Dearborn Jail inmate's mother worries over COVID outbreak

As of Nov. 18, 38 out of Dearborn County Jail's 288 inmates had tested positive for the coronavirus. The jail counted zero cases just a week prior.

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  • Republican lawmaker likens Trump vote-fraud crusade to the search for Bigfoot

    U.S. Rep. Denver Riggleman, R-Va., told the Yahoo News "Skullduggery" podcast that President Trump's supporters claiming voter fraud share a lot in common with the people searching for Bigfoot.

  • Omar renews push to 'cancel rent and mortgage payments' during pandemic

    Rep. Ilhan Omar proposed the legislation in April but concerns about an impending wave of evictions has continued to grow.

  • Feds: Militia leader pointed rifle at officers in Kentucky

    The leader of a pro-gun group that stages armed protests against police violence has been charged with pointing a rifle at federal officers while in Kentucky for a demonstration. John F. Johnson, who calls himself “Grandmaster Jay,” is facing a federal charge of assaulting task force officers. A complaint filed in federal court in Louisville said Johnson pointed a rifle, which had a flashlight mounted to it, at officers who were on a roof in downtown Louisville on Sept. 4.

  • Project Veritas’ New CNN Bombshell: Jeff Zucker Thinks Rudy Giuliani Is ‘Crazy’

    Earlier this week, Project Veritas released the first of what it promised would be many shocking revelations from CNN’s internal editorial meetings, which founder James O’Keefe appears to have infiltrated and recorded over the course of several weeks.First, the right-wing group tried to make hay out of the fact that one high-level CNN staffer considered Fox News host Tucker Carlson to be racist—while simultaneously misidentifying the staffer in question. Their latest bombshell? CNN President Jeff Zucker thinks Rudy Giuliani is “crazy.”According to Project Veritas’ website, O’Keefe believes it will be “virtually impossible for the American public to take CNN’s reporting seriously after listening to these tapes.” And yet, once again, nothing that Zucker has said should surprise anyone who has been paying attention to Giuliani, especially in the weeks since Trump lost the presidential election to Joe Biden.“There is a term for what Rudy Giuliani is suspected of being, which is ‘useful idiot,’” a voice identified as Zucker’s can be heard saying in a tape made just a couple of days after the man formerly known as “America’s mayor” started pushing material supposedly obtained from Hunter Biden’s laptop.He goes on to call Giuliani’s efforts to undermine the election a “really important story,” adding, “It gets tied to the Hunter Biden email disinformation campaign. That’s the way we do this, because it’s all tied and part-and-parcel of one. I know Washington is working on putting that all together.”In a more recent call, when another staff member suggests that the “real craziness is the client,” referring to President Trump, “not the lawyers,” the voice ID’d as Zucker agrees before saying, “I think you raise a good point about not just pawning it off on the crazy legal team, but the client is the one who is directing the crazy legal team.”Other comments from Zucker that seem to have outraged Project Veritas concern the baseless allegations of pedophilia against Biden that circulated online, especially among QAnon Facebook groups, in the run-up to the election.“The president of the United States has just retweeted a post accusing Joe Biden of being a pedophile to his 86 million followers which is just beyond,” he says on another tape. “You know it also is just unacceptable that the president of the United States is trafficking in this and doing it.”Once again, an exposé intended to make Zucker and CNN look bad has only revealed that they are simply adhering to reality.Project Veritas’ CNN Sting Uncovers Explosive News That Tucker Carlson Is RacistRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Murderers and rapists could be barred from claiming asylum as part of Priti Patel's crackdown on immigration

    Murderers and rapists to be prevented from claiming asylum, says Priti Patel, after the Jamaican deportation flight row. In an interview with The Telegraph, the Home Secretary said it was “completely wrong” that convicted killers and rapists released from jail should be able to exploit the asylum system to remain in the UK. She also indicated that asylum will be “streamlined” to prevent migrants making multiple claims that can be lodged and heard hours or even minutes before their removal. It will be part of a major reform of Britain’s “completely broken” asylum system, which is due to be unveiled in the new year. Her comments came after a murderer, two rapists and two would-be killers were among 23 criminals who escaped deportation to Jamaica early on Wednesday morning after lodging 11th hour appeals including claims for asylum. One was removed from the flight just minutes before the flight after a judge granted a stay.

  • Iran open to further prisoner swaps - foreign minister

    Iran is ready to engage in further prisoner swaps after last week exchanging a jailed British-Australian academic with three Iranians detained abroad, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Thursday. "We can always engage in that, it is in the interests of everybody," Zarif told an Italian diplomatic conference speaking via video-link. Kylie Moore-Gilbert, a specialist in Middle East politics at the University of Melbourne, had been serving a 10-year sentence for alleged espionage when she was freed on Nov. 25.

  • Georgia GOP Lt. Gov. is ‘embarrassed’ by misinformation surrounding election integrity in his state

    As a pair of critical Senate runoff races approach on Jan. 5, Georgia Republican leaders find themselves in a conundrum, trying to balance indulging President Trump’s baseless claims of voter fraud with supporting state GOP election officials. Lt. Gov. Geoff Duncan, a Republican, is frustrated with the misinformation about the election process in his state. “I’m actually embarrassed at the amount of misinformation that continues to show up on Twitter feeds and Facebook posts and blogs that takes literally 10 seconds to debunk,” Duncan told Yahoo News. “Anybody could debunk it, but because they’ve let themselves get to a point where they’re more worried about flipping an election result than they are following the truth, that’s how we’ve gotten here.”

  • Australian leader seeks conciliation in dispute with China

    A diplomatic war of words between Australia and China over a graphic tweet seemed to finally cool on Thursday as Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison struck a much more conciliatory tone. Morrison's change in approach came even after he was thwarted in getting his views out directly to Chinese people over the messaging app WeChat, after the Chinese company deleted his post on the grounds it could distort historical events and confuse the public. China has angrily rejected Morrison's complaints, but its foreign ministry on Thursday declined to comment further on the controversy.

  • India Muslim man arrested under 'love jihad' law

    He is the first to be arrested under a controversial anti-conversion law passed last month.

  • Biden says he's concerned about reports Trump is considering preemptive pardons

    President-elect Joe Biden said when it comes to the Department of Justice, he is "not going to be telling them what they have to do and don't have to do."Biden and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were interviewed by CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday, and the discussion turned to reports that President Trump is contemplating preemptively pardoning his adult children, son-in-law Jared Kushner, and personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani. Biden said this "concerns me in terms of what kind of precedent it sets and how the rest of the world looks [at] us as a nation of laws and justice."Biden promised that he is "not going to be saying, 'Go prosecute A, B, or C,' I'm not going to be telling them. That's not the role, it's not my Justice Department, it's the people's Justice Department. So the persons or person I pick to run that department are going to be people who are going to have the independent capacity to decide who gets prosecuted, who doesn't."Harris, who once served as California's attorney general, added that the administration will assume that "any decision coming out of the Justice Department ... should be based on the law, it should not be influence by politics, period."More stories from theweek.com What Trump is doing isn't politics. It's something much worse. 5 absurdly funny cartoons about Trump's desperate fraud claims The Donald goes down to Georgia

  • Philippines police threaten social distancing violators with caning

    Philippine police on Friday threatened to cane people who violate social distancing protocols as the Southeast Asian nation fights the spread of the coronavirus during the festive season. The Philippines celebrates one of the world's longest Christmas seasons, starting as early as September, and crowds have started to flock to sprawling malls and shopping centres despite the pandemic. Police general Cesar Binag, commander of the coronavirus task force, told a news conference that police and soldiers would patrol in public areas in the capital Manila, the hotspot of COVID-19 cases, carrying 1 meter rattan sticks to measure distancing.

  • Fatal shooting of Black teen roils liberal town in Oregon

    The killing of a young Black man last month by a white man who complained that he was playing loud music has roiled Ashland, Oregon, forcing the liberal college town that is famous for its Shakespeare festival to take a hard look at race relations. The death of Aidan Ellison, 19, added another name to the list of Black men and women whose killings have sparked a nationwide reckoning with racism and fueled a surge in a Black Lives Matter movement. On Nov. 23, Robert Keegan fired a single shot into Ellison's chest after complaining about the music late at night in a motel parking lot.

  • 10 Remote Airbnbs As Stunning As They Are Secluded

    From a private island to a tiny Vermont tree houseOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Trump reportedly derailed a GOP meeting about the Georgia Senate runoffs by praising QAnon

    President Trump reportedly needs no encouragement to start praising the dangerous, baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.The most pressing matter for federal Republicans right now is the upcoming Senate runoffs in Georgia, which will determine control of the body. But in a meeting with advisers and top Senate Republicans about that matter, Trump totally derailed the conversation by bringing up QAnon, people familiar with the discussion tell The Washington Post.Trump is reportedly not thrilled with Georgia and that fact that it flipped for President-elect Joe Biden, and is publicly upset with Republican leaders in the state who haven't somehow overturned the election for him. So even though Republican advisers say Trump's help is "key to convincing his die-hard supporters to vote for Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue" in the January runoff election, the president isn't thrilled about doing so, the Post reports. "Advisers say he has been frustrated at how some GOP senators have criticized him," leading Trump to appear "disinterested" when discussing Senate campaign plans, the Post continues.That was clear in a recent meeting with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), Sen. Todd C. Young (R-Ind.), and other aides. As they discussed Georgia's Senate races, Trump brought up the QAnon-supporting soon-to-be congressmember Marjorie Taylor Greene. Trump mispronounced the name of the group as "Q-an-uhn," and then said supporters of the theory that purports Democrats are a cannibalistic, pedophilic cabal "basically believe in good government," people familiar tell the Post. Everyone reportedly went silent until White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows mentioned he had "never heard it described that way," the Post reports.Trump has been asked to denounce QAnon several times, but usually gives the theory his tacit approval instead.More stories from theweek.com What Trump is doing isn't politics. It's something much worse. Biden says he's concerned about reports Trump is considering preemptive pardons 5 absurdly funny cartoons about Trump's desperate fraud claims

  • Taiwan says trade deal would show U.S. support in face of China pressure

    A bilateral trade deal between Taiwan and the United States would reinforce U.S. support for the democratic island in the face of "unrelenting intimidation" from China, Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen said on Friday. Taiwan, claimed by China as its own territory, has long angled for a trade deal with its most important diplomatic and military backer, and in August Tsai announced a relaxation on imports of U.S. pork and beef, removing a stumbling block.

  • Tennessee inmate’s execution put on hold due to COVID-19

    The Tennessee Supreme Court on Thursday indefinitely postponed the execution of death row inmate Byron Black. Black was convicted by a Nashville court of murdering his girlfriend Angela Clay and her daughters Latoya, 9, and Lakesha, 6, at their home in 1988. Black’s lead attorney, Kelley Henry, filed the petition for a second delay last month after contracting COVID-19 during a visit to a federal prisoner she is representing in Texas.

  • Attorney for Jared Kushner and a Trump fundraiser investigated by DOJ in alleged bribery-for-pardon scheme

    The New York Times reported that a lawyer for President Trump's son-in-law was investigated by the Justice Department this summer.

  • Abolishing the Electoral College is closer than you think

    The Electoral College is a historic relic in our constitutional system. It's basically never worked as intended. The original idea in the Constitution was to have state legislatures select a well informed deliberative body of electors to actually gather to choose a president and to have the second-place vote getter become vice president. The runner-up becoming VP was such a disastrous idea it barely lasted a decade before we changed it with the 12th amendment. By the end of the 19th century, all states gave up on having legislatures choose the electors, creating the very type of direct elections the system was meant to avoid.In recent times, the Electoral College has only become more problematic with each passing election cycle. First and foremost, it constantly risks handing the presidency to the candidate who received fewer votes. On top of that, the Electoral College creates terrible incentives, both for campaigning and governance. Candidates put all their energy and resources into a handful of swing states. Once in office, presidents have little political reason to solve problems in deep red states or deep blue states. For example, it was widely reported that Donald Trump paid little attention to the massive wildfires this year because California is a blue state. Yet Trump won more votes in California than he did in Texas.There is an easy and relatively cheap way to fix this.The National Popular Vote Compact would guarantee the presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Once states with a total of 270 Electoral College votes sign on to the compact, those states will agree to give all their electors to the candidate who gets the most votes nationally. This will make the Electoral College effectively meaningless in practice. So far, states with 196 electoral votes have joined, so only 74 more electoral votes are needed.There is also a way for regular people to get this over the finish line without convincing a single additional state legislator. There are 17 states not currently part of the compact that allow citizen ballot initiatives — together, they control a total of 114 electoral votes. (This doesn't include Florida, which has 29 electoral votes but requires ballot amendments to meet a 60 percent threshold before they are adopted, making it an especially difficult place to pass such a measure).The National Popular Vote Compact could be placed on the ballots in, for example, eight states with more than 74 electoral votes by gathering roughly 1.3 million valid signatures. According to an analysis by Ballotpedia, for ballot measure campaigns in 2020, the average cost per required signature was $8.09. So it would cost only about $10.6 million to put a national popular vote before voters across the country in 2022. Even spending an average of an additional $9 million per state for campaign staff, mailers, TV ads, etc., the whole effort across numerous states could cost $74 million or less. For comparison, just over $7 million was spent by both sides combined on the recent National Popular Vote Compact ballot measure in Colorado.That total is $14 million less than what Democrat Amy McGrath raised in her Senate race against Republican Mitch McConnell — a race she lost by over 19 points. We could likely end the idiotic Electoral College for less than what just one party raised for just one doomed Senate candidate.As mentioned, the National Popular Vote Compact was recently put to the test in Colorado and passed. This year a group called Protect Colorado's Vote tried to remove Colorado from the compact by placing a referendum on the ballot, but voters endorsed the compact, voting 52.3 percent in favor. This is despite the fact that Colorado has "benefited" from being a presidential swing state for multiple election cycles, getting a disproportionate share of attention from candidates.While this might be seen as a partisan dispute, it really shouldn't be. In the two most recent presidential elections, the Electoral College favored Republicans, but that is neither the historic norm nor is there any guarantee it will continue. In 2004, 2008, and 2012 the different breakdown of votes and states gave Democrats an advantage. While Obama's margin was large enough for it not to matter in 2012, he likely could have lost the popular vote by 1.5 points and still won re-election. With Georgia and Texas trending blue and Florida trending red, it is entirely possible Democrats will have an Electoral College advantage again in a few years.The four of the referendum states mentioned above that voted for Biden this election (with 37 electoral votes) have every reason to make sure their votes aren't overridden by an anti-democratic relic. But so do the 13 states that went for Trump, for next time it could be their candidate who is on the short end of an Electoral College-popular vote split.There is no guarantee a ballot measure to join the National Popular Vote Compact would succeed in every state where it could be put on the ballot, but it doesn't need to. There are also several states that don't allow ballot measures where the compact has already passed in at least one legislative chamber, including Virginia, Oklahoma, and Minnesota. If more state ballot measures supporting the compact passed, it would likely cause legislators in other states to finally sign on. Even relatively modest spending on a coordinated effort could make 2024 the first election ever where the president was selected by a true popular vote.More stories from theweek.com 5 absurdly funny cartoons about Trump's desperate fraud claims Trump reportedly derailed a GOP meeting about the Georgia Senate runoffs by praising QAnon Florida attorney reportedly under investigation after telling Republicans to change 'your address for the next 2 months' for Georgia runoffs

  • To save money, Mexican president says won't replace chief-of-staff

    Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador said on Thursday he would not replace his outgoing chief-of-staff Alfonso Romo and will close down his office in order to save money. Lopez Obrador said on Wednesday that Romo, a longtime ally and millionaire entrepreneur known for his outreach to business groups, would step down after two years in the job. The leftist president said Romo would continue to act as a go-between for the government and the private sector, a role that has often been strained over Lopez Obrador's skepticism about private sector involvement in areas such as energy.

  • Supreme Court again asked to block Biden win in Pennsylvania

    Fresh off another rejection in Pennsylvania's courts, Republicans on Thursday again asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in the battleground state, while the state's lawyers say fatal flaws in the original case mean justices are highly unlikely to grant it. Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania and the other plaintiffs are asking the high court to prevent the state from certifying any contests from the Nov. 3 election, and undo any certifications already made, such as Biden’s victory, while its lawsuit is considered. Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.