News (1)
'Enough is Enough': DeSantis signs bill to confront CCP influence
Reporters : Eva Fu, Victoria Wu / Publisher : The Epoch Times PREMIUM
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed two pieces of legislation on June 7 designed to combat the influence of communist China in the United States.
“If you look right now, there is no single entity that exercises a more pervasive nefarious influence across a wide range of American industries and institutions than the Communist Party of China,” the Republican said during a press conference in Miami.
“All we are doing today is saying, ‘Enough is enough.’ We’ve got to start fighting back, and so the state of Florida is doing that,” he said.
One of the bills aims to cut the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) access to higher academic institutions—public and private—by prohibiting those entities from entering into agreements with the Chinese regime or companies with close state ties.
The bill will exclude Confucius Institutes, a controversial Beijing-backed program that has drawn scrutiny for its role in stifling freedom of expression on campus. It will also ensure that “all nation-states, corporations, organizations, and individuals seeking to engage with colleges and universities are fully vetted,” DeSantis said.
Florida shuttered the last Confucius Institute in the state in September 2019; 47 such facilities still remain in the United States.
“We don’t want bad actors involved in our colleges and universities, and we’ll hold you accountable if you run afoul of these new laws,” DeSantis added.
The second measure, called the Combating Corporate Espionage in Florida Act, would make stealing and selling trade secrets a criminal offense, DeSantis warned. Stealing or attempting to steal a trade secret for one’s own benefit constitutes a third-degree felony punishable by up to five years in prison, he said.
“If the same person tries to sell the stolen trade secret, they’ll face a second-degree felony with even more penalties,” he said, adding that the individual or entity would face even harsher penalties for acting on behalf of a foreign government.
“We knew that we needed to stand up, we knew that we needed to start taking a stand against this, because it’s really gotten out of hand,” he said.
He told The Epoch Times in an interview on June 7 that with the two bills signed into law, Florida has “the most robust protections against CCP influence that any state’s done so far.”
Both measures go into effect on July 1, he said.
At the press conference, the governor cited a number of recent federal prosecutions of Chinese individuals for “being in cahoots with the Chinese government.” That includes a University of Florida professor charged with secretly taking $1.75 million in U.S. taxpayers’ money to fund research for a firm he founded in China.
A Jacksonville woman who is the wife of a U.S. Navy officer pleaded guilty in September 2020 to helping smuggle military-grade equipment to China.
The National Institutes of Health said in April that it has flagged 500 researchers suspected of having financial ties with the CCP and other foreign adversaries. Examples like these haven’t gotten the attention they deserve, DeSantis said, adding that there’s a reason for that.
“There’s a lot of people in the United States who benefit from the largesse that’s provided by the Communist Party of China,” he told The Epoch Times.
While the CCP influence is pervasive in U.S. academia, the infiltration doesn’t stop there, he said.
“You look at corporate media, in the entertainment industry in this country, they are in the pocket of the Communist Party of China,” he said at the press conference. “They were on the vanguard of trying to suppress the truth about the lab leak theory.”
DeSantis also noted how Bing, a Microsoft-owned search engine, censored the iconic “tank man” image during the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre; Microsoft later claimed that was a result of “accidental human error.”
DeSantis says it was a “pretty convenient mistake.”
“It’s amazing how these entertainment companies will genuflect to whatever the CCP wants. It’s amazing how corporate media in this country is very scared to hold them accountable. And you see that time and time again,” he told The Epoch Times.
DeSantis said he plans to see what difference the June 7 action makes.
“This is a long-term issue that we’re going to have to engage with, and we’ll continue to do it.”
News (2)
DeSantis signs bill banning transgender athletes form women's sports
Reporter : Jack Phillips / Publisher : The Epoch Times PREMIUM
Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill that would bar transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports at schools and universities across Florida.
DeSantis, a Republican, signed the “Fairness in Women’s Sports Act” on Tuesday morning in Jacksonville, saying that in schools, “girls are going to play girls’ sports, and boys are going to play boys’ sports.”
The Florida state Legislature passed a measure in April that prevents transgender athletes from competing in women’s sports, saying that it would be unfair and argued that biological males possess significant physical advantages over females.
“We believe in the state of Florida protecting the fairness and integrity of women’s athletics,” said DeSantis in Jacksonville alongside several female athletes at the Trinity Christian Academy.
State Sen. Kelli Stargel, a Republican who sponsored the legislation, noted that “we all know that men are stronger than women.”
“I’ve always heard as a kid, ‘You run like a girl,’” she said, referring to a video showing Selina Soule, a Connecticut track athlete who filed a lawsuit over biologically male transgender athletes competing in high school girls’ sports.
“And when you’re looking at that video,” Stargel said, “it’s evident the woman, the transgender woman who competed, or self-identified woman, ran very differently than the others in the competition. It’s physiologically different. Men are stronger, they have bigger lung capacity, stronger muscles.”
The state’s Democratic Party accused DeSantis and Republicans of being discriminatory.
“The language denigrating trans youth incorporated in this bill shows how little the Republican-led legislature regards equal treatment for all our young people,” said the state Democratic Party in a statement.
But Stargel pushed back, saying Republicans are not against any particular group and that the bill is about fairness.
“This is not about that. This is about sports and having competitive advantage and having the ability to compete,” she remarked on Tuesday, adding that the bill will benefit women.
DeSantis also dismissed a pressure campaign from corporations and the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) that they might pull out of Florida due to the bill. In 2017, the NCAA pulled events from North Carolina after a similar bill was passed.
“Some of these organizations say they’re not going to hold events if you do this. Just let me say very clearly, in Florida, we’re going to do what’s right, we’ll stand up to corporations, they are not going to dictate the policies in this state,” the governor said. “We will stand up to groups like the NCAA, who think that they should be able to dictate the policies in different states.”
News (3)
Trump considering DeSantis as possible 2024 running mate
https://nypost.com/2021/06/07/trump-eyeing-florida-gov-desantis-as-2024-running-mate/
News (4)
New NASA leader does not think UFO sightings are optical illusions
Reporter : Samuel Allegri / Publisher : The Epoch Times PREMIUM
Bill Nelson, NASA’s recently appointed leader, is a former Florida senator and a spaceflight veteran. In an interview with CNN, he said that even to the higher authorities of the space agency it is not clear what the flying objects caught on tape are.
Nelson stated that he does not regard UFOs to be proof of extraterrestrials visiting our planet, saying “I think I would know.” However, he acknowledged that it would be too early to completely discard that possibility.
“We don’t know if it’s extraterrestrial. We don’t know if it’s an enemy. We don’t know if it’s an optical phenomenon,” Nelson remarked, “we don’t think [it’s an optical phenomenon] because of the characteristics that those Navy jet pilots described … And so the bottom line is, we want to know.”
In addition, former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe said that the number of UFO sightings is “far greater” than the ones that have been revealed to the public.
Ratcliffe appeared on Fox News and said that there is a “need to get explanations” for the observation of objects that were moving at “five times the speed of sound.”
“I think what is important, and people can expect about this UAP report is I think it will talk about the number of sightings, they are far greater than have been publicly disclosed before,” Ratcliffe noted.
“I think there has been leaking there may be as many as 100. I am not going to dispute that number, but what is more important … is that the number of sightings and recordings that have been picked up by what we call multiple sensors—that is visual, radar, ISR, satellite, and you have those under conditions we see UAPs, that explains away visual disturbances or things like that.”
“Here is what troubles me right now, Trey, is, you know, a lot of people say, well, maybe it is Russia or China.” Ratcliffe continued.
“Some things that have been publicly talked about, we know for a fact from intelligence community we have high confidence that things like transmedium properties and hypersonic speed, meaning vehicles that go at five times the speed of sound, or Mach five, Russia and China clearly did not have that in in 2004 when some of these things were sighted and recorded. And so, we need to get explanations for them.”
News (5)
Biden neglects to mention D-Day, tweets about 1921 Tulsa Massacre instead
Reporter : Elizabeth Stauffer, The Western Journal
Sunday, June 6, was the 77th anniversary of D-Day, one of the most significant dates in the history of World War II. The Allied invasion of Normandy was the largest amphibious assault ever carried out.
It marked the start of the two-month-long Battle of Normandy and the eventual liberation of France from the German occupation.
Historians have calculated the number of confirmed Allied fatalities on that first day alone to be 4,415, according to the National D-Day Memorial. Total Allied casualties are estimated at nearly 10,000. Codenamed “Operation Overlord,” the D-Day landing involved “over 5,000 ships, 11,000 airplanes, and over 150,000 service men,” the memorial notes.
Allied heads of state have traditionally marked the day of remembrance by honoring the brave men who sacrificed so much on the shores of Normandy so that we may enjoy freedom today.
Two years ago, then-President Donald Trump delivered one of the most powerful speeches of his presidency on the 75th anniversary of D-Day. He even drew praise from critics such as MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough and CNN’s Jim Acosta.
It was a different story this year for President Joe Biden, who neglected to acknowledge the momentous date at all. Instead, he chose to pay tribute to the survivors of the 1921 Tulsa Massacre.
That Tulsa post was one of only two published on the “@POTUS” Twitter account on Sunday. The other was an empty brag about “getting American back on track.”
My intention is not to minimize the atrocity that occurred on May 31, 1921, in Tulsa, Oklahoma. It is arguably the single most tragic day in the history of racial violence in the U.S. (I posted here about the National Black Power Convention held last weekend in Tulsa to mark this sad chapter in history.)
For those who may be unfamiliar with this event, in the early 1900s, a large number of African-Americans settled in the Greenwood district of Tulsa.
According to History.com, the neighborhood “grew and flourished as a Black economic and cultural mecca—until May 31, 1921. That’s when a white mob began a rampage through some 35 square blocks, decimating the community known proudly as ‘Black Wall Street.’ Armed rioters, many deputized by local police, looted and burned down businesses, homes, schools, churches, a hospital, hotel, public library, newspaper offices and more. While the official death toll of the Tulsa race massacre was 36, historians estimate it may have been as high as 300. As many as 10,000 people were left homeless.”
The events that took place 100 years ago in Tulsa were heinous. No one is denying that.
But Biden had already acknowledged the anniversary. He traveled to Tulsa last Tuesday to commemorate the occasion.
He spoke to survivors. His comments ranged from the ludicrous to the downright dangerous. Please read my post “Biden Managed a Trifecta of Stupid in His Tulsa Massacre Speech” to see for yourself just how disturbing his remarks really were.
The Tulsa massacre anniversary rated a trip to Oklahoma, but the memory of D-Day, a date that changed the course of world history, didn’t elicit even a mention from the president of the United States.
Biden’s failure to recognize D-Day tells us, and our foreign adversaries, a lot about his and his administration’s priorities.
During his speech last week in Tulsa, Biden said, “According to the intelligence community, terrorism from white supremacy is the most lethal threat to the homeland today. Not ISIS, not Al Qaeda, white supremacy. That’s not me. That’s the intelligence community.”
On Sunday night, former Republican Rep. Trey Gowdy of South Carolina, now a Fox News contributor, concluded his new Fox News program by posing a question to those who can’t answer, those who sacrificed their lives on D-Day. A visibly emotionally Gowdy asked: “Was it worth it?”
“Was it worth it to the men and the women who were killed serving, protecting and defending this country?” Gowdy asked. “… You might frame the question differently, you may ask, ‘Are we worth it?’ Are we now, as a country, what you sacrificed for us to be? Are we worth, as a country, worth what you gave up? …”
He continued: “I do wonder sometimes what those women and men who died on behalf of this country would say. … When we reflect on the state of our politics, was it worth dying for? When we reflect on what has become of our First Amendment, was it worth losing your life over? When we reflect on the divisions in our country, these divisions that seem so intractable at times, was it worth dying for? …”
“Have we become the country you imagined we would be when you fought and fell for us? Is this the America you dreamed of when you were taking your last breath? …”
Perhaps five months ago, when we had a patriotic president who loved America, the answer might have been “yes.”
But what if they were shown a clip of Biden or House Speaker Nancy Pelosi spewing their stupidity? Desperately trying to take away our liberties for the sake of political power?
Or Dr. Anthony Fauci conspiring with his cronies in the world scientific community to turn the lab leak theory into a conspiracy theory? What if they were shown a clip of Rep. Adam Schiff trying to impeach a president over what he knew to be lies? What would they think about H.R. 1, the Democrats’ latest attempt to consolidate power for years to come?
The answer might be “no.” Because they would see that the most dangerous threat to liberty that Americans face today is their own government.
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