Trump’s Marijuana Executive Order Is Woefully Half-Baked
Trump should rethink his support for weed. Increasing the normalization and legalization of pot will only increase our nation's problems.Trump should rethink his support for weed. Increasing the normalization and legalization of pot will only increase our nation's problems.Glenn Beck works to save pain-racked Canadian woman left at euthanasia dead end by broken socialist health care system
Blaze Media co-founder Glenn Beck and his team are desperately trying to save a woman in the Canadian prairie province of Saskatchewan who has been failed by her country's socialist health care system.
Jolene Van Alstine of Regina has for eight years suffered from a rare parathyroid disease called normocalcemic primary hyperparathyroidism, which causes nausea and vomiting and draws calcium from the bones into the blood, resulting in extreme bone pain, weakened bone density, and fractures.
'I've been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end.'
Van Alstine has undergone three surgeries but still requires a specialized procedure to remove her overactive parathyroid gland.
The problem, according to Canadian state media, is that there is presently no surgeon in the province able to perform the operation. While there are apparently capable and available surgeons elsewhere in Canada, Van Alstine has indicated that she must first obtain a referral — and cannot secure one, as none of the endocrinologists in her region are accepting new patients.
Until this week, Van Alstine was running short on hope.
"My friends have stopped visiting me. I'm isolated. I've been alone lying on the couch for eight years, sick and curled up in a ball, pushing for the day to end," she told state media.
Glenn Beck noted Wednesday on his show, "She's riddled with pain. Yesterday, we found out that she was in the ER because she's having all kinds of complications because of this. And she can't take it any more."
"This one is so grotesque," continued Beck, "because the state would rather have her die."
'We expect to see more than 16,500 "medical assistance in dying" or euthanasia deaths.'
The prospect that her treatable disease might go untreated prompted Van Alstine to contemplate state-facilitated suicide, which is euphemistically referred to in Canada as Medial Assistance in Dying.
RELATED: 'Pro-death legislators' want euthanasia in Illinois — Canada reveals why that's a terrible idea
"I understand how long and how much she's suffered, and it’s horrific, the physical suffering, but it's also the mental anguish," Miles Sundeen, Van Alstine's partner, said late last month. "No hope — no hope for the future, no hope for any relief. I don't want her to do it, but I understand where she's at."
George Carson, a MAID approval doctor, indicated this week that he assessed Van Alstine and provided her with his approval. Since she has apparently also received approval from a nurse practitioner, she now requires only one more approval in order to secure a spot among the tens of thousands of Canadians who will be snuffed out in the new year by their socialist health care system, which was originally founded by the eugenicist Tommy Douglas.
MAID is among the top five leading causes of death in Canada and accounted for 4.7% of all deaths in the country in 2023.
Rebecca Vachon, health program director at the Canadian think tank Cardus, recently told Blaze News that "based on current reporting from the most populous provinces, we expect to see more than 16,500 'medical assistance in dying' or euthanasia deaths in 2024, which is an increase from the 15,343 deaths reported in 2023. This will likely result in MAID deaths constituting 5% of total deaths in Canada that year."
MAID — which Canada's Office of the Parliamentary Budget Officer boasted in October 2020 would, with expanded access, "result in a net reduction in health care costs for the provincial governments" — appears to be fast becoming a relief valve for a health care system that has come under great strain in part because of an aging population but largely because of the immigration-driven population gains overseen by the Trudeau Liberals.
'Imagine saving a woman's life for Christmas.'
Average annual immigration from 2000 to 2015 was 617,800. Under the Trudeau Liberals, average annual immigration was 1.4 million from 2016 to 2024.
As of April 1, 2025, Canada had an estimated population of just over 41.5 million people. According to the 2021 census, over 8.3 million people — 23% of the total population — "were, or had ever been, a landed immigrant or permanent resident in Canada." This, however, appears to be a gross undercount.
A new government report revealed that 38% of non-permanent residents — roughly another 576,000 — were potentially "missed" by the 2021 census.
According to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, there were 2.41 physicians per 1,000 people. The United States, by comparison, reportedly has at least 3.6 doctors per 1,000. An estimated 5.9 million Canadians — around 14% — don't have regular access to a primary care provider.
"This is your socialized health care, gang," Beck said on Wednesday of Van Alstine's case.
"This is the reality of compassionate, progressive health care. Canada has to end this insanity. And Americans must never let it spread here."
After Van Alstine's last-ditch plea for help to Canadian lawmakers and officials failed to immediately produce the desired results, an American got involved.
"If there is any surgeon in America who can do this, I'll pay for this patient to come down here for treatment," Beck wrote Tuesday on X.
RELATED: JD Vance to Canada: Stop blaming Trump for your decline
Beck revealed in a series of announcements first, that multiple surgeons reached out with an interest in helping; second, that his team made contact with Van Alstine and Sundeen; and third, that his team had connected with the U.S. State Department after discovering that Van Alstine lacked a passport to gain legal entry into the United States.
"I'll fly her down. I'll put her up. I'll get her the doctors," Beck said on his show. "We need to get her the surgery."
"Imagine saving a woman's life for Christmas," added Beck.
"Is there anything better that we could do?"
Sundeen told Canadian state media after Beck's team spoke with him, "For us to have it done in the States would be financially impossible otherwise."
An Ipsos poll conducted last year for Global News found that 42% of Canadians would travel to the U.S. and personally pay for more routine health care if needed — up 10 percentage points over the previous year — and 38% would travel to the U.S. and pay out of pocket for emergency care — up 9 points over the previous year.
Sean Simpson, vice president of Ipsos Public Affairs, noted, "I think the increase is happening because of the increasing level of frustration that Canadians have in the health care system."
"It's not the quality of care that people are upset about; it is the timely access to care, meaning wait times in emergency rooms, wait times to see specialists, to get appointments, for screening," continued Simpson. "As a result, we have a significant chunk of the population say if they can get that service elsewhere, such as the United States, they may consider doing so."
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Florida Sues 3 Trans Groomer Groups For ‘Mutilating Kids And Misleading Families’
'Defendants’ reprehensible and immoral actions capitalize on the mentaldistress of children,' the lawsuit states.Rigged report exposed: Utah review appears to defend child sex-altering drugs while ignoring sterility and sexual risk
Utah Gov. Spencer Cox (R) ratified legislation in January 2023 prohibiting health care providers from providing sex-altering surgeries or drugs to minors.
The law, which enraged gender ideologues and other non-straight activists, also required the Utah Department of Health and Human Services to conduct a "systematic review of the medical evidence regarding hormonal transgender treatments and provide recommendations to the Legislature."
The HHS' statutorily mandated review, which was completed last year then submitted in May 2025 to the legislature, painted the ruinous trans-drugs — which are also used to sterilize sex offenders — in a positive light, characterizing them as "effective."
According to a damning new report from the medical advocacy group Do No Harm, however, the Utah review — which was conducted on behalf of the HHS by the University of Utah College of Pharmacy's Drug Regimen Review Center — "is filled with falsehoods and serves as an aid to push harmful medical interventions as the answer to minors’ confusion, all while blatantly ignoring the associated risks."
'Utah legislators must not rely on a report that clearly undermines the safety and well-being of minors.'
While the executive summary for the review states that the HHS "does not take a position on whether to lift the moratorium" and the authors were not contracted to include a synthesis of the evidence they came across, the over-1,000-page review nevertheless delivers what is effectively an endorsement of sex-altering drugs for minors:
After having spent many months searching for, reading, and evaluating the available literature, it was impossible for us to avoid drawing some high-level conclusions. Namely, the consensus of the evidence supports that the treatments are effective in terms of mental health, psychosocial outcomes, and the induction of the body changes consistent with the affirmed gender in pediatric GD patients. The evidence also supports that the treatments are safe in terms of changes to bone density, cardiovascular risk factors, metabolic changes, and cancer.
Do No Harm indicated that the Utah review "deviates from established standards for systematic reviews, emphasizes the volume of evidence over its quality, relies uncritically on guidelines from self-proclaimed experts, neglects significant life-altering adverse effects, and includes input from advisers, some of whom demonstrate bias in favor of 'gender-affirming care' for minors."
RELATED: 'Not medicine — it's malpractice': Trump HHS buries child sex-change regime with damning report
Do No Harm noted, for instance, that the review glossed over some of the worst, most life-changing effects of gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonists, known as "puberty blockers," and cross-sex hormones — namely infertility, sterility, and sexual dysfunction. While admitting that "infertility is a known risk," the authors of the review didn't bother including it as an outcome of focus in their report. The risk of sexual dysfunction, meanwhile, was apparently not mentioned once.
Extra to leaning heavily on low-quality scientific literature, much of which was observational and not trial-based, the review may have also been ideologically contaminated. After all, among the advisers who consulted on the project were Nikki Mihalopoulos, chief of the division of adolescent medicine for the department of pediatrics at the University of Utah School of Medicine, and Brooks Keeshin, a professor of pediatrics at the university. Both have written positively about "gender-affirming care" for minors in recent years.
Mihalopoulos co-authored a 2021 paper that stated, "Pediatric health care providers can play a critical role in building solutions in policy and advocacy ... to improve the health of transgender/gender diverse youth. Many government entities, especially at the state and local level, actively resist efforts promoting equal rights."
Keeshin wrote in an article published last year that "as states pass adolescent bans on gender-affirming care across the country, Utah offers a potential pathway forward in restrictive states to help maintain or open access to care." Keeshin also suggested that some adolescents could benefit from radical sex-rejecting medical interventions.
Do No Harm concluded on the basis of these and other issues with the review that Utah lawmakers are better off turning to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' thorough and peer-reviewed report, which was released last month.
The federal HHS' report underscored that "the harms from sex-rejecting procedures — including puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgical operations — are significant, long-term, and too often ignored or inadequately tracked."
Michelle Havrilla, Do No Harm's director of programs, said in a statement, "This Utah Report is unreliable, unscientific, and fails to meet the standards of a systematic review."
"The Report’s inaccuracies and bias diminish its credibility and allow left-wing activists to weaponize it for their political machinations. Utah legislators must not rely on a report that clearly undermines the safety and well-being of minors," added Havrilla.
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HHS takes aim at Midwestern school that allegedly vaccinated child without parental consent
The Department of Health and Human Services' Office for Civil Rights is undertaking a nationwide campaign to protect parental rights in pediatric medicine and cracking down on those institutions that fail to provide parents with access to their children's medical records, as required by Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996.
HHS Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said in a video on Wednesday, "A parent's right to guide their child's health decisions — that right is not optional, it's non-negotiable, and under the Trump administration, it will not be ignored."
'Religious exemption rights are one aspect of true informed consent and refusal.'
It appears that HHS already has one alleged offending institution on its radar.
Kennedy indicated that his agency has launched an investigation into a "troubling incident" in the Midwest — where a school is alleged to have illegally vaccinated a child with a federally provided vaccine without the parents' consent.
According to Kennedy, the child also had a "legally recognized state exemption" for the vaccine.
"When any institution — a school, a doctor's office, a clinic — disregards a religious exemption, it doesn't just break trust; it also breaks the law," said Kennedy. "It fractures the sacred bond between families and the people entrusted with their child's care, and we are not going to tolerate it."
In the video, Kennedy did not identify the vaccine, school, or state involved in the case, and when pressed for comment by USA Today, HHS reportedly declined to provide any clues.
RELATED: FDA finally admits COVID-19 vaccine killed kids: 'This is a profound revelation'
HHS indicated that its Office for Civil Rights will determine whether the school acted in compliance with the Vaccines for Children Program requirement that conditions the federal provision of reduced-cost, public-purchased vaccines for eligible children on compliance with state religious and other exemptions from vaccine laws.
— (@)
Extra to scrutinizing the school's conduct, HHS provided a strong reminder to health care providers in a letter on Wednesday that the HIPAA privacy rule "generally gives the parent the right to access the child’s medical records as the child’s personal representative, unless one of the limited exceptions applies."
Absent limited exceptions such as in the case of children for whom health care decisions are made at the direction of a court or a person appointed by a court, HHS emphasized that "a covered entity (and, where applicable, its business associate acting on the covered entity’s behalf) may not place additional limitations on a parent’s access to the child’s medical records beyond any existing limitations in applicable law."
In September, HHS' Office for Civil Rights sent another "Dear Colleagues" letter on theme, noting that providers participating in the Vaccines for Children Program must follow state laws relating to religious and other exemptions to vaccination laws.
"The Vaccines for Children Program should never circumvent parents' rights," CDC acting Director Jim O'Neill said of the latest initiative on the part of the HHS. "Secretary Kennedy’s decision to probe potential abuse of the VFC is a necessary step in restoring public trust in immunization policy."
Children's Health Defense, which was chaired by Kennedy from 2015 to 2023, lauded the initiative.
Mary Holland, president and CEO of CHD, said in a statement, "CHD strongly supports the right to informed consent and informed refusal of all medical interventions — this is the essence of what the Nuremberg Code stands for."
"That document was the antidote to the medical atrocities of World War II," continued Holland. "Religious exemption rights are one aspect of true informed consent and refusal — whether that ‘informed’ nature comes from religion or science or wherever else."
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FDA warns Americans in 31 states about dangerous elements that may be in their shredded cheese
The Food and Drug Administration is warning consumers to ensure that their shredded cheese products are not contaminated with metal fragments.
According to an FDA enforcement report, Ohio-based Great Lakes Cheese Co. — which touts itself as "an award-winning, premier manufacturer and packager of natural and processed bulk, shredded, and sliced cheeses" — initiated a recall on Oct. 3.
'Wrap it securely before putting it in the trash.'
On Dec. 1, the FDA classified the recall as Class II, which describes "a situation in which use of, or exposure to, a violative product may cause temporary or medically reversible adverse health consequences or where the probability of serious adverse health consequences is remote."
There are three classes of recall. A Class II designation is the second-most serious. The most serious, Class I, concerns situations when there is a reasonable probability that the use or exposure to a problematic product will cause adverse health consequences or death.
While Great Lake Cheese Co. made the potentially contaminated shredded cheeses, they were sold by various brands including Always Save, Borden, Brookshire's, Econo, Food Club, Happy Farms, Laura Lynn, Publix, Simply Go, Stater Bros. Markets, and Sunnyside Farms.
The bulk of the recalled cheeses were low-moisture part-skim shredded mozzarella — 235,789 cases — but a number of Italian-style and pizza-style shredded cheese blends, such as Simply Go Italian Style Six Cheese Blend, have also been recalled.
The cheeses are customarily sold at big stores such as Aldi, Target, and Walmart.
The recalled cheese was distributed to Puerto Rico and the following states: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Minnesota, Missouri, Mississippi, North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, Nevada, New York, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Virginia, Washington, and Wisconsin.
Great Lakes Cheese Co. did not respond to Blaze News' request for comment.
The FDA notes on its website that consumers who suspect that they have a recalled food in their possession can generally return the items to the store where they were purchased for a full refund. The agency urges consumers not to give the potentially contaminated product to others such as a food bank or a pet and noted that if chucking the recalled product, consumers should "wrap it securely before putting it in the trash."
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Do birth control pills make women all think the same?
Could hormonal birth control be turning women into NPCs?
That’s “non-player characters,” by the way. You may remember the meme, which reached the height of its popularity a few years ago and has largely disappeared now.
Only now, many decades after it was unleashed on the world, are we starting to understand hormonal contraception’s effects more fully.
The NPC is a person who lacks any kind of unique identity. Who they are is completely determined by their social circumstances and by the values and information fed to them by a narrow range of approved sources: the government, scientists and “experts,” the mainstream media, Hollywood and Netflix, handpicked celebrities and influencers.
The NPC exercises no independent judgment, no free-thinking of their own. They simply do as they’re told, and they get very angry if you don’t do the same.
The NPC is represented by a special Wojak — a cartoon person — with grey skin and generic facial features: pindot eyes, a semi-triangle nose, and a horizontal line for a mouth.
During the pandemic, for example, the NPC meme was used to mock everyone who chose to “trust the science” unquestioningly. It was also widely used in Donald Trump’s first presidency to describe devotees of the mainstream media who repeated its various platitudes and mantras ad infinitum — “orange man bad,” “diversity is our strength,” and so on.
That sync-ing feeling
A new study suggests that hormonal birth control reduces the “functional individuality” of women’s brains, making them more alike with one another. Making women NPCs, in other words.
Researchers analyzed the brain activity of 26 users by means of MRI scans. They looked in particular at something called “functional connectome fingerprinting,” a method of identifying patterns of brain connectivity that are distinct to each person.
They found that while each woman’s brain patterns remained identifiable, the overall distinctiveness of those patterns was reduced by hormonal birth control.
In basic terms, there was a general “dampening” or “normalizing” effect on the brain as a whole.
The changes affected certain networks more than others, though: networks involved in executive function, muscle control, perception and attention, and the so-called “default mode network,” which is active during various kinds of introspection, including daydreaming, thinking about oneself and others, remembering the past, and planning for the future.
The default-mode network is central to the creation of an “inner self” and a coherent “internal narrative.”
In other words, a distinct identity.
RELATED: Time for RFK Jr. to expose the dark truth about the pill
Mood for thought
In truth, I might have been exaggerating just a little bit when I said birth control could be turning women into NPCs. Yes, we’ve seen changes in particular regions of the brain that are associated with particular functions, but the researchers didn’t investigate the actual effects of these changes — I’ve simply inferred what they might be.
The researchers did note evidence that the changes were associated with increases in negative moods, which many of the participants recorded, but we can’t say much more than that, at least not yet.
What we need is more research. This might look at direct evidence of the effects of hormonal birth control on female behavior, preferences, and character: things like individual decision-making processes and personality traits like conformity.
Brainsplaining
There are plenty of studies that already do that kind of thing with hormones, especially testosterone. Some have shown that a dose of testosterone will make a man more likely to stand up for himself and defend a minority opinion, even in the face of disapproval from the majority. Studies have also shown that testosterone makes men more comfortable with inequality and hierarchy, which is usually couched as an “antisocial effect,” but when you remember that virtually every society in history has been hierarchical, except our own — at least in principle — that doesn’t really make much sense.
Still, we have every reason to be concerned about the effects of hormonal birth control on women’s brains and their behavior. As the study notes, more than 150 million women worldwide use hormonal birth control, and if it is changing the way their brains work, that obviously could mean significant effects in the aggregate, with the potential to touch more or less every aspect of life, from personal relationships to politics.
Retrograde research
Of course, this is a controversial stance to take, even as evidence mounts. The drug makers don’t want to lose money if women stop taking hormonal birth control, and the champions of “liberation” don’t want women to stop either. The entire sexual revolution was kickstarted by the pill, and “equality” as we understand it is predicated on women having total conscious control over their bodies.
Anybody who says women shouldn’t take hormonal birth control, or just that they should think carefully before they do, is immediately denounced as retrograde, sexist, or, as we’ve seen with recent viral social-media trends, a purveyor of dangerous “medical misinformation.” And that includes women who’ve been on hormonal birth control themselves and quit, and female medical professionals like Dr. Sarah Hill, the author of the very well-reasoned and evidenced book, “This Is Your Brain on Birth Control.”
My new book, “The Last Men: Liberalism and the Death of Masculinity,” is a call to get serious about the effects of hormones on politics. Deadly serious. Testosterone, in particular, is rapidly disappearing, in large part because we’ve created a world that’s reliant on thousands of chemicals and substances that mimic the “female” hormone estrogen. We had created that world long before we even knew what many of those chemicals are, let alone what they do to us.
The same is true of hormonal contraception. Only now, many decades after it was unleashed on the world, are we starting to understand its effects more fully, having built a world that is reliant upon it to function.
Our hormonal interventions remain clumsy and short-sighted. In truth, we’ve not come all that far from the first bright spark who decided to lop off a bull’s testicles to bring it under control. In that first brutal act, endocrinology — the science of hormones — was born, a science still very much in its infancy.
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