Day: May 11, 2020

Facebook Provides $16M in Grants to 200 Mostly Liberal Local Newsrooms

Jason M. Reynolds

Facebook last week announced that more than 200 news organizations will receive nearly $16 million in grants through the Facebook Journalism Project’s relief fund for local news. These grants come from $25 million in relief funding announced in March from Facebook’s $100 million global investment in news. It includes:

$10.3 million being awarded to 144 US local newsrooms as part of the COVID-19 Local News Relief Fund Grant Program. The fund is supporting many publishers who are hardest hit by this crisis: nearly 80 percent of recipients are family- or independently owned and more than half are published by or for communities of color.

$5.4 million being awarded to 59 North American newsrooms that participated in Facebook Local News Accelerator programs focused on subscriptions and memberships.

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EXCLUSIVE: Trump Campaign Staffer Speaks Out after Targeted by Collusion Hoaxers

Neil W. McCabe

A former national security advisor to New York City developer Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign told Star Newspapers about his ordeal as he was hounded by Russian Collusion Hoaxers, Special Counsel Robert Mueller and their allies in the mainstream media.

“It was a waking nightmare for several years because of the chain reaction sparked by that opinion column,” said J.D. Gordon, who was also a national security advisor for the 2012 Herman Cain and the 2016 Michael Huckabee presidential campaigns.

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Commentary: Export Bans and the Re-Emergence of the Nation-State

Michigan Star Staff

The COVID-19 pandemic has served to upend many long-held policy assumptions, but none so clearly as the theory that international trade rests purely on economic incentives, and that those economic incentives will always override a country’s more base instincts to act in its own interest because of the cost to global profits.

Responses from countries around the world to COVID-19 have significantly fractured this argument. It can no longer be said with unshakable confidence that nations will sidestep their own economic objectives, interests, and policies for the sake of a more profitable international economic integration.

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Sen Dianne Feinstein, Who Defended Christine Blasey Ford, Calls Tara Reade’s Accusation Against Joe Biden ‘Ridiculous’

Admin

Rep. Dianne Feinstein on Thursday called Tara Reade’s sexual allegations against former Vice President Joe Biden “ridiculous” and said she does not believe her.

The California Democrat discussed Reade’s allegations before reporters, and said Reade’s are “totally different” from the sexual assault allegations Christine Blasey Ford made against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh.

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More California Churches, Sheriffs Announce Defiance of State, Local Orders

Admin

California entered phase 2 of its reopening plan Friday, but that excluded houses of worship being able to hold in-person services. Regardless, several thousand church leaders say they plan to reopen by May 31 no matter what the governor says.

California Church United, a network of 3,000 California churches, representing 2.5 million members, announced it plans to open May 31, instead of waiting until the state implements phase 3, which includes allowing modified reopening of houses of worship.

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Former Warren Aide on Commission Overseeing COVID Stimulus Is Married to Lawyer Who Defends Big Corporate Clients

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One of the regulators pegged to oversee the coronavirus stimulus is married to a corporate attorney who touts her history of defending companies in civil and criminal enforcement cases before the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC), public records show.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer tapped attorney Bharat Ramamurti to sit on the Congressional Oversight Commission, a five-member panel Congress created in March to oversee the $2.2 trillion stimulus package. The commission’s statute does not explicitly require members to disclose their finances, though three of the members are obligated to provide disclosures as they are lawmakers.

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Trump Campaign Launches ‘Moms For Trump’ Coalition

Michigan Star Staff

President Donald Trump’s campaign launched a “Moms for Trump” coalition ahead of Mother’s Day during an online broadcast Saturday night.

The campaign’s online broadcast aired at 8 p.m., Trump campaign spokeswoman Sarah Matthews told the Daily Caller News Foundation. It featured top Trump 2020 advisers Lara Trump, Mercedes Schlapp, Katrina Pierson and national chair of Trump Victory Finance Committee Kimberly Guilfoyle.

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Commentary: America’s Rock-n-Roll Architect Little Richard Has Died

Michigan Star Staff

Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as “Little Richard,” died on Saturday at his Nashville home. He was 87. Millennials and such may be unaware of the man and the great American music he pioneered.

As the big-band era of the 1940s began to wane, musicians opted for smaller combos. They pounded out a rollicking sound with a heavy backbeat, honking saxophones, percussive pianos, and simple lyrics that lingered in the mind. When Chuck Berry sang “roll over Beethoven, dig these rhythm and blues,” that was the music he was talking about. By the mid-1950s, rhythm and blues had been rebranded as rock and roll, and Little Richard was the king.

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Industry Leaders Warn Hundreds of Businesses Won’t Survive Reopening Plan, Extended Stay-Home Order

Michigan Star Staff

Michigan business leaders are concerned some businesses won’t survive Michigan’s mandated closures by Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, which she extended yesterday through at least May 28.

Whitmer announced a plan to reopen the economy Thursday but provided no dates, other than for manufacturing, for when additional businesses could reopen.

Michigan Chamber President and CEO Rich Studley said the order “may be a foreclosure notice” for many small and seasonal businesses.

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