Biden Energy Department’s Claim It Replenished Strategic Petroleum Reserve Misleading, Expert Says

Joe Biden

When the Department of Energy announced that it had successfully replenished the nation’s stockpile with the total purchased volume of 40 million barrels, the announcement had some people scratching their heads.

The Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR), as the stockpile is called, contained over 630 million barrels of crude oil when President Biden took office in January 2021. Last week, it had less than 376 million barrels. How did the DOE refill the SPR with only 40 million barrels?

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Lee Creates Tennessee Office of Outdoor Recreation

Tennessee Office of Outdoor Recreation

Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee is starting a state Office of Outdoor Recreation after putting $207 million for state parks, blueways development, farmland conservation and outdoor recreation in this year’s budget.

Lee announced the department, within the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation, will work on conservation to provide Tennessee residents and visitors have more access to the outdoors.

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Dave McCormick Wants Additional Observers, ‘Huge Voter Turnout’ After Pennsylvania Officials Warn of Delayed Election Results

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Dave McCormick on Sunday urged additional election observers after the Pennsylvania Department of State warned that election results may not be available on Election Day, and claimed that changing vote totals should not be construed as evidence of “rigging.”

Ultimately, McCormick that Republicans in Pennsylvania must go to the polls with a “huge voter turnout” that will result in a resounding victory announced on the night of the election.

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Arizona Democrats Say They Want to Cut Costs with New Laws, State Republicans Contend it Would Lead to Higher Taxes

Sen. Juan Mendez and Sen. John Kavanagh in front of the Arizona State Capitol Building (composite image)

If victorious in November, Arizona Democrats aim to institute laws they say would cut costs for Arizonans. Republicans say these measures would only hurt Arizona’s economy and lead to higher taxes.

Only two seats away from having a Democratic majority in Arizona’s legislative chambers for the first time in six decades, the Democratic Caucus has established a plan they say would allow them to hit the ground running in 2025 should they take control of the Legislature. This story is part of an ongoing series of what a Democratic trifecta would look like for Arizona taxpayers.

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Joe Biden to Campaign for Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania Despite Disapproval from Majority of Voters

Kamala Harris

President Joe Biden confirmed in an interview broadcast Sunday that he will campaign for Vice President Kamala Harris in Pennsylvania, even as nearly 60 percent of voters in the commonwealth disapprove of his performance in the White House.

The 81-year-old president confirmed on CBS Sunday Morning Americans will see him campaigning for Harris, beginning with a tour of Pennsylvania with Governor Josh Shapiro, who was controversially skipped over by the Harris campaign in favor of Governor Tim Walz.

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Retired Border Patrol Chief Sounds the Alarm on Kamala Harris Border Crisis ‘Fix’

Rodney Scott and Kamala Harris (composite image)

Vice President Kamala Harris’ campaign is attempting to cast her as a tough-on-the-border candidate, but a former leader of the Border Patrol is warning the public not to buy it.

The Harris campaign has released a slate of advertisements that claim the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate would “fix the border” and crack down on illegal immigration by increasing the number of Border Patrol agents. However, retired Border Patrol Chief Rodney Scott, who led the agency while Harris served as “border czar,” says voters must look at her record to understand how she would really handle border security.

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Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars Pour Into Georgia’s House District 53 Race

Susie Greenberg and Deborah Silcox in front of the Georgia State Capitol Building (composite image)

While many of Georgia’s 180 state House of Representative seats are not competitive, District 53 is where Democrat Susie Greenberg hopes to flip the “most flippable” seat back blue.

Incumbent Republican Rep. Deborah Silcox was first elected in 2022 by a margin of less than 1,500 votes, after many years of Democrat representatives. She previously was a representative in District 52, before losing that seat in 2020.

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Alex Soros Continues His Father’s Political Operation, and Is Aiming to Shape the 2024 Election

Since The Wall Street Journal first reported that Alex Soros had taken over his father’s political operation on June 11, 2023, he has pumped tens of millions of dollars into an array of efforts to sway the 2024 election, financial disclosures show.

Democracy PAC, the primary conduit through which the Soros family shuffles its wealth into electoral politics, spent roughly $40 million after the WSJ reported that George Soros had passed the reins on to his son, campaign finance records show. The PAC’s spending under Alex Soros signals somewhat of a departure from how his father operated it, with less focus on criminal justice and a greater emphasis on helping Democrats keep the White House.

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Commentary: Chronic Absenteeism Is a Problem, but Most Proposed Solutions Miss the Point

Classroom

Two weeks ago, three unlikely bedfellows joined forces to announce their intention to cut K-12 chronic absenteeism in half by 2029.

The right-leaning American Enterprise Institute, the left-leaning Education Trust, and the nonprofit organization Attendance Works revealed their plan in Washington, DC. The coalition hopes to combat chronic absenteeism, defined as students missing 10 percent or more of school days in a given academic year, by implementing a variety of initiatives, including home visits and similar interventions. Chronic absenteeism rates more than doubled during and after the Covid response. The goal is to reduce these rates to pre-pandemic levels, or around 13 percent.

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Proposal Suggests Fully Funding Veterans Affairs to Avoid Missing October Distributions

Veterans

With a looming deadline to fund benefits to about 7 million veterans in October, and Congress out until Sept. 9, Maine Sen. Susan Collins and six colleagues have filed legislation to get full funding.

A Republican and independent are among the six. Veterans Affairs is facing a deficit of about $15 billion the remainder of this year and next – a deficit larger than the annual budget of the Environmental Protection Agency, says one senator.

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Commentary: Theater of the Absurd, Harris-Walz Edition

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz de-boarding a plane

H. L. Mencken apparently never quite said that “No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” He said lots of similar things, however, and I like to think he would have been proud of being the sort of chap to whom people attributed such astringent mots.

He would also, I feel sure, regard the theater surrounding the Kamala Harris-Tim Walz campaign as a test case of the proposition.

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