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Justice Jackson slammed for suggesting First Amendment is ‘hamstringing’ government

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Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson

From LifeSiteNews

By Matt Lamb

Free speech advocates blasted Justice Jackson for defending government censorship efforts and criticizing conservative views about the First Amendment as ‘hamstringing the government.’

Comments made by Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Jackson during a hearing on Monday raised concerns among free speech advocates.

The Supreme Court heard arguments Monday in Murthy v. Missouri, a case concerning collusion efforts between the Biden administration and Big Tech to censor speech about topics like the integrity of the 2020 election and the dangers of the COVID jabs.

“My biggest concern is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways in the most important time period,” Justice Jackson asked Louisiana Solicitor General Benjamin Aguiñaga.

She said further:

Some might say that the government actually has a duty to take steps to protect the citizens of this country, and you seem to be suggesting that that duty cannot manifest itself in the government encouraging or even pressuring platforms to take down harmful information.

So, can you help me? Because I’m really worried about that. Because you’ve got the First Amendment operating in an environment of threatening circumstances, from the government’s perspective, and you’re saying that the government can’t interact with the source of those problems.

“Interact” refers to Biden administration officials working closely with X (formerly known as Twitter), Facebook, Instagram, and other platforms to censor speech. In one example, a Biden administration official quickly got Instagram to delete a parody account of Dr. Anthony Fauci.

The comments from Jackson drew criticism from conservatives and free speech advocates.

Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey said the “hamstringing” nature of the First Amendment is what makes it valuable.

“It is hamstringing, and it’s supposed to. The whole purpose of the Constitution is to protect us from the government, and the government exists to protect our rights,” Bailey told Fox News. “But here, the federal government is ignoring our First Amendment protections and weaponizing the federal government to silence our voices.

“Yes. The first amendment does limit the government. That’s the point of it,” Rick Esenberg, president of the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty, wrote on X.

Charlie Kirk, president of Turning Point USA, pointed out Jackson could not define what a woman is during her Supreme Court hearing.

Jackson also earlier suggested that a “once-in-a-lifetime pandemic” could justify restrictions on free speech, essentially adopting the arguments of the Biden administration.

“I mean, I understood our First Amendment jurisprudence to require heightened scrutiny of government restrictions of speech but not necessarily a total prohibition when you’re talking about a compelling interest of the government to ensure, for example, that the public has accurate information in the context of a once-in-a-lifetime pandemic.”

Many assertions regarding COVID-19 promoted by the Biden administration have since proven to be false, including claims that COVID shots and masks stop transmission of the virus and that COVID shots are not harmful and are beneficial for children.

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Crime

RCMP Bust B.C. Fentanyl Superlab Linked to Mexico and Transnational Exports

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Sam Cooper 

@samthebureau

In a remote mountainous area of British Columbia, federal police have dismantled the largest fentanyl laboratory ever discovered in Canada. This western province has become a critical front in the Five Eyes battle against the production and distribution of deadly synthetic narcotics trafficked globally by networks involving Chinese and Iranian state-sponsored mafias and Mexican cartels.

In a groundbreaking discovery, the RCMP located the superlab in Falkland—a village of 946 residents nestled in the rugged terrain between Calgary and Vancouver—using Phenyl-2-Propanone (P2P) to manufacture methamphetamine. This production method, primarily employed by Mexican cartels, stems from the precursors and scientific expertise Mexican cartels have gathered from elite Chinese criminals since the early 2000s, according to U.S. enforcement sources.

David Teboul, Commander of the RCMP Federal Policing program in the Pacific Region, underscored the significance: “Manufacturing methamphetamine using P2P had not been seen in Western Canada until now,” he said. “The P2P manufacturing method has been the primary method used by Mexican cartels to produce methamphetamine for years.”

Demonstrating the destructive power of the cartels involved, the RCMP seized a staggering cache of illicit substances and weapons. Officers confiscated 54 kilograms of fentanyl, massive amounts of precursor chemicals, 390 kilograms of methamphetamine, 35 kilograms of cocaine, 15 kilograms of MDMA, and 6 kilograms of cannabis. The superlab was described as the largest and most sophisticated of its kind, capable of producing multiple types of illicit drugs.

“To put things into context,” Teboul said, “the over 95 million potentially lethal doses of fentanyl that have been seized could have taken the lives of every Canadian at least twice over.”

A large portion of the product was destined for other countries.

During the investigation, RCMP officers learned of several large shipments of methamphetamine prepared for international export. They intercepted 310 kilograms of methamphetamine before it could leave Canada, preventing a significant quantity from reaching global markets—a critical point as Canada faces pressure from its allies over its role in the global fentanyl and methamphetamine trade.

Teboul noted that the RCMP collaborated with its Five Eyes enforcement partners—an intelligence alliance comprising Canada, the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. Although Teboul did not provide specific details, this cooperation underscores the international scope of the transnational investigation.

The first suspect, Gaganpreet Singh Randhawa, was identified and arrested during raids. He is currently in custody and faces multiple charges, including possession and export of controlled substances, possession of prohibited firearms and devices, and possession of explosive devices. More arrests are expected, Teboul said.

The scale of this criminal network echoes the power and violence fueling gang wars that have rocked British Columbia, putting innocent lives at risk during high-powered shootouts in Vancouver. Investigators seized a total of 89 firearms, including 45 handguns, 21 AR-15-style rifles, and submachine guns—many of which were loaded and ready for use. The searches also uncovered small explosive devices, vast amounts of ammunition, firearm silencers, high-capacity magazines, body armor, and $500,000 in cash.

British Columbia has been grappling with an influx of synthetic opioids like fentanyl, significantly exacerbating the opioid crisis across Canada. The province has witnessed a surge in overdose deaths, prompting law enforcement to intensify efforts against drug production and trafficking networks. Experts highlight weaknesses in Canadian laws and a lack of federal oversight at the Port of Vancouver, which have been exploited by transnational crime and money laundering organizations from China, Iran, and Mexico.

This significant bust comes at a time when Canada is under increased scrutiny from international allies over its role as a hub for the export of fentanyl and methamphetamine. The superlab takedown appears to align with serious concerns raised by lawmakers in Washington about how Canada and Mexico are being used by transnational crime organizations to distribute fentanyl worldwide.

A recent U.S. congressional report argues that the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) strategy relies less on overt military actions and more on covert tactics, including trafficking of fentanyl and leveraging money laundering, aimed at exploiting vulnerabilities across social, economic, and health domains.

“Fentanyl precursors are manufactured in China and shipped to Mexico and Canada. For precursors that arrive in Mexico, Chinese transnational mafias work with Mexican cartels to smuggle and distribute fentanyl in the United States on behalf of the CCP,” the report states. “The DEA confirmed Chinese transnational crime leaders hold government positions in the CCP and indicated that Chinese transnational crime organizations are dedicated to the CCP.”

“The public deserves to know about the CCP’s role in fentanyl production and how the Party is using fentanyl as a chemical weapon to kill Americans,” the report adds. It recommends that Washington publicly “blame the CCP as much as the DEA and its partners currently blame the Sinaloa Cartel” for fentanyl trafficking and urges the government to “educate international allies about CCP chemical warfare” and encourage them to condemn Chinese transnational crime.

According to congressional investigations, Beijing is actively incentivizing the export of fentanyl and methamphetamine worldwide. The report alleges that Chinese criminal organizations, including Triads led by individuals with official positions in the CCP, are working alongside Mexican cartels to generate profit to fund interference operations in America.

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International

RFK Jr: Trump has ‘asked me to clean up the corruption’ in federal health agencies

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From LifeSiteNews

By Emily Mangiaracina

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he has been tasked by Donald Trump with ending the conflicts of interest that now compromise the integrity of U.S. health agencies, with devastating ripple effects on the well-being of Americans.

Former Democrat-turned-independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said Wednesday that former President Donald Trump has asked him to reorganize and “clean up” federal health agencies like the CDC and FDA if Trump is re-elected in November.

Kennedy, who joined Trump’s presidential transition team in late August after dropping out of the race himself and then endorsing the former president, shared in an appearance on NewsNation that Trump wants him to “reorganize the federal health agencies” affecting human health, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the National Institutes of Health (NIH), the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), as well as some of the agencies within the USDA.”

“He’s asked me to clean up the corruption, number one,” Kennedy said. “Number two, end the conflicts of interest.”

In recent years, Kennedy has spoken much publicly about the pattern of corruption and conflicts of interest that he witnessed firsthand during his many years as an environmental attorney. During Kennedy’s presidential run, he discussed how the “corporate capture” of regulatory agencies is the “biggest threat to American democracy.”

As Kennedy explained during his Wednesday NewsNation appearance, “When you litigate these agencies, you get a Ph.D. in corporate capture and how to unravel it.”

According to Kennedy, the problem is pronounced in health agencies, where for example, the FDA “gets 50 percent of its budget from Big Pharma” and the NIH “collects royalties when (a) pharma company sells (its) product,” as he explained in an interview last year.

Kennedy went on to share Wednesday that he has been tasked by Trump with “return(ing)” those U.S. health agencies “to their rich tradition of gold-standard, empirically based, evidence-based medicine.”

He shared that Trump has also tasked him with ending “the chronic disease epidemic in this country,” adding, “And he’s asked me specifically to measurably reduce chronic disease in our children within two years.”

On Wednesday, he cited statistics showing unprecedented, drastically poor patterns of health in Americans, especially in children.

According to Kennedy, a staggering “77% of American boys cannot qualify for the military because of a chronic disease, and that while when he was a child, “the average pediatrician saw one case of diabetes in his lifetime,” now one out of every three kids is diabetic or pre-diabetic.

He further shared that in his generation, only “one in 10,000” has full-blown autism, whereas now the rate is one in 34 children.

“This is an existential threat to the country,” said Kennedy, adding that Trump wants his “legacy to the American people” to be “the end of the chronic disease epidemic.”

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