U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland announced on Thursday that he approved the FBI raid on former President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home and several Tennessee Republican leaders voiced their displeasure with both the raid and the attorney general’s role in it.
U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) was one of strongest and most prolific voices in reacting to Garland’s statement.
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The war of words between New York City Mayor Eric Adams and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott escalated this week as buses of foreign nationals who’ve entered the U.S. illegally arrive in Adams’ city. The buses arriving at the Port Authority generally carry between 50 and 100 people. Abbott says that’s compared to the more than 5,000 apprehended a day in the five Border Patrol sectors in Texas at the southern border.
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Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) had $469,819.49 stolen in an alleged Nigerian email scam, according to a Department of Justice court document and an FBI Richmond press release that announced the extradition to the U.S. of three Nigerian nationals alleged to have participated in a multimillion-dollar fraud scheme that also targeted a North Carolina university, a Texas college, local Texas governments, and Texas construction companies.
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Richmond law enforcement will distribute cold case decks of cards to inmates at the Richmond City Justice Center; the cards feature pictures and names of victims of unsolved homicides.
“The loss of a murdered loved one is devastating. Not receiving justice makes it even worse. I’m hopeful that this creative tool will help law enforcement provide answers and justice to these families,” Attorney General Jason Miyares said in an announcement.
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On Tuesday, a school board in North Dakota voted overwhelmingly to abandon the sacred tradition of reciting the Pledge of Allegiance, claiming that the Pledge doesn’t align with the district’s values.
As reported by the New York Post, the Fargo School Board voted 7-2 to cancel the Pledge at all of its future bi-weekly board meetings. Those who voted in favor of the ban claimed that the Pledge of Allegiance wasn’t inclusive enough, primarily due to the use of the phrase “under God.”
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Rather than impose higher taxes and more restrictions on domestic production of oil and natural gas, as Senate Democrats voted to do by passing the Inflation Reduction Act, those in the industry proposed 10 actions policy makers can take right now to reduce costs. The industry says its solutions won’t cost taxpayers $740 billion, as the Inflation Reduction Act does, or increase the national debt or inflation, as 230 economists have warned the act will do.
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Monkeypox has America’s public health establishment in a bit of an awkward spot. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra last Thursday labeled monkeypox a public health emergency. “We’re prepared to take our response to the next level in addressing this virus, and we urge every American to take monkeypox seriously and to take responsibility to help us tackle this virus,” he said.
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In May, state Sen. Doug Mastriano won the Republican nomination for governor of Pennsylvania – much to the consternation of his party. Many Republicans felt that Mastriano had no chance of winning because of the far-right positions he took in the primary and during his brief career as a state senator. They pointed out that Democrats had even spent money to help make Mastriano the nominee because he was such a weak candidate.
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Per capita murder rates in major U.S. cities such as Chicago, Baltimore and St. Louis are outpacing Ukraine’s recorded civilian death rate from Russia’s invasion.
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When voters were asked by Pew Research, prior to the 2020 election, what issues were most important to them, education wasn’t even among the top dozen.
But things have changed dramatically since then. Outlets ranging from The Washington Post, to ABC News, have identified education as a potentially significant factor in the 2022 midterms. Additionally, after education emerged as a defining issue in Virginia’s gubernatorial election last year — ranking as a top two or three issue — school choice became a litmus test issue for Republicans.
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Republican Sen. Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia may be saving her state’s coal industry after the Senate Democrats’ climate bill, backed by Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, threatened to place new regulations on coal.
Manchin’s agreement included a provision that explicitly authorized the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to further regulate coal production under a variety of legal provisions that could have rendered the recent Supreme Court rulings, which stated that Congress must clearly authorize the agency’s actions, irrelevant. However, Capito asserted that the authorization did not comply with budget reconciliation rules on the Senate floor on Sunday, leading the Senate parliamentarian to eliminate the provision, according to a press release.
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Donny Van Slee is a Florida boy from the rural town of Weeki Wachee Springs, home of the famous live mermaids. Growing up, Van Slee was shy and his dad bought him a guitar to help him. Later, influenced by the bands he loved – Led Zeppelin and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers – he took lessons, but his main focus in school was soccer.
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The “right to try” has been expanded in Arizona.
Gov. Doug Ducey held a signing ceremony for five bills that passed with bipartisan support in this year’s legislative session. It included Senate Bill 1163, the Right to Try for Individualized Treatments.
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Louisiana Sen. John Kennedy said this week that raising taxes during a recession was a “special kind of stupid.” He’s not wrong, of course, but don’t be fooled. The high-fiving and devilish cackling over the Democrats’ latest spending bonanza isn’t just in the Democratic Cloakroom.
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The Democrat-led House passed a climate and healthcare spending bill on Friday without a full Congressional Budget Office score of the legislation’s cost.
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Amid spreading alarm about the Internal Revenue Service stockpiling ammunition and Senate Democrats’ passge on Sunday of a spending bill that would fund the hiring of 87,000 new IRS agents, the tax collection agency is listing a job opening for a Criminal Investigation Special Agent who must must “be willing to use deadly force, if necessary.”
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A Georgia lawmaker will support additional funding for the Georgia Composite Medical Board to hire additional investigators if the agency asks for the money.
“I don’t think they have enough investigators and when they ask for appropriations for that I will support it,” state Sen. Kay Kirkpatrick, R-Marietta, an orthopedic hand surgeon for more than 30 years, told The Center Square.
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Ohio’s largest school district continues to move forward with plans to open the school year for students Aug. 24, despite the system’s teachers union getting closer to a strike.
Jennifer Adair, president of the Columbus City Schools Board of Education, said in a statement the board was troubled to learn the Columbus Education Association filed a notice of intent to strike a day after a 20th negotiating session.
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A Freedom of Information Act request submitted to Kalamazoo Public Schools to learn how the district spent more than $63 million in federal taxpayer money was met with a $263.66 price tag.
The Center Square submitted the FOIA to KPS in late July.
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Mayors of Pennsylvania’s small towns and large cities have fallen afoul of the law with varying reasons.
Meadville Mayor Jaime Kinder is the latest added to the list.
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Arizona’s Republican nominee for governor earlier this week said that America’s federal government has turned on its people.
“All I will say is that [the raid on former President Donald Trump’s home] shows that our federal government is corrupt to the core,” Lake said in an interview on Newsmax. “This is the kind of stuff you see in a banana republic. I mean, I think the El Salvador president had a great quote … when he said ‘What would the United States have done if we did this in El Salvador? They probably would have invaded.'”
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Republicans in Wisconsin are offering a glimpse at their strategy for this fall’s campaign against Democratic Gov. Tony Evers.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Wednesday said Evers will be tough to beat in November because he hasn’t screwed-up in years.
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Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey, a Democrat, had some harsh words for Rep. Ilhan Omar after she narrowly escaped defeat in a Tuesday primary against Frey’s preferred candidate.
Frey said the “massive” 20-point shift should send a message to Omar, who defeated Don Samuels by just two points. In 2020, Omar won the Fifth District’s Democratic primary by 20 points.
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Jim Renacci, a Republican former Ohio gubernatorial candidate who now chairs the pro-Trump American Greatness PAC, announced Friday he will host a series of forums across the Buckeye State this fall to foster conservative unity on political strategy.
The first of these events will occur on the evening of September 15 at the Thirsty Cowboy in Medina. Subsequent forums will be announced at a later time. The events will also feature vendor tables for aligned political organizations.
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Christina Pushaw stepped down from her role as press secretary for Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis to serve on his re-election campaign, she told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Election laws restrict the ability of individuals to endorse political candidates or parties and make certain election-related statements in their capacity as government employees; now that Pushaw works for DeSantis’ campaign and not the Florida government, she is free from those restrictions. She appeared to warn her opponents about the next phase of her career in a Friday tweet.
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Republican members of Arizona’s congressional delegation are calling for accountability after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided former President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home Monday.
“There are good, hardworking people at the Department of Justice and FBI who keep our nation safe and uphold our nation’s laws. Unfortunately, bad actors in these agencies have weaponized the Department of Justice to attack political opponents on the right and have declined to investigate political allies such as Hunter Biden,” Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) told The Arizona Sun Times. “If Republicans win back the Majority in the U.S. House, we will be investigating those who have abused our system of justice for political purposes, and we will hold them accountable to the fullest extent of the law.”
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Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey (R) issued an executive order Friday to fill a 1,000-foot gap in the Yuma sector of the southern border wall.
“Arizona has had enough,” Ducey said. “We can’t wait any longer. The Biden administration’s lack of urgency on border security is a dereliction of duty. For the last two years, Arizona has made every attempt to work with Washington to address the crisis on our border. Time and time again we’ve stepped in to clean up their mess. Arizonans can’t wait any longer for the federal government to deliver on their delayed promises.”
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Democrat Washington, D.C., Mayor Muriel Bowser asked the Pentagon Thursday for a second time to deploy the National Guard to support illegal migrants arriving from the southern border.
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One Democratic lawmaker, Virginia Rep. Don Beyer, cast 10 proxy votes on the House floor on Friday in favor of the Democrats’ $740 billion climate and healthcare spending bill, the Inflation Reduction Act.
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Donald Trump’s office told Just the News on Friday that the classified materials the FBI seized from his Mar-a-Lago estate were declassified under a “standing order” while he was president that allowed him to take sensitive materials to the White House residence at night to keep working.
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The American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee (ACLU-TN) earlier this week announced that it has selected a Nashville attorney to be its next executive director.
Kathy Sinback will now lead the organization, replacing Hedy Weinberg who stepped down in July.
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