Tennessee Man Sentenced to 4 Years in Prison for Spending 22 Minutes in Capitol on January 6

A Tennessee man was sentenced to four years in prison after he entered the U.S. Capitol through a fire door on Jan. 6, 2021, and spent 22 minutes in the building during the riot.

Matthew Bledsoe, 38, was found guilty in July on a felony obstruction charge and four misdemeanor counts. He “scaled a wall … and entered through a fire door at the Senate Wing,” the Justice Department stated Friday.

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Biden Admin Pays $2.8 Billion to Battery Makers That Pledge Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

The Biden administration announced a $2.8 billion investment in U.S.-based battery manufacturing Wednesday that contributed to the administration’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility (DEIA) initiatives.

The administration selected 20 companies to receive awards from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, signed into law in November 2021, with projects evaluated by their ability to “contribute meaningfully” to the administration’s Justice40 initiative, which sets a target of 40% of all federal clean energy investments benefitting “disadvantaged and underrepresented communities,” the Department of Energy (DOE) announced Wednesday.

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‘Can’t Be Bought, Bribed or Coerced’: Kari Lake Explains Why Liberals ‘Are Afraid’ of Her

Republican gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake of Arizona claimed liberals fear her because she “can’t be bought, bribed or coerced” during a Saturday night Fox News appearance.

“I never wanted to get into politics. I left my career and walked away from my paycheck because I was disgusted with where journalism was going, the propaganda. The people of Arizona recruited me, they asked me to run. I’m a citizen politician,” Lake told host Dan Bongino. “I’m not in this because I want to climb the rungs of the political ladder into a different position.”

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Two More Indicted in Yuma Ballot-Harvesting Scheme

Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich announced this week that two more defendants, both from San Luis, have been indicted with felonies for conspiracy and ballot abuse over illegally collecting ballots. 

The indictments allege that Gloria Lopez Torres, a San Luis council member and Gadsden Elementary School District Board (GESD) member, collected seven ballots from Nadia Guadalupe Lizarraga-Mayorquin. The latter collected at least one ballot from a third party. The women put the ballots in ballot drop boxes on August 4, 2020, for the city’s municipal election.

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New Balance Announces New Distribution Center Coming to Lebanon

New Balance Athletics and the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development announced on Tuesday that it will be investing $68.5 million to establish a new distribution center in Lebanon.

New Balance Chief Operating Officer Dave Wheeler said, “We are excited to open our new distribution center in Lebanon, Tennessee, that will drive increased agility, capacity, and collaboration across our North American distribution network. This new state-of-the-art facility will ensure we can continue to provide world-class customer service and achieve our strategic growth goals. We greatly appreciate the tremendous support we’ve received at the local and state level and look forward to joining the Wilson County business community.”

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Parents, School Board Member Ask Courts to Review Decisions Around Hiring of Spotsylvania Superintendent

Two legal efforts are challenging the Spotsylvania School Board’s decision to hire former Greene County Administrator Mark Taylor as superintendent. Two district parents are asking the Spotsylvania Circuit Court to review that decision, seeking an injunction block Taylor’s appointment, and school board member Nicole Cole is appealing the Virginia Board of Education’s (VBOE) decision to license Taylor as a superintendent, according to WJLA.

“We intend to show under that code that the actions of the Spotsylvania County School Board were both capricious and an abuse of discretion in direct violation of  Va. Code Section 22.1-87,” plaintiffs Jeffrey Glazer and Christina Ramos said in their petition against the school board.

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Federal Deficit Tops $1.4 Trillion in Fiscal Year 2022, Nearly 50 Percent Above Pre-COVID Level

The Biden administration on Friday released its budgetary data for the last month of fiscal year 2022 which showed the U.S. government ran up a roughly $1.4 trillion deficit. That is an average of nearly $120 billion in added debt every month.

Federal debt surpassed $31 trillion earlier this month. The federal debt topped $30 trillion, its own milestone, in January of this year.

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Aftermath: Rushdie Has Lost Sight in One Eye, Use of Hand After Attack, Agent Says

Author Salman Rushdie lost sight in one eye and the use of one of his hands as a result of an attack in August, his agent said.

Rushdie “lost the sight of one eye,” his agent Andrew Wylie told the Spanish paper El Pais on Saturday. “He had three serious wounds in his neck. One hand is incapacitated because the nerves in his arm were cut. And he has about 15 more wounds in his chest and torso. So, it was a brutal attack.”

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Commentary: Gen X Voters Tell Democrats ‘Eat My Shorts’

Some social media blue checks had a bit of a temper tantrum this week following the release of a New York Times poll that showed overwhelming support for Republicans among Gen X voters.

The poll broke down the results by the respondents’ ages, and while the category encompassing Gen X also technically included some younger Baby Boomers, it captured most of the so-called slacker generation. According to the survey, Gen Xers, those born between 1965 and 1980, now prefer a Republican candidate to a Democratic candidate 59 percent to 38 percent, a huge gap unmatched by the other age groups. (Boomers, the next closest group, split at 48 percent for each.)

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Detroit Drug Raids Decline 95 Percent Due to Cannabis Legalization, Changing Priorities

Drug raids in Detroit have fallen 95% since a peak in 2012, largely as a result of voters’ decision to legalize recreational marijuana and shifting other police priorities. 

Detroit police conducted 3,462 drug raids in fiscal year 2012. Nearly every year since then, that number has declined. Last year, police conducted 186 drug raids, according to the city’s annual financial report.

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‘They’re Complicit in All This’: Ron Johnson Slams Media for ‘Covering Up for the Democrats’

Republican Sen. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin mauled media outlets for “covering up for the Democrats” during an appearance on “Sunday Morning Futures.”

“As corrupt as the Biden family is, and we’ve known this literally for years, the news media has, Sen. Grassley and I have, but what may be even more troubling is the corruption within federal law enforcement and inside a corrupt, complicit and dishonest media,” Johnson told host Maria Bartiromo.

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Moderate GOP PAC in Arizona Raised $1.6 Million, Spent Less than $7,500 on Actual Candidates

The Republican Legislative Victory Fund (RLVF), a PAC which is run by Camelback Strategy Group (CSG), filed a campaign finance report this past week revealing that between the middle of July and the end of September, they raised over $1,606,795, but only about $7,000 ended up being spent to help Republican candidates. Instead, the RLVF spent about $735,000 on operating expenses for consultants, fundraisers, accounting, polling, etc. 

Other than $7,398.45 for flyers/handouts/door hangers for one candidate, RLVF’s only expenditures helping candidates during this crucial point of the primary race and the beginning of the general race was $5,619 each for campaign websites. Maricopa County Republican Committee Member at Large Brian Ference, who designs websites for a living, told The Arizona Sun Times, “$5,619 for a simple website is considerably overpriced in the Arizona market. I have created dozens of political sites including candidates and the most a candidate should be paying is $2,000-$3,000 for a simple campaign website.”

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Commentary: Climate Extremism Is Making America Mentally Ill

America is floundering in an epidemic of anxiety, depression and drug use.

One in six Americans takes some kind of psychiatric drug, mostly antidepressants, a medical study concluded, and some of them (Prozac and Paxil) are linked to acts of violence. A third of high school students cannot shake feelings of sadness or hopelessness, another report found, and nearly 2 0% of teens have contemplated suicide.

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Commentary: Race-Baiting Celebrity January 6 Police Officer Once Involved in Race-Related Lawsuit

Michael Fanone, the former D.C. Metropolitan police officer using his presence at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 as a pathway to fame and fortune, is on a major publicity blitz. Along with his Pulitzer-prize finalist co-author, Fanone managed to turn his 30-minute struggle that afternoon into a 256-page book: Hold the Line: The Insurrection and One Cop’s Battle for America’s Soul is an “urgent warning about the growing threat to our democracy from a twenty-year police veteran and former Trump supporter who nearly lost his life during the insurrection of January 6th.

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New Poll Smothers Democrats’ Hopes That Abortion Can Thwart a Red Wave

Abortion is not a top priority for female voters and most women support abortion limits that would have been considered unconstitutional under the Roe v. Wade precedent, a new poll found, dashing Democrats’ hopes of an electoral advantage over abortion.

Inflation was about four times as likely to be listed as the most important issue for female respondents compared to abortion, with only 54% saying abortion was very important in determining their vote compared to 74% for inflation, according to the RMC Research/America First Policy Institute poll shared exclusively with the Daily Caller News Foundation. The polling cuts against a common Democratic talking point: that overturning Roe would be an electoral boon for Democrats as pro-abortion voters, and women in particular, flocked to the polls in November.

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Appeals Court Finds Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Funding to Be Unconstitutional

On Wednesday, a federal appeals court determined that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB)’s mechanism for funding is unconstitutional.

Politico reports that the three-judge panel of the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ultimately made the ruling based on the fact that the CFPB receives its funding through the Federal Reserve, rather than through legislation from Congress, thus violating the separation of powers in the Constitution dictating that Congress controls the government’s purse strings.

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California’s Economy Hurting as Companies Flee in Droves

California officials are sounding the alarm after recent statistics showed that fewer corporate and start-up activity in the state was leading to a decline in tax revenue, according to a report by Bloomberg News.

This year, just nine companies based in the state had held initial public offerings (IPOs), which is when a company first lists shares for sale on the stock market – considered a milestone in its growth after strong activity and high valuation, the report revealed. In 2021, California – whose start-up ecosystem in ‘Silicon Valley’ is considered the most prodigious in the world – saw 81 companies conduct IPOs, making 2022 a year of a nine-fold decrease.

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Social Security Now Allowing People to Choose Their Own Gender

The Social Security Administration will allow people to self-select their sex on social security documents without providing legal or medical documents to verify their sex, according to a Wednesday announcement.

The agency will accept individuals’ self-identification regardless of whether it matches their other documents and will supply Social Security cards accordingly, the agency announced. The move comes amid a push from the Biden administration to facilitate gender transitions and help transgender people change their sex on government records more easily.

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Public Policy Foundation Sues Biden Administration for Going After Gun Sellers

The Biden administration is abusing the 1968 Gun Control Act to take away gun dealers’ licenses over paperwork mistakes, according to a Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) lawsuit filed Wednesday.

In 2021, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) started revoking dealer licenses for firearm transaction paperwork errors violating the Act, despite the legislation only permitting that penalty for “willful” violations, the federal lawsuit says. The plaintiffs, Michael Cargill and his company Central Texas Gun Works (CTGW), are arguing for their customers as well.

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