While Trump and Elon Do the Fish Slapping Dance, Dodge Reintroduces the Hemi V-8 Ram

While Trump and Elon Do the Fish Slapping Dance, Dodge Reintroduces the Hemi V-8 Ram 1

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While Trump and Elon Do the Fish Slapping Dance, Dodge Reintroduces the Hemi V-8 Ram 2

See the kind of totally cool news you miss if you watch the spat between the big kids… 

Oh, SHUT UP ALREADY

…instead of the rest of what’s going on in the world?

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Trump and Elon can duke it out over who got who elected (I’m ‘Team Trump’ with an able-bodied Musk assist), but there’s no denying the changes in the world since Trump WAS elected.

Good ones at that.

This sort of goes hand-in-glove with the post I had earlier about Elon’s Chinese competitors and their flaming ocean-going cargo boat of EVs.

Had Trump not prevailed in November and the geriatric, dessicated sack of carbon’s mentally challenged assistant and her brain-damaged running mate taken the win, we would all be well on our way to privileged folks being allowed to have an EV in their taxed driveway, timed waterflow of lukewarm streams from EPA-approved shower heads, electricity rationing for those whom had caved and converted to all-electric, and no bug rations for those who once had natural gas and refused to surrender it.

They would have frozen to death with it turned off in the name of the planet.

We missed all that by the hair of our chinny chin chins, praise Jesus.

And you know what we’ve got?

Freedom of CHOICE returning.

The stuff that screams ‘By God, AMERICAN’ is returning.

And corporate heads admitting, well, yeah – we kinda effed up.

No, you didn’t. You had to bend the knee. I get it.

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I am delighted to see it’s straightening out so fast, and, after convincing the Portuguese Stellantis CEO to leave, they’ve brought back the American former head of Dodge to do it, Tim Kuniskis.

Ram resurrects Hemi engine for popular pickup trucks in ‘Symbol of Protest’

 Stellantis said Thursday it is resurrecting its popular V-8 Hemi engine for its Ram 1500 full-size pickup trucks beginning this summer.

The company discontinued the 5.7-liter engine amid tightening fuel economy regulations and a companywide push toward electric vehicles and more efficient engines last year under ex-Stellantis CEO Carlos Tavares.

Ram CEO Tim Kuniskis, who unretired from the automaker late last year, admitted the decision to cancel the Hemi engine for its popular consumer-focused Ram 1500 was a mistake.

Everyone makes mistakes, but how you handle them defines you. Ram screwed up when we dropped the Hemi — we own it and we fixed it,” Kuniskis said in a press release. “We’re not just bringing back a legendary V-8 engine, we’re igniting an assertive product plan and expanding the freedom of choice in powertrain for our customers.”

The announcement marked the latest reversal in automakers’ plans this year, as EV adoption has been slower than expected and as the Trump administration has sought to unwind many of former President Joe Biden’s initiatives to push the auto industry away from gas-guzzling internal combustion engines.

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Stellantis, the owner of Dodge, has had its Bud Light moment and is done with it.

You will be forgiven for thinking Ram is down and out these days. The brand killed the Hemi V-8 that was a highlight of its 1500 full-size pickups, stopped building the affordable (but old) Ram Classic, and had a difficult launch of the Hemi-less 2025 Ram 1500 that included problems getting trims with all the bells and whistles out the door while also trying to start producing new Heavy Duties at the same plant. EV plans were pushed back, both for the range-extending Ramcharger and the entirely battery electric Ram 1500 REV. It adds up to a bad stretch for a brand critical to parent company Stellantis’ U.S. fortunes.

The company is now talking about what customers want, not what the company wants to give customers, and/or the government will allow customers to have.

…Unlike previous generations of the truck, the new vehicle will not feature “HEMI” on the side. Instead, the company has created a new badge that features a ram’s head coming out of a Hemi engine that it’s calling its “Symbol of Protest.”

The new logo and name are an effort to regain customers who may have decided not to buy a Ram truck because the company attempted to push more efficient engines and EVs on them.

“They hate the fact that we took away the freedom of choice,” Kuniskis said at a press briefing. “We, as Americans, probably even more so truck buyers, hate the fact that we said, ‘This is the choice you get.’”

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WE, AS AMERICANS, HATE BEING TOLD ‘THIS IS WHAT YOU GET’

Damn straight.

Or what we’re ‘allowed.’

Holy smokes. This is awesome.

Okay. 

Back to Trump and Elon.

Fox News Primetime Is Now Bigger than ABC, CBS, or NBC; CNN Might as Well Not Exist

Fox News Primetime Is Now Bigger than ABC, CBS, or NBC; CNN Might as Well Not Exist 3

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Fox News Primetime Is Now Bigger than ABC, CBS, or NBC; CNN Might as Well Not Exist 4

Everybody has been laughing at CNN’s skydive without a parachute, and we all had a chuckle when the ratings came out that showed that CNN’s viewership is now about 1/6th that of Fox News. 

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After all, who would have predicted that the publicity push for Jake Tapper’s “Original Sin” (apologies to Alex Thompson, who co-wrote the book and is an actual journalist, but nobody cares about non-celebrities anymore) wouldn’t give CNN a bump or two in the ratings? I expected it would have, since any publicity is good publicity if you are looking for ratings. 

So it’s funny that the more people see Jake Tapper, the less interested they are in listening to him. That is funny. Admit it. 

But it turns out that it is a categorical mistake to compare Fox News to CNN or MSNBC, and I mean that literally. They are not in the same category at all. Fox News is no longer just a news channel juggernaut–they are a genuine ratings juggernaut against the prime time lineups of all the networks. 

You don’t tend to think of a cable news channel as in the same category as the networks that broadcast innumerable versions of Law and Order or the sitcoms that people apparently watch (I literally cannot name one on the air anymore, except for reruns of Seinfeld). 

Fox News topped all three broadcast networks during the week of May 26-30. NBC and CBS averaged only 2.4 million average primetime viewers, while CBS earned just 2.3 million. Fox News grabbed 2.7 million.

Between May 26 and June 1, Fox News earned 1.5 million average viewers throughout the total day, compared to CNN’s pathetic 308,000.

In the 25-54 age demo that sets advertising rates, Fox News attracted an average of 175,000 during the total day and 240,000 during primetime. CNNLOL earned only 49,000 and 61,000, respectively.

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But Fox News has broken into the big time. The Five–which is as much a comedy show as a serious news discussion venue–is killing it in the ratings, so much so that it has beaten those Law and Order clones on numerous occasions. 

The Fox News Channel’s most popular show, The Five, earned more demo viewers — 409,000 — than CNN earned average primetime viewers. The Five also attracted 3.7 million total viewers. That’s more viewers than most primetime network shows, and The Five probably costs about a 20th to produce.

Go figure. 

News nerds like us tend to compare Fox News to its cable news “peers,” but that understates its cultural significance. If a cheaply produced show like The Five, which essentially consists of talking heads joking around about politics and the news, can attract more viewers–including the coveted “demographic” we keep hearing about– it really is a cultural juggernaut. 

Which raises a question: why do the advertisers still skew the way they do? You see a lot fewer big corporations throwing cash onto the screen on Fox than on network television–at least that is my impression from the times I have been forced to watch the channel at other people’s homes. 

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As with so many other things, I think it is class. The people who purchase advertising for transnational corporations likely find Fox News viewers icky. They will spend some money there for eyeballs, but they are not fans of the channel or its viewership. Their money spends, but as with Jaguar, they want customers who are of the better sort. 

Trump Bans Foreign Students At Harvard … Again

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Trump Bans Foreign Students At Harvard ... Again 6

Again? Still? Where did my Harvard scorecard go, anyway?

In our last exciting episode of All Your Indoctrinated Children, Harvard had successfully, if temporarily, parried a move by the Department of Homeland Security to decertify the school from the Student Education Visa Program (SEVP). Even that success was limited, however, by the State Department’s decision two days earlier to halt all processing of student visas while creating a new vetting system to prevent Hamas propagandists and other malcontents from taking advantage of American hospitality. While Harvard and other schools would have no access to new foreign students for recruitment until the new vetting standards are put in place, at least Harvard could keep the nearly 7,000 already enrolled — 27% of their entire student body — and recruit more later.

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Or so they thought. While the administration appeals the injunction on the SEVP decertification, Donald Trump took another route to cut off Harvard’s lucrative foreign-student business late yesterday:

President Trump suspended Harvard from participating in the student-visa program, effectively prohibiting foreign nationals from attending the nation’s most prominent university.

The proclamation issued by the White House late Wednesday ramps up Trump’s attacks on the university, which has fought back against the administration in federal court. The proclamation seeks to prevent students from receiving visas to study for six months and perhaps longer.

The escalation comes as Harvard has declined to negotiate with Trump after the school rejected a series of demands from the administration’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism. Those demands included oversight of faculty hiring, viewpoints and student admission at Harvard. Trump has pulled billions of dollars in federal research funds, threatened Harvard’s tax-exempt status and probed its acceptance of foreign donations.

Is Trump defying the Boston judge who let Harvard off the hook for a while? Not directly:

Trump’s Wednesday proclamation uses a different path to blocking foreign-student enrollment, saying he has executive authority rooted in the Immigration and Nationality Act, passed in 1952, to ban people whose entry would be detrimental to the U.S.

The proclamation cites “misconduct and crimes committed by foreign students at Harvard” as the reason for the ban and accuses the university of either not properly reporting crime statistics from foreign students or not policing the crime. It also says that the university has “extensive entanglements with foreign countries, including our adversaries” and cites the university’s receiving funding from China.

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Does the Immigration and Nationality Act give the president the ability to exclude a school from the SEVP? Its language is arcane and extensive, but at first blush, it seems at least a debatable point. The INA gives the Secretary of State broad powers to declare entrants inadmissible and remove them (via a removal court process in 8 USC 1533, notably), but there seems to be no specific language at all about students or education in Title II except generally in 8 USC 1153, under visa allocations. It’s very possible that I have missed some reference to such authority in other areas of this incredibly dense statutory construct, although the question does not appear to have been raised enough for any legal commentary on it … yet.

The executive branch has plenty of authority to deny student-visa applications generally, of course. Marco Rubio can take his sweet time in generating a new vetting scheme for access to those visas. The question is whether the INA gives Trump executive-order authority to exclude Harvard from accessing such students outside of the SEVP certification process. Expect to see this as a topic of discussion in a Boston federal court soon — very soon. 

However, at some point Harvard has to learn the mathematics of their predicament. The only people who care about Harvard are (a) Harvard, (b) some other elite colleges that know they will be next, and (c) the Protection Racket Media that hates Trump and is even more despised than the sneering elites at Harvard. For most of the last two years, the country watched as Harvard sacrificed its Jews to pander to its foreign masters, and then lied repeatedly about it in Congress and in the media. Other than the media, they have no real allies — and they don’t have the moral high ground either. Their conceit about “independence” wears pretty thin when it’s clear that they define it as “sucking at the public teat without any accountability whatsoever.”

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In the end, Harvard is signing up for a four-year war that could easily turn into eight or twelve if Republicans win the succeeding presidential elections. And the longer that Haaaaahhhhvaaaahhd holds out for the elites’ right to be vile anti-Semites, the more likely that outcome could be. 

The Musk-Trump War of Words is Heating Up (Update: Musk Drops ‘Really Big Bomb’)

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The Musk-Trump War of Words is Heating Up (Update: Musk Drops 'Really Big Bomb') 8

As you’ve probably noticed already, Elon Musk revealed this week that he is not a fan of the Big, Beautiful Bill. In fact he’s been tweeting about it constantly for the last couple days.

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I’m skipping a bunch…

Elon also strated retweeting some of his interviews from earlier this year when he was making the case that DOGE was necessary to ensure America did not go bankrupt.

There are still a lot of conservatives in agreement with him on this point.

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He’s calling on people to pressure congress to kill the bill.

Grok sides with the CBO estimate.

He also retweeted this:

He also retweeted this old Remy clip from 2013:

This meme puts his work at DOGE in perspective.

He has been making this case all along.

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He RT’d this clip of Sen. Kennedy agreeing with him.

He also dug up an old Trump tweet from 2012:

As for the cuts to EV incentives, he says he’s fine with that so long as the bill is put on a diet.

Anyway, after all that it’s probably not surprising that President Trump is being asked about it and is suggesting that maybe he and Elon aren’t friends anymore. Trump is also claiming that Elon “knew the inner-workings of this bill” long before now.

But Musk says that’s not the case. No one showed him this.

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I think this is Musk’s response to Trump saying “I’ve helped Elon a lot.” That cuts both ways.

Musk RT’d some reporting from OAN suggesting his tweets have reset the conversation in the Senate. They may not have the votes for the current version of the bill.

Here’s Musk’s pinned tweet at the moment. You can click on the embedded tweet and bring up the image but basically it’s a collection of Donald Trump tweets demanding a balanced budget. “Where is this guy today??”

Musk risked his companies and potentially much more to run DOGE and try to save money and make the government more efficient. He became public enemy #1 for months to save less than $200 billion in spending. Now this bill threatens to add billions more to the debt, at least according to the CBO score of the House bill.

About the CBO score, you can certainly make the argument that conservatives and maybe most Americans want the Trump tax cuts to be extended. That’s probably true. But the fact remains that extending the tax cuts does raise the deficit over the next decade compared to letting the cuts expire under current law. Why? Because the government is going to bring in less tax revenue if the cuts are extended. Over ten years the difference could be as much as $4.5 trillion. That’s great news for taxpayers (who aren’t being forced to pay all of that), but the federal budget still has to be balanced. If it’s not from higher taxes then it has to be from lower spending. 

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It’s worth noting that the CBO is going to score the BBB again looking for the impact of potential growth (“macroeconomic effects”) on these numbers, so they could still improve. But as it stands the BBB cuts only partially offset the cost of extending the tax cuts. That’s certainly better than nothing, but it still leaves us with debt going up rather than down over the budget window. Can we do better?

If the result of this BBB is that the debt is higher a decade from now then Musk’s efforts at DOGE seem to be in vain. No wonder he’s upset.

Update: Well, that escalated quickly.

I don’t think it’s true that Musk is doing this over subsidies. He said months ago that cutting subsidies might hurt Tesla but would hurt other EV manufacturers a lot more. If there’s an angle here it’s not that. And then Musk drops the big one.

Hard to see them patching this up now. Democrats are loving this:

New fronts are opening in this war.

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Pretty funny. This is now the new cycle for today. Everything else is…not this.

Oh noooo….

Trump is still making threats.

President Trump threatened to cut billions of dollars in federal contracts and tax subsidies for Elon Musk’s companies on Thursday, the latest escalation in the growing feud between the two men.

“The easiest way to save money in our Budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon’s Governmental Subsidies and Contracts,” the president wrote on Truth Social. “I was always surprised that Biden didn’t do it!”

Last year, Mr. Musk’s companies were promised $3 billion across nearly 100 different contracts with 17 federal agencies. Most of the contracts were for SpaceX, Mr. Musk’s space technology company. Tesla, his electric vehicle company, also has contracts with the federal government.

If the US doesn’t contract with Space X, we aren’t going back to the moon. That would be a big win for China. And here’s Musk’s response.

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Dragon has been carrying astronauts to and from the ISS (including the two who got stuck last year). Elon is clearly very angry.

Elie Mystal thinks this is all a set up leading to another loss for Democrats.

So much for Bluesky:

This is going to keep going probably all day. I’ll have a new post with more reactions coming up soon.

All That Glitters Isn’t Gold – It Might Be a Car Carrier Named ‘Midas’ Burning at Sea

All That Glitters Isn't Gold - It Might Be a Car Carrier Named 'Midas' Burning at Sea 9

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All That Glitters Isn't Gold - It Might Be a Car Carrier Named 'Midas' Burning at Sea 10

We haven’t had one of these stories in a while. And thank God, because when they happen, they can be a doozy.

It sure is looking as if this one has the potential to reach ‘doozy’ pretty quickly.

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On the morning of May 26, a 600-foot-long car carrier named the Morning Midas departed Yantai, China, laden with vehicles for delivery at a port in Mexico.

Yesterday, the Coast Guard confirmed that it was responding to reports of a fire onboard the vessel, which was now about 300 miles off the Alaskan coast.

The Midas Morning was carrying a cargo of some 3000 vehicles, 800 of which were electric. The initial report of the fire’s origin placed the smoke as arising from the deck where the EVs had been loaded.

The U.S. Coast Guard is responding to a fire on board the 600-foot car carrier Morning Midas carrying hundreds of electric vehicles approximately 300 miles off the coast of Alaska.

The vessel departed from Yantai, China on May 26 with destination Lázaro Cárdenas, Mexico where it was expected on June 15. According to shipping database Equasis the 2006 Morning Midas is owned by Hawthorn Navigation Inc. out of London with management by Zodiac Maritime Limited.

Zodiac Maritime has confirmed the vessel is loaded with around 3,000 vehicles, 800 of which are electric vehicles. Smoke was initially seen emanating from a deck carrying electric vehicles, according to the statement.

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Fire suppression systems had no effect on the blaze and the twenty-two-man crew eventually gave up attempting to fight the fire. Several commercial vessels in the area had changed course to offer assistance after being alerted to the emergency. 

…“Watchstanders immediately issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast requesting assistance from vessels in the vicinity of Morning Midas. Three ‘good Samaritan’ vessels responded to the incident,” said the US Coast Guard.

Watchstanders later diverted a US Coast Guard cutter to the area, directed the launch of a C-130J Super Hercules aircraft from Coast Guard Air Station Kodiak, and positioned an MH-60T Jayhawk helicopter air crew in Adak.

All 22 crew members aboard Morning Midas evacuated the ship and were subsequently rescued by the crew of Cosco Hellas, one of the good Samaritan vessels on scene, with no reported injuries, noted the US Coast Guard. 

The crew safely evacuated to another ship in one of their lifeboats and abandoned the blazing Midas Morning to her fate.

This is a great animated map of the incident tracking.

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So what happens now?

Well, the company that owns the Midas Morning has already coordinated with the Coast Guard and arranged for a salvage tug and crew to babysit what will quickly become a smoldering hulk of epic toxic proportions as it burns itself out, which is the only thing it can do.

Besides all the vile things associated with EVs themselves… 

…A potential highly toxic floating lithium bomb.  

Burning EV batteries release dangerous chemicals including hydrogen fluoride, hydrogen chloride, and hydrogen cyanide, as well as carbon monoxide, sulphur dioxide, and methane. 

These leach into the environment. 

This is the green movement, so many worship, in action. This vessel will continue to burn until it sinks.

…there are the standard fuels and chemicals that provide the power for an ocean carrier onboard (and copious amounts of them) to be considered as well.

…According to the US Coast Guard, Morning Midas is estimated to have some 350 tonnes of marine gas oil and 1,530 tonnes of very low sulphur fuel oil on board.

Zodiac Maritime confirmed today, June 5, that is has appointed salvage company Resolve Marine to respond to the fire aboard Morning Midas.

A tug carrying a team of salvage specialists and equipment has been mobilised and is expected to arrive in the area of the stricken vessel on Monday (June 9).

“A tug will assess the vessel’s condition and provide necessary support. An additional firefighting tug, capable of ocean towage, is also being arranged to provide further support,” said Zodiac Maritime. 

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The tug and salvage team will stand off from the Midas Morning to avoid any dangerous chemicals or possible lithium battery explosions and monitor the fire’s progress. If the ocean towing tug can safely attach a line, it’ll do so in order to keep the vessel from drifting into shipping lanes as best it can.

That’s as much as they can do and only as long as the vessel remains afloat.

The Coast Guard has released updated vehicle figures for the ship.

– Reported vehicles onboard: 3,048 total, 70 fully electric, 681 partial hybrid electric.

So far, the Chinese manufacturers of the EVs onboard haven’t had anything to say when queried.

…The Morning Midas was shipping around 3,000 cars from a range of manufacturers including Chery Automobile Co. and Great Wall Motor Co. to Mexico. It’s unclear at this stage which brand’s electric vehicle caught fire, the people said, who asked not to be identified discussing preliminary findings.

…Great Wall Motor had about 140 cars on the ship, although none of them were battery EVs and were not located at the deck where the fire started, one of the people said.

A representative from Chery declined to comment. Great Wall Motor didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Calls and an email to Anji Logistics weren’t answered.

Chery has been increasingly trying to position itself as the rival to Tesla. I’m pretty sure this incident is going to be unhelpful to their product image.

The guys over at G Captain have compiled a pretty handy reference list of recent car carrier fires which includes the God awful one at Port Newark that cost the lives of two Newark firefighters and the Felicity Ace, which went down with buttloads of brand new Porsches, Lamborghinis, and Bentleys.

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Until somebody somewhere comes up with a way to fight a lithium-ion battery fire effectively, be it in an apartment, in a storage facility, or, terrifying thought, in the middle of the Pacific, all you can do is let them burn.

Seriously – how stupid are we to put up with this crap?

NYT: Republicans Raising Energy Prices By Shunning ‘Clean’ Energy

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NYT: Republicans Raising Energy Prices By Shunning 'Clean' Energy 12

Did you know that renewable energy is the cheapest form of energy there is?

The sun, after all, is FREE for all to use! Wind? It blows without our needing to do a thing at all!

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You have to admit, “renewable energy” blows, although not quite how they meant. 

The New York Times is working hard to convince us that Trump’s attempt–and that is all that is happening now, because a lot of Republicans are pitching to keep much of Biden’s “Inflation Reduction Act” spending, and we will have to see whether they manage to do so when all is said and done–will increase energy prices.

It’s all based on the myth that renewable energy is practically free–and it is, if you exclude all the costs associated with it. 

Some renewable energy really IS inexpensive–Canada has low energy prices because it relies heavily on hydroelectric power to the tune of 60% of its power generation, but good luck building big dams in the United States. But if you look at wind and solar, they are “cheap” only because all the expenses necessary to actually use them are excluded from the calculations. 

And, of course, there are the massive subsidies, which hide the actual cost.

The cost of electricity is rising across the country, forcing Americans to pay more on their monthly bills and squeezing manufacturers and small businesses that rely on cheap power.

And some of President Trump’s policies risk making things worse, despite his promises to slash energy prices, companies and researchers say.

This week, the Senate is taking up Mr. Trump’s sweeping domestic policy bill, which has already passed the House. In its current form, that bill would abruptly end most of the Biden-era federal tax credits for low-carbon sources of electricity like wind, solar, batteries and geothermal power.

Repealing those credits could increase the average family’s energy bill by as much as $400 per year within a decade, according to several studies published this year.

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Even the subsidies don’t really reduce the costs to consumers, as a quick tour of Europe will demonstrate. Germany has been on a tear building “renewable energy,” and now has the highest electricity costs of any industrialized nation. In addition to the high cost to consumers, the country’s economy has stalled and is deindustrializing because, well, it is way too expensive to build anything there. 

The UK? What awful policy have they not implemented? It, too, has skyrocketing costs. Spain? They can’t even keep the lights on. And without France’s nuclear power, the whole European grid would groan and the lights would go out.

There are few things so expensive as free or government-subsidized goodies. 

The studies rely on similar reasoning: Electricity demand is surging for the first time in decades, partly because of data centers needed for artificial intelligence, and power companies are already struggling to keep up. Ending tax breaks for solar panels, wind turbines and batteries would make them more expensive and less plentiful, increasing demand for energy from power plants that burn natural gas.

That could push up the price of gas, which currently generates 43 percent of America’s electricity.

On top of that, the Trump administration’s efforts to sell more gas overseas could further hike prices, while Mr. Trump’s new tariffs on steel, aluminum and other materials would raise the cost of transmission lines and other electrical equipment.

These cascading events could lead to further painful increases in electric bills.

“There’s a lot of concern about some pretty big price spikes,” said Rich Powell, chief executive of the Clean Energy Buyers Association, which represents companies that have committed to buying renewable energy, including General Motors, Honda, Intel and Microsoft.

A study commissioned by the association found that repealing the clean electricity credits could cause power prices to surge more than 13 percent in states like Arizona, Kansas, New Jersey and North Carolina and lead to thousands of job losses nationwide by 2032.

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Notice who is funding these studies? Companies that made stupid commitments to use 100% “renewable energy.” This is just another way of saying “hey, we want our free money.” 

“Given rising energy demand, it is imperative that any modifications to the tax code avoid worsening the economic pressures that American households and businesses already face,” Senator Lisa Murkowski, Republican of Alaska, wrote in a letter with three fellow Republicans in April. Repealing some tax breaks “would translate into immediate utility bill increases, placing additional strain on hardworking Americans,” they wrote.

Well, if Lisa Murkowski says so, it must be true. 

Now it is true that electricity demand is surging and that, at least we are being told, the explosion of data centers will put us in a position where demand will exceed supply. But if you take a look at what data centers are doing to ensure that they get a reliable supply of energy, it’s obvious that none of these companies actually believes that “renewable energy” is cheap or reliable. They all have generation capacity based on fuel because they can’t afford to have the lights go out. 

All those fields of solar panels are for show. Nice enough to have when the sun is shining, but useless as tits on a bull when you need 24/7/365 uptime. 

They’ll build those massive fields of toxic waste leeching panels, but it’s there for the subsidies and for the hoi polloi to rely on. 

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Spain, anyone?

Electricity prices WILL rise in the coming years, but that has everything to do with the idiotic NetZero policies American industry has been laboring under for years. You can’t build new power plants in a month, and given environmental regulations, you have a hard time building them at all. 

One solar project is 17 years into its environmental review. It’s like they want us to freeze in the dark or something. They call it “degrowth,” as if becoming poorer is a good thing. 

In the real world, there are trade-offs, resource constraints, cost-benefit analyses, and no free lunch. At some point in the future, there will be fusion power, geothermal plants at scale, and maybe even pixie dust to power everything. But all that requires progress (or magic), and progress requires economic growth. 

Which requires reliable power. There is no such thing as a wealthy country that is energy poor. 

SCOTUS: Mexico Cannot Sue US Gun Manufacturers

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In August 2021, Mexico sued 10 US gun manufacturers arguing the companies were intentionally marketing guns to Mexico and therefore partly responsible for the wave of violence using guns in the country.

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The suit accuses the companies of actively facilitating the flow of weapons to powerful drug cartels, and fueling a traffic in which 70 percent of guns traced in Mexico are found to have come from the United States.

“For decades, the government and its citizens have been victimized by a deadly flood of military-style and other particularly lethal guns that flows from the U.S. across the border,” the lawsuit reads. The flood of weaponry is “the foreseeable result of the defendants’ deliberate actions and business practices.”

The government cited as an example three guns made by Colt that appear to directly target a Mexican audience, with Spanish nicknames and themes that resonate in Mexico. One of them, a special edition .38 pistol, is engraved with the face of the Mexican revolutionary hero Emiliano Zapata and a quote that has been attributed to him: “It is better to die standing than to live on your knees.”

And because gun crime is rampant in Mexico, the country was seeking a huge payout to cover the cost of this crime.

Alejandro Celorio, legal advisor for the ministry, told reporters Wednesday that the damage caused by the trafficked guns would be equal to 1.7% to 2% of Mexico’s gross domestic product. The government will seek at least $10 billion in compensation, he said. Mexico’s GDP last year was more than $1.2 trillion.

There was one big, obvious hurdle this case had to face. Gun manufacturers are protected by a law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PCLAA) which says they can’t be sued for the misuse of their product. And sure enough, a lower court dismissed the case in 2022 on the basis of that law. However, Mexico appealed and the case was revived by a US appeals court in January 2024.

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On Monday, a US appeals court ruled that the Mexican lawsuit “plausibly alleges a type of claim that is statutorily exempt” from the PCLAA, which only covers lawful gun sales…

In a statement, Jon Lowy, the president of Global Action on Gun Violence – who serves as Mexico’s co-counsel on the case – said that the ruling is a “huge step forward in holding the gun industry accountable for its contribution to gun violence, and in stopping the flood of trafficked guns to the cartels.”

That decision was appealed in April 2024 by Smith and Wesson.

In a filing to the justices, the manufacturer wrote that “Mexico’s suit has no business in an American court,” and that the country’s argument was an “eight-step Rube Goldberg, starting with the lawful production and sale of firearms in the United States and ending with the harms that drug cartels inflict on the Mexican government.”…

When criminals improperly use a product, including guns, they are typically responsible for their own actions, the company said in a different filing to the court. “If the rule were otherwise, every industry — from beer to cars to knives — would be on the hook for the predictable misuse of its product,” lawyers for the gun maker wrote.

Today we got a unanimous ruling from the Supreme Court saying Mexico cannot sue because PCLAA protects them.

In a unanimous decision by Justice Elena Kagan, the court held that a lawsuit by the Mexican government was barred by U.S. legislation that insulates gun makers from liability. Mexico, she wrote, had not plausibly argued that American gun manufacturers had aided and abetted in unlawful gun sales to Mexican drug traffickers…

During an oral argument in early March, a majority of the justices appeared skeptical that Mexico could prove a direct link between gunmakers and cartel violence. Several justices appeared persuaded that a 2005 law shielding gun makers and distributors from most domestic lawsuits over injuries caused by firearms could also apply to the case brought by the Mexican government…

At the March oral argument, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh had appeared receptive to those concerns. He asked about the broader implications if Mexico succeeded in arguing that manufacturers acting lawfully could be held responsible for illegal behavior by cartels, an outcome that he worried could have “destructive effects on the American economy.”

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The whole decision isn’t very long but this bit sort of sums up the reasoning by comparing this case to two previous cases involving corporate liability.

Two of our cases—one approving liability for aiding another’s crime, the other not—illustrate how all this doctrine plays out in practice. In Direct Sales Co. v. United States (1943), we held that a mail-order pharmacy could be convicted for assisting a small-town doctor’s illegal distribution of narcotics. The pharmacy, Direct Sales, sold huge amounts of morphine to Dr. John Tate: Whereas the average physician required no more than 400 quarter-grain tablets annually, Direct Sales sold Tate some 5,000 to 6,000 half-grain tablets every month. Still more, Direct Sales “actively stimulated” Tate’s purchases, by giving him special discounts for his most massive orders and using “high-pressure sales methods.” And it did all that against the backdrop of law enforcement warnings: The Bureau of Narcotics had informed Direct Sales that “it was being used as a source of supply” by lawbreaking doctors. All that evidence, this Court found, … showed that Direct Sales “not only kn[ew of] and acquiesce[d]” in Tate’s “illicit enterprise,” but “join[ed] both mind and hand with him to make its accomplishment possible.”

By contrast, this Court recently ordered the dismissal of a suit against several social-media companies for aiding and abetting a terrorist attack carried out by ISIS. See Twitter v. Taamneh (2023). The plaintiffs, victims of the attack, alleged that adherents of ISIS used the companies’ platforms for recruiting and fundraising. The complaint further asserted that the companies knew that was so, yet failed to identify and remove the ISIS-related accounts and content. But we held that was not enough to make the companies liable for ISIS’s terrorist acts. The companies’ relationship with ISIS and its supporters, we reasoned, was “the same as their relationship with their billion-plus other users: arm’s length, passive, and largely indifferent.” There were no allegations that the companies had given ISIS “any special treatment,” or “encourag[ed], solicit[ed], or advis[ed]” the group. Instead, after providing their platforms for general use, the companies “at most allegedly stood back and watched.” More was needed, we stated, for a provider of generally available goods or services to be liable for a customer’s misuse of them—for example, conduct of the kind in Direct Sales. When a company merely knows that “some bad actors” are taking “advantage” of its products for criminal purposes, it does not aid and abet. And that is so even if the company could adopt measures to reduce their users’ downstream crimes….

Viewed against the backdrop of that law, Mexico’s complaint does not plausibly allege that the defendant manufacturers aided and abetted gun dealers’ unlawful sales of firearms to Mexican traffickers. We have little doubt that, as the complaint asserts, some such sales take place—and that the manufacturers know they do. But still, Mexico has not adequately pleaded what it needs to: that the manufacturers “participate in” those sales “as in something that [they] wish[] to bring about,” and “seek by [their] action to make” succeed.

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Bottom line: Aiding and abetting means more than being vaguely aware of something.

What I’m not seeing so far is the wailing and gnashing of teeth from gun control groups that I would expect. Maybe they are still on a conference call working out their response. Meanwhile, pro-2nd Amendment groups are celebrating.

Another Biden Judge Slithers Out of Boulder

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Judge Gordon J. Gallagher is the latest in a long line of district court judges, most of them Biden-appointed, that have issued rulings not so much based on law, but more so on how to stop the Trump administration’s Article II powers of protecting and defending the country, and also administering the immigration laws currently on the books. 

The carnage from Sunday’s horrific Molotov cocktail attack on a group of Jews walking silently in a Boulder, Colorado park to raise awareness and show solidarity for the remaining hostages held by Hamas expanded, as 15 people have now reported burn injuries, and a dog was burned in the process as well. The age range of victims now spans 25 to 88-years-old, and includes one Holocaust survivor. 

The unrepentant terrorist, Mohamed Soliman, according to the FBI and acting U.S. Attorney for the State of Colorado, not only confessed to committing the antisemitic atrocity, but said he would do it again if he had the means and opportunity. He said he’d been planning the attack for a year, but chose to wait until his daughter’s high school graduation before lighting a bunch of Jews on fire. He was able to release two of 16 Molotov cocktails he had prepared, but accidentally set himself on fire in the process, slowing down his attempted mass murder spree. He also said Allah is greater than his family, and Allah agrees with him that he needs to kill more Jews, even if it means hardship for his family.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced by Monday night that the family – Soliman’s wife, Hayam El Gamal, and their five children, were arrested, questioned, and fast-tracked for immediate removal from the country. Enter Judge Gallagher, who couldn’t resist the siren song of a pro-illegal immigration attorney.

An emergency appeal on Wednesday was granted by the Judge to El Gamal’s lawyer, Susanna Dvortsin. Here’s where the story gets interesting. Dvortsin, who hangs her shingle outside a solo practice in Denver, has a checkered history with immigration law. In 2006, while serving as an employee of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, she lied on her SF-86 form. She did not disclose that she had married an illegal alien, did not disclose the psychiatric medication she was on, nor did she disclose her foreign travel history as required. She was terminated. 

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In 2019, in South Dakota, representing a client in another immigration case, she conducted herself in a manner that caused her to endure a 115-day suspension of her law license

But she allegedly befriended El Gamal to a significant degree to file an appeal for habeas corpus on her behalf as a “next friend”. Her complaint? Homeland Security’s priority in deporting illegal aliens was to concentrate on those here illegally for up to two years. Dvortsin in her emergency brief said El Gamal and the children had been here for almost three years, so they are ineligible for priority deportations. While you’re shaking your head at the legal nitpicking here, keep in mind that they’re here illegally – every single one of them. 

In August of 2022, Soliman, El Gamal, and their five children obtained temporary visitor visas. They are limited to six months, and specifically do not allow the holder of the visitor visa from establishing residence, seeking employment, and you must show intent to return home, or onward to some other country of destination, within those 80 days. Soliman was further granted a work permit by the Biden administration, which has also since expired, along with the visitor visa, as of mid-2023. El Gamal has been working here illegally as a network engineer. She has applied for an advanced degree visa, but it has not been granted. Neither has her claim for asylum. After Sunday, it will never be granted.  

USA Today, along with some other media outlets, featured the sob story of the poor daughter of the man who waited for her to graduate high school before lighting Jews on fire. She said she embraced the move to this country and wanted to go into the field of medicine and become a doctor. The problem with that, of course, is that under the visitor visa, even if it hadn’t expired, which it has, she’s not allowed to “move to this country.” That’s specifically outside the parameters for which the visitor visa is granted. Trips to Disneyland? Sure. Settling down? Registering and attending school? Establishing roots? Not legal activities for people here with a visitor visa. 

Dvortsin in her restraining order request made this claim, according to the Washington Post. 

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The family’s attorneys wrote that officials violated their constitutional rights and other federal laws by depriving them of due process and protection from being punished for another person’s alleged crimes.

Of course, this is Constitutional nonsense. Even if you want to give the family the benefit of the doubt while their claim of asylum is being heard, the law is pretty clear here. 

That last part about spouses or children of anyone who has engaged in terrorist activity within the last five years? Well, looks like Dad just screwed them all, making them inadmissible. Judge Gallagher didn’t address any law here in his order. He just signed a piece of paper saying they stay, because they’re friends of this lawyer, and time is of the essence. If this order stands, there is no rule of law anymore. 

Secretary Noem said the family has been moved to a detention facility in Texas, pending a speedy plane out. It remains unclear whether they are still in the country or not by the time the order came out by Judge Gallagher Wednesday afternoon. 

In Gallagher’s order, he ordered that the family could not be removed from either the state of Colorado or the United States. By the time his order had been made public, they were already in Texas. So the first part of his edict is moot. It is unclear when the government was actually served the court order. Releasing it publicly to the news media doesn’t count. They have to be served. Before this is all over, I wouldn’t be surprised if we don’t see another round of ‘drat the luck, that plane took off an hour ago,’ before the pilot gets served the order to stand down. We’ll see. 

As for Judge Gallagher, what do we know about him? He was nominated to the bench in the fall of 2022, had a relatively unremarkable confirmation hearing in December, and was championed from nomination to floor vote by Colorado Senator Michael Bennet. Here’s what Bennet had to say about Gallagher then. 

On Sunday, global jihad came to Boulder. 48 hours later, on the same Senate floor, Bennet was understandably shaken. 

His condemnation sounded sincere enough on Tuesday. Those words rang very hollow by Wednesday when his white knight of a judge, Gordon J. Gallagher, threw caution, Article II, the Constitution, and common sense out the window the first chance he could in order to protect the family of an antisemitic terrorist living here in violation of U.S. law. Bennet talked about Gallagher’s character and how he was born for this moment, a moment which is now being written as infamy. 

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By the way, this analysis by Oilfield Rando is precisely why I’m never leaving X. 

If the process server caught up with Homeland Security before the family boarded the next plane out and the Jew hater’s family is still in Texas, the government will now have to file an appeal to the 10th Circuit to see if this latest round of judicial lawlessness from a district court stands or falls. 

If only we had a court, a body of justices that could be placed in a position of oversight for all these hundreds and hundreds of district courts, supervising their conduct. And if it appears a trend develops showing them getting a little too far out over their skis, they could rein them in and limit their scope. That way, it wouldn’t appear we’re living in a democratically-elected republic that is for all intents and purposes being run as a tyranny by a cabal of black robes. If only…

The Knives Are Out for KJP

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This is gonna be fun to watch. 

Ed wrote a great piece this morning about the “reviews” of Karine Jean-Pierre’s book, which is currently vaporware. 

It’s not the book that is the target of all this bile pouring forth, but Karine Jean-Pierre herself. After years of pent-up anger, the opportunity to strike out at her has attracted all comers. 

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Ed’s piece focused on the “external” reviews–Scott Jennings and Stephen A. Smith taking KJP apart. And they were hilarious. After all the “now it can be told” books basically ignored KJP’s role in Biden Brain Boondoggle, the actual appearance of KJP has reminded people of why they hated her so much. 

Apparently, nobody hates Karine as much as her former colleagues, who apparently radiate it with the heat of a thousand suns. When Alex Thompson–whose book barely mentions her–asked her former colleagues yesterday about what they thought about KJP’s declaring herself an Independent (and independent thinker), they didn’t hold back. 

What they’re saying: One former White House official who worked closely with Jean-Pierre told Axios that she “was one of the most ineffectual and unprepared people I’ve ever worked with. … She had meltdowns after any interview that asked about a topic not sent over by producers.”

  • “She didn’t know how to manage a team, didn’t know how to shape or deliver a message, and often created more problems than she solved,” the official said.
  • A former Biden communications official threw more wood on the fire: “The hubris of thinking you can position yourself as an outsider when you not only have enjoyed the perks of extreme proximity to power — which … bestows the name recognition needed to sell books off your name — but have actively wielded it from the biggest pulpit there is, is as breathtaking as it is desperate … It’s difficult to see how this is anything but a bizarre cash grab.”
  • Another former White House official familiar with the dynamics told Axios: “The amount of time that was spent coddling [Jean-Pierre] and appeasing her was astronomical compared to our attention on actual matters of substance.”

A former senior spokesperson in Biden’s administration added: “It’s hard to believe someone could look at the past year and genuinely think, ‘The party left Joe Biden — that’s why I’m leaving the Democratic Party.’ ‘”

  • A former White House communications official added: “Today Karine lost the only constituency that ever supported her — party line Democrats.”

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KJP spent years in the Obama/Biden orbit, and millions of people have wondered why. As I said yesterday, calling her a midwit is far too kind a characterization. She, by all appearances, seems downright stupid, or at least of below-average competence. In 2024, Anita Dunn, who for all her flaws is not a midwit, desperately tried to bounce her from the White House and replace her with the exceptionally good liar John Kirby, but failed to do so because Jean-Pierre was as immovable as the Rock of Gibraltar. 

Even a 7-figure a year bribe–becoming the President of Emily’s List–was not a juicy enough incentive to lure Jean-Pierre away from her prestigious position as spokes-black-immigrant-lesbian for the President of the United States. 

Jean-Pierre is the poster queer for DEI. President Trump’s administration is chock full of homosexual aids, but nobody says a thing about their sexual preferences because…who cares? They are smart, competent people who are in their positions because they earned it. 

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Jean-Pierre–whom apparently everybody hated and for whom they felt contempt–was untouchable because she wasn’t primarily a Biden aide, but a symbol. 

The Knives Are Out for KJP 18Just as Democrats believe in the magical power of “messaging,” they believe that symbolism trumps everything else. John Kirby was very good at his job–lying for the president–while KJP couldn’t say a word without consulting a 3-ring binder. When I was in Washington, I spoke with a White House Correspondent and brought up Jean-Pierre, and he went ballistic. The disgust was palpable.

Washington is akin to a High School campus in many respects–a self-referential world where everybody jockeys for prestige. Everybody wants to sit at the cool kids’ table. 

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KJP will never again be invited. If the Bidens have lost their power and prestige in Washington–and, oh boy, they have!–KJP has, if anything, fallen farther and faster because she never was in a position to spread the money and favors around. She was promoted far above her abilities, was a “mean girl” when she had proximity to the Bidens and Obamas. 

Now, everybody wants to kick her when she is down. And she deserves it. 

This should be fun to watch. 

Close Buddy of Anthony Fauci Suddenly Dreaming of Nordic Nights

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The housecleaning at the National Institute of Health (NIH) is taking an interesting turn. It’s all sort of been under the radar, not surreptitiously, but just in the nature of other news lately being so much more explosive.

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New Director Jay Bhattacharya, himself a martyr of the Fauci COVID persecutions and proudly still wearing the scorched scars of his public burning at the stake for being an infidel, has been quietly going about the business of shutting down the clandestine Fauci operations, while digging into the who and what happened.

One of the little pet projects the treacherous infectious disease imp launched was something in 2020 called Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases, or “CREID.”

This is how Fauci describes it on the website.

The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), one of the National Institutes of Health, today announced that it has awarded 11 grants with a total first-year value of approximately $17 million to establish the Centers for Research in Emerging Infectious Diseases (CREID). The global network will involve multidisciplinary investigations into how and where viruses and other pathogens emerge from wildlife and spillover to cause disease in people. NIAID intends to provide approximately $82 million over 5 years to support the network.

“The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic serves as a potent reminder of the devastation that can be wrought when a new virus infects humans for the first time,” said NIAID Director Anthony S. Fauci. “The CREID network will enable early warnings of emerging diseases wherever they occur, which will be critical to rapid responses. The knowledge gained through this research will increase our preparedness for future outbreaks.”

Each Center in the network will involve collaborations with peer institutions in the United States and 28 other countries. Research projects will include surveillance studies to identify previously unknown causes of febrile illnesses in humans; find the animal sources of viral or other disease-causing pathogens; and determine what genetic or other changes make these pathogens capable of infecting humans. CREID investigators also will develop reagents and diagnostic assays to improve detection of emerging pathogens and study human immune responses to new or emerging infectious agents. Overall, the breadth of research projects in the CREID network will allow for study of disease spillover in multiple phases of the process: where pathogens first emerge from an animal host; at the borders between wild and more populated areas, where human-to-human transmission occurs; and, finally, in urban areas, where epidemic spread can occur.

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Each one of his little ‘centers’ would focus on one or more specific regions of the world and the various pathogens and viruses associated with them.

There was an initial $17M in grants awarded, with a potential $82M in the future pipeline. One of the names associated with the awarded grants rings a bell of infamy to anyone remotely aware of the Wuhan lab story and the gain-of-function research going on there, being paid for by Tony Fauci’s NIAID, aka the United States: zoologist and virus-hunter, Peter Daszak of EcoHealth Alliance.

Daszak and his company, after the Fauci funding web was unraveled, and the lies exposed (and recommended for criminal investigation by Comer’s Oversight Committee but protected by Merrick Garland’s DOJ in 2024), were formally stripped of all Health and Human Services (HHS) funding and debarred for five years shortly before Trump’s inauguration.

Today, after an eight-month investigation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) cut off all funding and formally debarred EcoHealth Alliance Inc. (EcoHealth) and its former President, Dr. Peter Daszak, for five years based on evidence uncovered by the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic. In a new letter, HHS states “that a period of debarment for Dr. Daszak is necessary to protect the Federal Government’s business interests.” This letter also confirms that EcoHealth terminated Dr. Daszak’s employment effective January 6, 2025. EcoHealth and Dr. Daszak facilitated gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China without proper oversight and willingly violated multiple requirements of its multimillion-dollar National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant.

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Another lesser-known, but no less prominent player in the cover-up for Wuhan was another recipient of Fauci’s CREID payouts, Danish evolutionary microbiologist and professor at Scripps Institute, Kristian Andersen.

While Andersen had nothing directly to do with hands-on research at Wuhan, he had everything to do with one of the major papers that exonerated Wuhan as the origin of the virus. Andersen’s paper was considered to be so sacrosanct that it was used repeatedly to bludgeon those who questioned the legitimacy of the wet market and poor pangolin theory.

The paper, Scientic Concensus™ declared, was the definitive proof that the ‘lab leak’ was a conspiracy theory.

Professor Andersen received a CREID grant.

…Andersen also faced close inspection for his CREID grant. Some months before Fauci gave final sign off on Andersen’s CREID award, Andersen and other researchers published a paper in Nature Medicine titled, “Proximal Origin” that dismissed the possibility of a Wuhan lab accident. Andersen’s paper was widely hailed by scientists as proof, at the time, that discussions of a COVID lab accident was a conspiracy.

Nature Medicine’s editor-in-chief, Joao Monteiro, tweeted that the “Proximal Origin” paper “put conspiracy theories” about the pandemic’s possible lab origin to rest.

Andersen himself gloated about being able to compare lab leak theorists to moon landing doubters.

…Andersen echoed Monteiro’s statement days later, associating “conspiracy theorists” worried about a possible lab accident with people who doubt the Moon landing.

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Thanks to Andersen’s paper, any doubters about a lab leak from Wuhan were being effectively and brutally silenced by The Science™, and Fauci’s cover-up game remained intact.

He could also reward his loyal soldiers.

Only it turns out that there were significant problems with the pristine Science™ in Professor Andersen’s paper – for one thing, he’d only run it by favorable eyes, bought and paid for friends, like Fauci and the WHO, among others.

And the calls for retraction began.

…The group BioSafety Now has demanded Nature Medicine retract the “Proximal Origin” paper, calling it a “a product of scientific misconduct.” Two weeks ago, The DisInformation Chronicle reported that the Justice Department began an initial inquiry into the paper, sending Nature Medicine a list of questions that included, “How do you handle allegations that authors of works in your journals may have misled their readers?” The existence of the Justice Department letter to Nature Medicine had not been previously reported.

Awkward questions began that had no good answers from Andersen. There is a litany of Andersen sins in this article.

…Justice Department officials opened the inquiry as they suspect the paper may have been a quid pro quo, published by the authors to dismiss the possibility of a lab accident in exchange for the Fauci CREID grant. Andersen addressed these bribery allegations two years ago during a congressional hearing.

“There is no connection between the grant and the conclusions we reached about the origin of the pandemic,” Andersen wrote in sworn testimony to Congress in July 2023. “We applied for this grant in June 2019, and it was scored and reviewed by independent experts in November 2019.”

The Intercept later reported that Andersen “knew that was false.” NIH records show the Fauci CREID grant to Andersen wasn’t finalized until May 21, 2020, two months after Andersen published “Proximal Origin” in March 2020.

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And now all this information is in the hands of a Wuhan marketplace denier as head of the NIH and a Republican administration that was never supposed to have been elected to begin with.

Professor Andersen has suddenly managed to secure a most expedient position created for him at the University of Oslo.

How peculiar is that timing?

…Bratlie said that scientists have legitimate worries about the current climate for research in Trump’s America, but these concerns should be balanced with the need to protect democratic principles and academic integrity.

“I would be absolutely devastated on behalf of Norwegian academia if this recruitment happens,” Bratlie said of the University of Oslo’s bid to bring Andersen to her country. “If Andersen has contributed to a cover-up of the origins of the pandemic, potentially extending to criminal acts, he should be held accountable and not be given amnesty or academic shield in Norway.

I certainly hope Justice has a chance to reach out and touch him before he gets his Northern Nights cruise tickets.

We need an accounting. Some payback would be gravy.