Baltimore Police Commissioner Michael Harrison stepped down this week as the progressive-run city struggles with homicides, a drug crisis, and a troubling rise in violence involving teenagers.

“I have been truly blessed to serve this city of Baltimore… and this opportunity to serve as your police commissioner is one that I will always cherish,” Harrison said Thursday at a news conference. 

Harrison’s abrupt exit as Baltimore’s top cop marks the 11th change in leadership since 2000. He was the longest-serving police commissioner in the metro in more than two decades. After nearly three decades in the New Orleans Police Department, he joined the Baltimore Police Department in 2019.

If you missed yesterday’s BREAKING NEWS on @wbalradio from @BaltCityHall Here are a few of my videos & pics of @MayorBMScott’s press conference that I was one of the reporters here as we learned of changes atop @BaltimorePolice with Michael Harrison “out” & Rich Worley “in” pic.twitter.com/zE9bCqN22T

— Scott Wykoff (@ScottWykoffWBAL) June 9, 2023

Harrison told local news WBAL TV in an interview in April that progress in making reforms and rebuilding community trust has been seen over the four years: 

“We’re totally different than we were four years ago, but we’ve made all these improvements. Let me be the first to say we have a long way to go,” he said. 

The only difference Baltimore City has seen in the last four years is that it descended quicker into a hellhole of shootings, homicides, and other violent crimes as teenagers run amuck. Troubled youth has become so bad that the city’s Democrat mayor, Brandon Scott, has placed a curfew on teens this summer. 

Baltimore’s top cop had more than 1.5 years left on his contract. An abrupt exit is a sign the crime-fighting plan by the police department and the mayor might be failing to reduce crime. 

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

Multiple brands touting conservative values have been launching and gaining market share amid the current economic climate where an increasing number of consumers are reacting harshly to—even boycotting—companies promoting progressive ideologies, especially transgenderism.

NBA player Jonathan Isaac, for example, announced the launch of his UNITUS apparel brand in a tweet on June 2. Pitched as an “alternative” to retail brands that are going woke, UNITUS is scheduled to launch in August. “UNITUS is a sports and apparel company, and the basis of it for me is freedom. You have companies that are in that field who have made a conscious decision to either attack or undermine Christian values, conservative values, and things like that,” Isaac told Prager U’s Amala Ekpunobi for the documentary “Unwoke Inc.”

“And I think they have the free choice to do so, as much as I disagree. But I feel that we also have the freedom to create what we want to create,” the NBA star sadi to make his position clear.

Isaac said that the UNITUS brand is aimed at giving parents who want to buy their kids sneakers and clothes the option to give their money to a company that “they know is going to work toward bolstering their values.”

“We can be proud of what we believe in. We don’t have to hide or be ashamed of it … As the day continues to get darker and darker and crazier and crazier, you standing up for what you believe in is only going to get harder. But it’s only going to become more and more necessary,” Isaac said.

Conservative Beer

A business looking to capitalize on conservative anger against woke companies is beer brand “Ultra Right.” The brand was launched in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding Bud Light hiring transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney for a promotion campaign.

Ultra Right began selling its beer around mid-April, and was on its way to exceeding $1 million in sales in just 12 days, according to an April 26 report by Fox News. By that time, the business had garnered more than 10,000 customers.

In an April 25 video posted to Twitter, Ultra Right CEO Seth Weathers said that “we’re a movement of people that are speaking up and saying no to the woke nonsense. Ultra Right beer and this movement will never be stopped, no matter what they throw at us.”

Back in April, Anheuser-Busch, the company which owns Bud Light, sent beer cans to Mulvaney featuring the trans-activist’s face—a move criticized as pushing transgenderism. People began boycotting the beer brand and sales numbers subsequently crashed.

Between April 3 and May 30, the market capitalization of Anheuser-Busch fell from $132.06 billion to $108.19 billion—a decrease of over 18 percent.

New Firms and Some Old

The Daily Wire team launched a new razor company in March called Jeremy’s Razors after razor firm Harry’s pulled out ads from the media outlet in 2021.

“After we said that boys are boys and girls are girls, they [Harry’s] publicly condemned our views as ‘inexcusable’ and dropped their ads because of what they called ‘values misalignment,’” stated the Jeremy’s Razors website.

“You’re damn right our values are misaligned. We embrace masculinity and the courage to uphold it. And since no other razors out there did … we built our own.”

Jeremy’s Razors notched up 15 million views for its first ad across social media platforms by the end of March, selling 45,000 razor subscriptions as well.

While companies like Bud Light advocate for leftist agendas, other firms have existed for years without having to resort to such measures.

For instance, Black Rifle Coffee Company, which promotes support for law enforcement, veterans, and first responders, saw a 29 percent revenue growth in 2022.

Mixed martial arts promotion company UFC has been doing far better than competitors like Bellator and Professional Fighters League. Goya Foods is the biggest Hispanic-owned food company in America. Goya’s CEO is a Trump supporter, and has insisted that the results of the 2020 presidential election were not legitimate.

The company has supported initiatives to end child trafficking, showing that there are multiple other avenues for brands to give back to the public instead of relying on LGBT causes. However, the primary reason for many companies to support such causes is to align with the environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) framework.

ESG principles make companies look beyond making market demand and profits, and focus on taking actions related to issues like climate change, racism, and sexual identity, among others. It is adopted by firms mainly to appease large investors like BlackRock that use these metrics to evaluate whether to invest or not.

With many companies increasingly pushing woke ideologies, shoppers are shifting more toward brands that align with their traditional values, choosing not to remain passive in an increasingly politically charged climate. More brands are expected to hit the marketplace in the near future.

In the end, companies need to make profits, boycotts hurt, and competitors catering to market demand will take up market share.

Authored by Marie Hawthorne via The Organic Prepper blog,

The OP has suffered a lot from deplatforming, as Daisy has documented. This has been very difficult financially, but we’re far from alone. One of the biggest public figures regularly getting shut down is Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., an official presidential candidate. RFK is constantly getting banned and smeared as an “anti-vaxxer.” But is he really that crazy?

Some background on RFK Jr.

RFK Jr. was born famous and privileged, except, of course, for his father and uncle getting assassinated in his childhood. For a long time, RFK Jr. was best known as an environmental lawyer. He became involved in cleaning up the Hudson River in the 1980s as part of court-mandated community service from a heroin arrest. His community service inspired him to work with multiple groups dedicated to cleaning up the Hudson, and he eventually founded Waterkeeper Alliance in 1999.

His environmental hero status didn’t last, however. In 2005, he entered the vaccine debate after being contacted by parents of vaccine-injured children. Since then, it has been hard to find an article about RFK Jr. that doesn’t begin by describing him as an “anti-vaxxer.”

For about fifteen years, most people (myself included) were content to dismiss him and the anti-vaccine movement in general as cranks. I raised my children with all their shots, trusting the medical profession to keep us healthy.

Until Covid.

As the “two weeks to flatten the curve” turned into months and sometimes years, many people began to realize there was something deeply wrong with many of our formerly-trusted institutions. We saw businesses get shut down and livelihoods ruined. Decisions were not being made in the best interests of normal Americans, those who ran small businesses and relied on institutions like the public schools.

When the jabs came along, things got weirder. Natural immunity was totally ignored and the nation was expected to submit itself as guinea pigs for this treatment that had never been tested for long-term effects. When vaccine mandates began to be implemented, RFK Jr.’s advocacy for parental choice regarding medical treatments started to sound a lot more reasonable.

It became obvious that there was a lot of lying and manipulation going on. I became increasingly suspicious of “official” voices and more willing to listen to figures like RFK Jr. I bought his book, The Real Anthony Fauci, almost as soon as it was available.

I read the whole thing. All 492 pages detailing one scam after another. You may not agree with RFK Jr. on every issue, but no one can deny that he knows his material. And no one has sued him for libel or slander, which makes me think the book is mostly accurate.

The Real Anthony Fauci sold over a million copies and has more than 23,000 reviews culminating in 4.8 stars, yet garnered no book reviews from legacy media.

So, why are the Democrats so afraid of him?

On pages 142-142, RFK Jr. recounts going from a sought-after guest speaker whose articles were regularly featured in legacy media to a total outcast. His status changed abruptly once he turned from cleaning up waterways to pharmaceutical companies. However, he has deep pockets, he’s got the Kennedy name, and he hasn’t gone away.

As the public, in general, became more and more distrustful of the Covid response, people became more willing to listen to non-mainstream voices like RFK Jr. His non-profit, Children’s Health Defense, saw its profits double in 2020.

His “Defeat the Mandates” rally in January 2022 was attended by over 30,000 people.

After The Real Anthony Fauci was published, Tucker Carlson hosted RFK Jr. more regularly. The two men had an interview on April 19, the day RFK Jr. announced his plan to run as a Democratic presidential candidate. On April 24, five days later, Fox fired Tucker, leading to speculation that Tucker’s willingness to give RFK Jr. a large platform was part of the reason for his dismissal.

RFK Jr. has been interviewed by the likes of Russell Brand and Jordan Peterson. Despite being endlessly labeled “crazy” and “extremist,” after watching him interact with a variety of hosts, he comes across as anything but.

After immense social pressure, Instagram had to reinstate his original account as well as his campaign account once he announced his presidential bid. Former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has endorsed RFK, much to the outcry of the MSM. He’s proven difficult to silence.

He would be very impressive in a presidential debate.

Rather than name-calling, if RFK Jr. is so dead-wrong about vaccines and children’s health, why doesn’t anyone actually engage him?

People refuse to engage in arguments with RFK Jr. because they can’t. He’s a long-time trial lawyer, so he’s good at arguing, and he’s also very, very intelligent. He’s comfortable reading scientific material and understands much of the debates around childhood health and vaccines in a way that many people, even many college-educated people, just don’t.

For example, in The Real Anthony Fauci, on pages 285-286, he discusses the debate between Louis Pasteur and Antoine Bechamp back in the 19th century. To simplify: Pasteur is the guy who realized that germs spread diseases. He posited that, by keeping environments germ-free, we could avoid infections. Obviously, there is a lot of truth in this. It is the model Western healthcare runs on.

Bechamp, however, who lived at about the same time as Pasteur, argued that it wasn’t so simple. He thought we could never kill every imaginable germ, nor should we try to. Instead, Bechamp thought our time would be better spent focusing on optimal nutrition and basic sanitation so that our bodies would be best able to fight off whatever harmful germs came along. We know, at this point, that there is truth in this as well, and RFK Jr. uses Bechamp’s line of thinking to posit that maybe we should focus more on higher-quality food and a healthier environment for children rather than more pharmaceutical products.

There is nothing crazy about this, and in fact, the more we uncover about the importance of the microbiome in our intestines, the more it makes sense. In David Quammen’s book The Tangled Tree, featuring the lifetime work of microbiologist Carl Woese, he puts forth the recent research indicating that we understand the microscopic world far less than we think we do. Simply lumping microscopic life forms into “good” and “bad” categories, and then trying to kill off all the “bad” ones, cannot work when the lines between the species are fairly blurry.

Many scientifically-literate individuals understand this to varying degrees, and this is part of the reason that PhDs displayed the most persistent suspicion around the Covid vaccines. Time has proved them correct, as we find that the jabs were, at best, fairly ineffective and, at worst dangerous for certain groups.

Controversial or not, he gets the word out.

And this all goes to prove that RFK Jr. understands issues at a level that most public figures just don’t. His stances are definitely debatable, but they are not unhinged and they don’t come out of nowhere. However, because understanding his point of view well enough to engage in serious argument requires an understanding of both science and history, most pundits find it far simpler to just call him crazy and refuse to let him speak.

But RFK Jr. gets his message out anyway, finding alternative outlets, doing his best to expose the inner workings between Big Government and Big Business.

And this is probably why RFK Jr. is such a thorn in the side of the Democratic establishment. He doesn’t play along with most of the big donors he’s supposed to play along with. He has watched the Democratic Party go from being anti-war, anti-corporate, and pro-free speech to being the party of lockstep conformity. No other family represents the old Democratic Party the way the Kennedy clan does; he is in a unique position to point out the ways in which the Democratic Party has morphed into something completely different than it was even twenty years ago.

RFK Jr. also has a pulse on using media in a way that most establishment figures don’t. During his recent interview with Jordan Peterson, he referenced the first televised presidential debate back in 1960, when young, handsome John F. Kennedy mopped the floor with Richard Nixon.

The way in which his uncle used the newest form of media to his advantage sixty years ago obviously made an impression on RFK Jr. He said that Trump won the 2016 election, in part, because he used Twitter to his advantage, even though legacy media treated his campaign as a joke. RFK Jr. believes that the 2024 race will be hugely influenced by podcasts, and he has a real advantage here because, unlike so many other candidates, he is ready and willing to sit down and debate for two or three hours at a time.

He’s an interesting candidate.

I should make it clear, again, that I disagree with RFK Jr. on plenty of issues. I used to work in oil and gas, and I think his characterization of “clean” wind and solar is way off. I could argue with him on that.

But I’m happy he’s out there, throwing rocks at establishment windows and forcing powerful figures to either explain themselves or prove by their silence that they have something to hide.

*  *  *

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A US intelligence document revealed and analyzed by The Washington Post shows what’s really behind the Saudis no longer playing ball with the Biden administration with its decision slash oil output amid already high energy prices, which also won’t bode well for the Democrat incumbent in the fast-approaching 2024 election…

Polite but firm public pronouncements from the kingdom aside, the Post wrote this week that “in private, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman threatened to fundamentally alter the decades-old U.S.-Saudi relationship and impose significant economic costs on the United States if it retaliated against the oil cuts,” based on the classified intel document.

The document leaked by 21-year-old National Guardsman Jack Teixeira cited the crown prince as asserting “he will not deal with the U.S. administration anymore,” vowing that there will be “major economic consequences for Washington.”

This is perhaps why (along with little leverage/few cards to play) the White House has refrained from imposing any costs or consequences on the longtime close Gulf ally. Biden last year warned of “consequences” coming, but still no bite.

The Biden administration has been quick to downplay the intel document and Washington Post’s reporting: 

A spokesperson with the National Security Council said “we are not aware of such threats by Saudi Arabia.”

“In general, such documents often represent only one snapshot of a moment in time and cannot possibly offer the full picture,” the official said, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss an intelligence matter.

“The United States continues to collaborate with Saudi Arabia, an important partner in the region, to advance our mutual interests and a common vision for a more secure, stable, and prosperous region, interconnected with the world,” the official added.

So it seems the man who Biden once called a “pariah” after the killing of journalist Jamal Khashoggi is defiantly in the driver’s seat vis-à-vis Washington, also while American officials have since the start of the Russia-Ukraine war been scrambling for untapped energy resources, even beginning to bring the Maduro regime of Venezuela “in from the cold”. But Riyadh is currently provoking Washington by itself reaching out to Maduro of late.

Meanwhile, Middle East news source The Cradle writes that Saudi-Russian concord is the secret behind OPEC+ in the below analysis [emphasis ZH]…

* * *

A curious thing happened in Vienna on Sunday just as the 35th Ministerial Meeting of OPEC+ was about to start at its headquarters. Three princely western news organizations – Bloomberg, Reuters, and the Wall Street Journal – were barred from entering the OPEC premises. When asked about it, pat came the reply: “This is our house.” 

Indeed, OPEC officials were left with no option other than an unorthodox way of “mood setting,” given their heightened sensitivity about the wild stories disseminated in the western media about disagreements between Saudi Arabia and Russia, the two high flyers in OPEC+. 

To be sure, OPEC+ touches raw nerves in Washington even seven years after the group took shape as the brainwave of Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MbS). The two leaders intended that they would have more control over the global crude oil market. The impetus to realism on the part of Moscow and Riyadh has only grown since 2016, and will crystalize further after the US-led G7 inserted itself into rule making in the world oil market last year, threatening to fragment the entire ecosystem. 

Saudi Arabia’s BRICS aspirations

Neither Russia nor Saudi Arabia can afford a break-up of OPEC+. In fact, had there been no OPEC+ today, there would be an urgent need to create one, as both Moscow and Riyadh have, in different ways, come under US pressure on account of their global pre-eminence as energy producers. 

Their potential to be key players in the emerging multipolar world is giving Washington the jitters. Saudi Arabia has formally applied for BRICS membership and sought to join the New Development Bank, the multilateral development bank established by the BRICS states and headquartered in Shanghai, China.

In fact, Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Faisal bin Farhan Al-Saud was present in Cape Town last week for the BRICS ministerial meeting. On the sidelines, Bin Farhan met Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. The Russian readout underscored the depth and profundity of the current level of relations between the two counties. 

Saudi Arabia is tiptoeing toward BRICS at a historic juncture when the group is reportedly all set to create its own currency at its forthcoming summit in Durban, South Africa. This, of course, will be a calamitous development for the petrodollar – the pillar of the western banking system – and holds the potential to create a new global oil market. 

Russia-Iran oil cooperation

To digress a bit, on May 18, Russia and Iran signed 10 documents for cooperation in the oil industry, comprising six memorandums of understanding, two contracts, one agreement, and a roadmap related to bilateral cooperation in the fields of industry, transfer of technology, and oil recovery enhancement.

These agreements allow Russia (together with China in separate agreements) to have its companies present in any oil and gas field in Iran that Moscow chooses. Following the signing ceremony in Tehran, the visiting Russian Deputy Prime Minister Alexander Novak, who is also the co-chair of the Permanent Russian-Iranian Commission on Trade and Economic Cooperation, stated that the two countries held negotiations on banking interactions and using their national currencies in the bilateral transactions.

Quite obviously, Iran’s strategic ties with Russia is a spectre that haunts the administration of US President Joe Biden. In that context, Saudi Arabia’s gravitation toward BRICS adds to the angst in the western mind. It is hardly surprising that feverish US attempts are afoot to undermine OPEC+. 

Agreement on oil production cuts

No sooner than the OPEC+ ministerial at Vienna ended, Deputy PM Novak made clear that Russia and Saudi Arabia were in lockstep on the OPEC+ deals:

“No, there were no [Russian-Saudi] differences. We always find common solutions. For years, our agreements have been in force in the interests of the market, in the interests of the countries participating in the agreement, and in the interests of both exporters and producers. We always find common solutions with Saudi Arabia. Naturally, we always have preliminary discussions, but nevertheless we always reach concord.” 

In Moscow on Monday, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters: “The Russian Federation is a member of the joint understanding (in Vienna). The OPEC+ format continues its work, there are common agreements that, of course, everyone will follow. Of course, this format retains its importance and its significance for ensuring stability in international energy markets.” 

The decisions taken by the OPEC+ ministerial after seven hours of talks amply bears out the Saudi-Russian “concord”: An agreement on pegging the 2024 baselines at 40.46 million barrels a day, against which the production cuts are to be measured; reduction of overall production targets from 2024 by a further 1.4 million bpd in total; the deep cut by Saudi Arabia to its output in July on top of a broader OPEC+ deal to limit supply into 2024 as the group seeks to boost flagging oil prices; Russia’s extension of its voluntary oil production cut by 500,000 barrels daily till end-December 2024, which will be calculated from the 2024 quota, which in turn has now been reduced to 9.828 million barrels a day as part of the deal. 

OPEC+ seeks ‘stability and market balance’

Novak told Russian TV on Sunday that OPEC Plus nations have taken “an important decision to extend the voluntary cuts announced by the countries from 1 May, 2023 in order to balance the market. This is 1.66 million barrels a day on top of what was announced last October … So, in aggregate terms, it is 3.66 million barrels undertaken by the OPEC+ countries to ensure stable market operation.” He continued: 

“The agreement is in force until the end of 2023, that is why we discussed the issue of its possible extension until the end of 2024 for quite a long time today. Two major decisions have been passed: first, to extend the existing agreement until the end of 2024, and, second, to extend throughout 2024 voluntary cuts by 1.66 million barrels a day starting 1st May undertaken by nine countries.” 

“This will make it possible to have long-term forecasts of the effect of our agreement for 18 months ahead. These are key decisions we discussed and passed today… Naturally, we have possibilities to adjust our decisions. If necessary, we will do so to ensure the market stability so that it is balanced and clear for investors, buyers, and exporters. For all market players.” 

Indeed, as the Saudis have sought, oil prices rose on Monday, with global benchmark Brent oil climbing toward $78 a barrel. On the whole, if there has been any “winner” in the OPEC+ talks on Sunday, it must be the UAE, which gets a boost to its production limit for next year at the expense of some African members who were asked to give up part of their unused quotas. 

The finely balanced OPEC+ decisions “to achieve and sustain a stable oil market, to provide long-term guidance for the market, in line with the successful approach of being precautious, proactive, and pre-emptive,” – to borrow from the OPEC press release on Sunday – have only been possible due to the trust and mutual confidence among the key players within the group, Russia and Saudi Arabia, in particular. 

Authored by Jarrett Stepman via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

The institutional Left senses that its dominance over our societal mores faces a sudden and unexpected challenge. It is responding with predictable derangement.

The Human Rights Campaign, a powerful and well-funded left-wing advocacy group, declared a “national emergency” for “LGBTQ+” people on Tuesday.

“LGBTQ+ Americans are living in a state of emergency. The multiplying threats facing millions in our community are not just perceived—they are real, tangible, and dangerous,” HRC’s president, Kelley Robinson, said in a press release.

“In many cases, they are resulting in violence against LGBTQ+ people, forcing families to uproot their lives and flee their homes in search of safer states, and triggering a tidal wave of increased homophobia and transphobia that puts the safety of each and every one of us at risk.”

Just over two months ago, a person who was “identified” as transgender engaged in a mass shooting at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. The Human Rights Campaign had nothing to say about the targeting and killing of Christians in that case, despite a clear increase in attacks on churches in the past few years. Most of the media pivoted to explaining how a terrorist attack on Christians is really a threat to the LGBTQ+ community.

The Biden administration followed suit.

If the Human Rights Campaign is worried about violence, maybe it should say something about incidents like this:

“One day, somebody is going to shoot you in the head.”

At the @dallasprideorg event on June 3, a group of pride participants confronted conservative group @protecttxkids_ and one person made a death threat on camera. pic.twitter.com/sxeoFHI1eM

— Andy Ngô 🏳️‍🌈 (@MrAndyNgo) June 6, 2023

The evidence that the group has produced to prove its case of an LGBTQ+ “national emergency” was that many states passed bans on so-called gender-affirming care for children, prohibited gender-neutral restrooms, and prevented biological males from competing in female sports.

Most of these laws are broadly popular.

That, of course, is the real crisis for the Human Rights Campaign.

The “crisis” is that the American people will pass laws limiting the group’s demands on society and that the laws will be widely accepted.

Its declaration is obviously hyperbolic. However, it’s understandable why it’s in a moment of panic.

There’s been a noticeable vibe shift to begin this year’s “Pride Month”—the holiest of times in the secular Left’s liturgical calendar.

It’s clear that many Americans have become fed up with the insanity. They are fed up with the Rainbow Mafia dominating our society, and most of all, they are fed up with the extreme demands of the LGBTQ+ movement attempting to bend every institution to its will.

What was once a distinct counterculture in America has taken over to become the dominant strain of what’s defined as the public good. The Human Rights Campaign and its allies have browbeaten corporate America into submission—which was easy, given how higher education has conditioned upper-middle-class Americans to accept their values to begin with.

But the LGBTQ+ movement got ahead of its skis. It assumed that the war had been won, the courts were on its side, and it could impose its version of the public good on society without restraint—shoving aside the old Christian ethos that used to dominate.

The countercultural Left, which always preaches about the open society and “tolerance,” is paradoxically and savagely intolerant of those who cling to the belief that there is an absolute truth and that some behaviors are inherently good or bad. As the left gains power, it as become increasingly become totalitarian. Those who disagree are punished by law or subjected to woke struggle sessions.

Now, there’s resistance.

Perhaps it’s the complete departure from truth and endangering women and children that has stirred up the most opposition. Whatever the impetus, it does appear that something is changing as of late—and it certainly is late.

A “drag queen in every school” has replaced a “chicken in every pot” as the focus of the managerial ruling elite.

In response, fed-up Americans are using the power of the purse and democracy to short-circuit the Human Rights Campaign—one of the biggest drivers of corporate wokeness—and its political allies.

Stocks for major companies such as Anheuser-Busch and Target have been hit hard after embracing woke, LGBTQ+ promotional campaigns. It’s particularly impressive to see Target’s downturn. After all, this isn’t an inexpensive beer brand with countless—and mostly better—options on the market. It’s a major retail chain with a large and diverse shopping base.

Going woke hasn’t always meant that a company will go broke. With “environmental, social, and governance” (ESG) investments and in some cases government involvement, companies have been able, from time to time, to anger their customers, yet keep making money. But even those wells might dry up as red states begin the process of banning ESG rules for public pension funds.

It seems corporate America will back down after all.

Whereas “celebrating Pride” in the past came with minimal commitment and risk, Americans opposed to the new institutional moral paradigm are more relentlessly boycotting the brands that promote it. More importantly, they are passing laws and refusing to allow woke corporations and groups such as the Human Rights Campaign to decide what the rules of society are.

The cultural Left continues to have enormous institutional strength. For decades, all it has had to do is play the equivalent of a “prevent defense,” and it ultimately got its way.

Now, there is a real movement and momentum to circumvent that power. The Human Rights Campaign and its friends are trying to gin up as much hysteria as they can in the hope that they can mute that movement just enough to let it burn out.

The Right needs more than a few successful boycotts to “win.” To capitalize on this moment, it needs a governing agenda and leadership to play the long game and create lasting institutional and societal change.

That’s how we go from winning a few culture battles to winning the culture war.

Reprinted by permission from The Daily Signal, a publication of The Heritage Foundation.

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

Shoplifting in California may get a lot easier, after the state Senate passed a controversial bill on May 31 that would make it illegal for store employees to confront thieves.

SB 553, authored by Democrat Senator David Cortese (San Jose), requires employers to maintain violent incident logs, provide active shooter and shoplifter training, and to discard policies requiring workers to confront suspected active shoplifters, the Epoch Times reports.

According to Cortese, the bill is intended to “help employers keep employees safe at work.”

The bill, which passed the Senate by a vote of 29 to 8, is pending further review by state Assembly committees.

According to the California Realtors Association (CRA), the bill will apply to all industries – not just retail, if passed. CRA president and CEO Rachel Michelin told Fox2/KTVU that the bill “goes way too far.”

“I think it will open the doors even wider for people to come in and steal from our stores,” she said.

According to the CRA, most retailers already prohibit regular employees from approaching someone who is shoplifting. These situations are handled by employees specially trained in theft prevention instead.

If employees trained in theft deterrence are not allowed to do their job per the bill, “What does that mean? We are opening up the door to allow people to walk into stores, steal, and walk out,” Michelin added. -Epoch Times

According to a position letter from the California Chamber of Commerce, the bill “takes a regulation written for hospitals related to workplace violence and applies it to all workplaces, regardless of size of resources.”

“Substantively, SB 533 does not change the realities around workplace violence—namely, that it is a criminal matter that employers are not well-equipped to prevent.”

In recent years, shoplifting has become a serious problem, with retailers such as Target anticipating a $1.3 billion hit due to “theft and organized crime.”

In Downtown San Francisco, Target employees told the San Francisco Standard that they’re experiencing at least 10 thefts a day.

The Target store at 1690 Folsom St initially locked up most of its merchandise to deter shoplifting, but quickly changed to only locking up more valuable goods.

As shoplifting plagues the San Francisco Bay Area, confronting thieves could be dangerous, even for trained professionals.

Whether to confront or not confront shoplifters has become a hot topic, especially after a security guard shot and killed a suspected shoplifter at a Walgreens store in downtown San Francisco.

San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins decided not to charge the guard, Michael Earl-Wayne Anthony, after reviewing the surveillance video and Anthony’s testimony. -Epoch Times

It’s unclear whether SB 553 applies to security guards.

Meanwhile, in 2014 California voters passed Prop 47, which downgraded certain thefts and drug offenses from felonies to misdemeanors. Its most well-known statute raised the minimum amount of stolen goods from $400 to $950 for a theft case to be classified as a felony, which critics consider to be the main cause of a rise in petty theft across the state.

It also allowed felons serving prison terms to petition for resentencing under the new classifications. Those who have already served their terms can also have their past convictions reclassified as misdemeanors.

Thanks to Prop 47 thefts under $950 will not be prosecuted, so cops will not bother showing up. Just a reminder that you get what you voted for, California! pic.twitter.com/jWUPdJzy0A

— Adam Carolla (@adamcarolla) July 20, 2021

As the Times notes, weeks before the fatal Walgreens shooting, a 26-year-old Home Depot employee, Blake Mohs, was shot and killed attempting to stop an active robbery at a store in Pleasanton when he grabbed a DeWalt box out of the hands of the suspected shooter, Benicia Knapps. Knapps reportedly grabbed the box again after shooting Mohs, and got into a car driven by her boyfriend, David Guillory. She was later apprehended by Alameda Country Sheriff’s Deputies following a pursuit.

Apparently the answer to incidents such as the above is to allow shoplifters to simply walk out without confrontation.

Authored by J. Peder Zane via RealClear Wire,

Special Counsel John Durham may have issued his final report last month, but the Russiagate scandal is far from over. This is not because there is no more to learn about the years-long effort by the Democratic Party, the FBI, CIA, and major news outlets to advance the conspiracy theory that Donald Trump teamed with Vladimir Putin to steal the 2016 election.

Rather it’s because Russiagate never ended. Unlike political scandals of the past – from the XYZ Affair to Watergate and Iran-Contra – it is not a discrete set of events with a beginning, middle, and end. Instead, it has become a form of governing in which the entrenched forces of the Washington bureaucracy punish their enemies, protect their friends and interfere in elections with impunity.

A continuous thread connects the schemes to deny the results of the 2016 election, to cover up the Biden family’s influence-peddling schemes during the 2020 election, and the ongoing effort to tar President Biden’s opponents as extremists or racists.

Ironically, all of this is especially dangerous because it is out in the open. The profound misdeeds are not hidden in the dark web; they are part of the public record. And yet, none of the major malefactors – including Joe Biden, former President Obama, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James B. Comey, and former CIA Director John Brennan, among others – have been held to account. Rather, they are lionized, and in some cases employed, by leading media organizations.

The breadth of these machinations is so extensive that I would need a book, rather than a column, to detail it. But here is a brief recap that can serve as a reminder of key events of this dark period of our history.

On July 28, 2016, then CIA Director John Brennan informed President Obama about intelligence reports indicating Hillary Clinton’s campaign “plan” to tie Donald Trump to Russia in order to distract the public from the growing controversy over her use of a private email server while Secretary of State. Notes in the margin – “JC,” “Susan,” and “Denis” – almost certainly refer to then FBI Director James Comey, National Security Advisor Susan Rice, and Obama’s chief of staff, Denis McDonough.

On July 31, Comey’s FBI launched a counterintelligence probe into whether the Trump campaign was conspiring with Russia to damage Clinton through the release of her emails.

On Jan. 3, 2017, Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer warned the president-elect not to challenge the intelligence community’s claims of Russian interference in the 2016 election. “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you,” Schumer told MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow. “So even for a practical, supposedly hard-nosed businessman, he’s being really dumb to do this.”

On Jan. 5, 2017, in his finals days in office, Obama held an Oval Office meeting with Brennan, Comey, Rice, Vice President Biden, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, and others to strategize responses to alleged Russian election interference and Trump’s victory.

On Jan. 6, Comey briefed President-elect Trump about the Steele dossier – a series of absurd and salacious memos paid for and disseminated by the Clinton campaign that sought to tarnish Trump’s character while tying him and his campaign associates to the Kremlin.

On Jan. 10, CNN used a leak it received about Comey’s briefing to broadcast the dossier’s smears, fueling a partisan feeding frenzy that led to the appointment of former FBI Director Robert Mueller as Special Counsel to investigate Trump/Russia ties. Buzzfeed News published the entire dossier the same day.

On Jan. 28, after assuring Trump privately that he wasn’t under investigation, Comey wrote a memo recounting that he’d boasted to the new president, “I don’t do sneaky things, I don’t leak, I don’t do weasel moves.” He then went to his car and typed up his version of the conversations. When Trump fired him on May 9, Comey immediately leaked the memos, in violation of FBI rules, to a sympathetic college professor in hopes, he conceded later, of prompting the appointment of a special prosecutor. On May 17, Robert S. Mueller III, a longtime Comey friend and ally, was appointed special counsel to investigate potential ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

On April 18, 2018, the New York Times and Washington Post shared the Pulitzer Prize for national reporting for their “deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign.” This work, much of which was based on leaks from anonymous government sources, was filled with “false and misleading claims” which, my RealClearInvestigations colleague Aaron Maté reported, the newspapers have still refused to correct.

On March 22, 2019, Mueller submitted a report on his investigation which “did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.” Mueller, however, claimed that the source of these falsehoods was beyond his mandate, so he did not look into the role Clinton, Comey, Brennan, Obama, and other high-ranking Democrats played in ginning up charges of treason against a duly elected U.S. president.

On May 13, it was reported that Attorney General William Barr had appointed John Durham to examine the origins of the Russia probe. Barr upgraded Durham to a Special Counsel role on Dec. 1, 2020. Durham’s final report, issued last month, detailed the Clinton campaign’s central role in the Russiagate conspiracy while concluding that “the FBI should never have launched a full investigation into connections between Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia during the 2016 election” because it relied on “raw, unanalyzed, and uncorroborated intelligence.” Durham’s investigation also undermined the other pillar of the Russia hoax, endorsing earlier findings that there was no conclusive evidence that the Russians had hacked DNC servers. Like the Trump/Russia collusion theory, this claim also originated from associates of the Clinton campaign.

On Sept. 24, the Mueller report a bust, House Democrats began proceedings to make Trump just the third president in history to be impeached based on the claim that he sought foreign influence in America’s elections by holding up aid to Ukraine for a short period to pressure the country into looking into its potential connection to the Russiagate hoax and the Biden family’s work in Ukraine. The aid package was later delivered, and no investigation was undertaken. Nevertheless, the House approved two articles of impeachment on December 18, 2019, along party lines – all Republicans and three Democrats opposed the measure – and sent them to the GOP-controlled Senate, which acquitted Trump on Feb. 5, 2020, on another party-line vote (only Republican Mitt Romney crossed party lines to convict Trump on a single charge).

On Oct. 14, 2020, the New York Post reported “that Hunter Biden introduced his father, then-Vice President Joe Biden, to a top executive at a Ukrainian energy firm less than a year before the elder Biden pressured government officials in Ukraine into firing a prosecutor who was investigating the company.” The article, based on email from a laptop Hunter Biden had abandoned at a Delaware repair shop, suggested an influence-peddling scheme while flatly contradicting Joe Biden’s claim that he never discussed his son’s foreign business dealings.

On Oct. 17, Biden campaign official and future Secretary of State Antony Blinken discusses the laptop with former acting CIA Director Mike Morell.

On Oct. 19, Politico reported that a letter signed by Morell and 51 other former intelligence officials – including Brennan and Clapper – claimed that allegations in the Post article had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” Echoing the false Russiagate claims, the letter continued, “For the Russians at this point, with Trump down in the polls, there is incentive for Moscow to pull out the stops to do anything possible to help Trump win and/or to weaken Biden should he win.” Major news outlets and social media companies relied on this letter to downplay and suppress the revelations. The FBI, which had taken possession of Hunter Biden’s laptop in December 2019, refused to comment on its authenticity.

On Oct. 22, Joe Biden invoked the letter in his final debate with Trump to dismiss the laptop as “a Russian plant.” On November 3, Biden became president through razor-thin margins in key swing states.

On March 30, 2022, the Washington Post reported that it had authenticated thousands of emails on Hunter Biden’s laptop. CBS News subsequently verified almost all the contents of the laptop.

On May 15, 2023, the New York Post reported that the Internal Revenue Service removed “the entire investigative team” in its years-long tax fraud investigation of Hunter Biden at the behest of President Biden’s Department of Justice. This purge came after several whistleblowers stepped forward claiming the probe was being slow-walked. The move also came after a series of revelations showed how the Biden family used a series of shell companies to funnel millions of dollars from foreign sources to at least nine family members – including Joe Biden’s young grandchildren. As Andrew C. McCarthy recently noted in the National Review, it is still not clear what the Bidens provided in exchange for this money, other than access to Joe.

On June 4, former FBI Director Comey, noting the long string of cases being brought against Trump by Democratic officials, told MSNBC that “it’s a crazy world that Donald Trump has dragged this country into, but he could be wearing an ankle brace while accepting the nomination at the Republican convention.”

J. Peder Zane is a RealClearInvestigations editor and columnist. He previously worked as a book review editor and book columnist for the News & Observer (Raleigh), where his writing won several national honors. Zane has also worked at the New York Times and taught writing at Duke University and Saint Augustine’s University.

By Jeffrey Jones of Gallup

More Americans this year (38%) say they are very conservative or conservative on social issues than said so in 2022 (33%) and 2021 (30%). At the same time, the percentage saying their social views are very liberal or liberal has dipped to 29% from 34% in each of the past two years, while the portion identifying as moderate (31%) remains near a third.

The last time this many Americans said they were socially conservative was 2012, during a period when consistently more U.S. adults identified as conservative rather than liberal on social issues.

The results are based on Gallup’s annual Values and Beliefs survey, conducted May 1-24. The survey comes at a time when many states are considering policies regarding transgender matters, abortion, crime, drug use and the teaching of gender and sexuality in schools.

The increase in conservative identification on social issues over the past two years is seen among nearly all political and demographic subgroups. Republicans show one of the largest increases, from 60% in 2021 to 74% today. Independents show a modest uptick of five percentage points, from 24% to 29%, while there has been no change among Democrats (10% in both 2021 and 2023).

Since 2021, there have been double-digit increases in conservative social ideology among middle-aged adults — those between the ages of 30 and 64. At the same time, older Americans’ ideology on social issues has been stable, while there has been a modest increase in conservative social ideology among young adults.

Economic Conservatism Also Ticks Up

When Americans are asked to describe their views on economic issues, 44% identify as very conservative or conservative, 33% moderate and 21% very liberal or liberal. The percentage saying they are conservative averaged 40% between 2020 and 2022. The current figure is the highest since 46% in 2012.

Americans have consistently been more likely to say they are conservative on economic issues rather than liberal, by no fewer than 16 percentage points (in 2021).

During the poll’s field period, President Joe Biden and Congress debated legislation to raise the federal debt ceiling and cut federal spending.

Americans have been more likely to identify as economically conservative rather than liberal because Republicans overwhelmingly say they are conservative, but Democrats are not overwhelmingly liberal. In 2023, 79% of Republicans identify as conservative on economic issues, while 48% of Democrats say they are liberal. Additionally, more independents identify as economic conservatives (36%) than liberals (16%). About half of independents say they are moderate on economic matters.

Partisans’ ideology on economic issues has been steady in recent years. The modest shifts in economic ideology among national adults are instead driven by slight changes in political party identification among U.S. adults (from an average 29% Republican, 32% Democratic in the 2020 and 2021 surveys to 30% Republican and 29% Democratic in the 2023 survey).

Bottom Line

For most of the past eight years, Americans were about as likely to say they were liberal as conservative on social issues. This year, there is a more obvious conservative advantage. The shift is mostly due to increasing social conservatism among Republicans, at a time when social issues such as transgender rights, abortion and other hot-button concerns are prominent in the national public debate.

Greater social conservatism may be fostering an environment more favorable to passing conservative-leaning social legislation, especially in Republican-dominated states. Indeed, in the past year, many Republican states have passed stricter constraints on abortions, limited choices for transgender youth in sports participation and healthcare, and placed prohibitions on what topics can be discussed in classroom settings.

Americans remain more likely to say they are conservative on economic issues. When asked to describe their political views overall, without reference to social or economic issues, 40% say they have conservative views, 31% moderate and 26% liberal. Overall ideological identification, thus, is less conservative than it is for economic issues but more conservative than for social issues, though closer to the social issue figures.

Update (1505ET): As announced earlier, special Counsel Jack Smith is holding a press conference to discuss the Trump indictment.

*  *  *

The 49-page indictment against former President Trump was unsealed Friday, and contains 38 counts covering seven criminal charges, including willful retention of national defense information, corruptly concealing documents, conspiracy to obstruct justice, and making false statements.

Special Counsel Jack Smith will hold a press conference at 3pm ET.

TRUMP CHARGES REVEALED.

The indictment has been unsealed.

The court filing details numerous charges against the former president related to the over more 100 classified documents that were recovered from his Florida home. pic.twitter.com/NJzHOJbUyH

— Pat🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️🤷‍♀️ (@geewhizpat) June 9, 2023

As attorney and journalist Techno Fog notes via The Reactionary, Trump faces up to 100 years in prison if convicted.

This is the first indictment of its kind; we are in new territory, led there by a regime that demands victory at any cost, no matter the political norms or the legal barriers standing in its way. The erosion of the institutions continues.

As Trump faces charges, and as the authorities and media promise that the charges (this time) are legitimate, make no mistake that millions of voters see it as something else: that they’ve been disenfranchised once again. As for the rest of America, it’s safe to assume that many feel little confidence in this prosecution. They see it for what it is.

Trump is expected to appear in Federal District Court in Miami on Tuesday afternoon to face charges. His first appearance will be before Judge Eileen M. Cannon, who was appointed by Trump in 2020.

The indictment marks the first time in US history that a former president has faced federal charges – and is the first time a sitting president’s DOJ has indicted his chief political rival in an upcoming election.

2/ Including “nuclear capabilities of foreign countries”, “military attacks by a foreign country”, “military activities and planning of foreign countries,” “military capabilities of a foreign country.”

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 9, 2023

3/ It goes on: “concerning nuclear weaponry of the United States”, “concerning White House intelligence briefing relayed to various foreign countries.”

— Jim Sciutto (@jimsciutto) June 9, 2023

At one point, Trump allegedly made a ‘plucking motion’ to indicate to his attorney that anything ‘really bad’ should be removed from the retained files.

Here’s (now former, just resigned) Trump attorney Jim Trusty discussing former presidents turning in classified documents (h/t/ Techno Fog)

Prosecutors also charged former presidential aide, Waltine Nauta, who continued to work for Trujmp after he left office.

Read the entire indictment below:

Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

“Whenever Biden says ‘I’m not joking,’ he’s lying. Whenever he says, ‘I’m joking,’ he’s telling the truth.”

– Margot Cleveland

At long last you know what those plangent cries of Russia! Russia! Russia! ringing across the land signify: America has been turning into Russia, Joe Stalin-vintage, since 2016, just as Lon Chaney turned into a werewolf on-screen back in 1941. 

Trump Derangement turns out to be an extreme presentation of mass Species Identity disorder, a national altered state that (Wikipedia says): “…typically involves delusions and hallucinations with the transformation only seeming to happen in the mind and behavior of the affected person.”

Clinical lycanthropy is a very rare condition and is largely considered to be an idiosyncratic expression of a psychotic or dissociative episode caused by another condition such as Dissociative Identity Disorder, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or clinical depression. It has also been associated with drug intoxication and withdrawal, cerebrovascular disease, traumatic brain injury, dementia, delirium, and seizures…. However, there are suggestions that certain neurological conditions and cultural influences may result in the expression of the human-animal transformation theme that defines the condition.”

So, now we are to have a grand show trial, in the Stalinist mode, of presidential candidate (and werewolf) Donald Trump on charges actually concocted off-site in the Lawfare laboratory of Commissar for Werewolf Activities Andrew Weissmann and sidekick, Brookings Institute fellow Norm Eisen, late counsel to the House Committee that impeached the werewolf with disappointing results over a telephone call to Ukraine in 2019. And, yes, that would be the same Andrew Weissmann who previously (but surreptitiously) led the team of intrepid Lawfare werewolf exorcists fronted by dementia victim Robert Mueller. Mr. Weissmann’s previous two-year-long werewolf hunt was a bust, too, of course. The werewolf slipped off into the moonstruck night to gnaw on Democrat loins again!

This time Mr. Weissman’s front-man is federal attorney Jack Smith, new to the werewolf hunting scene, packing a seven-shot indictment of silver bullets, aiming to show America how it’s done. And just in case he misses those shots, he’s got another gun strapped to his ankle chambering silver bullets engraved with “Jan 6” on the slugs. If you think our world has gotten interesting, better buckle into your Big Boy lounger because this werewolf movie is going places like none before.

You may have noticed the timing of this new werewolf hunt has a near-magical synchronicity with oddly identical circumstances shimmering around the current occupant of the White House — another case of misplaced official papers.

Unlike the Donald Trump werewolf hunt, the “Joe Biden” classified-docs-in-a-garage case is moving at the speed of an Amtrak train with a broken Johnson rod stuck on a sidetrack outside Joppatowne, Maryland, in a snowstorm on Christmas Eve.

But those purloined classified papers may be the least of “Joe Biden’s” concerns.

Why, just the other day a single “whistleblower” document turned up in the House Oversight Committee’s SCIF — a special room for the performance of secret rituals — suggesting that “JB” was on the receiving end of $5 million gratis from some generous soul connected to a Ukrainian natgas company. That payday, for services left murky, when “JB” happened to be Barack Obama’s vice-president, came around the same period as yet other multi-million-dollar gift parcels from China, Russia, and Romania flew into a long list of companies operated by “JB’s” son Hunter, with no known business other than receiving large sums of money and then writing checks to various Biden family members. “Well Sonofabitch…!” as the president himself once said apropos of legal doings in Ukraine.

You understand, the US Department of Justice — the outfit that employs werewolf hunter Jack Smith — got a hold of that “Joe Biden” Ukraine “whistleblower” receipt a good three years ago, and somehow AG Merrick Garland has been unable to take any action on it since then.

It’s been mouldering in some remote FBI file, out of sight and mind until Rep. James Comer (R-KY) subpoenaed it.

Apparently, not even the most preliminary inquiry. Nothing to see there.

May have been a shortage of federal attorneys not already assigned to the odious Jan 6 “insurrection” incident that so scarily endangered our democracy. Why, they are still rounding up suspects from sea to shining sea for that treasonous caper, so deep, broad, and dark was the conspiracy!

Springing the werewolf trap on Mr. Trump in the Miami federal district court is sure to intoxicate the, let’s say, thirty percent of the public gripped by lycanthropic hallucinations.

You can hear cheers ring out in Santa Monica and the Hamptons today as the “blue” demographic prepares to watch the glorious ordeal of Donald Trump’s legal vivisection.

They are forgetting one thing, though: werewolves have powers unknown to mere men who hunt them. Trapping a werewolf is one thing, but holding onto him is another. There are seventeen full moons between now and the next election. A lot can happen, especially among the, let’s say, seventy percent of the public, who disapprove of all this werewolf craziness.

The hunters might even find themselves flipped, horrifyingly, into the hunted.