<p id="">A man convicted of brutally beating two elderly pro-life Americans has been spared prison time.</p><p id="">In May 2023, Dick Schafer, 80, and Mark Crosby, 73, were protesting abortion outside a Planned Parenthood facility in Baltimore&nbsp; 28-year-old Patrick Brice stopped and began arguing with them. After Schafer made a remark Brice perceived as racist, Brice asked a Planned Parenthood volunteer to hold his drink and then assaulted Schafer from behind. When Crosby came to Schafer’s aid, Brice struck the 73-year-old in the face, knocking him against the building’s glass. Crosby fell, toppling a ceramic planter, and Brice proceeded to punch him in the face and kick him in the head.</p><p id="">Crosby was admitted to the University of Baltimore’s shock trauma center with a fully fractured plate bone in his upper right cheek, blindness in one eye, two fractured fingers, bruising on his arms and legs, and head and neck pain. His orbital bone was completely shattered. The attack left Crosby with photophobia, forcing him to cover his right eye from bright lights or sunlight.</p><p id="">Brice avoided first-degree assault charges. In February, he was convicted of two counts of reckless endangerment and two counts of second-degree assault.</p><p id="">On Thursday, Baltimore City Circuit Judge Yvette M. Bryant sentenced Brice to one year of home detention—allowing him to travel for work and medical appointments—and three years’ probation. He must complete anger management classes, undergo drug and alcohol screening, and remain in therapy, <em id="">Fox News</em> <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/man-caught-video-attacking-pro-life-protesters-gets-slap-wrist-judge" id="">reported</a>.</p><p id="">Prosecutors had requested a 10-year prison sentence.</p><p id="">This lenient sentence sharply contrasts with the <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/young-mother-sentenced-to-over-three-years-for-pro-life-protest" id="">harsher punishments</a> often handed down to pro-life Americans who peacefully protest abortion, including elderly and infirm demonstrators.</p><p id="">Brice is also the latest violent radical Leftist to receive exceptionally lenient treatment in court.</p><h2 id="">Robert Hoopes</h2><p id="">On June 14th, 24-year-old Robert Jacob Hoopes participated in a riot outside an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Oregon. Hoopes threw a rock that struck a police officer in the head, causing what the DOJ called&nbsp; a “significant laceration” under the officer’s eye. With the help of two others, Hoopes used a pole as a battering ram to try to break through the facility, causing “significant damage” to the main door.</p><p id="">Last month, Obama-appointed Judge Youlee Yim You ordered Hoopes released from jail, to be fitted with an ankle monitor instead. According to <em id="">Oregon Public Broadcasting</em>, the judge based her decision partly on the showing of support for Hoopes in the courtroom. Attendees included Hoopes’ father, who said he was proud of his son for defending illegal aliens.</p><h2 id="">Adam Lansky</h2><p id="">Federal judges have also refused to detain Adam Lansky, a transgender-identifying man who attacked a Tesla dealership in January. Lansky firebombed the dealership with Molotov cocktails, aimed a rifle at a witness, and returned the next day to shoot up the building. <a href="https://dailycaller.com/2025/07/29/blue-state-judges-refuse-jail-leftists-charged-violent-attacks/" id="">According</a> to the <em id="">Daily Caller</em>, the DOJ warned the court that Lansky belongs to a militant organization called the Socialist Rifle Association, a group that trains radical Leftists and Marxists across the US in firearms. The DOJ also expressed concern that if released, Lansky could continue to make bombs.</p><p id="">“The [improvised explosive devices] used by Lansky were all manufactured by him using everyday items, empty glass bottles, gasoline, fabric, etc., all these items remain easily accessible to Lansky in the community if released,” the DOJ said in a court filing.</p><p id="">Nevertheless, Obama-appointed Judge Stacie Beckerman ordered Lansky’s release to a halfway house, calling his behavior an “outlier event.” When the DOJ appealed to Judge Adrienne Nelson, who is celebrated as the first Black woman to serve on Oregon’s District Court, she upheld Beckerman’s decision.</p><h2 id="">‘Julie’ Winters</h2><p id="">Beckerman also ordered the release of another transgender-identifying rioter, “Julie” Winters, to a halfway house. Winters tried to set off a bomb near an ICE building, threw a large knife at a federal officer, which missed, and pulled a knife on officers who tried to restrain him. He had also assaulted a police officer in December. Beckerman released Winters from jail because he was kept in solitary confinement rather than with male or female inmates due to his gender confusion.</p><h2 id="">Dylan Bryan Adams</h2><p id="">In April, a Democratic Minnesota official evaded charges for domestic terrorism. Dylan Bryan Adams, a fiscal policy analyst for the Minnesota Department of Human Services, was arrested after keying six Teslas, causing over $21,000 in damages. Instead of filing charges, Hennepin County District Attorney Mary Moriarty—who has been backed by billionaire George Soros—said she will enter Adams into an adult diversion program. Diversion programs are designed to keep criminals out of the justice system and offer activities such as counseling and community service.</p><h2 id="">Owen McIntire</h2><p id="">Owen McIntire, a 19-year-old physics major at the University of Massachusetts Boston, was arrested after throwing two Molotov cocktails at a Tesla dealership in Kansas City. The firebombs caused hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage to two cybertrucks and two charging stations.&nbsp;</p><p id="">Federal prosecutors sought to keep McIntire in federal custody, arguing that the terrorism-related charges make him a public safety threat. On April 24th, however, Judge Jessica Hedges rejected the prosecutors' request and granted McIntire release so he could continue to receive “gender-affirming care.” The judge also cited McIntire’s autism and ADHD, for which he takes medication. He was released to the custody of his parents and will remain under house arrest until his trial, which has been delayed a year.</p><p id="">‍</p>

Radical Leftist who brutally beat elderly pro-lifers avoids prison

Patrick Brice is the latest radical Leftist to receive exceptionally lenient treatment in court

<p id="">In this explosive interview, Elizabeth Farah sits down with scholar Timon Cline to expose the decision as the legal nuke that detonated America's religious foundations.</p><p id="">By WND Staff</p><p id="">What if everything you've been told about the First Amendment is a lie?</p><p id="">In this explosive interview, Elizabeth Farah sits down with attorney and scholar Timon Cline to expose the 1947 Everson v. Board of Education decision as the legal nuke that detonated America's religious foundations.</p><p id="">Cline calls Everson the Roe v. Wade of public religion: 75 years of Supreme Court rulings that erased school prayer, banned Ten Commandments displays, and silenced Christian expression, all in the name of "neutrality."</p><p id="">He pulls no punches, showing how unelected judges hijacked power from the people and redefined the Constitution to favor secularism. With over 60% of Americans still identifying as Christian, why are courts treating religion like a threat?</p><p id="">Cline lays out a strategy to overturn Everson, restore federalism, and give states back the right to support public faith. If you care about religious liberty, parental rights, and reclaiming American identity, this is the moment you've been waiting for.</p><p id=""><strong id="">WATCH: </strong></p><div data-rt-embed-type='true'><iframe class="rumble" width="640" height="360" src="https://rumble.com/embed/v6v0nyo/?pub=4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe></div><p id=""><a href="https://www.wnd.com/author/wndstaff/" id="">WND Staff</a>. This story was <a href="http://wnd.com/2025/08/watch-timon-cline-75-years-anti-christian-law/" id="">originally published</a> by the <a href="https://www.wnd.com/">WND News Center.</a></p><p id="">‍</p>

WATCH: 75 years of anti-Christian law started with this one Supreme Court case

What if everything you've been told about the First Amendment is a lie? 

<p id="">President Trump is preparing to sign an executive order that would crack down on financial institutions that shut down customer accounts for holding the wrong views, the <em id="">Wall Street Journal </em><a href="https://archive.is/18BQK#selection-751.175-751.258" id="">reported</a> on Tuesday.</p><p id="">The practice, known as debanking, has primarily targeted conservatives and crypto companies. The executive order will direct financial regulators to investigate such institutions for violating the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, antitrust regulations, or consumer financial-protection laws.&nbsp;</p><p id="">On Tuesday, Trump told <em id="">CNBC </em>that JPMorgan Chase once gave him 20 days to move millions of dollars to another bank, and that Bank of America refused to allow him to open an account to deposit over a billion dollars. Stripe shut down the Trump campaign’s account immediately after January 6, 2021. In her recent memoir, First Lady Melania Trump <a href="https://www.thegoldreport.com/news/bank-denied-accounts-to-trump-family-after-white-house-says-melania" id="">slammed</a> a bank that closed her and her son Barron’s bank accounts after the Trumps were ousted from the White House in 2020.</p><p id="">In May 2022, Chase Bank abruptly closed the account belonging to former U.S. Ambassador Sam Brownback’s National Committee for Religious Freedom (NCRF), a nonprofit aimed at safeguarding freedom for all religions. No transactions had raised any red flags. In 2021, a Chase-owned credit card processor notified the pro-life organization Family Council that “we can no longer support your business” because it was considered “High Risk.” The nonprofit did not meet any of the qualifications for the High Risk category.</p><p id="">WePay, a payment gateway owned by Chase, refused service to a conservative group because it felt its views supported “hate, violence, racial intolerance, [and] terrorism”. In 2021, Chase abruptly closed former Trump National Security Advisor Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn’s bank account for “reputational reasons,” <a href="https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/commentary/left-doesnt-just-want-censor-you-social-media-it-also-wants-close-your" id="">according</a> to <em id="">The Heritage Foundation. </em>&nbsp;&nbsp;</p><p id="">In 2020, Wells Fargo suddenly closed then-Republican Senate candidate Lauren Witzke’s bank account without explanation.&nbsp;</p><p id="">These are just some examples that led to Trump’s public admonition of major banks at the World Economic Forum’s annual summit in Davos in January.</p><p id="">I hope you start opening your bank to conservatives, because many conservatives complain that the banks are not allowing them to do business within the bank, and that included a place called Bank of America,” Trump told Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan, who attended the summit. “They don’t take conservative business. And I don’t know if the regulators mandated that because of Biden or what, but you and [JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie [Dimon] and everybody, I hope you’re going to open your banks to conservatives, because what you’re doing is wrong.”</p><h2 id="">Government-sanctioned debanking</h2><p id="">In December, billionaire startup investor Marc Andreessen explained to podcaster Joe Rogan how the federal government engages in debanking.</p><p id="">“We have this thing called the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau, CFPB, which is sort of Elizabeth Warren’s personal agency that she gets to control,” said Andreessen. “And it’s an independent agency that gets to run and do whatever it wants, right? And if you read the Constitution, there is no such thing as an independent agency, and yet there it is.”</p><p id="">Andreessen said the CFPB acts on Sen. Warren’s whim and is able to “terrorize financial institutions, prevent new competition, new startups that want to compete with the big banks . . . Just terrorizing anybody who tries to do anything new in financial services.”</p><p id="">“This is where a lot of the debanking comes from, is these agencies,” he continued. “So debanking is when you as either a person or your company are literally kicked out of the banking system.”</p><p id="">The investor explained that agencies like the CFPB allow the federal government to skirt the Constitution:</p><blockquote id=""><em id="">This is where the government and the companies get intertwined. Back to your fascism point, which is, there’s a constitutional amendment that says the government can’t restrict your speech, but there’s no constitutional amendment that says the government can’t debank you, right? And so they, if they can’t do the one thing, they do the other thing, and then they don’t have to debank you. They just have to put pressure on the private company banks to do it. And then the private company banks do it because they’re expected to. But the government gets to say we didn’t do it. It was the private company that did it. And of course JP Morgan can decide who they want to have as customers, because they’re a private company. And so it’s this it’s this sleight of hand that happens it — basically it’s a privatized sanctions regime that lets bureaucrats do to American citizens the same thing that we do to Iran. Kick you out of the financial system. And so this has been happening to all the crypto entrepreneurs in the last four years. This has been happening to a lot of the fintech entrepreneurs, anybody trying to start any kind of new banking service because they’re trying to protect the big banks.</em></blockquote><div data-rt-embed-type='true'><blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Worth listening to Marc Andreessen&#39;s interview with Joe Rogan:<br><br>&quot;CFPB is Elizabeth Warren&#39;s private agency.&quot;<br><br>&quot;CFPB&#39;s job is to terrorize new startups and increase hold of existing banks to prevent new competition.&quot;<br><br>&quot;Privatized sanction regime that lets bureaucrats do what the… <a href="https://t.co/y3dzgMNRRr">pic.twitter.com/y3dzgMNRRr</a></p>&mdash; Rohit Mittal (@rohitdotmittal) <a href="https://twitter.com/rohitdotmittal/status/1861648094124745183?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">November 27, 2024</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script></div><p id="">‍</p>

Trump poised to crack down on discriminatory debanking

America's biggest banks have been known to drop conservative customers and crypto businesses

<p id="">By Joseph Varon, MD, Brownstone Institute</p><p id="">In a time when trust in public health is already hanging by a thread, recent <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/press-room/hrsa-to-reform-organ-transplant-system.html" id="">revelations</a> from the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) have delivered another blow—one that strikes at the very heart of medical ethics. </p><p id="">“Our findings show that hospitals allowed the organ procurement process to begin when patients showed signs of life, and this is horrifying,” Secretary Kennedy said. “The organ procurement organizations that coordinate access to transplants will be held accountable. The entire system must be fixed to ensure that every potential donor’s life is treated with the sanctity it deserves.”</p><p id="">Hidden beneath the surface and quietly ignored by corporate media is a story that should horrify every physician, patient, and policymaker: the commodification of human life in the American transplant system.</p><p id="">The Independent Medical Alliance (IMA), a coalition of physicians dedicated to restoring transparency and patient-centered care, has publicly denounced the findings of a recent HHS report. As President of IMA, I can tell you this: what we’ve uncovered is not a case of benign negligence. It is a deliberate erosion of the most sacred values in medicine—consent, dignity, and the inviolability of the human body.</p><h3 id="">A System That No Longer Sees the Patient</h3><p id="">Organ transplantation is, in theory, one of the great achievements of modern medicine. When practiced ethically and transparently, it has saved countless lives. But like so many institutions corrupted by profit and policy, it has drifted far from its original mission.</p><p id="">In 2024 alone, over 45,000 organ transplants were performed in the United States. That number should inspire hope—but instead, it invites scrutiny. A substantial portion of those organs were harvested under ethically ambiguous conditions, including donation after circulatory death (DCD) and questionable determinations of brain death. The line between patient and donor is blurring—and not in a way that honors either.</p><p id="">Organ Procurement Organizations (OPOs) are incentivized not by patient outcomes, but by volume. The more organs they harvest, the more funding they receive. Hospitals, too, receive significant reimbursement for transplant procedures, creating a perverse system where terminal patients are seen less as individuals with complex medical stories and more as reservoirs of reusable parts. The <em id="">New York Times</em> has <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/30/opinion/organ-donors-death-definition.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare" id="">published</a> a piece that urges standards of death to be liberalized even further. “We need to figure out how to obtain more healthy organs from donors… We need to broaden the definition of death.”</p><h3 id="">Where Are These Organs Coming From?</h3><p id="">The public assumes, understandably, that most organ donors are willing participants—cadaveric donors who’ve signed cards or checked boxes. But the data doesn’t support that rosy picture. A growing percentage of organ procurement comes from patients who are not dead in the traditional sense but are declared brain dead or transitioned to DCD protocols under murky guidelines.</p><p id="">Let’s talk plainly: Who decides when a person is truly dead? And how confident are we, as physicians, that our criteria are airtight?</p><h3 id="">The Trouble with Brain Death</h3><p id="">Brain death is defined as the irreversible cessation of all brain activity, including the brainstem. On paper, that sounds final. In practice, it’s anything but. There is no universal standard for determining brain death in the United States. Each state, and often each hospital, may have its own protocol.</p><p id="">Here’s how it’s supposed to be done:</p><ol id=""><li id="">Prerequisites:<ul id=""><li id="">Establish cause of coma (e.g., trauma, hemorrhage, anoxic injury)</li><li id="">Rule out confounding factors: intoxication, metabolic disturbances, hypothermia</li><li id="">Ensure normothermia, normal electrolytes, and absence of sedatives or paralytics</li></ul></li><li id="">Neurological Exam:<ul id=""><li id="">No responsiveness to verbal or noxious stimuli</li><li id="">Absent brainstem reflexes:<ul id=""><li id="">Pupillary response to light</li><li id="">Corneal reflex</li><li id="">Oculocephalic reflex (“doll’s eyes”)</li><li id="">Oculovestibular reflex (cold calorics)</li><li id="">Gag and cough reflex</li><li id="">No spontaneous breathing on apnea testing (typically ≥8 minutes off ventilator with rising PaCO₂)</li></ul></li></ul></li><li id="">Confirmatory Testing (if clinical exam incomplete or legally required):<ul id=""><li id="">Cerebral blood flow studies</li><li id="">EEG (flatline)</li><li id="">Nuclear medicine perfusion scans</li></ul></li></ol><p id="">It’s a thorough process—when done correctly. But that’s precisely the issue: it’s not always done correctly. There are documented cases where brain death was declared prematurely or without full testing. Hospitals under pressure to free up ICU beds or meet organ quotas may streamline protocols, sometimes performing incomplete assessments or skipping confirmatory imaging altogether.</p><p id="">In one documented case from a major metropolitan hospital, a patient declared brain dead still had spontaneous movements and reactive pupils—until a more experienced intensivist reversed the call and the patient recovered. That is not “rare.” That is underreported.</p><p id="">Even the apnea test, long considered a gold standard, is increasingly controversial. It requires removing the patient from mechanical ventilation long enough to provoke a rise in CO₂. But this test, by definition, stresses the brain and may worsen injury. In borderline cases, it can tip a patient from injured to truly nonviable. And it assumes that the absence of any spontaneous respiration equals death, a standard that conflates clinical irreversibility with absolute neurologic death.</p><h3 id="">The Rise of DCD and the Ethical Quagmire</h3><p id="">Donation after circulatory death (DCD) is another increasingly common method of procurement. In DCD, life support is withdrawn, and after the heart stops—typically for just 2 to 5 minutes—organ harvesting begins. The ethical argument here is that the patient has died a “natural” death. But how natural is it when withdrawal of care is timed and orchestrated to maximize organ viability?</p><p id="">Imagine this scenario: a family is told their loved one is not brain dead but has “no chance” of recovery. They agree to withdraw support. Moments after the heart stops, a surgical team—already scrubbed and waiting—enters the room. The skin is still warm. The body is still perfused. And the scalpel goes in.</p><p id="">That’s not hypothetical. That’s protocol in many transplant centers today.</p><p id="">And it’s not only adults. Pediatric DCD cases are growing, too, with parental consent forms often filled out under stress, confusion, or duress.</p><p id="">This is not medicine. It’s logistics.</p><h3 id="">Incentives, Pressure, and Profit</h3><p id="">The transplantation field has become a multi-billion-dollar industry. The average kidney transplant is reimbursed at over $300,000. Liver and heart transplants exceed $1 million. OPOs operate as pseudo-nonprofit organizations but are rewarded financially based on volume.</p><p id="">HHS oversight of these organizations is minimal. Even after several critical reports by the Office of Inspector General, no sweeping reforms have followed. In 2022, a Senate committee hearing revealed that one-third of OPOs had failed basic performance metrics—but not one was shut down.</p><p id="">Meanwhile, transplant candidates who refuse certain medical mandates—like Covid-19 vaccination—have been removed from waitlists, despite being otherwise viable recipients. So we will reject a healthy, unvaccinated patient but harvest a heart from someone whose family didn’t understand what “circulatory death” really meant?</p><p id="">That’s not health care. That’s institutionalized hypocrisy.</p><h3 id="">What Must Be Done</h3><p id="">This is not a call to end transplantation. It is a call to reclaim the ethical foundation of organ donation before it’s too late. We can—and must—do better.</p><h4 id="">Policy Recommendations:</h4><ul id=""><li id="">Standardized, federally mandated brain death protocols across all 50 states</li><li id="">Mandatory confirmatory testing (4-vessel cerebral angiogram or cerebral perfusion nuclear scan) for all brain death declarations</li><li id="">Real-time video documentation of brain death exams and DCD processes</li><li id="">Mandatory waiting period before DCD procurement to ensure true irreversibility</li><li id="">Full, informed consent recorded on video, with independent patient advocates present</li><li id="">Transparent audit logs from every OPO, published annually</li><li id="">Publicly searchable transplant registry, including donor status and procurement pathway</li><li id="">These are not radical ideas. These are the bare minimum requirements for a system that claims to respect life</li></ul><h3 id="">Final Thoughts: Medicine Must Be Moral or It Is Nothing</h3><p id="">There is no dignity in a system that cuts corners to save organs. There is no science in a system that calls someone dead based on arbitrary timelines and vague reflex testing. There is no trust in a system that silences physicians who speak up.</p><p id="">The medical profession is not a manufacturing line. Our job is not to optimize supply chains—it is to protect life, and when necessary, honor death. We must stop pretending that efficiency is equivalent to morality.</p><p id="">For years, I have trained residents and students to perform brain death exams. I’ve overseen transplants. I’ve supported grieving families and celebrated recipients. But I’ve also seen the shift—the slow erosion of principle under pressure. It’s time to draw a line.</p><p id="">Let us be the generation that doesn’t look away.</p><p id=""><a href="https://brownstone.org/author/joseph-varon/" id="">Joseph Varon</a></p><p id="">Joseph Varon, MD, is a critical care physician, professor, and President of the Independent Medical Alliance. He has authored over 980 peer-reviewed publications and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Independent Medicine. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id="">Published under a</a><a href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/" id=""> Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License</a>. For reprints, please set the canonical link back to the <a href="https://brownstone.org/articles/the-moral-cost-of-modern-transplant-medicine/">original Brownstone Institute Article</a> and Author.</p>

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