Former CDC director on Ebola outbreak: ‘I suspect this is going to become a very significant pandemic’

Former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Robert Redfield said Wednesday he suspects the spreading Ebola outbreak in Africa will spread across three new countries and become a “very significant pandemic.”

“I suspect this is going to become a very significant pandemic, probably going to leak into Tanzania, leak into southern Sudan, maybe leak into Rwanda,” Redfield said during an appearance on NewsNation’s “Elizabeth Vargas Reports.” 

“So, it’s going to be very disruptive,” he added. 

A majority of the Ebola cases are in Congo and Uganda. 

Local health officials in the two nations reported 536 suspected cases, 105 probable cases, 34 confirmed cases and around 134 suspected deaths from the outbreak, according to the CDC.

“This is an outbreak right now that is really a significant outbreak that’s of significant public health international concern, partially because what you said, it wasn’t recognized very quickly. I’m not sure why,” Redfield told anchor Elizabeth Vargas. 

“Normally when we have these Ebola outbreaks, and I had three of them when I was CDC director, all of which were in the DRC, normally we recognize them when we have five, 10 cases, you know, at most,” he continued. “This one really wasn’t picked up until there was over 100 cases.”

The former CDC director added, “As you said, now there’s over 500 cases. There’s close to 150 deaths already, and it’s moving very rapidly.”

The May outbreak marks the 17th outbreak of Ebola in the region within the past 50 years, and officials said the most recent outbreak ended last December, the CDC noted.

One American worker reportedly came in contact with the virus while working in Congo and was transported to Germany for treatment.

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Media Twist Opposition to Land Theft Into Hatred of a Religion

As revelations about the Catholic Church abuse scandals emerged in the early 2000s, protests at churches grew. In Los Angeles, protesters “defiantly entered” a “church with a wooden cross covered with photographs of abuse victims,” according to the LA Times (6/2/03). An AP report (9/23/02) covered what was then “the largest protest” in response to the sex abuse scandal at “the cathedral, the seat of the Archdiocese of Boston, in months.”

The protests continued for years; in 2018, the National Catholic Reporter (8/26/18) recounted, about “30 protesters, including survivors of clergy sex abuse, stood outside the Cathedral of St. Matthew the Apostle in Washington, DC,” to call for an “end to cover-ups.”

The widespread molestation of children by priests who had the protection of the church hierarchy angered Catholics and non-Catholics alike. And at no point did any reasonable observer misinterpret these protests as attempts to intimidate Catholic mass goers or spread anti-Catholicism.

Today in New York City, the press is focusing on a series of protests against real estate events that promote “properties for sale in the occupied Palestinian territories” (Intercept5/11/26), settlements that are widely recognized as illegal under international law (Amnesty International, 1/30/19). Several such events have taken place at synagogues; the first protest against these illegal land sales, at the Park East Synagogue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in November 2025, sparked so much outcry it inspired a new law giving police authority to restrict demonstrations near houses of worship (Politico4/24/26).

The local media have fanned the misconception that these are anti-Jewish protests, meant to intimidate Jewish worshippers attending synagogue, when in fact they are pro-Palestine protests against illegal land sales that are strategically held inside a house of worship.

In the Catholic sex scandal case, it was easy for most people to see that the protests were not about religion or bigotry, but about an injustice committed within a religious order. In the occupied land sales case, the press entertained the notion that any condemnation of Israel that happens within earshot of a synagogue must be rooted in anti-Jewish sentiment.

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House Democrats Unanimously Vote Against Women’s History Museum… Can You Guess Why?

House Democrats unanimously voted this week against legislation to build a new women’s history museum on the National Mall.

The reason was an amendment that limited the exhibits to biological women to the exclusion of transgender figures.

The museum failed 204-216 as House Democrats hoped that they could still secure a museum including transgender figures once they retake power after the midterm elections.

The amendment drafted by Rep. Mary Miller, R-Ill., states in part, “The Museum shall be dedicated to preserving, researching, and presenting the history, achievements and lived experiences of biological women in the United States.”

It further mandated that the museum would not depict “any biological male as female.”

The vote was notable after the release of the DNC “autopsy” report that flagged how transgender and identity politics contributed to the defeat in the last election.

The report specifically noted the success of Trump’s “Kamala is for they/them, President Trump is for you” ad.

The report noted that “If the Vice President would not change her position — and she did not — then there was nothing which would have worked as a response.”

The fact that this was a unanimous vote among Democratic members is particularly notable and suggests that transgender issues will remain a rallying point for the Democrats.

Democratic members called the exclusion a “poison pill” amendment.

In the meantime, transgender issues continue to occupy the courts with a major decision by the Colorado Supreme Court this week that ordered Colorado’s largest provider of gender-affirming care for young people to resume medical treatments like puberty blockers and hormone therapy.

That puts  Children’s Hospital Colorado in direct conflict with the Department of Health and Human Services, which has moved to block federal support for institutions providing such care.

Justice William Wood III wrote that “We conclude that the actual immediate and irreparable harm to petitioners outweighs the speculative harm CHC may face if the federal government further acts against it.”

In his dissent, Justice Brian Boatright said that this was hardly a speculative matter, but “a decision driven by the direct threat to the viability of the entire hospital.”

Here is the opinion: Boe v. Child.’s Hosp. Colo.

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ICE Recruitment Tweets Are So Racist That Cops Feared They Could Incite Neo-Nazi Violence

Colorado law enforcement officials warned their counterparts across the country that social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security recruiting for ICE contained so many white supremacist themes that they could endanger the public, according to internal records obtained by The Intercept.

The Colorado Information Analysis Center cautioned in a March bulletin that “violent extremists” might perceive “White Supremacy Ideology in ICE Recruitment Materials, Leading to a Potentially Increased Threat Environment.”

The bulletin from an agency tasked with preventing terrorism advised law enforcement offices throughout the United States that these posts could create a “permissive environment to engage in vigilante action and/or violence against individuals perceived to be immigrants.”

These DHS posts, the analysts warned, could convince “white supremacist violent extremists to attempt to join or infiltrate ICE and engage in bias motivated violence, endangering the public, other ICE personnel, and local law enforcement.”

The bulletin circulated following months of inflammatory social media posts by the Department of Homeland Security intended to drive ICE recruitment and promote the Trump administration’s agenda of violent mass deportation.

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American Freight Revival Enters Next Phase As Illegal Alien Trucker Chaos Continues

In a unanimous landmark decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Federal Aviation Administration Authorization Act (FAAAA) does not protect freight brokers from state-law negligence claims when they carelessly hire unsafe motor carriers.

The case, Shawn Montgomery v. Caribe Transport II, LLC, et al., marks a seismic shift in the trucking industry. For the first time in years, brokers can be held accountable when their profit-driven shortcuts lead to deadly crashes. This is a massive victory for crash victims and the small- to midsize carriers who actually move America’s freight.

American Truckers United (ATU) proudly filed an amicus curiae brief supporting the petitioner, exposing how blanket broker immunity had fueled a dangerous race to the bottom.

“It is implausible that Congress sought to immunize brokers from tort liability when their negligence leads to fatal or injurious motor vehicle crashes,” our brief stated. “Any time the government provides immunity from suit, it picks economic winners and losers… There is no reason to believe Congress chose negligent brokers to be the winners.”

The Broken System That Needed Fixing

For too long, freight brokers have operated with near-total immunity while sitting in the middle of every transaction, pocketing the spread between what shippers pay and what they actually pay carriers.  

Their incentive was brutally simple: hire the absolute cheapest truck possible — safety, maintenance, and regulatory compliance be damned.

Resulting in brokerage’s share of the freight market exploding from roughly 6% twenty-five years ago to 29% today. Much of that growth came by flooding the market with cut-rate, often illicit capacity — including non-domiciled foreign drivers operating under lower standards that undercut responsible American operators.

Legacy American carriers shuttered at historic rates. Small fleets filed bankruptcy in droves. Mega-brokers and a handful of giant carriers captured massive new market share. The human cost was measured in wrecked trucks, ruined families, and lives lost on our highways.

A recent viral crash in California involving an illegal alien truck driver from India brought the issue back into sharp focus — and raised the obvious question: Which broker put that truck on the road?

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Britain Desperate for Oil

Britain is now discovering you cannot dismantle your industrial and energy base, wage war on domestic production, impose endless climate regulations, and still expect to maintain a functioning economy. Reality eventually arrives no matter how many politicians attempt to legislate against it.

The UK is quietly loosening oil and gas restrictions because the country is becoming desperate. After years of aggressively pushing Net Zero policies, discouraging North Sea investment, raising windfall taxes on producers, and pretending renewable systems alone could carry an advanced industrial economy, Britain is being forced to confront the simple reality that energy shortages destroy economies from the inside out.

The North Sea once represented one of the great strategic advantages for Britain. During the peak years around the late 1990s and early 2000s, the UK was producing nearly 4.5 million barrels of oil equivalent per day. That production has collapsed by more than 70% over the past two decades. At the same time, Britain became increasingly dependent on imported energy while shutting down domestic capacity.

What politicians never understand is that energy is not just another sector of the economy. Energy is the economy. Every industry depends upon it. Food production depends on it. Transportation depends on it. Manufacturing depends on it. Once energy prices rise high enough, inflation spreads through the entire system because energy sits underneath every layer of economic activity.

Britain now faces exactly the trap I warned Europe was heading toward. Deindustrialization combined with rising debt and declining living standards. Manufacturing weakens, capital flees, energy costs rise, and governments respond with more taxation and regulation which only accelerates the collapse further. This becomes a vicious cycle.

The desperation is now becoming obvious. The UK government is reportedly reconsidering restrictions on North Sea drilling and attempting to stabilize investment conditions because energy firms were already beginning to abandon projects entirely. The punitive tax structure imposed on producers created massive uncertainty while investment dried up. Companies simply stopped committing capital because governments kept changing the rules in the middle of the game.

Europe is in a depressionary phase while capital continues moving toward countries with stronger energy and industrial positions. You cannot build an economy entirely on financial services, bureaucracy, migration, and government spending while destroying the productive base underneath society itself.

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US Targets Hamas Support Networks

The Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is sanctioning four individuals associated with a pro-Hamas flotilla that is trying to access Gaza in support of the terrorist group, the department said in a May 19 statement.

The flotilla is organized by the Popular Conference for Palestinians Abroad (PCPA), which has been classified as a specially designated global terrorist by the United States.

The PCPA was established with funding from Hamas’s International Relations Bureau and Hamas directs its activity through the placement of Hamas officials throughout the organization, including its executive body, the General Secretariat,” the Treasury said.

“So-called humanitarian flotillas that are organized by or supporting designated parties represent a significant compliance risk for financial institutions. Sanctioned terrorist groups continue to maintain significant influence over maritime flotillas to Gaza.”

The four individuals sanctioned by the Treasury include a Spanish member of the PCPA’s General Secretariat, who is a central figure of the flotilla; the acting secretary general and president of the PCPA, who is from Jordan; a Belgium-based European coordinator for the Samidoun organization; and a Samidoun coordinator from Spain.

Samidoun is a front organization for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which the State Department has designated as a foreign terrorist organization. Both the PCPA and Samidoun act on behalf of sanctioned Palestinian terrorist organizations, the Treasury said.

In addition, OFAC sanctioned several members of Muslim Brotherhood networks who are aligned with Hamas.

All property and interests in property of the sanctioned individuals that are in the United States or in control of U.S. persons are effectively blocked and must be reported to OFAC. The sanctions prohibit U.S. persons from engaging in any transactions involving the property or interests in property of those who are sanctioned.

The pro-terror flotilla attempting to reach Gaza is a ludicrous attempt to undermine President Trump’s successful progress toward lasting peace in the region,” Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent said. “Treasury will continue to sever Hamas’ global financial support networks, no matter where in the world they are.”

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In a Reversal, Trump Announces 5,000 More Troops To Be Stationed in Poland, Citing Good Relationship With President Nawrocki

The situation of the US troops in Europe is in flux.

After many European NATO allies failed to live to their alliance with the US during the military confrontation against Iran, the US Donald J. Trump administration decided to accelerate the process of withdrawing troops from Europe.

The first move was to move 5,000 troops out of Germany, after ‘big mouth’ Chancellor Friedrich Merz said that Iran had ‘humiliated’ the US during peace negotiations.

After that, a deployment of 4,000 troops to Poland was also reported to be canceled.

But today, in a reversal, Trump decided to send 5,000 more troops to Poland.

Reuters reported:

“Trump, in a Truth Social post, cited his relationship with Poland’s conservative nationalist president, Karol Nawrocki, as the reason behind his decision ​to send additional troops.

[…] The U.S. ​had been reviewing its troop presence in Europe and had ​long been expected to scale it back following demands from Trump that NATO take a larger role in the defense of Europe.”

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Fact check: Advocating for independence is not treason

On May 5, Forever Canada leader Thomas Lukasuk said the movement to secede from Canada is “a form of treason” and something “most of us Albertans and Canadians don’t stand for.”

This follows British Columbia Premier David Eby saying it was treason when members of the Alberta Prosperity Project went to the United States to discuss Alberta’s independence movement with American officials.

Canada has a legal framework in place for any province to pursue independence from Confederation through a democratic referendum as per the Clarity Act. It is irresponsible and incorrect to accuse anybody of treason for acting within those parameters.

To commit treason in Canada would involve using force or violence to overthrow the government, or (without lawful authority) sharing military/scientific secrets with a foreign state that could harm Canada’s defence.

Peaceful petitioning, public rallies, citizen initiatives under Alberta law, referendum advocacy, and even political meetings/lobbying with foreign officials (like U.S. representatives) involve none of these.

Premier Eby and Thomas Lukaszuk are chilling free speech and legal political advocacy by falsely accusing law-abiding advocates of committing a serious crime.

Their inflammatory use of terms like treason misleads the public and escalates tensions between Alberta citizens.

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Indicted Minnesota Fraudster Muhammad Omar Captured After Jumping Off Balcony and Fleeing Amid $90 Million Bust

Indicted Minnesota fraudster Muhammad Omar was captured two hours after he jumped off a 4-story balcony and fled.

The Justice Department on Thursday announced new indictments against 15 Minnesota fraudsters in a ‘shocking’ $90 million bust during a press conference on its efforts to crack down on fraud.

Assistant Attorney General Colin McDonald made the announcement after Aimee Bock, the convicted mastermind behind the $250 million Feeding Our Future scandal, was sentenced to 41.5 years in federal prison.

“Today, we are announcing criminal charges against 15 defendants in Minnesota for fraud schemes that targeted over $90 million in taxpayer dollars,” Colin McDonald said.

“This is the beginning of our work in Minnesota. The fraud here in Minnesota is shocking,” he added.

One of the indicted fraudsters, identified as Muhammad Omar, jumped out of a 4-story building and fled.

“Muhammad Abdulqadir Omar, 32, was charged by indictment with one count of conspiracy to commit health care fraud and four counts of health care fraud in connection with a scheme to submit $3.3 million in fraudulent claims to the Housing Stabilization Services (HSS) Program of Minnesota Medicaid, of which approximately $3.2 million was paid,” the DOJ said.

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