Arizona Supreme Court Delays Release of Election Audit Records

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The Arizona Supreme Court said Tuesday that contractors hired by the Republican-led state Senate to conduct the Maricopa County 2020 election audit would not need to release records from their review by next week.

This is only a temporary delay, as Kathryn King, a justice on the state’s high court, put a hold on a lower court ruling that ordered the documents released by Aug. 31 while the case is under consideration.

Left-leaning watchdog group American Oversight took its records request to court and emerged victorious on Aug. 19 when the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled Cyber Ninjas, the Florida-based firm leading the audit, was subject to the state’s public records law because it was performing a core government function and had to produce the documents by the end of the month.

Arizona Senate President Karen Fann argued the records should not be publicly released because they are maintained by private contractors so legislative immunity applies to the documents, declaring her intention to appeal to the state Supreme Court.

“It is ordered extending the stay to enable the Court to fully consider the issues raised in the petition for review. However, this order does not relieve the Petitioners from continuing to review and produce documents Petitioners have already agreed to produce,” King wrote on Tuesday. (Read more from “Arizona Supreme Court Delays Release of Election Audit Records” HERE)

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Dozens of California Students, Parents Stranded in Afghanistan After Summer Trip Abroad

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Dozens of California students and parents are stranded in Afghanistan after taking a summer trip to the country.

More than 20 students and 16 parents from the Cajon Valley Union School District in El Cajon, Calif., visited Afghanistan on summer vacation. Now they are among thousands of people who are waiting to leave the country amid the chaotic U.S. withdrawal that has caused political unrest across the nation, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Cajon Valley Superintendent David Miyashiro alerted school board members on Tuesday that he would be meeting with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) to discuss the situation, the Times noted.

Miyashiro told the news outlet that the families traveled to Afghanistan on special visas for U.S. military service and that the school district was able to provide government officials with information on the families as they work to locate them.

The stranded students reportedly attend different schools within the school district. (Read more from “Dozens of California Students, Parents Stranded in Afghanistan After Summer Trip Abroad” HERE)

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Major Airline to Charge Workers $200 per Month for Not Being Vaccinated

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Delta Airlines announced Wednesday that unvaccinated workers will be subject to an additional charge of $200 on their monthly healthcare plan starting in November.

CEO Ed Bastian said in a memo to employees that the average hospital stay for Delta employees infected with COVID-19 has been $50,000. The $200 per month extra charge reflects the “financial risk the decision not to vaccinate is creating for our company,” the memo said.

The change will go into effect Nov. 1. Delta will also begin requiring unvaccinated employees to take a weekly COVID-19 test Sep. 12, if they are in an area where community transmission is high.

Seventy-five percent of Delta employees are vaccinated, and 100% of recent hospitalizations of Delta employees have been among unvaccinated workers, the memo said. (Read more from “Major Airline to Charge Workers $200 per Month for Not Being Vaccinated” HERE)

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CUOMO’S BODY COUNT: New York Health Officials Finally Reveal State’s True COVID Death Toll

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The tally of New Yorkers killed by the coronavirus pandemic stands at more than 55,000 people, the state Health Department confirmed late Tuesday — far more than the 43,000 long reported by now-departed Gov. Andrew Cuomo.

DOH officials released the revised tallies just hours after Gov. Kathy Hochul was sworn into office, finally bringing the state’s death count into line with figures long published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Johns Hopkins University.

“It’s a good first step by Hochul,” said Bill Hammond, a health care policy expert at the conservative-leaning think tank The Empire Center, which aggressively pressed state officials over their handling of nursing home safety measures during the pandemic.

“The higher COVID death totally is significantly important,” he added. “She’s acknowledging how bad things got. She’s not sugarcoating the problem. Cuomo was trying to keep the numbers as low as he could.”

For months, the Cuomo administration had only released partial tallies of those killed by the coronavirus pandemic — counting just those who died in hospitals, nursing homes and adult care facilities — in its daily public summaries of COVID-19 data. (Read more from “New York Health Officials Finally Reveal State’s True COVID Death Toll” HERE)

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Two Congressmen Say They Secretly Traveled To Afghanistan Amid Ongoing U.S. Evacuation Efforts

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A bipartisan duo of House lawmakers said that they secretly visited Kabul, Afghanistan amid the chaos currently unfolding as the U.S. scrambles to evacuate citizens and others from that country.

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Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and Rep. Peter Meijer (R-Mich.), who are both veterans, issued a joint statement regarding their trip.

“As Members of Congress, we have a duty to provide oversight on the executive branch. There is no place in the world right now where oversight matters more. We conducted this visit in secret, speaking about it only after our departure, to minimize the risk and disruption to the people on the ground, and because we were there to gather information, not to grandstand. We left on a plane with empty seats, seated in crew-only seats to ensure that nobody who needed a seat would lose one because of our presence,” the lawmakers noted. . .

“Washington should be ashamed of the position we put our service members in, but they represent the best in America. These men and women have been run ragged and are still running strong. Their empathy and dedication to duty are truly inspiring. The acts of heroism and selflessness we witnessed at HKIA [Hamid Karzai International Airport] make America proud,” the legislators said. (Read more from “Two Congressmen Say They Secretly Traveled To Afghanistan Amid Ongoing U.S. Evacuation Efforts” HERE)

Photo credit: U.S. Army https://www.flickr.com/photos/soldiersmediacenter/768971372

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China Claims COVID Origin Investigation May Be Way To Put Trump in Office

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In an attempt to discredit the U.S. Intelligence Community’s investigation into the origin of COVID-19, The Global Times, a Chinese state-run media outlet, promoted a baseless theory that its goal is to “overthrow” President Joe Biden’s administration.

Biden received the Intelligence Community’s report on the origin of COVID-19 on Tuesday, as its 90-day deadline was set to expire. Contents of the report have not been made public, but the Intelligence Community has reportedly been unable to reach a consensus on how the pandemic began, keeping both the lab leak theory and natural origin theory on the table.

Amidst an already strained relationship, China has been heavily critical of the Intelligence Community’s involvement in the origin-finding process, as they aren’t scientists.

On Tuesday, Gao Lei, a Global Times reporter, called it “absurd” to involve intelligence organizations, who he accused of only serving “politics and repeatedly fabricated false information for Washington’s political needs.” Gao added that the investigation may be a “plot to overthrow his administration,” in reference to Biden. (Read more from “China Claims COVID Origin Investigation May Be Way To Put Trump in Office” HERE)

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DeSantis Blasts Mask Mandates: ‘Piece of Cloth Is Not Going to Stop the Aerosols’

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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) dismissed the need for mask mandates in the Sunshine State on Wednesday, emphasizing the importance of personal liberty while reminding reporters of scientific research showing cloth and surgical masks are relatively ineffective in blocking the transmission of exhaled aerosols.

During a press conference in The Villages on Wednesday during which the governor announced the opening of another monoclonal antibody treatment center, a reporter asked DeSantis to explain his position on the role masks play in addressing the pandemic.

“They should not be mandated. No government entity should force you to do that. That is your choice. If that’s something you believe provides you protection, no one is going to say anything to you. But that should not, absolutely not be mandated,” DeSantis said, adding that such mandates “obviously” cannot occur in the state of Florida under his leadership and that it is his view that masking should remain a personal choice. . .

“I will say that from a scientific perspective, you have, even some of these experts now are acknowledging, with an aerosolized virus, a piece of cloth is not going to stop the aerosols,” DeSantis said:

When they started doing the masks last year, the thought was it was respiratory droplets, and so the respiratory droplets, maybe you could intercept some. When you’re starting to talk about aerosol transmission — something that’s very highly contagious — just understand. An N95, a medical mask, you know, that will intercept some of the aerosols. But just a piece of cloth is not going to do that. Osterholm, one of Biden’s advisers, has acknowledged that. You got other people who are acknowledging that.

(Read more from “DeSantis Blasts Mask Mandates: ‘Piece of Cloth Is Not Going to Stop the Aerosols’” HERE)

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China Launches Massive War Exercises Near Taiwan

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The Chinese military is ramping up massive military exercises in the South China Sea intended to brush back the United States as the Biden administration pleads with the Taliban to bring Americans back home from Afghanistan.

People’s Liberation Army Navy forces are conducting drills in the South China Sea, Yellow Sea, and Bohai Strait near Korea until Thursday. The intense war drills come shortly after another set of military exercises off the coast of Taiwan intended to help China achieve “supremacy” in a potential showdown with the United States and Taiwan, and in response to recent activity in the South China Sea, according to one former Chinese colonel.

Lawmakers and experts say combative messaging around the exercises from China’s military brass shows an increasingly relentless attitude from Beijing when it comes to seizing Taiwan. Brent Sadler, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation and former naval officer, told the Washington Free Beacon the war drills show the Chinese Communist Party is not just saber-rattling but also preparing for a conflict in the coming years.

“The timing of them may be normal, but the intensity and coordination of them are different,” Sadler said of the exercise. “China is setting the battlefield for a fight if it should happen in this six-year period that it can fight on its terms. There’s an urgency with that where we should similarly be setting the stage for more favorable conditions with our allies.”

China’s demonstrations come as President Joe Biden directs his national security team to focus on Afghanistan, where thousands of Americans are stuck behind Taliban lines. Though Vice President Kamala Harris is visiting Asia to engage allies on how to team up against Beijing, Chinese survey ships are already directly intruding into territory belonging to countries such as the Philippines and Indonesia. China also conducted another set of military exercises near Taiwan earlier in August, as well as a separate drill with Russian troops. The United States in turn is conducting its own annual maritime exercises with India, Australia, and Japan next week. (Read more from “China Launches Massive War Exercises Near Taiwan” HERE)

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Biden Sticks With Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline; CIA Boss Secretly Meets With Taliban as Evacuation Deadline Looms

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By CNN. President Joe Biden will stick, for now, with an August 31 deadline to withdraw US troops from Afghanistan after determining the risks of Taliban reprisal or terror attacks were too high.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said Biden relayed his decision in crisis talks of the Group of 7 on Tuesday morning, making clear the decision to stick to the withdrawal timeline was in large part driven by those security risks.

“The President conveyed that our mission in Kabul will end based on the achievement of our objectives,” Psaki said in a statement. “He confirmed we are currently on pace to finish by August 31st and provided an update on progress in evacuating Americans who want to come home, third-country nationals, and Afghans who were our allies during the war.”

Psaki said Biden noted that each day the risks are getting higher in a country now controlled by the Taliban. The President made a particular point of warning of the potential for terror attacks, which has become an acute concern inside his administration, Psaki said. (Read more from “Biden Sticks With Afghanistan Withdrawal Deadline” HERE)

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CIA Boss Secretly Meets With Taliban as Evacuation Deadline Looms

By Washington Examiner. Central Intelligence Agency Director William Burns met in person with top Taliban leader Abdul Ghani Baradar during a low-publicity rendezvous in Kabul on Monday.

Burns, a former diplomat and deputy secretary of state, traveled to the war-torn capital city of Kabul in Afghanistan for undisclosed negotiations with Baradar, according to reports first shared by the Washington Post. While the CIA has remained tight-lipped about the details of the meeting, Burns’s position as CIA director and a former high-ranking member of the State Department makes him the highest-ranking U.S. official to meet with the Taliban’s top brass in the flesh.

Word of the high-level meeting between Burns, a longtime diplomat now heading the spy agency under Biden, came as the U.S. mulled extending the Aug. 31 deadline to evacuate Afghanistan.

A Taliban spokesman warned of “consequences ” if the U.S. remained in Kabul into September, but the massive evacuation effort is proving difficult, and the military is running out of time to pull out American government workers, citizens, contractors, and Afghans who served the U.S. over the last 20 years. (Read more from “CIA Boss Secretly Meets With Taliban as Evacuation Deadline Looms” HERE)

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Lying Four Star General Compares U.S. Patriots to Taliban

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A former CIA chief who was in power at the end of the administration of George W. Bush into the early part of Barack Obama’s is likening a bunch of patriotic Americans flying Old Glory to the Taliban.

That would be murderous gang of Islamists in Afghanistan who shoot surrendering prisoners in cold blood, abduct 12-year-old girls for their harems, shoot women who wear Western clothes, and just recently took over the government there when Joe Biden abruptly withdrew American troops.

According to a report at American Greatness, it was Michael Hayden who repeated on social media an image that “explicitly compared supporters of President Donald Trump to the Taliban.”

The report noted Hayden was a four-star general who retired after holding the position of CIA director from 2006 to about 2009.

“The tweet in question depicted a split-screen image with Islamic terrorists riding in a convoy of pickup trucks and waving their flags, alongside a caravan of Trump supporters in pickup trucks waving American flags. The caption read: ‘Their Taliban. Our Taliban,'” the report explained. (Read more from “Lying Four Star General Compares U.S. Patriots to Taliban” HERE)

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