Ask and Ye Shall Receive: Local Businesses Keep Doctors Safe

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Our small business success story this week comes from Arizona. A doctor who, after seeing his colleagues contract COVID-19 while providing care to COVID patients, became sick and tired of the risks and decided to act. He designed an intubation box to protect medical professionals during the intubation process and went to local businesses for help in creating it.

They stepped up. Via AZ Central:

Reeser first took his design to Phoenix-based mattress company, Tuft & Needle, which has built and donated dozens of intubation boxes to hospitals across the Valley using his plans. Hundreds more have been sent across the country with the help of additional partners. 

While Tuft & Needle didn’t have the resources on hand to make these boxes for Dr. Reeser, they did know who to call. Soon, they were on their way to building the boxes for Reeser and his colleagues.

However, Reeser wasn’t finished. He approached Urban Plough Furniture, which normally serves hospitality and office space firms, to make the same safety devices. Founder Matthew Moore, who had seen six months worth of business dry up, jumped on the chance to help his community and his company:

“And magically, Dr. Reeser shows up at our doorstep,” Moore said. 

Like Tuft & Needle, Moore’s company has been producing the intubation boxes at cost and donating them to doctors in need — they’re not making up for lost profits. But he says the work has given him purpose. 

This is what it means to “buy,” or in this case “ask,” local. Small businesses are always going to fight – and often lose – to faceless corporations that have lower per-product costs and thus can sell everything at a lower price. However, your local small business sees purpose in helping you and your family – whether it’s during the pandemic or during more normal economic times.

Serving communities takes all kinds of shapes. Buying local means that when times are tough, you have allies and friends to get you, your family, and your neighbors through tough times. Reeser and Moore are just a single example of the amazing community teamwork that is taking place across America.

How can you be a part of supporting local?

This post is part of 2ndVote’s coverage of business charity during the COVID-19 public health, social, and economic crises. We are highlighting companies large and small which are doing their part to help their communities.

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Education in Kosovo

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Primary education is provided for students here. It consists of schooling from grade one through five. This is a requirement by law for all children and students enroll at the age of six. The second component of education is the lower secondary educational system, which is usually for teens around 12 to 15 years of age. It provides education through grade nine. This is publicly funded and free of charge.

From here, students move on to secondary education. This is either professional education or general education. Most students spend three to four years at this level. This level of education is not a requirement under law, though. Most students who enroll in it do so to learn trades and skills that they will use to build their careers and lives with. These schools have a goal to prepare students for vocational work directly out of school or to prepare them to enter university.

Higher Education in Kosovo

Much of the country is rebuilding and reorganizing. This includes the educational system in the country. Universities and educational institutions provide higher education in Kosovo. Both private and public schools are available here at this level. Students are able to earn an associate’s degree, which generally takes under two years to complete in a specialized area of study, a bachelor’s degree, which takes between three and four years to complete, or a masters degree, which can add an additional two to three years of education on. Post graduate education to earn a PhD is also available. Many students enroll in these programs part time, though full time education is still widely available as well.

It is important to note that many of the schools, under the guidance of the Ministry of Education, Science, and Technology is being altered. The goal is to align the educational system along the lines of other European countries.

The Best Universities in Kosovo:

  • University of Pristina, located in the city of Pristina as a public university
  • AAB University, located in the city of Pristina as a non-public university

Each of these schools set the requirements for enrollment both at the domestic and the international level. Students generally will need to apply directly to the school to learn about qualifications and costs for tuition. These can range significantly with private schools tending to be more expensive than public universities. International students are welcoming, though, at both.

Travel Visa Requirements

Once you decide to obtain your education in Kosovo, you can apply to enroll in one of the universities. Once you do that, you can obtain the required student travel visa. An application with the Kosovo government, though a consulate or embassy can help students to do so, is required. A fee is paid at this time. The individual must also submit a letter from the school indicating their acceptance into the program of student, as well as information about the student’s living arrangements.

Students will need to show they have financial stability enough to live in the country and support themselves while doing so. The country does not provide health insurance to international students. Purchasing a policy from a third party is often a good idea, though a student who enrolls in a travel package may already obtain this.

Universities in Kosovo are trying their best to try to encourage overseas students to study in Kosovo, in their capacities. There much to be done in this regard, but the interest from international students is there.

For example, at AAB University, there are many interested students from abroad who want to study there. The two main faculties, in which they enroll, are: Computer Science Faculty and English language and Literature Faculty.

Local students are very much interested to study abroad, to experience the European dream. This is done by different exchange programs, such as: Erasmus+. Their interest and willing to study abroad is to gain knowledge, come back and implement and serve that knowledge to their country.

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The Intolerant, Ingrate Left Wants Christians to Stop Helping COVID-19 Victims

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Just as soon as the Christian organization Samaritan’s Purse came to the aid of overwhelmed New York City officials and sick residents struggling to combat the effects of COVID-19, New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson decided the diverse, “tolerant,” progressive city had enough of its assistance, due to its Christian foundation, and effectively kicked the charity out.

While it’s usually Christians who are scolded for their so-called intolerant beliefs that are rooted in centuries-old religious traditions, here it seems like it’s progressives who aren’t so tolerant of other people embracing views that are different than theirs—even if those very views inform their acts of charity and medical care.

Samaritan’s Purse is, of course, a renowned Christian relief organization that focuses mostly on offering medical aid in times of crises, setting up emergency field hospitals in disease-ridden, war-torn, or terrorist-ravaged hot spots around the world.

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 >>>

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>>>.

It has gone everywhere from the Bahamas to Mozambique to Iraq and has treated everything from injuries caused by ISIS to Ebola. Now, it’s helping COVID-19 patients and public officials in New York and Italy.

When COVID-19 began to overwhelm New York City just a few weeks ago—at the peak of what we now think was the frightening “curve” of the outbreak—Samaritan’s Purse arrived, built a giant tent hospital in Central Park with the full knowledge and cooperation of the nearby highly acclaimed Mount Sinai Health System, and went to work.

Here’s what Samaritan’s Purse accomplished, according to its website:

We operated our respiratory care unit in Central Park from April 1 to May 5. Through our  partnership with the Mount Sinai Health System, we treated more than 300 coronavirus patients in New York, including 190 at the park site.

More than 240 relief specialists served at various times on the Disaster Assistance Response Team there. We ran a similar medical facility outside of Milan, Italy, that opened on March 20 and closed May 7. The 14-tent unit was set up adjacent to the Cremona Hospital in order to treat an overflow of coronavirus patients.

Our DC-8 aircraft made two airlifts to Italy in order to deliver the hospital, 20 tons of supplies, and a large Disaster Assistance Response Team.

Those efforts sound not only peaceful and benign, but also quite remarkable. Not so, according to a number of New York City officials, who started a culture war where there wasn’t even a battle—except for those fighting for their lives due to COVID-19.

According to a May 4 New York Post column, “Four local Democratic members of Congress—Reps. Jerry Nadler, Carolyn Maloney, Adriano Espaillat, and [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez]—sent a letter to Mount Sinai expressing their ‘concern’ about the group’s efforts and demanding to know how it had received permission to operate in Central Park.”

Combine that with Johnson’s tweets and you have yourself a culture war coup d’etat.

Johnson specifically called out the organization’s religious views, tweeting they were too exclusive and hateful:

Their continued presence here is an affront to our values of inclusion, and is painful for all New Yorkers who care deeply about the LGBTQ community. …

The @NYCCouncil is committed to supporting [health care workers] and protecting our city’s public health. But as a city that values diversity and compassion for all, we can’t continue allowing a group with their track record to remain here when we’re past the point they’re needed.

Mount Sinai must sever its relationship with Samaritan’s Purse. Its leader calls the LGBTQ community ‘detestable’ and ‘immoral.’ He says being gay is ‘an affront to God,’ and refers to gay Christians as ‘the enemy.’ …

Johnson concluded his tweetstorm:  “Hate has no place in our beautiful city.”

Samaritan’s Purse did indeed leave a few days later, although it’s unclear whether those tweets motivated it or whether it had already planned to leave New York City on May 5.

Johnson’s interpretation that Samaritan’s Purse is a bigoted, hateful organization because it espouses traditional Christian beliefs—specifically, that marriage is between a man and a woman—is not a new lens through which the left views Christians, though that doesn’t make it accurate.

Even before the Supreme Court legalized gay marriage in 2015, that was the premise of virtually every LGBTQ group, the plaintiff in that 2015 court case, the ACLU, and many others.

Since when is it “bigotry” to hold sincere religious beliefs that people have practiced for centuries?

The LGBTQ community claims to advocate tolerance and inclusion, but it is inviting and welcoming only when everyone believes what it does, even when, as we saw here, the issue at stake—medical care in a crisis—has nothing to do with political ideology.

There’s no evidence that Samaritan’s Purse came to New York City to condemn gay marriage or even to spread the Gospel. From the sound of it, Samaritan’s Purse pitched its tent, gave medical care to patients suffering with COVID-19, and after a few weeks, or perhaps when its presence became controversial, it left.

There is still a cultural divide between Christians and LGBTQ groups and their supporters. That’s unfortunate.

I know many Christians who grieve over that and desire harmony with everyone without compromising their beliefs. I’m sure many in the LGBTQ community do as well.

It’s possible that divide may always exist, but I wish that Christians could maintain their beliefs and still extend courtesy and grace, and that people like the New York City Council speaker would be as inclusive and tolerant as they claim to be toward Christians trying to help them.

COMMENTARY BY

Nicole Russell

Nicole Russell is a contributor to The Daily Signal. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, National Review, Politico, The Washington Times, The American Spectator, and Parents Magazine. Twitter: .

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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.

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VIDEO: The Fauci-WHO Connection and Restoring U.S. Funding to the Marxist organization

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Tucker Carlson obtains draft letter showing U.S. on brink of restoring WHO funding:

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VIDEO: Clinton Resists Court Order to Produce Memo on Process that Led to Her Mass Email Deletions

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Perhaps Hillary Clinton thinks she can run out the clock on our efforts to get to the bottom of her scandalous email schemes. Recall that she is resisting, through an emergency appeal, a court order to us about her emails. (The appellate hearing on her testimony, btw, has been officially set for June 2.)

Now our Judicial Watch attorneys are to file a motion in federal court to compel her to produce a December 2014 after action memorandum created by her personal attorney, Heather Samuelson, that memorializes the search for and processing of Clinton emails in 2014.

It was Samuelson who reviewed Clinton’s State Department emails, and about half of them were deleted.

The filing comes in our FOIA lawsuit that seeks records concerning “talking points or updates on the Benghazi attack” (Judicial Watch v. U.S. Department of State (No. 1:14-cv-01242)). We famously uncovered in 2014 that the “talking points,” which provided the basis for false statements by then-National Security Advisor Susan Rice, were created by the Obama White House. This JW FOIA lawsuit led directly to the disclosure of the Clinton email system in 2015.

In December 2018, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth ordered discovery into whether Clinton’s use of a private email server was intended to stymie FOIA; whether the State Department’s intent to settle this case in late 2014 and early 2015 amounted to bad faith; and whether the State Department has adequately searched for records responsive to Judicial Watch’s request. The court also authorized discovery into whether the Benghazi controversy motivated the cover-up of Clinton’s email. The court ruled that the Clinton email system was “one of the gravest modern offenses to government transparency.”

Clinton is resisting producing even a portion of the “after-action” memo, despite an August 22, 2019, ruling by Judge Lamberth that we may ask for the memorandum in our discovery. Clinton alleges that the memo is fully exempt from disclosure under the “attorney work product doctrine.” In an earlier ruling on a similar issue in this litigation, the Court held that “any contemporaneous documents shedding light on the three narrow discovery topics – even documents evincing attorney impressions, conclusions, opinions, and theories – constitute fact work-product” and should be produced.

We explain to the court: “After repeated attempts to resolve this dispute have proven unsuccessful, [Judicial Watch] respectfully requests an order from the Court to compel Secretary Clinton to produce the document … within short order.”

We point out:

This is a rare Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) case in which the Court determined that civil discovery is appropriate. On March 29, 2016, the Court granted [Judicial Watch’s] motion for discovery, holding that “[w] here there is evidence of government wrong-doing and bad faith, as here, limited discovery is appropriate, even though it is exceedingly rare in FOIA cases.”

In our motion we refute Clinton’s claim that the memo is protected by the “attorney work product doctrine.”

Secretary Clinton claims that the after action memo is subject to the attorney work product privilege and exempt from disclosure, but she fails to explain that the memorandum was created in reasonable anticipation of litigation. … She does not assert that it was created due to the litigation here. Neither does she claim that it was created in anticipation of any other specific litigation. Simply put, she does not demonstrate that the after action memo was not created in the normal course of the search and review process …

Second, … the after action memo falls within the category of “contemporaneous documents shedding light on the three narrow discovery topics.” … According to Samuelson’s testimony, the after action memo plainly contains factual information memorializing searches and techniques for retrieving Secretary Clinton’s governmental records.

Clinton’s attorneys also do not explain why her emails were deleted despite the “reasonable anticipation of litigation,” rather than preserved.

In a June 2019 court-ordered deposition to us, Samuelson admitted under oath that she was granted immunity by the U.S. Department of Justice in June 2016. She also revealed that, contrary to what she told the FBI in 2016, she was, in fact, aware that Clinton used a private email account while secretary of state. Samuel’s admission to us that she became aware of Clinton’s non-State.gov emails during her service in the Clinton State Department White House Liaison Office contradicts the notation in the FBI’s May 24, 2016, “302” report on Samuelson’s interview with FBI agents:

Samuelson did not become aware of Clinton’s use of a private email account and server until she was serving as Clinton’s personal attorney.

In 2014, after Clinton left the State Department, Samuelson became Clinton’s personal attorney and was primarily responsible for conducting the review of Clinton emails and sorting out “personal” emails from government emails, which were provided to the State Department under the direction of Cheryl Mills and Clinton lawyer David Kendall.  After the emails were provided to State, Clinton, through her lawyers and Platte River Networks, deleted the rest of the “personal” emails from her server, wiping it clean. Samuelson conducted the review of emails on her laptop, using Clinton server files downloaded from Platte River Networks, which housed the Clinton email server.

Clinton clearly doesn’t want the Court and the American people to know the full truth about her destruction of 33,000 emails. The evidence shows that she knew exactly what she was doing when she hid her emails, took them from the State Department and deleted them. So it is no surprise she is desperate to avoid testifying and turning over what must be a smoking-gun memo on her email deletions.

This is only one facet of our pursuit of the truth about Hillary Clinton’s activities while secretary of state.

On March 2, 2020, Judge Lamberth granted us additional discovery that includes testimony under oath by Clinton and her former Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills regarding Clinton’s emails and Benghazi attack records. In April, we and the State Department, which is represented by Justice Department lawyers, filed responses opposing Clinton’s and Mills’ Writ of Mandamus request to overturn this court order requiring their testimonies.

Also, on April 10, we served a subpoena on Google LLC, which was authorized by the court, demanding that it produce all emails, including metadata, from a Google account believed to contain former Secretary of State Clinton’s emails. Google just produced data to us this week and I’ll be sure to report back to you as soon as our expert team analyzes it, so stay tuned!

Judicial Watch Sues to Stop Maryland County Giving $5 Million to Illegal Aliens

The Left is using our national health crisis to fulfill its agenda on the sly.

Last month we sued the Governor of California on behalf of two California taxpayers for overstepping his authority and violating federal law when he attempted to go around the California State Legislature by executive action and spend $78 million to provide direct case payments to illegal aliens.

Now we’re taking a similar step in Maryland. We have filed a lawsuit and asked for a temporary restraining order against Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich and Raymond L. Crowel, director of the county’s Department of Health and Human Services, on behalf of two Montgomery County taxpayers, Sharon Bauer and Richard Jurgena.

The U.S. District Court for the District of Maryland set a hearing for Friday, May 15, on our petition.

We have asked the court to stop the county from expending $5 million of taxpayer funds to provide direct cash assistance to unlawfully present aliens (Bauer, et al, v. Elrich, et al. (No. 482061V)).

We argue that the county council overstepped its authority and violated federal law when, without affirmative state legislative approval, it created the “Emergency Assistance Relief Payment Program” (EARP) to provide cash payments to people who otherwise are ineligible for unemployment insurance due to their unlawful presence in the United States.

On April 15, 2020, County Executive Elrich referred to a soon-to-be-announced initiative to provide at least $5 million in cash payments to illegal aliens. On April 27, Montgomery County announced in a press statement that “[a]pproximately $2.5 million will be disbursed to residents [by the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS)] and another $2.5 million will be targeted to individuals and families served by nonprofit organizations in the community.”

On April 30, the County Council released a press statement that the program would be paid for out of the Montgomery County General Fund, which, according the County Operating Budget, is comprised entirely of taxpayer monies. The DHHS website specifies that the payments would consist of $500 for single adults, and up to $1,450 per family.

In our complaint we argue:

Under federal law [8 U.S.C. § 1621(a)], unlawfully present aliens generally are ineligible for State or local public benefits.

***

However, a “State may provide that an alien who is not lawfully present in the United States is eligible for any State or local public benefit … only through the enactment of a State law … which affirmatively provides for such eligibility” [Emphasis added]

***

…The Maryland General Assembly has not enacted a State law affirmatively granting [Montgomery County officials] the authority to provide cash payments to unlawfully present aliens.

The program targets the payments to illegal aliens:

The Montgomery County DHHS has stated that unlawfully present aliens are ‘eligible to apply for and receive cash payments,’ [and] based on the narrow set of eligibility criteria, unlawfully present aliens will be the primary – if not exclusive – recipients of EARP’s cash payments.

In arguing for a temporary restraining order, we point out:

Based on the face of the Complaint as well as the facts identified above, it is likely [Judicial Watch’s clients] will prevail on the merits. The Maryland General Assembly has not affirmatively enacted a law authorizing Defendants [Montgomery County officials] to provide cash benefits to unlawfully present aliens as part of EARP, as required under 8 U.S.C. § 1621. Nonetheless, Defendants intend to provide such benefits to unlawfully present aliens starting in May 2020. Plaintiffs also can demonstrate that they and all Montgomery County taxpayers will suffer immediate, substantial, and irreparable pecuniary harm as soon as Defendants illegally spend the $5 million of taxpayer monies.

Montgomery County Executive Elrich and the Montgomery County Council have no legal authority on their own to spend taxpayer money for cash payments to illegal aliens. The coronavirus challenge doesn’t give politicians a pass to violate the law. If they want to give cash payments to illegal aliens, they must be accountable and transparent, and, as federal law requires, pass a state law to do so.

I attended the tele-hearing with the Court the morning.  The Court suggested he would rule on the TRO request by the middle of next week. We’ll be sure to let you know what happens next!

New Judicial Watch Court Action to Block Newsome from Providing Illegal Cash to Illegal Aliens in California

Last week I reported to you that we were seeking a restraining order to keep California Governor Gavin Newsom from handing out $75 million in cash to illegal aliens.

As I noted, that judge issued a bizarre ruling: the governor can go ahead, even though it’s likely illegal.

We’ve taken that to the appeals court in California.

We have filed a petition for Writ of Mandate that would require the trial court to issue a temporary restraining order on Newsom’s plan. Though the lower court said that Judicial Watch taxpayer clients are likely to succeed on the merits (that Governor Newsom has no authority under law to spend the money), there’s more harm to illegal aliens during the coronavirus crisis than there is to California’s 40 million taxpayers and citizens. For those of you interested in the detail, Judicial Watch filed the writ petition in the California Court of Appeal, Second Appellate District, in order to overturn a May 5, 2020 Superior Court of Los Angeles County ruling denying a temporary restraining order sought by Judicial Watch in the case (Crest et al. v. Newsom et al. (No. 20STCV16321)).

Our filing asks the Court of Appeal to command the Superior Court to issue the restraining order against California Governor Gavin Newsom and his Director of the California Department of Social Services Kim Johnson, enjoining them from making what is now an imminent, May 18, 2020 illegal expenditure of $79.8 million of taxpayers’ funds to illegal aliens pending the final determination of the taxpayer action brought by Judicial Watch in the lower court.

On April 29, we filed a lawsuit in the Superior Court of California for the County of Los Angeles on behalf of two California taxpayers, Robin Crest and Howard Myers, asking the court to stop the state from illegally expending more than $75 million of taxpayer funds as direct cash assistance to unlawfully present aliens (Crest et al. v. Newsom et al. (No. 20STCV16321)).

The lawsuit alleges California Governor Gavin Newsom overstepped his authority and violated federal law when, without affirmative state legislative approval, he took executive action to create the “Disaster Relief Assistance for Immigrants Project” and to provide cash benefits to illegal aliens who otherwise are ineligible for state or federal insurance or other benefits due to their unlawful presence in the United States. On May 5, we filed an application for a temporary restraining order in the case to prevent Newsom and Johnson from unlawfully spending any of the $75 million slated for direct cash benefits or the $4.8 million earmarked for the administrative costs of having community based organizations distribute the money to unlawfully present aliens under guarantees of privacy and state secrecy.

It is astonishing that any court would allow government officials to ignore the law and spend tax money with no legal authority. The lower court essentially acknowledged Governor Newsom has no legal authority to spend state taxpayer money for cash payments to illegal aliens. And the circumstances are very troubling. The Court of Appeal should overturn the lower court’s manifest error.

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Iran’s Economy In Free Fall

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From the Jewish News Syndicate:

With the coronavirus pandemic sending oil prices to record lows, for Iran, which relies on oil exports as its top revenue source, the economic situation is going from bad to worse.

Oil prices have suddenly declined by 40% for two reasons. First, the Saudis started an oil price war with Russia, ramping up their own production, in order to increase their market share. That price war is over, and oil producers have agreed to share production cuts, but prices have not rebounded as producers hoped. That is because of the second reason for the oil price decline: a colossal decrease in demand. The coronavirus pandemic has led to a worldwide dampening of demand, as both car and plane travel have plummeted. Working at home cuts down on commuting, keeping children home means there is no need to take them to and from school, tourism has plummeted worldwide now that non-essential travel is forbidden, and so has plane travel that relies on those tourists. Online multi-party meetings on Zoom and Skype have replaced in-person meetings. In the second quarter of 2020, world oil demand is now nearly 24 mbd down from a year ago. As long as the pandemic continues, travel by car or plane will not rebound, and oil prices will remain at historic lows..There is nothing Iran can do about this.

Reflecting such a state of fiscal affairs, Iran’s parliament this week approved a measure to change its currency from the rial to the toman, which will be set as 10,000 rials. The move is a bid by the Islamic Republic to curb growing inflation.

The Weimar-like inflation in Iran has led to a change in currency from the rial to the toman. but this will make no difference to the reality of inflation. Each toman effectively is worth 10,000 rials. Iranian officials have emphasized the benefits of lessening the psychological pressure associated with steep-looking prices, but they have admitted that the changes will not affect inflation. Embracing the toman also, they added, should save the country money — fewer bills to print, fewer coins to mint. That’s not much of a savings. The staggering inflation remains.

Already struggling under the U.S. sanctions as part of the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” campaign, the energy woes will deal another blow to the Islamic regime.

“The Iranian economy has been on the skids for some time, with oil exports sharply limited by U.S. sanctions. As a result, they have already taken a lot of the hit they would otherwise have taken rather suddenly,” said Danielle Pletka, senior vice president for foreign- and defense-policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute. “That said, the rewards from smuggling, especially for the [Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps], will be lower.”

Iran has managed to smuggle some oil out to sellers, despite American sanctions. But now that the price of oil is so low – a few weeks ago we even had the spectacle of negative prices for oil, which meant that those who had bought oil, but had no place to store it, were paying others to take the oil off their hands – the profits of smuggling oil that has lost 40% of its value are much lower, and for many smugglers may not be worth it.

The United States designated the IRGC as a terrorist organization in 2019.

On April 30, the United States charged two Iranian individuals and seized more than $12.3 million used in September 2019 to acquire a petroleum tanker, the Nautic—the biggest seizure ever of funds connected to the IRGC’s elite Quds Force.

“These defendants purchased a crude oil tanker valued at over $10 million by illegally using the U.S. financial system, defiantly violating U.S. sanctions,” said U.S. Assistant Attorney General for National Security John Demers. “This is yet another example of Iran brazenly using front companies and false documentation in an attempt to hide the illegal transactions that the Iranian regime desperately needs to fund its malign activities.”

Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, said “sanctions, the sharp drop in oil prices, and the coronavirus will all contribute to Iran’s increasingly untenable economic woes.”

“Before the coronavirus, the regime attempted to bolster its non-oil sectors like agriculture and manufacturing to compensate for the losses generated by the U.S. maximum pressure campaign,” he continued.

The coronavirus lockdown in Iran affects most factories. Wearing PPE and observing social distancing are required of employees in the few places where where they are still allowed to work. Most factories in Iran, however, have shut down, just as in the U.S. Agricultural output in Iran, too, has suffered. With stay-at-home orders in place, and restaurants and schools closed, demand for nearly every agricultural product has collapsed. Restaurants have stopped buying food, purchases of cotton for consumer goods has slowed, and low oil prices have reduced demand for bioethanol, and thus from the crops it is derived from: wheat, sugar cane bagasse, rice, barely and corn. Iranian farmers are in a desperate condition.

The coronavirus will likely prove to be a blow [as well] to the services sector, upon which Iran’s economy relies heavily. That’s not to mention the border closures, which will potentially hamper trade with Iran’s neighbors,” said Brodsky. “The regime is increasingly having to make hard choices in this environment, and sadly the bill for decades of mismanagement is coming due.”

Pletka said Iran “will do with less, and as usual, and the Iranian people will be the victims, as they always are. The regime [as individuals] has plenty of money.”

The best example of the colossal corruption in the regime is the Supreme Leader himself, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who according to the U.S. government has amassed a business empire worth $200 billion, up from a mere $95 billion in 2013.

Foundation for Defense of Democracies CEO Mark Dubowitz told JNS that the damage to Iran’s oil sector had already been done because of U.S. sanctions.

“The collapse in oil prices has a limited short-term impact on Iran’s oil revenues because exports have already fallen sharply from 2.5 million barrels per day to a few hundred thousand as a result of the U.S. maximum pressure campaign,” he said. “It does however impact oil production since foreign investors who might be willing to take the sanctions risk when oil prices are high will be less likely to do so if profit margins are much lower.”

The oil price collapse will certainly affect investment in oil production in Iran, where American sanctions already make potential investors nervous. As long as the price of oil was high, some were willing to risk those sanctions, but no longer. Smuggling Iranian oil to buyers has suddenly become far less profitable.

“Germany, which was their primary trade partner, was taking pistachios, rugs, and some industrial metals, but it was very limited and the trade was very unbalanced,” said Jewish Policy Center senior director Shoshana Bryen. “At the same time, the mullahs are not Iranian nationalists, but Shi’ite supremacists and the single most important element of their policy, foreign and domestic, is undermining Sunni states in the Middle East and Africa, while threatening Israel and inflicting damage on American interests.”

“They have to keep the population as quiet as possible, but helping the Iranian people is not their goal,” she continued. “So look for them to take their very limited funds and continue to use them for their military.”

For the Iranian regime, the well-being of its people is not a major concern, just as long as it can intimidate the population, and when there are protests nonetheless, to crush them using force. The regime will continue to spend what money it on its own military, especially the IRGC, and on supporting fellow Shi’a troops, as the Houthis in Yemen, the Shi’a militias in Iraq, Assad’s Alawite-led forces in Syria, against their Sunni enemies and to spend money supplying advanced weaponry, especially precision-guided missiles, on Hezbollah, as the shock troops of Iran’s never-ending war on Israel.

Dubowitz noted that “Iran’s non-oil exports like petrochemicals are linked to oil prices.”

Iranian petrochemicals and their handlers have been subject to U.S. sanctions. In March, the Trump administration sanctioned companies and individuals allegedly engaged in trading or transporting Iranian petrochemicals.

In January, the United States sanctioned several companies and senior executives allegedly part of the international network supporting Iran’s petrochemical and petroleum industries.

Furthermore, Dubowitz said that “the collapse in oil prices will adversely impact these revenues which have been a major source of foreign currency earnings even under the sanctions regime.

“Iran is facing an economic depression but its sizable off-the-books assets under the control of the supreme leader and its continued trade with the UAE, Iraq, China, Turkey and others give it a lifeline. Washington needs to double down on the pressure and shut off all remaining economic and financial lifelines.”

Hudson Institute senior fellow Michael Doran remarked that “despite its protestations to the contrary, the regime does not have any good alternatives to oil, and it cannot circumvent the economic laws of gravity.”

Ahead of November, said Doran, Iran’s objective is “simply to limp its way to the American presidential election. If Trump will be defeated, a Democratic president may lift the ‘maximum pressure’ campaign without Tehran having to make any intolerable concessions.”

The presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden, has not laid out a clear vision on Iran policy if he were to win the White House. Last year, he said that if elected, the United States would re-enter the 2015 Iran nuclear deal when the regime “returns to compliance.”

In a conference call hosted by the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), Rapidan Energy Group founder and president Robert McNally echoed Doran, saying that Iran will be awaiting the results of the presidential election, “hoping Joe Biden will win, and then they got out of jail, if you will, by the second half of next year.”

That scenario, said McNally, would be “a world of hurt.”

Given his party’s sharp leftward turn, Joe Biden is likely to end the sanctions regime that has been so successful in damaging the Islamic Republic’s economy, and to re-enter the 2015 Iran deal that Trump had exited. But that still leaves Iran with the problem of the coronavirus, with the pandemic’s future so unpredictable. If it is still going on, then the current huge drop in demand for oil will remain, both because of the working-at-home, study-at-home rules, and because of a continued ban on all non-essential travel, which is a death knell for tourism. The price of oil will stay at historic lows. Even if the sanctions are lifted by Biden, Iran’s oil revenues will be far less than Tehran could have expected just two years ago, when the sanctions were re-imposed by Trump. And along with historically low prices for oil, Iran will have the constant threat of Saudi Arabia raising its production, and lowering its price, to take customers away from its Shi’a arch-enemy. Iran’s economy has in recent years been very bad, but the worst, inshallah, is yet to come.

COLUMN BY

HUGH FITZGERALD

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India: Muslims burn down Hindu houses and temples, police take action against Hindus

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Ramadan: 290 dead, 280 injured in first two weeks despite coronavirus pandemic

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

How We Get to the Bottom of the Obama White House’s Domestic Spying

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Michael Flynn did not seem to be the best choice President-elect Donald Trump could have made for his first national security adviser.

My own publication, The Daily Caller, broke the story of Flynn writing an op-ed praising Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan just before Trump’s election. The op-ed was a clear break from Flynn’s past comments criticizing Turkey for its policies toward the ISIS terrorist group.

The most troubling part was Flynn’s failure to disclose the fact that his private-sector intelligence consulting firm had just signed a lucrative contract with a company closely aligned with Erdogan before the op-ed was published. The whole thing looked a lot like a paid foreign influence campaign.

Short of some sort of crime, though, Trump could have picked anyone he wanted to be his national security adviser. Trump won the presidential election. In doing so, he won the right to put together his White House team.

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 >>

A peaceful transition of power and respect for the will of the voters are fundamental to our system of government. New revelations are increasingly calling into question whether the Obama team abused this basic precept in the wake of Trump’s election. It’s now clear that numerous top Obama officials were spying on Flynn.

In the intelligence world, the government has a system in place to spy on foreigners using less than the normal due process needed to spy on Americans.

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act authorizes the government to collect information on foreign powers and agents of foreign powers. Using this law, the Obama administration was spying on Russia’s ambassador to the United States. Good for them. That’s their job.

In monitoring the Russian ambassador, they picked up conversations he was having with Flynn, Trump’s incoming national security adviser.

Finding American communications in foreign intelligence in this way is referred to as “incidental collection.” When this happens, we have “minimization” rules, which mandate that any American communications caught up in foreign surveillance be redacted to protect the American citizens involved. These redactions can be overturned, however, through a process called “unmasking.”

We have now learned, thanks to a recent release by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, that a stunning 39 different Obama administration officials requested the unmasking of Flynn’s communications in the time period between Trump’s election and his inauguration.

Those making the request included numerous ambassadors, Treasury Department officials, and White House political staff, including the chief of staff and, just one week before Trump’s inauguration, Vice President Joe Biden. Not surprisingly, in the wake of these unmaskings, Flynn’s communications were then leaked to the press.

Such a high number of requests for information related to a rival political party is troubling to any but the most hardened anti-Trump partisan.

As a former heavy consumer of intelligence reporting in my days as assistant to Vice President Dick Cheney for special projects, I can state categorically that top White House staff do not do this as a matter of course. Checking in with former colleagues confirmed that nobody recalls any unmasking related to rival political figures.

Regardless of how anyone on Team Obama may try to spin this, such high levels of unmasking requests from top White House officials related to political rivals is completely and totally unprecedented.

None of this means we know for sure that the Obama requests were political, or even improper. We only know they were highly unusual and highly troubling because they present the distinct possibility of using our national security apparatus for political ends.

There are a number of possibilities as to what was driving these requests. Maybe Flynn was involved with communications that, in the eyes of the Obama staff, raised such serious national security concerns that the unmasking was somehow proper, despite its political appearance.

It’s important to state here that it’s common, and even necessary, for the incoming team during a presidential transition to begin outreach to those they will be working with, including foreign government agents. It’s what’s supposed to happen, so absent something more damning, Flynn speaking with the Russian ambassador should not be alarming.

The only way to get to the bottom of this matter is to release to the public the communications and unmasking requests in question and to thoroughly question each official involved.

This transparency is not just advisable but absolutely necessary in order to restore the public’s confidence that one party’s leaders were not abusing the system for political ends.

Intelligence is declassified all the time, and it can be done in a way that doesn’t endanger our intelligence sources or their methods.

In the wake of 9/11, numerous sensitive intelligence reports were declassified to establish what the Bush administration had known ahead of time about any potential attack. A similar process is needed now.

Given what appears to be a violation of some of our most basic liberties—and to ensure that our system was not hijacked for political purposes—the information surrounding these unmaskings must be declassified so the American people can see what is really happening.

Trump has the authority to do this himself. So do numerous members of his team. They should use that authority and set this record straight.

If anyone on the Obama team misused our national security apparatus to spy on their political opponents, it would be the greatest political abuse in our country’s history.

Anyone who asked for an unmasking involving an incoming national security adviser would have known the risks going in. Hopefully, they did it for some legitimate reason. If that’s the case, they should be at the front of the line asking for all this to be made public so everyone can see that there were no abuses at hand.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

COMMENTARY BY

Neil Patel

Neil Patel is co-founder and managing director of Bluebird Asset Management, a hedge fund investing in mortgage-backed securities. He previously served in the White House from 2005 to 2009 as the chief policy adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney.

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.

VIDEO: Tik Tok and Chinese propaganda

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Thank you Pepi

Now wouldn’t it be great if this guy did one one Canada’s CBC?

OH WAIT! HE DID!

EDITORS NOTE: This video posted by Eeyore on Vlad Tepes Blog is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

See what Nancy Pelosi stuffed in her partisan ‘Coronavirus’ bill

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Nancy Pelosi’s left-wing wish list

If House Democrats are focused on helping Americans get through this global pandemic safely, they sure have a funny way of showing it.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s latest extravagant, $3 trillion spending proposal is Washington at its worst—and most predictable. While President Trump, governors of both parties, and frontline workers band together to fight this virus as one country, House Democrats see an opportunity to exploit this crisis to pass their partisan agenda.

Millions of Americans are out of work. President Trump is trying to get them back on the job by safely reopening our country. Instead of helping him do it, here is what Democrats in Congress have decided is worth holding Coronavirus relief hostage for:

  • A BAN on information about low-cost health insurance. That’s right—House Democrats want to forbid the government from sharing any information with you about lower-cost health options such as association plans or short-term plans. Even as families try to cope with job and wage losses, Speaker Pelosi doesn’t want them to learn about options that are up to 60 percent cheaper than Obamacare.
  • Mass voting by mail. A “Coronavirus relief” bill might seem like the wrong time and place to dictate how states run their elections. Democrats disagree.
  • Stimulus checks for illegal aliens. Rather than protect American citizens by requiring a Social Security Number for taxpayer-funded stimulus, Pelosi’s bill would give illegal immigrants the ability to receive up to $1,200 in direct payouts.
  • Bailouts… for government. Democrats want more than $1 trillion in cash for state and local governments, mostly in the form of unrestricted aid that doesn’t need to be used to offset Coronavirus costs. They also threw in a $25 billion bailout for the Post Office.

The list goes on. At a moment when Americans most need Washington to look out for them and cut the partisan drama, Democrat leaders once again chose to put their far-left base first.

MORE: “Democrats’ new $3 trillion Coronavirus spending wishlist is another embarrassing farce”

President Trump is protecting our national stockpile

When the Coronavirus struck, President Trump knew that America needed to act quickly. He worked with Congress to secure $16 billion to build up our national stockpile with ventilators, masks, respirators, pharmaceuticals, and other critical supplies.

As a result, America today has an abundant supply of ventilators, N95 respirators, and resources for testing—a crucial area where we now lead the world.

But that’s only the start. President Trump knows that America’s long-term self-reliance depends on our supply chain. “Our goal for the future must be to have American medicine for American patients, American supplies for American hospitals, and American equipment for our great American heroes,” he says.

“Now, both parties must unite to ensure the United States is truly an independent nation in every sense of the word.”

Today, the President traveled to Pennsylvania, visiting a distribution center that’s played a key role in helping to restock America.

Just since February, the Owens & Minor Distribution Center in Upper Macungie has deployed 1.75 million N95 respirators, 3.4 million gowns, 80 million gloves, and much more across our country. “You’re making America proud,” President Trump told them.

President Trump: “We are reclaiming our heritage as a nation of manufacturers!”

WATCH: Our supply chains need to be HERE, not overseas

Videomaker Sues Planned Parenthood, Kamala Harris for Suppressing Exposé

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David Daleiden, founder of the Center for Medical Progress, filed a lawsuit Tuesday against Planned Parenthood (PP), the former and current California Attorneys General Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra (respectively), the National Abortion Federation, and others for suppressing his undercover video exposing PP’s trafficking of the body parts of aborted babies.

The complaint “seeks justice for a brazen, unprecedented, and ongoing conspiracy to selectively use California’s video recording laws as a political weapon to silence disfavored speech.”

Daleiden wrote, “The California Attorney General first admitted that they are enforcing the video recording law solely based on how they feel about the message being published, and then further admitted they are not even trying to follow the text of the law as written.”

Breitbart News reports that emails showed Harris’s office collaborated with PP to produce legislation targeting Daleiden, who was accused of 14 felonies related to his damning undercover videos.

Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA)

201 Known Connections

In an undercover video that was made public on July 14, 2015, Dr. Deborah Nucatola, who had been PPFA’s senior director of medical services since February 2009, spoke to investigators posing as buyers from a human biologics company and told them that her organization was selling — for $30 to $100 per specimen — intact fetal body parts that it harvested from abortion procedures. Trafficking in human body parts, however, is a federal felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $500,000.

In the undercover video (filmed by the Center for Medical Progress, or CMP, an anti-abortion group), Nucatola revealed that although “a lot of people want intact hearts these days,” she also had received requests for lungs and “lower extremities.” And while emphasizing that PPFA affiliates “absolutely” wanted to offer such organs, she noted that “[t]hey just want to do it in a way that is not perceived as, ‘The clinic is selling tissue. This clinic is making money off of this.’”

To learn more about Planned Parenthood, click on the profile link here.

EDITORS NOTE: This Discover the Networks column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

PODCAST: A Three-Star Conspiracy. . .

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Was the Michael Flynn saga ever about him? Or was it just another way to get to the president?

Andrew McCarthy has been following the case for three years, and he says there’s no doubt. Find out what Democrats were up to — then and now — in this special sit-down with the former federal prosecutor. Hear about all of the new developments, including one judge’s decision not to drop the case.

RELATED ARTICLES:

HEROES with 12 Zeroes

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White House Treads a Fine Guideline

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

VIDEO: Imam on Terror Watch List Delivers Opening Prayer at Utah State Senate Session

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Did the person from the Utah Senate who invited Yussuf Awadir Abdi to deliver this prayer know that he was on the terror watch list? Did he or she care? Or was virtue-signaling the paramount imperative here, overriding all other considerations?

“Imam on terrorist watch list delivers opening prayer during Utah Senate Session,” Deplorable Kel, May 8, 2020 (thanks to George):

Yussuf Awadir Abdi, an Imam who is on a federal government terrorist watch list, delivered the opening prayer at a Utah Senate Session in February 2020.

After delivering the prayer, Abdi took to Facebook to praise “allah”. He wrote:

All praises is due to Allaah who gave me to mention his name and his prayer front of our state senators. Thank you UTAH Muslim Civic league for giving me this opportunity.

Abdi was placed on the terrorist watch list in 2014 and later fought in court to be removed from the list, but his request was denied by the Judge.…

Abdi is the imam of Salt Lake City’s Madina Masjid Islamic Center.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Ramadan in Poland: Four Muslim migrants detained for recruiting converts to Islam to carry out jihad terror attacks

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EU Home Affairs Commissioner: Europe must go ‘back to the future’ of open borders after coronavirus is under control

Italy: Illegal Muslim migrant rapes pregnant coronavirus care nurse as she waits for bus after work

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

4 Big Unanswered Questions About the ‘Unmasking’ Scandal

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As the “unmasking” scandal unfolds, the Senate Judiciary Committee will delve into the conduct of the Obama administration and the intelligence community in secretly investigating the incoming Trump administration.

Two Senate Republicans released previously secret information Wednesday listing top Obama administration officials who made the same request in early 2017: that the intelligence community disclose to them that retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn was the American whose phone conversation with the Russian ambassador had been intercepted by intelligence officials.

Flynn at the time had been chosen by President-elect Donald Trump as his first national security adviser. Flynn’s “unmasking” at the request of some of outgoing President Barack Obama’s closest advisers set in motion events that led to Flynn’s resignation after only 23 days in office during the new Trump administration.

Sens. Charles Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin, both Republicans, released the names of the Obama officials requesting Flynn’s identity as part of information declassified by Richard Grenell, acting director of national intelligence.

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 >>

Senate Judiciary Chairman Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., announced Thursday that his committee would hold hearings in June examining issues surrounding the Flynn case and related to the initial FBI investigation of possible ties between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

In a joint statement, Johnson, chairman of the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Senate’s chief oversight panel, and Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, said:

Our investigation of these matters has been ongoing for years, and as information finally comes to light, our focus on these issues is even more important now. The records are one step forward in an important effort to get to the bottom of what the Obama administration did during the Russia investigation and to Lt. General Flynn. We will continue to review this information and push for additional relevant disclosures until we are satisfied that the American people know the full truth.

Meanwhile, U.S. Attorney John Durham of Connecticut continues to look into the origins of the Russia investigation, and the Justice Department has said that the Flynn unmasking requests is one part of that probe.

Here are four big unanswered questions as the Senate and the Justice Department scrutinize actions taken by the Obama administration between Trump’s election on Nov. 8, 2016, and his inauguration on Jan. 20, 2017.

1. Can Obama Be Compelled to Testify?

It might well be must-see TV, but at this point it seems highly unlikely that Obama himself would be subpoenaed to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Trump made the demand in a tweet Thursday.

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1260938381254701060?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1260938381254701060&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailysignal.com%2F2020%2F05%2F14%2F4-big-unanswered-questions-about-the-unmasking-scandal%2F

“If I were a Senator or Congressman, the first person I would call to testify about the biggest political crime and scandal in the history of the USA, by FAR, is former President Obama,” Trump said in the tweet. “He knew EVERYTHING. Do it @LindseyGrahamSC, just do it. No more Mr. Nice Guy. No more talk!”

The previously classified documents released this week show that in the waning days of the Obama administration, these six well-known officials each submitted an unmasking request that would reveal Flynn’s otherwise protected identity under U.S. law: FBI Director James Comey, White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Vice President Joe Biden, United Nations Ambassador Samantha Power, CIA Director John Brennan, and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper.

The Justice Department’s case against Flynn for lying to the FBI about his conversations with the Russian ambassador largely fell apart after other documents recently surfaced. They included notes of a discussion among Comey and two other top FBI officials about whether the goal in questioning Flynn at the White House was to “get him to lie” so that he could be fired or prosecuted.

The Justice Department last week dropped the case against Flynn for misleading the FBI, but a federal judge this week called in outside authorities to dispute that action.

Graham, in a statement Thursday, appeared to be reluctant about Trump’s call for Obama to testify.

“I am greatly concerned about the precedent that would be set by calling a former president for oversight,” Graham said. “No president is above the law. However, the presidency has executive privilege claims against other branches of government.”

Graham continued:

To say we are living in unusual times is an understatement.

We have the sitting president (Trump) accusing the former president (Obama) of being part of a treasonous conspiracy to undermine his presidency. We have the former president suggesting the current president is destroying the rule of law by dismissing the General Flynn case.

All of this is occurring during a major pandemic.

As to the Judiciary Committee, both presidents are welcome to come before the committee and share their concerns about each other. If nothing else it would make for great television. However, I have great doubts about whether it would be wise for the country.

Graham is striking the correct balance, said Charles Stimson, a senior legal fellow for national security at The Heritage Foundation.

“Chairman Graham should go after the facts, and see where that leads. He’s going to hold hearings,” Stimson told The Daily Signal on Thursday. “To take the president up on that suggestion [of calling Obama to testify] would risk looking political and could delegitimize the inquiry.”

2. What Are the Legal Issues?

Graham said the first part of his committee’s comprehensive inquiry would be of the Flynn matter.

“Our first phase will deal with the government’s decision to dismiss the Flynn case as well as an in-depth analysis of the unmasking requests made by Obama Administration officials against General Flynn,” Graham said in his written statement. “We must determine if these requests were legitimate.”

If Obama administration officials engaged in improper conduct, it’s not clear whether a law was broken, or who violated the law if one was broken.

Under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, U.S. intelligence agencies may intercept and listen to the telephone calls of foreign citizens, including foreign officials. That would include Flynn’s call with then-Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak on Dec. 29, 2016, roughly three weeks before Trump’s inauguration.

If a foreign citizen is speaking to an American citizen on the intercepted call, the law requires the name of the American citizen to be blacked out, or masked, in documentation.

So unmasking is the process by which authorized federal officials request to see information regarding American citizens mentioned anonymously in classified transcripts of calls or other communications involving foreigners.

However, someone leaked Flynn’s communication with the Russian ambassador to the media shortly after the unmasking requests were made. Leaking classified information is a crime.

Brennan, Clapper, Comey and the others named in the documents released by Grenell were authorized to ask for the unmasking. The question is whether there was a legitimate reason to ask for the unmasking, Stimson said.

Another question is whether the unmasking was an attempt by officials of the outgoing Obama administration to undermine the incoming Trump administration.

“I’m not there yet. I want to see more facts,” Stimson told The Daily Signal.

Stimson added that congressional hearings typically seem political, but could produce further lines of inquiry.

He said he is more focused on the probe by Durham, whose career has been as a “stand-up, just-the-facts-ma’am, Joe Friday type of guy.”

3. How Did FISA System Go ‘Off the Rails’?

Graham said the next phase of the Judiciary Committee’s inquiry will revisit the apparent abuse of the process for obtaining warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, highlighted in a scathing report late last year by Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz.

Horowitz testified to the committee in December about his report’s findings. Among the most startling: The FBI relied almost entirely on the so-called Steele dossier, an opposition research document financed by Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, as the basis for a FISA warrant to surveil Trump campaign aide Carter Page.

The inspector general’s report also determined that FBI overreach wasn’t limited to Page, but included other Trump campaign aides such as Flynn, then an adviser; George Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer; and one-time campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

“Our next area of inquiry, later this summer, will be oversight building upon the Horowitz report about FISA abuses against Carter Page,” Graham said. “My goal is to find out why and how the system got so off the rails.”

4. What Was the Point of the Mueller Probe?

After an investigation lasting nearly two years and costing taxpayers $32 million, special counsel Robert Mueller, Comey’s predecessor as FBI director, determined that the Trump campaign did not conspire with the Russian government to influence the 2016 election.

The problem, critics of the Mueller probe say, is that prior to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s appointing him as special counsel, no evidence existed to suggest a Trump-Russia conspiracy.

Thus, the Judiciary Committee will look into the predicate of initiating a special counsel probe, Graham said.

“Finally, we will look at whether Robert Mueller should have ever been appointed as Special Counsel,” he said. “Was there legitimate reason to conclude the Trump campaign had colluded with the Russians?”

Mueller secured grand jury indictments against some two dozen Russian operatives—none of whom is expected ever to stand trial because they are in Russia.

The special counsel’s team also scored a conviction of Manafort for financial crimes unrelated to the presidential campaign.

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.

RELATED ARTICLES:

Flynn Judge Disagrees With Own Rulings by Letting Outsiders Fight Dropping Charges

Biden, Comey, Brennan Submitted Flynn ‘Unmasking’ Requests

With That Revelation, There’s No Reason Why the Flynn Case Shouldn’t Be Tossed

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.

1% of Counties Home to Half of COVID-19 Cases, Over Half of Deaths

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As Heritage Foundation researchers have demonstrated throughout the pandemic, the spread of COVID-19 in the U.S. has been extremely concentrated in a small number of states—and among a small number of counties within all states.

As of May 11, for example, 10 states accounted for almost 70% of all U.S. cases and nearly 75% of all deaths (but only 52% of the population). Together, New York and New Jersey alone account for 35% of all cases and 44% of total COVID-19 deaths, though only 9% of the U.S. population.

These state-level figures do not, however, adequately describe the concentrated nature of the spread of COVID-19.

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 >>

The 30 counties with the most COVID-19 cases, for example, account for 48% of all the cases in the U.S. and 55% of all deaths, three to four times greater than their 15% share of the U.S. population.

That is, just 1% of all counties, representing 15% of the U.S. population, are responsible for almost half of the country’s COVID-19 cases and more than half of the deaths.

Of those 30 counties, 24 are in the Northeast corridor between Philadelphia and Boston, the passageway served by a commuter railway system that runs through Manhattan.

Overall, only about 10% of all counties contain 95% of all the COVID-19 deaths, even though they account for 64% of the population.

Just as important, 50% of all counties (with 10% of the U.S. population) have zero COVID-19 deaths as of May 11. In fact, 63% of all counties (with 15% of the population) have no more than one COVID-19 death each.

So, while 1% of counties (mostly in the Northeast) have more than half of all COVID-19 deaths in the U.S., 63% of counties have no more than one COVID-19 death each—and both groups represent the same share of the U.S. population.

With many state and local governments starting to relax stay-at-home orders, it’s instructive to examine just how concentrated the spread of COVID-19 has been in the U.S.

The Heritage Foundation’s interactive COVID-19 tracker helps put these levels of concentrated cases in perspective. It provides county-level data that includes total cases, total cases as a percentage of the population, where that percentage ranks among all 3,145 counties, and a population density measure.

The tracker also describes whether the trend of cases is increasing or decreasing over the prior 14 days, and provides a visual depiction of new cases during this time period.

The information shows just how difficult it can be to use only one metric to gauge whether a county is doing well.

For instance, Jersey County, Illinois, on the state’s border with Missouri, has had an increasing case trend during the past 14 days. As the chart shows, however, the county has not had more than one new case per day since April 26.

Furthermore, the fact that Jersey County ranks almost squarely in the middle of all U.S. counties with a case total of just 0.08% of its population affirms that most counties have a relatively small number of COVID-19 cases.

Readers are invited to explore the information in the tracker and check back frequently for updates.

COLUMN BY

Norbert Michel

Norbert Michel studies and writes about housing finance, including the reform of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, as The Heritage Foundation’s research fellow in financial regulations. Read his research. Twitter: @norbertjmichel.

Drew Gonshorowski

Drew Gonshorowski focuses his research and writing on the nation’s new health care law, including the repercussions for Medicare and Medicaid, as a policy analyst in the Center for Data Analysis at The Heritage Foundation. He also studies economic mobility and the Austrian school of economics. Twitter: @Gonshorowskd.

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Greasing the Skids Toward Socialism?

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One fallout of the Covid-19 crisis is its severe thrashing of our economy. Not only have all the impressive economic gains of the Trump administration evaporated, but we are now adding to our national debt in scary ways. I hope that all the bailouts are temporary means to solve a temporary problem.

To use an analogy: One of the saddest things about a midlife crisis is that permanent damage can be done to “solve” what turns out to be only a temporary problem. I pray that America won’t adopt the permanent solution of socialism to solve our temporary coronavirus crisis.

One of the most frightening things about the bailouts is that some people find that they are receiving more money for not working than they did when they were working.

Long before the crisis, we have seen the rise of popularity of socialism among the young in America. A Gallup poll about a year ago found that four in ten Americans embrace some form of socialism. Yipes.

In short, if we are not careful, this crisis could end up greasing the skids toward socialism.

President Trump wants to see us “inch” back to work and to recovery. But many Americans want to see us embrace socialism. Long before the aLL crisis, NYC socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was arguing that the “super wealthy” should be taxed up to 70 percent of their income in order to fund the “green new deal.”

Dr. Richard Land, the president of Southern Evangelical Seminary in Charlotte, N.C., knows firsthand what it is like to live in a socialist country. After graduating Princeton, he studied at Oxford to earn his Ph.D. He lived in the U.K. from 1972-1975 and experienced socialism there before Margaret Thatcher turned things around, beginning in the late 1970s. He said, “It was horrible.”

In a radio segment warning against socialism, he told me, “In Great Britain, nothing worked.”

Some people had been paying 91 percent taxes before Thatcher’s policies lowered it to 29 percent. She also privatized a lot of industries.

The results were amazing. Before Thatcher’s capitalist reforms, notes Land, England had the lowest per capita income in Western Europe. Because of her reforms, they ended up having the highest per capita income.

But, someone might ask, “What about Scandinavia?” Land notes that they too abandoned socialism because it doesn’t work. Instead, they have capitalism with a “liberal welfare state.”

What about all the young Americans who claim to embrace socialism? Land notes that they are thinking of socialism as just being “share and share alike.” But that’s not what it is. In socialism, the state becomes god. In a nanny state, you get the people more and more dependent upon the government for their very living.

That is what makes this present meltdown of the economy so frightening. There may be many on the marginal side of life who are content to rely upon the government—even as a way of life beyond the crisis.

Some people claim that the Scriptures advocate socialism. The Bible certainly promotes “share and share alike.” However, sharing is voluntary. Socialism involves government coercion and theft from Citizen A’s property on behalf of Citizen B. Meanwhile, the socialist government makes more money than either citizen in the administration of this theft by taxation and coercion.

Dr. Land observes, “Some people have said that the Bible teaches socialism. They’re wrong. They’re simply wrong and they’re very simplistic. The Bible tells us a great deal about the nature of man, which is pretty basic. And the heart of man, according to Jeremiah, is ‘deceitful and desperately wicked; who can know it?’”

Dennis Prager, founder of PragerU, once told me in a TV interview, “[Socialism] is against human nature. The moment you tell people that the community will take care of you, they work less. It undermines character.”

During the heyday of the Obama administration and their over-abundant spending on domestic programs, I asked Stephen Moore, an economist who has served both Presidents Reagan and Trump, about those who promote socialistic solutions because “it’s the Christian thing to do.”

Moore answered, “I always laugh and sometimes frown when people say the Christian thing to do is to continue to spend money recklessly like we are doing now….If the government spends a dollar, that dollar has to come from somebody or somewhere….The real problem here is people say, ‘Oh, it’s so Christian to be spending all of this money on all these programs,’ and I say, ‘Wait a minute. Who’s going to pay the cost? Isn’t it Christian to care about your kids and your grandkids?”

May the coronavirus crisis be a temporary one. And may we be on our guard against any socialist framework that will do irreparable damage as a “solution” to this, Lord-willing, temporary problem.

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