The 2020 presidential election is just six weeks away, and pollsters and pundits are turning more attention to the handful of swing states that could ultimately decide the outcome.
While the issue of the Second Amendment hasn’t necessarily been at the forefront of this campaign cycle, the notion of gun rights has been a significant flashpoint throughout the turmoil and uncertainty of this year – induced by the ongoing global pandemic and national shutdown and further enhanced by the rioting and unrest that has permeated much of the country in recent months.
According to FBI data, the bureau processed 93% more background checks nationwide from March through July this year as compared with the same period the previous year. And while the classification of a “swing state” varies and is debatable, the Cook Political Report – as cited last month by the U.S. State Department –”sees Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin as toss-ups,” potentially along with New Hampshire and North Carolina.
NBA playoffs return after league, players agree to 3-point plan to promote social justice; reaction from FOX Sports NBA analyst Chris Broussard.
Former NBA guard Kenny Smith walked off the “NBA on TNT” set in August in solidarity with players who refused to play in their playoff game over the Jacob Blake shooting in Wisconsin.
Smith left the set just minutes after TNT began a special edition broadcast during what would have been the network’s coverage of a playoff matchup between the Oklahoma City Thunder and the Houston Rockets. While seen as a powerful move, one of Smith’s colleagues said he was “pissed” over it.
It’s what’s being called the $100 million headache.
UFC color commentator and podcasting deity Joe Rogan signed an exclusive multi-year deal with Spotify earlier this year, but it seems not everyone associated with the digital streaming service wants to be part of the “Experience.”
Despite several internal meetings, select staffers were reportedly dissatisfied with the way senior management responded to Rogan’s controversial material, which prior to finding its way to Spotify, aired exclusively on the longtime funnyman’s YouTube channel.
This ‘cowboy’ rode a horse down a busy highway in support of #KidsLivesMatter, a movement demanding greater investment in youth programs and other needs of children in Chicago pic.twitter.com/h9EM8oiyob
BLM guy who Lori Lightfoot engaged as the ‘Census Cowboy’ even after he was a revealed on video to have been saying ‘fuck the police’ and ‘fuck 12,’ the BLM/rioter slogan.
The horse ridden for 7.5 miles on the Dan Ryan Expressway during an impromptu protest Monday by a man known as the “Dreadhead Cowboy” would not have survived without immediate treatment and may still be euthanized, according to Cook County prosecutors, who said the treatment of the horse was the equivalent of forcing an 80-year-old woman run a full marathon.
Adam Hollingsworth, 33, was held on $25,000 bond during a court appearance Wednesday after he was charged with a felony count of aggravated cruelty to an animal, as well as misdemeanor counts of reckless conduct, trespassing and other traffic offenses. He must pay 10% of that amount, $2,500, to be released from jail.
Hollingsworth has also been dubbed the “Census Cowboy” for his work with Mayor Lori Lightfoot to boost census participation in Chicago. He said he rode the horse on the expressway during rush hour in support of the #KidsLivesMatter movement — an initiative that aims to raise awareness and motivate residents to fill out the census to help communities receive better funding.
Prius driver plows through crowd, gets run down by a pickup truck, gets car smashed up, crashes into another car, speeds away (📹 KCAL) pic.twitter.com/QVoK2l4kP9
The LAPD is are aware of an incident in Hollywood involving several vehicles and a large group of protestors. Here is the information we can verify at this time. pic.twitter.com/ttqpnziVo8
Paunchy former New Jersey governor Chris Christie once threatened to sit on Mike Bloomberg — during a bizarre, jealous rant involving the Queen of England.
The asinine threat is alleged in former governor David Paterson’s dishy new memoir, “Black, Blind & in Charge.”
It was July 8, 2010. Paterson was leading New York and Christie was the Garden State’s top exec as they awaited the arrival of Queen Elizabeth at Ground Zero, where the royal was to lay a wreath.
Then-New York City Mayor Bloomberg had yet to arrive, and Christie was seething about the city honcho, Paterson recounts.
“I was told by the protocol people that nobody escorts the Queen but Prince Philip,” the rotund Jersey chief executive sniped to Paterson. “But I bet you that Bloomberg is going to try to stand in front of us both and escort her.”
Paterson shrugged in response.
“Yeah Chris, Michael always takes charge like that,” Paterson says he told Christie. “I’m OK with it.”
The annual ball drop in Times Square on New Years Eve will be “virtually enhanced, visually compelling and very different” this year with only a very limited number of in-person attendees, organizers announced Wednesday, marking the latest high-profile event to be affected by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
The event’s socially-distanced “limited live entertainment” is still in development, but there will be an “extremely limited group of in-person honorees” who will “reflect the themes, challenges and inspirations of 2020.”
“Any opportunity to be live in Times Square will be pre-determined and extremely limited,” Times Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins said in a statement, but the event will offer spectators an opportunity to participate virtually from around the world.
In addition to the live programming, the event will feature “significantly new and enhanced virtual, visual and digital offerings,” Tompkins said.
The celebration will focus on the “news, people and pop culture” from 2020, including programming featuring first responders, essential workers and health professionals alongside the entertainers who typically perform at the annual event.
Jamestown Properties, which owns the One Times Square building where the ball drops, will offer an app that lets users virtually experience Times Square.
Olive Garden is losing hundreds of thousands of dollars every week from just one location in New York City because of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Times Square Olive Garden typically brings in $15 million a year, but now it’s losing $300,000 a week. That’s because of state restrictions on indoor dining, said Gene Lee, the CEO of Olive Garden’s parent company Darden Restaurants, on a Thursday call to investors.
“We start every single week $300,000 in the hole from a comp store basis,” Lee said about the Times Square location.
In fact, he said that location alone is costing the chain “50 basis points in comps.”
NEW YORK (Reuters) – Democrats in of the House of Representatives will introduce a bill next week to limit the tenure of U.S. Supreme Court justices to 18 years from current lifetime appointments, in a bid to reduce partisan warring over vacancies and preserve the court’s legitimacy.
The new bill, seen by Reuters, would allow every president to nominate two justices per four-year term and comes amid heightened political tensions as Republican President Donald Trump prepares to announce his third pick for the Supreme Court after the death on Sept. 18 of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with just 40 days to go until the Nov. 3 election.
Aspects of U.S. Attorney John Huber’s investigation into the Clinton Foundation have been assumed by U.S. Attorney John Durham as part of his review into the origins of the Russia probe, Fox News has learned.
A source familiar with Durham’s investigation told Fox News on Thursday that parts of what Huber was investigating in 2017 — involving the Clinton Foundation — have been incorporated in Durham’s investigation.
In November 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions directed Huber, the U.S. attorney for Utah, and other senior prosecutors to evaluate “certain issues” involving the sale of Uranium One, and other dealings related to the Clinton Foundation. Sessions tapped Huber after requests by congressional Republicans, who had been calling for the appointment of a special counsel to review the matters.
Democrats spent the early months of the coronavirus pandemic urging their base to vote absentee. But as threats of U.S. Postal Service delays, Team Trump litigation and higher ballot rejection rates become clearer, many are pivoting to promote more in-person voting as well.
Why it matters: Democrats are exponentially more likely to vote by mail than Republicans this year — and if enough mail-in ballots are lost, rejected on a technicality or undercounted, it could change the outcome of the presidential election or other key races.
Driving the news: In Colorado, former Gov. John Hickenlooper, who’s running against Sen. Cory Gardner, told Axios that he’s encouraging voters to physically take their mail-in ballots to a dropbox and to do so “early, really early.”
A woman at a grade-school football game in Ohio on Wednesday was reportedly tased and arrested by a police officer for not wearing a face mask in the stands.
The woman was sitting in the bleachers with her mother when she got into an altercation with the cop about mask-wearing at a middle school in the town of Logan, the Marietta Times reported.
Video of the incident, which was posted to YouTube, shows the woman resisting as the officer struggles to handcuff her for nearly two minutes before he deploys his Taser.
The woman, identified in the report as Alecia Kitts, repeatedly tells the officer to “get off of me,” the video shows.
HARRISBURG – On Monday, September 21, 2020, at the request of Luzerne County District Attorney Stefanie Salavantis, the Office of the United States Attorney along with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Scranton Resident Office, began an inquiry into reports of potential issues with a small number of mail-in ballots at the Luzerne County Board of Elections.
Since Monday, FBI personnel working together with the Pennsylvania State Police have conducted numerous interviews and recovered and reviewed certain physical evidence. Election officials in Luzerne County have been cooperative. At this point we can confirm that a small number of military ballots were discarded. Investigators have recovered nine ballots at this time. Some of those ballots can be attributed to specific voters and some cannot. All nine ballots were cast for presidential candidate Donald Trump.
Just when we thought the murder hornet scourge had died down, leaving 2020 to come up with some alternate terror, scientists are now predicting that the giant, bee-killing bugs could potentially spread “rapidly” if not contained.
“This could be, if it were to become established, one of the most damaging invasive species that we could almost imagine,” said Washington State University entomologist David Crowder. He helped author the stinging study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Indeed, while the Asian hornet — the largest of its kind at up to 2 inches long — has so far only been spotted in Washington state, it has the potential to establish a foothold in the western US, reports Washington State University.
The team formulated this terrifying theory by analyzing more than 200 records from the insect’s native range in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. They then used climate data to determine its likely ideal habitat across six continents in a process dubbed “scientific sleuthing.”
“We’re making an educated guess on how fast and far these insects can move, their rate of success in establishing a nest, and offering different scenarios, from least bad to worst,” Javier Illan, WSU entomologist and study author, said of the method. “No one has done this before for this species.”
