Republicans Outside DC Think Trump on Way to Victory: ‘We’re Thinking a Landslide’

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‘The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump…’

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President Donald Trump gestures to the audience during a rally in Charlotte, NC, before Super Tuesday. / PHOTO: Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines

(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Republican operatives are confident that President Donald Trump will win re-election, especially given recent events.

The GOP’s coronavirus aid, the ongoing economic rebound and the president’s hard-line stance on “law and order” throughout recent protests have increased his favorability among swing state voters, according to Republicans working with Trump’s campaign.

“The more bad things happen in the country, it just solidifies support for Trump,” Phillip Stephens, GOP chairman in Robeson County, North Carolina, told Politico.

“We’re calling him ‘Teflon Trump’” Stephens said. “Nothing’s going to stick, because if anything, it’s getting more exciting than it was in 2016.”

Stephens’s county was one of several in the state that voted for Trump after supporting former President Barack Obama in 2012. And this year, Stephens is convinced that Trump’s win will be a “landslide.”

Back in March, Republicans were understandably concerned that the economic hit would dull Trump’s chances. Internal polling confirmed that there was “some sagging off where we wanted to be,” said Andrew Hitt, the GOP chairman in Wisconsin.

But now, “things are coming right back where we want them,” Hitt said.

“That focus on the economy and on reopening and bringing America back is resonating with people,” he explained.

The real test will be the swing states, such as Ohio and Michigan. In both states, presidential candidate Joe Biden has been ahead of Trump.

However, Jane Timken, the Ohio GOP chairwoman, said she doesn’t see any evidence that demonstrable support for Trump has slipped. The GOP chairs of Indiana and Pennsylvania said the same.

“Contrary to what may be portrayed in the media, there’s still a high level of support out there,” said Kyle Hupfer, chairman of the Indiana Republican Party.

The 2016 election is proof that polls are not always accurate. If anything, that inaccuracy has gotten even worse, according to Ted Lovdahl, chairman of the GOP in Minnesota’s 8th congressional district.

Friends and family members he’s talked to have said that pollsters’ questions are often misleading or aggressive. As a result, few give their honest opinions, Lovdahl said.

This shift away from public polls is happening nationwide, said Jack Brill, acting chairman of the local Republican Party in Sarasota County, Florida. “I used to be an avid poll watcher until 2016 … Guess what? I’m not watching polls.”

The Democratic Party’s lurch to the left must also be taken into consideration, said Scott Frostman, GOP chairman in Wisconsin’s Sauk County, which Obama won in 2012 but Trump won in 2016.

The Left’s recent “Defund the Police” movement is a perfect example of how polarizing the Democratic agenda has become, Frostman said.

“The further and further the Democrats tack left, and the further you get to where it’s the defunding the police,” he explained. “I think we have the opportunity as Republicans to talk to people a little bit more about some common sense things.”

Trump, for his part, is also confident that he can beat Biden. In April, he rejected polls that put him behind the former vice president. He has recently reminded Americans that the “silent majority” spoke in 2016, and that they’ll speak again in November.

“I don’t believe the polls,” Trump said in April, according to Reuters. “I believe the people of this country are smart. And I don’t think that they will put a man in who’s incompetent.”

NeverTrump Republicans Working w/ Liberals to Elect Joe Biden

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‘We’re all on the same team…’

Never Trump Republicans Working w/Liberals to Elect Joe Biden
Tim Miller / IMAGE: Showtime via YouTube

(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) NeverTrump Republicans are actively working with Democrats to elect presidential candidate Joe Biden.

Republican Voters Against Trump, an activist group associated with The Lincoln Project, plans to spend $10 million on television and digital advertising on behalf of the Biden campaign in important battleground states, according to the Washington Examiner.

RVAT even plans to partner with openly liberal groups, such as American Bridge, to take down President Donald Trump.

“We’re all on the same team,” RVAT co-founder Tim Miller said when asked why he was working with groups that did not support the conservative cause.

Miller plans to target centrist and/or moderate voters he believes voted for Trump in 2016 simply because Trump was better than opponent Hillary Clinton. Now, Trump doesn’t have as big of an appeal, Miller claimed.

“These are gettable voters for Biden, and so this program is targeted at reaching them,” he said.

“Based on what we’ve learned, what resonates with them is hearing from authentic voices like them who understand their perspective rather than being lectured to by Democrats from D.C.”

One GOP source said earlier this year that the only reason Never Trump Republicans are eager to support Biden is because they want to see Trump fail. Policy isn’t the problem, the source told the New York Post in February.

“They’re not rational people,” the source said. “They want revenge. Trump beat them, and they want revenge.”

The GOP, however, isn’t worried about Trump’s prospects. Despite negative poll numbers, Republicans are confident that recent events have solidified support for Trump.

The focus on the economy, reopening America, and fending off radical leftism is an appealing message, said Andrew Hitt, the GOP chairman in Wisconsin.

“We’re calling him ‘Teflon Trump,’” Phillip Stephens, GOP chairman in Robeson County, North Carolina, told Politico. “Nothing’s going to stick, because if anything, it’s getting more exciting than it was in 2016. We’re thinking landslide.”

Facebook Shadow-Bans Climate Scientist Who Doesn’t Toe the Alarmists’ Line

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‘This group has a long history as a biased “goon squad” whose climate science claims are sloppy and weak…’

Facebook ‘Fact-Checkers’ Exploit Loophole to Shadow-Ban Climate Skeptic Videos
Patrick Michaels / IMAGE: Independent Institute via YouTube

(Michael Barnes, Liberty Headlines) When it comes to expressing climate change skepticism, Facebook’s fact-checking “goon squad” is quick to label opinions as false information and have them shadow-banned—even if they’re from renowned climate scientists.

That’s the experience of Dr. Patrick Michaels, a senior fellow at both the CO2 Coalition and the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

Michaels appeared in a recent video with Fox News’s Marc Levin, host of the Life, Liberty & Levin television show.

In the interview, Michaels offered his expert opinion about the scientific-consensus belief that the Earth’s climate has increased one-degree since 1900. Michaels said he believed one-half of the one-degree increase was natural, and the other half was caused by man-made emissions of carbon dioxide.

But the seemingly non-controversial statement was labeled false by the Facebook fact-checking group Climate Feedback and the video was shadow-banned. It had 3 million views at the time.

In a follow-up brief rebutting Climate Feedback’s determination, Michaels notes that his opinion is not only science-based, but it’s shared by the extremely climate-friendly United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change .

What’s more, Michaels had taken Climate Feedback to task in 2019 and defeated the activist group for labeling an op-ed he wrote as false. The article highlighted the well-known inaccuracies of climate-change computer models.

After a detailed appeal, Facebook removed the label and implemented a policy of not fact-checking op-eds. But the Facebook censor group is now exploiting a loophole in that policy that does not explicitly include opinions expressed in videos.

“Climate Feedback is taking advantage of the lack of clarity in Facebook’s definition of ‘opinion’ that will not be subject to censorship. Why should spoken opinions about scientific judgment be censored when written ones are not?” said Dr. Caleb Rossiter, co-author of Michaels’ 2019 op-ed.

“As Dr. Michaels shows in the [rebuttal] brief, this group has a long history as a biased ‘goon squad’ whose climate science claims are sloppy and weak.”

Michaels also cites in his brief other prominent examples of skeptical opinions and sources being labeled as “false,” “misleading” and containing “outdated data.”

Michaels notes that the labels have been applied to conservative Dennis Prager’s popular PragerU video lectures, some of which include highly qualified scientists from the CO2 Coalition, such as MIT atmospheric physicist Richard Lindzen and ecologist Patrick Moore, a founding member and former international leader of Greenpeace.

The fact-checking and shadow-banning tactic was even recently applied to progressive filmmaker Michael Moore for questioning the climate-change consensus about renewable energy.

Senate Passes Confucius Act to Keep Chinese Gov't Out of University Education

Joshua Paladino
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‘Confucius Institutes are threatening academic liberty and free speech without shame, and too many American schools have fallen victim to the political con…’

U.S. Universities Close Their Confucius Institutes as Chinese Influence Becomes More Apparent
Protestors oppose the Chinese propagandist Confucius Institutes/IMAGE: Michael Mahonen via Youtube

(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) By unanimous consent the Senate passed the Concerns Over Nations Funding University Campus Institutes in the United States, known as the Confucius Act, to weaken China‘s influence on America’s college campuses.
The Confucius Act transfers control over Confucius Institutes, which have popped up at campuses across the country, to the universities at which they operate.
The bill gives the universities the authority to determine “what is being taught, the activities carried out, the research grants that are made, and who is employed at the Confucius Institute.”
This eliminates the Chinese Communist Party’s ability to manage them from behind the scenes.
Sen. John Kennedy, R-La., first introduced the legislation in March 2019.
“Confucius Institutes are threatening academic liberty and free speech without shame, and too many American schools have fallen victim to the political con,” Kennedy said.
The Confucius Act places obligations on universities that host Confucius Institutes, as well.
They must “protect academic freedom at the institution” and “prohibit the application of any foreign law
on any campus of the institution.”
Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Doug Jones, D-Ala.; and Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, co-sponsored the bill, according to Blackburn’s press release.
“The Chinese Communist Party has used deceptive tactics to infiltrate our U.S. university campuses and K-12 classrooms,” Blackburn said.
“Those studying Chinese culture and language at Confucius Institutes should be alarmed to learn that these facilities are a part of the Communist Party propaganda,” she continued. “It is an affront to academic freedom, and we should not bow to repressive Chinese propaganda systems.”
Blackburn introduced additional legislation, the Transparency for Confucius Institutes Act in March 2020, which would require universities to monitor and confront the ways in which the Chinese government influences Confucius Institutes, according to a press release.
Both the College Republican National Committee and the College Democrats of America agreed in a joint letter that they seek the “immediate and permanent closure of all Confucius Institutes in the United States” because of their threats to academic freedom and free government.

NC Arrests 23 Illegal Aliens for 70 Sexual Crimes Against Children

Joshua Paladino
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Alleged child-abusers disregard NC governor’s COVID quarantine orders, as well as federal immigration policy…

NC Governor Told to Give Up His Slush Fund
Roy Cooper/IMAGE: YouTube

(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) North Carolinians for Immigration Reform and Enforcement released its May report on child rapes and sexual assaults by illegal aliens and found that authorities charged 23 criminals with 70 crimes.
Despite North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper’s stay-at-home order, these crimes against children have not slowed.
The Lenoir County Sheriff’s Office arrested Benjamin Medeiros on May 25 after launching an investigation two days prior, WNCT reported.
The investigation targeted a person responsible for sexually assaulting a child for 10 years, from 2003 to 2013.
Police arrested Medeiros in New Bedford, Massachusetts, and charged him with three counts of first-degree rape and three counts of indecent liberties with a child.
The Pender County Sheriff’s Office arrested Michael Martorelli on May 5 in Hampstead, JDNews reported.
Martorelli allegedly had an online, sexual relationship with an underage girl. The alleged victim is 14 years old.
The Pender County Sheriff’s Office charged Martorelli with ten misdemeanor counts of contributing to the delinquency of a child; one misdemeanor for making an obscene image; one felony fount of sending obscene images to a child; one felony count of indecent liberties with a childl; and one felony count of soliciting a child by computer.
The Henderson County Sheriff’s Office arrested 43-year-old Antonio Miranda Santos on March 5.
Police charged him with sexual battery and indecent liberties with children, BlueRidgeNow reported.
Authorities in Mecklenburg County arrested Cruz Miguel Aguina, 38, on May 6 and charged him with indecent liberties with a child and statutory sex offense with a child who was younger than 15 years old, Busted Newspaper reported.
Authorities in Henderson County arrested Josue Martinez Juarez, 24, on May 12 for felony statutory rape of a child who was younger than 15 years old and felony dissemination of obscene material to a child.

Border Patrol Arrested 23 Convicted Sex Offenders in May

Joshua Paladino
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‘Transnational criminal networks don’t do background checks on the people they help smuggle into the country…’

Border Agency Closes Its Offices to All Asylum Seekers, Illegal Immigrants Amid Coronavirus Concerns
US Border Patrol / IMAGE: CBC News via Youtube

(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) Border Patrol found 23 convicted sex offenders and prevented them from illegally entering the United States in May, Customs and Border Protection reported.
“Transnational criminal networks don’t do background checks on the people they help smuggle into the country,” CBP Chief Rodney Scott said. “Our vigilance makes this country safer, one encounter at a time.”
Border Patrol agents encountered Julio Martinez Ocampo, a 50-year-old Mexican citizen on May 27, CBP reported.
He was previously deported from America after serving more than six years in prison for kidnapping, assault, and an attempted sex crime. He committed the crimes in Orange County, California.
Ocampo returned to the United States in a group of seven people.
Border Patrol immediately deported the six people who were traveling with Ocampo due to President Donald Trump’s emergency orders related to the coronavirus.
The federal government will prosecute Ocampo for reentering the United States as a convicted felon.
Border Patrol agents encountered and arrested a human smuggled who was previously convicted of a sex crime in southern California on May 26.
Agents searched a car and found five passengers and a driver inside.
The driver was a 44-year-old American man who was convicted of having sex with a minor who was 3 or more years younger than himself in 1999.
The five people who he was smuggling were all adult, male, Mexican illegal aliens. Authorities immediately deported them back to Mexico.
Border Patrol agents arrested a convicted sex offender on May 23 about 20 miles away from a port of entry over Memorial Day weekend.
They learned that the man had been convicted of lewd and lascivious acts with a child in 2007.
The 45-year-old illegal alien will be prosecuted for reentering the United States as a convicted felon.

Appeals Court Strikes Down Charleston's Tour Guide Licensing Laws

Joshua Paladino
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‘In this country, we rely on people to decide who they want to listen to rather than relying on the government to decide who gets to speak…’

Charleston Appeals Ruling That Found Tour Guide Licenses Unconstitutional
Charleston, S.C./IMAGE: Southern Living via Youtube

(Joshua Paladino, Liberty Headlines) An appeals court ruled Thursday that Charleston, South Carolina’s regulations that force tour guides to obtain a license violate the Constitution’s First Amendment, the Institute for Justice reported.
The Fourth Circuit Appeals Court agreed with a South Carolina District Court’s 2018 ruling, which affirmed the right of citizens to host tours without the city’s permission.
“In this country, we rely on people to decide who they want to listen to rather than relying on the government to decide who gets to speak,” said IJ Senior Attorney Arif Panju. “Charleston’s law was unconstitutional because it got that important principle exactly backwards.”
Institue for Justice‘s attorneys tried the city’s tour-guide regulations on behalf of three people who wanted to host unique tours.
For tour guides to obtain Charleston’s license, they had to memorize a 500-page book of information about the city.
But the tour guides who IJ represents did not want to focus on the information that Charleston had hand selected when talking with visitors.
“My love for history has helped others to go down in history, and what an amazing feeling that is,” said Kimberly Billups, a plaintiff in the lawsuit. “I tell my tour groups full of eighth-graders about how important our First Amendment is and how they can keep it safe for the future.”
IJ’s lawyers said Charleston’s tour-guide ordinance put an undue burden on the right to free speech, and the city’s interest in ensuring that tour guides disseminate accurate information does not outweigh that right.
The court agreed.
“The Ordinance undoubtedly burdens protected speech,” wrote Judge Robert B. King in the court’s opinion, “as it prohibits unlicensed tour guides from leading paid tours—in other words, speaking to visitors—on certain public sidewalks and streets.”
King said Charleston officials did not try to regulate tourism through less restrictive means, as the law obligates them to do.
Charleston is “obliged to demonstrate that it actually tried or considered less-speech-restrictive alternatives and that such alternatives were inadequate to serve the government’s interest,” King wrote.
IJ has helped topple similar licensing ordinances in Washington, D.C., Savannah, Ga., and Williamsburg, Va.

BIDEN: MLK Wasn’t as Impactful as George Floyd

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‘What happened to George Floyd—now you got how many people around the country, millions of cell phones. It’s changed the way everybody’s looking at this…’

Progressive Left Alarmed at Biden’s Cognitive Decline
Joe Biden / IMAGE: MSNBC

(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Presidential candidate Joe Biden said on Thursday that the assassination of civil rights icon Martin Luther King Jr. wasn’t as impactful as George Floyd’s death.

At an economic reopening roundtable in Philadelphia, Biden said that Floyd’s death has inspired a cultural shift thanks to social media and the use of smartphones.

“Even Dr. King’s assassination did not have the worldwide impact that George Floyd’s death did,” Biden said.

“What happened to George Floyd—now you got how many people around the country, millions of cell phones,” he continued. “It’s changed the way everybody’s looking at this. Look at the millions of people marching around the world.”

Biden has faced a good deal of criticism over the past few weeks for his past remarks and policies on race. Last month, he said that black Americans who were on the fence about whether to vote for him or President Donald Trump “ain’t black.”

And last summer, Biden implied that race was synonymous with poverty while discussing the achievement gap and funding in education.

“We have this notion that somehow if you’re poor, you cannot do it,” Biden said in August. “Poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.”

While always gaffe-prone, Biden’s recent propensity for foot-in-mouth remarks has alarmed many in his party.

Former Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a former Democratic National Committee chair and longtime Clinton fundraiser—said at a recent breakfast that it was wise for Biden’s handlers to keep him relegated to his Delaware basement since he lacked the means to make his statements resonate more during recent national crises.

“It’s hard for the vice president to break through,” McAuliffe said.

But some, including the Trump campaign, have made hay of what appears to be the 77-year-old’s advanced cognitive decline whenever he does go before the cameras.

Biden’s comment on MLK wasn’t the only mistake the former vice president made on Thursday. At one point during the roundtable, he appeared to lose his train of thought completely while he was reading his notes.

“You know the rapidly rising, umm, uh, in with, uh, with I, uh, don’t know,” he said.

San Francisco Bans Use of Tear Gas, Forbids Cops from Answering Non-Criminal Calls

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‘We know that a lack of equity in our society overall leads to a lot of the problems that police are being asked to solve…’

San Francisco Bans Use of Tear Gas, Forbids Cops From Answering Non-Criminal Calls
San Francisco police look for fugitives in the notorious inner-city Tenderloin district. / IMAGE: ABC7 News Bay Area via YouTube

(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) San Francisco police officers are no longer allowed to use tear gas and they will not respond to non-criminal calls, according to new reforms passed by Mayor London Breed.

The reforms, which Breed unveiled on Thursday, aim to “[end] the use of police in response to non-criminal activity; [address] police bias and [strengthen] accountability; [demilitarize] the police; and [promote] economic justice.”

This means that the San Francisco Police Department must get rid of weapons that are classified as military-grade, including tear gas, by 2021.

The city will also develop a new system to deal with non-criminal calls, Breed said.

“San Francisco has made progress reforming our police department, but we know that we still have significant work to do,” she said in a statement.

“We know that a lack of equity in our society overall leads to a lot of the problems that police are being asked to solve,” she continued. “We are going to keep pushing for additional reforms and continue to find ways to reinvest in communities that have historically been under-served and harmed by systemic racism.”

The San Francisco Police Department must also change the way it hires and promotes officers, and increase training and disciplinary action for those who violate the department’s policies.

Democrat-controlled cities across the country are passing similar reforms. The Minneapolis City Council even went so far as to pass a resolution that would allow the city to begin dismantling its police department entirely.

“Our city needs a public safety capacity that doesn’t fear our residents, that doesn’t need a gun at a community meeting, that considers itself part of our community, that doesn’t resort quickly to pepper spray when people are understandably angry, that doesn’t murder black men,” Minneapolis council member Steve Fletcher said.

It is not clear how the Minneapolis City Council plans to address emergencies or respond to crime without its police department, but council member Lisa Bender has claimed its replacement will be a “transformative new model of public safety.”

Bender said it was a “privilege” of the white community to be able to expect police to respond to emergency calls, although much of the work of law-enforcement takes place in low-income minority-heavy communities.

DNC CHAIR: Trump Has KILLED African Americans w/ COVID Response

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‘Donald Trump rather than battling bigotry wants to battle Twitter…’

(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez accused President Donald Trump of killing black Americans with “his failed response to the coronavirus” and the “hopelessness that he is trying to stoke.”

Deflecting from widespread criticisms that recent Democrat-backed race-riots and demonstrations recklessly endangered the public health—and particularly that of vulnerable African Americans—amid the ongoing health crisis, Perez sought to pin the responsibility squarely on the president in an interview with Meet the Press.

The Left’s efforts to have it both ways have been met mostly with derision, including a claim by some partisan public-health officials that “racism” was a greater health risk than the virus. Since March, the pandemic has killed nearly 115,000 Americans while disproportionately impacting low-income black and Latino communities.

But with the riots fading, for now, into the background—and along with them, the mainstream media’s coronavirus silence—some leftist networks have brazenly attempted to pivot back to the prior COVID-shaming of those who ignored lockdown regulations and social-distancing guidelines.

Perez subtly tried to conflate the two dueling crises, both of which were exacerbated greatly by the sensationalism-driven claims of left-wing media and public figures seeking to bludgeon the current administration.

“Donald Trump rather than battling bigotry wants to battle Twitter,” Perez claimed, referencing the social-media giant’s recent efforts to impose false fact-checks on the president’s tweets.

“Rather than bringing us together, he wants to continue to drive us apart,” Perez continued. “What has he done to black people in America? He has killed them in some places because of his failed response to coronavirus, the unemployment rate, joblessness, hopelessness that he is trying to stoke.”

DNC CHAIR: Trump Killed African Americans w/Coronavirus Response
Tom Perez / IMAGE: Meet the Press via YouTube

Perez went on to praise presumptive Democrat nominee Joe Biden for being the “uniter-in-chief.”

“We need a consoler-in-chief. Not a tweeter-in-chief,” Perez said. “Joe Biden was that. He’s a listener-in-chief as well.”

While several Democratic strategists are urging Biden to stay “in the basement” to avoid making public, embarrassing gaffes, Perez encouraged Biden to step up to “make sure that the American people know that under a Biden leadership we will make government work again.” Perez continued.

The differences between the two candidates couldn’t be clearer, he added. “I applaud what the vice president has been doing.”

Other Democrats, however, aren’t so sure that Biden’s place should be in the spotlight.

One of Perez’s predecessors as DNC chair, former Clinton fundraiser Terry McAuliffe,  admitted to a group of Democrats last week that Biden has a hard time “breaking through” to voters, and that he should keep campaign away from the public eye.

“People say all the time, ‘Oh, we got to get the vice president out of the basement,'” McAuliffe said. “He’s fine in the basement. Two people see him a day: his two body people. That’s it. Let Trump keep doing what Trump’s doing.”

Liberty Headlines’ Ben Sellers contributed to this report.

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