Michigan Democrat facing censure for 'thank you' to Trump should join GOP, president says

President Trump on Thursday night shared some advice for U.S. Rep. Karen Whitsett, the Michigan congresswoman who recently survived a bout with coronavirus – only to now face possible censure by some fellow Democrats.
“Should join the Republican Party!” the president wrote on Twitter.
Trump was responding to a message posted by Ronna McDaniel, chairwoman of the Republican National Committee, who retweeted a Detroit News story reporting that Whitsett was facing a possible rebuke for having said “thank you” to President Trump and Vice President Mike Pence during a recent White House meeting.
DEMS PLAN TO CENSURE MICHIGAN LAWMAKER WHO SAID TRUMP'S BOOSTING OF HYDROXYCHLOROQUINE 'SAVED MY LIFE'
Whitsett had thanked Trump and Pence because she attributed her recovery from the coronavirus to having taken the anti-malaria drug hydroxychloroquine -- a treatment Trump has frequently supported during White House news briefings.
The congresswoman said the drug had “saved my life.”
Whitsett also thanked the president during an appearance on Fox News’ “The Ingraham Angle” earlier this month.
“I really want to say that you have to give this an opportunity," she said on the show, referring to the drug. "For me, it saved my life. I only can go by what it is that I have gone through and what my story is, and I can't speak for anyone else. So that's not what I'm trying to do here. I'm only speaking for myself.”
During the White House meeting on April 14, Whitsett hinted she was already receiving pushback from Democrats for thanking Trump.
“Thank you for everything that you have done,” Whitsett told the president, according to The Detroit News. “I did not know that saying thank you had a political line. … I’m telling my story and my truth, and this how I feel and these are my words.”

"Thank you for everything that you have done. I did not know that saying thank you had a political line."
— U.S. Rep. Karen Whitsett, thanking President Trump

A group called the 13th Congressional District Democratic Party Organization will consider censuring Whitsett when it meets Saturday, The Detroit News reported.
Whitsett is not the only Democrat to face repercussions for positive comments about Trump.
Also in Thursday, a state-level Democratic lawmaker in Georgia reversed a decision to resign after facing pressure from other Democrats for saying he supported the president.
State Rep. Vernon Jones of Lithonia said he was convinced to remain in office after receiving an outpouring of support following his initial plan to step down.
“I will not allow the Democrats to bully me into submission,” Jones said. “I will not let them win. I will NOT resign.”
Last December, New Jersey Democratic Rep. Jeff Van Drew announced he was switching to the GOP after deciding that his fellow Democrats’ arguments for Trump’s impeachment were “weak” and “thin.”
In January, Van Drew appeared with the president before a capacity crowd at a rally in Wildwood, N.J.

Michigan Democratic Gov. Whitmer faces protest outside her home as lawmakers mull curbing her powers

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Protesters gathered outside the home of Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Thursday -- the same day reports emerged that she plans to extend the state’s coronavirus stay-at-home order by two weeks until May 15.
The demonstration, dubbed “Operation Queen’s Castle,” featured an image of Whitmer wearing a crown, FOX 2 of Detroit reported.
“We wanted to send Gretchen Whitmer a message, we didn't want to surrender our liberties just for a little temporary safety,” Brian Pannebecker, who helped organize the protest, told the station.
Meanwhile, the Michigan Legislature has scheduled a special session for Friday with the goal of creating an oversight committee to review Whitmer’s coronavirus orders and possibly strip her of some of her powers, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Critics have accused Whitmer, a 48-year-old first-term Democratic governor, of overstepping her authority with a series of measures intended to stem the spread of coronavirus in the state. April 9 revisions to her initial stay-at-home order included bans on visiting friends and relatives or traveling to vacation homes, and halts on sales of items such as furniture and gardening supplies.
In a podcast interview, she also said abortions should continue in the state during the virus outbreak because the procedures were part of "life-sustaining" health care for women.
In addition, Whitmer came under fire after a no-bid coronavirus-related state contract was awarded to a firm operated by a well-known Democratic consultant who had written that President Trump should "get coronavirus ASAP." Whitmer’s office later acknowleged that the contract was awarded without adhering to normal protocols.
Michigan House Speaker Lee Chatfield, R-Levering, explained the point of Friday’s planned session in a Twitter message.
“The House & Senate will convene tomorrow to create a special oversight committee on COVID-19 to examine our government’s response,” he wrote. “Michigan needs to handle this pandemic seriously yet properly. It’s what the people deserve, and we will see that it happens.”
In another tweet, Chatfield noted that marijuana, lottery tickets and alcohol had been declared "essential," while lawn care, construction and fishing in a motorized boat had been declared nonessential amid the outbreak.
On Monday, Whitmer said she would take a 10 percent cut to her $159,300 annual salary and her staffers would take cuts of 5 percent as the state grapples with the financial fallout of the coronavirus shutdowns. She also continued defending the orders she has issued.
“I know it’s not easy, but the price of losing loved ones is what’s at stake,” she said, noting that many people who contract the virus show no symptoms but can still spread it.
The theme of Thursday’s protest in Lansing, the state’s capital city, was that many Michiganders who are able to work should be able to do so, Pannebecker said.
“Younger people, healthy people, without putting anybody else in danger, including ourselves, and others in danger, should be able to go back to work,”  Pannebecker told FOX 2.
The demonstration came eight days after a larger gathering outside the Statehouse called “Operation Gridlock.”
As of late Thursday, Michigan had more than 35,200 confirmed cases of the virus and nearly 3,000 deaths, the Detroit News reported.
Fox News’ Gregg Re and Michael Ruiz contributed to this story.

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Usama bin Laden wanted to kill Obama so 'totally unprepared' Biden would be president, declassified docs show

Usama bin Laden wanted to assassinate then-President Barack Obama so that the "totally unprepared" Joe Biden would take over as president and plunge the United States "into a crisis," according to documents seized from bin Laden's Pakistan compound when he was killed in May 2011.
The secretive documents, first reported in 2012 by The Washington Post, outlined a plan to take out Obama and top U.S. military commander David Petraeus as they traveled by plane.
“The reason for concentrating on them is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency," bin Laden wrote to a top deputy. "Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour ... and killing him would alter the war's path" in Afghanistan.
Bin Laden specifically wanted fellow terrorist Ilyas Kashmiri to shoot down Obama.
“Please ask brother Ilyas to send me the steps he has taken into that work,” bin Laden wrote to the top lieutenant, Atiyah Abd al-Rahman. Kashmiri wouldn't get too far along in the plot, however; he was killed in 2011 in a U.S. drone strike shortly after bin Laden himself was shot to death by U.S. special forces.

Usama bin Laden said he wanted Joe Biden to be president, according to declassified documents.

Intelligence officials told the Post that bin Laden's plan never progressed past the aspirational stage.
For his part, Biden has sent mixed signals on his role in bin Laden's death, as explained at length in a timeline by The Washington Examiner's Jerry Dunleavy. In late April 2011, Obama gathered together a team that included Biden before making a final decision on whether to strike at bin Laden's suspected compound.
In January 2012, Biden revealed he had opposed to the raid, and claimed that “every single person in that room hedged their bet” except for CIA Director Leon Panetta, who supported striking the compound.
“Mr. President, my suggestion is, don’t go,” Biden said he told his boss, as reported by The New York Times. "We have to do two more things to see if he's there.'"
But in 2015, Biden changed his mind and said he had told Obama he "should go."
Obama himself verified Biden's opposition to the plan, telling Mitt Romney in a 2012 presidential debate, “Even some in my own party, including my current vice president, had the same critique as you did."
On CBS’s “60 Minutes" in Oct. 2015, Biden tried to clear up the confusion, and insisted everything he said had been "accurate."
“In order to give the president the leeway he needed, I said, ‘Mr. President, there’s one more thing we can do.’ … One more pass to see if it was bin Laden. I said, ‘You should do that, and there’d still be time to have the raid, but that’s what I would do,” Biden said.
SEAL Team Six ultimately landed at bin Laden's compound in two MH-60 Black Hawks, killed the terror leader and seized a fateful cache of valuable intelligence.

Newsom won’t share details on $1B mask deal with China

California Gov. Gavin Newsom is facing pushback as state lawmakers have begun demanding details of his nearly $1 billion deal to receive 200 million masks per month from a Chinese manufacturer.
Just two weeks after announcing the deal, Newsom has remained largely mum on the specifics.
Advisers to the California Democrat have declined requests for comment from the Los Angeles Times about the agreement, which was inked with Chinese electric car manufacturer BYD — which stands for Build Your Dreams — earlier this month.
BYD was formed in 1995 as a battery manufacturer. In 2008, Warren Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway purchased a 24.8% stake in the company.
Since then, it has grown into one of the largest electric car makers and partnered with Toyota in November to launch a joint venture into electric car batteries.
The Buffett-backed company also operates a US subsidiary in Lancaster, California, which employs about 1,000 people, according to the Times.
Despite its growth under Buffett, the company announced it saw a 42% drop in profits from 2019, citing the coronavirus pandemic, cuts to government subsidies and changes to emissions rules in China.
Around the same time, the company said on its website that it had converted one of its manufacturing facilities into “the world’s largest mass-produced face masks plant,” adding that it would make 5 million masks per day in the fight against the spread of the virus.
After announcing the deal, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow pressed Newsom for details, though he would only say he had decided to utilize “the purchasing power” of California “as a nation-state,” and that of the 200 million masks, 150 million would be N95 masks and the remainder would be surgical masks.
Pressed by reporters this week about withholding details of the contract, Newsom maintained scant specifics.
“I’m for outcome here. Some are consumed by process, personality, intrigue. Who’s up, who’s down. We are for actually solving a major, major problem — not only for the state but potentially a template for the country,” he said.
The California Senate and Assembly have also been kept in the dark about the deal, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“It would be great to get a heads-up directly from the governor’s office rather than watching it on national TV,” Assembly Budget Committee Phil Ting (D-San Francisco) said in an interview Wednesday with the Chronicle.
“We don’t have any information as to how many masks we’re buying, who we’re buying them from, at what price … What are we obligated? For how long are we obligated?”
Senate Budget Committee Chairwoman Holly Mitchell (D-Los Angeles) sent a letter to the Newsom administration requesting full details, including quality standards and price per mask.
“Under normal circumstances, the Legislature would have had more time to deliberate an expenditure of this magnitude and would have been allowed to thoroughly vet the details of the contract before proceeding,” Mitchell wrote.
The paper reports that a Newsom administration official refused to provide state senators with a copy of the contract during a budget oversight hearing in Sacramento last Thursday, despite the state having already paid half the cost.
The state’s chief deputy director of the Office of Emergency Services told senators via videoconference that providing all specifics of the deal would risk disrupting the supply line of masks to the state.
A BYD spokesperson referred all questions about negotiations over the purchase of masks to Newsom’s office when reached by the Times.
A spokesperson for Newsom could not immediately be reached for comment by The Post.

Texas judge’s 30-day coronavirus mask order blasted as 'ultimate government overreach'

A judge in Harris County, Texas, on Wednesday ordered residents to start wearing face masks in public for 30 days beginning next week -- or face a possible fine.
But Judge Lina Hidalgo’s action, intended to help stem the spread of the coronavirus, drew immediate pushback – including from the state’s lieutenant governor, who called the move, “the ultimate government overreach,” and U.S. Rep. Dan Crenshaw, who wrote that "commonsense guidelines" should never lead to "unjust tyranny."
Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick noted in a Twitter message that Hidalgo’s order was announced on the same day as plans surfaced for closing a local hospital “because it wasn’t needed.”
“These kind of confused government policies fuel public anger – and rightfully so,” wrote Patrick, who has been a vocal advocate for reopening the Texas economy and getting people back to work.
Crenshaw said health guidelines should be "emphatically promoted," but he objected to the punitive aspects of the judge's order.
The order by Hidalgo -- whose role as a county judge in Texas is similar to that of "county executive" in other states -- is scheduled to take effect Monday. It requires that people in public areas or in close proximity to other people cover their nose and mouth with a mask or other covering – or face a possible $1,000 fine, FOX 26 of Houston reported.
The order does not apply for exercising or outdoor walks and does not apply to children under 10, the report said.
Aside from Patrick, Hidalgo’s order also drew backlash from a Houston police officers’ union, which called the order “draconian,” and said it was seeking guidance from the state attorney general’s office on whether the fine for offenders was legal, the Houston ouston HoustonHChronicle reported.
“It is clear the so-called leader of Harris County lacks any critical thinking skills,” President Joe Gamaldi of Houston Police Officers’ Union Lodge 110 wrote in a statement. “But let me assure the public, our officers do!”
Hildalgo responded by saying the police were “entitled to their opinions. She added that she wasn’t looking to impose “a police state,” but rather was looking to slow the spread of the virus.
“It’s something we have to do for the sake of our safety, our lives and our economy,” the judge said, according to the Chronicle.
The city of Houston reported 27 new infections Wednesday, and for the third straight day reported no deaths related to the virus, the newspaper reported.

Whitmer backtracks after COVID-19 contract awarded to Dem consultant who said Trump should 'get coronavirus ASAP'

Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration acknowledged Tuesday that normal protocols were bypassed when a no-bid contract for coronavirus contact tracing was awarded by the state to Great Lakes Community Engagement, which is operated by a well-known Democratic consultant Michael Kolehouse -- who has previously written that President Trump should "get Coronavirus ASAP" and that someone should "do the country a favor and cough on that man," Facebook posts reviewed by Fox News show.
The Washington Free Beacon reported earlier Tuesday that Michigan gave a separate contract to track the spread of coronavirus to Every Action VAN, a division of the Democratic data operation NGP VAN. The contract for Great Lakes Community Engagement, which would total $200,000 over eight weeks, was to be executed in coordination with EveryAction, which is tightly linked to NGP VAN's operation. The state abruptly canceled the contract Tuesday.
“Nearly every major Democratic campaign in America is powered by NGP VAN's software, including the Obama campaign’s voter contact, volunteer, fundraising and compliance operations in all 50 states," NGP VAN boasts on its website. The Washington Post has described NGP VAN as "the voter file provider for Democratic campaigns and independent groups up and down ballot."
NGP VAN has previously exposed secretive and proprietary information due to technical glitches, The Washington Post has reported, including when a software patch was improperly applied.
The contracts raised concerns that Whitmer's administration was tying confidential health information to a political data gathering operation and that Whitmer, a rising star floated as a possible vice presidential candidate, had circumvented the state's normal process for awarding key financial resources.
"This is who Gov. Whitmer is giving state contracts to?" asked GOP chairwoman Ronna McDaniel.
“I want to know how Gov. Whitmer’s administration decided to hire this company without a competitive bid process, or letting the Legislature — charged with ensuring accountability within state government — know about it,” wrote GOP state Rep. Shane Hernandez in a letter to Whitmer that was first reported by The Detroit News. “I want to know what safeguards the governor has in place to ensure the information gathered during this COVID-19 response doesn’t wind up in the hands of any campaigns."
Whitmer's office told Fox News that neither Kolehouse's operation nor NGP VAN should have gotten the funds, but didn't explain how the purported mistake had occured in the first place.

In this photo, provided by the Michigan Office of the Governor, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer addresses the state in Lansing, Mich., Monday, April 20, 2020. (Michigan Office of the Governor via AP, Pool)

"This contract should have been approved by the State Emergency Operations Center," a Whitmer spokesperson said by email. "This issue is being corrected, and a different vendor and software platform will be selected by the SEOC. The state is committed to ensuring this important tracing work can begin quickly to help save lives, while also ensuring that public health data is safe and secure."
The governor's office separately told The Washington Post: “The executive office is uncomfortable with this vendor for the same reason others are. The public needs to have confidence that this tracing work is being done by a nonpartisan firm. The state is committed to ensuring this important tracing work can begin quickly to help save lives, while also ensuring that public health data is safe and secure.”
Kolehouse Strategies appears in contact tracing testing materials obtained by Fox News, although the governor's office indicated that the firm hadn't yet begun work.
There was little doubt that Kolehouse and NGP VAN were no strangers to the Whitmer administration before they secured the contracts. Kolehouse also runs Kolehouse Strategies, which openly advocates on behalf of progressive candidates. In other social media posts, including one on April 1, he has praised Whitmer and called Trump a "maniac."
"We stand with that women [sic] and her name is Governor Whitmer!" Kolehouse wrote on March 30.
Kolehouse has since locked down his Facebook account, and he did not respond to Fox News' request for comment.
Contact tracing allows health officials to proactively address the spread of a virus by assessing exposure among individuals, and involves major potential privacy risks. Wes Nakagiri, a local county commissioner, was the first to discover the contract arrangement -- and told the Free Beacon that the Whitmer contract was unprecedented.
"I’ve been involved with grassroots activists for a little over a decade," Nakagiri told the outlet. "I’ve never seen anything like this on the conservative side of the ledger, where you’ve got this entity working with governmental bodies, dumping huge networks of information into one database. They’re asking for contact information, they’re asking for who else lives in the house—it’s troubling that this information is being stored in a Democrat-aligned database."
Whitmer has taken numerous hits on the national stage amid the coronavirus epidemic, even as her profile surges and she is discussed as a possible running mate for Joe Biden.
Two Michigan business owners who filed a lawsuit against Whitmer after she imposed one of the strictest stay-at-home orders in the country told “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Sunday that they weren't alone.
“We are representing thousands of business owners like us in the state of Michigan,” Chris Welton, a co-owner of Welton Lawn Care, said. “It’s our peak season and it’s devastating to the entire industry.”
“We have customers that want us to come. They don’t understand why we can’t,” she continued. “We have lost revenue, employees that are laid off that we’re trying to take care of, unused inventory, customer retention issues, that really is a problem.”
Whitmer was facing at least two federal lawsuits challenging her April 9 executive order to combat the coronavirus pandemic.
In the complaints filed last week, several Michiganders said the governor’s recent tightening of restrictions infringed on their constitutional rights.
Whitmer’s April 9 order prohibited people in her state from visiting family or friends in groups of any size, in public or private. It also placed restrictions on what types of businesses may operate and restricted essential businesses from selling non-essential items. It also banned travel to second homes and vacation properties.
Fox News' Talia Kaplan contributed to this report.

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