House Judiciary GOP Slams Microsoft’s ‘Woke Agenda,’ Welcome Hearing With CEO . . . House Judiciary Committee Republicans would welcome the opportunity to question Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella about censorship of conservatives on his company’s platforms and antitrust issues, a spokesperson said.
While conservatives often aim their criticism of Big Tech at Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google and Twitter, they often leave out Microsoft, Russell Dye, a spokesperson for House Judiciary Republicans and Ranking Member Jim Jordan, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. However, Microsoft has similarly wielded its massive power as one of the largest companies in the world to silence conservatives, he added. “Big Tech censorship of conservatives is not limited to just Amazon, Google, Facebook, and Twitter,” Dye told the DCNF in a statement. “Microsoft has used its power to promote a woke agenda and to help Democrats.” Daily Caller

 

 

Conservatives Divided As Supreme Court Narrows Scope of Anti-Hacking Law . . . The Supreme Court on Thursday narrowed the reach of a federal anti-hacking law, rejecting a broad interpretation advanced by federal prosecutors it feared would criminalize workaday computer activity. The question in the case was whether the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act penalizes authorized computer users who use database information improperly. The defendant, Nathan Van Buren, was a Georgia police officer who tried to monetize his access to the state’s license plate database. A coalition of tech companies, advocacy groups, and journalists warned a broad reading of the act would criminalize whistleblowing, news-gathering activity, and ordinary internet embellishment. Prosecutors, they noted, have applied the statute broadly to charge researchers or internet "cat-fishers" who misrepresent themselves online with federal crimes. The groups expressed relief with Thursday’s decision. Washington Examiner

 

 

 

CIA victim of 'Havana Syndrome' blames Kremlin: 'Russians are very aggressive' against U.S. gov't . . . Marc Polymeropoulos was a senior CIA case officer on a routine visit to Moscow in 2017 when he awoke in his hotel room with a severe case of vertigo. His first inclination was that he had food poisoning and that the symptoms would soon wear off. Instead, it was the beginning of a brain-rattling affliction that would last for years and eventually force him out of the CIA. Mr. Polymeropoulos had fallen victim to Havana syndrome, a debilitating affliction that U.S. Embassy staff suffered in 2016 in Cuba. The mysterious symptoms “are consistent with the effects of directed, pulsed radio frequency (RF) energy,” said a National Academy of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine report published in December. Many believe the syndrome is a result of attacks with a microwave weapon or directed energy device, but the U.S. intelligence community doesn’t officially know any more now than it did five years ago. Washington Times

 

 

Violent Crime Keeps Surging as More on Left Admit It’s Foolish to ‘Defund Police’ . . . It looks as if the surge in violent crime of 2020 is holding steady and perhaps escalating in 2021.
Numbers on violent crime from cities around the country have jumped by historic and unprecedented rates in the past year.
This surge is returning many of America’s cities to violent crime rates not seen since the early 1990s. Some cities have begun quietly reversing the “defund the police” policies they adopted following the May 25 death of George Floyd in police custody in Minneapolis. And some commentators on the left finally are beginning to recognize that the crime problem in major cities is out of control and can’t be ignored. No city was hit by a sharper increase in violent crime than Portland, Oregon, which partially defunded its police department in 2020. More violence followed as crime rates soared and anarchy reigned. Daily Signal

 

Human Smuggling Leading to Pursuits, Bailouts, Crashes, School Lockdowns . . . A smuggler traveling at 140 mph races through town and crashes through a building in Uvalde, Texas. Another one drives onto a softball field in Crystal City, with children playing nearby. In Del Rio, eight illegal aliens die after crashing head-on into another vehicle during a pursuit. Further east, in Lavaca County, a pickup truck carrying 18 to 20 illegal aliens crashes into a tree and bursts into flames. In Kinney County, a smuggler fires an AK-47 out the vehicle window while fleeing from law enforcement, then passes the weapon to an illegal alien in the backseat to reload. Many of the vehicles that smugglers are using to transport illegal aliens are stolen, and the unsuspecting owners won’t get them back—they’ve been used in the commission of a crime. If illegal aliens make it past Border Patrol at the U.S.–Mexico border, their goal is to get north to a large city as quickly as possible. Epoch Times

 

As illegal migration explodes, concerns grow U.S. tax dollars may be aiding trafficking . . . On a recent congressional trip to the Darién Gap in Panama, where tens of thousands of migrants begin their trek to the U.S. southern border, U.S. Rep. Tom Tiffany, R-Wis., noted something remarkable. Western Union outlets were stationed near migrant camps on either side of the gap, making it easy for relatives of migrants who are already in the United States to wire funds. Security officials say some of those funds are then used to pay off smugglers and members of cartels at various points along the migrants' trip to America. Tiffany said he fears the COVID-19 stimulus payments approved by Congress may be driving some of the flow of money.  "They all get paid," he told Just the News A.M. TV show. "In fact, I suspect that some of those stimulus payments that are going out to illegals here in our country – that $1,400 they qualified for as the result of the $1.9 trillion stimulus bill passed a couple months ago – are probably going back to the smugglers. Just the News

 

 

Hong Kong Police Make Arrests on Tiananmen Square Massacre Anniversary . . . Pro-democracy groups say the government is trying to dim the flames of the only mass Tiananmen remembrance held on Chinese soil. Restrictions on gatherings remain in place in Hong Kong, which hasn’t recorded a local and untraceable Covid-19 infection for more than a month. Tensions were high in parts of the city Friday after police said they would put the vigil’s traditional venue of Victoria Park on lockdown and local media reported 7,000 officers, or more than a fifth of the force, would be deployed to avert protests Friday evening. Officials have warned that anyone attending or publicizing unlawful assemblies faces arrest and up to five years in jail. Wall Street Journal

 

Before US-Russia summit, measure demands any new missile treaties include China . . . Ahead of a U.S.-Russia summit this month, one Republican lawmaker is proposing a higher bar for any new limits on America’s ballistic missile arsenal that the two sides might want to set. Citing China’s expanding missile inventory, U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, R-Mont., unveiled a nonbinding resolution Wednesday that would demand any restrictions on U.S. ballistic missiles also be imposed on Russia and China. The agreement should also be subject to consent from the Senate, the resolution said. The measure comes nearly two years after President Donald Trump terminated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty over alleged Russian violations and unsuccessfully pursued a trilateral treaty with China, a rising nuclear power. the INF Treaty reduced the number of short-, medium- and intermediate-range ballistic missiles between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union.
“Since the United States first entered the INF treaty with Russia, China has been developing and building an arsenal of ballistic missiles,” Daines said in a statement. “Any treaty moving forward must hold both Russia and China to the same standards, and it must be approved by the Senate according to the Constitution.” Analysis. Breaking Defense

 

 

New intel lends more credence to Wuhan lab theory as WHO pressured . . . British intelligence services are now reportedly reassessing their position on the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in China’s Wuhan Institute of Virology.A Sunday report from the Sunday Times of London quotes British spies who initially dismissed the lab leak theory, but now say it is "feasible." 
"There might be pockets of evidence that take us one way, and evidence that takes us another way," the paper quoted a source as saying. "The Chinese will lie either way. I don’t think we will ever know." The quote comes as both the United States and Britain are stepping up calls for the World Health Organization to take a deeper look into the possible origins of COVID-19, including a new visit to China, where the first human infections were detected.
WHO and Chinese experts issued a first report in March that laid out four hypotheses about how the pandemic might have emerged.

 

Media Serve Up Softballs on Fauci Emails . . . Dr. Anthony Fauci's emails during the coronavirus pandemic were released this week through the Freedom of Information Act, and the media have shown little restraint in delivering him softball questions on the subject. CNN and MSNBC's hosts seemed uninterested in pressing the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director on questions raised by the contents of the emails, such as whether he wrongly dismissed the possibility that the coronavirus emerged from a laboratory leak in Wuhan, China. Washington Free Beacon

 

Pompeo: NIH tried to suppress State Department virus probe . . . Former Trump Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused the National Institutes of Health of trying to suppress his department's investigation into the true origins of the coronavirus pandemic, as until recently theories that the pathogen leaked from a Wuhan, China lab were often viewed as conspiratorial. On "The Ingraham Angle," Pompeo remarked that outside of typical pushback within his own department from people who didn't like him or President Donald Trump, he was also dealing with "internal debate" from the National Institutes of Health. "[NIH] folks were trying to suppress what we were doing at the State Department as well," he said. Fox News

 

Biden Cabinet members avoid huge tax hits thanks to little-known federal law . . . Members of President Biden's Cabinet are able to punt paying taxes as they divest their assets to avoid conflicts of interest when they enter into public service, thanks to a little-known provision of federal law.  Under Section 2634 of federal elections law sits a unique provision to help soften the financial blow of new administration officials suddenly selling off assets: certificates of divestiture. Since 1989, this tax provision has been offered by the Office of Government Ethics and has helped administration employees and appointees — including Cabinet members — defer paying capital gains taxes when they are required to sell assets as they enter public service. Government appointees and employees are able to put off paying capital gains taxes as long as they reinvest their gains into less-conflicted interests, such as mutual funds and treasury bonds. Fox News

 

Unrest in Minneapolis after shooting death of suspect by law enforcement . . . Rioters in Minneapolis reportedly smashed windows and lit a dumpster on fire Thursday night near a parking garage where an officer fatally shot a suspect wanted for unlawful possession of a firearm by a felon earlier. The suspect, accused in a homicide, didn’t follow commands from the U.S. Marshal Service taskforce –  made up of local law enforcement  – and pulled out a gun during the attempted arrest, FOX 9 in Minneapolis reported, citing authorities. He was pronounced dead at the scene. The dumpster eventually melted into a "puddle of fire," a KSTP-TV reporter at the scene tweeted. The few dozen protesters continued to add items to the dumpster to keep it burning, FOX 9 reported. Firefighters eventually arrived and extinguished the fire. Police reportedly took around 40 minutes to respond after it was lit. Fox News

 

PATEL: It’s Time To Consider Mandatory National Service To Help Heal Our Broken Country . . . Our country is broken — it’s coming apart at the seams — and it is not going to fix itself. Repairing it will take effort from all of us. It may require consideration of some big national changes. Too many of us are just sitting back and watching America’s decline. It’s time to consider any idea that holds some promise for national renewal, any idea that could universally bring us all together and teach us a shared cause. Perhaps even mandatory national service. Mandatory service would require every 18-year-old to serve for a year or more. It is not a radical or new idea. Seventy-five countries have some form of national service requirement, and we’ve already required service at times in American history. It can also be broader than just military service. Other options include the Peace Corps, community service, cleaning up public lands and rebuilding aging infrastructure. Daily Caller

 

 

China Denies Reports Of Bird Flu, Says There Are No Birds In China . . . There have been reports of a human case of a rare bird flu in China, but Chinese officials have dismissed the report saying it’s impossible for bird flu to be in China as there are no birds there. “It’s absurd to suggest there is bird flu in China because we have gotten rid of all birds,” said Chinese President Xi Jinping at a press conference. “China has complete dominance of all of its skies — including in Taiwan which we are totally in control of — so no birds would dare intrude here. To suggest otherwise is more American lies — just like the lies that I look like Winnie the Pooh when I in fact look like a more rugged Timothée Chalamet.”

Xi went on further to say that if anyone in China got sick, it was not bird flu but “totally regular flu” and that no weird diseases ever originate in China and everyone should stop looking into their Wuhan lab which is only working on “a new type of gum that never loses flavor.” Babylon Bee