The Patriot Post® · Wednesday Top News Executive Summary

Government & Economy

TARIFFS DELAYED: “The United States Trade Representative office said Tuesday that new tariffs on certain consumer items would be delayed until Dec. 15, while other products were being removed from the new China tariff list altogether. It cited health and security factors. The duties had been set to go into effect on Sept. 1, so the announcement eased concerns about the holiday shopping season.” (CNBC)

NRA SUIT GREENLIGHTED: “A federal judge Monday ruled that a lawsuit against Los Angeles by the National Rifle Association (NRA) over the city’s contractor disclosure law can proceed. … U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson rejected the city’s argument that contractors involved with the NRA does not represent ‘expressive’ speech, and therefore not protected by the First Amendment as NRA attorneys contend.” (The Daily Caller)

BLUE-STATE OBSTRUCTION, PART I: “San Francisco and Santa Clara County in California filed a lawsuit Tuesday to block the Trump administration from implementing a new rule that would deny permanent residency to legal immigrants if they are judged likely to use government benefit programs.” (The New York Times)

BLUE-STATE OBSTRUCTION, PART II: “California and a coalition of 21 other states on Tuesday sued to block the Trump administration’s attempt to gut restrictions on coal-burning power plants, limits that were central to President Obama’s climate change policy.” (Los Angeles Times)

Culture

LEMON ACCUSED: “CNN primetime host Don Lemon was accused of a bizarre, sexually charged assault of a bartender in New York’s tony Hamptons last year in a civil suit filed earlier this week. … CNN denied [Dustin] Hice’s account and said Hice seemed to bear animosity toward the cable news network.” (Fox News)

PRO-LIFE SUCCESS: “‘Unplanned,’ a movie about an abortion clinic director who left her job at Planned Parenthood, is the No. 1 DVD in Amazon sales after surpassing expectations in movie theaters. … [Co-Director Cary] Solomon said he read that the makers of the average movie are happy with sales of 20,000 to 30,000 DVDs, but that ‘we presold about 235,000 without even telling anyone it was out there.’” (The Daily Signal)

EPSTEIN FALLOUT: “The prison guards for alleged child sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein may have falsified the records showing that they were checking in on the jet-setting financier leading up to his apparent suicide at the Manhattan Correctional Center on Saturday,” the Washington Examiner reports. Meanwhile, National Review reveals that “Attorney General William Barr on Tuesday ordered that the warden of the federal prison where billionaire and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein apparently committed suicide over the weekend be reassigned and that two guards who were responsible for Epstein be placed on leave.”

Other Notables

BIG LIES: “The Washington Post Fact-Checker gave its harshest rating of Four Pinocchios to a pair of Democratic presidential candidates who claimed black teenager Michael Brown was murdered in 2014 by a white policeman. Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D., Mass.) and Kamala Harris (D., Calif.) both tweeted last Friday — which was the fifth anniversary of Brown’s death in Ferguson, Missouri — that Brown had been murdered by Officer Darren Wilson.” (The Washington Free Beacon)

FACEBOOK SHENANIGANS: “Facebook has hired contractors to transcribe users’ audio recorded through the company’s Facebook Messenger app. … Contractors stressed over the audio transcription work because they were not told how the recordings were obtained or why they were transcribing them.” (Washington Examiner)

Closing Arguments

POLICY: Expensive climate-change programs hurt the poor most (Washington Examiner)

POLICY: Three ways Trump’s new regulations will better protect endangered species (The Daily Signal)

HUMOR: Six-year-old saying “Why don’t we just give everything away for free?” surges to top of Democrat polls (The Babylon Bee)

For more of today’s editors’ choice headlines, visit In Our Sights.

The Patriot Post is a certified ad-free news service, unlike third-party commercial news sites linked on this page, which may also require a paid subscription.