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Evacuations urged in Tampa Bay ahead of Hurricane Milton

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“We’re talking about storm surge values higher than the ceiling,”  “Please, if you’re in the Tampa Bay area, you need to evacuate.”

Florida residents in and near Tampa Bay are strongly urged to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton, a Category 5 storm that could increase its intensity.

In the Atlantic Basin, Milton at 18 hours is the second-fastest storm to go from Category 1 to 5. Wilma in 2005 needed just 12. Milton’s maximum sustained winds measured Monday morning were 160 mph.

Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie in Tallahassee on Monday said the ceilings in the state’s emergency operations center were 10 feet, 8 inches tall. The surge forecast for Tampa Bay from the National Hurricane Center is from 8 to 12 feet.

“We’re talking about storm surge values higher than the ceiling,” Guthrie said. “Please, if you’re in the Tampa Bay area, you need to evacuate. If they have called for your evacuation order, I beg you, I implore you, to evacuate. Drowning deaths due to storm surge are 100% preventable if you leave. We had situations where people died of drowning in Hurricane Ian. Had they just gone across the bridge from Estero Bay, Sanibel Island and so on, just across the bridge to the first available shelter that had capacity, they’d still be alive today.”

According to the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. advisory, the storm is packing winds of 160 mph and is predicted to make landfall on the Gulf Coast of Florida either Wednesday night or Thursday morning. If the storm continues to intensify, it could become a Category 5 storm.

Hurricane Helene landed in the Big Bend region on Sept. 26. While Florida took a wallop, the remnants did the most severe damage in the mountains of North Carolina and Tennessee. At 236, the death toll is fourth most from a hurricane in America since 1950.

Gov. Ron DeSantis discussed Hurricane Helene debris removal from the Tampa Bay area after workers found one of the gates locked and unmanned at the Pinellas County landfall despite the two-term Republican’s executive order that required landfills to remain open 24 hours to accept wreckage.

The Florida Highway Patrol, according to DeSantis, “took matters into their own hands,” fastened some rope to the gate and ripped it open so trucks carrying debris could dump their cargo there. He said crews already hauled 500 truckloads with 9,000 cubic yards of Helene debris from the barrier islands in Pinellas County and 180,000 cubic yards statewide.

“We need as much of this debris picked up as possible, this creates a safety hazard, and it also will increase the damage that Milton could do with flying debris,” DeSantis said. “All local entities should comply with this order and work around the clock to accomplish this mission. We don’t have time for bureaucracy and red tape.”

DeSantis said 800 National Guardsmen have been activated for debris removal in coastal areas affected by Helene, with 5,000 already on duty and 3,000 mobilized prior to Milton’s landfall. He also said the state suspended all tolls in west and central Florida such as the tolled part of Interstate 75 known as Alligator Alley, which connects Naples on the Gulf Coast with Fort Lauderdale on the Atlantic Coast.

DeSantis issued an emergency declaration on Saturday for Alachua, Baker, Bradford, Brevard, Broward, Charlotte, Citrus, Clay, Collier, Columbia, DeSoto, Dixie, Duval, Flagler, Gilchrist, Glades, Hamilton, Hardee, Hendry, Hernando, Highlands, Hillsborough, Indian River, Lafayette, Lake, Lee, Levy, Madison, Manatee, Marion, Martin, Miami-Dade, Monroe, Nassau, Okeechobee, Orange, Osceola, Palm Beach, Pasco, Pinellas, Polk, Putnam, Sarasota, Seminole, St. Johns, St. Lucie Sumter, Suwanee, Taylor, Union and Volusia counties.

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COVID-19

Trump DOJ seeks to quash Pfizer whistleblower’s lawsuit over COVID shots

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From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

The Justice Department attorney did not mention the Trump FDA’s recent admission linking the COVID shots to at least 10 child deaths so far.

The Trump Department of Justice (DOJ) is attempting to dismiss a whistleblower case against Pfizer over its COVID-19 shots, even as the Trump Food & Drug Administration (FDA) is beginning to admit their culpability in children’ s deaths.

As previously covered by LifeSiteNews, in 2021 the BMJ published a report on insider information from a former regional director of the medical research company Ventavia, which Pfizer hired in 2020 to conduct research for the company’s mRNA-based COVID-19 shot.

The regional director, Brook Jackson, sent BMJ “dozens of internal company documents, photos, audio recordings, and emails,” which “revealed a host of poor clinical trial research practices occurring at Ventavia that could impact data integrity and patient safety […] We also discovered that, despite receiving a direct complaint about these problems over a year ago, the FDA did not inspect Ventavia’s trial sites.”

According to the report, Ventavia “falsified data, unblinded patients, employed inadequately trained vaccinators, and was slow to follow up on adverse events reported in Pfizer’s pivotal phase III trial.” Overwhelmed by numerous problems with the trial data, Jackson filed an official complaint with the FDA.

Jackson was fired the same day, and Ventavia later claimed that Jackson did not work on the Pfizer COVID-19 shot trial; but Jackson produced documents proving she had been invited to the Pfizer trial team and given access codes to software relating to the trial. Jackson filed a lawsuit against Pfizer for violating the federal False Claims Act and other regulations in January 2021, which was sealed until February 2022. That case has been ongoing ever since.

Last August, U.S. District Judge Michael Truncale dismissed most of Jackson’s claims with prejudice, meaning they could not be refiled. Jackson challenged the decision, but the Trump DOJ has argued in court to uphold it, Just the News reports, with DOJ attorney Nicole Smith arguing that the case concerns preserving the government’s unfettered power to dismiss whistleblower cases.

The rationale echoes a recurring trend in DOJ strategy that Politico described in May as “preserving executive power and preventing courts from second-guessing agency decisions,” even in cases that involve “backing policies favored by Democrats.”

Jackson’s attorney Warner Mendenhall responded that the administration “really sort of made our case for us” in effectively admitting that DOJ is taking the Fair Claims Act’s “good cause” standard for state intervention to mean “mere desire to dismiss,” which infringes on his client’s “First Amendment right to access the courts, to vindicate what she learned.”

Mendenhall added that in a refiled case, Jackson “may be able to bring a very different case along the same lines, but with the additional information” to prove fraud, whereas rejection would send the message that “if fraud involves government complicity, don’t bother reporting it.”

“The truth is we do not know if we saved lives on balance,” admitted FDA Chief Medical Officer Vinay Prasad in a recent leaked email. “It is horrifying to consider that the U.S. vaccine regulation, including our actions, may have harmed more children than we saved. This requires humility and introspection.”

The COVID shots have been highly controversial ever since the first Trump administration’s Operation Warp Speed initiative prepared and released them in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a large body of evidence has steadily accumulated over the past five years indicating that the COVID jabs failed to prevent transmission and, more importantly, carried severe risks of their own.

Ever since, many have intently watched and hotly debated what President Donald Trump would do about the situation upon his return to office. Though he never backed mandates like former President Joe Biden did, for years Trump refused to disavow the shots to the chagrin of his base, seeing Operation Warp Speed as one of his crowning achievements. At the same time, during his latest run he embraced the “Make America Healthy Again” movement and its suspicion of the medical establishment more broadly.

So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine advocate, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current jabs optional but not supporting work to develop successors.

In a July interview, FDA Commissioner Marty Makary asked for patience from those unsatisfied by the administration’s handling of the shots, insisting more time was needed for comprehensive trials to get more definitive data.

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International

Trump admin wants to help Canadian woman rethink euthanasia, Glenn Beck says

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Jolene Van Alstine, approved for state-sanctioned euthanasia after enduring long wait times to receive care for a rare parathyroid disease, is in need of a passport to enter the U.S.

Well-known American media personality Glenn Beck says he has been in touch with the U.S. State Department to help a Canadian woman in Saskatchewan reconsider euthanasia after she sought assisted suicide due to long medical wait times to address her health problems.

As reported by LifeSiteNews on Tuesday, Canadian woman Jolene Van Alstine was approved to die by state-sanctioned euthanasia because she has had to endure long wait times to get what she considers to be proper care for a rare parathyroid disease.

Van Alstine’s condition, normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism (nPHPT), causes her to experience vomiting, nausea, and bone pain.

Her cause caught the attention of Beck and many other prominent Americans and Canadians on X.

In an update today on X, Beck said, “Jolene does not have a passport to gain legal entry into the U.S., but my team has been in touch with President (Donald) Trump’s State Department.”

“All I can say for now is they are aware of the urgent life-saving need, and we had a very positive call,” he added.

Beck had said before that he was in “contact with Jolene and her husband” and that he had “surgeons who emailed us standing by to help her.”

As of press time, neither the State Department nor other officials have not yet confirmed Beck’s claim that he has been in touch with them.

As a result of Van Alstine’s frustrations with the healthcare system, she applied for Canada’s Medical Assistance in Dying (MAiD) and was approved for January 7.

A new Euthanasia Prevention Coalition report revealed that Canada has euthanized 90,000 people since 2016, the year it was legalized.

As reported by LifeSiteNews recently, a Conservative MP’s private member’s bill that, if passed, would ban euthanasia for people with mental illness received the full support of the Euthanasia Prevention Coalition.

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