From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Fox News declared Trump the winner of the 2024 presidential election after he picked up the swing states of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Republican former President Donald Trump is projected to win this year’s election to become the 47th president of the United States, defeating Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris.

Fox News called the 2024 presidential race for Trump around 1:50 a.m. EST on Wednesday after declaring him the winner of swing states Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.

Republican are also projected to win control of the Senate with at least 51 seats, though control of the House is not known yet.

Trump, the populist celebrity businessman who won one of the most stunning political upsets in 2016 but was ousted in 2020’s intensely disputed election, easily claimed the party’s 2024 presidential nomination, thanks in large part to sympathy generated by Democrat-led prosecution efforts against him in multiple jurisdictions.

While his leftward moves on abortion led some pro-lifers and conservatives to abstain from voting for him, most ultimately remained in his camp due to the left-wing, pro-abortion radicalism of the alternative, first President Joe Biden and then Harris, following her replacement of the 81-year-old incumbent as the party nominee after a disastrous televised debate highlighted his severely diminished physical and mental stamina.

Harris, a former U.S. senator from California who was ranked the most liberal member of the Senate and had a 100% pro-abortion voting record, made abortion the centerpiece of her campaign and pledged to sign a federal law that would legalize virtually unrestricted abortion in all 50 states. She also ran as a militant supporter of all aspects of the LGBT movement, including “gender transitions” for minors, taxpayer funding for transgender surgeries, and LGBT indoctrination of children in schools and vowed to sign the pro-LGBT “Equality Act” if elected.

Despite being Biden’s default successor as his second-in-command, Harris had long been beleaguered by discontent with her own job performance, ability to connect with non-liberal voters, and doubts as to whether she would fare any better against Trump.

Still, she quickly overtook Trump in polls of the national popular vote, although the race remained extremely close up to the end in the swing states that would determine the actual Electoral College outcome. In the campaign’s closing days, the national polls tightened to the point that Trump retook the lead, with many predicting a Trump win due to Trump resonating with voters’ preeminent concerns about the economy and immigration. Harris was largely unsuccessful at distancing herself from Biden’s record on both, in favor of a heavy focus on turning out pro-abortion voters.

Trump opposes underage “gender transitions,” LGBT ideology in schools, and allowing gender-confused males to compete in women’s sports and use female bathrooms. The Republican former president has pledged to criminalize “transitioning” minors without parental consent and ban federally funded healthcare providers from subjecting children to transgender drugs and surgeries, among other actions.

On abortion, Trump, who had a pro-life record as president, has said that he would not sign a federal abortion ban or prohibit abortion pills and has embraced in vitro fertilization (IVF) while upholding Dobbs v. Jackson, the Supreme Court decision that overturned Roe v. Wade and once again allows states to ban abortion. In February, nearly 90,000 babies were estimated to have been saved so far due to the Dobbs ruling.

Trump appointed three Supreme Court justices who voted to reverse Roe v. Wade and is expected to have the opportunity to fill more Supreme Court seats, especially now that Republicans will control Senate.

Sam Cooper 

In an explosive admission, Parliament’s Canada-China Committee has confirmed that Canada’s spy agency, CSIS, issued a direct and unheeded warning to senior health officials in August 2018, raising concerns about “insider threat activities” linked to Dr. Xiangguo Qiu and her husband, Keding Cheng.

This alert, delivered seven months before the couple’s network—with connections to the highest levels of Chinese biological weapons research—coordinated the shipment of live Ebola and Henipah virus samples from Canada’s high-security National Microbiology Laboratory (NML) to the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), highlighted risks posed by their continued access to sensitive materials.

“CSIS held a briefing for personnel responsible for security at [Public Health Canada],” in August 2018 that “focused on foreign interference and included possible indicators of insider threat activities, as well as other security risks,” according to CSIS’s submission to the Committee. In CSIS’s presentation, “student programs were identified as being one of these possible threat vectors,” prompting “[Public Health Canada] to flag two scientists to CSIS, Dr. Cheng and Dr. Qiu,” the Committee report, released Tuesday, states.

Despite these explicit warnings, no immediate restrictions were placed on Qiu, Cheng, or their Chinese students’ access to Canada’s sensitive research materials. In December 2018, Public Health Canada authorized a fact-finding investigation into the concerns, but the delayed response effectively allowed them to continue their operations, further endangering Canada’s security.

The Committee report also finds—like the ongoing Hogue Commission—that Justin Trudeau’s government, including senior bureaucrats and ministers, showed a reluctance to act on or even acknowledge urgent alerts from CSIS, exposing a stark divide between CSIS’s view of Chinese threats and Trudeau’s.

Dr. Qiu’s associations with China’s military and scientific programs had deep roots. She began her work at the Winnipeg NML in 2003, followed by her husband’s employment there in 2006.

As early as 2013, Keding Cheng filled out an application for the PRC’s “Science and Technology Innovation Talent Program of Henan Province,” requiring applicants to “passionately love the socialist motherland [PRC]” and maintain Chinese citizenship.

By 2016, Dr. Qiu was nominated for an award by a senior military official from the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, recognizing her collaborations with Major-General Chen Wei, a leading figure in China’s biological weapons research. CSIS investigations revealed that Dr. Qiu and Major-General Chen collaborated on multiple research projects dating back to 2012.

Dr. Qiu’s use of Canada’s facilities to benefit China was well recognized in Beijing. An award nomination for Dr. Qiu noted that she “used Canada’s Level 4 Biosecurity Laboratory as a base to assist China to improve its capability to fight highly pathogenic pathogens … and achieved brilliant results.”

In October 2016, Dr. Qiu co-authored a paper with Major-General Chen and other scientists affiliated with the Chinese Academy of Military Medical Sciences, further deepening her connection to Chinese military research. By this time, Qiu had also been recruited into China’s Thousand Talents Program—a PRC initiative aimed at harnessing international scientific expertise—and these affiliations, conspicuously absent from her Canadian curriculum vitae, made her a person of interest to CSIS, especially as her work increasingly intersected with China’s biosecurity research.

Concerns over Qiu and Cheng’s activities continued to mount at the NML. In October 2018, Cheng, accompanied by a restricted visitor, attempted to exit the lab with two Styrofoam containers, claiming they were empty. By January 2019, Cheng breached security again by using another employee’s passcode to enter the NML.

On March 23, 2019, Public Health Canada received its fact-finding report, which advised administrative investigations into Qiu and Cheng. Yet, only days later, on March 31, live samples of Ebola and Henipah viruses were shipped from the NML to the WIV, highlighting critical lapses in Canada’s security protocols.

In response to these revelations, the Committee’s report outlines recommendations to safeguard Canada’s scientific resources from similar threats in the future. Chief among these is a call for the Government of Canada to immediately terminate all research collaboration with PRC-affiliated entities in sensitive fields, such as artificial intelligence, aerospace, and advanced digital infrastructure.

A key recommendation is to designate the Wuhan Institute of Virology and the Thousand Talents Program as Named Research Organizations under Public Safety Canada, subjecting them to enhanced scrutiny and restricted partnerships due to their potential security risks. Furthermore, the Committee suggests that Canada explore constitutionally compliant legal measures to prevent individuals under national security investigation from leaving the country. Despite RCMP investigations, the couple was able to leave Canada.

As investigations mounted, irregularities in the WIV shipment were noticed, and it was only in January 2021 that Public Health Canada terminated the couple’s employment. Nathalie Drouin, Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council, acknowledged with evident understatement, “it is a timeline that needs to be looked at.” However, Richard Fadden, the director of CSIS from 2009 to 2013, testified that the timeline “was too long” and the viral shipment to WIV “should not have happened.”

In his opinion, the incident at the Winnipeg NML revealed a deep cultural issue long present in Canada’s federal administration. “I don’t think the culture in this particular lab and in large parts of the public service had caught up with the change in facts as we understand China,” Fadden said. His comments emphasize a notable gap between CSIS’s understanding of the Chinese threat and that of Trudeau’s administration.

“This gap in the understanding of risk between national security and science sectors at the federal level, particularly with regard to the threat to Canadian interests posed by actions of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), was illustrated in testimony before the Special Committee,” the report says.

On one hand, Minister of Health Mark Holland noted that “countries such as China are implicating themselves in our domestic processes in a way that would have been unimaginable just five years ago” and are “potentially willing, in this instance, to use pathogens that threaten humanity in order to advance their geopolitical agenda.” But Fadden pointed out that “CSIS was already aware of concerns about the PRC’s actions,” noting that since Xi Jinping’s rise to power in 2013, the institutionalization of espionage and interference techniques by the CCP has intensified.

Adding to these concerns is the Trudeau government’s controversial denial of access to related records, noted by the report, raising questions of transparency and whether there may have been a cover-up of key details surrounding the case.