Ryan Lovelace – June 2, 2021

Researchers conducting human-animal hybrid experiments struck fear into federal lawmakers worried that nightmare scenarios of Frankenstein creatures have become a reality.

Earlier this year, researchers announced a blending of man and monkey.

The Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California, said in April that it participated with a China-led research team in an experiment by injecting human stem cells into monkey embryos. They allowed the resulting creature to live and grow for 19 days before terminating it. The researchers responsible for the technology used in the experiment said their work aided the study of embryonic development.

Federal officials have placed a moratorium on U.S. funding of such research. Still, they are reviewing the restrictions and scientific developments as Congress debates a bill to spend nearly $200 billion of taxpayers’ money on research and development endeavors to counter China.

Sen. Mike Braun, Indiana Republican, said he is worried that such human-animal hybrid experiments will cross ethical boundaries and contravene the dignity and sanctity of human life.

“I mean, any of us could speculate on kind of the Frankenstein concept, let’s put it that way, which that was being referred to as in terms of what this leads to,” Mr. Braun said. “I don’t know. I think that I do believe that there’s a genuine interest in taking so much that we’ve learned through DNA analysis, understanding the genome of not only human beings but other animals, that there’s going to be that [temptation] contagion to go beyond maybe, just the altruistic effort of finding cures for very, very vexing ailments like ALS, like Alzheimer’s, like any of the diseases that are out there that are significant, that we’re not even to the point where we know exactly what causes it, let alone cures.”

Mr. Braun and fellow Republicans seek to outlaw chimeras involving the blending of human embryos with animal wombs and animal embryos with human wombs.

https://www.washingtontimes.com

Steve Warren – May 27, 2021

President Joe Biden will send a clear message on Friday when he releases his proposed 2022 $6 trillion budget to Congress. His message? He wants U.S. taxpayers to fund abortions at a time when Republican-led states are ramping up restrictions on it and when the U.S. Supreme Court plans to hear a direct challenge to Roe v. Wade.

Several media outlets are reporting Biden’s budget would cause the highest sustained level of federal spending since World War II as the president looks to fund his ever-increasing progressive agenda investing in education, infrastructure, and fighting climate change.

Politico reports Biden is also expected to leave out the Hyde Amendment as well as any other pro-life acknowledgments in his spending proposal in a move to try to please progressives and abortion activists.

The Hyde amendment is a decades-old bipartisan policy that has been included in federal spending bills for roughly 40 years to prevent taxpayer funds from paying for abortions. Biden’s exclusion of Hyde would largely be a token confrontation due to the Democrat Party’s narrow majority in Congress, and no clear winning edge in the Senate.

As CBN News reported in 2019, in his many years as a senator, he was for it. But suddenly then-candidate Biden flip-flopped on the issue saying he wanted to get rid of the ban on taxpayer-funded abortions. This surprised many Democrats including some of the then-former vice president’s aides.

“Just as I’ve never attempted to impose my views on anyone else as to when life begins, I have never attempted to impose my view on who should pay for it if people fundamentally disagree with the position we take,” Biden said at the time. “But folks, but folks times have changed. I don’t think these guys are gonna let up.”

He shifted his position, he said, while crafting his healthcare plan, as more and more states pass laws protecting the unborn.

“I can’t justify leaving millions of women without access to the healthcare they need and the ability to exercise their constitutionally protected right,” he said.

https://www1.cbn.com

Michael Foust – May 24, 2021

A Texas judge’s practice of opening his court sessions in chaplain-led prayer violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition on government establishment of religion, a federal district court ruled Friday.

Judge Wayne Mack, a justice of the peace in Montgomery County, Texas, created a chaplaincy program in 2014 allowing volunteer chaplains to “assist the Court system and Law Enforcement with grieving families on tragic death scenes or death call notifications.” Chaplains also were allowed to offer an invocation for Mack’s court sessions.

The Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), which calls itself an organization of “atheists, agnostics and skeptics of any pedigree,” sued Mack in federal court, arguing that the prayers were unconstitutional. FFRF represented an attorney who is a member of the organization and who frequently argued cases in Mack’s courtroom.

On Friday, U.S. District Judge Kenneth M. Hoyt issued a 15-page decision siding with the atheist organization. Hoyt was nominated by President Reagan. Mack’s attorneys say they will appeal.

“The Court is of the view that the defendant violates the Establishment Clause when, before a captured audience of litigants and their counsel, he presents himself as theopneustically-inspired, enabling him to advance, through the Chaplaincy Program, God’s ‘larger purpose,” Hoyt wrote. “Such a magnanimous goal flies in the face of historical tradition and makes a mockery of both religion and law.”

About 90 percent of the chaplains between November 2017 and October 2020 were Protestant Christians, although the chaplains list also included representatives of Buddhism, Hinduism and Judaism, Hoyt said.

https://www.christianheadlines.com

Lifesite News – May 13, 2021

MADISON, Wisconsin, May 13, 2021 (LifeSiteNews) – Wisconsin senators approved a bill earlier this week allowing dead bodies to be dissolved in a chemical bath and disposed like sewage.

The bill, Senate Bill 228, authorizes a practice called alkaline hydrolysis, or “water cremation,” which liquifies the human body using a mixture of water, heat, and chemical agents, leaving only bones behind. The liquid is then dumped into the sewage system or boiled off, and bones can be crushed and deposited in an urn.

The Republican-led Senate passed the legislation without debate on Tuesday over the objection of the Catholic bishops of Wisconsin.

“Catholic teaching is centered on the life and dignity of the human person because each person is created in the image and likeness of God,” Kim Vercauteren, executive director of the Wisconsin Catholic Conference, wrote to the senate health committee. “The heart, mind, flesh, and bones of a human person are all elements of a unique creation, down to the DNA, which must be honored even after death.”

“Our concern is that with alkaline hydrolysis, remains are washed into a wastewater system as though the body created by God never existed,” Vercauteren added. “Wastewater does not honor the sacredness of the body, nor does it allow the grieving to honor the dead after disposition.”

Sen. Patrick Testin, R-Stevens Point, who sponsored SB 228, argued for the measure as a means to promote “consumer choice.” At a hearing for the bill, he said that “Wisconsin funeral directors are receiving more and more requests for flameless or water cremation.” “I believe in allowing consumers choices. And if a consumer chooses flameless cremation, I would like to empower Wisconsin funeral directors the means to fulfill that choice,” Testin said.

https://www.lifesitenews.com

Dale Hurd – May 11, 2021

Scientists want to spread dust in the upper atmosphere to see if it will stop climate change.

The idea is to dump calcium carbonate, basically chalk dust, into the stratosphere to block some of the sun’s rays with the hope of halting the climate from warming.

It’s called Stratospheric Aerosol Injection or SAI.

The media calls it Bill Gates’ idea, but Gates is only one of many people funding the research and it isn’t his idea, it’s Harvard’s.

The test launch for the project next month in Sweden was canceled after people complained.  But there’s likely to be another test in the future because some scientists think this could work, while others say it’s a very bad idea.

What Could Possibly Go Wrong? A Lot

A video made by the German science foundation Heinrich-Böll-Stiftung shows how it could all go terribly wrong.  It says of Stratospheric Aerosol Injection that “It is unlikely that cooling of the planet could be achieved in a uniform way. SAI would therefore produce regional winners and losers. The total global rainfall would be less. In Asia, SAI could upset the complex system governing the monsoon, on which the water and food supply of 2 billion people depends.”

It could also lead to droughts in Africa and flooding in Latin America.

Experts admit they aren’t sure what would happen if the sun was dimmed, but we know when it has happened because of natural processes, the result was not good.

https://www1.cbn.com

Bob Unruh – May 13, 2021

President Trump successfully had worked to make sure federal Title X taxpayer money was not being used to fund abortions.

Joe Biden, when he moved into the Oval Office, immediately reversed that. It’s one of nearly a dozen ways President Biden is moving to cement a “legacy of death,” as critics have described

But now one state has started a movement to protect its own taxpayers from that burden anyway.

Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte on Thursday signed his state Legislature’s HB620, sponsored by Rep. Amy Regier, that ensures taxpayer dollars funding Title X family planning programs are kept separate from abortion-related activities.

“Taxpayers shouldn’t be forced to subsidize the dangerous work of abortionists. HB 620 helps ensure that Montana women and families maintain access to quality, comprehensive healthcare, including family planning services,” said Denise Burke, a senior counsel to the Alliance Defending Freedom.

https://www.wnd.com

AP- May 3, 2021

TOPEKA, Kan. (May 3, 2021) — Conservative Republican legislators in Kansas failed Monday to override Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a proposed ban on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s school sports.

The Senate’s vote to override Kelly was 26-14, leaving backers of the measure one short of the necessary two-thirds majority and blocking an attempt in the House. The outcome was in doubt until the only Democrat to waver on voting against the override, Sen. David Haley, of Kansas City, cast his no vote.

More than 20 states have considered such proposals this year, as Republican lawmakers have pressed the issue. Idaho enacted such a law last year, and bans were enacted this year in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia. Florida lawmakers passed a bill, and South Dakota’s governor issued an executive order.

Kelly called the Kansas measure “regressive,” said it would send a message that Kansas was not a welcoming place and predicted it would hurt the state’s attempts to recruit businesses.

The bill’s supporters said they were trying to protect fair competition in women’s sports and preserve hard-won opportunities for female athletes, such as college scholarships.

https://onenewsnow.com

Mish – April 26, 2021

The Bloomberg Agriculture Spot Index surged the most in nearly nine years, driven by a rally in crop futures.

Expect Grocery Shock

With futures surging, Grocery Price Shock Is Coming to a Store Near You.

With global food prices already at the highest since mid-2014, this latest jump is being closely watched because staple crops are a ubiquitous influence on grocery shelves — from bread and pizza dough to meat and even soda.

“The relentless rise in prices acts as a misery multiplier, driving millions deeper into hunger and desperation,” Chris Nikoi, the World Food Programme’s regional director for West Africa, said earlier this month. It’s “pushing a basic meal beyond the reach of millions of poor families who were already struggling to get by.”

And commodities aren’t the only component in driving up the price of food. Higher freight costs and other supply-chain headaches as well as packaging can all add up. Food and beverage giants are already signaling they’re watching margins. Coca-Cola Co. has flagged higher costs in plastic and aluminum, as well as coffee and high-fructose corn syrup, the key ingredient in soda. Nestle SA, the world’s biggest food company, warned it won’t be able to hedge all of its commodity costs and it’s raising prices where appropriate.

https://mishtalk.com

Charlotte Pence Bond – April 16, 2021

On Friday, the Biden administration announced the removal of a previous barrier that restricted certain kinds of research conducted on fetal tissue from elective abortions.

The National Institutes of Health (NIH) released a statement on Friday saying that it was undoing some of the previous administration’s policies regarding research conducted on fetal tissue gathered from abortions.

The statement said that the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is “reversing its 2019 decision that all research applications for NIH grants and contracts proposing the use of human fetal tissue from elective abortions will be reviewed by an Ethics Advisory Board.” It added that another Human Fetal Tissue Research Ethics Advisory Board will not be created.

The statement noted: “NIH reminds the community of expectations to obtain informed consent from the donor for any NIH-funded research using human fetal tissue … and of continued obligations to conduct such research only in accord with any applicable federal, state, or local laws and regulations, including prohibitions on the payment of valuable consideration for such tissue.”

During a hearing at the House of Representatives on Thursday, HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra discussed the changes prior to the official announcement, as reported by Politico.

“We believe that we have to do the research it takes to make sure that we are incorporating innovation and getting all of those types of treatments and therapies out there to the American people,” he said.

Pro-life groups have spoken out against the measure, saying that the topic would be a main issue in the midterm elections next year, the outlet reported.

https://www.dailywire.com

Joel B. Pollak – April 5, 2021

Two-hundred sixty-one California state prisoners have requested transfers to facilities that house the opposite gender since a new law went into effect on Jan. 1 — and 255 of them have requested to move from a male to a female corrections facility.

The law, SB 132, provides that a prisoner who self-identifies who is “transgender, nonbinary, or intersex” must be “addressed in a manner consistent with the incarcerated individual’s gender identity,” and be “housed at a correctional facility designated for men or women based on the individual’s preference.” The law applies “regardless of anatomy.” Governor Gavin Newsom signed the law last September, declaring on that occasion that “our march toward equality takes an additional step forward.”

The Los Angeles Times reported Monday that while only a few transfers have been approved thus far, none has been rejected:

Just over 1% of California’s prison population — or 1,129 inmates — have identified as nonbinary, intersex or transgender, according to the corrections department, populations that experience excessive violence in prison. A 2007 UC Irvine study that included interviews with 39 transgender inmates found that the rate of sexual assault is 13 times higher for transgender people, with 59% reporting experiencing such encounters.

So far, the prison system has transferred four inmates to the Chowchilla women’s prison, approved 21 gender-based housing requests and denied none. Of the 261 requests, all but six asked to be housed at a women’s facility.

Some prisoners are also concerned that inmates are making false claims about their gender identity in order to transfer to women’s prisons and say staffers have told them that this has slowed the process.

The Times adds that several inmates are thought to have applied “under false pretenses” and some female prisoners are afraid.

https://www.breitbart.com