The Meeting at Jekyll Island

History 10 Minutes

November 20, 1910–November 30, 1910

In November 1910, six men – Nelson Aldrich, A. Piatt Andrew, Henry Davison, Arthur Shelton, Frank Vanderlip and Paul Warburg – met at the Jekyll Island Club, off the coast of Georgia, to write a plan to reform the nation’s banking system. The meeting and its purpose were closely guarded secrets, and participants did not admit that the meeting occurred until the 1930s. But the plan written on Jekyll Island laid a foundation for what would eventually be the Federal Reserve System.

The Need for Reform

At the time, the men who met on Jekyll Island believed the banking system suffered from serious problems. The Jekyll Island participants’ views on this issue are well known, since before and after their conclave several spoke publicly and others published extensively on the topic. Collectively, they encapsulated their concerns in the plan they wrote on Jekyll Island and in the reports of the National Monetary Commission.

Like many Americans, these men were concerned with financial panics, which had disrupted economic activity in the United States periodically during the nineteenth century. Nationwide panics occurred on average every fifteen years. These panics forced financial institutions to suspend operations, triggering long and deep recessions. American banks held large required reserves of cash, but these reserves were scattered throughout the nation, held in the vaults of thousands of banks or as deposits in financial institutions in designated reserve and central reserve cities. During crises, they became frozen in place, preventing them from being used to alleviate the situation. During booms, banks’ excess reserves tended to flow toward big cities, especially New York, where bankers invested them in call loans, which were loans repayable on demand to brokers. The brokers in turn loaned the funds to investors speculating in equity markets, whose stock purchases served as collateral for the transactions. This American system made bank reserves immobile and equity markets volatile, a recipe for financial instability.

In Europe, in contrast, bankers invested much of their portfolio in short-term loans to merchants and manufacturers. This commercial paper directly financed commerce and industry while providing banks with assets that they could quickly convert to cash during a crisis. These loans remained liquid for several reasons. First, borrowers paid financial institutions – typically banks with which they had long-standing relationships – to guarantee repayment in case the borrowers could not meet their financial obligations. Second, the loans funded merchandise in the process of production and sale and that merchandise served as collateral should borrowers default. The Jekyll Island participants also worried about the inelastic supply of currency in the United States. The value of the dollar was linked to gold, and the quantity of currency available was linked to the supply of a special series of federal government bonds. The supply of currency neither expanded nor contracted with seasonal changes in demands for cash, such as the fall harvest or the holiday shopping season, causing interest rates to vary substantially from one month to the next. The inelastic supply of currency and limited supplies of gold also contributed to long and painful deflations.

Furthermore, Jekyll Island participants believed that an array of antiquated arrangements impeded America’s financial and economic progress. For example, American banks could not operate overseas. Thus, American merchants had to finance imports and exports through financial houses in Europe, principally London. American banks also struggled to collectively clear checks outside the boundaries of a single city. This increased costs of inter-city and interstate commerce and required risky and expensive remittances of cash over long distances.

In an article published in the New York Times in 1907, Paul Warburg, a successful, German-born financier who was a partner at the investment bank Kuhn, Loeb, and Co. and widely regarded as an expert on the banking systems in the United States and Europe, wrote that the United States’ financial system was “at about the same point that had been reached by Europe at the time of the Medicis, and by Asia, in all likelihood, at the time of Hammurabi” (Warburg 1907). 

Just months after Warburg wrote those words, the country was struck by the Panic of 1907. The panic galvanized the US Congress, particularly Republican senator Nelson Aldrich, the chair of the Senate Finance Committee. In 1908, Aldrich sponsored a bill with Republican representative Edward Vreeland that, among other things, created the National Monetary Commission to study reforms to the financial system. Aldrich quickly hired several advisers to the commission, including Henry Davison, a partner at J.P. Morgan, and A. Piatt Andrew, an economics professor at Harvard University. Over the next two years, they studied banking and financial systems extensively and visited Europe to meet with bankers and central bankers.

The Duck Hunt

By the fall of 1910, Aldrich was persuaded of the necessity of a central bank for the United States. With Congress ready to begin meeting in just a few weeks, Aldrich — most likely at Davison’s suggestion — decided to convene a small group to help him synthesize all he had learned and write down a proposal to establish a central bank.

The group included Aldrich; his private secretary Arthur Shelton; Davison; Andrew (who by 1910 had been appointed assistant Treasury secretary); Frank Vanderlip, president of National City Bank and a former Treasury official; and Warburg.

A member of the exclusive Jekyll Island Club, most likely J.P. Morgan, arranged for the group to use the club’s facilities. Founded in 1886, the club’s membership boasted elites such as Morgan, Marshall Field, and William Kissam Vanderbilt I, whose mansion-sized “cottages” dotted the island. Munsey’s Magazine described it in 1904 as “the richest, the most exclusive, the most inaccessible” club in the world.

Aldrich and Davison chose the attendees for their expertise, but Aldrich knew their ties to Wall Street could arouse suspicion about their motives and threaten the bill’s political passage. So he went to great lengths to keep the meeting secret, adopting the ruse of a duck hunting trip and instructing the men to come one at a time to a train terminal in New Jersey, where they could board his private train car. Once aboard, the men used only first names – Nelson, Harry, Frank, Paul, Piatt, and Arthur – to prevent the staff from learning their identities. For decades after, the group referred to themselves as the “First Name Club.”

An additional member of the First Name Club was Benjamin Strong, vice president of the Bankers Trust Company and the future founding chief executive officer (then called governor, now called president) of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. But it is unlikely Strong attended the meeting on Jekyll Island. In his autobiography, Vanderlip recalls him attending, but no other account indicates Strong’s presence. Most scholars and journalists who have written about the issue, including Bertie Charles (B.C.) Forbes — the founder of Forbes magazine and the journalist who first revealed the meetings in an article in 1916 — have concluded Strong did not attend (Forbes 1916). Strong had worked closely with the Jekyll Island attendees in other venues, however, and his ideas were certainly present at the meeting even if he was not there in person. After the meeting, as the First Name Club revised the plan and prepared it for publication, Strong was frequently consulted and according to Forbes, “joined the ‘First-Name Club’ as ‘Ben’” (Forbes 1922).

The Plan Takes Shape

Aldrich and his colleagues quickly realized that while they agreed on some broad principles — establishing an elastic currency supplied by a bank that held the reserves of all banks — they disagreed on details. Figuring out those details was a “desperately trying undertaking,” in Warburg’s words. Completely secluded, the men woke up early and worked late into the night for more than a week. “We had disappeared from the world onto a deserted island,” Vanderlip recalled in his autobiography. “We put in the most intense period of work that I have ever had.”

By the end of their time on Jekyll Island, Aldrich and his colleagues had developed a plan for a Reserve Association of America, a single central bank with fifteen branches across the country. Each branch would be governed by boards of directors elected by the member banks in each district, with larger banks getting more votes. The branches would be responsible for holding the reserves of their member banks; issuing currency; discounting commercial paper; transferring balances between branches; and check clearing and collection. The national body would set discount rates for the system as a whole and buy and sell securities.

Shortly after returning home, Aldrich became ill and was unable to write the group’s final report. So Vanderlip and Strong traveled to Washington to get the plan ready for Congress. Aldrich presented it to the National Monetary Commission in January 1911 without telling the commission members how the plan had been developed. A final report, along with legislative text, went to Congress a year later with a few minor changes, including naming the new institution the National Reserve Association.

In a letter accompanying the report, the Commission said it had created an institution “scientific in its method, and democratic in its control.” But many people, especially Democrats, objected to the version of democracy it presented, which could have allowed the largest banks to exert outsized influence on the central bank’s leadership. With a presidential election coming up, the Democrats made repudiating the Aldrich plan a part of their platform. When Woodrow Wilson won the presidency and the Democrats took control of both houses, Aldrich’s National Reserve Association appeared to be shelved.

Leaders of the Democratic Party, however, also were interested in reform, including President Wilson and the chairs of the House and Senate Committees on Banking and Currency, Carter Glass and Robert Owen, respectively. Glass and Owen both introduced proposals to form a central banking system based on draft legislation supported by Wilson. Glass, Owen, and their staffs directly consulted with Warburg, whose technical expertise was respected by Democratic and Republican politicians alike. Wilson’s chief political adviser, Col. E. M. House, met and corresponded with Warburg to discuss banking reform in general and the Glass and Owen plans in particular. So did William McAdoo and Henry Morgenthau, senior political and policy advisers to Wilson who served in his administration. Morgenthau assured Warburg “that he sent his copy of the [January 10, 1913] memorandum to President Wilson” (Warburg 1930, p. 90). Together, these ideas formed the basis of the final Federal Reserve Act, which Congress passed and the president signed in December 1913. The technical details of the final bill closely resembled those of the Aldrich Plan. The major differences were the political and decision-making structures, which was a compromise acceptable to both the progressive and populist wings of the Democratic Party.

Postscript

B.C. Forbes somehow learned about the Jekyll Island trip and wrote about it in 1916 in an article published in Leslie’s Weekly (October 19, 1916 p. 423), which was recapitulated a few months later in an article in the magazine Current Opinion. In 1917, Forbes again described the meeting in Men Who Are Making America, a collection of short biographies of prominent entrepreneurs, including Davison, Vanderlip, and Warburg. Not many people noticed the revelation, and those who did dismissed it as “a mere yarn,” according to Aldrich’s biographer.

The participants themselves denied the meeting had occurred for twenty years, until the publication of Aldrich’s biography in 1930. The impetus for coming clean was probably the publication in 1927 of Carter Glass’s memoir, An Adventure in Constructive Finance. In it, Glass, by now a senator, claimed credit for the key ideas in the Federal Reserve Act, which prompted the Jekyll Island participants to reveal their roles in creating the Federal Reserve.

Warburg was especially critical of Glass’s description of events. In 1930, he published a two-volume book describing the origins of the Fed, including a line-by-line comparison of the Aldrich bill and the Glass-Owen bill to prove their similarity. In the introduction, he wrote, “I had gone to California for a three months’ rest when the appearance of a series of articles written by Senator Glass…impelled me to lay down in black and white my recollections of certain events in the history of banking reform.” Warburg’s book does not mention Jekyll Island specifically, although he states that

“In November, 1910, I was invited to join a small group of men who, at Senator Aldrich’s request, were to take part in a several days’ conference with him, to discuss the form that the new banking bill should take. … when the conference closed … the rough draft of what later became the Aldrich Bill had been agreed upon … The results of the conference were entirely confidential. Even the fact that there had been a meeting was not permitted to become public. … Though eighteen years have gone by, I do not feel free to give a description of this most interesting conference concerning which Senator Aldrich pledged all participants to secrecy. I understand, however, a history of Senator Aldrich’s life … will contain an authorized account to of this episode” (Warburg 1930, pp. 58-60).

Disagreements over authorship of the Federal Reserve Act received widespread publicity in the late 1920s. Glass defended his claim for the lion’s share of the credit in speeches, in his book, and in submissions to prominent publications including the New York Evening Post and the New York Times. Critics responded in similar venues and academic journals. For example, Samuel Untermyer, former counsel to the House Committee on Banking and Currency, published a pamphlet titled “Who is Entitled to the Credit for the Federal Reserve Act? An Answer to Senator Carter Glass,” in which he asserted that Glass’s claims of primary authorship were “fiction,” “fable,” and a “work of imagination” (Untermyer 1927). In 1914, Edwin Seligman, a prominent professor at Columbia University, wrote that “in its fundamental features the Federal Reserve Act is the work of Mr. Warburg more than of any other man.” In 1927, Seligman and Glass debated this point in a series of letters published in the New York Times.

The Jekyll Island Club never bounced back from the Great Depression, when many of its members resigned, and it closed in 1942. Today, its former clubhouse and cottages are National Historic Landmarks. But the debates at and about the conference on Jekyll Island remain relevant today.

Source: federalreservehistory.org

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Published by pat frederick

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102 thoughts on “The Meeting at Jekyll Island”

  5. Morning All

    it is freaking -10* here this morning!

    the pipes under the kitchen sink froze even though hubby left the water dripping last night. For some reason that little section of pipes has always been vulnerable. we agreed this morning to have a plumber look at them in the spring.

    Liked by 1 person

    1. Morning, Pat! I’ve got 35 on my thermometer this morning – this, too, will change soon enough! Wheezer was waiting.

      You might try some pipe wrap – no need for a plumber and this would probably be a lot cheaper:

      https://redfordsupply.com/products/redford-supply-co-2-pack-cold-snap-pipe-insulation-tape-weather-resistant-water-pipe-wrap-tape-outdoor-water-pipe-insulation-wrap-insulation-tape-for-water-pipes-pipe-wrap-insulation

      https://www.walmart.com/ip/VEVOR-Self-Regulating-Pipe-Heating-Cable-18-feet-5W-ft-Heat-Tape-Pipes-Freeze-Protection-Protects-PVC-Hose-Metal-Plastic-Freezing-120V/1690792629

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Morning Filly!
        we tried that the first time it froze. there is not enough clearance between the pipe and the concrete walls. we need a plumber to reconfigure the setup to bring the pipes out further so we can use that kind of stuff.

        Liked by 1 person

          1. when i worked for the borough , they managed a trailer park and they had those pipe wraps available for their tenants. the borough guys told me about them and I bought one at Lowe’s. that’s when we discovered the insufficient clearance.
            usually if we leave the water drip in the kitchen sink, we’re okay–it doesn’t freeze. but this was extremely cold last evening and that wasn’t enough.

            Liked by 1 person

  9. Nebraska governor hospitalized after fall from horse

    FTA

    Nebraska Gov. Jim Pillen is hospitalized after he was bucked off a new horse Sunday. 

    The accident happened when the 68-year-old was out with his family. 

    Pillen was taken to a hospital in Columbus, Nebraska, and then transported to the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, where he is expected to stay for several days. 

    The governor’s office did not release details on Pillen’s injuries, but said he is conscious and alert. 

    Pillen was elected governor in 2022. Before becoming governor, he worked as a veterinarian and owned a livestock operation.

    https://www.fox4news.com/news/nebraska-governor-horse-fall-accident-bucket-jim-pillen

    Liked by 1 person

        1. Ah, good! Yeah, Xmas day isn’t the best day to go since most stores won’t even be open. I usually make my Norfolk trip on the day I get my SS but since that’s Xmas day this year and WM & HyVee close all their stores, I’ll be waiting this one out.

          Liked by 1 person

  13. Just The News: “A unanimous ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court may pave the way for challenges to a federal deportation plan under the incoming Trump administration to be defeated.

    The ruling was issued in a “sham marriage” case after an American citizen applied with the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) to obtain a visa for her noncitizen Palestinian husband to receive permanent legal residence status.

    Under the law, USCIS “shall … approve” a visa petition if it’s been determined “that the facts stated in the petition are true” and the noncitizen is the petitioner’s spouse. If the noncitizen previously sought or received an immigration benefit “by reason of a marriage determined by the Attorney General to have been entered into for the purpose of evading the immigration laws” – known as the sham-marriage bar – USCIS is required to deny it.

    The petition was initially approved but two years later was revoked because USCIS argued there was “evidence suggesting that her husband had previously entered into a marriage for the purpose of evading immigration laws,” which the couple denied.

    The Board of Immigration Appeals affirmed the revocation, affirming that USCIS’s determination that the husband had entered into a prior sham marriage that would have prevented the initial visa approval.

    The couple sued, a federal district court dismissed the case, arguing federal courts don’t have jurisdiction over certain discretionary agency decisions. The couple appealed and the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the lower court’s decision. The case was appealed to the Supreme Court, which in a 9-0 vote affirmed both lower court rulings.

    “Section 1155 is a quintessential grant of discretion,” Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in the decision. “The Secretary ‘may’ revoke a previously approved visa petition ‘at any time’ for what the Secretary deems ‘good and sufficient cause.’ Congress did not impose specific criteria or conditions limiting this authority, nor did it prescribe how or when the Secretary must act.”

    The ruling was issued after the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that the federal government has the authority to deport illegal foreign nationals over the objection of local authorities, The Center Square reported.

    In June, the Supreme Court also ruled in favor of federal deportation policies in three consolidated cases on appeal before the Fifth and Ninth circuits, where the courts issued conflicting rulings.

    The lawsuits were brought by illegal foreign nationals deemed “inadmissible” under federal law and given Notice to Appear (NTA) documents stating they must appear before an immigration court at a future date and time. Each of the plaintiffs didn’t show up to their hearings, and federal immigration judges ordered their removal in absentia in accordance with federal law established by Congress.

    The illegal foreign nationals sued, demanded their removal orders be rescinded, claimed they didn’t receive proper written notification, challenged the definitions of the word “change” in the order they received, and made other technical arguments.

    The petitioners, illegal border crossers from El Salvador, India and Mexico, demanded they had rights to stay despite court orders requiring their deportation. In a 5-4 ruling, the Supreme Court disagreed, ruling against them.

    The ruling established precedent for potential future cases that could be brought after the Biden administration began issuing NTAs with court dates three to four years in the future, The Center Square first reported. The ruling could also have a bearing on roughly 200,000 deportation cases that were thrown out by immigration judges because the Department of Homeland Security didn’t file paperwork with the courts in time for scheduled hearings.

    The rulings are likely to have the most impact on those who attempt to fight a deportation plan by the incoming Trump administration to reverse a policy through which the Biden administration released millions of illegal foreign nationals into the country contrary to federal law.”

    Liked by 1 person

  14. Just The News: “A new report based on data from the U.S. Department of Justice suggests that crimes committed by illegal migrants cost U.S. taxpayers at least $166.5 billion, and the severity of those crimes greatly exceeds that of typical American norms. 

    The report was written by Dr. John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center and is based on data from the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice (NIJ), according to The Tennessee Star. 

    In September, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) revealed in a letter to U.S. Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, that as of July 21, 2024, there are 662,566 illegal migrants with criminal histories on the Non-Detained Docket (NDD), which means they are living freely in this country.

    Of the 662,566 illegal migrants, a total of 435,719 on the docket – more than 65 percent – are documented to have criminal convictions in their home countries while another 226,847 have pending criminal charges, according to the outlet. 

    FBI crime statistics show that in 2023 the rate of convicted killers in the NDD alone is more than 13 times that of the rate of reported homicides when compared to American crimes.

    Out of the total crimes committed by the migrants on the docket, 14,944 – or 2.25 percent – are homicides; 20,061 are sexual assaults, 105,146 are assaults, 126,343 are traffic offenses, and 60,268 are burglaries, larcenies, or robberies, according to Dr. Lott’s research.

    The financial cost of crimes committed by the illegal aliens on the NDD is estimated at $166.5 billion, with the largest share of $153.8 billion coming from murder, according to Lott’s report.  

    “The estimate of over $160 billion in costs from criminal illegal aliens is very likely an underestimate of the true costs. It assumes the average criminal coming into the country commits only one offense similar to what he committed in his home country. We are also not counting the costs of half of criminal illegal aliens,” Lott wrote.”

    Liked by 1 person

  15. Just The News: “A truck driver fleeing police plowed into a Texas mall teeming with holiday shoppers Saturday night, injuring five before he was fatally shot by officers.

    The incident at the Killeen Mall, about an hour north of the Texas capital of Austin, occurred just a day after a Saudi doctor drove his vehicle into a German Christmas market, killing at least five and injuring scores in a terror attack.

    Texas Department of Public Safety Sgt. Bryan Washko said the Killeen incident involved a suspected drunk driver who crashed through the front glass doors of a JCPenny and continued driving inside the store as he struck several shoppers. The injured ranged in age from 75 years old to six years old.

    “The trooper and the Killeen police officer continued on foot after this vehicle, which was driving through the store actively running people over. He traveled several hundred yards” before the officers shot him, Washko explained.  

    “Thankfully he was stopped when he was, because it could have been so much worse,” Washko said. “This mall is pretty busy this time of year.”

    The identity of the suspect was not immediately released.”

    Liked by 1 person

  16. I’m seriously beginning to wonder about Gaetz!!! That draft report is NOT good!!! He appears to have been a very, very bad rich boy!!!

    Just The News: “Former GOP Rep. Matt Gaetz filed a legal suit Monday to try to stop the House Ethics Committee from releasing a report on him. 

    Gaetz is making a last-minute attempt to stop the official release of the report, following Just the News and other news outlets publishing a draft of the report. 

    The draft reports show substantial evidence that Gaetz violated House rules or Florida state laws that prohibit prostitution, statutory rape, illicit drug use, impermissible gifts, special favors or privileges and obstruction of Congress.

    Gaetz, of Florida, resigned from Congress last month.”

    Liked by 1 person

    1. he was investigated by the doj who exonerated him however…if they could have filed charges, they would have.
      AND with that ethics committee report? he was NOT allowed to rebut “witnesses” or their stories nor was he allowed to present his side.

      Liked by 1 person

      1. Even so….it’s plain to see he was a rich playboy and yes, he was “paying for” sex. I never, ever took cash from any of the men I was dating nor did I insist on expensive dinners or entertainment. How much $$$ they made was irrelevant. IMO, it does speak to a lack of ethics on his part. Then again, men have always kind of paid for it by wining and dining the fair ladies in order to get ahead. Many women expected that and wouldn’t date men who weren’t lavish in their attentions. Some would say there’s not much difference.

        Liked by 1 person

  17. “Hammer Down: Incoming Trump PressSec Shares Day 1 Executive Order Plans on Energy, Immigration”

    Red State, By Ward Clark | 5:31 PM on December 22, 2024

    Brandon Bell/Pool via AP

    “Never let it be said that Donald Trump doesn’t know how to hit the ground running. Since the election, he’s done everything to effectively take over the presidency from the befuddled old Joe Biden; he’s talking with world leaders, he’s putting his team together, he’s letting all the right people (like Christopher Wray) know to expect pink slips on January 20th. He’s doing everything but actually sleeping in the White House, and that’s coming soon enough. (Besides, Mar-a-Lago, also known these days as the Southern White House, is probably more comfortable anyway.)

    On Sunday, President-elect (*Acting* president) Trump’s future press secretary Karoline Leavitt gave us some insights as to what orders the incoming president will issue on Day One – and it’s an ambitious list.

    Leavitt joined Fox News’s “Sunday Morning Futures,” where she outlined what can be expected from Trump’s first day in office next month.

    “He will use the power of his pen to deliver on many of the promises he made to the American people on the campaign trail to secure our southern border, to fast-track permits for fracking, for drilling, and to also take executive action to stop some of the transgender insanity that we have seen take over this country,” Leavitt said.

    Host Maria Bartiromo pressed Leavitt on what immigration-related executive action Trump plans to take.

    “Well, securing the southern border, perhaps looking at Title 42. Many of these executive actions are still being considered by our policy teams and also our lawyers,” she said.

    This is encouraging; the Trump team is clearly setting priorities and making plans. The plan is obviously to hit it hard that first day and to keep the momentum up after that. A big part of the Day One plan appears to be on immigration, which was after all a major campaign item for Donald Trump.

    As mentioned on the campaign trail, the president-elect plans to conduct a mass deportation of undocumented migrants, though experts are wondering if such an effort would be feasible and what the economic impacts would be.

    “President Trump is also going to launch the largest mass deportation of illegal criminals in American history,” Leavitt said. “He can do that immediately by empowering federal and local law enforcement to work together to identify, to detain, and to deport these illegal criminals that we know are roaming freely in our country.”

    The Executive branch indeed has broad powers over immigration and the border – not unlimited, mind you, but broad. President-elect Trump already has the right man to oversee this, that being new Border Czar Tom “The Hammer” Homan. 

    Any long-term fixes, though, will take legislation – such as ending the perfectly ridiculous idea of birthright citizenship applied so broadly that an illegal alien can take two steps into the United States and deliver a baby, which infant is immediately a U.S. citizen by dint of having been dropped on American magic dirt.

    President Trump can, though, in his second term, and on that first day, start by repealing all of befuddled old Joe Biden’s executive orders – and that’s something worth doing in and of itself. Team Trump is making a list and checking it twice, and in less than a month now, we’ll all be seeing what’s on that list.”

    Liked by 1 person

  18. “JUST IN: Parents at @WestoshaCHS in Wisconsin are outraged after learning that a boy identifying as a girl was reportedly using the girls’ locker room to change, often exposing his pnis and testcles to girls. He also allegedly assaulted a girl when she told him to “put his d*ck away.”

    After complaints, the boy was allegedly told not to enter the girls’ locker room but he has since ignored that directive. This comes after Kenosha Unified School District voted to allow boys in girls’ locker rooms.”

    https://x.com/libsoftiktok/status/1870226993586831558

    EXCERPT: “Several parents of female students have contacted KCE with a very serious concern. According to allegations shared with KCE by multiple sources:

    A boy has been using the girls’ locker room to change at Westosha Central High School. He stares at the young girls while they change and that makes them feel very uncomfortable. Some of the girls began to use the stalls to change. When they would exit, the boy would be exposing his penis and rubbing himself with lotion. He claimed to the girls that the lotion was to “prevent chafing.”

    The boy changes in the full nude, often exposing his penis and testicles. Many girls, some or most which are freshmen, approached the gym teacher, Miranda Hopkins. Hopkins told the girls that the boy “identifies” as a girl, so they have to let him have access. (Miranda is of no relation to a local school board member and teacher, Brian Hopkins, nor his father, Salem Lakes Trustee Bill Hopkins.)

    There is a family locker room in the school that the girls starting using, but Hopkins told the girls they can’t use it and to stop “stirring up drama.” The girls then stopped changing in the locker room and went to gym class without the proper gym clothes on. The school punished them by marking down their grades and handing out “unexcused absences.”

    Multiple parents have called the school multiple times and the school leadership finally called seemingly tried to address the issue. The girls were told that the boy is no longer allowed in the female locker room, but they say he isn’t listening to that directive.

    One girl was allegedly assaulted by this boy as she told him to “put [his] dick away,” and he pushed the girl. He was suspended for this violence and/or smashing a chromebook in a fit of rage against another student. Some students have told school staff that the boy has threatened to “shoot up the school”, but they say the teachers laughed it off and told the students not to be “dramatic.”….”

    https://kenoshacountyeye.com/2024/12/19/parents-of-female-students-outraged-after-boy-parades-around-girls-locker-room-naked-exposing-himself-at-westosha-central-high-school/

    Liked by 1 person

      1. Oh, not me after I was adopted; and before that, I was the meekest of the 3 of us – my brother was sassy enough for all of us! I just scowled a lot or cried – I was, after all, the baby and little. After I was adopted, I got slapped in the face if I sighed too deeply! So I learned to keep my mouth firmly shut early on! Once I was an adult and free? Oh, yeah – all hell broke loose! ALL those years of stifling myself just exploded.

        Liked by 1 person

  23. NF: I never saw the clip before either but then, in 2008 I wasn’t paying any attention to politics.

    https://www.wsj.com/politics/biden-white-house-age-function-diminished-3906a839

    Our Take: Biden is still supposed to be president, right? Is it weird that his aides and cabinet members would admit their treasonous plot before he leaves office, or are they setting up the story for their own pardons?

    Also, if the president is “diminished,” can he issue pardons?

    “Diminished” is an understatement based on some of the details in this article. Consider that Biden:

    • …had aides acting as nurse maids, constantly repeating basic instructions, like event flows and stage direction.
    • …was known to speak from notecards, but also gave prepared questions to guests at donor events! Asking for money from people while refusing to allow them to ask their own questions is wild.
    • …deferred meetings with cabinet members to his senior staff, and only held nine full cabinet meetings during his residency, compared to Obama’s 18 and Trump’s 25.
    • …was not the clear decision maker, with policy decisions filtered through senior staff which frustrated cabinet members and drove ambiguity and confusion about the administration’s direction.
    • …perhaps the most egregious, administration officials, including SecDef, were unable to reach Biden during the Afghanistan withdrawal.

    Also, check this out:

    [video of Biden saying it will take a year to get troops out; if they leave the equipment behind, maybe 7 mos; then they'll use that equipment against us in the future]:

    https://www.c-span.org/program/campaign-2008/biden-campaign-event/179743

    I never saw that clip before.

    Of course, those of us not attempting to spin this story into plausible deniability or a pardon know that Biden was “diminished” back in the 2020 campaign. We asked questions about it then, and all these people lied to us, deplatformed and dehumanized us.

    They lied to everyone. While lying to us, they told us Donald Trump was the greatest threat to democracy, as a justification for weaponizing the government. Then they arrested parents at school board meetings and threw lawfare at anyone who questioned elections or wars or emergency powers or Biden’s cognitive abilities.

    I’m going to ask this again, because I think it’s important: If the president is “diminished,” can he issue pardons? No deals.” — Ashe in America

    Liked by 1 person

  24. ‘A dumpster fire, wrapped up in a cluster’: Inside the chaos of Justin Trudeau’s Ottawa

    Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s week started with a crisis his opponents likened to a “gong show at the bottom of a dumpster fire, wrapped up in a cluster.”

    Canada’s three-term prime minister managed to make it to Friday when he announced a Cabinet shakeup triggered in part by the bombshell exit of Chrystia Freeland, who quit Monday as head of finance and deputy prime minister.

    Trudeau spent the week holed up in his office, except for appearances at a couple of high-profile holiday parties where he sounded defiant and upbeat.

    “It is the absolute privilege of my life to serve as your prime minister,” he told a gathering of his top donors on Monday — just 30 minutes after an emergency caucus meeting where MPs urged him to step down.

    His office canceled year-end interviews and his press team ignored most media questions while Trudeau contemplated his next moves.

    “We have a lot of work to do and that’s what we’re focused on,” he said after blowing by journalists after a Cabinet meeting later Friday afternoon.

    Parliament does not return until Jan. 27 — days after Donald Trump’s inauguration. In theory, Trudeau has time to consider his options, but realistically he’s running out of time.

    He could stick around to fight the next election, which could come sooner rather than later in 2025. Once MPs are back in their seats, opposition leader Jagmeet Singh has vowed to bring down the minority government with a no-confidence vote. — Politico

    Our Take: Trump’s Art of the Deal is based on Sun Tzu’s Art of War.

    This isn’t some grand revelation for anons, but it is worth remembering when it comes to his recent narrative deployments, specifically with regards to pending allies and enemies ahead of the second (public) term.

    The reason I use the word ‘deployment’ where it concerns Trump’s narratives is because they take on tactical & strategic significance when you understand that we’re in the midst of a fifth-generation war for influence over the Collective Mind, which is key to winning the public mandate to reforge the United States into a grand Republic worthy of recognition.

    Lately, Trump’s deal-making has been on full display on both sides of the border, across the oceans and reaching several continents, and it’s all happening before he’s stepped back into office, demonstrating the power projection capabilities inherent in being a man who does the things he says he’s going to.

    Up north, Justin Castro is in the midst of a Trump-provoked death spiral, as Globalist America hawks circle his waning administration while the Canadian media apparatchiks search for their next faux dictator.

    South, Claudia Sheinbaum is being forced to take the fight to the cartels on Trump’s de facto orders, while Panama shudders at the thought of the US taking back one of the world’s premier trade routes.

    Retreat is defeat in the Mind War, and there are a LOT of backward steps being taken as the game board shifts ahead of the next round of play. — Burning Bright

    Liked by 1 person

  29. “Residents in the southeastern US saw a beam of orange light travelling over their homes (pictured) as a Chinese satellite burned up and re-entered Earth’s atmosphere. The fireballs, which scientists have identified as Beijing’s SuperView-1 02, (inset, file photo) were spotted soaring through the sky over Bryant, Arkansas around 10pm Sunday. The American Meteor Society received at least 120 reports of sightings across Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi and Missouri after the satellite exploded.”

    “Make no mistake: I condemn these murderers, grieve for the victims of their despicable acts, and ache for all the families who have suffered unimaginable and irreparable loss,” Biden said.

    Liked by 1 person

  30. “This is a typical Florida EBT card – what we usta call food stamps. Anyway, the card is issued by the state ‘Departmernt of children and families’, and if that name isn’t stupid enough, the cards are further managed by the ‘Office of economic self-sufficiency’. If there isn’t some kinda left-handed joke in there, I’ll be damned. 

    How does giving someone free food make them ‘self-sufficient’ in any way? I’da thought going out and earning the money to buy the food you need to live would be a more accurate definition of ‘economic self-sufficiency’, wouldn’t you?”

    Liked by 1 person

  32. “Soldier’s 6, a Minnesota-based organization that provides trained K-9 dogs to veterans, law enforcement officers, and first responders, was holding a Christmas donation drive for families in need when an 11-year-old girl handed a heartbreaking letter to their volunteer Santa Claus.

    Instead of asking for toys and games, she wrote, “Dear Santa, for Christmas I would like my mom to get a job, my mom’s spinal disease to go away, bills paid off, mom to get a car, friends and to stop being bullied.” 

    The rest of this story is here: https://www.breitbart.com/local/2024/12/22/family-need-gets-christmas-surprise-after-girl-asks-santa-help/

    https://www.soldiers6.com/

    Liked by 1 person

  33. “In an 1898 short story titled “From the ‘London Times’ of 1904,” Mark Twain introduced an electrical instrument called the telectroscope. Machines for transmitting vision at a distance, telectroscopes had been speculated about since the invention of the telephone in 1876. Over the next quarter of a century, numerous inventors were credited with its imminent, but never realized, production. No such instrument was ever actually built, and it now usually appears only in footnotes to television’s prehistory.

    Nevertheless, the telectroscope offers useful insights into the way the Victorian future was constructed out of assemblages of fact and fiction.”

    Liked by 1 person

  35. hubby and i were watching the feeder–there’s a junco and a tufted titmouse hopping around out there, plus the nuthatch’

    and while we were watching–guess what else we saw? a deer walking ACROSS THE POND! we were scared shitless the ice would crack and it would fall i. but it didn’t, thank goodness!

    Liked by 1 person

    1. I’m sure the deer would shake it off quickly if it did fall in. I went out to refill the WP feeder and could hear the nuthatch from the nearby tree – almost like it was saying “thank you!” LOL

      Liked by 1 person

      1. LOL

        they are throwing seed everywhere. hubby put a red tray underneath the feeder –we don’t have it hanging up– we have it sitting on the little table out there. we hung a black oiled sunflower bell on the hummer feeder hanger and only the one or two chickadees go after that plus the nuthatch. the bluejays like the corn block for the deer.

        Liked by 1 person

  36. EXCERPT: “President-elect Donald Trump’s transition team is pushing for the U.S. to exit the World Health Organization (WHO) on the first day of the new administration, the Financial Times (FT) reported.

    FT cited “experts,” including Georgetown global health professor Lawrence Gostin, who spoke with the transition team. Gostin said the move would be “catastrophic” for global health.

    “America is going to leave a huge vacuum in global health financing and leadership,” Gostin told FT. “I see no one that is going to fill the breach.”

    The U.S. historically has been the single-largest contributor to the WHO. In 2022-23, the U.S. shelled out $1.284 billion to the organization, which FT reported was about 16% of its funding. If the U.S. were to withdraw, it would eliminate the WHO’s biggest source of funding and leadership and hamper its ability to direct global public health.

    In 2020, the Trump administration initiated the process to sever ties with the WHO and redirect the funding to U.S. global health priorities. However, when President Joe Biden took office, he canceled the withdrawal on his first day. Some funding was withheld that year, making the U.S. only the third-largest contributor in 2020-21 — behind Germany and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

    The experts told FT that some members of Trump’s team want to initiate the process immediately and move much more quickly this time.

    Ashish Jha, Biden’s former White House COVID-19 response coordinator, said the team wanted to make the move on day one because of the “symbolism” of reversing Biden’s action. Jha said some members of the team want to stay in the organization and push for reform, but the members who want to cut ties completely are winning out.

    Dr. Kat Lindley, a senior fellow at FLCCC Family Medicine and president of the Global Health Project, told The Defender, “In my opinion, the WHO cannot be reformed. Corruption is rampant, especially in its compromised relationship with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, GAVI alliance and other public-private partnerships.”

    Lindley said: “President Trump has tried to get us out of the WHO before and I am looking forward to him finally doing it this time.

    “There is no need for a global supranational agency to oversee the health of United States citizens. We need to return to principles of individualized medicine, informed consent and not one-size-fits-all public health.”

    Internist, bioweapons expert and WHO critic Dr. Meryl Nass wrote on her Substack that the announcement was “Great news, if reliable!” noting the article cited only “globalist attorney” Gostin and “hapless former COVID czar Ahish Jha.”

    Gostin warned that if the U.S. were to withdraw, the WHO would have to cut its scientific staff and would “struggle to respond to health emergencies.” He said European countries were not likely to increase their funding and warned that in response, China might seek greater control over the organization.

    “It would not be a smart move as withdrawal would cede leadership to China,” he said.

    The Financial Times said the WHO did not comment directly on the news….”

    https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/trump-transition-team-pushing-for-who-exit-day-one/

    Liked by 1 person

  38. EXC: Key Figure in Gaetz Ethics Report Blasts ‘Haphazard,’ ‘Sloppy’ Committee, Demands Retractions.

    A Florida businessman who is a key figure in the sex and drug allegations against former Congressman Matt Gaetz has called the House Ethics Committee’s biased investigation report “reckless,” demanding the retraction of multiple “demonstrably false statements,” The National Pulse can reveal.

    Lawyers representing Christopher Dorworth note that former Congressman Gaetz is not even under the Committee’s jurisdiction before explaining in a letter sent just hours after the committee’s report was leaked to the corporate media that it contains at least three falsehoods.
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    The first involves an allegation that Gaetz invited people to Dorworth’s home on July 15, 2017. Dorworth states that Gaetz did not invite anyone to his home and that the Committee’s evidence that he did is “a gate log that doesn’t include Gaetz’s name on it” and references to “an affidavit and deposition transcripts that say nothing about Gaetz inviting anyone to [Dorworth’s] home.”

    Another claim is that Dorworth was confronted with cell phone records during his deposition, but Dorthworth denies this occurred. The records, lawyers claim, were deemed “Attorneys eyes only” and were not reviewed by Dorworth or experts.

    Finally, Dorworth’s lawyers note that the Committee claims it “requested, through counsel, that Mr. Dorworth clarify his testimony regarding his whereabouts on the evening of July 15, 2017; his counsel did not respond.” They say they did, in fact, send an email to Committee staff that included exculpatory documents supporting both Dorworth and Gaetz’s public statements regarding the accusations.

    The letter concludes by noting disappointment, but not surprise, at “the haphazard and careless manner in which [the Committee’s] was drafted and now published,” branding it “sloppy.”

    The report on the Committee investigation into Gaetz was leaked to the media over the weekend, with several outlets publishing claims that Gaetz paid for sex from women and purchased illegal drugs. Gaetz denies the allegations and notes that the Biden-Harris Justice Department (DOJ) declined to charge him with anything.

    On Monday, December 23, Gaetz filed a lawsuit against the Committee to prevent the publication of the report, arguing that the Committee not only does not have jurisdiction over him but that he would suffer reputational and professional damage from the report.

    https://thenationalpulse.com/2024/12/23/exc-key-figure-in-gaetz-ethics-report-blasts-haphazard-sloppy-committee-demands-retractions/

    Liked by 1 person

  39. Just The News: “An illegal Guatemalan immigrant on Monday was charged with the murder of a woman whom he allegedly set on fire while aboard a New York City subway this weekend.

    The suspect has been identified as Sebastian Zapeta, 33, and he was charged Monday with first- and second-degree murder and arson, according to CBS News.

    A senior U.S.official told Just the News that the man was an illegal immigrant from Guatemala who had already been deported once before under President Donald Trump.

    The man first entered the country illegally in 2018 through the Arizona border and was deported days later. He later crossed over the border illegally again but it is not clear when he re-entered, the official said.

    It is also not clear when Zapeta arrived in New York City, which has been a safe haven for illegal immigrants, but he was already staying at a Days Inn hotel in the city, which had been converted into a migrant shelter in April 2023.

    Officials claim they are still working on a motive for the murder, which occurred on the F Train in Coney Island, Brooklyn. The woman has not been publicly identified so far.” 

    Liked by 1 person

  40. EXCERPT: “We could use more people in Washington like Senator Rand Paul (R-KY.) He’s one of the rarest of rare breeds in the federal government, a fiscal hawk – and he’s unapologetic about it, especially now, in the Festivus season, which he has adopted as part of an annual observation.

    Granted, the made-up holiday of Festivus didn’t start with the good senator. It was introduced to the national culture by comedian Jerry Stiller on the television show “Seinfeld,” as a sort of Christmas alternative; he described it as “Festivus, a holiday for the rest of us.” In the show’s canon, a part of the observance of Festivus was the airing of grievances.

    When it comes to federal spending, Sen. Paul has some grievances to air, and since 2016, he has done so by releasing his annual Festivus Report detailing wasteful government spending – and as you can imagine, the federal budget gives him plenty to work with. We now have seen the 2024 Festivus Report – and boy howdy, it contains some real humdingers.

    The good Senator begins:

    This year, I am highlighting a whopping $1,008,313,329,626.12. That’s over $1 trillion in government waste, including things like ice-skating drag queens, a $12 Million Las Vegas pickleball complex, $4,840,082 on Ukrainian influencers, and more! No matter how much money the government has wasted, politicians keep demanding even more.

    That is, of course, what governments do – at all levels, although Washington is even less constrained than state and local governments. Why? Because only Washington can turn on the fiscal printing presses and WHIRRRR out a few trillion with which to buy votes. Well, we can take it from the source that a part of the tradition of Festivus is the airing of grievances.

    So, let’s take a look at the report and air some grievances.

    Girls Just Wanna Have Funds. The Department of State (DOS) spent $3 Million for ‘Girl-Centered Climate Action’ in Brazil.

    While American households need to spend an additional $1,095 each month or $13,138 per year to maintain the same consumption basket they had in January 2021, the State Department decided to do what it does best: spend your money on something you never asked for and probably never will. This time, they’ve outdone themselves by sending $3 million of your hard-earned tax dollars to a Netherlands-based organization. Apparently, the climate can’t be saved without first dividing it up into gender-based silos. Because, as we all know, carbon emissions and rising sea levels are deeply concerned with inclusivity.

    This is well to the left of ridiculous. We’ve covered the hooraw over anthropogenic climate change here many times (and likely will many more times, as the lunatics never give up), but isn’t it enough that Washington sinks enough of our hard-earned taxpayer dollars into “green energy” boondoggles here? Why must we fund activism and boondoggles elsewhere in the world? Doesn’t the Netherlands have taxpayers of their own that can pony up $3 million (that’s 5,394,898 Dutch guilders, if you were wondering) for this nonsense?

    But there’s more. Granted, one of the (few) legitimate roles of government is to protect the liberty and property of the citizens. While in these times that often means fighting terrorism, apparently the State Department also thinks that fighting terrorism can be achieved by promoting soccer.

    Goalposts & Grandstanding. The Department of State (DOS) spent $345,434 on football engagement to counter terrorism.

    In 2022, the U.S. Department of State spent $98,765 on a grant to “counter recruitment and build resilience against terrorism and violent extremism for at-risk communities in Albania primarily using sport (football) as a means of engagement.” This grant went to the Football for Peace Foundation, which is based out of London, England. Not only did the U.S. government spend nearly $100k on football, or according to the recipient’s website, “advancing sports diplomacy initiatives,” in another country, but the State Department also apparently believed funding this initiative would help stop violent extremism. Then in 2024, the DOS allotted $246,699 to the UK Football for Peace Foundation to promote peaceful football in Serbia and the Maldives.

    Peaceful football? That may be counter-productive, given the riots and looting that sometimes accompanies a sports franchise losing a game – or winning one. But that ridiculous notion isn’t a patch on spending our money to encourage DEI among birdwatchers…..”

    https://redstate.com/wardclark/2024/12/23/sen-rand-paul-releases-the-2024-festivus-report-government-waste-for-the-rest-of-us-n2183552

    Liked by 1 person

  47. “Coca Cola has replaced artists with AI. They couldn’t even get their logo right…

    Enshitification will continue until morale improves…”

    Liked by 1 person

  48. Brazil: City councilman recording a video about the poor state of a bridge at the moment it collapsed…

    1 dead, 1 injured and 10 missing after vehicles fell in the river after bridges collapse in Brazil. Two of the trucks that fell into the bridge were carrying toxic agricultural pesticide and the river is now contaminated and the city has forbidden anyone from swimming in it. Not even just human, but an ecological disaster too…Now it looks like that:

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