Good afternoon, this is Brooke Howard with The Daily Beast. It's Monday, November 23rd, and these are the top stories the Chi Chi team is watching right now. Maybe this will help things change course. One of President Trump's closest allies and wealthiest donors has told him to stop the post-election shenanigans.
Even as other big financial backers abandoned Trump, Blackstone CEO Steve Schwarzman donated millions of dollars to the president's 2020 campaign. He also supported his 2016 presidential bid, chair the White House's strategic and policy forum, and remains an unofficial Trump advisor. But in a statement to Axios, Schwarzman said the election result is damn near certain, and it's time to quote, move on. He added that he is ready to help President-elect Joe Biden and his team rebuild the post-COVID economy.
To make matters worse for Trump, more than 100 top business leaders are issuing a letter on Monday to demand that he call it quits on the election. According to the New York Times, if a concession from Trump does not happen, the executives may threaten to withhold campaign donations from the two Republican candidates in Georgia, whose runoffs will determine the Senate's balance of power. And if that was not enough, legendary journalist Karl Bernstein has named 21 GOP senators who want Trump to end his battle for a second term. Thing is, the senators are too afraid to express their feelings out loud to the public.
Bernstein listed the Republicans one by one on Twitter, who he said have been privately condemning Trump. He added, quote, with few exceptions, their craving public silence has helped enable Trump's most breathless conduct. And you know what? He's absolutely right.
At least two people have been killed in a Sunday night stabbing attack. At a Baptist church in San Jose, California. Police confirmed that multiple other people have been hurt, some with life-threatening injuries. As of Monday morning, details were still scarce, though authorities have confirmed that no services were ongoing at Grace Baptist Church at the time of the attack.
However, people who were homeless have been brought inside to get out of the cold. Police said no arrests have been made. International diamonds and jade are not the only items you have to worry about being ethical. Unfortunately, that olive oil in your pantry could be the product of conflict olives, stolen by Syrian warlords who finance their fighting units.
An investigation by the Daily Beast has found that those olives are smuggled into Europe and used to produce high-grade olive oil. And from there, it is sold on and stocked in grocery stores across America. The oil comes from Afrin, a hilly district northwest of Aleppo, Syria. Turkish forces invaded Syria twice, once in 2018 and again in October 2019, with a personal green light from the Trump administration.
Along with pro-Turkish militias, they've been accused of booting Kurdish majority areas under their occupation. Multiple sources have said that Turkish-backed warlords are taxing, extorting, and outright robbing local farmers of their olive crops. And thanks to Trump administration policy, the militias can now profit from olive oil sold on American supermarket shelves, untouched by the otherwise strict U.S. economic sanctions on Syria.
With the help of Turkey, the Syrian National Army, who are a coalition of Islam's fighters, have been able to fund their military operations by taking control of Afrin's olive industry. A test to track the provenance of the olive oil reveal a murky world of militia commanders and middlemen profiting from Afrin farmers, where some of the olive farms have been seized outright. Farmers are blocked from selling their produce on the open market and must hand over a large portion of their harvest to the warlords. Warlords also charge landowners a fee to export olives or even to access their own land, in addition to levying attacks on trees.
The system is essentially a mob, extorting its country's farmers with the assistance of its country's enemy. While the Turkish-backed authorities in Afrin will not protect farmers from the predatory olive trade, the Trump administration could potentially help through U.S. sanction laws. Issue is, the Trump administration has not sanctioned the Syrian National Army, an armed opposition group.
In fact, U.S. officials have praised Turkey's operations in Syria as a counter to Russian influence, and elements of the Syrian National Army have received U.S. support under both the counter-ISIS campaign and a covert CIA program to undermine the Syrian government. Well, isn't this quite the pickle?
Democrats don't know exactly what to do with Fox News. As Joe Biden assumes the responsibility is of the presidency, his press operation has already questioned what to do with the network that operates by propaganda for Republicans, and President Trump in particular. As of late, there's been some growing tension between Trump and some of the network's more straight-laced news anchors, which could possibly switch up the political arena of Fox News. The willingness of the network's Newsy daytime hosts and reporters to call the 2020 election for Biden has enraged Trump.
He has spewed about Fox's decision to call Arizona for Biden on election night, and his son-in-law, Derek Kushner, even placed a call to Fox News proprietor, Rupert Murdoch, to try and reverse it. However, the network's more popular, and off-the-rails opinion hosts, have stood behind the president as he's attacked the legitimacy of the election and spread wild fears about voter fraud. But Trump may make Biden's decision to embrace Fox easier. The president has implied that he might start or join a rival network or media company if he, and when, he leaves office.
Since the election, he has bashed Fox for what he describes as a, quote, ratings crash for the network's daytime programming, and his followers have literally protested at the network's headquarters. And people still don't think he's racist, huh? President Trump is threatening to veto the annual Defense Department funding bill put forth by Congress if it moves to rename all U.S. military bases that were named after Confederate leaders.
While that particular section of this year's National Defense Authorization Act has received bipartisan support, the outgoing president remains steadfast in his disapproval. The defense bill has successfully passed Congress every year since 1961. According to the New York Times, there are currently 10 military installations named after Confederate war leaders, most notably for Brad in North Carolina and Ford Hood in Texas. This guy thought he was gonna get away with this, but he had another thing coming.
Over the weekend, a clip of a man named Raymond Deskin surfaced where he approaches two women protesting outside of President Trump's golf course in Virginia, maskless, and decked out in Trump gear, including an inflatable Keep America Great swimming floaty around his waist. In the footage from Saturday, the 61-year-old MAGA fanatic takes a deep breath, exhales all over the women, and then walks away smirking and shouting, quote, I grieved on you. Well, according to the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office, Deskins has been charged with misdemeanor simple assault. The MAGA fan has not commented on his charge.
A clinical trial has shown that a University of Oxford vaccine created alongside the drugmaker AstraZeneca stops at least 70% of people from developing COVID-19 symptoms. Data suggests that protection can be increased to 90% when people are given a low dose of the vaccine, followed by a high one. It's currently unknown why the dosing method seems to increase protection. This now means that there are three vaccines that have been shown to prevent people from developing coronavirus symptoms.
Earlier this month, Pfizer and Moderna announced that their treatments appear to give around 95% protection from the coronavirus. The Oxford vaccine is cheaper than the other two and can be stored at regular refrigerator temperatures, which means it can be distributed all over the world. That's all for today. Check back every weekday morning and afternoon for more of the news you need to know.
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