DAILY CALLER NEWS FOUNDATION—The Biden-Harris administration has granted millions of dollars in funding for a virtual treatment that aims to help cure eating disorders by “affirming” LGBTQIA+ patients’ sexual orientation and gender claims. The U.S. National Institutes of Health awarded Auburn University Assistant Professor of Psychological Sciences Tiffany Brown and San Diego State University Professor of Psychology Aaron Blashill up to $5 million in grants to “develop and provide” the Promoting Resilience to Improve Disordered Eating (PRIDE) treatment—a virtual “identity-affirming eating disorder treatment for LGBTQIA+ patients,” the Auburn University College of Liberal Arts website states. The PRIDE initiative is undergirded by the idea that “identity-related stress” is an “underlying motivator of disordered eating,” and thus that “affirm[ing] and support[ing]” patients’ beliefs that they are LGBTQIA+ can help cure eating disorders. “Even when available, many LGBTQIA+ people across the country feel uncomfortable accessing treatment, for fear of discrimination or lack of understanding,” Brown said of the PRIDE initiative. “That is why we are so excited and honored to receive this grant from the NIMH [National Institute for Mental Health] to evaluate a treatment that integrates approaches that affirm and support LGBTQIA+ identities.” Brown runs Auburn’s Appearance Concerns, Eating, Prevention & Treatment (ACCEPT) lab, which states its aim is to “improve eating disorder treatment for traditionally underserved populations,” according to the Auburn website. Blashill heads San Diego State University’s Body Image, Sexuality and Health lab, which “explores the role body image plays in influencing eating disorders and other health behaviors, with a focus on health disparities among sexual and gender minority individuals.” Blashill co-authored a study published in November entitled, “The Association Between Minority Stressors, Intraminority Stressors, And Borderline Personality Disorder Symptomatology Among Sexual Minority Men,” which linked “minority stressors” such as “internalized homophobia and sexual orientation concealment” to criteria for borderline personality disorder. The $5 million in total potential funding for the PRIDE program comes amid a broader Biden administration effort to fund LGBT initiatives across the globe, including the development of a mobile health app in Malaysia that instructs men on how to more safely engage in drug-fueled intercourse and a sex change program in Guatemala. The incoming Trump administration could be poised to crack down on Biden’s LGBTQIA+ agenda, with President-elect Donald Trump announcing the creation of a Department of Government Efficiency on Nov. 12 that will look to “slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies.” “The woke mind virus consists of creating very, very divisive identity politics…[that] amplifies racism; amplifies, frankly, sexism; and all of the -isms while claiming to do the opposite,” Department of Government Efficiency co-leader Elon Musk said at an event in Italy in December 2023, according to The Wall Street Journal. “It actually divides people and makes them hate each other and hate themselves.” Brown, Blashill, Auburn, San Diego State University, and the National Institutes of Health did not respond to the Daily Caller News Foundation’s requests for comment. Originally published by the Daily Caller News Foundation The post ‘Affirm and Support LGBTQIA+ Identities’: Biden Admin Dishing Out Millions to Treat Eating Disorders With Gay Pride appeared first on The Daily Signal.

No one should be surprised that President Joe Biden lied when he said he would not pardon his corrupt son Hunter before wandering out of office. As much as journalists want to pretend this is just a Dear Old Dad rescue scenario, Hunter Biden enriched most of the Biden clan in his foreign influence-peddling projects, including Joe and Jill. No one’s surprised that Joe Biden would commit this outrage and then fly to Africa to get out of the earshot of reporters. His entire presidency seemed designed to avoid reporters, and never mind that about 95% of them are Biden voters. The surprising occurrence was people on the Left complaining now that Donald Trump has been reelected that the Hunter pardon ruins all their talking points about nobody being above the law. It “muddies the water” of their anti-Trump crusades. How did these supposedly smart people figure this scandal was going to end? New York Times White House reporter Peter Baker wrote the pardon would “make it harder for Democrats to defend the integrity of the Justice Department and stand against Mr. Trump’s unapologetic plans to use it for political purposes.” At this late and ridiculous juncture, Baker and other journalists are still engaged in the fiction that the Biden Justice Department wasn’t used for political purposes, and certainly not like Trump, who wants “retribution.” Just start with the Biden Justice Department’s oppressively overwrought prosecution of the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. More than 1,000 Americans have been convicted (a large chunk of them in plea deals), and about 350 trials are still pending. Almost four years later, the FBI is still hunting down suspects. It’s easy to categorize this aggression as “retribution” for challenging Joe Biden’s election certification. Take 72-year-old “Praying Grandma” Rebecca Lavrenz, who’s now serving six months of home confinement in Colorado after being found guilty in August of this year. Her “crime”? Lavrenz watched other rioters breach barricades and overrun a police line on the Capitol’s Rotunda steps, prosecutors said. She then spent approximately 10 minutes inside the Capitol. Prosecutors sought 10 months behind bars. Ten months for 10 minutes. Anyone who doesn’t think this sounds ridiculously overwrought probably watches MSNBC 12 hours a day. This is the kind of “Jan. 6 criminal” that the leftists are already protesting might be pardoned by Trump next year. How does Grandma compare to Hunter Biden’s tax evasion and gun crimes? The Justice Department started investigating Hunter Biden in 2018 (but nobody reported it). The FBI kept Hunter Biden’s laptop under wraps to protect the Bidens. Under Joe Biden, they kept slow-walking the case. CNN senior legal analyst Elie Honig called the delay “preposterous” in 2023. He said, “Five years? That’s a five-week investigation.” Joe Biden’s Justice Department tried to toss the whole case in the trash can (like Hunter Biden’s gun) with a plea deal in 2023. Only a federal judge stopped that outrage, which led inescapably to the pardon outrage. But Joe Biden screamed in his pardon memo that all this delay and attempted deconstruction was a Hunter persecution. Give us all a break. All the reporters who lecture us about the perils of disinformation and misinformation ruining democracy are the same ones who still pretend that the Biden Justice Department is the pristine antonym of a partisan agency. To use their own formulation, “there is no evidence” that either the Justice Department or their pompom squad in the press have acted in a nonpartisan manner during the Biden presidency. The Hunter pardon doesn’t muddy the waters. The leftist press have been churning mud into the waters this whole time. COPYRIGHT 2024 CREATORS.COM We publish a variety of perspectives. Nothing written here is to be construed as representing the views of The Daily Signal. The post The Press Still Pretends the Justice Department Is Pristine appeared first on The Daily Signal.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. President-elect Donald Trump announced on Wednesday the nomination of Gail Slater, a seasoned policy adviser in technology and media, to lead the Department of Justice’s antitrust division. Slater is tasked with spearheading major antitrust cases involving tech giants such as Google, Visa, and Apple. With a robust background in antitrust law and economic advisory roles, Slater is prepared to advance the ongoing efforts against Big Tech monopolies, an initiative that began under Trump’s previous term. Trump expressed his stance on social media, stating, “Big Tech has run wild for years, stifling competition in our most innovative sector and, as we all know, using its market power to crack down on the rights of so many Americans, as well as those of Little Tech!” During her tenure in 2018 at the White House National Economic Council, Slater contributed to an executive order addressing national security risks from Chinese telecommunications equipment. Her career also includes significant positions at Fox Corp and Roku before she joined JD Vance’s office. JD Vance, the Vice President-elect, has advocated for a comprehensive approach to antitrust enforcement and has lauded the efforts of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. Slater, originally from Dublin, Ireland, started her legal career at Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer in London, eventually moving to Washington. Her decade at the FTC saw her challenging mergers like Whole Foods’ purchase of Wild Oats and later serving as an adviser to Julie Brill, a former commissioner who joined Microsoft. It’s also worth noting though, that Slater’s experience also includes representing major firms like Amazon and Google through the Internet Association. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Trump Taps Gail Slater to Lead Justice Department Shakeup appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The Biden-Harris administration seems determined to do a little more damage to free speech while on the way out and one example is the Department of Justice (DOJ) trying to impose a gag order on Dr. Eithan Haim. Perhaps it’s the haste of it all but a filing to support the request for the gag order cites a number of X posts that Haim should be prevented from reposting, the inclusion of which has variously been described by their authors as “absolutely insane,” “unbelievable,” etc. move by the DOJ. This new filing comes in the case United States v. Haim, where the doctor – a Texas Children’s Hospital whistleblower, who revealed some controversial transgender medical practices – is sued for alleged felony violation of HIPAA by exposing sensitive information. We obtained a copy of the filing for you here. However, those critical of the indictment consider it as yet another attempt to silence dissent and retaliate against Haim. The latest filing doesn’t do anything to dispel that impression: now the DOJ wants to stop him from reposting the many X posts from prominent figures critical of the department as corrupt, and of the prosecution as a way to silence this medical professional. But the DOJ is asking a federal court in Texas to impose the gag order to prevent Haim, and his attorney, from making “inflammatory and unfairly prejudicial statements” that supposedly are “substantially likely” to prevent a fair trial. What these posts contain is criticism and opinion freely expressed on X, including by Haim who has been trying to clear his name and expose what he believes is the DOJ’s attempt to intimidate and silence him as a whistleblower about transgender surgeries on minors. Among the posts is that published half a year ago by Mike Benz, who urged “changing the guard of this corrupt Justice Department” that he mockingly referred to as “Merrick’s Mafia.” One of the whistleblower’s own posts is also cited in the DOJ filing, designed to provide proof that it is necessary to silence him on the platform. Six months ago he posted that the DOJ “wanted to intimidate me into silence using every technique the federal leviathan had at their disposal.” But, according to the DOJ, these examples of freely expressed opinion and criticism could fatally undermine the trial against Haim. X itself tried to oppose the gag order, but that motion was denied. “While the prosecution tries to make it sound like its gag order is reasonable, it would completely prevent Dr. Haim or his counsel from criticizing the prosecution, no matter how correct the criticism,” Haim’s legal team said. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post Lawyers Slam DOJ’s “Insane” Online Gag Order Against Texas Doctor Who Exposed Controversial Practices on Children appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. Critics might say that Lord Richard Allan is failing upward, at least where issues of free speech and responsibility in that context governing are concerned: this member of UK’s communications regulator Ofcom Board has now been appointed to head the new Disinformation and Misinformation Advisory Committee. The government-approved Office of Communications (Ofcom) says that this committee will serve to offer advice regarding “misinformation” and “disinformation” in the way these are “specified” by the country’s sweeping controversial censorship law, Online Safety Act. Allan has spent his career spanning several decades bouncing between government and corporate jobs. His revolving door career has included working for the NHS, then Cisco, a stint as British MP, and most recently as Facebook (Meta) VP Public Policy. Now, Allen is overseeing the work of the nascent committee, which has set out its tasks to include the way providers of regulated services “should deal with disinformation and misinformation;” Ofcom’s requiring information from said services “relating” to disinformation and misinformation, and, Ofcom promoting “media literacy” – specifically in the context of misinformation, etc. “Media literacy” is often code for reinforcing “fact-checking” and collaboration with legacy media in order to prop-up their credibility; and sure enough, describing the committee’s duties, Ofcom states that it will advise on “development of policy in relation to the program of work on media we trust and value.” This is accompanied by reports detailing Ofcom’s (and Allan’s) message around the UK’s general election held earlier this year. According to articles detailing an Ofcom survey, the regulator chooses to interpret the reality in this way: misinformation – seems – to have surged immediately ahead of the vote. So, had it “surged” – or had it not? The Ofcom survey is not one of those “approve/disapprove of,” but based on interviewing people and their subjective impressions. And in that setup, 43% said they encountered disinformation on TV, compared with 21% who claimed the same regarding newspapers and their sites/apps. More people are skeptical, though. 44% agree that “the more a story is edited, the less likely it is to be true” – while a similar percentage think that “important stories are deliberately covered up by traditional news sources (42%).” That leaves the door open to the question of what the prime target of the new committee’s (and Ofcom’s) will turn out to be – misinformation, or repairing the rising mistrust in legacy media. If you're tired of censorship and dystopian threats against civil liberties, subscribe to Reclaim The Net. The post UK’s “Safety” Watchdog Forms New “Misinformation” Taskforce appeared first on Reclaim The Net.

Highlights from the Supreme Court's Oral Arguments Over Ban on Gender Affirming Care

Turns out they likely ate little else.

In the dog-eat-dog world of prehistoric Alaska, it helped to have a fluffy friend.

Our smug academic types love the smell of their own self-importance so much, they demand the rest of us get a whiff!  In the rotting cocoon of Cambridge (UK), one smug “intellectual” is patting herself on the back for earning her PhD with a thesis calling our sense of smell racist! That’s right. In the World of Woke, smell is now a social construct! If you dare walk past a bum digging through a garbage can and smell anything other than the scent of sweet roses, that makes you a racist, classless bigot! Smells a lot like B.S! If you can handle the stench, tune into the latest episode of “Woke of the Weak!”

On Wednesday, Pete Hegseth’s mother Penelope stepped out from private life into the spotlight for a sit-down on Fox & Friends to lay waste to the “almost criminal” liberal media and specifically “discredit” The New York Times for leaking a 2018 e-mail she had written to her son amid his second divorce but quickly regretted. Speaking to co-host Steve Doocy, Mrs. Hegseth started by stating she’d “do anything for my son” and implored “the senators on the Hill especially our female senators” to listen to “the truth” and “not listen to the media.”     Hegseth said, on the e-mail itself, she said the Pete she was dealing with seven years ago was a far different man than the one he is now. “[I]f all went back seven years we would — we would see that maybe we were not the people we are today but they were going through, Pete and his wife at the time were going through a very difficult divorce. It was a very emotional time and I’m sure many of you across the country understand how difficult divorce is on a family. There’s emotions. We say things and I wrote that in haste. I wrote that with deep emotions. I wrote that as a parent,” she said before noting she retracted it hours later. She then called out the liberal media smear campaign as “dangerous,” “threaten[ing]” and “hard on families”: [P]art of today is to discredit the media and how they operate. When they contact you I let a few phone calls go but then they call you and say they threaten you. That’s the first thing they do. They say unless you make a statement we will publish it as is and I think that’s a despicable way to — to treat anyone. Threats are — are dangerous and they’re — they — they’re hard on families. Doocy asked her to address head on the media reports alleging his past was filled with financial and sexual ruin. He also wondered how his family has been grappling with these headlines (click “expand”): DOOCY: Right. There are — and you wanted to come on to talk a little bit and you mentioned a moment ago the media scrutiny. You know, there are allegations of sexual assault, excessive alcohol use, infidelity, financial mismanagement. As a parent that’s really hard though. It’s hard to hear. HEGSETH: Right. Well, our job as parents are to correct. They are to speak truth and I am a passionate person like Pete and — and sometimes emotional words come out. I don’t believe any of that is true, any of it. And I’m here — I wouldn’t be sitting on this — in this chair today if I didn’t believe that about my son. DOOCY: Right. How’s the family holding up? HEGSETH: Oh we — we’re okay. We have a deep, deep faith. Not only in each other but in God and our friends have been amazing. The support we’ve been receiving has been amazing. So we’re trusting in — in our God and in our faith and in our family. DOOCY: What do you say to people who have read the stuff about Pete or heard the stuff about Pete? You’re here, you said he has changed.  HEGSETH: Oh absolutely. DOOCY: How — how do you convince people of that? HEGSETH: Okay. Well, I start with four things. First, I have very intelligent son. I have a leader son. I’ve known that since he was two. He went to Princeton and Harvard. By the way, he returned the Harvard diploma. But I wouldn’t let him return the Princeton because I work too hard for that one. That one’s going to stay, that’s on his wall. He’s written two New York Times bestsellers. Who’s — who what mother can say that? And one of them is about war and defense. So he already has a playbook, so you talk about experience. He’s also put his life on the line twice overseas for our country. One in Iraq and one in Afghanistan. I’m a very proud Blue Star mom. There it is right there. And he’s still a warrior and that’s why he’s still fighting. That’s why we’re all still fighting because we believe in the good. Hegseth then returned to the media chicanery, saying “the way they threaten you I think is — is very hurtful and the person who leaked it — I don’t know who that is and I don’t think I will need to, but Pete is a new person. He’s redeemed, forgiven, changed.”     Doocy pressed again for her to elaborate on how she believes her son has changed since 2018 (click “expand”): DOOCY: I heard you said say just a moment ago, Pene, was — he’s a changed man.  HEGSETH: He is.  DOOCY: So the man you wrote to in 2018 who you were really mad at. HEGSETH: As a mom. DOOCY: He is different than that man. HEGSETH: Absolutely. I believe that with all my heart. And I wouldn’t be sitting here if I didn’t believe he’s the man for the job. DOOCY: What do you — as you look at what is going on in Washington D.C.  HEGSETH: Correct. DOOCY: This — this is the way it works. You know, there — there are people who want Pete to get the job. There are people who don’t want Pete to get the job. As a mother that’s got to be tough. They don’t like my son. Then you add on these allegations and it’s like okay it becomes a little more complicated. HEGSETH: You know, Pete and I —  DOOCY: It becomes much more. HEGSETH: — right. Pete and I are both warriors and we’ve — we’ve developed a really tough skin over the years. First raising Pete and then — and then going through war, saying goodbye to our son to war. What mom needs to do that? And then his accomplishments and his qualities as a leader. He is strong. He is capable and I think his experience, I think the people that Trump has picked are not the ones you would expect. And I love that. He also asked her whether she regrets writing the email, which she replied who doesn’t have “regrets as a parent” and “[i]t’s not an easy job and we’ve all made mistakes.” After she said it’s been “hard” to see all the attention on the Hegseth family, she did largely duck questions about whether she’s worried the firestorm will keep Trump from “hit[ting] the ground running” next month, whether she’d testify before Congress if asked, and if she’s done any investigating as to how the e-mail to her son was leaked to The Times.     She did, however, take the chance to thank Pete’s Fox colleagues:  I want to thank Fox News for all of you at Fox from makeup to — to cameramen to producers to the other hosts and how you’ve grown him as a leader because I think everybody should do a year on Fox. You learn to be a communicator. You learn to be take charge. “[H]e doesn’t misuse women. No. I mean, he — you know, he’s been through some difficult things. I’m not going to list them by name but I would just say that some of those — some of those attachments or descriptions are just not true, especially anymore,” she added, saying she had come “to take on The New York Times” by being “a strong mother, a fighter.” Asked what her message is to The Times, Hegseth was blunt:     I would say I don’t think the way you operate is, it feels almost criminal when reporters call you and threaten you. I don’t think a lot of people know that’s the way they operate. And they — they are in it for the commission, for the money. And they don’t care who they hurt, families, children. And I just — I don’t believe that that is the right way to do things. To see the relevant FNC transcript from December 4, click here.