Former President Donald Trump on Monday asserted that Republicans must embrace ballot harvesting in the states that permit the practice in order to win the next election.
“So for 2024, should Republicans embrace early voting, voting by mail, and embrace the tactics of the Democrats and follow the ballot harvesting laws of their respective states?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked in an interview that premiered Monday.
Read More
Kentucky lawmakers hope they have already have taken steps that can help avoid a tragedy such as took place in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday.
On Friday of last week, legislation was signed into law allowing parochial and other private schools to develop pacts with local law enforcement agencies or the Kentucky State Police to have school resource officers on their campuses. House Bill 540, sponsored by state Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Nicholasville, was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear.
In Tennessee on Monday, a shooting at Christian elementary school left three children, three adults and the shooter dead.
Read More
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday in Miami that establishes an Education Savings Accounts (ESA) program under which every family in the state can receive up to $8,000 to cover education expenses outside of the public school system. “The state of Florida is number one when it comes to education freedom and education choice,” DeSantis said at a press conference.
Read More
On Friday, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost sent a letter to the U.S. Department of Education urging the department to maintain a regulation that mandates public universities to uphold the First Amendment or risk losing grant funding.
In accordance with the current rule, which was put in place in 2020 to carry out Supreme Court precedent, public universities are not allowed to deny religious student organizations “any right, benefit or privilege that is otherwise afforded to other student organizations at the public institution” because of the group’s “beliefs, practices, policies, speech, membership standards or leadership standards, which are informed by sincerely held religious beliefs.”
Read More
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. agreed that the North Carolina-based First-Citizens Bank & Trust Co. can acquire the troubled Silicon Valley Bank, and 17 branches of the California-based bank will reopen Monday as branches of First-Citizens.
Read More
The Pentagon is increasingly struggling to fill the weapons and equipment requests for the war in Ukraine. At the same time, taxpayer funds are going to pay for ongoing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in the military, most recently one controversial Pentagon official pushing anti-police and pro-critical race theory books at schools for the children of military families.
The New York Times recently highlighted the Pentagon’s manufacturing problem with a story headlined: “From Rockets to Ball Bearings: Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine.”
Read More
The top four downloaded applications in the past 30 days in the U.S. Apple App Store and Google Play Store are owned by Chinese-tied companies, according to data from Apptopia analyzed by Axios.
While these Chinese-tied apps are thriving in the U.S., American apps are typically not permitted to operate in China due to the country’s strict censorship, according to Axios. China has over one billion internet users according to Statista, so the U.S. is missing out on a massive market while China has exclusive access to it.
Read More
A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics found that nearly 40% of veterans reported concerns about being able to pay their medical bills.
Overall, the report found that 12.8% of veterans aged 25-64 had problems paying medical bills, 8.4% had forgone medical care and 38.4% were somewhat or very worried about being able to pay their medical bills if they got sick or had an accident.
Read More
The Ohio Narcotics Intelligence Center (ONIC) has released a public safety notice in order to warn parents that children are using emojis to advertise, sell, and acquire illegal substances on social media and in electronic communication.
According to ONIC Executive Director Cynthia Peterman, this kind of emoji usage is becoming more popular around the country, and the analysis of electronic devices seized in current drug investigations has shown activity in Ohio related to the use of emojis in this way.
Read More
States throughout the nation that have facilities for storing hazardous waste are still working to stop the transport of contaminated debris from an Ohio train disaster that culminated in a fire to their states.
On Saturday, the City and County of Baltimore, Maryland announced in a joint statement that they are “seeking a legal opinion from the Attorney General’s Office regarding the City’s requirement to treat and discharge the waste from the Norfolk Southern Railroad derailment.”
Read More
Two polls showing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis “running more competitively” against former President Donald Trump in first-in-the-nation nominating states Iowa and New Hampshire are missing some key data, raising questions about the validity of the surveys.
Read More
“[W]e would not proceed with this without support from Congress, and I think that would ideally come in the form of an authorizing law, rather than us trying to interpret our law to enable this.”
That was Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in March 2021, noting the fact that when it comes a central bank digital currency – a more distinct possibility after several bank failures have swept across the global financial system – that Congress simply has not authorized such an undertaking.
Read More
by Madeleine Hubbard While the corruption trial of former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan is still a year away, the depth of his alleged scheme is already starting to be unveiled, as the Chicago Democrat remains a central figure in the corruption trial of four former ComEd officials. Federal…
Read More
The most recent shout-down debacle at Stanford’s law school, one of many such recent sordid episodes, prompts the question: “Who owns our universities?”
The law students who are in residence for three years apparently assume they embody the university. And so, they believe they represent and speak for a score of diverse Stanford interests when they shout down federal Judge Kyle Duncan, as if he were an intruder into their own woke private domain.
Read More
It’s challenging to say something original about the Ukraine war. It’s been debated now for more than a year, and it’s not over yet. But that’s bad news for those supporting the war. Most Americans’ interest in foreign policy matters is limited, and many expect quicker favorable results than are probably ever possible in war. A year of war in a far-off land – another war in another far-off land – is not something Americans are likely to support for long, especially if it’s led by a stumble-bum president who picks incompetents for cabinet secretaries, campaigned for a mentally challenged stroke victim, and may be compromised by his son’s business dealings.
Read More
The dates have been revealed for when six United States Army bases will officially have their names changed due to a far-left campaign to rename any installations bearing Confederate names.
According to Axios, the six bases in question are: Fort Hood, Texas; Fort Pickett, Virginia; Fort Rucker, Alabama; Fort Lee, Virginia; Fort Benning, Georgia; and Fort Bragg, North Carolina. The name changes come after Joe Biden created a federal Naming Commission, for the sole purpose of changing names of federal facilities, monuments, parks, and other territories that were originally named for Confederate figures; the campaign has been widely criticized as an effort to erase American history in the name of political correctness and “woke” racial justice politics.
Read More
Researchers are increasingly investigating 3D-printed food to boost global food production in a bid to combat climate-related food insecurity, Axios reported Friday.
Although the technology is still new, with research necessary for the technique to be scaled up for both industrial or home use, some researchers see 3D-printed food as a way to make nutritious food available and affordable for those who would otherwise lack access to healthy options, according to Axios. Printed food is already being used to make imitation meat cuts from soy protein and chickpeas at several restaurants and butchers in Europe, Reuters reported in October.
Read More
Three children are dead after a gunman opened fire Monday at the Covenant School, a private Christian school in Nashville, Tenn., according to a Vanderbilt University Medical Center spokesperson.
Read More
The Ohio Senate and House, along with Republicans and Democrats, agreed on rail safety issues in the state’s proposed transportation budget. But there were other differences.
The nearly $13.5 billion budget that unanimously passed the Senate on Thursday funds state and local road and bridge construction, improvements and repair maintenance. House Democrats said that version negatively impacts working Ohioans, labor unions and competitive bidding.
Read More
The Joe Biden administration has no plans to remove the Cuban regime from the list of “State Sponsors of Terrorism,” the head of US diplomacy, Antony Blinken, said Thursday during a hearing before the Foreign Affairs Committee—House of Representatives (HFAC).
“We do not plan to remove them from the list,” said the Secretary of State in response to a direct question about it made by Congresswoman María Elvira Salazar.
Read More
The federally-chartered regulator responsible for managing fisheries in the oceans of New England acknowledged that offshore wind farms could pose a threat to the local marine wildlife, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Thomas Nies, executive director of the New England Fishery Management Council (NEFMC), noted the “concerning implications” of a study by researchers from the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research, which found that the high voltage direct current (HVDC) power cables used by some offshore wind farms emitted magnetic fields that could hinder the ability of haddock larvae to navigate, according to a January 18 letter obtained by the DCNF. The negative impact on both the haddocks’ speed and ability to navigate could result in increased “predation” of affected fish.
Read More
As “Zuckerbucks” — the injection of private money into public election administration — make a comeback, states and municipalities are clashing over whether the funds should be accepted or banned.
While many states and counties across the country have either restricted or banned the use of private money to fund public elections offices, a nonprofit with progressive Democrat ties that served as the key link in the 2020 Zuckerbucks funding chain is still finding loopholes in some counties as states seek to tighten up their laws.
Read More
Republican lawmakers have re-introduced a bill to require school systems to have policies in place that allow parents to be more active in their child’s education.
House Bill (HB) 8, known as the “Parents Bill of Rights,” sponsored by state Representatives D.J. Swearingen (R-Huron) and Sara Carruthers (R-Hamilton) aims to require school systems to give parents notice of sexually explicit materials and create a health care plan for students with their parents.
Read More
On his blog A Pilgrim in Narnia, Brenton Dickieson tells us that C.S. Lewis in his Studies in Words defined “verbicide” as the “murder of words.” Dickieson adds that “Lewis has some similar concerns as George Orwell in his ‘Politics and the English Language.’ Words can be politicized or bent into the service of those who are peddling products or ideas.”
The 21st century has given us a multitude of these vampires, who—having sucked the original meanings out of certain nouns and verbs—then use the carcasses to sell certain ideologies or to confuse the rest of us. Here is a partial list of these zombie words.
Read More
The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) opened federal investigations into four universities this week in response to complaints filed by medical watchdog Do No Harm (DNH), according to the organization.
The OCR will investigate Wake Forest University (WFU), the University of Virginia (UVA), the University of Rochester (UR) and Thomas Jefferson University (TJU) for alleged civil rights violations, Do No Harm reported. Senior Fellow Mark Perry filed a joint complaint against WFU and UVA, alleging the institutions used school resources to partner with an organization whose activities violate Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, while Program Manager Laura Morgan violated complaints against UR and TJU for allegedly participating in programs that violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
Read More
Municipal pension plan investment returns were a “wild rollercoaster ride” in 2021 and 2022 with boom or bust results over that two-year period.
Many cities reported record-setting returns in 2021 as high as 33.7% only to find negative returns in 2022. The swing meant billions of dollars to many municipalities’ pension funds.
Read More
For Ask an Economist this week I have a question from Hal who asks, “What is the difference between a ‘non-profit’ and a ‘not for profit’?”
In order to address this question, I think it’s important to discuss what separates a for-profit business from these two forms of organization.
Read More
After nine weeks of testimony from multiple government witnesses, including FBI agents, the Justice Department finally concluded its case-in-chief in the Proud Boys’ seditious conspiracy trial on Monday.
Five Proud Boys, including the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, are accused of conspiring to “oppose the lawful transfer of presidential power by force” on January 6, 2021. It is Attorney General Merrick Garland’s most consequential case related to January 6; convictions will help build a similar case against Donald Trump largely based on his infamous “stand back and stand by” remark to the Proud Boys during an October 2020 presidential debate.
Read More
Former President Donald Trump is decrying the relentless investigations launched against him and his supporters, saying they are a form of political cheating worse than ballot stuffing.
Trump assailed the chronic investigations he has faced for seven years during his first rally of the 2024 campaign season in Waco, Texas on Saturday night, and then in a subsequent post on his Truth Social platform.
Read More
Antonin Scalia was a budding textualist long before he transformed the Supreme Court, and the nation, with his unique legal approach, a new biography of his early life reveals.
In the 1950s, the future Supreme Court Justice spent his mornings on the New York subway, commuting with his rifle to Xavier High School, a hybrid Jesuit-run Catholic school and military academy in Manhattan. His teacher’s response one day to a student’s sarcastic comment about “Hamlet” became a moment Scalia would never forget — and would refer to for the rest of his life as the Shakespeare Principle: “Mistah, when you read Shakespeah, Shakespeah’s not on trial; you ah,” Father Thomas Matthews said.
Read More
Republican Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky left an inpatient rehab facility Saturday following physical therapy, CNN reported.
McConnell, the senate minority leader, was hospitalized Mar. 9 after he tripped and fell during an event at the Waldorf Astoria in Washington, D.C., suffering a concussion and a fractured rib. He will work from home on the advice of medical professionals, according to CNN.
Read More
Former President Donald Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis for the 2024 GOP primary by a massive two-digit margin, doubling the support of DeSantis’ share, according to a poll released Friday.
Trump tops a crowded field of Republican presidential contenders at 50% – a 26-percentage point lead over the Florida governor – according to a Harvard CAPS/Harris poll. In a head-to-head matchup between the two frontrunners, the former president still wins against DeSantis, but by a slimmer margin of 56% to 44%.
Read More
Hawaii will not cooperate with other states’ civil or criminal investigations related to abortion under a new law signed by Gov. Josh Green.
Senate Bill 1, also known as Act 2, prohibits the issuance of a subpoena in connection with an out-of-state or interstate investigation related to abortion and bans any agency from providing information or spending time or resources to further such an investigation.
Read More
Nearly 300 suspected terrorists have been apprehended attempting to enter the U.S. in the first few months of fiscal 2023 as 28 members of Congress formed a new caucus to address the crisis at the northern border, where record numbers of foreign nationals continue to illegally enter from Canada.
The Northern Border Security Caucus, formed by U.S. Reps. Mike Kelly, R-Pennsylvania, and Ryan Zinke, R-Montana, is expressing concerns about “the increased human and drug trafficking, along with the decrease in Border Patrol agents and lack of security, along the U.S.-Canada border.”
Read More
Alex Triantafilou, the newly elected head of the Ohio Republican Party, endorsed legislation on Thursday that aims to alter the process of how initiative petitions can propose constitutional amendments.
There are currently two pieces of legislation that Republican lawmakers have introduced this session to protect the state Constitution from out-of-state special interest groups.
Read More
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) has followed through on their plan to turn millions of lawful gun owners into felons in the name of “public safety” by reclassifying pistols with stabilizing braces as short-barreled rifles, effectively expanding the unconstitutional national gun registry.
Stabilizing braces are devices that can be attached to pistols to aid the user in balancing their arm. Originally created to help people with disabilities, the accessory is now more popular amongst mainstream shooters who use them to adapt pistols into guns that can be shot from the shoulder, which has been legal to do in the past. Now, there’s a big hoop to jump through if you don’t want to be hit with fines and/or jail time.
Read More
The North Dakota House approved a bill on Wednesday that would require teachers to refer to students using pronouns that correspond with their biological sex.
In a 60-32 vote, the state house passed Senate Bill 2231, sponsored by Republican state Sen. Larry Luick and state Sen. Scott Meyer, which mandates that public school teachers must use a students’ biological sex pronouns unless parents give permission for them to do otherwise. The bill cleared the state senate in February and now heads to Republican North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum’s desk.
Read More
Ahead of Tax Day on April 18, 73% of taxpayers said the government doesn’t use their taxes wisely, a new survey found. A separate report found that red states have the better taxpayer return on investment.
Wallethub’s “Taxpayer Survey” found that 28% of respondents said charities would better spend their money; 26% said local governments would best spend their money, followed by state government (22%), the federal government (16%) and religious groups (13%).
Read More
Most Americans are likely pleased that when they turn on their television, no longer are there talking heads and public health figures breathlessly discussing COVID-19 case counts and deaths. Broadly, the media as a whole is no longer incessantly reporting on the topic, and nationally, the federal public health emergency declared for the COVID-19 pandemic terminates on May 11.
While the old signs of the pandemic have virtually vanished, Americans won’t forget what their governments did to them.
Read More
Ahead of a prospective indictment of former President Donald Trump, legal experts and elected officeholders are warning that such an unprecedented move may spur a dangerous escalation spiral of retributive political prosecutions that undermine the nation’s justice system.
Trump announced last week that he expected to be arrested imminently. While that arrest has not yet occurred, the prospect of a Trump indictment looms large as Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg continues his investigation into an alleged 2016 hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels.
Read More
Iowa and Ohio are the latest states looking to leave the Electronic Registration Information Center (ERIC), the controversial interstate voting data partnership.
Already seen as suspect by conservatives questioning ERIC’s left-leaning ties, the organization has been inflexible to changes called for by Ohio and other Republican-led states.
Read More
Republican state lawmakers are getting closer to putting a measure on the ballot in August that would need 60 percent of voters to approve constitutional amendments.
State Senators Rob McColley (R-Napoleon) and Theresa Gavarone (R-Bowling Green) introduced two pieces of legislation on Wednesday one which aims to alter the process of how constitutional amendments can be proposed by initiative petitions and one to allow for special elections to be held in August for certain purposes.
Read More
Alex Triantafilou, the newly elected head of the Ohio Republican Party, stopped in Hillsboro for the Highland County Republican Party’s annual Lincoln Day Dinner on Wednesday to discuss his positive vision for the Ohio Republican Party moving forwards.
According to Triantafilou, one of his primary focuses for the party is removing U.S. Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and President Joe Biden from office.
Read More
Records newly released by the National Archives show efforts to suppress negative stories about the Biden family’s business deals long predate the Hunter Biden laptop controversy, dating back to 2015 when an aide to then-Vice President Joe Biden boasted she got a reporter to “only use” negative information “if her editors hold a gun to her head.”
The emails come from the Obama administration archives and were forced into the public through litigation by the America First Legal nonprofit public interest law firm. They chronicle efforts by Biden’s then-aides in the vice president’s office to suppress stories about Huter Biden’s relationship with the Ukraine energy compamy Burisma Holdings during a Biden trip to Ukraine in December 2015.
Read More
Utah passed legislation Thursday to require parental consent for children to use certain social media apps, becoming the first state in the country to limit teenagers’ social media usage.
Republican Gov. Spencer Cox signed two bills into law that limits minors from using social media apps like TikTok, requiring parental consent for those under 18. Minors are prohibited from using these platforms between 10:30 p.m. and 6:30 a.m., and are subjected to age verification prior to social media use.
Read More
The U.S. House passed the Parents Bill of Rights Act Friday, with most House Republicans voting in favor of the bill that would require school districts to give parents access to their children’s curricula and reading lists, to inform parents of any violence occurring on campus, and to notify parents if their child is sharing a bathroom or locker room with a student of the opposite biological sex.
The measure passed by a vote of 213-208, with five Republicans voting no. Representatives Mike Lawler (R-NY-17); Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05); Matt Gaetz (R-FL-01); Ken Buck (R-CO-04); and Matt Rosendale (R-MT-02) all voted against the legislation.
Read More
On Thursday, the Cuyahoga County Republican Party censured state Representative Tom Patton (R-Strongsville) for voting in favor of newly elected House Speaker Jason Stephens (R-Kitts Hill).
The Cuyahoga County Republican Party Disciplinary Committee previously recommended that Patton be censured for disregarding his obligation to the party and public by voting for Stephens.
Read More
The stunning success of conservative education reform across the country in the past few years is the result a moral fact: Parents are children’s primary educators. Until very recently, this was not disputed, let alone controversial.
But lately, it has become clear that progressive elites who run teachers unions and school boards, the Democratic Party, and the corporate media no longer share this view. Their contempt for parents’ rights has fueled a long train of abuses, from racist curricula to a war on girls sports and bathrooms to darker episodes of criminal cover-ups and student grooming.
Read More
A recent Washington Post-Kaiser Family Foundation survey purporting to find that transitioning made life more satisfying for transgender adults additionally found that a huge proportion of sampled transgender people had not undergone any form of medical transition.
Most — not all — of the transgender participants had socially transitioned, but fewer than one third had ever undergone puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, and only one in six had undergone any type of surgery to present as the opposite sex, according to the survey. Additionally, the survey’s definition of transgender included many individuals who didn’t identify as either gender, and most transgender respondents didn’t consistently present as the opposite sex, the survey found.
Read More
Border Patrol agents in Maine busted a stash house full of illegal migrants Tuesday, according to a U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) statement.
Authorities found 17 illegal migrants from Nicaragua and Guatemala in a house located in Lisbon, Maine, according to CBP. The incident comes amid a surge in illegal migration at the northern border, where Border Patrol apprehended more than 2,800 illegal migrants between October 2022 and February 2023, according to agency data.
Read More