Brownstone Journal

By Sinead Murphy at Brownstone dot org. In What Autism Is, I characterized autism as exclusion from the existential empathy on which meaningful human experience relies. Autistic people are irretrievably remote from the conditions for meaning. Whatever they learn is learnt as a simulation and from outside of human connection. Further clarity about autism comes from considering what autism is not. An opportunity has arisen in this regard, with a discussion between psychologists Jordan Peterson and Simon Baron-Cohen. The discussion is titled What Do We Actually Know About Autism? It concludes that autism is a talent for understanding, not thoughts and feelings but structures, not intentions but arrangements. Some of us tend to be good with people. Autistics tend to be good with things. Some of us tend to 'empathize.' Autistics tend to 'systemize.' But autism is not a talent for understanding things. Autism is not an attunement to structures and arrangements. Autism is not a propensity for systemizing. Why not? Because appreciation of structures and arrangements requires precisely the same baseline aptitude that is required by appreciation of thoughts and feelings – and it is this baseline aptitude that autistic people lack. It may be true that most of us are more or less good with people or good with things. It is certainly true that those with autism are good with neither. The idea that those with autism are good with things is often heard, admittedly – Peterson and Baron-Cohen do little more than frame the idea in professional speak. Those with autism are not attuned to people. It is natural for us to assume that they are attuned to something. We conclude that they're attuned to things. We are thereby prepared for the hypothesis that those with autism are on a spectrum with those talented at the workings of things – engineers, mechanics, technicians. And so we take autism to be merely a different style of attention to the world – less adept with people, more adept with things; less empathetic, more systematic. It is a common mistake. But it is not only a mistake. It is a category mistake. It posits as a form of meaningful human experience what is categorically impossible as meaningful human experience. Nothing – not people, not things – means anything without a baseline empathy. The distinction between 'systemizers' and 'empathizers,' between engineers and nurses, is of little significance. All in the end is empathy. Autism, as the lack of capacity for empathy, is not an attunement to the meaning of things. It is a wholesale exclusion from the meaning of anything. To describe it as a style of meaningful experience is to commit a categorical error, albeit a common one. What is uncommon about the discussion between Peterson and Baron-Cohen is that it does not simply commit this categorical error – it unfolds it quite explicitly. In their opening exchange, Peterson and Baron-Cohen immediately dismiss the baseline empathy on which meaning relies. In doing so, they make it clear what must be suppressed so as to normalize autism in our midst: the very achievement that makes our experiences human. What do we actually know about autism? That autism is not an attunement to the meaning of things. That autism is rather an assault on meaning itself – hiding in the plain sight even of men of science. At the outset of his discussion with Baron-Cohen, Peterson introduces Martin Heidegger's insight that the fundamental human attitude is one of 'care.' It is a promising beginning. There are few better philosophical resources for coming to know about autism than the work of Heidegger with its central concept of 'care.' And Peterson does not only introduce Heidegger's concept of 'care,' he explains it as implying that human beings inhabit 'a shared structure of value that…foregrounds certain perceptions and hides others.' Peterson's explanation is good. In describing the baseline human attitude as one of care, Heidegger points to the essential...

By Jeffrey A. Tucker at Brownstone dot org. When Scott Adams died, People Magazine led with a line that dominated most of the media for days: "Scott Adams, Disgraced Dilbert Creator, Dies at 69." It's a message for the living: depart from saying what you are supposed to say and you will lose everything. Even in death, your life will be called worthless. This was not eulogy but rather an enforcement action to keep the opinion cartel functioning. It was in 2015 that the famed creator of the Dilbert cartoon first started speculating that Donald Trump had what it takes to become president. The feeling of shock was palpable. No one else was saying anything like this – more specifically, no one of his status and reach as a cultural influence. In those days, the opinions of The Nation and National Review were identical: this clown cannot be president. For my own part, I recall feeling appalled by Adams' statements. At the time, I was firmly in the Never Trump camp, without fully understanding that I was then accepting the most conventional opinion possible at the time. I further failed to understand the complex dynamic operating beneath the surface, namely that a broken system of government/media/tech had long ago stopped serving the cause of freedom and dignity and turned to full-time exploitation in surreptitious forms. In words, Trump was out there saying that the system was gravely broken and needed to be fixed. This was Adams' view as well, and he further saw that Trump had the gravitas necessary to pull people over to this view. Adams of course turned out to be correct about this. It's difficult to recreate the sense of those times to understand just how disruptive his views were. It was a universally shared opinion at the time that Trump was an unwelcome and deeply dangerous invader into electoral politics. The establishment figured that the best way to shut down Trump's effort was to treat them as wholly inadmissible to public life. The Huffington Post put their coverage under the entertainment category, while every other mainstream venue ran countless millions of articles on his evils. Adams saw something others did not. He saw that Trump was compelling in ways no other political figure was. He was talking about real issues no one else would mention. He was a master improviser on stage. He was also funny. It was only after Adams's comments that I started to listen. I realized that he was onto something important. For holding this view, and then becoming ever more open about his support of Trump, Adams lost everything. His high-paid corporate speaking gigs were cancelled. He lost his income stream and social/cultural status. Eventually his syndication was cancelled too, on thin pretext. This cannot have come as a shock to him. He knew exactly what the consequences would be for departing from the status quo. He did it anyway. We need to appreciate just how rare this is in higher circles of public influencers. This is a world in which everyone knows what they are supposed to say and what is unsayable. No one needs to send memos or give marching orders. The proper orthodoxy is in the air, discerned from all the signs by all intelligent people. Entering into the upper echelons of opinion making, whether in academia or media or civil society generally, requires three types of training. First, you need to develop expertise in some area or at least be able to present evidence that other experts regard you as an expert. Second, you need to show evidence that you can speak the rarified form of language that is reserved to elite opinion, which has its own special vocabulary for communication and cultural signalling. And third, you need to develop proficiency in knowing what to say and believe. This is what advanced training amounts to. Master all three, and you cross into a different realm from that inhabited by the rabble. Staying in that place requires close adherence to the rules and the presentation of ongoing evidence that you...

By Brownstone Institute at Brownstone dot org. Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe was once the preeminent legal scholar in the country. The New York Times referred to him as a "legal icon" and "President Obama's mentor." New York Magazine called him "the nation's foremost scholar of constitutional law." But in reality, Tribe is the archetype for the supposedly solemn legal practitioner who is merely a stooge for the Democratic Party establishment. The cast of lawyers maintain facades of jurisprudential seriousness, but beneath their suits there is a Bolshevik thirst for power. Tribe began his work in this field nearly four decades ago when he testified against the nomination of Judge Robert Bork to the Supreme Court, calling Bork "hostile to individual rights and deferential to executive power." With time, however, Tribe's dedication to unravelling the social fabric and destroying his political enemies became more apparent. He sought to upend property rights during the Covid response by supporting a CDC eviction moratorium. He later lobbied President Biden to unilaterally cancel student loans, though he never acknowledged if that would be considered "hostile to individual rights" or "deferential to executive power." He later defended the Biden regime's censorship of online dissent, writing that the proliferation of ideas would "make us less secure as a nation" and "endanger us all every day." Most recently, Professor Tribe joined a slew of the nation's largest law firms in arguing that it is unconstitutional for public schools to divide their sports teams by sex. Behemoth law firms like Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, LLP ($2.7 billion in annual revenue) and Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP ($1.6 billion in annual revenue) filed amicus briefs opposing West Virginia's law limiting female sports to biological women. Kathleen Hartnett, a partner at Cooley LLP ($2.1 billion in annual revenue), argued on behalf of the challenge to the law. Despite billing approximately $3,000 per hour to paying clients, she was unable to provide a definition of what it means "to be a man or woman, a boy or girl" when asked by Justice Samuel Alito. This occurrence is no anomaly; Big Law fundamentally distorts the American legal system by offering billions of dollars in free legal services to unconstitutional crusades and liberal pet projects while denying access to any opposition group. For example, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom (annual revenue $3.6 billion) dedicated approximately 40,000 pro bono hours to immigration cases in 2022 alone (accounting for at least $5 million in legal work) and has continued to oppose any form of deportations of illegal aliens. The firm dedicates millions in resources to advancing other left-wing causes, including affirmative action, the trans agenda, and a "fellowship" program that states its desire to expand access to food stamps, combat election integrity efforts, and support "sanctuary city laws." Big Law generally is much the same. Willkie Farr & Gallagher (annual revenue $1.5 billion) touts on its website that it served pro bono to support continued "surgical abortions" in Tennessee. In 2020, Law360 described how firms like Ropes & Gray (annual revenue $3.4 billion), Arnold & Porter (annual revenue $1.19 billion), and WilmerHale "jumped into court fights" to support mail-in voting gratis. Notably, these gratuitous in-kind donations only extend in one direction. None of these firms offered defense services to January 6 protestors locked away in solitary confinement or to Christians targeted by Merrick Garland's Department of Justice. Skadden did not offer counsel to dissidents debanked for resisting the regime. WilmerHale never stood in pro bono to stop states from shuttering churches or businesses through lockdowns. Cooley will never argue a case before the Supreme Court on behalf of the vaccine-injured. To the contrary, they work to destroy anyone who resists their manipulation of the scales...

By Maryanne Demasi at Brownstone dot org. For the first time in a generation, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has rewritten its official position on whether vaccines can cause autism. This is a change that could reshape one of the most politically charged and emotionally fraught debates in modern medicine. In a website update published on 19 November 2025, the agency now states that the long-standing claim "vaccines do not cause autism" is "not an evidence-based claim" because scientific studies "have not ruled out the possibility that infant vaccines cause autism." The page also acknowledges that "studies supporting a link have been ignored by health authorities." It's difficult to overstate the significance of these statements. For nearly two decades, they would have been unthinkable for a federal public health agency. The timing is equally striking. The change arrives at a moment when the political and scientific landscape around vaccine safety is undergoing a marked shift inside the Trump–Kennedy administration. For months, critics have accused Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr and several of the administration's appointees of holding unconventional views on vaccine safety. The CDC's revised language now places the agency closer to Kennedy's long-standing argument that federal agencies had ignored crucial evidence. The CDC explains the shift by pointing to the Data Quality Act, which requires federal communications to accurately reflect the evidence. Because studies have not excluded the possibility that infant vaccines could contribute to autism, the agency concedes that its long-standing categorical statement was not scientifically justified. The update states plainly that scientific uncertainty remains, particularly for vaccines administered in the first year of life. Scientific Uncertainty Finally Acknowledged The information on the website draws a sharp distinction between the infant vaccine schedule — which includes DTaP, HepB, Hib, IPV, PCV and others — and the measles–mumps–rubella (MMR) vaccine. For the MMR, the CDC continues to cite observational evidence showing "no association … with autism spectrum disorders," describing the conclusion as supported by "high strength of evidence." But the agency also acknowledges that these studies had "serious methodological limitations" and were all retrospective epidemiological analyses, the type that cannot establish cause and effect or identify subgroups who may be more vulnerable. The acknowledgement of limitations is unusually candid for a federal agency discussing vaccines and autism. For the infant vaccine schedule, the shift is even more dramatic. The CDC cites a series of authoritative reviews — including the 1991 and 2012 Institute of Medicine's assessments, and the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality's review in 2021 — all concluding that the evidence was "inadequate to accept or reject" a causal relationship between early-life vaccines and autism. In other words, the fundamental scientific question remains unresolved. Political Dynamite The political context makes this change even more consequential. Senator Bill Cassidy (R-LA), who chairs the Senate Health Committee, has been one of the most vocal critics of Kennedy's vaccine views. Cassidy has repeatedly insisted that the science on autism and vaccination was settled years ago. Now the CDC states that the claim "vaccines do not cause autism" does not meet evidence standards. Remarkably, the CDC states that the headline phrase remains on the page only "due to an agreement with the chair of the U.S. Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee." The implication — that the wording is a political compromise rather than a scientific one — will undoubtedly invite scrutiny on Capitol Hill. Attorney Aaron Siri, who has spent years litigating against federal agencies for greater transparency around vaccine safety, said the update marks a long-overdue shift in honesty from...

By Joseph Varon at Brownstone dot org. My experience in medicine allows me to distinguish between genuine innovation and subtle reclassification that fundamentally alters practice while appearing unchanged. Artificial intelligence has recently attracted considerable attention, including the widely circulated assertion that AI has been "legally authorized to practice medicine" in the United States. Interpreted literally, this claim is inaccurate. No medical board has licensed a machine. No algorithm has sworn an oath, accepted fiduciary duty, or assumed personal liability for patient harm. No robot physician is opening a clinic, billing insurers, or standing before a malpractice jury. However, stopping at this observation overlooks the broader issue. Legal concepts of liability are currently being redefined, often without public awareness. A significant transformation is underway, warranting more than either reflexive dismissal or uncritical technological enthusiasm. The current development is not the licensure of artificial intelligence as a physician, but rather the gradual erosion of medicine's core boundary: the intrinsic link between clinical judgment and human accountability. Clinical judgment involves making informed decisions tailored to each patient's unique needs and circumstances, requiring empathy, intuition, and a deep understanding of medical ethics. Human accountability refers to the responsibility healthcare providers assume for these decisions and their outcomes. This erosion is not the result of dramatic legislation or public debate, but occurs quietly through pilot programs, regulatory reinterpretations, and language that intentionally obscures responsibility. Once this boundary dissolves, medicine is transformed in ways that are difficult to reverse. The main concern isn't whether AI can refill prescriptions or spot abnormal lab results. Medicine has long used tools, and healthcare providers generally welcome help that reduces administrative tasks or improves pattern recognition. The real issue is whether medical judgment—deciding on the right actions, patients, and risks—can be viewed as a computer-generated outcome separated from moral responsibility. Historically, efforts to disconnect judgment from accountability have often caused harm without taking ownership. Recent developments clarify the origins of current confusion. In several states, limited pilot programs now allow AI-driven systems to assist with prescription renewals for stable chronic conditions under narrowly defined protocols. At the federal level, proposed legislation has considered whether artificial intelligence might qualify as a "practitioner" for specific statutory purposes, provided it is appropriately regulated. These initiatives are typically presented as pragmatic responses to physician shortages, access delays, and administrative inefficiencies. While none explicitly designates AI as a physician, collectively they normalize the more concerning premise that medical actions can occur without a clearly identifiable human decision-maker. In practice, this distinction is fundamental. Medicine is defined not by the mechanical execution of tasks, but by the assignment of responsibility when outcomes are unfavorable. Writing a prescription is straightforward; accepting responsibility for its consequences—particularly when considering comorbidities, social context, patient values, or incomplete information—is far more complex. Throughout my career, this responsibility has continuously resided with a human who could be questioned, challenged, corrected, and held accountable. When Dr. Smith makes an error, the family knows whom to contact, ensuring a direct line to human accountability. No algorithm, regardless of sophistication, can fulfill this role. The primary risk is not technological, but regulatory and philosophical. This transition represents a shift from virtue ethics to proceduralism. When lawmakers and institutions redefine med...

By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org. When the Trump administration announced its withdrawal from, and defunding of, 66 international organizations and treaty bodies on January 7th, much of the media coverage framed the move as reckless isolationism or short-term budget cutting. That framing misunderstands what is actually happening. This is not primarily a cost-saving exercise. It is a deliberate strategic break from a model of global governance that increasingly perpetuates problems rather than resolving them, and that relies on the continuous expansion of mandates, budgets, and crises to justify its own existence. Money matters here, but only insofar as it reveals intent. What the United States Is Actually Saving Using the most recent consolidated US government contribution tables, a conservative reading shows that the United States was spending at least $90 million per year on a subset of the 66 organizations now being exited. That figure is a lower bound, based only on clearly identifiable FY2023 obligations tied to a handful of the largest recipients. Among the biggest recipients of recent US funding on the withdrawal list were the United Nations Population Fund, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, UN Women, and UN-Habitat. Together, just these four entities account for the bulk of the identifiable spending in the conservative estimate above, with the population fund alone receiving tens of millions of dollars annually from the United States. Climate-related bodies illustrate particularly clearly what Washington is stepping away from. US funding for the UNFCCC secretariat and associated climate processes has typically run into the low tens of millions of dollars annually, largely through voluntary contributions. These funds do not finance emissions reductions or energy innovation directly; they support the administrative machinery of global climate governance — conferences, reporting frameworks, expert panels, working groups, and compliance processes that expand year after year regardless of measurable climate outcomes. This design is not accidental. Climate institutions are structured around process rather than resolution. There is no condition under which the UNFCCC can declare success and wind itself down. Progress justifies more funding; failure justifies even more. The conservative $90 million estimate excludes dozens of smaller agencies among the 66, indirect funding routed through multi-donor trust funds, and future escalations embedded in open-ended commitments. In other words, $90 million is not the headline; it is the floor. Even if total savings ultimately land in the low hundreds of millions rather than the billions, the scale is large enough to matter and small enough to clarify intent. This is not a budgetary stunt. Washington routinely spends more than this on programs few can recall authorizing. What makes this decision different is where the cuts are aimed. Why These Organizations Were Chosen The administration did not withdraw randomly. The organizations selected for exit share a common institutional pathology. Bodies created to solve specific, technical problems have gradually evolved into permanent advocacy platforms. Climate secretariats, population agencies, and norm-setting bodies rarely declare success because success would undermine their relevance and funding base. Funding models reinforce this dynamic by rewarding the identification of ever-expanding risks rather than measurable improvement. In climate policy, each missed target becomes justification for additional conferences, additional frameworks, and additional global coordination. Over time, this has produced institutions with weak performance metrics but strong moral authority. Critics of the withdrawals often reveal this logic unintentionally. Climate advocates quoted in The Guardian warned that leaving UN climate bodies would "undermine global cooperation" and abandon "decades of climate leadership." That concern is reveali...

By Thomas Harrington at Brownstone dot org. The following piece is the English translation text of a talk delivered by Brownstone Fellow Thomas Harrington, on December 20, 2025 at the "Seconda Festa Della Scienza a Servizio Dell'Uomo" (Second Festival of Science in the Service of Man) held in Venice, Italy. In his address, Harrington explains that Brownstone was founded as a direct response to the totalitarian management of the Covid-19 crisis imposed by the Government and its private sector partners. He then outlines the numerous projects the organization has launched and sustained over the last five years. Good morning everyone. It is a true honor to be here, among so many people who have worked so hard and with such dedication to expose the truth about the Covid Operation and to rebuild the foundations of a culture of human dignity in Italy. One of the main objectives of the propaganda that bombards us daily is to present Covid as a strictly medical phenomenon that was so dangerous that ordinary citizens needed to obey the edicts of an unelected class of supposed medical experts with no questions asked. And it is sad to admit that the majority of Western citizens, and probably an even larger percentage of the so-called intellectual class in our countries, surrendered to this enormous operation of emotional, moral, and intellectual blackmail with little or no resistance. And when, in the early months of the crisis, when a number of the medical experts and other public figures with their rational capacities still intact dared to oppose this organized campaign of nonsense that went against many of the agreed precepts of immunology and public health up to February 2020, they were attacked by gangs of cyber-thugs who, as we were able to verify later, were working in concert with the United States government and, from there, with the military and intelligence services of all European countries to tightly control our economy of ideas. It was in this absurd and intimidating context that Jeffrey Tucker, an economist, and Lucio "Lou" Eastman, an IT professional and his colleague at the think tank where he worked at the time—the American Institute for Economic Research (AIER)—decided not only to raise their voices, but to organize a high-level challenge to the growing wave of medical totalitarianism. In early October 2020, they invited three internationally renowned experts in public health—Jay Bhattacharya of Stanford, Martin Kulldorff of Harvard, and Sunetra Gupta of Oxford—to visit the AIER campus in the small town of Great Barrington, in western Massachusetts. The initial plan was to invite journalists to engage in dialogue with these experts who were questioning the logic of the virus containment policies then being adopted by almost all Western governments. But the intellectual atmosphere at the time was so pervasively stifling that no journalist deigned to take them up on their offer. So, making a virtue of necessity, the three academics drafted and signed what would become known as the Great Barrington Declaration on the afternoon of October 4, 2020. There was absolutely nothing radical about the document. It was simply a reaffirmation of the fundamental principles of public health in place prior to the emergence of the new virus at the beginning of that year. It acknowledged the enormous long-term costs of lockdowns, especially on the lives of the most economically vulnerable. It also identified the widely varying negative effects of the virus on the different age cohorts of the society. The document therefore advocated, on the one hand, for a policy of special protection for those known to be most vulnerable to the effects of the virus and, on the other, a policy of relative freedom for citizens in a position to survive the virus without serious problems, a stance that they believed would have the added benefit of catalyzing the development of herd immunity within the population. That same evening of October 4, Lou Eastma...

By Brownstone Institute at Brownstone dot org. In a single week in January 2026, new managers of public health in the Trump administration – backed by a vigorous citizens' movement of highly informed writers and researchers – have made some dramatic decisions to disrupt the status quo of decades. Within the ranks of the institutional gatekeepers, there is a sense of shock and awe. May this be just the beginning. First, the childhood vaccine schedule has been entirely reformulated to fit with the better science and practices of other nations. The schedule had ballooned out of control since the industry received a liability shield in 1986, from a few diseases to 17, from a few shots to a possible 82 doses. The indemnification rewarded a cynical raid of the childhood schedule to earn huge profits without risk. The industry push clearly came at the expense of kids because the added shots had weak or nonexistent safety profiles, plus the cocktail mix in total has completely evaded serious study. It's not unreasonable to speculate that the schedule contributed to documented increases in suffering and crisis. The correction had already begun with the meetings of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). The role of this committee in the past was to provide a scientific veneer to industrial and agency priorities. The conflicts on the old committee – patent holders, grant receivers, industry shills – were palpable. The new independent committee, appointed by new leadership, started looking under the hood and asking the right questions. The three meetings of 2025 were grueling and frustrating, not to mention slow going. This is where the Department of Health and Human Services swung into action, together with CDC Acting Director Jim O'Neill. In early January, HHS released an eye-popping report on the childhood schedule. It is signed not by some anonymous committee but by two top experts in the field. They are Tracy Beth Høeg, MD, Ph.D., Acting Director for the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research and Martin Kulldorff, Ph.D., Chief Science and Data Officer for the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation and among the most published and cited authors on vaccines in the world. Signing off on this document is a bold move. It reveals honesty, transparency, and tremendous confidence in the conclusions of their work. After all, the usual academic strategy is to sign a study with as many names as possible so that no one is responsible. When trouble comes, they throw each other under the bus. Similarly, the usual bureaucratic strategy on documents like this is to have only the whole committee sign but not with names. When the trouble begins, and committee members are called, they invariably claim to have been the outlier on the committee and otherwise pressured. The authors of this study boldly stood up and said: these are our findings. If you disagree, fine, but at least you know who is to blame. This kind of academic courage is too rare these days, especially when dealing with such a dicey topic as this. The report pushes four core principles of a successful childhood vaccination program: 1) scientific honesty about vaccines, including what is known and not known; 2) informed consent, not coercion; 3) a vaccine approval process using evidence-based science and thorough post-licensure evaluation of vaccine safety and risks; and 4) recommendations that take account of the experience of peer nations. The CDC under O'Neill accepted the document and ordered the changes. The initial results born of moral courage have stunned industry watchers, while greeted with universal praise from parents and the burgeoning movement that is fed up with shot proliferation without accountability. Still, this is just a beginning. Much more needs to be done. The vaccine industry needs to be normalized as a conventional market product: no indemnifications, no mandates, no subsidies, no patent-sharing scams, no censorship, no fake science, ...

By REPPARE at Brownstone dot org. Recommendations given by the World Health Organization (WHO) carry substantial weight. During the Covid-19 pandemic, the WHO partnered with the world's largest tech companies to restrict information and scientific debate to billions. YouTube explicitly banned all content contradicting the WHO's recommendations, whilst the WHO actively vilified those questioning its recommendations. A concerning outcome of this suppression of open discussion in international public health has been an apparent loss of evidence base in subsequent WHO recommendations, particularly in response to pandemics. When the WHO endorsed the unprecedented measures taken by the Chinese authorities in response to the outbreak of SARS-CoV-2, this was a watershed moment in WHO pandemic policy. Traditionally, these recommendations were relatively cautious, grounded in a recognition of health as not "merely the absence of disease." WHO recommendations during health emergencies often focused primarily on avoiding harm by unilateral border closures. Although the organisation still upheld its traditional advice against trade and travel restrictions for a few weeks, this also changed after countries imposed restrictions irrespective of the WHO's caution. With the WHO giving ambiguous advice, governments around the world followed each other unreflectively, imposing lockdowns that turned a respiratory disease into a global socioeconomic crisis, plunging millions into poverty. The lockdowns and mandates of the Covid-19 era can be regarded as the largest natural experiment in public health. With governments imposing dozens of measures simultaneously, attributing effects to specific measures is tricky, and it is no wonder that the academic debate on what worked and what didn't is far from being settled. The fact that Sweden had one of the lowest excess mortality rates worldwide despite having some of the least aggressive restrictions certainly calls into question the unprecedented lockdowns, extended school closures, and mask mandates. Or at least in a rational world, it would. Nonetheless, these measures are becoming the new go-to response to future pandemics, now promoted by the WHO itself. This is confirmed by a systematic comparison of the WHO's pre- and post- Covid pandemic response recommendations. As part of the REPPARE project at the University of Leeds, we searched all WHO publications between January 2017 and April 2025 for recommendations on non-pharmaceutical interventions during pandemics. We excluded temporary guidance during specific events like Covid, focusing on standing recommendations that will influence future health emergencies. The results show a normalisation of measures that the WHO formerly advised against and were first applied at scale during Covid. As example, in 2018, the 'Managing Epidemics' handbook stated that: "…many traditional containment measures are no longer efficient. They should therefore be re-examined in the light of people's expectations of more freedom, including freedom of movement. Measures such as quarantine, for example, once regarded as a matter of fact, would be unacceptable to many populations today." A new edition, revised in 2023, states: "…many traditional containment measures are challenging to put in place and sustain. Measures such as quarantine can be at odds with people's expectations of more freedom, including freedom of movement. Digital technologies for contact tracing became common in response to Covid-19. These, however, come with privacy, security and ethical concerns. Containment measures should be re-examined in partnership with the communities they impact." Containment is "challenging" rather than "no longer efficient," while quarantine is no longer "unacceptable." The same 2018 document also referred to the use of face masks by sick people as an "extreme measure," while the update recommends their use even for seasonal flu. A literal adherence to WHO's ongoing Covid-1...

By Steven Kritz at Brownstone dot org. It is generally acknowledged that the Baby Boom generation (of which I am a member) has been the most successful, socioeconomically speaking, in the history of this planet, and the prospects for the generations following to match or surpass us are not looking good. As a confirmation of the disparity, I recently read that while Baby Boomers make up approximately 20% of the current US population, they possess more than 50% of the wealth. In speaking with others of my generation, I have come to realize that very few Baby Boomers have even a modicum of insight as to how that success happened. The typical pabulum that I get from my peers is that they got their education and worked hard, implying that it should be no different for the younger generations. To be fair, I can see several historical and sociological factors that would lead Boomers to think this way. First of all, many of our parents pounded into our heads from an early age that going to college was the key to success. Some things just don't change from generation to generation! In fact, when Boomers entered the work force en masse during the 1970s, we were the largest new worker cohort in the history of the country, and approximately 30% of us had a college degree, up from, at most, 10% for previous generations. However, despite our educational advantages, the 1970s was a disastrous time economically for everyone, but especially for those entering the workforce, and those permanently leaving the workforce, due to retirement or disability. We were plagued by two recessions, two huge oil shocks, and stagflation. Engineering as a career was absolutely dead. Add the extremely challenging geopolitical environment both at home and abroad, and we experienced an era when it was virtually impossible to get ahead solely through one's education and hard work. I was able to sidestep much of this, at least socioeconomically speaking, even though my dad had suddenly and unexpectedly died at the age of 42 in mid-December 1969. That's because I spent the first three years of the 1970s finishing college, the next four years in medical school, and the final three years of the decade as an Internal Medicine resident. In those days, the cost of living, including college and medical school could be handled without too much difficulty, and the pay as a medical resident was sufficient for me to have a very nice apartment in Brooklyn, while also being able to save some money. As such, I didn't enter the "real" workforce until the middle of 1980. The timing for me was near perfect! Beginning in the middle of 1982, the greatest economic boom in history launched, and due to significant gains in the areas of racial equality and women's rights, all groups participated. In fact, every quintile of household income set a record in all but two or three years of this boom, peaking in 1999. Given that the 1980s and 1990s were in the wheelhouse of every Baby Boomer's working career, I could see where the attitude would be that getting an education and working hard would lead to success. Extrapolating this thinking to the younger generations, it would make sense for Boomers to believe that the younger generations, having an even higher percentage with a college degree, just need to keep working hard and they will also achieve the same level of success. However, there are several major flaws in this thought process. Some of it stems from the fact that the Boomers were the first "me" generation. It resulted in an inability to see the world from other than a personal bubble that was easily filled with nonsense. One of the things that has been completely missed by the Boomers is that Gen X, which is currently in its peak earnings years, has not, and never will catch up to the Boomers in terms of wealth accumulation. Carrying this train of thought further, one might ask the following questions: (1) Are Boomers smarter than the generations that followed? I'd say no, exce...

By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org. Before Covid, I would have described myself as a technological optimist. New technologies almost always arrive amid exaggerated fears. Railways were supposed to cause mental breakdowns, bicycles were thought to make women infertile or insane, and early electricity was blamed for everything from moral decay to physical collapse. Over time, these anxieties faded, societies adapted, and living standards rose. The pattern was familiar enough that artificial intelligence seemed likely to follow it: disruptive, sometimes misused, but ultimately manageable. The Covid years unsettled that confidence—not because technology failed, but because institutions did. Across much of the world, governments and expert bodies responded to uncertainty with unprecedented social and biomedical interventions, justified by worst-case models and enforced with remarkable certainty. Competing hypotheses were marginalized rather than debated. Emergency measures hardened into long-term policy. When evidence shifted, admissions of error were rare, and accountability rarer still. The experience exposed a deeper problem than any single policy mistake: modern institutions appear poorly equipped to manage uncertainty without overreach. That lesson now weighs heavily on debates over artificial intelligence. The AI Risk Divide Broadly speaking, concern about advanced AI falls into two camps. One group—associated with thinkers like Eliezer Yudkowsky and Nate Soares—argues that sufficiently advanced AI is catastrophically dangerous by default. In their deliberately stark formulation, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, the problem is not bad intentions but incentives: competition ensures someone will cut corners, and once a system escapes meaningful control, intentions no longer matter. A second camp, including figures such as Stuart Russell, Nick Bostrom, and Max Tegmark, also takes AI risk seriously but is more optimistic that alignment, careful governance, and gradual deployment can keep systems under human control. Despite their differences, both camps converge on one conclusion: unconstrained AI development is dangerous, and some form of oversight, coordination, or restraint is necessary. Where they diverge is on feasibility and urgency. What is rarely examined, however, is whether the institutions expected to provide that restraint are themselves fit for the role. Covid suggests reason for doubt. Covid was not merely a public-health crisis; it was a live experiment in expert-driven governance under uncertainty. Faced with incomplete data, authorities repeatedly chose maximal interventions justified by speculative harms. Dissent was often treated as a moral failing rather than a scientific necessity. Policies were defended not through transparent cost-benefit analysis but through appeals to authority and fear of hypothetical futures. This pattern matters because it reveals how modern institutions behave when stakes are framed as existential. Incentives shift toward decisiveness, narrative control, and moral certainty. Error correction becomes reputationally costly. Precaution stops being a tool and becomes a doctrine. The lesson is not that experts are uniquely flawed. It is that institutions reward overconfidence far more reliably than humility, especially when politics, funding, and public fear align. Once extraordinary powers are claimed in the name of safety, they are rarely surrendered willingly. These are precisely the dynamics now visible in discussions of AI oversight. The "What if" Machine A recurring justification for expansive state intervention is the hypothetical bad actor: What if a terrorist builds this? What if a rogue state does that? From that premise flows the argument that governments must act pre-emptively, at scale, and often in secrecy, to prevent catastrophe. During Covid, similar logic justified sweeping biomedical research agendas, emergency authorizations, and social controls. The reasoning was...

By Clayton J. Baker, MD at Brownstone dot org. The Fifth Big Lie of Vaccinology: Declaring Vaccines Fundamentally "Safe and Effective" as a Class, is a manipulative, unethical propaganda device that must be brought to an end. Slogans, catch phrases, and advertising jingles comprise an enormous amount of the information that the media sends out to all of us every day. Marketing is largely based on attaching simplistic, positive connotations to whatever product is being sold. Sometimes manipulative advertising is easily identifiable and seems harmless enough. Depending on your personal preference for fast food, you may either decide that "You rule," or instead choose to make sure "I'm lovin' it." When purchasing an automobile, you can be content just to say "Let's go places," or you can insist on owning "The ultimate driving machine." However, marketing, news, and yes, government directives frequently overlap – and even merge – to an extent that can be very difficult to detect. If an advertising jingle takes hold firmly enough, it can become conventional wisdom. Sometimes it can even be assumed to be objective fact. Generations of Americans grew up accepting as an article of faith that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day." However, this claim was first made – without evidence – in 1917 by a protégé of breakfast cereal magnates named the Kellogg Brothers. While this assertion about the primary importance of breakfast has been challenged in recent years, it still resonates in the minds of many as a basic truth of daily life. "Safe and Effective:" An Advertising Slogan, Not a Medical Fact With the rollout of the Covid vaccines, starting in December 2020, patients worldwide were barraged with another baseless (and completely untrue) marketing slogan: that the brand new, warp-speed developed Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." (Should anyone have forgotten the intensity of the marketing blitz, please watch this, this, and – gulp – this to refresh your memory.) We were told that Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." Period. This advertising slogan was repeated endlessly, despite the fact that it referred to a variety of different products, using multiple different technologies, all produced in extreme haste. Almost overnight, there were shots by Pfizer/BioNTech (mRNA technology), Moderna (also mRNA), Johnson & Johnson (viral vector technology), AstraZeneca (also viral vector), and Novavax (protein subunit technology). Didn't matter. We were told that Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." We were told to take whichever Covid shot might be available. We were told that it didn't matter which vaccine might be offered to you. We were told its mechanism of action didn't matter. We were told you could even "mix and match!" Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." That advertising jingle persists even today. Never mind that two major Covid vaccines (the Johnson & Johnson and the AstraZeneca products), both previously hailed as "safe and effective," were pulled from the market for, well, killing people. Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." Never mind that the CDC's own Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) catalogued over 38,000 deaths due to the Covid vaccines. Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." Never mind the drip-drip-drip of media reports describing the waning effectiveness of the Covid shots, an utterly predictable outcome. All that means is that you need another booster shot! Covid vaccines are "safe and effective." To review: two of the original Covid shots – previously hailed as "safe and effective" – have been pulled from the market because they were unsafe. New, updated versions of the remaining shots are constantly being produced, because previous versions – also previously promoted as safe and effective – are ineffective. Furthermore, their disastrous safety record is reflected in the low public uptake of the newer versions. Nevertheless, Covid vaccines are still officially "safe and ef...

By Peter St Onge at Brownstone dot org. Somali daycare powerhouse Quality Learing Center has closed. If you need to lear your kids you will need a new Somali daycare. Happily, you've got thousands of empty ones to choose from. The nation is being seized by what Zerohedge calls the Nick Shirley effect as hundreds of citizen journalists fan out exposing what looks like tens of billions — perhaps trillions — of fraud. What's been found so far focuses on the Somali community, where despite nearly 90% of these model immigrants being on welfare they've managed to set up tens of thousands of apparently fraudulent daycares, autism therapy centers, food for kids programs, and home health companies. To give a flavor, there's apparently 50,000 Somali healthcare companies — one per 3 adult Somalis in the nation. Somali-run autism grants in Minnesota now run $399 million — up from $3 million in 2018. Somali child nutrition scams were actually prosecuted for $300 million stolen. After which even more scams sprung up because the city and state turned a blind eye. So far DOJ estimates $8 billion of Somali fraud in Minnesota alone — roughly a quarter million per Somali household. Meaning the roughly 65,000 Somali adults in Minnesota managed to steal more than the entire GDP of Somalia itself, population 20 million. Saudi Arabia has oil. China has factories. Somalia has Quality Learing Centers. The Tip of the Iceberg Unfortunately, Somalis are just the tip of the iceberg. A new study found half of New York City is on Medicaid — note average family income in New York City is $81,000. Given 40% of New Yorkers are foreign-born, this will be hundreds of thousands getting free care when the rest of us — who pay for it — shell out tens of thousands for insurance. Meanwhile, a 2023 survey by New York City found foreigners — not foreign-born but actual foreigners — occupy fully 32% of public housing and over 40% of rent-controlled and stabilized units. California is even worse; the state auditor recently tallied $70 billion in fraud, including $2.5 billion of SNAP fraud and $24 billion in fraud for homelessness. And that's just the fraud they found. The Covid Fraud Boom The Fraud Industrial Complex took off during Covid: The Small Business Administration estimates $64 billion in fraudulent PPP loans — other estimates run to $80 billion. Given the median PPP loan was $20,000 so that implies 4 million people should be in prison right now. Toss in the Covid-era Economic Injury loans, where up to $200 billion was stolen. These averaged $100,000, implying another 2 million felons. So take Minnesota Somalis, multiply by 20 blue states, dozens of nationalities — eight Indian gas stations in Texas, for example, got 32 million in SBA loans. In case you wonder why Indians and not Americans own the 7/11's. What's Next Long-standing government estimates of fraud run north of $500 billion a year. Elon thinks it's closer to a trillion and half, which seems right given what's being exposed. That would be roughly half of income taxes. In fact, it's enough to exempt every American from income tax up to $200,000. This is leading Americans people to suggest maybe we should stop paying tax until government gets control of the fraud. The left is responding how you'd expect. Minnesota Governor Tim Walz calls Somali fraud probes "white supremacy." While MSNBC says Trump's making it up cos he's racist. But Shirley has set off a nationwide movement by citizen journalists to expose fraud. Incentivized by the fact whistleblowers get 15-30% of recoveries — in case you're looking for a side gig. A hundred million Americans are pissed off. Unless we see a lot of people in handcuffs, we're this close to a taxpayer revolt the IRS couldn't hope to keep up with. Republished from the author's Substack

By Michael Tomlinson at Brownstone dot org. Evidence continues to mount indicating that the global response to the Covid-19 pandemic was counterproductive and harmful, yet mainstream opinion continues to proclaim that it was a triumph. This is based on scientific papers that often manipulate the data or present it selectively. Exhibit 1: Cohort study of cardiovascular safety of different Covid-19 vaccination doses among 46 million adults in England by Ip et al. The authors conclude that 'the incidence of common arterial thrombotic events (mainly acute myocardial infarction and ischaemic stroke) was generally lower after each vaccine dose, brand and combination' and 'the incidence of common venous thrombotic events (mainly pulmonary embolism and lower limb deep venous thrombosis) was lower after vaccination.' This seems to be a straightforward outcome, based on a most inclusive sample – the whole population of England. However, Table 2 shows incidence rates of cardiovascular events were substantially higher (nearly double for arterial events) after the first dose of the Pfizer and AstraZeneca vaccines, compared to no vaccination: This contradicts the text: 'The incidence of thrombotic and cardiovascular complications was generally lower after each dose of each vaccine brand.' Of course, 'generally' is a weasel word. It means that the incidence of complications after each dose was lower except where it was higher. Incidence rates for the Moderna vaccine were indeed much lower at least in the medium term (up to 26 weeks) but rates for AstraZeneca and Pfizer were much higher. Incidence rates after the second dose were indeed 'generally' lower in the tables. But Supplementary Table 3 reveals that the definition of 'no vaccination' for Dose 2 in fact means the interval between a first dose and a second dose. The largest increases in incidence rates are for the Pfizer and AstraZeneca Dose 1 vaccination groups, the only cohorts compared with a true vaccination naïve control group. Returning to Table 2, the vaccinated group and the unvaccinated groups have comparable numbers of events, but the vaccinated groups are calculated with reference to approximately half the number of person years. If we apply the incidence rates to the numbers of people in each group (at the top of Table 1), we can calculate vaccination with the AstraZeneca and Pfizer vaccines brought about in the region of 91,000 additional serious cardiac events (euphemistically described as 'complications') compared to the no vaccination group in a little over one year. On the other hand, the Moderna group experienced over 34,000 fewer events compared with the no vaccination group, leading to an overall balance of around 56,000 additional events. How many of the individuals who had additional heart attacks, strokes, and thromboses subsequently died? The results are shocking, but after further processing we are told they are 'reassuring.' To obscure the alarming results, the text relies not on the straight incidence rates but on hazard ratios 'adjusting for a wide range of potential confounding factors.' It is not apparent why any adjustment was necessary. On the one hand, 'There were few differences between subgroups defined by demographic and clinical characteristics,' and on the other hand, 'we addressed potential confounding by adjusting for a wide range of demographic factors and prior diagnoses.' Were there significant differences in demographics or weren't there? Further on, we are told that 'Subgroup analyses by age group, ethnic group, previous history of the event of interest and sex were conducted' and outcomes 'were generally similar across subgroups.' What were the potentially confounding factors that had to be adjusted for if not these? How could an incidence rate of approximately 1.9 for the Pfizer Dose 1 arterial events be adjusted to a hazard ratio of 0.9? If an adjustment leads to the reversal of findings of this magnitude, then it must be done transpa...

By Roger Bate at Brownstone dot org. The Washington Post recently published a detailed investigation showing that childhood vaccination rates across the United States are falling sharply, particularly for measles. Fewer counties now meet the 95 percent coverage level commonly associated with herd immunity, and millions of children attend schools in communities below that threshold. On the basics, it's true that routine childhood measles shots are among the most effective measures for keeping that particular infection at bay. But the Post's analysis fails where it matters most: it cannot explain why trust has collapsed so broadly, so persistently, and so rationally for many ordinary people. Instead, readers are offered a familiar diagnosis. Distrust of authorities. Political polarization. Misinformation. Backlash against mandates. All of this is curiously detached from responsibility. The article describes the consequences of distrust without confronting its causes. That omission is not accidental. It reflects a broader unwillingness among elite media and public health institutions to reckon honestly with Covid-era failures. And without that reckoning, efforts to restore vaccine confidence are unlikely to succeed. This is not an argument against vaccines. It is an argument about credibility. During the Covid-19 period, public health authorities repeatedly overstated certainty, minimized uncertainty, and treated legitimate scientific disagreement as a threat rather than a feature of good science. Claims about vaccines preventing infection and transmission were presented as settled fact, not evolving hypotheses. When those claims weakened or collapsed under new evidence, they were revised quietly, without acknowledgment of error. The same pattern appeared across other policies: masking, school closures, natural immunity, and population-level risk. Positions shifted, sometimes dramatically, but rarely with public explanation. The message conveyed—intentionally or not—was that narrative management mattered more than transparency. This mattered because trust is cumulative. People do not evaluate each public health recommendation in isolation. They judge institutions based on patterns of behavior over time. When authorities insist they were always right, even when claims visibly change, credibility erodes. Worse, dissent was often suppressed rather than debated. Scientists and clinicians who questioned prevailing policies—on lockdowns, school closures, or mandates—were frequently labeled as misinformation spreaders rather than engaged on the merits. Government coordination with social media platforms blurred the line between combating falsehoods and policing debate. Once that line is crossed, institutional trust does not merely decline—it inverts. None of this requires assuming bad faith. Emergencies are hard. Decisions were made under pressure. But good faith does not excuse overstatement, nor does difficulty justify refusing retrospective evaluation. The result of this approach is now visible in the data the Washington Post reports—but does not explain. Evidence from Pennsylvania illustrates the point. Montgomery County, a large, affluent, highly educated Philadelphia suburb, has historically had strong vaccination uptake and robust healthcare access. It is not a place easily dismissed as anti-science or anti-medicine. Yet my physician survey research conducted in the county during and after the pandemic tells a different story. Clinicians reported that while initial Covid vaccine uptake was high in 2021, acceptance declined sharply over time, particularly for boosters. More importantly, many physicians observed a spillover effect: growing hesitancy not only toward Covid vaccines, but toward other vaccines as well. Patients were not primarily citing technical fears about vaccine safety. They were expressing distrust of public health authorities. They referenced shifting claims, perceived exaggeration, and the absence of acknowle...

By Ramesh Thakur at Brownstone dot org. At the turn of the century, America held unchallengeable sway in the world, its economy the strongest and most dynamic, its military the most powerful, its globe-spanning alliances unrivalled, and its global leadership uncontested. The year 2001 seemed to be the pivot on which everything began heading south, with 9/11 serving as the most potent symbol of the all-round decline of US military power, financial muscle, societal cohesion, and global leadership. Political gridlock domestically was accompanied by failed interventions abroad. In a parallel development pregnant with profound ramifications for the world's trajectory, China began a rapid ascent up the global power rankings on most dimensions, helped by US-led Western generosity in granting WTO membership, market access, and shift of manufacturing and production chains. The Wall Street Journal columnist William A. Galston describes this first quarter-century of the new millennium as 'an era of folly' for America. This is the global geopolitical landscape against which the US National Security Strategy (NSS) was published on 5 December, the seventh such document in this century and the most transactional ever. President Donald Trump's more muscular and singular approach to foreign and national security policy was already foreshadowed with his multifront assault on the central pillars of the liberal international order created in the aftermath of the Second World War under US leadership, and with the renaming of the Department of War. The 33-page NSS gives institutional form to his foreign policy. Sent by the president to Congress, the NSS articulates the administration's national security vision and how the several elements of US power will be used in pursuit of national security goals. It is meant to bring the different elements of his international policies into some sort of a coherent strategic framework, to steer the various branches of the national security apparatus into implementing his priorities, to rally public support behind the administration's goals, to reassure friends and allies, and to deter adversaries. It marks an explicit repudiation of the worldview of post-Cold War US administrations: 'The days of the United States propping up the entire world order like Atlas are over' (p. 12). In his foreword, Trump describes it as 'a roadmap to ensure that America remains the greatest and most successful nation in human history' and is made 'safer, richer, freer, greater, and more powerful than ever before' (p. ii). The NSS addresses the world as Trump sees it today, not as it was in 1991. The key sentence for me is: President Trump's foreign policy is…realistic without being 'realist,' principled without being 'idealistic,' muscular without being 'hawkish,' and restrained without being 'dovish' (p. 8). The backdrop to this is the denunciation of the elite consensus at the Cold War's end, following which successive administrations: lashed American policy to a network of international institutions, some of which are driven by outright anti-Americanism and many by a transnationalism that explicitly seeks to dissolve individual state sovereignty (p. 2). NSS 2025 accepts the imperative to prioritise competing regions and goals in a world of limited resources, instead of presenting a comprehensive laundry list of all the good-to-have objectives. It makes the obvious and common-sense point that the principal US strategic interest is the defence of the homeland and its own hemisphere, with special emphasis on preventing extra-hemispheric powers such as China, Russia, and Iran from meddling. But it also reaffirms the need for a 'free and open Indo-Pacific' (p. 19). The region that accounts for almost half the world's GDP in purchasing power parity (PPP) dollars and one-third in nominal GDP, is critical to the world's economic development and political stability. The Logic of Geography The NSS should put to rest the notion that Trum...

By Michael Hurley at Brownstone dot org. During Lent in 2022, Michael Hurley published a shorter version of the following essay in American Thinker, lamenting the betrayal of the faithful during the Covid pandemic. After four years, the silence of the bishops continues. Today is Ash Wednesday, the beginning of the season of Lent for Catholics around the world. On this day, priests smear ashes on millions of foreheads while uttering some version of the words, "Remember, man, thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return." Perhaps this year the ritual should be reversed, with the faithful lining up to administer ashes to priests and bishops until their white surplices are covered with an unmistakable reminder of their own mortality. Everywhere today there are hopeful signs that the political revolution traveling under the guise of Covid-19 may be faltering, but the shockwaves it sent through the Church are still reverberating and slowly widening, two years after the fact. The opening salvos of this revolution still echo in these five words: The bishops closed the churches. Let that sentence wash over you, slowly, and you may begin to grasp its enduring significance. Never before in human history, through centuries of war and famine and disease, has there been a worldwide closure of the Church that Christ founded to conquer death over-wait for it-the fear of death. To understand the scope of the damage that has been done to the Church, let's begin with a thought experiment. Assume you are given the power to save the soul of one person from an eternity in Hell, but to do so, you must make martyrs and saints of every man, woman, and child now living on the face of the earth. How would you choose? If you could be assured that every life lost would rise to glory in Heaven, would you calculate the value of saving one person from Hell to exceed the value of all the days and years of life lost to the billions whose earthly lives would be cut short? Would billions and billions of days of life on earth, and all the joy and wonder and happiness they would surely contain, be worth one soul lost to an eternity in Hell? To some, this will seem a preposterous question, because none of us can fathom eternity and many of us no longer believe in Hell. But the Church does-or at least it did until around March 2020. It was then that the Church made the wrong decision: that prolonging our lives by a few days or years (a goal that lockdowns spectacularly failed to accomplish) was worth the souls that would be lost and the long-term damage to the faith that would result from denying millions of people the sacraments as they watched their shepherds flee in a time of widespread fear. The idea that the bishops had "no choice" but to close the churches because the government "made them" do so is pretty weak sauce. The Roman Empire banned the practice of Christianity upon pain of death for the first four centuries of the Church's history. All but one of the twelve apostles-the original bishops-were martyred for their stubborn resistance to Jewish and Roman demands that they "close the churches." Had our bishops decided to bring communion to the chronically ill and frail elderly but invite the overwhelming majority of parishioners for whom Covid posed scant mortal danger to celebrate mass publicly, does anyone seriously believe that the same governments that kept garden centers and liquor stores open and allowed BLM protests would have resisted a united front of bishops with 1.4 billion of the world's Catholics behind them? Instead, frightened bishops in America and Europe offered not a fig leaf of resistance and, in the UK, even quietly urged the government to "compel" them to close their doors. Christ is "the good shepherd." (John 10:11) Every bishop, standing in persona Christi, carries a shepherd's crozier as a symbol of his duty to his flock. In the Gospel of John, we learn the difference between a good shepherd and a bad one: "He who is a hireling a...

By Jessica Rose at Brownstone dot org. If you haven't heard about this recent news uncovered by Nick Shirley and David, you need to. You can watch the full video documentary by clicking on the photo below. It's been watched by more than 38 million people which is dwarfed by the amount of capital from American taxpayers being fraudulently taken by fake businesses - like day care centers - "run" by Somali people. This isn't racist - it's fact. Simple questions were posed all along the way: Where are the children? Where is all the money going? Why did not one Somali who they interviewed have any clue what their own businesses were doing? And why were they so aggressive? Defensive much? In this article, I would like to focus on the meeting that took place at the end of the video. I am pretty sure it was the legislative update that took place on December 19, 2025 at the State Capitol in Minnesota. If you click on the meeting link and go to the webpage, you'll see that the first paragraph states the following: The last few weeks have been difficult for our community in Minneapolis and around Minnesota, which has been targeted by the hateful rhetoric from Donald Trump and lawless action by his federal agents [ICE]. To be clear, slandering our Somali and Latino neighbors and violating the constitutional rights of Minnesotans as a pretense for ICE's cruel and violent enforcement actions is not about public safety. It is intended to cause fear, chaos, and division. From where I stand as a non-conflicted objective observer with very little knowledge of Minnesota House Representatives, the above language is very inflammatory, and quite polarizing. Having watched the interaction between Nick and David and the Somali people that they tried to interview, and the knife attack on David by Somali men, I dare say that beyond inflammatory, it is pure "disinformation". According to Nick, at this meeting, Republican members had clearly demonstrated ongoing fraud in Minnesota with data and charts as visual aids, and also who was profiting from this fraud. A paper trail - if you will - was shown to the committee members. As Nick notes, the Democrat representatives "looked into the abyss" as the data was delivered, while one in particular, Minnesota House of Representatives' Emma Greenman, defended the allegations of fraud by declaring that fraud is a non-partisan issue, and that declarations (with proof) of fraud is "not building trust." Her official committee assignments include being Co-Vice Chair for Workforce, Labor, and Economic Development Finance and Policy, Public Safety Finance and Policy, Elections Finance and Government Operations and last but not least Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Policy. She is a lawyer with a B.A. in political science and an M.P.A. in "public administration." If you look into Emma's official Minnesota House of Representatives statements from February 14th, 2025, It is clear from the text that she is very anti-Trump herself. The first heading is as follows: "Protecting Minnesota from the Trump Administration's Harmful and Unconstitutional Actions". She therein refers to "the daily barrage of unprecedented overreach by President Trump, Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk, and his billionaire cabinet [that] is designed to wear Americans down and undermine our faith in democratic institutions and the rule of law". The rule of law, eh? So what about fraud? Does fraud not involve intentional deception to gain a benefit, typically financial, prosecutable by the government under both state and federal laws? She also refers to MAGA as an "extreme" "agenda" in the Legislative Update: from February 14, 2025. With this agreement, we prevented the House Republicans from throwing out the votes of 21,980 Shakopee voters in service of their extreme MAGA agenda. I want to thank every one of you who spoke up against the MAGA Republican power grab in Minnesota, and is standing up for democracy and the rule of law every d...

By James Lyons-Weiler at Brownstone dot org. In January 2019, the New England Journal of Medicine published a study that was immediately hailed as the final verdict on vitamin D: it doesn't work. The study, known as the VITAL trial, was large, well-funded, and led by respected researchers from Harvard. Its conclusion-that vitamin D supplementation did not reduce the risk of invasive cancer or major cardiovascular events-rapidly diffused across headlines, textbooks, and clinical guidelines. But the VITAL study didn't fail because vitamin D failed. It failed because it was never designed to test the right question. This article walks through the anatomy of that failure, why it matters, and what we must fix if we are to take prevention seriously in modern medicine. The Trial That Didn't On the surface, VITAL looked impeccable: over 25,000 participants, randomized and placebo-controlled, testing 2000 IU of vitamin D3 daily for a median of 5.3 years. The primary endpoints were the incidence of any invasive cancer and a composite of major cardiovascular events (heart attack, stroke, or death from cardiovascular causes). But there is a foundational problem: most participants weren't vitamin D deficient to begin with. Only 12.7% had levels below 20 ng/mL, the threshold generally associated with increased risk. The mean baseline level was 30.8 ng/mL-already at or near sufficiency. It's the equivalent of testing whether insulin helps people who don't have diabetes. Further eroding the study's contrast, participants in the placebo arm were allowed to take up to 800 IU/day of vitamin D on their own. By year 5, more than 10% of the placebo group was exceeding that limit. The intervention, in effect, became a test of high-dose vitamin D versus medium-dose vitamin D, not against a true control. Add to that the decision to use broad, bundled endpoints like "any invasive cancer" or "major cardiovascular events" without regard to mechanisms, latency, or stage-specific progression, and the trial becomes a precision instrument for finding nothing. The Important Real Signal They Missed The one glimmer of benefit appeared in cancer mortality. While incidence rates were similar between groups, the vitamin D arm showed a lower rate of cancer deaths. This effect emerged only after two years of follow-up and became statistically significant once early deaths were excluded. Even more telling, among participants whose cause of death could be adjudicated with medical records (rather than death certificate codes), the benefit was stronger. This suggests a biologically plausible mechanism: vitamin D may not prevent cancer from starting, but it may slow its progression or reduce metastasis. That theory aligns with preclinical models showing vitamin D's role in cellular differentiation, immune modulation, and suppression of angiogenesis. And yet, VITAL buried this signal. The paper acknowledged a significant violation of the proportional hazards assumption in cancer mortality, a red flag that time-to-event models were inappropriate. Instead of adjusting with valid statistical models for non-proportional hazards, the authors sliced the data post hoc to generate a story and dismissed the result as exploratory. Meanwhile, they mentioned in passing that fewer advanced or metastatic cancers occurred in the vitamin D group-but offered no data. How Design Choices Shape Public Understanding The public interpretation of VITAL has been simple and sweeping: vitamin D doesn't help. That perception has reshaped policy, funding, and clinical guidance. Combined with errant policy based on acknowledged errors, It is dangerous and a risk to public health. But what the trial actually tested was much narrower: Does high-dose vitamin D provide additional benefit in a mostly vitamin D-sufficient, highly compliant, aging American cohort already permitted to take moderate doses on their own? And does it do so within 5 years? Given those conditions, the null result was foreordain...

By Clayton J. Baker, MD at Brownstone dot org. (For the purposes of this essay, we will focus on fatal outcomes of multiple simultaneous injections, although nonfatal harms from this practice are also real and even more common.) The Fourth Big Lie of Vaccinology - declaring multiple simultaneous injections to be safe - is a reckless and sometimes deadly false assumption that has no legitimate scientific basis. The simultaneous administration of multiple different vaccines, especially in children, is now standard practice in the United States. It has intensified over the past couple of decades, as additional shots have been added to the bloated CDC vaccination schedules. However, this practice has never been properly investigated, nor demonstrated to be safe. This Big Lie has been imposed onto everyday pediatric practice to allow the excessive pediatric vaccine schedule to be administered in an expedient manner for both doctors and parents. After all, if a family adheres to the current CDC recommended pediatric vaccine schedule, a child will receive well over 70 total doses of 23 different vaccines by age 18. Who would bring their child to the pediatrician more than 70 times in eighteen years to get one shot at a time? Spacing out shots would be the prudent approach for those choosing to vaccinate, given the complete lack of safety data regarding giving multiple shots at once, and the clear evidence of potential harm. However, it would be highly impractical. Furthermore, it would reveal to all involved the preposterous excess of the current CDC pediatric vaccine schedule. Why on Earth does a healthy child need to be injected an average of 4 or 5 times per year between birth and their 18th birthday? Dragging one's child to the pediatrician that often would draw public attention the following facts: unvaccinated or minimally vaccinated minority populations such as the Amish thrive, with much lower rates of autism, ADHD, and other disorders children in the 1980s and 1990s received only a fraction of the shots on today's schedule, and they were significantly healthier than today's children multiple other developed nations recommend only a fraction of the shots on the CDC schedule, while boasting superior pediatric and general health outcomes But if the "experts" simply declare it "safe" to administer multiple shots at once and group those shots together in large salvos of multiple vaccinations, the whole operation becomes more feasible (not to mention less obviously excessive) for pediatricians and parents alike. Never mind the cumulative toxicity or drug-drug interactions the children face. "Kids are resilient," remember? The Deadly Ritual of the "Catch-Up Visit" With 70-plus doses recommended before age 18, every so often some poor urchin is bound to fall behind with his vaccinations. But fear not. The concept of a "catch-up visit" is well established in pediatrics. In this practice, a child who is behind the official schedule is brought in to be injected with the vaccines he has not yet received, whatever the combination may be. Vaccine zealots have heartily endorsed the "catch-up visit" for decades. In 2002, vaccinologist Dr. Paul Offit notoriously claimed that children possess "the theoretical capacity to respond to about 10,000 vaccines at any one time." An article in the American Academy of Pediatrics' flagship journal Pediatrics, with Offit as lead author, endorsed the notion. In 2023, the World Health Organization, in cooperation with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, GAVI, and promoted by Chelsea Clinton, started "The Big Catch Up," a worldwide program to provide the wonders of multiple simultaneous vaccinations to children worldwide. What clinical studies have been performed verifying the safety and effectiveness of this hyper-aggressive approach? None. There are reasons for the lack of clinical studies supporting multiple simultaneous vaccinations. The first reason, of course, is that v...