Did you know that over two-thirds of national crops originated from somewhere else?

Humans have been selecting and growing crops for specific traits since the origins of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, shaping where and what crops are grown today.

However, as Visual Capialist’s Tessa di Grandi details below, now our food system is completely global and many of the world’s top producers of staple crops are in countries far from their historical origin. For example, Brazil is now the largest soybean producer in the world, though the crop is originally from East Asia.

The below infographic by Brazil Potash shows the historical origins of crops before they were domesticated across the globe and the main producers of our staple crops today.

Producers Of Staple Crops Today

Staple crops are those that are the most routinely grown and consumed. These can vary between countries depending on availability.

In 2020, sugarcane, maize, wheat, and rice made up around 50% of global crop production.

But when the production and distribution of staple crops are threatened, the consequences can be felt globally. Let’s take a look at the countries that were the top three producers of some of our staple crops in 2020.

As you can see from the data above, Brazil is the world’s largest producer of sugarcane and one of the top three producers of maize.

The Future of Food Security

Global food security depends on staple crops and the countries that produce them. As the global population increases, so does the need to grow more crops.

The FAO estimates that by 2050 the world will need to increase its food output by around 70% in order to feed an ever-growing population.

Early food security solutions were transplanting crops from other regions to supplement diets. Now crop yields must increase as the next evolution in strengthening our food security. Fertilizers are a vital step in this process and are an essential ingredient in the future of global food security. They provide vital nutrients that increase crop production and strengthen nutrition security.

Brazil Potash extracts vital potash ore from the earth for it to return to the earth as fertilizer, fortifying food and helping to maintain continuous growth in the agricultural sector.

Authored by Ian Miller via the Brownstone Institute,

“The Experts™” have repeatedly tried to deflect from the failure of their policies with misdirection.

The reason lockdowns didn’t work in the United States or the United Kingdom is because they weren’t strict enough, according to many in the expert community.

Of course, their excuses have been conveniently ignored as China’s repressive zero COVID lockdowns have continued, with horrific consequences.

Now that mass protests have broken out in the country that “The Experts™” revered for their COVID handling, there’s a massive effort to disregard their own previous advocacy.

This is perhaps best exemplified by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who clearly used authoritarian measures to suppress the protests in his own country, while now supporting Chinese demonstrations.

pic.twitter.com/FiFoIJJxqy

— Defiant L’s (@DefiantLs) November 30, 2022

The bewildering lack of awareness of their own hypocrisy seems to be a feature of COVID-obsessed politicians and public health authorities.

Another similar, oft-repeated assertion is that the failure of universal masking can be explained by the type of masks being used by the public.

Even though the CDC and Dr. Fauci explicitly claimed that wearing anything to cover your face would be effective at preventing transmission, many have now quietly dismissed that messaging.

Fauci specifically said that “cloth coverings work,” not just surgical or N95s. Former Surgeon General Jerome Adams famously suggested that rolling up a t-shirt in front of your face would be effective protection.

Yet public health departments and the media are now highlighting the importance of “high quality,” “well-fitted” masks. 

Their desperation to justify masking has led to remarkably poor studies being released to support their anti-science messaging.

There is new research that has been released showing that masks are ineffective, regardless of type.

And it’s not just new research, it’s high quality research.

Finally, Another RCT on Mask Wearing

The Annals of Internal Medicine just published a randomized controlled trial comparing the ability of medical masks to prevent COVID infection to fit-tested N95s.

Importantly, this trial was conducted on healthcare workers who would be most likely to use masks appropriately.

To determine whether medical masks are noninferior to N95 respirators to prevent COVID-19 in health care workers providing routine care.

That trial design was also important as it was meant to determine whether or not N95 respirators were superior to “regular” surgical masks.

They examined 29 different health care facilities on multiple continents, from North America to Asia and Africa.

The percentage of healthcare workers testing positive for COVID in each group was tracked to determine how effective or ineffective higher-quality masking was in preventing infection.

Unsurprisingly, the results confirmed that there is essentially zero difference between surgical or N95 respirators when it comes to tests results.

In the intention-to-treat analysis, RT-PCR–confirmed COVID-19 occurred in 52 of 497 (10.46%) participants in the medical mask group versus 47 of 507 (9.27%) in the N95 respirator group (hazard ratio [HR], 1.14 [95% CI, 0.77 to 1.69]). An unplanned subgroup analysis by country found that in the medical mask group versus the N95 respirator group RT-PCR–confirmed COVID-19 occurred in 8 of 131 (6.11%) versus 3 of 135 (2.22%) in Canada (HR, 2.83 [CI, 0.75 to 10.72]), 6 of 17 (35.29%) versus 4 of 17 (23.53%) in Israel (HR, 1.54 [CI, 0.43 to 5.49]), 3 of 92 (3.26%) versus 2 of 94 (2.13%) in Pakistan (HR, 1.50 [CI, 0.25 to 8.98]), and 35 of 257 (13.62%) versus 38 of 261 (14.56%) in Egypt (HR, 0.95 [CI, 0.60 to 1.50]). There were 47 (10.8%) adverse events related to the intervention reported in the medical mask group and 59 (13.6%) in the N95 respirator group.

52 of 497 participants who wore medical masks got COVID-19, and 47 of 507 in the N95 group got COVID-19. 

No matter how “high quality” your mask is, it’s entirely irrelevant.

The researchers also took pains to ensure that the control and treatment groups shared as many similarities as possible.

They excluded workers who could not pass a fit test, had laboratory-confirmed COVID, or “had received 1 or more doses of a COVID-19 vaccine with greater than 50% efficacy for the circulating strain.”

Yet none of that mattered; there was no difference in outcomes between the medical and N95 level masks.

The N95s in use were even specifically fit tested and approved respirators, far from the KN95s commonly used by the general public.

“Health care workers randomly assigned to the N95 respirator group were instructed to use a fit-tested National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health–approved N95 respirator when providing routine care to patients with COVID-19 or suspected COVID-19.”

It didn’t matter.

Even more importantly, these disappointing results were from facilities with universal masking policies in place.

Everyone, in each health care facility, “for all activities,” was required to wear masks. 

The intervention included universal masking, which was the policy implemented at each site. This refers to the use of a mask when in the health care facility for all activities, whether patient related or not, including in workrooms, meetings, and treating persons that were not suspected or known to be positive for COVID-19.

It still didn’t work.

They even tracked potential exposure points, whether at home, in the community or in hospital exposures.

There was no difference.

What’s even more impressive about the futility of masking is that outside of Egypt, the observed results occurred before the more contagious Omicron variant emerged.

There were substantial differences in results between countries, which indicates the impact of N95s might have been further muted had it covered the Omicron period.

Canada, which was observed pre-Omicron, showed the biggest “benefit” to N95s, while post-Omicron Egypt was nearly identical. 

It’s possible that the mild difference in Canada could have been erased entirely if subjected to the Omicron era.

On top of being functionally useless, N95s were substantially more likely to result in adverse effects.

According to the results page, there were significantly more reported issues in the respirator group:

“There were 47 (10.8%) adverse events related to the intervention reported in the medical mask group and 59 (13.6%) in the N95 respirator group.”

This becomes even more noteworthy since compliance with respirator masking was lower.

“Adherence with the assigned medical mask or N95 respirator was self-reported as “always” in 91.2% in the medical mask group versus 80.7% in the N95 respirator group and as “always” or “sometimes” in 97.7% in the medical mask group versus 94.4% in the N95 respirator group.”

While still extremely high, health care workers “always” wore N95s 80.7% of the time instead of 91.2% for medical masks.

This is one of the many issues the “experts” now pushing for (now disproven) “higher-quality” masking should address.

Health care professionals who are trained to use N95s can’t always use them yet experience higher rates of adverse effects.

Imagine how much worse compliance would be among the general public, especially if 13% are suffering significant side effects.

Results Show Expert Incompetence

This is yet another randomized controlled trial to show that masks do not work.

It also confirms the DANMASK study conducted earlier in the pandemic, which proved there was no benefit from masking in COVID prevention.

Even the Bangladeshi study, comparing villages, showed there was no benefit to masking at a population level. They used statistical misdirection and purposeful p-hacking to try and generate a positive result, and still could only get to a ~10% reduction for those over 50.

No matter the quality, no matter the compliance, masks are entirely ineffective at preventing transmission or infection.

The participants in this examination lived and worked in environments where universal masking was a requirement.

It didn’t matter.

This also examined health care workers, who, in theory, would be using and disposing of medical or N95 level masks properly. 

There was no difference. 

Now imagine how much worse the results would look for mask fanatics if it examined the Fauci-approved cloth coverings. 

If “The Experts™” actually cared about following “the science,” or “the evidence,” this would once again be the nail in the coffin for masking.

More like the 40th nail in the coffin.

We have observational evidence through population-level comparisons that masks do not prevent the spread of COVID.

We also now have multiple randomized controlled trials confirming that masks do not prevent the spread of COVID.

And we have extremely well done comparisons of neighboring jurisdictions confirming it.

All the mask fanatics have is politically motivated wishful thinking, desperate advocacy from disproven CDC “studies,” and a commitment to avoiding reality.

Fauci and his health authority allies have lied to the public repeatedly about masking. The obsession with credentialism and appeals to authority within the media has resulted in tremendous, unjustified harm.

You’d hope that results like these would finally end their ridiculous posturing, but it’s abundantly clear they’re too dug in to ever relent.

But thankfully those paying attention now have even more ammunition in the fight for the inarguable scientific reality that masks do not work.

Authored by Techno Fog via The Reactionary,

In the event you missed last night’s thread of The Twitter Files, here it is:

1. Thread: THE TWITTER FILES

— Matt Taibbi (@mtaibbi) December 2, 2022

To give a short explainer, the talented Matt Taibbi posted internal Twitter documents around the 2020 presidential election which demonstrated how political operations – such as the Biden presidential campaign and the DNC – petitioned the company to remove “offending” tweets. Twitter complied. The Trump White House would make similar requests, but as Taibbi observe, “this system wasn’t balanced.” Instead, it was based on contacts. And as you can imagine, Twitter’s staff, especially at the highest levels, was far left and supported the Democrats.

What of the other Twitter Files? Elon has promised more transparency and Taibbi posted on his Substack that “there may be a few more big surprises coming.” Catch Taibbi and Walter Kirn, both of whom we’re big fans, explaining the Twitter Files on Episode 15 of “America This Week.”

But there’s a bigger story slowly emerging: the FBI’s involvement in political censorship.

As Miranda Devine observed today, there is much more to be divulged. Specifically, the FBI’s meddling in the 2020 election and the FBI’s pressure of social media companies, including Facebook and Twitter, to essentially censor the Hunter Biden story. It’s the story of FBI Supervisory Special Agent Elvis Chan, who recently testified he was part of that effort:

During the deposition, Chan said that he, along with the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and senior Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency officials, had weekly meetings with major social media companies to warn against Russian disinformation attempts ahead of the 2020 election, according to a source in the Missouri attorney general’s office.

These FBI warnings had to do with the potential Russian “hack and dump” or “hack and leak” of sensitive materials. And they may have contributed to Twitter’s assessment that the Hunter Biden materials may have been hacked, justifying Twitter’s censorship of the story.

FBI Director Christopher Wray actually took pride in these efforts, admitting to the agency’s involvement with social media companies “to make sure that their platforms are not used by foreign adversaries to spread disinformation and propaganda.” The censorship was directed from the top.

The Response

Not that any of this matters to much of the left. The clichés started once the story was posted. Twitter’s former former head of trust and safety, Yoel Roth, complained that the leaks were essentially “violence” and put the censors in danger.

The media’s response to the Twitter File story was equally predictable and boring. It was a non-story, it was public relations for the world’s richest man. They misrepresented the leak, ignored the merits, downplayed the significance of the Hunter Biden story by focusing on scandalous photos and not corruption and influence peddling and tax evasion and violations of federal law, and criticized Taibbi for posting the story on Twitter. Undertones of jealousy and resentment. As if we expected anything else. If their attacks are anything, they’re unoriginal. By this time we know what they’re gonna say before they say it.

Thankfully, we were able to see the documents for themselves. They’re damning, demonstrating the danger of the political control of social media. The DNC and Biden Team knew they had friends at Twitter who would do their bidding during the election. And Twitter lied to the FEC about that influence.

But that’s just at the surface. There’s something worse underneath it all, hidden from public: governmental influence and coercion over social media platforms, and the lies of the FBI to keep politically damaging – and true – material away from Americans.

It’s the massive “censorship enterprise” by the Federal Government. It’s the one-sided influence operation on American soil. (The CIA would be proud.) It was there in 2016, and it continued through the 2020 election to the emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic and the development of the COVID-19 vaccines. And it’s slowly coming into view. 

Subscribers to The Reactionary can read more here…

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Politics,

The relentless attacks on Elon Musk since he purchased Twitter should be familiar to most Americans. It’s exactly what Democrats and their media and corporate allies did to demonize Donald Trump.

The McCarthyite formula is simple: Claim you are defending high-minded principles (Democracy! The rule of law! Civil discourse!) to justify efforts to delegitimize someone you’ve identified as a political opponent.

Democrats denied Trump’s presidency from day one; Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden themselves declared for years that he had stolen the 2016 election. In the name of election integrity, Democrats turned a bogus conspiracy theory cooked up by Clinton’s campaign about Russian collusion into years of official investigations that undermined and tainted Trump. When Special Counsel Robert Mueller proved that a lie, Democrats immediately seized on a few innocuous sentences in a Trump phone call with a foreign leader to launch just the third presidential impeachment in U.S. history.

Those events are well-known, but ponder them for a moment. This was a soft coup, a nonviolent version of Jan. 6 that was far more dangerous than the Capitol riot. The effort to remove a lawfully elected president was planned and orchestrated by officials at the highest level of government and the media. While Jan. 6 was a one-off eruption of crazed anger, the false attacks on Trump edged our political discourse toward Orwellian Newspeak by presenting lies and smears as ringing defenses of sacred constitutional values.

The ongoing attacks against Musk are following the same playbook. The man once hailed by liberals as a genius for developing electric vehicles is now Public Enemy No. 1 because he says Twitter should allow more free speech. Ponder that as well: Musk’s enemies are casting him as a threat to the country because of his commitment to one of America’s most cherished freedoms.

Progressives have abandoned their longstanding anti-corporate stance to argue that an unelected, unaccountable company must aggressively censor the vox populi. We saw the same dizzying turnabout in Russiagate, where the left abandoned its historic defense of Russia to cast dealings with that nation as un-American (making Joe McCarthy their new “Uncle Joe”). 

Yes, Musk has restored Donald Trump’s Twitter account which the company’s previous leaders had disabled when he was president. But there is zilch, zero, nada evidence at this point that Twitter has become a toxic cesspool of hate. Nevertheless, that is the bogus claim being advanced by thought leaders including Jelani Cobb, dean of Columbia University’s journalism school.

Ponder the argument here that a corporation should have the power to remove the president of the United States from communicating through one of the nation’s prime networks. The same people who cheered that decision also thought it was appropriate for Twitter to help swing the 2020 election by prohibiting users from sharing blockbuster reports about Hunter Biden’s foreign dealings, recorded on his laptop.

If one needs any more proof that principle has no part in the attacks on Musk, consider that while Apple has joined many other major companies in pulling its advertising from Twitter, it issued an update only for its Chinese users limiting a function commonly used by protestors as discontent was percolating against that country’s extreme COVID restrictions.

The attacks on Musk shed light on a darker mystery of American life: Why did the left attack Trump so savagely? Yes, Trump is a coarse, combative man who has the same relationship with truth as a used-car salesman. But that hardly makes him an outlier in our coarse, combative culture where, the left has long argued, truth and almost everything else we used to define as reality are just social constructs.

At bottom, they saw Trump – and now Musk – as a threat to their power and privilege. For all their talk of democracy and the will of the people, the left has always embraced a top-down approach in which a benighted few control society. Trump was the first president without political or military experience. He  was not just an outsider; he  also promised to expose the hypocrisy and self-dealing of the ruling class, both Democrats and Republicans (hence the rise of “Never Trump” Republicans).

The fact that this man with no political experience accomplished so much – including helping the economy hum, brokering a peace deal in the Middle East, calling out China’s ruthlessness, and creating conditions for the development of a COVID vaccine in record time – exposed the failures of our best and brightest. He wasn’t a threat to the nation, but to their authority.

The left sees Musk as a similar threat. For decades they have largely controlled the flow of information in prestige publications and network news divisions. The rise of social media gave them new mechanisms for defining national narratives, and for silencing those who disagreed with them through cancel culture and outright censorship. They see Musk’s promise to restore free speech on Twitter as a threat to this power. Whoopi Goldberg stated this baldly when she counseled liberals to walk away from Twitter until they figure out how to “get the control you need” of the platform.

Hence the effort to Trumpify Musk.

Ponder for a moment the ubiquity and ferocity of attacks on this one man and the outrageous effort to cast calls for censorship as ringing defenses of liberty. Consider too that this, like the treatment accorded Trump, has not just been normalized, but valorized.

When authorities lose the power to convince, they coerce. That is what is going on now as they tell us to shut up and submit. Please tweet that out.

Authored by Alan Dershowitz, op-ed via The Daily Caller,

The City of San Francisco is constitutionally prohibited from disqualifying job applicants on the basis of race. That is precisely what occurred to John Arntz who has held the job of San Francisco’s director of the Department of Elections for two decades.

He has been repeatedly praised for his excellent performance at this increasingly important job – important because of so many election challenges and doubts. Just two years ago, the election commission commended him for his “incredible leadership.”

But now they are essentially firing him because he is apparently of the wrong race to satisfy their “racial equity plan”.

This is what he was told:

“Our decision wasn’t about your performance, but after twenty years we wanted to take action on the City’s racial equity plan and give people an opportunity to compete for a leadership position.”

The mayor of San Francisco, London Breed, disagreed:

“John Arntz has served San Francisco with integrity, professionalism and has stayed completely independent. He’s remained impartial and has avoided getting caught up in the web of City politics, which is what we are seeing now as a result of this unnecessary vote.”

“Over the last year John successfully ran four elections while navigating a pandemic that thwarted San Francisco into crisis response – all without a single issue. Rather than working on key issues to recover and rebuilt our City, this is a good example of unfair politicization of a key part of our government that is working well for the voters of this city.”

All of the 12 managers in his department asked that his contract be renewed. But in today’s woke world of identity politics, race trumps meritocracy. “Racial equity” plans are apparently more important than electoral integrity.

It well maybe that Arntz’s “equity” replacement will be as good as or better than him. There are, after all, highly qualified people of all races and backgrounds. But that is not the point. His contract would clearly have been renewed — he would not have been fired — if he were of an “acceptable” race.

But he is not, because he does not meet the criteria for the city’s “racial equity plan.”

To cover their legal rear ends (“CYA”) the panel has said that Arntz can “reapply” and be considered among the pool of candidates who do meet the criteria of racial equity, even though he does not! This “CYA” tactic does not even pass the giggle test.

It certainly does not pass the constitutional test, even the one that currently allows universities to place the thumb of racial diversity on the scale of admissions. That test is likely to be changed — perhaps disallowed — even in the context of private universities such as Harvard.

There is one important benefit to the San Francisco decision — at least as compared to university admissions decisions. The San Francisco panel did not try to disguise the racial criteria they are employing, whereas most universities go to great length to deny that race alone is often a dispositive factor in ranking applicants.

This will make it easier for the courts to hold San Francisco’s Arntz decision as a clear violation of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

But even if this particularly outrageous decision is struck down as unconstitutional, many cities and other governmental units will continue to use race as a basis for hiring and firing employees. They will simply be less transparent about it than San Francisco was.

In the bad old days, race was often used to discriminate against black applicants. Today race is often used to discriminate in favor of black applicants. I guess that is some sort of progress. But real progress will be achieved only if and when race is no longer a factor that trumps meritocracy.

Only then will Martin Luther King, Jr.’s dream of how his children and ours should be judged become a reality.

Edward Snowden, the former NSA contractor who exposed the U.S. government’s unconstitutional mass surveillance programs, received a Russian passport on Thursday after taking the country’s citizenship oath. 

“Edward received a Russian passport yesterday and took the oath in accordance with the law,” his lawyer Anatoly Kucherena said, according to Russian media. “He is, of course, happy, thanking the Russian Federation for the fact that he received citizenship.”

That citizenship comes with an enormously valuable feature: “Under the Constitution of Russia, he can no longer be extradited to a foreign state,” said Kucherena. 

Snowden faces prosecution on espionage charges for giving journalists an enormous volume of classified documents about NSA surveillance programs.

In 2013, Snowden famously traveled from Hawaii, where he worked for the NSA, to Hong Kong, where he arranged to meet journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. 

To obtain a Russian passport, one must pledge to: 

“…observe the constitution and legislation of the Russian Federation, the rights and freedoms of its citizens; perform the duties of a citizen of the Russian Federation for the benefit of the state and society; defend the freedom and independence of the Russian Federation; be loyal to Russia, respect its culture, history and traditions.”

Snowden’s citizenship and accompanying oath are prompting reiterations of the false claim that he “fled to Russia” after leaving Hong Kong. The truth, however, is that the Obama administration trapped Snowden in Russia.  

Snowden was merely using Moscow as a flight connection as he tried to make it to Ecuador and seek political asylum. Upon arriving in Russia, he learned Obama had revoked his passport. After spending 40 days at Sheremetyevo airport — and applied to 27 countries for asylum — he was granted asylum by Russian President Putin.  

I’m in Russia because the White House intentionally canceled my passport to trap me here. They *downed the President of Bolivia’s diplomatic aircraft* to prevent me from leaving, and continue to interfere with my freedom of movement to this day.

In case that was unclear. https://t.co/hOb2Azc41G

— Edward Snowden (@Snowden) December 2, 2022

Despite all the contrary facts that have been in plain view for nine years, a chorus of deep state useful idiots unleashed a new round of social media smears against the NSA whistleblower. “Edward Snowden, Russian asset and now citizen,” tweeted Washington Post columnist and Bulwark culture editor Sonny Bunch.  

Meanwhile, headlines at many outlets emphasized that Snowden “swore allegiance to Russia,” implying he’d abandoned his American citizenship. 

Shame on @WaPo for not checking w/ ⁦@Snowden⁩’s lawyers in the US. This misleading headline makes it sound like he renounced his US citizenship and swore fealty to Russia. He & his wife remain Americans. https://t.co/ZSrILewDlO

— unR̶A̶D̶A̶C̶K̶ted (@JesselynRadack) December 2, 2022

Snowden’s wife, Lindsay Mills, is also seeking Russian citizenship. The couple lives in Moscow with their two sons, who were born in Russia. 

Pleas for then-President Donald Trump to pardon Snowden — along with Julian Assange– fell on deaf ears.  

Authored by Joseph Lord via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Senate Republicans have vowed to oppose any spending bill that would go on beyond the 117th Congress.

After a long effort to pass an omnibus spending bill for fiscal year 2023, Democrats were forced to accept a short-term continuing resolution (CR) instead.

CRs, while they prevent the government from shutting down, make no changes to long-term federal spending. Rather, they simply continue to spend at levels set the prior fiscal year.

Earlier this year, Democrats passed a CR that will fund the government through Dec. 16, at which point the government will shut down if lawmakers have not passed a new spending bill.

One of the Democrats’ many agenda items during the lame-duck session is the passage of a more comprehensive omnibus spending bill. In contrast to a CR, an omnibus bill, if passed, would allow Democrats to set appropriations levels for next year even though they’ll be in the House minority.

Because the 118th Congress will sit for the first time on Jan. 3, 2022, allowing a CR to run out before then could give a lame-duck Democrat majority a last-minute chance to fund its policies through all of fiscal year 2023.

This, a group of Republican senators told Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a Nov. 30 letter, is unacceptable.

The letter was written by Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) and signed onto by three other Republicans—Sens. Rick Scott (R-Fla.), Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and Mike Braun (R-Ind.).

In it, the coalition demanded that McConnell not allow Democrats to succeed in their efforts to set next year’s spending levels.

“On November 8, 2022, the American people made their voices heard at the ballot box,” the letter opened. “Using the
Democratic process, millions of Americans sent a message—they want divided power in Washington to curb the worst excesses of both parties.”

The four Republicans said they “stand with the voters.”

They wrote, “We believe it would be both imprudent, and a reflection of poor leadership, for Republicans to ignore the will of the American people and rubber stamp an omnibus spending bill that funds ten more months of [President Joe Biden’s] agenda without any check on his reckless policies that have led to a 40-year high in inflation.”

According to the most recent data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation has slowed from its peak of over nine percent in June, but it remains high. In October, the value of the dollar dropped by 7.7 percent, a situation that Republicans have blamed on Democrats’ “out of control spending” (pdf).

Since taking unilateral control of the government, Democrats have rushed through trillions in new spending: first with the passage of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan, which received no GOP support, the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, and the $740 billion Inflation Reduction Act.

The effect of this spending, the Republicans wrote, has been higher costs for American households. They cited a figure provided by the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget which estimates that Democrats have authorized $4.8 trillion in new borrowing since Biden took office.

“Since taking office, President Biden has overseen a $4.8 trillion increase in the national deficit, costing the average American household an estimated $753 more a month,” the lawmakers wrote. “It should be up to the new Congress to set spending priorities for the remainder of this fiscal year.”

Concluding the letter the Republicans wrote: “Now is the time for Republicans to get serious about leading America towards a better future.”

They demanded that McConnell not make any deals that would fund the government well into the next fiscal year.

“We must not accept anything other than a short-term Continuing Resolution that funds the federal government until shortly after the 118th Congress is sworn in,” they wrote, demanding that “[no] additional spending, [and] no additional policy priorities should be included.”

Anything more urgent, they added, should be handled as an individual bill rather than as part of an omnibus spending bill.

‘A Lame Duck Spending Blowout’: Roy

This demand, the passage of a short-term “clean” CR with no changes to current spending, has been growing among Republicans.

In the House, Rep. Chip Roy (R-Texas) circulated a letter making similar demands.

In the letter, Roy wrote: “Federal dollars are fueling rampant inflation and funding the Biden administration’s radical agenda. This includes empowering authoritarian bureaucrats at agencies like the IRS and FBI, implementing open-border policies that are threatening our communities, imposing COVID-19 mandates that shut down schools and are forcing our military servicemembers out of their jobs, and advancing self-destructive energy policies.

“As the September 30th federal funding deadline approaches, Republicans must do what is necessary to ensure that not one additional penny will go toward this administration’s radical, inflationary agenda,” he continued. “Any legislation that sets the stage for a ‘lame duck’ fight on government funding gives Democrats one final opportunity to pass that agenda.

“Therefore, we, the undersigned, pledge to the American people to reject any continuing resolution that expires prior to the first day of the 118th Congress, or any appropriations package put forward in the remaining months of this Democrat-led Congress.”

On Dec. 1, Roy re-upped these demands in an op-ed for the Washington Examiner. He described Democrats’ ongoing efforts to pass an omnibus bill as “a lame-duck spending blowout.”

“When is $5 trillion still not enough?” Roy quipped. “Answer: When you’re a progressive about to lose your grip on total power.”

Later, he wrote: “Taxpayers … deserve better than another rushed backroom deal as lawmakers sprint home for Christmas. Democrats ran all of government for two years but focused on their special spending causes rather than pass individual bills to finance the government. Now with three weeks left in a lame duck, they want to jam the GOP again.”

Roy said that Republicans should not be cowed by Democrats threatening to shut down the government to pass a spending bill.

“The GOP campaigned on a return to regular fiscal order, and why not start now?” Roy wrote. “Democrats can threaten a government shutdown, but they’d own it as the party in control. If Republicans aren’t going to use their power to enforce some fiscal discipline, they might as well stay in the minority.”

What’s Next

Despite opposition to an omnibus bill among both House and Senate Republicans, Democrats could still get what they hope for.

Read more here…

Authored by Janice Hisle via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

When a researcher begins with a conclusion, then looks for data to support that, “it’s a danger to all of science,” Dr. Paul Hruz, a St. Louis physician-scientist told a federal judge.

Yet Hruz said he has seen this disturbing pattern recur in recent years, as he examined studies purporting to prove the benefits of hormones and surgeries as treatments for gender-conflicted youths.

“It is erroneous to say that we identified an effective solution that maximizes benefits and minimizes risk,” Hruz testified Dec. 1 in U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Arkansas.

Assailing the poor quality of research about gender-transition medical treatments for minors, and raising concerns about the risk of harm, Hruz said: “There are major, major questions that remain.”

Hruz, a pediatric endocrinologist and researcher, also called the procedures “highly experimental” and “unproven.”

He was the final witness to testify during a trial that is testing the nation’s first law banning hormones and surgeries for “gender-transition” of minors.

Judge Faces Big Decision

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit seeking to throw out the 2021 Arkansas law, alleging it is unconstitutional.

The ACLU of Arkansas has denounced the law as part of a “hateful attack” on LGBT youths seeking “medically necessary care.”

But the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office is defending the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act, asserting that the state has a compelling interest to protect vulnerable children from medical interventions that can cause permanent harm, including ongoing health problems and sterility.

No dates have been set for attorneys to file final written briefs—the final pieces of the puzzle for Judge James Moody Jr. to consider before he issues a ruling. His decision could influence the way other states and courts respond to controversies surrounding similar legislation.

Moody will be considering two weeks’ worth of testimony that began with witnesses the ACLU called in mid-October. After a month-long recess, the trial resumed on Nov. 28 with witnesses testifying on behalf of the SAFE Act.

Treatments ‘Disrupt’ Healthy Process

During the last day of testimony on Dec. 1, Dylan Jacobs, deputy solicitor general for the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office, systematically questioned Hruz to share his extensive knowledge about treatment of “gender dysphoria,” or gender-related distress, among adolescents.

Based on his 25 years as a pediatric endocrinologist, along with 10 years of intensely researching gender dysphoria, Hruz said he would never prescribe puberty-blockers or cross-sex hormones without solid scientific studies showing that they do more good than harm.

Endocrinologists are dedicated to “restoring the body to its natural state of health” by correcting hormonal imbalances or deficiencies, he said.

Thus, Hruz objects to using hormones for gender dysphoria, and disrupting a normally functioning, healthy endocrine system.

6,000 Sex-Based Differences

Jacobs pointed out that ACLU witnesses described puberty blockers as a harmless “pause button.” Not so, Hruz said.

Puberty blockers prevent sex-specific changes, including easily observed ones such as breast development in girls and testicle development in boys. But inside the body, many other changes are also occurring during adolescence; the impact of interfering with those changes remains largely unknown, which is troubling, Hruz said.

“It is impossible to turn back time. So, once you’ve blocked puberty… you cannot buy back the time when that physical process has been disrupted,” Hruz said.

He also said credible studies show that, if left alone, many transgender-identifying youths will likely revert to their biological sex. But if put on puberty blockers, 98 percent of the youths will go on to take cross-sex hormones.

Flooding a person’s body with hormones of the opposite sex can cause myriad unknown effects, he said, noting that there are more than 6,000 sex-specific genetic differences between males and females.

In addition, it’s unclear how the combined effects of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones could affect young people in the long run, Hruz said.

Rapid-Fire Answers

In instance after instance, Hruz enumerated specific problems with studies that claim hormones or surgeries benefited youths with gender dysphoria.

“Despite the claims that are made about the efficacy of the affirmative approach, the evidence is insufficient to make that conclusion,” Hruz said.

With near-encyclopedic detail, Hruz fired off answers so quickly that the court stenographer struggled to keep pace. Moody repeatedly asked him to speak more slowly.

At one point, the judge became so frustrated, he threatened to stop the witness from further testimony unless Jacobs found a way to get Hruz to slow down his statements.

Hruz moderated his pace but continued speaking authoritatively as he testified for more than three hours under Jacobs’ questioning.

Generally, when considering medical treatment options, “The higher the risk, the lower the quality of evidence, the more caution that is used,” Hruz said.

Yet, with gender-affirming care, that principle seems not to apply, he said.

He couldn’t remember seeing any other medical treatments so strongly recommended despite such poor-quality evidence.

Another “unique” feature of this debate: The existence of gender dysphoria hinges on the patient’s self-reported identity and desires, Hruz said. There is no way to “test the accuracy of that condition,” he said.

Read more here…

More than one thousand New York Times employees could walk off the job late next week if a newsroom union fails to strike a deal with the publisher. 

After 20 months of negotiations, enough is enough: Today, more than 1,000 @NYTimesGuild members pledged to walk out if @nytimes does not agree to a complete and fair contract by Dec. 8.

— NYTimesGuild (@NYTimesGuild) December 2, 2022

In a series of tweets, NYTimesGuild, the labor union of more than 1,000 NYTimes employees, complained about pensions, health care, and pay while the progressive newspaper is on track for an annual operating profit of $320 million and splurged $150 million on stock buybacks.  

If you can believe it, NYTimes still pays their base journalist a measly $65,000 yearly, barely enough to live in NYC. 

A company on track for an annual operating profit of $320 million or more should be paying its employees a minimum of $65,000 a year. The @nytimes thinks this is unreasonable. The @NYTimesGuild does not.

— NYTimesGuild (@NYTimesGuild) December 2, 2022

This walkout pledge was not a decision we made lightly. But the truth is @nytimes is a blank page without @NYTGuild members. It’s time they gave us a contract that reflects our true worth. pic.twitter.com/MTMdockEKK

— NYTimesGuild (@NYTimesGuild) December 2, 2022

The lack of pay increases and failed negotiations by the union to solidify a deal appears to have been the last straw:

“Enough. If there is no contract by Dec. 8, we are walking out,” read the email’s subject line containing the letter that was sent to NYTimes publisher A.G. Sulzberger and CEO Meredith Kopit Levien on Friday, according to New York magazine.

The labor union wants negotiations on health care, pension plans, and a pay increase. They threatened to stop working for a full day next Thursday if an agreement wasn’t reached. 

“Labor unrest at the Times is always awkward for the top editor, who gets pinioned between the newsroom they run and the business side to which they must answer. The big walkout would be the first real crisis for new executive editor Joe Kahn,” New York Magazine wrote. 

NYTimes spokesperson said:

“While we are disappointed that the NewsGuild is threatening to strike, we are prepared to ensure The Times continues to serve our readers without disruption. We remain committed to working with the NYT NewsGuild to reach a contract that we can all be proud of.”

Meanwhile, “the paper,” NYTimes television critic James Poniewozik said, “doesn’t write itself.” A labor action and what could result in content disruption wouldn’t necessarily be a terrible thing, as it would force readers to search for news elsewhere.