Minneapolis May Lay off 40 Workers, Cut Spending Projects to Fill $156 Million Budget Deficit

Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey presented a plan to patch a more than $155 million revenue gap using furloughs, cash reserves and spending freezes.

The deficit followed the COVID-19 pandemic and riots in the wake of George Floyd’s death in police custody, which combined brought a steep drop in parking, utilities and general revenue.

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Commentary: At a School Near You, ‘Whiteness Studies’ Aims to Denigrate Its Subject

If you had told me a couple of years ago that a book like Robin DiAngelo’s White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism would be topping the bestseller lists and receiving accolades from all over, I wouldn’t have believed it.

And I’m speaking as someone who, in my 2012 book The Victims’ Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind, warned about the dire ascendancy of identity studies, which are far less about education than about ideological indoctrination and the promotion of social activism.

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Rep. Mo Brooks Calls for Investigation After U.S. Army’s Chaney Pickard Sends Race-Baiting Email, Labels ‘MAGA’ Slogan and More ‘White Supremacy’

US Army

by Debra Heine   The U.S. Army sent an email to its military and civilian members after the Fourth of July that included a graphic that claimed innocuous words and phrases like “colorblind,” “all lives matter” and the Trump Campaign slogan “Make America Great Again” are evidence of “white supremacy.”…

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Lakers Star LeBron James Won’t Wear Social Justice Message on Lakers Jersey

LeBron James says his thoughts on social justice can’t be contained on the back of a basketball jersey.

The Los Angeles Lakers superstar won’t wear one of the NBA-approved social justice messages on the back of his jersey when the NBA resumes competition later this month in the Orlando bubble.

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Facebook’s Software Kit to Blame for Popular Apps Crashing

Friday’s widespread crashes of popular apps running on the iPhone’s iOS operating system — including Tinder, Spotify and Pinterest — serve as a reminder that Facebook is still tracking you through your phone using sophisticated software, even if you’re not browsing the social network.

Early Friday, users of the apps reported crashes when they tried to open them up. Facebook attributed the problem, which was quickly fixed, to a bug in its software development kit, or SDK, a tool developers use to integrate their apps with Facebook.

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Google Selects Mississippi Site for First US Operations Center

Google’s first U.S. operations center is coming to northwest Mississippi.

The company announced Thursday it will lease a new 60,000-square-foot (5,574 square-meter) facility in Southaven, Mississippi, near Memphis, Tennessee. Google expects the site, which will provide customer and operations support to customers worldwide, to be operational by summer 2021.

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Amazon Says Email to Employees Banning TikTok Was a Mistake

Roughly five hours after an internal email went out Friday to Amazon employees telling them to delete the popular video app TikTok from their phones, the online retailing giant appeared to backtrack, calling the ban a mistake.

“This morning’s email to some of our employees was sent in error,” Amazon emailed reporters just before 5 p.m. Eastern time. “There is no change to our policies right now with regard to TikTok.”

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Fire Destroys Much of 249-year-old Church in California

A fire early Saturday destroyed the rooftop and most of the interior of a Catholic church in California that was undergoing renovation to mark its upcoming 250th anniversary celebration.

Fire alarms at the San Gabriel Mission rang around 4 a.m. When firefighters arrived, they saw smoke rising from the wooden rooftop in one corner of the historic structure, San Gabriel Fire Capt. Paul Negrete said.

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Biden-Sanders Proposal for DNC Convention Includes Increased Taxes, Tuition-Free Community Colleges, Other Spending Increases

A task force created by presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., his former political rival, released policy recommendations for the Democratic Party Convention platform committee to consider.

Called the “unity platform,” it emphasizes expanded federal spending and taxation in nearly all platform areas. It calls for increased federal funding for housing, infrastructure, Social Security, and a large-scale government-run jobs program, and increases taxes on higher income earners.

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Thousands of North Carolina Voters Double-Voted, Watchdog Group Finds

Thousands of voters in North Carolina voted twice in one or both of the past two elections, according to a court filing in the key battleground state.

Public Interest Legal Foundation, an election integrity group, announced Thursday that it had filed a brief in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina outlining the number of double votes.

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Commentary: Demoralization, Destabilization, Crisis, and Normalization Are the Four Stages of a Marxist Takeover

by Scott McKay   It’s important to understand that this is a revolutionary moment in American history, and it isn’t a bad idea to act in ways that would fall under the traditional description of “accordingly.” But it’s also important to understand that the revolution taking place in America is…

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White Singing Group Formerly Known as Lady Antebellum Seeks Legal Ruling to Confirm Appropriation of Name ‘Lady A’ from Black Singer

The white country band formerly known as Lady Antebellum has chosen to show racial “sensitivity” by suing to appropriate the name “Lady A” from Anita White, a black singer who has used the moniker for decades.

Lady Antebellum on June 11 said they would start going by the name Lady A since “antebellum” carried racial connotations, Billboard said. The suit was filed July 8 in Nashville’s U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Tennessee.

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North Minneapolis Democrat Says City Facing ‘Real Emergency’ Amid Ceaseless Violence

A north Minneapolis Democrat said his constituents are “facing a real emergency” as the city continues to experience alarming levels of gun violence.

“Every Minnesotan deserves to be safe in their own neighborhood, but right now many people are experiencing gun violence at unsustainable levels,” Rep. Fue Lee (DFL-Minneapolis) said in a statement released Saturday. “The neighborhoods I represent in north Minneapolis are facing a real emergency.”

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