Congressman Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05) on Thursday introduced new legislation to require in-person work for federal agencies.
Specifically, the bill, entitled the Return to Work Act, would mandate the agencies to reinstate their telework policies used prior to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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“In critical moments,” said Star Trek’s master of logic, Mr. Spock, “men sometimes see exactly what they wish to see.”
Apparently so. The truth of this statement hit me like a bolt of lightning recently when a friend relayed his experience at a medical clinic. It seems the ignorance and lack of rational thinking in our medical system is even worse than I imagined.
It all started when my friend John, a man in his mid-60s, went to the doctor to fill out forms and answer questions before undergoing an in-house surgery. After about 30 minutes of taking his history, the nurse asked him if he had taken the COVID vaccine. John replied that he had not—a fact he had already told the office secretary when he made his appointment—but that he was prepared to take tests to see if he was positive for the virus.
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Law Enforcement Appreciation Day was celebrated this year on January 9, 2022. The day is dedicated to recognizing and honoring all law enforcement officers who unselfishly serve and protect our communities, often at great risk to themselves and their families.
Unfortunately, there is pervasive negative political and activist rhetoric in American society that undermines support for law enforcement by recasting our men and women in blue as the enemy of an orderly society.
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The state’s highest court ruled that new Congressional maps drawn by a court-appointed special master be adopted.
The Connecticut Supreme Court handed down the decision Thursday after members of the Reapportionment Committee failed to reach an agreement on new maps in December 2021. The maps were re-drawn using information from the 2020 Census.
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Far-left Antifa radicals vandalized businesses and blocked traffic with barricades during a two-hour march down Lake Street in Minneapolis Friday night.
The march was infiltrated by independent photojournalist Rebecca Brannon, who said that Antifa-affiliated accounts had been posting about the “direct action” all week.
Brannon reports that a helicopter was circling overhead the entire time, but no police ever showed up during the two-hour occupation.
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The Georgia House passed its version of an amended fiscal year budget Friday, agreeing to spend $2.7 billion more than the previously passed budget.
Appropriations leaders in the Georgia General Assembly must review and approve spending changes for the remainder of fiscal year 2022 and approve a budget for fiscal 2023, which begins July 1.
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On Thursday, the Florida Department of Children and Families (DCF) proposed a rule that would end participation in a federal program sheltering Unaccompanied Alien Children (UAC) who enter the U.S.
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Wisconsin’s state superintendent of schools and at least one Democratic state representative are dismissing the parents who turned out at the Capitol on Thursday to ask to be more of a part of their children’s education.
State Superintendent Jill Underly issued a statement before the parents appeared in front of the Assembly’s Committee on Education saying the parents are taking sides against teachers in the state.
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Milwaukee Public Schools (MPS) reduced its number of virtual learning days after a 3 percent COVID-19 positivity rate was reached within a 14-day window.
Originally, the school district’s policy mandated 10 days of virtual learning, if the conditions were met. However, the updated provisions will cut the time in half, only forcing five days of remote learning.
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A liberal arts college in southeastern Minnesota ended its “anti-racism” training program following a civil rights complaint.
Carleton College, located in Northfield, held racially segregated “mandatory monthly affinity groups” as part of its “anti-racism training series” for employees and staff throughout the spring 2021 semester (January through May 2021).
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Governor Mike DeWine on Tuesday announced a round of grants to law enforcement agencies across the state to help with recruitment efforts.
The funds will be awarded to organizations in Clark, Franklin, Greene, Hamilton, Logan, Lucas, Mahoning, Medina, Montgomery, Shelby, and Summit counties.
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Gov. Gretchen Whitmer on Wednesday signed into law two bills ostensibly aimed at assisting first-time homebuyers.
House Bill 4290 and Senate Bill 145 will allow first-time homebuyers to save down payments and closing costs tax-free. The bills establish the Michigan First-Time Home Buyer Savings Program within the state’s Department of Treasury.
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New legislation in Phoenix would keep cities from nudging private businesses and others into a union shop before giving permission to build.
Although explicitly requiring union labor is illegal in Arizona, an amendment to Senate Bill 1191 would block cities from limiting a zoning permit, zoning variance, rezoning application, general plan amendment or other permit or land use requirement to those who promise to use union labor or only use contractors paying union wages. If enacted, it also would ban public works projects from having similar requirements or disclosing union ties in a bid.
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The Ohio House has passed a bill that would give employers $25,000 in tax credits to train new drivers in an effort to help companies across the state alleviate a growing truck driving shortage.
House Bill 197, backed by trucking and business organizations, now heads to the Senate. It passed the House, 97-0, this week.
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Members of the Georgia General Assembly are unwilling to move forward with legislation that would allow Buckhead residents to vote later this year on forming an independent city. But members of the Buckhead City Committee, who have pushed for a vote, said media reports about the matter lack important context.
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Socialist members of the Pennsylvania state House of Representatives on Friday proposed a tax increase on net profits, dividends, rental income, copyrights and patents as well as gambling and lottery winnings.
Currently, Pennsylvania’s income-tax rate is 3.07 percent. The plan would raise it to 6.5 percent on the aforementioned items.
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Representatives from the Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry and the Office of Administration discussed ongoing fraud and other issues in the commonwealth’s unemployment system Thursday during a House hearing.
Pennsylvania Secretary of Labor & Industry Jennifer Berrier told the House Labor and Industry Committee that “overall the (unemployment compensation) system is in a good place,” but acknowledged a raft of ongoing issues, from hundreds of millions of dollars stolen through fraud to large backlogs of unresolved claims and fraud cases.
Berrier said the unemployment compensation system has processed more than 611,000 claims since the modernized system went live in June, paying out about $3.4 billion in benefits. During the height of the pandemic, the department faced a backlog of 300,000 nonmonetary determinations, or those involving eligibility, that since has been whittled down to 95,000, she said.
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With midterm elections this year, Pennsylvania’s 2022 congressional re-districting plans are under scrutiny. The state lost one congressional district last year, bringing the total number down to 17.
The proposed map is not finalized, but FiveThirtyEight reports that three congressional districts will likely be “highly competitive seats.”
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A group of truckers from Tennessee is traveling to Buffalo, New York on the Canadian border to show support for their Canadian counterparts, who have been jamming the city of Ottawa and international trade routes in protest of COVID-19 vaccine mandate and restrictions.
The group is called “Convoy to Save America.”
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Police in Ontario on Sunday arrested protesters still blocking the Ambassador Bridge, seeking to clear the major trade route between Canada and the United States after days of COVID-19 restriction protests that captured the world’s attention.
Windsor police told the Associated Press that arrests began and vehicles were towed starting just after dawn at the bridge linking Detroit and Windsor, Ontario — the busiest northern border crossing to the U.S.
“Television images showed officers detaining protesters. Only two pickup trucks and less than a dozen protesters blocked the road to the bridge before police moved in. Afterward, police barricades remained and it was not immediately clear when the bridge might be opened,” AP reported.
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Filings from Special Counsel John Durham this week allege the 2016 Hillary Clinton campaign was working to establish a “narrative” linking the Trump campaign to a Russian bank, in an alleged gambit one expert said was an effort to “infiltrate” Trump servers to that end.
The allegations, first reported on by Fox News on Saturday, are another layer to the densely, multifaceted Durham investigation into the origins of the Trump-Russia conspiracy theory, one that has continued long after Trump left office and that continues to produce fresh controversies on a regular basis.
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Liberal mothers plan to attend more public-school board meetings to attempt to defeat conservative groups like Moms for Liberty, and now members of that group’s Williamson County chapter in Tennessee have responded. The Washington Post profiled these left-of-center mothers in an article this week. The report also said those mothers are about to go on offense against anyone who attends public school board meetings to speak out against Critical Race Theory (CRT) and COVID-19 masks.
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Ronald Turner, a convicted gang leader from Knoxville, was sentenced to life in prison, followed by a five-year term of supervised release, for charges related to drug and money laundering crimes.
He was arrested, along with seven other members of the conspiracy, in an operation that was focused across multiple counties in East Tennessee.
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Though alarming and depressing, we can no longer avoid recognizing that America’s greatest domestic threat is from pro-government extremists.
We rue that pro-government extremists caused immense destruction during their less-than-“peaceful protests” in 2020; and we witness the continuing damage caused by their neurotic, totalitarian response to a plethora of problems, such as the COVID-19 pandemic..
Indeed, what makes the pro-government extremists so dangerous is their far greater numbers than their anti-government extremist counterparts. Their noxious ideology that the citizen is subordinate to the omnipotent state is incessantly “normalized” and propagandized by their corporate media comrades.
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The Tennessee Valley Authority Board of Directors ratified approval of a programmatic approach to exploring advanced nuclear technology as a component of its decarbonization goals as discussed at its meeting on the campus of Western Kentucky University on February 10th.
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Nearly 12% of police officers were assaulted while on duty in 2020, according to annual state level data collected by the FBI. Alaska reported the greatest percentage, California the greatest number.
A total of 60,105 officers were assaulted nationwide, with the overwhelming majority assaulted, and injured, by assailants’ hands and feet.
Nationwide, 26% of assaults in 2020 involved a deadly weapon that wasn’t a firearm; 5% involved a firearm.
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Perched about 325 feet (100 meters) up the slopes of the Prealps in southern France, a humble rock shelter looks out over the Rhône River Valley. It’s a strategic point on the landscape, as here the Rhône flows through a narrows between two mountain ranges. For millennia, inhabitants of the rock shelter would have had commanding views of herds of animals migrating between the Mediterranean region and the plains of northern Europe, today replaced by TGV trains and up to 180,000 vehicles per day on one of the busiest highways on the continent.
The site, recognized in the 1960s and named Grotte Mandrin after French folk hero Louis Mandrin, has been a valued location for over 100,000 years. The stone artifacts and animal bones left behind by ancient hunter-gatherers from the Paleolithic period were quickly covered by the glacial dust that blew from the north on the famous mistral winds, keeping the remains well preserved.
Since 1990, our research team has been carefully investigating the uppermost 10 feet (3 meters) of sediment on the cave floor. Based on artifacts and tooth fossils, we believe that Mandrin rewrites the consensus story about when modern humans first made their way to Europe.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) refused to provide evidence to support its claims that COVID-19 “misinformation” and “false or misleading narratives” inspired violent terrorism during 2021.
DHS issued a terrorism advisory bulletin Monday warning that of the dangers of online misinformation, which the agency said has been exploited by “threat actors” and to inspire acts of terrorism.
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A scientist who worked with Peter Daszak at the EcoHealth Alliance has sent a whistleblower complaint to Senator Gary Peters, the Chairman of the Senate Whistleblower committee, stating that he believes Daszak works with the CIA and could in fact be “a double agent working on behalf of the Chinese government.”
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TikTok is banning users from “misgendering” and “deadnaming” others in an effort to improve the social media platform, the company announced Tuesday.
The company announced the new policies in updated community guidelines released Tuesday, saying it will now explicitly ban certain practices classified under the umbrella of “hateful ideologies.”
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Global crude oil prices surged Friday, continuing their steady approach toward $100 per barrel, as a top energy group projected greater demand through 2022.
The West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil index, which measures U.S. prices, increased more than 1.89% to $91.73 per barrel while the European Brent Crude index ticked up nearly 1.71%, hitting $92.94 per barrel as of Friday afternoon. Both indices inched closer to their highest price in multiple years, according to data tracked by Business Insider.
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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released data showing that effectiveness of the COVID-19 vaccine booster wanes markedly in the months following that shot, though the agency still said uptake of the booster is important for fighting against the virus.
The agency said in a press release that studies showed effectiveness against COVID-19 emergency department and urgent care incidents “was 87% and 91%, respectively, during the 2 months after a third dose [of the booster],” but that it “decreased to 66% and 78% by the fourth month after a third dose.”
The CDC said that “protection against hospitalizations exceeded that against ED/UC visits” with the shot.
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Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) slammed President Biden for failing on his foreign policy decisions and his pledge to “unite” the country, during separate interviews with Fox News.
According to the Wisconsin senator, Biden has allowed other countries to advance their priorities, while undermining those of the U.S. For example, when Biden took office, he ended construction of the Keystone XL pipeline; however, he later reduced sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 Pipeline.
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Representative Elaine Luria (D-VA-02) criticized efforts to regulate congressional stock trading which Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07) is championing.
“So my thoughts on it, you know, I think this whole concept is bull***t. Because I think that, why would you assume that members of Congress are going to be inherently bad or corrupt? We already have the STOCK Act that requires people to report stock trades. Why would you assume – I mean, the people that you’re electing to represent you, it makes no sense that you’re going to automatically assume that they’re going to use their position for some nefarious means or to benefit themselves. So I’m very strongly opposed to any legislation like that,” Luria told Punchbowl News this week.
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Leading Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake came from the media, so she is well versed dealing with reporters during interviews, often bringing her own camera operators to film her interviews too in case the media only plays selective clips. 60 Minutes Australia recently interviewed her, and sparks flew during the interview and for an extended period afterward between Lake and interviewer, as Lake repeatedly called out reporter Liam Bartlett for the type of questions he was asking.
Lake uploaded the entire interview and their exchange afterwards to Rumble in a video entitled “Kari Lake vs Lunatic ‘Journalist’ at 60 Minutes Australia.” Almost all of Bartlett’s entire interview focused on discussing Donald Trump and the Jan. 6 protest at the U.S. Capitol, which Lake did not attend.
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Members of The Republican Governors Association (RGA) are contributing money to assist Georgia Governor Brian Kemp’s reelection campaign. This, even though former U.S. Senator David Perdue, also a Republican, has challenged Perdue for his seat.
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The University of Pittsburgh will fire nine individuals who refuse to receive the coronavirus vaccine, violating the institution’s mandate imposed last year.
According to a statement provided to the University Times, 22 individuals were originally non-compliant, but 13 individuals cleared the protocols. The university is “in the process of terminating” the others.
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Ana Goni-Lessan, a Florida education reporter with the Gannett-owned Tallahassee Democrat, has adopted the “Don’t Say Gay” moniker when referencing the Parental Rights in Education bill which is working its way through the Florida Legislature.
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After an Ontario Superior Court judge issued an injunction Freedom Convoy protestors at Ambassador Bridge to disburse, more protestors showed up in defiance of the order.
The order, handed down Friday afternoon, told protestors to clear the bridge or be arrested. Police officers from across the province reportedly swarmed to the area.
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Many iconic U.S. newspapers sport slogans that seek to explain their mission – and self-image. “All the News That’s Fit to Print” has been called “the seven most famous words in American journalism.” “Democracy Dies in Darkness” was an overtly partisan call to arms. But the most telling section of a newspaper’s true values is its “Corrections” page. That’s where journalism distinguishes itself from just about every other profession, routinely and straightforwardly admitting its mistakes. Who else does that?
It is a soul-crushing enterprise. A single misspelled name is all it takes to ruin an otherwise stellar article. We reporters may forget the topic of the piece we wrote last week, while the error five years ago is seared into our memories. But it is also crucial: Reader trust is the lifeblood of journalism. If you can’t believe what you read, why bother?
And yet, we do get things wrong all the time. Despite the self-righteous claims of too many news outlets, journalists don’t print The Truth. The “first draft of history” is necessarily messy and incomplete. What journalists have long promised readers is that we will do our best to get the story right initially and then set the record straight when better information emerges. This isn’t solely a commitment to high-minded ethics. It is also transactional: Journalists can so readily acknowledge errors because readers honor and reward our honesty. They forgive us our trespasses because we acknowledge them.
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St. Paul’s chief of police is pleading with city leaders for help once again.
Last Friday Chief Todd Axtell wrote a letter to Mayor Melvin Carter with a dire warning about the understaffed and overworked St. Paul Police Department.
Evidently not much has changed after a contentious Sept. 2021 meeting with the St. Paul City Council, in which Axtell sought a $3.1 million increase over what Mayor Carter initially proposed for the 2022 police budget.
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Ohio State University’s annual “Sex Week,” which begins Sunday, will feature two days for students to meet and thank abortion providers.
“Meet [Student Advocates for Sexual Health Awareness] (SASHA) in the Union on the 1st floor on to help thank abortion providers in Ohio and Texas for the valuable work they do for reproductive rights! We will be creating valentines,” the group’s schedule says.
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Former Trump administration State Department spokesman Morgan Ortagus made a dubious claim about why President Trump endorsed her in a national publication.
Ortagus recently sat down with the Jewish News Syndicate to discuss her candidacy for Tennessee’s 5th Congressional district seat.
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The Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration announced Friday that overall January state tax revenues exceeded budgeted estimates. On an accrual basis, January is the sixth month in the 2021-2022 fiscal year.
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Bedford County Mayor Chad Graham officially announced his re-election campaign on Friday in a press release.
“For many years, our county lagged behind surrounding counties in benefiting from regional economic growth,” Mayor Graham said in a statement. “While we certainly want an improved economic environment, we also don’t want to sacrifice our quality of life to unbridled growth, traffic congestion and crime. I believe we have the right approach and now is the time to continue building on our recent successes for the sake of future generations and make Bedford County even better.”
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The Metro Nashville Beer Permit Board has granted permits to two pedal tavern companies.
The Beer Permit Board met on Thursday, February 10, 2022 and granted Nashville Pedal Tavern and Sprocket Rocket Party Bike permits to sell beer. Customers are also permitted to bring their own beer onto the pedal taverns.
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For months, the lawyer representing Kaleb Franks—one of six men charged with conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020—has produced some of the most detailed and damning reports to make a case for FBI entrapment. Defense attorneys last year discovered that at least a dozen FBI agents and informants were intimately involved in the abduction plot, brought to a dramatic conclusion in October 2020 when the men were arrested after an FBI informant drove them to meet an undercover FBI agent to buy materials for explosives.
With the trial date just weeks away, the Justice Department’s case is imploding amid numerous scandals.
The timing could not be worse for the government, especially the FBI, which is now under scrutiny for its suspected role in fomenting the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. After all, the two events share many similarities, including plans to “storm” Michigan’s state Capitol building, the use of militia groups reportedly loyal to Donald Trump, and official designations that both represent “domestic terror” attacks.
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The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) warned U.S. law enforcement and public safety officials that a trucker convoy protest similar to the one taking place in Ottawa, Canada, could begin on American soil on Feb. 13, the day of the Super Bowl, Yahoo News reported.
The warning, which was distributed nationwide on Tuesday, told authorities the DHS “has received reports of a convoy of truckers planning to potentially block roads in major metropolitan cities in the United States in protest of, among other things, vaccine mandates for truck drivers,” according to senior law enforcement officials and documents obtained by Yahoo News.
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Two years after COVID burst on the American scene, leading to lockdowns, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and trillions of dollars in emergency government spending, the question on many minds is: When will the emergency end?
The answer to that question is not an easy one. An examination of past emergencies does not resolve it. Rather, it is clear that emergency situations, including this one, may be understood through various lenses, yielding different perspectives on what the endpoint will be.
Take, by way of comparison, World War II, an emergency that had at least four distinct endings because it had at least four distinct faces:
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A D.C. District Court judge overseeing numerous Capitol protest cases today accused the Justice Department of repeatedly falsifying the location of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris during the afternoon of January 6, 2021.
Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, openly doubted the validity of trespassing charges against Nicholas Rodean, indicted last March on several counts for his participation in the protest on Capitol Hill.
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