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President Trump Says Executive Order Necessary ‘If Democrats Continue to Hold Relief Hostage’

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By Fox News. President Trump threatened to take coronavirus relief into his own hands “if Democrats continue to hold relief hostage.”

Trump said if coronavirus negotiations continued to stall, he would sign an executive order deferring the payroll tax until the end of the year, starting July 1 retroactively, and extend enhanced unemployment benefits.

He did not state how much those benefits would be — $600 per week was given in additional federal benefits under the last relief bill but Republicans have proposed cutting that to $200 per week.

The president also said his executive order would defer student loan payments and forgive interest “until further notice.”

Trump said lawyers were drawing up the executive order currently and “it could be by the end of the week” that he signs it. He said, “probably we get sued” but he isn’t worried about the legality because “everything gets sued.” (Read more from “President Trump Says Executive Order Necessary ‘If Democrats Continue to Hold Relief Hostage'” HERE)

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House Democrats Slam Trump Coronavirus Response as ‘Wrong’ and ‘Dangerous’

By CNBC. House Democrats slammed the administration’s response to the pandemic Thursday, saying in a new report that President Donald Trump “intentionally misled the American public on every aspect of the pandemic” and it’s led to needless deaths and job losses.

Led by Rep. James Clyburn, chairman of the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis, House Democrats released a scathing report titled “A Failure to Lead: The Trump administration’s Disastrous Response to the Coronaviurs Pandemic.” . . .

White House spokeswoman Sarah Matthews said the U.S. leads the world in testing with more than 64 million tests. “Our national testing strategy has ensured that states were adequately supplied and that our most vulnerable received needed testing,” she said in an emailed statement. (Read more from “House Democrats Slam Trump Coronavirus Response as ‘Wrong’ and ‘Dangerous’” HERE)

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Trump Will Require Insurance Companies to Cover Preexisting Conditions

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President Trump will require insurance companies to cover all patients with preexisting conditions, he said during a press briefing on Friday.

“We will be pursuing a major executive order requiring health insurance companies to cover all preexisting conditions for all of its customers,” Trump said. “This has never been done before but it’s time the people of our country are properly represented and properly taken care of.”

The Affordable Care Act, which the administration has taken steps to undo, provides coverage for preexisting conditions, which means an insurance company cannot refuse to cover an individual based on health problems.

Last month, the president also announced a series of actions aimed at lowering the cost of prescription drug prices. Among them were allowing the importation of prescription drugs from Canada and other countries and cutting out the “middlemen” to deliver discounts directly to consumers. (Read more from “Trump Will Require Insurance Companies to Cover Preexisting Conditions” HERE)

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Facebook Levels 90-Day Ad Ban on Pro-Trump Super Pac

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By Washington Examiner. Facebook announced a ban on digital advertisements from the pro-Trump political action committee The Committee to Defend the President for sharing alleged misinformation repeatedly, which is expected to continue past Election Day.

The move comes one day after the social media giant deleted a video the president shared where he claimed children were “almost immune” to the coronavirus, which the company said violated its coronavirus “misinformation” policy.

Fox Business reported that Facebook’s ban on the committee’s ads would last 90 days.

“As a result of the Committee to Defend the President’s repeated sharing of content determined by third-party fact-checkers to be false, they will not be permitted to advertise for a period of time on our platform,” said Facebook spokesperson Andy Stone.

A rebuke by the group claims Facebook’s “Trump-hating” fact-checkers “restrict free speech” by failing to assess their claims accurately. (Read more from “Facebook Levels 90-Day Ad Ban on Pro-Trump Super Pac” HERE)

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Reelection Reboot for Donald Trump in Two New Ads

By Florida Politics. U.S. President Donald Trump is attempting a narrative recalibration as August begins, with two new ads in early voting states, including Florida.

The campaign went dark last week, in a belief that strategy needed to be “smarter and more strategic.” The latest spots, in addition to airing in the Sunshine State, will also be seen in North Carolina, Arizona and Georgia. . .

According to the campaign, the goal is to inform voters that presumptive Democratic nominee Joe Biden is an “empty vessel, a tool being used by the radical left to advance their extreme agenda.”

The first spot, Takeover, “exposes Biden as a tool of the radical left,” focusing on tax hike proposals, amnesty for undocumented immigrants, and cuts in police funding. . .

The second spot, meanwhile, hits familiar themes of the “Joe Biden is weak” variety, but departs from the usual bombast-and-bluster approach, with no voiceover at all.

(Read more from “Reelection Reboot for Donald Trump in Two New Ads” HERE)

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Trump Campaign Sues Nevada Over Mail-In Voting

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By NBC News. President Trump’s reelection campaign is suing Nevada over a newly passed bill that expands mail-in voting for the November general election[.] . . .

The lawsuit filed by the Trump campaign, the Republican National Committee and the Nevada Republican Party against Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, a Republican, on Tuesday takes aim at Assembly Bill 4, under which all active registered voters in Nevada will be sent mail ballots for the November 3 election. The Trump campaign claims the measure “makes voter fraud and other ineligible voting inevitable.”

“Many of AB4’s provisions are head-scratching — particularly given the stark irregularities in Nevada’s June 2020 primary election, and because AB4 changes so many election laws so close to the 2020 general election,” the Republicans said in their lawsuit.

The legal challenge from the Trump campaign and the GOP claims several of the bill’s provisions are unconstitutional, including one that requires election officials to count ballots received up to three days after Election Day even if the date it was postmarked is unclear. They are also targeting two sections of the bill that dictate the number of in-person polling places for early voting and day-of voting, claiming the provisions will lead to more polling places for voters in urban counties than rural counties. (Read more from “Trump Campaign Sues Nevada Over Mail-In Voting” HERE)

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Wealthy Donors Pour Millions Into Fight Over Mail-In Voting

By AP News. Deep-pocketed and often anonymous donors are pouring over $100 million into an intensifying dispute about whether it should be easier to vote by mail, a fight that could determine President Donald Trump’s fate in the November election.

In the battleground of Wisconsin, cash-strapped cities have received $6.3 million from an organization with ties to left-wing philanthropy to help expand vote by mail. Meanwhile, a well-funded conservative group best known for its focus on judicial appointments is spending heavily to fight cases related to mail-in balloting procedures in court. . .

The massive effort by political parties, super PACs and other organizations to fight over whether Americans can vote by mail is remarkable considering the practice has long been noncontroversial. But the coronavirus is forcing changes to the way states conduct elections and prompting activists across the political spectrum to seek an advantage, recognizing the contest between Trump and Democrat Joe Biden could hinge on whether voters have an alternative to standing in lines at polling places during a public health crisis. (Read more from “Wealthy Donors Pour Millions Into Fight Over Mail-In Voting” 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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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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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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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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Trump Appropriately Argues COVID Stat Pushed by Axios is Irrelevant: ‘You Can’t Do That’ (VIDEO)

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(See editor’s note, below)

By National Review. President Trump argued that the number of COVID deaths per capita is irrelevant and pointed to the number of deaths in proportion to cases as a sign that the U.S. is doing well in its battle against the virus during an interview with “Axios on HBO” Monday.

“I’m talking about death as a proportion of population,” Axios’ Jonathan Swan told the president. “That’s where the U.S. is really bad. Much worse than South Korea, Germany, etc.”

“You can’t do that,” Trump responded, adding that the data should “go by the cases.”

“It’s surely a relevant statistic to say if the U.S. has X population and X percentage of death of that population vs. South Korea,” Swan pushed back, citing reporting from Seoul showing 300 deaths out of the country’s population of 51 million. . .

“You don’t know that,” Trump said in response to South Korea’s numbers, leading Swan to ask the president if he believes the country is faking its statistics. (Read more from “Trump Argues Irrelevant COVID Stat: ‘You Can’t Do That'” HERE)

(Editor’s note: Trump got it right. The more COVID testing that is done, the more known COVID deaths a nation will have. If you don’t test, you don’t have reported COVID deaths. So comparing the U.S. per capita COVID death rate to countries that test far less is an absolutely unfair comparison)

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Trump Weighs Executive Action as Negotiations Progress on Next Coronavirus Stimulus Package

By USA Today. The president on Monday said he was weighing executive action as Congress and the White House struggle to break the impasse over another emergency relief package to counter the coronavirus’ impact on U.S. families and the economy.

Negotiators on Monday signaled they’d made progress hashing out differences between Republican and Democratic proposals for the next stimulus package, though a deal remains far out out of reach and millions of unemployed Americans remain in financial limbo after a $600 weekly unemployment benefit expired on Friday.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, Congress’ top Democrats, met again Monday with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin for several hours, where they examined the competing proposals and went through specific dollar amounts in various areas in the two bills. . .

Meanwhile, President Donald Trump on Monday floated the possibility of taking unilateral action if a deal could not be made with Democrats, claiming he has the power to step in and curtail Congress should there be a need. The president specifically noted the moratorium on housing evictions that recently expired.

“A lot of people are going to be evicted but I’m going to stop it because I’ll do it myself if I have to,” Trump said at the White House. “I have a lot of powers with respect to executive orders and we’re looking at that very seriously right now.” (Read more from “Trump Weighs Executive Action as Negotiations Progress on Next Coronavirus Stimulus Package” HERE)

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On New Voter Registration in Key States, Trump Is Blowing Biden Out of the Water

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While polling continues to show President Trump behind Biden in key swing states, new voter registration numbers are telling a different story about his chances to win re-election in November.

According to Axios, the RNC continues to register more voters than the Democrat Party in places where it will matter most.

The Trump campaign and RNC have now registered 100,000 new voters in the 2020 cycle, more than doubling their numbers from 2016 and shrinking Democrats’ registration advantage in key swing states, according to new Trump Victory data provided exclusively to Axios.

The Trump campaign and RNC have now registered 100,000 new voters in the 2020 cycle, more than doubling their numbers from 2016 and shrinking Democrats’ registration advantage in key swing states, according to new Trump Victory data provided exclusively to Axios.

(Read more from “On New Voter Registration in Key States, Trump Is Blowing Biden Out of the Water” HERE)

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