News Round-Up: US to Deny Visas to Censors, German Pensioner Sent to Prison for a Social Media Post, and CDC Halts Covid Vaccine Advice for Pregnant Women & Kids
Every week, the editorial team of Freedom Research compiles a round-up of news that caught our eye, or what felt like under-reported aspects of news deserving more attention.
Over the past week, the following topics attracted our attention:
US to deny visas to foreign officials who try to censor US social media platforms.
US removes Covid vaccine from pregnant women’s and children’s immunization schedule.
German pensioner receives a prison sentence for a social media post.
Vietnam cuts subsidies on $13 billion worth of ‘renewables’ projects leaving them at default risk.
Merkel warns new German government against border controls.
US to deny visas to foreign officials who try to censor US social media platforms
Since taking office, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has taken a series of actions to push back against growing foreign government demands to censor American citizens and American technology companies like Google, Meta, and X, Public reports.
In April, Rubio shut down the State Department’s Global Engagement Center (GEC), which had funded censorship advocacy by the Global Disinformation Index, a UK-based NGO with ties to the Intelligence Community. Last week, Rubio said the administration was considering sanctions under the Magnitsky Act against Brazilian Supreme Court Justice Alexandre de Moraes for his sweeping censorship edicts.
On Monday, senior State Department officials travelled to France to raise their concerns about the lawfare against presidential front-runner, Marine Le Pen, and to Ireland to raise their concerns with the Digital Services Act (DSA), the law that allows the EU to censor American citizens and American companies.
Now the State Department has advanced a policy to deny visas to foreign nationals and even their family members if they are or have been involved in the censorship of American citizens, companies and foreigners residing in the United States, under the Immigration and Nationality Act (INA).
US removes Covid vaccine from pregnant women’s, children’s immunization schedule
Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced Tuesday that the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommends pregnant women and children in good health to get vaccinated against Covid.
Robert F Kennedy Jr announced, along with the director of the Institute for Health Solutions Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, and the head of the Food and Drug Administration Dr. Marty Makary, that Covid vaccines have been removed from the immunization schedule for healthy children and pregnant women, writes Forbes. They explained that the previous administration had recommended that all children be revaccinated against Covid every year, but there is no clinical data to support the strategy of repeatedly vaccinating healthy young people and children.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) website has not yet made any changes in this regard and continues to state that it is particularly important to vaccinate pregnant women and women planning to become pregnant against Covid. It also recommends vaccinating all children aged six months and older against Covid.
Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), headed by Dr. Makary, announced that it plans to issue new recommendations for Covid vaccines. According to these recommendations, it is likely that only people over the age of 65 and those at high risk of severe illness will be vaccinated in the future.
German pensioner receives a prison sentence for a social media post
Apollo News is reporting on the substantial speech crime sentence handed to a 73 year-old pensioner from the district of Traunstein in Upper Bavaria, eugyppius writes. Twice last year, the man repeated the expression “Alles für Deutschland” (all for Germany) in posts on X – apparently in the course of discussing the indictment of Alternative für Deutschland politician Björn Höcke for the use of the same phrase. The words are forbidden in Germany by Section 86a of the German Criminal Code, which bans National Socialist slogans and symbols. While “Alles für Deutschland” occurs in various contexts, the phrase is associated particularly with the Sturmabteilung, or the SA, who carved the words onto their uniform daggers.
The Traunstein Public Prosecutor brought charges against the pensioner last autumn. The District Court convicted him in November and imposed a fine of €4,500, which he was unable to pay due to financial hardship. Rather than granting the usual deferral or instalment plan, prosecutors have summoned him to serve 75 days in prison instead. He will begin his sentence on June 5.
This is the latest in a long string of speech crime prosecutions in Germany. Last November, another German pensioner from Bavaria had his house raided by police for the crime of sharing a meme on X that called former Economics Minister Robert Habeck a “moron.” Others have been prosecuted for such trivialities as tweeting the poop emoji at a cabinet minister, calling Greens fat and stupid, imprecisely quoting important politicians, and reproducing a picture of former Health Minister Karl Lauterbach with his hand raised at an unfortunate angle. In most such cases, convicted speech criminals receive fines (however ruinous), although harsher sentences are not unheard-of.
What makes this most recent prosecution noteworthy is the fact that the offending tweets were referred for prosecution by the so-called “trusted flaggers” at the dubious government-funded anti-hate organisation that calls itself REspect! The EU Digital Services Act has helped empower REspect! to police the German internet for “disallowed speech,” and with our Bavarian pensioner they apparently claimed yet another scalp. REspect! Claims on their website that they have referred nearly 25,000 cases of criminal speech for prosecution over the years.
Vietnam cuts subsidies on $13 billion worth of ‘renewables’ projects leaving them at default risk
Investors in Vietnam’s solar and wind energy sector are warning they may default unless the government honors its original pricing commitments, ZeroHedge cites to Nikkei Asia.
Vietnam had initially offered feed-in tariffs ranging from 7.09 to 9.35 U.S. cents (€6.24-8.23 cents) per kWh for solar energy, valid for 20 years, to attract investment and support the country's shift to renewable energy. However, the government now wants to pay in local currency at a rate equal to 4.7 U.S. cents per kWh—a cut of 34% to 50%, depending on the exchange rate.
Most affected projects are solar farms, and many investors have reported delayed or reduced payments from the state utility Electricity Vietnam (EVN). These delays stem from a government review claiming that key documentation—the construction completion acceptance (CCA)—was missing, despite not being required at the time.
Investors argue that most of the projects have since secured the document and paid related penalties.
In a letter sent on May 16 to top leaders including Communist Party chief To Lam and Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh, the investors urged the government to protect what they described as Vietnam’s “contractual integrity, regulatory consistency, and the credibility” of its investment environment. They also warned that the dispute “poses serious and immediate risks to investor confidence, financial stability, and Vietnam’s long-term energy and climate objectives.”
Concerns have grown over EVN’s proposal to retroactively change terms, which could require investors to return past payments. One Vietnamese investor noted that while the rules have shifted, most developers are now in compliance.
The Nikkei report says that the letter—signed by more than 40 foreign and local investors representing a combined 6.38 gigawatts of capacity—also noted that over $13 billion (€11.44 billon) in equity is at risk, including about $4 billion (€3.52) from foreign-led projects.
Signatories include Japan’s Fujiwara Energy and Toho Gas, Thailand’s B.Grimm Renewable and Super Energy, the Philippines’ ACEN, Portugal’s Sunseap, and the Netherlands’ SEP.
Merkel warns new German government against border controls
Former German Chancellor Angela Merkel has warned that the federal government’s tightened border controls are putting the principle of European freedom of movement at risk, despite figures showing they have sharply reduced the number of illegal entries into Germany, Remix News reports.
Merkel, who led Germany during the 2015 migrant crisis and welcomed over a million foreign nationals into the country, insisted that national measures to control migration were ultimately ineffective and endangered the broader European project.
“I do not believe that we will be able to conclusively combat illegal migration on the German-Austrian or German-Polish borders,” Merkel said during a discussion with Südwest Presse editor-in-chief Ulrich Becker.
Merkel, who read excerpts from her book Freedom, stressed her long-standing preference for European-level solutions. “The truth is, it takes forever and a very long time, but we must focus on external border protection. Anything else will ultimately cost us Schengen, i.e. freedom of movement in the European Union, if it becomes permanent.”
The former chancellor added that current internal controls were already having an effect. “Border controls are already very annoying in some cases,” she said, claiming that she personally knows many people who no longer travel to Szczecin in Poland because of the inconvenience. “I plead for European solutions because otherwise we could see Europe being destroyed for us, and I don’t want that. And I hope that the new federal government doesn’t want that either.”
Germany’s border regime has grown steadily stricter in recent years, with stationary border checks with Austria having been in place since 2015, and extended to Poland, Czechia, and Switzerland in October 2023. Interior controls were further expanded during the summer of 2024 to include all other land borders.
Federal police data obtained by Welt suggests the government’s newfound interest in border control is working. From January to mid-May this year, 22,170 illegal entries were registered, down from 83,572 during the same period in 2024 and 127,549 in 2023.
The new CDU-led federal government made a promise in their election campaign in February to crack down on illegal immigration, and Federal Interior Minister Alexander Dobrindt (CSU) recently announced that most asylum seekers would be turned away at the German border, citing EU law provisions that allow border measures in cases of public emergency. Children and pregnant women are exempt from the rule.
Please, RFK jr, just remove the C vaccination for everyone - plenty of evidence shows that it is neither safe nor effective for anyone, whatever their age.
What a fat ugly idiotic twot Merkel is. And it’s a man……isn’t it?