Members of the Tennessee Senate Education Committee are scheduled to consider a bill this week that would, if enacted into law, expand Educational Savings Accounts, also known as ESAs. Senator Mike Bell (R-Riceville) said Monday that at least one school district in Tennessee, in Collierville, moved students to remote learning this month, as Chalkbeat Tennessee reported.
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Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) mocked President Joe Biden’s inability to advance key priorities of his administration, awarding him the “lame-duck” title often given to presidents in the final year of their term.
In an interview with “Sunday Morning Futures” on Fox News, Blackburn pointed out that Biden has watched over multiple domestic and foreign policy failures.
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The congressional redistricting process continues to move forward through the Tennessee General Assembly.
The next stop in the state House is the State Government Committee and the next stop in the state Senate is the Senate Judiciary Committee. Both committees are set to meet Tuesday.
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Last week there was quite a lot of news media chatter about swapping Hillary Clinton for Joe Biden on the 2024 Democrat presidential ticket, a fascinating concept that pundits couldn’t stop talking about. It didn’t receive nearly the headlines, but whispers involving the impending retirement of Speaker Nancy Pelosi — and her eventual replacement — have also begun in earnest.
Of course, there’s been no formal announcement that she’s leaving — either from the Speaker herself or the poohbahs at Democrat National Committee headquarters. But like all worst kept secrets, everyone with a brain and some knowledge of American politics understands that Pelosi shares characteristics with a ticking time bomb set to go off later this year.
With the prospects for Democrats holding the majority after this year’s federal midterm elections growing dimmer by the day, folks have initiated a political death watch for the soon-to-be 82-year-old gavel bearer. A large number of veteran party incumbents have officially indicated they’re heading for the exits after this session concludes. Combined with redistricting changes (after the 2020 census) and a basketful of “moderate” (they’re really not balanced, but that’s how the media refers to them) Democrats facing fierce headwinds in their swing districts, and the numbers bloodbath could/should be scary.
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The Wisconsin Supreme Court will rule on a lawsuit against the Madison Metropolitan School District for a policy that does not tell parents if a transgender student chooses to use a different name at school.
The suit, brought by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL) and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), argues it is a parental right to be informed and make important healthcare decisions in their child’s life.
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The World Health Organization and the European Union regulators are advising against repeated COVID-19 vaccine boosters amid overwhelming data that indicate they are ineffective at stopping the COVID variants.
On Tuesday, EU regulators admitted that repeated shots may not be feasible, and the WHO declared that a booster strategy is “unlikely to be appropriate or sustainable.”
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In 2020, the federal government gave American colleges and universities approximately $14 billion in relief through the CARES Act. As part of the $2.2 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package, the CARES Act allocation mandated that approximately half its funds be used for emergency student aid.
Now, nearly two years after President Donald Trump signed the CARES Act in March 2020, numerous institutions that received aid are delaying in-person learning due to the Omicron variant.
By Jan. 7, seven out of 10 University of California campuses announced “revisions to their winter quarter or winter semester plans.” Winter sessions precede the spring semester, which traditionally starts in mid-to-late January.
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Luxury car sales surged in 2021 while mainstream car companies struggled amid global supply chain disruptions and soaring inflation, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Luxury car brands, including Rolls-Royce, Bentley, Porsche and BMW, all reported record sales in 2021, the WSJ reported. Reduced international travel reportedly encouraged high-end car users to boost their vehicle purchases.
Meanwhile, the auto industry was crushed by supply chain bottlenecks and worsening chip shortages causing companies to curb production, the WSJ reported.
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Several governors around the country are taking federal funds meant to combat the coronavirus and instead using the money to deal with so-called “global warming.”
Breitbart reports that, in addition to federal stimulus funds, such governors are taking advantage of budget surpluses as a result of tax collection and massive consumer spending following the end of most lockdowns. Among the most prominent governors engaging in such misuse of funds are Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.), and Jay Inslee (D-Wash.).
“The climate crisis is not an abstraction,” Inslee falsely claimed. “It is something that I and every governor in the United States, almost on a weekly basis, have to deal with.” Newsom, who has incorrectly described global warming as an “existential threat,” has proposed spending of up to $24 billion over the next five years, for such projects as electric school buses, more electric vehicle charging stations, and additional “clean energy” development and storage projects.
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The North Carolina State Superintendent walked back plans to implement a statewide curriculum that would teach disabled preschoolers to “deconstruct whiteness,” according to a report from Education First Alliance (EFA).
Catherine Truitt, North Carolina’s superintendent of public instruction, said she has not “will not sign” a contract proposal that would teach disabled preschoolers “we are all products of a racialized society” and that “Whiteness affects everything … inside and outside the classroom.”
“Instead, I will create a new contract proposal that has strict guardrails and new accountability measures to ensure the true needs of our youngest and most vulnerable learners are met,” she said. “As long as I am Superintendent, our pre-K classrooms will remain places of play and learning.”
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How do you make the progressives on campus so “horrified” that they spring into action to defend their sacred ideology? Make an indigenous land acknowledgment that doesn’t match their view of history and watch them lose their minds. Let me describe how that happened to me.
Indigenous land acknowledgments have been common in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand, and they are now starting to crop up on college campuses in the United States. At the University of Washington, they are showing up all over the place. The diversity experts in the university’s Allen School of Computer Science—where I teach—have produced a “best practices” document that encourages faculty to include these on their course syllabus. The document also suggests replacing the phrase “you guys” with “ya’ll,” but that’s a topic for a different piece.
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The Organizing Committee of the Beijing Winter Olympics, which are just days away from starting, has announced that it will not be selling tickets to the general public due to COVID-19 concerns.
Initially, individuals living on mainland China were the only people allowed to purchase tickets for the event, but the committee has now revoked that plan, citing “the current grave and complicated situation of the COVID-19 pandemic.”
In a statement, the committee wrote that the new policy is being put in effect to “ensure the safety of all participants and spectators.”
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On Friday, one day prior to being sworn in as Virginia’s new Attorney General, Jason Miyares (R-Va.) fired 30 employees in the Virginia Attorney General’s office, including the entirety of the Civil Rights Division.
As reported by the Daily Caller, 17 of the 30 employees who were fired were attorneys. Following the mass firing, Miyares spokeswoman Victoria LaCivita said that the new Attorney General was “restructuring the office, as every incoming AG has done in the past.” She noted that Miyares and former Attorney General Mark Herring (D-Va.), whom Miyares narrowly defeated in November, “have very different visions for the office.”
In response, Herring’s former spokeswoman Charlotte Gomer criticized the move, claiming that the fired employees were “dedicated and professional public servants who do important work, like investigate wrongful convictions, protect Virginians’ civil rights, help to ensure free and fair elections, and prevent human trafficking and opioid abuse.”
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Prolific urban-country singer/songwriter Julia Cole delivers something for everyone with her innate ability to relate to her audience via her original music.
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Iowa Secretary of State Paul Pate announced Thursday the creation of a statewide alliance of businesses to end human trafficking.
The Iowa Businesses Against Trafficking coalition is open to businesses and nonprofits that are promoting both awareness of human trafficking and the Iowa Safe at Home confidentiality program for survivors of human trafficking and other violent crimes, a news release from Pate’s office said. The office is administering the coalition and the Iowa Safe at Home program and inviting all businesses to join the mission, Pate said in the release.
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Ohio U.S. Senate candidate J.D. Vance spoke with The Ohio Star Monday about anti-white discrimination in monoclonal antibody treatment for patients with COVID-19.
“You should not, in this country, have your fortune determined by your skin color,” he told The Star, noting the irony of having the discussion on Martin Luther King Jr. day. “It’s a fundamental principle of our Republic that we should not punish or reward people based on skin color, but we’re doing that right now.”
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The school district that oversees public education in Las Vegas said it will offer teachers and other employees up to $2,000 in bonuses if they stay on amid the current COVID-19 surge and concurrent employment crisis.
Clark County School District said in a statement this week that the CCSD Board of School Trustees had “approved an agreement with all five employee bargaining units to provide eligible regular and full-time employees employed as of January 1, 2022 with a $1,000 COVID retention bonus.”
“CCSD will also pay an additional $1,000 bonus to eligible regular and full-time employees who are employed on May 25, 2022, for a total of $2,000,” the statement added.
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More than 50,000 illegal immigrants released into the U.S. by Immigration and Customs Enforcement failed to report to their deportation proceedings during a five-month period analyzed last year, according to a report provided by the Department of Homeland Security to U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wisconsin. The report also states that ICE doesn’t have court information on more than 40,000 individuals it’s supposed to prosecute.
“Between March and August 2021, as a result of the Biden Administration’s failed border policies, over 270,000 illegal aliens have been dispersed into the United States with little chance for removal,” Johnson said in an announcement accompanying the report, which didn’t include data from the other seven months of the year.
Over the same time period, “over 50,000 illegal aliens – more than half of the aliens released into the interior of the United States under a Notice to Report (NTR) – failed to appear to begin deportation proceedings,” the DHS report states.
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American politics over the last half decade has become immersed in a series of conspiracy charges leveled by Democrats against their opponents that, in fact, are happening because of them and through them. The consequences of these conspiracies becoming reality and reality revealing itself as conspiracy have been costly to American prestige, honor, and security. As we move away from denouncing realists as conspiracists, and self-pronounced “realists” are revealed as the true conspirators, let’s review a few of the more damaging of these events.
Russians on the Brain
Consider that the Trump election of 2016, the transition, and the first two years of the Trump presidency were undermined by a media-progressive generated hoax of “Russian collusion.”
The “bombshell” and “walls are closing in” mythologies dominated the network news and cable outlets. It took five years to expose them as rank agit-prop.
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President Joe Biden plans to roll out executive actions on police reform in honor of Black History Month this February, three sources familiar with the matter told NBC News, despite the fact that most black Americans polled support a police presence in their communities.
The executive legislation would come shortly after the fight by President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and Senate Democrats to pass voting rights legislation.
White House press secretary Jen Psaki during a briefing Thursday said: “We’re very supportive of the efforts to negotiate police reform on a bipartisan level. Obviously, that didn’t move forward as we would have hoped.”
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Officials in Beijing have urged for an end to overseas deliveries, saying that the Omicron coronavirus variant can spread by opening packages that originate in other countries, BBC News reported.
The officials calling to end overseas deliveries cited the case of a woman who contracted the Omicron variant after opening a parcel later found to have traces of the variant on it, BBC News reported. The officials noted that the woman had no prior travel history.
The virus was discovered on the surface of a letter the woman received from Canada as well as on the inside of an unopened letter, health official Pang Xinghuo told reporters on Monday, BBC News reported. Dozens of letters from the same batch were tested, with five reportedly containing traces of COVID-19.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic continues into its third year, William Paterson University is now laying off 100 full-time faculty over the next three years.
The university, located in Wayne, New Jersey, originally planned to let 150 professors go before union negotiations revised the number to 100, or 29% of the institution’s 340 faculty, reports Inside Higher Ed.
Thirteen tenured professors lost their job at the end of 2021, according to the outlet.
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Florida’s public universities have numerous outgoing board of trustee members and there has not yet been any indication of who will be replacing them. In fact, some board members are serving past their term and have been accused of hiring friends.
Ben Wilcox from Common Cause Florida, a government accountability group, said Florida law does not expressly dictate what happens when trustees continue in their post past their allotted term.
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An MSNBC guest viciously attacked Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) over her renewed commitment to keeping the Senate filibuster in place, which progressive Democrats say is holding up their agenda.
“Look, people like Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, these are the white people Martin Luther King Jr. warned us about,” commentator Elie Mystal said on Sunday’s episode of “American Voices.”
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Our political situation is so chaotic and strange right now that we can’t take anything for granted—including what is normal. So it’s often necessary to explain what may seem obvious to readers of American Greatness, but is regarded as strange or almost incomprehensible to other people.
For example, it is obvious to me, and probably to you, that today’s “progressive” agenda is actually pushing our country back to a more primitive past.
Consider some of the most urgent priorities of woke ideology:
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The Michigan Democratic Party (MDP) is scrambling to walk back the messaging of a now-deleted post on its Facebook page.
“Not sure where this ‘parents-should-control-what-is-taught-in-schools-because-they-are-our-kids’ is originating, but parents do have the option to send their kids to a hand-selected private school at their own expense if this is what they desire,” the post, which appeared to be an image with text on it, said.
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Georgia’s school choice programs saved taxpayers at least $605 million in fiscal year 2018, an updated analysis by EdChoice found.
EdChoice examined the fiscal effects of 40 private educational choice programs in 19 states and the District of Columbia. The nonprofit found the Georgia Special Needs Scholarship Program and the Georgia Qualified Education Expense Tax Credit saved taxpayers between $605 million and $1.1 billion in fiscal 2018.
Each taxpayer saved money on the sum they would have paid in taxes for each student enrolled in the program to attend public schools. The programs saved each taxpayer between $4,355 to $8,013 per student, according to the report.
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For the second time recently, Emory Law School in Atlanta is dealing with a controversy involving a student-run organization seeking to squelch debate in the name of preventing harmful speech.
Its Student Bar Association, the law school equivalent of student government, denied a charter to the Emory Free Speech Forum (EFSF) in part based on the “lack of mechanisms in place to ensure respectful discourse and engagement” at its events, such as a moderator.
This could cause a “precarious environment” and “potential and real harm” on fraught topics such as race and gender, “when these issues directly affect and harm your peers’ lives in demonstrable and quantitative ways,” the rejection letter said.
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Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears took up the gavel to preside over the Senate for the first time on Monday, Martin Luther King Day. Sears is the first Black woman to hold statewide office in Virginia. Senators spent the Monday session with Martin Luther King Day speeches and with ceremonial introductions, including of Attorney General Jason Miyares.
Senator Mark Obenshain (R-Rockingham) introduced Sears: “It is wonderful to have Winsome Earle-Sears assume the gavel as the lieutenant governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia. For those of you who do not know Madam President, she is a Marine Corps veteran.
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Poor Democrats — they haven’t been this ruffled about Republicans taking over Richmond since 1865.
Truly, it’s hard to feel much sympathy for the Virginia Democrats, whose lust for power and the damage they did in just two years was something to behold. What they deemed progress consisted mostly of bulldozing history, embedding outright racism into our classrooms and bureaucracy, and institutionalizing mental illness to the degree where if such things are questioned you are swiftly beaten out of the public square — or worse, the Twitter mob is followed up by a media no one reads and you are marched off to your own private gulag.
Yet I digress.
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Sean Parnell, a former candidate for U.S. Senate who was endorsed by former President Donald Trump, backed recently-declared candidate Dave McCormick in the same race.
McCormick will take on former lieutenant governor contender Jeff Bartos, political commentator Kathy Barnette, former ambassador to Denmark Carla Sands, and cardiac surgeon Mehmet Oz, and multiple other candidates.
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I have received many requests from you regarding how Gov Youngkin’s order applies to school masking requirements.
For private schools – the answer is easy. Private schools were ordered by the former health commissioner to require masking in schools. That order is rescinded. Private schools should rely on the parental choice option and create a policy allowing mask wearing to be optional.
Public schools: This is more complicated. Last year a law was passed (SB1303) that requires public schools (only public – not private) to be open for in-person learning 5 days weeks while requires “ii) provide such in-person instruction in a manner in which it adheres, to the maximum extent practicable, to any currently applicable mitigation strategies for early childhood care and education programs and elementary and secondary schools to reduce the transmission of COVID-19 that have been provided by the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
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Pennsylvania student loan borrowers will receive over $70 million in relief as part of a national settlement with Navient, one of the nation’s largest student loan servicers.
Attorney General Josh Shapiro said Navient will provide $1.85 billion to resolve allegations of unfair, deceptive, and abusive loan servicing practices dating back more than a decade.
“Navient repeatedly and deliberately put profits ahead of its borrowers – it engaged in deceptive and abusive practices, targeted students who it knew would struggle to pay loans back, and placed an unfair burden on people trying to improve their lives through education,” Shaprio said in a statement.
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Colby cheese is up for another day of debate in Wisconsin on Tuesday.
The state Senate’s Committee on Government Operations, Legal Review and Consumer Protection is scheduled to hear the arguments for and against making Colby cheese Wisconsin’s official state cheese yet again.
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Pennsylvania state Reps. Benjamin Sanchez (D-Abington) and Joe Webster (D-Collegeville) are planning to introduce a bill to remove male and female designations from Pennsylvania birth certificates.
The two Montgomery-County lawmakers say their proposal would not affect notations of biological sex on the U.S. Standard Certificate of Live Birth system that is used to gather medical and other statistics.
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After passing through two different committees in the Florida Senate, a bill (SB 254) giving religious institutions the right to stay open during a state of emergency has been put on the calendar to be considered by the entire Senate.
Introduced by Republican Senators, Keith Perry of Gainesville and Jason Brodeur of Lake Mary, SB 254 was approved by the Senate Rules Committee Thursday who voted 14 to 2, and was unanimously approved by the Military and Veterans Affairs, Space, and Domestic Security Committee in November.
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A recent report shows Ohio continues to struggle to recover economically from the COVID-19 pandemic when compared with the rest of the nation.
A state-by-state comparison from the personal-finance website WalletHub showed the among the biggest increases in unemployment claims compared with a week ago. Ohio had the ninth-largest increase week-over-over.
“Ohio’s unemployment claims experienced the ninth-biggest increase in the past week. Compared to the same week in 2019, there are almost 75% more claims registered, and over 62% more compared to the first week of 2020, some of the highest increases in the country,” WalletHub Analyst Jill Gonzalez said. “Since the start of the COVID-19 crisis, Ohio has had an over 120% rise in unemployment claims, the 13th-largest nationwide.”
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After inaugurated Gov. Glenn Youngkin (R) banned schools from establishing mask mandates on his first day as Virginia governor, four major school districts say they won’t abide by his new rule.
Executive Order Number Two (2022) and Order of Public Health Emergency One banned the mandates.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin used his first State of the Commonwealth address to describe a Virginia in need of reform, with underfunded schools whose leaders are out of touch with parents, rising crime rates, rising cost of living, and a stalled economy. The Monday message contrasted with former Governor Ralph Northam’s State of the Commonwealth delivered last Wednesday, where Northam highlighted economic success, education that reckons with Virginia’s past, and progress on equity.
“From the perspective of everyday Virginia families, times are tough and the State of the Commonwealth is not what it should be,” Youngkin said. “The good news is that we have the ability to course-correct before this poor performance becomes permanent.”
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The district attorney for Georgia’s Western Judicial Circuit last month compared her constituents in Oconee County to white supremacists, and she said they wish to do her harm. That woman, Deborah Gonzalez, represents a district that includes not only Oconee but Athens-Clarke counties. Athens-Clarke County’s political climate is strongly liberal. Oconee County’s political climate, meanwhile, is very conservative, according to BestPlaces.net
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The University of Michigan fired President Mark Schlissel for an improper relationship with a subordinate – a mistake that cost him his job and part of a contract initially valued up to $10 million over the next 10 years.
A Detroit News report previously estimated the contract payout total.
Last month, an anonymous complaint alerted University of Michigan officials of alleged misconduct. It hired Jenner & Block to investigate, which found “over the years” Schlissel used his work email to “communicate with that subordinate in a manner inconsistent with the dignity and reputation of the university.”
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Customs officials at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport seized more than 100 pounds of deadly “bushmeat” from travelers during the last week of December alone. Despite its potential for “deadly effects” and outbreaks of disease, there will be no consequences for the culprits.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, bushmeat refers to “raw or minimally processed meat that comes from wild animals in certain regions of the world including Africa” and may pose a risk of communicable disease.
“Bushmeat comes from a variety of wild animals, including bats, nonhuman primates (monkeys), cane rats (grasscutters), and duiker (antelope),” the CDC says.
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The University of Minnesota admitted in an email to its student body that the COVID-19 vaccine doesn’t prevent transmission of the virus — yet the school says it will “probably” require more boosters for its students.
Public Health Officer Jakub Tolar sent an email to the student body answering some frequently asked questions about the virus earlier this month.
“I’m vaccinated, does that mean I can’t get COVID-19?” one question reads. “No,” the school responds, stressing that omicron remains “easily transmissible” even among the university’s fully-vaccinated population.
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Election season is heating up in Tennessee. The midterm congressional elections occur this year and the release of the proposed new maps has led to even more discussion about potential candidates and district races in Tennessee.
In addition to satisfying the federal and state requirements to run for public office, candidates seeking the Republican nomination in Tennessee must satisfy the Tennessee GOP’s governing criteria in order to qualify for the nomination contest.
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