BREAKING: Top Politics Reporter Neil W. McCabe Joins The Star News Network as National Political Editor

The Star News Network, the constellation of nine state-focused news sites hired veteran Washington reporter and editor Neil W. McCabe as the network’s national political editor, in its next step in the 50-state buildout.

“I met Neil when he was at Breitbart News covering Capitol Hill and the two of us ran the Breitbart-Gravis polling project during the 2016 presidential election,” said The Star News Network’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy.

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Metro Nashville Parks and Recreation and Nashville Department of Transportation Push for New E-Bike Program with Taxpayer Funded Non-Profit ‘Greenways for Nashville’

E-Bike

Recently Nashville Metro Parks and Recreation and the Nashville Department of Transportation asked residents about their experiences with e-bikes on Metro greenways. The Nashville agencies are working with Greenways of Nashville, a local nonprofit, to bring e-bikes to Music City.

“We need your input!” the Parks and Recreation Department wrote on their Facebook page; adding, “The Metro Nashville Department of Parks and Recreation and Nashville Department of Transportation are conducting this survey regarding electric bike usage on Metro greenways. You can access the survey at http://ebikesurvey.nashville.gov. The results of this survey will help the city inform policy on the greenways.”

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Domestic Terrorism Backstory

President Joe Biden talks on the phone with Senator Rob Portman, R-Ohio, following the Senate vote to pass the $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill, Tuesday, August 10, 2021, in the Oval Office Dining Room of the White House. (Official White House Photo by Adam Schultz)

“Where are the real domestic terrorists?” wonders Julie Kelly. As it happens, the intrepid American Greatness reporter is in luck. Domestic terrorist Nidal Hasan is on military death row at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. As embattled Americans might wonder, who is this guy? What did he do to land in prison? And what, if anything, does Joe Biden have to say about it? 

Nidal Hasan, 51, is an American-born Muslim who earned a degree in psychiatry, joined the U.S. Army, and attained the rank of major. Trouble is, Hasan considered himself a “soldier of Allah” and in 2009 he was communicating with al Qaeda terrorist Anwar al-Awlaki about killing American soldiers. The FBI knew all about it, but as “Lessons from Fort Hood” confirms, the Washington office of the FBI dropped the surveillance on Hasan and took no action against him. 

Major Hasan was a partisan of the Taliban and in November of 2009 Americans were being deployed from Fort Hood, Texas, for duty in Afghanistan. On November 5, 2009, Hasan yelled “Allahu Akbar!” as he opened fire. Hasan gunned down 13 unarmed American soldiers, including Private Francheska Velez, who was pregnant and died crying “my baby!” 

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Analysis: The Biggest Loser of the Durham Indictments May Be James Comey’s FBI

Special Counsel John Durham’s latest criminal case is as much an indictment of James Comey’s FBI as it is of the primary source of the Steele dossier, whom Durham accuses of repeatedly lying to agents.

The Steele dossier was the central evidence used by the FBI to win four consecutive FISA warrants targeting Trump’s campaign — and in 39 pages of painstaking detail the indictment lays out just how flawed and fake central elements of the dossier were.

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Woke Teachers Go Viral After Sharing Their Shocking Classroom Behavior on Social Media

Woke K-12 teachers ranting about their leftist agendas are ubiquitous on social media, particularly the Twitter account “Libs of TikTok.”

As universities ramp up their efforts to train K-12 educators on how to teach components of leftist and woke ideologies, Campus Reform decided to give parents and community members a look in the classroom with information on the higher education programs and academic theories that trained some of teachers behind those infamous videos.

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Cotton, Klobuchar Plan to Rein in Big Tech’s ‘Monopolistic’ Practices with New Bipartisan Bill

Amy Klobuchar and Tom Cotton

Republican Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Democratic Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar unveiled a bipartisan bill Friday intended to restrict how major tech companies acquire and merge with smaller firms.

The bill, titled the Platform Competition and Opportunity Act, is a companion to antitrust legislation advanced out of the House Judiciary Committee in June. If enacted, the law would shift the burden in antitrust cases to the acquiring party for mergers greater than $50 million, meaning that the acquiring firm would have to prove that its acquisition of another company was not anti-competitive.

The bill explicitly targets Big Tech companies, and it applies to firms with market capitalizations over $600 billion, at least 50,000,000 U.S.-based monthly active users or 100,000 monthly active business users. This would include Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple.

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New Court Documents Detail Alleged Web of Lies Used to Fabricate Steele Dossier, Frame Trump

The indictment of Igor Danchenko, the primary source for the discredited Steele dossier, provides damning evidence alleging the Russian analyst repeatedly lied to the FBI. But it’s only part of a larger portrait emerging in federal court records chronicling how the U.S. government was bamboozled into investigating Donald Trump for Russia collusion by a circle of players connected to Hillary Clinton.

Just a few weeks before his arrest Thursday, Danchenko was served in late September with a federal subpoena in a separate civil case brought by executives connected to the Russia-based Alfa Bank. That case, like the indictment, has produced evidence Danchenko contrived the intelligence he provided to former MI6 agent Christopher Steele in 2016.

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Immigration Reforms Tucked in Democrats’ Spending Bill Will Be A Gift to Big Tech

Several immigration provisions tucked inside the Democrats’ spending bill are set to greatly expand the number of legal, high-skilled immigrants admitted to the U.S., handing large tech companies a major victory.

The provisions, included in the $1.75 trillion Build Back Better Act, propose a number of changes to the immigration system intended to help relieve the green card backlog and admit more immigrants. The bill proposes “recapturing” green cards that were authorized but never actually issued due to administrative complications, as well as exempting visa applicants from numerical and country limits if the applicants pay a fee.

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George Soros, Unions, Other Far-Left Entities Donated Heavily to Defeat Pro-Police Ballot Measure in Austin, Texas

Police lights on top of car

A ballot measure aimed at increasing the number of police officers in the city of Austin, Texas was defeated in Tuesday’s election after hundreds of thousands of dollars was spent against it by George Soros, unions, and other organizations from outside of Texas, as reported by Fox News.

The question before voters, known as Prop A, would have required the city to hire two police officers for every 1,000 residents, and would subsequently increase officer training to accommodate the new hires. The measure was put on the ballot in response to a surge in violent crime in the wake of last year’s violent race riots, and a subsequent decline in the number of officers due to the “defund the police” movement as well as increasingly strict vaccine mandates.

The bulk of the money spent against Prop A came from outside the state of Texas. Chief among them was the far-left Equity PAC, which was given $500,000 by George Soros’s Open Society foundation, contributing to a total war chest of around $1.2 million. Other culprits include the equally far-left group known as the 1630 Fund, which spent $100,000 against Prop A, and the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, which spent another $100,000. Another Soros-linked group, the Fairness Project, spent $200,000 to defeat Prop A.

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J6 Detainee Subjected to Post-Lawyer Meeting Strip Search

Capitol Riot

Immediately following an in-person meeting with his defense attorney, Robert Morss, a January 6 detainee held in part of the D.C. jail system used exclusively to incarcerate Capitol defendants, was subjected to a strip search where he was verbally and physically abused by prison guards.

Morss, a former Army ranger with three tours of duty in Afghanistan, was arrested in June and later indicted on numerous counts including assaulting a police officer and disorderly conduct. (Morss is named in a multi-defendant case with others who battled police near the lower west terrace tunnel, where law enforcement officers from D.C. Metro and Capitol police were attacking protesters.) In July, Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee to the D.C. District Court, denied Morss’ release pending trial.

Morss met with his attorney, John C. Kiyonaga, in advance of a status hearing scheduled for Friday afternoon. After Morss returned to the so-called “pod,” prison guards informed him he would need to be strip searched.

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Newly Declassified Documents Show Extensive FBI Investigation of Saudi Links to 9/11 Attacks

Newly declassified documents from the FBI give a sense of the depth of the bureau’s investigation into potential ties of the Saudi government to the 9/11 terror attacks.

According to The Hill, the FBI investigated how much support Saudi officials — including one at their embassy in Washington — may have given to three Saudis involved in the attacks, including “procuring living quarters and assistance with assimilating in the country.”

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PR Firm Deletes Clinton Advisor from Its Website After Trump Dossier News

Public relations firm kglobal deleted the company profile of executive Charles Dolan, a former advisor to both Bill and Hillary Clinton, from its website Thursday following his implication as a source of information for Igor Danchenko, a Russian analyst involved in creating the Steele dossier.

Danchenko was indicted by Special Counsel John Durham on several counts of lying to the FBI and arrested Thursday, The New York Times first reported. Danchenko, a Russian analyst, was used by British ex-spy Christopher Steele as a primary source of information in creating the infamous Steele dossier, which spurred allegations of collusion between former President Donald Trump and Russia.

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Professor Canceled Because He Wasn’t Upset over a Fake Racial Bias Incident

Steven Earnest

A professor at Coastal Carolina University was canceled after he emailed his department questioning their reaction to a perceived racial bias incident that proved to be baseless.

“Free speech and basic civility are disappearing,” the theater professor Steven Earnest told Campus Reform. “So, I shouldn’t have been surprised, but I still am.”

On Sept. 16, a non-White visiting artist working with non-White theatre students at the South Carolina university wrote a list of names on the board so that the students could connect as a group.

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Healthcare Group Severs Ties with Aaron Rodgers After He Criticized COVID Vaccine Politics

A major healthcare company has severed a longtime partnership with Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers after Rodgers revealed that he had contracted COVID-19 while unvaccinated and criticized what he said were the unreasonable politics surrounding the COVID vaccine.

Rodgers this week slammed what he characterized as a “woke mob” perpetuating a “witch hunt” against individuals unvaccinated against COVID-19. The football player himself has taken criticism for not getting the shot and subsequently contracting the disease.

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New Facebook Lawsuit Alleges Tech Giant Conspired to ‘Crush’ Competition

Executives of a now-defunct photo app filed an antitrust complaint against Facebook on Thursday alleging the company schemed to end their company.

The complaint, filed by executives of a start-up image app called Phhhoto, alleges that Facebook employed anti-competitive business tactics to throttle the smaller company after it refused a business deal with the tech giant. Specifically, the suit alleges that Mark Zuckerberg personally downloaded the app, approached Phhhoto for a partnership and later pursued a campaign against the start-up after no deal materialized.

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Zillow to Shut Down House-Flipping Business, Lay Off 2,000 Workers After Disastrous Earnings

Zillow is closing down its home buying and selling business and laying off 25% of its workforce after the online real estate company missed its third-quarter earnings estimate.

The company announced in a statement attached to its earnings report Tuesday that it would be shutting down its Offers program, which buys and sells houses, after the company reported a net loss, partly due to failures in its Offers division. Zillow attributed the change to its inability to accurately forecast the housing market.

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Top Texas University Employees Donated Overwhelmingly to Democrats in 2020 Election

The overwhelming majority of employees at ten of the top Texas universities who contributed campaign money throughout the 2020 election cycle donated to Democrats, a Campus Reform investigation has revealed.

Using publicly available data from the Federal Election Commission, Campus Reform analyzed the donation records of the employees of the universities in Texas for the 2020 election cycle.

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Microsoft Draws Jeers for ‘Utterly Bananas’ Introductions Highlighting Pronouns, Race and Hairstyles

Microsoft was ridiculed on social media Thursday for including land acknowledgments, pronoun statements and references to hairstyles in its corporate introductions.

While giving presentations during the Microsoft Ignite 2021 conference on Tuesday, Microsoft employees recognized that the land they were currently standing on previously belonged to Native American tribes.

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House Passes Infrastructure Bill as Democrats Pave Way for Huge Social Spending Package

The House passed a $1.2 trillion infrastructure spending bill late Friday night, advancing legislation held for ransom for months by Democrats’ left flank to ensure passage of a much more expensive social spending package.

The House vote completed about 11:30 p.m. was 228-206, with 13 Republicans joining all but six Democrats in support of the infrastructure spending plan and sending President Joe Biden a much-needed victory for his signature.

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Top GOP Lawmakers Pledge to Hold Fauci Accountable on Wuhan Gain-of-Function Research

Leading Republican lawmakers from both the House and the Senate pledged to hold Dr. Anthony Fauci and the National Institutes of Health accountable following a Daily Caller News Foundation report on documents showing the agency had concerns about funding gain-of-function research in China in 2016.

The documents, obtained by the White Coat Waste Project and provided exclusively to the DCNF, show that two subordinates of Fauci reached out to the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance in May 2016 with concerns the group was planning to engage in gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, only to drop the issue after EcoHealth downplayed their concerns.

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Immigration Attorneys Refuse to Be ‘Complicit’ in Biden’s Restarted Trump-Era Migrant Removal Program

Some immigration attorneys are refusing to be “complicit” in former President Donald Trump’s Migrant Protection Protocols that were reinstated by the Biden administration and expected to go into effect as early as mid-November, BuzzFeed News reported Thursday.

The attorneys said they won’t offer pro bono legal assistance to migrants enrolled in Trump’s Remain in Mexico program because of the alleged dangers and rights violations migrants are subjected to, according to BuzzFeed. Immigration advocacy groups said they will keep assisting migrants at the southern border, but worry the reinstatement of the Migrant Protection Protocols (MPP) will result in more people than attorneys can effectively represent.

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Wisconsin Election Commissioners to Respond to Audit in December

The head of the Wisconsin Elections Commission is promising to answer what she says are “misconceptions and misunderstandings” from the state’s recent audit into the 2020 election.

WEC Administrator Meagan Wolfe on Thursday said she and the commission will address the finding of the Legislative Audit Bureau report at the commission’s December meeting.

“We’re pleased that overall, the LAB report confirmed the November 2020 general election was conducted accurately and fairly,” Wolfe said in a statement. “And while there’s always more to be done to ensure consistent election administration in Wisconsin, and we’re working on that every day, we also know there are some misconceptions and misunderstandings built into the LAB’s findings, and that record needs to be corrected.”

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Two Minnesota Organizations Receive ‘up to $1M’ in Community Navigator Pilot Program Grants

U.S. Small Business Administration members

The Chinese American Chamber of Commerce, MN and the Minnesota State University Mankato’s Strategic Partnerships Center have each received up to $1 million in Community Navigator Pilot Program grant funding from the U.S. Small Business Administration.

The program is an American Rescue Plan initiative intended to increase small businesses’ access to critical support. It distributed $100 million, in total, to 51 organizations across the nation that will partner as hubs for local groups to connect entrepreneurs with government resources, the administration said. The funding was announced late last month.

“The Biden-Harris Administration has prioritized building our small business ecosystems back better so that all of our entrepreneurs have a fair shot at achieving the American dream of business ownership,” SBA Administrator Isabella Casillas Guzman said in the news release. “We need to meet businesses where they are with resources to start, grow and be resilient, and the Community Navigator Pilot Program will power a trusted network of community partners to connect America’s entrepreneurs with the SBA. The program’s Community Navigators will develop strong relationships with deeply trusted community-based organizations that will tap into one-on-one, targeted support from programs designed to help them create jobs and drive innovation.”

The program has a 3-tier approach that provides funding over two years according to geographical level of reach. The Chinese American Chamber of Commerce and the Minnesota State University Mankato’s Strategic Partnerships Center received Tier 3 funding (up to $1 million) to focus on city, countywide and/or rural engagement, while Tier 1 (up to $5 million) recipients are national and Tier 2 (up to $2.5 million) are regional or statewide.

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Lawmakers Call on Minnesota School Boards Association to Withdraw from National Organization

Minnesota School Boards Association meeting

Several state lawmakers want the Minnesota School Boards Association to withdraw from the national affiliate after it compared concerned parents to domestic terrorists.

The National School Boards Association wrote to President Joe Biden in September regarding an alleged increase in “acts of malice, violence, and threats against public school officials.”

The infamous letter described this alleged behavior as “equivalent to a form of domestic terrorism and hate crimes.”

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Arizona State Troopers Find $2 Million in Fentanyl, Meth During Traffic Stop Outside Tucson

Heston Silbert

Troopers with the Arizona Department of Public Safety on Thursday seized over $1.7 million in illegal drugs while performing a traffic stop Thursday.

The stop, performed on Interstate 10 near Marana outside of Tuscon, produced 34 pounds of fentanyl pills hidden in the vehicle. Additionally, law enforcement officers obtained a warrant to search a separate vehicle.

In the second vehicle, authorities discovered over 37 additional pounds of fentanyl pills, 8 pounds of methamphetamine, 7 pounds of heroin, and 4.95 pounds of an unknown substance.

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DeSantis: Florida Republicans Overtake Democrats in Voter Registration

Ron DeSantis speaks on bad policy with the national government

This past Friday, in a speech at the National Conference of State Legislatures, Gov. Ron DeSantis said that Republicans have surpassed Democrats in Florida voter registration numbers for the first time in the state’s history.

“Today, and it’ll probably be fully publicized very soon, today for the first time in the history of Florida we’ve now overtaken Democrats,” DeSantis said. “There are more registered Republicans in Florida than Democrats.”

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Commentary: The Navy’s New Emphasis on ‘Diversity’ Puts the Nation at Risk

group of Navy members sitting on bleachers

After the 2020 summer of riots, the U.S. Navy’s Chief of Naval Operations stood up Task Force One Navy (TF1N) on July 1, 2020. After a six-month effort, the final 142-page report was submitted on January 28, 2021 Its two operating assumptions are, first, that the Navy, as an institution, is systemically racist, and, second, that “Mission readiness is stronger when diverse strengths are used and differing perspectives are applied.” Notwithstanding several key military principles—such as unit cohesion, strict discipline across the chain of command, and, well, uniforms—the Navy is now ideologically committed to the mantra that “diversity is strength.”

Not surprisingly, considering the key entering assumptions, the task force report identified problems with Navy systems, climate, and culture; and submitted almost 60 recommendations aligned with four lines of inquiry: Recruiting, Talent Management/Retention, Professional Development, and Innovation and STEM (as well as a fifth line for miscellaneous recommendations).

One should be skeptical, however, about the entire exercise and the recommendations that flow from it. It inaccurately depicts the proud institution of the United States Navy as systemically racist—a slander that has more potential to undermine morale, good order, discipline, and military effectiveness than any geostrategic adversary. 

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Georgia Rep. Barry Loudermilk, Others, Propose Way Pete Buttigieg Could Ease Supply Chain Crisis

Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) and nearly 90 other members of the U.S. House of Representatives this week urged Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg to allow certain 18-20-year-olds to operate Commercial Motor Vehicles (CMVs) in interstate commerce. This, Loudermilk and other members of Congress said in a letter to Buttigieg, to help alleviate the nation’s growing supply-chain emergency. The representatives said there are too few truckers on the road to meet demands. They asked the Department of Transportation (DOT) to proceed with the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration’s (FMCSA’s) Under-21 Commercial Driver Pilot Program.

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Addiction-Based Mental Health Crisis Still Getting Worse in Virginia

During the beginning of COVID-19, hospital inpatient volume and emergency department visits decreased, in part due to people postponing treatment. But the same data showed an increase in the number of patients getting treatment for alcohol, drug use, and related mental disorders, the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA) reported in April. In a Friday press conference, VHHA Vice President of Data and Analytics David Vaamonde reported that increased treatment for those kinds of disorders continued into the first two quarters of 2021 — one of only two Major Diagnostic Categories (MDCs) that saw growth since the beginning of the pandemic.

“We’re looking at MDCs where volumes actually increased since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. We have alcohol and drug use, and drug induced organic mental health disorders, obviously a very concerning trend there, and then diseases and disorders of the respiratory system and infectious and parasitic diseases,” Vaamonde said, adding that the respiratory, infectious, and parasitic categories line up with what a COVID-19 patient would have.

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100 Nations Agree to Non-Binding Pact to End Deforestation by 2030

The U.S., China and more than 100 other nations signed onto a pact to end deforestation by 2030 at the ongoing United Nations climate summit, the U.K. announced.

“Conserving our forests and other critical ecosystems is indispensable — an indispensable piece of keeping our climate goals within reach as well as many other key priorities that we have together: ensuring clean water, maintaining biodiversity, supporting rural and Indigenous communities, and reducing the risk of the spread of disease,” President Joe Biden remarked on Tuesday.

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Loudoun County Schools Chief Orders Outside Review of How His Office Handled Sexual Assault Claims

The superintendent of Loudoun County Public Schools in Virginia announced he has commissioned an outside review of how his office handled allegations of sexual misconduct at two high schools.

“We believe we have followed all mandatory reporting protocols and aided law enforcement to the fullest extent allowed in all investigations regarding these matters,” Superintendent Scott Ziegler wrote in a Nov. 5 email to parents and staff. “We acknowledge that these matters need to be fully reviewed.”

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Everglades Oil Drilling Proposal Denied by Florida Department of Environmental Protection

Aerial view of an oil drilling site

A proposal to dig exploratory oil wells in the Florida Everglades was denied Friday by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (DEP).

The DEP’s decision to reject the proposal by Trend Exploration of north Fort Myers, is due to the concerns that oil drilling will negatively affect surrounding water supplies and natural habitats for endangered species such as the Florida panther.

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Virginia Democrats Concede Control of House of Delegates, Completing GOP Election Sweep

Eileen Filler-Corn

Democrats in the Virginia House of Delegates conceded control of the chamber to Republicans several days after the state’s off-season elections saw massive Republican gains in the state.

Democratic Del. Eileen Filler-Corn publicly announced the transfer following the concession of Democratic Del. Martha Mugler in a hotly contested race in the state’s Hampton Roads region.

“While the results of the election were not in our favor, our work for the people of Virginia goes on,” Filler-Corn said in a statement.

Democrats over the past two years had wielded majorities in the state House and Senate, as well as control of the state’s governorship, to pass a large package of progressive policies, including marijuana decriminalization and gun control.

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New Bill Will Fix Problems Within the NCAA, Tennessee Rep. David Kustoff Says

Representative David Kustoff (R-TN-08) this week filed legislation that, if enacted into law, would create due process protections for individuals and universities under investigation by the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) for rule infractions. Representative Burgess Owens (R-UT-04) and Representative Josh Harder (D-CA-10) are co-sponsoring the legislation, according to a press release.

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