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Senator Vows to Fight More COVID Lockdowns, Continued Mask-Wearing

Sen. Rand Paul said Sunday he would do everything in his power to fight back against another possible lockdown under a projected Biden administration, as some of his coronavirus advisers have said may be necessary.

“I’m going to do everything I can to try to prevent Biden from locking us up and locking us down and forcing us to wear masks forever. We can’t go on like this forever,” he told WABC’s “The CATS Roundtable with John Catsimatidis.”

“Today, Biden’s talking more about a lockdown,” Paul added. “This is absolutely why he’s going to be a terrible president if we get him. He’s going to ruin the country. Lockdowns don’t work. And in fact, all of the evidence on mandatory masks show that they don’t work either.” . . .

Paul pointed out places that have implemented mandatory mask rules saw an increase in the infection rate.

“There’s about 10 different countries or venues, maybe 20, that instituted mandatory masks, and every one of them to a T, the infection rate or the COVID rate went up after the mask mandate,” he continued. “Now, this is just showing that … all these mitigation strategies — washing our hands, staying six feet apart — they really don’t work, frankly. And the virus, as the Wall Street Journal put it, is insidious. It does what it’s going to do. The only thing that’s going to stop it is either enough immunity among individuals in the community or a vaccine.” (Read more from “Senator Vows to Fight More COVID Lockdowns, Continued Mask-Wearing” HERE)

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Pro-Life Catholics Denounce Bishops for Congratulating Biden

Leaders of the American Life League (ALL), the oldest grassroots Catholic pro-life organization in the U.S., blasted the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) after they congratulated Democratic nominee Joe Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA) for reportedly winning the election.

Archbishop José H. Gomez of Los Angeles and president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops issued a statement in the wake of the election, saying in part:

[W]e recognize that Joseph R. Biden, Jr., has received enough votes to be elected the 46th President of the United States. We congratulate Mr. Biden and acknowledge that he joins the late President John F. Kennedy as the second United States president to profess the Catholic faith. We also congratulate Sen. Kamala D. Harris of California, who becomes the first woman ever elected as vice president.

We ask the Blessed Virgin Mary, patroness of this great nation, to intercede for us. May she help us to work together to fulfill the beautiful vision of America’s missionaries and founders — one nation under God, where the sanctity of every human life is defended and freedom of conscience and religion are guaranteed.

Judie Brown, the cofounder and president of ALL, responded in a statement earlier last week:

The USCCB has affirmed what many of us have suspected for many years, and that is that most Catholic bishops have no problem with a Catholic politician spitting at the face of Christ by supporting the vile murder of the preborn. Joe Biden is such a man; he claims to be Catholic, yet he gives 100 percent support for abortion every day of the week and in every manner of brutality against the innocent. The Catholic bishops have erred, and as a Catholic, I am ashamed of them.

(Read more from “Pro-Life Catholics Denounce Bishops for Congratulating Biden” HERE)

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Obama Didn’t Want To Campaign for Joe Biden

Former President Barack Obama was adamant that he wouldn’t have returned to the 2020 campaign trail if he didn’t have to.

“It is not my preference to be out there,” Obama told CBS in an interview that aired Sunday.

“We were in a circumstance in this election in which certain norms, certain institutional boundaries that are so extraordinarily important, had been breached,” he added. “It was important for me as somebody who has served in that office to simply let people know this is not normal.”

Obama created problems for President-elect Joe Biden this cycle by not endorsing his two-term vice president early during the primary. Instead, Obama insisted through spokespeople that he wanted to remain neutral throughout the process. (Read more from “Obama Didn’t Want To Campaign for Joe Biden” HERE)

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Ex-Clinton Aide Details the ‘Stealthy Road’ To a Trump Victory That’s Being Overlooked

. . .When former aides to Bill Clinton are saying there’s a chance, it’s not tinfoil hat stuff, which is how the liberal media has treated this. Graham Allison, who served as Assistant Secretary of Defense for Policy and Plans under that administration, recently wrote in The National Interest about one path that’s being ignored. He called it a “stealthy road,” and one that’s being overlooked. We have to go back to the 1876 election. Allison noted that state legislatures have the authority to declare that the popular vote was corrupted, thereby, permitting them to send a competing set of electors. I’ll let him explain the rest [emphasis mine]:

I believe the current consensus is missing the fact that Trump has a second, viable stealthy road to victory. I’m reluctantly betting that the debate about who won will continue until at least January 6 when slates of electoral college members are opened in Washington, and most likely beyond that as whatever is decided then is appealed by the loser to the Supreme Court. My conclusion reflects the analysis of my colleague in the Applied History Network at the Belfer Center which is below.

As he notes, this stealthy road follows in the footsteps of a number of previous contested American elections, especially the 1876 election that pitted Tilden v. Hayes. Then as now, each state must decide on a group of electors to meet with a joint session of Congress on January 6 where the winner of the presidential election is declared. The normal practice in a state where Biden won the popular-vote total would be for state election officials to certify the results and send a slate of electors to Congress. But state legislatures have the constitutional authority to conclude that the popular vote has been corrupted and thus send a competing slate of electors on behalf of their state. The 12th Amendment to the Constitution specifies that the “President of the Senate shall, in the presence of the Senate and House of Representatives, open all the certificates and the votes shall then be counted.” That means that in the case of disputes about competing electoral slates, the President of the Senate—Vice President Pence—would appear to have the ultimate authority to decide which to accept and which to reject. Pence would choose Trump. Democrats would appeal to the Supreme Court.

Alternatively, if at that point, no candidate has the required 270 electoral votes, the 12th Amendment stipulates, “the House of Representatives shall choose immediately, by ballot, the President. But in choosing the President, the votes shall be taken by states, the representation from each state having one vote.” [GOP has the majority there]

(Read more from “Ex-Clinton Aide Details the ‘Stealthy Road’ To a Trump Victory That’s Being Overlooked” HERE)

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Biden Taps Reparations Advocate for Treasury Transition

A major reparations advocate has a seat on Joe Biden’s transition team.

Mehrsa Baradaran, a professor at the University of California, Irvine School of Law, is helping Biden prepare to “hit the ground running on Day One” as a member of his Department of the Treasury agency review team. Baradaran is an outspoken advocate of reparations for black Americans, both as a means of correcting “white supremacy” and closing the racial wealth gap.

Biden and Sen. Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) dodged questions about reparations throughout the 2020 cycle. Baradaran took note of their refusal to stake out a firm stance on the issue. “Dear Kamala, Reparations or go home,” she wrote in June 2019. “Biden just dodged that reparations question like a much nimbler and younger man,” she said in December 2019, referencing a Democratic primary debate.

In her 2017 book The Color of Money: Black Banks and the Racial Wealth Gap, Baradaran argues that closing the racial wealth gap requires acknowledging past wrongs and providing compensation for damages. “A reparations program could take many forms from simple cash payments or baby bonds to more complex schemes such as subsidized college tuition, basic income, housing vouchers, or subsidized mortgage credit,” she writes. Baradaran’s book inspired Netflix to donate $100 million to organizations that “support Black communities.” (Read more from “Biden Taps Reparations Advocate for Treasury Transition” HERE)

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GOP Governor Won’t Comply With Biden Face Mask Mandate: He ‘Doesn’t Have the Authority’

South Dakota Gov. Kristi Noem says she won’t enforce a national face mask mandate if it is issued by President-elect Joe Biden.

“It’s a good day for freedom. Joe Biden realizes that the president doesn’t have the authority to institute a mask mandate,” Noem’s communications director Ian Fury said this week. “For that matter, neither does Gov. Noem, which is why she has provided her citizens with the full scope of the science and trusted them to make the best decisions for themselves and their loved ones.”

Since the early days of the coronavirus pandemic, Noem has adopted an approach that she says is focused on the Constitution and “people’s freedoms and liberties,” which has generated much criticism from many Democratic politicians and media figures.

“The facts on the ground here did not support shelter-in-place,” Noem said in April. “We just didn’t have the spread. For me, personally, I took an oath to uphold our state Constitution. I took an oath when I was in Congress to uphold the United States Constitution. So, I believe in people’s freedoms and liberties, and I always balance that with every decision that I make as governor. I get overly concerned with leaders who take too much power in a time of crisis because I think that’s how we directly lose our country someday by leaders overstepping their proper role.” (Read more from “GOP Governor Won’t Comply With Biden Face Mask Mandate: He ‘Doesn’t Have the Authority'” HERE)

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Iran: ‘Golden Days Will Be Back’ With Biden Presidency

Iran’s Islamic regime is looking forward to having a Democrat, Joe Biden, in the White House, because it means “golden days will be back.”

“It is unfortunate that Iran’s ruling mullahs view a possible victory of the Democrat Party in U.S. elections as a win for the Tehran regime, its proxies and militia groups,” wrote Majid Rafizadeh, a business adviser and political scientist who is a board member of Harvard International Review.

“President Rouhani has already called for restoring the nuclear deal. It could well be a loss for continuing peace in the region and for finally restoring the violated Iranian people’s hoped-for human rights,” he wrote in a column for the Gatestone Institute.

Rafizadeh, who also is president of the International American Council on the Middle East, said Iran’s leaders are “excitingly” promoting Biden’s claim to have won the 2020 election amid President Trump’s court challenges alleging vote fraud. . .

“The last three years has indeed been a nightmare for the Iranian regime and its proxies. No U.S. administration before the current one has imposed such a draconian pressure on the mullahs, their rogue state and their allies,” he said. (Read more from “Iran: ‘Golden Days Will Be Back’ With Biden Presidency” HERE)

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Obama Reveals if He’ll Take a Cabinet Position in the Biden Administration

Former President Barack Obama has ruled out taking on any formal position in President-elect Joe Biden’s administration — quipping that wife Michelle would leave him.

“I will help him in any ways that I can. But now, you know, I’m not planning to suddenly work on the White House staff or something,” Obama told anchor Gayle King in a sit-down interview that aired Sunday on “CBS This Morning”

King responded, saying, “No cabinet position for you, Mr. President?”

“There are probably some things I would not be doing, ’cause Michelle would leave me. She’d be like, ‘What? You’re doin’ what?’” Obama joked. (Read more from “Obama Reveals if He’ll Take a Cabinet Position in the Biden Administration” HERE)

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Revealed: Biden Cancer Charity Spent Millions on Salaries, Zero on Research

A cancer charity started by Joe Biden gave out no money to research, and spent most of its contributions on staff salaries, federal filings show.

The Biden Cancer Initiative was founded in 2017 by the former vice president and his wife Jill Biden to “develop and drive implementation of solutions to accelerate progress in cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, research and care and to reduce disparities in cancer outcomes,” according to its IRS mission statement. But it gave out no grants in its first two years, and spent millions on the salaries of former Washington DC aides it hired.

The charity took in $4,809,619 in contributions in fiscal years 2017 and 2018, and spent $3,070,301 on payroll in those two years. The group’s president, Gregory Simon, raked in $429,850 in fiscal 2018 (July 1, 2018 to June 30, 2019), according to the charity’s most recent federal tax filings.

Simon, a former Pfizer executive and longtime health care lobbyist who headed up the White House’s cancer task force in the Obama administration, saw his salary nearly double from the $224,539 he made in fiscal 2017, tax filings show.

Danielle Carnival, former chief of staff for Obama’s cancer initiative, the Cancer Moonshot Task Force, who took home $258,207 in 2018. (Read more from “Revealed: Biden Cancer Charity Spent Millions on Salaries, Zero on Research” HERE)

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Potential Biden Cabinet Pick Linked To Chinese Propaganda Outlets

Jeffrey Sachs, an economist and potential progressive pick for a cabinet position under a Joe Biden administration, appeared on Chinese propaganda outlets throughout the 2020 campaign to blast U.S. foreign policy as an “unholy crusade against China.”

Sachs, a Columbia University economist, contributed to scathing articles in the Global Times, China Daily, and other regime mouthpieces and has done media hits on state-owned outlets such as the China Global Television Network (CGTN). Sachs has maintained a long relationship with the Chinese government and business elite, which can be traced back to at least the early 2000s.

Over the last few months, Sachs has criticized new U.S. restrictions on Huawei as undue “punitive measures” and condemned sanctions implemented after Beijing’s Hong Kong crackdown. The academic has also lavished praise on China for its economic development programs, including the controversial Belt and Road Initiative, which critics fear is trapping developing countries in crippling debt. He accused President Donald Trump of “trying to incite a new cold war against China” in comments published in the Global Times in May.

Originally an economist who made a name for himself in the field of development economics, Sachs has made frequent appearances on mainstream U.S. media networks such as CNN and MSNBC, earning him a following among progressives. His name has been floated as a potential cabinet member in a Biden White House. (Read more from “Potential Biden Cabinet Pick Linked To Chinese Propaganda Outlets” HERE)

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