Gaetz and McCarthy have heated exchange in closed door meeting amid looming shutdown

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/gaetz-and-mccarthy-have-heated-exchange-in-closed-door-meeting-amid-looming-shutdown/ar-AA1hpucw?ocid=mailsignout&pc=U591&cvid=d70e797a835e42c0833390762bf34797&ei=30#image=BB1gLBQV|1

WASHINGTON - Rep. Matt Gaetz, R-Fla., got into a heated exchange with House Speaker Kevin McCarthy in a closed door meeting Thursday as tensions between lawmakers on the Hill grow amid a looming government shutdown, according to reports.

Gaetz told The Hill that he asked McCarthy whether the speaker was paying for people “to create a false negative sentiment” about him online.

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“From secretaries to secretary of state, Biden documents probe casts wide net: Sources”

Investigators have interviewed scores of witnesses -- some more than once.
>https://abcnews.go.com/amp/US/secretaries-secretary-state-biden-documents-probe-casts-wide/story?id=103504213

“The federal investigation into President Joe Biden's handling of classified documents prior to becoming president has grown into a sprawling examination of Obama-era security protocols and internal White House processes, with investigators so far interviewing scores of witnesses, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, sources familiar with the investigation told ABC News.

Federal prosecutors and FBI agents from special counsel Robert Hur's office have been interviewing witnesses for nearly nine months, targeting an expansive constellation of former aides -- from high-level advisers to executive assistants and at least one White House attorney. Several sources estimated that as many as 100 witnesses have already been interviewed, with interviews conducted as recently as last week and some witnesses asked to return for follow-up interviews.

BUT
>Sources who were present for some of the interviews, including witnesses, told ABC News that authorities had apparently uncovered instances of carelessness from Biden's vice presidency, but that -- based on what was said in the interviews -- it seemed to them that the improper removal of classified documents from Biden's office when he left the White House in 2017 was more likely a mistake than a criminal act.
It’s another potential cover up or a hint from ABC who ran that 10pt deficit poll against Biden vs Trump to send him a message.

They are fence sitting officially and can’t figure out whether to fully dump this guy or keep up the cover up. Biden is losing on economy, invasion immigration, corruption, and cognitive function. If Biden starts losing on classified doc scandals next it’s even more JOEVER than it already is.

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“Hunter Biden received $250K wires originating in Beijing with beneficiary address listed as Joe Biden's home”
>https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-received-250k-wire-from-beijing-with-beneficiary-address-listed-as-joe-biden-delaware-home.amp

EXCLUSIVE: Hunter Biden received wires that originated in Beijing for more than $250,000 from Chinese business partners during the summer of 2019 — wires that listed the Delaware home of Joe Biden as the beneficiary address for the funds.

House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., has been investigating the Biden family business dealings and President Biden’s alleged involvement in those ventures.

As part of the investigation, Comer subpoenaed financial records related to a specific bank account and received records of two wires originating from Beijing and linked to BHR Partners.

BHR Partners is a joint-venture between Hunter Biden’s Rosemont Seneca and Chinese investment firm Bohai Capital. BHR Partners is a Beijing-backed private equity firm controlled by Bank of China Limited. Hunter Biden reportedly sat on the board of directors of BHR Partners.

>The first wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated July 26, 2019, was for $10,000 from an individual named Ms. Wang Xin. There is a Ms. Wang Xin listed on the website for BHR Partners. It is unclear if the wire came from that Wang Xin.
>The second wire transfer sent to Hunter Biden, dated Aug. 2, 2019, was for $250,000 from Li Xiang Sheng — also known as Jonathan Li, the CEO of BHR Partners — and Ms. Tan Ling. The committee is trying to identify Ling’s role.

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https://variety.com/2023/digital/news/net-neutrality-fcc-agenda-democrat-criticism-1235736049/
https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/federal-judge-declares-texas-drag-law-unconstitutional-rcna117486
https://gizmodo.com/rosenworcel-fcc-reinstate-net-neutrality-1850873109
https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2023/09/fcc-details-plan-to-restore-the-net-neutrality-rules-repealed-by-ajit-pai/

> Net neutrality — the concept that internet service providers should be prohibited from blocking or degrading access to users — is back in political play. And not everyone’s happy about the reprise.

On Tuesday, FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel proposed restoring the agency’s net neutrality rules under its authority to reclassify broadband as a telecommunications service (rather than an information service). The proposal seeks to “largely” return to the Open Internet Order rules the FCC adopted in 2015, before they were overturned in 2018 by the Trump administration.

“In the wake of the pandemic and the generational investment in internet access, we have a window to update our policies to make sure that the internet is not only open, but fast and fair, safe and secure,” Rosenworcel said in remarks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. “I am committed to seizing this opportunity. Now is the time for our rules of the road for internet service providers to reflect the reality that internet access is a necessity for daily life. Let’s get to it.”

Rosenworcel proposed the FCC take the first procedural steps toward reaffirming rules that would treat broadband internet service as “an essential service for American life.” Such net neutrality rules would affirm, under Title II of the Communications Act, “that broadband service is on par with water, power, and phone service; that is: essential,” according to a summary of her remarks provided by the agency.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7-W92xs0iMY&t=9s
New York Judge Rules Trump Committed Fraud in Valuing Assets
https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/new-york-judge-rules-trump-committed-fraud-in-valuing-assets-c90bcdd3?mod=hp_lead_pos4
A New York judge on Tuesday found that Donald Trump and his family business committed fraud by making false and misleading valuations on much of his real-estate empire and ordered the cancellation of legal certificates that have allowed the Trumps to do business in the state.The ruling handed a significant early victory to state Attorney General Letitia James, a Democrat, on part of her civil-fraud case against Trump, which is set to go to trial next week.She sued the former president last year and has accused Trump in court filings of inflating his annual net worth by as much as $3.6 billion between 2011 and 2021 by falsely valuing his properties.Overvaluing his real estate, including his flagship Manhattan building, the Trump Tower, his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida and his golf courses, allowed Trump to obtain bank loans on more favorable terms, James has alleged. She is seeking financial penalties of $250 million.The cancellation of the business certificates also was a centerpiece request in the attorney general’s case, a remedy that could cripple the Trump Organization’s ability to operate in New York.Trump, the Republican front-runner for the 2024 presidential nomination, has denied the allegations and attacked the case as politically motivated.Chris Kise, a lawyer for Trump, said the ruling was outrageous and disconnected from the facts and governing law. “The court disregarded the viewpoint of those actually involved in the loan transactions who testified there was nothing misleading, there was no fraud, and the transactions were all highly profitable,” he said.Kise said the full impact of the decision was unclear but pledged that Trump and his family “will seek all available appellate remedies to rectify this miscarriage of justice.

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https://www.businessinsider.com/russian-officers-sold-black-sea-fleet-intel-ukrainian-fighters-report-2023-9

Ukrainian resistance fighters say Russian officers who hadn't been paid by Moscow sold them key intel on the Black Sea Fleet. Missiles then tore through the headquarters.

After missing their anticipated salary payments, Russian officers leaked sensitive information about Moscow's Black Sea Fleet to a Ukrainian partisan movement, Ukrainian media reported, revealing the intelligence later paved the way for a devastating missile strike on the fleet's headquarters in the occupied Crimean Peninsula.

Ukrainian resistance fighters told the Kyiv Post in a recent interview that they managed to gather information about high-ranking Russian commanders from officers who were frustrated by Moscow's failure to pay their salaries on time. They said the officers were financially compensated in exchange for the information, which was then passed along to state agencies and reportedly used to plan last week's attack on the Black Sea Fleet's headquarters.

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https://www.nbcnews.com/nbc-out/out-politics-and-policy/federal-judge-declares-texas-drag-law-unconstitutional-rcna117486

A federal judge on Tuesday struck down a Texas law that LGBTQ advocates feared would ban drag shows in the state and imprison performers.

The law, which Republican Gov. Greg Abbott signed in June, expanded existing state law to prevent children from exposure to sexually explicit performances. While the legislation, Senate Bill 12, does not cite drag specifically, drag performers feared that it was passed with the intention of criminalizing the art form, which has deep ties to the LGBTQ community, and would that it repress their freedom of expression.

The bill’s statement of intent leads with and repeatedly cites drag shows as a threat to children. And on the day Abbott signed the bill into law, he shared an article about it and wrote, “Texas Governor Signs Law Banning Drag Performances in Public. That’s right.”

U.S. District Judge David Hittner, who was nominated by Republican President Ronald Reagan, ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, writing that the law “impermissibly infringes on the First Amendment and chills free speech.”

“Not all people will like or condone certain performances,” Hittner wrote. “This is no different than a person’s opinion on certain comedy or genres of music, but that alone does not strip First Amendment protection.”

Hittner — who temporarily blocked the law from taking effect last month — added that the “chilling effect S.B. 12 will have on speech in general outweighs any hardship on the State of Texas.”

LGBTQ advocates and drag performers celebrated the ruling.

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House Republicans release more than 700 pages of internal IRS documents from whistleblowers in Hunter Biden probe
By Annie Grayer, Marshall Cohen and Hannah Rabinowitz, CNN
Updated 11:02 PM EDT, Wed September 27, 2023

https://www.cnn.com/2023/09/27/politics/house-republicans-internal-irs-documents-hunter-biden-whistleblowers/index.html

Washington
CNN
—
Documents released Wednesday by House Republicans shed new light on how two Internal Revenue Service agents who investigated Hunter Biden felt like they hit roadblocks whenever President Joe Biden’s name came up in the criminal probe.

However, some of the documents also show that senior Justice Department prosecutors believed there were legitimate reasons for investigators to steer away from the elder Biden. And there is no indication that the DOJ officials were acting at the request of senior leadership.

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https://news.yahoo.com/target-says-close-9-stores-202524518.html

Target says it will close 9 stores in 4 states because of theft, worker safety

Target announced on Tuesday that it is closing nine stores in four states, citing theft, organized retail crime and worker safety.

The stores will close Oct. 21.

In a press release, the company said the "difficult decision" was made to protect workers and customers.

"We know that our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all," company officials said in the statement..

The company said it previously had invested "heavily" in crime-prevention strategies at the affected stores, such as adding more security team employees, using third-party guard services, and putting into place theft-deterrent efforts.

"Despite our efforts, unfortunately, we continue to face fundamental challenges to operating these stores safely and successfully," the company said.

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QAnon Man Threatened to Kill Congresswoman He Believed Was Transgender
BY MATTHEW IMPELLI ON 9/27/23 AT 10:00 AM EDT

https://www.newsweek.com/man-threatened-kill-congresswoman-transgender-qanon-1830288

ANew Mexico man and QAnon believer recently pleaded guilty to threatening to kill a Texas congresswoman because he believed that she was transgender.

Earlier this month, Michael David Fox entered a guilty plea for interstate transmission of threatening communications after he was arrested by federal agents in May for a call he made to a Texas representative, threatening to kill her. Fox said his belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory prompted the call.

According to a criminal complaint reviewed by Newsweek, Fox made a call on May 18 to "the office of a congresswoman for the District of Texas, United States House of Representatives ('V1"), who is from Houston, Texas." The congresswoman was not identified in the complaint.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/09/26/whale-gulf-mexico-rices-oil/

It was a whale of an announcement.

After years of research, scientists said they had discovered an entirely new species of whale swimming right under their noses in the Gulf of Mexico.

Yet as soon as scientists identified Rice’s whale, also known as the Gulf of Mexico whale, two years ago, there was a problem. There were hardly any left. With only about 50 remaining, the whale is one of the most endangered marine mammals on Earth.

Now efforts to protect the whale are running headfirst into that other behemoth off the Gulf Coast: the offshore oil and gas industry.

The Biden administration has proposed protecting a massive swath of ocean from Texas to Florida, potentially restricting fossil fuel activity in one of the nation’s top oil-producing spots. Already Biden’s deputies sought to remove millions of acres within its habitat from an offshore oil lease sale originally scheduled for Wednesday.

Offshore oil drillers and Republican lawmakers from Gulf Coast states responded with lawsuits to stop protections they say are economically crippling and hastily executed.

A federal district judge last week agreed, ordering the Biden administration to reverse course on the upcoming lease sale. An appellate court Monday delayed the lease sale until November.

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https://www.cbsnews.com/news/hunter-biden-sues-rudy-giuliani-attorney-robert-costello-for-hacking-laptop-data/

Hunter Biden sued Rudy Giuliani and his former attorney Tuesday, claiming they hacked and manipulated data on an external hard drive associated with his laptop.

Giuliani and the attorney, Robert Costello, have frequently acknowledged accessing the hard drive's data. The lawsuit accuses them of having "dedicated an extraordinary amount of time and energy toward looking for, hacking into, tampering with, manipulating, copying, disseminating, and generally obsessing over data that they were given that was taken or stolen."

Giuliani has sought to paint Hunter Biden as a corrupt businessman, who cashed in on his father's political power. He and Costello have said they were provided the hard drive in 2020 by a Delaware computer repair shop owner who claims Hunter Biden dropped off the laptop the year before and never returned to retrieve it. In May, Hunter Biden also sued the computer repair shop owner, John Paul Mac Isaac, who has denied wrongdoing and said he obtained the laptop legally.

https://apnews.com/article/california-guns-ammunition-tax-school-safety-0870a673a3d4e85c78466897cfd7ff6f
https://thehill.com/business/4224760-california-enacts-first-gun-and-ammunition-tax-in-the-country/
>SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California will ban people from carrying firearms in most public places while doubling the taxes on guns and ammunition sold in the state under two new laws Gov. Gavin Newsom signed Tuesday that will test the limits of the U.S. Supreme Court’s new standard for interpreting the Second Amendment.

The federal government already taxes the sale of guns and ammunition at either 10% or 11%, depending on the type of gun. The law Newsom signed adds another 11% tax on top of that — making California the only state with a separate tax on guns and ammunition, according to the gun control advocacy group Brady.

The money will pay for security improvements at public schools and a variety of gun violence prevention programs, which will go directly into the pocket of jewish billionaire and Newsom donor Michael Bloomberg. Newson regularly preforms fellatio and anilingus on Bloomberg in exchange for campaign contributions from everytown for gun safety. including those geared toward young people in gangs. The money from the federal tax, which has been in place for more than 100 years, pays for wildlife conservation and hunter education programs.
The laws were some of nearly two dozen gun control measures Newsom signed on Tuesday. But he acknowledged many of these laws might not survive legal challenges now that the U.S. Supreme Court has imposed a new standard on interpreting the nation’s gun laws. Just last week, a federal judge struck down a California law banning guns with detachable magazines that carry more than 10 rounds — one of three major pending cases challenging California’s gun restrictions.

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Responding to a claim that Trump was committing fraud by overvaluing his property, while overvaluing his property, is madness

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/donald-trump-mar-a-lago-zillow/

The judge cited a Palm Beach County Assessor’s appraisal of the property from 2011-2021.

Former President Donald Trump and his sons complained on Tuesday that a judge undervalued Mar-a-Lago, arguing that the property could be worth well “over a billion dollars.”

“In an attempt to destroy my father and kick him out of New York, a Judge just ruled that Mar-a-Lago, in Palm Beach Florida, is only worth approximate ‘$18 Million dollars’… Mar-a-Lago is speculated to be worth well over a billion dollars making it arguably the most valuable residential property in the country,” Eric Trump wrote. “It is all so corrupt and coordinated.”

In a court filing Tuesday, New York Justice Arthur Engoron ruled that Trump committed fraud through falsely inflating the value of multiple properties, including Mar-a-Lago and the Trump Tower in New York.

Engoron rejected various rationale for how the supposed inflated figures were achieved, such as by valuing apartment complexes with rent-stabilized the same as those without rent regulation due to the fact that one day the unit may no longer be regulated.

“That is a fantasy world, not the real world,” the court filing reads.

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N.Y. judge finds Donald Trump committed business fraud for a decade

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2023/09/26/ny-judge-finds-trump-committed-fraud-sanctions-his-attorneys/?itid=hp-top-table-main_p001_f007

NEW YORK — A judge overseeing a $250 million lawsuit against Donald Trump ruled the former president and his company committed fraud by inflating his net worth in business transactions, narrowing the scope of what the state’s attorney general must prove at an upcoming civil trial.

New York Supreme Court Justice Arthur Engoron also ordered the cancellation of Trump business certificates and imposed sanctions on attorneys representing him, two of his adult children, two other company executives and the business for repeating arguments that failed multiple times previously and were called “borderline frivolous.”

The judge’s ruling represents a significant setback for Trump by revoking his company’s authority to do business in New York, where the Trump Organization is headquartered and where Trump has major real estate interests. It also represents a victory for Attorney General Letitia James (D), who had asked that Engoron simplify the upcoming trial by deciding in advance that fraud was broadly committed so the state would need to prove only specific illegal acts.

Trump and his attorneys have denied any wrongdoing. Trump spokeswoman Alina Habba said the judge’s ruling Tuesday would be appealed.

Five Trump attorneys have been ordered to pay $7,500 each to a state organization that reimburses clients whose attorneys misused funds. One of the attorneys sanctioned by Engoron is Christopher Kise, a former Florida solicitor general who also represents Trump in federal court there in the indictment over the retention and mishandling of classified documents.

The decision orders the parties to suggest candidates for receivers who will oversee the dissolution of the various entities that make up the Trump Organization’s corporate structure