News and Headlines: In The News, Politics, World News, Commentary/Opinion.

In The News:

Oklahoma Senate passes bill to protect motorists who strike violent protesters​ while fleeing riot

House Bill 1674, as previously reported by TheBlaze, would create a new section of law to protect motorists that strike one or more persons while fleeing from a riot from criminal liability if the motorist had a reasonable belief that their actions were necessary to protect themselves from serious injury or death.

The bill would also impose penalties for protesters that “unlawfully obstruct streets or highways, blocking vehicles,” KFOR-TV reported.

Any driver who “unintentionally causes injury or death” while fleeing from a riot in their vehicle would be protected under the proposed law.

Individuals who “unlawfully obstruct” approaching vehicles from using a public street, highway, or road or endanger a vehicle’s or person’s safe movement would be subject to misdemeanor penalties. 

Michigan Moving To Make ‘Emergency’ COVID-19 Mandates Permanent

State bureaucrats are moving to impose permanent regulations that would mandate the following and more on all Michigan businesses: mask wearing whenever employees are within six feet of someone else, daily health screenings, extensive record keeping, and keeping a “COVID-19 safety coordinator” on-site.

Retail stores, personal care services, and other businesses open to the public would have to become the mask police: They would be required to make all customers wear masks, vaccinated or not.

So how can this be? Aren’t there limits on the state’s power? Yes, but Michigan’s executive offices have fought them every step of the way.

Whitmer put in place orders last spring under a state law that requires the legislature to approve the continuation of emergency powers after 28 days. Initially, Michigan lawmakers approved their continuation for another 22 days.

But even after the legislative approval expired, Whitmer continued issuing emergency orders. She claimed a 1945 law aimed at controlling local riots enabled her to maintain unilateral control over the state’s pandemic response for however long she alone determined was necessary.

Major Hollywood Studio Apparently Done Making Films for ‘White Christian Trash’

With all this push for Hollywood “diversity” one often wonders if Hollywood has a vendetta against traditional standards of movie making. According to one insider, that’s exactly the case for at least one major studio.

 Sci-fi author Nick Cole, co-author of the Galaxy’s Edge series, claimed that during a pitch meeting, a major Hollywood studio passed on a recent project he had been working on, citing the fact that they’re done producing content for “White, Christian, Trash.”

Cole also wrote, “Hollywood is a place filled with the worst people who somehow think they hold the moral high-ground about what gets made while raping girls and molesting small children.”

Well that’s quite the indictment. At the very least there is a lot of immorality in Hollywood. Think of Weinstein, Woody Allen, and all the immoral anti-Christian perversion shown in films these days.

What gives them the right to call traditional moviegoers trash?

Middle School Teacher In Texas Arrested On Possession Of Child Pornography Charges

Tyler Hardy-Croskey, an eighth-grade history teacher at West Lake Middle School in Humble, was arrested at his home Thursday, according to Click 2 Houston.

Days before Hardy-Croskey’s arrest, a teacher at a Dallas elementary school was also charged with possession of child pornography.

Kevin Rayo, a first-grade teacher at Lakewood Elementary School, allegedly was in possession of numerous images showing an adult male engaging in sexual intercourse with children as young as three.

In West Virginia, a former middle school teacher was charged with distributing child pornography after officials say they found several thousand sexually explicit images of minors on his Facebook account. In March, a Maryland public middle school teacher was charged with ten counts of child pornography.

Elon Musk’s SpaceX wins contract to develop spacecraft to land astronauts on the moon

The contract for the “human landing system” marks another major victory for the hard-charging company that vaults it to the top tier of the nation’s aerospace companies and solidifies it as one of the space agency’s most trusted partners.

In winning the $2.9 billion contract, SpaceX beat out Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, which had formed what it called a “national team” by partnering with aerospace giants Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Draper.

SpaceX also won over Dynetics, a defense contractor based in Huntsville, Ala. (Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

Cop-supporting coffee shop owner says she was bullied off Boise State, files tort claim against university

Fendley had expressed support for police officers for two specific larger reasons, according to the claim.

The first reason is that “As a single woman running a business in a sometimes rough neighborhood, the police have assisted her in many potentially dangerous situations over the years and she is appreciative of such assistance,” the claim states.

It also notes that Fendley’s fiance, Kevin Holtry, is a cop who caught five bullets in the line of duty, making him wheelchair-bound.

Big City Coffee’s Boise State store opened in September 2020. That same month, its existence was a point of contention at an Inclusive Excellence Student Council meeting, which is an official activist arm of the student government.

Study: American Rescue Plan allocates $2 billion to counties that don’t exist or don’t have fiscal problems

ARPA allocated $173 million to the government of Hartford County, Connecticut, Walczak notes, but says, “There’s only one problem: the government of Hartford County doesn’t exist, nor do any of Connecticut’s other counties have county-level government despite being allocated a collective $691 million under the bill. There is no proper county government to receive, let alone spend, these funds.”

In Massachusetts, eight of 14 county governments “were dissolved since the 1990s, but they are still entitled to $942 million in aid, while the six ‘functional’ counties get another $395 million even though their budgets are quite small,” he notes.

In total, ARPA allocates “nearly $2 billion to counties without governments or independent revenue streams,” excluding other calculations, like the case of New York City, for example.

Texas House Passes Bill to Abolish Concealed Permit Requirement

HB 1927 is sponsored by State Rep. Matt Schaefer (R-Tyler), who listened as State Rep. Joe Moody (D-El Paso) suggested that a permitless approach helps criminals.

Schaefer responded, “Criminals don’t care about our gun laws and so they have an advantage over the vulnerable.”

“Nearly two dozen” Democrat attempts to alter Schaefer’s legislation failed to garner the votes necessary to pass.

Border Patrol nabs 3 convicted child sex offenders in 2 days, amid migrant surge

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) said that Border Patrol in Brownsville apprehended a group of nine illegal immigrants on Tuesday.

That group included a Honduran national with a conviction in Minnesota for criminal sex conduct with a minor under the age of 13.

On Wednesday, agents in McAllen stopped 15 illegal immigrants — including another Honduran who had been arrested in Virginia and charged with aggravated sexual battery of a victim under 13. He was convicted and sentenced to five years. 

A CBP release included a disturbing detail that the Honduran was traveling as part of a group that included two children traveling without a guardian.

George W. Bush Renews Amnesty Push for Illegal Immigrants

Bush pointed to former President Barack Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) amnesty program and called for a permanent amnesty for recipients.

Bush argued DACA recipients were “fundamentally American” and did not know any other home than the United States.

“They ought not be punished for choices made by their parents,” he wrote.

Bush is on a media tour promoting Out of Many, One, his book of stories and paintings of immigrant Americans.

Concha: ‘Deja vu’ after Facebook censors story on BLM leader

“How is that not a story?
Black Lives Matter is a powerful entity, they raised more than $90 million just last year, they should not therefore be exempt from scrutiny or accountability, but Big Tech apparently has their back and says,

‘Nothing to see here, we’re going to censor this,’” Concha said. “It is chilling.”

The move to block the story has reminded many of Facebook and Twitter’s unprecedented decision to restrict sharing of the Post’s explosive reporting on Hunter Biden’s laptop, which contained emails showing his business dealings overseas while his father served as vice president.

‘Stunning hypocrisy’: ‘Friends’ hosts on Facebook blocking story on BLM leader

‘Fox & Friends Weekend’ host Will Cain reacts after Facebook blocked a New York Post story on a Black Lives Matter co-founder’s luxury home purchases.

‘This is a very damaging expose’ by Project Veritas

Political researcher Robert Graziani says the fact Project Veritas’ expose on CNN was not reported by “rival” news networks bar Sky News Australia and Fox News America – gives strong “evidence” the other networks “collude” in the same narrative.

“They all seem to cover for each other,” he told Sky News host Cory Bernardi.

“Isn’t it interesting how these revelations from Project Veritas are only being carried on Sky News Australia after dark and also maybe in America on Fox News channel which is openly a rival of all the other news networks.

Politics:

Liz Cheney Was A Primary Culprit Of Spreading Fake News On Russian Bounties To Undermine Trump

Officials said their conclusion of “low to moderate confidence” in the story, which effectively means it’s at best unproven and potentially false, came “in part because it relies on detainee reporting,” an often unreliable source of intelligence on which to base such explosive claims.

As the story picked up traction in the corporate press, however, Cheney appeared to sense a prime opportunity to capitalize on what was treated as a scandal, to not only undermine Trump, but also justify a prolonged military presence in the region while the administration took steps to pull out.

Neither to Cheney, nor legacy media, appeared to hesitate due to the claims’ poor sourcing.

The viral public post below generated a series of news stories in major publications including Axios and The Hill, and was cited in dozens of others while catching airtime on national networks as an admonishment to the president of her own party.

Senator Marco Rubio Sponsors Bill to Defund Planned Parenthood Abortion Biz

Rubio joined Sen. Joni Ernst and other pro-life senators in introducing the bill, the Protect Funding for Women’s Health Care Act, which would prohibit taxpayer dollars from going to Planned Parenthood and instead direct those funds to other eligible women’s health care providers.

The bill also promises to ensure that there is not any reduction in federal funding for women’s health services.

“Taxpayer dollars should never be used to fund organizations that perform abortions, an inhumane practice that a substantial percentage of Americans have a strong moral objection to,” Rubio said in a statement.

“Planned Parenthood should never receive federal funding, and this legislation would make that a reality.”

GOP senators demand DOJ, SBA probe over whether Planned Parenthood applied for PPP loans despite ineligibility

Fox News exclusively obtained letters that Paul, R-Ky., the top Republican on the Senate Small Business Committee, sent to Garland, SBA Inspector General Mike Ware and SBA Administrator Isabel Guzman, calling for their “immediate attention” to the matter, claiming that the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) applied for PPP loans with “full knowledge of their ineligibility” to receive the funds.

The Republican senators went on to cite SBA data from May 2020, saying the Small Business Administration “notified a number of PPFA affiliates that they had wrongfully applied for 38 PPP loans totaling more than $80 million dollars.”

The SBA, at the time, according to Republicans, determined that the local affiliates of PPFA were “ineligible for PPP loans under the applicable affiliation rules and size standards and that the loans they received should be returned.”

Dagen tears into Dems’ Supreme Court plan: A ‘threat’ to the justices

Commentary/Opinion:
FOX Business’ Dagen McDowell and The Wall Street Journal’s James Freeman sound off on the Democrats’ bill to expand the Supreme Court.

Tucker: The barrage of ongoing change continues

Commentary/Opinion:
‘Tucker Carlson Tonight’ host analyzes how court-packing will affect American’s trust in the institution.

World News:

North Korea preparing to launch ballistic missile submarine: report

“South Korea and the US believe North Koreans have finished building one that they revealed in 2019,” Yonhap News Agency quoted the officials as saying.

“North Korea could test-fire a ballistic missile on that submarine after the rollout ceremony,” the officials said.

The submarine is believed to be a modified Soviet-era Romeo-class model built at the Sinpo South Shipyard along the east coast. The port city is home to the North’s fleet of submarines.

North Korea is also building a larger submarine that could carry advanced ballistic missiles, the report said, referring to the Pukguksong-4 and -5 missiles it revealed in 2020 and 2021 during a military parade and a key party meeting, respectively. The Pukguksong-3 was tested in October 2019.

Raul Castro confirms he’s resigning, ending long era in Cuba

The 89-year-old Castro made the announcement Friday in a speech at the opening of the Eighth congress of the ruling party, the only one allowed on the island.

He said he was retiring with the sense of having “fulfilled his mission and confident in the future of the fatherland.”

The coronavirus pandemic, painful financial reforms and restrictions imposed by the Trump administration have battered the economy, which shrank 11% last year as a result of a collapse in tourism and remittances.

Long food lines and shortages have brought back echoes of the “special period” that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

Report: Mozambique Jihadists ‘Beheading, Skinning, Cutting off Limbs’

“What they do to the people they capture and kill I have never seen anywhere in Africa,” said one witness cited by the Barnabas Fund, a charity monitoring and assisting persecuted Christians.

The ongoing violence has led to the displacement of some 750,000 people in the Cabo Delgado province where the militants operate, or a third of the local population, the report added.

“Africa is no stranger to violence on a vast scale but even by these standards, the horror of what is unfolding in Mozambique is truly indescribable – almost beyond compare,” said John Pontifex, spokesman for the Catholic charity Aid to the Church in Need (ACN).

Islamist rocket-fire draws Israeli retaliation; US intelligence warns of Iran- TV7 Israel News 16.04

1) Palestinian Islamists perpetrate indiscriminate rocket fire from Gaza toward Israel’s southern communities.

2) The U.S. intelligence Community’s ‘annual threat assessment’ openly regards the Islamic Republic of Iran as one of four key threats to the national security of the United States and its Mideast partners.

3) China calls on all relevant parties to nuclear-related talks in Vienna “to do away (with) any disruptive factors.”

Woke National Trust to Force All Volunteers to Undergo Diversity Training

The state-backed conservation charity — the largest in all Europe — is responsible for almost 620,000 acres of land, close to 800 miles of coastline, over 500 “historic houses, castles, parks, and gardens”, and nearly a million works of art — but its leadership has become increasingly preoccupied with trendy, woke causes such as Black Lives Matter, LGBT activism, climate change, gender identity, and admonishing Britain for past links to slavery and colonialism in recent years, rather than its core mission of heritage preservation.

The latest such scheme is an initiative to make all Trust volunteers — even those with no public-facing role — undertake diversity training, including a module on redressing so-called “unconscious bias”, which some conservative social scientists have branded pseudoscience.

This has led some volunteers to simply quit once-cherished roles as Trust properties reopen with the easing of the coronavirus lockdown, according to the Telegraph, with resignation seen as preferable to submitting to leftist ideological concepts of “equity” in order to keep doing what is, after all, voluntary work.

Commentary/Opinion:

Dan Bongino SOUNDS OFF against latest ’STUPIDITY’ on police & guns

Dan Bongino, host of The Dan Bongino Show, spent years as an NYPD officer.

So he knows firsthand the dangers and difficulties police officers face every single day — not like being able to see what’s going on inside a car while approaching it during a traffic stop.

That’s why, he explains, it makes NO SENSE to take guns away from officers during one of the most dangerous situations they face…something recently proposed by a Minnesota mayor.

Bongino explains WHY this proposal is a perfect example of the far left’s ‘stupidity,’ AND he weighs in on the footage recently released of the Adam Toledo shooting.

Is the mainstream media telling the FULL story and asking ALL the questions?