GENEVA, June 18, 2020 — China took the floor at the U.N. Human Rights Council today to lash out at what it called “ungrounded attacks” by a human rights group that criticized Beijing’s new role on a UNHRC panel that will select 17 human rights experts this year.
China exercised its right of reply after Hillel Neuer, executive director of UN Watch, a Geneva-based independent human rights group that monitors the United Nations, questioned the ability of the world body to credibly investigate racism and police brutality.
The Chinese delegate complained about Neuer “abusing the forum to level unwanted attacks against sovereign states,” and said he hoped that “this forum will not become a forum to abuse human rights.”
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Following is testimony delivered by UN Watch executive director Hillel Neuer before the United Nations Human Rights Council, in its debate on June 8, 2020:
Madam Chair, UN Watch condemns the killing of George Floyd, and stands with all victims of racism and police brutality.
The question today is: In combating the disease of racism, should we be turning to the United Nations?
Certainly the UN made a great contribution in 1946, when, in the aftermath of the Nazi atrocities, Eleanor Roosevelt, René Cassin, and other eminent figures gave the world the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
Certainly this was true in 1948, when the UN adopted the Convention Against Genocide.
And certainly this was true in 1965, when the UN adopted the Convention Against Racial Discrimination. It was drafted by civil rights leader Morris Abram, the founder of our organization, who served on the UN sub-commission against discrimination.
But is it still true today?
Speakers here invoked the UN’s Durban Declaration on Racism, and its 2009 conference, which was held in this room. I was here.
UN Watch organized rallies with black African victims of the genocide in Darfur. Yet the UN and its Durban Conference refused to help them.
Instead, in this room, the world’s most notorious Holocaust denier, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of the Islamic Republic of Iran, who also advocated genocide, was the opening speaker.
Qaddafi’s Libya, which brutalized black migrants, portraying them as dealers of drugs and alcohol, was Chair of the Preparatory Committee.
Madam Chair, is the UN’s Durban process really part of the cure?
And is this UN Human Rights Council qualified to investigate racism and police brutality?
Let us consider who the prosecutors and the judges will be — the members of the council.
One is Mauritania, which has up to 500,000 black slaves. The leading anti-slavery activist, Biram Dah Abeid, was put in jail. And yet Mauritania was just elected as a member.
Another is Venezuela. They spoke here of police brutality. It’s a subject on which they have great expertise. In only five days last year, the Maduro government killed 47 protesters, and arbitrarily detained 900 people.
And who chooses the council’s experts? For reasons unclear, the representative of China was just appointed, and will now play a central role in selecting 17 UN human rights experts this year.
This is the same government that has locked up 1 million Muslims in camps. Amazingly, last summer, 50 ambassadors from this UN Human Rights Council submitted a letter praising China for this action.
China just chaired the process of selecting the UN expert on freedom of speech, yet when courageous Chinese men and women tried to sound the alarm about the Coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan, they were arrested, silenced, and disappeared
If we seek a real cure for the disease of discrimination, we need to find doctors who can promise, first, to do no harm.
In the video below , you can see the Chinese response
The national arm of Black Lives Matter spent millions on consultants, travel and compensation for its own staff between July 2017 and June 2019, according to audited financial statements prepared by its fiscal sponsor, Thousand Currents.
BLM Global Network spent $899,000 on travel, $1.6 million on consulting and $2.1 million on personnel costs during its 2017, 2018 and 2019 fiscal years, the financial statements show, together comprising 83.3% of its total spending during the three year period. BLM Global Network granted $328,000 to outside organizations, which include local BLM chapters, during that same time frame, a figure that represents about 6% of its total spending.
“The numbers you have for the prior years do not reflect, for example, the in kind support for chapters and fundraising directed to chapters and programmatic assistance to chapters, that would not show up as direct grants on the audited financials,” BLM Global Network Managing Director Kailee Scales told the DCNF on Tuesday. “That work was carried out by employees and consultants to BLM.”
But Scales did not answer when asked how much of its spending during that timeframe reflected the in-kind assistance she says BLM Global Network gave to its local BLM chapters versus the development of the various art projects the organization advertises as program areas on its website.
Additionally, Scales said her organization is not responsible for preparing the financial statements, noting that they were prepared by Thousand Currents, a California charity that has acted as a fiscal sponsor for BLM Global Network since 2016.
“The numbers you cite from the annual information return form [sic] our fiscal sponsor reflect IRS-required reporting categories that bear no relationship to how our programs have actually been run,” Scales said. “These are not numbers developed by BLM Global Network Foundation and we cannot speak to how they were calculated.”
Scales also said BLM Global Network has upped its grant-making activities substantially during its current fiscal year, granting “over $770,000” to outside organizations between the beginning of June 2019 and the end of April 2020. Financial statements for BLM’s current fiscal year are not yet available.
BLM Global Network announced on June 11 it was launching a $6.5 million fund to support its affiliated local chapters with grants of up to $500,000 after donations began flooding into the organizations following the death of George Floyd, an unarmed black man who died on May 25 after a white police officer knelt on his neck for more than eight minutes.
On Wednesday, BLM Global Network announced an additional $6 million grant fund to support black-led grassroots organization groups. The group told the Associated Press it has received more than 1.1 million donations since Floyd’s death. The average donation clocked in at $33, according to the AP.
A spokesperson for Thousand Currents, which was formerly called “IDEX,” confirmed in an email to the DCNF that it was approached by BLM Global Network in 2016 to create a fiscal sponsorship arrangement, which enables the activist group to use Thousand Currents’ charitable status to receive tax-deductible contributions.
“In this capacity, we provide administrative and back office support, including finance, accounting, grants management, insurance, human resources, legal and compliance,” the Thousand Currents spokesperson said.
Thousand Currents’ primary charitable activity is to support grassroots groups and movements in South America, Africa and Southeast Asia, according to its website. The charity’s former executive director, Rajasvini Bhansali, told the Associated Press in 2016 that BLM Global Network agreed to make donations to Thousand Currents’ partners in Zimbabwe and South Africa in lieu of an administrative fee for its fiscal sponsorship services.
Thousand Currents did not respond to numerous inquiries seeking clarification on how much BLM Global Network has contributed to its overseas partners since its fiscal sponsorship began in 2016.
Scales, who did not respond to numerous requests for a phone interview with the DCNF, also did not respond when asked how much BLM Global Network has donated to its fiscal sponsor’s overseas partners.
Thousand Currents finance director Jenesha de Revera told FactCheck.org that BLM Global Network’s activities are referred to as the “fiscal project” in its audited financial statements for fiscal years 2017, 2018 and 2019.
Local BLM Chapters ‘Are The Ones Leading’
Multiple BLM founders have said its independent, autonomous chapters are the ones responsible for carrying out the movement’s mission.
“We have impacted the world; the Black Lives Matter Global Network, a crew of mostly young Black women and femmes challenging the culture to live up to our resilience. We evolved from a phrase, to hashtag, to a global network,” BLM co-founder Patrise Khan-Cullors wrote in a statement commemorating the group’s fifth anniversary in 2018. “This work is carried out by our chapters, whose leadership spans across the country and the world.”
Another BLM co-founder, Opal Tometi, told The New Yorker in early June that the affiliated BLM chapters “are the ones leading” the movement.
“It has always been somewhat decentralized,” Tometi said. “We have tried various structures, but we have always said the power goes on in the local chapter because they know what is going on, and they are the ones familiar with the terrain.”
“There are chapters across the country, many of them are operational and do their own fund-raising, and make their demands,” Tometi said, adding that the chapters have great leeway in deciding which issues to focus on.
“So different chapters might take on different issues, but there is this throughline of valuing black life and understanding that we are not a monolith but being radically inclusive in terms of chapter makeup,” Tometi said.
Former BLM Global Network communications strategist Shanelle Matthews explained in 2016 that the national group plays a supporting role for its affiliated chapters.
“Because we are decentralized, chapters are autonomous and develop their own strategies,” Matthews told PR Week. “They know what’s best for their communities. Anyone working outside a chapter is here to provide technical assistance and support.”
All of BLM Global Network’s affiliated chapters must establish their own legal entities prior to their initiation to the network, according to the organization’s website.
Former BLM activist Ashley Yates has publicly criticized BLM Global Network since as early as 2018 for what she says is a lack of transparency and has accused the organization of squandering money on excessive travel and compensation for its top staffers while giving little to its affiliated chapters.
Yates is described on a GoFundMe fundraising page established last year to support her work as having “[M]et with President Obama at the White House in November of 2014 after the officer who murdered Micheal Brown failed to be indicted by a grand jury” and that she “was among the protesters who made headlines by interrupting presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Martin O’Malley at Netroots Nation in 2015.” Yates also profiled in a 2018 New York Times article about the depression and physical strains suffered by young black activists.
“I had concerns since the donations started rolling in from day one and I asked each of the co founders individually what happened to all the money several times,” Yates tweeted in January 2019. “Each time I got the run around, outright dismissed.”
How much longer is this facade going to continue? How much more money will be poured into this bottomless pit with nothing to show for it aside from houses and cars for cofounders?
Black Lives Matter Cincinnati announced in March 2018 it was changing its name because the national group had “perverted” the Black Lives Matter brand.
“BLMC has never been a chapter of that organization or a partisan of its politics because, even at the onset of us establishing our name as BLMC, we recognized that our idea of the type of movement necessary to win black liberation was at odds with that national body and it’s [sic] directive,” BLM Cincinnati wrote in its statement announcing it was changing its name to the Mass Action for Black Liberation.
“BLM did not create or build this new grassroots movement against police brutality and racism; they capitalized off a nameless groundswell of resistance sweeping the nation, branded it as their own, and profited from the deaths of Black men and women around the country without seriously engaging, as a national formation, in getting justice for fighting families,” BLM Cincinnati wrote.
“All the while raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars from high-end speaking engagements and donations from foundations that support the Black struggle.”
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The Agudath Israel of America-led Association of Jewish Camp Operators (AJCO) and several parents filed suit today in federal court to overturn Governor Cuomo’s decision to keep sleep away camps closed this summer
YWN reported: The lawsuit takes the Governor to task for rejecting the safety plan proposed by AJCO, a consortium of Orthodox Jewish overnight camps serving approximately 41,000 children. The plan, in the estimation of the nine nationally-recognized infectious disease doctors and other medical professionals who signed it, would have minimized the risk of infection and been far safer than having children remain in an unregulated environment that lacks the “protective bubble” and rigorous safety procedures the AJCO plan proposed.
This announcement comes after late last week it was reported by DCNF:
Catholic priests and Jewish congregants have filed a lawsuit against Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Democratic New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over double standards on worship and protests.
Two Catholic priests from upstate New York and three Orthodox Jewish congregants from Brooklyn filed lawsuit June 10 against Cuomo, de Blasio, and Attorney General Letitia James in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York.
he lawsuit accuses Cuomo, de Blasio, and James of infringing on freedoms of religion, speech, assembly, expressive association, and due process, according to a press release from the Thomas More Society,
Meanwhile BLM protests are now in the middle of a 4th week of assemblies without social distancing
Paris riot police fired tear gas Saturday to disperse a largely peaceful but unauthorized protest of police brutality and entrenched racism, as France’s minorities increasingly push back against a national doctrine of colorblindness that has failed to eradicate discrimination. (AP)
On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, an unarmed black man, was stopped by police in Minneapolis, MN because he allegedly attempted to use counterfeit money and appeared intoxicated.
Videosshow that Mr. Floyd did not resist the arrest — yet he was brutally killed by a white police officer who held him down, with a knee to his neck for almost nine minutes, as he desperately pleaded, “I can’t breathe.”
The video of Mr. Floyd’s senseless killing went viral, and huge protests broke out shortly afterwards in numerous cites by outraged citizens. Initially, the protests were peaceful, They were depicted by participants as a reaction not just to the murder of Mr. Floyd, but also, to allegations of American police officers using excessive, unjustified violence against alleged criminals — especially black people — for many years.
We at SaveTheWest are outraged by Mr. Floyd’s murder, and hope that the police officers who have been charged — Derek Chauvin, Thomas Lane, Tou Thao and J. Alexander Kueng — all receive fair trials, and if found guilty, will receive severe sentences.
From peaceful demonstrations to spiraling violent, seditious anarchy — in 48 hours
The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution declares:
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.”
During the first few days of the national horror at the video of Mr. Floyd’s murder, people organized and participated in peaceful rallies in their communities, that focused on demanding that the Minneapolis and federal government do two things:
(1) Launch a criminal investigation of the police officer who killed Mr Floyd, and those who stood by while their fellow officer killed him.
(2) Investigations into allegations of police brutality across America, particularly against black people — and if justified, enact reforms that will correct these abuses
Americans from across the racial, political and economic spectrum, from celebrities to laborers, politicians to media figures, shared many of the peaceful demonstrators’ concerns, and expressed this unity on social media.
Seemingly without a pause, soon after of the first reports of Mr. Floyd’s murder, these peaceful protests were transformed into violent seditious anarchy, that:
Quickly spread across America
Then, quickly spread throughout the Western world
asserting that this violent seditious anarchy was not occurring organically
Further, governmental figures from across the American political spectrum began asserting that this violent seditious anarchy was not occurring organically, even though it became increasingly clear that one or more here-to-for obscure organizations were inciting, orchestrating and supporting it. The evidence of such coordination and conspiracy include the following, which were observed in dozens of U.S. cities, much of which was displayed on social media:
The pre-positioning of weapons caches, including bats, clubs, guns and pallets of bricks in strategic locations where the violence broke out
The use of box trucks and other vehicles to position these caches, some incidents of which were captured on video
The same tactical means by which to break into, loot and torch businesses, as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot described, in detail, below
SaveTheWest consulting editor and videographer Jon Sutz has constructed a deep research page that presents evidence to support these allegations:
Here are some key facts and quotes from Jon’s research page (which is being updated as new evidence becomes available):
Floyd was killed on the evening of May 25. The first reports and videos of what happened emerged on May 26. By May 28, however — barely 48 hours later— dozens of acts of violent anarchy were being perpetrated in cities across America, and in the coming hours, and the number of locations in which this was occurring skyrocketed. Further, at the same time, evidence emerged that much or most of this violent anarchy was being coordinated.
On May 29, the third day, Former NYPD Police Commissioner Bernard Kerik,a staunch conservative, said (in part): “Riots and protests across multiple metropolitan cities are coordinated… some of the leaders in the group were young white men all dressed up in black with military-grade radio communications, who were central command posts with earpieces.”
On May 31, Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot,a staunch leftist Democrat, said: “There’s no question that both the people who were fighting who brought the weapons that was absolutely organized and choreographed. It seems also clear that the fires that were set both the vehicles and buildings… that that was organized. That wasn’t opportunistic. Somebody driving up with a U-Haul, having crews jump out, breaking the windows going in and literally hauling out the merchandise in coordination… car caravans doing a similar thing, people jumping out using a metal device to pop the window, jumping into the stores and then loading up the cars on like an assembly line.”
Also on May 31, Richmond (VA) Police Chief Will Smith(political affiliation unknown), said: “We know that this is an organized effort. We’re committed to try and identify those that are behind it… I think we can all understand attacking the symbols of the past and of the racist past. But when you look at trying to burn down a VCU dormitory, or burn down people’s homes, or burn down and loot the stores that we depend on every day. Those things don’t correlate at all. So, you know, I think there is a much more organized effort, and we’re doing our very best to determine where that’s coming from and who’s pulling the strings.”
The fact that these and many other current and former public servants, and reputable terrorism analysts are sounding the alarm in almost identical terms should cause grave concern to all patriotic Americans. As of this writing (June 16):
An estimated 1,000 police officers across America have been injured by these violent seditious anarchists, and at least four have been murdered
Officer Shay Mikalonis, who was shot in the head by anarchists at a George Floyd protest in Las Vegas, Nevada, was just announced to be paralyzed from the neck down, and is on a ventilator
Tens of thousand of businesses, including many black and minority-owned, have been looted and burned to the ground
A growing body of evidence shows that many if not most perpetrators of the violence we’re witnessing are motivated by either far-left or Islamist propaganda. Here, for example, is explicit incitement to seditious violence by a Philadelphia, PA Muslim faith leader, posted on June 2 (h/t MEMRI).
What should the Trump administration, Congress and the U.S. Senate do about this violent seditious anarchy?
Here are some suggestions:
(1) President Trump should speak from the White House, to explain what’s happened regarding George Floyd’s murder, and announce a new Department of Justice investigation into how his constitutional rights were violated. This investigation should also propose further specific police reforms that would minimize the possibility that anything like this tragedy could happen again.
(2) President Trump should organize a special task force, akin to the 9/11 Commission, to investigate and report to the American people on:
(a) The root causes behind the legal, peaceful protests of George Floyd’s killing
(b) How they so quickly morphed into violent seditious anarchy
(c) What forces were operating behind the scenes to incite, organize, support and even fund this violent seditious anarchy. The Senate should also hold immediate public hearings on this matter, to hear testimony from, and learn what evidence has been amassed by the mayors, governors and police chiefs across America, who have alleged that there was coordination, even “choreography,” as Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, described.
(3) President Trump should announce the hiring of a Domestic Security Advisor (DSA) to complement the National Security Advisor (NSA), who primarily focuses on outside international foes, “frenemies,” adversaries, competitors, and enemies.
(4) President Trump should announce that both the DSA and NSA will coordinate their activities with the two task forces that SaveTheWest recently recommended that he organize, to address the two most lethal ideologies that are at war with freedom, Western civilization, and America in particular:
(a) The Red Task Force, which would focus on the threats posed to us by communists, socialists; learn more here and here.
(b) The Green Task Force, which would focus on the threat from Islamists (Muslim supremacists); learn more here and here.
(5) President Trump should announce his intent to hire a new Special Advisor to the President, for Cultural Protection, who would focus on all threats facing the American people and our Constitution, from all sources, domestic and foreign-influenced.
(6) Over the longer term, President Trump should order the DSA should work with the Department of Education to examine the textbooks and other instructional materials that are used to teach our children, to ensure they are providing them with an accurate understanding of civics, history and our Constitution. Also, they should look at our America’s universities, to determine if laws and policies concerning the diversity of thought among professors and their departments are being upheld, or needs to be legislated or regulated. Learn more in this SaveTheWest editorial.
Now that the U.S. economic recovery is moving faster than anticipated, as we regained more than 2.5 million new jobs last month, and the stock market is rising, it is crucial that the Trump administration seizes the opportunity to use all the powers granted to his office to do all he can to quell the violent seditious anarchy we are witnessing across America, and prevent its occurrence in the future.
Longer term, we must work together to stop the subversion of the U.S. Constitution, which should be a unifying document as it guarantees to all Americans the rights outlined in our Declaration of Independence: our unalienable rights of Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.
The country’s largest social media companies are allowing the Chinese Communist Party to disseminate propaganda to American audiences with little oversight or warning, according to an ongoing congressional investigation into these companies’ failure to police suspect content.
Investigators with the House Foreign Affairs Committee have been pressing Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube to deplatform Chinese Communist Party officials and news outlets for disseminating propaganda, particularly related to the coronavirus, but each of the sites has failed to take adequate action. In most cases, Communist Party propaganda freely circulates on these sites without labels identifying the information as questionable.
While each of these sites has begun aggressively policing conservative provocateurs and even President Donald Trump, they have been lax about applying the same standards to Chinese officials and state-controlled news outlets that regularly traffic in unfounded conspiracy theories, congressional officials with knowledge of the investigation told the Washington Free Beacon. In many cases, these websites allowed communist leaders and outlets to post outright lies about the coronavirus pandemic, including the claim that American military leaders created the coronavirus and planted it in China.
The investigation, run by House Foreign Affairs Committee leader Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), is part of a broader effort by congressional leaders to crack down on China’s influence operations in the United States.
The findings of the investigation were presented in the form of report cards grading each company on whether it has banned communist officials and news outlets, applied warning labels to their content, and fact-checked their claims for accuracy. All of the websites failed these tests: Twitter received a D-, Facebook a C+, and YouTube a C-, grades that imply each still permits the dissemination of anti-U.S. communist propaganda, often without warning labels for readers.
“The Chinese Communist Party has weaponized American social media platforms to push their disinformation and promote their propaganda. The solution is simple—deplatform CCP officials and propagandists who consistently spread lies,” McCaul told the Free Beacon. “Sadly, while we had some positive conversations and some steps have been taken, these companies have chosen to allow CCP officials to continue to operate on their sites instead of doing what’s right.”
McCaul’s team first started investigating these sites in March, when he petitioned them to ban Communist Party officials and state-controlled news outlets for their dissemination of lies about the coronavirus pandemic.
Twitter emerged as the most abused platform and also the one with the least oversight. While the company cooperated with McCaul’s probe, it did not remove any of the propaganda posts identified by the congressional investigators.
Despite a willingness to discuss HFAC Minority staff concerns, Twitter does not appear to have removed any CCP disinformation from its platform nor made any meaningful policy changes in response to our concerns to prevent the CCP from spreading propaganda on its platform,” according to the investigation. “Moreover, Twitter does not label or provide transparency about the nature and operations of CCP propaganda outlets. Rather, it legitimizes them by allowing them to operate as verified users.”
While average Chinese citizens are blocked from accessing Twitter due to the country’s strict censorship policies, Communist Party officials are often verified by the website, providing legitimacy to their claims. McCaul’s team maintains this violates Twitter’s own policies barring individuals and organizations guilty of gross human rights violations from operating accounts on the site.
Additionally, Twitter does not equally apply its rules. Prominent conservatives, including Trump, have had their content censored or removed in recent months. But Chinese officials and news outlets are not held to a similar standard.
“Of all the companies we engaged with, Twitter is the platform most heavily abused by the CCP,” investigators found. “Twitter only applied a factcheck label to the Tweet about the virus originating with the U.S. military after it had been on the platform for more than a month. They are the most unwilling to do anything to stop the CCP from spreading harmful misinformation or provide transparency through labels that inform users they are viewing content from a state-funded or state-directed media outlet.”
Twitter has said that it will only fact-check tweets from prominent voices, such as the president. Congressional investigators remain concerned that China does not rank as a top priority for the website.
Facebook also allows several Chinese state-controlled propaganda organs to freely post misinformation, potentially reaching millions of Americans. These outlets include China Daily, Xinhua, and CGTN, all of which are leading purveyors of Chinese government-approved propaganda.
Facebook received the highest grade awarded, a C+, due to its efforts to specifically inform readers they are consuming state-funded information. It still permits these outlets to freely post content on its site, however.
Facebook does not “currently plan to take down content flagged by the staff or take sufficient action to prevent the CCP from using Facebook to spread propaganda and lies about COVID-19,” according to the report.
YouTube demonstrated similar failures. It does not block communist officials and news outlets or remove their materials. YouTube does, however, attempt to fact-check and police this content for inaccuracies.
“YouTube does label videos by CCP propaganda outlets, but the labeling is inconsistent,” according to the report.
In many cases, YouTube failed to label CCP content as propaganda and did not provide viewers with complete information about the biased nature of these videos.
Attorney Lance LoRusso, a former police officer, represents officers involved in use-of-force cases, in his office in Atlanta. (Lisa Marie Pane/AP
By Jeffrey Rodack(NEWSMAX)
Lance LoRusso, attorney for the former Atlanta police officer charged with murder, claims Rayshard Brooks was not running away when he was shot and killed.
LoRusso represents former officer Garrett Rolfe. He made his comments Wednesday on the Fox News show “The Ingraham Angle.”
“Mr. Brooks was not running away,” he said. “Mr. Brooks turned and offered extreme violence toward a uniformed law enforcement officer. If he was able to deploy the Taser, it would incapacitate officer Rolfe through his body armor, and at that point, if he decided to disarm another officer, he would be in possession of a firearm.”
Prosecutors brought murder charges Wednesday against the white former police officer, saying that Brooks, a black man, posed no threat when he was gunned down.
Brooks was holding a taser he had snatched from one of the officers but was 18 feet, 3 inches away when he was shot by Rolfe and was running away at the time, District Attorney Paul Howard said.
An autopsy found that Brooks was shot twice in the back.
LoRusso also pushed back at claims Rolfe had kicked Brooks as he lay dying.
“My client never kicked Mr. Brooks,” the lawyer said. “If there was a video of my client kicking Mr. Brooks, you would have seen it.”
Facebook removed an ad from the Trump campaign earlier today attacking Antifa, citing its policy on “organized hate.”
The ad, now removed by Facebook, denounced Antifa, the decentralized movement of far-left agitators known for acts of domestic terrorism and political violence
During the George Floyd riots, Attorney General William Barr described the actions of Antifa as domestic terrorism, and President Trump has also confirmed that he intends to label Antifa a domestic terrorist organization.
The now-deleted Trump ad featured an inverted red-and-black triangle to symbolize the Antifa movement, which uses the red-and-black color scheme in their badges, flags, and propaganda as a form of ideological identification. Red-and-black are the historical colors of the anarcho-communist movement, and red triangles are an Antifa symbol according to products available for purchase.
In the now-deleted ad, the official Team Trump Facebook account said:
Dangerous MOBS of far-left groups are running through our streets and causing absolute mayhem. They are DESTROYING our cities and rioting – it’s absolute madness.
It’s important that EVERY American comes together at a time like this to send a united message that we will not stand for their radical actions any longer. We’re calling on YOU to make a public statement and add your name to stand with President Trump against ANTIFA.
Please add your name IMMEDIATELY to stand with your President and his decision to declare ANTIFA a Terrorist Organization.
But Facebook, and far-left organizations that regularly run cover for Antifa, said the red-and-black triangle was a “hate” symbol because it is similar to a symbol used by Nazi Germany in concentration camps.
Facebook apparently bought this argument, even though the Trump team’s post was clearly about Antifa.
“We removed these posts and ads for violating our policy against organized hate,” a company spokesman toldNew York Daily News. “Our policy prohibits using a banned hate group’s symbol to identify political prisoners without the context that condemns or discusses the symbol.”
In a post on Twitter, the Trump team posted an image showing the inverted red-and-black triangle being used by Antifa, in response to a Media Matters post accusing the campaign of using Nazi imagery.
“This is an emoji. It’s also a symbol widely used by Antifa. It was used in an ad about Antifa,” said the Trump team. “It is not in the ADL’s Hate Symbols Database.”
In a comment to the New York Daily News, the Trump team again pointed out the symbol’s links to Antifa.
“The red triangle is an Antifa symbol,” said Trump campaign spokesman Ken Farnaso who linked to the symbol being used in Antifa-branded products.
This is not the first time Facebook has deliberately censored political ads from the Trump team. Ahead of the 2018 midterm elections, Facebook censored a Trump ad about the dangers of mass immigration.
New York’s 2020 primary elections are just a week away, offering a crowded field in an era of social distancing.
More people than ever have requested absentee ballots as they plan to vote remotely. Meanwhile, measures to keep people safely apart at the polls are already underway at early voting sites.
The city’s first pandemic election isn’t lacking for races.
A total of 51 state and federal primary contests are set to take place within the five boroughs on June 23, according to a tally from the city’s Campaign Finance Board. In addition, ballots for some will include a contentious battle for Queens borough president and plenty of contests for state district leader spots.
Eleven Congressional districts are on the primary ballot and many longtime incumbents are fighting to keep their seats, including Reps. Eliot Engel and Yvette Clarke.
Some races feature more than one or two challengers: In The Bronx, 10 Democrats are vying to replace retiring longtime Rep. José Serrano.
And by the nature of New York politics, a Democratic primary win is often all a candidate needs to coast in the general election.
Ahead of primary day, THE CITY rounded up some of the most notable and competitive contests.
Get more information about which candidates will be on your ballot by visiting the NYC Votes voter guide from the CFB or Vote411.org from the League of Women Voters.
You also can find out who will be on your local ballot with this tool from the city Board Of Elections. Plug in your address, then click the button for “Ballot Information.”
House Races
With 11 races and multiple candidates in some, you need an election scorecard to keep the players straight. Here are some of the contests to watch:
South Bronx’ Crowded Contest
Serrano’s decision not to seek re-election put the most left-leaning congressional district in the nation in play, and has drawn the interest of a wash of familiar local names. That includes City Council colleagues Ruben Diaz Sr., Ydanis Rodriguez and Ritchie Torres and former Council Speaker MelissaMark-Viverito. Assemblymember Michael Blake is also hoping for a win.
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITYCouncilmember Rubén Díaz Sr. attends a ribbon-cutting ceremony at Parque de los Niños in Soundview with his son, Bronx Borough President Rubén Díaz Jr. (right), and State Assemblymember Marcos Crespo, on Aug. 13, 2019.
Engel is in his 16th — and possibly last — term in New York’s 16th District, which straddles The Bronx and Westchester.
Chair of the House’s Foreign Affairs Committee, Engel was initially challenged by a pair of progressive contenders, both former educators: Jamaal Bowman and Andom Ghebreghiorgis.
Ghebreghiorgis later ended his campaign, endorsing Bowman. The consolidation of progressive power led to endorsements from Sanders and Ocasio-Cortez, as well as a New York Times nod.
Arguably the biggest name in the local races, first-termer Ocasio-Cortez, whose district spans Queens and The Bronx, is being challenged by a handful of Democrats. Among them: Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, a former CNBC contributor who filed a successful challenge to knock Ocasio-Cortez off of the Working Families Party line.
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITYRep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez at the Parkchester station in The Bronx, July 31, 2019.
Adem Bunkeddeko, who came within 2,000 votes of unseating Clarke in 2018, is running again. The anti-poverty strategist has embraced ideas from the rising left wing, such as the Green New Deal, and earned his second New York Times endorsement.
Isiah James, an Army veteran and Democratic Socialist, is also facing Clarke. The political newcomer has struggled with fundraising. But he’s earned high-profile endorsements from prominent left leaning groups, including Brand New Congress, which boosted AOC’s bid two years ago.
The race’s wildcard is term-limited Councilmember Chaim Deutsch (D-Brooklyn), a relative conservative who threw himself in the race in January. Deutsch, who is endorsed by the Police Benevolent Association and has positioned himself as an advocate for law enforcement, could pose a threat to Clarke in the district’s southern neighborhoods, which helped carry her 2018 primary victory against Bunkeddeko.
Thorns in Rose’s Side
On Staten Island, two Republican candidates are vying for a chance to go up against freshman Democratic Congressman Max Rose in November.
Assemblymember Nicole Malliotakis and former Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Joseph Caldarera have both aligned themselves with President Donald Trump. But, with supportive tweets from Trump himself and increased name recognition from her 2017 mayoral challenge, the primary race appears to be Malliotakis’ to lose.
State Races
Across Queens and Brooklyn, some incumbents who have been in office for decades are being challenged by political newcomers.
A DSA Contender in Astoria
Assemblymember Aravella Simotas, who represents parts of Long Island City and Astoria, is being challenged by Zohran Mamdani, a leader in the Queens Democratic Socialists of America branch and a housing counselor for the nonprofit immigrant advocacy group Chhaya CDC. He is running on a campaign of establishing universal rent control, defunding the NYPD, and taxing Wall Street to make public transit free.
Double Fight for Nolan
Assemblymember Cathy Nolan, whose district also covers parts of Long Island City, Astoria as well as Sunnyside and Ridgewood, has been in office for 35 years. She is being challenged by two Democrats.
One, Danielle Brecker, a lead organizer for the grassroots political group Empire State Indivisible, is campaigning on taxing the rich to fund healthcare, housing, and education. The other, Mary Jobaida, a co-founder of Bangladeshi Americans for Political Progress, has said that if sent to Albany she would fight to implement universal childcare, curb the influence of the fossil fuel industry, and put term limits in place for elected state officials.
A First Time Challenge for DenDekker
Four challengers are up against Assemblymember Michael DenDekker, who has never faced a primary in his six terms representing Woodside, Jackson Heights and East Elmhurst.
Nuala O’Doherty-Naranjo, a community organizer and former prosecutor, has prioritized criminal justice reforms such as funding supportive social services and scaling back the NYPD’s reach.
Jessica González-Rojas, the former executive director of the National Latina Institute, is campaigning on a platform of universal health care, a rent freeze, and funding public schools and CUNY. Joy Chowdhury, a taxi driver and labor organizer, has made supporting gig economy workers one of his key issues.
Little is known about the fourth challenger, Angel Cruz.
Ortiz’s Brooklyn Battle
Longtime Sunset Park Assemblymember Félix Ortiz, who serves as assistant speaker of the Assembly, faces three challengers — all progressive women raised in the district he’s represented for a quarter century.
Katherine Walsh, an urban planner and former teacher, is running on a campaign focused on environmental justice. Génesis Aquino, a Dominican Republic-born organizer who previously ran for female district leader, has placed immigration issues at the forefront of her campaign.
But the hopeful with the biggest heat is arguably Marcela Mitaynes, who has racked up a series of high-profile endorsements — including from the DSA and Ocasio-Cortez. Mitaynes, who was born in Peru, is a long-time tenant organizer and has pledged to fully fund NYCHA and expand tenant protections if elected.
Hanging over the race for Ortiz: In August 2019, his then-chief of staff was arrested by the FBI and charged with wire fraud, accused of stealing $80,000 from his boss’ campaign.
Lentol Pushes Half-Century Mark
Assemblymember Joe Lentol has represented North Brooklyn in the state legislature for the last 47 years, following in the footsteps of his father and grandfather.
Now he’s facing his first primary challenger in a decade: Emily Gallagher, a Greenpoint activist and community board member, who launched her upstart Democratic primary campaign for the 50th Assembly District in September, on a platform based on housing guarantees and government reform.
A Two-Borough Race to the Right
Two Republicans are racing to the right of each other to grab the last GOP-held seat in Brooklyn, in an Assembly district that encompasses a piece of Bay Ridge and Staten Island’s East Shore.
Former prosecutor Michael Tannousis is backed by the state Republican party, Donald Trump Jr. and the outgoing incumbent, Malliotakis. Marko Kepi, a Marine veteran and formidable fundraiser, is supported by former pols familiar to the district: ex-Rep. Michael Grimm, and ex-state Sen. Marty Golden. Both candidates have campaigned on reopening the city faster.
New York State AssemblyAssemblymember Nicole Malliotakis.
City Races
Last year’s Queens district attorney’s race, in which Borough President Melinda Katz edged upstart Tiffany Cabán in a hotly contested recount, emerged as perhaps the most compelling New York City race of 2019. Now, the contest to replace Katz as beep is dominating the local electoral landscape.
Queens Borough President Drama
It’s been a tumultuous few months in the borough president’s race, with changing terrain caused by a series of blurry, pandemic-driven decisions at both the city and state level.
First, the March 24 non-partisan special election was canceled by Mayor Bill de Blasio with two-weeks’ notice, despite more than 2,500 absentee ballots already cast in early voting. Then the contest to replace Katz was postponed to June 23 — the same day the primary to permanently fill the seat was supposed to take place.
The special election was ultimately cancelled in late April, when Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed an executive order officially mandating that the borough president post would be filled with the general election in November.
The five names still on the ballot are Councilmembers Costa Constantinides and Donovan Richards, former Councilmember Elizabeth Crowley, retired NYPD Sergeant Anthony Miranda, and Dao Yin, previously a corporate controller.
Brooklyn Ballot Bumping
The race to replace former City Council member Rafael Espinal — who resigned in January from the Brooklyn seat representing a V-shaped district that runs from Bushwick to East New York — was reduced to just one candidate.
Darma Diaz, the Brooklyn Democratic Party-backed district leader, was the only hopeful to survive a string of alternating city Board of Election and state court rulings regarding the number of petition signatures a candidate needed to remain on the ballot. The issue took a more prominent role this year because in-person collection of signatures was impeded by the coronavirus outbreak.
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITYCouncilmember Rafael Espinal speaks in Brooklyn during the 2019 public advocate special election.
In the most recent decision, the state court Appellate Division agreed with the city BOE’s interpretation of a Cuomo executive order that set the minimum number of signatures needed at 270 — much higher than the 135 minimum some of the candidates thought was in place.
That bumped two of the candidates off the ballot: East New York businessman Misba Abdin and law librarian Kimberly Council. Two other candidates were tossed from the ballot over technicalities in late April. Council told THE CITY she sought an appeal with the New York Court of Appeals, but the justices wouldn’t intervene.
THE CITY is an independent, nonprofit news outlet dedicated to hard-hitting reporting that serves the people of New York.
In a virtual vote The Rent Guidelines Board voted Wednesday night to freeze rent for the third time in seven years for rent-stabilized apartments.
NY Times reported:
The New York City panel that sets rents for the roughly 2.3 million residents of rent-regulated apartments on Wednesday froze those rents for a year, delivering a slight reprieve to tenants struggling in the worst economy in decades.
By a 6-to-3 vote, the panel, the Rent Guidelines Board, approved a measure that froze rents on one-year leases at their current levels and imposed a similar freeze in the first year of two-year leases, while allowing landlords to raise rents 1 percent in the second year.
The vote came after dueling proposals offered by the board’s tenant and landlord members failed. The tenant proposal would have frozen rents for two years, while the landlord members sought to raise rents 2 percent on one-year leases and 5 percent on two-year leases.
An eviction moratorium imposed by the state for those affected by the pandemic and economic shutdown expires in August.
“A lot of residents have lost their jobs and as much as one of the theories that people are using, well they can use their unemployment right to pay for rent? But unemployment is going towards food, towards electricity, utilities,” tenant advocate Paloma Lara told ABC news.
The mayor was quoted as saying “”Renters have never faced hardship like this,” said “They desperately need relief and that’s why we fought for this rent freeze. Now, more renters than ever before will get help keeping a roof over their heads. This is one step of many we have to take to get families through this crisis-but it’s a big one.”
Landlords and ownership Associations were critical of the vote and process.
NY Times reported:
After the vote, landlords criticized Mr. de Blasio for playing “pandemic politics” and not taking their own precarious situation into consideration.
The mayor was “denying owners of small buildings, mostly immigrants and people of color, the rent revenue needed to operate their buildings, finance capital improvements, infuse jobs and revenue into their neighborhoods, and pay property taxes that he raises every year,” said Joseph Strasburg, the president of the Rent Stabilization Association, which represents some 25,000 landlords of rent-stabilized units.
Some landlords say they’re not all wealthy billionaire corporate owners, as ABC news reported:
The owner a building in Chinatown said a rent freeze would put his livelihood in jeopardy.
“A lot of people don’t realize that people of color and black owners exist,” said landlord Jan Lee. “There’s this myth that all of New York is owned by corporate giants. That’s not actually true. In neighborhoods like mine and in neighborhoods where there’s people of color, they actually own those buildings and they house people of color. And we’re the ones who are creating stability right now. If we are gone, the city becomes a very ugly and expensive place.”
Lee is a third-generation Chinese-American landlord. His commercial tenants haven’t paid rent for several months now.
The Real Deal quoted one of the landlord representatives on the board:
Ahead of the final vote, Scott Walsh, a project director at Lendlease and one of two landlord representatives on the board, criticized the voting process as “little more than a theater” that was manipulated by the mayor. He said the RGB’s public members didn’t adequately understand the issues surrounding rental housing nor their duty to property owners.
“Public members must understand: Owners are members of the public, and you have an obligation to them through your service on this board,” he said. He went on to call on property owners to “continue the dialogue with public members and to write and communicate with them often to tell their stories.”
“When you are wondering how you are going to pay your increased property tax bill on July 1 this year and avoid an 18 percent penalty for any late payment, call the public members,” he said. “When tenants with jobs elect to not pay rent or assert false claims against you, call the public members. When your insurance carrier won’t renew your policy … Call the public members often, make yourselves heard at their workplaces.”
Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient Roberto Martinez, left, celebrates with other DACA recipients in front of the Supreme Court on Thursday, June 18, 2020, in Washington. The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, a stunning rebuke to the president in the midst of his reelection campaign. (AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)
By MARK SHERMAN (AP)
The Supreme Court on Thursday rejected President Donald Trump’s effort to end legal protections for 650,000 young immigrants, the second stunning election-season rebuke from the court in a week after its ruling that it’s illegal to fire people because they’re gay or transgender.
Immigrants who are part of the 8-year-old Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program will retain their protection from deportation and their authorization to work in the United States — safe almost certainly at least through the November election, immigration experts said.
The 5-4 outcome, in which Chief Justice John Roberts and the four liberal justices were in the majority, seems certain to elevate the issue in Trump’s campaign, given the anti-immigrant rhetoric of his first presidential run in 2016 and immigration restrictions his administration has imposed since then.
The justices said the administration did not take the proper steps to end DACA, rejecting arguments that the program is illegal and that courts have no role to play in reviewing the decision to end it. The program covers people who have been in the United States since they were children and are in the country illegally. In some cases, they have no memory of any home other than the U.S.
Trump didn’t hold back in his assessment of the court’s work, hitting hard at a political angle.
“These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!” he wrote on Twitter, apparently including the LGBT ruling as well.
In a second tweet, he wrote, “Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn’t like me?”
Later, he said the decision showed the need for additional conservative justices to join the two he has appointed, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh, and pledged to release a new list from which he would choose a nominee if another opening occurs on his watch. Both of his appointees dissented on Thursday, though Gorsuch wrote the LGBT rights ruling.
Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden pledged to send Congress proposed legislation on his first day in office to make DACA protections permanent.
Roberts, with whom Trump has sparred, wrote for the court that the administration did not pursue the end of the program properly.
“We do not decide whether DACA or its rescission are sound policies,“ Roberts wrote. “We address only whether the agency complied with the procedural requirement that it provide a reasoned explanation for its action. Here the agency failed to consider the conspicuous issues of whether to retain forbearance and what if anything to do about the hardship to DACA recipients.”
The Department of Homeland Security can try again, he wrote. But any new order to end the program, and the legal challenge it would provoke, would likely take months, if not longer.
“No way that’s going to happen before November,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration law practice at Cornell University Law School.
The court’s four conservative justices dissented. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justices Gorsuch and Samuel Alito, wrote that DACA was illegal from the moment it was created under the Obama administration in 2012. Thomas called the ruling “an effort to avoid a politically controversial but legally correct decision.”
Alito wrote that federal judges had prevented DACA from being ended “during an entire Presidential term. Our constitutional system is not supposed to work that way.”
Justice Kavanaugh wrote in a separate dissent that he was satisfied that the administration acted appropriately.
DACA recipients were elated by the ruling.
We’ll keep living our lives in the meantime,” said Cesar Espinosa, who leads the Houston immigration advocacy group FIEL. “We’re going to continue to work, continue to advocate.”
Espinosa said he got little sleep overnight in anticipation of a possible decision. In the minutes after the decision was posted, he said his group was “flooded with calls with Dreamers, happy, with that hope that they’re going to at least be in this country for a while longer.”
From the Senate floor, the Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said of the DACA decision, “I cried tears of joy.”
“Wow,” he went on, choking up. “These kids, these families, I feel for them, and I think all of America does.
Republican Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas had a different take, labeling DACA illegal and focusing his wrath on Roberts.
“Yet John Roberts again postures as a Solomon who will save our institutions from political controversy and accountability. If the Chief Justice believes his political judgment is so exquisite, I invite him to resign, travel to Iowa, and get elected,” Cotton said in a statement.
The program grew out of an impasse over a comprehensive immigration bill between Congress and the Obama administration in 2012. President Barack Obama decided to formally protect people from deportation while also allowing them to work legally in the U.S.
Immigrants, civil rights groups, universities and Democratic-led states quickly sued, and courts put the administration’s plan on hold.
The Department of Homeland Security has continued to process two-year DACA renewals so that hundreds of thousands of DACA recipients have protections stretching beyond the election and even into 2022. No new applications have been accepted since 2017, and it probably would take a court order to change that, Yale-Loehr said.
The Supreme Court fight over DACA played out in a kind of legal slow motion. The administration first wanted the justices to hear and decide the case by June 2018. The justices said no. The Justice Department returned to the court later in 2018, but the justices did nothing for more than seven months before agreeing a year ago to hear arguments. Those took place in November and more than seven months elapsed before the court’s decision.
Thursday’s ruling was the second time in two years that Roberts and the liberal justices faulted the administration for the way it went about a policy change. Last year, the court forced the administration to back off a citizenship question on the 2020 census.
In 2018, Roberts joined his conservative colleagues to preserve Trump’s travel ban affecting several countries with largely Muslim populations. In that instance, Roberts wrote the administration put the policy — or at least its third version — in place properly.
In this June 4, 2020, file photo, a customer walks out of a U.S. Post Office branch and under a banner advertising a job opening, in Seattle. The U.S. government will issue its latest snapshot Thursday, June 18, of the layoffs that have left millions unemployed but have slowed as businesses have increasingly reopened and rehired some of their laid-off workers. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson, File)
By CHRISTOPHER RUGABER (AP)
Three months after the viral outbreak shut down businesses across the country, U.S. employers are still shedding jobs at a heavy rate, a trend that points to a slow and prolonged recovery from the recession.
The number of laid-off workers seeking unemployment benefits barely fell last week to 1.5 million, the government said Thursday. That was down from a peak of nearly 7 million in March, and it marked an 11th straight weekly drop. But the number is still more than twice the record high that existed before the pandemic. And the total number of people receiving jobless aid remains a lofty 20.5 million.
The figures surprised and disappointed analysts who had expected far fewer people to seek unemployment aid as states increasingly reopen their economies and businesses recall some laid-off people back to work. The data also raised concerns that some recent layoffs may reflect permanent losses as companies restructure their businesses, rather than temporary cuts in response to government-ordered closures.
The report is “telling us that the scars from the job losses in the recession will be longer-lasting than we expected,” said Gregory Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics.
At the same time, Thursday’s figures may have raised as many questions about the state of the job market as they answered. Jobless claims generally tracks the pace of layoffs. But they provide little information about how much hiring is occurring that would offset those losses. In May, for example, employers added 2.5 million jobs — an increase that caught analysts off-guard because the number of applications for unemployment aid was still so high.
Some likely factors help explain why applications for jobless benefits remain so high even as businesses increasingly reopen and rehire some laid-off workers. For one thing, many businesses that deal face-to-face with customers — from restaurants and movie theaters to gyms and casinos — remain strictly limited to less-than-full capacity. Some of those establishments are still cutting jobs as a result.
Casinos in Louisiana, for example, can open at half-capacity. But Boyd Gaming Corp., which operates five casinos in the state, has informed 1,500 of its workers that with financial losses mounting, they could be laid off by early July.
And in some especially hard-hit sectors, like the hotel and travel industries, corporations are now slashing white-collar workers because their business remains far below pre-pandemic levels. This week, Hilton Hotels said it would cut 22% of its corporate global workforce — about 2,100 jobs.
Although consumer spending, the primary driver of the U.S. economy, is recovering from its low in mid-April, it remains far below its pre-pandemic level, according to data compiled by Opportunity Insights. That trend may be forcing changes at some companies that managed to withstand the initial shutdowns. AT&T, for instance, said this week that it plans to cut 3,400 technical and clerical workers over the next few weeks. It also plans to permanently close 250 of its Mobility and Cricket Wireless stores.
“We’re starting to see more job losses among higher-skilled positions that are harder to recall,” said Brad Hershbein, a senior economist at the Upjohn Institute.
And some states may still be clearing backlogs of applications from weeks or months ago.
Corinne Cook, who lives in Kissimmee, near Orlando, just received her first unemployment payment last week, after being laid-off from her job in mid-April. Cook, 28, moved to the area in September for an 18-month contract position as a 3-D modeler for Walt Disney, a job involving sculpting character prototypes that were printed on 3-D printers. She lost her job when the parks closed down.
She’s receiving the minimum state unemployment benefit from Florida, $125 a week, because the state has no record of her prior earnings in New Jersey, even though she said she has uploaded, mailed and faxed her documents from her job there. If her previous earnings were properly credited, her state benefits would more than double. She is grateful, though, for the extra $600 in federal unemployment benefits, which have allowed her to pay some bills.
Dealing with the state’s bureaucracy “was very stressful,” she said.
Daco of Oxford Economics said he still expects the June jobs report, to be released in early July, to show another hiring gain. But these figures will be particularly hard to forecast. Tens of millions of people may be flowing in and out of work each month, he noted, making it much more difficult to forecast where the job market is headed.
The jobs report for May had suggested that the damage might have bottomed out. The unemployment rate declined from 14.7% to a still-high 13.3%.
Even so, nearly 21 million people are officially classified as unemployed. And including people the government said had been erroneously categorized as employed in May and those who lost jobs but didn’t look for new ones, 32.5 million people are out of work, economists estimate.
Thursday’s report showed that an additional 760,000 people applied for jobless benefits last week under a new program for self-employed and gig workers that made them eligible for aid for the first time. These figures aren’t adjusted for seasonal variations, so the government doesn’t include them in the official count.
Other recent data have been more encouraging and suggest that the lifting of shutdown orders has sparked some pent-up demand from consumers. Most economic gauges remain far below their pre-pandemic levels, though, and some analysts question whether the recent gains can be sustained, especially if the virus were to surge back.
Last month, retail and restaurant sales jumped nearly 18%, the government said Tuesday, retracing some of the record plunges of the previous two months. Still, retail purchases remain a sizable 6% below their year-ago levels.
One key reason why consumer spending has somewhat rebounded is that government aid programs, from one-time $1,200 stimulus checks to $600-a-week in supplemental federal unemployment aid, have helped offset the loss of income for laid-off Americans. Yet nearly all the stimulus checks have been issued. And the supplemental federal jobless aid is set to expire July 31.
“Recently, some indicators have pointed to a stabilization, and in some areas a modest rebound, in economic activity,” Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell said Tuesday in testimony to a Senate committee. Yet “until the public is confident that the disease is contained, a full recovery is unlikely.”
On Monday evening a very unique telethon event was hosted by The Special Children’s Center in Lakewood in honor of the inner song and joyful spirit of special children and their families. Photo Credit: Rachel Mishanieh Portraiture
By: Fern Sidman
On Monday evening a very unique telethon event was hosted by The Special Children’s Center in Lakewood in honor of the inner song and joyful spirit of special children and their families. A live streaming and entertaining program was presented by internationally renowned singer Yaakov Shwekey, distinguished philanthropist Harry Adjmi and many more devoted supporters of The Special Children’s Center. Thousands of viewers of the Singing in the Rain extravaganza were inspired by their personal accounts and life’s lessons through these trying times and everyone felt the unity as they sang together.
A live streaming and entertaining program was presented by internationally renowned singer Yaakov Shwekey, distinguished philanthropist Harry Adjmi and many more devoted supporters of The Special Children’s Center. Photo Credit: Rachel Mishanieh Portraiture
The Singing in the Rain telethon began at 6:00 pm and entertained throngs of people well beyond midnight. Thanks to the incredibly generous donations of hundreds of thousands of people, as of this writing (10:30 pm) the Special Children’s Center has raised over $3 million for their new building and for a litany of exciting programs that the kids at the center take part in each and every day.
When a special child is born, the entire family is affected. The special child, parents, and siblings face enormous physical and emotional challenges. According to the Special Children’s Center web site, “The Special Children’s Center is there for them every step of their arduous journey Their needs are our needs, their pain is our pain. Their triumphs are our triumphs. And they know that we are their extended family- for life.”
The Special Children’s Center would not be in existence today if it were not for the tireless work of Jenine Shwekey and Chaya Bender, who as teenage girls in high school began working with special children and through their tireless efforts the Special Children’s Center has grown exponentially over the years.
Thousands of viewers of the Singing in the Rain extravaganza were inspired by the personal accounts and life’s lessons (of those involved in the center) through these trying times and everyone felt the unity as they sang together. Photo Credit: Rachel Mishanieh Portraiture
Now, the Special Children’s Center is raising money for a new building on their campus to provide everything that any special child needs for their healthy development and growth.
The Singing in the Rain telethon was dedicated to the loving memory of philanthropist extraordinaire, Stanley Chera, of blessed memory who was the financial and emotional backbone of the Special Children’s Center. Mr. Chera passed away recently from the coronavirus and was special friends with President Trump who spoke of him in exceptionally glowing terms.
Over the many years of his personal involvement in the Special Children’s Center, Mr. Chera was on the frontlines in organizing countless fundraisers for the center as the work that they do meant a great deal to him. In his memory, Mr. Chera’s widow, Cookie Chera donated $36,000.
The Singing in the Rain telethon was dedicated to the loving memory of philanthropist extraordinaire, Stanley Chera, of blessed memory who was the financial and emotional backbone of the Special Children’s Center. Mr. Chera passed away recently from the coronavirus and was special friends with President Trump who spoke of him in exceptionally glowing terms. Photo Credit: CNN Newsource
Mr. Chera’s granddaughter said that what inspired her was her grandfather’s ability to make such a tremendous impact in the world by constantly giving to others, to doing good deeds, to offering one’s self with enthusiasm. She spoke of her grandfather’s special devotion to the Special Children’s Center and asked others to be a part of this great center. She said that her grandfather said her grandfather promised to always help these children as he never wanted them to be forgotten.
Other people who have made the Special Children’s Center the focus of their time and resources are Harry Adjmi and Richie Dweck. Mr. Adjmi just recently recovered from the coronavirus.
Speaking about his experience with the Special Children’s Center was philanthropist Jeff Sutton, who spoke of how the center helped his daughter Frieda and how he had previously given $1 million to them.
According to the Special Children’s Center web site, “The Special Children’s Center is there for them every step of their arduous journey Their needs are our needs, their pain is our pain. Their triumphs are our triumphs. And they know that we are their extended family- for life.” Photo Credit: Rachel Mishanieh Portraiture
Speaking to the Jewish Voice about his special connection with the Special Children’s Center was Rabbi Shlomo Farhi, the rabbinical leader of the Edmund Safra Synagogue in Manhattan. Rabbi Farhi said, Before he married Jenine, Yaakov Shwekey and I were chavrusas together in yeshiva. I can tell you that both Jenine and Chaya just jumped into this noble venture together and they did it with the highest degree of alacrity and total devotion. Jenine does not take a paycheck. She works harder than a a Fortune 500 executive. She and Chaya put so much into this.”
He added that, “The Kotzker Rebbe once said that one is obligated to do what is necessary. The Special Children’s Center is absolutely necessary and Jenine and Chaya knew this when they were much younger and I applaud them wholeheartedly. In life, one needs to have an unwavering and indomitable faith in Hashem to do the right thing. Just as Nachson ben Aminadav jumped into the Yam Suf and led the way for their people who had just left Egypt after hundreds of years of brutal slavery, we too must summon up that kind of faith and we need only look to Jenine and Chaya as our examples of faith, hard work and total dedication.”
Rabbi Farhi said that the Special Children’s is a ‘first class organization’ and that when they give to these children’s both Jenine and Chaya give in a first class manner. There is nothing too good for these kids and they want them to have everything they need and much more.
“When HaShem gives someone wealth and he sees that they are a vessel with one opening to receive and at the other end they give back generously then HaShem continues to reward them with even more bounty,” he said.
The Special Children’s Center is raising money for a new building on their campus to provide everything that any special child needs for their healthy development and growth. Photo Credit: Rachel Mishanieh Portraiture
One of the programs that the Special Children’s Center provides is the Center House. Center House is a 24/7 loving home away from home for special children. When difficult circumstances at home arise, such as family illness or other extenuating needs, as well as the happy occasion of the birth of a new sibling, the stay can be extended for as long as the family needs. All children who stay at Center House are members of the Center House family, are treated with loving care, and are provided with personal needs such as haircuts, clothing, medication and other basic essentials. Families feel a great sense of security knowing that their loved one is being cared for by their extended family.
A warm and meaningful Shabbat program with home-cooked meals, singing and socialization together with their other Center friends, make it a fully joyful experience.
Families are better able to cope knowing that Center House is always there to provide a home for their special needs child, no matter when or whatever the reason.
Inclusion has shown important benefits not only for the disabled child but also for typically developing children. By participating in activities together, special children learn by modeling and, as a result, show greater gains in learning resulting in higher levels of social play, greater confidence and initiation in interactions and improvements in cognitive, motor and self-help skills.
Internationally renowned singer Yaakov Shwekey
Among the multitude of people who generously donated to the Special Children’s Center was Charles Kushner, the father of White House senior advisor Jared Kushner and friend of Stanley Chera, zt’l. Mr. Kushner donated $100,000 and an anonymous donor gave a matching grant of $500,000 to the center.
The palpable electricity that helped make the evening not only extremely lively but quite enjoyable was supplied by the in incomparable voice of Yaakov Shwekey and a panoply of other singers and entertainers. Singing songs of praise to Hashem, these singers inspired others to grasp the power of giving from the heart and doing the ratzon of the Ribono Shel Olam.
President Donald Trump addresses the annual U.N. General Assembly in New York on Sept. 24, 2019. Credit: UN Photo/Cia Pak.
(AP) President Donald Trump signed legislation Wednesday that seeks to punish China for a crackdown on ethnic minorities, even as a new book by former national security adviser John Bolton said the American leader expressed support for the brutal campaign in a private conversation with his Chinese counterpart.
The Uighur Human Rights Policy Act of 2020 passed with overwhelming support from Republicans and Democrats in Congress. Trump signed it with no ceremony, issuing a statement in which he said a sanctions provision intruded on executive authority and he would regard it as non-binding.
Still, Uighur activists see the approval as an important step. It is the first time any government has sought to punish China for a campaign of mass surveillance and detention of Uighurs and other mostly Muslim ethnic groups in the western Xinjiang region.
“Globally this should be a model for other counties who have been very lukewarm in their response to the ongoing atrocities in the Uighur region,” said Nury Turkel, a Uighur activist and member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom.
The bill, which includes sanctions on Chinese officials directly involved in the crackdown, was expected to further inflame already tense relations with China amid the Trump administration’s criticism of Beijing’s response to the outbreak of the coronavirus.
The signing came as Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was meeting in Hawaii with a senior Chinese diplomat, and as revelations from the soon-to-be-released Bolton book were emerging.
The former national security adviser said Trump asked at a White House Christmas dinner in 2018 why the U.S. wanted to sanction China over the treatment of the Uighurs, who are ethnically and culturally distinct from the country’s majority Han population and are suspected of harboring separatist tendencies.
Bolton wrote that at the opening dinner of the Osaka G-20 meeting in 2019, with only interpreters present, Chinese President Xi Jinping explained the Chinese campaign to Trump.
“According to our interpreter, Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which he thought was exactly the right thing to do,” Bolton wrote.
Bolton said another National Security Council official, Matthew Pottinger, told him Trump had made a similar remark during his 2017 trip to China, “which meant we could cross repression of the Uighurs off our list of possible reasons to sanction China, at least as long as trade negotiations continued.”
Trump issued a statement upon signing the legislation Wednesday that the new law would hold “perpetrators of human rights violations” accountable.
Members of Congress intended the legislation to increase pressure on China over the crackdown in Xinjiang, where authorities have detained more than a million people — from ethnic groups that include Uighurs, Kazakhs and Kyrgyz — in a vast network of detention centers. Many have been subjected to torture and forced labor and deprived of adequate food and medical treatment.
The law would impose sanctions on specific Chinese officials, such as the Communist Party official who oversees government policy in Xinjiang. Trump said in his signing statement that a provision dictating when sanctions could be terminated interfered with executive authority and would be considered non-binding.
Even with the signing statement, Turkel said the measure is “still an effective legal mechanism to address human rights abuses” and he thanked members of Congress for their support.
The legislation also requires the U.S. government to report to Congress on violations of human rights in Xinjiang as well as China’s acquisition of technology used for mass detention and surveillance. It also requires American authorities to look into the pervasive reports of harassment and threats of Uighurs and other Chinese nationals in the United States.
China has publicly brushed away criticism of its crackdown in Xinjiang, which it launched in 2014 as the “Strike Hard Against Violent Extremism” campaign in a vast resource-rich territory whose inhabitants are largely distinct, culturally and ethnically, from the country’s Han Chinese majority.
Elected officials reacted to Google’s threat of demonetization of the Federalist, which would restrict ad revenues to the news media outlet. Sean Davis, co-founder of the Federalist, spoke with Fox News’s Tucker Carlson on Tuesday’s edition of the latter’s eponymous TV program, describing coordination between NBC, Google, and a foreign left-wing organization in Europe.
NBC worked with the Center for Countering Digital Hate, an organization that smears conservative websites — including Breitbart News — while advocating digital boycotts and blacklists against them.
Wait, wait – you want to treat the @FDRLST comment section, which they don’t curate, as THEIR speech but simultaneously say the content you directly host and modify IS NOT your speech under Section 230? Wow, this is getting really interesting https://t.co/QEtpCtssco
Rep. Jim Banks (R-IN) noted Google’s opposition to the Federalist’s characterization of protests, riots, and unrest following the death of George Floyd.
.@Google bans @FDRLST from its ad platform for writing the media had lied about violence & rioting at “largely peaceful” protests.
— Sen. Marsha Blackburn (@MarshaBlackburn) June 16, 2020
Donald Trump Jr., President Donald Trump’s eldest son, called for Republicans to investigate Google as an “out of control monopoly” using its monopoly of the flow of information to advance left-wing politics.
The GOP Senate needs to wake up & IMMEDIATELY subpoena & haul in the CEO of @Google for questioning.
Google is an out of control monopoly, with a leftwing political agenda, engaging in a clear campaign to silence dissent. It’s election interference, full stop.
Breitbart News reported that NBC’s Adele-Momoko Fraser thanked two foreign non-profit organizations for their “collaboration” in urging Google to demonetize the Federalist.
As of this article’s publication, Alphabet Inc., which owns Google, is valued at $985 billion. Its market capitalization is the third-highest of all companies in the world.
El Al has extended its halt on all scheduled passenger flights to and from Israel until July 31, the airline informed the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on Wednesday, with the exception of cargo flights and one-off services.
The previous date announced by El Al earlier this month was June 30th. Some 6,000 of the carrier’s 6,500 staff are also on unpaid leave until July 31.
In its notification to the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange (TASE), El Al said that while Israel continues to bar foreigners from entering and requires Israelis returning from abroad to undergo 14 days self-isolation, it will continue its suspension of flights, according to a report on the Globes web site.
As was reported by Globes, El Al is not hopeful of a resumption in August after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced yesterday that he only plans opening Israel’s borders between Greece and Cyprus on August 1, if the rate of Covid-19 infections does not climb.
El Al is deep in debt and is under pressure to fire at least 2,000 employees, reduce its fleet and the number of destinations it flies to in order to receive a government bailout, as was reported by Globes.
Observers of the airline have stated that service on the carrier has dramatically declined over the years and have attributed the exceptionally poor service to the fact that El Al employees are protected by a very strong union. “There is absolutely no accountability whatsoever amongst El Al employees because they know they are protected as are their salaries. They have no incentive to perform well and to receive positive customer satisfaction comments,” said a company official that spoke on the condition of anonymity.
Others have critiqued the upper level management of the company for its stagnant performance. “I happen to know that El Al has had the same person heading up their public relations department for the last 30 years. This person has single handedly alienated potential vendors and partners, but the real question is, who decides who stays in power at El Al and who decides who does not,” said the official.
Rumors have been circulating for quite some time that El Al is considering bankruptcy as an option to deal with its growing financial woes.
Regular travelers to Israel and other destinations have taken note of the rising stars in El Al’s competition. They have remarked that at one time, El Al had a monopoly on the security aspect of air travel and that passengers could rest assured that they were safe from terrorism or any other mishap that could possibly happen on an international flight, but that is no longer the case.
“Every airline that flies to Israel has extraordinary security and El Al’s does not stand out from the rest,” said the official.
box of Aunt Jemima pancake mix sits on a stovetop Wednesday, June 17, 2020, in Harrison, N.Y. Pepsico is changing the name and marketing image of its Aunt Jemima pancake mix and syrup, according to media reports. A spokeswoman for Pepsico-owned Quaker Oats Company told AdWeek that it recognized Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype and that the 131-year-old name and image would be replaced on products and advertising by the fourth quarter of 2020. Quaker did not say what the name would be changed to. (AP Photo/Courtney Dittmar)
By ALEXANDRA OLSON and MATT OTT (AP)
America’s painful struggles over racism have finally caught up with Aunt Jemima, that ubiquitous fixture served up at breakfast tables for 131 years.
Quaker Oats announced Wednesday that it will retire the Aunt Jemima brand, saying the company recognizes the character’s origins are “based on a racial stereotype.” Indeed, the logo was inspired by 19th century minstrel celebrating the “mammy,” a black woman content to serve her white masters. A former slave, Nancy Green, became the first face of the pancake product in 1890.
Aunt Jemima’s downfall is the latest signal of the powerful cultural moment unleashed by the Black Lives Matter protests, which have spread around the world and prompted companies to rethink their policies, from hiring practices to giving employees off for Juneteenth, the anniversary of the end of the slavery in the U.S.
Other companies said they are reconsidering racial imagery in their branding.
The owner of the Uncle Ben’s rice says the brand will “evolve” in response to concerns about racial stereotyping. Caroline Sherman, a spokeswoman for parent company Mars, said the company is listening to the voices of consumers, especially in the black community.
Geechie Boy Mill, a family-owned operation in South Carolina that makes locally-grown and milled white grits, said it is “listening and revising our overall branding,” though no decisions have been made. Geechie is a dialect spoken mainly by the descendants of African-American slaves who settled on the Ogeechee river in Georgia, according to Merriam-Webster.com. In a statement to The Associated Press, the company said a name change has been under consideration for the past year and discussions have ramped back up given the current climate.
Earlier this year, Land O’Lakes announced that it would no longer use the Native American woman on its packages of butter, cheese and other products since the late 1920s.
But reconsideration of the images also raises questions about why they have endured for so long in the first place, beyond the Civil Rights movement and ensuing decades of protests against discrimination and violence against African-Americans. Brands with ethnic and racial stereotypes still abound, from Nestle’s Eskimo Pie and Miss Chiquita of banana fame, to the ongoing debate over the Washington Redskins football team.
Riché Richardson, an associate professor of African American literature at Cornell University, called for Aunt Jemima’s retirement five years ago in a New York Times opinion piece — part of a wider discussion about Confederate statues and other imagery after the massacre of nine black parishioners at a church in Charleston, South Carolina.
Richardson said Aunt Jemima epitomizes the dark comfort that some Americans take from imagery of black servitude, so normalized that it’s on their box of pancake mix. She said it was problematic that Aunt Jemima is such a ubiquitous symbol of black femininity when there are so many real women who are icons of African American history.
“The question becomes, ‘do we want to hold onto images that hearken back to a past when blacks were servants and expected to know their place?’” Richardson said. “People who are holding onto these symbols are almost suggesting that those are times they are nostalgic about. I don’t think people intend to send that message but at this time, we cannot afford to send mix messages.”
Quaker, which is owned by PepsiCo, said its overhauled pancake mix and syrup will hit shelves by the fourth quarter of 2020. The company will announce the new name at a later date. PepsiCo also announced a five-year, $400 million initiative “to lift up black communities and increase black representation at PepsiCo.”
“We recognize Aunt Jemima’s origins are based on a racial stereotype,” said Kristin Kroepfl of Quaker Foods North America. “While work has been done over the years to update the brand in a manner intended to be appropriate and respectful, we realize those changes are not enough.”
Quaker tried over the years to purge Aunt Jemima of her “mammy” roots, exchanging her kerchief for pearls by 1989. Still, the image was of eager domesticity and her name could not be dissociated from its racist origins.
Aunt Jemima’s years of success as a marketing image made it risky for the company to part with it completely, said Brenda Lee, founding director of the marketing research firm Vision Strategy and Insights.
“It’s a huge deal. They’ve invested quite a bit in establishing that brand with all that goes along with the logo,” Lee said. “The calling to make this change has been around for years and the most they had been willing to do was update her looks, but they were not willing to relinquish the name.”
Lee said the risk calculation for companies is quickly changing, in part because of the Black Lives Matter movement’s effort to draw attention to where black dollars are spent.
Earlier this week, the singer Kirby posted a TikTok video called “How to Make a Non Racist Breakfast” explaining some of the backstory of the Aunt Jemima brand. That video went viral.
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
New York State Assembly
Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
