The Empower Oversight whistleblower center, which represented one of the agents, Gary Shapley, disclosed the findings of the Office of Special Counsel in a letter sent to Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.
A police force has been accused of endangering a man who burned a Quran by publishing his name and address on social media despite the current risks faced by people who criticise Islam.
Elizabeth Clair, the mother of a seventh grader in suburban Detroit, wanted to find out whether her local school district had mended its ways after it lost a lawsuit for improperly tracking disgruntled parents. Instead, she’s the one who learned a lesson: Prying information out of local governments can be very expensive—and state transparency laws don’t always help.
Back in 2022, the Rochester Community School District settled a lawsuit for nearly $200,000 with another mom who accused the district of keeping a “dossier” on parents critical of Covid lockdowns. Clair said she wanted to know what the district was doing to stem future retaliation against parents. So she filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request for six months’ worth of emails containing the word anti-retaliation.
A few weeks later, she heard back from the district’s FOIA coordinator: Her request had been granted. All she had to do was pay $33,103,232.56. That’s right. More than $33 million.
Until Friday afternoon, Dr. Eithan Haim, 34, was facing a potential decade in federal prison for revealing publicly that Texas Children’s Hospital was continuing to perform gender transitions on children even after declaring a moratorium on the controversial practice. For this, Haim, a Texas surgeon, became the target of the Biden Department of Justice, which indicted him for allegedly violating patient privacy laws.
There was no violation of patient privacy. What Haim blew the whistle on were mostly surgeries to insert hormonal devices that prevent children from going through puberty. The records he revealed about these interventions carefully redacted identifying information about the patients. What’s more: He had caught the hospital in a bald-faced lie about the very existence of the program. Most dangerous for Haim was that he had run afoul of the Biden administration’s unquestioning support of medical transition of young people distressed about their gender.
“Eithan Haim was the only person with the courage to stand up for what was right,” Haim’s wife, Andrea, wrote on X about her husband taking on the powerful children’s hospital, the country’s largest. “For him, it wasn’t even a decision. Kids were being harmed, and he had to stop it.”
It came with a high price. The couple lost close friendships, all their savings, and their peace of mind. But they never budged.
On Friday came vindication.
At around 2:30 p.m. on Friday, Haim received notice that the Trump DOJ issued a dismissal of all charges against him, with prejudice—meaning the charges cannot be refiled. In a conversation with The Free Press, while he and his wife were celebrating over champagne, he said, “We didn’t think it was going to happen. We took on the federal leviathan and we won.” He added, “This is epic. This is like Lord of the Rings.”
Although Haim had raised more than $1.2 million in a GiveSendGo account, mounting a case to stay out of federal prison has cost $2 million. “We’ll be paying legal bills for 20 years,” he said.
Andrea knows about federal indictments. She herself is an assistant U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Texas—her husband was indicted in the Southern District. Andrea, who gave birth to their daughter four months ago, said of their ordeal, “I haven’t had a good night’s sleep in a year without worrying my husband would be in prison and I would be raising our daughter alone. We are now going back to normal life.”
As the Trump administration got underway, Haim had an upcoming jury trial on the Biden-era indictment. “I was facing a kangaroo court in a few weeks,” he said.
Marcella Burke, Haim’s attorney, said she and his other lawyers began to ask everyone they knew with any connection to the new administration to make the dismissal of Haim’s case a priority. But she said she had no warning that their efforts had been successful.
“We thank everyone who helped along the way to bring this massive injustice to light, and we are grateful to secure this victory on behalf of our client,” Burke said in a statement. “The fight against the evils he exposed continues, but this dismissal represents a repudiation of the weaponization of federal law enforcement and the first step in accountability for the misdeeds we have all witnessed in this case.”
Missouri senator Josh Hawley went on X Friday afternoon to tout the effectiveness of his lobbying to get the charges against Haim dismissed. He wrote, “Following my call this morning, I am delighted to report the Trump DOJ is now moving to DISMISS this illegitimate prosecution.”
Andrea Haim wrote on X that the couple had no regrets. “[I]f you ask either of us, we would do it again in a heartbeat. Because of Eithan, the world is a better place for children, including our daughter. There is no greater gift we can give her than the knowledge that her daddy is a hero.”
The single most thorough review of the pandemic conducted to date
WASHINGTON – Today, the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic concluded its two-year investigation into the Covid-19 pandemic and released a final report titled “After Action Review of the COVID-19 Pandemic: The Lessons Learned and a Path Forward.”
The final report will serve as a road map for Congress, the Executive Branch, and the private sector to prepare for and respond to future pandemics. Since February 2023, the Select Subcommittee has sent more than 100 investigative letters, conducted more than 30 transcribed interviews and depositions, held 25 hearings and meetings, and reviewed more than one million pages of documents. Members and staff have exposed high-level corruption in America’s public health system, confirmed the most likely origin of the pandemic, held Covid-19 bad actors publicly accountable, fostered bipartisan consensus on consequential pandemic-era issues, and more. This 520-page final report details all findings of the Select Subcommittee’s investigation.
“This work will help the United States, and the world, predict the next pandemic, prepare for the next pandemic, protect ourselves from the next pandemic, and hopefully prevent the next pandemic. Members of the 119th Congress should continue and build off this work, there is more information to find and honest actions to be taken,” wrote Chairman Wenstrup in a letter to Congress. “The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted a distrust in leadership. Trust is earned. Accountability, transparency, honesty, and integrity will regain this trust. A future pandemic requires a whole of America response managed by those without personal benefit or bias. We can always do better, and for the sake of future generations of Americans, we must. It can be done.”
On Wednesday, December 4, 2024, at 10:30 am, the Select Subcommittee will hold a markup of the final report and officially submit the report to the Congressional record. Ahead of the markup, the Select Subcommittee will also release additional supporting materials and recommendations.
The full, 520-page final report can be found here. A summary of the information can be found below:
The Origins of the Coronavirus Pandemic, Including but Not Limited to the Federal Government’s Funding of Gain-of-Function Research
Covid-19 ORIGIN: Covid-19 most likely emerged from a laboratory in Wuhan, China. The FIVE strongest arguments in favor of the “lab-leak” theory include:
The virus possesses a biological characteristic that is not found in nature.
Data shows that all Covid-19 cases stem from a single introduction into humans. This runs contrary to previous pandemics where there were multiple spillover events.
Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research at inadequate biosafety levels.
Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV) researchers were sick with a Covid-like virus in the fall of 2019, months before Covid-19 was discovered at the wet market.
By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced.
PROXIMAL ORIGIN PUBLICATION: “The Proximal Origin of SARS-CoV-2” publication — which was used repeatedly by public health officials and the media to discredit the lab-leak theory — was prompted by Dr. Fauci to push the preferred narrative that Covid-19 originated in nature.
GAIN-OF-FUNCTION RESEARCH: A lab-related incident involving gain-of-function research is most likely the origin of Covid-19. Current government mechanisms for overseeing this dangerous gain-of-function research are incomplete, severely convoluted, and lack global applicability.
ECOHEALTH ALLIANCE INC. (ECOHEALTH): EcoHealth — under the leadership of Dr. Peter Daszak — used US taxpayer dollars to facilitate dangerous gain-of-function research in Wuhan, China. After the Select Subcommittee released evidence of EcoHealth violating the terms of its National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant, the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) commenced official debarment proceedings and suspended all funding to EcoHealth.
New evidence also shows that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has opened an investigation into EcoHealth’s pandemic-era activities.
NIH FAILURES: NIH’s procedures for funding and overseeing potentially dangerous research are deficient, unreliable, and pose a serious threat to both public health and national security. Further, NIH fostered an environment that promoted evading federal record-keeping laws — as seen through the actions of Dr. David Morens and “FOIA Lady” Marge Moore.
The Efficacy, Effectiveness, and Transparency of the Use of Taxpayer Funds and Relief Programs to Address the Coronavirus Pandemic, Including Any Reports of Waste, Fraud, or Abuse
COVID-19 RELIEF FUNDING: Federal and state governments had significant lapses in coordination, were unprepared to oversee the allocation of Covid-19 relief funds, and failed to sufficiently identify waste, fraud, and abuse of taxpayer dollars during the pandemic.
PAYCHECK PROTECTION PROGRAM: The Paycheck Protection Program — which offered essential relief to Americans in the form of loans that could be forgiven if the funds were used to offset pandemic-era hardships — was rife with fraudulent claims resulting in at least $64 billion of taxpayers’ dollars lost to fraudsters and criminals.
FRAUDULENT UNEMPLOYMENT CLAIMS: Fraudsters cost the American taxpayer more than $191 billion by taking advantage of the federal government’s unemployment system and exploiting individuals’ personally identifiable information.
SMALL BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION (SBA) FAILURES: $200 million of taxpayers’ dollars were lost as a result of the SBA’s inability to conduct proper oversight, implement internal controls, and ensure fraud protection measures were enacted.
TRANSNATIONAL FRAUD: At least half of the taxpayer dollars lost in Covid-19 relief programs were stolen by international fraudsters.
Covid-19 RELIEF FUNDING OVERSIGHT: Expanding relief programs that lacked proper oversight functions exposed severe vulnerabilities in the system and paved the way for fraudsters, international criminals, and foreign adversaries to take advantage of taxpayers.
The Implementation or Effectiveness of Any Federal Law or Regulation Applied, Enacted, or Under Consideration to Address the Coronavirus Pandemic and Prepare for Future Pandemics
WORLD HEALTH ORGANIZATION (WHO): The WHO’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic was an abject failure because it caved to pressure from the Chinese Communist Party and placed China’s political interests ahead of its international duties. Further, the WHO’s newest effort to solve the problems exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic — via a “Pandemic Treaty” — may harm the United States.
SOCIAL DISTANCING: The “6-feet apart” social distancing recommendation — which shut down schools and small businesses across the country — was arbitrary and not based on science. During closed-door testimony, Dr. Fauci testified that the guidance, “sort of just appeared.”
MASK MANDATES: There was no conclusive evidence that masks effectively protected Americans from Covid-19. Public health officials flip-flopped on the efficacy of masks without providing Americans scientific data — causing a massive uptick in public distrust.
LOCKDOWNS: Prolonged lockdowns caused immeasurable harm to not only the American economy but also to the mental and physical health of Americans, with a particularly negative effect on younger citizens. Rather than prioritizing the protection of the most vulnerable populations, federal and state government policies forced millions of Americans to forgo crucial elements of a healthy and financially sound life.
NEW YORK PANDEMIC FAILURES: Former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo’s March 25 Order — which forced nursing homes to accept Covid-19-positive patients — was medical malpractice. Evidence shows that Mr. Cuomo and his administration worked to cover up the tragic aftermath of their policy decisions in an apparent effort to shield themselves from accountability.
Evidence suggests Mr. Cuomo knowingly and willfully made false statements to the Select Subcommittee on numerous occasions about material aspects of New York’s Covid-19 nursing home disaster and the ensuing coverup. The Select Subcommittee referred Mr. Cuomo to the DOJ for criminal prosecution.
TRAVEL RESTRICTIONS: President Trump’s rapidly implemented travel restrictions saved lives. During Dr. Fauci’s transcribed interview, he unequivocally agreed with every travel restriction issued by the Trump administration. This testimony runs counter to the public narrative that the Trump administration’s travel restrictions were xenophobic.
Covid-19 MISINFORMATION: Public health officials often spread misinformation through conflicting messaging, knee-jerk reactions, and a lack of transparency. In the most egregious examples of pervasive misinformation campaigns, off-label drug use, and the lab-leak theory were unjustly demonized by the federal government.
The Biden administration even employed undemocratic and likely unconstitutional methods — including pressuring social media companies to censor certain Covid-19 content — to fight what it deemed misinformation.
The Development of Vaccines and Treatments, and the Development and Implementation of Vaccination Policies for Federal Employees and Members of the Armed Forces
OPERATION WARP SPEED: President-elect Trump’s Operation Warp Speed — which encouraged the rapid development and authorization of the Covid-19 vaccine — was highly successful and helped save millions of lives.
Covid-19 VACCINE: Contrary to what was promised, the Covid-19 vaccine did not stop the spread or transmission of the virus.
RUSHED Covid-19 VACCINE APPROVAL: The FDA rushed approval of the Covid-19 vaccine in order to meet the Biden administration’s arbitrary mandate timeline. Two leading FDA scientists warned their colleagues about the dangers of rushing the vaccine approval process and the likelihood of adverse events. They were ignored, and days later, the Biden administration mandated the vaccine.
VACCINE MANDATES: Vaccine mandates were not supported by science and caused more harm than good. The Biden administration coerced healthy Americans into compliance with Covid-19 vaccine mandates that trampled individual freedoms, harmed military readiness, and disregarded medical freedom to force a novel vaccine on millions of Americans without sufficient evidence to support their policy decisions.
NATURAL IMMUNITY: Public health officials engaged in a coordinated effort to ignore natural immunity — which is acquired through previous Covid-19 infection — when developing vaccine guidance and mandates.
VACCINE INJURY REPORTING SYSTEM: Vaccine injury reporting systems created confusion, failed to properly inform the American public about vaccine injuries, and deteriorated public trust in vaccine safety during the Covid-19 pandemic.
VACCINE INJURY COMPENSATION: The government is failing to efficiently, fairly, and transparently adjudicate claims for the Covid-19 vaccine injured.
The Economic Impact of the Coronavirus Pandemic and Associated Government Response on Individuals, Communities, Small Businesses, Health Care Providers, States, and Local Government Entities
BUSINESS IMPACTS: Federal and state governments imposed mandatory lockdowns that were the primary cause of temporary and permanent business closures. More than 160,000 businesses closed due to the pandemic — with 60% of those closures classified as permanent. For the businesses that stayed or reopened, the lack of supply chain diversity exacerbated pandemic-era challenges and deepened existing disparities.
HEALTHCARE IMPACTS: America’s healthcare system was severely damaged by the Covid-19 pandemic. Patients experienced a decreased quality-of-care, longer wait times, shorter medical appointments, and missed diagnoses.
WORKER IMPACTS: Unemployment rates surged to levels not seen since the Great Depression. Overly broad mitigation measures — including the now debunked “6-feet apart” guidance — disproportionately impacted sectors with low-wage earners.
FEDERAL RESERVE: The Federal Reserve’s aggressive, early, and unprecedented response to the Covid-19 pandemic prevented a severe economic downturn. This continued approach also contributed to staggering inflation.
The Societal Impact of Decisions to Close Schools, How the Decisions Were Made, and Whether There is Evidence of Widespread Learning Loss or Other Negative Effects as a Result of These Decisions
Covid-19 SCHOOL CLOSURES: The “science” never justified prolonged school closures. Children were unlikely to contribute to the spread of Covid-19 or suffer severe illness or mortality. Instead, as a result of school closures, children experienced historic learning loss, higher rates of psychological distress, and decreased physical well-being.
CENTERS FOR DISEASE CONTROL AND PREVENTION (CDC) INFLUENCE: The Biden administration’s CDC broke precedent and provided a political teachers organization with access to its scientific school reopening guidance. Former CDC Director Rochelle Walensky asked the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) to provide specific language for the guidance and even went so far as to accept numerous edits made by AFT.
AFT INFLUENCE: Schools remained closed longer than necessary because of AFT’s political interference in the CDC’s school reopening guidance. AFT is a political union, not a scientific organization, that advocated for mitigation efforts that prolonged school closures — including an automatic closure “trigger.”
Testimony revealed that AFT President Weingarten had a direct telephone line to contact former CDC Director Walensky.
LONG-TERM IMPACTS: Standardized test scores show that children lost decades' worth of academic progress as a result of Covid-19 school closures. Mental and physical health concerns also skyrocketed — with suicide attempts by 12-17 year-aged girls rising 51%.
Cooperation By the Executive Branch and Others with Congress, the Inspectors General, the Government Accountability Office, and Others in Connection with Oversight of the Preparedness for and Response to the Coronavirus Pandemic
HHS OBSTRUCTION: The Biden administration’s HHS engaged in a multi-year campaign of delay, confusion, and non-responsiveness in an attempt to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation and hide evidence that could incriminate or embarrass senior public health officials. It appears that HHS even intentionally under-resourced its component that responds to legislative oversight requests.
ECOHEALTH OBSTRUCTION: EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigation by providing publicly available information, instructing his staff to reduce the scope and pace of productions, and doctoring documents before releasing them to the public. Further, Dr. Daszak provided false statements to Congress.
DR. DAVID MORENS: Dr. Fauci’s Senior Advisor, Dr. David Morens, deliberately obstructed the Select Subcommittee’s investigation, likely lied to Congress on multiple occasions, unlawfully deleted federal Covid-19 records, and shared nonpublic information about NIH grant processes with EcoHealth President Dr. Peter Daszak.
NEW YORK OBSTRUCTION: New York’s Executive Chamber — led presently by Governor Kathy Hochul — redacted documents, offered numerous illegitimate privilege claims, and withheld thousands of documents without an apparent legal basis to obstruct the Select Subcommittee’s investigation into former Governor Cuomo’s pandemic-era failures.
The above press release is from the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic
I know, with like 200 executive orders already in this administration, it is hard to imagine one was missing. But if I were the victim of some sort of horrible karma and found myself as President, I was thinking about what EO I might sign (other than one repealing all the others). This is what I came up with:
Subject: Federal Transparency
I hereby order that all Federal agencies, from this day forward, follow the letter of the f*cking law in the Freedom of Information Act. All requests will be processed in a timely manner as specified in the law and all redactions will be made solely based on the exceptions allowed in the law and those exceptions will be interpreted narrowly. Redactions in any document released to the public solely to protect the reputation of an individual or agency shall be grounds for immediate termination of those involved [update: here is a famous example]
Further, all public business will be handled through public channels and will be archived as required by law. Anyone attempting to conduct public business through private channels that cannot be archived or FOIA'd will be subject to immediate termination.
Further, within 90 days the US military, the US state department, and all intelligence agencies are required to submit to me proposed updated guidelines and processes for marking documents as classified or secret with the goal of reducing documents with any sort of classification by 90%. Anyone found to be over-classifying documents to protect an individual or agency's reputation will be subject to immediate termination.
If I knew more about Federal organization I would probably propose pulling FOIA officers out of their agencies and into some new group. Maybe we pull out all the Inspector Generals as well and put them in that new group too.
Postscript
Who the heck remembers all the stuff like this to do day 1? I can't remember that my wife told me to start the dishwasher at the next commercial.
Apparently Canada's speech laws closely mirror those of Russia...
Below is my column in the Hill on the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his anti-free speech legacy. The collapse of free speech in Canada is a cautionary tale for Americans. It shows how Trudeau and the Liberal Party used faux rhetoric of tolerance and inclusion to justify intolerance and exclusion.
Here is the column:
With Justin Trudeau’s announcement that he will step down as prime minister, Canada is now looking for a new leader after a decade under his policies. The question is whether anyone will look for the remnants of Canadian free speech in the wreckage of the Trudeau government.
Canada has long been a country caught between two influences: the United Kingdom and the United States. It has shared DNA with both nations. Unfortunately, it has largely followed the British approach in treating free speech more like a privilege than a right.
That dubious tradition was magnified over the last decade by a wholesale attack on free speech deemed hostile, insulting or triggering for different groups.
In many ways, Canada has been a cautionary tale for many in the U.S., as the same voices of censorship and criminalization grow on our campuses and in Congress.
Indeed, BlueSky, a social media site that offers a safe space for liberals who do not want to be triggered by opposing views, has apparently embraced Canadian-style standards for censorship as part of its pitch for those with viewpoint intolerance.
For over a decade, Trudeau has been the cheerful face of modern censorship. While exuding tolerance and inclusivity, he hammered critics with draconian measures and perfectly Orwellian soundbites. In the name of tolerance, he proudly proclaimed intolerance for opposing views.
Trudeau shows how speech codes and virtue signaling are now chic on the left. In a town hall event, Trudeau chastised a woman for asking a question that used the term “mankind” and instructed her, “We like to say ‘peoplekind’ … because it’s more inclusive.” (He later claimed he was joking. If so, many of his policies have the same punchline and are no joking matter.)
In many ways, Trudeau’s true colors emerged in his crackdown on the trucker protests opposing COVID-19 mandates in 2022, a campaign widely supported by an enabling media. Trudeau invoked the 1988 Emergencies Act for the first time to freeze bank accounts of truckers and contributions by other Canadian citizens, powers long condemned by civil liberties groups in Canada.
The anti-free speech apple did not fall far from the tree. It was Trudeau’s father, Pierre Trudeau, who as prime minister used the predecessor to the act for the first time in peacetime to suspend civil liberties.
Trudeau was widely criticized for his anti-free speech policies, including his move to amend the Criminal Code and the Canadian Human Rights Act to criminalize any “communication that expresses detestation or vilification of an individual or group of individuals on the basis of a prohibited ground of discrimination.”
It was used to prevent “social media platforms [from being] used to threaten, intimidate, bully and harass people, or used to promote racist, anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, misogynistic and homophobic views that target communities, put people’s safety at risk and undermine Canada’s social cohesion or democracy.”
Under Trudeau, human rights commissions became virtual speech commissars in Canada. A conservative webmaster was prosecuted for allowing third parties to leave insulting comments about gay people and minorities on the site. Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley insisted that “the minimal harm caused … to freedom of expression is far outweighed by the benefit it provides to vulnerable groups and to the promotion of equality.” Even a comedian was prosecuted for insulting jokes involving lesbians.
Recently, a Canadian mayor and a town were prosecuted for not hoisting an “LGBTQ2 rainbow flag” in celebration of Pride Month — even though they did not have a flag pole.
Despite crushing the trucker protests, the Canadian parliament extended Trudeau’s emergency powers to allow him to continue to harass and threaten those on the right. Despite broad opposition, the Liberal Party, the NDP and other allies were able to muster 181 votes to keep authoritarian powers alive in Canada. (The Canadian courts later, belatedly, declared the Trudeau powers unconstitutional).
Many of the same legislators would later push to increase the penalties for certain speech crimes to life imprisonment.
One of the most tragically ironic moments for Canada came last year, when Trudeau’s government blocked the citizenship of Russian dissident Maria Kartasheva because she has a conviction in Russia. She had been tried in absentia by a judge sanctioned by Canada for her exercise of free speech in Russia in condemning the Ukrainian war. The Canadian government informed Kartasheva that her conviction in Russia aligns with a Criminal Code offense relating to false information in Canada.
Think about that. Canada was concerned because she violated anti-free speech laws that are similar to its own. The Russians convicted her of disseminating “deliberately false information,” and Canada convicts people under laws like Section 372(1) of the Criminal Code of Canada for efforts “to convey, cause, or procure to be conveyed false information with the intent to alarm or injure anyone.”
That is why some of us spit out our soup in 2022 when Trudeau’s government condemned Cuba for its own crackdown on protesters, claiming that “Canada strongly advocates for freedom of expression and the right to peaceful assembly free from intimidation.” Trudeau also condemned China for cracking down on protests over COVID-19, the very subject of his own crackdown on the truckers.
Yet Trudeau has been a darling of the Canadian and American press despite a disapproval rate of around 68 percent among Canadian citizens. The media clearly approves of his position that “freedom of expression is not without limits” when others seek “to arbitrarily or unnecessarily injure those with whom we are sharing a society and a planet.”
So the question is: Now that Trudeau is heading out, where do Canadians go to get their free speech back?
In the annals of environmental law, no creature is more famous than the Snail Darter, the endangered species that shut down completion of the Tellico Dam in the 1970s. It required congressional legislation to allow the dam to be finished after years in the courts where judges maintained that the species had to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. According to the New York Times., the species may turn out to be as mythical as a unicorn.
The controversy began in 1967 when the Tennessee Valley Authority started constructing a dam on the Little Tennessee River, roughly 20 miles outside Knoxville. Environmentalists and locals opposed the project and, in 1973, a zoologist at the University of Tennessee named David Etnier went snorkeling with his students and found a possible solution. He spotted a small fish and called it a “snail darter” because of its movements and eating habits. He reportedly announced “Here’s a little fish that might save your farm.”
Dr. Zygmunt Plater, an environmental law professor at Boston College, represented the snail darter before the Supreme Court. He did an excellent job and, in 1978, the Supreme Court ruled that “the Endangered Species Act prohibits impoundment of the Little Tennessee River by the Tellico Dam” to protect the endangered snail darters.
That was then.
The Times now quotes Thomas Near, the curator of ichthyology at the Yale Peabody Museum who leads a fish biology lab at the university, that “there is, technically, no snail darter.” Worse yet, it was actually just another member of the eastern population of Percina uranidea, or stargazing darters, which is not considered endangered.
Near and his colleagues have published the results in Current Biology
In other words, years of litigation and millions of dollars were spent on what was a false claim, and the courts accepted the claims hook, line, and sinker.
Under the ESA, the snail darter was listed as protected and therefore triggered Section 7 of the Act barring federal agencies from undertaking actions that could jeopardize a species’ survival or destroy any of its critical habitat.
In Tennessee Valley Auth. v. Hill, 437 U.S. 153 (1978), Chief Justice Warren Burger noted that the finding of this “previously unknown species of perch” changed everything on a legal level. He added:
“Until recently, the finding of a new species of animal life would hardly generate a cause celebre. This is particularly so in the case of darters, of which there are approximately 130 known species, 8 to 10 of these having been identified only in the last five years. The moving force behind the snail darter’s sudden fame came some four months after its discovery, when the Congress passed the Endangered Species Act of 1973 (Act), 87 Stat. 884, 16 U.S.C. § 1531 et seq. (1976 ed.).”
Plater insisted that Dr. Near is merely a “lumper” who tends to rely on genetics rather than being a “splitter” who proliferates new species. Dr. Plater added that “whether he intends it or not, lumping is a great way to cut back on the Endangered Species Act.”
That was a particularly revealing point from the law professor since it suggests what could be an overwhelming motive could be legal and not scientific in declaring the new species — the very objection raised in the litigation and denied by many advocates.
Roughly three years ago, the government declared victory in restoring the snail darter and the Fish and Wildlife Service proposed removing it from the ESA list of threatened species.
Meet Naz Shah, a Muslim member of parliament in the UK. Here she is giving a speech about how British people should not be allowed to insult the "Prophet" Mohammed:
The authors of an influential but controversial 2020 paper on the activity of bat coronaviruses in China which proposed the animals as a “likely origin” for the virus that causes COVID-19 have retracted their work and republished a revised version of the analysis. They say their results and conclusions did not change.
The authors are affiliated with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the New York City-based nonprofit organization EcoHealth Alliance, which has come under intense scrutiny by members of the U.S. Congress and others. The U.S. government in May suspended funding for EcoHealth amid concerns the COVID-19 pandemic virus may have developed from research on which the nonprofit and Wuhan lab collaborated – a so-called “lab leak.” EcoHealth has denied the pandemic virus could have emerged from its work.
Peter Daszak, a corresponding author of the paper and president of EcoHealth, told Retraction Watch the researchers had discovered dozens of the more than 1,000 viral sequences in the paper didn’t come from China, but from “a few miles over the border” in Laos. He explained:
Given that bats on both sides of the border likely co-mingle, and that our initial analyses were conducted by zoogeographic regions which encompass cross-border populations, we did not expect that the inclusion of these samples changed any conclusions substantially. However, given that the title and focus of the paper was for CoVs from bats in China, the authors decided to remove the 41 Laotian sequences, and repeat all of the paper’s analyses. During this process, we were also able to remove 29 sequences that were duplicated in the Genbank database. As expected, the results did not change substantially, and the conclusions remain the same.
Nature Communications published the revised analysis on December 19, along with a retraction notice for the original article. The abstracts of the original and revised papers are identical, except for the number of viral sequences.
The authors learned of the erroneously included sequences “months after publication,” Daszak said. He did not immediately respond to our questions about when his group informed the journal, or whether they considered publishing an expression of concern while they conducted the new analysis.
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This morning’s story about the Twitter Files and the possibility of new speech investigations came on the heels of good news I heard of late, suggesting the cavalry might be coming on First Amendment issues.
Now, there’s word of an ugly development in a fight over the continued funding of the State Department’s Global Engagement Center. Gabe Kaminsky of the Washington Examiner, the young reporter whose extensive digging on GEC beginning in 2023 was crucial in shining a light on its funding of “blacklisting” efforts, reports that the agency, scheduled to be shuttered, may get a “one-year lifeline”:
According to a congressional source familiar with the matter, the GEC provision was a private demand from Senate Democrats in exchange for Republicans getting a provision aiming to protect small businesses from certain fines approved by the Biden administration under a bill called the Corporate Transparency Act.
I’m still trying to clarify what’s happening, but I want readers to know that if the GOP or the incoming administration sells out voters on the speech issue, you’ll hear about it here. The GEC escaping the chopping block would be a blow. More to come.
Authorities in Bend, Oregon, were wide-eyed with disbelief when they found their beloved outdoor sculptures improved by the addition of hilarious googly eyes.
In the newest America This Week, Walter Kirn and I watched a clip of “PoliticsGirl” host Leigh McGowan insisting that Hunter Biden’s crimes were less serious than Donald Trump’s because he merely “failed to file and pay taxes when he was a drug addict.” Without thinking I immediately demanded to know why no one had yet spoofed the great Afroman hit Because I Got Highusing lyrics like, “I wasn’t gonna evade tax/But I got high…”
I’ve been flooded with messages this morning insisting an apology is in order, because Afroman himself wrote and performed Hunter Got High. Walter will like this lyric: “Ukraine wasn’t part of the plan, till Hunter got high/China wasn’t that big of a fan, till Hunter got high…” As usual with this man, it’s on the money. Apologies to the inimitable Afroman:
Federal law enforcement has been able to access bank customer financial information through manipulating the Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) system, the report said
U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, demanded that the DOE produce the requested documents, asking Crabtree if he ran the research and development programs, which he said he did.
White House officials… are carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons to those who’ve committed no crimes… [worried] it could suggest impropriety, only fueling Trump’s criticisms, and because those offered preemptive pardons may reject them… mentioned by Biden’s aides for a pardon is Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases who became a lightning rod for criticism from the right during the Covid-19 pandemic.
If Anthony Fauci gets a “blanket” pardon, he’ll wrap himself and sleep in it. Plan B was living under an assumed name in Argentina, dressed in the Anthony Hopkins vacation suit from Silence of the Lambs. Throughout the pandemic the NIAID head showed he was willing to do anything, from shuttering schools to lying to Congress to making private campaign stops at intelligence agencies to urge investigators off his path, to keep the ick of scandal off his person. He won’t reject squat.
The Politico piece by Jonathan Martin might be the first of the era that needs to be read entirely between the lines. White House officials are “carefully weighing” preemptive pardons really means White House officials already decided, but are publicly floating the idea. Pardons for “those who’ve committed no crimes” means those who’ve committed crimes. “Could suggest impropriety” would admit impropriety. Criticism from “the right” is criticismfrom all. It goes on:
Below is my column in the Hill on the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his anti-free speech legacy. The collapse of free speech in Canada is a cautionary tale for Americans. It shows how Trudeau and the Liberal Party used faux rhetoric of tolerance and inclusion to justify intolerance and exclusion.
In the annals of environmental law, no creature is more famous than the Snail Darter, the endangered species that shut down completion of the Tellico Dam in the 1970s. It required congressional legislation to allow the dam to be finished after years in the courts where judges maintained that the species had to be protected under the Endangered Species Act. According to the New York Times., the species may turn out to be as mythical as a unicorn.
