The U.S., NATO and other allies are collectively calling out China for malicious cyberattacks, including a March attack that exploited a flaw in Microsoft’s Exchange Server.
Why it matters: It’s the first time that NATO, a military alliance founded in 1949 to confront the Soviet Union, has signed onto a formal condemnation of China’s cyber activities.
Zoom in: Authorities are detailing more than 50 different techniques that Chinese state-sponsored actors used, and offering up recommended mitigations that businesses and organizations can take.
The U.S. says that China’s Ministry of State Security is using contract hackers to conduct the attacks, many of which are being done for profit, including via ransomware.
The U.S., NATO, European Union, U.K., Australia, Canada, New Zealand and Japan say they can now, “with high confidence,” attribute the March attack using the Exchange flaw to cyberattackers affiliated with China’s state security ministry. That attack crippled thousands of computers around the world.
(American Thinker) The “silent majority” was mentioned by President Nixon in 1969, who labeled middle Americans who weren’t protesting the Vietnam war or joining the counter culture — two activities being over-reported by the media of the day. The silent majority didn’t speak up much but respected traditional American values with a good-natured approach to political issues.
They were silent, but they voted. In 1972, Nixon was re-elected with one of the largest landslides in U.S. history — 520 electoral votes to only 17 for McGovern.
Today, most Americans focus on work and family and trust that our elected officials will work for us, and if they don’t, the folks who pay attention to such stuff will vote them out.
But after five years of hysteria over Donald Trump, the media have hyped so many radical liberal causes to the point where many conservative Americans feel they are an endangered minority. If we speak up, we feel we will be ridiculed or ostracized by our friends and co-workers or even lose our jobs. People with conservative bumper stickers have had their cars vandalized, and those wearing patriotic clothing have been harassed and physically assaulted.
There are so many issues that face us that we can easily be overwhelmed and simply give up on political discourse, which furthers the idea that liberals rule the day.
But the silent majority in the United States is waking up — not in a uniform manner, but on an issue-by-issue basis. They know what their eyes are seeing on the nightly news, and they aren’t fooled one bit by blatant liberal spin.
If they have young children, they have been outraged by sex education initiatives that teach masturbation and promote gay and transgender lifestyles to kindergarteners. Or their children participate in sports where boys who think they may be girls are competing in female activities and are given free access to girls’ locker rooms. And of course, locking down schools for over a year has caused irreparable damage to their kids’ education, with mountains of evidence saying staying home was completely unnecessary.
Parents of college-aged kids are now seeing “Critical Race Theory” being taught, claiming that whiteness alone causes unavoidable unconscious racism, and nothing can be done to fix it, but giving special privileges to everyone who isn’t white can help.
If they live in border states, they have been horrified by the policies of the new administration, which are leading to massive increases in local crime, horrible hardships for women and children, and a free flow of drugs into our country.
Things came to a head with the George Floyd riots, where Democrat mayors and governors gave out-of-state agitators free rein to incite locals to loot and burn businesses. Anyone with eyes could see that protesting is not stealing flat-screen TVs and designer tennis shoes. They saw footage from New York of organized thieves driving up to electronics and jewelry stores while police were ordered to stand by.
Those who were arrested were released immediately, and the charges were later dropped. New laws were passed in liberal cities ending cash bail “in the interest of fairness to minorities,” which has led to an unprecedented level of crime and violence in our most vulnerable populations. Then came ridiculous demands to “defund police” while 70% of the minorities in affected districts want more policemen, not fewer.
The 2020 elections were a turning point. Everyone watched Trump rallies with tens of thousands of enthusiastic supporters and contrasted them with Biden’s events with 20–30 people in six-foot circles. On Election Night, they saw videos of Republican poll-watchers being thrown out of Democrat-controlled districts and windows being papered to hide what was going on. They saw videos of ballots being counted late at night when no one was watching, and the same stacks were run through the machines multiple times. Ballot counting was halted simultaneously in five liberal states, and when things started up again, the results magically shifted to Biden.
Americans are not stupid. They know that the fix was in. They know that lying and corruption at the highest levels were involved.
But by far the strongest reaction has come from the government and medical communities’ response to the COVID-19 “pandemic.” When it was first noticed in March of 2020, we were told it was 5% fatal, and the only way to stop it was to stay home for 15 days, and everything would be fine.
Oil tumbles as OPEC, allies reach deal to raise production
Selling intensified for U.S. stock markets Monday early afternoon as the recent rise in COVID-19 infections has stoked fears of an economic slowdown.
New COVID-19 infections jumped 70% last week to about 30,000 a day as the Delta variant continued to spread. Deaths rose to an average of 250 a day, mostly in unvaccinated people.
The decline is on pace to be the worst session of the year after the major averages on Friday suffered their biggest single-day declines in a month.
Selling in the equity markets caused investors to seek safety in the U.S. Treasury market with the yield on the 10-year note falling 10 basis points to 1.19%, the lowest since mid-February.
In stocks, rate-sensitive banks, like JPMorgan Chase & Co. Bank of America Corp. and Citigroup Inc., were lower.
Stocks tied to the reopening of the global economy were under extra pressure including Delta Air Lines Inc., Carnival Corp. and Las Vegas Sands Corp., amid concerns a COVID-19 resurgence could cause virus-wary travelers to stay home. Restaurants also taking a hit.
The U.S. surgeon general on Thursday issued an advisory calling on tech companies to crack down on what the office called vaccine “misinformation.” The same day, The Rockefeller Foundation announced $13.5 million in new funding to combat vaccine “misinformation and disinformation.”
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy on Thursday issued an advisory warning the American public about the “urgent threat” of health misinformation and disinformation that have “threatened the U.S. response to COVID-19 and continue to prevent Americans from getting vaccinated, prolonging the pandemic and putting lives at risk.”
The 22-page advisory calls on Big Tech and social media companies to take more responsibility to stop the online spread of health misinformation.
The advisory blamed “misinformation” for causing people to decline COVIDvaccines, reject public health measures such as masking and physical distancing and using unproven treatments.
Murthy, who operates under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said in a press release, “As Surgeon General, my job is to help people stay safe and healthy, and without limiting the spread of health misinformation, American lives are at risk.”
According to the HHS press release, whether “health misinformation” is false, inaccurate or misleading will be determined by the “best available evidence.”
The advisory further defined the “best available evidence” standard as the preferred benchmark because “claims can be highly misleading and harmful even if the science on an issue isn’t yet settled.”
“We can meaningfully improve the health information environment even without a consensus definition of misinformation,” Murthy said.
U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy on Thursday issued an advisory warning the American public about the “urgent threat” of health misinformation and disinformation that have “threatened the U.S. response to COVID-19 and continue to prevent Americans from getting vaccinated, prolonging the pandemic and putting lives at risk.”
The 22-page advisory calls on Big Tech and social media companies to take more responsibility to stop the online spread of health misinformation.
The advisory blamed “misinformation” for causing people to decline COVIDvaccines, reject public health measures such as masking and physical distancing and using unproven treatments.
Murthy, who operates under the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), said in a press release, “As Surgeon General, my job is to help people stay safe and healthy, and without limiting the spread of health misinformation, American lives are at risk.”
According to the HHS press release, whether “health misinformation” is false, inaccurate or misleading will be determined by the “best available evidence.”
The advisory further defined the “best available evidence” standard as the preferred benchmark because “claims can be highly misleading and harmful even if the science on an issue isn’t yet settled.”
“We can meaningfully improve the health information environment even without a consensus definition of misinformation,” Murthy said.
“Facebook needs to move more quickly to remove violative posts,” Psaki said. “Posts that will be within their policies’ removal often remain up for days. That’s too long. The information spreads too quickly,” she said.
A CNN source said Biden officials took concerns about vaccine misinformation to Facebook and concluded the tech giant was either not “taking this very seriously, or they are hiding something” due to what they view as Facebook’s unwillingness to tackle vaccine misinformation.
The source pointed to how Robert F. Kennedy Jr., co-founder and chair of Children’s Health Defense, was banned from Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, but not from Facebook itself.
The Facebook spokesperson told CNN, “We don’t automatically disable accounts across our apps, because the accounts may post about different things on our different services.”
In an interview today with The Defender, Kennedy said:
“I’m very happy to debate the Surgeon General or to line my stacks up against his and allow the public to judge which one of us is the source of misinformation — is the font of all the vaccine misinformation, disinformation and obfuscation. I would also remind the Surgeon General that censorship by the government is not just un-American, it’s unconstitutional, and he should have the confidence in his policies in the marketplace of ideas and not have to rely on coercion.”
Kennedy said it’s not up to the government or CNN to decide. He said:
“It’s a dangerous path for democracy when we allow government officials and CNN, which is utterly dependent on pharmaceutical advertising, to tell Americans they are not allowed to criticize pharmaceutical products — zero liability, experimental pharmaceutical products.”
People injured by COVID vaccines are asking for help on GoFundMe as the U.S. government shields vaccine makers from liability.
The Legal Process Is Underway To Recall The Arizona Electors
President Donald Trump supporters and American patriots nationwide are emboldened after an Arizona state Senate hearing on the Maricopa County election audit proved massive fraud. Among the audit’s findings so far: 11,326 people in the county who voted in the November 3 election were NOT on the voter rolls on November 7, but were added to the voter rolls by December 4. This number is higher than Joe Biden’s supposed statewide “lead” in Arizona of 10,457 votes. Additionally, more than 74,000 mail-in ballots were counted in the county even though there is no recorded evidence of the ballots being sent to the “voters” in the first place — and Maricopa County withheld all photographic evidence of the mail-in ballot envelopes from the Republican audit team (meanwhile, photographs show ballot printers and boxes getting loaded onto a “Destruction” truck in Phoenix during the Senate hearing). Thin ballot paper used for approximately 168,000 ballots led to markers “bleeding through” the paper, damaging ballots, after a Maricopa County official ordered staff to hand out Sharpie markers to same-day voters even though she knew about concerns with the Sharpies. Another round of subpoenas is expected, as state senators call for the Republican-controlled Arizona legislature to decertify the election and “recall” Joe Biden’s electors in the state. Activists on the ground are fighting to get a warrant from necessary Arizona senators to compel Maricopa County to hand over more evidence.
Republicans hoping to get President Donald Trump back in office can look to left-wingers for advice. That’s right. After the 2016 election, liberals tried to overturn Trump’s victory and laid out numerous strategies for doing so, as we will explain below. Arizona state Senator Wendy Rogers stated: “I have heard enough. With the tens of thousands of ballots mailed without being requested, the over ten thousand people who voted after registering after November 3rd, the failure of Maricopa to turn over the 40% machines, the passwords that Dominion still refuses to turn over, & tens of thousands of unauthorized queries demonstrating how insecure the election was, I call for the Biden electors to be recalled to Arizona & a new election must be conducted. Arizona’s electors must not be awarded fraudulently & we need to get this right.” Arizona state senator Sonny Borelli stated: “I’ve seen enough evidence to challenge the validity of the certification of the Maricopa County Election results.” Arizona state senator Kelly Townsend stated that “I want to see indictments.” Georgia State Senator Brandon Beach, referring to the massive voter fraud revelations in his own state of Georgia, said, “We can ask for our 16 Electoral College votes back, and park them here. And just say, we don’t want those as part of the vote.” Beach explained, “Decertify our 16 electoral votes. Park them here. Bring them back, and park them in Georgia. And then if Arizona did that, if a couple other states did that, and it got below 270, then the Twelfth Amendment would kick in, and Congress would have to act.” So would Republicans put Decertificaton of the 2020 election on the ballot for the 2022 midterms, or can Wendy Rogers’ strategy prove effective and can we get a re-vote of the entire election? Arguments can certainly be made for an Election “Re-Do.”
As Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan revealed some of his evidence at an Arizona Senate hearing, ballot printers and boxes were being moved in Phoenix onto a truck providing “Destruction” services. The establishment appears to be panicking. Maricopa County officials have confirmed that they are getting rid of the election equipment that was inspected in the audit.
Why were they loading shredding trucks w boxes too? Inquiring minds want to know! pic.twitter.com/DsPfeeupJg
— JovanHuttonPulitzer™ #JovanHuttonPulitzer (@JovanHPulitzer) July 15, 2021
SharpieGate: “We are seeing a lot of very thin paper stock being used especially on Election Day,”said Doug Logan, Cyber Ninjas CEO, noting that approximately 168,000 on-site ballots printed at polling places used this thin paper, which resulted in a “bleed-through” ink effect that damaged ballots. Evidence shows that a Maricopa County government official ordered her underlings to hand out Sharpie markers to Election Day voters (mostly Trump voters showed up to vote on Election Day) despite “issues and concerns” with the markers.
Doug Logan: This is an actual ballot in Maricopa County with bleed through that would have been counted as an over vote. pic.twitter.com/dMaS0cvbFL
BUSTED: This internal email from Maricopa County, AZ talks about "Issues and Concerns" with markers but says they have to give voters markers anyway instead of ballpoint pens on Election Day
Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan said at a hearing before Arizona state senators Thursday that his election audit found more than 74,000 mail-in ballots that were counted in Maricopa County with no record of them being sent to the voters, and that the standard of verification for mail-in ballots dropped down to zero during the counting process. Logan is demanding the full library of mail-in ballot images from Maricopa County, which the county has not provided to him. Biden’s official lead in Arizona stands at only 10,457 votes.
“We have 74,243 mail-in ballots where there is no clear record of them being sent,” Doug Logan said. “And so we have 74,000 where we have them came back from individuals where we don’t have a clear indication that they were ever sent out to them.”
BOMBSHELL: Arizona Audit experts say that there were 74,000 mail in ballots received with no record of them being sent out. pic.twitter.com/0LMel5Yj2l
Cyber Ninjas CEO Doug Logan stated that the standard of verification for mail-in ballots dropped considerably as the volume of the ballots increased. “We’ve had an affidavit that specifically stated that when mail-in ballots were received, that so many of them were received that the standard was reduced over time. They originally talked about, there was originally 20 points of comparison on the signature and then after some time they were told to go to ten points of comparison, then five. And then eventually they were just told to let every single mail-in ballot through,” Doug Logan stated, noting that Maricopa County is withholding mail-in ballot images that can be used as evidence. Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett recommended re-subpoenaing those images.
HUGE: Arizona Audit experts say they received an affidavit from Maricopa County revealing that verification of mail in ballots went from 20 points to 10 to 5 to ZERO. pic.twitter.com/lTE39dK0wX
Former Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, who served as the Republican state Senate’s liaison to the Maricopa County audit, confirmed that “thousands” of ballots that were set aside to be duplicated had no serial number on them or a very “light” unreadable serial number, making them impossible to properly count during the 2020 election.
“There was almost one whole pallet that were called original/damaged ballots sent to duplication…if a ballot gets damaged and has to be sent to duplication,” Bennett explained. “We found I would have to say thousands of duplicate ballots where those serial numbers are not on them” which “has created great difficulty in trying to match up.”
Bennett said that “thousands” of ballots in the duplicate pile had serial numbers “put on by a dot matrix printer, very very light” and there was “none whatsoever on many” ballots. When asked how you would know if ballots are duplicated or not with no serial number, Ken Bennett confirmed that you would NOT know. The stunning revelation provides more substance to President Donald Trump’s assertion that the 2020 election was illegitimate.
BOMBSHELL: Many Arizona duplicate ballots had "very, very light" serial numbers, and many more had NO SERIAL NUMBERS. pic.twitter.com/mzxBKJfXrH
Tech contractor Ben Cotton, a witness in the Arizona Senate hearing Thursday on the Arizona election audit, confirmed that the Maricopa County election system was “compromised” during the 2020 election. “An element of the election system was actually compromised or breached during the course of the November 2020 election…The registration server that was public facing did have unauthorized access to that. In cybersecurity terms, it was breached…The county issued a letter” regarding the problem, stated tech expert Cotton.
In March, there were more than 37,000 anonymous administrative queries to access the 2020 election system in Maricopa County that defied “normal Windows behavior,” according to cyber expert Ben Cotton, a witness at the Arizona state Senate hearing Thursday on the election audit.
“The Windows logs will actually record the user name that is requesting that action” in addition to the IP address and the host name of the client making the request, said tech expert Ben Cotton. “What we are seeing here…is we’re seeing anonymous logins at the system level that do not follow that pattern of normal Windows behavior.” Cotton said that he needs to obtain data to figure out what the activity is.
JUST IN: Maricopa County cyber expert Ben Cotton says "We're seeing anonymous logins at the system level that do not follow that pattern of normal Windows behavior" pic.twitter.com/I8WF8TPy14
President Donald Trump stated: “Arizona Senate hearings on the Maricopa County Election audit is devastating news to the Radical Left Democrats and the Biden Administration. While this, according to the Senate, is preliminary, with results being announced at a later date, it seems that 74,243 Mail-In Ballots were counted with “no clear record of them being sent.” There were 18,000 voters who were scrubbed from the voter rolls after the election. They also revealed that the voting system was breached or hacked (by who?) Very big printer and ballot problems with different paper used, etc., and MUCH MORE. The irregularities revealed at the hearing today amount to hundreds of thousands of votes or, many times what is necessary for us to have won. Despite these massive numbers, this is the State that Fox News called early for a Biden victory. There was no victory here, or in any other of the Swing States either.”
“Maricopa County refuses to work together with the Senate and others who are merely looking for honesty, integrity, and transparency. Why do the Commissioners not want to look into this corrupted election? What are they trying to hide? The highly respected State Senator Wendy Rogers said in a tweet the hearing today means we must decertify the election. In any event, the Senate Patriots are moving forward with final results to be announced in the not-too-distant future, but based on today’s hearing, why even wait?” stated Republican President Trump, who served honorably in the Oval Office from 2017 until his ouster by the Deep State in January 2021.
The Left Tried To Overturn The 2016 Election After Trump Won, Demanding A Revote And Petitioning Attorneys General
The left-wing VoicesofMillionsCoalition drafted a Change.org petition to the U.S. Supreme Court to force a “Revote of the 2016 Elections (Primary and General).” The group’s petition stated: “The people of Austria and Ukraine prompted their Supreme Court to overturn their elections following widespread election hacking. We must do the same. Jerroll M. Sanders—legal strategist for a far-reaching citizen revote effort—looked at U.S. law through a new lens and drafted a writ of mandamus that amounts to a solid challenge to the 2016 elections. Citizens across the nation walked into courts and filed the documents drafted by Sanders to safeguard our right to vote. One of the writs filed jointly by three citizen petitioners now sits before the U.S. Supreme Court. The writ asks the Court to declare the 2016 elections (primary and general) unconstitutional because the U.S. Government failed to protect States’ against cyber invasions during the 2016 elections as required by Article IV, Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution. www.revote.org.”
On November 21, 2017, VoicesofMillionsCoalition posted that “Revote Coalition Launches Promising Strategy to Obtain Revote of 2016 Federal Elections” and stated, “Revote Coalition (www.revote.info) has sent requests to several State Attorneys General (AGs) asking them to file a Supreme Court (SCOTUS) case seeking a revote of the 2016 federal elections. AGs are considering the group’s request.” Of course, in the 2020 election, the Coalition encouraged its anti-Trump supporters to vote with paper ballots.
State Supreme Courts have ordered re-votes of contested elections
This time four years ago, in July 2017, the liberal website FiveThirtyEight ran an article headlined “What Happens If The Election Was A Fraud? The Constitution Doesn’t Say?,” which delved into the strategies Democrats could try to use to overturn the election if “Russian interference” was found to have helped Trump defeat Hillary Clinton. Needless to say, liberals were very much open to the idea of overturning the election results using legislative process. FiveThirtyEight even linked to some examples of cases that could be used to support a re-do of the 2016 presidential election, the way the 1974 Senate election in New Hampshire sparked a re-vote the following year.
In July 2002, the Chicago Tribune ran a headline entitled “Supreme Court doesn’t bar revote in primary” in which staff reporter Christi Parsons reported: “Clearing the way for a new election to correct a faulty Illinois House primary, the state Supreme Court on Friday declined to step in and avert plans to hold the unprecedented revote this fall. As a result, election officials are on course to hold a do-over election Sept. 10 for the West Side Chicago and west suburb House seat. In the initial election, some ballots were not counted, some were lost before an official recount and others were mistakenly cast by voters who didn’t live in the district. A Cook County judge last month ordered a new primary election in the race between Democrats Dorothy Reid and Deborah Graham. On Friday, justices declined to take up a direct appeal of that ruling, leaving an appeals court to hear complaints from Reid. She had been declared the winner after a coin flip to break a tie between her and Graham, opening the door to a court challenge soon after the March primary.”
The Supreme Court of Connecticut in 2006 upheld a lower court’s ruling that an election must be re-done for Middletown city council. The Supreme Court of Connecticut wrote in its decision on Bauer vs. Souto: “This appeal concerns a contested municipal election for the common council of the city of Middletown (council) that was held on November 8, 2005…Following the filing of simultaneous briefs and oral argument before this court, we announced the decision of this court from the bench on December 21, 2005, affirming the trial court’s judgment ordering a new election to be held on January 24, 2006, but reversing the judgment as to the scope of that election. Specifically, we ordered the new election to be citywide, and not limited to district eleven, the district in which the contest arose, as ordered by the trial court…The defendants’ suggestion, made at oral argument in this court, that the new election be limited to those voters who actually voted in the first election in district eleven, is patently unreasonable. There is nothing in our law or in our democratic traditions to suggest that, if a voter does not vote in an election, he or she waives his right to do so when the results of that election prove unreliable and a court orders a new election.”
Back when liberals thought they could overturn the 2016 election, FiveThirtyEight reported (emphasis added):“Others (legal scholars) suggest that there is legal precedent for a presidential re-vote if there were flaws in the process. One instance in which this question arose was the “butterfly ballot” from the 2000 election, which may have caused some voters to choose Pat Buchanan when they meant to vote for Al Gore in Palm Beach County, Florida…At least one federal court has suggested that the courts could order a new election. In 1976, a District Court in New York heard a case alleging voter fraud in several urban locations. The court’s opinion maintained that federal courts had a role to play in ensuring free and fair presidential elections, arguing: “It is difficult to imagine a more damaging blow to public confidence in the electoral process than the election of a President whose margin of victory was provided by fraudulent registration or voting, ballot-stuffing or other illegal means.” This assertion challenged the idea that presidential elections occupy a special category beyond such court remedies.” (FiveThirtyEight passage ends)
Ohio State University law professor Steven Huefner wrote a paper in the Harvard Journal on Legislation, Vol. 44, 2007, entitled Remedying Election Wrongs which argued for the constitutionality of “empowering” what he called “legislative tribunals” to “settle some election contests.” Here is a passage from Huefner’s abstract (emphasis added): “The article next discusses the primary values that should be protected in remedying an unsettled election. With these values in mind, the article then urges states to reconstitute their remedial processes for failed elections. First, it recommends much greater specificity in defining the remedies available for particular types of election failure. It then identifies several additional issues that a state’s election contest statute should address with clarity, such as who can contest an election, what evidentiary showings to require, and the time within which a contest should be resolved. It also recommends empowering non-judicial forums, such as administrative or legislative tribunals, to settle some election contests, and encouraging citizens to adjust their expectations about our election processes – and about the appropriate remedies for failures in these processes – in recognition of the practical impossibility of developing a flawless election system.”Though Huefner was indecisive on what could happen in a contested presidential election and felt that Congress should have jurisdiction over federal elections he wrote: “The easiest case for adjusting election results is when the specific tainted votes, not just the total number of affected votes, can be identified. If the invalid votes are known, then the court can subtract those votes from the official tally, and declare whichever candidate has the most remaining votes to be the winner. For instance, in a recent judicial election in Arkansas, the outcome was reversed when 518 invalid absentee ballots were specifically identified and removed from the official count because the ballots were not obtained or submitted in compliance with absentee balloting requirements…Nonetheless, most courts also have a comparatively easy time resolving the case when the ostensible victor of the election is proven to have participated in vote fraud. When the number of tainted votes exceeds the margin of victory, courts will usually presume that all of those illegal votes favored the candidate behind the fraud and deduct those votes from the official tally, thereby reversing the outcome…The remaining alternative for remedying an unreliable election outcome, whether it occurs as a result of fraud or mistake, is to invalidate the election and call for a new one. This has happened in a variety of circumstances, and many courts have wrestled with whether and when they have authority to order a new election. Although dramatic examples of ordering a new election at the federal level are rare,68 we can find a number of instances in local elections. For instance, in an Alabama mayoral race in 1984, one of four voting machines was conclusively shown to have failed to register any votes cast for one of the four candidates. The state supreme court ordered the entire election rerun, overruling the trial court’s remedy of ordering new balloting only for the voters who had voted on the defective machine…Consider, for instance, a system in which all U.S. citizens received a voter identification card upon reaching voting age, linked to a national computerized database of voters.162 Election eligibility could then be easily confirmed at polling places nationwide. Voters who had voted by absentee ballots also could be systematically identified. Imagine the impact that such a national voter identification card could have not only on facilitating greater voter participation, but also reducing voter and administrative errors (including those associated with the casting of provisional ballots), discouraging (and identifying) vote fraud, and reducing costs.”
Representative Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, suggested that he and fellow GOP Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia plan to file a lawsuit after their “America First” rally in Riverside, California, was canceled.
The City of Riverside announced on Friday that the event, which was planned for 6 p.m. on Saturday, would not proceed at the Riverside Convention Center after it was “widely condemned” by residents, according to a press release from the city. Mayor Patricia Lock Dawson called the rally “divisive” and welcomed the decision from the Raincross Hospitality Corp., which manages the convention center through a city contract.
These quotes are going to make great exhibits in the lawsuit @RepMTG and I will be filing.
Meanwhile, join us today at our alternate location.
“These quotes are going to make great exhibits in the lawsuit @RepMTG and I will be filing,” Gaetz wrote in response on Saturday, retweeting images shared by a journalist of the city’s press release.
The Florida congressman then urged supporters to sign-up for the rally’s new location in Anaheim, California.” However, the Anaheim was canceled hours later as well.
“Meanwhile, join us today at our alternate location,” Gaetz wrote, sharing a link where supporters could sign up.
In a previous tweet, Gaetz wrote: “The Woketopians are this scared of a dose of #AmericaFirst in California. Rally still happening today!”
In the city’s press release, Riverside’s mayor and mayor pro tem spoke favorably of the decision to cancel the right-wing event.
“I recognize this was a divisive issue in our community, and I am glad it has been resolved,” Mayor Dawson said. “I commend Raincross Hospitality Corp. for this decision.”
“Riverside is a diverse and inclusive community, so it is heartening to hear that this event will not move forward,” Mayor Pro Tem Gaby Plascencia said. “I am disappointed we even got to this point, because these speakers are the antithesis of everything Riverside stands for.”
In a Saturday email to Newsweek, Phil Pitchford, a public information officer for Riverside, reiterated that the decision was not made by the city.
“The City did not cancel the event. The decision was made by the private company that operates the Convention Center for the City,” Pitchford said.
Meanwhile, Greene claimed that “Radical communists” had worked to block the Riverside event from moving forward.
Democrats are the party of hate. They organized to attack, threaten, & harass every venue we booked in CA to hold an America First rally, which celebrates our great country & freedoms. They think their vicious hate will stop me, but I never give up. See you at the rally tonight!
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) July 17, 2021
“Radical communists have spent the last week trying to cancel our America First Rally w/ @mattgaetz. Violent threats from BLM/Antifa were used again today to bully another venue,” she tweeted Saturday.
“We won’t back down. Our rally is happening tomorrow night in California,” the congresswoman wrote.
As Gaetz and Greene noted, the “America First” rally was rescheduled and relocated to take place at 7:00 p.m. at the Anaheim Event Center in Anaheim, California. The new venue is located about 45 minutes by car from the Riverside Convention Center. But the event was canceled there as well.
“The City of Anaheim shared public safety concerns with the operator, and those concerns are shared by the operator. As a city, we respect free speech but also have a duty to call out speech that does not reflect our city and its values,” Anaheim city spokesperson Mike Lyster said in a Saturday statement.
Greene responded angrily to the additional cancellation. The congresswoman described the decision as “America Last communists cancel culture” in a tweet.
The @City_of_Anaheim does not believe freedom represents their values, but America Last communists cancel culture does.
Me and @mattgaetz are still having a rally to show all Americans how to stand up against tyrants and bullies using our great First Amendment! https://t.co/bMOTRUueqO
— Marjorie Taylor Greene 🇺🇸 (@mtgreenee) July 17, 2021
“Despite the Democrats‘ dirty tricks and threats of violence, Congressman Gaetz continues to draw unprecedented large crowds. He thanks the hundreds of California patriots who came out in the face of ANTIFA’s threats of violence today,” a spokesperson for Gaetz said in a statement emailed to Newsweek.
“Congressman Gaetz and Congresswoman Greene look forward to announcing new stops on the America First tour in the coming weeks.”
Gaetz and Greene are prominent supporters of former President Donald Trump. Both Republican lawmakers have promoted and spread Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was “rigged” or “stolen” by President Joe Biden. This extraordinary allegation has already been thoroughly litigated and wholly debunked.
An appeals court has unanimously ruled against the University of Iowa for wrongly discriminating a Christian youth organization.
The Christian Post reported that the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit on Friday ruled in favor of two youth organizations–the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship and the InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship–who sued the University of Iowa for deregistering them as student groups out of “viewpoint discrimination.”
“Employees of the University of Iowa targeted religious student organizations for discriminatory enforcement of its Human Rights Policy. After the district court ordered it to stop selectively enforcing the policy against one religious group, the University deregistered another-InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship. InterVarsity filed suit. On cross-motions for summary judgment, the district court held that University employees violated InterVarsity’s First Amendment rights and denied qualified immunity. We affirm,” the three-panel judge said in its decision.
“What the University did here was clearly unconstitutional. It targeted religious groups for differential treatment under the Human Rights Policy-while carving out exemptions and ignoring other violative groups with missions they presumably supported. The University and individual defendants turned a blind eye to decades of First Amendment jurisprudence or they proceeded full speed ahead knowing they were violating the law. Either way, qualified immunity provides no safe haven,” the Eight Circuit judges concluded.
The case, InterVarsity v. University of Iowa, was filed in 2018 when the university “deregistered” many religious organizations that included the InterVarsity Graduate Christian Fellowship, as well as Sikh and Muslim groups. The University actually sent a notice to religious groups on June 1, 2018 with the threat of “deregistration” if the groups will not change their constitution.
