Why Processed Foods May Be Secretly Raising Your Blood Pressure

 by George Citroner via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Common phosphate additives that keep your packaged foods fresh and flavorful may be driving up your blood pressure, a recent study has found.

Daisy Daisy/Shutterstock

The study, conducted in laboratory rats over 12 weeks, revealed that inorganic phosphates may contribute to hypertension by stimulating the release of a chemical called fibroblast growth factor 23 (FGF23).

How Food Preservatives Raise Blood Pressure

Researchers discovered that high-phosphate diets cause a specific protein called FGF23 to accumulate in the blood and then cross into critical brain regions that control blood pressure, including the brain stem.

The findings suggest this effect occurs because high levels of phosphate cause the body to release FGF23, which crosses into the brain and stimulates certain receptors that raise sympathetic nerve activity, ultimately causing hypertension.

Further experiments indicate this involves activation of a protein called calcineurin, which is known to influence nerve activity and heart function.

Natural versus Inorganic Phosphates

Not all phosphates are created equal, the research suggests. The findings relate mainly to inorganic phosphate, said Dr. Wanpen Vongpatanasin, one of the study authors and a hypertension expert at the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center.

While vegetables naturally contain high amounts of phosphate, it exists in an organic form that the body absorbs poorly—only 40 percent to 60 percent is absorbed in the intestines.

By contrast, inorganic phosphates added during food processing have an absorption rate exceeding 90 percent, making them far more likely to reach problematic levels in the bloodstream.

Phosphate additives, commonly used as preservatives and flavor enhancers in processed foods and cola drinks, are highly absorbable, she noted.

“Vegetables also contain high amounts of phosphate, but it is in the form of organic phosphate, which is not easily absorbed in the gut. Therefore, they do not have the same side effect profile,” Vongpatanasin said.

Excess Phosphate Linked to Other Health Issues

The phosphate problem extends beyond cardiovascular concerns, according to registered dietitian nutritionist Holly Huhlein, who was not involved in the study.

“This is one of the reasons why overconsumption of highly processed foods, such as bakery products, processed dairy products, and highly processed snacks, is not recommended,” said Huhlein.

She noted that while phosphates in highly processed foods help preserve them and blend ingredients together, consuming too much phosphate has the potential to cause weak bone structure, damage to the kidneys, and increased risk for heart issues due to the imbalance of the ratio of calcium to phosphorus in the body.

“We tend to store phosphate alongside calcium in the body in our bones, and our bodies naturally do a great job of managing our phosphate levels through balancing hormones and other minerals,” she said.

High levels of phosphate can cause the body to pull calcium out from bones.

However, Huhlein said that phosphates are also an essential mineral in the body and important for many bodily functions, including the creation of DNA, cellular structure, bone mineralization, and utilizing energy in the body.

Who Should Be Most Concerned

For the general healthy population, Huhlein said, phosphate is not a concern when eating a well-balanced diet consisting of lean protein sources (animal and plant proteins), whole grains, fruits, and vegetables.

Rather, she added, concern can come from a diet higher in highly processed foods that, besides tending to have more additives like phosphates, also contain higher amounts of saturated fats and added sugars that people are encouraged to limit.

“For this reason,” Huhlein said, “if you are focusing on consuming a majority of nutrients from whole food sources while occasionally consuming shelf-stable or highly processed foods, phosphate consumption is not of concern.”

However, certain populations that have special dietary needs, such as those with kidney issues or osteoporosis, should be more cautious, she added. “Osteoporosis is caused by our bones breaking down faster than they can be rebuilt, and maintaining a proper calcium-to-phosphate ratio can play a role in keeping the condition from escalating,” Huhlein said. “As for our kidneys, they are one of the ways we monitor and manage phosphate levels by excreting them through urine.”

Vongpatanasin cautioned that because the research was conducted in animals, it remains unconfirmed whether the same effects would occur in humans.

According to Vongpatanasin, the findings also suggest that the brain’s FGF receptor 4 pathway could be a promising target for new treatments for high blood pressure linked to diet.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/why-processed-foods-may-be-secretly-raising-your-blood-pressure

K2, Cancer, and Congress: The Full Story

 The air base that sits 90 miles from the border of Uzbekistan and Afghanistan has changed hands on several occasions, but its history of toxicity and radioactivity has spanned decades.

For nearly twenty-five years, American servicemembers and veterans have lived with the effects of this toxic exposure. Many have already lost their lives. Years of denial and deception from the U.S. government about the connection between service at Karshi-Khanabad (K2) and various health conditions, including cancer, have cost valuable time. Our K2 veterans deserve justice. That’s why we’ve been fighting for these veterans since I (Mark) entered Congress and since I (Matthew) deployed to K2 in 2001, where I witnessed firsthand the toxic conditions and later saw too many fellow service members and their families suffer the consequences. With Republicans in charge of the House and Senate and President Trump in the White House, this is the perfect time to ensure these veterans get the help they need and deserve. 

Those who don’t know history are doomed to repeat it. In order to ensure this never happens to our service members again, we must understand the full story of what happened at K2.

Karshi-Khanabad Air Base was under the control of the Soviet Union from 1954 to 1992. During the Cold War, the Soviet Air Defense Force used it as a staging ground for its invasion of Afghanistan. At that time, the USSR’s 735th Fighter Aviation Regiment of the 12th Independent Air Defense Army stored everything from jet fuel to uranium inside the compound—materials that were ultimately abandoned and left to fester within and underneath the base. After the USSR’s collapse, K2 was handed over to the newly formed Uzbekistan government, which failed to clear the base of hazardous materials before the arrival of U.S. forces in October of 2001.

After 9/11, thousands of American soldiers were stationed at K2, which was renamed Camp Stronghold Freedom. On November 27th, 2001, a then-classified Department of Defense (DOD) Operational Health Risk Assessment found that soil contaminated with jet fuel left over by the Soviets at K2 could have adverse health effects if the vapors were inhaled. Among those vapors were industrial chemicals including acetone, ammonia, benzyne, glycol ethers, methanol, and twelve other compounds with side effects like liver and kidney damage, asphyxiation, bone marrow depression, chemical pneumonia, cardiac sensitization, and many others. 

Retired U.S. Air Force Master Sgt. Kliengsak Nimpchaimanatham flew into K2 about three weeks after 9/11 with the Air Force 1st Special Operations Wing, 16th Civil Engineering Squadron. He said that “there was no warning for us. We just went in and we just dug.” His team was tasked with digging deep trenches to set up the base’s water lines. They dug eight feet down with backhoes, or sometimes by hand. This would have been in direct violation of the November 2001 Operational Health Risk Assessment that instructed teams to dig no deeper than one meter (about 3.3 feet) into the ground, especially around the living quarters, showers, and mess hall. Nimpchaimanatham said, “It was hard to breathe. It was kind of like being in [a] room with gas fumes. There was no heads up of, ‘Hey guys, [...] there’s a lot of contamination in here. Be sure to wear protective gear.’” His group finished their work by unearthing more dirt to build a 20-foot berm, or dirt wall, to protect the base. It wasn’t until after the berm was completed that signs were mounted to the side of the berm facing outward that read “Danger. Off Limits. Radiation Hazard.” 

K2 Army veteran Mark Jackson kept a daily journal of his time in Uzbekistan during the summer of 2003. On day one, he reported that “[his] throat and [his] eyes [were] stinging from…this rotten smell.” His journal was filled with yellow tabs, marking every day he felt sick while at K2, noting coughs, headaches, rashes, shortness of breath, and fatigue. After leaving K2, Jackson lost the use of his thyroid, was diagnosed with irritable bowel syndrome, and was told by his doctor that he had the bone density of an 80-year-old. He was 46. 

In a February 2020 House Subcommittee on National Security Hearing, Kim Brooks, the widow of Lt. Col. Timothy Brooks, told Congress that “K2 families and veterans deserve to know the full extent of what they were exposed to so that they can focus on their health and plan for their futures.” In her testimony, Mrs. Brooks told the Subcommittee of the emails she would receive from Tim after his arrival to K2 and the “thick layer of dust” that covered his eyes, mouth, and ears as well as the “‘black gunk’ that oozed from the floor of his tent.” Lt. Col. Brooks was part of the 10th Mountain Division HHC that deployed to K2 in late 2001. He would later share with his wife that the special forces group he was a part of was assigned to clear out bunkers below the air base where they found “degraded uranium, among other hazardous waste.” Within a year of returning home, Lt. Col. Brooks developed a stage 3 astrocytoma, a type of star-shaped glioma that can develop from a single cell to a lethal mass within a year. He was 36 years old when he died in 2003, leaving behind four children.

These are just some of the stories of veterans who were exposed to toxic materials at K2. 

In June 2002, another DOD Health Risk Assessment was released on the risk of elevated compounds in the air at K2. The report detailed that it was “essential that no digging be allowed in large portions of the tent city and hangar area in order to minimize health effects [including] the areas around the former mess hall and shower facility [which] also contain visible petroleum contamination in subsurface soils.” The tent city is where the soldiers lived and slept. A final environmental assessment just one month later was likely the reason why the DOD allowed American troops to remain stationed at K2 despite the previous damning assessments. The report detailed that “volatile organic compounds (VOCs) were detected at low levels” despite the fact that the area “was obviously impacted by minor amounts of leaking fuel (probably jet kerosene) in the past.” How can an area be “obviously impacted” by jet fuel if it only spilled in “minor amounts” 20 years prior to U.S. occupation? 

Another health and safety report about K2 was not sent to the Department of Defense until 2004. The report’s reassessment concluded that “contaminant levels observed in the lone breathing zone sample do not pose an acute health hazard to personnel working in this hazard area sign (HAS).” As part of this new assessment, leadership was instructed to communicate to both active occupants and incoming troops about the risks to their health and safety and “provide periodic updates through the chain of command and in public forums.” Many K2 veterans claim these briefings never took place. The DOD hoped that regular briefings would “compensate for personnel turnover,” but clearly someone in the chain of command didn’t follow orders. 

On November 24, 2004, the Army released a classified memorandum confirming that “up to 100%” of the nearly 16,000 service members stationed at K2 were likely exposed to hazardous petrochemicals as well as radiation on a daily basis. Yet, nothing was done. The Pentagon neglected to notify Congress or K2 soldiers about this report. In fact, it wasn’t until the House Oversight Committee demanded the release of these files in 2020 that this came to light. Almost exactly a year after the report was released, Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov ordered the U.S. military facility at Karshi-Khanabad to close down and U.S. Armed Forces were completely evacuated by November 25th, 2005.

As the years went by, K2 veterans began developing cancer. In 2012, Air Force Master Sgt. and K2 veteran Paul Widener started a private Facebook group to help Air Force veteran Tech Sgt. Mike West to connect with other K2 veterans and figure out why this was happening. Through this Facebook group, it came to light that the 5th Special Forces Group had a particularly higher incidence of reported cancer than regular Army battalions deployed to other bases. That same year, Tech Sgt. West was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer and, two years later, passed away. His last wish to Master Sgt. Widener was to continue the mission of connecting K2 veterans. The nonprofit I (Matthew) now lead, the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, was founded in February 2020 by Master Sgt. Widener and his friends, David and Sarah Puerner—dear friends of Tech Sgt. West. Today, the Stronghold Freedom Foundation has expanded its efforts and partnerships and will continue to serve those who served us.

A 2015 study by the U.S. Army found that K2 veterans are up to 5.6x more likely to develop malignant neoplasms of lymphatic and hematopoietic tissue, a specific type of cancer, than their counterparts who deployed to South Korea. When veterans came to the DOD and the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) for help, they were told that “there were no K-2 exposures of health consequence.” Many K2 veterans were denied cancer treatment because the VA did not recognize cancer as a “presumptive condition” for serving at the air base. That decision cost lives. 

Air Force veteran Andrea LaForce recalled workers visiting the air base dressed in hazmat suits and carrying Geiger counters during her service at K2 in 2003. She also confirmed the toxicity of a series of ponds in the middle of the base that would change colors, earning the nickname “Skittles” to represent the various colors the ponds would change to, typically green and red. Just six months after leaving K2, LaForce developed an ovarian cyst that eventually burst. This was the first symptom of a 20-year-long battle with chronic abdominal pain that could still turn into cancer at any point. Her disability rating from the VA for the ovarian cysts: 0%. 

Air Force veteran Clayton White lost so much weight during his service at K2 that he could barely keep his watch on his wrist. After he returned home, White was diagnosed with thyroid disease, chronic hypertension, gastrointestinal issues, seizures, respiratory problems, pancreatitis, and tinnitus. The only service-related care he received was for the tinnitus. His wife, Natalie, became his caregiver as he was too sick to live a normal life. The day after his 41st birthday, Clayton White passed away in his sleep. His wife was 30 weeks pregnant at the time.

In January of 2020, Subcommittee on National Security Chairman Stephen F. Lynch and Committee on Oversight and Reform Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney launched an investigation into the hazardous conditions at Stronghold Freedom and requested information from the DOD and the VA about potential contamination at K2 and related adverse health effects of U.S. personnel who served there. A month later, Chairman Lynch and I (Mark) introduced the K2 Veterans Toxic Exposure Act to establish a registry of U.S. servicemembers who may have been exposed to toxic substances while deployed to the K2 Air Base. At that time, there was so much we still didn’t know. Over the coming months, the House Oversight Committee held a hearing to better understand the conditions at K2 and lawmakers sent letters to both the DOD and the VA with the same goal. Following the hearing, one of our witnesses, Dr. Patricia Hastings, Chief Consultant for Post Deployment Veterans Health Administration at the VA, wrote a letter to the House Committee on Oversight and Reform Subcommittee on National Security agreeing to conduct a follow-up study on the K2 population. We thought we were finally making progress. Yet, five years later, we’ve yet to see that study. Congress has yet to see the results of that report, which is why I (Mark) recently sent a letter to the VA requesting the results. 

Rep. Lynch and I (Mark) also worked to get the environmental hazards document related to toxic substances at K2 declassified. It was an uphill battle, but we succeeded. Yet, this wasn’t the end of the fight. Following the declassification of those documents, the DOD changed positions. In July of 2020, a military investigation revealed that 50-75% of servicemembers at K2 were exposed to “elevated levels of compounds in the air.” 

October of 2020 hailed a major breakthrough in the K2 investigation. Nick Nicholls, a U.S. Army veteran responsible for investigating initial reports of chemical contamination at K2, gave Mark T. Jackson, head of the K2 veterans charity Stronghold Freedom Foundation, a 17-slide presentation that he and his fellow investigators compiled after their initial investigation of K2. Not only did the investigators find the soil of K2 was suffused with a mixture of jet fuel and industrial solvents, they also found that K2’s air was contaminated with enriched yellowcake uranium. Breathing in air contaminated with yellowcake uranium not only causes immediate damage to the lungs, it also irradiates the lungs, causing long-term damage. The substances within the soil at K2 had poisoned those quartered there. 

As news of K2 veterans’ exposure and subsequent cancer diagnoses continued to gather steam in the media, a CBS News investigation found that nearly 2,000 veterans self-reported life-altering health conditions, which they believe to be linked to their deployments to K2, including hundreds who were diagnosed with cancer. That same month, former Chairman Lynch and I (Mark) introduced an amendment to the FY21 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requiring the VA to determine whether K2 veterans diagnosed with certain health conditions should be eligible for disability benefits and to make K2 veterans eligible for the VA burn pits registry and depleted uranium follow-up program. That amendment was included in the final version of the FY21 NDAA—yet it's been over four years and we have still never received this study. That’s why I (Mark) recently sent a letter to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth urging the Pentagon to complete this overdue study.

Once it became impossible to deny, the U.S. government finally moved to assist K2 veterans. The VA expedited care for all K2 veterans regardless of whether or not they filed a claim. In December 2020, I (Mark) was approached by Former Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller to help draft an executive order on my bipartisan legislation. Less than a month later on January 19, 2021, President Trump signed an Executive Order modeled after my K2 Veterans Toxic Exposure Accountability Act that directed the Secretary of Defense to recognize Uzbekistan as a combat zone for purposes of medical care.

Meanwhile, in Washington, momentum was underway to rectify the damage done by K2. Local news channels and national networks shared the stories of the K2 veterans suffering from cancer after serving at the Uzbek air base. By 2021, CNN, the Associated Press, CBS, Politico, and the Washington Times all raised K2 awareness, giving veterans the chance to tell the whole nation about the conditions they faced. 

While we are glad our K2 veterans received the attention they deserved, it is also frankly shameful that veterans were allowed to die with no assistance from the U.S. government after being exposed to toxins while fighting for our country. It is ridiculous that it took years of Congressional oversight and pressure on the Pentagon for our veterans to begin receiving a presumption of service connection for their illnesses related to toxic exposure. 

As veterans who served in the War on Terror, this is personal for us. I (Mark) also have the honor of representing Fort Campbell in Congress, home of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment (Night Stalkers) and 5th Special Forces Group, both of which spent substantial time stationed at K2. A 2015 study claimed that of all of the servicemembers who served at K2, an estimated 75% will develop an illness related to exposure. As someone who developed two primary cancers, likely due to burn pit exposure from my (Mark) time serving in Iraq, I am dedicated to this fight. One thing is clear, neither of us will stop until we know without a doubt that these men and women are getting the care they need. 

Following President Trump’s 2021 executive order, which demanded a rigorous study on the health consequences for servicemembers deployed to K2, we never received such a study from either the Biden VA or the Biden Pentagon, despite being asked for an update by my (Matthew’s) organization, Stronghold Freedom. Congress and the American people have no way of knowing whether or not that study was completed or its results. That’s why I (Mark) sent letters to Department of Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Department of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins requesting the release of this study or that it be completed if the Biden administration failed to do so. 

Finally, with the support of the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, I (Mark) sent a letter to DOD Acting Inspector General Steven Stebbins requesting an investigation into the decision-making process to use K2 as a base of operations for the invasion of Afghanistan and to continue using it once toxins were discovered. We look forward to learning how the DOD will ensure that K2 veterans, Congress, and the American people have the answers they need in order to take the next steps to ensure that K2 veterans have the coverage and accountability they deserve. 

While there is still work to be done, none of the achievements of the past two decades would be possible without the bravery of the K2 veterans who came forward and demanded accountability. What started as an unproven rumor has now expanded into congressional hearings, executive orders, and legislation signed into law. As we continue through the 119th Congress, I (Mark) reintroduced my K2 Veterans Total Coverage Act of 2025, with support from the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, to ensure that K2 veterans have access to the resources needed to fight the various forms of cancers and diseases associated with their service at Camp Stronghold Freedom. The fight is far from over, but time is not on our side. The veterans of Karshi-Khanabad Air Base need our nation’s leaders to be their voice in Washington. Together, we can get our veterans the care they need, achieve accountability for years of injustice, and live up to our creed as Americans to care for those who have sacrificed so much in defense of our nation. 

Congressman Mark Green is Chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee and serves on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. He served three tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Matthew Erpelding is a 1998 graduate of the United States Air Force Academy and holds an Executive MBA from the College of William & Mary. As a senior pilot, he flew the C-130 Hercules in multiple deployments throughout Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom, including a pivotal early mission to Karshi-Khanabad (K2) Air Base in Uzbekistan following 9/11. He now serves as Executive Director of the Stronghold Freedom Foundation, advocating for K2 veterans impacted by toxic exposure.

https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2025/06/25/k2_cancer_and_congress_the_full_story_1119039.html

Who Counts? Trump Poised To Try To Remove Noncitizens From Census

 by Benjamin Weingarten

Following a years-long surge in illegal immigration, the Trump administration is poised to challenge a longstanding but legally fraught practice: counting illegal aliens in the U.S. census.

President Trump tried to end the practice during his first term, but President Biden overturned his predecessor’s policy before it was implemented. Now, buoyed by red state attorneys general and Republican legislators, the second Trump administration is determined “to clean up the census and make sure that illegal aliens are not counted,” White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy Stephen Miller said last month. 

Stephen Miller said Trump wants to "make sure that illegal aliens are not counted" in the next census. 

AP

What Miller didn’t mention are the political implications of the administration’s move. It could have significant political implications because the census count is used to apportion House seats, determine the number of votes each state gets in the Electoral College for selecting the president, and drive the flow of trillions of dollars in government funds. 

Some immigration researchers project that including noncitizens in the census count disproportionately benefits Democratic states with large illegal alien populations. A recent study counters that, based on 2020 census figures, there would have been a negligible shift to the political map had the U.S. government excluded noncitizens from that count. But looking backward, those researchers found, red states would have benefited under the administration’s desired census counting shift. Had authorities excluded such migrants from the 2010 census, Louisiana, Missouri, Montana, Ohio and North Carolina all would have gained one seat in the House, while California would have lost three seats, and Texas and Florida would have each lost one seat – with the total number of Electoral College votes allotted each state changing accordingly.

Since the first census in 1790, the nation has counted not only citizens but also residents to determine such representation. In addition to citing its long history, defenders of the practice say it is only fair that states should be given the power and resources to represent and serve everyone within their borders.

Critics contend the government’s powers come from “We the people” – citizens or eligible voters – a government established before tens of millions of migrants resided in the country illegally. They also say the practice dilutes the representation of American citizens while incentivizing localities to promote illegal immigration.

Trump’s first term hints at what is to come if his administration vigorously pursues a citizen-centric census policy. In July 2020, when the president issued a memorandum to exclude illegal migrants from the census, blue states and immigration groups challenged it in court almost immediately. 

Those challenges rose all the way to the Supreme Court. But it did not rule on the merits – whether all residents must be counted and if the president has the authority to exclude nonresidents – setting the stage for a battle over immigration and presidential power.

The Meaning of the 14^th Amendment

President Calvin Coolidge signed the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924 that gave Native Americans voting rights.

AP

The census issue hinges on the Constitution’s language, which calls for apportioning House seats among the states “according to their respective Numbers.” Those “Numbers” originally included “free Persons” and “three-fifths of all other Persons” – namely slaves, a result of the states’ compromise. The framers excluded “Indians not taxed” – Native Americans who were members of sovereign tribal nations, not citizens – from the count. 

After the Civil War, Congress passed the 14^th Amendment to recognize the rights of the formerly enslaved. It states that congressional representation “shall be apportioned among the several States according to their respective numbers, counting the whole number of persons in each State,” again excluding Indians not taxed. Under the Indian Citizenship Act of 1924, this population would be granted citizenship.

Congress tasked the secretary of commerce with carrying out the census “in such form and content as he may determine.” The president receives that data, is responsible for carrying out the apportionment calculations, and transmits the information to Congress. 

Echoing arguments against birthright citizenship, critics on the right say that the 14^th Amendment aimed to address the status of former slaves, not masses of illegal migrants. They assert that including this population in the census artificially skews political power, effectively disenfranchises citizens, and incentivizes states to adopt sanctuary policies protecting people here illegally. 

“…[R]espect for the law and protection of the integrity of the democratic process warrant the exclusion of illegal aliens from the apportionment base, to the extent feasible and to the maximum extent of the President’s discretion under the law,” President Trump wrote in the 2020 memorandum.

The first Trump administration argued that the “persons in each State” that the 14^th Amendment refers to had long been interpreted to mean “inhabitants.” Inhabitants, it asserted, do not include “every individual physically present within a State’s boundaries at the time of the census,” noting that past administrations had excluded temporary aliens and foreign diplomatic personnel for apportionment. 

The administration also argued that the Constitution and relevant law authorize the executive branch to determine who is to be counted as an inhabitant in the census. The president, therefore, had discretion to omit “persons with debatable ties to a State,” like “aliens living within a jurisdiction without the sovereign’s permission to settle there.” 

The Supreme Court ruled in 1992 that the president can make "policy judgments" regarding the census. 

AP

The administration pointed to Franklin v. Massachusetts to support its claims. There, the Supreme Court held that the President George H.W. Bush administration could include Defense Department employees deployed overseas in the census. Then, the Court found that the president’s duties in the census process are not solely “ceremonial or ministerial,” and that federal law “does not curtail the President’s authority to direct the [Commerce] Secretary in making policy judgments that result in ‘the decennial census.’”

In testimony at the Democrat-led July 2020 House Oversight Committee hearing on the Trump memorandum, Republicans tabbed the head of the Claremont Institute’s Center for Constitutional Jurisprudence, John Eastman, to defend it. The conservative legal scholar, much-maligned by the left for the counsel he provided President Trump regarding challenging the 2020 election, recently told RealClearInvestigations that the Declaration of Independence’s “consent principle” – the concept that government derives its power from the American people – “compels that only citizens be counted for purposes of reapportionment,” and that the principle “is actually codified in the Constitution by excluding ‘Indians not taxed.’” In Eastman’s view, that language signifies that the founders sought to omit “those who are not part of our political community, from the apportionment for representation.”

“President Trump would be on solid ground, therefore, were he to direct that the census either not count illegal aliens at all, or at the very least record citizenship status so that a proper apportionment of citizens could be conducted,” Eastman said.

The plaintiffs challenging the Trump administration contended that the 14^th Amendment’s “persons” includes all residents irrespective of their immigration status; that the president lacked the discretion to deem otherwise; and that the process the administration had put in place to exclude illegal aliens was legally deficient. The president had issued a July 2019 directive in advance of his memo instructing the Census Bureau to collect citizenship data from various federal agencies, which would have been used to exclude illegal aliens from the apportionment count, raising additional legal questions. 

Testifying opposite Eastman at the committee hearing, former Census Bureau directors warned that the president’s memo would spook potential respondents and suggested the memo would minimally create the appearance of politicizing the census.

Trump’s action reflected an “illegal desire of only counting citizens,” said Vincent Barabba, former Census Bureau director under the Nixon, Ford, and Carter administrations. “[H]is real objective…is to make sure less people will be counted in states with large minority populations which did not support President Trump or the positions he has taken.”

When litigation over the Trump census policy reached the Supreme Court, it punted. In December 2020, the justices held by a 6-3 margin in Trump v. New York that the plaintiffs lacked standing, and that the case was not ripe for adjudication – with Justices Steven Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan dissenting.

President Joe Biden revoked Trump's first term order to exclude illegal aliens from the census. 

AP

Upon taking office, President Biden issued a first-day executive order revoking both of Trump’s policies. Excluding people based on their immigration status “conflict[s] with the principle of equal representation enshrined in our Constitution, census statutes, and historical tradition,” Biden wrote. “Reapportionment shall be based on the total number of persons residing in the several States, without regard for immigration status.”

States Provide a Backup Plan

The first Trump administration lost a related case at the Supreme Court. In 2018, the administration reinstated a question on the decennial survey about the citizenship status of respondents – a move that likewise came under furious legal challenge.

The Commerce Department stated that it reinstated the question at the behest of the Justice Department, which was seeking superior data on voting-age citizens necessary to enforce the Voting Rights Act. Critics sued the administration, saying that including the question, which administrations had dropped after 1960, would chill immigrant respondents, leading to an unconstitutional undercount.

In June 2019, the justices found that while reinstating such a question was legal, the process by which the president sought to do so was invalid, since the Commerce Department’s rationale for including it was “contrived” and “pretextual” – in violation of the Administrative Procedure Act.

If the second Trump administration fails to win court approval of its expected effort to exclude illegal migrants, this time around, it will have backup. 

Three days before Trump’s second inauguration, Louisiana, Kansas, Ohio, and West Virginia sued the Commerce Department, arguing that its prevailing practice of counting foreigners including illegal aliens at their place of “‘usual residence…’ robb[ed] the people of the Plaintiff States of their rightful share of political representation, while systematically redistributing political power to states with high numbers of illegal aliens and nonimmigrant aliens.”

They want the federal court, among other things, to vacate this “Residence Rule” to the extent it requires the Census Bureau to “include illegal aliens and nonimmigrant aliens in the apportionment base.” And they want to require the Census Bureau to include questions on the survey about citizenship, including one to determine whether non-citizen respondents are lawful permanent residents.

In March, the federal court stayed the case at the Trump administration’s request. The administration said it needed time “to determine its approach to the Residence Rule.” The White House and states plan to provide a joint status update on July 1.

The Justice and Commerce Departments did not respond to RCI’s requests for comment.

Republicans Seek a Legislative Fix

In the interim, Congress has acted. During the last session, Republican members introduced the Equal Representation Act, requiring the census to include a citizenship question and exclude all non-citizens from the census count for apportionment.

Rep. Jamie Raskin says a "plain reading" of the Constitution shows the census must count all residents. 

AP

Democrats panned the bill, with the then-ranking member of the House Oversight Committee, Jamie Raskin, writing in a minority report that “The plain reading of the [constitutional] text is clear as day, and the original purposes have been carefully articulated and never rebutted. For those who like to follow precedent, every apportionment since 1790 has included every single person residing in the United States, not just those lucky enough to have been given the right to vote.”

In 2016, the Supreme Court held that a state or locality may draw legislative districts based on total population, irrespective of the fact that some districts may have significantly larger voter-eligible populations than others. 

Writing for the majority, the late Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said that “we need not and do not resolve whether…States may draw districts to equalize voter-eligible population rather than total population.”

Fifty years prior, the Court held that Hawaii could use a registered-voter population base for its apportionment of state legislative seats due to the “large concentrations of military and other transients” in key population center Oahu.

In May 2024, the House passed the Equal Representation Act on a largely party-line vote, but it failed to advance in the Senate.

The current House reintroduced the bill by North Carolina Republican Rep. Chuck Edwards. He told RealClearInvestigations that “Americans deserve fair and equal representation, something that will not be possible until we eliminate the influence of noncitizens in our elections.”

The bill must first move through the Oversight Committee, chaired by Kentucky GOP Rep. James Comer. He told RCI that “American citizens’ representation in Congress should not be determined by individuals who are not citizens of the United States.” 

Comer said his committee plans to move the bill again during this congressional session.

The states suing the Commerce Department are adamant that their view should prevail irrespective of legislative action.

Christopher Hajec, Director of Litigation at the Immigration Reform Law Institute – a legal nonprofit opposed to “unchecked mass migration” that is representing Kansas in the pending states’ suit – told RCI that “Whatever Congress does or does not do, our position is that the Constitution implies that illegal aliens should not be counted in the census for apportionment.”

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2025/06/26/who_counts_trump_poised_to_try_to_remove_noncitizens_from_census_1118884.html

The COVID Reckoning Cometh

 by 

Christine Rosen

Senior Fellow

The word reckoning has several definitions and, in many ways, David Zweig’s important book, An Abundance of Caution, which describes the decisions that led to the mass, sustained closure of American schools during the COVID pandemic, touches on several of them.

His methodical exploration of the many claims made by public health experts, elected officials, and media outlets is an example of one definition of a reckoning, as the process of calculating something—in this case, the sheer number of claims about safety and risk and their validity. His detailed narrative and timeline of events, from the first calls for school closures in 2019 to the chaotic year that followed, when many American children were denied in-person education, offers another: a “bill or account” of something.

Yet it is the more colloquial definition of “a reckoning”—the collective sense that someone must answer for something that was done to others—that best describes what Zweig has accomplished. The book is a detailed examination of public health models and policymaking, but at its core, it is the story of a serious injustice committed against American children.

A parent himself, Zweig captures well the experience of watching young children struggle with the new reality of being stuck at home staring at a computer screen all day once public schools went remote in the spring of 2020. “I felt a visceral sense of injustice, which brought a growing sadness to me that gave way to gnawing frustration,” he writes of his children’s experience in public schools in New York State.

Driven by a curious, skeptical, and delightfully contrarian nature, Zweig tries to determine if the evidence public health and school officials kept invoking to justify their decisions was accurate, especially given the fact that many European countries made dramatically different choices about keeping schools open with access to the same facts. Pouring over the studies and models, he realizes, “I wasn’t misunderstanding the data. The Europeans saw the same studies and evidence that I had seen, and they came to the same conclusion: Open the schools.” Why wasn’t this option given serious consideration in the United States? Why did the initial closures in the spring continue through the next school year?

The answers Zweig uncovers have implications far beyond education policy. “School policies emerge as a window into the larger conversation around COVID-19 and, broader still, a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis,” Zweig writes. More damning still, his book is “about a country ill-equipped to act sensibly under duress.”

I should acknowledge my own bias here: I was a public school parent in Washington, D.C., during the pandemic. COVID arrived in the spring of my children’s eighth grade year, and like many jurisdictions, their schools closed for the rest of the year. Unlike many jurisdictions, however, ours was among the last school systems to reopen. My sons had no access to daily in-person schooling for all but a few weeks of the following school year thanks to the reprehensible behavior of our city’s mayor, D.C. public school administrators, and D.C. public school teachers, most of whom are members of one of the major teachers’ unions.

In his book, Zweig mentions how some teachers “piled body bags and placed fake tombstones” outside school administration offices in D.C. to protest having to go back to classrooms to teach. Those were my sons’ teachers, and this childish stunt came after parents like me became reluctant activists, organizing and demanding answers from school officials about why schools remained closed for months on end. Teachers and school administrators frequently failed to show up to teach their online classes, grade students’ assignments, or respond to parents’ requests for information about students’ progress. The more outspoken parents among us were often kicked out of Zoom calls when we asked tough questions, or “accidentally” given incorrect meeting times or login credentials when such meetings were held. Meanwhile, teachers’ unions demanded and received preferential treatment for vaccination, ahead of high-risk groups like the elderly and the immunocompromised—and then still refused to teach in-person. The contempt many of us feel toward those teachers and administrators will never fade, and it is to Zweig’s great credit that he refuses to indulge in resentfulness or score-settling in his book.

Instead, Zweig explores the decision-making process and its many failures, most notably among public health “experts,” media outlets, and political leaders, as well as the influence of tribal partisan politics during the first Donald Trump administration. This last point is crucial for understanding our cultural memory of the pandemic because it challenges the comforting narrative many on the left still nurture. It is the story of “how many progressives, professedly representing the party of science, completely disregarded overwhelming evidence about the safety of schools from around the world, in significant part, as a reaction to Trump and Trumpism.”

One of the great services Zweig performs is establishing a timeline that follows actions and reactions among public health experts, public officials, and the media. This serves as an antidote to the spontaneous amnesia all three groups experienced once the pandemic ended, and they claimed they simply did the best they could with the available evidence. Zweig notes how the evidence “from China, then Italy, and then throughout Europe, was remarkably consistent: children were largely unaffected by COVID-19.” As well, “in regard to the risks they posed to teachers, children likely were less contagious than adults. This information was known even well before the March shutdowns.”

And yet, as the timing of officials’ decisions suggests, the evidence didn’t matter to policymakers. “[Gov. Mike] DeWine, [Gov. Andrew] Cuomo, and numerous other governors ordering school closings before shutting down many other aspects of society was, in many ways, the original sin,” he writes. “It wrongly implied that schools, and children in particular, were the primary source of transmission, and, despite whatever verbal assurances given to the contrary, implied that children were at great risk. The action of closing schools, and especially that they were first, spoke louder than words.”

There was plenty more sinning to come. Zweig goes into detail about the deficiencies of many of the most influential COVID forecasting models, which serves as a damning indictment of public health expertise. As Zweig notes, an analysis of the performance of the top two dozen models in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found, “three of the top four most accurate modelers were from outside the public health field,” and included a Canadian physicist, a team from a management consulting firm, and the owner of a software business. Many models embraced by policymakers and the media effectively were “garbage in, garbage out.”

He notes how the insularity of the expert class and its expectation of deference led to poor policymaking in the COVID era. American “experts” ignored the evidence on the ground in Europe (and later in states like Florida that reopened schools) in favor of fearmongering. He cites the example of deaths of children in New York from COVID and notes that of the very small number of children who did tragically die, most had underlying health conditions that contributed to their vulnerability to the virus. Yet, as Zweig writes, “when discussing COVID policies for children, American public health authorities and the media would almost entirely ignore this point for the duration of the pandemic.”

Instead, we had Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and the public face of the federal government’s COVID messaging, telling the public, “If it looks like you’re overreacting you’re probably doing the right thing.” Fauci later posed poolside in sunglasses on the cover of InStyle magazine and told a reporter, “With all due modesty, I think I’m pretty effective. … And I think everybody thinks I’m doing more than an outstanding job.”

The flawed models and fearmongering statements from experts were uncritically regurgitated by the media, and Zweig rigorously documents its “complicity in creating the juggernaut of misinformation” around schools and COVID. “Much of the prestige media, including, most damagingly, the New York Times, deliberately and repeatedly emphasized supposed dangers to children and, specifically, the role schools would play in potential harm to students and the community,” he notes. Zweig was one of the few exceptions. I can attest to the fact that a piece he wrote for Wired, “The Case for Reopening Schools,” was passed around like samizdat on many of the WhatsApp and text groups formed by parents.

Like the public health experts whose flawed models drove poor policymaking, journalists who indulged in scare tactics neither acknowledged their errors nor paid any professional price for making them. He points to Amanda Mull’s hyperbolic story in the Atlantic, “Georgia’s Experiment in Human Sacrifice,” as typical. Mull criticized (Republican) Governor Brian Kemp for reopening schools and other public places, claiming it would lead to increased deaths; when no such thing occurred, there was no correction or follow-up reporting.

Worse, the expert class, enabled by the media, “positioned anyone who questioned this policy [of an abundance of caution] as someone who didn’t value children’s safety. It set opposition as immoral.”

Nor was there any enthusiasm on the part of the dominant media for critical reporting on the hypocrisy of many in the expert and political class, although examples were plentiful: COVID response coordinator Deborah Birx scolded the public for failing to practice social distancing, telling Americans not to gather for Thanksgiving, then headed off to her vacation home with several generations of her family; California governor Gavin Newsom enjoyed a lavish private dinner at The French Laundry while other restaurants were forced to stay closed and also kept his four children in full-time, in-person private schools while insisting California public schools remain shuttered.

Some of this was elite privilege but some of it was also the downstream effects of political tribalism, as Zweig captures in the title of one of his chapters, “If Trump is for it, then we’re against it.” Once Trump tweeted that schools should reopen, “the notion of opening schools was now seen as explicitly part of Trump’s ‘open everything up’ campaign, and in the process became radioactive to many liberals and much of the intelligentsia.”

This went doubly so for the teachers’ unions, one of the largest financial supporters of the Democratic Party. As Zweig notes, “Randi Weingarten, the head of the American Federation of Teachers, said Trump’s ‘defiance of science has made it impossible to do what he wanted to do.’” The unions joined forces with the American Academy of Pediatrics, which reversed its position on reopening schools via “a joint statement from the AAP with the American Federation of Teachers and the National Education Association, the largest teachers unions in the country.”

Virtue signaling and tribal loyalty replaced objective scientific analysis and evidence-based policymaking. Zweig notes, correctly, that “the marketing of morality was the connective tissue between the public health establishment’s positions, the media’s representation of these positions, and much of the public’s internalization of just action.” Subjective and often politically motivated values “were presented to the public as objective science,” with terrible consequences for children. When the precautionary principle runs amok, people suffer.

Have we learned any lessons from our COVID experience?

Institutionally, the public health establishment and teachers’ unions, along with dominant media, remain convinced of their own moral rectitude during the pandemic. Weingarten still heads the teachers’ union, Fauci was treated as a folk hero right up to his retirement (and blanket pardon from President Biden), and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo is launching a comeback for mayor of New York City.

All these officials and our public health and media institutions more broadly should be forced to read and reread Zweig’s crucial observation: “Believing in the effect of interventions—and imposing them on the citizenry—without scientific validation meant we were following a model of public health that was faith-based, as opposed to evidence-based.” As well, Zweig observes, correctly, that the problem wasn’t entirely partisanship or “fog-of-war” decision making, or even the malevolence of the teachers’ unions. It’s about information: “how it is presented to the public, and who is afforded a platform to present it.”

Zweig more than fulfills his obligation to readers to explain the many decisions—some misguided, some ignorant, some morally obtuse—that together led to disastrously harmful policies for children. His book is a powerful and necessary effort to untangle the many misleading narratives and outright disinformation about the pandemic that have too quickly become conventional wisdom among America’s media and expert class. “The single most important myth that this book seeks to debunk is the notion that various interventions—most specifically related to schools and kids—were reasonable or even necessary to be employed because ‘we didn’t know’ at the time about their lack of benefit, or the relatively benign course for children from the virus,” he writes. Zweig might not have intended his book to serve as a reckoning, but in its methodical and damning indictment of COVID-era policymaking, it hopefully signals the beginning of one.

https://www.aei.org/op-eds/the-covid-reckoning-cometh/