Ohio Sues Norfolk Southern over East Palestine Train Derailment

The state of Ohio this week announced a lawsuit against Norfolk Southern in connection with the February derailment of one of its trains near the town of East Palestine.

Attorney General Dave Yost filed the suit on Tuesday, contending that the railroad violated state and federal laws, among them the Ohio Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensation, and Liability Act (CERCLA), CNN reported.

The Feb. 3 derailment saw toxic materials leak from the railcars and force an evacuation of the town. Authorities were later forced to implement a controlled release of the toxic materials to prevent an explosion.

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Commentary: Centrist Parties Will Try and Fail to Sway the 2024 Election

You’re forgiven if you didn’t hear the news – or didn’t pay attention to it – but former Maryland governor Larry Hogan announced last week that he won’t run against Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis for the Republican Party’s 2024 presidential nomination.

This didn’t mean Hogan accepted the inevitable and intends to throw-in with the wisdom of his party’s voters and simply do what most loyal politicians do when the grassroots selects in a primary someone he or she doesn’t necessarily agree with. No, Hogan said he hopes like heck that someone other than Trump or DeSantis will earn the GOP nod – and henceforth release him from taking drastic measures. But should Republican primary participants opt for a Trump or DeSantis candidacy… Larry may run instead on a third-party ticket.

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Medical School Students Required to Take Class Including Woke DEI Gender Indoctrination

Students at the Indiana University School of Medicine are required to take a basic Human Structure class that includes indoctrination in the woke gender ideology agenda, Fox News revealed Sunday.

The first-year students in the Human Structure class have a “sex and gender primer” lesson that states “both sex and gender fall along a continuum, rather than being binary constructs,” and claims “a nuanced understanding of sex and gender and the use of inclusive terminology may positively affect healthcare of all individuals,” according to the documents obtained by Fox News.

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Election Integrity Legislation Addressing Early Ballot Tabulation and Polling Locations Pass Senate Floor

In a weekly update to constituents, State Sen. J.D. Mesnard (R-Chandler) announced Monday that three of his election-related bills recently passed the Senate floor.

“Several of my bills that focus on improving our elections process by speeding up ballot tabulation, while preserving accuracy, security, and transparency, have now passed the Senate and are advancing to the House,” Mesnard shared.

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Connecticut Sues Rest Stop Owner over Worker Wages

Connecticut’s top law enforcement officer is taking aim at a rest stop operator with a legal challenge alleging it cheated food service workers out of wages they were owed. 

The lawsuit, filed by Attorney General William Tong, claims plaza operator Food Project LLC owes workers at Dunkin Donuts, Subway and other rest stop businesses collectively more than $2.7 in lost wages for underpaying them under state labor laws. 

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Dozens of Virginia Housing Projects to be Supported by $93 Million in Loans

The Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development is distributing more than $93 million in housing loans to support housing projects across the commonwealth that are estimated to create nearly 4,000 units for low-income and extremely low-income households, according to Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s office. 

The $93 million in Affordable and Special Needs Housing loans administered by the Virginia Department of Housing and Community Development will support 57 projects in various parts of the state. In total, the projects are estimated to create 3,936 units for low-income and extremely low-income households, including 298 permanent supportive housing units, 3,825 rental units and 111 units for homeownership opportunities, according to the governor’s office. 

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Former President Donald Trump Stumps in Iowa, Vows to Evict Biden from the White House and ‘Prevent World War III’

Former President Donald Trump was back in Iowa Monday night and he was loaded for bear, taking aim at woke liberals, the mainstream media, the Deep State, “Paul Ryan RINOs” and the current unpopular top resident of the White House. 

And Trump, arguably the leading contender for the 2024 GOP presidential nomination, made the crowd packing Davenport’s 2,400-seat Adler Theatre some big promises. Chief among them:  He’ll always have Iowa’s back and he’ll “stop World War III.” 

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Ohio Ballot Board Certifies Amendment to Enshrine Abortion in State Constitution

On Monday, the Ohio Ballot Board unanimously certified that the proposed constitutional amendment that would legalize abortion throughout the state called “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety,” incorporates only one constitutional amendment and therefore advances.

The Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, a coalition of radical pro-abortion activists that includes Planned Parenthood, Pro-Choice Ohio, the Abortion Fund of Ohio, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio, along with the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights, must now gather over 413,000 signatures from registered voters in at least 44 counties, which equals 10 percent of the votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial election before July 5th. The amount of signatures must equal at least 5 percent of the votes cast in the most recent gubernatorial race in each county.

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Gov. Shapiro’s Pennsylvania Budget Proposal Rewards Union Donors

Unions donated copiously to Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) during last year’s gubernatorial campaign and they’ll reap a handsome reward if the legislature approves a particular item in Shapiro’s proposed budget. 

The Fiscal Year 2023-24 spending plan includes a $1,274,000 initiative to increase by one-third the number of labor law compliance investigators at the commonwealth’s Department of Labor and Industry. The text of Shapiro’s proposal expresses concern that more labor cases need to be probed and that businesses need more education on workers’ right to organize. 

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HHS Audit Finds Florida’s Foster Care System Didn’t Properly Report Missing Children

An audit recently released by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General gave the state of Florida low marks for its stewardship of children in its foster care system.

The OIG audit found that state agencies were failing to properly report missing foster care children in accordance with federal law and some didn’t report them missing at all.

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Commentary: Pro-Market Reforms Lead to Fewer Chemical Spills

The train derailment in East Palestine, Ohio has attracted the ire and attention of the public and government officials. Unfortunately, train disasters are just one of many contributors to the threat posed by environmental contamination. According to Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) data analyzed by The Guardian, the U.S. is averaging one chemical accident every two days. Some of the top culprits are water treatment plants, which regularly use hazardous inputs such as chlorine and sulfur dioxide in their operations. (Mostly) government-owned plants fail to place proper safeguards on these chemicals, resulting in dangerous exposures to the public. Policymakers should consider alternative approaches that incentivize careful treatment operations at affordable prices for consumers.

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Bill Would Increase Tennessee Teacher Pay, Stop Payroll Collection of Dues

A bill to both raise the minimum Tennessee teacher salary to $50,000 by 2026-27 and eliminate the option of districts collecting Tennessee Education Association dues from paychecks passed the Senate Education Committee this week.

The bill is sponsored by State Sen. Jack Johnson, R-Franklin, but was termed an administration bill supported by Gov. Bill Lee. When asked why the two topics were combined by both a Republican and Democratic member of the committee, representatives from the Tennessee Department of Education said that was the choice of Lee.

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Shapiro Says Pennsylvania Republican Lawmakers ‘Are Praising’ His Budget Proposal While Omitting Criticisms

Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro (D) is already claiming high-ranking Republicans “are praising” his first budget. Those Republicans’ actual remarks tell a different story.

A press release from the governor selectively quotes eight GOP state lawmakers’ reactions to the budget he unveiled last week. While the snippets accurately capture areas of agreement, they leave out decidedly negative sentiments the Republicans voiced about the $45.9 billion plan which would hike state spending by about four percent over the current level. 

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Commentary: Despite ‘Strong’ Rhetoric, Biden Administration Signals Gloomy Economic Outlook

The White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB) in the now-released President’s Budget is projecting just 0.6 percent in inflation-adjusted real growth of the U.S. economy in 2023 as the unemployment rate is expected to rise to 4.3 percent in 2023 and peak at 4.6 percent in 2024 after the economy is finished overheating from the continued, elevated inflation, consumers max out on credit and spending falls off a cliff.

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Arizona Education Chief: The Key to Success in College Depends Directly on the Academic Quality Students Receive Before They Enroll

State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne (R) told The Arizona Sun Times over the phone that he hopes his administration can increase the number of Arizona high school graduates enrolling in universities by improving the education they receive before graduating.

“In order to go onto college, students have to get a good academic education, and that’s my total focus, to improve the academic education students get,” Horne said via the phone. “I’m doing everything I can to raise the academics in the schools.”

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National Transportation Safety Board Chair: Norfolk Southern’s New Safety Goals ‘Not Robust Enough’

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) chair said on Sunday that Norfolk Southern’s proposed “six-point strategy” safety plan is “not robust enough,” following multiple mishaps from the railroad giant that included the derailment of a train carrying toxic chemicals in East Palestine, Ohio.

Norfolk Southern’s CEO, Alan Shaw, testified before the U.S. Senate last week over a month after a Norfolk Southern train carrying hazardous materials derailed in East Palestine creating a fiery catastrophe which jeopardized both the health of residents and the environment.

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Teachers, Activists Push School Districts to Drop Calculus in the Name of Equity

Teachers and activists are pushing for high schools to drop their calculus courses to increase equity as many minority and low-income students don’t have access to the class, according to The 74, a nonprofit news organization covering education.

In the 2017-2018 school year, 76% of schools with “low student of color enrollment” offered calculus while 52% of schools with a high proportion of students of color offered the advanced math course, according to a Learning Policy Institute report. The course, teachers and activists argued, is disproportionately offered to students not of an underrepresented group, giving other students an advantage in the college admissions process, according to The 74.

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Nonbinary Pronouns Nonhelpful on Job Resumes: Study

The number of U.S. adults who self-identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and non-binary (LGBTQ+) continues to increase. According to Gallup, the percentage of Americans identifying as something other than heterosexual has more than doubled in the space of a decade.

As the number of people identifying as non-heterosexual continues to increase, so too does the number of those using gender-neutral pronouns. Personal gender pronouns (PGPs), a rather recent phenomenon, are part of someone’s gender expression. They are commonly used by queer, gender non-conforming, non-binary, and transgender individuals, although an increasing number of straight Americans are also using them.

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Oil CEOs See Massive Bonuses amid Record Profits

The pay packages for the chief executives of British oil giants BP and Shell skyrocketed in 2022 after the oil titans posted record profits off the back of high gas prices last year, Reuters reported Friday.

The salary of BP CEO Bernard Looney climbed to roughly £1.3 million, while performance-related bonuses and stock awards climbed to £10.03 million, to a total of £11.33 million in compensation, more than two and a half times the £4.46 million he earned in 2021, the company announced Friday. BP —which lagged behind its American competitors in 2022 despite a record profit of roughly $28 billion — has drawn criticism from activists for cutting its green investments and reinvesting in gas and oil, Reuters reported.

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Biden Admin Shot Down Purchase Attempts for Failed Bank, Former Trump Official Says

A former economic adviser to former President Donald Trump said Monday that the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) prevented several efforts to purchase Silicon Valley Bank. Federal regulators shut down Silicon Valley Bank Friday after its stock price collapsed and customers began a bank run following the financial institution’s disclosure of a $1.8 billion loss on asset sales due to high interest rates, CNBC reported. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) also shut down Signature Bank Sunday, citing “systemic risk,” CNBC reported separately.

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