Month: September 2020

Commentary: Environmentalists Destroyed California’s Forests

Minnesota Sun Staff

Millions of acres of California forest have been blackened by wildfires this summer, leading to the usual angry denunciations from the usual quarters about climate change. But in 1999, the Associated Press reported that forestry experts had long agreed that “clearing undergrowth would save trees,” and that “years of aggressive firefighting have allowed brush to flourish that would have been cleared away by wildfires.” But very little was done. And now fires of unprecedented size are raging across the Western United States.

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AG Barr Says There ‘Could Be’ More Charges in Durham Probe

Minnesota Sun Staff

Attorney General William Barr said Wednesday that more charges are possible in the investigation led by John Durham, the U.S. attorney investigating the origins of the Trump-Russia probe.

Barr was asked about the status of the probe during an interview with NBC News. He declined to say whether Durham, the U.S. attorney for Connecticut, is nearing the end of the probe, which began in April 2018.

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Positive COVID-19 Cases Drop in No-Lockdown Sweden, Marking the Lowest Rate Since the Pandemic Began

Minnesota Sun Staff

Sweden’s positive coronavirus cases dropped after the country carried out a record number of COVID-19 tests recently, Reuters reported Tuesday, citing Swedish health officials.
The country saw only 1,300 positive cases out of 120,000 tests last week, representing a 1.2% positive rate, Sweden’s health agency said Tuesday, according to the Reuters report. The low number of cases is the lowest Sweden has seen since the pandemic, which originated in China, first emerged in Europe, the report noted.

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GOP’s Slimmed-Down Virus Bill Scuttled by Senate Democrats

The Associated Press

Senate Democrats scuttled a scaled-back GOP coronavirus rescue package on Thursday, saying the measure shortchanged too many pressing needs as the pandemic continues its assault on the country.

The mostly party-line vote capped weeks of wrangling over a fifth relief bill that all sides say they want but are unable to deliver. The bipartisan spirit that powered earlier aid measures has given way to election-season political combat and name-calling. The 52-47 vote fell well short of what was needed to overcome a filibuster and seems likely to end hopes for coronavirus relief before the November election.

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John Fredericks Commentary: Fauci Debunks Woodward Hit on Trump

Minnesota Sun Staff

Here we go again. Another tell-all book trashing President Trump. What else is new?

The newest snooze-rag comes from longtime lefty WAPO-Bezos lackey Bob Woodward, of Watergate deep-throat fame. In what the mainstream legacy fake news media gushed over, Woodward says the President characterized the coronavirus as “deadly” and “dangerous” — while telling Americans it was nothing to be concerned about. Woodward writes that President Trump told him the Covid-19 virus was “more deadly than even your strenuous flus,” and that he repeatedly played it down publicly.

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Joe Biden Claims 6,000 Military Members Dead From COVID, but the Real Number Is Seven

Minnesota Sun Staff

Democratic 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden said Wednesday that more than 6,000 military members have died from coronavirus, Department of Defense (DOD) statistics show the real number is just seven deaths.

While speaking in Michigan on Wednesday, Biden significantly overstated both the number of COVID infections in the military, as well as the number of COVID deaths.

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United States Has Revoked Over 1,000 Visas for ‘Security Risks’ from China

Minnesota Sun Staff

Since June, over 1,000 Chinese nationals located in the United States have had their visas revoked after being labeled national security risks, as reported by CNN.
The State Department released a statement on Wednesday addressing the matter, revealing that the initiative had specifically targeted “graduate students and research scholars” at various American universities who had been determined to be “high-risk,” and were thus removed from the country.

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California Fire That Killed Three Threatens Thousands of Homes

The Associated Press

A Northern California wildfire threatened thousands of homes Thursday after winds whipped it into a monster that incinerated houses in a small mountain community and killed at least three people.

Several other people have been critically burned and hundreds, if not thousands, of homes and other buildings are believed to have been damaged or destroyed by the fire in the foothills of the northern Sierra Nevada, authorities said.

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Minnesotan Public University Grants $92K to ‘Decolonize Educators’

Corinne Murdock

Bemidji State University will grant $92,000 for a “Decolonizing Educators” program. The university announced its decision to fund these scholarships in a press release last week.

The funds come from a Minnesota Department of Education (MDE) initiative called “Minnesota Indian Teaching Training Program” (MITTP). The state program administers scholarships to enrolled members of federally-recognized tribes, or first- or second-degree descendants. MITTP is currently available through six universities and colleges.

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New Unemployment Claims Fall Below 1 Million for Second Straight Week

Minnesota Sun Staff

About 884,000 U.S. workers filed new claims for unemployment benefits last week, the second consecutive week that new claims fell below the million mark and the third time in about a month.

The U.S. Department of Labor reported Thursday that the number of new claims filed in the week ending Sept. 5 was about the same as those who filed the week ending Aug. 29 – 884,000. The numbers from the week ending Aug. 29 were adjusted about by 3,000 from 881,000.

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Biden Flip-Flops on Proposed National Mask Mandate, Says It Would Be Unconstitutional

Minnesota Sun Staff

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden on Sunday walked back his pledge to impose a national mask mandate, admitting he wouldn’t be able to use the powers of the presidency to make face-coverings compulsory because that would actually be unconstitutional.

Biden was asked to respond to President Trump’s policy of giving more authority to the states during an interview with AZFamily’s “Politics Unplugged.”

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Commentary: Polls Tighten in Battleground States After President Trump Gets Big Post-Convention Bump

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Donald Trump has received a definite bump in polls following the presidential nominating conventions, including his acceptance speech for the Republican nomination at the White House on Aug. 27.

The latest NBC-Marist poll conducted Aug. 31 to Sept. 6 shows President Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden tied in Florida, 48 percent to 48 percent.

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Trump Promises Navy, DOD Will ‘Not be Cancelling’ Contract with Catholic Priests

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Donald Trump promised Wednesday that neither the Navy nor the Department of Defense will cancel contracts with Catholic priests allowing serving military members.

“The United States Navy, or the Department of Defense, will NOT be cancelling its contract with Catholic Priests who serve our men and women in the Armed Forces so well, and with such great compassion & skill,” the president tweeted Wednesday morning, tagging the Archbishop of New York, Cardinal Timothy Dolan. “This will no longer be even a point of discussion!”

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Commentary: If Biden Wins, China Wins—and America Loses

Minnesota Sun Staff

The New York Times on Monday published a 3,100-word story headlined “Joe Biden’s China Journey.” The three reporters whose bylines appear on the article engage in a painfully obvious effort to explain away the former vice president’s long and cozy relationship with communist China. Now, at long last, they suggest, Biden is ready to get really tough on China. Tougher even than Trump.

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Over Half of Double Voters in Georgia Primary Were Democrats, Secretary of State Announces

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Georgia Secretary of State announced Tuesday that about 1,000 Georgians face investigation for voting twice in the state’s June 9 primary, and 58 percent of them were cast for Democrats. A Georgia voter must request a specific party ballot in the primary election.

“While the investigation is still ongoing, initial results show that of the partisan ballots at issue, approximately 58% were Democratic ballots,” a spokesman for Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger told Breitbart News.

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‘Unbearable Screams’: Uighurs Accuse China of Crimes Against Humanity, File International Court Complaint

Minnesota Sun Staff

Two Uighur organizations filed a complaint against China in the International Criminal Court alleging crimes against humanity and repression of minorities.

The International Criminal Court complaint represents the first time members of the minority group have attempted to hold the Chinese government accountable for alleged repression policies, according to NBC News. Uighurs are a minority group of Muslim Turkic ethnicity numbering 11 million who mainly live in China’s Xinjiang region, according to BBC News.

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Data Shows Pandemic Contributing to Opioid Crisis, Local Health Experts Report ‘More Relapses’

Minnesota Sun Staff

The ongoing coronavirus pandemic has contributed to rising drug-related deaths and the ever-worsening opioid crisis in the United States, according to health officials said local data.

Individuals battling opioid addiction have experienced increased stress due to isolation during the pandemic, according to health experts and data collected by the Wall Street Journal reported. Roughly 13% of American adults surveyed in June said they had started or increased drug use, according to a U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.

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Trump Releases List of 20 New Possible Supreme Court Picks

The Associated Press

Hoping to replicate a strategy that has long been seen as key to his appeal among conservative voters, President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced he is adding 20 names to a list of Supreme Court candidates that he’s pledged to choose from if he has future vacancies to fill.

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NIH: Halted Vaccine Study Shows ‘No Compromises’ on Safety

The Associated Press

The suspension of a huge COVID-19 vaccine study over an illness in a single participant shows there will be “no compromises” on safety in the race to develop the shot, the chief of the National Institutes of Health told Congress on Wednesday.
AstraZeneca has put on hold studies of its vaccine candidate in the U.S. and other countries while it investigates whether a British volunteer’s illness is a side effect or a coincidence.

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Music Spotlight: Highway Women

Bethany Bowman

The Highway Women is an all-female country blend (country, rock, pop) music band like no other bringing a musical movement to support other women in country music and beyond. They are comprised of singers Kristen Kae, Drew Haley, Bailey James, and Heather Harper.

The group started in 2016 and has had various members since then, but the current group has been together for about a year. They don’t have a lead singer as they try to equally share the singing responsibilities.

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Commentary: September 11 – Lest We Forget

Minnesota Sun Staff

As we approach the 19th anniversary of September 11, 2001 we should never forget the loss of 2,977 innocent American lives. Many were simply at their desks and had no idea that September 11 would be their last day on earth, while others such as brave first responders and the “Let’s Roll” passengers and crew of flight 93 who willingly sacrificed their lives so others might live.

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Coffee Shop Owners Expose Reality of Forced Closures Under Minnesota’s Gov Walz’s Executive Orders

Corinne Murdock

A viral post from The Coffee Nest shared it was forced to close after the state threatened the local business with imprisonment, fines, and more. They have since deleted the post, citing an influx of private hate messages.
Most commenters expressed frustration over the negative impacts of Governor Walz’s executive orders.

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Hunter Biden-Tied Fund Helped Communist China Obtain a Michigan Auto Parts Maker

Minnesota Sun Staff

As he was sewing up the Democrat nomination this spring, Joe Biden surprised many in foreign policy circles by publishing an essay arguing it was time to “get tough with China” and to stop its “robbing the United States and American companies of their technology and intellectual property.”

For Biden, a four-decade advocate of trade and friendly relations with Beijing, it was a stunning turnabout that signaled the Democrat was concerned President Trump was winning the election-year battle over U.S.-China policy as tensions in the South China Sea, a trade war, and growing espionage cases created a Cold War-like atmosphere with China.

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Kamala Harris Told Jacob Blake, Who Is Accused of Sexual Assault, She’s Proud of Him

Minnesota Sun Staff

Democratic California Sen. Kamala Harris told Jacob Blake Sunday that she is “proud of him,” his attorney said, though she did not address allegations of sexual assault leveled against Blake.

Harris, who is 2020 Democratic nominee Joe Biden’s running mate, visited with Blake at Wisconsin’s Froedtert Hospital Sunday while his family joined with them over the phone, according to a press statement released by Blake’s attorney Ben Crump.

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Rhetoric About Crime and Race Ss Wrong – and Dangerous

Minnesota Sun Staff

Freddrick Hadden was shot to death by a sheriff’s deputy in Burke County, Georgia. A habitual felon who had only recently been released from prison, Hadden had kidnapped his ex-wife at gunpoint. When Deputy Eric Madison pursued Hadden to a home near Hephzibah, the woman escaped Hadden’s vehicle. She was shot twice by Hadden before Deputy Madison returned fire, killing the kidnapper and saving the woman’s life.

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Navy Ends Catholic Masses on San Diego-Area Bases to Cut Costs

Minnesota Sun Staff

The U.S. Navy has reportedly ended Catholic church services on San Diego-area bases for cost purposes, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The Navy declined to renew contracts with priests who were contracted to assist the Chaplain Corps, an active-duty group containing few Catholic clergy members, according to a Tribune report on Saturday. The new changes are from a national realignment announced in August.

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DEPLORABLES 101: Steve Bannon Warns of the Democrats Transition Integrity Project to Steal the Election from Trump

Julie Carr

Tuesday morning on The John Fredericks Show, host John Fredericks welcomed former senior advisor to President Trump Steven K. Bannon to the show to discuss the Transition Integrity Project as configured by the Democratic Party to manipulate the 2020 election.

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‘Senseless’: 51 Shot, 10 Dead in Bloody Chicago Labor Day Weekend, Child Among the Dead

Minnesota Sun Staff

Dozens were shot and multiple people died over Labor Day weekend in Chicago as violence continues in the city, according to police.

A total of 51 people were hit by gunfire and 10 people died, Chicago police told ABC 7. An 8-year-old girl was shot fatally Monday in an SUV while waiting at a stoplight, authorities told the local outlet.

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Trump Readying Potential Supreme Court Nominee List Including Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Young

The Associated Press

President Donald Trump is preparing to again release a list of potential Supreme Court nominees, one that voters can compare to rival Joe Biden’s promise to nominate a Black woman to the high court if given the chance.

White House chief of staff Mark Meadows told reporters at the White House on Tuesday that Trump’s list will be released soon. “I’m optimistic that you’ll see those SCOTUS picks in coming days,” Meadows said.

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Pharmaceutical Companies Sign Joint Pledge Promising a Safe Coronavirus Vaccine as Public Confidence Dips

Minnesota Sun Staff

Nine pharmaceutical companies signed a joint pledge Tuesday promising to prioritize safety and science regarding the development and distribution of a coronavirus vaccine.

The pledge is meant to counter declining public confidence in an eventual vaccine, Politico reported. An August CNN poll found that just over half of Americans would be willing to take a vaccine once developed, and a recent Politico poll found that over 60% of voters opposed the release of any vaccine that had not undergone full testing.

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This Group Within Florida’s Latino Community Overwhelmingly Supports Trump, Poll Finds

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Donald Trump is winning the Cuban vote by large margins in one of the most contentious counties in Florida less than three months before Election Day, a new poll published Tuesday found.

Cuban-Americans in Florida’s Miami-Dade County support Trump over Biden by 38 points, according to a Bendixen & Amandi International poll. The poll, conducted Sept. 1 to Sept. 4, found the former vice president narrowly behind overall Hispanic voters in the county, with Trump leading 47% to 46%.

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Commentary: Yes, Vote Fraud Is Real

Minnesota Sun Staff

Our friends at the Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) have just released briefs detailing the massive level of vote fraud in the past two elections – especially in Democrat-controlled jurisdictions.

PILF has filed two court briefs documenting that double voting by the thousands happened in 2016-2018 in Georgia and North Carolina.

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DFL House Leaders Postpone Event with Pro-Riot Candidate Thompson After Widespread Pushback

Corinne Murdock

The Democratic-Farmer-Labor (DFL) Party has officially postponed its event with Democratic candidate John Thompson due to widespread pushback. A reporter with The Star Tribune announced the fundraiser’s indefinite delay.
However, DFL House Speaker Melissa Hortman did not initially want to remove Thompson from the event.

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Judge Rules Minnesota’s ’51 Percent’ Wine Rule Unconstitutional

Minnesota Sun Staff

A federal judge struck down a Minnesota law that forced wineries to make wine using 51 percent of grapes grown within the state.

Critics say the rule is a “protectionist” restriction placed to shield the state’s grape producers from competition.

The ruling could have implications across the nation where the law is mirrored, including in New York, Pennsylvania and Illinois.

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Commentary: America’s Clown Conference

Minnesota Sun Staff

The latest act in the clown show that is the Big Ten Conference’s postponement of football this fall occurred on Thursday afternoon when Michigan governor Gretchen Whitmer green-lighted high school football in the state.
Twitter erupted into paroxysms of hope, and the Internet haruspices crouched down to read the chicken entrails. Might the decision of this control-freak governor, who a little more than a week earlier had expressed glee that the Big Ten was scrubbing football for the fall, augur a reversal of opinion among decision makers in the Upper Midwest and thus a possible revocation of the conference suspension of fall sports?

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Biology Textbooks Reference Too Many ‘White Men’ Washington Post Article States

Minnesota Sun Staff

A recent Washington Post article lamented the fact that biology textbooks contain a disproportionate number of mentions of “white men.”
The article’s author, Bethany Brookshire, begins by referencing three of the most recognized contributors to modern biology, Charles Darwin, Carolus Linnaeus, and Gregor Mendel.

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Trump Supporters Hold Rallies Across Country

Ben Kolodny

Supporters of President Trump have held numerous rallies across the country this week.

Trump supporters in Oregon caravanned and rallied with hundreds of vehicles showing up for the event. The Oregon For Trump 2020 Labor Day Cruis Rally event page on Facebook received over 6000 responses with over a thousand people saying they would be attending. 

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Poll Reveals Growing Distrust in CDC and Media Over COVID Information

Minnesota Sun Staff

American voters’ trust in the national media and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to provide accurate information about the coronavirus pandemic has plummeted since March, according to a CBS poll published Sunday.

Roughly 54% of voters trust the CDC for reliable information about the virus, a 30 percentage point drop from March, when 86% of voters said the same thing, the CBS poll showed. Fewer voters also trust the national media to provide good information about coronavirus, or COVID, according to the poll, which was conducted between Sept. 2-4 and sampled 2,493 registered voters nationwide.

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Trump, Biden Spar Over Economy, Workers in Labor Day Blitz

The Associated Press

Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump spent Monday diminishing each other’s credentials on the economy and understanding of the American worker as the presidential campaign entered its final, post-Labor Day stretch.

While workers live by an “American code,” Biden said Trump “lives by a code of lies, greed and selfishness” as he met with labor leaders in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a key swing state. Trump, meanwhile, tried to put the halting economic recovery under the best light in a White House press conference where he said Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, would “destroy this country and would destroy this economy.”

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Assistant Principal on Administrative Leave After Expletive-Laced Facebook Video Surfaces

Minnesota Sun Staff

A New York assistant principal has been placed on administrative leave after he recorded himself at Rochester protests screaming “F-k the police,” video shows.
Ninth-grade Advanced Placement school teacher Steven Lysenko attended Rochester protests where he took a Facebook Live video of himself screaming about police while wearing a Black Lives Matter shirt in a video, the New York Post reported. Lysenko did not immediately respond to a request for comment from the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Dozens Arrested as Portland Riots Continue

Minnesota Sun Staff

by Andrew Selsky   PORTLAND, Oregon (AP) — Hundreds of people gathered for rallies and marches against police violence and racial injustice Saturday night in Portland, Oregon, as often violent nightly protests that have happened for 100 days since George Floyd was killed showed no signs of ceasing. Molotov cocktails…

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Commentary: Trump Takes on the Real Pandemic of ‘Critical Race Theory’

Minnesota Sun Staff

At long last, the president tackles the “critical race theory” infecting the federal workforce.
To be a freedom-loving individual in the year 2020, and to have a proper understanding of modern history and current events, is to be terrifyingly aware of just how much the liberty, prosperity, and stability of America and the free world depend on one thing and one thing alone—namely, the continued physical and intellectual health of a certain preternaturally brave, brilliant, and energetic 74-year-old named Donald Trump.

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Commentary: Desperately Derailing Donald

Minnesota Sun Staff

The effort to stop President Trump is growing comical.

One always expects the media surprise leak of a purported hidden scandal as a presidential campaign winds down. Remember the last-minute “discovery” of George W. Bush’s undisclosed 24-year-old DUI arrest in 2000? Or the October 7, 2016 effort of the Washington Post to publish the hoarded 11-year-old “Access Hollywood” tape, just two days before Donald Trump’s second debate with Hillary Clinton?

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In Battlegrounds, Absentee Ballot Rejections Could Triple

The Associated Press

Thousands of absentee ballots get rejected in every presidential election. This year, that problem could be much worse and potentially pivotal in hotly contested battleground states.

With the coronavirus creating a surge in mail-in balloting and postal delays reported across the country, the number of rejected ballots in November is projected to be significantly higher than previous elections.

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Rep Jim Hagedorn Only MN Leader to Sign Pledge Opposing Any ‘Defund the Police’ Bills, Resolutions, Movements

Corinne Murdock

Representative Jim Hagedorn (R-MN-1) is the only Minnesotan leader to sign the Police Pledge, a promise to oppose any bills, resolutions, or movements to defund the police. No other leaders from the state have signed this pledge yet.
Hagedorn signed the pledge Thursday. He credits his decision to American government leadership excusing criminal behavior while blaming law enforcement.

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