Several states are advocating for harsher fentanyl penalties as overdose deaths surge in the U.S.
Nevada, Oregon, Alabama, Texas, West Virginia and South Carolina have all pushed to increase the length of sentences for fentanyl dealers, according to the Associated Press. Fentanyl is largely responsible for the more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths that occurred in 2021 up from 93,331 drug overdose deaths in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Read More
The state of Texas intends to take control of the Houston Independent School District, citing poor academic accountability, violations of the law and the expiration of an injunction that had previously prevented the state from acting, state officials said Wednesday.
The Texas Education Agency said it would name a new district superintendent and suspend the district’s board of trustees. This is the latest in a yearslong fight between the state and the district of about 200,000 students over poor academic performance and the behavior of trustees.
Read More
A federal judge heard oral arguments Wednesday in a lawsuit that could end availability of abortion-inducing drug mifepristone throughout the nation.
The case was brought against the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) in November by Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine, a coalition of pro-life OB/GYNS, pediatricians, and other Christian healthcare providers, who are seeking a preliminary injunction to require the FDA to either withdraw or suspend its approval of the drug while the lawsuit continues.
Read More
More than 205,000 foreign nationals were apprehended or reported as gotaways after illegally entering the southwest border in February, according to preliminary data obtained by The Center Square from a U.S. Customs and Border Patrol agent. The agent provided the information on condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation; it only includes Border Patrol data and excludes Office of Field Operations data.
Read More
What’s happening at the southern U.S. border with Mexico is in fact an invasion, Kinney County Sheriff Brad Coe says.
“We’re experiencing a silent invasion of military age men,” Coe told The Center Square when describing what his deputies have been increasingly facing over the past two years.
Read More
Officials in Texas and Michigan said they were not informed before their states received shipments of contaminated water and soil from East Palestine, Ohio, where a train derailed with toxic chemicals and caused a public health and environmental crisis earlier this month.
Read More
An audit of the 2020 election found a discrepancy of nearly 600 absentee votes in a Texas county, while a hand recount in a Pennsylvania county found a far smaller disparity, as more states seek to implement election reviews.
In Smith County, Texas, an audit of the 2020 election showed 584 more absentee voters than absentee ballots, according to KLTV, a local ABC News affiliate. Seven county races were within the 584-vote margin of error, including council races and propositional elections. The audit also found five different totals for absentee ballots.
Read More
Ahead of President Biden’s first trip to the southern border on Sunday in El Paso, Texas, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas again said the U.S. southern border is closed.
His comments came despite thousands of illegal border crossers pouring into the city, filling the airport, sidewalks, homeless shelters. Over the past few days, many were bused out of town and otherwise cleared out ahead of the president’s visit.
Read More
Half of the states in the U.S. no longer require residents to hold a concealed carry permit to carry firearms in public after Alabama, Indiana, Georgia and Ohio passed laws in 2022 removing permit requirements.
On Monday, Alabama began enforcing its permitless carry law, becoming the 25th state to do so, while Indiana, Georgia and Ohio also passed laws this year allowing residents to concealed carry firearms without a permit. Over the last two years 10 states have moved to permitless carry, including Utah, Montana, Iowa, Tennessee, Arkansas and Texas.
Read More
Following South Dakota GOP Gov. Kristi Noem’s lead, nearly half of U.S. states have put restrictions on or banned the use of Chinese-based social media app TikTok.
At least 19 states have banned TikTok on government-issued devices – Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Idaho, Iowa, Maryland, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, North Dakota, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utha, Virginia and West Virginia.
Read More
Walmart has launched a drone delivery service for customers in Florida, Texas and Arizona as the grocery chain expands its delivery operations.
Customers in the Dallas, Phoenix, Tampa and Orlando areas are able to have same-day delivery via drone, Walmart announced earlier this month.
Read More
Republicans will soon take control of the House of Representatives, but with a margin so narrow it may prove difficult to achieve their legislative and oversight objectives. That margin might have been larger, were it not for egregious errors made by the U.S. Census Bureau in the 2020 census.
Come January, House membership will consist of 213 Democrats and 222 Republicans. A party must hold 218 of those seats to control the House. Thus, Republicans will have only a four-seat majority. That extremely narrow majority means that GOP leadership can lose any vote on any issue if only four Republicans defect and the Democrats stay united in opposition.
Read More
Frustrated by an unending crisis fueled by drug and human trafficking at the southern border, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on Tuesday declared his state was under an invasion and invoked special powers granted under the U.S. and Texas constitutions.
Abbott’s decision came after three dozen counties in his state passed resolutions calling for the dramatic action. The Republican governor said the declaration allows him to send National Guard troops to the border, treat drug cartels as terrorist organization and to build his own border wall separate of the federal government.
Read More
Four Texas cities and six villages in Nebraska voted on Election Day on ballot measures that would outlaw abortion within their jurisdictions.
Of the 10 ballot measures, only one was rejected by voters, reported Mark Lee Dickson, founder of the Sanctuary Cities for the Unborn Initiative, at Live Action News.
Read More
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a Civil Investigative Demand to the Center for Tech and Civil Life (CTCL) as part of an investigation his office launched to determine whether it “solicited donations under the pretext of protecting voters from Covid-19 while instead using the funds to support partisan electioneering efforts or election oversight roles normally left to state and local officials.”
CTCL, a self-described non-partisan nonprofit organization, according to the bios posted on its own website and other records, “is led by individuals with distinctly partisan backgrounds,” the AG’s office says. CTCL’s founder and executive director, for example, Tiana Epps-Johnson, was among a group of inaugural Obama Foundation Fellows who previously was the Election Administration director for a progressive grassroots organization, the New Organizing Institute. She also worked on the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.
Read More
Determined to use their oversight authority to ensure election integrity, House Republicans are deploying dozens of trained observers to key races around the country while dispatching letters putting federal and state officials on notice to look for any shenanigans in the midterms.
The effort led by Rep. Rodney Davis, the top Republican on the House Administration Committee, includes investigating how federal agencies are implementing President Joe Biden’s executive order instructing the U.S. government to expand voter registration, along with the training and deployment of House staff as observers under the authority of Congress.
Read More
NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Although she only vaguely remembers it, I met Erin Kinsey at a Writer’s Round in a side room at the Bavarian Bierhaus at Opry Mills in March of 2021 and we still weren’t sure if we should even be gathering.
Long before Kinsey officially launched her country music career, the Texas girl was already a full decade into it. Her parents had her in every sport, club, and extra-curricular activity they could think of. She played tennis, basketball, and soccer and even took piano lessons. They wanted to help her figure out what she loved. Their goal was to help her find a career born out of passion.
Read More
As the leader of a nonprofit group whose mission is to promote economic freedom, sound public policy, and responsible financial management at the state level, I’m honored to help our nation’s financial officers practice good stewardship of taxpayer dollars. Their work often includes managing pension funds that are vital to millions of Americans’ retirement security. Over the past few years, a growing threat called ESG (Environmental, Social, Governance) has been negatively impacting state pension systems, ultimately putting retirees at risk. Sadly, our nation’s state financial officers and the retirees they have a fiduciary responsibility to protect are increasingly under siege by ESG ideologues who are motivated by politics rather than economics.
Read More
Three more counties are the latest to express support for Texas declaring an invasion at the southern border, bringing the total to 32.
The judge and county commissioners of Ector County, in the Permian Basin, signed a Declaration of Local State of Disaster on Sept. 27 stating the “health, safety, and welfare of Ector County residents are under an imminent threat of disaster from the unprecedented levels of illegal immigration, human trafficking, and drug smuggling coming across the U.S. border from Mexico.”
Read More
New York City officials are thinking about flying illegal immigrants out of the Big Apple to Florida after officials in Texas bussed 11,000 border crossers to the sanctuary city, the Daily Mail reported on Friday.
Manuel Castro, NYC’s Commissioner of Immigration Affairs, said that most of the migrants are from Venezuela, and they want to go to the Sunshine State because it has a large community of Venezuelans.
Read More
The judges and commissioners of four more Texas counties have declared an invasion at the southern border, bringing to 22 the number of counties that have done so.
Jasper, Madison, Throckmorton and Wichita counties are the latest to declare an invasion.
Read More
Texas mom Jennifer Cains told Campus Reform that she unenrolled her daughter from the University of North Texas (UNT) College of Education’s Center for Young Children (CYC) after learning that teachers were allegedly pushing gender theory and pronouns in a classroom full of four-year-olds.
The CYC is an “early childhood program within the College of Education” at UNT. The center describes itself as a “research-based, high-quality preschool program” used to give UNT’s college trainees experience and provide “care and education” for its young students.
Read More
A restaurant in Roanoke, Texas, held a controversial “kid-friendly” drag queen grooming event Sunday during which children of all ages were invited to participate in the show that featured vulgarity and partial nudity, while ANTIFA members, armed with AR-15s, protected the event.
Read More
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is accelerating the state’s busing to New York City of foreign nationals who’ve entered the U.S. through the southern border.
The majority coming in are believed to not have valid asylum claims, are bypassing federal immigration law, and instead of being deported are being released into the U.S. under new Biden administration policies, attorneys general who’ve sued the administration argue.
Read More
The state of Texas announced new restrictions on at least 10 finance firms that have declared an opposition to oil and other fossil fuels, since such a stance could “undermine” the Texas economy that depends heavily on such fuel sources.
The Daily Caller reports that the restrictions, announced by the Texas Comptroller of Public Accounts Glenn Hegar, will prevent the companies in question from entering into most contracts with entities at the state or local level. The new policy is the result of a law passed in 2021 that requires the state government to limit its ties with anti-oil companies. As a result, the government requested information from over 100 companies to determine their stances on fossil fuels.
Read More
The tragic results of the Biden Administration’s extremist immigration policies have become increasingly clear. By now there is abundant video evidence of large groups of foreign nationals wading across the Rio Grande, seeking shelter under highway overpasses, and walking through gaps in the unfinished border wall. These are the obvious results.
Less obvious are the other potentially dangerous situations these policies create. This is not just about talking points for politicians to debate, but real-world situations where people can be injured or killed.
Read More
James Hendrix, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s attempt to force states to provide abortions in certain emergency situations in a Tuesday ruling, according to court documents.
Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding to provide emergency medical aid in an attempt to override state abortion bans. Hendrix halted the guidance and temporarily blocked the HHS from enforcing its interpretation of EMTALA.
Read More
UPDATE: Late Wednesday, Judge Lynn Winmill granted the Biden Department of Justice’s request for an injunction on Idaho’s abortion ban as it pertains to medical emergencies.
“The Court hereby restrains and enjoins the State of Idaho, including all of its officers, employees, and agents, from enforcing Idaho Code § 18-622(2)-(3) as applied to medical care required by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA),” Winmill wrote, adding the state is prohibited “from initiating any criminal prosecution against, attempting to suspend or revoke the professional license of, or seeking to impose any other form of liability on, any medical provider or hospital based on their performance of conduct that (1) is defined as an “abortion” under Idaho Code § 18-604(1), but that is necessary to avoid (i) “placing the health of” a pregnant patient “in serious jeopardy”; (ii) a “serious impairment to bodily functions” of the pregnant patient; or (iii) a “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part” of the pregnant patient.”
Read More
In October 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court stripped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of the unilateral powers she was using when she declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whitmer had been using a 1945 law – which was prompted by a three-day race riot in Detroit three years earlier – that had no sunset provision in it and didn’t require approval by the state legislature.
In May 2021, Whitmer told a news agency that if she still had that 1945 state-of-emergency law, she would use those powers, but not for anything related to a pandemic.
Read More
Donald Trump on Saturday delivered stinging rebukes of the Biden administration at the Dallas Conservative Political Action Conference, one of a continuing series of indications that the still-popular former president has set his sights on a return to the White House for 2024.
Trump during his speech declared that the U.S. “is being destroyed more from the inside than the out,” and that the country “is on the edge of an abyss, and our movement is the only force on earth that can save it.”
Read More
Avideo of kids at an Islamic center in Houston, Texas pledging their allegiance to the supreme leader of Iran is setting off alarm bells among experts, who are warning this has all the signs of the Iranian regime’s global indoctrination efforts to spread its revolutionary ideology and recruit operatives abroad.
The viral video was initially posted to YouTube and Facebook last week by the Islamic Education Center of Houston (IEC), which organized the event calling on parents to bring children aged 4-14, according to its social media pages. The original video posts were later removed, but clips remain online.
Read More
Idaho, Tennessee and Texas are moving to enact “trigger bans” restricting abortions after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade June 24, ending the precedent which had banned states from restricting abortion throughout the first six months of pregnancy.
The bans in these three states will take effect 30 days after the Supreme Court officially transmitted its ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Association July 26, according to The Hill. Another 10 states had trigger bans go into effect after elected officials enacted them, and trigger abortion bans went into effect immediately after the court overturned Roe in three other states.
Read More
An additional $30 million in Operation Lone Star (OLS) grant money is available to Texas cities and counties to enhance border security operations, the governor’s Public Safety Office (PSO) announced.
The announcement came two days after six county judges and sheriffs asked the governor to declare an invasion at the southern border, and to do more to help them thwart illegal activity in their counties after experiencing a surge of drug and human smuggling and other criminal activity resulting from the Biden administration’s border policies.
Read More
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Chief Chris Magnus promised discontented rank-and-file officials that the agency would always support them despite pursuing charges against agents involved in the now-debunked “whipgate” incident, an internal email obtained exclusively by The Daily Caller News Foundation showed.
When CBP personnel “do the right thing,” the agency “will always stand behind you,” Magnus wrote in the email before announcing the results of the investigation into the September incident that took place in Del Rio, Texas. During the incident, Border Patrol agents used reins to steer their horses and maneuver around migrants entering the United Sates at the Rio Grande, which prompted some Democratic lawmakers and immigration advocates to falsely claim the agents whipped migrants.
Read More
U.S. judges declaring an invasion at the southern border hasn’t occurred before until this week, Ken Cuccinelli, former U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services director and deputy secretary of Department of Homeland Security, said.
On Tuesday, four county judges in Texas declared an invasion citing Article 4, Section 7 of the Texas Constitution and Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution. They called on Texas Gov. Greg Abbott to “immediately prevent and/or remove all persons invading the sovereignty of Texas and that of the United States.”
Read More
The Texas Republican Party has adopted a new platform, rejecting the certification of the 2020 presidential election results and declaring “that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”
The 40-page platform was adopted by the state GOP in Houston over the weekend for its biennial convention, The Hill reported.
Read More
The world’s first trillionaires could be from Texas, according to a new analysis of the 30 richest people in the world.
A new report published by the software company Tipalti Approve estimates that newly relocated Texas resident, Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk, could become the world’s first trillionaire by 2024. Houston native and Dell Technologies CEO Michael Dell could become a trillionaire by 2033.
Read More
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis says Texas shouldn’t be allowing illegal immigrants to enter the state, echoing sentiments conservative Texans have been arguing for over a year.
“What Texas needs to do is just send them [illegal immigrants] back across the border,” Gov. DeSantis said at a recent press conference in Fort Walton Beach, Florida. “Who cares what the Feds are saying. They aren’t doing their job.
Read More
Construction and mining equipment giant Caterpillar Inc. announced Tuesday it will move its global headquarters from its current location in Deerfield, Illinois, to the company’s existing office in Irving, Texas.
“We believe it’s in the best strategic interest of the company to make this move, which supports Caterpillar’s strategy for profitable growth as we help our customers build a better, more sustainable world,” said Chairman and CEO Jim Umpleby in a press release.
Read More
Shocking footage has emerged online of a drag queen show for children that took place at a gay bar in Dallas, Texas, on Saturday.
The newly-opened “Mr. Misster” hosted a “Drag the Kids to Pride” event where scantily clad drag queens gyrated in front of young children, and invited them to join them on stage.
Read More
The U.S. Supreme Court voted 5-4 on Tuesday to temporarily block the Texas law that prohibits social media companies from moderating content based on users’ views.
Read More
From Congress to the statehouse, Republicans are fighting a growing movement to force investments into funds that make decisions based on environmental, social, governance, or political criteria.
The Environmental Social Governance (ESG) movement has prompted the Securities and Exchange Commission to propose a rule requiring companies to report emissions and other climate risk data, while public pension funds like the Thrift Savings Plan are discussing using ESG metrics to govern investment decisions.
Read More
The May 24 massacre in Uvalde, Texas outrages the conscience, though not for the facile and stupid reasons spewed by every prominent Democratic Party politician, half-witted newspaper columnist, and vapid television talking-head.
Liberals and other simpering dunderheads make fetishes of objects, focusing on the tool rather than the tool’s misuser. “Nobody needs an AR-15,” goes the refrain, when need has nothing and right has everything to do with it. “But the tool is so easy to misuse and abuse!” comes the ovine rebuttal, when we know as a matter of fact the tool is used in a small fraction of violent crimes.
Read More
The director of the southern section of the Texas Department of Public Safety cut short his Thursday press conference as reporters shouted questions at him about why local law enforcement was ineffective for the hour after Tuesday’s spree shooting at Uvalde’s Robb Elementary School as gunshot victims languished inside. The crisis ended when Border Patrol Tactical officers arrived, engaged shooter Salvador Ramos, and killed him.
Read More
Texas government officials can continue to investigate parents who transition their children to the opposite sex for possible child abuse, the state’s supreme court ruled Friday.
The Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) determined that child sex change surgeries constituted child abuse in August 2021 upon prompting by Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, and the DFPS began investigations of families for potential child abuse over treatments their transgender children were receiving in February. An appeals court had previously blocked these inquiries throughout the state, but the Texas Supreme Court ruled the lower court had “abused its discretion.”
Read More
Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Robert Henneke, the executive director and general counsel of The Texas Public Policy Foundation, about Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s Oct. 18, 2022 ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for air travelers and public transportation passengers.
Read More
Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Robert Henneke, the executive director and general counsel of The Texas Public Policy Foundation, about Florida federal Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle’s Oct. 18, 2022 ruling that overturned the Centers for Disease Control’s mask mandate for air travelers and public transportation passengers.
Read More
Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, reports from Washington’s Union Station, where Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott sent migrants who crossed the border into his state.
Read More
A significant number of Hispanic women are poised to represent the Republican Party in Texas as congressional candidates in the upcoming midterms, creating a potential nightmare scenario for Democrats as they attempt to reverse GOP gains.
Four Hispanic women have already won their respective GOP primaries, while two others made it to a runoff that will be held in May. Three of them, Mayra Flores, Monica de la Cruz and Cassy Garcia, have the potential to become the first Hispanic women and the first Republicans to represent South Texas in Congress.
Read More
After the serious election integrity issues of 2020, Republican leaders and the Republican National Committee have not been idle, but responded on behalf of voters to ensure that free, fair, and transparent elections remain a hallmark of American democracy. Joe Biden and Democrats predictably have done everything under the sun to smear these efforts, even calling those everyday Americans who oppose the efforts racist. But now, over a year later, the results are in, and Democrats have been totally wrong.
Georgia and Texas are perfect examples. Almost a year ago, after the passage of SB 202 – a highly popular Republican-led election integrity law which expanded early voting, poll watching, and voter ID requirements – Democrats pulled out all thestops and started lying. They said the law was “racist,” would “suppress” voter turnout, and even backed a boycott meant to hurt small businesses, many of them black-owned.
Essentially, they shamefully tried to stir up chaos along racial lines. But on Election Day, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution depicted a different scene entirely, writing that voters saw “short lines,” “few problems,” and no “obstacles at the polls.” It is time for all race-baiting Democrat politicians to stop their lies and admit their claims aren’t based in reality.
Read More