Two Ohio state representatives are looking to create a state holiday in honor of former President Donald Trump.
State Reps. Reggie Stoltzfus (R-40-Paris Township) and Jon Cross (R-83-Kenton) plan to introduce a bill that would make June 14, Trump’s birthday, a state holiday known as “President Donald J. Trump Day.”
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The Richmond Electoral Board on Monday night voted 2-1 to remove J. Kirk Showalter from her position as the city’s general registrar.
Of the three-member board, which has the power to remove a general registrar from office under state law, chairman James M. Nachman and vice-chairman Joyce K. Smith voted in favor of the move, while secretary C. Starlet Stevens opposed.
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The Cincinnati Federation of Teachers (CFT) filed an injunction in Hamilton County Municipal Court last Friday to stop Cincinnati Public Schools (CPS) from conducting in-person learning.
The union, which represents 3,000 teachers, claims classroom learning is unsafe until all teachers have received both rounds of the COVID vaccine.
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The Michigan tax code is finally aligned with a 2020 Michigan Supreme Court ruling that prohibited county treasurers from pocketing excess equity when foreclosing on tax-delinquent homes.
The ruling followed Oakland County seizing Uri Rafaeli’s property in 2014 over an initial tax debt of $8.41, which rose to $285.81 after interest, penalties, and fees.
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A group of Republicans launched a committee to fight former Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, a Democrat, who is likely to challenge Republican Gov. Brian Kemp again in 2022.
“Leaders of the new independent committee, known as ‘Stop Stacey,’ say they will build a ‘robust state and national fundraising operation’ in order to target Abrams with opposition research, digital ads and other paid media,” a Fox News report said.
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The House of Delegates continues passing restrictions on firearms in Virginia, including on Monday, with a bill banning guns on Capitol grounds and a bill prohibiting people convicted of assaulting a family member from possessing firearms. But the House has killed or stalled four pro-gun bills that would have walked back firearms restrictions.
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The people who work for Georgia’s film and television studios are not only working again but working more frequently than their counterparts at competing studios in California and the United Kingdom. That’s because officials in Georgia’s state government have a more lenient COVID-19 policy. Those studios opened back up not long after the start of the pandemic.
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The Virginia state Senate on Monday passed two bills relating to the Virginia Parole Board that aim to bring more transparency to individual votes and give warnings to victims of crimes or their families when a decision to release an offender has been made.
Senate Bill 1125, introduced by Sen. Mark Obenshain (R-Rockingham), specifically requires the board to notify a victim of a crime through either written or electronic means that a decision has been made to grant parole to the inmate who committed the related offense.
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Over the past five years, nearly 1,200 Michigan State University students and staff members reported racial discrimination incidents. Only eight instances, however, truly violated the school’s bias and discrimination policies.
According to data provided to the Lansing State Journal by Michigan State’s Office of Institutional Equity, affiliates reported 1,187 instances of race-based bias and discrimination between 2015 and September 2020. Of those instances, 76 revealed issues with conduct, and of those 76 issues, eight instances — less than 1 percent of all reported — constituted violations of the school’s policies.
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A Minneapolis man whose criminal behavior “raises significant concerns for public safety” was twice bailed out of jail by the Minnesota Freedom Fund.
The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office announced three new charges Thursday against 29-year-old Thomas Moseley.
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Minneapolis City Council members officially introduced a draft amendment to the city charter that would create a new Department of Public Safety and eliminate the Minneapolis police force as its own department.
After giving a notice of intent to change the charter’s current mandate — which requires funds for the MPD as a sole entity — to fund more general “public safety services,” City Council Members Phillipe Cunningham, Steve Fletcher, and Jeremy Schroeder introduced the draft of the amendment Friday. Their objective is to put the amendment up for a public vote during the next municipal election.
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Giving parents the ability to choose what school their children attend could save Georgia taxpayers money and generate billions of dollars in economic benefits, according to a new study.
Released this week by conservative think tank the Georgia Public Policy Foundation (GPPF) in conjunction with National School Choice Week, the study said establishing a statewide education savings account program that serves 5% of the student population would provide at least $15.7 billion in long-term economic benefits.
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The Buckeye Institute has slammed the newly released Ohio budget for excess spending, saying that while it commends the governor for balancing the budget, the state missed an opportunity for reform.
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A Northeast Ohio school guidance counselor filed a lawsuit to stop union representation, saying she’s not a member of the union and should not be forced to accept it.
Barbara Kolkowski, a counselor in the Ashtabula Area City School District, filed the complaint in Ashtabula County Court of Common Pleas and wants a preliminary and permanent injunction that stops the union from requiring her to accept its representation.
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Nashville Mayor John Cooper and Metro Nashville Police Chief John Drake announced Monday that they are restructuring law enforcement resources to reduce the city’s violent crime rates. And as a part of that restructuring, officials will intervene in young people’s lives before they repeat any violent behaviors, the two men said.
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The majority of U.S. cities were ill-prepared for any financial crisis last year, let alone the one brought about by their respective state shutdowns in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, a new report published by the nonprofit Truth in Accounting (TIA) concludes.
The annual assessment surveys the fiscal health of the 75 largest municipalities in the U.S. based on fiscal year 2019 data. TIA reviewed audited Comprehensive Annual Financial Reports filed by city halls across the country and concluded that even the fiscally healthiest cities are projected to lose millions of dollars in revenue as a result of state shutdowns on top of their previously existing poor fiscal health.
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Sleepy no more, President Joe Biden has taken to the Oval Office with gusto. On Wednesday, he resumed a climate policy blitz that has already included rejoining the Paris Agreement and deep-sixing the Keystone XL pipeline with an “Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad.”
Among the banner proclamations from the Wednesday order are that Biden will pause the leasing of federal land to oil and gas companies, seal off 30 percent of federal land from development altogether, create a National Climate Task Force to wage “government-wide” battle on climate change, and require of the intelligence services a National Intelligence Estimate on the security impacts of climate change.
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A group of ten Republican senators outlined a less expensive coronavirus relief compromise bill and said much of the past stimulus passed during the pandemic hasn’t been spent yet.
The proposed stimulus framework builds on prior legislation that passed with bipartisan support, the 10 senators wrote in the letter Sunday. The group, which included Sens. Mitt Romney, Thom Tillis, Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski, also requested a meeting with President Joe Biden to discuss the bill.
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The board of supervisors of Maricopa County, Arizona, voted this week to audit the election equipment it used in the 2020 election, following months of allegations of election irregularities there and elsewhere around the country.
The supervisors voted unanimously in favor of the audit, the county said Wednesday on its website. Both audits will take place early next month.
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College community members are subjects of internal and even federal probes for their presence at “Stop the Steal” protests on Jan. 6.
It’s largely unclear if the identified participants committed acts of violence at the U.S. Capitol or simply showed up to peacefully protest the Senate’s confirmation of Electoral College votes.
Yet their alleged attendance – and in one case, online rhetoric – was enough to spawn investigations by their colleges and, in another case, the feds.
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A group of Colorado residents are looking into the possibility of secession from their state to join Wyoming and escape Colorado’s more liberal government, according to the group’s Facebook page.
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Acting Capitol Police Chief Yogananda Pittman said the U.S. Capitol needs a permanent wall to protect Congress members in the wake of the riots on Jan. 6.
“In a statement on Thursday, Pittman said the security at the Capitol building must include a “permanent fencing” barrier — a similar barrier to the one halted by President Joe Biden’s administration at the U.S.-Mexico border,” Breitbart reported.
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Conservative activists gathered in-person to protest at a Bed Bath & Beyond store in California, in opposition to the company’s decision to cancel all MyPillow products due to the CEO’s support for President Trump, according to Breitbart.
The group consisted of members of the Media Action Network, an activism group founded by former Fox News executive Ken LaCorte. As part of the protest, the gathered members pretended to shop through the store, filling up their carts with various products, before leaving the filled carts behind throughout the store and leaving. They left behind brochures urging the chain to “stop promoting cancel culture,” and bring back MyPillow products.
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Just minutes after taking office on Jan. 20, President Joe Biden’s Office of Presidential Personnel demanded that Senate-confirmed National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) General Counsel Peter Robb resign. Robb refused, citing the unprecedented nature of the demand, and was fired.
His deputy, Alice Stock, also was asked to resign, refuses, and was fired the next day.
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Over 4,000 pro-democracy protesters gathering in support of Alexi Navalny, a vocal Kremlin critic, have been detained by Russian police since the beginning of last weekend, according to local media and pro-democracy organizations.
The arrests have occurred across the country, from European cities like Moscow and St. Petersburg to far-eastern cities like Vladivostok, according to Russian monitoring groups, BBC reported.
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Short sellers claim there is a moral and economic worth to their trade. They supposedly keep the market honest by exposing overvalued stocks, thereby preventing “irrational exuberance” from creating stock bubbles.
If that was all there was to it, they’d be right. Stock bubbles tend to pop eventually, and when they do, the worst case scenario is that the collateral they represent implodes, the loans that the collateral enabled go into default, and trillions in debt-fueled liquidity is erased in a cascading downward spiral. And just like that, the economy collapses into a deflationary depression that makes the 1930s look like a cake walk. There are good reasons we don’t want to demonize short sellers indiscriminately, or drive them out of the market.
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Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is seeking another prosecutor to assume the case due to her predecessor’s conduct. Willis requested removal of her office from prosecuting former Atlanta police officer Garrett Rolfe in a letter to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr, obtained by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. She is also requesting to reassign another case involving six Atlanta Police Department Officers alleged to have used excessive force.
According to Willis, the county’s previous district attorney, Paul Howard, reportedly used video evidence from Brooks’ case in a campaign ad. Willis claimed that the act may have violated Georgia Bar Rule 3.8(g) by not “refraining from making extrajudicial comments that have a substantial likelihood of heightening public condemnation of the accused.”
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On Friday, The Coalition of Greater Minnesota Cities (CGMC) announced priorities for the 2021 legislative session for COVID-19 recovery, including Local Government Aid, child care, housing, and water infrastructure.
“The pandemic has taken a toll on our community,” Greg Zylka, mayor of Little Falls and CGMC president said in a Zoom meeting. “Some segments are still really struggling, and that pain has ripple effects across the city.”
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Michigan cities with similar populations relied on taxpayers to foot police-settlement payouts ranging from a few thousand dollars to nearly $18 million between 2018 and 2020, according to research conducted by The Center Square.
Freedom of Information Act requests revealed Detroit payouts from police damages in those two years totaled $17.79 million.
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Governor Ralph Northam’s Get Skilled, Get a Job, Give Back (G3) program passed the Virginia House of Delegates with near-unanimous support Thursday. HB2204 establishes a fund and program to provide free community college to low and middle-income students taking community college degrees in high-demand fields. The program is one of Northam’s signature policy proposals that he first called for in his campaign for governor, according to his January 2018 address to the Joint Assembly.
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Sixteen Democrats in the Georgia General Assembly want to add an amendment to the state constitution that would mandate workers have a Family Medical Leave Fund. The Georgia General Assembly’s website identifies State Sen. Gloria Butler (D-Stone Mountain) as the primary sponsor.
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Two new online dashboards have recently been launched to help provide awareness and track the spread of the coronavirus at Virginia’s colleges and universities as many institutions in the Commonwealth have already begun or are starting in-person classes soon.
The Virginia Department of Health (VDH) launched its COVID-19 Outbreaks in Virginia Higher Education dashboard roughly two weeks ago.
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An Ohio lawmaker says he wants to make sure the rights of gun-owners and those who want to own guns are a priority and that the federal government cannot infringe on those rights.
State Rep. Mike Loychik, R-Bazette, plans to introduce legislation in the General Assembly next week that would, if passed and signed, make Ohio a second amendment sanctuary state, joining Idaho, Montana, Alaska and Kansas.
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Members of the Tennessee General Assembly will consider a bill that mandates public school and charter school officials screen students to evaluate how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected their mental and behavioral health patterns. This, according to legislation that State Sen. Katrina Robinson (D-Memphis) filed last month.
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