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Ruth King

Trump tells Treasury to review universities’ tax exempt status By Morgan Chalfant

https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/506762-trump-tells-treasury-to-review-universities-tax-exempt-status

“Against every law of society and nature, our children are taught in school to hate their own country and to believe that the men and women who built it were not heroes, but that were villains,” Trump continued.”

President Trump on Friday threatened the tax-exempt status of and funding for universities and colleges, claiming that “too many” schools are driven by “radical left indoctrination.”

“Therefore, I am telling the Treasury Department to re-examine their Tax-Exempt Status and/or Funding, which will be taken away if this Propaganda or Act Against Public Policy continues,” Trump tweeted. “Our children must be Educated, not Indoctrinated!”

Trump did not name specific institutions whose tax-exempt status he wants the Treasury Department to review. Most private and public colleges and universities are exempt from taxes because they qualify as 501(c)(3) organizations.

It would fall to the IRS, a bureau of the Treasury Department, to conduct the review that Trump described. However, federal law prohibits the IRS from targeting groups for regulatory scrutiny “based on their ideological beliefs.”

‘I’m Not Apologizing’: Goya Foods CEO Refuses To Apologize For Pro-Trump Remarks

https://dailycaller.com/2020/07/10/goya-foods-ceo-trump-white-house/

The CEO of Goya Foods is refusing to back down in the face of a boycott over his comments praising President Donald Trump.

Goya Foods President and CEO Bob Unanue came under fire after he said at the White House Thursday that “we’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,” according to Fox News. His comments sparked calls to boycott Goya Foods, the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the country.

“Oh look, it’s the sound of me Googling ‘how to make your own Adobo,’” Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez tweeted. In a subsequent tweet, Ocasio-Cortez included a recipe for homemade adobo.

Former presidential candidate Julian Castro tweeted: “@GoyaFoods has been a staple of so many Latino households for generations. Now their CEO, Bob Unanue, is praising a president who villainizes and maliciously attacks Latinos for political gain. Americans should think twice before buying their products.”

A Minnesota Doctor Says He Is Being Targeted for His Viewpoints on COVID-19 By Meiling Lee

https://www.theepochtimes.com/a-minnesota-doctor-says-he-is-being-targeted-for-his-viewpoints-on-covid-19_3420129.html

A Minnesota doctor says he is under investigation by the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice for his vocal views about the CCP virus and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) guidelines on certifying COVID-19 deaths.

Dr. Scott Jensen, a family physician and a Republican state senator, took to social media to share that the Board of Medical Practice in Minnesota was investigating him for “spreading misinformation in regards to the completion of death certificates on a news program” and providing “reckless advice” by comparing COVID-19 to influenza following two public complaints filed to the Board.

“I should have seen it coming because I saw the threats on social media; I’ve seen them for the last two or three months,” Jensen said. “They didn’t agree with me. They didn’t like that I was trying to provide some context for the flu, for COVID-19.”

Jensen claims that the threats came from “people in all walks of life” including physicians. He says he’ll never know who made the complaints.

“I don’t know if they’re routinely in a political camp if they’re activists. I’ve gone online and looked at what it takes to complete a complaint that the Board of Medical Practice has to follow up on,” Jensen said. “It’s a one-page deal. You can say what you want, you could be a huge donor for the other party.”

In echo of Mao era, China’s schools in book-cleansing drive Huizhong Wu

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-books-insight/in-echo-of-mao-era-chinas-schools-in-book-cleansing-drive-idUSKBN24A1R5

BEIJING (Reuters) – As schools reopened in China after the COVID-19 outbreak, they have thrown themselves into a nationwide exercise to remove books deemed politically incorrect, deepening Chinese President Xi Jinping’s push to instil patriotism and ideological purity in the education system.

A directive from the Ministry of Education last October called on elementary and middle schools to clear out books from their libraries including “illegal” and “inappropriate” works. Now teachers have removed books from schools in at least 30 of mainland China’s 33 provinces and municipalities, according to a Reuters review of social media posts, publicly available school and local government documents, and interviews with teachers.

From western Gansu province to Shanghai, the review of publicly announced measures pointed to books being cleared by the hundreds of thousands.

Censorship in China has been intensifying under Xi, but analysts say this is the first national campaign aimed at libraries in decades. It comes as government employees in Hong Kong last week removed books by pro-democracy activists from public libraries to see whether they violate a new national security law.

“This is the first movement targeted at libraries since the Cultural Revolution,” said Wu Qiang, a political analyst based in Beijing and former political science lecturer at Tsinghua University. In the late 1960s, zealous teenagers driven by Mao Zedong carried out a nationwide campaign targeting libraries and destroying or burning what they could get their hands on, as part of a wider destruction of traditional culture.

This campaign is more selective, and directed from the top, with schools putting groups of teachers in charge of interpreting the order. The books removed have mainly been out-of-date, shabby or pirated texts, but the drive has also covered those which, while they may be legally available, are sensitive.

New Steele evidence strengthens Durham prosecution as frustration over inaction grows A British court decision unmasks new evidence of FBI abuses in the Russia collusion probe.By John Solomon

https://justthenews.com/accountability/russia-and-ukraine-scandals/new-steele-evidence-strengthens-durham-prosecution

It was in London that the whole Russia collusion caper began four years ago, so it seems only fitting that as the discredited probe enters its final phase that damning new evidence of the FBI’s failures would emerge back in England.

This week when a British judge ruled against the former FBI human source Christopher Steele, the decision delivered more than an order for the former spy’s company to pay damages to two Russian businessmen maligned by his dossier.

It also introduced new incontrovertible evidence that bolsters Attorney General William Barr’s and U.S. Attorney John Durham’s probe into whether the FBI engaged in misconduct and criminally deceived the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to win permission to spy on the Trump campaign.

Buried in Justice Mark Warby’s ruling were several new pieces of evidence that answer long lingering questions about just what the FBI knew, and when it knew it.

For instance, Congressional Republicans have long questioned when exactly the FBI knew that Steele’s dossier was a product ordered up for the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democratic Party. After all, the bureau never revealed the connection to the FISA court despite its central relevance to the motives of the dossier.

Goya faces “#BoycottGoya” backlash on social media after CEO praises Trump

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/goya-boycott-ceo-robert-unanue-praise-donald-trump/

Goya, which claims to be the largest Hispanic-owned food company in the U.S., is facing a backlash after CEO Robert Unanue praised Donald Trump during a Thursday event at the White House. “We’re all truly blessed at the same time to have a leader like President Trump, who is a builder,” Unanue said.

Unanue, who is of Spanish descent, was one of a handful of Hispanic supporters on hand as the president signed an expansion of the “Hispanic Prosperity Initiative.” The executive order is meant to “improve access by Hispanic Americans to educational and economic opportunities,” according to a White House press release.

Calls to #BoycottGoya quickly spread on social media, with hashtags including #Goyaway also trending. Former Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro tweeted his disapproval of the company, urging consumers to “think twice before buying their products.”

Julián Castro

@JulianCastro
.@GoyaFoods has been a staple of so many Latino households for generations. Now their CEO, Bob Unanue, is praising a president who villainizes and maliciously attacks Latinos for political gain. Americans should think twice before buying their products. #Goyaway

Peter Beinart’s Israel-Palestine Fantasies by Jerold Auerbach

https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/07/09/peter-beinarts-israel-palestine-fantasies/

Nearly a decade ago, Peter Beinart, a journalist with impeccable leftist credentials, authored a New York Times column titled “To Save Israel, Boycott the Settlements.” His settlement animosity, admirers will appreciate, remains undiminished. But his salvation solution has now reached the outer margins of fantasy. His newest iteration, once again in the newspaper that eagerly embraces any critique of Israel, testifies to his abiding discomfort with the very idea, let alone the reality, of a “Jewish” state in the Biblical homeland of the Jewish people.

Once upon a time, Beinart hoped that he “could remain a liberal and a supporter of Jewish statehood at the same time.” That time has clearly passed. The pivotal “event” in his transformation has been the return of Jews to Judea and Samaria, previously known as Jordan’s “West Bank,” following the Six-Day War in 1967. Some 640,000 Jewish “settlers” now inhabit East Jerusalem and the West Bank — for Beinart, forbidden territory to Jews. And the West Bank even “hosts Israel’s newest medical school.” A shanda!

Since, in Beinart’s view, Israel has decided to become “one country that includes millions of Palestinians who lack basic rights,” it is “time to imagine a Jewish home that is not a Jewish state.” His imagination leads Beinart to fantasize that “equality could come in the form of one state that preposterously includes Israel, the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem.” He cites Palestinian advocate Edward Said — more than once — as his favored source.

Beinart fancifully imagines that his plan “is not fanciful.” Rather, he has decided, “one equal state” is the preference of “young Palestinians” and “young Americans, too.” Young Israelis are inconsequential. The reason it can work is that Israel “is already a binational state” where two peoples “live under the control of one government.” Beinart’s cited models for success are Northern Ireland and South Africa.

A Tale of Two Countries By Madeleine Kearns

https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/07/a-tale-of-two-countries/

Scottish nationalism in the wake of the coronavirus.

Britain is now reporting around 1,000 new cases of coronavirus a day, but the vast majority are in England. On June 29, Scotland accounted for only five out of 815 new cases across the whole of the U.K. Now, Scotland may be only weeks away from having no new cases. But something stands in their way, or so Scottish nationalists claim — the plague-ridden English!

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, a staunch pro-independence campaigner, said that while she had “no plans” to quarantine visitors from England, she couldn’t rule it out. Prime Minister Boris Johnson then accused her government of “astonishing and shameful,” “disappointing and divisive” rhetoric, making the bizarre statement that there is “no such thing as a border between England and Scotland.” Sturgeon responded in kind, calling out his “frankly disgraceful” politicization of the pandemic.

Though health is a devolved power and Scotland has, by and large, made its own decisions on how to tackle the coronavirus — in truth, the two countries’ approaches have been more similar than not. Take the mistakes made, for instance. The calamitous handling of care homes was an error made both north and south of the border. During its worst weeks, Britain saw a 300 percent increase in care-home deaths in England, while Scotland saw a comparatively lower 200 percent increase, though it’s worth mentioning, as writer Alex Massie has noted, “if the overall Scottish casualty rate remains lower that likely only reflects the fact that Scotland had fewer cases, proportionately, when lockdown was introduced.”

Death By Policy Mortality statistics show that many people have died from lockdown-related causes, not from Covid-19.Joel Zinberg, M.D.

https://www.city-journal.org/deadly-cost-of-lockdown-policies

Many years ago, one of my duties as a young surgical intern was to fill out death certificates for recently deceased patients. Under “cause of death,” Part I asked for the immediate cause, other conditions leading to it, and the underlying cause. Part II asked for “other significant conditions contributing to death but not resulting in the underlying cause given in Part I.” If you think this is confusing, you’re right. Did the post-operative patient found dead in bed really die of a heart attack, a pulmonary embolism, or some operative complication, like bleeding? Where do you list their colon cancer or hypertension?

The task has not gotten any easier during the Covid-19 pandemic. People are still dying of heart disease, stroke, cancer, and accidents. But now there is a new respiratory illness to account for. Not every decedent who tested positive for the virus that causes Covid-19 died from it—in fact, the disease is mild for most people. Conversely, some deaths due to Covid-19 may be erroneously assigned to other causes of death because the people were never tested, and Covid-19 was not diagnosed. Nearly everyone dying of Covid-19 has concurrent health problems—the average decedent has 2.5 co-morbid conditions—and hypertension, heart disease, respiratory diseases, and diabetes are among the most common. The presence and interaction of these co-morbid conditions is what sometimes changes Covid-19 from a relatively benign disease into a killer. But co-morbidities can also cause death regardless of Covid-19.

A common way to distinguish the mortality burden of a new infectious agent from other causes of death is to estimate the excess deaths that occurred beyond what would be expected if the pathogen had not circulated. A recent study of 48 states and the District of Columbia estimated 122,300 excess deaths during the pandemic period of March 1 to May 30, compared with expected deaths calculated from the previous five years. Deaths officially attributed to Covid-19 accounted for 78 percent of the total; approximately 27,000 deaths (22 percent) were not attributed to Covid-19. A second study, using the same database with different statistical methods for the period March 1 to April 25, found that 65 percent of 87,000 excess deaths were attributed to Covid-19.

Will Democrats Accept Another Trump Victory? Barton Swain

https://www.wsj.com/articles/will-democrats-accept-another-trump-victory-11594405793?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Joe Biden, asked recently if he had considered the possibility that President Trump may refuse to concede defeat in the election, answered that he had. But he was “absolutely convinced,” the former vice president said reassuringly, that if such a thing happens, military personnel will “escort him from the White House with great dispatch.” What a relief!

The exchange brings to mind the 2016 campaign, when media personalities speculated that Mr. Trump would refuse to concede to Hillary Clinton. The hypothesis was never tested, Mr. Trump having had the bad manners to win, but it turned out to be they who refused to concede defeat—not by contesting the election results but by persuading themselves and half the country that Mr. Trump had won by illegal means and generally behaving like spoiled children for the next four years. 

I suspect Mr. Trump would have conceded the night of the election (which Mrs. Clinton did not do), for the simple reason that he neither expected nor particularly wanted to win. In the event that Mr. Trump fails to win re-election, he will depart willingly. Not graciously, perhaps, but willingly and at the appointed time.

The more interesting question is: What will Democrats do if Mr. Biden loses? What idiotic conspiracy theory will they concoct to explain their defeat?

I mean no disrespect to my liberal friends when I say, to borrow Mr. Biden’s phrase, that I am absolutely convinced that Democrats won’t accept the result if the Republican wins.