FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have repeatedly supported “gender-affirming care” for “transgender” minors, but the National Institutes of Health has approved multiple research grants acknowledging there is “scant evidence” to support the idea that experimental medical interventions improve the lives of children who identify as the opposite sex. America First Legal, a nonprofit organization that describes its mission as protecting Americans’ rights from “an unholy alliance of corrupt special interests, big tech titans, the fake news media, and liberal Washington politicians,” filed a Freedom of Information Act request aiming to uncover communications between the White House and the NIH regarding potential harm to children and adolescents caused by the interventions euphemistically referred to as “gender-affirming care.” “While the rest of the world has rightfully pulled back on life-altering ‘gender’ experiments on children, the Biden-Harris administration is full steam ahead despite scant and dubious ‘evidence’ of any so-called benefits but plenty of data of the clear and obvious harm,” Ian Prior, a senior adviser at America First Legal, told The Daily Signal in a written statement Friday. Prior was referring to European countries such as the United Kingdom, Sweden, and Finland that have begun to reverse the trend of pushing “gender-affirming care” on children. “America First Legal is committed to finding out exactly what the Biden-Harris administration knew, didn’t know, and didn’t care about while they were pushing this crime against humanity on our nation’s children,” Prior added. The records request, provided exclusively to The Daily Signal, asks the NIH for “all communications with the White House and the Executive Office of the President regarding the potential harm to children and adolescents caused by ‘gender affirming’ care.” In the request, America First Legal cites documents obtained by Children’s Health Defense, a nonprofit founded by presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Those records show that the National Institutes of Health approved multiple grants for research into “gender-affirming care” that acknowledge the scarcity of evidence supporting such medical interventions. “Children’s Health Defense is happy to provide this [Freedom of Information Act] information to AFL for further analysis and investigation,” Mary Holland, the group’s CEO, said in a written statement. “The public needs to understand fully the government’s policies on transgenderism, especially as it relates to children.” NIH_FOIA_Youth Gender Affirming Care_2024-09-25Download NIH Grants Reveal ‘Scant Evidence’ Children’s Hospital Los Angeles applied for a research grant for which the NIH first awarded funds in 2015, according to records provided to Children’s Health Defense. The federal government has awarded $7.5 million to date for this research. When requesting funds, Children’s Hospital Los Angeles wrote that it aimed to “expand the scant evidence-base currently guiding the clinical care of [transgender and gender dysphoric] youth and thus, is of considerable public health significance.” (Gender dysphoria refers to the condition of persistently and painfully identifying with the gender opposite one’s biological sex.) The hospital’s grant application noted that, while previous studies focused on adults who underwent “treatments,” “no known U.S. studies have examined similar outcomes among transgender youth with gender dysphoria.” “No U.S. data have been collected on the longer-term physiological impact on [transgender and gender-nonconforming] youth initiating [gonadatropin-releasing hormone agonists] in early puberty,” the grant application noted, referring to the drugs often euphemistically referred to as “puberty blockers.” The Food and Drug Administration has not approved these drugs—first developed to treat cancers that feed on testosterone and estrogen—for gender dysphoria among minors. Prisons use the same drugs to carry out the “chemical castration” of sex offenders. The hospital’s grant application noted, “Very limited data also exist on the longer-term psychosocial outcomes of [transgender and gender dysphoric] youth initiating any gender-affirming medical care.” Children’s Health Defense also obtained a grant application from the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, which noted a “dearth of evidence on health care needs of [transgender and non-binary] individuals after surgery, their psychosocial adjustment during this phase of their identity development, their quality of life and long-term physical and emotional wellbeing.” It also noted the “significant gap in the current evidence on best practices.” The federal government has awarded $2.8 million for this research, first funded in 2021. Finally, the nonprofit highlighted a grant to Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center. Since August 2022, the federal government has spent $1.7 million on this research. This study aims to clarify whether the use of estrogen in males who identify as female leads to increasing blood clots. The grant application laid out a hypothesis: “Youth receiving estrogen for [‘gender-affirming’ hormone therapy] will exhibit progressive prothrombotic changes in the coagulation system that increase with longer time on [‘gender-affirming’ hormone therapy].” The application acknowledged that “the thrombosis risk of using estrogen [‘gender-affirming’ hormone therapy] in youth as per current practice guidelines is unknown,” but that the longer an adult male takes estrogen as a cross-sex hormone, the greater his risk of blood clots, studies show. Those previous studies are inadequate, the application noted, because “studies reporting an association of [‘gender-affirming’ hormone therapy] with thrombosis were conducted with outdated treatment regimens and did not include [transgender] youth, who are likely to receive [‘gender-affirming’ hormone therapy] for a much longer time than [transgender] adults.” NIH 61083 recordsDownload The Biden-Harris Narrative Despite the lack of evidence supporting “gender-affirming care” for minors, the Biden-Harris administration has loudly supported so-called puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones for Americans under 18. America First Legal pointed to a public White House statement from March 31, 2022, celebrating the “Transgender Day of Visibility,” as evidence of the White House’s loud support for these experimental treatments. That document laid out many actions the Biden-Harris administration took to promote “gender-affirming care” for minors. Those actions included: The Justice Department sent a letter to state attorneys general suggesting that laws banning experimental interventions for kids might violate federal law. A document from the Department of Health and Human Services purported to explain why “gender-affirming care” is “important to transgender, nonbinary, and other gender expansive young people’s well-being.” HHS actions to “support transgender children in receiving the care they need” in response to states that “target parents and doctors who provide gender-affirming care to transgender children with child abuse investigations.” In a particularly noteworthy passage, the White House document also noted that the NIH will “increase funding for research on gender-affirming procedures to further develop the evidence base for improved standards of care.” In other words, while most of the administration was working overtime to protect these experimental transgender interventions on kids, at least one agency was asking whether pumping cross-sex hormones and chemical castration drugs into kids was a good idea after all. Previous Evidence Against ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ America First Legal previously exposed a high-ranking FDA official who urged the federal agency to approve “puberty blockers” for minors, even while acknowledging that preliminary studies revealed that minors who take the drugs experience “increased risk of depression and suicidality, as well as increased seizure risk.” Internal documents from the World Professional Association for Transgender Health, a pro-transgender activist group, revealed that WPATH leaders knew about various side effects of “gender-affirming care,” including cancer in teens, reduced sexual function, and the lack of informed consent for procedures with lifelong impacts. These medical professionals endorse the experimental treatments anyway. Many doctors also testified in favor of a Florida rule that would prevent Medicaid dollars from funding “gender-affirming care.” The doctors—including psychiatrists, endocrinologists, neurologists, and a former WPATH leader—testified that these interventions are experimental and may do more harm than good. The post Did Biden, Harris Know There’s ‘Scant Evidence’ for ‘Gender-Affirming Care’ When They Pushed It on Kids? Group Demands Answers appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Time for a Trump 'Purge?'

President Donald Trump posted a prayer to social media on Sunday, asking Saint Michael for help battling "the wickedness and snares of the Devil" — just days ahead of his return to Butler, Pennsylvania, where in July a Democratic donor shot him and killed the heroic patriarch of the Comperatore family. The prayer and accompanying image of Saint Michael vanquishing Satan, reposted by the Trump campaign, were largely well received. Michael is recognized as an archangel in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, and the prayer simply asks for help routing evil. However, a number of leftists reflexively expressed shock and horror, in some cases showcasing cultural and historical ignorance — just as Ana Navarro of "The View" did when responding to Trump's happy birthday wishes to the Virgin Mary on the feast of her nativity earlier this month. Former Clinton Labor Secretary and Harris booster Robert Reich led the pack in ignoring or at the very least overlooking the fact that the post coincided with Michaelmas, the feast day of the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Raphael, which is celebrated by Catholics — of which there are nearly 1.4 billion worldwide and at least 52 million stateside, including Trump's wife, Melania — as well as by Lutherans and Anglicans. 'By the power of God, cast into hell Satan.' "Trump increasingly suggests that he is God's chosen instrument of wrath and that his opponents are 'evil spirits' to be 'cast into hell,'" tweeted Reich, whose fellow Democrats helped set the stage for two known assassination attempts with incendiary rhetoric. "If you don't find this terrifying, you're not paying attention." Reich, now a public policy professor at the University of California, Berkeley, apparently found this prayer terrifying: Saint Michael the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our defense against the wickedness and snares of the Devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray, and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly hosts, by the power of God, cast into hell Satan, and all the evil spirits, who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen. The prayer was written by Pope Leo XIII following an Oct. 13, 1884, vision of demonic attacks on the church from within — and of the archangel tossing the offending demons back into the abyss. It was long recited after Mass, though that obligation ended in 1965. However, when discussing preparations for spiritual battle 13 years after he was wounded in an assassination attempt, Pope John Paul II said, "Even though today this prayer is no longer recited at the end of the Eucharistic celebration, I invite everyone not to forget it, but to recite it to obtain help in the battle against the forces of darkness and against the spirit of this world." According to the Diocese of Gary, Indiana, Pope Pius XI ordered the recitation of the prayer in 1929 for the conversion of Russia. 'But the sword / Of Michael from the Armorie of God / Was giv'n him temperd so, that neither keen / Nor solid might resist that edge.' Saint Michael is one of the three angels mentioned by name in the scriptures and is regarded by multiple Christian denominations as the patron saint of the police, firemen, and members of the military. Michael is also the patron saint of numerous countries and cities, including Kyiv, Ukraine. EWTN indicated that Michael is referred to in two chapters of the Old Testament (in Daniel 10:13, 21 and 12:1) and in at least two books of the New Testament (Jude 1:9 and Revelation 12:7). Revelation 12:7-9 states: And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. The prayer Reich found terrifying not only has religious significance but engages a key character in the Western literary canon. In Book Six of John Milton's "Paradise Lost," Saint Michael introduces the proud and rebellious Lucifer to something called pain: But the sword Of Michael from the Armorie of God Was giv'n him temperd so, that neither keen Nor solid might resist that edge: it met The sword of Satan with steep force to smite Descending, and in half cut sheere, nor staid, But with swift wheele reverse, deep entring shar'd All his right side; then Satan first knew pain. Robert Reich's concern-mongering post was not only slapped with a community note on X, highlighting some of this context, but ridiculed. 'You're totally delusional Robert.' Auron MacIntyre, podcast host and columnist at Blaze Media, responded, "Any public expression of Christianity is now interpreted as a threat to our ruling order." Conservative commentator Michael Knowles noted, "Today is Michaelmas, which Christians have celebrated for ~1,500 years. This specific prayer, composed by Pope Leo XIII, was recited after every Low Mass in the world for 86 years. Religious and historical ignorance among our 'elite' is reaching record highs." Seamus Coughlin of FreedomToons wrote, "Leo XIII: I will compose a prayer to scare the devil away[.] Marxist Professor: This prayer is terrifying." "This is one of the most popular prayers in the Catholic faith and in no way suggests that Trump is saying he's God's 'chosen instrument of wrath,'" tweeted conservative filmmaker Robby Starbuck. "You're totally delusional Robert." Reich admitted in March that the lead-up to the election would test the "individual and collective capacities." In the months since, he appears to have found his limits on his blog, where he blamed Trump for the two apparent Democratic assassination attempts against him. 'We will FEAR NOT.' Reich was not alone in expressing displeasure about Trump's prayer post. New Atheist author James Lindsay wrote that it's "a damn shame Trump has been pulled into this, probably on bad advice." Claiming he grew up Catholic but had virtually no experience with Michaelmas, Lindsay suggested, "The Left will use it to characterize Trump as a religious warlord type, fitting the worst of the Operation Christian Nationalism motifs. Because of the Left/Right dialectic in play in the op, we'll all be forced to take a side or dip out into irrelevance." Lindsay was similarly met with some notes indicating, again, projection might be at play. While the posting of the prayer may have factored into a broader strategy to appeal to those American Catholics now cluing into Kamala Harris' antagonism for their faith and beliefs, Trump appears to have adopted a more prayerful outlook since his brush with death on July 13. "It was God alone who prevented the unthinkable from happening. We will FEAR NOT, but instead remain resilient in our Faith and Defiant in the face of Wickedness," he wrote on July 14. Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

We almost had Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft screen projects. That's according to Bloomberg journalist Jason Schreier, who says Activision Blizzard was working with Netflix on a series of projects and implies a lawsuit between the two seemingly put a stop to the collab. Continue reading Netflix, Activision drama allegedly kills Overwatch, Diablo, and StarCraft shows MORE FROM PCGAMESN: Best strategy games, Best space games, StarCraft 2 system requirements

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If successful, the merger would create a combined satellite streaming business with around 20 million US subscribers. | Illustration by Alex Castro / The Verge DirecTV has reached an agreement to acquire Dish, alongside its parent company EchoStar’s wider satellite TV business, for a single dollar — and assume $9.75 billion of Dish’s debt. Private equity firm TPG has arranged a two-step agreement to buy the remaining 70 percent of DirecTV that it didn’t already own from AT&T for a reported $7.6 billion and merge all of that with Dish. The deal announced Monday would combine Dish’s roughly 8.1 million subscribers with the 11 million US subscribers under DirecTV, The New York Times reports. The agreement would see AT&T exit as a part-owner of DirecTV, while EchoStar separates from its TV business to pursue the wonders of Open RAN 5G once the deal is closed in 2025. The DirecTV and Dish merger is... Continue reading…

Image: AMD AMD is releasing new BIOS updates that will boost performance for its Ryzen 9600X / 9700X processors and address some latency issues. The performance improvements and latency reductions arrive around a month after disappointing Zen 5 desktop CPU reviews and appear alongside updates to Windows 11 that include optimized AMD-specific branch prediction for both Zen 4 and Zen 5 chips. CPU reviewers have been reporting a higher-than-expected core-to-core latency across the Ryzen 9000-series of desktop processors, and now AMD has addressed this with a new BIOS optimization. The latest AMD updates for AM5 motherboards include AGESA PI 1.2.0.2 firmware, which AMD says will address some “corner cases” where it takes two transactions to read and... Continue reading…

For centuries, our distant ancestors believed in a plethora of gods and goddesses, having a close relationship with the nature around them and personifying many natural occurrences. But there were some civilizations that moved past that polytheistic belief. They believed that there is only one God - a singular deity above all else. This was known as monotheism, and the Near East is one of its earliest cradles. So, what compelled those ancient cultures to step away from the polytheistic peoples that surrounded them? How did they structure their lives to be centered on a nuanced belief that there is a singular deity? Near East, The Cradle of Change The ancient Near East, often regarded as the cradle of civilization, witnessed the development of some of the most influential and enduring religious systems in human history. It was here that the earliest known examples of polytheistic worship - where societies believed in and venerated multiple gods - flourished. However, among these complex belief systems emerged a revolutionary idea: monotheism, the belief in a single, all-powerful deity. This transition from polytheism to monotheism did not happen in a vacuum. Instead, it was the product of cultural, political, and theological shifts over millennia. The rise of monotheism, particularly through the faith of the Israelites and later reinforced by Zoroastrianism and early Christianity, altered the religious landscape of the Near East and set the stage for the Abrahamic religions that dominate the world today. Read moreSection: NewsGeneralReligionsMyths & LegendsAncient PlacesHistoryAncient TraditionsPremiumPreviewRead Later 

For the first time in 3,500 years, scientists have revealed a likeness of the face of Amenhotep I, the Egyptian pharaoh who founded the Valley of the Kings. This was made possible through a combination of modern technology and historical expertise, offering an intimate glimpse into the appearance of a ruler who ushered in one of ancient Egypt’s golden ages. The Pharaoh Behind the Valley of the Kings Amenhotep I, the second ruler of Egypt's 18th Dynasty, reigned from around 1526 to 1506 BC. Known for his reign of peace and prosperity, he followed in the footsteps of his father, Ahmose I, who expelled the Hyksos invaders and reunited Egypt. Amenhotep I’s reign laid the groundwork for the New Kingdom’s rise to power, and he is credited with establishing the Valley of the Kings as the final resting place for pharaohs and nobles of this era, writes the Daily Mail. Not only was Amenhotep I revered for his military achievements, which included campaigns in Libya and northern Sudan, but he also oversaw significant religious and architectural projects, earning the devotion of his people. After his death at around 35 years of age, Amenhotep I was worshipped as a god, and his mummified body was meticulously preserved. Read moreSection: NewsHistory & ArchaeologyHistoryFamous PeopleRead Later 

The death toll from powerful storm Helene jumped above 100 on Monday, with one county in North Carolina alone reporting 30 deaths, authorities said, as rescuers battled to reach people in need across the southeastern United States.