Disney Thanks Chinese Propagandists in ‘Mulan’ After Filming Where Uighers are Abused

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Disney Thanks Chinese Propagandists in ‘Mulan’ After Filming Where Uighers are Abused

(Headline USA) Disney is under fire for filming part of its live-action reboot “Mulan” in Xinjiang, the region in China where the government has abused human rights against Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities.

The final credits in the film, which was released on Disney Plus last week and is being rolled out in several countries this month, thank propaganda departments in Xinjiang and the public security bureau of Turpan, a Uighur-majority city in the region.

Human rights activists and some China experts have taken to social media to condemn Disney for turning a blind eye to alleged abuses in Xinjiang. They accuse the American enterprise of kowtowing to China for access to its lucrative movie market, the second-largest in the world.

Amnesty International tweeted a link to a media report on the controversy and asked Disney, “Can you show us your human rights due diligence report?” A Washington Post opinion contributor called the movie a scandal, and one widely shared tweet suggested the Mulan crew would have seen “reeducation camps” for Uighurs en route to filming locations.

Uighurs and other predominantly Muslim minorities in the remote Xinjiang region have been locked up in camps as part of a government assimilation campaign launched in response to decades of sometimes violent struggle against Chinese rule. Some have been subjected to forced sterilization and abortion, and in recent months, ordered to drink traditional Chinese medicines to combat the coronavirus outbreak.

Chinese authorities defend the camps as job training centers, though former detainees describe them as prison-like facilities where they were humiliated, beaten and deprived of food.

“There is no so-called reeducation camp in Xinjiang,” foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian said when asked about the Mulan controversy on Tuesday. “The establishment of the vocational education and training centers in Xinjiang is a positive attempt and active exploration of preventive counterterrorism and deradicalization. … There have been no violent terrorist attacks in Xinjiang for more than three years.”

Zhao is the Chinese official who blamed the origin and spread of the coronavirus on the U.S. Army.

In addition to Xinjiang, the Mulan team has scouted and filmed in multiple locations in China including the cities of Xi’an and Dunhuang, according to director Niki Caro’s Instagram posts. The movie has been partially filmed in New Zealand as well.

Disney did not reply to a request for comment.

The film, which is a remake of the popular 1998 animation, is based on the ancient Chinese tale of Hua Mulan, a young woman who takes her father’s place in the army by dressing as a man.

The remake was no stranger to controversies even before its release.

Last year, a boycott movement was sparked when the lead actor, Liu Yifei, a Chinese-American originally from Wuhan, publicly supported Hong Kong police when they were accused of using excessive force against Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters.

Donnie Yen, a renowned Hong Kong star who plays Mulan’s regiment leader Commander Tung, also drew ire from Hong Kong protesters for his pro-China stance.

Alan Horn, co-chairman and chief creative officer of The Walt Disney Studios, said in February that the company doesn’t want to be dragged into a political discussion.

“I can’t speak for what Yifei says in China, we didn’t know about it, what she was going to say, and that’s up to them,” he said during a roundtable session with other entertainment executives including from Netflix and Warner Brothers.

He did note the importance of the Chinese market, where Mulan opens Friday. “If ‘Mulan’ doesn’t work in China, we have a problem,” he said with a laugh.

It’s a crucial time for Disney. In August, the American entertainment conglomerate said its net income fell dramatically after having to close theme parks temporarily and cancel theatrical releases because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Disney has high hopes for the Mulan remake, one of its most expensive productions ever. It is pushing limited theatrical releases in some countries and putting the movie on its Disney+ streaming service for $29.99, on top of the monthly subscription.

However, the film’s explicit credits to Xinjiang authorities have reignited the boycott movement.

“I’m a huge fan of Disney movies and especially with a 4-year-old daughter, ‘Mulan’ should be a must watch for my family,” Uighur American activist Ferkat Jawdat said.

He said he won’t be watching this Disney remake.

“The hypocrisy is just too amazing to fathom,” he said of filming in the same region as the camps and where the Uighur population is oppressed.

The controversy has revived calls for a boycott in Hong Kong, where the film will be released next week.

“Even before this became known, Hong Kongers have already been protesting for a year about Liu Yifei’s support of police brutality,” Jeffrey Ngo, a Hong Kong activist, said.

Hong Kong democracy activist Joshua Wong tweeted, “Now, when you watch #Mulan, not only are you turning a blind eye to police brutality and racial injustice … you’re also potentially complicit in the mass incarceration of Muslim Uyghurs.”

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

Trump Readies Supreme Court Nominee List; Is Biden Ashamed to Show His?

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Trump Readies Supreme Court Nominee List; Is Biden Ashamed to Show His?

(Headline USA) 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, using an acronym for Supreme Court of the United States.

The move to release a list is a repeat of a successful strategy Trump employed during his 2016 campaign. Four years ago he took the unprecedented step of announcing potential Supreme Court nominees in a bid to win over conservatives and evangelicals who were not enthusiastic about his personal flaws and his past support for Democrats, but came around to his candidacy because of his promises on judicial appointments.

Trump had previously said on Twitter the announcement of a new list would come by September 1 and that it “may include some, or many of those already on the list.”

Biden too has said he’s working on a list of potential nominees, but the campaign has given no indication that it would release any names before the November election and doing so would risk giving Trump and Republicans a target to put Biden on defense.

Any vacancy would give the president the ability to shape the future of the powerful court, which is currently divided 5-4 between conservatives and liberals.

Any list may also be meaningless, however. Either man’s ability to get any future choice confirmed depends on having a majority in the Senate, which confirms nominees. Republicans currently hold 53 seats in the chamber to Democrats’ 45, with two independents who caucus with the Democrats.

Trump released two lists of potential Supreme Court nominees during his previous presidential campaign, one with 11 names in May 2016 and another with 10 names that September. Justice Neil Gorsuch, Trump’s first nominee to the court, was on the second list. Justice Brett Kavanaugh, his second nominee, was one of five people added to Trump’s list in 2017.

Of the people remaining on Trump’s list, six are women. It also includes several minorities including Amul Thapar, who is of South Asian descent. Former Michigan Supreme Court Justice Robert Young, who is black, and Federico Moreno, a federal judge in Florida who is Hispanic, are also on the list, though their age makes them unlikely nominees.

Trump said recently that the winner of November’s presidential election “could have anywhere from two to four, to maybe even five” Supreme Court justices to pick because of the age of the current nine justices. It’s a view he also expressed in 2016.

The court’s oldest members are Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, 87, and Justice Stephen Breyer, 82, both liberals, and Justice Clarence Thomas, 72, and Justice Samuel Alito, 70, two conservatives. Ginsburg made news this summer when she announced she is being treated for a recurrence of cancer but has no plans to step down.

Biden, for his part, has not released a list of specific people he’d nominate, but his promise to nominate a black woman to the court if he has the opportunity in many ways narrows the field. Biden said in late June that work on his list was underway.

“We are putting together a list of a group of African-American women who are qualified and have the experience to be in the court. I am not going to release that until we go further down the line of vetting them as well,” he said.

Regardless of party, presidents tend to look for the same characteristics in potential Supreme Court picks. Stellar legal credentials are a must. All of the current justices attended Harvard or Yale law school, though Ginsburg left Harvard and graduated from Columbia. All but Justice Elena Kagan were also first a judge on a federal appeals court. And they tend to be old enough to have a distinguished legal career but young enough to serve for decades. That generally means nominees are in their late 40s or 50s.

More recently, nominees have also previously clerked for a Supreme Court justice, an early mark of legal smarts. Five of the current justices previously clerked at the Supreme Court.

Age is one factor narrowing Biden’s choices. Only five Black women are judges on federal appeals courts around the country, and each is 68 or older this year according to a Federal Judicial Center database.

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

UPDATE: Trump Cutting US Troops in Iraq to 3,000 This Month

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UPDATE: Trump Cutting US Troops in Iraq to 3,000 This Month

UPDATE: (Associated Press) The United States is reducing its troop presence in Iraq this month from 5,200 to 3,000, the top American commander for the Middle East said Wednesday, as President Donald Trump tries to make good on his campaign promise to get America out of “endless wars.”

During a visit to Iraq, Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said the reduction in Iraq reflects the Trump administration’s confidence in the ability of U.S.-trained Iraqi security forces to handle the militant threat from the Islamic State group, which entered Iraq from Syria in 2014.

ORIGINAL ARTICLE: The Trump administration will announce Wednesday that it is withdrawing additional troops from Iraq, as President Donald Trump tries to make good on his campaign promise to disentangle the country from “endless wars.”

A senior administration official discussed the draw-down with reporters aboard Air Force One on Tuesday night, on condition of anonymity.

The official said the administration is also looking to announce the withdrawal of additional troops from Afghanistan in the coming days.

The planned announcements come as the president has made the case that he has fulfilled the promises he made four years ago as he tries to secure a second term.

There are more than 5,000 American troops in Iraq now.

In July, the top U.S. general for the Middle East said he believed the U.S. will keep a smaller but enduring presence in the country.

Marine Gen. Frank McKenzie, the commander of U.S. Central Command, said he believes the Iraqis welcome the U.S. and coalition troops, especially in the ongoing fight to keep IS fighters from taking hold of the country again.

Trump told reporters two weeks ago that “we look forward to the day when we don’t have to be there.”

The comments came during an Oval Office meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi.

However, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo emphasized at that same meeting that a full withdrawal of U.S. troops would only occur once “we can complete the mission.”

Women Charged w/ Hate Crimes After Attacks on Trump Supporters

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Women Charged w/ Hate Crimes After Attacks on Trump Supporters

(Associated Press) Two women are facing hate crime charges after confronting a 7-year-old boy and his mother outside the Democratic National Convention in Delaware over their support of President Donald Trump and seizing a “Make America Great Again” hat.

A grand jury on Tuesday indicted Olivia Winslow and Camryn Amy, both 21, on felony charges of robbery, conspiracy and hate crimes and a misdemeanor charge of endangering the welfare of a child.

Amy also was indicted on misdemeanor charges of assaulting a man who tried to retrieve the hat, attempting to assault his mother, and offensive touching of the boy.

The indictment accuses the women of committing the crimes “for the purpose of interfering with the victim’s free exercise or enjoyment of any right, privilege or immunity protected by the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, or committed said crime because the victim had exercised or enjoyed said right or rights, …”

“Violence in any form is unacceptable, but harming another person — let alone a child — because of the expression of their views betrays the principles on which our country was founded,” said Delaware Attorney General Kathleen Jennings, a Democrat who has joined in several lawsuits against the Trump administration.

“Free speech, free assembly, and free expression are sacred, no matter whether we agree with the opinions expressed, and especially when we don’t,” Jennings added in a prepared statement.

The incident, which was captured on a video that went viral after being posted online by Students for Trump, occurred outside a restaurant at the Wilmington Riverfront on Aug. 20, a few hundred feet from where Joe Biden gave his DNC acceptance speech that night. The video shows the two women damaging signs supporting Trump and taking a red MAGA hat.

“Get it Liv, get it,” Amy tells Winslow, who picks up the hat from the ground and throws it.

The boy chases after the two women, saying “That’s somebody else’s hat,” before Amy picks it up again and walks away with it.

“Mom, call 911,” the frightened boy says.

The video later shows Amy apparently punching a man who tried to get the hat back before she throws it over a fence. Amy then approaches and confronts the woman shooting the video, which abruptly ends.

According to the attorney general’s office, it does not appear that either of the suspects is represented by an attorney yet. It was not immediately clear whether either is still in custody.

DOJ Asks to Defend Trump in Rape Accuser’s Defamation Suit

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DOJ Asks to Defend Trump in Rape Accuser’s Defamation Suit

(Headline USA) The Justice Department is asking to take over President Donald Trump‘s defense in a defamation lawsuit from a writer who accused him of rape, and federal lawyers asked a court Tuesday to allow a move that could put the American people on the hook for any money she might be awarded.

After New York state courts turned down Trump’s request to delay E. Jean Carroll’s suit, Justice Department lawyers filed court papers aiming to shift the case into federal court and to substitute the U.S. for Trump as the defendant.

That means the federal government, rather than Trump himself, might have to pay damages if any are awarded.

Carroll’s lawyer, Roberta Kaplan, called the department’s argument “shocking.”

“It offends me as a lawyer and offends me even more as a citizen,” she said in a statement.

Carroll said the developments illustrated “that Trump will do everything possible, including using the full powers of the federal government,” to try to stop the case.

And in a tweet addressed to Trump, Carroll wrote: “Sir, I and my attorney Robbie Kaplan, are ready! So is every woman who has ever been silenced! So is every American citizen who has been trampled by Bill Barr and the DOJ! BRING IT!”

The filing complicates, at least for the moment, Carroll’s efforts to get a DNA sample from the president as potential evidence and to have him answer questions under oath.

Justice Department lawyers argue that Trump was “acting within the scope of his office” when he denied Carroll’s allegations, made last year, that he raped her in a New York luxury department store in the mid-1990s.

She says his comments — including that she was “totally lying” to sell a memoir — besmirched her character and harmed her career.

“Numerous courts have recognized that elected officials act within the scope of their office or employment when speaking with the press, including with respect to personal matters,” the Justice attorneys wrote.

It will be up to a federal judge to decide whether to move the case to federal court from state court and to allow the U.S. to become the defendant.

Carroll is trying to get a DNA sample from Trump to see whether it matches as-yet-unidentified male genetic material found on a dress that she says she was wearing during the alleged attack and didn’t don again until a photo shoot last year.

Her suit seeks damages and a retraction of Trump’s statements.

The Associated Press does not identify people who say they have been sexually assaulted unless they come forward publicly.

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

Pro-Trump Groups Rally Again Near Portland, One Week after Patriot’s Murder

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Pro-Trump Groups Rally Again Near Portland, One Week after Patriot’s Murder

(Headline USA) Hundreds of people gathered Monday afternoon in a small town south of Portland for a pro-President Donald Trump vehicle rally.

The latest demonstration came just over a week after member of the Patriot Prayer group, 39-year-old Aaron Jay Danielson, was fatally shot after a Trump caravan went through Oregon’s largest city.

Danielson’s murderer, a proud Antifa member, was later killed in a police standoff as federal authorities closed in to arrest him.

Vehicles waving flags for Trump and in support of police gathered at about noon at Clackamas Community College in Oregon City.

The rally’s organizers said they would drive to toward Salem and most left the caravan before that.

A smaller group that identified themselves as members of the conservative group the Proud Boys went on to Salem, where a crowd of several dozen pro-Trump supporters had gathered.

At one point Monday afternoon, the crowd clashed with a smaller group of Black Lives Matters protesters, with both groups firing paint-gun pellets at each other.

Organizers of the earlier vehicle rally in Oregon City said they did not plan to enter Multnomah County, where Portland is located. Oregon City is about 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of Portland.

Race riots in Portland started in late May, ostensibly in connection with the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But they have now continued for more than 100 days, with the motives—and funding source—of far-left activists remaining unclear.

Portland city officials, including Mayor Ted Wheeler, have largely embraced and encouraged the rioters. Wheeler even joined them in protesting against federal law-enforcement who were sent in to safeguard a federal building.

However, he has since backed off and sought to disavow the unruly and volatile scene, opting to scapegoat President Donald Trump for fomenting the violence.

A fire started outside a police precinct on Portland’s north side resulted in about 15 arrests during protests Sunday night into Monday morning, police said.

Demonstrators protesting police brutality began marching about 9 p.m. Sunday and stopped at the North Precinct Community Policing Center, the site of several protests in recent months.

Officials warned rioters against entering the precinct property, saying they would be trespassing and subject to arrest.

Shortly after arriving, the crowd began chanting, among other things, “burn it down,” police said. Some in the group lit a mattress on fire.

Most of those arrested were from Portland. Others were from San Francisco; Sacramento, California; Mesa, Arizona; and two from Vancouver, Washington.

Charges included interfering with an officer, resisting arrest, reckless burning and possession of a destructive device.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Virginia City Official Resigns Amid Confederate Monument Scandal

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Virginia City Official Resigns Amid Confederate Monument Scandal

(Headline USA) The city manager in Portsmouth, Va., has resigned amid an ongoing dispute over charges filed against a black state senator and several others who the city’s police department say were conspiring to damage a Confederate monument.

Lydia Pettis Patton, who announced last month that she would be retiring at the end of the year from her role, announced her departure in an email Tuesday morning, The Virginian-Pilot reported.

Pettis Patton wrote that her decision to “step aside immediately” was in “the best interest” of the city. “I have served this city with honor and dedication and I want to leave the city as I came in 1986 with honor,” the newspaper quotes Pettis Patton’s email as saying.

Pettis Patton was the first black woman appointed to the position, a role she had held since 2015. Her resignation came hours after the city’s mayor called for a special meeting to discuss “personnel matters.”

Officials did not provide details on that meeting, but one of the city’s top officials, Portsmouth Police Chief Angela Greene, was placed on administrative leave Friday, nearly three weeks after her department charged several people, including State Sen. Louise Lucas, members of the local NAACP chapter and the public defender’s office with conspiring to damage the monument in June.

The toppling of the statue in June led to at least one major injury as a member of the mob standing directly underfoot was hit by the statue on its way down. The rioter was said to be convulsing on the ground with his skull showing through afterward.

Radical leftists were undeterred, however. Using the risk of injury as a pretense for declaring civic emergencies, they bypassed recently enacted legislation that would require voting on the removal of statues to take down several others in the state capital of Richmond and elsewhere.

The felony charges levied against Lucas are based on words police say she spoke before protesters ripped heads off Confederate statues. Lucas and several others face counts of conspiracy to commit a felony and injury to a monument in excess of $1,000.

In a statement posted last month on Facebook by Portsmouth Vice Mayor Lisa Lucas-Burke, Lucas’ daughter, Pettis Patton said she was “surprised and troubled” that the investigation into the incident had continued despite there being a “conflict of interest” that was reported by the police chief.

“Chief Greene and members of the Police Department continued to be engaged without my knowledge,” Pettis Patton wrote.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Colorado School District Suspends and Calls Cops on 12-Yr-Old For Holding Toy Gun

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Colorado School District Suspends and Calls Cops on 12-Yr-Old For Holding Toy Gun

A Colorado school district is facing backlash after it suspended a 12-year-old student for holding a toy gun during a virtual online class.

The school also had local authorities called to his residence for a welfare check, according to KDVR.

The student, Isaiah, was handed a five-day suspension after a teacher saw him holding a toy gun, which was black and green with an orange tip and had the words “Zombie Hunter” written on the side.

Isaiah, a seventh grader at Grand Mountain School, was not in the school building; he was in his home, since classes are still being held virtually.

But the teacher reportedly contacted the school’s principal and asked that Isaiah be suspended.

The principal then contacted the local sheriff’s office about the incident and asked for a welfare check to be carried out. He did not contact Isaiah’s parents, they told KDVR, until after authorities had been called.

The entire incident was “really frightening and upsetting for me as a parent,” said Curtis Elliott, Isaiah’s father.

“He was in tears when the cops came,” Curtis Elliott continued. “He was just in tears. He was scared. We all were scared. I literally was scared for his life.”

Isaiah’s mother, Dani Elliott, agreed and called the school “insane.”

“For them to go as extreme as suspending him for five days, sending the police out, having the police threaten to press charges against him because they want to compare the virtual environment to the actual in-school environment is insane,” she said.

The school, however, refused to apologize and said in a statement that it will continue to take “very seriously” the safety of students and staff.

“We follow board policies and safety protocols consistently, whether we are in-person or distance learning,” said the statement. “We utilize our School Resource Officers, who are trusted and trained professionals who work in our schools with our children, to ensure safety.”

The Elliotts said they have since made plans to transfer their son to a different school.

REPORT: Leftists Plot to Secede, Launch ‘Mass Civil Unrest’ if Trump Wins

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REPORT: Leftists Plot to Secede, Launch ‘Mass Civil Unrest’ if Trump Wins

Leftist activists are preparing to stage “massive civil unrest” across the country if President Trump wins reelection, according to the Daily Beast.

Organized by a coalition called the Fight Back Table, more than 50 progressive groups met last week to discuss what they would do if Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden lost to Trump—or if Biden won and Trump refused to concede.

Their strategy would include a multi-state communications effort to fight Republican “disinformation” and a training program for “nonviolent” civil disobedience, consisting of mass protests and boycotts.

However, “the potential for violent conflict is high,” according to a report by the Transition Integrity Project, whose recent “war games” scenarios the groups analyzed.

According to The National Pulse, the TIP has ties to both globalist mega-donor George Soros and the Chinese Communist Party.

Although Democrats claimed that their concern was the possibility of right-wing violence, much of the planning seemed to focus more on instigating their own unrest in the event that Biden fails to capture a clear victory.

The two-hour meeting mostly focused on how you “occupy s**t, hold space, and shut things down, not just on Election Day but for weeks,” one source familiar with the meeting told the Daily Beast.

Among the possible scenarios suggested by the TIP report would be that the heavy reliance on mail-in ballots will yield an ambiguous outcome in which several key tossup states are disputed, much like the 2000 debacle in Florida that led to the Bush vs. Gore case being decided by the Supreme Court.

The leftist groups then would encourage tossup states with Democrat governors to refuse to certify the result and instead send a rival set of electors, leading to a likely breakdown of the system that could punt the decision to Congress.

If no decision has been made by Jan. 20, they concluded, the presidency would fall to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., by default. However, it is unlikely that Trump would willingly cede it to her under the circumstances.

However, one of the main concerns for these activists was that Trump could win the Electoral College again but lose the popular vote.

If that were to happen, leftists should contest the results and fight to take the White House, the group said.

To do that, he could encourage “Western states, particularly California but also Oregon and Washington, and collectively known as ‘Cascadia,’ to secede from the Union,” said a source.

The only way leftists would allow Trump to keep the White House in that scenario is if he agreed to abolish the Electoral College, give Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C. statehood, and divide California into five states, the groups agreed.

“It’s the hardest scenario,” the source said. “It’s 2016. But it’s that plus all Trump has done on voter suppression. So I think there is a question but I think both sides are going to fight this till the very end.”

There is no evidence that Trump has promoted voter suppression, although considerable evidence has been presented to suggest widespread vote fraud and ballot mishandling during recent mail-in primaries.

Though most national polls still portray Biden as having a solid advantage, Trump has been gaining ground steadily since the Republican National Convention.

Biden was leading Trump by six points, according to a Morning Consult poll released last week, compared to his 10-point lead taken a few weeks earlier.

Hillary Clinton maintained a similar polling advantage during the 2016 election, shocking many when Trump routed her in states like Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin.

Clinton already has weighed in on the outcome of the upcoming election, saying Biden should not concede the race “under any circumstances.”

A Biden-linked marketing firm likewise tried to temper expectations by suggesting that Trump would likely appear to win a landslide victory on Election Day, but that Biden would pull ahead as the result of counting mail-in ballots.

Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

San Francisco Opened City-Owned Gyms; Forced Private Gyms to Stay Closed

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San Francisco Opened City-Owned Gyms; Forced Private Gyms to Stay Closed

San Francisco allowed government buildings to reopen their gyms but forced private fitness facilities to remain closed, according to KNTV-TV.

Daniele Rabkin, who owns Crossfit Golden Gate, said the hypocritical enforcement is “shocking” and “infuriating.”

She learned that city-owned gyms were open after texting several police officers, offering them her gym to work out.

They responded and said that the fitness center at the police station was already up and running.

“There are no repercussions, no ramifications? It’s shocking,” Rabkin said.

The city has proved that there was no reason to keep the gyms closed in the first place, said Dave Karraker, owner of MX3 Fitness.

“It just demonstrates that there seems to be some kind of a double standard between what city employees are allowed to do and what the residents of San Francisco are allowed to do,” he said.

“What the city has unwillingly done is created this great case study that says that working out indoors is actually safe. So at this point, we’re just demanding that they allow us to have the same workout privileges for the citizens of San Francisco that the employees of San Francisco have,” he explained.

The city, however, refused to apologize for its hypocritical enforcement.

When NBC Bay Area asked Mayor London Breed’s office for comment, a spokesperson refused to comment except to say that private gyms must remain closed until Breed lifts the city’s coronavirus restrictions.

This news comes days after House Speaker Nancy Pelosi was caught getting her hair done in a San Francisco hair salon that was closed due to COVID-19 restrictions.

“It was a slap in the face that she went in, you know, that she feels that she can just go and get her stuff done while no one else can go in, and I can’t work,” the salon owner, Erica Kious, said.

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