GOP Senate Candidate Dr. Manny Sethi Received Grants from Anti-Gun Rights Foundation for Violence Prevention and Conflict Resolution Programs

Dr. Manny Sethi has ties with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), an organization that does not support gun rights. But, the NRA considers the GOP Senate candidate to be pro-gun and he has made statements against gun control.

Sethi and former Ambassador to Japan Bill Hagerty are competing for the Republican nomination to succeed retiring Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN) in the U.S. Senate. Election day is next Thursday, August 6.

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Commentary: Silicon Valley Ramps up Censorship of Conservatives

Silicon Valley’s pre-election censorship of conservatives is rapidly increasing, with anything that questions the imposition of a new level of COVID-19 lockdown misery and economic devastation a top target.

The latest example of this pre-election censorship occurred yesterday, when Facebook, Twitter and Google removed a press conference video by frontline doctors featuring U.S. Rep. Ralph Norman (R-S.C.) and organized by Tea Party Patriots.

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VP Mike Pence and Secretary of Education Visit Thales Academy to Highlight an Example of How Schools Can Open During COVID Times

  Vice President Mike Pence and Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos visited Thales Academy on Wednesday in Apex, North Carolina. This visit by the members of the Trump administration comes as most school districts across the country are announcing schools with limit attendance to virtual and online classes to start the upcoming school year. Thales Academy, as a school, has bucked the virtual class trend and decided that its students will be attending in-person classes this upcoming school year. “We’ve got to get our kids back to school. We’ve got to get them back this fall,” Pence said at Thales Academy, according to WRAL. “It’s best for our kids. It’s best for working families. It’s best for North Carolina and best for all of America.” While Pence was at the Thales Academy, he chatted with fourth-grade students. Fourth-grade teacher Allison Combs, the teacher of the class Pence visited, said that she is happy to be in class teaching again even with additional health measurements, according to WRAL. “Virtual learning was challenging. We made it work because that’s what we had to do,” Combs said. “But losing that interaction with students made the work even harder. … Just having those interactions…

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NYPD Reports Demonstrators Damaged 303 Cruisers, Costing $1 Million in Repair

The New York City Police Department said 303 law enforcement vehicles were damaged since George Floyd’s death on May 25, costing nearly $1 million.

A total of 14 cruisers were set ablaze and totaled with another seven still being repaired, according to the Associated Press. The remainder of the damaged cars have since been re-deployed on NYC’s streets that continue to be roiled by protests and riots following the death of Floyd, who died after a former Minneapolis police officer knelt on his neck for over eight minutes, the AP reported.

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Commentary: Former CIA Officer Says Terrorists Will Learn from COVID

During the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the media warned breathlessly of “chatter” that terrorists—domestic and international—were planning to exploit and spread the virus. So far no such plots have developed, but a former CIA officer warns that the lessons terrorists have learned from the inept and politicized response to the pandemic, if exploited, may be more dangerous to us than terrorist use of the virus itself.

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Google Deliberately Alters Search Results for Breitbart News

As the 2020 election draws nearer, search engine and tech giant Google is being exposed as engaging in election interference by artificially altering search results to negatively impact right-wing sites, as reported by Breitbart.

Breitbart reports that its own visibility on Google search results has been reduced by as much as 99.7 percent of its previous performance since the 2016 election. In contrast to its performance in April of 2016, when it was among the top ten search results for 355 key search terms, it now ranks in the top ten of only one such search term in the month of July of this year.

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Oregon Governor Says U.S. Agents Will Start Leaving Portland

Federal agents who have clashed with protesters in Portland, Oregon, will begin a “phased withdrawal” from the city, Gov. Kate Brown said Wednesday.

Acting Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said in a statement the plan negotiated with Brown over the last 24 hours includes a “robust presence” of Oregon State Police in the downtown of the state’s largest city.

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Kodak Company Flips to Pharma

A Kodak moment for the books: the former film giant flipped to pharma in a move aimed to rejuvenate the company after nearly two decades of hardship. Several reports state that Kodak branched out to offset the large-scale loss of its film business – punctuated by a bankruptcy in 2012 after the concept of the digital camera that it invented rendered many of its product offerings obsolete.

Initial talks of Kodak’s new active pharmaceutical ingredients (APIs) division, branded “Kodak Pharmaceuticals,” began as early as a few months ago according to Kodak CEO Jim Continenza. He says the move shouldn’t be all that surprising.

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Detroit Police Chief James Craig Cites Unified City, Not Backing Down for Peaceful City Among Protests

Detroit Police Chief James Craig credited the city’s success in remaining peaceful during nationwide protests and riots with having a city that has stood together and a police force that refuses to give up “the ground to the radicals.”

In an appearance on Fox News’s Tucker Carlson Tonight on Tuesday, Craig told Carlson that “we don’t retreat here in Detroit.”

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Analysis: The Republicans’ Path to a House Majority in 2020

The House of Representatives is in play and Republicans have a real shot at recapturing control of the lower chamber after their dismal performance in 2018.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D.-Calif.) deserves credit for her success passing legislation and articles of impeachment, but that it more a testament to her mastery of the whip count than her overwhelming numbers. House Democrats are holding, if not a slim majority, a fragile one.

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Ohio State House Representatives Introduce Bills to Revise State Campaign Finance Laws

  Ohio state House Representatives introduced two pieces of legislation Monday that aims to reform state campaign finance laws. These bill proposals come a week after Speaker of the House Larry Householder and four other people were arrested by the FBI. These five men are accused of “worked to corruptly ensure that HB 6 went into effect by defeating a ballot initiative to overturn the legislation. The Enterprise received approximately $60 million into Generation Now from an energy company and its affiliates during the relevant period,” according to the DOJ press release. The first bill called House Bill (HB) 737, which was introduced by State Reps. Gayle Manning (R-North Ridgeville) and Jessica Miranda (D-Forest Park), would update Ohio’s campaign finance laws to reflect changes the federal level made to campaign finance laws after the 2010 Supreme Court case Citizens United vs. Federal Elections Commission. If the bill became law, it would place “additional reporting requirements on entities that make political contributions,” according to the state House of Representatives’ press release. “We cannot continue down the path of what is, but should aspire to pursue what should be when it comes to campaign finance reform,” Manning said. “I believe that we…

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Opioid Overdoses Rise in State During Coronavirus Pandemic

The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is reporting significant increases in opioid overdoses during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

MDHHS reported emergency medical services (EMS) in the state responded to a 33 percent increase in opioid overdoses from April to May of this year. The department adds that opioid overdoses increased by 26 percent from the prior year during the period between April and June. 

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Students See Spike in Reported Violent Crime After University of Minnesota Cuts Ties with Minneapolis Police Department

Students saw an increase in reported violence just weeks after the University of Minnesota announced that it would cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department after the death of George Floyd.

In the weeks following the University of Minnesota’s announcement that it would cut ties with the Minneapolis Police Department, students received multiple systemwide public safety alert messages, telling them to be cautious on and near campus due to various reported violent crimes. This is a substantial increase in safety notifications for Minnesota students, given that prior to the announcement, only seven such announcements with only two emergencies were made in a six month period.

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Commentary: Michigan Is Already on Its Way to Full Economic Recovery

With the “v-shaped” economic recovery taking shape nationwide, Michigan has begun to bounce back from the artificial coronavirus downturn sooner than most of us dared to hope. 

Despite Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s excessively harsh stay-at-home orders, Michigan regained more than 460,000 nonfarm jobs since the start of May, reducing the unemployment rate by almost a whopping 10 percentage points. Blue collar industries that provide the lifeblood for Michigan’s middle class, such as construction and manufacturing, are doing particularly well — those two sectors alone created more than 180,000 new jobs in May, no doubt fueled in part by the President’s focus on ramping up domestic production of medical supplies needed to confront the invisible enemy.

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Nashville Metro Council Member Wonders If Mayor John Cooper Will Allow Conservatives to Help Pick New Police Chief

Nashville Metro At-Large Council Member Steve Glover wondered this week if certain residents of Davidson County who lean right politically will have a say selecting a new police chief to replace the retiring Steve Anderson.

This, as Mayor John Cooper on Tuesday announced what he called a roadmap to finding a new chief. According to a press release, Cooper will rely on Metro Human Resources and a candidate review committee to narrow that person down.

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