Category Archives: Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, Federalist Western Correspondent Tristan Justice joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss what he learned about the state of the GOP from the Republican Governors Association annual conference in Phoenix earlier this month.

Its important to note that all these different states have different issues to run on, but education is really at the focal point of the culture war, and Republicans, I think, would be wise to follow the model of Glenn Younkin and adopt this issue and become champions for kids education. But again, they have other issues to run on as well, Justice said.

Other issues that the GOP plans to harness in the 2022 midterms include immigration, inflation, and energy costs.

Republicans ought to worry more about governors than anything else next year, considering just how just how the pandemic illustrated how important it is to maintain these governorships, Justice said.

Read Justices dispatch Youngkins Win Bolsters GOP Optimism, But Did Governors Learn? here.

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Will GOP Governors Engage The Culture War To Keep States Red? - The Federalist

On this episode of The Federalist Radio Hour, author and Daily Signal columnist Jarrett Stepman joins Culture Editor Emily Jashinsky to discuss the history of Thanksgiving and why, despite attacks from the left, the holidays traditions live on.

When you have a national day of Thanksgiving, you have to understand 1863 was really the heart of the American Civil War. There were Americans dying in the tens of thousands, a country that was at that point entirely torn apart. You had literally families that were at war with one another. It says a lot about the character of the nation that at that moment, they took a step back to give thanks for what they had as Americans, Stepman said.

And it was, I think, a combination of giving thanks for the things that they were given, giving thanks to the fact that they even had a country, the United States of America, something that many take for granted, he added.

Stepman said varying visions leave many of the far-left feeling contempt for the U.S. but the nations origins are important.

I think that the Thanksgiving tradition, which, of course, the pilgrims are very much a part of in this country is incredibly important. Its important to remember how our origins as a country, even though this was hundreds of years before the United States as we know it existed, you can see the seeds of our own origins as a people, Stepman said.

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Why America's Future 'Depends' On Thanksgiving - The Federalist

The Los Angeles Unified School District, the second-largest public school district in the nation with more than 640,000 K-12 students enrolled, discouraged students from celebrating Thanksgiving this year, instead offering an alternative holiday in its place.

The LAUSD Office of Human Relations, Diversity & Equity prepared a number of presentations called Advisory Lessons that push left-wing beliefs and are intended to be shown to students. The website also describes the need for teachers to talk to students about power, privilege, oppression, and resistance.

One such lesson is called Lets Talk About Thanksgiving. It starts out innocently enough, asking students if they prefer pie or turkey. Then the presentation lists a number of objectives, one of which is Reflect on how you can honor the true meaning of Thanksgiving.

What exactly is this true meaning, you might ask? The presentation doesnt waste any time, jumping into a video from MTV titled Everything You Know About Thanksgiving Is Wrong. It challenges the finer details of the first Thanksgiving, like the nature of the food that they ate and the clothes that the pilgrims wore. The video goes on to entirely overshadow the three-day pilgrim festival at which 90 members of the Wampanoag tribe were present, the event that would later go on to be called Thanksgiving.

It does, however, discuss the extensive history of violent conflict between Native peoples and the pilgrims, all while falsely framing such conflict as if it was exclusively initiated and carried out by the European settlers. The rest of the presentation maintains this theme.

One slide contends that unnamed researchers doubt that the pilgrims and natives ever had a celebration of unity, despite a historical record that documents a three-day festival where members of both groups celebrated together. It once again cites settlers attacks against the natives while not mentioning aggressive actions taken by the natives against settlers.

Students are then directed to a website where they can discover whose land you are on. It also says that LAUSD headquarters is on Chumash, Tongva and Kizh land. Note that the slide show does not refer to the land in the past tense but instead says that the area is currently Chumash, Tongva, and Kizh land, implying that these tribes, not the state of California or the United States of America, continue to have a legitimate claim to the area a century or more after they were conquered by settlers and U.S. armies.

The presentation concludes with a videofrom Teen Vogue that claims thatthe true story of Thanksgiving is that after every killing of a whole village, these European settlers celebrated it and then called it Thanksgiving and thatpeople who celebrate Thanksgiving are celebrating the deaths of many people. The video ends with a group of girls flipping over a Thanksgiving table.

LAUSD isnt content with simply deconstructing Thanksgiving, theyre also intent on replacing it with a different holiday. Thats why they made a presentation labeled National Day of Mourning, which bears the subtitle Learn about the day of protest held by Native Americans to mourn ancestors and the theft of their lands.

The presentation provides a historical overview of the Day of Mourning, citing the original protest that was held in Massachusetts in 1970. It goes on to note that The National Day of Mourning hopes to educate folks about the true history of the colonization of America and end the national myth and that it is a way for Indigenous people to remember their ancestors and grieve their genocide. This holiday is held on the same day as Thanksgiving.

The presentation also includes a reflection page that asks the question Do you think people are starting to re-think their understanding of Thanksgiving? One doesnt have to read very far into these two presentations to realize that the administrators at LAUSD who created these lessons fully intend for their students to reconsider Thanksgiving, specifically to see it as a celebration of racist violence rather than how it has traditionally been regarded as a celebration of unity and gratitude.

There is nothing wrong with a person mourning the loss of aspects of his culture, or the evils that accompany war. But both presentations were permeated with an air of faux impartiality. This is the exact danger. By disingenuously framing their politics as legitimate academic disciplines or good-natured attempts at intellectual inquiry, they shroud their real aims.

To naively accept that the LAUSD was simply motivated by a desire to engage in historical or cultural preservation rather than to indict American traditions as uniquely racist is to ignore what weve learned from a year thats been replete with controversies surrounding critical race theory.

Their presentation on Thanksgiving sheds light on their motives. Notice how all historical nuance had been discarded. In the name of telling the true history of the holiday and native settler relations, they entirely ignored that violence between the two populations went both ways, the barbaric practices of many indigenous tribes including the abuse of women and ritual torture, that the violence was punctuated by periods of peace and treaties, or even that the Native American population was segmented into different tribes, each of which had distinct experiences with each other and settlers.

Furthermore, if decrying conquest and the cultural erosion that stems from it, not engaging in grievance politics, was their goal, where are the mentions of any of the numerous cases of violence between native tribes? The unfortunate reality is that violent conflict has been a defining feature of the human experience, regardless of the people, place, or time one studies. Acting as if conquest is specific to a population or a country is dishonest, serving only to engender animosity against peoples or countries that have been deemed as uniquely guilty.

This rejection of historical nuance is highly politically expedient and has, in this instance, been leveraged by LAUSD to needlessly push division and erode a quintessential American holiday. While fighting back against the critical race theory thats invaded American schools is a long and arduous process, there is a simple way you can push back against those who undermine our traditions. Keep celebrating.

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Los Angeles Schools Teach Students That Celebrating Thanksgiving Is Evil - The Federalist

The point of the obviously unjust prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse was to deter Americans from standing against the lefts routine use of mob violence. After all, mobs cannot be checked if citizens are afraid to defend themselves and their communities when Democratic mayors, governors and prosecutors refuse to stop leftist riots.

This is why left-wing politicians and their media supporters hate effective self-defense. For example, Farhad Manjoo of the New York Times used the Rittenhouse trial to argue against the foundational tenets of gun advocacy, starting with the claim that guns are effective and necessary weapons of self-defense. He claimed that Rittenhouses gun transformed situations that might have ended in black eyes and broken bones into ones that ended with corpses in the street.

As National Reviews Kevin Williamson replied, Well, yes. Thats the idea. The point of effective self-defense is avoid relying on the mercy of aggressors, hoping they will be satisfied with only seriously injuring you.

In addition to disdaining the right to self-defense, Manjoo also wants to remove police protection from citizens. He was ebullient over the violent Black Lives Matter protests of 2020, and elated that acceptable public discourse about police reform has shifted to include terms like demilitarize, defund and abolish.

This in folly, but at least he is honest enough to admit that he believes that the police (if they are not outright abolished) should stand down during leftist riots, and that citizens who defend themselves should be prosecuted. The only people who should be punished for riots are those who try to stop them.

The lefts leadership, and not just the fringe, is pro-riot, as illustrated by the constant labeling of rioters as protestors. The only reason to conflate the two is to give moral cover to the riots.

As Nellie Bowles, formerly of The New York Times, noted regarding the papers suppression of her reporting on Kenosha, the mainstream liberal argument was that burning down businesses for racial justice was both good and healthy. If you lived in those neighborhoods on fire, you were not supposed to get an extinguisher. The proper response the only acceptable response was to see the brick and mortar torn down, to watch the fires burn and to say: thank you.

In short, either get with the mob or get out of its way. And dont forget to cheer as rioters destroy your neighborhood. As Nikole Hannah-Jones, mastermind of The New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning 1619 Project said during the 2020 riots, Destroying property, which can be replaced, is not violence.

This attempt to justify mob destruction by pretending that it only targets replaceable property could only be believed by the ideologically intoxicated and the very privileged. Even if we ignore those killed and injured by the riots, the truth is that property is often irreplaceable, and even when it can be replaced its destruction harms people.

The idea that insurance will fix everything is ridiculous, especially coming from those who otherwise tend to denounce insurance companies. Furthermore, even when insurance companies are not difficult to deal with, there are things that are uninsured, or not insured for the full value. And some things are just irreplaceable, often because they have value beyond their physical functionthe furniture that my father built can be functionally replaced by something from a store, but the personal value cannot.

We are embodied beings, and naturally develop emotions regarding objects with special significance. Furthermore, it is still harmful to destroy more mundane objects. Businesses and homes, even if fully insured, cannot be rebuilt in a day, and in the meantime people will be out of work or out of a home.

Rebuilding, even with money, takes time, and to force people into it is stealing parts of their lives from them. The injury is multiplied when entire neighborhoods are destroyed, even if no one is physically hurt.

This is why people will not simply acquiesce to rule by rioters. Citizens taking up arms is inevitable when the authorities are unable or unwilling to defend people and property. It may have been foolhardy for an untrained 17-year-old to take that task on himself, but that does not negate his right to self-defense, let alone excuse the rioters and their media cheerleaders and political enablers.

For those of us not high on ideology, it was obvious that the violence of Black Lives Matter riots would not result in fruitful criminal justice reform. As for defunding the police, it has been a disaster, and left-wing cities that cut police budgets are having to increase funding due to crime surges.

Increases in crime are a natural result of excusing and encouraging riots. Evil attracts evil, and excusing riots if they are for a supposedly good cause ensures that many wicked people will flock to that cause as an excuse for their crimes. It is no coincidence that the men Rittenhouse shot in self-defense were all criminals, beginning with pedophile rapist Joseph Rosenbaum.

The response of left-wing media and politicians to Rittenhouses justified acquittal shows that they have learned nothing. They doubled-down on the lies that the rioters were peaceful protestors and that Rittenhouse was a white supremacist murderer, and they called everyone who agreed with the verdict racist.

That reveals why they support riots and hate self-defense. They want to punish the nation. They want to inflict pain as part of some bizarre national catharsis that purges the sins of the people and puts the left in permanent power.

This strange hatred for their own country is a large part of why the leadership of the leftpoliticians, media, academics, and suchlikeis losing support from ordinary, working-class voters, who do not want to see their neighborhoods burned down and the police defunded. Other than criminals, rioting is largely the province of faux-radicals who view destruction as a lark or a tool, and who are safely insulated from the long-term consequences.

Politically, the lefts leaders view riots as tools of punishment and intimidation used by their side, which may be part of why the capitol riot of Jan 6 looms so large for themit carries the threat that the right might be able to summon mobs of its own. In contrast to the lefts embrace of violence, conservatives must oppose escalating, tit-for-tat, riots. We will win by standing for law and order against mob rule, not by emulating the left.

Rittenhouse should never have been charged. But even more, the left should never have encouraged and enabled the riots that led to him being attacked and having to defend himself.

Nathanael Blake is a senior contributor to The Federalist and a postdoctoral fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.

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Rittenhouse Verdict Reveals Once Again That The Left Wants Riots - The Federalist

If, as recommended, you spent your Thanksgiving enjoying football along with excessive amounts of food, you were treated to a curious sponsorship: Crown Royal.

While it isnt curious that the Canadian whiskey is working with the NFL, a league not known for its aversion to marketing or booze, to have Thanksgiving games sponsored by a Canadian company is a visible sign of decline. For starters, it was Thanksgiving, the quintessential American holiday. For seconds, its Canadian whiskey. For thirds, Im pretty sure this is still America, decline notwithstanding.

But thats where we are as a country, reduced to letting hosers help bring us an annual tradition. And while we should probably blame President Biden for this, even if this one thing isnt his fault, we should definitely blame NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for selling us out, once again.

Football on Thanksgiving brought to us by Canadian whiskey, as if there arent many, many, many bourbons that could have done the same job, except better.

Im not trying to disparage Crown Royal. Its a fine whiskey. There was a time before the bourbon craze when a friend busting out the velvet bag would be treated with reverence. I still wouldnt look down upon it, even though there are many, many, many bourbons that could do the same job, except better.

The time for reverence, though, has long since passed. Its Crown. Its easily accessible, not too expensive, and not too demanding of the drinker. Its a great bottle for elevating your and Coke or passing around the room for celebratory shots after the game. Its also suitable for remorse shots when the game doesnt go so well.

But the thing is, in case I havent mentioned it, its Canadian. And not to talk trash about Canada, but, well, it is Canada. As much as people love to elevate its stature, no one ever actually moves there, threats aside. Its a place people love in theory. Even ex-pat Canadians extolling its virtues stop short of moving back and they presumably have family there. Its like the Unitarian Church of countries.

On Thanksgiving, though, there was Crown Royal, sponsoring our game, rubbing decline in our faces. As Americans, we should be accustomed to Goodell and the NFL rubbing our faces in various things. That doesnt mean we shouldnt fight it.

Roger Goodell was unlikely involved in the decision to accept Crown Royal as an official sponsor. That move probably came from the NFLs chief marketing officer or some other marketing lackey who saw the dollar signs American, of course and said Yes. Goodell, though, created the environment in which that could happen, most likely because he hates America.

If you doubt that undeniable truth, remember how Goodell treated Americas son Tom Brady and the New England Patriots. The Patriots! Roger Goodell hates America and now hes stopped hiding it, going so far as letting Canada sponsor our pastimes, even if he didnt personally approve the deal and instead just trusted someone to ink it for him. Fish do rot from the head down.

America has never been big on banishing people, but we live in a brave new world and maybe its time to rethink that. When it comes to Roger Goodell, its definitely time to rethink it. It is now undeniable that the commissioner should at least be banished to Canada, if not some remote outpost with semi-reliable electricity. No longer can we let this megalomaniacal ginger make a mockery of our holidays, our people, and our sports.

As it is always darkest before the dawn, so is our current moment. This is no time for excessive despair, or to give up. We must, though, fight, and thats why its time to send Goodell packing to colder climes. Politically, Canada obviously suits him better than his current country, so its not that harsh of a punishment. And when it comes to whiskey, he might at least start learning how to drink.

Richard Cromwell is a senior contributor to The Federalist. Follow him on Twitter, @rcromwell4.

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It's Time To Banish Roger Goodell To Canada - The Federalist

In the year since last Thanksgiving, no one has been more influential in shaping the course of my career than MSNBCs Joy Reid.

Others on the left come close, but no one is quite as good at representing, day in and day out, just how awful Democrats and the media have become. Watching Reids show is the surest way to get a sense of where the lefts depravity stands and where its headed. Her program has been a godsend in providing me with direction in explaining and answering any given lie that Democrats and the media are excitedly spreading.

Whatever Reid says, odds are you can count on the opposite being the truth. And thats why this year, Im deeply thankful that Joy Reid has a nightly show on prime-time television.

I appreciate in December 2020, Reid continued the media campaign to make Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis look bad on the pandemic. As Floridas governor, Ron DeSantis has made one hideous move after another, she babbled. But, she said, his biggest screw-up had been when it comes to the coronavirus.

Reids leading data point to back up that accusation was that Florida at the time was only one of the three states with more than 1 million cases, and those case numbers are rising.

Such breathless declarations on DeSantis were routine for the past year but they had the unintended effect of inspiring interest in what actually was happening in Florida and all indications are that even without obsessing over masks and resisting draconian economic restrictions, the DeSantis administration has done relatively well in limiting the damage of COVID-19.

At the time, Florida did have more than 1 million cases. But so did deep-blue California, with 1.5 million. The third state with more than 1 million was Texas. Incidentally, all three states have the largest populations in the country. Of course they had the highest total number of positive cases.

But even though Florida has a higher population than blue state New York (and an older one), Florida to this day continues to have the lower COVID death rate. Florida has suffered 285 deaths per 100,000 people. In New York, its 292.

Average person: Wow, so mask mandates and lockdowns dont necessarily mean COVID success? Good to know for 2022 and 2024! Thanks, Joy!

I also appreciate Reid bringing my attention to the Kyle Rittenhouse homicide trial in advance, something I had not planned on paying attention to until she claimed on her show in late October that an acquittal would reinforce white supremacy. When Reid says its about race, you know its actually devoid of race.

Reid hadpondered whether there was anything prosecutors could do to make sure that this doesnt wind up being a jury that essentially approximates the Emmet Till jury back in the 1950s. Spotting the red flag, I refreshed my memory on the details of the Rittenhouse shootings from August of last year, curious as to where Reid was drawing the dubious race link.

Couldnt find it. Other than that the riot scene where the shootings took place had also been a place where Black Lives Matter protests were taking place, nothing about it was racial. Others around the country apparently noticed the same and while on that fact-finding crusade, we all noticed something else that Rittenhouse was in fact the victim!

Had not half the country realized theyd been told a lie, pressure on the jury from the left to deliver a guilty verdict might have been successful.

Good thing Reid was putting out the alerts. Thanks, Joy!

And thanks to all of you who have been reading along. Happy Thanksgiving.

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This Thanksgiving, I'm Thankful For Joy Reid - The Federalist

The following is a song of thanksgiving written by the great Psalmist, in Psalm 111. Its presented here in the King James version, which is in the public domain.

1 Praise ye the Lord. I will praise the Lord with my whole heart, in the assembly of the upright, and in the congregation.

2 The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.

3 His work is honourable and glorious: and his righteousness endureth for ever.

4 He hath made his wonderful works to be remembered: the Lord is gracious and full of compassion.

5 He hath given meat unto them that fear him: he will ever be mindful of his covenant.

6 He hath shewed his people the power of his works, that he may give them the heritage of the heathen.

7 The works of his hands are verity and judgment; all his commandments are sure.

8 They stand fast for ever and ever, and are done in truth and uprightness.

9 He sent redemption unto his people: he hath commanded his covenant for ever: holy and reverend is his name.

10 The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: a good understanding have all they that do his commandments: his praise endureth for ever.

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'The Beginning Of Wisdom': An Ancient Song Of Thanksgiving - The Federalist

Gratitude is a virtue. Its moral and its healthy. Thanksgiving is a day to practice this virtue, rendering the efforts to rebrand the holiday an attack on thankfulness itself. In times of war and times of peace, there is always reason for pain. That we have a holiday dedicated to gratitude does not invalidate any of these reasons. It soothes our pains but does not dismiss them.

Indeed, President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in the midst of the Civil War, making this very argument explicitly in his proclamation. Thanksgiving has always been about pausing in bad times to give thanks for the good.

In the midst of a civil war of unequalled magnitude and severity peace has been preserved with all nations, order has been maintained, the laws have been respected and obeyed, and harmony has prevailed everywhere except in the theatre of military conflict, Lincoln wrote. The first two sentences of his Thanksgiving proclamation make note of bounties, which are so constantly enjoyed that we are prone to forget the source from which they come.

The first Thanksgiving itself celebrated not merely a bountiful harvest, but a bountiful harvest enjoyed amidst suffering and scarcity. For the English, [the first Thanksgiving] was also celebrating the fact that they had survived their first year here in New England, Tom Begley of Plimoth Plantation told the History Channel.

Both the English and the Native Americans present at the first Thanksgiving had strong traditions of ritual gratitude. We as native people [traditionally] have thanksgivings as a daily, ongoing thing, Linda Coombs, a former director of the Wampanoag program at Plimoth Plantation, explained to the Christian Science Monitor. Every time anybody went hunting or fishing or picked a plant, they would offer a prayer or acknowledgment.

Pain and suffering are baked into the very fabric of Thanksgiving, as well they should be. We give thanks not to whitewash history or mitigate challenges of the present. We give thanks because of those struggles.

Modernity cushions us from the suffering that induced these ritual expressions of gratitude. In this age of dollar-menu abundance, where starvation in our country is rare, rich and poor alike are less reliant on nature for immediate survival and therefore less likely to celebrate every bite of turkey or every sip of water. But our food and other bounties still sustain us. We need them to survive, no matter how easy it is for us to eat or treat the common cold.

The Bible is clear that we are to give thanks in all circumstances. (1 Thessalonians 5:16-18.)

Efforts to rebrand Thanksgiving as a day for rejecting customary gratitude in the interest of focusing only on evil are immoral and unhealthy, both culturally and psychologically. If ingratitude characterizes an individual, no matter how aggrieved, they will be miserable and unproductive. The same is true of a country.

That isnt to say we should accept present injustices or forget injustices of the past. But a national holiday of Thanksgiving is no enemy of the disenfranchised. Marginalized people throughout history, in times of much less abundance, have practiced gratitude in their darkest days. Thanksgiving is not about a fantasy of perfection or revisionist history. We must be grateful for the good precisely because of the bad. We are alive and we are full.

This is the day that the Lord has made; let us rejoice and be glad in it.

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Thanksgiving Is Meant For The Bad Times As Much As The Good - The Federalist

The Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) strongly reiterates its support for any genuine and honest political solution that helps the redemption of Ethiopia.

Addis Abeba, November 25,2021- Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) issued a statement yesterday reiterating calls for peaceful resolution to what it called an avoidable war raging all over the country. In its statement the OFC listed steps to immediately be taken to salvage the country from disintegration and the entire region from potential destabilization, among which is the immediate establishment of an interim government for a period of 3-6 months with a mandate to maintain law and order, undertake the charting of a common roadmap and facilitate the national dialogue processes. During the mandate of the interim administration, all parties will begin negotiations on the formation of an all-inclusive transitional government that shall last for 18 months. No major stakeholder shall be excluded from these negotiations, the OFC said.

Full Statement

Recalling the recent press release Only Honest, Genuine, and All-inclusive National Dialogue Can Solvethe Countrys Political Crisis announced on 25 October 2021, and evenbeyond the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) has been repeatedly called for andappealed to the current ruling party and its leaders to change course from thepresent perilous road to destruction and the political dead-end thereof, whichhas pushed the country to brink of a potential disintegration. For the rulingparty and its leaders are not bold enough to take concrete positive measuresdangers are looming on the land of Ethiopia. To tackle the imminent danger, wehereby again strongly reiterate that peaceful resolution is a panacea for thecurrent Ethiopian crises.

Starting from the assumption of power by Prime Minister AbiyAhmed in 2018 after 27 years of a one-party authoritarian rule, Ethiopians ingeneral and the Oromo people in particular, have become hopeful for asuccessful democratic transition through honest and genuine national dialoguethat can lead the country to durable peace, democratic governance andmeaningful economic development, which in turn could pull millions of ourcitizens out of poverty. However, the incumbent government quickly moved to fulfillits ambition of a one-party rule that squandered the opportunity for a realdemocratic transformation, dashing the hopes of millions of people who weredreaming for freedom and democracy.

Our party, OFC used every opportunity to cooperate with theruling party to draw a common road map for smooth transition. Our effort tohelp the ruling party move in the right track has become to the risking of thesafety of our members who have been imprisoned in mass, forced to flee fromtheir loved ones, beaten, and even shot dead just for disagreeing with the paththe government has chosen.

Sadly, the governments response to all our peaceful pleawas the closure of almost all our party offices across the country, except justthree, in addition to forcing the OFC out of the 2021 ill-designed electionshosted by illegitimate election processes that resulted in the usual, I won99% or 100% of the vote tradition we experienced from Ethiopias pastdictators or elsewhere in Africa. Consequently, today, Ethiopia is at a criticalcrossroad of uncertainty, which forced us to forward the below points as analternative for solution. For sure an avoidable war is raging all over thecountry consuming the lives of tens of thousands and bringing misery for tensof millions. And, more than ever before in our countrys history, the war isnot limited to armed factions, but also ordinary citizens with no real trainingfor war or have no knowledge of international rules of engagements in war havebecome active actors of the horror.

After assessing the on-going blood bath in the country andthe potential for a war of all against all whose end-result cannot bepredicted, our party is calling for the following steps to immediately be takento salvage our people from civil war, our country from disintegration and theentire region from potential destabilization.

In conclusion, OFC urge all Ethiopians, the international community, and the warring parties to hear our voice and cooperate in achieving durable peace and stability to salvage our country. In this regard, the Oromo Federalist Congress (OFC) strongly reiterates its support for any genuine and honest political solution that helps the redemption of Ethiopia. Dispatch

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News: OFC calls for establishment of interim govt; negotiation towards all-inclusive transitional govt - addisstandard.com

This is an excerpt from the authors new book, A Plague Upon Our House, which releases December 7 and is available now for preorder.

[CDC Director Robert] Redfields congressional testimony on September 23 immediately caught my attention. I watched in disbelief as Redfield told Congress that more than 90 percent of the populationmore than three hundred million people in the USremains susceptible to the illness.

The statement was based on incomplete and outdated data, as well as an apparent lack of understanding of the literature, and it struck me as one of the most erroneous and fear-inducing proclamations of any public health official to that moment. Approximately two hundred thousand Americans had already died from COVID; the last thing the public needed was an exaggeration of the future risks, implying to some that ten times that number could still die.

First of all, the numbers didnt add up. At that point, confirmed cases in the US already totaled approximately seven million, and the CDC itself had estimated that approximately ten times the number of confirmed cases, a very conservative estimate, were likely to have had the infection. A Stanford seropositivity study back in April had shown that confirmed cases underestimated the total infections by a factor of approximately forty times. It made no sense that only 9 percent, or thirty million Americans, had been infected.

Second, the 9 percent calculation was blatantly wrong. That number came from antibody testing by the states. I looked at the CDC website myself, and sure enough, the data was based on antiquated testing from several states.

Some antibody totals were pulled from several months earlier, before many of those states had experienced a significant number of cases. It therefore grossly underestimated the number of cases that had already occurred. The data was simply not valid, but you needed to pay attention to the details.

More importantly, Redfields basic claim was fundamentally flawed. The conclusion that serum antibody testing revealed the entire population of those protected from COVID was counter to an entire body of published literature and contrary to fundamental knowledge of immunology, including other coronavirus infections.

It was well known that antibody tests showed one cross-section in timethey were transienteven though immune protection can last. From studies on SARS-2 and most other viruses, antibody levels change over a span of months. They typically appear in the first couple of weeks, peak in a few months, and then decrease over a span of several months.

The literature on COVID had already shown these patterns. A month before this press conference, a Nature Reviews Immunology study on COVID-19 explicitly stated, The absence of specific antibodies in the serum does not necessarily mean an absence of immune memory, and explained, memory B-cells and T-cells may be maintained even if there are not measurable levels of serum antibodies.

Japans study demonstrated this dramatically. In their study, antibody levels increased from 5.8 percent to 46.8 percent over the course of the summer. The most dramatic increase occurred in late June and early July, paralleling the rise in daily confirmed cases within Tokyo, which peaked on August 4.

Out of the 350 individuals who completed both offered tests, 21.4 percent of those who tested negative became positive, and 12.2 percent of initially positive participants became negative for antibodies. A striking 81.1 percent of IgM-antibody-positive cases at first testing became negative in only one month. They stated that [antibody tests] may significantly underestimate previous COVID-19 infections. It had also been widely reported in several major scientific journals that antibody responses are not necessarily detectable in all COVID patients, especially those with less severe forms.

But the flaws in Redfields estimate extended deeper. Even those familiar with first-year college biology know that other components of the immune system, memory B-cell and T-cells, provide protection from virus infections. Some T-cells kill the virus, and they also help antibodies form. T-cells develop and provide protection that lasts far longer, even after antibodies disappearsometimes for years in other SARS viruses.

T-cells for this virus had already been documented, even in people unexposed to SARS-2, meaning that in these cases, cross-protection was present from T-cells originating in response to other coronaviruses. T-cells had also been found in individuals with completely asymptomatic SARS-2 infections.

NIH Director Francis Collins had highlighted that very data in his Directors Blog a few weeks earlier, writing, In fact, immune cells known as memory T cells also play an important role in the ability of our immune systems to protect us against many viral infections, includingit now appearsCOVID-19.

Scientists from some of the top research institutions in the world, like Swedens Karolinska Institute, San Diegos La Jolla Institute, Duke University, Berlin, and others had published this evidence. Karolinska demonstrated T-cell immunity in both asymptomatic and mild cases of COVIDeven if antibody-negative.

Singapore researchers had noted robust T-cell responses to this virus, SARS2, from seventeen-year-old SARS1 samples. Since T-cells are obviously not discovered by antibody tests, those individuals were not included in Redfields count. Yet he apparently had not considered this essential, indeed fundamental, point as he testified to Congress and made headlines.

After watching this debacle on TV, I knew full well what was coming later that day. The media would latch on to this and create even more public panic. I also knew that the responsibility for clarifying this grossly erroneous statement would be mine. There was no question it would come up at the presidents press conference, and even if it did not, it still needed to be explained.

I rushed over to Derek Lyonss office to update him and to make sure we would alert the president beforehand. A few others in the West Wing were there, so I summarized to them what had been said to Congress.

The mood ranged from amazement to dejection to frustration. An advisor to the president on legal matters warned me, with a smile on his face, Scott, dont just bluntly say, Redfield is wrong! Say something softer, like He misstated things.

I nodded, knowing that I needed to restrain my words, even though this was the same man who had tried to destroy me in the national press a few days earlier. But this wasnt personal at all. Clarifying the facts about the pandemic and countering the unending barrage of misinformation and pseudoscience about it, in this case coming from within the administration itself, was one of my most important roles in this national crisis.

During the pre-brief in the Oval Office a few hours later, I outlined the issue to the president. It was decided, as expected, that I would answer the question when it came up. And so it did.

A reporter from ABC News directly asked me if Redfields statement that more than 90 percent of Americans remained susceptible to the disease was true. I took the friendly advice I had received earlier in the day.

I think that Dr. Redfield misstated something there, I said, and then did my best to calmly explain the problems with outdated information and the contribution of cross-reactive T-cells and T-cell protection that would not have been included in his data. I correctly stated what was widely known and factualthat the protection from the virus is not solely determined by the percent of people who have antibodies. During my answer, as I fended off interruptions, I tried to explain in understandable language as best I could.

I also made a serious effort to be somewhat delicate, because I felt extremely uncomfortable about having to correct the director of the CDC on the national stage.

Unfortunately, my disgust with the confrontational mood in that press room prevented me from being more diplomatic when that reporter asked, Who are we to believe? My reflexive answer was Youre supposed to believe in the science, and I am telling you the science. Then I referred him to several expert scientists by name. However, I had the strong sense that he was not really interested in the facts at all. Rather, it was another attempt to amplify discord.

After exiting the press room, I walked alongside the president. He briefly stopped to check the news coverage on the set of TV monitors outside the briefing room, as he typically chose to do. After some banter between the president and the staff standing in the area, we began walking back toward the Oval Office.

President Trump turned to me on his right, smiling wryly but with a genuinely puzzled look on his face. Is Redfield political or just stupid? he asked, subtly shaking his head. I looked right back at the president and hesitated. The answer was obvious to both of us.

Needless to say, the media immediately played up the disagreement between me and Redfield. It fed into their narrative of conflict between me and the other Task Force doctors, one that Redfield personally caused with his offensive and unwarranted remark that everything I said was false.

Later, Dr. Fauci appeared on TV and criticized my straightforward attempt to clarify important information as extraordinarily inappropriate. I wondered if he was more concerned with protecting his bureaucrat colleagues reputation and undermining mine than ensuring that correct information was being told to the American public.

Martin Kulldorff, the world-renowned Harvard epidemiologist, posted his reaction on Twitter: Scott Atlas stated the simple fact that immunity is higher than those with antibodies, whereupon Dr. Fauci criticizes him without contradicting what was actually said. Stating a simple scientific fact is not extraordinarily inappropriate. What is going on?

Scott William Atlas is a senior fellow in health care policy at Stanford University's Hoover Institution and a former member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force. From 1998 to 2012 he was a professor and chief of neuroradiology at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Photo President Donald J. Trump talks with Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany and Dr. Scott Atlas Thursday, Sept. 10, 2020, in the West Wing of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead)

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Atlas: The Nation's 'Top Scientists' Lied About COVID And Got Away With It - The Federalist