From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By KATE ANDERSON

A sexual assault survivor gave an inside look at living in a female prison with male criminals identifying as transgender in a new documentary by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) released Tuesday.

The six-minute documentary, part of IWF’s “Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons” series, focuses on the story of Evelyn Valiente, a sexual assault survivor and former inmate at the Central California Women’s Facility. Valiente, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity, was forced to share a housing unit with a male inmate identifying as a woman while serving time for killing someone in a shooting.

“At first I thought it was going to be okay and it didn’t take long before this one particular individual was manipulative, calculating, vindictive and always looking and seeking to do harm to another person,” Valiente said regarding the inmate, who had a history of sex crime convictions.

In 2020, Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom of California signed legislation requiring the state’s prison system to house inmates based on their gender identity and not their biological sex. Under the law, corrections officers are required to ask inmates privately how they identify and then work to house them accordingly.

Before her time in prison, Valiente had been sexually assaulted, and said that being in the same housing unit as this individual, who had been convicted of sex crimes, as well as other men made it “scary” not only for her but for many women who had “come from very abusive backgrounds.”

“It’s a lot of walking in trauma,” Valiente said.

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Andrea Mew, IWF’s storytelling manager and co-producer of the documentary series, told the DCNF that while California lawmakers claimed that the transgender inmate bill was about keeping inmates safe, the law actually further victimized women in prison who often have been abused.

“It’s really interesting that California, at the same time that they are focusing on being all about rehabilitation, are subjecting women to being re-traumatized by a lot of their personal triggers,” Mew said. “Many women who are in prison are victims of sexual assault, emotional abuse, physical abuse and having men in their spaces can be a very big trigger for them. At the same time, it’s allowing violent male criminals to have unbridled access to, in many cases, the thing that got them there in the first place.”

Currently, five states: Connecticut; Rhode Island; Massachusetts; California and New Jersey as well as New York City; have passed laws allowing men identifying as women to be housed in women’s prisons. However, other states, such as Wisconsin, have reportedly moved biologically male offenders identifying as transgender into all-female facilities despite their violent criminal history.

In September 2023, a female inmate sued the Edna Mahan Correctional Facility in New Jersey after allegedly being assaulted in prison by a male inmate identifying as transgender. Another female inmate from New York City filed a lawsuit in January, claiming that a prison official instructed a male inmate who reportedly sexually assaulted her to identify as transgender so he could have “access to female inmates.”

Mew told the DCNF that she and co-producer Kelsey Bolar wanted people to imagine how they would feel if someone they loved in prison was forced to share a cell or a housing unit with a transgender inmate with a history of violence.

“People need to put themselves in the shoes of people who are in prison and just imagine yourself in there, imagine your own daughter in there,” Mew said. “There are a lot of things that could happen that could get you into prison that are complete accidents, so imagine yourself or your own daughter is in that sort of accident. Put yourself in the shoes of the person there and think about how it would feel if you’re being physically, emotionally and in some cases, as we’ve seen, sexually threatened by male criminals while you’re just trying to do your time and get home.”

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation did not respond to the DCNF’s request for comment

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By JASON COHEN

“Dr. David Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci for decades, wrote in an email to Dr. Daszak, ‘I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d, but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe.

National Institutes of Health (NIH) Principal Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak testified on Thursday that a former aide to Dr. Anthony Fauci allegedly violated the agency’s public records policy by disposing of certain emails.

Fauci’s senior advisor at the NIH Dr. David Morens allegedly intentionally obstructed the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic’s investigations into the origins of COVID-19 to protect his boss. Tabak told Republican House Oversight Chair James Comer in response to his questioning during a hearing that Morens allegedly violated NIH policy by getting rid of emails following public records requests.

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“Dr. David Morens, a senior advisor to Fauci for decades, wrote in an email to Dr. Daszak, ‘I learned from our FOIA lady here how to make emails disappear after I am FOIA’d, but before the search starts. So I think we are all safe. Plus I deleted most of those earlier emails after sending them to Gmail.’ Is that consistent with NIH document retention policies?” Comer asked, to which Tabak answered that it’s not.

EcoHealth Alliance President Peter Daszak allegedly misled the federal government to receive grants that funded virus research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where some suspect the COVID-19 pandemic originated.

“Does the NIH FOIA office teach employees how to avoid transparency?” Comer followed up.

“I certainly hope not,” Tabak said.

Daszak appeared for a transcribed interview in November 2023, where he called Morens a “mentor.”

“He also later wrote Dr. Daszak, ‘We are all smart enough to know to never have smoking guns and if we did, we wouldn’t put them in emails. And if we found them, ‘we would delete them,” Comer said, again asking if this is consistent with agency policy and Tabak again saying it’s not.

“Finally, emails show that Dr. Morens would share internal questions about upcoming FOIA releases with Dr. Daszak. He would then help Dr. Daszak craft responses to documents being released in these FOIAs. Are those actions consistent with NIH policies?” Comer asked.

Tabak expressed uncertainty about whether these actions took place, but said they would not be consistent with agency policy.

Morens in 2021 sent an email to Daszak, explaining that he tries “to always communicate on gmail because [his] NIH email is FOIA’d constantly,” The Intercept reported.

U.S. Right to Know is one organization that submitted public records requests to the NIH for emails Morens sent regarding content related to the origins of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is currently engaged in litigation with the agency for its lack of compliance with a January 2022 request.

The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) on Wednesday informed EcoHealth Alliance that the federal government would be suspending current grants to the nonprofit and it is striving to block it from getting more grants. HHS cites a series of mistakes EcoHealth Alliance made, including issues with the organization’s monitoring of work at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.