Day: January 21, 2024

Thousands Converge for Snowy 2024 March for Life, Take on Reforging New Identity Post-Roe

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by Isaac Willour   The 2024 March for Life brought thousands into the streets of Washington D.C. on Friday amid driving wind and snow to show support for the unborn and address a pivotal question: After the overturn of Roe, where is the movement going? Attendees gathered on the National Mall for the 51st annual rally, then marched to the Supreme Court, which in 2022 decided Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health, overturning Roe v. Wade and giving the decision on abortion laws up to individual states. Tens of thousands took part in Friday’s march—far fewer than many marches in the pre-Dobbs era. Yet, the smaller turnout didn’t dampen the spirit of the event’s organizers. “There’s a lot of you,” March for Life President Jeanne Mancini told attendees. Among the signs peppering the crowd on Friday: “Abortion is murder,” “Gay rights starts at conception,” “Life is our revolution,” “Forceps off their bodies,” “Make more babies,” and “Let their hearts beat.” The marchers included high school and college students, families, retirees, priests, pastors and lawmakers. The rally, preceded by a concert courtesy of American Idol finalist Danny Gokey, featured speakers ranging from legislators to cultural icons. “This is what the heart of the pro-life movement is about: helping women…

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Home Sales in 2023 Were the Lowest in 28 Years as Affordability Crisis Plagued Americans

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Home Owners

Sales for existing homes, which make up a majority of the housing market, slumped to the lowest level since 1995 as rising prices and sky-rocketing mortgage rates increased unaffordability, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR).

Existing home sales sank 1.0% in December compared to the previous month, falling 6.2% annually, with 4.09 million homes being sold for the year, according to a report from the NAR. The slump in sales follows a year of rising prices due to inflation, constrained supply and sky-high mortgage rates, which at one point neared 8%, suppressing demand and Americans’ ability to buy in the housing market.

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Divide Among Elites and Rest of Country Widening Ahead of 2024 Election: Rasmussen

Just the News

The divide between the country’s “elite” and the rest of America is growing and it will have a substantial impact on the 2024 elections, according to a survey conducted by Scott Rasmussen and RMG Research, Inc. 

The survey also found the most highly educated voters with advanced degrees are liberal-leaning and their policy positions are at odds with the rest of the electorate, which Rasmussen and conservative economist Steve Moore said during a briefing about the results on Friday.

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Cloud Hangs over Commercial Real Estate as Trillions in Debt Set to Come Due

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Commercial Real Estate

Commercial real estate is facing a mountain of debt that many borrowers could have trouble refinancing due to a rapid hike in interest rates and record vacancies, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Around $2.81 trillion in commercial real estate loans are set to expire through 2028, meaning borrowers would either have to pay the amount outright or refinance the debt with higher interest rates, according to data from market research group Trepp. Payments on commercial mortgages are typically only for interest while the loan is active, and when the loan reaches its expiration date, borrowers often refinance at current rates, but doing so would increase payments drastically in a time when commercial developers and property owners are strapped for cash, according to the WSJ.

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Harvard Details Handling of Claudine Gay Plagiarism Controversy in New Congressional Report

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Claudine Gay

Harvard University detailed its handling of the controversy surrounding former President Claudine Gay’s alleged plagiarism in a new report submitted to Congress on Friday.

Harvard’s report, which was submitted to the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, details how a university subcommittee appointed an independent panel of “three of the country’s most prominent political scientists” that found “virtually no evidence of intentional claiming of findings that are not President Gay’s.” The independent panel did not review all accusations of plagiarism against Gay, only the 25 allegations flagged by the New York Post, 16 of which the panel said were “trivial,” used “commonly used language” or regarded a previous publication that “they devoted ‘less attention.’”

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Death Count from Extreme Winter Weather in Tennessee Rises to 19, Department of Health Confirms

Kaitlin Housler
Snow Nashville

The Tennessee Department of Health (TDH) confirmed 19 Tennesseans died as of Friday evening due to the winter weather and extreme cold in the state.

“The Tennessee Department of Health has confirmed 19 weather-related fatalities. Seven in Shelby County, one in Hickman County, one in Madison County, two in Washington County, one in Carroll County, one in Knox County, one in Van Buren County, one in Lauderdale County, one in Henry County, two in Marshall County, and one in Roane County,” the Tennessee Emergency Management Agency (TEMA) wrote in its  Flash Report.

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Commentary: The Loss of the Sacred in American Culture

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Catholic Church

There’s a grim scene near the end of The Iliad in which the Greek hero Achilles, because of his rage and grief over the death of his comrade Patroclus at the hands of the Trojan prince Hector, slays Hector in battle and drags his corpse behind his chariot, day after day, desecrating the body in a manner unthinkable to the ancient Greeks. In fact, the affront to the dignity of this hero and prince, as well as the violation of the sacred customs of Greek society, eventually compels the gods to intervene. They tell Priam, the elderly king of Troy, to go to Achilles and plead for the body of Hector so that it may be properly honored and buried. The gods will not allow such a desecration to continue.

In these final lines of this epic poem—which, along with The Odyssey forms the bedrock of Western literature and arguably Western Civilization as a whole—Homer reaffirms a notion that all Greeks would have agreed with: There are certain lines that must not be crossed, certain sacred realities that cannot be defied, even by the semidivine hero Achilles.

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Fani Willis Pledged Not ‘To Date People That Work’ Under Her in Resurfaced 2020 Campaign Interview

Tom Pappert
Fani Willis

A video resurfaced on Friday showing Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis pledging she will not “date people that work” under her if elected to her current position.

The clip of Willis was filmed during her April 6, 2020, appearance on the Atlanta-area public access program “People TV” as she campaigned to become Fulton County’s top prosecutor.

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Commentary: Inflated Grades, Increasing Graduation Rates, and Deflated Test Scores

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Students Learning

Grade inflation is rampant and has been so for many years. Back in 2011, an in-depth study by three Ivy League economists looked at how the quality of individual teachers affects their students over the long term. The paper, by Raj Chetty and John N. Friedman of Harvard and Jonah E. Rockoff of Columbia, tracked 2.5 million students over 20 years and, using a value-added approach, found that teachers who help students raise their standardized test scores have a lasting positive effect on those students’ lives beyond academics, including lower teenage pregnancy rates, greater college matriculation, and higher adult earnings. The authors of the study define “value added” as the average test-score gain for a teacher’s students “…adjusted for differences across classrooms in student characteristics such as prior scores.”

But to those who believe in equity über alles, quality is an afterthought, and many states are ditching any objective criteria for entry into the teaching field. In California, teachers traditionally have had to pass the ridiculously easy California Basic Educational Skills Test (CBEST) to gain entry into the profession, but the test is now under fire.

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Wisconsin Republicans Introduce Abortion Bill as 2024 Election Draws Near

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Robin Vos

Wisconsin Republicans introduced a bill Friday that would ban abortion at 14 weeks, just months ahead of the 2024 presidential primary.

The bill would limit abortions in the state by an additional six weeks since Wisconsin already has a 20-week ban on the books, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In addition to passing the legislature and getting Democratic Gov. Tony Evers’ signature, the bill would also have to appear on the ballot for voters during the state’s primary election in April, which is just months before the presidential election in November.

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Religious Freedom Advocates Demand Answers on State Department’s Exclusion of Nigeria, India from Persecution List

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African Christians

A group of international religious freedom experts are calling for Secretary of State Antony Blinken to testify before a congressional hearing about the State Department’s decision to exclude Nigeria and India from a list of nations with severe violations of religious freedom.

In a letter sent Wednesday, first obtained by The Daily Signal, more than 40 religious freedom experts and organizations pointed out that since 2009, more than 50,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria, and 18,000 churches and 2,500 Christian schools attacked. They also cited India, where they say that between 200 and 400 churches and 3,500 Christian homes have been attacked just since last May.

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Commentary: Seven Ridiculous Examples of Government Waste in 2023

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Congress Spending

Almost nobody doubts that the federal government wastes a lot of money. Every day we hear stories of fraud, mismanagement, and misplaced priorities that cost taxpayers millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars.

But just how much money is wasted? In his annual Festivus report—named after the fictional Seinfeld holiday—Senator Rand Paul tallies up some of the most egregious examples of government waste from the year. The report for 2023 came out on December 22, and as usual, the stories spanned the range from hilarious to deeply disconcerting. In all, Paul identified $900 billion in government waste from 2023.

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Poll Finds Americans Worried About National Debt

The Center Square
Congress Spending

Americans are worried about the national debt, according to the results of a new poll.

Americans have the national debt crisis as one of their top concerns along with war, inflation and crime. Those polled think the overspending has a direct impact on their personal security and also has an impact on the security of the United States, according to a recent study commissioned by Main Street Economics, a nonprofit group designed to educate Americans on the nation’s debt crisis.

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Commentary: No, Ladies, We Cannot Have It All

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Woman Stressed out at work

The phrase “having it all” came from the title of a 1982 book written by Helen Gurley Brown, then editor-in-chief of Cosmopolitan magazine. As Antoinette Lattouf, writing in The Guardian in early 2023, put it, this self-help book for women focused on “money, sex, diet, exercise, and appearance.” Notably, it made no mention of children or family.

Since then, of course, the phrase has come to take on an even broader meaning. Today, “having it all” is touted as a woman’s reaching her full potential by having an education, lucrative formal career, rewarding marriage, happy children, and an active social life. Of course, this ideal is vague at best and destructive at worst.

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