Day: November 22, 2024

Two State Legislators Challenge Sedona’s Ordinance Banning Firearms on ‘Any Trail or Open Space Area’

Rachel Alexander

State Rep. Quang Nguyen (R-Prescott) and State Rep. Selina Bliss (R-Prescott) are challenging an ordinance in Sedona which bans firearms on “any trail or open space area.” The legislators believe the law infringes on the right to keep and bear arms, since Arizona has some of the most Second Amendment-friendly laws in the country. They submitted a request to the Attorney General’s Office (AGO) to investigate, known as an SB 1487 request for investigation, which prompted Sedona city officials to put it on the agenda for the December 10 city council meeting. 

Nguyen, who chairs the House Judiciary Committee and has held positions with the Arizona State Rifle & Pistol Club, said in a joint statement with Bliss after submitting the 1487 request, “I urge the City of Sedona to review Ordinance 12.30.090 to ensure it complies with Arizona law. It’s important that local ordinances do not infringe upon the constitutional rights of Arizonans or conflict with state statutes.”

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Tennessee U.S. Senators to Confirm Pam Bondi as Attorney General

Tom Pappert
TN Senators and Pam Bondi

Both Tennessee U.S. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Bill Hagerty have signaled they intend to vote to confirm former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as the next U.S. Attorney General.

Bondi was nominated on Thursday by President-elect Donald Trump only hours after former Representative Matt Gaetz withdrew his nomination, citing the distraction his confirmation could pose to the Trump-Vance administration.

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Nearly Half of Los Angeles’ Homeless Budget Wasn’t Spent: Report

Daily Caller News Foundation
Homeless Person

Nearly half of Los Angeles, California’s $1.3 billion homelessness budget for fiscal year 2023-2024 wasn’t spent, according to the city Controller’s report.

Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia discovered that only $599 million had been spent, with an additional $195 million marked to be spent, and $512,690,810 million not marked for anything, according to the report. Recently, Los Angeles residents seem poised to approve Measure A, which would add a .5% county-level sales tax, with revenues going towards homeless programs, according to the unofficial election results count.

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Mike Benz Explains Why He Is ‘Cautiously Optimistic’ About President-Elect Trump’s Nomination of Pam Bondi as Attorney General

Kaitlin Housler
Pam Bondi and Donald Trump

Mike Benz, a former Trump State Department official and current executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online, said he is “cautiously optimistic” about President-elect Donald Trump’s nomination of former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi to serve as U.S. Attorney General, given Bondi’s shortcomings while she served as Florida’s chief legal officer.

On Thursday afternoon, Trump announced his nomination of Bondi as attorney general just hours after the president-elect’s initial choice, former Florida U.S. Representative Matt Gaetz, withdrew his nomination.

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Operation Warp Speed Official Questions COVID Vaccine Purity, Worries ‘They May Ingrate’ into DNA

Just the News
Lab Research

COVID-19 vaccine supporters are fond of sneering at public figures who have called for the Food and Drug Administration to pull or at least re-evaluate the safety of the increasingly unpopular therapeutics, such as Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cardiologist Peter McCullough and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

They might have a harder time caricaturing a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director who ran the agency when COVID vaccines were being developed, promoted vaccination and repeat boosting as recently as 2022 and promoted cloth face masks as “one of the most powerful weapons we have” against COVID, before vaccines were available.

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Texas Orders State Agencies to Divest China Assets

Daily Caller News Foundation
Greg Abbott China

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to state agencies ordering them to divest from “risky” investments from China, warning of security threats, according to a Thursday press release.

Abbott’s letter was aimed at preventing Texans from being exposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to the statement. The governor called for the agencies to fully divest from China as soon as possible, citing financial risk and Chinese “aggression” against the U.S.

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Virtue Signaling Nashville Banner Leaves Elon Musk’s X, Joins Democrat Exodus to Bluesky

Tom Pappert
Nashville Banner

The Nashville Banner announced in a series of posts to the social media platform X on Thursday that it is leaving the platform, citing the direction of the social media service since it was purchased by Elon Musk, who changed the company’s name from Twitter to X the next year.

In an announcement posted to the social media platform X, the news outlet wrote, “As of today, the Nashville Banner will stop posting on X.”

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Post-Election, Some States Have Already Started Focusing on Election Integrity

Just the News
People Voting

Following the 2024 presidential election, some states are already focusing on implementing election security legislation, such as requiring proof of U.S. citizenship and reducing the time it takes to count ballots.

Republicans in Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona are all zeroing in on election integrity following this month’s election, and ahead of newly-elected officials taking office next year.

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California Doesn’t Have the Financial Capacity for Trump Resistance Lawsuits

Admin

Washington Examiner   The California Legislative Analyst’s Office projected a dismal fiscal outlook for the Golden State as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is anticipated to pour millions of dollars into fighting the Trump administration.  The non-partisan budget watchdog released an analysis this week showing that while the state has managed to reduce its budget deficit by a massive amount since last year, the deficit is estimated to climb back up to a staggering $20 billion by 2026.  “We anticipate the Legislature likely will need to address deficits in the future, for example by reducing spending or increasing taxes. In our view, this year’s budget does not have capacity for new commitments, ongoing ones,” the LAO’s report reads.  READ THE FULL STORY                 

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Texas Approves Optional Bible-Based Lessons for Public Schools

Admin

The Hill   Texas gave final approval Friday to optional biblical lesson plans for kindergarten through 5th grade classes in state public schools.  The State Board of Education voted 8-7 to allow lessons on topics such as Jesus’s Sermon on the Mount and the Last Supper, structured by the state-created Bluebonnet Learning.   Schools are not required to implement the curriculum — but would receive an additional $60 per student in funding if administrators adopt it.   READ THE FULL STORY                 

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Matt Gaetz Says He’s Not Returning to Congress Next Year

Admin

CNN Former Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz, who withdrew from consideration as President-elect Donald Trump’s pick for attorney general on Thursday, said Friday he will not be returning to Congress next year. “I’m still going to be in the fight, but it’s going to be from a new perch. I do not intend to join the 119th Congress,” he told Charlie Kirk in an interview. Gaetz, first elected in 2016, had resigned from the House earlier this month after Trump selected him to lead the Department of Justice and before the House Ethics Committee could release a report about its investigation into him, including alleged sexual misconduct, which he has denied. The fate of the report — and whether it would be released with him no longer in Congress — had resulted in an animated debate on Capitol Hill about whether he could be confirmed. READ THE FULL STORY                  

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Reporter Tom Pappert: DOJ in Panic Mode to Destroy Documents Before Trump Administration Is Sworn In

Kaitlin Housler
MPL and Pappert

Tom Pappert, lead reporter at The Tennessee Star, said employees at the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) appear to be in a panic mode to destroy evidence that could become problematic under the incoming Trump administration in an effort to save themselves from being terminated or possibly from facing prosecution.

On Tuesday, the Heritage Foundation’s Oversight Project found a document and product destruction truck outside of the DOJ’s headquarters in Washington D.C. – just days after the Justice Department reported a “division-wide system outage” that prevented its access to certain network files.

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James Erwin Details How Tennessee is Leading the Way in Administering Funding for Broadband Internet

Kaitlin Housler
James Erwin, Michael Patrick Leahy

James Erwin, federal affairs manager for telecommunications at Americans for Tax Reform, said Tennessee is leading the nation in awarding funding for broadband internet provided by the federal Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) program by ensuring funds do not go exclusively towards government-owned networks (GONs).

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Operation Warp Speed Official Questions COVID Vaccine Purity, Worries ‘They May Ingrate’ into DNA

Just the News
Dr. Robert Redfield addresses a presidential briefing with Trump, Fauci, Mick Mulvaney, and others

COVID-19 vaccine supporters are fond of sneering at public figures who have called for the Food and Drug Administration to pull or at least re-evaluate the safety of the increasingly unpopular therapeutics, such as Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cardiologist Peter McCullough and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

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‘Serious Blow to Trust in Our Government’: Lawmakers Torch Wray, Mayorkas for Skipping Out on Hearing

Daily Caller News Foundation
Alejandro Mayorkas, Christopher Wray

Senate Republican and Democratic lawmakers joined together in a display of bipartisan condemnation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray after the two declined to testify on Thursday before the Senate on global threats facing the U.S. homeland.

Mayorkas and Wray requested to move the annually-scheduled Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) hearing to a classified setting, which would have broken with 15 years of precedence according to Democratic Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, Chairman of the HSGAC.

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Commentary: John F. Kennedy – A Remembrance

RealClearWire

Sixty autumns have passed since the assassination of John F. Kennedy that Friday, Nov. 22, a day that traumatized a generation of children and revealed the impermanence of their innocence. For many, it was their first rendezvous with death. It endured as a vivid remembrance even as other memories lapsed with the passage of age. Many of those children are now grandparents, having lived past the average American life expectancy in 1963. Others, like my father, are not here for the somber milestone. But until his own twilight, my father – like any Irish-Catholic child of that period – remained haunted by that afternoon, transfixed by what Kennedy meant at that time, and committed to imparting those reminiscences unto his three sons.

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