Congressional Dems Scoff at Mnuchin’s ‘Overture’ to Revive COVID Relief Talks

Ben Sellers
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Congressional Dems Scoff at Mnuchin’s ‘Overture’ to Revive COVID Relief Talks

(Headline USA) The White House’s top negotiator tried to revive stalled talks Wednesday over coronavirus aid, but House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer dismissed the “overture,” saying the Trump administration is still refusing to meet them halfway.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin reached out to the Democratic leaders as it becomes increasingly unlikely there will not be any new relief for Americans until Congress resumes in September.

“The Democrats have no interest in negotiating,” Mnuchin said.

The House is now on recess with the Senate only nominally in session until the end of this week.

Lawmakers are being told they could be recalled to Washington on 24-hour notice, but there are few signs of a breakthrough.

Pelosi and Schumer tried to capitalize on the crisis, yet again, to use the stimulus as leverage for pushing through an array of wish-list items on their agenda.

That reportedly included radical measures that would likely have undermined election integrity, such as mailing ballots to every registered voter in the country, regardless of how accurate the jurisdiction’s voter rolls were.

Democrats have sought from the very day that Trump declared a national health emergency to push for conducting a mail-in election that would result in chaos and undermine faith in the electoral system.

Even so, in the stimulus debate, the two sides are said to have reached an impasse largely on just a single issue: the question of providing bailout funding to reward financial insolvency of blue regions, many of which have drained their own coffers by offering generous social benefits to illegal aliens in defiance of federal law.

In their joint statement, the Democrats said Mnuchin made an “overture” to meet.

The treasury secretary called the Democratic leaders on Wednesday, according to a person granted anonymity to discuss the private call.

“Democrats have compromised,” they claimed, repeating what has now become a stale talking point.

They once again noted that they dropped their initial $3.5 trillion proposal by $1 trillion and expect President Donald Trump’s team to raise its $1 trillion offer by a similar amount to $2 trillion. “However, it is clear that the Administration still does not grasp the magnitude of the problems that American families are facing.”

They said, “We have again made clear to the Administration that we are willing to resume negotiations once they start to take this process seriously.”

Mnuchin said the Democrats’ statement “is not an accurate reflection of our conversation.”

He said Pelosi made it clear that she was unwilling to continue negotiations “unless we agreed in advance to her proposal, costing at least $2 trillion.”

Mnuchin and White House chief of staff Mark Meadows also briefed GOP senators privately on Wednesday, but Republicans said there was no further information on next steps.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

US Budget Deficit Climbs to Record $2.81 Trillion

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US Budget Deficit Climbs to Record $2.81 Trillion

(Associated Press) The U.S. budget deficit climbed to $2.81 trillion in the first 10 months of the budget year, exceeding any on record, the Treasury Department said Wednesday.

The nation’s budgetary shortfall is expected to eventually reach levels for the fiscal year that ends Sept. 30 more than double the largest annual deficit on record.

The federal government rang up a $63 billion deficit in July, the department reported. That’s a relatively modest amount compared to red ink that spilled in the spring months when the government tried to revive an economy that all but ground to a halt due to the coronavirus outbreak.

Last month’s deficit was sharply lower than June’s $864 billion, in part because the government collected a record amount tax revenue in July — $563 billion — after extending the filing deadline to July 15. That extension allowed Americans more time to sort through the economic havoc wrought by the pandemic.

So far this budget year, government receipts total $2.82 trillion, off just 1% from the same period last year, Treasury officials said, crediting the “income replacement” provided by various government aid packages. In other words, unemployment benefits and other aid are still taxable.

Outlays so far this budget year total $5.63 trillion, a 50% increase over the $3.73 trillion at this point in 2019, with the vast majority of the extra spending related to fortifying the country’s economy in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

Congress has already passed rescue packages totaling nearly $3 trillion this year, but Democrats and Republicans remain far apart on another relief bill, just as an expanded unemployment benefit of $600 per week expired on July 31.

President Donald Trump issued a series of presidential directives last weekend to prolong the extended unemployment benefits at $400 a week, with 25% to be paid for by the states. But it’s unclear how much of an economic boost the extension would provide, given the economic uncertainty and funding that could run dry after five weeks.

Democrats in the House passed another bill with $3 trillion in aid, but the Republican-led Senate is pushing for a package closer to $1 trillion and did not bring the House bill up for a vote before going on August recess.

The Congressional Budget Office has forecast a $3.7 trillion deficit for this fiscal year as the country fell into a deep recession in February, ending a record expansion of nearly 11 years. The Trump administration is predicting that the economy will bounce back in second half of 2020, but many private forecasters are concerned that consumers will dial back spending as infections surge in states like Florida. Consumer spending drives the U.S. economy, making up about 70% of all economic activity.

Last month, the government reported that the gross domestic product declined at a record 32.9% annual rate in the April-June quarter, as a resurgence of the viral outbreak pushed businesses to close for a second time in a number of regions.

For 20 consecutive weeks, more than a million Americans have sought jobless benefits. The unemployment rate fell last month to 10.2%, still higher than any point during the financial crisis of 2008-2009.

That was also when the federal government set the record for an annual deficit, hitting $1.4 trillion in 2009 as it tried to dig the country out of recession. The U.S. blew past that mark in May.

Top Mid-East Commander: ISIS Starting to Rebuild in Syria

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Top Mid-East Commander: ISIS Starting to Rebuild in Syria

(Headline USA) Elements of the Islamic State group are working to rebuild in western Syria, where the U.S. has little visibility or presence, the top U.S. commander for the Middle East warned on Wednesday.

In the region west of the Euphrates River where the Syrian regime is in control “conditions are as bad or worse” than they were leading up to the rise of the Islamic State, said Gen. Frank McKenzie. “We should all be concerned about that.”

McKenzie said insurgents are operating with some degree of freedom, and he said the U.S. and its allies have little hope the Syrian regime will do anything to tamp down the group there.

Speaking online to a United States Institute of Peace from his U.S. Central Command office in Tampa, McKenzie said that the slow-moving effort to transfer people out of Syrian refugee camps has been further complicated and delayed by the coronavirus pandemic.

And that, he said, fuels concerns about the radicalization of people—particularly the youth—in the camps, which officials worry are breeding grounds for IS insurgents.

The al-Hol camp in northeastern Syria is home to as many as 70,000 people—mostly women and children—who were displaced by the ongoing civil war in Syria and the battle against IS.

Many fled as the U.S.-backed Syrian Democratic Forces cleared out the last pockets of land held by IS last year.

Leanne Erdberg Steadman, the USIP director for countering violent extremism, said getting people out of the camps is key to having them abandon violence and secure a new future.

Officials said that there have now been the first few reported cases of COVID-19 at al-Hol.

McKenzie said concerns about blocking the spread of the virus among European allies and other nations in the region has complicated efforts to repatriate camp residents to their home nations.

Repatriation is the key to clearing out the refugee camps, and the U.S. has aggressively pushed to get allies to take their own citizens back.

Most nations, however, are reluctant to take in potential IS insurgents. And the potential spread of COVID-19 is now an added fear.

Humanitarian groups say many of the women and children are not risks, but officials also note that there are a lot of women who were radicalized and active in the insurgency.

McKenzie said that unless political leaders find a way to deradicalize and repatriate the displaced people in the camps, there will be another IS resurgence in the future.

“As young people grow up, we’re going to see them again unless we can turn them in a way to make them productive members of society,” he said. “We can either deal with this problem now or deal with it exponentially worse a few years down the road.”

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Md. County ‘Cooperates’ w/ ICE by Telling Agents Hours Before Criminal Release

Joshua Paladino
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Md. County ‘Cooperates’ w/ ICE by Telling Agents Hours Before Criminal Release

Politicians in Montgomery County, Maryland promised citizens that they would work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement, yet their police force has not been responsibly cooperating with the agency when they release criminal illegal aliens, a watchdog group reported.

Immigration Reform Law Institute gathered data on immigration detainer requests from the county for about eight months, Nov. 1, 2019, to June 5, 2020.

IRLI found that the county is notifying ICE only a few hours before criminal illegal aliens are released or not alerting immigration officials at all.

The result is that ICE agents do not have time to prepare to arrest the offenders, and so they move back into Maryland communities where they oftentimes re-offend.

“Montgomery County claims to be cooperating with ICE, but the implementation of this policy is a joke,” said Dale L. Wilcox, executive director of general counsel of IRLI.

“The data suggest a very cynical attempt to claim cooperation while doing the bare minimum to uphold it,” he said.

During the 8-month period, Montgomery County released 20 criminal illegal aliens.

The most glaring example of bad-faith, bare-minimum cooperation involved an illegal alien who was charged with 2nd-degree rape and sex-abuse.

The Montgomery County Department of Correction and Rehabilitation contacted ICE about the illegal alien’s release at 7:25 p.m. on March 26, and then released the criminal 28 minutes later.

There were 84 criminal illegal aliens for whom ICE sent detainers within the eight-month span.

The DOCR said 56 of these detainer requests were valid.

For eight of the valid detainer requests, the DOCR notified ICE less than four hours before the illegal alien’s scheduled release time.

The Department of Correction and Rehabilitation released three criminals without giving any notice to ICE agents, but this was not the fault of the county, since they were released at court.

Montgomery County had a non-cooperation policy with federal immigration officers prior to this limited cooperation.

Property Owner Tells Billboard Co. to Remove BLM Message or They’ll ‘Hear My Chainsaw’

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Property Owner Tells Billboard Co. to Remove BLM Message or They’ll ‘Hear My Chainsaw’

Heritage or hate? Either way, Black Lives Matter supporters and progressive activists in Pittsboro, North Carolina want the Confederate flag canceled.

But one property owner—and proud Southerner—stood up to the BLM bullies — and won.

Sam White, a descendant of Confederate soldiers, disagreed with the decision to remove a Confederate monument from the Chatham County courthouse and allowed a large Confederate flag to be placed on his private property along Highway 64 as a sign of protest.

In response, an activist campaign funded a Black Lives Matter advertisement on a billboard that stood next to the flag.

“The billboard sent a very strong message, as strong of a message as that Confederate flag,” Dawn Blagrove, the executive director of Emancipate NC told WTVD.

Kerwin Pittman, executive director of Recidivism Reduction Educational Program Services, said the billboard was an in-your-face effort to confront those who want “hatred and fear and terror” in Pittsboro.

But instead of buckling under social and media pressure, White told the billboard company to take a hike.

“I told them if they don’t take it down by Sept. 1, they’re going to hear my chainsaw running,” White told WTVD.

LAMAR Advertising has leased the land for the billboard from White for more than a decade. However, White told the ad agency that their billboard is no longer welcome on his property when the current lease expires.

The company offered an extra $1,000 per their annual rental agreement, which White declined.

“The #BlackLivesMatter billboard installed near a Confederate flag in Pittsboro is coming down,” Joe Brown of ABC11 tweeted on Monday.

“The property owner who allowed the flag has canceled his lease with the billboard company who allowed the BLM message. New BLM billboard now planned for Raleigh,” he wrote.

White told reporters that his decision was based on principle, not personal gain.

“There’s some things that are a lot more important than money,” White said. “The new phrase, BLM, means burn, loot and murder not Black Lives Matter.”

Kerwin Pittman responded by calling White a racist, and added, “To remove currency from your pocket because of mentions of Black Lives Matter speaks to the testament of how he truly feels.”

Biden VP Pick Harris Backed Minnesota Bail Fund that Let Violent Rioters Walk Free

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Biden VP Pick Harris Backed Minnesota Bail Fund that Let Violent Rioters Walk Free

Sen. Kamala Harris, D-Calif., who was picked to be Joe Biden’s running mate, backed an activist group that bailed out violent rioters and criminals, including an alleged murderer and a previously convicted rapist during recent race riots.

The group, Minnesota Freedom Fund, bailed out multiple criminals, including Darnika Floyd, who allegedly stabbed a friend to death; and Christopher Boswell, who is facing charges for sexual assault and kidnapping, according to Fox 9.

Both criminals received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bail money from MFF. The group put up $100,000 on Floyd’s behalf, and $350,000 on Boswell’s behalf.

MFF also bailed out Jaleel Stallings, who allegedly shot at police during the May riots, and Donovan Boone, who was charged with invading the home of his ex-girlfriend and choking her. Stallings was bailed out for $75,000 and Boone was bailed out for $3,000.

Just weeks before, Harris had promoted the fund, urging her followers to donate to the MFF and bail out “peaceful protesters”:

Several other high-profile politicians and Hollywood celebrities also promoted the fund, including Steve Carell, Cynthia Nixon and Seth Rogen.

Greg Lewin, the interim executive director of MFF, admitted that the group doesn’t look closely at the records of the individuals they’re bailing out.

“I often don’t even look at a charge when I bail someone out,” Lewin said, according to KMSP. “The last time we were down there, the clerk said, ‘We hate it when you bail out these sex offenders.’ That is what they said.”

When asked how many protesters were bailed out during the riots, Lewin said, “probably a dozen in terms a direct bail actions.”

CNN Admits that ‘Uncle Joe’ and ‘Auntie Kamala’ Plan Post-Election Bait-and-Switch

Ben Sellers
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CNN Admits that ‘Uncle Joe’ and ‘Auntie Kamala’ Plan Post-Election Bait-and-Switch

A day after announcing his vice-presidential pick, presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden acknowledged what many had long suspected: that he is likely to be little more than a placeholder who will “step aside” for his radical running mate.

Biden surprised many by selecting California Sen. Kamala Harris, whose oft-dour demeanor is a far cry from the “empathy” his campaign has been emphasizing of late.

Harris’s own presidential bid was one of the early failures, with the former California prosecutor withdrawing even before the first primary contest.

Her own lack of charisma and indecisiveness were two key factors that prevented her from breaking free of the pack and fulfilling the expectations of her once-promising run.

Biden, considered by many to be the “safe” candidate when pitted against the uncertainty of far-left radicals like Sens. Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, now seems likely to do little more than help usher the way for what would be the first female president of color.

He acknowledged as much himself in his statements explaining why he chose Harris, who—despite being one of the more experienced alternatives within his parameter to pick a black woman—had been outright rude and combative when the two shared the debate stage.

“I need someone working alongside me who is smart, tough and ready to lead,” Biden told his supporters in an email Tuesday, according to the Associated Press. “Kamala is that person.”

Fake Republican CNN correspondent Ana Navarro–Cárdenas seemed more than OK with the notion that Democrats planned a bait-and-switch operation to oust incumbent President Donald Trump.

Cárdenas’s language, evoking the minstrel stereotypes of a benevolent “uncle” and “auntie,” called to mind one of the most challenging issues the pair will face in cobbling together a winning coalition from a deeply fractured and divided nation after recent race riots and woke mob rule.

Biden has, himself, faced some of the harshest criticism for his repeated gaffes that have come off as being insensitive—and sometimes outright insulting—to black voters.

But the Left sought to recast Biden’s decision as one reflecting his certainty and inevitability in the race against Trump more than a desperate bid to compensate for his own leadership shortcomings.

In his e-mail message, Biden availed himself of the opportunity to continue hammering the president.

“I need someone who understands the pain that so many people in our nation are suffering, [w]hether they’ve lost their job, their business, a loved one to this virus,” he said.

“This president says he doesn’t want to be distracted by it,” Biden continued. “He doesn’t understand that taking care of the people of this nation—all the people—isn’t a distraction; it’s the job. Kamala understands that.”

NJ Town Revokes Business License of Gym That Refused to Close

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NJ Town Revokes Business License of Gym That Refused to Close

A borough council in New Jersey voted to revoke the business license of a gym that defied officials’ demands and continued to operate throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

The Bellmawr council voted 5-1 on Tuesday to rescind Atilis Gym’s mercantile license, according to NJ.com.

The council members argued that the gym’s owners, Ian Smith and Frank Trumbetti, had been given ample warning to shut down their business and obey the city’s coronavirus restrictions.

The city issued at least nine citations and even boarded up the building at one point to prevent Smith and Trumbetti from accessing the gym.

“If you believe this business is unsafe to your residents of Bellmawr and you believe that laws have been violated, you have the right … to revoke this license,” Howard Long, the borough’s attorney, told the council.

Smith, however, argued that the council’s decision had been made before the vote began.

“Anybody who didn’t already have their minds made up would have made the right choice,” he said.

And given the pressure the state government has been putting on Bellmawr to crack down on Atilis Gym, Smith is probably right.

Just a few weeks ago, the New Jersey Attorney General’s office declared that Atilis Gym is a threat to “an organized judicial system,” and to the “public health and the safety of New Jerseyans.”

The city’s attempts to prevent Smith and Trumbetti from making a living are “something out of Orwell,” said John McCann, Smith’s attorney.

When the city boarded up the gym, for example, Smith and Trumbetti were then arrested for taking the boards down.

“The bottom line is we are fighting for our constitutional rights,” Trumbetti said. “We all have the right to make a living. We all have the right to actually do what we want to do as Americans. We are promised liberty. And they have actually put such oppressive restrictions on us that it’s just unacceptable to us.”

Wisconsin Bureaucrat Makes Gov’t Employees Wear Masks for Zoom Meetings

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Wisconsin Bureaucrat Makes Gov’t Employees Wear Masks for Zoom Meetings

Wuhan virus mask mandates are becoming more intrusive—and ridiculous—than ever.

Earlier this year, U.S. Surgeon General Jerome Adams and infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci of the White House Coronavirus Task Force explained that masks wouldn’t stop the spread of the coronavirus.

They’ve since flip-flopped, with the news media and progressive Left now hounding mask-less Americans in true totalitarian form.

But while most officials try to keep the scope of their fiats limited to public situations where potential inter-personal exposure is a concern, the head of Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources is taking forced mask compliance to new heights.

According to a July 31 email to department employees, Secretary Preston Cole is requiring masks for Zoom meetings in workers’ own homes.

“Also, wear your mask, even if you are home, to participate in a virtual meeting that involves being seen—such as on Zoom or another video-conferencing platform—by non-DNR staff,” Cole wrote.

“Set the safety example which shows you as a DNR public service employee care about the safety and health of others,” he said.

The order lacks a scientific basis and common sense. It also goes farther than an already constitutionally questionable statewide mask mandate.

Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers, a Democrat, issued an executive order requiring face coverings in all enclosed spaces beginning Aug. 1. Private residences, however, are exempt.

When asked why Cole is insisting on such stringent mask protocols, a spokeswoman for the Natural Resources Department told McClatchy News that the video-conferencing mandate will increase public safety.

“By wearing a mask while video conferencing with the general public, we visually remind folks that masking is an important part of navigating the business of natural resources during this tumultuous time,” she said.

The spokeswoman also said that the policy protects the department against “screenshots” of employees without masks that could be used “to suggest that state employees are not properly following the Governor’s directive.”

Critics have accurately cited Centers for Disease Control and Prevention guidelines that advise against wearing face masks when at home.

Facebook Admits to Censoring More than 100M COVID Posts

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Facebook Admits to Censoring More than 100M COVID Posts

Conservatives in the United States are no strangers to social-media censorship for their well-reasoned skepticism regarding the coronavirus.

But Wuhan virus truth-seekers worldwide have also been targeted by the millions—105 million to be exact.

According to Facebook’s new quarterly report, the global social media giant admitted to removing 7 million posts about the Wuhan virus between April and June 2020 for containing what it deemed “harmful” misinformation.

Facebook, which also owns Instagram, further slapped restrictive warning labels on 98 million posts across both social-media platforms during the second fiscal quarter this year for alleged “misleading” coronavirus information.

Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg has previously said that the company’s heavy-handed warning labels effectively remove targeted posts because users abstain from clicking on them “95 percent of the time.”

The quarterly report comes after the high-profile banning of a viral video last month that showed a group of medical doctors on the steps of the U.S. Supreme Court touting the benefits of hydroxychloroquine as a treatment for the coronavirus.

The doctors also insisted that “we don’t need to be locked down” to prevent it from spreading. The video had 14 million views before it was taken down.

Other censorship examples appear purely political — to say nothing of the tens of millions of everyday people who share coronavirus-related thoughts and information.

Instagram threatened to delete Donald Trump Jr.’s account for spreading “misinformation” about the virus and hydroxychloroquine. However, Trump Jr. had only shared screenshots of CNN articles that contradicted each other on the issue.

An April 11 headline read, “President Trump is wrong in so many ways about hydroxychloroquine studies. Here are the facts.” A July 2 headline read, “Study finds hydroxychloroquine helped coronavirus patients survive better.”

“These are actual headlines from CNN,” Trump Jr. wrote after the posts were taken down, adding, “but because it doesn’t fit the narrative the social media masters are going to make sure that no one actually hears the truth.”

Zuckerberg, along with leaders from Apple, Amazon, Google, Youtube and Twitter, recently told the Democrat-controlled House Judiciary Committee that he would personally ensure that posts expressing “harmful” or “misleading” coronavirus information would be censored.

Then, in Orwellian fashion, he said, “We do not want to become the arbiters of truth. I think that would be a bad position for us to be in and not what we should be doing.”

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