Trump, GOP Leaders Meet to Plan New Stimulus after COVID ‘Flare Up’

Ben Sellers
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Trump, GOP Leaders Meet to Plan New Stimulus after COVID ‘Flare Up’

(Headline USA) President Donald Trump acknowledged Monday a “big flare up” of COVID-19 cases, even as House Democrats posed fresh challenges for a new federal aid package with the U.S. crisis worsening and emergency relief about to expire.

Trump convened GOP leaders at the White House as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell prepared to roll out his $1 trillion package in a matter of days.

But the administration criticized the legislation’s money for more virus testing and insisted on a payroll tax cut that could complicate quick passage. The timeline appeared to quickly shift.

“We’ve made a lot of progress,” Trump said as the meeting got underway.

But the president added, “Unfortunately, this is something that’s very tough.”

Lawmakers returned to a Capitol still off-limits to tourists, another sign of the nation’s difficulty containing the coronavirus.

As the pandemic rises again, businesses are shutting down anew, and questions loom over the possibility of extended school shutdowns.

Meanwhile, federal aid will expire in days, leaving Congress little choice but to engineer another costly rescue.

McConnell and House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy huddled with Trump, Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and acting chief of staff Mark Meadows.

Mnuchin vowed passage by month’s end, as earlier benefits expire, and said he expected a fresh $1 trillion jolt of business tax breaks and other aid would have a “big impact” on the struggling economy.

Back at the Capitol, McConnell downplayed his proposal as simply a “starting point” for eventual discussions.

Not only does he face pressure from the White House, but splits within his ranks from both anti-Trump centrists and fiscal conservatives have chiseled away at his majority power, leaving him to rely on Democrats for votes.

“The question before the Senate this week is, ‘Where are we now?’” the Kentucky Republican said as he opened the chamber.

The package from McConnell, being crafted behind closed doors, is expected to include $75 billion to help schools reopen. It is also expected to provide a new boost in unemployment benefits, a fresh round of direct $1,200 cash payments to Americans below a certain income level, and a sweeping five-year liability shield against coronavirus lawsuits.

But the administration was panning the proposal’s $25 billion in new funds for virus testing and tracing, said two Republicans familiar with the discussions. Trump was also reviving his push for a payroll tax break, said another Republican. Both spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the private talks.

Trump insisted again Sunday that the virus would eventually evolve into something less deadly and contagious, just as other pandemics have faded away in the past.

On a conference call with the nation’s governors Monday, Pence called the rising numbers in Sunbelt states “serious.”

And a somber McConnell said that “it’s not going to magically disappear,” during a visit to to thank front-line workers at a hospital in his home state of Kentucky last week.

Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, D-NY, suggested that Democrats might undertake a similar strategy as the prior relief bill, attempting to force Republicans to the negotiating table in order to obtain concessions for their own agenda.

The prior effort was met with some criticism after some leftist party members acknowledged holding the relief hostage and delaying it for many in order to negotiate terms favorable to unions and radical environmental interests.

This time, the House has already approved House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s sweeping $3 trillion effort, giving Democrats additional momentum heading into negotiations.

Trump raised alarms on Capitol Hill when he suggested last month at a rally in Oklahoma that he wanted to slow virus testing.

Some of Trump’s GOP allies want new money to help test and track the virus to contain its spread. And one of the Republicans familiar with the process said about half of the $25 billion previously approved remains unspent. Senate Democrats are investigating why the administration has left so much on the table.

The payroll tax break Trump wants also is dividing his party because that tax is used to finance Social Security and Medicare. Cutting it only adds to the nation’s rising debt load at a time when conservatives are wary of any new spending. McConnell is straining to keep the bill’s total price tag at $1 trillion.

During Monday’s White House meeting, Trump put economist Art Laffer on speaker phone to discuss a health care provision backed by Newt Gingrich and key conservatives in Congress, according to a person familiar with the exchange and granted anonymity to discuss it. It would require hospitals and providers to disclose some prices to patients before receiving medical care, putting Trump’s executive actions into law.

The proposed virus aid package would be the fifth, following the $2.2 trillion bill passed in March, the largest U.S. intervention of its kind.

While many Republicans hoped the virus would ease and economy rebound, it’s become clear more aid is needed as the first round of relief runs out.

The federal $600-a-week boost to regular unemployment benefits is to expire at the end of the month. So, too, the federal ban on evictions from millions of rental units.

With 17 straight weeks of unemployment claims topping 1 million — typically about 200,000 — many households are facing a cash difficulties and losing employer-backed health insurance.

Despite flickers of an economic upswing as states eased stay-at-home orders in May and June, the jobless rate remained in double digits, higher than it ever was in the last decade’s Great Recession.

Pelosi’s bill, approved in May, includes $75 billion for testing and tracing, funnels $100 billion to schools to safely reopen and calls for $1 trillion to be sent to cash-strapped states to pay essential workers and prevent layoffs.

Trump has opposed the latter for state who exercised fiscal irresponsibility before and during the crisis, including those that passed their own payouts for illegal immigrants, which they now expect the federal government to subsidize due to their debt crises.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

 

Virtue-Signaling Media Face Awkward Dilemma over ‘Black’ Style Rule

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Virtue-Signaling Media Face Awkward Dilemma over ‘Black’ Style Rule

(Headline USA) The Associated Press—oft known for its capricious and nonsensical style rules, which try to use subtle virtue-signaling to steer a national media narrative—has just taken a major plunge off the deep-end.

In the wake of recent race riots, the AP declared last month that it would begin capitalizing the word black in racial and cultural references.

But the left-skewed news agency is now insisting, bizarrely, that it plans to keep white references lowercase.

Appropriately, the overt racism expressed in its latest style tweak seems to bring it back full-circle, in a way, to a not-so-bygone rule on race many deemed uncomfortable and offensive.

For well into the 2000s, the AP Stylebook insisted on using lowercase black in all cases, even as the term African American grew to be a more commonly accepted and politically correct racial identifier.

In both cases, the presumption was that the style rule was in place to add further clarity or precision, but each effectively achieved the total opposite: more confusion and inconsistency.

The idea behind using the lowercase black was that not all those who were considered “black” identified as African American since some may have hailed from the Caribbean or been purely of African descent.

In the latter decision, to capitalize the word, the AP claimed it aimed to acknowledge a special cultural distinction that black connotes when used in racial context.

But the move itself seemed to many to be a gesture of privilege as the paper deigned to cast an overly broad net by characterizing all blacks as being the same culturally.

Democrat presidential hopeful Joe Biden caught criticism in May for doing something similar when he declared that any voter who could not decide between him and incumbent President Donald Trump “ain’t black.”

Meanwhile, in reaching the opposite conclusion for white, the AP said, inaccurately, that white people in general have much less shared history and culture, and don’t have the experience of being discriminated against because of skin color.

The declaration was immediately denounced by Twitter users and others.

The AP itself acknowledged that the decision to continue using a lowercase white was “more ticklish” than its decision to use an uppercase black.

On one hand, it noted that even some black advocacy groups saw the disparity as being racist. The National Association of Black Journalists and some Black scholars have said white should be capitalized, too.

“We agree that white people’s skin color plays into systemic inequalities and injustices, and we want our journalism to robustly explore these problems,” John Daniszewski, the AP’s vice president for standards, said in a memo to staff Monday. “But capitalizing the term white, as is done by white supremacists, risks subtly conveying legitimacy to such beliefs.”

It validated its racially motivated decision, much as many racists in the past have done, by noting that other “respected” similarly racist outlets had followed suit, a phenomenon that was once referred to as “lynch mob” mentality.

Columbia Journalism Review, the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times, NBC News and Chicago Tribune are among the organizations that have recently said they would capitalize “black” but have not done so for “white.”

“White doesn’t represent a shared culture and history in the way Black [sic] does,” The New York Times said on July 5 in explaining its decision.

CNN, Fox News and the San Diego Union-Tribune said they will give white the uppercase, noting it was consistent with Black, Asian, Latino and other ethnic groups. Fox cited NABJ’s advice.

CBS News said it would capitalize white, although not when referring to white supremacists, white nationalists or white privilege.

Some proponents believe that keeping white lowercase is actually anti-black, saying it perpetuates the idea that whites are the default race.

“Whiteness remains invisible, and as is the case with all power structures, its invisibility does crucial work to maintain its power,” wrote Eve Ewing, a sociologist of race and education at the University of Chicago who said she’s changed her mind on the issue over the past two years.

“In maintaining the pretense of its invisibility, whiteness maintains the pretense of its inevitability, and its innocence,” she wrote on the website Nora.

Kwame Anthony Appiah, a philosophy professor at New York University, wrote in the Atlantic that capitalizing white would take power away from racists, since their similar use “would no longer be a provocative defiance of the norm.”

“We will closely watch how usage and thought evolves, and will periodically review our decision,” Daniszewski said.

Editor’s note: Headline USA will retain the original style of keeping both races lowercase, even in stories by the Associated Press.

HUSA has not decided whether it will retain the prior capitalization in its references to the AP or other news organizations whose use of the absurd race-baiting rule have further  invalidated their own standing as objective journalism institutions of any substance or consequence.

Adapted from reporting by the Associated Press

Trump on Renaming Military Bases: ‘Are We Going to Name It After Al Sharpton?’

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Trump on Renaming Military Bases: ‘Are We Going to Name It After Al Sharpton?’

President Donald Trump mocked efforts to rename Fort Bragg and other military bases named after Confederate officers, asking, “We’re going to name it after the Rev. Al Sharpton?”

Fort Bragg, an Army base in North Carolina named after Confederate Gen. Braxton Bragg, is one of several military bases that would be required to change its name if the Democrats succeed in pushing the National Defense Authorization Act through Congress.

Senate Republicans have not said whether they’d fight the bill, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did mention earlier this month that he’d “hope the president really wouldn’t veto the bill” if it came down to it.

Trump, however, said that he would veto the bill regardless of what Senate Republicans or military leadership said. 

“I’m supposed to make the decision,” Trump told Fox News’s Chris Wallace on Sunday. “Fort Bragg is a big deal. We won two World Wars. No one even knows General Bragg. We won two World Wars. Go to that community where Fort Bragg is, in a great state, I love that state, go to the community, say how do you like the idea of renaming Fort Bragg, and then what are we going to name it?”

Trump continued: “We’re going to name it after the Rev. Al Sharpton? What you are going to name it, Chris, tell me what you’re going to name it?”

Sharpton responded to Trump’s jab a few hours later on MSNBC, telling the network that he “appreciated the boost.”

But, the base should really be named “after people that served in the military for this country,” Sharpton added, later calling Trump a “bigot” for threatening to veto the bill.

“I think that it was failed sarcasm, and I think it was because I’m usually the one that stands up to him on these issues,” Sharpton said on Monday of Trump’s comment. “Why would you want to fight passionately to honor bigots unless it was fine with you? And if bigotry is fine with you, then the noun form of that is that you are a bigot.” 

Cuomo Travels to Lecture Ga. on NY’s COVID Response After Nursing Home Fiasco

Ben Sellers
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Cuomo Travels to Lecture Ga. on NY’s COVID Response After Nursing Home Fiasco

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and his Fake News allies declared this week that enough time had passed since the state-directed nursing home massacre in which he forced seniors infected with coronavirus to share facilities with those who did not have it.

The decision drastically increased the state’s already astronomical death toll in the early days of the virus, making it the global epicenter of the highly contagious, airborne disease.

But now, Cuomo has begun the rehab effort to once again posture himself and his state as a COVID “success” story.

In fact, he issued a press release on Monday declaring that he planned a trip to Savannah, Ga., to counsel the Southern port city on “best practices.”

“We’ll tell them about what we did and will help them with testing programs, tracing programs,” claimed Cuomo. “We’re going to bring thousands of pieces of PPE and whatever they need from us they’re going to get.”

He also used his planned summer vacation/photo-op, predictably, as another in his long line of efforts to lay blame for New York’s pandemic problem at the feet of President Donald Trump.

“The federal government is still in denial about this virus. It still refuses to follow the science,” blathered Cuomo in the press release.

“It still thinks it’s going to beat this virus by playing politics,” he continued, while making what appeared to be a highly political statement about his politicized trip to a red-leaning “swing” state. “And I’ve said to the president from day one, this virus does not respond to politics.”

Cuomo has taken considerable heat for his mixed messages; so have other Democrats, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio.

As late as March, when the first cases already were circulating in New York, all continued to downplay concerns about the virus.

Cuomo took criticism for having depleted the state’s emergency stockpiles and failed to prepare for such an occurrence.

And yet, he continued to demand federal help only to find he had far overestimated his emergency, which enabled him to dole off some of US taxpayers’ emergency provisions to other states at his discretion.

Even so, Cuomo’s efforts to deflect and finger-point had begun to fail as the criticisms mounted over his nursing home decision.

But following June’s race-riot interlude, in which left-wing figures and media openly encouraged mass public gatherings, the desperate pivot back to COVID panic gave the New York political scion an opening to pepper his detractors with a spray of Cuomo-brand teflon.

“It doesn’t respond to bullying. It doesn’t respond to rhetoric. It doesn’t respond to denial,” Cuomo prattled on.

“It is the science,” he proclaimed. “What did we do in New York? We did it as a science. We did it on the numbers. We did on the data.”

Indeed, if there is one thing Cuomo did well, it was generating ample data to use.

Of the officially recorded 3.7 million US cases in all 50 states as of Monday, July 20, 10 percent of them were in New York alone.

However, one major point of divergence with other states is New York’s death rate.

Georgia, for example, had reported just over 143,000 cases as of Monday. However, the state had only 3,173 deaths—for a rate of 2.2%.

Of its more than 408,000 cases—with some estimates around 412,000—New York has reported more than 32,000 confirmed deaths, putting its mortality rate at nearly 8 percent.

While Georgia reported only 49 hospitalizations on Monday, New York’s health department on Sunday crowed over the fact that it had reached a new low of 722 since the pandemic hit.

Media have played along with the ruse by supporting the use of misleading statistics. When seeking to hype the virus in the context of their narrative of a failed federal response, they will emphasize the total case count—a cumulative number that obviously increased with more testing, regardless of outcome and may, in fact, be a good thing in some scenarios.

Despite the phony claims, the data indicate that the US fatality rate—which has remained consistently below the global average, continues to drop, and the recovery rate of those who test positive continues to rise with only 7 percent of afflicted patients now succumbing to it.

When it becomes necessary to downplay the virus or to hype “progress” in blue states like New York, of course, the media quickly pivot from total count to rates of change.

Since New York’s rate inevitably had to level off after reaching its critical mass, the number’s steady decline in recent weeks likely meant it had nowhere to go but down.

COVID graphic
Graphic by CDC.gov

Meanwhile, the dishonest press will again fudge data by suggesting things like a “doubling” of cases in areas like Florida or Texas, where the low infectioncount may well have doubled but overall statistics still pale in comparison to New York City.

While Fake News likely would have reported that Texas and Florida on Monday had reported nearly 10 times the number of COVID deaths as New York, the roughly 8 versus 80 count is nothing when compared to the overall rates, populations per capita and other factors.

Texas’s mortality rate of cases to deaths remains below 1.2 percent, and Florida’s sits currently at  1.4 percent.

That, of course, is assuming that the data were accurately recorded, despite recent questions over whether Florida’s health department conflated its number of positive tests by massive amounts.

In New York City, meanwhile—which as recently as last week, has a case count of its own that was equivalent to both of the larger states—the death rate exceeds 10 percent.

Savannah, Georgia
Savannah, Georgia / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Headline USA

Savannah, one of the country’s oldest, most historic cities—and located in the low-country marshlands of the Savannah River basin—has dealt with its share of past health outbreaks, including yellow fever.

Apart from political grandstanding—an opportunity to undermine Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp as he pushes back on blue cities’ mask mandates—it seems there is little reason for it to solicit Cuomo’s input.

But the city can only hope that Cuomo—whose younger brother Chris was previously seen walking around in public while contaminated with the virus—does not bring it there himself.

Portland Rioters Set Fire at Fed Courthouse; Tear Gas Used to Disperse Them

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Portland Rioters Set Fire at Fed Courthouse; Tear Gas Used to Disperse Them

(Headline USA) Rioters outside Portland‘s U.S. courthouse set a fire in the building’s entryway early Monday in yet another night of conflict with federal agents, who were forced to tear-gas the agitators to drive them away, officials said.

Authorities over the weekend erected large fences around the building in an effort to keep away the rioters who have been on Portland’s streets daily since the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis nearly two months ago.

But video posted online showed the insurrectionists taking down the fencing, and a statement from Portland’s city police department described the rioters’ tactics as they repeatedly headed toward the courthouse and were repelled by federal agents who emerged from inside.

Hundreds of violent demonstrators were at the scene Sunday night into early Monday morning and at one point “dozens of people with shields, helmets, gas masks, umbrellas, bats, and hockey sticks approached the doors” of the courthouse until federal officers came out and dispersed them, the Portland police statement said.

The protesters later lit a fire at about 1:30 a.m. Monday within the portico of the courthouse, said Portland police, who stressed that their officers were not involved in any crowd control measures, did not fire tear gas and “were not present during any of the activity described.”

Other people added wood and debris to the fire to make it larger and federal agents came out of the courthouse, “dispersed the crowd and extinguished the fire,” the statement said.

The violence happened as local and state leaders expressed anger with the presence of the federal agents, saying — without evidence — that the city’s protests had started to ease just as the federal agents started taking action on the streets of Portland.

Speaking on CNN’s ‘State of the Union,’ Democratic Mayor Ted Wheeler said federal officers “are not wanted here. We haven’t asked them here. In fact, we want them to leave.”

Top leaders in the U.S. House said Sunday they were “alarmed” by the Trump administration’s tactics against protesters in Portland and other cities, including Washington, D.C. They’ve called on federal inspectors general investigate.

“This is a matter of utmost urgency,” wrote House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler, D-New York, Homeland Security Committee Chairman Bennie G. Thompson, D-Mississippi, and Oversight and Reform Committee Chairwoman Carolyn B. Maloney, D-New York, in a letter to the inspectors general of Department of Justice and Department of Homeland Security.

The Democratic lawmakers seek an investigation “into the use of federal law enforcement agencies by the Attorney General and the Acting Secretary of Homeland Security to suppress First Amendment protected activities in Washington, D.C., Portland, and other communities across the United States.”

President Donald Trump has decried the riots, and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf labeled the insurrectionists as “lawless anarchists” in a visit to the city last Thursday.

“We are trying to help Portland, not hurt it,” Trump tweeted Sunday. “Their leadership has, for months, lost control of the anarchists and agitators. They are missing in action. We must protect Federal property, AND OUR PEOPLE. These were not merely protesters, these are the real deal!”

Late Saturday, Portland police said rioters broke into the building of the Portland Police Association labor union that represents officers. Dumpster fires were also set and fencing was moved and transformed into barricades, police said.

Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum sued Homeland Security and the Marshals Service in federal court late Friday, alleging that unidentified federal agents grabbed people from Portland’s streets “without warning or explanation, without a warrant, and without providing any way to determine who is directing this action.”

Rosenblum said she was seeking a temporary restraining order to “immediately stop federal authorities from unlawfully detaining Oregonians.”

It was not immediately unclear whether anyone was arrested or detained during the protest that started Sunday night.

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

Conservative Hillsdale Defies Mich. Leaders, Holds FULL Graduation Ceremony

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Conservative Hillsdale Defies Mich. Leaders, Holds FULL Graduation Ceremony

(Associated Press) A small conservative college in southern Michigan has defied warnings from state public health officials during the coronavirus pandemic by hosting an in-person graduation ceremony.

Hillsdale College held graduation Saturday evening, capping days of celebrations, according to The Detroit News.

“COVID obviously was a concern,” said David Betz, whose son, Christian, graduated. “For a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be able to come, it was well worth it.”

The college of about 1,500 students had expected more than 2,000 people at the event, though school officials declined to discuss actual attendance numbers.

Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel had called the gathering illegal at a time when with public gatherings are capped at 100 people.

Health officials had said the event, drawing people to restaurants and hotels, put the Hillsdale city community of about 8,000 people at risk.

School officials said graduation is an important milestone and safety precautions were taken, including wearing masks.

The liberal arts college has connections to top Republicans.

Vice President Mike Pence gave 2018’s commencement address.

Pritzker Sues to Mandate Face Masks for Students Returning to School

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Pritzker Sues to Mandate Face Masks for Students Returning to School

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker filed a lawsuit this week to obtain court approval for an executive order requiring students to wear face coverings when schools reopen this fall.

“As a father, I would not send my children to a school where face coverings are not required because the science is clear: face coverings are critical to prevent the spread of coronavirus,” Pritzker said in a statement.

No one has sued over the policy, but Prtizker says he expects to face pushback.

Already, two private schools and one public school district informed the state Board of Education that Pritzker does not have the authority to require masks, because governors cannot impose rules that “merely have a tendency to prevent” the community spread of the coronavirus, according to Thomas DeVore, an attorney representing Hutsonville Community School District as well as Parkview Christian Academy and Families of Faith Christian Academy.

Masks requirements are “recommendations,” not rules, DeVore said in the letter to the state Board of Education, because Pritzker’s policy lacks any sort of enforcement mechanism.

Instead of addressing the schools’ concerns, Pritzker decided to preemptively file a lawsuit in order to “signal that this issue is not up for debate.”

“Students need to prepare, parents need to know what’s coming, administrators need guidelines. Confusion on these things leads to risk,” Ann Spillane, Pritzker’s chief legal counsel, said. “The governor doesn’t have an option.”

Pritzker has already lost one court battle over his “arbitrary” executive orders made throughout the coronavirus pandemic.

Last month, a state Republican legislator sued Pritzker, alleging that the governor had exceeded his legal authority in issuing a stay-at-home order.

Clay County Judge Michael McHaney ruled in favor of state Rep. Darren Bailey, and granted Bailey’s request that the lawsuit “be a representative action and apply to all citizens of the state of Illinois.”

Neither the state constitution nor the emergency management act allows Pritzker “to restrict a citizen’s movement or activities and/or forcibly close business premises,” McHaney ruled, according to the Chicago Sun Times.

Nebraska Dems Endorse Replacement for Their ‘Dumpster Fire’ Senate Nominee

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Nebraska Dems Endorse Replacement for Their ‘Dumpster Fire’ Senate Nominee

(Headline USA) Nebraska Democrats endorsed a new U.S. Senate candidate in hopes of pressuring their current nominee to drop out of the race after he sent sexually offensive text messages to a campaign staffer.

The party’s state central committee voted Sunday to back Alisha Shelton, an Omaha mental health therapist, if nominee Chris Janicek withdraws his name from consideration.

Janicek has refused to resign from the race, and state law bars the party from removing him as their nominee without his consent. If Janicek doesn’t withdraw by Sept. 1, his name will remain on the ballot as the party’s nominee in November.

“Voters deserve a candidate we can be proud of and Alisha Shelton is a leader who will fight for those who need health care and good-paying jobs,” said Jane Kleeb, the party’s chairwoman.

Party leaders condemned Janicek, an Omaha cupcake bakery owner, after he made offensive comments in a group text with campaign staffers.

At one point after winning the nomination, Janicek wrote that he had gotten into an argument with a female staffer and asked whether the campaign should spend money on “getting her laid.” He also made crude references to group sex. The woman who was the target of his remarks was accidentally included on the group text and filed a complaint with the party.

Kleeb said Janicek has “no shot” at beating incumbent Republican U.S. Sen. Ben Sasse, who is seeking a second term, and she argued that Shelton would do a better job of uniting voters. Even before the scandal, Janicek wasn’t likely to win in Republican-dominated Nebraska.

Shelton was the third-place finisher in the May 12 Democratic primary. After news broke about Janicek’s text messages, many Democrats coalesced around Shelton, including Angie Philips, who finished second in the primary.

However, her loss in the primary prevents her from even running as a write-in candidate unless Janicek withdraws.

“I am ready to fight for all Nebraskans and take on Sen. Sasse this November,” Shelton said.

The local Republican Party chapter in Omaha put it bluntly in a recent tweet: “Nebraska Dems have a dumpster fire on their hands.”

Adapted from reporting by Associated Press.

Apple Sides with China Against Hong Kong Protestors, Again

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Apple Sides with China Against Hong Kong Protestors, Again

Who cares about human rights if it means losing money in China?

That seems to be the attitude of Silicon Valley tech juggernaut Apple, Inc.

Tim Cook, CEO of the California-based multi-national company, seems determined to stay in the good graces of the ruling Chinese Communist Party despite his “woke” rhetoric at home and the CCP’s brutal crackdown on pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong.

Cheap labor and access to China’s vast consumer population, roughly three times the size of the U.S., has motivated the company’s executive management to help the CCP censor Hong Kong protestors and supportive human rights activists.

China has successfully usurped the formerly independent Asian financial capital, but courageous opposition groups have been attempting to organize online.

Their chief short-term goal is to rally support against China’s new “national security” law ahead of a key September election, assuming it will have merit.

The law redefines even simples acts of dissent, such as waving an American flag, as conspiring with a foreign power or, in some cases, terrorism.

The Hong Kong opposition groups created an online polling and voting platform called “PopVote,” along with apps to further the effort.

But Apple, and later Google, deleted the apps without warning.

“We think it is being censored by Apple,” said Edwin Chu, an IT advisor for PopVote said.

Apple first said the apps were rejected because of technical issues. The company then went silent after denying repeated attempts to amend and resubmit them.

Unlike other Silicon Valley tech giants, Apple has refused to deny whether it’s handing over user data to Hong Kong’s new communist authorities.

Even European Union officials have taken note and are pushing back — sort of.

The EU recently introduced new rules and regulations intended to force more transparency into Apple’s app-related decisions and prevent Apple and Google from deleting apps without cause.

The EU is known more for its anti-democratic impulses against member-states over national sovereignty issues — especially mass immigration — than it is for supporting individual rights.

Indeed, siding against Apple and Google seems counterintuitive given the multi-national monopolies share the same left-wing globalist political objectives.

While not expressly naming China, EU leaders said they’re concerned about the lack of market competition.

“We need to ensure that Apple’s rules do not distort competition in markets where Apple is competing with other app developers,” said Margrethe Vestager, the EU executive vice-president.

Judicial Watch: Dept of Defense Infested with ‘Woke’ Diversity Programs

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Judicial Watch: Dept of Defense Infested with ‘Woke’ Diversity Programs

The military is going “woke” — and there’s a lot of funding and institutional energy behind it.

According to a trove of documents obtained by the conservative legal watchdog Judicial Watch, the U.S. Department of Defense is being overrun with diversity programs, equality administrators and so-called inclusive social justice trainings.

So much so, that Pentagon bureaucrats appear intent on turning the nation’s defense headquarters into a progressive college campus.

Through a Freedom of Information Act request, Judicial Watch obtained 1,483 pages of training materials and 26 pages of corresponding budget records from the DoD’s Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute.

The materials are used by the department’s “equal opportunity advisors” to train military members on a wide range of diversity and inclusion topics.

The Defense Equal Opportunity Management Institute received nearly $20 million in taxpayer funding during President Barack Obama’s second term, from 2012 to 2017. The Institute’s website claims that it’s “propelled by the civil rights movement of the 1960s.”

But leaders of the era would be hard-pressed to recognize the bizarre initiatives now being imposed on the country’s servicemen and women.

The document release included “Student Study Guides” written for “Equal Opportunity Advisor Courses” that cast aspersions on military personnel who “believe that human similarities are more important than differences.”

The guides also instruct service members to acknowledge their “privilege” when it’s pointed out to them, that heterosexuals have “sexual orientation privilege” and that “religious privilege” is an ongoing problem.

A chapter called “Power and Privilege” states that heterosexual privilege involves the “marginalization of non-heterosexual lifestyles and the view that heterosexuality is normal.”

People who disagree with homosexual lifestyles and same-sex marriage due to their religious objections are said to engage in “principium,” or a form of discrimination that “avoids exploration based on a religious or personal principle.”

Guide notes also assert that transsexuals, transgenders and gays are frequently denied “freedom enjoyed by heterosexual couples,” and that all service members should be encouraged to “decode your social identity.”

But the provisions on race are particularly disturbing.

Training materials state that “Whites are the majority in senior leadership positions” and that contributes to the “perpetuation of racism.”

Racism is also divided into four categories, traditional, symbolic, modern and aversive.

Aversive racists “put high value on egalitarian beliefs,” according to the authors.

Modern racists, they say, think minorities are “undeserving of special efforts to redress past inequities,” and will utter racist sentiments such as, “discrimination is a thing of the past,” “tactics and demands of activists are unfair” and “racism is bad.”

The Student Study Guides contain plenty of warnings against stereotypes while laughably engaging in ignorant stereotypes throughout.

Women are said to communicate using “a passive/assertive style,” whereas men communicate “using an assertive/aggressive style in efforts to accomplish tasks, achieve status, and dominate the conversation.”

The majority of whites are located in the South, a document states.

A section on Asian Americans says that “self-control, discipline, competitiveness and education are important elements in Japanese–American culture” — as if they aren’t qualities in other cultures; Japan is also a country, not a race.

“Stereotypes may or may not originate in a kennel [sic] of truth …” reads page 563 of a Student Study Guide.

In many places, the diversity materials are unhinged.

One document attempts historical revisionism by claiming that in previous American wars “many women masqueraded as men in order to serve their country.”

A study guide on sexism says that killing one’s spouse is an example of sexist behavior because such an act, presumably being a man killing a woman, falls under the gender discrimination category of “extermination.”

“Privilege will never go away until the systems in our society that cause discrimination go away,” a study guide suggests while instructing equal opportunity advisors to “work to make those inequitable systems visible.”

Tom Fitton, president of Judicial Watch, issued a statement on Thursday after the investigative powerhouse posted the record request documents to its website.

“These documents show that the Department of Defense has been indoctrinating our troops with anti-American and racially inflammatory ‘training,’” Fitton said.

“We must protect our military service members from being brainwashed by the divisive, anti-American propaganda fueling the leftist insurrectionists who are right now trying to destroy our country.”

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