The Media’s Double Standard on States’ Different Approaches to COVID-19

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America’s economy is in the early stages of “reopening” after dealing with the coronavirus pandemic for months. It’s a process that won’t be easy, simple, or without hiccups.

Meanwhile, many in the mainstream media are being true to form in making it a game of ensuring conservatives and Republicans look like reckless, heartless monsters for wanting to reopen the economy sooner rather than later.

That might sound like an exaggeration, but it’s hard to come to any other conclusion when viewing the media’s coverage of the various states and their divergent approaches to controlling the coronavirus and plans for reopening their economies.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Consider, for example, how the media have treated Georgia, with its Republican governor, Brian Kemp, and Colorado, with its Democrat governor, Jared Polis. Both states have moved forward with aggressive reopening plans, but only one has received a torrent of criticism from legacy media outlets.

Can you guess which one?

Washington Post columnist Dana Milbank wrote a piece in April that carried the headline, “Georgia leads the race to become America’s No. 1 Death Destination.”

“Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp is proposing to offer a new nonstop service to the Great Beyond,” he wrote. “He has a bold plan to turn his state into the [emphasis in original] place to die.”

And Milbank wasn’t alone. Countless other articles, both straight news stories and commentaries, were published suggesting pretty much the same thing. One writer in the Atlantic called Georgia’s approach an “experiment in human sacrifice.”

But there was hardly any criticism directed at Polis and Colorado for embracing a similar reopening plan.

But perhaps the most egregious example of the phenomenon is the disparity in the treatment of Florida versus New York.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has been regularly attacked by many in the media for his state’s initial approach to the coronavirus pandemic and for its early reopening, while New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, has been widely praised.

“The Sunshine State has a bigger population than New York and arguably is just as international. It has a disproportionately vulnerable and older population. Yet Florida’s COVID-19 deaths per capita are less than one-tenth of New York’s,” noted an editorial in the Washington Examiner. “DeSantis’s state has not only avoided the fate of Italy, but it has done better than Germany, Denmark, and other European countries that have received lavish praise for limiting the human cost of the coronavirus.”

My colleague, Fred Lucas, reported Monday on the starkly different outcomes in New York and Florida.

“New York has had about 348,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 28,000 deaths as of May 17, according to the [Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)],” Lucas wrote. “Florida, meanwhile, had about 46,000 cases and 2,000 deaths. The population of New York state is 19.5 million, while Florida is home to 21.5 million.”

In some respects, the circumstances that led to the outcomes in those states might be comparing apples and oranges, but in terms of population, as Lucas noted, Florida and New York are comparable in size.

While Cuomo has often struck the right tone and certainly dealt with a massive challenge as New York was rocked by COVID-19, his leadership and decisions have been far from perfect.

There was a delay in shutting down the New York City subway system for a deep cleaning and nightly sterilizations, which could have occurred much sooner. Perhaps even more consequentially for the state’s COVID-19 fatality rates, Cuomo’s administration forced nursing homes to take in sick coronavirus patients, which led to many deaths and furthered the spread of the pandemic.

Cuomo has partially admitted to this mistake, but one does wonder whether, if he were the governor of another state and a member of another party, we would be seeing articles calling him unfit to lead the state.

It should be noted, too, that while DeSantis took heavy criticism for Florida’s open beaches, he also actually took early steps to ensure that sick coronavirus patients did not return to nursing homes, where there were far more vulnerable populations.

DeSantis laid out his approach to the coronavirus pandemic in a superb interview with National Review’s Rich Lowry, in which he explained how he gave counties latitude to pursue the policies that work best for their specific conditions.

“I said from the beginning,” DeSantis said in the interview, “we’re a big, diverse state. The epidemic is not going to affect this state uniformly, and what’s appropriate in Miami and Broward may not be appropriate for Jacksonville or the Panhandle. And that’s pretty much the way we did it.”

On Wednesday, DeSantis torched the mainstream media over their coverage of his approach to the coronavirus pandemic and the positive data coming out of his state.

“You’ve got a lot of people in your profession who waxed poetically for weeks and weeks about how Florida was going to be just like New York,” he told reporters.

Well said.

Though American government has centralized dramatically over the past century, our system continues to retain a fair amount of federalism. States around the country have pursued their own policies, and that’s a good aspect of our system.

After all, the geography, population, and circumstances of, say, Wyoming, are far different from those of New York or California. It would make sense that states would have different strategies with respect to how they seek to contain the pandemic and how they approach their reopening.

Unfortunately, all too many in the media want to make this complicated process a mindless game of blaming conservatives and Republicans for bad things that happen and praising Democrats and progressives for things that go well (or simply remain silent when they don’t).

It would be nice if our national media committed to an evenhanded treatment of the pandemic and the states’ divergent plans for reopening, but that appears to be too much to ask for.

COMMENTARY BY

Jarrett Stepman

Jarrett Stepman is a contributor to The Daily Signal and co-host of The Right Side of History podcast. Send an email to Jarrett. He is also the author of the new book, “The War on History: The Conspiracy to Rewrite America’s Past.” Twitter: .

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Legislators, Pro-life Advocates Denounce Planned Parenthood Receiving $80 Million in Coronavirus Funding

Scientists Are Studying Hydroxychloroquine as a Preventative Drug for COVID-19

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Welcome to the Fourth Reich

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Shortly after World War II ended, Americans were in shock as the horrors of the Holocaust were revealed. But they also took comfort from the fact that nothing like that could ever happen here. Or could it?

The plethora of new and ever-changing dictatorial edicts in many states today strikes me as eerily reminiscent of the Nazi’s series of escalating mandates that targeted the Jewish population. However, in our own case, we’re all the targets.

Consider the new piece of legislation proposed by congressional Democrat Bobby Rush, H.R. 6666. If you’ve read the Bible, you may blanch at the number of this bill, as well as at its content.

The bill calls for the creation of a civilian army of “contact tracers” to spy on American citizens, to determine whether any of us test positive for Covid-19—a flu virus so mild that most people have no idea they’ve contracted it. However, it can provoke serious, life-threatening illness in people in their 80s and 90s, especially those in nursing homes—and one would want to make sure anyone entering a nursing home is virus-free.

But that’s as far as this insane idea should go.

In case you needed another tip-off that the tracing program is good for the bad guys and bad for the rest of us: Bill Gates, George Soros, the Clintons, Governors Cuomo and Newsom, among others, are pushing it as hard as they can. A play-along Health Department official in Ventura County, while singing the praises of this unprecedented and astonishingly creepy plan, let the cat out of the bag: the “contact tracers” will come to your home, insist on testing you and your family, and may also insist on carting off any person who tests positive if you have “only one bathroom” in your home. As Dave Barry was wont to say, I am not making this up. The state could conceivably abscond with your 6-year-old child, or your spouse, taking them to a “safe” place for “quarantine.”

Never mind that in America, no one has the right to enter your home without your permission, unless he has a warrant—and no warrant is to be issued without “probable cause.” So the question comes down to this: are we, in fact, still in America?

This Stasi-style spying program, guaranteed to create informers, accusers, and snitches-in–waiting, is a thinly veiled persecution of our citizens. The crime? Being suspected of having been exposed to someone who was exposed to someone else who may possibly have had a cold—I mean virus. Here’s the kicker: any healthy person, even one with natural antibodies to Covid-19, and/or a robust immune system that could easily fight the virus off, is now at the mercy of the State, since he or she might “test positive.” Then all bets are off.

The devil, as usual, is in the details: the “best test,” the PCR, is not even a diagnostic test! Its usefulness, according to the Nobel Laureate Kary Mullis, who invented it, is restricted to research. Maybe that’s why it’s producing 80% false positives, as noted in a recent Chinese study. Yet your future may depend on a toss of the PCR dice.

Now let’s take a big step back: isn’t “herd immunity” what ends flu epidemics? Don’t we want people under 65 to get the virus, which is often asymptomatic, so we reach herd immunity and the virus peters out? In other words, isn’t testing positive a good thing? Or have the “experts” once again changed the narrative…

First it was all about “flattening the curve”—but the catastrophic “curve” turned out to be a mirage, projected by the UK’s disgraced Neil Ferguson and his Imperial College group’s wacko computer modeling. Well, anyone can make a mistake, right? Then it was our desperate need for ventilators—but we’ve since learned that ventilators are the wrong treatment for serious cases and tend to damage patients’ lungs, raising mortality rates rather than saving patients’ lives.

And why oh why must we continue to hear from the relentless Dr. Fauci, who singlehandedly depresses an entire nation, and when challenged, masterfully weasels out of his own public statements. Isn’t it about time for President Trump to snap out of the Faucian trance he seems to be in? No, Mr. President, we don’t need millions of dicey tests any more than we needed huge hospital ships or millions of ventilators for the millions of emergency Covid-patients who never materialized. And we especially don’t need a Fauci-touted, Bill Gates-funded vaccine. Thanks anyway. And whoever is advising you to green-light all this—fire ‘em!

If we’d done what we always do when a new viral epidemic strikes—that is, go on with our lives as usual—no masks, no “social distancing,” and no draconian “lockdowns,” renowned epidemiologist Dr. Knut Wittkowski says the virus would have likely peaked and ended within four weeks due to natural herd immunity. Yes, four weeks! Surely it must be clear to everyone by now that the virus is the least of our worries.

In fact, a far greater worry may commence as the “tracing” efforts begin. Imagine living in dread that anyone you meet may name you as a “contact” if they test positive. How’s that for restoring faith in community and normal social interaction?

Although PCR testing is useless for diagnosing Covid-19, it’s assuredly a powerful tool for terrorizing the public—especially if it is used as the basis to lock up those who defy the State. (And by “State” I do not mean the Trump administration, but the Deep State and assorted America-hating, globalist, One World Government/New World Order types.) Think for a moment how easy it would be, in this era of high-tech surveillance, for the powers-that-be to single out those they view as potential troublemakers: i.e., conservatives, patriots, Christians, NRA members, Republicans, Jews, libertarians, and truth-tellers of all stripes. Lo and behold, they all test “positive!”

And as we’ve seen with the ever-changing diktats from on high, the “only one bathroom” rationale may quickly morph into “only one kitchen,” etc., thus enabling the state to round up its targeted enemies for lengthy “quarantine”—perhaps in those FEMA camps citizen journalists have been warning us about for years. Just imagine the interrogations: Are you now or have you ever been infected with Covid-19? Guilty as charged. Now rat on your friends.

In a recent video conference, Bill Clinton and Gavin Newsom, with barely concealed glee, congratulated each other on their enthusiastic support for unleashing an army of newly minted Brownshirts, aka “contact tracers,” to hound American citizens and coerce us into being “tested.” Let me remind you that, in addition to their being worthless diagnostically, thousands of these tests given only a month or so ago were actually contaminated with the virus! No wonder so many were testing positive and getting sick! Accidents do happen.

Governor Newsom’s statement from that video is worth quoting: “The predicate for getting back to some semblance of normalcy is our ability to identify individuals through testing, to be able to trace their contacts, to isolate individuals that either have been exposed, or quarantine people that have tested positive. And that’s just going to require an army of folks, and the capacity of consideration from individuals to allow for their privacy to be impacted by that kind of acuity of attention based upon where they’ve been and who they’ve talked to.”

Gotta love “capacity of consideration” and “that kind of acuity of attention.” These phrases take Orwellian doublespeak to a whole new level. Bravo, Gavin! Let’s translate this poisonous prose into English: Gruesome Newsom, the self-appointed dictator of California, plans to send an army of cretins and thugs out to barge into your homes, to spit upon your privacy, your rights, your families, and your friends, or else. I doubt, however, that the tracers will be focusing said “acuity of attention” on the Newsom family.

Of course if this horrifically oppressive system were put into place, in spite of being utterly unconstitutional and an affront to the dignity, privacy, and independence of the American people, everyone would quickly come to loathe and fear it.

The answer? Ah, ask Mr. Gates.

Just a simple jab in the hand or arm. A Gates-funded, Fauci-backed, rushed-to-market, highly lucrative experimental vaccine! But don’t forget the Part B: Gates’ other dream come true: ID2020. That’s the end game. Get the vaccine and the chip permanently installed in your body, and you become chattel owned by the globalist elites who are behind this entire satanic program for which the virus was merely the ruse chosen to set it all in motion. Why now? Because they knew they had no one to beat Trump in November, and four more years of prosperity and nationalism might just derail their glorious, globalist New World Dystopia plan for good.

Think this can’t happen?

Think we’re still in America?

Think we should succumb to the social distancing—meaning no assembling for protests or for prayer, let alone for weddings, funerals, or summer barbecues? Wanna keep wearing masks as if we were living in a hospital instead of a country? Think we should just shrug our shoulders and accept the tracking, tracing, testing, sheltering in place, lockdowns, shutdowns, mandatory vaccinations, and mandatory ID2020—coincidentally reminiscent of the biblical “Mark of the Beast,” without which “no man may buy or sell”?

Are you figuring out why liberty matters?

It’s looking more and more like some of the wild conspiracy theories circulating on the Web for decades may be true. We’re surely at a tipping point, teetering on the edge of the totalitarian abyss. Yanking the country back from that cliff is our only hope. We rescue our nation, or we lose it.

As to the question so often asked after WWII: Can it happen here? We have already lived part way into the answer. The difference is that in our case, there’s no safe haven for us to flee to. America is the last stop.

© Cherie Zaslawsky

Mexico Demands Explanation for Obama-era Gun-walking Scandal

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Nearly a decade has passed since the public first learned of the botched Obama-era gunwalking scandal Operation Fast and Furious. These days, Barack Obama spends his time collecting money from a lucrative Netflix contract, shuffling between lavish homes in Washington, D.C. and on Martha’s Vineyard, and occasionally offering his tepid support for presumptive democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden. Former Attorney General Eric Holder enjoys a profitable position as a “rainmaker” at high-powered D.C. law firm Covington. Meanwhile, those who lost loved ones to the Obama Department of Justice’s misguided gun trafficking scheme are still searching for answers and accountability.

On Friday May 8, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador​shared his intent to demand that the U.S. provide Mexico with further information on Operation Fast and Furious. According to Reuters, the failed operation has once again come to the forefront of Mexican politics “amid a debate over historic U.S.-Mexico cooperation on security.” Speaking of the gunwalking scheme at a news conference, Obrador said, ​”How could this be? A government that invades in this way, that flagrantly violates sovereignty, international laws​.”

The following Monday, Mexico Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard announced in a video message that the country had sent a diplomatic note to the U.S. Embassy seeking information on Operation Fast and Furious. The minister made clear who he wanted information on. Reuters reported that “In the video, Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard cited former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder as saying Mexican authorities knew about the 2009-2011 scheme known as ‘Fast and Furious’​” and that “It was the first time Ebrard or President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador had made direct reference by name to a key U.S. figure connected to the program since the issue resurfaced in Mexico a week ago.”

Operation Fast and Furious was largely run out of the Tucson and Phoenix ATF field offices. Agents would allow suspected illegal purchases of firearms by gun traffickers to take place and then track the guns with the purported goal of uncovering the workings of a larger criminal organization for which these individuals were purchasing firearms. In some cases, concerned FFLs were instructed by ATF to go forward with suspicious transactions. Rather than interdicting these firearms, ATF permitted the guns to flow into Mexico.

On December 14, 2010, Border Patrol Agent Brian Terry was shot to death in a gunfight with armed criminals near the Mexican border. Following the incident, firearms used by the criminals were traced to Operation Fast and Furious. Subsequently, whistleblower ATF Agent John Dodson, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), intrepid gun rights supporters, and CBS journalist Sharyl Attkisson helped bring the truth of what happened to the public. Illustrating the opacity of the Obama DOJ, the DOJ inspector general was forced to open an investigation into whether the government had retaliated against Dodson after he came forward with information on the botched gunwalking scheme.

Word of the failed operation struck a nerve with gun rights advocates. Around the same time as the operation was taking place, American gun rights were being blamed by the Obama Administration for Mexico’s crime problem.

In March 2009, then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton scolded Americans, stating, “Our inability to prevent weapons from being illegally smuggled across the border to arm these criminals causes the deaths of police officers, soldiers and civilians.”​In an interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell that same month, Clinton endorsed a ban on commonly owned semi-automatics firearms. Mitchell brought up the problem of Mexican violence and a potential “assault weapons” ban, to which Clinton responded “I think these assault weapons, these military style weapons don’t belong on any one’s street.”

By its conclusion, the failed operation involved as many as 2,000 firearms. The firearms have been found at numerous crime scenes in Mexico. As of 2016, Operation Fast and Furious firearms were linked to at least 69 killings. That same year, CBS news reported that one of the firearms was found at the hideout of notorious Mexican drug lord Joaquin “el Chapo” Guzman.

In 2012, the U.S. House of Representatives voted 255-67 to hold then-Attorney General Eric Holder in contempt of Congress for failing to hand over requested documents related to Operation Fast and Furious.

Mexico’s request for further information on Operation Fast and Furious is understandable, given the Obama administration’s extensive efforts to conceal the details of the gunwalking scheme.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Playing Pandemic Politics in New Mexico

Everytown Ignores Its Own Data to Get Attention

Father Pfleger’s Selective Reasoning

EDITORS NOTE: This NRA-ILA column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The ACLU Loses Its Way

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The American Civil Liberties Union used to be a great institution.

Founded in January 1920, the ACLU sought to become, in its own words, “the nation’s premier defender of the rights enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.” Over the decades, the organization fought for civil liberties even when no one else would.

The ACLU fought against the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. It fought against racial segregation. And it fought for the free speech rights of students protesting the Vietnam War.

The ACLU’s commitment to the Constitution defied politics, and it defended even the most unpopular people if its unshakable principles demanded it.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

For example, the American Civil Liberties Union defended the First Amendment rights of a Ku Klux Klan leader, a group of Nazis, and members of the notorious Westboro Baptist Church because of its “unwavering commitment to principle.”

Over its 100-year history, the ACLU has—to its credit—vexed both sides of the political aisle because it refused to compromise the principles of its “civil libertarianism.”

Sadly, that is no longer the case. In recent years, the group has retreated from its principles when they clash with trendy left-wing priorities.

By now, the ACLU’s retreat from the First Amendment is well documented. It will not defend the First Amendment rights of pro-life pregnancy centers or small religious businesses. It no longer defends religious freedom, although it once did. And in a leaked internal memo, the ACLU takes the position that free speech denigrating “marginalized groups” should not be defended.

Sadder yet, however, is the ACLU’s recent abandonment of the right to due process. For a group founded to help the powerless, this is a repudiation of its founding ideals.

Consider the new Title IX rules designed to restore the due process rights of those accused of sexual harassment on college campuses. The rules are meant to restore protections that were erased under the Obama regime.

Under the old rules (which remain in effect until August), colleges may expel students based on nothing more than the word of their accuser or even the word of a third party who witnessed nothing. The accused often is denied the right to cross examine, the right to counsel, the right to see the evidence against him or her, and the right to present exculpatory evidence.

It’s so bad that in one case, after two students got drunk and had sex, one of them rushed to report his sexual partner to the Title IX officer simply because he was worried that she would report him first.  Because he got there first, she was found guilty of sexual assault and suspended.

The new rules restore some due process protections. The American Civil Liberties Union should be happy. In fact, the ACLU ought to have been fighting for them.

After all, it was only two years ago that the ACLU opposed a victims’ rights bill because it would “undermin[e] a bedrock principle of our legal system—the presumption of innocence.”

Instead, the ACLU is suing to block the new rules. It claims that they “dramatically undermine students’ civil rights.”

The ACLU’s logic is as backward as are its priorities.

The organization says it is concerned that the new rules—in particular a requirement that victims report assaults to a Title IX official before an investigation may begin—would “inflict significant harm on students who experience sexual harassment or assault.”

The lawsuit does not clearly explain why that is so, but asserts that the new rules would interfere with students’ right to “equal educational opportunities,” especially for students of color, LGBTQ students, and other minority groups.

Never mind that under the old rules men of color are accused and suspended or expelled with alarming frequency.

There is no way for the ACLU to explain its decision to fight against due process, except that it has abandoned its principles to advance the trendy partisan agenda of the day.

If the American Civil Liberties Union means to become a litigation boutique for such causes, so be it. But it should be prepared to surrender the goodwill that its long and storied history of integrity has earned it.

COMMENTARY BY

GianCarlo Canaparo

GianCarlo Canaparo is a legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

For Dems to Succeed, Americans Must Fail — Inside the Left’s morbid agenda to destroy America’s middle class.

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Many claim that the Democrats want open borders to import millions of new voters who will likely vote for Democrats.

Undeniably this is an accurate statement but only partially addresses the strategy behind the Democrats’ push for open borders and an end to immigration law enforcement as optimized by the creation of “Sanctuary Cities” and Sanctuary States and immigration mayhem that ensues.

Today’s Democrats bear no resemblance to the Democrats of the past.  Today’s Radical Democrats are hell-bent on seizing permanent political power at the expense of America and Americans.

Traditional Democrats supported American workers and addressed their concerns while Republicans backed up business owners’ goals of fewer regulations and greater profits.  This balance made sense and helped Americans and America to prosper.

My dad used to say that the easiest way to turn capitalists into communists is to take away their money.  Flooding America with millions of Third World workers who bring Third World expectations of Third World wages and working conditions results in the loss of jobs by millions of American and lawful immigrant workers and the suppression of wages for all workers.

Homeless rates soar as the cost of housing increases as more foreigners come to the United States and seek housing.  The increased demand for apartments drives up the price of housing even as jobs are lost and wages fail to keep up with increased costs of housing.

As more Americans lose their jobs and the ability to support themselves and their families- even if they don’t lose their jobs, they will be drawn to the Democratic Party candidates who offer to provide Americans and aliens alike with economic assistance that they desperately need to survive.

Consider the May 12, 2020 news report published by PJ Media, Democrats’ $3 Trillion Bill Would Include a Massive Gift…to Communist China.

There are many elements of the proposed emergency funding bill concocted by Nancy “Let them eat ice cream” Pelosi and her fellow travelers of the Radical Democratic Party that have absolutely nothing to do with assisting struggling Americans and small businesses that were ordered shuttered because of the Coronavirus Pandemic that has sickened millions and has killed an estimated 80,000 Americans, thus far.  One of the most egregious components of this bill has been ignored by the media that is addressed by PJ Media.

Here is the relevant excerpt:

They’ve also prioritized China’s economy in this one. The bill includes a provision that waives Chapter 83 of title 41, United States Code. What’s that?

Chapter 83 of title 41, United States Code, shall not apply with respect to purchases made in response to the emergency declared by the President on March 13, 2020, under section 501 of the Robert T. Stafford Disaster Relief and Emergency Assistance Act (42 U.S.C. 5191) and under any subsequent major disaster declaration under section 401 of such Act that supersedes such emergency declaration.

Chapter 83 of Title 41, United States Code is none other than the Buy American Act. That 1933 law prioritizes American manufacturers over others when the government makes purchases. The Trump administration strengthened the Buy American act last year. The Democrats’ bill would waive it permanently, allowing the government to purchase more goods from overseas, unrestricted.

Consider that the afore-noted Buy American Act was enacted by a traditional Democrat, President FDR who acted to protect American jobs and manufacturing the year after the Stock Market cratered on July 8, 1932 and stocks hit their lowest point.  Roosevelt also ramped up immigration law enforcement to protect jobs for American workers.

The Buy American Act requires that the federal government must prioritize the purchase of supplies from American companies when such made in America supplies are available.

This is commonsense and helps America and Americans.

Yet during the current crisis the Democrats want to eliminate this requirement that protects American jobs that has been on the books for nearly 90 years.  They are exploiting the pandemic crisis as a means for pressuring the Republicans and the President into ending this important long-standing law.

I doubt that any so-called journalists will even report on this major betrayal, let alone ask Pelosi or any other Democrat about why they included this provision in their proposed legislation.

It is clear that they seek to destroy more jobs Americans desperately need, especially in this post coronavirus era where tens of millions of Americans fear that they will have lost their jobs permanently when the U.S. economy slowly reopens.

Their proposed legislation would also provide amnesty to illegal aliens declaring aliens working illegally in the United States as “Essential Workers” even as many Americans have been kept from working because purportedly their jobs are un-essential!

If the Democrats were truly concerned about the plight of American and lawful immigrant workers and their struggling families, they should favor immigration law enforcement and suggest that for the meanwhile Americans should be able to take “essential jobs” to help them get through this unparalleled crisis.

Remember the Democrats’ mantra, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”

This crisis has emboldened Radical Democrat’s to push an agenda that destroys the American middle class to propel more Americans into homelessness and dependency on the Democrats.

Indeed, the Democrats continue to push for passage of “Comprehensive Immigration Reform” a legislative disaster I have come to refer to as the Overwhelm America Act.

On Sunday May 17, 2020 New York’s Mayor Bill de Blasio was interviewed on Fox News by Maria Bartiromo.  Fox posted the video under the title, Mayor de Blasio: New York City will likely see more revenue losses without a stimulus.

During the interview de Blasio referred to the supposed “12 million undocumented folks” to describe the population of illegal aliens which has been estimated to be nearly double that number.  That number, however, is only the tip of the proverbial iceberg.

If legalized, everyone of those millions of illegal aliens would have the absolute and immediate right to bring in each and everyone of their minor children and their spouses as lawful immigrants.  Third World countries have many, many children.

It is not uncommon for such families to have more than six children each.  Additionally aliens could claim to have fathered children with women who are not their spouses.  It is entirely possible that each legalized alien could, on average, petition for more than three children each, considering that some aliens might not have minor children, don’t want them here or already brought them to the United States.

If, for the sake of argument, 25 million illegal aliens were given lawful status- and that number could be much, much larger, we could wind up with more than 75 million minor children being brought legally to the United States by this ill-conceived program, along with their other parent.

In other words, Comprehensive Immigration Reform could enable more than 100 million new immigrants to legally come to the United States, literally overnight!

Imagine the impact that tens of millions of children this would have on our schools, hospitals, mass transit, the power grid and other elements of critical infrastructure.  The cost of housing would climb still higher leading to more poverty, more homelessness and more crime.

When those tens of millions of immigrant children become adults they will flood the over-flowing labor pool.

Finally, if our political leaders would be sufficiently corrupt and stupid to provide an unknown number of illegal aliens with lawful status, there would be no way to interview these millions of illegal aliens who either entered the United States without inspection and/or violated multiple immigration laws after entering the United States.  There would be no way to conduct field investigations to verify the claims made in their application and to identify fraud.

Immigration fraud was identified by the 9/11 Commission, to which I provided testimony, as the key method of entry and embedding for terrorists.

This is why I have also come to refer to Comprehensive Immigration Reform by another name, the “Terrorist Assistance and Facilitation Act” as I noted in an Op-Ed I wrote for the Washington Times Immigration bill a ‘No Go’ and that was quoted by then-Senator Jeff Sessions when he persuaded members of the U.S. Senate to vote down that terrible bill in 2007.

I also used that descriptive title in my responses to written questions from Senator Chuck Grassley when I testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee Hearing on March 20 2013 on the topic Building An Immigration System Worthy Of American Values.

Decent Americans are horrified by the growing number of homeless Americans.  The immoral Radical Democrats, however, are encouraged that their strategy to force Americans to trade their freedoms for food, shelter and other necessities is working.

For Radical Democrats, winning isn’t everything- it is the only thing!

©All rights reserved.

VIDEOS: America’s Economy Sabotaged by Totalitarian Dictators

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“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –  Voltaire

“It also gives us a very special, secret pleasure to see how unaware the people around us are of what is really happening to them.” –  Adolf Hitler

“The people want wholesome dread. They want to fear something. They want someone to frighten them and make them shudderingly submissive.” –  Ernst Rohm, Hitler’s chief of the SA (Storm Trooper)

“The more we do to you, the less you seem to believe we are doing it.” –  Joseph Mengele, MD, “Angel of Death” at Auschwitz

“Experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms of government those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny.”  – Thomas Jefferson

How quickly we forget that in January President Trump restricted traffic from China, and Dr. Fauci was not pleased.  Fauci opposed eliminating flights from China. He disagreed and then ultimately, he agreed. That’s newsworthy.

Fauci also doesn’t believe the virus came from the Wuhan lab, despite the fact that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) “expert” shelled out a total of $7.4 million to the Wuhan biolab for this research.  Fauci and other medical experts on the White House coronavirus task force are “Hillary Clinton sympathizers” with a vendetta against President Donald Trump and his supporters.

Time has proven that locking down the entire country for a virus that kills and hospitalizes less than seasonal flu has been a huge mistake promoted by VP Mike Pence and his unvetted Task Force globalists.  Both Fauci and Birx are tightly bound to WHO Director Tedros, a Marxist-Leninist apologist for China. Funds for their activities come from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation which wants to vaccinate us all, just as they did in Africa with devastating results.  President Trump agrees to restore partial funding to WHO, run by a Marxist-Leninist.  Why?

Gates is a population reduction aficionado as are Anthony Fauci and George Soros.  Gates’ goal is not life, but death and the reduction of world population.

Inflating Statistics

A week ago, Dr. Birx said, “There is nothing from the (Center for Disease Control) CDC I can trust.”  She has expressed doubts about the CDC Control statistics’ reports and believes the CDC has dramatically inflated the numbers by at least 25 percent.  Birx and others reportedly feared that the CDC Control and Prevention’s data-tracking system was inflating coronavirus death rates and case numbers statistics.  Falsified death records are common.

Physicians throughout America have complained about being forced to falsely label the cause of death as Covid-19.  Dr. Scott Jensen, Republican member of the Minnesota Senate spoke to Laura Ingraham about the actual infection rates.

Birx is still claiming that the “shelter-in-place” directive was saving lives, but now we know that’s not true either. Over 36 million, or nearly 22 percent of Americans are without work; the economy continues going down the drain and many people have lost everything.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo came forth and acknowledged that new hospitalizations caused by COVID-19 are from individuals who did, in fact, stay home.  Fox News confirmed that the percentage of new coronavirus patients who listened to the government and stayed home is at 66%.

What Michael Smith of Wells, Maine wrote in the WSJ is absolutely true, “We have torched the house to rid it of spiders.”  He went on to say that the governments’ response will kill us if the virus doesn’t.  If unemployment hits 32 percent, some 77,000 Americans are likely to die from suicide and drug overdoses as a result of layoffs. Deaths of despair.

Vaccines

We can’t open now, says Chinese mouthpiece Dr. Tedros for the World Health Organization, not for five years. “It could take up to five years before the coronavirus pandemic is under control.” And WHO friend, Dr. Fauci, is not going to authorize reopening if the virus is not under control.

First, we had to flatten the curve, then we had to follow the data of gigantically flawed models, and now we need more testing, which only shows you how many more people have gotten this virus. It’s not enough. Now we need antibody testing. That doesn’t mean anything anymore. Now we need a vaccine.

Flu vaccines rarely cover the exact type of seasonal flu, and in any given year, a flu shot is only about 40-60 percent effective.  The CDC reported that the 2020 flu vaccine was 45% effective against type B and 37% effective against type A.  It’s doubtful a Covid-19 vaccine would be any better, and we certainly don’t want it mandated.

President Trump said in an interview last week that he is gung-ho to distribute a coronavirus vaccine as soon as it is developed.  “Our military is now being mobilized so at the end of the year we’re going to be able to give it to a lot of people very, very rapidly,” the president said in an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.

If a flu vaccine is only 40 – 60 percent effective, why would a Covid-19 vaccine be any better.  No one has ever come up with a vaccine for the common cold virus or even for HIV-AIDS.  No thanks, I don’t want the speedily made vaccine that will inject my body with foreign elements that could well make me sick or shorten my life.

Oh, those lovely vaccines!  The 1960s polio vaccine that gave everyone soft tissue cancer was grown on monkey kidneys. The cancer-causing SV-40 monkey virus is genetically passed to your descendants.  And guess what?  The Daily Post is reporting that Bill Gates offered Nigeria’s House of Representatives $10 million if they passed a compulsory vaccine bill.

A Digital “Snapshot” for Every Injection

On May 12th, PRNewswire reported that ApiJect Systems America, Inc., a public benefit corporation based in Stamford, CT, announced that it has been awarded an HHS-DOD Title 3, Data Processing Agreement (DPA) contract valued up to $138 million to accelerate the building of a new U.S.-based, high-speed, population-scale emergency drug injection capability with prefilled syringes from its subsidiary RAPID USA Inc. RAPID USA’s emergency program, “Project Jumpstart” is being initiated to supply 500 million prefilled syringes by year-end.  Jumpstart will develop the capability to manufacture a minimum of 30 million prefilled syringes per month once therapeutic drugs and vaccines become available.

If coronavirus vaccines were planned to be optional – respecting the vaccine choices of individuals, not more than 100 million doses would be needed.  The fact that 500 million doses are being manufactured is an admission that the DoD and HHS plan to make Covid-19 vaccines mandatory.  The DoD awarded a $238 million contract enabling prefilled syringes for the future Covid-19 vaccine.

The ApiJect syringes come with an optional RFID device enabling health care workers to track the GPS location of the syringes and record the identity of those being injected according to the company’s website.

Before giving an injection, the healthcare worker will be able to launch a free mobile app and “tap” the prefilled syringe on their phone, capturing the Near Field Communication (NFC) tag’s unique serial number, GPS location and date/time.  The app then uploads the data to a government-selected cloud database.  Aggregated injection data provides health administrators an evolving real-time “injection-map.” No thanks big brother!

Remdesivir v. Hydroxychloroquine

Dr. Fauci has never backed the very cheap 60-year-old drug, hydroxychloroquine.  In fact, he has criticized its usage.  Yet around the world, including within the U.S., this cheap drug has had excellent results, especially when given early in a Covid-19 diagnosis.  There is little money to be made with this drug and the accompanying antibiotic, Azithromycin.

Dr. Stephen Smith called hydroxychloroquine a “game changer” in the fight against Covid-19. He had been treating his Covid patients with hydroxychloroquine with a 100% cure rate. He believed that the fight against the virus was over, but he underestimated the nefarious forces in the medical establishment and how much money was to be made.

Ivette Lozano is a Dallas doctor who is treating her coronavirus patients with hydroxychloroquine and the recovery success rate of her patients is 100%.  In the following video she explains how Texas has passed a bill that disallows prescribing hydroxychloroquine and azithromycin without giving a diagnosis to the pharmacist.  They’ve eliminated the privacy of the HIPPA law because this drug is successful and cheap and obviously, they don’t want it used.

A recent Gateway Pundit article, brilliantly researched by Joe Hoft, exposed the connections with remdesivir.  The very first case of Covid-19 was in Washington state and the clinic where the patient was treated for declining health happened to have samples of the drug to give him intravenously.  He recovered.  By mid-February a Chinese company was mass producing remdesivir, despite studies showing a lack of benefit.

The drug is from Gilead Sciences and the clinical trials are being done by Dr. Fauci’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health.  Dr. Fauci is behind the promotion of Gilead’s remdesivir and has worked with Gilead for years.

Gilead is partnered with Wuxi AppTec, an international pharmaceutical, biopharmaceutical and medical device company located in China and owned in part by George Soros.

Gilead has endorsed and is engaged with a drug purchasing group, Unitaid which is an outgrowth of the United Nations, Millennium Declaration of 2000, which is now the U.N. Global Compact (sustainability via UN Agenda 2030).

Despotic States

Governor Wolf of Pennsylvania, (GOP Rep. Scott Perry called out Governor Wolf for killing elderly Pennsylvanians in nursing homes.) Governor Cuomo of New York and other states had ordered nursing homes to take Covid-19 patients resulting in thousands of fatalities to elderly and immune compromised patients within these facilities.  Long Island is now calling for a federal probe into more than 5,000 nursing home deaths.

If you thought the drones were bad telling us to keep our distance from each other, how about the Darpa Robot enlisted by police to enforce distancing.  The robots are able to scan anyone walking on the sidewalks, record license plates, use infrared vision, and one of the scariest uses of this technology is the capability to detect cellphone serial numbers within a designated patrolling area.  According to CBS, the devices are actively being used and can be seen in 16 states including New York at the Lefrak City Apartments in Queens and LaGuardia Airport. 

In Kentucky, now run by Democratic Governor Andy Beshear rather than Republican Governor Bevin, authorities have ordered Louisville residents who have been exposed to the flu virus, but won’t self-quarantine, to wear a tracking device to ensure they don’t leave the house.

In Tennessee, a 39-year-old homeless person who tested positive for the virus and was incarcerated at the local Nashville fair grounds, escaped and fled. He was stopped and arrested by Metro Nashville Parks police two miles from where he had been quarantined.  Metro Parks has charged the man with a single count of escape from a penal institution, a class A misdemeanor. The statute that defines this crime makes no mention of it being used to enforce quarantine orders.  And our Governor Bill Lee claims to be a constitutional conservative.

Senate hopeful Bill Hagerty’s stint as Tennessee’s Department of Economic & Community Development Commissioner ended with the Volunteer State becoming the “most dependent state in America for trade with China.”  He was appointed by ‘NeverTrumper’ Republican Gov. Bill Haslam in 2011.  Haslam proudly stated he did not vote for Trump.  At the expense of American workers, Hagerty’s first-choice candidate in the 2016 Republican primary was Jeb Bush.  And even after Jeb’s candidacy flamed out, he shifted to supporting pro-amnesty Marco Rubio.

In Ventura County California, Dr. Robert Levin, director of Ventura County Public Health spoke before the board of supervisors about a plan to hire up to 50 new “contact tracing investigators” to “find people who have COVID-19 and immediately isolate them, find every one of their contacts, make sure they stay quarantined and check in with them every day.”  He said they would be physically removed from their homes and isolated.  He had to walk it back!

The despotic Mayor of Providence, Rhode Island has told people to “social shame” those who refuse to wear masks.  Those with compromised immune systems should wear protection, but for healthy people, wearing masks actually can make them more susceptible to the virus.

And Amtrak now requires masks for all passengers.

Open Economy

Had we sheltered the compromised and elderly and allowed the economy to remain open, we may have had a higher number of deaths, but the immunity would have spread throughout the nation saving us from the debacle of debt, inflation, job loss, suicides, alcoholism, drug addiction, and domestic violence which has outnumbered the deaths from this virus.  We’ve been sold another lie; dumbed down Americans don their masks to go out into public.  I’m ashamed of my fellow citizens and how easily they were brainwashed with lies and propaganda.

Republican Governor Brian Kemp of Georgia celebrated the state’s lowest number of hospitalized coronavirus patients and the fewest number of COVID-19 patients on ventilators on Saturday, 15 days since he loosened lockdown restrictions in the face of persistent attacks from the mainstream media and the public disapproval of President Trump.  Currently, 995 people out of a population of 10.62 million, have died from Covid-19 in Georgia, according to the model, and it projects that number could climb to 4,691 by August 4.  But it hasn’t.

Republican Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida ripped into the media for their failing, dire predictions of his coronavirus response.  He said to mainstream media, “You were all wrong about my state, we’re in better shape without draconian lockdown.”  He’s right.

Dr. Scott Atlas’ recent article in The Hill gives five facts as to why we need to reopen our economy, stop the panic and end the total isolation.

Resistance

A Seattle police officer sacrificed his job to speak the truth on the abuse of power by the government.  Greg Anderson is married with children, but he could not continue to follow orders he knew were against the Constitution and Bill of Rights.

A federal judge blocked Governor Beshear’s (D-KY) temporary ban on mass gatherings amid the coronavirus pandemic from applying to religious services.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) halted a coronavirus testing program promoted by billionaire Bill Gates and Seattle health officials pending reviews.

The Texas Supreme Court halts expansion of mail-in voting during pandemic.

The Hill reports that legal challenges to the stay-at-home orders are gaining momentum.  The Wisconsin Supreme Court invalidated the state’s coronavirus health order, a decision that’s already generating momentum behind similar challenges across the country.

Atwater, California has declared itself a sanctuary city for businesses!

Michigan’s Governor Gretchen Whitmer lost a fight to force a 77-year-old barber out of business.  Despite moving to sustain his livelihood and remain economically afloat, the Michigan governor pulled strings and issued a cease-and-desist order against Manke.

Ultimately, a Michigan judge ruled for Manke when the state’s Attorney General failed to make the bogus case that Manke posed “imminent danger to public health.”  The repressive fascistic Governor plans to keep the state closed until a vaccine is available.

And Michigan protesters plan “Operation Haircut” demonstration to push back against state’s ‘tyrannical’ stay-at-home order by Whitmer.

Democrat Gov. Whitmer listed abortion as a non-elective procedure during Covid’s lockdown.  She even decided to categorize it as “life-sustaining.” This woman is a murderer in so many ways…unborn babies, her constituents, and the survival of Michigan businesses.  She is the epitome of evil.

Conclusion

Are Americans waking up to the attack on our country?  They better, or these power-hungry neo-Nazi autocrats will strengthen the control over their constituents and we can kiss freedom good-bye.

©All rights reserved.

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This is No Time for Green Giveaways

CNN Buries the Trump Lead

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Election polling is big-time news these days. Unless the media doesn’t like the results. Then, apparently, it’s not news at all. Take CNN, NRO’s Kyle Smith says. They just spent a pile of money to ask voters what they think of President Trump. Believe it or not, his approval ratings have never been higher — not that viewers would know it, since CNN virtually ignored the numbers altogether.

It took RealClearPolitics to break the story on CNN’s poll, since the network decided that a Target shopper without a mask was of more national consequence than the president making a statistical comeback. Only digging under dozens of other headlines did Kyle Smith find a single reference to the results.

“CNN seemed oddly unenthused about its own poll. And the story to which the homepage linked doesn’t even mention that Trump had never scored higher in a CNN poll… But the single most surprising and newsworthy detail of the poll was that Trump holds a seven-point lead over Biden in 15 battleground states.”

And here’s where it gets truly comical. The outlet is so desperate to downplay Trump’s surge that it draws attention to the “small sample size” and insists that “it’s difficult to determine… whether the movement is significant or a fluke…” Funny, CNN didn’t seem to think any of its Biden-leaning polls were a coincidence. Yet now, when the president has an advantage, the results must suddenly be wrong. Is it any wonder Americans have such little confidence in the mainstream media? Agendas like this one only fuel the country’s distrust.

Unfortunately for the liberal media, the president’s numbers aren’t just improving overall, they’re suggesting a stark contrast on issues that matter the most. Asked who they trusted to handle the economy, 54 percent of voters said Donald Trump. Far fewer — 42 percent — said the same about Biden.

Obviously, this polling — or any polling — isn’t the end-all, be-all for Trump. There are plenty of obstacles for the White House to overcome, including a crisis environment where even a sneeze in the wrong direction can mean a full news cycle of blame. As anyone who paid attention in 2016 knows, surveys only tell one part of the story. A lot like the mainstream media, it appears.

Tony Perkins’s Washington Update is written with the aid of FRC senior writers.

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EDITORS NOTE: This FRC-Action column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

The Muslim Brotherhood Operative on Facebook’s Content Oversight Board

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PART I

When it comes to Islam, Facebook seems unable to get things right. It has made life more difficult for sober islamocritics such as Robert Spencer, censoring their content, while favoring those who attempt to deflect such criticism with charges of “racism” and “Islamophobia.”

Recently Mark Zuckerberg decided it would be a good thing – Diversity! Inclusivity! — to appoint the Yemeni journalist and political activist Tawakkol Karman to the Content Oversight Board of Facebook, a position where she will be well-placed to protect Islam and Muslims from their critics. It is not only those islamocritics who are up in arms at Karman’s appointment, but a great many Muslims are horrified as well. For Tawakkol Karman is not only a Muslim, but a fervent admirer of the Muslim Brotherhood.

To many around the world, Tawakkol Abdel-Salam Khalid Karman is known as the first Arab woman — and the second Muslim woman — to win a Nobel Prize, for Peace, in 2011. She won the prize for several reasons. First, there is her record of “activism,” which some may find underwhelming. In Yemen, she campaigned against systemic repression by the government, and demanded inquiries into corruption and other forms of social and legal injustice. In 2005, she founded an organization, Women Journalists Without Chains (WJWC), to help train women in media skills, and to promote the work of female journalists in Yemen. WJWC also produces regular reports on human rights abuses in Yemen, so far documenting more than 50 cases of attacks and what it claims are unfair sentences against newspapers and writers. In 2007, Tawakkol began organizing weekly protests in Yemen’s capitol, Sana’a, against government mismanagement. She also shows up regularly at Change Square, where she holds court inside a tent when not haranguing her followers outside.

Karman is not shy about proclaiming her own greatness. At the “Official Website of Tawakkol Karman,” you will find listed (I haven’t corrected the English) some of her Outstanding Achievements:

  • The lady of year 2011 according to the readers and subscribers of Yahoo website;
  • One of the Top 100 Global Thinkers selected by the Foreign Policy Magazine;
  • Among the most strongest 100 Arab women;
  • Awarded the Courage Award by the Embassy of United States of America, Sana’a in 2008;
  • One of the seven women who change the history for the year of 2009;
  • Member of Transparency International’s Advisory Council;
  • Member of High-Level Panel of Eminent Persons on the Post 2015 Development;
  • She granted the honorary degree of doctor of law from Alberta University-Canada

It has been suggested that the main reason she was chosen to share the 2011 Peace Prize with two other women, both from Liberia — the Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Leybah Gbowee, a “peace-and-women’s-rights-activist” – is that the Nobel Peace Prize Committee was that year under pressure to find a Muslim female recipient and Tawakkol Karman fit the bill, checking all the right boxes as a fighter “against governmental suppression” of dissent and as a “promoter of women’s rights.”

What the Nobel Peace Prize committee did not know, or did not care about, was that Karman held a senior position in Yemen’s Al-Islah Party, an affiliate of the Muslim Brotherhood known for its extremist and violent agenda. In 2013, she was a strong supporter of Mohamad Morsi, the Muslim Brotherhood member who became, briefly, the President of Egypt. She wrote an article in Foreign Policy about Egypt; her title says it all: “Mohamed Morsi is the Arab World’s Nelson Mandela.”

Aside from being a senior member of the Al-Islah Party, which had strong ties to the MB, Karman also had ties to the Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch, an Islamist movement founded by Abdul Majeed Al-Zindani, a man who appears in Washington’s Specially Designated Global Terrorist list. She claims to have severed those ties to the MB in Yemen, but many wonder whether her move was merely a cosmetic exercise to deceive gullible Westerners.

The story of Tawakkol Karman’s appointment to the Content Advisory Board at Facebook is at Arab News:

Unsurprisingly, Facebook’s choice has prompted outrage on social media networks, with many worried that it will bring the Muslim Brotherhood’s ideas right into the heart of the biggest social networking company in the world.

“She has not denounced the extremist ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood,” Ghanem Nuseibeh, founder of risk consultancy Cornerstone Global Associates, told Arab News.

“On the contrary, there is everything [sic] to believe that she continues to espouse the hate speech that has been a mark of the Brotherhood in general.”

Given her prominent role in the revolution that toppled Yemen’s former leader Ali Abdullah Saleh, Karman’s Nobel Prize is not without merit, say political analysts. But they add that her advocacy of extremist causes can hardly be glossed over.

“Karman was considered a symbol of the Yemeni revolution against the rule of Saleh, but over time she has become associated with intolerance, discrimination and lack of neutrality,” Hani Nasira, a terrorism and extremism expert, told Arab News.

Soon after Karman was awarded the Nobel Prize, she was invited to Doha and [was] personally congratulated by Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, the Muslim Brotherhood leader and preacher of hate, whose fatwas call for suicide bomb attacks and who praises Hitler for “punishing” the Jews.

After conveying to her his message of “support” for the Yemeni people, Al-Qaradawi gave Karman a copy of his book, “Fiqh Al-Jihad,” as a gift.

Such easy rapport with a personality as controversial as Al-Qaradawi calls into question Karman’s political beliefs, despite her ostensible split with the Brotherhood’s Yemeni branch.

It also rings the alarm about the judgement of Facebook, a social networking behemoth that claims to be an unbiased arbiter of international political discourse.

Facebook has never been an “unbiased arbiter” when it comes to Islam. It has consistently privileged defenders of the faith, and made life difficult — by taking down posts or making them impossible to find – for islamocritics. It is not surprising that a Muslim Brotherhood admirer such as Tawakkol Karman would be appointed to Facebook’s Content Oversight Board; Facebook either does not know, or more likely does not care, about Karman’s dangerous liaisons.

“We understand that people will identify with some of our members and disagree passionately with others,” a Facebook Oversight Board spokesperson told Arab News.

“Board members were chosen to represent diverse perspectives and backgrounds that can help with addressing the most significant content decisions facing a global community.”

Would Facebook place a strong supporter of President Trump on the Content Oversight Board, to increase its diversity and inclusivity? Or a supporter of Matteo Salvini in Italy, or of Marine Le Pen in France, or of Victor Orban in Hungary? What about a supporter of Prime Minister Netanyahu? No, I didn’t think so either. They’re all, you see, “extremists.” Unlike Tawakkol Karman.

Facebook declined to respond to specific questions regarding Karman’s links to extremist groups. But clearly the platform has put its credibility on the line by bringing her on board.

Facebook “risks becoming the platform of choice for extremist Islamist ideology,” Nuseibeh, who is also chair of UK-based nonprofit Muslims Against Anti-Semitism, told Arab News.

“With Karman’s appointment, Facebook’s argument that it is an impartial platform is severely weakened. There is no guarantee that Karman will not have a direct editorial influence on what Facebook allows to be published.

“Would Facebook, for example, appoint Aung San Suu Kyi, another Nobel laureate, to arbitrate in disputes over posts related to the Rohingya atrocities in Myanmar?”

Nuseibeh added: “Karman, to much of the world, is what Aung San Suu Kyi is to the Rohingyas.”

Karman’s abrasive personality became evident during the Arab Spring protests, which began with Tunisia’s “Jasmine Revolution” in 2011 before spreading out to other Arab countries including Yemen.

Previous Yemeni protest leaders who had aligned with her called her “dictatorial,” someone who went against the consensus of peaceful movements by urging young protesters to march on in the face of imminent danger.

“She called for that march, the police brutally attacked it and 13 people died,” one protest organizer who declined to be named told Reuters in 2011.

“She didn’t apologize for it and it really upset a lot of people.”

She was willing to sacrifice her young followers – sending them on a march that previous protest leaders opposed because of the “imminent danger” posed to the marchers by the police – for no other reason than to promote herself as a protest leader. Tawakkol Karman, of course, never marched in these protests; that would have been too dangerous.

PART II

Tawakkol Karman is a supporter of Qatar, the Arab world’s staunchest supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, and of Turkey, which under President Erdogan has become the other main promoter of the Brotherhood’s agenda..

In recent years, Karman’s utterances have tended to hew closely to the party line of her two leading patrons, Qatar and Turkey, while being reflexively critical of the actions of Saudi Arabia.

For instance, in an interview with the Saudi daily Al Riyadh in 2015, Karman praised the Arab coalition and its role in restoring the UN-backed government in Yemen.

She called it a “savior” and posed for a picture with President Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi, who she described as “the legitimate leader of the country.”

At that time she was supporting Saudi Arabia and UAE in the help they gave the internationally recognized government in Sana’a, led by Abd-Rabbo Mansour Hadi. But that did not last long.

A few years later, she suddenly changed her tone to accuse Saudi Arabia and the UAE of committing war crimes in Yemen, and demanded the toppling of regimes in Egypt and Bahrain.

It was no coincidence that all the four countries she denounced happened to have cut diplomatic ties with Qatar on June 5, 2017, for its refusal to abandon support for extremists.

She turned on Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, and Bahrain for the same reason: all four had cut ties to Qatar, because that state had consistently shown support for the extremist Muslim Brotherhood, whose cause was also dear to Tawakkol Karman’s heart. Had Facebook known of her passionate attachment to the MB, would they have had second thoughts about naming her to the Content Oversight Board? One likes to think so.

“Karman’s loyalty to, and association with, governments that flout all norms of democracy, such as Qatar and Turkey, deprives her of any claim to neutrality and objectivity,” Nasira said.

Her political rhetoric encourages extremism, divisiveness and shunning of those who disagree with her current loyalties.

Numerous posts on her Twitter handle and Facebook page attest to her desire to see specific Arab governments destabilized and toppled.

She has called on Bahraini, Algerian and Tunisian citizens to revolt against their governments, and accused the Egyptian army of being full of terrorists.

Again, Karman is consistent in her support of the Muslim Brotherhood. Bahrain, Algeria, and Tunisia have all come down hard on the MB, and therefore, in her view, the people of those countries must overthrow their governments, and the rulers she deems insufficiently “Islamic” in their views. The Egyptian army, which is engaged in a endless battle with MB, is described – in Karman’s customary hyperbole – as “being full of terrorists.” The Egyptian army is ruthless, all right, in its pursuit of MB members, but no one could fairly describe it as “being full of terrorists.”

“Saudi Arabia should be worried. All the Gulf countries should be scared, except for Qatar,” Karman can be heard saying in an undated video clip broadcast by Yemen TV.

The Gulf Arabs should be “worried” about what? Karman means they should be worried about popular uprisings, for according to her, except for Qatar, they have lost the support of their people. No evidence is presented for this. There have been no popular protests against the governments in Saudi Arabia (save for a small group of Shi’a, who briefly rioted eight years ago), the Emirates, Kuwait, Oman, or elsewhere among the Gulf Arab states. There have been violent protests in Qatar, however, in 2019, by the migrant workers who could no longer stand the abuse they endured from their employers, nor could they tolerate the widespread practice of employers withholding their wages. Qatar’s reputation for such mistreatment apparently doesn’t bother that Nobel-winning “rights activist” Tawakkol Karman. As long as Qatar supports the MB, its abuse of foreign workers doesn’t concern her. Besides, those discontented foreign workers in Qatar are not Arabs, and Tawakkol Karman is both an Islamist and an Arab supremacist.

Karman’s unremitting hostility towards Saudi Arabia and the UAE has made her almost a natural choice for stewardship of the Qatari-funded and Turkey-based Belqees TV station.

The consensus view of many Middle East political observers is that Karman is an Islamist activist who is firmly embedded within regional and international networks backed by Qatar and Turkey.

“Karman is an extremely divisive figure whose judgement is severely impaired by her many years of (harboring) extreme political bias,” says Nuseibeh.

As for Facebook, the company “has only one choice to make and that is to sever all ties” with Karman, he told Arab News.

“If it doesn’t, Facebook would be on the side of promoters of hate speech, extremism and anti-Semitism.”

Facebook likely had no knowledge of Tawakkol Karman’s connection to Qatar and to the Muslim Brotherhood when it offered her a position on the Content Oversight Board. It’s a company worth $600 billion, but it couldn’t spare the money or take the time to conduct due diligence on Karman before appointing her to such an important post. It might have taken a Facebook employee five minutes – no more – to conduct an online search that would have revealed the disturbing sympathies of Tawakkol Karman for the Muslim Brotherhood. The company had decided it would be a good idea to have a Muslim and, even better, a Muslim woman – More Diversity! More Inclusivity! — on the Content Oversight Board as one of Facebook’s internal censors. Karman fit the bill. And she had won a Nobel Peace Prize. Mark Zuckerberg knows that Nobel Peace Prize winners are, by common consent, among our Great and Good. Yes, I grant you, there is Arafat… That’s all Facebook knew about her – Muslim, female, Nobel winner — and that was apparently all it needed to know. Muslim, female, Nobel winner — what’s not to like?

As an unswerving supporter of the Muslim Brotherhood, Karman certainly is a promoter, as Ghanem Nuseibeh says, of “hate speech, extremism, and antisemitism.” Simply take a look at the best-known MB website, that of Hamas, which is the Palestinian branch of the Muslim Brotherhood, for prompt confirmation of its “hate speech, extremism, and antisemitism.” Or consider Tawakkol Karman’s warm meeting in Doha with Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, whose fatwas call for suicide bomb attacks and who praises Hitler for “punishing” the Jews.

Is that what Mark Zuckerberg wants on his Content Oversight Board? Someone who admires a man who calls for suicide bomb attacks and praises Hitler for “punishing” the Jews? Or will there be signs of sanity yet, and an invitation withdrawn, from the head office at 1 Hacker Way in Menlo Park?

COLUMN BY

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EDITORS NOTE: This Jihad Watch column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

11 More Cases in Which Responsible Gun Owners Saved Lives

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In recent weeks, several instances involving the reckless use of firearms dominated national headlines. In one case, a Georgia man tragically lost his life when armed civilians crossed the line between defensive necessity and vigilantism.

But such headlines tell only one side of the story. Every day, many law-abiding and responsible Americans use their firearms lawfully to defend their lives, liberty, and property.

In fact, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention concluded in 2013, almost every major study on the issue has found that Americans use their firearms in lawful self-defense between 500,000 and 3 million times a year.

These instances of proper defensive gun use provide an important but often unreported counterbalance to the national conversation.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>>

For this reason, The Daily Signal has been publishing a monthly series highlighting some of the news stories of defensive gun use that you may have missed—or that might not have made it to the national spotlight in the first place. (Read accounts from 2019 and 2020).

The lawful defensive uses of guns below represent only a small part of the many stories we found last month. You can explore more examples by using The Heritage Foundation’s Defensive Gun Use Database, an interactive map that allows users to find recent defensive gun uses from all over the country quickly and easily.

  • April 2, Wolf Creek, Oregon: A homeowner was forced to defend himself with his firearm after confronting a man who was firing guns on the homeowner’s property. The intruder—who previously had been convicted of attacking a family member with a samurai sword during an argument—threatened the homeowner. Police said the homeowner acted in lawful self-defense when he shot and killed the man.
  • April 4, Chicago, Illinois: A doorbell camera captured a homeowner’s incredible defense against two armed, masked men who brazenly tried to rob the residence in broad daylight. The video shows that when the homeowner answers the door, two would-be robbers force their way inside. A struggle ensues off-camera, and the homeowner is next seen chasing down and fighting with one of the intruders on his front lawn. When the homeowner returned inside, police said, he found the second intruder pointing a gun at his wife and children. The homeowner retrieved his own gun from a safe, then shot and killed the assailant in defense of his family.
  • April 8, Asheboro, North Carolina: A homeowner, leaving for work, discovered that two of his vehicles had been ransacked during the night. As he went back inside to alert others in the house, he heard noises inside the garage and grabbed his firearm to investigate, police said. The homeowner discovered an intruder sitting in the front seat of one of his cars. He held the burglar at gunpoint until police arrived.
  • April 11, Fredericksburg, Texas: A woman came to her fiancé’s defense by shooting and killing an intruder who had brutally assaulted him in the couple’s home, police said. The woman begged the intruder to stop as he beat her fiancé and put him in a chokehold, but to no avail. As her fiancé began to lose consciousness, the woman retrieved a handgun and fatally shot the intruder.
  • April 17, Gaffney, South Carolina: When a homeowner asked a man to leave his property, he became irate, pulled out a handgun, and threatened the homeowner. The homeowner retreated, grabbed a rifle from inside the house, and again told the man to leave. The intruder then opened fire on the homeowner and five others, including a small child, police said. He fled when the homeowner defended himself and his household with the rifle. Police later arrested and charged a suspect.
  • April 18, Fairfield, Connecticut: A homeowner, awakened by his barking dogs in the early morning, was confronted by a machete-wielding intruder. He fled when he realized the homeowner was armed, police said.
  • April 20, Sacramento, California: A robbery suspect led multiple law enforcement officers on a chase through two counties, at times driving the wrong way and endangering other motorists. The suspect eventually crashed the car and ran through a residential neighborhood. Police said he approached an elderly homeowner sitting on his back patio and the homeowner, fearing for his life, shot and wounded him.
  • April 22, Las Vegas, Nevada: Local prosecutors determined that a concealed-carry permit holder acted in lawful self-defense when he shot and killed a man who fired a gun at him. The permit holder and a woman were eating fast food in a parking lot when the man, apparently angry over a failed gun purchase earlier in the day, randomly chose to vent his frustrations on them. Police said the man began shooting at the permit holder, who hid behind a trash can and returned fire with at least 11 rounds.
  • April 24, Lexington, Kentucky: A man who was the subject of active arrest warrants for robbery and domestic violence broke into his ex-girlfriend’s home and opened fire on those inside, police said. An armed resident returned fire, killing the ex-boyfriend and ending the threat long before police could have arrived.
  • April 24, Des Arc, Arkansas: Two inmates at a county jail attacked their guards, stole their keys, and escaped. Authorities captured one inmate within minutes, but the other—in jail on capital murder charges—was on the run for more than eight hours, police said. When the escapee finally was captured, it wasn’t by law enforcement but by armed citizens who found him hiding in an abandoned car.
  • April 29, Yoder, Colorado: A couple relied on the Second Amendment to defend themselves from four armed attackers who police believe mistook the couple’s legal hemp farm for an illegal marijuana operation. Hundreds of rounds reportedly were fired in a shootout, and the four intruders eventually fled.

It’s true that gun owners sometimes overstep the lawful bounds of the Second Amendment, and the failure to act responsibly with firearms can have devastating consequences.

But it’s equally true that, for countless Americans, the lawful defensive use of firearms has been the only thing standing between them and the devastating consequences of crime.

Whether it’s a woman rescuing her fiancé from certain death, or armed citizens unexpectedly helping to end a cross-county manhunt, it’s clear that the right to keep and bear arms plays a vital role in promoting public safety and protecting individual rights.

COMMENTARY BY

Amy Swearer

Amy Swearer is a senior legal policy analyst at the Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation. Twitter: .

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Tale of 2 States: New York’s COVID-19 Death Toll Far Greater Than Florida’s

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Florida and New York are states with similar population sizes, but dramatically different approaches to the COVID-19 pandemic.

New York has almost 30 times as many coronavirus-related deaths as Florida, with a heavy concentration among senior citizens, according to numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat, gained praise in the media for his performance in press conferences if nothing else, while Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, has been heavily criticized in media reports.

When can America reopen? The National Coronavirus Recovery Commission, a project of The Heritage Foundation, is gathering America’s top thinkers together to figure that out. Learn more here>>>.

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

New York has had about 348,000 COVID-19 cases and more than 28,000 deaths as of May 17, according to the CDC. Florida, meanwhile, had about 46,000 cases and 2,000 deaths.

The population of New York state is 19.5 million, while Florida is home to 21.5 million.

“Gov. DeSantis understands Florida and knows how to interpret data and use science to guide the state during this health care pandemic,” the governor’s communications director, Helen Aguirre Ferre, told The Daily Signal in an email. “He worked quickly to protect the vulnerable, increase testing, promote social distancing, support hospitals and protect health care workers, and prevent introduction [of the virus] from outside of the state.”

Ferre added:

When the media was howling because there were folks on the beach, Gov. DeSantis prohibited visitations to assisted living facilities and nursing homes. In addition, Gov. DeSantis prohibited nursing homes and long-term care facilities to [allow] COVID-19 patients who were discharged from hospitals to be returned to their facilities.

He established COVID-19 dedicated nursing homes. In addition, he required comprehensive screening of staff and vendors entering these long-term care facilities. Testing and contact tracing was a priority for all Florida residents in addition to providing precious PPE [personal protective equipment]. Impeding those who were fleeing from other states where there was community spread of this virus was also important.

In New York, senior Cuomo administration officials contend that the federal government was too slow to ban European flights that primarily stop at major airports in New York or New Jersey.

From January through March, about 13,000 flights came through these airports from European locations carrying about 2 million passengers, the officials told The Daily Signal on background.

New York also does more testing for the coronavirus than other states, which is one reason the recorded rates are higher, they said. Add to that, New York City has the most dense population in the United States.

New York and Florida have a similar percentage of total COVID-19 deaths among those 65 and older. Seniors made up 83% of deaths in Florida, 77% in New York.

“In general, on a statewide basis, Florida is doing much better than New York,” Norbert Michel, director of the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation, told The Daily Signal. “Florida has much fewer deaths and deaths per capita and per 100,000 than New York; this fact holds even if you remove New York City from the state data, though the differences are much smaller.”

The high fatality rate in New York City from the coronavirus skews the statewide numbers, he said.

Florida also is doing better during the pandemic across every category of those 45 and older, as the New York death toll is 15 to 20 times higher than Florida across every category, Michel said.

“Regardless, the death rates by age are worse in New York. If New York City is the primary driver of high death totals and high death rates, then the same comparison still applies; the only thing that would change is that we would have to say New York City is doing much worse than Florida,” Michel said.

Cuomo also has faced criticism for a March decision, later reversed, to send patients back to nursing homes after they tested positive for COVID-19.

“Florida and New York had very different protections for nursing home patients,” Michel said. “The nursing home policy [in New York] was insane. The state was basically sending someone to an early grave. … If it is the case that the infection was already widespread before anyone knew about it, the state was still literally sending people back into it.”

To help free up beds in hospitals in late March, the New York state Health Department issued an order to nursing homes: “No resident shall be denied re-admission or admission to the [nursing home] solely based on a confirmed or suspected diagnosis of COVID-19.”

The Long Term Care Community Coalition in New York opposed the Cuomo policy of sending COVID-19 patients back to nursing homes.

Similarly, the American Medical Directors Association, in a March 26 statement, said: “Unsafe transfers will increase the risk of transmission in post-acute and long-term care facilities, which will ultimately only serve to increase the return flow back to hospitals, overwhelming capacity, endangering more healthcare personnel, and escalating the death rate.”

Cuomo administration officials said residents returning to nursing homes after testing positive for the virus were quarantined from other residents, following federal guidelines for them to be kept in separate facilities with different caretakers from the rest of the population. A total of 12% of the state’s fatalities were from nursing homes, a Cuomo administration official said. 

“It was one of the giant red herrings of all time,” the official told The Daily Signal. “I would take our state law over any state law that says you can discriminate [against] potentially the most feeble, at-risk, vulnerable people in our society.”

In early May, The New York Times reported that 1,600 previously undisclosed deaths occurred in New York nursing homes, bringing the total number of deaths at nursing homes to almost 5,000.

One more factor: Cuomo didn’t order the New York City subway to be sterilized on a nightly basis until early May, even though the first COVID-19 cases were reported March 1.

Another Cuomo administration official contended that new cleaning policies were in place March 3, two days after the state’s first confirmed coronavirus case.

New York is unique among U.S. cities in having a subway that operates around the clock; closing it was not an option. As more people stayed home more often, however, it was feasible to close down for nightly sterilization beginning May 5, the official said.

COVID-19 deaths in New York City total 1,403.72 per 100,000 for those ages 75 and older, according to the city’s data. The death rate drops to 560.85 per 100,000 for those 65 to 74; 171.49 for ages 45 to 64; and 18.4 for ages 18 to 44. The rate is 0 for those under 18.

Although New York City has more people living in close proximity than any other American city, specific policies played a role in the death toll for both the city and state, said Arpit Gupta, an adjunct fellow at the Manhattan Institute who co-authored a report with recommendations for reopening New York City.

“I would point to large, dense cities in Asia such as Seoul, Taipei, Tokyo, and in Hong Kong,” Gupta told The Daily Signal. “Density is not destiny. Those cities made policy decisions that New York didn’t that have contributed to the death toll we’ve seen.”

As of May 13 in Florida, COVID-19 had claimed the lives of 53 people ages 45 to 54, or 0.24 per 100,000; 138 ages 55 to 64, or 0.64 per 100,000;  296 ages 65 to 74, or 1.4; 391 ages 75 to 84, or 1.82; and 378 ages 85 and older, or 1.8.

In New York state as of May 13,  COVID-19 had killed 1,267 people ages 45 to 54, or 6.5 per 100,000; 3,039 ages 55 to 64, or 15.6 per 100,000; 4,818 ages  65 to 74, or 24.7; 5,603 ages 75 to 84, or 29; and 5,881 ages 85 and older, or 30.2.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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Pill Pushers Exploiting COVID-19 to Promote Risky Telemedicine Abortions

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Obamagate — How Obama administration apparently weaponized intel agencies for political attacks

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There is strong evidence that President Barack Obama’s administration improperly weaponized U.S. intelligence agencies in multiple and shocking ways against Donald Trump and other political enemies.

It appears the Obama administration did this in a number of ways, including: fraudulently obtaining Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act warrants to spy on American citizens; promoting the Democratic National Committee-funded dossier assembled by former British spy Christopher Steele that was filled with lies about Trump; politicizing intelligence analysis; leaking intelligence; and spying on political opponents and journalists.

In the period when he was a presidential candidate and president-elect, Trump and his aides seemed to have been the major targets of this misuse of American intelligence for political purposes. But they were not the only targets.

It is imperative to uncover the extent of the Obama administration’s abuse of U.S. intelligence for political purposes. This must include a full list of every American unmasked from intelligence reports – Trump aides, members of Congress, and ordinary Americans – and who made these requests.

It would be irresponsible for the intelligence community and Congress to turn a blind eye to this abuse simply because it happened years ago. Wrongdoing by the Obama administration in this scandal – which President Trump has dubbed “Obamagate” – must be exposed to ensure such actions never take place again.

This week’s revelation that an astounding 39 Obama administration officials – including then-Vice President Joe Biden – made 53 requests to unmask incoming Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s name from National Security Agency phone intercepts between Election Day on Nov. 8, 2016 and Jan. 12, 2017 was a bombshell.

The stunning revelation regarding Obama administration spying on Flynn by secretly recording his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. at the time appears to confirm allegations by President Trump and his supporters of a broad effort by the Obama administration to weaponize intelligence to undermine the Trump presidency shortly before it began.

Flynn was simply carrying out his duties by making contact with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the transition period after Trump was elected president. It is perfectly routine for incoming members of a new presidential administration dealing with foreign affairs to contact foreign officials to introduce themselves before taking office.

Making this worse, the 53 unmasking requests by Obama administration officials are probably the tip of the iceberg of the Obama administration’s abuse of National Security Agency intelligence to target Trump aides.

House Intelligence Committee ranking member Devin Nunes, R-Calif. confirmed this in a Fox Business interview this week on “Lou Dobbs Tonight” when he said the Flynn unmasking scandal is “even worse than this” because “a whole lot” of other Trump associates were unmasked.

With this in mind, it is frustrating to see former Obama officials, the mainstream media and some former intelligence officials brush off the Flynn unmasking requests by claiming such requests are “normal and routine” and that all relevant rules and laws were complied with.

As a former CIA officer who helped process requests to unmask the names of U.S. citizens from National Security Agency reports, I know that unmasking requests are not normal and routine. And I believe these requests raise serious civil rights and legal issues that have not yet been addressed.

From my 25 years working in U.S. government national security jobs, I know how sensitive and rare unmasking requests are.

Names of U.S. citizens mentioned in U.S. intelligence reports – often National Security Agency communications intercepts – are redacted because under U.S. law, America’s foreign intelligence services are normally not permitted to spy on U.S. citizens.

Although senior U.S. officials are permitted to ask for the identity of a redacted name in an intelligence report (an unmasking request), such requests are unusual and the requestor must have a “need to know” the identity of the U.S. person to understand the foreign intelligence information or assess its importance.

When the request is approved, the unmasked identity is released only to the person who requested it – not to everyone who might have seen the original version of the report.

For example, during my time at the State Department from 2001-2006, Deputy Secretary Richard Armitage made about 100 demasking requests. Then-Under Secretary of State John Bolton only made 10 in four years.

Ironically, Senate Democrats made Bolton’s unmasking requests an issue during his 2005 nomination to be U.S. ambassador to the United Nations by falsely claiming these requests were improper and made to intimidate people and gain political advantage.

Then-Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., said at the time that unmasking requests were “rarely requested” and made “infrequently” by “non-career political appointees such as Mr. Bolton.”

An April 14, 2005, New York Times article said this about unmasking requests in connection with the Bolton confirmation hearings: “The identities of American officials whose communications are intercepted are usually closely protected by law, and not included even in classified intelligence reports. Access to the names may be authorized by the N.S.A. only in response to special requests, and these are not common, particularly from policy makers.”

The above statements about the rarity of unmasking requests are consistent with what I witnessed during my government career. In addition, the National Security Agency tightened the rules in 2005 on unmasking because of the controversy over such requests caused by the Bolton hearing.

The Obama administration, however, appeared to weaken the unmasking rules.

The Obama administration expanded access to National Security Agency information in February 2016 and on January 12, 2017. Both changes appeared to allow larger numbers of government officials to have access to unmasked names of Americans in intelligence reporting.

Even more troubling was a major rollback by the Obama administration in rules protecting members of Congress from unmasking requests.

I know from my five years on House Intelligence Committee staff of longstanding sensitivity by lawmakers that U.S. intelligence agencies could be used by the executive branch to spy on a president’s political enemies. For this reason, until 2013 there were strict limits to keep members of Congress out of intelligence reporting and to prevent unmasking their names.

Under a policy in effect in the 1990s, unmasking requests of the names of members of Congress were extremely limited and generally had to be reported to the House and Senate Intelligence Committees.

According to the Wall Street Journal, these rules were tightened further with “a 2011 NSA directive [that] required direct communications between foreign intelligence targets and members of Congress to be destroyed, but [gave] the NSA director the authority to waive this requirement if he determines the communications contain ‘significant foreign intelligence.””

However, in 2013 the Obama administration significantly weakened rules on unmasking the names of members of Congress from intelligence reports. The requestor’s reason could now merely be “to fully understand the intelligence.”

Rules on notifying Congress also were weakened. National Security Agency officials henceforth would notify Congress when members were unmasked from intelligence reports “as appropriate” and would determine “whether and to what extent congressional notification would take place.”

The Obama administration appeared to take advantage of these rules changes in 2015 when it obtained private conversations from National Security Agency reports of U.S. lawmakers who opposed the Iran nuclear deal in meetings with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The rule changes on unmasking the names of members of Congress have a direct bearing on the Obama administration’s unmasking of Trump aides.

Since there no longer was a prohibition on using U.S. intelligence agencies to spy on members of Congress, Obama officials probably reasoned there was nothing to prevent them from spying on members of a presidential campaign or an incoming presidential administration. This helps explain the hundreds of unmasking requests regarding Trump aides in 2016 and early 2017.

So what should happen now?

In addition to an investigation of spying on American citizens by the Obama administration, all Obama administration rule changes making it easier to unmask the names of members of Congress and ordinary Americans from intelligence reports need to be reversed immediately.

There also should be a requirement in the law restricting when U.S. officials can unmask the names of members of a presidential campaign or incoming administration from intelligence reports or otherwise spy on them. These rules should include a requirement for congressional notification if such spying is deemed necessary in the future.

Finally, I want to know why career intelligence officials cooperated with unmasking Trump campaign and transition officials at the request of the Obama administration.

Since the prohibition on spying on American citizens and keeping the names of U.S citizens out of intelligence reports are cardinal rules of the U.S. intelligence community, how could career intelligence officers agree to process hundreds of these requests? Why did none of them file complaints with their inspector general or the congressional intelligence oversight committees?

The hundreds of unmasking requests of Trump campaign and transition officials made by the Obama administration were in no way routine and necessary. I believe carrying out these unmasking requests was a huge ethical lapse by dozens – maybe hundreds – of U.S. intelligence community employees that must be addressed by the White House and the leaders of our intelligence agencies.

Originally published by Fox News

COLUMN BY

About Fred Fleitz

Fred Fleitz is President and CEO of the Center for Security Policy. He recently served as a Deputy Assistant to President Trump and Chief of Staff to National Security Adviser John Bolton. He previously worked in national security positions for 25 years with CIA, DIA, the Department of State and the House Intelligence Committee staff. Read his complete bio here. Follow Fleitz on Twitter @fredfleitz.

EDITORS NOTE: This Center for Security Policy column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

VIDEO: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Daughter calls American Soldiers ‘Bitches’ who are ‘killing innocent children abroad’

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As a combat veteran of the Vietnam War I have lived through this type of dangerous rhetoric. I have seen this before and it is ugly and wrong for many reasons. We Vietnam veterans were also called “baby killers” by those protesting the war. This young girl is being clearly influenced by her mother. It is a very sad and dangerous situation given that her mother is a U.S. Representative.

The following video was posted on Twitter by Isra Hirsi the daughter of Rep. Ilhan Omar.

CLICK ON THE PHOTO OF ISRA HIRSI TO WATCH:

https://twitter.com/thecjpearson/status/1261701137608163332?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1261701137608163332&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.thegatewaypundit.com%2F2020%2F05%2Frep-ilhan-omars-daughter-calls-american-soldiers-bitches-killing-innocent-children-abroad-video%2F

For more articles about Rep. Ilhan Omar please CLICK HERE.

RELATED ARTICLE: Rep. Ilhan Omar’s Daughter Calls American Soldiers ‘Bitches’ Who Are ‘Killing Innocent Children Abroad’ (VIDEO)

PODCAST: What Does Facebook’s New Oversight Board Mean for Conservative Posts?

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Facebook recently announced the first 20 members of its new oversight board. The role of the board is to guide Facebook through decisions on what controversial content should be allowed to stay up or be deleted.

Michael McConnell, professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook’s oversight board, joins the podcast to discuss what the institution of the board may mean for conservatives and how he plans to work alongside the liberal members of the group.

We also cover these stories:

  • President Donald Trump is critical of Obama administration officials who “unmasked” his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn.
  • Sen. Richard Burr of North Carolina is stepping down from his chairmanship of the Senate Intelligence Committee while his stock sales are investigated.
  • Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell criticizes Democrats’ $3 trillion coronavirus package.

The Daily Signal Podcast is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

Virginia Allen: I am joined by Michael McConnell, professor and director of the Constitutional Law Center at Stanford Law School and a co-chair of Facebook’s new oversight board. Professor McConnell, thank you so much for being here today.

Michael McConnell: It’s a pleasure.

Allen: To begin, can you just tell us a little bit about the mission and purpose of Facebook’s oversight board and how you came to be one of the four co-chairs of the board?

McConnell: The mission and purpose is that, over the years, Facebook has become the leading platform of communication around the world. And with that have come controversies and problems: What gets posted? What comes down? And the company realized that it was not a good thing for any one entity, even itself, to be making these important free speech decisions.

What they decided to do was to create an outside board of independent-minded people with experience in free expression issues to give a second look to the decisions made by the company about content moderation.

So if you post on Facebook and Facebook decides to take your message down, then you can come to the oversight board for a second opinion on that. And Facebook has agreed that it will comply with the oversight board’s decisions.

Now, as for me, I don’t exactly know, nobody really tells you where your own name comes from, but I do teach freedom of speech and religion and press right in Facebook’s backyard at Stanford.

So I guess in Silicon Valley, when you’re talking about issues of that sort, my name would come up pretty quickly. I’m also a former federal judge, so that probably also attracted some favorable attention.

Allen: Well, we’re certainly glad to see you on the board. You have said that Facebook has one of the most influential roles to play in deciding what can and can’t be said in our culture today. That’s a little scary, but I think that you’re absolutely right.

How does Facebook saying this is or is not something that you can say on our platform threaten free speech in general?

McConnell: Facebook from the beginning has had some restrictions. It is a platform that’s supposed to be a good place for families, and so it’s had, for example, an anti-nudity policy, quite rigid anti-nudity policy from the beginning. And other issues have come up over time.

They have what they call the Facebook Community Standards, which is an elaboration of their policies and what can and can’t be expressed. It’s right on the net. You can look it up and read the Community Standards for yourselves. Many of those, though, are, as you would expect, somewhat vague and subject to different kinds of interpretation, so that leads to many controversies.

Now, as a mechanical matter, first there’s the use of AI and algorithms to find some kinds of impermissible content. … I’m not much of an empirical guy, but I think something like 80% or 90% of this is elimination of bots, which are artificially-generated posts that aren’t coming from human beings at all, and AI is pretty good at identifying bots.

But in addition to that, Facebook has three different monitoring centers around the world, each of them having about 10,000 employees who review the posts and see whether they comply with Facebook Community Standards.

Then on top of that, someone who doesn’t like the decision that Facebook has made has the right to appeal it within the company, and they would get a yes or no answer, but no explanation.

That’s where it rested or has rested up until now.

And the idea of the oversight board is to give people an opportunity to appeal these decisions to a group of independent outsiders who will take another look, make a decision, and this time actually provide an explanation or rationale in writing so that people can find out why their post was up or why it was down, and we’ll be able to evaluate whether the decisions are being made on a reasonable and a neutral, ideologically and culturally neutral, basis.

Now, the difficulty of this is that the volume is so immense, with billions of posts and hundreds of thousands of controversies.

Obviously, the oversight board, we’re all going to be working part time. We can’t begin to look at all of the appeals. So one of our tasks is going to be to figure out how best to select from that mass of possibilities the cases to focus attention on.

So we’re going to have a committee, a case selection committee, that looks at a large number of these cases quite quickly and superficially, and then identifies the ones that will have the most impact.

We could talk about the criteria for that, but the main point is that even once we’re up and running, not every dispute can go to the board, and we’re only going to be able to decide a tiny fraction of the appeals.

Allen: … [It’s] interesting to hear some of that background. I do want to ask just about how we kind of as conservatives should be viewing this board, because here at The Heritage Foundation, we’ve experienced Facebook pulling down our content over wording that they saw as objectionable, and later they did restore that content. But this is a pattern that we see with Facebook.

So with the implementation of the oversight board, are you optimistic that conservative groups and individuals will be treated impartially on the platform?

McConnell: We’ll see, but it’s my hope that this is going to be one of the major contributions of the board, is to bring a kind of ideological neutrality to these decisions.

It’s hard to know exactly what the source of all these problems has been, but you think of Facebook as a profit-making company and it responds to consumer pressure, and it just so happens in this world that the most pressure, the loudest, noisiest voices tend to be those who are advocating censorship, and often of censorship of people on the conservative side of the spectrum. And companies respond to the squeaky wheel.

It’s my hope that when an outside group that has pledged to be ideologically neutral and objective then takes a look at this—and in a more deliberative way where we don’t really care about Facebook as a company, what we care about is the charge to promote freedom of expression in a neutral way—I’m hoping that this board will have the effect, maybe not in every single case, and I’m sure no one is going to agree with all of the decisions, but overall to have a more even-handed and fair-minded and certainly more transparent system.

Allen: Yeah. Do you know how the board anticipates handling hate speech issues, for example? These are issues that can often involve pretty complicated matters. So let’s say that someone posts a cartoon that is making fun of Islam in a Muslim-majority country, how would the board deal with that?

McConnell: I can’t speak to any specific question because that’s what we’ll be deciding. Hate speech is both a real problem, on the one hand, but also an extremely slippery concept on the other. And if it’s interpreted to include merely being offensive or annoying or insulting, then freedom of speech values are really seriously compromised.

Now, you mentioned the Muhammad cartoons episode, and it is interesting that several members of the board had real-world experience with that particular controversy.

One of the co-chairs, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, who was the prime minister of Denmark when that controversy was going on, she defended the publication of those cartoons, even though part of the result of that were some deaths from people being attacked by people offended by the cartoons.

And yet, her reaction was that freedom of speech demands … the ability to publish things of that sort, even if they are offensive to some people.

There was another member of the board from the Middle East itself who publicly defended the publication of the cartoons, which was really quite an act of courage.

Allen: Yeah, absolutely. Gender identity is another controversial issue that, obviously, we see come up quite a lot in the news, with some activists arguing that using someone’s birth gender instead of their adoptive gender is hate speech. Twitter has already banned misgendering people. How do you anticipate Facebook handling this issue and similar ones?

McConnell: I don’t know. That might very well be a particular case that comes up, and I can’t anticipate how my colleagues and I will be deciding particular questions.

Allen: Yeah. … That’s very fair. We’ll wait and see.

Well, yourself and John Samples, the vice president of [the Cato Institute], are really the only known figures on the political right among the first 20 board appointees. Are you confident that your views and opinions will actually be heard?

McConnell: Well, let me tell you, I don’t intend to be sitting around as a potted plant. If my voice is not heard, I won’t be around for very long. I won’t put up with it.

Allen: I like it. Straightforward answer.

The board is internationally very diverse, and it represents countries from all over the world. And some, such as the Free Speech Alliance, have raised concerns about this, saying that the board will be unable or unwilling to embrace America’s First Amendment ideas of free speech. Is this a concern that you have?

McConnell: I think that anyone needs to be concerned, because it is true that the American understanding of freedom of speech is often more expansive than that elsewhere. But the two points about it, one is that, politics and ideology and free speech around the world are complicated.

So there are quite a few people, even on the board, and I really mean people around the world, who live under authoritarian regimes that are hostile to freedom of speech. And their politics of the dissidents may not be very similar to the politics of American conservatives, but they, in many cases, are as passionately committed to freedom of expression as any of us may be.

And we have members of the board who grew up under extremely adverse, even totalitarian, circumstances. And for them, freedom of speech is part of what they live and breathe.

The second thing about this is that these influences can both go both ways. And I understand that there are those who worry that the less libertarian notions of freedom of speech that we often see around the world will influence speech in the United States through this board. But it’s my hope that it will be the other way around, that this will be an opportunity for American free speech values to have a platform and to become more influential abroad.

Allen: Considering just that diversity among the oversight board, are you confident that the board will be able to really act and rule in unity in those situations where it really matters, on important issues around free speech?

McConnell: I don’t know. It’s really something we have to see. I see this board as an experiment rather than a panacea, and a couple of years from now, ask me that question again, and I can give you more of my reaction.

I do think that there are grounds for hope, though, because although there is a tremendous diversity of all kinds of dimensions among the members of the board, I think that they all do have in common some very serious commitment to freedom of expression within the cultures from which we all come.

And I hope and think I have reason to hope that that is going to play out and that the board will be able to work together for a world in which people can speak and also be safe.

Allen: How do you hope to influence your fellow board members to maybe more so embrace those principles or free speech for those who might just be a little bit more apprehensive to do so?

McConnell: Oh, I’ll need a little prayer for that. I have been an advocate for freedom of speech and freedom of religion my entire adult life. I have carried this message even within American academia, which is no less homogeneous than some of the environments we’ll be working in here.

I really believe that John Milton and John Stuart Mill and Thomas Jefferson had it right when they argued that the suppression of free opinion, [the] suppression of error, as John Milton would call it, is not good for human beings and for society. And if that’s right, then maybe the message will carry.

Allen: Yeah. Now, you said very clearly earlier, which I appreciated that, if your views and opinions are not really, I guess, taken seriously and upheld on the board that you wouldn’t stick around. But considering the fact that you are one of the only figures on the board that is conservative, are you at all worried about other board members trying to push you out?

McConnell: No, it never occurred to me.

Allen: OK, good. I’m glad to hear that.

I know that some conservatives are concerned that Facebook essentially has created the oversight board to be almost like a shield for themselves, so that they won’t have to necessarily take that brunt of when there is kind of questionable action taken. Do you think that there’s weight to this argument?

McConnell: Well, I don’t really care what Facebook’s motivation is. What I care about is that this is a mechanism for a second look and for contradicting Facebook when it is improperly taking material down. And that’s what really matters.

Allen: Yeah. I want to ask you one other content question. In our generation, increasingly we constantly see a lot of memes on the internet, and sometimes those memes can be quite crude. They use kind of various types of humor and content that can be offensive.

So how do you anticipate really navigating humor as a factor when you’re considering what stays up, what comes down, what’s constituted as hate speech, what’s not?

McConnell: I think it’s going to be hard. Not just humor, but satire, too, and deliberate exaggeration. … Especially in the United States, this is part of the way we communicate, through humor and satire and exaggeration. And to treat all of these things as if they were just straightforward statements of fact would just be a massive misunderstanding of the social phenomenon.

I do worry that, around the world, these things … are different norms and different understandings. And while I think that it’s essential that the same standards of freedom of speech are applied everywhere, I do think it’s important for the board to be culturally sensitive, so that something that might be understood to be a satire in the United States, a similar thing might not be understood as that elsewhere.

We need to make sure that we are as culturally literate as possible, so that we understand the meaning of these communications in the context where they occur. It’s not going to be easy.

Allen: Yeah. It’s certainly a challenge. Now, what are two or three things that you hope the board can implement over the course of the first year or so that will really empower Facebook users to feel comfortable exercising their free speech rights on the platform?

McConnell: First of all, I think it’s going to be very helpful to have some explanations of reasons. I think one of the biggest frustrations for Facebook users is that it’s been such a black box, that no one really knows why one thing is up and why something else is down. And the oversight board is going to explain the reasons for what we do.

… Whether you like the decisions or not, I just think getting reasons is going to be a big advantage.

Second thing is, I think that, at least I hope, that the board is going to be independent-minded enough to be able to take a step back from all of the kind of noise and pressure of the moment.

Social media is plagued by a kind of mass hysteria that is deeply contrary to both liberty and just to rationality. And I do hope, and I really do when I say hope, I’m very hopeful that this board is going to be able to separate itself from that and not to succumb to that.

Let’s see, a third thing? This is probably not on the immediate agenda, but something that I would like to see us do eventually is to take a look at the fact-checking process.

We will not be in a position ever to overrule fact-checking on each individual piece, but I think we might be able to, and I hope we’ll be able to, do some auditing of the fact-checking process and see how it’s going.

I think there are serious concerns that fact-checking is biased and perhaps not always as factual as it is made out to be. I think the principle of fact-checking is a very good idea, but if political bias is smuggled in in the name of fact-checking, we all are made much worse off as a result.

And we would need to look at this objectively and not just … assume that it’s so problematic, but also not assume that just because people call themselves fact-checkers, that they’re necessarily all that interested in the facts.

Allen: Professor McConnell, what would you say to conservative Facebook users who, frankly, are worried that the oversight board in the long term will mean more censorship of their content on Facebook?

McConnell: I don’t actually understand why it would. I think that the overwhelming sort of institutional drive here is going to be the opposite. That the demands for more censorship are powerful out in the world of Facebook’s customers.

I think that to have a process which is focused on deliberation is going to be a calming influence for that. I don’t see why it would be an aggravating influence. …

I also think that if people look at the records of the members of the board, not with a point of view of what is their politics, but rather from the point of view of what has been their stance on freedom of speech, that people should be reassured. Conservatives should be among those who are reassured.

I am now old enough, gray hair and all, … to remember when sort of left progressives used to be—part of their orthodoxy was to defend freedom of speech, even for people that they disagreed with. That, I think, has been going away. It’s been diminishing in power in the United States and elsewhere, but it isn’t gone. It isn’t absent. It is still a very respectable and somewhat common view.

I think that many members of this board, even if you can look at them and say, “Well, I don’t like their politics,” … are going to be standing up for freedom of speech for people that they don’t necessarily agree with.

Allen: Professor McConnell, thank you. I just really appreciate hearing your insight and your perspective. I think this is incredibly helpful, and I hope it’s a great resource for all of our listeners, so thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.

McConnell: Thank you for the chance.

PODCAST BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal podcast is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

White House Challenges Left’s Pandemic Playbook Narrative

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The White House pushed back on the media narrative that the Obama administration left behind a pandemic “playbook” for the Trump administration.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said Friday that the playbook from the Obama administration was an insufficient packet of paper, and that the Trump administration’s own pandemic response exercise in 2019 exposed its shortcomings.

On Thursday, Dr. Rick Bright, a senior adviser at the National Institutes of Health who filed a whistleblower complaint against President Donald Trump, told a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health that the administration should have known more about the coronavirus.

As a result, Bright said, “we were not as prepared as we should have been.”

In these trying times, we must turn to the greatest document in the history of the world to promise freedom and opportunity to its citizens for guidance. Find out more now >>

“We missed early warning signals and we forgot important pages from our pandemic playbook,” Bright said. “There will be plenty of time to identify gaps for improvement.”

Much of the mainstream media, including CNN, Politico, and PBS, ran with the narrative that the Obama administration left a pathway for the Trump administration to better handle the coronavirus.

That wasn’t the case., McEnany said during the Friday press briefing.

“Some have erroneously suggested that the Trump administration threw out the pandemic response playbook left by the Obama-Biden administration,” McEnany said, holding up documents from the podium. “What the critics fail to note, however, is that this thin packet of paper was replaced by two detailed, robust pandemic response reports commissioned by the Trump administration.”

“In 2018, the Trump administration issued our pandemic crisis action plan,” she said, adding:

Further, from August 13th to the 16th, the Trump administration conducted the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise. This was a pandemic simulation to test the nation’s ability to respond to a large-scale outbreak.

In January of 2020, [the Department of Health and Human Services] issued the Crimson Contagion 2019 Functional Exercise after-action report. This exercise exposed the shortcomings in legacy planning documents, which informed President Trump’s coronavirus response.

COLUMN BY

Fred Lucas

Fred Lucas is the White House correspondent for The Daily Signal and co-host of “The Right Side of History” podcast. Lucas is also the author of “Tainted by Suspicion: The Secret Deals and Electoral Chaos of Disputed Presidential Elections.” Send an email to Fred. Twitter: @FredLucasWH.

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RELATED VIDEO: Hopkins: Britain, Boris and Lethal Socialized Healthcare.

A Note for our Readers:

This is a critical year in the history of our country. With the country polarized and divided on a number of issues and with roughly half of the country clamoring for increased government control—over health care, socialism, increased regulations, and open borders—we must turn to America’s founding for the answers on how best to proceed into the future.

The Heritage Foundation has compiled input from more than 100 constitutional scholars and legal experts into the country’s most thorough and compelling review of the freedoms promised to us within the United States Constitution into a free digital guide called Heritage’s Guide to the Constitution.

They’re making this guide available to all readers of The Daily Signal for free today!

GET ACCESS NOW! >>

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Unfit To Print Episode 52: Biden Busted In Flynn Unmasking Scandal

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‘Grossly Incompetent’: Trump Fires Back At Obama’s Criticism Of Leadership During Coronavirus

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These Are The Republicans Who Want To Continue Spending After The US Debt Passes $25 Trillion

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Caller video is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.