Some batches were linked to as many as 1,650 serious problems, while some produced zero reported issues, according to the data, which was obtained by the Informed Consent Action Network and presented on the website OpenVAERS.
The network received the data through Freedom of Information Act requests from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
“Certain lots had an unusually high number of adverse reactions,” the network said in a statement.
The data undercut a 2022 statement from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.). The department said at the time that an analysis by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) showed “no unusual concentration of reports with a single lot or small group of lots.”
The HHS is the parent agency of the CDC and the FDA.
Mr. Johnson told Dr. Mandy Cohen, the CDC’s director, and Dr. Robert Califf, the FDA’s commissioner, in a new letter that the newly disclosed data “paint a very concerning picture.”
“As a former manufacturer, this data provides strong evidence that the vaccine manufacturing process was not in control,” Mr. Johnson wrote. If the data are accurate, “then your agencies have kept this vital information hidden from Congress and the American people for years, despite my requests for this data beginning in December 2021,” he added.
Spokespersons for the CDC and FDA said the agencies received the letter. The spokespersons said the agencies would respond at a later time to Mr. Johnson.
The HHS did not respond to a request for comment.
According to independent research reviewed by Mr. Johnson in 2021, as many as 5,297 adverse event reports were linked to certain vaccine batches, while other lots had as few as one reported adverse event.
The reports were made to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS), which is co-run by the FDA and CDC. The system accepts reports from anybody but studies have shown most reporters are health care workers. Reporters face penalties if they enter information later found to be false, and many reports have been verified by health authorities.
Melanie Anne Egorin, the assistant HHS secretary for legislation, made the 2022 statement to Mr. Johnson before adding that the number of reported events may vary by lot due to “important factors such as the lot size and the length of time a lot has been in use.”
She said that COVID-19 vaccine lots are backed by certificates from manufacturers and that the FDA has visited sites to ensure quality, safety, and effectiveness.
More on New Data
The Informed Consent Action Network submitted multiple FOIA requests for lot information, and eventually sued when the data was not released.
Updated datasets were provided on Dec. 13, 2023, the network said.
The nonprofit shared the data with OpenVAERS, which describes itself as a project “developed by a small team of people with vaccine injuries or who have children with vaccine injuries.”
Before receiving the data, “it was impossible to determine the Serious Adverse Event (SAE) rate by lot number because we did not know the total number of doses in the lot,” OpenVAERS said on its site. With the new data, “we can now confirm that some batches of Covid-19 vaccines are significantly more dangerous than others.”
The project linked the lot information with VAERS reports that included batch data to produce the total number of reported serious adverse events, and rates of serious adverse events, per batch.
Serious adverse events were defined by the definition used by VAERS, which is an event that leads to an emergency room visit, a hospitalization, permanent disability, or death, or is life-threatening or results in a birth defect.
Many lots had between 10 and 500 reported serious adverse events linked to them, according to OpenVAERS. Twenty-two had between zero and nine reported adverse events. Forty-five had 501 or more adverse events.
Reported deaths following vaccination were also higher for certain lots, particularly for some Moderna batches.
The data cover the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines.
Pfizer and Moderna did not respond to requests for comment.
Some lots were flagged by Pfizer for deviation from quality standards, according to FDA documents recently produced under court order, but still released to the public.
Mr. Johnson urged the FDA and CDC to provide responses to questions by Jan. 26. He asked for the analysis the FDA allegedly performed to look into whether certain lots were associated with unusual concentrations of reported adverse events, whether the agency took any issue with the OpenVAERS’ analyses, and what steps the agency would take if it did determine any COVID-19 vaccine lots were associated with higher rates of adverse events.
HHS says in a guide that VAERS “is used to continually monitor reports to determine whether any vaccine or vaccine lot has a higher than expected rate of events.”
Danish researchers reported in 2023 that they examined rates of serious adverse events across batches of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine and found that certain batches were linked to many more events than others. They noted that leaked data showed there was a “significant difference” between the amount of modified messenger RNA between batches of the Pfizer vaccine.
Lavrov Says West Is Aware Zelensky Getting ‘Out Of Control’
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in fresh Thursday statements says the West is trying to reign in Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky as he’s doing everything possible to stamp out dissent and cling to power, including canceling an expected presidential election this year.
Lavrov characterized the situation as one wherein America’s man in Kiev is increasingly “out of control” but that his Western backers “would have liked to have more flexibility,”according to state media translation of the new remarks.
The Russian top diplomat further said that all the latest rhetoric coming from the Ukrainian presidency’s office “only reflects the wish of that individual and his associates… to keep power as much as they can.”
That’s when Lavrov asserted that having Zelensky run a re-election campaign “would put him more in line with Western interests, because he has been increasingly getting out of control.”
However, this claim is uncertain given that all commentary on this matter by the Biden administration as well as US mainstream media has focused on justifying the election cancelation based on there being martial law and a state of war in the country. Biden officials have previously stated that it would not be practical, and even logistically impossible, to have fair elections.
Thus the US has defended these anti-democratic moves of Zelensky at every turn. It’s also an open question of whether there will even be parliamentary elections, which was due to change over this year. However, US officials do seem open to entering serious negotiations to end the war, behind the scenes at least, given Ukraine’s mounting battlefield losses.
Lavrov’s critique came as Zelensky is seeking to push an unrealistic peace plan at the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos. To review:
Zelensky’s plan requires a full Russian withdrawal from the territory it has captured since February 2022, Russia giving up Crimea, war crimes tribunals, and Russia paying reparations to Ukraine. Kyiv has no shot at implementing any aspect of the Peace Formula since its counteroffensive failed, and Ukrainian forces are now focused on defense and facing manpower shortages.
Despite the reality on the ground, Zelensky’s “Peace Formula” has received backing from the US and other Western nations. “There was the most representative meeting of national security advisors regarding the implementation of the Peace Formula. More than 80 countries and international institutions were represented,” Zelensky said in Davos.
Given these latest words of Zelensky, it remains clear that Kiev’s plan is a non-starter for Moscow, and for the war to end Ukraine will have to at the very least recognize Russian possession of Crimea, and likely the four annexed territories as well.
🇺🇦 While Zelensky is on a begging trip around the world, at home, Ukrainians are being kidnapped and sent to the front to be used as cannon fodder in America’s proxy war against Russia.
Ukrainians don’t need more weapons! They need negotiations and a new president‼️ pic.twitter.com/vXnJ1apxLW
Meanwhile, Zelensky has continued pushing hard for the Western allies to give his forces more advanced weapons, including longer range missiles and advanced fighter jets. Yet public opinion polls in the West have continued to show Zelensky’s popularity is slipping.
A bureaucracy-empowering judicial doctrine that critics blame for the explosive growth of the U.S. government in recent decades should be overturned, the Supreme Court heard on Jan. 17.
The court may overturn the so-called Chevron deference doctrine that the Supreme Court enunciated in 1984, or narrow its application. “Chevron deference,” as lawyers call it, holds that an agency’s interpretation of a statute it administers is entitled to deference unless Congress has said otherwise.
The court’s ultimate ruling might alter the current balance of power among Congress, executive agencies, and the nation’s judiciary by curbing the legal underpinnings of the modern administrative state, which critics deride as an illegitimate fourth branch of government.
In the landmark ruling in Chevron v. Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), the court held that while courts “must give effect to the unambiguously expressed intent of Congress,” where courts find “Congress has not directly addressed the precise question at issue” and “the statute is silent or ambiguous with respect to the specific issue, the question for the court is whether the agency’s answer is based on a permissible construction of the statute.”
Conservatives and Republican policymakers have long been critical of the doctrine, saying it has contributed to the dramatic growth of government and gives unelected regulators far too much power to make policy by going beyond what Congress intended when it approved various laws. The authority of regulatory agencies has been increasingly questioned in recent years as the conservative majority on the Supreme Court has grown.
Conservative Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and Neil Gorsuch have expressed skepticism of the Chevron doctrine.
Those on the other side say the Chevron doctrine empowers an activist federal government to serve the public interest in an increasingly complicated world without having to seek specific congressional authorization for everything that needs to be done.
The court heard two related cases: Relentless Inc. v. Department of Commerce and Loper Bright Enterprises v. Raimondo.
In the cases at hand, in 2020, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and its National Marine Fisheries Service implemented a final rule to compel fishing companies to pay for human monitors aboard their vessels.
The companies say the burden of paying for the monitors is a hardship that significantly reduces their profit margins.
Relentless Inc. attorney Roman Martinez told the justices that Chevron deference must be overruled.
“For too long, Chevron has distorted the judicial process and undermined statutory interpretation,” he said.
“Chevron violates the Constitution. Article III empowers judges to say what the law is … [and] to interpret federal statutes using their best and independent judgment. Chevron undermines that duty. It reallocates interpretive authority from courts to agencies, and it forces courts to adopt inferior agency constructions that are issued for political or policy reasons.
“In doing so, Chevron blocks judges from serving as faithful agents of Congress. It mandates judicial bias and encourages agency overreach, and by removing key checks on executive power, it threatens individual liberty. Chevron also violates the APA,” referring to the Administrative Procedure Act.
The APA “contemplates that courts, not agencies will authoritatively resolve ambiguities in statutes,” Mr. Martinez said.
“This court’s only justification for Chevron is the implied delegation theory, but that theory is a fiction. There’s no reason to think that Congress intends every ambiguity and every agency statute to give agencies an ongoing power to interpret and reinterpret federal law in ways that override its best meaning.
“In this case, the agency misinterpreted the MSA [i.e., Magnuson–Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act] to force struggling fishermen to pay up to 20 percent of their annual profits to federal agents.”
The government is arguing that “even if all nine of you agree with us that the agency’s construction is worse than ours, you should nonetheless defer to that construction and uphold their program under Chevron.
“That’s not consistent with the rule of law. If we have the best view of the statute, we should win this case,” the lawyer said.
Justice Clarence Thomas told Mr. Martinez, “Your argument is that Chevron deference is problematic.”
“How do we know where the line is?” he said.
Justice Elena Kagan offered a hypothetical to show the difficulty that lawmakers could face if deference to agencies were overruled.
The justice asked how lawmakers would decide if a product aimed at alleviating bad cholesterol was a dietary supplement or a drug. Having specialized agencies staffed with experts who understand these things can be helpful, she said.
Along similar lines, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said she saw Chevron as “doing the very important work of helping courts stay away from policymaking.”
“I’m worried about the courts becoming uber-legislators,” the justice said.
Justice Samuel Alito suggested that Chevron became popular because it was viewed as a way of discouraging judges from imposing their own views in a case.
Justice Alito asked Mr. Martinez if he agreed “that one of the reasons why Chevron was originally so popular was concern that judges were allowing their policy views consciously or unconsciously, to influence their interpretation of the statutes in question.”
Mr. Martinez replied, “yes.”
That fear has diminished over time because nowadays courts rely less “on legislative history and on more free-form analysis that I think made it easier for policy considerations to infect the judicial decision-making process,” the attorney said.
But the Supreme Court has “now made clear that, really, we should be text-focused, we should be focused on faithful agency to Congress.”
The late Justice Antonin Scalia backed away from his initial enthusiasm about Chevron deference after he realized the APA “had text that actually bore on this question,” he said.
“When you’re enforcing that text, you come to the same place as our Article III argument, which is that courts have to exercise independent judgment.”
Justice Alito suggested Mr. Martinez was arguing that courts decide cases arbitrarily.
“Do you think that the canons of interpretation that we have now and all of the other tools that we have in our statutory interpretation toolkit are like the enigma machine? And so we have these statutes and they’re sort of written in code and we run them through the enigma machine and –abracadabra—we have the best interpretation? Do you really think that’s how it works?”
Mr. Martinez said the problem with Chevron is that “you’re not trying to find the best interpretation anymore. You’re, in fact, agreeing that you have to impose the not-best interpretation because you have to defer.”
This means that Chevron is the only canon “that says to courts, ‘you can stop doing your normal interpretive function and we’re going to allocate that interpretive function outside of Article III,’” the attorney said.
Responding to Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Mr. Martinez said the Supreme Court “has tried to rein in Chevron in numerous ways, but I think that what all of those efforts show is that you kind of need a secret decoder ring to figure out what the law means under this court’s approach.”
Loper Bright attorney Paul Clement said Chevron deference hurts small businesses.
“Commercial fishing is hard,” he said. Space on vessels “is tight, and margins are tighter still.”
For his clients to have “to carry federal observers on board is a burden, but having to pay their salaries is a crippling blow.”
Chevron deference “is unworkable as its critical threshold question of ambiguity is hopelessly ambiguous. It is also … a reliance-destroying doctrine because it facilitates agency flip-flopping.”
U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar told the court that Chevron deference should be affirmed.
“The Chevron framework is a bedrock principle of administrative law with deep roots in this court’s jurisprudence,” she said.
“Overruling a precedent is never a small matter. But overruling a precedent as foundational as Chevron should require a truly extraordinary justification. And petitioners don’t have one.”
The other side argues that Article III “requires de novo review of all statutory interpretation questions.”
De novo review is when a court rules on an issue without giving deference to a previous decision, as if the case were being heard for the first time.
“But that’s flatly inconsistent with precedent going back” to the early days of the American republic, she said.
They are wrong to argue that Chevron violates due process because “the application of deferential standards of review doesn’t constitute impermissible bias.”
And the contention that the APA requires de novo review is “inconsistent with the statute’s history and the way it’s been understood ever since its enactment, including in the more than 70 cases in which this court has relied on Chevron to sustain an agency’s interpretation.”
Overturning Chevron deference would cause upheaval and lead to “endless litigation,” Ms. Prelogar said.
“Thousands of judicial decisions sustaining an agency’s rulemaking or adjudication as reasonable would be open to challenge, and that profound disruption is especially unwarranted because Congress could modify or overrule the Chevron framework at any time.
“Congress has many times considered proposals to do so, but it’s never taken that step,” she added.
Justice Neil Gorsuch told the top government lawyer that, “Maybe a dozen or more circuit judges have written asking us to overrule Chevron. And … it also may be why one of your colleagues last year said I don’t know what ambiguity means at this lectern.”
“And should that be a clue that something needs to be fixed here, that even the federal government at the podium can’t answer the question what triggers ambiguity?”
Even “here in this rather prosaic case,” lower court judges “can’t figure out what Chevron means,” the justice said.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett said, “Most scholars of statutory interpretation consider Chevron to be an interpretive canon, much like clear statement rules, rule of lenity, judicially created.”
Ms. Prelogar said she didn’t think of it as “a canon,” but instead regards it as “fundamentally rooted … in kind of setting the ground rules for how all three branches of the government are operating together.”
The Supreme Court has been “recognizing that there are legitimate reasons why Congress cannot answer every question itself and why it will want to go hand-in-hand with an agency by charging that agency with administering the statute.”
Washington Democrats Want To Make Armed Self-Defense Illegal At Dangerous Bus Stops
While violent criminals in Seattle have no compunction about carrying weapons wherever they go, Washington Democrats want to strip law abiding citizens of the ability to match force in self-defense in various public places.
Their newest bill bans weapons, including legally purchased guns and knives, at bus stops and transit centers.
SB 5444 isn’t just an overreach; it’s a direct attack on law-abiding citizens. And it disproportionately affects those demographics the Democrats always claim to champion. The irony is as thick as it is infuriating.
While current law prohibits weapons in courtrooms, bars, and other restricted areas, the new bill adds several new categories of prohibited areas, such as public libraries, zoos, aquariums, parks, community centers, and other public buildings – which emboldened criminals will promptly ignore as they prey on victims.
The bill prohibits full-time mass transit users from carrying weapons for self-defense, depriving low-income residents of their right to bear arms.
According to Rantz, western Washington saw a spate of high-profile violent crimes in 2023 – many of which occurred in places that SB 5444 would rob law-abiding citizens of the ability to match force with assailants.
Sound Transit’s light rail is dangerous to ride. Here, a prolific offender is accused of randomly stabbing a stranger in Seattle. The transit riders come to the man’s rescue, risking injury to death in doing so. They’re heroes. pic.twitter.com/2fgVVXcBSF
— Jason Rantz on KTTH Radio (@jasonrantz) August 6, 2023
In November, a 21-year-old man was murdered on the metro – shot dead as he was apparently sleeping. That same month, a 64-year-old man was stabbed after getting off a Metro bus in Seattle. In the Parkland area of Seattle, two young men were shot dead last year at a bus stop across the street from an elementary school.
Rantz further notes that Seattle mass transit is unsafe, period – and Democrats want to eliminate ‘reasonable means of defending ourselves.’
Washington Democrats routinely push legislation making it easier for criminals to suffer fewer — if any — consequences for their crimes. But at least the rest of us have been left with means to protect ourselves and our families from the criminals Democrats keep out of jail. But if this bill passes, we’ll again be sitting ducks.
It’s unclear what bill sponsor State Senator Javier Valdez (D-Seattle) hopes to accomplish. He did not respond to a request for comment. It’s safe to say the intent is not to add more jail time to criminals caught with weapons because that’s already against the law, and Democrats are pushing legislation that lessens punishment for gun-related crimes. This specifically targets law-abiding citizens, disproportionately impacting low-income communities that rely on mass transit. -mynorthwest
According to King County Metro data, law-abiding black residents will be most disadvantaged by the new bill, as they are more likely than white people to ride the bus.
Rampant fraud in trucking has become an $800 million problem and the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration is not addressing the problem, according to the lobby representing 3PLs and brokerage firms.
“There’s a surge of malicious actors engaging in illegal activity, registering with FMCSA as carriers and perpetrating fraud, theft and holding freight hostage in situations without any legal consequences,” said Jeffrey Tucker, testifying on behalf of the Transportation Intermediaries Association at a hearing before the U.S. House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee on Wednesday.
“While this is obviously an economic problem, hurting consumers and businesses alike, it also raises safety and security concerns. Unfortunately, FMCSA is failing to enforce the law or investigate the tens of thousands of fraud complaints lodged with it.”
Asked during the hearing the types of fraud he sees being committed, Tucker, who is also CEO of Tucker Company Worldwide, a New Jersey-based freight brokerage, said the problem is criminals masquerading as brokers as well as trucking companies.
“It shouldn’t be seen as either carrier fraud or broker fraud. These are just criminals,” Tucker said.
He pointed to similar cases of fraud involving dispatch services that are often based in another country but are not required by FMCSA to obtain a license or registration, as is the case with U.S.-based services.
“FMCSA must stop dabbling in non-safety commercial considerations like what dollar amount a performance bond should be or what commercial terms are included inside a private contract between two parties. Until there are effective measures to address and enforce solutions for this issue, the continued dysfunctionality of the supply chain and its adverse impact on the broader economy will persist.”
Driver shortage?
In addition to freight fraud, Tucker addressed the contention made by sectors within the trucking industry as well as within the Biden administration that there is a driver shortage.
“There is no driver shortage nor has there been one,” Tucker testified. “That is a false narrative that may lead to unintended consolidation in the industry and to weakening America’s supply chain. A more than doubling of American carriers and an increase of 1 million drivers has occurred over the last 10 years. We must have a more nuanced conversation about this.”
U.S. Rep. Mike Bost, R-Ill., a former trucking company owner, challenged Tucker.
“If you’re out there dealing with it every day, there is” a driver shortage, Bost said, adding that the increasing legalization of marijuana among individual states is exacerbating the problem.
“You may have a lot of people who may be good drivers, but they prefer to smoke dope on the weekend and they can’t get clean by Monday. It’s not like having a beer on Sunday during a football game.”
Red Sea supply chain costs
Lawmakers were also concerned about the recent attacks on cargo vessels in the Red Sea by Houthi rebels and the ripple effect on the global supply chain.
“The initial impact is the delay of vessels arriving both in Asia and coming back to the United States,” testified Stephen Edwards, CEO of the Virginia Port Authority.
“So ocean carriers are rescheduling all of those ships and detouring around Africa” instead of going through the Suez Canal, he said, which will settle into a pattern of ships bound for the U.S. East Coast taking an extra seven days in transit.
“You can take the view … that the extra seven days could be offset by the loss of the Suez Canal fees. But that is not true for [vessels moving from] Asia to the Mediterranean or Asia to North Europe.”
Tucker added that another concern is special fees related to the disruption and delays that the U.S. Federal Maritime Commission is allowing ocean carriers to charge their customers.
“There is concern that maybe those fees are not applicable to the situation, and shippers would like to see more oversight on it,” Tucker said.
“End Of The World Bunker” Listed On Zillow: 10,000SqFt, Blast-Doors, & EMP Shielding
Elites have spent the last decade building and or purchasing underground doomsday bunkers. Whether it’s to survive the next global conflict, civil war in America, a tyrannical government that locks down the economy because of a virus, out-of-control BLM riots, and or possibly a solar storm that zaps that nation’s power and communications grid, bunker demand has been smokin’ hot.
X account “Zillow Gone Wild” posted Thursday about a 10,000 sqft bunker hidden in Polo, Missouri, that was recently listed.
You don’t need to be a billionaire to have your own bunker because here’s a chance to have your very own over 10k bunker in beautiful Polo, MO.
Per the listing it has a “a private water well, a new pump, and a substantial 10,000-gallon stainless steel water storage tank, all… pic.twitter.com/JuzDYb0z6V
“In an era where even technology titans are grabbing headlines for their investments in personal safety, such as his end-of-the-world bunker, this property emerges as a true testament to visionary planning,” the Zillow listing said.
The bunker offers 10,007 sqft of modernized underground space and is located just 35 minutes away from Kansas City.
“It has 2.5 foot thick concrete walls, EMP-resistant copper shielding, and 2 3,000 pound blast doors,” Zillow Gone Wild said.
The bunker’s price is $2 million – and that’s affordable compared with other bunkers listed for tens of millions of dollars.
Both sides of the Second Amendment debate will be watching the U.S. Supreme Court closely in 2024 as it applies the standards from previous decisions to new high-profile cases.
In the 2022 New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen decision, the Supreme Court ruled that, to be constitutional, new gun laws must match the plain text of the Constitution and the “history and tradition” of the United States.
“The test that … applies today requires courts to assess whether modern firearms regulations are consistent with the Second Amendment’s text and historical understanding,” Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for the majority in June 2022.
One of the first major post-Bruen cases, United States v. Rahimi has court watchers curious about how Bruen will be applied. The high court heard oral arguments on Rahimi on Nov. 7, 2023.
Federal law currently bars those who are under domestic violence restraining orders from possessing guns. The Supreme Court in the Rahimi case will decide if it stays or goes.
Gun control advocates say the “text and tradition” standard of the Bruen decision, if applied in Rahimi, would allow violent abusers access to guns, resulting in the deaths of domestic violence victims.
“The Supreme Court must reverse this dangerous [Bruen] ruling,” Janet Carter, senior director of issues and appeals at Everytown Law, wrote on the Everytown for Gun Safety website. “Domestic abusers do not have—and should not have—the constitutional right to possess a firearm.”
Gun rights advocates say the Rahimi case has been mischaracterized as an attempt to arm violent criminals when it’s really about protecting society without preemptively suspending constitutional rights.
“It’s going to answer one issue, which is, do we as a country have a historical tradition of disarming people that we believe to be dangerous?” William Kirk, a Washington state-based lawyer who specializes in the Second Amendment, told The Epoch Times.
“And the answer is, ‘Yes, we do.’”
Second Amendment lawyers predict that the Supreme Court will uphold the federal domestic violence law in Rahimi. They hope that the court will also ensure that due process rights are protected and an avenue for returning confiscated firearms is preserved.
“The real issue being decided goes far beyond the narrow question,” Tom Grieve, a Wisconsin criminal defense lawyer, told The Epoch Times.
Mark Smith, a constitutional attorney and author, agreed. He said it’s vital that the court protect the due process rights of gun owners.
“The most important thing Second Amendment supporters should want the Supreme Court to state in the Rahimi case is that the government may not disarm any American citizen unless there is first and foremost a court finding that a person is violently dangerous, after a robust evidentiary hearing with counsel, live witnesses, and ample due process,” he wrote in an email to The Epoch Times.
According to court records, Zackey Rahimi is a drug dealer based in Arlington, Texas, who abused his girlfriend and had a penchant for shooting at people when he was angry.
In 2019, he was placed under a domestic violence restraining order that barred him from possessing or purchasing firearms. Mr. Rahimi reportedly agreed to the order during a court hearing. He later assaulted a different woman and was involved in at least five more shootings, court records show.
He was indicted by a federal grand jury in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas for violating the restraining order after police found guns, drugs, and cash in his home.
He asked the Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, which covers Texas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, to toss the indictment because the restraining order was issued before he was convicted of any of the crimes for which the order was issued.
The court upheld the indictment. He pleaded guilty to violating the restraining order and was sentenced to 73 months in prison.
After the Bruen decision, the 5th Circuit reversed its decision, according to a petition filed by the Department of Justice (DOJ).
“The Fifth Circuit at first affirmed [the indictment], reasoning that its decision in McGinnis foreclosed Rahimi’s Second Amendment challenge. But after this Court decided New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen, the Fifth Circuit withdrew its opinion. After receiving supplemental briefing on Bruen, the court reversed,” the petition reads.
The 5th Circuit ruled that, under the Bruen standard, 18 USC 922 (g) (8), which relates to unlawful possession of a firearm, didn’t align with the text of the Second Amendment and that there was no historical analog to indicate that the law was in line with the United States’ history and tradition of firearms regulation.
The court ruled that Mr. Rahimi had been deprived of his Second Amendment rights.
Define ‘Dangerous’
DOJ lawyers told the court that the 5th Circuit had misread the Bruen decision.
At that time, Republican-appointed Chief Justice John Roberts asked Mr. Rahimi’s lawyer, J. Matthew Wright, “You don’t have any doubt that your client is a dangerous person, do you?”
When Mr. Wright said it depends on what was meant by ‘dangerous person,’ the chief justice responded with, “Well, it means someone who’s shooting, you know, at people. That’s a good start,” according to The Associated Press.
However, Justice Samuel Alito, a Bush appointee, expressed concern that someone could receive a domestic violence restraining order without “any finding of dangerousness” before losing their Second Amendment rights.
“Now, suppose someone is later prosecuted for violating that provision. Would it be a defense for that person to say that the state law in question did not require such a finding and, in fact, there was no such finding in my case?” he asked U.S. Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar.
Mr. Kirk, who also hosts a YouTube channel focused on Second Amendment issues, expects the court to be particular in its decision.
“It’s going to be a narrow, tailored opinion, and it’s going to answer one issue, which is, do we as a country have a historical tradition of disarming people that we believe to be dangerous? And the answer to that question is, ‘yes, we do,’” Mr. Kirk told The Epoch Times.
While he agrees with Mr. Kirk on what the court will likely decide, Mr. Grieve said that the bigger question is how the justices will come to their conclusions.
“There’s a lot of ways this can go, right and wrong. And I think we may see a mixture of both,” he said.
Mr. Grieve pointed out that under Bruen’s text requirement, the justices will need to determine the definition of “the people.”
“What are the limits of the phrase ‘the right of the people?’ Is it just law-abiding citizens? Is it everyone?” he said.
The justices will also have to determine what constitutes “tradition.” How far back do they have to trace a law’s lineage before it can be considered a tradition?
Conflicting Ideas on Tradition
According to Mr. Grieve, many gun control advocates point out that the Second Amendment was incorporated into the states under the Constitution’s 14th Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law.
But most gun rights activists say tradition requires the court to consider the law in the context of the year that the Constitution was ratified, 1791. At that time, there were far fewer gun regulations.
“There is seemingly no end to the directions this could be going,” Mr. Grieve said.
And while it’s not as significant in the Rahimi case, some gun rights advocates expect due process to be a factor.
This was evidenced by Justice Alito’s question about whether “a finding of dangerousness” should be required before firearms are confiscated.
Aidan Johnston, director of federal affairs for Gun Owners of America, said this is crucial since many state red flag laws don’t have any due process requirements. He said this could result in the disarming of people who need protection during contentious divorce proceedings.
“Often, an innocent victim is deprived of the right to defend themselves. The Second Amendment is actually about empowering the victims,” Mr. Johnston told The Epoch Times.
Netanyahu In Blistering Rebuke Of US Post-War Plans: “Israel Will Control Entire Area From The River To The Sea”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has announced that he informed the White House that he firmly opposes the establishment of a Palestinian state in any postwar scenario, after also saying that the operation to eliminate Hamas could continue all the way into 2025.
In statements that run directly counter to what the US has expressed (namely a desire for a two state solution), Netanyahu said, according to the widely circulated Hebrew translator’s words, “In any future arrangement … Israel needs security control all territory west of the Jordan. This collides with the idea of sovereignty. What can you do?”
Netanyahu: “In the future, the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.” pic.twitter.com/s6iqEUrKcE
The Israeli leader added that he had “told this to the Americans” and then stressed, “The prime minister needs to be capable of saying no to our friends.”
He also said Israel seeks a “decisive victory” over Hamas and that war is “not about the lack of a Palestinian state but the existence of a Jewish one.”
“Every area that we evacuate, we receive terrible terror against us. It happened in south Lebanon, in Gaza, and also Judea and Samaria… and therefore I clarify that in any other arrangement in the future the state of Israel has to control the entire area from the river to the sea.”
“This truth I say to my American friends.” He emphasized that questions of Israeli sovereignty can’t be “imposed” from the outside, even from the “best of friends” – in a reference to Washington.
The prime minister’s word choice of “from the river to the sea” is interesting given that this is the very phrase often used by groups opposed to the state of Israel and pro-Palestine supporters. Critics have called it a pro-Hamas, antisemitic and pro-genocidal slogan when shouted at pro-Palestine demonstrations. Netanyahu without doubt used the phrase specifically to show that Israel doesn’t plan to give even an inch of statehood to the Palestinians.
It has for weeks been clear that Israeli and US officials have been clashing on a vision for the Hamas “day after”. The US has called for the Palestinian Authority (PA) to eventually resume control of the Gaza Strip, but the Netanyahu government has firmly rejected this, calling the PA terror sympathizers, and saying this won’t solve Israel’s security problems.
Tel Aviv’s resistance to the United States’ more “moderate” stance has been deeply awkward for the Biden administration, given it is the US that has given the weaponry and support Israel needs to execute the war in the first place, which has taken a reported over 24,000 Palestinian lives, with the majority of these being civilians.
Chinese Lab Sequenced COVID-19 Weeks Before Beijing Disclosed Data
Once again the timeline surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic has shifted – this time with the revelation that a researcher based in Beijing had already mapped the COVID-19 sequence two weeks before the CCP revealed its details to the world, raising questions over what other critical information China may have obscured from view – and why.
The sequence came from a 65-year-old Chinese deliveryman who was hospitalized with high fever and coughing on Dec. 18, and became critically ill four days later.
According to documents released by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, Ren Lili – a current Beijing-based recipient of US federal grants via US nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance, uploaded the COVID-19 sequence into an NIH US government genetic database on Dec. 28, 2019 – when Chinese official were still calling the disease an unknown pneumonia, and ordered health workers not to spread any information about the disease or face harsh penalties.
Over two weeks later on Jan. 12, Beijing shared the genetic sequence with the World Health Organization. Two days later, the CCP acknowledged that the disease could spread between humans.
The NIH’s GenBank repository to which the sequence was uploaded by Ms. Ren subsequently notified her that the submission was “incomplete” and “lacked the necessary information required for publication,” according to the Department of Health and Human Services. Ren – who works at the state-run Institute of Pathogen Biology – was asked by the NIH for more information, but the agency never heard back, resulting in the removal of the sequence from the database on Jan. 16, 2020. During the same period, GenBank received a near-identical COVID-19 genetic sequence from a different researcher, which was published Jan. 12, 2020, according to a letter released by the Energy and Commerce Committee on Wednesday.
The newly unearthed information points to yet more evidence of the CCP’s lack of transparency on the origins of COVID-19.
“This significant discovery further underscores why we cannot trust any of the so-called ‘facts’ or data provided by the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) and calls into serious question the legitimacy of any scientific theories based on such information,” said committee chair McMorris Rodgers (R-WA), Subcommittee on Health chair Brett Guthrie (R-KY), and Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA), in a joint letter, the Epoch Times reports.
“The American people deserve to know the truth about the origins of SARS-CoV-2, and our investigation has uncovered numerous causes for concern, including how taxpayers’ dollars are spent, how our government’s public health agencies operate, and the need for more oversight into research grants to foreign scientists.”
Mike Gallagher (R-Wis.), chairman of the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party, praised the House committee for the findings and criticized the Biden administration for “lack of interest in understanding the basic facts of how this pandemic originated.” The declassified COVID origin report, compelled by a 2023 law, “obscured more than it illuminated,” and the Energy and Commerce Committee only received information after threatening subpoena, he noted.
The virus genome data that Ms. Ren submitted, the earliest kind known by far, appears to have come from a 65-year-old Chinese deliveryman, who was hospitalized with high fever and coughing on Dec. 18 and became critically ill four days later.
A Chinese microblogger said their private firm in the southern Chinese city Guangzhou had analyzed the virus samples on Dec. 26, 2019. Deeming the findings too sensitive, their company decided to withhold making them public and shared the findings with Ms. Ren’s institute the following day after they pieced a “nearly complete genetic sequence” together.
“In terms of how I see this whole incident, most of all is disappointment, pain, and anger. We had been so timely on this, how come it’s still not under control?” the person wrote on Chinese social media. “It has less to do with science or technology, and more with policy and media.” A Chinese media report citing the incident has been deleted.
Ms. Ren has led the discovery of several emerging viruses in China, including human rhinovirus A21 subvariant, and, like other prominent Chinese virology researchers, has come out in defense of the CCP on the virus origin issue.
In correspondence from September 2021, now published in the medical journal Lancet, Ms. Ren and over a dozen other Chinese medical researchers dismissed the chances that the virus may have leaked from Wuhan Institute of Virology—another EcoHealth subgrantee that had, for years, been working on dangerous bat coronaviruses—demanding instead that the origins of COVID-19 would best be “investigated worldwide.”
Chinese media have lauded her role in isolating and synthesizing the virus genome, citing approving statements from the World Health Organization that lent her credence. Ms. Ren’s work was recognized by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences—the highest state-level Chinese medical research institute that her research center is affiliated with—as one of 40 “major national medical developments of the year.”
Scrutiny has increased over the lab leak possibility.
Dr. Francis Collins, director of the NIH until late 2021, said in recent closed-door congressional testimony that the theory that COVID-19 could have come out of a lab in Wuhan “is not a conspiracy theory.”
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases’s former head Dr. Anthony Fauci made a similar statement when questioned days earlier by the same House panel investigating the COVID pandemic.
Ownership of almost all small businesses has always been private. If their stock isn’t publicly traded, most companies haven’t needed to disclose the identify of owners anywhere.
That’s over for most U.S. companies.
The Corporate Transparency Act (CTA) went into effect January 1, requiring most businesses to identify their beneficial owners (someone who owns at least 25% of the company or who has “substantial control” over it) to the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN).And there’s certainly a high risk of political abuse.
Just yesterday, news came of evidence that the FinCen is flagging for attention transactions that include words like “MAGA” or Trump. And who trusts the federal government not to leak what are supposed to be confidential reports? Even Trumps tax returns were leaked.
The new law applies to U.S. corporations, limited liability companies and any other entities created by the filing of a document with a secretary of state or any similar office in the U.S. It also applies to companies formed under the law of a foreign country that have registered to do business in the U.S.
Exemptions are described here, but they generally are narrow. Also, the law does not apply to companies (a) with at least 20 full-time employees in the U.S.; (b) that file a U.S. federal income tax or information return showing more than $5,000,000 in U.S. gross receipts or sales for the prior fiscal year; and (c) have an operating presence at a physical office in the U.S.
It’s a dramatic change and will be a headache for many small companies. An estimated 30 million U.S. businesses will now have to file. The filed disclosures do not become public but may be used for law enforcement and national security. The law is intended to help stop and prosecute things like money laundering, tax fraud, terrorist funding and other illegal activities.
Penalties for non-compliance can be harsh. The CTA establishes civil penalties ($500 per day, up to a total of $10,000) and criminal penalties (up to two years of imprisonment) for individuals who willfully fail to file
The Illinois Secretary of State office will be taking on the task of notifying Illinois businesses about the law and developing materials to help explain it, which the Chicago Sun-Times wrote about here. Salute to both of them for that. Secretary of State Giannoulias and the state are not responsible for the new federal law in any way, so his office’s assistance will no doubt welcome to many unaware or perplexed small business owners.
The law enforcement reasoning behind the CTA is no doubt valid, but it’s also true that many law-abiding businesses and their owners have valid reasons for privacy. They won’t be happy with the new law.
Based on over thirty years earlier practicing corporate law and making venture capital investments, I can attest to many instances where privacy of ownership was important for a variety of business or personal reasons. I am not now a practicing lawyer, so please obtain your own legal advice.
The law passed in 2021 as part of related legislation with bipartisan support, overriding a veto by President Trump. It also had substantial support in the financial community and with some business groups, such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
You won’t find many news reports on the CTA but plenty of good law firms have published advisories about the new law, which you can find by searching “Corporate Transparency Act.” Filing is done online at FinCEN’s website, which also links to FAQs and further information.
