New York Admits Knowingly Undercounting Nursing Home Deaths After Quietly Changing Reporting Rules

New York has omitted an unknown number of coronavirus deaths in recent reports regarding residents of nursing home and adult care facilities, the New York State Department of Health acknowledged in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

In early May, those reports quietly began omitting long-term care residents who died of coronavirus in hospitals. Even so, New York still leads the nation with 5,433 reported deaths at nursing homes and adult care facilities as of Wednesday.

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Commentary: Borders and Taking Care of Our Own

One of my favorite short stories is “The Lame Shall Enter First” by Flannery O’Connor. The plot centers on a young, atheist widower who takes in a violent teenage orphan and attempts to reform him. Neglecting his own young and motherless son, the widower focuses all his love and attention on the delinquent teen, even blinding himself to certain crimes the teen commits.

As is common in O’Connor’s work, the ending is gut-wrenching, with the father realizing his neglectful behavior too late as his son commits suicide.

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GOP Lawmaker Breaks Ranks, Will Vote for Pelosi’s Coronavirus Package

An outgoing Republican lawmaker says he will buck his party to vote for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s coronavirus stimulus package, a bill that includes a slate of progressive measures.

New York Rep. Peter King told to The Hill Wednesday that he plans to vote for House Democrats’s HEROES Act, a $3 trillion relief package for Americans suffering financially from the coronavirus pandemic. The bill has been criticized by some Republicans as a “liberal wishlist” that has no chance of passing.

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Tennessee GOP Senate Candidate Bill Hagerty Weighs in on Joe Biden and His Plan to Bring Back Supply Chains to America

Former Ambassador to Japan and Tennessee Republican Senate Candidate Bill Hagerty joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Thursday morning on the newsmakers line.

During the third hour, Hagerty discussed former Vice President Joe Biden’s involvement in the unmasking of General Michael Flynn and how he has deep ties to the Chinese Communist Party. Hagerty said his campaign is actively laying out a blueprint for bringing much-needed supply chains back to America.

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Carol Swain Question’s Mayor Cooper’s Spending While Expecting More Bailout Money from the Federal Government

Live from Music Row Thursday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – Leahy was joined on the newsmakers line by all-star panelist and former Vanderbilt Professor of Law Dr. Carol Swain.

At the bottom of the second hour, Swain reported from credible sources that Mayor Cooper has purchased 40,000 thermometers for Metro employees while keeping his hands out for federal coronavirus bailout money. She added that the coronavirus numbers don’t add up to a shutdown which has forced Nashville to the top of the list of metropolitan cities that are losing the most money during the pandemic.

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Trump Plans to Keep Borders Closed Until Coronavirus Isn’t a Threat: Report

The Trump administration is preparing an order that will extend current border restrictions indefinitely, until a top public health official declares the novel coronavirus is no longer a threat, The New York Times reported Wednesday.

The White House plans to keep border restrictions in place until it decides the coronavirus outbreak is not a significant threat to the public anymore, according to a draft of a public health order obtained by the NYT. If such an order is implemented, it would remove any concrete timetable to open up the U.S.-Mexico border to non-essential traffic.

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U.S. Sen. Burr Steps Down from Senate Intelligence Committee Chairmanship

A day after his cellphone was seized by federal agents as part of an FBI investigation into insider trading, North Carolina U.S. Sen. Richard Burr is leaving his position as chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

“Senator Burr contacted me this morning to inform me of his decision to step aside as Chairman of the Intelligence Committee during the pendency of the investigation,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, said in a statement. “We agreed that this decision would be in the best interests of the committee and will be effective at the end of the day tomorrow.”

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Nashville Officials Scold White House for Reporting False COVID-19 Data Despite Nashville Officials Making Similar Claims Two Weeks Ago

Metro Coronavirus Task Force Chair Alex Jahangir scolded members of the White House Thursday for saying — falsely — that Nashville had a sudden 129 percent increase in confirmed COVID-19 cases earlier this month.

Jahangir said a spike at a prison in nearby Trousdale County had a lot to do with the White House reporting false data about Nashville. This, even though, as The Tennessee Star reported, Jahangir earlier this month made misleading claims about Trousdale County numbers and how they relate to Nashville.

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BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Making In-Network Telehealth Services Permanent

BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee members will have easier access to health care services moving forward as the state’s largest insurer makes permanent its coverage of virtual visits with in-network providers effective immediately, according to a press release the company put out Thursday.

“The BlueCross decision makes it the first major insurer to embrace telehealth for the long-term after the dramatic expansion of these services during the COVID-19 pandemic, a move the company said aligns with other steps it has taken to improve access to primary care. In March, the mission-driven insurer began covering telephone and video visits with in-network providers,” the press release said.

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Confirmed: China Pressured WHO Against Declaring Coronavirus Global Health Emergency

China pressured the World Health Organization (WHO) against declaring the coronavirus pandemic a global health emergency, a senior U.S. intelligence official told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

That official’s account confirms aspects of Newsweek’s reporting, which cited a CIA report stating that China urged the WHO not to declare the pandemic a global health emergency.

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Bezos Could Become World’s First Trillionaire as Amazon Rakes in Cash During Pandemic, Research Shows

Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos is expected to ride the wave of business his company is collecting during the coronavirus pandemic to become the world’s first trillionaire, research shows.

Bezos’s net worth has grown by 34% on average over the past half decade, which could make him a trillionaire, according to an analysis from Comparisun, a platform that helps companies create business management tools. Along with creating marketing tools, the company also conducts studies forecasting what will happen in the business sector, Comparisun’s website noted.

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Wisconsin Supreme Court Strikes Down Evers’ Safer-at-Home Restrictions

A divided Wisconsin Supreme Court struck down Gov. Tony Evers’ extended safer at home order Wednesday, siding with Republicans who claimed the governor overstepped his authority when his administration extended restrictions on individuals and businesses through May 26.

In the 4-3 decision, all but one of the court’s conservative members ruled that the Evers’ administration does not have the legal power to continuously extend restrictions in the name of trying to slow the spread of COVID-19.

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Commentary: Senate Should Adopt Sen. Rand Paul Amendment to Ensure FISA Abuse Never Happens Again

Reauthorization of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is once again up for consideration and Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) has an amendment to fix it — and is urging President Donald Trump to veto the renewal legislation if the Senate doesn’t adopt it.

What makes the Paul amendment unique — and why it must be adopted — as summarized by Lawfareblog.com is that it would “require that electronic surveillance, use of a pen register or trap-and-trace device, production of tangible things, or targeting of U.S. persons for information can be done only pursuant to a warrant issued by a non-FISA federal court and only under the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure.”

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Lewis Says Any Politician Who Purports to Represent the People Can’t ‘Deny Them Their God-Given Right to Earn a Living’

  There’s no “pandemic exception” to the Bill of Rights, Republican Senate candidate Jason Lewis told The Minnesota Sun in a recent interview. That’s the same argument U.S. Attorney General Bill Barr made in an interview with radio host Hugh Hewitt. “We have three branches of government, and allowing the unitary executive to do this, especially making a pandemic exception to the Bill of Rights, seems to me to be, and to Attorney General Bill Barr, to be overstepping their bounds. Now states, to be perfectly objective about it, states do have plenary police powers, but that assumes the state will make a law in the normal order – introduced in the legislative branch and signed by the governors. That’s not what’s happening here,” Lewis told The Minnesota Sun. Lewis said he’s been campaigning all over the state for the past two weeks because his team decided “enough was enough.” Going through “a second Great Depression” won’t do “anything to stop a virus,” he said. “The lockdown was meant to give hospital capacity a head start – we’ve accomplished that by anybody’s standard. Any official who purports to represent the people of Minnesota cannot deny them their God-given right to earn…

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Minnesota Organization for Retired Americans Sue To Keep Voting Rights for Quarantined Residents

The Minnesota Alliance for Retired American Educational Fund, along with three of its members, filed a lawsuit to protect voting rights of those who may be self-quarantining without a legal adult.

The lawsuit alleges that those who are quarantining alone — or without a voting-age member of the household — essentially lose their ability to cast a vote, as mail-in absentee ballots require a witness signature.

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More Than 47,000 File for Unemployment in Michigan as State Continues to Stay Shut Down

More than 47,000 people filed for unemployment in Michigan in the week ending May 9, bringing the state total to more than 1.7 million people in the state who have filed for unemployment insurance, according to recently released data from the U.S. Department of Labor.

According to the data, 47,438 people in Michigan filed for unemployment insurance in the state in the week ending May 9, down nearly 20,000 claimants from the previous week. Nearly 3 million people filed nationally.

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