The kids are really begging for smartphones this Christmas, but we all know there are potential risks. In lieu of purchasing your child a smartphone, perhaps consider any of these 13 safer alternatives:

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The Norwegian Nobel Committee, in a surprise Wednesday morning announcement, revealed that Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado is on her way to Oslo, Norway, to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.

The post Nobel Committee Says Peace Prize Winner María Corina Machado Has Escaped Venezuela appeared first on Breitbart.

No one has ever mistaken Democratic Rep. Jasmine Crockett of Texas for an intelligent and humble public servant. When your opponents help orchestrate your political ascent, however, you might want […]

The post It Appears Jasmine Crockett Just Fell for a Trap Set by the Republican Senatorial Committee appeared first on The Western Journal.

Almost a year after the University of Michigan severed ties with a Chinese institution over concerns of national security, over a dozen U.S. universities are still working with Shanghai Jiao Tong University.

Now, at least one of those schools is also considering cutting ties with the Chinese university over national security concerns.  

The University of Hawaii at Manoa’s relationship with Shanghai Jiao Tong University is currently under review, the Honolulu public university told The Daily Signal.  

The central fear is China may exploit its relationship with universities like Yale, Cornell, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the same way it is reported to have done at the University of Michigan, according to a Heritage Foundation expert.  

In the case of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, “it would be safer” for U.S. universities “to cut ties at this particular juncture where we must pay closer attention to these critical matters to safeguard our national security from CCP threats,” Anthony Kim, a research fellow in International Economic Affairs at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal.  

University of Michigan

In January, the University of Michigan announced it would end its longstanding partnership with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, based in Shanghai, China, over Congress raising concern of national security.  

Following an extensive investigation into American universities’ relationship and work with China, Rep. John Moolenaar, R-Mich., sent a letter to University of Michigan President Santa Ono at the end of October 2024 warning that “Sanghai Jiao Tong drives the [People’s Republic of China] PRC’s military modernization and intelligence capabilities.”  

Through its work and research, Sanghai Jiao Tong makes “significant contributions to the PRC’s most sensitive defense programs, including nuclear weapons, carrier rockets, satellites, nuclear submarines, and fighter jets,” the Congressman wrote to Ono.  

A series of national security breaches at the University of Michigan were also discovered to be linked to the school’s research relationship with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, The Washington Free Beacon reports. The breaches included accusations that University of Michigan Students, who are Chinese nationals, took photos of military drills at Camp Grayling, a military training facility in Michigan.  

Earlier this year, the Department of Justice charged a Chinese national employed at the University of Michigan with smuggling a dangerous biological pathogen called Fusarium graminearum into the U.S. 

Change Is ‘Overdue’

“I think we need a common sense-based step by step approach to untangle what’s been going on with bad, malicious players that have been polluting our academic institutions,” Kim said, adding that the change is “overdue.” 

Changes aimed at “stopping academic or other types of espionage or influence operations, particularly from China’s CCP” should include “enforcing stricter transparency for funding …, lowering disclosure thresholds for university grants [and] donations, and holding universities accountable for concealing foreign influence through government-sponsored student groups,” Kim said.  

Shanghai Jiao Tong and US Universities

The University of South Carolina, which has an exchange program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, says its relationship with the Chinese institution “has been limited to sending a handful of our business students to SJTU for a semester; not part of research-oriented student exchange program,” Jeffrey Stensland, associate vice president for university communications at the University of South Carolina, told The Daily Signal.  

The university does not currently have any students at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, according to Stensland.  

The University of California at Berkeley, which also has a relationship with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, “complies with every single federal law, every state law, and every university policy that together ensure our relationships with foreign countries and entities operate in [a] manner consistent with our national interest,” Dan Mogulof, assistant vice chancellor at the school, said.  

Meanwhile, other colleges, such as Drexel University in Pennsylvania, have already ended their program with Shanghai Jiao Tong University, but did not specify the reason why.  

Northwestern University, Cornell University, University of Maryland, Johns Hopkins University, University of Texas at Austin, Yale University, and the University of Pennsylvania did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment regarding their current relationship with Shanghai Jiao Tong University or whether their school would consider terminating relations with the Chinese institution over concern of national security.  

The post Another University Considers Cutting Ties With Chinese Institution as National Security Concerns Mount   appeared first on The Daily Signal.

U.S. — In a corroboration of what many had long suspected, a new report finally confirmed that the holiday of Kwanzaa had been revealed to be an elaborate prank on white people.

An illegal alien is accused of randomly shooting 61-year-old Michael Kasper in the parking lot of an Omaha, Nebraska, grocery store.

The post Illegal Alien Accused of Randomly Shooting 61-Year-Old Man at Nebraska Grocery Store, Firing at Police Officers appeared first on Breitbart.

Food and Drug Administrator Marty Makary said he has a “moral duty” to inform the public of the risks of the COVID-19 vaccine after the agency found the shot may have been responsible for 10 children’s deaths.

“We did an investigation where we looked into it to decide whether or not there was a probable or possible link,” Makary told The Daily Signal in an exclusive interview. “That work is ongoing, but this data accrued over the last four years. So the moral question is now that the FDA has data where links to a child’s death have been made to the COVID vaccine, do we have a moral duty to let the public know what we know more as we learn more about the details of it? I believe we do have a moral duty to do that.”

A internal memo, first obtained by the New York Times, showed an FDA agency official saying the COVID-19 vaccine may have played a role in the deaths of at least 10 children.

Makary said the FDA needs to listen to parents who believe the COVID shot harmed their children.

“Parents have said that they believed their children had died from the COVID shot because the kid was otherwise healthy and then suddenly had a cascade of events starting immediately after the COVID shot,” he said. “And remember, many of these shots in the era of the last four years were mandated on young, healthy students to get into college or stay in college.”

“When parents have said things about their children, we need to listen,” he said. “So we did an investigation where we looked into it to decide whether or not there was a probable or possible link.”

This information is not new, Makary said.

“We’ve known that there have been deaths from the COVID vaccine,” he said. “We don’t want to be alarmist or create hysteria out there because these complications are rare. But denying that they occur is also not true. So we have a radical transparency agenda to try to rebuild public trust.”

A July 2024 poll showed that 28% of Americans believe that the COVID-19 vaccines have been responsible for thousands of deaths, up from 22% in June 2021. 

The theory that “a young 6-year-old boy needs another 70 or 75 COVID shots in his average lifespan” may be incorrect, Makary said.

“It’s a theory, and there are pros and cons of that theory, and now we have at least one piece of information that says it’s not 1000% safe and free of any myocarditis risk,” he said. “We now know there are some risks, albeit rare, and so that’s information that people can use.”

Cases have been documented in the New England Journal of Medicine of young males dying from myocarditis after getting the COVID vaccine, Makary said.

“It’s been out there,” he said. “So it’s been known that this is a complication. Myocarditis can affect as many as one in 2,600 young males after one of the COVID shots, and a rare sub complication of myocarditis is severe illness and ICU stay and even death.”

Mitigating the Risks

To mitigate the risk of myocarditis, Makary said kids with natural immunity to the circulating strain of COVID should not be vaccinated.

“The other opportunity is to space out the COVID shots,” he said. “We could have spaced out the first and second dose during the pandemic in young, healthy children, especially boys who are at higher risk of myocarditis. But that recognition came too late. And so, if we would have looked at these data earlier, we could have potentially avoided many of these cases.”

The Trump administration does not support COVID vaccine mandates which have cost people their jobs.

“Of course, the issue of vaccine mandates in children has been very controversial, and our feeling has been that we don’t support kicking kids out of school, insisting soldiers leave the military, insisting teachers be fired, that firefighters be fired and other people be fired if they don’t agree to the COVID shot mandate,” he said.

“And so this is a moment where people want some closure over what happened over those four years,” he continued. “And if you look back, insisting that upwards of a million people be fired from their jobs for not getting the vaccine, even if they already had circulating antibodies from natural immunity, even though they were ultra-low risk—people want some closure to that issue. And this is a time for all the data to come out.”

Part of rebuilding trust in the FDA will come from admitting what it doesn’t know, Makary said.

“Trust in doctors and hospitals went from 71% of the public trusting us in 2019 down to 40% last year. That’s a 31-point drop in the last administration,” he said. “So we need to rebuild that trust. And part of the way we’re going to do that is to show some humility and to be transparent with what we know and to say ‘I don’t know’ when we don’t know something.”

Makary Defends Controversial Pick to Lead Drug Center

The FDA tapped Tracy Beth Høeg, a COVID vaccine skeptic, to serve as acting director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research, leading to complaints from some FDA officials who told CBS her appointment “will harm the agency’s reputation as a reliable steward of the nation’s drug supply.” But Makary told The Daily Signal he maintains “full support” for her.

“She’s terrific,” he said. “So first of all, MD, PhD, high-level scientist with an epidemiology background. She has an incredible command of so many subjects. She’s highly respected in the field, trained at some of the best institutions, served on the faculty at MIT and others. We want this type of high-caliber scientist at the FDA.”

“Many people have perceived that the FDA has been corrupted over the years,” he said. “And some people believe that the industry feels they own the FDA, but the FDA is not owned by the industry—it’s owned by the American people. And so my job is to safeguard the public and at the same time make sure that the agency is entirely independent in its scientific evaluations. And so Tracy Beth Høeg is perfect in fitting in line with our mission to deliver an amazing FDA, to bring more cures and meaningful treatments to the American public, faster and safer.”

Universal Flu Shot

Makary’s effort to improve the safety and efficacy of vaccines is not limited to COVID-19. He is also overseeing the development of a universal flu shot through a project titled Generation Gold Standard.

“I believe it’s in phase 1 clinical trials or between phase 1 and phase 2,” he said. “The current flu shot doesn’t work very well. You get it, you come back the following year, we take another guess as to which strain is going to be circulating. The guesses are not very good.”

“Overall, the flu shot is a bit of a crapshoot each year when it comes to guessing which strain is going to be dominant,” he continued.

A universal flu shot, Makary said, would protect against all strains and mutations, even those which have not yet occurred in nature.

“Then you may be able to get decades-long protection from a single flu shot if it has different targets of that flu vaccination, and so that’s a very promising concept,” he said. “It has garnered a lot of interest. And I personally would love to see us have lifelong immune protection to the flu instead of every year doing this whole roundup of people to say ‘come in and get your flu shot.'”

Ted Ross, the director of Global Vaccine Development at the Cleveland Clinic, has praised Generation Gold Standard.

“I’m glad to see that this administration is still wanting to invest in developing next-generation influenza vaccines or respiratory vaccines in general,” he said.

But some scientists, like Dr. Gregory Poland, who leads the Atria Academy of Science and Medicine in New York, said the universal flu shot would revert back to 50-year-old technology.

“This is what influenza vaccines in the 40s, 50s and 60s looked like,” he said.

Hepatitis B Vaccine

The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted Friday to remove the universal recommendation that babies receive the hepatitis B vaccine at birth. Makary praised the decision.

“The moms who test negative for hep B are asking, ‘Why do I need to do this on the day of birth?’ So, I was pleased to see the ACIP committee use some nuance and get away from absolutism and recognize that the risk in a hep B–negative mom is extremely infinitesimally low for that child, that it’s entirely reasonable to wait till the kid is 8 or 10 or 12 or something like that,” he said.

Makary said this is another area where the FDA needs to listen to parents.

“And if we’re really following the data on this, the data supports hep B immunization for babies when the mom is hep B–positive or the vaccine status is unknown,” he said.

Co-Administration of Vaccines

Makary is also working on new regulatory standards on the co-administration of vaccines. He said there have been “few standards” on the subject thus far.

“We’re just saying we want to see a little more science,” he said. “If you’re going to propose giving two vaccines at the same time—two different vaccines—one of the ways vaccines work is they promote an inflammatory and immune response. And so when you give multiple pro-inflammatory therapeutics at the same time, you’re going to increase the body’s inflammation.”

“And inflammation is now recognized to not only have some positive benefits but also some negative health effects,” he added. “So, we’re just saying we want to use basic principles that we use for other medications and apply those to vaccines as well.”

Makary clarified that the FDA will not take away “anyone’s flu shot or anyone’s vaccine on the childhood schedule.”

“We always have to be vigilant for safety signals we can’t predict or may not know about, but there’s no plan to take away anyone’s vaccines or anyone’s opportunity to get a vaccine,” he said. “But there’s a big fear machine out there trying to say otherwise. So we need to be honest and truthful and remind people that we are here to advance vaccine science and not take away anyone’s vaccines.”

The post EXCLUSIVE: FDA Chief Says He Has ‘Moral Duty’ to Expose COVID-19 Vaccine Deaths appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Winners, of course, do not seek comfort in relative performance. They simply plow ahead and keep winning. Nonetheless, for fairness’ sake, one must occasionally take note of a remarkable achievement […]

The post Trump Has Beaten Obama's Approval Ratings Every Single Day for the Last Month, And 96 Percent of the Time Since July 20 appeared first on The Western Journal.

Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said on Wednesday that she has granted waivers to six additional states allowing them to prevent the use of food stamps to purchase certain items, like soft drinks and candy.

“President [Donald] Trump has made it clear: we are restoring SNAP to its true purpose – nutrition. Under the MAHA initiative, we are taking bold, historic steps to reverse the chronic diseases epidemic that has taken root in this country for far too long,” said Rollins in a statement.

The Trump administration has now allowed 18 states to implement a variety of restrictions on low-income recipients of Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, also known as food stamps.

Rollins and Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. have urged states to adopt the restrictions as part of the administration’s “Make America Healthy Again” agenda.

“We cannot continue a system that forces taxpayers to fund programs that make people sick and then pay a second time to treat the illnesses those very programs help create,” Kennedy said in a statement.

The restrictions, which go into effect next year, vary by state and include barring soda, candy and energy drink purchases.

The new state waivers are for Hawaii, Missouri, North Dakota, South Carolina, Virginia and Tennessee, Rollins said at an event at the U.S. Department of Agriculture headquarters.

States that apply for such waivers gain an advantage in their applications for a $50 billion rural health fund established this year by the Trump administration, Mehmet Oz, the director of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services at the Department of Health and Human Services, said at the event.

Rollins and Kennedy have worked closely together to advance the MAHA agenda, including a revision of the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which gives advice on what Americans should eat.

The guidelines, expected in January, will “suggest limiting highly processed foods and those high in sugar,” Rollins said on Wednesday.

Rollins also said the USDA would spend $700 million on regenerative agriculture to encourage farmers to adopt conservation farming practices that support soil health.

The administration earlier this year canceled a $3 billion program for sustainable farming practices, like reducing soil tillage.

Reuters contributed to this report.

The post Trump Administration Allows 6 More States to Ban Using Food Stamps for Junk Food appeared first on The Daily Signal.

Three people have been arrested for allegedly providing drugs to 7 students of Providence College in Rhode Island who ended up overdosing.

The post Three People Arrested After Seven Rhode Island College Students Overdose at Party appeared first on Breitbart.

A small plane made an emergency landing on a Florida freeway this week, miraculously avoiding a serious crash — even though it set down on top of a car traveling below its flight path.

The post WATCH: Plane Crashes on Top of Car as it Lands on a Florida Freeway, Only Minor Injuries appeared first on Breitbart.

The U.S. Navy publicly launched its new Rapid Capabilities Office, which is designed to improve the critical capabilities procurement process in a bid to ensure American maritime dominance into the next century.

At the kickoff event hosted at the Capital Turnaround in Washington on Tuesday, Secretary of the Navy John Phelan explained that the new office would seek to “disrupt bureaucratic inertia,” a warning shot to bureaucratic sclerosis that gets in the way of America’s sailors.

The approach, Phealan said, is “rooted in common sense and accountability for the Department of the Navy.”

The Navy Secretary also emphasized the procurement reforms were a turning point for the Navy.

“The question now is whether we have the institutional architecture that can absorb risk back, take risk, accelerate winners, and retire dead ends. The answer is yes, and that changes today,” Phelan said.

The Daily Signal spoke with Vice Admiral Seiko Okano, who has been named the director of the new office about the significance of the reform effort.

“I think that the fact that we’re reporting directly to the secretary signals the priority of the office, and the fact that we are making structural changes within not just the acquisition community, but within the entire navy on how to get capability out to those sailors and marines faster is, I think, a signal that we’re serious about this,” Okano told The Daily Signal

The Navy also announced yesterday a partnership with Palantir Technologies on “ShipOS,” which the Navy secretary described as “deploying an AI powered shipbuilding operating system across the maritime industrial base.”

“We are taking the cornerstone of our deterrent capacity and making it more lethal, more valuable,” Palantir CEO Alex Karp said at the announcement.

“Every shipbuilder who partners with us will have AI powered tools that optimize their work in real time. Every supplier in the network will be connected through intelligent logistics. Every program manager will have unprecedented visibility into schedule, cost, and risk,” Phelan stated.

The Daily Signal interviewed Mike Gallagher, the head of defense at Palantir Technologies, and Jason Potter who is performing the duties of the assistant secretary of the Navy for Research, Development and Acquisition about the Palantir deal. They explained the issues the public-private partnership hoped to address.

Potter stated that for some shipyards, “the government has been the only customer” meaning that there had not been the “sort of the commercial incentive to modernize and innovate.”

Gallagher told The Daily Signal, “I was in Congress for eight years on the sea power subcommittee, and to quote what Secretary Phelan recently said to Congress: we just would invest billions of dollars, and we get delays, cost overruns, and capacity gaps.”

“Obviously, our undersea capability gives us a massive advantage relative to our pacing threats, particularly the Chinese Communist Party, but commercially, we remain a software powerhouse, AI enabled software applied directly to our top priority, which is submarine construction, thereby assuring the next 100 years of strategic and conventional deterrence,” the former congressman added.

Gallagher also articulated some of the efficiency gains that had already been accomplished with Palantir technology at a navy shipyard over the past several months.

“You have four people whose full-time job is to do planning, working 160 hours. That process is now down to 10 minutes,” Gallagher told The Daily Signal.

“You’re talking about a million dollars a day being spent in some of these yards. Every second counts, every hour counts,” Gallagher added. “You can save months, and ultimately years.”

The post The Navy Declares War on Bureaucratic Inefficiency appeared first on The Daily Signal.