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Washington, D.C. As the U.S. special representative for Iran, I receive complaints regularly about Voice of Americas Persian service. Iranian viewers say its American taxpayer-funded programming often sounds more like the Voice of the mullahs than the Voice of America, U.S. Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook writes in the New York Post.This is a priority for the Donald Trump administration, because supporting the Iranian people includes giving them access to independent and truthful reporting.

Exactly three months since President Trump tapped Vice President Mike Pence to head the White House Coronavirus Task Force, it is shifting focus to reopening the American economy, Paul Bedard reports. Vice President Pence explained that America will be ready this fall for any potential second wave. Read more in the Washington Examiner.

If states try now to implement an entirely vote-by-mail system and mail every voter on their outdated registration lists a ballot, they are inviting fraud into our elections. My message to Twitter: Before you decide to censor speech by throwing a label on the president of the United Statesor any Americanmake sure you know the facts yourself, Rep. Rodney Davis (R-IL) writes for Fox News.

As the world begins to recover from the pandemic, nations face a stark choice about what vision of artificial intelligence will prevail. As Group of Seven nations meet this year under the organizations U.S. presidency, there is a critical opportunity to shape the evolution of AI in a way that respects fundamental rights and upholds our shared values,U.S. Chief Technology Officer Michael Kratsios writes inThe Wall Street Journal.

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Why are US Taxpayers Funding a 'Voice of the Mullahs' in Iran? - Clarksville Online

The vice president is in town today to meet Gov. Brian Kemp and restaurant industry leaders.

MARIETTA, Ga. The Vice President is back in Washington after spending Friday in metro Atlanta. He came to see how Georgia is doing three weeks after the state began to reopen.

During his visit with Gov. Brian Kemp, Pence participated in a round-table discussion with restaurant executives at Waffle House's headquarters near Norcross.

The restaurant industry, hard hit by the pandemic, was a focus of the conversation, as well as the important Paycheck Protection Program passed in Congress to help businesses stay afloat.

During the discussion, restaurant owners discussed how they have managed to stay in business and reopen during the pandemic.

Watch the full round-table below.

Waffle House's CEO said in the first two weeks of the statewide shelter-in-place order, the chain's revenue dropped 80 percent.

Since the state's reopening, revenue is back up, with Waffle House able to re-hire 2,000 Georgians.

Georgia started relaxing strict guidelines for businesses and Georgians on May 1, after allowing the statewide shelter-in-place order, issued back at the beginning of April to expire April 30.

Vice President Pence praised Georgia and said the state is setting the example for reopening.

"I hope if you heard no other message, I wanted to come to Georgia to say thank you to the people of Georgia, thank you to the Governor of Georgia. Georgia is leading the way to opening up America again," Pence said.

The tone of Pence's comments marked a drastic change from President Donald Trump several weeks ago, who at one point criticized Kemp for perhaps reopening too soon.

After the roundtable, a reporter asked Kemp if he felt vindicated to receive Pence's praise, after being criticized by Trump.

"I will let history be the judge of what ends up being right and wrong," Kemp said. "I believe every governor, just like the president and vice president is making the best decisions with the information and data that they have. Sometimes I've had local elected officials disagree with what I'm doing, but I haven't been critical of them because I believe they're doing what is in their best interests. They're governing their local community, I'm governing the state and the president, vice president, and (White House coronavirus) task force are trying to deal with the whole country."

Pence said one-in-four jobs lost nationally during the pandemic were restaurant-related jobs.

The Georgia restaurant owners on hand Friday said the managed to stay in business during the pandemic, and most kept many if not all of their employees.

Each credited federal funding through the Payroll Protection Program, or PPP, for allowing them to stay afloat.

Pence gave his word he is working to extend the window of time owners have for using PPP loans, as right now, businesses need to spend their loans in eight weeks; there are calls to increase that window.

"I'm looking at one of your senators and one of your congressman, and they can confirm we are looking at a possible phase-four bill that would include a number of things, but before that, we are working with members of Congress of both parties to extend Paycheck Protection for just the reasons you have said. The President has made it a priority and we are working on it in real-time," Pence said.

The senator and congressman Pence referred to in his comments were Senator Kelly Loeffler and Rep. Doug Collins.

The two republicans attended Friday's round-table and were in assigned seats at opposite ends of the room. Loeffler is running to keep her Senate seat, appointed to her by Kemp. Collins is challenging her.

11Alive asked both Loeffler and Collins about Congress' work on extending the PPP.

"Hopefully, (it's) going to be coming back next week to make some slight adjustments, but I think the bigger issue is where do we need to go and how do we need to get there, and I think that is important," Collins said. "The Vice President said the President is working on it and we are working on it in Congress."

"There is a will to do something to extend PPP," Loeffler added. "When we set the parameters on PPP, we didn't know the duration of what the shutdowns would be. Now we know, we can go back and re-look at that."

On the topic of restaurants, Kemp said, including grabbing lunch with Pence at an Atlanta restaurant Friday, he has dined at Georgia restaurants three times in the past two weeks, and on a fourth occasion picked up food to-go.

Based on reports he is receiving, the governor expects restaurants along Georgia's coast will be busy for Memorial Day weekend.

"The hotels are booked down there," Kemp said. "Which is great for those hotel owners and their employees. I feel like restaurants are going to have a big weekend. I feel like they will be very busy, but I also feel like there will be people that aren't comfortable dining in, they will pick-up or cook at home and that is okay, too. We have to keep easing back into this."

Kemp added his office has been working this week to make sure business owners in the coastal area understand the guidelines and rules for being open.

11Alive is focusing our news coverage on the facts and not the fear around the virus. We want to keep you informed about the latest developments while ensuring that we deliver confirmed, factual information.

We will track the most important coronavirus elements relating to Georgiaon this page. Refresh often for new information.

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Mike Pence arrives on Air Force Two in Atlanta | 11alive.com - 11Alive.com WXIA

It remains unlikely, but hardly unthinkable, that President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence could simultaneously come down with serious cases of COVID-19 especially after two prominent White House aides recently tested positive for the coronavirus. We have already seen one head of government, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, incapacitated by COVID-19 and sent to an intensive care unit.

Both men are in high-risk groups: Trump is 73 and overweight; Pence is 60. (Johnson, in contrast, is a comparatively youthful 55.) If they were ordinary people, the protocol would be for the two men to place themselves in self-quarantine for two weeks, yet they have not done so.

When Johnson was hospitalized, he deputized his foreign minister to act as prime minister in his absence. Should only the president become ill, then the vice president can take over, following the protocol laid out in the 25th Amendment. But if the vice president becomes incapacitated as well, then we could face a constitutional crisis. It would be triggered by the inadequacies of the Presidential Succession Act passed in 1947 (when there was no vice president, because Harry Truman had succeeded Franklin D. Roosevelt).

Article II of the Constitution grants Congress the right to provide for the Case of Removal, Death, Resignation or Inability, both of the President and Vice President, declaring what Officer shall then act as President and the 1947 act is the current result. Under its rules, the speaker of the House and the president pro tempore of the Senate would be next in the line of succession, followed by the members of the Cabinet, beginning with the secretary of state.

Until 1947, succession had passed through the Cabinet. Congress added the speaker and president pro tem on the grounds that the president should desirably be an elected official, even if not part of the executive branch. This might make sense in theory, but it could be truly terrible in practice. Should both Pence and Trump be unable to serve, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D.-Calif., would become president under the act handing the White House to a different party without an election. Should she be unable or unwilling to serve, then the office would go to Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa.

Any effort to transfer power from Trump and Pence to Pelosi would surely inspire legal and political challenges, adding to chaos at precisely the moment the nation desperately needed stability.

To be sure, COVID-19 in the White House could precipitate a crisis well before the Succession Act came into play. It is not difficult to imagine that Trump would deny and denounce as fake news any suggestion that he lacks the ability, in the words of Article I, Section 2, of the Constitution, to discharge the Powers and Duties of the presidency. The vice president and Cabinet can, in theory, overrule him and pronounce him unable to serve, invoking the 25th Amendment. But would they? Even if Pence and the Cabinet displayed independence, would Trump simply fire those who betrayed him? He couldnt fire the vice president, but the vice president cannot displace a president on his own; he needs the support of the majority of Cabinet officials and then Congress.

But even if the headstrong president bowed to reality, perhaps as he was about to go on a ventilator, the system would be stretched to the breaking point if Pence faced his own health crisis. If Pence, too, acknowledged his constitutional inability, then the Succession Act would apply and its flaws would become apparent.

The act, first of all, bespeaks a simplistic theory of democratic legitimacy that ignores the prominent role that political parties which have grown far more polarized since 1947 play in the American system. And it raises vexing legal and practical questions. Most lawyers believe that the speaker would have to resign from the House to serve as president, as a result of the Constitutions obscure incompatibility clause, which says that no Person holding any Office under the United States, shall be a Member of either House during his Continuance in Office. Perhaps, then, Pelosi would waive her right of succession (since, after all, her term would probably last only several weeks at most). So then the 86-year-old Grassley could take on the awesome role of president should he be willing to resign from the Senate.

There is also a serious argument, first laid out by Yale Law School professor Akhil Reed Amar and his brother, Vikram Amar, now dean of the University of Illinois College of Law, in a 1995 essay in the Stanford Law Review, that the Succession Act is unconstitutional. Article II specifically says that Congress in setting rules of succession must select an officer as a replacement for the president and vice president. Members of Congress, the argument goes, are not officers, because they are elected officials and not presidential appointees. (Another legal argument holds that the incompatibility clause does not apply if a member of Congress were to serve as president or vice president, because officers refers to people appointed by the president, not to the chief executive position itself. Under that interpretation, Pelosi could retain her legislative office, if the act were upheld as constitutional.)

To put it mildly, it is hard to imagine these questions being litigated in real time should Republicans try to prevent Pelosi from taking office, or should she try to serve as president and speaker simultaneously. This month, Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh evoked the possibility of chaos in a Supreme Court argument about unfaithful electors members of the electoral college who opt for candidates besides the ones they pledged to support. The problem of unfaithful electors is trivial compared with the true chaos possible under the Succession Act.

Constitutionality aside, the Succession Act makes little sense as policy: No one seriously believes that the worthies who serve as speaker of the House and president pro tem of the Senate do so because of a belief by the House or Senate that they have the skill set needed to serve as president. Indeed, Grassley occupies his office exclusively because he is the senior member of the majority.

Just as the United States turns out to have been woefully unprepared to confront the coronavirus, so are we unprepared to confront simultaneous presidential and vice-presidential disability. Returning to the pre-1947 rules, under which the secretary of state would follow the vice president in the line of succession, would make far more sense. The Constitution authorizes is it too much to suggest that it even places a duty on? Congress to address the possibility that the president and vice president could both become incapacitated. It should face up to its responsibility, before the grim scenario becomes reality.

Sanford V. Levinson is a professor of law and government at the University of Texas at Austin. He wrote this article for the Washington Post.

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OPINION EXCHANGE | If Trump and Pence both get very sick, it's unclear who would be president - Minneapolis Star Tribune

VP Mike Pence is on his way to Marietta, GA, for lunch with the governor and a roundtable with restaurant owners.

Good morning from a wet Andrews. The VP is headed to Marietta, GA, for lunch with the governor and a roundtable with restaurant owners.

Travelling with the VP are Secretary Eugene Scalia, Senator Kelly Loeffler and Marc Short.

VP arrived in motorcadeat 09:29. He saluted ground crew, waved to pool and climbed steps without further ado. Wheels up imminently.

Tail reg of AF2 today is 80002.

Schedule below.

9:25AM THE VICEPRESIDENT departs Washington, D.C. en route Marietta, GA on Air Force Two

Joint Base AndrewsPool Press

11:05AM THE VICE PRESIDENT arrives in Marietta, GAon Air Force Two

Dobbins Air Reserve BasePre-Credentialed Press11:40 AM THE VICEPRESIDENT has lunch with Governor Kemp to discuss Georgias phased economic re-opening

Star CafPool Press

1:35PM THE VICEPRESIDENT participates in a roundtable discussion with restaurant owners and executivesWaffle House Corporate HeadquartersPre-CredentialedPress

4:45PM THE VICEPRESIDENT departs Marietta, GAen route Washington, D.C.on Air Force Two

Dobbins Air Reserve BasePool Press

6:10PM THE VICE PRESIDENT arrives in Washington, D.C. on Air Force Two

Joint Base Andrews

Pool Press

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Here's what VP Mike Pence is doing today - The Pavlovic Today

A Michigan man has been arrested for allegedly sending a number of emails threatening to commit a mass shooting and kill President Donald Trump and Vice President Mike Pence in a bomb attack.

Jeffrey David Cox, of Grand Blanc, has been charged with use of interstate communications to make a bomb threat, making threats against the president and vice president of the United States and use of interstate communications to make threats to injure another person after allegedly sending a total of 18 emails from his personal address.

According to an affidavit, seen by MLive, Cox sent the emails on May 16 to the Mott Community College's admissions office, the Monroe Community College's president's office in New York and the Navy's Recruit Training Command in Great Lakes, Illinois.

In one email, Cox allegedly wrote: "There is a bomb in the White House set to detonate Monday, May 18, 2020 at 12:00 P.M. I either placed it near the main White House gates or in the White House itself. I plan to assassinate the President and the Vice President. Nobody can stop me."

In another email, Cox threatened to plant bombs and carry out a mass shooting at Mott Community College.

"I won't tell you when I will do it because I don't want the police to catch me or stop me, but rest assured I will do it and this time it is for real," the email said.

"I am doing this because I think it is extremely funny and I just love the thrill of killing people and destroying buildings and stirring up trouble. There is nothing you or the police can do to stop me! Ha Ha Ha!"

Cox also said he planned on stealing an aircraft and crashing it into the U.S. Naval Reservation in San Diego, California.

Cox's laptop and cellphone were then seized after a search warrant was carried out at his home. The emails were allegedly found in the sent email folder on his phone.

The suspect admitted to sending the threatening emails from the device, according to the affidavit filed by Jeffery Brook, a special agent with the United States Secret Service.

Cox said he sent the emails to help "calm himself down" and had no intention to carry out the threats, reported WXYZ.

"Cox claimed that he had no negative feelings toward the protectees nor the White House," the affidavit said.

Cox has been booked into the Genesee County Jail on state charges of false report of terrorism and using a computer to commit a crime.

Excerpt from:
Michigan Man Accused of White House Bomb Threat to Kill Donald Trump and Mike Pence - Newsweek