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Falun Gong-aligned media push fake news about Democrats and Chinese communists
US news outlets aligned with Falun Gong, a religious movement locked in a decades-long conflict with the Chinese state, have been increasingly successful in promoting conspiracy narratives about Democrats, election fraud and communists to the pro-Trump right in America.Experts say that in a future post-pandemic landscape, the cable news channel NTD, and especially the multimedia enterprise the Epoch Times, may amplify the efforts of Republicans to link Joe Biden and Democrats to the Chinese Communist party (CCP), and to harden US public opinion against China.According to Angelo Carusone, president and CEO of the media watchdog Media Matters for America, these outlets, and especially the Epoch Times, were always critical of China, and somewhat right-leaning, but were not commonly counted as problematic during the 2016 election as spreading falsehoods across social media platforms like Facebook.But in a telephone conversation, Carusone said Epoch Times pivoted hard from 2017 towards material which stoked conspiracy narratives, and began spending freely in order to make sure that their message was prominent on platforms like YouTube.“After social media sites moved against the fake news outlets, it left a gap,” Carusone said. “What Epoch Times did so well was to step right into that gap.” And, he says, they secured their niche by handing money to big tech platforms.After Epoch Times spent about $11m on Facebook ads in 2019, the platform banned them from advertising on the grounds that they had violated rules around transparency in political advertising. But the outlet simply took its business elsewhere: according to data from Pathmatics that was analyzed by Media MattersIn the year to date, Epoch Times has spent an estimated $930,000 in digital advertising promoting videos and desktop display ads. Over 95% of their spending was on YouTube.Through 2020 and into the early life of the Biden administration, Epoch Times and NTD alike promoted conspiracy theories related to the QAnon movement, the supposedly compromising international ties of Hunter Biden, and even sold merchandise outlining half-forgotten conspiracy theories such as “Uranium One”, which held that Hillary Clinton, as US secretary of state, engineered the sale of uranium deposits to Russian interests in return for donations to the Clinton Foundation.While US rightwing outlets like One America News and Newsmax have profited by supplying the seemingly bottomless appetite among the rightwing grassroots for material that depicts American politics as a tangle of elite conspiracies, Carusone says it is a mistake to view the Falung Gong-aligned outlets as normal media companies.The principal goal of Epoch Times – now publishing in 36 countries under the supervision of a network of non-profits – is not to generate profit, he says, but to mount a long and broad “influence operation”. And the goal of that influence operation, in turn, is “to foment anti-CCP sentiment”.By leveraging the deep partisan polarization in US politics, and by tapping into a long tradition of anticommunism on the American right, according to Carusone, the outlets have sought to link Biden and the Democratic party to radical leftist movements like antifa, and then publish “anything that ties them to CCP influence”, however spurious.He envisages the possibility that Republicans will cooperate with these outlets – who have also spread significant amounts of disinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic – to ask “what is Joe Biden going to do about China causing coronavirus?”Although there is no evidence of direct cooperation, they have already shown a willingness to echo anti-China messaging with the likes of the former Trump aide Steve Bannon and billionaire Chinese exile Guo Wengui, also known as Miles Kwok, who has financed Bannon’s activities through consulting contracts and donations.From as early as January 2020, Bannon and Kwok were attempting to spread a narrative alleging that the pandemic was caused by a Chinese bioweapon, both on Bannon’s radio program and on their shared media venture, G News. The Epoch Times followed that April with a documentary that repeated the bioweapon claims, and have taken further opportunities to allege, without basis, that China’s government started the pandemic deliberately.According to Carusone, such opportunistic retreading of existing conspiracy narratives is characteristic of these outlets. “They’re not drivers, they’re not weaving new conspiracy theories, they’re amplifying what’s already out there,” he said.This effort appears to be increasingly well-resourced. Although the financial arrangements of the many Epoch Times non-profits vary, the original Epoch Times Association Inc, headquartered in New York City, saw revenues and donations increase sharply every year between 2016 and 2019 according to IRS 990 declarations inspected by the Guardian. While in 2016, the association took in $3.9m in revenue, in 2019 they brought in $15.4m, and cleared $1.86m after salaries and expenses.Neither outlet has ever explicitly confirmed its links to Falun Gong, a religious organization which emerged from the so-called “qijong” movement, which teaches adherents to practice breathing, movement and meditation exercises. But former employees reportedly say that they are run by movement adherents, and that Falun Gong founder and leader, Li Hongzhi, and others in the movement’s hierarchy exercise a powerful influence over the outlets’ anti-China messaging.Alongside the English language outlets, Chinese language outlets and a dance troupe spread the group’s messages.Though Falun Gong emerged in China in the 1990s, its founder now lives in the US.The Epoch Times, which began as a print newspaper in 2000, has been a steadfast opponent of the CCP, which has persecuted Falun Gong and other, related qijong movement groups since the late 1990s.The newspaper was founded in Georgia by a Chinese-American Falun Gong adherent, John Tang, and a group of like-minded businessmen. Over the next half-decade it expanded internationally.Carusone says that the intensification of conspiracy messaging in the output of NTD and the Epoch Times, along with their embrace of Trumpism could make them more influential as the far right regroups in the coming months and heads towards the 2022 midterm elections.“There’s an incredible demand for a version of the world centered on one big villain.” he said. “Epoch Times provides that very simple narrative.” More
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‘Not as dramatic as Trump’: Republicans respond to Biden’s address
Republican reaction to Joe Biden’s first congressional speech on Thursday centered as much on what the new president was perceived to have omitted as much as the policy proposals he did lay out.“He didn’t discuss the border and the fact that tens of thousands of people are pouring into our country,” former president Donald Trump said during a morning appearing on Fox News’ Mornings with Maria, seizing on a familiar grievance.“It’s out of control. It could destroy our country.” (Biden did, in fact, address immigration, and his proposed plan for border issues and paths to citizenship.)The Arizona congressman Andy Biggs was another to criticize Biden for not addressing the situation at the southern border, which has seen migrant apprehensions surge.“That is the worst crisis that America is facing today and I was sorely disappointed that the president did not take that on,” he told Fox & Friends.Biggs said Biden “was more methodical and not as dramatic or energetic” as Trump was while delivering his final address to Congress last year, but praised elements of the speech.“When he started talking about the need to end forever wars, and getting us out of Afghanistan, that was good. When he started talking about being competitive with China and we need to buy America, support America, those things, on narrative messaging point, were right on the money,” he said.“However, his policy statements affiliated with those things are dubious. You can’t throw $6tn in spending out the door as quickly as they want to do, we just don’t have the money for that. Taxes will have to go up across the board.”It was Biden’s ambitious social agenda, and accompanying price tag, that led senior Republicans to frame Biden’s address as a “bait and switch” operation“He talks like a moderate but is governing to satisfy the far left,” Mitch McConnell, the Senate minority leader, said, according to the Kentucky Courier Journal, rehashing a favored Republican talking point.“I think the storyline on the Biden administration, underscored by the president’s speech tonight, could best be described as bait and switch. The bait was that he was going to be a moderate, a unifying force, and bring us all together. The switch is that Bernie Sanders, for all practical purposes, won the debate in the Democratic party over what it ought to look like.”The perceived lack of a unifying message was the main topic of the South Carolina senator Tim Scott’s rebuttal, the only Black Republican in the chamber insisting that: “The actions of the president and his party are pulling us further and further apart.”Predictably, Scott’s performance drew praise from Trump, who said: “I thought Tim Scott last night was fantastic. I thought he did an incredible job.” More
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Why a filibuster showdown in the US Senate is unavoidable
Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterHappy Thursday,During Joe Biden’s first 100 days in office, there are few issues more pressing than the escalating attack on the right to vote in America. Democrats may be running out of time to address it.As Republicans have pushed more than 360 bills across the country to restrict access to the ballot, the president and Democrats have strongly condemned those efforts, but they’ve been unable to stop them. Even though Democrats control both chambers of Congress in Washington, they can’t pass a sweeping voting rights bill because they don’t have enough votes to get rid of the filibuster, an arcane senate rule that requires 60 votes to advance legislation. A showdown over the filibuster has loomed over the first 100 days of the Biden administration, but during the next 100 days, it’s clear that a showdown over getting rid of the procedure is unavoidable.Amanda Litman, the executive director of the Run for Something, a group that recruits candidates for state legislative races, told me this week she thinks some Democrats still don’t fully appreciate how dangerous and consequential the GOP’s ongoing efforts are. “This is really an existential crisis. It’s a five-alarm fire. But I’m not sure it’s quite sunk in for members of the United States Senate or the Democratic party writ large,” she told me.“If the Senate does not kill the filibuster and pass voting rights reforms … Democrats are going to lose control of the House and likely the Senate forever. You don’t put these worms back into a can. You can’t undo this quite easily,” she added.Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, last week set August as a deadline for Democrats to pass their sweeping voting rights bill, which would require early voting, automatic and same-day registration, among other measures. Ron Klain, Biden’s chief of staff, said the White House supports that effort.But the window for Democrats to have the most impact with their legislation is rapidly closing. The decennial process of redrawing district lines is set to take place later this year, and a critical portion of the Democratic bill would set new limits to prevent state lawmakers, who have the power to draw the maps, from severely manipulating districts for partisan gain. While it’s probably already too late to set up independent redistricting commissions for this year, Democrats could still pass rules to prevent the most severe partisan manipulation.“You could pass new criteria, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering…require greater transparency in the process,” Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice, told me. “There’s a lot that could be done.”I also asked the Minnesota senator Amy Klobuchar, a Democrat who chairs the Senate committee currently considering the bill, what kind of message it would send if Democrats failed to take any action to protect voting rights while they held the reins of government. “Failure is not an option,” she said, adding she wasn’t going to let the filibuster stand in the way.“This is our very democracy that’s at stake,” she said. “I’m not gonna let some old senate rule get in the way of that.”Also worth watching …
My colleague Tom Perkins and I reported on a particularly anti-democratic effort underway in Michigan, where Republicans have already hinted they plan to utilize a little-used maneuver to get around a gubernatorial veto and enact voting restrictions.
The Census Bureau announced its long-awaited apportionment totals on Monday that determine which states gain and lose seats in Congress. Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina, and Florida will all gain a seat and Texas will add two. California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia will all lose a seat. More - in US Politics
The next major US voting rights fight is here – and Republicans are ahead
Sign up for the Guardian’s Fight to Vote newsletterThe next major fight over voting rights in the US kicked off Monday: a hugely consequential battle over the boundaries of electoral districts for the next 10 years that will have profound implications for American politics. And Republicans seem to be pulling ahead.Census officials released a decennial tally of people living in the US, a number that’s used to apportion the House’s 435 seats among the 50 states. The Census Bureau announced that Colorado, Montana, Oregon, North Carolina and Florida will all gain an additional seat in the House, while Texas will get two more. Seven states – California, California, Illinois, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia – will lose a seat.The numbers accentuated what many have predicted for months: Republicans are extremely well positioned to draw districts that will give them an advantage both in their effort to reclaim control of the US House in the 2022 midterms, and cement control over congressional seats for the next decade.The constitution gives state lawmakers the power to draw districts and, because of their continued strength in state legislative races, Republicans will dominate the process later this year and can manipulate the lines to their advantage, a process often called gerrymandering.Even though Democrats earned about 4.7m more votes in 2020 House races around the country, Republicans will have control over the drawing of 187 congressional districts later this year (down from 219 in 2011) while Democrats will have complete control over the drawing of 75 districts (up from 44 a decade ago), according to the Cook Political Report.Republicans need to win just five seats to retake control of the US House of Representatives, a gap observers believe they can wipe out with gerrymandering alone. Eric Holder, the former US attorney general, told reporters Wednesday he was concerned Republicans could use their complete control of the redistricting process in Texas, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina alone to overcome that gap.“What we’re seeing is a Republican party that has shown they’re willing to bend or break the rules of democracy simply to hold on to power,” said Holder, who is leading the Democratic effort to push back on excessive GOP gerrymandering. “If Republicans gerrymander those states, as they have indicated they will, they will have the ability there, almost to take control of the House of Representatives just based on what they do in those four states.”In 2019, the US supreme court said for the first time that federal courts could not do anything to stop severe manipulation of district lines for partisan gain. One lingering uncertainty is whether Democrats in Congress will be able to pass pending federal legislation to place new limits on the practice. Passing that legislation, however, requires getting rid of the filibuster, a Senate rule requiring 60 votes to advance legislation. Democrats do not yet have the votes to get rid of the procedure.“You could pass new criteria, including a ban on partisan gerrymandering … require greater transparency in the process,” said Michael Li, a redistricting expert at the Brennan Center for Justice. “There’s a lot that could be done.”Because of a 2013 supreme court ruling, states with a history of voting discrimination, like Texas and North Carolina, will not have to get their maps approved by the federal government before they go into effect. That leaves an opportunity for lawmakers to draw maps that discriminate based on race. Kathay Feng, the national redistricting and representation director at Common Cause, a government watchdog group, warned that voting advocates would be closely monitoring for that kind of discrimination. Much of the America’s population growth over the last decade has come from non-white people.“Our top priority is ensuring that states that are adding congressional seats recognize the population growth fueled by communities of color in the upcoming redistricting process,” Feng said in a statement.As federal legislation stalls, Democrats are already signaling they will move aggressively in court to challenge gerrymandering. Shortly after the apportionment numbers were released, Holder’s group filed three separate lawsuits in Minnesota, Pennsylvania and Louisiana – states where Democrats and Republicans share control of the redistricting process – asking courts to be prepared to step in if lawmakers reach an impasse. Such quick machinations are crucial because the redistricting process is moving on a condensed timeline this year because of delays releasing data due to the Covid-19 pandemic.Marc Elias, a top Democratic election lawyer, said this week more lawsuits are likely to follow.While the Republicans made possible gains, the biggest surprise of the Census Bureau’s Monday’s announcement was that it didn’t result in more of a shift for the party. Projections based on population estimates had predicted Texas would gain three seats and Florida would gain two. Arizona, where districts are drawn by an independent commission, was expected to gain a seat, but ended up not doing so. Minnesota and Rhode Island were both projected to lose seats, and New York could have lost an additional seat.“Overall, the population shifts to the the south will definitely benefit Republicans, but definitely not as much as people were expecting, just because they got fewer seats,” Li said.It’s not unusual for the final tallies to be slightly off from apportionment, but Li said he was surprised to see the kind of variation there was this year. There is some concern that the variation in the data may signal an undercount of Hispanic population, especially after the Trump administration repeatedly tried to tamper with the process. Bureau officials said Monday they are confident in the data.Holder told reporters on Tuesday that it was impossible to separate the upcoming battle over redistricting from an aggressive GOP effort underway in state legislatures to restrict access to the voting booth.“I have no doubt that the same Republican legislators that have pushed these bills will now try and use the redistricting process to illegitimately lock in power for that party, for them, for the next decade,” he said. More
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Biden hails ‘stunning progress’ on Covid but warns Americans: ‘Do not let up now’ – live
Key events
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5.43pm EDT
17:43Interior Department reverses Trump-era policies on tribal land
5.15pm EDT
17:15Today so far
5.02pm EDT
17:02Biden raises minimum wage for workers paid by federal contractors
4.26pm EDT
16:26Governor calls for special prosecutor in Andrew Brown case
4.07pm EDT
16:07Texas sheriff who criticized Trump is nominated to head Ice
2.33pm EDT
14:33Interim summary
2.14pm EDT
14:14‘Do not let up now’ – Biden
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5.43pm EDT
17:43Interior Department reverses Trump-era policies on tribal land
The US Interior Department has reversed Trump-era policies governing Native American tribes’ ability to establish and consolidate land trusts.
The department restored jurisdiction to the regional Bureau of Indian Affairs directors to review and approve the transfer of private land into federal trust for tribes. The Trump administration had moved the oversight of the process to the department headquarters.
“Qe have an obligation to work with Tribes to protect their lands and ensure that each Tribe has a homeland where its citizens can live together and lead safe and fulfilling lives,” said Deb Haaland, the first Native American woman to lead the department. “Our actions today will help us meet that obligation and will help empower Tribes to determine how their lands are used – from conservation to economic development projects.”
The agency also reversed several Trump admin rules that hindered or complicated the process for putting land into trust.
The AP explains:Whether land is in trust has broad implications for whether tribal police can exercise their authority, for tribal economic development projects to attract financing and for the creation of homelands and government offices for tribes that don’t have dedicated land.
The Trump administration put 75,000 acre (30,300 hectares) into trust over four years, versus more than 560,000 acres (226,600 hectares) in the eight years of the Obama administration, Interior officials said.
The trust land system was adopted in 1934, when Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act in response to more than 90 million acres (36.4 million hectares) of tribal homelands that had been converted into private land under the 1887 Allotment Act.
Approximately 56 million acres (22.7 million hectares) are currently in trust. Combined that’s an area bigger than Minnesota and makes up just over 2 percent of the U.S.5.28pm EDT
17:28Joe Biden and Jill Biden will visit former president Jimmy Carter and former first lady Rosalynn Carter this week.
A day after the president delivers his address to Congress, the Bidens will make a trip to Georgia, where the Carters reside. The Carters, who are both in their 90s, did not attend Biden’s inauguration due to the pandemic. Now that they have both been vaccinated, they will be able to safely visit with the Bidens.
Biden will also likely hold some sort of drive-in event in Georgia to mark his 100th day in office, the White House has previously indicated.Updated
at 5.35pm EDT5.15pm EDT
17:15Today so far
The blog will hand over from the US east coast to the west coast now, where our colleague Maanvi Singh is ready to take you through the next few hours of developing politics news. There’s plenty of it, so please stay tuned.
Main items so far today:Joe Biden a little earlier signed an executive order raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour.
The US president plans to nominate Ed Gonzalez – a Texas sheriff who vocally opposed Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their families – to become the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency.
Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, has called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to handle the investigation into the police shooting of Andrew Brown, a 42-year-old Black man, in the state last week.
Earlier this afternoon, Biden spoke outside the White House to hail progress towards ending the coronavirus pandemic, while warning that there was a long way to go. He said people in the US should not “let up” and should definitely get vaccinated ASAP as a patriotic duty.
This followed new advice from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that fully vaccinated people in US can go without masks outdoors except in crowded settings.Updated
at 5.37pm EDT5.02pm EDT
17:02Biden raises minimum wage for workers paid by federal contractors
Joe Biden a little earlier signed an executive order raising the minimum wage paid by federal contractors to $15 an hour.
President Biden
(@POTUS)
I believe no one should work full time and still live in poverty. That’s why today, I raised the minimum wage to $15 an hour for people working on federal contracts.April 27, 2021
The tweet and the sentiment didn’t go down terribly well with everyone.
LADY BUNNY
(@LADYBUNNY77)
So in other words, you mean that everyone who makes minimum wage who is not a federal employee should work full time and still live in poverty.April 27, 2021
The $15 minimum is likely to take effect next year and increase the wages of hundreds of thousands of workers, according to a White House document.
The New York Times has a lot more on this, here, including this:White House economists believe that the increase will not lead to significant job losses — a finding in line with recent research on the minimum wage — and that it is unlikely to cost taxpayers more money, two administration officials said in a call with reporters. They argued that the higher wage would lead to greater productivity and lower turnover.
And although the number of workers directly affected by the increase is small as a share of the economy, the administration contends that the executive order will indirectly raise wages beyond federal contractors by forcing other employers to bid up pay as they compete for workers.
Paul Light, an expert on the federal work force at New York University, recently estimated that about five million people are working on federal contracts, on which the government spends hundreds of billions of dollars each year.Updated
at 5.10pm EDT4.46pm EDT
16:46When the former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin was found guilty a week ago today of murdering George Floyd last May, the judge in the case mentioned that sentencing was expected in eight weeks’ time.
So the sentencing hearing had been expected on 18 June, but news just emerged from a brief court filing today that it will now be scheduled for 25 June.
Chauvin is white and Floyd was Black and his murder, seen around the world on a bystander’s video as the officer kneeled on his neck for more than nine minutes, fanned the largest civil rights uprising in the US since the 1960s.The only reason cited for the later sentencing date was a scheduling conflict, the Associated Press reports.
The trial in the Hennepin county court house in downtown Minneapolis lasted three weeks before Chauvin was convicted on all three counts facing him.
Second degree murder carries a maximum sentence of 40 years. That was the most serious charge, which Chauvin had denied, along with the other two charges, of third degree murder and manslaughter.
The AP adds that the longest sentence Chauvin is expected to be given, according to experts, is 30 years, maybe less.
The jury only deliberated for about 10 hours, over two days, before unanimously reaching its verdict.
Do watch the Guardian’s excellent film about the trial and reverberations.Updated
at 5.01pm EDT4.26pm EDT
16:26Governor calls for special prosecutor in Andrew Brown case
Roy Cooper, the governor of North Carolina, has called for a special prosecutor to be appointed to handle the investigation into the police shooting of Andrew Brown, a 42-year-old Black man, in the state last week.
Governor Roy Cooper
(@NC_Governor)
Gov. Cooper issued the following statement urging a special prosecutor following the Pasquotank County shooting: pic.twitter.com/6m5UqxyZ09April 27, 2021
Cooper, a Democrat, put out a statement saying such an appointment would be “in the interest of justice and confidence in the judicial system”.
He said that: “This would help assure the community and Mr Brown’s family that a decision on pursuing criminal charges is conducted without bias.”
Demonstrators called this morning for p0lice officers to be arrested, after an independent autopsy arranged by the family concluded that Brown was killed with a bullet that entered the back of his head.
Attorneys for Brown’s family, who were shown only a 20-second clip of police body camera footage yesterday, said in a press conference in Elizabeth City, North Carolina, that the man’s hands were clearly placed on the steering wheel of his car, where police could see him, when they fired at him, and that he was driving away, presenting no threat.
The local North State Journal adds that:Should the district attorney request a special prosecutor, the potential appointment could come from the North Carolina Attorney General’s Special Prosecution Division, the Administrative Office of the Courts, or the Conference of District Attorneys.
Cooper’s call follows the announcement of an FBI civil rights investigation into the shooting.There will be a protest march tomorrow over the fatal shooting.
Kyleigh Panetta
(@KyleighPanetta)
HAPPENING NOW: Church members announced they will march from Mt. Zion A.M.E. Church tomorrow at 11:30 to the location where #AndrewBrownJr was shot & killed here in #ElizabethCity. They’re calling on people of all denominations to join them @SpecNews1RDU pic.twitter.com/4x7aWhzdxJApril 27, 2021
Updated
at 4.33pm EDT4.07pm EDT
16:07Texas sheriff who criticized Trump is nominated to head Ice
Joe Biden plans to nominate Ed Gonzalez – a Texas sheriff who vocally opposed Donald Trump’s policy of separating migrant children from their families – to a key post as the head of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (Ice), the White House has announced.
Houston Chronicle
(@HoustonChron)
White House nominates Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez to lead ICE https://t.co/A5W3YP0SWIApril 27, 2021
Gonzalez is a Houston native and a veteran law enforcement officer and Democrat who has served since 2017 as sheriff of Harris county, the most populous county in Texas, Reuters reports.
In a July 2019 Facebook post, Gonzalez said he opposed sweeping immigration raids after Republican former president Donald Trump, a month earlier tweeted hyperbolically that ICE would begin deporting “millions of illegal aliens”.
“I do not support ICE raids that threaten to deport millions of undocumented immigrants, the vast majority of whom do not represent a threat to the US,” Gonzalez wrote. “The focus should always be on clear & immediate safety threats.”
The nomination would need to be approved by the US Senate, divided 50-50 between Democrats and Republicans, with Vice President Kamala Harris able to break ties.
Biden campaigned on a pledge to reverse many of Trump’s hardline immigration policies. After Biden took office on January 20, his administration placed a 100-day pause on many deportations and greatly limited who can be arrested and deported by ICE.
Biden’s deportation moratorium drew fierce pushback from Republicans and was blocked by a federal judge in Texas days after it went into effect.
Biden announced on April 12 that he would tap Chris Magnus, an Arizona police chief, to lead U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP). Magnus had criticized the Trump administration’s attempt to force so-called “sanctuary” jurisdictions to cooperate with federal law enforcement.
Gonzalez similarly sought to limit ties between local police and federal immigration enforcement. In 2017, he ended Harris County’s participation in a program that increased cooperation between county law enforcement and federal immigration authorities.Meagan Flynn
(@Meagan_Flynn)
Wow. Thinking back to when Ed Gonzalez was the new sheriff in town, having run on a reform-minded platform, and quickly made the call to terminate Harris County’s 287(g) partnership with ICE. Now the White House wants him to lead the agency, @nkhensley reports: https://t.co/B9R2YvCWvFApril 27, 2021
Here’s another view:
Stephanie Clay 🦋🏳️🌈🐝🛳
(@_StephanieClay)
Republicans will hate his nomination. That should tell you everything you need to know. Ed Gonzalez withdrew from the 287(g) collaboration program with ICE while he was sheriff of Harris County. Ed has fought ICE at every turn to protect Houstonians. https://t.co/RSn6kSFcOzApril 27, 2021
Updated
at 4.14pm EDT3.32pm EDT
15:32The White House is considering options for maximizing production and supply of Covid-19 vaccines for the world at the lowest cost, including backing a proposed waiver of intellectual property rights.
No decision has been made, press secretary Jen Psaki said a little earlier.
“There are a lot of different ways to do that. Right now, that’s one of the ways, but we have to assess what makes the most sense,” Psaki said, adding that US officials were also looking at whether it would be more effective to boost manufacturing in the United States.3.07pm EDT
15:07It’s been incredibly difficult to cope with assessing the Oscars ceremony without the help of Donald Trump, so fortunately the former president has glided back into our lives for a moment to fill that void.
Here comes a statement from Trump’s office. It speaks for itself.
Statement by Donald J Trump, 45th president of the United States of AmericaWhat used to be called The Academy Awards, and now is called the “Oscars”—a far less important and elegant name—had the lowest Television Ratings in recorded history, even much lower than last year, which set another record low. If they keep with the current ridiculous formula, it will only get worse—if that’s possible. Go back 15 years, look at the formula they then used, change the name back to THE ACADEMY AWARDS, don’t be so politically correct and boring, and do it right. ALSO, BRING BACK A GREAT HOST. These television people spend all their time thinking about how to promote the Democrat Party, which is destroying our Country, and cancel Conservatives and Republicans. That formula certainly hasn’t worked very well for The Academy!”
So that clears that up. More
