Author: J.P. Knowles

An abnormal heatwave has gripped the Pacific Northwest and is responsible for two deaths in Washington and hundreds of visits to the emergency room during record-high temperatures in a region that typically only sees rain or overcast weather.

The hazardous weather that gave Seattle and Portland back-to-back days of record-breaking high temperatures in excess of 100 degrees was expected to drop in those cities. But inland Spokane saw temperatures rise even higher.

The Seattle Times reported two women, a 65-year-old from Seattle and a 68-year-old from Enumclaw, both died of hyperthermia, meaning both bodies had become dangerously overheated, citing the King County Medical Examiner’s office.

The heat may have claimed the life of a worker on a nursery in Oregon, the state’s worker safety agency, known as Oregon OSHA. A 4-year-old boy also drowned Monday, the newspaper said.

Heat-related illness accounted for about 10% of all King County emergency room visits Monday. In total, 357 county residents visited emergency rooms for heat-related issues during the three heat wave.

On Monday, 223 visits to emergency departments were made and emergency workers responded to 165 heat-related calls.

Officials in Bremerton, Washington, said the extreme temperatures may have contributed to four deaths in that Puget Sound city. But Bremerton’s medical officer said that they cannot say for sure if the heat was the official cause of death.

According to the National Weather Service, temperatures reached 109 degrees in Spokane — the highest temperature ever recorded there.

Condo collapse survivor Steve Rosenthal filed a lawsuit Sunday and shared his experience during an appearance on Fox News’ “The Faulkner Focus.”

“All you could do is go to the balcony and wait for your rescue,” Rosenthal recalled.

Raysa Rodriguez is also filing a lawsuit against the condo association that ran the property in connection with the building’s collapse. She remembers sleeping inside the Champlain Towers condo building when it began to collapse last Thursday morning.

“Something woke me up, and I found myself in the middle of the room,” she writes in a newly filed lawsuit.”The building swayed like a sheet of paper.”

Rodriguez’s lawyer, Adam Moskowitz, claims his client had been waving “red flags” about the safety conditions of the building “for months,” submitting complaints and photo evidence of cracks and other structural damage.

“Nobody seemed to take any of this seriously, unfortunately,” said Moskowitz.

In her lawsuit, Rodriguez describes the series of events as she tried to figure out what was happening.

“I ran to the balcony. I open the doors, and a wall of dust hit me,” Rodriguez wrote in the lawsuit. “I couldn’t see anything outside.”

She somehow managed to get out of her unit to see a concrete column had entered the hallway and the doors to the elevator shaft were gone.

She knocked on neighbors’ doors but received no answer. She quickly began to recognize the magnitude of what had just happened to the building.

“I screamed in horror,” she writes and recalls her brother on the phone yelling, “Get out of there, get out!”

Rodriguez also remembers hearing a woman’s voice calling to her from underneath the debris.

She heard the woman shouting, “Please help me! Please help me! Don’t leave me here!”

“I couldn’t see her,” Rodriguez said. “There were no lights.”

Later, she describes following several neighbors as they made their way down a stairwell in the portion of the building that was still intact.

When they reached the ground floor, the exit was blocked by rubble so they made their way to the basement parking garage which was flooded.

When they eventually found their way to the 2nd-floor firefighters rescued them via a neighbor’s balcony.

In the late hours of Sunday night, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy finally decided to stop playing ball with Big Tech and issued a letter to his fellow House Republicans in which he demanded them to confront Big Tech for their “infringement of public speech rights.”

McCarthy held nothing back in his letter, writing, “The examples of conservative censorship and bias across internet platforms has proliferated. Each one of you are all too familiar with how Big Tech and its overwhelmingly liberal executives want to set the agenda and silence conservatives.”

McCarthy blamed Big Tech for “stacking the deck” with their “gatekeeping effects” explaining that “If your company or product doesn’t meet the criteria of corporate wokeism, it’s increasingly likely Americans won’t find it on these platforms.” He added, “Big Tech wants higher corporate taxes because companies like Amazon know it’s the entrepreneurs and disruptors who will have to pay more to try to compete.”

Then he gave his fellow Republicans three principles in the GOP that they should use to buttress their reformation of how Big Tech does business: First, by “taking away the liability shield Big Tech has hidden behind for far too long. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act would be changed to limit liability protections for moderation of speech that is not protected by the First Amendment and would preclude Big Tech from discriminating against Americans based on their political affiliation. We would also require regular reauthorization of Section 230 so Congress may update regulations of the constantly-evolving internet landscape.”

Section 230 of the U.S. Code states:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be held liable on account of any action voluntarily taken in good faith to restrict access to or availability of material that the provider or user considers to be obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, excessively violent, harassing, or otherwise objectionable, whether or not such material is constitutionally protected.

Second, McCarthy demanded that Big Tech be honest and transparent with their terms of service, ensuring that “Big Tech’s ability to hide behind vague terms of service that have not constrained their conduct in any meaningful way. We will do so by mandating that any Big Tech content moderation decisions or censorship must be listed, with specificity, on a publicly available website. In addition, by requiring Big Tech to implement and maintain a reasonable user-friendly appeals process, our plan will empower conservatives and others whose speech rights have been infringed to challenge Big Tech’s attacks.”

Last, McCarthy is determined not to let the ponderous pace of government impede the reformation of Big Tech. He wrote: “The status quo and bureaucratic delays are not acceptable when it comes to bringing long-overdue antitrust scrutiny to Big Tech. We will provide an expedited court process with direct appeal to the Supreme Court and empower state attorneys general to help lead the charge against the tech giants to break them up. We will also reform the administrative state and remove impediments that delay taking action on Big Tech power. … I have more faith in elected state leaders than in the unelected federal bureaucracy, which is as ideologically homogeneous as Big Tech.”

He concluded, “Conservatives and our ideas have been targeted by Big Tech for too long. We must step up because make no mistake, the Democrats continue to demonstrate no interest in addressing fairness when it comes to conservative viewpoints. And they’ll continue to use Big Tech to do so.”

In Surfside, Florida, search-and-rescue crews are working around the clock following the collapse of the Champlain Tower South condo building last week.

About 130 firefighters working to clear the ruble and search for survivors have reported hearing tapping and other sounds, but it is still not clear if these are human made sounds or just shifting debris. The clock is ticking for the 159 people who are still unaccounted for but how long can they survive trapped under tons of concrete?

“We still have hope that we will find people alive,” Miami-Dade Mayor Daniella Levine Cava said during a press conference Friday.

Officials feel they are working against the clock, but some experts say people in such situations have been known to survive for weeks.

Dr. Mike Cirgliano, an internist with Penn Medicine and medical contributor for “Good Day Philadelphia,” told FOX 29 that people can survive in spaces created within the wreckage with access to oxygen and possibly rainwater.

Both water and oxygen are necessary to survive longer than a few days: People can survive weeks without food but only days without water, Duke University professor Dr. Richard Moon said last year following the deadly blast in Beirut.

“This is the risk that we take: it’s the risk vs. benefit,” Assistant Miami-Dade Fire Chief Raide Jadallah said. “Every time that we have that belief that there’s hope with personnel that are trapped, we do risk our lives.”

Heavy rain briefly halted the search but rescue crews are using every resource available including sniffer dogs and cranes while more crewmembers search from below using saws and jackhammers.

The host of “The Joe Rogan Experience” finally weighed in about his Hollywood past with the hosts of “Breaking Points” on their podcast which offers a fresh take on politics without the mass media’s narratives.

Rogan explained the troubling culture within Hollywood, a place where insecure people flock to be rejected over and over again.

“You wanna say the things that people are gonna wanna hear so they’ll cast you,” Rogan says.

“I’ve been in rooms where they discuss politics right away, and you see people bend to whichever way the wind is blowing,” he says of hopeful stars and starlets, desperate for a break. “They don’t have opinions…. what they have is a conglomeration of opinions they’ve adopted because they think it’ll be good for their careers.”

“The entire mindset of that part of the country is doing things that you think other people will like,” he explains. “Imagine a Hellscape of a world where everyone in the business, one business, everyone is liberal? How is that possible … when the country is basically divided 50/50?”

“It’s not possible, because it’s not really opinions,” he explains. “They’re willing to not have any opinions on anything else other than feeding narcissism, feeding this career that seems … impossible to achieve.”

“What are the odds you make it? It’s so small,” he adds.

Rogan argues that for many actors it’s all a facade to stay employed so they continue to appear liberal while shouting progressive arguments over social media.

“They adopt these liberal sensibilities and ideologies. They don’t necessarily do it because they’ve thought these things through. Occasionally you have your Mark Ruffalo type characters who are ‘all in,’” he says on progressivism. “Most of them are not. Most of them are nonsense people who will get on stage .. they’ll talk about, ‘this is what we have to do. We have to support this and that.’ It’s horsesh**.”

Rob Schneider offered a surprising answer after a Twitter user asked him if his fellow celebrities are exhausted by the “leftist orthodoxy,” which indirectly weighed in on what Rogan explored via Twitter.

The “Saturday Night Live” alum increasingly sounds aghast at both woke culture and Hollywood’s lockstep liberalism. So when a fellow Twitter user asked him if his fellow celebrities are exhausted by “leftist orthodoxy,” Schneider offered a surprising answer.

Honestly,
75% and growing.
The manipulation of well intentioned people is becoming more obvious as you are seeing it’s applications destroying good people https://t.co/YoemZ7efLY

— Rob Schneider 🇺🇸 (@RobSchneider) June 21, 2021

News anchor on MSNBC Joshua Johnson implied that the deadly Surfside condominium building collapse can be used to justify the “price tag” of infrastructure spending during tight negotiations between lawmakers and the Biden administration.

On Sunday’s “Meet the Press,” Johnson declared that big-ticket projects from Democrats are being utilized as “ammunition” by Republicans, but quickly turned to the horrific events in Florida, which has left at least 11 dead with 150 still missing.

“There’s nothing like a disaster to focus on the mind,” Johnson said of the Surfside building. “I have never spent a night in a building and wondered if it was going to hold me up by morning.”

“The idea that we have infrastructure in this building… Florida is one big infrastructure project,” he continued. “[Republican Sen.] Bill Cassidy is in Louisiana, that’s a big infrastructure project. It’s built on swampland. New York subways have flooded in the last few years.”

On #MTP, @NBCJoshua Johnson uses Surfside building collapse to justify multi $trillion federal infrastructure spending: “There is nothing like a disaster to remind the American people the home you sleep in may not stand by morning and there is something you can do about it.” pic.twitter.com/9pGx5UXBKX

— Brent Baker 🇺🇲🇺🇦 🇮🇱 (@BrentHBaker) June 27, 2021

Johnson then mentioned the National Institute of Building Sciences, which has insisted that “for every dollar you spend on hazard mitigation, it saves six dollars on disaster relief.”

“Miami Beach hasn’t been hit by a major hurricane since about 1926. They called it ‘The Big Blow.’ It was a Category 4 hurricane that killed 113 people, drowned and crushed by a hurricane,” said Johnson. “I understand all these political calculi that are playing, but there’s nothing like a disaster to remind the American people the home you sleep in may not stand by morning and there is something you can do about it.”

The official death toll in the Miami-area building collapse increased to at least nine people, according to officials, as rescue crews continued to hunt through the rubble.

The mayor of Surfside, Fla. emphasized that the first priority of rescue teams is to find the 152 building occupants who are still missing and reunite them with their families. Temporary housing will be provided for tenants in a sister building as an “army of engineers” works to commence a “top to bottom” analysis of its infrastructure.

The sister building, Champlain Towers North, which Burkett said “was built around same time by same contractor with same plans and probably with the same materials,” will get a full review starting next week.

“Our first priority and our only priority is to pull our residents out of that rubble and reunite them with their family who are understandably out of their minds with emotion, sadness, anger and just confused and want to know what’s happening,” Surfside Mayor Charles Burkett said. “Our duty is to continue to do our jobs, which is to find their loved ones and reunited them.”

“Buildings don’t fall down in America,” he continued. “That is a third-world phenomenon. The last time we saw something like this — well we had two sections of building fall down pancake style separately, and then you saw the fire. It’s very reminiscent of something we’ve seen in New York. It’s very disturbing. There was something obviously very, very wrong in this building and we need to get to the bottom of it.”

“We don’t know why that building fell down and we need to get in and understand what’s going on with the sister building,” the mayor added. “We are going to make alternate housing available for any resident who really doesn’t want to be in that building pending that investigation which is going to commence next week with what I would say an army of engineers to get in there and pour over that building from top to bottom.”

Former President Donald Trump finally took the stage at his first rally since leaving the White House earlier this year on Saturday in Wellington, Ohio. Thousands of supporters showed up for the rally while Trump set his sights on the “woke” military generals, critical race theory, and President Joe Biden’s many failed policies.

“The Biden administration issued new rules pushing twisted critical race theory … into our military,” Trump said. “Our generals and our admirals are now focused more on this nonsense than they are on our enemies.”

President Trump Calling Out The "Woke" Generals

President Trump Also Calls For Congress To Ban Critical Race Theory Being Taught In American Schools, Workplaces, Federal Agencies, And Military pic.twitter.com/31xBc0ImH7

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) June 27, 2021

“Have you seen these generals lately on television? They are woke,” Trump told the crowd in northeast Ohio. “Our military will be incapable of fighting and incapable of taking orders.”

Trump’s comments were likely referring to comments made by the Chairman of Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley who stated he wanted to “understand white rage” while defending critical race theory being instituted into the military.

The former president went on to pledge to “break up big tech monopolies, reject left-wing ‘cancel’ culture, and we will restore the right to free speech in America.”

“We will break up Big Tech monopolies!”

Amen, we must. #BreakUpBigTech pic.twitter.com/od5jtogVGq

— The Columbia Bugle 🇺🇸 (@ColumbiaBugle) June 27, 2021

The former president hammered Biden over the current border crisis.

“We have to defund his reckless immigration policies and restore our southern border to where it was,” Trump declared.

Trump, who is set to visit the border crisis on June 30th, claimed that Vice President Kamala Harris only went to Texas because he was traveling there this week.

“Kamala Harris, your vice president, only went to the border yesterday for the one simple reason that I announced that I was going,” Trump said. “If I didn’t do that, I don’t know if she was ever going to go.”

“After just five months, the Biden administration is already a complete and total catastrophe. I told you,” Trump said during the speech that lasted over an hour.

“I’m trying to save American democracy,” Trump stated.

President Joe Biden’s trip to the annual NATO summit is moving right along without any major mishaps or fauxpas. Thats not to say there hasn’t been a few awkward moments here or there.

For instance, President Biden caught the Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan off guard when he approached the leader from a blind spot and offered him an awkward fist-bump.

Biden, wearing a mask despite being fully vaccinated against COVID-19 for months, approached an unmasked Erdogan, who was seated at a desk, and offered his fist at an angle that caught the Turkish leader off guard.

Erdogan rose to greet Biden, continuing the casual knuckle contact as they spoke.

https://youtu.be/dXQOexctgjw

Erdogan and Biden later sat down for a more formal meeting. But in a surprise twist, U.S. reporters who were supposed to be in the room were left waiting in a hallway.

Confirmation of the Biden-Erdogan sit-down came through Erdogan’s press office, which tweeted images of Biden and Erdogan bumping wrists and smiling at one another. In one image, Erdogan flashed a thumbs up.

President @RTErdogan, who is in Brussels for NATO Leaders’ Summit, met with President Joe Biden of the US. pic.twitter.com/qbvayJkByr

— Presidency of the Republic of Türkiye (@trpresidency) June 14, 2021

Last year, the president called on Erodgan to reverse his decision to turn the Hagia Sophia, a former Christian church, from a museum into a mosque. Then, in April, Biden recognized the World War I slaughter of Armenians by Turks and Kurds as a genocide which angered the Turkish leader.

Before the NATO summit, Erdogan made it clear that he would be confronting Biden over his remarks on the Armenian genocide, saying the designation “disturbed and upset” the people of Turkey.

There are still many unknowns when it comes to the rushed COVID-19 vaccine, which is still not FDA approved. There are now more than 1,200 cases of heart inflammation in people who received messenger RNA Covid-19 vaccines.

The CDC reported those numbers during a meeting on Wednesday with their advisory Committee on Immunization Practices.

More than 130 million Americans have been fully vaccinated with mRNA shots, according to the CDC, and there have been few reports of serious adverse effects. Two-dose COVID-19 vaccine regimens made by Moderna Inc. and partners Pfizer Inc. and BioNTech SE rely on the technology.

Pfizer and BioNTech’s shot was cleared for those 12 to 15 years old in May. About 2 in 10 adolescents among that age group are now fully vaccinated, according to the CDC. Initial safety findings from the U.S. health agency suggest real-world data is consistent with the results from the companies’ clinical trial prior to authorization.

Shares of Pfizer were down 1.1% at 12:57 p.m. in New York trading, and BioNTech shares fell 5.2%. Moderna shares were also down 6.7%.

Since April, the CDC has seen a spike in reports of myocarditis along with pericarditis, an inflammation of the membrane around the heart. The cases, while rare, have occurred mostly in male teens and young adults.

“We’re observing this in younger age groups, mainly teens and early twenties,” said CDC safety expert Tom Shimabukuro. “This largely disappears when you get to older age groups.”