A caravan of more than 1,000 migrants crossed illegally into El Paso, Texas, Wednesday as chaos erupted in recent days on the Mexican side in Juarez.
Agents apprehended the group, which was mostly comprised of Venezuelans, Wednesday, El Paso Border Patrol Chief Anthony Good said late Thursday. The incident follows chaos in Juarez, where nearly 40 migrants died Monday in a shelter fire.
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Metro Nashville plans to backstop between $150 million and $250 million of the $760 million in revenue bonds taken out by the Metro Nashville Sports Authority for a new estimated $2.2 billion Tennessee Titans stadium if the deal is approved in April by both the sports authority and the Metro Nashville Council.
Financial details of the deal were presented to the sports authority Tuesday after a similar meeting scheduled for Monday with the city’s finance committee was postponed following the Covenant School shooting that left seven dead.
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Joe Biden is dethroning King Dollar in real time. The US dollar’s financial dominance is under siege from a uniquely bad combination of foreign and domestic policies, and Americans should be deeply concerned by the fallout if the dollar loses its 80-year reign as the world’s reserve currency.
In just the past weeks, China conducted the first major LNG sale in renminbi instead of dollars, struck a major deal with Brazil to conduct trade in their own currencies, and just announced the sale of 65,000 tons of LNG to France denominated in yuan. This dovetails with the Biden administration’s inflationary policies and ham-handed sanctions on Russia that accelerated foreigners’ flight from the dollar at the very moment the world doubts if the dollar remains a safe and reliable store of value.
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Michiganders should see $50 of savings after the state income tax decreases to 4.05% for one year.
“Michigan’s strong economic position has led to a reduction in the state income tax from 4.25% to 4.05% for 2023,” Treasurer Rachael Eubanks said in a statement. “When Michiganders file their 2023 state income taxes in 2024, they will see the rate adjustment in the form of less tax owed or a larger refund.”
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As Virginia resumes the Medicaid renewal process that was paused during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gov. Glenn Youngkin is asking the General Assembly to amend the “skinny” budget passed during the legislative session to include millions in funding from the American Rescue Plan Act to support the process.
The General Assembly adjourned at the end of February without a finalized budget. Instead, lawmakers approved a “stopgap” budget bill that included just a few items, including funding to address a calculation error that overstated the amount of state aid Virginia schools could expect to receive.
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In order to completely clean up the scene of a flaming train derailment that happened last month in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio, Norfolk Southern has decided to only work with Ohio-based companies.
Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced on Wednesday that he believed it was a good idea for the railroad to recruit businesses from throughout the state to carry out the work, which may take two years to complete.
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Social media platforms that choose to suspend or ban candidates for office would face tens of thousands – or hundreds of thousands – of dollars a day in fines under legislation working its way through the Legislature.
The House Commerce Committee on Tuesday approved Senate Bill 1106 along party lines. The bill defines how a social media suspends, bans or reduces the exposure of an account. This is also referred to as “shadowbanning.”
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Approximately 16 Georgia House Republicans voted down a piece of school choice legislation on Wednesday that would have given taxpayer funds to students outside of the public school education system.
In a 89-85 vote, the state House killed Senate Bill 233, which would have given state funded vouchers up to $6,500 to students pursuing a private or homeschool education. Republican Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp endorsed the legislation after it passed the Senate on March 6, urging state lawmakers to “get this over the finish line,” according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
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On Wednesday, a group of Republican lawmakers filed a discharge petition on House Joint Resolution (HJR) 1 which aims to alter the process of how constitutional amendments can be proposed by initiative petitions.
A bill or resolution may be discharged from committee if it wins the support of a simple majority of House members (50 percent + 1). This implies that even if the resolution has not yet been approved out of committee or finished holding hearings, it would automatically advance to the floor for a vote if 50 representatives signed on.
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Two bills passed through the House Commerce Committee Tuesday with bipartisan support, Senate Bills (SB) 1161 & 1163, aiming to provide zoning reform to Arizona so more affordable housing can be made available.
“Big wins yesterday getting 1161 and 1163 out of House Commerce 7-3 for each bill. This is bipartisanship! R’s and D’s understand we need zoning reform in AZ,” tweeted State Senator Steve Kaiser (R-Phoenix).
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Ohio Governor Mike DeWine issued an executive order on Wednesday that would make Ohio one of the first states in the nation to designate xylazine as a controlled substance drug.
According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse, xylazine, a non-opioid veterinary tranquilizer, is a central nervous system depressant that can cause drowsiness and amnesia and slow breathing, heart rate, and blood pressure to dangerously low levels.
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Border authorities in the U.S. are expecting a further increase in the number of Chinese migrants crossing illegally at the southern border, and have identified key ways they are entering the country, according to an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) document exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The document, which was circulated via an internal email to CBP personnel, warns of more Chinese nationals entering the U.S. via the southern border due to a broader message from smugglers about routes into the country. The document details key smuggling routes, and notes that the Chinese nationals are entering in higher numbers due to religious persecution against the Christian faith.
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The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The “energy transition” is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b and here), reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment, toward such unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are expensive, unreliable, and deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a larger context large and inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in environmental protection.
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The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found itself hoist with its own petard by making 25 basic statistical and numerical errors related to COVID-19, particularly with regard to children, while purporting to expose COVID vaccine misinformation, according to an analysis led by University of California San Francisco epidemiologists.
The preprint, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, documented 20 errors that “exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation” and three that “simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed” severity, while one each was neutral or exaggerated vaccine risks.
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On Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to commit to using federal resources to investigate Monday’s shooting in Nashville as a hate crime, despite the perpetrator’s clear motivations against the Christian victims.
The Daily Caller reports that the Nashville Police Department discovered “writings” in Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s home after the shooting, which suggested a “calculated and planned” attack. Addressing these reports, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) noted during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that the 28-year-old Hale “could have had collaborators.”
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Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Thursday that he will not visit a small Minnesota town that was evacuated after a Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) train derailed and caught fire earlier that morning.
Raymond, Minnesota, residents who live within a half mile from the derailment site were evacuated after approximately 22 cars derailed and four caught on fire around 1:00 a.m. CST. The train was carrying mixed freight including ethanol and corn syrup.
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On the heels of The Tennessee Star’s report in which a security expert recommended that schools implement ballistic glass film to deter and prevent school shooters, another security expert has recommended the same.
“So even if you shoot it 100 times, you’ve still not gained access,” said Wayne Gregory of Ever Safe, as reported by FOX17. “You’ve only put holes in the glass. And then beat it out of the frame of the hammer is the only way to get in.”
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A day after shootings at a Nashville school left three students, three teachers and the shooter dead, Tennessee’s Senate Judiciary Committee delayed all of its gun-related bills one week.
The committee was set to consider Senate Bill 1325, which would allow a teacher to carry a concealed handgun on school property with a permit. The Legislature is also considering a bill to lower the age for a concealed carry permit to 18 along with competing versions of the bill in the House and Senate regarding whether loaded long guns will be allowed to be carried in public.
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Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard that President Joe Biden has nominated to head the World Bank, told Axios Wednesday that both the bank and the private sector needed to spend “trillions” to combat both climate change and poverty.
Banga has been aggressively campaigning for the job, meeting with officials from 37 different governments in the past three weeks, Axios reported. The World Bank faces competing pressure from wealthy and developing countries over whether to focus on combatting climate change or poverty mitigation, but Banga said he does not view the two goals as inherently opposed to one another.
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In 2016 Tennessee passed two new statutes with bi-partisan support that addressed the issue of whether Tennessee’s private schools, both K-12 and “higher education,” could establish their own policies with respect to whether and to what extent civilian possession of firearms would be prohibited on their campuses. These laws are codified at Tennessee Code Annotated Sections 49-50-803 and 49-7-161.
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Gov. Tim Walz and his family will temporarily relocate to a $17,000-a-month lakeside mansion later this year during renovations to the St. Paul governor’s residence.
The Minnesota Department of Administration entered into an 18-month lease agreement with MFM Properties II, LLC for a five-bedroom, 7,900-square foot home in Sunfish Lake.
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The Arizona State Senate passed more legislation Tuesday aimed at strengthening Arizona’s elections, starting with House Concurrent Resolution (HCR) 2033, sponsored by State Representative Austin Smith (R-Suprise).
“Thank you to the @AZSenateGOP for voting out HCR2033. A bigger thank you to all the grassroots activists who worked so hard to make this happen. Very grateful for you all,” Smith tweeted. “This constitutional referral to protect our party primaries and girding us against radical experimental election systems that disenfranchise voters such as ‘ranked choice voting.'”
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S.686, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act or the appropriately titled “RESTRICT Act” could be used to censor any website in America, not just TikTok.
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Two leftist Pennsylvania state senators are reintroducing legislation that would ban the use of solitary confinement for gay and transgender prisoners but allow its limited use on others.
Senators John Kane (D-Chester) and Katie Muth (D-Royersford) sent colleagues a memorandum describing their proposal and bemoaning the effects of isolation on prisoners’ mental health. Their bill would limit to 15 days a period of solitary confinement for any of Pennsylvania’s 37,000 state-facility inmates. LGBTQ individuals as well as pregnant women, minors and those 70 or older would be shielded from any isolated imprisonment.
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Critics say a bill that would increase retirement benefits for beneficiaries of the state’s defined-benefit pension system could put the system’s financials in future jeopardy.
House Bill 239, which passed favorably through the House Appropriations Committee meeting on Tuesday, will increase retirement benefits for the 629,073 members of the Florida Retirement System and 151,913 current retirees.
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Connecticut’s health care expenses increased by 6% to $34 billion in 2021, according to a new report, exceeding a goal set by Gov. Ned Lamont to limit the state’s cost growth.
The first annual Connecticut Healthcare Cost Growth Benchmark report said the state spent $34 billion on health care and insurance costs in 2021, up from $31.9 billion in 2019 and $30.9 billion in 2020. That’s higher than the 3.4% growth benchmark set by the Lamont administration three years ago.
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Arizona Superintendent of Public Instruction Tom Horne released a study Tuesday demonstrating that school districts that put a higher percentage of their budget into the classroom and teacher salaries perform better academically.
“No school can be better than the quality of the teachers in the classroom,” Horne stated. “The surrounding states pay more, and we lose good teachers to those states. We cannot afford to let this go on.”
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The Scottsdale City Council voted 4-3 last week to convert two driving lanes in Scottsdale’s Old Town entertainment district to bicycle lanes. Along 68th Street from Indian School Road south to Thomas Road, one lane each way will become bicycle lanes, leaving only one lane each way on the busy street available for vehicles.
Scottsdale City Councilmember Barry Graham, who lives in South Scottsdale near Old Town and opposed the March 21 vote, tweeted, “On Tuesday, Scottsdale City Council voted (4-3) to eliminate 2 lanes from one of your major streets in south Scottsdale. I tried to find a compromise that preserved the car lanes. Unfortunately, councilmembers made the issue about what they want — not what you want.”
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The State Legislature revived Cincinnati city officials’ attempt to sell a city-owned rail line to Norfolk Southern, the same company that caused the toxic disaster in East Palestine, which stalled last month,
City leaders announced a plan to sell the rail line that runs to Chattanooga, Tennessee, to Norfolk Southern at the end of last year for $1.6 billion. However, that deal could not be done without changes to state law.
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Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy blasted the U.S. Department of Education for creating “psychopaths” through gender ideology agendas while the nation’s schools are left unprotected from mass shooters like the one that terrorized a Nashville elementary school this week.
“The real question is why this psychopath in Nashville was able to get into the school in the first place,” the Ohio entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader wrote in a tweet. “We protect green pieces of paper in a bank with more armed guards than we do our kids in schools … There’s more security at a random mall than in a public school.”
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Ohio Secretary of State Frank LaRose on Tuesday supported a prospective August election as a way to change the process of how initiative petitions can propose constitutional amendments.
Republicans in both the House and Senate have introduced resolutions to raise the initiative petition voting threshold to 60 percent to amend the state Constitution.
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The Ohio Supreme Court set a schedule on Tuesday for briefs and evidence in a lawsuit claiming that the Ohio Ballot Board erred by approving a proposed abortion constitutional amendment as one issue.
Earlier this month, the Ohio Ballot Board unanimously certified that the proposed constitutional amendment by the Ohioans for Reproductive Freedom, a coalition of radical pro-abortion activists that includes Planned Parenthood, Pro-Choice Ohio, the Abortion Fund of Ohio, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Ohio, along with the Ohio Physicians for Reproductive Rights that would legalize abortion throughout the state called “The Right to Reproductive Freedom with Protections for Health and Safety,” incorporated only one constitutional amendment and therefore advanced to the signature gathering stage.
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When the existence of the Disinformation Governance Board burst into public view, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was nothing sinister to hide and claimed the office was rooted in “best practices.”
A year later, Mayorkas’ department is refusing to let Americans see most of the legal justifications and talking points it created to defend the now-disbanded board from “blowback,” FOIA documents showed.
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Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear let a bill that allows parents to challenge sexually explicit school materials become law without his signature on Tuesday.
Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Josh Calloway, lets parents file complaints over school materials that depict sexual acts “in an obscene manner” or are “patently offensive to prevailing standards.” The legislation passed the state Senate in February and then the state House on March 15 before Beshear allowed the bill to become law.
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Pennsylvania Department of Labor & Industry (L&I) officials testified before state senators Tuesday, requesting an increase in the department’s budget as well as a hike in the commonwealth’s minimum wage.
Governor Josh Shapiro’s Fiscal Year 2023-24 spending proposal envisions an 11.4-percent rise in L&I’s allocation to $89.8 million. The agency’s acting secretary Nancy Walker also asked lawmakers to consider backing the governor’s goal to raise the Keystone State’s legal wage floor to $15 per hour.
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Federal and state Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) officials were questioned about the East Palestine train derailment at a Tuesday hearing of the U.S. House Environment, Manufacturing, and Critical Materials Subcommittee over a month after a train carrying toxic chemicals derailed in East Palestine, Ohio.
Debra Shore, the regional administrator of the U.S. EPA Region 5, and Anne Vogel, the director of the Ohio EPA, both gave testimony and detailed the actions they have taken in reaction to the incident.
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Connecticut trucks hundreds of thousands of tons of solid waste to landfills in other states, which costs the state and taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
Gov. Ned Lamont has pitched a plan to reduce the amount of waste going to other states by increasing recycling and requiring manufacturers to reduce packaging materials, but the effort has faced pushback from the solid waste industry and some lawmakers.
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Political observers and partisan activists debate whether Donald Trump or some other Republican candidate has the best chance of beating a Democratic rival in the 2024 presidential election. But earlier this month, Trump demonstrated that just as he did in 2016, he is raising campaign issues central to America’s future, issues that no other candidate is talking about. The latest flare-ups of what have been nearly eight years of relentless, orchestrated prosecution of Trump are a massive distraction but don’t change this reality.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed more than 700 bills sent to his desk by the General Assembly by Monday’s action deadline, approving a slew of new laws that will take effect by July 1.
The governor approved 738 bills by Monday’s action deadline and vetoed three as of Tuesday at 3 p.m., according to the state’s bill tracking system. The governor has also issued recommendations and amendments to 78 other measures, which the General Assembly will consider when it reconvenes in Richmond April 12.
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Democratic Arizona Governor Katie Hobbs announced shortly after entering office in January that she would eliminate the Border Strike Force (BSF) that former Governor Doug Ducey created in 2015, sparking outrage from Republican lawmakers concerned about rising crime and violence related to Arizona’s porous border with Mexico. Hobbs said as part of her budget, she would reroute the funding for the BSF elsewhere.
“In the same manner that Joe Biden has destroyed our country with his welcomed support for the prolonged lawlessness and drug crisis along our southern border, Katie Hobbs is destroying Arizona in three short months since taking office by her reckless dismantling of the Border Strike Task Force,” Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ-09) told Fox News. “Countless more people will die from Hobbs’ open border policies.”
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In the wake of the murder of six people at a Christian School in Nashville, Tennessee by an individual who reportedly “identified as transgender” on Monday, U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH) said that the extreme left needs to do a lot of “soul searching.”
According to Vance, this terrible incident should prompt the extreme left to deeply consider the correctness of their ideals.
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Make no mistake about it, TikTok is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda machine living rent-free on the devices of 150 million Americans, and it’s putting our national security in jeopardy. This insidious app collects your data, surveils behavior, monitors user habits, and negatively influences our youth with an endless stream of addictive content.
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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) announced several legislative actions on Tuesday, including the veto of Senate Bill (SB) 1063, sponsored by State Sen. Sonny Borrelli (R-Lake Havasu), which would have prevented Arizona municipalities from enforcing a tax on groceries.
“This veto is a disgraceful windfall for cities and an absolute gouge for families,” said Majority Leader Borrelli. “We’re not only paying inflated prices to feed our families, but we’re also paying more in taxes as the cost of food rises. Food is not a luxury; it is a necessity. A tax on our groceries is regressive and hurts everyone.”
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Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost filed a lawsuit against several pharmacy benefit management firms on the grounds that they have erroneously raised the cost of medications like insulin.
Yost claims that the companies, one of which is based in Switzerland, have maintained dominance over most of the pharmaceutical market due to industry consolidation. Yost named Ascent Health Services LLC, Express Scripts Inc., Cigna Group, Evernorth Health Inc., Prime Therapeutics LLC, Humana Pharmacy Solutions Inc., and Humana Inc. as defendants in the lawsuit. Yost filed the lawsuit on Monday in the Delaware County Common Pleas Court.
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Secretary of State Doug La Follette’s sudden retirement from the post he’s held for nearly half a century raised questions, particularly when Governor Tony Evers swiftly appointed former state treasurer and Democratic Party political climber Sarah Godlewski to take La Follette’s place.
But it’s the millions of dollars La Follette — and his survivors — could take home in retirement benefits that may really raise eyebrows.
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Leaders of the Pennsylvania State Police emphasized their recruitment efforts as they testified in front of the House Appropriations Committee on Monday.
They also supported Gov. Josh Shapiro’s call to create a dedicated fund, rather than relying on money from the Motor License Fund to support operations.
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An amendment being brought forth this week by House Education Chair Mark White (R-Memphis) if made law, would make more families eligible to participate in the state’s Education Savings Account (ESA) program. Often referred to as “vouchers”, ESAs provide funding to eligible families to enroll their children in private schools.
Currently, only students in Davidson and Shelby counties are eligible to participate, but earlier this session SB0012 was passed by the State Senate, expanding eligibility to Hamilton County students. The proposed amendment increases the potential for participation by students in even more districts.
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The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. agreed that the North Carolina-based First-Citizens Bank & Trust Co. can acquire the troubled Silicon Valley Bank, and 17 branches of the California-based bank will reopen Monday as branches of First-Citizens.
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Pennsylvania’s House Appropriations Committee members signaled general agreement with Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro’s budget-increase goals for Pennsylvania State Police (PSP) on Monday, though some related issues remain contentious.
Representatives questioned PSP Commissioner Christopher Paris, Acting Deputy Commissioner of Operations George Bivens and other lead staffers at the agency in preparation for the budget process which lawmakers aim to wrap up by June 30.
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Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin signed into law a pair of bills Monday aimed at providing greater financial flexibility for individuals with developmental disabilities who receive waiver services – a move supporters say will translate to greater “buying power” for people with disabilities to invest in technology that allows them to live independently.
Virginia currently offers several kinds of Disability Waivers – including Community Living, Family and Individual Supports, and Building Independence waivers – for individuals diagnosed with a developmental disability. The waivers offer long-term support for people with developmental disabilities and include access to services, including assistive technology and electronic home-based services.
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