Illegal marijuana operations continue to plague states like New York despite laws letting people grow and use marijuana.
Presumably, many marijuana growers and users simply don’t want to comply with the requirements found in their states’ laws.
WGRZ-TV News out of New York recently reported that authorities in New York are cracking down on illegal marijuana dispensaries, but nobody actually knows how many there may be in the state.
Across the board, media outlets have repeatedly reported that legalization of marijuana has fueled black market operations rather than reducing them — emboldening drug cartels that operate industrial scale marijuana cultivation sites.
Some of these marijuana operations are tied to labor trafficking and violent crime. A recent report by Fox Business highlighted national security concerns that some of these illegal marijuana farms may actually have have connections to foreign interests like the Chinese Communist Party.
These reports come as a proposed marijuana amendment is vying for the 2024 ballot in Arkansas — raising serious questions about what could happen in Arkansas if the state goes the same route as California, New York, Oregon, and others.
You can watch WGRZ-TV News coverage of the situation in New York below.
Recently attorney Jeremy Tedesco, Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement for Alliance Defending Freedom testified before a congressional committee about how big banks have targeted Family Council and other conservative organizations.
On March 6, the U.S. House of Representatives Judiciary Committee and the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government released a report indicating the federal government weaponized banks against conservatives.
The report shows that after the events of January 6, 2021, federal law enforcement officials from the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) and the FBI initiated multiple discussions with financial institutions to discuss ways financial institutions could share customer information with federal law enforcement outside of normal legal processes.
The U.S. Treasury Department gave banks and other financial institutions guiding “typologies” — patterns that could be used to identify suspicious people or activities — including search terms and patterns like “TRUMP” and “MAGA”, and encouraged financial institutions to comb through transactions for terms like, “Bass Pro Shops,” “Cabela’s,” and “Dick’s Sporting Goods” when looking for “Homegrown Violent Extremism.”
The report also reveals the Treasury Department provided banks and financial institutions with an analysis that listed legitimate, conservative groups such as Alliance Defending Freedom, the American College of Pediatricians, American Family Association, Eagle Forum, Family Research Council, Liberty Counsel, National Organization for Marriage, and the Ruth Institute as “Hate Groups” alongside the KKK and the American Nazi Party.
On March 7attorney Jeremy Tedesco, Senior Counsel and Senior Vice President of Corporate Engagement for Alliance Defending Freedom, told the Select Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government how big banks have targeted other conservative organizations like Family Council.
JP Morgan Chase de-banked the Arkansas Family Council for being “high risk” and never provided a credible reason for canceling the account of former U.S. Sen. Sam Brownback’s organization the National Committee for Religious Freedom. And Wells Fargo denied payment processing to the pro-life group The Ruth Institute. These are some of the many instances of viewpoint-based de-banking and are likely only the tip of the iceberg.
These stories highlight the systemic risk of political and religious bias that pervades the financial industry, particularly at the largest banks and payment processors. These institutions maintain reputational risk policies that allow them unfettered discretion to punish customers who have, in their view, problematic political or religious views. Many also have prohibitions on “hate” speech and “intolerance” that require the institution to make subjective and value-based judgments on a customer’s viewpoint. Both types of policies are vague and ambiguous, sweep in broad swaths of content, chill constitutionally protected speech, and erode economic freedom.
Worse, government regulators can all too easily wield their outsized power over financial institutions to pressure them to leverage these against disfavored views—all with virtually no public accountability. Financial institutions in turn can hide behind that same shield to discriminate without ever explaining it to the customer—regardless of whether the action was prompted by government pressure.
In 2021 Family Council’s credit card processor terminated our account after designating our organization as “high risk.”
At 10:29 AM on Wednesday, July 7, 2021, our office received a terse email from our credit card processor — a company owned by JPMorgan Chase — saying, “Unfortunately, we can no longer support your business. We wish you all the luck in the future, and hope that you find a processor that better fits your payment processing needs.”
Within sixty seconds, our account was terminated and and Family Council could no longer accept donations online. We never received any further explanation concerning our abrupt, unprofessional cancelation. All we can do is speculate that our conservative principles and our public policy work might have had something to do with the decision to close our account.
You can watch Jeremy Tedesco’s full congressional testimony below or read it here.
On Monday the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis scheduled oral arguments for next month in a lawsuit over whether or not Arkansas can protect children from sex-change procedures.
In 2021, lawmakers in Arkansas overwhelmingly passed the Save Adolescents From Experimentation (SAFE) Act.
The SAFE Act is a good law that prevents doctors in Arkansas from performing sex-change surgeries on children or giving them puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones.
Sex-change surgeries and procedures can leave children sterilized and scarred for life.
Researchers do not know all the long term effects puberty-blockers and cross-sex hormones can have on kids. That is why many experts agree that subjecting children to sex-change procedures is experimental, at best.
Unfortunately, the SAFE Act has been tied up in court for more than two years, and a federal judge in Little Rock has blocked the state from enforcing the law. However, it’s worth noting that federal appeals courts have allowed similar laws to go into effect in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Alabama.
That’s why Arkansas Attorney General Tim Griffin’s office is appealing Arkansas’ case over the SAFE Act. Last Monday the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals announced it will hold oral arguments in the lawsuit at an en banc hearing on Thursday, April 11.
A growing body of scientific evidence shows children should not be subjected to sex-change procedures, puberty blockers, and cross-sex hormones.
Not long after Arkansas passed the SAFE Act, a major hospital in Sweden announced that it would no longer give puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones to kids, and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration added a warning label to puberty blockers after discovering they caused some biological girls to experience swelling in the brain.
For example, the leaked files showed one WPATH doctor encountered a 16-year-old female patient who had “two [cancerous] liver masses [tumors]” and that girl’s oncologist and surgeon both agreed cross-sex hormones were to blame for the cancerous tumors.
