Category: US News

The latest Trump political donor to draw controversy is Li Yang, a 45-year-old Florida entrepreneur from China who founded a chain of spas and massage parlors that included the one where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft was recently busted for soliciting prostitution. She made the news this week when the Miami Herald reported that last month she had attended a Super Bowl viewing party at Donald Trump’s West Palm Beach golf club and had snapped a selfie with the president during the event. Though Yang no longer owns the spa Kraft allegedly visited, the newspaper noted that other massage parlors her family runs have “gained a reputation for offering sexual services.” (She told the newspaper she has never violated the law.) Beyond this sordid tale, there is another angle to the strange story of Yang: She runs an investment business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family. And a website for the business—which includes numerous photos of Yang and her purported clients hobnobbing at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s private club in Palm Beach—suggests she had some success in doing so.

Yang, who goes by Cindy, and her husband, Zubin Gong, started GY US Investments LLC in 2017. The company describes itself on its website, which is mostly in Chinese, as an “international business consulting firm that provides public relations services to assist businesses in America to establish and expand their brand image in the modern Chinese marketplace.” But the firm notes that its services also address clients looking to make high-level connections in the United States. On a page displaying a photo of Mar-a-Lago, Yang’s company says its “activities for clients” have included providing them “the opportunity to interact with the president, the [American] Minister of Commerce and other political figures.” The company boasts it has “arranged taking photos with the President” and suggests it can set up a “White House and Capitol Hill Dinner.” (The same day the Herald story about Yang broke, the website stopped functioning.)

The short bio of Yang on the website, identifying her as the founder and CEO of GY US Investments, shows her in a photo with Trump bearing his signature. It says she has been “settled in the United States for more than 20 years” and is a member of the “Presidential Fundraising Committee.” According to the Herald, Yang is a registered Republican, and since 2017 she and her relatives have donated more than $42,000 to a Trump political action committee and more than $16,000 to Trump’s campaign. Her Facebook page, which was taken offline on Friday, was loaded with photos of her posing with GOP notables: Donald Trump Jr., Rep. Matt Gaetz or Florida, Republican National Committee Chair Ronna McDaniel, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, and former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, among others.

The GY US Investments website lists upcoming events at Mar-a-Lago at which Yang’s clients presumably can mingle with Trump or members of his family. This includes something called the International Leaders Elite Forum, where Trump’s sister, Elizabeth Trump Grau, will supposedly be the featured speaker. Attendees, the site says, will include “Chinese elites from various countries, including the US states, as well as elite leaders from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macau, Australia, Europe and other countries and regions.” Another event for which Yang’s firm says it can provide access is Trump’s annual New Year’s celebration at Mar-a-Lago. Elsewhere on the website, the firm boasts that “GY Company arranged a number of guests to attend the 2019 New Year’s Eve dinner. All the guests took photos with” members of Trump’s family. This page displays photos of Chinese executives and a Chinese movie star with Donald Trump Jr., suggesting that these pics were arranged by the company, and also includes a photo of Yang with Elizabeth Trump Grau.

Among the Chinese executives who attended that New Year’s event was Huachu Tang, the owner of an electric car company. Tang told Yahoo Finance that he flew 17 hours from Xi’an, China, with his family and an assistant in hopes of meeting with Trump at the party. Though he reportedly speaks almost no English, Tang said he hoped to use a Trump connection to build up his company’s brand before eventually taking it public on the New York Stock Exchange. Trump, however, canceled his trip to Mar-a-Lago due to the government shutdown. Tang and his wife managed to pose for pictures with Trump Jr., Eric Trump, and Trump Grau. Tang told Yahoo that he received admission to the New Year’s party through a package offered by a public relations agency—perhaps Yang’s firm. According to Yahoo, the company Tang used declined to reveal the price of the package, citing the confidentiality of the contract.

The GY US Investments website also posted photos of Yang at a White House celebration of the “Asian New Year” in 2018 and at a Chinese New Year dinner celebration that purportedly included Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross and Transportation Secretary Chao. The firm says it invited 10 guests to the Chinese New Year event and the website shows several of them posing with Chao.

According to the website, the company has offices in Miami; Washington, DC; and Wuhan, China, and is preparing to open an office in Beijing. But the address of its office in the Washington area matches the location of a UPS store.

Yang and her business partners listed on the GY US Investments’ website could not be reached for comment. No one responded to messages left at the number for GY US Investments. A man who answered a phone number listed for Yang hung up. A man who picked up the phone at a number listed for the company’s Washington-area office said, “My English isn’t good,” and hung up. White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders and Trump Grau did not respond to requests for comment.

The overall message conveyed by the GY US Investments website seems clear: hire Yang’s company and she can get you close to Trump and his government—at Mar-a-Lago and in Washington. If the posted photos are authentic, she has been able to get Chinese clients at least into the Trump circle for a quick pic. They are a sign that this Chinese immigrant and Trump donor has used her contacts to go from massaging clients to massaging influence.

Update: Yang has been active in Asian American Republican groups. Since 2017, she has participated in the Broward County, Florida Chapter of the Asian GOP, a national Republican group. The chapter’s web page touts the Mar-a-Lago “Safari Night” promoted by Yang’s company – with Trump Grau listed as the host. Yang also visited the White House last year as part of the Asian American and Pacific Islander Initiative, an advisory group Trump formed by executive order.

CAPITOL HILL – Government waste and inefficiency: there’s so much of it, it’s actually hard to keep track of it.   Still, Oklahoma Republican Senator James Lankford believes it’s important enough to find, then share it in a report titled Federal Fumbles.

He both announced the release of that report and talked about it on the Senate floor Tuesday.

Here’s one small example he shared with CBN News.

“It’s just personally frustrating to me.  There was an NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) grant for a professor in California to be able to study Soviet wines.  I understand why the wine industry would want to do that study.  I don’t understand why the taxpayer would need to be able to do that study.”

Or pay for it.

He pointed out, though, how hard it is to find out about this wasteful spending, even for Congress – which is supposed to legislate, regulate and control all of it.

“If we can’t get transparent information – if it takes 18 months for a member of Congress to be able to hear how many programs we have on any specific issue — we’re never actually going to solve it, because it’s all hidden,” the senator said, exasperation in his voice.

Major Federal Fumble: Getting the Budget Done

That’s when Lankford outlined the bigger problem: the whole budget.

 “If we don’t fix the budget process, we’re never going to fix the budget product,” the senator said.

He then explained what happened to the latest effort to solve this.

“I was on the budget process reform committee – an ad hoc committee, eight Democrats, eight Republicans.   There were several ideas that everyone agreed on.”

Then party politics and accusations derailed it.

Lankford continued, “Senator Schumer notified the Democrats on the committee ‘Hey, I think McConnell’s going to try to pull some procedural trick when this comes to the floor and add something else to it.’  And so everyone walked away.”

“McConnell assured everyone publicly and privately and on the floor that he’s not trying to pull some trick on it,” Lankford summed up.  “But at that point, trust is already broken down, and everyone walked away from it.”

Political Foes Stymied Obama, Stymying Trump

 The Oklahoma senator is frustrated because although he desperately wants to cut the federal budget, the broken system makes it almost impossible.

He declared, “If we don’t fix the way we do budgeting, we’re never actually going to do any kind of reduction of spending.”

Both Presidents Obama and Trump have made major reorganization proposals but been stymied by their political foes in Congress.

It’s happening to Trump right now.

Lankford explained, “I think we’re in a presidential election mode, and my Democratic colleagues are going to try to oppose anything that he brings forward.”

Could You Wait 400 Days to Get Hired?

 Another highly inefficient area frustrating the senator is government hiring practices.

He pointed out it takes an average of about 100 days to hire a federal worker, and in some cases 300 to 400.

“That’s not rational.  You’re just not going to get competitive people to come in and do that process.  So we have to be able to fix that,” Lankford argued.

A Massive Emergency, But Little Panic

 One federal fumble the Oklahoman sees as an emergency is the massive debt.  And he’s amazed very few people in government are panicking about it.

He mentioned a Congressional Budget Office report that warned, “We would either have to increase taxes or reduce spending by 400 billion dollars a year for 30 years to just keep our current debt-to-GDP ratio.  Should be chilling to everyone, but everyone seems to just greet it with a shrug.”

He concluded, “It seems that the problem has become so large, that people just say ‘it’s unsolvable.  We’ll move on.’  We can’t do that.”

How Tax Cuts Lead to More Taxes Coming In

 Lankford admits he and his allies face charges they’ve committed their own federal fumble.

He said, “I’ve had a lot of folks who have said to me, ‘How can you be serious about debt and deficit when the Republican-led House and Senate just blew a hole in government based on the tax reduction that just occurred?’”

The senator defended himself and other tax cut advocates by saying they were trying to get the economy going again, which ends up creating enough wealth that tax revenues actually end up rising.

That’s exactly what’s happened in the last few months since the tax reduction.

“So after the tax cut that everyone said would blow a giant hole in the budget, our revenue has actually gone up 14 billion dollars from the previous year,” Lankford explained.

source

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The stage is set for a GOP primary debate broadcast by Fox News in 2012. Following a report about the close relationship between the network and the Trump White House, DNC chairman Tom Perez said the party will not allow Fox News to host any of its primary debates in 2020. Charles Dharapak/AP hide caption

The stage is set for a GOP primary debate broadcast by Fox News in 2012. Following a report about the close relationship between the network and the Trump White House, DNC chairman Tom Perez said the party will not allow Fox News to host any of its primary debates in 2020.

The Democratic National Committee will not allow Fox News to broadcast any of its 2020 presidential primary debates, citing a recent report about the close relationship between the Trump administration and the conservative cable network.

“I believe that a key pathway to victory is to continue to expand our electorate and reach all voters. That is why I have made it a priority to talk to a broad array of potential media partners, including FOX News,” DNC Chairman Tom Perez said in a statement Wednesday.

“Recent reporting in the New Yorker on the inappropriate relationship between President Trump, his administration and FOX News has led me to conclude that the network is not in a position to host a fair and neutral debate for our candidates. Therefore, FOX News will not serve as a media partner for the 2020 Democratic primary debates,” the statement adds.

The decision comes after a lengthy article by Jane Meyer in The New Yorker, detailing the increasing coziness between President Trump and the network, which has long had a conservative tilt but that one source in the piece calls simply “propaganda” and effectively Trump’s “own press organization.”

Former Fox News president Bill Shine is now the White House communications director, and Trump has given dozens of exclusive interviews to Fox while eschewing other networks, often deriding them as “fake news.” Host Sean Hannity has appeared as a special guest at Trump rallies, and in the New Yorker story is referred to as essentially “a West Wing adviser.”

Among many other details in The New Yorker article, Meyer also claims that former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes, who died in 2017, had tipped Trump off to some debate questions during the 2016 cycle, including a now-infamous clash with then-Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly over his past comments about women, in addition to an inquiry about whether he would eventually support the GOP nominee.

Planned Parenthood filed a lawsuit against President Trump after he issued a new rule that effectively blocks as much as $60 million of taxpayer funds from going to the abortion giant.

WND reported President Trump issued a final federal rule last month that prevents federal funding of family planning centers that refer or perform abortions while providing Title X services such as birth control, mammograms and cancer screenings.

The Title X Protect Life Rule is Planned Parenthood’s second biggest source of taxpayer funding, after Medicaid. Planned Parenthood received about $500 million a year from various government sources.

Planned Parenthood President Leana Wen called the rule “unethical, illegal and dangerous.”

“Planned Parenthood will never force our doctors and nurses to withhold medical information from our patients, and we will fight the Trump administration in the courts to protect everyone’s fundamental right to healthcare,” she said.

However, LifeSite News argued, the rule doesn’t require doctors or nurses to withhold any information. It merely prevents taxpayer-funded clinics from promoting abortion.

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in the U.S. District Court in Eugene, Oregon. The Oregon Medical Association and the American Medical Association joined Planned Parenthood in the lawsuit.

Already, 22 states with pro-abortion attorneys general have joined in a lawsuit to block the new Title X rule before it goes into effect. The Hill reported a second lawsuit representing 21 states is expected Tuesday.

Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the pro-life group Susan B. Anthony List, said Planned Parenthood, “which ends the lives of more than 332,000 unborn children a year, has treated the Title X program like their own multimillion-dollar slush fund.”

Lynne Patton, who worked for the Trump Organization before the election and is currently a senior official at HUD, is at today’s Michael Cohen hearing:

Right-wing activist Laura Loomer appeared on YourVoice America last night, where she declared that people like her are being abused and tortured simply for supporting President Trump and that such treatment constitutes “severe human rights violations.”

As Loomer and host Julio Gonzales griped about the cost and ramifications of Robert Mueller’s special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, Loomer fumed that American “heroes” like Michael Flynn and Roger Stone have suffered financially after being targeted by Mueller’s team simply for being Trump supporters.

But it isn’t just those who have been ensnared in Mueller’s investigation who are suffering, she said.

“People like myself and Alex Jones and Milo Yiannopoulos and Gavin McInnes and so many others are being de-platformed simply because we support President Trump and we inspired so many young people and red-pilled so many people to vote for President Trump,” she said. “They’re destroying us financially too.”

“There are people who really do deserve to have their homes raided by the FBI at six o’clock in the morning and be prosecuted. And the people who don’t deserve it, well, they’re being tortured and they’re being subjected to such abuse,” Loomer added. “I view this as severe human rights violations. I think that the way Trump supporters are being treated in this country constitutes human rights violations.”

source: http://www.rightwingwatch.org

Donald Trump has announced he is delaying plans to increase tariffs on Chinese goods after “significant progress” in talks to end the punishing US-China trade war.

The US president was planning to ramp up duties on $200bn (£153bn) in Chinese imports this Friday – with tariffs increasing from 10% to 25%.

But on Twitter, Mr. Trump said a number of breakthroughs have been achieved by Washington and Beijing on contentious areas including intellectual property protection, technology transfers, currency, and agriculture.

Mr. Trump added that he is prepared to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping to conclude an agreement as long as “additional progress” is made by both sides.

He suggested that the summit could take place at Mar-a-Lago property in Florida, where the two world leaders have held talks in the past.

And late on Sunday evening, he hinted there could be “very big news over the next week or two” if all goes well in negotiations.

Speaking to US governors at the White House, the president said: “China has been terrific. We want to make a deal that’s great for both countries and that’s really what we’re going to be doing.”

Both Mr. Trump and Mr. Xi have been under immense pressure to resolve the trade dispute, which has unnerved investors and cast a shadow over the global economy.

The US and China have slapped import taxes on hundreds of billions of dollars of each other’s goods – rattling financial markets.

The conflict between the world’s two biggest economies began when the US accused China of stealing technology and forcing foreign companies to hand over trade secrets, in what has been regarded as an aggressive push to challenge America’s technological dominance.

Reaction to the delayed tariff increases has been mixed.

While Republican politicians have described the thawing tensions as “encouraging news” that a full-blown trade war can be avoided, critics are claiming that the president may have given up crucial leverage.

Philip Levy, a White House economist under former president George W Bush, said he can see the odds now tilting in Beijing’s favor – and warned the US has “now lost the advantage of a deadline”.

Attorneys representing Covington Catholic High School student Nick Sandmann and his family indicated on Friday that they have sent letters for potential lawsuits to over 50 entities ranging from Democratic politicians to celebrities to media figures.

“The legal counsel representing Nick and his family, Todd McMurtry and experienced libel and defamation lawyer L. Lin Wood of Atlanta, have said they will seek justice for the harm allegedly done to the teen,” The Enquirer reported. “McMurtry is with the law firm of Hemmer Defrank Wessels and has practiced law in Greater Cincinnati since 1991. He said a team of seven lawyers has been working full-time to review the media accounts of what happened.”

The letters come in response to the media’s smearing of Sandmann after a selectively edited clip of an incident on January 19, 2019, went viral that showed Sandmann standing face-to-face with Native American Nathan Phillips, who was beating a drum in Sandmann’s face.

The Enquirer added: “This week they have prepared documentation preservation letters addressed to organizations and individuals they believe may have defamed or libeled Nick with false reporting.”

“They know they crossed the line,” McMurtry said. “Do they want 12 people in Kentucky to decide their fate? I don’t think so.”

The list of entities that letters were sent to includes:

Hours after the initial clip, which was only several seconds long, went viral on social media, longer videos began to emerge that showed the initial way the incident was framed was misleading and false. The Daily Wire’s Emily Zanotti reported:

The three-minute video was posted online by a group of Native American protesters who claimed they were harassed and intimidated by a group of Covington Catholic High School students waiting for their bus near the Lincoln Memorial. The video is heavily clipped at the beginning and end, and shows only an apparent “confrontation” between a protester named Nathan Phillips and a Make America Great Again-hat wearing teen. …

Saturday night, a two-hour long, full video of the confrontation became widely available on social media, and that video shows a very different interaction than the one initially portrayed. The video, taken from the point of view of a second group of protesters who witnessed the interaction, shows that Phillips approached the teens — not the other way around, as Phillips claims — and that the teens were relatively peaceful during the incident, laughing and clapping along with Phillips’ drumming, and occasionally asking questions like, “what is going on here?”

The Daily Wire further noted that “the Covington Catholic students were verbally attacked by a designated hate group that called them ‘Child molesting f**gots,’ ‘Dirty a*s crackers,’ ‘Future school shooters,’ and ‘Incest babies.’”

source:  Daily Wire