The House over the weekend lifted its COVID-19 mask mandate, ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union on Tuesday night in House chambers before a joint session of Congress.
The change, which makes masks optional, was announced Sunday by Capitol Physician Brian Monahan.
“Individuals may choose to mask at any time, but it is no longer a requirement,” he said in a letter to lawmakers, who are returning Monday to Capitol Hill.
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Wisconsin. Senator Ron Johnson (R) and Dr. Robert Malone wrote in an op-ed at The Federalist Thursday the “COVID cartel” – federal health agencies, Big Pharma, establishment media, and Big Tech – lied in order to scapegoat unvaccinated Americans in a campaign to divide the nation.
Johnson, who has spearheaded efforts to break the silencing of physicians and scientists on the issue of early treatment for COVID-19, and Malone, a pioneer in the development of mRNA technology, wrote Americans have been deceived for the sake of covering up government fraud and incompetence, while likely thousands have died unnecessary deaths.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill this week that at least 35 organizations asked him to veto. Now health-care providers have liability protection from being sued by patients and family members over COVID-19-related injuries, deaths and refusal to try available treatment.
The new law provides liability protection to health-care providers that follow “government-issued health standards” that “include the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines, which many say aren’t working,” the groups wrote in a letter to DeSantis. “Some medical professionals have stated that these CDC protocols have led to unnecessary medicines, ventilation and deaths.”
Shawn McBride, director of The American Freedom Information Institute, Inc. who led the 35-group coalition asking DeSantis to veto the bill, told The Center Square that while DeSantis “signed a bill that may allow CDC protocols to continue in some hospitals, we’ve laid the foundation to help more folks get to medical freedom.”
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A new bill would, if enacted into law, prohibit a Tennessee licensing board or disciplinary subcommittee from acting against a physician’s license based solely on the physician’s recommendations to a patient regarding treatment for COVID-19. The bill would also prohibit a pharmacy from blocking or attempting to block a patient’s access to COVID-19 treatments in certain circumstances.
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Senator Siobhan Dunnavant (R-Henrico) protested the plexiglass shields that surround senators’ desks on the senate floor.
“The first week we were here together, I shared with the body through Madam Clerk the data that shows that devices like these do not help mitigate the risk of COVID, and that they may indeed increase risk of COVID,” Dunnavant said in a floor speech. “There is no emergency order in place.”
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On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is allegedly set to announce an easing of mask restrictions on the national level.
Fox News reports that the updated guidelines will focus less on the overall number of cases, and will instead emphasize a community’s general risk of spreading the coronavirus. As such, current guidelines apply to individuals who live in communities with allegedly “substantial or high transmission.” The CDC claims, without evidence, that 95 percent of all counties in the United States qualify as “high transmission.”
The new guidelines will apparently not apply to most Americans, as the new criteria will factor in hospitalizations with the overall capacity of local medical facilities. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said that the new guidelines will focus more on “enhanced prevention efforts.”
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ALPHARETTA — Whistleblowers, some of whom have testified on Capitol Hill, told an audience in Alpharetta Thursday that the medical and pharmaceutical industries that treat COVID-19 have been corrupted. Organizers held this conference, COVID-19 Pharma Corruption: Your Life, Health, and Job, at Alpharetta’s Phase Family Learning Center.
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A Minnesota man says his wife, who is in dire need of a kidney transplant, is being denied treatment because she is not vaccinated against COVID-19.
Glenn Wilson transcribed an email from the M Health Fairview hospital system sent transplant patients, describing its guidelines for those patients to receive a transplant.
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In a Metro Nashville School Board (MNSB) meeting that turned heated Tuesday night, one of the school board members directed a curse towards parents.
Parents who attended the meeting – but were not allowed to speak – cheered when the board voted seven to one in favor of ending the school system’s mask mandate on March 21, when students return from their spring break.
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Vanderbilt University is concerned after four of its medical school students have committed suicide in less than two years.
“Vanderbilt University is committed to a culture of caring in which the well-being of all community members—our extraordinary students, the faculty who teach them, and the staff who play an immeasurable role in the success of this remarkable university—is enhanced and supported,” Vanderbilt said in a statement. “We strive to foster a culture of openness through brave dialogue, honest self-reflection, and willingness to invest in this incredible university by investing first in the mental health and wholeness of every member of the Vanderbilt family.”
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In response to a report that American truckers could follow the lead of their Canadian counterparts and clog parts of the I-95 Beltway near Washington, D.C., a Democrat congressman from Arizona has a solution for the potential peaceful protest.
“Perfect time to impound and give the trucks to small trucking companies looking to expand their business,” Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-07).
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In a letter to the House Speaker and Senate President Friday, President Joe Biden extended the national COVID-19 emergency pandemic indefinitely.
“There remains a need to continue this national emergency,” Biden wrote.
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The two oral antiviral therapeutics developed by pharmaceutical companies Merck and Pfizer to treat mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 are readily available to patients in Tennessee as a part of an increased bi-weekly allocation program.
“This increase in allocations is something we have been anticipating for weeks,” Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey, MD, MBA, FAAP said in a statement. “Our goal has always been to increase access to these treatments by onboarding more pharmacies to maximize access to patients. We have seen a steady increase in allocations to the state and know many pharmacies and providers are eager to offer this treatment to help mitigate COVID-19 disease progression for those at risk of a severe outcome.”
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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced legislation Wednesday to protect a doctor’s right to treat patients and to reassert that the federal government’s agencies have no authority to restrict lawful prescribing or dispensing of FDA-approved or Right to Try drugs.
Johnson, who has spearheaded efforts to break the silencing of physicians and scientists on the issue of early treatment for COVID-19, joined with Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to launch the Right to Treat Act to confirm that the doctor-patient relationship is at the center of treatment decision-making, and not the federal government.
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A political action committee is funding a series of trucker protests against COVD-19 restrictions in the U.S., mirroring efforts by Canadian truckers to lift the country’s vaccine mandates and rules.
The Great American Patriot Project (GAPP) launched a campaign Wednesday intended to organize and fund several truck convoys to begin in early March across the United States.
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A growing number of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck despite increasing wages, a newly released report found.
PYMNTS and Lending Club released the report, which says that 61% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, an increase of 7 points since May 2021. The report also found 54% of Baby Boomers and seniors are living paycheck to paycheck.
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City leaders from Bexley, Whitehall, Worthington, and Columbus met with Columbus Public Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts and Franklin County Health Commissioner Joe Mazzola recently to receive an update on the status of the spread of COVID-19 in the community, according to a statement by the city of Columbus.
Currently, each city has local orders in place requiring the wearing of face coverings indoors, however, Dr. Roberts reported that both COVID-19 transmission rates and hospitalizations have continued to decline dramatically. If current trends continue, each city expects to consider lifting local face covering requirements in the coming weeks, according to the press release.
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The former mayor of Stonecrest and a bookkeeper who administered COVID-19 relief funds to the town pleaded guilty in federal court this month to charges related to the theft of pandemic relief funds. Per federal rules, Stonecrest officials could only spend these relief funds on necessary expenditures related to the pandemic that occurred between March 2020 through December 2020. They include medical and public health expenses as well as grants to reimburse businesses for lost business during COVID-19.
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A Knox County Schools (KCS) parent group fighting the end of school mask mandates has filed an ethics complaint against three members of the school board, alleging they violated one of the board’s own policies and also appeared at a Knox County Commission meeting without giving adequate public notice.
Parent Amanda Collins, who chairs Knox County Schools Parent Advocates for School Safety (KCS PASS), said in a press statement KCS board members Betsy Henderson, Susan Horn, and Kristi Kristy violated the board’s policy when they submitted a proposal to the Knox County Commission to hire private attorneys to help in the board’s fight against a lawsuit over masks in schools.
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The general counsel of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told The Star News Network the legal theory behind the federal lawsuit filed by the foundation Wednesday on behalf of Representative Elizabeth Ann “Beth” Van Duyne and Texas Attorney General W. Kenneth Paxton petitions the court to strike down the Centers of Disease Control mask mandate on airplanes and public transit as unlawful and unconstitutional mitigation for the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Well, the basis is twofold,” said Robert Henneke, who is also the foundation’s executive director.
“First of all, there is no statutory authority for the Centers for Disease Control to command that all Americans have to wear a face mask covering when they travel,” Henneke said.
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Vitamin D deficiency was linked to worse health outcomes for COVID-19 patients, including higher risk of death, a new study found.
Israeli scientists from Bar-Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center found a strong connection between vitamin D deficiencies and negative COVID-19 outcomes. The researchers were able to predict COVID-19 patients’ vitamin D status accurately based on the severity of the disease in a patient, according to the Feb. 3 study.
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“I cannot make a disease worse, and create fear out there,” says Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who discovered Omicron.
In an interview on Just the News Not Noise, Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, described the pressure she faced from public health authorities worldwide to portray the now-dominant variant of COVID-19 as more severe than she was witnessing in real time.
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One of the largest teachers unions in the country donated $2 million to the left-wing Senate Majority Political Action Committee in 2021 after the Democratic Party voted against reopening public schools, according to data from the National Republican Senatorial Committee provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
On March 6, 2021, Senate Democrats unanimously voted against a Republican amendment to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that would have ensured school reopening dollars were allocated to education institutions prioritizing in-person learning. Schools that were working to provide in-person learning for students five days a week would have been given full funding under the bill, while those that were completely closed would only get 25% of its allocated funding.
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At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, the panel’s GOP majority grilled the state’s chief economic-development official on the damage inflicted by COVID-related business restrictions.
In March 17, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf (D) responded to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus by ordering the shuttering of all businesses he deemed “nonessential.” The commonwealth phased out most of the closures that summer, though capacity restrictions on restaurants and other gathering places continued into 2021. Republicans in the General Assembly attempted to end the shutdowns but did not have the two-thirds supermajority needed to override the governor.
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The Chairwoman of the Montgomery County School Board says she intends to keep her job after storming out of a meeting earlier this week and offering the position to speaker at the meeting.
“I have not resigned,” Sue Kass told The Virginia Star by email Thursday.
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Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal unveiled a bipartisan bill Wednesday aimed at curbing online harms to children.
The Kids Online Safety Act is the result of several hearings and a months-long investigation led by Blackburn and Blumenthal into how use of social media platforms affects teens and young children. If enacted, the bill would require social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable “addictive” product features and allow them to opt out of recommendation algorithms.
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The Biden administration plans to make yearly COVID shots mandatory for all Americans, including young children, a Food and Drug Administration executive told a Project Veritas undercover journalist on hidden camera.
In the sting video released on Tuesday, Christopher Cole, Executive Officer of Countermeasures Initiative for the FDA, said: “Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible.” According to Project Veritas president James O’Keefe, Cole has “over 20 years experience” at the FDA, and “claims to be directly involved in the approval process.”
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RICHMOND, Virginia – Governor Glenn Youngkin signed a school mask-optional bill into law from the steps of the capitol on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the House of Delegates approved his amendments adding an emergency clause and a March 1 effective date.
“Today, we are reestablishing, restoring power back from parents. We are also reestablishing our expectations that we will get back to normal, and this is the path, this is the path. So thank you all for coming. And now, we’re going to do a little work,” Youngkin told the crowd before signing the bill.
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Tennessee State Senator Ken Yager (R-Kingston) has filed a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly that he said would, if enacted into law, help school districts across Tennessee address ongoing staffing challenges.
The bill, SB 2702, would allow retired members of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS) to seek reemployment as a K-12 teacher, K-12 substitute teacher, or as a K-12 bus driver. This, without the loss or suspension of the retired member’s TCRS benefits, Yager said in an emailed statement.
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Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is lifting the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and will not extend its mask requirement into March.
The Democratic mayor also says that as of Tuesday many businesses in the nation’s capital will no longer be required to check that customers have at least one dose of the vaccine before allowing them to enter. However, they will still be allowed to make such a request on their own, according to dcist.com.
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New York City recently fired nearly 1,500 municipal workers who failed to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, officials said Monday.
City officials said 1,430 workers were fired Friday and that the number represents less than 1% of the city’s 370,000-person workforce. The number was also far smaller than what they had predicted.
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Fifty-five federal agencies have issued rule changes to track employees and others who request religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Critics of the tracking say the practice is discriminatory against people of faith.
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The real pandemic in this country is one of growing fascism from our so-called political Left.
The far-Left Democratic Party doesn’t care about your essential freedoms—from speech and the free flow of ideas to freedom of assembly—particularly when those freedoms stand in the way of their pursuit of power.
This is the party, after all, who opposed Abraham Lincoln and stood in the way of integration well into the 1960s. Where Democratic hatred of freedom has become glaringly apparent in recent times is with their obsession with COVID vaccine mandates and mask mandates, most especially for school-aged children. This “pandemic” has exposed what is truly afoot here, fascist authoritarianism at its most potent and dangerous.
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The Senate has approved Governor Glenn Youngkin’s amendments to the recently passed school mask-optional bill. The amendments, which an aide said Youngkin sent to the Senate on Monday evening, include clauses making the bill take effect on March 1.
“As you can probably tell from my remarks, I would like this to take effect yesterday, but that’s not going to happen. And I do believe that we’re going to need a transition time for some of our Northern Virginia school districts and probably elsewhere in the state,” co-sponsor Senator Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax City) said on the Senate floor on Tuesday evening.
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Ingham County will spend $56.8 million in federal funding to recover from COVID-19. The spending will be divided into two phases.
Ingham County Controller Gregg Todd said the first round of spending ranged from June 2021 through May 2022, and aims to help those hit hardest by COVID.
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Four Senate Republicans announced bills they called the “Parent’s Bill of Rights.”
In a morning press conference, Sens. Justin Eichorn of Grand Rapids, Michelle Benson of Ham Lake, Paul Gazelka of East Gull Lake, and Roger Chamberlain of Lino Lakes announced the bills they said would increase school transparency.
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The House of Delegates passed SB 739, which will require schools to make masks optional. After Republicans were surprised by bipartisan votes in the Senate last week to amend the bill to include the mask clause and to pass the bill, Republicans hustled the bill through the necessary House committee hearing and through three required floor sessions, including a two-minute-long pro-forma session on Sunday. By 1 p.m. on Monday, Republicans had already delivered the bill to Governor Glenn Youngkin, who has committed to adding an emergency clause to make it take effect immediately.
After Youngkin adds the clause, both chambers can pass the bill and emergency clause with simple majority votes, setting up the bill to be law and in effect potentially by the end of the week, House Majority Leader Terry Kilgore (R-Scott) said on The John Fredericks Show Monday morning.
“Once we adopt his [Youngkin’s] amendments, he’s already signed it and sent it back, it’ll be the law, and we can put this behind us,” Kilgore told The Virginia Star’s publisher, John Fredericks.
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Eight Michigan counties will end school mask mandates on or before Feb. 28, citing lower COVID metrics.
The Health Department of Northwest Michigan, which covers Antrim, Charlevoix, Emmet and Otsego counties, will repeal its mask mandate for schools on February 17, followed by Ingham County on February 19, and Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne County will drop their mask mandates on February 28.
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“In critical moments,” said Star Trek’s master of logic, Mr. Spock, “men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.”
Apparently so. The truth of this statement hit me like a bolt of lightning recently when a friend relayed his experience at a medical clinic. It seems the ignorance and lack of rational thinking in our medical system is even worse than I imagined.
It all started when my friend John, a man in his mid-60s, went to the doctor to fill out forms and answer questions before undergoing an in-house surgery. After about 30 minutes of taking his history, the nurse asked him if he had taken the COVID vaccine. John replied that he had not—a fact he had already told the office secretary when he made his appointment—but that he was prepared to take tests to see if he was positive for the virus.
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The Ohio House has passed a bill that would give employers $25,000 in tax credits to train new drivers in an effort to help companies across the state alleviate a growing truck driving shortage.
House Bill 197, backed by trucking and business organizations, now heads to the Senate. It passed the House, 97-0, this week.
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Police in Ontario on Sunday arrested protesters still blocking the Ambassador Bridge, seeking to clear the major trade route between Canada and the United States after days of COVID-19 restriction protests that captured the world’s attention.
Windsor police told the Associated Press that arrests began and vehicles were towed starting just after dawn at the bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario — the busiest northern border crossing to the U.S.
“Television images showed officers detaining protesters. Only two pickup trucks and less than a dozen protesters blocked the road to the bridge before police moved in. Afterward, police barricades remained and it was not immediately clear when the bridge might be opened,” AP reported.
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Though alarming and depressing, we can no longer avoid recognizing that America’s greatest domestic threat is from pro-government extremists.
We rue that pro-government extremists caused immense destruction during their less-than-“peaceful protests” in 2020; and we witness the continuing damage caused by their neurotic, totalitarian response to a plethora of problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic..
Indeed, what makes the pro-government extremists so dangerous is their far greater numbers than their anti-government extremist counterparts. Their noxious ideology that the citizen is subordinate to the omnipotent state is incessantly “normalized” and propagandized by their corporate media comrades.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released data showing that effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine booster wanes markedly in the months following that shot, though the agency still said uptake of the booster is important for fighting against the virus.
The agency said in a press release that studies showed effectiveness against COVID-19 emergency department and urgent care incidents “was 87% and 91%, respectively, during the 2 months after a third dose [of the booster],” but that it “decreased to 66% and 78% by the fourth month after a third dose.”
The CDC said that “protection against hospitalizations exceeded that against ED/UC visits” with the shot.
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Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA-02) criticized efforts to regulate congressional stock trading which Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07) is championing.
“So my thoughts on it, you know, I think this whole concept is bull***t. Because I think that, why would you assume that members of Congress are going to be inherently bad or corrupt? We already have the STOCK Act that requires people to report stock trades. Why would you assume – I mean, the people that you’re electing to represent you, it makes no sense that you’re going to automatically assume that they’re going to use their position for some nefarious means or to benefit themselves. So I’m very strongly opposed to any legislation like that,” Luria told Punchbowl News this week.
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Two years after COVID burst on the American scene, leading to lockdowns, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and trillions of dollars in emergency government spending, the question on many minds is: When will the emergency end?
The answer to that question is not an easy one. An examination of past emergencies does not resolve it. Rather, it is clear that emergency situations, including this one, may be understood through various lenses, yielding different perspectives on what the endpoint will be.
Take, by way of comparison, World War II, an emergency that had at least four distinct endings because it had at least four distinct faces:
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Connecticut children cannot be certain they can finally be free of wearing masks in school since, although Gov. Ned Lamont (D) said he would end the state school mask mandate by February 28, that plan may depend on the legislature voting to extend his pandemic emergency powers, and then on individual school districts.
In his State of the State address Wednesday, Lamont told residents he will roll back some coronavirus restrictions, including the school mask mandate, adding, “You have earned this freedom.”
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Amid the controversy over world-famous Spotify podcaster Joe Rogan hosting guest Dr. Robert Malone, credited with inventing mRNA vaccine technology that is used in COVID-19 vaccines, Malone revealed information about a massive conflict of interest.
On an episode of Tucker Carlson Today that aired Wednesday, Malone revealed that the largest stakeholder in Spotify, which has been under pressure to censor Rogan for spreading “misinformation” about COVID-19, is also the largest stakeholder in Moderna, one of the two companies distributing mRNA vaccines for COVID-19.
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As the mid-term elections approach, a number of Democrat governors are now following in the steps of Republican Governors Ron DeSantis (FL) and Glenn Youngkin (VA) in support of dropping mask mandates.
Supported by their political and media allies, the governors of states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, California, and Oregon are now announcing mask mandates in schools may be dropped soon, as the New York Times reported Tuesday.
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Major technology companies and social media platforms have removed, suppressed or flagged the accounts of over 800 prominent individuals and organizations, including medical doctors, for COVID-19 misinformation, according to a new study from the Media Research Center (MRC).
MRC’s Free Speech America CensorTrack, an initiative that monitors acts of censorship across online platforms, identified over 41 instances between March 2020 and February 2022 in which doctors, scientists and medical organizations were censored, according to the results of a study shared with Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The U.S. trade deficit continued to grow in December as the import-export gap widened to record highs in 2021, the Census Bureau reported Tuesday.
The trade deficit grew by 1.8% in December 2021 to $80.7 billion, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday, $1.4 billion above the revised figure from November 2021.
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