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Venezuelan Christians forced to eat pages of the Bible, have ‘crosses’ etched into their bodies

At least four Christian men recently suffered serious injuries after they were stabbed, forced to eat pages of the Bible, and had “crosses” etched into their skin by eight hooded men, according to a persecution watchdog organization.

The attack by men suspected to be criminals from a drug gang took place at Restoration House in the city of Libertador on Feb. 16, Open Doors reported Friday. Restoration House is a church-led drug rehabilitation center in Venezuela’s Mérida State. 

The charity, which works with persecuted churches in over 60 nations, explained that Christians, who deter people from criminal lifestyles, are often seen as a threat to the illegal activities of drug gangs in Latin America.

“The criminals covered our faces and started to beat and stab us,” a victim was quoted as saying. “They drew ‘X’ on our bodies and forced us to eat the Bible.”

While the four Christians have been discharged from the hospital, one of them remains in poor health due to two broken ribs and injuries to his lungs and head. Two others had casts put on their legs and arms. 

“Weeks before the attack, in the middle of a meeting discussing neighborhood issues, two men said they were going to end the Restoration House because they did not agree with this type of program,” Pastor Dugarte, who founded the center with his wife, told Open Doors.

Pastor Dugarte remains strong in his faith, and he will carry on with the ministry in the predominantly Roman Catholic country.

Calling for an investigation, the Evangelical Council of Venezuela attributed the attack to “hatred towards religion,” according to Premier Christian News.

“The cutting of crosses into the bodies of these young Christians, and the forced eating of pages of the Bible is deeply disturbing,” Dr. David Landrum, Open Doors UK’s director of advocacy and public affairs, was quoted as saying. 

“This premeditated attack has all the hallmarks of the local ‘collectives’ of the Maduro regime. This shows how Venezuela has become a dictatorial narco-state which is violently opposed to the drugs rehabilitation work of the church.” 

Open Doors noted that while Venezuela is not in its 2021 World Watch List of the top-50 countries where Christians are persecuted, Christian persecution in other parts of Latin America is increasing.

President Nicolás Maduro has been in office since 2013. In 2017, the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions against Venezuelan government officials and others accused of “undermining democracy in Venezuela.”

“Under Maduro, the Venezuelan government has deliberately and repeatedly abused the rights of citizens through the use of violence, repression, and criminalization of demonstrations,” the department said in a statement at the time. “At his direction, the regime’s security forces have systematically repressed and criminalized opposition parties through arbitrary detention, military prosecution of civilians, and the excessive use of force against demonstrators. Any member of the opposition or critic of the regime risks being detained, imprisoned, assaulted, tortured, and assassinated.”

Maduro’s victory in the 2018 election was denounced as fraudulent by several countries, including the United States. 

Third Woman Comes Forward on Andrew Cuomo

Anna Ruch, 33, had never met Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) before a New York City wedding reception in September 2019.

According to a report, the governor was working the room after toasting the newlyweds, and when he came upon Ruch, she thanked him for his kind words about her friends.

Cuomo “put his hand on Ruch’s bare lower back,” she said in an interview on Monday.

When she removed his hand with her own, the report cited:

Ruch recalled the governor remarked that she seemed ‘aggressive’ and placed his hands on her cheeks. He asked if he could kiss her, ‘loudly enough for a friend standing nearby to hear.’ Ruch was bewildered by the entreaty and pulled away as the governor drew closer.

“I was so confused and shocked and embarrassed,” said Ruch, whose recollection was corroborated by the friend, contemporaneous text messages and photographs from the event. “I turned my head away and didn’t have words in that moment.”

“He said, ‘Can I kiss you?’” Ruch said. “I felt so uncomfortable and embarrassed when really he is the one who should have been embarrassed.” Apparently, per the report, a friend captured the exchange in a series of photographs taken on Ruch’s cellphone.

Ruch later said she had to ask a friend if Cuomo’s lips had made contact with her face as she pulled away. The governor had kissed her cheek, she was told. Ruch said:

It’s the act of impunity that strikes me. I didn’t have a choice in that matter. I didn’t have a choice in his physical dominance over me at that moment. And that’s what infuriates me. And even with what I could do, removing his hand from my lower back, even doing that was not clear enough.

Ruch said she posed for a photograph with Cuomo afterward. Once the governor walked away, Ruch’s friend approached her with a look of alarm.

Ruch’s account comes after two former aides accused Cuomo of sexual harassment in the workplace, plunging his third term into turmoil as the governor’s defenders and Cuomo himself strain to explain his behavior.

“The women who have come forward with serious and credible charges against Governor Cuomo deserve to be heard and to be treated with dignity,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said. “The independent investigation must have due process and respect for everyone involved.”

The Daily Wire reports:

New York Democratic Governor Andrew Cuomo released a statement on Sunday afternoon apologizing for his behavior after two women came forward and claimed that he sexually harassed them while they worked in his administration.

The statement from Cuomo comes after “Lindsey Boylan, a candidate for Manhattan borough president who formerly worked for Cuomo and the state’s economic development agency, revealed in a blog post on Wednesday that the governor had kissed her without her consent and asked her to play strip poker,” Politico reported. “Then, on Saturday, The New York Times reported that Charlotte Bennett, a former executive assistant and health policy adviser to Cuomo, was also sexually harassed by the governor, including inappropriate questions about her sex life.”

“Questions have been raised about some of my past interactions with people in the office,” the statement began. “I never intended to offend anyone or cause any harm. I spend most of my life at work, and colleagues are often also personal friends. At work sometimes I think I am being playful and make jokes that I think are funny. I do, on occasion, tease people in what I think is a good natured way. I do it in public and in private. You have seen me do it at briefings hundreds of times. I have teased people about their personal lives, their relationships, about getting married or not getting married.”

“I mean no offense and only attempt to add some levity and banter to what is a very serious business,” Cuomo continued. “I now understand that my interactions may have been insensitive or too personal and that some of my comments, given my position, made others feel in ways I never intended. I acknowledge some of the things I have said have been misinterpreted as an unwanted flirtation. To the extent anyone felt that way, I am truly sorry about that.”

“To be clear I never inappropriately touched anybody and I never propositioned anybody and I never intended to make anyone feel uncomfortable, but these are allegations that New Yorkers deserve answers to,” the statement concluded. “That’s why I have asked for an outside, independent review that looks at these allegations. Separately, my office has heard anecdotally that some people have reached out to Ms. Bennett to express displeasure about her coming forward. My message to anyone doing that is you have misjudged what matters to me and my administration and you should stop now – period.”

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki discussed the issue on CNN’s “State of the Union” on Sunday and suggested that Biden believed the essence of the claims that were being made.

“Charlotte should be treated with respect and dignity. So should Lindsey,” Psaki said. “And there should be an independent review looking into these allegations. And that’s certainly something [Biden] supports and we believe should move forward as quickly as possible.”

Whistleblower: 25% of Residents in German Nursing Home Died After Pfizer Vaccine

Reiner Fuellmich and Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview a caregiver in a Berlin nursing home who describes what happened during and after the rollout of Pfizer’s COVID vaccine.

In this 40-minute video, Reiner Fuellmich and his associate Viviane Fischer, attorneys and founding members of the German Corona Investigative Committee, interview an unidentified whistleblower at a nursing home in Berlin, Germany.

The whistleblower, a caregiver, describes what happened at the care facility during and after the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines. The whistleblower’s voice has been distorted to protect the individual’s identity, and is in German with English subtitles.

The whistleblower describes how seven of 31 nursing home residents with dementia died after the first dose of the Pfizer vaccine, and an eighth was near death at the time the interview was recorded.

After the second dose, 11 more residents became seriously ill and one more died.

In other words, 25% of the residents died immediately, and 36% were severely injured within a short time.

The video contains de-identified footage from the nursing home, where a team of three or four people, including a soldier in uniform, vaccinate residents, in many cases using force. The footage is troubling as it shows some people resisting the shots, being being vaccinated nonetheless.

Fischer has filed a complaint on behalf of the whistleblower with prosecutors and the police. They seek an investigation by law enforcement and publicity about this information to halt further deaths.

An investigation into the deaths at this particular nursing home won’t be the first investigation into deaths among elderly in care facilities, after being vaccinated with a COVID vaccine — there have been many reports of elderly people dying after the vaccines.

In January, officials in Norway and Germany said they were looking into deaths following the vaccine. Last month, in Spain, officials temporarily halted vaccines after 46 nursing home residents died after getting the vaccine.

The Global Times reported last week that 16 elderly people in Switzerland died following COVID vaccinations.

In the U.S., according to the latest available data from the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, the average age of those who died following COVID vaccines is 77.8.

Children’s Health Defense is working closely with Fuellmich and his associates at the German Corona Investigative Committee to seek information and justice regarding COVID-19.

Watch here.

Climate Change Alarmism Takes Another Big Hit

Throughout the midsection of the United States in February, record frigid temperatures were inconvenient for those politicians who call global warming an “existential threat.”

Global warming is already here, we are told. However, it didn’t feel like it if you lived in Bismarck, North Dakota, where temperatures fell to decades-low numbers, or in Chicago, Oklahoma City, Dallas, or Houston. San Antonio had snow for the first time in recent memory.

The environmental apocalyptics say this doesn’t prove anything about what is happening with the planet’s climate. And you know what? They are 100 percent correct.

But last summer, when hundreds of thousands of acres burned in California, that event was prima-facie evidence of global warming, and if you challenged that premise, you faced ridicule as a “denier.”

About 10 years ago, when Barack Obama was president, his scientists put out a silly report on climate change, showing that the Great Lakes’ ice coverage had fallen to its lowest level in several decades. It was evidence of a warming planet. But the year after the report came out, we had a frigid winter in the Midwest, and the ice cover was abnormally high. This year, we are again experiencing high ice levels on the Great Lakes with the polar vortex.

Whoops. Again, this proves nothing, but the environmentalists made the point in the first place. OK, what’s the following argument?

One of the climate change movement’s ironies is that it talks obsessively about science and the “scientific consensus.” Still, collectively, the adherents suffer from one of the most common scientific reasoning flaws: confirmation bias. This happens when you point to anything supporting a hypothesis as evidence and discount anything contradicting the theory as an outlier. Ice melting means global warming. Ice forming is a natural, expected winter occurrence.

Here is a classic example from The New York Times, which tries to ridicule anyone who would point to the cold weather as a contradiction to the global apocalypse narrative: “Those who deny climate science love to declare that there’s no such thing as climate change whenever the weather turns cold.”

Wrong. The left declares that there is climate change anytime the weather turns warm or there are forest fires such as those last summer.

Here’s another non sequitur from the big green movement, also reported by The New York Times: “In the United States, we’re seeing longer wildfire seasons because of hotter, drier conditions, and our hurricanes are becoming more destructive in several ways, including flooding and storm surge. … We’ve always had floods, fires and storms, but climate change adds oomph to many weather events.”

Is there more “oomph” from severe weather events now than in the past? Generally, no. The historical evidence shows 1) there are no more severe events than there were 50 years ago or 100 years ago (the period for which we have reliable data) and 2) the percentage of people in the world who die from extreme weather events, such as monsoons, forest fires, high temperatures, frigid winters, hurricanes, and tornadoes, has been consistently falling for at least a century and is lower today than any time in human history.

There are many reasons for this. First, we have better warning systems for severe weather events. Second, we are better prepared with superior building codes and more weather-resistant materials. And third, technology and human know-how make us better prepared to deal with the “fires next time.” We learn and we adapt from the vicissitudes of Mother Nature.

It explains why, even though storms may be getting more destructive and we hear constant warnings of rising sea levels, people are paying higher prices than ever before for beachfront properties in states such as Florida, South Carolina, Virginia, and California.

It may sound, to borrow a word from The New York Times, “counterintuitive,” but these are the rock-solid facts.

Man Group Has a Message for Reddit Rookies: We’re Watching You

The Business Insider reports:

The world’s largest publicly-listed hedge fund has decided that the Reddit mob is now too influential to be ignored.

Man Group Plc, known for its computer-driven quant funds, has built a system to track hot topics on the website’s WallStreetBets forum, according to Chief Executive Officer Luke Ellis. Managers receive a daily report on names being discussed on the site that hosted the hordes of retail investors behind the recent short squeeze on GameStop Corp.

The report shows how the firm is using “technology to address investment problems that humans alone can’t handle efficiently,” Ellis said on a call with analysts Tuesday.

Man Group is bolstering its defenses after a 6-million strong Reddit crowd joined forces in late January to fire up stocks most hated by hedge fund elites. One of the biggest casualties was Andrew Left’s Citron Research, which said it will discontinue offering short-selling analysis after 20 years of providing the service. Melvin Capital was forced to retreat by dumping its short position on GameStop, while Carson Block and others cut bets.

Read more: Short Sellers Face End of an Era as Rookies Rule Wall Street

A majority of Man Group assets sit in its alternative investing funds, meaning a large number of them use short selling strategies to make money or hedge risk. The firm said Tuesday that cash inflows helped its assets under management reach a record $123.6 billion at the end of last year.

Conservative UMC faction announces creation of ‘Global Methodist Church’

A group of theologically conservative United Methodists has announced the creation of a new denomination once the United Methodist Church officially separates due to its long-standing debate over homosexuality.

The Wesleyan Covenant Association and the 17-member Transitional Leadership Council    released a statement on Monday morning announcing the creation of the Global Methodist Church.

According to the statement, the theologically conservative denomination will not be officially launched until the UMC General Conference, scheduled for 2022, passes a separation measure known as the Protocol for Reconciliation and Grace through Separation.

The Protocol, which will be up for debate at the General Conference, involves allowing conservative churches to leave the UMC to form their own denomination.

Transitional Leadership Council Chairman Rev. Keith Boyette said in a statement that the GMC would “make disciples of Jesus Christ who worship passionately, love extravagantly, and witness boldly.”

“Over the past year, the council members, and hundreds of people who have informed their work, have faithfully and thoughtfully arrived at this point,” stated Boyette.

“They are happy to share with others a wealth of information about a church they believe will be steeped in the life giving confessions of the Christian faith.”

As part of this preliminary launch, the GMC created a website explaining that the new denomination will allow for female ordination and is committed to racial equality. 

“Alternatively, if it becomes apparent that the leading bishops, centrists, and progressives who covenanted to support the Protocol no longer do so, then the council will consider bringing the new church into existence without delay,” explained a frequently-asked-questions section of the site.

“For approximately one year, the Global Methodist Church will be a church in transition as it prepares for its convening General Conference.”

Last December, a group of theologically progressive United Methodists announced a plan to create its own denomination as part of the likely separation plan for the UMC.

Known as the Liberation Methodist Connexion, its website describes the new church as “a grassroots denomination of former, current, and non-Methodist faith leaders working on the unfolding of the kin-dom of God.”

The LMX went on to say that they welcome all “gender expressions and sexual identity,” “religious or non-religious backgrounds,” “races and ethnicities,” “size,” and “monogamous and non-monogamous.”

“We trust God’s presence and our collaborative labors will guide us toward a new, more liberative way of answering our calling and being in connexion together,” stated the LMX, which went on to state that their “theology is not written in stone.”  

The UMC General Conference, where the potential separation plan will be debated and possibly approved, is scheduled for Aug. 29 through Sept. 6, 2022, in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Originally, the General Conference was supposed to be held last year but was postponed to 2021 due to coronavirus pandemic concerns. The General Conference was again postponed this year.

Georgia House Passes Omnibus Election Reform Bill

Georgia’s House of Representatives passed an omnibus bill that would reform a range of election rules, including over absentee voting, voter ID for absentee voting, time limits for voting, and more.

The 66-page bill, HB 531 (pdf) passed the Republican majority chamber on a party line vote of 97-72 and is headed to the state Senate for further debate.

State Rep. Barry Fleming, a Republican, the main sponsor of the HB 531 bill, said that the proposal was designed to restore voters’ confidence in Georgia’s election system following the 2020 presidential election, which saw numerous allegations of voting irregularities and allegations of election fraud.

Separately, the GOP-majority Senate on Feb. 23 introduced its own version of an omnibus election reform bill, SB 241 (pdf) that has some overlap with HB 531. One difference is that the Senate bill would eliminate no-excuse absentee voting, something that has been allowed in Georgia since 2005, whereas the House bill would still allow no-excuse absentee voting.

Absentee Ballots

The proposed HB 531, first introduced on Feb. 18, sets up multiple requirements for absentee ballots, including a number of voter identification requirements in replacement of the state’s current signature match process.

Voters would have to submit their driver’s license number, their state identification card, or the last four digits of their Social Security number on the ballot envelope. If the voter lacks a government ID, the bill requires a copy of a current utility bill, bank statement, government check, paycheck, or other government document that shows the name and address of the voter.

Under the new bill, voters would be able to request an absentee ballot up to 78 days before the election, instead of the current 180 days. The absentee ballots and early votes must be received by 11 days prior to the election day.

The government, including election officials, would not be allowed to mail out unsolicited applications for absentee ballots to voters under the bill. Only authorized relatives or persons signing as helping a voter who is illiterate or physically disabled may apply on behalf of another for an absentee ballot application .

Election officials also must not send out absentee ballots until four weeks prior to the election.

Other Requirements

To help reduce Georgia’s runoff period to four weeks, instead of nine weeks as experienced by the state in the Jan. 2 runoff elections for two Senate seats, military and overseas voters would be offered ranked choice voting.

Drop boxes would still be allowed under the new bill but subject to a number of restrictions. There would be a limited number of drop boxes, where every county would have at least one drop box but no more than one per 100,000 active voters or one for each early voting site. Any given drop box must be located at the office of the board of registrars or absentee ballot clerk, or indoors at an early voting site. The drop boxes are only open when those sites are open and be under constant surveillance “by an election official or his or her designee, law enforcement official, or licensed security guard.”

voters ballots
Voters cast their early voting ballot at drop box outside of City Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 17, 2020. (Mark Makela/Getty Images)

The proposed legislation would change Georgia’s early voting period to business hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. starting about three weeks before election day, and registrars would have the option to extend voting hours to 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. The bill would also limit weekend voting to the second Saturday before the election. Counties can also choose the third Saturday or third Sunday before election day as another weekend day.

The HB 531 will no longer count any provisional ballots cast in the wrong precinct—a change from the current law, which stipulates that even if the ballot was cast in the wrong precinct, election officials can count the votes for races in which the voter was entitled to vote.

Per the bill, ballots would be required to be printed on “security paper that incorporates features which can be used to authenticate the ballot as an official ballot but which do not make the ballot identifiable to a particular elector.“

Election superintendents and boards of registrars are not allowed to accept any “funding, grants, or gifts from any source other than from the governing authority of the county or municipality, the State of Georgia, or the federal government,” under the bill.

Among other voting requirements, the bill also prohibits people to solicit votes, distribute or show any campaign material, or provide money or gifts—including food and drink—within 25 feet of voters standing in line at any polling place, and within 150 feet of any polling place.

Amazon Quietly Bans Books Containing Undefined ‘Hate Speech’

This article is a compilation of written content from The Epoch Times and social media content curated by American Faith.

Amazon has adopted a rule against books that contain anything the company labels as “hate speech.” It appears there was no announcement of the new rule. It was only noticed by media after the online retailer recently banned a book that criticizes transgender ideology.

It’s not clear what Amazon means by “hate speech” or even if it used that label to drop that particular book. In general parlance, Americans hold widely diverging views on what constitutes hate speech, a 2017 Cato poll found. Some tech platforms describe it as speech that disparages people based on characteristics such as race, gender, and sexual proclivities. But insider evidence indicates the companies aren’t clear on where to draw the lines, perpetually redraw them, and at least in some instances ignore violations when politically convenient.

“As a bookseller, we provide our customers with access to a variety of viewpoints, including books that some customers may find objectionable,” an Amazon spokesperson told The Epoch Times in an emailed statement.

“That said, we reserve the right not to sell certain content as described in our content guidelines for books, which you can find here. All retailers make decisions about what selection they choose to offer, and we do not take selection decisions lightly.”

The statement omitted that the $1.5 trillion company changed the rules sometime after August 10 last year, apparently without telling its customers.

Previously, Amazon prohibited “products that promote, incite, or glorify hate or violence towards any person or group,” but explicitly stated the policy didn’t apply to books.

Its book policy used to contain no mention of “hate speech,” according to a version of the page archived on Aug. 10. It mentioned Amazon reserved “the right not to sell certain content, such as pornography or other inappropriate content.”

The current “Content Guidelines for Books” include a section against “Offensive Content” that reads: “We don’t sell certain content including content that we determine is hate speech, promotes the abuse or sexual exploitation of children, contains pornography, glorifies rape or pedophilia, advocates terrorism, or other material we deem inappropriate or offensive.”

The Amazon spokesperson wouldn’t respond to emailed questions on when the policy was adopted, what constitutes “hate speech,” and how Amazon’s customers were informed about the change.

The change apparently occurred prior to Feb. 24 when JustTheNews reported on the new policy. The report followed the banning of “When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment,” a 2018 book by Ryan Anderson, president of the Washington-based think tank Ethics and Public Policy Center.

Amazon purged the book around Feb. 21, though the exact timing is hard to pinpoint since the author only learned about the move from people who were looking for the book, he told the Daily Caller.

Anderson couldn’t get an explanation from Amazon on why his book was banned.

“A week after they removed my book, Amazon still refuses to say which aspect of their ‘content policy’ the book violates (after three years of not violating that policy). And they refuse to say which page of the book commits the offense,” he said in a Feb. 26 tweet.

The book argues that the push to encourage individuals who feel like a different gender to undergo sex-change procedures is driven by ideology rather than sound medical advice, according to Princeton University politics lecturer Matthew Franck, who reviewed it in 2018.

The book disappeared around the same time Anderson published an op-ed in the New York Post critical of a bill pushed by the Biden administration that would insert sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories under the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Amazon didn’t respond to a previous inquiry by The Epoch Times as to why the book was removed.

Transgender ideology has become one of the focal points of far-left, progressive politics. It fuses discussion of the severe quality-of-life issues faced by transgender individuals with the quasi-Marxist “intersectional” critical theories that divide society into “oppressors” and the “oppressed,” based on characteristics such as race and “gender identity.”

Goya Foods CEO Robert Unanue calls Donald Trump the ‘legitimate’ U.S. President during CPAC speech

  • Robert Unanue, boss of the Hispanic food supplier, claimed that ‘the majority’ of Americans voted for Donald Trump at CPAC in Orlando on Sunday
  • The 67-year-old suggested Trump had been overthrown by communists who had used the Covid-19 pandemic as a political weapon against the incumbent
  • Came hours before Trump took stage in his first appearance since leaving office

This article is a compilation of written content from The Daily Mail and curated social media content.

The CEO of Goya Foods called Donald Trump ‘the real, legitimate and still actual president of the United States’ at CPAC in Florida on Sunday night.

Robert Unanue, boss of the Hispanic food supplier, claimed that ‘the majority’ of Americans voted for the Republican candidate just hours before Trump took the stage in Orlando. 

The 67-year-old suggested Trump had been overthrown by communists who had used the Covid-19 pandemic as a political weapon against the incumbent.

Unanue told CPAC: ‘It’s just an honor to be here. But my biggest honor today is gonna be that – I think we’re gonna be on the same stage – as, in my opinion, the real, the legitimate, and the still actual president of the United States, Donald J. Trump.’ 

He told the crowd that he had received many unsolicited ballots, as had many of people that he knew. 

‘As a citizen of the United States, I think I’m allowed to vote, once, once. Not two times, or three times, or ten times,’ Unanue said.

‘But we still have faith that the majority of people in the United States voted for President Trump.’

According to the official data, Biden won 51.3 percent of the popular vote, the highest proportion won by any challenger to an incumbent president since 1931.

Unanue continued his speech by setting out how he believed the far left, like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, had seized control of the White House.

But he claimed that Americans could return to unity if they put their faith in God.

‘In communism the few control the many, and that’s what is happening in our country,’ Unanue told CPAC.

He claimed that Trump’s political opponents had ‘weaponized’ the pandemic during the election year and since taking power are seeking to ‘kill our spirit.’

Unanue said: ‘They seek to destroy our reason to get up in the morning: God, family, work. Seek to cancel God.’

Trump was hailed as returning hero later that evening when he took the stage for the first time since he left office at the end of January. 

‘Do you miss me yet?’ The former president said as his old rally soundtrack boomed out. 

He blasted his successor and spoke of a future with him firmly at the helm of the GOP.  

In his speech, he tried to downplay the civil war gripping the party over the extent to which Republicans should embrace him, even as he unfurled an enemies list, calling out by name the 10 House Republicans and seven GOP senators who voted to impeach or convict him for inciting the U.S. Capitol riot.

He ended by singling out Rep. Liz Cheney, the No. 3 House Republican, who has faced tremendous backlash in Wyoming for saying Trump should no longer play a role in the party or headline the event.

While he insisted the division was merely a spat ‘between a handful of Washington, D.C., establishment political hacks and everybody else, all over the country,’ Trump had a message for the incumbents who had dared to cross him: ‘Get rid of ’em all.’

The conference, held this year in Orlando instead of the Washington suburbs to evade COVID-19 restrictions, was a celebration of Trump and Trumpism.

Speakers, including many potential 2024 hopefuls, argued that the party must embrace the former president and his followers, even after the deadly riot at the Capitol on January 6.

They also repeated in panel after panel his unfounded claims that he lost reelection only because of mass voter fraud, even though such claims have been rejected by judges, Republican state officials and Trump’s own administration.

Trump, too, continued to repeat what Democrats have dubbed the ‘big lie,’ calling the election ‘rigged’ and insisting that he won in November, even though he lost by more than 7 million votes.

‘As you know, they just lost the White House,’ he said of Biden, rewriting history.

It is highly unusual for past American presidents to publicly criticize their successors in the months after leaving office.

Ex-presidents typically step out of the spotlight for at least a while: Barack Obama was famously seen kitesurfing on vacation after he departed, while George W. Bush said he believed Obama ‘deserves my silence’ and took up painting.

Trump delivered a sharp rebuke of what he framed as the new administration’s first month of failures, especially Biden’s approach to immigration and the border.

‘Joe Biden has had the most disastrous first month of any president in modern history,’ Trump said.

White House press secretary Jen Psaki had brushed off the expected criticism last week.

‘We’ll see what he says, but our focus is certainly not on what President Trump is saying at CPAC,’ she told reporters.

Aside from criticizing Biden, Trump used the speech to crown himself the future of the Republican Party, even as many leaders argue they must move in a new, less divisive direction after Republicans lost not just the White House, but both chambers of Congress.

Though Trump has flirted with the the idea of creating a third party, he pledged Sunday to remain part of ‘our beloved’ GOP.

‘I’m going to continue to fight right by your side. We’re not starting new parties,’ he said. ‘We have the Republican Party. It’s going to be strong and united like never before.’

Yet Trump spent much of the speech lashing out at those he has deemed insufficiently loyal and dubbed ‘RINOs’ – Republican in name only – for failing to stand with him.

‘We cannot have leaders who show more passion for condemning their fellow Americans than they have ever shown for standing up to Democrats, the media and the radicals who want to turn America into a socialist country,’ Trump said.

Trump did not use his speech to announce plans to run again, but he repeatedly teased the prospect as he predicted a Republican would win back the White House in 2024.

‘And I wonder who that will be,’ he offered. ‘Who, who, who will that be? I wonder.’

Lawsuit Accuses Amazon of ‘Systemic’ Racism in Corporate Offices

Reuters reports:

A manager at Amazon.com Inc sued the online retailer for discrimination on Monday, saying it hires Black people for lower positions and promotes them more slowly than white workers, and that she was subjected to harassment.

The lawsuit from Charlotte Newman, a business development head at Amazon Web Services who is Black, said the company suffers from a “systemic pattern of insurmountable discrimination,” despite its pledge to fight racism and statements of solidarity from Chief Executive Officer Jeff Bezos.

Seattle-based Amazon had no immediate comment. The complaint was filed in Washington, D.C., federal court.

Newman, a Harvard Business School graduate and former adviser to U.S. Senator Cory Booker, said Amazon delayed by 2-1/2 years her rise to senior manager by hiring her in 2017 for a more junior role for which she was overqualified, a “de-leveling” that reduces awards of company stock.

She also accused a male supervisor of using racial tropes by calling her “aggressive,” “too direct” and “just scary,” and another male co-worker of sexually harassing her and once pulling on her braids while saying, “You can leave this behind.”

Both men were also named as defendants, and according to the lawsuit the co-worker was terminated. His lawyer could not immediately be identified.

Newman is seeking compensatory and punitive damages. She is represented by Douglas Wigdor, who also represented women suing the former movie producer Harvey Weinstein and Fox News over alleged harassment or discrimination.

Amazon has worked to show support for the Black Lives Matter movement. In September its cloud computing chief Andy Jassy, who will succeed Bezos as Amazon CEO, gave the keynote address at a Black Employee Network entrepreneurship conference.

The news site Recode last week reported allegations of racial disparities in Amazon promotions and performance reviews.

Amazon also faces lawsuits claiming it mistreated workers in its handling of the coronavirus pandemic at its facilities.

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