Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) on Wednesday proposed a two-year budget that will see Virginia’s income tax rate decrease, but paired the cut with a sales tax increase that will see some parts of the commonwealth pay nearly 8 percent sales tax.
Youngkin presented his “Unleashing Opportunity Budget” before the Virginia House of Delegates by noting migration trends within the United States that show Americans moving to states with lower taxes and more jobs.
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President Joe Biden’s administration has set another record.
A total of 14,509 illegal aliens were encountered at the southern border Monday by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, the Washington Examiner reported, a record for total daily encounters.
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The Arizona State Senate and Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Gilbert) took legal action against Governor Katie Hobbs (D) on Tuesday. The governor faces legal action for her attempt to bypass the normal Senate confirmation process for the directors of Arizona’s state agencies, which she started after one of her nominees was rejected for alleged plagiarism.
A summary of the Senate lawsuit was posted to X, formerly Twitter, by State Senator Wendy Rogers (R-Flagstaff). Rogers noted that Arizona law requires “agencies be led by Senate-confirmed directors,” and wrote that she is “proud” the Arizona Senate GOP “is committed to upholding the law to protect Arizonans’ liberty.”
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At least two families were denied reimbursement by their travel insurance company when their trips to Israel were canceled due to the attacks by Hamas. AIG Travel Guard Insurance representatives told the would-be travelers that its policy didn’t cover war, or acts of war, only “acts of terror.” Arizona’s Family On Your Side (AFOYS) interviewed the families and aired coverage of a video showing that Secretary of State Anthony Blinken referred to the violence as a terrorist attack, specifically distinguishing it from war. However, AIG will not backtrack on what it told the families, even after AFOYS contacted the company.
Sheri Hathaway, who was denied reimbursement along with her husband and children, told The Arizona Sun Times that she would never use AIG again. They spent nearly $12,000, excluding airfare. “Hamas is a terrorist organization,” she said. “This happened as a terrorist attack on Israel by Hamas and clearly states in their policy that they do cover terrorist incidents, which this clearly was.”
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This year, the Christmas spirit knocked at my door two weeks before Thanksgiving, smiled coyly, and settled in like some stray feline who’s struck gold with a warm hearth and a bowl of Friskies Seafood Sensations. Never before had this spirit arrived so early and so unexpectedly.
It started with a review copy of Faith Moore’s Christmas Karol, a novel that copycats the plot of the Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. Here we meet Karol Charles, an attorney obsessed with success and money to the detriment of her husband, her two young children, her sister, and her employees. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, Karol is visited on Christmas Eve first by her deceased partner and then by three spirits of the season. Most of the action takes place in a hospital, a stroke of inspiration on Moore’s part as hospitals serve both the dying and the recovering. When we meet her, Karol’s soul is most decidedly on the critical list.
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The Colorado Republican Party said it would start using a caucus system rather than participating in a primary election if the state supreme court’s decision banning former President Donald Trump from the primary ballot remains in place.
After GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy said Tuesday evening on X, formerly Twitter, that he would withdraw from Colorado’s primary ballot if Trump is not allowed on, the state Republican Party responded: “You won’t have to because we will withdraw from the Primary as a Party and convert to a pure caucus system if this is allowed to stand.”
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Young Republican voters overwhelmingly want Donald Trump to be the GOP nominee in 2024, and they only disagree on whether he should choose Tucker Carlson or Vivek Ramaswamy as his running mate, according to a straw poll of participants who attended Turning Point Action’s annual AmericaFest.
Obtained exclusively by RealClearPolitics, the results provide a snapshot of the youth vote just weeks before the Iowa caucuses. The online poll was conducted by Turning Point Action Dec. 17-18 and surveyed 1,113 attendees at the TPUSA conference in Phoenix, Ariz.
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Breitbart News Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak joined the newsmaker line on Wednesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy to share insights into the troubling state of his alma mater, Harvard University.
The veteran journalist and Harvard Law School graduate highlighted the rise of antisemitism on campus and traced the university’s decline, noting that it was former President Drew Faust who emphasized a thin record of slavery over Harvard’s significant contributions to the abolitionist cause and civil rights movement.
The 387-year-old institution’s rapid shift to prioritize social justice and the erosion of free speech, Pollak suggested, has indelibly marred Harvard’s reputation as a symbol of excellence.
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Arizona State Representative Alexander Kolodin (R-Scottsdale) and Pima County Supervisor Ally Miller filed an election-related bar complaint on Monday against Cochise County Attorney Brian McIntyre, alleging that he violated attorney client privilege when informing opposing attorneys of the county’s intention to hand-count some of its 2022 election ballots.
In a post on X, formerly Twitter, Kolodin said McIntyre committed “apparent violations” of attorney client privilege, calling it “his most sacred duty.” Kolodin added, “It is time for equal justice under the law.”
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Academics, doctors, lawyers and others are losing their jobs – and more could find themselves struggling to get hired – due to antisemitic activism.
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The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday announced roughly $1 billion in penalty relief to those owing back taxes from 2020 and 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The U.S. natural gas industry is pushing back against the Biden administration’s regulations targeting gas-powered residential furnaces.
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Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy gave details about a an “aggressive prosecution” strategy to Memphis media on Tuesday, promising to target violent offenses with a new strategy beginning in 2024.
Mulroy said he will modify his office’s practices regarding bail, court deadlines, and investigations for those accused of committing a number of violent and property crimes beginning on January 1, according to News Channel 3.
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Mike Benz, the director of a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, is sounding the alarm on the European Union’s investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, for what it claims are breakages of the multinational conglomerate’s hate speech laws.
Benz, an attorney and the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), says that the EU’s plan is to force X into implementing a mandatory “disinformation compliance” service like NewsGuard. Such products have been termed “middleware.”
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Nashville Electric Service (NES) released a statement on Monday updating the public about its work in restoring power for approximately 48,000 customers affected by severe storms.
Severe thunderstorms and tornadoes ripped through Middle Tennessee on December 9, causing six fatalities – three in Montgomery County and three in Davidson County – and dozens of injuries. The storms produced significant damage to nearly 1,900 homes and destroyed over 500 homes, according to initial reports.
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The number of transgender services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics exploded over the past few years as the transgender medical industry became increasingly lucrative, according to data published by the organization’s regional branches.
Planned Parenthood first began providing hormone treatments for transgender patients in 2005, and since then 41 out of 49 regional branches have provided transgender services as of 2022. However, in just the last three years, Planned Parenthood has become dramatically more involved in the gender hormone industry.
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A bill introduced in the Tennessee General Assembly in November would prevent teachers from allow teachers only to hang the Tennessee and United States flags in their classrooms.
HB 1605 “prohibits [Local Education Associations] and public charter schools from displaying in public schools flags other than the official United States flag and the official Tennessee state flag,” according to the summary of the bill’s text.
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A 206-page audit of public and private prisons in Tennessee was released last week, revealing both state and private facilities in the state remain understaffed and face high employee attrition rates while struggling to offer sufficient beds and services for inmates.
The audit, conducted by the Tennessee Comptroller’s Office, found that the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC) “has taken action to address critical staffing shortages,” but warned both TDOC and CoreCivic, which manages private prisons in Tennessee, “are facing an ongoing and deeply rooted challenge of attrition within their ranks.”
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Another mainstream pollster shows that Joe Biden’s job approval rating has plunged yet again, as voters increasingly turn against him due to numerous crises on his watch.
As reported by Fox News, the Monmouth University poll saw a mere 34% of respondents say that they approve of his performance as president thus far, with a staggering 61% disapproving. The issues on which Biden scored the lowest were inflation, with just 28% approving of his handling of it, and immigration, with 26%.
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The Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) issued a construction permit to Kairos Power for its Hermes low-power demonstration reactor to be built at the Heritage Center Industrial Park site in Oak Ridge.
Kairos Power, according to its website, is a “nuclear technology, engineering and manufacturing company whose mission is to enable the world’s transition to clean energy with the ultimate goal of dramatically improving people’s quality of life while protecting the environment.”
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The immigration court backlog increased by a whopping one million cases in a single year as the surge at the southern border continues, according to a new report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
The number of pending cases in U.S. immigration courts reached three million in November, marking a new record, TRAC, which analyzes data provided by the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), reported Monday. The backlog is expected to only worsen with the continued record flow of illegal immigration at the southern border.
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Georgia Superior Court Judge Thomas Wilson reportedly expressed skepticism at an attempt to remove Lt. Governor Burt Jones (R) from office on Monday. A group of Democratic voters in Georgia filed the lawsuit claiming Jones’ role as one of the alternate electors who sought to preserve former President Donald Trump’s legal challenge to the 2020 election in Georgia should make him ineligible to hold office.
Wilson “appeared skeptical of the plaintiffs’ longshot arguments,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reported that plaintiffs argued Jones “is an insurrectionist against the Constitution of the United States of America” because he participated in the 2020 election contest, and thus should be prohibited from holding office due to a post-Civil War law that was also cited in a bid to prevent Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene from seeking reelection in 2022.
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A Florida man pleaded guilty Monday to threatening to kill a Supreme Court justice, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Neal Brij Sidhwaney, 43, placed a call in July to the Supreme Court, leaving an “expletive-laden, threatening voicemail message” where he “repeatedly threatened to kill a specific Supreme Court Justice,” according to the DOJ. Sidhwaney revealed the justice he had threatened was Chief Justice John Roberts during a court-ordered psychological evaluation, Politico reported.
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Kari Lake secured the endorsement of the Oil and Gas Workers Association (OGWA) for her U.S. Senate bid on Tuesday, with the group highlighting her commitment to “American energy dominance” in a statement.
Lake revealed the endorsement in a post on X, formerly Twitter, writing that she was “honored” to receive the endorsement from the nonprofit trade association operated by oil and gas workers.
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President Joe Biden is not the Democrats’ biggest problem; they are. The greatest misperception in the 2024 presidential race is that Biden is causing Democrats’ poor performance. On the contrary, Biden is an effect. The real cause is that Democrats are wildly out of touch with America.
Biden’s bad polling numbers are well known. According to Real Clear Politics’ Dec. 18 average of national polling, Biden’s job approval rating is 40.8–56.0 percent; he trails former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head rematch 43.7 to 47.2 percent, and his favorability rating is 39.4–56.0 percent.
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When the city of East Lansing excluded someone from a farmer’s market because of his religious beliefs, they violated his right to free speech and freedom of religion.
The exclusion of Country Mill Farms owner Stephen Tennes from the farmers market because he refused to play host to same-sex wedding ceremonies at his farm, detailed in a 2017 lawsuit, will cost East Lansing $825,000 in damages and attorney fees.
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A Minnesota woman who was fired for refusing to take the COVID-19 vaccine and then denied unemployment benefits has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear her case, arguing that her First Amendment rights were violated.
“Religious belief is intimate and differs substantially among Americans. The promise of religious liberty in the First Amendment is that such differences may persist without punishment from the state. That promise is being broken in Minnesota,” James Dickey, senior counsel for the Upper Midwest Law Center, said in a petition filed with the court Monday.
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A pair of Republican lawmakers are promising to hold hearings into why so many state and University of Wisconsin workers aren’t in their offices.
A pair of audits from the Legislative Audit Bureau looked at telework and office space trends.
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Higher rents and a reduction in pandemic assistance caused a spike in homelessness in Ohio over the past year, according to a group advocating for more affordable housing around the state.
The Coalition on Homelessness and Housing in Ohio pointed to U.S. Department of House and Urban Development data that showed more than 11,000 Ohioans homeless on one January night in 2023. That number was a 6.9% increase from the previous year’s count.
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LGBTQ activist Kendall Stephens, who identifies as a transgender woman and has worked with members of Pennsylvania’s Democratic Party, was charged with the rape of a minor, according to court documents filed Monday in the Philadelphia Municipal Court.
Stephens, 37, was arrested by the Philadelphia Police Department and appeared before a judge on Monday, according to the documents. The department charged Stephens with one count of rape forcible compulsion, unlawful sexual contact with a minor and indecent assault of a person under 13, among other charges.
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A push to ban non-disclosure agreements in Connecticut is getting a boost from former Fox News anchors turned women’s rights advocates pushing for its approval.
Connecticut lawmakers are expected to revisit a proposal that would ban employers from imposing contracts that prevent employees from talking about their claims of workplace sexual harassment or assault. Democrats back in the proposal say they expect to file the bill in early 2024 when the new legislative session begins.
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Governor Glenn Youngkin (R) celebrated on Monday as all 131 Virginia school divisions finalized and submitted their “ALL in VA” plans with the governor’s office. Youngkin originally challenged Virginia’s schools to finish their plans by October 16.
In a statement, Youngkin said he is “pleased all of Virginia’s school divisions have heeded my call to urgently and aggressively take action to help our students recover” from the learning loss suffered as a result of pandemic-era restrictions. Youngkin said the submissions mean Virginia schools “embraced that challenge and are committed to getting our students back on track academically.”
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Even though Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs ordered National Guard troops to the southern border on Friday, not everyone in the region is on board.
The Tohono Oʼodham Nation, which is a Native American nation that touches parts of the southern border in the Tucson Sector, wrote in a letter that they do not want troops along their portion of the border.
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Grammy-nominated and Dove Award-winning country artist Ty Herndon has released the deluxe edition of his highly acclaimed album, ‘Jacob’ which has two new tracks and four reimagined tracks.
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When Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann asked priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers in the German Diocese of Speyer to offer blessings for same-sex unions and remarried couples early last month, his letter made international news — and it should have. That’s because the Catholic Church believes same-sex unions are sinful and contrary to both the law of God and the laws of nature.
That teaching — that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is, in fact, a sin — has repeatedly put a Church hierarchy dedicated to “inclusion” and “solidarity” in a tight spot. Progressives both inside (men like Wiesemann and Fr. James Martin) and outside of the Church have repeatedly pressured Catholic leadership to offer some kind of legitimization to homosexual unions.
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A federal judge ordered the names of 177 associates of the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to be made public in 2024 with the unsealing of court documents.
The judge on Monday ordered the names to be unsealed in connection to a defamation case brought by Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex crimes.
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The trendy electric vehicle (EV) market could be in trouble as at least 18 EV and battery start-ups that went public in the last few years are running out of funds to operate, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
The trouble in the industry follows rising costs and manufacturing issues as the companies fail to compete with top EV maker Tesla and traditional automakers, with the median stock of the 43 companies reviewed dropping 80% from its peak, losing tens of billions in collective value since the companies relatively recent inception, according to the WSJ. Of those 43 EV start-ups reviewed, five have already gone bankrupt or been acquired, including Lordstown Motors, Proterra and Electric Last Mile Solutions.
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Life is hard if you do not learn from your mistakes. With Covid, political leaders and public health authorities engaged in a series of missteps, miscalculations, and manias that amounted to an extreme overreaction to the disease.
First, statistical models overstated the risk of the disease by an order of magnitude. Then, even after these miscalculations became apparent, other extreme measures like lockdowns, mandatory masking, coercive vaccine mandates, and a million other indignities ensued. In the end, almost everyone got Covid, almost everyone survived, and, while the economic countermeasures increased our national debt by 30%, the economy soon recovered too.
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Esteemed former Vanderbilt professor, renowned scholar, and all-star panelist Dr. Carol Swain joined The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Tuesday to discuss the growing scandal involving Harvard’s Claudine Gay and increasingly difficult-to-defend allegations of plagiarism by the Ivy League school’s president.
Swain contends that Gay failed to credit her for sections of the book Black Faces, Black Interests, accusing her of derivative work since her dissertation, which Swain claims builds upon her own groundbreaking research.
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Aaron Spradlin, who is the Chairman of the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition and CEO of the Mission America Foundation, told The Star in a phone call that he’s known of suspected human trafficking activities happening at hotels where De Caldera operated since at least 2015.
Executive director Aaron Gulbransen, a former reporter for The Star, explained the Tennessee Faith and Freedom Coalition previously informed state officials of suspected criminal activity at the hotels, and said the organization has been able to “amplify” Spradlin’s work by regularly sharing tips and insight with Tennessee lawmakers and law enforcement.
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Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti appeared in-studio on Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, to discuss the first-of-its-kind lawsuit his office filed Monday against financial services giant BlackRock over alleged violations of consumer protection laws.
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Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti appeared in-studio on Tuesday’s edition of The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy, where he laid out the reasons why BlackRock’s alleged double standards that they are pushing Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) initiatives that effectively force companies to shift their priorities are not just afoul consumer protection laws.
If left unchecked, Skrmetti argues, the opaque and unaccountable nature of corporate policymaking threatens the foundational principles of self-governance.
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The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday determined that former President Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection against the United States via the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Riot and was therefore ineligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot, Politico reported.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed a measure to make illegal entry into the Lone Star State a state crime, giving state law enforcement a potentially pivotal tool to combat illegal immigration on its own amid perceived federal apathy.
The law, which is slated to take effect in March, would empower Texas law enforcement to arrest illegal entrants and grant judges the ability to order their deportation, CNN reported.
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On Monday, the European Union (EU) formally announced that it would be launching an investigation into X, the platform formally known as Twitter, over alleged violations of laws meant to crack down on free speech.
According to ABC News, the investigation will be the first one of its kind under new regulations passed by the 27-nation European bloc. In a post on X, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that “Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act.
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Turning Point USA’s third annual AmericaFest ended its third full day on Monday, featuring speeches by Tucker Carlson, Democrat-turned-independent and former Congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, and NBA star Jonathan Isaac. Candace Owens was scheduled to speak, but due to giving birth to her third child, she submitted a short speech on video instead.
In her speech, Gabbard criticized “neocon” Nikki Haley, who has positioned herself in the Republican presidential primary race as a moderate. Gabbard lambasted the “Democratic elite” repeatedly.
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A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a bid from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move his Georgia election case from state to federal court.
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Small businesses impacted by the deadly tornadoes that killed six people in Middle Tennessee are eligible for federal government and private grant assistance, as relief continues to pour in.
“Low-interest disaster loans from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) are available to businesses and residents in Tennessee following the announcement of a Presidential disaster declaration due to severe storms and tornadoes on Dec. 9, 2023,” said the SBA on its website.
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Arizona Democratic Gov. Katie Hobbs on Friday deployed the National Guard to the southern border amid the unprecedented surge in illegal immigrant arrivals under the Biden administration.
She further pleaded with Washington to send further aid, admonishing the Biden administration for not responding to her request for $512 million to reimburse the state for border security expenses it had already incurred.
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Small business owners are pessimistic about the future of the economy, according to a new poll.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses released the polling data Tuesday, which shows that the group’s “Small Businesses Optimism Index” decreased slightly in November to 90.1, its 23rd straight month below the historical average of small business optimism.
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