News and Headlines: In The News, Politics, World News, Commentary/Opinion.
In The News:
Center for American Liberty Sues Gov. Newsom to #OpenCASchools
All students have the right to an education. Students cannot be denied in-person educational instruction based of their zip code.
Plaintiffs represent families from across the state whose rights to a basic education are being denied.
Their children have already suffered academically, socially, and emotionally from stunted online education in the spring, and who rightfully fear compounded injury to academic progress and physical/mental health and development in the year ahead.
Plaintiffs seek to reopen in-person education as an option for children in their districts.
Oklahoma DA slaps teens with terrorism charges, accuses BLM of intimidating officers, protecting criminals
Several dozen protesters conducted a sit-in at the office of Oklahoma County District Attorney David Prater on Monday to demand that he drop the terrorism charges and resign.
But Prater maintained last week that those who incite violence in the streets are “criminals” who “have subverted peaceful protests and impaired the open discussion regarding race in our country.”
“When you employ these tactics for a political purpose, you are a terrorist,” he said.
Seattle police release bodycam footage of protesters throwing projectiles at them
“We are relating this video in an attempt to be transparent and will continue to released videos of significant incidents,” the Seattle Police Department said.
Body camera footage shows one protester using a black umbrella to allegedly obstruct the view on surveillance cameras, police said.
“Officers moved in to escort the person away from the doors and were immediately assaulted,” the department said.
Several officers on bikes positioned themselves outside the precinct as protesters hurled rocks and bottles at them.
Some protesters also threw “large mortar-type fireworks” at officers “from a close range,” which exploded on the concrete in small, fiery bursts, kicking up smoke and injuring officers who were nearby.
Texas high school teaching aide accused of having sex with 3 male students
A former teaching aide in Texas is being accused of engaging in sexual activity with three male students ages 17 and under — including one alleged encounter that happened after she put her young child to bed inside her home.
Ashlyn Faye Bell has been charged with two counts of improper relationship between educator and student and one count of sexual assault of a child stemming from the alleged incidents at her New Boston home last year, according to the Texarkana Gazette.
The 24-year-old worked at Texas High School in Texarkana until May 22 and was arrested by police in late June, the newspaper adds.
California city washes away BLM mural after Trump supporter requests ‘MAGA 2020’ display
Redwood City in San Francisco’s Bay Area quietly scrubbed away its Black Lives Matter mural from a city street after a resident asked to paint a similar “MAGA 2020” on the same road, according to a local news report.
Redwood City resident Dan Pease received permission from city officials to paint “Black Lives Matter” on Broadway Street as part of a Fourth of July public art celebration, according to KPIX 5. City officials even supplied him with the yellow poster paint to make the mural.
Then, local real estate attorney Maria Rutenberg, who reasoned that the street was now a public forum, asked the city if she could paint her own “MAGA 2020” sign on the same street.
Planned Parenthood’s New York chapter disavows founder Margaret Sanger over racist eugenics
The announcement comes after more than 350 current and former staffers at the Manhattan clinic, as well as 800 donors, supporters and volunteers, called Sanger “a racist, white woman.”
An open letter on June 18 to Planned Parenthood of Greater New York, criticized the organization as “steeped in white supremacy,” the Washington Times reports.
For decades, pro-life activists pointed out Sanger’s racism, but in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement, Planned Parenthood said it is addressing the problem.
Admitted pedophile Cary Smith checks into Garden Grove motel
An admitted pedophile described by psychologists as an imminent danger to society arrived in Garden Grove on Monday, July 20, and is being monitored by police following his release from two decades of involuntary care at a state mental hospital.
Local authorities dispatched a surveillance team as soon as they learned that Cary Jay Smith, 59, was staying at a motel in the city, Garden Grove Police Department officials said in a news release.
They will continue to keep tabs on Smith, who has previously written about having sex with minors and referred to himself as “Mr. RTK,” shorthand for rape, torture and kill.
Smith is not required to register as a sex offender, and is not on any formal supervised release.
However, law enforcement agencies have been alerting residents to his whereabouts, and a petition has been circulating in hopes of adding him to the Megan’s Law database.
Body found in Minneapolis pawnshop that was torched in George Floyd protests
Investigators were acting on a tip when they found the man’s body in the rubble of Max It Pawn on East Lake Street in south Minneapolis, police spokesman John Elder told the Star Tribune.
“The body appears to have suffered thermal injury and we do have somebody charged with setting fire to that place,” Elder told the paper.
Montez Terrill Lee, 25, of Rochester, Minn., was hit with a federal arson charge last month in connection with that blaze.
Michigan teacher says he was fired for supporting Trump, president’s push to reopen schools
Justin Kucera, a teacher and varsity baseball coach at Walled Lake school district, said administrators summoned him to a meeting after he responded to a Trump speech in which he called for school to reopen and after the president tweeted “SCHOOLS MUST OPEN IN THE FALL.”
Kucera retweeted in response, “I’m done being silent. @RealDonaldTrump is our president.”
Kucera told the Washington Free Beacon the Walled Lake Western principal and district superintendent gave him an ultimatum: be fired or resign.
Feds indict two Chinese nationals for allegedly trying to hack, steal coronavirus research
Li Xiaoyu, 34, and Dong Jiazhi, 31, were charged with 11 counts in connection with hacking into the computer systems of hundreds of businesses, government offices, Chinese Communist Party dissidents, members of the clergy and human rights activists in the United States, Hong Kong, and mainland China.
Their activities have reportedly been taking place over the span of decade, for the benefit of the Chinese government.
The hacking team also extorted cryptocurrency from individuals and targeted the tech industries of Australia, Belgium, Germany, Japan, Lithuania, Spain, South Korea, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
Tucker Carlson: NY Times Threatening to Reveal Where I Live — ‘To Hurt Us, to Injure My Wife and Kids ‘
“Last week, The New York Times began working on a story about where my family and I live,” he said. “As a matter of journalism, there is no conceivable justification for a story like that.
The paper is not alleging we’ve done anything wrong, and we haven’t. We pay our taxes. We like our neighbors. We’ve never had a dispute with anyone.
So why is The New York Times doing a story on the location of my family’s house? Well, you know why.
To hurt us, to injure my wife and kids so that I will shut up and stop disagreeing with them.”
Carlson reminded viewers that nearly two years ago, another such incident occurred when he was residing in Washington, D.C. An angry mob showed up at his home, forcing his wife to hide while the angry mob aligned with Antifa vandalized his home.
Tucker responds to intrusive reporting by New York Times
Tucker: Last week, the New York Times began working on a story about where my family and I live.
North Carolina teachers’ unions demand support for undocumented immigrants, more funding to reopen schools
Two North Carolina teachers’ unions are calling on state officials to meet certain demands before schools reopen amid the COVID-19 outbreak.
Brooke Medina, director of communications for the Civitas Institute, a Raleigh-based nonprofit policy organization, said NCAE is using the pandemic to push its political views.
“Children should not be held hostage to the NCAE’s political agenda, and the money should follow the students,” she said.
Pat Bryan, a spokesman for Berger, R-Rockingham, also believes NCAE’s stance is politically motivated, adding North Carolina schools are in a better position than most states.
Politics:
President Trump Holds a Press Conference 7/21/20
Tuesday, July 21, 2020: President Donald J. Trump holds a press conference from the James S. Brady White House Press Briefing room.
Judicial Watch Sues FBI, DOJ, DNI for Records On Obama WH Meeting On Flynn
“Obama’s infamous January 5, 2017, Oval Office meeting is a key moment in the corrupt effort to smear and spy on President Trump and target General Flynn with a malicious prosecution,” said Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton in a press release.
“Rather than delay and stonewall, it is urgent the FBI, DOJ, ODNI release all records about this malicious, seditious conspiracy.”
During that meeting in the White House then Obama, Rice, former Vice President Joe Biden, Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, FBI Director James Comey, CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper allegedly discussed Flynn, as well as the dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele.
Years long investigations by Congress, the DOJ Inspector General and journalists revealed that Steele’s dossier was filled with false information, as well as disinformation planted by Russia’s GRU to sow chaos in the United States 2016 election.
Progressive Cities In Utter Chaos, What Happens Next? | Dave Rubin | POLITICS | Rubin Report
Commentary/Opinion:
Dave Rubin of The Rubin Report talks to Sean Hannity about progressive cities’ descent into civil unrest.
While “defund the police” has become a rallying cry on the left, America’s major liberal cities struggle with endless riots, protests, and increased violence.
Should cities like New York City, Portland and Seattle be left to their Democratic mayors like Ted Wheeler and Bill de Blasio to deal with or should President Trump use federal troops to quell the violence?
Dave Rubin gives thoughts on what should be done to his hometown of New York City.
Oregon Dem: Portland Not Out of Control, Some People ‘Have Strong Feelings’
“Portland, Oregon, is not out of control. To be sure there are some people who have strong feelings,” Blumenauer, who represents most of Portland in Oregon’s third congressional distict, said.
“There are some who have done things that are inappropriate and unlawful, but that is the challenge of our local officials and our state officials to manage it, not having somebody unwelcome, uninvited, and unprepared coming in to take this difficult situation and make it worse.”
This past weekend, rioters barricaded federal officers inside the Hatfield federal courthouse and proceeded to launch fireworks toward the building. They also set fire to a Portland police union building.
Delaware Beer Distributor: I Wore a Wire to Probe Biden’s Fundraising
Tigani was in trouble. While serving as a bundler for Biden’s aborted 2008 presidential campaign, he had reimbursed his employees for contributions made in their names, a well-worn tactic for circumventing campaign-finance laws.
What happened between that day and Tigani’s 2012 sentencing has never before been revealed:
He would wear a wire for the FBI and record people close to the then-vice president, seeking, he said, to confirm his belief that they knew of his reimbursements and investigate whether they, or others close to Biden, engaged in any quid pro quo deals with donors.
In interviews with POLITICO, Tigani, now 49, agreed to share the details of his informant work for the first time, in part, he said, because he felt he was left out to dry by the Bidens when revelations about his illegal fundraising for both Joe and son Beau, along with other top officials, placed him at the center of a Delaware political scandal a decade ago.
Tigani’s saga provides insight into the political culture from which Biden emerged, the chummy “Delaware Way.”
Trump signs order to prevent illegal immigrants from being counted in redrawing of voting districts
A White House official said it clarifies that those in the country illegally would not be included for the redrawing process — known as apportionment — of congressional districts after the census.
Census counts are used to determine the allocation of seats in the House of Representatives, the number of electors in the Electoral College and hundreds of billion dollars of federal spending.
“Excluding illegal aliens for the purpose of apportionment reflects a better understanding of our Constitution and democratic principles,” the official said.
The order says that the Constitution “does not specifically define which persons must be included in the apportionment base.”
Joe Biden Wants Schools to Teach About ‘Islamic Faith’
“Look, one of the things I think is important, I wish — I wish we taught more in our schools about the Islamic faith.
I wish we talked about all the great confessional faiths. It’s one of the great confessional faiths.
And what people don’t realize is — one of my avocations is theology — don’t realize is we all come from the same root here in terms of our fundamental basic beliefs,” he said.
Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder arrested in $60 million bribery case
CINCINNATI – Federal officials arrested Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and four others on Tuesday morning in connection with a $60 million bribery case.
Also arrested, according to the source: Neil Clark from Grant Street Consultants in Columbus; former Ohio Republican Party chair and consultant Matthew Borges; Juan Cespedes, co-founder of The Oxley Group in Columbus; and Jeffrey Longstreth, adviser to Householder.
A spokeswoman for DeVillers said an Ohio official and associates were charged in the case, which she described as a “public corruption racketeering conspiracy involving $60 million.
Christopher Steele Text Messages Revealed At First Day Of Dossier Defamation Trial
In another message from early 2017, Steele urged David Kramer, an associate of Sen. John McCain’s, not to tell reporters that Steele had been a source for another journalist on a dossier-related story.
And in a message weeks earlier, Steele told Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, that McCain was “compromised” by being given a copy of the dossier.
“Sir Andrew Wood and Mr. Steele telephone Mr Talbott on 2nd or 3rd November 2016, and Mr Talbott asks for copies of the memoranda to discuss with John Kerry and other officials at the State Department,” Caldecott said.
Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Steele on behalf of the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, provided the dossier to Talbott, according to the lawyer.
World News:
China to Expand Naval Fleet With Two New Aircraft Carriers
The advanced Type 002 carrier is in the final stages of development, with Beijing hoping it will be seaworthy by the end of next year.
Equipped with “the world’s most advanced” Electromagnetic Aircraft Launch System, the ship will likely measure up with the U.S. Navy’s state-of-the-art Gerald R. Ford-class aircraft carrier.
Modernizing the People’s Liberation Army Navy has long been a key feature of the Xi regime’s “Chinese Dream” of a strengthened role in world politics.
China aims to have six aircraft battle groups ready for cruise by 2035.
Ukraine hostage crisis: Police in Lutsk end stand-off
The man had originally been holding about 20 hostages but released three shortly before officers moved in.
All the hostages are said to be unharmed.
The man has been named by police as Maksym Kryvosh, 44, who has previous convictions.
Police earlier said they had come under fire and a grenade was thrown, although it did not explode.
UN official, in recording, talks of getting US ‘off the UN’s back,’ preventing cuts with whistleblower system
Emma Reilly, a United Nations whistleblower who has faced retaliation for reporting illegal practices that she said put the lives of activists and their families in danger at the U.N. Human Rights office, has called on Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to implement a law that calls for the U.S. to defund the U.N. by 15 percent for noncompliance of its whistleblower protection policy.
Her letter includes a transcript of an undercover recording, which has been reviewed and verified by Fox News, where the head of U.N. investigations talks about cutting down investigative times while keeping the U.S. from complaining.
Emma Reilly is fighting to keep her job at the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) in Switzerland.
She said China had asked that her office hand over names of Chinese dissidents who were coming to the U.N. Human Rights Council beginning in 2013.
Afghan teen wielding an AK-47 kills two Taliban fighters after parents were murdered: officials
The incident involving Qamar Gul, who is around 15 years old, happened last week in Ghor province, according to the AFP.
A local police chief told the news agency that the Taliban was after her father – a village chief and supporter of the Afghan government – and ended up dragging him and his wife outside of Gul’s home before killing them.
“Qamar Gul, who was inside the house, took an AK-47 gun the family had and first shot dead the two Taliban fighters who killed her parents, and then injured a few others,” Habiburahman Malekzada, the police official, told the AFP.
China ‘orders Christians to destroy crosses on their churches and take down images of Jesus in intensifying crackdown on religion’
Authorities have recently destroyed religious symbols by force in churches in multiple provinces, including Anhui, Jiangsu, Hebei and Zhejiang, according to US-based news site Radio Free Asia.
Furthermore, officials of Shanxi, another region, demanded religious images be taken down and replaced with pictures of Communist leaders at the homes of impoverished believers, said independent outlet Bitter Winter.
Officials in charge of religious affairs in Huainan in the eastern province of Anhui allegedly barged into the local Shiwan Christ Church to dismantle its cross on Saturday and Sunday.
The officials had required the church to take down its cross a week earlier, reported Radio Free Asia citing local sources.
Exclusive Video: BLM Activist Says White Men Are ‘The Common Enemy’, ‘We Need to Get Rid of Them’
One of the speakers said that to understand the movement, it is important to understand the tenants of the left-wing sociological concept of “intersectionality”.
“You can’t talk about education, and you can’t talk about black issues, and LGBT issues, and exclude them as if they’re some individual issue; you need to be looking at this using intersectionality,” he said in a Breitbart London exclusive video.
The speaker said that intersectionality “means recognising that there is one common enemy: the white man. The systems that they use are capitalism, patriarchy, and fascism. They were created and perpetuated by white men, for white men, in the interests of white men.”
Good Guy With a Car: ‘Allah hu Akbar’ Attack Stopped After Passer-By Runs Gunman Over
The witnesses say the man yelled “Allah hu Akbar!” and came at them with a knife and rifle.
But he was quickly hit by a man driving a car, who is said to have acted out of instinct to stop the armed attacker, Le Parisien reports.
“We thought we were going to die. If we hadn’t intervened ourselves, we don’t know what could have happened,” one of the witnesses told the newspaper.
The man had already been seen, dressed in camouflage, in the area twice before. He had also threatened a party guest with a sabre at around 6 am.
Commentary/Opinion:
Portland Goes To Hell: The Death Of An American City
The city has been the locus of nonstop violent protests for 51 days and counting. And really, calling them protests is incorrect:
They are acts of outright rebellion, with many participants openly calling for the dismantling of the United States.
Who’s behind all this? Antifa and Black Lives Matter, of course. But they aren’t the only ones. There are lots of other leftists of various affiliations agitating the crowds.
One in particular who’s come to our attention is a so-called organizer of the violent protests.
She describes herself in a viral Twitter video: “My name is Lilith Sinclair, I’m an Afro-Indigenous non-binary local organizer here in Portland, organizing for the abolition of not just the militarized police state but also the United States as we know it.”
The fevered rhetoric by the left predictably has engendered violence, which has been met with an equally predictable response by the federal government to protect its property, buildings and, most of all, employees.
Five Battles We Cannot Afford to Lose
International best-selling author, Dr Vernon Coleman MB ChB DSc FRSA, describes how we can fight against masks, media lies, lockdowns, social distancing and the disappearance of cash.