The following information is based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details have been streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.

A registered nurse with 30 years of experience treating chronic pain says she saw “TEN TIMES” the positive effects after mixing DMSO with castor oil to treat her peripheral neuropathy.

Castor oil on its own has anti-inflammatory effects, but adding the DMSO is where she says it “got interesting.”

That’s because DMSO “isn’t just a treatment, it’s a carrier,” Danielle Minetti explained.

“It can pull medications and nutrients right through the skin barrier deep into the body.”

That’s why when Danielle mixed DMSO with castor oil, she saw “ten times” the positive results.

Because DMSO acts as the delivery system, carrying the castor oil deeper into the areas where she needs relief most.

DMSO is a naturally occurring compound that is primarily derived as a byproduct of the wood pulp and paper industry, which makes it widely and affordably available.

But that also creates a problem...

Because if a treatment can’t be patented, Big Pharma can’t profit.

And that simple reality is where the DMSO story takes a dark turn.

So what happened to DMSO, and why is a substance that is so medically promising still relatively unknown to this day?

Let’s take a closer look.

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The real story isn’t whether or not DMSO worked.

The real story is how a low-cost, widely available substance became an early case study in medical distrust.

Regulators suddenly restricted it. Doctors dismissed it.

But patients kept using it.

And once that happened, official medicine no longer controlled the story.

DMSO was discovered in 1866 by a Russian chemist, then largely forgotten.

In the 1950s, the paper industry needed new solvents. Dimethyl sulfide from wood pulping could be oxidized into DMSO.

That industrial turn set up one of the most unusual medical controversies of the 20th century!

This information comes from the work of medical researcher A Midwestern Doctor. For all the sources and details, read the full report below.

Early Health Innovators and DMSO

Crown Zellerbach, a pulp and paper company, became a major DMSO producer.

A chemist there, Robert Herschler, noticed DMSO could carry dyes through skin.

That alone was remarkable.

But the implication was bigger: if it could carry dyes, could it carry medications into places ordinary drugs struggled to reach?

Nearby, surgeon Stanley Jacob was searching for better ways to preserve organs for transplant.

When Herschler shared his findings in 1961, Jacob began experimenting.

Then he reportedly tasted iodine shortly after applying DMSO mixed with iodine to the skin.

That suggested rapid systemic absorption.

For pharmacology, that was a thunderclap.

The point isn’t that “DMSO cures everything.”

It is how a cheap, available compound became a test case in medical distrust: easy to try, hard to regulate, and impossible to fully suppress.

Early Health Innovators and DMSO

Early reports were dramatic.

DMSO was said to help burns, sprains, musculoskeletal pain, and other hard-to-treat problems.

Jacob became so convinced that he carried it with him, used it on people he encountered, invested his career and savings into researching it, and eventually received medical-school funding after going broke.

This is where the story could have become conventional.

A substance is discovered.

Clinicians test it.

Drug companies invest.

Regulators evaluate.

Clear indications are approved or rejected.

Instead, DMSO ran into a newly empowered FDA, reshaped by the thalidomide disaster and the 1962 expansion of drug-regulatory authority.

At first, the FDA was reportedly open to DMSO research.

Then a practical problem appeared: DMSO was too versatile.

It was being investigated alone and in combination with other substances.

That meant many possible applications, many IND filings, and a regulatory workload that could become enormous.

A flexible compound did not fit neatly into a narrow approval machine.

Then came the break.

In late 1965, the FDA moved against DMSO after preliminary dog data suggested high doses could alter eye focusing.

The reports emphasized that this effect was not seen in trials involving 37,000 people and was not later seen in humans or monkeys.

There was also one death, which supporters argued was likely tied to another drug being taken at the same time.

But the response was sweeping.

DMSO testing was banned in the United States.

The FDA also reportedly sent telegrams to U.S. embassies encouraging other nations to halt DMSO work.

That is the key turn in the story.

A safety question became a global chilling signal.

This is where distrust begins.

Not because every DMSO claim was proven.

But because the public saw something stranger: a therapy people believed was helping them, a research pathway that suddenly narrowed, and institutions that seemed more interested in stopping the conversation than resolving it.

That was the first wave.

The second came in 1980, when Mike Wallace covered DMSO on 60 Minutes before congressional hearings on FDA stonewalling.

The broadcast turned a buried controversy into a mass public question.

DMSO was still legal as an industrial solvent.

So people were not waiting for prescriptions.

They were looking for bottles.

The full article from reveals a lot.

Once doctors were seen as hostile or uninformed, DMSO users didn’t stop seeking answers.

They changed who they trusted.

Early Health Innovators and DMSO

The 1985 study didn’t find one narrow kind of DMSO user.

It found a small but diverse group: men and women, younger adults and retirees, high-school graduates and college graduates.

The uses were just as broad: osteoarthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, back pain, neck pain, knee injuries, bursitis, burns, psoriasis, headaches, scleroderma, insect stings, cataracts, toothaches, and more.

That range is exactly what made regulators uneasy.

It is also what made users curious.

The study used innovation-diffusion theory to explain why DMSO spread.

An innovation spreads faster when it has relative advantage, compatibility, low complexity, trialability, and observability.

DMSO appeared to have all five.

It was cheap.

It was topical.

It could be tried quickly.

People could stop if easily it did nothing.

So believers told everyone.

The anecdotes were powerful.

One woman said she could not swing her leg because of knee pain, then after two DMSO treatments she could move it without pain and cried.

Another said she had not walked upstairs for five years, used DMSO three times on her hip, and could climb stairs again.

Those stories move faster than journal articles.

This is not proof that every claim was true.

Anecdotes can mislead. Placebo effects are real. Pain fluctuates.

But institutions make a fatal mistake when they treat lived experience as irrelevant.

The public doesn’t need every anecdote validated.

It needs to see that inconvenient signals are being investigated honestly.

Then came the trust inversion.

FDA non-approval made some users cautious.

But for others, it made DMSO seem more credible.

Their logic was simple: if doctors, drug companies, and regulators all opposed it, maybe that meant the substance threatened them.

Suppression became evidence.

The trust channels were revealing.

Among 37 users, 41% first heard about DMSO from 60 Minutes.

Another 21% heard from friends and family. Nine percent heard from veterinarians.

For verification, 39% relied on other DMSO users, while only 21% relied on physicians or health professionals.

That is not just underground medicine.

That is a parallel trust system forming in real time.

Refusing to responsibly regulate a popular health intervention doesn’t make it disappear.

It can move people into weaker guidance, inconsistent quality, peer-to-peer improvisation—and sometimes into ordinary storefront windows.

That’s not control.

It’s loss of control.

All of their attempts at suppression didn’t make DMSO disappear.

It moved it outside the medical system—and made unofficial networks more persuasive.

has all the details.

Early Health Innovators and DMSO

There was another strange contradiction.

DMSO faded as a broadly studied human therapy in the U.S., but it didn’t vanish from medicine.

It remained approved for interstitial cystitis.

It remained widely used as a cryopreservative.

It became a common laboratory solvent.

It appeared as an “inert” vehicle in other drug contexts.

So the system never fully rejected DMSO.

It narrowed where DMSO was allowed to exist.

Outside the U.S., the story looked different.

In 1971, the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Health approved it as Dimexide.

That meant much of the forgotten therapeutic literature came from Russian and Ukrainian sources, with additional work from Chinese, South American, and German researchers.

One country’s suppressed topic became another country’s ordinary medicine.

The larger lesson is not limited to DMSO.

When people are desperate, when conventional options fail, and when a low-cost intervention appears to help, information will spread.

The only question is whether that spread happens inside a responsible research culture or outside it.

Suppression doesn’t erase demand.

It changes where demand goes.

That is why DMSO keeps resurfacing.

The first wave came through researchers and media attention in the 1960s.

The second came through 60 Minutes and hobby-shop networks in the 1980s.

The third is happening in the internet era—right now—where one viral discussion can reach millions faster than regulators, journals, or medical societies can respond.

The uncomfortable conclusion is this:

Institutions often assume public trust comes from authority.

Far from it it. Trust comes from honesty, proportionality, and a willingness to investigate inconvenient signals.

When people believe institutions are hiding useful options, even imperfect anecdotes can become more persuasive than official silence.

DMSO isn’t just a story about a solvent.

It is a story about what happens when institutions lose the benefit of the doubt.

When people believe medicine is ignoring what they can see with their own eyes, they don’t stop searching and experimenting with what they find.

They stop trusting the people who told them not to.

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Thanks for reading! This information was based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details were streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.

Early Health Innovators and DMSO

For a deeper dive into what modern medicine has overlooked—or intentionally buried—check out these other eye-opening reports by A Midwestern Doctor:

The Great Alzheimer’s Scam and The Proven Cures They’ve Buried for Billions

Unmasking The Great Blood Pressure Scam

The Hidden Dangers of Hospital Births & How to Protect Your Family

While you’re at it, give A Midwestern Doctor a follow. No one brings more research, clinical insight, or historical context when it comes to exposing the health myths we’ve all been fed. This is easily one of the most valuable accounts you’ll ever follow.

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The Vigilant Fox

Writer, video clipper, and pro-freedom citizen journalist with 12 years of healthcare experience. Tyranny is not possible without compliance.

This article originally appeared on m o d e r n i t y and was republished with permission.

Guest post by @ModernityNews

Yet another church has been destroyed by fire, this time in France.

Flames tore through the roof and bell tower of the 19th-century Église Saint-Cyriaque in the small Moselle village of Montenach, near the borders with Luxembourg and Germany.

Built between 1884 and 1886, the church survived two world wars and had just undergone significant community-funded renovations. Now its timber roof and charpente are gone, part of the clocher has collapsed, and the interior sustained heavy damage. No one was injured, but the loss is devastating for locals.

Firefighters were reportedly called to a vegetation fire in dry scrubland nearby. Strong winds—reported up to 50 km/h—drove the blaze straight into the wooden structure. Around 60 to 110 pompiers and dozens of vehicles battled the flames for hours. Crews managed to save over 110 liturgical objects and artworks, but the historic building itself was left roofless and gutted.

The mayor of Montenach, Jean-Paul Tinnes, commented “The roof is gone, the bell tower is gone. It makes me cry. I’ve been mayor for over thirty years. My children were baptized here, I got married here… It’s a historic building that everyone cherishes. We hope to be able to rebuild and restore it quickly.” A planned wedding for the weekend was canceled.

Video footage captured the rapid spread and collapse, showing thick smoke pouring from the steeple before the roof gave way.

Officials are calling it an accident. An investigation has been opened, but no criminal motive is publicly suspected at this stage.

Yet the timing and context are hard to ignore. France has seen a documented surge in attacks on churches—vandalism, desecration, and arson. Studies show a Christian religious building disappears every two weeks through fire, collapse, or deliberate damage.

Anti-Christian incidents number in the hundreds annually, with criminal fires rising sharply in recent years. Europe-wide reports from groups tracking religious freedom confirm the trend is worsening, not fading.

Social media reaction has been swift and skeptical. Many users pointed out the growing list of similar blazes and questioned whether every “brush fire” or “technical defect” explanation holds up when churches keep burning. Posts highlighted the contrast: Europe’s Christian landmarks are torched while officials downplay any cultural or demographic drivers behind the hostility.

This isn’t isolated bad luck. It’s part of a pattern playing out across France and Europe where Christian sites face repeated targeting. The sheer frequency of these incidents demands more than the usual quick dismissal.

Copyright 2026 m o d e r n i t y

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Brenda Baletti, Ph.D.

For years, Katy Talento kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. away from senior officials, managed the concerns of vaccine-skeptical parents, and trusted the public health establishment she had spent her career serving. Now she says that was a mistake.

A former White House public health adviser today publicly admitted that during the first Trump administration, she was directed to limit Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s access to senior officials.

In a Substack post titled “Confessions of a White House Public Health Priestess,” epidemiologist Katy Talento, who served on the White House Domestic Policy Council, describes an internal effort to manage which voices were allowed into federal health discussions.

“I kept Robert F. Kennedy Jr. out of the West Wing. Now I owe him an apology,” Talento wrote.

Talento did not say who specifically directed her to limit Kennedy’s access.

Commenting on the essay, Children’s Health Defense (CHD) CEO Mary Holland said:

“I wish that more people would come out and say that they were mistaken. I think it is a brave thing to do and the world would benefit from more people saying, ‘I was misled, and I did things that I now regret.’”

Talento’s essay is a retrospective on two decades in public health, including roles advising lawmakers and working at senior levels of federal policymaking.

She details her transformation from a key player advising on mainstream vaccine and public health policies, and supporting vaccines “religiously … because I had been trained in the orthodoxy of public health,” to becoming skeptical after what she calls a “cascade of eye-opening episodes.”

She describes witnessing — and participating in — the public health policymaking process, and laments that she didn’t take up key fights earlier in her career.

Autism moms ‘treated like a problem to manage’

Talento recounts how certain groups — particularly parents of children with autism — were treated within policy circles.

She says her job was to manage and deflect their concerns.

“Autism moms” who petitioned federal health authorities to study vaccine safety and the connection between vaccines and autism in the early 2000s were deliberately sidelined from the policymaking process.

Talento says she was “torn” after hearing the mothers and naively trusted the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

She describes herself as being under pressure to toe the line, but was also an adviser on these issues. Her job was “to recommend, when it came to public health, which bills to write, which bills to move, which bills to kill, which issues to conduct oversight on and which agencies to subpoena.”

From 2002-2004, Talento worked in the Republican Office of the U.S. Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions (HELP). She advised senators, including Judd Gregg (R-N.H.), who several times introduced legislative language that would place more restrictions on families seeking fair compensation for vaccine injuries.

Several of those bills, including one introduced in 2002 while Talento was serving as an adviser, proposed to block cases altogether.

Laura Bono, mother of a vaccine-injured child with autism and vice president emerita of CHD, told The Defender:

“I’m grateful for Ms. Talento’s honesty and welcome her help in righting the egregious wrongs put in place by the 1986 National Childhood Vaccine Injury Act. While it’s painful to revisit the days of being ignored or gaslit by staffers like Talento on Capitol Hill, as so many of us were, I appreciate that she now wants to join us.”

Bono said she looked forward to Talento’s efforts to attain concrete goals, including repealing laws that protect vaccine manufacturers from legal liability for injuries and deaths caused by their products, and advancing successful biomedical treatments needed by the vaccine-injured.

“Many of us will be watching closely and hope to see her future actions match her present words,” Bono said.

Talento arranged for RFK Jr. to meet with Fauci and Collins ‘far from public view’

Talento said that she treated Kennedy, whose views made him a controversial figure in Washington at the time, in the same way she treated the autism moms.

“It was my job to make this problem go away,” she writes.

Before Trump’s first term, Kennedy had persuaded Trump to commit to establishing a Vaccine Safety Commission, she said. Once in office, the administration didn’t want to follow through, she said.

Talento arranged for Dr. Francis Collins and Dr. Anthony Fauci to meet with Kennedy, the Informed Consent Action Network’s (ICAN) Del Bigtree and attorney Aaron Siri “off-site somewhere, far from the White House and the public view.”

In the meeting, Fauci told them that he would send them the “mountains of studies demonstrating vaccine safety” — but never did.

ICAN filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit to obtain the documents, and the CDC was compelled to admit that it didn’t have the studies.

‘Consider this my excommunication from the public health cult’

Talento says her real transformation came during the COVID-19 pandemic. She initially celebrated the appointment of Deborah Birx to lead the White House response. But Birx’s masking and lockdown policies led Talento to experience “cognitive dissonance.”

Friends introduced her to the film “Vaxxed,” produced by CHD.TV’s Polly Tommey, which detailed the CDC’s efforts to cover up a link its researchers found between autism and vaccines.

Talento became a naturopath and familiarized herself with public health law — including the Public Readiness and Emergency Preparedness Act, or PREP Act, which protects vaccine manufacturers from lawsuits over injuries caused by COVID-19 vaccines.

She began promoting treatments, including hydroxychloroquine and ivermectin. She said health officials had to suppress or discredit those treatments to justify liability protection for the makers of COVID-19 vaccines. The emergency use authorization vaccines were eligible for liability protection under the PREP Act only if there were no approved treatments for the virus.

Talento says she “devoured” Kennedy’s book, “The Real Anthony Fauci,” when it was released in the fall of 2021. She was particularly moved by the chapters that detailed how HIV drugs were tested on “the broken bodies of forgotten children” — a subject close to her, because she had worked on HIV issues in cities across the globe early in her career.

“If untrue, the claims in Kennedy’s book were so utterly defamatory that they should have spurred a parade of lawsuits,” Talento writes. “To my knowledge, no such lawsuits have ever been filed.”

These experiences led her to conclude that her 2017 resistance to Kennedy’s Vaccine Safety Commission proposal was “a massive mistake.” She became involved with the alternative health movement, embracing homeopathy and German New Medicine.

Talento closes her essay by thanking the autism moms, scientists such as Dr. Andy Wakefield, who published a 1998 paper in The Lancet, later retracted, on the possible link between vaccines and autism and was viciously attacked.

She also thanked CDC whistleblower William Thompson, Ph.D., Kennedy and others who have dissented from mainstream public health policies.

“Consider this my excommunication from the public health cult,” she writes.

Kennedy, now leading the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, responded to Talento’s apology on X. He wrote, “Thank you Katy for coming clean and for your support. All is forgiven!”

Related articles in The Defender

• Kids, Vaccines and Autism: Will a New Legal Strategy End the Decades-long Battle for Truth and Justice?

• HHS Reinstated Vaccine Safety Task Force After CHD Sued the Agency — ICAN Urges HHS to Take Next Steps

• Pharma’s Gatekeeper: How the PREP Act Protects Everyone Except Those Injured by Vaccines

• ‘Guinea Pig Kids’: Fauci’s Legacy of Cruel Experiments on Kids

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on ZeroHedge and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Tyler Durden

How much do you need to earn to live comfortably in a major American city? Increasingly, the answer is a six-figure salary.

This map, via Visual Capitalist’s Bruno Venditti, shows the income required for a comfortable lifestyle across 56 U.S. cities, factoring in housing, food, transportation, savings, and discretionary spending.

The data comes from SmartAsset, using the MIT Living Wage Calculator and updated in February 2026.

The Highest-Cost Cities Now Require Nearly $160K

New York tops the list at $158,954, narrowly ahead of San Jose at $158,080.

California accounts for many of the highest-cost cities overall, with Irvine, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, and Sacramento all ranking near the top.

Taken together, the top of the ranking highlights how concentrated the highest costs are in a handful of major metros, particularly in California and the Northeast.

Boston, Honolulu, Seattle, and Jersey City also stand out, showing that the highest salary thresholds extend well beyond just a handful of coastal hubs.

Six-Figure Salaries Are Becoming the Norm

A key shift in the data is how quickly six-figure income requirements have spread beyond the most expensive cities.

Beyond the usual high-cost leaders, cities such as Denver, Atlanta, Nashville, Charlotte, and Boise now require roughly $100K or more for a comfortable lifestyle. That shift suggests higher living costs are no longer confined to the country’s most expensive coastal markets.

Lower-Cost Cities Still Require Substantial Income

At the lower end of the ranking, the salary needed to live comfortably still remains substantial. San Antonio has the lowest threshold at $83,069, followed by Memphis at $86,444 and Tulsa at $87,690.

Even in the most affordable cities on the map, the income needed for a comfortable lifestyle is far above what many households earn, highlighting how even the most “affordable” major cities now require incomes that were once considered high.

If you enjoyed today’s post, check out Where Americans Pay the Most Income Tax on Voronoi, the new app from Visual Capitalist.

Copyright 2026 ZeroHedge

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Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

NOTE: Thank you for supporting this sponsored interview, which helps keep this broadcast running to bring you uncensored news.

Wall Street’s biggest players are now making major moves that signal Bitcoin is transitioning into a new era of institutional dominance.

Just a few weeks ago, Morgan Stanley became the first major U.S. bank to launch its own spot Bitcoin ETF. Then on April 14th, Goldman Sachs filed for its Bitcoin Premium Income ETF, a product designed to give investors Bitcoin exposure while generating extra yield through covered-call options.

When two of the most respected bulge-bracket investment banks on Wall Street start issuing their own Bitcoin products, it signals deep institutional conviction.

It opens the door for traditional money, things like pensions, 401(k)s, and wealth advisors that have mostly stayed on the sidelines up until now, potentially bringing in billions in new capital and helping push Bitcoin further into the mainstream.

Meanwhile, crypto has been rallying back in recent weeks.

After a tough start to the year, Bitcoin posted one of its strongest months in recent memory in April 2026, delivering double-digit gains of roughly 15 percent from recent lows in the mid-$60,000 range back toward the $77,000–$78,000 level.

If you bought the dip just a couple of months ago, you could already be sitting on a 20 percent gain on your investment in a very short period of time.

And history shows this pattern repeatedly. Every major pullback in Bitcoin has eventually been followed by powerful recoveries and new all-time highs, often faster than most expect.

For example, after the sharp mid-2021 correction that took Bitcoin down to around $29,000 in July 2021, it reached a brand-new all-time high of roughly $69,000 just four months later in November 2021.

Similarly, following the brutal COVID crash low near $3,850 in March 2020, Bitcoin hit new all-time highs above $28,000 by December of that same year, in only nine months.

Bitcoin’s previous all-time high was over $126,000 back in October 2025.

Right now, it’s sitting around $78,000, meaning anyone who gets positioned today could be looking at massive upside if it blows past that level and launches into the next leg higher.

So the big question right now: Is Bitcoin destined to break that again, now that two of the biggest banks on Wall Street are actively backing it?

Jacob Diaz from BlockTrust IRA joins us to discuss.

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When the same institutions that once dismissed crypto start selling it, the narrative begins to shift.

Once called a “fad,” Bitcoin has survived multiple “death cycles,” crashing several times over the past decade. Yet it keeps coming back, often stronger. Most fads don’t last through repeated boom-bust cycles.

The debate surrounding Bitcoin now is less “Is this real?” and more “How big does this get?” or “What role does it play in the financial system?”

Unlike fiat, Bitcoin has a fixed supply, 21 million coins to be exact. It can’t be printed, shares can’t be diluted, and that means when you own Bitcoin, or even a fraction of it, you hold something with the promise of long-lasting value.

As adoption grows, that fixed supply runs straight into rising demand. That’s why Bitcoin price targets like “half a million” or “a million dollars” aren’t being brushed off anymore. It probably won’t happen tomorrow, or even in the next couple of years, but as adoption picks up and crypto becomes more woven into the financial system, those numbers start to feel less like a stretch—and more like where things are heading.

And Wall Street can now see this clearly.

As we mentioned, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are offering Bitcoin ETFs to their customers.

But our guest Jacob notes there’s a catch, calling it “the right track, but it’s the wrong train.”

Because what these ETFs really do is give you exposure to Bitcoin’s price swings—but at the end of the day, you don’t own a single piece of it.

You can benefit from price movement without ever holding the asset. You can watch it rise on a screen while staying fully inside the system Bitcoin was built to move beyond.

Jacob compared it to gold. The point isn’t just tracking the price, it’s owning the asset itself.

That’s where the contradiction becomes obvious.

If banks fear customer money leaving their system, offering Bitcoin exposure via ETFs keeps that money in place while giving the appearance of access.

Jacob called it “the bank’s biggest nightmare,” because real ownership means money moves outside their control.

That’s the gap BlockTrust IRA is built around. Actual ownership of the “spot asset,” held in cold storage, not just tied to price movement. The difference isn’t technical, it’s fundamental.

You’re either holding the asset, or you’re holding a version of it the system is comfortable selling you.

Every Bitcoin crash to date has followed an eerily similar script. Headlines declare Bitcoin is over, skeptics celebrate, and the people who never really understood it act like they were right all along.

Jacob dismissed that cycle as noise. He said the claim that “crypto is dead” has “just never been true.”

What matters is what happens next. Even after brutal corrections, sometimes around 50%, Bitcoin has returned to all-time highs “every single time,” often within “18 months” or less.

That doesn’t mean volatility goes away. It means you have to understand how Bitcoin moves.

For most people, volatility feels like punishment. The chart drops, fear takes over, and conviction disappears at exactly the wrong moment. They don’t just lose money because markets move; they lose because they react under pressure.

That’s the gap BlockTrust’s exclusive AI trading platform, Animus, is built to solve.

This isn’t the kind of AI you have to fear will take over your job or convince you to commit suicide. It’s the kind of AI that gives you signals, so you have a clearer picture of when to buy and when to sell. It’s the kind of technology that keeps you calm under pressure and helps you make better trades.

Because investing isn’t so much a game of intelligence, it’s a game of keeping a clear mind and being patient.

The two biggest mistakes Jacob pointed to are “the panic buy and the panic sell.” Even the smartest people fall for them. Because it’s not about a lack of intelligence; it’s about a lack of emotional control in a market that never stops.

And that’s where Animus shines.

Animus doesn’t feel fear. It doesn’t chase green candles or panic on red ones. Diaz said it operates on “math and data analytics,” making decisions “purely off the data” and “purely based off the numbers.”

The results he pointed to prove his point. In 2022, when the market fell about 50%, clients “would have been up over 40%.” In 2025, while Bitcoin dropped roughly 6.5%, they saw a “27% gain.”

“[Animus] removes the emotion from the equation,” Jacob said. And its trading history backs it up.

That’s why this technology is so powerful for the everyday person who wants to live their life without tracking crypto price movements 24 hours a day.

As Jacob put it, you only have “one brain and so many hours in the day.” You can’t track thousands of data points around the clock. You can’t outwork machines or institutions by checking your phone more often.

At BlockTrust IRA, Animus does the heavy lifting, monitoring Bitcoin’s price swings 24/7, while BlockTrust’s crypto experts act on its signals when the data points to a high-probability trade.

Jacob explained that with Animus, as those swings happen, you “turn that volatility into opportunity,” while buy-and-hold investors ride the roller coaster and hope they simply survive it.

So how does that Animus technology translate to what BlockTrust investors see in their pocket?

In 2025 alone, BlockTrust IRA created over 80,000 new millionaires. And right now, our viewers can take advantage of a special offer when they start investing with Animus and BlockTrust IRA.

When you use our special link at DailyPulseCrypto.com, you get $2,500 in bonus crypto the moment you open a qualifying account.

This gives you real ownership of Bitcoin, along with the exclusive Animus Advantage, only available through BlockTrust IRA, backed by a trading track record that speaks for itself.

While others treat money as something to spend on a new phone every two years, you can put that same cash to work and position yourself for the retirement you deserve.

Take the next step and secure your free 2026 crypto review at DailyPulseCrypto.com with a trusted BlockTrust IRA-certified crypto expert.

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Put Your Money to Work

Jacob explained that when it comes to investing, familiarity has a way of hiding risk. A 401k feels safe because it’s always been there. A financial advisor feels safe because you’ve known them for years. The system feels safe because everyone treats it like it is.

Jacob challenged that assumption directly. When people say they don’t understand crypto, he agrees, it’s “a valid point.” But then he flips the question: can you actually explain what’s inside your 401k?

Most people can’t. They know there are “some stocks,” “some bonds,” “some other equities,” but they’re trusting the structure more than the substance. Jacob’s point was simple: familiar doesn’t mean understood, and understood doesn’t mean safe.

That’s when his critique of the system sharpened. The financial system “wasn’t built for the American people.” The 2008 crisis should have made that obvious. Executives walked away with massive bonuses while ordinary people lost homes, savings, and stability. In his words, the system “does not work” and “does not protect the American people.”

Bitcoin, in that context, wasn’t random. Jacob tied it directly to that moment, a response to a system people no longer trusted. That’s why he sees crypto as more than an investment. It forces accountability. It keeps “the banking system honest,” because money finally has somewhere else to go.

Maria brought it back to something more personal. You can do everything right, work your whole life, save consistently, trust the system, and still watch it disappear because you never fully understood what your money was tied to.

Traditional investing feels safe because it’s normal. But normal isn’t the same as secure. Jacob put it clearly: “just because something is familiar does not mean it’s the best option available.”

And once you see that, it’s hard to ignore it.

The system only feels safe because you’ve never been taught to question it.

Control is what people are really asking about, even if they don’t say it. Who holds your money, who can touch it, and whether it actually belongs to you.

BlockTrust IRA, Jacob explained, was built to let investors “completely own their crypto to the greatest extent possible.” Each client has an “individual wallet,” tied directly to them or their IRA.

When funds are commingled, trust becomes a promise. When they’re separated, ownership becomes real. Your assets are yours, not part of a system you have to hope holds together.

At the same time, Jacob didn’t pretend this sits outside the system. A crypto IRA still follows IRS rules. But he framed it as a bridge, a way to stay inside a recognized structure while holding something different. In his words, it’s “the best way to offer yourself some... diversification from the system.”

He was also clear about limits. You would “never hear someone say to take their entire portfolio and move it in with us.” It’s “your money that you worked hard for.”

That’s where the deeper frustration comes in.

“Who likes the banks?” Jacob asked. Trust cracked in 2008 and never fully came back. People watched institutions survive while families took the loss.

And that’s why crypto exists.

Because inside the traditional system, risk isn’t always obvious. Jacob pointed to “counterparty risk.” Your money isn’t just sitting there, it’s being leveraged. And if something breaks, “your money is only there on a screen.”

The system works as long as everyone believes it does.

Markets open, money floods in, and eventually people realize they didn’t fully understand what they owned. Crypto is moving through that phase now.

That’s where BlockTrust positions itself.

Most equities are managed. Crypto largely isn’t. As the market matures, people will look for guidance from those who understand it.

Without that, he said, going alone is like being put in “a fighter jet” with a manual and told to fly.

Their model is simple: “jump in the backseat and we’ll get you there.”

People aren’t just looking for exposure anymore. They’re looking for ownership, guidance, and something they don’t have to blindly trust just because it feels familiar.

What Jacob just laid out raises an important question:

If the biggest banks and institutions are going hard after Bitcoin exposure, actively launching products and positioning for the future, why wouldn’t you take the same bet they do?

Look at the facts. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are in. Corporate treasuries are stacking. And the forces driving people to crypto, institutional adoption, inflation, and declining trust in the system, aren’t slowing down.

If you’re interested in Bitcoin but not sure where to start, BlockTrust IRA makes that first step simple.

Their crypto experts walk you through your goals, review what you have, and handle the complexity so you don’t have to.

BlockTrust IRA is powered by Animus Technologies, an AI trading system featured as Bitcoin Magazine’s #1 Crypto Technology Platform and winner of their 2023 trading competition.

They’ve stripped away the usual friction, no setup fees, no monthly fees, and just 0.14% trading fees, so more of what you earn stays invested.

The team brings 30+ years of combined experience and has already processed over $300 million in IRA transactions, backed by up to $200 million in custody insurance, multi-key security, and fully offline storage.

Their Animus Advantage has delivered +657% versus +400% for buy-and-hold, a clear example of what a data-driven approach can do.

It’s simple to set up, secure, and designed to help maximize your retirement with the tax advantages of an IRA.

Book your crypto market review now at DailyPulseCrypto.com and discover what Animus could do for your portfolio in the years ahead.

Secure your free crypto market review today at DailyPulseCrypto.com.

Claim Your Crypto Review

There’s much more in the full interview.

Visit DailyPulseCrypto.com or watch the full episode below to learn more:

We want to thank Jacob Diaz for joining us today—and more importantly, we want to thank you for watching and doing your duty to be informed when so many others choose not to.

Follow us (@ZeeeMedia and @VigilantFox) for stories that matter—stories the media doesn’t want you to see. We’ll be back with another show tomorrow. See you then.

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

The following information is based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details have been streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.

The FDA knew the COVID shots would kill and maim countless Americans.

They kept injecting anyway.

One government employee tried to sound the alarm about “49 examples” of deadly side effects that conventional safety analyses weren’t detecting.

She was shut down.

Her name was Dr. Ana Szarfman.

On March 1, 2021, less than three months after the rollout of the COVID-19 injections, Dr. Ana Szarfman, an employee at CDER and safety data mining developer, warned that the FDA’s existing system could hide vaccine safety signals due to a flaw called “masking.”

She proposed a newer method developed by statistician Dr. William DuMouchel that corrected for this issue and, when applied, detected “49 examples of extreme masking” that the standard system did not.

These “49 examples of extreme masking” include not “minor” but serious adverse events:

• Bell’s palsy

• Cardiac failure

• Acute left ventricular failure

• Agonal rhythm (severe end-of-life arrhythmia)

• Pulmonary infarction

• Cerebral artery occlusion

• Aortic stenosis

• Sudden cardiac death

• Hypertensive emergency

• Basal ganglia stroke

When Dr. Szarfman proposed a new method, she was told to “hold off on creating and sending data mining reports and analyses.”

Later, they “made it clear” that she “needs to focus on her assigned work” and “should not be discussing or providing internal analyses externally.”

As Dr. Szarfman puts it, her work became a “pest” for raising concerns about safety signal masking.

In September 2021, Dr. Peter Marks, the FDA’s top vaccine official, decided that Dr. Szarfman’s COVID vaccine data-mining days were over.

He informed Dr. Patrizia Cavazzoni, the then director of CDER, that Dr. Szarfman “has been asked to cease and desist conducting her data analysis.”

Dr. Marks complained that Dr. Szarfman’s work had become “a major distraction” and that her efforts could “create erroneous conflicts that feed into anti-vaccination rhetoric.”

Dr. Szarfman went on to retire from the FDA in 2025 after more than 35 years of service.

She raised concerns about safety signal masking. The FDA essentially told her to shut up.

Because in their eyes, “49 examples of extreme masking” could create “erroneous conflicts” and fuel “vaccine hesitancy.”

Unfortunately, this is not a one-off instance. It’s part of a much deeper problem: the gap between what’s known internally and what’s allowed to reach the public.

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For years, Americans were told the COVID vaccines were “safe and effective.”

Not mostly safe.

Not partially effective.

Not still being studied.

Safe. Effective. Full stop.

The message was absolute, repeated by government officials, doctors, media outlets, hospitals, employers, schools, and nearly every major institution in the country.

But internal records now suggest something very different was being discussed behind the scenes.

The story is no longer just about whether the COVID vaccines caused harm.

That debate has been raging for years.

The bigger question is what federal health agencies knew, when they knew it, and why the public was told a much different story than the one officials were discussing behind closed doors.

Senator Ron Johnson’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations obtained thousands of pages of subpoenaed HHS records.

The investigation and subpoenaed records suggest that the CDC and FDA were aware of serious safety signals involving myocarditis and strokes, yet continued pushing the vaccines while downplaying the risks.

That’s the part we can’t ignore.

Vaccine trust was built on a very simple promise.

The government said the products had been carefully tested, monitored, and transparently evaluated.

If a serious safety issue appeared, the public would be told.

But according to the records Johnson released, that isn’t how the COVID vaccine rollout worked. Not even close.

The myocarditis timeline is absolutely brutal.

On February 28, 2021, Israel’s Ministry of Health reportedly notified CDC officials of “a large number of reports” of myocarditis, “particularly in young people,” after Pfizer vaccination.

By mid-April, CDC officials were internally discussing a myocarditis safety signal tied to mRNA vaccines.

But the public—the people receiving these vaccines—didn’t receive that same level of warning.

As early as May 2021, CDC and FDA officials had reportedly acknowledged a myocarditis/pericarditis signal, especially in males ages 16–17 and 18–24.

VAERS was signaling the same problem in those age groups.

That should have been a defining moment for public transparency.

Instead, officials softened the message and kept pushing the vaccine.

A formal Health Alert Network message was drafted.

A HAN alert is not some casual website update. It’s how health agencies warn doctors and public health officials when something serious needs attention. That’s big.

But according to Johnson’s findings, the alert was never issued.

The public got milder “clinical considerations” instead.

That’s shocking.

The full article from walks through the internal timeline in detail, including what CDC and FDA officials reportedly knew before the public was fully warned about myocarditis.

Everyone needs to see this.

Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?

Then came the stroke signal.

After the Pfizer-BioNTech bivalent booster was authorized on August 31, 2022, the CDC’s Vaccine Safety Datalink reportedly began detecting a statistically significant ischemic stroke signal in people 65 and older by November 27, 2022.

That signal reportedly persisted through multiple weekly analyses, and it appeared in seniors, the very group most aggressively targeted for boosters.

According to the records, officials did not issue a formal Health Alert Network warning or recommend changes to vaccination guidance for that high-risk age group.

Despite the signal, public guidance did not change—and they kept pushing the boosters.

Internal records show officials launched investigations, including a contractor-led “Stroke Project,” while public messaging remained reassuring.

Draft communications in early January 2023 softened the language from “moderately elevated” to “slightly elevated.”

That one edit says so much.

On January 13, 2023, the agencies posted a brief notice acknowledging the stroke signal but said “no change is recommended in COVID-19 vaccination practice.”

By early February, VAERS reports of ischemic stroke had reportedly climbed to 226 cases.

And still, the guidance did not change.

The human stakes here are enormous.

Stroke-related injury in the elderly is especially easy to miss because seniors are often less able to advocate for themselves.

A nursing home resident declines after a shot, shows signs of neurological injury, deteriorates into dementia, and the system writes it off as aging.

That means not only is it easy to miss, it’s also very easy to hide.

It doesn’t mean every decline in the elderly was vaccine-related.

But it does show why honest safety monitoring matters.

When the same population being targeted for boosters is also the population least able to report injuries, doctors and families need more transparency, not less.

Instead, the public was repeatedly told the matter was settled.

If something changed rapidly after vaccination, family members being to ask questions—but those questions were often brushed off or attributed to normal aging.

The full breakdown from also gets into the elderly stroke signal, the “Stroke Project,” and why these injuries may have been so easy to dismiss as ordinary decline.

Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?

By now, this pattern should feel familiar.

A vaccine is rushed into a public health crisis.

The benefits are oversold.

The harms are minimized.

And when problems appear, officials protect the program instead of correcting course.

Then, when the public resists, the blame shifts to the people who refuse to comply.

Institutions don’t like to admit they were wrong.

That pattern didn’t begin with COVID.

Tragically, it has appeared again and again throughout vaccine history, starting with smallpox.

The difference this time is the scale.

The COVID vaccine campaign reached nearly every workplace, school, hospital, military unit, and family in America and across the world. The scale was truly unprecedented.

So when trust broke, it broke everywhere.

Polling over the last several years reflects that collapse in trust.

Rasmussen found that by July 2021, 32% believed public health officials were lying about vaccine safety.

By January 2023, 49% believed vaccine side effects had likely caused a significant number of unexplained deaths.

By September 2024, that number had risen to 55%.

One 2023 survey of 2,840 respondents found 15% of vaccinated individuals reported a vaccine injury—and 22% said they knew someone who experienced a severe injury.

That’s not rare.

That’s widespread exposure.

Other findings were just as stark.

In December 2022, 34% of vaccinated respondents reported minor side effects and 7% reported major side effects.

By November 2025, 26% reported minor side effects, 10% reported major side effects—and 46% still believed vaccines had caused a significant number of unexplained deaths, after that number had peaked above 50% in earlier polling.

That is not a fringe collapse.

Confidence in the pharmaceutical industry has also dropped sharply.

Gallup data shows positive views falling to around 28%, while negative views climbed near 58%.

That’s one of the lowest trust levels of any major industry.

The damage to trust has spread far beyond COVID shots.

A JAMA survey of 443,455 American adults found trust in physicians and hospitals fell from 71.5% in April 2020 to 40.1% in January 2024.

That’s huge.

And it’s what happens when institutions demand trust while refusing transparency.

The collapse also hit vaccine mandates.

Gallup data showed support for government childhood vaccine requirements falling from roughly 80% in the early 1990s to 51% in 2024, while opposition rose to 45%.

COVID did not create every concern people had.

It made millions feel like their concerns were justified and that they could finally talk about it.

The full report includes polling from Rasmussen, Gallup, Pew, KFF, JAMA, and others showing how far trust has fallen since COVID.

Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?

This isn’t just about COVID.

The same cycle has played out repeatedly throughout vaccine history—enthusiasm, emerging problems, denial, and eventual public backlash.

The difference now is that the pattern is visible.

And once people see it, they don’t unsee it.

The most important point is not that everyone has to reach the same conclusion about every vaccine.

The point is that public health cannot survive on censorship, coercion, and selective disclosure.

When agencies hide risks to protect a program, they do not protect trust.

They burn it down.

That is why “just trust the experts” no longer works.

Trust is not rebuilt by repeating slogans louder and more often.

It’s rebuilt by releasing the data, admitting what went wrong, compensating the injured, removing conflicts of interest, and making sure the same patterns never happen again.

The government didn’t lose our trust because people suddenly became irrational.

It lost trust because people saw the gap between what they were told, what they saw with their own eyes, and the proof that came out later.

Once that gap becomes visible, the old model collapses.

The only path forward is radical transparency—and a system that will not and cannot repeat the same pattern again.

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Thanks for reading! This information was based on a report originally published by A Midwestern Doctor. Key details were streamlined and editorialized for clarity and impact. Read the original report here.

Why Did the Government Lie About the COVID Vaccines?

For a deeper dive into what modern medicine has overlooked—or intentionally buried—check out these other eye-opening reports by A Midwestern Doctor:

The Great Alzheimer’s Scam and The Proven Cures They’ve Buried for Billions

The Hidden Dangers of Hospital Births & How to Protect Your Family

The FDA’s 50-Year War on the Safest Painkiller Ever Discovered

While you’re at it, give A Midwestern Doctor a follow. No one brings more research, clinical insight, or historical context when it comes to exposing the health myths we’ve all been fed. This is easily one of the most valuable accounts you’ll ever follow.

If you haven’t subscribed to this Substack yet, take a moment to read what some of the most powerful voices in the medical freedom/truth movement have to say:

“The Vigilant Fox has been putting in a lot of work to create a news platform that shares the stories we want to hear about and brings attention to the most important things to know about. If you want a daily newsfeed in alignment with our ...”

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The Vigilant Fox

The stories that matter the media hopes you’ll never hear. Subscribe now to stay sharp and informed.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Leena Nasir

Republican Oklahoma State Senate candidate Barry Christian was found dead in his car two days after he was reported missing. He was 54.

The Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation (OSBI) issued a statement Thursday on X confirming Christian had been located and found deceased.

“On April 29, the Sayre Police Department received a report regarding 54-year-old Barry Christian, who was last seen on April 28 in Sayre, Oklahoma,” they wrote.

Their statement continued, “On the morning of April 30, around 9:45 a.m., Christian’s vehicle was discovered by Beckham County deputies in the Sandy Sanders Wildlife Management Area, just south of Erick, Oklahoma.”

Christian was one of three candidates running in the Republican primary for District 38 of the Oklahoma State Senate.

OSBI special agents processed the scene and discovered Christian deceased inside the vehicle. The Chief Medical Examiner is working to determine the cause and manner of death, the OSBI stated.

“Please pray for our family and friends. Our world is upside down right now,” Christian’s daughter, Brooklyn, said in a statement issued to News 9.

“We are still not sure of everything that happened, so please act with grace and treat my dad’s legacy with dignity.”

Brooklyn thanked those involved in the search for her father before saying, ” I know there will be lots of people devastated by his passing.”

Christian’s youngest daughter told the outlet that her father “wanted nothing more than to provide and protect his family. He lived only for his kids. He loved his kid with everything in him.”

The OSBI asserted that “This is still an ongoing investigation,” and requested that “Anyone with additional information regarding this case” report their information to a dedicated tip line.

The Beckham County Sheriff’s Office, Elk City Fire Department, and the Oklahoma Department of Wildlife Conservation assisted in the investigation.

Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on Focal Points and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

A major new peer-reviewed study we just published in Medical Research Archives has uncovered a shocking reversal: after two decades of steady progress, infant mortality surged 37% since 2020, congenital abnormality deaths jumped 46%, and registered live births collapsed by 24% — all coinciding with expanded vaccination campaigns in the Philippines.

The study is titled Global Implications of Vaccination and Rising Infant Mortality in the Philippines, authored by Sally A. Clark, Claire Rogers, Mila Radetich, Nicolas Hulscher (myself), Kirstin Cosgrove, Breanne Craven, M. Nathaniel Mead, and James A. Thorp.

Using official Philippine Statistics Authority data on 41.7 million births and over 546,000 infant deaths from 2000–2024, plus Department of Health vaccination records, we documented a sharp turnaround after two decades of steady progress.

Infant mortality rate fell to a historic low of 11.05 deaths per 1,000 live births in 2020. Then it rose 37% to 15.11 by 2024 — a statistically significant jump (p < 0.0001) that erased more than 20 years of gains in just five years.

At the same time, registered live births dropped 24% from their 2012 peak (p < 0.0001), with an accelerating decline after 2019.

We found clear temporal links between rising infant deaths and key elements of the national vaccination program.

Pneumococcal Conjugate Vaccine (PCV) coverage surged from 24% in 2015 to 76% in 2023. The correlation with infant mortality was extremely strong: r = 0.93 (p = 0.00074) from 2015–2023 and r = 0.77 (p = 0.016) when including 2024 data.

Mortality peaks across the first year of life aligned precisely with the National Immunization Program schedule:

• Birth doses of Hepatitis B and BCG coincided with early neonatal spikes.

• 6-, 10-, and 14-week doses of PCV, pentavalent, and polio vaccines matched major post-neonatal peaks (especially months 2–4 and month 7).

National “catch-up” vaccination campaigns in April–June 2022 and 2023 were followed by clear monthly spikes in infant deaths. In 2024, with no nationwide campaign, those peaks were noticeably lower.

The sharp reversal also coincides precisely with the national COVID-19 vaccination rollout. The program launched in March 2021, with professional societies actively recommending the shots for pregnant women. By early 2023, 70.3% of the eligible population — and a striking 88.8% of adults aged 18-59 (the prime reproductive-age group) — were fully vaccinated.

As a result, the first birth cohorts gestated after widespread maternal COVID-19 vaccination (starting in 2021) experienced the dramatic infant mortality rise, along with a 46% increase in congenital abnormality deaths and major spikes in respiratory diseases (+124%), infectious/parasitic diseases (+125%), and unexplained sudden deaths (+106%, including SIDS).

Although these data are derived from the Philippines, the implications are global. Similar vaccination schedules, products, and maternal COVID-19 vaccination strategies have been implemented worldwide. Notably, our findings align with recent analyses of U.S. CDC death certificate data demonstrating a break in decades-long declining infant mortality trends beginning in 2021, alongside significant excess mortality among young children.

FOCAL POINTS (Courageous Discourse)

BREAKING: CDC Child Death Records Indicate Severe Transgenerational Harm of Mass mRNA Vaccination

by Nicolas Hulscher, MPH…

Read more

8 months ago · 358 likes · 56 comments · Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

After decades of steady improvement, the abrupt and sustained reversal in infant mortality—alongside parallel rises in congenital abnormalities and multiple cause-of-death categories—represents a clear and unprecedented public health signal that cannot be ignored.

Nicolas Hulscher, MPH

Epidemiologist and Foundation Administrator, McCullough Foundation

Support our mission: mcculloughfnd.org

Please consider following both the McCullough Foundation and my personal account on X (formerly Twitter) for further content.

Copyright 2026 Focal Points

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Harold Hutchison

A heated verbal brawl took place on “CNN Newsnight” Thursday as panelists duked it out over America’s involvement in launching Operation Epic Fury in Iran.

Secretary of War Pete Hegseth testified before Congress Wednesday and Thursday about the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion defense budget request, with Hegseth claiming that President Donald Trump didn’t have to seek authorization for using force in Iran after 60 days due to a ceasefire. After failed Democratic congressional candidate Kat Abughazaleh claimed the United States was the aggressor, the panel began a heated debate over U.S. involvement in Iran.

WATCH:

“Did all of U.S. history exist before the last eight weeks to you, or just eight weeks? I mean, honestly, they have been at war with us for 47 years,” Salem Radio host Scott Jennings said, prompting liberal content creator Adam Mockler to respond with, “We all know that Scott Jennings is more than happy to defend a war with a country that starts with the letter IRA, that we are currently failing, that is going to put us trillions and trillions of dollars more in debt. I was only a few years old while you were in the administration defending prior endless wars. Now, this war is failing.”

“Eight weeks is endless to you?” Jennings asked, starting a back-and-forth with Mockler, who responded, “Okay. You said it was going to be six weeks.”

Jennings fired back with a comment about the left-wing influencer’s attention span, which led to Mockler pointing at Jennings while demanding that the former George W. Bush administration official name a “political concession” the Trump administration had secured. Tensions had been building since Jennings cracked that Mockler was “hyper” due to it being after his “bedtime.”

“Get your hand out of my fucking face!” Jennings snapped, leading host Abby Phillip to step in with, “Hey, whoa!”

“Honestly, I’m not going to have this guy’s hand in my face. Honestly,” Jennings replied, with Phillip saying, “No, everybody calm down, okay? We’re having a debate. You can respond to the points that he’s making.”

FULL EXCHANGE:

Former Fox News host Geraldo Rivera joked that the clash between Jennings and Mockler reminded him of a brawl involving skinheads that took place during a 1988 episode of his daytime talk show.

Former Director of the National Counterterrorism Center Joe Kent resigned from the administration in March over the Iran war, stating that the war began “due to pressure from Israel and its powerful American lobby.”

The Trump administration claimed Iran posed an imminent threat to the U.S., though they have not specified what the threat was. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the U.S. preemptively launched strikes because Israel’s planned attack on Iran could have potentially caused American casualties.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and other Israeli officials convinced Trump to launch strikes against Israel during their visit to the White House on Feb. 11, The New York Times reported on April 7. Several U.S. cabinet officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, described their reasoning for striking Iran as “farcical” and voiced skepticism about Israel’s plan for regime change.

Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

A New Jersey water company shut off a woman’s water for six days after she refused a smart meter due to health concerns, even though the state has no regulation requiring residents to accept smart meters.

In an exclusive interview with The Defender, Alla Goldman described how New Jersey American Water (NJAW) employees “harassed” her and her husband for over a year, threatening to shut off her water if she refused to let them install a smart water meter.

On March 5, the water company made good on its threats by sending a technician — escorted by two police officers — to her home to shut off her water.

For six days, Goldman, who was sick with the flu, and her husband went without water at their home. Goldman took shelter in a hotel and bought gallons of drinking water.

“I want to sue them for their literal threats,” Goldman said.

While staying at a hotel, Goldman filed a complaint with the state’s Board of Public Utilities (BPU) about the water company’s action.

The BPU informed her that the water company had no legal basis for shutting off her water because there is no BPU regulation requiring people to accept smart meter upgrades.

Goldman said, “A BPU supervisor told me that if we do not want a smart meter, we do not have to have one.”

When the BPU informed the water company of Goldman’s complaint, the company changed its tune by offering to restore services and install an analog meter that would not emit wireless radiation.

‘Few people know that water companies do the same thing’

Goldman, who shared records with The Defender to corroborate her account, said she now wants to raise awareness about how water companies, such as NJAW, may try to unlawfully force people to accept smart meters.

Many people know that electric companies commonly pressure residents to accept smart meters.

For instance, despite freezing temperatures and with little to no warning, Dominion Energy Virginia in December 2022 showed up at the homes of more than half a dozen families in Virginia and shut off their power because they refused to have smart meters installed.

“But very few people know that water companies do the same thing,” Goldman said.

When Goldman posted on Facebook about her experience, the post garnered over 1,000 views within a week. “People were thanking me,” she said. They had no idea that water companies in the U.S. would do such a thing. “People are so shocked,” she added.

Water company shuts off water after saying it wouldn’t

Goldman has been diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome. Her condition worsens when she is exposed to the radiofrequency (RF) radiation emitted by smart meters.

After NJAW notified Goldman via a letter sent Jan. 29, 2025, of their plan to upgrade her water meter, she repeatedly told NJAW she couldn’t accept a smart meter due to her health condition.

Plus, the meter she had was only five years old and worked fine, she told them.

Still, NJAW told her the smart meter upgrade was mandatory and that they would cut off service if she refused it.

The water company avoided saying that she was “legally” required to get the smart meter and instead repeatedly said it was mandatory, with no option to opt out.

A smart meter, or AMI (advanced metering infrastructure) meter, is more convenient for the utility companies because it allows them to review clients’ usage data without sending a technician to the home, Goldman said. Her old meter, which used AMR (automated meter reading) technology, required a technician to walk or drive by to read it.

On Feb. 20, 2025, Goldman called NJAW’s local office and spoke with NJAW Supervisor Anthony Ingato. She said he “literally yelled at me and threatened” to shut off their water if they failed to comply with the smart meter upgrade.

Over the following months, Goldman said she was “bombarded with continued threats and harassment via mail, email, texts and phone calls” from NJAW’s local office and its smart meter contractor, MeterTek Utility Services.

Goldman said an NJAW customer service representative told her that MeterTek, being merely a contractor, was not authorized to contact customers directly like that.

On Jan. 6, MeterTek posted a notice on Goldman’s door stating that the water would be shut off within 24 hours for failure to provide access to the meter so their technician could install a smart meter.

Goldman immediately called NJAW and reiterated her concern about how the smart meter would affect her health. She reminded them she would not consent to the upgrade but was willing to pay an opt-out fee.

An NJAW representative told her “not to worry,” and that all previous orders for meter replacement had been canceled. The representative reassured her that her water would not be shut off.

However, less than two months later, on March 2, an NJAW technician showed up at Goldman’s front door. He said he was under direct orders from his supervisor to replace the meter. The technician told Goldman he would shut off the water if they refused.

When Goldman showed him documentation from their NJAW account showing that all previous replacement orders were canceled, the technician took a picture and sent it to his boss.

The technician also called Ingato so Goldman could speak with him. According to Goldman, “Ingato just kept threatening us with the water shut-off.”

The technician suggested that Goldman call the main NJAW office to find out the status of their request to keep their meter. “We did so and were assured that our service would not be shut off,” Goldman said.

However, on March 5, the same technician returned to Goldman’s home — this time accompanied by two police officers — and shut off their water service.

“Imagine our shock and disbelief to find two police officers at the door,” she said. “One of them informed us that their presence was specifically requested by the NJAW local office to keep their technician safe.”

NJAW did not restore Goldman’s water service until March 10, after the BPU intervened on Goldman’s behalf.

Goldman said she finds it ironic that NJAW’s official motto is, “We keep life flowing.”

“They intentionally cut off our life because water is life,” she said.

Goldman wants to sue, citing ‘emotional distress’

Although Goldman now has water service and an analog meter, she’s considering pressing charges for the damages she and her husband suffered, including emotional distress.

Goldman sees a psychotherapist who has documented the ongoing harm NJAW’s actions caused Goldman over the last year and a half.

The Defender asked New Jersey’s BPU if and how it proactively informs residents of their right to refuse a smart meter. The BPU did not respond by deadline.

When asked if NJAW allows water customers to opt out of a smart meter, an NJAW representative told The Defender:

“Though New Jersey American Water does not have a formal opt-out program for smart meter installations, the company works directly with customers who wish to explore alternative options on a case-by-case basis.”

The Defender asked NJAW why one of its technicians shut off Goldman’s water on March 5 for refusing a smart meter. However, NJAW did not respond by deadline.

Related articles in The Defender

• Pennsylvania Woman Scores Temporary Win Against Smart Meter Mandate

• Wireless Radiation Sickness Gets a New Name: ‘EMR Syndrome’

• Don’t Want a Smart Meter? Take It Up With Your State Lawmakers, Experts Say

• Take Action: Virginia Families Forced to Choose Between Smart Meters or No Power At All

• Why Smart Meters Are Good for Utility Companies, Bad for Consumers

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Nicole Silverio

Alex Jones’ longtime program, Infowars, officially shut down its operations Thursday while a satirical website is trying to purchase the company.

Infowars shut down due to bankruptcy proceedings related to $1.4 billion defamation judgments owed to families of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims. The closure came after a court receiver halted payments for rent and services, which prompted Jones to move from his studio in Austin, Texas, and operate his independent company, the Alex Jones Network.

“All glory goes to Jesus Christ, our Heavenly Father. We are committing ourselves to God in this holy fight and we are committed and if God stands with us, who can stand against us, and that’s how I close out,” Jones said.

WATCH:

Jones founded Infowars in March 1999.

The families of Sandy Hook victims and one Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agent sued Jones and Infowars’ parent company, Free Speech Systems, for defamation and emotional distress after Jones repeatedly claimed the shooting was a hoax aimed at confiscating Americans’ firearms. A jury ordered Jones to pay at least $965 million in damages to the defendants in 2022, which prompted Jones and Free Speech Systems to file for bankruptcy protection.

U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Lopez ordered the liquidation of Jones’ personal assets, including his stake in Infowars, in a June 2024 court decision, leading to a high-profile auction of Infowars. The Onion, a satirical website run by Ben Collins, won the auction and engaged in a legal fight with Jones, who claimed the auction was not fair.

The Onion planned on turning Infowars into a mockery of itself, though its acquisition of Infowars is currently in the hands of the Texas Supreme Court, according to NPR. A state judge in Austin held a hearing Thursday on whether to approve The Onion’s purchase, but the Texas Third Court of Appeals approved an emergency motion by Jones’ lawyers to temporarily block the transfer of any Infowars assets.

Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on ZeroHedge and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Tyler Durden

The British tabloid newspaper Daily Mail first broke the story earlier this week about a former JPMorgan staffer who claimed that an executive director on JPM’s leveraged finance team turned him into a “sex slave” by drugging him with Rohypnol and Viagra, according to a bombshell lawsuit. However, it now appears that the sexual harassment suit was “fabricated,” according to a new report.

The New York Post reported late Thursday that Chirayu Rana, now a principal at Bregal Sagemount, filed the suit under the pseudonym “John Doe,” alleging that Lorna Hajdini drugged him, forced him to have sex, and threatened his bonus.

“Rana has been accused of making fabricated sexual-harassment claims against a high-ranking executive at the bank after an internal investigation found no evidence of wrongdoing,” the NYPost said, citing sources.

Hajdini’s lawyers issued this statement to NYPost:

“Lorna categorically denies the allegations. She never engaged in any inappropriate conduct with this individual of any kind and has never even been to the location where the alleged sexual assault supposedly took place.”

Rana apparently filed an internal complaint in May 2025 with JPM, alleging race- and gender-based harassment and abuse of power before his exit. During this time, he allegedly tried to negotiate a payoff that ran into the “millions,” sources said. He also accused JPM of retaliation and of failing to investigate properly.

A JPM spokesperson told the outlet that its HR and legal teams reviewed phone records and emails, and interviewed employees, but found no merit to the claims. The bank said Rana refused to participate in the investigation or provide key facts.

“Following an investigation, we don’t believe there’s any merit to these claims,” the spokesperson said. “While numerous employees cooperated with the investigation, the complainant refused to participate and declined to provide facts that would be central to supporting his allegations.”

Notably, the outlet said, “Rana did not report to Hajdini. The two were simply colleagues on the leveraged finance team, which works on large corporate acquisitions, mergers, and buyouts.”

JPM colleagues told the outlet that Hajdini is viewed internally as “a top performer,” and that Rana “has tarnished her with a complete fabrication” after the suit, which was reported by the Daily Mail and subsequently by Indian media outlets. Most Western media outlets stayed away from the story, but X meme accounts had a field day.

Hajdini’s Bloomberg profile saw a surge in activity on Thursday.

“That sucks, she got dragged through the news cycle because of this loser. On the plus side, she sort of looks like a legend now, especially now that they claim its fabricated, now she has this power lore around her of being a boss bitch,” X user Autism Capital opined.

Copyright 2026 ZeroHedge

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Jill Erzen

The U.S. House voted 280-142 today to remove language that would have limited lawsuits against pesticide makers. The vote marked a significant bipartisan rebuke of industry-backed protections. “I do not support giving blanket immunity to corporations at the expense of American families,” said Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, who co-authored the amendment to preserve states’ authority over pesticide labeling and safety standards.

The U.S. House of Representatives voted today to strip controversial pro-pesticide provisions from the Farm Bill and adopt a bipartisan amendment that removes liability protections for chemical manufacturers, The Hill reported.

Reps. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) and Elijah Crane (R-Ariz.) co-authored the amendment that removed language that would have shielded companies like Monsanto from certain state-level failure-to-warn lawsuits. The amendment, which passed in a 280-142 vote, preserves states’ authority over pesticide labeling and safety standards.

“I do not support giving blanket immunity to corporations at the expense of American families,” Luna wrote on X.

“Today we secured a major win,” said Children’s Health Defense Senior Advocacy Manager Stephanie Locricchio. “It proves that when people unite around a common goal, change is possible. But the fight isn’t over. We must stay vigilant, push our government to prioritize public health — especially our children — over corporate profits, and continue to hold industry accountable.”

Support for the amendment crossed party lines. Rep. Chellie Pingree (D-Maine), who has long opposed similar provisions, emphasized the breadth of that coalition.

“Democrats, Republicans, and citizens across this country agree: Keep the pesticide liability shield language OUT of the Farm Bill!” Pingree posted on X.

The House later passed the Farm Bill in a 224-200 vote, Politico reported. The bill now moves to the U.S. Senate.

Farm Bill remains ‘devastating failure of policy and responsibility’

Despite the removal of the pesticide liability shield, The Kucinich Report on Substack said the massive Farm Bill remains deeply flawed, and “a devastating failure of policy and responsibility.”

“We acknowledge and are grateful for the bipartisan leadership that secured removal of the chemical liability shield from the proposed text. … The food movement elevated this issue, but it is only one of many disastrous provisions in this bill.”

According to The Kucinich Report, the bill still erodes states’ rights, entrenches industrial agriculture, and increases reliance on costly chemical inputs and consolidated corporate power.

The report characterized the measure as “massive federal overreach,” alleging it blocks states from setting stronger protections than federal baselines across agriculture, including pesticide rules, spray protocols and animal welfare.

Original bill amounted to ‘giveaway’ to chemical companies

The now-stripped provisions had sparked intense debate among Republicans and across Congress.

The bill would have made it harder for people to sue pesticide makers by asserting that if the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has not officially identified a substance as dangerous, companies cannot be held liable for failing to warn consumers about those risks.

Additional provisions would have restricted local governments from imposing stricter pesticide rules and eliminated certain permitting requirements.

Backers of the original language, including House Agriculture Committee Chairman Glenn Thompson (R-Pa.), argued the approach would create regulatory consistency.

Thompson said states could still pursue stricter requirements, but would need EPA approval to incorporate them into labeling.

But opposition came from an unusual alliance of Democrats and Republicans aligned with the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) movement.

They argued that the provisions amounted to what Pingree called a “giveaway” to powerful chemical interests.

The dispute complicated the Farm Bill’s path and exposed broader tensions among Republicans, where agriculture-state lawmakers and industry groups pushed to keep the protections in place.

Supreme Court to weigh in on labeling rules

The pesticide liability fight unfolded alongside developments at the U.S. Supreme Court, which heard arguments this week in a case that could determine whether federal law already preempts certain failure-to-warn lawsuits.

The case centers on Bayer’s Roundup weedkiller and whether companies can be held liable for risks not listed on labels approved by the EPA.

The issue drew public attention at the People vs. Poison rally on the steps of the Supreme Court on Monday, where lawmakers from both parties warned against shielding pesticide manufacturers from accountability.

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.) told the crowd he was working with Pingree on legislation to block such protections, The MAHA Report wrote on Substack.

“This is regulatory capture. It is corrupt,” Massie said.

Pingree echoed that message at the rally, arguing that prioritizing industry over public health undermines farmers and families.

“Any Farm Bill that protects chemical companies over American families is not pro-farmer. It’s not pro-health. It’s not pro-America. It’s a giveaway to Big Chemical,” she said. “People over poison, we are going to win!”

Sen. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) also warned that lawmakers were attempting to quietly insert industry-friendly language into must-pass legislation. He said efforts to include such provisions in the Farm Bill would “protect a broken system that is literally killing people around our country.”

Related articles in The Defender

• Will Justices Side With Pesticide Giant or Cancer Victim? SCOTUS Weighs Landmark Liability Case

• ‘Feeding America Safely’: Pesticides, Regulatory Failures, and America’s Chronic Disease Crisis

• Glyphosate Poses ‘Profound and Permanent’ Risks to Kids: Children’s Health Defense Urges U.S. Supreme Court to Rule Against Bayer

• ‘We’ve Addicted Our Farmers’ to Glyphosate, RFK Jr. Tells Joe Rogan

• Industry-friendly Laws Could Mean More Chemicals in Food Production — and Trouble for the MAHA Agenda

• Trump Directs USDA to Make More Glyphosate, Signals Liability Protection for Pesticide Makers

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Nicole Silverio

Daily Caller News Foundation co-founder Tucker Carlson sent a message Thursday to neocons attempting to silence Americans who oppose the Iran war.

Carlson, on “The Tucker Carlson Show,” criticized Fox News host Mark Levin and others for condemning anyone who dared to say anything negative about Israel. He also accused Republicans, including President Donald Trump, of being hypocritical on censorship for calling to silence Israel critics.

“And Mark Levin, who has positions that are shared by only a tiny percentage of the American population, this is knowable through public opinion polling, is telling you that anyone who disagrees with him must be silenced,” Carlson continued.

Levin said on “Liberty’s Voice” that technology and social media companies should de-platform so-called “Nazis” and claimed those criticizing Israel are espousing violence.

WATCH:

Carlson alleged that Levin’s rhetoric influenced Democratic New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer and Republican New York Rep. Mike Lawler, who he called “the most florid and least ashamed neocons” in Congress. The two lawmakers introduced a resolution Wednesday which calls on social media platforms to combat so-called antisemitism online.

“That definition is now the operative definition and it means that criticizing the behavior of a foreign government is a hate crime and can get you censored in your own country,” Carlson continued.

Neocons also have no desire to fix issues occurring in the U.S., Carlson added.

Carlson and other podcasters clashed with Trump over the Iran war, with Carlson calling the war with Iran an “absolutely evil and disgusting” violation of Trump’s campaign pledge to not enter any new foreign wars. In response to Trump calling him “low IQ,” Carlson stated in his April 10 newsletter that Israel would go as far as to blackmail Trump into ensuring that the “bloodshed” continues in Iran.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli officials convinced Trump that war was necessary during a Feb. 11 meeting at the White House, The New York Times reported. Several U.S. cabinet officials, including Vice President J.D. Vance, described their reasoning for striking Iran as “farcical” and voiced skepticism about Israel’s plan for regime change.

Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on The Defender and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D.

President Donald Trump yesterday withdrew the nomination of Dr. Casey Means to serve as U.S. surgeon general. He tapped Dr. Nicole B. Saphier — a radiologist who previously questioned COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates — as his new nominee. The president blamed Sen. Bill Cassidy for sinking Means’ nomination, and said Means “will continue to fight for MAHA.”

President Donald Trump yesterday withdrew the nomination of Dr. Casey Means to serve as U.S. surgeon general. He tapped Dr. Nicole B. Saphier — a radiologist who previously questioned COVID-19 vaccine and mask mandates — as his new nominee.

Trump posted the news on Truth Social on Thursday. He described Saphier, director of breast imaging at Memorial Sloan Kettering Monmouth in New Jersey and a Fox News contributor, as a “star physician” and advocate for women facing breast cancer who will advance the Make America Healthy Again (MAHA) agenda.

In May 2025, Trump nominated Means, a holistic medicine doctor and supporter of the MAHA movement. But after her confirmation hearing in February, her nomination stalled.

Means’ brother, Calley Means, serves as a senior adviser at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

In another Truth Social post today, Trump blamed Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), chair of the U.S. Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor & Pensions, for holding up Means’ nomination, calling him “a very disloyal person.” Cassidy has frequently clashed with U.S. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on vaccine policy.

“Casey will continue to fight for MAHA on the many important Health issues facing our Country, such as the rising childhood disease epidemic, increased autism rates, poor nutrition, over-medicalization, and researching the root causes of infertility, and many other difficult medical problems,” Trump wrote.

Mary Holland, CEO of Children’s Health Defense, said the withdrawal of Means’ nomination and the selection of Saphier is a pragmatic move. She said:

“Politics is the art of the possible, and after nearly a year, it was impossible to push through Dr. Means’ confirmation as Surgeon General, apparently because of opposition from Republican Chair of the Senate Health Committee Bill Cassidy.

“Dr. Saphier appears to be a safe choice for confirmation, as she is both an experienced clinician and public speaker on medicine.”

Means was Trump’s second nominee for surgeon general. In November 2024, as president-elect, Trump tapped Dr. Janette Nesheiwat for the position. He withdrew her nomination in May 2025, just one day before her confirmation hearing.

If confirmed, Saphier would serve as the nation’s top public health voice and oversee the 6,000-member U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, a federal branch whose officers include physicians, nurses, scientists and engineers.

Saphier: Vaccine mandates ‘knee-jerk’ policies that don’t stop transmission

According to The Washington Post, Means’ nomination stalled “as some Republicans questioned her stance on vaccines, her medical credentials and her pushes against the medical establishment.”

Early during the COVID-19 pandemic, Saphier publicly expressed confidence in the COVID-19 vaccines and suggested that anyone who wishes to get the vaccine should take the first available dose. However, she also called vaccination a “personal choice” and said not everyone would need to get vaccinated.

Saphier also has a history of questioning vaccine safety. During the pandemic, she repeatedly questioned the need for vaccine and mask mandates — including for children.

During a 2021 interview, Saphier said that it was time for the U.S. to “move forward” from vaccine mandates and allow the then-Omicron variant to “circulate.” She called vaccine mandates “knee-jerk” policies that do little to decrease viral transmission.

The following year, Saphier warned in a now-hidden tweet that the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, which advises the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on vaccine-related policy, was considering mandating COVID-19 vaccination for schoolchildren.

In 2023, amid a resurgence of COVID-19 infections that led some hospitals and local communities to consider reinstating mask mandates, Saphier said there was “no place” for such policies.

Holland welcomed Saphier’s past stance on vaccine and mask mandates.

“I am pleased to see that she spoke out convincingly on Fox about school mask mandates,” Holland said.

Jeffrey Tucker, president and founder of the Brownstone Institute, called Saphier’s nomination a “good choice.”

“I’m reading Dr. Saphier’s 2021 book now and I’m very impressed. She is precise, accurate, and brave for speaking out against lockdowns, closures and shot mandates so early,” Tucker said. “She was strong against mask mandates and school closures, really a voice of rationality in crazy times.”

Despite Saphier’s past questioning of vaccine mandates, Dr. Anahita Dua, a surgeon who is founder and chair of Healthcare for Action, a healthcare-focused political action committee supportive of the Democratic Party, welcomed the nomination — and the withdrawal of Means’ nomination.

“Saphier at least has real-world experience with treating patients and a better understanding of the ins and outs of our healthcare system,” Dua said in a statement provided to The Defender. “As a physician, I am hopeful that Saphier will stay true to science and facts if she indeed becomes the next Surgeon General of the United States.”

Related articles in The Defender

• ‘Our Nation Is Angry, Exhausted and Hurting From Preventable Diseases,’ Surgeon General Nominee Tells Senate

• Trump Taps MAHA Supporter Dr. Casey Means for Surgeon General

• Concerned About Casey Means? ‘Your Vigilance Is Valid. Your Questions Are Vital. But Please Don’t Withdraw.’

• Trump’s Picks for Surgeon General and Top Posts at FDA, CDC Earn Mixed Reviews

• RFK Jr. Clashes With Lawmakers Over Measles, COVID and Chronic Disease

• Sen. Cassidy Calls for Delay of Vaccine Advisers Meeting, Criticizes RFK Jr.’s New Appointees

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on U.S. Right to Know and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Lewis Kamb

Prosecutors allege that Dr. David Morens used his position as a senior adviser to Dr. Anthony Fauci to route information and advocacy to Fauci through a “backchannel,” specifically to avoid creating records that could later surface in a FOIA request. Although Fauci denied any wrongdoing and was issued a pardon by President Joe Biden, the Morens indictment puts his “inner circle” under fresh legal scrutiny.

The indictment Tuesday of a top adviser to former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) director Dr. Anthony Fauci on charges of conspiring against the U.S. casts a spotlight on years of efforts to subvert public records laws and conceal key COVID-19-era communications from the public.

The adviser, Dr. David Morens, a longtime senior aide inside Fauci’s inner circle, is accused by federal prosecutors of using private email accounts to conduct government business, deleting records and coordinating with others to conceal communications related to COVID-19 origins, high-risk coronavirus research and grant funding.

According to the indictment, Morens and others agreed in writing to “intentionally hide” their communications from public records requests made under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) by using his personal Gmail accounts rather than his official NIH account, even when discussing matters within his government duties.

In one email cited by prosecutors, Morens allegedly wrote to co-conspirators: “I need to keep this correspondnce [sic] off of USG emails for obvious reasons, so am sending from gmail … I am under multiple FOIAs already.”

The indictment alleges that Morens worked with at least two co-conspirators and others without explicitly naming them. But the descriptions provided closely track at least some publicly known roles and relationships.

For instance, “Co-Conspirator 1,” who is described as the head of a U.S.-based nonprofit that received the National Institutes of Health (NIH) grant titled, “Understanding the Risk of Bat Coronavirus Emergence” and subcontracted research to the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

That description aligns with Peter Daszak, the former president and chief executive of the now federally debarred and defunct New York-based non-profit EcoHealth Alliance.

Daszak, who has not been charged, has since launched a new nonprofit research group, Nature.Health.Global, which lists Morens among its affiliated scientists.

Neither Morens nor Daszak immediately responded to emails sent Tuesday seeking their comment for this story.

The allegations in the 29-page indictment largely mirror a trail of evidence unearthed over more than four years of FOIA requests and subsequent litigation by U.S. Right To Know.

The nonprofit watchdog group has filed more than 220 public records requests and 44 lawsuits seeking clarity on COVID-19 origins and biosafety risks, including filing at least five FOIA requests and two suits specifically targeting Morens’ communications.

Those efforts previously forced the release of thousands of pages of emails that appear to align closely with descriptions of the offenses laid out within the indictment.

The documents demonstrate how Morens conducted official business via private Gmail accounts, discussed strategies to “make emails disappear” to evade FOIA searches and avoided creating written records altogether — actions that Morens later admitted and apologized for during congressional testimony.

Other records show Morens in ongoing contact with Daszak and a small circle of allies after the pandemic’s onset.

Their communications include strategizing about how to restore EcoHealth Alliance’s standing with federal funders, counter scrutiny from Congress and the media, and shape public narratives around the origins of COVID-19 and NIH oversight of coronavirus research.

The exchanges repeatedly included several prominent global health scientists, including Gerald Keusch, a Boston University provost, and, less frequently, Peter Hotez, a dean and professor at Baylor College of Medicine.

According to prosecutors, those same kinds of relationships form the basis of the alleged conspiracy. The indictment alleges that after NIH terminated the EcoHealth grant, Morens and his co-conspirators worked to restore funding and counter the narrative that COVID-19 may have originated from a lab, while at times using private channels to conceal their communications.

The filing also references a second unnamed participant, “Co-Conspirator 2,” described as a scientist affiliated with an institute that received federal funding.

Prosecutors allege that Morens and his co-conspirators used his position as a senior adviser to route information and advocacy to Fauci through a “backchannel,” specifically to avoid creating records that could later surface in a FOIA request.

In one exchange, Morens told Daszak that it would be best to connect the two “in an off the record manner” because “we are getting FOIA’d non stop, so its most important that [Senior NIAID Official 1] not have anything on the record that could come back to bite.”

The indictment also alleges a conspiracy involving illegal gratuities.

According to prosecutors, “Co-Conspirator 1,” — Daszak — provided Morens with gifts for official acts favorable to EcoHealth Alliance, including two bottles of wine delivered to Morens’ home with a note thanking him for his “behind-the-scenes shenanigans,” and promised future meals at Michelin-starred restaurants.

Morens allegedly used his influence to help submit and publish scientific commentary supporting a natural origin theory for COVID-19.

While Fauci is not a direct participant in the communications cited in the indictment, the document refers to a “Senior NIAID Official 1” whose description corresponds with the former director. Fauci has faced intense scrutiny from lawmakers like Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) over NIH funding of “gain-of-function” research.

Although Fauci has denied all allegations of wrongdoing and was issued a pardon by President Joe Biden covering potential federal offenses related to his official duties, the Morens indictment puts his “inner circle” under fresh legal scrutiny.

Thousands of pages of Morens-related records — along with others linked to NIH, EcoHealth Alliance and the Wuhan Institute of Virology — are now publicly available through U.S. Right to Know’s online archive, with additional releases expected in response to the group’s ongoing FOIAs and lawsuits.

Copyright 2026 U.S. Right to Know

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Harold Hutchison

Democratic Michigan state Sen. Mallory McMorrow wiped thousands of posts Wednesday after her social media history of trashing “Middle America” gained national attention.

McMorrow and former Wayne County health director Abdul El-Sayed were virtually tied in an Emerson College poll taken in early April before CNN reporter Andrew Kaczynski noted that 6,000 posts, including all of them prior to 2020, had vanished from McMorrow’s X account. The New York Post first reported on McMorrow’s posts in April 2025.

“I had a dream that the US amicably broke off into The Ring (coasts+Can+Mex+parts Mich/Tex) and Middle America,” McMorrow posted in December 2016, shortly after President Donald Trump won his first term.

McMorrow also took shots at the state she is aiming to represent, at one point rooting for Notre Dame over the University of Michigan in a post, according to the New York Post. Another post, since deleted, featured McMorrow expressing a dislike of snow and using the hashtag #NYCtoLA.

McMorrow vaulted to national prominence in 2022 when she gave a speech on the floor of the Michigan Senate attacking Republicans for their opposition to child sex changes, opposition to abortion and other social conservative positions. The speech went viral and was praised by longtime Democratic strategist James Carville.

“I am a straight, white, Christian, married suburban mom … I am the biggest threat to your hollow, hateful scheme,” McMorrow claimed during that speech, which was in response to a fundraising email from a Republican colleague opposed to child sex changes and the use of critical race theory in school curricula. “Because you can’t claim that you are targeting marginalized kids in the name of ‘parental rights’ if another parent is standing up to say no.”

Former Republican Michigan Rep. Mike Rogers is the likely Republican nominee for the United States Senate seat being vacated by retiring Democratic Sen. Gary Peters.

Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation

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Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on ZeroHedge and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Tyler Durden

US Central Command has asked to send the Army’s long-delayed Dark Eagle hypersonic missile to the Middle East for possible use against Iran, seeking a longer-range system to hit ballistic-missile launchers deep inside the country Bloomberg reports.

If approved, this would mark the first time the US will have deployed its hypersonic missile, which is running far behind schedule and hasn’t been declared fully operational even as Russia and China have deployed their own versions. And since Trump isn’t shy when it comes demonstrating force, it is unlikely that the request will be denied.

The military’s Request for Forces submission reportedly justifies the move by saying Iran has moved its launchers out of range of the Precision Strike Missile, a weapon that can hit targets at more than 300 miles. If approved, the deployment would also send a signal to Russia and China that the US is finally able to match a capability that they’ve long since mastered.

Dark Eagle, also known as the Long-Range Hypersonic Weapon, or LRHW, has a reported range of more than 1,725 miles, although its exact capabilities are secret. It is designed to glide to its target at more than five times the speed of sound and can maneuver to avoid interception. The missile was designed to fight Chinese or Russian advanced air defenses. The problem is that each Lockheed Martin missile costs about $15 million, and there are no more than eight missiles, so any assault using hypersonics would be rather brief. Also, since each battery will cost about $2.7 billion, according to the Government Accountability Office, they will make attractive targets for Iran’s own hypersonics.

The US already transferred most of its supplies of the stealthy JASSM-ER cruise missile, also designed for a fight with a near-peer adversary, to the Iran fight. About 1,100 of the missiles have been fired so far in the conflict.

The US has said it has local air superiority, meaning that in some parts of Iran its aircraft can operate without facing much of a threat. But dozens of MQ-9 aircraft, plus several crewed fighters, have been downed, showing that other parts of Iran’s airspace remain dangerous.

The Bloomberg report comes as Axios rehashed an earlier report, according to which President Trump will receive a briefing on new plans for potential military action in Iran on Thursday from CENTCOM Commander Adm. Brad Cooper. The briefing signals that “Trump is seriously considering resuming major combat operations either to try to break the logjam in negotiations or to deliver a final blow before ending the war.”

The report goes on to note that CENTCOM has prepared a plan for a “short and powerful” wave of strikes on Iran - likely including infrastructure targets - in hopes of breaking the negotiating deadlock. The hope would be that Iran would then return to the negotiating table showing more flexibility on the nuclear issue.

Another plan expected to be shared with Trump is focused on taking over part of the Strait of Hormuz to reopen it to commercial shipping. Such an operation could include ground forces.

A third option that has been discussed in the past and might come up in the briefing is a special forces operation to secure Iran’s stockpile of highly enriched uranium.

Copyright 2026 ZeroHedge

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Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on the Daily Caller News Foundation and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Harold Hutchison

Hoover Institution senior fellow Victor Davis Hanson told Sirius XM host Megyn Kelly Wednesday he was dealing with a heart condition as a result of his battle with lung cancer.

Hanson told the audience of his podcast, “Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words,” on Dec. 26 that he would be having an operation to address a “serious” medical condition that doctors were unable to diagnose at the time. Hanson, 72, gave Kelly the update during “The Megyn Kelly Show” about the heart condition he was dealing with due to a complication he suffered during the operation to remove the tumor.

“The biggest problem I’m doing having now is with the heart, because when I walk, I’m trying to build up my heart and I never know when it’ll go from 70 to 120 or something and then I’m out of breath,” Hanson explained. “I have to stop quick and but it’s not a-fib, that stopped. But it’s called episodic tachycardia, and they think it’s just the trauma of the pulmonary artery being cut and the losing all that blood and then the anemia and dehydration. I lost 60% of my blood volume. So that was pretty scary.”

WATCH:

Hanson told Kelly that one major frustration with his heart issues was that he was unable to do any work on the farm. Hanson underwent an operation on Dec. 30, during which a tumor was removed, according to a Jan. 3 post on X by former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“What are they saying the prognosis is? What does the future hold for you?” Kelly asked Hanson.

Hanson responded by giving Kelly some details about the type of cancer doctors diagnosed.

“The prognosis is that it’s called KRAS G12R mutation and that’s bad… I had it for about two years apparently when I had my collapsed lung and then at some point it mutated and there’s a disagreement [about whether] the mass was the size of a softball, but the interior was the size of a golf ball, the cancer,” Hanson told Kelly. “So some oncologists say, well, it must have spread all through that in stage four. And other oncologists say, no, no, it it was an encapsulated tumor at stage one.”

“And then the good news is, even though it’s a very deadly mutation and it was in the airways, it wasn’t in the lymph nodes and it wasn’t in the lung lining,” Hanson continued, adding that he was undergoing blood biopsies every 120 days and that each negative test meant there was a lower chance of recurrence. In a Feb. 2 post on X, Hanson said that that there was a 40% chance of recurrence, which would be “untreatable.”

Copyright 2026 Daily Caller News Foundation

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.

This article originally appeared on The Gateway Pundit and was republished with permission.

Guest post by Mike LaChance

Seattle’s new socialist Mayor Katie Wilson recently laughed when describing the idea of millionaires leaving the city over new and higher taxes supported by her and her cohorts, saying ‘Bye!’ as she shrugged it off glibly.

Like so many places currently under Democrat rule, Seattle and the state of Washington are looking to ‘tax the rich’ to pay for their new Democratic Socialist utopia where everything is ‘free’ because ‘the rich’ are being forced to pay for it.

History has shown that this approach has a funny way of not working out too well, as many of the people with real wealth simply leave, taking their tax dollars with them.

Mayor Wilson doesn’t seem too concerned. Watch:

Starbucks Coffee, one of the great success stories of the Pacific Northwest, is already signaling an interest in moving to greener pastures.

KIRO News reports:

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson called for a Starbucks boycott. Starbucks called Nashville

Seattle Mayor Katie Wilson’s first move after winning the election was calling for a Starbucks boycott. Starbucks’ first move after the income tax passed was calling Nashville. Boeing left years ago. Amazon split. And the billionaire who spent millions building the progressive tax agenda that helped get us here says virtually every wealthy friend he has is already gone or planning to leave.

His name is Nick Hanauer. And he’s worth listening to.

He didn’t just get rich and stay quiet. He helped build the progressive tax framework Olympia runs on today. He spent millions pushing Seattle’s $15 minimum wage. He bankrolled the campaign to pass Washington’s capital gains tax. He wrote a famous essay warning his fellow billionaires that inequality would lead to pitchforks if they didn’t start paying more. He coined the term “middle-out economics” and appeared in Robert Reich’s documentary, arguing that prosperity requires massive investment in the middle class.

His whole brand, for years, was: I’m rich, and I’m telling you the rich need to pay more.

He was the billionaire giving cover to the progressive agenda. The architect.

And this is what he told GeekWire about Washington’s new income tax: “Virtually every wealthy friend I have has either left or is planning to. It’s a catastrophe.”

It’ll be fun to see if Mayor Wilson is still laughing a year or two from now.

Copyright 2026 The Gateway Pundit

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The Vigilant Fox

Stories the mainstream buries. Banned during COVID. Built and led by a healthcare professional turned citizen journalist.