Tulsi Gabbard Declassifies Biden ‘Domestic Terrorism’ Strategy: What’s Inside

• The Trump administration changed a government COVID-19 website to include assertions that the virus’s true origins are likely from a laboratory in Wuhan, China.
• Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard fulfilled her past promise to declassify information related to President Joe Biden’s domestic counterterrorism strategy. Here’s what the declassified documents show.
• The Food and Drug Administration is removing pharmaceutical company representatives from advisory committees in a bid to limit industry influence.
• The Hamas terrorist group has rejected Israel’s latest peace proposal.
• 🍵 Health: Six exercises to help you safely rise from a fall.

🏛️ Politics

Trump Admin Changes COVID Website to Say Outbreak Began From Chinese Lab

A White House press officer, Anna Kelly, appeared to confirm the change on social media platform X on Friday, including a link to the covid.gov page that, under the Biden administration, included information on how to order COVID-19 tests, vaccines, and treatment, as well as information on “long COVID,” symptoms, and other details.

The page now displays an image of President Donald Trump walking forward ahead of the text “LAB LEAK” and “The true origins of COVID-19.”

On the webpage, the administration criticizes former White House COVID-19 adviser Anthony Fauci, who left the government in 2022, saying he tried to downplay the theory that the virus was associated with a lab leak in China. It also suggested that a study published in the journal Nature was unfairly used to discredit the theory that the virus leaked from the Wuhan lab.

“Wuhan is home to China’s foremost SARS [severe acute respiratory syndrome] research lab, which has a history of conducting gain-of-function research (gene altering and organism supercharging) at inadequate biosafety levels,” the website states.

Lab researchers in Wuhan, it says, were ill with COVID-19-like symptoms in late 2019, or months before COVID-19 was discovered at a nearby wet market in Wuhan. The lab also had a history of unsafe practices and performing controversial research, the website says.

“By nearly all measures of science, if there was evidence of a natural origin it would have already surfaced. But it hasn’t,” the administration says of COVID-19.

The Trump administration faulted EcoHealth Alliance, which had used taxpayer funding to engage in gain-of-function research in the Wuhan lab, in which researchers genetically alter an organism to enhance its biological functions. The Department of Health and Human Services later barred funding to EcoHealth. (More)

More Politics:

• The American Civil Liberties Union filed an emergency request late on Friday asking the Supreme Court to immediately block the Trump administration from deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members.
• Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) shared the details of his meeting with Kilmar Abrego Garcia, the Salvadoran man that the Trump administration said it deported due to an administrative error.
• A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from conducting mass layoffs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
• Another federal judge has barred the Trump administration from implementing a new policy of rapidly deporting illegal immigrants with final removal orders to new countries without first giving such individuals a chance to raise claims that, if sent there, they would face persecution, torture, or death.
• The Department of Health and Human Services has stopped funding for a next-generation COVID-19 vaccine that received an award during the Biden administration.
• The Trump administration has unveiled plans to impose port fees on Chinese-built ships in an effort to level the playing field in the global shipbuilding market, with scaled-back penalties to limit the impact on American businesses and consumers.

🌎 World

Persecuted in China, Young Shen Yun Artists Find New Meaning on the World Stage

They were seated together, relishing that beloved southern Chinese staple that Rao’s grandma had lovingly fried golden crisp, when a hard knock at the door made them drop their chopsticks.

Two men demanded to come in. They said they were from the water utility and were “checking the meter.”

The phrase was a code word for police, as the men indeed were. Four or five more soon swarmed in. They dragged her dad away. From the apartment window, the girl could do nothing but watch her father’s lanky frame vanish into a white car, and then, from her life.

He never made it back.

Two weeks later, the 34-year-old was at a hospital struggling to breathe. He couldn’t speak, but tears were running down his face. On his head, around his ears and neck, and on his hands and feet, his wife found bruises and swelling. He died less than seven weeks after police dragged him away.

For the young Rao, fear was part and parcel of living in communist China. And she wasn’t alone.

Today, at Shen Yun Performing Arts, an upstate New York company whose motto is to showcase “China before communism,” it’s hard to meet someone who hasn’t lived through such pain or knows someone who has. Here are their stories.

More World News:

• President Trump will drop efforts to clinch a peace agreement between Russia and Ukraine in the absence of any clear signs of progress, according to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
• The U.S. State Department has dismissed communist China’s self-proclaimed role as a “global peacemaker,” saying that a Beijing-supported Chinese satellite company has directly supported the Iran-backed Houthi terrorist group’s attacks on U.S. interests.

☀️ A Few Good Things

💛 Inspiration: Six rituals to help you reset and refocus during the day.

🎙️Podcast: Catch this week’s recap from our reporters on the ongoing clashes between the judicial and executive branches, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s comments on autism, and the hearings for Ryan Routh. (Listen)

🎵 Music: Mendelssohn – Symphony No. 4 (Listen)

🍵 Arts & Culture

‘The King of Kings’: The Life of Christ Presented in a Whole New Light

In a relatively short running time of 103 minutes, Seong-ho’s film includes Christ’s teachings and almost every major event in his life without rushing, condensing, or turning them into a bullet-point presentation. There isn’t a single depiction in “Kings” that hasn’t been shown before in other projects. What makes this movie so different, special, and infinitely watchable is the wholly original presentation.

“Kings” will engage entire families—not so much for the bountiful and moving biblical content, but because of its “kid-friendly” presentation.

While Seong-ho deserves immense credit for his appealing and unorthodox handling of the material, the movie simply would not exist without the book “The Life of Our Lord” by Charles Dickens.

The movie opens with Dickens (Kenneth Branagh) doing a stage reading of “A Christmas Carol” while being interrupted by his second son, Walter (Roman Griffin Davis). Walter and his cat, Willa, are acting out parts of “King Arthur and His Knights of the Round Table.” This raises the ire of Dickens to the point where he severely admonishes Walter, sending him home hurt and dejected.

At the urging of his wife, Catherine (Uma Thurman), Dickens attempts to make up for his outburst by reading “Lord” to Walter for the first time. Still reeling, Walter initially shows little interest but perks up when Dickens informs him that “King Arthur” is based on the life of the greatest king ever, Jesus Christ.

🎲 Games

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