Month: May 2021

11 States Consider Bans on Teaching Critical Race Theory

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Student raising hand in class

Earlier this year, an Aiken County teacher wrote to South Carolina state Rep. Bill Taylor in alarm about critical race theory emerging in public schools. 

“I know full well the insidiousness of the so-called critical race theory that aims to resegregate society, discriminate against those who are white, victimize those who are black, and render America a nation of identity groups rather than Americans,” the teacher wrote. 

Hardly a day goes by, Taylor said, that he doesn’t hear from a constituent on the issue. 

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Texas State Border Officials Fear Large Spikes in Overdose Deaths with Drug Traffic Increases

The Center Square
Texas Department of Public Safety SUV

Texas officials said Thursday they’re worried about dramatic spikes in drug overdose deaths in some areas of the state as illegal border crossings and drug trafficking have picked up since President Joe Biden took office.

Gov. Greg Abbott joined Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) Director Steve McCraw and Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn on Thursday in Fort Worthto provide an update on the border crisis.

“We’re heading for a 50 percent increase in overdose deaths in Tarrant County alone,” Waybourn warned, noting that the amount of drugs flooding into Tarrant County has skyrocketed even with DPS intervention.

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MNPS Security Officers File Numerous Workplace Complaints

Cooper Moran

Security officers serving the Metro Nashville Public School (MNPS) system have been subject to a toxic work environment, according to the 14 complaints submitted to the human resources and employee relations departments. 

“The morale itself has been low. We had grievance upon grievance just sitting there. Not being answered. Nobody reached out. Nobody followed up,” Security Officer James Franklin Spencer III told WKRN.

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Senate Republicans Kill Bipartisan Bill Establishing 9/11-Style Commission into January 6 Capitol Attack

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Jan. 6 Capitol Riot

Senate Republicans killed a bipartisan bill establishing a commission to investigate the Jan. 6 attack at the Capitol, filibustering the first legislation since President Joe Biden took office after a multi-hour, overnight session pushed the vote back a day.

The bill failed 54 to 35, getting the support of six Republicans instead of the 10 that it needed to overcome the Senate’s 60-vote threshold required to begin debate. The bill would have established a 10-member, bipartisan commission into the Capitol riot, when pro-Trump rioters attempted to block Congress from certifying Biden’s victory.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell led the Republican opposition, and called the bill “slanted and unbalanced” last week.

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Commentary: Giving Parents the Choice in Their Children’s Education

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With widespread school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the debate over school choice has once again taken center stage.

For the past seven years, approximately two-thirds of Americans have consistently supported school choice.  Additionally, support is largely bipartisan, with 82 percent of Republicans, 69 percent of Independents, and 55 percent of Democrats in favor of school choice.  

The positive impact of access to quality education is clear.  As President Donald Trump said during his State of the Union Address on February 4, 2020, “The next step forward in building an inclusive society is making sure that every young American gets a great education and the opportunity to achieve the American Dream.” 

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BLM Co-Founder Patrisse Cullors to Step Down Following DCNF Reports of Potential Self-Dealing

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Patrisse Cullors

Patrisse Cullors, the co-founder of Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, will depart from her role as the organization’s executive director, the charity announced Thursday.

Cullors’ abrupt departure from the charity, which serves as the national arm of the BLM movement, came three weeks after the Daily Caller News Foundation reported that she had used her position as the charity’s leader to funnel business to an art company led by the father of her only child. Charity experts said BLM’s arrangement with the art company, Trap Heals, amounts to self-dealing and raises ethical and legal questions.

BLM Global Network did not provide an explanation in its statement Thursday for Cullors’ sudden departure. The statement said Cullors would be replaced by two senior executives who will lead the group until it “finds a new permanent team.”

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Commentary: The Forgotten History of Memorial Day

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Memorial Day History Headliner

by Richard Gardiner   In the years following the bitter Civil War, a former Union general took a holiday originated by former Confederates and helped spread it across the entire country. The holiday was Memorial Day, and this year’s commemoration on May 27 marks the 151st anniversary of its official nationwide observance. The annual commemoration was born in the former Confederate States in 1866 and adopted by the United States in 1868. It is a holiday in which the nation honors its military dead. Gen. John A. Logan, who headed the largest Union veterans’ fraternity at that time, the Grand Army of the Republic, is usually credited as being the originator of the holiday. Yet when General Logan established the holiday, he acknowledged its genesis among the Union’s former enemies, saying, “It was not too late for the Union men of the nation to follow the example of the people of the South.” I’m a scholar who has written – with co-author Daniel Bellware – a history of Memorial Day. Cities and towns across America have for more than a century claimed to be the holiday’s birthplace, but we have sifted through the myths and half-truths and uncovered the authentic story of how this holiday…

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After National Criticism, Whitmer’s Campaign to Pay for Florida Flight

The Center Square
Governor Gretchen Whitmer

Months after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer flew on a secret trip to Florida, Michiganders are starting to find answers.

Whitmer’s campaign committee will pay for her March Florida flight to visit her father after she initially attempted to use a nonprofit to charter the flight through a separate company.

The flight sparked an Federal Aviation Agency investigation, because the jet company was not authorized to operate charter flights.

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Ohio Jail Ends Contract with ICE

Peter D'Abrosca

In an apparent protest over the loosened border security measures of the Biden administration, an Ohio Sheriff terminated his county jail’s contract to house U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) detainees.

“With the crisis at the border getting worse, it concerns me that the feds will ship detainees to my facility, then release them to the streets of my community under some technicality,” Butler County Sheriff Richard Jones said.

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President Biden Gives Memorial Day Weekend Address in Hampton

Eric Burk

President Joe Biden gave a Memorial-Day-weekend speech at Joint Base Langley-Eustis in Hampton on Friday afternoon. He highlighted the humility and sacrifice of the military and their families and emphasized that they defended the American principle that all men and women are equal. He also mentioned the service and death of his son Beau Biden.

“He was like a lot of you. You do your duty. You don’t expect anything for it except people having a general respect,” Biden said.

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Florida Supreme Court Rules Against Marijuana Industry Challenge

Grant Holcomb
Florida Supreme Court Building

Earlier this week the Florida Supreme Court unanimously ruled against a challenge from the medical marijuana industry, backing the state’s strict regulation of the industry’s business model standardized by the Florida legislature.

The challenge was filed by a marijuana company, Florigrown, where they contested the legislation put in place which limits the amount of medical marijuana licenses issued in Florida and requires dispensaries to grow and process their product. Florigrown was denied a license to become a medical marijuana treatment center in 2017.

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Jody Hice Outlines How Joe Biden Makes Federal Government Less Efficient After COVID-19

Chris Butler

U.S. Rep. Jody Hice (R-GA-10) told constituents in an email Thursday that the COVID-19 pandemic has exacerbated several longstanding problems and created more than a few new ones within the federal government. “The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), for example, has a tremendous backlog of millions of income tax returns waiting to be processed, leading to lengthy delays in refunds and stimulus checks to many Americans. Another case is the State Department, which is taking 10 to 12 weeks to process even a simple passport application. Perhaps the worst example is the National Personnel Records Center (NPRC), a little known but critical agency responsible for the military service records needed for veterans to receive care from the VA. As of April, the backlog for veterans’ records is roughly 500,000 and may take up to two years to clear. Unreal!” Hice wrote.

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Big Tech Lobbyists Sue DeSantis over New Regulations

Peter D'Abrosca
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis

A pair of Big Tech lobbying groups, NetChoice and the Computer & Communications Industry Association, have filed a lawsuit against Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody, along with Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and other state officials, after DeSantis signed into law a bill that regulates Big Tech’s censorship abilities earlier this week. 

“Americans everywhere should oppose Florida’s attempt to run roughshod over the First Amendment rights of private online businesses,” Carl Szabo, vice president and general counsel of NetChoice said, according to POLITICO. “By weakening the First Amendment rights of some, Florida weakens the First Amendment rights of all.”

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Tennessee Lawmakers Drafting Legislation to Prevent Traffickers, Cartels from Taking Migrant Children Under Guise of Sponsorship

Corinne Murdock

Tennessee legislators will draft legislation to increase transparency and establish protective measures for the sponsorship of unaccompanied migrant children. The federal government says that sponsors are “almost always a parent or close relative” – but that’s not always the case. Lawmakers’ urgency to increase transparency and establish protective measures for sponsorship heightened after it was revealed that Governor Bill Lee’s administration has continued licensing for a Chattanooga shelter without apparent provisions in place to protect the housed migrant children from traffickers and cartels. 

The Chattanooga shelter is run by the Baptiste Group, a Georgia-based national group that provides emergency shelter services for unaccompanied migrant children – usually for up to 30 days, excepting complications. Last May, the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Administration for Children and Families contracted with the Baptiste Group for a conditional Residential Child Care Agency License in Chattanooga. The three-year contract, set to expire last August, anticipated nearly $7.5 million in costs to house up to 100 children.

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Carol Swain Commentary: Critical Race Theory Is a Cancer on Our Educational System

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Critical race theory is the civil rights issue of our time. It eats away at our public, private, and Christian academies with its cancerous messages about white privilege, minority disadvantage, and perennial racism. Hardly a day goes by that I do not hear from parents and teachers about yet another school system where the cancerous roots of critical race theory have taken hold or begun to appear under the guise of “culturally competent teaching and learning” or “educational equity.” No matter what they call it, they cannot hide its poisonous effects. 

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Tennessee’s First Conservative Female Mentorship Group Launched Through United Women of Tennessee

Corinne Murdock

The United Women of Tennessee (UWTN) is gaining traction as a novel mentorship program for young conservative women statewide. UWTN started off with a bang: their first guest speaker was Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), who discussed her book “The Mind of a Conservative Women.”

In an interview with The Tennessee Star, UWTN Founder Gloria Giorno explained that she couldn’t find groups connecting and empowering young women with conservative-leaning older women, opportunities, and education. Giorno said her goal is to show them that conservative women are educated and successful mothers, daughters, sisters, Christians who are able to work and have a family life, if they so choose. 

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Increased Number of Migrants from India and Haiti Attempting to Cross into the U.S.

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An increasing number of migrants from India, Romania, Haiti and Cuba are attempting to enter the U.S. through the southern border, Axios reported Wednesday.

Migrants are reportedly flying to Central America since U.S. courts are backlogged with asylum cases preventing them from living or working in the country as their case is processed, according to Axios. Border officials encountered over 33,000 migrants from countries other than Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador attempting to enter the U.S. in April, according to Customs and Border Protection (CBP).

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Jobless Claims Drop to 406,000, Yet Another Pandemic Low

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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 406,000 last week as the economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending May 15, when 444,000 new jobless claims were reported. Economists expected Thursday’s jobless claims number to come in at 425,000, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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Just Six Percent of Small Businesses Have Fully Recovered Pandemic Losses, Poll Shows

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Just 6% of small businesses that were negatively impacted by the coronavirus pandemic have fully recovered their losses, a Job Creators Network survey showed.

The vast majority of U.S. small business owners continue to “claw their way out” of the hole caused by the coronavirus pandemic, according to the poll commissioned by small business advocacy group Job Creators Network (JCN) and shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation. While 6% of small business owners that suffered losses related to the pandemic said they have recovered, 43% believed they would be fully recovered within six months.

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Commentary: The Real Significance of the Arizona Audit

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A lot of people on both sides of the political aisle seem to be missing the whole point of the ongoing election audit in Maricopa County, Arizona.  

This process isn’t about “proving” fraud or overturning an election. Rather, it’s about determining what, if anything, went wrong with the election process in 2020 and providing a road map for further investigation. In other words, it’s about determining the right questions to ask as we work to restore confidence in our electoral process. 

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Commentary: New National ‘Report Card’ Shows Public Schools Are Failing in One Huge Way

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Students often face punishment from parents when they get a bad report card. But what happens when our school system gets one?

The latest national “report card” is out, and it shows that our schools are failing Americans when it comes to science education. These most recent data come from the 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) science assessment. 

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Conservative Group Sues Chicago Mayor for Racial Discrimination

Cooper Moran

Judicial Watch, a conservative legal foundation, joined The Daily Caller Foundation in a racial discrimination lawsuit against Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot. The lawsuit claims Lightfoot, a Democrat, refused his interview simply because he was a white reporter.

The lawsuit follows the Chicago mayor’s decision to only provide interviews to “black and brown journalists.” In a letter released defending the decision, Lightfoot claims she is protesting the “whiteness” of the journalism industry.

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Senators Blackburn and Hagerty Introduce Migrant Resettlement Transparency Act

Cooper Moran

Senators Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) and Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined Congressman Chuck Fleischmann in introducing the Migrant Resettlement Transparency Act.

If enacted, the legislation would require the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to consult with state and local officials regarding federally sanctioned migrant resettlement before the migrants are relocated to the specific area.

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At the Brink of Hurricane Season, Florida Insurance Companies Expect to Cancel over 50,000 Policies

Casey Owens

Less than a week from the start of hurricane season, an estimated 53,205 homeowners insurance policyholders in Florida will have their policies cancelled or nonrenewed after approval by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation.

The Florida regulator approved Office of Insurance Regulation consent orders for three Florida-based insurance companies: Universal Insurance Co. of North America (UICNA), Southern Fidelity Insurance Co., and Gulfstream Property and Casualty.

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Trump’s Spiritual Advisor Criticizes Biden Policies

Cooper Moran

Paula White, President Trump’s spiritual advisor, took aim at President Joe Biden’s policies since taking office.

In an interview with Dr. Gina Loudon on the Real America’s Voice news network on Wednesday, Pastor White criticized the Biden Administration for enacting policies that are “totally out of alignment” with the Christian faith. Specifically, White pointed to Biden’s attempts to undo much of the progress made by the Trump administration in efforts to protect religious freedom and the right to life.

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Roundup: Democratic Lieutenant Governor Candidates Debate, Gubernatorial Candidates Spent Nearly $5.6 Million on TV/Radio

Eric Burk

The last day of voting in the Democratic primary is June 8, a week and a half away, but 53,562 people have already voted, exceeding total 2017 turnout of 35,390, according to the Virginia Public Access Project. As the final days of the campaigns approach, gubernatorial and attorney general candidates have had plenty of opportunities to define their public image. However, the six remaining candidates for the Democratic lieutenant governor nomination haven’t had as much time in the spotlight. On Tuesday, the candidates met for a debat

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30 Shots Fired in George Floyd Square on One Year Anniversary

Hayley Feland

In the middle of a gathering at George Floyd Square on May 25, 2021 commemorating the one year anniversary of the death of black man, George Floyd, while undergoing arrest by former Minneapolis Police Officer Derek Chauvin, 30 shots were fired, sending one victim to the hospital. 

The gunfire erupted on live television, as seen on the ABC News live stream. A voice can be heard yelling at people to get down.

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Ohio Bill Would Prevent Gun Seizures During Emergencies

Cooper Moran

Two Ohio state legislators have introduced a bill that would prevent state and local governments from attempting to seize guns or close gun stores or ranges during declared emergencies.

When introducing the proposal, State Senator Tim Schaffer (R-Lancaster) and State Representative Scott Wiggam (R-Wayne County) pointed to shutdowns of gun stores in Michigan throughout the coronavirus pandemic as the source of inspiration for the bill. 

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Parents Protest Implementation of Critical Race Theory at School Board Meeting

Hayley Feland

100 parents were reportedly in attendance at a school board meeting in Lakeville, Minnesota on Tuesday to speak out against Critical Race Theory being implemented.

Two concerned parents spoke at the meeting and protested the “indoctrination” of Critical Race Theory and said that Critical Race Theory is opposed to their Christian faith. The couple, Jim and Keisha, said that they were there to speak for the “millions of black Americans who disagree with the Black Lives Matter movement.” 

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82nd House District Candidate Cries Foul over Location and Time of Firehouse Primary

Matthew Hall
Kathy Owens and Anne Marie Tata

The 82nd House of Delegates District Republicans are holding a firehouse primary, and one candidate’s leveraging of the rules has her opponent crying foul. The seat, which is currently occupied by the Republican nominee for Attorney General, Delegate Jason Miyares (R-Virginia Beach), will allow Republicans to choose between Anne Marie Tata and Kathy Owens for the next Delegate from the 82nd District.

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Virginia Politicians Call for Action to Make Sure Unemployment Benefits Don’t Keep People from Getting Jobs

Eric Burk
bluecollar

Virginia politicians are calling on Governor Ralph Northam to take steps to make sure unemployment benefits aren’t preventing potential employees from returning to work. Senate Republicans want to use American Recovery Plan funds to create “Back-to-Work” bonuses to incentivize current unemployment recipients to re-enter the workforce. Congresswoman Elaine Luria (D-Virginia-02) is calling for better enforcement of unemployment benefit eligibility rules.

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