Tag: secrecy

Newsom Sued Over Transgender Policy, Teachers Claim They Are Forced To Lie To Parents

Teachers are suing California Gov. Gavin Newsom and California Attorney General Rob Bonta in federal court over policies they say force them to conceal the transgender status of young students from parents.

The lawsuit comes after the governor signed several laws in September 2023 that expanded California’s protections for LGBT individuals.

One law establishes timelines for required so-called cultural competency training for public school teachers and staff. Another law creates an advisory body to determine the needs of LGBT students. A further law requires families to demonstrate willingness to meet the needs of a child in foster care, regardless of the child’s sexual orientation or gender identity. There is also a law requiring elementary and secondary schools to have gender-neutral bathrooms for students.

“California is proud to have some of the most robust laws in the nation when it comes to protecting and supporting our LGBTQ+ community, and we’re committed to the ongoing work to create safer, more inclusive spaces for all Californians,” Mr. Newsom said at the time.

“These measures will help protect vulnerable youth, promote acceptance, and create more supportive environments in our schools and communities.”

At the same time, the governor vetoed legislation that would have compelled judges making custody and visitation orders to consider whether a parent accepts a child’s professed gender identity.

In the lawsuit, San Diego-area teachers Elizabeth Mirabelli and Lori Ann West, who are devout Christians, filed suit to object to policies they say mandate dishonesty.

The legal complaint in the case, Mirabelli v. Olson, was originally filed in April 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California against the Escondido Union School District (EUSD), in San Diego County, and officials with the California State Board of Education.

The lawsuit was prompted by the K–8 school district’s recent policies affecting transgender students.

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Florida Bills Would Hide the Names of Police Officers Who Kill People 

Bills filed in Florida would allow law enforcement agencies to hide the names of police and correctional officers who kill people.

Such legislation was widely expected after the Florida Supreme Court ruled in December that police departments could not invoke Marsy’s Law, a crime victims’ rights law adopted by Florida voters in 2018, to hide the names of officers involved in deadly shootings. The ruling was much broader than expected, though, and stripped privacy protections from civilian crime victims as well.

The legislation is one of several efforts in the Republican-controlled Florida Legislature to further insulate police in the Sunshine State—once lauded for its expansive public record laws—from scrutiny. As Reason reported yesterday, two other bills advancing through the Legislature would ban cities and counties from forming civilian police oversight boards.

State Rep. Chuck Brannan (R–Macclenny) filed House Bill 1605 and House Bill 1607 earlier this month. The former would expand the definition of “crime victims” to include “law enforcement officers, correctional officers, or correctional probation officers who use deadly force in the course and scope of their employment or official duties.” 

The latter would exempt records that could be used to identify and harass crime victims from the state’s public records law unless the victim opts to have it disclosed. “The Legislature finds that the release of any such information or records that could be used to locate or harass a crime victim or the victim’s family could subject such victims or their families to further trauma,” the bill says.

The bills have the backing of powerful police unions in the state as well. “For people to exclude police officers just because we wear the badge and we protect and serve, that’s not fair to us,” John Kazanjian, president of the Florida Police Benevolent Association, told the Tampa Bay Times. 

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Former UFO Office Director’s Opinions Draw Scrutiny on Impartiality and Investigation Handling

A recent opinion article written by Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former director of the U.S. government’s Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) office, known as the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), has prompted concerns regarding the impartiality and handling of the office under his leadership.

In the article published in Scientific American, Dr. Kirkpatrick took swipes at whistleblowers under threat from reprisals and current members of Congress currently investigating UAP.

Dr. Kirkpatrick, referring to former senior intelligence official and UAP whistleblower David Grusch, wrote:

‘Our efforts were ultimately overwhelmed by sensational but unsupported claims that ignored contradictory evidence yet captured the attention of policymakers and the public, driving legislative battles and dominating the public narrative.’

Dr. Kirkpatrick in October 2023 admitted that as director he had not spoken to Grusch about the allegations, casting doubts over his position to know whether they are unsupported. 

Grusch has lodged an official complaint with Thomas Monheim, the Intelligence Community’s Inspector General (ICIG), addressing UAP programs and the reprisals he endured. The complaint has been recognized as both credible and urgent.

That complaint was lodged in May 2022, almost two months before the AARO was stood up. 

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Air Force Whistleblower’s Concerns “Legit” Over US Govt UFO Program Cover-Up; House Oversight Committee

A classified briefing on UFOs delivered to members of the House Oversight and Accountability Committee on Friday elicited a mixed response, with some saying they were dissatisfied by the fragmented information presented, while others were grateful to receive some more clarity.

Interest in UFOs, which officials now call unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), surged in July 2023 when the Oversight Committee invited Air Force veteran David Grusch to speak after he’d filed a formal complaint with the Inspector General of the U.S. intelligence community, claiming “the U.S. government is operating with secrecy—above Congressional oversight” on the subject.

During that hearing, Mr. Grusch accused the Pentagon and its private contractors of covering up a “multi-decade” program to reverse-engineer technology retrieved from crashed UFOs piloted by “non-human” beings, or “biologics” as he called them.

He also mentioned knowledge of people harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal the extraterrestrial technology program.

Though apparently only limited information was disclosed during Friday’s 90-minute briefing at the Capitol Building in Washington, the attendees agreed that the hearing seemed to confirm Mr. Grusch’s claims.

“Based on what we heard,” Rep. Jared Moskowitz (D-Fla.) said, “many of Grusch[’s] claims have merit!”

“I think everybody left there thinking and knowing that Grusch is legit—if they didn’t think that before,” attested Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.).

The Tennessee legislator, one of the stronger voices calling for transparency on the issue of UAPs, nevertheless left the meeting somewhat frustrated, saying the meeting was just “more of the same.”

“By design this issue is very compartmentalized,” he explained. “It’s like looking down the barrel of a .22 rifle. All they know is just right in that little circle.”

“Now it’s just whack-a-mole—you go to the next [briefing], until we get some answers.”

For Rep. Andy Ogles (R-Tenn.) the limited information presented only proved there was a “concerted effort to conceal as much information as possible—both in Congress and to the general public.”

“I asked very specific questions and was unable to get specific answers,” he said. “And so that’s a problem, and we’re not going to stop until we get the truth.”

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CDC Ordered To Disclose Crucial Information From COVID-19 Vaccine Surveillance System

The top U.S. public health agency must disclose information provided by people who experienced problems following COVID-19 vaccination, a federal court has ruled.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is being ordered to produce 7.8 million free-text entries from V-safe, one of its vaccine surveillance systems.

Data from the system released under court order in 2022 showed that 25 percent of V-safe participants missed school, work, or other normal activities due to post-vaccination issues, and nearly 8 percent of participants reported seeking medical attention, such as hospitalization after receiving a shot. That data, from boxes checked by users, came through an order in a case that started as a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

But the CDC resisted releasing the free-text entries, arguing that many of them include information that should remain private.

“CDC determined that many of these responses contain personally identifiable information, the disclosure of which would publicly link participants to highly sensitive health information,” government lawyers representing the agency said in one brief. “And because it would take tens of thousands of workhours to manually review and redact millions of free-text responses, CDC determined that segregating the non-exempt information within these responses would be unreasonably burdensome and was therefore beyond its FOIA obligations.”

The CDC said it would take one worker 59 years to complete the work if it were ordered.

The government’s arguments were rejected by U.S. District Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, an appointee of former President Donald Trump, in response to a fresh lawsuit.

“While the burden to produce the requested free-text responses may be heavy, this court does not find that it is unreasonable,” he said in the new ruling.

The CDC can go through the records and redact personally identifiable information as allowed by FOIA but must do the work and produce the records with the redactions, he added later. Evidence produced in the case indicates that about 93 percent of the records will require no redactions.

The materials will be important for people who experienced problems following vaccination, the judge said.

“Production of the free-text data will permit independent researchers to put the government agencies to their proof by considering all of the available data,” he said. He noted that CDC studies on v-safe data only covered data from the first week or two after vaccination but that the surveys collected data for up to one year after receipt of a shot.

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Lawmakers investigating UAPs, or UFOs, remain frustrated after closed-door briefing with government watchdog

House lawmakers emerging from a classified, closed-door briefing with an internal government watchdog on Friday said they remained frustrated in their attempts to get more information about explosive whistleblower claims made about unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs.

Thomas Monheim, the inspector general of the intelligence community, briefed members of the House Oversight Committee’s national security subcommittee on Capitol Hill. The meeting came months after the subcommittee held a high-profile public hearing that featured tantalizing testimony from a former military intelligence officer-turned-whistleblower named David Grusch.

At the hearing in July, Grusch said he was informed of “a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse-engineering program” and accused the military of misappropriating funds to shield these operations from congressional oversight. He claimed he had interviewed officials who had direct knowledge of aircraft with “nonhuman” origins, and that so-called “biologics” were recovered from some craft. The Pentagon denied his claims.

The subcommittee has been leading the charge to improve transparency about what the government knows about anomalous phenomena. Rep. Glenn Grothman, a Republican from Wisconsin and the subcommittee’s chairman, said before Friday’s meeting that lawmakers were looking “to track down exactly what the military thinks of individual instances of these objects flying around.”

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Biden was only told TODAY that Lloyd Austin, 70, had prostate cancer – a month after he was diagnosed: Details of communication failure over secret ICU trip spark more questions for the White House and Pentagon

President Joe Biden was told that Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin had prostate cancer on Tuesday – the same day the public was informed, sparking more questions about the transparency of the administration and whether the public can trust their government.

‘Nobody at the White House knew that Secretary Austin had prostate cancer until this morning and the President was informed immediately after we were,’ White House spokesman John Kirby said at the daily press briefing. 

Kirby got defensive as he was repeatedly queried about why the commander-in-chief didn’t know the conditions or the where abouts of his top military officer. Austin was diagnosised with cancer a month before his Dec. 22 surgery. He was released the next day and returned to the hosptial via ambulance on Jan. 1 for complications. Biden was told Austin was in the hospital on Jan. 4. 

‘We all recognize that this didn’t unfold the way it should, on so many levels, not just the notification process of the chain of command, but the transparency issue. We all recognize that. And I think we all want to make sure we learn from that,’ Kirby said. 

‘It’s certainly not good, which is why we want to learn from this and we want to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.’

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Inside secret tunnel built by ‘extremist Jewish students’ linking historic ‘cleansing bath’ to Brooklyn synagogue that was only discovered when homeowner heard ‘suspicious noises at night’

A new video shows the secret underground tunnel dug by a group of young Orthodox Jewish men that is at the core of a bizarre dispute with religious leaders. 

The tunnel was discovered by rabbis in December, who were horrified that the young men had burrowed it from the Chabad Lubavitch synagogue in Crown Heights. 

Initially, local site Crown Heights Info reported that it led all the way to a women’s mikvah at the end of the street – several houses away. 

However the operators of that women’s mikvah say it does not, and instead connects the synagogue with an out-of-use historic men’s mikvah at 770 Eastern Parkway – the synagogue site. 

The NYPD is yet to confirm exactly where the tunnel leads, what is being used for or what the young men have been charged with.  

After learning about what the young men had done, the Chabad’s rabbis ordered it to be filled, but when construction workers showed up last night to complete the work the young men blocked their way, jumping into the tunnel and sparking a riot that was filmed and broadcast on social media. 

In the end, 12 young men were arrested by the NYPD, who had to be called in. The site has been at the center of a dispute between the rabbis and ‘extremists’ who both stake claim to the property. 

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FBI is demanded to release HUNDREDS of ‘missing’ Jeffrey Epstein documents including tapes, CDs, passports and pictures raided from his $51 million NYC townhouse amid suspicions pedo was linked to Mossad

The FBI is facing fresh calls to release hundreds of ‘missing’ pieces of evidence raided from Jeffrey Epstein‘s $51 million New York townhouse following the release of a new list of his associates.

Among the items said to be missing are tapes, CDs, passports and pictures all located inside a safe within the property during a siege on the home in July 2019, shortly after Epstein was arrested.

It comes as speculation continues to swirl that Epstein was working as an agent for Israeli intelligence agency Mossad prior to his suicide while awaiting trial for child sex offences. 

FBI agent Kelly Maguire previously testified the agency broke open a safe at his home in July 2019 to reveal the cache of evidence, along with ‘loose diamonds’ and ‘large amounts of US currency’.

Speaking at the sex-trafficking trial of Epstein’s madam Ghislaine Maxwell, she told the court the agents only photographed the contents as they did not have a warrant for its removal, the Telegraph reports.

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NASA WILL DEBUT ITS MYSTERIOUS X-59 ‘QUIET’ SUPERSONIC AIRCRAFT AT FAMOUS LOCKHEED MARTIN SKUNK WORKS FACILITY NEXT WEEK

NASA has announced plans to unveil its X-59 quiet supersonic aircraft next week, the American space agency said in a statement on Friday.

“NASA will provide live coverage as it reveals its X-59 aircraft at 4 p.m. EST on Friday, Jan. 12, as part of the agency’s Quesst mission to make commercial supersonic flight possible,” read a portion of the NASA statement.

The aircraft, which recently received a patriotic paint job, will see its public reveal during a ceremony at the famous Lockheed Martin Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California.

As part of NASA’s Quesst mission, the X-59 will be flown above populated regions of the United States, after which the space agency will collect information from the public about responses to sound the aircraft produces, which will then be supplied to international regulators for assessment.

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