Category: US News

In an interview with leftist media outlet HuffPost, Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg bragged about a whopping $1 million donation she recently made to the Planned Parenthood Action Fund, an advocacy group owned by the eponymous abortion giant.

Sandberg told HuffPost that she is doing it to help Planned Parenthood fight what she calls the “draconian laws” recently passed by Alabama, Georgia, and Missouri to protect unborn children.

“I think this is a very urgent moment where the rights and the choices and the basic health of the most vulnerable women, the women who have been marginalized, often women of color, are at stake,” she said. “Planned Parenthood is going to fight back in the courts, in Congress, in the state houses, in the streets, for women’s health and rights.”

“If you are a wealthy woman, you can just fly to New York,” Sandberg continued. “I want to make sure that the women with the fewest resources still have access to these services, and I think that is slipping away every day in our country.”

“We all have to do everything we can to protect women,” she opined, noting that the massive donation came from her, personally — and not from Facebook.

The social media executive bragged that the gesture was “a very strong political statement.” However, Sandberg hedged on whether she supports the Hollywood-led boycotts of the pro-life states. She said that she neither supports nor condemn the boycotts.

“I certainly think people should do what they can,” Sandberg said.

Planned Parenthood President Dr. Leana Wen bragged about the support in a statement.

“Now, more than ever, Sheryl’s generous support is necessary to help Planned Parenthood fight back against unprecedented attacks on people’s health and rights,” Wen said, thanking Sandberg “for her longstanding commitment to Planned Parenthood and her leadership as a role model for women and girls everywhere.”

Wen added: “As anti-women’s health politicians try to pass extreme abortion bans across the country, our freedom and rights hang in the balance.”

This is not the first time Sandberg has given a large donation to the abortion lobby. According to Yahoo! News, she gave a similarly large donation to Planned Parenthood in 2017 to protest President Donald Trump’s order that international abortion lobbying organizations would be banned from receiving federal taxpayer funding.

Actress and left-wing activist Alyssa Milano has led a boycott against the state of Georgia after Republican Gov. Brian Kemp signed a “heartbeat bill” that protects unborn children there after a heartbeat is detected.

“I will do everything in my power to get as many productions as possible, including ‘Insatiable,’” she said at the time. “To move out of this state which continues to put forth oppressive, hurtful policy that contradicts everything the entertainment industry stands for.”

As noted by The Daily Wire’s James Barrett, actor and director Clint Eastwood is set to shoot his new film “The Ballad of Richard Jewell,” in Georgia, thus ignoring the calls for a boycott. The movie is directed by Eastwood and stars Paul Walter Hauser, Olivia Wilde, Jon Hamm, Sam Rockwell, Kathy Bates, and Ian Gomez.

In the post-debate spin room, Castro again said O’Rourke has not done his homework on immigration, calling him “misinformed.”

“I do find it somewhat ironic that a senator from Massachusetts and a senator from New Jersey and a congressman from Ohio have a better understanding of immigration law than Congressman O’Rourke,” he said.

One of the challenges for both those debating on stage and reporters monitoring the debate is the always looming question of who won. A consensus answer might be more difficult this evening because of the unquestionable effect of social media.

Fact check: What is Section 1325, and why do Castro and O’Rourke disagree about it?

Julián Castro made the claim earlier this evening that the reason the Trump administration is separating families is because “they are using section 1325 of that act which criminalizes coming across the border to incarcerate the parents and then separate them.”

This is true. Section 1325 within the U.S. Code, “sets forth criminal offenses relating to (1) improper entry into the United States by an alien.” The Trump administration has used this statute to prosecute, and detain, people for illegally crossing the U.S. border. 

Castro, referring to himself, also said that, “Some of us on this stage have called to end that section, to terminate it.”

“Some like Congressman O’Rourke have not,” Castro said. 

O’Rourke, in fact, told CNN earlier this month that he did “not think it should be repealed,” citing attempts by some crossing the border to smuggle people or drugs into the U.S. 

Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rejected a bipartisan border bill on Wednesday that overwhelmingly passed the Senate and comes as the United States is facing a crisis on the southern border.

The Washington Times reports that Pelosi “will demand changes to limit how long children can be held in some facilities” and “will insist on more money to pay the communities that illegal immigrant families are being dumped into, and will demand a new method of processing migrants when they arrive at the border ‘which is culturally, linguistically and religiously appropriate.’”

The $4.6 billion border bill, which passed 84-8 on Wednesday, included “$2.88 billion for Health and Human Services to provide safe shelter and care for children in custody; $1.1 billion for Customs and Border Protection (CBP) to establish migrant care and processing facilities; $220 million for the Justice Department to help process immigration cases and provide resources to U.S. Marshals Service for care and detention of federal detainees; $145 million for branches of U.S. military for missions along the border,” according to CBS News.

The Times further noted the bill that the Senate passed, while similar in the amount of money that is provided to help fix the problem at the border, differs in how the money would be spent.

“The federal Health Department, charged with caring for Unaccompanied Alien Children, gets a majority of money in each bill,” The Times noted. “But border authorities, the Pentagon and deportation officers get money in the Senate bill that’s absent from the House version. And while both bills contain some restrictions on how the money can be spent, the House version contains many more.”

The Times added that the provisions were added to appease the far-left wing of the Democratic Party.

The Hill noted that far-left Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (NT), Ilhan Omar (MN), Ayanna Pressley (MA), and Rashida Tlaib (MI) voted against the Democrat-controlled House’s $4.5 billion border bill on Tuesday evening.

Gun control advocate and Parkland school shooting survivor David Hogg said in an interview published Tuesday that he has been the target of seven “assassination attempts” in the last year and warned that killing him would essentially make him a martyr, only galvanizing his cause.

“Honestly, I realize that it’s horrible that I have to live through this, and it is traumatizing,” Hogg told The Washington Post of the alleged death threats. “But you eventually become desensitized to it.”

The activist claimed that assassinating him would be “the stupidest thing they could do to try to end the movement. … Because that would make it even more successful in the end. Because it would invigorate us and create f***ing change.”

According to The Hill, after Hogg claimed he was target of a stunning seven attempts on his life, The Washington Post did “not [ask] for further details about the threats.”

On February 14, 2018, a gunman entered Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and killed 17 innocents, 14 of whom were students. Hogg and other classmates who survived the attack, such as Emma González and Cameron Kasky, were quickly thrown into the spotlight to be become prominent anti-gun rights activists (though Kasky has since tempered his views).

Hogg, who is arguably the most visible activist to emerge from the tragic shooting, routinely slanders the National Rifle Association and gun rights supporters.

“Honestly, it’s disgusting. [The NRA acts] like they don’t own these politicians, but they do,” Hogg told host ABC’s “This Week” host George Stephanopoulos just 11 days out from the shooting, in comments reported by HuffPost. “They’ve gotten gun legislation passed before in their favor, in favor of gun manufacturers. … The NRA is an organization that’s completely broken.”

“Listen to Dana,” Hogg said of NRA spokeswomen Dana Loesch. “Is she really speaking to you guys, is she trying to fight for you guys? Or is she actually trying to fight for the gun lobby? Everything she’s saying seems like spectacle. Is it just her tone? Or is it what she’s actually saying?”

“Dana is serving the gun manufacturers,” the teen claimed. “She’s not serving the people of the NRA, because the people that are joining the NRA, 99.9 percent of them are amazing people that just want to be safe, responsible gun owners. And I fully can support that.”

In March of 2018, Hogg said we were living under a “dictatorship” of the NRA.

”These lobbyist groups like the NRA, they can buy our politicians but they can’t buy our voices as American citizens and we need to realize that because when we don’t, we don’t have a democracy, we have a dictatorship,” the teen said, as previously reported by The Daily Wire.

David Hogg says the NRA is making America a dictatorship: “These lobbyist groups like the NRA, they can buy our politicians but they can’t buy our voices as American citizens and we need to realize that because when we don’t, we don’t have a democracy, we have a dictatorship.” pic.twitter.com/nEoUZGhjSU

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra)

In the same sit-down interview, Hogg seemed to shift blame for the murderous Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting to Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) and politicians like him.

David Hogg says it’s not a “Democrat” or “Republican” issue as he downplays the importance of how the local police, FBI, and school officials failed and claims Marco Rubio is responsible for all of them. pic.twitter.com/bBD6Um03MZ

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra)

After taking a year off, Hogg is heading in the fall to Harvard — which just rescinded the acceptance of Hogg’s fellow Parkland shooting survivor, outspoken conservative Kyle Kashuv.

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has received heat after it was revealed that she was wearing a $600 dollar watch during her carefully staged ‘crying’ border photo-op.

The photos, which show AOC crying into her hands, were taken two days before she won her Congressional race. They show her outside a “tent city” in Tornillo, Texas which was being used to temporarily hold migrant children.

Ivan Pierre Aguirre@i_p_a_1

Before @AOC hit the national stage & was just a fairly unknown House candidate frm NYC,she took time awy frm her campaign & came dwn to #Tornillo to protest the #tentcity housing migrant children.I made these previously unpublished fotos a yr ago today. #elpaso #aoc #onassignment

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It is unknown what Ocasio-Cortez is looking at or crying about, but the photos are carefully

UPDATE: Photos Reveal AOC Was Crying Over an Empty Parking Lot

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has received heat after it was revealed that she was wearing a $600 dollar watch during her carefully staged ‘crying’ border photo-op.

The photos, which show AOC crying into her hands, were taken two days before she won her Congressional race. They show her outside a “tent city” in Tornillo, Texas which was being used to temporarily hold migrant children.

It is unknown what Ocasio-Cortez is looking at or crying about, but the photos are carefully staged to catch the height of her emotion, prompting questions as to their ‘in the moment’ authenticity.

Even Newsweek highlighted the bizarre sight of AOC wearing a pristine, crisp white outfit and bright red lipstick during what was supposedly a “protest”.

Ocasio-Cortez was apparently trying to look good alongside the numerous celebrities who showed up for the event.

Now Twitter users are dragging Ocasio-Cortez for wearing a $600 dollar watch during a protest.

Eagle-eyed sleuths zoomed in on the watch and found out that it was a Mavado Museum Classic which retails at $595.

While that’s hardly Rolex-level, it did prompt some questions.

“When in a dusty area near the border it is always important to be stylish with a designer watch and all white….in the dust…Apparently she wasn’t there long,” commented one respondent.

“Of course it was a contrived display,” remarked another. “The body language, the pose, the clothes. Everything there is screaming, “I need to look good for the cameras”.

“She seems to be doing pretty well for a bartender who couldn’t afford an apartment 6 months ago!” commented another.

“But muh student loans,” added another.

source

The online behemoth found itself in the crosshairs of Project Veritas, a conservative action group that purports to expose pro-liberal biases at various American organizations through sting operations and by publishing leaked material. Its report on Monday claimed that Google deliberately tweaks its search algorithms to promote liberal agendas that it favors, and that this is intended to help “prevent the next Trump situation” in the upcoming elections.

YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing platform, which is owned by Google, soon took down the videos that were uploaded by Project Veritas, its head James O’Keefe reported. The footage was removed “due to a privacy claim by a third party,” a message now tells anyone trying to view it.

🚨DEVELOPING: We have received two YouTube privacy complaints for undercover interviews in today’s video (https://t.co/seGC0VcRzz) which exposed a Google exec saying prevent next Trump situation,” another engineer confirming “ML Fairness.” Now is time to download video and SHARE. pic.twitter.com/MKO4dkBy27

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII)

BREAKING: YOUTUBE/GOOGLE HAS REMOVED OUR GOOGLE INVESTIGATION as it was approaching 50K likes and a million views. IMPORTANT: Please download it on @bitchute and repost it. https://t.co/chDsGF0QCk

— James O’Keefe (@JamesOKeefeIII)

The third party is probably Jen Genai, Google’s head of ‘Responsible Innovation,’ who was featured in the report, discussing the company’s policies in a secretly filmed interview with Project Veritas agents. She also addressed the expose in a blog post, saying that the people she met “lied about their true identities, filmed me without my consent, selectively edited and spliced the video to distort my words and the actions of my employer, and published it widely online.”

Genai said Project Veritas ambushed her to get “juicy soundbites” for their report, and insisted that she is not some powerful executive with influence on Google politics. The claim that Google was going to influence the 2020 presidential election “is absolute, unadulterated nonsense, of course,” she said. Whatever Google does with its search algorithms and rankings is meant to prevent “foreign interference” and not to tip the scales in domestic debates, she added, which presumably makes the company’s gatekeeping techniques all fine.

Project Veritas previously had its videos taken down by YouTube. Just this month, its report on alleged suppression of conservative voices on Pinterest was removed from Google’s platform, which again cited privacy violation as the reason for the move.

This month, YouTube also banned or demonetized a number of creators after a complaint by Vox journalist Carlos Maza. The crackdown was done under the platform’s new rules on content, which are meant to fight online harassment and hate speech. Critics say in effect they stifle political debate by allowing left-wing commentators to paint their critics as harassers and have YouTube take punitive action.

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MIAMI — Sens. Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders top a new straw poll from the progressive group MoveOn.org, illuminating how the packed field of candidates is coming into focus for more left-leaning Democratic voters just before the first debate of the 2020 cycle.

The poll, released Tuesday and first reported by NBC News, shows Warren is the top choice of 38 percent of MoveOn’s members nationwide — and the top choice of voters surveyed in the early-voting states of California, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and South Carolina.

Warren gains lead in progressive poll ahead of first primary debate

Sanders comes in second nationwide — 17 percent say he’s their first choice — trailing Warren by more than 20 points. Former Vice President Joe Biden (15 percent) and Mayor Pete Buttigieg of South Bend, Indiana (12 percent), are the only other candidates to earn double-digit support; Sen. Kamala Harris of California comes in with 7 percent.

That Sanders, the Vermont independent, would do well in the progressive group’s poll is no surprise: MoveOn backed him over then-rival Hillary Clinton in 2016’s Democratic primary, and a majority of MoveOn members at the time said they preferred him to the former secretary of state. But that progressives are gravitating toward like-minded policy wonk Warren could be another sign of trouble for Sanders, who has been overtaken by the Massachusetts senator in some recent polls.

MoveOn’s first straw poll of the 2020 contest found a mostly wide-open field, with almost 3 in 10 respondents unsure of whom they would support. At the time, former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke edged out Biden for the top spot with 15.6 percent, and Sanders came in third with 13.1 percent. Warren netted only 6.4 percent of the respondents.

This latest poll, though, shows a massive shift. Now, only 2 percent of voters say they’re undecided on their first choice. In 2018, almost 30 percent of the respondents deemed themselves undecided on whom to support or wanting someone else not listed among the 30-plus potential choices.

Download the NBC News app for full coverage of the first Democratic debate

The poll was online, emailed to MoveOn members and conducted June 17 to 21.

The field’s top 20 candidates are set to face off for the first time in Miami on Wednesday and Thursday for the debate hosted by NBC News, MSNBC and Telemundo.

A non-profit charity is helping wounded US veterans start a new chapter in life, building new homes for those who have suffered severe injury during their time in service.

So far, the Homes for Our Troops organization has built 278 homes for injured veterans nationwide, according to the organization’s website.

The charity recently built and gave a new home to one Oklahoma soldier.

KOCO-TV reports Army Specialist Adam Putt was serving as a rifleman with the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Infantry, 3rd Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, when he lost both legs on Aug. 2, 2007, in an improvised explosive device blast.

Putt’s new home contains more than 40 major special adaptations, including widened doorways for wheelchair access, a roll-in shower and kitchen amenities that include pull-down shelving and lowered countertops, according to the charity’s officials.

The home was presented to Putt on Saturday in Newcastle, OK.

“Injured veterans lose their mission and goals, not just limbs. In this home I will regain my freedom and independence, enabling me to carry on another mission,” Putt told the television station. “Having a new home gives me the freedom to pursue my education and enjoy activities with my children.”

The organization reports it currently has 82 more homes underway nationwide.  You can find out more about the non-profit, including the veterans it has helped, a home build project map, and how you can help, on their website.

The People’s Bank of China has purchased more than 70 tons of gold since December, according to the World Gold Council (WGC). Before that, the Chinese central bank had not reported an increase in gold reserves for more than two years, and the official figures remained unchanged from October 2016 to November 2018.

The increased gold purchasing by Asia’s top economy comes at a time when global central banks are accumulating the precious metal in record numbers. Russia has been the top buyer of gold, adding about 274 tons to its reserves last year. In the first 5 months of 2019, Russia added 78 tons of gold to its coffers, increasing the metal’s share in its international reserves by 3.7 percent.

Gold reserves of central banks around the world surged by 651.5 tons, or 74 percent year on year, in 2018, showed data from the WGC.

Analysts say Beijing was doubling down on gold “to diversify its reserves” away from the greenback. The country has been selling off US Treasuries lately, with its holdings having plunged from the peak of $1.32 trillion in late 2013 to about $1.1 trillion in April.

China’s latest boost to its gold holdings comes amid the protracted trade dispute with the US.

“Beijing is worried US-China ties could get worse, so the PBOC has jumped to stockpile its gold reserves,” said Tom McGregor, Beijing-based journalist and political analyst.

“Gold is a safe haven investment,” added McGregor, who is senior editor for China’s national broadcaster CCTV.

Gold has been “quietly” outperforming most G-10 currencies since the US-China trade war began, Scotiabank commodity strategist Nicky Shiels told the Kitco News. He described the latest rally as a “standalone gold breakout” that excludes the metal’s usual direct correlation with the US dollar.

The world’s two largest economies US and China have been involved in a trade conflict since March 2018. In the latest escalation the US increased tariffs to 25 percent on $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. China, in response, introduced duties of 25 percent on 5,000 US products worth $60 billion.

For more stories on economy & finance visit RT’s business section