Month: September 2023

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine Officially Reconvenes Redistricting Commission

Hannah Poling

Ohio Governor Mike DeWine officially called for the Ohio Redistricting Commission to reconvene to begin the process of drawing new state legislative maps on September 13th, 2023.

The official notice states that, after DeWine reconvenes the commission, “the appointments of any appointed members of the commission will be entered into the record, the administration of the Oath of Office will occur, the roll will be called, the co-chairpersons will be formally entered into the record and the meeting will be turned over to the co-chairpersons.”

Read the full story

Report: Fani Willis Has Transcript Exonerating Former Trump Lawyer Ray Smith, Former Georgia GOP Chair David Shafer

Tom Pappert
Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis

Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis is reportedly in possession of a meeting transcript that exonerates two defendants named in her August 14 indictment against former President Donald Trump, his former lawyers, and Georgians involved in his effort to contest the 2020 presidential election.

A transcript of a December 14, 2020 meeting of those involved in the effort to create alternative Trump delegates in Georgia for the 2020 election, reviewed by The Federalist, reveals that Shafer and former Trump attorney Ray Smith specifically planned to act as “Republican nominees for Presidential Elector,” and not “duly elected and qualified” electors, in what seems to be a direct contradiction to Willis’s indictment.

Read the full story

Wisconsin Universities Keep DEI Positions Despite GOP Gutting Budget by $32 Million

Admin

University of Wisconsin campus leaders have not cut diversity, equity and inclusion positions from their campuses despite losing $32 million in funding from the GOP-led state legislature earlier this summer in an effort to see such programs axed.

However, system leaders are in the process of requesting a partial reimbursement to the tune of $15 million from the Wisconsin State Assembly’s Joint Finance Committee to fund non-DEI, workforce development-related positions, which state lawmakers left open as an option to recoup some of the cuts.

Read the full story

Arizona GOP Says There Will Be No Change in Administration of 2024 GOP Presidential Primary Election

Michael Patrick Leahy

Arizona Republican Party Chairman Jeff DeWit promised that the Arizona GOP Executive Committee will hold a vote on a resolution to withdraw the Arizona GOP from a government-run 2024 Presidential Preference Election.

The Presidential Preference Election (PPE) is an election in which voters can choose who they would like to be their presidential candidate in the upcoming General Election. Party winners of the Arizona PPE are officially determined at the party’s national convention.

Read the full story

Commentary: Abolishing Women, One Right at a Time

Admin

Does an 84 year-old Reagan appointee to the United States District Court for the District of Wyoming really believe that it is acceptable, morally or legally, for a man who claims he identifies as a woman to join a college sorority and intrude on all that entails?

Last year at the University of Wyoming, officers and graduating seniors bullied younger members of a national college sorority, Kappa Kappa Gamma, into not objecting to the admission into their sorority and their sorority house of a person who not only was not a woman, but who also did not meet the academic standards of the sorority.

Read the full story

NRA, Hunters and U.S. Forest Service Beat Environmental Groups in Legal Battle over Lead Ammo

Just the News

A federal court ruled in favor of the National Rifle Association, hunters and the U.S. Forest Service over environmental groups who were pushing to ban lead ammunition in a national forest.

The 9th Circuit Court of Appeals on Friday unanimously rejected an attempt from the Sierra Club, the Grand Canyon Wildlands Council and the Arizona-based Center for Biological Diversity to order the Forest Service to ban lead ammunition in the Kaibab National Forest, which is a popular hunting destination near the Grand Canyon.

Read the full story

Little Support Among Voters for Transgender Medical Procedures on Children

The Center Square

Few voters think children should undergo transgender interventions even with parental permission.

That’s according to The Center Square Voters’ Voice Poll of 2,500 registered voters across the U.S., conducted by Noble Predictive Insights. The poll found that 58% of those surveyed are against medical interventions such as gender-changing surgery or puberty blockers for children younger than 18 years old.

Read the full story

Family Units Trying to Enter U.S. Illegally Spiking Due to Biden Rule, Experts Say

Just the News

The record number of “family units” attempting to cross into the U.S. at the border hit a record high at 91,000 in August, which immigration policy experts say was entirely predictable due to a Biden administration rule change.

August is now the highest month this year for overall U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) migrant encounters, based on a report of preliminary agency data.

Read the full story

Sources: State Rep. Gloria Johnson Could Announce U.S. Senate Run Tuesday

Peter D'Abrosca

State Rep. Gloria Johnson (D-Knoxville) will make stops in three major cities across the state Tuesday, and could announce her anticipated long shot U.S. Senate bid against Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R-TN), according to sources who spoke with The Tennessee Star. 

Johnson is expected to make announcements at 9 a.m. ET in Knoxville, noon CT in Nashville and 6:30 p.m. CT in Memphis.

Read the full story

Ramaswamy Blasts DeSantis ‘Monster PAC’ Following Report of Fake News Dirty Politics

M.D. Kittle

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is blasting Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and “Monster PAC” following a report exposing the political action committee’s campaign in “spreading dirt” and “misstatements” about the poll-rising Ramaswamy.

“It came out yesterday that the DeSantis $100m+ Monster PAC is taking credit with their donors for ‘spreading dirt’ and manufacturing fake attacks on me,” the Ohio biotech entrepreneur said in a statement.

Read the full story

DeSantis’ Super PAC Head Honcho Privately Admits He’s Spreading Dirt on Ramaswamy

Admin

Politico The top strategist for Ron DeSantis’ super PAC privately told donors that Vivek Ramaswamy posed a threat to the Florida governor — and bragged that the super PAC was behind an avalanche of opposition research targeting the rival candidate. “Everything you read about him is from us,” Jeff Roe, the leader of the DeSantis-aligned Never Back Down told the gathering of donors. “Every misstatement, every 360 he’s conducting or 180 that he is going through in life, is from our scrutiny and pressure. And so, he’s not going to go through that very well, and that will get worse for him.” Roe was speaking just hours before the first GOP primary debate, in remarks captured in an audio recording obtained by POLITICO. During his question-and-answer session, he conceded that if Ramaswamy had “a big night” at the debate, it could prove problematic for DeSantis. “That’s not great for us, short term,” he added. READ THE FULL STORY    

Read the full story

States with Weaker Marijuana Laws See More Impaired Driving, Report Finds

The Center Square

A new report found that states with less restrictive marijuana policies have higher incidents of residents driving while high.

The Drug Free America Foundation released a new report showing that states that have legalized or weakened restrictions around high-THC marijuana, either for medical or recreational use, saw 32% more marijuana-impaired driving than states that have not adopted the same policies.

Read the full story

Trump Expands Primary Lead as Former President Becomes Top Choice for Nearly 60 Percent of GOP Voters: Poll

Just the News
Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump is expanding his lead in Republican presidential primary polls as nearly 60 percent of GOP voters say they would vote for the former president even after his four criminal indictments, according to a new poll.

Trump is now at least 46 points ahead of all other GOP primary candidates, according to a Wall Street Journal poll released Saturday. While 59 percent of GOP voters say they would support Trump, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis comes in second with 13 percent. 

Read the full story

NIH-Funded Research Collaborative Redacts Emails on Why It Disavowed ‘Gold Standard’ Mask Study

Just the News

As public and private institutions resume or consider mask mandates in the wake of a small uptick in COVID-19 hospitalizations and new viral variants, an international research collaborative funded by the National Institutes of Health is facing new scrutiny for how it came to publicly downplay its 17 years of research finding that masks make “little to no difference.”

U.K-based nonprofit Cochrane, often described as the “gold standard” of evidence-based medicine, heavily redacted its internal discussions on how to respond to questions about alleged conflicts of interest that may have shaped its March statement deeming the systematic review’s results “inconclusive” without changing its content.

Read the full story

Upcoming Supreme Court Elections in Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Michigan Could Tip Majorities on the Bench Just in Time for the 2024 Elections

Admin

Three swing states will hold elections to their supreme courts over the next 18 months, potentially altering court compositions amid key cultural and political flashpoints such as abortion, guns and redistricting.

Between 2023 and 2024, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan will hold elections for several seats on their supreme courts, which have the final word on matters of state law regarding abortion and gerrymandering, among others. These seats are likely to be highly contested as partisan groups seek to bring litigation to change the law on these issues, political strategists and academics told the DCNF.

Read the full story

Non-Plastic Straws the Latest Example of Climate Activism’s Unintended and Deadly Consequences

Just the News

Last week, a widely read study was published revealing that the “plant-based” drinking straws pushed onto diners by eco-activists may actually be more harmful to both the environment and public health than their plastic counterparts.

According to research published in the journal Food Additives & Contaminants, the “plant-based straws” in question contain “per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS),” which the scientists say are “not necessarily biodegradable and that the use of such straws potentially contributes to human and environmental exposure of PFAS.”

Read the full story

Most Arizona Voters Now Registered Independent, Unable to Vote in Presidential Preference Election

Tom Pappert

More Arizona voters have continued to change their party affiliation to independent, making it the state’s largest voting bloc. This means more than 1.4 million voters will be unable to cast a ballot in the state’s 2024 presidential primary contests.

The Arizona Secretary of State released new data this month dating from July 2023, revealing that 1,450,697 Arizonans, or 34.55 percent of the state’s voters, are now registered independent.

Read the full story

Commentary: What Unions Don’t Want You to Know This Labor Day

Admin
A male doing electrical work with a ball cap and safety glasses on

This Labor Day, the Biden administration and Big Labor will no doubt tout the alleged successes of President Joe Biden’s “whole of government” push to increase unionization in the workplace and unions’ modest successes in breaking into a few big corporations. But those stories will also leave a lot out. They’ll leave out the side of the story that unions don’t want workers to know.

That side of the story includes the fact that unionization reached an all-time low of 10.1 percent in 2022 (and only 6.0 percent among private sector workers) as worker satisfaction reached an all-time high of 62.3 percent (according to The Conference Board’s measure, which began in 1987). It also includes the fact that while non-union wages increased by 24 percent over the past five years, union wages rose by less than 17 percent.

Read the full story

Elections Expert Gina Swoboda Discusses Maricopa County Officials’ Missteps in the 2022 Election

Rachel Alexander

Gina Swoboda, executive director of Phoenix-based Voter Reference Foundation (VRF) discussed election problems and what to do about them recently on the Jenny Beth Show. Jenny Beth Martin was an early leader in the Tea Party movement as co-founder of Tea Party Patriots. In this third part of a three-part series from the interview, Swoboda delved deeper into the problems that occurred during the 2022 election, many which were caused or exacerbated by election officials, and the hurdles to fixing them.

She observed that switching from precinct voting to vote centers did not increase turnout as election officials claimed it would, which they did in order to convince voters the switch would be beneficial. Republican legislators ran bills that would have made precinct voting easier, she said, like holding voting on a school holiday so the schools could be used as voting locations, but the bills were unsuccessful. 

Read the full story

DeSantis’ Never Back Down PAC Suspends Door-Knocking in Four States to Focus on Early Primary States

Just the News

The pro-DeSantis Never Back Down super PAC is reportedly suspending its voter canvassing in four states to focus resources in early-voting states.

The PAC supporting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign is pausing its door-knocking activities in Nevada, California, Texas and North Carolina, according to The Epoch Times on Saturday.

Read the full story

Most EPA Employees Really Don’t Want to Show Back Up to the Office, Survey Finds

Admin

More than 80% of surveyed Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) employees said that they would experience “personal hardships” if the agency changes its remote work policies to align more with the White House’s push to get government employees back into their offices, E&E News reported.

The survey results indicate that there is a significant disconnect between rank-and-file EPA employees and senior Biden administration officials over the White House’s return-to-office push for federal employees who have enjoyed expanded remote work policies since the pandemic. About 66% of the survey’s respondents said that they would consider leaving the agency if remote work flexibility diminished, and more than 65% of polled EPA employees said that reductions to remote work would negatively impact “diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility,” according to a summary of the survey’s results.

Read the full story

Federal Judge Blocks Law Requiring Age Verification for Social Media

Admin

A federal judge blocked an Arkansas law Thursday that requires age verification for social media users.

Arkansas’ Social Media Safety Act, which restricts minors from creating social media accounts without parental consent, was scheduled to take effect Friday. U.S. District Court Judge for the Western District of Arkansas Timothy Brooks, an Obama appointee, sided with NetChoice, a group that includes companies like Google and TikTok, and temporarily blocked the law from being enforced.

Read the full story

Meta’s Epidemic of Chinese ‘Spamouflage’ Propaganda

Admin

Meta recently took “what appears to be the largest known cross-platform covert influence operation in the world,” off its platforms, according to the company’s quarterly Adversarial Threat Report released this week.’

The social media accounts that made up the covert influence operation — collectively dubbed “Spamouflage” — were active all over the world, including in America, major U.S. allies, Taiwan, and the Chinese diaspora.

Read the full story

Commentary: AI Is Coming for Art’s Soul

Admin

While AI-based technology has recently been used to summon deepfakes and create a disturbing outline for running a death camp, the ever-pervasive digital juggernaut has also been used to write books under the byline of well-known authors.

The Guardian recently reported five books appeared for sale on Amazon that were apparently written by author Jane Friedman. Only, they weren’t written by Friedman at all: They were written by AI. When Friedman submitted a claim to Amazon, Amazon said they would not remove the books because she had not trademarked her name.

Read the full story

Teachers Union Tells Teachers to Destroy Evidence of Student Gender Identity Surveys: Report

Admin

A Colorado affiliate of the nation’s largest teachers union, the National Education Association, told its teachers to destroy any evidence of having given students a gender identity survey, according to a recent report.

CBS Colorado notes that while the JeffCo Public Schools district says it is “unclear” whether surveys about “preferred pronouns” are in violation of state law, it advised teachers against using them as lawsuits are ongoing.

Read the full story

Feds Flagged Nearly 75,000 Illegal Migrants as Potential National Security Risks

Admin

Customs and Border Protection (CBP) authorities flagged 74,904 illegal migrants nationwide for potentially posing risks to national security between October 2022 and August, according to CBP data obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Certain illegal migrants are deemed to be “special interest aliens” because they may have travel patterns that “possibly have a nexus to terrorism” or may come from countries with such ties, according to a 2019 Department of Homeland Security (DHS) fact sheet. Border Patrol agents encountered 25,627 “special interest” illegal migrants in fiscal year 2022, compared to 3,675 encounters in fiscal year 2021, according to internal agency data previously obtained by the DCNF; however, this data doesn’t account for all CBP encounters of special interest aliens.

Read the full story

Poll Shows GOP Establishment’s Montana Senate Pick Getting Clobbered in Primary Matchup

Admin

A poll released Thursday indicates the Senate GOP campaign arm’s pick to unseat Montana’s incumbent Democratic senator in 2024 is not faring well in a potential primary.

Former Navy SEAL Tim Sheehy, who was recruited by the National Republican Senatorial Committee (NRSC), is losing by double digits to Republican Rep. Matt Rosendale, who’s considering a bid, according to a J.L. Partners survey. Sheehy garnered only 21% support compared to Rosendale’s 52%, with 28% of GOP primary voters remaining undecided as to which Republican should take on Democratic Sen. Jon Tester.

Read the full story

More than 3,500 Minors Underwent Transgender Surgeries in Five Years, Study Says

Admin

Transgender advocates repeatedly claim that minors only take “puberty-blocking” drugs or cross-sex hormones, but never undergo surgeries in an attempt to force their male or female bodies to resemble the opposite sex, yet a new study estimates that more than 3,000 minors underwent transgender surgeries in a five-year period, and more than 400 of them had their genitals removed.

The Journal of the American Medical Association published a study Wednesday estimating that 48,019 Americans underwent “gender-affirming surgeries” from 2016 to 2020, and 3,678 of them underwent surgery between ages 12 and 18.

Read the full story

Scottsdale Short-Term Rental Restriction Proposals Gain Powerful Ally

The Center Square

Scottsdale, Arizona, officials have enlisted one of the state’s most powerful advocacy organizations in proposing numerous changes to crack down on short term rental properties.

Scottsdale, which is popular for tourism, is pushing for three changes at the state level backed by the League of Arizona Cities and Towns 2024 Legislative Agenda. The organization, headed by Yuma Mayor Douglas Nicholls, represents the state’s municipalities in lobbying for changes at the state level.

Read the full story

Commentary: Recession May Be Coming After 514,000 More Americans Struggle to Find Employment

Admin

The national unemployment rate reported by the Bureau of Labor Statistics jumped from 3.5 percent to 3.8 percent in August as an additional 514,000 Americans said they could not find work in the Bureau’s household survey. Now 6.3 million Americans are said to be unemployed, the highest in more than a year.

But it did not come with a commensurate drop in the number of Americans saying they were working, which also increased by 222,000 to 161.48 million.

Read the full story

Court: Wayne County Violated Rights in Vehicle Seizure ‘Scheme’

The Center Square

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Wayne County violated the rights of Detroiters by not offering prompt court hearings within two weeks of their vehicles being seized.

The Center Square reported the lawsuit in 2020 when The Institute for Justice filed a class action suit challenging the program on behalf of Detroiters whose vehicles were seized without receiving a hearing.

Read the full story

Ivy League Business Schools to Offer ESG Majors and Courses in Fall, Despite Controversy

Admin

Despite the controversiality of the curriculum, business schools are still following the Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiative.

The Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance defines ESG as an effort that “grew out of investment philosophies clustered around sustainability and, thereafter, socially responsible investing,” though “there is no single list of ESG goals or examples, and ESG concepts often overlap.”

Read the full story

Alaska State Board of Education Votes to Support Banning Boys from Girls’ High School Sports Teams

Admin

The Alaska State Board of Education voted on Thursday to support a regulation banning boys from competing on girls’ high school athletic teams, according to The Associated Press.

The board delayed its initial vote on the issue in July after hearing hours of testimony and receiving 1,400 pages of written comments, according to the AP. The board voted 7-1 to support the measure in a special session, and the proposal now heads to Republican Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor for approval.

Read the full story