A Washington Post reporter has sued the paper for allegedly discriminating against her by preventing her from covering stories about sexual misconduct and the #MeToo movement after she publicly spoke out about being a victim of sexual assault.
Felicia Sonmez, a national politics reporter, said in a complaint filed Wednesday in D.C. Superior Court (pdf) that she was barred from reporting on sexual misconduct after she issued a statement in September 2018 on the resignation of a Los Angeles Times journalist who she said had assaulted her. He has denied the allegations, saying what happened was consensual.
According to the lawsuit, after Sonmez issued the statement, she was barred from covering stories related to sexual misconduct, a ban lifted earlier this year after she publicly criticized the paper for its stance.
“The Post disciplined Ms. Sonmez for making herself the ‘star’ of her own sexual assault and for criticizing other news organizations,” the complaint alleged.
The lawsuit names WP Company LLC, former Post executive editor Marty Baron, managing editors Cameron Barr and Tracy Grant, deputy national editor Lori Montgomery, and senior politics editor Peter Wallsten.
Somnez said Barr told her she had “taken a side on the issue’” of sexual assault by going public with her own story, while Ginsburg told her that “it would present ‘the appearance of a conflict of interest’” for her to report on sexual misconduct, according to the complaint.
Washington Post spokesperson Kris Coratti declined to comment on the suit.
The lawsuit claims Sonmez had been “chastised, silenced and subjected to humiliation on a repeated basis for being a victim of sexual assault, for defending herself against false accusations and for her opposition to Defendants’ attempts to depict her as unworthy or unable to perform the duties of her position.”
It also claims that Sonmez has lost opportunities for career advancement and has experienced “economic loss, humiliation, embarrassment, mental and emotional distress, and the deprivation of her rights to equal employment opportunities.”
The suit also claims Sonmez has suffered “serious and verifiable emotional distress, embarrassment and humiliation that has required, and will continue to require, medical treatment and medication.”
Sonmez is seeking compensatory and punitive damages and to force the paper to take steps to remedy its conduct and prevent similar situations.
HE BIG DEAL—Senate braces for a nasty debt ceiling fight: Republicans are digging in on the federal debt limit, warning Democrats that it will be up to them to avoid a default as President Biden pushes for trillions more in spending.
GOP senators are taking a firm line as Democrats plot a path for their $3.5 trillion spending measure, which the party plans to pass with budget reconciliation rules that will prevent the GOP from blocking it with a filibuster.
For that reason, Republican senators say they won’t lift a finger to help Democrats raise the debt ceiling.
“I’m not sure why there’s much of an incentive right now given what the Democrats are doing, trying to run roughshod over the minority in the Senate, to help them,” said Sen. John Thune (S.D.), the No. 2 Senate Republican.
The stakes: The government will reach its debt limit on July 31, though the Treasury Department will be able to shuffle funds for an additional period to prevent the U.S. from breaking the ceiling.
Actually doing so would cause a severe disruption to markets and the economy, as the U.S. government would be unable to meet demands from its creditors and pay its bills.
Trillion of dollars in Treasury bonds held by foreign governments and investors are underpinned by faith in the federal government’s ability to pay its bills. A default on the national debt could shatter that confidence and trigger a catastrophic financial crisis.
Experts have said that the coronavirus pandemic is making it harder to estimate precisely when the U.S. would default on its obligations absent any action.
“There is so much spending that is going out in a relatively short period of time, and because there’s lots of uncertainty about when that spending is going out the door, it makes it even more difficult than usual to predict what spending patterns in August, September, October, etc. are going to look like,” said Shai Akabas, director of economic policy for the Bipartisan Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank.
The Hill’s Naomi Jagoda, Jordain Carney and I have more here.
LEADING THE DAY
Democrats pushing for changes to bipartisan infrastructure deal: Senate Democrats are warning that they will ask for changes to an infrastructure deal being worked on by a bipartisan group of senators, as they try to get reassurances on key priorities.
The bipartisan group is still working to finalize their deal, and resolve a remaining sticking point of transportation funding.
But the requests from Democrats are an early sign of the hurdles the bill could face even if it is able to get the 60 votes needed to start debate.
What’s in play: A group of Democrats is pushing for assurances that the Drinking Water and Wastewater Infrastructure Act, a drinking water and sanitation bill that previously passed the Senate in an 89-2 vote, would be fully funded through the bipartisan group’s infrastructure bill.
Sens. Chris Murphy and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) are pushing for more rail funding.
Top Democrat presses IRS for improvements to web tool on child tax credit: Senate Finance Committee Chairman Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) on Thursday pressed the IRS for improvements to a web tool that allows low-income families to register for the new monthly child tax credit payments.
“If this inadequacy is not rectified, millions of American families could be denied the opportunity to provide a more secure future for their children and break the cycle of poverty for so many,” Wyden wrote in a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig.
The IRS last week sent out the first batch of the monthly advanced child tax credit payments that were authorized by President Biden’s coronavirus relief law.
The agency will make monthly payments on or near the 15th of each month through the end of the year. Families are eligible for monthly payments of up to $300 for each child under six and up to $250 for each child ages six to 17.
The issue: Families who filed 2019 or 2020 tax returns are receiving the monthly payments automatically. However, some families who are not required to file tax returns, typically because they have low incomes, need to use an IRS web tool to sign up for the payments. Democratic lawmakers and officials at nonprofits have also raised concerns the IRS web tool could be hard for non-filers to use because it is not mobile-friendly or available in Spanish.
Housing prices hit new high in June, up 23 percent in year: The median sale price of an existing home rose to a record high of $363,300 in June as purchases broke a four-month streak of declines, according to data released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors (NAR).
As home sales rose 1.4 percent last month, the median sale price of an existing home soared 23.4 percent in the year since June 2020 — just 0.2 percentage points below May’s record-setting annual increase.
The median sale price of an existing home one year ago was $294,000.
A small increase in the housing supply helped sales increase for the first time since February, said NAR chief economist Lawrence Yun, but did little to cool the staggering rise in prices that suppressed sales earlier this year.
“Huge wealth gains from both housing equity and the stock market have nudged up all-cash transactions, but first-time buyers who need mortgage financing are being uniquely challenged with record-high home prices and low inventory,” Yun explained. “Although rates are favorably low, these hurdles have been overwhelming to some potential buyers.” I’ve got more here.
GOOD TO KNOW
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) is doubling down on warnings about the possibility of child tax credit scams.
New applications for unemployment insurance rose last week after reaching a new pandemic low, according to data released Thursday by the Labor Department.
White House senior adviser Anita Dunn will brief Democratic members of Congress on a messaging strategy surrounding President Biden’s agenda on Thursday as the Senate prepares to soon take up a sweeping $3.5 trillion budget bill with his priorities.
The IRS says it has now delivered more than $400 billion in American Rescue Plan coronavirus stimulus checks.
ODDS AND ENDS
Mercedes-Benz on Thursday became the latest car manufacturer to unveil plans for a greater investment in electric vehicles, saying that it hopes to transition to solely manufacturing electric vehicles by 2025.
A number of businesses that condemned Georgia’s sweeping voting rights bill have since contributed thousands of dollars to supporters of the legislation after it was signed in March by Gov. Brian Kemp (R).
The Christopher Steele dossier is the most important political document in America’s modern era.
Imported from London, the dossier contained a dozen or so bogus felony allegations against a U.S. president, Donald Trump, and aides for purported Russian election collusion. It was designed to bring his end.
Unleashing it like a piece of destructive malware, Democratic Party operatives sent the dossier coursing through Washington’s power machines to program them to get Mr. Trump.
Recipients treated the collection of 2016 memos like precious jewels — FBI directorships and counter-intelligence; the Justice Department; the Barack Obama White House and his CIA and State Department; senior congressional Democrats, most notably intelligence chair Rep. Adam Schiff; and the most influential cluster of newsrooms in the world that shape and dictate Washington’s daily political struggles.
The Washington establishment’s acceptance is what makes the dossier — at its core a piece of campaign opposition research — historically unmatched.
It became a weapon to constantly harass, destabilize and distort Mr. Trump for much of his presidency. It was an astounding success from the Democrats’ point of view. It only cost them and Hillary Clinton’s campaign team about $160,000 for Mr. Steele and his ex-journalist handlers, the folks at Fusion GPS.
Dossier Democrats never paid a political price for trying to bring down a president with non-existent conspiracies.
Mr. Steele told us the 35-page booklet came directly from the lips of senior Kremlin insiders. Mr. Steele, the liberal press told us, especially the liberal British press, was the best spy ever during his time at MI6 as a Moscow embed.
The dossier enjoyed devotion from the Leftist media. (CNN and MSNBC vouched for its accuracy. Mr. Trump was a Russian agent.)
The FBI studied the dossier pages like they were a roadmap to the point where the story ends with the slaying of monster Trump. It wasn’t just FBI wiretaps based on dossier “probable cause” search warrants. Mr. Steele assured there was a well-developed Trump-Russia election conspiracy and, by God, the FBI gumshoes were going to find it.
When Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein sent investigative directions in 2017 to special counsel Robert Mueller, his memo read as if it came straight out of Mr. Steele’s brain.
When the CIA was writing the official intelligence history of Russia’s election interference in the fall of 2016, FBI Director James Comey and Deputy Director Andrew McCabe insisted that it include the dossier. A public intelligence community report that was supposed to be based on verified facts would have contained the unverified claims of a poorly sourced dossier if the FBI had had its way. The CIA balked and relegated the unreliable dossier to an appendix.
Still, the FBI repeatedly soaked up dossier info via intermediaries, including the Justice Department’s No. 4 official. Agents met with Mr. Steele in Rome and agreed to pay him for more anti-Trump dirt.
By early 2017, Mr. Steele’s main source, Russian-born Igor Danchenko, told the FBI that Mr. Steele had embellished his report.
U.S. intelligence told the FBI that Moscow intelligence penetrated Mr. Steele’s dossier project and likely fed him disinformation, such as the fictitious Prague trip by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen. Vladimir Putin likes to mess with America, Republican or Democrat.
Put on notice, the FBI continued to rely on the dossier.
Eventually, Republicans and Washington’s plucky conservative press took over. Mr. Trump did not finance Russian computer hacking. There was no sinister trip to Prague to meet Mr. Putin’s goons. Nor did campaign operatives agree to end sanctions for gobs of Russian natural gas money.
Today, a small reckoning is appearing in Washington discourse.
Former New York Times reporter Barry Meier has written a book on the ubiquitous private intelligence industry. “Spooked: The Trump Dossier, Black Cube, and the Rise of Private Spies” gets around to looking at Steele handler Fusion GPS and its stable of ex-Wall Street Journal reporters.
What’s interesting is that the New York Times played host to a Meier book preview. While the Times promoted all kinds of Trump-Russia conspiracy theories, the paper was decidedly neutral on the dossier itself. It tried hard to corroborate its specious allegations but never did, even as it wrote scores of stories that insinuated that a conspiracy did exist. The Times has never eviscerated Mr. Steele’s body of work despite its collapse.
Mr. Meier depicts Mr. Steele and Fusion co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch as united in the liberal contest to beat up, destroy and discard Mr. Trump. Mr. Steele sold his life rights to Hollywood. Oh, the fun that Democratic bastion would have made Mr. Steele a star on its Walk of Fame.
“Now the glow has faded — from both the dossier and its promoters,” Mr. Meier wrote in the Times. “Russia, as Mr. Steele asserted, did try to influence the 2016 election. But many of the dossier’s most explosive claims — like a salacious ‘pee’ tape featuring Mr. Trump or a supposed meeting in Prague between Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former attorney, and Russian operatives — have never materialized or have been proved false.”
Mr. Simpson and Mr. Fritsch have never acknowledged any dossier mistakes. They once adorned the New York Times op-ed pages. The Times published at least three Simpson-Fritsch columns attacking Mr. Trump in 2018-19.
Their rebuttal to Mr. Meier appeared on the community site Medium.com.
They paint Mr. Meier as a hypocrite because he wrote a book criticizing them — after previously seeking their opposition research on Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.
“By far, the most salient fact that Meier omits in his book and news story is that he himself repeatedly contacted us for help on Times stories before, during and after the 2016 election,” they write. “We would generally consider our correspondence with a journalist to be confidential, but Meier’s extraordinary hypocrisy warrants an exception.”
On June 6, Mr. Meier posted a photo on his Twitter account of Mr. Simpson and Mr. Fritsch, with the heading: “The dossier’s journey from media obsession to the slush pile. It’s one of the stories in SPOOKED.”
Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA) said the Department of Justice’s decision to end the investigations into nursing home deaths in New York, Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey was “unconscionable.”
Scalise was told Friday, in a letter from the Justice Department, that the investigations into the nursing home deaths that occurred during the coronavirus pandemic would be dropped, which prompted the congressman to call out the DOJ for not finding out the truth that plagued thousands of families following the loss of their loved ones.
There are still several investigations into @NYGovCuomo here in New York, and I will try to hold out hope for those to prevail, but for the families in Pennsylvania, Michigan, and New Jersey, this is a soul crushing day.
“It is outrageous that the Department of Justice refuses to investigate the deadly ‘must admit’ orders issued by governors in New York, Pennsylvania, and Michigan that resulted in the deaths of thousands of senior citizens,” Scalise said in a Friday statement. “Where is the justice for nursing home victims and their grieving families?”
“These deadly orders contradicted the CDC’s guidance, and needlessly endangered the most vulnerable among us to the deadly COVID-19 virus,” he continued. “Even worse, Governor Cuomo in New York intentionally tried to cover up the true death toll resulting from his mandate. Grieving families deserve answers and accountability. It’s unconscionable that Biden’s Department of Justice refuses to investigate the deadly actions that went against CDC’s medical guidance taken in these states.”
The DOJ’s Civil Rights Division requested information from New York in August pertaining to a March 25, 2020 order from the state Health Department that required nursing homes to house “medically stable” COVID-19 patients who had been discharged from hospitals.
It also asked for records from Pennsylvania, Michigan and New Jersey, all of which enacted similar rules that “may have resulted in the deaths of thousands of elderly nursing home residents,” according to the DOJ.
Even after these investigations were dropped by the DOJ, other investigations into New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) surrounding his role in the state’s nursing home deaths are still ongoing. He is facing a probe by the FBI and the Brooklyn US Attorney’s Office that is potentially more serious after a top aide said privately that the administration covered up the number of nursing home residents’ COVID-19 deaths.
The probe includes how Cuomo handled nursing homes during the pandemic, as well as his $5.1 million book deal, according to state Senate Health Committee Chairman Gustavo Rivera (D-The Bronx).
Families in Michigan, Pennsylvania and New Jersey will not receive justice for their loved ones.
Speaking with The Western Journal on Thursday, Arizona State President Karen Fann confirmed that a number of ballots in the 2020 election were indeed printed on the wrong paper, allowing bleed-through which then invalidated those ballots.
During a broadcasted state Senate hearing held on July 15 regarding the Maricopa County presidential election audit, Arizona senators revealed as much.
However, Maricopa County officials then issued a statement from their official Twitter account that merely said “SharpieGate has been debunked already” without addressing the evidence provided at the hearing.
This accuracy is verified through logic and accuracy tests, hand counts performed by the political parties, and post-election audits performed by EAC certified voting testing laboratories. #SharpieGate has been debunked already.https://t.co/ltmk5lr4N2
However, it should be noted that Maricopa County officials would be found liable should any of the audit’s findings prove legitimate. Therefore, their arguments cannot necessarily be considered impartial or unbiased.
According to Fann, there are many “misstatements” being spread by those officials regarding whether or not the proper paper was used for ballots in the 2020 election.
“For example, we can go back to an actual public document that [Maricopa County officials] had on their website and they put out there and said, ‘We only use four types of paper for our ballots,’ and those ballots are — it’s a special kind of paper that has, I believe, it’s a titanium film on it, if you will, which actually prevent people from — from the ballots, from seeping through on the other side,” Fann told The Western Journal.
“Well, we know for a fact from the hearing last Thursday that there is a lot of ballots out there that they marked through, and images of them. So clearly, that was misinformation when they said we only use four types of paper.”
During the July 15 hearing, images were provided showing that some ballots did suffer bleed-through which, if the proper VoteSecure paper had been used, should have been impossible.
According to Fann, Senate Republicans have affidavits from poll workers confirming that some polls “were not using any special paper.”
“As a matter of fact, if they ran out of paper, somebody was sent down to the nearest office supply store to pick up more paper. So that in itself is, okay, obviously, that’s not secure paper. Obviously, you’re going to have bleed-throughs,” Fann told The Western Journal.
VoteSecure paper is particularly thick and has a special coating designed to prevent bleed-through.
Fann believes that this mishandling of ballot paper could be why “there were so many more adjudicated ballots this year than ever.”
“I don’t have the statistic in front of me and I cannot even remember when I [read] it, but I do remember back in April there was a statement that was made from Maricopa County that said there was over 11 percent adjudicated ballots [in 2020],” Fann told The Western Journal.
“I’m still trying to find that as my backup to do that, but clearly that is way more than they have ever, ever had. And so, that explains that. But why, so why aren’t they talking to us about it? Why aren’t they saying, ‘Yeah, we do believe there could be these problems here,’ but they’re not.”
“Instead, they’ve set up a Twitter account on social media, and working in concert with the liberal media, [they’re] trying to cover any mistakes that maybe they had made, or anything — I don’t understand why they want to fight this out or do this, trying to defend themselves on a Twitter site, rather than just sit down with us and say, ‘Let’s go through this and see if we can find some explanations for you.’”
The chief health officer of New South Wales gave a press conference telling Australians that they shouldn’t “engage in conversation with each other,” even if they’re wearing masks, in order to reduce the transmission of COVID.
Yes, really.
Dr. Kerry Chant made the remarks in response to people in NSW being ordered to comply with yet another lockdown triggered by just a handful of new cases, which included a man in Cootamundra who visited a Woolworths supermarket, Pizza Hut restaurant, petrol station and Officeworks store.
“Whilst it’s human nature to engage in conversation with others, to be friendly, unfortunately this is not the time to do that,” said Chant.
“So even if you run into your next door neighbor in the shopping center…don’t start up a conversation, now is the time for minimizing your interactions with others, even if you’ve got a mask, do not think that affords total protection, we wanna be absolutely sure that as we go about our daily lives we do not come into contact with anyone else that would pose a risk,” she added.
SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA.
DON’T ACT LIKE A HUMAN. DON’T TALK TO YOUR FRIENDS, EVEN WHEN MASKED. DON’T BE FRIENDLY. THIS IS NOT THE TIME. pic.twitter.com/iiPgz2D8Bb
In addition to officials telling people they shouldn’t talk to their friends and neighbors, those living in or those who visited the affected areas are now under a minimum 7 day stay-at-home order, while masks will again become mandatory masks for teachers and high school students.
Twitter users reacted to the statement by pointing out that this represents a new level in the complete inhumanity of lockdown.
“Their desperation is front and centre. They’re either running out of time or they’re going insane right in front of our eyes,” commented British pop due Right Said Fred.
Their desperation is front and centre. They’re either running out of time or they’re going insane right in front of our eyes.
As we have previously highlighted, Australia has imposed innumerable brutal lockdowns, some of the most draconian in the western world, in the disastrous pursuit of a ‘zero COVID’ policy.
Alice Springs, a town in Australia 800 miles away from the nearest city went into full lockdown last month after just a single new case of COVID-19 was detected.
As we reported earlier this month, COVID-19 lockdowns were found to have been a major contributing factor to a doubling in attempted suicides of those aged between 5-25 in Australia.
Free speech is under attack in this country. Some of the attacks are loud and transparent, while other attacks are quiet and obscure. At this very moment, someone could be combing through your personal Facebook page and advocating that the content is bigoted and grounds for you to be fired from your job. I faced this issue head-on, and I have a story to tell that is troubling but also intended to create awareness about this very real and important topic.
As a K-12 district leader, I was dreading an upcoming parent meeting with two same-gendered and divorced dads who thought that their child’s teacher should be fired based on her social media posts.
I had previewed the teacher’s page prior to the meeting, and I agreed with many of the teacher’s posts, which expressed politically conservative and religiously Christian viewpoints. I could not find evidence of hate speech or bullying on the teacher’s Facebook page. Nevertheless, I knew that I needed to come into the meeting with an open mind to demonstrate love and compassion for these dads who were clearly distressed.
The dads were articulate, educated, and respected members of the community who had persisted in trolling the teacher’s Facebook page. To understand the context, it is important to know some basic information about the teacher’s Facebook page:
The teacher’s account was personal and was not school-related.
While one had to “friend request” the teacher to view the entire contents of the page, many of the posts were made “public” for anyone to view.
The teacher did not, at any point in time, advertise her personal Facebook page to parents or students or suggest that they view her page.
The teacher was aware of the complaints that the dads had voiced, and even though the teacher had blocked them from viewing her page, the dads still found workarounds; they continued to monitor and attempted to police the page by communicating with school site administration.
The dads essentially thought that the teacher should not have free speech or express viewpoints that some students would identify with, such as Christian believers, but that could alienate students from other religions, including agnostics and atheists. The parents were also concerned with the teacher’s position on transgendered students. The teacher had made a post that biological male students should not be able to compete on female sports teams. The parents said that this was bigoted and a conflict of interest since the teacher also coached sports.
Ultimately, the dads expected the school district to monitor the teacher’s personal Facebook page. This request seemed unreasonable and like a misuse of public funds, as school districts have hundreds and sometimes thousands of employees and are not required to monitor how employees express their right to free speech. Furthermore, the parents wanted the district to take action to FIRE the teacher based on her personal social media posts.
In that moment, while I did not agree with the parents, I felt compassion for these dads who had clearly faced their own struggles in life. It seemed to me that perhaps their attention toward the teacher’s Facebook posts was really displaced hurt and anger for the unkindness that they had experienced in their own lives.
I also felt compassion for the teacher, who had a reputation as both an excellent educator and one who connected well with her students. I thought it was unfair that the teacher’s glowing reputation and professional practice were being outshined by her freedom of speech.
Nevertheless, I also sought legal counsel, as I recognized my own personal bias in this situation. The law supported the teacher’s constitutionally protected speech. In fact, even though it was not applicable in this situation, hate speech is protected in the United States. What is not protected is speech that advocates hate crimes or targeted harassment, and evidence of this could not be found on the teacher’s Facebook page.
In the end, I found this situation deeply disturbing, so I wanted to increase awareness in the Christian conservative community that personal social media accounts are being watched and monitored by others.
In today’s cancel culture, it is a bold move to contact a person’s employer and advocate that they be fired for posting personal religious or political viewpoints on their own time, especially when issues of religion and politics will always be offensive or controversial to those with opposing viewpoints. It is also disturbing that employers are being asked to monitor their employee’s expression of free speech and use it as grounds for termination. Free speech comes with a steep price to pay, and sadly, the costs continue to increase.
Channel i24 News also noted the Health Ministry’s indication that the vaccine loses effectiveness over time, achieving only 16% effectiveness in preventing coronavirus transmission among those vaccinated in January.
Ben-Gurion University Epidemiologist Nadav Davidovitch toldThe Times of Israel, “What we see is that the vaccine is less effective in preventing transmission,” adding, however, that the vaccine does prevent “hospitalization and severe cases.”
New study suggests Pfizer’s Covid-19 vaccine is far less effective at preventing infection and symptomatic illness with the Delta variant https://t.co/2vxQOSGJ7B
The revelation out of Israel about the Pfizer shot’s effectiveness comes as Israel begins investigating a number of adverse reactions in some of its citizens who received the vaccine.
Bloomberg notes that Israeli authorities have identified more than 60 cases of heart lining and heart muscle inflammation in vaccinated Israelis.
Israel is one of the world’s most heavily vaccinated countries but has recently seen the number of positive COVID tests rise substantially (here, here, here). Last Sunday, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett issued new restrictions last weekend to “curb” the increase of delta variant infections over the weekend, according to Haaretz.The Jerusalem Post reports 143 Israelis were hospitalized with COVID-19 as of Wednesday at 12 pm, according to Israel’s Health Ministry. 58% of them were vaccinated, 39% were not, and 3% were partially vaccinated.
Meanwhile, a survey in Inda shows 67% of its citizens have covid antibodies—meaning they are protected form the virus—despite only 4% of the populaiton being fully vaccinated.
Israeli health ministry says Pfizer vaccine prevents severe sickness—but not infection https://t.co/5EhW9A7F90
