Nashville mayor under fire for hiding info about low transmission rates in restaurants . . . Nashville Mayor John Cooper’s office was put on the defensive with local Fox-17 reporter Dennis Ferrier on Thursday over the apparent suppression of COVID-19 data showing low risk of transmission of the disease in bar and restaurant settings. Earlier this week Mr. Ferrier reported on a series of emails between the Democratic mayor’s senior staff and the Metro Health Department that revealed that contact tracing attributed only 80 cases of the virus to bars and restaurants out of roughly 20,000 for the area. One email from late June shows a staffer in the mayor’s office instructing a health department official that the data was “not for public consumption” when told there had been just 22 coronavirus cases linked to bars and restaurants at that time. Washington Times

 

Coronavirus whistleblower praised pandemic response before leaving White House . . . A former White House coronavirus official praised the “unwavering” work of the president's COVID-19 task force in her departure letter, before accusing President Trump of having a “flat out disregard for human life” and saying the "ongoing response" was "a failure." In an interview with the Washington Post published on Thursday, Olivia Troye became the first official who worked extensively on the pandemic response to speak out against Trump, saying that his actions cost lives. “The president’s rhetoric and his own attacks against people in his administration trying to do the work, as well as the promulgation of false narratives and incorrect information of the virus, have made this ongoing response a failure,” she said. However, White House officials familiar with her work say she did not raise concerns during her time as an adviser and delivered glowing praise when she left. Washington Examiner

 

Trump demands schools provide a "patriotic education" . . . President Trump announced Thursday that he was working to restore “patriotic education” to schools with a national commission to encourage schools to teach children a positive version of American history as he railed against what he said were liberal attacks on the country’s legacy. His speech at the White House Conference on American History included passages denouncing critical race theory — and its inclusion in federal diversity training programs — and the New York Times’s 1619 Project on slavery as “toxic propaganda.” Instead, he announced, he was establishing the 1776 Commission to redress the balance. Washington Examiner

 

 

CNN panned for softball questions for Biden . . . While Biden's performance has received praise for his ability to display empathy toward Pennsylvania voters selected to ask questions, what has been described as the "softball" treatment of the former vice president by CNN was widely panned on Thursday night, especially following the grilling President Trump faced at the ABC News town hall just two days before. "In the first moments, the contrast between what Trump was asked and what Biden is being asked is striking," Politico columnist Jeff Greenfield tweeted. Fox News

 

 

AOC believes she can push Joe Biden to the Left after he is elected . . . I agree with Alexandria Ocasio Cortez. “I think overall, we can likely push Vice President Biden in a more progressive direction,” she said. Yes, they certainly will. But she makes clear now is not the time, because those policies won’t get him elected. “We will hash those out,” she said. “Our main priority is to make sure that the vice president is successful and victorious in November, so that we can have those kind of conversations from a more effective stance with him in the White House.” White House Dossier

 

 

 

Trump won't attend UN opening . . . President Donald Trump will not attend the United Nations General Assembly in person next week, a White House official said Thursday – the latest display of how the coronavirus pandemic is upending U.S. diplomacy. The annual meeting usually draws world leaders to New York for several days and Trump has often used his address to frame his foreign policy in domestic terms. Last year, for instance, Trump asserted that the "future does not belong to globalists." But this year, because of COVID-19, many world leaders are sending recorded messages instead. USA Today

 

 

Twitter public policy director goes to work for Biden . . . Twitter's public policy director, Carlos Monje, has left the social media company's Washington office to join the transition team for Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, a person familiar with the move said Thursday. Monje's exact position on the transition team was not immediately clear and Biden's transition team declined to comment. Requests for comment sent to Monje were not immediately returned. But he serves as co-chair of Biden's infrastructure policy committee and helped host a fundraiser for the former vice president this week. Politico

 

 

California family accuses Kamala Harris of trespassing . . . A California family has accused Democratic vice presidential candidate Kamala Harris and Gov. Gavin Newsom of trespassing on their fire-ravaged property for a photo opportunity. The lawmakers visited Fresno County on Tuesday to survey areas that have suffered the most damage during the Creek Fire, as dozens of other wildfires continue to rage across the West Coast. Daily Mail 

 

Ma'am, get your Timberlands off my damn lawn please.

 

Media praise Kamala's shoes while panning Melania's . . . Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris received praise for sporting Timberland boots on Wednesday, but the media wasn't nearly as kind to First Lady Melania Trump when displaying a similar look. Upon her visit in her home state, Harris was seen wearing the iconic boots while surveying the devastation left behind by the California wildfires, sparking plenty of compliments on Twitter and glowing headlines from the media. However, Women For Trump co-founder Amy Kremer pointed out that the media was rather hostile towards the first lady on multiple occasions when she wore Timberlands. Fox News

 

Trump accused of sexual assault again . . . Former model Amy Dorris alleged in a new interview that President Donald Trump sexually assaulted her at the U.S. Open tennis tournament in New York in 1997 by forcing his tongue down her throat and groping her body. "He just shoved his tongue down my throat and I was pushing him off. And then that's when his grip became tighter and his hands were very gropey and all over my butt, my breasts, my back, everything," Dorris said in an interview published Thursday in The Guardian newspaper. "I was in his grip, and I couldn’t get out of it," she said, adding: The Guardian reported that through his lawyers Trump denied in the strongest possible terms having ever harassed, abused or behaved improperly toward Dorris. Trump's lawyers noted that Dorris didn't report it to police at the time and suggested the timing of her coming forward now, less than two months before the election, could be politically motivated. NBC News

 

Judge blocks "politically motivated" changes to the postal service . . . A federal judge on Thursday blocked controversial changes to the United States postal service, saying they were “a politically motivated attack” that had slowed the nation’s mail and likely would slow the delivery of ballots in the upcoming presidential election. U.S. District Judge Stanley Bastian in Yakima, Washington, said he was issuing a nationwide injunction sought by 14 states in a case against U.S. President Donald Trump, Postmaster General Louis DeJoy, and the U.S. Postal Service over July changes to the service. The 14 states, led by Washington, had filed a motion for a preliminary injunction asking the court to immediately halt a “leave mail behind” policy that required postal trucks to leave at certain times, regardless of whether mail was loaded. Reuters

 

China holds military drill as US envoy visits Taiwan . . . China says it is conducting military exercises near the Taiwan Strait to "protect its sovereignty" as a top US official visits Taiwan.

The live-fire drills take place as relations between Beijing and Washington sour and the US shores up its support of Taiwan. China regards self-ruled Taiwan as a breakaway province. Keith Krach is the highest-level official from the US State Department to visit the island in decades. On Friday, China's defence ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang accused the US and Taiwan of "stepping up collusion, frequently causing disturbances", although he did not make any reference to the visit. BBC

 

China desperately wants to retake Taiwan. I'd be careful about needling them too much right now.

 

UK coronavirus hospitalizations soaring . . . Britain’s health minister said on Friday that the novel coronavirus was accelerating across the country, with hospital admissions doubling every eight days, but refused to say if another national lockdown would be imposed next month. The United Kingdom has reported the fifth largest number of deaths from COVID-19 in the world, after the United States, Brazil, India and Mexico, according to data collected by Johns Hopkins University of Medicine. Reuters

 

White House says five more countries considering deals with Israel . . . White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said on Thursday that five more countries are seriously considering striking a normalization deal with Israel after the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain signed accords this week. Meadows, speaking to reporters on Air Force One on the flight that carried President Donald Trump to a campaign rally in Wisconsin, would not identify the five nations. But he said three were in the region. He would not comment further. Reuters

 

Trump administration to ban WeChat . . . The Trump administration said Friday that it will ban the use of popular messaging and electronic payment app WeChat after Sunday night over national security and data privacy concerns. In an interview on Fox Business Network, Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said he made the decision after President Trump ordered his department to review the Chinese-owned app for national security concerns last month. “China has been taking all kinds of data…that’s what we’re trying to squelch,” he said. Wall Street Journal 

 

 

Black Lives Matter linked to 91% of riots . . . The Black Lives Matter movement is linked to more than nine-in-ten riots across the country, according to a recent study. The U.S. experienced 637 riots between May 26 and Sept. 12, and 91% of those riots were linked to the Black Lives Matter movement, according to the US Crisis Monitor, a joint project of the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project and the Bridging Divides Initiative at Princeton University. Forty-nine states, not counting Washington, D.C., experienced riots during that time period, the study found. Daily Caller

 

New York City murder rate soars by 27% . . . New York City's murder rate has soared by 27 percent and gang violence has risen by more than 50 percent in 2020 as the Big Apple continues to be rocked by a growing crime wave. Harrowing new NYPD data published in the 2020 Mayor’s Management Report Thursday night revealed a staggering 352 New Yorkers were murdered in the 2020 fiscal year - an extra 74 deaths compared to 2019. The biggest crime spike was for gang-motivated incidents which skyrocketed 52 percent compared to the previous year. Daily Mail

 

 

Princeton faces federal probe for saying racism is "embedded" there . . . Princeton University could be forced to pay back millions of dollars in federal funding — and also be fined — over its president’s recent admission that racism persists at the Ivy League institution.

In a letter to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber, the US Department of Education said it was opening an investigation into a Sept. 2 letter in which he outlined the school’s “efforts to combat systemic racism.” “Among other things, you said ‘[r]acism and the damage it does to people of color persist at Princeton…’ and ‘[r]acist assumption…remain embedded in structures of the University itself,” Assistant Secretary Robert King of the Office of Postsecondary Education wrote. New York Post

 

What could be more delicious? They're trying so hard to be politically correct, and now they have a legal problem.

 

Michigan invaded by deadly mosquitos . . . Michigan health officials suspect a resident has contracted the rare and life-threatening disease Eastern equine encephalitis (EEE) after being bitten by a mosquito, they announced Tuesday. It's the first human case of EEE in the state so far this year, and the sixth in the US. 

Last year, the US saw an unusual spike in the number of people bitten by infected mosquitoes. By early October 2019, at least 30 people had been infected with the disease, which kills about 30 percent of people who catch it. Daily Mail

 

 

Tesla driver asleep at wheel of care traveling over 90 mph . . . A Canadian man has been charged after he was found asleep at the wheel of a self-driving Tesla traveling over 93 mph down a highway in the province of Alberta, authorities said on Thursday. The July 9 incident occurred after authorities received a complaint that a Model S Tesla was speeding on a highway near the town of Ponoka, located about 60 miles south of Edmonton, according to the Alberta Royal Canadian Mounted police (RCMP). “The car appeared to be self-driving, traveling over 140km/h, with both front seats completely reclined and both occupants appearing to be asleep,” the RCMP said in a statement. Fox News