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GoFundMe’s Sordid History of Censorship of Conservative Causes

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The popular crowdfunding site GoFundMe has taken down yet another conservative donation campaign.

As donations for the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protest in Ottawa, Ontario, reached $10 million on Feb. 4, GoFundMe pulled the plug on it and took the page down, alleging violence and unlawful activity as an excuse.

To add insult to injury, the company wasn’t originally planning on returning the donated funds from the canceled page unless asked. Instead, GoFundMe claimed it intended to distribute the money to charities the truckers selected. After massive public pushback—especially from a number of states’ attorneys general—the platform relented and said it would automatically return the funds.

GoFundMe’s excuse for closing the donations page down doesn’t pass the smell test, because it has a long history of deplatforming conservative causes while conspicuously leaving leftist crowdfunding efforts alone.

Consider a case from back in November 2020, when the site canceled a campaign to erect a billboard in California advertising a book critical of puberty blockers for kids. Local parents tried to get a sign erected that would have read “Puberty is not a medical condition,” along with a photo of the book “Irreversible Damage: The Transgender Craze Seducing Our Daughters” by Abigail Shrier.

GoFundMe offered no explanation beyond claiming the campaign went against the site’s user rules.

In March of last year, it censored another cause for purely political reasons: A women’s rape crisis center in Vancouver, British Columbia, had crowdfunded $7,000 before GoFundMe killed the page. The page was started by a short-lived internet community called “Super Straight” that wanted to support the one rape crisis center in the city explicitly for biological women. That ran afoul of GoFundMe’s liberal sensibilities regarding transgender people, so the page had to go.

While GoFundMe has ramped up its efforts against conservatives in recent years, the practice tracks back to the site’s early days.

In April 2015, The Daily Signal reported a pair of stories about bakers Aaron and Melissa Klein and florist Barronelle Stutzman, who had their GoFundMe campaigns stripped from the platform after they refused to provide service for gay weddings. The Kleins’ story is notable insofar as it ushered in a change in policy directly responsible for today’s problems.

Prior to the Kleins, GoFundMe’s terms of service prohibited “campaigns in defense of formal charges of heinous crimes, including violent, hateful, or sexual acts.” After they removed the Kleins’ page, the terms were updated to include “discriminatory acts.”

To the leftists in charge at GoFundMe, anything contrary to their narrative can be construed as “hateful” or “discriminatory,” and therefore, ripe for takedown.

GoFundMe’s bias in deciding what stays and what goes on its platform becomes even more evident when one looks at the types of violent leftist content that’s allowed to remain.

Numerous funding campaigns for violent Antifa and Black Lives Matter rioters have been allowed to remain up on the site while conservatives who have done nothing “wrong” except go against leftist dogma are frequently deleted.

The double standard employed by platforms like GoFundMe over what is acceptable is dangerous. American democracy cannot survive a system where only one political ideology can support causes it likes.

Thankfully, however, there are burgeoning alternatives. As of this writing, the Canadian truckers have raised more than $6 million on the Christian crowdfunding site GiveSendGo. While it would be preferable if GoFundMe would drop its ideological bias and accept donations to non-leftist causes, in the meantime conservatives should financially support causes they agree with through whatever means necessary.

The left might try and stop us, but we’ll just keep on truckin’. (For more from the author of “GoFundMe’s Sordid History of Censorship of Conservative Causes” please click HERE)

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Report: Pandemic Caused Smaller ‘Baby Bust’ Than Expected

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Provisional data on the number of births in the United States showed that the COVID-19 pandemic might have had less of an impact on a “baby bust” than was originally anticipated.

The Wall Street Journal reported that the United States experienced around 7,000 fewer births in the initial nine months of 2021 when contrasted with the same time period a year before, per provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS).

“Starting in June 2021, monthly births began to show consistent gains over their year-earlier levels, which reflect pre-pandemic conceptions, and that mostly offset declines in the first two months of 2021, the data show,” the Journal noted, adding that the 2021 numbers are nationwide provisional estimates and “[t]he federal government will issue a final count later this year, a CDC spokesman said. The provisional data are rounded to the nearest thousand and might differ from the final numbers by as much as 2%, according to the NCHS.”

Some experts believed the COVID-19 pandemic would have a much larger impact on the birth rate across the country. In December, economists Melissa Kearney and Phillip Levine reportedly put forward numbers demonstrating how the pandemic resulted in 60,000 missing births from October 2020 through February 2021. “Earlier in the pandemic, they predicted the health crisis and economic uncertainty would lead to 300,000 to a half million fewer births last year,” the outlet added.

“The Covid baby bust doesn’t seem to be nearly as large as I thought it would be,” said Kearney. (Read more from “Report: Pandemic Caused Smaller ‘Baby Bust’ Than Expected” HERE)

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NIH Spent Billions Supporting Research in China Including Its Biowarfare Program

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Judicial Watch obtained 301 pages of emails and other records from the NIH through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit.

Among those documents is a list of 2,221 research projects awarded to U.S. universities between 2010 and 2018, through which money was funneled to Chinese research centers. The major portion of those grants (22%) were provided by Anthony Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID).

Chief among the recipients of Anthony Fauci’s generosity was Major General Wuchun Cao (shown in the photo as a Senior Colonel), who has been identified as a key figure in China’s biowarfare program.

Wuchun Cao has been the Director of the Institute of Microbial Epidemiology, Academy of Military Medical Sciences and Director of the State Key Laboratory of Biosafety of Pathogenic Microorganisms, both in Beijing.

He has also been a part-time research scientist and doctoral supervisor of the Institute of Remote Sensing Applications, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Shandong University.

Wuchun Cao is a senior advisor on bioterrorism to the Chinese Communist Party and a scientific advisor for Wuhan Institute of Virology. He was second-in-command of the military team under Major General Chen Wei, presumed leader of China’s biowarfare program, that was sent to Wuhan to control the outbreak of COVID-19 early in the pandemic.

Wuchun Cao was a participant in the 2013 NIAID research grant R01AI083640-05 for $343,817, awarded to Xiaofeng “Frank” Yang of the Indiana University School of Medicine.

The China-origins of Xiaofeng “Frank” Yang remain hidden, but he was a guest speaker at the Wuhan Institute of Virology in 2012.

The joint work between Xiaofeng “Frank” Yang and Wuchun Cao, which included Duke and Yale Universities, was published in 2015.

Wuchun Cao was a participant in the 2014-2017 NIAID research grant R01AI108993 for $1,719,354, awarded to Gregory Gray of Duke University.

An earlier Gateway Pundit article described the long-term research collaboration between Wuchun Cao and Gregory Gray concerning the epidemiological spread of influenza virus and how that research may have played into the planning around the COVID-19 pandemic.

Wuchun Cao was a participant in the 2014-2018 NIAID grant R01AI110820 for $3,926,048, awarded to the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore.

Wuchun Cao was a participant in the 2017-2018 NIAID grant R01AI125842 for $1,493,667 awarded to the University of California at Berkeley.

People’s Liberation Army scientists Shibo Jiang of the Lindsley F. Kimball Institute at the New York Blood Center and his long-time collaborator Yusen Zhou of the Academy of Military Medical Sciences in Beijing teamed up on NIAID research grants R03 AI088449 (2011-2012), R21 AI128311-01 (2017) R01 AI139092-01 (2018), R21 AI128311-02 (2018) and R01 AI137472-01 (2018) for a total of $2,400,883.

Both Shibo Jiang and Yusen Zhou have deep connections with China’s People’s Liberation Army and were involved in research leading up to the laboratory origin of COVID-19, fact that have been exhaustively detailed in Gateway Pundit articles, here, here and here.

China has a fused military-civilian virus research program, which includes its bioweapon development effort.

It now appears, as documented in a previous Gateway Pundit article, that China’s fused military-civilian biowarfare program has been extended to incorporate U.S. laboratories and U.S. taxpayer funding.

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Lawrence Sellin, Ph.D. is retired U.S. Army Reserve colonel and a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq. He had a civilian career in international business and medical research. His email address is [email protected].

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Ill Effects of Lockdowns Are Far Greater Than Any Benefits

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A new study from Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Applied Economics supports what I and others have long maintained: Lockdowns do not work, and their economic, social, educational and psychological costs far outweigh any health benefits they might bring.

Early in the pandemic, epidemiological modelers predicted catastrophic casualties that could be averted only with stringent lockdown measures. In response, nearly every country around the world imposed lockdown measures by the end of March 2020. Yet little evidence existed to support such actions, and the modeling studies were fatally flawed.

Now the Hopkins literature review and meta-analysis, by professors Jonas Herby, Lars Jonung and Steve Hanke, finds that lockdowns — “defined as the imposition of at least one compulsory, nonpharmaceutical intervention (NPI)” such as school and business closures and limitations on movement and travel — “had little to no effect on COVID-19 mortality.” . . .

The authors reviewed thousands of studies and culled 34 that had reliable and sufficiently relevant data to review. The results were mixed: Several studies found no statistically significant effect of lockdowns on mortality; other studies found a significant negative relationship between lockdowns and mortality; and others found a significant positive relationship between lockdowns and mortality — i.e., that lockdowns actually increased COVID-19 deaths from COVID-19.

When the authors performed a meta-analysis — a statistical technique that combines the results of multiple studies addressing the same question and uses the pooled data to draw conclusions — they found that lockdowns failed to show a large significant effect on COVID-19 mortality: “the effect is little to none.” (Read more from “Ill Effects of Lockdowns Are Far Greater Than Any Benefits” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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Company Sues Man on Life Support With COVID in Order to Recoup Loan

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A Bronx landlord who’s clinging to life thanks to COVID-19 was slapped with two lawsuits over a $23,000 high-interest loan he was forced to take out during the pandemic-related rent moratorium, according to a new lawsuit.

The lending company Premier Capital Funding LLC is hunting down Jeffrey Schneider — who is on life support — to repay $58,000 for the loan he took out in May through his company Remie Realty Corp., according to court papers filed by Schneider’s wife.

Schneider, the landlord of a rent-controlled building in the Bronx, sought the $23,000 life line when his struggling tenants stopped paying rent, the court filing says.

He managed to pay back $25,000 of the roughly $35,000 total he owed on the high-interest loan before coronavirus all but killed him.

“This debt that started out with the merchant [Remie] receiving $23,000 has now exploded into an $85,000 debt,” Schneider family lawyer Ashlee Colonna Cohen told The Post. “He’s already paid $25,000 of it and they are still asking for more.” (Read more from “Company Sues Man on Life Support With COVID in Order to Recoup Loan” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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Private School Forces 2-Year-Olds To Mask During Nap Time

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A private school with two locations in northern Virginia is forcing students 2 years and older to wear masks for the entire school day, including during nap time, a parent with twins in the school told the Daily Caller.

Halston Davis, a father with twin boys enrolled at Karter Schools, told the Daily Caller that his 3-year-old preemies are required to wear face coverings for the duration of the school day, despite an executive order from Republican Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin repealing mask mandates in all schools. Davis alleges the school’s marketing director told his family masks were not required for the entirety of in-classroom learning when initially interviewing with the school.

Davis said he feels his boys are “falling behind” because “seeing other people talk is important for their development.” Davis and his wife attended an in-person meeting with Karter Schools’ leadership and claimed they asked for “flexibility” when masking their children “during instruction.” The school allegedly denied their request.

Karter Schools requires staff, students and parents to wear masks on school property regardless of vaccination status, according to COVID-19 FAQs sent to parents. Children were also required to present a negative test before returning to school if they traveled following winter break, per the FAQ form. (Read more from “Private School Forces 2-Year-Olds to Mask During Nap Time” HERE)

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Responses You Should Use When the Mask Police Come for You (VIDEO)

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By The Federalist. As the mask police continue to patrol school hallways and the open skies, fed-up Americans have devised creative ways to protest the mandated insanity of required cloth coverings that even their loudest champions have begun to concede are pointless. . .

“It’s all nonsense,” said Adam Jenne in December after he was banned from United Airlines for wearing a red thong as a face mask. “COVID doesn’t know that we’re at cruising altitude. It’s stupid. The whole thing is theater.” . . .

The Democrat mayor of Los Angeles tried to excuse himself for flouting his own city’s mask mandate last weekend with claims Wednesday he was “holding his breath.” . . .

“I’ll take personal responsibility,” Garcetti said in response to a reporter’s question on the photos. “If it makes you and everyone else happy — or even the photographs with people where I’m literally holding my breath for two seconds — I won’t even do that.”

In September, San Francisco Mayor Breed excused herself from wearing a mask in a nightclub where coverings were required per her own city’s order.

(Read more from “Responses You Should Use When the Mask Police Come for You” HERE)

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Dr. Scott Gottlieb Says It’s Time to Consider Dumping School COVID Mask Mandates

By CNBC. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention should adjust its Covid masking guidance to account for high immunity protection in America, specifically when it comes to schools, Dr. Scott Gottlieb told CNBC on Wednesday.

“We have a much more contagious variant that is probably going to continue to circulate and you have a population that has much more immunity,” the former Food and Drug Administration chief said in a “Squawk Box” interview, referring to the proliferation of the omicron variant in the U.S., on top of most school-age kids being eligible for vaccination. . .

“If we hold out, again, if we wait for 10 cases per 100,000 per day in most communities, we’re probably going to be waiting until the summer; we’re going to lose the opportunity this spring to try to return some sense of normalcy in the schools,” he added, arguing a more appropriate threshold could be 20 cases per 100,000 people per day.

Gottlieb said the CDC’s guidance is “a pretty high threshold in the age of omicron,” adding that agency testing conducted right before the omicron wave showed that 90% of Americans have antibodies against Covid either through a vaccine or infection, or both. (Read more from “Dr. Scott Gottlieb Says It’s Time to Consider Dumping School COVID Mask Mandates” HERE)

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School District Cancels Classes After Nearly 1,500 Teachers Call in Sick to Protest Conservative School Board

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A school district in Colorado was forced to cancel classes Thursday after nearly 1,500 employees called in sick to protest the actions of its conservative school board, CPR News reported.

Of the estimated 3,300 licensed teachers in the Douglas County School District (DCSD) there were nearly 1,500 unfilled teacher absences filed for Thursday as of mid-Wednesday, according to three school board members, CPR News reported. Teachers are reportedly calling in sick as part of a protest against actions of the conservative school board majority, who ended the district’s mask mandate, voted to amend the district’s equity policy and is advocating to remove the district’s superintendent, Corey Wise.

DCSD announced a “no-student contact day,” citing “a large number of staff who have submitted absences for Thursday, February 3” that has “reached the point where the number of absences has impacted our ability to provide a safe and supervised learning environment for students,” according to the district website. A rally outside the district’s headquarters is reportedly planned for Thursday in protest of the school board.

(Read more from “School District Cancels Classes After Nearly 1,500 Teachers Call in Sick to Protest Conservative School Board” HERE)

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Maskless Students Suspended, Could Face Trespassing Charges

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A maskless high schooler in Loudoun County, Virginia, was suspended for 10 days for failing to comply with the district’s mask mandate, according to documentation obtained by the Daily Caller.

Loudoun County Public School (LCPS) parents Scott and Karen Mineo were informed Feb. 2 that their 11th-grade maskless daughter would be suspended from Stone Bridge High School for “willful or continued disobedience of school rules and regulations or school personnel.” The first paragraph of the letter states that the suspension is in effect for 10 days, though the second paragraph states that the suspension ends when the student “is in compliance with LCPS mitigation policies.”

At the bottom of the suspension letter, the Mineos were informed that if their daughter violated her suspension, she could be charged with “trespassing.”

Parents with children in elementary school were threatened Feb. 2 to have their children charged with trespassing, as well. LCPS’ Creighton’s Corner Elementary School Assistant Principal told parents that maskless elementary schoolers placed on suspension could be charged with trespassing for coming back to school, according to audio obtained by the Daily Caller. (Read more from “Stanford Professor Says COVID-19 Mandates Doing Long-Term Damage to Public Health” HERE)

Photo credit: Flickr

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White House: Do More to Censor Rogan Podcast!; More Musicians Boycott Spotify After Joe Rogan Bends the Knee (VIDEO)

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By Breitbart. The White House indicated Tuesday that Spotify’s attempts to address what they described as coronavirus “misinformation” on podcaster Joe Rogan’s interviews was not a strong enough response to the freedom of speech controversy.

Spotify announced a decision Sunday to include content advisory warnings on Rogan’s interviews about the coronavirus pandemic with sources dissenting from the government narrative about the virus.

“It’s a positive step but more can be done,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki said during the daily briefing on Tuesday.

Spotify acted to address the situation after musicians Neil Young and Joni Mitchell asked the company to remove their music from their platform as part of a protest of Rogan’s interviews.

But Psaki called on technology and media platforms to do more to censor what she described as “misinformation” about the virus. (Read more from “White House: Do More to Censor Rogan Podcast!” HERE)

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More Musicians Boycott Spotify in Support of Neil Young After Joe Rogan Bends the Knee

By Breitbart. The cancel mob is still baying for Joe Rogan’s head just days after the popular podcaster acquiesced to their demands by agreeing to a “content advisory” warning label and more “balance” on his show.

Musicians Graham Nash, Nils Lofgren, and India Arie are the latest stars to boycott Spotify, following in the path of Neil Young who last week demanded his songs be pulled from the streaming service in what has become a media-fueled effort to censor and deplatform Rogan. . .

On Sunday, Rogan responded to the growing controversy, saying in a video message that “many of the things that we thought of as ‘misinformation’ just a short while ago are now accepted as fact.”

He also pledged to add more “balance” to “controversial viewpoints” presented on “The Joe Rogan Experience.” (Read more from “More Musicians Boycott Spotify in Support of Neil Young After Joe Rogan Bends the Knee” HERE)

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