Category: Policy

Commentary: Armed Teachers Save Lives

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Nikki Goeser

My husband Ben and I used to run a mobile karaoke business in Nashville, Tennessee. Every Thursday evening, we would load up our vehicle and head to a popular restaurant to help facilitate a night of good music and great memories.

As a woman who was concerned for her safety, I usually carried my permitted concealed handgun with me. But in April of 2009, Tennessee did not allow carrying firearms in restaurants that served alcohol, so I left my handgun locked inside of my vehicle.

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Israel Ministers Threaten to Quit Over Ceasefire, Official Says Biden’s Description ‘Not Accurate’

Just the News
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich with Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir (composite image)

Top Israeli ministers are threatening to quit, which would cause the government coalition to collapse, if Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu agrees to President Joe Biden’s cease-fire proposal.

A senior Israeli official said that Biden’s description of the cease-fire proposal, which he unveiled Friday, was “not accurate,” NBC News reported Monday.

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Georgia Airports Secure Federal Funding Boost

The Center Square

The federal government announced a pair of airport grants for Georgia, including money for an airport in middle Georgia and a statewide grant program.

The funding is part of nearly $187 million in taxpayer-backed grants for 90 airport-related projects in 34 states that the Federal Aviation Administration announced on Friday. The funding was included in the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which some call the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law.

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Federal Lawmakers Push for Greater Restrictions on ‘Lab-Grown Meat’

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Lab and Meat

With the rise of so-called “lab-grown meat” being promoted as a “green” alternative to actual meat, federal lawmakers are beginning to follow the example set by several states as they push for restrictions on this new concoction.

As reported by the Associated Press, lab-grown meat is not yet available in grocery stores or served in restaurants anywhere in the United States. Several states, including Florida and Arizona, have already passed laws to ban the sale of such products, while Iowa has forbidden the distribution of such food in schools.

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Commentary: Joe Biden’s Dangerous Natural Gas Game

RealClearWire
Joe Biden

If the devil is in the details, bureaucracy is hell on earth. Though terrain familiar to the Biden administration, Republicans must prepare to navigate it.

Witness the debacle over liquefied natural gas exports, wherein the White House, by “pausing” most new approvals, has catapulted the energy security of key U.S. allies straight into the buzzsaw of its climate ambitions. (The category of exports that will continue to be authorized is tiny.) The Department of Energy claims that a multifactor impact study due in early 2025 is required to determine whether and how the moratorium will be lifted.

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Emails Suggest Fauci Aides Miswrote Names to Evade FOIA

Just the News
Dr. Anthony Fauci

Dr. Anthony Fauci became a punchline for reportedly claiming to “not recall” more than 100 times in his transcribed interview with the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic how he ran the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases during COVID-19.

His former chief of staff, Greg Folkers, may have a tougher sell: convincing lawmakers he is just coincidentally bad at spelling proper nouns likely to be searched in Freedom of Information Act requests related to COVID origins and federal funding of a suspected outbreak source.

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Group: Georgia Could See a $1.1 Billion Cut in SNAP Benefits

The Center Square
Grocery Shopping

Georgia could see a more than $1 billion reduction in how much federal money it receives for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program.

According to the Georgia Budget and Policy Institute, the Farm, Food, and National Security Act of 2024 includes a $30 billion reduction in SNAP funding. The group pointed to a Center on Budget and Policy Priorities finding that Georgia would see a nearly $1.1 billion reduction over a decade.

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Oversight Panel Investigates Secret Service ‘DEI’ Practices

RealClearWire
Secret Service

The House Oversight and Accountability Committee has launched an investigation into potential vulnerabilities in the Secret Service’s ability to protect President Biden, Vice President Harris, and former President Donald Trump and their families after an incident last month raised new concerns about the agency’s diversity, equity, and inclusion hiring decisions and vetting process.

Rep. James Comer, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the panel, sent Secret Service Director Kimberly Cheatle a letter Thursday requesting an agency briefing on the matter by June 13.

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Florida AG Moody Calls on Treasury to Stop Supporting ‘Cuba’s Communist Interests’

The Center Square
Ashely Moody Cuba

Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody on Thursday called on U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen to stop the agency’s “continued support of Cuba’s communist interests.”

She did so after Cuban-American lawmakers raised the alarm about Chinese spies operating in Cuba, reportedly targeting Cuban-Americans as well as about the Biden administration recently allowing Cuban regime officials to tour TSA facilities at the Miami International Airport.

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Connecticut Gov. Lamont Signs Paid Leave Bill into Law

The Center Square
Ned Lamont

Connecticut employers will be required to provide workers with up to a week of paid leave under a proposal signed into law by Gov. Ned Lamont, despite a number of concerns from the state’s business community that it will drive up costs and hurt bottom lines.

The new law pushed through the state Legislature despite Republican opposition, will require Connecticut employers in most retail and service occupations to provide up to 40 hours of annual leave. It would allow eligible workers to accrue one hour of paid time off for every 30 hours worked up to a maximum mandated benefit of 40 hours a year.

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South Carolina Gov. McMaster Signs Pair of ‘Child Safety’ Measures

The Center Square
South Carolina

South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster ceremonially signed a pair of “child safety” measures on Wednesday, including one mandating age verification on websites with sexually explicit content.

H. 3424, the Child Online Safety Act, mandates that sites with at least one-third of their content being “obscene material” enforce an age verification system starting Jan. 1, 2025. This would ostensibly bar users under 18 from accessing the site’s material.

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Supreme Court Unanimously Sides with NRA in First Amendment Case Against New York Official

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Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

The Supreme Court unanimously held Thursday that the National Rifle Association (NRA) “plausibly alleged” that a New York official violated its First Amendment rights, finding that government officials cannot “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”

The justices allowed the NRA to pursue its First Amendment claim against former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) Maria Vullo, vacating a lower court ruling that found the NRA failed to show Vullo “crossed the line between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce.” They held that the gun rights group has a plausible case that Vullo “violated the First Amendment by coercing regulated entities to terminate their business relationships with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy.”

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Exclusive: Sen. Blackburn Discusses State of Economy with Former Trump Advisor

Peter D'Abrosca
Stephen Moore Marsha Blackburn

In a yet-to-be-released episode of her podcast Unmuted, Sen. Marsha Blackburn spoke with former President Donald J. Trump’s economic advisor, Stephen Moore, about the state of the economy, which the senator said is in much worse shape than the Biden administration’s official numbers.

“[R]ight now, Tennesseans are spending about $1,000 a month more than they were spending in 2020 during President Trump’s time,” Blackburn said before introducing Moore. “And repeatedly, I hear these questions. How are they arriving at these inflation numbers when they tell us it’s really not that bad? And we go to the grocery store in the gas pump and go by the clothing store, and prices are through the roof.”

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Public Schools Push ‘Climate Crisis’ Narrative, as Skeptics Try to Offer Other Perspectives

Just the News
Paul Tice, senior fellow for the National Center for Energy Analytics

Paul Tice, senior fellow for the National Center for Energy Analytics, took the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal to criticize the climate change curriculum in New Jersey public schools.

The educational materials, Tice explained, are not just found in sections of science courses, but in all school subjects. Districts are encouraged to insert lessons on climate change into English language arts and mathematics. In foreign language classes, students discuss the impacts of climate change “on the target language of the world.”

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UCLA Med School DEI Leader Accused of Major Plagiarism Refuses to Address Allegations

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Natalie Perry

Another university diversity, equity, and inclusion administrator is facing allegations of plagiarism – but neither she nor her employer, the University of California at Los Angeles, has responded publicly to the report.

Natalie Perry, the leader of the Cultural North Star program at the UCLA School of Medicine, and UCLA did not answer multiple requests for comment from The College Fix since a recent investigation alleged she plagiarized large portions of her doctoral dissertation.

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Phoenix Unanimously Bans Homeless Camps Near Schools, Daycares, Shelters, Parks and City Property

Tom Pappert
Homeless Camps

The City of Phoenix on Wednesday approved an ordinance that will ban the homeless from camping within 500 feet schools, businesses that provide child care, shelters or parks.

Effective on September 1, the ordinance was approved unanimously by the Phoenix City Council according to KTAR News, which reported violators “will face a $100 fine for the class 3 misdemeanor.”

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Commentary: Civil Unrest and Radical Reappraisals are Shaping the Future of American Culture

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Pro-Palestine Protesters at Ohio State University

Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies.

Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.

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U.S. Economic Growth in First Quarter Worse than Previously Thought

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Jerome Powell and Joe Biden (composite image)

The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024 amid a slowdown in consumer spending, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced Thursday.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was revised down in the first quarter from 1.6 percent to 1.3 percent year-over-year in a sign that the economy is not as strong as initial estimates indicated, according to a release from the BEA. Economists originally expected growth in the first quarter to be around 2.2 percent, more in line with the above trend growth seen in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, which were 4.9 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.

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Justice Department Investigated Conservative ‘Moms for Liberty’ in Same Manner as KKK: Report

Just the News
Moms for Liberty

The internal emails appeared to show that the DOJ pressured local officials at times to accept their help, including by using emails from doj.gov accounts to allegedly pester them when they did not show interest.

The Justice Department (DOJ) appeared to investigate a conservative parental rights group in the same manner that it investigated the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), according to a news report on Wednesday.

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American Tax Dollars Fund Laundry List of Left-Wing Books

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People sitting under a transgender flag

American tax dollars are funding an array of book projects covering topics like “trans reproduction” and the “neglected queer history” of homosexuality in post-colonial Ireland, federal records show.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) spends hundreds of thousands of tax dollars a year funding academics to write full-length books on a variety of subjects, according to grant records. While many of the books center on innocuous topics, like the history of criminal procedure in China or philosopher Immanuel Kant, others the NEH funded in 2023 and 2024 veer into left-wing topics.

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Migrants Insist on Crossing the Rio Grande into the United States Despite Increasing Deportations

ADN America
Illegal migrants crossing Rio Grande

Despite the increasing deportations and operations of the United States and Mexico , migrants on the border of the Mexican Ciudad Juárez with the American El Paso insist on crossing the Rio Grande (Grande) border irregularly. This was confirmed by a report from the Spanish news agency EFE this day.

The situation escalated because last week the US authorities expelled 200 migrants who crossed through gate 40 of the wall and handed them over to the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juárez, where it was announced that they would return them to Chiapas , the state of the southern border of Mexico , the outlet said.

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New Study Challenges ‘Myth’ That U.S. Has a Mass Incarceration Problem

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Inmate in prison cell

Prison reform advocates have repeatedly pushed the notion that the U.S. has a mass incarceration problem, but a soon-to-be released Heritage Foundation study casts doubt on that claim.

Left-wing proponents of criminal justice reform claim that masses of individuals, including an unfair rate of minorities, are languishing in America’s country’s prisons, but they do not take into account the vast number of crimes that go unsolved or the number of criminals who avoid jail time, according to the report. The data show that any mass release of the U.S. prison population would result in a high number of individuals convicted of violent crimes being put back into American communities.

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Gov. Lee Signs Abortion Trafficking Bill into Law

Peter D'Abrosca
Bill Lee

Gov. Bill Lee (R) on Tuesday signed a bill into law that will penalize adults who take minors across state lines to obtain abortions or sex change surgeries. 

HB 1895 “creates the criminal offense of abortion trafficking of a minor; provides for a civil action against a person committing the offense of abortion trafficking of a minor for the wrongful death of an unborn child that was aborted.”

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A.G. Kris Mayes Claims She is ‘Fighting So Hard’ for Abortion to Keep Arizona from Becoming Like Texas

Tom Pappert
Kris Mayes

Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes claimed this week that she is “fighting so hard” to preserve abortion access to prevent Arizona from following Texas’ path of banning the practice after the child’s heartbeat is detected, according to an article published Wednesday.

Mayes made the remarks to the Austin American-Statesman while in Texas for a Democratic Attorneys General Association meeting the outlet reported was designed to allow the legal officials “to strategize on abortion access” throughout the country.

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Commentary: China’s Land Purchases in U.S. Spark Outcry for Federal Solution

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Smithfield Foods factory farm

Over the past two years, nearly half the states in America acted to scrutinize purchases of land linked to China and other foreign adversaries. Concerns focus primarily on national security threats from China, and they’re well-founded.

The federal government has no idea how much real estate Chinese entities own in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture legally is required to track foreign ownership of agricultural land, but underestimates Chinese ownership by at least 50 percent.

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State of Oregon Attempts to Force Christian Ministry to Remove Christian Beliefs in Order to Receive Funding

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71Five Ministries

The state government of Oregon enacted a new restriction on a Christian youth ministry group, withholding crucial funding on the condition that the group specifically hire non-Christians or people who otherwise don’t agree with the group’s beliefs.

As reported by Fox News, the group, 71Five Ministries, is struggling with a large budget deficit following the Oregon Department of Education’s decision to revoke its funding due to its Christian beliefs. The ministry filed a lawsuit against the state in March, with the support of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), declaring the state’s decision to be a violation of their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Oral arguments in the case ended last week, and both sides are now waiting for the judge’s decision.

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Chinese Companies are Reportedly Camouflaging Themselves as U.S. Brands to Dodge Government Blacklist

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Hesai Headquarters

A number of blacklisted Chinese companies have reportedly disguised themselves as American to operate inside the U.S. and evade penalties, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The U.S. government has taken several steps to crack down on Chinese firms that have been linked to the Chinese Communist Party and identified as potential threats to national security. But companies of concern, including Hesai Group, SZ DJI Technologies, BGI Group, Huawaei and ByteDance have operated or worked with American-based companies to sell products and services inside the U.S. without penalty, according to the WSJ.

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Whistleblower Says Fulton DA Misspent Federal Grant

The Center Square
Fani Willis Money

A whistleblower who worked in the Fulton County District Attorney’s Office says she was fired after raising concerns about the misuse of federal grant funds.

Amanda Timpson worked with the office from 2018 until 2022 and served as the director of gang prevention and intervention under previous District Attorney Paul Howard. Timpson told the Senate Special Committee on Investigations she faced retaliation under District Attorney Fani Willis after raising concerns about how the office planned to spend a federal grant.

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Commentary: Despite Warnings, Biden Admin Finalizes Rule That Could Cripple Many Offshore Oil Companies

RealClearWire
Offshore Oil Platform

In June 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed a rule that would require stricter financial assurance standards for oil companies operating in the Outer Continental Shelf. This costly rule became final on April 15, 2024, but in the 10 months since its initial proposal, BOEM did nothing to alleviate concerns for smaller companies that comprise of 76 percent of oil and gas operators in the Gulf. As a result, many of these companies could be forced out of business by extreme and unnecessary costs from this rule. The situation threatens an estimated 36,000 jobs, more than $570 million in federal government royalties, and $9.9 billion from our GDP.

Records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act show private meetings between Interior officials and representatives of the major oil companies as they cooperated on this rule. If you think that’s strange, you’re not alone. President Biden made clear in his campaign that he wanted to end oil and gas production on public lands. It’s baffling that Big Oil – among the administration’s most, if not the most, maligned businesses – would stand on the same side with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club who praised the rule. But needless government intervention makes strange bedfellows. Big Oil must think it won’t miss the small competitors the rule will drive from the market.

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Commentary: America Should Pass Legislation Like Georgia’s ‘Agents of Foreign Influence’ Law

Admin
Ted Cruz

For once, I agree with the Washington Post – widely viewed as the newsletter of the deep state intel “community.”  I agree with their oft-repeated slogan that Democracy Dies in the Dark.  Now, if they could just move to apply that admonishment to countless issues that are now rising across the world.

This point came to me as I read the fear and loathing about a piece of new legislation in the nation of Georgia – not the RINO directed southern state but the country that borders the Black Sea.  Last week their Parliament passed legislation that required any NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) that received more than 20 percent of their funding from outside the country to register as “agents of foreign influence.”  As expected, the United States and its minions at the EU and NATO loudly condemned the legislation and demanded it be blocked.  In what has become the knee-jerk reaction of the “collective west,” there have been threats of retaliation, exclusion, and of course financial harm.

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European States’ Move to Recognize a Palestine Nation Adds to Biden’s Reelection Peace-Deal Efforts

Just the News
Benjamin Netanyahu

More European countries’ recognition of Palestine as a sovereign, independent nation is increasing the challenges President Biden faces in trying to win reelection and broker a long-term peace deal between Israel and Palestinian-backed Hamas.

The developments have the potential to tip the scales in what is expected to be a tight presidential race between Biden and former President Donald Trump, with Biden’s Democratic Party possibly abandoning him for his support of longtime Middle East ally Israel.

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‘Amateur Hour:’ Biden Admin’s Floating Gaza Pier Problems Go from Bad to Worse

Admin
JLTOS Pier in Gaza

New problems are mounting for the Biden administration’s $320 million floating Gaza aid pier which was already facing setbacks, despite becoming operational less than two weeks ago.

The U.S. military was forced to halt aid shipments to Gaza on Tuesday after the floating pier was damaged by bad weather over the weekend. The damage sustained from the bad weather is only the latest in a string of logistical and operational problems that have plagued the pier since it was constructed in mid May.

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Biden Received Sensitive Data, Briefings from Security Advisers via His Private Pseudonym Email

Just the News
Joe Biden

While he was vice president, Joe Biden received sensitive communications via his private email accounts created under a fictitious identity, including foreign policy discussions with his national security adviser, schedules of meetings with Cabinet secretaries and a summary of at least one intelligence briefing to President Barack Obama, according to new emails obtained by Just the News.

The new memos were released by the National Archives over the Memorial Day holiday weekend under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Southeastern Legal Foundation on behalf of Just the News that sought emails that Biden received or transmitted as vice president using his [email protected] account.

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New Documentary Details Female Sexual Assault Survivor’s Story of Being Incarcerated with Trans Inmate

Admin
Female inmate

A sexual assault survivor gave an inside look at living in a female prison with male criminals identifying as transgender in a new documentary by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) released Tuesday.

The six-minute documentary, part of IWF’s “Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons” series, focuses on the story of Evelyn Valiente, a sexual assault survivor and former inmate at the Central California Women’s Facility. Valiente, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity, was forced to share a housing unit with a male inmate identifying as a woman while serving time for killing someone in a shooting.

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Big Tech Championed Zero Emissions but Now Its Power-Hungry Data Centers are Straining the Grid

Just the News
Data center

For years, tech giants in California and Washington have been leading the charge to eliminate fossil fuels from the grid. Microsoft, Google, Meta and Apple, for example, are members of Climate Group RE100, an organization of major corporations who are dedicated to accelerating “change toward zero-carbon grids at scale by 2040.”

In 2018, Apple proclaimed that it was globally powered entirely by 100 percent renewable energy.

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Gov. Bill Lee Confirms He’s ‘Engaged’ with Republican Candidates to Determine School Choice Stance Ahead of Primary Elections

Tom Pappert
Bill Lee

Governor Bill Lee confirmed in a Monday press conference that he is “engaged” with Republican candidates to determine their stance on school choice following the defeat of his Education Freedom Scholarship Act, which would have provided 20,000 Education Savings Accounts for Tennessee students.

Lee said he has “met with several candidates, some who are in open seats; some who are incumbents,” with the governor specifically asking the candidates for their stances on “what I’m talking about is education freedom and choice for parents.”

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Commentary: OpenAI and Political Bias in Silicon Valley

RealClearWire
ChatGPT app on a smartphone

AI-powered image generators were back in the news earlier this year, this time for their propensity to create historically inaccurate and ethically questionable imagery. These recent missteps reinforced that, far from being the independent thinking machines of science fiction, AI models merely mimic what they’ve seen on the web, and the heavy hand of their creators artificially steers them toward certain kinds of representations. What can we learn from how OpenAI’s image generator created a series of images about Democratic and Republican causes and voters last December?

OpenAI’s ChatGPT 4 service, with its built-in image generator DALL-E, was asked to create an image representative of the Democratic Party (shown below). Asked to explain the image and its underlying details, ChatGPT explained that the scene is set in a “bustling urban environment [that] symbolizes progress and innovation . . . cities are often seen as hubs of cultural diversity and technological advancement, aligning with the Democratic Party’s focus on forward-thinking policies and modernization.” The image, ChatGPT continued, “features a diverse group of individuals of various ages, ethnicities, and genders. This diversity represents inclusivity and unity, key values of the Democratic Party,” along with the themes of “social justice, civil rights, and addressing climate change.”

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Pennsylvania Bill Would Name Group Opposed to School Choice Vouchers as Sole Agency Capable of Training Directors

Tom Pappert
School with students learning

Legislation that passed the Pennsylvania House of Representatives would name the Pennsylvania School Boards Association (PSBA) the only entity capable of training school directors, even though the organization has seemingly adopted political positions on school choice and charter schools.

While PSBA is currently the only agency approved by Pennsylvania to provide training for school directors, a Broad and Liberty report notes that HB 1743 would codify its monopoly status into law.

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Gov. Katie Hobbs Claims ‘Secure the Border Act’ Would Drive Business to Texas Despite Similar Law

Tom Pappert
Katie Hobbs

Governor Katie Hobbs claimed last week the “Secure the Border Act” proposed by Republicans in the Arizona State Legislature would drive businesses to neighboring California and Texas, though she did not acknowledge the similar law signed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott in December 2023.

Hobbs claimed the effort by Republicans, which would allow Arizona voters to decide whether to pass legislation that would make it a state crime to enter Arizona illegally, increase penalties for submitting false information to E-Verify and help prevent illegal immigrants from receiving Arizona welfare programs, would “demonize communities” and send businesses to Texas during a media appearance reported by KTAR News.

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Trump Hints at Holding Fauci Accountable, Says He’ll Consider Pardoning Julian Assange If Reelected

Admin
Anthony Fauci and Donald Trump at a White House press conference in 2020

Former President Donald Trump hinted at holding Dr. Anthony Fauci accountable if elected president, and noted that he’ll consider pardoning Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

Trump commented on potentially prosecuting Fauci in an interview with Tim Pool moments before his speech at the Libertarian National Convention, telling the podcast host he’ll be “taking a look at that very seriously.” Trump also vowed to commute “Silk Road” founder Ross Ulbricht’s sentence at the conference.

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