Five for the Fed: A handful of people Trump may select for a seat

The hunt is back on for candidates to fill two empty Federal Reserve Board seats after Herman Cain and Stephen Moore were dropped in quick succession. President Trump has been frustrated so far in his desire to appoint figures sympathetic to his aim of reducing interest rates. Analysts believe Trump is likely to try again with loyalists, given that the Fed has so far proved resistant to his demands for a more expansionary monetary policy. There is no shortage of well-qualified candidates. But with the decision apparently resting with the president, there is plenty of scope from an unexpected, quixotic choice. These are some of the names being mentioned in economic circles.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/five-for-the-fed-a-handful-of-people-trump-may-select-for-a-seat

Federal court tosses out Ohio's congressional map

A federal court in Ohio on Friday struck down the state’s congressional map as an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander and ordered the state to draw new voting lines for the 2020 election. In a 300-page ruling, the three-judge panel for the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio found the redistricting plan, enacted by the Ohio legislature and signed into law in 2011, violated the First and 14th Amendments and exceeded the powers granted to the states under Article I of the Constitution. The map, they said, was drawn to entrench the Republicans in power and disadvantage Democratic voters.

The court ordered the state to draw new lines for the 2020 election and gave the General Assembly a deadline of June 14 to enact a remedial redistricting plan. If the state legislature fails to enact a new map, the court will instead draw new voting boundaries for the 2020 election. The ruling from the federal court comes as the Supreme Court is set to rule in the coming weeks on two partisan gerrymandering cases, one from Maryland and one from North Carolina. The justices heard oral arguments in those cases in March, and a ruling is expected by the end of June.

In Maryland, Republican voters challenged the lines of the state’s 6th Congressional District drawn by Democratic state lawmakers. In North Carolina, Democratic voters challenged the full congressional voting map drawn by the state’s Republican leaders. The pair of cases, which came to the court ahead of the next redistricting cycle in 2021, raised the question of whether extreme partisan gerrymandering runs afoul of the Constitution.

In Ohio, Democratic voters from each of the state’s 16 congressional districts and five organizations challenged the constitutionality of its redistricting map, which was drawn by the state’s GOP-controlled legislature. “In 2011, when Ohio’s redistricting process began, Republican dominance in the Ohio state government meant that Republican state legislators could push through a remarkably pro-Republican redistricting bill without meaningful input from their Democratic colleagues,” the court said. “Ohio Republicans took advantage of that opportunity, and invidious partisan intent — the intent to disadvantage Democratic voters and entrench Republican representatives in power — dominated the map-drawing process.”

GOP legislators, the court said, drew the districts with “one overarching goal in mind — the creation of an Ohio congressional map that would reliably elect 12 Republican representatives and four Democratic representatives.” The plan has achieved its desired outcome, as Republicans have won 12 of the state’s 16 congressional seats in the four election cycles that have been held under the voting map. The three-judge panel implicated state and congressional Republicans in the mapmaking process, including former House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio. The judges said in their ruling that in some instances, “national Republican operatives had the authority to ‘sign off’ on changes” before they were implemented at the state level.

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/policy/courts/federal-court-tosses-out-ohios-congressional-map

OPINION AND ORDER

https://big.assets.huffingtonpost.com/athena/files/2019/05/03/5ccc73a1e4b0e4d757321d8a.pdf

Never Trumpers and Leftists Praise Facebook’s Blacklisting of Conservatives

Never Trumpers, journalists, and leftists took to Twitter yesterday to praise Facebook’s decision to blacklist prominent conservative accounts. Facebook blacklisted several prominent right-wing accounts from both Facebook and Instagram on Thursday. Alex Jones, Milo Yiannopoulos, Laura Loomer, and Paul Joseph Watson are amongst the major players who had their accounts permanently suspended on Thursday. Never Trumpers including Rick Wilson praised the decision on social media.

A Facebook spokesperson said that the account suspensions were made in accordance with the platform’s policy against hate. “We’ve always banned individuals or organizations that promote or engage in violence and hate, regardless of ideology. The process for evaluating potential violators is extensive and it is what led us to our decision to remove these accounts today.”

https://www.breitbart.com/tech/2019/05/03/never-trumpers-and-leftists-praise-facebooks-blacklisting-of-conservatives/

Google Doubles Down, Making Trump Reddit Fan Club Even Harder to Find

Users of the Reddit social media site have noticed that the Reddit fan club of President Donald Trump was quite difficult to find on Google, but not on other search sites. However, rather than fixing the issue, Google appears to have doubled down, making the fan club—/r/The_Donald—even harder to find. As The Epoch Times reported in April, if one searches the words “Donald Trump” and “Reddit” together on a number of internet search engines such as Yahoo, Bing, DuckDuckGo, and Brave, one finds that the top spot in the results is r/The_Donald—possibly the largest and most active Trump fan club on the internet with some 740,000 subscribers.

Making the same search on Google, however, didn’t surface the link to The_Donald at all, or at least not on the dozens of pages of search results The Epoch Times staff browsed through. A Google official, responding on the condition of anonymity, had at the time denied the company took any action to impact the ranking of the page and said Google didn’t remove it from its page index. The page still appeared high in the results, the official said via email, when one looked for it more specifically, such as by searching “The_Donald” or “/r/The_Donald” or “reddit The_Donald.” Since then, however, Google seems to have further suppressed The_Donald as searching the words “reddit The_Donald” doesn’t surface the page anymore.

Reddit user Trolling_Rolling pointed to the change in a May 3 post. “I did this two weeks ago and ‘The_Donald’ turned up 5th on the search return. It no longer is on the front page,” he or she said. The Epoch Times’ previous article pointing to Google’s suppression of the subreddit, as compared to other search engines, was the 7th top result for the phrase “reddit The_Donald.” Google didn’t respond to a request for comment on the latest change.

‘Fringe Ranking’ Internal Google materials reportedly revealed a mechanism called “fringe ranking” that was explained as “not showing fake news, hate speech, conspiracy theories, or science/medical/history denial unless we’re sure that’s what the user wants.” Google software engineer Paul Haahr worked on the mechanism, according to his bio on Google’s internal network Moma, which was quoted in an April 9 Daily Caller report. Google didn’t respond to questions on whether “fringe ranking” was applied to r/The_Donald. But left-leaning press has repeatedly accused the page’s users of being “hateful.”

The_Donald was created in June 2015 after Trump announced his candidacy. It describes itself as “a never-ending rally dedicated to the 45th President of the United States, Donald J. Trump.” Aside from supporting the president, it also focuses on criticizing and ridiculing Trump’s opponents, particularly leftist politicians, celebrities, and media. Its users’ humor and commentary is at times insulting, inaccurate, and/or speculative.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/google-doubles-down-making-trump-reddit-fan-club-even-harder-to-find_2905658.html

>>6405684

Agreed and since the American people bought and paid for this program..it should be handed over to them to run as they see fit..break (((them))) down and get (((them))) out of the business of subverting the constitution.

Omar Challenged After Blaming Venezuela’s Crisis on US: ‘Please Say One Good Thing About America’

Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) was challenged by a Fox News Host to say something positive about the United States after she blamed the Trump administration’s policies for Venezuela’s current political crisis. “A lot of the policies that we have put in place has kind of helped lead the devastation in Venezuela,” Omar said during an interview with the “Democracy Now!” program, adding that “we’ve sort of set the stage for where we’re arriving today.” “This particular bullying and the use of sanctions to eventually intervene and make regime change really does not help the people of countries like Venezuela and it certainly does not help and is not in the interest of the United States,” Omar said.

Jesse Watters, co-host of “The Five,” took issue with Omar’s claims that the U.S. sanctions were to blame for Venezuela’s crisis. The Trump administration has issued a number of sanctions in order to pressure Maduro to step down according to the will of the people. “I would issue a challenge to her. Omar, please say one good thing about America,” Watters said. “We hear her so much saying what’s wrong with America. Just say what you’re proud of. I think that would counterbalance some of the negativity that you hear coming out of her mouth.” Watters also disputed Omar’s claims that the administration was “bullying” Venezuelans.

President Donald Trump and other top U.S. officials have repeatedly said that they stand with the people of Venezuela and their freedoms over Maduro’s socialist regime. Administration officials also indicated their support to Guaidó’s latest bid in liberating Venezuela. “America is not bullying the people of Venezuela,” Watters said. “It is Maduro and the Russian-backed military that are taking away people’s rights and shooting into the crowd and doing all those things. Also, this is what socialists do. “When something good happens in the world, what they do is they say why can’t America be like that country? And then when something bad happens in the world, they say that’s America’s fault that that’s happening. They can never see the point that socialism is failing on its own.”

Omar’s comments come amid a military uprising in Venezuela as the country’s legitimate interim president, Juan Guaidó, called for the “largest march” in the country’s history on May 1. The march was part of his “final phase” plan to oust illegitimate dictator Nicolás Maduro, who has refused to step down even in the face of mounting international pressure. The oil-rich nation that was once among the wealthiest in the world has been crippled by the socialist policies implemented by Maduro and his predecessor, Hugo Chavez. Almost 90 percent of Venezuela’s population now live below the poverty line and more than half of families are unable to meet their basic food needs, according to humanitarian group Mercy Corps.

For years, Venezuela has been fed billions of dollars from both Russia and China, through loans and energy deals. They both continue to support Maduro over Guaidó, who has the backing of more than 50 nations. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said recently that Maduro was ready to leave Venezuela when the uprising started but didn’t follow through after Russia coaxed him into staying. “We literally had Nicolás Maduro getting prepared to get on this airplane and head out of the country before he was stopped, stopped really at the direction of the Russians,” Pompeo said at a gala in Washington.

Watters also appealed to Omar to stop siding with the Russians over America. “At this point I want her to do this. Stop siding with the Russians. You say you want to start World War III over Russian interference with the election; now they are interfering physically in our hemisphere and you’re siding with them,” Watters said.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/omar-challenged-after-blaming-venezuelas-crisis-on-us-please-say-one-good-thing-about-america_2905336.html

>>6405848

Agreed, they will do what ever it takes to not have another Hillary debacle. They never thought she would lose. Patriots are prepared for this.

New York Times Identifies Second Spy Who Targeted Trump Campaign

The FBI sent a spy to London in the fall of 2016 to pose as a research assistant and target a Trump campaign associate, according to a report by The New York Times published on May 2. The spy, Azra Turk, pretended to by an aide to Stefan Halper, the retired professor who was exposed a year ago as a United States government spy targeting the Trump campaign. The New York Times did not disclose which agency Turk worked for, describing her instead as a “government investigator.” Asked by CNN if Turk was an FBI agent, New York Times reporter Adam Goldman refused to answer, leaving open the possibility that Turk may have worked for another domestic or foreign intelligence agency. Papadopoulos believes Turk worked for the CIA and has ties to Turkish intelligence.

The New York Times claims to have received details about Turk from “people familiar with the operation.” The newspaper did not disclose the woman’s real name. Halper lured Trump-campaign adviser George Papadopoulos to London by offering Papadopoulos $3,000 to write a research paper. When Papadopoulos met with the two spies, Turk bluntly asked him whether the Trump campaign is working with Russia.

The FBI sent Turk to London as part of its “Crossfire Hurricane” investigation of the Trump campaign. The bureau reportedly started the investigation in late July 2016 after receiving intelligence that Papadopoulos had mentioned to an Australian diplomat that Russia had rival candidate Hillary Clinton’s deleted emails. Responding to the report, Papadopoulos suggested that the Australian diplomat, Alexander Downer, was also an intelligence asset sent to target the Trump campaign. “What is the media going to do when Congress reveals that Alexander Downer was an asset sent to make contact with me? The old narrative is about to get obliterated. Read my testimony to Congress. They have it all,” Papadopoulos wrote on Twitter.

The revelation that a second spy targeted the Trump campaign further buttresses President Donald Trump’s assertion that the Obama administration weaponized executive branch agencies to spy on his campaign. The president responded to the report on May 3, calling the revelation “bigger than WATERGATE.” “Finally, Mainstream Media is getting involved – too ‘hot’ to avoid. Pulitzer Prize anyone? The New York Times, on front page (finally), ‘Details effort to spy on Trump Campaign,'” Trump wrote on Twitter. “This is bigger than WATERGATE, but the reverse!”

Attorney General William Barr told Congress last month that he believes the Trump campaign was spied on. Barr has directed a team to determine whether the spying was adequately predicated. Meanwhile, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz is investigating a parallel FBI operation which utilized a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on former Trump-campaign associate Carter Page. Barr told Congress that Horowitz’s investigation is due to conclude in May or June. The FBI obtained the warrant targeting Page using evidence from the infamous Clinton-funded Steele dossier. The document was composed by former British intelligence office Christopher Steele using second- and third-hand sources with ties to the Kremlin. Special counsel Robert Mueller took over the reins of the FBI investigation of the Trump campaign in May 2017. Mueller finished his probe last month, concluding that neither Trump nor anyone in the Trump campaign colluded with Russia.

https://www.theepochtimes.com/new-york-times-identifies-second-spy-who-targeted-trump-campaign_2905380.html

F.B.I. Sent Investigator Posing as Assistant to Meet With Trump Aide in 2016

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/02/us/politics/fbi-government-investigator-trump.html

>>6406036

She's worried about all of her activities as AG in San Fran being exposed..