China’s Population Declines for Third Straight Year amid Rising Economic Struggles

Chinese citizens

China’s population declined for a third straight year in 2024, the National Bureau of Statistics of China reported on Friday.

The total population of China stood at 1.408 billion at the end of 2024, a decline of 1.39 million from 2023, according to the press release. The country’s continuous population decline is largely due to low fertility rates, which have been steadily declining for half a century.

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Kristi Noem Pledges to End CISA Anti-‘Misinformation’ Efforts, Focus on Security

Kristi Noem

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security will crack down on domestic terrorism, the border, and cybersecurity attacks rather than waging war against election misinformation, secretary nominee Kristi Noem vowed.

During her Friday confirmation hearing before the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, the Republican governor of South Dakota emphasized how the American people have lost trust in the DHS and other federal agencies meant to ensure national security, particularly those responsible for the border.

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EXCLUSIVE: Tennessee AG Jonathan Skrmetti Confident Settlement with BlackRock Will Help to Abolish ESG Investing Among Other Asset Managers

Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti told The Tennessee Star’s CEO and Editor-in-Chief Michael Patrick Leahy that ESG (Environment, Social, and Governance) investing is “dead” at the “biggest asset manager in the world” on Friday as a result of a settlement reached Friday between the State of Tennessee and BlackRock, Inc.

In December 2023, Skrmetti filed a consumer protection lawsuit against BlackRock’s ESG investing, arguing that the hedge fund had misled consumers in Tennessee about the scale and impacts of its ESG initiatives for several years.

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Trump to Tap Sean Curran for Secret Service Director: Sources

Donald Trump (July 13, 2024)

President Trump plans to announce Secret Service agent Sean Curran, who heads his detail, to be the agency’s director, according to three sources in the Secret Service community.

Curran, who has served in the agency for more than two decades, leads a team of roughly 85 agents who protect the president-elect and has done so over the last two and a half years of his presidential campaign. Curran has the closest relationship to Trump of any current agent and is usually physically closest to him at any given moment in the innermost ring of Secret Service security dedicated to protecting the incoming president’s life on a daily basis.

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Trump-Vance Inauguration to Move Indoors on Monday, President-Elect Announces

Donald Trump and JD Vance

President-elect Donald Trump and Vice President-elect JD Vance’s swearing-in ceremonies will take place inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda on Monday amid record low temperatures and possible snow forecasted for the day.

Trump announced Friday that he has ordered the Inauguration Address, in addition to prayers and other speeches, to be delivered inside the U.S. Capitol Rotunda instead of outside on the steps of the Capitol.

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AG Skrmetti Declares ‘Tennessee Beats ESG’ After Legal Settlement with BlackRock over Retirement Funds Used for ‘Radical Ideology’

Jonathan Skrmetti

Tennessee Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti on Friday celebrated a legal settlement between the State of Tennessee and BlackRock, Inc., which resulted in the company changing its policies related to Environment, Social, and Governance investing.

“Tennessee beats ESG,” wrote Skrmetti in a post to the social media platform X containing a link to the settlement. “BlackRock’s stringent obligations under this settlement ensure Tennesseans will not see their retirement funds used to support radical ideologies they oppose.”

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Mike Pence’s Nonprofit Opposes Confirmation of RFK Jr. as President-Elect Says Ex-VP Suffers from ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

Robert F. Kennedy Jr, Mike Pence

The dark money nonprofit founded by former Vice President Mike Pence on Friday urged Republicans in the U.S. Senate to vote against confirming Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who President-elect Donald Trump nominated to become secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, after the president-elect listed his former subordinate in a list of Republicans suffering from “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

In a letter initially obtained by The Daily Wire on Tuesday, Pence’s nonprofit Advancing American Freedom, which does not need to disclose its donors as a 501 (c) (4) organization, said Republicans should vote against Kennedy’s confirmation due to the former Democrat’s past support for abortion.

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Supreme Court Upholds Law That Could Shut Down TikTok

TikTok, Supreme Court

The Supreme Court upheld a law on Wednesday forcing TikTok’s Chinese owners to divest from the app or face a ban, paving the way for the app to shut down on Jan. 19

“There is no doubt that, for more than 170 million Americans, TikTok offers a distinctive and expansive outlet for expression, means of engagement, and source of community,” the court held. “But Congress has determined that divestiture is necessary to address its well-supported national security concerns regarding TikTok’s data collection practices and relationship with a foreign adversary.”

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Todd Bensman Uncovers Billions of U.S. Taxpayer Money Funding United Nations Agencies, NGOs Aiding and Assisting Illegal Migrants

Todd Bensman, Michael Patrick Leahy

Todd Bensman, a senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, is bringing attention to the billions of U.S. taxpayer dollars that are continuing to fund United Nations agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) that work to aid and assist migrants in crossing into the country illegally.

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Arizona House Republican Majority Issues Conservative Blueprint for 2025

Arizona State House Speaker Steve Montenegro

The Arizona House Republicans issued a “2025 Majority Plan” this week, laying out their plans for this year’s legislative session. The conservative blueprint contains sections on securing elections, securing the border, protecting individual rights and liberties, economic prosperity, improving education, and streamlining government.

Under the direction of new House Speaker Steve Montenegro (R-Glendale), the plan to secure elections states, “Arizona voters deserve elections that are free, fair, and transparent. It shouldn’t take weeks to count ballots. We will protect the integrity of Arizona elections from anyone who chooses to tamper with them, and we will ensure that ballots are counted faster and results are known sooner.”

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Biden’s Green Loan Office Offers Up a Staggering $22 Billion in Admin’s Final Hours

Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm

The Biden administration’s green loan office is shelling out nearly $23 billion to utility companies for green energy development and other projects in its final days.

The Department of Energy’s (DOE) Loan Programs Office (LPO) announced its conditional commitment to provide a combined $22.9 billion in financing to numerous utility companies across the country to “modernize” their grid systems by adding new green energy generation, building transmission lines needed to harness renewable generation and more. The LPO is continuing its lame duck lending spree through the very end of the Biden administration, even though Republicans and the DOE’s internal watchdog have called for a freeze on LPO activity due to concerns about the office’s safeguards pertaining to conflicts of interest.

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Virginia Democrats Shelve Bill to Protect Girls’ Sports Despite Support from Youngkin, Earle-Sears, Athlete Riley Gaines

Women's Volleyball

A Virginia State Senate subcommittee on Thursday shelved legislation that would have prohibited biological men who identify as transgender women from competing on sports teams with biological women, despite the bill receiving support from Governor Glenn Youngkin, Lieutenant Governor Winsome Earle-Sears, Attorney General Jason Miyares, and former college athlete Riley Gaines.

Senate Bill 749 by State Senator Tammy Brankley Mulchi (R-Clarksville) would have required schools to clearly state whether sports teams are for men, women, or are coed, and also required student athletes to obtain a signed document from a physician stating they seek to compete on a team that corresponds to their biological gender. The bill would have also allowed students who suffered from a school’s failure to adhere to the law to sue for damages.

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Commentary: Time to Ask Tough Questions About These Student Loan Bailouts

Even as the Trump inauguration nears, Biden continues to cause controversy, including with student loan cancellations.

On January 13,  his Education Department announced yet another round of student loan forgiveness—this time, for more than 150,000 borrowers—bringing the Administration’s total number of individuals with student debt canceled to over 5 million.

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Review: Norm Grant’s ‘Tales of Young Patriots’

Tales of Young Patriots

P. Norman Grant has written “Tales of Young Patriots,” a delightful collection of 12 short stories of historical fiction celebrating the story of America, and the virtues that made our people great, through the eyes and ears of young participants in key moments in our country’s history.

From the ocean passages of the 1600s to our modern desert wars, Young Patriots contains lessons in virtue driven by action. The stories are written in a style and with language to appeal to middle or high school students of social studies or history.

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Arizona Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee Passes Bill to Speed up Election Tabulation Modeled After Florida Law

Maricopa County election processing

The Arizona Senate Judiciary and Elections Committee passed election integrity bill SB 1011 with a 4-3 vote along party lines on Wednesday. Sponsored by Arizona Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa), the bill is modeled after Florida election law, in order to speed up ballot tabulation. Florida announces election results overnight after an election, whereas Arizona has come under criticism for taking up to two weeks due to lengthy signature verification on mail-in ballot affidavits.

The bill provides that voters who return their early ballots to early voting locations after 7 p.m. the Friday before the election would be required to present identification. Only if they drop the ballots off at the actual county recorder’s office that late would they be allowed to skip showing ID. Currently, voters can drop early ballots off at any location without ID up until 7 p.m. on Election Day. Additionally, in-person voting would be expanded past Friday before the election to Saturday and Sunday before the election.

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Lee Zeldin Tells Senator He ‘Doesn’t Believe’ in ‘Armed Bureaucracy’ When Asked About ‘Outrageous’ EPA Raid

Lee Zeldin

Former Republican Rep. Lee Zeldin of New York said Thursday he believed the Environmental Protection Agency should not be an “armed bureaucracy.”

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) carried out a raid with dozens of armed agents on a mine near Chicken, Alaska, in August 2013, according to Fox News. Republican Sen. Dan Sullivan of Alaska asked Zeldin, who President-elect Donald Trump nominated to serve as EPA administrator, about the use of armed agents to conduct raids during a Thursday hearing, saying that the Biden administration was conducting armed raids similar to the 2013 raid on “small mechanic shops” in his state.

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