Donald Trump Thanks Democrats for Robert Mueller Hearings

President Donald Trump mocked Democrats on Wednesday for holding hearings with former special counsel Robert Mueller on the Russia investigation.

“I would like to thank the Democrats for holding this morning’s hearing,” he wrote on Twitter ahead of Mueller’s additional testimony in front of the House Oversight Committee under chairman Adam Schiff on Wednesday afternoon.

“Now, after 3 hours, Robert Mueller has to subject himself to #Shifty Schiff – an Embarrassment to our Country!” Trump continued, referring to the chairman.

Trump watched portions of the testimony, according to reports, but did not appear concerned about the first round of testimony.

The president also shared Fox News analysis of the hearings, including Chris Wallace describing the testimony as a “disaster,” Katie Pavlich noting that Mueller denied that his investigation was impeded, and highlights of Rep. Jim Jordan’s line of questioning.

White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham also shared an assessment of the Mueller testimony earlier on Wednesday.

“The last three hours have been an epic embarrassment for the Democrats,” she wrote in a statement to reporters. “Expect more of the same in the second half”:

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‘VERY PAINFUL’: Democrats, Left-Wing Media Implode Over Disastrous Mueller Hearing

Prominent Democrats and members of left-wing media melted down on Wednesday in response to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s bumbling hearing in front of the House Judiciary Committee.
As the hearing unfolded, numerous critics across the political spectrum criticized Mueller’s seemingly dull mental dexterity and his inability to defend his work.
David Axelrod, a former senior advisor to President Obama, tweeted: "This is very, very painful."

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Investigation: Washington Sanctuary County Releases Hundreds of Illegal Aliens Charged with Felonies

Washington state’s central sanctuary county released hundreds of illegal aliens charged with felonies such as homicide, kidnapping, and sexual assault over the course of two years, a new investigation finds.

Records obtained by the Immigration Reform Law Institute (IRLI) reveal that the sanctuary jurisdiction of King County, Washington — which includes Seattle — failed to honor more than 370 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency detainers that were placed on arrested illegal aliens — including those charged with serious felonies.

An ICE detainer is a hold that federal immigration officials put on an illegal alien who has been arrested by local or state law enforcement asking that they turn the particular illegal alien over to them for arrest and deportation.

Sanctuary jurisdictions like King County,refuse to hand criminally charged illegal aliens over to ICE agents.

Over a 27-month period ending on December 30, 2017, King County freed hundreds of illegal aliens instead of turning them over to ICE for deportation. Nearly 290 of these illegal aliens taken into custody and then freed by King County officials had been charged with felonies such as homicide, kidnapping, sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, drugs, burglary, and fraud.

RLI Executive Director Dale Wilcox said in a statement:

State and local elected leaders like to congratulate themselves for the compassion of their sanctuary policies, but they are actually bringing violent crime and even death to their residents. The people of King County should be outraged and demand accountability from their leaders. Refusing ICE detainer requests means releasing dangerous criminals into the community, period.

Most recently in King County, a 32-year-old woman who is bound to a wheelchair was allegedly raped by 35-year-old illegal alien Francisco Carranza Ramirez, as Breitbart News reported.

The victim pleaded with the court to give the illegal alien the highest penalty possible, but instead, he was given just 12 months in prison which had already been served and he was released and ordered deported to Mexico.

Just three days after being released from prison, Ramirez found his rape victim and attacked her while she was with her three-year-old son, pushing her out of her wheelchair and fleeing the scene. Today, Ramirez is wanted by local and state officials and is now an illegal alien fugitive.

Currently, IRLI is awaiting additional data from ICE that will reveal how many illegal aliens charged with serious felonies were released from King County jails who were later charged with additional crimes.

John Binder is a reporter for Breitbart News. Follow him on Twitter at @JxhnBinder.

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Google Blacklists Free Speech Platform Gab’s Latest App

Tech giant Google has blacklisted the free-speech focused social media app Gab from the Google Play Store, joining Apple in banning Gab users from accessing the platform using Gab-branded smartphone apps.

Silicon Valley tech giant Google has reportedly banned the free-speech focused social media platform Gab from the Google Play Store. According to a screenshot posted by Gab to Twitter, Google banned the app from the store for “Violation of User Generated Content (UGC) Policy.” Essentially, it appears that Gabs refusal to censor users’ content is what resulted in the app being removed from the store.

The tweet posted by Gab can be seen below, along with a number of links to similar apps that are still active in the Play Store and work with Gab’s servers. Because Gab shifted its platform to a decentralized and open-source architecture, it can be accessed by other apps still available on both Android and Apple smartphones, some with nearly identical code to the blacklisted Gab app.

Breitbart News reached out to Gab.com founder Andrew Torba for comment on the matter. Torba commented on and outlined the current situation with Google, saying:

Google has banned Gab’s decentralized and open-source mobile app from their Google Play Store, claiming that it has “non-compliant user-generated content such as hate speech.” The Gab android app contains no user content. It is effectively a web browser that allows anyone to connect to any one of the thousands of decentralized microblogging servers, Gab included. So by Google’s own standards, the Google Chrome web browser is also violating their user-generated content policy.

Gab’s app was forked from an open source project. The exact same code exists on the Google Play Store, the only difference is this version has Gab’s logo on it and was submitted by Gab. All of those apps with the exact same code are still up on the Google Play Store and ironically our one million Gab users can still utilize them to login to Gab.

Gab is now part of the Fediverse, a decentralized community of open source microblogging projects that are all built on top of the same open source protocol, ActivityPub. Any app that supports ActivityPub will allow Gab users to sign into Gab and get their feeds, notifications, and all other functionality. ActivityPub is used by multiple projects and by millions of users outside of Gab. Google will need to ban each and everyone of these apps in order to stop Gab.

The future of social networking on the web is decentralized and open source. Gab has been the tip of the spear in the fight for free speech online since August of 2016 and we continue to be the leading alternative technology solution to the Silicon Valley oligarchs.

We now have a decentralized and unstoppable social network, a web browser that blocks big tech trackers and ads, and soon our own free speech app store to circumvent the censorship of mobile apps. We will continue to build products that defend the fundamental human right to speak freely.

Breitbart News reporter Allum Bokhari recently reported that decentralized social media system Mastodon was also attempting to ban Gab and even shutting down users that refused to ban Gab from their servers. Bokhari writes:

Mastodon is an open-source social network that theoretically enables a decentralized network of online communities to thrive. Anyone can set up a Mastodon server, appoint moderators, and add it to the network of communities known as the “Fediverse.”

However, although its technology is built around the principles of decentralization and federated content moderation, Mastodon’s leadership leans to the left.

However, the very decentralized principles that allowed SJWs to set up Mastodon-based communities with trigger warnings and censorship on steroids also allowed free speech platform Gab to create a community based on First Amendment principles. By using Mastodon’s open source technology to provide a new mobile app to its users, Gab would theoretically be able to bypass Apple and Google’s anti-competitive bans of its original smartphone app.

The left-wingers behind Mastodon and many of the smartphone-based platforms built with the project’s software have swiftly acted to contain Gab.

To remove Gab from the Fediverse, every host of a Mastodon server would have to agree to ban Gab — as a result, panicked left-wing Mastodon users are flagging and reporting any Mastodon-based app that doesn’t agree to ban Gab. Merely by existing on the network, Gab has triggered a civil war within it.

Thanks to Gab, the people behind the Mastodon project are now at war with their own founding principles of decentralization. In abandoning their founding principles to pursue a strategy of censorship, they follow in the footsteps of the “Good Censors” at Google.

Read the full article at Breitbart News here.

Lucas Nolan is a reporter for Breitbart News covering issues of free speech and online censorship. Follow him on Twitter @LucasNolan or email him at lnolan@breitbart.com

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Religious Freedom Scorecard: Marco Rubio Earns Highest Rating in Senate for 3rd Year

WASHINGTON, DC — Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) earned the highest score in the Senate again this week, which was bestowed by the latest International Religious Freedom (IRF) Congressional Scorecard, a non-governmental organization (NGO) assessment that recognizes lawmakers’ devotion to advancing religious liberties via their voting record, caucus work, and sponsoring of bills, among other efforts.

More Democrats received highest scores than Republicans, although the scorecards, first launched in 2017, covered the Republican majority sessions of Congress.

Rubio came out on top for his chamber on all three scorecards, released since 2017 by the Christians human rights NGO, 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative.

The NGO released one for the 114th session of Congress (January 2015 to January 2017), another for the first year of the 115th session, and the latest one issued Tuesday for the 115th in its entirety.

Breitbart News spoke to Lou Ann Sabatier, the communications director of 21st Century Wilberforce Initiative, on the day it issued the IRF Congressional Scorecard.

Referring to the assessment, she said, “First, we want people to know and appreciate that we have members of Congress who have championed international religious freedom in tangible ways.“

“Secondly, we want to encourage legislators to take even bolder actions in support of international religious freedom,” she added. “And we want to ‘stir’ citizens to be more curious about what Congress is doing and to understand the scope of challenges they face on this issue.”

In the final assessment for the 115th congressional session, Rubio was joined by Rep. James McGovern (D-MA) in the House of Representatives in receiving the highest scores, showing bipartisan support for religious freedoms.

Only in the first scorecard (114th Congress) did two Republicans from each legislative chamber of the U.S. Capitol receive the highest scores.

Sabatier told Breitbart News, “Scoring is pretty balanced between Democrats and Republicans; it transcends partisanship.”

“Republicans and Democrats are working together on international religious freedom issues,” she added. “The Notable Leaders [48 out of 535 members of Congress] in the Senate did skew more to Democrats, but it’s balanced in the House.”

“I believe the reason this holds true is that it is the foundational freedom; it’s the dignity of humanity to respect and protect freedom of conscience and religion or belief,” she also said.

All scorecards covered Republican majority congressional sessions, but they all showed bipartisan support for religious liberties.

In a rare show of bipartisanship, however, the NGO recognized 31 Democrat and 17 Republican lawmakers as “notable leaders” of religious freedom.

In its assessment, the Wilberforce Initiative explained:

The FINAL International Religious Freedom Congressional Scorecard illuminates the voting records of members of the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives for bills, resolutions, and amendments that support international religious freedom. It also tracks sponsorship and co-sponsorship of bills, votes in the House and the Senate, and international religious freedom-related caucus membership.

Some analysts indicated that Congress can still do more to promote religious freedom.

Katrina Lantos Swett, the president of the Lantos Foundation for Human Rights & Justice, declared in a statement attached to the release of the scorecard:

The FINAL IRF Congressional Scorecard has an incredibly important story to tell. As religious freedom abuses have proliferated around the world, America’s efforts to advocate for this bedrock human right have not kept pace. This vital tool tells us who in our Congress is leaning forward in defense of the First Freedom and who is leaning back. This is information we need to know so that all of us can better protect the conscience rights of people around the globe.

The NGO acknowledged that the scorecard is not a perfect tool.

“There are additional factors that cannot be reflected therein. Not all efforts made in the promotion and protection of international religious freedom can be publicly recorded,” it added, noting:

Low scores do not necessarily indicate disagreement with international religious freedom legislation, but rather that it was not a high priority for that legislator. Conversely, high scores indicate that a given legislator has made support of international religious freedom a priority.

The NGO released its scorecard amid the second Ministerial to Advance Religious Freedom hosted by the U.S. Department of State this week.

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Conservative Student Kathy Zhu Stripped of ‘Miss Michigan’ Title for ‘Offensive’ Social Media Posts

Kathy Zhu, a student from the University of Michigan, was stripped of her Miss Michigan title over “offensive” social media posts. The student says that she is being discriminated against over her conservative views.

University of Michigan student Kathy Zhu says that Miss World America recently contacted her to inform her that she was stripped of her Miss Michigan beauty pageant title over “offensive, insensitive and inappropriate” social media posts.

Zhu tweeted about the incident on Thursday, stating that Miss World America dismissed her from the beauty pageant due to her conservative views, as well as her refusal to wear a hijab last year.

“Miss World America’s State/National/Chief Director accused me of being racist, Islamaphobic, and insensitive,” tweeted Zhu. “They stripped me of my Miss Michigan title due to my refusal to try on a hijab in 2018, my tweet about black on black gun violence, and ‘insensitive’ statistical tweets.”

In 2018, Zhu made waves on campus after approaching a Muslim Student Association table and later declining to wear a hijab for “World Hijab Day,” according to the Detroit Free Press.

The student then tweeted, “There is a ‘try a hijab on’ booth at my college campus. So you’re telling me that it’s now just a fashion accessory and not a religious thing? Or are you just trying to get women used to being oppressed under Islam?”

Zhu later clarified that she was referring to women in the Middle Eastern countries who are being punished for refusing to wear the hijab.

“Nobody is talking about that in the West because all they see is everyone being at peace, but that is the beauty of America,” affirmed Zhu.

The conservative student took to Twitter to elaborate on the accusations made against her. “Someone called me an islamophobic for not wanting to put on a hijab. Someone called me a racist because I recognize that black people kill more blacks than police do,” said Zhu.

Miss World America, however, does not seem to approve of the student’s online activity, according to a purported email from the organization, shared by Zhu on Twitter.

“It has been brought to the attention of Miss Word America (MWA) that your social media posts contain offensive, insensitive, and inappropriate content,” read the purported email from Miss World America to Zhu.

The email went on to state that Zhu was in violation of the pageant’s Rules and Conditions requiring contestants to be “of good character and whose background is not likely to bring into dispute Miss World America or any person associated with the organization.”

“Therefore, and effective immediately, WMA does not recognize you as a participant of any sort or in any capacity as it relates to any events or WMA,” the email continues. “Furthermore, let this communication serve as an official notice to remove any mention of yourself as a participant in MWA from all social media platforms.”

Miss World America did not immediately respond to Breitbart News’ request for comment.

You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.

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1,100 African Migrants Apprehended in One Border Sector Since May 30

Border Patrol agents assigned to the Del Rio Sector apprehended more than 1,100 migrants from multiple countries in Africa since May 30. The migrants present unique problems for Border Patrol agents who must care for their health and safety.

“The apprehension of people from African countries illegally crossing our borders continues to increase,” Del Rio Sector Chief Patrol Agent Raul L. Ortiz said in a written statement. “Our agents this year have encountered people from 51 countries other than Mexico including 19 countries from the continent of Africa.”

Border Patrol officials reported on Friday that the Del Rio Sector continues to receive and process large numbers of migrants from the continent of Africa. The trend began in May when agents in the sector began noticing for the first time, large groups of migrants from Africa illegally crossing the border, Breitbart News reported.

In a press call in June, Brian Hastings, U.S. Border Patrol Chief of Law Enforcement Operations, told reporters this was the first large group “ever recorded in Border Patrol history solely from Central and South Africa. We’ve never seen that demographic in a large group of that size before.”

Within just a few days, the number of African migrants apprehended in this single sector jumped to more than 500.

“The introduction of this new population places additional burdens on processing stations, to include language and cultural differences,” Chief Ortiz said in a written statement at the time. “Our agents continue to meet each new challenge as the ongoing humanitarian crisis evolves.”

Near the end of June, Del Rio Sector agents apprehended two more large groups totaling more than 300 migrant during two days of patrolling the border.

Bob Price serves as associate editor and senior political news contributor for the Breitbart Border team. He is an original member of the Breitbart Texas team. Follow him on Twitter @BobPriceBBTX and Facebook.

 

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Christian Book Distributors Drops ‘CBD’ Name After Cannabis Confusion 

A Christian book company with the initials “CBD” has decided to drop the name after being inundated with requests for cannabis-related products.

Christian Book Distributors, which is the largest distributor of Christian products, said the company wants to avoid “brand confusion” after receiving numerous calls from customers searching for hemp products, Fox News reported.

The company, which was started by two brothers in Massachusetts in 1978, announced in June that it will now go by the name “Christianbook” to avoid any confusion with the popular trend in cannabis-derived oils bearing the same initials.

“The problem is the other CBD is just so popular at this point in time that it just kind of overwhelms our brand,” Christianbook President and CEO Ray Hendrickson said in an interview with the New York Times.

“I was driving my mom down the road recently,” Hendrickson commented. “She saw a sign that said ‘CBD sold here.’ I was like, ‘No, mom. That’s not us.’”

The company also noted in a statement that a Google search for “CBD” used to rank them at the top of the page, but that is no longer the case.

The statement continued:

Now ‘our CBD’ is nowhere to be found in the search results, only sites for the cannabis product are listed, and paid ads are no longer allowed. As this wave of popularity over the ‘other CBD’ is not likely to subside, we will stop referring to ourselves as ‘CBD’ and will also drop the word ‘Distributors’ from our company name. Going forward, we will operate under the name of ‘Christianbook.’

However, Sarah Bolme, director of the Christian Indie Publishing Association, said she believes the change will be a positive thing for the company.

“As CBD became more widely known for the product derived from the cannabis plant than a Christian book company, changing their brand was the wise choice for Christianbook,” she wrote in a newsletter for Marketing Christian Books.

“Wise authors and publishers will monitor their brand and be willing to make changes should a more popular similar name or acronym become more of an impediment to their brand than an asset,” Bolme concluded.

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Despite Demanding More Security, Threats Have Not Increased for ‘the Squad’

If you’re even roughly familiar with how the outrage mill works in American politics, you knew this was coming. Politico headline, Thursday, July 18: “House Dems warn Omar in ‘imminent danger’ after Trump rally chants.” “House Democrats erupted in fury Thursday over President Donald Trump’s attacks on freshman Rep. Ilhan Omar at his reelection rally,…

The post Despite Demanding More Security, Threats Have Not Increased for ‘the Squad’ appeared first on Conservative Tribune.

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