President Donald Trump signed four executive actions on Saturday to provide relief to Americans amid continued fallout from the coronavirus pandemic as talks with Democrats continued to stall, and now Democrats are reportedly expected to challenge Trump&#8217;s actions.
According to Axios, the four actions that Trump <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-executive-order-coronavirus-aid-c0f59817-b95c-440f-86d0-db1e46f4ab64.html">signed</a> did the following:
<blockquote>
<ol>
<li>Defer payroll taxes for Americans earning less than $100,000 a year.</li>
<li>Implement a moratorium on evictions and give financial assistance to renters.</li>
<li>Add $400 per week in extra unemployment benefits through the end of 2020, requiring states to cover 25% of the additional benefits.</li>
<li>Postpone student loan interest and payments through the end of 2020.</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
Presumptive Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden attacked Trump for taking unilateral action to help the American people during the pandemic, saying, “This is not presidential leadership. These orders are not real solutions.”
The Los Angeles Times <a href="https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-08-08/trump-executive-orders-bypassing-congress-coronavirus-relief">reported</a> that Trump&#8217;s actions &#8220;are expected to face legal challenges from Democrats that could blunt their impact.&#8221;
A reporter asked Trump during a press conference about expecting to face legal challenges from Democrats to his executive actions, to which Trump <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/politics/trump-abruptly-leaves-coronavirus-eo-signing-after-facing-onslaught-of-questions-is-this-political-theater/">responded</a>, “I guess maybe they will bring legal actions or maybe they won’t but they won’t win.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
While Democrats blocked relief for Americans, President <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> has paved the way for relief for Americans in need through &#8211; 
✅ Unemployment relief ✅ Eviction relief ✅ Student loan debt relief ✅ Payroll tax relief
Pelosi &amp; Schumer don’t care. Trump does‼️
&mdash; Kayleigh McEnany (@PressSec) <a href="https://twitter.com/PressSec/status/1292205081451003904?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy responded to the news by writing on Twitter, &#8220;Pelosi &amp; Schumer held up relief for the American people because they wanted a liberal wishlist that talks more about &#8216;cannabis&#8217; than a &#8216;job.&#8217; Today President Trump took action to make up for Democrats’ failures. He stepped up to deliver targeted relief to the American people.&#8221;
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Pelosi &amp; Schumer held up relief for the American people because they wanted a liberal wishlist that talks more about &quot;cannabis&quot; than a “job.”
Today President Trump took action to make up for Democrats’ failures. He stepped up to deliver targeted relief to the American people.
&mdash; Kevin McCarthy (@GOPLeader) <a href="https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1292231616128069632?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 8, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell responded to the news by <a href="https://www.republicanleader.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/mcconnell-on-president-trumps-announcement-struggling-americans-need-help-now">writing</a> in a statement:
<blockquote>Struggling Americans need action now. Since Democrats have sabotaged backroom talks with absurd demands that would not help working people, I support President Trump exploring his options to get unemployment benefits and other relief to the people who need them the most.
Before the jobless benefits expired, Senate Republicans tried several times to extend them while talks continued. But Leader Schumer declared that nobody could get help unless all of Democrats’ demands were met.
Then the President’s team worked hard to bridge differences on many of the policies that would rapidly help American families — money to safely re-open schools, money for testing, more direct payments for households, another round of the PPP, legal protections, and more. But Democrats have continued to block all of it while holding out for non-COVID-related liberal demands like a huge tax cut for rich people in blue states and a massive slush fund for state and local governments that is many times the size of the actual coronavirus shortfall they are projected to face.
Weeks ago, some predicted that Speaker Pelosi and Minority Leader Schumer might actually prefer if the American people received no further bipartisan aid before the election. Sadly, they have done nothing to suggest otherwise.
I am glad that President Trump is proving that while Democrats use laid-off workers as political pawns, Republicans will actually look out for them.</blockquote>
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Charles Schumer responded to the news by <a href="https://www.speaker.gov/newsroom/8820">writing</a> in a statement:
<blockquote>Today’s meager announcements by the President show President Trump still does not comprehend the seriousness or the urgency of the health and economic crises facing working families. We’re disappointed that instead of putting in the work to solve Americans’ problems, the President instead chose to stay on his luxury golf course to announce unworkable, weak and narrow policy announcements to slash the unemployment benefits that millions desperately need and endanger seniors’ Social Security and Medicare.
These policy announcements provide little real help to families. For instance, not only does the President’s announcement not actually extend the eviction moratorium, it provides no assistance to help pay the rent, which will only leave desperate families to watch their debt pile higher. Instead of passing a bill, now President Trump is cutting families’ unemployment benefits and pushing states further into budget crises, forcing them to make devastating cuts to life-or-death services.
Furthermore, these announcements do nothing to increase testing, nothing to reopen schools, nothing to put food on the table for hungry families, nothing to prevent heroes being laid off across state and local government, nothing to protect the Postal Service or the integrity of our elections, nothing on many critical needs of the American people.
Since the House passed The Heroes Act twelve weeks ago, more than 3.5 million Americans have become infected and 70,000 have tragically died. The coronavirus is moving through our country like a runaway freight train and the economy is quickly running out of steam. The only solution to crush the virus and protect working families is to pass a comprehensive bill that is equal to the historic health and economic catastrophe facing our country.
Democrats repeat our call to Republicans to return to the table, meet us halfway and work together to deliver immediate relief to the American people. Lives are being lost, and time is of the essence.</blockquote>
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US-POLITICS-CONGRESS-VIRUS-TALKS

Trump’s Actions To Provide Relief To Americans ‘Expected To Face Legal Challenges From Democrats,’ Report Says

Coronavirus

COVID-19

Democrats

Donald Trump

Democratic officials in Pennsylvania are worried what impact a lawsuit brought by the New York attorney general against the National Rifle Association (NRA) might have on the 2020 presidential race.
Politico reporter Holly Otterbein said on Thursday after the suit was filed that several Democrats in Pennsylvania, a battleground state President Trump flipped red in 2016, are “panicked” the lawsuit may be interpreted as a Democratic attack on gun rights and the Second Amendment.
“Some Pennsylvania Democratic elected officials are panicked about the NRA lawsuit&#8217;s effect on the presidential race. One told me it was an ‘October surprise’: ‘This is the equivalent of Alabama AG suing to dissolve Planned Parenthood for the left,’” Otterbein tweeted.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Some Pennsylvania Democratic elected officials are panicked about the NRA lawsuit&#39;s effect on the presidential race. One told me it was an &quot;October surprise&quot;: &quot;This is the equivalent of Alabama AG suing to dissolve Planned Parenthood for the left.&quot;
&mdash; Holly Otterbein (@hollyotterbein) <a href="https://twitter.com/hollyotterbein/status/1291425273100066818?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 6, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden is currently leading Trump by 4.7 points in Pennsylvania, according to the <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/pa/pennsylvania_trump_vs_biden-6861.html">RealClearPolitics</a> polling average. Trump won the state in 2016 after it had gone for the Democratic candidate in six straight presidential elections.
New York Attorney General Letitia James <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/new-york-attorney-general-sues-to-dissolve-the-nra-citing-financial-irregularities">announced</a> her lawsuit against the NRA on Thursday morning, aiming to “dissolve” the organization for alleged financial “fraud and abuse” allegedly committed by several current and former NRA executives.
“We are seeking to dissolve the NRA for years of self-dealing and illegal conduct that violate New York’s charities laws and undermine its own mission. The NRA diverted millions of dollars away from its charitable mission for personal use by senior leadership,” James wrote in the lawsuit. “Our lawsuit charges the NRA as a whole and four senior leaders, including Wayne LaPierre, with failing to manage the NRA’s funds and failing to follow numerous state and federal laws. These actions contributed to the loss of more than $64 million in just three years for the NRA.”
The NRA denied the allegations: “The NRA has full confidence in its accounting practices and commitment to good governance. The association’s financials are audited and its tax filings are verified by one of the most reputable firms in the world. Internally, the association has an appropriate conflict of interest policy, which provides that all potential conflicts are reviewed and scrutinized by the audit committee.”
The association’s CEO, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/nras-wayne-lapierre-rips-media-democrats-putting-joseph-curl">Wayne LaPierre</a>, who is named in James’ lawsuit, responded in a separate <a href="https://twitter.com/NRA/status/1291468835317518356">statement</a> on the NRA’s Twitter account. LaPierre said, “The NRA is well governed, financially solvent, and committed to good governance. We’re ready for the fight. Bring it on.”
The NRA filed its own <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bring-it-on-nra-counters-new-york-ags-lawsuit-with-one-of-its-own">counter-suit</a> against the New York attorney general’s office, charging that James has unfairly targeted the gun rights organization since her 2018 campaign for office. The suit alleges that James has consistently defamed the NRA and violated its First Amendment rights.
“James boasted that she would strike foul blows against the NRA and pound the NRA into submission. She vowed that she would use the NYAG’s investigative and enforcement powers for the precise purpose of stanching political speech (‘deadly propaganda),” the NRA’s lawsuit says. “She has begun to deliver on her campaign promises to retaliate against the NRA for constitutionally protected speech on issues that James opposes. As NYAG, James has regrettably succumbed to ‘individual passions, and individual malevolence.’”
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Letitia James

Democrats In Battleground State Apoplectic Over NY’s NRA Lawsuit: ‘Equivalent Of Alabama AG Suing To Dissolve Planned Parenthood’

2020 Election

National Rifle Association (NRA)

Pennsylvania

A Tennessee Democrat state senator was charged this week for allegedly stealing more than $600,000 in federal money that she allegedly used to pay for personal expenses, including her political campaign, wedding, honeymoon, and eventual divorce.
&#8220;Tennessee State Senator Katrina Robinson, 39, has been federally charged with theft and embezzlement involving government programs and wire fraud,&#8221; the Department of Justice <a href="https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtn/pr/tennessee-state-senator-katrina-robinson-charged-criminal-complaint-theft-and">announced</a>. &#8220;According to the information presented in the complaint, Katrina Robinson is the Director of The Healthcare Institute (THI), a provider of educational and training programs for jobs in the healthcare field. She is also a Tennessee State Senator, having been elected to represent the 33rd District in Shelby County in 2018.&#8221;
The DOJ says that THI received more than $2 million in federal grants between 2015 and 2019 from the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA), and that Robinson stole over $600,000 from THI by &#8220;compensating herself in excess of what was allowed under the terms of the HRSA grant and by using Institute funds for payments and purchases for her own personal benefit and that of her immediate family.&#8221;
The DOJ&#8217;s statement outlined things that Robinson allegedly paid for with the stolen money:
<blockquote>Payments and purchases included a vehicle for her daughter; clothing, accessories, and hair and beauty products; expenses related to her wedding and honeymoon, and later, legal fees for her divorce; payments on her personal debts, including credit cards, store charge cards, student loans, and other personal loans; travel and entertainment for herself and her family; improvements to her personal residence; expenses related to a body aesthetics business she owned and a snow cone business operated by her children; and an event for her State Senate campaign.</blockquote>
&#8220;Protection of the United States Treasury and federal grant programs against theft, fraud, waste, and abuse is a top priority of this office and the Department of Justice,&#8221; U.S. Attorney D. Michael Dunavant said in announcing the charges. &#8220;We commend the FBI and the HHS-OIG for their diligent and thorough investigation in this case.&#8221;
&#8220;Anyone who seeks to take advantage of government programs will be vigorously investigated by the FBI, regardless of who they are or any position they hold,&#8221; Acting Special Agent in Charge Jermicha L. Fomby of the Memphis Field Office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation added. &#8220;The public should know that the FBI will continue to work diligently with our law enforcement partners to identify and investigate those who seek to exploit government programs and line their own pockets.&#8221;
The case is expected to be presented to a grand jury and, if convicted, Robinson faces up to 20 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine.
The Tennessee Senate Democratic Caucus defended Robinson in a statement, saying, “Senator Robinson’s work in the state legislature on behalf of her constituents is not in question here today.”
“Just like every other American, Senator Robinson deserves the presumption of innocence and due process under the law,” the statement continued, according to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/29/us/katrina-robinson-embezzlement-fraud.html">The New York Times</a>. “Her case should be resolved by a court of law, not by the court of public opinion.”
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Katrina Robinson

Democrat State Senator In Tennessee Allegedly Stole $600,000 In Federal Money, Feds Say

Crime

Tennessee

Republican and Democratic officials are struggling to negotiate a fourth coronavirus relief package amidst a soon-expiring July 31 deadline for the boosted unemployment benefits, and a gap between the policy ideas being proposed by either party.
The struggle is so big, in fact, Speaker <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/nancy-pelosi">Nancy Pelosi</a> (D-CA) reportedly compared it to trying to breed a giraffe with a flamingo. 
“It’s like a giraffe and a flamingo,” said Pelosi in a meeting on Tuesday, reports <a href="https://www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2020/07/29/how-to-translate-congressional-code-489913">Politico</a>, citing people at the meeting. “They’re both at a zoo. A dumb person may think they could mate for offspring. A smart person knows that’s impossible. That’s our bills. They’re unable to mate.”
White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin were also in the meeting, as was Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), who reportedly compared the Democratic bill to a golden retriever and the GOP proposal to a chihuahua: “[A] golden retriever can’t mate with a Chihuahua. You have a Chihuahua. We have a beautiful lion.”
Pelosi reportedly then “helpfully reminded” the Democratic Senate leader that lions actually can’t mate with chihuahuas either.
The Republican proposal, unveiled by Senate Majority Leader <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/mitch-mcconnell">Mitch McConnell</a> (R-KY) earlier this week, is an attempt to counter the “multi-trillion-dollar <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/mcconnell-outlines-coronavirus-relief-package-to-counter-socialist-manifesto-from-dems">socialist manifesto</a>” Democrats passed in the House back in May.
While the two proposals agree on the federal government sending out another round of $1,200 stimulus checks, other policy disagreements abound. For example, the Republican proposal suggests reigning in the boosted unemployment insurance benefits; the Democratic bill wants to extend the $600 boost into next year. 
Politico <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/27/senate-gop-coronavirus-relief-package-382502">reports</a> that the Republican proposal, which would cost about $1 trillion, also includes $100 billion for schools, $26 billion to develop and distribute vaccines, and $16 billion for coronavirus testing. The Democratic bill, which would cost over $3 trillion, would also toss an additional $500 billion to states and $375 million to local governments for tax-revenue related shortfalls or pandemic costs, according to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/07/28/politics/stimulus-bill-republican-democrats/index.html">CNN</a>.
The Republican proposal also extends legal protections to businesses for coronavirus-related lawsuits, a move Democrats have strongly opposed, but that McConnell recently told <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/07/28/coronavirus-stimulus-updates-mcconnell-defends-liability-protections.html">CNBC</a> isn’t up for negotiation because there would be &#8220;no chance of the country getting back to normal without it.&#8221;
During an interview on <a href="https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/mcconnell-some-republicans-think-we-have-already-done-enough-pandemic-aid">PBS New Hour</a>, McConnell suggested a sizable portion of Republican senators aren’t even on board with another coronavirus relief package, which could cause additional difficulties in the negotiations process with Democrats.
“About 20 of my members think that we’ve already done enough,” said McConnell. “They’re deeply concerned — and it&#8217;s understandable — about the size of our national debt now, which is as big as our economy for the first time since World War II.”
“So I do have a reasonable number of members who don’t think we ought to do another package,” continued the majority leader. “That’s not my view, and it’s not the majority of our conference view, nor is it the view of the president.”
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House Speaker Pelosi Holds Weekly News Conference

Report: Pelosi Compares Dem Relief Bill, GOP Proposal To Zoo Animals ‘Unable To Mate’

Nancy Pelosi

Republicans

stimulus

Former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg spent about $1 billion on his own 100-day presidential campaign, and has promised to put his vast fortune to use unseating President Donald Trump in November.
The problem, however, is that some Democrats are wondering where Bloomberg’s money is, Fox News <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/dems-say-bloomberg-not-helping-2020-campaign-as-much-as-promised-report">reported</a>. Bloomberg repeatedly promised to use his money to help Democrats win in November.
“Mike Bloomberg is either going to be the nominee or the most important person supporting the Democratic nominee for president,” Bloomberg’s campaign manager Kevin Sheekey told <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/bloomberg-fund-sizable-campaign-effort-through-november-even-if-he-n1113421">NBC News</a> earlier this year. “He is dedicated to getting Trump out of the White House.”
Bloomberg burned through money during his embarrassingly short run for president, which netted him just 55 pledged delegates, The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/final-numbers-show-michael-bloomberg-actually-spent-more-than-1-billion-on-his-failed-presidential-bid">reported</a>. He then made numerous promises that have so far gone unfulfilled, such as paying staffers through November with full health benefits even if he dropped out. Bloomberg dropped that promise shortly after announcing he would no longer seek the presidency.
As Fox reported, many Democrats “were under the impression that, after Bloomberg exited the presidential race, he would keep his massive campaign apparatus filled with experienced political operatives and simply change the name on the signs to whoever the eventual nominee was, while also helping out down the ballot.”
That didn’t happen, though Bloomberg did give the largest transfer between political committees ever recorded – $18 million. As Fox noted, however, that wouldn’t be enough to hurt Trump’s chances.
President Barack Obama’s former campaign manager Jim Messina <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/07/29/896545732/bloomberg-vowed-to-spend-whatever-it-takes-to-beat-trump-dems-are-still-waiting?utm_source=dlvr.it&amp;utm_medium=twitter">told NPR</a> that he interpreted Bloomberg’s pledge to defeat Trump to mean helping Democrats other than himself if he didn’t get the nomination.
&#8220;It meant spending about a billion dollars,&#8221; Messina told the outlet. &#8220;It meant making sure that Donald Trump did not have the typical incumbent advantage on finance, and it meant helping us catch up in a couple places where Trump was well ahead of us, which was digital and data.&#8221;
Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter, however, said Bloomberg intends to follow through on his promise, and that it’s not about a specific amount of money. NPR reported that Bloomberg has given $350 million to Democrats in the 2020 election, including:
<ul>
<li>
<blockquote>$275 million in anti-Trump ads during his primary campaign.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$35 million for a digital and data platform he gives to Democratic campaigns at cost.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$18 million transferred from his campaign to the Democratic Party.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$10 million to House Majority PAC, the lead outside group backing House Democrats.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$5 million to Fair Fight, the voting rights group led by Stacey Abrams.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$2 million to Collective Future, focused on registering Black voters in key states.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$2 million to Swing Left, which supports Democratic volunteer efforts.</blockquote>
</li>
<li>
<blockquote>$500,000 to Voto Latino, focused on registering young Latino and Hispanic voters.</blockquote>
</li>
</ul>
As one can see, the vast majority of the money was spent during his own campaign in an effort to boost himself.
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Mike Bloomberg

Bloomberg Said He’d Use His Fortune To Unseat Trump, Democrats Wondering When The Money Will Arrive

Michael Bloomberg

On Tuesday, Sens. Ron Johnson (R-WI) and Charles Grassley (R-IA) fired off a <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/2020-07-28%20RHJ-CEG%20Letter%20to%20Peters-Wyden%20%28Defensive%20Briefing%29.pdf">blistering letter</a> to the Democratic Ranking Members of the House Committee on Finance and House Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs in which they accuse Democrats of conducting a “disinformation campaign” in order to hinder their investigation into the possibility of the Biden family having conflicts of interest.
Grassley and Johnson <a href="https://www.axios.com/chuck-grassley-ron-johnson-hunter-biden-burisma-ukraine-4b0cd790-af3b-4102-a6e3-d8295992d559.html">announced</a> a <a href="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2020-02-05%20CEG%20RHJ%20to%20Secret%20Service%20%28Biden%20Travel%29.pdf" data-vars-link-text="review" data-vars-click-url="https://www.grassley.senate.gov/sites/default/files/documents/2020-02-05%20CEG%20RHJ%20to%20Secret%20Service%20%28Biden%20Travel%29.pdf" data-vars-content-id="4b0cd790-af3b-4102-a6e3-d8295992d559" data-vars-headline="Treasury Department complying with GOP requests for Hunter Biden review" data-vars-event-category="story" data-vars-sub-category="story" data-vars-item="in_content_link">review</a> in February of &#8220;potential conflicts of interest posed by the business activities of Hunter Biden and his associates during the Obama administration, particularly with respect to his business activities in Ukraine and China.&#8221;
The senators&#8217; letter, sent Tuesday to Sens. Gary Peters (D-MI) and Ron Wyden (D-OR), begins by asserting that a July 16 letter asking once more for a member briefing from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and relevant members of the Intelligence Community (IC) flew in the face of the FBI advising &#8220;all of us during a March 2020 staff briefing that there was nothing to preclude the continuation of our investigation.&#8221; Johnson and Grassley note that the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee had heard months ago that the FBI and intelligence agencies &#8220;did not have any additional information to provide.&#8221;
Grassley and Johnson then point out that Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) also wrote a letter asking for an FBI briefing; Grassley and Johnson assert that news reports regarding the classified part of that letter indicated that it falsely accused the GOP senators of obtaining information from foreign nationals about former Vice President Joe Biden.
Johnson and Grassley write:
<blockquote>Not only is that an apparent classified leak, but that allegation is false and you know it because we told you it was false right after those reports were published. Yet, as with your repeated public requests for a member briefing that seem designed to suggest that we are somehow denying members access to briefings and relevant intelligence, Democrats and Mr. Biden’s campaign prefer to knowingly repeat false information so the liberal media will keep reporting on it. Continuing to repeat false information, including apparently classified information, will not make the allegations true. In fact, it is the very definition of a disinformation campaign—the same conduct you are falsely accusing us of participating in.</blockquote>
Biden’s camp has been assiduously attacking Johnson. “Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said Wednesday that Johnson is ‘not only diverting’ the committee from oversight … ‘but he has also revealed his complicity in a foreign attack on the very sovereignty of our elections,’” <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/meet-the-press/blog/meet-press-blog-latest-news-analysis-data-driving-political-discussion-n988541/ncrd1234536#blogHeader">NBC News</a> reported in mid-July.
The two GOP senators state that “during the Senate Judiciary Committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and its focus on the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, Democrats never once asked for briefings before interviewing Russian nationals, some of whom were allegedly linked to Russian Intelligence Services.&#8221;
&#8220;In contrast to that investigation, our investigation is focused on records from the State Department, National Archives, Department of Justice, other federal agencies, and the U.S. consulting firm Blue Star Strategies, as well as speaking with current and former U.S. government officials,&#8221; the senators write. &#8220;How, exactly, could this be foreign or Russian disinformation? If it is, that means that the Obama administration peddled it regularly.&#8221;
They then cite the role of the infamous Steele dossier, which relied in part on Russian sources, in the investigation of the Trump campaign:
<blockquote>Your misguided efforts that actually assist Russian disinformation were further confirmed when our investigative work recently revealed now-declassified intelligence reporting that parts of the Steele dossier—foreign opposition research paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign, and used during and after the 2016 election—were ‘part of a Russian disinformation campaign.’ We are not aware that you or any of your colleagues have commented publicly on this disturbing revelation. Where is your outrage regarding actual Russian disinformation contained in the Steele Dossier and Russian disinformation paid for by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton campaign? The Steele Dossier is the very definition of election interference, yet we hear no objections from you.</blockquote>
“Finally, we want to reiterate that we have taken every precaution to protect the integrity of our investigation and keep your staffs involved in our work,&#8221; Johnson and Grassley conclude. &#8220;Yet at every turn, we have seen leaks of sensitive information and attempts to smear and undermine our investigation—and us, personally—in the press. These attempts to discredit our investigation only serve to increase our curiosity: what are the Democrats and many in the media so afraid of us finding?&#8221;
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Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg Testifies To Senate Commerce, Science And Transportation Committee

GOP Senators Investigating Biden’s Family Accuse Democrats Of ‘Disinformation Campaign’

Charles Grassley

Hunter Biden

Joe Biden

Ron Johnson

Acting Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Ken Cuccinelli said Friday that federal law enforcement agents may be able to bring libel claims against Democrats who have called them “Nazis” or “stormtroopers.”
Cuccinelli made the comments to Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle,” which was guest hosted by Lisa Boothe. Cuccinelli was referring to remarks previously made by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Rep. Maxine Waters (D-CA).
&#8220;When you see such libelous, slanderous comments from people who know better &#8212; Let&#8217;s not kid ourselves, the speaker of the House knows that she is using Nazi allusions to refer to correct, professional law enforcement officers,&#8221; Cuccinelli said, referring to federal agents with U.S. Customs and Border Protection, Immigration and Customs Enforcement, FBI, and the Federal Protective Service.
&#8220;If I was a CBP agent or ICE agent, or FBI agent &#8212; and if I was an FPS agent &#8212; I might sue for libel,&#8221; he suggested.
Multiple prominent Democrats have made Nazi references to the federal agents deployed to protect federal buildings and monuments that are being freely destroyed by violent rioters in U.S. cities such as Portland, Oregon, and Seattle, Washington.
Pelosi tweeted on July 17: “Unidentified stormtroopers. Unmarked cars. Kidnapping protesters and causing severe injuries in response to graffiti. These are not the actions of a democratic republic. <a href="https://twitter.com/DHSgov?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1284306982225182723%7Ctwgr%5E&amp;ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailywire.com%2Fnews%2Ffederal-unit-behind-arrests-in-portland-reportedly-identified-pelosi-smears-them-makes-false-claims">@DHSgov</a>’s actions in Portland undermine its mission. Trump &amp; his stormtroopers must be stopped.”
“First Amendment speech should never be met with one-sided violence from federal agents acting as Trump’s secret police, especially when unidentified. This is disgraceful behavior we would expect from a banana republic — not the government of the United States,” she continued.
As The Daily Wire previously <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/democrat-maxine-waters-trump-deploying-feds-might-be-trial-run-for-starting-civil-war-if-he-loses">reported</a>, Waters told MSNBC host Joy Reid that Trump deploying federal agents was a “trial run” for what he would do if he loses re-election in November.
“As a matter of fact, it has been suggested that this is a trial run of the President of the United States who may be organizing to not accept what happens when we have the election if he’s not elected,” Waters said. “Is he going to pull out his military? Is he going to engage us? He has already alluded to there may be a civil war if he’s not re-elected. This is dangerous, we are trying to find out more about it.”
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-SC) also compared federal agents lawfully protecting federal buildings from criminals to Nazis, as The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/beginning-of-the-ending-of-this-democracy-jim-clyburn-accuses-trump-and-barr-of-imposing-gestapo-activities">reported</a>.
“For all of a sudden for these people to go in there, nothing from the governor, nothing from local law enforcement, just show up with their faces covered in unmarked cars […] That kind of activity is the activity of a police state, and this president and this attorney general seem to be doing everything they possibly can to impose Gestapo activities in local communities, and that is what I have been warning about for a long time,” Clyburn said.
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Top DHS Official: Calling Federal Officers ‘Nazi,’ ‘Stormtrooper’ May Be Libelous

Department of Homeland Security

James Clyburn

Maxine Waters

There is no police power in the federal Constitution. The police power is left to the states. To the extent the President can send federal officers into Portland, Oregon, and other cities, it should be to protect federal property.
The President cannot save Portland from itself, and he should not. He cannot save the other cities either.
I want a mask mandate, but there is no federal police power for the President to impose it. It must come from governors, who have more expansive police powers than your average libertarian-leaning person would have you believe.
The President does not have the power to issue mask mandates, and he does not have the power to send law enforcement to police the streets of America.
The people of Portland have a history of outlandish behavior and displays of protest, including nudity. The place is so bizarre there&#8217;s been an entire television show parodying Portland.
By sending federal troops to Portland, the President is not only allowing Portland an escape from their own democratic choices but also providing them with a scapegoat to take the blame. Portland can blame President Donald Trump instead of its residents. They can blame Washington instead of their mayor.
In Portland, the accounts of what is happening diverge. The President and his supporters claim he is protecting federal property and rounding up rioters who have vandalized the property. The media and Democrats claim the presence of these troops is unsettling the city, provoking protestors and arresting more than just those who vandalize property.
Last week, the President and attorney general announced the President will send more federal authorities to cities like Chicago to help local law enforcement with out-of-control crime. This is part of the President&#8217;s &#8220;law and order&#8221; messaging that he has been tweeting regularly. Some will conclude the President is using federal employees to inflame tensions and then set those employees on protestors to try to bolster his claim of out-of-control cities.
Others, me included, would note these cities have been out of control whether the President campaigned on the issue or not. But, at some point, we must allow people to live with their choices and make it easy for those who want to escape to actually move. If we allow Portland, Chicago, St. Louis and other cities to fester as they want, they will either figure out they must change or live with the consequences.
When people move out, the tax base collapses and crime goes up, the people will either change their behavior or be democratically marginalized in their voting power. If life goes on as normal, or more people move in to embrace what is happening, then they&#8217;ve chosen it, or the problems have been exaggerated by conservatives, as they claim. Let the market decide by letting the actions of a free people control their fate.
The President should withdraw from Oregon and not send supplemental help to these other cities. Instead, he can campaign on their descent to chaos at the hands of Democratic mayors.
A President sending in a police force to a city is a dangerous precedent that will be expanded upon by future presidents, even though they lack a general police power. A city allowed to choose its own fate is a positive precedent, from which we can all draw lessons.
Let Portland burn or not. Let the other cities descend into violence or not. But let the cities decide without intervention from Washington.
I should also note two more things. First, we should all be disturbed to see that the Department of Homeland Security has such a police force, when police power resides with states, not Washington. This is a bridge too far, and, frankly, these teams of troops, soldiers or police, in the gear they are wearing, does convey a military image, not a civilian police force image.
Second, we should note that despite all the bellyaching from all the Democrats about the situation, not a single Democratic leader has advanced a measure to defund these people or cut the budget of the Department of Homeland Security. They could, but they have not even tried.
To find out more about Erick Erickson and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.
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Federal police

ERICKSON: Let The Cities Burn (Or Not)

Chicago

Constitution

Portland

Riots

Democrats and progressive activists have been demanding reforms to America’s police departments, with thousands taking to the streets across the country to protest and riot.
Yet Democrats in congress seem to think these necessary reforms aren’t so urgent they can’t wait until next year, when the party hopes they will have control of the Senate and White House, The Hill <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/house/507915-democrats-set-to-hold-out-for-big-police-reform">reported</a>.
House Democrats have proposed sweeping reforms that outright ban police chokeholds, create a national registry of alleged police misconduct (which could open the door for police getting wrongly punished for exaggerated or made up citizen complaints), among other reforms. Republicans in the Senate, by contrast, reject the draconian measures supported by Democrats while still wanting reforms, including federal incentives for reforms.
Instead of accepting Republican reforms that Democrats also want but they say don’t go far enough, the Left would rather wait until they may get everything they want, assuming that not only does former Vice President Joe Biden win the election, but Democrats regain control of the Senate by enough of a majority that they can push through whatever bills they want, as they could during the first two years of the Obama administration.
While Biden may win the election, the odds of Democrats winning that many Senate seats is pretty slim. The party may just do away with the filibuster in order to ram through legislation, however.
The Hill spoke to several Democrats who now support waiting until after the election to pass any police reforms, including Rep. Karen Bass (D-CA), who leads the Congressional Black Caucus and is the lead sponsor of the House Democrat bill. Bass said last week that she was not even negotiating with Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), who is the lead sponsor of the Republican Senate bill.
Other Democrats told the outlet they were preparing to wait until after the election.
&#8220;Rather than coming up with a piece of the police reform act &#8230; we should really push this over until after the election and move something that is much more powerful,&#8221; Rep. Bobby Rush (D-IL) said.
&#8220;We don&#8217;t want to make a mockery of this moment,&#8221; he added, according to The Hill. &#8220;We don&#8217;t want to see something passed into law that is weak, watered down and whitewashed.&#8221;
Sheila Jackson Lee (D-TX) was less adamant about waiting, but still said reforms may not be passed until next year.
“We’re steadfast in not allowing the Senate to dissect the bill,” she told The Hill. “It may be that we go into 2021, but I’m not prepared [to] say that that’s our strategy.”
D.C. Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) suggested the reforms could wait because not much was getting passed anyway due to the coronavirus pandemic.
&#8220;There is not enough time to fix it this year,&#8221; Holmes told The Hill. &#8220;There&#8217;s an understanding well beyond me that you don&#8217;t need to get everything done this year in the midst of a pandemic when you&#8217;re not getting very much done anyway.&#8221;
As The Hill reported, the message from House Democrats now “belies the urgency of just a few weeks ago, when Democrats were hoping to seize the momentum generated by the massive protests that followed the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man, in the custody of Minneapolis police on May 25.”
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Sheila Jackson Lee

Police Reforms So Important, Democrats Prepared To Wait Until Next Year To Enact Them

police reform

One of the great disadvantages of having ceded the culture to the Left is that conservatives are always on defense. Because the Left owns the news media, the entertainment media, and the academy – the Empire of Lies, as I call it – they set the agenda, and all we can do is fight back. We think we’re winning when we repulse their attacks, but you can’t win on defense. They will keep coming back again and again until the day is theirs, even if it takes half a century.
Why are we talking about race, for instance? Race is not a problem in this country. A violent underclass, too often black, created and sustained by Democrat policies – that is a problem. Instead of babbling about the police, who are only trying to clean up society’s messes, we should be talking about how to destroy the Great Society swamp in which too many of our black citizens are trapped.
What about transgenderism? I have no doubt there are a small number of people in this country who get confused about which of the two sexes they are. But so what? All God’s children have their troubles. We’re 25-trillion dollars in debt. If Harry wants to pretend to be Sally, that’s Harry’s problem, not mine. I’m sure I’ll treat him kindly, cause that’s just the sort of lovable fellow I am, but I’m not rewriting the wisdom of the ages so he can play make-believe on my dime.
These things become topics because the Left has the power to make them topics. The minute we start saying, “Well, maybe some statues should be taken down,” the game is over. They won. The minute we say, “You can’t defund the police. What we need is police reform” – game over. They won. We’ve accepted their premises. We’re no longer talking about the things that matter.
Instead of debating idiot race theories or idiot gender theories or idiot economic theories, we should be setting the agenda ourselves.
And the agenda should be liberty. Not libertarianism. Not capitalism. Not even Christianity. Liberty. The right of each person to go his own way. Liberty is the first good. Without liberty, there is no virtue or charity or love, because all those things are only authentic when you are free to choose them yourself. Without liberty, you cannot even be yourself. You are only who you are told to be.
Liberty cannot stand alone. It was built on pillars and those pillars cannot be removed. The process of sustaining liberty is deep and complex. And while Trump has often stood for the cause, he just as often fails to defend it effectively.
But his administration has, in fact, been at work on the liberty agenda, especially our excellent Secretary of State Mike Pompeo. This week, Pompeo’s State Department released a draft report from the Commission on Unalienable Rights, chaired by Pompeo’s old Harvard Law Professor Mary Ann Glendon. The brief of the committee was not to discover new rights, but to re-establish those rights that the United States of America set as an agenda for the world in the aftermath of our victory in World War II.
The report is a stunning repudiation of the lies being spewed by The New York Times and its despicable and dishonest 1619 project by reporter-slash-race-hustler Nikole Hannah-Jones. That project stipulates America is inherently racist and dedicated to inequality, a historical nonsense. The Rights Commission’s report, conversely, re-establishes what in fact we are: the source and support of the world’s quest for freedom.
Here is one paragraph from the report: “Among the traditions that formed the American spirit, three stand out. Protestant Christianity, widely practiced by the citizenry at the time, was infused with the beautiful Biblical teachings that every human being is imbued with dignity and bears responsibilities toward fellow human beings, because each is made in the image of God. The civic republican ideal, rooted in classical Rome, stressed that freedom and equality under law depend on an ethical citizenry that embraces the obligations of self-government. And classical liberalism put at the front and center of politics the moral premise that human beings are by nature free and equal, which strengthened the political conviction that legitimate government derives from the consent of the governed.”
Whatever happens in the next election, restoring this wisdom to our citizens and their children should be the project of the Right for the next fifty years. If it’s not, the agenda will continue to be the identity politics with which the Left divides us in order to consolidate their power.
If that happens, we may win the debate every day, but in the long run, we will lose the country.
The Daily Wire is one of America’s fastest-growing conservative media companies and counter-cultural outlets for news, opinion, and entertainment. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Republican tie

KLAVAN: The Right Has To Learn To Set The Nation’s Agenda

Leftism

As coronavirus cases rise across the nation, the media and the Democrats (but I repeat myself) have struck upon a narrative: COVID-19 has been mishandled by Republicans. This is, to be sure, a dubious proposition.
There are five separate pieces of information that should make you skeptical of the “Republicans as key bad actors” narrative in the media’s fantasy.
1. Blue States Were Harder Hit By Every Metric. 
After all, New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut represent well over one-third of COVID-19 deaths, but just 6% of the population of the United States; the worst death per million ratios by state belong to, in order, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, District of Columbia, Louisiana, Michigan, Illinois, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Delaware. Only Maryland has a Republican governor. Much-maligned Florida ranks 25th here, better than Ohio, Colorado, Minnesota, and Virginia. Texas ranks even further down the list, at 35th, below Washington and California.
Still, the myth persists: red states blew it, blue states didn’t.
2. New York Isn’t Doing Well Now Because They Did It Right. They’re Doing Better Because They Performed Horribly. 
In order to promulgate this myth, particularly these days, media members put out charts showing the dramatic decrease in deaths in New York. But that decrease is almost assuredly due not to good policy – New York never implemented good policy, from cramming COVID-positive elders back into nursing homes to refusing to cleanse the subways until May, from cheering on mass protests to refusing to lock down until late March. It’s due to the fact that Democratic areas were hard-hit, and the virus burned through the most vulnerable population. It’s like arguing that the death rates on Alderaan looked stellar a week after Grand Moff Tarkin’s order to destroy the planet.
3. There Is No Consistent Evidence That Forced Lockdown Is The Solution. 
The media have drawn a sharp binary between shutdown states and non-shutdown states. The data don’t support it. Sometimes lockdowns are necessary; sometimes they’re not. Colorado reopened at the same time as Georgia, but has seen case declines. California remained largely locked down while Texas and Florida opened, but California is being shellacked. Policy considerations differ from place to place and from climate to climate. Furthermore, Americans became risk-averse before official lockdowns by data. Government compulsion isn’t always the rationale for Americans staying at home.
4. Mask-Wearing Mandates Aren’t The Big Differentiator.
The theory seems to be that Americans in red states aren’t wearing masks, but that Americans in blue states are – therefore red state Americans are idiots spreading disease. That’s not true. Here’s the latest map from The New York Times on prevalence of mask-wearing, alongside the latest map from the Times on overall case load. The maps show clearly that Americans wear masks when the caseload is high. In other words, Americans are self-interested and rational in protecting themselves for the most part.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Map of mask-wearing in the US vs. map of total case count in US. See if you can spot the pattern. <a href="https://t.co/DLjtVHu1iR">pic.twitter.com/DLjtVHu1iR</a>
&mdash; Ben Shapiro (@benshapiro) <a href="https://twitter.com/benshapiro/status/1284175434431643648?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">July 17, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Furthermore, there is wide variation in terms of mask adoption abroad – countries like Norway (49 deaths per million), Finland (59 deaths per million), Denmark (105 deaths per million) and Sweden (556 deaths per million) have not adopted masking, while countries like Spain (608 deaths per million) and Hong Kong (1 death per million) have. Is the most obvious factor in the deaths per million differential mask mandates? And do such variations have anything to do with Republicans?
5. This Virus Is Extraordinarily Transmissible.
As Jim Geraghty wrote today in National Review:
<blockquote>A <a href="https://www.biospace.com/article/mutated-covid-19-viral-strain-in-us-and-europe-much-more-contagious/">study released last month</a> by the Scripps Research Institute concluded that the strains of the virus spreading so quickly in Europe and the U.S. have a mutated S “spike” protein that makes them about ten times as infectious as the strain that was initially identified in Asia. If it seems like the United States is having a tougher time controlling the spread of the coronavirus than Asian countries did in winter and early spring, that’s partially because this version of the virus is tougher to stop from spreading.</blockquote>
That means it’s simply tough to stop the spread. End of story.
There is some good news in all of this. Overall, mortality rates have plummeted. We may be seeing a plateau in hospitalizations in Texas, Florida, and Arizona. There is some evidence that T-cell immunity actually makes the herd immunity threshold significantly lower than previously supposed. But no matter what comes next, one thing is clear: this stuff shouldn’t be partisan. And there are no obvious answers or sins that allow Democrats to pin the pandemic on Republicans.
More from Ben Shapiro: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/shapiro-anti-racists-say-science-and-reason-are-whiteness-thats-insane-and-dangerous">‘Anti-Racists’ Say Science And Reason Are ‘Whiteness.’ That’s Insane And Dangerous.</a>
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SHAPIRO: Dems Want To Blame Republicans For Covid Spread; Here’s 5 Reasons That Doesn’t Hold Up

Speaking on the South Lawn of the White House on Thursday, President Trump fired a barrage at the Democrats and their presumptive presidential candidate Joe Biden regarding suburbs around the country. &#8220;People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell,&#8221; said Trump. &#8220;Not going to happen, not while I’m here.&#8221;
Trump began by pointing out that Democrats want to change zoning regulations, asserting, “The Democrats in D.C. have been and want to, at a much higher level, abolish our beautiful and successful suburbs by placing far-left Washington bureaucrats in charge of local zoning decisions. They are absolutely determined to eliminate single-family zoning, destroy the value of houses and communities already built, just as they have in Minneapolis and other locations that you read about today. Your home will go down in value and crime rates will rapidly rise.”
Then Trump turned to Biden: “Joe Biden and his bosses from the radical Left want to significantly multiply what they’re doing now. And what will be the end result is you will totally destroy the beautiful suburbs. Suburbia will be no longer as we know it. So they wanted to defund and abolish your police and law enforcement while at the same time destroying our great suburbs.”
Trump promised, “The suburb destruction will end with us. Next week, I will be discussing the AFFH rule — AFFH rule, a disaster — and our plans to protect the suburbs from being obliterated by Washington Democrats, by people on the far Left that want to see the suburbs destroyed, that don’t care. People have worked all their lives to get into a community, and now they’re going to watch it go to hell. Not going to happen, not while I’m here.”
In 2015, the Obama administration’s Department of Housing and Urban Development announced a <a href="http://www.hud.gov/AFFH">final rule</a> on Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing.
Stanley Kurtz took note of the Obama administration’s targeting of suburbs in a piece for <a href="https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/massive-government-overreach-obamas-affh-rule-out-stanley-kurtz/">National Review</a> in 2015:
<blockquote>AFFH is easily one of President Obama’s most radical initiatives, on a par with Obamacare in its transformative potential. In effect, AFFH gives the federal government a lever to re-engineer nearly every American neighborhood — imposing a preferred racial and ethnic composition, densifying housing, transportation, and business development in suburb and city alike, and weakening or casting aside the authority of local governments over core responsibilities, from zoning to transportation to education. …
[T]he real story of AFFH is the attempt to force integration by class, to densify development in American suburbs and cities, and to undo America’s system of local government and replace it with a ‘regional’ alternative that turns suburbs into helpless satellites of large cities. Once HUD gets its hooks into a municipality, no policy area is safe. Zoning, transportation, education, all of it risks slipping into the control of the federal government and the new, unelected regional bodies the feds will empower. Over time, AFFH could spell the end of the local democracy that Alexis de Tocqueville rightly saw as the foundation of America’s liberty and distinctiveness.</blockquote>
In early 2020, the Trump administration said it was <a href="https://www.housingwire.com/articles/trump-administration-rolling-back-controversial-obama-fair-housing-rule/">issuing a new AFFH rule,</a> stating it “offers clearer guidance to states and local governments to help them improve affordable housing choices in their community.”
HUD Secretary Ben Carson said the new rule eliminated the federal mandate to address systemic housing discrimination and it would permit local officials to supervise housing efforts. &#8220;Mayors know their communities best, so we are empowering them to make housing decisions that meet their unique needs, not a mandate from the federal government,&#8221; said Carson.
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President Trump Delivers Remarks At The White House On Rolling Back Regulations

Trump Hammers Biden And Dems: They Will ‘Totally Destroy The Beautiful Suburbs’

California Democrats in Orange County have passed a resolution demanding that the county’s John Wayne Airport be renamed. But there&#8217;s more: They want likenesses of Wayne &#8212; photos, statues, everything &#8212; removed from the airport, which was named in his honor in 1979, shortly after the western actor died.
“The Democratic Party of Orange County condemns John Wayne’s racist and bigoted statements, and calls for John Waynes&#8217; [sic] name and likeness to be removed from the Orange County airport, and calls on the OC Board of Supervisors to restore its original name: Orange County Airport,” says the <a href="https://orangecountydemocrats.com/wp-content/uploads/RESOLUTION-TO-REMOVE-JOHN-WAYNE-FROM-ORANGE-COUNTY-AIRPORT.pdf">resolution</a>, passed Friday.
The board cited remarks Wayne made in a 1971 interview with Playboy.
“I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility. I don’t believe in giving authority and positions of leadership and judgment to irresponsible people,” he said in the interview 49 years ago. “I don’t feel guilty about the fact that five or 10 generations ago these people were slaves,” he said at another point.
The demand comes as liberals across the country are pushing to tear down monuments and rename buildings and institutions that they deem to be racist.
The Democrats&#8217; resolution applauds a “national movement to remove white supremacist symbols and names [that is] reshaping American institutions, monuments, businesses, nonprofits, sports leagues, and teams, as it is widely recognized that racist symbols produce lasting physical and psychological stress and trauma particularly to Black communities, people of color and other oppressed groups, and the removal of racist symbols provides a necessary process for communities to remember historic acts of violence and recognize victims of oppression.&#8221;
Ada Briceño, chairman of the Democratic Party of Orange County, told The <a href="https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-27/orange-county-democrats-condemn-racist-comments-by-john-wayne-call-for-airport-to-drop-his-name">Los Angeles Times</a> that the resolution is not the first attempt to rename the airport, but, she added, said the time has come.
“There have been past efforts to get this done and now we’re putting our name and our backing into this to make sure there is a name change,” Briceño told The Times.
Said The Times: &#8220;Democrats point to a <a class="Link" href="https://www.chapman.edu/wilkinson/political-science/_files/2020_orangecounty_annualsurvey.pdf?fbclid=IwAR27jdjxhWn-hMsYB5VY9RzeN9TtFD-OM19KvPyo2CSnxTiXmNQovqzflcE" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Chapman University</a> survey released earlier this year that said 79% of county residents polled believe &#8216;that O.C.’s increasing ethnic diversity is a source of great strength for the region.'&#8221;
Wayne, who starred in dozens of movies, including “Stagecoach” in 1939 and “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” in 1962, also addressed Native Americans in his Playboy interview.
“I don’t feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them. … [O]ur so-called stealing of this country from them was just a matter of survival,” he said. “There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves.”
&#8220;He also considered movies such as &#8216;Easy Rider&#8217; and &#8216;Midnight Cowboy&#8217; perverted, and used a gay slur to refer to the two main characters of the latter film,&#8221; The Times said.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe" target="_blank" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer">member</a>.

John Wayne Airport Statue

Democrats Pass Resolution To Rename John Wayne Airport, Say He Was ‘Racist, Bigoted’

California

Racism

An &#8220;analysis&#8221; in The Washington Post this week apparently sought to discredit a claim by President Donald Trump about violence in Democrat-controlled cities and ended up proving him correct.
The Post noted that Trump has sought to portray Democrats as soft on crime as part of his re-election strategy and pointed out the following quote from Trump on Wednesday: “You hear about certain places like Chicago and you hear about what’s going on in Detroit and other — other cities, all Democrat run. Every one of them is Democrat run. Twenty out of 20. The 20 worst, the 20 most dangerous are Democrat run.”
The Post <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/25/trump-keeps-claiming-that-most-dangerous-cities-america-are-all-run-by-democrats-they-arent/">reported</a>:
<blockquote>It’s not clear how Trump is defining “most dangerous” in this context. So let’s look at two related sets of data compiled by the FBI: most violent crime and most violent crime per capita.
The most recent data to that effect is from the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report covering the first half of 2019. The cities with the most violent crimes are many of the most populous cities in the country, as you might expect. Those with the highest rates of violent crime are from a range of different states.</blockquote>
The Post then included a graphic (featured below) in their report that showed that overall 17 out of the top 20 cities with the most violent crime have Democrat mayors, while two have independent mayors, and one has a Republican mayor.
The graphic also showed that per capita, Democrats controlled 19 out of the top 20 most violent cities with independents controlling one and Republicans controlling none.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
For tweet embedding purposes, here is the graph cited in The Washington Post&#39;s report titled: “Trump keeps claiming that the most dangerous cities in America are all run by Democrats. They aren’t.” <a href="https://t.co/FeAskhbnDM">pic.twitter.com/FeAskhbnDM</a>
&mdash; Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1276885830083043329?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 27, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
&#8220;Trump would no doubt shrug at that detail, decrying as &#8216;fake news&#8217; the revelation that his assertion was only slightly wrong,&#8221; Washington Post blogger Philip Bump wrote. &#8220;And, in fairness, it actually doesn’t matter that four of the 32 cities listed above have non-Democratic mayors — because it doesn’t really matter that the other mayors are Democrats.&#8221;
Violence has surged in major cities across the U.S. in recent weeks — including in <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-shreds-chicago-mayor-lori-lightfoot-in-letter-over-chicago-violence-lightfoot-snaps-on-twitter">Chicago</a>, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/16/us/new-york-city-crime/index.html">New York City</a>, and <a href="https://losangeles.cbslocal.com/2020/06/09/lapd-crime-homicides-up-250-percent/">Los Angeles</a> just to name a few — as far-left activists have demonized law enforcement officials and called for defunding police departments in response to the death of George Floyd.
Violent rioters have also plagued streets across the U.S. in recent days as they try to destroy statues and monuments.
The Daily Wire <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-signs-executive-order-protecting-monuments-barr-creates-task-force-to-tackle-extremists-includes-antifa">reported</a>:
<blockquote>In recent days, extremists have destroyed statues of former Presidents <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-rioters-burn-american-flag-on-fire-on-top-of-george-washington-statue-tear-it-down">George Washington</a>, <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/us/portland-protesters-tear-down-racist-statue-thomas-jefferson">Thomas Jefferson</a>, <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/rioters-in-california-tear-down-statue-of-ulysses-s-grant-he-defeated-the-confederacy-devastated-kkk">Ulysses S. Grant</a>, and attempted to destroy the statue of former President <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-rioters-near-white-house-try-to-tear-down-presidential-statue-set-up-black-house-autonomous-zone">Andrew Jackson</a> before being stopped by law enforcement.
Statues of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-rioters-tear-down-statue-of-francis-scott-key-he-wrote-the-star-spangled-banner">the man who wrote “The Star-Spangled Banner,”</a> <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/watch-rioters-in-california-tear-down-religious-statue-of-father-junipero-serra">a notable person from the Catholic church</a>, and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/memorial-dedicated-to-holocaust-survivors-toppled-at-cemetery-in-california">a Holocaust memorial</a> have also been destroyed in recent days.</blockquote>
Trump <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/breaking-trump-signs-executive-order-protecting-monuments-barr-creates-task-force-to-tackle-extremists-includes-antifa">signed</a> an executive order yesterday that protects monuments while Attorney General William Barr created a new task force to go after violent anti-government extremists.
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Trump

Washington Post ‘Analysis’ Tries To Debunk Trump Claim On Violent Democrat Cities. It Proves Him Right.

Media Bias

Violence

Washington Post

How long can this nation survive when its main cultural and educational institutions preach a relentless, unchallenged stream of anti-Americanism to young people (and others) who lack the background to resist this toxicity?
Along with others, I have long argued that the American left has a major problem with America as founded. Yet Democrats are outraged by the suggestion, and too many Republicans seem insufficiently concerned about it. They better wake up.
If current events aren&#8217;t enough to turn your head, please consider the following data presented by Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at the University of London Birkbeck College.
Kaufmann writes that the &#8220;cultural revolutionaries&#8221; who are toppling statues and renaming buildings &#8220;are changing minds, and could be in a position to enact a root-and-branch reconstruction of America into something completely unrecognizable to its present-day inhabitants.&#8221; He adds: &#8220;Imagine a country whose collective memory has been upended, with a new constitution, anthem, and flag, its name changed from the sinful &#8216;America&#8217; to something less tainted. Far-fetched? Not according to data I have collected on what liberal white Americans actually believe.&#8221;
Notice Kaufmann isn&#8217;t talking merely about the extreme left but American liberals. This is chilling stuff but unsurprising to me. In my book &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity,&#8221; I warned that socialism is not the only terrible idea the left is promoting. I wrote: &#8220;The left isn&#8217;t turning to socialism just because its members think it&#8217;s more equitable than capitalism but also because they seek revenge against America&#8217;s founding generation and its successor beneficiaries. They want to eradicate the Western tradition that spawned our unique American culture because it allegedly led to continental larceny against Native Americans, is in irredeemable moral debt over slavery, and is forever culpable for oppressing minorities and women through white privilege and the inherent exploitation of capitalism.&#8221; I don&#8217;t claim to be a prophet, but is my statement not vindicated by America&#8217;s present turmoil?
Kaufmann polled American liberals to gauge their willingness &#8220;to jettison the country&#8217;s cultural identity.&#8221; On May 7 (before the George Floyd killing), he surveyed a sample of 870 Americans who &#8220;lean young, liberal, and white.&#8221; The group was not representative of the American population at large but drawn from the Amazon Mechanical Turk and Prolific Academic survey platforms used by thousands of academics. He consciously removed conservatives and centrists to focus only on self-described liberals. He presented them with 16 &#8220;outlandish&#8221; statements and was &#8220;amazed&#8221; by their answers. He surveyed them again on June 15, after the Floyd killing and subsequent protests, and found that things &#8220;had gotten even crazier.&#8221;
He asked them to agree or disagree that Americans should:
&#8220;1. Rebalance the history taught in schools until its voices and subjects reflect the demographics of the population and heritage of Native people and citizens of color
&#8220;2. Move, after public consultation, to a new American anthem that better reflects our diversity as a people
&#8220;3. Rename our cities and towns until they match the demographics of the population
&#8220;4. Rebalance the art shown in museums across the country until an analysis of content shows that it reflects the demography of the population and perspective of Native people and citizens of color
&#8220;5. Move, after an open public process, to a new name for our country that better reflects the contributions of Native Americans and our diversity as a people
&#8220;6. Rename our states until they better reflect the heritage of Native people and citizens of color
&#8220;7. Gradually replace many older public buildings with new structures that don&#8217;t perpetuate a Eurocentric order, until a more representative public space is achieved
&#8220;8. Respectfully remove the monument to four white male presidents at Mount Rushmore, as they presided over the conquest of Native people and repression of women and minorities
&#8220;9. Allow our public parks to return to their natural state, before a European sense of order was imposed upon them
&#8220;10. Move, after public consultation, to a new American flag that better reflects our diversity as a people
&#8220;11. Consider adopting a new national language, that will be forged from the immigrant and Native linguistic diversity of this country&#8217;s past
&#8220;12. Remove existing statues of white men from public spaces until the stock of statues matches the demographics of the population
&#8220;13. Gently remodel the statue of liberty to make it better reflect the diversity of America
&#8220;14. Rename our streets and neighbourhoods until they match the demographics of the population
&#8220;15. Move, after public consultation, to a new American constitution that better reflects our diversity as a people
&#8220;16. Begin changing the layout of our cities, towns, and highways, moving away from the grid system to follow the more natural trails originally used by Native people&#8221;
Kaufmann reports: &#8220;Every one of these proposals represents a radical blow to American cultural nationhood. Yet &#8230; six of them carry the support of more than 50 percent of committed liberals &#8230; Eight are backed by a majority of the 40 percent of liberals who identify as &#8216;very liberal.&#8217; Some 80 percent of those who have made up their mind would replace the national anthem and constitution.&#8221;
Assuming this survey is remotely scientific and representative of liberal thinking, it should be uncontroversial to say the American left wants to radically transform America.
After considering this data, and the left&#8217;s support and sympathy for the violence, looting and anarchy sweeping this country, could it be any clearer what is at stake in the 2020 elections?
I respectfully appeal to reasonable people on both sides of the political aisle to recognize what&#8217;s happening to the greatest nation in history and oppose it before it&#8217;s too late. These kinds of revolutions don&#8217;t end well for anyone — including the nihilists who engineer them.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

American flag

LIMBAUGH: America’s Survival Hangs In The Balance

House Democrats overwhelmingly <a href="http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2020/roll116.xml">voted</a> on Thursday, 231 to 176, to block a Republican resolution that called for justice for George Floyd, condemning riots, and opposing efforts to defund or dismantle police departments.
The <a href="https://republicanleader.house.gov/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/RESOLUTION_xml.pdf">resolution</a>, introduced by Rep. Greg Steube (R-FL), does the following:
<blockquote>
<ul>
<li>Calls for justice for George Floyd.</li>
<li>Calls for justice for officers and others who have suffered from violence at the hands of extremists</li>
<li>Strongly condemns the violence, riots, and looting in the United States</li>
<li>Recognizes that violent opportunists use the cover of legitimate protests by their fellow citizens to sow chaos</li>
<li>Recognizes that the actions of those committed to violence does not diminish the rights of other Americans to peacefully protest</li>
<li>Urges peace and order to be restored</li>
<li>Expresses that those responsible for these violent acts be held criminally responsible for their actions</li>
<li>Strongly opposes any effort to establish autonomous areas within the sovereign territory of the United States</li>
<li>Strongly opposes efforts to defund, dismantle, or disband police forces</li>
</ul>
</blockquote>
&#8220;What happened in Minneapolis we all know was a tragedy,&#8221; Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) said. &#8220;Never should have happened. Wrong as wrong could be, and his family deserves justice.&#8221;
&#8220;There is a big difference between peaceful protest and rioting,&#8221; Jordan continued. &#8220;There is a big difference between peaceful protests and violence. There is a big difference between peaceful protest and attacking police officers. And there is certainly a big difference between peaceful protest and forming CHAZ or CHOP or any type of autonomous zone.&#8221;
Jordan also noted that the resolution strongly opposed defunding the police, which comes at a time where crime rates have soared across the country in recent weeks.
WATCH:
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
🚨🚨 Democrats just BLOCKED a vote on <a href="https://twitter.com/RepGregSteube?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@RepGregSteube</a>&#39;s resolution that calls for: • Justice for George Floyd • Condemns violence &amp; rioting • Prevents defunding of police <a href="https://t.co/4j1cOeExwf">pic.twitter.com/4j1cOeExwf</a>
&mdash; Mark Bednar (@MarkBednar) <a href="https://twitter.com/MarkBednar/status/1276191410023272451?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 25, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

Democrats Block Resolution That Opposes Defunding Police. Comes As Nation Battles Riots, Soaring Crime.

Defund The Police

George Floyd

Lately it seems that we conservatives can&#8217;t win even when we&#8217;re winning. But the country is under siege, so we cannot indulge the luxury of being discouraged.
This year has been one body blow after another to the nation we love. First, there was the coronavirus, and we thought, &#8220;How can this get any worse?&#8221; Then came the economic shutdown and the incalculable pain and suffering it brought. Next were the riots, the radicals&#8217; unopposed seizure of a section of Seattle and the maniacal efforts throughout the country to defund the police. Now a series of rulings from the &#8220;conservative&#8221; Supreme Court are wreaking untold havoc on the Constitution and the rule of law.
It wouldn&#8217;t take a Christian fanatic or an excitable conspiracist to conclude that America is now the target of an intense spiritual onslaught — brought on by its own rampant descent into decadence.
The left has been at war with America as founded for decades, and it has made great progress in transforming our culture and institutions. Leftists are activism-oriented and relentless. They pursue their goals 24/7, exhausting their less activist and less calculating opponents, and advance their agenda by sheer attrition.
But a more important factor in the left&#8217;s success is the depressing naivete of too many conservatives about its ultimate aims. If you underestimate the extremism and determination of your opponents, how can you counter them?
Perhaps one silver lining emerging from the Democrats&#8217; enabling of the proliferating lawlessness in America is that unsuspecting patriots are finally awakening to the horrors facing us and the left&#8217;s cynical exploitation of them.
The virus isn&#8217;t red or blue, but the left immediately weaponized it against President Donald Trump, their endless efforts to remove him having failed. From the beginning of this scourge, it was obvious they were more interested in demonizing Trump than in defeating the virus.
The media and the Democratic Party bludgeoned Trump instead of working with him to combat the virus. They excoriated him for responding too slowly when, had he listened to them, he wouldn&#8217;t have implemented his travel bans, which objectively slowed the spread in the United States.
They savaged him for defying the medical experts, when he was following their advice at every turn, including in shutting down the economy. Though they have shut the economy down even more severely in their blue-controlled states, they preposterously blamed the inevitable economic downturn on him.
Though Trump and virtually all of America condemned the senseless killing of George Floyd, the extreme left seized the moment not merely to protest officer misconduct but to condemn the nation for &#8220;systemic racism,&#8221; &#8220;white privilege&#8221; and &#8220;white supremacy.&#8221;
Leftist activists converted the protests into riots, looting and violence, and Democratic leaders refused to condemn it and instead fanned the flames lit by the organized mob. They have joined the movement to topple monuments and erase all other unpleasant aspects of American history — as if they never occurred.
This is nothing new for the Democratic Party. It was shocking that its key figures dared to publicly support some of the certifiably insane provisions of the Green New Deal — provisions too fantastical for even infants to endorse. It was surreal that some of their leading presidential candidates openly supported the abolition of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. But this widespread move to defund the police takes the insanity to French Revolution-crazy levels.
How can parents not fear for their kids&#8217; future? How can an entire political party give itself over to a lawless mob? How can it condone the systematic suppression of political speech by Hollywood, the corporate left and social media giants?
Do rank-and-file liberals want to live in a country whose culture destroys people who won&#8217;t toe the leftist line? Ironically, it will only be a matter of time before the mob they legitimized will turn on them, as surely as the French revolutionaries turned on their mastermind Maximilien Robespierre. For an unquenchable mob hellbent on eradicating all traditions, systems and laws, nothing is sacred, and no one is immune. Examples already abound. Just ask actor Mark Duplass and author J.K. Rowling. How can anyone be blind to this fascism? How, indeed, unless we really are witnessing a raging spiritual war.
Note to conservatives: If you have been casually dismissing leftist extremism, maybe now you will wake up. Can&#8217;t you hear the alarms blaring?
Too many on the right also mistakenly believe that this Democratic frenzy and leftist unrest is all based primarily on their contempt for President Donald Trump. He has made them crazy, and they&#8217;ll do anything to get rid of him. Then everything will return to normal.
Yes, he makes them crazier, more desperate and more unreasonable — mainly because he&#8217;s fighting them hammer and tongs — but he didn&#8217;t make them leftists, and leftists don&#8217;t need any prompting to unleash their hell on America. It stands for everything they hate.
With or without Trump, their goals remain the same. But without Trump, their chances of finally undoing America immeasurably increase.
I began this column saying we can&#8217;t afford to be discouraged. We can&#8217;t. But that doesn&#8217;t mean we can afford to be blind to the gravity of the threats we face. Let&#8217;s wake up and rededicate ourselves to preventing the destruction of America. Don&#8217;t ever lose hope. My bet is the silent majority is bigger than ever and that we&#8217;ll see that in November. Stay in the fight like your children&#8217;s future depends on it — because it does.
David Limbaugh is a writer, author and attorney. His latest book is &#8220;Guilty by Reason of Insanity: Why the Democrats Must Not Win.&#8221; Follow him on Twitter @davidlimbaugh and his website at www.davidlimbaugh.com. To read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

Megaphone

LIMBAUGH: The Silent Majority Can Be Silent No More

protests

While it might not be popular to say in the wake of the recent social disorder, the true plight of black people has little or nothing to do with the police or what has been called &#8220;systemic racism.&#8221; Instead, we need to look at the responsibilities of those running our big cities.
Some of the most dangerous big cities are: St. Louis, Detroit, Baltimore, Oakland, Chicago, Memphis, Atlanta, Birmingham, Newark, Buffalo and Philadelphia. The most common characteristic of these cities is that for decades, all of them have been run by liberal Democrats. Some cities — such as Detroit, Buffalo, Newark and Philadelphia — haven&#8217;t elected a Republican mayor for more than a half-century. On top of this, in many of these cities, blacks are mayors, often they dominate city councils, and they are chiefs of police and superintendents of schools.
In 1965, there were no blacks in the U.S. Senate, nor were there any black governors. And only six members of the House of Representatives were black. As of 2019, there is far greater representation in some areas — 52 House members are black. Nine black Americans have served in the Senate, including Edward W. Brooke of Massachusetts, Carol Moseley Braun and Barack Obama of Illinois, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Cory Booker of New Jersey, and Kamala Harris of California. In recent times, there have been three black state governors. The bottom line is that today&#8217;s black Americans have significant political power at all levels of government. Yet, what has that meant for a large segment of the black population?
Democratic-controlled cities have the poorest-quality public education despite their large, and growing, school budgets. Consider Baltimore, Maryland. In 2016, in 13 of Baltimore&#8217;s 39 high schools, not a single student scored proficient on the state&#8217;s math exam. In six other high schools, only 1% tested proficient in math. Only 15% of Baltimore students passed the state&#8217;s English test. That same year in Philadelphia only 19% of eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 16% were proficient in reading. In Detroit, only 4% of its eighth-graders scored proficient in math, and 7% were proficient in reading. It&#8217;s the same story of academic disaster in other cities run by Democrats.
Violent crime and poor education is not the only problem for Democratic-controlled cities. Because of high crime, poor schools and a less pleasant environment, cities are losing their economic base and their most productive people in droves. When World War II ended, the population of Washington, D.C., was about 800,000; today, it&#8217;s about 700,000. In 1950, Baltimore&#8217;s population was almost 950,000; today, it&#8217;s around 590,000. Detroit&#8217;s 1950 population was close to 1.85 million; today, it&#8217;s down to 673,000. The population of Camden, New Jersey, in 1950 was nearly 125,000; today it has fallen to 74,000. St. Louis&#8217; 1950 population was more than 856,000; today, it&#8217;s less than 294,000. A similar story of population decline can be found in most of our formerly large and prosperous cities. In some cities, the population decline since 1950 is well over 50%, and that includes Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland and Pittsburgh.
Academic liberals, civil rights advocates and others blamed the exodus on racism — &#8220;white flight&#8221; to the suburbs to avoid blacks. But blacks have been fleeing some cities at higher rates than whites. The five cities whose suburbs have the fastest-growing black populations are Miami, Dallas, Washington, Houston and Atlanta. It turns out that blacks, like whites, want better and safer schools for their kids and don&#8217;t like to be mugged or have their property vandalized. And like white people, if they have the means, black people cannot wait to leave troubled cities.
White liberals and black politicians focus most of their attention on what the police do, but how relevant is that to the overall tragedy? According to Statista, this year, 172 whites and 88 blacks have died at the hands of police. To put police shootings in a bit of perspective, in Chicago alone in 2020 there have been 1,260 shootings and 256 homicides with blacks being the primary victims. That comes to one shooting victim every three hours and one homicide victim every 15 hours. Three people in Chicago have been killed by police. If one is truly concerned about black deaths, shootings by police should figure way down on one&#8217;s list — which is not to excuse bad behavior by some police officers.
Walter E. Williams is a professor of economics at George Mason University. To find out more about Walter E. Williams and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate webpage at www.creators.com.

BLM protest

WILLIAMS: The True Plight Of Black Americans

African American community

Education

For those of us who truly believe black lives matter, Black Lives Matter is a criminally wicked movement.
BLM’s attacks on the police have resulted and will continue to result in more of the felonious violence that claims so many black victims – in L.A. alone, homicides are up 250 percent since the recent riots.
BLM’s disruption of businesses and encouragement of looting may cow some white liberals now, but they will ultimately increase anti-black sentiment and will slow blacks’ ability to rejoin a resurgent economy.
And BLM’s stated leftist <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/black-lives-matter-what-we-believe-page-disrupt-the-western-prescribed-nuclear-family-dismantle-cisgender-privilege">commitment</a> to “disrupt the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure requirement” is just one more stage in the Left’s destruction of precisely that family structure that is the only hope of black children.
The Democrats think they can control this violent outfit and use them to protect the multi-billion-dollar welfare patronage scam that has maintained their power base for 60 years while keeping blacks dependent and socially hobbled. It’s a cruel con. Because Democrats are in the pocket of corrupt teachers’ unions, they destroy the charter schools that give black kids a chance. But they absolutely love BLM’s gobbledygook talk of “white supremacy” and “systemic racism” because those are amorphous nothings that can never be addressed. They therefore allow whites a warming sense of self-accusatory virtue while keeping blacks mired in endless self-destroying grievance politics that will never undermine the oppressive systems that profit Democrat elites.
Now, because of the BLM-Democrat complex, all of virtuous Washington is focused on police reform. Police Departments are powerful organizations and should always be on the lookout for ways to lighten their touch while still controlling crime. But while relations between police and black Americans may be problematical, surely one important source of that trouble must be the extraordinary high crime rate in black neighborhoods. When 13 percent of the population – and it’s really six percent because we’re mostly talking about men – commit roughly 50 percent of the murders, mostly of other blacks, police reform is an issue on the margins.
Meanwhile, because of Democrat welfare policies that encouraged irresponsible parenting, Democrat feminist philosophy that discounted the worth of fathers, and Democrat encouragement of sexual liberation that discounted the value of marriage, blacks now have an illegitimacy rate <a href="https://www.hoover.org/research/race-and-economics">higher</a> than when Democrat slavemasters were actually breaking up their families by design. Study after study shows that, without fathers, children are at high risk of failure, substance abuse, and crime. But no one has the guts to address this central issue.
The Democrat Party is a cancer on black American lives. The latest stage of that cancer is Black Lives Matter.
Yet if you speak any of these truths online or out loud, you are in danger of losing your job or your reputation. A UCLA college professor was suspended after he followed a university directive and refused to bow to virtue signaling white students’ demands to reschedule an exam for black students in the wake of George Floyd’s death. An NBA play-by-play announcer had to resign after tweeting “All Lives Matter.” And so on.
Corporations, constrained by decades of restrictive and arbitrary civil rights legislation and law, are terrified. They can be sued for just thinking racist thoughts, and the evidence to prove the case against them can include some untoward remark some employee made ten years ago in the back of a taxi after a couple of drinks. No wonder they fire you if you say anything that might come back to haunt them.
The result is a fear of speaking the truth. Which means lies win. Which means the Left and its media have been allowed to create a Matrix – an entirely false narrative in which just those very prescriptions that will make black lives worse provide whites a sense of virtue while continuing the Democrat destruction of actual black lives.
My suspicion is that a great many black Americans know this. But they too are afraid. Their leaders are invested in this system. A scurrilous con man like Al Sharpton Junior draws all his prestige and power from it. Corrupt and incompetent black politicians around the country thrive in it. Stand up to them and you too will be penalized for transgressing the Matrix.
All people have tribal prejudices, but Americans are not racist in any way that hampers success. Jamaicans and Nigerians succeed here. Koreans and Chinese and Indians and Japanese and Jews and everybody else. 
Only that small segment of our society that has been the constant recipient of Democrat largesse and governance is continually mired in crime and dysfunction. That leads people to regard that segment with suspicion, hostility, and fear. Free blacks from the Democrats and they will rise like every other group in America.
But for that to happen, we’re going to need a bigger red pill.
More from Andrew Klavan: <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/klavan-black-americans-are-being-used-as-pawns-by-the-leftist-elite">Black Americans Are Being Used As Pawns By The Leftist Elite</a>

KLAVAN: The Racial Matrix

Black Lives Matter

Democratic Party

On Wednesday, having watched rioters and looters burn and pillage through America as Democrat politicians refrained from condemning them, actor James Woods summed up the Democrats’ hypocrisy in one tweet, writing, “Democrats were literally arresting Americans for opening their businesses, but now are silent as protesters burn them down. You were fined for worshipping in your church, but now cheered for marching in screaming crowds.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Democrats were literally arresting Americans for opening their businesses, but now are silent as protesters burn them down. You were fined for worshipping in your church, but now cheered for marching in screaming crowds.
&mdash; James Woods (@RealJamesWoods) <a href="https://twitter.com/RealJamesWoods/status/1268201526448685056?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">June 3, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Woods has not been alone in calling out Democrats for their unwillingness to condemn the rioters and looters. This week, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/media/doug-collins-why-arent-democrats-calling-out-rioters">called out</a> House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer for their statement which did not even mention the violence and riots terrifying Americans. Asked why Pelosi and Schumer had eschewed any mention of the violence and riots, Collins stated:
<blockquote>That’s a great question for the media to ask them. Why will they not call out police officers for being shot? Where are they with the family of the Las Vegas police officer who was shot in the head and is on life support right now? Peaceful protests need to happen; that’s part of our culture; it’s part of who we are, and change needs to happen, but you cannot call out Antifa and these agitators and anarchists who are in the middle of these peaceful protests who have now made them into something that is very damaging? You know what is damaging to our culture? It’s when the people do not feel safe on the streets because people who want to use the death of someone to actually just go in and steal something. That never should be allowed. Where is their outrage there instead of their outrage at a president that they thoroughly dislike?</blockquote>
Josh Kraushaar, writing in the <a href="https://www.nationaljournal.com/s/707162?unlock=LQ60B2WEYHL2ZO2D">National Journal</a>, stated on May 30:
<blockquote>I was surprised to see Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, fail to make even a pro forma exhortation against rioting in his heartfelt speech Friday when he called for police reforms and racial reconciliation. It probably wasn’t an accident: President Obama, his old boss, didn’t address the violence raging across Minneapolis <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/politics/george-floyd-trump-biden-obama.html">in his statement</a>, either. (The only reference to violence Biden made seemed to apply to Trump’s ominous Twitter threat that looting will lead to shooting: “This is no time for incendiary tweets. This is no time to encourage violence.”)</blockquote>
Kraushaar spoke to Kamala Harris’s former presidential campaign spokesman Ian Sams, asking him if Democrats might face a backlash for not condemning the riots. Sams responded, “The riots are obviously unfortunate, but are an outward manifestation of desperate anger that the system is failing large communities of people. White people need to step up here and speak out against the way that systemic racism is allowing police officers to kill innocent unarmed black men in this country without consequence.”
The Daily Wire, headed by bestselling author and popular podcast host Ben Shapiro, is a leading provider of conservative news, cutting through the mainstream media’s rhetoric to provide readers the most important, relevant, and engaging stories of the day. Get inside access to The Daily Wire by becoming a <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/subscribe">member</a>.

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Democrats

Trump’s Actions To Provide Relief To Americans ‘Expected To Face Legal Challenges From Democrats,’ Report Says

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