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Barnette blames Sean Hannity for loss in Pennsylvania

Failed GOP Pennsylvania Senate candidate Kathy Barnette took to Twitter to blame Fox News host Sean Hannity for her primary election loss. 

“Never forget what Sean Hannity did in this race,” she said in a video posted on Twitter Wednesday. “Almost single handedly Sean Hannity sewed deep seeds of disinformation, flat out lies every night for the past five days and that was just extremely overhard to overcome.”

Her comment comes after Pennsylvania Republican Senate candidate Mehmet Oz said Tuesday Hannity has been giving him advice “behind the scenes.”

“I want to thank Sean Hannity. Sean has been like a brother to me. When Sean punches through something, he really punches through it. He understands exactly how to make a difference and he’s been doing that this entire campaign,” Oz said.

Oz and former hedgefund manager John McCormick are still in a battle for the GOP Senate nomination as the vote was too close to call on Tuesday night. 

Barnette declared she would not support Oz or McCormick in the general election, saying she had “no intentions of support[ing] globalists” before the election began Tuesday,

Barnette was a surprise contender as she surged in the polls weeks before the election, but was swiftly beaten on Tuesday by Oz and McCormick. 

Oz, who is endorsed by Trump, and McCormick’s election could trigger a recount due to how close the votes are between the candidates. 

Whoever wins will go on to face progressive candidate John Fetterman, who beat Democratic candidate Conor Lamb on Tuesday.

Source: TEST FEED1

Biden policies, Ukraine war get most blame for inflation: poll

Americans primarily blame President Biden and the war in Ukraine for high inflation in the U.S., according to a new poll from Morning Consult and Politico.

In response to a question on how responsible the Biden administration’s polices are for high inflation, 40 percent of Americans said the president’s policies were “very responsible” for high inflation, according to the poll conducted from May 13 to May 16.

When asked if Russia’s war in Ukraine was very responsible for high inflation, just 25 percent of Americans agreed that it was. Only 15 percent of Americans agreed that returning to pre-pandemic behaviors was very responsible for high inflation, the lowest consensus on the list.

Inflation has lingered around a 40-year high this spring, with the consumer price index, a measure of the cost of goods in the U.S., climbing 8.3 percent in April in year-over-year estimates. Americans are paying near-record prices at the pump and extra dollars for food at the grocery market.

Biden has suffered from low approval ratings, in part because of inflation. In the Politico and Morning Consult poll, Biden earned a 44 percent approval rating, which is higher than previous polls showing around 39 percent of Americans approve of how he is doing his job.

Americans ding the Biden administration for high spending, including the COVID-19 relief bill passed last year — the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan act. The war in Ukraine has also been considered a factor as Ukraine and Russia are major wheat producers, while Russia is the third-largest oil producer.

With the economy consistently the most pressing issue for American voters, the public’s Biden-blaming is likely to hurt Democrats in the upcoming midterm elections. Republicans have seized on inflation as a campaign issue.

About 43 percent of Americans say Republicans would do a better job of handling inflation than Democrats, while 38 percent of Americans say Democrats would do better, according to the poll.

Most Americans in the new poll said Biden has the most control over inflation management, with 37 percent saying the president’s office has a lot of control on inflation.

They also said the Federal Reserve and Congress are most responsible for managing high inflation. About 34 percent said Congress has a lot of control over inflation management, the same number that says the Federal Reserve has a lot of control over inflation.

Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve raised its interest rates by half a percentage point, the highest jump in more than 20 years, in a bid to combat rising prices.

In a Wall Street Journal conference on Tuesday, Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell has said he would “keep going” until inflation comes down.

The poll was conducted from May 13 to May 16 among 2,005 registered voters. The margin of error is plus or minus two percentage points.

Source: TEST FEED1

Russia relied on Chechen forces in siege of Mariupol: UK intelligence

Russia relied on Chechen forces in its successful push to take control of the Ukrainian city of Mariupol, according to the United Kingdom’s Defense Ministry.

In a Twitter thread on Wednesday, the ministry said in its intelligence report that Moscow deployed Chechen forces after a “staunch” Ukrainian resistance force delayed its attempt to seize the city and took out many Russian troops.

“In attempting to overcome Ukrainian resistance, Russia has made significant use of auxiliary personnel. This includes a deployment of Chechen forces, likely consisting of several thousand fighters primarily concentrated in the Mariupol and Luhansk sectors,” the ministry said in its Twitter thread. 

Russia said on Wednesday that some 700 Ukrainian fighters had surrendered after weeks of holding out in Azovstal steelworks plant, the final battleground in the fight for the city.

The U.K. said Chechen forces involved in the Mariupol assault consisted of individual volunteers and National Guard units. Chechen Republic Head Ramazan Kadyrov and his cousin, Adam Delimkhanov, took leadership roles among the new military units, it added.

“Kadyrov likely maintains close personal oversight of the deployment, while his cousin Adam Delimkhanov has likely acted as the Chechen field commander in Mariupol,” the ministry said. 

“The combat deployment of such disparate personnel demonstrates Russia’s significant resourcing problems in Ukraine and is likely contributing to a disunited command which continues to hamper Russia’s operations,” the ministry concluded. 

Kadyrov is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who also shares his macho persona and record of ruthless tactics to hold power. His father, also a former Chechen President, aligned himself with Putin during the Chechen war.

During an event in Moscow this week, Kadyrov spoke about Russia’s challenges in Ukraine.

“And today we’re fighting not against Ukraine,” he said, “we’re fighting against NATO. NATO and the West, their mercenaries are there. And that’s why our state is finding it difficult.

“But it’s a really good experience and we’ll prove once again that Russia cannot be defeated.” 

The U.K. Defense Ministry said on Sunday that Moscow has lost likely one-third of its ground combat forces in Ukraine, adding that Russian forces in the Donbas region have lost their ​​momentum and fallen behind schedule as well. 

The UN Human Rights Monitoring Mission in Ukraine said last week that it had confirmed more than 7,000 civilian deaths during the war, which began in late February and has also displaced nearly 6.3 million Ukrainian citizens.

Source: TEST FEED1

'Pharma bro' Martin Shkreli released from prison

Martin Shkreli, the notorious so-called “Pharma bro” who garnered controversy when he significantly raised the price of AIDS medication, was released from prison on Wednesday.

The Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) confirmed Shkreli’s release in a statement.

“We can confirm Martin Shkreli transferred on May 18, 2022, from the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) Allenwood Low to community confinement overseen by the Bureau of Prisons’ (BOP) New York Residential Reentry Management (RRM) Office,” said the BOP.

Shkreli is set to be released from community confinement on Sept. 14, 2022.

In a statement, Shkreli’s attorney Benjamin Brafman said, “I am pleased to report that Martin Shkreli has been released from Allenwood prison and transferred to a BOP halfway house after completing all programs that allowed for his prison sentence to be shortened.”

“While in the halfway house I have encouraged Mr. Shkreli to make no further statement, nor will he or I have any additional comments at this time,” added Brafman.

Shkreli was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2018 for two counts of securities fraud and one count of securities fraud conspiracy on charges that he deceived investors into giving millions to his company.

In 2015, Shkreli’s former company Turing Pharmaceuticals acquired Daraprim, an anti-parasite medication used by AIDS patients, and raised the price from $13.50 a tablet to $750 per tablet. This move elicited waves of outcry against Shkreli, with patients accusing him of exploiting those who needed the medication to stay healthy.

Shkreli was also ordered in 2018 to forfeit $7.36 million in assets, including a Picasso painting and the only copy of the Wu-Tang Clan album “Once Upon A Time in Shaolin.” 

In January, it was announced by New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) that a federal court had ruled in favor of banning Shkreli from the pharmaceutical industry for life.

On social media on Wednesday, one Twitter user named Edmund Sullivan posted a picture of what appeared to be Shkreli in a sweatshirt. The tweet read, “Picked up this guy hitchhiking. Says he’s famous.” The name Edmund Sullivan was previously given for an associate of Shkreli’s in court documents by the Justice Department.

Throughout his time in prison, Shkreli made multiple attempts to secure early release. In the opening months of the pandemic, Shkreli requested release to research potential COVID-19 treatments, which a U.S district judge dismissed as “delusional.”

Source: TEST FEED1

Netflix to woke workers: Suck it up or quit

Netflix has a message for its employees: If you don’t agree with the content on our streaming, go work elsewhere.

“Not everyone will like – or agree with – everything on our service,” the company said in a “culture memo” to its employees. “While every title is different, we approach them based on the same set of principles: we support the artistic expression of the creators we choose to work with; we program for a diversity of audiences and tastes. We let viewers decide what’s appropriate for them, versus having Netflix censor specific artists or voices. As employees we support the principle that Netflix offers a diversity of stories, even if we find some titles counter to our own personal values.”

“Depending on your role, you may need to work on titles you perceive to be harmful,” the company added. “If you’d find it hard to support our content breadth, Netflix may not be the best place for you.”

This should be the message all companies and businesses send: If you don’t like it, don’t agree with it — don’t let the door hit you too hard on the way out.

More and more in this country, employees believe they can shame a company into cancelling whatever content they wish. We saw this happen at the New York Times in 2020, when several high-profile progressive employees revolted against Pulitzer-Prize winning editor James Bennet for having the audacity to publish an op-ed by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) arguing for sending in National Guard troops if riots and violent protests in U.S. cities got out of control. An ABC News poll at the time showed 52 percent of Americans supported Cotton’s perspective, making it a worthy column for civil debate.

But several Times journalists took to Twitter to voice their disagreement with the paper’s decision to publish Cotton’s piece, including “The 1619 Project” creator Nikole Hannah-Jones, advice columnist Roxanne Gay and opinion page writer Charlie Warzel.

“As a black woman, as a journalist, as an American, I am deeply ashamed that we ran this,” Hannah-Jones tweeted. 

On cue, leadership at the Times buckled. They apologized for publishing the piece, claiming it didn’t live up to its editorial standards. Bennet was out faster than you can say, “All the news that’s fit to print.” 

It was no better at Twitter after Elon Musk announced he would be buying the company. 

“Physically cringy watching Elon talk about free speech,” one Twitter engineer wrote on Slack. 

“We’re all going through the five stages of grief in cycles and everyone’s nerves are frazzled,” added a senior staff software engineer on the same platform. “We’re all spinning our wheels, and coming up with worst case scenarios (Trump returns! No more moderation!).” 

We witnessed similar public disagreements with management from employees at Spotify over Joe Rogan’s podcast and at Disney over Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’s signing of a law banning schools from talking about sexual orientation and gender identity to young children. Both Spotify and Disney saw younger employees defy their bosses.

It also occurred at Netflix when some employees there tried to “cancel” Dave Chappelle after they accused the equal-opportunity comedian of being transphobic. Hundreds of Netflix employees staged a walkout in October 2021 demanding that Chappelle be removed. 

But Netflix didn’t fold. Chappelle stayed and is arguably more popular than ever. 

“If this is what being canceled is like, I love it,” Chappelle told his fans during an appearance last October.  

I wonder whether America’s most famous free speech advocate, Elon Musk, indirectly influenced Netflix to send this message to its workers. Musk weighed in on Twitter on Monday, calling the Netflix memo “a good move” by the company. 

“We model ourselves on being a professional sports team, not a family,” the company also declared. “A family is about unconditional love. A dream team is about pushing yourself to be the best possible teammate, caring intensely about your team, and knowing that you may not be on the team forever.”

Netflix announced earlier this month that it is on track to lose 2 million subscribers in the second quarter of this year. The company lost $50 billion in market value on one day alone following that news.

The streaming giant is in no position, or any mood, to start slashing content and performers based on the whims of the woke within. Anyone who has a problem with that is free to disagree. They’re also free to leave. 

Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.

Source: TEST FEED1

DHS to pause work of disinformation board

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) will pause the work of a controversial board to coordinate efforts to battle disinformation, saying that while its work was “grossly and intentionally mischaracterized,” the “false attacks have become a significant distraction.”

Its leader, disinformation expert Nina Jankowicz, will also resign from the department.

Designed as a way to coordinate efforts across the department with disparate missions, the Disinformation Governance Board prompted attacks from Republicans and civil rights groups alike. 

While free speech and civil rights groups largely argued that DHS was not transparent enough in outlining the board’s mission to adequately evaluate it, the GOP was quick to borrow a phrase from George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984 in labeling it the Ministry of Truth. 

Many also directly targeted Jankowicz, who was brought in to oversee the board, which was designed to ensure DHS protected civil liberties and free speech rights in disinformation efforts at agencies dealing with topics as varied as immigration and natural disasters that have already been underway for the better part of a decade.

“The great irony here is that the board was designed to protect against the very thing that the board is accused of engaging in,” one senior DHS official said on a call with reporters.

The board, created just three weeks ago, never formally met.

The Washington Post first reported the board would be paused.

While the board is on hiatus, its mission will be reviewed by DHS’s Homeland Security Advisory Council, which is led by former DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff, a George W. Bush appointee,  and former U.S. Deputy Attorney General Jamie Gorelick, a Clinton administration official.

They have already been tasked with providing recommendations on how the department can garner public trust surrounding its disinformation efforts.

DHS Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas on Wednesday also asked the council for a broader review of the board within 75 days, after which next steps will be determined.

The clunky rollout of the board – announced in a short blurb in Politico playbook – led to an immediate misfire for DHS. Few outside the agency were comfortable defending the board without more information, while Republicans sounded a civil liberties alarm and pored over Jankowicz’s earlier comments on Hunter Biden’s laptop.

“The reaction to the creation of the board has been extreme in some quarters,” another DHS official said Wednesday.

“There have been gross mischaracterizations of what the board’s work would be. And there have been grotesque personal attacks and the reaction has candidly become a distraction to the department’s important work in addressing disinformation that threatens homeland security.”

–Updated at 2:12 p.m.

Source: TEST FEED1

Buffalo Bills, NFL contributing $400K to help neighborhood in wake of shooting

The Buffalo Bills along with the NFL have announced plans to contribute $400,000 to support the city’s East Side neighborhood in the wake of the mass shooting at a supermarket there over the weekend.

In a statement on Wednesday, the league said it would give $200,000 to the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund, a newly created fund that plans to address long-standing issues in the community such as systemic issues involving marginalized minority communities. 

The other $200,000 will be directed toward the Bills’ own charitable foundation, the Buffalo Bills Foundation, which will work with various nonprofit organizations who work on emergency response efforts to address the immediate needs of the city’s East Side residents.

The Bills’ foundation has partnered with Buffalo Go Green, African Heritage Food Co-op, the Resource Council of WNY and UB Food Lab to provide food resources to those who are unable to find food distribution sites near them, according to the statement. 

“On behalf of the Buffalo Together Community Response Fund, we are most grateful for the generous contributions from the Buffalo Bills Foundation and the National Football League Foundation that will allow us to create real change and emerge from the darkness of this heinous act,” Clotilde Perez-Bode Dedecker, the president and CEO of the Community Foundation for Greater Buffalo, said in a statement. 

“This Fund is a partnership to build upon the collective desire to take action and to work together as a community to address immediate needs, long-term rebuilding and systemic issues that continue to marginalize communities of color.”

This comes as President Biden and first lady Jill Biden traveled to Buffalo on Tuesday to meet with state and local officials and the families of those who died in the shooting. 

Ten people were killed and three others were wounded in the shooting on Saturday when a lone gunman who had espoused racist beliefs opened fire at a Tops Friendly Markets.

Payton Gendron, an 18-year-old resident of Conklin, N.Y., has been charged in the shootings. Authorities said that they will investigate the incident as a hate crime, noting that Gendron specifically targeted Black customers and employees at the supermarket during the rampage.

Source: TEST FEED1

Kansas Supreme Court upholds GOP-drawn House map

The Kansas Supreme Court upheld a Republican-drawn House map that would split a racially diverse county in the state in two, reversing a decision made by a Kansas judge last month to toss out the map.

“A majority of the court holds that, on the record before us, plaintiffs have not prevailed on their claims that [the redistricted map] violates the Kansas Constitution. Therefore, the judgment of the district court is reversed and the permanent injunction ordered by the district court is lifted,” Kansas Supreme Court Justice Caleb Stegall wrote for the court’s majority in a Wednesday ruling.

“A full opinion describing the facts, rationale, and holdings of the court is forthcoming, along with all dissenting or concurring opinions of members of the court,” he added.

The new map would split Democratic stronghold Wyandotte County in two, moving part of the county into Rep. Jake LaTurner’s (R-Kansas) district and leaving less of it in the district represented by Rep. Sharice Davids (D-Kansas).

In exchange, the map would add all of Franklin and Anderson counties to Davids’s district, in addition to parts of the conservative Miami County. Overwhelming majorities in all three counties voted for former President Trump in 2020.

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly (D) vetoed the map earlier this year, but that veto was overridden days later by the Republican-controlled Senate. A Democratic judge, Wyandotte County District Judge Bill Klapper, then tossed out the map last month and demanded that the legislature draw new lines.

The state Supreme Court’s ruling allows the new map to go into effect following the lower court’s injunction.

Source: TEST FEED1

Warnock says he's meeting with Biden to push for student loan forgiveness

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-Ga.) on Wednesday said he’ll be meeting with President Biden to push for student loan debt forgiveness that will be enough “to actually make a difference.”

“I’m meeting with the president later today, and I’m going to push him on this issue. Everywhere I go in Georgia, students and families talk to me about the crush of student debt,” Warnock told The Hill. “And, in this time in which I’m focused on providing relief for families that are feeling the pressure, this couldn’t come sooner.”

His comments come after Politico reported last week that Warnock, along with Senate Majority Leader Charles Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), had reached out to White House on the matter, following reports that it was considering using executive action to approve at least $10,000 in forgiveness per borrower.

The outlet reported that the lawmakers were pressing for a meeting with Biden to hold off temporarily on any potential action on student loans to push for more significant action.

The Hill has reached out to Warren’s and Schumer’s offices for comment.

In remarks to The Hill on Wednesday, Warren declined to discuss the matter, saying, “I’m not gonna talk about private meetings.” However, Warren said she is still calling on the White House to set its sights higher.

“​​I’m urging the White House to cancel $50,000 in student loan debt because it gives the greatest return for the most folks who struggle,” she said, adding, “This is a racial equity issue, it is a gender equity issue, and it is an issue about what kind of America we want to build.”

Asked if he supports calls to cancel $50,000, Warnock said, “I’d love to see him do that.”

“We certainly need to do more than $10,000,” he said.

Biden supported canceling at least $10,000 in federal student loan debt per borrower during his 2020 presidential campaign, though many in his party have called for him wipe out the debt entirely. 

According to The Washington Post, the White House has also been looking at applying limits to borrowers eligible for potential forgiveness by income, as Republicans went into attack mode over the forgiveness, which they argue is unfair and will be an extra burden to taxpayers.

Pressed by reporters about his stance on means testing Wednesday, Warnock said he’d be “open” to the idea.

Source: TEST FEED1