Blog

Wyoming Passes Bill Banning Sale of Abortion Pill

On March 17, Wyoming Gov. Mark Gordon (R) signed a bill into law that will make it illegal to prescribe, sell or use “any drug for the purpose of procuring or performing an abortion.” The abortion pills, misoprostol and mifepristone, have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).

While more than a dozen states have effectively banned abortion pills with their prohibitions on all forms of abortion and 15 states currently restrict access to abortion pills, Wyoming is now the first in the country to specifically ban abortion pills. People who violate the law, which goes into effect on July 1, will be charged with a misdemeanor and punished with up to six months of incarceration and a fine of $9,000.

“These abortion bans should alarm everybody in every corner of our country,” NARAL Pro-Choice America President Mini Timmaraju said in a statement in response to the abortion pill ban. “There’s no stone that anti-choice extremists will leave unturned as they seek to do everything they can to ensure that abortion is banned across the nation. This first-of-its-kind ban on medication abortion, as well as the total ban, are just the latest proof.”

Gov. Mark Gordon also allowed HB0152, dubbed the “Life is a Human Right Act,” to go into effect without his signature, immediately banning all abortions in the state with exceptions for rape, incest or dire risks to the pregnant patient’s life. People who violate this law will be charged with a felony, fined up to $20,000 dollars, and face a prison sentence of five years.

Keep reading

Police Use “Less Lethal” Weapons to Crush Social Movements Across the World

This week, the City of Philadelphia agreed to a $9.25 million settlement with protesters who were brutalized with tear gas and pepper spray during demonstrations following the murder of George Floyd in late May 2020.

Such accountability for police who crush protests with crowd-control weapons is rare both in the United States and across the world. The settlement comes as researchers report that police in dozens of countries have routinely injured and even killed demonstrators with crowd-control weapons since 2015 as governments cracked down on protests.

Injuries from crowd-control weapons are increasing and widespread both in authoritarian nations such as Iran and China as well as “democratic” countries that supposedly tolerate dissent and public assemblies, according to a new report from Physicians for Human Rights and the International Network of Civil Liberties Organizations (INCLO). The report, “Lethal in Disguise: How Crowd-Control Weapons Impact Health and Human Rights,” found that more than 121,000 people globally were injured or killed by so-called less lethal crowd-control weapons such as chemical irritants, “flash bang” grenades and rubber bullets since 2015, although many other injuries likely went unreported.

From the uprisings in Iraq and Chile in 2019, to mass movements against regimes in Iran, Myanmar and Peru, clashes between police forces and social movements challenging government corruption and demanding basic rights are now a worldwide public health concern, according to the report. So far this month, crowd-control weapons were reportedly used against protesters in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, France, Georgia, Greece, Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Lebanon, Italy, Kenya, Mozambique, Pakistan, Peru, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and the U.S.

“The repression of demonstrations remains as global as protest itself,” said INCLO Program Coordinator Lucila Santos in a statement. “In addition to the growing violent use of crowd-control weapons, since 2016 we have seen new technologies deployed by governments with next to no accountability or oversight whatsoever.”

Keep reading

They’re Rebooting “Axis Of Evil” On The 20th Anniversary Of The Iraq Invasion

The western political/media class has suddenly resurrected the phrase “Axis of Evil” in recent days to refer to the increasing intimacy between Russia and China, just in time for the 20th anniversary of the invasion of Iraq.

Famed Iraq War cheerleader Sean Hannity appears to have kicked things off last week, saying on his show that “a new Axis of evil is emerging” between China, Russia and Iran, a slogan that has since been echoed numerous times this week.

On Tuesday former ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley told Fox News that Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping are “two dictators that have said they are unlimited partners,” asserting that “This is the new Axis of Evil, with Iran being their junior partner.”

Also on Tuesday Representative Mike Lawler tweeted, “Xi’s meeting with Putin in Moscow is deeply concerning and highlights the growing threats posed by this new axis of evil,” and on Thursday he tweeted, “We are dealing with a new axis of evil and failure to stop Putin in Ukraine will have far-reaching implications as Russia pushes further into Eastern Europe and China moves against Taiwan.”

Keep reading

Why so many Canadians pretend to be indigenous

‘Pretendians’ must be among the fastest growing cultural groups in Canada. A Pretendian is someone with little or no indigenous background who pretends to be indigenous. The latest to be uncovered is Vianne Timmons, president of Memorial University of Newfoundland. Last week, Timmons was forced to apologise for misrepresenting her background and is now taking a leave of absence.

Timmons claimed in CVs and elsewhere that she was descended from Mi’kmaq First Nations peoples. A recent CBC News report questioned whether or not Timmons actually had any First Nations ancestry at all. Looking at her family tree, the report found that she is probably only one-1024th to one-2048th indigenous.

Timmons’ story is noteworthy because she is a high-profile academic. She is director on the board of Universities Canada. She was named as one of Canada’s Top 100 most-powerful women in 2008 and was the 2013 winner of the Saskatchewan Humanitarian Award from the Red Cross. In 2017, she was even named an Officer of the Order of Canada for her lifetime contributions to inclusive education, family literacy, indigenous post-secondary education and women’s leadership.

Timmons even accepted an Indspire trophy – ‘the highest honour the indigenous community bestows upon its own people’ – while holding an eagle feather. At that ceremony, she claimed that her father once told her: ‘We’re Mi’kmaq, but I was raised to be ashamed of it so I hid it, all my life.’ In 2021, Timmons spoke about ‘discovering’ her indigenous roots: ‘It’s like trying to find your story that somebody hid from you, not just hid from you, but changed for you.’

Timmons is far from the only high-profile academic to have claimed minority status on dubious grounds. In 2016, author Joseph Boyden, an award-winning author of fiction and non-fiction about First Nations Canadians, faced doubts about his claims to indigenous ancestry. A 2020 CBC investigation raised similar concerns about filmmaker Michelle Latimer, whose film, Inconvenient Indian, won the People’s Choice Award for Documentaries and the award for Best Canadian Film at the Toronto International Film Festival. In 2021, the CBC revealed that Carrie Bourassa, Canada’s leading indigenous health scientist, appeared to be of entirely European ancestry. She had to resign her position at the University of Saskatchewan. Last year, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond – a former judge, scholar and another recipient of the Order of Canada – was also found to have made inconsistent claims about her heritage.

Keep reading

Historian Calls Pedophilia ‘Intergenerational Sex,’ Refuses To Describe Rape Of 10-Year-Old Boy As ‘Abuse’

Historian Rachel Hope Cleves described pedophilia as “intergenerational sex,” adding that she wouldn’t describe the abuse of children with words such as “survivors or necessarily abuse.”

Cleves wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post earlier in March that argued against Republicans wanted to ban drag shows to reinforce “traditional hierarchies of race, class, sex and gender.”

The resurfaced clip was part of a Zoom interview Cleves had with fellow author Alexis Coe in 2020, hosted by Chicago University Press.

“In writing this book I didn’t want to use pedophilia discourse because I felt like it would fail to capture this other historical organizing system, for intergenerational sex, which was the topic I wanted to address,” Cleves says in the video.

Cleves is a professor of History at the University of Victoria, according to their website, but is currently on leave.

Cleves wrote a biography of British author Norman Douglas in 2020, who was charged multiple times with rape and sexual assault of underage boys and girls, including two cousins aged 10 and 12.

Keep reading

The Case Against Flat Earth Theory

You might say, “John, do we REALLY need a column explaining why the Earth can’t be flat?” Unfortunately, yes we do. Why? Well, because among others, here are some of the celebrities who have come out at one time or another and said that the Earth is flat or at least, that they’re not sure about it: Shaquille O’Neal, Kyrie Irving, B.O.B., Tila Tequila, Thomas Dolby, A.J. Styles, Sherri Shepherd, and Draymond Green. There are also millions of other people, most of whom were probably convinced by the YouTube algorithm, who also believe that we live on a flat Earth:

Researchers believe they have identified the prime driver for a startling rise in the number of people who think the Earth is flat: Google’s video-sharing site, YouTube.

Their suspicion was raised when they attended the world’s largest gatherings of Flat Earthers at the movement’s annual conference in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 2017, and then in Denver, Colorado, last year.

Interviews with 30 attendees revealed a pattern in the stories people told about how they came to be convinced that the Earth was not a large round rock spinning through space but a large flat disc doing much the same thing.

Of the 30, all but one said they had not considered the Earth to be flat two years ago but changed their minds after watching videos promoting conspiracy theories on YouTube. “The only person who didn’t say this was there with his daughter and his son-in-law and they had seen it on YouTube and told him about it,” said Asheley Landrum, who led the research at Texas Tech University.

The interviews revealed that most had been watching videos about other conspiracies, with alternative takes on 9/11, the Sandy Hook school shooting, and whether Nasa really went to the moon, when YouTube offered up Flat Earth videos for them to watch next.

Some said they watched the videos only in order to debunk them but soon found themselves won over by the material.

Typically, most people just roll their eyes at this kind of thing, but I am from the mindset that it’s a mistake not to counter conspiracy theories. Maybe at one point in time, when there were a handful of gatekeeper news sources, that was a viable strategy, but today? Bad ideas can spread easily among like-minded thinkers if people aren’t exposed to counterpoints.

So, let’s start with the basics. First of all, the Flat Earth Theory IS NOT being offered in a vacuum. There is a popular competing theory that has been around for thousands of years (around 500 BC, the Greeks figured out that the world was round and at around 240 BC, Eratosthenes figured out the circumference of the Earth) that has large amounts of scientific proof undergirding it. So, for the Flat Earth Theory to be viable, it has to make more sense than the idea that the Earth is round. That is not an easy task because of some very big, very obvious flaws in the Flat Earth Theory.

Keep reading

Ron DeSantis Signed COVID Law Allowing Forced Injections by ‘Any Means Necessary’

Florida Governor Ron DeSantis signed COVID legislation in 2021 giving state health authorities the power to forcibly quarantine and inject anyone who “state health authorities” deem to be a risk to public safety, using “any means necessary” to do so.

On May 3rd, 2021, Florida GOP Governor Ron DeSantis signed Senate Bill 2006 into law, giving state health authorities massive power over the people of Florida, while authorizing the imprisonment and forced injection of anyone deemed a risk by those authorities. At the time of the bill’s signing, DeSantis and others in Florida’s government presented it as a ban on so-called “vaccine passports,” but buried within the legislation is an unprecedented attack on the civil liberties of American Citizens.

As a result of DeSantis-signed SB 2006, state health authorities have the power to “order an individual to be examined, tested, vaccinated, treated, isolated, or quarantined for communicable diseases,” if those health authorities believe the diseases “have significant morbidity or mortality and present a severe danger to public health.”

In the case of COVID, which has a more than 99% survival rate, state health authorities made this exact claim and, though false, it led to the biggest clampdown on civil liberties in American history.

Furthermore, SB 2006 states that if an individual is deemed to pose “a danger to the public health, the State Health Officer may subject the individual to isolation or quarantine.”

“If there is no practical method to isolate or quarantine the individual, the State Health Officer may use any means necessary to vaccinate or treat the individual.”

Keep reading

THE DEATH OF PETER THIEL’S “KEPT” ROMANTIC PARTNER IS BEING INVESTIGATED AS A SUICIDE

JEFF THOMAS, a model and social media influencer who was recently in a long-term relationship with billionaire Peter Thiel, said he spent much of his time with the tech mogul working to persuade him away from his increasingly aggressive pursuit of a culture war — a war that Thomas warned was blowing back on their community.

“I don’t side with him on a lot of political things, but I understand him,” Thomas told me in an interview last November. “I’m trying to influence him in ways to show him my heart, and show him how it affects myself, certain individuals, himself.”

Thomas said that he felt like he had made strides with Thiel, though his effort was cut short earlier this month, on March 8, when he died tragically. His death is being investigated as a possible suicide, according to a Miami Police Department report and sources who have been contacted by the police for information. Miami police have been in contact with Thiel, and will interview him as part of the probe, two sources with knowledge of the investigation said.

Thiel did not respond to texts or phone calls requesting comment. Most of the people The Intercept spoke to during this reporting have requested anonymity, citing Thiel’s relentless and successful effort to obliterate Gawker in retribution for outing him in the 2000s.

Thomas had met Thiel back in 2015 or 2016 at Coachella, he told me, where Thiel threw one of his legendary parties. “I was wondering why he was being affiliated with someone like Trump, and investing in him, if he’s gay,” Thomas said. But his own father was a Republican, Thomas said, and he grew up in Texas, so felt that he knew how to reach people who thought differently.

In 2017, Thiel married investment banker Matt Danzeisen. Thomas and Thiel eventually struck up a relationship in the early stages of the pandemic. But it wasn’t a typical relationship. Thomas described himself as being in a “kept” situation that made him uncomfortable. “It was stressful, he wanted me to get the nicest car, the nicest house. He wanted to kind of show his power, to kind of show that he had me in his dollhouse,” he said. “It’s not like I was his boyfriend, really, I was just kind of his friend that was there for him when he needed, you know, whatever he needed.”

But Thomas justified it to himself as a fair trade. “If I’m gonna give up the relationships I have and give up my dreams right now, during Covid, or dating other guys or pursuing people, then I’m going to get a $300,000 car and I’m going to get a $13 million home [on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills]. So those are the things that I see fit for me to give up my freedom,” he said.

I spoke with Thomas while doing reporting for a profile of Thiel, which is ongoing. (If you knew Thomas or have any other information to share, send me a message on Signal or WhatsApp at 202-368-0859, or by email to ryan.grim@theintercept.com.) Thomas also spoke with several Democratic and progressive activists who are working to expose what they see as Thiel’s hypocrisy. The activists provided recordings of interviews with Thomas to The Intercept. Some of the quotes in this story come from that audio.

Thomas figured that the relationship, and the house he was living in — a mansion at 8517 Franklin Avenue in Hollywood Hills listed at $13 million — could be a step toward a career in real estate. “It was something to do during the pandemic. I was kind of over my one bedroom apartment,” he said. “I did real estate in New York, and I was considering getting my license and doing investment — flipping homes and doing investment properties in LA and I figured that this could be maybe one of my first in my portfolio. … I knew I wasn’t going to be in it for the long run.”

Several of Thomas’s friends in Los Angeles said they often saw Thiel at Thomas’s home, and also saw Thomas at Thiel’s nearby home on Metz Place. (Unrelatedly, before Thomas moved in, the home was owned by leading figures in the bizarre NXIVM sex cult that was rolled up in 2021, according to property records.)

The parties Thiel and Thomas threw could get raucous, and Thiel himself would sometimes do the recruiting. Thiel, or someone using his Facebook account, reached out to one University of California, Los Angeles grad student, despite having no friends in common, and invited him to a party at Thiel’s house, describing the poolside scene. “Hot guys at a pool sounds like pretty idyllic gay activity to me,” the student responded, according to screenshots of the conversation obtained by The Intercept. They moved to a WhatsApp conversation using Thiel’s phone number.

“Well, it doesn’t stay idyllic too long,” Thiel’s account said, “but always lots of fun,” adding later, “Yeah, we know how to have some no holds barred gay fun.”

To paraphrase Jerry Seinfeld, there’s nothing wrong with no-holds-barred gay fun, and, indeed, the ability of consenting adults to engage in whatever private, victimless behavior they choose is one measure of a just society. It’s also what Thiel has been spending heavily to oppose.

Thiel, one of the biggest funders of Republican candidates in 2022, bankrolled a massive super PAC that backed Ohio Senate candidate and Thiel protégé J.D. Vance, called “Protect Ohio Values PAC.” He also put millions into Saving Arizona PAC, to support Blake Masters. Both candidates ran heavily on culture war issues, portraying themselves as fighting for an America with traditional conservative values against the libertine coastal elites.

Keep reading

Hospitals Are Still Reporting New Mothers for Neglect Based on Drug Tests Triggered by Poppy Seeds

Before Kate L. gave birth to a baby girl last September, a nurse at New Jersey’s Hackensack University Medical Center collected a urine sample from the soon-to-be mother. Kate thought nothing of it, because she was accustomed to having her urine tested for protein levels during her pregnancy. She had no idea that her urine would be tested for drugs, which resulted in a terrifying, monthslong investigation aimed at determining if she was a fit mother.

Kaitlin K. had a similar experience when she gave birth to a baby boy at Virtua Voorhees Hospital in Camden County, New Jersey, the following month. The immediate culprit in both cases seems to have been a poppy seed bagel that triggered a false positive for opiates. That, in turn, led to state investigations of alleged child neglect. But the real blame, according to complaints filed this month by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of New Jersey, lies with the hospitals, which it says conducted nonconsensual, medically unnecessary, and woefully inadequate drug tests, then reported the erroneous results to the New Jersey Department of Child Protection and Permanency (DCPP).

The ACLU, which is asking the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety’s  Division on Civil Rights to stop that practice and award compensatory damages, argues that a policy of “drug testing perinatal patients on the basis of sex and pregnancy” constitutes illegal discrimination under state law. Whatever the legal merits of that claim, the sneaky, arbitrary, high-handed, and cruel treatment described in the complaints shows what can happen when medical personnel forsake their ethical responsibilities in service of the war on drugs.

“No one should be subjected to unnecessary and nonconsensual drug tests,” says ACLU of New Jersey staff attorney Molly Linhorst. “Our clients are sending a clear message to hospitals that these testing and reporting policies are unacceptable. Discriminatory testing policies like these upend what should be a time of joy for families, and so often subject them to further trauma and unwarranted investigation by the state.”

Keep reading