Mike Pompeo gets exemption from quarantine rules to meet Netanyahu and Benny Gentz in Israel but arrives wearing red white and blue mask

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Israel Wednesday for a quick, eight-hour visit amid the coronavirus pandemic

He disembarked from his plane wearing a red, white and blue face mask

Pompeo received an exemption from Israel's mandatory two-week quarantine for the visit; quarantine was put in place because of coronavirus

Pompeo met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Benny Gentz

Netanyahu and Gentz swearing-in ceremony delayed one day by Pompeo visit

Here’s how to help people impacted by Covid-19

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo landed in Israel Wednesday for a quick, eight-hour visit amid the coronavirus pandemic, disembarking from his plane wearing a red, white and blue face mask.

He landed in Tel Aviv and headed directly to Jerusalem, receiving an exemption from Israel's mandatory two-week quarantine for arrivals due to the coronavirus outbreak. He is the first foreign official to visit Israel since January, before the country largely shut its borders to curb the pandemic.

But, in a change in protocol, Pompeo was not met at the airport by David Friedman, the U.S. ambassador to Israel, as Friedman was feeling unwell and had been advised to keep away, the State Department said.

Friedman tested negative for the coronavirus, a State Department spokeswoman said. But he experienced 'mild upper respiratory symptoms' and was therefore asked by medical staff to avoid proximity to Pompeo.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8314357/Despite-virus-Pompeo-Israel-talk-West-Bank-annexation.html

Republicans Win First Democrat-Held California House Seat Since 1998

Update (1005ET): Democratic state Assemblywoman Christy Smith conceded in the special election in California’s 25th District and she congratulated Republican Mike Garcia as the "likely victor," though the race has yet to be officially called.

https://www.zerohedge.com/political/republicans-win-first-democrat-held-california-house-seat-1998

President Trump says he 'totally' disagrees with Dr. Fauci on his comments about the lockdown

'You're having bedlam already in the streets, you can't do this.'

President Donald Trump voiced his disagreement with his own coronavirus task force director over his recommendations on further lockdown policies to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

The president was speaking to the media about lifting the lockdown restrictions when he addressed Dr. Fauci's concerns about opening up too quickly.

"I was surprised by his answer actually because, it's just to me it's not an acceptable answer, especially when it comes to schools," Trump said.

"The only thing that would be an acceptable answer, as I said, was professors, teachers, et cetera, over a certain age. I think they oughtta to take it easy for another few weeks, five weeks, four weeks, who knows, whatever it may be," he concluded.

The president had earlier explained his disagreement in an interview with Maria Bartiromo of Fox News.

"So Anthony is a good person, a very good person – I've disagreed with him," Trump said in the interview.

"We have to get the schools open, we have to get our country open, we have to open our country. Now we want to do it safely, but we also want to do it as quickly as possible, we can't keep going on like this," he explained.

"You're having bedlam already in the streets, you can't do this," he added. "We have to get it open. I totally disagree with him on schools."

The coronavirus task force released guidelines for slowly and methodically opening up parts of the country with some restrictions in order to prevent a second spike of the pandemic. Fauci voiced his concerns that if the economy opened too quickly that certain regions could experience needless and preventable deaths.

The president had previously blasted the mainstream media for attempting to drive a wedge between him and Dr. Fauci.

https://www.theblaze.com/news/trump-disagrees-with-fauci

Allentown Man Arrested for Distribution of Child Pornography and Weapons Charges

https://www.justice.gov/usao-edpa/pr/allentown-man-arrested-distribution-child-pornography-and-weapons-charges

https://twitter.com/LouDobbs/status/1260696518778146819

Lock ‘em up! @DevinNunes

says there is nobody in America who wants the deep state bastards thrown in jail more than him. #AmericaFirst #MAGA #Dobbs

Devin Nunes Discusses Unmasking: “It’s Much Worse Than This” – The Entire Trump Transition Was Under Surveillance…

First things first: ♦Understand Obama’s Surveillance Operation HERE. ♦Michael Flynn wasn’t under a FISA (Title-1) HERE …. that’s the background.

Devin Nunes appears with Lou Dobbs to discuss the recent list of Obama-era officials who unmasked NSA intercepts of Michael Flynn talking to foreign government officials. Rep. Nunes reminds the audience that Flynn is only one person within a much larger group of Trump transition team members who were under surveillance by Team Obama.

1.) …”On numerous occasions the [Obama] intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S. citizens involved in the Trump transition.”

2.) “Details about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration; details with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value were widely disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”

3.) “Third, I have confirmed that additional names of Trump transition members were unmasked.”

4.) “Fourth and finally, I want to be clear; none of this surveillance was related to Russia, or the investigation of Russian activities, or of the Trump team.

“The House Intelligence Committee will thoroughly investigate surveillance and its subsequent dissemination, to determine a few things here that I want to read off:”

“Who was aware of it?”

“Why it was not disclosed to congress?”

“Who requested and authorized the additional unmasking?”

“Whether anyone directed the intelligence community to focus on Trump associates?”

“And whether any laws, regulations or procedures were violated?”

“I have asked the Directors of the FBI, NSA and CIA to expeditiously comply with my March 15th letter -that you all received a couple of weeks ago- and to provide a full account of these surveillance activities.”

https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/05/13/devin-nunes-discusses-unmasking-its-much-worse-than-this-the-entire-trump-transition-was-under-surveillance/

Wisconsin Supreme Court strikes down Wisconsin's stay-at-home order that closed businesses to limit spread of coronavirus

MADISON - The Wisconsin Supreme Court has struck down Gov. Tony Evers order shutting down daily life to limit the spread of coronavirus — marking the first time a statewide order of its kind has been knocked down by a court of last resort.

The state's highest court sided with Republican lawmakers Wednesday in a decision that curbed Democratic Gov. Tony Evers' power to act unilaterally during public health emergencies.

The 4-3 decision was written by four of the court’s conservatives — Chief Justice Patience Roggensack and Justices Rebecca Bradley, Daniel Kelly and Annette Ziegler.

The court’s fifth conservative, Brian Hagedorn, wrote a dissent joined by the court’s two liberals, Ann Walsh Bradley and Rebecca Dallet.

The court issued the decision a month after Kelly lost his seat on the court. He will be replaced in August by Dane County Circuit Judge Jill Karofsky, a liberal who beat him by 10 points in the April 7 election.

The ruling immediately threw out the administration's tool to control a disease for which there is no vaccine. It came after Evers had already begun lifting some restrictions because the spread of the virus has slowed for now.

Republicans who brought the lawsuit had asked the justices to side with them but to stay their ruling for about a week so legislators and Evers could work out a new plan to deal with the pandemic. The justices declined to do that and had their ruling take effect immediately.

To put any limits in place, the Democratic governor and Republican-controlled Legislature will be forced to work together to deal with the ebbs and flows of the outbreak — something the two sides have rarely been able to achieve before.

With no COVID-19 policies in place, bars, restaurants and concert halls are allowed to reopen — unless local officials implement their own restrictions. That raises the prospect of a patchwork of policies, with rules varying significantly from one county to the next.

GOP leaders offered no immediate response to the decision or indicated whether they wanted to put any limits in place to fight the pandemic.

State Sen. Dan Feyen, R-Fond du Lac, contended in a statement that state officials would develop a reopening plan soon and, in the meantime, citizens should exercise "good old-fashioned common sense and personal responsibility."

But the Legislature's top leaders, Assembly Speaker Robin Vos of Rochester and Senate Majority Leader Scott Fitzgerald of Juneau, remained mum about what plan they might try to advance for the state.

In the majority opinion, Roggensack determined Health Services Secretary Andrea Palm should have issued regulations through a process known as rulemaking, which gives lawmakers veto power over agency policies.

Without legislative review, “an unelected official could create law applicable to all people during the course of COVID-19 and subject people to imprisonment when they disobeyed her order,” the majority wrote.

Other justices saw it differently.

https://www.jsonline.com/story/news/politics/2020/05/13/wisconsin-supreme-court-strikes-down-tony-evers-coronavirus-orders/5179205002/

FDA orders Bill Gates-funded program to HALT at-home Covid-19 self-testing

The US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has ordered a Seattle-based Covid-19 testing project funded by Bill Gates to stop screening for the virus, putting the program on ice as it provided hundreds of at-home test kits each day.

The billionaire Microsoft icon announced the initiative in a blog post this week – dubbed the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network, or SCAN – which he said was already distributing some 300 test kits on a daily basis. As of Wednesday, however, all links to the project’s website redirect to a notice stating its operations are “currently paused” due to a conflict with the FDA.

“SCAN has been operating under an emergency use authorization (EUA) from the Washington State Department of Health,” the notice says, adding that while the FDA has allowed states to approve new Covid-19 tests, “we have been notified that under revised guidance issued on May 8th, a separate federal EUA is now required” to continue testing.

The FDA has requested additional information about SCAN’s at-home nasal swabs, and seeks clarification on the project’s testing of “people who have not reported Covid-like illness.” While the notice offered no timetable for when testing might go back online, it noted that SCAN is “actively working” to address the FDA’s concerns and has been in contact with the agency since March.

Spearheaded by five Seattle-area healthcare organizations, the program, according to Gates, was meant to create a coronavirus surveillance system by testing “a sample of people in the Seattle region” – both sick and healthy – in hopes of gaining insight into how the illness is “moving through the community, who is at greatest risk, and whether physical distancing measures are working.”

The key advantage of this at-home testing approach is that people don't need to go to a clinic, where they risk exposing themselves or others to infection.

https://www.rt.com/usa/488589-gates-scan-coronavirus-testing-fda/

Does Trump know his own government indirectly bankrolls some key promoters of the ‘Russiagate’ hoax?

US President Donald Trump was elected on a promise to “drain the swamp.” Almost four years later, the Washington think-tank racket is as murky as ever, and the gravy train keeps rolling.

The false ‘Trump/Russia collusion’ narrative has been dead for so long now that it’s hard to remember what killed it, whether it was the Mueller Report or simply death by a thousand cuts.

Here is what we know: ‘Russiagate’ was a giant scam, and many of those who promoted it knowingly lied for a considerable length of time. Their aim was either to undermine Trump’s presidency or prevent any improvement in US relations with Russia.

Most of the journalists who facilitated the hoax also knew it was nonsense. But their loathing of Trump – and in some cases Russia, too – trumped ethical considerations. Thus, much of the general public was, for years, fed a diet of grifters and washed-up old spooks pushing a scam.

Funded by the government

The crazy thing is that many of its chief architects work for Washington think tanks funded by the US government. Given Trump has taken no obvious steps to curtail public funding for these lobby groups, it means the president’s own cabinet has been effectively bankrolling activists who are out to smear and destroy him.

Take Evelyn Farkas. A rabidly anti-Russia official in Barack Obama’s government, she was subsequently looked after with a gig at NATO’s Atlantic Council adjunct. This has become a traditional route in DC. When one party loses power, its apparatchiks are placed in a sort of think-tank racket cryonics chamber from which they can be reanimated in future, if their own tribe gets back into the White House.

Farkas, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for Russia, Ukraine and Eurasia, told MSNBC TV in 2017 that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government to win the 2016 presidential election.

https://www.rt.com/op-ed/488572-trump-government-bankrolls-russiagate/

Former Monahans Police Officer Sentenced to 87 Months in Federal Prison on Child Pornography Charge

https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdtx/pr/former-monahans-police-officer-sentenced-87-months-federal-prison-child-pornography

Consultant Agrees to Plead Guilty to RICO Offense Related to Bribery Scheme that Enriched L.A. City Councilmember and Associates

https://www.justice.gov/usao-cdca/pr/consultant-agrees-plead-guilty-rico-offense-related-bribery-scheme-enriched-la-city

North Country Man Pleads Guilty to Receipt and Possession of Child Pornography

https://www.justice.gov/usao-ndny/pr/north-country-man-pleads-guilty-receipt-and-possession-child-pornography

“It Is Absolutely Foreign for any Judge to Consider Bringing in another Judge to Co-Pilot a Case!” – Judge Jeanine GOES OFF after Judge Sullivan Goes Rogue with US Law

The William Barr Justice Department dropped its case against General Mike Flynn last Thursday after bombshell documents were released that proved he was framed by Comey’s FBI.

This was a major win for justice after General Flynn was targeted and destroyed by the Obama deep state for years for daring to speak out against the failed president.

But on Tuesday the Clinton-appointed Judge Emmet Sullivan made a dirty, political move to delay justice for General Mike Flynn.

Judge Sullivan extended the case by soliciting amicus briefs to allow for public comment on Flynn’s criminal case.

Judge Sullivan today appointed retired Clinton appointee judge John Gleeson to argue against the government’s motion to dismiss the charge against Flynn!

This is unheard of!

First the attorneys for the Mueller team withheld Brady evidence from General Flynn for over a year and now this crooked judge won’t acquit!

Judge Jeanine: Tucker from the time I was sitting on a bench, and it was not a federal bench but it was a trial bench as this one is. It is absolutely foreign to any judge to even consider bringing in another judge to co-pilot a case.

https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2020/05/absolutely-foreign-judge-consider-bringing-another-judge-co-pilot-case-judge-jeanine-goes-off-judge-sullivan-goes-rogue-us-law-video/

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1260735992727769096