Day: December 22, 2023

Supreme Court Hands Jack Smith a Major Defeat in Trump 2020 Election Case

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The Supreme Court declined special counsel Jack Smith’s request Friday for it to quickly consider a key question in former President Donald Trump’s election interference case without letting the lower court weigh in first.

Smith asked the justices last week to hear former President Donald Trump’s bid to have his election interference case dismissed based on presidential immunity without allowing the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals to first consider the issue. In an unsigned order Friday, the justices shot down his request.

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Tennessee Releases Letter Grades for Every School in the State for First Time Since Bill Passed in 2016

Tom Pappert
Students Classwork

The Tennessee Department of Education (TDOE) released letter grades for every school in the state for the first time on Thursday, fulfilling the department’s obligations under a bill passed in 2016.

Letter grades are available for every school covering the last school year, the TDOE confirmed on Thursday. Commissioner of Education Lizzette Reynolds said the letter grades “will provide Tennessee families with a clear rating system” to understand how a given school performs over years. She urged parents and other community members to “play a role in supporting the success of our students” regardless of a school’s letter grade.

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Illegal Migrant Encounters at the Southern Border Surpass 547,000 in Less than Three Months

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Illegal Immigrants

by Jennie Taer   Border Patrol encounters of migrants crossing the southern border illegally surpassed 547,000 less than three months into fiscal year 2024, according to preliminary internal data obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation. The number of encounters, which reached 547,593 on Thursday morning, is higher than the number of encounters recorded in the first three months of any fiscal year before President Joe Biden took office, according to federal data going back to 1999. Between October and December 2022, Border Patrol recorded 634,832 encounters of illegal migrants, according to federal data. Border Patrol recorded 153,613 encounters during the first three months of fiscal year 2019, and 101,779 encounters during that same time period in fiscal year 2020, according to federal data. It recorded 209,342 encounters between October and December in fiscal year 2021 and 496,730 encounters those same months in fiscal year 2022. As of early Thursday, Border Patrol had more than 24,000 illegal migrants in custody nationwide, according to the data, which showed that three sectors of the southern border, Del Rio, Rio Grande Valley and Tucson, exceeded holding capacity. On Wednesday, Border Patrol had released 8,388 illegal migrants into the country. The Del Rio sector of Texas, which…

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Harvard President Requests Even More Corrections to Her Academic Work as Plagiarism Accusations Mount

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Claudine Gay

Harvard President Claudine Gay will request three new corrections to her Ph.D. dissertation following multiple plagiarism allegations, according to The Harvard Crimson.

Gay submitted two corrections to academic articles Friday involving “quotation marks and citations” but was the subject of fresh plagiarism allegations on Tuesday. Now, Gay is submitting additional corrections following a review undertaken by the Harvard Corporation, the university’s highest governing board; however, the Corporation said Gay’s actions did not constitute serious wrongdoing, according to the Crimson.

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Facebook Sees Rise in Antisemitic Posts, Censorship of Pro-Israel Content: Reports

Tom Pappert

Facebook has reportedly experienced nearly a 200 percent increase in antisemitic posts since the October 7 terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel, and a U.S. Senator recently wrote to the social media platform’s parent company, Meta, about reports it is censoring pro-Israel content.

Antisemitism monitoring technology company Cyberwell recently warned of a dramatic increase in antisemitic posts and posts that call for violence against Jewish people across all social media websites, claiming social media companies were unprepared to confront “national security issues” posed by the Hamas attacks.

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Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Applicant Biography Series: Judge Camille R. McMullen

Peter D'Abrosca
Camille McMullen

As Tennessee Supreme Court Justice Roger A. Page plans to retire at the end of August, six judges from around the state are vying to replace him. The Tennessee Star plans to profile each of the applicants before they are interviewed for the position in January.

Judge Camille R. McMullen is the Presiding Judge of the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals, a position to which she was elected in June, and is perhaps most high-profile candidate to fill the State Supreme Court role. 

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Ketanji Brown Jackson Hit with Ethics Complaint over Income Disclosures

Just the News
KBJ SCOTUS

Supreme Court Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson faces an ethics complaint from a conservative non-profit alleging that she failed to disclose income from her husband’s business for more than a decade.

The Center for Renewing America filed the complaint on Monday with the Judicial Conference Secretary alleging that she “willfully failed to disclose required information regarding her husband’s medical malpractice consulting income for over a decade.”

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YoungkinWatch: Governor Ties Norfolk Sea Wall Funding to Completion of Delayed Casino in New Budget

Tom Pappert
Youngkin Casino

The budget Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) proposed on Wednesday includes nearly $95 million in funding for the Norfolk Coastal Storm Risk Management Project, also known as the Norfolk Sea Wall, but tied $21 million of the funding to the completion of a long-delayed casino.

Youngkin’s budget includes $73.8 million for the project, a series of improvements that includes levees, storm surge barriers, pump stations, and other improvements to manage the flow of water during storms. However, the budget calls for an additional $21 million in funding that is “contingent upon the City applying revenues generated by a casino gaming establishment.”

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Satanic Temple Unveils New Display at Michigan State Capitol

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The Satanic Temple (TST) unveiled a new display at the Michigan State Capitol Monday, just days after its statue in Iowa was torn down, according to a post on X.

TST’s display of Baphomet in the Iowa State Capitol building was destroyed after a Christian veteran beheaded the statue, claiming that he would not stand by as Christians continue to “submissively accept the legitimization of Satan.” TST unveiled a new display that can be found outside Michigan’s capitol building on the lawn, according to a post on X.

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Georgia Unemployment Rate Holds at 3.4 Percent for Third Month as Expert Predicts ‘Soft Landing’ for State Economy

Tom Pappert
Office Work

The Georgia Department of Labor revealed on Thursday that the state’s unemployment numbers remained constant at 3.4 percent for the third consecutive month in November, even as small business owners across the country report a pessimistic outlook for the economy.

A total of 14,300 jobs were added to Georgia over November, bringing the total number of jobs generated in 2023 to 103,700. Nearly 5 million jobs exist in Georgia, which the agency reported continues to be the state’s highest recorded.

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Arizona Poll Finds Abe Hamadeh Has 23-Point Lead in House Race, Buoyed by Endorsements from Trump, Lake

Tom Pappert
Abe Hamadeh

Abe Hamadeh holds a commanding, 23-point lead in the Republican primary race for the election for the House seat being vacated by Representative Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) according to an internal poll published on Wednesday. The pollsters suggest Hamadeh’s early endorsements from former President Donald Trump and U.S. Senate candidate Kari Lake may prove instrumental in securing the support of Arizona Republicans.

The National Public Affairs poll, published by German-owned Politico, found Hamadeh, who last ran to become Arizona Attorney General, has the support of 37 percent of Republicans in the district. Former Senate candidate Blake Masters was the only other candidate to reach double digits, polling in second with 14 percent.

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Election Fraud Denying Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre Hit with Another Bar Complaint over ‘Super Extreme’ DUI

Rachel Alexander
Brian McIntyre

Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, a Republican, was arrested for a Super Extreme DUI last January and pleaded guilty to Extreme DUI but has received no discipline from the State Bar of Arizona. He blew a .20 percent when arrested, more than two times the legal limit of .08 percent BAC. On Thursday, a concerned Arizona resident filed a bar complaint against him, just three days after State Representative Alexander Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) and Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller filed an election-related bar complaint against him.

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Federal Judge Temporarily Blocks California Gun Law That Bans Concealed Carry in Most Public Places

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A federal judge on Wednesday temporarily blocked California from enacting a law barring permit holders from carrying firearms in numerous public locations.

United States District Judge Cormac Carney of the Central District of California, appointed by former President George W. Bush, issued a temporary restraining order, halting the law from taking effect on Jan. 1, The Associated Press reported. “The right to self-defense and to defend one’s family is fundamental and inherent to our very humanity irrespective of any formal codification,” Carney wrote in his ruling.

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Commentary: ‘Tis the Season for Streaming Christmas Movies

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Love in the Wild

“It’s Christmas Eve and we are going to go celebrate being young and being alive,” Miles (Jack Black) declares to Iris (Kate Winslet) in the delightful Christmas romantic comedy The Holiday (2006), which concerns two “unlucky in love” women, Iris and Amanda (Cameron Diaz). The two decide to nurse their broken hearts and bruised egos by respectively swapping their Cotswold cottage and LA mansion for the holidays. As the fates would have it, Kate and Amanda each find love and a new outlook on life during their Christmas swap. I love this sugar plum saga, which I have previously written about in these pages, because it reminds us that friendship, love, and new adventures are always available. We only need to open our eyes to the world around us and celebrate our blessings. 

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Biden Looks to Tariffs to Bolster Struggling Electric Vehicle Market

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Tesla Charging

The Biden administration is considering increasing tariffs on some Chinese products related to his green agenda, like electric vehicles (EV), in an effort to boost poor market demand and protect domestic industries, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Officials are considering setting higher rates on the already existing tariffs originally placed under the Trump administration, covering around $300 billion in Chinese goods, with Chinese EVs already having a 25% import tax, according to the WSJ. New tariffs could help domestic EV manufacturing, which has struggled with stagnant market demand, only rising from 3% in January to 4% in September of total vehicles sold in the U.S., while the share of EVs produced out of all vehicles has risen from 3% to 6% in that same time frame.

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Public Health Alerts Issued About Communicable Disease Spread Tied to Migrant Crisis

The Center Square
Entry Line

Federal, state and city health departments have issued public health alerts about increases of communicable diseases as illegal border crossers arrive in their communities.

Earlier this year, the New York City Health Commissioner instructed New York health-care providers to undergo several precautions and tests in light of “an alarming trend” of diseases spreading among illegal foreign nationals in New York City who arrived from the southern border. Dr. Ashwin Vasan expressed alarm about those arriving who hadn’t been vaccinated for polio or chickenpox and were coming from countries with high rates of infectious tuberculosis.

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