Authored by Megan Redshaw via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A new report is raising concerns over General Mills’ new cereal line after testing revealed that Trix LOADED cereal is literally loaded with high levels of heavy metals and agrochemicals.

General Mills, Inc. on Feb. 1 launched “LOADED,” a new cereal line with “puffed-up larger-than-life squares” of General Mills’ Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Trix, and Cocoa Puffs cereals filled with artificially flavored vanilla creme. Trix LOADED boasts 17 grams of whole grain per serving and 12 vitamins and minerals. Yet testing by Moms Across America (MAA), an organization dedicated to educating and empowering others to create healthy communities, found the artificially flavored creme-filled breakfast food also contains measurable levels of aluminum, cadmium, arsenic, lead, glyphosate, and pesticides shown to be harmful to humans.

In a statement to The Epoch Times, MAA director Zen Honeycutt said her organization tested two samples of General Mills’ Trix LOADED cereal because they were alarmed that the company, which had previously seemed very committed to supporting regenerative organic agriculture, launched a cereal “loaded with creme, food dyes, and highly-processed foods.”

Pesticides Found in General Mills’ Trix LOADED Cereal

In test results obtained by MAA, scientists found residues from eight different pesticides in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal.

The following six pesticide residues were found in trace amounts:

• Imazalil-1
• Metconazole-1
• Pyraclostrobin-1
• Pyrimethanil-1
• Pyriproxyfen-1
• Tebuconazole-1

Two pesticides, piperonyl butoxide-1 (PBO) and fluopyram-1, were detected in higher amounts. Fluopyram-1 is a broad-spectrum fungicide that can cause liver problems, endocrine disruption, and thyroid cancer.

Piperonyl butoxide (PBO) is a man-made pesticide synergist that enhances the potency of certain pesticides designed to kill insects. The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) classifies PBO as a “possible human carcinogen” as studies in rats show PBO can induce thyroid and liver cancers, as well as noncancerous tumors.

More recent animal model studies suggest PBO exposure can cause neurodevelopmental abnormalities in utero and liver cancer. A 2021 study published in Reproductive Toxicology found PBO may cause male infertility and reproductive toxicity.

According to the National Pesticide Information Center, PBO is found in over 2,500 pesticide products, including foggers and mosquito control programs. Yet PBO is exempt from the EPA’s maximum residue limits, which determine the amount of pesticides allowed to remain in food. This means PBO pesticide residue is freely permitted in cereals consumed daily by children and adolescents across the United States.

Heavy Metals Exceeded EPA Allowable Levels

According to test results obtained by The Epoch Times, scientists also detected measurable levels of aluminum, cadmium, lead, and arsenic in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal that in some cases far exceeded the EPA allowable levels in drinking water. The United States does not consistently regulate heavy metals in food or assess the long-term cumulative effects of heavy metal exposure in children, but it does regulate the amount of heavy metal contaminants allowed in water.

For example, the EPA sets the allowable level of arsenic in drinking water at 10 parts per billion (ppb). Trix LOADED cereal samples contained 21.5 and 23 ppb of lead—more than double the EPA’s allowable level. The samples contained cadmium levels 400 percent higher than the EPA’s allowable level.

The EPA allows 0.05 to 0.2 mg/L of aluminum in drinking water, equivalent to 50 to 200 ppb. Cereal samples 1 and 2 contained 2,930 ppb and 3,500 ppb of aluminum, respectively. These were 1,365 percent and 1,650 percent higher than the agency’s allowable level of aluminum in drinking water.

In 2008, the European Food Safety Authority established a “tolerable weekly intake” of 1 mg of aluminum per kg of body weight per week, based on combined evidence from animal studies that assessed dietary administration of aluminum compounds.

Using European Union standards, if a child eats a 40-gram serving of Trix LOADED cereal daily, the weekly consumption of aluminum would be 0.98 mg/week based on one sample and 0.82 mg/week based on the other. This is roughly equal to the EU’s limit without considering other sources of aluminum exposure, such as flour, baking soda, medications, processed foods, and aluminum pots and pans.

Trix LOADED Exposes Children to Toxic Glyphosate

Glyphosate, the most widely used herbicide in the world, was found in both samples of Trix LOADED cereal at 15.83 ppb and 17.47 ppb. It is a key inactive ingredient in weedkiller products such as Roundup.

The EPA has not classified glyphosate as a human carcinogen, but the International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified glyphosate as “probably” carcinogenic to humans.

Studies have confirmed a link between glyphosate and numerous health conditions, including cancers and nervous system disorders. Additionally, Monsanto, now Bayer, agreed to pay roughly $11 billion to settle claims filed by individuals who say Roundup caused their non-Hodgkin lymphoma or other related cancers. As of March, there are 4,253 cancer lawsuits, out of the 4,800 claims originally filed, still pending in the California Roundup multi-district litigation.

In research published by the University of California, Berkeley School of Public Health, scientists found that childhood exposure to glyphosate is linked to liver inflammation and metabolic disorders in adulthood that could lead to liver cancer, diabetes, and cardiovascular diseases later in life. Researchers found high levels of glyphosate residue in the urine of children and adolescents and reported that diet was a key source of exposure—as levels were higher in those who consumed more cereals and carbohydrates.

Glyphosate is routinely used on genetically modified crops such as corn, soybeans, wheat, oats, legumes, and produce.

Moms Across America Contacts General Mills

In an email to General Mills provided to The Epoch Times, MAA called on the company to source suppliers who use safe, nontoxic ingredients, despite the lack of laws and regulations that would otherwise require them to do so.

MAA requested General Mills do the following:

• Require that suppliers of ingredients avoid using glyphosate or other agrochemicals as a drying agent or preharvest weedkiller.
• Transition away from using glyphosate as a weedkiller within one to two years.
• Perform quality testing on fertilizers for heavy metal contaminants and direct the safest possible fertilizer to be used.
• Support and promote regenerative organic farming practices.

“We hope consumers will learn the truth about the contents of ‘loaded cereal’ and make choices to support their family’s health,” Ms. Honeycutt told The Epoch Times. “We also hope they [consumers] will alert their elected officials that these types of foods, with high heavy metals and agrochemicals, have no place in the American food supply.”

Ms. Honeycutt said she believes consumers should know the truth about what’s in their cereal so that they can make choices to support their family’s health, and hopes policymakers will “exercise the political will needed to clean up the food supply.”

The Epoch Times reached out to General Mills for comment.

Late this week House Speaker Mike Johnson confirmed that he will go through with inviting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Washington in order to address a joint session of Congress, and to emphasize solidarity with Israel amid its ongoing war against Hamas.

Johnson’s Thursday statement suggests the invitation has already been extended: “I would love to have him come in and address a joint session of Congress. We’ll certainly extend that invitation,” he said to NBC News. “We’re just trying to work out schedules on all this.”

Johnson has in turn recently been asked by Israeli officials to speak at Israel’s parliament, the Knesset.

Even though all of this has come in direct response to Sen. Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s scathing anti-Netanyahu speech issued earlier this month, Schumer now says he welcomes the idea of Netanyahu addressing Congress.

Schumer had said Israel risks becoming a “pariah” under Netanyahu’s failed policies, and highlighted the soaring Palestinian civilian death toll in the war against Hamas. He even called for new elections in Israel.

“Israel has no stronger ally than the United States, and our relationship transcends any one president or any one Prime Minister,” Schumer has responded in a statement. “I will always welcome the opportunity for the Prime Minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way.”

It must be remembered, however, the Netanyahu once addressed Congress – all the way back in 2002 – where he helped the Bush administration deceive the American public concerning Saddam Hussein and WMDs.

He had testified during that appearance over two decades ago, “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons.”

Netanyahu had also dubiously said, “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.”

That alone should disqualify him from ever being welcomed to speak to Congress and the American people again. But apparently both sides of the aisle are welcoming Johnson’s plan.

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

Some 8 to 10 million illegal aliens from all over the world, as expected, have flooded across the border since President Joe Biden took office.

A demagogic candidate Biden, remember, in 2019 invited those massing at the southern border to “surge” into the United States without specifying that they first needed legal sanction: “We immediately surge to the border all those seeking asylum.”

In contrast, we know legal immigration is America’s great strength, but it has always depended on a few key prerequisites.

Immigration must be legal and measured.

Why? Because only the host nation can adjudicate how many immigrants it can successfully accept and assimilate. It has no desire to encourage Balkanized tribalism so common in nations abroad torn apart by ethnic conflict.

America must have some knowledge of the background of immigrants, especially whether they have criminal records, belong to gangs, are importing drugs, carry infectious diseases, or can be self-supporting.

By contrast, if the first thing immigrants do is illegally cross the American border, and the second is to reside illegally in America, and the third is to obtain fraudulent identification to mask that illegality, then they will establish long patterns of illegal behavior and disrespect for their hosts.

In addition, immigration should be diverse so that large ethnic groups do not form permanent tribal sects in the fashion of the Balkans, the Middle East, or Latin America.

Ideally, the host should prefer immigrants who have some knowledge of the language and customs of the United States. And they should have some ability to be self-supporting so as not to burden American taxpayers or overtax and deprive social services from poorer U.S. citizens.

As for the host?

America must be confident enough in and knowledgeable enough about its values, customs, and traditions to demand immigrants integrate rapidly into the body politic of the United States.

Both the host and immigrants must agree on the basic facts of immigration.

Immigrants, not the host, have chosen to leave their native land to risk a new life and identity in America.

Therefore, the relationship is, by nature, asymmetrical. The host has a perfect right, indeed a responsibility, to impose its own values upon newcomers—not vice versa.

Otherwise, if immigrants do not absorb their newly adopted culture, why would they have left and, in some sense, rejected their homeland in the first place?

To replicate in the United States the very conditions and environment that they so eagerly fled from back home?

So the host must remind immigrants that they chose a completely different paradigm from their native country. And therefore, they must be helped to embrace an entirely new national identity.

Unfortunately, in the last four years, the Biden administration has violated every historical canon critical to ensuring legal immigration enriches the United States.

They have encouraged 8–10 million of the world’s poorest to flood the border and to enter and reside in America without legal sanction.

Most have no prior experience with American traditions, and few speak English.

Host Americans have no idea whether hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of the millions entering illegally have committed crimes in their native countries, or have any record of employment, or are sick, or are here to foment gangs and to import lethal, foreign-made drugs that kill some 100,000 Americans a year.

Worse, we, the hosts, no longer believe in the melting pot that once made America the world’s only successful multiracial democracy, united by the laws of the Constitution and the unique values that emanate from it.

The combination of mass illegal immigration, without audit, into a country beset with $35 trillion in national debt, an existing 50 million residents not born in the United States, and without confidence in rapid assimilation certainly explains the disaster of illegal immigration that now manifests daily.

President Biden may think nullifying federal immigration law is a smart political trick that, in the past, may have flipped southwestern states from red to blue or warped the census to give blue states more congressional districts.

Or he may assume that with 70 percent of the electorate now voting through poorly audited mail-in balloting, there is no real way to prevent foreign nationals from voting for those who neutered the law to let them in.

But in truth, President Biden is unfortunately undermining support for all immigration, legal or otherwise. He is guaranteeing that more imported drugs and gang members will kill more Americans.

Ironically, President Biden is also alienating from the Democratic Party its once loyal black and Latino voters. They, not the party elite, must deal concretely with the consequences of Biden’s callous and cynical, ideologically driven policies.

Perhaps the left will only cease destroying immigration law when it realizes that for each illegal alien it invites in, it will lose one or more once loyal Democratic voters.

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

Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife MacKenzie Scott, the third-wealthiest woman in the US, has awarded $640 million in new charitable donations – with most of it going to far-left nonprofits pushing left-wing causes, including assisting migrants who commit crimes and promoting transgender biological males who compete against women, the NY Post reports.

Scott will provide 67 migrant-advocacy organizations a combined $122 million for legal aid and other assistance, according to an analysis of 361 awards she announced Tuesday through her foundation Yield Giving.

The big winners include the Florida Immigrant Coalition, which vehemently opposes Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ crackdown on migrants who commit crimes; and the Tennessee Immigrant & Refugee Rights Coalition, which is fighting that state’s efforts to increase illegal-migrant enforcement. Both scored $2 million awards. -NY Post

Scott also awarded $117 million to prisoner-advocacy groups, $72 million to 43 groups which promote “sexual orientation” and “gender identity” and supporting transgender boys who routinely ruin athletics for biological females (feminists MIA).

“Bezos’ wife is using the profits he made through capitalism to [fund] the rope that will hang capitalism,” said Heritage Foundation senior fellow, Mike Gonzalez, adding “The capitalists will sell us the rope with which we will hang them,” to quote Lenin.

“These things that she’s donating money to – whether it’s transgender ideas, helping illegals, prisoner rights, climate change – they’re all trying to transform our system away from capitalism,” Gonzalez continued.

Scott, who was married to Jeff Bezos for nearly 25 years and has four children with him, parted ways with the Amazon.com founder with $38.3 billion in Amazon stock. In Dec. 2022 she launched a database of her charitable gifts under the name Yield Giving.

She then began soliciting applications from community-led nonprofits in need of financial assistants – which were required to have budgets ranging between $1 and $5 million, and missions “to advance the voices and opportunities of individuals and families of meager or modest means,” according to the website.

According to the Post, the $640 awarded by Yield Giving during this first round of donations is more than double what Scott had initially pledged – with 361 of the 6,530 charities which applied receiving awards of either $1 million or $2 million.

Megan Peterson, executive director of Gender Justice, cheered Scott’s $2 million “gift” to her nonprofit, saying in a statement it “could not come at a more crucial time” with “a conservative legal movement threatening our fundamental rights here in Minnesota, North Dakota, and across the United States.”

“Building and sustaining a world free of gender barriers requires community organization, education, and changing the ways we talk and think about gender,” added Peterson, whose group recently won lawsuits regarding access to emergency contraception and the rights of trans youth to play sports that are not their biological gender. -NY Post

At least $16 million out of $72 million handed out to LGBTQ causes were nonprofits promoting transgender athletes in female sports – including the ACLU of Alabama.

“Democrats running cities across America do this every day with our money, and that’s the real battle we need to keep fighting,” said NY Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-Brooklyn), who said that Scott’s spending on leftist causes is “unfortunate – but it’s her personal money.“

Authored by Naveen Athrappully via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Receiving blood transfusion from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals could pose a medical risk to unvaccinated recipients since numerous adverse events are being reported among vaccinated people worldwide, according to a recent study from Japan.

The preprint review, published on March 15, examined whether receiving blood from COVID-19-vaccinated individuals is safe or poses a health risk. Many nations have reported that mRNA vaccine usage has resulted in “post-vaccination thrombosis and subsequent cardiovascular damage, as well as a wide variety of diseases involving all organs and systems, including the nervous system,” it said.

Repeated vaccinations can make people more vulnerable to COVID-19, it said. If the blood contains spike proteins, it becomes necessary to remove these proteins prior to administration, and there is no such technology currently available, the authors wrote.

Contrary to earlier expectations, genes and proteins from genetic vaccines have been found to persist in the blood of vaccine recipients for “prolonged periods of time.”

In addition, “a variety of adverse events resulting from genetic vaccines are now being reported worldwide.” This includes a wide range of diseases related to blood and blood vessels.

Some studies have reported that the spike protein in the mRNA vaccines is neurotoxic and capable of crossing the blood-brain barrier, the review stated. “Thus, there is no longer any doubt that the spike protein used as an antigen in genetic vaccines is itself toxic.”

Moreover, people who have taken multiple shots of mRNA vaccines can have several exposures to the same antigen within a small time frame, which may lead to them being “imprinted with a preferential immune response to that antigen.”

This has resulted in COVID-19 vaccine recipients becoming “more susceptible to contracting COVID-19.”

Given such concerns, medical professionals should be aware of the “various risks associated with blood transfusions using blood products derived from people who have suffered from long COVID and from genetic vaccine recipients, including those who have received mRNA vaccines.”

The impact of such genetic vaccines on blood products as well as the actual damage caused by them are currently unknown, the authors wrote.

“In order to avoid these risks and prevent further expansion of blood contamination and complication of the situation, we strongly request that the vaccination campaign using genetic vaccines be suspended and that a harm–benefit assessment be carried out as early as possible.”

Repeated vaccination of genetic vaccines can also end up causing “alterations in immune function” among recipients. This raises the risk of serious illnesses due to opportunistic infections or pathogenic viruses, which would not have been an issue if the immune system were normal, the review said.

“Therefore, from the perspective of traditional containment of infectious diseases, greater caution is required in the collection of blood from genetic vaccine recipients and the subsequent handling of blood products, as well as during solid organ transplantation and even surgical procedures in order to avoid the risk of accidental blood-borne infection,” it stated.

The review was funded by members of the Japanese Society for Vaccine-related Complications and the Volunteer Medical Association. Authors did not declare any conflict of interest.

Dangers With Blood Transfusions

The review pointed out that the genetic vaccination status of blood donors is not collected by organizations even though the use of such blood may pose risks to patients. As such, authors recommended that when blood products are derived from such people, “it is necessary to confirm the presence or absence of spike protein or modified mRNA as in other tests for pathogens.”

“If the blood product is found to contain the spike protein or a modified gene derived from the genetic vaccine, it is essential to remove them,” it stated. “However, there is currently no reliable way to do so.”

Since “there is no way to reliably remove the pathogenic protein or mRNA, we suggest that all such blood products be discarded until a definitive solution is found.”

The authors pointed out that cases of encephalitis among people who received blood from dengue vaccine recipients were reported as recently as last year. This suggests that the present system of tracking and managing blood products “is not adequate.”

Since genetic vaccines were implemented on a global scale for a massive population, “it is expected that the situation will already be complicated” compared to previous drug disasters.

As such, there is an “urgent need” for legislation and international treaties related to the management of blood products, the authors wrote.

The issue of blood transfusion from COVID-19 vaccine recipients has been highly controversial. In 2022, a court in New Zealand ruled against the parents of a sick infant son after they refused blood transfusions from vaccinated people.

The parents had asked the health system to allow blood transfusion from unvaccinated individuals, with donors who were already prepared to contribute. In its ruling, the court stripped the parents of medical custody of their son.

In Canada, doctors have also reported the trend of people’s resistance to vaccinated blood transfusions. Speaking to CBC in 2022, Dr. Dave Sidhu, the southern Alberta medical lead for transfusion and transplant medicine, said that parents of sick children were requesting unvaccinated blood.

“We’re seeing it about once or twice a month, at this stage. And the worry is of course that these requests might increase,” he said at the time.

In Wyoming, Rep. Sarah Penn (R-Wyo.) has sponsored a bill mandating that blood donated by people who have taken COVID-19 shots be labeled. Doing so will allow recipients who do not wish to accept such blood to reject them.

In an interview with Cowboy State Daily, Ms. Penn said, “For various reasons, many people have purposefully strived to keep the mRNA therapies out of their bodies, even to the point that some lost their livelihoods … Their concerns are warranted.”

In the latest bad news for Boeing, the FBI has started notifying passengers on the Jan. 5 Alaska Airlines flight that experienced a terrifying blowout of a door-plug that they may be a “victim of a crime.” 

“As a victim specialist with the Seattle division, I’m contacting you because we have identified you as a possible victim of a crime,” read the FBI letters to travelers on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282. “This case is currently under investigation by the FBI. A criminal investigation can be a lengthy undertaking, and for several reasons, we cannot tell you about its progress at this time.” 

Passenger releases footage from January 7, 2024 on Alaska Airlines Flight 1282 in Portland, Oregon where a Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft experienced rapid decompression after the plane door ‘fell off’ pic.twitter.com/1yrly2JDZc

— TRACKER DEEP (@tracker_deep) March 19, 2024

In early March, it was reported that the Justice Department had opened an investigation of Boeing over the incident, which involved a Boeing 737 MAX 9 aircraft used for an Alaska Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon to Ontario, California. Soon after takeoff, a door plug — a panel used to fill an area that in some configurations might hold a functioning door — blew out of the side of the aircraft. Fortunately, the seats adjacent to the hole weren’t occupied, and there were no serious injuries. 

In a preliminary report on its own inquiry, the National Transportation Safety Board said the door plug was missing four bolts that are used to secure it to the fuselage. They also said they’d determined the bolts weren’t installed when the plane left a Boeing assembly plant in late 2023. 

Diagram of a Boeing 737-9 mid-cabin door plug and components (Source: Boeing) pic.twitter.com/7qPF5MGAOX

— NTSB Newsroom (@NTSB_Newsroom) January 8, 2024

The DOJ investigation is ominous enough on its own, but it could also have a serious follow-on effect: 

If the Justice Department brings any criminal charge against Boeing in the Alaska Airlines case, that would give prosecutors the grounds to tear up the earlier agreement and charge Boeing for its role in the crashes of a Lion Air flight in 2018 and an Ethiopian Airlines flight in 2019. Those crashes resulted in the deaths of 346 passengers and crew. — Bloomberg

In that earlier combined case, Boeing agreed to pay more than $2.5 million, with most of that going to customers. In exchange, the DOJ agreed not to charge Boeing for withholding information from the Federal Aviation Administration pursuant to obtaining FAA approval for the MAX model. 

On March 19, FAA chief Michael Whitaker said his visit to Boeing facilities left him with the impression that the firm’s “priorities have been on production, and not on safety and quality.” In February, the FAA published a report in which it noted 27 failings of safety procedures and culture at Boeing.  

The door-plug blowout was just the first of a string of worrying incidents involving Boeing jets in 2024, the rest of which have no doubt left United Airlines with a bad case of buyer’s remorse…

• “Plane Was Nosediving”: United Airlines Boeing 737 Engine Erupts In Flames Over Texas
• United’s Boeing 737 Max Jet Veers Off Runway In Houston, Marking Third Incident In Week
• Tire Separates From Boeing 777, Crushes Cars In San Francisco Parking Lot
• Boeing 737 With 139 Passengers Loses External Panel Mid-Air

Authored by Steven Kovac via The Epoch Times,

Michigan’s Democrat Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson is being sued for working with local officials to stonewall a citizen’s efforts to access public election records from the Nov. 8, 2022 general and the May 2, 2023 primary elections.

Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (right) and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel (left) wait to speak at a United Auto Workers rally after the Detroit Labor Day Parade in Detroit, Mich., on Sept. 4, 2023. (Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Ms. Benson has a record of resisting transparency dating back to the 2020 presidential contest, after which she ordered local clerks to delete all electronic poll book (EPB) data from that election. In Nov. 2022, just days after the midterms, she ordered local clerks to deny public information requests to examine certain election data stored on their EPBs.

EPB files are an original public record and a component of the electronic voting system audit trail.

“When she (Ms. Benson) realized that some public officials were properly releasing this information under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act), she ordered them to delete the data,” claims Macomb County resident Michael Butz in a brief he filed in Macomb County Circuit Court on March 11, 2024.

Mr. Butz asked the court to deny “any interjection of responsibility” into this case by the secretary of state (SOS) and to deny the defendant municipal clerks’ rejection of his FOIA requests.

The memos and emails supporting Mr. Butz’s claims concerning Ms. Benson are attached to the brief.

Mr. Butz told The Epoch Times he is still awaiting the defendants’ response to his filing.

“Jocelyn Benson and her Michigan Bureau of Elections directors are violating Michigan and United States Codes and statutes with their unlawful election processes, procedures, and instruction manuals…In fact, the Michigan Court of Appeals recently agreed,“ Mr. Butz said. “These are ongoing acts of malfeasance against the people of Michigan.”

The Michigan Secretary of State’s Office said it does not comment or answer questions about ongoing or pending litigation.

The case was filed against municipal election officials from several Macomb County localities for allegedly violating Mr. Butz’s right under FOIA to inspect and copy public election information.

Though Ms. Benson is not a named defendant in the Butz lawsuit, she successfully petitioned the court to designate her as a defendant-intervener.

The brief alleges that Ms. Benson interfered with the clerks’ responses to Mr. Butz’s initial FOIA requests by directing local officials as to what data should or should not be provided to him.

Not Up to the SOS to Decide, Man Argues

According to Plaintiff Butz, the responsibility for the decision to reject a FOIA request lies with the local clerks, who are mandated by statute to disclose public information and are liable for any violations of the act.

Michael Butz, an IT professional and election integrity activist from Macomb Co., Mich. on May 30, 2023. (Steven Kovac/Epoch Times)

The plaintiff cited legal precedent showing that Ms. Benson’s regulations, directives, guidance, opinions, memos, emails, and statements “cannot serve as the basis for FOIA denials,” because they are not statutes, and therefore, “the only basis for denial of a FOIA request must be based on the express language of the statute’s exemptions.”

According to the brief, “Benson is simply not authorized by law to prohibit public officials from fulfilling their constitutional and statutory duties of disclosing public information under FOIA.

“Defendants cannot, therefore, say, as they have, that they are ‘waiting’ on the research and guidance from the SOS…to tell them what to withhold, what exemption applies, or what exemption might be asserted.”

Federal law requires all election records to be retained and preserved for 22 months, and Michigan law requires they be kept for 24 months. The retention time for used ballots in state and local elections is 30 days, if the ballots are not subject to recount or an ongoing investigation or court order or SOS order.

“The public records derived from the EPB must, by law, be retained in their entirety and be accessible to the public,” the brief said.

By following Ms. Benson’s order to delete the EPB data, local officials may have violated federal and state laws.

Mr. Butz told The Epoch Times, “ The Nuremburg Trial excuse ‘I was just following orders’ does not cut it.”

Michigan law states, “It is the public policy of this state that all persons…are entitled to full and complete information regarding the affairs of government and the official acts of those who represent them as public officials and public employees…The people shall be informed so that they may fully participate in the democratic process.”

Discrepancies Found 

The Butz brief states that in the jurisdictions that complied with his FOIA request, the data obtained indicated a 12 percent variation between the local records of who voted and the state’s records.

When the discrepancies were questioned by clerks and citizens, “SOS Benson unilaterally, and without legal authority encrypted” the EPB data in order to “conceal” it from the public, and so that clerks cannot access it to reconcile it, the brief alleged.

According to the brief, as of the 2022 elections, all files on the USB Drive for the EPB flash drive were fully encrypted.

Mr. Butz wrote his latest FOIA requests in such a way so as to eliminate the local governments’ justifications for rejection—the privacy of registrants, proprietary and copyright concerns of the software vendors, and cybersecurity worries of the State Board of Elections. He specifically stated in his requests that he was not asking for any of these things and would be satisfied if they were redacted.

According to the brief, “Lawful redaction of the appropriate items is expected, but BOE (state Bureau of Elections) is not allowed to define what is acceptable FOIA material in opposition to statute.”

Mr. Butz’s requests were denied in total, so he sued.

All Non-Exempt Information Must Be Provided 

“The blind obedience of local clerks to the unlawful directives of the BOE is the actual reason that the FOIA requests presented by Michael Butz were denied,” according to the brief.

Michigan law states that, if exempt information is combined with non-exempt information, the public official cannot use the excuse that redaction or separation is not possible, but “shall separate the exempt and nonexempt material,” the brief said.

According to the plaintiff, Ms. Benson and the BOE suggest citizens requesting EPB data settle for a copy of the Voter List Report (VLR), generated on election night, in place of the EPB History file. The problem is the VLR does not contain all the information that is available on the History file, such as same-day voting data and internet connectivity, according to Mr. Butz, who is a career computer expert.

The brief also noted that, due to several statewide voter registration services conducted by the SOS, such as the driver registration program, the statutory requirement that voter registration information be entered and filed in the public records of the relevant local official is precluded by the state’s digital practice. This means that the local clerk, who is responsible and liable for the accuracy of the names and addresses of the registrants, is effectively cut out of the process and that there is “no paper trail,” the brief contended.

Mr. Butz told The Epoch Times that he would not settle for anything short of full disclosure of the information sought in his lawful FOIA request.

A status conference for the case is scheduled for May 28.

Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

More than 30 years ago, Congress enacted the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992. Enacted in the wake of Oliver Stone’s movie JFK, which posited that the Kennedy assassination was a regime-change operation on the part of the U.S. national-security establishment, the law mandated that all the assassination-related records of the Pentagon, the CIA, the Secret Service, the FBI, and other federal agencies be released to the public. Having succeeded in keeping their assassination-related records secret for almost 30 years, they didn’t like that at all.

Today — more than 60 years after the assassination — the CIA continues to keep thousands of its assassination-related records secret. Its justification? You guessed it: “national security,” the two most powerful and meaningless words in the American political lexicon. CIA officials maintain, with straight faces, that if those still-secret assassination-related records were released, the United States would fall into the ocean, be taken over by communists, or have its “national security” endangered in some other silly way.

How in the world can “national security” be threatened by the release of records that are more than 60 years old, regardless of what definition is placed on that nebulous term? Indeed, how can any American really believe this nonsense? They obviously take Americans for dupes.

It is a virtual certainty that those still-secret records contain circumstantial evidence that further confirms criminal culpability on the part of the CIA and the Pentagon in the assassination of President Kennedy. After all, the CIA knows that that is precisely what most everyone is thinking with respect to the continued secrecy of those records. Why would the CIA want to leave people thinking that? One reason: Because it’s better to have people thinking that those records contain incriminating evidence rather than knowing that they do.

What could the CIA be hiding with those still-secret records? The answer necessarily has to be speculative in nature, but my hunch is that some of the still-secret information deals with Mexico City, where the accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald was supposed to have met with Cuban and Soviet officials.

In the immediate aftermath of the assassination, it is obvious that everything went wrong with the Mexico City part of the assassination plot. For example, there were audiotapes that supposedly contained Oswald’s voice and then suddenly there were no such audiotapes. There was a photograph of Oswald except that it was a photograph of someone else.

Why was Mexico City an important part of the assassination plot? As I detail in my newest book on the assassination, An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story, an essential part of the assassination plot was to frame a communist. This was the height of the Cold War, when most everyone hated and feared the Reds. By framing a communist, the national-security establishment could rest assured that Americans would be reluctant to come to Oswald’s defense or believe anything he said.

Mexico City played an important role in this endeavor. Oswald was ordered to travel to Mexico City, where he was to meet with both Cuban and Soviet officials. In that way, the plotters could definitely tie the future assassin to the Soviet and Cuban communists.

Why would Oswald obey such orders? Because he was an operative for U.S. intelligence. Intelligence operatives follow orders, especially when they’re told that they are part of an intelligence operation.

In fact, in one of its first meetings, Earl Warren, the head of the Warren Commission, told the commission that there was highly discomforting evidence that Oswald was, in fact, an intelligence operative. Once the CIA and the FBI, which, of course, would never lie about such a thing, assured the commission that such wasn’t the case, Warren ordered that the meeting be kept top-secret and never revealed to the American people.

When he was serving in the army, Oswald became fluent in the Russian language. That is not an easy thing to do. It takes language experts, which the U.S. government has. That’s the only way Oswald could have learned to speak fluent Russian while he was in the army.

There is also New Orleans, where Oswald had moved from Dallas prior to his trip to Mexico City. In New Orleans, Oswald spent a lot of effort building up his “pro-communist” persona, especially with the help of an anti-Castro group called the DRE.

Immediately after the assassination, the DRE sent out a press release informing the nation that Oswald was a communist. There is one big important thing about the DRE that the nation did not know and would not know for several decades. It was a CIA-funded and CIA-supervised group. Thus, it was actually the CIA that wanted the nation to know that the president had been killed by a Red.

As JFK researcher Jefferson Morley, who first discovered the CIA’s connection to the DRE, has also discovered, the CIA was secretly monitoring Oswald in the months leading up to the assassination, including secretly reading his mail. Why would the CIA be doing that? Because if one is going to frame a person in a very complex murder plot, one has to be certain that the person being framed doesn’t figure out what is going on.

Will the CIA succeed in keeping its assassination-related records secret forever? Given the overwhelming power that the national-security branch has within the federal governmental structure, it’s a virtual certainty that it will succeed. But what difference does it make? The evidence that was released by the JFK Records Act already proves beyond a reasonable doubt that the Kennedy assassination was a national-security state regime-change operation, especially with respect to the fraudulent autopsy that the military conducted on JFK’s body and the fraudulent copy of the Zapruder film that the CIA produced. (See my books The Kennedy Autopsy and An Encounter with Evil: The Abraham Zapruder Story.) The CIA’s still-secret assassination-related records would only add more circumstantial evidence to what we already know.

The Biden campaign couldn’t have picked a worse time to copy Donald Trump’s name-calling strategy.

In an effort to highlight Trump’s lagging fundraising figures in the 2024 race, as well as a $454 million judgement in his NY civil fraud case, the Biden team has dubbed the former president “Broke Don”  (a slap in the face to millions of hard working Americans who are now actually broke thanks to ‘Bidenomics,’ we might add).

On Wednesday, public election filings showed that Trump’s 2024 campaign brought in $10.9 million last month, while his joint fundraising committee raised nearly $11 million, bringing total cash on hand to around $42 million.

Biden’s campaign, meanwhile, raised around $53 million in February, giving him $155 million in cash on hand entering this month.

Except, Trump’s worth just jumped by roughly $3.5 billion after shareholders in Digital World Acquisition Corp (DWAC) on Friday approved a merger with Trump’s media startup, Truth Social.

What’s more, Trump said on Friday via Truth Social that “through hard work, talent, and luck, I currently have almost five hundred million dollars in cash,” which would give him enough cash to post bond in his NY civil case in order to appeal the decision.

Absolute fail

And while Americans are getting absolutely crushed under an enormous debt load, Biden mocked them while making a joke at Trump’s expense.

During a fundraiser last week, Biden told crowds that “a defeated man” came up to him and said, “I’m being crushed by debt.”

“I had to say, ‘I’m sorry Donald, I can’t help you,” Biden joked.

Even Democratic strategists are cringing at the “Broke Don” strategy.

“The Biden team’s instinct to earn free media, try to get under his skin, and go on offense is the right one. But mimicking Trump has been done before and has never really worked,” one anonymous strategist told The Hill.

“You can’t out-Trump Trump because he’s the original version. I would say they need to be more creative in producing their own original and unique strategy to bring him down a peg that shocks and awes,” the strategist added.

Stay classy, Joe.