If You Defy COVID Orders in This City, Your Utilities Will Be Shut Off

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Following reports of large parties that violate health orders aimed at slowing the spread of the novel coronavirus, Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti announced Wednesday that he will authorize the city to shut off water and power services to residents who hold such gatherings.

Beginning Friday night, if Los Angeles Police Department officers respond to and verify that a large party is occurring at a property, and there’s evidence that the venue has repeatedly engaged in such behavior, the department will request that the city shut off water and power services within 48 hours.

Garcetti said that while all nightclubs and bars have already been closed, “these large house parties have essentially become nightclubs in the hills” and often happen at homes that are vacant or used for short-term rentals. . .

L.A. Councilman David Ryu also introduced a motion Wednesday to increase penalties and provide additional enforcement options against property owners who defy city laws or building and safety rules, including the city’s 2018 party-house ordinance. (Read more from “If You Defy COVID Orders in This City, Your Utilities Will Be Shut Off” HERE)

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Trump Signs Executive Order Banning TikTok in 45 Days

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President Trump issued an executive order Thursday night that would see the social media platform TikTok banned within 45 days.

TikTok is a video sharing mobile application, owned by ByteDance Ltd., that the Trump administration has deemed a national security threat on the basis that the app has been gathering data that could potentially be shared with the government of China.

“TikTok automatically gathers vast swaths of information from its users, including internet and other network activity information such as location data and browsing and search history,” the executive order said.

“This data threatens to allow the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) access to Americans’ personal and propietrary information – potentially allowing China to track the locations of Federal employees and contractors, build dossiers of personal information and blackmail, and conduct corporate espionage.”

The U.S. ban puts pressure on the China-based company to sell the app’s U.S. platform – Microsoft is reportedly a leading contender, but the deal will be closely monitored by the Trump administration. (Read more from “Trump Signs Executive Order Banning TikTok in 45 Days” HERE)

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Poll: Black Americans Favor Higher Police Presence

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A Gallup poll released on Wednesday shows that 81 percent of black Americans want the police presence to remain the same or increase in their neighborhood or area. According to the poll, “67 percent of all U.S. adults” also prefer the “status quo” when it comes to local police presence.

“Most Black Americans want the police to spend at least as much time in their area as they currently do, indicating that they value the need for the service that police provide,” the poll concludes.

Eighty-three percent of Hispanic Americans and 88 percent of white Americans share similar attitudes. In contrast, only 72 percent of Asian Americans say they would prefer increased or the same amount of police presence in their neighborhoods.

After an examination of factors such as volume and frequency of police interactions, however, researchers determined that neither were the most significant factor in dictating black Americans’ attitudes towards police presence in their area.

While “exposure comes with more trepidation for Black than White or Hispanic Americans about what they might experience in a police encounter,” poll analysis suggests that “simply having an interaction with the police in the past year has no bearing on black Americans’ preference for local police presence in their area.” (Read more from “Poll: Black Americans Favor Higher Police Presence” HERE)

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Trump Finalizes Rule Defining Gender as a Person’s Biological Sex

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The Trump administration on Friday finalized a regulation that defines gender as a person’s biological sex, reversing an Obama-era rule aimed at protecting transgender people against sex discrimination in health care.

The Health and Human Services Department regulation says essentially that “gender identity” is not protected under federal law prohibiting sex discrimination in health care.

The policy shift was long sought by religious and social conservatives. The Obama administration’s regulation defined gender as a person’s internal sense of being male, female, neither or a combination.

Dr. Grazie Pozo Christie, policy adviser for The Catholic Association, praised the move. She said preventing “discrimination on the basis of sex” was intended “to ensure that women are treated on a par with men.”

“Changing the definition of sex to mean ‘gender identity’ and to include unfettered access to abortion would not have protected the vulnerable,” she said. “Instead, it would have made it impossible for doctors to decline to perform ethically problematic procedures (like late-term abortion) and experimental and dangerous ones (like the removal of healthy organs from young patients with gender dysphoria.) Getting the government out of the business of social engineering, and out of the way of sound medical ethics and patient care is a step forward.” (Read more from “Trump Finalizes Rule Defining Gender as a Person’s Biological Sex” HERE)

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Democratic Donor Ed Buck Facing New Charges for Prostitution, Fatal Drug Overdose

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Disgraced Democratic donor Ed Buck has been charged with four more felonies, including enticing victims to travel interstate for prostitution.

The Justice Department announced Tuesday that a Los Angeles federal grand jury returned an updated indictment with the additional felony charges, bringing a total of nine counts against Buck, 65, before he is scheduled to head to trial in January.

Prosecutors have alleged Buck operated a drug den in his West Hollywood home, where he administered methamphetamine to men against their will during sexual encounters.

Among the new charges, prosecutors claim Buck knowingly lured one of his victims, Gemmel Moore, 26, to travel to Los Angeles, where Buck provided methamphetamine to Moore who then fatally overdosed on July 27, 2017. (Read more from “Democratic Donor Ed Buck Facing New Charges for Prostitution, Fatal Drug Overdose” HERE)

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Twitter Places Ban on Trump Campaign Account

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Twitter temporarily banned the Trump 2020 campaign from tweeting on their social media platform until they deleted a video about the coronavirus on Wednesday.

Liz Kelley, a spokesperson for Twitter, told the Washington Post that the video was “is in violation of the Twitter Rules on COVID-19 misinformation.” . . .

The Trump Team tweet contained a video of President Donald Trump from an interview with Fox News where he said that children were “almost immune” from the coronavirus.

Facebook also took down a post from the president about children contracting coronavirus on Wednesday.

“This video includes false claims that a group of people is immune from COVID-19 which is a violation of our policies around harmful COVID misinformation,” said Andy Stone, a spokesperson for Facebook. (Read more from “Twitter Places Ban on Trump Campaign Account” HERE)

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How Many Americans Are Saying ‘Hard Pass’ to a Coronavirus Vaccine?

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. . .The White House and members of Congress are banking on vaccine development to get the United States through this pandemic. Even if a successful vaccine is developed, succeeds in trials, and makes its way to market, just how many Americans are willing to vaccinate?

According to a new poll conducted by Yahoo News and NewGov, 42 percent of Americans say they would get the vaccination. That number is a record low for willingness to get a vaccine, and it could be a problem for the nation. Scientists say at least 60 percent of the population – although 75 to 80 percent would be ideal – need to get the vaccine in order for the vaccine to be effective.

The reason people are reluctant to receive the vaccination varies considerably.

“The outlook for universal vaccination is clouded by political considerations from both sides: skepticism about medical authority and expertise (more common among Trump supporters), and suspicions (mostly among Democrats) that the administration is cutting corners on safety to rush a vaccine into production before the election,” the poll concluded. (Read more from “How Many Americans Are Saying ‘Hard Pass’ to a Coronavirus Vaccine?” HERE)

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President Trump Is Encouraging This State to Vote by Mail; Trump, Democrats Both Hold Fears About U.S. Postal Service, Mail-In Ballots

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By Fox News. President Trump tweeted Tuesday afternoon that Florida voters should vote by mail this November, claiming that there is nothing to worry about in terms of security.

The president has generally railed against mail-in voting, claiming that Democrats are going to take advantage of the system to commit fraud and rig the election against him. At this point, however, he appears confident that this will not be the case in the Sunshine State. . .

Some states, like Maryland, are mailing absentee ballot applications to voters rather than the ballots themselves. A common practice, this process requires voters to provide personal information in order to get a ballot. What is new is states mailing ballots to voters unprompted, which has caused concerns over how states decide who to send them to. Trump on Monday threatened legal action against a universal mail-in voting plan in Nevada.

Trump and other Republicans have warned that mail-in voting could lead to ballot harvesting, ballots for dead people or ballots for people who no longer live at the residence where they are sent being fraudulently filled out. Additional concerns include ballots being lost in the mail and disenfranchising voters. (Read more from “President Trump Is Encouraging This State to Vote by Mail” HERE)

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Trump, Democrats Both Hold Fears About U.S. Postal Service, Mail-In Ballots

By The Hill. The U.S. Postal Service (USPS) is under intense partisan scrutiny from both President Trump and Democratic lawmakers, who are warning the agency is ill-equipped to handle the tens of millions of mailed-in ballots expected to be sent for the November election.

Many states have moved to expand access to mail balloting in an effort to reduce in-person voting amid the coronavirus pandemic, leading to growing concerns that Postal Service delays could draw the vote count out for days or weeks past Election Day.

There are fears that ballots that are late, missing or disqualified for small irregularities will lead to lawsuits and questions about the integrity of the elections.

The coronavirus pandemic has hampered post office operations and led to delays in mail delivery. The Postal Service faces serious financial pressures, and Congress is at odds over whether to provide additional assistance, even as it handles more shipments. (Read more from “Trump, Democrats Both Hold Fears About U.S. Postal Service, Mail-In Ballots” HERE)

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Portland Riots: DHS Investigates Link Between Antifa and Syrian Fighters; Trump-Loving Grandma Outs Portland ‘Bomber’ to Feds — and It’s Her Own Grandson

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By Washington Examiner. A leaked internal report from the Department of Homeland Security revealed that the federal government is investigating a half-dozen Americans who support antifa for possible connections to a terrorist group in Syria.

DHS’s Intelligence & Analysis Office, criticized by acting Secretary Chad Wolf last week for compiling information on two journalists, released an internal report in mid-July titled The Syrian Conflict and its Nexus to the U.S.-based Antifascist Movement. The investigation began in June, two weeks after President Trump promised to designate antifa a terrorist organization and just as attacks on federal property and federal agents in Portland, Oregon, were escalating.

The government report was not to be shared publicly, in part because it names those investigated, and concludes that “there appears to be a clear connection” between the antifa ideology and what the report described as “Kurdish democratic federalism teachings,” according to a copy obtained by The Nation’s Ken Klippenstein.

More than half a dozen people left the United States to fight alongside Kurdish factions, including the People’s Protection Units, according to DHS’s Customs and Border Protection’s National Targeting Center Counter Network Division, who compiled information in the report. (Read more from “Portland Riots: DHS Investigates Link Between Antifa and Syrian Fighters” HERE)

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Trump-Loving Grandma Outs Portland ‘Bomber’ to Feds — and It’s Her Own Grandson

By New York Post. Shortly after midnight on Tuesday morning, videos captured the moment a makeshift bomb was thrown at the Portland federal courthouse during another night of violent protest. A Trump-loving, 69-year-old woman soon stepped forward to out the suspect publicly — as her own grandson.

Karla Fox says she recognized the alleged bomber as her daughter’s son, 18-year-old Gabriel “Rico” Agard-Berryhill.

In the hours after the IED attack, social-media users analyzed videos showing a slim male, wearing a distinctive olive vest with the word “ICONS” printed on it, throwing something over the fence at the Mark O. Hatfield Courthouse. Seconds later, a large explosion erupts, covering the front door in flames. The man picks up something off the ground and sprints off-camera. Police said the concussion could be “heard and felt more than a block away.”

Fox instantly identified her grandson because she gave him the vest.

“I bought the vest for him after he found one online after getting hit with rubber bullets the night before at the protest,” Fox told The Post. (She even left a positive review on clothing site Hibbett: “I got this for my grandson who’s a protester downtown, he uses it every night and says it does the job.”) She posted a photo of him posing in the $26 non-bulletproof apparel. (Read more from “Trump-Loving Grandma Outs Portland ‘Bomber’ to Feds — and It’s Her Own Grandson” HERE)

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Trump Administration Slates $35m to Help Survivors of Human Trafficking

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The Trump administration will issue more than $35 million in grants to provide safe housing to survivors of human trafficking.

The Justice Department was set to announce Tuesday that its Office for Victims of Crime will award the funds to 73 organizations across the nation to provide six to 24 months of transitional or short-term housing assistance for trafficking victims, a White House official said. . .

Attorney General William Barr and White House adviser Ivanka Trump, the president’s elder daughter, were to announce the grants at a 2 p.m. event Tuesday.

“In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, combating human trafficking in the U.S. and abroad is critical work,” Trump said in a public statement, adding:

DOJ’s grant recipients are on the front lines of this fight, ensuring that survivors across our country are afforded safe and stable housing and empowered with the support and resources they need to rebuild their lives. I am incredibly honored to join Attorney General Barr to highlight these organizations and their tireless and vital work.

(Read more from “Trump Administration Slates $35m to Help Survivors of Human Trafficking” HERE)

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