into place, and a couple days is not going to cut it,” he added. “I really worry that what’s going to happen is that this could potentially set us back two incubation cycles.”

Rev. Jason Churchill of St. Stephen’s Lutheran Churh interacts online with Bible school students. (Courtesy of Jason Churchill)

Rev. Christopher Bullock of Canaan Baptist Church of Delaware filed a civil action against the governor on May 19 calling for the reopening of houses of worship in the state. The complaint argues closures discriminate against Black churches and low-income worshippers, many of whom don’t have access to the internet to attend virtual services.

“The wholesale shutdown of religious worship has a severe racially discriminatory purpose and effect on the African-American faith community, which is made up of many small churches and their parishioners, without the wealth of white churches and their parishioners, who can so easily switch to services on-line,” the complaint reads.

The complaint also argues the shutdown order has caused the “deprivation of [Bullock’s] rights to the free exercise of religion, freedom of religious speech, religious assembly and religious association, as well as to be free of government establishment of religion under the First Amendment and to the equal protection of the laws under the Fourteenth Amendment.”

Bullock did not respond to requests for an interview.

Churchill said he agrees access to virtual services is limited for some worshippers, but argues it’s more important to protect his congregation. He notes that members of his congregation who don’t have internet access can call into his services.

“From all the data I’ve been looking at, lower income folks are affected more negatively by the virus right now. The access to health care, the access to testing, has been ravaging the lower socioeconomic communities and it’s compounded on top of that for people of color,” said Churchill, who plans to continue virtual services through the end of June and have medical professionals review his reopening plan.

“I took a vow in my ordination,” he said. “One of the vows we take is to do no harm, to not give false sense of security and no false hope, and I take that seriously. We’re responsible by the very nature of what we do to be sure we take all steps necessary to keep our congregation safe.”

Rabbi Michael Beals of Congregation Beth Shalom is the chair of the Delaware Council of Faith-Based Partnerships. He said religious leaders in the multi-denominational coalition are unanimously opposed to reopening. Beals’ services also will remain virtual for the time being.

“In Judaism, we have the idea of, ‘If you save one life, you save the entire universe.’ None of us would want to have one death on our hands because we prematurely opened up,” he said. “We were promised that science would lead — and this is politics leading. This is about people in the state who are louder than us who are pressuring [Carney] or threatening to sue him under the First Amendment — freedom of religion, freedom of gathering. It’s true, but at what cost?”

Beals said the governor has listened to the coalition’s anxieties about reopening, and believes the guidance strikes a balance between the polarizing opinions of different religious leaders.

Rabbi Michael Beals livestreams daily services to the empty Congregation Beth Shalom sanctuary in Wilmington. (Courtesy of Rabbi Michael Beals)

However, he said he’s concerned that if one religious leader decides not to reopen, they might be pressured by the public to do otherwise. Beals also worries restrictions, such as the 30% occupancy rate and the six-foot separation, might be difficult to enforce.

“The real issue is what type of people tend to go to churches and synagogues? It’s older people who tend to go to brick-and-mortar houses of worship. And who’s the most vulnerable for getting this disease? Older people,” he said. “So you’re taking the most vulnerable people in the population and opening up the thing they’re most likely to go to.”

Witmer said even though his church is reopening on Sunday, it will continue to offer livestreams, so those who don’t feel comfortable attending can watch from home.

He said his church will abide by the restrictions, despite the fact he sees some of them as an overreach. Witmer said the occupancy requirement will hurt small churches, and points to certain guidelines, such as the prohibition of hand-held microphones, as taking things too far.

“We want to respect and honor our government, but there is a great desire in the religious community for individual personal liberty to make these decisions on our own…,” he said. “There’s a fine line between being cautious and being full of fear of everything.”

“DECLARATION OF ESSENTIALITY”: 1,200 CALIFORNIA PASTORS DEFY GOVERNOR NEWSOM; PLAN TO REOPEN MAY 31

May 23, 2020 John

Demonstrators hold signs demanding their church to reopen during a rally against stay-home orders in San Diego on May 1, 2020. (Sandy Huffaker / AFP / Getty Images)

“DECLARATION OF ESSENTIALITY”:

1,200 CALIFORNIA PASTORS DEFY GOVERNOR NEWSOM; PLAN TO REOPEN MAY 31

BY BOB ADELMANN

SEE: https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/faith-and-morals/item/35783-1-200-california-pastors-defy-governor-newsom-plan-to-reopen-may-31;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

The day after the Department of Justice warned California Governor Gavin Newsom about discriminating against churches in both his shutdown and his reopen orders, a lawyer announced that more than 1,200 pastors have said they will open in-person services in defiance of those orders on Pentecost Sunday, May 31.

The attorney who drafted the “Declaration of Essentiality” sent a letter to the governor, declaring that the pastors were not asking permission: “This letter was not sent for the purposes of asking for permission.”

The Declaration began with this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr.: “The church must be reminded that it is not the master or the servant of the state, but rather the conscience of the state. It must be the guide and the critic of the state, and never its tool. If the church does not recapture its prophetic zeal, it will become an irrelevant social club without moral or spiritual authority.”

After briefly reviewing the case against Newsom’s onerous and unconstitutional edicts, it ended with this: “NOW THEREFORE, WE DECLARE THAT WE WILL RESUME IN-PERSON RELIGIOUS ASSEMBLIES BEGINNING ON THE DAY OF PENTECOST, MAY 31, 2020, OR SOONER.”

The letter to the governor ran 15 pages, outlining the legal case against Newsom’s infringements of precious rights guaranteed in the Constitution’s Bill of Rights. In addition, it quoted large portions of the Declaration of Independence.

It included this from founders Madison and Jefferson:

James Madison once said, “All power is originally vested in, and consequently derived from, the people.” And Thomas Jefferson said, “Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”

Our founding fathers did not intend to allow a single individual to establish law that permits the infringement upon individual liberties recognized in the Constitution.

This is especially true where one individual has issued executive orders to suspend the religious liberty of individuals to assemble together in worship of God.

The letter said, “We agree that the government has a legitimate interest in preventing the spread of COVID-19, but that interest cannot go unchecked.”

Therefore, “In order to restore the proper balance between public safety and individual liberties, the clergy we represent have declared their intent to begin holding in-person church services beginning on Sunday, May 31, 2020. All services will be held in compliance with CDC and state guidelines for social distancing as is required of “essential businesses.”

Robert Tyler, the attorney who drafted both the Declaration and the letter, said, “These pastors are willing to stand against the state and face fines or penalties in order to fulfill their calling and essential needs of those around them.”

May 31, the Day of Pentecost, is celebrated fifty days after Easter Sunday and commemorates the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Apostles and other followers of Jesus Christ while they were in Jerusalem celebrating the Feast of Weeks, as described in the Acts of the Apostles (Acts 2:1-31).

It is often referred to as the birth of the Christian religion. In California this year, it will celebrate the birth of freedom from onerous and unconstitutional restrictions issued by the state. More than 3,000 churches are expected to join that celebration.

NORTH CAROLINA: JUDGE RULES IN FAVOR OF CHURCHES SEEKING TO HOLD INDOOR SERVICES~”THERE IS NO PANDEMIC EXCEPTION TO CONSTITUTION”

May 20, 2020 John

NORTH CAROLINA:

JUDGE RULES IN FAVOR OF CHURCHES SEEKING TO HOLD INDOOR SERVICES~

“THERE IS NO PANDEMIC EXCEPTION TO CONSTITUTION”

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/05/19/judge-rules-in-favor-of-nc-churches-seeking-to-hold-indoor-meetings-there-is-no-pandemic-exception-to-constitution/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

RALEIGH, N.C. — A U.S. district judge in North Carolina has ruled in favor of two churches and a ministry that want to hold indoor services but feel prevented from doing so as executive orders from Gov. Roy Cooper have limited “mass gatherings” to 10 people and a later directive said that larger meetings should “take place outdoors unless impossible.” The judge stated that there is no good reason why churches can’t have indoor services — with social distancing and other protective measures in place — when funeral homes and other locations are allowed to accommodate dozens of people.

“There is no pandemic exception to the Constitution of the United States or the Free Exercise Clause of the First Amendment,” wrote Judge James Dever III, nominated to the bench by then-President George W. Bush.

“Plaintiffs have demonstrated that they are likely to succeed on the merits of their Free Exercise claim concerning the assembly for religious worship provisions in Executive Order 138, that they will suffer irreparable harm absent a temporary restraining order, that the equities tip in their favor, and that a temporary restraining order is in the public interest.”

In March, Gov. Cooper issued Executive Order 116, declaring a state emergency, followed by a series of executive orders, such as order 121, which defined “mass gatherings” as “any event or convening that brings together more than ten (10) persons in a single room or single space at the same time.” Religious services were specifically held to this 10-person limit, while funeral services were limited to 50 people.

Earlier this month, Cooper issued a new order, Executive Order 138, which allowed religious gatherings of more than 10 people, but with the notation that such gatherings should “take place outdoors unless impossible.”

Guidance issued by the director of Legislative Affairs outlined in further detail on the “impossible” factor, “For example, there may be situations in which particular religious beliefs dictate that some or all of a religious service must be held indoors and that more than ten persons must be in attendance.”

Two churches, Berean Baptist Church and People’s Baptist Church, along with the organization Return America, sued Cooper on Thursday, asserting that the “outdoors unless impossible” requirement violates their First Amendment rights under the Free Exercise Clause.

A rally with approximately 500 people was also held next to the state legislative building that same day, according to the Greensboro News & Record.

While Judge Dever noted on Saturday that “[n]o constitutional right — including the right of free exercise of religion — is absolute,” he expressed concern that law enforcement would be the final arbiter of whether it is deemed “impossible” for any particular church to meet outside.

He also pointed out that legal representation for Cooper “could not explain why the governor trusts those who run funerals to have 50 people inside to attend the funeral, but only trusts religious entities and individuals to have 10 people inside to worship.”

“Eleven men and women can stand side by side working indoors Monday through Friday at a hospital, at a plant, or at a package distribution center and be trusted to follow social distancing and hygiene guidance, but those same eleven men and women cannot be trusted to do the same when they worship inside together on Saturday or Sunday. ‘The distinction defies explanation, or at least the governor has not provided one,’” Dever wrote.

He outlined that the churches plan to exercise safety guidelines to protect its members and that those who worship are the same people who go to the stores to shop, and they would not behave any differently based on location.

“[C]ommon sense suggests that religious leaders and worshipers (whether inside or outside North Carolina) have every incentive to behave safely and responsibly whether working indoors, shopping indoors, or worshiping indoors,” Dever said. “The governor cannot treat religious worship as a world apart from non-religious activities with no good, or more importantly, constitutional, explanation.”

“Plaintiffs have pledged to adhere to ‘all recommended COVID-19 social distancing and personal hygiene safety guidelines’ in exercising their free exercise rights,” he noted. “They simply want the governor to afford them the same treatment as they and their fellow non-religious citizens receive when they work at a plant, clean an office, ride a bus, shop at a store, or mourn someone they love at a funeral.”

Ultimately, Dever found that the order does not meet the “narrowly tailored” and “least restrictive means” prongs of the strict scrutiny standard in legal precedent.

“The court trusts worshipers and their leaders to look after one another and society while exercising their free exercise rights just as they and their fellow citizens (whether religious or not) do when engaged in non-religious activities,” he wrote. “Plaintiffs have pledged to practice social distancing and other public health guidelines, just like others under EO 138. Accordingly, the equities tip in favor of granting a temporary restraining order.”

Read the ruling in full here.

Cooper’s office says it disagrees with the ruling but does not plan to appeal.

“We don’t want indoor meetings to become hotspots for the virus, and our health experts continue to warn that large groups sitting together inside for long periods of time are much more likely to cause the spread of COVID-19,” a statement, as reported by local television station WRAL, reads.

“We urge houses of worship and leaders to voluntarily follow public health guidance to keep their members safe.”

MEDIA, LEFTISTS FLIP OUT AFTER TRUMP SAYS HE’S TAKING HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE

May 20, 2020 John

MEDIA, LEFTISTS FLIP OUT AFTER TRUMP SAYS HE’S TAKING HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE

Nancy Pelosi ‘fears’ for ‘morbidly obese’ President

BY STEVE WATSON

SEE: https://www.infowars.com/media-leftists-flip-out-after-trump-says-hes-taking-hydroxychloroquine/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

The media spent all night in a frothing fit because President Trump told reporters that he is taking the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, as a precaution against coronavirus.

Trump told reporter that he hopes not to be taking the medication for long, but that he believes it’s effective, and that “people should be allowed to.”

The media immediately called Trump irresponsible, with some vowing that the drug would “kill him” and anyone else who takes it.

Nancy Pelosi seized on the moment to call Trump “morbidly obese”:

Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer called Trump’s remarks about hydroxychloroquine “dangerous.”

“Maybe he’s really not taking it because the president lies about things characteristically,” Schumer said on MSNBC.

He added: “I don’t know whether he is taking it or not. I know him saying he is taking it, whether he is or not, is reckless, reckless, reckless.”

Of course, orange man is still bad:

The Daily Beast

✔@thedailybeast

Stephen Colbert brutally mocks Trump for taking hydroxychloroquine: “If you think hydroxycholoroquine might be right for you, don’t ask your doctor. Just ask around. And if you hear some good stories, eat it. Eat it, you coward.” https://trib.al/eGLh7wl

Stephen Colbert Brutally Mocks Trump for Taking Hydroxychloroquine

“For the sake of his children, I hope he’s not getting a lot of positive calls about Clorox,” the “Late Show” host joked.

thedailybeast.com

3,362

12:47 AM – May 19, 2020

Twitter Ads info and privacy

754 people are talking about this

Even the communist Chinese government got in on the act, claiming that Trump is trying to beat coronavirus with “witchcraft”:

It’s not witchcraft, it’s a drug that has proven effective against the virus. Cutting horns off Rhinos and sniffing them is witchcraft.

FLATTENING CORONAVIRUS OR FLATTENING THE UNITED STATES?

May 19, 2020 John

FLATTENING THE UNITED STATES

BY GINA MILLER

SEE: http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/miller/200517;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

Last Tuesday on Rush Limbaugh’s radio show, he asked, “What was the goal here, to flatten the curve or flatten the U.S. economy?” It’s a rhetorical question that reminds me of what some of us have suspected from the start of this “pandemic.” That the insane, despotic response in shutting down our nation was never about public “safety” from a Chinese flu-like virus, but rather, it was about gaining control of the people, breaking the United States and thwarting President Trump’s reelection chances in November.

Do I really believe a global pandemic is being used to target President Trump and the United States? Yes, I do, and I’m far from the only one who sees it. From the beginning I have been suspicious of much of the reporting on the Wuhan virus, especially the death and infection rate numbers out of communist Democrat-controlled states and bureaucracies. Immediately after the Democrats’ vile impeachment scam finally ended in proper failure, the media harpies flew into megaphone lock-step, flooding the American people with incessant, manufactured hysteria over this “novel coronavirus.” Even many people who had previously come to fully mistrust the media, suddenly began to believe them and fall into the compliant fear trap the media were setting.

This virus also seemed to come pre-packaged with its own PR campaign. It even has a logo! The logo (an example seen here), I guess, is supposed to be the likeness of a microscopic image of the virus. It looks like Pinhead from the Hellraiser movies, and it’s been featured seemingly everywhere since the beginning of this! When have we ever seen such a thing done? We even have the lingo: “social distancing,” “flatten the curve,” “stay home; stay safe,” and “essential” workers and businesses (which is detestable, because every business is essential to the people involved with it). It’s all been impressively organized from the start, almost as if it were a “rollout.”

We were told that it’s a “brand new” virus, and yet from the beginning it was declared that most people who get it are asymptomatic. Where did that information come from? Did China say that? How was there immediately all this extensive testing on people who weren’t sick, who had no symptoms, so that it was able to be determined that “most people who get the virus are asymptomatic”? Regardless, one thing I can tell you is that’s an amazingly convenient key factor in this. If everyone who got this virus became obviously sick, then there would be no “excuse” to shut down the nation, but if everyone walking around free, seemingly healthy, could potentially be an infected “spreader” of the virus, then there’s your so-called excuse for suspending big chunks of the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights.

And suspend them they have. The big picture of national “mitigation” is one of arbitrary dictates, not based in true science or proper legislation, nor honoring the fundamental rights of American citizens to work, worship, gather and freely move about as they see fit. There was never even a thought of treating this as any other flu-like virus and allowing herd immunity to progress. No. Instead, the powers-that-be seized on the opportunity presented to them by the media-created fear and hysteria in the people to impose their un-American, despotic control, including the psyops foolishness of mandated mask-wearing and inhumane, forced isolation.

I don’t blame President Trump in all this, because he has truly been between a rock and a hard place. This nation-destroying nightmare was imposed on the United States, and the officials at the state and local levels have taken huge advantage of their newly-acquired power over frightened Americans, power they will not easily, if ever, relinquish.

I remember the first shutdown that happened was of our local schools. It was announced that certain school districts would close for a few days. At the time I said it was nonsense to do that, but that quickly became the least of it. Soon, the whole nation was shut down, and now here we are with millions of lives and businesses destroyed, and I don’t mean by a virus that apparently has a 99-plus-percent recovery rate.

The people who are pushing the continued shut-down of our nation have evil intentions. This is not about a virus, and I truly believe it never has been. It’s about crushing our freedoms, destroying the United States and preventing President Trump’s reelection in November. And they—meaning the communist Democrats and their fellow travelers—will stop at nothing to impose on our nation the tyranny of their long-held, wicked dreams. I have no doubt that the “news” (regarding the death and infection rate numbers from the Chinese virus) will continue to be whatever the enemies of America in power within our nation need it to be to give them their “excuse” to continue the destruction of our nation with these senseless lockdowns, because this is finally their chance. At last they’ve found the hammer that works, and they’re putting it down on the United States to flatten and reorder our nation according to their hell-born, dystopian desires.

It remains to be seen how much of this the American people will take before they stand up firmly against it, and if enough people do stand up, I hope it won’t be too little, too late. It’s been encouraging to see some push-back against it in certain places. I attended a Freedom Rally here on the Mississippi Gulf Coast last week. It was an event that was very quickly organized, so there was not much time to get the word out. Even so, there were around 150 or more people there. That has to be repeated on a grand scale all across the country, especially in communist Democrat-controlled states. Business owners, employees and other concerned Americans must engage in massive, widespread, peaceful civil disobedience to these lawless dictates, if we’re to have any hope of stopping the destruction of our nation.

Also with our continuing mega prayers and love for Rush.

LEARN WHY TRUMP IS MOBILIZING THE MILITARY TO IMPLEMENT VACCINATIONS

May 17, 2020 John

Alex Jones breaks down the tactics at play when Trump declares he will mobilize the military to implement mass innoculation.

Trump: Mobilizing Military To Deploy VACCINES!!!

NEARLY 200 PASTORS, MINISTRY LEADERS CALL ON NEVADA GOVERNOR STEVE SISOLAK TO LIFT 10 PERSON LIMIT ON CHURCH SERVICES

May 17, 2020 John

BY HEATHER CLARK

SEE: https://christiannews.net/2020/05/15/nearly-200-pastors-ministry-leaders-call-on-nev-gov-steve-sisolak-to-lift-10-person-limit-on-church-services/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

CARSON CITY, Nev. (Christian News Network) — Nearly 200 pastors and other ministry leaders have signed on to a letter to Nevada Gov. Steve Sisolak to ask that he lift his current 10-person limit on in-person church services — “so long as each church develops, implements, and maintains a safety plan that adheres to applicable social distancing and hygiene guidelines.”

“Just like you, we deeply care for the people of the state of Nevada. During this time of crisis, our houses of worship and the people we serve have adapted to the pandemic and [have] taken safety precautions related thereto,” reads the letter sent to the governor on Thursday. “We have restricted our in-person services and [have] done our best to utilize virtual platforms to serve our congregations and our communities.”

“That being said, we have been gravely concerned that the actions you have taken appear to have targeted religious gatherings,” it outlines, noting that religious gatherings have been excluded from the first phase of the state’s gradual reopening plan.

The pastors point to Sisolak’s April 8 stay-at-home order, Emergency Directive 013, which states in one section, “Places of worship shall not hold in-person worship services where 10 or more persons may gather, including without limitation, drive-in and popup services, for the remainder of the Declaration of Emergency.”

“Places of worship may, however, hold worship services via alternative means, including but not limited to, video, streaming or broadcast, provided that any personnel needed to perform tasks related to such do so in a manner that is consistent with social distancing guidelines … ”

The order also advised that the government may use civil or criminal statutes to enforce the regulations.

The pastors state that while Sisolak likely had good intentions in issuing the order, it goes too far as there are less restrictive ways to protect people of faith from contagious diseases.

“We respectfully submit that the restrictions on in-person church services are more burdensome than they need to be in order to accomplish our shared goal of preventing the spread of COVID-19,” the letter reads. “Emergency Directive 013 restricts religious gatherings in a way that is overbroad and not narrowly tailored to accomplish our shared goal of preventing the spread of disease and death.”

The correspondence further argues that it is not fair for restaurants to be allowed to reopen in phase one at 50 percent capacity — with other safety measures in place — while churches are not permitted to do the same.

The pastors contend that as churches in Nevada have created detailed safety plans to keep their members safe, prohibiting in-person services nearly altogether is excessive.

“We believe we are not called to be isolated individuals expressing Christ in the privacy of our homes but a collective city on the hill where Christ is expressed together to one another,” they outline. “[I]t is our sincerely-held religious belief that online and drive-in services do not meet the Lord’s requirement that the Church meet together in person for corporate worship.”

“For this reason, your order violates our First Amendment rights to free exercise of religion and freedom of assembly.”

Pointing to Church history and current events, the pastors note that the Body of Christ has been active to help others in need, from caring for the elderly, to assisting the poor, to raising money for personal protective equipment (PPE) and other needed supplies in the medical community, to ministering to the mental, emotional and spiritual needs of health care workers.

“We don’t assume you have approved such restrictive orders regarding church gatherings with a specific animus toward our churches and our vital role in society, but your orders have sent an unfortunate message to us and the people of the state of Nevada that churches and church leaders can’t be trusted to take the steps necessary to protect our congregations and the communities we serve when we are engaged in the work of ministry in our communities,” the letter states.

“Although we acknowledge that there have been bad actors in the community of faith who have not taken their duty to prevent the spread of disease and death, the response of these bad actors should not be to shut down all communities of faith and the essential work we do,” it contends.

The pastors note that the Church has “faithfully shepherded communities through countless plagues” for the past 2,000 years, and therefore, “[t]here is no reason to believe our collective wisdom and experience does not have relevance during this pandemic.”

Signees include Sam Crouch of Calvary Baptist Church in Elko, John Gee of Faith Life Family Church in Las Vegas, Nickolas Emery of Hope Crossing Community Church in Carson City, Ric Fehr of Living Waters Christian Felllowship in Reno, Byron Gomez of Sheep of Christ in Sparks, Larry Webb of Shadow Mountain Church in Gardnerville, James Arthur Moore of Stagecoach Church of God, Jeffrey Ogden of The Village Church in Incline Village, D. Wayne Evans of New Hope Christian Center Assembly of God in Overton, and Duke Taber of Mesquite Worship Center.

View the letter in full here.

OPPOSE H.R. 6666, THE COVID–19 TESTING, REACHING & CONTACTING EVERYONE (TRACE) ACT

May 17, 2020 John

OPPOSE H.R. 6666, THE COVID–19 TESTING, REACHING & CONTACTING EVERYONE

(TRACE) ACT

Contact your U.S. Congressional Representative and ask them to vote NO on H.R. 6666

THE NVIC ADVOCACY PORTAL

THE NATIONAL VACCINE INFORMATION CENTER

Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

Dear NVIC Advocacy Team Members,

H.R. 6666, otherwise known as the COVID–19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act, was introduced and referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce on 5/1/2020. This bill is sponsored by Representative Bobby Rush (D) of Illinois District 1. The bill has 59 cosponsors, 58 Democrats and 1 Republican. We need your help to stop this terrible bill.

Summary

H.R. 6666 provides 100 billion dollars this year and unlimited federal funding in future years to create and operate a massive and likely unconstitutional surveillance, testing, and tracing enforcement system under the guise of “protecting” Americans against coronavirus.

H.R. 6666 is a federal funding bill. It proposes to create a surveillance infrastructure that can be used by the federal government, as well as local and state governments and private businesses, to require medical testing and tracking of all citizens in violation of fundamental civil liberties as set forth in the Bill of Rights, which include the first 10 amendments to the U.S. Constitution designed to protect individual rights and limit the power of the government.

H.R. 6666 lacks safeguards and conditions related to funding of the proposed surveillance operation to prevent it from being applied to intrusive programs mandating testing and surveillance without an individual’s voluntary consent. If this legislation is passed by Congress and enacted into law, it could lead to denial of an individual’s right to appear in public spaces and travel; the right to employment and education or participation in government-funded services, and the right to receive care in a government funded hospital or other any other medical facility.

H.R. 6666 specifically allows for funded entities to home quarantine a person against their will, even while they are healthy. Once a vaccine is available, the testing and tracing results potentially could be used to force individuals to be injected with a COVID-19 vaccine against their will.

According to a Press Release from the sponsor Congressman Bobby L. Rush, “Reopening our economy and getting back to normal will be all but impossible if we do not step up our testing efforts and implement robust and widespread contact tracing,” said Rep. Rush. “Until we have a vaccine to defeat this dreaded disease, contact tracing in order to understand the full breadth and depth of the spread of this virus is the only way we will be able to get out from under this.”

The Devil is in the Details

H.R. 6666 would allow The Secretary of Health and Human Services (HHS), acting through the Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), to award federal grants to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID–19, to trace and monitor the contacts of infected individuals, and to support the quarantine of such contacts. Through the use of mobile health units, as necessary, individuals would be tested and provided with services related to testing and quarantine at their residences.

The amount of money appropriated for fiscal year 2020 would be $100,000,000,000 (one hundred billion dollars) and more money may be appropriated by Congress as necessary for any subsequent fiscal year during which the emergency period continues.

A grant recipient may use the federal grant funds, in support of the above referenced activities to hire, train, compensate, and pay the expenses of individuals; and to purchase personal protective equipment and other supplies.

Priority will be given to applicants in “hot spots” and medically underserved communities and to entities that hire residents of the community where the activity will occur. Hot spots are defined as a geographic area where the rate of infection with the virus that causes COVID–19 exceeds the national average. Medically underserved communities are communities given that term in section 799B of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 295p).

Entities eligible for the grant money are defined as a federally qualified health center, school-based clinic, disproportionate share hospital, academic medical center, nonprofit organization, institute of higher education, high school, and any other type of entity as determined by the Secretary of HHS.

H.R. 6666 Does Not Guarantee Privacy

Section 2 (e) of H.R. 6666 is entitled “Federal Privacy Requirements”, but it does little to protect privacy. It states that “Nothing in this section shall be construed to supersede any Federal privacy or confidentiality requirement, including the regulations promulgated under section 264(c) of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (Public Law 104–191; 110 Stat. 2033) and section 543 of the Public Health Service Act (42 U.S.C. 290dd–2).

In actuality, H.R. 6666 offers few privacy protections for Americans who will be surveilled and tested without their consent under programs funded with this grant. In fact, Americans can expect their privacy to be violated under TRACE funded programs. That is because the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) 45 CFR 164.512(b)(1)(i) has always allowed disclosure of private health information to government officials and other government approved entities including foreign governments without the knowledge or consent of the individual for the purpose of conducting public health surveillance, investigations or interventions.

Bill of Rights Cannot Be Suspended During A “Public Health Crisis”

The Bill of Rights in the U.S. Constitution cannot be set aside by the federal government or state governments during pandemics or other public health emergencies. In The United States Statement of Interest in Support of Plaintiffs, filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ) in a case last month in which church goers attending a drive-in sermon were issued citations for violating an executive order in Mississippi, the DOJ stated;

“There is no pandemic exception, however, to the fundamental liberties the Constitution safeguards. Indeed, “individual rights secured by the Constitution do not disappear during a public health crisis.” In re Abbott, — F.3d —, 2020 WL 1685929, at *6 (5th Cir. Apr. 7, 2020). These individual rights, including the protections in the Bill of Rights made applicable to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment, are always in force and restrain government action.”

H.R. 6666 sets the stage for multiple violations of our constitutional rights.

The 4^th Amendment right of American citizens is to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures. The proposed law would provide government funding of entities that create and implement programs to trace and monitor healthy people potentially exposed to the coronavirus. However, the bill does not allow individuals to exercise their Constitutional right to be safe in their homes free from warrantless government intrusion, and does not provide for voluntary refusal of testing and monitoring by a government funded entity. The bill also does not set forth how the contacts of persons with COVID-19 will be traced and whether the Constitutional rights of those infected with COVID-19, as well as their contacts, will be upheld.

The 5^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law. This legislation provides government funding of entities that will enforce testing and potentially enforce vaccination of healthy individuals, who are suspected of having come into contact with COVID-19 positive persons whether or not they are exhibiting symptoms, without requiring the voluntary consent of the individual.

The 8th Amendment prohibits cruel and unusual punishment of citizens. The proposed law provides government funding to entities that will create and implement programs that trace, monitor and support the enforced quarantine of healthy individuals, who are suspected of coming into contact with COVID-19 persons, whether or not they are exhibiting symptoms and whether or not they may already be immune.

The 9^th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution bestows upon the people rights not specifically set forth in the Constitution. H.R. 6666 provides funding for entities to create and implement undefined “related activities” to COVID-19 testing and unnamed “other purposes.”

H.R. 6666 should be opposed because it provides federal funding to entities to create and enforce unrestricted surveillance, testing, tracing and quarantine mechanisms and has no set end date. There is simply no way to know how many inalienable rights protected under the U.S. Constitution could be infringed upon or taken away from citizens if this bill becomes law.

Text, Status and History for H.R. 6666 https://www.congress.gov/bill/116th-congress/house-bill/6666?q=%7B%22search%22%3A%5B%22HR+6666%22%5D%7D&r=1&s=1

Action Needed

1) Call and Email your own U.S. Congressional Representative and ask them to vote against H.R. 6666, the “COVID–19 Testing, Reaching, And Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act.” Pick a few points in the discussion about that resonate with you to personalize your message. You may need to leave a phone message as many staff members are working remotely.

If you do not know who your U.S. House Representative is or their contact information, you can login to the NVIC Advocacy Portal, http://NVICAdvocacy.org, click on the “NATIONAL” tab, and your elected Congressional Legislators are automatically posted on the right hand side of the page. Click on their name to display links to all of their contact information. If a district office is close to your home, you may also consider trying to set up a longer phone call, video chat or meeting with your Representative or staff to discuss your concerns.

2) Login to the NVIC Advocacy Portal, http://NVICAdvocacy.org, OFTEN to check for state and U.S. updates and action items. We review bills and make updates daily. Bills can change many times over the legislative process and your timely visits, calls, and emails directed at the correct legislators are critical to this process.

3) Please forward this email to family and friends and ask them to register for the NVIC Advocacy Portal at http://NVICAdvocacy.org and share their concerns with their Representative as well.

Sincerely,

NVIC Advocacy Team National Vaccine Information Centerhttp://NVIC.org and http://NVICAdvocacy.org https://nvicadvocacy.org/members/Members/ContactUs.aspx

The National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC) works diligently to prepare and disseminate our legislative advocacy action alerts and supporting materials. We request that organizations and members of the public forward our alerts in their original form to assure consistent and accurate messaging and effective action. Please acknowledge NVIC as originators of this work when forwarding to members of the public and like-minded organizations. To receive alerts immediately, register at http://NVICAdvocacy.org, a website dedicated to this sole purpose and provided as a free public service by NVIC.

PRESIDENT TRUMP TO MOBILIZE MILITARY TO GIVE COVID-19 VACCINE; THIS IS THE WORST IDEA EVER~ WTF IS THE PRESIDENT THINKING?

PRESIDENT TRUMP TO MOBILIZE MILITARY

TO GIVE COVID-19 VACCINE;

THIS IS THE WORST IDEA EVER

WTF is the president thinking?

SEE: https://www.infowars.com/president-trump-to-mobilize-military-to-give-covid-19-vaccine-this-is-the-worst-idea-ever/; republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research purposes:

In a move that will make globalists squeal with delight, President Trump says he would mobilize the military to give out the Covid-19 vaccine to the American public.

What a horrible idea! This is literally an idea the deep state would cook up. Does the president realize the pro-mandatory vaccine crowd is not his base?

According to CBS:

President Trump says he would “rapidly” mobilize the U.S. military to distribute a coronavirus vaccine once it’s ready, focusing first on nursing homes and the elderly most vulnerable to deadly complications from the virus. Mr. Trump made the comments during an interview with Fox Business’ Maria Bartiromo.

“We’re mobilizing our military and other forces but we’re mobilizing our military on the basis that we do have a vaccine. You know, it’s a massive job to give this vaccine. Our military is now being mobilized so at the end of the year we’re going to be able to give it to a lot of people very, very rapidly,” the president said.

“We will have a tremendous force because assuming we get it, then you have to distribute it,” he added. “And unless you’re mobilized and ready, you’re not going to be able to do it for a long time. So we’re starting now.”

Voice of America also reported that the president would release more details on Friday.

Notice the number of downvotes on this video posted by his base:

Scientists in Iceland said they have already found at least 40 different mutations of the coronavirus, which suggests that the vaccine could be as ineffective as a flu shot.

“So now they’re telling us they’re gonna rush a COVID vaccine when we know there have been twenty to thirty mutations of this virus already, and I’m very, very concerned that they’re rushing out a vaccine that will be dangerous, ineffective, et cetera, so I said this,” radio host Michael Savage said last week. “

…And I don’t care who tells me I have to take it, if Donald Trump tells me to take it, I’m not taking it, you hear me? I’m not taking it for Jesus, I’m not taking it for Trump, I’m not taking it for Moses, I’m not not taking it for Isaiah, I’m not taking it for Muhammad, I’m not taking it for Charlie Parker, I’m not taking it.”

Did you listen? Will you listen now?

CONTACT TRACING GROUP FUNDED BY SOROS AND GATES, HAS CHELSEA CLINTON ON BOARD

Contact Tracing Group Funded By Soros and Gates, Has Chelsea Clinton on Board

CONTACT TRACING GROUP FUNDED BY SOROS AND GATES, HAS CHELSEA CLINTON ON BOARD

What do these investigators really want?

BY PATRICK HOWLEY

SEE: https://www.infowars.com/contact-tracing-group-funded-by-soros-and-gates-has-chelsea-clinton-on-board/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

Partners in Health was recently selected by Massachusetts governor Charlie Baker to conduct Coronavirus “contact tracing,” a process that involves teams of investigators finding out who infected people have come into contact with.

The group is already “training and deploying hundreds of contact tracers.” Some citizens fear the potential for mass surveillance posed by contact tracing, especially in light of a Democrat-introduced bill in Congress to authorize contact tracing “at individuals’ residences.” Partners In Health’s involvement will not assuage many fears, considering the group has received funding from George Soros and Bill Gates organizations and counts Chelsea Clinton on its board of trustees.

Partners in Health lists George Soros’ Open Society Foundations as an official partner, along with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Partners In Health lists Open Society Foundations on its 2015 annual report as a supporter to the tune of $1 million or above, along with the Gates Foundation. Chelsea Clinton serves on Partners in Health’s Board of Trustees, according to its 2019 annual report.

Partners in Health co-founder Paul Farmer’s achievement.org bio notes: “Farmer’s work attracted the support of philanthropists, including George Soros and Bill and Melinda Gates. In 2002, PIH received a $13 million grant from the Global Fund for improvements in the Cange complex. In 2005 the William J. Clinton Foundation funded a Partners in Health AIDS program in Rwanda.” Farmer and Chelsea Clinton did a Clinton Foundation podcast together in 2019.

In response to a 2007 tuberculosis outbreak in Africa, NBC News reported: “Soros’ Open Society Institute announced a $3 million grant to the non-profit organization Partners in Health and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. The donation will be used to design a model project of community-based XDR-TB treatment in Lesotho. Once treatment guidelines are developed, experts hope the program will be adopted in other poor countries.”

Soros personally announced the grant and said he hoped it would spark a larger project. For this initiative, Partners In Health was cited by name in the propaganda book The Philanthropy of George Soros: Building Open Societies.

In 2011, International Women’s Health Coalition noted, “YP Foundation Founder to Join Paul Farmer, George Soros, at IWHC Gala.” Farmer was honored at the gala, which Guest of a Guest noted had David Rockefeller in attendance.

In 2014, Partners In Health co-founder Paul Farmer secured multi-million dollar Soros financing for a coalition project in Africa. Farmer was featured in an October 2014 video interview on Soros’ Open Society Foundations website, which stated, “In between trips to Liberia, Paul Farmer of Partners In Health visited Open Society’s offices to discuss his work on Ebola. Paul talked about the need to ensure sustainable health systems for people in nations where the virus has spread.” Farmer blasted “fear and conspiracy theories around fatal illnesses” in the video and talked about how to “attack” conspiracy theories with activism.

Forbes reported in September 2014: “There’s never been a connection between Ebola and first-rate medical care,” says Paul Farmer, the renowned co-founder of Partners in Health, before pointing out that none of the health care workers flown back to the U.S. for treatment have died. Could the answer to the outbreak lie in the care regiment for those afflicted?

We’ll soon find out. Farmer landed in Liberia this morning, at the center of a coalition quietly formed to specifically – and quickly – test that thesis. In the next few weeks, the Farmer group will open a top-notch treatment facility in one of Liberia’s most rural provinces, along with strategies designed to maximize its effectiveness.

“This has been coming together for years,” Farmer tells Forbes, a few hours before departing on the trip. “The Ebola crisis pushed it over the edge.”

The impetus for this coalition began with a meeting two weeks ago, convened by Farmer’s co-founder at Partners in Health, Jim Kim, who is now president of the World Bank. Attendees included Director-General Margaret Chan of the World Health Organization, Tom Frieden, Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Francis Collins, Director of the National Institute for Health. Dismayed by the global response – Kim told the group that the outbreak already ranks among the worst health crises in world history — Kim tabbed Farmer as the World Bank’s special Ebola advisor and also enlisted another attendee at the meeting, Raj Panjabi, who runs Last Mile Health in Liberia. (Full disclosure: Panjabi was mentored at last year’s Forbes 400 Summit on Philanthropy and I now chair the advisory board for Last Mile Health, which hires, trains and manages front-line health care workers in remote villages.)

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations quickly provided $4 million to fund this project. “The coalition got us a proposal the next day, they answered all our questions the day after, and we got them the funds they needed before the week was out,” says Chris Stone, the organization’s president. The project was appealing to Soros’ team because it features a local group familiar with the turf, an entrepreneurial mentality and the ability to scale.”

Forbes passage ends

Meanwhile…

Prospective Coronavirus contact tracers in New York City are required to understand “institutional and structural racism” and to support immigrants and the LGBTQ community. The government is employing contact tracers to investigate who infected persons come into contact with, leading to civilian concerns that privacy is being attacked.

A job posting on Columbia University School of General Studies states: “The Fund for Public Health in New York City (FPHNYC), in partnership with the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), is seeking contact tracers to perform case interviews and contact tracing to support the citywide COVID-19 response. using a trauma-informed, culturally respectful approach that builds trust and facilitates the free sharing of information.” The job includes “Conducting in-person investigations into congregate settings and selected cases and contacts.”

Listed requirements include: “Ability to understand the concepts of institutional and structural racism and bias and their impact on underserved and underrepresented communities” and “Have a demonstrated commitment to supporting communities who have experienced systemic oppression and bias (e.g. people of color, LGBTQ people, immigrants, justice involved persons, etc.)”

Democrat Rep. Bobby Rush has introduced a bill in Congress to authorize the federal government to grant approved entities the right to conduct contact tracing for Coronavirus at “individuals’ residences.” Contact tracing involves investigators tracing every interaction that infected people have.

Rep. Rush introduced HR 6666, “COVID-19 Testing, Reaching, and Contacting Everyone (TRACE) Act” on May 1, 2020 and it has been referred to the House Committee on Energy and Commerce. The bill has 45 co-sponsors. According to the text of the bill: “To authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to eligible entities to conduct diagnostic testing for COVID-19, and related activities such as contact tracing, through mobile health units and, as necessary, at individuals’ residences, and for other purposes.”

People are concerned that the government might be angling to use contact tracing to remove people from their homes and place them in quarantine, after a Ventura County, California health official suggested doing just that (and later walked it back, though it’s unclear what his proposed policy actually is at this time).

Former Democrat president Bill Clinton extensively discussed contact tracing recently in video interviews with Democrat leaders including governors Andrew Cuomo and Gavin Newsom:

Alex Jones discusses the dismemberment of the coronavirus task force & Fauci’s fraud!

SEVERAL CHURCHES FILE JOINT LAWSUIT AGAINST MICHIGAN GOVERNOR WHITMER OVER UNCONSTITUTIONAL STAY AT HOME ORDER

SEVERAL CHURCHES FILE JOINT LAWSUIT AGAINST MICHIGAN GOVERNOR WHITMER OVER UNCONSTITUTIONAL

STAY AT HOME ORDER

SEE: https://reformationcharlotte.org/2020/05/07/several-churches-file-joint-lawsuit-against-michigan-governor-over-unconstitutional-stay-at-home-order/;

republished below in full unedited for informational, educational and research

purposes:

In the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, governors in almost every state in the country

issued executive orders bypassing state legislature to enact Unconstitutional lockdowns

that kept businesses closed, churches from gathering, and people locked away in their

homes under the threat of force by law enforcement who chose to uphold these governor’s

orders rather than the Constitution they swore to uphold. Thankfully, in many local and

county governments, many did not — including some in Michigan.

Following widespread protests in the state of Michigan — which included tens of thousands of citizens driving into the state capital city of Lansing — several sheriffs in the state vowed not to enforce the draconian orders. Instead of listening to the citizens’ protest of her infringement of their constitutional rights, instead, Governor Janet Whitmer proceeded to blame and ridicule them.

Now, several churches, pastors, laypeople, and a former Republican delegate have filed a joint lawsuit against the Michigan tyrant claiming that her orders continue to hinder religious gatherings against afforded them in the First Amendment of the Constitution despite the “exceptions” that are made.

Whitmer’s executive order, which is in effect until May 15, says “neither a place of religious worship nor its owner” could be penalized or charged with a misdemeanor for “allowing religious worship at such place,” and that “no individual would be subject” to penalties for not wearing a face mask, which is currently a legal requirement in confined public places, including grocery stores.”

However, the lawsuit argues that “Nothing in this provision applies to individuals attending a place or worship as clergy or congregants,” and “A promise to not subject a geographic location or its ‘owner’ to the criminal penalty … merely adorns the Constitution with a fig leaf and does not protect individuals or change the clear language of the order prohibiting any religious services or other ministry functions at a church or religious organization.”

The lawsuit asks a federal judge to deem the 1945 Emergency Powers Act and the 1976 Emergency Management Act, which afforded Whitmer the power to issue her executive orders, unconstitutional.

“Nothing in the U.S. Constitution authorizes a state governor to suspend constitutional representative governance by declaring new emergencies every 28 days into perpetuity,” the complaint says. “Allowing one person to wield absolute power is not a republican form of government, it is tyranny.”

The entire lawsuit can be seen at this link.

OUR DRESS REHEARSAL FOR A POLICE STATE~THE GREATEST THREAT TO LIBERTY SINCE AMERICA’S FOUNDING