Chattanooga Brewery Responds After Video Shows Child Touching Groin of Drag Queen

The brewery where a child touched the groin of a drag queen at a “family friendly” drag show claims it is the victim of Republican smears. 

“We hosted Chattanooga Pride on Saturday September 24 as one of their locations to hold a Family Friendly Pride Event as part of Chattanooga Pride Week,” said Wanderlinger Brewing Company Co-Owner Chris Dial. “We have hosted a few of these events over the last few years for them with one of the more recent even including local politicians. The video that was taken by a supporter of Robby Starbuck [and] was a targeted attack against our business and more specifically the LGBQT community as seen with similar events they targeted at [Tennessee] Tech, Memphis and calling for action against more. If you look at his social media he is very strongly targeting this kind of activity across the state, whether you agree or not that is the fact.”

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Report: Fraudsters Stole $45 Billion in Unemployment Benefits Using Dead People, Prisoners

The Department of Labor announced Thursday that 1,000 people have been charged for receiving $45.6 billion of fraudulent unemployment insurance (UI) payments since March 2020.

The pandemic overwhelmed state offices responsible for distributing benefits, with 57 million people filing initial UI claims within five months of March 2020, the DOL-OIG reported. Fraudsters were successfully able to take advantage of the chaos, filing for claims in multiple states, using fraudulent emails and using the Social Security Numbers (SSN) of dead people and federal prisoners.

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Goldman Sachs Warns Investors High Rates Are Here to Stay

Even in the best case scenario where the Federal Reserve is able to combat inflation without causing a recession, it is unlikely to cut interest rates, Goldman Sachs analysts warned in a note, according to Business Insider.

The Federal Reserve has raised rates three times in the past four months, with Wednesday’s 0.75% increase bringing primary credit rates to 3.25%, one of the most aggressive increases since the 1980s. However, even in a so-called “soft landing” where a recession and layoffs are avoided, the Fed is unlikely to cut interest rates until “something goes wrong,” according to a Goldman Sachs note reported by Business Insider.

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Report: Latinos’ GDP Increased in U.S. from Eighth to Fifth in 2020 – Bigger than Those of France, UK

If Latinos in the U.S. were their own independent country, then they would have the fifth-largest GDP in the world, up from the eighth-largest at the beginning of 2020, according to a new report. 

The Latino Donor Collaborative, in conjunction with Wells Fargo, released a report Thursday that found Hispanic Americans had an economic output of $2.8 trillion in 2020, up from $2.1 trillion in 2015 and $1.7 trillion in 2010. 

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Top Trans Medical Org Recommends Castration for Those with ‘Eunuch’ Identity

The World Professional Association for Transgender Health (WPATH), which sets medical standards for transgender-related procedures, recognized eunuchs as a gender identity group in its newest guidelines, recommending castration as a treatment option.

Eunuchs are males who wish to remove all male genitals, genital functioning or other masculine attributes, according to WPATH. Eunuchs are listed alongside gender identities and sexual conditions like “nonbinary” and “intersex” in the eighth edition of WPATH’s standards of care, which states that eunuchs need “gender-affirming care” that can include physical and chemical castration in order to live out their identities.

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Liz Cheney Says She Will Leave GOP if Donald Trump Is 2024 Nominee

Rejected by her own voters in Wyoming, Rep. Liz Cheney says she won’t remain a Republican if Donald Trump is the GOP presidential nominee in 2024.

“I’m going to make sure Donald Trump, I’m going to do everything I can to make sure he is not the nominee. And if he is the nominee, I won’t be a Republican,” Cheney told the Texas Tribune festival on Saturday.

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Democrats Pivot on Law and Order as Soft-on-Crime Liberals Assaulted, Burglarized

Democrats’ virtual 180 on the issue of crime — a journey from supporting the “defund the police” movement to espousing tougher law enforcement — has been accentuated by a striking pattern in recent months: prominent liberals being mugged, sometimes quite literally, by the harsh reality of rising crime as victims themselves.

The latest liberal to embody this shift is Bill Walton, the 69-year-old basketball legend-turned-garrulous broadcaster, who has a history of stirring controversy and advocating a range of progressive causes over the years.

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FBI Whistleblower: ‘Nobody I Know Signed Up’ to Investigate Parents Who Vented at School Board Meetings

An FBI whistleblower who was recently suspended said in an interview this week that he became a whistleblower last November because of Attorney General Merrick Garland’s email ordering the FBI to use Patriot Act counterterrorism tools to target parents at school board meetings.

Special Agent Kyle Seraphin, who was indefinitely suspended on June 1 after nearly six years with the Bureau, said that he was so disturbed by the directive, he went to his congresswoman’s office in New Mexico, and made a “protected disclosure.”

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Early Voting for November Election Begins in Virginia

With Congressional elections about a month and a half away, Virginians who want to cast their ballots early can begin doing so.

Registered voters can cast their early ballots in person at the general registrar’s office for the jurisdiction in which they are registered, according to a news release from the Virginia Department of Elections. Some jurisdictions also offer satellite locations for early voting in addition to offering them at the general registrar’s office.

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Yale University Set to Research $1 Million Project to Combat Racist Hair in Video Game

Yale University’s Computer Science Department recently announced a $1 million donation given to them from the Bungie Foundation for a research project that fights against racist hair graphics in video games.

“It is widely assumed that the algorithms used to generate virtual humans are based in biological underpinnings that accurately reflect all races and ethnicities,” the announcement reads. “In reality, however, these algorithms are deeply biased and based on predominantly European features.”

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Arizona’s School Choice Expansion Very Likely to Be Halted as Signatures Mount for ESA Blockage

Arizona’s historic legislation expanding school choice to every child in the state appears likely to be placed on hold right now, as a ballot measure aimed at stopping the Empowerment Scholarship Account (ESA) expansion will probably make the 2024 ballot. Save Our Schools Arizona (SOSAZ) said its signature collectors turned in 141,714 signatures for “Stop Voucher Expansion” to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office on Friday. Only 118,823 valid signatures were required by Sept. 24, leaving plenty of room for error with bad signatures.

Jenny Clark, the founder of Arizona-based Love Your School and a new appointee to the Arizona State Board of Education whose children participate in the ESAs, told The Arizona Sun Times, “Today 11,000 Arizona students had the opportunity of an ESA put on hold. Every day that a child struggles in a school that’s not working for them is detrimental. But this is far from over. We will be monitoring the signature verification process, and continuing to walk alongside Arizona families and their children.”

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Mastriano Condemns FBI Raid of Pennsylvania Pro-Life Activist

Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial candidate Doug Mastriano this weekend condemned the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s raid and arrest of Bucks County resident Mark Houck, a prominent pro-life activist. 

According to a LifeSiteNews.com report citing Houck’s wife Ryan-Marie’s firsthand reaction to the SWAT team’s Friday-morning visit to the home where the two live with their seven children, between 25 and 30 armed agents arriving in approximately 15 vehicles surrounded the house. 

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RNC, Republicans in Wisconsin Ramp Up Efforts to Recruit, Hire Poll Watchers Ahead of Midterms

Republicans in Wisconsin are recruiting poll watchers to monitor voting in November, as the GOP embarks on a multimillion-dollar effort to recruit tens-of-thousands of poll watchers and workers to monitor voting.

Both initiatives are part of renewed efforts to respond to the allegations of election fraud in the 2020 presidential election, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Over $30 Million in Grants Awarded to Support Workforce Development and Entrepreneurship Education and Training

More than $30 million in additional grants have been awarded to support workforce development and entrepreneurship education and training in Florida.

Nearly $30 million has been allocated to support workforce development in the Space Coast region as part of a multi-agency initiative to support competitive industries.

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Group Sounds Alarm on Arizona Voting Machine Readers Lacking Accreditation

For the last year and a half, three Arizona activists have been investigating the lack of accreditation of voting machine readers used in Arizona. Concerned that the machines are susceptible to fraud — not just fully electronic voting machines but also electronic voting machine readers that are used with paper ballots here in Arizona — the trio has made several unsuccessful attempts legally to halt their use in the elections this year, as well as calling upon elected officials in the state, executive, and legislative branches for assistance.

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Julie Kelly Commentary: Fair Trials Are Impossible for January 6 Defendants

Odds are jurors in Douglas Austin Jensen’s trial took longer to fill out the verdict forms than they took to decide his fate.

After only a few hours of deliberations on Friday, 12 residents of the nation’s capital found Jensen guilty on seven counts related to his involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6, 2021. Jensen, an alleged QAnon follower, infamously confronted Capitol police officer Eugene Goodman inside the building that afternoon; he potentially faces decades in prison for convictions on impeding law enforcement officers and obstruction of an official proceeding, a dubious nonviolent felony punishable by up to 20 years in jail.

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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich Cheers Pima County Judge Ruling Which Reinstates Territorial-Era Law

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) applauded the ruling from a Pima County judge Friday, which reinstated Arizona’s law prohibiting abortions.

“A Pima County judge lifted an injunction that was placed on Arizona’s abortion statute,” said Brnovich. “We applaud the court for upholding the will of the legislature and providing clarity and uniformity on this important issue. I have and will continue to protect the most vulnerable Arizonans.”

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Stores Implementing New Ideas to Keep Up with Inflation

Financial executives across the retail industry have been forced to adjust strategies to account for customer expectations as inflation puts pressure on outlets, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday.

Major retailers, including Macy’s and Target, who used discounts to clear excess inventory after overestimating demand for their products following a wave of pandemic-era retail spending, are being forced to develop strategies, such as reducing the size of bundles or subtly cutting down on discounts, to entice customers while protecting profit margins, the WSJ reported. Dollar stores have gained popularity as consumers struggle with inflation and — in tandem with the more aggressive discounting campaign by retailers — customers’ heightened demand for value has left some retailers concerned that customers might start to expect discounts that damage profits.

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Commentary: Can’t Forget the Motor City

“In the 1950s,” writes J. Eric Wise in “The French Exit: A Detroit Love Story,” Detroit was “outwardly living well, a very healthy city, technologically advanced, with economic diversity, prosperity, peace, and civil life supporting the arts and sciences.” That is no exaggeration, as this writer can testify. 

As Wise explains, Detroit prospered enormously from World War II and attracted workers from far and wide. My father, a mechanical engineer, was among them. In 1952, he moved our family from Alliance, Ohio, to Detroit, Michigan. The Big Three automakers gave him all the work he could handle.

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Nation’s Second-Largest School District Stocks Overdose Reversal Drugs After Student Deaths

The second-largest school district in the country is stocking its schools with naloxone, an opioid overdose reversal drug, following student deaths, according to a Thursday news release.

In the recent weeks, nine students have died from overdoses in the Los Angeles Unified School District, with one student overdosing in the bathroom after obtaining a pill containing fentanyl from a peer, according to the Los Angeles Times. Every school in the district, beginning with elementary schools, will be stocked with the nasal spray version of naloxone, or Narcan, according to news release by the school.

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Most Americans Believe Migrants Should Be Sent to Sanctuary Cities, Poll Finds

The majority of Americans believe illegal immigrants should be sent to sanctuary cities, a new poll from Scott Rasmussen and RMG Research Inc found.

Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis sent 50 migrants last week to Martha’s Vineyard, which advertises itself as a sanctuary city for illegal immigrants, last week, sparking widespread backlash. The new poll suggests that ordinary Americans are actually supportive of the decision despite the media’s negative response.

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Caryn Sullivan Commentary: A Gaslit Mom Will Vote Republican for the First Time

The 2022 midterm election is officially underway in Minnesota, as early voting commenced Friday. Recent polls showed the economy, crime, and abortion were in the forefront of voters’ minds. Then Minnesota made international news again when U.S. Attorney Andy Luger issued indictments of nearly 50 individuals accused of perpetrating the largest COVID fraud on record.

Commentators now say concerns about fraud will influence voters. But there’s another issue that’s garnered little attention. I wonder how it will play out as voters weigh in.

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