Controversy over state surveillance in Canada is escalating after Public Safety Canada received a Community Note on X for attempting to rebut criticism of Bill C-22, the Lawful Access Act.
“Bill C-22 may not formally create new warrant powers, but Part 2 would impose new lawful-access and technical capability obligations, including metadata retention,” reads the note.
“Privacy experts argue this expands the practical surveillance framework if warrant standards remain unchanged.”
California seized a Christian woman’s teenage daughter for opposing her “gender transition,” and now the state is moving to put the girl up for adoption.
Alexandra Lyashchenko, an Orthodox Christian and legal Ukrainian immigrant, lost custody of her then-15-year-old daughter in 2024 after rejecting her “sudden desire to transition.”
Lyashchenko told NTD that California is “deciding that my daughter is going to be adopted out.”
Her family was “forced out of California” and is now “hiding in Florida” because California also wants her younger son, she added.
The far-left state has legally separated the girl and her parents, according to Lyashchenko.
She also said that she believes that her daughter was sexually assaulted in the foster system, noting that the girl was housed with boys due to her supposed “gender identity.”
Lyashchenko has accused Dr. Michelle Sager, the director of psychiatry at Children’s Legacy Center in Redding, California, of indoctrinating her daughter. She told NTD that she believes that her daughter’s school “secretly indoctrinated” her as well.
Lyashchenko said that her daughter also used the online platform Discord, which hosts radical pro-LGBT servers and where the girl looked into “online psychology.” The mother said that she suspects that Sager led her daughter to a “particular LGBT server” on Discord.
The girl eventually asked for consent to undergo testosterone, which her parents refused.
Testosterone and other transgender hormones are linked to serious and even life-threatening side effects, including cancer, stroke, and sterilization.
The grim circumstances behind the death of George Washington (1732-1799), America’s first president and popularly known as the Father of the Country, are not wholly unknown. The details have been reported by historians for more than two centuries.
What’s strange about this dry biographical knowledge is that it is not reported with shock and alarm and hence never conveyed to popular culture with lessons for our lives. This is because Washington’s physicians were following standard protocols when they bled him to death.
The facts: Washington came down with a throat infection. Three doctors, all convinced of the settled wisdom of the healing arts deployed since the Middle Ages, participated in draining blood from his body, to the point that they took 5 pints or fully half his blood, while giving him an enema on top of it all.
They literally drained the life out of him, not from malice but simply by following the established protocols as recommended by the best physicians at the time.
To invoke a popular phrase, where is the outrage? Nineteenth-century biographies reported the details but celebrated Washington for his bravery in enduring the treatment, then called phlebotomy, which was considered the best science.
John Marshall’s (later Justice) famous early biography, published in five volumes from 1804 to 1807, simply says:
“Believing bloodletting to be necessary, he procured a bleeder who took from his arm twelve or fourteen ounces of blood, but he would not permit a messenger to be despatched for his family physician until the appearance of day. About eleven in the morning Doctor Craik arrived; and perceiving the extreme danger of the case, requested that two consulting physicians should be immediately sent for. The utmost exertions of medical skill were applied in vain. The powers of life were manifestly yielding to the force of the disorder; speaking, which was painful from the beginning, became almost impracticable: respiration became more and more contracted and imperfect, until half past eleven on Saturday night; when, retaining the full possession of his intellect, he expired without a struggle.”
Necessary. Medical skill. Protocols. Best Practices. Standards of Care. Death. No one knows why: just a yielding to the forces of disorder.
American Federation of Teachers (AFT) President Randi Weingarten used hundreds of thousands of dollars in union resources to help her write a book suggesting President Donald Trump is a fascist, and her team made more than $1.4 million from the labor group, a new report found.
The Freedom Foundation, a conservative think tank whose mission is to challenge “entrenched power of left-wing government union bosses who represent a permanent lobby for bigger government, higher taxes, and radical social agendas,” released a report claiming Weingarten used union resources for her book Why Fascists Fear Teachers: Public Education and the Future of Democracy, and then kept part of the proceeds.
The report, first obtained by the New York Post, alleges that Weingarten’s team included an attorney who earned $977,000 for various work with the union, despite supposedly working on the book pro bono. The report also alleges that a “ghost writer” earned $400,000 from the union, and two people who “fact-checked” the book earned $11,000 each.
“Most AFT members pay dues in exchange for workplace representation, not to fund the union president’s literary pursuits,” said Maxford Nelsen, the Freedom Foundation’s director of research and government affairs.
“However, AFT appears to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in members’ dues on top-tier consultants, lawyers, and agents to get WFFT published,” Nelson continued. “Indeed, the wide range of expenses borne by AFT suggests that Weingarten may not have contributed anything at all financially to the enterprise.”
The book was pitched by the publisher as “a manifesto for our time,” and made headlines for appearing to suggest President Donald Trump is a fascist, according to the report. Weingarten specifically made a Hitler comparison in the book.
Rep. Thomas Massie has conceded his race in Kentucky’s fourth congressional district.
As reported earlier in the evening, Massie lost to former NAVY Seal Ed Gallrein in Tuesday’s primary election by a decisive margin.
During his concession speech, Massie said he was unable to Gallrein because he was in the Israeli city of Tel Aviv.
“Listen, I would have come out sooner but I had to call my opponent and concede and it took a while to find Ed Gallrein in Tel Aviv.”
”I have called and conceded the race. We have been honorable the whole time and we are going to stay that way.”
“Welcome to the most expensive congressional primary ever, in the 250 year history of this country.”
”It is not just the most expensive, this thing went on longer than Vietnam.”
Sanctuary jurisdictions in the United States will see more Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) personnel on the ground if they do not allow local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE officers, border czar Tom Homan said in a May 15 interview with the Daily Signal.
In the interview, Homan was specifically asked about New York. In January, the state’s governor, Kathy Hochul, proposed the Local Cops, Local Crimes Act, which bars state and local law enforcement agencies from signing or maintaining any Section 287(g) agreements with ICE.
Such agreements authorize ICE to delegate certain immigration functions to local and state officers under the agency’s oversight. Local and state officers can detain suspected illegal immigrants under the deal.
If passed, the New York bill would void all existing Section 287(g) agreements in the state. Homan said in the interview that he had talked to Hochul about the consequences.
“I said, Look, you end cooperation in the jails, we’re going to have to send more agents to do the job, because now, rather than one agent arresting one bad guy in the jail, which is safer for the agent, safer for the alien, safer for the community, of course, you’re going to release him. Now we got to send a whole team, six or seven agents, to go find him. So, it’s going to result in more agents in the community,” Homan said.
“Totally briefed on the whole thing, but she decided to go ahead and do it anyways. Well, I made a statement that we’re going to send more agents to New York. We have to, as a response to this, go arrest those public safety threats.”
When asked whether any sanctuary jurisdiction that doesn’t cooperate with ICE would face more ICE personnel on the ground, Homan replied, “Absolutely.”
The border czar said that he warned Hochul that there would be more collateral arrests if that’s the situation. For instance, if ICE were to arrest a criminal illegal alien, and the individual was with another illegal immigrant, then the second individual would be arrested as well.
Plus, Hochul’s legislation bans ICE from leasing beds from sheriffs in the state, due to which every illegal immigrant arrested has to be flown out of state for detainment. So, if New York locks ICE out of local jails for detaining illegals, “then we’ll simply fly them out,” Homan said.
Earlier this month, Hochul announced that an agreement had been reached with legislative leaders on the key priorities of the fiscal year 2027 state budget, including a provision banning state, local, and federal officials from wearing masks while on duty.
“Good luck with the law of banning masks. Federal law always trumps state and local law. And while threats are up over 8,000 percent, masks is a non-starter, so good luck enforcing that,” Homan said, regarding that provision.
The left-wing Labour Party government in Britain has refused to confirm that it is not using slave labour in its publicly owned green energy project, despite having passed a law last year committing to do so.
The push in the UK to eliminate the use of fossil fuels and replace them with supposedly cleaner forms of energy may be coming with a hefty human toll, with it being unclear if the state-funded Great British Energy (GBE) project is using forced labour in places like China to prop up its so-called renewable sector.
Following pressure from campaigners, after initially baulking at the idea of banning slavery from its key green initiative, the Labour government adopted legislation last year committing GB Energy to ensure its “supply chains are free of forced labour” as it seeks to build a “new energy infrastructure using ethical supply chains.”
However, this week, the government appeared to admit the reality that it is nearly impossible to guarantee that any large-scale purchases of solar panels and other green products are free from slave labour, given the dominance that Communist China has over the industry.
A government spokesman said, per the Daily Mail, that GB Energy has “strict procurement controls in place” for solar panels, but admitted that it could not make any guarantees, only saying that the measures will look to root out forced labour from supply chains “as far as possible”.
The tacit admission of continued reliance on slavery sparked backlash, with Britain’s independent anti-slavery commissioner, Eleanor Lyons, saying: “The race to net zero should never come at the expense of people forced to produce goods in horrendous conditions, working endless hours and under constant surveillance.
“The Government promised taxpayers their money would not fund products linked to forced labour. They should not abandon that commitment.”
The U.S. State Department announced on Thursday that it will begin revoking passports of thousands of parents with unpaid child support debt. The revocations will start on Friday and will primarily focus on parents who owe more than $100,000 in child support.
Additionally, anyone with over $2,500 in unpaid court-ordered child support can be denied a passport or have their existing one forfeited under federal law, according to a release by the State Department.
“We are expanding a commonsense practice that has been proven effective at getting those who owe child support to pay their debt. Once these parents resolve their debts, they can once again enjoy the privilege of a U.S. passport,” said Assistant Secretary of State for Consular Affairs Mora Namdar.
Since the program’s full implementation in 1998, states have recovered $657 million in child support arrears. This total includes more than $156 million collected since 2021 through over 24,000 individual lump-sum payments.
Following initial reports of the program’s expansion on February 10th, the department noted an immediate shift in compliance, stating it has “seen data that hundreds of parents took action and resolved their arrears with state authorities since news broke that the State Department would start proactively revoking passports.”
“While we can’t confirm the causation in all of those cases, we are taking this action precisely to impel these parents to do the right thing by their children and by U.S. law,” added the department.
Once revoked, a passport becomes entirely invalid and cannot be used for international travel, even after the underlying child support debt is settled. According to State Department guidance, an individual’s eligibility is only restored after the past-due balance is paid directly to the relevant state child support agency and the person’s name is cleared from federal delinquency records.
Following payment, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) must update its internal tracking system before the State Department can begin processing a brand-new passport application — a multi-agency clearance process that typically takes at least two to three weeks to complete.
As of last week, the exact number of passport holders owing more than the $2,500 statutory threshold remains unclear, as HHS is still aggregating data from the various state agencies responsible for tracking these metrics. However, federal officials predict that once this lower threshold is fully implemented, the final tally could encompass many thousands of additional people.
The political left often betrays their true agenda in the legislation they choose to oppose. The SAVE Act, for example, would require proof of citizenship to vote in US elections; a law which the majority of countries around the world enforce. It’s widely supported by around 80% of the public, yet, Democrats stubbornly refuse to pass it.
Why? Because they know there are illegal immigrants voting in their favor, and they know that mail-in ballot fraud exists and often benefits them.
By extension, Democrats aggressively attempted to block Trump Administration efforts to ensure that illegal immigrants could not receive healthcare subsidies. Their argument was that “no illegals actually access those subsidies”. Of course, if this was true, then it should not matter if Trump adds such restrictions – According to Dems, nothing would change.
In reality, progressive politicians know that around 1.4 million “asylum seekers” (illegal immigrants who entered the country under Biden’s open border policies and then took advantage of the system) were on the healthcare rolls at the end of 2024. They also know that by offering welfare programs to illegals, they are buying the future loyalty of those migrants (as well as keeping them in the country to rig the census in favor of blue states).
Today, this loophole is being rectified by a number of states that are now requiring proof of citizenship in order to qualify for public healthcare programs. You would think this is common sense, but Democrats and some medical institutions are not happy with the changes.
Hospitals across the state of Tennessee say they are receiving notice from the Department of Health requiring them to verify the citizenship status of everyone enrolled in public benefit programs.
Opponents to the reforms say this includes Children’s Special Services, which provides access to care for children from birth to 21 years of age. The process for disenrolling kids 18 to 21 has already begun, and there is a process underway to disenroll kids zero to 17.
It is a typical Democrat tactic to target and isolate a single “vulnerable” group and use them to justify the existence of welfare benefits for all foreigners. You don’t want to steal that wheelchair away from little Pedro or snatch life saving medicine away from poor innocent Gabriela, right? It is also the case than many of these healthcare providers stand to lose millions in government subsidized payments if migrants are kicked off the rolls.
Have you observed what is happening with medical insurance in the United States? There is an upheaval taking place. You might be experiencing it yourself.
The Wakely Consulting Group has taken upon itself to track trends in the medical insurance market, both pricing and participation.
Their latest report has documented an ongoing and profound shift, one so dramatic that it portends something truly meaningful for the future.
Lacking serious reform of the system from Congress, it seems that consumers are taking matters into their own hands.
Congress declined to extend subsidies for the Affordable Care Act (ACA) starting in January. Consumers have examined their bills and plans in light of the price increases which range from 25 to 115 percent depending on conditions and levels. More than a million people have dropped their coverage entirely. More will do so through the end of the year.
Wakely comments: “Based on unique data collection from 80 percent of the ACA individual market, Wakely … estimates a material reduction in enrollment for 2026, ranging on average from 17 percent to 26 percent in total.”
This is happening because, fortunately, there is no individual mandate to be enrolled in anything since the Supreme Court deleted that portion of the program.
Individuals are downgrading their coverage to plans with fewer benefits and higher deductibles. Or they are just doing without and paying cash or shopping for crowdhealth options.
The implications for the ACA, also known as Obamacare, are profound.
First, this changes the risk pool calculation in ways that are disruptive. The whole machinery fundamentally depends on large risk pools that mask costs and separate premiums from actual individual circumstance. With such large pools, the architects hoped to take a sideways route to a privatized form of socialized medicine.
That scheme now lies in tatters.
Second, with so many people leaving (obviously those who don’t anticipate system needs) those who remain in the system are less healthy: the very people more willing to pay the higher premiums are those who expect to use the services. From an actuarial point of view, this change puts further pressure on prices. And with risk pools shrinking and data pointing to higher costs, we have a system that seems to be eating itself on both ends.
You would think that the implosion of the medical-care system of the world’s biggest economy would be big news. Somehow it is not. Why has this not been widely reported?
A theory as to why: It is happening too slowly and with too much data diffusion. It is genuinely difficult to get a handle on the pace of the increases because every state is different, every age group is priced differently, and the diversity of real-world experience not only differs on the household level but even on the event level.
Which is to say, you never know until it hits you precisely what you will pay given any particular medical-care event. As for the premiums and deductibles, people are remarkably unwilling to share personal stories of what they face due to privacy concerns and also some element of personal shame related to financial burdens.
The system as it stands is so enormously complicated that hardly anyone can really understand the whole, much less characterize the aggregate experience with the sector. It keeps growing larger, more expensive, and more exploitative, but also more complicated and diffuse, leaving writers like me ever less willing to make a judgment on it.
Hellbound and Down 
You must be logged in to post a comment.