Category: Latest News

Biden takes big break from habit of avoiding Trump talk

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President Biden has made a habit of not talking too much about his predecessor, former President Trump.  

That changed big time on Tuesday, when Biden gave a spirited voting rights speech in Philadelphia. Biden didn’t mention Trump by name but repeatedly criticized the man he unseated as president, slamming him for “the big lie” that the 2020 election was stolen. 

“We continue to see an example of human nature at its worst. Something darker and more sinister,” Biden said in remarks from the Philadelphia speech directed toward Trump and his allies.  Continue reading.

REVEALED: Cops blame Antifa for Oregon wildfires — and approvingly share Proud Boys propaganda

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Emails revealed police continued blaming wildfires last year in Oregon on anti-fascist activists after the FBI knocked down those rumors.

Messages obtained by the watchdog group Property of the People show a Washington sheriff and other law enforcement officials pushed those rumors last summer to pin the blame for those wildfires on Antifa and Black Lives Matter demonstrators, although federal investigators found no evidence that was true, reported The Daily Beast.

“One of the methods Antifa is using to start fire’s, is to take a mason jar with tinder placed inside the jar, put it in brush with the lid open, so the hot sun light will create a slow start which allows them to be out of the area before the smoke appears [sic],” wrote Klickitat County Sheriff Bob Songer to officials throughout Washington state. Continue reading.

Top Tennessee health official says she was fired after efforts to get teens vaccinated

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“I am not a political operative, I am a physician who was, until today, charged with protecting the people of Tennessee … against preventable diseases,” Dr. Michelle Fiscus wrote.

Tennessee officials have fired the state’s top vaccination official, who had been facing scrutiny from Republican state lawmakers over her department’s outreach efforts to vaccinate teenagers against Covid-19.

Dr. Michelle Fiscus, a pediatrician, was fired Monday as the medical director for vaccine-preventable diseases and immunization programs at the Tennessee Department of Health.

In an interview with MSNBC host Chris Hayes on Tuesday, Fiscus said her job was to roll out the Covid-19 vaccine “across the state and to make sure that that was done equitably and in a way that any Tennessean who wanted to access that vaccine would be able to get one.” Continue reading.

How Tucker Carlson became the voice of White grievance

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Tucker Carlson huddled in a low-ceilinged dungeon that had served as a holding pen for Africans bound for enslavement in the United States. It was a July day in 2003 in Ghana, and Carlson stood alongside some of America’s most prominent civil rights leaders.

The conservative commentator, who at the time co-hosted the CNN show “Crossfire,” walked through the memorial, where a guide told how the shackled Africans who did not perish during the voyage were sold as human chattel in America.

The civil rights leaders prayed, cried and sang “We Shall Overcome.” They peered toward the sea from the Door of No Return. But Carlson seemed strangely detached, according to two of the civil rights leaders who were present. Continue reading.

Harris emerges as main GOP foil on campaign trail

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Republicans on the campaign trail are zeroing in on Vice President Harris as their political target of choice as the midterm battle draws closer.

The attacks against Harris come as Republicans have struggled to define President Biden, who enjoys higher approval ratings than his vice president and who has largely managed to sidestep any major controversies so far.

Harris, on the other hand, has drawn intense and persistent criticism over everything from her handling of the surge of migrants from Central America to her recent suggestion that voter ID laws make voting “almost impossible” for people in rural areas. Continue reading.

DeSantis sells ‘Don’t Fauci My Florida’ merch as new coronavirus cases near highest in nation

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Fox News host Tucker Carlson suggested that he should be criminally investigated. Republican members of Congress introduced a “Fire Fauci Act” to remove his salary.

Now White House medical adviser Anthony S. Fauci — a polarizing figure in the U.S. response to the coronavirus — is also part of a rising GOP star’s political branding.

“Don’t Fauci My Florida,” read drink koozies and T-shirts that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s campaign team rolled out just as his state sees some of the highest coronavirus hospitalizations, new infections and deaths per capita in the country. It’s the latest example of Republicans running on their opposition to virus-fueled shutdowns and mask mandates. A pandemic hero to some and villain to others, Fauci has become a high-profile target. Continue reading.

GOP Senator Objects To FBI Mobilization Against Violent Extremism

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Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) on Monday criticized the FBI for requesting the public’s help in combating violent extremism.

Blackburn appeared on the conservative Newsmax TV network’s National Report program and was asked by host Emma Rechenberg for her reaction to what she called “a quite controversial tweet” posted on the official FBI Twitter account that read, “Family members and peers are often best positioned to witness signs of mobilization to violence. Help prevent homegrown violent extremism.”

The agency is currently in the middle of a massive investigation of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol by supporters of former President Donald Trump. Over 500 people have been arrested so far. Continue reading.

Trump Justice Dept. effort to learn source of leaks for Post stories came in Barr’s final days as AG, court documents show

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Newly unsealed court documents show the Trump Justice Department sought a court order for the communications records of three Washington Post reporters in the final days of William P. Barr’s tenure as attorney general in 2020, as prosecutors sought to identify sources for three articles written in 2017.

The papers also reveal the service provider that was the recipient of the secret court order: Proofpoint Corporation, a firm that supplies data security services. Using Proofpoint as a means of trying to get the reporters’ email records suggests prosecutors were thinking creatively about where they might be able to find reporters’ data, beyond just standard email providers like Google or Microsoft. Representatives for Proofpoint did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

In addition, the documents indicate the extent to which federal investigators strongly suspected the disclosures of classified information were coming from Congress. Continue reading.

Russia’s most aggressive ransomware group disappeared. It’s unclear who made that happen.

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Just days after President Biden demanded that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia shut down ransomware groups attacking American targets, the most aggressive of the groups suddenly went off-line early Tuesday.

The mystery is who made it happen.

The group, called REvil, short for “Ransomware evil,” has been identified by U.S. intelligence agencies as responsible for the attack on one of America’s largest beef producers, JBS. Two weeks after Mr. Biden and Mr. Putin met in Geneva last month, REvil took credit for a hack that affected thousands of businesses around the world over the July 4 holiday. Continue reading.

Barr shoots down former prosecutor’s election-fraud claims

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In an interview, the former attorney general rejected a pro-Trump former U.S. attorney’s allegation that the Justice Department stifled vote-tampering investigations.

Former Attorney General William Barr pushed back Tuesday against suggestions from former President Donald Trump and a former federal prosecutor in Pennsylvania that federal authorities were ordered not to aggressively investigate claims of fraud during the 2020 presidential election.

Trump declared in a statement sent to reporters Monday evening that the former U.S. attorney in Philadelphia, William McSwain, was blocked from pursuing assertions of election tampering.

“U.S. Attorney from the Eastern District of Pennsylvania was precluded from investigating election fraud allegations. Outrageous!” Trump said in the statement, which was accompanied by a two-page letter from McSwain seeking Trump’s endorsement in the Keystone State governor’s race. Continue reading.