Ohio’s next U.S. senator is in the hands of Gov. Mike DeWine after Vice President-elect J.D. Vance submitted his resignation Thursday night.
Vance, whose resignation took effect at midnight Friday morning, promised to help President-elect Donald Trump push his agenda forward as vice president. Trump and Vance will be sworn in Jan. 20.
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Gun owners in Ohio won’t have to worry about firearm purchases being tracked by financial institutions or having to carry liability insurance.
Senate Bill 58, one of a series of bills signed into law late Wednesday by Gov. Mike DeWine, received backing from pro-gun organizations like the National Rifle Association and Buckeye Firearms. But the Ohio Mayors Alliance and the Ohio Municipal League both opposed it.
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Wisconsin’s latest proposed constitutional amendment is on the fast track to the voters.
The Wisconsin Senate on Wednesday approved the proposal to ask voters whether they want to constitutionally protect the state’s voter ID law.
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U.S. Representative Rob Wittman (R-VA-01) said Wednesday that the suggestions by President-elect Donald Trump that the United States should reassert ownership over the Panama Canal and purchase Greenland from the Kingdom of Denmark both serve U.S. national security interests.
Wittman made the remarks during an appearance on “The John Fredericks Show,” telling host John Fredericks, who is the publisher of The Virginia Star, that increased access to Greenland would help monitor Russian submarine activity while renegotiating the country’s interest in the Panama Canal would better position the United States against China.
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Former Ohio Department of Health (ODH) Director Amy Acton announced on Tuesday that she is running as a Democrat for state governor.
“I’m a doctor, not a politician,” she said in a statement, according to The Hill. “I solve problems by bringing people together regardless of party to find solutions. So unlike most of our leaders I know the answer to moving our state forward isn’t giving politicians more power, it’s giving people more freedom.”
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States United Democracy Center (SUDC) has provided free official work for Arizona’s top three Democratic officials.
On its website, SUDC says it is a “nonpartisan organization advancing free, fair, and secure elections.” However, according to Influence Watch, this nonprofit acts left-leaning.
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A majority of Virginia voters want state lawmakers to pass legislation that would set new standards for health insurance companies when it comes to transparency surrounding prior authorization decisions and approval rates, a new poll shows.
The polling firm Mason-Dixon Polling & Strategy polled 625 registered Virginia voters from December 17-December 20 on their experiences and views regarding the healthcare industry, specifically health insurance companies providing customers with prior authorization before receiving medical care.
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Arlington County Republican Committee accused Arlington Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti of leniency when it was revealed the suspect in a Pentagon City double stabbing that occurred last month, 23-year-old Leonardo Reyes, previously reached a plea deal with her office in 2021 for armed robbery.
Dehghani-Tafti is one of the prosecutors who received significant political backing from an organization tied to the controversial Hungarian-American financier George Soros, and more recently, the prosecutor argued there was “no basis” to disrupt an anti-Israel encampment that formed near the Virginia home of Secretary of State Antony Blinken.
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Hundreds of attendees who paid $1,000 to $50,000 each filled up a sold-out event at Mar-a-Lago Saturday evening, where they watched a screening of a new documentary about the lawfare against Donald Trump’s former attorney and constitutional legal scholar John Eastman. Madison Media Fund, launched by film producer Gary DePew to support “freedom focused filmmakers,” deliberately timed The Eastman Dilemma: Lawfare or Justice for release on January 6. Incoming-President Donald Trump stopped by to watch the movie, flanked by Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Senator Marco Rubio (R-FL).
The evening included a panel discussion with Eastman and others in Trump’s circle who were targeted by lawfare; Rudy Giuliani, Alan Dershowitz, General Michael Flynn, Jeffrey Clark, and Peter Navarro.
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The Department of Justice fined an Ohio meat-packing company last week almost $4 million after a hiring manager stole the identities of American citizens and gave them to illegal immigrants who were not eligible to work in America.
Fresh Mark, Inc., entered into a Non-prosecution Agreement with the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Ohio after Yelwin Omar Munoz-Solis’ “involvement in an identity theft scheme and subsequent obstruction of justice.”
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Virginia House Delegate Jason Ballard (R-Pearisburg) introduced legislation last Wednesday that could allow state law enforcement to apply an existing law against those who engage in “swatting,” a slang term for making a false police report to compel an intense police response, typically involving a SWAT team, to a specific address.
House Bill 1583 would amend and reenact the portion of Virginia code specifying bomb threats are a Class 5 felony to include threats, whether real or false, to “discharge a firearm within or at” any location where it is already illegal to call a bomb threat. It also would change the law to make such threats a Class 1 misdemeanor for offenders under 18.
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The top election oversight body in the battleground state of Wisconsin kicked off 2025 by launching a bipartisan investigation of uncounted ballots in the state’s capital city.
Election integrity advocates say that’s a good first step.
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A panel on the Arizona Court of Appeals ruled last Wednesday that Attorney General Kris Mayes’ prosecution of Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby for delaying canvassing of the 2022 election may proceed. Crosby, along with Cochise County Supervisor Peggy Judd, was indicted for felonies by a grand jury in November 2023 for briefly delaying canvassing of the 2022 election in order to investigate concerns with the voting machine tabulators. Judd accepted a plea agreement two months ago for a misdemeanor charge of failing to perform her duty as an election officer and was sentenced to probation.
State Senate President Warren Petersen (R-Mesa) and Speaker of the House Ben Toma (R-Peoria) filed an Amicus Curiae brief opposing the prosecution last March.
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Arizona had the 15th most H-1B workers for a state during the Fiscal Year (FY) 2024.
This FY year went from October 1, 2023, to September 30, 2024.
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The University of Dayton College Republicans released a press release on Thursday that came out against H-1B program abuse.
“Students born in America who pay large sums of money to gain a degree for a specific career field should not have to compete with imported foreign labor that companies can pay less,” the student organization said.
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Legislation filed last month in Virginia would require social media companies to obtain verifiable parental consent before allowing minors to create accounts on social media platforms, effectively raising the age for Virginia’s existing parental consent requirement from 13 to 18, while also prohibiting the sale of data collected about children.
Senate Bill 783 was submitted on December 27, 2024, by State Senator David Suetterlein (R-Roanoke), and the bill’s description explains it requires social media companies to obtain “verifiable parental consent” before any minor Virginian can create an account or at least “before collecting, using, or disclosing such child’s personal data,” specifically in a commercial transaction.
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The Texas Supreme Court issued a ruling on Wednesday dismissing the State Bar of Texas’s (SBT) four-year-long attempt to discipline Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s First Assistant Attorney General Brent Webster, calling it an “egregious invasion of the attorney general’s authority.” Webster assisted Paxton with combating election wrongdoing in the 2020 election, which included filing the lawsuit Texas v. Pennsylvania over the election irregularities in four states in 2020, which was joined by 21 other states.
Paxton, who is facing similar charges from the SBT, posted on X, “After four years of lawfare and political retaliation, the Texas Supreme Court has ended this witch hunt against the leadership of my office. The Texas State Bar attempted to punish us for fighting to secure our national elections, but we did not and will not ever back down from doing what is right. We have seen this playbook used against President Trump and other effective fighters for the American people and I am pleased that this attempt to stop our work has been defeated.”
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Former U.S. Representative Denver Riggleman, the former Republican congressman who considered voting for President Joe Biden in 2020, and served under the House January 6 committee after he left Congress in 2021.
In remarks published on New Year’s Day by The Washington Post, Riggleman confirmed he has already started to launch an exploratory committee to determine his path to the Republican nomination to serve as Virginia’s next governor, telling the outlet he would run a campaign based on “facts, data, humor and integrity” to spread his message.
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Taxpayer transparency watchdog Open the Books sacked the Buckeyes in a report Monday on its diversity, equity and inclusion bureaucracy, including 201 employees with “DEI-related roles” who last year cost $13.3 million, which it said could pay in-state tuition for 1,000 students.
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An anti-Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) bill that failed to pass the Ohio legislature in 2024 could be debated again and potentially passed next year.
Senate Bill 83, also known as the Enact Ohio Higher Education Enhancement Act, passed the Ohio Senate but was not passed by the House in this legislative session.
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Outgoing U.S. Representative Abigail Spanberger (D-VA-07), who is leaving Congress to pursue the Democratic Party’s nomination for Governor of Virginia, said it was “dangerous” for President-elect Donald Trump to nominate Tulsi Gabbard to serve as Director of National Intelligence (DNI) in an interview with ABC 7 News published Tuesday.
Spanberger, who formerly worked as a federal agent for the U.S. Postal Inspection Service and a case officer for the CIA, made the remarks about Gabbard when asked about those nominated by Trump to serve in key intelligence positions during his second term in the White House.
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The legal integrity organization Judicial Watch (JW) announced on December 10 that Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis, who was prosecuting Donald Trump and several prominent Republicans over their concerns about election fraud in Georgia’s 2020 election until she was removed earlier this month for “impropriety,” colluded with the Biden administration to conduct the prosecutions. The group has been repeatedly stonewalled in its attempts, including litigation, to obtain public records from Willis’ office revealing any coordination.
“Judicial Watch and a state court forced Fani Willis to confirm additional documents exist about her collusion with the partisan Pelosi January 6 Committee to ‘get Trump,’” JW President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “But Willis, citing legal exemptions for a prosecution that’s essentially dead in the water, now wants to hide these records from the American public. Judicial Watch plans to push back in court against this disingenuous secrecy.”
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Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr urged the Georgia Supreme Court not to accept the appeal launched by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis after she was disqualified from prosecuting the state’s 2020 election case against President-elect Donald Trump.
The attorney general, who recently became the first Republican to launch a 2026 gubernatorial campaign, posted a statement to the social media platform X that accused Willis of creating “her own conflict” in the Trump case, alluding to the district attorney’s romantic relationship with her former special prosecutor, Nathan Wade.
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Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to maintain the law requiring for ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of the social media platform TikTok, to sell its American operations or face a ban in the country.
After Congress raised concerns about TikTok’s connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), President Joe Biden signed legislation in April that gave ByteDance until January 19, 2025 to sell its American operations. ByteDance sued to block the legislation, but the federal government obtained rulings allowing the law in place from lower courts, leading to the Supreme Court deciding to take the case on January 10, 2025.
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Less than a month after being offered a job by incoming President Donald Trump heading up the Voice of America (VOA), Kari Lake announced on X that she will not be running for office again. Instead, she accepted the job heading up the journalism position with the Trump administration. Many believe that progressive activists conducted illegal election activity to defeat her in both the 2022 election race for governor and the 2024 race for U.S. Senate.
“We know the movement that we have in Arizona, and I will never take that for granted,” she posted on Elon Musk’s social media platform on Saturday. “But there is a corrupt machine here that is hellbent on making sure I never hold office. So, I won’t put my family (and myself) through the torture of running again. I will go to Washington, D.C., return @VOANews to its glory days, and help President Trump Make America Great Again.”
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Attorney General Kris Mayes, who is prosecuting the alternate electors for Donald Trump from 2020 as well as Cochise County Supervisor Tom Crosby for delaying the canvassing of that election due to election irregularities, may find herself on the other side of prosecution. Founder Mike Davis of the Article III Project, which defends constitutionalist judges and the rule of law, posted on X that Mayes could go to prison due to obstructing the incoming president.
He said, “Dear @AZAGMayes: You disenfranchised AZ voters and stole your election from @AbrahamHamadeh. Now you’re plotting to overturn the will of American voters and illegally obstruct President Trump’s immigration mandate? Want to go to prison? 8 U.S.C. § 132.”
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Data publicly tracked online reveals the Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) hired more than 60 foreign nationals for its Arizona factories using the H-1B visa program. The company was given billions under President Joe Biden through the CHIPS Act, including $6.6 billion in November.
According to the h1bdata.info website, data released by the U.S. Department of Labor reveals TSMC’s Arizona corporation hired at least 58 foreign employees through the H-1B visa program implemented by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS).
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Virginia House of Delegates Speaker Don Scott (D-Portsmouth) said on Thursday that the “Agenda 47” plan by President-elect Donald Trump to relocate up to 100,000 federal employees from Washington, D.C. to other parts of the country will help unite Democrats ahead of the January 7 special elections.
Scott made the remarks during an appearance on MSNBC’s “The Katie Phang Show,” telling the eponymous host he is optimistic his party will fare well in the upcoming special elections sparked by the electoral victories of U.S. Representatives-elect Suhas Subramanyam (D-VA-10) and John McGuire (R-VA-05).
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Correction Officer Andrew Lansing died on Christmas Day at Ross Correctional Institution in Chillicothe, Ohio, allegedly at the hands of inmate. Lansing, a long-time and well-respected employee at the facility, succumbed to his injuries following the early morning assault. His death has sent shockwaves through the correctional community, as well as his family and colleagues.
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U.S. Representative Buddy Carter (R-GA-01) endorsed House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA-04) to retain his leadership position on Thursday, arguing a protracted battle to select the next Speaker of the House could jeopardize the ability of President-elect Donald Trump to enact his political agenda within his first 100 days in office.
Carter endorsed Johnson and made the remarks about Trump’s first 100 days, which are historically considered a “honeymoon period” for incoming presidents, during an appearance on “Mornings with Maria.”
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Legislation filed ahead of the upcoming legislative session in Virginia would require the commonwealth to use security paper and watermarks on absentee ballots.
House Bill 1566, submitted last week by Delegate W. Chad Green (R-Seaford), would require all ballots requested by Virginia’s absentee voters to be “printed on security paper that incorporates a visible watermark,” in order to demonstrate the absentee ballot is authentic. The watermarks and security paper must nonetheless maintain “the absolute secrecy of the ballot.”
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A panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals reversed a ruling by an Obama-appointed judge which found that the Phoenix Police Department (PPD) used “excessive force” dealing with violent protesters outside of a Donald Trump rally in 2017. The court’s opinion, issued last Thursday, found that U.S. District Court Judge John J. Tuchi incorrectly applied Fourth Amendment law to analyze claims from three protesters who were hit with projectiles.
Trump held a rally at the Phoenix Convention Center on August 22, 2017. A “Free Speech Zone” was set up for protesters, but the PPD was forced to intervene when they became violent. The opinion said the police used “tear gas, other chemical irritants, and flash-bang grenades” to deter the rioters.
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A special audit of the State Board of Chiropractic Examiners is raising alarm from the Republican lawmaker who requested it.
Sen. Janae Shamp, R-Surprise, said that the audit she asked for in February brought concerning results, and she hopes to tackle the issues during the upcoming legislative session. The board is responsible for oversight of the niche medical professional practice.
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The University of Minnesota appears to have removed details about a controversial “MyGender Dolls” project from its website after the paper dolls, which have interchangeable genitalia and are designed for children, attracted criticism online.
Internet archives of the public university’s website show an article about the project was removed and the project’s main page was changed sometime toward the end of last week.
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Two bills that passed the Ohio General Assembly on the session’s final day drew praise from the state’s largest business group.
The Ohio Chamber of Commerce said both Senate Bill 63 and Senate Bill 95 will help the state’s business climate by reducing legal actions and improving access to health care.
Both bills await a signature from Gov. Mike DeWine.
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The world’s largest private fusion company has announced that it has chosen Chesterfield, Virginia, as the site of the world’s first grid-scale commercial fusion power plant, which will also be its first power plant.
Founded in Massachusetts as a result of decades of research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Commonwealth Fusion Systems is at the forefront of efforts to “build a full-fledged fusion energy industry” that aims to help meet the energy demands of the future without relying on fossil fuels.
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The recent Starbucks strike that continued into Christmas Eve will spread to even more cities across the United States, says the employee union behind the effort.
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Ohio House Democrats want Gov. Mike DeWine to veto several parts of bills passed during a flurry of activity as the two-year General Session came to a close last week.
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Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes reportedly entered into a contract with a partisan group run by a man considered a media expert on the legal challenges faced by President-elect Donald Trump to organize its case against the alternative electors who helped Trump contest the 2020 election in Arizona.
The documents were shared to the social media platform X on Sunday by pro-Trump attorney Jeff Clark, who Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis charged for his role in Trump’s 2020 election contest in that state.
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Former Virginia Governor Douglas Wilder cautioned Democrats in the commonwealth against a tumultuous primary, arguing it was a lack of Democratic solidarity preceded the 2021 election of Governor Glenn Youngkin.
While U.S. Representative Abigail Spanberger (R-VA-07) is leaving Congress to run for governor, last week Punchbowl News reported Representative Bobby Scott (D-VA-03) is considering entering the race.
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Likely ending what could have been a contentious race for chair of the Arizona Republican Party (AZGOP), Donald Trump endorsed current chair Gina Swoboda during his speech at Turning Point USA’s annual AmericaFest in Phoenix. State Rep. Cory McGarr (R-Tucson), who lost his reelection race even though there is a 10+ Republican voter registration advantage in his district, announced on December 12 in an X post that he was challenging Swoboda.
Swoboda, who was asked by Trump personally to run after Jeff DeWit was forced to step down, was elected to the office less than a year ago. Swoboda leads the Voter Reference Foundation (VRF), so Republican leaders felt it was imperative to put someone in the leadership position who understood election fraud and had experience combating it. She issued a statement after the endorsement, going over her record the past 11 months.
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A Maricopa County Superior Court on Monday invalidated key provisions of the embattled 2023 Elections Procedures Manual (EPM) by Secretary of State Adrian Fontes, siding with Arizona House Speaker Ben Toma and Senate President Warren Petersen in their legal challenge, declaring that the Secretary overstepped his authority and infringed on the exclusive lawmaking powers of the Arizona Legislature.
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A letter signed by more than 100 current and former intelligence or national security officials urged a northern Virginia county against allowing a the construction of a casino, was published Thursday, with the officials arguing the casino would pose threats to recruitment and national security.
Sent to the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, the letter was sent by a group called the National Security Leaders for Fairfax, and contains more than 100 signatures from, “a diverse group of retirees who worked for national security agencies, their contractors, or the U.S. military in and around Fairfax County.”
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Thousands showed up for the first night of Turning Point USA’s (TPUSA) annual AmericaFest Thursday evening in downtown Phoenix, in a festive mood celebrating Donald Trump’s presidential election win. The annual weekend event every December at the Phoenix Convention Center features talks by the top names in the conservative movement, with the biggest ones participating the first evening: TPUSA CEO and founder Charlie Kirk, Tucker Carlson, and Steve Bannon.
Kirk opened the event discussing how the MAGA movement has grown, especially on college campuses, which his youthful organization focuses on. He said people were afraid to wear MAGA hats in 2016, but now he visits campuses where everyone wants them. He said they handed out 5,000 hats at the University of Georgia recently.
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While President-elect Donald Trump endorsed a primary challenge to Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr in 2022, the attorney general said Thursday his 2026 campaign for governor will not “be anti-anybody.” He also downplayed the significance of endorsements to Georgia voters.
Carr made the remarks to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reported the attorney general said he planned to run a positive campaign for governor after becoming the first candidate to declare his candidacy in November.
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Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs wants the Department of Education to reconsider a new policy that fast-tracks low-dollar spending of Empowerment Scholarship Account funding, but the state’s top public school official asks why she signed it into law.
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The Virginia State Police (VSP) on Thursday confirmed citizens have reported 150 drone sightings throughout the commonwealth during the month of December in a statement that urged the public to notify authorities if they see drones flying over sensitive areas.
A VSP press release shared to the social media platform X confirms the Virginia Fusion Center (VFC), part of the VSP’s Homeland Security Division, “has received more than 150 tips involving drone activity,” since the beginning of the month. It also confirmed these reports were made amid “reports of drones flying in other areas of the country, including New Jersey.”
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The Ohio House of Representatives passed on Wednesday House Bill 8 (HB8). Dubbed “The Parents’ Bill of Rights,” the measure is a significantly strengthens parental control over their children’s education and healthcare. The bill, previously amended and passed by the State Senate received a 57-31 vote.
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We the People AZ Alliance (WPAA), represented by Kari Lake’s former attorney Bryan Blehm, filed a lawsuit last week against outgoing Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer demanding records related to Richer allegedly attempting to get a conservative Arizona State University professor fired and disciplined by the State Bar of Arizona. WPAA requested an email between Richer and States United Democracy Center (SUDC), concerned that the far left activist group was aiding Richer in his attempt to get Aaron Ludwig fired.
The complaint asserted, “On July 31, 2022, Defendant Richer, acting as Maricopa County Recorder, sent an email to the Directors of ASU’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice seeking to have a faculty associate terminated from ASU for sharing a Tweet. … Defendant’s email also shows that the Recorder, in his capacity as Maricopa County Recorder, intended to seek sanctions against the faculty member through the State Bar of Arizona as the faculty member was also an attorney licensed to practice law in Arizona.”
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The chair of the Democratic Party of Virginia told an independent journalist to “delete himself” in a post to the social media platform X, which has now been deleted in turn.
“Delete yourself,” Chairwoman Susan Swecker told Substack writer Ken Klippenstein after he questioned the decision by Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives to vote for Representative Gerry Connolly (D-VA-11) to represent the party on the House Oversight Committee.
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