by Brian Shilhavy
Editor, Health Impact News

By now everyone is aware of the protests and rioting that occurred in Los Angeles over the weekend, due to ICE arrests and activities in LA starting Friday morning.

I have been monitoring these events through the weekend, but did not want to comment or write anything until today, Monday, June 9th.

The reason I waited is because I wanted to see if these riots would continue into the work week, to judge how widespread and serious they were. It was most definitely serious over the weekend, where protesters shut down the 101 freeway, and set several Waymo self-driving taxis on fire.

And of course, the big news was that Trump was calling in the National Guard to deal with the rioting.

But as of today, it appears that things are mostly back under control, as mass transit systems were up and running, people were driving to work, and all public schools in LA were open today.

This was obviously a planned event designed for a specific purpose, perhaps to try and incite riots that would quickly spread to other cities, such as the George Floyd riots in the summer of 2020, also under Trump during his first presidency.

If this was a “trial balloon” to try and duplicate what happened in 2020, it appears, at least at this point, to have failed.

That also does not surprise me, because we have a much different population in the U.S. here in 2025, than we had in 2020. In 2020 the nation was under lockdown from COVID, with tensions running high.

However, the experimental COVID shots had not yet been deployed under Trump’s Operation Warp Speed. Today, most of the population has been significantly affected by the COVID shots and the injuries they caused, including many neurological injuries, and the public is perhaps much more “sedated” than they were in 2020.

It also doesn’t surprise me that they chose LA to do this, if it was indeed a “trial balloon,” because not only does LA have a very significant illegal migrant population, but it is also home to MONEY, and lots of it, funding groups that will turn out for protests at a moment’s notice, no matter what the cause is of the protests.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell admitted as much on Sunday when the protests turned into rioting.

Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell said officers were “overwhelmed” by the remaining protesters. He said they included regular agitators who show up at demonstrations to cause trouble. (Source.)

The LA Police Chief on Friday originally said that the LA police department would not help ICE agents in their raids, due to California “Sanctuary City” laws that prevented them from doing so.

But by Sunday they had declared that the protesting was an “illegal assembly”, and LA police began clearing out the protesters, including using live round “crowd-control munitions”.

Trump Actions and Deploying the National Guard

One of the most controversial actions of the weekend was the Trump Administration deploying the California National Guard to the protests, bypassing the California Governor Gavin Newsom in doing so.

Media reports claim that such an action has not happened since 1965.

The last time the National Guard was activated without a governor’s permission was in 1965, when President Lyndon B. Johnson sent troops to protect a civil rights march in Alabama, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. (Source.)

In fact, the Trump Administration called a meeting with military leaders, whom Trump said included “generals and admirals”, at Camp David Sunday night, which he claimed was a more secure place to meet than the White House.

He held a brief impromptu press conference with just a few reporters before heading to Camp David, and responded to one reporter that they were planning on deploying military troops  “everywhere” in the United States.

Upon arriving back at the White House earlier today, the New York Times reported that Trump has now started using the word “insurrectionists” to describe the LA rioters, perhaps as a prelude to invoking the “Insurrection Act.”

President Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that the protesters in Los Angeles “are insurrectionists,” a term that several of his aides have been using as well, in what may become a rationale for him to invoke the 1807 Insurrection Act.

Invoking the act would give Mr. Trump broad authority to use the United States military to deal with violent protests in California and possibly elsewhere.

“The people who are causing the problems are bad people, they are insurrectionists,”

Mr. Trump told a small group of reporters after he landed on the White House lawn Monday. He arrived by helicopter from Camp David, where he had attended a meeting Sunday night. (Source.)

Most people will remember that this is not the first time that Trump has wanted to invoke the Insurrection Act, as he threatened to do so at the end of his first term as well just after the elections when Biden was declared the winner.

He was opposed by military leaders back then, as well as his own Secretary of Defense, whom he promptly fired.

[…]

Not surprisingly, military leaders and legal scholars today are also opposing the idea of invoking the Insurrection Act.

Trump LA protest response risks turning US military into political force, veterans warn

The Trump administration’s deployment of national guard troops to Los Angeles to intervene in civilian protests in the face of opposition from the Californian governor is a major escalation that risks the politicisation of the US military, armed service veterans are warning.

Former top military figures have told the Guardian that the decision to put up to 2,000 troops under federal control and send them into the streets of LA is a violation of the military’s commitment to keep out of domestic politics in all but the most exceptional circumstances. The last time a US president federalised the national guard against the wishes of a state governor was in 1965, when Lyndon Johnson deployed them to protect civil rights marchers in Alabama.

“This is the politicisation of the armed forces,” said Maj Gen Paul Eaton.

Eaton, who commanded the training of Iraqi troops during the invasion of Iraq, predicted that the LA deployment would lead to the eventual invocation of the Insurrection Act. The 1807 law empowers the president to deploy the full US military against insurrection or armed rebellion.

“We are headed towards the invocation of the Insurrection Act, which will provide a legal basis for inappropriate activity,” he said.

Trump’s move in the absence of a genuine civil emergency has sent alarm through military circles, which have long prided themselves on being above politics.

“This deployment was made counter to what the governor wanted, so it seems like a political forcing – a forced use of the military by Trump because he can,”

said a retired senior US army officer who requested anonymity in order to preserve their lifelong non-partisanship.

Trump’s memo federalising the national guard for deployment in LA is written in sweeping terms, in effect casting it as a nationwide mobilisation.

It says that regular military troops, as well as national guard forces, can be employed by the defense secretary, Pete Hegseth, to protect federal functions anywhere in the country where protests are occurring.

Most troublingly, the memo also acts pre-emptively – an action never seen before in the US – authorising the military to be deployed against anticipated protests.

It says that troops can be sent to

“locations where protest against [federal] functions are occurring, or are likely to occur based on current threat assessments”.

On Sunday, Trump signaled that LA was just the start of a much wider deployment.

“We’re gonna have troops everywhere,” he said. (Source.)

[…]

Like many of Trump’s actions so far this year, this will probably end up in the courts, as Newsom said earlier today he is going to sue Trump over his deployment of the California National Guard.

I should also note that the Trump administration suffered a legal loss on one of its immigration actions when it admitted that they wrongly deported a Maryland man to El Salvador, but then refused to bring him back.

Well, they finally complied with court orders and he is back now, where he will face criminal charges, with full due process of law. (Source.)

[…]

But Americans need to stop looking at news events from partisan glasses. We can all agree that illegal immigrants who are criminals in the United States need to be rounded up and deported, without agreeing to all of the Trump Administration’s actions, which may lead to a Civil War and disaster for the American people.

If there is one thing we have learned from this administration so far this year, it is that they have no problem lying in public to the American people to accomplish their goals.

Was the Trump-Musk “Divorce” Fake or Real?

The recent social media war of words between two billionaires, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, has brought about a lot of speculation about how and why that happened, with many in the Alternative Media, especially among the MAGA crowd, stating that it was all fake.

I, for one, have been predicting this since the inauguration, stating that two egotistic billionaires could never share the public spotlight, and I never thought it would take this long.

What we saw last week was real, like two spoiled children having temper tantrums.

Musk clearly has the most at risk here, because Trump has the full force of the federal government to use against Musk, and he has threatened to cancel many of his government contracts.

Some are also wrongly speculating that this could be a break in Trump’s cozy relationship with Silicon Valley. Such a view is very short-sighted, because people in the Tech world, including myself, know full well that Musk does NOT represent Silicon Valley, and has many enemies.

He is also a newcomer to Right Wing politics, and only started supporting Trump in 2024, spending millions to help get him elected.

Other Silicon Valley rich billionaires, however, have been in Right Wing politics for years. One of those is Peter Thiel, who has supported Trump since at least 2016. He was the one who hand-picked J.D. Vance to be Vice President, for example.

Also, his company Palantir Technologies has richly profited from contracts with Government intelligence agencies, including the CIA and Mossad, for years now.

Articles about Palantir developing a database that tracks everyone in the U.S. have gone viral lately in the Alternative Media, but this is actually OLD NEWS, as it has already been happening for years now, but is accelerating now with the new LLM AI search tools.

These Technocrats do not need anything from Elon Musk, as they are becoming a big part of American culture now and the “New Right”, which includes Evangelical Christianity, as I have previously reported.

[…]

In conclusion, to answer the question in my headline, are we on the brink of civil war?, I am not sure yet. I think the Trump Administration wants one, but whether or not the masses in American culture are up for one, is not so certain at this point. At the time of my writing this, no major riots like what we saw in LA this weekend have spread to other major U.S. cities, yet.

Also, with this being the focus of the current news cycle in the U.S., it is drawing attention away from other news stories that might actually be more important, such as the escalation of the war between Russia and Ukraine/NATO, the ongoing conflicts in Israel and potential outbreak of war with Iran, and the U.S. economy which still has not seen the full impact of Trump’s tariffs.

[…]

Via https://healthimpactnews.com/2025/is-the-united-states-on-the-brink-of-civil-war/

By Greg Wehner

About 2,100 members of the California Army National Guard’s 79th Infantry Brigade Combat Team have reported to the greater Los Angeles area, according to a U.S. Northern Command (NORTHCOM) spokesperson.

The 2,100 military members are currently operating in Los Angeles, Paramount and Compton, California.

These military members are in addition to the 700 U.S. Marines President Donald Trump deployed to the city to assist police and the National Guard in restoring peace.

[…]

Via https://www.foxnews.com/live-news/marines-deploy-los-angeles-trump-ice-protest-newsom#post-38a2144

Eternal Life: Secrets of the Centenarians

Directed by Markus Hensler (2025)

Film Review

Statistical records reveal that Sardinians live longer than anyone else in the world. The documentary is filmed in a small village in the Ogliasta region of Sardinia, where people are particularly long-lived. The residents interviewed range between 86 and 100.

Some of the secrets they share are the importance of staying active, eating healthy and refraining from sin. For the most part, residents stick food they produce themselves and avoid preservatives and “industrially” produced food. They also stress the importance of strong social ties with family and their community.

At present 13,000 people in the village are in a study, in which medical scientists do lots of blood tests and ultrasound scans of their carotid arteries, liver, and kidneys. The researchers are busy trying to pinpoint the genetic idiosyncracies (go figure) responsible for their longevity.

I was particularly intrigued by vignettes of residents still dancing at age 100+, as well as a farmer in his nineties who ilks a herd of sheep everyday and makes his own sheep cheese.

The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire

Directed by Michael Oswald (2017)

Film Review

The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire

This documentary reveals how after 300 years of global domination, the British empire was replaced by a British financial empire, as many former colonies declared independence in the 1950s and 1960s.

The collapse of Britain’s political empire was accompanied by many threats to its commercial interest across the globe. One of the first was Egypt’s 1956 nationalization of the the Suez Canal, previously controlled by British and French corporate interests. The UK responded by bombing five Egyptian cities, including Cairo. The US reacted by laying a complaint with the UN against the UK, while simultaneously engineering a “run” on the British pound (by encouraging US and other banks to sell their pounds for other currencies).

To ensure this never happened again, the Bank of England created a euro-dollar market, enabling them to hold a large cache of US reserves that couldn’t be regulated by the US government. Most US banks responded by moving their financial operations to the City of London.

The City of London is a private corporation in the center of the British capitol with a private police force and courts and a privately appointed Lord Mayor and governing council. The latter has a permanent unelected seat in the House of Commons. The Bank of England supposedly regulates the city of London, but condones many illegal activities, including money laundering and financing of terrorist activities that would be illegal elsewhere in Britain, UK bankers almost never go to jail.

After creating the euro-dollar market, the City of London’s next move was to set up offshore banking havens in seven British overseas territories, starting with the Cayman Islands in 1969. This enabled Britain to indirectly benefit from a wide range of illegal financial activities, including money laundering, tax evasion and drug, weapons and people smuggling.

In 1980 the seven tax havens had a turnover of $500 billion. By 1988 it was $4.2 trillion. By 1997 nearly 90% of international loans were made through this market. Much of the business that takes place in the City of London is registered in offshore tax havens for secrecy.

The UK is the largest provider of international financial services (40%) in the world, if you include Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai, which continued to be closely linked to the City of London despite being politically independent of the UK.

When renowned economist Michael Hudson worked at Chase Manhattan during the Vietnam War, the State Department asked him to open some offshore Caribbean banks to help hide the horrendous cost of the war. Typically criminal outflows of money are labeled “errors and emissions” on government balance sheets. He asserts the burgeoning of offshore tax havens enabled the US and UK to keep their economies strong after they exported their manufacturing base to Asia.

The third world loses over $1 trillion a year in capitol flight and tax evasion, a process especially detrimental to Africa’s developing nations. In 2008, the continent of Africa had a $177 billion debt to Western nations, after corrupt sub-Saharan African leaders had moved $944 billion into offshore tax havens.

The Cayman Island is home to 3/4 of the world’s hedge funds and 80,000 registered corporations. There’s a total of $1.9 trillion deposited on an island with a mere 60,000 population.

*William the Conqueror failed to conquer the City of London and allowed it to continue to be self governing. The 1215 Magna Carta confirmed its continuing independence from British rule.

The Spider’s Web: Britain’s Second Empire

By Jim Hoft

What began as a lawful operation turned into outright insurrection in the so‑called sanctuary city of Los Angeles. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents conducted multiple strikes Friday — targeting a Home Depot, fashion warehouses, clothing outlets in downtown L.A., and a meat‑packing plant in Paramount — arresting deportable illegal aliens, including some with criminal records.

The result? Large crowds descended, blocking lanes, hurling bricks and chunks of concrete, setting trash fires, smearing graffiti on federal buildings, and assaulting federal vehicles.

According to Fox News reporter Bill Melugin:

Federal sources ID some of the criminal illegal alien targets ICE arrested in their LA operation yesterday & today, which sparked violent protests. They include multiple gang members, convicted sex offenders, violent gun offenders, & drug offenders. One has already been deported. They include:

Rolando Veneracion-Enriquez, a national of the Philippines who has prior convictions for sexual penetration with a foreign object, assault with intent to commit rape, and burglary, all in California.

ARMANDO ORDAZ, a Mexican national & known gang member with a convictions for sexual battery, receiving stolen property, and theft in Los Angeles.

VICTOR MENDOZA-AGUILAR, a previously deported Mexican national & known gang member with convictions for assault with a deadly weapon, and possessing drug paraphernalia.

DELFINO AGUILAR MARTINEZ, a Mexican national with a conviction for assault with a deadly weapon causing great bodily injury in LA.

[…]

Via https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2025/06/i-smell-cia-deep-state-all-this-rfk/

by Suzanne Burdick, Ph.D.

“The MAHA Report,” released May 22, identified four “key drivers” behind the childhood chronic disease epidemic. EMR, which wasn’t included as a main driver, was mentioned only briefly in the report’s section on environmental chemicals.

Miriam Eckenfels, director of Children’s Health Defense’s (CHD) Electromagnetic Radiation (EMR) & Wireless Program, said EMR should have been listed as a fifth main driver.

“The report’s discussion of EMR serves as a conversation-starter,” Eckenfels said. “But it misses the mark in terms of acknowledging the impact of wireless radiation on the childhood chronic disease epidemic.”

For instance, the report failed to mention that studies have linked wireless radiation exposure to impaired blood sugar regulation and neuropsychiatric effects, including depression, Eckenfels said.

Some autism researchers, including Martha Herbert, M.D., Ph.D., a pediatric neurologist and neuroscientist, have theorized that EMR is linked to autism. Herbert’s publications on the topic weren’t cited in the report.

Still, the fact that the report mentioned EMR at all is significant, according to Odette Wilkens, a technology attorney.

“Although the MAHA report falls short of what we would like it to say, nonetheless, it has broken ground as the first formal acknowledgment by the executive branch that there is a problem,” Wilkens said.

Camilla Rees, a business consultant on technology risks and long-time health and environmental researcher, agreed. “That the MAHA Commission gave any mention of risks from EMR at all was nonetheless still progress, believe it or not.” But the report “disappointingly still undermined the extensive body of evidence showing risks that exist, and it continued to foster doubt.”

According to Rees, U.S. government officials for decades have ignored data showing risk. She said:

Dmitry Orlov

A military class between Russia and NATO is inevitable. It has been inevitable since 2022. By then, it had already become clear that the collective West had run out of money, and it urgently needed to either rob someone, in order to continue its wasteful welfare state, or to offer an explanation for its own plebs for why they are living increasingly poorly. Robbery was then duly attempted by one part of the collective West (the Anglo-Saxons) on the other part (the Germans, the French and various other Poles and Italians). They conspired in secret, and that, in the context of Western civilization, is considered to be the highest manifestation of valor. The Anglo-Saxons lied to their European accomplices that they had decided to only rob Russia, at the same time hiding behind the war hysteria to avoid the wrath of their own plebs, thereby killing two birds with one stone.

The time, place and direction of propaganda were chosen flawlessly. The greedy and half-starved Franco-German-Poles agreed immediately. A millennium of history has conditioned them for shutting off their instinct for self-preservation upon hearing the word “Russia” and for turning on their berserker mode. This is an old trick, first made popular by the Roman popes who used to launch multiple crusades, then repeated by Napoleon, then

tler’s “Drang nach Osten.” The irredentist fantasy lives on: “You remember, in 1941, they promised you a personal estate in Russia and a hundred Russian serfs? Well, the time has come! But you have to be patient for a little longer (and be willing to suffer and to die).”

And with that the trap snapped shut. Once the various burghers and citoyens signed up to suffer and to die, a military clash between NATO and the Russian Federation became inevitable. The war with Russia became a factor of domestic, not foreign policy for Europe. It became the only means of uniting their own nations, quite upset by the continuous and accelerating decline in their living standards. Already in April 2022 it became clear that the Russian military operation in the Ukraine was rapidly developing into a global final battle — the end of a centuries-old bloody confrontation between the East and the West which originated in the Great Church Schism, and commenced the second half of the 11th century, which marked the beginning of the division of Europeans into classes, some of them endowed with the right to exist, others doomed to perpetual contempt.

Preoccupied with solving their internal problems and driven by the Anglo-Saxons’ promises of “just a little more, just a little more and Russia will be crushed”, the Europeans did not even notice how the conflict went global. When they finally realized this, they became hysterical: “The defeat of Ukraine will be the defeat of Europe!”

“We will not let Russia win!” This final imperative brought the collective West to its logical conclusion: the need to enter the war with their own forces, replacing some two million dead or disabled Ukrainians. Suddenly, with crystal clarity, a stunning prospect of choosing between two evils appeared before them:

• Their first option is a war against “Russian barbarians” on foreign soil stretching from the Barents Sea in the Arctic to the Black Sea in the south.
• Their second option is a civil war of all against all on their own territory — because their own plebs have already reached the boiling point past which it is no longer shameful to loot shops, seize real estate and openly disregard their civic duties. Not only has the population in the West begun to get out of control, but it has also acquired its own opposition politicians ready to rise up and launch mass protests. In such conditions, a small but victorious war is almost the only recipe for retaining political power and has been perpetually in vogue since the time of Nebuchadnezzar.

There are other options — such as abandoning the Ukraine, making peace with Russia and mending their economies with Russia’s help (for the Russians do not like having failed states as neighbors), but Europe’s leaders did not look for them. They declared a sort of crusade-LITE — not a real crusade, since the newly barbarized West has lost its Christian core and its messianic spirit. But this has not made it any less greedy or dangerous. What in 2022 seemed speculative and unlikely to many, in 2025 has become practically inevitable.

Two Years Before the Great War”, Yelena Panina writes: “There should be no doubt in anyone’s mind: this war is serious and will go on for a long time. Moreover, it is moving to a fundamentally different level. The West no longer questions the admissibility of strikes deep into Russia, nor is there a question about the possibility of striking or not striking [Russia’s] nuclear facilities. Now everything is admissible against Russia and, most importantly, everything is possible. At the NATO summit in June, the collective West, under the far-fetched pretext of a threat from Russia, intends to designate reference points for unleashing a war by the alliance countries against [Russia] between 2027 and 2030.” There are plenty of other political scientists and politicians who are saying something similar. The Wild West’ suicidal drive can no longer be stopped. It sees slowing down on its way to the eastern front to be even more dangerous for itself than a military clash with Russia.

What will this war look like? The terrorist attack of March 22, 2024 (Crocus City Hall near Moscow), as well as the terrorist attacks of June 1, 2025, gave us a glimpse of carefully prepared aggression. The new Great War with the collective West will begin with the erasure of the usual concepts of “front and rear”. It will take the form of terrorist attacks in many places all over Russia at once. And then, following the tradition established by Hitler, our Western neighbors imagine that they will launch a new blitzkrieg: the expeditionary forces of the collective Wild West will enter only to crush individual, most stubborn pockets of resistance — or so they imagine. What they cannot imagine is that by then their expeditionary forces, along with all those who command and who supply them, will no longer be alive. Nor will civilian casualties still be a major concern.

[…]

Via https://boosty.to/cluborlov/posts/22eb7887-1d5e-42cb-b758-78ba63cc19bc

Photo credit: David Strause GoFundMe page

Parents of two different babies are being charged with felonies in Pennsylvania after police say their babies died because the parents placed them in unsafe sleeping positions, SpotlightPA reported.

In both cases, police allege that the parents failed to follow guidance, including handouts given to them at doctor’s visits, stating that babies should be put to sleep on their backs.

Gina and David Strause of Lebanon County are accused of putting their 3-month-old infant son, Gavin, to sleep on his stomach and allowing him to sleep with stuffed animals in the crib.

They are charged with involuntary manslaughter, recklessly endangering another person, and endangering the welfare of children.

Natalee Rasmus of Luzerne County is accused of putting her 1-month-old daughter, Avaya Jade Rasmus-Alberto, to sleep on her stomach on a boppy pillow, often used for nursing. She is charged with third-degree murder, involuntary manslaughter and endangering the welfare of children.

Rasmus was a 17-year-old mother when her daughter died in 2022. Court records show that she continues to be held at the Luzerne County Correctional Facility with bail set at $25,000 pending resolution of her case.

In both cases, autopsies concluded the babies died of accidental death from asphyxiation. Law enforcement argued in both cases that parents should have known that putting the babies to sleep on their stomachs was unsafe, because they had received paperwork at wellness visits informing them of safe sleeping practices.

They pointed to signed acknowledgements in the babies’ medical records that were created as part of a 2010 state law to educate parents about Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).

The law requires hospitals, birthing centers and medical providers to give parents educational materials from the national Safe to Sleep campaign, and ask them to certify that they received them.

Signing the statement is voluntary. The statement doesn’t indicate that parents can be charged with a criminal offense if they don’t follow the campaign advice.

Advocates from national organizations that educate parents about safe sleep practices found the charges shocking. Nancy Maruyama, the executive director of Sudden Infant Death Services of Illinois told Spotlight PA, “To charge them criminally is a crime, because they have already suffered the worst loss.”

Alison Jacobson, executive director of First Candle, a nonprofit that also educates parents about safe sleep practices, told Pennlive, “There is no law against placing a baby on his or her stomach to sleep. How they can charge this family with involuntary manslaughter is completely baffling to me.”

Researcher Neil Z. Miller, an expert on SIDS and the Safe to Sleep campaign, told The Defender, “Parents of a sleeping baby who dies in the middle of the night should never be charged with murder. That’s just cruel.”

Miller, author of “Vaccines: Are They Really Safe and Effective?” added:

“Should parents be obligated to follow every ‘recommendation’ made by their doctor or the Safe to Sleep campaign? Would we as a society prefer that doctors raise our babies instead of the parents? Have other possible causes of death been considered, such as vaccinations? As a society, we can, and must, do much better.”

Does placing infants on their backs make a difference? 

The handouts shared with new Pennsylvania parents are based on the National Institutes of Health “Safe to Sleep” campaign, which institutionalized a program initiated by the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in 1992 to inform parents to put children to sleep on their backs rather than on their stomachs.

The campaign is based on the premise that babies who sleep on their backs or sides are less likely to die in their sleep. Until that time, it was common for babies to sleep on their stomachs.

The program was launched in the wake of a rising number of SIDS deaths — and growing concern among some parents that the deaths were linked to vaccination.

In a 2021 article in the peer-reviewed journal Toxicology Reports, vaccine researcher Neil Z. Miller provides a history of the SIDS diagnosis, noting that the rise of SIDS coincided with the first mass immunization campaigns.

Between 1992, when the Safe to Sleep program launched, and 2001, SIDS deaths reportedly declined a whopping 55% — a number touted in articles celebrating the program, making it appear that babies sleeping on their stomachs was the cause of SIDS, not vaccines.

However, at the same time deaths from SIDS decreased, the rate of mortality from “suffocation in bed,” “suffocation other,” “unknown and unspecified causes,” and “intent unknown” all increased significantly.

Why? The classification system had changed. SIDS deaths were being reclassified by medical certifiers, usually coroners, as one of the other similar categories, not SIDS.

Research published in the journal Pediatrics, the AAP’s flagship journal, concluded that deaths previously certified as SIDs were simply being certified as other non-SIDS causes, such as suffocation — but the deaths were still essentially SIDS deaths.

That change in classification accounted for more than 90% of the drop in SIDS rates.

The Pediatrics paper showed no decline in overall postneonatal mortality after the Safe to Sleep campaign was launched, despite the program’s — and the AAP’s — claims to the contrary.

Others verified the Pediatrics paper’s findings, and the trend continued, as reported by multiple studies in top journals. Miller reported that, for example, “From 1999 through 2015, the U.S. SIDS rate declined 35.8% while infant deaths due to accidental suffocation increased 183.8%.”

Research shows that almost 80% of SIDS deaths reported to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS) happen within seven days of vaccination.

Theories linking vaccines to SIDS suggest that, in some cases, underdeveloped liver enzyme pathways may make it harder for some infants to process toxic ingredients in vaccines. Others argue that other, multiple, complex factors can make some infants vulnerable to toxic ingredients in vaccines.

Baby Gavin was ‘a dream come true’

On April 30, Gina and David Strause were charged with involuntary manslaughter, which carries a sentence of up to 10 years, and other lesser charges in the death of their son Gavin.

According to the police report, Gina found her son unresponsive, cold and blue in his crib when she woke up to feed him on the morning of May 8, 2024. She immediately called 911 and performed CPR until the police arrived.

The baby was pronounced dead at the hospital. The autopsy report found the cause of death to be “complications of asphyxia.”

Police said they observed loose items in the crib, “such as blankets and stuffed animals.”

Gina said that after feeding her baby at about 11:30 the night before he died, she placed him in his crib on his belly, because he was a “belly sleeper,” and covered him with a blanket. She said that she had received the recommendation that he should sleep on his back, but that he preferred to sleep on his stomach.

In an interview with Pennlive, Gina said that she typically put Gavin to sleep on his back, but he had gotten into the daily habit of rolling onto his belly.

Davis Stause told police that when he left for work at 5:30 am, he checked on Gavin, who was sleeping on his stomach and moving around a little bit. David said he “patted his butt” to put him back to sleep.

The police reported that they also obtained medical records from birth through death that showed that on the discharge paperwork that the parents received information about safe sleep practices, which included putting the baby on its back, having it sleep in the same room as the parents, and keeping the crib clear of bumper pads and stuffed animals.

They said this paperwork explained how parents could create a safe sleeping environment for their babies to reduce the risk of SIDS.

Baby Gavin also went to the pediatrician for well-child visits on Feb. 7 and 14, March 5 and April 9, a month before he died.

Gina told Pennlive that Gavin, who was born when she was almost 40, was “a dream come true.” She had taken 10 weeks of maternity leave and largely worked at home to spend as much time with him as possible. She said that after she gave birth, she was “overwhelmed” and didn’t remember receiving any paperwork or instructions about sleep.

Gina also said that at the hospital, police treated her and her husband with immediate suspicion, separating and questioning them. They were not allowed to see their baby again before he was taken by the coroner’s office.

The parents created a GoFundMe page, where they shared a copy of the police report, to help cover their legal costs, because they said they do not qualify for a public defender.

[…]

‘Tragic accident with no criminal intent to harm or kill the baby’

The forensic pathologist who performed the autopsy for Natalee Rasmus’ baby listed the cause of death as accidental. According to the report, the baby died from asphyxiation, the Times Leader reported.

Rasmus discovered her baby had died on the morning of Oct. 23, 2022, when she picked her up to get her ready for a doctor’s appointment.

Pennsylvania State Police in December charged Rasmus, alleging that she placed her baby face down to sleep against the recommendations of medical personnel and prenatal classes at Geisinger Wyoming Valley Medical Center.

At a preliminary hearing on the case in February, a state trooper testified that Rasmus ignored safe sleeping practices because she had placed her baby face down in her bassinet with a Boppy pillow, which has a tag warning, “Do not use for sleeping.”

The trooper, Caroline Rayeski, also testified that a search of Rasmus’ cellphone found that she had searched the internet to see whether it was ok to allow newborns to sleep on their stomachs. The trooper also seized literature from the prenatal classes stating it is “recommended” to put newborns to sleep on their backs.

“Yeah, she wouldn’t sleep, she’ll just scream, so she has to be like propped up,” Rasmus told the investigating officer, according to Spotlight PA, which reported the story.

Assistant attorneys argued in a preliminary hearing that she disregarded safe sleeping practices, and a judge forwarded the criminal case to county court.

[…]

Rasmus’ most serious charge, third-degree murder, is a homicide that involves killing someone without intent to kill, but with reckless disregard for human life. In Pennsylvania, it can carry a prison sentence of up to 40 years.

Court documents indicate that Rasmus remains in jail with a $25,000 bail, pending the outcome of her case.

[…]

How common is it to bring criminal charges against parents in infant deaths?

Attorney Daniel Nevins told SpotlightPA said it is extremely rare for parents to be criminally charged when infants die after sleeping on their stomachs, and that the burden of proof on the prosecutors will be high.

In 2014, Virginia resident Candice Christa Semidey, age 25, was charged with murder after she swaddled her baby and put it to sleep on its stomach, The Washington Post reported. In that case, police similarly did not think that she intended for the baby to die.

She pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and child neglect. She was ordered to serve three years of probation to avoid the five-year prison term she was sentenced to.

Some charges have also been brought against parents in deaths of infants sleeping with Boppy pillows. There have also been several cases of parents charged for sleeping in the same bed as their child.

The Defender recently reported on three SIDS deaths that occurred shortly after vaccination. Police are still investigating the parents of 18-month-old twins who died together a week after receiving three vaccines. Authorities have not yet charged the parents, but initially said they were investigating the deaths as homicides.

Blessings Myrical Jean Simmons, age 6 months, received six routine vaccines at a well-baby visit on Jan. 13. The next morning, her parents found the baby dead in her bassinet. The autopsy SIDS as the infant’s cause of death, and no charges were filed against the parents.