Biden Admin Announces Massive Restrictions on Alaskan Oil Reserve and Hampers Key Mining Project in One Fell Swoop

Alaska Petroleum Reserve

The Biden administration moved to block oil and gas activity on millions of acres of Alaskan land and effectively rejected a road project needed to mine large reserves of copper in the state on Friday, Bloomberg News reported.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) finalized a plan that will restrict future oil leasing and development on about half of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (NPR-A), an area in the state’s north approximately the size of Indiana first designated by former President Warren Harding as an emergency source of fuel for the U.S. Navy, according to Bloomberg News. The DOI also moved to all but shoot down the Ambler Access Project, a previously-approved proposal for a mining company to build a 211-mile long road needed to mine copper reserves potentially worth billions of dollars.

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Columnist Roger Simon: The U.S. Government Paying for Iran’s Attack on Israel Is the ‘Single Greatest Disgusting Thing in American History’

Roger Simon Israel

Roger Simon, the co-founder of PJMedia and current columnist for The Epoch Times, said the U.S. government paid for Iran’s Saturday attack on Israel, which saw 300 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles launched at the country.

Simon said the money trail could be traced back to the Obama administration when billions of dollars were sent to the Mullahs.

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Electricity Prices have Risen Seven Times Faster Under Biden than Trump

Electricity prices have experienced a significant rise since the beginning of the Biden administration, rising more than seven times faster than under the entire Trump administration.

The average price of electricity has increased by 29.4% since January 2021 as of March, far greater than the preceding four years under the Trump administration, when electricity prices increased by only 4.0%, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. The jump in electricity prices accompanies a number of policies from the Biden administration that have curbed energy production, such as a regulation from the Environmental Protection Agency that requires that existing coal-fired power plants cut their greenhouse gas emissions by 90% by 2040.

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Texas Farmers Ask Judge to Block USDA from Doling Out Disaster Aid Based on Race or Gender

Texas Farmer in field

A group of white farmers in Texas is asking a federal judge to block the U.S. Department of Agriculture from using race, gender or other “socially disadvantaged” traits to determine who gets disaster and pandemic farm aid and how much, arguing the agency’s current administration of eight emergency funding programs is unconstitutionally discriminatory.

“When natural disasters strike, they don’t discriminate based on race and sex. Neither should the Department of Agriculture,” the group of farmers wrote in a court filing made public Monday.

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Electric Vehicle Market Share Plummets in First Quarter as Consumers Sour

Tesla Showroom

Growth in sales for electric vehicles (EV) slowed in the first quarter of the year as consumers remained wary of the product even though growth in sales of new vehicles remained strong, leading to a drop in EV market share, according to The Associated Press.

Sales for new vehicles grew 5 percent in the first three months of the year, but EV sales grew only 2.7 percent as more consumers chose traditional vehicles due to cost and product concerns, according to the AP. The average sales price declined 3.6 percent year-over-year to $44,186 in March as dealers looked to offload built-up inventory.

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Biden Admin Threw Billions at EV Charging Stations, But Only a Handful Have Been Built

Electric Vehicle charging station

The Biden administration’s well-funded push to build out a national network of electric vehicle (EV) chargers has so far resulted in only a handful of installations, according to The Washington Post.

The bipartisan infrastructure bill of 2021 allotted $7.5 billion to subsidize thousands of EV chargers to help the administration’s goal of having EVs constitute 50 percent of all new cars sold in 2030, but only seven stations in total have been built in four states to date, according to the Post. The slow rollout of the EV charger funding is unfolding as the Biden administration has recently issued stringent emissions standards for light-, medium- and heavy-duty vehicles that will result in significant increases of EV sales for all three classes of vehicle.

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Commentary: With ‘Friends’ Like Obrador, Enemies Like Putin, Xi, Kim Jong are Old News

President AMLO of Mexico

In a recent 60 Minutes interview, Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador—who prefers to be known as AMLO for short—issued to the Biden administration blackmail demands that sounded more like existential threats.

AMLO warned the U.S. that the current influx of some 10 million illegal aliens through the southern border will most certainly continue—unless America agrees to his ultimatums.

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Tennessee Immigration Bills Would Help A.G. Efforts to Sue Federal Government

Tennessee State Senator Ferrell Haile

A pair of Tennessee bills are intended to allow Tennessee to fight illegal immigration in the state.

Senate Bill 2158 will require agencies and law enforcement departments across the state to collect data on the financial effects of illegal immigration in the state. Senate Bill 757 would require local law enforcement to verify the citizenship of a detainee and report the individual to the Department of Safety and Homeland Security if found to be illegally in the country.

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Commentary: The Biden EV Plan Needs American Mining

Mining Work

The Biden administration has just supercharged the electric vehicle (EV) revolution. With its finalized tailpipe emissions rule, the administration expects that by 2032 70% of new U.S. car sales will be electric.

This lightning-fast transformation of the nation’s car fleet faces myriad challenges but perhaps none are greater than sourcing the minerals needed for millions of EVs and addressing the nation’s alarming reliance on Chinese-controlled mineral supply chains.  

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‘Politically Weaponized’: Republicans Criticize Federally Funded Plan to Have Students Register Voters

Students registering to vote

Republican leaders are responding with skepticism to the Biden administration’s plans to hire students to register voters and work in polling places.

New Department of Education guidance states Federal Work-Study funds “may be used for employment by a Federal, State, local, or Tribal public agency for civic engagement work that is not associated with a particular interest or group.”

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Biden EPA Projects Americans Wasting Billions of Dollars’ Worth of Time Charging Up EVs

EVs Charging

The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is projecting that Americans could waste billions of dollars’ worth of time juicing up their electric vehicles (EVs).

As part of the Biden administration’s broader EV agenda, the EPA finalized aggressive tailpipe emissions standards on Wednesday that are designed to force manufacturers to massively increase the proportion of EVs they produce and sell. The regulatory impact analysis for that rule features estimates for costs of time spent refueling EVs over the coming decades, and the EPA is expecting that Americans will have wasted approximately $1.7 billion worth of time charging their EVs by 2055.

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Commentary: Biden’s Border Blowup

Illegal Immigrants

Some 8 to 10 million illegal aliens from all over the world, as expected, have flooded across the border since Joe Biden took office.

A demagogic candidate Biden, remember, in 2019 invited those massing at the southern border to “surge” into the United States without specifying they first needed legal sanction: “We immediately surge to the border all those seeking asylum.”

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Immigration Expert Says the Mainstream Media Refuses to Cover How the Biden Administration Caused Haiti’s Current Chaos

Haitian Refugees

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the mainstream media’s refusal to acknowledge how the Biden administration’s compliance in scuttling Haiti’s elections back in 2021 contributes to the chaos currently unfolding in the Caribbean country stems from the fact that the backstory is a “terrible” look for President Joe Biden.

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Immigration Judges Have Thrown Out 200,000 Deportation Cases Because Biden Admin Didn’t File Paperwork

Immigration judges have dismissed roughly 200,000 deportation cases because the Biden administration didn’t file the relevant paperwork, according to a report from the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) released on Wednesday.

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is obligated to provide a Notice to Appear (NTA) to immigration courts when the agency believes an illegal migrant should be removed, according to the TRAC report. Biden’s DHS failed to issue NTAs in several instances by the time of a scheduled hearing in immigration court, limiting judges’ ability to hear the case and forcing a dismissal.

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Biden Admin Finalizes Stringent Tailpipe Emissions Standards

Mechanic underneath car

The Biden administration unveiled its final tailpipe emissions standards for vehicles Wednesday, effectively requiring about 67 percent of all light-duty vehicles sold after model year 2032 to be electric vehicles (EVs) or hybrids.

The Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) finalized standards rolled back some of the de facto EV production benchmarks for manufacturers proposed initially, but still require automakers to reach the final standards set forth in the agency’s April 2023 proposal. The agency finalized the standards as the American EV market is struggling: demand has not grown as quickly as expected, manufacturers are losing billions on their EV product lines, executives have backed away from near-term production targets and Biden administration subsidy programs to facilitate the creation of a nationwide EV charging network have so far failed to make much of an impact.

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Commentary: A Huge Double-Digit Decline in the Share of Black Voters Saying Biden’s Policies Have Helped Them Could Shake Up 2024 Election

President Joe Biden speaking to a crowd

After supporting Democrats for decades, Black Americans are poised to make a marked shift away from the left thanks to the Biden Administration’s dismal economic record and abandonment of the working-class.

A striking New York Times/Siena College poll from early March shows the share of Black Americans who say Biden’s policies have “helped them personally” has taken a forty-one-point nosedive since last November’s Times/Siena battleground state poll.

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Biden Admin Hands Out $500 Million for Oil Drilling in the Middle East

Oil Drilling

The Biden administration is providing financing for oil development in the Middle East after taking numerous steps to restrict domestic production, according to Bloomberg News.

The U.S. Export-Import Bank — a nominally independent government entity that aims to boost the American economy “by facilitating the export of U.S. goods and services” —  approved a $500 million loan guarantee for oil and gas development in Bahrain on Thursday, according to Bloomberg News. The funding follows the Biden administration’s decisions to release the most restrictive offshore oil and gas leasing schedule in American history and cancel seven previously-issued oil and gas leases in Alaska, among other actions intended to rein in domestic oil production.

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Biden Admin Sending Tribes $120 Million to Fight Climate Change

Native Americans

The Biden administration announced Thursday that it is giving Native American tribes across the country a total of $120 million to fight climate change.

The Department of the Interior (DOI) is disseminating the money, which will be split into 146 different awards to support projects that enhance “climate resilience” in tribal communities. The funding is inspired in part by the administration’s view that Native American populations are among the least able to prepare or recover from climate change’s impacts.

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Biden Admin Funding Theatrical Productions to Teach Africans About LGBTQ Rights

LGBTQ Africa

The Biden administration is spending taxpayer dollars to stage plays in an effort to teach Africans about “LGBTQ rights.”

A State Department grant allocates money to “improve communication at the level of the local community on the social issue of LGBTQ rights and domestic violence via participatory theater” in the African nation of Chad, according to a federal grant description. The Biden administration has paid out several grants to use theater to educate foreigners about environmentalism, racism, immigration and the war in Ukraine.

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Virginia Home to More than 650 New Afghan Refugees

Afghanistan People

Virginia has taken in more than 650 refugees from Afghanistan in the past five months as that nation continues to reel after President Joe Biden’s 2021 withdrawal of American troops.

According to a report on refugee resettlement from October 2023 through February, 655 Afghanis now call Virginia home. That is the most of any country of origin for the 1,295 refugees recently resettled in Virginia.

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Semiconductor Giant Faces U.S. Delays While Racing Ahead in Japan amid Biden Chips Funding Uncertainty

A major Taiwanese chip manufacturer’s plan to build a key factory in the U.S. has been plagued with significant delays. Meanwhile, the chipmaker is on schedule to open a separate facility in Japan.

One of the plants Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) is building in Arizona has delayed manufacturing until 2027 or 2028 instead of 2026 because of uncertainty regarding funding it will receive from President Joe Biden’s administration, according to The New York Times. TSMC’s factory in Japan is on track to operate on schedule as the country’s government has helped the factory by committing billions in funding and assisting with assembling thousands of employees to build it, the WSJ reported.

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Congo, Syria, Burma, and Afghanistan Top List of Countries Represented Among Georgia Refugee Intake

Congo Refugees

According to a report on refugee resettlement, more refugees from the Democratic Republic of Congo have been resettled in Georgia than from any other country since October of last year, following a trend among other states. 

According to the report, of the 1,469 refugees resettled in Georgia over the past five months, 267 have come from the Central African country that is both war-torn and one of the poorest in the world. 

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Commentary: In Prosecuting Trump, Democrats Have Exonerated Him

Trump Walking

Despite their best efforts, have Democrats begun an inexorable elevation of former President Donald Trump? For the better part of a decade, Democrats and the Left have thrown everything they could think of against the man they live to loathe. In the process, they have created a quasi-caricature that appears to be decreasingly believable to an increasing proportion of Americans. The question is whether these attacks have come full circle, accomplishing what Democrats most sought to avoid. Have they vilified Trump to victimhood and prosecuted him back into the presidency?

Since Trump burst on the political scene in 2016, Democrats and the Left have busted their guts laughing at him. When that didn’t work and he won, they burst all boundaries going after him. Their efforts have ranged from slights to a Russian dossier to two impeachments. Even after Trump left office, they refused to stop. Unquestionably, these efforts have had an effect — and equally unquestionably, Trump has given ample fodder to use against him: the result being that with Trump poised to win an unprecedented third successive major party presidential nomination (a feat last accomplished by Franklin D. Roosevelt 84 years ago), he has become a highly polarizing figure.

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England Bans the Use of Puberty Blockers at Nation’s Gender Identity Clinics

Doctor Patient

England’s National Health Service (NHS) has banned the use of puberty blockers to treat children with gender dysphoria at the nation’s gender identity clinics, Sky News reported.

Taking a position at odds with the Biden administration, Health Minister Maria Caulfield said: “We have always been clear that children’s safety and wellbeing is paramount, so we welcome this landmark decision by the NHS. Ending the routine prescription of puberty blockers will help ensure that care is based on evidence, expert clinical opinion and is in the best interests of the child.”

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Report: Biden Staffers Allege Toxic Work Environment in Advance Office

Biden Cabinet Meeting

A new report claims that dozens of staffers in the Biden Administration have experienced an unhealthy and toxic work environment in the president’s Advance Office.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the article from Politico featured over a dozen individuals who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe what they have gone through. The focus is on former Associate Director Ian Mellul, who resigned on March 1st after the White House Counsel’s Office carried out an investigation into allegations of verbal harassment.

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Watchdog: Biden’s 2025 Budget Would Drive National Debt to $45 Trillion in 10 Years, 106 Percent of GDP

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget (CRFB) a budget watchdog group, found that President Joe Biden’s fiscal year 2025 budget would drive the national debt to $45.1 trillion or 106 percent of the U.S. Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 2034, from $27.4 trillion or about 97 percent of GDP at the present time.

The organization noted that those calculations are based on the Biden administration’s own internal figures. The current $27.4 trillion debt figure is the debt held by the public, not the total national debt including intragovernmental holdings.

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Audit of Grand Canyon University Fails to Find Wrongdoing amid the Institution’s Legal Battle with the Biden Administration

Grand Canyon University campus

A recent risk-based audit of Grand Canyon University conducted by the Arizona State Approving Agency (SAA) for the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs did not “show any findings” related to the institution’s doctoral disclosures, which have been targeted by the Biden administration’s Federal Trade Commission (FTC) through a $37.7 million fine.

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Judge Allows Biden Admin Program That Lets in 30,000 Asylum-Seekers a Month

A federal judge on Friday dismissed a challenge from 21 states against a Biden administration program that allows 30,000 asylum-seekers into the U.S. from four countries each month. 

U.S. District Judge Drew B. Tipton ruled that Texas and 20 other Republican-led states didn’t have legal standing in the lawsuit because they didn’t demonstrate suffered financial harm from the federal program, the Associated Press reported. The program lets a total of up to 30,000 asylum-seekers enter the U.S. each month from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua and Venezuela. 

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Trump Pays Tribute to Laken Riley, Blasts Biden Border Policies as ‘Crime Against Humanity’

Donald Trump met with Laken Riley’s family and unleashed a blistering attack Saturday on President Joe Biden’s border policies as a “crime against humanity” as the two likely general candidates staged dueling events in the battleground state of Georgia. “Joe Biden has no remorse, no regret, no empathy, no compassion, and worst of all, he has no intention of stopping the deadly invasion that stole precious Laken’s beautiful American life,” Trump told a rally in Rome, Ga., the home district of close ally Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

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Biden Administration Using ‘Secretive Flights’ to Import 320,000 Illegal Aliens into U.S.

A new report suggests that the Biden Administration has not only been letting illegal aliens into the country through a porous southern border, but that the administration has even been actively importing illegals with “secretive flights.”

As Breitbart reports, the claims were made by Todd Bensman, Senior National Security Fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies (CIS), who obtained internal records from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) via a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit.

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Commentary: Giving the FTC More Power Won’t Keep Kids Safe Online

We have seen a rise in parents concerned about social media’s impact on our children across Tennessee and America. As a proud parent and the chairman of Latinos for Tennessee, I firmly believe that parents must play a central role in ensuring the safety of our children online. I also firmly believe in states’ rights and that when it comes to enforcing legislation to protect our children, I trust Tennessee’s own Attorney General Jonathan Skrmetti much more than the bureaucrat-heavy Federal Trade Commission (FTC).

I have previously written that the well-being of future generations depends on our federal representatives taking appropriate action to protect children by empowering parents. This issue has become even more pressing as children increase their daily screen time. As a leader in the Latino community, I worry because, “Latino adolescents have a higher rate of social media use” and “face greater risks of experiencing adverse mental health outcomes,” according to the Julian Samora Research Institute at Michigan State University.

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Todd Bensman with the Center for Immigration Studies: ‘The Biden Administration has Industrialized Parole Authority’

Illegal Immigrants

Todd Bensman, senior national security fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, said the Biden administration has “industrialized parole authority” through its program that has flown 320,000 inadmissible aliens into 43 American airports over the past year.

“[The migrants] are coming in on an authority called parole. That’s supposed to be for two or three immigrants a year on a case by case basis, like an emergency medical treatment or, they need somebody to testify in an important case, and then they turn them right back,” Bensman explained on Monday’s edition of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show. “The Biden administration has industrialized parole authority. Now they’re just letting hundreds of thousands in all at once instead of two or three as the law says on a case by case basis.”

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After Canceling Student Loan Debt, Biden Admin Announces Paying College Students to Register Voters

Paying Voters Biden

The Biden administration announced it will pay college students to register voters and participate in get-out-the-vote activities shortly after canceling student loan debt.

It’s a move that Republicans and election integrity advocates are saying will mobilize Democratic voters with taxpayer dollars.

After canceling student loan debt the prior week, the Biden administration announced that it will pay college students to register voters and engage in GOTV efforts through a Federal Work-Study (FWS) program.

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Commentary: Reality Is Dawning on the Democrats

Biden Administration

You might recognize “The Look” when you see it. It made its debut on the faces of American television and media pundits during the early evening hours of Nov. 8, 2016, as the undeniable specter of a Trump presidency began to take hold.

Today, “The Look 2.0” is back. The most recent iteration is a mixture of resignation tinged with intense discomfort – a sanguine sense of impending doom born of the many dysfunctions of the Biden administration and the increasing realization that the lawfare campaign waged against Donald J. Trump is backfiring.

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Biden Family Has a Long History of Being Kept Afloat by Democratic Donors

The newly released transcript of presidential brother James Biden’s testimony before the House Oversight Committee shows he received large sums in the form of loans from Democratic donors, mirroring Hunter Biden’s relationship with lawyer and friend Kevin Morris.

According to the transcript, James Biden confirmed that he received two loans from associates who were also Democratic Party donors, though he disputed the value of the loans provided by the committee.

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Just the News Sues Biden Administration to Force Disclosure of COVID-19 Vaccine Safety Data

COVID Vaccines

Just the News on Thursday sued the Biden administration in federal court seeking to force the disclosure of COVID-19 safety data that is being kept outside the government’s normal adverse events reporting system

In the lawsuit filed in partnership with the America First Legal public interest law firm, Just the News asked the U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C., to order the Department of Health and Human Services to comply with two Freedom of Information Act requests to the Food and Drug Administration and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention seeking COVID-19 reactions data kept in a back-end, nonpublic system to the nation’s Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS).

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Biden Admin to Investigate Chinese-Made ‘Smart Cars’ Posing Potential National Security Risks

Gina Raimondo

The Biden administration announced Thursday it will investigate Chinese-made “smart cars,” citing national security risks and surveillance concerns.

The investigation will center around concerns that Beijing could use Chinese smart cars inside the U.S. to collect information on the driver and the area surrounding the vehicle, according to the White House. U.S. intelligence agencies have warned that China has capabilities allowing it access to a score of key infrastructure systems, which could potentially be exploited in the event of a global emergency.

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New Drug Prices Spiked in 2023 as Biden Admin Seeks to Keep Costs Down

Joe Biden Drug Costs

Pharmaceutical companies set median starting list prices 35% higher in 2023 than the previous year, despite the Biden administration’s ongoing efforts to tamp down on surging costs, Reuters reported Friday.

The median list price for a drug being placed on the market, many of which were for rare diseases, was $300,000 in 2023, which is up from a median price of $222,000 in 2022, according to an analysis by Reuters of 47 drugs. The Biden administration has made it a goal to tame drug prices, announcing steps like imposing automatic rebates to Medicare for drugmakers that raise their prices faster than the rate of inflation, which does not cover the starting list price.

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Biden Rule Would Deprive Pregnancy Resource Centers of Funds and Favor Abortion Groups, Conservatives Warn

Former Vice President Mike Pence’s organization, Advancing American Freedom, is leading conservative groups in calling on Republicans in Congress to defund a pro-abortion rule backed by President Joe Biden’s administration that would punish pro-life centers.

“We, as leaders of the pro-life movement, request that you defund the rulemaking process for the Biden administration’s proposed rule, ‘Strengthening [Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)] as a Safety Net and Work Program,’” the conservative groups told House Republicans in a Friday letter first obtained by The Daily Signal.

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Mercedes-Benz Walks Back on Huge Electric Vehicle Commitment amid Slowing Demand

MB Evs

Mercedes-Benz on Thursday walked back plans to have an all-electric line-up by 2030 as consumers decline to adopt electric vehicles (EV) at the rate automakers expected.

The company has changed its expectations to have only 50% of its sales be EVs by 2030, announcing that it will be updating its current line-up featuring the internal combustion engine into the next decade, according to Mercedes-Benz in its fourth quarter report. EV sales grew 21% year-over-year in 2023, but total car sales remained relatively the same, bucking hopes that EVs would fuel growth as the automaker pushes electric models.

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Biden Cancels Another $1.2 Billion in Student Loan Debt

In yet another move circumventing the Supreme Court on the question of student loan debt, Joe Biden announced the cancellation of approximately $1.2 billion in student loan debt for about 153,000 borrowers.

As reported by ABC News, the Biden Administration made the cancellation official on Wednesday, including a draft email that will be sent to all of the borrowers in question. The email will read, in part: “Congratulations — all or a portion of your federal student loans will be forgiven because you qualify for early loan forgiveness under my Administration’s SAVE Plan.”

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