Be Jeremy Tanner of Nextar Media

As the country slogs through a “tripledemic” wave of COVID-19, influenza and RSV infections, CVS and Walgreens confirmed Monday that they are limiting purchases of children’s pain and fever medication. A Walgreens spokesperson told Nexstar that the decision was due to “increased demand and various supplier challenges,” and that pediatric fever reducing products are “seeing constraint across the country.”

There is currently no widespread, national shortage so supplies may vary from one community to another.

“In an effort to help support availability and avoid excess purchases, we put into effect an online only purchase limit of six per online transaction for all over-the-counter pediatric fever reducers,” the spokesperson added.

The company encourages customers looking to buy an item in-store to check the Walgreens website for inventory by location.

CVS spokesperson Mary Gattuso said the drugstore chain created the product limit to ensure “equitable access for all our customers.”

There is currently a two product limit on all children’s pain relief products at all CVS Pharmacy locations and cvs.com, Gattuso confirmed.

“We’re committed to meeting our customers’ needs and are working with our suppliers to ensure continued access to these items,” Gattuso said.

How did we get here?

Experts are blaming the early, widespread arrival of flu cases in the U.S., in combination with other respiratory illnesses, for the overwhelming demand for over-the-counter medication.

“There are more sick kids at this time of year than we have seen in the past couple years,” said Dr. Shannon Dillon, a pediatrician at Riley Children’s Health in Indianapolis.

Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson says it is not experiencing widespread shortages of Children’s Tylenol, but the product may be “less readily available” at some stores. The company said it is running its production lines around the clock.

“At this point, it’s more like toilet paper at the beginning of the (COVID-19) pandemic,” Dillon said “You just have to look in the right place at the right time.”

Former Food and Drug Administration Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told CBS “Face the Nation” host Margaret Brennan on Sunday that shortages of children’s cold medicine, as well as an ongoing shortage of antibiotic drugs, are the result of unanticipated levels of demand, not a problem with the supply chain.

“Demand went up this year, they anticipated some increase in demand, but not as much as we’re seeing and not this early in the season,” Gottlieb said. “So it’s not any kind of disruption in supply. This isn’t like what we had with baby formula where manufacturers have been taken out of the market.”

Gottlieb anticipates that the pharmaceutical industry’s “sophisticated supply chain” should catch up soon.

In the meantime, parents of sick children may want to explore other options if they find bare shelves at their local pharmacy, experts say. To start with, you may want to check different locations, consider generic versions of name-brand drugs or even ask the family doctor where to find a well-stocked supply.

Authored by Katabella Roberts via The Epoch Times,

Roughly 20,000 illegal aliens are waiting to cross the border into El Paso, Texas, as soon as the Trump-era Title 42 program ends, Mayor Oscar Leeser said on Monday.

Leeser made the comments at a press conference just two days after declaring a state of emergency amid an influx of illegal aliens that have crossed the southern border and been released into the city. Many of them are sleeping in downtown streets while temperatures are freezing, according to officials.

“We’ve been talking to some of the partners in Mexico, and we’re talking also to the Border Patrol and those are the numbers that have been fed back to us,” said Leeser.

“The shelters in [Ciudad] Juarez are completely full today, and they believe there are about 20,000 people ready to come into El Paso.”

Leeser, a Democrat, added that his office has been working with local agencies to ensure that the city is prepared to handle the wave of illegal immigrants.

Title 42 allowed Border Patrol agents to turn illegal aliens back to their country immediately if they were deemed to pose a health threat amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

A U.S. Border Patrol agent instructs immigrants who had crossed the Rio Grande into El Paso, Texas, on Dec. 19, 2022 as seen from Ciudad Juarez, Mexico. (John Moore/Getty Images)

El Paso Declares State of Emergency

The policy, which was set to end on Dec. 21, has been used millions of times to expel aliens since March 2020 and has prompted fears among officials that cities and states could soon be overwhelmed with immigrants.

Preliminary Customs and Border Protection data shared with The Epoch Times shows that El Paso and Del Rio in Texas, two of the busiest sectors along the border, apprehended 70,288 illegal aliens between Dec. 1 through Dec. 19. An additional 28,913 “getaways,” or those who evaded arrest, were also reported.

According to acting Chief Patrol Agent Peter Jaquez of the El Paso Sector, border agents experienced a major surge in illegal crossings over the weekend of Dec. 10 to Dec. 11, with a three-day average of 2,460 daily encounters. This marks a 40 percent increase compared with October. More increases are expected.

In order to help deal with the increased number of illegal aliens, Leeser declared a state of emergency, granting the city more resources and authority to shelter those who have crossed the southern border.

An emergency operations center will also be opened to help manage the situation, Leeser said.

“We know that the influx on Wednesday will be incredible,” the mayor said in a news conference announcing the state of emergency.

“I said from the beginning, that I would call it when I felt that either our asylum-seekers or our community, was not safe. I really believe that today our asylum-seekers are not safe as we have hundreds and hundreds on the streets and that’s not the way we want to treat people.”

Supreme Court Puts Title 42 End on Hold

On Nov. 16, a federal judge ruled that Title 42 was unlawful and ordered the Biden administration to end it by Dec. 21. Republican states promptly filed a motion seeking to stay the order but that order was denied late on Dec. 16 by a federal appeals court.

The GOP-led states, including Arizona, Louisiana, and Texas, filed an emergency application seeking to reverse the lower court’s decision, just days before the policy was set to expire, noting that removing it would “needlessly endanger more Americans and migrants by exacerbating the catastrophe that is occurring at our southern border.”

Supreme Court Chief Justice John Roberts agreed to the temporary pause to the termination of the policy but said the Biden administration must respond to the emergency appeal by 5 p.m. ET Tuesday.

On Dec. 15, the city of Denver also declared a state of emergency in an effort to prevent a local humanitarian crisis amid an influx of illegal aliens arriving mainly from El Paso.

Mayor Michael Hancock, a Democrat, said the increased number of illegal aliens arriving in the city, mostly from Central and South America, is placing extreme pressure on the city’s efforts to shelter them and leading to limited space. The situation is being further exacerbated by staffing issues and winter weather, according to Hancock.

“It is at a crisis point right now and cities all over this country are being forced to deal with something we’re not equipped to deal with,” Hancock said.

The US has alleged that relations between Iran and Russia have reached a “full fledged defense partnership” – based on the words of the US State Department’s Ned Price. 

Price explained that Iran has continued its shipments of drones to the Russian military, at a moment drones have continued to pound Ukrainian cities, particularly targeting energy infrastructure – plunging at least half the country into darkness, and resulting in rolling emergency blackouts.

Price went on the explain that the constant supply of drones and other munitions has in return resulted in Moscow giving back “unprecedented level of military and technical support to Iran… that should concern Iran’s neighbors.”

The US and UK have recently ramped up sanctions efforts to isolate and punish the Islamic Republic’s defense sector, and to thwart the drone transfers, but now see the closer relationship with Moscow as a ‘life-line’ keeping these manufacturers operating and thriving.

An estimated hundreds of drones, and possibly thousands throughout the course of the over 10-month long conflict, are alleged to have been transferred from Iran to the Russian military. Throughout the opening half of the war, both Russian and the Iranian government denied the drone transfers; however, more recently Tehran officials belatedly admitted to sales which they say took place before the Feb. 24 invasion.

The Ukrainian government and intelligence has countered that hundreds more are on the way: 

A Ukrainian senior intelligence official says Russia has received a new shipment of Iranian-made Shahed-136 kamikaze drones from the Islamic Republic of Iran.

According to Ukraine’s defense intelligence (GUR) spokesman Andriy Yusov, the new shipment is smaller than the previous one sometime in the summer that is estimated to have included at least 400 UAVs.

Yusov said in a Sunday statement, “This is a new batch [of Shahed drones], we do not comment on its size, but we see that Shaheds were not used during yesterday’s massive terrorist missile strikes.”

#Ukraine: Russian kamikaze drone attacks hit the Kyiv area last night, reportedly targeting critical infrastructure in the city. The drones were reportedly Shahed drones purchased from #Iran, which have been used in a number of attacks in recent weeks. pic.twitter.com/sTDpiMUrg5

— POPULAR FRONT (@PopularFront_) December 19, 2022

“All other available weapons were used, and these were all missiles and no Shaheds,” he continued. “This is a new batch, but this one, compared to the initial mass use of Shahed, is obviously smaller.”

Iran’s foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian on Monday again repeated the official government line that all Iranian-made drones were sent to Moscow “before the Ukraine war began.”

Authored by Zachary Stieber and Bill Pan via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

President Joe Biden will sign the $858 billion National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this week, even though the measure ends the U.S. military’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, the White House said.

“He’s going to sign that later this week,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters on Dec. 19 in Washington.

The White House had kept open the possibility of a veto because of the budget bill’s inclusion of the forced termination of the military’s vaccine mandate, which the president opposed.

The bill “has some provisions we support and some we do not,” Jean-Pierre said. “Clearly, the president was opposed to rolling back the vaccine mandate but we saw that Republicans in Congress decided that they’d rather fight against the health and well-being of the troops than protecting them.”

She claimed that the vaccine mandate was protecting troops, even though many experts have acknowledged that the vaccines don’t stop transmission, provide little protection against infection, and have a waning effect on severe illness. Mandate critics have also noted that young, healthy people—the bulk of the military—face little risk from COVID-19.

It isn’t clear when the president will sign the bill, which was passed by bipartisan majorities in the House of Representatives and Senate in recent weeks. The NDAA for fiscal year 2023 states that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, the Biden appointee who imposed the vaccine mandate in 2021, must repeal the policy within 30 days of Biden’s signature.

Pentagon officials, who have said they want to keep the mandate in place, declined to comment.

“We won’t comment on pending legislation,” a spokesperson told The Epoch Times via email. Austin was spotted entering the office of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) around the time that Jean-Pierre spoke.

While Republicans spearheaded the end of the mandate, many Democrats joined them in ending the requirement.

Rep. Adam Smith (D-Wash.), chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, said the mandate made sense when it was imposed but makes little sense now that the protection from a primary series of a vaccine serves little protection.

“Personally, I would have preferred the Department of Defense do it on their own rather than legislature telling them to but since they didn’t, I think this makes sense, and I think we ought to do it,” he said on the House floor.

Pentagon Is Urged to Reinstate Discharged Troops

Military branches have discharged more than 8,400 members over vaccine refusal. Three branches have been blocked by courts from discharging members seeking religious exemptions due to findings they likely or did violate the members’ constitutional rights with nearly word-for-word rejections.

A group of senators urged Austin on Dec. 16 to reinstate the members who have been discharged.

“All branches of our military are facing significant recruiting problems, including problems arising from the vaccine requirement,” they said in a missive (pdf). “Therefore, it is in our readiness and security interests to keep these brave men and women within our ranks.”

Read more here…

After a Tuesday vote, Democrats on the House and Ways Committee have voted to release six years of President Trump’s tax returns, in what Rep. Kevin Brady (R-TX), the top Republican on the Committee, called a ‘new political weapon.’

“This meeting actually sets a terrible precedent that unleashes a dangerous new political weapon that reaches far beyond the former president,” Brady told reporters on Tuesday. “I won’t speculate on what the next Congress and this committee will focus on related to tax returns, but I do know that a major focus will be on the IRS.”

The committee voted along party lines, 24-16, to make public the returns – which will span 2015 to 2020. While the returns could be released as soon as hours, per The Hill, Chairman Richard Neal said that ‘sensitive information’ would be redacted, which may take days.

Chairman Neal told reporters tonight that redactions of sensitive information will be made, and that’s probably why it’ll take a few days to release the full docs. https://t.co/4HKGOZUaEA

— bryan metzger (@metzgov) December 21, 2022

Progressives, meanwhile, cheered the decision.

“Chairman [Richard Neal (D-MA)] and the Ways and Means Democrats are to be congratulated for their dogged pursuit of this important information. Now they must share the fruit of their labors with the American people, the final arbiters of what is acceptable behavior by our elected leaders,” said Frank Clemente, director of the Americans for Tax Fairness nonprofit.

That said, some legal minds are saying that Democrats would be abusing the oversight process if they rush to make the tax returns public without substantially assessing the presidential audit program – the ostensible reason for obtaining Trump’s returns, The Hill reports.

“Any review of the presidential audit program that starts now and ends when the GOP takes control of the House in January would be slapdash and superficial,” said NYU Law professor Daniel Hemel in an article posted to Lawfare earlier this month.

“Neal and the House Ways and Means Committee would undermine their own credibility—and could be seen as hoodwinking the courts and the public—if they proceeded to release the returns outside the context of a comprehensive review of the presidential audit program,” he added.

Tax experts have expressed doubts about whether the documents obtained by the committee are enough to back up years of investigative reporting that also gained access to Trump’s financial records and painted a dismal picture of Trump as a businessman.

“It could be a case of too little too late,” Steve Rosenthal, an analyst with the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said in an interview. “I expect very little, without a fuller probe.” -The Hill

In 2017, MSNBC host Rachel Maddow released two pages of Trump’s 2005 tax returns, which revealed that he paid $38 million that year, and the rate he paid was higher than than Mitt Romney and several other top earners.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of OilPrice.com,

Independent Chinese refiners have seen their refining margins jump in recent weeks as they are able to negotiate steeper discounts for their preferred Russian crude grade, even if they buy it above the G7 price cap, trading and industry sources told Reuters on Tuesday.

The flow of cheaper Russian crude to China lifted the refining margins of the independent refiners, the so-called teapots, to above $115 (800 Chinese yuan) per ton last week, from less than $86 (600 yuan) at the beginning of December, according to a China-based oil analyst who spoke to Reuters.   

Many independent Chinese refiners based in the Shandong province have continued to buy Russian crude and are ignoring the price cap imposed by Western countries. The price cap on Russian crude imposed by the EU, the G7, and Australia came into effect on December 5, but China hasn’t joined the so-called Price Cap Coalition, which bans maritime transportation services for Russian crude oil unless the oil is sold at or below $60 per barrel.  

ESPO, the crude from Russia’s Far East which is preferred by China’s independent refiners, is being sold above the price cap and estimated at around $65-68 per barrel on a free-on-board basis by trading sources. 

Although it’s above the price cap, the price of ESPO being negotiated by Chinese refiners is still at a wide discount to ICE Brent futures for the month of delivery of the cargo, currently February and March.

While China hasn’t joined the Price Cap Coalition, the fact that a price cap now exists gives the world’s top crude oil importer, as well as other buyers of Russian crude such as India, more bargaining power to negotiate steep discounts for the Russian crude even outside the price cap mechanism, analysts say.

The trades with ESPO above the price cap suggest that, for now, Russia has the tankers and insurance firms to provide coverage and shipping for the ESPO grade, which can reach China from Russia’s Far East in less than a week.  

The US has sent a B-52H strategic bomber as well as F-22 stealth fighter jets to participate in joint military drills over South Korea on Tuesday, in what Pyongyang is sure to take as a significant provocation. It comes after the north has test-fired a record number of missiles, including ICMBs, this year – also amid live military exercises.

“South Korea, US conducted combined air drills involving US B-52H strategic bomber, F-22 stealth fighters,” South Korea’s Defense Ministry said in a statement, also confirming it is utilizing its own F-35A stealth jets and F-15K fighters for the aerial maneuvers with the US.

Yonhap News described based on the ministry statement, “The deployment of the B-52H and F-22 fighters this time is part of an effort to reinforce the credibility of the U.S.’ extended deterrence.”

The deployment comes a mere days after North Korea’s weekend launch of a pair of ballistic missiles fired toward Japan, which set off emergency notifications across the large island-nation. Officially pacifist Japan has meanwhile announced its largest defense budget since WWII, having unveiled a $320 billion plan, which will involve development of long-range offensive missiles.

The Tuesday Korea-U.S. air drill near Jeju, the country’s largest island off the southern tip of the peninsula.

“The purpose of joint South Korea-U.S. stealth fighter training is to strengthen the ability to respond to North Korea’s nuclear and missile threats,” a Korean government source told regional media. “The training involves practicing strikes on North Korean high-value targets.”

The Pentagon described the mission as part of “extended deterrence” over the South Korean capital.

The US flew nuclear-capable B-52 bombers and F-22 stealth fighter jets near South Korea today during joint air drills with Seoul — a demonstration of US “extended deterrence,” said Seoul.

Video via @ROK_MND: pic.twitter.com/90Lf6B6hVC

— William Gallo (@GalloVOA) December 20, 2022

Likely Pyongyang will respond with more military muscle-flexing, including possibly with more drills near the border. It has already launched over 60 ballistic missiles so far this year. This reportedly included an ICBM launch on November 18. According to The New York Times‘ count, the country has “launched at least 90 ballistic and other missiles this year, more than in any previous year” – despite a UN ban.

Kim Jong Un’s influential sister responded Tuesday, warning the US and South Korea to “behave carefully and think twice”…

Earlier Tuesday, Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, used a slew of derisive terms — such as “malicious disparaging,” “rubbish” and “dog barking” — when she dismissed the outside assessments that cast doubt on North Korea’s spy satellite development and long-range missiles.

South Korean intelligence has for months been warning that the north is preparing its first nuclear test in over half a decade, but despite predictions which have been on since the summer, this has yet to materialize. 

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Do you know any adults that still live at home with their parents?  If you are like most Americans, you probably know lots of them.  Sadly, that is because the percentage of young adults that are living with at least one parent has been trending upwards for decades.  Of course the cost of housing is one factor that is driving this phenomenon.  At one point in 2022, housing was more unaffordable than it had ever been in the entire history of our country.  So the truth is that many of the multi-generational households that exist today have formed due to economic necessity. 

But in other cases, “kidults” that simply refuse to grow up have moved back home with Mom and Dad because it is easier than trying to live independently.

Thanks to the “kidult” trend, approximately half of all U.S. adults in the 18 to 29-year-old age bracket are currently living with at least one parent…

In July 2022, half of adults ages 18 to 29 were living with one or both of their parents. This was down from a recent peak of 52% in June 2020 but still significantly higher than the share who were living with their parents in 2010 (44% on average that year) or 2000 (38% on average).

So what do parents think about all of this?

Well, some like it, but even more don’t like it…

The share of adult children who live with their parents has ticked up in recent years. This just in: The parents don’t like it.

A recent Pew survey found two-fifths of dads believe parents hosting adult children is bad for society, while only 12 percent think it’s a good thing. Moms agree, albeit to a lesser degree.

Overall, the Pew survey discovered that Americans have very mixed feelings about this phenomenon…

Over a third of Americans (36%) say that more young adults living with their parents is bad for society, while 16% say it is good for society. Nearly half of Americans (47%) say it doesn’t make a difference.

Of course every story is different.

Some adults are living at home because they just cannot afford homes of their own.

These days, millions of young people graduate from college with massive amounts of debt, and when all of that debt forces them to go back to living with their parents they are referred to as “boomerang kids”.

If you are a young person that has been financially crippled by student loan debt, I certainly don’t blame you for trying to save money so that you can turn your life around.

Ultimately, trying to get out of debt is a really good thing.

But of course there are millions of other young adults that simply refuse to grow up.

In fact, they have become so numerous that the toy industry has created a special term for them.  They are called “kidults”, and these days they are spending billions of dollars on toys…

There are two things keeping the toy industry afloat right now: inflation and a consumer group known as “kidults.”

These kids at heart are responsible for one-fourth of all toy sales annually, around $9 billion worth, and are the biggest driver of growth throughout the industry, according to data from the NPD Group.

Have you ever met an adult that has a special room for all of his Star Wars collectibles?

If so, then you probably have a really good idea of the type of person that I am talking about.

“Kidults” are shelling out so much money for toys that toy companies have actually begun to create “product lines just for these consumers”…

Kidults, who tend to spend more on toys, have a great fondness for cartoons, superheroes and collectibles that remind them of their childhood. They buy merchandise such as action figures, Lego sets and dolls that might typically be considered “for kids.” However, in recent years, toy makers have created product lines just for these consumers, realizing that demand is high for this generation of adults who still want to have fun.

I am all for having fun.

But this is getting ridiculous.

Sadly, men are much more likely to be “kidults” than women are.

Needless to say, this is one of the reasons why many women find it so difficult to find someone suitable to marry.

The labor force participation rate for men has been trending down for decades, and meanwhile the labor force participation rate for women has been trending up for decades.

Of course the systematic emasculation of the male population is another reason why this has been happening, but that is a topic for another article.

Once upon a time, it was extremely unusual for an able-bodied male to be doing nothing if he was capable of working.

But now we have millions upon millions of men that have simply dropped out of the labor force completely.

Some of those men are now living with their parents, and that isn’t good for our society.

Unfortunately, as economic conditions deteriorate, even more young adults will move back home with Mom and Dad.  According to a Wall Street Journal poll that was just released, approximately two-thirds of Americans believe that “the nation’s economic trajectory is headed in the wrong direction”…

A majority of voters think the economy will be in worse shape in 2023 than it is now and roughly two-thirds say the nation’s economic trajectory is headed in the wrong direction, the latest Wall Street Journal poll shows.

The survey, conducted Dec. 3-7, suggests a recent burst of positive economic news—moderating gas prices and a slowing pace of inflation—haven’t altered the way many feel about the risk of a recession, something many economists have forecast as likely.

The coming year is definitely going to be quite rough, and the outlook for beyond that is even worse.

As the economy crumbles and global events spiral out of control, we are going to need men to be men.

But a lot of the “kidults” out there simply don’t want to be men, and that is extremely unfortunate.

*  *  *

It is finally here! Michael’s new book entitled “End Times” is now available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.

The body positivity movement, at least in the case of women, has been highly promoted by every area of the entertainment media and among social justice activists based on a singular claim:  You can be healthy at any size (HAES).  

The claim has inspired numerous efforts to normalize obesity in American society as not only socially acceptable but also medically acceptable.  While political activism in science is nothing new and has been present in everything from climate change rhetoric to pandemic response, fat positivity disinformation in scientific observation is perhaps the most egregious and widespread.  It attempts to ignore or dismiss decades of studies on the negative effects of obesity and asserts that being grossly overweight has minimal or no health consequences.  

This argument is often debunked by the very people that tend to promote it and encourage it, as they die incredibly young and from health problems that are usually reserved for the elderly.  

Jamie Lopez, star of the body positivity-based television show ‘Super Sized Salon’, was an advocate of a “beauty at any size’ philosophy, more so than a health at any weight size.  However, social justice proponents often held up her example as justification for the HAES lifestyle.  She is now dead, suffering from heart failure at age 37.

To be fair to Lopez, she did attempt to lose weight, dropping over 400 pounds in a year. 

But, going from 800 pounds to 400 pounds is still not enough to prevent the myriad of health problems associated with obesity.  Undoubtedly, body positivity proponents will try to gloss over her cause of death, but the fact remains that health and weight are indelibly intertwined. 

While “beauty” might be treated as socially subjective by some people (studies show beauty concepts are actually biologically ingrained), health standards are not subjective. 

Gluttony has long been a despised habit within almost all cultures for a reason – It is a sign of a lack of discipline as well as a precursor to societal decline, and, it is a sure trigger for an early demise.

Authored by Mimi Nguyen Ly via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Former film producer and convicted rapist Harvey Weinstein was found guilty by a jury of one count of rape and two counts of sexual assault at a trial in Los Angeles on Monday.

This marks the second criminal trial for Weinstein, 70, who is already serving a 23-year prison sentence after he was convicted in February 2020 of rape and sexual assault in New York.

The jury of eight men and four women at the Los Angeles trial reached the verdict on Monday after they deliberated for nine days spanning more than two weeks.

Weinstein faced seven counts of rape and sexual assault from four women for incidents between 2004 and 2013. He pleaded not guilty to the charges in July 2021. Weinstein asserted that all of his sexual encounters were consensual.

The allegations against Weinstein in the trial lacked any forensic evidence or eyewitness accounts, and relied heavily on the stories and credibility of the four women involved.

The jury found Weinstein guilty of rape, forcible oral copulation, and sexual penetration by foreign object involving a woman known as Jane Doe 1.

They acquitted Weinstein of a sexual battery charge made by a massage therapist who treated him at a hotel in 2010.

The jury was unable to reach a decision on two allegations, including rape, involving Jennifer Siebel Newsom, a documentary filmmaker who is the wife of California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom. She was known as Jane Doe 4 in the trial. She had testified of being raped by Weinstein in a hotel room in 2005.

The jury was also unable to reach a verdict on the charge involving another woman, Lauren Young. Young was the only accuser who testified at both of Weinstein’s criminal trials. She said she was a model aspiring to be an actor and screenwriter, and was meeting with Weinstein in 2013 when he trapped her in a hotel bathroom, groped her, and masturbated in front of her.

Jurors informed Superior Court Judge Lisa Lench that they were 10-2 in favor of conviction on the count involving Young, and 8-4 in favor of conviction on the two counts involving Siebel Newsom.

Lench declared a mistrial on the counts where the jury could not reach a verdict.

Elizabeth Fegan, Siebel Newsom’s attorney, said in a statement: “My client, Jane Doe 4, shared her story not with an expectation to testify but to support all the survivors who bravely came forward.”

“While we are heartened that the jury found Weinstein guilty on some of the counts, we are disappointed that the jury could not reach a unanimous verdict on Jane Doe 4,” Fegan added. “She will continue to fight for all women and all survivors of abuse against a system that permits the victim to be shamed and re-traumatized in the name of justice.”

Four other women who were not part of the charges offered testimonies that Weinstein had sexually assaulted or raped them. They were brought to testify to support the prosecution’s arguments that Weinstein routinely abused his position to prey on women.

The women shared that Weinstein had promised to help them with securing deals such as for an audition or for a book, and then arranged meetings where staff left them alone with him.

Defense lawyers noted that none of the four women reported their sexual assaults or rape until after the #MeToo movement that put a spotlight on Weinstein. The defense also accused two of the women of having completely fabricated about their encounters with Weinstein, while accusing the other two women of having “100 percent consensual” sexual interactions.

Read more here…

“Harvey Weinstein is a wonderful human being and a good friend ” pic.twitter.com/wEdthXpt3Q

— MStever (@MStever6) December 15, 2022