Editor’s Note: As the father of a 41-year-old autistic man, it is hard to comprehend why some people are upset by RFK’s attempt to do something about the problem. That in no way undermines my son’s humanity. There are problems with the fact that my low-functioning son is defined by a term that includes Elon Musk, who is on the opposite end of the spectrum. On the other hand, while I accept my son for who he is, if I could wave a magic wand and make my son “normal,” I would do it in a heartbeat. Why is there a fear of being “normal” today? Why is being normal somehow considered a threat to those who fall outside of that category? Moreover, like so many big problems the Trump administration has taken on, I’m glad to see something being done about the frequency of autism. Whether it be inflation, the border, DEI, fair trade, or autism, attempting to address the problem should be lauded. All these issues will be very difficult to solve. Those who criticize often do so, offering nothing in return but to run down those who try to make things better. Maybe the embarrassment of backing a President who had to be hidden from view, to one who dynamically tackles problems, is just too much for some people to handle.
Is it really an epidemic? Are rates increasing? Answering these questions and more
The April 16 autism press conference featuring Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had the media and internet in a frenzy. Did he offend people with autism, or was he at long last shining a light on harsh, neglected realities? Was he right to call the stunning increase in autism cases an epidemic, or was that unscientific scaremongering?
Some people, including Sen. Elizabeth Warren, raged. Other people, particularly parents of the severely affected, cheered. But mostly, people were confused. And who can blame them? The truth about autism can seem as easy to grasp as a mound of warm Jell-O.
So it’s worth some quality time to closely examine the main bones of contention. After all, a hell of a lot is at stake. Probably the future of our country is at stake. Because if the new CDC autism prevalence estimate of 1 in 31 8-year-olds signals truly escalating rates, the implications for public health, research, safety-net services, and our economy are simply massive.
As someone who has labored in the trenches of autism for two decades, in the realms of both research and advocacy, I offer this little FAQ for your consideration.
Was RFK Jr. right to call autism an “epidemic”?
Score a point for the health secretary here. A half century of troves of very rich data from multiple sources across multiple systems and examining all levels of autism emphatically point to a true increase in autism rates. Despite rampant speculation about “just noticing it better,” the research does not support this conjecture, though it could explain some effects around the higher-functioning edge. Some key data points to consider:
Even limited to cases of autism with intellectual disability, or ID (formerly called mental retardation, and meaning IQ of 70 or under), childhood autism rates have skyrocketed, from about0.01 percent to 0.05 percentof children in the 1960s based on early studies to about 1.28 percent of 8-year-olds in 2022, per the latest CDC data.
Even in 4-year-olds, who tend to have greater impairments than those diagnosed later in childhood or adulthood, prevalence has more than doubled over a short period, reaching 2.93 percent for the recent 2022 surveillance, up from 1.34 percent in 2010, when the CDC began tracking preschoolers.
Autism cases in our most populous state, California, have exploded. Its developmental disability system—which serves only significantly disabling forms of autism—has seen autism cases rise from about4,000 in 1989 to about 206,000 in 2024. That’s a 51-fold increase over 35 years, while caseloads of ID and other categories remained fairly flat.
Careful epidemiology in the state of New Jersey conducted by the respected Rutgers University researcher Dr. Walter Zahorodny (who gave invited remarks at the RFK Jr. press conference confirming the existence of a true increase) has reflected sweeping increases in autism prevalence in the state, to the point that in some regions, about 7 percent of 8-year-olds have autism. Dr. Zahorodny told me the case definitions did not change over time.
Autism cases are up sharply in special education across all states. To be eligible for special education, a student must demonstrate significant impairments that interfere with learning, and they require specialized instruction as a consequence. For example, in California, cases grew from about 4,000 in 2000-21 to about 167,000 in 2023-34, while cases of ID remained steady. In 2019, Massachusetts reported that its schools were serving four times as many students with autism as they did 15 years prior. In Minnesota, autism cases surged exponentially beginning in the 1991 school year, with the researchers finding “diagnostic substitution does not largely explain the increasing trends.”
The largest U.S. study of autism prevalence in hospital and medical care systems shows rising autism prevalence across birth cohorts. Autism in adults over the age of 65 was shown to be extremely rare, in the range of .02 percent, compared to rates of about 3 percent for children aged 5 to 8 in 2022. When RFK Jr. says he’s never met anyone his age with significant autism, he’s not wrong. The data, especially from the robust California developmental disability system, show they hardly exist.
Autism rates are skyrocketing in our adult Medicaid and Social Security safety-net systems, where the disorder is by definition limited to more severe cases. In Medicaid, the prevalence of young adults with autism more than doubled from 2011 to 2019. For SSI, we see staggering autism growth of 336.6 percent from 2005 to 2019, while cases with ID and other mental disorders decreased by 45 percent.
Further evidence it’s not a game of diagnostic switcheroo: The CDC has found that the prevalence of children with developmental disabilities generally, including ID, has increased over time.
The word epidemic is appropriate to describe the ascension of autism, Alexander MacInnis, MS, an independent epidemiological researcher who has published on California autism data and who has a daughter with profound autism, told me. “Epidemic has a definition, and not just for infectious disease,” he said. “It can be a disorder where more cases are occurring than what you would expect based on history. We have massively increased birth cohort prevalence from every data source I can find showing very consistent increases, even within studies, which removes bias. Overall we see about a 7 percent increase in autism cases per birth year. Does this meet the definition of an epidemic? It does.”
The media loves to cherry-pick a few old studies to defend the idea that there’s been no true increase in autism. A perfect example is this recent gem from Scientific American citing and mischaracterizing papers that are plainly irrelevant.
For example, it points to a 2015 study on special education enrollment for the idea that autism’s increase was only caused by diagnostic shifts away from ID to Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). That paper was not an epidemiological study on autism increase over time but instead intended to look for hints of common molecular origin for comorbid conditions. It was conducted by geneticists, not epidemiologists using proper tools of that trade, and performed a clumping of all ages 3 to 21, which is meaningless to determine autism rates over time. In any event, the study found that a large percentage of the autism increase was not accounted for by declining ID, and many states did not reflect this trend at all, including the most populous states, California and Texas. Furthermore, the data is now 15 years old, and autism rates have clearly continued surging over that time.
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“Feeling seen” describes the sensation of being fully recognized, understood, and validated for who you are, your emotions, and your experiences by others. It’s a feeling of deep connection and can be incredibly empowering, leading to a sense of belonging and less isolation.
It may be as you read my commentary Monday is on the horizon, the beginning of a new week, new challenges, new obstacles, a start to a new race but carrying the effects of the one you have been running. Maybe you are facing some challenges that appear to have no real positive answer or positive direction from which you will emerge better off than last week or month or year. All around are arguments both pro and con as to what Trump has accomplished, what Trump promised to be accomplished but has yet delivered, what difference has he made in your personal existence on this earth? Headlines, lawsuits, arrests, threats of impeachment (again) fill the very air we breathe and have become commonplace. With all these political, national security, national economic challenges, YOU may be facing tomorrow or this week challenges that are not making any news nor even raising an eyebrow with anyone except yourself, and your most immediate family, unless they, too, have become like leaves in the wind.
Walking through a valley of deepest darkness can really be discouraging, sobering, leaving you to feel alone, even forgotten, or at least misplaced. Yes, you may be busy but feel absolutely unproductive, not at all making a positive difference in this world of hurry up. There are many who hide these deep intimate feelings and thoughts, but they are out there, they are coming across your path but possibly unnoticed. Seeing the person under a bridge or on a street corner with a homemade sign asking for help is one dimension. I do not choose to write that person off as insignificant or a drain on society. I wish, however, for my thoughts herein to challenge you to look around even more closely, quite possibly to a coworker, the cashier at the Circle K or Grocery Store, the food server at the cafe, a schoolteacher, a white collar cuff linked person with a tie, or female with nice looking attire in a professional office, look around. Now may I challenge you?
What if this week you could help someone be “seen.” Yes, not simply looked at but seen as the individual they are? I learned repeatedly that many folks are empty inside but don’t need to be fixed as much as simply heard. To be individually seen and not simply passed by. What if this week you helped to build something more meaningful than profits in your business or corporation? What if you made a decision to go through this week extending various acts of kindness to those with whom you met? I was taught many years ago that one small act of kindness can rewrite a life. Kindness, real kindness, doesn’t show up when it’s convenient, it shows up when the world, a person, least expects it.
I was introduced the past ten days to folks who are not broken but they are tired, really tired. Being tired doesn’t mean you’re weak, it means you’ve cared for too long without someone caring back. I pray I am able to take what I have seen in these folks and extend to them what I learned growing up…to care back about them, each one individually and without fanfare or embarrassment to them, but actual measurable acts of demonstrative caring so they know that they know, each one, has been truly “seen” and “heard.”
Now I am asking you through this commentary to look around. Sincerely look around. Would you actively consider how you can make a difference, to build something other than profits or political gain. To do something that makes others better off for your having been there.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-27 17:51:322025-04-27 17:51:32Help others to FEEL SEEN
Left-wing media has identified a dangerous new political archetype: the thin, fertile, Republican woman.
Beware the burgeoning online “womanosphere” urging an audience of young women away from feminism and towards marriage, children, and being attractive, warns The Guardian. The outlet points to prominent conservative commentators such as Brett Cooper and Candace Owens, along with publications like Evie Magazine, as emblematic of this clunkily-named counterpart to the “manosphere.”
These women are united by their “desire to return to a gender-essentialist worldview,” according to The Guardian, which casts “women as submissive homemakers” and “men as strong providers.”
Oh, the horror. “Gender-essentialism” refers to the outlandish belief that men and women are different. One is free to draw varied conclusions from this fact. The left has taken up a strange quarrel with the concept of biological sex itself, an argument which defeats itself at the outset. How can one analyze why female commentators specifically appeal to females without acknowledging the validity of the category?
The outlet warns of “an organized effort” to create an “alternative rightwing media ecosystem targeting young female US audiences.” One discerns the outlet’s terror at the prospect — no great wonder, given the much vaunted “podcast strategy” helped win over young male voters to Donald Trump in the 2024 election.
“Organized” is supposed to be a dirty word. It connotes an insidious masterplan to take women off birth control and put them on quick-slimming diets. But the legacy media, with its extreme left-wing bias, is surely no less organized and strident in its political and cultural prescriptions than the “right-wing media.” Notice the asymmetry in terms. The New York Times and Netflix are simply media. They claim neutral ground. It’s a powerful rhetorical trick. If they can successfully assert themselves as unbiased observers and artists, they fashion reality itself in their terms.
This strategy shifts the window of acceptable belief to the left. Sure, they say, we welcome a diversity of opinion — anywhere between Hillary Clinton and a Tesla vandal. Any objections to left-wing madness are easily characterized and dismissed as “extreme.” Including objections which members of the Democratic Party levied just twenty years ago.
“I believe that marriage is not just a bond, but a sacred bond between man and woman,” said a younger Clinton. “It exists between a man and a woman going back into the mists of history as one of the founding, foundational institutions of history and humanity and civilization.”
Sounds an awful lot like a “womanosphere” talking point.
“Young women are particularly vulnerable to these appeals,” according to The Guardian. This is the proposition of feminism: women deserve all the same rights as men but are agentless creatures capable of none of the same responsibilities. It seems a tension born not out of logic, but political maneuvering. Feminism cloaks itself in the language of equality to disguise a cheap aim: endless goodies. This, at the cost of the well-being of men and women alike.
The Guardian blames conservative commentators for “capitalizing on a real crisis of loneliness” among young people.
“Conservatives aren’t focusing on the real issues,” whines the leftist, “Like making sure third graders have a robust understanding of prostitution and bondage.” Appeals to unity from the left are always bungled by their own inability to cleave from Woke.
“Don’t let them trick us into thinking we can be separated into rural and urban,” said Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) at a recent rally. “Black and white and Latino.” Note the capitalization from her producers. Even in a sentence calling for unity, she can’t help but isolate “white.”
Do not let them trick you into thinking we are enemies.
Do not let them trick you into thinking that we can be separated into rural and urban, Black and white and Latino.
More to the point: why shouldn’t one relate young people’s loneliness to a culture plunging leftwards? At the very least, one must admit a correlation between rising alienation and rising egalitarianism. It seems no outlandish conjecture that men and women might be happier and more at ease with one another were they to assume some “antiquated,” sex-specific standards. And basic hygiene and fitness.
“Young women have been hailed as the saving grace of the Democratic party, the force that will deliver us from all those angry young men spending all their time listening to podcasts, but that’s not a given,” writes The Guardian.
Therein lies a sick admission. The Democratic Party prefers women fat, infertile, single, and unhappy. Why? Because those women make the most fervent ideologues. Leftism inverts natural hierarchies. It lofts the ugly and sick above the beautiful. It punishes any natural inclination towards the latter. This appeals to malcontents who depend on such an infrastructure to confer them status and meaning. Or a green card, as the case may be.
Who profits by a woman being thin and fertile? Why, only the woman herself, the young man interested in dating and marrying her, her future family, and all the rest of society by extension. The left’s supposed concern for female “freedom” and “independence” is false. They’d just prefer women be dependent on the state, not a husband.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-26 06:52:342025-04-26 06:52:34SANDOVAL: Left Wing Media Seethes At Young, Fertile, Republican Women
This is the second most important challenge of most people’s life.
Writing this, I’m audaciously stepping into the area of expertise of my friend John Rosemond.
John has made a career out of giving parenting advice. At one point, he had a weekly column in a few hundred US newspapers. See his excellent books here. He has also given hundreds of popular parenting talks all over the country. I’m sure that he will share his wisdom in the comments below.
Triggering Life-Changing Thoughts —
Let’s say that when cleaning their attic, two parents came across a Genie.
After getting introduced, the Genie said that he ordinarily grants three wishes, but since there are two of you (and he feels generous), today he’ll grant four! His offer is that he will grant their wishes for four (4) outcomes for their six-year-old child by the time they turn 18.
What would the parents ask for?
The first parent gave this some thought and said that they wanted their child to be:
Healthy
Happy
Straight A student, and
Successful in some sport.
The second parent could see some merit in their partner’s thoughts, so decided to build on them. After some joint critical thinking and discussion, they both agreed that their final answer was for their child to be:
Physically Healthy (have good dietary and exercise habits.
Mentally Healthy (be a Critical Thinker).
Socailly Healthy (communicative, considerate, etc. and…
Spritually Healthy (have a strong Value System, e.g. sound morals.
Regarding the first parent’s original thoughts, they mutually agreed that if their child has these four things, it will also be almost guaranteed that they will be a happy, well-performing student, with success in some sport!
Note that their answer said nothing about them being best friends with their child, which is a very common major parenting mistake. The parents’ job is to see that their child turns into an adult with the above attributes — not to be their BFO. Interestingly (as explained here), being your child’s best friend and a proper parent are frequently in direct conflict.
If parenting is successful, the new adult will have a superior chance of being a happy, productive person. That is the ultimate parental reward.
What would YOU say if you had that opportunity?
The two main points of this fantasy exercise are that parents should:
Have very specific goals regarding what they will call successful child rearing (ideally in writing to minimize misunderstandings), and
Then decide whether their K-12 schooling is an asset or liability regarding each of their goals. (Where it is not, they need to fix that!)
To answer #1, parents need to take a major step back and resolve what their goals are for themselves!
Whether we think about it or not, there will be a day of reckoning for every one of us.
It’s up to each of us to decide what will happen at that time, and then live appropriately.
My view is that when we cash our chips in, there will be a final balancing of our account. What will be the assets and liabilities listed on that ledger? Most importantly, what will be the Net?
The Bottom Line —
My perspective is that these are the two most important life goals:
Have a successful life — i.e., finish with a net asset ledger, and
Assist others to end up with a net asset ledger.
These “others” can be:
Members of your original family (e.g., a sibling),
Spouse
Child
Relatives
Friends or acquaintances
Other associates (e.g., readers of this Substack)
Some other interesting articles about child-rearing:
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Planned Parenthood’s political donations to Republicans have plummeted in the past decade, leaving the nation’s largest abortion provider with few friends on the right as it faces funding cuts under the Trump administration.
Planned Parenthood reports that about 34% of its funding comes from the federal government, usually through federal grants or reimbursements from Medicaid.
Planned Parenthood turns around and gives millions of dollars to Democrats each political cycle. In 2024, an analysis from the watchdog group Open Secrets, examining political donations from the large network of Planned Parenthood affiliates and political arms, the group donated $5,144,579, nearly all for liberal groups or Democrats, including former Vice President Kamala Harris in her bid against President Donald Trump.
No Republicans in the U.S. House or Senate received any donations from Planned Parenthood’s array of affiliates, according to Open Secrets.
At the federal level, Democrats received 99.83% of the political donations.
The nation’s largest abortion provider seems to have gone all in on one party, but that wasn’t always the case. A look back at the tenures of Barack Obama and George W. Bush showed Planned Parenthood gave to Republicans at the federal level as well. However, federal donation records show that the Trump era in Washington, D.C. is when donating to both sides came to an end.
Now, Trump is in charge of the executive branch and Republicans hold narrow majorities in both chambers of Congress, which seems poised to make his tax cuts permanent and enact other parts of his agenda.
Among a wave of other cost-saving cuts, Trump’s Health and Human Services agency is reportedly cutting tens of millions of dollars in Title X funding for Planned Parenthood clinics in about two dozen states.
HHS Title X grants are long-standing funding sources from the HHS Office of Population Affairs to Planned Parenthood for family planning services. During his first term, Trump limited Title X recipients from referring for abortions, a measure that was overturned by the Biden administration. Now, the battle over the same funding is underway.
A coalition of 29 senators sent a letter to HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. this week demanding the funding be reinstated. Notably absent were any Republican signatures.
Alexis McGill Johnson, president and CEO of Planned Parenthood Action Fund, the group’s lobbying arm, blasted Trump for his recent cuts and defended the nonprofit’s work.
“President Trump and Elon Musk are pushing their dangerous political agenda, stripping health care access from people nationwide, and not giving a second thought to the devastation they will cause,” McGill said.
But so far, it appears nobody is listening.
Meanwhile, in Medina v. Planned Parenthood South Atlantic, the U.S. Supreme Court is currently considering a case that involves South Carolina’s ban on Planned Parenthood from receiving any Medicaid funds because it performs abortions, even if those funds are not being used on abortions.
The Supreme Court case is not a direct challenge to South Carolina’s ban but whether private beneficiaries can sue to use their preferred provider, in this case Planned Parenthood.
The ruling involving South Carolina’s 2018 ban is expected in June. It could rebuff or pave the way for other states to ban Medicaid funds from going to Planned Parenthood.
Republicans have eyed defunding Planned Parenthood for years, though without success, over the abortion issues. Now, Planned Parenthood has become a staunch advocate on transgender issues, a less popular tenet that has become the subject of scrutiny for Republicans and some moderates.
“Planned Parenthood” is really a collection of linked groups, not a single entity. Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) provides medical services at hundreds of clinics around the country. The Planned Parenthood Action Fund is one political arm. Planned Parenthood also has a SuperPAC called Planned Parenthood Votes. Affiliates around the country vary in their size, funding and political engagement.
On top of that, there are state and regional political arms of Planned Parenthood affiliates, similar to how labor unions have national political activity and then local activity carried out by local affiliates.
This series of graphics from Open Secrets, shows the political donations of Planned Parenthood’s affiliates and demonstrates the recent dropoff in support for even moderate Republicans. These figures include donations to members of presidential committees as well.
When defending their federal funding, Planned Parenthood advocates regularly point to the necessity of their healthcare services, like STI testing and cancer screenings in poorer areas.
In its 2022-2023 annual fiscal year report, Planned Parenthood boasted 392,715 abortions. It also conducted 1,721 adoption referrals.
A Knights of Columbus/Marist Poll in 2022 found that 71% of Americans support legal limits on abortion and 54% oppose taxpayer funding for abortions.
Under current federal law, Planned Parenthood cannot be reimbursed by the federal government for abortions via Medicaid or Medicare except in the cases of rape, incest or threat to the life of the mother.
However, Planned Parenthood received about $700 million in one year from the government, according to its 2022-2023 report.
Critics argue that even with limitations to prevent federal funding from directly paying for most abortions, taxpayers are still propping up the nation’s largest abortion provider to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
Defenders of Planned Parenthood say it helps underserved populations and provides abortions in places where recipients might otherwise struggle to obtain one.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2025-04-18 02:28:002025-04-18 02:28:00Planned Parenthood Spends Big For Democrats, Faces Cuts Under Republican Control
President Donald Trump’s doctor said Sunday the president “exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health” in a memo released by the White House.
Trump underwent his annual physical examination Friday, spending nearly five hours at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland, the Associated Press reported. United States Navy Capt. Sean P. Barbabella took note of Trump’s “active lifestyle” in the memo sent to White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt.
“President Trump’s days include multiple meetings, public appearances, press availability and frequent victories in golf events,” Barbabella wrote in the memo.
According to the memo, Trump weighed 224 pounds, and had a blood pressure of 128/74, with a resting pulse of 62 while scoring 30 out of a possible 30 on a cognitive test. The memo noted a scar from the July 13, 2024, assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, during which Trump’s right ear was grazed by a bullet and “benign lesions” on his skin.
The memo also listed that Trump was taking two medications to control cholesterol, a cream for a skin condition and aspirin as a preventative measure.
“President Trump exhibits excellent cognitive and physical health and is fully fit to execute the duties of the Commander in Chief and Head of State,” Barbabella wrote. The physical was the first for Trump since he started his second term after succeeding President Joe Biden, whose health and cognitive abilities were widely questioned.
A Wall Street Journal article published Dec. 19, 2024, revealed White House aides “insulated” then-President Joe Biden, even from Cabinet members, as his health declined. The WSJ published similararticles prior to Biden’s July 21, 2024, decision to withdraw from the race, which generated pushback from some other media outlets.
Questions were also raised about the White House’s truthfulness about Biden’s health. On multiple occasions, Biden said he spoke with people who had died, including claiming to have spoken with former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, who died in 2017, and former French President Francois Mitterrand, who passed away in 1996 on two occasions in February.
In September 2022, Biden asked for Republican Rep. Jackie Walorski of Indiana at a conference on hunger that took place several weeks after Walorski and two staffers were killed in a car accident.
Biden also suffered multiple falls during his term in office, including one at the Air Force Academy in June 2023, a fall while on his bike in June 2022 and tripping on the steps of Air Force One on multiple occasions. Biden took a different set of stairs onto the VC-25, a modified Boeing 747 used as Air Force One, among other concessions to his age in the later years of his administration.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-14 14:52:362025-04-14 14:52:36‘Fully Fit’: White House Physician Releases Details On President Trump’s ‘Excellent Health’
Israeli scientists have discovered how to ensure further efficiency in quantum technology, meaning advanced computers used across various sectors will now run better than ever.
Researchers at Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Cornell University have discovered how to keep “quantum spin” – the technology that keeps computers based on this technology active – going for longer.
This means that information stored on the computers that could sometimes be lost when quantum atoms lost their “spin” will now be saved.
Quantum computers are already highly efficient and fast and are currently utilized across various fields, such as medicine, space exploration, cybersecurity, and banking.
Scientists have now found that the electrons in tiny magnetic properties of atoms that store information can now keep spinning by applying low magnetic fields.
Often, when these electrons encounter certain types of light, they lose their “spin”, and, therefore, their ability to retain information, but the application of magnetic fields can keep the electrons spinning endlessly.
The study was led by Mark Dikopoltsev and Avraham Berrebi, under the supervision of Prof. Uriel Levy from the Hebrew University’s Institute of Applied Physics and Nano Center and Prof. Or Katz from Cornell University.
Dikopoltsev commented: “Our results show that low magnetic fields are not just useful for avoiding decoherence from random, spin-conserving interactions, they can actively suppress more damaging relaxation processes, giving us a powerful tool for preserving spin coherence.”
In the field of medicine, quantum computers are often used in drug development, MRI machines, and image processing.
Additionally, quantum technology is used in sensors, batteries, quantum clocks, and AI.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-13 14:52:282025-04-13 14:52:28New Discoveries in Quantum Physics Will Further Efficiency in Medicine, Space Exploration and More
A $25 million program that offered taxpayer funds to promote LGBTQ ideology abroad has been removed from the State Department website by the Trump administration.
The Biden administration State Department’s Global Equality Fund posted its final grant application solicitation on Jan. 6, offering $2.1 million to help LGBTQ people “mitigate and recover from violence and restrictions on human rights and fundamental freedoms,” “eliminate laws which criminalize LGBTQI+ status and/or conduct,” and advance the fund’s goals in other ways.
In 2023, the Global Equality Fund invited projects led or supported by LGBTQ organizations and communities to apply to win awards of between $750,000 and $1.5 million. In 2021, the fund offered up to $1 million to LGBTQ “empowerment” projects in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East.
But on Jan. 20, President Donald Trump paused foreign aid for 90 days to assess “programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy.” Four days later, Secretary of State Marco Rubio halted spending on most existing foreign aid grants.
The stop-work order included grants and programs under the Global Equality Fund.
“The Department of State conducted a full review of foreign assistance programs, led by Secretary Rubio, to ensure efforts effectuate U.S. foreign policy,” the State Department press office told The Daily Signal. “Programs not advancing President Trump’s priorities were terminated.”
Trump issued executive orders prohibiting government-funded promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion; radical gender ideology; and critical race theory.
The Global Equality Fund was removed from the State Department’s website, and it is now only available under a 2021-2025 archived content page.
The cuts to State Department foreign funding projects are part of the Trump administration’s wider effort to cut “waste, fraud, and abuse” from the federal government.
The Department of Government Efficiency is “finding levels of fraud and waste and abuse like, I think, nobody ever thought possible,” Trump has said.
The Global Equality Fund was “dedicated to advancing and defending the human rights and fundamental freedoms” of LGBTQ people around the world, according to the former webpage on the State Department’s website.
The State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor managed the global LGBTQ fund with the support of foreign governments, businesses, and foundations, including the Human Rights Campaign, one of the largest LGBTQ rights organizations.
During its 10-year tenure, the Global Equality Fund distributed more than $100 million to more than 100 countries in order to “achieve LGBTQ equality.”
“There is not enough appreciation or understanding for how much funding the federal government provides for causes associated with the political left,” David Ditch, senior analyst in fiscal policy at Economic Policy Innovation Center, told The Daily Signal. “This problem ramped up during the Biden administration, and even though President Trump is pushing back, Congress must take action as well.”
A recent court ordered audit of the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority (LAHSA) is emblematic of the problems we face at a federal level and how our governments waste our money with little to no accountability.
LAHSA was formed in 1993 as a joint authority of the city and county of Los Angeles to address the issue of homelessness in Los Angeles County. The vast majority of the problems exist within the city limits of Los Angeles.
We could probably stop there. Billions of dollars have been spent since then, and the problem of homelessness has only soared. Arguably the Authority’s biggest accomplishment is the renaming of “homeless” to “unhoused.”Symbolic of the Left and the services they provide, they are more successful in changing the nomenclature than solving the problem.
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The audit was ordered by U.S. District Judge David O. Carter, a Bill Clinton appointee, and performed by global advisory firm Alvarez & Marsal. A lawsuit was filed in 2020 by the L.A. Alliance for Human Rights, a group representing business owners, residents, and property owners. It asserted that the LAHSA was not doing their job to provide shelter and services for people living on the streets. Otherwise, it was not a lawsuit to stop the expenditure. The assertion was the money was not being spent properly. The audit found:
• Auditors were unable to verify the total amount spent on homelessness services due to inconsistent and incomplete financial records across LAHSA, the city, and the county.
• The report found glaring inconsistencies in how LAHSA tracked shelter beds and services, making it impossible to determine how many beds were available, occupied, or even functional at any given time.
• Auditors noted that LAHSA and the city routinely approved invoices from service providers without verifying whether the billed services were actually provided. Payments were often processed based on high-level summaries, with little scrutiny of receipts or actual service delivery.
• On average, 82 days passed between the start of a contract term and its official execution, meaning many service providers operated for months without signed agreements. Some contracts were signed after services had already been provided, raising concerns about oversight and compliance.
• The auditors reviewed provider invoices from fiscal year 2023-24 and found extreme differences in costs per bed per day, with personnel costs ranging from $67 to just $7; food costs varying from $18 to $7; and security costs fluctuating between $32 and $2. The audit found no clear explanation for these discrepancies.
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• Nearly half (47.8%) of program participants exited back into homelessness, while just 22% found permanent housing, highlighting the lack of measurable outcomes despite billions in spending.
The effectiveness of the program is not really asserted here. Twenty-two percent found permanent housing, but how many found jobs, either got off drugs or got their drug problems under control, and how many returned to be functional members of our community? That should really be the measure of the program’s success, yet it is not even addressed.
As a result of the audit, Dr. Va Lecia Adams Kellum (LAHSA’s head), resigned the $430,000 position that she held for two years but said she was willing to remain around for 120 days. Local leadership lined up to praise Adams Kellum including the LAHSA board chairperson, Mayor Bass, and county supervisors. This is a woman who should have been fired for inept leadership.
This malfeasance has real life effects.
To give you an idea how misguided this program is, $1.3 billion was allocated in the 23-24 budget year but only $599 million was spent. That part is good. Then $961 million was allocated for 24-25 budget year. If they were spending significantly less the prior year, why didn’t they terminate those funds and then cut the budget to what they spent? That is not even considering the inefficiencies discovered in the audit. The audit caused LAHSA’s budget to finally be cut by $300 million. Frivolously wasting money is what they do. You can see why Mayor Bass is grappling with a $1 billion budget deficit.
That was while the city fire department was the same size as it was in 1960 with 1.5 million more residents today. Los Angeles city has one firefighter per 1,000 residents while other major cities across the nation have two. Firefighters are not the only problem. On the day of the horrific Pacific Palisades fires, 75 fire trucks were unusable because mechanics were not available to repair them. God forbid they would have brought in outside, non-union mechanics to do the repairs.
And how are the two issues tied together? KCAL News reviewed LAFD records and found that 17,000 fires were started in 2024 by the homeless. This is not new data. NBC found 13,909 fire incidents generated by homeless people in 2023. It is estimated the homeless (who represent 1% of the population) cause 50% of the fires. They are a real danger to the city and county.
I have said for a long time the elected officials care more about the homeless than they do about the housed. Now we know they don’t even care about the homeless. They blatantly waste our money. It is not difficult to project out the level of negligence there is within the California budget. After all, they acknowledged $32 billion in fraud just in one program – unemployment benefits.
The further away the Americans get from their government the more isolated it is from being reviewed.
You can now see how the LAHSA audit results are just a microcosm of what is being found in Washington. Thankfully, someone has decided to do something about it. So, what if a few eggs are getting broken — especially now that the prices have come down.
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Country music star John Rich told President Donald Trump that the reason his supporters booed him at his rallies during his 2024 bid for the White House was because of his constant bragging about Operation Warp Speed, Trump’s controversial COVID-19 program that led to the deaths and injuries of millions of Americans.
Rich explained to the hosts of the Try That In a Small Town Podcast that he was at a dinner with Trump and other high-ranking Republican politicians several years ago. Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, Senator Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, as well as then-Georgia Senate candidate Herschel Walker were also present, sitting around a table.
Knowing that Rich is a seasoned performer, Trump turned to Rich and asked for advice on how to deal with his tough crowds.
“[Trump] goes, ‘why are people booing me at my rallies when I bring up the vaccine?’” Rich said.
Before sharing his answer, Rich explained to the podcast hosts that he knew Trump was extremely proud of Operation Warp Speed so he had to collect himself before speaking directly to him.
Listen to him describe, in the video below, how the conversation went down from there. It really is quite stunning.
It took a country music singer for God to get through to Donald Trump about the evils of his horrifying “miracle vaccine.”
God bless John Rich. One of the few, maybe the only one, who had the guts to tell the truth about Warp Speed to the President of the United States of America, the man who triggered it all.
And Trump seems to have listened. You don’t hear him bragging about Warp Speed like he used to do constantly at every opportunity.
I also love how Rich put the corrupt globalist Senator Lindsey Graham in his place after Graham accused Rich of being a “conspiracy theorist.” Graham is a scourge on this country, an embarrassment and a pathetic excuse for a leader. If he is legitimately elected every six years, then shame on the people of South Carolina.
Sad to say, Trump still has not learned from Rich on what to make of Graham, as Trump recently gave Graham a ringing endorsement for his 2026 Senate re-election campaign.
If Trump really is an anti-globalist and against forever wars, he should be able to recognize a died-in-the-wool globalist like Lindsey Graham. It’s really not that difficult.
Please visit LeoHohmann.com: Investigative reporting on globalism, Christianity, Islam, Judaism and where politics, culture and religion intersect.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-11 16:51:272025-04-11 16:51:27VIDEO: The day President Trump finally got told the truth about Operation Warp Speed
Thimerosal, an ingredient in several childhood vaccines, is linked to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
The U.S. government has for years been telling parents that a mercury-based vaccine preservative called thimerosal poses no harm to children but that, out of an abundance of caution, the ingredient hasn’t been included in childhood vaccines since at least 2001.
Attkisson described them as part of “a concerted propaganda campaign to mislead the public” about thimerosal and the science linking it to autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders.
Attkisson’s investigation highlights how government agencies, along with the mainstream medical and media establishment, colluded for decades to promote a false narrative about the toxic chemical.
On the one hand, they misled the public about its known and possible harms and actively worked to discredit anyone who questioned its safety. On the other hand, they falsely assured the public that it had been removed from vaccines. Anyone who stated otherwise was branded a conspiracy theorist.
The fact is, thimerosal is still used today in some vaccines, Attkisson said, including some that are advertised as “thimerosol free.”
Her report shows that evidence linking the chemical to neurodevelopmental disorders, including autism, has existed for decades. It also shines a light on the purposeful agenda to rewrite the scientific narrative around the devastating neurotoxin to hide that link from the public.
Websites for the CDC, the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, a key source for vaccine-industry propaganda promoted by Googleand an army of bought-and-paid-for “fact checkers,” have long posted statements leading the public to believe thimerosal had been removed years ago from children’s vaccines.
Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia states on its website that thimerosal “was removed from vaccines after an amendment to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Modernization Act was signed into law on Nov. 21, 1997.”
“These claims would receive five outrageous Pinocchios from any neutral fact-checking organization,” Attkisson wrote.
The screenshots all show thimerosal as an ingredient in vaccines available to children in the U.S., including in flu shots and some tetanus shots.
There can only be one reason why a government lies to its people in an effort to harm its children. They want a dumbed-down, mentally stunted, weak and passive population. And if that’s what they want, you have to ask yourself, why? Whose interests are served by dumbed-down, weak and passive population? I’ll let you be the judge of that.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-11 15:51:572025-04-11 15:51:57Government and medical establishment continue to poison our children with mercury and then lie about it to parents
We are often treated to hallucinatory storylines by the legacy media and their allies the Democrats. This one I have not understood at all. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has told us for years that our federal government has experienced immense fraud annually of $300 billion or more. That was accelerated by the money flushed out by COVID packages and the trillions of dollars handed out by the Biden Administration. We have a $2 trillion annual deficit yet the attempts to stop the hemorrhaging are perceived as dangerous or authoritarian.
President Trump asked this generation’s premier business leader to aid in the fight. Elon Musk was branded the evilest person on the planet. Stories were told of Musk using 20-year-old shock troops to terrify our wonderful public employees and cut programs that were causing death and destruction around the planet.
That narrative changed completely on March 27th. Bret Baier, who anchors Fox News’ nightly news show, Special Report, interviewed Elon Musk and seven of his DOGE team leaders. Each leader has a proven track record in business and left significant positions in private industry to help in this effort. One of them — Tyler Hassan, Basin Energy CEO — said he had been running five separate companies and decided to step away to help.
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The others were 1. Steve Davis, Boring Company President; 2. Joe Gebbia, Airbnb Co-Founder; 3. Aram Moghaddassi, NeuroLink Software Engineer; 4. Brad Smith, Russell Street Ventures CEO; 5. Anthony Armstrong, Morgan Stanley Banker; and 6. Tom Krause, Cloud Software Group. They are working in distinct areas of our government and told their own stories.
One of the overarching themes was the government’s archaic and dysfunctional technology systems. Brad Smith is assigned to work with the Department of Health and Human Services. It has the largest budget with 25.4% of our $7 trillion budget. He stated there are 700 different IT systems just at the National Institute of Health, and they do not communicate with each other. There are 27 different centers created over time and each one has their own Chief Information Officer.
Mr. Smith has a particular goal in mind regarding university scientists receiving grants. Today, out of every $100 received, the scientist receives $60 to do their work and the university receives the other $40. That cut could be considered for “overhead” or perhaps their “vig” (share). Smith wants to change that split to 85% for research and 15% for the vig to the Deans at the university.
The Democrats have repeatedly accused DOGE of attacking Medicare and Social Security. Chuckie Schumer stated, “The goal is clear, destroy Social Security from within.” Aram Moghaddassi is working at SSA. One of the things that is occurring is related to people receiving social security benefits which are almost exclusively direct deposited into the beneficiary’s bank account. Every day people contact the SSA to change their direct deposit information. Forty percent of the changes are made by fraudsters. Forty percent. The SSA doesn’t have proper controls to stop this. I ask you: who is trying to destroy social security — DOGE or Schumer? Even the Washington Post stated the SSA website crashed four times in ten days this past month.
You may have heard there were a lot of really old people on the social security website. Steve Davis stated more than 15 million people over the age of 120 years old listed as “alive.” He verified that it is an accurate figure. Whether any or all are receiving benefits is not clear, but maybe they should clear the deadwood (so to speak).
The Social Security database is used to verify who is filing their tax returns. You cannot file an electronically filed tax return (the method predominantly used) without matching the exact name and birth date of all people on the return. But the database is not used for other proper purposes. This is because the dysfunctional computer systems do not speak to one another.
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For example, the Small Business Administration gives out loans and does not verify whether the people are proper individuals to receive those loans. DOGE found that over $300 million in SBA loans were given out to people under the age of 11 years old. There has been another $300 million given to people over the age of 120 years old. The youngest recipient of a loan is nine months old. That baby will have a defaulted SBA loan on their credit report for a long, long time.
There are so many other loans that were given out to fraudsters that have not yet to be determined. Anthony Armstrong stated the problem is the government has multiple computer systems that don’t interact. If they did, they would be able to eliminate a large amount of this fraud. Musk said the failure to communicate between computer systems allows for a fraudster to potentially get unemployment and disability using a deceased person’s name.
The discussion then lurched into the financial structure. Tom Krause, a former CFO of a major tech company, found there is one bank account that writes all the checks for 580 agencies. There are basically no standard business-like controls for sending out a check. As seen with how various different individuals are getting checks, just think how larger checks are going out to major entities without proper review.
Possibly the most stunning story was the one told by Steve Davis. There were 4.6 million credit cards for 2.3 million federal employees. Wrap your head around that. Davis stated DOGE has successfully whittled that down to 2.3 million. That means, in effect, that every janitor and security guard have a credit card. One might say they are the only people who should have credit cards. Do you think the expenditures on those credit cards are being reviewed for propriety? Don’t bet your house on that. DOGE has shown there is still a lot of work to do.
I believe these people and their fellow volunteers have just begun to scratch the surface. There were more stunning stories just from this 30-plus-minute interview. As Musk stated, the people who whine the most about the process are typically the fraudsters. If you want to see what is being done to keep our country from financial destruction, you can follow yourself at https://doge.gov/.
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
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The Trump administration’s Health and Human Services Department has canceled hundreds of millions of dollars in grants dedicated to researching illegal sexual behavior in children, pregnancy prevention for “transgender boys,” and so-called sleep inequality affecting black sexual-minority men.
In March, HHS canceled at least $530 million of funding for LGBTQ+ health research programs, according to a grant tracker from Noam Ross of rOpenSci and Scott Delaney of Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
HHS previously provided more than $990 million of grant funding to LGBTQ+ health research programs, according to the tracker.
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The National Institutes of Health’s newly sworn-in director, Dr.Jay Bhattacharya, said that under his tutelage, the agency would shift its priorities toward “research aimed at preventing, treating, and curing chronic conditions like cancer, diabetes, heart disease, obesity and many others that cause so much suffering and deaths among all Americans, LGBTQ individuals included.”
The shift “away from politicized DEI and gender ideology studies” is in “accordance with the president’s executive orders,” HHS spokesman Andrew Nixon told The Daily Signal.
The priority shift included cutting funding for studies focused on radical gender ideology, critical race theory, and other topics thatpolls show to be wildly unpopular with Americans, according to The Daily Signal’s review of terminated grants.
For instance, the Trump administration cut off $10,000 of promised funding to a conference Feb. 25-27 at the University of Oklahoma called “Be Curious Not Judgmental: The 4th National Symposium on Sexual Behavior of Youth.”
“Professionals and parents continue to use myths and misunderstandings as the base of decisions on problematic and illegal sexual behavior of children and adolescents,” the symposium’s website reads. “Adults worry about addressing sexual topics, and yet youth continue to be inundated with graphic sexual images and messages.”
“We need to better equip professionals and parents to understand and support healthy sexual development and to identify problematic sexual behavior early and intervene with all children and caregivers impacted,” the description continues.
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One breakout session at the conference focused on “The Help-Wanted Prevention Intervention for Minor Attracted Individuals,” a euphemism for pedophiles.
On March 21, Trump’s NIH terminated a $2.9 million grant to the University of Minnesota for research on “adolescent health at the intersections of sexual, gender, racial/ethnic, immigrant identities and native language.”
The study aimed to determine “what positive and negative experiences are particularly relevant to the overlapping, simultaneous production of inequalities by [sexual and gender minority] identity, race/ethnicity, immigration experiences, and native language?”
The pre-Trump NIH promised the Research Triangle Institute $100,507 to study “social influences on sexual health among Latinx adolescents and emerging adults who identify as LGBTQ+ in an agricultural community.”
NIH ended a $1.5 million grant to Urban Health Partnerships for “leveraging a community-driven approach to address the impact of social determinants of health on structural inequities among Miami-Dade County’s intergenerational LGBTQ+ Community.”
Hunter College lost its $211,100 grant to study “development and feasibility of a psychosocial intervention for sexual and gender minority autistic adults.”
On March 18, NIH cut off Virginia Commonwealth University’s $205,308 grant focused on “using youth-engaged methods to develop and evaluate a measure for disordered eating behaviors in transgender and gender-diverse youth.”
“Transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse (TNG) youth face stigma due to the marginalization of their gender identities,” the study says. “TNG youth also have increased vulnerability to body dissatisfaction due to pubertal changes and development of secondary sexual characteristics that might be misaligned with their gender identity, which may be exacerbated by a youth’s inability to access gender-affirming medical care (i.e., puberty blockers, gender-affirming hormones).”
Yale University lost government funding for a program, “Training in Behavioral Design Interventions to Address Stigma Among Men Who have Sex with Men.”
“This study will explore relationships of different discrimination experiences and sexual health among young Black men who have sex with men (YBMSM),” the project narrative says. “This study aims to better the sexual health of YBMSM throughout their lives by informing future interventions that help decrease new cases of HIV and other poor sexual health outcomes.”
The NIH terminated its $2,368,492 contract with Brown University to study “improving mental health among the LGBTQ+ community impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.”
NIH had committed more than $1.3 million to Princeton University to study “Views of Gender in Adolescence.”
“Gender diverse children often experience disparities in mental health and well-being,” the project narrative says. “Further questions concern the stability of their gender, as that has implications for medical transitions. The proposed work would examine the role of gender beliefs and self-categorization in predicting mental health and well-being, as well as provide better estimates of rates of stability and change across time in the identities of both cisgender and gender-diverse youth.”
Trump’s HHS terminated a $1.3 million grant to the Center for Innovative Public Health Research to study “Adapting an LGB+ inclusive teen-pregnancy prevention program for transgender boys.”
The project’s goal was to change the title of “Girl2Girl,” a text messaging-based teen prevention pregnancy program, to “#TranscendentHealth, a gender-inclusive [teen prevention pregnancy program] for transgender boys.”
Other grants funded by the NIH before Trump took over included $2.5 million to a study on “Efficacy of a Multi-level School Intervention for LGBTQ Youth”; $6.4 million to “Multilevel strategies to understand and modify the role of structural and environmental context on HIV inequities for sexual and gender minorities of color”; and $1.8 million to “Sexual minority couples’ health during the transition to marriage.”
NIH canceled a grant of $1.3 million to examine “the Mechanisms and Consequences of Sleep Health Inequities Affecting Black Sexual Minority Men.”
“Using a syndemic and multilevel approach, this project seeks to investigate relationships between sleep and HIV treatment outcomes and behaviors (e.g., viral suppression and retention in care) among Black gay, bisexual and other sexual minority men (SMM),” the project narrative says, “a population in the United States heavily impacted by HIV/AIDS.”
The National Institutes of Health “remains fully committed to supporting research aimed at improving the health and well-being of every American, regardless of their sexual identity,” Nixon, the HHS spokesman, said.
The Prickly Pear is focused on delivering timely, fact-based news, and citizen opinion that reflects our mission to “inform, educate and advocate about the principles of limited government and personal liberty.”
To achieve that mission, Prickly Pear often engages with like-minded contributors and organizations who share our values. We encourage to support these partners in any way you can, as these partners make our efforts possible.
Direct support of the Prickly Pear can be made at the link below. Every dollar is greatly appreciated!
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The Supreme Court permitted the Trump administration on Monday to use a wartime authority to deport alleged members of a foreign gang.
In a 5-4 ruling, the majority tossed orders by U.S. District Court Judge James Boasberg, an Obama appointee, that blocked the administration from using the Alien Enemies Act to deport members of the Tren de Aragua gang to El Salvador.
“AEA detainees must receive notice after the date of this order that they are subject to removal under the Act,” the court’s order states. “The notice must be afforded within a reasonable time and in such a manner as will allow them to actually seek habeas relief in the proper venue before such removal occurs.”
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, Ketanji Brown Jackson and Amy Coney Barrett dissented.
Following tonight’s landmark Supreme Court ruling, the American people can rest assured that @Sec_Noem, @RealTomHoman and I will direct our assets to scour the country for any remnants of Tren De Aragua and DEPORT THEM.
— Attorney General Pamela Bondi (@AGPamBondi) April 7, 2025
The Trump administration argued Boasberg exceeded his authority in issuing his March order, telling the justices that the issue “presents fundamental questions about who decides how to conduct sensitive national-security related operations in this country—the President, through Article II, or the Judiciary, through TROs.”
Attorney General Pam Bondi called the Monday decision a “landmark victory for the rule of law.”
“An activist judge in Washington, DC does not have the jurisdiction to seize control of President Trump’s authority to conduct foreign policy and keep the American people safe,” she wrote in a statement on X.
In her dissent, Sotomayor wrote that the government’s conduct throughout the case “poses an extraordinary threat to the rule of law.”
“That a majority of this Court now rewards the Government for its behavior with discretionary equitable relief is indefensible,” she wrote. “We, as a Nation and a court of law, should be better than this.”
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MAHA advocates are warning about a bill Georgia lawmakers passed in March that they allege would allow manufacturers of pesticides to escape liability for poisoning customers.
Senate Bill 144 would make it so “that a manufacturer cannot be held liable for failing to warn consumers of health risks above those required by the United States Environmental Protection Agency with respect to pesticides.”
Environmentalists and regenerative farming advocates warn that the bill would be detrimental to public health.
“Stripping our right to be able to sue if we have a different opinion than what the EPA has is really going to be catastrophic for public health, because then we have no recourse whatsoever,” Kelly Ryerson, the founder of American Regenerative and Glyphosate Facts, told the Daily Caller. Ryerson, a Stanford University MBA, has a certificate in public health policy from Stanford Business School.
The bill’s primary sponsor, Republican Georgia State Sen. Sam Watson, pushed back on the idea that the bill would prevent Americans from being able to sue manufacturers.
“It’s dealing with failure to warn, it’s not providing immunity,” Sen. Watson told the Caller. “It’s not preventing anyone to go after [manufacturers] because they thought that a product caused cancer. You can still do that, you just can’t do it for failure to warn of it causing cancer.”
Manufacturers that would be covered under Georgia’s bill include Bayer, who owns Monsanto, the maker of RoundUp. A Georgia jury is fresh off awarding a plaintiff over $2 billion in a judgement against Bayer after he blamed RoundUp for his non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma in a lawsuit.
Why did the Georgia State Legislature rush to pass SB144 aka The Pesticide Bill?
There are $2.1 BILLION reasons why!
Bayer was ordered to pay a plaintiff when they proved his cancer was caused by their pesticide (Round-Up).
RoundUp’s active ingredient is glyphosate, the most commonly used pesticide in the United States. The World Health Organization’s International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) said glyphosate likely causes cancer in 2015, labelling it as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
“It says it’s likely and we saw that same report. It doesn’t say it does. It says that it suggests or it may be or probably or could cause,” Sen. Watson told the Caller.
The EPA reached a different conclusion. After a February 2020 review, the agency found “that there are no risks of concern to human health when glyphosate is used in accordance with its current label,” according to its website.
The IARC was accused of manipulating their data in 2017. A draft document of IARC’s 2015 study was unearthed and, according to Reuters, showed the agency dismissed and edited out conclusions contrary to their final report.
Watson claimed that the study which the IARC based its carcinogenic conclusion on also found a number of other common American lifestyle choices increased the risk of cancer.
“If you’ll keep reading in that study it also says that red meat is carcinogenic and night shift work is carcinogenic and a lot of other things that people do are carcinogenic. So, I mean, you need to read the whole study because one studies shift and dictate,” Watson told the Caller.
While the EPA did not concur with the IARC’s conclusion that glyphosate is a carcinogen, Ryerson alleged that the research they based that conclusion on was manipulated by Bayer/Monsanto.
Wisner Baum, a law firm which Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once worked for, published a trove of documents that appeared to implicate Monsanto in ghostwriting a number of reports on glyphosate’s toxicity.
Science journal highlights Baum Hedlund’s work un-sealing and exposing the Monsanto Papers. “Scientific misconduct by private firms threatens the integrity of public science, and it threatens to undermine the public’s trust in science.” #ScienceEthicshttps://t.co/ww31mf94ZWpic.twitter.com/5ibdhgMreV
One email published by the firm allegedly shows that Monsanto commissioned scientist David Saltmiras and former Monsanto consultant Larry Keir to recruit respected names to write a review of glyphosate’s toxicity. “[E]ven though we feel confident that glyphosate is not genotoxic, this became a very difficult story to tell given all the complicated ‘noise’ out there,” the correspondence reads.
Keir’s name appears on the review that was eventually published, according to the documents obtained by Wisner Baum.
Other manufacturers that could benefit from the limited liability include Chinese chemical manufacturers. When ChemChina, a Chinese state-controlled chemical manufacturer, bought Swiss AgTech company Syngenta for $43 billion in 2017, it was forced by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission to divest its rights to the company’s paraquat chemical business in the U.S. to an American firm.
However, China is still the primary producer of paraquat used in the U.S. while America is the world’s biggest importer, according to global shipping tracker Volza. The U.S. imports from 4,000 to 5,000 tons of the product annually, making up over 10 percent of China’s export supply, according to agropages.com
Like glyphosate, the EPA found “no dietary risks of concern associated with paraquat when it is used according to the label.” But others have called it “the deadliest chemical in US agriculture.”
National Institutes of Health (NIH) studies have linked the chemical to Parkinson’s disease, finding that people who used paraquat were 2.5 times more likely to develop Parkinson’s. Over 50 countries have banned its use, including China.
Sen. Watson, a vegetable farmer who uses RoundUp himself, argued it’s China’s very stranglehold over the paraquat market that makes SB 144 so necessary.
“If the Chinese become the only manufacturer of a product, you can’t go after them. It’s very difficult to go after a Chinese manufacturer for any kind of negligence claim,” he told the Caller.
“So I feel like they’re already protected, which makes it even more important to keep manufacturers in the United States because those are the ones that we can have recourse if they here in the United States.”
Ryerson disagreed. “I actually don’t care who manufactures it,” she said. “I just don’t want it anywhere in our system.”
Additionally, 99 percent of glyphosate used in the U.S. originated from China in 2024, according to a Farm Business Network survey.
You can’t make this up.
A German pharmaceutical company that helped Hitler during World War 2 (@Bayer) bought Monsanto and is now sending mailers in states saying lawmakers are pro-China if they don’t vote for a bill giving glyphosate legal immunity. https://t.co/6IbbIVD9Xe
The bill now sits on Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp’s desk for him to sign. “Our office has 40 days following the last day of the legislative session to conduct a thorough review of legislation that received final passage by the Georgia General Assembly. We will make an announcement upon the conclusion of that review process,” a spokesperson for Kemp’s office told the Caller.
Georgia’s legislative session ended April 4, giving the governor until May 14 to make a decision.
The bill represents a test of power for RFK Jr.’s Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) coalition. Self-proclaimed “MAHA moms” have been lobbying hard against its passage, imploring Kemp not to sign it. RFK, who tried and won cases on behalf of Monsanto victims in his past life as an attorney, has yet to publicly comment on the bill.
The Daily Caller reached out to HHS to get Secretary Kennedy’s thoughts on the bill but did not receive a response.
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One of the most insightful things I’ve read about pain is that it is an essential element of making us happy! (e.g., read this interesting article.)
Put in a simpler way: Contrast makes all the difference. A personal example is that one of my favorite meals is lobster. However, if I had lobster every night it wouldn’t take too long before it was no longer my favorite… Go figure…
What this also says is that pain is not just a physical sensation, but a mental one. In a particular situation, it is often difficult to assess how much of a very marked pain comes from physical nerve signals, vs how much is from our brain telling us that we are hurt.
A good example is when a child stubs their toe. If the mom is looking on anxiously, there is a strong chance that the child will start crying. On the other hand, if they are by themself, it is more likely that they will frown and grimace — and then move on.
I clearly remember a situation when I was in high school (around 15), and living at home. I was always in good physical condition (e.g., I ran track, played high school basketball, etc.), so I was rarely sick.
I don’t remember what led up to it, but one evening (before dinner) I started feeling nauseous. That was quite unusual, so I was expecting that this painfully unpleasant feeling would quickly pass.
It not only did not go away, but it got worse. I had the definite feeling that I was going to throw up shortly — very distressing. I skipped dinner (an extreme rarity), and went up to my room to lay down. I brought a pan and was waiting for the very unappealing inevitable.
I decided to listen to my radio. (My clock radio was a prized possession I earned by getting a lot of subscriptions for a local newspaper.) Anyway, when I turned it on, nothing happened. The clock part was still working, so what was going on? Being a mechanical wizard (still am), I started to fiddle around to solve the problem. It took me about 15 minutes to disassemble the radio, figure out, and fix the issue. The radio started to play.
As I lay down to listen I started to think why was I in bed at this time in the evening, and remembered that I was here due to feeling very sick. Oh, right. The strange thing was that the nauseous feeling was completely gone!
I couldn’t believe it and was sure that this respite was temporary and that the pain would come back. It didn’t! After laying there for 10+ minutes, and feeling fine, I decided that there was no need for me to be in bed at this time of day. I went downstairs, had a typical dinner(!), and continued on normally. The nauseous feeling did not return…
Yes, the basic strategy here was to use the worthwhile tactic of trying to take my mind off a painful matter by distracting myself. The differences here were:
a) I didn’t consciously try to do that, and
b) the pain wasn’t just disguised, it actually went away.
I have found that there are other life situations (that we all experience), where this mind-over-matter insight can be beneficial.
Another interesting perspective on pain is expressed here:
“One unique characteristic of life is that the more pleasure you hunt down (as we’re inclined to do), the more pain you get!
“Most everything that makes you feel amazing and alive, ends with long-term pain and an accelerated premature death. Take alcohol for example or junk food, narcotics, watching TV, drinking coffee, working that safe job you don’t enjoy, smoking cigarettes, smoking weed, procrastinating, being a perpetual people pleaser, being lazy, mindless scrolling of social media, thinking that a toxic big pharma pill will make you healthy instead of changing your lifestyle, etc., etc…”
So the next time you are inclined to complain about a pain, give it some Critical Thinking to see if it really is as bad as it seems, or maybe it’s a cloud with a silver lining…
Media Balance Newsletter: a free, twice-a-month newsletter that covers what the mainstream media does not do, on issues from COVID to climate, elections to education, renewables to religion, etc. Here are the Newsletter’s 2024 Archives. Please send me an email to get your free copy. When emailing me, please make sure to include your full name and the state where you live. (Of course, you can cancel the Media Balance Newsletter at any time – but why would you?
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Health and Human Services Secretary Robert Kennedy, Jr. forced Peter Marks, the Food and Drug Administration’s top vaccine official, to resign on Friday. Good Washingtonians were horrified, especially since Marks had played a key role in enabling President Biden’s most oppressive Covid mandate. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) responded to Marks’ exit with a tweet mentioning the hearings he held last year “exposing COVID vaccine malfeasance led by Peter Marks at the FDA. Instead of verifying the safety and efficacy of the shots, Marks swept things under the rug and became a cheerleader for the jab.”
Marks’ ejection produced the usual ludicrously biased coverage from the mainstream media. Former FDA boss Scott Gottlieb gushed that Marks “presided over an extraordinary period of medical progress, spearheading breakthroughs” in numerous areas. The Washington Post touted that quote but failed to mention that Gottlieb is on the Pfizer Board of Directors. And Marks practically gave Pfizer a license to print money.
On Sept. 9, 2021, President Biden dictated that more than 100 million Americans must get Covid vaccine injections. But the Food and Drug Administration finding behind that order, the official certification of the jabs as “safe and effective,” was the result of a brazen bureaucratic bait-and-switch, as I reported in the New York Poston April 15, 2023.
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In December 2020, the FDA approved Covid vaccines on an emergency-use basis. That ruling provided an absolute waiver of liability for vaccine manufacturers for any harm their products inflicted. The following month, Joe Biden became president and the White House touted the vaccines as national salvation from Covid.
But it soon became clear that many Americans were hesitating to get jabbed, in part because the FDA approval was solely for emergency use. Many Americans have long been wary of vaccines, including cynics who avoid annual flu shots that are notoriously ineffective.
Bidenchampioned vaccines with evangelical fervor. “You’re not going to get COVID if you have these vaccinations,” he proclaimed during a July 21, 2021 CNN town hall. Biden’s claim was the single biggest shard of disinformation during the pandemic.
The effectiveness of the Covid vaccines was already collapsing. The week after Biden’s promise, headlines revealed that almost 400 fully vaccinated people contracted Covid on holiday visits to Provincetown, Massachusetts. A few days later, the Washington Post and New York Times published leaked CDC documents warning that vaccines were utterly failing to stop Covid transmission. A Mayo Clinic study found that vaccine efficacy had fallen to 42%. But Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention was covering up the debacle by refusing to count “breakthrough” Covid infections that did not result in death or hospitalization. The Washington Post castigated the CDC for withholding Covid information, noting that its “overly rosy assessments of the vaccines’ effectiveness against delta [variant] may have lulled Americans into a false sense of security.”
The Biden administration responded to the vaccine failure by using an iron fist to force Americans to get injected. But Biden could not issue a mandate until the FDA gave final approval to the Covid vax.
In May 2021, Pfizer applied for full approval; the FDA said it aimed to announce a decision in January 2022. But that wasn’t fast enough for the Biden White House. Internal emails revealed that Acting FDA Commissioner Janet Woodcock was concerned because “states cannot require mandatory vaccination” without FDA final approval, according to the chief of the FDA’s vaccine-review office, Marion Gruber. Gruber warned that a thorough evaluation was needed due to “increasing evidence of association of this vaccine and development of myocarditis (especially in young males).”
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After Gruber balked, Woodcock placed Peter Marks in charge of the process, and the vaccine got full approval on Aug. 23. Biden boasted that day of achieving a Covid “key milestone” and labeled FDA approval the “gold standard,” proving vaccines were safe and effective. The White House arm-twisting spurred a “mutiny” at the FDA, as Politico put it: Gruber and her top deputy resigned in protest.
When he dictated his vaccine mandate on September 9, Biden promised to “finish the job [on COVID] with truth, with science.” But the White House had already buried the truth and effectively exiled dissenting scientists. Four months later, the Supreme Court ruled that most of Biden’s vaccine mandate was illegal. By that point, the catastrophic failure of the vaccines was resulting in a million new Covid cases per day.
The Covid vaccine’s rushed approval was the pharmaceutical version of a riverboat gamble — except Biden was betting the lives and health of Americans. But Biden’s bluster could not prevent the vaccines from increasing the risk of myocarditis up to sixfold in young males. The CDC is investigating a possible link between Pfizer vaccines and strokes in the elderly. According to a Swiss medical study, up to three million Americans may have asymptomatic heart damage thanks to Covid booster shots. A recent Spanish medical study found that people who received multiple Covid boosters were almost twice as likely to get Covid infections.
But, as the New York Times reported, legitimate Covid vaccine injury caseshave been swept underthe rug. Akiko Iwasaki, an immunologist and vaccine expert at Yale University, stated that people who report injuries from Covid vaccines are “just completely ignored and dismissed and gaslighted,” she added. As former New York Times science reporter Alex Berenson quipped, “The bestest vaccines ever keep getting bester.”
There have been successful vaccines that saved millions of lives. But the Covid vaccine was a political fix from the start, Americans deserve a full accounting of the risks behind the injection that Biden sought to compel. Hopefully, the Trump administration will open the files and disclose hard facts ASAP.
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Several years ago, I found out that my family doctor was passing on information about me to the government. Behind my back.
My dcotor works closely with drug manufacturers, presumably for a generous commission.
So I already objected to my doctor’s methods, because I don’t trust Big Pharma. I trust in natural remedies, such as herbs.
I decided to unsubscribe from my doctor, and find another one.
Not much later, I found out that my family doctor reported this to a psychiatrist behind my back! The psychiatrist thought it was mentally disturbed of me to want to deregister from my regular doctor. It was made clear to me that this was not permitted.
Behind my back the Amsterdam Court was also informed that I had tried to deregister from my regular doctor. The Court also found this to be a sign of derangement.
I wonder now: are we still living in a free country? Surely a person should have the RIGHT to decide who his or her doctor is?
Another problem is that my family doctor can force me to take medications I don’t trust. My doctor swears by chemical medicines, and I only trust in natural medicines.
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“Big Pharma is one of the largest and most profitable businesses in America, and in order to sell their chemical goods to allegedly treat the mind/psyche, pharmaceutical companies must convince society that people’s mental and behavioral problems are caused by their bodily chemicals.”
Daniel R. Berger, The Chemical Imbalance Delusion
An epidemic of mental illness has spread across the modern world. According to the National Institute for Mental Health, 25 percent of all American adults suffer from at least one mental illness, as do 15 percent of all children. Many in the field of psychiatry claim that psychiatric drugs are the most effective tool we have to counter this epidemic, and as a result, these drugs are heavily prescribed in the Western world. In this series of videos, we explore the lies and propaganda that are used to justify the use of psychiatric drugs, and we expose the deep corruption that exists at the heart of the unholy alliance of modern psychiatry and Big Pharma.
In this first video, we expose the “big lie” that supports the millions of psychiatric drug prescriptions written each year and the billions of dollars of profits that pharmaceutical companies earn from their sales. This lie is that chemical (or neurotransmitter) imbalances are a primary cause of mental illness, and that taking psychiatric drugs corrects for these imbalances.
“If a lie is only printed often enough, it becomes a quasi-truth, and if such a truth is repeated often enough, it becomes an article of belief, a dogma…”
Isabella Blagden, The Crown of a Life
In the late 19th century, psychiatry suffered low status among the medical professions. There were few generally agreed upon treatments for mental illness, and while medical doctors were rapidly improving their capacity to understand and treat disorders of the body, psychiatry was relatively stagnant with respect to understanding the disorders of the mind.
The fate of psychiatry changed, however, when the German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin put forth a bold and revolutionary theory. Kraepelin hypothesized that mental disorders such as depression, anxiety, and schizophrenia, are the result of underlying physical pathologies in the brain and body. Kraeplin’s theory caught on like wildfire as it aligned with materialism, the dominant scientific paradigm at the time. Materialism is a philosophical position which claims that matter is the primary, sole, and fundamental element of reality, and that our mind is an emergent property of, and reducible to, the interaction of the material parts of our brain.
In aligning psychiatry with the materialist position, and hence the scientific community at large, Kraeplin’s theory radically improved the status of psychiatry. Kraeplin became the founder of modern psychiatry, and the widespread acceptance of his theory ushered in a wave of experimental psychiatric treatments targeting the brain and bodily malfunctions believed to underly mental illness. In his book Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good, James Davies writes:
“In the 1920s, these [treatments] included…surgically removing parts of the patient’s body—their teeth, tonsils, colons, spleens, and uteri…injecting patients with horse serum, using carbon dioxide to induce convulsions and comas, injecting patients with cyanide, and giving them hypothermia…Another treatment was malaria therapy, injecting the patient with the malaria parasite in the hope that the high temperatures malaria produced would kill the virus then thought responsible for mental disease…many patients failed to recover from the malaria disease.”
James Davies, Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good
The ineffectiveness of these early 20th century treatments did not stop psychiatrists from developing new experimental treatments. In the 1930s, insulin shock therapy was invented, which involved giving patients high doses of insulin that would trigger intense seizures and place the patient in a coma. Davies writes that:
“After this procedure, granted, patients would appear to feel calmer, but they would often show memory loss and other neurological abnormalities such as loss of speech. Five percent of all patients actually died from this treatment.”
James Davies, Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good
In the 1940s, lobotomy, or the surgical removal of parts of the brain thought to be responsible for mental disorders, was invented. And by the 1970s one million people in the United States had been lobotomized. Another treatment which grew in popularity in the 1940s was electroconvulsive therapy, or ECT, which involved adminstering electric shocks to the brain of a depressed patient in order to induce severe seizures. In the words of Davies, all these outlandish and barbaric treatments “won impetus and legitimacy from psychiatry’s enduring conviction that there must be a physical basis for mental disorder…this originated with Kraeplin’s assumption: if our emotional maladies are biologically caused, then the body is where our efforts must be directed.”(James Davies, Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good)
After half a century of experimenting with psychiatric treatments that not only proved ineffective but often harmed, handicapped, or killed patients, the field of psychiatry faced a crisis. General medicine was advancing via revolutionary breakthroughs such as the first organ transplants and blood transfusions, as well as the discovery of antibiotics and insulin. Psychiatry, in contrast, had found little success within the materialist paradigm that dominated scientific discourse. This all changed in the 1950s with the development of the first generation of psychiatric drugs.
Prior to the 1950s, sedatives and stimulants were commonly prescribed in psychiatric institutions to subdue and control a psychotic or heavily depressed patient. However, psychiatrists were not publicly open regarding how they were using these drugs.
“Official reticence about the old drugs conveys the impression that they were a source of embarrassment.”
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
However, in the 1950s, after a new collection of psychiatric drugs were discovered, psychiatrists started to publicly embrace their use.
Chlorpromazine, the first neuroleptic or anti-psychotic which was marketed under the name Thorazine, was discovered when researchers, searching for anti-malarial drugs, discovered that chlorpromazine functioned as a “major tranquilizer” which induced in patients a “euphoric quietude…. Patients are calm and somnolent, with a relaxed and detached expression.” The first anxiolytic, or anti-anxiety drug, was a minor tranquilizer which was discovered by researchers searching for a drug to treat gram-negative microbes. While the first antidepressant was a psychological stimulant that was discovered by researchers searching for a drug treatment for tuberculosis. These discoveries initiated what is called the Psychopharmacological Revolution, and in the words of Moncrieff, these drugs “were greeted with immense enthusiasm, verging on zeal. One contemporary observer noted…that the atmosphere at conferences on the new drugs was akin to religious revivalist meetings… From this time on, textbooks started to cover drug treatments in detail and proclaimed their transformative effects.” (Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure)
Pharmaceutical companies realized that psychiatric drugs could be marketed and sold not only to institutionalized patients, but to the general public, and so they began investing heavily in the research and development of psychiatric drugs. In 1955, Wallace Laboratories brought meprobamate to the market, selling it under the name Miltown, and marketing it as a minor tranquilizer that could ease anxiety and worry. Following an extensive marketing campaign, demand for Miltown soared.
“The public rush to obtain this new drug was such that Wallace Laboratories and Carter Products, which were jointly selling meprobamate, struggled to keep up with the demand.”
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic
Following the success of Miltown, in 1963 the drug maker Hoffmann-La Roche brought Valium, the first benzodiazapene, to market. Valium was marketed primarily to anxious housewives and from 1965 to 1981 it was the best-selling drug in the West and the theme of the Rolling Stone’s song “Mother’s Little Helper”.
“In 1967, one in three American adults filled a prescription for a “psychoactive” medication, with total sales of such drugs reaching $692 million.”
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic
This first generation of psychiatry drugs were not only highly profitable for pharmaceutical companies, they also granted the field of psychiatry the status and legitimacy it had long been seeking. For as Joanna Moncrieff writes:
“[These first generation drugs] were an intervention on the body and as drug treatment grew in importance in other areas of medicine they confirmed the desired parallels between psychiatry and physical medicine.”
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
However, the success these drugs conferred on psychiatry and pharmaceutical companies was short-lived, as the public soon became aware that consuming these drugs produced negative side effects.
While Hoffman-La Roche claimed that Valium provided “pure anxiety relief” and was “safe, harmless and non-addicting”, many users reported physical dependence, terrible withdrawal effects, as well as insomnia, panic attacks, and heightened levels of anxiety. In 1975, the U.S. Justice Department classified benzodiazepines as schedule IV drugs under the Controlled Substance Act. Prescriptions for Valium, as well as other psychiatric drugs, plummeted, and a growing public awareness of the harmful nature of psychiatric drugs led to the development of an antipsychiatry movement.
The intellectual father of the antipsychiatry movement, Thomas Szasz, argued that psychiatrists were agents of social control and that the diagnosis and medication of the mentally ill was a way to subdue individuals who are reacting, in an undesirable manner, to life in a sick and oppressive society. In 1975, Szasz’s idea found legitimacy when a highly publicized government investigation into the use of neuroleptics in juvenile institutions was hijacked by ex-patients who testified that the drugs caused “excruciating pain” and turned them into “emotional zombies”. One patient said that such drugs “are used not to heal or help, but to torture and control. It is that simple.” This antipsychiatry movement reached popular consciousness via the Oscar winning movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, which portrayed mental hospitals as facilities of torture and control.
The antipsychiatry movement, as well as the drop in the sales of psychiatric drugs, led the director of the American Psychiatric Association, Melvin Sabshin, to state in 1980 that “the profession is under severe siege.” A solution was needed to save psychiatry, as well as the profits of pharmaceutical companies. And a solution was found. Pharmaceutical scientists gave Emile Kraeplin’s theory a modern spin. They claimed that mental illness is caused by neurotransmitter imbalances in the brain, and that psychiatric drugs correct for such imbalances, fix a broken brain, and cure mental disorders. This idea became known as the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness. Regarding the researcher who is credited with popularizing this theory, James Davies writes:
“In the early 1960s, a young medical researcher…stumbled upon an idea that would launch a paradigm shift in psychiatry. The researcher was called Joseph Schildkraut, and the idea he advanced was rather simple: fluctuations in our moods may be due to chemical imbalances in our brains. To be sure, Schildkraut was not the first person to entertain this compelling idea. It had been floating around the psychiatric community in one form or another since the mid-1950s when the first antidepressants started to be used. But for some reason when Schildkraut published his hypothesis in the American Journal of Psychiatry in 1965, his views took the community by storm.”
James Davies, Cracked: Why Psychiatry is Doing More Harm Than Good
Although Schildkraut admitted his theory was “at best a reductionist simplification” that could neither be rejected nor confirmed “on the basis of data currently available”, pharmaceutical scientists and psychiatrists ran with this theory and started to act as if it were true not only for depression, but for all mental disorders. Yet as they lacked hard evidence to support it, the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders was advanced through a line of reasoning that is illogic, unscientific, and bordering on absurd. For example, with respect to depression, pharmaceutical scientists identified how drugs to treat depression increased levels of norepinephrine and serotonin in the brain, and thus they claimed that depression is caused by low levels of norepinephrine and serotonin. Similarly, they noticed that neuroleptics, or antipsychotics, decreased dopamine transmission in the brain, and hence they proposed that schizophrenia is due to excessive levels of dopamine. Or as Robert Whitaker explains.
“This became the storytelling formula that was relied upon by pharmaceutical companies again and again: Researchers would identify the mechanism of action for a class of drugs, how the drugs either lowered or raised levels of a brain neurotransmitter, and soon the public would be told that people treated with those medications suffered from the opposite problem.”
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic
The following passage by the psychiatrist Robert Taylor hammers home just how absurd and pseudoscientific this line of reasoning is.
“In the absence of any real progress (in psychopharmacology), psychodrug makers have relied on marketing gimmicks. By far the most successful one portrays psychodrugs as treatment for specific chemical imbalances in the brain. Since psychodrugs alter brain chemicals, so the pitch goes, the conditions they target must be caused by chemical imbalances… A similar line of illogical reasoning would have us believe that aspirin deficiency causes headache, since when we take aspirin the headache gets better.”
Robert Taylor, Finding the Right Psychiatrist
Or as Joanna Moncrieff explains regarding the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders that took off in the 1970s.
“The drug companies were trying to capture that huge market of people who once took tranquilizers. But because the old model of how drugs work had been tarnished, they needed a new model to reassert their value and necessity. So now these drugs were cast as curing us rather than changing us. And that’s where the idea of the chemical imbalance came in. It was perfect because it implied that these drugs actually corrected a defect in the brain. If you have a brain disorder, a chemical imbalance, and this pill is going to correct that imbalance, then obviously you must take it… And this unthinking acceptance of the disease-centered view has dominated mainstream psychiatry for the last twenty or thirty years.”
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
To convince the public of the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders, one of the biggest propaganda campaigns in history was conducted. The major parties involved included the American Psychiatric Association, or APA, Big Pharma, the non-profit organization National Alliance on Mental Illness, or NAMI, as well as the National Institute of Mental Health, or NIMH. Or as Robert Whitaker writes:
“…a powerful quartet of voices came together during the 1980s eager to inform the public that mental disorders were brain diseases. Pharmaceutical companies provided the financial muscle. The APA and psychiatrists at top medical schools conferred intellectual legitimacy upon the enterprise. The NIMH put the government’s stamp of approval on the story. NAMI provided a moral authority. This was a coalition that could convince American society of almost anything…”
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic
This propaganda campaign initially focused on convincing the public that depression is caused by a chemical imbalance. Depression was likely chosen as the initial target of this campaign because of the fact that most people experience depression at some point in life and so a massive market exists for drugs promoted as “antidepressant”. In 1984, the NIMH launched an educational program called Depression Awareness, Recognition, and Treatment, or DART, whose stated purpose was “to change public attitudes so that there is greater acceptance of depression as a disorder rather than a weakness.” The NIMH director Lewis Judd in 1990 unequivocally claimed:
“Two decades of research have shown that [psychiatric disorders] are diseases and illnesses like any other diseases and illnesses.”
Quoted in Anatomy of an Epidemic by Robert Whitaker
Newspapers, magazines, and books by renowned psychiatrists, were also used in this propaganda campaign. In 1989, New York magazine placed the antidepressant drug Prozac on its cover with the headline: “Bye, Bye Blues. A New Wonder Drug for Depression.” One year later Newsweek Magazine’s cover read: “Prozac: A Breakthrough for Depression.” In the same year, one of America’s most famous science writers at the time, Natalie Angier of the New York Times, wrote that antidepressants “work by restoring the balance of neurotransmitter activity in the brain, correcting an abnormal excess or inhibition of the electrochemical signals that control mood, thoughts, appetite, pain and other sensations.” In 1993, the Brown University psychiatrist Peter Kramer published the book Listening to Prozac, which spent 21 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list, and in which he stated that Prozac was making some patients “better than well” and ushering in a new era of “cosmetic psychopharmacology”.
The United States was not the only country to spread Big Pharma’s propaganda. The Royal Colleges of Psychiatrists in the UK set up a Defeat Depression Campaign, which was funded by the pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly, the makers of Prozac.
“The campaign sought to persuade General Practitioners that they should diagnose more people as depressed and prescribe more antidepressants…The campaign also aimed to reduce the general public’s resistance to taking drugs for depression.”
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
In both the UK and America, these propaganda campaigns were enormously successful.
“This selling of depression, which was being done under the guise of a “public education” campaign, turned into one of the most effective marketing efforts ever devised.”
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic
Between 1992 and 2002, the number of prescriptions issued for antidepressants in the UK increased by 235%. In 1992 sales of Prozac in the United States reached $1 billion dollars. Pharmaceutical companies were swimming in profits, and patients flocked to psychiatrists to be told which chemical imbalance was responsible for their mental distress, and which drugs would fix their brain. The widespread acceptance of the chemical imbalance theory gave the field of psychiatry the legitimacy it was looking for, for as the psychiatrist David Healy explained, it “set the stage [for psychiatrists] to become real doctors.” Or as Robert Whitaker writes:
“Doctors in internal medicine had their antibiotics, and now psychiatrists could have their “anti-disease” pills too.”
Robert Whitaker, Anatomy of an Epidemic
The problem with this public relations campaign is that the chemical imbalance theory that was sold to the public is false. It is a “big lie”.
“Many professionals and the public have been falsely convinced that biochemical imbalances in the brain drive mental suffering, such as the serotonin theory of depression or the dopamine theory of so-called schizophrenia. Yet the evidence for any biological basis for ‘‘psychiatric disorders’’ is utterly lacking.”
Peter Breggin, Journal of Contemporary Psychotherapy, 2016
Or as the psychiatrist Joanna Moncrieff echoes in the introduction to The Myth of the Chemical Cure:
“This book exposes the traditional view that psychiatric drugs target underlying diseases, or correct chemical imbalances, as fraud. It traces the emergence of this view and suggest that it was adopted not because there was any evidence to support it, but because it served the vested interest of the psychiatric profession, the pharmaceutical industry and the modern state.”
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
Some studies, funded by the pharmaceutical industry, have concluded that low serotonin levels are implicated in depression, which seems to suggest that drugs that raise these levels may improve depressive symptoms. But the methodology of these studies has been revealed as highly flawed, Moncrieff notes that “contradictory evidence has been overlooked or reframed as supportive”, follow up studies have found no connection between serotonin levels and depression, and meta-analyses of studies have further dispelled the myth that serotonin is implicated in depression. And as Johan Hari explains:
“If depression and anxiety are caused by a chemical imbalance, and antidepressants work by fixing that imbalance, then you have to account for something odd that [scientists] kept finding. Antidepressant drugs that increase serotonin in the brain have the same modest effect, in clinical trials, as drugs that reduce serotonin in the brain. And they have the same effect as drugs that increase another chemical, norepinephrine. And they have the same effect as drugs that increase another chemical, dopamine. In other words—no matter what chemical you tinker with, you get the same outcome.”
Johan Hari, Lost Connections
Or as Nassir Ghaemi, a psychiatrist and neuroscientist at Novartis Institute, one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, explains:
“Our best-selling psychopharmacology textbook consists of pure speculations presented as pretty pictures . . . which we mistake for science. We have a huge amount of neurobiology research now to conclude that… neurotransmitter theories of psychopharmacology basically are false. The dopamine and [serotonin] hypotheses of schizophrenia and depression are wrong…”
Nassir Ghaemi, One Step Back, Two Steps Forward
One of the problems with studies that seek to prove the chemical imbalance theory of mental illness is that we possess no real understanding of how neurotransmitter levels influence or impact human experience. Furthermore, neurotransmitter levels in the brain are constantly fluctuating and there is no agreed upon standard of what constitutes healthy levels. As there is no known “normal” balance of neurotransmitters, there is no way to know what an imbalance would look like, and no way to test if a brain is chemically imbalanced. Or as professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University Hospital, David Kaiser, writes:
“Patients have been diagnosed with “chemical imbalances” despite the fact that no test exists to support such a claim, and there is no real conception of what a correct balance would look like . . . . Yet conclusions such as “depression is a biochemical imbalance” are created out of nothing more than semantics and the wishful thinking of scientists/ psychiatrists and a public that will believe anything now that has the stamp of approval of medical science.”
David Kaiser, Commentary: Against Biological Psychiatry
While the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders is what the Professor Emeritus of Psychiatry Ronald Pies called an “urban legend”, this theory continues to be widely promoted as an undisputed truth by the psychiatric industry, big pharma, government agencies, and the mainstream media. For example, in 2005, the American Psychiatric Association stated that: “antidepressants may be prescribed to correct imbalances in the levels of chemicals in the brain.” While in 2019, Channon Hodge, a correspondent for CNN, which receives millions of dollars each month in advertising for Big Pharma, stated that:
“Researchers identified the chemical imbalances that correlate with problems such as depression, for example, and use treatments such as Prozac or Zoloft which block the reabsorption of serotonin so more of it can remain floating around in the brain. The more serotonin floating around, the happier we feel.”
Channon Hodge, CNN Online, April 4, 2019
In an article titled Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris, the psychotherapist Gary Greenberg notes how the widespread acceptance of the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders has been an act of mass-deception perpetuated on an unsuspecting public.
“The chemical-imbalance theory…may fail as science, but as rhetoric it has turned out to be a wild success.”
Gary Greenberg, Psychiatry’s Incurable Hubris
Or as Joanna Moncrieff echoes:
“It appears that recent propaganda has been effective enough to persuade a large section of the population that their biochemistry is awry and that they need drug treatment to correct it.”
Joanna Moncrieff, The Myth of the Chemical Cure
But if the chemical imbalance theory of mental disorders is a big lie, and there is no known neurotransmitter imbalances for psychiatric drugs to fix, then what are psychiatric drugs doing to the brain and mind? In the next video, we examine this question.
https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00DrRichSwier.comhttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngDrRichSwier.com2025-04-05 15:51:242025-04-05 15:51:24Big Pharma and the Big Lie — The Chemical Imbalance Theory of Mental Illness
Falling birth rates in rich nations threaten collapse, while poorer regions boom—forcing tough questions on economics, culture, and why modern women choose not to have children.
Throughout the developed world, birth rates have crashed. But the “population bomb” that author Paul Ehrlich warned us about in the 1970s still exists; it’s just confined to the nations with the lowest per capita income. The correlation is almost perfect. The average number of children per woman in extremely poor nations is still extremely high.
For example,births per woman in Niger stand at a world-leading 6.6, which means that every generation the population of that nation will more than triple. Meanwhile, the per capita income in Niger, even based on purchasing power parity, stands at a dismal $2,084 per year. Exponential national population growth is occurring across most of the African continent, where in 1950, the population was estimated at around 225 million compared to an estimated 1.5 billion today. By 2050, Africa’s population is estimated to rise to 2.5 billion and is not estimated to level off until 2100 at nearly 4 billion people.
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There are pockets of fecundity elsewhere in the world, primarily in the Middle East, but if you exclude Africa and some Islamic nations, the entire global population is on a path to oblivion. From China (1.2 children per woman), Korea (0.9), and Japan (1.3) to Germany (1.5), Italy (1.3), and the United Kingdom (1.6), populations are on track to descend by 50 percent in at most two generations. The European numbers are only slightly better than the Asian numbers because of immigration.
Because of the sensitive nature of the information, it is difficult to get reliable statistics on the birth rates of indigenous European women. But according to official data from the German government, nearly 50 percent of all children under the age of five in Germany have a “migration background.” Since 80 percent of Germany’s population is still reported as having “German origin,” it is clear that immigrant birthrates are far higher than the birthrates of indigenous German women.
This pattern repeats itself throughout the European nations and nations of European origin. According to the Office of National Statistics in the United Kingdom, the most common name for baby boys is now Muhammad. In the hopefully more assimilative United States, according to Pew Research, “minority” births now outnumber white births.
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What these demographic trends portend for our future is central to every major issue we face. Can we maintain economic health if we accept a population in terminal decline? So far, the Asians are betting they can, relying on automation and AI to fill the labor gaps. Can we maintain cultural stability if we import Africans and Moslems to have babies since we don’t want to anymore? That’s the bet the European nations are making.
But there is an even more fundamental question that ought to be the topic of massive public debate, without stigmatizing the participants or restricting the theories offered up. Why don’t women in developed nations want to have babies anymore?
Answers to this question typically travel into safe spaces. It’s economics: the cost of living is too high. Or the slightly conspiratorial but increasingly mainstream explanation that endocrine disruptors in our food and water have lowered the fertility and the libido of men and women alike. And, of course, the likely possibility that social media has spawned a younger generation that is isolated, socially stunted, and intimacy challenged.
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To some degree or another, all of these explanations are true, but they ignore countervailing facts: Our nations are now filled with subcultures for whom none of these reasons apply to nearly the same effect. What are they doing that we stopped doing? And here is where we dive into the topics and theories that one may risk career and political suicide to utter.
There is a pundit on X who goes by the name “hoe_math” and bills himself as “history’s manliest and most hilarious sex genius.” He recently released a brief video post on his X account that squeezes several inflammatory explanations for low female fertility into 2 minutes and 14 seconds. Something this succinct deserves analysis, despite being horrifically biased, sexist, etc., etc., etc., because even if he is overstating his case and ignoring other factors and being deliberately offensive, he is covering the forbidden bases that need to be covered. If there were more honest scholarship available on these topics, we might by now have a more sanitized and more credible compilation. But we don’t. So here goes.
The video opens with a clip of a woman who claims women don’t need men anymore. To which “hoe_math” goes to work. He begins by saying that women’s need for men is not gone, just more indirect now, stating that “men have always been between women and the real world.”
Relying on hand-drawn pictographs, he shows seven women in pink dresses, safe inside a circle that is shielded by men who are getting killed (denoted by being crossed out with red X marks), protecting them from danger. “Your office job is not the real world,” he continues. “Men face danger and build things in order to create a safe space for women. You just don’t understand that because you’re too comfortable . . . If all men stopped working right now, we would all die. That’s because men make all the food and build all the houses and the walls.”
If the first half of the video asserts that that base reality still exists, requiring the presence of men, the second half explores the consequences of denying that assertion. Speaking about women, he says, “And then you look around and go, ‘Hey, men have more than us. No fair,’ so you go to the government, which writes some laws for you that make you equal, and then you are disgusted by men who are equal to you.” He then ventures his primary argument, saying, “So without equality laws, it’s very easy for women to find men they respect, and with equality laws, it’s very difficult.”
Moving from the impact of financially empowering women to the impact it has on men, he states, “And then everyone tells these men they are worthless,” while in the video placing a “not people” card over the first seven levels of men on a pictograph that has columns of men and women ranked from 10 down to 1. He then says the men who are deemed worthless decide not to work anymore and instead turn themselves into a Peter Pan type character that rejects personal responsibilities and refuses to grow up.
Whatever else you may say about this video, and despite its glib oversimplifications, it has too much substance to be dismissed. A study conducted in 2006 by academics from MIT and the University of Chicago evaluated the role of height and annual income in determining male attractiveness to women. It found that for a man 5′ 6″ in height to be as attractive as a man 6′ tall, the shorter man would have to earn $175,000 per year more than the six-footer. For a 5′ 8″ man, the gap he would have to fill drops to $138,000 per year. A man only 5′ 2″ tall would have to earn a whopping $269,000 per year more than the six-foot man to be considered equally attractive to women.
Income matters. A 2022 study of dating site behavior found that “Men with combined income and education that was one standard deviation greater than the mean received 255%—over three times—more indicators of interest than men with combined income and education that was one standard deviation less than the mean.” A 2018 study published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior found that women consistently rated men with greater income as more attractive and that these findings “tally with a much broader corpus of scientific work which found high-status men were considered more attractive by women.”
If women aren’t attracted to men who make less money, that would help explain why they aren’t marrying these men and having children. But also relevant to the decline in births are two myths that are slowly disintegrating despite ongoing mainstream denial. The first is the familiar trope that women only make 83 cents for every one dollar earned by men. Not true. When normalizing for job type, qualifications, and hours worked, the “gender pay gap” all but disappears, thus diminishing the pool of eligible males.
The second myth is that women are more likely to find fulfillment in careers than in having children. Also not true. A study of American women aged 18-55 found that married women with children were twice as likely to be “very happy” as unmarried women with no children and only half as likely to be “not too happy.” As long as this myth persists, however, women are impelled to choose career over children.
These findings all come with uncomfortable implications. Are women choosing to be alone because they have an innate need to only be with a man who is more able to provide for them than they can provide for themselves, and there are no longer enough of those men to go around? Are the only cultures where women still have babies above a replacement level those cultures that discourage women from having education and careers?
The cost of living, toxins in the environment, and the isolating impact of technology are all playing a role in the catastrophic decline in birth rates in developed nations. But there are also profound and very recent changes in how we collectively choose mates and choose to have families that are probably playing the larger role. If we ignore these cultural factors, we risk losing everything. The heritage we have painstakingly built over millennia may be erased because we didn’t want to talk about it. Babies don’t yet come in bottles. Women either get pregnant and give birth to them, or we go extinct.
For decades, fear of being called racist has suppressed honest debate over mass immigration. Similarly, fear of being called sexist prevents honest debate over why there is a population crash and what to do about it.
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https://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.png00ThePricklyPear.orghttps://libertyfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/logo_v6_225x110.pngThePricklyPear.org2025-04-05 02:30:002025-04-05 02:30:00Weekend Read: Can We Fix Our Demographic Doom Loop?