"Candidates backed by President Trump were outperforming expectations in two closely watched congressional special elections on Tuesday night, as former Navy combat pilot Mike Garcia inched closer to retaking Democrat Katie Hill's California seat and Republican Tom Tiffany easily prevailed in Wisconsin.

"Garcia grabbed a substantial early lead Tuesday in the fight for the open U.S. House seat north of Los Angeles in the swing 25th District, giving California Republicans a chance to claim a Democratic-held congressional seat in the state for the first time since 1998. With 76 percent of precincts reporting and approximately 143,000 ballots counted, Garcia was leading Democrat Christy Smith 55.9 percent to 44.1 percent.

"But, California routinely counts large numbers of votes after election day, and mail ballots can arrive as late as Friday and still be counted as long as they were postmarked by Tuesday. An unknown number of ballots remained uncounted and Los Angeles County, where most of them are located, was not expected to update its tally again until Friday. ...

"The contest is the only competitive House race in the country in the midst of the coronavirus crisis. It's seen nationally as a proxy vote on Trump's leadership and a possible harbinger for November elections."

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"Richard Grenell, the acting director of national intelligence, has declassified documents related to Obama administration officials' unmasking of Michael Flynn in transcripts of phone calls he had with Russia's ambassador, a senior intelligence official told The Daily Caller News Foundation.

"Grenell visited the Justice Department last week to meet with officials there to discuss releasing the documents, which include names of Obama-era officials involved in unmasking Flynn's name in the phone call transcripts. ...

"Unmasking refers to a process where top U.S. government officials can request information on American citizens picked up during electronic surveillance of foreigners. Flynn was unveiled as taking part in a Dec. 29, 2016 phone with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador.

"It is not illegal for U.S. officials to make unmasking requests. But the information on Flynn was leaked to The Washington Post, opening up the possibility that someone in the Obama administration illegally disclosed classified information.

"An unidentified senior U.S. official provided details of the Flynn-Kislyak phone call to The Washington Post for a column published on Jan. 12, 2017."

"No wonder Barack Obama is 'pretty darn invested' in making sure Donald Trump doesn't win re-election. The former president knows his Teflon coating is wearing thin.

"With his nemesis, Gen. Michael Flynn, suddenly exonerated, he also knows that Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr are closing in on the truth of his role in the whole dirty Russia-collusion lie.

"'There's more to come,' President Trump told 'Fox & Friends' on Friday, the day after the Justice Department dismissed its case against Flynn, having found that the FBI had laid a 'perjury trap' for his short-lived national security adviser.

"'I believe [Obama] and Biden -- Sleepy Joe was involved in this also, very much.'"

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"The collusion house of cards has finally and fully collapsed.

"In a stunning turn of events Thursday, the Justice Department dropped its case against former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn. Exculpatory documents concealed by the FBI and federal prosecutors for more than three years showed that the retired Army lieutenant general never lied or committed a crime.

"The FBI knew Flynn did not collude with Russians. He is a patriot, not a traitor.

"The notion that candidate Donald Trump conspired with Moscow to steal the 2016 presidential election was always an implausible phantasm built on a foundation of Russian disinformation commissioned by the Hillary Clinton campaign and Democrats.

"The malevolent James Comey, fired director of the FBI, knew this but it didn't deter him. He and his lieutenants sedulously stacked the cards, one by one, against Trump by exploiting the bogus allegations and pursuing an illicit investigation designed to drive him from office.

"House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and his sycophants in the media propagated the Russia hoax by insisting there was 'solid evidence' that Trump was a secret Kremlin asset and predicting the imminent demise of his presidency. Except no such evidence ever existed. Collusion was nothing more than an illusion and a delusion.

"Tragically, people like Flynn became collateral damage amid the carnage of corruption, dishonesty, abuse and injustice."

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"Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) on Wednesday predicted that a 'tidal wave' of lawsuits against reopening small businesses would flood the courts if there is no liability protection legislation passed by Congress.

"The Texas senator told 'The Hugh Hewitt Show' that he agreed with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) that liability protection for small businesses that are reopening after the pandemic is necessary.

"'If we do nothing, there will be an onslaught, a tidal wave of lawsuits going after every small business in America for opening up and risking COVID-19,' he said. 'That's not an acceptable course of action.'

"Cruz said he expects Democratic lawmakers to 'protect trial lawyers' by excluding the liability protection because they are funders of the party. He said Democrats' priority during the pandemic has been political to 'take care of their partisan wish list.'

"'And so I fully expect that [Senate Minority Leader] Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and [Speaker] Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) will go to the barricades to protect the ability of the trial lawyers to sue everyone and try to extract billions from the system,' he said. 'I don't know how that will shake out.'"

"Dr. Neil Ferguson, director of the prestigious MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis at Imperial College London, published an explosive report on March 16 predicting that without intervention coronavirus deaths in the U.K. could reach 550,000 and American fatalities could be as high as 2.2 million.

"Alarmed by Dr. Ferguson's predictions, the British government scrapped its original plan of allowing its population to acquire 'herd immunity' to the virus naturally in favor of a strict lockdown. The U.S. government fell into line with similar guidelines shortly thereafter.

"On Monday, the epidemiologist whose projections guided the imposition of strict stay-home measures resigned his position when it was reported that his married lover visited him at his home -- twice -- in defiance of social distancing rules."

"BEIJING (Reuters) - An internal Chinese report warns that Beijing faces a rising wave of hostility in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak that could tip relations with the United States into confrontation, people familiar with the paper told Reuters.

"The report, presented early last month by the Ministry of State Security to top Beijing leaders including President Xi Jinping, concluded that global anti-China sentiment is at its highest since the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown, the sources said.

"As a result, Beijing faces a wave of anti-China sentiment led by the United States in the aftermath of the pandemic and needs to be prepared in a worst-case scenario for armed confrontation between the two global powers, according to people familiar with the report's content, who declined to be identified given the sensitivity of the matter.

"The report was drawn up by the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations (CICIR), a think tank affiliated with the Ministry of State Security, China's top intelligence body. ...

"Reuters couldn't determine to what extent the stark assessment described in the paper reflects positions held by China's state leaders, and to what extent, if at all, it would influence policy. But the presentation of the report shows how seriously Beijing takes the threat of a building backlash that could threaten what China sees as its strategic investments overseas and its view of its security standing."

"Had the Department of Justice (DOJ) released the newly disclosed documents related to Gen. Michael Flynn three years ago, instead of fired FBI Director James Comey improperly leaking his 'memos' on President Trump, there definitely would have been a special counsel -- only it would have been investigating the FBI for gross abuse of power, not the Trump administration.

"The new documents are in effect the 'smoking gun' proving that a cabal at the FBI acted above the law and with extreme political bias, targeting people for prosecution rather than investigating crimes. ...

"It is all coming out now, but it is way too late. Attorney General William Barr seems to see this all very clearly, but the time to act with tough indictments is truly now, with the release of these explosive documents."

Read entire article here.

"If you thought the coronavirus presented difficult policy questions, don't worry -- we have science. ...

"The invocation of science as the ultimate authority capable of settling questions of how we should govern ourselves is a persistent feature of modern Western life going back several centuries, and has always been a mistake. It is especially so in this crisis, when so much is still unknown about the coronavirus and immensely complicated and consequential public-policy questions are in play. ...

"Of course, our policymakers should be informed by facts and reason, but science has a limited competency. Once you are outside a lab setting and dealing with matters of public policy, questions of values and how to strike a balance between competing priorities are involved and they simply can't be settled by people in white lab coats. ...

"Obviously, science already has made an enormous contribution to our fight against the coronavirus, and may -- through therapies or a vaccine -- go a long way to solving this crisis. But life is not an equation, and neither is politics or policy.

"We, as a self-governing people, will have to decide the important questions about how to respond to the coronavirus going forward, not the doctors on TV or the researchers in the labs."

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"The business community is pressuring the White House and Congress to shield companies from lawsuits as they seek to reopen, setting up a politically charged battle as coronavirus restrictions around the country begin to ease.

"As Congress considers more legislation to jolt the economy back to life, Democrats, labor unions and trial attorneys have voiced fierce opposition to a liability shield for employers. But top Republican lawmakers and the Trump administration appear eager to extend businesses of all sizes a layer of legal protection from any coronavirus-related litigation.

"The debate over liability protections has quickly emerged as a new sticking point as Congress weighs another round of coronavirus relief aid. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) has said the GOP-controlled Senate won't pass a bill providing more assistance to state and local governments if it doesn't include those legal protections.

"'Imagine you are a businessman thinking about reopening, and you've heard that the trial lawyers all over the country are sharpening their pencils getting ready to sue you, claiming that you didn't engage in proper distancing or other issues related to health and safety,' McConnell said this week on Fox News.

"His remarks came on the heels of similar comments from Larry Kudlow, President Trump's top economic adviser.

"'You've got to give the businesses some confidence here that if something happens, and it may not be their fault -- the disease is an infectious disease -- if something happens, you can't take them out of business, Kudlow said on CNBC."

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