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National Parental Rights Group Founder: Homeschooling ‘One Of The Last Remaining Spaces Where Parents Maintain Full Autonomy Over Children’s Education

Connecticut Democrats’ attempt to gain control of homeschooling reveals a desire to “force homeschoolers into alignment with the same ideological materials and standardized assessments that have already sparked controversy in government schools,” Sheri Few, founder and president of United States Parents Involved in Education, wrote in an op-ed at The Hill last week.

The national parental rights leader observed that Connecticut’s HB 5468 represents “a troubling pattern emerging whereby government agencies fail in their most basic responsibilities and lawmakers find someone else to blame.”

Few referred to state Democrats’ attempt to regulate homeschooling after their own government systems failed to attend to “repeated warnings in tragic child-abuse cases.”

“It is hard not to see this as a political sleight of hand,” she asserted. “A crisis exposes government negligence, yet instead of holding those agencies accountable, lawmakers pivot to regulate an entirely unrelated group.”

Rather than celebrate the Connecticut parents who choose to homeschool, sacrificing, for their children, their time and perhaps an opportunity for additional employment income, Democrat lawmakers want to require them to notify the government of their curriculum and be subjected to screening by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) and the Department of Education.

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The Dollar Lifeline in War – Currency Swaps

I have said for years that people misunderstand the global monetary system. It is not driven by trade balances. It is driven by capital flows and access to dollar liquidity. The discussion of a currency swap between the United States and the United Arab Emirates shows how the system actually works under stress.

The United States is now considering a currency swap with the UAE as tensions around Iran rise. This is not about trade policy. It is about liquidity. When uncertainty increases, capital begins to move. Countries need dollars to stabilize their financial systems and maintain confidence.

Currency swaps are often presented as technical tools. In reality, they are lifelines. They allow a foreign central bank to access U.S. dollars directly. This bypasses stressed markets and helps prevent a liquidity crisis that could trigger capital flight.

This is exactly what happens during geopolitical conflict. The Iran situation has raised concerns about the Strait of Hormuz. That region is critical for global energy flows. When energy is threatened, markets react immediately. Currency volatility rises and capital seeks safety.

The UAE is a strong economy, but it is still exposed. Its currency is pegged to the U.S. dollar, meaning it must maintain sufficient dollar reserves to function properly. When global stress increases, even strong economies seek direct dollar access. That is why a swap line becomes important.

There is also a geopolitical layer. Currency swaps are tools of influence. When the United States provides dollar liquidity, it reinforces alignment. If access is restricted, countries look for alternatives. That can include increasing use of other currencies like the Chinese yuan. The UAE has stated it would consider using the yuan if the U.S. denies them the opportunity to swap, but the issue has become polarizing.

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Obama-Appointed Judge Denise J. Casper Blocks Trump Administration’s Efforts to Stop ‘Green New Scam’

A federal judge in Boston issued a preliminary injunction halting enforcement of several federal policies affecting wind and solar energy development, siding with industry groups that argued the measures unlawfully delayed projects across the country.

Chief U.S. District Judge Denise J. Casper ruled Tuesday that the Trump administration could not enforce a series of permitting requirements and related policies that renewable energy advocates said had stalled or canceled projects nationwide. Casper concluded that the plaintiffs were likely to succeed in their claims that agencies including the Department of the Interior adopted unlawful procedures that created bottlenecks in the approval process.

The ruling applies to members of nine advocacy organizations and trade groups, including RENEW Northeast and the Alliance for Clean Energy New York. Those groups had challenged a policy requiring multiple levels of approval from senior political appointees for nearly every step in the permitting process for wind and solar projects. The judge found that the administration had not adequately justified the additional review structure.

The decision represents one of several recent judicial setbacks for President Donald Trump’s administration as it seeks to reshape federal energy policy. The administration has emphasized expanding fossil fuel production, promoting oil, coal, and natural gas output while reducing support for renewable energy sources. On Monday, Trump invoked the Defense Production Act and signed memorandums aimed at increasing domestic energy production, citing national defense concerns.

According to court filings, the challenged Department of the Interior memorandum implemented directives aimed at eliminating what the administration called “preferences” for “expensive and unreliable energy sources like wind and solar.” The policy required nearly every step in the permitting process for wind and solar projects to receive approval from three senior political appointees, including Interior Secretary Doug Burgum. The judge also blocked the Department’s “adoption of an interpretation of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act that ​imposes stricter standards for offshore wind projects,” Reuters reported. Plaintiffs argued the policy created a bottleneck that ground permitting to a halt and was adopted without explanation for why it was needed, in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

Casper agreed with those arguments, stating that the directives cited by the administration did not sufficiently justify the added review process or the stricter standards applied to renewable energy projects. Her order blocks enforcement of those policies while the case proceeds.

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Genocide Doesn’t Happen Without Language to Incite It

How is information made legitimate, and when is it appropriate for journalists to introduce skepticism? What happens when only one side of a conflict is given the legitimate voice, always repeated and rarely questioned, even when those sources have proven many times to have promulgated lies?

Military studies scholars and analysts understand that there is always a long genesis of historical, political and economic factors that can eventually erupt into conflict. In many ways, US establishment media seemed unwilling or unable (but likely both) to narrate a more complex, historically accurate account of the war on Gaza.

The Intercept (4/15/24) reported that editorial directives at the New York Times and CNN, two of the most important news sources in the US, advised reporters to avoid certain “taboo” words, such as “genocide” and “massacre.” Yet between October 7 and November 24, 2023, the Times used the word “massacre” 53 times—referring to Israelis killed by Palestinians, but only once to refer to a Palestinian killed by Israel (Intercept, 1/9/24).

From November onward, as deaths in Gaza piled up, the Times habitually avoided using emotionally fraught terms for Palestinians. Another term, “ethnic cleansing,” was also barred from use, along with “refugee camps” and “occupied territories.”

As the Times source who leaked the directives said, “You are basically taking the occupation out of the coverage, which is the actual core of the conflict.”

US news outlets were crippled by these verbal restrictions, incapable of offering an accurate explanation of what was happening in Gaza by imposing such constraints on humanitarian language, and international principles and laws.

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The Surveillance Accountability Act Demands Warrants for Data

Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) have introduced the Surveillance Accountability Act, a bill that feels like someone took the Fourth Amendment and actually meant it.

The legislation aims “to ensure that all searches that significantly impinge on the privacy or security of a person require a warrant based on probable cause” and to create “a right of action for violations of Fourth Amendment rights.” That covers the kinds of searches federal agencies currently conduct without judicial oversight: pulling your financial records from banks, requesting your browsing history from ISPs, buying your location data from brokers, and harvesting your biometric information from surveillance cameras.

We obtained a copy of the bill for you here.

The bill lands in the middle of a brutal Congressional fight over FISA Section 702, the surveillance authority that currently lets the FBI search Americans’ communications.

The new legislation goes much further than the various reform bills circulating around that debate. Where the SAFE Act and the Government Surveillance Reform Act target specific loopholes in FISA, the Surveillance Accountability Act tries to close all of them at once by rewriting the baseline rule: if the government wants your data, it needs a judge’s permission.

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Bill introduced to allow physician-assisted death in Ohio

Addie O’Neil didn’t have a choice about how she would die.

After being diagnosed with stage 4 endometrial cancer in 2018, O’Neil was in hospice care for two years. Her final week of life was spent in a drug-induced coma to alleviate her pain. Through it all, Addie’s husband of 40 years, Jim, and their children were there.

“We stood vigil, watching the woman we love slowly waste away until thankfully, her heart finally gave out,” said Jim O’Neil, of Lucas County, at the Ohio Statehouse on April 23. Next to him, his daughter Rochelle held a picture of Addie, who died in 2020.

O’Neil is asking Ohio to join 13 states and Washington, D.C., that allow physician-assisted death. A new bill from Rep. Eric Synenberg, D-Beachwood, would legalize the option, but it could face a mountain of opposition in the Republican-controlled Legislature.

“This bill is about choice, a choice only the terminally ill can make for themselves,” O’Neil said.

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Trump’s Embrace of Psychedelic Therapy Leaves Most Users on the Wrong Side of the Law

On Saturday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order aimed at “accelerating medical treatments for serious mental illness” by facilitating regulatory approval of ibogaine and other psychedelics that have shown promise as psychotherapeutic catalysts. Although the case for doing that is compelling, the medical model embraced by the president excludes most psychedelic use, which will remain illegal even if the “historic reforms” that Trump announced work as planned.

Trump takes it for granted that Americans should be allowed to use psychedelics only for reasons that the government recognizes as legitimate. Otherwise, they are criminals rather than patients, subject to arrest, prosecution, and potentially severe penalties for daring to assert sovereignty over their own bodies and minds.

The injustice of that policy is readily apparent when people use psychedelics in ways that manifestly improve their lives. Many combat veterans, for example, have found that ibogaine, which is derived from the root of an African shrub, provides dramatic relief from the constellation of problems known as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“It absolutely changed my life for the better,” former Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell, whose Afghanistan memoir inspired the 2013 movie Lone Survivor, remarked as Trump signed his executive order. “I was reborn,” says Luttrell’s twin brother, Rep. Morgan Luttrell (R–Texas), also a former Navy SEAL. “It is one of the greatest things that ever happened to me.”

Because ibogaine is banned in the United States, the Luttrell brothers had those transformational experiences at a clinic in Mexico. So did the 30 subjects of a recent Nature Mental Health study, which found that ibogaine, combined with magnesium as a safeguard against the drug’s cardiac side effects, “safely and effectively reduces PTSD, anxiety and depression and improves functioning in veterans” with traumatic brain injuries.

Research on ibogaine, which also is reputed to be remarkably useful for people struggling with drug addiction, is relatively limited so far. But the evidence supporting the use of MDMA (for PTSD) and psilocybin (for depression), both of which the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has designated as “breakthrough” therapies, is strong enough that they may soon be approved as prescription medications.

If that happens, some people who could benefit from these drugs will be able to use them legally, provided they can obtain a diagnosis and a prescription. But where does that leave all the psychedelic users who can’t meet those requirements?

In a 2023 survey of psilocybin users, the RAND Corporation found that the most common motivations included “fun” (59 percent), “improved mental health” (49 percent), “personal development” (45 percent), “curiosity” (43 percent), and “spiritual growth” (41 percent). Although very few of those people would qualify for the medical exception that Trump advocates, that does not mean their reasons for using psilocybin should be dismissed as frivolous, let alone that they should be treated as criminals.

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Chinese Scientists Have Been Dying Mysterious Deaths Too

The star of China’s booming artificial intelligence defense sector had been working on Taiwan invasion scenarios—until he died in an unexplained car crash in the early hours of the morning in Beijing, aged just 38.

Many questions remain over the July 1, 2023 death of Feng Yanghe, a professor at the National University of Defense Technology, who had won national competitions with his pioneering “War Skull” platform.

Such as, why did an obituary in the state-run science news website, Sciencenet.cn, say he was “sacrificed”? Why was the brilliant scientist from Gansu province buried in a special cemetery in Beijing for the Communist Party elite, state heroes, and revolutionary martyrs?

Yet as in the U.S., Feng’s death was just one of many unexpected deaths of top-flight scientists working in ultra-sensitive fields such as military AI, hypersonic weapons, and space defense, according to reports in Chinese and overseas Chinese media.

The phenomenon mirrors the wave of disappearances or deaths among American scientists that is now being investigated by Washington. In the U.S, there have been 11 cases, in China at least nine.

It’s prompted a disturbing question among some military analysts: Is there a silent “scientist war” going on?

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UFO researcher’s chilling final warning before grisly death adds to growing conspiracy fears

The death of a prominent UFO researcher has triggered conspiracy theories after it was ruled he took his own life.

David Wilcock, 53, died by suicide from a self-inflicted gunshot wound outside his home in Boulder County, Colorado, on April 20, the coroner’s office confirmed on Wednesday.

Police responded to a 911 call about a man, reported at the time as being Wilcock, ‘experiencing a mental health crisis’ around 10.44am local time.

‘Within minutes of deputies’ arrival, he used the weapon on himself. He was pronounced deceased at the scene,’ the sheriff’s office added.

No other individuals were located inside the residence or on the surrounding property, authorities added.

Wilcock, who also tied his theories on UFOs to Christianity, previously posted on social media about not being suicidal and had spoken hours earlier about believing that a death from natural causes was the only acceptable way of dying. 

‘You don’t get to resurrect. If you lay down your life, you’re done. So, please don’t do that. Please don’t be stupid,’ Wilcock said in an April 19 livestream on YouTube.

‘It’s something you never want to have to go through. And uh again, you know, natural is the only way to go.’

In 2022, Wilcock, who also talked about humanity moving towards a spiritual enlightenment, wrote on X: ‘I plan on LIVING. Not suicidal at all. Just concerned about what happens when you prove God is real.’ 

That unearthed post has been flooded with new comments from skeptics alleging without evidence that he was murdered or coerced into taking his own life. 

Wilcock was a well-known figure within the growing community seeking full government disclosure on UFOs and extraterrestrials.

The author explored topics most people consider ‘fringe’ or alternative science, including the theory that ancient civilizations were influenced by aliens and used advanced technology that has been lost over the centuries.

He was a regular expert on the History Channel’s long-running show Ancient Aliens, making dozens of appearances.

Wilcock also promoted the idea that humanity was on the verge of a major positive spiritual ‘ascension’ that would likely coincide with the disclosure of alien life.

The UFO researcher and author’s reported suicide sparked immediate backlash from Wilcock’s supporters and even members of Congress, who found the timing of his death suspicious and claimed he may have been the victim of foul play. 

Tennessee Congressman Tim Burchett responded to a social media post announcing Wilcock’s death by writing ‘not cool.’

On Wednesday, Burchett told the Daily Mail: ‘I just don’t think there’s any chance that this is just all coincidental.’

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Pentagon Spokesperson Christopher Sherwood Emails on UFOs, UAP, and more

A newly released collection of Department of Defense records centers on internal email communications tied to Pentagon spokesperson Christopher Sherwood and references to Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). The material stems from a targeted Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request seeking insight into how UAP-related terminology and issues were discussed within the Pentagon’s public affairs apparatus.

The request specifically sought “a copy of all emails, sent to and/or from (bcc’d and cc’d) Pentagon spokesman Christopher Sherwood… with the following keywords/phrases,” including “Unidentified Aerial Phenomena,” “Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon,” “UAP,” and “UAPs” . The scope was narrowly defined, focusing on a single individual and a set of keywords that became increasingly prominent within Department of Defense communications in the late 2010s. Sherwood primarily responded to UAP related questions from the media, even those from The Black Vault, back around this time frame. He was later replaced in those duties by Susan Gough, for reasons unknown.

Sherwood served as a Pentagon spokesperson within the Department of Defense’s public affairs structure. In that role, communications involving Sherwood typically relate to media inquiries, official messaging, and coordination of public statements on defense-related topics.

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