ACTION

Tuesday News Executive Summary
Jordan Candler  Above the Fold

STRATEGY: Sen. Amy Klobuchar drops out of 2020 campaign, helping to buoy loose lips liar-Joe Biden in her home state of Minnesota (Politico)

RALLYING THE TROOPS: Establishment Democrats embrace loose lips liar-Biden as commie-Bernie Sanders hopes for a big Super Tuesday delegate haul (The Washington Post)

EMERGENCY CUT: Fed reduces rates by half a percentage point to combat coronavirus slowdown (CNBC)

Government & Politics

SCANDAL REOPENS: Federal judge orders scumbag/liar-Hillary Clinton to give sworn deposition for first time in server scandal (The Daily Wire)

NOT BACKING DOWN: Senate Republicans plan first subpoena in Burisma-loose lips liar-Biden probe (The Washington Post)

TENURED VOICE DEPARTS: Embattled pundit Chris Matthews announces retirement, mutually parts ways with MSNBC (NBC News)

Culture & Heartland

ROLLERCOASTER OF EMOTIONS: Dow roars back from coronavirus sell-off with biggest gain since 2009, surges 5.1% (CNBC)

MEMO TO COLIN KAEPERNICK: China forces Uighurs to work in factories supplying Apple — and Nike (National Review)

MOTHER NATURE’S WRATH: Nashville tornado leaves at least nine dead as severe weather strikes Tennessee (Fox News)

Other Notables

THIRD ELECTION IN UNDER A YEAR: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu defeats Benny Gantz, but is still short a majority (The Jerusalem Post)

TIT FOR TAT: U.S. places new restrictions on Chinese journalists following China’s expulsion of three Wall Street Journal reporters (Axois)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: Want to improve performance in public schools? Let school choice flourish (E21)

POLICY: How the plastic panic hurts us — and the planet (City Journal)

HUMOR: loose lips liar-Joe Biden drops out of race, endorses loose lips liar-Biden (ScrappleFace)  

~The Patriot Post
https://patriotpost.us/articles/68974?mailing_id=4900&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pp.email.4900&utm_campaign=snapshot&utm_content=body     

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by jpost.com ~ Seyed Mohammad Mir-Mohammadi, a member of Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council, a body that advises Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei... died on Monday from coronavirus, Sputnik News reported. Some 66 people have died from coronavirus and over 1,500 have been infected in Iran as of Monday morning, Reuters reported.  Several high-ranking officials, including a vice minister, deputy health minister and five lawmakers, have tested positive for the coronavirus. "The definite latest numbers we have are 523 new infections and 12 new deaths so the total number of those infected until now is 1501 and the number of deaths is 66," said Iran's Deputy Health Minister, Alireza Raisi. One lawmaker, elected in Iran's February 21 polls, has died of the coronavirus, Iranian media reported last week. Iran's Health Minister Saeed Namaki warned on Friday of "a very difficult week" ahead in the country, which only announced its first infections and deaths from the coronavirus on February 19 and where the death rate among confirmed cases has been around 10%, compared to around 3% elsewhere. Saudi Arabia is now the only Arab Gulf state not to have reported any cases of the coronavirus, which has infected about 80,000 people and killed more than 2,800, mostly in China.

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{ freebeacon.com } ~ President Donald Trump said members of the media are doing everything they can to "instill fear" in people over the coronavirus and defended his administration's response to the viral outbreak... "I think that CNN is a very disreputable network," Trump told reporters on the White House lawn Friday. "I think they're doing everything they can to instill fear in people, and I think it's ridiculous." "Some of the Democrats are doing it the way it should be, but some of them are trying to gain political favor by saying a lot of untruths," Trump added. The stock market experienced its worst week since the financial crisis in 2008 over fears of the virus's impact on the international economy. Democratic presidential contenders made false claims about Trump cutting the budgets of the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. An  Associated Press fact check also found that the leadership of these agencies has remained stable despite Michael Bloomberg's claim that there was "nobody here" to deal with the virus. Trump also defended the administration's decision to restrict travel to and from China, where the coronavirus was first discovered...   https://freebeacon.com/politics/trump-rips-politicized-coverage-of-coronavirus-crisis-defends-administrations-response/?utm_source=actengage&utm_campaign=FreedomMail&utm_medium=email  

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{ gatestoneinstitute.org } ~ Essam al-Sa'afeen, a 39-year-old Palestinian from al-Bureij refugee camp in the center of the Gaza Strip, was pronounced  dead on February 23... one month after he was arrested by Hamas security forces. His family and friends are demanding answers from Hamas regarding the circumstances of the death al-Sa'afeen, a father of six. Hamas says it has formed a commission of inquiry to investigate the circumstances surrounding his death. According to the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Interior, which is in charge of the Palestinian security forces in the Gaza Strip, al-Sa'afeen died shortly after he was transferred from prison to a hospital. The ministry said al-Sa'afeen was rushed to the hospital after a "sudden deterioration in his health condition." The Palestinian Fatah faction, headed by Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas, has accused Hamas of brutally torturing al-Sa'afeen during his incarceration. Al-Sa'afeen was a member of Fatah who previously served as a police officer in the PA security forces before Hamas's violent takeover of the Gaza Strip in 2007. On January 27, 2020, masked gunmen arrested  al-Sa'afeen on the streets of al-Bureij refugee camp, apparently for his membership in Fatah. Hamas often arrests Fatah members in the Gaza Strip for their political activities and criticisms of Hamas's leaders and policies. Similarly, the Fatah-dominated PA in the West Bank regularly arrests Palestinians in the West Bank because of their affiliation with Hamas. Palestinians call the security crackdown by both parties "politically-motivated arrests." The death of al-Sa'afeen did not surprise Palestinians who are familiar with various methods of torture in Hamas and PA prisons. The Gaza-based Al-Mezan Center for Human Rights said that an autopsy conducted by the forensic medicine department on the body of al-Sa'afeen showed "bruises and a change in the color of the skin" -- implying he had been physically abused...  https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/15664/palestinians-hamas-prisons 

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{ nationalreview.com } ~ The Supreme Court announced Monday that it would hear a GOP-led effort against scumbag/liar-nObamacare, with opening arguments likely slated for the fall after the justices initially decided against fast-tracking a ruling... scumbag/liar-nObamacare came under threat in December when the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in a 2-1 vote that the individual mandate, which required Americans to buy health insurance under threat of fine, was unconstitutional. But the court kicked the rest of the case back down to Texas district judge Reed O’Connor, who initially decided that the individual mandate was unconstitutional in December 2018. “It may still be that none of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, even after this inquiry is concluded,” Judge Jennifer Walker Elrod said in her majority opinion. “It may be that all of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate. It may also be that some of the ACA is severable from the individual mandate, and some is not.” The Democratic states and the House, which are leading the defense of the 2010 healthcare statute, intervened and asked the Supreme Court to intervene and fast-track a decision by June, which it turned down. But the Court’s decision to hear the case on a regular track is still unusual, as the case has yet to be fully considered by O’Conner. The Trump administration had urged in its brief for the Court to wait for a lower-court decision. “Immediate review is unwarranted in the case’s present posture,” it wrote, “because the court of appeals did not definitively resolve any question of practical consequence.” Texas and 17 other Republican-led states sued in 2017 after the GOP-led Congress cut the tax penalty for those who lacked insurance to zero — rendering the individual mandate effectively over, and attorney general William Barr expanded the suit this year to argue that the entire law should be found unconstitutional.

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{ freebeacon.com } ~ House Democrats on Friday passed new regulations on tobacco which, just days before, major liberal policy groups said would "further engrain systemic criminalization and racism."... H.R. 2339, the Reversing the Youth Tobacco Epidemic Act of 2019, passed the House on a nearly party-line vote of 213 to 195. Just 17 Democrats voted against and 5 Republicans in support. The bill is meant as a comprehensive response to the spike in teen nicotine consumption. It prohibits the sale of cigarettes, vapes, or other tobacco products that are flavored in any way, including with menthol, among other reforms. That menthol ban drew the ire of seven liberal policy organizations, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Action Network. In a letter sent Monday to H.R. 2339's author Rep. Frank Pallone (D., N.J.) and obtained by the Washington Free Beacon, the groups wrote that they were concerned "a blanket prohibition on menthol and other flavored tobacco products, which will apply to adults, will (1) disproportionately impact people and communities of color; (2) trigger criminal penalties, prioritizing criminalization over public health and harm reduction; and (3) instigate unconstitutional policing and other negative interactions with local law enforcement." The groups' objection comes down to differences in consumer preferences. Eighty-five percent of black smokers report using mentholated cigarettes in the past month, compared to less than 30 percent of white smokers. Hispanic smokers are in the middle, at about 50 percent. Similarly, the letter notes that black people make up 60 percent of the market for flavored cigarillos and "non-premium" cigars also prohibited under the bill. Notably, H.R. 2339 exempts certain "traditional, expensive" cigars from a ban on online tobacco sales, but not those more frequently used by people of color. "There is no justification for differentiating a La Palina from a Black and Mild," the letter argued...   https://freebeacon.com/issues/house-dems-pass-menthol-cigarette-ban-that-liberal-groups-blasted-as-racist/?utm_source=actengage&utm_campaign=FreedomMail&utm_medium=email   

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by restoreamericanglory.com ~ At a speech in front of the 2020 National Religious Broadcasters Convention in Nashville this week, Attorney General William Barr said that religion and the free press were both important weapons in the war against a powerful... centralized corporate media that was trying to impose its view of the world onto the American population. Barr said that as long as those weapons are primed and ready, the United States will never fall into a “tyranny of the majority. “Today in the United States, the corporate – or ‘mainstream’ – press is massively consolidated,” Barr said. “And it has become remarkably monolithic in viewpoint, at the same time that an increasing number of journalists see themselves less as objective reporters of the facts, and more as agents of change. These developments have given the press an unprecedented ability to mobilize a broad segment of the public on a national scale and direct that opinion in a particular direction. “When the entire press ‘advances along the same track,’ as Tocqueville put it, the relationship between the press and the energized majority becomes mutually reinforcing,” he continued. “Not only does it become easier for the press to mobilize a majority, but the mobilized majority becomes more powerful and overweening with the press as its ally. This is not a positive cycle, and I think it is fair to say that it puts the press’s role as a breakwater for the tyranny of the majority in jeopardy. The key to restoring the press in that vital role is to cultivate a greater diversity of voices in the media.”Oh, diverse voices? The media LOVES diversity, Bill! They’ll be all too happy to accommodate you. How long before we get a transgender reporter on ABC Nightly News? Surely it’s only a matter of time before MSNBC gives an afternoon slot to a passionate illegal alien. And we’re not even sure why white men are still anchoring CNN’s late afternoon and primetime programs, but at least Anderson Cooper is gay. Not sure what the deal is with Wolf Blitzer, though. But of course, that’s not the “diversity” that Barr is talking about; he’s talking about ideological diversity, which is a concept the corporate media has absolutely no use for. Well, that’s not exactly true: You can be a fervent liberal or a mild liberal or a NeverTrump conservative liberal. That’s pretty much your entire window right there, and it is a pretty narrow one. “Although totalitarian democracy is democratic in form, it requires an all-knowing elite to guide the masses toward their determined end, and that elite relies on whipping up mass enthusiasm to preserve its power and achieve its goals,” Barr warned. “Totalitarian democracy is almost always secular and materialistic, and its adherents tend to treat politics as a substitute for religion. Their sacred mission is to use the coercive power of the state to remake man and society according to an abstract ideal of perfection.” Every time we hear this attorney general speak, we’re more impressed than we were the last time. Bill Barr is a guy who GETS IT. He gets it like Steve Bannon gets it. Trump outdid himself when he put this guy at the head of the Justice Department.   http://www.restoreamericanglory.com/breaking-news/ag-william-barr-warns-against-dangers-of-monolithic-corporate-media/ 

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