"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."

Read entire article here.

"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."

Read entire article here.

"Hillary Rodham Clinton, who is still alive, has endorsed Joe Biden's presidential campaign.

"That is inspiring: A corrupt, decrepit, exhausted relic of the 1990s has given her blessing to a corrupt, decrepit, exhausted relic of the 1970s. Mrs. Clinton already has lost an election to Donald Trump, a visitor from the 1980s, and Joe Biden might very well do the same.

"(Or not.) ...

"Mrs. Clinton came to prominence when most Americans had never sent an email or heard of a web browser. Joe Biden was elected to the Senate in the first year that color televisions outsold black-and-white models. He comes from the other side of a great divide -- and that is not only a matter of age. 'Hillary Endorses Biden' is a headline that belongs on newsprint, like 'Dewey Defeats Truman.'

"The response to Mrs. Clinton's endorsement in 2020 was, 'So, what?'

"The day after tomorrow, it will be, 'Who?'"

"Michael Flynn is the victim of one of the worst miscarriages of justice in modern times -- an innocent man who was unfairly targeted by the FBI, wrongfully prosecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller, and coerced into a guilty plea under threat.

"New court documents finally handed over to Flynn's lawyer contain exculpatory evidence that has been long sought, yet concealed until now. The charge against him should be dismissed. Then, he should sue the very people and government that persecuted him under the pretext of a legitimate prosecution.

"The unvarnished truth is that the retired Army lieutenant general and former National Security Adviser never did anything wrong and committed no crimes. He was set up by unscrupulous FBI officials, then relentlessly pursued by Mueller's team of overzealous prosecutors who were desperate to show that President Trump and his campaign colluded with Russia to win the 2016 presidential election.

"Of course, no such conspiracy with Moscow ever existed. It was a fantasy built on the sand of Russian disinformation and lies.The FBI knew it but didn't care. As I wrote in a column as far back as 2018, the FBI lied to Flynn to ensnare him in the crime of making a false statement, even though Flynn did not lie at all about his perfectly legal and appropriate conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak. ...

"So, how is it possible to charge someone with lying to the FBI when the only witnesses -- the two agents -- determined that the person they interviewed did not lie? The answer is quite simple: you cannot bring such a prosecution. Yet, Mueller did it anyway. The goal was to put pressure on Flynn to say something incriminating about Trump, even if that meant inventing a story that prosecutors wanted to hear."

Read entire article here.

"Democratic leaders in Congress continued on Sunday to remain quiet on the sexual assault allegations leveled against their party's presumptive presidential nominee Joe Biden, even as anger over the accusations mounted from the party's more progressive wing.

"Neither House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., nor Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., have made any public comment about the allegations by Tara Reade, a staffer for Biden in 1993, that the then-senator from Delaware sexually assaulted her.

"Pelosi and Schumer's offices did not return Fox News request for comment.

"There is growing anger from both progressive Democrats and supporters of the #MeToo movement about the lack of response from Democratic leaders toward the allegations. The hashtag #dropoutbiden was trending on Twitter on Sunday -- until it was allegedly removed -- and many supporters for former Democratic presidential primary hopeful Bernie Sanders are calling on Biden to suspend his campaign for the White House. ...

"Over the weekend, a video emerged from 1993 in which Reade's mother appears to allude to the sexual assault accusation during an interview with CNN's Larry King."

"Though often omitted from public conversations about pandemic solutions, the U.S. military has a huge stake in fighting deadly infectious diseases and quietly has been researching novel treatments for years at its secretive biodefense lab at Fort Detrick.

"The reasons are mission obvious. With soldiers deployed in exotic locations around the world where novel viruses like Ebola, Zika or bird and swine flus can strike with lighting speed and alarming fatality, the Pentagon wants to make sure it has treatments to keep its forces from being disabled

"It's from that body of research that an intriguing potential remedy, an organic extract, has emerged. And of all sources, it comes from the common but toxic flowering plant oleander.

"Dr. John Dye, chief of viral immunology at the USAMRIID lab at Fort Detrick, confirmed to Just the News that his team began testing the extract known as oleandrin a few years ago and found it was effective in fighting the Ebola and Marburg viruses. The Army lab is now ramping up a rapid plan to test oleandrin against COVID-19."

Read entire article here.