Lew Rockwell Institute

The Trump administration is delivering justice for employees who were forced out of their job for declining the abortion-tainted COVID shot – including a recent $1 million settlement.

Mercyhealth agreed to the settlement after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) investigated the healthcare organization, which operates clinics and hospitals in Wisconsin and Illinois, for “denying [employees] a religious accommodation and either terminating their employment or subjecting them to a wage deduction.”

“The EEOC also found reasonable cause to believe that Mercyhealth discriminated against a class of similarly situated employees across all its facilities from September 2021 to May 2022 by denying them an opportunity to request a religious accommodation, opting instead either to terminate their employment or withhold money from their pay,” the commission announced.

The pay withholding was essentially a $60 monthly tax on individuals who chose to decline the COVID-19 jab for religious reason. The shots are derived from aborted fetal cell tissue lines, which raised serious ethical concerns for many Christians. The hospital system called the tax a “vaccine incentive charge.”

The EEOC notes that the hospital’s practices appeared to violate Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits discrimination based on religion.”

“Such alleged conduct violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on religion,” the EEOC stated.

Mercyhealth will “provide back pay and compensatory damages to the aggrieved individuals.”

It also agreed to further training on religious accommodation requests and monitoring by the EEOC.

Acting EEOC Chair Andrea Lucas explained the importance of the settlement further in a statement.

“At the start of my tenure as Acting Chair of the EEOC, I committed to focusing our agency’s resources to address the very real problem of religious discrimination, and this resolution is just the beginning,” Lucas stated

“This is an example of what our agency can accomplish when we work with employers to ensure that the doors of our workplaces are equally open to religious employees,” she stated. “I am proud of the monetary relief that we have obtained here, and I am equally proud that these employees—who remained committed to their religious beliefs and practice at great personal cost—will receive job offers.”

“Mercyhealth respects the religious beliefs and practices of its employees,” Vice President of Clinical Operations Kara Sankey stated on behalf of the health organization.

Liberty Counsel, which represented Mercyhealth employees who objected to the vaccine policy, said the settlement is good but took too long.

“During the COVID mandates, Liberty Counsel assisted many Mercyhealth employees whose religious accommodations had been denied. While these health care workers are getting much deserved relief, the relief is very late as it has been nearly four years since their unconstitutional treatment,” the religious liberty group wrote on its website.

Chairman Mat Staver provided further analysis.

“This hospital system did not live up to its name and instead was merciless to its faithful and dedicated workers,” he said. “This class-wide settlement is rightly deserved for these health care employees who were unlawfully discriminated against and denied religious exemptions from the experimental COVID shot.”

Employees, Staver said, “should never have to choose between their faith and their job.”

The Trump administration has continued to pursue other cases of discrimination against individuals who decided not to take the COVID jab for religious or other reasons.

As recently reported by LifeSiteNews, the Trump administration sued the Mayo Clinic for allegedly coercing a security guard into taking the COVID shot.

The lawsuit, filed on July 30, accuses the Minnesota-based clinic of violating the civil rights of security guard Cody Schultz by rejecting his religious exemption request from a COVID shot mandate in 2021. Schultz, a member of the Assemblies of God church, said taking the shot conflicted with his religious beliefs.

He eventually took the jab after exhausting his options to get exempted – including offering to wear a mask and submit to regular testing. He also had already contracted COVID, meaning he likely had the antibodies.

In addition to religious liberty concerns, the COVID shots have also come under scrutiny for being dangerous. In June, the Food and Drug Administration announced a new warning for mRNA COVID shots due to the risk of young men developing serious heart problems.

This article was originally published on LifeSite News.

The post Hospital System Will Pay $1 Million to Employees It Punished for Refusing COVID Shots appeared first on LewRockwell.

“Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it” — George Santayana

Our time is much like Europe during 1912-1914 and 1938-1939.  War is brewing, and unlike the earlier periods today the countries likely to be involved, with the exception of Russia, China, and Iran, are not trying to avoid it.  Between 1912-1914 the French President Poincare, Russian Foreign Minister Izvolski, later Russian ambassador to France, and Russian Foreign Minister Sazonov were deeply involved in a conspiracy to cause a war between Russia and France (with British approval and involvement) on one side and Germany and Austria-Hungary on the other.

Poincaire’s goal was to recover Alsace-Lorraine for France.  The Tsar’s ministers wanted Constantinople in order to control the straits that are the entrance from the Black Sea into the Mediterranean. Harry Elmer Barnes tells the story based on the notes the conspirators wrote to one another over the years the conspiracy was prepared and put into operation.  

For telling the truth, Barnes, a top of the line American historian, lost his position at Columbia University.  The official narrative was that Germany caused the war, a claim for which there is zero evidence. But assigning historical blame to Germany kept attention off the French-Russian conspiracy. As Barnes own fate proved, it did not pay for a historian to tell the truth.  The road to professional success was to create a narrative that justified the winners. And the “winners” were actually winners because the Germans were deceived, having foolishly trusted US President Wilson’s “Fourteen points.”

The German emperor, a cousin of the British king and Russian Tsar, did everything he could to avoid war, and Germany was the last to mobilize. 

The country responsible for war is never the last to mobilize. 

Both the Germans, the British, and possibly the Tsar were disadvantaged by being unaware of the French-Russian conspiracy for war.  The assassination of the Austrian Archduke and Austria’s punitive response to Serbia, was turned by propaganda into the cause for war.  Most likely, the assassination was a part of the French-Russian war plot.  Regardless, a dispute between Austria-Hungary and Serbia ended up causing a war that killed millions of people in the major European powers and enabled Lenin to overthrow the Russian government. France got Alsace-Lorraine, and Russia got a revolution.  Austria-Hungary was destroyed along with the German monarchy.  The result was the Versailles Treaty that ensured World War II.  The flower of the British leadership class was destroyed along with British financial strength.  Turkey remained in control of Constantinople.

Barnes, like David Irving, bases his history on official documents, whereas most historians create a career for themselves by justifying the winners and aligning with the rising political, social, and economic forces.

Izvolski arranged for Russian gold to be poured into bribes of French newspapers to silence war opponents, to make a case for war, and to bring Poincare into the French presidency.  Russia also bribed leading Serbian politicians to engage in intrigues against Austria-Hungary.

We are watching the same thing today, only we don’t know it.  The media don’t tell us. They too are bribed.

When we look at the American Witkoff and the nominal Russian Dmitriev, what is their real role?  Could they be bribe makers whose job it is to produce outcomes that make their principles appear successful?  One can hear the patriotic American’s disbelief:  “Our country, never!”

But we know of the Clinton’s collection of bribes that have enriched their family.  We know of the Hunter-Joe Biden collection of bribes and payoffs.  Was the letter Trump’s wife had delivered to Putin about the alleged Ukrainian children the product of an Israeli bribe to get the focus off of Israel’s extermination of Palestinian children?

As the realities of what is really underway are not exposed to the light of day, the populations in the US and Europe really have no idea what is going on.  Commentators, depending on who is paying them, either spread optimistic hopes or allege Trump is selling out Ukraine. The reality is different.

The reality is that the world is headed into war because of (1) the US foreign policy imperative of American hegemony, and (2) the apparent problem the Russians have of putting themselves in the hands of their hopes instead of  acknowledging reality.  When a country’s foreign policy doctrine requires the prevention of the rise of any country that can serve as a constraint on its unilateralism, and there are rising countries, there can be no peace.  

In 1939 the British government gave a guarantee to Poland similar to the NATO guarantee the West wants to give Ukraine.  The immediate consequence was World War II.

The post Previous History Indicates that War Is Our Future appeared first on LewRockwell.

“If it is known that authorities have power to coerce, few people will wait for actual coercion,” economist Friedrich Hayek wrote in the 1956 foreword to his 1944 classic The Road to Serfdom. Hayek’s insight could be the Rosetta Stone for understanding the Trump administration’s zealotry for assailing freedom of speech.

On March 25, six masked federal agents seized a Turkish graduate student on the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. Rumeysa Ozturk, who was wearing a hijab, was a Fulbright scholar working on a doctorate at Tufts University. Ozturk didn’t know what was happening when she was first grabbed and later said she thought she might be killed.

She was abducted and vanished into the maw of the federal detention system. She was put in leg shackles and had a chain placed around her waist. She was frog marched out like a terrorist kingpin.

A federal judge speedily ordered the Trump administration not to remove Ozturk from New England. But Trump administration officials ignored that court order and hustled Ozturk from Massachusetts to federal detention facilities in Louisiana.

Criticizing Israel

Almost a year before she was seized on the streets near Boston, Ozturk had coauthored an op-ed piece for the Tufts student newspaper criticizing the university’s refusal to divest from Israel despite “credible accusations of … indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.”

That was all it took to nullify the formal student visa that the U.S. government had previously approved for Ozturk. A Department of Homeland Security spokesperson justified seizing the 30-year-old graduate student: “DHS and ICE investigations found Ozturk engaged in activities in support of Hamas, a foreign terrorist organization that relishes the killing of Americans. Glorifying and supporting terrorists who kill Americans is grounds for visa issuance to be terminated.” Ozturk never mentioned Hamas in her op-ed. Ozturk has not been linked to any campus protests at Tufts or elsewhere. She simply cowrote an opinion piece. As the New York Post noted shortly after her arrest, DHS “alleged that Ozturk was a supporter of Hamas but has yet to provide any evidence to that effect.”

The video of the arrest spurred tidal waves of online celebrations by groups who wanted to forcibly silence all campus protests. When Secretary of State Marco Rubio was asked about the case while traveling in Guyana, he justified revoking Ozturk’s visa: “If you apply for a visa … and you tell us that the reason you are coming to the United States is not just because you want to write op-eds but because you want to participate in movements that vandalize universities, harass students, take over buildings, and cause chaos — we’re not giving you that visa.” Rubio added: “It’s crazy — stupid, even — for any country to let people in who say, ‘I’m going to your universities to riot, take over libraries, and harass people.’ We gave you a visa to study and earn a degree — not to become a social activist tearing up our campuses.”

Rubio promised: “Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visas.” Is criticizing a foreign government now considered proof of lunacy in the White House? Does the Trump administration consider op-eds to be a weapon of mass destruction? Or did the secretary of state somehow become an omniscient expert on derangement?

A state kidnapping

On March 27, more than 30 Democratic members of Congress sent a letter to Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem demanding information on the case in which the video “looked like a kidnapping.”

On March 28, federal judge Denise Casper blocked the Trump administration from deporting Ozturk and ordered the administration to respond to Ozturk’s legal challenge (now aided by the ACLU) to her detention.

Ozturk was moved from state to state — including Vermont — so the Trump administration could avoid a habeas petition in federal court challenging her detention. In a subsequent congressional hearing, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem declared that “habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country, and suspend their right.” Actually, habeas corpus expresses an individual’s right to be brought before a judge and formally charged — or be released. The Constitution recognized the right of habeas corpus even before the Bill of Rights was added to the original document. But perhaps Noem and other Trump policymakers decided to go Lincolnesque.

Ozturk has asthma and had several asthmatic attacks in lockup. At the South Louisiana ICE Processing Center in Basile, she slept with 23 other people in a cell meant for 14. “None of us are able to sleep through the night. They come into the cell often and walk around triggering the fluorescent lights. They shout in the cell to wake up those who work in the kitchen around 3:30 am each day,” she said.

Ozturk stated that a federal officer told her: “We are not monsters. We do what the government tells us.” So, of course, federal officials are blameless for any rights that they violate. The “we are not monsters” line has been around the track a few times. Historically, it didn’t do well in 1946 as a defense at Nuremberg.

The First Amendment

Trump administration officials talked as if alleged protesting was sufficient to banish any foreigner they targeted. But the First Amendment doesn’t specify that it only applies to people that the White House approves. Former ICE Chief of Staff Deborah Fleischaker slammed the targeting of Ozturk as “a First Amendment violation. ICE had a policy in place that said that First Amendment activity was not to be the basis of enforcement action. That’s not why you enforce.”

On April 13, the Washington Post detonated the Trump case against Ozturk by publishing extracts from a confidential State Department memo. Prior to Ozturk being seized outside of Boston, senior DHS official Andre Watson sent a memo to the State Department stating that “OZTURK engaged in anti-Israel activism…. Specifically, [Ozturk] coauthored an Op-ed article” that “called for Tufts to ‘disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel.’” But the State Department found that no federal agency had turned up any evidence that Ozturk “engaged in antisemitic activity or made public statements indicating support for a terrorist organization.” Despite Rubio’s vilification of Ozturk, the feds didn’t have squat on her. But the State Department covertly nullified her visa anyhow, paving the way for the DHS ambush outside Boston.

The court hearing

At an April 14 federal court hearing, a Trump Justice Department lawyer declared that the federal judge had no jurisdiction over the case. Federal judge William Sessions III responded: “If the government then says, ‘oh, no, she can’t be released because we have a detention order in immigration, which is inviolate, and she’s not going to be released,’ then we’re in a constitutional crisis.” The Trump administration lawyer speedily denied wanting any constitutional crisis.

DHS wanted Ozturk expelled from the United States under a provision in the Immigration and Nationality Act that entitles the Secretary of State to deport any foreigner if there are reasonable grounds to believe their presence has “adverse policy consequence for the United States.” But there was no such evidence for Ozturk, so the Trump administration instead used a legal authority under which the secretary of state can deport anyone on his own decree — no evidence required.

On May 9, Sessions ordered that Ozturk be immediately released. Sessions declared, “There has been no evidence that has been introduced by the government other than the Op-Ed.” Sessions also declared: “Her continued detention cannot stand,” stating that keeping her locked up “potentially chills the speech of the millions and millions of people in this country who are not citizens.” Sessions said that Ozturk raised “a very substantial First Amendment claim” as well as a “substantial claim” that her due-process rights were violated. As the “LawDork” blog summarized the judge’s comment from the bench during the court hearing, “Addressing the question of [Ozturk’s] ‘dangerousness’ and ‘risk of flight,’ Sessions noted that he was not going to be deferring to an immigration judge, who, he pointed out ‘are executive branch employees,’ subject to executive branch oversight. Instead, he found, ‘There is absolutely no evidence that she has engaged in violence or advocated violence.’”

Mahsa Khanbabai, Ozturk’s attorney, declared, “When did speaking up against oppression become a crime? When did speaking up against genocide become something to be imprisoned for?” Jessie Rossman, another attorney for Ozturk, commented, “For 45 days, Rümeysa has been detained in Louisiana — over 1,300 miles from her friends, her community, and her lawyers. During that time, she has suffered regular and escalating asthma attacks. And at the same time, the government has failed to produce any justification for her detention.”

But this farce isn’t over yet. As Politico noted, “Sessions’ order, while expressing severe doubts about the constitutionality of Ozturk’s detention and deportation, only applies to her immediate confinement. Efforts by the Trump administration to deport Ozturk will continue in immigration court.”

The danger to Americans

It would be the height of folly for Americans to presume they face no peril from entitling the feds to seize boundless power to punish students’ speech. Ozturk’s name was provided to the Trump administration by Betar, an organization that the Washington Post characterized as a “militant Zionist group.” U.S. citizens are at risk as well. A spokesman for Betar declared: “We provided hundreds of names to the Trump administration of visa holders and naturalized Middle Easterners and foreigners” who have criticized Israeli policies. Last February, the Anti-Defamation League condemned Betar as an extremist organization. The Trump administration canceled the visas of more than 1,500 foreign students, many of whom were accused of having joined protests in the prior year and a half. Some of those cancellations were later revoked after a surge of bad publicity.

Any precedent for blanket censorship will propagate like a COVID virus. Many conservatives and libertarians may shrug off Ozturk’s degradation because they have no interest in criticizing the policies of foreign governments. But the Ozturk case hinged on collective guilt — on assuming that anyone who advocates a position is culpable for any crimes committed by any other advocate with the same view.

Ozturk’s persecution could be a linchpin in the Trump administration efforts to silence all protests that rile up his donors. Trump, discussing the protests over Gaza, promised wealthy supporters at a May 2024 fundraiser: “One thing I do is, any student that protests, I throw them out of the country. You know, there are a lot of foreign students. As soon as they hear that, they’re going to behave.” In April 2025, the Trump administration demanded that Harvard University cease enrolling any foreign students who Trump appointees label “hostile to the American values.” Or at least “American values” as defined by the current White House. On May 22, the Trump administration formally banned Harvard from admitting any foreign students — the ultimate solution to vexatious foreigners who caterwaul about atrocities.

American history demonstrates that persecution that starts with foreigners often snowballs into targeting American citizens. Three months after the 9/11 attacks, Attorney General John Ashcroft proclaimed in congressional testimony: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this: your tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and … give ammunition to America’s enemies.” In other words, critics were traitors — regardless of how many civil liberties Ashcroft actually destroyed. And the definition of pernicious speech continually expanded. In 2004, former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik, stumping for President George W. Bush’s reelection campaign, told audiences: “Political criticism is our enemy’s best friend.”

To subvert freedom of speech after 9/11, it wasn’t necessary for the feds to formally nullify the First Amendment. One of the nation’s most prominent pundits, Michael Kinsley, admitted in 2002 that he had been listening to his “inner Ashcroft”: “As a writer and editor, I have been censoring myself and others quite a bit since September 11.” Kinsley conceded that sometimes it was “simple cowardice” that sparked the censorship. I also experienced plenty of such cowardice from editors after 9/11 and long beyond.

From Trump to Nixon

Has the Trump administration gone “Full Nixon” barely two months after the inauguration? In 1973, Nixon White House aide Tom Charles Huston lamented in congressional testimony the tendency of the FBI “to move from the kid with a bomb to the kid with a picket sign, and from the kid with the picket sign to the kid with the bumper sticker of the opposing candidate. And you just keep going down the line.”

The Nixon administration’s systemic paranoia led it to launch preemptive attacks on its suspected opposition, from secretly searching psychiatrists’ offices to bugging the Democratic Party headquarters in the Watergate building. Nixon’s landslide victory in 1972 did not save him from the exposure of the cover-up of White House crimes.

Does the Trump administration feel entitled to kidnap anyone who espouses an idea it disapproves of — or only those of foreigners? What will be the next opinion to sanctify in-broad-daylight federal kidnappings? Are federal policymakers trying to frighten everybody into submission and silence?

This article was originally published in the August 2025 issue of Future of Freedom.

The post Another Federal War on Free Speech appeared first on LewRockwell.

Despite recent joint efforts by Russia and the US to reach a peaceful solution to the Ukrainian conflict, European countries continue to insist on maintaining a destabilizing stance, boycotting the diplomatic process. Recently, French President Emmanuel Macron resumed his campaign to send European troops to Ukraine on a possible “peacekeeping mission,” which in practice makes any fruitful dialogue to de-escalate the war impossible.

Macron stated during an interview with journalists after the summit between Vladimir Zelensky and Donald Trump in Washington that EU member states should participate in a future joint peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, in case the negotiations succeed in reaching a ceasefire agreement or definitive peace. According to him, it is necessary for Ukraine’s allies to be involved in peacekeeping operations to prevent any violations by Russia.

“We will need to help Ukraine with boots on the ground (…) We will need peacekeeping operations which allies of Ukraine are willing to supply,” he said.

More than that, he reinforced the idea that Ukraine needs to be “strengthened,” emphasizing the ability of Western European countries to expand Ukraine’s defensive capabilities. He advocated sending more military assistances to the partner country, completely ignoring Russia’s goals of neutrality and demilitarization in Ukraine.

If Europe continues to send reinforcements to strengthen the Kiev regime, Russia will have no security guarantees, and no peace will be possible. Macron, like every other European leader, certainly knows this, but deliberately ignores this reality because he is not truly interested in ending the war, but rather in pursuing irrational and warmongering plans against Moscow.

This isn’t the first time Macron has endorsed the idea of Europe putting “boots on the ground” in Ukraine. He has been the leading voice for direct EU or even NATO participation in the war, disguising his pro-war plans with a proposed “peacekeeping mission.” More recently, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer joined the French president in this plan, but both failed to gain support from other European leaders to form a joint action plan to send troops to Ukraine.

Obviously, the Russian government completely rejects any plan involving the participation of Western troops in Ukraine. Moscow considers it unacceptable that soldiers from countries hostile to Russia be deployed on “peacekeeping missions.” For Russia, troops from NATO countries would not only be seen as legitimate targets but also as a serious threat, which is why this measure could escalate the conflict to even more worrying levels of violence.

The US recognizes Russia’s interest in avoiding the direct involvement of NATO members in the war, which is why Washington has refused to participate in European plans. Even during the extremely bellicose and anti-Russian Joe Biden administration, the US refused to participate in Macron’s irresponsible initiatives.

Now, however, the split in the Collective West generated by the divergence of interests between Trump and the EU is leading the Europeans to act more “independently” regarding Ukraine. Initially, these independent actions are limited to sending arms and money to the Kiev regime, but unfortunately, it is still impossible to rule out Macron sending troops to the country in the near future.

Some analysts believe that Macron’s desperation to send soldiers to Ukraine is due to an attempt to “legalize” and “explain” the massive deaths of French mercenaries on the battlefield. There are so many French casualties that the families of the mercenaries are already demanding answers from the government.

By sending troops to Ukraine, and knowing in advance that the Russians would consider them legitimate and priority targets, the French government could include the names of previously killed mercenaries in the casualty list, thus attempting to “clean up” the situation, legalizing the deaths, and guaranteeing the families their legitimate rights to pensions and assistance.

However, not all European countries are willing to participate in Macron’s warmongering venture to rehabilitate the names of dead mercenaries. Germany, Poland, Spain, Romania, and Croatia have already ruled out any idea of committing their troops to a hypothetical “peacekeeping mission.”

Furthermore, there are European countries that directly oppose any form of intervention in Ukraine, whether with troops or simply by sending weapons, such as Hungary and Slovakia. If Macron succeeds in carrying out his plan, he will have to do so outside the collective sphere of the EU, which makes the situation even more dangerous for France itself and its potential supporters.

The best thing Macron can do is simply abandon the interventionist rhetoric and let the interested parties reach an agreement, if possible. Proposing the involvement of Western troops is just a way to prematurely thwart any diplomatic dialogue.

This article was originally published on InfoBrics.

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Virginia’s Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) is suspending two high-school boys after a “transgender” student secretly videorecorded them in the boys’ locker room questioning why she was there.

WJLA reported Monday:

LCPS’s Title IX Office launched an investigation based on that video and the male-identifying student’s complaint. That office has now determined the two boys are responsible for sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination, according to attorney, Josh Hetzler, who represents the families.

Hetzler said they were notified by LCPS Friday evening.

The punishment includes ten days of suspension and a no-contact order with the complainant, including not being able to be in any of the same classes. The boys are also required to meet with school administrators to determine a corrective action plan, according to Hetzler.

Title Deeds

The transgender student first began using the boys’ locker room during physical-education classes at Stone Bridge High School around September 2023. She was able to get away with this thanks to LCPS’ Policy 8040, which requires students to “be allowed to use the facility that corresponds to their consistently asserted gender identity.”

The girl filed her first Title IX complaint against one of the two boys in October 2024 on the basis that he had told a friend he was uncomfortable having a girl in the locker room. LCPS took the accusation seriously enough to question the boy about it, although no further action was taken.

The other now-suspended boy discussed the locker-room situation with his P.E. teacher. The teacher allegedly told him that he was stuck with it because of district policy — and that he should keep quiet about it.

In March, the girl surreptitiously took video in the boys’ locker room and used it as evidence for another Title IX complaint, this time against three boys. As The New American reported, the girl “accused the boys — two Christians and a Muslim — of making disparaging comments about her, threatening her with violence, and ‘misgendering’ her.”

Her punishment for violating school policy by taking the video? In-school suspension.

The boys’ punishment for saying things that, not long ago, would have been considered uncontroversial even in Loudoun County? A Title IX investigation culminating in 10 days’ at-home suspension and other humiliations.

Perturbed Parents

In June, after investigating the matter, Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares said his office had uncovered “a disturbing misuse of authority by” LCPS in opening a Title IX investigation into the boys. According to his report:

The single available video recording captures only a statement about needing a separate locker room due to the presence of a biological female. Most notably, the video does not record any disparaging remarks, profanity, or any threat against [the female student]. My Office is unaware of any corroborating witnesses who would substantiate [the female student’s] claims.

Nevertheless, LCPS proceeded with its investigation and ultimately disciplined two of the three accused students. (The third was acquitted.)

Those students’ parents, naturally, are livid over this turn of events.

“I would say the first reaction was some anger, because we’re just really concerned with all this stuff,” Seth Wolfe, father of one of the boys, told WJLA. “[We’re] saddened by the decision-making process and how that went.”

“[We’re] absolutely floored that they came back and branded my son responsible for sexual harassment and sex-based discrimination with no solid evidence whatsoever,” Renae Smith, another parent, told WJLA. “It’s wrong, and it should terrify every single parent.”

Smith moved her family to North Dakota, so her son will not actually be punished by LCPS, but the findings of the investigation will go on his permanent academic record.

That is also a concern for Wolfe. Both boys will be juniors this year and applying to colleges, which are unlikely to desire students with Title IX convictions on their records.

The parents also believe LCPS is using their boys to send a message to other students about disagreeing with the district’s gender policies. “I think this has gone a little too far and that they are trying to make an example of our students,” Wolfe told WTTG.

Forfeiting Federal Funding

LCPS isn’t commenting on the situation. But the Richmond-based Founding Freedoms Law Center (FFLC), which is representing the families, had plenty to say.

“The Founding Freedoms Law Center is working with our clients on next steps, but we are not going to let these boys go down without a fight, we’re going to stand with them all the way till they are innocent,” FFLC President Victoria Cobb told WJLA.

“LCPS, once again, shows that it is willing to harm students in the name of woke ideology,” she said. “These boys in particular are being made examples of what happens when someone crosses school indoctrination.”

Miyares referred the Title IX matter to the U.S. Department of Education Office for Civil Rights and the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division. Neither agency has acted on the referral yet.

However, reported WJLA, the Education Department has told LCPS and four other northern-Virginia school districts that they will lose federal funding if they do not change their pro-transgender bathroom and locker-room policies, which the department contends violate Title IX. As of Friday, all five districts remained intransigent, and the Education Department told WJLA it had started the process of slashing their funding.

The schools, the department said, “will have to defend their embrace of radical gender ideology over ensuring the safety of their students.”

This article was originally published on The New American.

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While Russia is confidently prosecuting the war in Ukraine towards its inevitable end.

Meanwhile the ‘West’ is still negotiating with itself about the conditions under which it will have to capitulate.

Discussions continue about ‘security guarantees’ for Ukraine even as the only serious ones are those that Russia is willing to give.

The confused arguments about ‘guarantees’ are reflected in the reports of them. Consider this nonsense:

A security guarantee could encompass a wide range of issues. In return for Russia ending its invasion, a security pact could include a pledge of U.S. air support for any European-led operations should Russian troops resume their assault.

If Russia ends the war NATO like ‘security guarantees’ are to be given to Ukraine as a reward?

How is that supposed to compute? Russia started this war to prevent a further extension of NATO into Ukraine. Why should it end the fighting if, in consequence, Ukraine would end up as a quasi-member of that pact?

All the ‘security guarantees’ talk is just obfuscation of the attempt by some European leaders to prolong the war by further dragging the U.S. into it:

Days before the [sanctions] deadline expired, Putin invited Witkoff to Moscow and offered a proposal, seen by the White House as sufficient grounds to set up last week’s Alaska summit meeting. There, Putin succeeded in convincing Trump that an immediate ceasefire to allow for complex peace negotiations was not required, allowing Russia to continue its attacks on Ukraine, without the risk of new U.S. sanctions.

The move alarmed European leaders, who raced to Washington on Monday to back up Zelensky during a meeting at the White House. After the meeting, they appeared satisfied by Trump’s openness to security guarantees. If Putin does not accept the terms, that could make the Kremlin the obstacle to Trump’s peace deal, insulating Ukraine from having to choose between untenable concessions of territory and inviting Trump’s ire.

Russia is not going to allow any of this:

[O]n Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov struck a blow at another major part of Trump’s peace effort, downplaying expectations for a swift bilateral meeting with the Ukrainian president, and further blocking the prospects for any deal on security guarantees for Ukraine. He said Russia would only agree to the measures if it had an effective veto over future efforts to defend Kyiv.

Russia will simply stick to its plan:

Russia’s conditions to end its war would essentially subvert Ukraine’s sovereignty, neuter its military and seize territory in eastern Ukraine that it has not captured in battle. Moscow wants to also permanently bar Ukraine from NATO and other international groupings and prevent it from hosting foreign troops — terms that would force Ukraine into a close, unwanted economic and political partnership with Russia.

A close economic and political partnership with Russia, unwanted or not, is indeed the most likely future for whatever is by then left of Ukraine.

Some Ukrainians, like the former presidential advisor Alexander Arestovich, do understand that:

The key task for Ukraine today in all these Alaskan tales is to preserve political independence in the long term.
…
Ukraine has only one way to preserve it: acknowledging the shared symbolic capital with Russia and Belarus, adopting a neutral status, and building good-neighborly relations with Russia and Belarus while maintaining political independence and the unique role of a “crossroads of worlds”- between Russia and Europe.

Economically, the most promising role is that of a “steppe corridor” – between Russia, Central Asia, the South Caucasus, and the EU.
In short, this is about a fundamental shift in project orientation – from a narrow, nationalist one to a broad, transit-oriented one.

In a sense, this could be called a “Great Return” – to Ukraine’s natural historical and cultural role.

By way of analogy – modern Kazakhstan.
…
In conclusion, the fundamental challenge for Ukraine lies not in tactical maneuvers but in recognizing the strategic perspective: the necessity of reimagining its role as a neutral, transit-oriented state in order to preserve independence in the emerging geopolitical order.

Reprinted with permission from Moon of Alabama.

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The Empire of Chaos is at war, hybrid and otherwise, not only against BRICS, but against Eurasia integration.

It took just one pic to imprint on posterity the utter humiliation of the EUrotrash political elites in Year 2025: the Coalition of the Twats, in the Oval Office, lining up like a bunch of frightened schoolkids, severely reprimanded by His Master’s Voice – the Headmaster cum Circus Ringmaster.

That was also neatly described as Trump breaks Europe over his knee.

Of course, President Putin had already predicted it, over six months before the fact:

“I assure you, Trump, with his character and persistence, will restore order quite quickly. And all of them, you’ll see, soon all of them will stand at the master’s feet and gently wag their tails.”

The White House humiliation sealed the deal, and reconfirmed an obsession: for the EUrotrash “leadership”, at all levels when it comes to relations with Russia, Peace is War.

Brandishing their warped logic, they cannot possibly understand that if Ukraine is instrumentalized – actually since before Maidan in 2014 – to harass and destabilize Russia in its western borders, Russia will forcefully counter-attack.

That’s at the heart of the Russian concept of “underlying causes” of the Ukraine tragedy, which must be thoroughly addressed if there is any real shot at Trumpian or not Trumpian “peace”.

In the Big Picture, that translates as the Empire of Chaos and Russia sitting down to set up a new “indivisibility of security” arrangement – just like Moscow proposed in December 2021: then, it was met by a non-response response.

EUrotrash Inc.’s new delirium is to attribute to itself the design of the future borders between a re-weaponized Europe and a Russia that will inevitably inflict on it a massive strategic defeat.

It’s a very long shot to imagine that Trump is capable, by himself, of imposing a new strategic reality on the warmongering yet penniless Coalition of the Twats. Whatever happens to rump Ukraine, Trump, based on his own twist and turn vociferations, actually wants Europe to “contain” Russia from now on, using an arsenal of ridiculous expensive American weapons.

So what changes is the character of this particular chapter of the Forever Wars: it will be fought by the Coalition of the Twats, and not by Americans.

In the short term, that also unveils the only strategy available for the EUrotrash/Kiev combo: outlast Trump until the 2026 mid-terms, destroy the remainder of his presidency, and be secure with the return of the mega-Russophobe gang in 2028.

Which Dead Hand will prevail?

And old school Deep State hand, who had privileged access to all Cold War era honchos, sums up the pitfalls ahead for Russia:

“Russia is taking too long to neutralize Ukraine, allowing time for NATO to reignite diversions. While the snail offensive in Ukraine does save lives, NATO seeks to weaken Russia’s strategic position in the Balkans and elsewhere that can cost far more lives in the future. If the Slavs in the Balkans are crushed that can strategically weaken Russia’s overall position, and that is far more costly than a major lightning offensive a la Stalin in Russian Ukraine. Russia must finish this war now and turn to its southern problems in the Balkans and the intrigues in Baku.”

Trump of course is oblivious to these Big Picture niceties. At best he admits, to Fox News, that “Ukraine will not regain Crimea” and “Ukraine will not join NATO.” But he does not seem to mind that “France, Germany and the UK want to deploy troops in Ukraine” as part of the new kabuki: “security guarantees”. That is an inter-galactic red line for Moscow.

In parallel, it’s wishful thinking to believe that Putin is now finally ready to negotiate “peace”. This is not about peace; it’s always about coming up with incontrovertible facts on the battle field, because Moscow knows this war will only be won in the battle field.

Russian forces have reached the final Ukraine defensive line in Donbass: Slavyansk-Kramatorsk. And is fast encircling key strongholds near Pokrovsk and Konstantinovka. Talk about a strategic/psychological turning point. From there, the – steppe – sky is the limit.

Compound it with the combined hacking of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine – which revealed that Kiev’s losses, in terms of dead and missing, amount to a staggering 1.7 million.

All of the above means that we are fast approaching the fateful moment when the victor dictates the full terms of the enemy’s capitulation. No need to march to Bankova in Kiev and plant the Russian flag.

To indulge in a tawdry Trump-spun “peace” agreement carries an overlapping amount of serious strategic defeats for Russia. For example: leaving Odessa and Kharkov to MI6 and Brit machinations. At the same time Moscow needs to start paying much closer attention to its underbelly in the South Caucasus front, where the mellifluous Turkish drive is to establish a pan-Turanic belt/corridor.

The Empire of Chaos is at war, hybrid and otherwise, not only against BRICS, but against Eurasia integration. Some of its implications will certainly be discussed in the upcoming SCO summit in Tianjin, on August 31/September 1st. Putin, Xi, Modi, Pezeshkian will all be at the table.

And that should impress on all players the imperative of BRICS and SCO, sooner rather than later, representing Eurasia, getting their act increasingly together, turbo-charging not only their economic but also geostrategic cooperation. There’s only one way to go: negotiate with the increasingly out of control Empire of Chaos as a group. Putin and Xi already now it. Lula and Modi are starting to get the picture.

Meanwhile, the temptation is irresistible to frame Putin as granting Trump a magnanimous exit: to get out of the imperial strategic defeat in Ukraine while saving face.

The problem is the massive Peace is War front will never accept it. And that goes way beyond EUrotrash Inc., including Atlanticist old money, key players in international finance, and the walking dead but not really dead neo-cons.

Russia, China, BRICS/SCO need to be on red alert 24/7. The Peace is War front is already in the process of converting themselves into the NBT front: nuclear threats, bioweapons and terror attacks. Russia may have the Dead Hand – which will exterminate any attacker. The NBT front at best has the scrawny dead hand of a dead man walking.

The views of individual contributors do not necessarily represent those of the Strategic Culture Foundation.

The post Even After the Headmaster’s Humiliation, Europe Insists that Peace Is War appeared first on LewRockwell.

Intellectuals and politicians often try to verbally summarize or justify conventional thinking in pithy ways. Milton Friedman (in 1965) and Richard Nixon (in 1971) both said different versions of the phrase “we are all Keynesians now.”  . . . . Friedman and Nixon were describing the thoughts behind the implementation of Great Society redistribution programs and an inflationary monetary policy designed to offset the cost of those programs. — We Are All Keynesians Now, Brian Wesbury, Robert Stein of First Trust Advisors, 4/4/22

If there is one central myth supporting the folly that passes for monetary policy and by extension fiscal policy, it would have to be the unchallenged assumption that money should be defined and controlled by government.

Given the role of money in the economy – that it is it serves as a trade intermediary, one-half of virtually every transaction – nothing has been more destructive than the government’s commandeering money from the market.

Money was once the most marketable commodity, wrote Ludwig von Mises in 1912, albeit a special commodity.  Since the Nixon Shock of 1971 making money a pure fiat, the absence of any commodity connection means that for government money is never an object.  Sounds like a drunk’s fantasy.  But there’s a downside: Fiat money increases amount to an exchange of nothing for something, a slick form of theft.  Thus, unlike gold mining and coin minting, increases in the fiat money supply “set economic impoverishment in motion.”

But if a monetary system “works” why not let it be?  Whatever our current problems might be we’ve survived without a commodity standard for a long time.  What’s wrong with the government or its agent, the central bank, defining money and regulating its supply and distribution?

First, the money is not theirs – it doesn’t belong to the government or the central bank.  Banks legitimately get their funds from depositors or investors.  Anything they create on their own through fractional-reserve lending is fraudulent, because they’re guaranteeing the same dollar to both a borrower and a depositor.

Property rights violations notwithstanding, government and the Fed are trying to make a counterfeiting racket support a prosperous economy.  The Fed’s money created “out of thin air” does not represent goods or services produced.  The subsequent increase in the supply of money puts downward pressure on the purchasing power of the dollar, so that holders of previously existing money are in effect paying for the counterfeiter’s purchases.  As Richard Cantillon explained in his famous essay (c. 1730), newly created money enters the economy unevenly, benefiting some groups at the expense of others.

Murray Rothbard discusses the counterfeiting process in What has government done to our money?:

Counterfeiting is evidently but another name for inflation — both creating new “money” that is not standard gold or silver, and both functioning similarly. And now we see why governments are inherently inflationary: because inflation is a powerful and subtle means for government acquisition of the public’s resources, a painless and all the more dangerous form of taxation. (Emphasis added)

And according to Keynes, not “one man in a million” is able to detect the theft — which apparently includes economists who believe “inflationary monetary policy . . . offsets the cost of those [Great Society] programs.”

As Keynes wrote during a brief period of clarity:

Lenin is said to have declared that the best way to destroy the Capitalist System was to debauch the currency. By a continuing process of inflation, governments can confiscate, secretly and unobserved, an important part of the wealth of their citizens. By this method they not only confiscate, but they confiscate arbitrarily; and, while the process impoverishes many, it actually enriches some. The sight of this arbitrary rearrangement of riches strikes not only at security, but at confidence in the equity of the existing distribution of wealth.

Kings of old could debase their coins and pass them off as the real thing but it was a slow, tedious process that didn’t yield much revenue.  Not only that, people grew wise to it and found ways to tell a cheat from a genuine article, giving rise to Gresham’s Law.  And they saw it as a cheat, not as a way of increasing GDP, or making the price of exports more competitive, or stabilizing the price level.

Paper money changed all that.

Today, the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer not because of “capitalism,” but because of a government-supported monetary system that enriches designated counterfeiters and their beneficiaries at the expense of other dollar holders.

Milton Friedman, in my view, penned the most important statement ever on monetary policy:

If a domestic money consists of a commodity, a pure gold standard or cowrie bead standard, the principles of monetary policy are very simple. There aren’t any. The commodity money takes care of itself.

Free markets tend to simply things.  Given that monetary policy today consists of varying degrees of counterfeiting, involving arcane meetings held in billion-dollar buildings, we need to get government out of the way and let the free market take care of itself.  And in so doing, take care of us as well.

Final Word

According to Mises there are two aspects to the sound-money principle:

It is affirmative in approving the market’s choice of a commonly used medium of exchange. It is negative in obstructing the government’s propensity to meddle with the currency system.

In my lifetime the greatest defender of sound money is Ron Paul — Keynes’s one man in a million — who in his 2009 book End the Fed explains how the Federal Reserve and its co-conspirator are the enemy of our future:

Bad economic policy can destroy a civilization—no policy is more dangerous than bad monetary policy. . . .

We need to take away the government’s money power. The banking industry needs its welfare check ended. The dollar’s soundness depends on its being untied from the machine that can make an infinite number of copies of dollars and reduce their value to zero.

The Fed and its powerful allies survive on the ignorance of the public.  Let’s not go down with that ship.

The post ‘We Are Still All Counterfeiters Now’ appeared first on LewRockwell.

Jerome Barber wrote:

Peggy Hall lays out the bait and switch.

Never trust ANY of them…

See here.

The post RFK Jr, Health Care Fraud appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, John Frahm.

Alt-Market.us

The post Globalists Are Rebranding Their “Woke Capitalism” Agenda After Crushing Setbacks appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click Here:

Eric Zuesse

The post A Top Ukrainian Journalist is Forced Out of Ukraine by Zelensky Regime appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Transportphenomena:

From Ragnar and Rollo the Conquerers to randy and his little pom-poms.

Breitbart

The post Tommy Tuberville Blasts NFL, Vikings Over Male Cheerleaders appeared first on LewRockwell.

Thanks, Tim McGraw.

Ghost of the Niles Hotel

Now that is a picture frame.

The post California’s Hwy 395 in the Remote NE Corner of the State appeared first on LewRockwell.

Click here:

John Leake

The post Michelangelo’s Message to Mankind appeared first on LewRockwell.

He defends the atomic bombing of Japan. It was a “terrible decision, but the alternatives were even worse.” There is one alternative that was not worse: Not dropping the bombs at all. David Henderson takes down Hanson here.

The post Victor Davis Hanson: Apologist for Mass Murder appeared first on LewRockwell.

Writes Tim McGraw:

Today, August 21, 2025, is the 54th anniversary of the day. Oh, it was a big day. It was the usual hot and humid August afternoon in Lincoln, Nebraska. We hippies, all boys born in 1952, had come together at our communal house, the Garfield House at 14th and Garfield Streets.

The Garfield House was a big two-story white frame house. It had a full basement that we’d insulated with egg cartons and blankets so our band could play loud music. The house had a large yard and a two-car garage that no one used. No one had a car. 

August 21, 1971, was the day that a military poobah would pull our birthdates out of a lottery drum to see if we won a free, all expenses paid, trip to the Vietnam War. 

The old black & white TV was in the bay window. We all had beers, joints, and/or cigarettes in our hands. If our birthdate was one of the first 100 drawn, we were fucked. There was laughter covering up the tension in the room.

My best friend, Mark, was sitting in his big leather chair. I was sitting on the couch next to his chair. I was drinking cheap Schmidt animal beer. Mark was drinking a can of Olde English 800 Malt Liquor in one hand and the usual Old Gold cigarette in the other.

Mark’s birthdate came up as #28. His face went white. His hands shook. He was fucked. 

I got #279. My Irish luck came through.

Mark went on the lam to a farmhouse in South Dakota. He eventually was caught, arrested, and did two years of community service in Lincoln. When Mark received his pardon from Jimmy Carter, he had it framed and hung it over his toilet so that he could look at it every time he peed.

Yeah, August 21, 1971; helluva day.

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The post Why Rep. Thomas Massie prefers living off grid appeared first on LewRockwell.

Vicki Marzullo wrote:

People aren’t “surprised,” they’re pissed because favored government employees, including teachers, had their loans forgiven and everybody else has to pay.

Zero Hedge

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Click Here:

Eric Zuesse

The post How Ukraine Is Collapsing appeared first on LewRockwell.