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Young farmer’s crusade to protect vanishing farmland pits her against solar developers in New York

Renewable energy developers say local opposition is one of the biggest impediments to building wind and solar projects in the U.S. Besides the impact of large-scale industrial projects littering the view of the countryside, opponents are also concerned about the impact on their land values and the destruction of precious limited farmland. 

In 2023, Alexandra Fusalo bought 6.74 acres of land near Saratoga Springs in upstate New York, and she set out to create a pollinator farm. That’s a type of farm that produces a productive habitat for pollinators, such as bees and butterflies, with diverse native plants, water sources and nesting areas. She documents her farming efforts in her “House of Green” Substack. 

“My goal this year was to see how many rare, endangered and common pollinators I could attract,” Fusalo told Just the News. She said she counted a couple dozen monarch butterflies on her land on one day in September. 

Her involvement with solar opposition began one day when she was working in her garden and a neighbor told her that he’s often approached by solar developers looking to buy his land. “It kind of sent shivers down my spine. All these pollinators I’ve attracted to my farm, what would happen to them? What would happen to my investment?” she said. 

Vanishing farmland: 24 million acres fewer than we had 2017

The neighbor assured her that he wasn’t going to sell his land to solar developers, but Fasulo said the developers are aggressive and many farmers do end up selling. Between 2017 and 2024, the U.S. saw a decline of 24 million acres of farmland, a trend that worries Fasulo.

The average age of farmers is rising, and few young people aren’t pursuing careers in agriculture, making it attractive to sell off unused farmland to developers. 

Farmland is being sold for other types of development than renewable energy. But renewable energy takes up large amounts of land, and unlike other types of energy, rural land is an attractive location to site wind and solar projects. 

Fusalo said on various social media platforms that young farmers will become rarer if farmland continues disappearing. To help protect farmland, she established the nonprofit American Land Rescue Fund, which pays for “environmental attorneys who take on industrial and governmental projects that threaten rural communities, ecological integrity, and agricultural sustainability.”

She posted a video about what her neighbor had told her, and soon after that, she went to Schuylerville, a small village near her farm, to speak to the Saratoga Town Board about a law placing more restrictions on solar development.  

At this meeting, a representative of Cypress Creek Renewables came out from Santa Monica, California, to argue that the law was “excessively restrictive,” according to the minutes of the meeting. 

“We’re in the boonies up here. It’s freezing. There’s more trees than humans. It’s not New York City. So I was sitting there thinking, ‘why is there a person from California in our little town board meeting?’” Fasulo said. 

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Deliberate Contradiction: How the West Plays Dumb and Kills People in Gaza

First, let’s dissect this puzzle.

On February 29, 2024, US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin sent shockwaves when he informed lawmakers in the House Armed Services Committee that over 25,000 Palestinian women and children had been killed by Israel in Gaza up to that date. Austin, the military chief of the Biden Administration, delivered a fact that immediately subverted his own government’s rhetoric.

The announcement was shocking for two main reasons. First, Austin himself had orchestrated the relentless flow of US arms to Israel, directly enabling the very campaign that liquidated those innocent people. Second, the figure provided was noticeably higher than the casualty tally reported by the Palestinian Health Ministry in Gaza for the same period – 22,000 women and children in the first 146 days of the war.

The crux of the contradiction, however, is that Austin’s detailed account of the US-funded Israeli atrocities in Gaza directly subverted the official narrative regularly disseminated by the White House.

In fact, as early as October 25, 2023 – barely two weeks into the war – President Joe Biden himself began doubting the Palestinian Ministry of Health’s death toll estimates. “(I have) no confidence in the number that the Palestinians are using,” he flatly declared.

Naturally, Austin’s declaration neither eroded his unwavering endorsement of Israel nor softened Biden’s patronizing attitude toward the Palestinians. To the contrary, US military and political backing for Israel surged exponentially after that congressional hearing. US military and financial support for the Israeli genocide during the Biden administration in the first year of the war is estimated to be at least $17.9 billion.

These apparent contradictions, however, are not inconsistencies at all, but a perfectly calibrated, deliberate policy. Historically, this approach grants the US license to consistently flout its own declared principles. Iraq was invaded, at a horrific cost of life and societal destruction, under the banner of ‘good intentions’: democracy, human rights, and the like. Afghanistan’s protracted agony of war and instability endured for two decades in the name of fighting terror, exporting democracy, and women’s rights.

The operational part of the equation satisfies military and political strategists. Meanwhile, the hollow rhetoric of democracy and human rights keeps intellectuals, both on the right and the left, mired in a protracted, perpetually unproductive debate that serves to conceal rather than influence policy.

While the US government may have perfected the craft of deliberate contradictions, it is not the original architect. In modern history, this phenomenon has been owned almost entirely by the West: colonialism was advanced as a solution to slavery, and forced conversions were brazenly justified as civilizing missions.

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Rosie Lasts Two Hours

Two days. That’s the amount of time Rosie O’Donnell’s therapist asked her to ignore President Donald Trump.

She didn’t last two hours.

She cheerfully bragged about it!

The former The View host readily admitted she only lasted a “few hours” before becoming enraged at Trump all over again.

Apparently, when Trump sniped at Bloomberg reporter Catherine Lucey on Air Force One and told her to be “quiet, piggy,” that sent O’Donnell into the stratosphere once again, she raced to her social media to accuse Trump of a “verbal rape” of a reporter.

O’Donnell’s rabid Trump obsession sent her therapist, Jennifer Kopetic, to tell the former comedienne that “you’ve got to detach. You’ve got to disconnect.”

She turned a lifeline, handed to her by a professional, into a punchline. That alone offers a window into her mindset, and the fact that she decided to brag about it shows an even bigger one.

Rosie framed her failure as something adorable. Normal people with a shred of self-awareness think before announcing that emotional impulse beats discipline using record-breaking speed. Rosie didn’t feel the slightest hesitation, delivering the story as if the world needed proof that her feud with Trump remains her daily workout. While people hit the gym, she “hits” Trump so often that her routine builds muscle memory.

Other people who think their opinions are important enough to share—every comedian, host, and cable panelist who leaned on a Trump feud—eventually moved on.

Not Rosie.

Her two-hour collapse carried the weight of two decades and stayed anchored, and despite that weight, she kept hugging it. Rosie’s therapist told her to unclench her grip. After nodding and taking a deep breath, she jumped right back into the same pattern that drained her for years.

Rosie announced her relapse as though she had won a medal.

Once, her rivalry with Trump fueled ratings. Then, over time, it started to look like she became dependent on the feud to sound relevant. Plenty of people have political passion, but few treat it like oxygen.

Rosie made it clear that she feels lost without the outrage. Whenever her anger cools off, she works hard to find a new spark. Even when told by a therapist to take a long walk off a short pier, she sprints toward the nearest monitor to catch Trump’s latest.

People who watched her for years saw a pattern. Rosie never had trouble forming an argument. Her trouble came from letting an argument end. A normal person might think two days of quiet should settle the mind.

Not Rosie.

She didn’t have the mental capacity and maturity to last the length of a movie, folding after 120 minutes. Best of all, she told everyone, she wanted to hear the applause despite failing at a task most adults complete without even trying.

Her confession also revealed a deeper habit. When performers age out of the spotlight, many search for new meaning. Some volunteer or explore new paths.

Not Rosie.

Her needle kept skipping on a scratched vinyl record, leaving her stuck in rage, which she believed gave her relevance. Rage kept her in the headlines even as the roles slowed. For Rosie, Trump was an energy drink, keeping her wired and loud.

She became frightened of being silenced.

Rosie’s therapist tried to interrupt the cycle with instructions requiring introspection, patience, and basic restraint. But in her infinite wisdom, Rosie decided to follow a different path, treating the assignment like a dare.

Unfortunately for Rosie, she lost the dare but declared victory anyway, which takes an exceptional level of detachment. She looked at a moment that exposed a lack of self-control and told the world it made her feel proud.

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The New York Times Is Suing the Pentagon. The Case Is Laughable

Just a few days ago, The New York Times filed a sweeping lawsuit accusing the Pentagon of violating the First and Fifth Amendments by updating the rules for Pentagon Facility Alternate Credentials. 

The Times frames these rules as an attack on journalism itself. That framing is completely inaccurate. The Department of War implemented a policy aimed at securing one of the most sensitive buildings in the United States, and the policy neither restricts publication nor bars legitimate reporting. 

It simply establishes basic conditions for physical access to the Pentagon. 

Those conditions are lawful, reasonable, and consistent with long-standing principles governing access to nonpublic government facilities.

What the Times avoids acknowledging is that no journalist has a constitutional right to roam the Pentagon on an unescorted basis. Courts have been clear for decades that facilities such as the Pentagon are “nonpublic forums,” allowing the government to impose reasonable access limits that protect security and operational integrity. 

Access can be granted or denied based on compliance with building rules. It cannot be demanded as if the First Amendment guarantees a permanent press badge. 

The new Pentagon policy does not regulate what the Times may print, what sources it may speak with, or what stories it may pursue. It regulates whether a reporter may carry a credential that functions as a secure building pass.

Under the updated system, reporters seeking Pentagon Facilities Alternative Credentials (PFACs) must acknowledge that the Pentagon expects credentialed visitors not to solicit or encourage the unauthorized release of protected information. 

Federal employees already face strict rules governing how classified and controlled unclassified information is handled. The Pentagon’s policy simply reflects that reality: if reporters want special access inside a secure military headquarters, they cannot use that access to induce potential violations of federal disclosure rules. 

That standard does not restrict publication. It applies only to conduct inside a restricted facility and to abuses of the access privilege itself.

The Times argues that prohibiting solicitation of unauthorized disclosures “chills journalism.” 

It does not. 

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Millions Experienced COVID-19 Vaccine Side Effects

More than a third of Americans who were vaccinated against COVID-19 say they had side effects from the shot, and nearly half suspect the vaccines killed many patients,

The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone and online survey finds that 68% of American Adults say they got a COVID-19 vaccination, and a majority (60%) of vaccinated adults report no side effects from the vaccine. However, 26% say they had minor side effects and 10% reported major side effects from the vaccine. Based on a U.S. adult population of 258 million, this would mean 63 million had at least some side effects from the COVID-19 vaccine, including more than 17 million who experienced major side effects. (To see survey question wording, click here.)

Among all American Adults (including those who didn’t get vaccinated against COVID-19), 46% believe it is likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths – down from 55% in September 2024 – including 25% who say it’s Very Likely. Forty-four percent (44%) now don’t think a significant number of deaths have been caused by vaccine side effects, including 20% who believe it’s Not At All Likely. Another 12% are not sure.

The survey of 1,292 American Adults was conducted on November 10-12, 2024 by Rasmussen Reports. The margin of sampling error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. Field work for all Rasmussen Reports surveys is conducted by Pulse Opinion Research, LLC. See methodology.

Those who didn’t get the COVID-19 vaccine are more likely to suspect it had deadly side effects. Seventy percent (70%) of those who weren’t vaccinated, compared to 36% of those who did get the shot, consider it at least somewhat likely that side effects of COVID-19 vaccines have caused a significant number of unexplained deaths.

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Jocelyn Ballantine – the Lead Attorney Assigned to J6 Pipe Bomber Case – Notoriously Pressured the Proud Boys to Lie About Trump’s Involvement in Jan. 6 or Face Decades in Prison!

As we asked last week… Why is this demon still working at the DOJ?
Why was she not cut loose?
Why is she not being prosecuted?

Jocelyn Ballantine was one of the Department of Justice attorneys assigned to Michael Flynn’s prosecution. The Department admitted altering evidence in the case following a reprimand from the judge. She called this an inadvertent mistake at the time.

Ballantine also provided altered documents to Sidney Powell, and submitted an FBI interview report with redactions to information that was crucial to the case, according to En-Wikipedia.  When the US government threw out the case against  General Flynn, Ballantine declined to sign the motion to dismiss the charges against him.

She is as crooked as they come.

Jocelyn Ballantine was later assigned to the infamous Proud Boys Trial.

Ballantine and the Biden prosecutors made up evidence, pressured the defendants to lie to the court, planted evidence in the Proud Boys chat group, and led the charge to send the innocent men to prison for over a decade each.

Ballantine is scum.

On Saturday, investigative journalist Julie Kelly told Steve Bannon on the War Room that not only is Ballantine still working at the DOj – But she was assigned the January 6 pipe bomber case this week.’

What the hell is going on?

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ACIP Reveals: The Newborn Hepatitis B Vaccination Policy Was Built on Narrative, Not Science

The vote on whether to continue the universal newborn hepatitis B vaccination policy was postponed, but the discussion at ACIP exposed how, for decades, the blanket directive to vaccinate infants immediately after birth rested on assumptions, theoretical models, and partial data rather than on a solid scientific foundation.

“As a father and a scientist, I do not understand how we have the courage to ask parents to vaccinate a healthy newborn at birth when the child’s risk is so low and the evidence so thin. I honestly do not know where that courage comes from.”

This statement by Prof. Retsef Levi during yesterday’s ACIP meeting captured, with his characteristic clarity and directness, the core theme that emerged from the entire session: significant scientific gaps in a universal vaccination policy that has been in place for more than three decades in the United States.

The committee had been scheduled to vote on what seemed like technical questions: whether to eliminate universal newborn vaccination and administer the hepatitis B shot only to infants whose mothers test positive, and whether to replace the current policy, which does not allow for full informed consent, with a shared decision-making model between parents and physicians regarding vaccination later in infancy.

What surfaced during the session may have been even more important than the vote itself: for the first time, the ACIP’s scientific staff presented, openly and systematically, the profound gap between the institutional narrative and the evidence base, or rather the lack of one, that underpinned an expansive policy for 30 years. They detailed how a major, far-reaching public health directive had been constructed on assumptions, theoretical frameworks, and partial datasets, absent rigorous foundational research.

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‘Unprecedented’ Power Grab: FCC, Congress Race to Strip Local Control Over Cell Towers

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and federal lawmakers are pushing to make it easy for telecom companies to erect cell towers in communities without residents’ consent — even if the tower isn’t really needed to close a coverage gap in cell service.

If either the agency or Congress succeeds, communities will lose the right to keep unwanted towers and other wireless infrastructure away from their homes and schools, according to Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program.

“This is the most aggressive push we’ve ever seen to override local zoning, erase public participation, and force dense wireless infrastructure into residential areas under the guise of streamlining wireless infrastructure deployment,” Eckenfels said.

On Wednesday, the U.S House Committee on Energy and Commerce advanced H.R. 2289, the American Broadband Deployment Act of 2025, in a 26-24 vote along party lines, with Democrats opposing it. A floor vote has yet to be scheduled as of press time.

If passed, the bill would allow wireless companies to install towers and antennas wherever they decide, regardless of whether local residents want the equipment, Eckenfels said.

The FCC, the federal agency that oversees telecommunications, is working on its own similar strategy. On Dec. 1, the agency published a notice in the Federal Register about a proposed rule to “free towers and other wireless infrastructure from unlawful regulatory burdens.”

Eckenfels called H.R. 2289 a “legislative shortcut” for what the FCC wants to accomplish.

The FCC and lawmakers don’t want any roadblocks to installing more wireless infrastructure, said tech attorney Odette Wilkens, president and general counsel for the nonprofit Wired Broadband, Inc. “They see community input as an obstacle, and they see it as a regulatory barrier because the zoning ordinances on the local level protect the people.”

Across the country, residents have been successfully keeping new cell towers and antennas from going up next to their homes and schools.

Eckenfels said she thinks these successes prompted the FCC — which is captured by the wireless industry — and lawmakers who favor the wireless industry to push the measures.

Wilkens agreed. “The reason for HR 2289 is to prevent any further litigation and any further successes that people have had across the country in stopping cell towers,” she said.

Eckenfels called the FCC and Congress’ proposed actions an “unprecedented federal power grab” that would “strip away state and local powers, and force communities to accept more cell towers, more antennas and more industrial equipment — without meaningful review, without due process and without the ability to say no.”

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Cleaning the Augean Stable of University-Based Scientific Research

Science’s reputation has taken a pretty strong hit in recent years – and it’s not undeserved. 

All throughout Covid, a class of people who should have known better revealed themselves as Quislings to their field as they publicly embraced politically and socially fashionable positions on supposed mitigation measures incongruent with long–held scientific consensuses despite often finding such measures risible at the pandemic’s start. Then, not having embarrassed themselves enough with Vonnegutesque absurdity, many went on to position once rudimentary components of mammalian reproductive biology as questions more complex than the development of multicellular life or the rise of human consciousness and best outsourced to the wisdom of gender theorists, confused teenagers, and the aptly named clownfish.

Consequently, many normal people stopped trusting “The Science” and became more skeptical of science as a whole. They started questioning what they had been told about psychotropic drugs. Worrying about the safety of vaccines went mainstream. Concerns about our diet partly gave rise to a movement and a Presidential commission.

Furthermore, many aspects of the scientific enterprise came under increased scrutiny, the most prominent perhaps being the US government’s role in funding scientific research, large portions of which seemed ideologically motivated.

A 2024 report from Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) highlighted $2.05 billion from the National Science Foundation that appeared to go to STEM-based DEI projects. Later, NSF grants for such projects, along with those examining the effects of alleged misinformation, were targeted by efforts aimed at reducing government waste, as were payments for indirect costs to the institutions of those receiving grants from the National Institutes of Health.

The function, utility, and integrity of the peer-review process and peer-reviewed journals likewise came under scrutiny. At the start of the year, Martin Kulldorff, an epidemiologist and biostatistician best known now as one of the primary co-signers of the Great Barrington Declaration, wrote of how publication in a peer-reviewed journal became a stamp of approval that even shoddy research can enjoy if dragged across the right finish line, how publication in a prestigious peer-reviewed journal became a surrogate for article quality, and how the desire to get published in the right journal can motivate all sorts of questionable behaviors on the part of researchers. In October, Anna Krylov, a University of Southern California chemistry professor and prominent critic of DEI’s infiltration of STEM, lambasted the prestigious Nature Publishing Group for using its publications to further DEI-related goals through its publication policies and the threat of censorship. 

Similarly, the competence and basic integrity of researchers, perhaps especially those in academia, came into question with some critics, such as the authors of a recent report from the National Association of Scholars, blaming the replication crisis plaguing modern science on ineptitude, irresponsibility, and statistical tomfoolery.

Subsequently, it seems that some have come to question whether we should have academic science at all.

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NYC’s Radical Socialist Mayor-Elect Zohran Mamdani Posts Video Coaching Illegals on How to Evade ICE – Urges People to ‘Stand Up’ to Feds

New York City’s incoming mayor, democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani, released a video on X Sunday morning offering step-by-step advice to illegal immigrants on thwarting Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents.

Standing in front of a flip chart labeled “Know your rights,” Mamdani positioned himself as the defender of NYC’s “more than 3 million immigrants,” vowing to protect them from federal raids amid President Trump’s aggressive deportation agenda.

The video comes on the heels of a disrupted ICE raid in Chinatown last weekend, where nearly 200 protesters blocked agents from leaving a parking garage.

“Last weekend, ICE attempted to raid Canal Street and detain our immigrant neighbors,” Mamdani said in the video posted to X on Sunday. “As mayor, I’ll protect the rights of every single New Yorker. And that includes the more than 3 million immigrants who call this city their home.”

Mamdani continued, “But we can all stand up to ICE if you know your rights.”

“ICE cannot enter into private spaces like your home, school, or private area of your workplace without a judicial warrant signed by a judge,” Mamdani said.

“You have the right to say, ‘I do not consent to entry,’ and the right to keep your door closed,” he continued.

Mamdani showed an example of ICE paperwork that may be mistaken for a warrant.

“ICE is legally allowed to lie to you. But you have the right to remain silent. If you are being detained, you may always ask, ‘Am I free to go?’ repeatedly until they answer you,” Mamdani continued.

“You are legally allowed to film ICE, as long as you do not interfere with an arrest,” he stated.

Mamdani also not-so-subtly urged people to protest.

“New Yorkers have a constitutional right to protest, and when I’m mayor, we will protect that right,” Mamdani said.

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