Category: Update

Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.) says that “American public health officials were well aware of COVID-19 vaccine safety signals for myocarditis and ischemic stroke . . . well before they alerted the American public,” summarizes The Epoch Times.

Last year, as chairman of the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, Johnson issued a subpoena to the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) seeking six categories of COVID-related data, including vaccine safety surveillance data and myocarditis records.

From the subpoenaed data — enormous dumps of what has ultimately become about 11 million pages — Johnson’s team found that the CDC was well aware of the myocarditis risk even in early 2021. Yet they downplayed it instead of alerting the public, Johnson said.

Johnson’s team also found that the White House modified wording about a safety signal for ischemic stroke with the bivalent booster for people over 65, changing “moderately elevated” to “slightly elevated,” according to records

“Sen. Ron Johnson: Here’s What We Found in 11 Million Pages of COVID Records,” The Epoch Times (April 23, 2026).

The risk of myocarditis in young men was known by May 2021, says Senator Johnson.

Specifically referring to the Pfizer and Moderna mRNA therapeutic injections (popularly called “vaccines”), Johnson notes that the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) results quickly signaled the danger. “All of a sudden, in 2021, it just spikes. I didn’t need a proportional reporting ratio analysis. I didn’t need empirical Bayesian analysis to tell me there was something seriously wrong here. I remember publishing my VAERS charts where there were a couple thousand deaths, then more thousand deaths, then 10,000, 20,000. We’re up to about 39,000 deaths.

Early on, there were 46 percent of those deaths occurring on the day of vaccination or within one or two days. Now we’re about 24 percent. Of the 39,000 deaths reported worldwide on VAERS, 24 percent are occurring on the day of vaccination or within one or two days. And they say, well, you know, VAERS doesn’t prove causation. I mean, that’s a heck of a correlation.

Ibid.

Internal communications at the CDC, seen in the data Johnson’s team went through, was a repeated fear: telling the American people that deaths were associated with the jabs the government was promoting and even mandating would “encourage vaccine hesitancy.”

Johnson notes that this vaccine hesitancy has jumped the corral and now extends far beyond COVID to vaccines on the official childhood vaccine schedule.

“The Pentagon on Friday unsealed the first tranche of what it described as ‘new, never-before-seen’ files related to otherworldly encounters,” reports The Military Times, just a few “months after President Donald Trump directed the government to begin disclosing intelligence related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena, and unidentified flying objects.

Trump, in a post on Truth Social, characterized the dissemination of the archives as an effort to achieve “complete and maximum transparency.”

“With these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’” the president wrote, adding, “Have Fun and Enjoy!”

The Department of Defense — in coordination with the White House, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Department of Energy, NASA and the FBI — disclosed 162 files on its newly launched “UFO” website. Additional batches are expected to be released on a rolling basis as they are discovered and declassified.

The website is not on the much-ballyooed, newly registered domains of alien.gov and aliens.gov. It is, as linked above, war.gov/ufo.

There has been much commentary, no little amount of hype, and a sizable amount of frustration: this was a carefully curated conglomeration of arcana. Not a full disclosure of everything some people in the government know. For instance, the FBI was never a leader in accumulating UFO information, but FBI files lead this “tranche.”

Highly recommended, though, are the files from NASA on what astronauts saw in lunar missions Apollo 11, 12, and 17. Check them out.

Paul Jacob has been covering the UFO disclosure movement for several years now. Use the search bar, above, to put keywords “UFO” or “UAP” through the paces. Or just click on the category “government transparency.”

Artemis II astronauts saw meteors — micrometeoroids, specifically — hitting the far side of the moon during their eclipse-event view. This remains one of the more surprising findings of the mission.

On April 6, 2026, during the Artemis II mission, the Orion spacecraft flew over the Moon’s far side, allowing the crew to experience a unique “total solar eclipse” from their perspective (the Sun passing behind the Moon). In the resulting darkness, they observed six distinct flashes of light on the lunar surface, which NASA scientists confirmed were micrometeoroid impacts.

This was the first time humans traveling beyond Low Earth Orbit have directly witnessed micrometeoroid strikes on the Moon in real-time.

• “NASA’s Artemis II Crew Saw Meteorites Striking The Moon in Real Time” – ScienceAlert
  • This article explains the unique geometry of the eclipse that allowed the crew to see the dark side of the Moon illuminated only by the impact flashes.
• “‘Audible screams of delight’ from NASA scientists over micrometeorite impacts on the moon witnessed by Artemis 2 astronauts” – Space.com
  • This piece breaks down the specific number of impacts (six) and includes reactions from NASA scientists regarding the data value of these observations.
• “Artemis II Astronauts Witnessed 6 Meteorites Colliding With the Moon” – Wired
  • Wired explains why these flashes were visible and how this data helps refine models of the lunar meteoroid environment.
• “A Unique Eclipse, Meteorite Impacts, And New Geological Features Among The Science Views From Artemis II” – IFLScience
  • Connects the meteorite sightings to the broader scientific goals of the mission, including the observation of the solar corona and the geology of the Orientale basin. 

Key Scientific Takeaways:

• Visibility: The flashes were visible because the Moon’s surface was in total shadow, allowing the bright impact flashes stand out against the dark regolith.
• Data Value: These observations validate models predicting the frequency and energy of micrometeoroid impacts — critical for designing shielding for future permanent lunar habitats.
• Frequency: Seeing six impacts in a short window suggests the flux of micrometeoroids in the lunar environment might be higher or more energetic than some previous models predicted.

Business Base:

Paul Jacob wrote about Artemis’s extensive use of corporate technology, contracting, and the bid-purchase system on April 22, 2026. NASA estimates that the Artemis program engages over 3,800 businesses across the United States. This includes small machine shops, software developers, material suppliers, and research institutions. But here is a list of the major corporate contractors responsible for the core systems of the Artemis program:

1. Lockheed Martin: Prime contractor for the Orion spacecraft (crew module and service module integration).
2. Northrop Grumman: Prime contractor for the Space Launch System (SLS) Solid Rocket Boosters and the Human Landing System (HLS) variant for the Gateway (though Blue Origin/SpaceX are also HLS competitors).
3. Boeing: Prime contractor for the SLS Core Stage (propulsion and structural elements).
4. Aerojet Rocketdyne: Provides the RS-25 engines (for SLS) and the Orion Service Module propulsion system.
5. Blue Origin: Selected as a competitor for the Human Landing System (HLS) (National Team includes Lockheed Martin, Draper, Honeybee Robotics).
6. Dynetics: Selected as a competitor for the Human Landing System (HLS) (part of the team with Sierra Nevada Corporation).
7. SpaceX: Selected as the primary Human Landing System (HLS) provider (Starship HLS).
8. L3Harris Technologies: Provides the Orion Crew Module avionics and communication systems.
9. Maxar Technologies: Building the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) for the Lunar Gateway.
10. Astrobotic Technology: Selected for the Peregrine lunar lander (CLPS program) to deliver payloads.
11. Intuitive Machines: Selected for the Nova-C lunar lander (CLPS program).
12. Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC): Partner with Dynetics for the HLS.
13. Amentum: Provides mission operations and engineering support for the SLS and Orion.
14. MDA (MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates): Providing robotic systems for the Lunar Gateway.

The Virginia redistricting story got a new wrinkle on April 22: “Rep. Rich McCormick (R-Ga.) introduced legislation to repeal the 1840s retrocession that delivered the other side of the Potomac River to the Commonwealth of Virginia,” according to The Epoch Times.

“Influential conservatives who back the idea now include Kevin Roberts, president of The Heritage Foundation, and Mike Howell, president of The Oversight Project, a government watchdog group.” The report quotes Cato Institute’s Roger Pilon, who “has repeatedly testified to Congress on the issue of D.C. statehood, agreed with activists that Congress never had the authority to retrocede the Virginia portion of the district in the first place.

Rather than Congress doing this, an executive order from the president sure seems . . . easier. “Pilon sees Trump as the likeliest president to force the issue, despite the political risks of stripping thousands of Virginians of political power.” Since the move to re-incorporate very populated parts of Virginia would in effect disenfranchise its inhabitants, Pilon is not alone to question the “optics,” as The Epoch Times phrased it.

Paul Jacob last published on the Virginia redistricting brouhaha on April 23.

The Southern Poverty Law Center has been a deeply pernicious organization for a very long time. In 2017, Paul Jacob characterized one of the outfit’s key modi operandi as a scam, lumping “political opponents — conservatives and libertarians — in with Nazis and the KKK, in order to smear them.” That is, expand the enemies list the better to incite activist involvement.

It turns out that may not just be the judgment of SPLC critics like Paul.

The Department of Justice, last week, added another dimension to the story, bringing fraud and money laundering charges against the organization. What is the SPLC alleged to have done? A federal grand jury indicted the organization with “11 counts of wire fraud, false statements to a federally insured bank, and conspiracy to commit concealment money laundering.”

Substantively, the claim is that the SPLC funded and directed infiltrators into racist organizations, including the organizers of the infamous Charlottesville “Unite the Right” rally, who — as leaders in those organizations — pushed radical, extremist tactics (including criminal acts) that the SPLC then used to gin up donor panic to increase the organization’s funding.

Whether the case succeeds in court, legally, remains to be seen, but already the revelations of the SPLC’s tactics show a twisted moral sense, a corrupt view of strategy and tactics, and a general ethical ickiness.

Journalist Tim Pool added more information, telling his video and podcasting audience of his own encounters with the SPLC — based on the “psy-op” run against him a few years ago, in which Biden’s egregious Attorney General Merrick Garland publicly proclaimed that the journalist had been funded by Russia. But Garland wasn’t the first to advance this accusation. The SPLC had done it earlier. Mr. Pool suspects that the CIA was involved in this, too, apparently trying to destroy him and some other non-woke alternative media voices. Pool says it did not work because there was nothing to it:

“Weird, isn’t it?” asks Mr. Pool.

Not-so-weird, once you know the history of the founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center, according to attorney Robert Barnes:

Barnes also notes an eerie CIA odor to the whole affair.

Speaking of the Central Intelligence Agency, the CIA “whistleblower” who has been making the rounds on podcasts in the last few months does not dismiss the charges, noting that they are specific enough that whether or not the crimes have happened can indeed be determined in court:

“Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Secretary Scott Turner announced a new proposed rule on Thursday,” explains The Epoch Times, one “that seeks to end the use of ‘gender identity’ across all departmental programs, which is intended to ‘restore biological reality and protect women.’”

HUD plans to “remove radical definitions of gender identity, sexual orientation, and gender, replacing them with sex” an April 23 statement from HUD clarifies.

Common terminology — including mother, father, woman, man, girl, and boy — will return to a commonsense usage, relating to a person’s sex as understood universally until just a few years ago with the rise of “gender theory” and “queer theory” and transhumanism, transgenderism and other now evidently transient fads in ideology.

In February the HUD secretary claimed that the new standards are in line with the infamous executive order signed by President Donald Trump on his first day in office.

“In its February 2025 statement,” the Epoch Times concludes, “HUD said that the 2016 rule allowed men to take advantage of department programs directed at women.”

Not mentioned in Wednesday’s report on withheld information about the Trump “telephone call” is an odd “coincidence”: just a day earlier, one of the main Russiagate-mongers in Washington, D.C., Rep. Eric Swallwell (D-Calif.), resigned from Congress.

His resignation was not about the Russiagate nonsense, of course. Or a telephone call. Or anything of direct relevance to the voters. It was about sex. Sexual misconduct. Rape even. Reaction has included some gallows humor:

I had to laugh when I read this headline from the Babylon Bee, the conservative satire site: “With Swalwell Resigning, Just 534 Perverts Left In Congress.”

It’s funny (and sad) because there is some truth to it. 

Ingrid Jacques, “Swalwell, Gonzales rightly resigned. Let’s elect better people,” USA Today (April 17, 2026).

Swallwell resigned in tandem with Tony Gonzalez (R-Tex.), actually. But the focus of most articles has been on Swallwell. Maybe it’s the name, maybe it’s his prominence as a Trump critic.

While the House investigations against him have ceased, other inquiries are ongoing, “including one announced Saturday by the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office,” reports an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. “The office plans to look into an alleged sexual assault reported by the Chronicle, which the former Swalwell staffer said took place after a charity gala in New York City in April 2024.”

Meanwhile, Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the main banana concocting and promoting the Russiagate psy-op, says he is “sickened” and “aghast” at the charges against Swallwell:

Had Schiff known what he now knows, why — he insists — he would not got near Swallwell “with a ten-foot pole.” His and AOC’s comments about partisanship are . . . interesting, if not quite believable.

The War on Drugs made another retreat this week, as the Washington Post covered the story early in its development:

President Donald Trump is planning to sign an executive order on Saturday to boost research into psychedelics and potentially make the drugs available in controlled therapeutic environments, according to three people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the administration’s plans.

Trump’s planned order will direct new steps from the Food and Drug Administration, which regulates drug safety. The agency would issue new guidance to researchers on how to design clinical trials for drugs such as psilocybin, ibogaine and other serotonin receptors. Those drugs, which also include LSD and MDMA, can cause hallucinogenic effects and are illegal in the United States.

Dan Diamond, “Trump plans to ease access to psychedelics like psilocybin, ibogaine,” Washington Post (April 18, 2026).

But a later report in the Washington Examiner shows that the deed’s already been done:

President Donald Trump signed an executive order allowing the use of some psychedelic drugs to treat post-traumatic stress disorder.

Flanked by Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., podcaster Joe Rogan, and other cabinet officials, Trump said his new executive order “directs the FDA to expedite their review of certain psychedelics already designated as breakthrough therapy drugs.”

Brady Knox, “Trump signs order boosting psychedelic drugs for PTSD with Rogan looking on,” Washington Examiner (April 18, 2026).

According to the New York Post, the signing was today, Saturday. “The drug is currently classified as a Schedule I controlled substance in the United States.” Specifically, the “order will remove legal restrictions that have prevented extensive studies into the medicine and how it works.”

Of course, there exist many hallucinogenic compounds — enough to make the phrase “the medicine” seem a little odd — and the federal government’s stance on its usage has not just been of suppression: consult Stephen Kinzer’s Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control (2019) for some real mind-blowing information.

But the current executive order is astounding enough to blow some minds:

Individuals suffering from major depressive disorder and substance abuse disorder, among other serious mental illnesses, can relapse or not fully respond to standard medical and psychiatric therapies.  Despite massive Federal investment into researching potential advancements in mental health care and treatment, our medical research system has yet to produce approved therapies that promote enduring improvements in the mental health condition of these most complex patients.  Innovative methods are needed to find long-term solutions for these Americans beyond existing prescription medications.

Psychedelic drugs, including ibogaine compounds, show potential in clinical studies to address serious mental illnesses for patients whose conditions persist after completing standard therapy.  Indeed, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has granted Breakthrough Therapy designation to specific psychedelic drugs, and there are numerous products currently in the clinical trial pipeline for review of safety and efficacy.  It is the policy of my Administration to accelerate innovative research models and appropriate drug approvals to increase access to psychedelic drugs that could save lives and reverse the crisis of serious mental illness in America.

Donald J. Trump, Executive Order: “Accelerating Medical Treatments for Serious Mental Illness” (April 18, 2026).

During the late coronavirus epidemic, we were told to “lock down” and “mitigate” the spread of the infection by extreme “social distancing” for 15 days, to “flatten the curve” and thereby save the medical system. But most governors kept the lockdowns going for months and months longer.

Foreshadowing this, years before the leader of the Cuban Revolution dictated a 15-month emergency “democratic lockdown” that stretched on and on and on.

Initial Promise: After overthrowing Batista on January 1, 1959, Fidel Castro initially pledged “free elections” within a year.

Delays: On April 9, 1959, Castro announced a 15-month postponement, arguing that immediate elections could allow the old oligarchy to regain control. He later reassured the public that elections would be held within four years.

What Actually Transpired: Consolidating power, the new revolutionary government outlawed opposition parties, and instituted a single-party system. No competitive, multi-party elections occurred as originally promised.

Later Elections: In the 1976 constitutional referendum, followed by the 1978 election of the National Assembly of People’s Power, voting did occur. However, these elections were conducted with pre-approved Communist Party candidate lists rather than the free, competitive elections initially promised.

The country transitioned to a single-party socialist state under Communist Party control.

Now, as negotiations between the U.S. Government and Cuba continue, if rockily — after deposing Venezuela’s dictator, the U.S. prevented the island nation from receiving oil shipments, putting extreme pressure on an already-embargoed economy — it’s a perfect time to reflect on the failure that is the 66-year-old Revolution:

Alina Fernández Revuelta, daughter of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro, premiered a documentary on April 10 at the Miami Film Festival, bringing together personal testimony from generations of exiles grappling with displacement, shared trauma, and a search for freedom.

“Revolution’s Daughter” showcased several leading voices against the Cuban regime, including exiles, refugees, and former political prisoners, who all, like Castro’s daughter, said regime change in Cuba is overdue. It’s a sentiment shared by top U.S. officials.

“We are in circumstances in which there can be a change,” Revuelta said about Cuba on the red carpet prior to the premiere of the documentary for which she is also credited as an executive producer.

Troy Myers, “Fidel Castro’s Daughter Releases Documentary on Generational Impacts From Communist Cuba,” The Epoch Times (April 10, 2026).

The timing of the documentary was coincidental, the filmmakers said. “This came in a special moment. It wasn’t on purpose,” Fidel Castro’s daughter explained. “It’s just that the circumstances are helping the spread of the message.”

Paul Jacob explained the “Madman Theory” of “diplomacy” and warcraft on Wednesday:

Buried in his book about being a wheeler-dealer, Mr. Trump notoriously advances a notion eerily similar to Nixon’s Madman strategy. Trump likes to keep those with whom he is negotiating “guessing.”

He says this often. We cannot be shocked, then, if we’re all kept guessing about his Iran strategy.

But if President Trump has explained it, and confessed it — can it really work?

In The Washington Monthly we read a negative answer: “Our data pool may be small, but the available evidence suggests that presidential adherents of Madman Theory are more mad than great theorists.”

Robert Tait’s op-ed in The Guardian, on the same date, quoted the same H.R. Haldeman-Nixon explanation, and — after further history lessons — noted that as “victories go, it look distinctly pyrrhic — shades of Nixon and North Vietnam in 1972.”

Newsweek’s editorial worries that the madman ploy “by design, compresses time. It can produce rapid breakthroughs, but it leaves little room for prolonged stalemate.” And that, it appears, is what Iranians are prepared to play: the long game.

Liz Peek at The Hill, published two days later, expresses some incredulity at the critics’ negative reactions. “Amazingly, after a decade or more of dealing with the blustery businessman, Democrats are still clueless about how Trump operates. Have they not read The Art of the Deal? Do they not understand that the president always leads with maximalist demands and then, having shaken his adversary, withdraws to a more moderate and desired goal? Apparently not.

Democrats howling for the president’s head are also appallingly ignorant of history. Trump is not the first commander in chief to use dire threats to end a war. “Madman” Richard Nixon and former President Dwight Eisenhower forged that diplomatic path years ago.  

As it happens, Trump’s apocalyptic threats may have pushed the regime in Tehran — or what’s left of it — to agree to a ceasefire. His warning that “A whole civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again” was meant to terrify. It was, admittedly, excessive, as was his crude demand that the mullahs “Open the F—in’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell — JUST WATCH!” Those demands, directed at officials in Tehran and posted to Truth Social, proved effective.

No one should be surprised that the mullahs, or the remaining heads of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, took Trump’s threats seriously. He has purposefully cultivated an aura of unpredictability. . . .

Ms. Peek concludes confidently: “Democrats’ sensibilities may be offended, but future generations will be grateful.”