Month: October 2020

Mike Flynn Seeks to Remove Judge Overseeing Case, Alleging Bias

Minnesota Sun Staff

In a dramatic escalation of a long-running feud, lawyers for former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn on Wednesday filed a motion to disqualify U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan from considering the request to dismiss their client’s case, arguing the jurist has demonstrated “contempt and disdain for the defense.”

The filing by attorneys Sidney Powell and Jesse Binnall came after the defense and judge clashed several times at a hearing last week. It also follows Flynn, retire Army lieutenant general, having tried to get an appeals court to issue a writ of mandamus forcing Sullivan to immediately dismiss the case.

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Commentary: Three Inconvenient Truths 60 Minutes Forgot to Mention in Its Story on California Wildfires and Climate Change

Minnesota Sun Staff

CBS journalist Scott Pelley recently visited Butte County, California, to report on the wildfires devastating the Golden State.

Government statistics show that more than 8,300 wildfires have burned some 4 million acres to date. The flames have claimed 31 lives and destroyed nearly 8,700 structures. One of those structures belonged to Fire Station 61 Chief Reed Rankin, who saw his home reduced to a charred skeleton after a September blaze.

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White House to Block FDA Vaccine Guidelines That Would’ve Delayed Approval Past Election

Minnesota Sun Staff

The White House blocked new vaccine guidelines proposed by health officials within the Trump administration, which likely would have pushed the approval of a coronavirus vaccine past the election.

The Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which is in charge of approving vaccines, proposed the guidance on Sept. 21, according to The New York Times. White House chief of staff Mark Meadows raised concerns with one provision of the guidelines which said vaccine trial subjects should be examined for two months following their final dose, a senior administration official told the Times.

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95 Percent of Silicon Valley Donations Have Gone to Joe Biden

Minnesota Sun Staff

A new Wired report shows overwhelming support from Silicon Valley employees for Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden. The magazine states that almost 95 percent of donations from employees at Silicon Valley tech giants such as Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, and Oracle went to the Democratic presidential nominee, Breitbart reports.

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‘Oil Barons and Railroad Tycoons’: Big Tech Must Be Restructured, House Report Says

Minnesota Sun Staff

Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google have abused their monopoly power and must undergo significant restructuring, according to a House report released Tuesday.

Lawmakers who wrote the report said the four tech companies had grown into monopolies akin to “oil barons and railroad tycoons” and suggested an overhaul to U.S. antitrust laws, according to The New York Times. The lengthy report, spearheaded by Democratic Reps. Jerrold Nadler and David Cicilline, is the result of a 15-month House Judiciary Committee investigation into the companies collectively known as Big Tech.

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Trump Administration to Sharply Limit Skilled-Worker Visas

The Associated Press

The Trump administration announced plans Tuesday to sharply limit visas for skilled workers from overseas, a move officials said was a priority amid job losses caused by the coronavirus pandemic.

Department of Homeland Security and Department of Labor officials said new rules for what’s known as the H1-B program will restrict who can obtain a work visa and will impose additional salary requirements on companies seeking to hire foreign workers.

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Brennan Personally Briefed Obama on Clinton Campaign’s Russia Collusion Operation in 2016

Minnesota Sun Staff

CIA Director John Brennan personally briefed former President Barack Obama on Russia’s knowledge of Hillary Clinton’s “plan” to smear then-candidate Donald Trump as a Russian stooge during the 2016 presidential election, newly declassified documents reveal.

Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe on Tuesday declassified Brennan’s handwritten notes from the briefing, as well as a CIA memo revealing that officials referred the matter to the FBI for potential investigative action. That referral was sent to then-FBI Director James Comey and then-Deputy Assistant Director of Counterintelligence Peter Strzok.

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Commentary: This Campaign, and This President, Are Like No Other

Minnesota Sun Staff

The startling revelation that President Trump and his wife have contracted COVID-19 not only contributes another imponderable complexity to this torrid election campaign, it brings forth—amid a general tide of goodwill in favor of the president and his wife—the worst traits of the Trump-haters. The media response ranged from Joy Reid’s piercing aperçu that he was faking the illness to attract sympathy, to the Lemon-Tapper school of Trump-hate at CNN, which saw it as a direct consequence of the president supposedly taking the virus lightly, leading the resistance to it incompetently, and pretending that it was a fiction, “a hoax.”

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State Dept. Officials Told They Broke Law by Monitoring Americans During Ukraine Scandal

Minnesota Sun Staff

State Department officials were explicitly ordered in spring 2019 to stop tracking 13 prominent Americans’ social media accounts for information about the Joe Biden-Ukraine scandal because the monitoring violated federal law, according to emails that were originally redacted to hide the concerns from the American public.

“We are barred by law from actively monitoring the accounts of American citizens in aggregate — and particularly from identifying and monitoring individual, selected accounts,” a State Department official wrote in an April 1, 2019 email to officials in Washington and the U.S. embassy in Kiev.

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Massive Trump Caravans Take Over Where the Boat Parades Left off

Minnesota Sun Staff

As boat season winds down with fewer pro-Trump boat parades scheduled, patriotic Americans throughout the nation are increasingly participating in car and truck caravans to show their support for President Donald Trump.

Now, more than ever, Republican voters are hitting the streets to support the president in the wake of his recent coronavirus diagnosis.

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Harvard Lecturer Pushes Wild Conspiracy Theory About Russian Spies at Walter Reed Hospital

Minnesota Sun Staff

Harvard University professor and CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem alleged that it is “very likely” that Russian spies infiltrated Walter Reed National Military Medical Center and gained access to information about President Donald Trump’s medical condition.

President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday. The president experienced symptoms before moving to Walter Reed Hospital in Bethesda, Maryland, out of an “abundance of caution” the following day.

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Commentary: Biden Is Behind the Curve in Fighting COVID

Minnesota Sun Staff

To hear former Vice President Joe Biden tell it, in January, he had perfect knowledge about the Chinese coronavirus, what its mortality would be and all the actions that would be necessary to save American lives.

On July 20 on MSNBC, Biden claimed, “I, all the way back in January, warned him this pandemic was coming. I talked about what we needed to do,” referring to President Trump and a Jan. 27 oped he wrote on the virus.

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Andrew Cuomo Threatens to Shut Down Churches, Synagogues, Says ‘Religious Institutions Have Been a Problem’

Minnesota Sun Staff
Andrew Cuomo

Democratic New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo threatened Monday to close down religious institutions, specifically Jewish synagogues, if they do not follow his coronavirus restrictions.

“We know religious institutions have been a problem,” Cuomo said at a Monday press conference. “We know mass gatherings are the super spreader events. We know there have been mass gatherings going on in concert with religious institutions in these communities for weeks. For weeks.”

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Texas Grand Jury Indicts Netflix for ‘Lewd Visual Material’ in Cuties, State Rep Says

Minnesota Sun Staff

A Texas grand jury has indicted Netflix, Inc. for “lewd visual material” in the movie “Cuties,” a Texas state representative said Tuesday.

Republican Texas state Rep. Matt Schaefer announced Tuesday afternoon that a grand jury for Tyler County, Texas, indicted Netflix, Inc., for “promoting material in Cuties film which depicts lewd exhibition of pubic area of a clothed or partially clothed child who was younger than 18 yrs of age which appeals to the prurient interest in sex.” 

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Boeing Says Pandemic Will Cut Demand for Planes for a Decade

The Associated Press

Boeing is lowering its expectations around demand for new planes over the next decade as the coronavirus pandemic continues to undercut air travel.

The company on Tuesday predicted that the world will need 18,350 new commercial airplanes in the next decade, a drop of 11% from its 2019 forecast. The value of that market will slide by about $200 billion from last year’s forecast, to $2.9 trillion.

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CDC Updates Coronavirus Guidance Again, Warns About Transmission from More than Six Feet

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated its coronavirus guidance Monday to warn about the potential for virus spread from beyond six feet.

The new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) guidance also says that the virus can “linger in the air” for hours. The revision comes weeks after the agency retracted a similar update to its coronavirus guidance.

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‘Dune’ Ditches 2020, While AMC Commits to Staying Open

Minnesota Sun Staff

The 2020 theatrical release calendar is getting even slimmer in the wake of the announcement that Regal cinemas are temporarily closing, although AMC, North America’s largest theater chain, says it will remain open.

Warner Bros. said late Monday that its sci-fi pic “Dune” will now open in October 2021, instead of this December. The studio also pushed back “The Batman” to March 2022 and moved up its “Matrix” sequel to Dec. 2021.

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Black Lives Matter Plans to Paint Street Mural in Nashville

Jason M. Reynolds

Black Lives Matter organizers plan to paint a street mural in Nashville on Saturday.

Muralist Thaxton Waters II and other artists plan to paint the mural along Woodland Avenue, the same day as the Women’s March in Nashville, Fox 17 News reported. Organizers say they soon will announce events for that day, and they expect over 10,000 to attend.

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Minnesota’s $6.9 Million COVID Morgue Converted into Storage Facility, Media Barred from Entering

Minnesota Sun Staff

Gov. Tim Walz’s administration purchased a warehouse for $6.9 million in May to be used for the “temporary storage of human remains,” but the facility was recently converted into a storage space for vaccines and other medical supplies.

The facility was intended to serve as “a building where we can properly handle with dignity and respect and safety the bodies of Minnesotans who may fall victim to the coronavirus,” Minnesota Homeland Security and Emergency Management Director Joe Kelly said at the time of the purchase.

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Commentary: The Harris Administration’s Radical Agenda

Admin

Kamala Harris seeks the (almost) highest office in our great land, the most powerful position in the free world.  Freudian slip that Harris referred to a future “Harris administration” at a virtual roundtable in Arizona last month?  Maybe she missed that her name is in the VP slot or maybe she doesn’t understand that “me too” refers to the movement advocating for sexual harassment victims and not “she too” for president.   

Either way, no time like the present to explore who Kamala Harris is despite that we’re not supposed to look critically at her record.  The media isn’t curious and dare anyone raise any questions, cries of misogyny abound. 

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Harvard Center Hosts Virtual Seminar on How to Inject Race Issues Into Course Syllabi

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Harvard Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies hosted a webinar last Friday on “integrating critical pedagogies of race” into professors’ course syllabi.

Titled “Teaching Race and Racism: Your Syllabus 2.0” and sponsored by the Association for Slavic, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies, it was part of the “Race in Focus” virtual series the goal of which is to show faculty how to utilize new course materials, “shar[e] resources,” and “connect with scholars of color.”

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Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s Restaurant Police Cite Two Downtown Bars For Having Too Many Customers

Jason M. Reynolds

Informants reportedly helped Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s restaurant police cite two downtown bars over the weekend.

WSMV reported that a task force cited Dogwood and Rebar, both on Division Street, on Saturday for having too many patrons, including on the patio. The task force had members from Metro Public Health Department, the Metro Nashville Police Department and the Metro Beer Board. The task force checked on Dogwood again on Sunday.

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Commentary: If Everyone is Behind, then No One is Behind

Minnesota Sun Staff

In early September, researchers Corey DeAngelis and Christos Makridis released the results of a study they spearheaded, which found that “school districts in places with stronger teachers’ unions are much less likely to offer full-time, in-person instruction this fall.” The authors stress that the results are remarkably consistent after controlling for differences in demographics, including age, race, population, political affiliation, household income, COVID-19 cases, deaths per capita, et al.

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Trump Working on Declassification of Intel Documents From Hospital, Chief of Staff Says

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Donald Trump is working to declassify documents related to the Russia investigation while he recovers from coronavirus at Walter Reed National Military Medical Center, his chief of staff said Monday.

“This morning we’ve already had a couple of discussions on items that he wants to get done,” Mark Meadows, the chief of staff, said in an interview on “Fox & Friends.”

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Commentary: In 2020, Wallace Learned ‘Never Go Full Crowley’

Minnesota Sun Staff

In the second presidential election debate between President Barack Obama and Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney on October 16, 2012, CNN moderator Candy Crowley sensed that Obama, coming off a dismal initial September 26 debate, was again floundering.

Romney was driving home the valid point that the Obama Administration had inadequately prepared the American mission in Benghazi for likely terrorist attacks. And such laxity resulted in a horrific attack and the deaths of four Americans, including the U.S. ambassador.

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Trump Signs Executive Order Establishing Coronavirus Mental Health Working Group

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Donald Trump signed an executive order Saturday aimed at “saving lives” of those suffering from mental and behavioral health needs, particularly during the coronavirus pandemic.

Through the executive order issued Monday morning, Trump called for more crisis-intervention services to those in “immediate life-threatening situations,” and encouraged increased availability of continuing care after crises, nurture mentorship programs, expanded availability of telehealth, and more.

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REVIEW: ‘Riding the Dragon’ Exposes Biden Family Connections with Corrupt Chinese Communists

Minnesota Sun Staff

A damning new documentary, “Riding the Dragon: The Bidens’ Chinese Secrets,” directed by M.A. Taylor and narrated by bestselling author Peter Schweizer, is shining sunlight on the close ties between Joe Biden’s family and the Chinese elite. Peter Schweizer, head of the Florida-based Government Accountability Institute and narrator of the film said the documentary is based on corporate records, financial documents, legal briefings and court papers.

The film features investigative journalist and author Peter Schweizer and Schweizer’s revelations of Chinese influence over the Biden family found in the 2018 book “Secret Empires” and the more recent “Profiles in Corruption” (both #1 New York Times bestsellers).

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Middle School Teacher Rips Student for Naming President Trump as Person He Admires

Minnesota Sun Staff

A Tacoma, Washington middle school teacher took great offense when one of his students named President Trump as a person he admires.

The thing is, Perry G. Keithley Middle School sixth grade teacher Brendan Stanton (below) asked his virtual class this very question — “who is the one person you admire and why?”

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Cardinal Says Biden ‘Not a Catholic in Good Standing,’ Should not Receive Communion

Minnesota Sun Staff

Cardinal Raymond Burke said Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, who describes himself as a “devout Catholic,” is “not a Catholic in good standing” and “should not approach to receive Holy Communion.”

In an interview with Catholic Action for Faith and Family released last week, Burke said he doesn’t intend to endorse any political candidate, but simply wants to state that “a Catholic may not support abortion in any shape or form because it is one of the most grievous sins against human life, and has always been considered to be intrinsically evil and therefore to in any way support the act is a mortal sin.”

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Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz Recall Effort Under Review by State Supreme Court

Minnesota Sun Staff

A recall effort has been filed against Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz (D) over his mask mandate in response to the coronavirus pandemic. The Minnesota Supreme Court will now review whether the grounds for recall stated in the petition are sufficient and meet statutory requirements. Two earlier efforts to recall Walz were dismissed by the supreme court because the petitions did not meet the legal standards to recall an elected official.

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Commentary: Protect Elderly Votes Project Aims to Thwart ‘Ballot Harvesting’ Fraud

Minnesota Sun Staff

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the push for widespread mail-in voting and other alternatives to going to the polls ahead of the presidential election has increased the risk of vote fraud through “ballot harvesting,” and the elderly are particularly vulnerable, advocates warn.

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Court Filing Alleges Fordham Wants to Hide Ties to Chinese Communist Party

Minnesota Sun Staff

The attorney for Austin Tong, a Chinese immigrant student punished by Fordham University, recently alleged that the university has ties to the Chinese Communist Party that the institution wants to hide.

He argued that it is why the school wants to avoid discovery in the lawsuit it faces for its punishment of Tong.

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ICE’s New Acting Director Plans to Change Public Perception of the Agency

Minnesota Sun Staff

Tony Pham is focused on changing the narrative of Immigration and Customs Enforcement by highlighting the work agents do every day, he told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an exclusive interview.

Closing his third full week as the senior official performing the duties of the director of ICE, Pham told the DCNF that he plans to focus on addressing the public misconception of the agency and its employees by promoting discussion around the “remarkable work that the men and women of ICE do every day.”

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Gov. DeWine on CNN: President Trump’s COVID Diagnosis is a ‘Cautionary Tale’ for Mask Wearing

Minnesota Sun Staff

In an appearance of CNN’s State of the Union Sunday, Ohio Governor Mike DeWine appeared to “mask-shame” President Trump, saying that the Chief executive’s diagnosis of the potentially deadly disease serves as a “cautionary tale” for people who are reluctant to wear masks.

DeWine, a fairly frequent guest on the news program told host Jake Tapper that “this should be kind of an alert to everybody that anybody can get the virus, even president of the United States can get the virus.”

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Commentary: Recognizing the Sovereignty of Taiwan Could be a Real October Surprise

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Trump has an opportunity to make his boldest moral, strategic, and catalyzing move yet, entirely in the interest of the American people and the free world: to recognize the Republic of China (i.e. Taiwan) as a sovereign nation. His administration has already taken significant steps to “bolster” Taiwan’s status. This move wouldn’t be so subtle. More than a Tweet; Trump could recognize the island nation, constantly harassed and illegitimately claimed by the CCP, before the United Nations. He could challenge democratic, freedom-loving allies and acquaintances to do the same, and in so doing, ascertain who exactly has the intestinal fortitude to call out the evil empire, and who is willing to subordinate their people to it in the decades to come. President Trump should remind our nuclear adversary why it is that the United States Navy’s Seventh Fleet routinely transits the Taiwan Strait and for whom, and that the United States of America remains a force for good in the world.

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Los Angeles Ordered to Pay NRA Six Figures After Losing First Amendment Case

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Washington Free Beacon reports, a federal court ordered the city of Los Angeles to pay the NRA’s lawyer fees of approximately $150,000, just months after he ruled a city ordinance violated the gun-rights group’s First Amendment rights.

The City of Los Angeles tried to penalize any contractor with ties to the NRA. The NRA sued over the ordinance and federal district court judge Stephen Wilson ruled it was an unconstitutional violation of the NRA’s First Amendment rights. The city eventually repealed it and on Tuesday, the judge ordered city officials to pay the NRA’s attorney fees totaling about $150,000.

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U.S. Supreme Court Reinstalls Arizona Ban on Ballot Harvesting as Ballots Hit Mailboxes

Minnesota Sun Staff

Arizona’s 2016 ballot harvesting ban will remain in effect for the 2020 General Election.

The U.S. Supreme Court announced Friday that they would hear Attorney General Mark Brnovich’s appeal against the Democratic National Committee over their challenge to a ban on anyone except a caregiver or immediate family member delivering an early ballot.

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Guatemala Says it Will Detain Around 2,000 Migrants Bound for the U.S.

Minnesota Sun Staff

Guatemala says it will detain and return a migrant caravan of around 2,000 that entered the country from Honduras on Thursday, the Associated Press reported Friday.

Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei vowed the caravan would be sent back to Honduras over concerns about coronavirus, the AP reported. The caravan overpowered Guatemalan border guards who reportedly made little attempt to control the situation, according to the AP.

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Three-Quarters of Voters Say Faith is Important in Their Personal Lives

Minnesota Sun Staff

The vast majority of U.S. voters say their religious faith plays an important role in their personal life, according to a new Just the News Daily Poll with Scott Rasmussen.

A full 72% of voters say that their “religion or faith” is either somewhat or very important to them. Just 24% of voters said religion holds little to no significance in their personal lives.

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As European Schools Stay Open Amid Rising Cases, Many U.S. Schools Remain Shuttered

Minnesota Sun Staff

Leaders in Western Europe remain committed to continuing in-person instruction for young students — in some cases relaxing restrictions like face mask requirements and social distancing rules — even as caseloads throughout the region continue to explode. 

It’s a sharp contrast from many school districts in the United States, including some of the largest and most populous, where governmental authorities and teachers’ unions continue to insist that children be barred from face-to-face instruction, that any in-person learning be accompanied by strict distancing and face covering rules, and that even modest upticks in coronavirus cases should necessitate a complete shutdown of face-to-face learning.

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Tax, Legal Experts Agree Leaker of Trump’s Tax Returns Could Face Prison Time

Minnesota Sun Staff

Tax and legal experts say the leaker or leakers who took President Trump’s personal tax returns and gave them to The New York Times, committed a felony punishable by prison.

Joseph diGenova, a former U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia who has advised Trump on some legal matters, told Just the News that the leaking was “definitely” a crime that could be liable for both criminal and civil legal actions.

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60 Percent of Duluth Rally Attendees Were Not Republicans, RNC Says

Minnesota Sun Staff

The majority of attendees at President Donald Trump’s recent rally in Duluth, Minnesota, were not Republicans, the Republican National Committee said.

RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said 60% of attendees were not Republicans while another 20% were Democrats, according to data the GOP collected from voters during the event.

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‘I Think I’ll Be Back Soon,’ President Trump Says in Optimistic New Video Message from Hospital

Minnesota Sun Staff

“I think I’ll be back soon,” President Trump said Saturday evening in a four-minute video from Walter Reed Medical Center, where the president is being treated for COVID-19.

Seated at a desk flanked by flags, the president offered words of guarded confidence, optimism and reassurance — about his own heath and the state of the larger national and international battle against the global pandemic.

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Paul Summers Commentary: Keep Nine Amendment to Permanently Ban Court Packing

Minnesota Sun Staff

At the September 29th Presidential Debate, Democrat nominee Joe Biden refused to answer a question about whether he would expand the size of the Supreme Court.  It is more likely that he and VP nominee Kamala Harris will, if elected, seek to pack the Court so they can appoint a new majority of more liberal Justices. 

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