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In the News
NEWS
The Supreme Court has
agreed to a request by the
Biden administration to
dismiss an upcoming case
challenging a public-charge
rule. ... A7
A lawmaker in Texas has
introduced a bill that would
enable prosecutors to seek
the death penalty for women
who get abortions. ... A8
A Florida Senate commit-
tee has approved a proposal
to advance an election bill that
would ban the use of mail-in
ballot drop boxes. ... A7
The Senate has confirmed
Merrick Garland as attorney
general, with 20 Republicans
joining all Democrats in ap-
proving Biden’s pick. ... A8
The Biden administration
says that the U.S.–Mexico
border is “not open,” while
calling to “expand safe and
legal avenues to the United
States.” ... A2
Chinese leader Xi Jinping
has told China’s armed forces
to strengthen their combat
readiness over the next five
years. ... A9
Young, healthy volunteers
are being deliberately infect-
ed with the CCP virus in the
first human challenge trial in
the UK. ... A11
Alaska has become the
first U.S. state to drop eligi-
bility requirements and al-
low anyone 16 or older to get
a COVID-19 vaccination. ... A4
Five people in Illinois are ac-
cused of committing election
fraud-related offenses during
the Nov. 3 election. ... A4
Goods and services from
China’s Uygur Autonomous
Region of Xinjiang are almost
certainly produced with
forced labor. ... A2
Forty House Republicans
joined all Democrats in re-
jecting Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene’s bid to delay the $1.9
trillion stimulus package be-
fore the debate. ... A5
The Los Angeles teachers
union and school district have
reached an agreement on re-
turning to in-person instruc-
tion. ... A8
BUSINESS
President Joe Biden is con-
sidering tax increases, new
fees, and a corporate tax
rollback to pay for an infra-
structure plan, White House
press secretary Jen Psaki
says. ... A18
The U.S. economy is ex-
pected to grow twice as fast
as earlier forecasts predicted,
a new report says. ... A18
OPINION
Rob Natelson: HR 1 Would
Create Such Chaos We
Would Need a Constitutional
Amendment to Fix It... A13
Jennifer Lahl: She’s My
Mother—She’s My Father...
A14
Patrick Keeney: The Woke
New University... A16
FEATURES
Wisconsin didn’t invent
fried fish, but they certainly
have made the Friday fish fry
a cultural imperative. ...B1
Rice takes more than one
meal to master. Here are two
guides to making the perfect
pot. ...B2
DON’T DELAY.
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Published in New York,
Washington, Houston, Chicago,
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| T H U R S D A Y, M A R C H 11, 2 0 21
BORDER SECURITY
Illegal Border Crossings Hit
More Than 100,000 in February
Border official says administration is working to rebuild
system and border-crossers are ‘looking for a better way of life’
BY CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON
M
cALLEN, Texas—As
President Joe Biden
rolled back several
existing border initia-
tives, the number of people cross-
ing illegally into the United States
has skyrocketed.
In February—despite a week of
freezing weather—Border Patrol
apprehended 100,441 illegal bor-
der-crossers along the southern
The Supreme Court in Washington on Nov. 10, 2020.
FREE SPEECH
Supreme Court Protects Rights
With Official Accountability
BY MARK TAPSCOTT
The Supreme Court’s 8–1 decision
on March 8 to require account-
ability for public officials violating
individuals’ constitutional rights
has huge significance beyond the
college campus where the case
originated, according to one of the
plaintiff’s attorneys.
With only Chief Justice John Rob-
erts dissenting, the high court held
in a case brought by the Alliance
Defending Freedom (ADF) on be-
CONGRESS
Gaetz, Jordan
Request Hearing
on Britney Spears
Conservatorship
BY IVAN PENTCHOUKOV
Reps. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) and Jim
Jordan (R-Ohio) asked the chair-
man of the House Judiciary Com-
mittee on March 9 to convene a
hearing on the conservatorship of
pop singer Britney Spears.
Continued on A3
Accuracy The Epoch Times was founded in 2000 as an independent newspaper with the goal to restore accuracy and
integrity in media. We have received numerous awards for our reporting, including from the Society of Professional
& Integrity Journalists, the Society for News Design, and the New York Press Association.
Truth & Tradition
Border Patrol agents apprehend a busload of illegal
immigrants in Penitas, Texas, on March 10. 2021.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES
Customs and Border Protection Acting
Commissioner Troy Miller (L) testifies
on Capitol Hill in Washington on Sept.
10, 2014.
AP PHOTO/ALEX BRANDON, FILE
half of former Georgia Gwinnett
College student Chike Uzuegbu-
nam that school officials violated
his First Amendment rights by
barring him from sharing about
his Christian faith in a free speech
zone on the campus.
“Campus policy at that time pro-
hibited using the free speech zone
to say anything that ‘disturbs the
peace and/or comfort of person(s).’”
Justice Clarence Thomas wrote for
the majority in describing the policy
Continued on A5
Pentagon Extends National Guard
Deployment at US Capitol Through May 23
BY MIMI NGUYEN LY
About 2,300 National Guard
troops will stay in Wash-
ington at the U.S. Capitol
for another two months, the
Department of Defense an-
nounced March 9.
Defense Secretary Lloyd
Austin approved a request
by the U.S. Capitol Police
for continued National
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES
border, according to Customs and
Border Protection (CBP).
Another 26,000 people evaded
capture, according to Jaeson Jones,
a former Texas Department of Pub-
lic Safety captain who received the
provisional CBP data from inter-
nal sources, which was reviewed
by The Epoch Times.
The February number is almost
triple the apprehensions from Feb-
ruary 2020, when Border Patrol
Continued on A4
SUPREME COURT
Johnson &
Johnson Appeals
$2 Billion Cancer
Verdict Over
Baby Powder to
Supreme Court
Pharmaceutical giant
claims abuse of the
legal system resulted in
giant award, with jury
misinformed about the facts
BY MATTHEW VADUM
Drugmaker Johnson & Johnson is
asking the Supreme Court to review
a $2.11 billion jury verdict from
Missouri over baby powder it pro-
duced that allegedly contained as-
bestos that caused ovarian cancer.
In addition to a vaccine used
against the CCP virus, which
causes the disease COVID-19, the
135-year-old New Jersey-based
company has been known for mak-
ing a variety of talc-based consum-
er products such as its iconic baby
powder, which is the subject of the
litigation.
Continued on A3
CAPITOL HILL
Guard support through May
23, according to a Pentagon
statement. The number of
Guard troops to continue
the support mission at the
Capitol will be about half of
the 5,100 to 5,200 currently
National patrolling the site.
Guardsmen at They had been scheduled
the U.S. Cap-
to leave this weekend prior
itol on March
5, 2021. to the extension.
Continued on A6
VOL . X V I I I | N O . 2 , 915 $1.
TAXES
Biden
Administration
Eyes Raising
Corporate
Tax Rate
BY EMEL AKAN
WASHINGTON—The Biden admin-
istration has signaled that it could
introduce gradual tax increases to
help pay for spending initiatives,
drawing criticism from Republi-
cans who worry that the tax hikes
would hurt the economy.
Tax increases are coming,
there’s no question about it.
Rep. Kevin Brady
As part of his campaign promise,
President Joe Biden proposed rais-
ing the federal corporate tax rate
to 28 percent from the current 21
percent. And Treasury Secretary
Janet Yellen in February indicated
that the tax increases “would prob-
ably phase in slowly over time” and
would help pay for Biden’s big-
spending agenda to be proposed
later this year, including invest-
ments in infrastructure, clean en-
ergy, and education.
According to Rep. Kevin Brady (R-
Texas), a lead architect of the Tax
Cuts and Jobs Act of 2017, Demo-
crats will push for tax increases
immediately after the signing of
the $1.9 trillion relief package ap-
proved by the House Democrats on
March 10.
“Tax increases are coming, there’s
no question about it,” Brady told
Fox Business on March 9.
“They intend to pair it with an in-
frastructure bill—although, right
now, they’re spending almost $2
Continued on A3
NOORULLAH SHIRZADA/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
An Afghan security force personnel
holds a rocket-propelled grenade near
the site of a car bomb attack at Sherzad,
Nangarhar Province, on Jan. 30, 2021.
AFGHANISTAN
US Proposes UN
Meeting With 5
Other Nations for
Comprehensive
Afghan Peace
BY VENUS UPADHAYAYA
NEW DELHI—U.S. Secretary of
State Antony Blinken has proposed
a U.N.-led meeting with five other
nations to support a comprehen-
sive and permanent ceasefire in
Afghanistan, in a letter to Afghan
President Ashraf Ghani.
The nations would include India,
China, Russia, Iran, and Pakistan.
Continued on A10
US–CHINA
BLINKEN AHEAD
OF MEETING WITH
CHINESE OFFICIALS
“[There will be]
no concessions
whatsoever to
the Communist
Chinese Party,”
Secretary of
State Antony
Blinken said.
Read more on A99
A2 | NATION
Biden Administration Says Border ‘Not Open,’
While Calling for Expansion of Legal Entry
BOWEN XIAO
The Biden administration reiterated
on March 10 that the U.S.–Mexico
border is “not open,” while also ex-
pressing a desire to “expand safe
and legal avenues to the United
States,” as it announced the restart-
ing of a program to help minors be
reunited with a parent legally in the
United States.
At a daily press briefing, Special
Assistant to the President & Coor-
dinator for the Southern Border
Ambassador Roberta Jacobson told
reporters the United States “must
build a better immigration system
that reflects our values as Ameri-
cans.” Press secretary Jen Psaki also
was at the briefing.
Jacobson said the administration
is “rethinking asylum processing
to ensure fair and faster consid-
eration,” and said President Joe
Biden is committed to seeking “$4
billion over 4 years to address the
root causes of migration.” The gov-
ernment has already begun spe-
cific actions to undo the previous
administration’s policies, she said.
She also announced the restarting
of the “Central American Minors
Program,” which  Jacobson said
helps “children to be reunited with
a parent who is legally in the United
States.” This program was ended by
the previous administration.
At the same time, Jacobson dis-
couraged migrants from physically
crossing the border in order to enter
the country.
“I want to be clear, neither this an-
nouncement nor any of the other
measures suggest that anyone, es-
pecially children and families with
US Firms
Are Profiting
From Uyghur
Forced Labor:
Expert
MARK TAPSCOTT
A parade of witnesses told the U.S.
Commission on International Reli-
gious Freedom (USCIRF) on March
10 that it’s all but impossible for U.S.
firms to buy goods or services from
China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autono-
mous Region that aren’t produced
with forced labor.
That’s because Chinese Commu-
nist Party (CCP) authorities have
imposed such a pervasive system
of repressive political, economic,
social, and religious policies on the
mostly Muslim population in the
region of northwest China.
“It is a practical impossibility for
a U.S. corporation to source from
the Uyghur region without using
forced labor, which means that ev-
ery corporation that has chosen to
stay in the Uyghur region is com-
plicit in the crime of forced labor,”
Scott Nova, executive director of
the Worker Rights Consortium
(WRC), told the USCIRF during a
March 10 hearing.
The WRC is an independent labor
monitoring organization with in-
vestigators around the world.
“If a corporation is importing a
good or service with content from
the region into the United States
from China or third countries,
it is doing so in violation of U.S.
laws prohibiting the importation
of goods made with forced labor,”
Nova told the hearing.
“Yet, despite the fact that the
crimes against humanity in the
Uyghur region have been visible
to international observers for a
period of years, a vast number of
global corporations, particularly
but not only in the apparel sector,
continue to source goods from the
region.”
The Uyghur region produces an
estimated 20 percent of the world’s
cotton production, according to
witnesses during the hearing, as
Migrants illegally cross the Rio Bravo to get to El Paso, Texas, from Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, on Feb. 5, 2021.
young children, should make the
dangerous trip to try and enter the
U.S. in an irregular fashion,” she
said.
“The border is not open,” she said.
“Going forward, we will continue
to look for ways to provide legal
avenues in the region for people
needing protections while we con-
tinue to enforce our laws. This is a
process.”
There were a record 3,200 migrant
children stuck in Border Patrol fa-
cilities as of March 8, with nearly
half held beyond the three-day le-
gal limit, according to CBS News.
It comes as the United States sees
a surge of illegal immigrants and
well as nearly half of the polysili-
con used in solar panels. The region
also produces vast quantities of to-
matoes and tomato-based prod-
ucts, much of which are bought and
imported into the United States by
domestic firms.
“From Target to Walmart, from
lululemon [stet] to Uniqlo, from
Amazon to Zara, the supply chain of
virtually every branded retailer that
sells cotton garments runs through
the Uyghur region,” Nova said.
As a result, Nova explained, mil-
lions of articles of clothing sourced
in whole or in part from the Uyghur
region of China are imported daily
into the United States.
The forced labor problem is a
major part of what USCIRF Com-
missioner Gary Bauer described
as “communist China’s barbaric
treatment of Uyghur Muslims that
rightly should be called the stain of
the century.”
“Its persecution of Uyghurs is just
one more example from a long and
egregious history of religious per-
secution of many other religious
groups, including Protestant and
Catholic Christians, Falun Gong
practitioners, and Tibetan Bud-
dhists,” said Bauer, who was chief
domestic policy adviser to Presi-
dent Ronald Reagan.
“Quite frankly, I’d like to know
how American corporations can
morally justify investing in com-
munist China at all. By doing so,
they contribute to making more
powerful a nation controlled by a
repressive regime that has literally
declared war on all people of faith.”
Another witness during the hear-
ing told the USCIRF about receiv-
ing a growing number of inquiries
from U.S. investment companies
expressing concerns about invest-
ments in China.
“In the last roughly two months,
we have had a remarkable, a no-
table slew of calls from investment
firms, big ones, little ones, boutique
firms, ones that work in sectors that
I’ve literally never heard of before.
They are asking nervously not just
about Xinjiang but other sectors
more broadly in China,” said So-
phie Richardson, China director
at Human Rights Watch.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), the
ranking Republican on the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence,
was scheduled to appear in person
unaccompanied minors in recent
months.
In a March 9 statement, former
President Donald Trump criticized
the new administration’s handling
border security, stating, “Our coun-
try is being destroyed at the South-
ern border.”
When asked by a reporter if the
situation at the border is a crisis, Ja-
cobson sidestepped the question.
“I’m not trying to be cute here, but
I think that the fact of the matter
is that we have to do what we do,
regardless of what anybody calls
this situation,” she said. “We are all
focused on improving the situation,
on changing to a more humane and
to testify but was unable to do so.
Rubio’s testimony was instead
read by USCIRF Vice Chairman
Tony Perkins. Perkins, who chaired
the USCIRF under President Don-
ald Trump, is president of the Fam-
ily Research Council.
“The CCP forbids Uyghurs and
other Turkic Muslims from follow-
ing traditional dietary restrictions,
performing daily prayers, growing
a beard, wearing a headscarf, go-
ing on Hajj, reading the Koran, and
teaching the faith to their children.
Using the Uyghur language is re-
stricted and frequently smeared as
an expression of terrorist sympa-
thies,” Rubio said in his testimony.
“Since 2017, the CCP has detained
more than a million Uyghurs and
other Muslim minorities in Xinji-
ang in political reeducation facili-
ties.  The documented atrocities
against Uyghurs are sickening
and evil: torture, forced labor, sex-
ual violence, forced abortions, and
forced sterilization.
“Let us be totally clear. There is
no ability for companies to con-
duct business as usual in Xinjiang
or where Chinese government pro-
grams have transported Uyghurs
outside of the region. Put another
way, proper due diligence of their
supply chains is just not possible.
“CCP officials block it. As with
so many issues, normal business
practices do not prevail in China.
The CCP refuses to play by the rules,
and it ignores international norms.”
In a related development, Rubio
wrote on Twitter late on March 9
about his concern over an apparent
softening in the Biden administra-
tion’s attitude toward the Uyghur
genocide.
The Florida Republican noted that
Secretary of State Anthony Blinken
had during his Senate confirmation
hearing expressed agreement with
his predecessor’s determination
that China was guilty of “commit-
ting genocide and crimes against
humanity.”
But more recently, State Depart-
ment spokeswoman Wendy Sher-
man described those policies in the
past tense.
Rubio said, “I hope this isn’t an
effort to step back from Secretary
Blinken’s previous statements.”
Contact Mark Tapscott at
Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
HERIKA MARTINEZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
efficient system.”
When asked about the high num-
ber of unaccompanied minors, Ja-
cobson repeated her previous
points.
“It’s really important that people
not make the dangerous journey in
the first place, that we provide them
alternatives to making that journey
because it’s not safe en route,” she
said. “It’s really important that that
message gets out because the per-
ception is not the same as the real-
ity in terms of the border not being
open.”
Mexico’s government is worried
that the new U.S. administration’s
asylum policies are stoking illegal
ETHAN MILLER/GETTY IMAGES
90,000 Ballots in Largest Nevada
County Sent to Wrong Addresses,
Bounced Back: Report
PETR SVAB
More than 90,000 ballots mailed
to registered voters in Nevada’s
largest county were returned
undeliverable, according to an
analysis of election data by a con-
servative legal group.
Clark County, which includes
the Las Vegas metro area, made
the extraordinary move to mail
ballots to all the nearly 1.3 mil-
lion active voters in the county,
instead of just those who request-
ed them. The county justified
the move as helping people vote
remotely during the COVID-19
pandemic.
More than 450,000 voters cast
their votes through the mail-in
ballots. But more than 92,000
ballots were returned by the
postal service as undeliverable,
according to the Public Interest
Legal Foundation’s (PILF) March
10 research brief.
The number is based on data
provided in February by Clark
County Voter Registrar Joe Gloria,
the brief says. The Clark County
Election Office didn’t imme-
diately respond to a request for
comment.
“Mass-mail balloting is a step
backward for American elections.
There are millions of voter regis-
tration records with unreliable
‘active’ address information that
will ultimately send ballots to the
wrong place in a mail election,”
PILF President J. Christian Ad-
ams said in the brief.
Prior to the election, PILF criti-
cized such mass ballot mailings
in states that hadn’t had such sys-
tems already in place.
immigration and creating business
for organized crime, according to
officials and internal assessments
seen by Reuters.
Detentions on the U.S. border
have surged since Biden took of-
fice on Jan. 20. Mexico has urged
Washington to help stem the flow
by providing development aid to
Central America.
“They see him as the migrant
president, and so many feel they’re
going to reach the United States,”
Mexican President Andres Man-
uel López Obrador said of Biden
the morning after a virtual meet-
ing with his U.S. counterpart on
March 1.
“We need to work together to reg-
ulate the flow, because this business
can’t be tackled from one day to the
next.”
Previously unreported details in
the internal assessments, based
on testimonies and intelligence-
gathering, state that gangs are di-
versifying methods of smuggling
and winning clients as they eye U.S.
measures that will “incentivize mi-
gration.”
Apprehensions on the U.S.–Mexi-
co border in February hit levels un-
seen since mid-2019, and were the
highest for that month in 15 years,
data reported by Reuters showed.
Among the U.S. steps that Mexico
worries are encouraging migration
are improved support for victims
of gangs and violence, streamlin-
ing of the legalization process, and
suspension of Trump-era accords
that deported people to Central
America.
Reuters contributed to this report. 
A Clark County
election worker
scans mail-in
ballots at the Clark
County Election
Department in
North Las Vegas on
Nov. 7, 2020.
The entire state of Nevada re-
ported only 5,863 mail ballots
returned undeliverable in the
2012, 2014, 2016, and 2018 Gen-
eral Elections combined, the brief
says, referring to the U.S. Election
Assistance Commission surveys.
Adams also took aim at the H.R.
1 election reform bill that was re-
cently passed by the Democrat-
controlled House of Representa-
tives.
The nearly 800-page bill would
largely shift power over elec-
tions to the federal government.
It would discard state voter-ID
laws, allow for same-day voter
registration, ban witness signa-
ture requirements for mail-in bal-
lots, and require that mail-in bal-
lots can arrive as late as 10 days
after election day (as long as it is
post stamped by election day). It
would also make it a federal crime
to “communicate or cause to be
communicated” information that
is knowingly false and designed
to discourage voting and require
a plethora of other measures.
Conservatives have made it
their priority to oppose the bill.
“H.R. 1 does more harm than
good for the American people
and will leave them at a constant
disadvantage to correct election
system errors which ultimately
impact their abilities to vote in a
timely manner,” Adams said.
The bill “basically codifies ev-
erything that was irregular or
outright wrong or the opportu-
nities for fraud during last year’s
election and makes it the law of
the land,” Indiana Attorney Gen-
eral Todd Rokita recently told Bre-
itbart News.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Johnson’s baby powder on a supermarket shelf in Alhambra, Calif., on Aug. 22, 2017.
Johnson & Johnson Appeals $2 Billion Cancer
Verdict Over Baby Powder to Supreme Court
CONTINUED FROM A1
The petition in the case, known as Johnson
& Johnson v. Ingham, court file 20-1223, was
filed with the Supreme Court on March 4.
The verdict came out of a 2018 trial that
consolidated the claims of 22 women who
alleged the company’s talc powder caused
their ovarian cancer. After a six-week trial, a
St. Louis jury originally ordered the company
to pay $4.69 billion, but in 2020, the Missouri
Court of Appeals lowered the sum to $2.11
billion, trade publication Fierce Pharma re-
ported at the time. Also last year, the com-
pany stopped selling talc powders in the
United States.
That court found that the plaintiffs
“proved with convincing clarity” that John-
son & Johnson “engaged in outrageous con-
duct because of an evil motive or reckless
indifference.”
Company officials, according to the court,
“discussed the presence of asbestos in their
talc in internal memoranda for several de-
cades; avoided adopting more accurate mea-
sures for detecting asbestos and influenced
the industry to do the same; attempted to
discredit those scientists publishing stud-
ies unfavorable to their products; and did
not eliminate talc from the products and use
cornstarch instead because it would be more
costly to do so.”
Johnson & Johnson argues that bad science
was relied on during the trial and that the
company was denied due process.
The trial was “fundamentally flawed,” and
“numerous legal errors allowed a faulty pre-
sentation of the facts, resulting in an incorrect
40 House Republicans Join Democrats to Reject Greene’s
Efforts to Delay Stimulus Package
CONTINUED FROM A1
trillion with almost no impact on the
economy.”
Biden’s rescue plan, which includes a
new round of stimulus checks to house-
holds, aid for state and local governments,
and expansion of the supplemental unem-
ployment benefit, has now headed to the
White House for signature.
Brady noted that the Biden administra-
tion has refused to provide an estimate
about how many jobs will be created with
the rescue plan.
“They’re thinking before Memorial Day,
packaging tax increases on businesses, on
income, perhaps on payroll, on wealth and
energy” in their forthcoming infrastruc-
ture bill, he said, presuming that Demo-
crats would move quickly without having
discussions with Republicans.
The tax cuts of 2017, which was signed
into law by President Donald Trump, re-
duced the corporate income tax rate to
21 percent from 35 percent beginning in
2018. It also reduced the tax rates for pass-
through businesses and individuals.
Progressives criticized the cuts, calling
it a giveaway to the rich and corporations.
The Institute on Taxation and Economic
Policy, a left-leaning think tank, found that
71 percent of the benefits of tax reform in
2018 went to the richest 20 percent with
about a quarter going to the top 1 percent.
Some economists, on the contrary, be-
verdict and arbitrary and disproportionate
damages,” the company said in a statement
supplied by its attorneys.
The verdict is “at odds with decades of in-
dependent scientific evaluations confirming
Johnson’s Baby Powder is safe, is not con-
taminated by asbestos and does not cause
cancer.”
The $2.1 billion award in the case “is so un-
moored from any notion of proportionality or
malice that reversal is warranted based solely
on the arbitrary size of the jury’s damages
award,” Cory L. Andrews, general counsel
and vice president of litigation for the Wash-
ington Legal Foundation, said in a statement.
“The legal inconsistencies in this case high-
light some of the worst abuses in our civil
justice system today,” Tiger Joyce, president
of the American Tort Reform Association,
said in a statement.
“The City of St. Louis is regularly named
among the worst ‘Judicial Hellholes’ in the
country and it’s no wonder. The court al-
lowed nearly two dozen plaintiffs from dif-
ferent states who all had varying circum-
stances to be joined together in a friendly
venue of their lawyers’ choosing. The trial
lawyers then presented questionable scien-
tific evidence as though it were fact, unfairly
prejudicing the jury in the process.”
Johnson & Johnson argues in its petition
that it has been victimized by plaintiffs’ law-
yers, who have abused the legal system.
“Today, confusion reigns in the lower
courts over the due process boundaries of
mass trials—and whether jury instructions
by themselves are a sufficient antidote to
the jury confusion and prejudice mass tri-
lieve the tax cuts have created prosperity
and opportunity for all Americans. Busi-
ness optimism soared to record-high levels
and the unemployment rate reached a 50-
year low following tax reform.
Increasing the corporate tax rate to 28
percent would raise the U.S. federal-state
combined tax rate to 32.34 percent, ac-
cording to the Tax Foundation, a conser-
vative-leaning think tank.
This increase will make the U.S. corpo-
rate tax rate the highest in the OECD and
among Group of Seven (G-7) countries,
reducing America’s competitiveness.
The Tax Foundation’s modeling showed
that raising the corporate tax rate to 28
FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
als cause. The Court should intervene here
to curb due-process abuses in mass-tort suits
and ensure that state courts give mass-tort
defendants the same rights as everyone else.”
The company reiterates that its talc prod-
ucts are safe for consumer use.
Federal regulators and respected health
organizations reject calls for warnings on talc
and “comprehensive epidemiological studies
tracking tens of thousands of talc users have
found no meaningful association between
cosmetic talc use and ovarian cancer.”
The Food and Drug Administration, Na-
tional Cancer Institute, and American Can-
cer Society have all reached the same conclu-
sion, the company states.
“Yet some plaintiffs’ lawyers have struck
on a winning formula: They first canvass
the country for women who were both di-
agnosed with ovarian cancer and among
the millions who used Petitioners’ talc prod-
ucts. They then select a jurisdiction where
out-of-state plaintiffs can be consolidated
with in-state plaintiffs for a single mass trial.
They put dozens of plaintiffs on the stand to
discuss their experiences with cancer, and
the jury awards billions of dollars in punitive
damages supposedly to punish Petitioners.
“Lawyers can then follow this script and file
the same claims with new plaintiffs and seek
new outsized awards, over and over again.”
It’s unclear when the Supreme Court will
rule on whether to hear the company’s
appeal.
Thomas C. Goldstein, counsel of record for
the consumers suing Johnson & Johnson,
declined to comment to The Epoch Times
on the pending litigation.
SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES
President Joe
Biden stops to
answer questions
from reporters
after speaking in
the State Dining
Room, following
the passage of
the American
Rescue Plan in
the Senate, at the
White House on
March 6, 2021.
percent would reduce long-run econom-
ic output by about 0.8 percent, eliminate
159,000 full-time equivalent jobs, and re-
duce wages by 0.7 percent.
“This is the last thing we want to do as the
U.S. recovers from the pandemic,” Garrett
Watson, senior policy analyst at the Tax
Foundation, told The Epoch Times.
He added that phasing in a corporate
rate increase, as opposed to hiking im-
mediately, “would in some ways be a worse
idea, with firms delaying investment deci-
sions as deductions would be more valu-
able against a higher corporate tax rate.”
“It would also make those investments
less attractive in the long-run.”
NATION | A3
VALERIE MACON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Singer Britney Spears arrives for the
premiere of Sony Pictures’ “Once
Upon a Time in Hollywood,” at the
TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles
on July 22, 2019.
Gaetz, Jordan
Request
Hearing on
Britney Spears’s
Conservatorship
JACK PHILLIPS
Her conservatorship reentered
the public spotlight recently with
the release of “Framing Britney
Spears,” a documentary about
the controversial conservatorship
controlled by her father.
Spears has been under her fa-
ther’s conservatorship since 2008.
In court papers obtained by US
Weekly last year, Spears’s attorney
said she was “strongly opposed”
to her father “continuing as the
sole conservator of her estate.”
“If the conservatorship process
can rip the agency from a woman
who was in the prime of her life
and one of the most powerful pop
stars in the world, imagine what
it can do to people who are less
powerful and have less of a voice.
I’ve heard the story of those peo-
ple in Florida, and I am concerned
about access to due process for
wards,” Gaetz said in a statement.
In their letter to House Judicia-
ry Committee Chairman Jerry
Nadler (D-N.Y.), Gaetz and Jor-
dan cite a project funded by the
Department of Justice that con-
cluded that “financial exploita-
tion by conservators often goes
unchecked by courts,” and there
is a “dire need for guardianship/
conservatorship reform.” The
project, by the National Center
for State Courts, reviewed pub-
licly reported cases of conserva-
torship exploitation, finding that
most cases involved older people.
The American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) has also recently
expressed concern about conser-
vatorships in light of Spears’s case.
“While we do not know the de-
tails of Spears’ conservatorship, in
general, conservators like those in
her case have the ability to make
decisions about all aspects of her
life—where she lives, where and
how she spends her money, what
medications she takes, who she
spends time with, and other de-
cisions,”  Zoe Brennan-Krohn,
staff attorney with the ACLU’s
Disability Rights Project, said in
a question-and-answer post on
the ACLU website.
Jamie Spears, the pop star’s fa-
ther, has said that he wants noth-
ing more than for his daughter to
“not need a conservatorship.” The
father’s attorney recently said he
has never been involved in a case
in which a conservatee “success-
fully terminated a conservator-
ship.”
Gaetz and Jordan state in their
letter: “Ms. Spears is not alone.
There are countless other Amer-
icans unjustly stripped of their
freedoms by others with little
recourse.
“For example, Long Island
resident Daniel Gross was forced
against his will into a conserva-
torship after being hospitalized
with cellulitis while visiting his
daughter in Connecticut. In what
the judge labeled as ‘a terrible
miscarriage of justice,’ Mr. Gross
was locked in a Connecticut nurs-
ing home for 10 months despite
his pleas for release.
“Given the constitutional free-
doms at stake and opaqueness
of these arrangements, it is in-
cumbent upon our Committee
to convene a hearing to examine
whether Americans are trapped
unjustly in conservatorships.”
Nadler’s office didn’t immedi-
ately respond to a request by The
Epoch Times for comment.
A4 | NATION
Alaska Becomes 1st State to Open CCP
Virus Vaccines to Anyone 16 and Older
ISABEL VAN BRUGEN
Alaska on March 9 became the
first U.S. state to drop eligibility
requirements and allow anyone
16 or older who lives or works
in the state to get a COVID-19
vaccination.
Gov. Mike Dunleavy hailed
the move to open up eligibility
as a historic step. The Republi-
can governor on Feb. 24 tested
positive for the CCP virus.
Dunleavy said individuals 16
or older who live or work in the
state can get the Pfizer-BioNTech
vaccine, while the Johnson &
Johnson and Moderna vaccines
will be administered to individu-
als who are at least 18 years old.
“This historic step is yet anoth-
er nationwide first for Alaska, but
it should come as no surprise.
Since day one, your response to
the pandemic has been hands-
down the best in the nation,”
Dunleavy said in a statement.
“I couldn’t be prouder of Alas-
ka’s response. From being the
first state to offer widespread
testing, to maintaining one of
the lowest mortality rates in the
country, to rolling out vaccina-
tions to every willing Alaskan,
we got here by working together.”
The U.S. Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention (CDC)
COVID-19 Vaccine Tracker
shows Alaska leading states in
the percentage of its popula-
tion to have received two doses
of a vaccine.
Illegal Border Crossings Hit More
Than 100,000 in February
CONTINUED FROM A1
caught almost 37,000 people,
while in 2019, on the cusp of the
most recent crisis, the number
was almost 77,000.
Many of those crossing now are
unaccompanied minors (9,457 in
February), who can’t be turned
back if they’re from a country
other than Mexico.
Minors who cross the border
illegally are meant to be passed
to the Department of Health and
Human Services (HHS) within
72 hours, but the sheer number
of minors has overwhelmed the
system. Acting CBP Commis-
sioner Troy Miller told media on
a March 10 call that he wasn’t go-
ing to discuss how long children
are being held in Border Patrol
custody.
HHS has just opened a second
facility for the burgeoning num-
ber of minors.
When asked what he thought
was driving the trend, Miller said,
“There’s certainly economic in-
stability in the region that’s un-
paralleled.”
“All you have to do is look at
THINK
THE EPOCH TIMES
BUT FOR TV
News without spin, for you to
form your own opinion.
GET NTD ON TV
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Alaska Gov. Michael Dunleavy in Washington on Oct. 29, 2019.
Alaska also has one of the low-
est death tolls nationwide, with
301 COVID-19 related deaths as
of March 8, according to figures
from the Alaska Department of
Health and Social Services Coro-
navirus Response Hub.
Dunleavy encouraged all
“Alaskans that are think-
ing about” getting vaccinated
against COVID-19 to do so,
adding that it “gives us the abil-
the pandemic ... the COVID rate
infections down in South and
Central America,” he said. “We
recently had a hurricane, con-
tinued violence, unemployment.
So if you put all those issues to-
gether, ... you’re going to see folks
looking for a better way of life.”
Miller said he wanted to be
clear that the border is not “open”
and that migrants shouldn’t lis-
ten to human smugglers who are
saying otherwise.
“We are building an orderly
immigration system and doing
so in a way that protects public
health during the global COVID
pandemic,” Miller said. “We’re
moving as fast as we can to re-
build.”
Biden has said there’s no crisis
on the border and that “we’ll be
able to handle it,” when asked by
reporters.
On March 8, the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS)
said it’s seeking volunteers from
among its agencies to assist in
dealing with an “overwhelming”
surge at the U.S.–Mexico border.
“Today, I activated the Volun-
teer Force to support Customs
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ity now in Alaska to far outpace
other states.”
“We want to get our economy
back up and running. We want
to get our society back up and
running,” the governor said.
“We want to put this virus be-
hind us—as far as possible, as
soon as possible.”
On March 3, Dunleavy opened
up COVID-19 vaccines for essen-
tial workers, people with under-
CHARLOTTE CUTHBERTSON/THE EPOCH TIMES
and Border Protection as they
face a surge in migration along
the Southwest Border,” DHS
Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas
said in an email to employees
on March 8, obtained by several
news outlets.
The number of illegal cross-
ings at the southern border has
steadily risen since October 2020.
The number of apprehensions
between October 2020 and Janu-
ary 2021 was 296,259, while the
same period the year prior saw
164,932 apprehensions, accord-
ing to CBP data.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott held a
press conference near the U.S.–
Mexico border on March 9, where
he raised the alarm about a grow-
ing crisis after meeting with bor-
der officials.
PAUL GREANEY TIFFANY MEIER
Host of NTD Business Host of China in Focus
and Deep Dive
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
SAMIRA BOUAOU/THE EPOCH TIMES
lying conditions, and those aged
55 and above.
Dr. Anne Zink, Alaska’s chief
medical officer, said the move
marks a “gigantic milestone.”
The website for the Alaska De-
partment of Health and Social
Services currently states that
while appointments are limit-
ed, more open up regularly, with
new appointments added every
Thursday.
Border
Patrol agents
apprehend
a busload
of illegal
immigrants in
Penitas, Texas,
on March
10, 2021.
The Republican governor
blamed Biden’s immigration
policies, saying they invite illegal
immigration and are contribut-
ing to the crisis, which “will grow
increasingly worse by the day.”
Among those arrested by Bor-
der Patrol since Jan. 1, more than
800 criminals have been identi-
fied, including 78 sex offenders
and 62 gang members, Abbott
said.
On March 6, Abbott launched
an operation to counter the grow-
ing crisis, activating and deploy-
ing National Guard troops and
other law enforcement officers
to the border to combat drug and
human smuggling.
Zachary Stieber contributed
to this report.
STEFANIA COX
Host of NTD
Evening News
5 People Charged
With Voter Fraud in
Illinois: DA’s Office
JACK PHILLIPS
Five people are being accused of
various election fraud-related cases
during the Nov. 3, 2020, election, ac-
cording to the DuPage County State’s
Attorney’s Office in Illinois.
The state attorney’s office said the
charges stem from investigations
into 32 cases of alleged election
fraud, adding that most of the cases
have been closed without investi-
gation. However, the office stressed
that several remain under investiga-
tion, according to a March 9 news
release.
Those who were charged in-
clude Colleen A. Kirchoff, 60, of Na-
perville; Thomas E. Wojciechowski,
73, of Carol Stream; and Adam P.
Butler, 51, of Lisle, officials said in
the release.
Kirchoff was charged with forgery
and perjury after she allegedly at-
tempted to cast a ballot for someone
else, officials said in a news release.
Butler was charged with a count of
forgery and one count of perjury in
election code, while Wojciechowski
was charged with one count of per-
jury in election code, officials said.
Two others—Darrick Kent, 43, and
Amy Kent, 41—of Austin, Texas, were
each charged with one count of per-
jury in the election code.
“I would like to thank County Clerk
Jean Kaczmarek and her office for
their fine work in uncovering these
alleged violations and bringing them
to our attention,” DuPage County
State’s Attorney Robert Berlin said
in the release.
“The charges filed today are the
direct result of the cooperation and
professionalism displayed by the
Clerk’s Office throughout the entire
investigation.”
His office didn’t provide any more
details about the charges or the in-
vestigation.
“The very foundation of our coun-
try is built upon fair and free elec-
tions,” Berlin said. “Elections are a
sacred duty and while the five de-
fendants charged today represent
an infinitesimal percentage of the
491,067 votes cast in the 2020 general
election, it is important that anyone
suspected of attempting to interfere
in any way in the election process
be investigated and charged where
appropriate.”
A judge on March 9 signed arrest
warrants for the five suspects, and
each person’s bail was set for $1,000,
reported WBBM.
Last week, the mayor pro tem of
a Northern California city resigned
from office after pleading guilty to
election fraud charges.  Crescent
City Mayor Pro Tem Alex Campbell
entered a plea to making a false dec-
laration of candidacy, in Del Norte
County Superior Court, local news
outlet Wild Rivers Outpost reported,
citing the city clerk’s office.
Separately, in Aberdeen, Missis-
sippi, a judge ordered a new runoff
election for a city alderman seat af-
ter more than three-quarters of ab-
sentee ballots cast in the June 2020
Democratic runoff election were
found to be invalid, while a notary
involved in the election was arrested.
KEVIN HOGAN
Host of NTD
News Today
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Free Speech Advocates Laud Supreme Court for Requiring
Official Accountability for Violating Individual Rights
CONTINUED FROM A1
challenged in the case. The case is
known as “Uzuegbunam et. al. v.
Precczewski et. al.”
When officials at the school
backed off the policy, they then
argued in federal court that Uzu-
egbunam no longer had stand-
ing to claim damages because
his rights were no longer being
violated.
But the court disagreed, say-
ing: “Uzuegbunam experienced
a completed violation of his consti-
tutional rights when respondents
enforced their speech policies
against him. Nominal damages
can redress Uzuegbunam’s injury
even if he cannot or chooses not to
quantify that harm in economic
terms.”
The court further noted that “an
award of nominal damages consti-
tutes relief on the merits.”
In other words, if a constitutional
violation is documented, the of-
fending official or institution must
be held accountable, even if there
is no demonstration of measur-
able injury deserving of more than
nominal damages.
The accountability requirement
also goes beyond colleges violat-
ing students’ free speech rights,
according to ADF Vice President
Kristen Waggoner.
“So, this ensures that it’s not just
discriminatory student speech
policies, it’s discriminatory stop-
SAUL LOEB/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Supreme Court Associate Justice
Clarence Thomas in the Supreme
Court in Washington on June 1, 2017.
40 House Republicans Join Democrats to Reject
Greene’s Efforts to Delay Stimulus Package
JACK PHILLIPS
Several dozen House Repub-
licans joined all Democrats in
rejecting Rep. Marjorie Taylor
Greene’s (R-Ga.) bid to stall final
passage of the $1.9 trillion CO-
VID-19 stimulus package.
The procedural tactic failed by a
235–149 vote as 40 GOP lawmak-
ers joined the Democrats to vote
against her motion to adjourn.
Greene had decried the stimulus
legislation on March 9 as a “woke
progressive Blue State Bailout.”
Greene also sent a warning to
House Republicans that should
they vote with Democrats, they
would be seen as joining them.
“I just made a motion to adjourn
to stop Congress from passing the
$1.9 trillion dollar massive woke
progressive Democrat wish list,”
she wrote on  Twitter an hour
earlier. “The GOP has messaged
against this ridiculous bill. We
should do everything to stop it.
Pay attention if Rs vote to adjourn.
Or with the Dems.”
Rep. Jim McGovern (D-Mass.)
said on the House floor that
Greene’s motion was an attempt
to try to “delay getting aid to the
people, including their constitu-
ents who are in desperate need.”
The House on March 10 gave
final approval to the so-called
American Rescue Plan. President
Joe Biden is expected to sign it
into law on March 12.
The bill will provide $1,400
stimulus payments to qualify-
ing individuals and children,
provide $300 weekly unemploy-
ment benefits until September,
and will provide hundreds of
and-frisk, denial of kosher meals
in prison, you can easily think of a
variety of constitutional violations
that would benefit from this,” Wag-
goner told reporters on March 8, in
response to a question from The
Epoch Times during a telephone
news conference.
“It sure ought to. Alliance De-
fending Freedom has had over 400
victories in this space, in terms of
public universities. Nobody liti-
gates more of these cases than we
do,” said Waggoner, who has ar-
gued multiple cases filed by ADF
before the Supreme Court.
“We believe this is a significant
victory because we see time and
time again where government of-
ficials will censor speech uncon-
stitutionally, students will muster
the courage to stand and say, ‘This
is a violation of my constitutional
rights,’ and then college officials
will quickly change the policy and
walk away.
“The irony in this case is that the
Georgia officials received a letter
years’ earlier from ADF warning
them that their policy was uncon-
stitutional, and they did nothing
until Chike sued them, and that is
consistent with what we see across
the country.”
Waggoner’s contention that the
case has big implications for situ-
ations involving alleged violations
of constitutional rights in other
arenas drew agreement from mul-
tiple legal experts interviewed on
March 9 by The Epoch Times.
Zack Smith, senior fellow in the
Meese Center for Legal and Judi-
cial Studies at the Heritage Foun-
dation, said “this case does have
wide-ranging implications” be-
cause it will severely limit a tactic
that violators have long used to
avoid facing a full court review of
the merits or demerits of their ac-
tions.
Smith said “the problem in these
cases, where there is an alleged
violation of a constitutional right,
is exactly what happened in this
case. A governmental entity will
change their policy and try to boot
out the case, get it dismissed.
“You see this in the First Amend-
ment context like here, you could
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) speaks during a press conference out-
side the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Feb. 5, 2021.
The GOP has mes-
saged against this
ridiculous bill. We
should do every-
thing to stop it.
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene
billions to state and local gov-
ernments.
“This nation has suffered too
much for much too long,” Biden
told reporters at the White House
after the Senate voted to approve
the measure over the recent
weekend. “And everything in this
package is designed to relieve the
suffering and to meet the most ur-
gent needs of the nation, and put
us in a better position to prevail.”
No Republicans voted in fa-
vor of the measure in the Senate
A woman stomps on a free speech sign after a conservative commentator spoke at the University of California–
Berkeley campus on Sept. 24, 2017.
Uzuegbunam
experienced
a completed
violation of his
constitutional
rights when
respondents
enforced their
speech policies
against him.
Supreme Court
DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
or when it initially passed the
House, underscoring the parti-
san environment on Capitol Hill.
Republicans call the measure
a wasteful spending spree for
Democrats’ liberal allies that ig-
nores recent indications that the
pandemic and economy are turn-
ing the corner.
“The Senate has never spent
$2 trillion in a more haphazard
way,” said Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). He said
Democrats’ “top priority wasn’t
pandemic relief. It was their
Washington wish list.”
In recent weeks, Greene, a
freshman legislator who was
stripped of her committee assign-
ments, has employed a strategy of
using procedural votes to delay
congressional business.
The Associated Press
contributed to this report.
see it in the stop-and-frisk con-
text, or really any context where
there is a policy that is alleged to
violate someone’s constitutional
rights, whether that violation is
based on the Fourth Amendment,
the Eighth Amendment, the First
Amendment or whatever.
“Any time a policy is violating
or alleged to violate someone’s
constitutional rights, this deci-
sion would essentially allow the
case to move forward even if the
governmental entity changes their
policy and tries to get it dismissed.”
Similarly, Will Creeley, legal
director for the Foundation for
Individual Rights in Education
(FIRE), which filed an amicus
curiae brief in the case, said Wag-
goner “is 100 percent correct, that
is a prediction I would confident-
ly share as well.”
“The opinion deals with the nom-
inal damages that are possible in
cases involving violations of rights
that aren’t easy to put a price tag
on, and that’s not just expressive
rights, but it can also be civil rights,
MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell
Says He’s Launching Social Media
Website After Twitter Ban
JACK PHILLIPS
My Pillow founder Mike Lindell
said he’s launching his own social
media website after his personal
and MyPillow accounts were sus-
pended by Twitter.
“Every single influencer person
on the planet can come there.
You’re going to have a platform
to speak out,” Lindell announced
last week on Charlie Kirk’s pod-
cast. “We’re launching this big
platform so all the voices of our
country can come back and start
telling it like it is again.”
Lindell said that with his un-
named social media website,
“you will not need YouTube. You
won’t need these places. ... It will
be where everything can be told,
because we’ve got to get our voic-
es back. People will be able to talk
and not walk on eggshells.”
Lindell said his social media
website will launch in “four to
five weeks” but didn’t elaborate
on the nature of the website or
how it would function.
Lindell’s site would compete
with the likes of Parler and Gab,
which have attracted conserva-
tives and supporters of former
President Donald Trump. Trump
and his advisers have said he’s
considering starting his own so-
cial media company.
The former president—who was
suspended by Twitter, Facebook,
and others—said that Twitter has
“become very boring” in recent
days, asserting that “millions of
people are leaving” the platform.
Lindell, also in the interview,
also said that Google “can-
NATION | A5
JOSH EDELSON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
privacy rights, a wide variety of
possible constitutional infringe-
ments that defy quantification,”
Creeley said.
Ilya Shapiro, director of the Cato
Institute’s Robert A. Levy Center
for Constitutional Studies, agreed,
saying, “Justice Thomas was right
for the near-unanimous court to
hold that government officials
can’t escape liability for viola-
tions of constitutional rights just
by changing their policies, and that
citizens can get their day in court
even if they only ask for nominal
damages.”
Shapiro noted that the decision
was the “first-ever solo dissent” by
Roberts in his more than 15 years
on the bench, which “continues his
crusade against an engaged judi-
ciary that would make it easier for
civil rights plaintiffs to hold state
actors to account.”
Cato also filed an amicus curiae
brief in the case.
Contact Mark Tapscott at
Mark.Tapscott@epochtimes.nyc
celed me on some things” and
took “tens of thousands of dol-
lars” in ad revenue from him be-
fore he was shut down.
The MyPillow CEO told Busi-
ness Insider that he “lost 20 re-
tailers” that cost him “$65 million
this year that I won’t get back.”
He told the outlet: “There’s your
story. Print it right. Don’t try and
twist this.”
It came as Dominion Voting
Systems last month filed a $1.3
billion lawsuit against Lindell al-
leging he defamed the firm. A key
argument in Dominion’s lawsuit
was that Lindell used election-
related claims to boost his brand
and sell products.
Lindell, meanwhile, told media
outlets that he welcomes the Do-
minion lawsuit, as it would pro-
vide him a means with which to
prove his claims.
Other than Lindell, prominent
conservatives including Michael
Flynn, Sidney Powell, and Lin
Wood were suspended by Twit-
ter, forcing them to move to other
platforms such as Telegram.
And last week, former New York
City Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s You-
Tube account was banned from
uploading new content for two
weeks.
“We removed content from the
Rudy W. Giuliani channel for vio-
lating our sale of regulated goods
policy, which prohibits content
facilitating the use of nicotine,
and our presidential election in-
tegrity policy,” a YouTube spokes-
woman said in a statement to
Bloomberg and other outlets on
March 1.
A6 | NATION
Supreme Court to Hear Case of Navy Veteran Suing
NYPD Officers for Malicious Prosecution
MATTHEW VADUM
The Supreme Court has agreed to
hear the case of a New York man
who is suing police for malicious
prosecution, after officers raided
his home without a warrant to
conduct a fruitless child abuse
investigation and held him in
custody for two days on charges
that were later dismissed.
In an unsigned  March 8 or-
der, the court agreed to review
the case known as Thompson v.
Clark, court file 20-659.
Pagiel Clark is one of four New
York Police Department (NYPD)
officers named in the lawsuit. The
other officers are Paul Montefus-
co, Phillip Romano, and Gerard
Bouwmans. The case is an appeal
from the U.S. Court of Appeals for
the 2nd Circuit, which rendered
its opinion on Feb. 24, 2020.
The case goes back seven years.
Larry Thompson, a U.S. Navy
veteran who has been a postal
worker for 20 years, lives in the
borough of Brooklyn with his
wife. At the time of the inci-
dent, the couple—who were the
proud parents of a one-week-old
daughter—were caring for the
wife’s sister, who has cognitive
challenges. On Jan. 15, 2014, the
sister dialed 911 to report that
the baby cried when Thompson
changed her diaper and mistak-
enly identified as signs of abuse
“red rashes” that turned out to
be diaper rash.
Emergency medical technicians
arrived to find the wife sitting on
the couch holding the baby safely.
Unaware that his sister-in-law
had called 911, Thompson asked
the technicians to leave and they
complied, according to his peti-
tion filed with the Supreme Court.
The four NYPD officers arrived
and met with the technicians,
who told them that the techni-
Members of the National Guard wear protective masks on duty outside of the
U.S. Capitol in Washington on March 4, 2021.
Pentagon Extends National
Guard Deployment at US
Capitol Through May 23
CONTINUED FROM A1
“During this extended period,
DOD officials will work with the
U.S. Capitol Police to incremen-
tally reduce the National Guard
footprint as conditions allow. We
thank the National Guard for its
support throughout this mission,
as well as for its significant efforts
across the nation in combatting
the COVID-19 pandemic,” the
department announced.
At a press conference on March
9, Pentagon press secretary John
Kirby said the extension serves
to address law enforcement con-
cerns and support the Capitol
Police.
“It’s not just about a threat as-
sessment, it’s about assisting and
supporting capabilities that the
Capitol Police may now lack and
may need to look at improving on
their own,” he said, adding that
Capitol Police and their capabili-
ties “may not be at the level where
[they] need to be, given the fact
that we’re in sort of a new envi-
ronment in this country.”
The Capitol Police last week re-
The Supreme Court in Washington on June 25, 2020.
cians would “get in trouble” if
they didn’t make contact with
and examine the baby. The police
went to Thompson’s apartment
and said they were investigating
possible child abuse and needed
to look at his child.
Thompson demanded to speak
with the officers’ superior, a re-
quest they refused, and then
asked if they had a warrant to en-
ter his home. The police then en-
tered the home over Thompson’s
objections, threw him to the floor,
handcuffed him, and conducted a
search without seeking a warrant.
The technicians found no signs of
abuse on the infant’s body and
took her to a hospital where the
lack of abuse was confirmed.
The police escorted Thompson
SARAH SILBIGER/GETTY IMAGES
quested the Pentagon to extend
the National Guard’s support on
Capitol Hill beyond March 12. In a
statement, the Capitol Police said
it was “extremely grateful for the
Department of Defense and the
National Guard support provided
since January 6th.”
Capitol Police Acting Chief Yo-
gananda Pittman, who made
the formal request, on March
3 told  the House Legislative
Branch Subcommittee in her
prepared testimony that the
level of existential threats to the
U.S. Capitol and the surround-
ing area “are increasing,” citing
Jan. 6, when the Capitol building
was breached as congressional
proceedings were underway to
certify the results of the 2020
presidential election.
The violence occurred amid oth-
erwise peaceful protests that were
taking place in surrounding areas,
calling for election integrity.
“On the Capitol Complex, the
level of existential threats to the
U.S. Capitol and Grounds are in-
creasing as well,” she said. “This
was abundantly clear on January
out of the apartment building
and put him in jail for two days.
According to the police, Thomp-
son’s “mere refusal to let them
into his home without a warrant
to examine his child was suffi-
cient basis to arrest and pursue
charges for resisting arrest and
obstructing governmental ad-
ministration,” the petition stated.
He refused offers to settle the
case out of court, but prosecutors
eventually unilaterally dismissed
the charges against him, advising
the court that the “people are dis-
missing the case in the interest
of justice.”
Thompson filed a federal civil
rights lawsuit claiming that
the police violated his Fourth
Amendment rights through their
6, 2021, when insurrectionists at-
tempted to prevent the Congress
from certifying the 2020 Electoral
College results by storming the
U.S. Capitol. Due to the heroic ac-
tions of USCP officers, with the
assistance of the Metropolitan
Police Department, the National
Guard, and many other of our law
enforcement partners, the violent
rioters were prevented from ac-
complishing their goal.”
Then-President Donald Trump
in the week after Jan. 6 repeatedly
called for peace and repeatedly
condemned the violence that
took place that day.
“The incursion of the U.S. Capi-
tol struck at the very heart of our
republic. It angered and appalled
millions of Americans across the
political spectrum,” Trump said
on Jan. 13. “I want to be very clear,
I unequivocally condemn the vio-
lence that we saw last week. Vio-
lence and vandalism have abso-
lutely no place in our country and
no place in our movement.”
It’s unclear who or what groups
instigated the breach of the
building, but a video of the event
shows a known left-wing activ-
ist encouraging and convincing
Capitol police to let trespassers
through at several points.
The civil unrest on the Capitol
grounds included the shooting
death by Capitol Police of a wom-
an who was part of the throng of
people who entered the Capitol
and clashed with police; three
other protestors reportedly died
from medical conditions. Mean-
while, a U.S. Capitol Police officer
who had protected lawmakers
during the riot was confirmed
dead by the department on Jan.
7. The FBI “cannot disclose the
cause of death.”
National Guard members were
deployed after the Jan. 6 Capitol
breach, and more than 20,000
were on hand during the Jan.
20 inauguration of President Joe
Biden. Officials also set up a non-
scalable fence topped with razor
wire around the Capitol facility.
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
warrantless entry to his home
and “by unreasonably seizing
him pursuant to legal process.”
There are two issues before the
court, according to court docu-
ments.
The first is whether the rule en-
shrined in legal precedent that
a plaintiff must await “favorable
termination” before bringing a
federal civil rights action alleg-
ing unreasonable seizure pursu-
ant to legal process requires the
plaintiff to show that the crimi-
nal proceeding against him has
“formally ended in a manner not
inconsistent with his innocence,”
or that the proceeding “ended in
a manner that affirmatively indi-
cates his innocence.”
The second deals with who
5 Arrested in Kentucky, Tennessee
After ICE Human Trafficking Operation
JACK PHILLIPS
A human trafficking operation car-
ried out by Immigrations and Cus-
toms Enforcement’s (ICE) Home-
land Security Investigations netted
five arrests in Kentucky and Ten-
nessee, officials stated on March 9.
In the sting, Lewis R. Harris, 52, of
Memphis, Tennessee, was charged
with two counts of trafficking for a
commercial sex act and two counts
of contributing to the delinquency
of a minor, ICE stated.
Others who were arrested in-
clude Kevin L. Jackson, 31, of Pa-
ducah, Kentucky, who was charged
with two counts of trafficking for
commercial sex act; Abraham M.
Labastida, 28, of Murray, Kentucky,
who charged with two counts of
trafficking for commercial sex
act;  Shannon L. Palmer, 44, of
Union City, Tennessee, charged
with two counts of trafficking for
commercial sex act; and Eddie R.
Robbins, 54, of Paris, Tennessee,
charged with two counts of traf-
ficking for commercial sex act
along with other charges, accord-
ing to the agency in a news release.
The five were booked into the
Obion County Jail in Union City,
Tennessee, and a $10,000 bond was
set for each, officials said.
The nature of the operation
wasn’t disclosed in the ICE news
release.
“Human traffickers use diverse
forms of force, fraud and coercion
to control and exploit their vic-
tims,” ICE’s Homeland Security
Investigations Nashville Special
Agent in Charge Jerry C. Templet
Jr. said in a statement.
He added that “early recognition
of human trafficking can help save
victims’ lives.”
“Our agents work with local, state
and federal law enforcement part-
ners to aggressively investigate hu-
man trafficking cases, assist the
victims and arrest the perpetra-
MICHAEL A. MCCOY/GETTY IMAGES
bears the burden of proof as to the
existence of exigent circumstanc-
es that allegedly justify the war-
rantless entry of a home. Federal
appeals courts disagree. The 3rd,
6th, 9th, and 10th Circuit Courts
of Appeals have held that the bur-
den to prove exigency lies with
the government; the 2nd, 7th,
and 8th Circuits have held that
the burden to prove the absence
of exigency is with the plaintiff.
The Epoch Times reached out
to both sides for comment.
New York City Law Department
spokesman Nicholas Paolucci
told The Epoch Times, “We’ll
decline to comment.”
Amir Ali, counsel of record for
Thompson, couldn’t be reached
for comment.
The five were
jailed and a
$10,000 bond was
set for each.
tors. As a result of our efforts, hu-
man trafficking arrests for HSI
Nashville, which covers the entire
states of Tennessee and Kentucky,
increased approximately 23 per-
cent for fiscal year 2020 from the
previous year,” Templet said.
Earlier this month, the U.S. Mar-
shals Service and other law en-
forcement agencies announced
the recovery of 150 missing chil-
dren in Tennessee.
“Many people don’t realize
this but hundreds of children go
missing in our state every month,”
Tennessee Bureau of Investiga-
tions Director David Rausch said
in a statement. “From runaways
that may leave their home out of
desperation or despair, to those
entangled in a custody battle, ev-
ery single one of them deserves a
fighting chance, and that’s why
they also deserve our best work to
help them.”
According to the agency, most of
the 150 children recovered will re-
ceive services from the Tennessee
Department of Children’s Services,
which might mean they are placed
in foster homes or group homes, or
get other care.
GREGORY BULL/AP PHOTO
U.S. Immigration and Customs
Enforcement officers detain a man
during an operation, in this file photo.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Supreme Court
Agrees to Dismiss
Case Challenging
Trump-Era Public
Charge Rule
JANITA KAN
The Supreme Court has agreed to
a request by the Biden administra-
tion to dismiss an upcoming case
challenging a public-charge rule
that requires prospective immi-
grants to be able to support them-
selves financially.
The court last month agreed to
hear the federal government’s
appeal of a lower court decision
against the Trump-era immigra-
tion rule that restricts the eligibil-
ity of new immigrants who are
deemed to likely become “public
charges” if they receive visas.
The Justice Department in-
formed the court in a filing on
March 9 that all parties agreed to
ask the court to dismiss the case,
signaling that the White House is
likely to overturn the rule. In early
February, President Joe Biden had
issued an executive order mandat-
ing a review of the public charge
rule that aims to assess the effects
and implications of such policies.
A “public charge” refers to an in-
dividual who is likely to become
primarily dependent on the gov-
Judge Dismisses Trump Campaign Lawsuit
Against NY Times
JACK PHILLIPS
A judge on March 9 dismissed
a defamation lawsuit from the
campaign of former President
Donald Trump against The New
York Times over its 2019 opinion
article “The Real Trump-Russia
Quid Pro Quo.”
New York Judge James d’Auguste
allowed the NY Times to dismiss
the lawsuit on March 9, which had
sought millions in damages.
Max Frankel, the former ex-
ecutive editor of the paper, had
alleged in an opinion piece that
Trump had “an overarching deal”
with “[Russian President] Vladi-
mir Putin’s oligarchy” during the
2016 election.
The article was seemingly part of
a continuous media-driven cam-
paign to tie Trump to Putin. How-
ever, in 2019, then-special counsel
Robert Mueller found that Trump’s
campaign didn’t collaborate with
Moscow after a months-long in-
vestigation.
D’Auguste, a Democrat, pro-
vided three reasons why the
suit should be dismissed. First,
he said, the opinion article
was  “nonactionable opinion,”
and he made note of “the overall
context in which the article was
published, in the opinion section
of the newspaper.”
Second, “the challenged state-
ments are not ‘of and concerning’
plaintiff, which is a necessary el-
ement for a defamation action,”
he wrote. “Further, a corporate
entity has no standing to sue over
statements that concern an entity’s
employees or affiliates, but not the
entity itself.”
In elaborating, the judge said
Frankel’s column was about
Trump’s family members and as-
sociates and not about the cam-
paign itself.
“Third, even if Mr. Frankel’s com-
mentary was actionable as factual
assertions, and even if such asser-
tions were of and concerning the
Trump campaign, the complaint
fails to allege facts sufficient to
support the requirement that the
Times published the challenged
statements with actual malice,”
according to D’Auguste’s ruling.
The judge, however, denied the
NY Times’ “application for the im-
ernment for subsistence, by receiv-
ing assistance such as food stamps
or Medicaid.
The case stemmed from a rule
adopted by the  Department of
Homeland Security (DHS) in 2019
that expanded the definition of
“public charges” in the Immigra-
tion and Nationality Act (INA). That
rule required the DHS to consider
cash benefits and certain non-
cash benefits when determining
an immigrant’s admissibility in the
United States.
Meanwhile, the rule considered
a person a public charge if they
receive at least one government
benefit for more than 12 months
in a three-year period.
The rule was challenged by states,
cities, and advocacy groups around
the country, and had resulted in
several preliminary injunctions
to block its enforcement while the
cases played out in court. Some of
those injunctions were lifted by
the appeals court, while a pair of
injunctions issued by a New York
district court judge were lifted by
the Supreme Court pending a rul-
ing from an appeals court.
President Donald Trump listens during a meeting in the Cabinet Room of the
White House on July 31, 2020.
People walk past the New York Times building in New York on July 27, 2017.
position of sanctions.”
Previously, Trump’s campaign
filed lawsuits against CNN and
The Washington Post over simi-
lar Russian collusion stories. The
lawsuit against CNN was dis-
missed last year.
The Epoch Times has reached
out to Trump’s team for comment.
Throughout his presidency,
Trump repeatedly pilloried stories
and narratives that alleged he col-
luded with Russia, frequently de-
scribing it as the greatest political
“witch hunt” in U.S. history.
Director of National Intelli-
gence John Ratcliffe this week
said that former  U.S. Attorney
John Durham, who was leading
a probe into the origins of the
A U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services official leads immigrants as they recite the Oath of Allegiance during a nat-
uralization ceremony in Los Angeles on Feb. 24, 2021.
The appeals court in that case,
cited as U.S. Department of Home-
land Security v. New York, affirmed
the preliminary injunction issued
by the district court but restricted
its application to states of New
York, Connecticut, and Vermont.
This ruling prompted the Trump
administration to file a request—or
a petition for a writ of certiorari—to
the top court asking it to review the
appeals court decision.
The respondents in the case in-
clude the states of New York, Con-
necticut, Vermont, and New York
City, as well as immigrant advo-
cacy groups including Make the
Road New York and Catholic Legal
Immigration Network Inc.
ANNA MONEYMAKER-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
SPENCER PLATT/GETTY IMAGES
Trump–Russia probe within the
FBI and Department of Justice,
agreed there was no intelligence
that Trump or his campaign col-
luded with the Kremlin.
“Last summer, we went over the
intelligence, and we all unani-
mously agreed that there was
no intelligence from the intelli-
gence community that reflected
actual, real Russian collusion
with the Trump campaign, but
there was intelligence that it was
created by the Hillary Clinton
campaign, and that there was
no proper predicate for Crossfire
Hurricane to begin,” Ratcliffe, a
Trump appointee, said during an
appearance on Fox News’ “Sun-
day Morning Futures.”
At the time when the rule was
introduced, Ken Cuccinelli, then-
acting director of Citizenship and
Immigration Services, said that the
rule was critical because the ad-
ministration wanted to “see people
coming to this country who are
self-sufficient.”
“That’s a core principle of the
American dream. It’s deeply em-
bedded in our history, and particu-
larly our history related to legal im-
migration,” he said.
Meanwhile, opponents of the
rule  say it discourages immi-
grants and their families from ac-
cessing necessities such as health,
food, and housing programs that
supplement their wages and “help
Florida Senate Advances Bill Banning
Drop Boxes for Mail-In Ballots
JACK PHILLIPS
A Florida Senate committee ap-
proved a reworked elections bill
that would ban drop boxes used
for mail-in ballots.
The panel on March 10 voted 4–2
to approve the proposal, known
as Committee Substitute Senate
Bill 90, which would—among oth-
er initiatives—prohibit an imme-
diate family member from picking
up a voter’s ballot. It would also
require vote-by-mail ballots to be
requested during each election
cycle instead of every two elec-
tion cycles.
The bill also increases the re-
quirements for voter identifica-
tion when requesting a mail-in
ballot via telephone, and would
prevent election officials from
sending mail-in ballots to people
who hadn’t requested them first.
The measure’s sponsor, Sen.
Dennis Baxley, a Republican,
stated that the proposed changes
are designed to safeguard future
elections.
“I am all about staying ahead of
whatever problems could devel-
op,” Baxley told Fox35 on March
10. “So, it’s not that there was a
debacle, and we have to fix it. Do
we have to wait for a debacle? Why
can’t we take something that is
working well and put guardrails
on it and keep it safe?”
He elaborated on the bill and
why he’s pushing it, telling Polit-
ico: “I just want to maintain that
chain of evidence from the time
they vote to the time until they get
counted so we don’t have a mis-
hap.” He said: “You can mail it or
bring it to the office. That’s it.”
The Senate decision comes amid
a push by lawmakers in various
states, including Georgia, to in-
JOE RAEDLE/GETTY IMAGES
NATION | A7
PATRICK T. FALLON/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
them make ends meet.”  House
Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)
said in a statement on Jan. 22,
2020, that the rule leaves the door
open for discrimination and un-
certainty.
The Biden administration has
taken similar steps in several other
immigration cases. In February,
the administration asked the top
court to cancel oral arguments in
two cases separately challenging
former President Donald Trump’s
border wall and “remain in Mexi-
co” policies.
The requests come after the ad-
ministration took action to undo
both policies, possibly rendering
the challenges moot.
crease the requirements for voters
to obtain mail ballots and restrict
the usage of drop boxes following
the 2020 election. Republicans and
former President Donald Trump
have asserted that mail-in ballot-
ing increases the chance for po-
tentially fraudulent activity and
irregularities.
In Florida, Democrats and voter
rights advocates argue that there
should be no tinkering with a sys-
tem that isn’t broken, asserting
that political motives are behind
the efforts in the Sunshine State
and elsewhere.
“Changing the vote-by-mail pro-
cess, especially following a major
election, makes no sense unless
you’re looking for ways to confuse
voters into not voting or to make
it harder, so they don’t vote,” said
Trish Neely on behalf of the League
of Women Voters of Florida, as re-
ported by The Associated Press.
The bill also drew critical feed-
back from local election supervi-
sors in Florida.
“I’m at a loss for words,” Pasco
County Supervisor of Election
Brian Corley, a Republican, told
Politico. “It’s a solution looking for
a problem.”
The move comes weeks after
Gov. Ron DeSantis called for a
crackdown on some of Florida’s
voting laws, including restricting
drop-box usage and stopping vol-
unteers from gathering and deliv-
ering vote-by-mail ballots, which
is colloquially known as “ballot
harvesting.”
About 4.8 million Floridians vot-
ed by mail in November, account-
ing for about 44 percent of the 11
million votes cast in the state.
The Associated Press
contributed to this report.
A poll worker
places mail-in
ballots into an
official ballot
drop box in
Doral, Fla., on
Oct. 19, 2020.
A8 | NATION
LA Teachers, School District Reach Tentative Deal
to Reopen Classrooms
ZACHARY STIEBER
The Los Angeles Unified School
District and its teachers union
have reached a tentative agree-
ment on returning to in-person
instruction, about a year after stu-
dents began learning remotely.
The deal would
require all stu-
dents and staff
to be tested for
COVID-19 before
returning to their
campus and sub-
mit to weekly test-
ing thereafter.
The deal would require all stu-
dents and staff to be tested for
COVID-19 before returning to
their campuses and submit to
weekly testing thereafter. Masks
and social distancing will be
required. Teachers and other
school workers wouldn’t have to
return to work inside schools un-
til they had the opportunity to get
a COVID-19 vaccine, according to
the agreement.
COVID-19 is the disease caused
by the CCP (Chinese Communist
Party) virus.
“The agreement provides for
the reopening of schools when
Los Angeles County is in the red
tier according to the state school
guidelines, that all staff have ac-
cess to the COVID vaccine and
that schools are kept clean and
An ultrasound machine sits next to an exam table in an examination room at
Whole Woman’s Health of South Bend in South Bend, Ind., on June 19, 2019.
Texas Proposal Would Allow
Death Penalty for Having or
Performing Abortions
ZACHARY STIEBER
A lawmaker in Texas has intro-
duced a proposal that would
enable prosecutors in the state
to seek the death penalty for
women who have abortions.
HB 3326 would abolish abor-
tion in Texas, state Rep. Bryan
Slaton, a Republican, wrote in a
social media statement.
“The bill will end the discrimi-
natory practice of terminating
the life of innocent children, and
will guarantee the equal protec-
tion of the laws to all Texans, no
matter how small,” he added.
The bill, formally known as the
Abolition of Abortion through
Equal Protection for All Unborn
Children Act, states that Texas is
a free and independent state and
that “the sanctity of innocent
human life created in the im-
age of God ... should be equally
protected from fertilization to
natural death.”
From the time of conception,
an unborn child “is entitled to
the same rights, powers, and
privileges as are secured or
granted by the laws of this state
A special education teacher conducts class remotely, in Los Angeles on Sept. 8, 2020.
safe,” Superintendent Austin
Beutner and United Teachers
of Los Angeles President Cec-
ily Myart-Cruz said in a joint
statement.
“As we have both stated for
some time, the right way to re-
open schools must include the
highest standard of COVID safety
in schools, continued reduction
of the virus in the communities
we serve, and access to vaccina-
tions for school staff. This agree-
ment achieves that shared set of
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGES
to any other human person,” the
bill continues. It would “rescind
all licenses to kill unborn chil-
dren by repealing discrimina-
tory provisions.”
Part of the legislation would
direct the state attorney general
to use the existing criminal code
against people who perform or
have abortions, including laws
against criminal homicide. In
Texas, homicide can be pun-
ished by the death penalty.
Abortion is the termination
of an unborn child or a fetus.
According to the Kaiser Family
Foundation, more than 55,000
abortions were performed in
Texas in 2018, the most recent
year for which figures were
available.
“It is time for Texas to protect
the natural right to life for the
tiniest and most innocent Tex-
ans, and this bill does just that,”
Slaton said in a statement. “It’s
time Republicans make it clear
that we actually think abortion
is murder. Unborn children are
dying at a faster rate in Texas
than COVID patients, but Texas
isn’t taking the abortion crisis
goals. It’s our shared commit-
ment to the highest safety stan-
dards and spirit of trust and col-
laboration we will take with us
back to schools.”
While the agreement is subject
to approval by the Los Angeles
Unified Board of Education and
ratification by the union’s mem-
bership. Kelly Gonez, the board’s
president, signaled her support.
“Exciting news!” she said on
Facebook. “LA Unified will be
reopening in a hybrid model,
seriously.”
Similar legislation was filed
in the last legislative term by
state Rep. Tony Tinderholt, but
it failed in the Judiciary and Civil
Jurisprudence Committee.
Republicans in Texas control
both legislative chambers as
well as the governor’s mansion.
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick last month
listed two abortion-related bills
in his legislative priorities.
Senate Bill 8, or the Heart Bill,
would restrict abortion after a
heartbeat is detected in an un-
born baby, while Senate Bill 9,
or the “Abortion Ban Trigger,”
would ban abortions if the Su-
preme Court reverses Roe v.
Wade.
The bills were among those
that reflect “the principles and
values of the Texas conserva-
tive majority,” Patrick said in a
statement.
The proposals drew criticism
from Planned Parenthood, one
of the nation’s largest abortion
providers.
“Lt. Gov. Patrick wants to ban
abortion at six weeks—before
most people even know they
are pregnant. Planned Parent-
hood will never stop fighting to
protect patients and their access
to reproductive health care, in-
cluding abortion. Just when we
think state leaders can’t go any
lower, Dan Patrick throws out
this list—nothing more than
a political stunt and a weak
attempt to save face with his
base,” Dyana Limon-Mercado,
executive director of Planned
Parenthood Texas Votes, said
in a statement.
BRYANSLATON.COM
Rep. Bryan Slaton.
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
RODIN ECKENROTH/GETTY IMAGES
starting with elementary schools
next month. With this agree-
ment with our teachers, we are
ready to begin to bring students
back safely.”
Elementary school students
would go to school every day in
the morning or afternoon un-
der a hybrid model, while stu-
dents in middle and high school
would keep learning virtually for
now. The agreement will allow
any student to continue learning
outside the classroom.
20 Senate Republicans Join
Democrats to Confirm Merrick Garland
as Attorney General
JACK PHILLIPS
The Senate on March 10 confirmed
Merrick Garland as attorney gen-
eral in a 70–30 vote, with 20 Repub-
licans joining all Democrats in ap-
proving President Joe Biden’s pick.
The nomination came about five
years after Garland’s failed nomi-
nation to the Supreme Court by
then-President Barack Obama. At
the time, the Senate, which was
controlled by Republicans, denied
Garland a hearing or a vote. Gar-
land has served on the U.S. Court
of Appeals for the District of Co-
lumbia Circuit Court since 1997.
Garland, 68, received the sup-
port of Senate Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and the
ranking Republican on the Senate
Judiciary Committee Sen. Chuck
Grassley (R-Iowa).
“I’m voting to confirm Judge Gar-
land because of his long reputation
as a straight shooter and a legal ex-
pert,” McConnell said on the floor
before the vote. “His left-of-center
perspective has been within the
legal mainstream. Let’s hope our
incoming attorney general applies
that no-nonsense approach to the
serious challenges facing the De-
partment of Justice and our nation.”
In his confirmation hearing sev-
eral weeks ago, Garland said his
first briefing as attorney general
would focus on the Jan. 6 Capitol
breach and its investigation. So far,
more than 300 suspects have been
arrested on a variety of charges in
connection to the incident.
“I intend to make sure that
we look more broadly to look at
where this is coming from, what
other groups there might be that
could raise the same problem in
the future,” he said during the
hearing. In the 1990s, as U.S. at-
torney, Garland investigated and
led prosecutions after the bomb-
ing of the Oklahoma City federal
building in 1995.
But Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) last
week said Garland refused “to an-
swer basic questions” during the
hearing relating to his views on the
Those students would have “the
opportunity to return to campus
for peer interaction, social-emo-
tional learning, and lessons for
college and career exploration,”
according to a summary of the
agreement.
The teachers union had resist-
ed what it described as a “pre-
mature” return to classrooms,
stemming from fears of the vi-
rus. Studies show that reopening
schools for in-person instruction
hasn’t led to a significant increase
in community transmission of
the illness. The Centers for Dis-
ease Control and Prevention last
month recommended a return to
physical classes, if certain steps
were taken.
Approximately 47 percent of
K-12 students in the United States
have returned to five-day-a-week
in-person classes as of March 8,
according to the tracking website
Burbio. California is lagging, sit-
ting last in Burbio’s state-by-state
in-person index.
“Most of the state’s large dis-
tricts have no plans to return
students in March,” Burbio said
in a blog post.
The tentative Los Angeles
agreement itself wasn’t released.
According to details obtained by
the Los Angeles Times, the agree-
ment has no set date for a return
to physical classes.
Middle and high schools
could remain closed until May
and when students do return,
they’d start by continuing to
learn online even though they’d
be physically present in their
schools, aside from a single
period each day.
Garland got the
support of Senate
Minority Leader
Mitch McConnell
and the ranking
Republican on the
Senate Judiciary
Committee Sen.
Chuck Grassley.
death penalty, illegal immigration,
and gun laws.
“Ensuring the Senate has time
to debate these issues and get an-
swers is the same thing that Senate
Democrats did for Bill Barr,” Cotton
wrote on Twitter. “We’re not going
to have one standard for Trump’s
nominees and another for Biden’s.”
When asked by Cotton about
whether illegally crossing the U.S.
border is a crime, Garland replied
that “the president has made clear
that we are a country of borders
and with a concern about national
security,” but stated he didn’t know
“of a proposal to decriminalize but
still make it unlawful to enter.”
“I asked Judge Garland whether
the Department of Justice has au-
thority to deny gun sales indefi-
nitely to individuals who have not
been found to have any back-
ground check red flags. He said
he doesn’t know,” Cotton also said,
while also blocking his quick con-
firmation.
Criminal justice reform and
voting rights would also be on
his agenda list, Garland told the
senators.
“I regard my responsibilities with
respect to the Civil Rights Division
as at the top of my agenda priorities
lists. So you have my commitment
to do everything I can in this area,”
Garland said during the hearing.
After Garland’s confirmation as
attorney general, Biden and Sen-
ate Democrats will now be able
to fill the vacancy on the D.C.
Circuit Court.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Xi Orders China’s
Military to Strengthen
Combat Readiness
EVA FU
Chinese leader Xi Jinping is tell-
ing China’s armed forces to fo-
cus on strengthening its combat
readiness over the next five years
because of domestic and interna-
tional uncertainties.
In  a March 9 address to del-
egates during Beijing’s annual
legislative sessions, Xi, who
heads the Central Military Com-
mission, said that ensuring its
armed forces are prepared for
war should be the nation’s lead-
ing military objective.
“The current security circum-
stances of our country are largely
unstable and uncertain,” he said.
He instructed the armed forces to
“heighten their sense of urgency”
and “hurry up” to accomplish the
annual military objectives as out-
lined in the 14th Five Year Plan, the
country’s latest policy roadmap.
Introduced in Beijing on March
5, the proposal calls for the co-
operation between the military
and civilians, or what it termed
“civil-military fusion,” to equip
the armed forces with artificial in-
telligence-powered weapons and
other cutting-edge technologies.
“The Chinese military as a
whole must make ready to meet
with various complex and dif-
ficult circumstances, and reso-
lutely defend national sover-
eignty, safety, and development
interests,” Xi said.
His order expands upon his
January command, in which he
called on the regime’s military
to “focus on preparing for war,
deepen the transformation of
military training, build a new
type of military training system,
and comprehensively improve the
Blinken Says ‘No Concessions Whatsoever’ to Beijing
Ahead of Meeting With Top Chinese Officials
CATHY HE
U.S. Secretary of State Antony
Blinken said on March 10 he in-
tends to lay out in “very frank
terms” the United States’ “deep
objections” to the Beijing regime’s
behavior in a meeting with top
Chinese Communist Party (CCP)
officials next week.
He added that the United States
won’t make any concessions to
China to get its cooperation on
implementing the Paris climate
agreement.
Blinken and national security ad-
viser Jake Sullivan will meet with
the top CCP official in charge of
foreign affairs, Yang Jiechi, and
China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi
in Anchorage, Alaska, on March
18—the first high-level in-person
meeting between the two coun-
tries since President Joe Biden took
office.
Blinken, at a House Commit-
tee on Foreign Affairs hearing on
March 9, said the meeting is an
“important opportunity for us to
lay out in very frank terms, many
concerns that we have with Bei-
jing’s action.”
Reiterating previous remarks,
Blinken described China as
the United States’ “most conse-
quential relationship,” saying the
regime “uniquely has an ability
militarily diplomatically, economi-
cally, to undermine the interna-
tional rules-based system.”
“So we’re going to be very mak-
ing very clear to our counterparts
in China, the deep concern objec-
tions that we have to some of the
things that they’re doing, and to
see if they will address those con-
cerns,” he said.
Blinken also said he would “ex-
plore whether there are avenues
for cooperation.” When later asked
by a congressman whether the sec-
retary was “contemplating conces-
sions” to the CCP in exchange for
cooperation on the Paris climate
level of combat training and abil-
ity to win.”
Years of continual spending
growth have made China the
world’s second-largest military
spender after the United States.
In a 2020 report, the U.S. Depart-
ment of Defense described both
the Chinese army and navy forces
as the largest in the world, noting
that the Chinese military, known
as the People’s Liberation Army,
“is developing capabilities to pro-
vide options for the [People’s Re-
public of China] to dissuade, deter,
or, if ordered, defeat third-party
intervention during a large-scale,
theater campaign.”
Over the coming year, Beijing
plans to spend more than 1.38
trillion yuan ($212 billion), an in-
crease of about 6.8 percent from
2020, according to Wu Qian, the
spokesperson for China’s Ministry
of National Defense.
In an interview with Chinese
media on March 7, Wu justified
the boost in military spending as
necessary for both “self-defense
and protecting world peace,” say-
ing it was “beyond reproach.”
China faces homeland security
challenges that “cannot be over-
looked,” Wu said, including “ris-
ing hegemonism, power politics,
unilateralism”—wording that
Beijing frequently invokes when
referring to the United States—
among threats he said would un-
dermine China.
“The world is far from peaceful,
therefore our national defense
must scale up,” he said.
While the Chinese regime has
denied that it’s seeking to pursue
hegemony, it has grown more ag-
gressive in the Taiwan Strait and
the South China Sea.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken testifies before the House Committee On
Foreign Affairs on Capitol Hill in Washington, on March 10, 2021.
Blinken said the
meeting is an
opportunity to
layout ‘many con-
cerns that we have
with Beijing’s
action.’
deal or other matters, Blinken re-
sponded, “No concessions what-
soever to the Communist Chinese
Party.”
He said that the meeting won’t
be a “strategic dialogue” and there
were no plans at this stage for fol-
low-up engagements, adding that
any future talks would be “based
on the proposition that we’re see-
ing tangible progress and tangible
outcomes on the issues of concern
to us.”
Responses to Genocide in Xinjiang
The secretary faced multiple ques-
tions on how the Biden adminis-
tration will respond to the CCP’s
repression against Uyghurs in
Xinjiang, which the Trump ad-
ministration designated a geno-
Military delegates leave after China’s rubber-stamp legislature’s conference at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on
March 8, 2021.
LEO RAMIREZ/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Beijing is currently holding a
month-long military exercise
through March 31 in a zone with
a radius of roughly 3.1 miles in the
South China Sea, vowing that they
“will not lose an inch of the land
that our ancestors left to us.”
Chinese warplanes have intrud-
ed into the air defense identifica-
tion zone of Taiwan, a self-ruling
island that the regime claims as
part of its territory, on a near-daily
basis since the start of this year.
Last week, it abruptly banned the
import of Taiwanese pineapple be-
TING SHEN-POOL/GETTY IMAGES
cide; Blinken has said he agreed
with this declaration. The secretary
confirmed that he would raise the
CCP’s abuses in Xinjiang in the
meeting next week.
Blinken said the United States
would respond first by “speak-
ing out forcefully” on the issue
and would work to build a “coali-
tion of like-minded countries who
share these deep concerns about
human rights abuses in China.”
In addition, the United States
would be calling for the regime to
open up Xinjiang to investigators
from the United Nations, he said.
There are also a number of prac-
tical actions “that we can and
should do,” Blinken said. They in-
clude sanctions and visa restric-
tions on those responsible for the
rights violations, barring exports
of U.S. technology that aids in the
repression, and banning imports
of goods made from forced labor
from Xinjiang.
The Trump administration im-
posed sanctions on several CCP
officials over their roles in oversee-
ing the persecution in the region
and banned all cotton and tomato
products from Xinjiang, citing the
use of forced labor.
Chinese leader Xi
Jinping attends
the opening
session of the
National Peo-
ple’s Congress at
the Great Hall of
the People in Bei-
jing on March 5,
2021.
cause of pests; more than 90 per-
cent of Taiwan’s pineapple exports
went to China last year.
Wu, the national defense
spokesperson, warned Taiwan in
late January that “independence
means war.”
He reiterated the same position
in the March 7 interview, saying
that the Chinese Communist Par-
ty “reserves the option to deploy
all necessary measures” to bring
Taiwan under its fold, including
using military force.
Chinese diplomats have repeat-
US Lawmakers Introduce
Legislation to Combat China’s Forced
Organ Harvesting
FRANK FANG
A bipartisan group of U.S. law-
makers has introduced legisla-
tion in the Senate and the House
to stop China’s state-sanctioned
practice of forced harvesting of or-
gans for transplant from prisoners
of conscience.
“Organ harvesting is an egre-
giously barbaric and inhumane
act that has no place in our world,”
Rep. Chris Smith (R-N.J.), the
prime sponsor of the House ver-
sion, said in a March 9 statement.
“We must do more to put an end
to the horrific abuse by interna-
tional human trafficking gangs,
terrorist organizations, and even
some governments—China’s com-
munist regime in particular—who
kill innocent people and sell their
organs for profit.
“Our legislation would empower
the U.S. State Department to iden-
tify and expose organ harvesters
and traffickers across the world
with the goal of punishing perpe-
trators through effective sanctions
and travel restrictions.”
The legislation, the Stop Forced
Organ Harvesting Act, would
authorize the U.S. government
to deny or revoke passports for
people who engage in the illegal
purchase of organs.
Under Section 301 of the Na-
tional Organ Transplant Act, the
commercialism and private sale
of human organs are banned.
China has been one of the top
destinations for transplant tour-
ism, while Beijing has promoted
its narrative in U.S. newspapers
that organs are sourced from vol-
untary donations. The Chinese
regime announced that it would
stop sourcing organs from ex-
ecuted prisoners starting on Jan.
1, 2015, and claimed that it would
executively rely on a new system
of voluntary donations.
Beijing’s claim was refuted by a
CHINA | A9
NOEL CELIS/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
edly called the regime’s claim to
Taiwan a “red line” issue that
can’t be crossed. Foreign Minis-
ter Wang Yi on March 7 told the
Biden administration to undo
former President Donald Trump’s
“dangerous practice” of support-
ing Taiwan, an action he said was
“playing with fire.”
Adm. Philip Davidson, head of
U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, ex-
pressed concern that the Chinese
military may be making “vast ad-
vances” in both its size and ca-
pabilities to supplant the United
States on the world stage.
He described the Indo-Pacific
region as the “most consequen-
tial region for America’s future,”
where the United States’s deter-
rence posture “must demonstrate
the capability, the capacity, and
the will to convince Beijing un-
equivocally the costs of achieving
their objectives by the use of mili-
tary force are simply too high.”
“They’ve long said they want to
be that by 2050. I’m worried about
them moving that target closer,”
he said.
June 2019 report published by a
London-based people’s tribunal.
The report concluded, after a year-
long investigation, that the stat-
ed-sanctioned practice of forced
organ harvesting was happening
on a “significant scale” in China,
with Falun Gong practitioners be-
ing the main source of organs.
Adherents of Falun Gong, a spiri-
tual discipline that’s also known
as Falun Dafa, have been the tar-
gets of persecution by the Chinese
regime since 1999.
Additionally, the legislation
would mandate that the State
Department report annually on
forced organ harvesting in foreign
countries, and identify foreign of-
ficials and entities responsible for
forced organ harvesting. These of-
ficials and entities could then be
subjected to possible U.S. sanc-
tions under the legislation.
The legislation would also pro-
hibit the U.S. export of organ
transplant surgery devices to these
foreign entities responsible.
The House bill (H.R.1592) was
co-sponsored by Reps. Thomas
Suozzi (D-N.Y.) and Vicky Hartz-
ler (R-Mo.), while the Senate bill
(S.602) was introduced by Sens.
Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) and Chris
Coons (D-Del.).
“There is growing evidence that
the Chinese Communist Party has
and continues to harvest organs
from persecuted religious groups,
prisoners of conscience, and in-
mates,” Cotton said in a statement.
“This bill will identify and pun-
ish CCP members involved in
forced organ harvesting. It’s past
time to hold Beijing accountable
for these heinous acts.”
Similar legislation was intro-
duced in the previous session of
Congress in December last year.
This year, four different counties
in the state of Virginia have passed
resolutions condemning China’s
forced organ harvesting.
A10 | WORLD
A member of Afghan security forces stands guard at the site of an attack in Kabul on Dec. 20, 2020.
US Proposes UN Meeting With 5 Other
Nations for Comprehensive Afghan Peace
CONTINUED FROM A1
Many of these nations are regional adver-
saries with competing stakes, and experts
say that a positive outcome will be difficult
to negotiate as, meanwhile, the security
threat will only intensify. India will be in-
cluded in the international Afghan peace
process for the first time.
“First we intend to ask the United Nations
to convene Foreign Ministers and envoys
from Russia, China, Pakistan, Iran, India,
and the United States to discuss a unified
approach to supporting peace in Afghani-
stan. It is my belief that these countries
share an abiding common interest in a
stable Afghanistan and must work together
if we are to succeed,” Blinken wrote in his
letter to Ghani last week, according to Af-
ghan broadcaster TOLO News.
Though Turkey wouldn’t be invited to the
U.N. meeting, Blinken in his letter informed
Ghani that the U.S. administration will
ask Turkey to host a senior-level meeting
between the Afghan government and the
Taliban in the coming weeks to finalize a
peace agreement.
The letter comes as the United States
prepares to withdraw a remaining 2,500
troops from Afghanistan by May 1, a year
after the Trump administration and the
Taliban signed an agreement at Doha to
start a political process to finish the war.
In his letter, Blinken had asked for “ur-
gent leadership” from Ghani in the com-
ing weeks, amid a fragile security situation
inside Afghanistan.
“Even with the continuation of financial
assistance from the United States to your
forces after an American military withdraw-
al, I’m concerned that the security situation
will worsen and that the Taliban could make
rapid territorial gains. I’m making this clear
to you so that you understand the urgency
of my tone regarding the collective work
outlined in this letter,” Blinken wrote.
Whether the attempt to bring so many
stakeholders onto the same platform will
be successful is yet to be seen, but all will
be closely watching what the United States
does, Aparna Pande, director of the Hudson
Institute’s Initiative on the Future of India
and South Asia, told The Epoch Times over
a chat platform.
“If the U.S. plans on leaving Afghanistan
without any military presence or support,
then each of these countries will make
their own plans. If the U.S. plans on hav-
ing a long-term presence, even if small, then
these countries will behave differently,” said
Pande, who is based in Washington.
By getting different stakeholders on the
same platform, the Biden administration
is trying to show the world that its foreign
policy will use diplomacy, according to Ab-
hinav Pandya, an India-based analyst on
terrorism and radicalization with expertise
on Afghanistan issues.
“So we are trying to get Iran on board, we
are trying to get Turkey on board, we are
trying to get Russians on board. Now we
are trying to get China on board. So this
is just to convey an image that, no, we are
not very isolationist, we are just trying to
U.S. Army soldiers retrieve their duffel bags after returning home from a nine-
month deployment to Afghanistan, at Fort Drum, N.Y., on Dec. 10, 2020.
Secretary of State
Antony Blinken deliv-
ers remarks at the
State Department
in Washington on
March 3, 2021..
ANDREW CABALLERO-
REYNOLDS/POOL/AFP VIA
GETTY IMAGES
Many of these
nations are re-
gional adversar-
ies with com-
peting stakes,
and experts
say that a posi-
tive outcome
will be difficult
to negotiate as,
meanwhile,
the security
threat will only
intensify.
JOHN MOORE/GETTY IMAGES
incorporate all the parties and come to a
consensus,” Pandya said.
Stakeholders
Anil Trigunayat, a geopolitical analyst with
expertise in the Middle East and a former
senior Indian diplomat, said the Biden ad-
ministration is aware of the stakeholders
playing positive as well as spoiler roles inside
Afghanistan. An attempt to bring everyone
together could mean different things for dif-
ferent invitees.
“Pakistan has been playing both sides. Iran
is an important neighbor of Afghanistan.
Russians are keen to have a say in the out-
come,” Trigunayat said. “Apart from strate-
gic reasons for a big power, Afghanistan is a
major source and problem of narcotics for
the Russian youth.
“The U.S., on its part, is keen to leave Af-
ghanistan, and paradoxically other countries
do worry about [the U.S.] exit while they did
not quite like [its] presence.” He added that for
any success to be achieved, all stakeholders
will need a common plan for peacekeeping
and security.
“[The] U.S. wants to leave ASAP but would
not like to abdicate as a defeated power.
Also, it wants some sense and semblance
of a graceful exit. China and Russia are P5
members, have to be on board for the U.N.-
led process and a viable outcome.”
Pande said the United States is trying to
bring different adversaries on the same plat-
form “especially those who disagree ... so that
they speak with each other and this way find
a way out.”
However, there are major pitfalls to con-
sider, according to Pandya, and there is a high
likelihood of it not succeeding.
“I feel that this is some kind of a half-
hearted attempt to undo what Trump was
doing and to reassert the American role in
the geopolitical domain,” said Pandya, who
is CEO of the India-based think tank Usanas
Foundation.
“And by inviting countries like Russia,
China, Iran, Turkey, and Pakistan to decide
the future of Afghanistan, the U.S. is also lay-
ing the foundation for the new great game in
Afghanistan involving the countries men-
tioned above trying to occupy the place left
by the U.S.”
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
ZAKERIA HASHIMI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
Contradictions and Challenges
Experts said the situation inside Afghanistan
is tough. Those invited have different stakes
in the region and have often contradicted
each other on global platforms, while some
invitees have also sponsored terrorism in the
region—their genuinely coming together for
peace is unlikely.
“Once again, the U.S. is repeating the same
mistakes. All the players which have been
brought to the tables, some of them are the
real culprits and the villains in Afghanistan.
First of all, Pakistan, as I mentioned, is the
devil’s advocate in Afghanistan, while shel-
tering all the terrorist groups,” Pandya said,
adding that other invitees also are sponsors
of terrorists inside Afghanistan.
“If you bring them on board, and if you ask
them for the solution, how is it going to suc-
ceed? Now you have Turkey, [which] is also
an accomplice of Pakistan.”
Pakistan’s Interservice Intelligence (ISI) is
outlined as the “principal and the underlying
cause of pertinent war against Afghan and
those who seek to help them,” in a recent
paper by Canada’s first resident ambassador
to Afghanistan, Chris Alexander.
“The regional conflict—and its resolu-
tion—is no longer about Afghanistan and
Pakistan alone. It is about the credibility
of international institutions, including the
UN and NATO,” Alexander wrote in a paper
published by the Ottawa-based Macdonald
Laurier Institute. “It is also about the future
of proxy war as an instrument of policy–at
a time when Russia’s Putin, Turkey’s Erdo-
gan, Iran’s Khamenei, and others are eager
to mimic ISI impunity.”
India’s 1st-Time Entry
India has finally been included in the Afghan
peace process after six months of diplomatic
efforts—and despite the efforts of Moscow,
a Chinese ally, to keep the South Asian na-
tion out, according to exclusive sources cited
by Indian Express. Efforts to keep India out
were at the behest of Pakistan, an Indian ad-
versary, the daily reported.
Harsh Pant, an expert on Asia security is-
sues and the head of the strategic studies
program at the Observer Research Founda-
tion in New Delhi, told The Epoch Times:
“India is [now] formally talked of as a country
that needs to be brought into the picture. For
a long time, the idea was that India can be
ignored [in terms of] what happens in Af-
ghanistan. It is increasingly becoming clear
that it can’t be ignored.”
Pandya said India is getting closer to the
United States, and Russia has no option but
to get closer to Pakistan. India, according to
him, is the only regional power that genu-
inely wants durable peace in the region.
“India has almost nothing to gain from it
except some formal participation because
Taliban leadership will continue to be con-
trolled by Pakistan,” Pandya said, adding that
after the United States leaves Afghanistan,
the training of militant groups operating
inside India’s Kashmir will likely be shifted
to Afghanistan, which has already begun.
“If India thinks that by such conferences
they will get some leverage with the Taliban,
they are living in a fine illusion.”
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021 WORLD | A11

Healthy Adults Voluntarily Infected With CCP Virus

in 1st Human Challenge Study
DAN KITWOOD/GETTY IMAGES
MEILING LEE

Young, healthy volunteers are be-

ing deliberately infected with the
CCP virus in the first human chal-
lenge trial in the United Kingdom,
with the aim of advancing research
into effective vaccines and treat-
ments for COVID-19.
The trial will enable researchers
to assess the smallest amount of the
CCP (Chinese Communist Party)
virus needed to “cause infection
and elicit an immune response” in
the volunteers, so as to better un-
derstand the route of infection and
the mode of transmission.
The virus being used is the origi-
nal strain “produced by” a team
of scientists, according to the re-
searchers.
“We expect these studies to offer
unique insights into how the vi-
rus works and help us understand
which promising vaccines offer
the best chance of preventing the
infection,” Clive Dix, interim chair
of the UK Vaccine Taskforce, said
in a February press release.
The 90 volunteers—aged be-
tween 18 and 30 and who have
been screened for potential health
risks—are being observed in a
“safe and controlled environment”
and closely monitored 24/7 by sci- A patient receives a COVID-19 vaccine at Salisbury Cathedral in Salisbury, England, on Feb. 11, 2021.
entists and medically trained per-
sonnel, according to the UK gov- will be vaccinated in the near fu- are still learning more about how

ANDREW H. WALKER/GETTY IMAGES FOR LUPUS FOUNDATION OF AMERICA

ernment, which is investing 33.6
million pounds ($43.7 million) in
the study.
The UK human challenge study
will end in May. Participants must
test negative twice for the CCP vi-
rus before they are allowed to go
home, and will continue to be
monitored for a year.
Opponents of the study question
if it’s necessary considering that
COVID-19 vaccines and treatments
are already available.
In an op-ed in Forbes, William
Haseltine, a former professor at
Harvard Medical School wrote:
“There is no need to actively in-
fect healthy individuals when we
are going to have real comparison
data to work with from the millions
of people already vaccinated and
the hundreds of millions more who
GEORGE FREY/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
The answer is
not to make
more people
sick, but to al-
low the already
approved test-
ed drugs that
work.
Dr. Lee Merritt,
orthopedic surgeon
Hydroxychloroquine
tablets sit on a counter
at Rock Canyon Phar-
macy in Provo, Utah, on
May 20, 2020.
ture. What could possibly be the
reason behind actively infecting
healthy people while the same data
could be garnered through other,
less risky means?”
Dr. Lee Merritt, an orthopedic
surgeon and a member of Amer-
ica’s Frontline Doctors, said it
doesn’t make sense for the studies
to be conducted now when scien-
tific data shows the use of certain
federally approved drugs can treat
COVID-19.
“The answer is not to make more
people sick, but to allow the already
approved tested drugs that work—
ivermectin, hydroxychloroquine,
along with [vitamin] D and zinc,”
Merritt told The Epoch Times. “The
real crime is covering up treatment
we know works.”
Merritt claims that hydroxychlo-
roquine (used in combination with
zinc) and ivermectin prescribed for
human consumption can prevent
and treat COVID-19, but govern-
mental health agencies are pro-
moting vaccines as the only option
to reduce the risk of severe illness.
However, the Centers for Disease
Control and Prevention states that
people may still get infected and
transmit the virus to others after
vaccination. Furthermore, “experts
long vaccines protect against CO-
VID-19 in real-world conditions.”
The Food and Drug Administra-
tion (FDA) “cautions against use
of hydroxychloroquine or chloro-
quine for COVID-19 outside of the
hospital setting or a clinical trial”
and says it hasn’t “approved iver-
mectin for use in treating or pre-
venting COVID-19” even though
the regulatory agency hasn’t re-
viewed data supporting the use of
ivermectin.
Merritt also says that the vac-
cines are experimental because the
phase 3 trials of Pfizer-BioNTech
and Johnson & Johnson are still on- Dr. William Haseltine speaks at the
going and won’t be completed until Lupus Foundation of America National
January 2023, and Moderna’s won’t Gala, at Gotham Hall in New York on
Oct. 8, 2013.
be completed until October 2022.
All three COVID-19 vaccines
have been granted an emergency vent COVID-19, to look at potential
authorization, meaning the vac- treatments and study the immune
cines only need to show that they response.”
“may be effective” and are issued “There are so many unknowns
only when there are “no adequate, about this disease,” Merritt said.
approved, and available alternative “To now go to human transmis-
to the product for diagnosing, pre- sion studies when you haven’t
venting, or treating the disease or completely sorted out what you’re
condition,” according to the FDA. dealing with, I think is premature
Researchers said that the goal and not what we need to be doing
of the human challenge trial is to right now. We need to absolutely
eventually “study how vaccines get a handle on whether this is even
work in the body to stop or pre- out in the world anymore.”

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Speaker of the House Rep. Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) speaks as other House Democrats listen during a news conference on the For the People Act at the east front of the U.S. Capitol, in Washington on March 3, 2021.
H.R. 1 Would Create Such Chaos We Would
Need a Constitutional Amendment to Fix It
ROB NATELSON
H.R. 1—the bill for federal
takeover of elections that
just passed the House
of Representatives—is
a constitutional night-
mare. If the Senate ap-
proves it, we almost certain-
ly will need a constitutional amendment
to clean up the mess.
This has happened before: In 1970,
we had to enact the 26th Amendment
to cure congressionally caused voting
chaos. This time, though, the situation
would be even worse.
H.R. 1 is one of those massive bills (in
this case, 791 pages) that no one reads
in their entirety until people try to apply
them. Then, everyone throws up their
hands aghast, shouting, “What were they
thinking when they passed this thing?”
The answer, of course, is that “they”
(those who passed it) weren’t thinking
about much of anything—at least not
about anything defensible.
This essay will outline just a few of
the constitutional problems in H.R. 1.
You can bet there are more where they
came from.
H.R. 1 purports to change many, many
aspects of federal elections. Others have
summarized those aspects in detail.
Among them:
E Requiring states to set up “indepen-
dent” redistricting commissions to
draw congressional districts. (Note the
quotation marks: “independent” com-
missions don’t stop politics; they just
hide politics from public view.)
E Institutionalizing permanently the
mail-in ballot irregularities we just
went through in the 2020 presidential
election.
E Imposing restrictions on campaign
contributions and free speech.
E Enfranchising felons.
E Subsidizing with federal money the
voter registration of Democratic Party
constituencies, such as college stu-
dents.
E Preventing states from using tradi-
tional methods of ensuring election
integrity and voter privacy.
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021 • A13
Many have argued that H.R. 1 is entirely
unconstitutional because it “federalizes”
election administration. But the truth is
much more complicated. H.R. 1 contains
some sections that are perfectly constitu-
tional—even if not well advised. But they
are intertwined with provisions that are
clearly (or arguably) unconstitutional.
This intertwining would take decades of
litigation to unravel.
H.R. 1 cites at least three constitutional
clauses to support it. One is the guarantee
clause (Article IV, Section 4), by which
the United States guarantees each state a
republican form of government. But H.R.
1 has nothing to do with the guarantee
clause. In the Constitution, the phrase
“republican form” means a government
that follows the rule of law, is ultimately
grounded in all or in some portion of the
citizenry, and has no king.
Republics have never adopted any par-
ticular voting rules. Historically, in fact,
limited and unequal suffrage has been
the norm for republics.
H.R. 1 also cites Section 5 of the
14th Amendment. This grants Congress
authority to enforce certain legal stan-
dards (such as equal protection of the
laws) against state governments. But the
Supreme Court tells us that Congress may
not use Section 5 as an excuse to massively
rewrite state law or change the federal-
state balance. The Court emphasizes that
Section 5 is only “remedial,” not “substan-
tive.” It adds that a law passed under Sec-
tion 5 must be “congruent and proportion-
al” to the problem it purports to address.
H.R. 1 recites alleged disparities among
groups in voting and says the bill is
designed to address them. But such
disparities, without other evidence, don’t
prove unconstitutional discrimination.
KEREM YUCEL/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
H.R. 1’s pretense
of regulating
presidential
elections is just
that—a pretense.
People wait in line to cast
their ballots in Minneapo-
lis on Nov. 3, 2020.
PHOTO BY ALEX WONG/GETTY IMAGES
More importantly, H.R. 1’s “solutions”
go far beyond anything needed to rem-
edy them. In other words, the bill isn’t
“congruent and proportional.” Rather,
it’s a federal sledgehammer purportedly
fashioned to kill a gnat, but really made
to bash the rest of us.
The third constitutional provision
cited by H.R. 1 is the elections clause
(which is more accurately called the
“times, places, and manner clause”). In
the Constitution, this is Article I, Section
4, Clause 1. H.R. 1’s reliance on the elec-
tions clause is somewhat better grounded
than its reliance on the guarantee clause
or the 14th Amendment. The elections
clause reads as follows:
“The Times, Places, and Manner of
holding Elections for Senators and Rep-
resentatives, shall be prescribed in each
State by the Legislature thereof; but the
Congress may at any time by Law make
or alter such Regulations, except as to the
Places of chusing [sic] Senators.”
Essentially, the elections clause gives
Congress power to override state laws on
such mechanics as 1. the time of election,
2. polling places, 3. registration rules, 4.
percentages required for victory, 5. the
nature of the ballot, and 6. congressional
districting. The elections clause can at
least partially support some of H.R. 1’s
rules. An example is the mandate that
states use mail-in ballots—a mandate
that would be stupid, but probably consti-
tutional for congressional elections.
But beyond that, there are many prob-
lems with using the elections clause to
support H.R. 1. For one thing, that clause
applies only to congressional elections.
It grants no power over presidential
elections. The Supreme Court has ruled
repeatedly that state legislatures have
almost complete control over presidential
elections. Indeed, the court reaffirmed the
classic case on the subject just last year. So
H.R. 1’s pretense of regulating presidential
elections is just that—a pretense.
Nor can the bill’s mail-in ballot rules
apply to state elections. If the mail-in
mandate is valid as to congressional
elections, states still could use traditional
ballots for all the other electoral contests.
Continued on A16
A14 | OPINION
She’s My Mother—She’s My Father
JENNIFER LAHL
If you’ve seen the 1974
movie “Chinatown,” you
may recall that great
scene in which detective
Jake Gittes (Jack Nich-
olson) confronts Evelyn
Mulwray (Faye Dunaway)
about the identity of the woman he be-
lieves is Evelyn’s father’s mistress.
It’s a famous scene, with Jake shout-
ing at Evelyn, “Who is she?” with Evelyn
responding, “She’s my daughter.” Gittes
slaps her. “She’s my sister.” Gittes slaps
her again.
“She’s my daughter and my sister.”
Spoiler alert: Mulwray was raped by
her father when she was 15. The young
woman, Katherine, is, in fact, not Ev-
elyn’s father’s mistress, but she is both
Evelyn’s daughter and her sister. It can be
confusing to unpack this scene.
Fast forward to today, to real life, and
not a Hollywood film or make-believe,
with the very confusing news story of
a transwoman physician. Dr. Jesnoor
Dayara, in Gujarat, India, has frozen
his sperm so that when he undergoes
sex-reassignment surgery sometime later
this year, the child he hopes to give birth
to as a woman will be biologically his.
It can be confusing to unpack this
story, too!
Dayara’s claim is, while he was born
male, he has always felt like a woman. He
feels he was “born in the wrong body.”
Let us be clear on a few fundamental
points on human biology and human
sexual reproduction:
> Men have testes that produce sperm
and women have ovaries that pro-
duce eggs.
> There are no “her sperm” and “his
eggs.” There is only his sperm and
her eggs.
DILBERT
PEANUTS
RED AND ROVER
GRAND AVENUE
MUTT & JEFF
And now, we are
looking at a world
where we will be
told to live with
Dayara’s fantasy of
transgender women
having babies,
lest we are called
transphobes and
become canceled.
DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
LGBT activists and their
supporters rally in support
of transgender people on
the steps of New York City
Hall on Oct. 24, 2018.
COMICS
> Women have babies and men do not,
nor can they.
> You can’t be born in the wrong body,
you are born in the body you get at
birth.
> Sex must not be conflated with gen-
der. Being a man or being a woman is
connected to biological sex.
> Liking feminine or masculine things
has nothing to do with our XX or XY
chromosomes.
I recently wrote about a new study done
showing that the majority of transgender
women will want uterine transplants so
that they can more fully express their fem-
inine characteristics, such as menstruat-
ing, getting pregnant, and giving birth.
The new wave of the “modern fam-
ily” with men having babies, which is a
movement of gay men actually not hav-
ing babies, but rather buying eggs from
one woman and renting the womb of
another woman, so that they can delude
themselves into thinking that they had
the baby.
In fact, one case concerning a “throu-
ple” of dads is making news as the judge
has allowed the three to be listed on
their son’s birth certificate. Of course,
we know three men can’t make a baby,
but this little boy was born via assisted
reproduction using the eggs from one
woman and the womb of another.
No mention of the genetic mother or
the birth mother on this birth certificate,
#WomenErased again and another child
without a sliver of an identity or idea of
where he or she came from.
And now, we’re looking at a world
where we will be told to live with
Dayara’s fantasy of transwomen having
babies, lest we are called transphobes
and become canceled.
But what about the children born with
all these strange new ways and into this
new version of what family looks like?
GARFIELD
GINGER MEGGS
BIG NATE
DRABBLE
FRANK AND ERNEST
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Are the kids all right like Hollywood and
the media want us to believe? The sad
answer is, probably not.
I like to say this is one of the largest
social experiments of our time, with our
learning as we go. What studies we do
have show that the children aren’t neces-
sarily all right, and they are searching
for and finding, thanks to DNA testing,
their biological parents and half-siblings.
Adults are getting what they want, with
little consideration of the best interests
of the children.
And if and when Dayara is able to give
birth using his sperm, using a uter-
ine transplant, with estrogen rushing
through his male body (he will still have
XY chromosomes and will be biologi-
cally male in every cell of his body), what
effect will this all have on any children
produced this way?
And how will this child explain his odd
relationship with his mother, or should
I say, his father? Like Faye Dunaway in
“Chinatown,” when asked, who is this
person, the child will respond, “He’s my
father. He’s my mother. He’s my father
and he’s my mother.”
Jennifer Lahl is the founder and president
of the Center for Bioethics and Culture
and producer of the documentary films,
“Eggsploitation,” “Anonymous Father’s
Day,” “Breeders: A Subclass of Women?”
and “Maggie’s Story,” and “#BigFertil-
ity,” which was an official selection in the
Silicon Valley International Film Festival.
She is back behind the camera, producing
a film on the ethics of allowing children to
medically and surgically transition.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
SPECIAL SERIES: HOW THE SPECTER OF COMMUNISM IS RULING OUR WORLD
Chapter Fifteen:
The Communist Roots of Terrorism
The Epoch Times here serializes
an adaptation from the Chinese
of “How the Specter of Communism
Is Ruling Our World,” a new book
by the editorial team of the “Nine
Commentaries on the Communist
Party.”
3. The Communist Origins
of Islamic Extremism
While the Soviets and Chinese com-
munists funded many terrorist orga-
nizations in the Middle East, actually
introducing communism in areas
with deeply held religious beliefs
proved a steep challenge. The Soviet
Union’s efforts to directly export so-
cialist revolution to the Muslim world
met with mixed and often temporary
results.
While there were multiple Soviet-
aligned states in the Middle East, only
South Yemen and Afghanistan were
under communist rule for varying
lengths of time during the Cold War.
In 1979, the Soviet Union launched an
invasion of Afghanistan and occupied
the country for 10 years in an attempt
to prop up the communist regime it
had recently helped rise to power. In
1989, the Soviets gave up and with-
drew from the country.
The ideological source of bin
Laden’s Islamic extremism can
be traced back to Sayyid Qutb, a
man who has been described as
the Karl Marx of radical Islam.
However, while communism itself
failed to establish control over the
Muslim world, it did much to influ-
ence the creation and development of
contemporary Islamic extremism.
Following the 9/11 attacks, the
threat of Islamic extremism gained
prominence, with the actions of
Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda
terrorist group becoming front-page
news. But the ideological source of
bin Laden’s Islamic extremism can be
traced back to a man who has been
described as the Karl Marx of radical
Islam. [9]
a. Sayyid Qutb: The Marx
of Islamic Extremism
At first glance, it may seem far-fetched
to suggest a relationship between
radical Islam and communism,
given that Muslims believe in Allah
and the prophet Mohammed, while
communism is atheistic and aims to
eradicate faith in religions. In fact,
the theory and methods of modern
Islamic extremism are closely linked
to Marxism-Leninism.
The pioneer of radical Islam and
modern jihad was Sayyid Qutb, an
Egyptian liaison for the local Mus-
lim Brotherhood to the Communist
International and the Egyptian com-
munist party. [10][11] Qutb’s ideas
were steeped in communist logic
and rhetoric. Born in 1906, Qutb
studied socialism and literature
in the 1920s and 1930s. He studied
A man claim-
ing to be an Al-
Qaeda mem-
ber addresses
a crowd gath-
ered in Yem-
en’s southern
province of
Abyan on Dec.
22, 2009.
abroad in the United States for two
years in the late 1940s and joined the
Muslim Brotherhood after his return
to Egypt. [12]
Qutbism can be described as the
pursuit of violence to destroy the old
society dominated by “jahiliyyah.”
As a religious term, jahiliyyah means
ignorance of religious truth, and it
originally referred to society before
the spread of Islam. Qutb called
upon Muslims to lay down their lives
in the struggle against jahiliyyah,
which would supposedly usher in
humanity’s liberation. To articu-
late his ideas on this struggle, Qutb
reinterpreted both the meaning of
jahiliyyah and the Islamic concept
of jihad.
Upon mention of jihad, many im-
mediately think of “holy war,” but
in Arabic, jihad simply means to
struggle or to fight. In mainstream
Islam, it can be taken to mean
internal conflict (self-perfection) or
defensive jihad. [13] Qutb, however,
extended this definition to include
proactive and unbridled use of vio-
lence in the “holy war” of jihad and
laid out its theoretical foundations.
[14] Qutb’s philosophy held that any
social system that abided by secular
laws or ethics was an anti-Islamic
jahiliyyah. He saw jahiliyyah as the
greatest obstruction for both Mus-
lims and non-Muslims, preventing
them from fulfilling Islamic values
and law. Even a society that claimed
itself Muslim could still be jahili-
yyah. Qutb considered the Egyptian
social system in which he lived to
be one in which jahiliyyah was
dominant, so he believed it must be
overthrown. [15]
This interpretation of jihad and
jahiliyyah mirrors the Marxist phi-
losophy of struggle along class lines.
Qutb claimed that the old society of
jahiliyyah had been forced on people
and, in the process, had robbed them
of their freedom. These enslaved
people—analogous to the working
class in Marxism—had the right to
Sayyid Qutb wage jihad to overthrow the oppres-
drinks a cup of sion of jahiliyyah. Qutb advocated
water behind jihad as the means of liberation for
bars in Cairo, in all mankind, Muslim as well as non-
1966. Muslim. [16] When Qutb’s writings
were published, many mainstream
-/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES Muslim leaders thought he had gone
too far and condemned his ideas as
heresy. [17]
Qutb had long had contact with
Nasser, leader of the socialist-leaning
Free Officers Movement and later
the long-serving president of Egypt.
In 1952, Nasser launched a military
coup overthrowing the Muhammad
Ali dynasty, Egypt’s pro-Western
monarchy. This socialist-revolu-
tionary coup was said to have been
planned by Qutb and the Muslim
Brotherhood together with Nasser.
However, while Qutb hoped Nasser
would establish an Islamic regime,
Nasser instead took the path of secu-
larization and in 1954 began sup-
pressing the Brotherhood.
Qutb and the Brotherhood pre-
pared to assassinate Nasser, but the
plot failed, and Qutb was imprisoned.
He was severely tortured during
his first few years in prison, but as
conditions relaxed, he was allowed
to write. Qutb wrote his two most
important works—“In the Shade of
the Qur’an” and “Milestones”—while
/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
incarcerated. These two books,
covering his views on the Qur’an,
Islamic history, Egypt, and Western
society, laid out in full his advocacy
of anti-secular, anti-Western extrem-
ism. At one point, Qutb was released
from prison, but stayed in Egypt and
was jailed again. In 1966, he was
convicted and hanged for his involve-
ment in the conspiracy to assassinate
Nasser. Qutb walked proudly up to
the gallows and toward becoming a
religious martyr.
Qutbism can be described
as the pursuit of violence
to destroy the old society
dominated by ‘jahiliyyah.’
As a religious term.
Ayman al-Zawahiri, the leader of
al-Qaeda following the death of bin
Laden, believed Qutb’s execution was
what ignited the fire of jihadi extrem-
ism. [18] Islamic extremists often cite
Qutb’s teachings and regard them-
selves as his “intellectual descen-
dants,” as observed by West Point
counter-terrorism expert William
McCants. [19] Middle East expert Has-
san Hassan, in a 2016 report on the
ISIS terrorist group, quoted a saying
popular among ISIS supporters about
the origins of the terrorist group’s
essential doctrine: “The Islamic State
was drafted by Sayyid Qutb, taught by
Abdullah Azzam, [and] globalized by
Osama bin Laden.” [20]
Notes
9. Paul Berman, “The Philosopher of
Islamic Terror,” New York Times Magazine,
March 23, 2003.
10. Raymond Ibrahim, “Ayman Zawahiri
and Egypt: A Trip Through Time,“ The
Investigative Project on Terrorism, Nov. 30,
2012.
11. Robert R. Reilly, “The Roots of Islamist
Ideology,” Centre for Research Into Post-
Communist Economies, February 2006, 4.
12. Berman, “The Philosopher.”
13. Andrew McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s
Egyptian Prophet: Sayyid Qutb and the
War on Jahiliya,” Terrorism Monitor 1, no. 3
(May 4, 2005).
14. A. E. Stahl, “‘Offensive Jihad’ in Sayyid
Qutb’s Ideology,” International Institute for
Counter-Terrorism, March 24, 2011.
15. McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian
Prophet.”
16. Stahl, “‘Offensive Jihad.’”
17. McGregor, “Al-Qaeda’s Egyptian
Prophet.”
18. Dale Eikmeier, “Qutbism: An Ideology
of Islamic-Fascism,” Parameters, vol. 37,
issue 1.
19. William McCants, “Problems With the
Arabic Name Game,” Combating Terrorism
Center, May, 22, 2006.
20. Hassan Hassan, “The Sectarianism
of the Islamic State: Ideological Roots
and Political Context” (Washington, D.C.:
Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace, June 2016), 26.
See next edition for the next installment.
To purchase the books, visit Epoch-
Shop.com
OPINION | A15
Stephen Gregory, Publisher
Jasper Fakkert, Editor-in-Chief
Channaly Philipp, Life & Tradition,
Travel Editor
Chrisy Trudeau, Mind & Body Editor
Crystal Shi, Home, Food Editor
Sharon Kilarski, Arts & Culture Editor
ABOUT US
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Standing outside of politi-
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We endeavor to educate read-
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and uplift minds. We believe that
rational, balanced debate is key
for fostering a healthy democ-
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As an independent media out-
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tigate issues overlooked—or
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We seek to highlight solutions
and what’s good in society rather
than what divides us.
We report respectfully, compas-
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We stand against the destruc-
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We are inspired in this by our
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A16 | OPINION
The Woke New University
PATRICK KEENEY
Historically, universi-
ties were institutions
devoted to the pursuit
of truth. It was a search
guided by Socratic
humility and Pascal’s
dictum that “we know too
much to be skeptics and too little to
be dogmatists.” Contrary to romantic
myths, there was never a time of cozy
accord in university life, and academic
disputations are well-known for their
ferocity.
But until recent years, intellectual
opponents could respectfully disagree.
Professors believed in argumentation
and disputation—what the Greeks
called the dialectic—as the way to truth.
Scholars kept in mind the Biblical in-
junction “Come, let us reason together.”
Professors engaged in civil debate,
avoiding ad hominem attacks while
recognizing superior reasoning and
better evidence. Disagreements could,
of course, be explosive. Nevertheless,
there was a tacit agreement about intel-
lectual norms, including the spirit of
generosity. One listened respectfully
to intellectual adversaries, conceding
when they had a better argument or
better evidence.
Western universities are currently
suffering from a series of self-inflicted
wounds that mock such old-fashioned
liberality. Notable is the abandonment
of objective truth and the growth of
an enervating relativism that refuses
to maintain distinctions of enduring
worth. There is a narrowing of accept-
able views and a rancorous intolerance
for ideas that fail to conform to the
prevailing orthodoxies.
The widespread embrace of a thera-
peutic education model has infan-
tilized students by indulging them with
“trigger warnings” and “safe spaces.”
The arrival of a managerialist class of
administrative busybodies undermines
the university’s educative mission,
while adding a costly burden to the tax-
The Book You’ve Been
Waiting for...
“Extremely well “The Truth, as horrifying as it is,
researched and true.” shall set us free. This should be
on this country’s academia’s
list of required reading.”
HOW THE
SPECTER OF COMMUNISM
IS RULING OUR WORLD
The specter of communism did not
disappear with the disintegration of the
Communist Party in Eastern Europe
ORDER NOW!
EpochShop.com
A pedestrian walks on
the University of Minnesota
campus in Minneapolis
on April 9, 2019.
There is a
narrowing of
acceptable views
and a rancorous
intolerance for ideas
that fail to conform
to the prevailing
orthodoxies.
NOW
BIGGER SIZE,
EASIER TO READ
FORMAT
STEPHEN MATUREN/GETTY IMAGES
payer. The brazen commercializing of
research labs has led to the predictable
corruption of science.
Simultaneously, the misguided belief
that university courses must be prof-
itable from a business and industry
perspective furthers the notion that the
university’s primary function is prepar-
ing students for careers.
None of this is news. But the past
decade has seen a militant turn toward
making universities bastions of woke
political correctness. The university’s
quest for truth is now passé; its new mis-
sion is to seek “social justice,” an alarm-
ing development that threatens the
university as never before.
In their book, “Cynical Theories: How
Activist Scholarship Made Everything
about Race, Gender, and Identity,” Helen
Pluckrose and James Lindsay state the
case baldly: “There is a problem that
begins in our universities, and it comes
down to Social Justice.”
The authors claim that the quest for
social justice is leading universities to
the precipice by a toxic admixture of
postmodernism and the Old Testament
righteousness of social justice warriors.
Social justice has seeped from the cam-
pus into the broader society to become
the culture wars’ driving force.
The authors believe that the secular,
liberal, and democratic societies born
of the Enlightenment are still the tem-
plate to measure human prosperity and
happiness. The well-being of democratic
societies is intricately bound with the
university’s fate. Ultimately, in defend-
ing the liberal university, one protects
the core values and culture of liberal
democracies, including “respect for the
value of viewpoint diversity and honest
debate [and] respect for evidence and
reason.”
They state that “we have reached a
point in history where liberalism and
modernity at the heart of Western civili-
zation are at great risk on the level of the
ideas that sustain them.”
In brief, it is liberal democracy itself,
not just the university, that is under siege
H.R. 1 Would Create Such Chaos
We Would Need a Constitutional
Amendment to Fix It
CONTINUED FROM A13
Here’s still another elections clause
problem: If Congress wished to erect
an independent commission to draw
congressional districts, it probably
could do so. But instead, H.R. 1 orders
the states to erect such commissions.
This violates a well-settled Supreme
Court rule called the noncommandeer-
ing doctrine, which generally forbids
the federal government from ordering
states to adopt, or not adopt, measures.
In particular, Congress can’t direct the
states to change their own governmen-
tal structures. Yet, H.R. 1 purports to
direct the states to do just that.
H.R. 1 also seeks to impose campaign
finance regulations. In recent years, the
courts have assumed that campaign fi-
nance is within the “Manner of Holding
Elections.” But the issue has never been
litigated squarely. And as the author of
a widely cited research study of the elec-
tions clause, I can report that 1. it does
not authorize campaign regulations,
and 2. its history instructs us to interpret
it narrowly.
So if the Senate passes H.R. 1, cam-
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
by social justice activists.
How did we arrive at such a juncture?
The problem arises from the fact that,
according to Pluckrose and Lindsay, “the
progressive left ... rejects objective truth
as a fantasy dreamed up by naive and/
or arrogant Enlightenment thinkers who
underestimated the collateral conse-
quences of Modernity’s progress.”
The authors are scathing about the
canons of social justice, particularly the
Foucauldian insistence that all of history
is reducible to power relations. Wher-
ever we look, goes the argument, we
encounter illicit power and oppression.
Ultimately, any form of authority—in-
cluding the intellectual kind—is illegiti-
mate. Reason and science are nothing
more than the daydreams of privileged
white men who have used their position
to maintain power and status. Likewise,
the Western canon is merely the scrib-
blings favored by the powerful to main-
tain their status and privilege.
The authors compare liberalism with
the siren call of the social justice activ-
ist: “Liberalism respects people both
as individuals and as members of the
human race. It does not respect identi-
ties or collectives per se; it values the
individual and the universal; the human
and humanity.”
Pluckrose and Lindsay urge us to main-
tain a belief in liberalism and “stand up
to something with a lot of power.”
At day’s end, the quest for social justice
hasn’t produced liberally educated men
and women but indoctrinated wokesters
parroting banalities about racism, sex-
ism, transphobia, Islamophobia, or other
modes of oppression. Meanwhile, those
who challenge or scorn such shibboleths
are de-platformed or canceled. In the
name of diversity, hiring committees ig-
nore scholarly merit and hire candidates
based on non-scholarly criteria such as
race, ethnicity, or gender.
The university is at a weird juncture.
In the name of social justice, everyone
in the university community is on edge.
Even distinguished professors know that
their careers can be ended by a disgrun-
tled undergraduate or a spiteful appa-
ratchik. That professors are now answer-
able to undergraduates and bureaucrats
is a sure sign that something is amiss.
The quest for social justice seems in-
nocuous. After all, who can be opposed
to justice? But social justice is no mere
harmless diversion, but a subversive top-
pling of the university’s historic mission.
As Pluckrose and Lindsey urge, we
need the courage to defend liberal
values in scholarship, activism, and
everyday life. This is a tall order given
our cultural moment. But such nerve
is necessary to save both the university
and liberal civilization itself.
Patrick Keeney, Ph.D., is an academic,
columnist, and associate editor of C2C
Journal.
paign finance lawsuits also will long
endure.
If H.R. 1 becomes “law,” we will have
two choices: We can suffer years, and
perhaps decades, of election confusion,
litigation, and likely corruption. Or we
can adopt a constitutional amendment
to straighten things out.
Because Congress is unlikely to
propose such an amendment unless it
extends congressional “reform” even
further, the only way to obtain one
would be to call a convention of the
states to propose it. For several reasons,
holding a convention of the states would
be a very good idea. But we shouldn’t
have to confuse and corrupt our elec-
tions to bring about a convention.
Robert G. Natelson, a former consti-
tutional law professor, is senior fellow
in constitutional jurisprudence at the
Independence Institute. He is the author
of widely-cited articles on the Elections
Clause and the Guarantee Clause. The
first was relied on by Chief Justice John
Roberts in a 2010 case and the second
by Justice (then Judge) Neil Gorsuch in
a 2014 case.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Philosophy for Laymen:
Second Thoughts About Left and Right
WILLIAM BROOKS
In a 1946 essay on the
subject of “Philosophy
for Laymen,” the late
British philosopher
Bertrand Russell noted
that, throughout the his-
tory of civilization, human
beings have faced two different kinds of
problems.
On the one hand, said Russell, mankind
had to acquire the practical knowledge
and techniques needed to sustain life in
our natural environment. In that regard,
we have enhanced the quality of our
lives through the methods of science. To
accomplish this, we have trained large
numbers of capable specialists in rather
narrow technical fields.
Our second problem, Russell cautioned,
has been mistakenly regarded as less
important. It’s the question of how best
to employ science and technology in the
best interests of individuals and society.
For Russell, this included such “burning
issues as democracy versus dictatorship,
capitalism versus socialism, international
government versus international anar-
chy, free speculation versus authoritarian
dogma.”
An Absence of Philosophical Guidance
On issues such as these, science provides
no decisive guidance. The kind of knowl-
edge that helps us deal with this “second
problem” is provided by a wide survey of
human history and a fuller understand-
ing of the sources of misery or content-
ment as they have appeared over time.
Advanced skills and techniques in agri-
culture, manufacturing, transportation,
and communication have not in them-
selves guaranteed human happiness or
wellbeing. Knowledge and skills can be
used for either good or evil. As Russell
points out, the same men who tamed the
horse to pull a plow also employed the
animal to make war and enslave peace-
able populations.
The history of civilization has demon-
strated that the development of “common
sense” and “human wisdom” requires
more than technical expertise. At the
very least, shared exposure to subjects
such as history, literature, philosophy,
and religion is needed to develop a moral
compass and to make informed choices
about the best way to live our lives.
Over the last 100 years, “progressive”
educators have denied young people
access to the traditional intellectual tools
required for sound philosophical devel-
opment. The result of this, said Russell, is
that the human race has become divided
into “rival groups of fanatics, each group
firmly persuaded that its own brand of
nonsense is sacred truth, while the other
side’s is damnable heresy.”
Our Bogus Political Spectrum
Writing in a 2014 edition of The Atlantic,
American philosopher Crispin Sartwell
pointed out that the West was more
divided than ever by political ideology,
and any hope for a return to civility in our
political discourse appears to be a “pipe
dream.” The last seven years have proven
this view to be prophetic.
Among the reasons for our present
division is a tendency to see the world
through the lens of a bogus paradigm.
Since World War II, most Westerners have
come to view politics on a spectrum that
lines up communism on the far left and
fascism on the far right. Social democ-
racy and reform liberalism are imagined
to face classical liberalism and conser-
vatism on opposite sides of the political
center. Sartwell described this model as
“conceptually confused, ideologically
deceptive and historically contingent.”
Few among our “woke” illuminati
recognize that the alleged opposites,
communism and fascism, are remark-
Attendees at a Make America Great Again rally in Murphysboro, Ill., on Oct. 27, 2018.
OPINION | A17
PUBLIC DOMAIN
the capacities of either side: think- Common people sense the need for
ing about the left-right spectrum rather a bottom-up renewal of their fortunes.
than from it.” We need to begin assessing political
Sartwell contends that the least use- and cultural movements according
ful way of thinking about the nature of to whether they propose to dismantle
the present left–right divide is as a battle hierarchy and renew opportunity rather
between “state” and “capital” or “public” than reinforcing the present iron alli-
versus “private” economic sectors. Since ance between Chinese communism
the development of the industrial revo- and global corporatism.
lution and multinational corporations, For such an endeavor, we can no lon-
large-scale private resources have flowed ger depend on established schools and
toward political power, and political universities. Today, ordinary citizens
power has sought to control the flow of glean more about “human wisdom”
British philosopher Bertrand Russell, an essential resources. The power of the and “common sense” from conversa-
avowed socialist and a member of the Fabian socialist state and the corporation has tions between long-haul truck drivers
Society, in 1954. become mutually reinforcing. and talk-radio hosts than they do from
As the state’s power expands into the lectures on critical theory at Ivy League
ably similar in nature and origin. Both realm of business, capital becomes universities.
are grounded in Marxist ideology and more concentrated and more capable Since the early 1990s, multi-partisan
ascended to power under tyrannous of exercising a wide variety of powers. cabals of globalists from all points on
socialists such as Vladimir Lenin, Joseph Witness the present powerful alliance the political spectrum have claimed
Stalin, Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, and between big media and socialist politi- to be about furthering democracy and
Mao Zedong. All destroyed the societies cal administrations in the West, or the promoting the advantages of free-mar-
they captured and cost the lives of mil- cozy relationships between the Chinese ket economics. But the means used to
lions of innocent victims. Communist Party, global corporations, achieve these goals are impacting ordi-
and progressive politicians. Together they nary people in ways essentially similar
Left–Right Ambiguity combine socialist principles with corpo- to the tragic consequences of a Maoist
The words left and right first began to rate capitalism to enrich one another and revolution. Globalized economic and
be used as political labels shortly after maintain the Beijing regime at the top of financial systems are paving the way
1789 in the French National Assembly. our world hierarchy. for an ideological mutation that will put
Those who supported the monarchy sat free people back on the road to serfdom.
to the right of the speaker. Those who Renewed Commitment In short, globalization has become a
believed all power should emanate from to Independent Thought powerful tool for creating vertical power
the people sat to the left. The center was In the decades following Russell’s lament structures and separating ordinary peo-
occupied by those who sought a balance about the disappearance of “wisdom” ple from their traditional cultures. Our
between the two positions. from Western culture, our progressive rul- last best hope for an antidote remains in
Our contemporary notion of the left– ing class has proven to be anything but a the hearts and minds of free-thinking
right paradigm took on a more economic meritocracy. As Sartwell pointed out: “The men and women. Only a renewed com-
and cultural dimension as socialism mainstream left is a technocratic elite, mitment to independent thought, work,
assumed a prominent role in European with a cult of science and expertise and faith, family, and nation can produce
politics. The term “left” was soon applied an ear for the unanimous catchphrase.” the energy and confidence required
to those who favored the redistribution of Instead of an increasingly incoherent to see us through these tortured and
wealth through political action. Socialists and simplistic identity-politics-driven uncertain times.
proposed to replace private property and left–right framework for social analysis,
the free market with public goods and more careful thought should be given to William Brooks is a writer and educator
state planning. the troubling re-emergence of the same based in Montreal. He currently serves
Significant ambiguities in the left–right hierarchical wealth and power arrange- as editor of ”The Civil Conversation” for
lexicon arose from this double origin. For ments that dominated life in the Euro- Canada’s Civitas Society and is an Epoch
example, advocates of popular democ- pean Dark Ages. Times contributor.
racy over authoritarian oligarchy don’t
necessarily favor socialist planning. Like
those in Canada’s new Peoples’ Party or
the U.S. MAGA movement, many remain
convinced that the spirit of enterprise
and free-market principles will, overall,
be of greater benefit to ordinary working
people.
In this sense, the ideas advanced by
the so-called “right” are more like those
of Canada’s first governing party, John
A. MacDonald’s Liberal-Conservatives,
who combined the principles of popular
democracy with free-market econom-
ics and Anglo-American constitutional
principles.
While the historical “left” began in
opposition to aristocratic authority, it’s
now highly uncertain that socialists will
continue to support popular democracy
unless electoral procedures can be per-
manently manipulated in their favor.
As was the case in the 2011 Canadian
election, when Stephen Harper’s Conser-
vative Party won a parliamentary major-
ity, and in the 2016 U.S. election, when
conservative Republicans took back
Congress and the presidency, desires ex-
pressed by existing citizens through fair
and honest elections threaten to reverse
the plans of socialist administrations.
Therefore, the political left, who once Ying and Yang by Sandra Kuck
championed the ideal of “power to the
people,” has become an economic and
cultural oligarchy that must employ
top-down governance to enforce global,
Beijing-inspired regulatory policies
against the wishes of Western middle and
working classes.
Ongoing Incoherence
Like Russell, the aforementioned Sartwell
proposed a more coherent, philosophical
examination of our political divisions.
“Transcending partisanship,” he wrote, Original artworks, canvas wraps,
“is going to require what seems beyond
HU CHEN/THE EPOCH TIMES
and prints of Award-winning oil
paintings now available at
InspiredOriginal.Org/Store
A18 | BUSINESS & ECONOMY THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021

DOUG MILLS/POOL/GETTY IMAGES SAMUEL CORUM/GETTY IMAGES CHIP SOMODEVILLA/GETTY IMAGES

(Left) President Joe Biden speaks in the State Dining Room of the White House on March 2, 2021. (Middle) White House press secretary Jen Psaki speaks at the White House on March 4, 2021.
(Right) Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.) (R) joins House Democrats to announce their “Make It In America” agenda at the U.S. Capitol in Washington on May 4, 2011.

Biden Mulls Funding Infrastructure

Plan With Tax Increases, Corporate
Tax-Cut Rollbacks, New Fees
TOM OZIMEK the corporate tax cuts,” Psaki said. “So, cer- so let’s get on with it,” he added. pretty good about that.”

P
resident Joe Biden is consider-
ing tax increases, new fees, and
a corporate tax rollback to pay
for an infrastructure plan that’s
now taking shape, according to
White House press secretary Jen Psaki and
a California Democrat familiar with the
discussions on the matter.
Biden floated a $2 trillion infrastructure
bill while campaigning, although his ad-
ministration has so far declined to specify
a price tag. In remarks to “Axios on HBO”
on March 8, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.)
suggested the package could cost as much
as $4 trillion, adding that he would oppose
taking on more debt to fund such a pro-
posal but would instead insist on tax hikes.
Manchin told the outlet that he supports
a range of tax increases, including repeal-
ing “a lot of” President Donald Trump’s tax
cuts and raising the corporate tax rate to
“at least” 25 percent from the current 21
percent.
At a March 8 press briefing at the White
House, Psaki was asked about Manchin’s
insistence that “any big infrastructure
package should be paid for” rather than
taking on more debt, whether Biden sup-
ports this view, and if he sees corporate tax
increases as one way to do that.
Psaki responded by saying that Biden gen-
erally supports increases in taxes but “we
don’t have a bill or a package yet, so we can
have that conversation once we get there.”
“One of the items that he spoke about in his
Build Back Better agenda was making sure
that people paid their fair share—whether
it’s highest income or rolling back some of
tainly, those are policies that he supports.”
Rep. John  Garamendi (D-Calif.) con-
firmed that Biden is considering boosting
taxes as a way to pay for the infrastructure
plan. Garamendi attended a March 4 meet-
ing at the White House, where the president
and a number of bipartisan lawmakers dis-
cussed the bill.
He told the Sacramento Bee that the ideas
considered at the meeting included raising
the excise tax on fuel, which he said “hasn’t
been raised in 20 years;” some form of a
user fee for electric vehicles on highways
since their owners aren’t subject to fuel
taxes; and a carbon tax.
He did not provide more specifics on the
proposed taxes, nor on the overall cost of
the package.
“No price tag right now, because we’re go-
ing at this from the bottom up,” Garamendi
told the outlet. “We’ll say, ‘what’s the cost
of broadband, what’s the cost of repairing
bridges?’ and go from there.”
In an interview with the news outlet
Cheddar on March 8, Garamendi said the
idea of a carbon tax was met with a favor-
able response from one of the Republicans
at the March 4 meeting, fueling his opti-
mism that the legislation could be shaped
in bipartisan fashion.
“We’re talking about funding mecha-
nisms. One of them, in a direct way that
would reduce emissions, that’s the carbon
tax, to be used fully for infrastructure—
well, maybe,” he said.
“Or maybe partly refunded. There’s an-
other issue out there, 100 percent refund-
able carbon tax on transportation fuels.
Now we’ve got things we can talk about,
At a White House press briefing the day
after Biden’s infrastructure meeting, Psaki
didn’t provide more specifics on the discus-
sions, but said that rolling back tax cuts
may be on the menu.
“I don’t have any more details. We don’t
even have a package that is being proposed
at this point, and when we get to that point
I’m sure we’ll have this discussion,” Psaki
said at a briefing on March 5. “Obviously,
the President has talked in the past about
different revenue raisers, whether it’s roll-
ing back certain tax cuts, but we’re just not
at that point in the internal policy discus-
sions right now.”
Biden floated a $2 trillion
infrastructure bill while
campaigning, but recently,
Sen. Joe Manchin suggested
the package could cost as
much as $4 trillion.
In his interview on Axios, Manchin also
said that he’ll block Biden’s infrastructure
bill unless more effort is made to include
Republican voices.
Asked about Manchin’s comments, Psaki
suggested that the West Virginia senator
will likely come through in the end.
“Senator Manchin and Senator Sanders
and a range of Democrats in between just
voted to support a $1.9 trillion package that
is the most progressive piece of legislation
in history,” she said. “So I would say we feel
She added that Biden is optimistic the
infrastructure plan will win bipartisan
backing.
“The president believes that there is a
path forward on a range of issues where
there’s been a history of bipartisan support,
including infrastructure,” she said.
“Infrastructure improvements are not a
Democratic issue, they’re not a moderate
issue, a progressive issue, a conservative is-
sue. The American people want their roads,
rails, and bridges to be reformed. He feels
there’s a path forward,” she said.
Psaki said that, at this point, “there’s no
bill that’s being considered. He’s having
discussions to hear ideas, hear good ideas
from members of both parties. And once
we have a bill, we’re happy to have the dis-
cussion on how we move it forward.”
Rep. Sam Graves (R-Mo.), the top Re-
publican on the House Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee and one
of the participants in last week’s infrastruc-
ture meeting at the White House, said the
plan must be bipartisan and that a funding
mechanism is needed.
“It cannot be a ‘my way or the highway’
approach,” Graves said, referring to pre-
vious Democratic legislation. “A highway
bill cannot grow into a multitrillion-dol-
lar catch-all bill, or it will lose Republican
support.”
During his presidential campaign,
Biden pledged to invest $2 trillion in fixing
highways, bridges, and airports; building
climate-resilient homes; wiring cities for
broadband internet; and encouraging the
manufacturing of fuel-efficient cars and in-
stalling electric vehicle charging stations.

The OECD’s closely watched December wearing a mask or social distancing.

US Economy Set to report, one of two main economic outlook
products bridged by the March 9 interim
Boone said the combination of vaccines,
fiscal stimulus, and reopening of the econ-

Grow Twice as Fast as projections, had predicted that the U.S.

economy would grow by 3.2 percent; the in-
terim report raises estimates for economic
omy in the United States is expected to “sig-
nificantly boost the recovery as people are
able to return to shop, dine, and travel.”

Earlier Predicted: OECD output this year to 6.5 percent.

TOM OZIMEK
The United States’ economy is expected
to grow twice as fast as earlier forecasts
predicted, according to a new report, which
rests its optimistic outlook on the huge dose
of fiscal stimulus and accelerating vaccine
rollout.
“The significant fiscal stimulus in the
United States, along with faster vaccina-
tion, could boost U.S. GDP growth by over
3 percentage points this year, with welcome
demand spillovers in key trading partners,”
the Organization for Economic Coopera-
tion and Development (OECD) wrote in its
so-called interim March report, released
on March 9.
J. SCOTT APPLEWHITE/AP PHOTO
Stimulus without
vaccinations won’t
be as effective
because consumers
won’t go out doing
normal things. It’s
the combination
of health and fiscal
policy that matters.
Laurence Boone, chief
economist, OECD
Congressional staffers wait
in the corridor outside the
Senate chamber during a
delay in work on the Demo-
crats’ $1.9 trillion COVID-19
relief bill, in Washington on
March 5, 2021.
“Sizable risks remain,” the report cautions,
however. Chiefly, slow progress in vaccine
rollout and the emergence of new vaccine-
resistant mutations of the CCP virus.
If the risks materialize, the OECD pre-
dicts weaker recovery, larger job losses,
and more business failures.
“Faster progress in vaccine deployment
in all countries would enable restrictions to
be lifted more quickly and enhance confi-
dence and spending,” the OECD said.
“COVID is still the dominant driver of the
world economic outlook,” Laurence Boone,
the OECD’s chief economist, told reporters
at a press briefing. She said that, despite
the upgrade to economic projections, she
remains “very concerned that we’re not
doing enough to accelerate the recovery.”
While the fiscal support is “appropriate,”
she said the pace of vaccinations isn’t fast
enough to “consolidate the recovery,” and
she urged haste.
“Stimulus without vaccinations won’t be
as effective because consumers won’t go
out doing normal things,” Boone said. “It’s
the combination of health and fiscal policy
that matters.”
The Centers for Disease Control and Pre-
vention (CDC) says that as of March 9, more
than 61 million people in the United States
have received at least one dose of the CO-
VID-19 vaccine, or about 18.4 percent of the
population. Just over 32 million, or around
9.7 percent, have received two doses. New
CDC guidance issued March 8 says fully
vaccinated Americans can gather with
other vaccinated people indoors without
America’s above-expectation economic
expansion will also help power global output
one percentage point above December pre-
dictions—to 5.6 percent, the OECD predicts.
The $1.9 trillion relief bill that recently
cleared the Senate provides up to $1,400 di-
rect payments to most Americans, extend-
ed emergency unemployment benefits, as
well as hundreds of billions for COVID-19
vaccines and treatments, schools, state and
local governments, and ailing industries.
“It’s a remarkable, historic, transforma-
tive piece of legislation which goes a very
long way to crushing the virus and solving
our economic crisis,” House Speaker Nancy
Pelosi (D-Calif.) said on March 9.
Republicans have opposed the bill, call-
ing the American Rescue Plan excessive
and wasteful.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McCon-
nell (R-Ky.) said the package is too big at
a time when the virus is showing signs of
easing and the economy is poised to come
“roaring” back.
And rather than working across the aisle
toward unity, as Biden promised, McCon-
nell said Democrats are “ramming through
what they call ‘the most progressive do-
mestic legislation in a generation,’” citing
the White House chief of staff.
“They explained their intent very clearly:
to exploit this crisis as ‘a tremendous op-
portunity to restructure things to fit our
vision,’” McConnell said.
The American Rescue Plan is the first
COVID-related relief bill that has had zero
support from Republicans in the House or
Senate.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
Most Voters Think Lockdown States
Did Worse Economically Than More
Open Counterparts: Poll
TOM OZIMEK
A majority of registered American voters
believe states that imposed more stringent
lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19
have done worse economically than those
that remained relatively more open, ac-
cording to a new poll.
The Just the News Daily-Scott Rasmus-
sen poll, published March 9, shows that
53 percent of respondents agreed with the
statement that “states that imposed strict
lockdowns generally had more economic
problems than states with fewer restric-
tions.” Only 21 percent disagreed.
The survey of 1,200 registered voters was
conducted by Scott Rasmussen using a
mixed-mode approach from March 4 to 6.
The outbreak of the CCP (Chinese Com-
munist Party) virus prompted near-
universal restrictions, although some
stricter than others, with red states such
as South Dakota, Florida, and Texas lean-
ing toward greater individual discretion
and their Republican leaders stressing
personal responsibility over top-down
mandates.
“We are not going to have any more lock-
downs in the state of Texas,” Gov. Gregg
Abbott told Dallas radio host Mark Davis in
November 2020, when the Lone Star State
was seeing virus cases and deaths surge as
the predicted second wave hit the country.
“Our focal point is going to be working to
heal those who have COVID, get them out
of hospitals quickly, make sure they get
back to their normal lives.”
Some blue states, such as heavily tour-
ist-reliant Nevada, also were reluctant to
tighten the screws too much for fear of
economic damage. Nevada’s Democratic
Gov. Steve Sisolak, for instance, has re-
peatedly asserted that containing the vi-
rus is largely up to individuals.
“Some people are going to ask, ‘Why not
limit retail, or casino resorts, or restau-
rants right now?’ That’s a fair question,”
he said in November 2020. “That is the
tightrope of trying to balance controlling
the COVID-19 spread, protecting our hos-
pitals from surges, and at the same time,
not destroying and shutting down our
economy.”
Unemployment Lower in Red States
Federal economic data speaks in support
of the findings of the poll.
The top three states with the lowest un-
EU Banking
Regulator Hit
by Suspected
Chinese Hackers
FRANK FANG
The European Banking Authority (EBA)
is the latest victim of a large-scale cyber-
hacking attack connected to the Chinese
regime against Microsoft’s email and cal-
endar server.
Early last week, Microsoft announced
(Left) A woman walks through an almost-deserted Times Square in the early morning hours in New York City on April 23, 2020. (Top right) Nevada
Gov. Steve Sisolak speaks during a news conference on the state's response to the coronavirus outbreak at the Grant Sawyer State Office Building in
Las Vegas, on March 17, 2020. (Bottom right) South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem gives a State of the State address in Pierre, S.D., on Jan. 8, 2019.
employment rates in 2020—all of them
Republican-led—were Nebraska, South
Dakota, and Utah, according to a recent
government report. And while blue states
occupy the bottom rungs of the overall
2020 unemployment table, they also saw
the highest over-the-year growth in job-
lessness between December 2019 and
December 2020.
One theory is that blue states are strug-
gling with higher unemployment because
they took more aggressive steps in fight-
ing the pandemic, with Democratic gov-
ernors tending to impose more stringent
restrictions than their Republican coun-
terparts.
A study of lockdown measures in states
was carried out by researchers at the per-
sonal finance site WalletHub in October
2020. It concluded that the states with
the most rules tended to have the highest
unemployment rates.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem, who has
resisted imposing the kind of lockdowns
that have been seen in other parts of the
country, recently blamed pandemic-relat-
ed restrictions for hurting the economy.
“COVID didn’t crush the economy. Gov-
ernment crushed the economy,” Noem
said at the Conservative Political Action
Conference (CPAC) in Orlando, Florida,
DREW ANGERER/GETTY IMAGES
The Microsoft logo
during a product launch
event in New York City
on May 2, 2017.
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
on Feb. 27.
Noem is among a handful of governors
to have bucked the trend of imposing
strict lockdowns to curb the spread of
the virus.
Given the lack of historical precedent or
controlled trials to support the argument
for widespread lockdowns, debates over
their efficacy have largely been split along
political lines.
COVID didn’t crush the
economy. Government crushed
the economy.
South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem
Former President Donald Trump re-
peatedly accused Democrat governors
and mayors of using the lockdowns to
snuff out the economic boom fueled by
his low-tax, deregulation agenda.
Noem told the conference that sidestep-
ping the push for deeper lockdowns was
why South Dakota had the lowest unem-
ployment rate in the nation in Decem-
ber 2020 and why the state’s economy is
booming.
via a blog post that Hafnium, a state-
sponsored hacking group operating from
China, exploited flaws in its Exchange
Server software. Three versions of the
software were affected—2013, 2016, and
2019—and the U.S. software giant released
emergency security patches to address the
security holes.
Microsoft explained that the Hafnium
hackers were using the flaws to access
email accounts and install malware to
“facilitate long-term access to victim en-
vironments.”
Soon after, U.S.-based cybersecurity
firm FireEye reported that the hacking
group targeted a number of American
targets, including “U.S.-based retailers,
local governments, a university, and an
engineering firm.”
On March 7, the EBA, an EU financial reg-
ulator, announced that its email systems
were compromised by the cyberattack.
“As the vulnerability is related to the
EBA’s email servers, access to personal
data through emails held on that servers
may have been obtained by the attacker,”
the EBA said in a statement.
On March 8, the organization released
another statement saying that its investiga-
tion was ongoing.
“At this stage, the EBA email infrastruc-
ture has been secured and our analyses
suggest that no data extraction has been
performed and we have no indication to
think that the breach has gone beyond our
email servers,” it stated.
The EBA wasn’t the only known victim.
The city government of Lake Worth Beach
in Florida said that its email server was
down for about three days since March 3
as a result of the cyberattack, according to
the local daily Palm Beach Post.
The cyberattack has also drawn the
concerns of the Biden administration.
BUSINESS & ECONOMY | A19
JOHANNES EISELE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
JAMES NORD/AP PHOTO
However, another likely dynamic for
why unemployment is higher in blue
states than in red states has to do with
the fact that blue states tend to be more
reliant on service industries, especially
ones related to travel, leisure, and hos-
pitality, which have been hit by the pan-
demic disproportionately hard.
This may explain why Kansas, which
has had restrictions roughly on par with
other blue states, has fared relatively bet-
ter. Its economy is driven by manufactur-
ing, contributing around $28 billion in
quarterly GDP compared to accommoda-
tion and food services, which contribute
around $4 billion in quarterly GDP. That
dropped to $2.5 billion in the second
quarter of 2020, at the height of the lock-
downs, while manufacturing remained
unchanged.
Hawaii, on the other hand, which in De-
cember 2019 had the lowest unemploy-
ment rate at 2.1 percent but in December
2020 topped the unemployment table at
10.3 percent, looked much different in
industry contribution to GDP. Arts, en-
tertainment, recreation, accommodation,
and food services accounted for nearly $9
billion of Hawaii’s GDP in 2019, compared
to manufacturing, which contributed just
$1.7 billion.
White House national security adviser
Jake Sullivan wrote via Twitter on March
4 calling on network owners to apply the
patches quickly while offering recom-
mendations if their systems were compro-
mised.
“This is an active threat,” said White
House press secretary Jen Psaki on March
5. “Everyone running these servers—gov-
ernment, private sector, academia—needs
to act now to patch them.”
“We are concerned that there are a large
number of victims and are working with
our partners to understand the scope of
this,” Psaki added.
The FBI said on March 7 that it was “work-
ing closely with our interagency and private
sector partners to understand the scope of
the threat.”
On March 8, the U.S. Department of
Homeland Security’s cybersecurity agency
took to Twitter asking “all organizations
across all sectors” to follow its guidelines
to address vulnerabilities within their Mi-
crosoft Exchange Server software.
At a daily briefing on March 3, China’s for-
eign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin
rejected Microsoft’s claims. He added that
media and companies should not “make
groundless accusations.”
There have been previously known Chi-
nese cyberattacks against U.S. entities.
In February 2020, the U.S. Department
of Justice indicted four members of the
Chinese military for hacking the online
systems of U.S. credit-reporting company
Equifax in 2017. The hackers stole names,
birth dates, and social security numbers
for about 145 million Americans.
The U.S. Office of Personnel Management
was the target of a Chinese cyberattack in
2015, which resulted in the theft of data
of about 4.2 million current and former
federal employees.
A20 | THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021

‘You and I have

a rendezvous with destiny.’ – Ronald Reagan

A
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TRUTH AND TRADITION

FLASH IN THE PAN BREAKFAST

The Journey to Perfect Rice Bring This Diner Staple Home

Two guides to building rice-cooking confidence: loosey- for St. Patrick’s Day
goosey and painfully specific.
A corned beef hash bound by creamy potatoes and
woven in a web of cabbage.

See B2 See B5

GOOD EATS|RECIPES|DRINKS THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021 B1

FOOD
BRENT HOFACKER/SHUTTERSTOCK

At a typical Friday fish fry, your beer-battered, deep-fried fish comes with a side of coleslaw, maybe a slice of rye bread and pad of butter, and likely French fries or another form of potato.

In Wisconsin, Fridays
Are for Fish Fries
A brief history of the beloved state tradition
KEVIN REVOLINSKI nence out of respect toward the cruci-
fi xion of Christ. In the 9th century, Pope

W
isconsin didn’t invent fried
fish, but they certainly have
made the Friday fish fry a
cultural imperative. Few restaurants, tav-
erns, or supper clubs—or for that matter,
church basements—skip the tradition
during Lent, the Christian 40-day period
of preparation for Easter, but the meal has
taken on a life of its own. Let me explain.
From the early days of Christianity,
Fridays were considered days of absti-
Nicholas I made it specifically a meat Dip a fillet in flour, then
issue. Fish—who may be offended they beaten eggs, and then
don’t rate as flesh—were still allowed,
as they weren’t the meat of a warm- into bread crumbs.
blooded animal. Ergo, they became a
favored Friday protein source. No, the
Drop it into the fryer
fish allowance wasn’t a secret deal be- and deliver to diners—
tween the Vatican and Big Fish. Still, it
doesn’t explain the frying. maybe even with a little
beer under the table.
Continued on B4

Call for Food Writers

Are you an experienced food writer? We’re looking to commission
stories about unique, time-honored food traditions and recipes from
FOOD
across the country—and around the world. If interested, send your
pitch, author bio, and 2 to 3 writing samples to food@epochtimes.com S!
E FOR U
W RIT
B2 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021

FLASH IN THE PAN

The Journey
to Perfect Rice
2 guides to building
rice-cooking confidence
ARI LEVAUX

I
have nothing but tough love for those
who claim they can’t cook a pot of
rice. Quit acting so helpless. Cook the
rice. If you screw it up, consider what
went wrong and adjust. Like you do
when making a sandwich. Which is much
easier to screw up than a pot of rice.
Not mushy, sticky, or starchy, neither
crunchy nor burnt, my rice is perfect. Sure,
once in a while you faceplant. Heck, I can
screw up a box of macaroni and cheese.
But it’s easier than baking bread, or mak-
ing your own noodles from scratch. The
variables in rice-making are manageable:
heat, time, and moisture. To these laws of
the physical universe, the rice abides.
Nobody wants too many learning experi-
ences along the way, but rice is a journey, not
a single meal commitment. It’s about learn-
ing where you want to go with your rice, and
figuring out how to get there. Do you like it
al dente? A little soggy? Take note of what
you did each time and make adjustments.
You’ll quickly run out of variables to tweak
and learn what not to do, like stir the rice,
which would be like stirring a cake while
it’s baking. It would kill the living, breathing
structural integrity of a pot of rice. As you
understand the finite universe of factors and
tricks, your confidence will rise.
Too many cooks have never felt confi-
dent in their rice. So they buy rice cookers,
even though they only make rice once
every six months, which is part of the
problem. If you cook it every day, sure,
buy a rice cooker. It will make perfect rice
every time. But if you know your rice, you
don’t need to measure, or watch the clock.
Just watch the rice, preferably in a heavy-
bottomed pot. Eventually your observa-
tions will become understanding.
A Loosey-Goosey Guide
I prefer white rice, which is often starchy, like
jasmine or sushi rice. If it makes the water
milky, I’ll rinse it several times, dumping
and replacing the cloudy water and stir-
ring in between loads, and sometimes let-
ting it soak for a minute, which reduces the
cooking time, not that I keep track. I learned
about rinsing, among other things, in sushi
class, 35 years ago, and still do it.
I think it’s this rinsing practice that got me
away from measuring and timing, as the
rice absorbs water during rinsing, which
makes it impossible to keep track. So I sim-
ply wash the rice until it rinses clean, then
Rice is a journey,
not a single meal
commitment. Take
note of what you did
each time and make
adjustments.
YELLOWRAIL/
SHUTTERSTOCK
cover it with about an inch of water, and
cook it until it’s perfect. That’s not what we
But if you know did in sushi class, but whatever.
With a tight-fitting lid, place the pot on
your rice, you high. Don’t stir it. When it boils, turn it
don’t need down to low. Don’t stir it. After about 15
minutes you can turn it off and forget about
to measure it. And don’t forget to not stir it.
or watch the If the rice burns, perhaps because you for-
get to turn it off, then you must act quickly,
clock. Just as with any burn. If it’s merely a pleasing
shade of brown, turn off the heat, give it a
watch the rice, splash of water, replace the lid and forget
preferably about it for a while. When you remember,
it will be perfect. It’s magic.
in a heavy- But if you smell actual blackened burned,
dump and remove the rice as quickly as
bottomed pot. possible, transferring it into a different pot
Eventually your or a bowl. Don’t scrape the bottom or move
any burnt material to the new vessel. As
observations long as the burned aroma has not impreg-
will become nated the clean grains, you’ll be fine.
If the rice is a bit crunchy, add what looks
understanding. like the right amount of water, the exact feel
of which you can only learn from experi-
ence, by feeling the rice and adding what
you think it needs. Just be nice to those
grains of rice, and they’ll be nice to you.
Most of the time, everything goes smooth-
ly and I end up with perfect, no-stress rice.
Some will judge me, but my loosey-goosey
process includes a peak along the way. I’ll
even insert a knife if I suspect low water,
and scrape the bottom, and perhaps taste a
grain of rice from the top. If it’s chewy, that
means you’re close and can turn it off and
let it sit until mealtime, slowly puffing up.
If the rice on top is too crunchy and seems
in danger of drying out, add a tablespoon
or two of water and replace the lid.
And a Painfully Specific One
I know that getting thrown off the deep end
isn’t always the best teaching method for
everyone, so I want to offer the stubbornly
helpless this painfully specific recipe for
baked rice. It comes from my mother-in-
law. It’s not only fool-proof, but smart-al-
eck-proof; it’s most customizable; and most
impressively, it breaks not one but two of
my cardinal rules. Not only does she get
away with both infractions, but they prob-
ably even help make it the dish that it is.
She rinses not a single grain of rice, which
is admittedly something of a rice snob’s
practice. And she stirs it just before serv-
ing—which technically isn’t an infraction,
as stirring is only prohibited during the
cooking process, but still. At the very least
this recipe bends my rules, which you can
do if you know them by heart.
Ari LeVaux writes about food
in Missoula, Mont.

Repurpose a Favorite Savory OLIVE OIL CAKE

Ingredient for Cake That’s SERVES 8 TO 10

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
minutes. Remove the side of the pan and let cake cool
completely, about 1 1/2 hours. Cut into wedges and

Simple yet Sophisticated 1 teaspoon baking powder

3/4 teaspoon salt
serve.

RECIPE NOTES

3 large eggs For the best flavor, use a fresh, high-quality extra-
virgin olive oil. Our favorite supermarket option is
AMERICA'S TEST KITCHEN 1 1/4 cups plus 2 tablespoons sugar California Olive Ranch Everyday Extra Virgin Olive Oil.

One of the most attractive aspects of mak-
ing a cake with oil rather than butter is the
way it expedites the mixing process: There’s
no waiting for butter to come to room tem-
perature and then beating it with sugar
before you even start to add the rest of the
ingredients. The batter is ready to go into
the oven in 5 minutes flat, and the cake
comes out just 40 minutes later.
With many oil-based cakes, you simply
whisk the dry ingredients in one bowl,
whisk the wet ingredients in another,
and then combine the contents of the two
bowls. The dry ingredients were all-pur-
pose flour, baking powder, and salt, and the
wet ingredients were eggs, milk, and olive
oil. Also on the list: sugar and lemon zest.
We wanted our olive oil cake to have
a light, fine-textured and plush crumb,
with a subtle but noticeable olive oil fla-
vor. Whipping the sugar with the whole
eggs, rather than just the whites, pro-
duced a fine texture that was airy but
sturdy enough to support the olive oil-rich
batter. To emphasize the defining flavor,
we opted for a good-quality extra-virgin
olive oil and supplemented its fruitiness
We wanted our olive
oil cake to have a light,
fine-textured and plush
crumb, with a subtle but
noticeable olive oil flavor.
with a tiny bit of lemon zest.
A bit of advice: Don’t panic when it puffs.
The cake will puff up during baking, but
don’t worry. This is just air released by
the cake batter getting trapped beneath
the layer of melted sugar, which adds a
crackly-sweet crust for a touch of sweet-
ness and sophistication. The cake will
settle once it cools.
For 25 years, confident cooks in the know
have relied on America’s Test Kitchen for
rigorously tested recipes developed by
professional test cooks and vetted by 60,000
at-home recipe testers. See more online at
AmericasTestKitchen.com/TCA. Copyright
2021 America’s Test Kitchen. Distributed by
Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest If your springform pan is prone to leaking, place a
3/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil rimmed baking sheet on the oven floor to catch any
drips.
3/4 cup milk
Leftover cake can be wrapped in plastic wrap and
Adjust the oven rack to the middle position and heat stored at room temperature for up to three days.
oven to 350 degrees F. Grease a 9-inch springform
CATRINE KELTY
pan.
Whisk flour, baking powder, and salt together in a bowl.
Using a stand mixer fitted with the whisk attachment,
whip eggs on medium speed until foamy, about 1
minute. Add 1 1/4 cups sugar and lemon zest, increase
speed to high, and whip until mixture is fluffy and pale
yellow, about 3 minutes.
Reduce speed to medium and, with the mixer running,
slowly pour in oil. Mix until oil is fully incorporated,
about 1 minute. Add half of the flour mixture and
mix on low speed until incorporated, about 1 minute,
scraping down the bowl as needed.
Add milk and mix until combined, about 30 seconds.
Add remaining flour mixture and mix until just
incorporated, about 1 minute, scraping down the bowl
as needed.
Transfer batter to a prepared pan; sprinkle remaining
2 tablespoons sugar over the entire surface. Bake until
cake is a deep golden brown and a toothpick inserted in
the center comes out with few crumbs attached, 40 to Because this cake is made with liquid fat
45 minutes. instead of solid, it will keep longer than its but-
Transfer pan to a wire rack and let cool for 15 ter-based counterparts.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
PERFECT BAKED RICE
I once had a basketball coach who
liked to remind us that “practice
doesn’t make perfect; perfect
practice makes perfect.” In that
spirit, this recipe will get you
accustomed to making good rice.
And will make you totally intolerant
of a single mushy grain of rice.
Each gloriously flavored and supple
batch of this rice is so decadent you
could binge on it plain, like a tub of
vanilla ice cream. I like to throw a
handful of fast-cooking veggies and
maybe some prepared proteins on
top. It’s very customizable. But try
to keep it simple.
Each gloriously flavored and supple batch of this rice is so deca-
1/4 pound onion, finely minced
dent you could binge on it plain, like a tub of vanilla ice cream.
2 tablespoons butter or oil
1 cup long-grain white rice, such
as jasmine
1 3/4 cups boiling water or chicken stock or veggie stock
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
Gently sauté the onions and butter in a bakeable vessel with a tight-fitting lid. Stir in the rice. Add
the boiling water or stock. Bake for 20 minutes with the lid on. Remove from the oven and let it rest
for 15 minutes. Fluff before serving, if you wish.
Or perhaps, turn off the oven and let it rest there, where it can slowly develop a delicious golden
bottom. Don’t burn it, but let it get close. Why stop at breaking just two rules at once?
Upping Your
Mash Game
LYNDA BALSLEV
What could be better than a rich and
creamy bowl of mashed potatoes? How
about a bowl of mashed potatoes infused
with celery and horseradish?
This fluffy bowl piles on the roots, with
celery root and horseradish joining the mix.
The result is a delicious side of potatoes,
with an extra dimension of fragrance, fla-
vor, and bite.
Celery root, also known as celeriac, is the
dark horse of root vegetables. Don’t let its
gnarly, bulbous exterior put you off. Once
Don't let celery Horseradish is
root's gnarly, also a root and
bulbous exterior belongs to the
put you off. mustard family,
which explains
its peppery bite.
B3
AFRICA STUDIO/SHUTTERSTOCK DR A NAUMENKO/SHU T TERS
KS A N TOC
OL E K
Too many cooks have
never felt confident
in their rice.
This savory
bloody mary
cocktail mix
is perfect
for breakfast
or brunch.
Bloody Marys
in a Snap
KARY OSMOND
A delicious bloody mary can be a pain to
make, especially if you’re making a bunch
of cocktails at a time. Instead, I find it easier
to make a big pitcher of this mix ahead of
time. That way, when you’re ready to serve
a few cocktails, all you need to do is salt
the rim of a glass, add ice, vodka, and this
savory bloody mary cocktail mix and you’re
good to go!
The hardest part will be deciding what
fun ingredients you’ll garnish your glass
with: a celery stick, cherry tomatoes, olives,
cheese?
ARI LEVAUX
Kary Osmond is a Canadian recipe
developer and former television host of
the popular daytime cooking show “Best
Recipes Ever.” Her easy recipes include
helpful tips to guide you along the way,
and her love of plant-based cooking
offers healthy alternatives to some of
your favorite dishes. Learn more at
KaryOsmond.com. Copyright 2021 Kary
Osmond. Distributed by Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
BLOODY MARY MIX
MAKES ABOUT 8 COCKTAILS black pepper
1.89 liters tomato juice Place the ingredients in a large mason jar
or jug and mix well. Store in the fridge until
2 tablespoons grated fresh horseradish
ready to use.
3 teaspoons Sriracha sauce
TO MAKE A BLOODY MARY COCKTAIL
2 tablespoons green olive juice
1 tablespoon lime cordial Rim the edge of a large glass with salt.
Add ice, 1 ounce of vodka, 3/4 cup bloody
2 tablespoons vegan Worcestershire
mary cocktail mix.
1 teaspoon salt Stir, garnish, and enjoy. If you like things
1/4 teaspoon fresh cracked spicy, add extra hot sauce..
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
The result is a delicious
quite strong when fresh, but its flavor fades
and bite softens with cooking, so don’t be
deterred by the amount in the recipe.
This is a lovely side dish to accompany
side of potatoes, with meat and stews. The potatoes are left un-
an extra dimension of peeled, and their nutrient-rich skins fleck
this side dish, adding flavor and texture. Peel
fragrance, flavor, and bite. the potatoes if you prefer a smoother texture.
you cut away the skin, a milky white inte- Lynda Balslev is a cookbook author, food
rior is revealed, softly redolent with celery. and travel writer, and recipe developer
Celery root can be eaten raw and grated into based in the San Francisco Bay Area,
salads, and when cooked, it’s a non-starchy where she lives with her Danish husband,
alternative or complement to potatoes in two children, a cat, and a dog. Lynda
mashes, gratins, and soups. studied cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole
Horseradish is also a root and belongs de Cuisine in Paris and worked as a
to the mustard family, which explains its personal chef, culinary instructor, and
peppery bite. Horseradish is often grated This fluffy bowl of mashed potatoes piles on food writer in Switzerland and Denmark.
raw and folded into sauces and garnished the roots, with celery root and horseradish Copyright 2021 Lynda Balslev. Distributed
over meats. Sharp and nutty, horseradish is joining the mix. by Andrew McMeel Syndication.
MASHED POTATOES AND ROOTS
PREP & COOKING TIME 1/2 cup sour cream, plus more as needed thoroughly and discard the bouquet garni.
Active Time: 10 minutes 4 tablespoons finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano Transfer the vegetables to a large bowl, add the butter,
Total Time: 55 minutes cheese, divided and mash with a potato masher. Stir in the sour cream,
SERVES 6 TO 8
3 tablespoons finely grated peeled fresh
2 tablespoons cheese, 2 tablespoons horseradish,
1 1/2 pounds Yukon gold potatoes, cut into horseradish, divided
and the pepper. If too thick, mix in more sour cream to
1-inch pieces your desired consistency. Add salt to your taste and
1/2 teaspoon pepper mix well. Transfer the potatoes to a buttered 2-quart
1 1/2 pounds celery root, peeled, cut into 1-inch baking dish.
Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F.
pieces
Combine the potatoes and celery root in large pot and Mix the remaining 2 tablespoons cheese and 1
1 bay leaf cover with cold water. Tie the bay leaf and thyme sprigs tablespoon horseradish in a small bowl. Sprinkle over
3 thyme sprigs with kitchen string to make a bouquet garni and add top of potatoes. Transfer the potatoes to the oven
to the pot along with 1 tablespoon salt. Bring to a boil and bake until the top is tinged golden brown and
Salt
and simmer, partially covered, until the potatoes and the potatoes are heated through, about 25 minutes.
1/4 cup unsalted butter, softened celery root are very tender, about 20 minutes. Drain Serve warm.
B4 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021

In Wisconsin,
Fridays Are
for Fish Fries
A brief history of
the beloved state
tradition
Continued from B1
Who Fried It First?
Surely fried fish must have origins as far back
as someone burning their finger on hot oil
and having a Eureka moment. The Greeks
used frying as early as the 5th century BCE
and the Egyptians were likely frying foods
at least two millennia before that—but likely
with animal fats. Did the Greeks use olive oil
early on? The Romans sure didn’t care for it
as it became rancid fast.
Much of this frying origin story is left to
archaeologists and historians to translate
and debate over, but at the very least, we
know that fish pieces dipped in flour and
fried in sesame oil appear in a 13th-centu-
ry Egyptian cookbook, while fried fish in
egg batter can be found in Spanish Arabic
cookbooks from the same time period,
perhaps the influence of the Moors on the
Iberian Peninsula.
But often Portugal is credited with bring-
ing peixe frito, fried fish, to the larger world.
An early adopter of the Maritime Empire
model, Portugal sailed the seven seas, ferry-
ing merchants and Christian (read: Friday
fish-eater) missionaries to faraway lands.
Portuguese ships arrived in Japan in
the 16th century, opening up trade
and cultural exchanges and in-
troducing what would become
known as tempura. The term
applied to Japanese frying
techniques was taken from
“quatuor anni tempora”—“four
annual seasons” in Latin—re-
ferring to the Ember Days, a
Catholic practice of three days
of fasting, abstinence, and prayer
at the beginning of each of the four
seasons, not merely Lent.
Even the British classic fish and chips
took its fish roots from Portugal. Claudia
Roden’s “The Book of Jewish Food” in-
forms us that under threat of persecution
during the Inquisition in Portugal, many
Portuguese Marranos, Sephardic Jews, ate
fried fish on Fridays, giving the appearance
of following Christian abstinence rules.
Surely fried
fish must
have origins
as far back
as someone
burning their
finger on hot
oil and having
a Eureka
moment.
ESY OF
T RAV E L W I S C
ONS
UR T IN
CO
They’d then save cold leftovers to eat on sociated with the lagers that long defined
Shabbat to abstain from cooking, accord- the beer culture of the Midwest, but in the
ing to their own religious customs. The 1920s when Prohibition was the law of the
batter helped keep the fish overnight, land, the taverns needed an alternative
and the olive oil they used gave it a revenue source.
lighter flavor. When the Marranos Lake Michigan, and so many other local
fled to the UK as refugees during fishing holes, had a massive supply of fresh
the 16th century, the fried fish product. Frying it had already proved popu-
dish followed with them. Thomas lar in Europe, and preparing large amounts
Jefferson himself wrote of eating was fairly easy: Dip a fillet in flour, then beat-
“fried fish in the Jewish fashion” en eggs, and then into bread crumbs. Drop it
during a trip to London. into the fryer and deliver to diners—maybe
even with a little beer under the table.
Beer and Fish Prohibition ended, but the meal proved to
But then how did fish fry come to be be so beloved that supper clubs and other
such a cultural norm in the upper Mid- taverns and restaurants continued the
west? Two factors: the predominance of tradition, and today many establishments
Christian fast-keepers looking for a Friday offer fish on all Fridays of the year. (Some
alternative, and the dark days of Prohibition. places have even added Wednesdays. I’m
Catholic immigrants such as the Poles, looking at you, Dexter’s Pub.)
A fish fry plate with
Germans, and Irish settled in these areas,
tartar sauce at
Toby’s Supper Club especially in and around Milwaukee. Ger- Today’s Fish Fry
in Madison, Wis. mans, who came to Wisconsin in abun- The meal often is an all-you-can-eat serv-
dance in the 19th century, are often as- ing of cod, walleye, or, if you’re lucky, lake

Bring This Diner Staple Home for St. Patrick’s Day

AMERICA’S TEST KITCHEN
We wanted a recipe for this diner staple that
was easy to make in every home kitchen.
In a large bowl, we tossed together 1/2-
inch cubes of cooked corned beef from the
deli counter, unpeeled russet potatoes, and
carrots, which offered pretty pops of color.
We also added shredded cabbage and sliced
onion and combined the entire mixture with
garlic, thyme, a few spices, and vegetable oil.
We transferred the contents of the bowl
to a nonstick skillet and cooked them, cov-
ered, until the potatoes were tender. We
then removed the skillet from the heat and
mashed the ingredients into a solid mass
with a potato masher.
After adding little nubs of butter all
around the sides, we returned the skillet
to the heat to brown the hash. Flipping the
hash in sections with a spatula gave us con-
trol over how much browning was achieved
and allowed browning on both sides. The
finished hash was bound by creamy pota-
toes and woven in a web of cabbage, with
salty, tender corned beef and subtly sweet
carrots in every bite.
For 25 years, confident cooks in the know
have relied on America’s Test Kitchen for
rigorously tested recipes developed by pro-
fessional test cooks and vetted by 60,000
at-home recipe testers. See more online at
AmericasTestKitchen.com/TCA. Copy-
right 2021 America’s Test Kitchen. Distrib-
uted by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
STEVE KLISE
The finished hash was bound by
creamy potatoes and woven in a web of
cabbage, with salty, tender corned beef
and subtly sweet carrots in every bite.
CORNED BEEF AND CABBAGE HASH
SERVES 4 TO 6
1 pound russet potatoes, unpeeled, cut
into 1/2-inch dice
12 ounces cooked corned beef brisket,
cut into 1/2-inch dice
3 cups shredded green cabbage
1 cup thinly sliced onion
2 carrots, peeled and cut
into 1/2-inch dice (1/2 cup)
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
2 garlic cloves, sliced thin
2 teaspoons coarsely chopped fresh
thyme
2 teaspoons pepper
over medium heat (skillet will be very full, but
contents will cook down). Cover and cook until
potatoes are tender, 15 to 20 minutes, stirring
occasionally.
Remove skillet from heat and, using a potato
masher, mash ingredients into a coarse,
cohesive mass. Spread corned beef mixture
into an even layer and place butter pieces
along the sides of the skillet all around the
hash. Return to medium heat and cook,
uncovered and undisturbed, until well browned
on the bottom, 5 to 7 minutes.
Flip spatula-size portions of hash and lightly
repack in the skillet. Cook until browned on the
second side, about 2 minutes. Flip again and
brown the bottom once more, about 2 minutes.
Serve.

1 1/2 teaspoons dry mustard NOTES

1 teaspoon table salt Corned beef is sold both raw and fully cooked.
Purchase fully cooked corned beef from the
1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
deli counter—ask the butcher to slice it 1/2-
4 tablespoons unsalted butter, cut into 16 inch thick. You can also use cooked corned
pieces beef left over from a boiled dinner.

Toss potatoes, beef, cabbage, onion, carrots, About one-quarter of a head of green cabbage
oil, garlic, thyme, pepper, mustard, salt, and will yield 3 cups.
You can use leftover corned beef from another meal, but the recipe tastes just as good when allspice together in a large bowl. Transfer Serve with hot sauce and a fried egg, if
using store-bought corned beef. mixture to a 12-inch nonstick skillet and set desired.
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021 B5
COURTESY OF TRAVEL WISCONSIN ROBERTSRE/SHUTTERSTOCK

The beer in the batter releases a bit of carbonation when it hits the fryer, giving a lifting lightness
to what will be a crunchy coating.

WISCONSIN-STYLE BEER-BATTERED FISH

perch or even bluegill. Beer-battered and
deep-fried, your fish comes with a side of
coleslaw, maybe a slice of rye bread and
pad of butter, and likely French fries or an-
other form of potato, especially German-
style potato pancakes—highly prized and
insisted upon by certain diehards.
American Serb Hall, a favorite in Milwau-
kee, won’t be doing dine-in this year, but
cod, pollock, and perch are available for
drive-through, walk-up, or delivery. The
Archdiocese of Milwaukee keeps a calen-
dar for its parish fish fries (ArchMil.org/
Parish/fish-fry), and Visit Madison rounds
up its favorites (VisitMadison.com).
Kevin Revolinski is an avid traveler, craft
beer enthusiast, and home cooking fan.
He is the author of 15 books, including
“The Yogurt Man Cometh: Tales of an
American Teacher in Turkey” and his
new collection of short stories, “Stealing
Away.”  He is based in Madison, Wis., and
his website is TheMadTraveler.com
Slipping your fish some beer
might seem like overdoing it, but
The fish fry at Essen Haus the beer in the batter releases a
Restaurant and Bar in bit of carbonation when it hits the
Madison, Wis., includes the fryer, giving a lifting lightness to
option of a side of German- what will be a crunchy coating.
style potato pancakes—
highly prized and insisted 1 pound perch fillets (or cod,
upon by certain diehards. haddock, or walleye), patted
dry
1 egg, beaten lightly
1 teaspoon baking powder
Prohibition ended, but the 1 3/4 cups flour, divided
12 ounces beer (pilsner,
meal proved to be so beloved amber, or light ale)
that supper clubs and other 1 teaspoon salt (or go full
Sconnie and use Lawry’s
taverns and restaurants seasoned salt)
continued the tradition, and 1 teaspoon black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder
today many establishments
1 teaspoon paprika
offer fish on all Fridays of
the year. Add oil to a deep cast-iron kettle,
such as a Dutch oven—at least
3 inches deep but never more
than half full—and heat it to 375
degrees F.
For the batter, whisk together the
egg, baking powder, and 1 cup of
flour. Then add the beer gradually,
adjusting the beer amount so that
the batter is just thick enough to
stick to the back of a spoon in a
thin layer. Whisk until it’s smooth.
If the batter is too thick, you will
end up with soggy breading.
Mix the remaining flour with
seasoned salt, pepper, garlic
powder, and paprika, and spread
out on a plate large enough to
accommodate a piece of fish.
Dry off each piece of fish using a
paper towel and season with salt
and pepper.
Set up the assembly line: the
fish pieces, the plate of flour,
and then the bowl of batter, all
leading to your pot of hot oil.
Coat the fish first with the flour
and then the batter, allowing for
excess batter to drip off. Then
lower the fish gently into the
oil so you don’t splash yourself.
Fry for 3 to 4 minutes watching
for a golden crust, then remove
with tongs and place on a paper
towel to drain excess oil. Thicker
pieces of cod or haddock may
require a couple extra minutes in
the oil. Work in batches, without
overcrowding, so that the pieces
don’t stick to each other or to the
bottom of the pot.
Serve with French fries or potato
pancakes, coleslaw, a slice of
light rye bread, tartar sauce,
and a lemon wedge. Pairs nicely
with a brandy Old Fashioned or a
German pilsner.

Rice, Noodles, and Lots of Lucky Green PISTACHIO AND VEGETABLE

HERBED RICE AND NOODLES
DIANE ROSSEN WORTHINGTON/TNS

DIANE ROSSEN WORTHINGTON SERVES 6 minutes or until soft. Add zucchini

I often find myself looking for side dishes
that can accompany main courses without
overpowering them. This is a recipe that
does just that.
Rice and noodles combined with toasted
pistachios, leeks, and zucchini is one of
my favorite year-round side dishes. It also
is a two-in-one dish since the veggies are
already in the rice. And it is perfect for St.
Patrick’s Day, with lots of green peeking
through the rice and noodles.
Look for long-grain rice for this recipe. It
has slender grains that stay separate and
fluffy after cooking, which works well for
side dishes or as a bed for sauces. Long-
grain rice is fairly bland, so any flavorings
added to it mingle nicely. There are other
exotic long-grain rice varieties like bas-
mati or jasmine rice, but they are more
aromatic and have a nutty flavor. I prefer
plain old American long-grain rice for
this recipe.
Simple egg noodles work best for this
recipe because they cook up in the same
amount of time as the rice, arriving at a
point where they’re soft but not mushy
while maintaining their distinctive fla-
vors. Look for fine egg noodles for this
recipe.
Through years of rice-making, I have
found that sautéing the rice in oil for a few
minutes until the kernels just become light
brown adds additional richness. In this
recipe, we also sauté the noodles to add
extra texture and flavor. Sautéed leeks and
zucchini along with toasted pistachios add
a delightful crunch.
Diane Rossen Worthington is an author-
ity on new American cooking. She is the
author of 18 cookbooks, including “Seri-
ously Simple Parties,” and a James Beard
Award-winning radio show host. You
can contact her at SeriouslySimple.com.
Copyright 2021 Diane Rossen Worthing-
ton. Distributed by Tribune Content
Agency, LLC.
1/4 cup pistachios
3 tablespoons olive oil, divided
1 1/4 cups long-grain white rice
1 1/4 cups fine egg noodles
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
Salt
Freshly ground black pepper
1 tablespoon unsalted butter
1 medium leek, finely chopped
1 medium zucchini, cut into 1/2-
inch dice
1/2 cup petit pois, defrosted
3 tablespoons finely chopped
parsley, divided
1 tablespoon finely chopped
mint
Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
Toast pistachios in oven for 5
minutes or until lightly browned.
Reserve.
In a medium saucepan heat 2
tablespoons of the oil on medium
heat. Sauté the rice and egg noodles
for about 3 minutes or until evenly
coated and very lightly browned.
Add the broth, salt, and pepper and
This two-in-one side increase heat to medium-high heat.
dish is perfect for St.
Stir with a fork. Lower the heat,
Patrick’s Day, with
cover, and simmer 15 to 18 minutes,
lots of green peeking or until cooked through and the
through the rice and
liquid has evaporated.
noodles.
Meanwhile, in a medium skillet heat
the butter and remaining oil over
medium heat. Add the leeks and
saute, stirring occasionally, about 3
and continue sauteing for about
3 to 4 minutes or until cooked but
slightly crisp. Season with salt and
pepper.
When rice and noodles are cooked,
add all vegetables, pistachios, 2
tablespoons parsley, and the mint.
Toss with a fork, taste for seasoning,
and garnish with remaining tablespoon
of parsley. Serve immediately.
TASTY TIPS
If you can find toasted pistachios,
skip the first step.
To make this a vegetarian main
course add sautéed tofu pieces and
use vegetable stock.
This may be prepared up to 2
hours ahead and kept at room
temperature. Reheat carefully in top
part of double boiler above hot water
over medium heat for 10 minutes.
Make this into a cold salad the next
day by adding some vinaigrette to
the leftover portion. Cold shrimp
or chicken pieces would be a nice
addition.
Lemon zest adds an extra flavor
component.
Diane Rossen Worthington is an
authority on new American cooking.
She is the author of 18 cookbooks,
including “Seriously Simple Parties,”
and a James Beard Award-winning
radio show host. You can contact her at
SeriouslySimple.com. Copyright 2021
Diane Rossen Worthington. Distributed
by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
B6 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021

CROSSWORD CONSTRUCTED BY TOM HOUSTON

EPOCH TIMES STAFF
Across
1. ___-European
5. Simple folk
10. Eyelets homonym
16. Inquires (about)
17. Present
18. Bowls
19. Experienced again
21. Backwoods accom-
modations
22. “A closed mouth
gathers no foot,” e.g.
23. ___ compos mentis
24. Middle Eastern heads
of state
25. Public servant with
great experience
29. Remains
30. “Billy the ___”
31. Not of the cloth
32. Heating fuel
35. Fingers
4. Siouan speakers 4NUMBERS CONSTRUCTED BY C. CHANG
AT 4NUMS.COM DAILY BRIDGE CLUB
5. Army member Find the criminal
Use the four numbers in the corners, and
6. Canadian cop the operands (+, - X, and ÷) to build an BY FRANK STEWART, TRIBUNE CONTENT AGENCY
equation to get the solution in the middle.
7. Advance There may be more than one “unique” so- ©2020 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
8. Track lution but, there may also be “equivalent”
solutions. For example: 6 + (7 X 3) +1 = 28 The late Alfred Sheinwold, who founded
9. “If only ___ listened ...” and 1+ (7 X 3) + 6 = 28 this column as “Sheinwold on Bridge” 60
10. Kind of calendar years ago, wrote wonderful columns in
which he asked the reader to “find the
11. Tolerate criminal”: discern which player had erred.
12. Burdened In some deals, it’s hard to find a law-
abiding citizen.
13. Perimeter In today’s deal, South’s 2NT was bold,
14. Echelon but he judged that the play would be easier
when West was known to have most of
15. Lip the missing honors. When West led the
20. Through five of spades, South let it ride to his ten
and next led a heart. West played low, and
26. 2011 Microsoft acqui- dummy won.
sition
NINE TRICKS
27. Slip by South next lost to the ace of diamonds.
28. Filled to excess Hard 1 - 1 Solution West continued with the ace and jack of
spades, but South had nine tricks: a heart,
32. Goggle four diamonds, two spades, two clubs. Find
33. Plot part the criminal(s).
West and South were guilty. West must
34. Cousin of calypso grab the first heart to lead the A-J of
36. Silvery gray spades. South has only seven fast tricks,
and West gets three spades and the red-
37. Grating suit aces.
38. “Chicago Hope” actor South can always succeed. If he puts up
dummy’s queen on the first spade, West
39. Culmination can’t beat 3NT.
40. “Hangin’ With Mr.
DAILY QUESTION
___” You hold: {Q3 KJ104 KQ953
42. Ran y K 9. Bothsides vulnerable. The dealer,
Hard 2 - 1 Solution at your right, opens one heart. What do
43. “We’ll take a cup of you say?
36. Reply to a captain 61. Zigzag, e.g. kindness yet for ___...” ANSWER: To act with your 14 points is
37. Auto with an odd 64. ‘The Preserver,’ in 44. Tibet’s capital
tempting, but no call is attractive. Your
spade support is inadequate to double,
number of doors Hinduism 45. Lift up you lack the strength to overcall 1NT, and
39. Venom carrier 67. Clearasil target to try two diamonds has more to lose than
46. It comes in sticks to gain. Pass. Your best chance for a profit
40. Short cloak? 68. Really love is to wait and hope the opponents get too
47. ‘Harper Valley ___’
41. Book after II Chroni- 69. Imagine high and run into a bad break.
51. Coruscated West dealer
cles 70. Jack Benny and N-S vulnerable
52. Malicious behavior
42. Academic attainment Henny Youngman, e.g.
53. All shook up
47. Pudding fruit 72. More densely covered
48. Stockings with a type of shade tree 54. Comeback
49. Chowderhead 73. Birth 55. Tipped off Easy 1 - 1 Solution
50. Dotted line? 74. Galley notation 56. Woodlands
53. Zodiac animal 75. Oddball 59. Indolent
54. “So few,” of fame 76. 1987 Nick Nolte 60. Tormentor
57. “... above our poor movie 61. Committee head
power to ___ or detract”: 77. Sen. Kennedy and 62. Online publication
Gettysburg Address others 63. Part of a balance
58. Leave behind 64. Aspect
59. ‘One Wild ___’ (1951 Down 65. Inactive
comedy) 1. Nazareth native 66. Rest stop sight
60. “Green Acres” struc- 2. Razzed 70. “Cross my heart,” e.g.
ture 3. 10’s and 20’s, e.g. 71. The “I” in T.G.I.F. Easy 2 - 1 Solution

WORDSEARCH CONSTRUCTED BY TOM HOUSTON

EPOCH TIMES STAFF SUPER KAKURO CONSTRUCTED
BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF

Help with Today’s Crossword Puzzle? Kakuro puzzles are like crosswords that use numbers instead of words. The goal is to fill the blank squares associated with a clue (called a “run”) with the numbers
1-9 so that the numbers add up to the corresponding clues. Like Sudoku, digits in a run cannot repeat. When the grid is filled, the puzzle is complete.

ADAGE ELATE LADEN ROGUERY

ADORE ELMIER LHASA SADIST
ALERTED E-ZINE LODGES SATED
AMEERS FORESTS NEEDLED SCENT
AMISH GLINTED NONCE SKYPE
BACHELOR’S HARSH ONSET STADIA
DEGREE HATCHBACK OSAGES STOMACH
CHAIR IDEATE OTIOSE VIOLINISTS
COOPER INROAD RATTLED VISHNU
DECADES ISLETS RECAPTURED WEEDS
ELAPSE ISRAELI RIPOSTE WEIRDY

SOLUTIONS
CROSSWORD SUPER KAKURO
4 NUMBERS
HARD 1

HARD 2

EASY 1

EASY 2
 THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021 B7

SUDOKU CONSTRUCTED
BY KANNAN SANKARAN SUPERSUDOKU CONSTRUCTED
BY KANNAN SANKARAN

Fill in the boxes using numbers between 1 and 9 so that each column, each Fill in the boxes using numbers from 0 to 9 and letters from A to F so that each column, each row, and
row, and each 3x3 square contain all nine numbers only once. each 4x4 square contain all ten numbers and six letters only once.
Hard

Easy FEEDBACK@EPOCHTIMES.COM

WE HAVE MADE SOME CHANGES TO

OUR PUZZLE PAGE IN RESPONSE TO
PUZZLER’S FEEDBACK. LET US KNOW
WHAT YOU THINK!
FEEDBACK@EPOCHTIMES.COM

CRYPTIC QUOTE

EPOCH DOKU CONSTRUCTED

BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF

KAKURO CONSTRUCTED
BY EPOCH TIMES STAFF JUMBLE BY DAVID L. HOYT
& JEFF KNUREK

Kakuro puzzles are like crosswords that use numbers instead of words. The goal THAT SCRAMBLED WORD GAME
is to fill the blank squares associated with a clue (called a “run”) with the numbers By David L. Hoyt and Jeff Knurek
1-9 so that the numbers add up to the corresponding clues. Like Sudoku, digits Unscramble these Jumbles,
*HWWKHIUHH-867-80%/(DSS‡)ROORZXVRQ7ZLWWHU#3OD\-XPEOH

in a run cannot repeat. When the grid is filled, the puzzle is complete. one letter to each square,
to form four ordinary words.
Easy DJEUG
EPOCH ESCAPE MAZE
TRBHE

DMELOU

SCCUTA
Now arrange the circled letters
©2021 Tribune Content Agency, LLC to form the surprise answer, as
All Rights Reserved. suggested by the above cartoon.

“ - ”

WORK SPACE

SOLUTIONS
SUPERSUDOKU SUDOKU: EASY JUMBLE EASY KAKURO
SUBJECT “MAD-HER” As quick as lightening
have avoided the —
brought it up. He should
She got angry when he
Answers:
CACTUS
MODULE
BERTH
JUDGE
Jumbles:
SUDOKU: HARD EPOCH DOKU

CRYPTIC QUOTE
economic self-interest?
nobler somehow than
political self-interest is
Is it really true that
B8
Buying
Good-Quality,
Inexpensive
Wines Has Never
Been Easier DAN BERGER
The late wine author Leon Adams once said
that in a best-of-all-worlds situation, dry
wine should be as cheap as milk.
We may be reaching a point where that’s
true. The overwhelming volume of wine
in the United States today has kept prices
for much of it very fair. The evidence is ev-
erywhere.
Three of the last four wine-grape crops
in California were huge. The 2019 harvest
was so large that about 10 percent of the
grapes grown were never harvested! There
were no buyers.
Wineries report they have more wine in
inventory than at any time in their history.
Young millennials, who had been ex-
pected to buy a lot of wine in 2019 and
2020, seem more smitten with alternative
beverages, from craft beer to ciders, hard
Trader Joe’s Charles Shaw wines, known as “Two-Buck Chuck,” lemonade to upscale whiskies, flavored
recently dropped back down to their original $1.99 price tag. hard seltzers to super-premium tequila.
The COVID-19 pandemic, which forced
ALL PHOTOS BY SHUTTERSTOCK
a shutdown of most restaurants and bars,
devastated on-premise wine sales, creating
large unsold inventories of older vintages.
Meanwhile, two of the nation’s most pop-
ular wine brands are continuing to grow in
the under-$7 price niche.
The famed Charles Shaw wines at the
Trader Joe’s grocery chain in many states
has spawned a number of other ultra-bar-
gain wines, including a decent dry wine,
at prices we haven’t seen in years. The
Charles Shaw brand (“Two-Buck Chuck”)
had been selling for $2.49 a bottle, but the
chain recently dropped its price back to its
original $1.99.
And E. & J. Gallo’s line of excellent Bare-
foot wines (most sell for about $7!) doubled
E. & J. Gallo’s affordable line of Barefoot wines doubled in sales in in sales in the last six years to nearly 19 mil-
the past six years. lion cases!
THURSDAY, MARCH 11, 2021
This has put downward pressure on all
wines priced in the $10-and-under brack-
ets. Wine consumers, hard-hit economi-
cally by the pandemic, are now happy to
trade down.
Fred Franzia, president of Bronco Wine
Co., the man who developed the idea of the
$2 wine bottle for Trader Joe’s, has long be-
lieved, as did Adams, that a bottle of wine
should be on every table in America.
Moreover, the deep-discount Grocery
Outlet chain, with 350 locations in six
states, now carries more overstocked and
private label wines than it ever has. Every
bottle is sold at a huge discount.
As if that weren’t enough evidence, a sig-
nificant trade dispute between Australia
and China has led to China instituting tar-
iffs on Aussie wines. That created a glut
of Australian wine, some of which now is
headed for the United States and England
at discounted prices.
Wineries report they
have more wine in
inventory than at any
time in their history.
Additionally, many of the nation’s retail
wine shops have so much inventory that
they have reduced their costs for shipping
wine direct to consumers. Many consum-
ers can have their wines delivered for the
equivalent of $1 to $2 per bottle, which eas-
ily covers the discount they get by ordering
online.
In order to compete, many large grocery
chains are increasing discounts for six-
bottle purchases.
All this has led many wineries to reduce
their shipping costs for direct-to-consumer
sales, in many cases waiving shipping costs
completely. One large Sonoma County win-
ery even hired two additional web design-
ers to retool their websites and then added
additional employees to handle increased
direct-to-consumer sales.
Buying good-quality wine today for a lot
less than $10 a bottle has never been easier.
To find out more about Dan Berger and
read features by other Creators Syndicate
writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators
Syndicate webpage at Creators.com.
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