McDaniel, the niece of Sen. Mitt Romney, was brought up in the Church of Latter-Day Saints, which frowns upon the use of certain curse words.
“It’s never fun to have your teenagers come home from school and say ‘Hey mom, you’re trending on social media because some woman said you should ‘go to heck,’” she wrote on Twitter. “That being said, politics is a contact sport.”
McDaniel then doubled down on her allegation that the DNC is going to “rig” the convention “against Bernie [Sanders] if those superdelegates have their way on that second vote.”
Ronna Romney McDaniel / IMAGE: American Conservative Union via Youtube
McDaniel was referring to a New York Times report from last week that said some of the party’s super-delegates are considering bucking Sanders if he wins a plurality and not an outright majority of pledged delegates.
Brazile had accused McDaniel of repeating “Russian talking points” meant to divide the Democratic Party. But McDaniel said Brazile’s response was “out of line.”
“You’ve seen the Democrats change their debate process to include Bloomberg on the stage, and you’ve seen the concerted effort by the establishment Democrats to go after Bernie Sanders,” McDaniel said.
“And you know who is saying that the most? Bernie Sanders,” she continued. “So, I felt very in my lane saying this is happening. I don’t think it’s something we can’t discuss, and I think her response was a little bit out of line and disproportionate.”
‘Your childhood is as precious as the climate and if you don’t do something about it, you will lose it forever…’
Greta Thunberg / IMAGE: PBS NewsHour via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) The European Commission unveiled a new plan this week to combat climate change and reduce carbon emissions, but teen climate activist Greta Thunberg argued it isn’t enough and likened it to a “surrender.”
“‘Net zero emissions by 2050’ for the European Union equals surrender. It means giving up,” she said in an open letter to the EU. “We don’t just need goals for just 2030 or 2050. We, above all, need them for 2020 and every following month and year to come.”
The new EU proposal would buy another 30 years of fearmongering, but Thunberg accused world leaders of stalling on a solution.
“Distant net-zero emission targets will mean absolutely nothing if we just continue to ignore the carbon dioxide budget—which applies for today, not a faraway future,” she said.
The EU proposal would require the bloc’s 27 member states to reach net zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen described the Climate Law as a “legal translation of our political commitment,” which“sets us irreversibly on the path to a more sustainable future.”
After Thunberg dismissed the proposal, European Parliament menber Pietro Fiocchi advised Thunberg to “go back to school.”
MEP Pietro Fiocchi to Greta Thunberg: “I would like to give advice as a father gives advice to a daughter — go back to school and go back to a normal life. Your childhood is as precious as the climate and if you don’t do something about it, you will lose it forever.” pic.twitter.com/zQopvbabdG
According to a leaked draft of the proposals establishing the 2050 goal, the European Commission is proposing a mechanism for regularly raising the EU’s emissions reduction target over the next three decades, but there is no plan for an increase of the EU’s overall emissions goal for 2030.
In the draft, the European Commission said it will review the EU’s current target of a 40% greenhouse gas reduction and “explore options for a new 2030 target of 50% to 55% emission reductions compared with 1990 levels.”
‘The concern is not that transgendered individuals are more likely to be sexual predators, but rather that sexual predators could exploit such laws…’
Austin Sauer / PHOTO: Oneida County Sheriff’s Office
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) A Wisconsin high school was forced to shut down its gender-neutral bathroom after a male student allegedly sexually assaulted one of his female peers.
The 18-year-old male student—identified as Austin Sauer—was arrested at Rhinelander High School last week on charges of child enticement, fourth-degree sexual assault and exposing genitals to a child, according to WSAW-TV.
The assault took place in the school’s gender-neutral bathroom, according to the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office.
Both students “went into the bathroom voluntarily,” according to Rhinelander School District superintendent Kelli Jacobi, who said the incident “was not random.” Still, Jacobi said they’d be closing the gender-neutral bathroom until the school can figure out what happened.
“That bathroom is no longer available to students. The male student will no longer be able to be on the school grounds,” she said.
The school’s gender-neutral bathroom opened in October, according to WAOW-TV. School officials praised its opening as an opportunity for inclusion, arguing that the school needs to make its transgender or “gender expansive” students feel comfortable.
But concerned parents have been warning school districts for the past few years that gender neutral bathrooms give sexual predators the opportunity to exploit the circumstances and violate privacy. Back in 2017, the Family Research Council compiled a list of more than 21 attacks on females, all of which occurred in gender neutral bathrooms.
“It is important to note that the concern is not that transgendered individuals are more likely to be sexual predators, but rather that sexual predators could exploit such laws by posing as transgendered in order to gain access to women and girls,” the group said in a statement at the time.
“Beyond this, when companies [and schools] implement any-sex bathroom/dressing room policies, it encourages criminals to take advantage of these policies to commit crimes,” it added.
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., and other progressives blamed the lack of unity among leftists for presidential candidate Bernie Sanders’s underwhelming performance on Super Tuesday, and suggested Sanders could have won had Elizabeth Warren dropped out.
Specifically referring to her home state of Minnesota, which Joe Biden won in a surprising upset, Omar took a veiled swipe at Warren and suggested she should have dropped out and endorsed Sanders in the same way Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar dropped out and endorsed Biden.
Imagine if the progressives consolidated last night like the moderates consolidated, who would have won?
That’s what we should be analyzing. I feel confident a united progressive movement would have allowed for us to #BuildTogether and win MN and other states we narrowly lost. https://t.co/lAj2mhI3GR
Sanders’s base was quick to condemn Warren, as well.
Elizabeth Warren is like a blood sucking tick you can’t rid of. She’s literally viable in Massachusetts, Utah, Minnesota, Maine, and Colorado…. So infuriating!! We could be dominating, but Elizabeth Warren is in to give the election to Biden.
Staying in is looking like a horrible, horrible idea for Elizabeth Warren. To place THIRD in her own state. This is one of the worst miscalculations I’ve seen in my life.
congratulations to elizabeth warren for showing no solidarity to the progressive movement and subsequently getting owned in her own fucking state. can’t believe i looked up to this person. https://t.co/f87Etfs65j
Biden carried Massachusetts, followed by Sanders in second, while Warren came in third.
Her dismal performance in her home state and the other primary states has forced Warren to reassess her presidential campaign, according to an email sent by her campaign manager Wednesday morning.
“Last night, we fell well short of viability goals and projections, and we are disappointed in the results,” Roger Lau wrote in an email to campaign staffers, according to ABC News.
‘I think part of it is people don’t know who to believe…’
Andrew Cuomo / IMAGE: MSNBC via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has never missed an opportunity to attack President Donald Trump, on Tuesday avoided the temptation that many of his fellow Democrats have fallen into and instead implied that the Coronavirus hysteria is largely overblown and media-driven.
Cuomo even admitted he is actively working with the Trump administration and its Coronavirus Taskforce as the virus breaks out in his state.
“I speak to the federal officials, I speak to Vice President Pence, I speak to the Health and Human Services personnel, Department of Homeland Security personnel, the whole alphabet soup of personnel,” Cuomo told MSNBC.
“I get my information from medical professionals … to make sure we’re getting medical information and not political information,” he continued. “So I get the best medical information I can, put the politics aside, and then we develop a system on the state level to actually address the problem.”
But Cuomo assured residents that there is no need to panic.
“I think part of the issue here is we have been unrealistic in the expectation, right?” he told MSNBC.
“We have a daily revelation, there’s a new case here, new case here, community spread case,” he continued. “I’ve said from day one, you look at the numbers, you look at the math, we’re going to have dozens and dozens and dozens of cases in the State of New York. That’s my expectation.”
He added that the panic was unfounded since the majority of the population was unlikely to succumb to the virus, even if the infection did spread. As with all viruses, the body itself plays the biggest role in building immunity.
“The bottom line realization that 80 percent of the people will self-cure, self-resolve the virus and the target problem,” Cuomo said. “The 1.2% mortality is senior citizens and people who have compromised immune systems.”
College students traveling back to New York from China, South Korea, Japan, Iran and Italy will be quarantined for 14 days, Cuomo announced. Several universities and schools have also shut down until the risk of spreading the virus has passed.
Cuomo blasted the “damning commentary” and political back-and-forth that has spread panic about the coronavirus, and reminded MSNBC viewers that they’re more likely to catch the flu, which has a greater likelihood of causing death.
“I think part of it is people don’t know who to believe,” he explained. “You have Democrats blaming Republicans for not doing enough. Republicans say Democrats are hyping it. And it’s that political filter that says to people, ‘I don’t know who to believe and I don’t even know how bad this is.’ And that’s what generates fear, it’s the unknown.”
‘I saw a guy so disconnected from his own reality that it was jarring to me…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Billionaire Michael Bloomberg ended his brief presidential flirtation after a half-billion-dollar campaign ended in massive disappointment on Super Tuesday, NBC News reported.
The former New York City mayor, who entered politics as a Republican before pivoting to the far Left with radical views in areas like gun control and climate change, endorsed former Vice President Joe Biden in what is shaping out to be a two-person race between him and socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont.
Despite flooding the airwaves with messaging, his self-financed campaign proved tone-deaf in many areas, alienating and insulting voters on both sides of the aisle while falsely attempting to brand himself as a “moderate” alternative.
He skipped out on the first four nominating contests—in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina—deeming them a waste of time for being too conservative.
However, during his only two debate performances, he was excoriated by his Democratic rivals over his questionable track record of sexist interactions with female staff members.
All seemed put off by yet another liberal elitist attempting to “buy” the election and holding himself to a different standard than those he was attempting to woo.
During a Fox News town hall just prior to the Tuesday primaries, Bloomberg further revealed his disconnect with audiences, observed Rush Limbaugh, longtime conservative radio pundit and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient.
“I saw a guy who thinks he’s the Beatles who is barely Cyndi Lauper,” observed Limbaugh in his Tuesday broadcast. “I saw a guy who thinks the world revolves around him when 95% of the American people have no idea who he is. I saw a guy so disconnected from his own reality that it was jarring to me.”
Michael Bloomberg/Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
When questioned during the town hall why he supported draconian gun regulations but justified having a well-armed security detail, Bloomberg responded, “Look, I probably get 40 or 50 threats every week, OK, and some of them are real. That just happens when you’re the mayor of New York City or you’re very wealthy and if you’re campaigning for president of the United States.”
Limbaugh said Bloomberg failed to distinguish himself from current President Donald Trump, also a wealthy New Yorker, although his campaign hinged on winning over disaffected Trump voters.
“He doesn’t disagree with a lot of what Trump’s doing,” Limbaugh said. “He’s just jealous Trump’s doing it and he isn’t.”
In the aftermath of the Super Tuesday losses—which saw him win only American Samoa, a US territory in the Pacific—Bloomberg still appeared to be clinging to hopes that a disputed contest between Sanders and Biden could result in a path to victory for him via brokered convention.
“It’s the only way I can win,” he told reporters, noting that it was the delegates and not the voters who truly mattered.
Several other former rivals appeared to have brokered deals with Biden on Monday in return for endorsements, leaving open the possibility that the business and media mogul could secure a plum Cabinet post in a hypothetical Biden administration.
But Bloomberg’s biggest impact likely remains his return to the role of left-wing mega-donor. Along with hedge-fund investors Tom Steyer, who also recently dropped out of the race; and the controversial George Soros, who chose to sit out the primary race, Bloomberg is one of the top Democratic donors ever.
His millions have helped sway races in areas like Virginia, which he helped turn solid blue for the first time in decades last year with a flood of cash.
The formerly cash-strapped Biden will need considerable support in the general election to overcome the fundraising gap that Trump has been able to build, largely on the back of House Democrats’ partisan impeachment push.
‘This is what happens to someone who … doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt…’
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Facing a primary runoff to reclaim his former Senate seat in Alabama, ex-Attorney General Jeff Sessions received no support from President Donald Trump.
This is what happens to someone who loyally gets appointed Attorney General of the United States & then doesn’t have the wisdom or courage to stare down & end the phony Russia Witch Hunt. Recuses himself on FIRST DAY in office, and the Mueller Scam begins! https://t.co/2jGnRgOS6h
Sessions fell well short of the threshold needed to secure an outright majority, Politico reported. He will now move to a March 31 runoff with former Auburn football coach Tommy Tuberville for the Republican nomination.
But Trump, whose fraught relationship with one of his earliest 2016 advocates began when Sessions recused himself from the Mueller investigation into Russian collusion, made clear that he was backing Tuberville during a deluge of post-election tweets on Wednesday.
The move reflects Trump’s confidence over his own standing in the deep-red state, in which he secured 96.2 percent of the vote during his Tuesday primary.
Sessions lost to Tuberville by nearly 8,000 votes—or about 1 percent—in a three-way race that also included Rep. Bradley Byrne, a conservative Trump supporter whose voters are likely to be swayed by the president’s endorsement.
The seat is a must-win in the November election, where Trump, should he be re-elected, faces the prospect of an even narrower Senate margin than the current 53-47 GOP majority.
Several incumbent Republicans—including those in Colorado, Maine and North Carolina—are likely to see their efforts to defend their seats come down to the wire.
Alabama remains the best hope of a seat gain, with Sen. Doug Jones increasing his already vulnerable standing after backing Trump’s recent impeachment during the Senate trial.
Photo by Gage Skidmore (CC)
Jones clinched the seat after Sessions’s appointment as attorney general largely due to the controversies surrounding Republican candidate Roy Moore following a flood of dark money and a smear campaign from left-wing mega-donors.
During Sessions’s brief tenure as attorney general, Trump routinely lambasted him as a pushover.
Facing a precarious political position, Sessions seemed to demure from a direct attack back on the president. On Tuesday night, he told a crowd in Mobile that he was the best equipped, in fact, to support Trump, according to US News and World Report.
“Anyone can say they are for the Trump agenda, but talk is cheap, but I have fought on the great issues of our day and won,” Sessions said. “We have this opportunity to turn the Trump agenda into reality, and I am the man for that job.”
‘The Town and the IBPO could have avoided the years and expense of litigation if they had only listened in 2014…’
Westerly Police Headquarters / IMAGE: WPRI via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) Five Rhode Island police officers won more than $110,000 in a settlement after a five-year lawsuit over forced union dues.
The case against the International Brotherhood of Police Officers Local 503 and the Town of Westerly complained that the officers had been subjected to illegal dues of $5 per hour, even though they were not members of the union.
It also said town officials “unconstitutionally retaliated against the officers, after they publicly voiced opposition to the policy, by implementing a plan to restrict their hours, and even firing two of the officers,” according to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation, which offered free legal representation.
“The Foundation is proud to stand with them and all public servants who are targeted with intimidation, misinformation, threats of firing, and other illegal tactics simply to keep dues money flowing into the bank accounts of self-interested union officials,” said NRTW Foundation President Mark Mix.
Mix noted that the dues scheme was “always blatantly illegal” but that the case became even stronger three years into litigation, when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME no public employees could be subjected to compulsory union dues as a matter of free speech. NRTW also offered counsel to Illinois school employee Mark Janus in the eponymous 2018 decision.
However, many labor unions have continued to resist the ruling and have sought legal loopholes to circumvent it.
“Even with the added protection provided by the Janus decision, Rhode Island legislators should look to these and other examples of union boss malfeasance as examples of why all Ocean State workers—public or private—need Right to Work protections to ensure that union membership and financial support are strictly voluntary,” Mix said.
The Westerly settlement included $65,000 in union-dues refunds, as well as $48,000 in back pay for officers Scott Ferrigno and Darrell Koza, who were fired in retaliation for pressing the complaint.
Their case outlined the dismissive treatment of town officials, who expected the officers to back down or run out of financial resources. “They can always go to McDonald’s,” said one town official during a meeting, according to NRTW.
The breakthrough came in a Feb. 6, 2020 ruling, in which the U.S. District Court issued a permanent injunction against the union’s ongoing effort to force involuntary fees.
“The Town and the IBPO could have avoided the years and expense of litigation if they had only listened in 2014 when we first tried to tell them that they cannot just take $5 per hour from our pay and give it to the Union without our permission,” said Officer Thomas Cimalore, another of the five plaintiffs.
“We did all we could to avoid bringing a lawsuit,” he added. “We made repeated unsuccessful attempts to present these issues to the sitting Town Council.”
‘Prediction has been a terrible business, and the pundits have gotten it wrong over and over…’
Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden and Elizabeth Warren / IMAGE: ABC News via Youtube
(Ben Sellers, Liberty Headlines) After nearly being knocked out with low finishes in the first three primaries, former Vice President Joe Biden drew on his momentum in the recent South Carolina primary—along with several major endorsements—to become Super Tuesday’s big winner.
Biden won at least nine of the 14 states voting, according to preliminary returns, with some West Coast polls still awaiting results.
However, far-left front-runner Bernie Sanders appeared poised to remain in strong contention, and likely remain the front-runner if the night’s biggest prize, California, swung his way.
Sanders pulled off wins in Colorado, Utah and his home state of Vermont, as well as a closer-than-expected race in Texas, the second largest state for delegates that was in contention.
“He has never compromised, he will never compromise—and that’s why he deserves to be our next president of the untied states,”Sanders campaign manager Faiz Shakir said during his victory party in Vermont, according to the Associated Press.
With 415 delegates up for grabs, California remained by far the kingmaker. Experts cautioned that the state’s unusual vote-tallying methods could mean it was days before the evening’s top prize was decisively determined, although Sanders was the favored victor going into the Tuesday primaries, according to most projections.
Biden kept his hopes high, though, delivering an election-night address in the Golden State shortly before the polls were due to close.
— Joe Biden (Text Join to 30330) (@JoeBiden) March 4, 2020
The speech was briefly interrupted by apparent animal-rights protestors who stormed the stage carrying signs that said “Let Dairy Die,” according to CBS Los Angeles.
The night’s major losers were billionaire ex-mayor Michael Bloomberg—whose strategy of eschewing the early states and investing heavy in Super Tuesday states yielded him only American Samoa—and Elizabeth Warren, who barely cracked the 20-percent threshold to secure a third-place finish in her home state of Massachusetts.
Tulsi Gabbard—the Hawaii congresswoman largely regarded as the most “moderate” of all the candidates, who drew accusations from former candidate Hillary Clinton for being a Russian plant—continued to be a non-factor, securing only one pledged delegate at press time.
It remained to be seen whether any of the night’s losers would drop out attempt to press forward in the hopes that a brokered convention might offer them more leverage if neither Sanders or Biden secured a majority.
Bloomberg, who has pledged to spend a billion dollars and already spent half that in his largely self-financed campaign, acknowledged that such a scenario was his last hope of clinching the nomination.
“It’s the only way I can win,” he told reporters during a campaign stop at one of his field offices in Miami, according to the Associated Press.
At a rally in Detroit, Warren gave no indication Tuesday that she was going anywhere soon, the AP reported.
“My name is Elizabeth Warren, and I’m the woman who’s going to beat Donald Trump,” she said. “Prediction has been a terrible business, and the pundits have gotten it wrong over and over.”
Much speculation loomed that the Biden camp—or perhaps others within the Democratic establishment—had brokered backroom deals earlier in the week to win endorsements from former rivals Beto O’Rourke, Pete Buttigieg and Amy Klobuchar.
The moves caught the attention of President Donald Trump during a rally in North Carolina on Monday, when he mocked the Democrats for their “quid pro quo” negotiations—a reference to the accusations from his political adversaries that resulted in his party-line impeachment by House Democrats last December.
The Sanders campaign also took note. “The political establishment has made their choice: Anybody but Bernie Sanders,” Shakir wrote in a fundraising message Tuesday according to the AP.
While Warren has been the most ideologically aligned with Sanders, her resounding defeats on the biggest day of the nominating contest could add greater pressure for her to accept the right offer. Biden has previously hinted that he would be open to offering Warren the spot as his running mate.
However, he has dangled the same offer before a bevvy of other influential figures, including Stacey Abrams and Michelle Obama.
One significant impact that the contentious Democratic race seemed to have was a massive increase in turnout. According to The Hill, Virginia, one of the earliest Super Tuesday states to go to the polls, reported nearly double its turnout over the 2016 primary.
In that race, which Sanders ran against Clinton, who already had been coronated as the presumptive nominee.
‘My whole message is about children. Anybody who hurts children—I’m a lioness. Watch out…’
Nancy Pelosi / IMAGE: CBS News via Youtube
(Claire Russel, Liberty Headlines) House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., claimed President Donald Trump is the “most dangerous person in the history of our country” in an attempt to boost voter turnout in November.
Pelosi argued that part of the reason Trump won in 2016 was because “people thought Hillary [Clinton] would win so they didn’t all turn out.”
“Nobody could possibly think that somebody like Donald Trump could be elected president of the United States,” she told Variety magazine. “But if you don’t turn out, those who do turn out will call the shots.”
Now the U.S. is stuck with a president who “doesn’t tell the truth, he doesn’t honor the Constitution, and he’s harming children,” Pelosi claimed.
“My whole message is about children,” she continued. “Anybody who hurts children—I’m a lioness. Watch out.”
Pelosi, however, is confident Democrats will retake the White House in November.
“The greatness of America is such that we will withstand what [Trump] has done and move on from that,” she said. “I feel confident about our ability to do that.”
Liberal commentators were quick to sing Pelosi’s praises.
CNN’s Jeff Zucker described Pelosi as the “perfect character in the Donald Trump story,” claiming “she knows how to play him better than anyone else.”
And MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow argued Pelosi “stands alone in terms of Democratic, practical, principled, effective leadership.”
Variety magazine’s Cynthia Littleton also claims in her profile of the California Democrat that Pelosi is “everything Trump is not.”
“[She’s] an expert in the legislative process, a prodigious fundraiser for fellow members of her party, a believer in what she calls the ‘noble calling’ of public service and a sophisticated dealmaker who understands the art of the compromise,” Littleton wrote.
Pelosi said that if Democrats do not win back the White House in November, everything will fall apart.
“Our country cannot withstand another four years of Donald Trump,” she said. “The courts, the press, the environment—everything.”
