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DNC CHAIR PEREZ: Trump supporters ‘cowardly,’ ‘will be judged harshly’

Democratic National Committee chairman Tom Perez apparently isn’t concerned about courting voters who cast their ballots for President Trump in 2016.

Much like Hillary Clinton infamously describing Trump supporters as “deplorables,” Perez is now labeling Americans who support the president as “cowards” on the wrong side of history.

Perez made the comments during a discussion with Brandeis University Dean David Weil on Monday, and it wasn’t an April Fool’s joke.

“The thing is, they are cowardly,” Perez told Weil at The Heller School for Social Policy and Management. “I mean, history will not only judge Donald Trump harshly, it will judge Mitch McConnell, and Paul Ryan, and all the other cowards who refused to stand up to this president and allowed the party of Lincoln to die.”

Ironically, Perez won his seat at the head of the Democratic Party with a pitch about how Democrats need to better “communicate our message of opportunity and inclusion, that optimistic message.”

He told MSNBC shortly after the 2016 election that Democrats need to develop a 57-state strategy – which includes the territories and the District of Columbia – to build up outreach to rural and suburban areas where Trump trounced Clinton in 2016, largely because Clinton ignored those areas in key states.


Senator Chris Murphy has introduced bill S.3274 to fight “propaganda and disinformation”. Robert Barnes joins Alex to break down how this is actually a tactic to continue and even amplify their censorship of Christians, conservatives, and patriots.

“We’ve got to talk to people everywhere,” he said, according to PJ Media. “We’ve got to build a bench of candidates – if we’re going to take over the redistricting process, we’ve got to be running candidates for state legislature.

“And the way to do that is to get out there in the communities, not just in urban areas, but in suburb and exurb and rural America and talk to people and listen.”

Fast forward a little over two years and Perez is instead trashing Trump supporters on a liberal college campus, pontificating about the cowardly constituents his party is hoping to recruit to unseat Trump in 2020.

“They will be judged harshly,” Perez said, “because whatever (Trump) says goes right now.”

Perez’s comments likely don’t matter much, because it’s certainly not the first time he’s said one thing and done another.

While running for the DNC chair, Perez argued that he was a better fit than then Rep. Keith Ellison, because the chairman needed to be focused on the party full time. Months later, he took a high-dollar teaching job at Brown University.

Then, after purging women and people of color from the top ranks of the Democratic Party, he promised the DNC would stay neutral in primary elections. He lied, and personally endorsed New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo over his more liberal challenger, The Week reports.

And while Democrat voters view the environment and climate change as a top issue, Perez reversed a ban last fall on the party accepting donations from fossil fuel companies, a policy that conflicts directly with the Green New Deal touted by several of the party’s candidates for president in 2020.

Source: InfoWars

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A-List Rap Artist Murdered After Plans To Expose Big Pharma

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Are We Heading Toward a Political Realignment?

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WASHINGTON -- Dick Cheney, the former vice president, made just about the nastiest crack a Republican could offer about President Trump's foreign policy when he said it "looks a lot more like Barack Obama than Ronald Reagan."

Obviously, the comparison is flawed. But say this much for Cheney: He's the rare Republican who isn't intimidated by Trump these days. Cheney made a string of similarly blistering comments at a supposedly off-the-record conversation with Vice President Pence at a gathering in Sea Island, Georgia, last weekend hosted by the American Enterprise Institute.

Cheney's remarks tell us that we are experiencing what may be a political realignment in America, in which some of our political labels don't work very well. There's a populist wing in both parties, with Trump and some progressive Democrats expressing broadly similar concerns about America's overextension in the world and the unfairness of the existing global order to working people.

There's a traditionalist wing in both parties, too, which supports the old Cheney-esque American-led world order and its network of alliances and trade agreements. This traditionalist approach was embodied in the shared invitation this week by Democratic House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Republican Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to NATO's secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, to address a joint session of Congress.

There's a world of difference, to be sure, between Trump's bullying, rich-guy version of populism and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders' empathetic, progressive version. Similarly, Pelosi's version of internationalism is less defense-oriented and hawkish than McConnell's. But politics is confusing these days partly because the usual left-right spectrum doesn't always apply. Is free trade liberal or conservative? How about internationalism? What about privacy protection?

American politics has always been more personality-driven than ideological, and when we think of eras, they're usually defined by presidents. George Washington personified the Federalist Era; Andrew Jackson defined a freewheeling Democratic Party assault on the elites; Abraham Lincoln created the modern Republican Party in the Civil War; and Theodore Roosevelt recast it in the Progressive Era; Franklin Roosevelt created a new Democratic coalition; and Reagan framed a new Republican one.

Is Trump such a transitional figure? I doubt it. He seems more an emblem of our current political disorder than the architect of a new political alignment. But he's a harbinger of change in our party system.

Trump already has led one of the most successful insurgencies in American politics. He destroyed the existing Republican establishment, savaging the GOP's field of presidential candidates in 2016. His defiant, carnival-barker politics of resentment was on display this month at the CPAC convention. It was a bizarre, idiosyncratic performance, but it clearly enthralled his audience. Trump owns what's left of the party he wrecked.

Democrats these days can seem just as frightened as Republicans by a party base that's in ferment. An example is former Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper, an ex-entrepreneur who created a bipartisan base in his home state. Hickenlooper is the embodiment of a moderate Democrat. But he verged on incoherence last week on MSNBC's "Morning Joe" when host Joe Scarborough asked him if he was a "socialist" or "capitalist." Watching him, it seemed possible that Democrats are as jittery about offending Sanders supporters as Republicans are of crossing Trump.

Maybe Sanders has the passion and progressive appeal to make "democratic socialism" a winning strategy for 2020. He's undeniably appealing to the Democratic base; polls show him gaining steadily over the past two months, while most of the rest of the field has been treading water.

But I'll be very surprised if Sanders can make it to the White House. The Democrat who can beat Trump is more likely to be a large but also reassuring personality, acceptable to blue-collar Democrats and also exciting to younger voters -- a more youthful version of Joe Biden, perhaps. People who occupy that space (at least on my mental map) include Sen. Michael Bennett; Sen. Kamala Harris, Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Rep. Seth Moulton and former Rep. Beto O'Rourke.

Political systems can be like scientific theories. Sometimes there emerge so many anomalous elements that don't fit the existing structure that the theory collapses, and a new one arises. In science, that means, for example, that the theory that the sun revolves around the earth loses its explanatory power, and evidence proves the opposite is the case. In politics, new parties emerge, or the existing ones develop new identities.

We may be entering such a period. The definition of a winning Democrat may be that, in response to Trump's rambling circus of self-aggrandizement, he or she could create a genuinely coherent new political order.

(c) 2019, Washington Post Writers Group

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When every day is Presidents’ Day

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On the roster: When every day is Presidents’ Day - Would Biden be the real frontrunner? - List of litigants against Trump emergency growing - Audible: Like freedom fries? - Tudder for an udder

WHEN EVERY DAY IS PRESIDENTS’ DAY
We are in the midst of a needful and long-overdue discussion about executive authority.

But don’t expect it to last.

In the past seven decades, Americans have substantially learned to live without the small-r republicanism that was so much a part of our founding and first century and a half of our history.

Consider the long, slouchy slide into the abomination that we call “Presidents’ Day.” The holiday is still “George Washington’s Birthday” by law, having survived an effort in 1968 to standardize the observance as a generic honor for all presidents.

Abraham Lincoln, born on Feb. 12, never had a federal observance of his own, but most states had holidays for the Great Emancipator. Washington was born on Feb. 22, so this created something of a holiday logjam in February, which was unhelpful for schools and employers.

Over time, confusion between state and federal observances and the pressure from advertisers who wanted a standard way to hawk mattresses and minivans, dumbed down the holiday.

While it’s true that it doesn’t really matter what we call the day for the sake of celebrations. Americans ought not need to be told how and when exactly to venerate our two greatest leaders. Plus, ski weekends…

What does matter, though, is that the generic holiday is an unfortunate reflection of the royalist strain that has so much taken hold of American political thinking.

There’s no doubt that in our republic, the president is afforded many of the powers of a term-limited king. The power of the commander in chief to defend against an attack or of whether to pardon a criminal are magisterial indeed.

The fear among the Federalists in support of the Constitution was, in fact, that the legislative branch would be too powerful and that the executive would be too puny to get the job done. Sapped of the capacity for decisive action, the executive branch would become a kind of ceremonial head of state – a hood ornament for the country. Meanwhile, Congress would be unable to provide decisive responses to *ahem* national emergencies.

It’s turned out to be exactly the opposite. Congress can seldom act, it’s true. But the response from what is supposed to be the preeminent branch has been to cede its own authority. For decades now and under the control of both parties, Congress has taken itself from the lion of our government into a pipsqueak.

The idea behind venerating Washington and Lincoln is that they were special men who, at crucial moments, led the country out of dangerous straits and into greater glories. And in both cases, that given the opportunity to be demagogues or to hoard power for themselves, they instead placed those authorities back in the hands of the representatives of the people.

But the reason their self-sacrifice is so remarkable is that it is so rare. And it is so rare because, as the verdict of 10,000 years of history clearly shows, the people generally don’t want the power. Autocracy and highly centralized power haven’t been the norm in human history just because of the efforts autocrats, but also the will of the people.

Being a citizen in a republic is harder duty than being the subject of a king or queen. You have to make decisions. You have to know the facts. You have to participate.

The imperial American presidency has been growing and growing to the point now where we are even having a discussion about whether the current occupant of the Oval Office can even disregard the domestic spending direction of the Congress. That we are even in debate on the subject tells us how far we have fallen.

And in this case, like every executive usurpation that has come before, the executive points to the abuses that came before and were allowed to stand by a craven Congress. We won’t here delve into the cause of congressional cravenness, except to say that the individual ambitions of careerist lawmakers has made lawmaking seem rather too icky.

Where we’ve landed, and this has been very much for the current presidency and the one before it, is where everything seems focused on the man in the White House. Day after day after day of focus on one single human. As if a president could be so powerful… 

Whatever sign they hung in the window at the mattress store today doesn’t matter, but we would submit that when we divorced the observance from the individual men, it was another step toward a monarchical America.    

The truth that most of us would probably not like to confront is that America likes it better that way.

THE RULEBOOK: FANCY THAT
“The representatives of the people, in a popular assembly, seem sometimes to fancy that they are the people themselves, and betray strong symptoms of impatience and disgust at the least sign of opposition from any other quarter…” Alexander Hamilton, Federalist No. 71

TIME OUT: UNDER THE INFLUENCE
Fashion critic Vanessa Friedman shares some thoughts on the passing of the original “influencer.” NYT: “What does it mean to have your greatest legacy be one of ‘taste?’ I have been thinking about this since the news of Lee Radziwill’s death arrived, along with the flood of photographs from all corners of social media featuring Ms. Radziwill throughout her life — in white corduroys and a blue boat-neck T-shirt, in bouffant chignon and tunics; in a pink shift with her sister, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, atop an elephant during a tour of India; in a white-and-silver beaded gown dancing with Truman Capote at his Black and White Ball; in a black patent python jacket — all of them used to pay homage to her extraordinary ‘taste.’ Been thinking about it since some of the obituaries and reminiscences almost seem to use the word as a backhanded compliment; a reference to a life that had more impact in style than substance... But are the two really so unrelated?”

Flag on the play? - Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM with your tips, comments or questions.

SCOREBOARD
Trump job performance 
Average approval: 41.8 percent
Average disapproval: 54.4 percent
Net Score: -12.6 points
Change from one week ago: up 3.6 points 
[Average includes: Fox News: 46% approve - 52% disapprove; Gallup: 44% approve - 52% unapproved; CNN: 42% approve - 54% disapproval; IBD: 39% approve - 57% disapprove; Quinnipiac University: 38% approve - 57% disapprove.]

WOULD BIDEN BE THE REAL FRONTRUNNER?

Politico:Joe Biden’s big lead in early Democratic 2020 polling might be a bunch of malarkey. While most polls show the former vice president hovering around 30 percent of the Democratic primary vote, well ahead of second-place Sen. Bernie Sanders, two recent surveys paint a starkly different picture — raising the question of whether Biden is a real front-runner or just has big name-recognition. Those polls show far more Democratic voters undecided about which candidate to support, and they pegged Biden’s backing at a much less intimidating 9 to 12 percent. The results are so varied partly thanks to different methodological choices by the pollsters. But parsing the results is more than an academic exercise: While Biden weighs a third campaign for the presidency, he and his allies must consider whether polls a year before primary season really reflect Biden’s true strength — and his potential rivals have to calculate whether the former vice president could overwhelm lesser-known challengers in 2020.”

The mom lane - The Boston Globe: “As the 2020 Democratic primary shapes up, its leading women candidates – accomplished stateswomen, all – are drawing attention to another role they play: Mom. Senators Kirsten Gillibrand and Amy Klobuchar both talked about being mothers in the opening statements of their presidential bids. Senator Kamala Harris speaks often of her husband’s two children and the nickname they have given her: Momala. There are already indications that the women of 2020 plan to draw on their own experiences to embrace policies that affect mothers and working parents more broadly, bringing such issues as child care and family leave firmly into the political mainstream. This week, for example, Warren plans to introduce a universal child care and early learning plan, which she has said would be paid for by taxing the wealth of the richest Americans.”

Busy weekend on the trail - AP: “Five Democratic senators vying for their party’s nomination to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020 fanned out across the country Saturday to campaign and meet voters. Kamala Harris of California spent her second straight day in the pivotal early-voting state of South Carolina, holding a town hall meeting in Columbia, the capital. Also visiting the state was Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, who met with an estimated 800 voters in Greenville before heading to Georgia… Cory Booker of New Jersey and Kirsten Gillibrand of New York both focused on New Hampshire. Booker made his first visit to there since joining the race earlier this month, holding a question-and-answer session with more than 400 voters in Portsmouth. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, meanwhile, made her own uncommon choice for early campaigning by visiting Wisconsin before heading to Iowa, home to the nation’s first caucus. And a Democratic heavyweight who’s yet to address his 2020 plans, former Vice President Joe Biden, made his own high-profile appearance at the Munich Security Conference.”

Bernie’s team talked of grim standing with non-white voters -  NYT: “Shortly after Senator Bernie Sanders suffered a crushing loss in South Carolina’s Democratic primary in 2016, his campaign’s African-American outreach team sent a memo to top campaign leaders with an urgent warning. ‘The margin by which we lost the African-American vote has got to be — at the very least — cut in half or there simply is no path to victory,’ the team wrote in the memo, which was reviewed by The New York Times. Mr. Sanders had won 14 percent of the black vote there compared with 86 percent for Hillary Clinton, according to exit polls. Over seven pages, the team outlined a strategy for winning black voters that included using social media influencers and having Mr. Sanders give a major speech on discrimination in a city like St. Louis or Cincinnati. Mr. Sanders’s inner circle did not respond.”

LIST OF LITIGANTS AGAINST TRUMP EMERGENCY GROWING
NBC News: “California and a dozen other states are filing a lawsuit challenging Donald Trump's national emergency declaration, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said Monday. ‘The president admitted that there’s not a basis for the declaration. He admitted there’s no crisis at the border. He’s now trying to rob funds that were allocated by Congress legally to the various states and people of our states,’ Becerra told Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC Monday afternoon. ‘The separation of powers is being violated, we’re going to go out there and make sure that Donald Trump cannot steal money from the states and people who need them, since we paid the taxpayer dollars to Washington, D.C., to get those services,’ he said. … New Jersey, Colorado, and Connecticut all confirmed to NBC News they are a part of the lawsuit. ‘The only national emergency is the president's trafficking in lies and deceit,’ Connecticut Attorney General William Tong said in a statement.”

Stephen Miller on the hot seat - USA Today: “During an interview on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ host Chris Wallace pressed [senior Trump adviser Stephen Miller] on the need for a national emergency, citing U.S. Customs and Border Patrol data showing between 80 to 90 percent of drugs seized in attempted smugglings happened at ports of entry. … Wallace pressed Miller to cite another example from the 59 times presidents used the National Emergency Act where it was invoked to obtain money that Congress had refused to appropriate. Miller did not cite such a precedent and took issue with the premise of the question. ‘They didn’t refuse to appropriate it,’ Miller said. ‘They passed a law specifically saying the president could have this authority. It’s in the plain statute. That’s the decision that Congress made, and if people don’t like that, they can address it.’”

PLAY-BY-PLAY
Senate Judiciary Committee will investigate McCabe’s claims - WaPo

North Carolina election officials make their case against GOP ‘ballot harvesting’ in unresolved House race - Raleigh News & Observer

AUDIBLE: LIKE FREEDOM FRIES?
“I think that whatever you eat is a very personal decision and everybody should eat what they want to eat. That’s America- that’s what we believe in freedom.” – Presidential Candidate Cory Booker (D-NJ) explained his vegan diet to his voters via twitter over the weekend.

FROM THE BLEACHERS
“Chris, be serious, neither [Former Massachusetts Gov. Bill Weld] nor [Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan] can be classified as ‘notable’. I'd put [Former Ohio Gov. John Kasich] in that category, but I don't think he'll get into a race that he knows for sure that he can't win.” Lou Banas, Brea,Calif

[Ed. Note: I can’t be sure of your definition of notability, Mr. Banas. But the second-term governor of a state of 6 million or so souls strikes me as within any reasonable definition. The ting about primary challenges is that they don’t have to be successful to do their damage. In 1980, Ted Kennedy didn’t beat Jimmy Carter, nor did Pat Buchanan unhorse George H.W. Bush in 1992, but both campaigns were certainly consequential. That’s why the Trump campaign is rightly worried about just such a run.]

“One of the greatest walls between us, the people, and an overzealous government is the separation of powers. The Founding Fathers, in perhaps one of their greatest acts of genius, divided the power of government into three separate branches so as to insure there was no party with absolute power. Declaring an ‘emergency’, after the president has already given the congress the opportunity to act and has acted, creates a huge breach in this wall of protection. Gaining short-term funds for building a border wall in exchange for the Constitutional wall of protection created by the separation of powers is neither conservative nor is it wise. Liberals often believe the end justifies the means, I hope conservatives do not stray down this dangerous road.” Steve Bartlett, Greenville, S.C.

[Ed. Note: The Constitution is always getting strange new respect from the party out of power. We could call it hypocrisy, but that would be too narrow of a view. In fact, our charter has very much in mind keeping majorities from turning into steamrollers. So then maybe it makes a certain sense that the party out of power holds the Constitution in greater reverence.]

Share your color commentary: Email us at HALFTIMEREPORT@FOXNEWS.COM and please make sure to include your name and hometown.

TUDDER FOR AN UDDER

Reuters: “A Tinder-inspired app is helping farmers match up potential partners for their cattle. Called ‘Tudder’ ― a mix of dating app Tinder and udder - it lets farmers swipe right on cattle they like the look of. They are then directed to a page on the SellMyLivestock website where they can browse more pictures and data about the animals before deciding whether to buy. Valuable information is available on matters like milk yield and protein content, or calving potential, explained Doug Bairner, CEO of Hectare Agritech which runs SellMyLivestock (SML) and Graindex, a UK-based online agritech trading platform. ‘Matching livestock online is even easier than it is to match humans because there’s a huge amount of data that sits behind these wonderful animals that predicts what their offspring will be,’ he said.”

AND NOW, A WORD FROM CHARLES…
“Nixon might indeed have committed crimes. But the spectacle of an ex-president on trial and perhaps even in jail was something Ford would not allow the country to go through.”  – Charles Krauthammer (1950-2018) writing in the Washington Post on July 27, 2017.

Chris Stirewalt is the politics editor for Fox News. Liz Friden contributed to this report. Want FOX News Halftime Report in your inbox every day? Sign up here.

Source: Fox News Politics

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Arab Spring comes later in Sudan and Algeria

A Sudanese demonstrator gestures while riding atop a military truck as he protests against the army's announcement that President Omar al-Bashir would be replaced by a military-led transitional council, near Defence Ministry in Khartoum
A Sudanese demonstrator gestures while riding atop a military truck as he protests against the army's announcement that President Omar al-Bashir would be replaced by a military-led transitional council, near Defence Ministry in Khartoum, Sudan April 12, 2019. REUTERS/Stringer

April 14, 2019

By Michael Georgy and Tarek Amara

DUBAI/TUNIS (Reuters) – The armed forces of Algeria and Sudan, which pushed out the long-serving rulers of those countries after mass protests, are following a script that has failed millions of Arabs since the 2011 uprisings.

Those “Arab Spring” upheavals raised hopes of political and economic reforms in countries such as Egypt, where the army watched patiently from the sidelines and then capitalized on the turmoil to widen its influence in politics.

Egypt’s armed forces chief effectively brushed President Hosni Mubarak aside when it became clear security forces could not contain street protests against the veteran leader.

A military council took charge, overseeing a turbulent and sometimes violent transition during which Egypt’s first democratic elections took place.

Two years later, army chief General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi led the overthrow of Egypt’s first freely elected president, Mohamed Mursi. Sisi then won elections in 2014 and 2018, on both occasions with 97 percent of the vote.

Parliament has proposed constitutional reforms that could allow him to remain in power until 2034.

“What I think caused a lot of the uprisings in 2011 and what’s causing them today in Sudan and Algeria is the politics of deception: when the president says I won by 85 or 99 percent at the polls but wherever you go everyone disapproves of him,” said Mohammed Alyahya, a Saudi political analyst and editor-in-chief of Al Arabiya English TV.

“That can be viable when you have robust economic development. But if you don’t have that and you’re not granting people political and civil rights, then you’re essentially giving them nothing but repression, and that is ultimately unsustainable.”

Sudan appears to be following the Egyptian model, at least for now, after long-serving leader Omar al-Bashir was overthrown in a military coup last week after sustained protests.

Crowds had gathered outside the Ministry of Defence to ask the army to help them topple Bashir.

The new head of Sudan’s military council, Abdel Fattah al-Burhan Abdelrahman, said on Saturday a civilian government would be formed after consultations with the opposition and promised a transition period of no more than two years.

He had just succeeded the officer who announced Bashir’s arrest, Defence Minister Awad Ibn Auf, who stepped down as head of the military council after only a day in the face of demands for a civilian government.

PRESSURE FOR CHANGE

Protesters, however, kept up the pressure for change, just as they did in Egypt when Field Marshal Hussein Tantawi – who was defence minister for two decades – ran the country after Mubarak’s fall.

A common chant amongst the Sudanese was “either victory or Egypt”, a reference to their objection to following that script. Social media in both countries latched on to Sisi and Burhan’s identical first names to humorously warn of a similar fate.

“The biggest blunder was the hope that the army would be an ally. I understand the emotions around the army but it’s a misunderstanding of what the army is and what it does,” said Sudanese commentator Magdi El Gizouli.

“If you call on the army to intervene to resolve a crisis, this is what it can do, it can’t do better.”

Algeria’s Army Chief, Lieutenant General Ahmed Gaed Salah, took a softer approach. He declared the ailing Bouteflika, 82, unfit for office when he attempted to extend his fourth term, raising the prospect of prolonged demonstrations.

In a matter of days, parliament named a new interim leader who was part of the ruling elite, the army expressed support for a transition and a date was set for a presidential election – providing what analysts say is political cover for the army, a long-time kingmaker in Algeria.

Any future civilian leader in Sudan or Algeria needs the support of the army – a common arrangement in the Arab World – while also facing huge economic and political challenges.

Problems that triggered the unrest across the Middle East in 2011 have since become more acute. Ousted autocrats have been replaced by leaders who also failed to create jobs, and eradicate poverty and corruption

BREAD PRICES

More than one in four people below the age of 30 in Algeria are unemployed – a central grievance of protesters who want the economy liberalized and diversified to reduce reliance on oil and gas.

In Sudan, what started as a protest about bread prices and poor living conditions turned into one about the regime.

Echoing 2011, their cry is: “The people want the regime to fall.”

But Elsheikh Ali, a 29-year-old Sudanese sales manager, said this was not exactly a second Arab Spring because the present protests were more about economic hardships than politics.

“Sudan and Algeria aren’t a second wave. They’re about hunger and the dire economic situation, and a wave of oppressed youth that haven’t gotten their full freedoms,” Ali said.

“It’s not a victory in any way. People want to see accountability for all the people who brought us to this point.”

Fawaz Gerges, professor of Middle Eastern politics at the London School of Economics and author of two recent books about the Arab Spring, agrees.

“The term Arab Spring is very misleading because it implies that everything will blossom, that there’s a magic bullet to resolve a severe crisis that has been in the making for decades,” he said.

“What we are talking about is social protests that are symptoms of economic and political vulnerabilities.”

As Algerians and Sudanese seek more freedom and better prospects, turmoil elsewhere in the region suggests their hopes for a better future may be disappointed.

Tunisia has been hailed as a success story for its democratic development, although an economic crisis has eroded living standards.

But its problems seem minor in comparison to other Arab Spring nations. In Libya, military strongman Khalifa Haftar, whom critics call the new Gaddafi, is waging war to take over a country that had already descended into bloodshed since 2011.

Hundreds of thousands have been killed in Syria’s civil war. Four years of conflict have pushed Yemen, already one of the poorest Arab states, to the brink of famine.

In Sudan and Algeria, meanwhile, democracy lacks a clear way forward.

“The army wants to stay in control, whether with a civilian cover in Algeria or a direct way in Sudan,” said prominent Tunisian journalist Ziad Krichen.

“The military that has tasted the sweetness of power and privileges sees itself as the only one capable of protecting those countries.”

(Additional reporting by Tarek Amara in Tunis, Nafisa Eltaher in Dubia, Lamine Chikhi in Algiers, and Stephen Kalin in Riyadh; Editing by Giles Elgood)

Source: OANN

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Report: Appointee Overruled Kushner’s Denied Clearance

President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner was denied a security clearance last year by the White House personnel security office but the decision was overruled by a political appointee, according to a new report.

The Washington Post reported Wednesday evening that whistleblower Tricia Newbold told staff members of the House Oversight Committee that another career employee in the security office and herself ruled Kushner had enough "significant disqualifying factors" that his clearance was denied for his role as a senior White House adviser.

Carl Kline, a political appointee who heads the White House security office, reportedly told Newbold the issues discovered in Kushner's background — concerns regarding foreign influence, his business interests outside of government, and his personal conduct — happened before he became a government employee. Kline then signed off on Kushner's application to receive a top secret clearance May 1, 2018 — more than 12 months after the process began.

Security clearance issues have dogged Kushner for months. It was reported in February Trump ordered then-White House chief of staff John Kelly to give Kushner a clearance last year — a request Kelly documented in writing because he was uncomfortable with it.

In an interview this week, Kushner said he complied with all investigations and disclosed all of his business holdings when he applied for the clearance.

Source: NewsMax America

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Orangutan blinded after being shot 74 times with air gun

A veterinarian says an endangered orangutan with a young baby on Indonesia's Sumatra island has gone blind after being shot at least 74 times with an air gun.

Yenny Saraswati said Monday that an X-ray showed at least 74 air gun pellets in the orangutan's body, including six in its eyes. It apparently also was stabbed and clubbed.

Villagers spotted the wounded orangutan with its month-old baby in a farm in Aceh province's Subulussalam district last week.

The baby orangutan died from malnutrition last Friday as rescuers rushed the two to an Orangutan veterinary clinic in neighboring North Sumatra province. The mother is recovering from surgery on Monday.

Orangutans are a protected species in Indonesia, but deforestation has dramatically reduced their habitat.

Source: Fox News World

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FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei's factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province
FILE PHOTO: The Huawei logo is pictured outside its Huawei’s factory campus in Dongguan, Guangdong province, China, March 25, 2019. REUTERS/Tyrone Siu/File Photo

April 26, 2019

By Ben Blanchard

BEIJING (Reuters) – Britain must get to the bottom of the leak of confidential discussions during a top-level security meeting about the role of China’s Huawei Technologies in 5G network supply chains, British finance minister Philip Hammond said on Friday.

News that Britain’s National Security Council, attended by senior ministers and spy chiefs, had agreed on Tuesday to bar Huawei from all core parts of the country’s 5G network and restrict its access to non-core elements was leaked to a national newspaper.

The leak of secret discussions has sparked anger in parliament and amongst Britain’s intelligence community. Britain’s most senior civil servant Mark Sedwill has launched an inquiry and written to ministers who were at the meeting.

“My understanding from London (is) that an investigation has been announced into apparent leaks from the NSC meeting earlier this week,” said Hammond, speaking on the sidelines of a summit on China’s Belt and Road initiative in Beijing.

“To my knowledge there has never been a leak from a National Security Council meeting before and therefore I think it is very important that we get to the bottom of what happened here,” he told Reuters in a pooled interview.

British culture minister Jeremy Wright said on Thursday he could not rule out a criminal investigation. The majority of the ministers at the NSC meeting have said they were not involved, according to media reports.

Hammond said he was unaware of any previous leak from a meeting of the NSC.

“It’s not about the substance of what was apparently leaked. It’s not earth-shattering information. But it is important that we protect the principle that nothing that goes on in national security council meetings must ever be repeated outside the room.”

Allowing Huawei a reduced role in building its 5G network puts Britain at odds with the United States which has told allies not to use its technology at all because of fears it could be a vehicle for Chinese spying. Huawei has categorically denied this.

There have been concerns that the NSC’s conclusion, which sources confirmed to Reuters, could upset other allies in the world’s leading intelligence-sharing network – the Five Eyes alliance of the United States, Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand.

However, British ministers and intelligence officials have said any final decision on 5G would not put critical national infrastructure at risk. Ciaran Martin, head of the cyber center of Britain’s main eavesdropping agency, GCHQ, played down any threat of a rift in the Five Eyes alliance.

(Writing by Michael Holden; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Source: OANN

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Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon
Park Yoo-chun, a K-pop idol singer, arrives at the Suwon district court in Suwon, South Korea, April 26, 2019. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji

April 26, 2019

SEOUL (Reuters) – K-pop and drama star Park Yu-chun was arrested on Friday on charges of buying and using illegal drugs, a court said, the latest in a series of scandals to hit the South Korean entertainment business.

Suwon District Court approved the arrest warrant for Park, 32, due to concerns over possible destruction of evidence and flight risk, a court spokesman told Reuters.

Park is suspected of having bought about 1.5 grams of methamphetamine with his former girlfriend earlier this year and using the drug around five times, an official at the Gyeonggi Nambu Provincial Police Agency said.

Park has denied wrongdoing, saying he had never taken drugs, and he again denied the charges in court, Yonhap news agency said.

Park’s contract with his management agency had been canceled and he would leave the entertainment industry, Park’s management agency, C-JeS Entertainment, said on Wednesday.

Park was a member of boyband TVXQ between 2003 and 2009 before leaving the group with two other members, forming the group JYJ.

A scandal involving sex tapes, prostitutes and secret chat about rape led at least four other K-pop stars to quit the industry earlier this year.

The cases sparked a nationwide drugs bust and investigations into tax evasion and police collusion at night clubs and other nightlife spots.

(Reporting by Joyce Lee; Additional reporting by Heekyong Yang; Editing by Nick Macfie)

Source: OANN

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FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport in Washington
FILE PHOTO: An American Airlines Boeing 737 MAX 8 flight from Los Angeles taxis after landing at Reagan National Airport shortly after an announcement was made by the FAA that the planes were being grounded by the United States over safety issues in Washington, U.S. March 13, 2019. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts/File Photo

April 26, 2019

(Reuters) – American Airlines Group Inc cut its 2019 profit forecast on Friday, saying it expected to take a $350 million hit from the grounding of Boeing’s 737 MAX planes after cancelling 1,200 flights in the first quarter.

The company said it now expects its 2019 adjusted profit to be between $4.00 per share and $6.00 per share.

Analysts on average had expected 2019 earnings of $5.63 per share, according to Refinitiv data.

The No. 1 U.S. airline by passenger traffic said net income rose to $185 million, or 41 cents per share, in the first quarter ended March 31, from $159 million, or 34 cents per share, a year earlier.

Total operating revenue rose 2 percent to $10.58 billion.

(Reporting by Sanjana Shivdas in Bengaluru)

Source: OANN

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2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa
2020 Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg speaks at a campaign event in Des Moines, Iowa, U.S., April 16, 2019. REUTERS/Elijah Nouvelage

April 26, 2019

By James Oliphant

MARSHALLTOWN, Iowa (Reuters) – Four years ago, Donald Trump campaigned in small towns like Marshalltown, Iowa, vowing to restore economic prosperity to the U.S. heartland.

In his bid to replace Trump in the White House, Pete Buttigieg is taking a similar tack. The difference, he says, is that he can point to a model of success: South Bend, Indiana, the revitalized city where he has been mayor since 2012.

The Democratic presidential contender has vaulted to the congested field’s top tier in recent weeks, drawing media and donor attention for his youth, history-making status as the first openly gay major presidential candidate and a resume that includes military service in Afghanistan.

But Buttigieg’s main argument for his candidacy is that he is a turnaround artist in the mold of Trump, although the Democrat does not expressly invoke the comparison with the Republican president.

“I’m not going around saying we’ve fixed every problem we’ve got,” Buttigieg, 37, said after a house party with voters in Marshalltown. “But I’m proud of what we have done together, and I think it’s a very powerful story.”

Critics argue improving the fortunes of a Midwestern city of 100,000 people does not qualify Buttigieg, who has never held national office, for the presidency of a country of 330 million. Others say South Bend still has pockets of despair and that minorities, in particular, have failed to benefit from its growth.

Buttigieg has told crowds in Iowa and elsewhere that his experience in reviving a struggling Rust Belt community allows him to make a case to voters that other Democratic candidates cannot. That may give him the means to win back some of the disaffected Democratic voters who turned their backs on Hillary Clinton in 2016 to vote for Trump.

Watching Buttigieg at a union hall in Des Moines last week, Rick Ryan, 45, a member of the United Steelworkers, lamented how many of his fellow union workers voted for Trump. The president turned in the best performance by a Republican among union households since Ronald Reagan in 1984.

Ryan said he hoped someone like Buttigieg could return them to the Democratic fold.

“He’s aware of the decline in the labor force in America, not just in Indiana or Des Moines or anywhere else,” Ryan said. “Jobs are going overseas. We need a find to way to bring that back.”

Randy Tucker, 56, of Pleasant Hill, Iowa, a member of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, said Trump appealed to union members “desperate for somebody to reach out to them, to help them, to listen to their voice.”

Buttigieg could do the same, he said. “In my heart right now, he’s No. 1.”

PAST VS. FUTURE

Buttigieg stresses a key difference in his and Trump’s approaches.

Trump, he tells crowds, is mired in the past, promising to rebuild the 20th century industrial economy. Buttigieg argues the pledge is misleading and unrealistic.

Buttigieg says his focus is on the future, and he often talks about what the country might look like decades from now.

“The only way that we can cultivate what makes America great is to look to the future and not be afraid of it,” Buttigieg said in Marshalltown.

Buttigieg knows his sexual preference may be a barrier to winning some blue-collar voters. But he notes that after he came out as gay in 2015, he won a second term as mayor with 80 percent of the vote in conservative Indiana.

Earlier this month, he announced his presidential bid at the hulking plant in South Bend that stopped making Studebaker autos more than 50 years ago. After lying dormant for decades, the building is being transformed into a high-tech hub after Buttigieg and other city leaders realized it would never again attract a large-scale industrial company.

“That building sat as a powerful reminder. We hoped we would get back that major employer that would fix our economy,” said Jeff Rea, president of the regional Chamber of Commerce.

Buttigieg is praised locally for spurring more than $100 million in downtown investment. During his two terms, unemployment has fallen to 4.1 percent from 11.8 percent.

But a study released in 2017 by the nonprofit group Prosperity Now said not all of the city’s residents had shared in its rebound. The median income for African-Americans remained half that of whites, while the unemployment rate for blacks was double.

Regina Williams-Preston, a city councilor running to replace Buttigieg as mayor, credits him for the revitalized downtown. But she said he had a “blind spot” when it came to focusing on troubled neighborhoods like the one she represents and only grew more engaged after community pressure.

“He understands it now,” she said. “The next step is figuring out how to open the doors of opportunity for everyone.”

‘ONE OF US’

Trump touts the fact that the United States added almost 300,000 manufacturing jobs last year as evidence he made good on his promise to restore the industrial sector. But that growth still left the country with fewer manufacturing jobs than in 2008.

The robust U.S. economy is likely the president’s greatest asset in his re-election bid, particularly in states he carried in 2016 such as Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania. He won Buttigieg’s home state by 19 points over Clinton in 2016.

Sean Bagniewski, chairman of the Democratic Party in Polk County, Iowa, said Buttigieg would be well positioned to compete with Trump in the Midwest.

“People love the fact that he’s a mayor,” said Bagniewski, who has not endorsed a candidate in the nominating contest. “If you can talk about a positive future, and if you actually have experience that can do it, that’s a compelling vision in Iowa.”

Nan Whaley, the mayor of Dayton, Ohio, which faces many of the same challenges as South Bend, agreed.

“He’s one of us,” Whaley said. “That helps.”

(Reporting by James Oliphant; Editing by Colleen Jenkins and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau
A man looks out at a flooded residential area in Gatineau, Quebec, Canada, April 24, 2019. REUTERS/Chris Wattie

April 26, 2019

MONTREAL/OTTAWA (Reuters) – Rising waters were prompting further evacuations in central Canada on Thursday, with the mayor of the country’s capital, Ottawa, declaring a state of emergency and Quebec authorities warning that a hydroelectric dam was at risk of breaking.

Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson declared the emergency in response to rising water levels along the Ottawa River and weather forecasts that called for significant rainfall on Friday.

In a statement on Twitter, Watson asked for help from the Ontario provincial government and the country’s military.

He warned that “flood levels are currently forecasted to exceed the levels that caused significant damage to numerous properties in the city of Ottawa in 2017.”

Spring flooding had killed one person and forced more than 900 people from their homes in Canada’s Quebec province as of 1 p.m. on Thursday, according to a government website.

Ottawa has received 80 requests for service related to potential flooding such as sandbagging, a city spokeswoman said.

The prospect of more rain over the next 24 to 48 hours triggered concerns on Thursday that the hydroelectric dam at Bell Falls in the western part of Quebec could be at risk of failing because of rising water levels.

Quebec’s provincial police said 250 people were protectively removed from homes in the area as of late afternoon in case the dam on the Rouge River breaks.

The dam is now at its full flow capacity of 980 cubic meters per second of water, said Francis Labbé, a spokesman for the province’s state-owned utility, Hydro Quebec. He said Hydro Quebec expected the flow could rise to 1,200 cubic meters per second of water over the next two days.

“We have to take the worst-case scenario into consideration, since we`re already at the maximum capacity,” Labbé said by phone.

The dam is part of a power station that no longer produces electricity, but is regularly inspected by Hydro Quebec, he said.

(Reporting by Allison Lampert in Montreal and David Ljunggren and Julie Gordon in Ottawa; Editing by James Dalgleish and Peter Cooney)

Source: OANN

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