For those political conservatives out there who are feeling increasingly isolated these days because of the cancel culture mentality that has prevailed in this great nation, we ask you to take heart, as better times ahead are coming up the proverbial pike. An opportunity of a lifetime presents itself for a brief respite from the perfunctory bullying and intimidation by the big tech conglomerate, the liberal “fake news” media and the radical left.
Each year, the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) takes place at the end of February and this year is no different. Normally held at a hotel in National Harbor, Maryland which is in fairly close proximity to the nation’s capitol, this year’s conference will be held from February 25-28 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Orlando, were the political climate is more conducive to the expression of divergent viewpoints and perspective issues of the day. And who knows? Maybe there will be a surprise visit from former President Trump. But since we have absolutely no clue if that is going to happen, we can’t promise you anything. What we can promise you is four days of exciting seminars on a panoply of issues affecting the politically conservative world in addition to workshops, specialized forums and a host of spectacular cultural activities.
Today’s conservative youth usually come out in droves for this event, so you will see hundreds of enthusiastic teenagers and young adults who are thrilled to be there. Many of them belong to an organization called Turning Point USA. Founded in 2012 by Charlie Kirk, the organization’s mission is to identify, educate, train, and organize students to promote the principles of freedom, free markets, and limited government. Turning Point USA believes that every young person can be enlightened to true free market values.
CPAC Central, redesigned for CPAC 2021, is the main space for attendees to interact directly with exhibitors, sponsors, and special guests. It is a highly-interactive area made to build excitement and maximize opportunities for sponsors and attendees as they meet other conservatives from around the USA and the world. CPAC Central features space for exhibition booths, broadcast interviews, interactive town halls, meet-and-greets with candidates, authors and media personalities. Merchandise sales, including space for book signings also take place in CPAC Central.
CPAC 2021 continues its almost 40-year tradition of hosting the annual Ronald Reagan Dinner. Government officials, thought leaders, and grassroots activists join together for an evening celebrating Americans working to promote conservative values.
The Ronald Reagan Dinner will be held on Saturday, February 27, 2021 at 7:00 pm. This premier event features VIP speakers and attendees, which has included Vice President Mike Pence and Fox News’ Judge Jeanine Pirro. A full-course dinner is provided with a post-dinner reception with drinks, live music, and dancing.
Covered by media outlets throughout the four corners of the globe, an avalanche of attention has been accorded to CPAC as it is the premier venue where the politically conservative movers and shakers hobnob and their barometer is in plain sight. It is there that incredibly exceptional opinion makers from across the spectrum of conservative thought convene to formulate their agenda for the future and to highlight a vast array of speakers who are setting the bar in practically every way.
Not only are former presidents featured such as Donald Trump but the brightest minds in the politically conservative sphere of influence. The level of gravitas and political sway that this one-of- a- kind conference holds is challenging in terms of describing it in words. You really have to be there to experience the palpable electricity in the air and the tangible aura of true freedom that it represents so magnificently.
This year, attendees will be treated to such speakers as American Conservative Union (ACU) Chairman Matt Schlapp and his wife Mercedes, as well as South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem, former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former Deputy National Security Advisor KT McFarland, Fox & Friends Weekend Host Pete Hegseth, former White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Award Winning Investigative Journalist Sarah A. Carter, National Security Expert Gordan G. Chang, founder of Black Guns Matter, Maj Toure, former US Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell, former US Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, ACU Executive Director Dan Schneider, US Senators James Lankford, Cynthia Lummis and Rick Scott.
Also appearing at CPAC will be US House of Representative members Jim Banks, Madison Cawthorn, Byron Donalds, Michelle Fischbach, Mark Green, Burgess Owens, and Steve Scalise. Media personalities such as Dan Bongino from the Dan Bongino Show as well as Buck Sexton from the Buck Sexton Show and political commentator Amber Athey will also deliver presentations as CPAC.
So, come one, come all to the 2021 CPAC gala event to be held at the Orlando Hyatt Regency Hotel from February 25-28th.
Click on this link to make your reservations today!
On Stage At Kingsborough Presents: JEWISH FILM FESTIVAL
ROSENSTRASSE & THE BOOK THIEF
Q&A with the Screenwriter & Cinematographer
Edited by: TJVNews.com
On Stage At Kingsborough, a leading performing arts presenter in Brooklyn, is pleased to present two moving and beautiful films that reveal lesser-known stories and human truths of the Holocaust. A virtual q&a with Pamela Katz, Co-Screenwriter for “Rosenstrasse” and Florian Ballhaus, ASC, Cinematographer for “The Book Thief” will take place at the conclusion of the On Demand screening period.
“We are proud to be able to present this unique Jewish Film Festival, revisiting the artistry and important messages these films hold. The ability to talk with leading artists from each film will afford us unique insights into the films and the creative process for each,” said Anna Becker, Executive Director of On Stage At Kingsborough.
ROSENSTRASSE (On Demand February 22-28)
Directed by Margarethe von Trotta
Screenplay by Margarethe von Trotta and Pamela Katz
In the cold Berlin winter of 1943, hundreds of Aryan women stood, and waited, in defiance of the Nazis who had suddenly imprisoned their Jewish husbands and children in a factory on a street named Rosenstrasse. While countless Jews had already been sent to concentration camps for execution, Jewish husbands of Aryan wives had, until then, been allowed to survive because of their mixed marriage. Suddenly, every single Jew in Berlin was threatened with deportation. Their wives, who had lost almost everything, refused to accept this final blow. On that street these women stood in protest, in the name of love until they were reunited with their men. This is the striking story of Rosenstrasse: where the power of the human will stands inconquerable. Featuring Maria Schrader (Emmy Award, “Unorthodox”) and multi-award-winning actresses Katja Riemann and Jutta Lampe.
Running Time: 2 hr 16 min. In German and English, with English subtitles.
THE BOOK THIEF (On Demand February 15-28)
Directed by Brian Percival (“Downton Abbey”)
Cinematography by Florian Ballhaus, ASC
In 1938, young orphan Liesel (Sophie Nélisse) arrives at the home of her new foster parents, Hans (Oscar, Emmy & Tony Award-winner Geoffrey Rush) and Rosa (Oscar-Nominee Emily Watson). When Hans, a kindly housepainter, learns that Liesel cannot read, he teaches the child the wonders of the written language. Liesel grows to love books, even rescuing one from a Nazi bonfire. Though Liesel’s new family barely scrape by, their situation becomes even more precarious when they secretly shelter a Jewish boy whose father once saved Hans’ life.
Running Time: 2 hr 15 min, in English.
TICKETING INFORMATION
A festival ticket includesaccess to view “Rosenstrasse” and “The Book Thief,” and attend the interactive Zoom discussion with Pamela Katz and Florian Ballhaus.
Tickets are available on a “pay what you can” basis, with a suggested price of $15, as follows:
(718) 368-5596 (due to the current health crisis, calls will be returned within 24 hours on weekdays).
ABOUT THE ARTISTS:
Pamela Katz is a screenwriter most known for her work with legendary director, Margarethe von Trotta, including “Hannah Arendt” (One of The New York Times critic A.O. Scott’s top ten films), “Rosenstrasse,” “The Other Woman,” and “Forget About Nick.” Other films include “Remembrance,” starring David Rasche, and an original comedy, “Home Sweet Home.” She is currently writing “Kasztner’s Ark,” which tells the controversial story of Rezso Kasztner, the Hungarian Zionist who agreed to trade 10,000 trucks for the lives of one million Jews. His so-called “deal with the devil” is furiously debated until today. As an author, she has published essays and articles, as well as the book, The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women and Germany on the Brink, published by Doubleday/Nan A. Talese. The New Yorker proclaimed “Katz restores the women to their proper place in the story, with levity, strong characterization, and beguiling descriptions of an interwar German milieu crackling with politics, art, and a sense of possibility.” Ms. Katz is an Adjunct Professor of screenwriting at the NYU/Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Film program.
Florian Ballhaus was born in Germany, and began his career in America at the age of 16. He started out working as a second camera assistant for his father, the renowned cinematographer Michael Ballhaus, and worked his way up in the industry to second unit cinematographer with directors like Martin Scorsese, James L. Brooks, and Mike Nichols. He began his own career as a cinematographer in 1997, shooting his first American feature films with directors such as Alan Rudolph (Secret Lives of Dentists) and Adam Brooks (Definitely, Maybe.) He enjoys close collaborations with director David Frankel (5 films including The Devil Wears Prada); Robert Schwentke (7 films including Flightplan and “The Captain.”). The critically acclaimed “The Captain” won a cinematography award at the San Sebastian Film Festival as well as the 2018 German Camera Award.
ABOUT THE PRESENTER:
On Stage At Kingsborough (OSK) brings artistically and culturally diverse, multidisciplinary performances from masters of the form to the varied communities within and surrounding Kingsborough Community College in Brooklyn. We strive to create an environment where the arts are an accessible and integral part of life, and the Arts Center is a community gathering place for interaction and inspiration. From October to May, we present world class dance, cabaret, theatre, music, and family performances in the Leon M. Goldstein Performing Arts Center, and notable jazz musicians in an intimate and elegant nightclub setting with wine, cheese, and floor-to-ceiling ocean views as part of the Jazz At The Lighthouse series in Kingsborough’s Lighthouse. Our Hot Summer Nights! free outdoor concert series at Kingsborough’s Lighthouse bandshell takes place every Saturday evening in July. Our school-time shows welcome classes from local public and private schools, a majority of which serves economically-disadvantaged or special needs populations. The spring 2021 season reflects our commitment to present a broad range of world-class artists in exclusive virtual engagements. We will return to live performances when the prevailing science deems it is safe to do so.
For the most up-to-date scheduling and line-up for all programming, including video previews, follow OSK via the below links for information.
Upgraded version or the Iron Dome anti-missile defense system during a recent test. (Ministry of Defense Spokesperson
By Yakir Benzion, United With Israel
Israel’s Ministry of Defense announced Monday that it has completed a successful series of flight tests of the new and upgraded version of the Iron Dome missile defense system, simulating “advanced threats” that the country face during times of conflict both at land and on the sea.
The new upgraded version of the Iron Dome is expected to be delivered to the Israel Defense Force for operational use, where it will not only be deployed on land, but also be integrated and installed on the Israel Navy’s brand-new Sa’ar 6 corvettes. It will be central to the defense of Israel’s offshore waters, including strategically critical gas platforms located in the Mediterranean Sea of of Israel’s coast.
The Israel Missile Defense Organization (IMDO), which is a part of the Defense Ministry, conducted the tests at a base in central Israel along with the Iron Dome’s manufacturer, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems. The Israeli Air Force (IAF) and Navy also participated in firings to show that the system works.
The world-famous Iron Dome system has proven itself over and over again, sometimes on live TV, as an effective defense system against rockets fired by terrorists at Israeli towns and cities.
The highly advanced system plots the trajectory of the incoming rocket and launches interceptor missiles only if it determines the rockets are a danger. If the Iron Dome computers see that the incoming rocket will explode in an open area, it doesn’t launch any interceptors. To date, the system has knocked down hundreds of rockets fired at Israel, saving countless lives and preventing massive property damage.
The system is so good that in August 2019, the U.S. and Israel signed an agreement for the procurement of two Iron Dome Defense System batteries for the U.S. military.
man receives a Covid-19 vaccine at a Meuhedet Covid-19 vaccination center in Jerusalem, February 2, 2021. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90
By Aryeh Savir, TPS
“We are in the midst of a race between the ‘Back to Life’ vaccines operation and the mutation. This vaccine operation is our key to the coronavirus exit plan,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stated while seeking to extend the Coronavirus (COVID-19) lockdown at least until Sunday night.
The UK, South African, and Los Angeles variants have been discovered in Israel. The UK variant has been blamed for an increased infection rate, dangerous infections in pregnant women, and a spike in illness among children.
Netanyahu pointed out during remarks to the press on Tuesday night that the UK variant is rapidly spreading, and while a few days ago accounted for 70% of the cases, now accounts for 80% of the new cases, “a powerful and rapid spread.”
He further noted that 97% of those who have died of COVID-19 in Israel are in the 50-and-over age group, and 93% of serious cases are in the 50-and-over age group.
Therefore, “if we take control of the disease in these ages, if we succeed in vaccinating and protecting the people in this group, to a large extent we will be on the way to victory over the Coronavirus,” he asserted, “if there are no surprises such as new mutations that we are not familiar with and which could enter Israel.”
Based on these data, he said the national goal should be to vaccinate at least 90% of the 50+ age group within two weeks. This is an achievable goal because 77% of them are already vaccinated, he said.
The health system has noted a significant slowdown in its campaign to vaccinate the population due to a lack of interest in the public.
“I call on whoever is watching us this evening, if you have not yet been vaccinated, go and be vaccinated. It is important not only for you, it is important for all of us because it is what will enable us to gradually open the economy and it is what will enable us, mainly, to save lives,” Netanyahu declared.
Touching on his demand to extend the lockdown until Sunday night, he said that “every day is decisive. The significance of another three days of lockdown is another approximately 200,000 protected people. That is to say, people who received the second vaccine plus one week. Among these are 120,000 people over 50. This is simply the saving of lives.”
The rate of new daily cases continues to be very high and has not decreased throughout the closure period. Health officials noted that the slight drop they saw in recent days has stooped and even reversed its course.
After almost four weeks of countrywide lockdown, the government is slated to discuss on Wednesday it’s partial lifting.
Over 3,236,800 Israelis have received the first dose of the Pfizer-developed COVID-19 vaccine, some 35% of the population, and over five million doses have been administered in total in the six weeks of the campaign.
The Ministry of Health updated Wednesday that it documented 7,919 new COVID-19 cases over the past day.
Of the 88,503 tests done on Monday, a very high 9.3% returned positive.
A high number of 1,074 patients hospitalized with Corona are in serious condition, 392 of them are on life support.
4,8 88 Israelis have died of the virus since the outbreak in the country almost a year ago.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, executive director of World Values Network (WVN), announced on February 1 that his organization will celebrate the solidarity of Black and Jewish Americans at the Ninth Annual Champion of Jewish Values International Awards Gala.
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The gala, which will take place on February 18, will honor Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza, television personality Steve Harvey, Motown legend Dionne Warwick, President and CEO of the National Association for Investment Companies Robert L. Greene, personal health guru Dr. Mehmet Oz and Urban Technology Center founder Patricia Bransford. Carnegie Hall Chairman and philanthropist Robert Smith will co-host the event. Five-time Emmy nominee and Broadway actor Tituss Burgess and world-renowned pianist Evgeny Kissin are set to perform.
It is one thing to honor someone who actually builds bridges with the Jewish community or at least has expressed an interest in doing so; but to honor someone who has done the exact opposite is embarrassing and seems like a vanity project and an exercise in tuchus-kissing.
In contrast, the recently launched Black-Jewish Entertainment Alliance could actually achieve something, since those who signed on actually care about Black-Jewish relations. All this seems to be likely to achieve is to give Boteach more publicity.
TJV News would like to note: Shmuley Boteach was seen in Italy with his family gazing at a naked statue of a women and discussing it. He also wants you to mention that at his previous fundraising dinners, Boteach honored actress Pamela Anderson and was charging dinner guests $500 for the opportunity to kiss her or be kissed by her. He also once honored transgendered celebrity Kaitlyn Jenner (formerly Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner).
I wrote here last month about the vaccine libel, the falsehood being peddled that Israel was refusing to vaccinate the Palestinians living in the disputed “occupied” territories.
I wrote that media outlets were persisting in this incendiary falsehood despite all the facts being to the contrary. Under international law as laid down by the Oslo Accords, responsibility for providing health care in these disputed territories rested with the Palestinian Authority; the PA had ordered its own supply of vaccines and had not asked Israel for any help in supplying them; and the Arabs of east Jerusalem, who are not Israeli citizens but have a special status, were being offered the Israeli vaccine along with Israeli Arabs and the rest of Israel’s population.
All such attempted corrections were to no avail. All the lawyers and media monitors who have been pointing all this out might as well have saved their energies. For the libel has continued regardless, with the Israel-bashers doubling down and reinforcing the distortions and the falsehoods.
US Democrat Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib, who regularly trashes Israel and promotes the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign whose purpose is to destroy Israel altogether, told a news program:
I think it’s really important to understand Israel is a racist state and that they would deny Palestinians, like my grandmother, access to a vaccine, that they don’t believe that she’s an equal human being that deserves to live, deserves to be able to be protected by this global pandemic.
Untrue in every respect. In a similar vein, Britain’s Labour MP Nadia Whittome tabled a motion in Parliament last month in which she said:
The Israeli government is shirking its legal and moral obligations to 4.5 million people. While it has already vaccinated more than a fifth of its population, Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza have not even begun to receive their jabs. Israeli settlements are being vaccinated yet Palestinians living metres away are not… The British government cannot be neutral in the face of such injustice and must make clear to the Israeli government that it is obligated to vaccinate all those living under its occupation without discrimination.
Not only legally false but stupid: since the Palestinians are indeed close neighbours, with many of them coming into Israel to work, Israel has every interest in all Palestinians getting vaccinated as fast as possible.
And then there’s The Lancet, once again allowing its hatred of Israel to trash any reputation it still has for evidence-based health information. It has published an article in the name of The Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance which says:
Israel has denied its status and role as an occupier of the West Bank and the attendant responsibilities for the health of the occupied population, as laid down in the Geneva Convention and highlighted by the UN and 18 human rights organizations…Israel is complicit in the increased vulnerability of the Palestinian population to COVID-19… We call on physicians and other health professionals to raise their voices and put pressure on the Israeli Government to provide vaccines to Palestinians, including Palestine refugees on the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
This is factually wrong and legally illiterate. Israel has no such legal obligation. The PA has ordered its own vaccine supplies in conjunction with the World Health Organisation’s Covax scheme. It did not ask Israel for help until recently when its supplies were delayed; Israel quietly provided it with vaccines on that occasion, and this week provided 5000 more doses. As for Gaza, the IDF say they have facilitated all requests for medical assistance there, including the provision of ventilators, oxygen generators, hospital beds and Covid-19 testing equipment.
All this, note, while Gaza’s terrorists continued to fire rockets into southern Israel in order to murder Israeli civilians.
The vaccine libel is frightening for a number of reasons. First and foremost, it involves a stunning denial of evidence, law and reason. Its perpetrators are simply immune to any facts that contradict their claims. So great is their venomous bigotry towards Israel, there is simply no argument that can stop this libel rolling on.
I previously suggested various reasons for this extraordinary determination to persist with it: the opening it provides for another malicious attack on Israel; the urgent need to deny that the Palestinians are responsible for their own affairs; and the determination to squash any evidence of Jewish exceptionalism.
The trigger for the libel was the fact that Israel started to receive admiring notices from around the world for its astonishingly fast vaccination roll-out. Those who seek to depict Israel as irredeemably bad in order to destroy it had to stop this dangerous admiration in its tracks and turn Israel’s exceptional scientific and moral triumph into an act of evil.
And that leads to the further and even more terrible point that needs to be made. For this is not just a libel against the State of Israel. It is redolent of the ancient blood libel used against the Jewish people.
That horror originated in medieval England with the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children to drink their blood, a demented fabrication that directly incited the murder of countless thousands of Jews. And there have been many other instances over the centuries of baseless accusations leveled against the Jews for spreading disease, notably when Jews were blamed for outbreaks of plague as a result of which thousands of Jews were slaughtered.
Today’s vaccine libel sits squarely within that horrific trajectory. For it promotes the grotesque lie that the Jews of Israel are deliberately helping cause the spread of disease and death among the Palestinians by refusing to make available to them a life-saving vaccine.
This not only weaponizes yet another lie to demonize and delegitimize Israel. More fundamentally and devastatingly, it presents Israeli Jews as evil. It denies the fact that Israel is the most humane and moral country in the world, not least in the consideration it repeatedly extends to its Palestinian neighbours who never stop trying to murder its citizens and colonise its land. Instead, the vaccine blood libel suggests that Israeli Jews are devoid of compassion, empathy or moral sense and would callously cause the Palestinians to die from Covid-19.
And that is is one of the reasons why antisemitism isn’t just “another kind of racism,” as it is so ignorantly and often described, but is uniquely malevolent and murderous. For it presents the Jews as evil, a blight on humanity, a mortal threat to the rest of the world. In doing so, antisemitism incites the obvious impulse to eradicate such an evil, which has resulted over the centuries in countless massacres, pogroms and eventually the Nazi attempt to wipe the Jewish people off the face of the earth. And presenting Israeli Jews as similarly evil fuels exactly the same impulse to destroy them.
The claim is often made that the venomous falsehoods about Israel are not antisemitic but merely legitimate criticism of its policies. Well, the vaccine blood libel graphically demonstrates that this is not so. It is instead the latest, foul iteration of the attempt to demonize and destroy the Jews.
As the eternal people, the Jews will survive this. The society which gives rise to it will not.
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After 2 months of record-setting case counts, hospitalizations, and deaths, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said today the United States has finally returned to pre-Thanksgiving levels of COVID-19 transmission.
“We are now averaging 144,000 cases per day, and though deaths continue to increase, a recent decline in hospitalizations gives us hope those will also soon fall,” said Rochelle Walensky, MD, during today’s White House coronavirus press briefing, CIDRAP university of Minnesota reported.
Meanwhile, VOA reported:
The World Health Organization (WHO) noted this week that globally, the number of new coronavirus cases fell for the third consecutive week.
At the agency’s regular news briefing conducted virtually from its headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while many nations are still seeing infections increasing, it is nonetheless encouraging news.
Tedros said it shows the virus can be controlled, even with the new variants in circulation, and that with proven public health measures such as social distancing, the wearing of masks and good hygiene, infections can be prevented.
He warned, however, that the world has been at this point before, and it is no time to relax.
“Over the past year, there have been moments in almost all countries when cases declined, and governments opened up too quickly, and individuals let down their guard, only for the virus to come roaring back,” he noted.
Tedros said that as vaccines are rolled out around the world, it is important to continue to take the precautions that keep people safe. He said controlling the spread of the virus saves lives now and reduces the chances of more variants emerging.
“And it helps to ensure vaccines remain effective,” he said.
Also at the briefing, WHO Emergencies Program Director Michael Ryan responded to a question regarding the WHO-led team currently studying the origins of the virus and early skepticism about what it may find.
WHO Health Emergencies Program head Michael Ryan
Commentators have raised doubts about what the investigators can discover this long after the fact and given China’s wavering cooperation with the investigation.
Ryan took exception to those who have already said they would not accept the report from the team or that there may be other intelligence with different findings.
”No other country has provided any documentary, intelligence or other information to WHO. We are out there looking for it. We are in the field with experts from 10 countries looking to find the answers. If you have the answers, if you think you have some answers, please let us know,” he said.
Ryan said the team currently in the field in China represents not just WHO but the world community and deserves support.
(TJVNEWS.COM) Republican Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), whose office is two doors down from Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, noted that “insurrectionists” never made it to their hall when the U.S. Capitol building was breached on Jan. 6. Mace made the note while hitting the media for their attempts to “fan fictitious news flames” about the breach, as reported by Red State.
Red State reported:
AOC wasn’t even in the Capitol building where all the action was going down. If she was in her office, she was in the Cannon Building which is nearby, but a different building. But of course, many didn’t get the logistics and just assumed that she was in the Capitol building.
According to Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC), who has an office in the same hall as AOC, two doors away, there were never any rioters in their hall so there was never any physical danger from rioters coming in at any point.
Mace Tweeted
“[Ocasio-Cortez] made clear she didn’t know who was at her door, Breathless attempts by media to fan fictitious news flames are dangerous. My office is 2 doors down, Insurrectionists never stormed our hallway. Egregious doesn’t even begin to cover it.”
“Is there nothing MSM (mainstream media) won’t politicize?
.@AOC made clear she didn’t know who was at her door. Breathless attempts by media to fan fictitious news flames are dangerous.
My office is 2 doors down. Insurrectionists never stormed our hallway. Egregious doesn’t even begin to cover it. Is there nothing MSM won’t politicize? pic.twitter.com/Tl1GiPSOft
Newsweek reported the story evidently the way AOC wanted to portray the day’s events. Based on Mace’s account, AOC appeared to lie or at the least grossly exaggerate what exactly happened about important details of the capitol seize. The rioters never made it anywhere near AOC’s office. AOC admitted the man behind her door was a police officer in her January 6th video on Twitter, where she revealed she was a survivor of sexual abuse and she has not denied that she was never actually in the capitol at the time of the riot but rather at the Cannon building, which was not breached.
AOC was taking advantage evidently that most people do not realize her office was not in the same building as the riot
The socialist congresswoman said she saw a “white man in a black beanie” who she later revealed to be a Capitol Police officer.
The Cannon building is across the street from the capitol, which was breached
Newsweek reported, this account, which was mostly retracted
Ocasio-Cortez said that rioters actually entered her office, forcing her to take refuge inside her bathroom after her legislative director Geraldo Bonilla-Chavez told her to “hide, hide, run and hide.”
“And so I run back into my office,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I slam my door. There’s another kind of like back area to my office, and I open it, and there’s a closet and a bathroom. And I jump into my bathroom.”
Ocasio-Cortez said was hiding behind the door “and then I just start to hear these yells of, ‘Where is she?’”
As members of the mob banged against the door, Ocasio-Cortez believed “this was the moment where I thought everything was over.”
“And the weird thing about moments like these is that you lose all sense of time,” Ocasio-Cortez continued. “In retrospect, maybe it was 4 seconds. Maybe it was 5 seconds, maybe it was 10 seconds. Maybe it was one second, I don’t know. It felt like my brain was able to have so many thoughts.”
“In between the screams and the yells,” Ocasio-Cortez added, “I mean, I thought I was going to die.”
The New York City Department of Sanitation will offer an operational update on snow removal efforts. Thursday, February 4, 2021 1 p.m.
The update will take place by one of the Department’s snow melters, one of seven in use citywide. In larger snowfalls, the Department will move snow from some areas, especially in places with more narrow streets, and melt it using large machines. The snow melters can melt 60 to 120 tons of snow per hour, at a rate of 240 gallons per minute. The liquefied snow is then drained through approved sewer connections after filters remove any debris.
WHERE:
Lower Manhattan, at the corner of Broad and Water Streets
Sanitation Commissioner Edward Grayson
About the New York City Department of Sanitation
The Department of Sanitation (DSNY) keeps New York City healthy, safe and clean by collecting, recycling and disposing of waste, cleaning streets and vacant lots, and clearing snow and ice. The Department operates 59 district garages and manages a fleet of more than 2,000 rear-loading collection trucks, 450 mechanical brooms and 705 salt spreaders. The Department clears litter, snow and ice from approximately 6,500 miles of City streets and removes debris from vacant lots as well as abandoned vehicles from City streets.
E-commerce giant Amazon will reportedly pay $61.7 million to settle allegations by the FTC that the company failed to pay Flex delivery drivers the full amount of tips given to them by customers. An FTC official commented: “Rather than passing along 100% of customers’ tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself. Our action today returns to drivers the tens of millions of dollars in tips that Amazon misappropriated, and requires Amazon to get drivers’ permission before changing its treatment of tips in the future.”
NBC News reports that Amazon will pay a $61.7 million settlement over allegations by the FTC that it failed to pay Flex delivery drivers the full amount of tips that they were owed. The commission voted 4-0 in favor of the settlement.
The FTC alleges that in 2016 Amazon shifted from paying divers the promised rate of $18 to $25 per hour, plus tips, to paying a much lower hourly rate. Amazon allegedly “intentionally failed” to notify drivers of the change and used tips received from customers to make up the difference between the original promised rate and the lower hourly rate.
Daniel Kaufman, acting director of the FTC’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, said in a statement: “Rather than passing along 100% of customers’ tips to drivers, as it had promised to do, Amazon used the money itself. Our action today returns to drivers the tens of millions of dollars in tips that Amazon misappropriated, and requires Amazon to get drivers’ permission before changing its treatment of tips in the future.”
An Amazon spokesperson told CNBC that the company disagrees with the FTC’s claims that the driver payment model was unclear, stating: “While we disagree that the historical way we reported pay to drivers was unclear, we added additional clarity in 2019 and are pleased to put this matter behind us. Amazon Flex delivery partners play an important role in serving customers every day, which is why they earn among the best in the industry at over $25 per hour on average.”
Amazon will pay more than $61.7 million to the FTC which will be used by the agency to compensate Flex drivers. The settlement further prohibits Amazon from misrepresenting any driver’s likely income or rate of pay, how much of their tips they will receive, and whether the amount paid by a customer is a tip.
Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolanor contact via secure email at the address [email protected]
A kindergarten teacher in Charlotte, North Carolina, was fired from his job on Monday following the discovery of an anti-Semitic tweet that he posted over the weekend.
Jarrin Wooten — a teacher at Sugar Creek, a K-12 charter school in northeast Charlotte — posted the tweet defending Nazi leader Adolf Hitler on Sunday.
“Hitler was trying to keep those demonic … Rothschilds and fractional reserve banks out of Germany and then we let those same ‘Jews’ come to America and teach us he was a terrorist … all I’ll say is look into it some more,” Wooten wrote.
Local broadcaster WFAE reported that Charlotte schools Superintendent Cheryl Turner began an investigation into Wooten on Monday after his tweet was exposed by watchdog StopAntisemitism.org.
He said the teacher initially told her he was hacked, adding that such a tweet would be surprising from “a black male teacher who has experienced racism himself.”
But a few hours later Sugar Creek board chair H. Bryan Ives III issued a statement saying the tweet was real and the teacher “is no longer employed at our school.”
The tweet violated the school’s social media and nondiscrimination policies, the statement said, adding that “hateful speech and discrimination against any person of any religion, race or color, will never be tolerated at Sugar Creek Charter.”
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki confirmed Tuesday that President Joe Biden had not yet spoken with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in the first two weeks of his administration — but could not explain why he had not done so.
The following exchange took place during Tuesday’s White House press briefing:
Reporter: Correct me if I wrong, but the president hasn’t spoken yet with Prime Minister Netanyahu. He has not. Isn’t that surprising?
Psaki: I don’t know that it’s surprising less than two weeks into an administration. He hasn’t called every foreign leader yet. He certainly would love to spend more time talking to foreign leaders. His first love is foreign policy. But I expect he’ll continue to have additional engagements in the weeks ahead. And, obviously, we have a long and abiding relationship with Israel, important security relationship. I’m sure they’ll discuss that and a range of issues when they do connect.
In contrast to Biden, President Donald Trump spoke with Netanyahu on Jan. 22, 2017, his second full day in the Oval Office.
Thus far, in order, Biden has spoken with: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada; President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico; Prime Minister Boris Johnson of the United Kingdom; President Emmanuel Macron of France; Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany; Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg of NATO; President Vladimir Putin of Russia; and Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga of Japan.
Journalists and security personnel gather near the entrance of the Wuhan Institute of Virology after a visit by the World Health Organization team in Wuhan in China's Hubei province on Wednesday, Feb. 3, 2021. (AP Photo/Ng Han Guan)
(AP) — World Health Organization investigators on Wednesday visited a research center in the Chinese city of Wuhan that has been the subject of speculation about the origins of the coronavirus, with one member saying they’d intended to meet key staff and press them on critical issues.
The WHO team’s visit to the Wuhan Institute of Virology was a highlight of their mission to gather data and search for clues as to where the virus originated and how it spread.
“We’re looking forward to meeting with all the key people here and asking all the important questions that need to be asked,” zoologist and team member Peter Daszak said, according to footage run by Japanese broadcaster TBS.
Reporters followed the team to the high security facility, but as with past visits, there was little direct access to team members, who have given scant details of their discussions and visits thus far. Uniformed and plainclothes security guards stood watch along the facility’s gated front entrance, but there was no sign of the protective suits team members had donned Tuesday during a visit to an animal disease research center. It wasn’t clear what protective gear was worn inside the institute.
The team left after around three hours without speaking to waiting journalists.
At a daily briefing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin said the experts also held talks Wednesday with experts from Huazhong Agricultural University.
“It should be noted that virus traceability is a complex scientific issue, and we need to provide sufficient space for experts to conduct scientific research,” Wang said. “China will continue to cooperate with WHO in an open, transparent and responsible manner, and make its contribution to better prevent future risks and protect the lives and health of people in all countries.”
Following two weeks in quarantine, the WHO team that includes experts in veterinary medicine, virology, food safety and epidemiology from 10 nations has over the past six days visited hospitals, research institutes and a traditional wet market linked to many of the first cases. Their visit followed months of negotiations as China seeks to retain tight control over information about the outbreak and the investigation into its origins, in what some have seen as an attempt to avoid blame for any missteps in its early response.
One of China’s top virus research labs, the Wuhan Institute of Virology built an archive of genetic information about bat coronaviruses after the 2003 outbreak of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome. That has led to unproven allegations that it may have a link to the original outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan in late 2019.
China has strongly denied that possibility and has promoted also unproven theories that the virus may have originated elsewhere or even been brought into the country from overseas with imports of frozen seafood tainted with the virus, a notion roundly rejected by international scientists and agencies.
The institute’s deputy director is Shi Zhengli, a virologist who worked with Daszak to track down the origins of SARS that originated in China and led to the 2003 outbreak. She has published widely in academic journalists and worked to debunk theories espoused by the former Trump administration and other American officials that the virus is either a bioweapon or a “lab leak” from the institute.
Confirmation of the origins of the virus is likely to take years. Pinning down an outbreak’s animal reservoir typically requires exhaustive research, including taking animal samples, genetic analysis and epidemiological studies. One possibility is that a wildlife poacher might have passed the virus to traders who carried it to Wuhan.
The first clusters of COVID-19 were detected in Wuhan in late 2019, eventually prompting the government to put the city of 11 million under a strict 76-day lockdown. China has since reported more than 89,000 cases and 4,600 deaths, with new cases largely concentrated in its northeast and local lockdowns and travel restrictions being imposed to contain the outbreaks.
New cases of local transmission continue to fall with just 15 reported on Wednesday as Chinese heed government calls not to travel for the Lunar New Year holiday later this month.
(TJVNEWS.COM) As of Jan. 22, 329 deaths — a subset of 9,845 total adverse events — had been reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System(LINK) (VAERS) following COVID-19 vaccinations. VAERS is the primary mechanism for reporting adverse vaccine reactions in the U.S. Reports submitted to VAERS require further investigation before confirmation can be made that an adverse event was linked to a vaccine.
It’s important to note that these reports to the VARES system require further investigation, however, it is important to keep the public aware that this reporting system exists and very few media outlets have been following VARES reports and informing the public. TJV is not an alarmist or “anti-vaccine” outlet, we believe in reporting important news, especially items that are frequently overlooked
The reports, filed on the VAERS website between Dec. 14, 2020, and Jan. 22, describe outcomes ranging from “foaming at the mouth” to “massive heart attacks” to “did not recover.”
According to the VAERS data, of the 329 reported deaths, 285 were from the U.S., and 44 were from other countries. The average age of those who died was 76.5.
States reporting the most deaths were: California (22), Florida (16), Ohio (18), New York (15) and KY (13). Most of the reports were from or filed on behalf of people who had received only the first dose. About half of the people reporting had the Pfizer vaccine, the other half Modern
According to the Washington Post, as of Jan. 29, 22 million people in the U.S. had received one or both doses of a COVID vaccine.
Newly confirmed Secretary of State Antony Blinken addresses a welcome ceremony at the State Department, Wednesday, Jan. 27, 2021 in Washington. (Carlos Barria/Pool via AP)
Edited by: Fern Sidman
In his first major interview as Secretary of State, Antony Blinken repeated his warning that Iran could be on course to get enough fissile material to build a nuclear weapon within months, according to a report in the Independent of the UK. He added that if Iran continues to lift restraints from the nuclear deal, it could be “a matter of weeks”.
Speaking to NBC News, Blinken said the US would be willing to once again comply with the 2015 nuclear deal if Iran does the same, as was reported by the Independent of the UK. The new Secretary of State said that the US would then work on a “longer and stronger” deal with allies that could possibly include other issues such as Iran’s development of advanced missile technology and its deployment of armed groups throughout the Middle East, according to the report.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has rejected allegations reportedly made by Blinken that Tehran could be months away from developing enough “fissile material” for a nuclear bomb. Photo Credit: AP
Reuters reported on Tuesday that Israel’s energy minister said it would take Iran around six months to produce enough fissile material for a single nuclear weapon, a timeline almost twice as long as that anticipated by a senior member of the Biden administration.
In a radio interview, Israeli Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz said that the Trump administration “seriously damaged Iran’s nuclear project and entire force build-up.”
“In terms of enrichment, they (Iranians) are in a situation of breaking out in around half a year if they do everything required,” he told public broadcaster Kan. “As for nuclear weaponry, the range is around one or two years.”
Reuters reported that Israel is wary of the Biden administration’s intent to reenter the 2015 Iranian nuclear deal and has long opposed the agreement, according to the Reuters report. Washington argues that the previous Trump administration’s withdrawal from the deal backfired by prompting Iran to abandon caps on nuclear activities.
Last week, a VOA report indicated that Blinken had signaled that U.S. sanctions on Iran will remain in place for some time as Washington waits to see if Tehran verifiably stops violating a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers before potentially rejoining the deal that the Trump administration jettisoned.
VOA reported that week that Blinken said the U.S. is a “long way” from the point of fulfilling President Joe Biden’s campaign pledge to rejoin the deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) if Iran resumes compliance with it.
“Iran is out of compliance on a number of fronts, and it would take some time, should it make a decision to do so, for it to come back into compliance, and (some time) for us then to assess whether it was meeting its obligations. So, we’re not there yet, to say the least,” Blinken said.
Biden has promised to offer Iran a “credible path back to diplomacy” if it returns to “strict compliance” with the JCPOA, in which it agreed to curb nuclear activities that could be diverted toward making nuclear weapons in return for sanctions relief from world powers, as was reported by VOA.
Iran has been escalating its violations of JCPOA nuclear curbs since 2019 in retaliation for the 2018 withdrawal from the deal. Former President Trump unilaterally tightened U.S. sanctions against Tehran.
On July 14, 2015, after two years of negotiations, the P5+1 and the European Union announced the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA)–Photo Credit: armscontrolcenter.org
In his interview with the media over the weekend, Blinken did not offer a forthright response when asked if the release of detained Americans in Iran would be a part of any future negotiations.
He said: “Irrespective of… any deal, those Americans need to be released… We’re going to focus on making sure that they come home one way or another.”
Before his confirmation as Secretary of State, Blinken said that under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, it would take Iran over a year to produce enough fissile material to make one weapon, as was reported by the Independent. During his Senate confirmation hearings last week, Blinken told lawmakers that it would now take “about three or four months, based at least on public reporting.”
The Independent reported that Iran began breaching the limits on the nuclear deal in 2019, a year after former President Trump withdrew the United States from the deal and began imposing sanctions on Tehran as part of a campaign of maximum pressure.
Iran has increased its production of fissile nuclear material, begun production of nuclear fuel enriched to 20 per cent purity, and ramped up its development of advanced centrifuges that can more efficiently process uranium ore for industrial or military purposes, as was reported by the Independent of the UK.
The report indicated that Iran said that it will not pursue nuclear weapons. Most western intelligence agencies say Iran abandoned a clandestine atomic arms program in 2003. But many non-proliferation experts have concluded Tehran is seeking to build up its nuclear technology capabilities with an eye toward quickly assembling nuclear weapons if it decided to in the future, as was reported by the UK paper.
According to a report on the Al Jazeera web site, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has rejected allegations reportedly made by Blinken that Tehran could be months away from developing enough “fissile material” for a nuclear bomb.
Zarif rejected those comments in an interview with CNN on Monday. “I think that is a statement of concern that is more addressed to the public opinion than to reality,” the foreign minister said, as was reported by Al Jazeera.
“Iran does not seek a nuclear weapon. If we wanted to build a nuclear weapon, we could have done it some time ago, but we decided that nuclear weapons would not augment our security and are in contradiction to our ideological views.”
A worker rides a bicycle in front of the reactor building of the Bushehr nuclear power plant in southwestern Iran. After the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the ruling clerics initially said they had no use for a nuclear program. Ayatollah Khomeini said the silos at the Bushehr facility should be used to store wheat. Photo Credit: Majid Asgaripour/AP
Blinken said he was basing his projections on “public reports” and said the timeline would get “more acute” if Iran lifts more nuclear deal restraints, according to a full transcript of the NBC News interview.
“Now, the fissile material is one thing. Having a weapon that they can actually detonate and use is another,” Blinken said, according to the readout.
Al Jazeera reported that Iran began to loosen compliance with the deal after Trump unilaterally withdrew from the agreement in 2018 as part of his administration’s “maximum pressure” strategy against the Iranian government.
The Biden administration says it will remove punishing sanctions on Tehran if Iran returns to full compliance with the JCPOA, according to the Independent of the UK report, but the sequencing of a restoration of the deal remains unclear. Both Blinken and Iranian President Hassan Rouhani have said that they would return to compliance with the deal, but only if the other does so first.
Iran has been trying to achieve a return to the 2015 deal by publicly pressuring the new Biden administration. It has seized the cargo ship of a US ally and imprisoned a US citizen on charges of espionage, according to The Times.
Iran has now said it will not renegotiate the deal and placed blame on the US for its unilateral withdrawal, as was reported by Al Jazeera.
“The nuclear accord is a multilateral international agreement ratified by UN Security Council Resolution 2231, which is non-negotiable and parties to it are clear and unchangeable,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh was quoted by state media as saying on Saturday.
“The United States needs to come back into compliance and Iran will be ready – immediately – to respond,” Zarif said. He added that, “The timing is not the issue. The issue is whether the United States, whether the new administration, wants to follow the old failed policies of the Trump administration or not.”
The Independent of the UK reported that National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan said Friday during a forum sponsored by the United States Institute for Peace that the Biden administration is looking at a faster restoration of the deal than previously advertised to manage the incoming threats from Iran.
Sullivan also reiterated that Iran is closer to building a bomb than when President Trump decided to leave the deal in May 2018, according to the report.
“We are going to have to address Iran’s other bad behavior, malign behavior, across the region, but from our perspective, a critical early priority has to be to deal with what is an escalating nuclear crisis as they move closer and closer to having enough fissile material for a weapon… And we would like to make sure that we reestablish some of the parameters and constraints around the program that have fallen away over the course of the past two years,” Sullivan said.
Biden has named people involved in Iran nuclear deal negotiations to key positions within his administration. That includes Robert Malley, his new Iran envoy, and Wendy Sherman, his nominee for deputy secretary of state, according to report in the Independent of the UK report.
Malley was the lead negotiator on the 2015 Iran nuclear deal and is currently tasked with bringing the United States and Iran into compliance with the Iran deal abandoned by Trump, according to a profile on Wikipedia. Previously, Malley was President and CEO of the International Crisis Group, a Washington, D.C. non-profit committed to preventing wars. Prior to holding that title, as was reported on Wikipedia, he served at the National Security Council under Barack Obama from February 2014 until January 2017. In 2015, the Obama administration appointed Rob Malley as its “point man” on the Middle East, leading the Middle East desk of the National Security Council. In November 2015, Malley was named as President Obama’s new special ISIS advisor.
In a statement released on the Iranian Foreign Ministry website, spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh rejected any flexibility on the part of the Iranians to changing any part of the 2015 agreement that the U.S. withdrew from in 2018, as was reported on the World Israel News web site.
“The UN Security Council Resolution 2231 is a multilateral international agreement ratified by Security Council, and is in no way negotiable and the parties are clear and unchangeable,” Khatibzadeh said.
The ministers of foreign affairs of France, Germany, the European Union, Iran, the United Kingdom and the United States as well as Chinese and Russian diplomats announcing the framework for a comprehensive agreement on the Iranian nuclear program (Lausanne, April 2, 2015) – Photo Credit: Wikipedia
His remarks on additional parties to the deal were in response to French President Emmanuel Macron’s comments on Friday that new talks with Tehran should include regional players like Saudi Arabia, according to the World Israel News report.
“The United States has withdrawn from this agreement and Europe has been unable to maintain it,” Khatibzadeh said, adding that if the U.S. and Europe wanted to revive and maintain the nuclear deal, the only way is for the U.S. to return to the same terms and remove all of its sanctions imposed on the Islamic Republic under former President Trump.
WIN reported that Macron had tried to push a hard line with the Iranians, telling the Al Arabiya news website during a media briefing in Paris: “Dialogue with Iran will be rigorous, and they will need to include our allies in the region for a nuclear deal, and this includes Saudi Arabia.”
Both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates want to be involved in any new talks with Iran, sharing Israel’s concerns over Iran’s ballistic missile program that was not included in the original nuclear deal, as well as Iranian support for terrorist groups in the region, according to the WIN report.
Khatibzadeh called on Macron to “exercise restraint and refrain from hasty and ill-considered positions.”
VOA News reported that U.S. administrations have long criticized Iran’s development of ballistic missiles, its support for Islamist militias engaged in conflicts with the U.S. and its allies, its detentions of Americans as bargaining chips for prisoner swaps, and its poor human rights record.
The U.S. military said it flew a B-52H bomber over the Middle East last week to “showcase its commitment” to the security of U.S. allies in the region who have felt threatened by Iran.
The Associated Press said flight tracking data showed the bomber flew over the Persian Gulf after taking off from a U.S. base in Louisiana. It was the sixth such overflight since November, when then-President Trump authorized the sorties to deter Iran from attacking the U.S. or its allies while Washington was consumed in political turmoil stemming from that month’s presidential election. The military exercise also was the first since Biden took office, signaling that his administration intends to continue them as a regular practice, according to the VOA report.
Elliott Abrams, Trump’s special representative for Iran who left office last week, told VOA Persian he believes Blinken was “realistic” in assessing no quick U.S. return to the JCPOA.
(Independent of the UK, Reuters, Al Jazeera & World Israel News)
Health officials to vacate their posts since July include: the state’s chief nursing home regulator; Deputy Health Commissioner Brad Hutton; Dr. Elizabeth Dufort, medical director of epidemiology; and Dr. Jill Taylor, head of Wadsworth Center research lab. Photo Credit: Twitter
By: Benyamin Davidsons
Nine or more top health officials in Governor Andrew Cuomo’s administration have resigned, retired or been reassigned amid the novel Coronavirus and criticism against the administration policies. Still, Health Commissioner Howard Zucker has managed to hold on to his hat.
On Monday, the NY Times reported the departures, tying them to dissatisfaction with the state’s handling of the pandemic. The paper also said that sources were complaining that the policies set are put in place by Gov. Cuomo and his close aides, who are not health experts. “When I say ‘experts’ in air quotes, it sounds like I’m saying I don’t really trust the experts,” Cuomo openly acknowledged on Friday. “Because I don’t. Because I don’t.”
As reported by the NY Post, Cuomo still continues to stand by Zucker, his top health expert, a Bronx native who became one of America’s youngest doctors at the age of 22 and continued on to attain board certification in six specialties/subspecialties , a JD from from Fordham Law School, a LL.M. from Columbia Law School and a postgraduate diploma from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Zucker, who joined the Department of Health in 2013, has also come under fire, with at least two Republican lawmakers calling for his resignation. The DOH’s infamous March 25 order for nursing homes to accept COVID-19 patients remains at the forefront of the controversy. Last week, Zucker also got scathed when Attorney General Letitia James’ investigation found that the Health Department downplayed the total number of nursing home deaths by withholding the number of residents who died after being sent to hospitals for COVID-19.
James’ report finally led Zucker to release the figures – saying that 12,743 residents have died of COVID-19 in NY nursing homes and hospitals as of Jan. 19. A day earlier, the official DOH number of nursing home deaths was 8,711, all of whom died in the nursing home facilities. On Friday, expressing frustration regarding James’ report, Cuomo broke out at a news conference asking, “But who cares [if they] died in the hospital, died in a nursing home? They died.”
Health officials to vacate their posts since July include: the state’s chief nursing home regulator; Deputy Health Commissioner Brad Hutton; Dr. Elizabeth Dufort, medical director of epidemiology; and Dr. Jill Taylor, head of Wadsworth Center research lab in Albany. In a statement to the NY Times, Zucker said that the state was facing “an intense period of extraordinary stress and pressure and a different job than some signed onto.” He added that more recruits have “joined the agency with the talents necessary to confront this new challenge”. He noted that proof would be “in the performance numbers.
