A Massachusetts director of nursing who at the end of each workday took to visiting an infant who had landed in her hospital is now the girl’s mother after she had volunteered to foster her when the state gained custody of her in October 2016. Liz Smith’s daughter, Gisele, was born at 29 weeks gestation in July 2016, and was diagnosed with neonatal abstinence syndrome due to her birth mother’s drug use during pregnancy.
According to Franciscan Children’s blog, Gisele, who was born weighing just under 2 pounds, spent three months in the NICU on ventilator support before she was transferred to Franciscan Children’s, and had developed an oral aversion. The infant had allegedly no visitors during her time at Franciscan Children’s, except for 45-year-old Smith, who herself had recently learned that she was not a good candidate for IVF.
With support from family and friends, Smith decided to foster Gisele, who was then 9 months old, with the hope of helping her thrive outside the hospital walls. At first, Gisele’s birth parents had supervised weekly visitations, but according to the blog those soon became infrequent and the goal went from reunification to adoption.
“When I got the call that the parents’ rights were terminated, I imagined that it would be a day of relief,” Smith, who had fallen in love with the little girl, told the blog. “And it was a day I was really sad. I was really happy. But I was really sad for them. I was gaining her but they were losing her. And to try to battle addiction and being a mom, that’s impossible.” So two years after Gisele first landed in state custody, Smith legally became her mom.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff ripped Donald Trump for accusing Democrats of anti-Semitism, noting that it’s not the Democratic Party that believes that there are good people on both sides of a Nazi rally. There’s just one party and one party leader who believes that, and that’s Donald Trump.”
On Sunday morning’s edition of CNN’s State of the Union, host Jake Tapper played a clip of Trump claiming that “the Democrats have even allowed the terrible scourge of anti- Semitism to take root in their party and in their country,” remarks he made at the Republican Jewish Coalition Convention in Las Vegas.
I’m surprised that they weren’t already so designated.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The United States is expected to designate Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps a foreign terrorist organisation, three U.S. officials told Reuters, marking the first time Washington has formally labelled another country’s military a terrorist group.
The decision, which critics warn could open U.S. military and intelligence officials to similar actions by unfriendly governments abroad, is expected to be announced by the U.S. State Department, perhaps as early as Monday, the officials said. It has been rumoured for years.
The Pentagon declined comment and referred queries to the State Department. The State Department and White House also declined to comment.
The Iranian mission to the United Nations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Let’s hope that President Trump’s “one-year warning” issued to Mexico Thursday to halt the flood of illegal drugs and migrants entering the U.S. – or face a border closure and new tariffs – will influence Mexico to make some real changes.
Unfortunately, the media’s continual exaggerations of the dangers of closing the border may give Mexico the idea that the U.S. lacks the willpower to carry through on the president’s threat. If Mexican leaders conclude Trump is bluffing, there will be little reason for them to change their behavior.
Take the headline this week in the Washington Post, sternly warning: “U.S. would run out of avocados in 3 weeks if border is closed.” USA Today, NBC News, CBS News, CNN, and many other media outlets have run virtually identical headlines.
The stories all paint a simple picture: we would soon have no avocados to eat unless we keep getting them from Mexico. After all, avocados can’t be stored for more than three weeks, and nearly 90 percent of our current imports come from Mexico.
No more guacamole. No more avocado toast.
The news media are hyping avocados the most because they think that will strike close to home with people. But despite the certainty of these news stories, avocados wouldn’t disappear even if the border was closed for months.
The economics are straightforward. Mexico grows about 34 percent of the world’s avocados, and they account for almost half the exports. But other major producers include the Dominican Republic, Peru, Colombia and Chile.
The United States imports fewer avocados than the European Union, Canada and Japan combined. If the U.S.-Mexico border is closed, avocados that would have shipped to these other countries would be shipped to the U.S., while the avocados that Mexico normally sends to the U.S. would now go to other countries.
Burger King is being called out for an advertisement for its new chicken sandwich, the Vietnamese Sweet Chili Tendercrisp.
The ad, which aired in New Zealand, features several fast food customers attempting – and failing – to eat the chicken sandwich using giant chopsticks.
“Take your taste buds all the way to Ho Chi Minh City with our Vietnamese Sweet Chili Tendercrisp, part of our Tastes of the World range. Available for a limited time only,” a caption for the ad read on Instagram.
Mario Mo, a Korean New Zealander, posted a video of the ad to her Twitter slamming the brand’s use of chopsticks with a sarcastic “chopsticks r hilarious right omg etc.”
Oh looky here, seems Democrats have figured out they actually do need the evil, racist, bigoted, sexist, white man’s vote. Whoda thunk it?
That’s left Democrats wondering whether the nominee should be someone who can cut deep into Trump’s base, picking off large numbers of working-class whites, whether it’s enough to win over affluent, college-educated, suburban men and whether the party is moving too far left to win them both.
“The white male vote is indispensable, it’s a part of any winning coalition,” said Democratic pollster Ronald Lester, who worked for Hillary Clinton’s campaign in 2016. He noted that successful national Democrats perform well with white men, and that includes Barack Obama, whose strength among white men in the Rust Belt helped fuel his White House victories in 2008 and 2012.
Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is expected to offer her resignation at a meeting at the White House on Sunday, U.S. officials familiar with the matter say. Nielsen was set to meet with President Trump at 5 p.m., the officials said.
Nielsen’s expected departure is a part of a massive DHS overhaul engineered and directed by top Trump adviser Stephen Miller, according to a senior U.S. official. It’s unclear whether Nielsen is deciding to resign voluntarily, or whether she has been pressured to resign. Nielsen has served as DHS secretary since December 2017, and questions about how much longer she might last have swirled for months, as the president continues to articulate his frustrations about illegal immigration.
Tracy Maitland, president and chief investment officer of Advent Capital Management, blasted socialist Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) at the National Action Network gathering — where Ocasio-Cortez was widely criticized for using an accent while talking to the predominantly black audience — over her lack of financial knowledge and even said she may need to be removed from office.
“The people campaigning against the Amazon campus are financially illiterate,” Maitland said, according to the New York Post.
After the event, Maitland told the Post: “This was a disgrace. I partially blame AOC for the loss of Amazon. She doesn’t know what she doesn’t know. That’s scary. We have to make sure she’s better educated or vote her out of office.”
Ocasio-Cortez led the charge against Amazon which ended up costing New York 25,000 jobs and nearly $30 billion in tax revenue. She later exploded at critics who correctly noted that she had no idea what she was talking about when it came to the Amazon deal. Both Democrat New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and Democrat New York Governor Andrew Cuomo slammed her for ruining the deal.
CHICAGO — The Chicago prosecutor whose office dismissed charged against Jussie Smollett defended the decision on Saturday, saying the “Empire” actor was treated no differently than thousands of other defendants whose charges were similarly dropped since she took office.
Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx made the comments during a defiant and emotional address at the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr.’s Rainbow Push Coalition. Foxx openly wondered if her race had something to do with the harsh criticism she’s faced since her office announced that charges against Smollett had been dropped. The actor was accused of staging what he claimed to be a racist and homophobic attack in January.
“I have been asking myself for the last two weeks what is this really about,” she said. “As someone who has lived in this city, who came up in the projects of this city to serve as the first African American woman in this role, it is disheartening to me … that when we get in these positions somehow the goalposts change.”
Acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney told “Fox News Sunday” in an exclusive interview that Democrats will “never” see President Trump’s tax returns, days after a House Democrat committee chairman made the unprecedented demand that the IRS provide the documents.
Mulvaney’s comments marked an apparent escalation in the White House’s rhetoric on the issue. On Wednesday, Trump responded with a dismissive taunt to Democrats’ renewed push for his tax information, but suggested he might be willing to provide the information pending the conclusion of an audit.
“Oh no, never — nor should they,” Mulvaney told Bill Hemmer, who is filling in for host Chris Wallace, when asked if Democrats will ever see the president’s tax returns. “That’s an issue that was already litigated during the election. Voters knew the president could have given his tax returns. They knew that he didn’t and they elected him anyway.”
BOSTON — House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has been named the recipient of the 2019 John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award.
Caroline Kennedy, the daughter of the late president, said in a statement Sunday that the California Democrat is “the most important woman in American political history.”
Pelosi is being honored because of her efforts to pass former President Barack Obama’s 2010 health care law and for helping Democrats reclaim control of the U.S. House during last year’s elections.
Pelosi, who has served in the House since 1987, called the award “a great personal and official honor.”
Univision host Enrique Acevedo suggested during a Friday interview with Martha MacCallum that instead of building the wall, it would be more financially sound for border patrol agents simply to dodge the rocks hurled at them from across the border.
“Just listening to the woman with the customs and border patrol, Enrique―describing that they had rocks getting thrown at their agents,” MacCallum began, after showing a clip of a female border agent talking. “She said this is so much better having the wall they can see through because they can see what’s coming at them from the other side and it helps, you know, keeps them safer in their job. That sounds like a good thing, right?”
“Well, it’s always a good thing when we can keep border patrol agents, federal agents safer. I would just ask you, Martha, is it worth $25 billion to keep people 100, 200, 300 yards away from the border to throwing rocks at agents on the other side when you just do this [bends out of frame]. Is that worth $25 billion?” Acevedo asked.
While exploring a run for president in Nevada, Mayor Bill de Blasio endorsed a committee to study reparations for descendants of slaves and then went further — saying that the country needs “a program of actual redistribution” of wealth.
A progressive activist asked the mayor his position on reparations at an event in Las Vegas Friday following the endorsement of the compensation plan by other presidential contenders like Elizabeth Warren.
“There’s no question that the issue of reparations has to be taken seriously,” said de Blasio, whose Vegas area barnstorming continues today, stating a clear, public position on the topic for the first time.
“I do believe the way to do it is to form a very public commission and say, ‘What is the way to address this problem once and for all?’”
But, he added, there needs to be a “bigger discussion about income inequality and oppression of other groups including Latinos, Native Americans, Asian and women,” he said at the event organized by the immigrant advocacy group Make the Road.
“I think we’re going to need something bigger even in a way, broader even in a way, then some of the ideas that have been put out there,” he said to the approximately 35 attendees.
Judge Jeanine didn’t “rally people to think hijabs were threatening,” she questioned Omar’s anti-Semitism and asked if she believed in Sharia law which is antithetical to the Constitution. If that makes her responsible, then Democrats are responsible for every death threat Trump gets.
Freshman New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is blaming a Fox News host for the death threat made against her fellow congresswoman Ilhan Omar.
The Democrat darling linked Jeanine Pirro’s controversial comments questioning Omar’s loyalty to the US to a phone call the lawmaker’s office received in which an upstate man allegedly called her a “terrorist” and threatened to kill her.
“Understand when Jeanine Pirro goes on Fox + rallies people to think hijabs are threatening, it leads to this,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted Saturday night, along with a link to a story on the death threat against the Muslim House member.
“Folks who imply we’re ‘bad’ for politics, the party, the country, etc. have no idea the threats we deal w/ because of that kind of language,” she added. “Talk policy, not personal.”
MUSCATINE, Ia. — While Iowa struggles on whether to restore voting rights to felons who have completed their prison sentences, Sen. Bernie Sanders said people convicted of felonies should never lose access to the ballot box in the first place.
At a town hall meeting in Muscatine’s West Middle School gymnasium Saturday, the Vermont senator was asked whether the imprisoned should have the right to vote. Only his home state and Maine allow felons to vote from behind bars.
“I think that is absolutely the direction we should go,” he said.
While most states disenfranchise felons, Sanders said the convicted still have a right to participate in elections.
“In my state, what we do is separate. You’re paying a price, you committed a crime, you’re in jail. That’s bad,” he said. “But you’re still living in American society and you have a right to vote. I believe in that, yes, I do.”
California Rep. Devin Nunes said Sunday he plans to submit eight criminal referrals to the Justice Department this week related to the Obama administration’s handling of the Trump-Russia investigation.
Nunes said on Fox’s “Sunday Morning Futures” that the referrals will be made for alleged leaks of classified information to the media, for manipulating intelligence and for misleading foreign intelligence surveillance court judges regarding the infamous Steele dossier.
Nunes declined to identify the Obama officials who will be subject to the referrals. He said that five of the referrals name specific government officials he believes have lied to Congress, misled Congress or leaked classified information.
“We believe there is a conspiracy to lie to the FISA [Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act] court, mislead the FISA court, by numerous individuals that all need to be investigated and looked at,” said Nunes, the top Republican on the House Intelligence Committee.
George Mason University students are urging the school’s administration to fire Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and prevent him from teaching a summer course over misconduct allegations.
The group calling themselves “Mason For Survivors” started a petition to “terminate AND void ALL contracts and affiliation with Brett Kavanaugh at George Mason University.” The petition attracted over 3,000 signatures so far.
Kavanaugh is set to teach a course for students studying abroad in the United Kingdom next summer for the university’s Antonin Scalia Law School as a distinguished visiting professor, but the activists say the allegations raised by women during the confirmation hearings last year warrant the firing of the justice.
Higher-education watchdog Campus Reform’s Emma Meshell told Fox Business’ Stuart Varney that some students said “the accusations against him are enough to make it a negative thing to have him on campus.”
