Berkeley Cheating Allegations Spike Nearly 400 Percent with Online Classes

According to the University of California-Berkeley student newspaper, The Daily Cal, the university’s Center for Student Conduct has seen a 400 percent increase of alleged academic misconduct compared with last year, amounting to more than 300 reports of misconduct as of early November.

The Berkeley Campus Code of Student Contact manual states that academic misconduct includes “cheating, fabrication, plagiarism, or facilitating academic dishonesty.”

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US-Backed Forces Raiding ISIS Cells in Syria

The Syrian Democratic Forces are executing a new series of raids against active ISIS-affiliated militants in eastern Syria with the support of the U.S., VOA News reported Sunday.

The new campaign targets ISIS remnants in the Deir al-Zour province near Iraq, VOA News reported. The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) military alliance is focusing on ISIS cells in the northern part of the province.

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Commentary: Biden’s Immigration Agenda

A lasting legacy of President Trump’s immigration policies will be his administration’s willingness to acknowledge and address the broad scope and wide spectrum of how immigration—both legal and illegal—impacts American life.

Our political debates tend to regress into entrenched and cyclical discussions of border security and amnesty for illegal populations, a polarized framing that ignores how significantly our labor policies, law enforcement practices, and even the shape of our congressional representation, are affected by the choices we make concerning immigration.

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Commentary: Zoom School Gets an ‘F,’ But Some Online Learning Providers Excel

Students in 40 percent of school districts across the country haven’t been inside a classroom since last spring, and others are now returning to virtual “Zoom school” as coronavirus cases rise. Remote public schooling as a response to school shutdowns has been a disaster for many children, with a record number of F grades issued this academic year. Both parents and kids are fed up with Zoom school, and teachers are frustrated with it as well. The Washington Post ran a headline this month saying we must finally admit that “remote education is a failure.”

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Family Files Civil Rights Lawsuit Against Charter School for Mandating Anti-White ‘Critical Race Theory’ Class

A Nevada mother has followed through on her threat to file a civil rights lawsuit against her son’s charter school for refusing to let him opt out of a mandatory class that promotes hostility toward whites as a race.

Democracy Prep at the Agassi Campus (DPAC) forced William Clark “to make professions about his racial, sexual, gender and religious identities in verbal class exercises and in graded, written homework assignments,” creating a hostile environment, the biracial high school student and Gabrielle Clark allege in their federal lawsuit filed Tuesday.

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Issue of Paid Sick Leave Returning to Virginia General Assembly in 2021

The debate over whether or not businesses should be required to provide eligible employees with paid sick leave will again be taken up by the Virginia General Assembly when it convenes for its regular session on January 13th.

After multiple bills calling for paid sick leave were killed by a Senate committee during this past summer’s special session, those same lawmakers are once again intending to offer legislation on the issue.

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President Trump to Stump for Loeffler and Perdue in Georgia the Eve of Election Runoff

President Donald Trump will host another Georgia rally in a show of support to incumbent Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA). The “Victory Rally” will occur January 4th, one day before the runoff election date for the two senate seats.

Others joining Trump at the rally are incumbent Georgia Public Service Commissioner Lauren “Bubba” McDonald, Jr., and a coalition of unnamed Republicans. McDonald will also appear on the January 5th election runoff ballot, defending his District 4 position for the Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC). The incumbent will face Democratic challenger Daniel Blackman. Prior to serving as commissioner, McDonald served two decades as a state representative. 

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No Alternatives Announced if Gov. Whitmer Succeeds in Closing Line 5

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration hasn’t revealed alternatives to transport more than half a million barrels of natural gas liquids if it succeeds in its legal efforts to close the Enbridge Line 5 pipeline in May 2021.

Enbridge spokesperson Ryan Duffy told The Center Square there are no pipelines or other alternatives that can readily substitute for Line 5 in transporting the crude oil and natural gas liquids to the refineries and other facilities served by Line 5. 

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More Than 40,000 Virginians Have Received COVID-19 Vaccines So Far

Roughly 41,709 Virginians have received first doses of the COVID-19 vaccines so far, according to the Virginia Department of Health (VDH), as the state continues its efforts to reach herd immunity and put an end to the coronavirus pandemic.

Last week, the VDH launched the COVID-19 vaccine data dashboard, which will be updated daily to keep the public informed about the number of vaccines distributed and administered as well as the demographics of recipients.

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Judge Denies Lin Wood’s Restraining Order to Prevent Potential Senate Runoff Fraud

A federal judge on Monday morning tossed a temporary restraining order filed the evening before by attorney and Fulton County, Georgia voter Lin Wood seeking to block fraudulent activities in the U.S. Senate runoff elections.

Atlanta Federal Judge Timothy C. Batten Sr. of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia’s Atlanta Division made the decision, calling Wood’s claim “speculative.”

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Senators Loeffler, Perdue Send Letter to Acting U.S. Consul General on Behalf of Georgia Teen Jailed for Breaking Cayman Island Quarantine

Senators Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) and David Perdue (R-GA) submitted a letter to the U.S. Embassy’s Acting Consul General requesting the release of Skylar Mack. The senators expressed concern for the welfare of Mack, an 18-year-old college student jailed for breaking the Cayman Islands’ quarantine rules. 

In their letter, Loeffler and Perdue acknowledged the impact of COVID-19 and the Cayman Islands’ authority to impose its pandemic-related regulations and sentencing. However, according to the two senators, Mack has reportedly received a substantial amount of death threats for the incident.

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Education Funding Reform Key to Curbing Ohio’s Inequality, Survey Says

by J.D. Davidson   A comprehensive educational funding reform effort pushed by the Ohio General Assembly into the next legislative session would substantially reduce what economists called inequality throughout the state. Scioto Analysis, a Central Ohio-based economic and public policy analysis firm specializing in tax and budget policy at the state and local level, surveyed 30 economists from Ohio colleges and universities. All but four agreed the plan would reduce inequality in the coming decades, but many also agreed it needed to be teamed with broader investments and smarter uses of money. “While access to quality education is necessary for reducing in equality, it is unfortunately not sufficient,” Fadhel Kaboub, a Denison University professor, said. “Education must be coupled with investments in health, infrastructure, direct job creation and other public safety nets.” The bill, which calls for a six-year complete phase it, could mean $2 billion more for education in Ohio. However, according to State Sen. Matt Dolan (R-Chagrin Falls) who chairs the Senate Finance Committee, actual costs remain unknown. While the plan passed the Ohio House, Dolan and Senate Republicans resisted calls for passage by the end of the year. Instead, opting to offer funding for studies called for…

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Social Justice Favorites Including LGBT+, Climate Change Take a Prominent Role in the New Draft of Social Studies Standards in Minnesota

Minnesota’s newly proposed social studies standards for public schools place significant emphasis on race, gender, climate change and LGBT issues.

Under the first draft of the proposed standards, students will be asked to “develop a respectful awareness about how ideas and norms about gender have changed over time,” accept that “some forms of slavery continued even after emancipation” and learn how the “fight for social justice” continues today.

Students will also be asked to “analyze how resistance movements in the U.S. have organized and responded to oppression,” and “imagine and work toward an equitable and caring future” in keeping with the social justice model.

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Tennessee’s Hall Tax Ends This Week, Promises New Economic Opportunities for the Volunteer State

Tennessee’s Hall Tax, as of this coming Friday, will cease to exist.

Experts say that will bring new opportunities to Tennessee and make the state’s economy more competitive.

The Hall Tax, instituted in 1929, applies a 6 percent tax to Tennesseans’ interest and dividend income. In 2016 members of the Tennessee General Assembly phased out the Hall Income Tax over years of scheduled reductions.

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AT&T Officials Make Big Progress Restoring Service After Damage from Nashville Explosion

AT&T officials announced Sunday that they have restored more than 75 percent of their mobility sites impacted by Friday’s explosion in downtown Nashville. As reported, an RV exploded Friday in Nashville, outside an AT&T transmission building. The blast caused extensive damage and knocked out phone and internet communications throughout Middle Tennessee.

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Commentary: Donald Trump is The Essential Man

Once upon a time, there was a president called Ronald Reagan – a model of decency and probity, at once great and self-effacing, who, above all, was truly in love with America and saw it as his sacred mission to preserve and strengthen American freedom. During his eight-year tenure, he revitalized the U.S. economy, snapped us out of what his disastrous predecessor had referred to as “our malaise,” and helped bring down the Soviet Union.

Then he walked off into the sunset. And for the next seven presidential terms, we had to make do with mediocrity and self-dealing. Both parties were dominated by crime families – sorry, I mean political dynasties. The Bushes were uninspiring. The Clintons were pure slime.

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Minimum Wage Hikes Set for 2021 Imperil Businesses Struggling Amid COVID Shutdowns

More than 80 states and local municipalities are slated to see minimum wage hikes in 2021, even as business owners continue to struggle during the coronavirus pandemic.

The Employment Policies Institute, a non-profit based in Washington, D.C., that studies how public policy impacts employment growth, released a comprehensive list of the minimum wage increases that will go into effect next year and in subsequent years.

“Minimum wage increases are demonstrated to cause job losses even in times of economic health,” said Michael Saltsman, EPI’s managing director. “These states and local areas are increasing the cost of labor as businesses are dealing with forced closures or a drastic drop in revenue. Employers and employees will pay the price for these misguided good intentions.”

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MIT Continues to Pay Prof Who Took Jeffrey Epstein Donations, Even After Severe COVID-19 Cuts

Massachusetts Institute of Technology physics professor Seth Lloyd — who accepted hundreds of thousands of dollars from sex offender Jeffrey Epstein — will continue to receive compensation from the university, and will eventually return to his teaching job.

As Campus Reform previously reported, Lloyd was fully aware of $850,000 donated to MIT over a period of 15 years. He was the direct recipient of $225,000 in research donations received after Epstein’s conviction.

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Joe Biden’s About to Floor It to a Green Future – Straight into State Speed Traps

Joe Biden needs to put the pedal to the metal as he races toward his goal of ridding America’s energy sources of carbon emissions by 2035. But the president-elect’s headlong rush toward a green future may be slowed by a snarl of political speed limits in the states.

One of Biden’s most ambitious aims is to completely clean up the electrical grid, today powered mostly by fossil fuels, in only 15 years. Many energy executives consider that goal quixotic because it would require a breathtakingly fast transformation of the massive power industry — from replacing hundreds of dirty power plants to upgrading thousands of miles transmission lines.

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Jake Tapper on White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany: She ‘Lies the Way that Most People Breathe’

CNN anchor Jake Tapper said Sunday that he wouldn’t put White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany on air because she “lies the way that most people breathe.”

Tapper told CNN’s Brian Stelter that throughout President Donald Trump’s term, “you had to steel yourself for interviews with people that might misrepresent the facts.” The CNN anchor said that “once somebody proved themselves to be a liar, I just stopped booking them.”

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Analysis: Republican’s 2020 Wins in State Capitals Sets the Stage for Lasting Victories Through the Next Decade

Carrie Delrosso, a Republican, won her campaign in Pennsylvania’s 33rd House District by defeating House Minority Leader Frank Dermody, a Democrat, to capture the seat. 

In Ohio’s 75th House District, Gail Pavliga won her election, flipping the seat to the GOP after running a campaign on solving the opioid crisis in the district. 

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Commentary: The North Face’s Absurd, Hypocritical Virtue-Signaling

Virtue-signaling, and the hypocrisies that inevitably accrue to it, are nothing new. Neither is it new that those who virtue-signal while engaging in or benefiting from those things that they decry are deeply self-deluded about their hypocrisy.

In the middle of a pandemic, we’re seeing more than our fair share, from the mayor of Austin lecturing his citizens on the virtues of staying home while he himself was on vacation in Mexico, to the newly inaugurated mayor of Baltimore locking down businesses across his city and then finding himself caught shopping outside his city where the rules are more “relaxed,” to Dr. Deborah Birx, one of the architects of America’s “You Should Stay Home” policy, traveling to see family over the holidays.

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Little-Known Georgia Runoff Election Could Play Role in Utility Rates

More than just the two U.S. Senate runoff elections will be on the ballot in the Jan. 5 election for voters in north Georgia.

In a District 4 runoff for public service commissioner, Republican incumbent Lauren “Bubba” McDonald Jr. faces Democratic challenger Daniel Blackman. The Georgia Public Service Commission (GPSC) oversees utility rates in the state. District 4 includes more than three dozen counties in north Georgia.

McDonald was appointed to the GPSC by former Gov. Zell Miller in 1998. He remained on the commission until 2002 and was reelected in 2008. He defeated a challenge from Blackman in 2014.

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Virginia AG Herring to Court: Ban ‘Ghost Guns’

Attorney General Mark Herring has joined 19 other attorneys general asking the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York to force regulation of so-called “ghost guns” – partially assembled firearms kits that can be completed by consumers without the serial numbers law enforcement uses to track the weapons. Herring and the other attorneys general signed an amicus brief as third parties to Syracuse v. ATF, a lawsuit that says the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) was too lenient in its 2015 interpretation of the Gun Control Act (GCA) of 1968.

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Ohio Moves Up School Employees for Vaccines to Get Students Back in Classrooms

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine plans to offer vaccines to all schools in the state that want it by mid-January in an effort to get children back to in-person learning in districts that want to return.

At his regular news conference Wednesday, DeWine announced new phases of vaccine distribution that included adults in school districts, those 64 years old and older, along with those with severe medical conditions.

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Minnesota’s Henry Sibley High Drops Literary Classic ‘Of Mice and Men’ After Complaints

Henry Sibley High School recently set aside “Of Mice and Men” and “Montana 1948” from its curriculum after receiving complaints from parents.

Henry Sibley High School, which will have its name changed to drop the name of Minnesota’s first governor, has put a “pause” on the use of multiple books. The school board sent out a letter to parents explaining why the books were set aside.

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Data Recovery Center in Vicinity of Nashville Bombing No Longer Owned by Silver Lakes – the Parent Company of Compromised SolarWinds

Following the Nashville bombing, a viral post alleged a connection between SunGard, a nearby data facility, and SolarWinds’ parent company, Silver Lake. However, Silver Lake only owned SunGard from 2005 until 2015. After that, Fidelity National Information Services (FIS) assumed control once SunGard filed for bankruptcy. Since 2017, Silver Lake hasn’t held any shares in FIS.

“Please help dig on Solar[W]inds, SunGard data center, and 211 Commerce Street in Nashville,” wrote Ron Watkins, former 8Kun administrator. “Interested in finding correlations between these subjects.”

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Nashville Police Announce Death of Anthony Warner in Christmas Bombing

Just hours after confirming that 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner was under investigation for an explosion that rocked downtown Nashville on Christmas, the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) confirmed that Warner died in that explosion. 

“BREAKING: Law enforcement is now announcing that Anthony Warner, 63, of Bakertown Rd, is the man believed responsible for Friday’s explosion He perished in the blast. No one else is presently believed to have been involved. Thank you to our federal & state partners,” MNPD said in a statement. 

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Nashville Police Confirm Anthony Quinn Warner ‘Is Under Investigation’ for Christmas Day Bombing

The Metropolitan Nashville Police Department (MNPD) Sunday morning confirmed to The Tennessee Star that Anthony Quinn Warner is officially under investigation in the Christmas morning explosion that rocked downtown Nashville, injuring three people.

“That person is under investigation,” Don Aaron, MNPD Public Affairs Manager said by email. 

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Commentary: Debt Is the Most Predictable Crisis in U.S. History

Former Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson issued a stern warning in last week’s Wall Street Journal: “A world-class financial system can’t exist in a country that fails to maintain the quality of its credit.”

America’s debt problem was already wildly out of control for the past 20 years, but we now face truly unprecedented additional levels of debt issued by Congress in response to the pandemic. From 2000 to 2019, the federal debt rose from $5.6 trillion to $22.7 trillion, and it is expected to top $27 trillion by year’s end, a whopping 19 percent increase this year. Another trillion in virus relief spending now seems to be at the low end of spending estimates going into 2021.

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Eleven Cases of Defensive Gun Use That Show How Biden’s Key Picks Miss the Mark

Joe Biden has begun naming his picks for top political positions in a Biden administration, and it is already evident that many of them are not fans of Americans’ Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms.

For example, California Attorney General Xavier Becerra—Biden’s choice to head the Department of Health and Human Services—has spent the past three years defending that state’s absurdly restrictive gun control laws in federal court.

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ICE Arrested Significantly Fewer Illegal Immigrants Due to COVID-19

Officials arrested 30% fewer individuals in 2020 than they did last year, in part because of COVID-19, Immigration and Customs Enforcement announced Wednesday.

ICE’s Enforcement and Removal Operations officials made 103,603 arrests this year and deported 185,884 individuals, according to ICE. Around 90% of the aliens who were arrested had criminal convictions or charges, and 92% of those deported had prior or pending criminal charges.

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Commentary: Open Borders Oligarch Charles Koch Re-Emerges to Oppose Trump and ‘America First’

The billionaire financier Charles Koch abandoned the Republican Party in the age of President Donald Trump, but he has returned on a white horse following the disputed election to preach the globalist cosmopolitan doctrines that previously had turned the GOP into a national laughingstock.

Koch penned an op-ed for CNN last week in which he urged Republicans to support amnesty for illegal aliens. He framed it as if allowing illegal immigrants to break the law is the “one thing we should all agree on” across the political spectrum.

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Commentary: The Federalist Papers and ‘The Violence of Faction’

Founding Fathers

It has been said that the oldest word in American politics is “new.” Even the United States Constitution, by far the oldest written constitution in the world, was once new, and had to be defended against charges that it was an unnecessary and unrepublican innovation. The Federalist was keenly aware of the novelty of the Constitution’s enterprise—the attempt to establish “good government from reflection and choice”—but boldly turned it to account. 

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New York City Has Lost 70K Residents, $34B in Personal Income

A net 70,000 New York City residents left the metropolitan region since COVID-19, resulting in roughly $34 billion in lost income, according to estimates released Tuesday from Unacast, a location analytics company.

Around 3.57 million people fled New York City between Jan. 1 and Dec. 7 this year — and they were replaced by some 3.5 million people earning lower average incomes, the findings from Unacast said.

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Baltimore Police Department Say They Need 500 Additional Officers to Stem City-Wide Crime Spike

After another violent weekend with a number of homicides and shootings in the city, the Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) called out Police Commissioner Michael Harrison Tuesday morning, saying more officers have left the department than have been hired during his tenure, leaving the police department 500 officers short.

WJZ reported there were seven non-fatal shootings and five murders over the weekend in Mayor Brandon Scott’s (D) Baltimore, and another fatal shooting in broad daylight Monday, bringing the homicide total to 325 so far this year.

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Commentary: The ‘Expert Consensus’ Favored Alcohol Prohibition, Too

Most people today regard America’s experiment with alcohol prohibition as a national embarrassment, rightly repealed in 1933. So it will be with the closures and lockdowns of 2020, someday. 

In 1920, however, to be for the repeal of the prohibition that was passed took courage. You were arguing against prevailing opinion backed by celebratory scientists and exalted social thinkers. What you were saying flew in the face of “expert consensus.”

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