Day: April 30, 2019

Education Savings Accounts Bill Appears Headed to Conference Committee

Laura Baigert

NASHVILLE, Tennessee – Gov. Bill Lee’s  Education Savings Account legislation appears headed to a conference committee, as the Tennessee House and State Senate both refused on Monday to move from their respective versions of the bill. The House passed HB 0939 last Tuesday by one vote after a dramatic 40-minute delay to break a 49 to 49 tie to end in a 50 to 48 vote, as reported by The Tennessee Star. The tie was broken by Representative Jason Zachary (R-Knoxville), after Knox County was removed as one of the participating counties covered in the program. Two days later, the Senate took up the measure with different language that that passed by the House. After much less drama and by a wider margin, as reported, SB 0795 passed in the Senate with a vote of 20 to 13. Education Savings Accounts (ESAs), part of a suite of education initiatives by Governor Bill Lee, will provide economically eligible parents with educational choice for their children in school districts with the highest concentrations of poverty and underperforming schools. A portion of state education funds will follow the child to a Tennessee Department of Education approved private school to cover costs of certain…

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Commentary: ‘ObamaGate’ Is All High Crimes and No Misdemeanors

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President Barack Obama

by Dr. Sebastian Gorka   Do you sometimes feel like you are living in a Tim Burton movie? Or an episode of “Monty Python’s Flying Circus”? All the more so after a private Twitter user, who posted a video of the teary-eyed Rachel Maddow, was suspended by the social media platform. Why? Because she posted the close-up that clearly demonstrated that Maddow was overwrought. Suspended for posting the truth. Or look instead at Anderson Cooper, CNN’s putative doyen, who can’t even garner 0.3 percent of the population as viewers for his “flagship” program, and who recently accused Jared Kushner of “gaslighting” the nation over Russia; in other words of making statements aimed at convincing the listeners that they are insane. This from the network that has so stoked the flames of Russia conspiracy-mongering every day for two years, that they publish outlandish pieces on Robert Mueller’s sealing indictments against the president, and as Cooper’s fellow show host Chris Cuomo qualifies the president’s public statements as those made by a convict already wearing an “orange jumpsuit,” statements that are less gaslighting than full on tinfoil-hattery. And why was Kushner so calumniated? What craziness was he trying to sell to America as fact? His “gaslighting” sin was to state early last week that…

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ICE Announces Plan to Stop ‘Fake Families’ and Child Smuggling at the Border

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by Jason Hopkins   Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced on Monday that it is shifting its resources to deal with the influx of “fake families” arriving on the U.S-Mexico border. “Fake families are being formed to cross our border and avoid detention. ICE [Homeland Security Investigations] is working with [Customs and Border Protection] to stop individuals, networks and organizations facilitating child smuggling and document fraud to illegally enter the U.S.,” ICE tweeted on Monday. Fake families are being formed to cross our border and avoid detention. ICE #HSI is working with @CBP to stop individuals, networks and organizations facilitating child smuggling and document fraud to illegally enter the U.S. — ICE (@ICEgov) April 29, 2019 The agency went on to write that it is moving experts to the border to investigate child smuggling, and it will be using science data to “dismantle” the child trafficking rings employed by human smugglers working in Central American and Mexico. The announcement came on the same day as a media appearance by the agency’s acting director. “What we’re currently doing is surging resources from ICE’s Homeland Security investigations to the border. We’re sending human trafficking experts, document fraud experts, forensic interviewers, victim assistance specialists, because our first…

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Long-Awaited Resignation of Deputy AG Rosenstein Finalized, May 11 Last Day

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Reuters   U.S. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Special Counsel Robert Mueller in May 2017 to investigate links between the Russian government and President Donald Trump’s campaign, said on Monday he was resigning from his post. Rosenstein’s departure, effective May 11, was not a surprise. He had been expected to step down in March. The White House had no immediate comment, but noted that Trump had already nominated Deputy Transportation Secretary Jeffrey Rosen to replace him. Rosenstein ended up staying on the job longer to help Attorney General William Barr manage the public release of Mueller’s findings from his 22-month investigation, which was completed on March 22. In a letter to Trump, Rosenstein echoed two of Trump’s signature phrases, writing that he helped staff the department with officials “devoted to the values that make America great “and adding that we always put America first.” Mueller’s investigation did not establish evidence that Trump’s campaign illegally conspired with Moscow. Mueller, in his final report, did not make a determination on whether Trump obstructed justice, but instead presented evidence on both sides. After receiving the final report, Rosenstein and Barr made their own determination, finding there was insufficient evidence to charge…

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Florida’s Governor Ron DeSantis Set to Sign Cost-Reducing Drug Importation Bill

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by Evie Fordham   Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appears set to sign a bill creating a program to import prescription drugs from Canada after the Republican-backed legislation passed the state Senate. The bill passed the GOP-controlled Florida House 93-22 on April 11, reported The Associated Press. The Washington Examiner characterized the legislation as a move to lock down “the gray vote.” It passed in the state Senate 27-13 on Monday morning. “The United States pays more for prescription drugs than anywhere else in the world,” DeSantis said after the bill’s passage in the state House. “In Florida, we can change that by employing safe, common sense solutions such as importing FDA approved prescription drugs from Canada.” Opponents of the bill have called the policy socialist and point out that only one other state, Vermont, has taken steps toward a similar program, although it faces federal hurdles. “For starters it is one of [Independent Vermont Sen.] Bernie Sanders’ ideas,” Grover Norquist of conservative group Americans for Tax Reform said April 22. “The rest of the world has damaged their ability to invent new drugs. We invent the drugs. Then they put price controls on them. And some politicians in Florida want to bring those price controls into Florida, a…

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FAKE NEWS: Viral ‘What Actually Happened’ Meme Misconstrues Facts Surrounding Mexican Soldiers’ Detainment of U.S. Troops

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by Brad Sylvester   A meme posted by the Facebook page Sick of the Slant claimed to portray what “actually happened” when two Americans were detained by Mexican soldiers at the southern border.   Verdict: False The version of events alleged in the meme are contradicted by news reporting and statements from U.S. Northern Command. The meme erroneously states that there were only two Mexican personnel involved in the incident, that the Americans were members of the National Guard and that no weapons were pointed at anyone. Fact Check: On April 13, two American soldiers were sitting in an unmarked vehicle on the American side of the U.S.-Mexico border when a group of Mexican soldiers approached and detained them at gunpoint, according to U.S. officials. The Mexicans may have erroneously believed that the Americans had inadvertently strayed into Mexican territory. The story was first reported by Newsweek on April 19 after it obtained a copy of the incident report. President Donald Trump tweeted about the incident April 24, stating, “Mexico’s Soldiers recently pulled guns on our National Guard Soldiers, probably as a diversionary tactic for drug smugglers on the Border.” Mexico’s Soldiers recently pulled guns on our National Guard Soldiers, probably as a diversionary tactic for…

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Far-Left Environmentalists Aren’t Impressed with Robert Francis ‘Beto’ O’Rourke’s $5 Trillion Climate Change Agenda

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by Michael Bastach   Democratic presidential candidate Beto O’Rourke’s $5 trillion climate change plan has not enthused far-left environmentalists, who say it doesn’t go as far as the Green New Deal. “Beto claims to support the Green New Deal, but his plan is out of line with [the] timeline it lays out and the scale of action that scientists say is necessary here in the United States to give our generation a livable future,” Sunrise Movement executive director Varshini Prakash said in a statement. Sunrise Movement Statement in Response to @BetoORourke's Climate Plan: Thread: pic.twitter.com/VzN9Uz6pz5 — Sunrise Movement 🌅 (@sunrisemvmt) April 29, 2019 The Green New Deal, introduced by Democratic New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in February, calls for a World War II-style takeover of the U.S. economy to replace fossil fuels with renewables and vastly expand the welfare state, all of which is estimated to cost up to $93 trillion over a decade. O’Rourke, on the other hand, aims to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050, getting halfway there by 2030. The plan also calls for a slew of new regulations and re-entering the Paris climate accord. O’Rourke unveiled his $5 trillion climate change agenda Monday at Yosemite National Park. O’Rourke framed his plan…

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Progressive Activists Join Forces to Launch ‘Supermajority’ Group

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by Mary Margaret Olohan   Progressive group leaders announced Monday they had launched the group Supermajority in order to train two million women as political activists. Supermajority is headed by activists from progressive groups, specifically former head of Planned Parenthood Cecile Richards, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Alicia Garza, and Ai-jen Poo, executive director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance. [ RELATED: Cecile Richards Leaves Behind Brutal Legacy As She Steps Down From Planned Parenthood ] The trio created Supermajority with the intention of providing “women with the tools, resources, and knowledge they need to channel the energy and activism of this moment and change the direction of this country,” their website says. “For good.” Supermajority’s website adds that the group is “a new home for women’s activism, training and mobilizing a multiracial, inter-generational community that will fight for gender equity together.” The group reportedly will not endorse specific candidates but will seek to influence policy and to educate women on candidate’s platforms, according to TIME Magazine. “Women are mad as hell and we’ve been in resistance mode for two years,” Garza told TIME. “Now it’s time to equip people.” The new group released a video on twitter Monday morning accompanied by the caption,…

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Angie Craig Facing Criticism for Impeachment Comments

Anthony Gockowski

  Rep. Angie Craig (D-MN-02) hosted her fourth town hall last week and received several questions from constituents on moving forward with impeachment hearings against President Donald Trump. Up until Tuesday’s town hall, Craig had taken a relatively moderate position on the issue of impeachment and believed it shouldn’t be discussed until Mueller completed his investigation. “I believe the next step is for the Congress to request the unredacted version of the report. I believe the next step is for the committee chairmen to call a number of folks forward to testify, to fill in the facts for the American people,” Craig told her constituents Tuesday. “I am very troubled by the number of the potential areas of obstruction of justice that are mentioned in the report.” Some took the comments to mean that Craig supports moving forward with the impeachment process, including the National Republican Congressional Committee. “Yesterday Craig laid out for her constituents how exactly Congress should waste more of Minnesotans’ taxpayer money on baseless impeachment claims,” NRCC spokeswoman Carly Atchison said. “It is bizarre that Angie Craig now decides to pursue baseless impeachment, but regardless, she should stop peddling conspiracy theories and focus on Minnesotans.” Former Congressman…

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Ohio Conservatives Suggest Ways to Fix the State’s GOP

Chris Butler

  Two conservatives with clout in Ohio say they can fix the Ohio Republican Party, which they say has members that are too elite, lean left politically, and are too vindictive toward others. Those ideas include making Ohio a right-to-work state and changing its primary election system, they told The Ohio Star. “The Republicans here are afraid of their own shadow. We are still a union state, and that is probably one of our issues. They are afraid to go right-to-work,” said Ray Warrick (pictured, right), who chaired the Warren County Republican Party for two years. “They are afraid of upsetting the unions and that is because all but about four or five state representatives and all but about one state senator, Republicans, take money from the unions. They are all in the bag. In many states a Republican would never get a dime from the unions.” The odds of Ohio going right-to-work? “Slim and none,” Warrick said. “Mike DeWine as governor has said it is just not on the table. But it is the only thing that should be on the table.” According to BNA.com, Ohio is one of five states that has a “labor-Republican alliance.” Meanwhile, various news…

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Georgia’s Failed Gubernatorial Candidate Stacey Abrams: I Feel Comfortable Now Saying, ‘I Won’

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by Molly Prince   Failed Democratic Georgia candidate Stacey Abrams revealed on Sunday that she still believes she was victorious during her 2018 gubernatorial race despite losing by nearly 55,000 votes. “If you look at my immediate reaction after the election, I refused to concede,” Abrams told The New York Times Magazine. “It was largely because I could not prove what had happened, but I knew from the calls that we got that something happened.” “Now, I cannot say that everybody who tried to cast a ballot would’ve voted for me,” she continued. “But if you look at the totality of the information, it is sufficient to demonstrate that so many people were disenfranchised and disengaged by the very act of the person who won the election that I feel comfortable now saying, ‘I won.’” Abrams and her campaign have consistently accused her former challenger, Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp, of racist voter suppression. A spokeswoman for Abrams’ campaign released a statement in October claiming that the Kemp is “maliciously wielding the power of his office to suppress the vote for political gain and silence the voices of thousands of eligible voters — the majority of them people of color.” Following Abrams’ loss, she has…

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DeWine Claims He’s Asked His Team to Work on ‘Red Flag’ Law

Anthony Gockowski

  Gov. Mike DeWine told the media Monday morning that he has asked his team to draft a red-flag bill to send to the Republican-controlled General Assembly. Former Gov. John Kasich repeatedly lobbied for red-flag legislation in the state, and refused to sign a controversial “Stand Your Ground” bill at the end of last session because it didn’t include such a provision. After another fatal shooting over the weekend, DeWine seems to be following in Kasich’s footsteps. “I am deeply concerned about what we are seeing in this country in regards to attacks on houses of worship,” DeWine said. “This is something that has to be deplored, I deplore – it’s sickening. People who go to worship certainly have the right to believe they are going to be safe.” According to The Columbus Dispatch, the comments were unprompted by reporters’ questions, but opened the floor up to discussion of a potential red-flag bill. “I have asked my team to work on that—trying to get a red flag law that can pass. That’s my goal,” DeWine said. The last time he spoke about the topic was in January before being officially sworn into office. “Well, I’ve talked about this during the…

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Biden: ‘I Am a Union Man,’ at First 2020 Campaign Event in Pennsylvania

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Reuters   Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden officially kicked off his White House campaign on Monday by hosting a union event in Pittsburgh just hours after securing his first labor endorsement. Biden told about 600 Teamsters members who attended his first event as a 2020 contender that restoring a vibrant middle class would be the theme of his campaign. “I make no apologies. I am a union man. Period,” Biden told the full union hall. “The country wasn’t built by Wall Street bankers, CEOs and hedge fund managers, it was built by you.” Among those who introduced Biden was Harold Schaitberger, the president of the International Association of Firefighters, a 300,000-member union that endorsed him ahead of the Pittsburgh event. In a Twitter fusillade, Trump said that while leaders of the firefighters and other unions would endorse Democrats in the 2020 race, “the members love Trump.” Biden soon fired back on Twitter. “I’m sick of this president badmouthing unions,” he said. Biden, who joined the 2020 Democratic race last week, has long styled himself as a champion of blue-collar workers. He is counting on organized labor to comprise a significant part of his support. In endorsing Biden, IAFF’s Schaitberger…

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Commentary: The Eternal Conflict of the Progressive Mind

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by Victor Davis Hanson   One of the strangest things about the series of psychodramas that surround the ongoing effort to remove President Trump before the 2020 election is progressive schizophrenia. In teenage fashion, one moment a player in the Trump removal intrigue is deemed by the media-progressive nexus a demigod. The next moment, he’s a devil. It depends solely on his perceived sense of utility. Robert Mueller, Saint to Sinner  When Robert Mueller was appointed in May 2017 as special counsel to investigate alleged Trump campaign “collusion” with Russia following the firing of FBI Director James Comey, he was practically canonized as a secular saint. The media was giddy over his “all stars” and “dream team” of almost all liberal lawyers who shortly would prove the supposedly obvious: sure winner Hillary Clinton lost only because the vile Trump conspired with Vladimir Putin to sabotage her campaign by leaking John Podesta’s emails. As the Mueller investigation lumbered along over the last 22 months, the media periodically announced that their newfound hero had inside information, privileged but unnamed sources, and high-ranking anonymous officials who confirmed “the noose was tightening,” the “walls were closing in,” and “a bombshell” was about to go…

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Broadband Accessibility Act Allegedly Hurts Private Business in West Tennessee

Chris Butler

Lately, the Tennessee Broadband Accessibility Act is putting a small dent in business at the Humboldt-based InfoStructure, Inc, said owner John Warmath. Using taxpayer money, state officials enacted the law in 2017 to provide broadband Internet to Tennessee’s unserved areas. The Trenton-based Gibson EMC electric co-op has used this law to take more than 50 of Warmath’s customers, and he expects it will take at least 200 more. On top of that, Warmath said Gibson EMC’s CEO Dan Rodamaker makes an excessive amount of money. Gibson EMC is based out of Trenton, according to its website. Warmath said the territories he services, Medina and Three Way, have had broadband since 2002. He also said his family has owned the business for exactly 50 years. “They (Gibson EMC) are overbuilding us. They’re not hurting us too bad, but they spend a ton of members’ money to create something they already had access to,” Warmath said. “Our entire footprint is rural. We have done business at the lowest prices. They, however, are spending their resources here in Humboldt and Medina and Three Way, where people already had access (to broadband) and not any resources at the places where we don’t have access.…

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