Joe Concha slams the media for 'soft' questions delivered to president-elect Joe Biden

Biden takes single question about his foot condition; reaction from Fox News contributor Joe Concha.

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  • Biden told this immigrant rights activist 'vote for Trump' in a blunt exchange. He voted for Biden but is ready to push him hard on immigration reform.

    Carlos Rojas Rodriguez confronted then-candidate Joe Biden about deportations in 2019. Here's what Rodriguez wants to see from the president-elect.

  • Seattle to Slash Police Budget as Homicides Hit Highest Level in over a Decade

    Seattles is preparing to slash the city's police budget just as homicides in the city climb to their highest level in more than a decade.Seattle Mayor Jenny Durkan is set to sign a city budget that includes an 18 percent cut to the Seattle Police Department, a move that comes after police reform activists demanded the police budget be reduced by half. Calls for police reform have abounded in cities across the country since May, when George Floyd died at the hands of police in Minneapolis.The city council voted last week to slash about $69 million in funding for officer training, salaries and overtime, and get rid of vacant positions in the police department as well as transfer parking officers, mental health workers, and 911 dispatchers out of the department. The goal is to ultimately reinvest in alternatives to police in situations such as mental health crises.Meanwhile, Seattle had seen 55 murders this year as of Monday, the highest level since at least 2008, the last year of data available. The troubled city is also suffering a spike in violent crime, with 8,418 burglary incidents, up from to 7,634 last year, according to police.The mayor, a Democrat, said last week that she believes the city is "laying the groundwork to make systemic and lasting changes to policing.""We have rightly put forward a plan that seeks to ensure SPD has enough officers to meet 911 response and investigative needs throughout the city, while acknowledging and addressing the disproportionate impacts policing has had on communities of color, particularly Black communities," Durkan said in a statement.Police Chief Carmen Best resigned over the summer amid disagreements with the city council over the cuts to the police budget.In June, rioters claimed and barricaded off several blocks in the city’s downtown Capitol Hill neighborhood, calling it the “Capitol Hill Occupied Protest” zone, or CHOP, after police abandoned their East Precinct to vandals and arsonists. Police agreed not to respond to calls from within the “autonomous zone” unless they were life-threatening.Later that month, however, Durkan, who previously predicted the autonomous zone would usher in a “summer of love” and said her decision to withdraw police from the area reflected her “trust” in protesters, announced the city would begin dismantling the zone, citing incidents of violence. A shooting inside the zone left a 19-year-old dead and another critically injured. Police said they were met by a violent crowd that blocked their access to the victims.

  • It's official: GOP’s Malliotakis ousts Democrat Rose in NYC

    A final tally of absentee ballots has confirmed that Republican Nicole Malliotakis has defeated U.S. Rep. Max Rose, denying the Democrat a second term representing one of the few conservative-leaning parts of New York City. Malliotakis, a New York State Assembly member, opened a big lead over Rose on Election Day in a district that includes all of Staten Island and part of Brooklyn.

  • Scott Atlas, the perfect Trump official, steps down

    Dr. Scott Atlas, the controversial White House coronavirus adviser, left federal employ much the same way he entered it: with an appearance on Fox News.

  • Navy Grounds New Fire Scout Helicopter Drone After Back-to-Back Mishaps

    Both were listed as Class A mishaps, meaning the aircraft likely suffered at least $2.5 million or more in damage.

  • ‘I can’t begin to explain the level of anger I have right now over this’: Georgia election official speaks out about threats against staff

    On Tuesday Gabriel Sterling of the Georgia Secretary of State’s Office spoke forcefully against post-election threats and rhetoric directed at election staff.

  • This Trump Crony Is Trying to Overturn the Election. His Own Group Has Thrown in the Towel.

    Adam Laxalt, the co-chair of the Trump campaign in Nevada, is fighting ferociously against his state’s decision to reward its six electoral votes to President-elect Joe Biden, alleging widespread voter fraud and hyping litigation to overturn Biden’s victory.But a nonprofit ethics and transparency group affiliated with Laxalt, Nevada’s former attorney general, has already conceded Biden’s victory and is looking ahead to the new administration.“It’s become clear that we’re going to be having a Biden team and a Biden administration in 2021,” said Caitlin Sutherland, the executive director of Americans for Public Trust, in an interview on Tuesday. The new administration is “what we will remain focused on going into next year.”Sutherland stressed that Laxalt’s work with the Trump re-election campaign, and his efforts to invalidate Biden’s win in Nevada, were entirely separate from his work with APT, a tax-exempt nonprofit that’s barred by law from engaging in political or partisan activity. “That is something he does in a personal capacity outside his role in APT,” Sutherland said. “As a 501c3, we, and Adam when he works with us, do not engage in anything with a partisan or political bent.”Nevada Gov. Calls Trump’s Conspiracy Theory Retweet ‘Unconscionable’ But Laxalt maintains his position as APT’s outside counsel and frequent spokesman even as he works with the Trump team in a personal capacity. And the fact that the group he works with is planning for a reality he refuses to concede underscores just how great a divergence has developed within the broader conservative movement. One faction appears unable to acknowledge the reality of Joe Biden’s win—perhaps for fear of offending Trump. Another doesn’t want to get caught flat-footed for when that reality comes about.Illustrating the political complications that these two pulls can create for the president’s political allies, Sutherland followed up on her initial interview with The Daily Beast to clarify her statement—and hedge her view on the outcome of the election. “As Biden is working to build out his team, APT will provide transparency and scrutiny, even as litigation on the election results are ongoing,” she wrote.As a leading Trump campaign official in Nevada, Laxalt has been a face of the campaign’s efforts to overturn the state’s presidential contest. Last month, he appeared at a news conference in North Las Vegas—alongside former Trump intelligence chief Ric Grenell and GOP lobbyist Matt Schlapp—to level allegations of widespread voter fraud and preview a lawsuit demanding that a state court declare Trump the winner, despite trailing by more than 33,000 votes.The Shady Ex-Cop Behind Trump’s Nevada Voter-Fraud FarceAs part of that lawsuit, the campaign submitted a list of thousands of voters who it said had cast ballots in Nevada despite living out of state. Many of those voters turned out to be military servicemen and their families stationed outside of Nevada, but who are permitted by law to cast ballots in the state.Like nearly all of the Trump campaign’s election-related lawsuits over the past month, the Nevada effort has so far fallen short. Last week, Nevada’s Supreme Court certified Biden’s win in the state. The campaign’s efforts persist nonetheless, and the president and his attorneys continue to gripe about a nonexistent conspiracy against him perpetrated by high-level government officials—including Republicans—and voting machine companies with nebulous ties to foreign dictators.Those voting machine conspiracy theories, which largely focus on the company Dominion Voting Systems, have not extended to Nevada, or Laxalt's efforts there. But on Tuesday, the president hailed a Nevada court ruling allowing both presidential campaigns to inspect voting machines used in the state’s largest county. In a tweet on the ruling, Trump tagged Grennell, Schlapp, and Laxalt.Founded this year, APT uses open records requests and other transparency tools to root out apparent conflicts of interest and ethical breaches among government officials and interest groups. APT is a conservative-leaning group, though Sutherland, a former research director at the National Republican Congressional Committee, said it has and will continue to investigate Republicans and Democrats alike.“We have demanded accountability and transparency from a variety of groups and politicians from both sides of the aisle. That momentum will not change as we head into a Biden administration,” she said.APT has already begun to file open records requests for documents related to incoming Biden administration officials, Sutherland said. “We are taking a look at each individual that will be nominated to the cabinet, and who President-elect Biden is surrounding himself with, what that network has done in the past, and what they would mean in a Biden administration.”Read more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • Russian police catch "Volga maniac" serial killer years after string of 26 murders

    Russian investigators claim to have caught the notorious “Volga maniac” who is suspected of murdering 26 elderly women nearly a decade ago. The Russian Investigative Committee on Tuesday identified one of Russia’s most prolific serial killers as Radik Tagirov, a 38-year-old plumber who is believed to have robbed and killed 26 women in 2011 and 2012 across central Russia, the Volga region and even the Ural mountains. The plumber targeted women, aged between 75 and 90, who lived alone in dilapidated housing, according to local media. He would meet some of them in the street and offer to help them with their heavy bags. In other cases, he showed up at his victims’ doorstep, impersonating a social worker or a plumber. He would strangle the victims with anything at hand such as a bathrobe belt and take valuables. The investigators, however, said that the pattern of his behaviour showed that he was not killing the women for the sake of material gain. Mr Tagirov, who was convicted of theft in 2009, reportedly killed his first victim in his hometown of Kazan but later expanded his reach to other cities on the Volga River hundreds of kilometres away, which earned him the nickname “the Volga maniac.” Police nearly caught the man in September 2011 when a victim’s son walked in on the scene of the crime but the killer escaped through a window. One of Mr Tagirov’s victims managed to survive but she was unable to describe the killer as she was blind. The murders had stopped by 2013, which led police to believe that the perpetrator had died or was arrested on an unrelated charge. Police offered £29,000 for any information leading to his arrest and spent years trying to link the killings by taking DNA samples from the crime scenes as well as shoe prints and other evidence. It took 10,000 genetic tests and countless cross-references to the police database to pin the crimes on Mr Tagirov, the investigators said on Tuesday. Mr Tagirov has already confessed and is awaiting a court hearing to rule on his possible arrest.

  • EU's Barnier says UK trade deal still hangs in balance: source

    The European Union's Brexit negotiator told the 27 national envoys to Brussels on Wednesday that differences in UK trade talks persisted, according to a senior EU diplomat who was present at the closed-door briefing. "Differences still persist on the three main issues," the diplomat said, when asked for the overall thrust of Barnier's update to EU member states on the latest in Brexit trade talks.

  • Iran's president opposes bill that would boost enrichment

    Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday expressed his opposition to a bill approved by parliament the previous day to suspend U.N. inspections and boost uranium enrichment, saying it would be “harmful” to diplomatic efforts aimed at restoring the 2015 nuclear deal and easing U.S. sanctions. The tug-of-war over the bill, which gained momentum after the killing of a prominent Iranian nuclear scientist last month, reflects the rivalry between Rouhani, a relative moderate, and hard-line lawmakers who dominate parliament and favor a more confrontational approach to the West. The bill would suspend U.N. inspections and require the government to resume enriching uranium to 20% if European nations fail to provide relief from crippling U.S. sanctions on the country's oil and banking sectors.

  • N.Y. Congressional Race Up in the Air after 55 Uncounted Ballots Found

    A tight race for a congressional seat in upstate New York is being further complicated by the discovery of 55 uncounted ballots, a Chenango County attorney announced on Tuesday.In New York’s 22nd Congressional District Republican Claudia Tenney led Democratic Representative Anthony Brindisi by just 12 votes on Monday, which should have been the last day for election officials to report vote totals in the district.On Tuesday, Chenango County Attorney Alan Gordon told Supreme Court Justice Scott DelConte about the newly discovered ballots, which were cast during New York’s early voting period in the 22nd Congressional District.“Those ballots were apparently mislaid and never counted,” Gordon wrote. “I have advised our Board of Elections to not open any of those ballots and to secure them in their offices,” he said.Eleven of the 55 ballots appear to be from unregistered voters, while the remaining 44 could undo Tenney's lead. However, the New York Supreme Court is expected to rule this week on challenges that have been made against over 2,000 other absentee and affidavit ballots in the race.Chenango County Elections Commissioner Carol Franklin told Syracuse.com she did not know why the votes had not been counted.“My guess is they came in early and they were put aside and mislaid,” Franklin said. "I would hope that we could open them tomorrow with representatives present from each campaign.”The race has taken a number of twist and turns since Election Night, when Tenney initially led by 29,000 votes before mail-in votes were counted, eliminating her lead. Last week, Brindisi picked up a double-digit lead that later disappeared after two counties said they had made tabulation errors.

  • Egyptian model arrested over photo shoot at ancient pyramid

    Both model Salma El-Shimy and her photographer were arrested and were accused by one lawyer of "insulting the great Pharaonic history."

  • Black woman sentenced to 5 years in prison for illegal voting files new appeal

    In 2018, Crystal Mason was sentenced to five-years for voting in the 2016 election. The American Civil Liberties Union of Texas is now working with her to appeal the verdict. Mason had no idea she was not allowed to vote in 2016 when she cast her provisional ballot due to the fact that she was on federally supervised release.

  • Freshly pardoned Michael Flynn shares message telling Trump to 'suspend the Constitution' to hold a new presidential election

    Retired Gen. Michael Flynn is fresh off a presidential pardon and ready to get back into some trouble.President Trump pardoned his short-lived national security adviser last week, after Flynn had previously pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with a Russian ambassador. Flynn has since been sharing dubious allegations of voter fraud, and on Wednesday, boosted a message telling Trump to take some radical actions to stop it.In a full-page Washington Times ad from something called the We the People Convention, Ohio Tea Party leader Tom Zawistowski tries to draw a comparison between Lincoln trying to save the union in 1863 and Trump trying to claw back the 2020 election, using some disputed facts along the way. Zawistowski alleges a lot of similarities between the two times, from "Democrat/Socialist federal officials plotting to finish gutting the U.S. Constitution" to big tech "actively censoring free speech and promoting leftist propaganda." So to counter that, the We the People Convention suggests Trump "declare limited Martial Law to temporarily suspend the Constitution" in order to hold a presidential election re-vote overseen by the military. > Big pro-authoritarian energy in Trumpland today:> > The president's (recently pardoned) former national security adviser, Mike Flynn, shared a message encouraging President Trump to "temporarily suspend the Constitution," impose martial law and "silence the destructive media." pic.twitter.com/cQh0wl7oWw> > — Brad Heath (@bradheath) December 2, 2020Flynn shared the ad on Twitter on Wednesday, seemingly trying to encourage a bunch of Fox News hosts an fellow QAnon supporters to share it. It's just one of many, many disputed facts and allegations about the election that are apparently flowing through the mind of the man who used to oversee America's national security.More stories from theweek.com Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead. The naked corruption of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue Americans are choosing death over deprivation

  • Air strike kills IRGC commander at Iraq-Syria border - Iraqi officials

    An air strike killed a commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards at the Iraq-Syria border sometime between Saturday and Sunday, Iraqi security and local militia officials said on Monday. The vehicle was carrying weapons across the Iraqi border and was hit after it had entered Syrian territory, two Iraqi security officials separately said. The incident came just days after Iranian nuclear scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh was assassinated in Tehran in a killing that Iran has blamed on Israel.

  • US Supreme Court asked to block Biden win in Pennsylvania

    Republicans attempting to undo President-elect Joe Biden’s victory in Pennsylvania asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to take up their lawsuit, three days after it was thrown out by the highest court in the battleground state. In the request to the U.S. Supreme Court, Republican U.S. Rep. Mike Kelly of northwestern Pennsylvania and the other plaintiffs are asking the court to prevent the state from certifying any contests from the Nov. 3 election, and undo any certifications already made, such as Biden’s victory. Biden beat President Donald Trump by more than 80,000 votes in Pennsylvania, a state Trump had won in 2016.

  • Project Veritas’ CNN Sting Uncovers Explosive News That Tucker Carlson Is Racist

    All day, Project Veritas founder James O’Keefe has been hyping the huge revelations the group would be releasing from their latest stunt. In a dramatic video posted Tuesday morning, the conservative activist could be seen unmuting himself and informing CNN chief Jeff Zucker, “We’ve been listening to your CNN calls for basically two months and recording everything. Just wanted to ask you some questions, if you have a minute.”“Do you still feel you are the most trusted name in news?” he asked. “Because I have to say from what I’ve been hearing on these phone calls, I don’t know about that. I mean, we’ve got a lot of recordings that indicate you’re not really that independent of a journalist.”“Thank you for your comments,” Zucker replied, dryly. “So everybody, in light of that, I think what we’ll do is we’ll set up a new system and we’ll be back with you, we’ll do the rest of the call a little bit later.”So what were the supposedly shocking comments O’Keefe uncovered? According to his group’s Tuesday night release, the most damning thing anyone on CNN’s editorial team did was accuse Fox News’ Tucker Carlson of being a racist.“I think it’s unavoidable that you have to talk about the naked racism of Tucker Carlson,” a man Project Veritas identified as CNN digital VP of global programming Marcus Mabry says in one tape. “Because that’s really what drove this anti-diversity push, you know, Trump watches Tucker Carlson's show and then reacts. And just as sort of the white supremacy hour they have on Fox News every night.”Not exactly news for anyone who watches Carlson’s nightly show, including some of his own Fox News colleagues who said as much earlier this year.Without mentioning Project Veritas, Carlson attacked Mabry directly on that show Tuesday night for “lecturing” media companies about the value of diversity. The host laughed out loud at the notion that “there’s a lot of work to do” to make newsrooms more diverse.CNN’s PR Twitter account, meanwhile, responded to Project Veritas with this message: “Legal experts say this may be a felony. We‘ve referred it to law enforcement,” though it’s unclear what laws the group may have broken.Later, that same account revealed that Mabry was not even the staffer who made those comments about Carlson. “James & Tucker, the voice you ID’d tonight as ‘Marcus Mabry’ is actually GA resident & CNN General Counsel David Vigilante. We’re certain you’ll want to correct the record and apologize to the Black executive for assuming he was the voice raising concerns over white supremacy.” The other big revelation from Project Veritas appeared to be that Zucker did not want his staff to “normalize” President Donald Trump’s delusional claims about the election.“This is a president who knows he’s losing, who knows he’s in trouble, is sick, maybe is on the aftereffects of steroids or not, I don’t know,” Zucker said. “But he is acting erratically and desperately, and we need to not normalize that.”“You know, this is what we've come to expect for the last three and a half years, four years, but it clearly is exacerbated by the time that we're in and the issues that he’s [Trump] dealing with,” he added. “I think that we cannot just let it be normalized. He is all over the place and acting erratically, and I think we need to lean into that.”It appears that for Project Veritas, pointing out the reality unfolding in front of Americans’ eyes, whether on Fox News or in the White House, is proof of CNN’s supposed bias. But if anything, their big sting is likely to endear Zucker to those who still like to blame him for elevating Trump during the 2016 campaign.Seth Meyers Brutally Mocks Sidney Powell, the Trump Lawyer ‘Too Insane’ for Tucker CarlsonRead more at The Daily Beast.Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Sign up now!Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper on the stories that matter to you. Learn more.

  • How China's special forces stack up against the US's special operators

    Chinese special operators are getting more resources and going through more training, but there are something you can't teach.

  • Trump will sign McConnell's coronavirus stimulus bill, Mnuchin says

    President Trump will sign Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell's (R-Ky.) coronavirus stimulus proposal, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin told reporters Wednesday.McConnell announced what appears to be a tweaked version of his previous $500 billion deal on Tuesday, just hours after a group of bipartisan senators put forward a $908 billion proposal. McConnell hasn't revealed many details of his bill yet, but it does include school choice tax credits, a proposal blocking the federal government from using unspent CARES Act funding, and other GOP priorities.Mnuchin made no mention of the bipartisan senators' bill, nor of a "secret deal" Democratic leaders reportedly put forward. The bipartisan bill's price tag was similar to the package McConnell shot down in July, but repurposes funds from the CARES Act, meaning only half the figure is new money. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) meanwhile gave Republicans what Schumer called a "private proposal" on Monday night. No further meetings between Democrats and the White House are on the docket.COVID-19 relief bill negotiations have been stalled for months, with the last CARES Act expiring at the end of July. Boosted unemployment benefits ended then, but a slate of other unemployment protections and tax propositions will expire at the end of the year without action.More stories from theweek.com Our parents warned us the internet would break our brains. It broke theirs instead. The naked corruption of Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue Americans are choosing death over deprivation

  • Georgia Secretary of State Investigating Voter Registration Group Run by Warnock

    The New Georgia Project, a voter registration group formerly led by Georgia Democratic Senate candidate Raphael Warnock, is under investigation for allegedly sending ballot applications to non-residents, the Georgia secretary of state said Monday.Warnock was CEO of the group, which was originally founded by failed gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, until February. Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger announced the group, and three others, are under investigation for improper registration activities.While Raffensperger, a Republican who has been vocal in debunking President Trump’s claims of election fraud, said that he has not seen signs of widespread, systemic fraud, there is evidence of "third-party groups working to register people in other states to vote here in Georgia."Raffensperger said the New Georgia Project "sent voter registration applications to New York City," in a potential violation of state law."Voting in Georgia when you are not a resident of Georgia is a felony," Raffensperger said. "These third-party groups have a responsibility to not encourage illegal voting. If they do so, they will be held responsible."Warnock served as CEO of the group, which describes itself as a “nonpartisan effort to register and civically engage Georgians” from 2017 until February 21, 2020, according to the Washington Free Beacon. He has said he organized voter mobilization drives for the New Georgia Project, including an effort to register 80,000 new minority voters in 2014.The group says it has registered "nearly 400,000 people from underrepresented communities to vote in Georgia.”Warnock, who is competing against incumbent senator Kelly Loeffler (R., Ga.) in a runoff race that could decide party control of the Senate, had called past voter fraud probes against the group “alarmist.”In 2014, the secretary of state's office conducted an investigation into the New Georgia Project after contractors working for the group were accused of forging voter registration applications. The case was referred to law enforcement three years later, though no charges were ever brought.Warnock claimed in 2017 that "using the word voter fraud is alarmist, and it was totally unnecessary." He argued that the New Georgia Project had "excellent internal controls and that we have followed the law," as evidenced by the lack of charges brought against the group.Three other voter registration groups are also under investigation, Raffensperger said, including America Votes, which allegedly sent "absentee ballot applications to people at addresses where they have not lived since 1994."Vote Forward allegedly registered a dead Alabama voter in Georgia while Operation New Voter Registration Georgia is accused of recommending college students temporarily change their residency for the purpose of voting in the state.