Federal Judge Refuses to Lift Suspensions of Arizona State University Students Arrested During Anti-Israel Protests

Free Palestine demonstration

A federal judge denied a motion filed by 20 Arizona State University students seeking to have their suspensions lifted after they were arrested for trespassing during anti-Israel demonstrations on campus.

The students filed the lawsuit last week against the Arizona Board of Regents, claiming that ASU allegedly violated their First Amendment rights and retaliated against students who were involved in the protest.

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Arkansas Becomes Latest State to Defy Biden Title IX Changes

Susan Huckabee Sanders

Arkansas GOP Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders ordered state officials to ignore the Biden administration’s latest changes to Title IX on Thursday, making Arkansas the latest state to fight back against the changes that add protections for transgender students.

The Department of Education finalized new rules related to Title IX last month, which expands the definition of sex discrimination to include gender identity and pregnancy. Attorneys General in Louisiana and Texas have already filed lawsuits against the new changes, with Texas claiming that the new orders ignore the Constitution and harm women.

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Tennessee Legislature Approves Bills to Report on Immigration, Crime

Ferrell Haile

The Tennessee Legislature passed a pair of bills intended to fight illegal immigration in the state.

The bill will require the Tennessee District Attorneys General Conference to collect and compile the data on the costs related to illegal immigrants in the state who are charged or convicted of a criminal offense. The report will be sent to the governor and both the House and Senate speaker.

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Americans Increasingly Turning to Discount Grocer Amidst Rising Prices

Grocery Shopping

A German discount grocer has seen an increase in business from American customers over the last year, as inflation remains stubbornly high and presents an ongoing threat to Americans’ financial security.

The Daily Caller reports that Aldi, the German-based grocer, saw a staggering 26% increase in foot traffic at its store in March compared to March of 2023. This rise far surpassed increases at other popular grocery store chains, including the 6% year-over-year increase at Kroger and the 15% increase at Trader Joe’s.

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Houses Passes Bill to Protect Domestic Oil Production, Protect Iñupiat Community

Alaska North Slope

The U.S. House passed another a bill to advance domestic energy production, this time in response to cries for help from an indigenous community living in the Alaska North Slope.

The bill’s cosponsor, a Democrat from Alaska, did not vote for her own bill. It passed with the support of five Democrats, including two from Texas who are strong supporters of the U.S. oil and natural gas industry.

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Latest Productivity Data Spells More Trouble for Future of American Economy

Staff Meeting

U.S. productivity growth slowed in the first quarter of 2024, casting doubt on the American economy’s future growth, according to data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) on Thursday.

Growth in U.S. business productivity slowed to just 0.3% in the first quarter of 2024, below economists’ predictions of 0.5% and far lower than the 3.5% rate of growth achieved in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the BLS. Sluggish growth in productivity bodes poorly for broader gross domestic product (GDP) growth, which slowed to 1.6% in the first quarter of 2024.

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Tennessee to Require Social Media Companies to Get Parental Consent for Minors

Bill Lee Social Media Bill

Social media companies in Tennessee will need to verify parental consent before allowing minors to create accounts in the state starting Jan. 1.

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee signed the bill, which along with age verification and parental consent, requires social media companies to allow parents access to monitor the account with privacy settings, daily time restrictions and creating breaks where the minor cannot use the social media.

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Commentary: Free Markets are Necessary But Not Sufficient

Family Prayer at Dinner

For most of our lifetimes, classically liberal economics so dominated the Right that nobody wondered if conservatives were abandoning free markets. In recent years, though, a new generation of conservative thinkers—more traditionalist, populist, or nationalist than libertarian—has challenged the utility and even the morality of laissez faire economic policy.

We welcome their questions and critiques, as they have compelled American conservatives to have a long overdue conversation about the market, the family, and the state. But the blunt truth is the movement cannot abandon free markets. The moral and practical case for free enterprise is as necessary today as it was when Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher used it to rescue their nations’ economies and win the Cold War.

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During Oral Arguments at the Arizona Court of Appeals in Kari Lake’s Election Lawsuit, Her Attorney Alleged Numerous Lies by Election Official

Kari Lake Hearing

A panel of three Arizona Court of Appeals judges heard oral arguments on Thursday in Kari Lake’s Rule 60(b) appeal of her election lawsuit. Lake’s attorney, Kurt Olsen, alleged that Maricopa County Co-Elections Director Scott Jarrett told numerous lies.

Lake’s team filed the Rule 60(b) motion requesting a second trial based on newly found evidence, but the trial court judge, Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Peter Thompson, greatly limited the scope of her second trial and then ruled against her.

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Georgia Lawmaker Says Fulton County DA Fani Willis Spends Taxpayer Dollars ‘Like the Wild West’

Fani Willis

A Georgia lawmaker alleged during a hearing that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis spends taxpayer dollars “like the Wild West” and has misused public funds.

“This is sounding to me kind of like the Wild West, very little control from Fulton County over a $36 million budget,” State Sen. Bill Cowsert said after questioning Fulton County Commissioner Robb Pitts and Fulton County Chief Financial Officer Sharon Whittmore about how Willis’ office receives and spends its funds.

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Attorney General Chris Carr Files Suit to Defend Women’s Sports and Freedom of Speech Against Biden Administration’s Changes to Title IX

Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr filed a lawsuit on Monday to safeguard women athletes from competing against biological males and to protect freedom of speech in schools against the Biden administration’s changes to the Title IX rule.

“Today we have taken action to defend women’s rights to fair competition,” Carr said in a press release on Monday, “and we will keep fighting until we end this absurdity once and for all.”

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Music Spotlight: Skip Ewing

Donald Ralph “Skip” Ewing is a musician’s musician. To say that his singing and songwriting are brilliant is an understatement. And he can play almost any stringed instrument.

He said, “I don’t remember when I couldn’t play a guitar. I took a woman’s pink foam curler, took the plastic out of it, and stuck it up under my strings so I could play late into the night without the guitar making a sound.”

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AstraZeneca Admits in Court Documents That COVID-19 Vaccine Could Cause Serious Rare Side Effect

COVID-19 Vaccine

British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca admitted in court documents for the first time that its COVID-19 vaccine could cause a rare blood-clotting side effect. 

The company is facing accusations that its vaccine contributed to the deaths or impairments of more than 50 people in the United Kingdom whose family are suing the pharmaceutical company. One claimant named Jamie Scott alleged the vaccine caused a permanent brain injury after a blood clot traveled to his brain. Scott claims he can no longer work because of the injury. 

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Lawsuit Accuses Pro-Palestine Groups of Being ‘Collaborators and Propagandists’ for Hamas

Pro-Palestine Protest

In a landmark lawsuit filed Wednesday, the law firm representing several victims of the Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel laid out compelling evidence that National Students for Justice in Palestine and its affiliates were acting as “collaborators and propagandists” for Hamas in the United States.

Earlier in the week, Just the News reported on the formation of National SJP—an umbrella organization purportedly organized by American Muslims for Palestine to coordinate the efforts of the hundreds of Students for Justice in Palestine groups at universities across the country.

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Commentary: Five Ways Campus Turmoil Hurts Democrats and America

Campus protesters

Higher education is sinking lower and lower. That’s bad news for our country, which has benefited enormously from having the world’s best system of higher education. And it’s bad news for Democrats, who face a tight election. Their party is closely tied to education at all levels, especially at elite universities. It is the party of experts, after all, and the party of the left. Universities are both. Moreover, since the Democrats control the Executive Branch, the public holds them primarily accountable for ensuring social order. Their failures are obvious to the average voter. That’s bound to hurt Democratic Party candidates in November.

Parents with children in college or expected to matriculate soon have every right to expect their kids can learn in peace, hear diverse viewpoints, and speak freely without threats, intimidation, or indoctrination. That’s true whether the parents are Jewish or not. Decent Americans won’t tolerate threats against Jewish students any more than they would tolerate them against blacks, Muslims, Christians, or Asian Americans. Yet they now see those threats against Jewish students every day, and, at many universities, they don’t see administrators standing up for their rights.

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Hiring of Police Officers Increased in 2023 After Years of Decline

New Police Officers

The year 2023 saw an increase in the number of police officers hired for the first time in several years, after widespread anti-police sentiment as a result of the race riots in the summer of 2020.

According to ABC News, more sworn officers were hired in 2023 than in any of the preceding four years. At the same time, fewer officers resigned or retired than in recent previous years. The information comes from 214 different law enforcement agencies responding to a study conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum (PERF).

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