Vaccines Stimulate Production Of Antigens - This mRNA Jab Stimulates Production Of Pathogen

Nature |  mRNA vaccines represent a promising alternative to conventional vaccine approaches because of their high potency, capacity for rapid development and potential for low-cost manufacture and safe administration. However, their application has until recently been restricted by the instability and inefficient in vivo delivery of mRNA. Recent technological advances have now largely overcome these issues, and multiple mRNA vaccine platforms against infectious diseases and several types of cancer have demonstrated encouraging results in both animal models and humans. This Review provides a detailed overview of mRNA vaccines and considers future directions and challenges in advancing this promising vaccine platform to widespread therapeutic use.

Vaccines prevent many millions of illnesses and save numerous lives every year¹. As a result of widespread vaccine use, the smallpox virus has been completely eradicated and the incidence of polio, measles and other childhood diseases has been drastically reduced around the world². Conventional vaccine approaches, such as live attenuated and inactivated pathogens and subunit vaccines, provide durable protection against a variety of dangerous diseases³. Despite this success, there remain major hurdles to vaccine development against a variety of infectious pathogens, especially those better able to evade the adaptive immune response⁴. Moreover, for most emerging virus vaccines, the main obstacle is not the effectiveness of conventional approaches but the need for more rapid development and large-scale deployment. Finally, conventional vaccine approaches may not be applicable to non-infectious diseases, such as cancer. The development of more potent and versatile vaccine platforms is therefore urgently needed.

Nucleic acid therapeutics have emerged as promising alternatives to conventional vaccine approaches. The first report of the successful use of in vitro transcribed (IVT) mRNA in animals was published in 1990, when reporter gene mRNAs were injected into mice and protein production was detected⁵. A subsequent study in 1992 demonstrated that administration of vasopressin-encoding mRNA in the hypothalamus could elicit a physiological response in rats⁶. However, these early promising results did not lead to substantial investment in developing mRNA therapeutics, largely owing to concerns associated with mRNA instability, high innate immunogenicity and inefficient in vivo delivery. Instead, the field pursued DNA-based and protein-based therapeutic approaches^7,8.

Over the past decade, major technological innovation and research investment have enabled mRNA to become a promising therapeutic tool in the fields of vaccine development and protein replacement therapy. The use of mRNA has several beneficial features over subunit, killed and live attenuated virus, as well as DNA-based vaccines. First, safety: as mRNA is a non-infectious, non-integrating platform, there is no potential risk of infection or insertional mutagenesis. Additionally, mRNA is degraded by normal cellular processes, and its in vivo half-life can be regulated through the use of various modifications and delivery methods^9,10,11,12. The inherent immunogenicity of the mRNA can be down-modulated to further increase the safety profile^9,12,13. Second, efficacy: various modifications make mRNA more stable and highly translatable^9,12,13. Efficient in vivo delivery can be achieved by formulating mRNA into carrier molecules, allowing rapid uptake and expression in the cytoplasm (reviewed in Refs 10,11). mRNA is the minimal genetic vector; therefore, anti-vector immunity is avoided, and mRNA vaccines can be administered repeatedly. Third, production: mRNA vaccines have the potential for rapid, inexpensive and scalable manufacturing, mainly owing to the high yields of in vitro transcription reactions.

The mRNA vaccine field is developing extremely rapidly; a large body of preclinical data has accumulated over the past several years, and multiple human clinical trials have been initiated. In this Review, we discuss current mRNA vaccine approaches, summarize the latest findings, highlight challenges and recent successes, and offer perspectives on the future of mRNA vaccines. The data suggest that mRNA vaccines have the potential to solve many of the challenges in vaccine development for both infectious diseases and cancer.

Between l'Affaire Epstein And Gamestop: Why People Believe Coincidence Theories

technologyreview |  Lunik: Inside the CIA’s audacious plot to steal a Soviet satellite. How a team of spies in Mexico got their hands on Russia's space secrets—and tried to change the course of the Cold War.

Scott and the CIA had already been exploring other plans to steal the spacecraft. On November 19, six miles up the Panuco River from the Gulf of Mexico, two American spies watched the Soviet ship carrying the Luna arrive at the Port of Tampico. 

The first was Robert Zambernardi, an Italian-American CIA officer from Massachusetts. With tan skin and a droopy black mustache, he could pass for a local during covert operations, and was an expert in photography, secret writing, disguise, and womanizing. Zambernardi also controlled a team of mercenaries he called Rudos—“tough guys”—from Mexico’s corrupt and violent Federal Judicial Police. They made treasonous Americans “disappear,” according to Mexican journalist and TV personality Jaime Maussan, who interviewed Zambernardi for a 2017 book about the mission, Operación LightFire. 

The second man was Warren L. Dean, Winston Scott’s deputy chief of station. A tall and dashing martini man, Dean had joined the FBI and chased Nazis in Bolivia and Chile, before serving under Scott in London and then joining him in Mexico City. Dean watched workers load the cargo from the Soviet boat onto a train, and asked his colleague if they could somehow grab it during its journey to the auditorium.

“We can delay it a few hours,” said Zambernardi, but he dissuaded Dean from staging a Mexican great train robbery, according to Operación Lightfire. “Moving photos are always very blurry,” Zambernardi told him. “We need the train to stop.”

The freight cars were slowly loaded with objects from Russian life—everything from hammer and sickle postage stamps, to fur coats, and instruments that displayed the might of Soviet science: cutting-edge microscopes that revealed the invisible, and world-beating telescopes that scanned the great beyond. Under the unflinching stares of armed KGB agents, workers lifted the Luna onto the train. 

“There are too many loose ends here,” Dean conceded, according to Maussan’s account. “We will do the kidnapping with Silveti.”

My, My, My..., Does The Great Reset Have Its Sights Set On The Global Electronic Infrastructure?

unlimitedhangout |  The devastating hack on SolarWinds was quickly pinned on Russia by US intelligence. A more likely culprit, Samanage, a company whose software was integrated into SolarWinds’ software just as the “back door” was inserted, is deeply tied to Israeli intelligence and intelligence-linked families such as the Maxwells.

In mid-December of 2020, a massive hack compromised the networks of numerous US federal agencies, major corporations, the top five accounting firms in the country, and the military, among others. Despite most US media attention now focusing on election-related chaos, the fallout from the hack continues to make headlines day after day.

The hack, which affected Texas-based software provider SolarWinds, was blamed on Russia on January 5 by the US government’s Cyber Unified Coordination Group. Their statement asserted that the attackers were “likely Russian in origin,” but they failed to provide evidence to back up that claim.

Since then, numerous developments in the official investigation have been reported, but no actual evidence pointing to Russia has yet to be released. Rather, mainstream media outlets began reporting the intelligence community’s “likely” conclusion as fact right away, with the New York Times subsequently reporting that US investigators were examining a product used by SolarWinds that was sold by a Czech Republic–based company, as the possible entry point for the “Russian hackers.” Interest in that company, however, comes from the fact that the attackers most likely had access to the systems of a contractor or subsidiary of SolarWinds. This, combined with the evidence-free report from US intelligence on “likely” Russian involvement, is said to be the reason investigators are focusing on the Czech company, though any of SolarWinds’ contractors/subsidiaries could have been the entry point.

Such narratives clearly echo those that became prominent in the wake of the 2016 election, when now-debunked claims were made that Russian hackers were responsible for leaked emails published by WikiLeaks. Parallels are obvious when one considers that SolarWinds quickly brought on the discredited firm CrowdStrike to aid them in securing their networks and investigating the hack. CrowdStrike had also been brought on by the DNC after the 2016 WikiLeaks publication, and subsequently it was central in developing the false declarations regarding the involvement of “Russian hackers” in that event.

There are also other parallels. As Russiagate played out, it became apparent that there was collusion between the Trump campaign and a foreign power, but the nation was Israel, not Russia. Indeed, many of the reports that came out of Russiagate revealed collusion with Israel, yet those instances received little coverage and generated little media outrage. This has led some to suggest that Russiagate may have been a cover for what was in fact Israelgate.

Similarly, in the case of the SolarWinds hack, there is the odd case and timing of SolarWinds’ acquisition of a company called Samanage in 2019. As this report will explore, Samanage’s deep ties to Israeli intelligence, venture-capital firms connected to both intelligence and Isabel Maxwell, as well as Samange’s integration with the Orion software at the time of the back door’s insertion warrant investigation every bit as much as SolarWinds’ Czech-based contractor.

 

Parasitically Fsucked Your Economy, Your Daughters, And Your Way Of Life - Yet - Free As A Jaybird

nytimes |  Apollo grew out of the ashes of Drexel Burnham Lambert, the investment bank that collapsed in 1990 amid a trading investigation that sent the since-pardoned Michael Milken to prison.

Although Mr. Black started Apollo with his younger partners — Mr. Harris is 56 and Mr. Rowan 58 — he has been long been the face and voice of the firm.

In building Apollo into a global financial powerhouse, Mr. Black has made himself and his co-founders immensely rich: His personal fortune is estimated at more than $8 billion, and he owns a massive private art collection — including a version of Edvard Munch’s “The Scream” — and is the chairman of the Museum of Modern Art.

But when Apollo held its most recent earnings call in late October, there were already signs his dealings with Mr. Epstein were causing ripples, both in the firm and among investors. In an unusual move, Mr. Black read a brief statement about the Epstein matter before handing over the meeting to Mr. Harris and Mr. Rowan.

Apollo has long specialized in buying up distressed companies and retooling them, but it also boasts large credit, infrastructure and real estate businesses. Mr. Rowan was the driving force behind Apollo’s thriving insurance business and its insurance subsidiary, Athene Holding, which has fueled the Wall Street’s firm earnings in recent years.

At one time, both Mr. Rowan and Mr. Harris were seen as the heirs apparent to Mr. Black. But with Mr. Rowan’s decision to pull back from day-to-day affairs, many on Wall Street assumed the job would fall to Mr. Harris, who has the run the nuts and bolts of Apollo’s vast buyout operation.

Mr. Harris, who is an owner of the Philadelphia 76rs basketball team and the New Jersey Devils hockey team, said he would “fully support” Mr. Rowan as chief executive. “I will focus on expanding our global search for investor returns, which is at the core of our success,” he said in a statement.

As the only three members of Apollo’s executive committee, the founders hold considerable sway over the company. As of now, the decision to name Mr. Rowan as Mr. Black’s successor does not need approval of the company’s board. And all three men — who have much of their net worth tied up in the company — have a vested interest in the stability of the firm.

 

What DID The Nephilim Find So Appealing In These Nasty Rascals?

nypost |  A federal judge ripped into Jeffrey Epstein cohort Ghislaine Maxwell for misleading the court on her marriage and wealth in a scathing decision denying her release on a $28.5 bail package.

“The defendant now argues that her newly revealed relationship with her spouse signals her deep affective ties in the country, but at the time she was arrested, she was not living with him and claimed to be getting divorced,” wrote US District Judge Alison Nathan of Maxwell’s mysterious marriage to tech CEO Scott Borgerson in newly unsealed court papers.

After Maxwell’s July bust, she was denied release to home confinement on a $5 million bond and had refused to disclose the name of her secret husband.

But in the 58-year-olds’s renewed motion for bail, her attorneys argued that the couple had lived an idyllic and devoted life in an oceanfront mansion in Manchester, Mass., supporting her claim of strong family ties to the country.

Prosecutors countered that she told pretrial services that she and Borgerson, 43, planned to split up.

The judge pointed out in the new papers that at the time of Maxwell’s arrest, she was hiding out on a sprawling compound in New Hampshire — not holed up with her hubby. Nathan’s denial of Maxwell’s bail proposal was disclosed Monday but the full 22-page ruling wasn’t unsealed until Wednesday.

Further, Nathan said, were Maxwell to be released, the British socialite proposed living with a friend, not Borgerson “undercutting her argument that that relationship would create an insurmountable burden to her fleeing.”

In another blow to Maxwell’s bid for freedom, the judge called her out for a “pattern of providing incomplete or erroneous information to the court or to pretrial services.”

The accused child abuser claimed at the time of her arrest she was worth just $.3.5 million — leaving out Borgerson’s assets and those that had been transferred to a trust. In her latest financial disclosures, she admitted that she and Borgerson’s net worth was about $22.5 million.

The vast disparity between the two figures “makes it unlikely that the misrepresentation was the result of the defendant’s misestimation rather than misdirection,” Nathan wrote.

“That lack of candor raises significant concerns as to whether the court has now been provided a full and accurate picture of her finances.”

 

These Dark Curly-Headed J'sesses Be Shysty As Fsuck.......,

thecut |  Christine is just one of Maxwell’s seven living siblings (her sister Karine and brother Michael died at ages 3 and 15). A brother, Philip, and the eldest daughter, Anne, have not been heard from publicly for at least a decade. But tracing the four others — Christine and her twin sister, Isabel; Kevin; and Ian — along with Ghislaine, who, at 57, is the youngest, is like watching a real-life season of Succession, as these heirs to their disgraced media-mogul father’s empire have strived toward their own ambitions. Twin sisters Christine and Isabel are the most fascinating of the bunch, and have their own ties to entrepreneurial, unorthodox (and, in some cases, shady) men.

Christine and Isabel had more freedom to strike out on their own after the demise of the Maxwell empire. In the 1980s, they decamped to Silicon Valley and in 1993 they helped co-found Magellan, an early search engine, with Isabel’s then-husband, David Hayden. According to the Daily Beast, the sisters appear in Michael Wolff’s book on dot-com startups, Burn Rate. Wolff describes Christine as “more commanding than her sister,” but both Maxwells are memorable characters — early Winklevoss prototypes. In a 1997 interview, Isabel credits her sister with coming up with “the idea of reviewing and rating.”

The twins made millions when Magellan was sold to another company, Excite, but — according to Isabel — it cooled the relationship between the two of them. “When McKinley [Magellan’s parent company] didn’t make it, our relationship changed,” Isabel said in 2002. “And I changed, in terms of my relationship with my family. Before then, I was completely in sync with the family. When something got to them, it got to me, too.”

Since then, both sisters seem to have remained in the software and technology spheres. Christine is a doctoral candidate in the humanities department at the University of Texas at Dallas, and continues to consult for internet companies. Her UTD website lists a personal website, ChristinesWorld.com, which is no longer active, but it does have the brief personal statement that she “came to the University in January 2012 and am enjoying academia and the associated activities of ‘big city’ life very much; it’s much different from the French countryside where I was working on my own Internet content projects!” After Magellan, Isabel was the president of an Israeli email venture called Commtouch, and has continued to work in the country. She has used the title “Technology Pioneer of the World Economic Forum.” In a 2000 interview, she displays a Zuckerbergian enthusiasm for the internet: “The wonderful thing about email is it’s not sexist,” she said. “It’s democratizing.”

The Maxwell twins’ husbands have truly bizarre histories, which has led observers to point out that they share Ghislaine’s association with powerful and unconventional men. Christine is married to Roger Malina, an astrophysicist at the University of Texas, whose father, Frank Malina, was also a scientist. Malina, the Daily Beast reveals, hung out in California with the likes of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard and rocket engineer Jack Parsons, occultists and transhumanists (a strange echo of Jeffrey Epstein’s friends in similar academic and business circles).

And Isabel’s romantic history might be the strangest. First, she married the son of Carl Djerassi, a scientist who invented the birth-control pill. Her third husband, Al Seckel, was a con man and “optical illusionist” who befriended scientists and academics despite not having a degree in those fields himself (sound familiar?); he co-founded a group called the Southern California Skeptics that investigated science’s relationship to the paranormal. Seckel and Isabel moved to France at some point in 2010, according to reports, where they lived in a château and “acquired thousands of stone-age tools to sell in the U.S.” That same year, Seckel hosted a “scientific conference” on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island, where Epstein also allegedly held underage girls for sex (presumably, the connection was Isabel’s little sister, Ghislaine). 

America Is Now Ruled By A Single Elite Class And Wokeness Is Its Protocol Of Exclusion

Why the embodiment of il33t, suave, 1% panache like George Sanders - tryna get at Lucy's ravishing young fire-cro*** - have Mumm decanted into martini glasses? jes dayyum....,

tablet |  More and more Americans are figuring out that “wokeness” functions in the new, centralized American elite as a device to exclude working-class Americans of all races, along with backward remnants of the old regional elites. In effect, the new national oligarchy changes the codes and the passwords every six months or so, and notifies its members through the universities and the prestige media and Twitter. America’s working-class majority of all races pays far less attention than the elite to the media, and is highly unlikely to have a kid at Harvard or Yale to clue them in. And non-college-educated Americans spend very little time on Facebook and Twitter, the latter of which they are unlikely to be able to identify—which, among other things, proves the idiocy of the “Russiagate” theory that Vladimir Putin brainwashed white working-class Americans into voting for Trump by memes in social media which they are the least likely American voters to see.

Constantly replacing old terms with new terms known only to the oligarchs is a brilliant strategy of social exclusion. The rationale is supposed to be that this shows greater respect for particular groups. But there was no grassroots working-class movement among Black Americans demanding the use of “enslaved persons” instead of “slaves” and the overwhelming majority of Americans of Latin American descent—a wildly homogenizing category created by the U.S. Census Bureau—reject the weird term “Latinx.” Woke speech is simply a ruling-class dialect, which must be updated frequently to keep the lower orders from breaking the code and successfully imitating their betters.

Mrs. Astor would approve.

White Nationalism Worse Than A Disease!!!

wired |  Our chimeric infectious cancer analogy for white nationalism might require something related but more focused: a war on white nationalism that is much lower on empathy than we’ve ever treated it, and higher on an appreciation for how large and disruptive a menace it truly is. Such a war would include the same administrative and legislative heft that has been given to the wars on drugs and foreign terrorism. (The latter served as the motivation for an entirely new executive department.) It would involve an intersection of experts from the intelligence, legal, criminal justice, and scholarly communities. And these experts would be charged with identifying all of the places that the infectious cancer hides in society, addressing the vulnerabilities in the American immune system, and cutting off the communication channels that serve as a bloodstream (e.g., social media) for white nationalism to further propagate, causing disseminated destruction. The Biden administration has already outlined formal plans for improved surveillance of emerging infectious disease in response to Covid-19. A similar process to address domestic terrorism could just as easily be activated.

Cancer analogies also have limits that oversimplify the blight of white nationalism. For one, cancer is driven by an undirected process driven by the laws of natural selection: Cancerous cells don’t know they’re disrupting anything. The 2021 strain of white nationalism, however, is engineered specifically for destruction. It is not a set of ideas that undermine the laws of the land by happenstance. Their purpose is to undermine them actively and directly.

These distinctions are more than just semantic: Too many narratives of white nationalism incorrectly depict its actors as exclusively low-class and uneducated. This trope says that the white nationalists aren’t really all that bad but are misguided, acting on ignorance, alienation, or economic anxiety.

This ragtag caricature of white nationalism evokes a cancerous cell blindly fomenting catastrophe through directionless meandering. The reality of white nationalism is closer to the opposite: It is a well-oiled machine, driven by nefarious actors with very specific goals in mind. And in this way, white nationalism isn’t much like cancer at all. There are no innocent, guileless actors, guilty only of being short-sighted. The purveyors of white nationalism live by a wicked creed that explicitly dehumanizes others.

If white nationalism isn’t a birth defect, a virus, or a cancer, should we dispense with disease analogies altogether? Why bother with explanatory vehicles at all?

The answer is that disease, in the abstract sense, does effectively capture the rot of white nationalism in important ways (many people even felt physically ill after seeing images of Charlottesville and the Capitol insurrection).

The challenge resides in identifying the right pathology. Finding one has no necessary allegiance to any existing class of disease—we’re free to cut and paste features of different diseases, even use our science-fiction mind to dream up one better fit to describe this unique blight.

The chimeric, hypothetical disease most like white nationalism resembles an infectious cancer—a rare class of diseases where malignant cells can be transmitted between people. The most famous of these is the devil tumour facial disease of Tasmanian devils. A grotesque illness typified by large tumors on the face that eventually spread throughout the body, killing the animal, the problem is so rampant it threatens the species with extinction.

Like an infectious cancer, white nationalism offers mutant, bastardized forms of American ideals and institutions like liberty, states’ rights, freedom of speech, and the right to bear arms. And they prey on and amplify existing white resentment, anti-Blackness, and xenophobia. And most frustratingly, these sentiments are allowed to grow and fester because of privilege: Law enforcement never treated white domestic terrorism as aggressively as it has Black radicals or international terrorists.

Deprogram Trumpian Conspiracy Theorists?!?! Bring Jeffrey Epstein's Clientele To Justice!!!!

WaPo |  For the past four years, the United States was governed by a conspiracy theorist in chief. Whether by retweeting QAnon accounts from the Oval Office or painting himself as the victim of shadowy “deep state” plots at rallies, President Donald Trump injected the toxin of baseless conspiratorial thinking straight into America’s political bloodstream. On Jan. 6, America saw how far that venom had spread, as a ragtag group of militias, racist extremists and flag-waving disciples of Trumpism stormed the Capitol.

The insurrectionists were unified by their support for Trump. But many of them shared another crucial trait: They were conspiracy theorists. And while hundreds of people stormed the Capitol, there are millions of Americans who share their views. There is no doubt: The United States has a serious problem with pathological political delusions.

So, do we have any hope of deprogramming the millions of Americans who are devoted to dangerous lunacy? Don’t hold your breath.

Psychologists and political scientists have been interested in conspiracy theories for decades, but their research has taken on new urgency. And what is clear from their findings is this: Once people have gone far enough down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking, it can be nearly impossible to get them back out.

There are a few reasons conspiracy theories are so “sticky” once they’re in someone’s head. First, conspiracy theorists are far more likely to have a Manichaean worldview, meaning they interpret everything as a battle between good and evil. That makes it harder for dispassionate evidence-based arguments to break through. (For QAnon believers, Trump is the central superhero in an epic saga to vanquish a shadowy cabal.)

Second, those who seek to debunk conspiracy theories are precisely the people that true believers distrust. If someone believes the media is controlled by sinister but unseen puppet masters, fact checks from CNN will never convince them they’re wrong.

A Step Too Far In Government Intrusions...,

WaPo | Months-long lockdowns. Entire city populations herded through the streets for mandatory testing. The people of China could be forgiven for thinking they had seen it all during the coronavirus pandemic.

But now they face a new indignity: the addition of anal swabs — yes, you read that right — to the testing regimen for those in quarantine.

Chinese state media outlets introduced the new protocol in recent days, prompting widespread discussion and some outrage. Some Chinese doctors say the science is there. Recovering patients, they say, have continued to test positive through samples from the lower digestive tract days after nasal and throat swabs came back negative.

Yet for many, it seemed a step too far in government intrusions after a year and counting of a dignity-eroding pandemic.

“Everyone involved will be so embarrassed,” one user in Guang­dong province said Wednesday on ­Weibo, a Chinese social media platform. In a Weibo poll, 80 percent of respondents said they “could not accept” the invasive method.  Fist tap Dale.

Diagnosing Critical Race Theory, Diversity Training, And Social Justice...,

On Left Bitches w/ @ggreenwald, Glenn explains why Trump scared ruling elites and why we should oppose the new dangerous domestic “war on terror”

Apple: https://t.co/iLa5Oo4g6r
Spotify: https://t.co/DfTG8uaOkv
WATCH on Patreon: https://t.co/pD7meJQsOZpic.twitter.com/Gpba57ifR0

— Rania Khalek (@RaniaKhalek) January 24, 2021

pitt.edu |  For a long time, philosophers of science have expressed little interest in the so-called demarcation project that occupied the pioneers of their field, and most now concur that terms like “pseudoscience” cannot be defined in any meaningful way. However, recent years have witnessed a revival of philosophical interest in demarcation. In this paper, I argue that, though the demarcation problem of old leads to a dead-end, the concept of pseudoscience is not going away anytime soon, and deserves a fresh look. My approach proposes to naturalize and down-size the concept, anchoring it to real-life doctrines and fields of inquiry. First, I argue against the definite article “the” in “the demarcation problem”, distinguishing between territorial and normative demarcation, and between different failures and shortcomings in science apart from pseudoscience (such as fraudulent or faulty research). Next, I argue that pseudosciences can be fruitfully regarded as simulacra of science, doctrines that are not epistemically warranted but whose proponents try to create the impression that they are. In this element of imitation of mimicry, I argue, lies the clue to their common identity. Despite the huge variety of doctrines gathered under the rubric of “pseudoscience”, and the wide range of defects from which they suffer, pseudosciences all engage in similar strategies to create an impression of epistemic warrant. The indirect, symptomatic approach defended here leads to a general characterization of pseudosciences in all domains of inquiry, and to a useful diagnostic tool.

If Teachers Are A Fallen Professional Class, What Does That Make Diversity Trainers?

jeanettecespinoza |  I grew up in a predominately white suburb and as a child and teenager, I wasn’t immediately aware of the racism I was experiencing. On the surface, it appeared we were all on a level playing field. I lived next door to white people, had white friends, was a cheerleader along-side white girls, acted in plays with white people, and even had sleep-overs at white people’s homes. To me, I was welcomed into white spaces so my exposure to white supremacy was minimal.

But this bubble of protection was broken during my sophomore year when I began to reflect on my high school experience.

I was a cheerleader, but I was the only Black girl on the squad.

I was an actor, but the roles I played were designed for white characters.

I was invited to sleep-overs but was often either the only Black girl or one or two out of the fifteen or twenty girls in attendance.

Of the white friends I had, I could probably be counted as their only Black friend. While I knew many white people, for most of them I was their only exposure to someone of a different ethnic background on a regular basis.

The playing field was anything but level.

When this became evident to me, I approached our guidance counselor to ask about creating a Black studies group where Black students could come together and share experiences and white students could come to learn more about our culture and world views. The counselor, who was a white woman, welcomed my suggestions and offered to facilitate the group. I was beyond excited that we would be doing something to make a positive difference and couldn’t wait to get started.

But when the group began, only a few Black people showed up, and no white people came at all. It was great getting together with my Black friends to discuss our experiences, but this was something we did all the time when we got together. My objective was to help create a space where white people would begin to understand our stories and use their privilege to create more all-inclusive spaces, but there was zero desire to make this happen.

After one meeting, I stayed after to talk to the counselor about my frustration with the lack of white participation and her answer has stayed with me for decades:

“It’s a brave effort, Jeanette, but realistically, it's hard for white people to reckon with racial disparity. It’s a lot to ask young white people who have been sheltered from adversity to talk about the difficulties Black people have to deal with. Most probably aren’t equipped to deal with that much pain and trauma.”

Even as a fifteen-year-old I remember thinking if it's too much for them to just discuss it, what about those of us who have to deal with it and will experience it for the rest of our lives? That day it became clear to me that the feelings of white people took precedence over my actual pain and suffering, and at that moment, my innocence and open view of the world was forever compromised.

tressiemcphd Needs To Stop Spouting Anti-Racist Gibberish And Just Say What She Means

The article is almost incomprehensible. There’s an academic-style jargon at work about anti-racism that is so post-modern that it’s impossible to penetrate unless you’re reading the latest and greatest books about your own privilege.

Like a lot of post-modernist rhetoric posing as scientific, these passages could benefit from saying what they mean. It’s unreadable otherwise:

tressiemcphd |  These explicit white racial identities are kind of what we wanted to have happen. Only an explicit identity can be named and negotiated, ideally to better social outcomes. The confusion seems to be a latent belief that white racial identities are only progressive, that is that they get better as they are surfaced. Which, uh-oh. Nope. We are watching clashes of white racial identities, between explicit and implicit frames, worked out through implied loyalties of kinship and resource-sharing.

A poor woman on Twitter last night was crying in response to this similar story, from the Associated Press. It featured a series of gut-wrenching nut graphs like this one:

Democratic voter Rosanna Guadagno, 49, said her brother disowned her after she refused to support Trump four years ago. Last year her mother suffered a stroke, but her brother — who lived in the same California city as her mother — did not let her know when their mother died six months later. She was told the news after three days in an email from her sister-in-law.

I have been mildly surprised by their surprise, whether the shock is knowing that families are not infinitely resilient or that politics can matter more than kin, I’m not sure. I put together a string of thoughts on Twitter in response to one such story:

I have a 3/4 baked argument about what’s going on with these “a nation/family divided” stories. Maybe I should jot it down quickly.

— Tressie McMillan Cottom (@tressiemcphd) January 24, 2021

I want to focus a bit on the break-up with whiteness thing. I want to focus on that bit because I fear it has gotten lost in the recent racial awakening among white Americans. I am not being cute when I say that I do not know if the “how to be a better white person” genre of books, articles, reading groups, and self-help communities cover “the break-up”. I really do not know. I do not pay that genre a great deal of attention because I am not the audience. It is not, as I say, my ministry.

Despite not being my ministry, I do empathize with citizen-learners who are struggling with the course material. It is the pedagogue in me. If no one else has mentioned it (or, you missed that day in class), I want to be very clear: breaking up with whiteness is absolutely the end game of all anti-racist, humanist, post-racism work.

How Bout You Bust Down $2000.00 Stimulus Payments Instead Of Bullshitting

blackenterprise |   White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Monday it’s important that “our money … reflect the history and diversity of our country, and Harriet Tubman’s image gracing the new $20 note would certainly reflect that. So we’re exploring ways to speed up that effort.”

Former President Barack Obama initiated the effort during his second term in 2016, but the initiative froze during former President Donald Trump’s one term as he called the move “pure political correctness,” and suggested putting Tubman on the $2 bill. Former Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin added the change would not be made until after 2028.

Tubman, who was born into slavery sometime in the 1800s, eventually escaped to Pennsylvania in 1849 and went on to make 13 missions on the Underground Railroad to free more than 70 slaves. In order to do this, Tubman relied on a bevy of trusted people, both Black and white; disguises; and secret codes used in letters to others.

Tubman even carried a gun with her on missions to protect herself from slave catchers and to intimidate runaways who changed their minds about being freed, risking the safety of others.

In 2016, Lonnie Bunch, the founding director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture told NPR what it would mean to see Tubman’s photo on a piece of U.S. currency.

“For me, having Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill really says, first of all, that America realizes that it’s not the same country that it once was — that it’s a place where diversity matters,” Bunch told All Things Considered. “And it allows us to make a hero out of someone like Harriet Tubman, who deserves to be a hero.”

Even Wokestan's Limp Wrist Straighted To Slap The Taste Out Of Cristina Beltran's Silly Mouth

medium  |  Fortunately, we people of colour can now follow Cristina’s leadership. Will she hand out “multiracial blackness” cards to white people who toe the line? Should the people of colour who voted for Trump wear a mark (perhaps a brand of some kind) so that we can identify and shun them? Does Cristina plan to distribute a list of acceptable opinions so that us poor, confused black folks don’t accidentally think something which costs us our blackness privileges? I can’t wait to learn more about how all of this works.

In the meantime, I’m just happy to see people of colour being infantilised and marginalised in this way. Surely we can all agree that the best way to treat those with differing opinions isn’t to focus on our common ground and try to understand each other but to discard them not only politically, but racially. By erasing the identity of everybody we disagree with, we can ensure that people of colour become the homogenous mass of groupthink Cristina imagines us to be.

Only one small shred of doubt remains. It’s true that I don’t understand how anybody, of any colour, believes Trump’s lies. I don’t understand why anybody would want him to represent America on the world stage. And I certainly don’t understand how anybody could be surprised that a president whose approval rating never made it above fifty percent and who presided over the deaths of more than 300,000 Americans during an election year, lost an election. But my first instinct when I come across these people isn’t to invalidate them.

Sure, sometimes it’s downright unpleasant to engage with people who think differently. It’s tempting to take refuge in the idea that we have nothing in common or that they’re hopelessly deranged. But if we find the courage and decency to talk in good faith, even the most repulsive people can surprise us.

Speaking of surprises, in a shocking turn of events (by which I mean a wholly predictable turn of events for anybody who’s noticed the trend of white guilt being twisted into deeper, more virulent strains of racism), Cristina is herself white*. And learning that she must automatically be invested in “a form of hierarchy in which the standing of one section of the population is premised on the debasement of others,” comes as a huge relief.

Because as revolutionary as the following statement might seem, I think people of colour should be able to disagree. I believe that the colour of your skin says nothing about the values and opinions you must hold. And while I wish that we could all get along, I’m willing to sit down and debate respectfully when we don’t. Because if I had to choose, I’d much rather deal with a person of colour who I disagree with than a white person who thinks we need to meet her standards to be who we are.

These Super-Accents When These Mexican Chicks Say "Names" Or "Latino" Though...,

NPR |   The chairman of the hate group The Proud Boys identifies as Afro-Cuban. One of the organizers of the pro-Trump extremist group Stop the Steal is Black and Arab. Christina Beltran is a professor of social and cultural analysis at New York University. And she uses the term multiracial whiteness to explain why some groups who are disdained by white supremacists embrace white power movements. And she joins us now to explain. Welcome to the program.

CRISTINA BELTRAN: Great. Thank you so much for having me.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what do you mean by multiracial whiteness?

BELTRAN: So there's been a whole lot of people thinking and theorizing about white supremacy. And all of these scholars share a view that I share, that whiteness is not the same thing as white people and that whiteness is actually better understood as a political project that has emerged historically, and that is dynamic and that is always changing. And so whiteness as an ideology is rooted in America's history of white supremacy - right? - which has to do with the legacy of slavery or Indigenous dispossession or Jim Crow. And I think it's important to realize just how long in this country legal discrimination was not simply culturally acceptable but legally authorized. And so we've only been practicing a more consistent form of legal equality for a relatively short time since the 1960s. So Americans have often learned how to create their own sense of belonging through violence and through the exclusion of certain groups and populations.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So what you're saying, essentially, is that people of other races and ethnicities want to benefit from white privilege by supporting it.

BELTRAN: Right.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: So we should note that you wrote an op-ed recently in The Washington Post about this, and it stirred up a heated debate on social media. (laughter).

BELTRAN: Yeah.

GARCIA-NAVARRO: I want to read what you wrote in part. (Reading) For voters who see the very act of acknowledging one's racial identity as itself racist, the politics of multiracial whiteness reinforces their desired approach to colorblind individualism.

Can you explain what you mean?

A Veritable Plague Of Brown White Supremacists..., (So Many Black Red Ants)

WaPo  | The Trump administration’s anti-immigration, anti-civil rights stance has made it easy to classify the president’s loyalists as a homogenous mob of white nationalists. But take a look at the FBI’s posters showing people wanted in the insurrectionist assault on the U.S. Capitol: Among the many White faces are a few that are clearly Latino or African American.

Such diversity highlights the fact that President Trump’s share of the Latino vote in November actually rose over 2016, notwithstanding years of incendiary rhetoric targeting Mexicans and other Latino communities. Yes, Trump’s voters — and his mob — are disproportionately White, but one of the more unsettling exit-poll data points of the 2020 election was that a quarter to a third of Latino voters voted to reelect Trump.

And while the vast majority of Latinos and an overwhelming majority of African American voters supported the Biden-Harris ticket and were crucial to its success, many Black and brown voters have family and friends who fervently backed the MAGA policy agenda, including its delusions and conspiracy theories.

One of the organizers of the “Stop the Steal” movement is Ali Alexander, a Trump supporter who identifies as Black and Arab. The chairman of the neo-fascist Proud Boys is Enrique Tarrio, a Latino raised in Miami’s Little Havana who identifies as Afro-Cuban; when he arrived in Washington for the Jan. 6 march, he was arrested for allegedly burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a Black church the month before.

What are we to make of Tarrio — and, more broadly, of Latino voters inspired by Trump? And what are we to make of unmistakably White mob violence that also includes non-White participants? I call this phenomenon multiracial whiteness — the promise that they, too, can lay claim to the politics of aggression, exclusion and domination.

State Legislatures Working In Unison To Outlaw Protests

theintercept |  Elly Page had never seen anything like what’s happened in recent days. A senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, Page has been tracking the proliferation of anti-protest bills across the U.S. since Donald Trump became president in 2017. “The number of bills we have seen in the past three weeks is unprecedented,” she said.

Since the day of the insurrection at the Capitol on January 6, at least nine states have introduced 14 anti-protest bills. The bills, which vary state by state, contain a dizzying array of provisions that serve to criminalize participation in disruptive protests. The measures range from barring demonstrators from public benefits or government jobs to offering legal protections to those who shoot or run over protesters. Some of the proposals would allow protesters to be held without bail and criminalize camping. A few bills seek to prevent local governments from defunding police.

The pushes by close to a fifth of state legislatures are part of a pattern that began to pick up speed after the summer’s uprisings in response to the police killing of George Floyd, which in many communities included significant property damage. In a handful of states, lawmakers did what they often do: introduced new legislation — however unnecessary — to show that they were responding to their constituents’ concerns.

The rate of new bills being offered sped up dramatically this month as lawmakers kicked off their legislative sessions at the very moment that Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. Bills quickly arose in Arizona, Florida, Indiana, Minnesota, Mississippi, Nebraska, North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Rhode Island.

“There has generally been an uptick at the beginning of odd-numbered years, when most states begin their biennial legislative sessions. But this year beats prior recent years,” Page said in an email. Since January 1, she noted that 11 state legislatures have introduced 17 bills, including those filed before the Capitol insurrection. “Compare that to 0 during the same period in 2020, 9 in 2019, 5 in 2018, and 13 in 2017,” she said, adding that the 2017 spike was mostly due to North Dakota responding to that winter’s Standing Rock protests.

Because of state legislatures’ part-time schedules, most legislative sessions were over by late last summer, leaving insufficient time to pass bills that responded to the uprisings against police brutality. “We expected to see some bills this month, as state legislatures reconvened, but the number of bills and their severity is still shocking,” she said.

In Florida, lawmakers have latched on to the insurrection at the Capitol to justify a bill they’d been working on for months. “Lawmakers may be trying to take advantage of the moment and the visuals of the violent and destructive Capitol scene, to make their case — to the public and to fellow lawmakers — that these draconian new measures are necessary,” said Page.

 

Red And Black Ants: Americans Will Be "Investigating" Americans

summit |  An academic study carried out by researchers in the US and Germany has concluded that big-tech elites are completely different to all other people on the planet, and can be placed in their own class.

“Our research contributes to closing a research gap in societies with rising inequalities,” note the authors of the study from two German universities and the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies in New York. 

The research centres around analysing language used in close to 50,000 tweets and other online statements by 100 of the richest tech-elites as listed by Forbes.

The researchers conclude that big-tech elites such as Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates display a ‘meritocratic’ worldview, meaning they do not see wealth as a source of their influence or success, but rather believe their innate abilities and more altruistic beliefs have enabled them to achieve power.

“We find that the 100 richest members of the tech world reveal distinctive attitudes that set them apart both from the general population and from other wealthy elites,” the study states.

The researchers noted that the study had limitations, ironically owing to the fact that they were not able to access language used by all the top 100 tech-elites because Twitter is banned in China.

The Twitter accounts they were able to access could also be managed by PR professionals and are obviously public projections of how the tech elites want to be thought of by the public at large, therefore the language used may be ‘strategic’.

Nevertheless, the findings go some way to explaining why big-tech elites are so inclined to censor and de-platform those who hold world views at odds with their own.

Abstract

The emergence of a new tech elite in Silicon Valley and beyond raises questions about the economic reach, political influence, and social importance of this group. How do these inordinately influential people think about the world and about our common future? In this paper, we test a) whether members of the tech elite share a common, meritocratic view of the world, b) whether they have a “mission” for the future, and c) how they view democracy as a political system. Our data set consists of information about the 100 richest people in the tech world, according to Forbes, and rests on their published pronouncements on Twitter, as well as on their statements on the websites of their philanthropic endeavors. Automated “bag-of-words” text and sentiment analyses reveal that the tech elite has a more meritocratic view of the world than the general US Twitter-using population. The tech elite also frequently promise to “make the world a better place,” but they do not differ from other extremely wealthy people in this respect. However, their relationship to democracy is contradictory. Based on these results, we conclude that the tech elite may be thought of as a “class for itself” in Marx’s sense—a social group that shares particular views of the world, which in this case means meritocratic, missionary, and inconsistent democratic ideology.

Political Ideologues Have No First Amendment Rights That Corporations Are Bound To Acknowledge...,

WaPo  |   The First Amendment prevents law enforcement from surveilling or investigating Americans based solely on their political views, even if the views are racist or anti-government. While the law makes it a crime to provide “material support” to specially designated foreign terrorist organizations, there is no parallel for domestic groups that harbor extreme positions. There is not even a particular criminal charge for domestic terrorism, though the concept is defined in federal law.

Some analysts have suggested that the United States could try to pass a law that criminalizes support of certain domestic organizations. Doing so, though, would probably draw legal challenges. And many far-right organizations that have demonstrated a propensity for violence are so loosely organized that they might not meet the criteria for an official designation.

“We really do want to be very careful about criminalizing ideologies, no matter how poisonous and awful,” said David Kris, a former senior Justice Department official and the founder of Culper Partners, a consulting firm. “You’re entitled to have an opinion and entitled to express that opinion no matter how noxious. But when you cross the line from having or expressing an ideology to acting on it in ways that are violent, you’ve crossed the line.”

Neumann said the government should formally study the issue, and focus on public education to help dispel debunked claims — like those promulgated by QAnon, an extremist ideology that the FBI has deemed a domestic terrorism threat — that have enthralled Trump supporters. Charging and publicly describing the evidence against those who participated in the riot will help, Neumann said, but she asserted that Republicans must take responsibility for their role in stoking the attack.

“We can’t even agree to what happened on Jan. 6, and you have people sitting in the Senate, sitting in the House, who helped it happen,” Neumann said. “I would hope if they take the right step, and acknowledge the wrong done, apologize to their constituents for being complicit in the lie, then that creates space for unity. But if you skip the step of accountability, if you skip the step of being introspective and acknowledging your role in the deception, your role in not standing up to Trump before now, then I don’t know that the people in the center and on the left are that interested in fake unity.”

McCord, the former Justice Department official, said she favors passing a law that specifically makes domestic terrorism a crime, which could allow the FBI to open more investigations and prosecutors to push for more significant sentences.

But, McCord noted, the FBI already can initiate investigations of suspected domestic terrorists — including using wiretaps and other strong surveillance measures — whenever they threaten violence or another crime. And many domestic extremists, she said, are doing so in public and online.

“Plotting acts of violence is not First Amendment protected, and once any criminal activity — even if it’s not violence — is discussed, that’s a predicate for investigation,” McCord said.

Zesty Middle-Aged OKC Personal Shopper Now The Number One Black Relationship Guru?

MTONews |  Kevin Samuels is one of most popular dating gurus on Youtube, and today he's going viral MTO News can report.

Kevin has a very unique style of offering dating advice. Much of his advice, which is aimed at Black women, centers around telling Black women they should lower their dating standards. According to Kevin, Black women have unrealistic expectations when it comes to dating.

But it's not Kevin's advice that has people talking, it's his new much younger girlfriend. Kevin, who is 55, posted new pics online suggesting that he's now dating a 29 year old IG model. 

He posted pics of her online:

 

whispersofawomanist |   Earlier this month, self-proclaimed image consultant Kevin Samuels went viral for an on-air session he had with a black female client. In the session, Samuels responded to his client’s want for a man that brings home a six-figure income. The client, a thirty-five-year-old woman who makes six figures herself, has a teenaged son. Samuels contended that the client did not qualify for the men that she desires. To clarify here, Samuel’s use of the word “qualify” speaks specifically to the client’s physical appearance and her status as a mother— a status he deems social suicide to her desire partner and lifestyle.

I will be honest and say that few things make me feel as disappointed and upset as the inauthentic aesthetic that has engulfed much of the black female optic. From weaves to the false eyelashes and nails, this aesthetic betrays the drastic measures the western world has taken to assassinate the African-descended woman’s natural aesthetic. Nevertheless, participating in what I perceive as slave culture, is not grounds for disrespect. Particularly, it is the critical gaze and ridicule that Samuels renders that is the reason why black women don this aesthetic. It is this pervasive and normalized scrutiny espoused with general disbelief in black female beauty that creates an internal void, a deficit fictively oscillated with weaves, eyelashes, wigs, and other social depressants. Rather than using his words to lift a young lady knocked down by imbalanced standards, Samuels contributes to the epidemic facing black people with his words and ideology

This brings me to my next point. Black women remain held to impossible standards simply non-existent to women of other races. When African-adjacent women approach or interact with black men, the issue is not whether they are average, a mother, overweight, a high earner, under or “over” educated; rather, their appeal lies in their non-blackness. Samuels upholds this imbalance with his praise of mixed-race and non-black women of all ages and circumstances as better romantic investments than black women.

Thus, telling a black woman he deems average that she does not qualify for what women with less going for them could acquire with non-blackness adheres to the racism embedded in gender. Gender is not a sister to biology, it is kin to racism, and it functions as another means to globalize racism under a seemingly autonomous category. Moreover, Samuel’s implementation of gender as racism illuminates his plight to actualize the ways of a white man in a black male body.

Glenn Loury Does An Adolph Reed Jr Level Takedown Of Afrodemic Ass-Clownery...,

campusreform |  Professor Glenn Loury of Brown University shredded racial activists for "bluffing" as they turn a blind eye to black-on-black crime and other issues in the black community. 

Loury said that the forced silence of black people in talking about these issues will prompt more non-blacks to speak up, eventually exposing Ibram X. Kendi and others as an “empty suit.”

Glenn Loury, a Brown University economics professor, shredded racial activists for "bluffing" as they fail to address Black-on-Black crime and other issues plaguing the Black community.

 

On an episode of his podcast, The Glenn Show, Loury told co-host and Columbia University professor John McWhorter that certain issues in the Black community are neglected.

 

"We're in an equilibrium, as economists might say,” explained Loury. “We're in a stable, ongoing situation where there are tacit agreements not to talk about certain things. Not to talk about Black-on-Black crime as the scourge that it is. Not to talk about affirmative action as being necessary because of Black mediocrity, not measuring up on the competitive edge."

"People don't want to talk about the Black family,” he continued. “It's an absolute catastrophe that two-thirds to three-quarters of Black kids are being raised in a home without a father present in the home, in terms of the social cohesion of the community. People don't want to say that."

 

Loury also explained that the forced silence of Black people in talking about these issues will prompt more non-Blacks to speak up. 

 

According to Loury, Americans will eventually realize that Boston University Center for Anti-Racist Director and author of How to Be An Anti-Racist Ibram X. Kendi is an "empty suit." At that point, "the jig is up, the bluff is called, and they don't have any cards."

 

In his book, Kendi teaches readers that "the only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination."

What Happens When Someone Drops A Rock From Space On You?

tomluongo |  I feel a lot like Amos right now finally realizing I’m walking through a post-civilizational landscape where everything looks normal but it isn’t. In his case violent Communists from the fringe of the solar system dropped asteroids on Earth.

For him this was a step-function change. But for many in our world the changes happening aren’t quite so profound yet. The lights are still on, there’s still food in a lot of our fridges.

It looks from where I’m sitting, the markets haven’t woken up to these changes yet. Because of the size and scope of the changes, and just how much of their valuation is a reflection of the false information being fed into them by stupid AI algorithms, the speed at which this realization is happening is far slower than we want to admit.

Normalcy bias is real. Markets never want to believe that cooler heads won’t prevail, because they always have before. But what happens when someone drops a rock from space on us, metaphorically? 

If you’re a fan of The Expanse (and if you aren’t you should be) you’ll be familiar with the term The Churn. The Churn is the controlling idea for Amos Burton, whose only defining ethos is survival.

Simply put, The Churn is that moment when, “the rules of the game change.” Which game?

Amos: The only game. Survival. When the jungle tears itself down and builds itself into something new. Guys like you and me, we end up dead. Doesn’t really mean anything. Or, if we happen to live through it, well that doesn’t mean anything either.

Embedded in Amos’ idea of The Churn, however, is that while the rules change society itself keeps on keeping on. So many people right now are trying to analyze the political situation in terms of The Churn, the normal ebb and flow of who has the upper hand in the power struggle.

 

Expendable Crazy Yellow Ants "Protecting" Parasitic Slug Politicians Kicked Out Of Capitol Hill Building

militarytimes |  National Guard troops forced to move out of the Capitol complex told Military Times they were finally allowed to return late Thursday evening.

“Because of the MASSIVE backlash over this, we are now being allowed back into the Senate building,” one National Guard soldier told Military Times. “We’re going to make a big show of marching back into the building.”

Another soldier told Military Times that “we were in the Thurgood Marshall Judicial Center parking garage and they kicked us out of that parking garage to make us walk half a mile away to the Hart Senate Office Building parking garage where we can’t be seen.’

Both soldiers spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

The move back to the Capitol came after a tremendous reaction by lawmakers and the public.

Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, announced in a Tweet posted at 11:39 p.m. Thursday that she “Just received text from Guard Commander: the last Guardsmen will clear the garage by 2330 tonight.”

Duckworth earlier tweeted that she just “made a number of calls and have been informed Capitol Police have apologized to the Guardsmen and they will be allowed back into the complex tonight. I’ll keep checking to make sure they are.”

Duckworth said she made her statement after reading a story in Politico, which first reported about the situation.