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Weather: Showers likely. Thunderstorms likely in the afternoon. Highs around 90. Southeast winds 5 to 10 mph. Chance of rain 70 percent. Thursday Night: Mostly cloudy with showers and thunderstorms likely. Lows in the lower 70s. Highs in the lower 90s. Chance of rain 70 percent.
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Drug Court convenes before Circuit Judge Dawn Nichols at 10 a.m. in Courtroom 401 at the Flagler County courthouse, Kim C. Hammond Justice Center 1769 E Moody Blvd, Bldg 1, Bunnell. Drug Court is open to the public. See the Drug Court handbook here and the participation agreement here.
The Flagler Beach City Commission meets at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall, 105 South 2nd Street in Flagler Beach. Watch the meeting at the city’s YouTube channel here. Access meeting agenda and materials here. See a list of commission members and their email addresses here.
The Palm Coast Democratic Club holds its monthly business meeting at noon at the Flagler Democratic Party Headquarters in City Marketplace, 160 Cypress Point Parkway, Suite C214, Palm Coast. This gathering is open to the public at no charge. No advance arrangements are necessary. Call (386) 283-4883 for best directions or (561)-235-2065 for more information. For further information, please contact Palm Coast Democratic Club’s President Donna Harkins at (561) 235-2065, visit our website at http://palmcoastdemocraticclub.org/ or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/groups/palmcoastdemclub/permalink
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Central Park, from noon to 2 p.m. in Central Park in Town Center, 975 Central Ave. Join Bill Wells, Bob Rupp and other members of the Palm Coast Model Yacht Club, watch them race or join the races with your own model yacht. No dues to join the club, which meets at the pond in Central Park every Thursday.
Notably: The numbers are depressing any way you look at them. Are we to take heart because only 33 to 37 percent of Americans support letting the SS into churches, schools and hospitals to arrest brown and Black skins without Green Cards? American cruelty is ramping up in proportion to our decline as an interesting, relevant nation.
—P.T.
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The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
June 2025
Free For All Fridays With Host David Ayres on WNZF
Volusia County Drug Court Celebrates 100th Graduation
Friday Blue Forum
Flagler Beach Farmers Market
Coffee With Flagler Beach Commission Chair Scott Spradley
Enrollment Day at Daytona State College
Grace Community Food Pantry on Education Way
Second Saturday Plant Sale at Washington Oaks Gardens State Park
American Association of University Women (AAUW) Meeting
Four No Kings Rally in Palm Coast and Flagler Beach
Peps Art Walk Near Beachfront Grille
A Legacy of Care: Flagler Cares’ 10-Year Celebration
For the full calendar, go here.
… the merry sport of Red-baiting goes on, and the pack gives tongue more and more shrilly. I really can’t get up much sympathy for the victims, but I own a sense of dismay at the increase in all the symptoms of apparent panic. How far people are getting afraid to speak, who have anything really worth while to say, I don’t know, but I am sure that the public generally is becoming rapidly demoralized in all its sense of proportion and toleration. For men who are not cock-sure about everything and especially for those who are not damned cock-sure about anything, the skies have a rather sinister appearance.
–From a letter by Learned Hand to Oliver Wendell Holmes, Nov. 25, 1919.
Pogo says
@More is more
As stated
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_Hand
Ibid
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Nationalism_(Theodore_Roosevelt)
Saddest words ever: if only…
Ed P says
Cessation of deportations is not a sustainable solution.
Leaving all the illegals in limbo is not a compassionate solution. Their legal status prevents them from thriving.
Our country is on the brink of default. There doesn’t seem to be enough honest reduction or slowing of spending. Every program is a “sacred cow” to some group. Our politicians won’t manage the current deficit. Even Doge is a boogeyman. Saving money and eliminating waste is not supported universally.
I know, “ it’s the process, asshole”
Amnesty costs for all illegals are so far beyond possible, it will destroy all future generations of our children. The debt load of mass Amnesty decimates the United States of American. It is impossible.
Unless….
Every working person pay 2 or 3 times as much in taxes! Should we tax corporations and rich people out of existence? What about Social Security recipients taking a cut? Maybe reducing non discretionary spending, welfare programs, and Medicare? Cut, cut and cut. Is amputation the only solution?
Nope, no one wants any of this. Well, the left wants the rich to pay more because they have too much. However even they don’t have enough to right the ship. Yikes.
Most Americans don’t want to pay more. Many bemoan when their utility costs rise for normal inflation.
Hard to see a solution except for sending the illegals home. Now is the time our leaders need to step up and admit the truth before it is too late. Set theatrics aside. Be leaders.
The left will protest they don’t like the process. Does the resistance to the undeniable reality just make it worse?
Someone, anyone, come up with a better solution immediately. Time is of the essence.
Jim says
Trump gives a “speech” in front of US Army soldiers and ridicules the previous commander-in-chief. He brags about deploying troops in LA despite the fact that the demonstrations there are very small in a contained area and the local police have handled the entire situation with no assistance from the military. Yet he continues to say he’ll send troops throughout the nation to quell violence that is not occurring. But he’s not a dictator, right?
RFK, Jr. “fired” all the members of the members of Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices because they have “conflicts of interest” and replaces them with vaccine skeptics and one of them has ties to our state Surgeon General so his credibility is DOA. Say goodbye to vaccines.
Attorney General Pam Bondi rejected that President Donald Trump’s pardons for hundreds of rioters who assaulted police during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol creates a double standard with the administration’s aggressive response to violence at immigration protests in Los Angeles. “Well, this is very different,” Bondi said Wednesday in an on-camera gaggle with reporters at the White House. “These are people out there hurting people in California right now. This is ongoing.” I guess that means that those protesting in LA can get pardons in a few years when they are no longer “hurting people”. No double standards here.
Mitch McConnel addressed Pete Hegseth in a hearing yesterday. He then launched into strong warnings against the U.S. cozying up to Russia in its bid to end its war in Ukraine. McConnell said Washington’s allies are “wondering whether we’re in the middle of brokering what appears to be allowing the Russians to define victory. I think victory is defined by the people who have to live there — the Ukrainians.” The former Senate majority leader who now chairs the subcommittee, McConnell asked Hegseth which side he wanted to win the war. The Defense chief said the Trump administration wanted the killing to end but would not choose a side. Translation: The current administration is not supporting a democratic country that was invaded by Russia. The Defense secretary is clearly showing his commitment to American values.
Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem tried to get a jump start on using the military to arrest protesters in Los Angeles, according to a newly unearthed letter. The letter to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth — first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle — got out in front of the White House in seeking to have the Pentagon order the U.S. Marines deployed in the city to arrest protesters who are opposed to the Trump administration’s anti-immigrant raids. Now, Noem has already been chastised by Congress for not knowing what habeas corpus means. (During the hearing, Senator Maggie Hassan said the government is “actively trying to suspend” the protected constitutional right (habeas corpus), and went on to ask Noem what it means. Noem replied, saying that it allows the president to remove people from the US. The senator told her she was incorrect and explained that “habeas corpus” requires the government to present a valid reason for detaining and imprisoning people.) Apparently she also doesn’t know (or care) about “posse comitatus”. The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 limits the ability of the federal government to use military personnel for civilian law enforcement. Thank God the HSS leader is fully committed to supporting and following the law.
I could keep going. I didn’t even get to the [alleged] Secretary of Education. But by now you either get the point or not. Of course, I don’t expect MAGA to read through this. Facts really annoy the MAGA world. It’s much better to stay in the Fox News cocoon.
I have serious doubts about our survival as a nation and we have definitely given up any claim to “leader of the free world”. But, on the bright side, we’re keeping the dozen or so transgenders from competing in sports, putting down imaginary “insurrectionists” throughout the country, deporting all these criminal immigrants (some of them are criminals, right?), fighting “woke” (an undefined catch-all for anything MAGA doesn’t like/understand) and beating up these bad universities for not agreeing to have the administration tell them what they can teach and who they can hire. There’s plenty more.
I hope we make it but the odds don’t seem so great right now.
Ray W, says
This from Reuters.
“Retail beef prices have set records as the size of the U.S. cattle herd has declined to its lowest level in 70 years after a years-long drought raised feed costs. Consumer demand for steaks and hamburgers has stayed strong nevertheless.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I have been keeping FlaglerLive readers up to date on the pressures within the cattle industry due to drought across the upper Midwest that has persisted since 2022. One recent story focused on once-again historically low Mississippi River water levels due to drought. Beef prices continue a slow long-term rise. At some point, American consumers will turn away from beef to seek alternatives, just as egg consumers turned away from eggs when prices hit record highs this past March.
Time after time, President’s Trump’s message is that food prices are falling. In fact, food prices continue to rise, albeit at a pace much closer to the target number of 2% year-over-year than in recent years. I place lesser weight on more volatile shorter-term weekly or monthly economic reports, as opposed to the more stable year-over-year economic reports.
Earlier this week, yet another government agency reported that food prices, year-over-year, rose by 2.4% in May from May of 2024, up from 2.3% in the year-over-year numbers for April 2025 over April 2024.
Yes, it is a monthly report based on a 12-month span of data collection on which I rely, but FlaglerLive’s inveterate lie launderer, Dennis C. Rathsam, recently commented that inflation had been beaten by the Trump administration, among his many other laundered lies.
About a week ago, I commented about the Fed’s monthly Beige Book, in which was contained survey evidence compiled from a number of business owners in every one of the 12 Fed districts. The survey data reflected growing upward pressure on prices in each of the 12 districts.
From the Beige Book survey compilation, it was reported that some businesses all over the country anticipate that in the next two or three months they will have to react to Trump’s tariffs by passing all of the costs through to their customers. Other business owners said that they intend to either pass some of their increased import costs through to their customers or they plan to absorb all of the additional costs.
Some businesses may not make it, for a variety of reasons. In the above-cited Reuters article, the main subject was that on Tuesday ICE members raided an Omaha, Nebraska-based Glenn Valley Foods meat-packing plant that supplies grocery stores and restaurants with steak, chicken and corned beef products. An estimated 74 or 76 workers out of a total of 140 were shackled and removed and the plant on Wednesday was operating at 20% efficiency with what relatively few remaining workers showing up on Wednesday to work.
According to the story, Glenn Valley had been using E-Verify, a federal database that can be used to check current and potential employee’s immigration status, to hire its employees. After the raid, the company’s president, Chad Hartmann, told the reporter he had called Homeland Security, during which call he had been told that there was “no better system” available to employers to determine employee status. He added that the company “will have to continue to use it (E-Verify)” in its search for new employees.
Mr. Hartmann added: “The hole that got punched into our business is staffing.”
According to the Center for Economic and Policy Research, over half of the nation’s meatpacking workers are immigrants. The president of the Meat Institute, an industry group, told the reporter that “[m]eatpackers still face an acute worker shortage.”
Livestock traders express worry that meatpackers will reduce their demand for cattle if their companies lack the employees to process cattle into beef products.
Another report has it that deportation numbers thus far this year remain below those for the Biden administration during the same time in 2024.
I marvel and will continue to marvel at those FlaglerLive commenters who claim that inflation has been conquered when it hasn’t been, who claim that the rate of deportation is rising when it isn’t, who claim that immigrations are an enemy invading the U.S. when they aren’t.
I also marvel at the ease at which President Trump lies in the face of so much evidence against his points. Gasoline prices are not below $2.00 per gallon at the pumps at multiple stations in multiple states as he repeatedly and falsely claims. The last time gasoline prices hit $2.00 per gallon was during the pandemic, when demand for gasoline plummeted before the level of supply followed the plummet. Crude oil prices in 2020 actually dropped into the high-$20 per barrel range (below extraction costs at the time) before extractors turned off the pumps.
There was a time before the pandemic when gasoline prices at the pump also dropped below $2.00 per gallon; it briefly dropped to $1.50 per gallon (I bought some at that price), but that was during the era of what the oil industry now calls the Shale Revolution, when American energy extractors pumped so much oil out of the ground that they wiped themselves out.
Over 2000 drilling rigs were in operation at one point during the latter years of Shale Revolution; the number now in operation has dropped to the low 400s. According to Texas Railroad Commission records, applications for permits to drill are not rising. American oil explorers issue investor note after investor note in which executive state that they do not intend to increase expenditures on oil exploration; they are not engaging in Trump’s Drill! Baby! Drill! mantra, nor does it look like the industry intends to do so anytime soon.
Ray W, says
According to an industry journal, EGG-NEWS.com, the March 2025 “USDA ex-farm blended USDA nest-run, benchmark price for conventional caged hens was 474 cents per dozen, down 266 cents per dozen or 35.9 percent from the February value of 740 cents per dozen. The corresponding March 2023 and 2024 values were respectively $2.71 and 1.87 cents per dozen.”
In a different section of the journal, it was reported that “[h]ighly pathogenic avian influenza was the major driver of price with a high incidence rate. Approximately 40 million hens and at least 2.0 million pullets were depleted in 2024 with to 33 million birds, in 32 complexes or farms year to date.
In what I admit is a partially explained statistic, the article reflects that the weighted hen-week rate of lay in March 2025 was 82.6%, up from February’s 82.0%. I interpret the statistic as reflecting a lower rate of egg laying per hen as the nation’s egg farmers rebuild their flocks. Numerous articles report that it takes up to two years for pullets to grow to full egg-laying maturity. If I am correct in this interpretation, the nation’s egg-laying flocks are not yet laying eggs at the rate of fully mature hens.
USDA projected 2025 egg consumption per capita will be 266.6, down from 2024’s 272.8 eggs per capita. In 2022, egg consumption per capita was 280.5. A drop of 13.9 eggs consumed per person per year over three years strikes me as a significant drop.
Make of this what you will.
Ray says
I really worry if we will have a democracy in 4 years. 2025 play book-180 days. Other things are bad now with all the lies and no one really brave enough to step up in mass. Guess 2026 elections will tell us how happy the people are. Maybe put a hold on all the crazy stuff going on now… So sad…
Jim says
@Ed P says, I know some people are completely opposed to deporting illegals. But that’s not everyone, including some liberals like me. The concerns I have is that Trump has pounded on the premise that we are overrun with illegals that have committed rape, murder and other crimes and they need to go. I wouldn’t argue with that. But that’s not what Trump is doing. He’s going after migrants who are here legally pending their cases being heard by a court. It doesn’t matter whether you or I like the current law that allows that; it only matters that the United States government follows the law as it’s currently written. Trump is not doing that. In fact, he’s just attempting to round up as many immigrants as he can to pad his numbers. DOJ just changed the rules for judges so they can/will dismiss cases that haven’t been heard (and without input from the immigrant side) so they can expedite the process. I guess that’s the new American way. Kilmar Abrego Garcia was sent to El Salvador despite having a “no deport” court order in place and Trump’s administration admitted this was an error. They only brought him back after an extreme amount of pressure (and bad PR) forced them. I see they’ve charged him with some crimes that were never mentioned before or during his absence from the US. Not that that’s suspicious in any way (just trust the government!). And he’s not the only mistake they’ve made in deportations. So my comment is that as long as we’re deporting those who either have committed crimes or have lost their court cases, I’m fine with that. That’s following the law. What is happening now is not the law. If those in power don’t like the current laws, they should work to change them; not just ignore them.
Also, I sure would like to see you expand on how deporting immigrants is going to save the country from default. I’m not sure how you came to that conclusion so please let the rest of us know.
Now, what I think might help save the country from default is for Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill” to get axed by the Senate. MAGA doesn’t like to admit that according to the Congressional Budget Office, this bill will raise the dept load by about $3 trillion. You and I will get a few hundred dollars back from Uncle Sam on taxes while the rich will rake in thousands and thousands. Now, somehow, to me, with a national debt load that we have, that just doesn’t seem like good government. I also think that it’s time to get serious about fair taxation for all. I definitely think the rich need to pay more. I don’t think someone making over $400k per year will get hurt too bad if his tax rate went up 10% or so. That’s roughly $40k out of pocket along with whatever the current tax is but without having the complete details in front of me, I’d estimate that’s leaving $250k or more in disposable income. I could make do with that; hopefully the rich can figure it out.
And, since social security is once again on the verge of collapse, I also think that the cap should be taken off the amount of income where social security deductions stop. It’s a 3% rate (6% if you’re self-employed) and I think that’s not a big hit either.
But anyway, please explain how getting rid of all the illegals is going to save America. I really look forward to seeing that!
Ray W, says
According to an USDA report, the egg market price for December 2024, was $4.61 per dozen. According to a CBS report, egg prices in May fell to a five-month low of $4.55 per dozen, due to at least two different reasons. For context, in May 2020, a dozen eggs cost $2.70.
According to a Michigan State University food economics professor, David Ortega:
“[The drop in egg prices] is primarily due to a reduction in the number of commercial facilities that have been impacted by the bird flu. … A lot of bird flu activity in the beginning of the year led to a significant surge in egg prices, but those impacts have really lessened over the past couple of months.” Professor Ortega cautioned that the bird flu outbreak is not yet fully contained: “It’s still very much an issue.”
In May, an outbreak of bird flu on an Arizona farm impacted almost 1.4 million hens, according to USDA data.
The CBS reporter attributed the price decline in part to seasonality factors:
“… Typically as we move into summer, demand for eggs soften as people shift to consuming more meat and grilling outdoors. … People aren’t making heavy breakfasts, so we don’t see demand for eggs being as strong as it typically is during the winter months”, said Columbia Business School economics professor Brett House.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
The American economy, according to economists, relies some 70% on consumer spending by some 340 million people to thrive.
Yes, drought and disease, among a multitude of other factors can impact what we pay at the store for perishable products.
The professional lying class that sits at the top of one of our two political parties wants us all to believe that egg prices are down during Trump’s tenure. And that class is correct, in that egg prices are down by six cents per dozen eggs over December 2024 prices.
The professional lying class want us all to believe that food prices are down when they are up and still rising faster than the preferred inflation rate of 2%.
The professional lying class want us all to believe that gasoline prices are down, when just last week the average price per gallon of gasoline finally dropped below the average price per gallon that existed on January 20th of this year, but the drop in average price is mainly due to OPEC+’s decision to reverse its long-standing voluntary reduction in pumping oil, and not due to American oil extractors pumping more oil. The EIA reports that monthly average 2025 American crude oil production figures have been dropping, albeit at a very slow rate of drop.
As an aside, Ed P. is partially correct in voicing his many fears derived from the mistakes of many U.S. legislative and executive decisions over the past 45 years. We as a nation face many serious and deeply entrenched and rapidly growing problems, with myopia being one of our nation’s biggest problems of the many.
The main flaw in Ed P’s thinking is that he has internalized a false narrative that immigrants are an economic drain on our economy. They are not. Until he internalizes the importance of immigration to our capacity to grow our economy, he will too easily be distracted by lies.
Please note that I do not now, nor have I ever have advocated for a cessation of deportation.
I think that any immigrant, documented or not, who commits any form of serious crime, including serious misdemeanors such as assault, battery, domestic violence, DUI, etc., should be deported.
But the idea of deporting a 40-year-old woman solely because she purportedly committed the specific intent crime of trespass when her undocumented parents brought her into the country at the age of two (long before the age at which the law infers the capacity to commit a specific intent crime), without her ever having committed a subsequent crime, is absurdity at its worst. Perhaps married, perhaps a mother of American children who excel in life on their own terms, perhaps a business owner who employs Americans, or perhaps a long-term valued employee for an American small-business owner, what grounds exist for anyone to deem her an “illegal.”
My position is that our legislature, ever since it enacted the last major change to immigration law in 1996, has known how important immigrants are to our economy.
This is why it is only a misdemeanor for an immigrant to cross our borders without documentation, albeit the fact that border trespassing is the only misdemeanor on the federal books that lacks a statute of limitations. Even those many, many protestors who tore down fences and crossed marked boundaries around nuclear power plants in the 60s and 70s faced misdemeanor charges that had statutes of limitations affixed to the crimes, just as boater seeking to watch launches at the Cape face misdemeanor charges complete with statutes of limitations for passing markers in the Indian River. I have talked with federal prosecutors who do not wish to waste time on prosecuting nude sunbathing on federal beaches in Brevard County. In reality, nude sunbathing is seldom prosecuted, with park employees often turning a blind eye to the act, though the misdemeanor crime is on the federal books.
This is why it is only a civil infraction for an immigrant to remain in our country without documentation.
Tax law is set up to permit undocumented immigrants the eligibility to work, but only after the undocumented obtain ITIN status from the IRS, so that the employers of the undocumented can pay taxes into the U.S. Treasury on their behalf without decent prospect of the undocumented of benefitting from those tax payments until five years after the immigrant obtains naturalization status.
Yes, for vengeful political reasons it is important that a show of deportation be highlighted so as to produce a salve for the gullibly ignorant among us.
For economic reasons, we have long needed immigrants in their millions to satisfy business demands for their labor, whether inexpensive labor or not. Without immigrants in their millions, upward pressure on wages and then on prices would long ago have driven inflation higher and higher ever since the recovery from the pandemic began in force in 2021. American women just do not birth babies at the rate that they used to. Our native-born population figure has flatlined over the past six years or so. Paycheck growth, so important to rising GDP now comes from immigrants.
No, Ed P., sending the undocumented home is not a viable solution. Sending home the undocumented who do commit serious crimes is a viable solution.
Sherry says
This is what Canadian leaders think of trump. . . Maga members, I “dare” you to watch this:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/16h3EmGhfp/?mibextid=wwXIfr
Ray W, says
According to an article published by Global Data, this past January, Johnsonville, an eighty-year-old sausage maker, acquired two Wisconsin-based meat production plants from Salm Partners.
More recently, Johnsonville, which employs some 4000 workers worldwide, announced the closure of a 63-year-old Illinois processing plant, impacting 274 workers, with the announced intent to shift production to” newer” processing plants in Kansas and Wisconsin that are thought capable of handling additional volume. The goal is to better support “current and future growth.”
The Watertown Wisconsin site will see 75 new employees, and the Sheboygan Falls site will grow by 25 new employees. No word on how many jobs will be added to the Kansas site.
Equipment and assets from the Illinois plant will be moved to other Johnsonville plants and the site will then be sold or demolished.
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I only comment on this story mainly because it emphasizes the concept of the “highest best use” for a property. Layoffs in their thousands occur every day as businesses fail, restructure, or grow. Thus far, government records show only a slight rise in the number of workers applying for unemployment benefits, which suggests a certain strength in the current labor market, a strength that has persisted for years. Anyone who focuses on the small picture of one plant closing might entirely miss the bigger picture. Our economy has a better capacity to thrive when those who can adhere to the concept of the “highest best use” of assets do so, even if it impacts one community’s labor force.
For a better example of the concept of highest, best use, the worldwide EV industry recently pierced the threshold at which EVs become the highest best use for personal transport. Perhaps not yet in the U.S., because of tax and tariff policies and the steady spread of disinformation and misinformation, but it is happening all over the world.
Sherry says
More trump administration “dangerous” garbage:
One of the U.S. government’s new advisors on vaccine recommendations, Dr. Robert Malone, is a frequent source of vaccine misinformation, including the false claims that COVID-19 vaccines can cause cancer and increase the risk of stillbirths. Indeed, Malone has personally pushed 13 claims from NewGuard’s Misinformation Fingerprints database of provably false claims.
The 13 False Claims initiated or promoted by Malone are presented here in reverse chronological order:
1. Measles vaccination can cause measles
On April 14, 2025, Malone stated in a Substack article: “Like polio, modern measles outbreaks have two general sources; ‘Wild’ or natural measles, and reversion of ‘live attenuated’ measles vaccine strains to become more infectious. Persons vaccinated with the currently marketed ‘live attenuated’ measles vaccines often shed infectious vaccine-strain measles for some time.”
Debunk: There is no evidence that the measles vaccine can cause measles, a highly contagious viral infection that can cause severe flu-like illness and rash. “The vaccine contains a live but weakened form of the measles virus that is designed to create immunity without causing full-blown illness,” Johns Hopkins Medicine says on its website. “In children with normal immune systems, the vaccine will not cause full-blown illness.”
2. Italy decided to leave the World Health Organization
A Jan. 28, 2025, post on X by Malone said, “Italy leaving the WHO.”
Debunk: Italy has not announced any plan or passed legislation to exit the organization.
3. Early polio vaccines caused a surge in cancers
In a Dec. 15, 2024, Substack article, Malone wrote: “Polio vaccines used in the late 1950s and early 1960s were contaminated with a virus called simian virus 40 (SV40) present in monkey kidney cells used to grow the vaccine. Subsequently, investigators found SV40 DNA in biopsy specimens obtained from patients with cancers such as mesothelioma (lung), osteosarcoma (bone), and non-Hodgkins lymphoma (lymph nodes). It should be noted that SV40 is so reliably carcinogenic that it’s what labs inject into the rats in order to INDUCE cancer and tumors in laboratory studies of cancer.”
Debunk: Polio vaccines, including those administered between 1955 and 1963, do not cause cancer, according to experts and published, peer-reviewed research. While the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that some 10 to 30 percent of polio vaccines during that time were contaminated with a virus shown to cause cancer in animals, there is no evidence that it does the same in humans. Moreover, research conducted decades after the introduction of polio vaccines has found no link between the vaccines and cancer in recipients.
4. Canadian study proves that COVID-19 vaccines killed 17 million people
A Nov. 23, 2023, Substack article attributed to Malone included a Rumble video transcript of comments made by Denis Rancourt, a former University of Ottawa physics professor, who said: “So from this work, we’re able to calculate how many people would’ve died globally, given that we’ve studied so many countries now and we find that 17 million people were killed by the vaccines on the planet.”
Debunk: According to health experts, COVID-19 vaccines do not cause increased mortality, much less 17 million deaths worldwide. A study from the Canadian nonprofit organization Correlation Research in the Public Interest, which is the basis for this claim, “represent[s] a major distortion of the actual data,” Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, told Agence France-Presse in October 2023. “All-cause mortality spikes are likely due to the virus surging during certain periods and have nothing to do with booster campaigns.”
5. mRNA vaccines can cause cancer
At a Nov. 13, 2023, event in Washington held by Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, Malone “revealed how Moderna’s patent shows that its (COVID-19) ‘vaccine’ vials contain billions of DNA fragments and other contaminants linked to birth defects and cancer,” according to an Expose-News.com (NewsGuard Trust Score: 7.5/100) article.
Debunk: The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged that residual amounts of DNA can remain in mRNA vaccines for COVID from the vaccines’ manufacturing process, according to a December 2023 USA Today fact-checking article. However, the FDA has also said there is no evidence this residual DNA could cause cancer. Malone was referencing a portion of an August 2019 patent application from Moderna that related to DNA, not mRNA vaccines, which mentioned that there were theoretical concerns that DNA vaccines could lead to mutated cells called oncogenes that can cause cancer.
6. Cleveland Clinic study proves vaccination increases COVID-19 infection risk
In a Feb. 12, 2023, interview with now-FBI deputy director Dan Bongino on Fox News, Malone said, “But the data regarding safety is becoming quite clear, and the more jabs you take, the more likely you are to get Covid according to the recent study that’s been published by the Cleveland Clinic.”
Debunk: This claim is based on a misinterpretation of the findings of an April 2023 study that was conducted by researchers at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio and published in the peer-reviewed journal Open Forum Infectious Diseases. The authors did acknowledge an “unexpected finding of increasing risk with increasing number of prior COVID-19 vaccine doses.” They noted that the finding required “further study.” Lead author Nabin Shrestha told NewsGuard: “This was an association we found in our study. However, association is not causation.”
7. COVID-19 vaccines linked to increase in stillbirths
In a Nov. 10, 2022, article on his Substack, Malone republished a November 2022 article written by Dr. James Thorp, a Floria OB-GYN who has repeatedly made false claims about COVID vaccines. Thorp wrote: “A nurse Whistleblower from California has formal, incontrovertible evidence in an email received from the nursing administration of Women’s Services documenting a massive spike in the number of fetal deaths (stillbirths) that began after the vaccination push in pregnancy. In July 2021 there was an all-time institutional record at 22 stillbirths that required a significant diversion of the nurses’ clinical responsibilities. There were again 22 more stillbirths in August 2022 and as the administrator stated that does not even include other stillbirths that likely were not included as they came into different departments e.g., emergency departments, offices, or operating rooms.”
Debunk: Peer-reviewed medical research has no found link between COVID-19 vaccines and an increased risk of stillbirth. For example, an August 2022 study published in the British Medical Journal that included data on 85,000 births in Canada concluded, “We did not find evidence of an increased risk of preterm birth, small for gestational age at birth, or stillbirth after COVID-19 vaccination during any trimester of pregnancy.” A study of 32,000 births in Australia, published online by the American Journal of Obstetrics & Gynecology in November 2022, said, “Vaccinated women had a significantly lower rate of stillbirth compared with unvaccinated women.”
8. Ventilators were the cause for nearly all early COVID-19 deaths
In an Oct. 7, 2022, article on his Substack, Malone stated: “Over 30,000 Americans appear to have been killed by mechanical ventilators or other forms of medical iatrogenesis throughout April 2020, primarily in the area around New York.”
Debunk: Ventilators have been used on critically ill COVID patients who likely would have died without one, according to medical experts. The fact that a high percentage of ventilated patients die reflects the severity of their COVID cases, not proof that the ventilator itself was responsible for their deaths.
9. COVID-19 vaccines caused excess deaths among millennials
In a July 26, 2022, article on his Substack, Malone wrote: “Millennials saw an acceleration of excess mortality into the second half of 2021 to new all-time highs, a stunning 84% above baseline. The rate of change during the fall vaccine mandates was particularly striking for us, as it coincided with the surge of corporate vaccine mandates during that time. We called this the smoking gun chart.”
Debunk: According to the CDC website, “Excess deaths are typically defined as the difference between the observed numbers of deaths in specific time periods and expected numbers of deaths in the same time periods.” According to the data, there were 63,000 more deaths among 25- to 44-year-olds in 2021 compared to 2019, before the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, those figures represent a 44 percent increase, not 84 percent. Moreover, the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics told Reuters in a March 2022 statement that the increases in excess deaths coincided with COVID waves in the second half of 2021 and could not be attributed to vaccines.
10. The 2022 mpox outbreak was predicted in a simulation
Malone published an article on June 3, 2022, in LifeSiteNews.com (Trust Score: 17.5/100) that stated: “The preponderance of current evidence is pointing towards a hypothesis for the origin of this outbreak [mpox] which is increasingly consistent with prior ‘war game’ scenario planning, remarkably akin to an event which occurred during last spring, which posits emergence of an engineered Monkeypox virus into the human population during mid-May of 2022.”
Debunk: The Nuclear Threat Initiative, a Washington-based nonprofit “focused on reducing nuclear and biological threats imperiling humanity,” according to its website, did host a pandemic preparedness exercise involving a fictional mpox virus at the Munich Security Conference in March 2021. However, the scenario had major differences from the actual 2022 mpox outbreak. For example, the NTI scenario said it involved “an unusual strain of mpox virus that first emerged in the fictional nation of Brinia and spread globally over 18 months.” In this exercise, the outbreak was caused by a terrorist attack using a virus “engineered in a laboratory,” according to NTI, and was projected to result in 3.2 billion cases and 271 million deaths by December 2023.
11. India stopped a surge in COVID-19 cases by using ivermectin
On Jan. 16, 2022, Malone posted on his Substack: “The curious case of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh is often sited [sic]. Densely populated, relatively poor, and they have absolutely crushed the COVID-19 death curve. Widespread availability of a package distributed throughout the region, rumored to contain the repurposed drug Ivermectin, have often been credited for this amazing success. But until now, these rumors have remained unsubstantiated…. So, without further ado, I am glad to finally be able to provide photographic evidence of what is responsible for the miracle of Uttar Pradesh.”
Debunk: It is true that COVID-19 began to decline in India in May 2021, approximately 10 days after the Indian government issued a new guideline allowing for the use of ivermectin to treat COVID-19. However public health experts and fact-checking organizations have said that there is no evidence of a causal relationship between the use of ivermectin and a reduction in COVID-19 case counts in India, and multiple peer-reviewed studies have found no evidence that ivermectin is an effective COVID treatment.
12. The spike protein in COVID-19 vaccines is toxic
During a Dec. 12, 2021, speech at the anti-vaccine Global Covid Summit, Malone stated: “The first is that a viral gene will be injected into your children’s cells. This gene forces your child’s body to make toxic spike proteins. These proteins often cause permanent damage in children’s critical organs, including: Their brain and nervous system; their heart and blood vessels, including blood clots; their reproductive system; and this vaccine can trigger fundamental changes to their immune system.”
Debunk: COVID-19 vaccines do not contain the spike protein, and the protein produced in vaccinated people is harmless. mRNA vaccines work by delivering mRNA to the body’s cells, instructing cells to make a piece of the COVID-19 virus called the spike protein. “Our immune systems recognize that the protein doesn’t belong there and begin building an immune response and making antibodies, like what happens in natural infection against COVID-19,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention states on its website. “In terms of the spike protein itself being pathogenic in some way that’s just simply not true,” Dr. Dan Kaul, an infectious disease expert at the University of Michigan, told The Associated Press in a June 2021 fact-checking article.
13. The FDA did not approve the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine
The claim appeared to originate with comments made by Malone in an Aug. 24, 2021, interview with Steve Bannon, former White House chief strategist under Trump. Malone said, “Once again, the mainstream media has lied to you…the product that’s licensed is the BioNTech product, which is substantially similar but not necessarily identical. It’s called Comirnaty…and it’s not yet available. They haven’t started manufacturing it or labeling it.”
Debunk: On Aug. 23, 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration granted full approval, also known as licensure, to the COVID-19 vaccine made by Pfizer and BioNTech for use in people aged 16 and over. The agency also approved the vaccine’s brand name, Comirnaty, as the FDA does not allow drugs or vaccines to be marketed under brand names until they are licensed.
Ray W, says
In one of the more intriguing guest editorials that I have read in a very long time, Barron’s, a publication devoted primarily to economic issues, recently published an article submitted by Emil W. Henry, Jr., whom the publication described as a former Assistant U.S. Treasury Secretary and founder and CEO of a private equity firm, Tiger Infrastructure.
Mr. Henry frames his editorial around the idea that now is that precious moment in time, amid vast changes in the international monetary ordering, for Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, whom he describes as a “man of the markets”, to take the initiative in securing “long-term American financial pre-eminence.”
Mr. Henry adds that “[g]lobal economic stability is at stake.”
Mr. Henry builds his premise on the foundation set by former U.S. Treasury Secretary Harry White, who helped shape the 1944 Bretton Woods accords during the economically unstable and geopolitically fragile closing years of WWII.
The Bretton Woods conference was called, according to Mr. Henry, to “avoid the destabilizing currency devaluations, monetary fragmentation, and economic nationalism that preceded the war.” And according to Mr. Henry, it was America’s “industrial scale” and “vast gold reserves” that enabled the U.S. to assume the mantle of world leadership after Bretton Woods and act as the “natural reserve currency issuer.”
From 1944 on, as the world’s accepted currency issuer, foreign nations began a process of their holding U.S. dollars “as a store of value, while the U.S. provided liquidity and monetary discipline.” The immediately subsequent forming of both the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank also promoted worldwide stability and enabled reconstruction.
This 75-year-or-more era of “stabilized exchange rates and institutionalized U.S. economic leadership” fostered economic order among nations, an order Mr. Henry maintains is “now being tested not by tanks but by new alliances, new technologies, and new ways of thinking.”
Mr. Henry asserts that “the global monetary system is quickly fragmenting, with China sitting at its center.”
During his time of oversight of U.S. Treasury securities, one compelling question within the Treasury Department was whether China’s increasing purchasing power and its holding of large portions of U.S. government debt should be viewed as an effort to create a “geopolitical weapon. Joint U.S. research teams concluded after analysis that among the world’s major economies, only the American economic marketplace was sufficiently large to absorb China’s reserves, i.e., U.S. Treasuries were China’s only rational economic outlet in which to safely place its money.
But the analysis of 20 years ago no longer holds true. Rising U.S. debt, geopolitical shifts, arising alternative trade blocs, increasing nondollar settlements, and active de-dollarization by “major economies” eat away at American financial dominance. The share of global reserves in dollars has dropped from 1999’s 71% to today’s 58%.
According to Mr. Henry, Treasury Secretary Bessent must do what Treasury Secretary White did in 1944; he must “create a new financial alignment with the goal of solidifying dollar centrality and U.S. economic leadership as the price of trade normalization.”
In order to accomplish the new financial alignment, the major U.S. trading partners must “hold a defined minimum portion of their reserves in dollars”, which would create a stable and sustained demand for Treasuries and dollar assets. And China’s new digital currency, e-CNY, must not be permitted to operate with U.S.-issued sovereign or private digital assets.
By agreement, he adds, China’s participation in initiates aimed at undermining the U.S. dollar, such as the BRICs reserve currency, must be limited. Any U.S.-China trade deal must explicitly reaffirm the dollar as the settlement currency for all types of energy imports.
Next, the U.S. “should introduce a 50- or 100-year Treasury bond”, akin to a form of permanent security and intended to extend U.S. debt maturities which would stabilize “capital formation” and more deeply align U.S. and foreign interests.
“Finally, U.S. firms still face barriers in Chinese banking, asset management, and insurance. Tariff relief should require enforceable rights for U.S. firms to operate independently and without barriers in China, to promote U.S. financial standards abroad and deepen dollar-linked activity.”
Make of this what you will.
Me?
I do not hold myself out to FlaglerLive readers as an economic expert. At best, I am a curious student. But to me, the question posed by Mr. Henry is whether we as a country will allow ourselves to get bogged down by political trivialities that will never have more than little or no meaning past today’s news cycle, or will we grasp, or miss, an opportunity to reprise a long-standing and effective economic world order.
Why any administration should focus on compulsively lying to the public about the new world order to be brought into being by big, beautiful tariffs that are 10% one day, and 25% the next day, and then paused for a time the next day, and then reinstated at 145% the next day, and then reduced to 30% the next day, all the while telling the people of the world that their leaders are lining up to kiss Trump’s ass, when the same administration could be reframing the world economic order with the American dollar as a strengthened and perhaps more enduring world’s currency?
Burn it says
Its like a daily terrorist show. Who will the orange terror target next for his concentration camps! Which group of people will they screw over for self enrichment tomorrow? Have to wait and see!! How many children starved today in murikkkas backed genocide of children! How many kids with cancer will loose their Medicare? lol have to wait and see? Prices are up but don’t worry all the money goes to the 20 richest people on the plantet no shit!
Ray W, says
InsideEVs Global reports on contracts recently given to ND Defense and Mack Trucks to develop three different prototypes of hybrid battery- and engine-powered Medium Tactical Trucks designed to replace the Marine Corps aging fleet of that same category of truck that first saw field duty in 2001.
Specifications include the capacity to silently power tools and certain weapons.
The truck variants will be tactical support, tractor, resupply, dump, cargo and wrecker.
Bed length variants will be 10-foot, 15-foot and 20-foot.
The goals include reducing overall fuel consumption, extending operational range, enabling silent watch operations, providing extensive on-board power storage and generation, and offering between 10 and 30 kilowatts of power to external systems.
Drive configurations will be both 4×4 and 6×6.
One reason for hybridization is the cost and vulnerability of providing large amounts of fuel to power current truck variants. Minimizing the need to transport fuel to forward locations is at issue. Operational energy is the key.
Make of this what you will.