CRISPR Babies: The Chinese Government May Have Known More Than It Let On

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When scientist He Jiankui announced he’d conducted an experiment that led to the birth of twin girls with CRISPR-edited genomes in November, the international scientific community swiftly condemned him. In the uproar that followed, the Chinese government, He’s university, and the hospital where the babies were born distanced themselves from the researcher, who claimed he was the first scientist known to use CRISPR to edit human embryos resulting in a live birth — and that a third CRISPR baby was on the way.

But there were also glaring inconsistencies in the official version of events. As the Washington Post reported, a hospital executive appeared on camera in an Associated Press video applauding He’s work, which seemed strange given that the hospital later denounced him. And an informed consent form He used stated that his university funded the experiment. . .

Shortly after He announced his experiment, China’s National Health Commission ordered an investigation of He’s research. In January, an initial government report found that He “seriously violated” state laws in pursuit of “personal fame and fortune.” His university, the Southern University of Science and Technology in Shenzhen, fired him and said his experiment was done “outside of the school.” . . .

Overall, He has been painted in the media — including in China — as a rogue actor and bad apple, tinkering quietly in a lab while smashing through norms and local laws to feed his ego. He also claimed that he privately funded the work while on unpaid leave from his job as a professor.

But according to a slide presentation, the clinical trials registry, and patient consent forms obtained by journalist Jane Qiu for Stat, three Chinese government institutions were listed as the funders of He’s experiment: the Ministry of Science and Technology (the nation’s federal science agency), the Shenzhen Science and Technology Innovation Commission, and Southern University of Science and Technology, where He was a professor. (Read more from “CRISPR Babies: The Chinese Government May Have Known More Than It Let On” HERE)

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The Most-Below-Average Temperatures Anywhere on Earth Are in the U.S. Right Now

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If you think it’s cold for this time of year in the United States, you’re right. The most-below-average temperatures anywhere on Earth are in the U.S. right now.

The map … from the Climate Change Institute at the University of Maine shows the departure from average temperature – that is, how far the temperature is above or below average – around the globe on Tuesday. Below-average temperatures are depicted by the blue and purple shadings, while above-average temperatures are depicted by the orange and red shadings. . .

The first five days of this month brought the coldest March outbreak in years, breaking daily records and a few monthly records in parts of the Northwest, Rockies, Plains and Midwest. . .

This arctic block has also been responsible for abnormally mild weather in parts of Alaska, including record warmth at America’s northernmost city, Utqiaġvik, formerly known as Barrow. (Read more from “The Most-Below-Average Temperatures Anywhere on Earth Are in the U.S. Right Now” HERE)

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Troubling: U.S. Pastors Increasingly Accepting Homosexual Marriage

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Once news hit that the global United Methodist Church upheld its ban on same-sex marriage and gay clergy, a Methodist pastor in North Carolina promised to fight back against the ruling until it’s reversed.

“Let us not rest until all people can be welcome to worship God in any space that they choose,” the Rev. Jason Butler with Open Table Methodist Church in Raleigh said, WNCN-TV reported. “That is what we will fight for.” . . .

Butler told WNCN that when he heard about the ruling, he “was just broken. I felt almost sick inside because I knew that for so many of our LGBTQ friends this was yet another voice, another church saying that we close our doors.”

Depris Price noted to WNCN that he’s acquainted with adversity as an openly gay black man and was taught from childhood that it was a sin to be himself.

“It was the untouched subject,” Price told the station. “You did not talk about this, and even if you did, it was only during like Sunday school, and you just said it’s wrong to be homosexual. There was no reasoning, there was no explanation.” (Read more from “Troubling: U.S. Pastors Increasingly Accepting Homosexual Marriage” HERE)

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Rep. Claims She’ll File Articles of Impeachment Against Trump Within Weeks

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Speaking to reporters from her congressional office, Tlaib exclaimed, “We saw record turnout in an election year, where people wanted to elect a jury that would begin the impeachment proceedings to (sic) Donald Trump,” The Hill reported.

“We want to work on these economic issues, racial injustice issues and everything. But guess what? There is a wall there, and a constitutional crisis that is not going to [let us] do our jobs as American Congress members to push a lot of these agendas forward.”

Referring to her fellow freshman Democrats, Tlaib continued, “This is the largest class since Watergate. This a class — a diverse class — that comes…with a sense of urgency to act. To act to hold corporations accountable; to act in holding President Trump accountable; to act to really try to see real reforms even within our congressional process. This is an emergency for all of us.”

According to WXYZ-TV, Tlaib added, “Later on this month, I will be joining folks and advocates across the country to file the impeachment resolution to start the impeachment proceedings.” . . .

“Remember, this is setting a precedent. If we don’t hold impeachment proceedings today, start them today and hold him accountable to following the United States Constitution — think about that, this is not going to be the last CEO that runs for president of the United States,” she said at her news conference.

(Read more from “Rep. Claims She’ll File Articles of Impeachment Against Trump Within Weeks” HERE)

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ICE Giving Pregnancy Tests to Migrant Girls as Young as 10 After Dangerous Journey to Border

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Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen told lawmakers Wednesday that the journey for migrants traveling from Central America to the U.S.-Mexico border is so fraught with danger that the U.S. is giving pregnancy tests to migrant girls as young as 10. . .

Nielsen was speaking to the House Homeland Security Committee and was informing lawmakers about the dangers that migrants face on the way to the border, a day after figures showed that the number of illegal immigrants coming over the border had spiked dramatically.

“In February, we saw a 30 percent jump over the previous month, with agents apprehending or encountering nearly 75,000 aliens,” she said. “This is an 80 percent increase over the same time last year. And I can report today that CBP is forecasting the problem will get even worse this spring as the weather warms up.” . . .

Nielsen’s testimony comes days after President Trump said in a speech to the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) that he was told by Border Patrol that mothers give their daughters large amounts of birth control pills “because they know their daughters are going to be raped on the way up to our southern border.” . . .

A Doctors Without Borders report from 2017 found that nearly one-third of women surveyed entering Mexico had been sexually abused on their journey north, while 68 percent of the migrant and refugee populations as a whole reported being victims of violence. (Read more from “ICE Giving Pregnancy Tests to Migrant Girls as Young as 10 After Dangerous Journey to Border” HERE)

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Religious Liberty Group Defends Veterans Memorial Against ‘Bully’ Trying to Remove Bible From Display

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A Bible at the center of a dispute between two military organizations will now be displayed prominently at a veterans hospital.

The Bible was donated to Manchester VA Medical Center by former U.S. Army Air Corps Technical Sergeant (TSgt) Herman “Herk” Streitburger, of Bedford, who was held captive in a German Prisoner of War camp during World War II.

It was placed in a memorial but moved after objections by Mikey Weinstein, the founder of Military Religious Freedom Foundation (MRFF). The Bible ended up behind a glass display case.

First Liberty Institute, the same law firm that argued on behalf of the Bladensburg “Peace Cross” memorial in front of the Supreme Court last week, sent a letter Wednesday supporting the Bible.

“As usual Mikey Weinstein is wrong on the fact and wrong on the law but that’s never stopped him from bullying military and VA officials and their facilities across the country,” Mike Berry, the First Liberty lawyer representing the Northeast POW/MIA Network, told Fox News. “If he wants to remove that display or any part of it he’s going to have to come through us.” (Read more from “Religious Liberty Group Defends Veterans Memorial Against ‘Bully’ Trying to Remove Bible From Display” HERE)

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WATCH: Trudeau Arrives at Climate Rally, Protests Erupt, Things Get Crazy

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Embattled Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau — who has been implicated in a corruption scandal as well as a #MeToo accusation from two decades ago — appeared at a climate change rally on Monday, and the scene quickly got ugly.

Trudeau is facing increasing political pressure over accusations by Jody Wilson-Raybould, Canada’s former female, indigenous attorney general, that he and other members of his administration attempted to pressure her to “abandon prosecution” of a “corrupt company,” SNC-Lavalin, that is allegedly tied to Trudeau’s political cronies. When she refused to cave, Wilson-Raybould says, Trudeau fired her. The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reports:

For some time, the story remained uncorroborated — a mere rumor that circulated around Canada’s government officials. But last week, Wilson-Raybould testified in front of Parliament, telling her story in “meticulous detail,” according to Canadian reporter Ezra Levant, parsing out “how Trudeau and his staff tried to get her to drop criminal charges against a corrupt company that he liked.”

In a series of videos published by Global News, Trudeau’s attempt to explain the controversy at a climate change-focused rally on Monday was derailed when protesters erupted.

“Prime Minister Justin Trudeau appeared at a rally on Monday amid the still-unfolding SNC-Lavalin affair, and the tone grew tense at times,” the outlet reports. “The rally, focused on climate change and taking place at Toronto’s Danforth Music Hall, saw protesters interrupt the prime minister repeatedly before they were quickly ushered out of the venue.”

(Read more from “WATCH: Trudeau Arrives at Climate Rally, Protests Erupt, Things Get Crazy” HERE)

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Is the Watered-Down House Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism Even a Reprimand of Ilhan Omar?

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House Democrats have finally conceded to public pressure and are prepared to address the anti-Semitic remarks of Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., in a resolution that doesn’t mention Omar by name.

The situation is reminiscent of when the House formally reprimanded Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, for a statement he made about white nationalism and white supremacy in a lengthy New York Times interview.

But there is a huge difference in how King and Omar have been treated by their own parties.

The reprimand aimed at Omar doesn’t even mention the freshman congresswoman by name. King’s did. But even that version wasn’t watered down enough for many Democrats, who also wanted the resolution changed to include other kids of religious bigotry, resulting in a big intraparty disagreement on Tuesday. Objectors got the vote pushed back a day.

There was no push inside the Republican party to expand the resolution condemning King to include anti-conservative bias on college campuses or on social media, and Republicans would have been mocked for entertaining such an idea.

Furthermore, whatever implied slap on the wrist Omar may get in this resolution, so far it looks like she’s going to keep her committee assignments in the aftermath.

Most people advocating for stronger reprimands against Omar have mainly focused on her slot on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, but not her spot on the House Education and Labor Committee. King lost all his assignments, including his spot on the Agriculture Committee.

Plus, the House Democrats, supposedly dedicated to government transparency, are still discussing whether or not to make their internal conference rules public. So it’s not publicly known how House Democratic leadership makes decisions about committee assignment and removal.

By contrast, under the rules of the House Republican Conference, decisions about committee assignments are ultimately up to the Republican Steering Committee. When King was stripped of his assignments in January, House GOP steering voted unanimously to do so.

Ultimately, regardless of how each party’s leadership makes committee decisions and recommendations internally, the speaker of the House has final authority to assign and remove House members to and from standing committees, per House rule 1, section 11.

That seems unlikely, given that the Democratic House Foreign Affairs chairman said that he won’t push to remove her from the committee. “I don’t know that that would do anything except exacerbate the situation even more,” Rep. Eliot Engel, D-N.Y., told CNN. “I’m looking to get rid of anti-Semitism, not looking to punish anybody.”

This is how House Democrats have chosen to respond to multiple high-profile anti-Semitic slurs coming from a single new House member in the first three months of her freshman session. Compare that with how Republicans responded to one statement in an hourlong interview by a longtime member of their conference just a few weeks earlier. (For more from the author of “Is the Watered-Down House Resolution Condemning Anti-Semitism Even a Reprimand of Ilhan Omar?” please click HERE)

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This Pro-Life Mom Got Tired of Fashion’s Support for the Abortion Industry. So She Started Her Own Brand

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People are working to spread the pro-life message through cultural media like music, movies, and poetry, but what about fashion? One homeschooling Philadelphia-area mom has that front covered.

Carla D’Addesi and her daughters have always had a passion for shopping. “It’s our cardio,” she joked to me about their retail habits. But when they realized that so many of their favorite clothing lines were kicking back proceeds to organizations that didn’t share their views, they decided to stop buying in and start their own fashion line.

“We felt very marginalized by the fashion industry,” Carla told me at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). “There were a lot of brands that were anti-American or they were giving our dollars to organizations like Planned Parenthood that went against our core principles.”

The relationship between the fashion world and the pro-abortion movement isn’t a secret. In 2017, 43 fashion designers lined up to help out Planned Parenthood during New York Fashion Week.

Conservative corporate activism watchdog 2ndVote keeps a running list of companies that have either donated to Planned Parenthood or have given to third parties that do. That list includes several famous brands such as Converse, Dockers, Banana Republic, Ann Taylor, and Old Navy. And if you want to support America’s largest abortion provider more directly, there are several smaller brands that are more vocal about their pro-abortion stance.

Ultimately, the idea for the company started with a gradual “build-up,” Carla’s 18-year-old daughter Vittoria told me. “Over time we would joke about it, you know, ‘Mom, you’re gonna have to start sewing soon, because there’s no more stores.’”

“Then one day,” Vittoria continued, “like a good Italian family, we’re sitting at our dinner table over a bowl of pasta and we were talking, you know, ‘What can we do? What’s something different that nobody else has done yet, but that can support the movement and be good for everyone?’”

“My family sits around the dinner table and we do discuss religion and politics from the time the kids were little,” Carla explained, noting that she also homeschooled her three daughters. “We have always stood outside of the Planned Parenthoods and prayed. We have been at rallies. We do the March for Life. And we just saw that the Left so appeared to be reaching our kids in pop culture and we saw a huge gap.”

“So we said, ‘Let’s try and reach the other side for life by making life glamorous and starting a fashion line,’” Carla recalled. “So this is absolutely a brand on a mission for people on a mission.”

Carla said that recent controversies over late-term abortion laws and infanticide have only increased the market for her brand.

“And believe me, there’s never been a better time to launch a pro-life fashion line than today,” Carla explained. “Because forget about abortion; it’s now about infanticide; it’s now about botched abortions where there’s babies gasping for breath on the table and we are denying them the right to life.”

“We did the research,” Carla said. “There’s nine million teen, tweens, Millennial young women that identify as being pro-life.” And she and her daughters want “to empower them” and “to make them stronger and we’re using the medium of fashion to do that.”

Right now the COL 1972 site features pieces like hoodies, knit hats and sweatpants, and travel bags, most of which are emblazoned with the company’s logo. Over time, the goal is to build out more options for both men and women.

But where does the company’s creative spark come from? So far, COL 1972 has gotten some help from a designer in Los Angeles, but Carla says that she and the girls are going to roll out their own designs this spring with their “Life is Amazing” campaign when the weather starts warming up.

“So you’re going to be seeing beach bags, flip-flops, dresses that just have the simple message: ‘Life is Amazing,’” Carla says. “Because it is!” (For more from the author of “This Pro-Life Mom Got Tired of Fashion’s Support for the Abortion Industry. So She Started Her Own Brand” please click HERE)

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12 Astounding Numbers That Show the Whole Invasion of Our Border

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After the media lied to the public throughout the border debate, when we actually had a chance to fix things in the budget, now they suddenly admit we have a crisis at the border. A Washington Post reporter conceded that the numbers were “bonkers.” The New York Times put in a headline the Customs and Border Patrol chief’s warning that the border is at a “breaking point.”

Here are twelve facts about the border apprehension numbers and the trends that demonstrate why the Trump administration should immediately shut down all asylum requests. Now is the president’s opportunity to make a new case to the American people and go beyond simply addressing a few billion in border funding.

76,325 – The number of total illegal aliens and inadmissible aliens apprehended at and between points of entry in the month of February. That is the highest number for a single month since April 2008, but very likely one of the highest months of all time for unique (non-repeating) illegal aliens, given that many of the apprehensions from last decade were multiple crossings of the same individual within hours or days. Today, according to Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council, “We rarely arrest the same person twice in one year, much less in the same work shift.”

916,000 – The annual pace of February’s border flow if this continues. But Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) predicts that with the weather getting warmer over the next few months and the incentives for illegal immigration unaddressed, the numbers will grow larger.

40,325 – A record number of family unit apprehensions in February. That beats the record we just set in December 2018 by a whopping 26 percent.

136,150 – The number of family units apprehended between points of entry for the first five months of fiscal year 2019. This far surpasses the numbers for any previous full year.

165,568 – The number of family units apprehended between points of entry since Judge Dana Sabraw ruled last July that all parents or adults brought with children must be released with the children. During that last seven months, as many family units have been apprehended as in the previous 23 months.

2,023% – The percentage increase in monthly family unit apprehensions since the low of the “Trump effect” in April 2017 through February 2019. Yes: 2,023 percent increase.

311% – The percentage increase in family units apprehended by Border Patrol for the first five months of this fiscal year over the first five months of last fiscal year.

97% – The total percentage increase in all illegal alien apprehensions for the first five months of this fiscal year over the first five months of last fiscal year.

1689% – the increase in family units apprehended in the El Paso sector for the first five months of fiscal year 2019 over the same period last year. El Paso saw its highest apprehensions in February since April 2006. And many of those in 2006 were the same people coming back after being deported immediately, and they were deported again. Almost all of these coming in currently remain here indefinitely.

70 – Number of large groups, defined as 100 or more, coming in at once to surrender to border agents and shutting down their resources. There were 13 such groups in FY 2018, mainly in the latter part of the year when this phenomenon began. It was almost unheard of in previous years.

31,000 – The number of projected aliens taken to American hospitals by the end of the year if the current pace holds, as compared to 12,000 last year.

57,000 – The number of man-hours Border Patrol had to spend with aliens in our hospitals just since December 22. According to Brian Hastings, chief of Border Patrol operations, 25-45 percent of Border Patrol resources are now diverted to the processing and humanitarian functions rather than patrolling the border.

During the press conference when Trump announced his emergency declaration on February 15, the media demanded from the president a set of data to demonstrate the problem. Well, here is the data that shows the most evident indicators of an emergency – a skyrocketing trajectory on all fronts.

The question for us all is how bad things need to get before we finally respect our own national sovereignty and stop allowing the courts to encourage illegal aliens to come here? (For more from the author of “12 Astounding Numbers That Show the Whole Invasion of Our Border” please click HERE)

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