Mayor of Newark Ras Baraka speaks at the groundbreaking celebration for a new development in Newark, New Jersey on April 26, 2022.
(Photo: R - One/Getty Images for Queen Latifah)
Federal agents with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement carried out a warrantless raid on Thursday targeting a local establishment in Newark, New Jersey, according to Newark Mayor Ras Baraka—who decried the move as an "an egregious act" in violation of the of the U.S. constitution.
Federal agents detained both undocumented residents and citizens, including a U.S. military veteran, Baraka said in a statement Thursday.
The local outlet PIX11 reported that ICE agents targeted the Ocean Seafood Depot, a wholesale seafood distributor. Store owner Luis Janota told the outlet that three people were taken into custody, including a Puerto Rican employee who is a military veteran. People from Puerto Rico have U.S. citizenship.
"We don't fret, we fight," wrote the New Jersey Alliance for Immigrant Justice, which is distributing materials to inform community members about their rights.
Immigration raids on so-called "sanctuary cities"—a list that includes Newark—were expected. On Monday, Trump issued executive orders ramping up immigration enforcement via executive orders, including attempting to end birthright citizenship, reinstating his "Remain in Mexico" policy, suspending refugee resettlement, and moving to restrict federal funds for sanctuary cities.
Trump's deputy acting attorney general sent a memo to Justice Department staff this week indicating that state and local officials could potentially be criminally prosecuted for failing to cooperate with Trump's ramped up immigration enforcement, and the Trump administration has also revoked a directive barring arrests in "sensitive" locations, such as schools.
The changes to immigration enforcement have already been met with hurdles. On Thursday a federal judge temporarily blocked his challenge to birthright citizenship, calling it "blatantly unconstitutional."
"Newark will not stand by idly while people are being unlawfully terrorized. I will be holding a press conference in alliance with partners ready and willing to defend and protect civil and human rights," Baraka said Thursday.
U.S. Sens. Andy Kim and Cory Booker, both New Jersey Democrats, said they were concerned about the news and that their offices had reached out to the Department of Homeland Security "to demand answers."
Following the incident, ICE issued the following statement to multiple news outlets: "U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement may encounter U.S. citizens while conducting field work and may request identification to establish an individual's identity as was the case during a targeted enforcement operation at a worksite today in Newark, New Jersey."
On X, ICE posted on Thursday that it had arrested 538 people and detained 373 others, though it's not clear from the post where those arrests and detentions took place.
"A reminder these raids and attacks on the Constitution are an attack on all of us—not just immigrants, not just their families, everyone. You, your neighbors, your colleagues—you're not safe just because you're a citizen, a legal resident, a veteran," wrote Peter Chen, an analyst at the think tank New Jersey Policy Perspective.
Newly confirmed U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a swearing-in ceremony at the Vice President's Ceremonial Office at Eisenhower Executive Office Building January 21, 2025 in Washington, DC.
(Photo: Albert Micky/Getty Images)
The State Department on Friday reportedly issued guidance that it is freezing almost all U.S. foreign assistance—with exceptions for emergency food aid and foreign military financing for two U.S. allies, Israel and Egypt—according to a cable obtained by multiple outlets.
"Guess which country was exempted....?" wrote the investigative outlet Drop Site, in response to the cable, which independent journalist Ken Klippenstein shared on social media.
The aid carve out for Israel follows 15 months of nearly unqualified U.S. support for the Israeli government during its military campaign on the Gaza Strip, which began after Hamas attacked Israel in October 2023, and led to the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians, according to the local health officials. A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Sunday, but Israel has since then attacked the city of Jenin in the West Bank.
Other traditional U.S. allies, like Ukraine and Taiwan, are not listed among the waivers to the pause. Trump has been a longtime critic of NATO, which Ukraine hopes to join, and has been critical of the scale of U.S. support for Ukraine as it battles an invasion by Russia.
On Monday, his first day in office, Trump issued an executive order calling for a 90-day pause on U.S. foreign development assistance in order to assess "programmatic efficiencies and consistency with United States foreign policy." But this latest memo, signed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio and sent to embassies worldwide, further fleshes out that directive.
The U.S. "shall not provide foreign assistance funded by or through the department and USAID without the secretary of state's authorization or the authorization of his designee," according to the cable, which was referring to the United States Agency for International Development.
Additionally, "no new obligations shall be made for foreign assistance until such times as the secretary shall determine, following a review" and "for existing foreign assistance awards, contracting officers and grant officers shall immediately issue stop-work orders."
Politico, which also obtained Rubio's memo, reported that "it had not been clear from the president's [Monday] order if it would affect already appropriated funds or Ukraine aid. The new guidance means no further actions will be taken to disperse aid funding to programs already approved by the U.S. government, according to three current and two former officials familiar with the new guidance."
"State just totally went nuclear on foreign assistance," one State Department official told Politico.
In fiscal year 2023, the most recent year with complete government reporting, the U.S. spent $68 billion in foreign aid obligations, on topics ranging from economic development, to health and the environment. Ukraine was the top recipient of foreign aid that year, with $17 billion obligated, and Israel came in second, with $3.3 billion.
According to The Associated Press, which also obtained the cable, the order was particularly disappointing to humanitarian officials who hoped that health clinics and other health programs worldwide would be spared from the funding freeze.
In this photo illustration, a Donald Trump meme coin $TRUMP logo seen displayed on a smartphone.
(Photo Illustration: Micki Sigrún/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)
Following a torrent of executive orders issued in his first few days back in the White House, U.S. PresidentDonald Trumpadded another one to the list Thursday, this time aimed at promoting U.S. leadership in cryptocurrency—an industry he now holds a considerable stake in.
Co-president of the watchdog group Public Citizen, Robert Weissman, decried the move, writing in a statement Thursday that "Trump is pushing crypto because he's in on the racket."
This executive order "will help super-inflate what's already a dangerous speculative bubble in an artificial, unregulated asset that will, eventually, burst. The inevitable crash will badly injure millions of everyday Americans," Weissman wrote.
The executive order calls for the establishment of a working group on digital assets to explore the possibility of creating a "national digit asset stockpile"—something that crypto industry has pushed Trump's administration to create. That group would also "propose a federal regulatory framework governing the issuance and operation of digital assets." The order, however, didn't go as far as some in the crypto industry had hoped, remarkedThe New York Times.
Just prior to his inauguration, Trump launched a so-called meme coin—"$TRUMP"—which as of Thursday afternoon had a market cap of about $7 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The digital asset bitcoin also surged to new heights Monday, the day of Trump's inauguration, buoyed by expectations that the incoming administration will be friendly to the crypto industry.
Trump's decision to launch his crypto coin has been criticized on ethics grounds.
Jeff Hauser, the executive director of the Revolving Door Project, wrote in an MSNBC op-ed published Friday that having wealth linked to cryptocurrency will "obviously impact" how Trump's administration approaches regulation the market.
What's more, Hauser warned, "crypto markets are frequently believed to be subject to manipulation by 'whales,' i.e., large investors. Having a Trump asset so susceptible to manipulation is highly concerning. Consider whales who might manipulate the Trump coin's worth to buy influence with the president by intervening with purchases at strategic moments."
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while visiting a neighborhood affected by Hurricane Helene in Swannanoa, North Carolina, on January 24, 2025.
(Photo: Mandela Micki/AFP via Getty Images)
With trips to North Carolina and California on Friday, Republican U.S. President Donald Trump renewed his threat to the federal disaster assistance agency, drawing swift rebukes from climate campaigners, experts, and members of Congress.
Trump was sworn in on Monday and took aim at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) during a Wednesday interview with Fox News' Sean Hannity. He echoed those comments on Friday after landing at Asheville Regional Airport in North Carolina, to visit a region devastated by Hurricane Helene in September.
During his first trip since Inauguration Day, Trump declared that he will "be signing an executive order to begin the process of fundamentally reforming and overhauling FEMA or maybe getting rid of FEMA."
"I think, frankly, FEMA's not good," he said. "I think when you have a problem like this, I think you want to go, and whether it's a Democrat or Republican governor, you want to use your state to fix it and not waste time calling FEMA."
"FEMA's turned out to be a disaster," the president added. "I think we're gonna recommend that FEMA go away and we pay directly, we pay a percentage to the state, but the state should fix this."
While attempting to kill FEMA could be legally complicated due to a federal law passed after Hurricane Katrina, Trump's comments sparked concern and criticism. According toCNN:
Officials with FEMA scrambled to understand his comments in North Carolina Friday, with personnel nationwide calling and texting one another, trying to figure out what his statements meant for the agency's future and work on the ground, according to a source familiar.
Trump's desire to eliminate or curtail FEMA could have chilling effects on emergency response even at state levels, former FEMA Chief Deanne Criswell told CNN.
"We need to take him at his word, and I think state emergency management directors should be concerned about what this means for spring tornado season" and the coming hurricane season, said Criswell, who served under former President Joe Biden. "Do they have the resources to protect their residents?"
Responding to Trump's remarks on social media, the think tank Carolina Forward said that "if you were upset at how FEMA responds to natural disasters, just wait until they don't exist at all. (Trump obviously won't do this—he can't, after all—but he'll very likely make a lot of noise about it and then not actually do anything, as usual)."
Congresswoman Deborah Ross (D-N.C.) also weighed in on X, saying that "FEMA has been a crucial partner in our fight to recover from Hurricane Helene. I appreciate President Trump's concern about Western N.C., but eliminating FEMA would be a disaster for our state."
Matt Sedlar, climate analyst at the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), noted in a Friday statement that "before he took office, some wondered whether Trump would actually deny federal disaster aid to states he considered politically unfriendly. The unpleasant truth is that in theory he could—and right now he appears willing to test that idea in reality."
"Trump is already setting the stage for a significant reduction in federal disaster aid and mitigation funding," warned Sedlar, who also published an article on CEPR's website that highlights how Trump's attacks on the agency relate to the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025. "He has made repeated demands that would tie California's aid to specific policy changes he would like to see, and has even begun discussing the possibility of overhauling FEMA—if not eliminating it entirely."
"States cannot absorb the costs of these disasters, and they don't have the money to prevent them either," he stressed. "The federal government agencies that aim to make the U.S. climate resilient are already chronically underfunded as it is. If Trump truly wanted to make America great again, he would prioritize funding for aid and mitigation. Instead, he is making incoherent political demands and setting Americans up for four years of uncertainty and suffering."
Shana Udvardy, senior climate resilience policy analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, released a similar statement on Friday.
"The president is suggesting eliminating FEMA. My question is: Should we also ban hospitals? Both are a means to recovery," Udvardy said. "This latest comment stretches the boundaries of reality. If we abolish federal funding for disaster assistance, municipalities and states wouldn't be able to cover these types of catastrophic emergencies and people would be left to fend on their own."
After visiting North Carolina on Friday, Trump took off for the Los Angeles area, which has been ravaged by recent wildfires. As of press time, the Hughes Fire was only 56% contained, according to the California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.
Sharing a video of Trump's Friday remarks on social media, Congresswoman Sydney Kamlager-Dove (D-Calif.) said that "as someone who's actually been on the ground in LA, people are grateful for FEMA and want more help—not less."
Margie Alt, director of the Climate Action Campaign, said in a Friday statement that "the people of Los Angeles are suffering. They need and deserve help. Wildfires fueled by high winds and climate change-fueled drought have destroyed 12,000 homes and killed 27 people in the area so far."
"Rather than playing the traditional presidential role of 'comforter in chief,' Donald Trump's visit to the area is performative, using the tragedy to advance his personal agenda: changing state water management policy to help his Los Angeles private golf club," Alt suggested. "Trump's threat to withhold disaster aid to benefit his golf club seems, unfortunately, to be par for the course when it comes to his presidency. But the people of Los Angeles deserve better, and quickly."
"Wildfires like these will only get worse and more frequent if we don't address the climate crisis that is intensifying these disasters and other extreme weather including flooding, extreme heat, drought, and more that we are experiencing across the U.S. and the world," she added. "It is unconscionable to threaten to withdraw federal support to Americans suffering the effects of this crisis because of where they live or whom they may have voted for. The climate crisis won't spare anyone."
Alt argued that "the only acceptable course of action for Trump and the Republican majority in Congress is to stop playing politics with people's lives. They must ensure that FEMA has the resources it needs, and need to stop cutting programs designed to help mitigate climate pollution and pushing for more of the fossil fuels responsible for making this crisis worse."
U.S. Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.), ranking member of the U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, said in a Friday statement that "if Donald Trump cared even one bit about the communities being ravaged by climate change, he wouldn't hold disaster aid hostage to his political whims, dismiss the climate crisis as a hoax, or pander to his Big Oil donors."
"Instead, he'd tackle the carbon pollution driving these catastrophes and support U.S. clean energy dominance to lower energy costs for families," he added. "But from day one, Trump's priority has been rewarding his corrupt fossil fuel donors and sabotaging America's clean energy future. Now, he's exploiting the suffering caused by extreme weather to peddle his political agenda—proving once again he's all in for polluters and all out for the American people."
This isn't the first time Trump—who was previously president from 2017-21—has come under fire related to disaster response. As The Associated Pressreported Friday:
The last time Trump was president, he visited numerous disaster zones, including the aftermath of hurricanes and tornadoes. He sometimes sparked criticism, like when he tossed paper towels to survivors of Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico.
Trump tapped Cameron Hamilton, a former Navy SEAL with limited experience managing natural disasters, as FEMA's acting director.
Reporting on Hamilton's position, The New York Times noted Wednesday that "since Hurricane Katrina, when the federal response was severely criticized, FEMA has been led by disaster management professionals who have run state or local emergency management agencies, or were regional administrators at FEMA."
Tech billionaire Elon Musk speaks live via a video transmission during the election campaign launch rally of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) political party as AfD supporters wave German flags on January 25, 2025 in Halle, Germany.
(Photo by Sean Gilbert/Getty Images)
BillionaireElon Muskmade virtual appearance at a Saturday campaign event for the far-rightAlternative for Germany party—known by the initials AfD—ahead of a snap federal election in Germany next month. The campaign appearance comes less than a week after Musk wasaccusedof performing a Nazi salute twice on stage at a post-inauguration celebration for U.S. President Donal Trump.
"A nazi speaking at a nazi rally. It's really not deeper than that," wrote the independent journalist Marisa Kabas on Saturday.
Musk has endorsed the AfD, known for it's strong anti-immigrant stance, and earlier this month hosted AfD co-leader Alice Weidel—who was also at Saturday's campaign event—for an interview on his platform X. Members of the AfD have been accused of downplaying the crimes of Nazi Germany and using Nazi slogans.
Musk told onlookers at the event, which took place in Halle, that he thinks AfD is the best hope for Germany and said that it's good to be proud of German culture, according to Reuters andThe Guardian.
"It's good to be proud of German culture, German values, and not to lose that in some sort of multiculturalism that dilutes everything," Musk said, according to Reuters, addressing the crowd via a live video.
"Children should not be guilty of the sins of their parents, let alone their great grandparents," Musk also said, which, per Reuters, apparently referred to Germany's Nazi past.
Musk's "Nazi-like salutes" earlier this week drew sharp rebuke from some, but not all. The Anti-Defamation League, an organization whose mission is to combat antisemitism, called the move "an awkward gesture" and "not a Nazi salute."
For his part, Musk wrote on X that the reaction was an example of Democratic "dirty tricks." He also said that "the 'everyone is Hitler' attack is sooo tired."
Washington Post columnist Karen Attiah, reacting to the news of Musk's appearance at the rally, wrote that "all the people who were shrugging and equivocating over Elon and whether he was aligning with Nazi, far-right forces should be launched into the sun. May they never be taken seriously again."
According to the word of Allah (God) and the history of the world, since the grafting of the Caucasian race 6,000 years ago, they have caused more bloodshed than any people known to the black nation. Born murderers, their very nature is to murder. The Bible and Holy Qur’an Sharrieff are full of teachings of this bloody race of devils. They shed the life blood of all life, even their own, and are scientists at deceiving the black people.
They deceived the very people of Paradise (Bible, Gen. 3:13). They killed their own brother (Gen. 4:8). The innocent earth’s blood (Gen. 4:10) revealed it to its Maker (thy brother’ blood crieth unto me from the ground). The very earth, the soil of America, soaked with the innocent blood of the so-called Negroes shed by this race of devils, now crieth out to its Maker for her burden of carrying the innocent blood of the righteous slain upon her. Let us take a look at the devil’s creation from the teaching of the Holy Qur’an.
“And when your Lord said to the angels, I am going to place in the earth one who shall rule, the angels said: “What will Thou place in it such as shall make mischief in it and shed blood, we celebrate Thy praise and extol Thy holiness” (Holy Qur’an Sharrieff 2:30).
This devil race has and still is doing just that–making mischief and shedding blood of the black nation whom they were grafted from. Your Lord said to the angels, “Surely I am going to create a mortal of the essence of black mud fashioned in shape” (Holy Qur’an Sharrieff, 15:28).
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The essence of black mud (the black nation) mentioned is only symbolic, which actually means the sperm of the black nation, and they refused to recognize the black nation as their equal though they were made from and by a black scientist (named Yakub). They can never see their way in submitting to Allah and the religion Islam and His prophets.
The slave-master’s every cry is to beat–beat–kill–kill–the so-called Negroes. Maybe the day has arrived that Allah will return to the devils–that which they have been so anxious to pour on the poor innocent so-called Negroes. Allah will give you your own blood to drink like water and your arms and allies will not help you against him (Rev. 16:6).
The heads and bodies of the so-called Negroes are used to test the clubs and guns of the devils, and yet the poor, foolish, so-called Negroes admire the devils regardless to how they are treated.
America is now under Divine Plagues. One will come after the other until she is destroyed. Allah has said it.
Black people in America have had a sordid relationship with land and property ownership due to historic and ongoing housing discrimination. A new study reveals yet another policy that authors say contributed to Black property and wealth erosion: heirs’ property policy.
“We are on a mission to help build Black wealth through real estate. But we realized when we’re building wealth, we’re telling people to buy land, we’re telling people to buy properties, telling people to become homeowners and invest in real estate.
At the same time of getting people to get into real estate, we need to also protect those that are already in it and look at how we’re losing wealth with real estate,” Dr. Courtney Johnson Rose, president of the National Association of Real Estate Brokers, Inc. (NAREB), which sponsored the study, said to The Final Call.
According to its website, NAREB was founded in 1947 as an equal opportunity and civil rights advocacy organization for Black real estate professionals, consumers, and communities in America.
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“Heirs’ property is one of the number one reasons why we’re losing wealth in the Black community. Our effort in studying heirs’ property is to be able to understand the issue,” she added. “Our report also has suggestions on things that we can do to help assist and provide more assistance and resources to families that are having heirs’ property issues.”
The paper released Jan. 14 titled: “Heirs’ Property in the United States: Its Destabilizing Structure and Contribution to Black Property and Wealth Erosion,” written by James H. Carr and Michela Zonta, walks readers through the history of housing discrimination and criticizes heirs’ property policies that left Black families reeling from the loss of land.
It goes into the racial wealth gap, the skyrocketing of Black land ownership after the Emancipation Proclamation, successes in Black land ownership despite Jim Crow laws and other discriminatory practices, Black land and farmland loss and recommendations to eliminate further loss of land.
The research highlighted five “aspects of Black property ownership and wealth accumulation in the United States that are neither well-known nor fully acknowledged by federal legislators or the American public in general.”
Three of these aspects included:
• Blacks owned millions of acres more land a century ago than they hold today;
• The largest share of property owned by Blacks was farmland throughout the South, some of which is today among the most expensive property in the U.S.;
• The combination of a lack of access to legal advice and institutions, discriminatory actions by federal, state, and local governmental entities, and legally condoned violence and hate crimes by White supremacists against Blacks, has resulted in the exploitative and frequently illegal taking of 90 percent of land that was held by Blacks in 1910;
“We had accumulated so much wealth in terms of land post-emancipation. The majority of that has been lost. That was the thing that was just kind of most heartbreaking,” Dr. Johnson said.
The authors define heirs’ property as “a type of ownership where multiple generations inherit a family-owned property, typically without a clear legal arrangement proving ownership and defining each person’s share.”
When a landowner passes away without leaving a will or clear directives, their assets enter probate court. “The court values them, pays outstanding taxes, settles debts secured by the property, and designates heirs,” the paper says.
Most Black people, more than 70 percent, according to CNBC, do not have a will. As a result, more than half of Black-owned land in the country is classified as heirs’ property, the paper says.
This leaves the land vulnerable to fractured ownership, conflicts over the property, foreclosure or forced auction and locks the property out of refinance options and federal, state or local tax breaks.
If heirs are in conflict over whether or not to sell the property, courts can order the sale to happen, which often attracts “wealthy developers who prey on unaware heirs.”
Black heirs often did not have the resources to prevent their land from being sold off at public auction, usually at prices well below market value, leading to loss of wealth and property.”
“We see it happening every day, even in urban cities where grandmother dies, and nobody has the deed to the house. There’s no will, and that property goes into probate or tax sales or things of that nature. So, we’re seeing it just pop up all over our community,” Dr. Johnson said.
Black families could also end up spending a significant amount of money in legal fees to determine land ownership. The paper explains how limited access to the legal system impacted Black landowners’ ability to retain their land, as Black attorneys were in short supply, Black landowners could not afford legal representation, and during the Jim Crow era, Black communities did not trust White courts.
Today, Black families still struggle with land and property ownership.
“We struggle to get into homes due to historical racism and discrimination, and we struggle sometimes to maintain those homes and those properties because it was so difficult for us to get it,” Dr. Johnson said.
She mentioned how vulnerable Black families may feel when owning property, due to not having financial reserves to assist with taxes, maintenance and environmental issues.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, encouraged Black land ownership and advised Black people to do for self or suffer the consequences. His National Representative, the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, has been urging Black people to go into agriculture.
“The Honorable Elijah Muhammad said, ‘As long as we are consumers and employees, our future is in the hand of somebody else.’ But if we are going to be producers, you cannot become a producer of what you need to extend your life without land,”
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan said in a message delivered on November 9, 2011, at Prairie View A&M University in Prairie View, Texas. “We have to own land. Elijah Muhammad said we need at least 100 million acres to make a start.”
For Melody Muhammad of Edith Family Farms, Black people need to want property. She recalled a situation where property was sold without alerting all the heirs.
Ms. Muhammad resides in the Philadelphia area but has seven acres of land in North Carolina she purchased several years ago. She is an urban agriculture consultant and attained a Certification in Urban Agriculture from Will Allen of Growing Power, and a master gardener certification from Penn State University.
“Some people who have heir property, they don’t have to fight over it because they already have money, like Caucasians. Some of them don’t have to fight over stuff because they got their cars, they got their houses, they got the basic things they already need, so they don’t have to fight over money,”
She said to The Final Call. “If we had heir property right now, some of us would be like, ‘Look, I want to sell it so I can go ahead and have some money to do what I want to do with it.’”
“After all this injustice and the things that our ancestors have lost as a result of us going into debt and sharecropping and all of those things, now we are at a time where some of us are striving to get and purchase the land.
And then some of us have gotten, I want to say, comfortable with this world’s life that we almost forget about the land and don’t even want to go back to the land,” she said. “We could say we have this, we have that, but if we don’t have the land to grow our own food, then how are we going to be healthy?”
Referencing the Honorable Elijah Muhammad on the importance of Black unity, Melody Muhammad wants to see more families getting together with land to live on.
“Moving forward, we start purchasing little spots here or there, and have communities,” she said. But to go into land ownership, Black people first have to work on their credit, budget and be willing to sacrifice, she added.
“We need to really focus on budgeting. And that’s where I think some of us fall short, is when you see these things going on, and you know it’s not in your budget. And you know that you want to get some land and you want to do some stuff, but you gotta make sacrifices. You gotta give up something to do it,” she said.
The National Association of Real Estate Brokers launched a “Building Black Wealth Tour” to help educate and provide resources. The organization has designated April 12, 2025, as their 2nd annual “Building Black Wealth Day,” where seminars and sessions will occur simultaneously in 100 cities on homeownership, property investment and other wealth-building topics.
One of the tour’s sessions will go into heirs’ property and “what to do with Big Momma’s house.”
Melody Muhammad believes as time goes on, more Black people will start uniting and owning land.
“When we realize the importance of what’s happening today, I believe we will educate some of the young people, and they can enjoy some of the space on the land,” she said. “We can start to get the children to want to be in those spaces, because they’ll be safe spaces.”
She placed focus on the family unit, first.
“Start buying property as a family, first,” she said. “More husbands and wives do things together then start working with other families and build communities.”
“I can see us going back to having generational wealth,” she concluded.
Hospitalized preterm infants had a 170% higher incidence of apnea within 48 hours of receiving their routine 2-month vaccinations compared to unvaccinated babies, according to a new study. The authors said the study supports current vaccine recommendations, but some scientists disagreed and raised concerns about SIDS.
by Nabil Muhammad, Ph.D. The Defender
This article was originally published by The Defender—Children’s Health De fense’s News & Views Website on January 9, 2025.
Hospitalized preterm infants had a 170% higher incidence of apnea within 48 hours of receiving their routine 2-month vaccinations compared to unvaccinated babies, according to the data in a new study.
The study, published Jan. 6 in JAMA Pediatrics, defined apnea “as a respiration pause greater than 20 seconds or a respiration pause greater than 15 seconds with associated bradycardia” — or low heart rate of less than 80 beats per minute.
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Noting that preterm infants receive their routine vaccinations at the same time as full-term infants, the study sought to determine whether routine 2-month vaccinations resulted in an increased risk of apnea.
The authors concluded, “The similar number and duration of apneic events and lack of serious adverse events suggest that current vaccination recommendations for hospitalized preterm infants are appropriate.”
However, Karl Jablonowski, Ph.D., senior research scientist at Children’s Health Defense, said the authors arrived at their conclusion “by ignoring the risks” evident in their own data.
“A premature infant experiencing apnea will likely have a longer neonatal intensive care unit stay, further exposing them to hospital-acquired infection,” Jablonowski said. “This is on top of the other risk factors for apnea like death, respiratory failure, long-term lung problems and failure to thrive.”
In a Substack post, cardiologist Dr. Peter McCullough suggested that “it is conceivable” that with seven vaccines at age 2 months and 16 vaccines at 12-15 months, “combination vaccination could be associated with significant unmonitored apneas, febrile seizures, or both resulting in sudden infant death syndrome [SIDS] at home.”
Biologist Christina Parks, Ph.D., an expert in how vaccines affect the immune system, told The Defender the study confirms “what previous studies on premature infants have shown — that vaccination induces cardiorespiratory stress that manifests as the slowing of heart rate (bradycardia) and respiration as well as the cessation of breathing (apnea) for brief periods of time.”
Parks said the fact that “the known risks have not been implicated as potential causes of SIDS is inexcusable at this point.”
Study suggests ‘one-size-fits-all approach to vaccination’ not appropriate for preterm infants
Research scientist and author James Lyons-Weiler, Ph.D., told The Defender the study “is a wake-up call” that highlights how routine vaccinations, particularly in preterm infants, may carry overlooked risks.
“The increased incidence of apnea in vaccinated preterm infants suggests that the one-size-fits-all approach to vaccination may not be appropriate for such a vulnerable population,” Lyons-Weiler said. “It underscores the need to consider individual physiological differences— especially in those with underdeveloped systems—and tailor vaccination practices accordingly.”
Lyons-Weiler said the study’s authors appear to prioritize the broader public health benefits of vaccination over the individual risks demonstrated in the study. He said:
“They assume that the short-term apnea risks are outweighed by the long-term protection against infectious diseases. However, this conclusion overlooks critical questions about long-term outcomes for these infants, particularly if apnea episodes have lingering neurological consequences. They did not, however, really think this through. What is a pre-term infant’s life worth?”
Parks noted that the study did not present an analysis of what the potential causes of the increased incidence of apnea in vaccinated infants might be. “The complete lack of interest in the mechanisms by which vaccination is increasing cardiorespiratory distress in infants is also somewhat shocking.”
Jablonowski noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s childhood immunization schedule has expanded since the study was conducted, from 2018 to 2021.
“Had this study been performed today, with the rapidly expanding CDC immunization schedule, the infants would have received Prevnar 20 instead of Prevnar 13—so, seven additional antigens for pneumococcal, the rotavirus vaccine—up to five more antigens, and a monoclonal antibody for RSV,” Jablonowski said.
Four vaccinated infants had suspected cases of sepsis
Jablonowski also highlighted a less-emphasized outcome of the study: Four vaccinated infants had suspected cases of sepsis—a condition where the body responds improperly to an infection. By comparison, only one unvaccinated infant has a suspected case of sepsis.
Jablonowski said:
“The most startling finding of this study was not its primary or secondary outcomes, but an exploratory outcome concerning sepsis.
“No one versed in vaccine adverse reactions would be surprised that four vaccinated infants— compared to one unvaccinated infant—presented with fever. Everyone should be surprised that four vaccinated infants—compared to one unvaccinated infant—had blood cultures or were administered antibiotics over a concern for sepsis.
“Did the onslaught of the study’s five vaccines, covering 19 antigens, simultaneously administered, mimic sepsis symptoms or degrade the immune systems so severely to allow a pathogen to gain a foothold?”
Previous studies have confirmed the risk of infant sepsis after vaccination, Parks said.
“Traditionally, doctors assumed that infant sepsis was due to bacterial infection and treated with antibiotics even when no bacterial infection could be identified. However, these previous studies demonstrated that it was actually vaccination that led to this potentially life-threatening hyper-inflammatory state,” Parks said.
According to French independent scientist Hélène Banoun, Ph.D., the study confirms a French medical thesis published in 2013. That study examined 144 preterm babies, finding that 68% of newborns experienced significant cardiorespiratory events after vaccination.
“Taken together, all of these studies show that vaccination causes extreme, and possibly life-threatening, stress to the infant body and the tinier the body, the less resources it has to withstand that stress,” Parks said.
Aluminum-containing vaccines may pose a particular risk to preterm infants
Lyons-Weiler said that the study’s results also provide an indication of the risk involved with administering multiple vaccines at the same time or within a short period — particularly in babies and young children.
“Preterm infants already have underdeveloped immune and neurological systems, and the cumulative aluminum burden from multiple vaccines could exacerbate risks like apnea,” he said. “This study suggests that combination vaccination in such populations needs to be carefully reevaluated.”
He also noted that some vaccines routinely administered to infants contain aluminum. He analyzed the potential risks of administering such vaccines to babies on his Substack.
“Aluminum adjuvants are known to trigger immune activation and inflammation, which could impact respiratory and neurological stability in preterm infants,” Lyons-Weiler said. “Unfortunately, the study did not explore specific mechanisms, such as aluminum adjuvants, that might explain the observed increase in apnea. This is a significant oversight.”
Aluminum salts “are potent immune activators and could trigger systemic inflammation, disrupting respiratory control,” Lyons-Weiler said. He said infant vaccination could also spur cytokine production, “which may interfere with the immature neurological pathways responsible for regulating breathing.”
“Simultaneous administration of multiple vaccines increases the immune activation burden and cumulative aluminum exposure, compounding risks,” Lyons-Weiler said.
Writing on Substack, Lyons-Weiler called for vaccines that do not contain aluminum to be prioritized. He also called for the delayed vaccination of infants “not at immediate risk of Hepatitis B infection, or who have respiratory or cardiac episodes following vaccination” and proposed weight-based dosing “to account for the smaller body mass and underdeveloped renal function of preterm infants.”
“Delaying non-essential vaccinations until greater physiological maturity may provide a safer path forward,” Lyons-Weiler wrote.
This article was originally published by The Defender—Children Health Defense News & Views Website under Creative Commons license CC BYNC-ND 4.0.
Experts raise questions about SIDS after study shows vaccinating preterm babies greatly increases risk of apnea
Hospitalized preterm infants had a 170% higher incidence of apnea within 48 hours of receiving their routine 2-month vaccinations compared to unvaccinated babies, according to a new study. The authors said the study supports current vaccine recommendations, but some scientists disagreed and raised concerns about SIDS.
