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House Adopts Bill to Make DC 51st State; Senate GOP Opposes

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From left, District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser, Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, D-D.C., and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Md., practice social distancing as they participate in a news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 25, 2020, about D.C. statehood. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By MATTHEW DALY (AP)

The Democratic-controlled House approved a bill Friday to make the District of Columbia the 51st state, saying Congress has both the moral obligation and constitutional authority to ensure that the city’s 700,000 residents are allowed full voting rights, no longer subject to “taxation without representation.″

Lawmakers approved the bill, 232-180, largely along party lines, marking the first time a chamber of Congress has passed a D.C. statehood bill. Minnesota Rep. Collin Peterson was the sole Democrat to oppose the bill. No Republican voted for it.

The legislation now goes to the Republican-controlled Senate, where it faces insurmountable opposition from GOP leaders.

Del. Eleanor Holmes Norton, the district’s non-voting representative in Congress, sponsored the bill, saying it has both the facts and Constitution on its side.

D.C.’s population is larger than those of Wyoming and Vermont, and the new state would be one of seven with populations under one million, she said. The city’s $15.5 billion annual budget is larger than those of 12 states, and D.C.’s triple-A bond rating is higher than those of 35 states, Norton said.

Opponents, mostly Republicans, called the bill a power grab for the firmly Democratic city, and said the nation’s founding fathers intended the capital to be separate from the other states.

“This is about power. Make no mistake about it,″ said Rep. Chip Roy, R-Texas. The bill would “fundamentally alter what D.C is,″ he added.

Norton, who has served as D.C. delegate since 1991, said the issue is deeply personal for her and thousands of other city residents who have long been disenfranchised. Her great-grandfather Richard Holmes escaped slavery at a Virginia plantation and “made it as far as D.C., a walk to freedom but not to equal citizenship,″ she said. ”For three generations my family has been denied the rights other Americans take for granted.″

Congress has two choices, she added. “It can continue to exercise undemocratic, autocratic authority over the 705,000 American citizens, treating them, in the words of Frederick Douglass, as ‘aliens, not citizens, but subjects.’ Or Congress can live up to this nation’s promise and ideals, end taxation without representation and pass” the statehood bill.

The bill would create a new state of Washington, Douglass Commonwealth, in honor of the Virginia-born first president and the Maryland-born abolitionist and former slave.

The bill also would reduce the size of the federal district to a tourist-friendly area that includes the White House, the Capitol, the Supreme Court, federal monuments and the federal executive, legislative and judicial office buildings adjacent to the National Mall and the Capitol. Congress would retain control of that 2-square-mile area.

Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser invoked Douglass as she hailed the “historic vote” bringing the city closer than ever to becoming the 51st state.

“More than 160 years ago, Washingtonian Frederick Douglass told us: Power concedes nothing without a demand,″ Bowser said. “As Washingtonians and as taxpaying American citizens, we are demanding what is owed to us — the rights guaranteed to us by the U.S. Constitution. It is past time to fix this injustice.″

Sen. Tom Cotton, R-Ark., blasted the bill ahead of the House vote. In a Senate speech, he dismissed Washington, D.C., as a city with little more to offer than lobbyists and federal workers.

“Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population, but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing,” Cotton said. “In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state.”

Cotton also criticized Democrats for prioritizing the D.C. statehood vote while there is “mob violence” in the streets. Recent protests near the White House required “force by federal law enforcement officers under federal control,” he said.

“Would you trust Mayor Bowser to keep Washington safe if she were given the powers of a governor? Would you trust Marion Barry?” Cotton added referring to current and former mayors, both Black.

Cotton’s remarks stirred outrage on social media, with many describing the remarks as racist. D.C. has a large African American population and was once known as “Chocolate City,″ although it is no longer majority Black.

Supporters said the bill has become even more important in the aftermath of protests for racial justice in both Washington and across the nation. Democratic leaders scheduled the vote after the Trump administration’s much-criticized move to use federal forces to clear Lafayette Square near the White House of peaceful protesters so that President Donald Trump could trumpet his law and order credentials in a photo op.

“There shouldn’t be troops from other states in Washington, D.C.,” said Bowser. “ There shouldn’t be federal forces advancing against Americans, and there very definitely shouldn’t be soldiers stationed around our city waiting for the go to attack Americans in a local policing matter.”

Trump said last month that “D.C. will never be a state” because it would likely mean two more Democratic senators. “No, thank you. That’ll never happen,” he said.

But House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said the rights of D.C. residents should transcend political calculations.

“We are the only free country in the world, from all our research, that doesn’t have a voting member of their parliament in their country. We call our parliament ‘Congress,’” Hoyer said.

Recent events have focused national attention on the city’s plight. Earlier this year, when Congress passed the CARES Act stimulus package, the capital was classified as a territory rather than a state — a distinction that cost Washington more than $700 million in federal funding.

All District laws are subject to review by a congressional committee, which can veto them or alter them by attaching riders to federal appropriations bills. During GOP control of Congress, conservatives have sought, mostly unsuccessfully, to restrict some of the city’s liberal initiatives such as needle exchanges for drug users and abortions under its Medicaid program.

House Republicans Call For Investigation Into New York’s ‘Deadly’ Nursing Home Order

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Andrew Kerr (DCNF)

The Republican members of the New York, California, Michigan, New Jersey and Pennsylvania delegations called on the attorneys general of their states to investigate the origins of their governors’ “deadly” nursing home orders that they say led to unnecessary coronavirus deaths among elderly populations.

“These governors are withholding information from the public and House Democrats are letting them get away with it with their partisan refusal to join our investigation,” Republican Whip and Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis ranking chairman Steve Scalise said in a statement. “As a result, we are now calling on the attorneys general of these states to investigate the orders behind these avoidable tragedies.”

Nursing home residents and staff have accounted for at least 40% of coronavirus deaths across the country, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some of the nation’s worst coronavirus outbreaks among its nursing homes have occurred in the five states House Republicans are seeking investigations.

New Jersey has reported 6,571 deaths of nursing home residents and workers and New York, which only reports coronavirus deaths of residents who died while physically at the nursing home facility, has reported 6,423 deaths.

Pennsylvania has reported 4,471 coronavirus deaths among nursing home residents and staff, accounting for about 68% of the state’s total fatalities from the virus. California and Michigan have reported 2,334 and 2,010 nursing home resident deaths, respectively.

Each of the states issued orders preventing nursing homes from denying admission to hospital patients based solely on being tested positive for coronavirus. New York was the first to issue such an order on March 25, and by April 15 the other four states had followed suit with their own orders.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has repeatedly blamed the federal government for nursing home deaths in his state’s long term care facilities, saying that his order was in line with federal guidelines.

But Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Administrator Seema Verma said in May that New York’s order ran counter to guidance from the federal government, which stated that nursing homes should admit coronavirus-positive patients into their facilities only if they can follow quarantining guidance from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“Grieving families of those who died as a result of these orders deserve answers about why they were put in place and the full extent of their impact, and there is no amount of stonewalling, name-calling, or blame-shifting that will make us give up on getting them,” Scalise said.

The five Republican members of the House coronavirus subcommittee wrote to the Democratic governors of the five states earlier in June seeking information about their nursing home orders.

While the governors of Michigan, California, Pennsylvania and New Jersey provided responses to the select committee, Cuomo has yet to provide a response.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

Federal Court Prohibits Cuomo From Restricting Shul Capacity & Banning Outdoor Worship After He Condoned Protests

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Jake Dima (DCNF) / TJV News

A federal judge on Friday blocked Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo and other New York leaders from prohibiting outdoor religious gathering  & limiting indoor capacity to 25%  due to the coronavirus after officials endorsed mass protests.

Specifically, the judge ordered that the current limitations on houses of worship, which in Phase 2 areas limits indoor attendance to 25% of capacity, be changed to 50% of capacity, equal to the limits on allowed businesses. The judge also barred all restrictions on outdoor gatherings. In both cases proper social distancing must still be followed, TVJ reported.

Judge Gary Sharpe issued a preliminary injunction against Cuomo, Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Attorney General Letitia James forbidding coronavirus-based regulations on outdoor religious ceremonies.

Sharpe’s ruling said the regulations resulted in the “curtailment of fundamental rights without compelling justification,” especially amid leaders’ support for outdoor protests.

The Thomas More Society, which specializes in religious freedom cases, filed the initial lawsuit against the New York leaders June 12.

Agudah Israel reported:

The plaintiffs, two Catholic priests and three Orthodox Jews, claimed that the state’s executive orders were a violation of the Free Exercise Clause of the United States Constitution, among other claims, because the restrictions treated houses of worship differently than non-religious businesses. Moreover, the state and the city stopped religious gatherings while both the Governor and the Mayor encouraged, and the Mayor even participated in, outdoor protest demonstrations. State law also explicitly allowed outdoor graduation ceremonies.

The court felt that the executive orders were riddled with contradictions and placed constitutionally protected religious practice on a lesser plane than other practices with similar risk factors. Thus, as the court put it, “it is not the judiciary’s role to second guess the likes of Governor Cuomo or Mayor de Blasio when it comes to decisions they make in such troubling times, that is, until those decisions result in the curtailment of fundamental rights without compelling justification.”

“We are pleased that Judge Sharpe was able to see through the sham of Governor Cuomo’s ‘Social Distancing Protocol’ which went right out the window as soon as he and Mayor de Blasio saw a mass protest movement they favored taking to the streets by the thousands,” The Thomas More Society wrote in a press release Friday. “Suddenly, the limit on ‘mass gatherings’ was no longer necessary to ‘save lives.’”

“Yet they were continuing to ban high school graduations and other outdoor gatherings exceeding a mere 25 people,” the organization continued. “This decision is an important step toward inhibiting the suddenly emerging trend of exercising absolute monarchy on pretext of public health.  What this kind of regime really meant in practice is freedom for me, but not for thee.”

“Protest. Just be smart about it,” Cuomo said during a June 1 press conference, according to order. “With this virus, you can do many things now as long as you’re smart about it, right? You can reopen, you can go into a store and you can do a lot of things, just be smart.”

Cuomo did not apply the same logic to religious ceremonies, according to the injunction, as Executive Order 202.10 forbade religious gatherings, despite being smaller than most Floyd protests.

Cuomo’s order stated that “all nonessential gatherings of individuals of any size for any reasons (e.g. worship services, parties, celebrations or other social events) are canceled or postponed, and that “individuals should not gather in houses of worship, homes, or other locations for religious services until the end of this public health emergency.”

Sharpe called this dichotomy “preferential treatment.”

“Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio could have just as easily discouraged protests, short of condemning their message, in the name of public health and exercised discretion to suspend enforcement for public safety reasons instead of encouraging what they knew was a flagrant disregard of the outdoor limits and social distancing rules,” Sharpe wrote.

“They could have also been silent. But by acting as they did, Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio sent a clear message that mass protests are deserving of preferential treatment.”

As Agudath Israel put in its June 12 statement, “Governmental power has also been used as a sword against religion, instead of the shield the Founding Fathers intended it to be.”
With this victory in hand, Agudath Israel intends to press forward to protect religious rights such as religious education and religious summer camps. While Agudath Israel reminds its constituents to continue to prioritize safety, we must also zealously and unapologetically safeguard our way of life.

Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact [email protected].

Upscale Salon Offering Cuts for Up to $1000, Packed with Huge Waiting List

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.julienfarel.com

By Rusty Brooks

A wait list of roughly 200 clients remained early Wednesday at the 10,000-square-foot Julien Farel Restore Salon, Spa & Fitness inside the Loews Regency New York Hotel, where high end hair cuts are offered up to  $1000 a cut !

The NY Post reported: “We, to be honest, have been working around the clock and probably have about 200 people left, believe it or not”, Director of operations Samantha Goldberg said

The salon does not only offer premium priced cuts and not everyone waiting was going to spend that much, however this shows just how “essential” beauticians are to New Yorkers

NY Post reported: Suelyn Farel, the salon’s chief executive officer and wife of main stylist Julien Farel, said cuts start at a “very competitive” NYC rate of $160, with other options ranging from $185 through $400. Only her husband charges $1,000 for his services, Farel said.

 

 

Countdown to Sovereignty Day 5

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President Donald Trump looks over to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Jan. 28, 2020. (AP/Susan Walsh)

White House Punts on Israel Annexation, More Talks Planned

The White House said Thursday that consultations with Israeli officials will continue as they try to formulate a proposal that would support Trump’s peace plan.

By: AP & WIN Staff

President Donald Trump’s top national security aides have been unable to reach a decision on whether to support an Israeli plan to extend sovereignty in the Jordan Valley and parts of Judea and Samaria.

The White House said Thursday that consultations with Israeli officials will continue as they try to formulate a proposal that would support Trump’s plan for an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal.

Earlier Thursday, Kellyanne Conway, one of President Donald Trump’s close advisers, said the president would be making a “big announcement” regarding his Middle East peace plan and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s intention of applying Israeli sovereignty to settlements in Judea and Samaria.

A senior administration official said U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and the administration’s special envoy for Mideast peace Avi Berkowitz would travel to Israel Thursday for further discussions.

The official said the White House meetings had been “productive” but added that “there is yet no final decision on next steps for implementing the Trump plan.” The official was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Trump could side entirely with Netanyahu, who has cited July 1 as a hoped-for date for a decision, or endorse a less comprehensive takeover or oppose it outright, which is the most unlikely scenario. That date wasn’t set in stone, and the uncertainty of the Trump administration’s position could make that date less likely.

But Netanyahu is expected to act before the fall, given uncertainty over Trump’s prospects for a second term and presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s opposition to the move.

The partisan divide over annexation was highlighted Thursday with the release of a letter to the Israeli government signed by 189 House Democrats expressing concern about the annexation plan.

“Our fear is that unilateral actions, taken by either side, will push the parties further from negotiations and the possibility of a final, negotiated agreement,” the lawmakers said.

At stake for the Trump administration is its credibility with Arab partners cultivated by Trump and with European nations that he has antagonized on numerous fronts, from climate change to trade to the Iran nuclear deal.

Potentially more persuasive politically for Trump and his team is that his decision will affect his standing with evangelical Christians, who are in favor of the sovereignty plan and whose support the president needs to win reelection. Although his campaign believes evangelical Christians will overwhelmingly vote for Trump, the campaign is concerned about a drop-off in enthusiasm and potential participation among an essential group of voters.

Among those favoring Netanyahu’s plan are Trump advisers such as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, as well as Friedman, the U.S. ambassador, and a number of Republicans in Congress. They say annexation, in addition to pleasing Trump’s base, would make a peace deal easier because that step would blunt what they believe are unrealistic Palestinian expectations for a future state, according to officials familiar with the matter. They were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

But others in the administration and in Congress want to see no, or limited, White House recognition of potential annexation. They include Pentagon officials and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and the architect of the Mideast peace plan, which has been roundly rejected by the Palestinians.

People on this side of the debate worry that a robust public endorsement would alienate U.S. allies in the Middle East and beyond at a particularly sensitive time in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic and threats posed by Iran.

Jordan, one of only two Arab nations with a peace deal with Israel, and the United Arab Emirates, a key U.S. partner in the Mideast, have come out against annexation and warned of severe consequences for the region if Netanyahu goes ahead. The European Union has voiced strong opposition and U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has said he hopes Israel will not proceed.

Despite the UAE’s warning to Israel against annexation, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Thursday that his government and the United Arab Emirates will soon announce a partnership in the fight against the coronavirus.(AP & World Israel News)

read more at: worldisraelnews.com

 

Mueller Report Witness Nadar Gets 10 Years on Child Sex Charges, In December Was Charged for Illegal Donations To Clinton Campaign

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FILE - This 1998 file frame from video provided by C-SPAN shows George Nader, then-president and editor of Middle East Insight. Nader, a businessman who was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's report and who helped broker the release of American hostages, is slated to receive at least a 10-year prison sentence on child sex charges. Prosecutors in federal court in Alexandria, Va. are not seeking a longer sentence than that at the sentencing hearing on Friday, June 26, 2020 but the judge could still impose one. (C-SPAN via AP, File)

(AP) A Lebanese American businessman who was a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report and who helped broker the release of American hostages was sentenced Friday to 10 years in prison sentence on child sex charges.

George Nader pleaded guilty in January to bringing a 14-year-old boy from the Czech Republic to the U.S. 20 years ago to engage in sexual activity. He also acknowledged possessing child pornography.

Nader’s name appears more than 100 times in the Mueller report. It details Nader’s efforts to serve as liaison between Russians and members of President Donald Trump’s transition team.

Editors Note: The AP article left out the FACT that : In December 2019, Nader was charged in U.S. federal court with violating campaign finance laws by allegedly also using over three and half million dollars to reach out to Hillary Clinton‘s 2016 campaign for the U.S. Presidency, through a front, WSJ report 

In the 1990s, Nader served as a broker to facilitate the release of American hostages held in the Middle East.

The convictions carried a 10-year mandatory minimum. The judge could have imposed a longer term, though prosecutors also recommended a 10-year sentence.

Nader also agreed to pay $150,000 in restitution to the Czech boy he abused, who is now an adult and testified at Friday’s sentencing hearing in U.S. District Court in Alexandria by phone.

“George destroyed practically my entire life, and I am trying to put it back together piece by piece,” he said through a translator.

Nader’s interest in children and his status as a behind-the-scenes power player both extend back decades. And there’s at least some indication that the latter shielded him from the consequences of the former.

Almost 30 years ago, Nader was caught by customs officials transporting two films, hidden in candy tins, of minor boys into the U.S. He received a six-month sentence, a term that prosecutors in the current case acknowledge is “far below what would be expected of such a crime today.”

In 1991, as he awaited sentencing, his case was twice delayed so he could continue his work on hostage negotiations. Court records cited by his current defense lawyers indicate that British hostage Jon McCarthy and American hostage Edward Tracy were released in July of that year and that Nader played an outsized role in securing the release. Participants in the negotiations wrote letters to the judge on Nader’s behalf.

Later, in 2003, Nader sentenced to a 1-year prison term in the Czech Republic after being convicted there on 10 counts of sexually abusing minors and sentenced to a one-year prison term in 2003.

Prosecutors say the abused boys were largely child prostitutes. The 14-year-old boy brought to the U.S. also alleged he was victimized by Nader int he Czech case, though Nader’s lawyers say he wasn’t convicted there. The two sides dispute the extent of abuse inflicted on the boy in the U.S. but Nader has admitted to one sex act.

Nader “used his contacts and his wealth to accomplish” bringing the Czech boy into the U.S., prosecutor Jay Prabhu wrote.

The current case against Nader began in 2018 when images were found on his phone after it was confiscated under a search warrant connected to the Mueller probe.

The images found in Nader’s phones at Dulles International Airport ended up not being the basis for the child-pornography conviction. Instead, prosecutors relied on images and videos he received via email in 2012 that in some cases involved sadistic depictions of infants or toddlers.

Even though it had no bearing on the sentence Nader received, defense lawyers and prosecutors continued to argue at Friday’s sentencing hearing as to whether the images found on the phone were child pornography. Nader’s attorney, Jonathan Jeffress, acknowledged that the photos showed naked children and were obscene, but said they amounted to “dirty jokes” and that Nader had put his struggles with child pornography behind him in 2012.

Prosecutors say the images included clear depictions of child pornography and bestiality and show that Nader is a lifelong recidivist.

Parts of the sentencing papers detailing Nader’s testimony to the special counsel remain blacked out.

Nader, for his part, apologized for his actions at Friday’s hearing.

“I have listened to what’s been said about me,” he said. “I can say I am sincerely, deeply sorry for the suffering I have caused.”

New Irish government rejects effort to boycott Israeli products

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The Irish Parliament or Oireachtas. Credit: Irish Ministry of Foreign Affairs

BY ISRAEL KASNETT

The anti-Israel movement in Ireland has suffered a major defeat. Earlier this month, the political parties working on forming the next government in Ireland eliminated a key bill that would have placed a boycott on products produced in Israeli settlements.

Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, told JNS that the bill was “carefully drafted so as to pretend to be about ‘occupied’ territories generally, but in fact would apply to just one disputed territory in the world, which happens to be the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland.”

The anti-Israel movement in Ireland has suffered a major defeat. Earlier this month, the political parties working on forming the next government in Ireland eliminated a key bill that would have placed a boycott on products produced in Israeli settlements.

Jonathan Turner, chief executive of UK Lawyers for Israel, told JNS that the bill was “carefully drafted so as to pretend to be about ‘occupied’ territories generally, but in fact would apply to just one disputed territory in the world, which happens to be the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland.”

Had the bill passed in Ireland, noted Turner, “we feared other countries would follow.”

Ireland’s two main parties struck an agreement in May to govern together for the first time. Leaders of the Fianna Fail and Fine Gael agreed on a draft agenda for a coalition government that will include a third party, the Greens, but not Sinn Fein—and not the anti-Israel legislation, at least for now.

Sinn Fein, the political arm of the former Irish Republican Army, has long-held positions that are anti-Israel. In the most recent Irish election in February, the radical party came in third behind Fianna Fail and Fine Gael, raising fears that Sinn Fein could enter into governing coalition.

Despite robust ties between Israel and Ireland, the country has gained the reputation as one of the most critical in the European Union when it comes to the Jewish state. Ireland also has a robust BDS movement led by the Ireland-Palestine Solidarity Campaign that has long been a vocal critic of Israel and its policies towards the Palestinians.

‘A serious bill’

According to Turner, this was a serious bill, cobbled together with great effort and “backed by a coalition of NGOs [GLAN, Trocaire, Christian Aid, Irish Congress of Trade Unions] determined to push it through and able to put large resources behind it.”

“A plus point of our victory is that it has been so expensive for our opponents,” quipped Turner.

When the bill was introduced in the Senate by Sen. Frances Black in January 2018, pro-Israel group Irish4Israel, with the assistance of UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI), took prompt action and pointed out to Irish politicians that the bill would contravene E.U. law. This remained a central sticking point throughout the ensuing debates in the Irish parliament and media.

Ignacio Wenley, Spanish Counsel for the Lawfare Project, followed up with a submission to the E.U. Commission that the bill was illegal.

According to UKLFI, the Lawfare Project and the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) also emphasized that “major U.S. companies with subsidiaries in Ireland would be exposed to serious liabilities and loss of tax benefits under U.S. law if they complied with the bill.”

“This provided an additional reason why the Irish government rejected the bill, as well as reinforcing the objection under E.U. law since it exacerbated Ireland’s potential liabilities for the breaches of E.U. law if the bill were enacted,” said UKLFI.

Turner said that prompt action on the bill, detailed analysis on how it contravened E.U. law and the possibility of a U.S. counter-boycott of Ireland all had a significant impact on the end results.

Turner added that the bill could have become law save for “a requirement in the Irish constitution that a bill for the appropriation of public money must be approved by the Prime Minister—and the minority government led by Prime Minister Leo Varadkar and Deputy Prime Minister Simon Coveney refused to approve it on the grounds that it was illegal.”

“I do not know whether the bill would have been stopped without our involvement,” he said. “It is possible that the Irish government and/or the E.U. Commission would have picked up the incompatibility with E.U. law without our assistance. But they might not.”

‘An alternative line of attack’

The new Irish government set to be sworn in will come at a time when the country, like many others globally, is facing economic ramifications as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, Ireland is also set to take up a seat in the U.N. Security Council in 2021, giving the country an outsized voice on the international stage.

Nevertheless, given the Irish affinity for the Palestinian cause, many in Jewish and pro-Israel circles remain concerned that the country could end up enacting retribution against Jerusalem for its plan to apply sovereignty to parts of Judea and Samaria in the coming weeks.

“We see annexation as a breach of international law that is dangerous and requires a response,” Irish Ambassador to Israel Kyle O’Sullivan recently told The Times of Israel. “But we don’t issue threats; we don’t issue warnings.”

At the same time, groups in Ireland may also try to continue to push the boycott bill. While Turner was hopeful that the anti-Israel groups “will be deterred for some time by this expensive setback,” he acknowledged that they “may well try again with a similar bill in Ireland or elsewhere.”

“They will probably look for an alternative line of attack,” he said, such as “persuading Ireland and other countries to recognize a State of Palestine if Israel goes ahead with the proposal to extend Israeli law over parts of Judea and Samaria.”

The Latest: Florida bans Alcohol at Bars as Virus Cases soar: Pandemic Updates Worldwide

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Civil protection and army officers stand at a road block in front of an apartment complex where dozens of COVID-19 cases have been registered among a community of Bulgarian farm workers, in Mondragone, in the southern Italian region of Campania, Friday, June 26, 2020. The governor of the region is insisting that the farm workers should stay inside for 15 days, not even emerging for food, and that the national civil protection agency should deliver them groceries. (AP Photo/Riccardo De Luca)

 Florida banned alcohol consumption at its bars after its daily confirmed coronavirus cases neared 9,000, almost double the previous record set just two days ago.

The Florida agency that governs bars announced the ban on Twitter, minutes after the Department of Health reported 8,942 new confirmed cases, topping the previous record of 5,500 set Wednesday.

More than 24,000 cases have been reported since Saturday, more than a fifth of the 111,724 cases confirmed since March 1. The department had not updated its death total, which still stood at 3,327.

The seven-day average for positive tests dropped slightly to 13.4%, down 1 percentage point from Thursday but still triple the rate of 3.8% of June 1. State officials have attributed much of the new outbreak to young adults flocking to bars after they reopened about a month ago.

— While India’s leaders have promised coronavirus testing and care for all who need it, regardless of income, treatment options are as stratified and unequal as the country itself.

— U.S. officials estimate that 20 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus since it first arrived in the United States, with millions never knowing they had it. Thursday’s estimate is roughly 10 times the 2.3 million cases that have been confirmed in the U.S.

— A government whistleblower ousted from a top scientific job alleges that the Trump administration is intensifying its campaign to punish him for revealing shortcomings in the U.S. coronavirus response.

AUSTIN, Texas — Republican Gov. Greg Abbott shut down bars in Texas again Friday and scaled back restaurant dining, the most dramatic reversals yet as confirmed coronavirus cases surge.

Abbott also says rafting and tubing outfitters on Texas’ popular rivers must close and outdoor gatherings of 100 people or more must be approved by local governments.

“At this time, it is clear that the rise in cases is largely driven by certain types of activities, including Texans congregating in bars,” Abbott said. “The actions in this executive order are essential to our mission to swiftly contain this virus and protect public health.”

Texas has reported more than 17,000 confirmed cases in the last three days with a record high positive tests of 5,996 on Thursday. The day’s tally of 4,739 hospitalizations was also a record. The state’s rolling infection rate hit nearly 12%, a level not seen since the state was in a broad lockdown in mid-April.

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MOUNT AIRY, Md. — A nursing home in Maryland is facing a $70,000 fine for not properly isolating newly admitted residents during two weeks in May to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.

State health regulators fined Pleasant View Nursing Home in Mount Airy, where the virus infected 126 residents and staff members and caused 29 deaths, the Baltimore Sun reported Friday. The nursing home in Carroll County in April was the site of the state’s first major outbreak at nursing homes.

State inspectors found that newly admitted residents between May 7-20 created an “immediate jeopardy” to the facility’s population because they were not properly isolated. This failure led to a $5,000-per-day fine.

Inspectors also found that one resident known to behave aggressively and experience hallucinations was placed in an area intended for people who were not infected with COVID-19. At that time, the test for that resident was pending and the person walked around the halls. The test eventually came back positive.

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ROME — The tiny country of San Marino says it has no known cases of people with COVID-19 infection.

The Republic is nestled near Italian provinces in the north where Italy’s outbreak began in late February. Officials say since Thursday, no new cases were registered and there were no confirmed deaths from the coronavirus infection.

Since the outbreak began, there have been a total of 698 confirmed infections and 42 deaths in San Marino.

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GENEVA — Experts behind a global push to develop and roll out a vaccine and other treatment for the coronavirus say their ambitions require a big budget.

The World Health Organization and its allies made a pitch for their ACT-Accelerator that aims to get a COVID-19 vaccine and treatment tools to the neediest people around the world, no matter the cost.

They were speaking a day before a European Union conference to drum up support and funds for the initiative that the United States has shunned so far.

Ultimately, WHO and partners say the project needs more than $31 billion through the end of 2021, for vaccines, therapeutics and diagnostics to fight a disease that has caused more than 9.6 million confirmed cases and killed more than 490,000 people worldwide.

“If we don’t rally now, the human costs and the economic pain will deepen,” said Dr. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, one of the WHO chief’s special envoys for the initiative. “So though these numbers sound big, they’re not when we think of the alternatives.”

“Just think of the trillions of dollars that have had to be spent in order to stimulate economies back,” she said. “If we spend billions now, we’ll be able to avoid spending trillions later.

“COVID-19 is a crisis that affects all of us. No one will be safe from COVID-19 until everyone is safe.”

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NICOSIA, Cyprus — Hungary’s foreign minister says his country is “very concerned” that the coronavirus pandemic will trigger more migrants trying to reach Europe from poorer nations.

Peter Szijjarto says European leaders must help citizens who lost their jobs due to the pandemic by stemming “labor-oriented migration” that is “definitely against the interests” of Europe.

Szijjarto says after talks with his Cypriot counterpart Nikos Christodoulides that EU migration policies must be scrapped because they “can be understood as an invitation for those who consider coming to Europe illegally.”

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BERLIN — Chancellor Angela Merkel’s spokesman is calling on Germans to show “respect and sympathy” to people in areas where there have been new coronavirus outbreaks.

Authorities in western Germany have imposed a partial one-week lockdown on Guetersloh and Warendorf counties, home to over 600,000 people, because of an outbreak at a slaughterhouse that led to some 1,400 confirmed positive tests.

Merkel’s spokesman Steffen Seibert is condemning reported incidents in which people from those regions have been insulted or had their cars damaged. He says, “we must treat each other with respect and sympathy, particularly in difficult times, and all should reflect that everyone could find themselves in the situation of living close to an outbreak.”

The local administration in Guetersloh says Merkel called council leader Sven-Georg Adenauer on Friday to thank the population there for helping ensure the virus doesn’t spread.

Some local officials have complained about bans or restrictions imposed by some other German regions on vacationers from the area. Seibert says those are matters for state governments.

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BANGKOK — Authorities in Thailand will decide next week whether to extend a state of emergency imposed to control the spread of COVID-19.

Taweesin Witsanuyothin of the Center for COVID-19 Situation Administration says the agency will consider the issue Monday and the Cabinet would decide Tuesday on its recommendation.

The National Security Council declared Thursday it will recommend the emergency decree be extended at least until July 31. It was first implemented in March and two extensions have kept it in place until the end of June.

The emergency decree allows the government to implement curfews, censor the media and disperse gatherings.

The government used it to arrest many people for breaking the now-lifted curfew, but recently has employed it to arrest political activists for the vaguely defined offense of “instigating unrest.”

The COVID-19 center will recommend whether to allow the return of foreign visitors and the reopening of nearly all businesses and schools not already open.

There were four confirmed COVID-19 cases announced Friday, bringing Thailand’s total to 3,162 and 58 confirmed deaths.

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BERLIN — A German meat company says it plans to perform daily coronavirus tests on all 5,000 workers involved in the production process amid concerns about a series of outbreaks at slaughterhouses in the country.

Westfleisch, one of Germany’s biggest meat processing companies, said Friday that it is already conducting weekly tests on the workers but from next week wants to perform them daily.

Westfleisch suffered a COVID-19 outbreak involving hundreds of workers at its plant in the western town of Coesfeld in May, but that has since passed.

Rival firm Toennies Group is at the center of an outbreak in the nearby region of Guetersloh that has led to a partial lockdown as authorities try to prevent the spread of the virus to the wider community.

Westfleisch executive Steen Soennichsen said the tests would be examined by external labs and results would be available within hours, allowing the company to act swiftly if there are any new cases.

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ROCHESTER, Minn. — Mayo Clinic is ending pay cuts that the Minnesota-based health system imposed to deal with a patient downturn caused by the novel coronavirus.

The Star Tribune reports Mayo plans to restore pay and return furloughed workers this summer.

In April, Mayo announced plans to cut pay to more than 20,000 employees and seek furloughs when elective surgeries were halted in anticipation of a surge in COVID-19 patients.

The clinic was projecting a possible $3 billion loss in 2020. But Mayo says patient volumes reached 80% to 90% of normal by mid-June, which was a quicker-than-expected recovery.

___

3 Killed in Stabbing Attack in Scotland, Police Not Calling it Terrorism

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royal Caribbean.com

Three people have been murdered during a suspected terror attack in Glasgow’s city center, according to the Telegraph.

A male suspect reportedly stabbed several people, including a police officer, before being shot dead by an armed officer. The incident is believed to have taken place at the Park Hotel, where more than 20 emergency response vehicles were congregating downtown. But details aren’t yet available.

AP reported:

The police have just confirmed that at this stage they are not treating this as a terrorist incident,” she said. “But of course, there are still details yet to be determined.”

Sturgeon said she had spoken with British Prime Minister Boris Johnson who expressed his concern and sympathies.

“It’s been a dreadful afternoon for the city of Glasgow,” Sturgeon said. “Clearly there is already much speculation around this incident, which remains under investigation.”

“All of us should bear them in mind, bear their families in mind and make sure we focus on all of the great things that bring our city together,” Sturgeon said.

“I would urge everyone to avoid such speculation, to not share potentially harmful or upsetting material on social media and to follow police advice while investigations are underway,” she added.

Report from Sky News

House passes sweeping police overhaul after Floyd’s death

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of Calif., joined by House Democrats spaced for social distancing, speaks during a news conference on the House East Front Steps on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, June 25, 2020, ahead of the House vote on the George Floyd Justice in Policing Act of 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

By LISA MASCARO (AP)

The House approved a far-reaching police overhaul from Democrats on Thursday, a vote heavy with emotion and symbolism as a divided Congress struggles to address the global outcry over the deaths of George Floyd and other Black Americans.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi gathered with members of the Congressional Black Caucus on the Capitol steps, challenging opponents not to allow the deaths to have been in vain or the outpouring of public support for changes to go unmatched. But the collapse of a Senate Republican bill leaves final legislation in doubt.

“Exactly one month ago, George Floyd spoke his final words — ‘I can’t breathe’ — and changed the course of history,” Pelosi said.

She said the Senate faces a choice “to honor George Floyd’s life or to do nothing.”

The George Floyd Justice in Policing Act is perhaps the most ambitious set of proposed changes to police procedures and accountability in decades. Backed by the nation’s leading civil rights groups, it aims to match the moment of demonstrations that filled streets across the nation. It has almost zero chance of becoming law.

On the eve of the vote, President Donald Trump’s administration said he would veto the bill. And Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has also said it would not pass the Republican-held chamber.

After the GOP policing bill stalled this week, blocked by Democrats, Trump shrugged.

“If nothing happens with it, it’s one of those things,” Trump said. “We have different philosophies.”

Congress is now at a familiar impasse despite protests outside their door and polling that shows Americans overwhelmingly want changes after the deaths of FloydBreonna Taylor and others in interactions with law enforcement. The two parties are instead appealing to voters ahead of the fall election, which will determine control of the House, Senate and White House.

“We hear you. We see you. We are you,” said Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, D-N.Y., during the debate.

It has been a month since Floyd’s May 25 death sparked a global reckoning over police tactics and racial injustice. Since then, funeral services were held for Rayshard Brooks, a Black man shot and killed by police in Atlanta. Thursday is also what would have been the 18th birthday of Tamir Rice, a Black boy killed in Ohio in 2014.

Lawmakers who have been working from home during the COVID-19 crisis were summoned to the Capitol for an emotional, hours-long debate. Dozens voted by proxy under new pandemic rules.

During the day, several Democratic lawmakers read the names of those killed, shared experiences of racial bias and echoed support of Black Lives Matter activists.

Rep. Karen Bass, D-Calif., the chairwoman of the Congressional Black Caucus, said hundreds of thousands of people “in every state in the union” are marching in the streets to make sure Floyd “will not be just another Black man dead at the hands of the police.”

Republican lawmakers countered the bill goes too far and failed to include GOP input. “All lives matter,” said Rep. Debbie Lesko, R-Ariz. New York Rep. Pete King said it’s time to stand with law enforcement, the “men and women in blue.” House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy decried the “mob” of demonstrators.

At one point Rep. Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., stood up to say he just didn’t understand what was happening in the country — from Floyd’s death to the protests that followed. Several Black Democratic lawmakers rose to encourage him to pick up a U.S. history book or watch some of the many films now streaming about the Black experience in America.

Later, Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., noting the legacy of Emmett Till, asked others to “walk in my shoes.”

In the stalemate over the policing overhaul, the parties are settled into their political zones, almost ensuring no legislation will become law. While there may be shared outrage over Floyd’s death, the lawmakers remain far apart on the broader debate over racial bias in policing and other institutions. The 236-181 House vote was largely on party lines. Three Republicans joined Democrats in favor of passage and no Democrats were opposed.

Both bills share common elements that could be grounds for a compromise. Central to both would be the creation of a national database of use-of-force incidents, which is viewed as a way to provide transparency on officers’ records if they transfer from one agency to another. The bills would restrict police chokeholds and set up new training procedures, including beefing up the use of body cameras.

The Democratic bill goes much further, mandating many of those changes, while also revising the federal statute for police misconduct and holding officers personally liable for damages in lawsuits. It also would halt the practice of sending military equipment to local law enforcement agencies.

Neither bill goes as far as some activists want with calls to defund the police and shift resources to other community services.

Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina, the only Black Republican senator, who drafted the GOP package, said the bill is now “closer to the trash can than it’s ever been.”

“I’m frustrated,” he said on Fox News Channel.

Scott insisted he was open to amending his bill with changes proposed by Democrats. But Democrats doubted McConnell would allow a thorough debate, and instead blocked the GOP bill.

Senate Democrats believe Senate Republicans will face mounting public pressure to open negotiations and act. But ahead of the November election, that appears uncertain.

A Terrorist’s Ties to a Leading Black Lives Matter Group

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by Scott Walter (Capital Research)

Some conservatives have begun speculating the unrest in American cities—even as late as Monday night in Washington, DC, as “protestors” unsuccessfully worked to tear down a statue of Andrew Jackson and set up an autonomous zone across the street from the White House—may in part be an attempt to affect the upcoming presidential election, with the chaos and violence intended to make it as difficult as possible for Donald Trump to win a second term.

Lending credence to this idea is the fact that at least one board member of Thousand Currents—the group fiscally sponsoring the most organized part of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, who have been involved in most of the activity surrounding the current unrest—tried the same thing almost 40 years ago during Ronald Reagan’s reelection campaign. And it landed her in federal prison for 16 years.

If there were any question whether Black Lives Matter has ideological ties to the Communist terrorists of the 1960s, the story of Susan Rosenberg  should put that issue to bed.

[Editor’s note: The webpage for Thousand Current’s board of directors was taken down within hours of this post’s publication. Fortunately, the board of directors webpage is archived here.]

Susan Rosenberg and Thousand Currents

Rosenberg, who started out as a member of the 1960s revolutionary group Weather Underground, graduated into even more violent, and arguably successful, forms of terrorism in the 1970s and 1980s—including bombings at an FBI field office in Staten Island, the Navy Yard Officers’ Club in Washington, DC, and even the U.S. Capitol building, where she damaged a representation of the greatest of the Democrat defenders of slavery, John C. Calhoun. She currently serves as Human and Prisoner Rights Advocate and a Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of Thousand Currents.

As my colleague Robert Stilson explains here, BLM Global Network Foundation has been a fiscally sponsored project of Thousand Currents, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, since 2016.  That means the BLM group, which runs the BlackLivesMatter.com website, does not have its own IRS tax-exempt status but is operating as a “project” of an organization that does. In the case of 501(c)(3) fiscally sponsored projects, this allows tax-deductible donations to be made to the project.

Marxist Connections

When “Black Lives Matter” is used to refer to an organization, it typically means the BLM Global Network Foundation that traces its beginnings to “three radical Black organizers — Alicia Garza, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.” Cullors recently went viral online when she admitted that she and others in the group were “trained Marxists.”

This leads to confusion when people express their support for “Black Lives,” because they may not realize this organization is ideologically tied—to the point of having Rosenberg on the board of the central group—with trained Marxists with a history of extremism and violence. In fact, Rosenberg was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization (M19). It was, according to this NY Post article from January 2020, “the nation’s only woman-run terror group,” as recounted by William Rosenau in his book Tonight We Bombed the U.S. Capitol.

According to the Post, M19 spent two years engaged in bombings in New York and Washington, DC, that were meant “to cast a cloud over what President Ronald Reagan’s re-election campaign was promising: a sunny, prosperous ‘Morning in America.’ Reagan’s election in 1980 told the remnants of America’s radical left that the country had rejected their call to revolution.”

Middle-class and college-educated, M19’s members shared a disdain for their own whiteness. To prove they weren’t merely “mouthing revolution,” they allied with the Black Liberation Army to break cop-killer Joanne Chesimard (aka Assata Shakur) out of prison in 1979. Two years later they assisted in the notorious Brink’s robbery of 1981, which killed two Nyack police officers and a bank guard.

In an eerily familiar incident on November 7, 1983, they even managed to pose as tourists at the U.S. Capitol building, planting a duffel bag with a bomb under a bench outside the Senate chamber, and cratering a wall  and shattering chandeliers that ultimately damaged a portrait of 19th-century Sen. John C. Calhoun.

Rosenberg and another M19 member, Tim Blunk, were arrested in November 1984 in Cherry Hill, NJ, in front of a storage unit containing 740 pounds of unstable dynamite stolen from a Texas construction firm four years earlier. Rosenberg was also wanted in connection with the 1981 Brink’s robbery. She was never charged in those crimes.

After 16 years in prison, she was released in 2001 when President Bill Clinton commuted her sentence, an act that outraged even the left-leaning New York Times.

Rosenberg’s Revolutionary Ideology

National Review columnist and former federal prosecutor Andrew McCarthy described her trial this way in a 2008 column:

Rosenberg turned her New Jersey terrorism trial into a circus, posturing as a political prisoner. At her sentencing, she urged her supporters to continue their war against the United States. (“When we were first captured we said, we’re caught, we’re not defeated, long live the armed struggle. We’d like to take this moment to rededicate ourselves to our revolutionary principles, to our commitment to continue to fight for the defeat of U.S. imperialism.”) She expressed remorse about only one thing: she hadn’t had the courage to shoot it out with the police who’d apprehended her.

Rosenberg has written a book about her exploits in which she justifies her actions this way:

I pursued a path that seemed to me a logical step beyond legal protest: the use of political violence. Did that make me a terrorist? In my mind, then and now, the answer is no. I say this because no act in which I was involved ever had violence against persons as its object or consequence.

The “Protestors”

Would the “protestors” destroying statues say the same about their behavior over the last several weeks? It’s a fair bet they would. In fact, Nikole Hannah-Jones, creator of the factually erroneous New York Times “1619 Project” proudly claims her project served as inspiration for the current iconoclastic destruction happening around the nation.

The long and the short of Rosenberg’s involvement with Thousand Currents is that numerous Black Lives Matter organizers have ties to extremist movements of the past, and are not some brand new movement simply fighting for marginalized people today. And that the goal of destruction and violence is more of a political tool than a reaction to injustice.

Audit: US sent $1.4B in virus relief payments to dead people

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In this April 21, 2020, file photo Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington. The Trump administration has abruptly dropped on Friday, June 19, its insistence on secrecy for a $600 billion-plus coronavirus aid program for small businesses. Mnuchin refused to do so at a Senate hearing last week, saying the data was “proprietary information.” (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File)

By MARCY GORDON(AP)

Nearly 1.1 million coronavirus relief payments totaling some $1.4 billion went to dead people, a government watchdog reported Thursday. Legal and political issues hang over the misdirected taxpayer funds, the latest example of errors in massive aid being dispensed at crisis speed.

As of May 31, about 160 million so-called economic impact payments totaling $269 billion were sent to taxpayers as part of the $2.4 trillion coronavirus relief package enacted in March. The Government Accountability Office, Congress’ auditing arm, cited the number of erroneous payments to deceased taxpayers in its report on the government programs.

While the government has asked survivors to return the money, it’s not clear they have to.

It also may be a politically sensitive gambit for the Treasury Department to aggressively seek to claw back the money, especially because some recipients may have died in the early months of this year from COVID-19.

When billions in aid are rushed out the door in a crisis, “these are the kinds of things that happen,” said Lisa Gilbert, executive vice president of advocacy group Public Citizen.

Gilbert acknowledged the sensitivity of the issue. But, she added, “it’s a big number, particularly at this moment when our economy is in free-fall. It’s a large amount of taxpayer money that’s not doing what it was intended to do.”

The errors occurred mainly because of a lag in reporting data on who is deceased. It’s a lapse that tax experts say is almost inevitable.

The revelation of more than $1 billion in public money erroneously paid out shines a light on the part of the government’s massive relief program with which most ordinary Americans are most familiar. It follows disclosures that several major restaurant chains and other publicly traded companies had received emergency loans under the $670 billion program for the nation’s struggling small businesses.

“GAO found that more than $1 trillion in taxpayer funds have already been obligated — including more than $1 billion to deceased individuals — with little transparency into how that money is being spent,” Rep. Carolyn Maloney, D-N.Y., chair of the House Oversight and Reform Committee, said in a statement.

The IRS didn’t use death records to prevent payments to deceased individuals for the first three batches of payments because of the legal interpretation the agency was operating under, the GAO report says.

The IRS asked in May for the money back from the deceased taxpayers’ survivors. Some legal experts have said the government may not have the legal authority to require that it be returned.

Spokespeople for the Treasury Department and the IRS didn’t return requests for comment Thursday on the report. Treasury pointed to its current guidance, indicating that the government’s position remains that the survivors must return the money to the IRS.

The payments were by paper check, direct deposit or debit card. All adults earning up to $75,000 in adjusted gross income annually were entitled to $1,200; that amount steadily declined for those earning more and phased out for people earning over $99,000. Up to $500 per qualifying child also was paid.

Former Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson has said there is nothing in the law prohibiting payments from going to the deceased. Nor is there anything in the law requiring people to return the payments. She notes that the language used on the IRS website does not say that returning the payments is required by law.

The relief payments were made to taxpayers based on the information filed on their 2019 or 2018 taxes. But it is considered a rebate on 2020 taxes. The government used the previous tax forms to help speed along payments to the public to offset some of the economic devastation from the coronavirus pandemic.

But some people who filed those taxes may no longer be alive. Those payments are sent to an heir or executor of their estate. If the payment is based off a final tax return completed after their death, an economic impact payment check may even denote, next to that person’s name, that the individual is deceased.

“I think the IRS will do little or nothing to pursue collection of these payments,” Keith Fogg, clinical professor at Harvard and an expert in tax law, said Thursday. “The cheapest way for the IRS to collect is offset of a future refund. That avenue will not exist for these taxpayers. I don’t think the IRS will take the somewhat difficult steps to pursue the heirs for this amount of money.”

Left-Wing Activist Shaun King Demands Removal of ‘White’ Jesus Statues

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(FREE BEACON)

Left-wing activist Shaun King on Monday said statues and images of Jesus Christ that look “European” should be removed because they are a form of “white supremacy.”

“All murals and stained glass windows of white Jesus, and his European mother, and their white friends should also come down,” King wrote on Twitter. “They are a gross form [of] white supremacy. Created as tools of oppression. Racist propaganda. They should all come down.”

The former surrogate of Sen. Bernie Sanders (I., Vt.) described Jesus, a Jewish rabbi, as “Brown” but said it’s up for debate whether he was “real.” However, King did say he was sure that representations of Jesus as “white” are lies created to foster white supremacy.

“We can debate [whether] or not Jesus was real all day long,” King said in another tweet. “What I do know, is that white Jesus is a lie. And is a tool of white supremacy created and advanced to help white people use the faith as a tool of oppression. Also, they never would’ve accepted a religion from a Brown man.”

It is common for images of Jesus to resemble the ethnicities of different regions around the world, even though Christians do not dispute whether he was born in Israel. Among Asian Christians, for example, Jesus can sometimes be represented with some Asian features.

In response to calls for these images to come down, Seattle pastor Brian Gibson and others with the group Peaceably Gather launched an initiative to prosecute the vandalization of churches.

“Churches will prosecute any vandals or agitators to the full extent of the law, including seeking hate crime designations for any attempt to desecrate church property or religious symbols,” Gibson said in a statement.

US Death Rate Falls for Third Day in a Row

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A woman puts up a sign for COVID-19 testing at a boarded up business, as some streets remain closed near the White House on June 24, 2020 in Washington,DC, as protests triggered by the death of George Floyd while in police custody, continue in the area. (Photo by Daniel SLIM / AFP) (Photo by DANIEL SLIM/AFP via Getty Images)

By Solange Reyner (NEWSMAX)

The daily coronavirus death count in the United States is down for the third day in a row, according to data collected by the World Health Organization.

The daily death toll climbed by 513 from June 22 to June 23, then dwindled in the following days. More than 800 people died on June 23, 688 on June 24 then 442 on Thursday as of 4 p.m. E.T.

Positive coronavirus cases continue to climb in America, specifically in hotspots like Florida, California, Texas, Arizona, South Carolina, Alabama and Montana, among others.

An increase in reported cases could signal a growing caseload, though it could also be the result of increased testing. Still, public health officials in some places are reporting an increase in hospitalizations and in the percentage of tests that are coming up positive.

Arizona has a 17 percent increase in new deaths since June 18 at 219 while South Carolina has an 11 percent increase with 70 new deaths.

At least 120,000 people have died from coronavirus in the U.S., and more than 2.3 million cases have been reported.

Law enforcement struggles with policing in reckoning moment

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In this June 23, 2020, file photo a man gestures to Metropolitan Police Department officers standing guard after police closed the area around Lafayette Park near the White House after protesters tried to topple a statue of Andrew Jackson in the park in Washington. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo, File)

By COLLEEN LONG (AP)

(AP) — As calls for police reform swell across America, officers say they feel caught in the middle: vilified by the left as violent racists, fatally ambushed by extremists on the right seeking to sow discord and scapegoated by lawmakers who share responsibility for the state of the criminal justice system.

The Associated Press spoke with more than two dozen officers around the country, Black, white, Hispanic and Asian, who are frustrated by the pressure they say is on them to solve the much larger problem of racism and bias in the United States. They are struggling to do their jobs, even if most agree change is needed following the death of George Floyd, who was Black, at the hands of a white police officer in Minneapolis.

Most of the officers spoke on condition of anonymity because they feared retaliation or firing.

“You know, being a Black man, being a police officer and which I’m proud of being, both very proud — I understand what the community’s coming from,” said Jeff Maddrey, an NYPD chief in Brooklyn and one of many officers who took a knee as a show of respect for protesters.

All of officers interviewed agreed they’d lost some kind of trust in their communities. For some, the moment is causing a personal reckoning with past arrests. Others distinguish between the Floyd case and their own work, highlighting their lives saved, personal moments when they cried alongside crime victims.

“I have never seen overtly racist actions by my brothers or sisters in my department,” wrote white Covington, Kentucky, police specialist Doug Ullrich in an Op-Ed. “In fact, I believe that my department is on the leading edge of ‘doing it right.’”

Of course, hardly all police support change. Some are incensed — deriding colleagues as traitors for taking a knee or calling out sick to protest the arrests of some police for their actions amid the protests.

For Dean Esserman, senior counselor of the National Police Foundation and past police chief of Providence, Rhode Island, and New Haven and Stamford in Connecticut, the result so far has been for communities and police to pull away from one another. That will mean fewer personal connections — and more problems, he said.

“Many police leaders who are saying ‘don’t call us’ when there are emergencies miss the point,” he said. “I delivered nine babies in my career, and I never shot anybody. The community isn’t part of the job. It IS the job.”

It’s not the first time that police officers have found themselves caught in the middle. The rise of the Black Lives Matter movement earlier this decade spawned a “blue lives matter” campaign and the belief among many Americans that cops were being unfairly stigmatized over the actions of a few or split-second decisions during tense situations.

But now, Americans are largely united behind the idea that change is necessary: 29% think the criminal justice system needs “a complete overhaul,” 40% say it needs “major changes.” Just 5% believe no changes are needed, according to a new poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

The long, often dark history of American policing has meant minority communities are treated one way, and white ones another. Floyd’s killing cracked open the pain anew, but minorities have long begged for officers to stop seeing them as criminals and to police with equity.

While many activists acknowledge that the problems they’re fighting go beyond police departments, they say that doesn’t mean individual officers aren’t guilty.

“People who try to sell you ‘police reform’ are trying to sell you the idea that you can (asterisk)train(asterisk) the anti-Black racism out of an institution built upon and upheld by anti-Black racism,” activist Adam Smith tweeted.

A culture that allows racism to fester in law enforcement hasn’t yet changed because that would take deep structural shifts, new blood and a lot of time, said Sandra Susan Smith, a criminal justice professor at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

“It’s not just about the institutional mandate to control and confine, it’s also about the views individual officers bring to neighborhoods,” she said.

The difference now is top police officials nationwide are increasingly supporting reform. Patrick Yeos, president of the national Fraternal Order of Police, said change must come from the top down — and lawmakers must play their role.

“These issues are not created by officers,” he said.

Police don’t always have the autonomy their elected leaders claim they do. When NYPD officers were stopping hundreds of thousands of mostly Black and Hispanic men a year, top brass said officers were exercising their judgment — and the stops were necessary. But officers testified at a federal trial over the stop-and-frisk tactic they felt pressured by superiors to show they were cracking down. And those stops rarely resulted in arrest.

Cerelyn Davis, police chief in Durham, North Carolina, and president of the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives, said reform is possible, but there must national accountability standards, and teeth behind them.

“They talk about one bad apple,” she said. “In this field we can’t afford to have one bad apple. One bad apple can have grave consequences.”

As the debate has played out, the tensions have led to violence. Officers are accused of harming protesters. And they’re getting hurt and killed, too.

A sheriff’s deputy in California was killed and four others officers wounded by an Air Force sergeant with links to a far-right group, officials said. He was also charged with killing a federal security officer outside a courthouse. A 29-year-old police officer was shot in the head during a protest on the Las Vegas Strip and has been left paralyzed from the neck down.

Hundreds of officers have been injured in the protests in New York, Los Angeles and Philadelphia, some critically.

This, too, has happened before. In 2014, after the grand jury declined to bring charges against a cop in the death of Eric Garner, a man angry over the death shot two officers dead in their patrol car. Across the nation, others were targeted.

In New York, where an officer was charged with strangulation Thursday after an apparent chokehold — the same tactic used on Garner — Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said continued reforms are needed and he lauded the push for them.

But, he said: “It’s also a moment in time where it’s a pretty tough time to be in law enforcement.”

A Second Facebook Whistle blower Exposes Deep Bias and Censorship of Conservatives

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Another report demonstrating rampant censorship of conservative content by Facebook content moderators and an interview with the latest insider who experienced it firsthand was released today, by the non-profit media company, Project Veritas.

“I was seeing them interfering on a global level in elections. I saw a blatant exception that just targeted conservatives or favored liberals—and you know, we’re deleting on average 300 posts or actioning 300 posts a day,” said Arizona-based Facebook content moderator Ryan Hartwig. “If you magnify that by however many content moderators there are on a global scale, that’s a lot of stuff that’s getting taken down,” he said.

Below is the latest Project Veritas report