Day: July 24, 2024

Blackburn’s ‘Kids Online Safety Act’ Heading for Vote on Senate Floor

Peter D'Abrosca
Kids on Phone

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) Tuesday announced that a bipartisan bill she cosponsored with Senator Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) called the “Kids Online Safety Act” is headed to the Senate floor for a vote.

“It’s official: the Kids Online Safety Act is getting a vote on the Senate Floor. This progress is a testament to the incredible work of parents and young people whose personal experiences are the heart of this bill,” Blackburn said in a press release. “They came to DC over and over again, told their stories to lawmakers, wrote letters, and never gave up on demanding change. We are grateful to be in this fight with such brave and tenacious friends and allies.”

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Harris Promoted Paper Ballots Before 2020 Election, but Democrats Now Push Back on Election Integrity

Just the News
Kamala Harris

Vice President Kamala Harris promoted using paper ballots for elections the last time she was a presidential candidate, but since then, Democrats and the Biden administration have largely pushed back against election integrity laws that Republicans have promoted.

Five years ago, Harris was part of a bipartisan effort to encourage the use of paper ballots. However, since the 2020 presidential election, Democrats have called Republicans “election deniers” for promoting such election integrity measures, and the Biden administration is focusing on suing states with election integrity laws.

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When Kamala Harris was Put in Charge in Past Jobs, Scandal, and Failure Often Followed

Just the News
Kamala Harris

Before she was Joe Biden’s understudy the last four years, Kamala Harris ran offices as a California prosecutor and senator. Often, scandal and failings followed in her wake.

As California Attorney General, Harris was widely criticized for failing to take on prosecutorial misconduct. In fact her office was “called out” by judges for “defending convictions obtained by local prosecutors” who had inserted false confessions, lied under oath, and withheld evidence. A federal appeals judge even admonished officials in 2015 to talk to Harris “and make sure she understands the gravity of the situation” involving prosecutorial misconduct.

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Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti Leads Push Against Federal Housing Finance Agency Pilot Program

Kaitlin Housler
Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti led a coalition of 13 other state attorneys general in pushing back against a new pilot program launched by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) that would remove title insurance requirements from certain loans sold to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

In March, the FHFA launched the pilot program, which “waives the requirement for lender’s title insurance or a legal opinion on certain low-risk refinance transactions where there is confidence that the property is free and clear of any prior lien or encumbrance.”

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Suspect in Tennessee Highway Patrol Shooting Had Violent Criminal History

Peter D'Abrosca
Braze Rucker

A man accused in taking part in the shooting of a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officer in Putnam County had a history of violent crime, according to court records. 

Braze Rucker was charged with a litany of crimes committed during a robbery attempt in Nashville in 2013. The charges stemmed from a robbery in which Rucker shot one person, leaving her paralyzed. 

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Student Test Scores Continue to Plummet Despite Hundreds of Billions in Pandemic Aid for Education

Admin
Student taking class online

Student test scores are continuing to fall four years after schools moved online due to the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a study released Tuesday by testing company Northwest Evaluation Association (NWEA).

The paper found gaps in academic performance between today’s students and their pre-pandemic counterparts are widening, despite the record $190 billion in federal aid distributed to schools since the pandemic began. The findings — which were divulged from an analysis of test results from the 2023-24 school year for approximately 7.7 million students between the third and eighth grades — also come two years after experts had claimed a recovery in education was underway.

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Wisconsin Lawmakers Strike Down Three Emergency Election Rules

The Center Square
People Voting

The fight over who writes the rules for elections in Wisconsin continues.

The Legislature’s rule making body, the Joint Committee for Review of Administrative Rules, on Monday voted to suspend three proposed emergency rules from the Wisconsin Elections Commission that dealt with uniform rules for absentee voting, challenges to candidates and challenges to nominating paperwork.

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Commentary: The Second Amendment Is More Crucial than Ever After Attempt to Kill Trump

Admin
Man training at gun range

A 20-year-old man with a rifle, perched atop a nearby roof, fired several rounds July 13 at Donald Trump as the former president spoke at a campaign rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, killing one attendee and wounding at least two others.

As we know now, one round nicked Trump’s right ear and he avoided a serious wound or death with a fortuitous head turn that moved him out of the bullet’s path at the last second.

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Virginia Democratic Delegates Unanimously Vote to Support Vice President Kamala Harris at August Convention

Tom Pappert
Kamala Harris

The Democratic Party of Virginia (DPVA) confirmed on Tuesday that its delegates to the Democratic National Convention voted unanimously on Monday to nominate Vice President Kamala Harris as the party’s nominee for the president during its convention next month.

In a statement posted to the social media platform X, the Virginia Democrats confirmed the delegates “met virtually” and “unanimously voted to join President Joe Biden in endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris for the 2024 Democratic nomination for President of the United States.”

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Kamala Harris Reportedly Considers Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, Arizona U.S. Senator Mark Kelly for Vice President

Tom Pappert
Josh Shapiro and Mark Kelly

Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly considering either Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro or U.S. Senator Mark Kelly (D-AZ) of Arizona to serve as the Democratic Party’s nominee for vice president, a Monday report revealed.

After Harris claimed to obtain the support of the required the number of delegates to be declared the party’s nominee, ABC News reported on Tuesday that Kelly and Shapiro are already the “leading VP candidates” under consideration.

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ICE Conducts Sweeping Raid in Florida of Criminal Aliens Released into U.S. Under Non-Detention Program

Admin
ICE Agents conducting a raid

Federal immigration authorities in Florida last week apprehended more than a dozen illegal migrants who were convicted or charged of crimes while in a program that allowed them to live freely in the U.S. despite crossing the border illegally.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents arrested 18 illegal migrants in a week-long raid referred to as “Operation Drumbeat,” according to a press release from the agency. The operation, which was done in conjunction with Border Patrol agents, apprehended noncitizens charged or convicted of a slate of heinous crimes, such as child abuse, extortion, assault, burglary and other offenses.

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Kamala Harris Faces Renewed Criticism for Support of Minnesota Bail Fund That Helped Free Violent Offenders

Admin
Kamala Harris Speaking

Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris, likely to succeed President Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee in the 2024 presidential election, is facing renewed scrutiny for her past support of a controversial bail fund with a history of springing violent offenders from jail.

Harris, despite often citing her experience as a district attorney and attorney general as a demonstration of her law and order credentials, endorsed the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) in a tweet from June 1, 2020, declaring, “if you’re able to, chip in now to the MN Freedom Fund to help post bail for those protesting on the ground in Minnesota.” The fund received a $40 million cash windfall after it was promoted by celebrities like Harris, Seth Rogen and Chrissy Teigen.

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Loudermilk Seeks Records from Capitol Police on Investigation of Gallows on Capitol Grounds January 6

Just the News
U.S. Capitol police uniform

Committee on House Administration’s Subcommittee on Oversight Chairman Barry Loudermilk, R-Ga., is pressing United States Capitol Police (USCP) Chief J. Thomas Manger for “records and information” related to their investigation of the “gallows assembled on the Capitol Grounds on January 6, 2021,” according to a news release sent out on Tuesday.

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Battleground States Absent Hurdles to Place Harris on Ballot

The Center Square
Kamala Harris

Election laws in all seven battleground states will allow Democrats to place onto ballots the name of Vice President Kamala Harris, or another candidate if one materializes.

As President Joe Biden’s supporters rally around Harris to take his spot as the party nominee, Republicans are planning legal challenges. Biden announced his decision via social media Sunday afternoon, with one month until the Aug. 19-22 Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

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Pennsylvania State Police Boss Says He Doesn’t Agree with Ex-Secret Service Head on ‘Sloped Roof’ Assessment

Just the News
Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris

Pennsylvania State Police Commissioner Col. Christopher Paris’s testimony before Congress on Tuesday resulted in some more information coming out regarding the day of former President Donald Trump’s attempted assassination, but there are still unanswered questions.

Paris told the Homeland Security Committee that he did not agree with former Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle’s assessment about not having an officer on the building the gunman used to attempt to assassinate former President Trump due to a “sloped roof.”

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Commentary: The Big Divide

Admin
Man looking out window

Whether the economy is currently bubbling along or facing a slowdown, a slow-motion disaster is about to create a real crisis for the government, our future politics, and the shrinking middle class. Half of households have no retirement savings.

This is just one of many shifts in the economy that reflect the declining fortunes of the middle class. Wages have remained mostly flat for most workers—particularly those without a college degree—since the early 1970s. Recent high rates of inflation further cut into the ability of the self-identified middle class to make ends meet. But the biggest change has been the abolition of employer-provided pensions and their replacement with rickety and self-managed 401k savings plans.

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Trump Gunman Had Michigan School Shooter’s Photo, Foreign Encrypted Apps, FBI Tells Congress

Just the News
Thomas Crooks and Ethan Crumbley (composite image)

While Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle frustrated lawmakers Monday with sparse details about the assassination attempt on Donald Trump, the FBI has disclosed to Congress that the shooter used three encrypted communications apps ostensibly tied to Germany, Brussels and New Zealand and also possessed an arrest photo of an earlier Michigan school shooter, Just the News has confirmed.

In multiple briefings, FBI leaders told lawmakers that the 20-year-old would-be assassin Thomas Matthew Crooks’ primary cell phone has become an important focal point of the probe, including some 14,000 images that were found on it, according to multiple sources familiar with the briefings. The FBI has not issued an update on their findings to the public since July 14.

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