Cut to the News
Cut through the clutter to today's top news
April 23, 2021
Good morning
Welcome to today's top news.
Leading the News . . .
FBI puts law enforcement nationwide on notice about increase in crime . . . The FBI is warning local law enforcement agencies to prepare for potential increases in crime over the next few months. Crimes rates in many cities have increased since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, with many agencies seeing upticks in gun violence and crimes committed by teenagers. Fox News
Let's keep defunding the police and see how that works out.
Parents Organize to Push Back Against the Quasi-Marxist Critical Race Theory . . . A growing number of American parents are getting together to find ways to block the spread of the quasi-Marxist critical race theory (CRT) in schools where they send their children. They see the doctrine as a culprit in creating a toxic environment and exacerbating problems it claims to ameliorate. School officials have been responding with denials or
silence.
CRT has been spreading throughout academia, entertainment, government, schools, and corporations. It redefines America’s history as a struggle between “oppressors” (white people) and the “oppressed” (everybody else), similarly to Marxism’s reduction of human history to a struggle between the “bourgeoisie” and the “proletariat.” It labels institutions that emerged in majority-white societies as “systemically” or “structurally” racist.
CRT’s entry into schools went largely unnoticed by parents due to its being dressed up as “equity,” “anti-racist,” or “culturally responsive” initiatives. It has spawned an industry of speakers, trainers, and consultants who get paid to diagnose an organization as “systemically racist,” prescribe CRT-based initiatives as the remedy, and then to help implement it over the years to come. The existence of “systemic racism” is usually claimed based on disparate outcomes for different groups,
such as lower average test scores or more detentions for black students. Epoch Times
Biden paints Floyd murder as evidence of police racism — without evidence . . . Derek Chauvin, convicted of murdering George Floyd, was white and that Floyd was black. But was racism was part of Chauvin’s motivation for the ultimately deadly hold he put on Floyd? Well, Joe Biden knows what was in Chauvin’s head. But as the Washington Times notes, the prosecution didn’t think it knew, or could prove it knew, and never including racism
as an aggravating factor in its charges. The racism angle was conspicuously absent from the Derek Chauvin courtroom drama, but not the post-trial push by Democrats for ambitious policing legislation. President Biden and other Democrats wasted no time after Tuesday’s guilty verdict in trying to link George Floyd’s murder to “systemic racism.” White House Dossier
Biden Nominee Pushed Essay Comparing Cops To KKK, Defending A Cop Killer . . . President Joe Biden’s nominee to lead the Justice Department’s civil rights division circulated an essay from self-proclaimed Marxist poet Amiri Baraka defending cop killer Mumia Abu-Jamal and referring to police officers as members of the Ku Klux Klan, according an email from her days at Columbia University. Kristen Clarke forwarded the Baraka essay in an
email on June 25, 1999, to her mentor, the late historian Manning Marable. She suggested that the essay, entitled “Mumia, ‘Lynch Law’ & Imperialism” be placed in a magazine Marable edited and used for a panel on the death penalty. Daily Caller
Biden Appointees Decry ‘White Male’ Diplomacy . . . Biden administration political appointees are peddling controversial language about gender and race within the State Department to pivot away from "white male-dominated" diplomacy. United Nations ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield and other senior State Department staffers bring a fixation on race to diplomacy and their criticisms of America's history and internal agency policies.
Multiple senior State Department officials have accused white diplomats of being complicit in systemic racism and said the agency should prioritize the hiring of women and minorities. Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the Biden-appointed diversity czar for the State Department, took issue with the "white male-dominated" national security sector in a December podcast. Washington Free Beacon
Newt Gingrich Audio Update: Is Biden Admin Helping Spread Communist China’s Propaganda? . . . It’s really hard to understand why the Biden administration is so anti-American. After the guilty verdict in the Derek Chauvin trial in Minneapolis, President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris had the opportunity to praise the American justice system. Instead, they’re refraining comments about systemic racism, and in the process,
sounding just like Communist China defacing America. The Chinese Communist Party doesn’t need a propaganda system when it can send out the Biden administration’s own attacks on the United States. Gingrich360
BLM Protesters Storm Into State Capitol To Protest Law Protecting Motorists From Rioters . . . Roughly two dozen people interrupted Oklahoma lawmakers at the state’s Capitol by chanting “black lives matter” in protest laws that would protect motorists fleeing riots and another that would ban transgender people from girls’ sports. Protesters entered the fifth floor and chanted “We will use our voices to stand against corruption, to fight
hate, to defend black and brown lives.” Daily Caller
House approves bill to make DC a state . . . The House, in a party-line vote on Thursday, approved legislation to make Washington, D.C., the 51st state in the nation, sending the bill to the Senate. It's the second time the House has approved such legislation in two years, but the statehood bill, long a goal for the nation's capital, faces an uphill climb in a Senate evenly divided between the two parties. Winning a vote in the
Senate would likely require ending the filibuster that requires most legislation to clear a 60-vote hurdle. Even then, not all 50 Democrats in the Senate back making D.C. a state. The Hill
Supreme Court Makes It Easier to Impose Life Without Parole on Juvenile Murderers . . . The Supreme Court on Thursday made it easier to sentence juvenile murderers to life in prison without parole, ruling against a Mississippi inmate who killed his grandfather when he was 15. The question was whether courts must find that a youth offender has no capacity for change before sentencing him to life without parole. Writing for a majority of
five, Justice Brett Kavanaugh said the answer is no, a defeat for defendants across the country fighting life without parole sentences imposed while they were minors. Thursday's decision breaks with a modern trend of clemency toward youth offenders at the High Court. It also reflects a continuing rightward shift in cruel and unusual punishment cases. The inmate in Thursday's case, Brett Jones, murdered his 67-year-old grandfather Bertis Jones in August 2004 by stabbing him eight times with
a steak knife. Washington Free Beacon
Senator Ron Johnson asks why police wrongly claimed Sicknick died of injuries sustained at Capitol riot . . . A top GOP senator is demanding to know why the U.S. Capitol Police claimed Officer Brian Sicknick suffered mortal injuries while on duty and after clashing with protesters during the Capitol riot in light of the District of Columbia’s chief medical examiner's ruling that Sicknick died of natural causes. Sen. Ron Johnson, a
Wisconsin Republican, on Thursday sent a letter to acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman, contending the determination from Chief Medical Officer Francisco Diaz, who told the Washington Examiner last week that Sicknick’s cause of death was a stroke, “raises more questions about what USCP knew and what actions USCP took to confirm certain facts regarding Officer Sicknick’s death before it released its Jan. 7 statement.” "The death of any police officer is a tragedy, and the use of
any officer’s death for political purposes or to create a false narrative is reprehensible,” Johnson added. Washington Examiner
Indeed.
|
|
UK spymaster issues warning over China’s cyber threat . . . The UK faces a “moment of reckoning” in the race to protect future technologies from the influence of adversaries such as China and Russia, the director of signals intelligence agency GCHQ Jeremy Fleming, warned on Friday. China has already proposed a radical change to internet architecture, supported by Russia and potentially Saudi Arabia, which critics fear would give
state-run internet service providers control over citizens’ internet use. His fears over hostile states’ tech advancements are shared by US intelligence chiefs, who warned in their annual threat assessment this month that “new technologies, rapidly diffusing around the world, put increasingly sophisticated capabilities in the hands of small groups and individuals as well as enhancing the capabilities of nation states”. Financial Times
North Korea propaganda spike suggests looming challenge to Biden, US . . . The propaganda spike that sprung from Pyongyang this week, promising major advances in the country’s ballistic missile program, has triggered speculation that Mr. Kim’s regime may be preparing a barrage of provocations — including possible submarine-launched ballistic missile tests. North Korean leader probably aimed at cutting the
legs out from whatever strategy the Biden White House announces following months of keeping the knotty problem of North Korea on the back-burner. A new Congressional Research Service (CRS) analysis this week concluded that the Kim regime is focused on developing weapons capable of evading U.S. missile defenses deployed in the region, including in South Korea. Washington Times
The spy who LinkedIn with me . . . What is social media good for, if not a bit of spying? Companies deploy it for due diligence on applicants, ex-partners check their former loved ones’ profiles, and actual spies use it too. MI5, the UK domestic intelligence agency, this week warned 450,000 civil servants and partners in academia and industry that they were potential targets for agents of hostile states with sham profiles on social
media and professional-networking sites. Foreign recruiters, posing headhunters, look for new spy agents by seeking to connect on LinkedIn and other sites, through bribery and blackmail, or to garner useful or damaging information. In the US, a scandal around China’s misuse of LinkedIn exploded last year after a Singaporean doctoral student, who also happened to be an agent of China, admitted in a US court that he had used a front company on LinkedIn to lure US government and
military officials, with some success. Separately, a former CIA officer received a 20-year sentence in 2019 for giving military secrets to the Chinese after an initial LinkedIn approach. Financial Times
|
|
US prepares for vaccine tipping point . . . The US has surpassed President Biden's goal of administering 200 million coronavirus vaccine doses four months into its massive vaccination campaign, but experts say that was the easy part. For months, supply has been so limited that states were restricting access to specific priority groups, and many people who wanted a shot couldn't get one. But now every person over the age of 16 is
eligible, and more than half the country's adult population has received at least one dose. The nation is fast approaching the tipping point of vaccinations, where supply will outstrip demand, as some people remain hesitant about getting a shot, unable or just indifferent. The Hill
|
|
Russia Orders Some Troops to Withdraw From Ukraine Border . . . Russia’s Defense Ministry ordered some of its troops to begin withdrawing from the Ukrainian border in a move that could help de-escalate tensions with Kyiv and the West, but its continuing military presence in the volatile region appears likely to keep nerves on edge. The defense ministry said it had deployed more than 10,000 personnel and 1,200 units of
equipment to participate in military exercises in Crimea, which Russia seized from Ukraine in 2014, in what it had described as a snap test of combat readiness in response to “threatening military activities” by the U.S. and its partners in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Wall Street
Journal
This is not over.
UK parliament declares genocide in China’s Xinjiang; Beijing condemns move . . . Britain’s parliament called on Wednesday for the government to take action to end what lawmakers described as genocide in China’s Xinjiang region, stepping up pressure on ministers to go further in their criticism of Beijing. But Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government again steered clear of declaring genocide over what it says are "industrial-scale" human
rights abuses against the mainly Muslim Uighur community in Xinjiang. Ministers say any decision on declaring a genocide is up to the courts. Reuters
|
|
Biden causes stock market to plummet . . . In a single day, President Biden announced that that he wants to cut greenhouse gases even faster and that he is seeking to raise the capital gains tax for individuals. And so, that market gets it. Bad news for the economy. White House
Dossier
US airlines say ‘worst behind us’ as vaccines fuel recovery . . . US airlines struck an optimistic note on Thursday, saying the “worst is behind us” with vaccinations and easing coronavirus restrictions boosting demand ahead of the summer holiday season. “This crisis is far from over . . . but there is no doubt, the pace of recovery is accelerating,” American Airlines chief executive Doug Parker said on the company’s earnings call.
Southwest Airlines chief Gary Kelly sounded similarly upbeat. “While the pandemic is not over, we believe the worst is behind us, in terms of the severity of the negative impact on travel demand,” he said. More than a year after air travel was all but halted by the pandemic, demand has started to recover, fuelled by vaccinations. Financial
Times
American Airlines, JetBlue add 24 new flights in time for summer . . . American Airlines and JetBlue are adding a slew of new flights just in time for the busy summer travel season. The aggressive ramp-up — part of the airlines’ Northeast Alliance partnership announced in February — adds 24 new routes in eight new cities, including the most flights of any other carrier between New York and Florida. Despite the upbeat news, American
Airlines posted its fifth consecutive quarterly loss on Thursday — a whopping $1.25 billion — even as it noted during an earnings call that bookings are improving which has helped it to add more routes. Most of the additions are flights from New York and Boston to such cities as Toronto, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Houston. New York
Post
Apple, Spotify and the New Battle Over Who Wins Podcasting . . . The battle for podcast dominance is on. Apple's introduction of paid podcast subscriptions and Facebook's new partnership with Spotify to spur discovery and listening on the social network’s platforms—are the latest for a rapidly growing medium that is attracting top talent and top dollar. Podcasting exploded in popularity during the coronavirus lockdown,
and is on track to bring in more than $1 billion in revenue this year from advertising in the U.S. for the first time. An estimated 116 million Americans, or 41% of the U.S. population over the age of 12, are now monthly podcast listeners, an 11% increase over 2020. Wall Street
Journal
|
|
Virginia will eliminate all accelerated math courses before 11th grade as part of equity-focused plan . . . The Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) is moving to eliminate all accelerated math options prior to 11th grade, effectively keeping higher-achieving students from advancing as they usually would in the school system. "[A]s currently planned, this initiative will eliminate ALL math acceleration prior to
11th grade," a Loudoun County school board member posted on Facebook, the change he learned about during a briefing from staff on the Virginia Mathematics Pathway Initiative (VMPI) . "That is not an exaggeration, nor does there appear to be any discretion in how local districts implement this. Fox News
Where's common sense? Are these 'do-gooders' so dumb that they don't see how this will stifle some talented kids' potential? Or are they deliberately trying to put the country back in the Stone Age?
|
|
Op-Ed: Riots Are What Happens When You Don’t Spank Children . . . Now there’s a lot of things wrong with society today (I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned men not wearing hats before), but one of the biggest problems is kids. They are terrible. And I’m not just talking about the music they listen to (which is kind of over-produced and soulless). They are running wild and have no respect for anyone. That’s why when they grow
older and get mad, they just riot , breaking everything and setting everything on fire. How’d this happen? I will tell you how.
Back some time ago, someone started an anti-spanking movement. “Oh, you can’t spank kids. It will hurt their widdle kid feewings,” said some so-called “experts,” -- probably Communist plants trying to destroy us from the inside. So what do you do when the kid talks back? Just gently pat him on the head and try to reason with his dumb kid brain and explain why you don’t like that? That don’t work; the only thing kids understand is a red backside. And without that, kids got no fear of
authority. As soon as they’re older, they’re going to just start looting Targets. “Spare the rod, spoil the downtown Portland” -- that’s what they say. So what do we do? Well, you start on the next generation. Any kid steps out of line, you give them a firm whack. Babylon Bee
|
|
Do you love Cut to the News? Let your family and friends know about it! They'll thank you for it. Spread the word . . .
By Email - use the message that pops up or write your own. On Facebook - On FB, write your own message
Thank you for doing it.
Have a great day.
Rebekah
Rebekah Koffler
Got this from a friend? Subscribe here and get Cut to the News sent to your Inbox every morning.
|
|
|
