Twenty United States colleges continue to require their students to receive the COVID-19 vaccine, according to the watchdog organization No College Mandates.
These mandates face increasingly heavy criticism from medical doctors and scholars who point to concerns regarding the vaccine’s safety, efficacy, and necessity.
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The rate of shoplifting saw a noticeable increase in the first half of 2024, even as the rates of other crimes fell to levels not seen since before the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic.
According to the Daily Caller, a study by the Council of Criminal Justice (CCJ) determined that shoplifting rose by 24% in 23 different cities across the country, compared to the first half of 2023. That rate is also about 10% higher than the first half of 2019. Meanwhile, the rates of homicide and robbery fell to lower than the levels seen in 2019.
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A new study shows that the prescription of antidepressants for youth skyrocketed during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic, rising by a staggering 65.3%.
As reported by Axios, the research from Pediatrics shows that the spike in such prescriptions may have been caused by a number of factors, including a shortage in mental health workers in schools and the shift towards remote forms of medical treatment such as “telehealth” and remote prescribing, which only contributed to a sense of isolation and depression brought on by the nationwide lockdowns.
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Schools across Wisconsin have not yet rebounded from enrollment losses during the coronavirus outbreak.
A recent report from the Wisconsin Policy Forum found more than 4,500 students are still “missing.”
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In 2017, a report from an official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) raised red flags about the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), according to internal records revealed this week by U.S. Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI).
“It is clear to me by talking to the technician that certainly there is a need for training support,” Dr. Ping Chen, an NIAID official, wrote in a report about the controversial laboratory suspected of unleashing COVID-19 on the world.
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Last week, American Greatness reporter Debra Heine reported a bombshell story that a “highly credible” CIA whistleblower has told the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic and the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the CIA “bribed” six of its analysts with significant financial incentives to change their initial conclusion that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a biolab leak in Wuhan, China and to instead conclude that the virus emerged naturally.
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The National Institutes of Health have renewed a grant to EcoHealth Alliance, an organization that funded experiments in Wuhan at a facility identified as the possible origin point of the COVID-19 pandemic.
EcoHealth announced the renewal on Monday, noting that the grant had been suspended in April of 2020 “due to concerns about continuing collaborative laboratory research with the Wuhan Institute of Virology.” EcoHealth’s experiments involved on-site work at the WIV and involved the study of coronaviruses.
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Pennsylvania’s Department of Labor & Industry (L&I) on Wednesday told state representatives the commonwealth’s unemployment-claim (UC) backlog remains vast at 31,304 cases.
L&I officials testifying at a hearing of the state House Appropriations Committee in preparation for next fiscal year’s budget also said state residents calling the department regarding UC claims face an average wait time of 67 minutes. Acting L&I Secretary Nancy Walker said her agency is making progress in clearing these cases which reportedly numbered more than 35,000 last month. Such cases began to accumulate over the course of the coronavirus outbreak.
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It’s time to open up the classified pandemic files, says U.S. Rep. Mike Gallagher (R-WI-08), a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
With revelations the U.S. Department of Energy now believes a lab leak was the likely cause of the COVID-19 outbreak, Gallagher is calling on the Biden administration to declassify the intelligence surrounding the origins of the deadly coronavirus.
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Congressman Brad Wenstrup (R-OH-2) this week commenced a House of Representatives investigation concerning the genesis of the novel coronavirus that hit U.S. shores in winter 2020.
As the new chair of the House Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic, the southern-Ohio legislator formally requested an on-the-record conversation with former National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases director Anthony Fauci and other senior federal health administrators as well as security officials. Wenstrup’s subcommittee is working on the matter alongside House Committee on Oversight and Accountability which is chaired by James Comer (R-KY-1) who last month made initial requests for federal documents pertaining to COVID-19’s origins.
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State Representative Brad Roae (R-PA-Meadville) this week proposed legislation to permit small businesses to continue operating during potential future states of emergency in Pennsylvania.
His bill, a version of a measure he sponsored in 2020, would permit small businesses to serve one customer at a time during such periods. The earlier legislation passed the House with nearly all Republicans and some Democrats in support but the Senate did not vote on it.
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U.S. Representatives Dave Joyce (R-OH-14) and Mariannette Miller-Meeks (R-IA-1) are seeking an end to the COVID-19-vaccine mandate affecting workers at Head Start facilities.
The federal Head Start program was founded in 1965 and provides numerous early-learning, wellness and parenting-support services to families with children ages five and younger who receive public assistance or have incomes below the poverty line. The program serves more than 800,000 children nationwide including 33,241 in Ohio and roughly 1,500 in Joyce’s district.
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“Today, Penn’s relationship with China is strong, and continues to grow.”
That’s how the University of Pennsylvania’s Penn Global website still refers to the Philadelphia-based Ivy League school’s association with the communist-run nation.
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A $6 billion spending bill that Ohio Governor Mike DeWine (R) signed on Friday expands a program assisting parents and guardians with supplemental education purchases.
The ACE Educational Savings Account program previously bestowed a $500 credit on families seeking to purchase enrichment materials or services to help their children get past the learning setbacks caused by the COVID-19 school shutdowns. The new legislation raises the credit to $1,000.
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Ahead of the holiday break, several schools in blue states are implementing mask mandates in light of the “tripledemic.”
Schools in states such as Pennsylvania, Washington and New Jersey are fearing a “tripledemic” of the respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza (flu) and coronavirus. To combat the “tripledemic” some schools are considering mask mandates while other states have already asked their students to mask up.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed Executive Editor for Human Events., Brent Hamachek in studio to talk about his co-author of the soon-to-be-released book Zelenko which highlights the story of Dr. Vladimir Zelenko from upstate New York that created a formula to fight the coronavirus in its early stages.
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A coalition of leading House Republicans is raising the alarm and demanding answers after the Biden administration approved another round of grant funding for research on coronaviruses and bats in Asia.
The lawmakers sent a letter to Anthony Fauci, who leads the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and serves as the chief medical advisor to President Joe Biden.
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A Columbus, Ohio-based think tank this week prevailed in an administrative case on behalf of a Washington, D.C. tavern owner against D.C.’s since-rescinded mandate forcing indoor establishments to require that patrons wear masks and submit proof of COVID-19 vaccination.
The Buckeye Institute handled the matter for Eric Flannery, a Navy veteran and co-proprietor of The Big Board, a bar and grill operating three blocks east of Washington’s Union Station. Despite the city’s mask and vaccine-card rules, Flannery announced that “everyone is welcome” at his restaurant. This winter, the D.C. Department of Health (DOH) officials responded by suspending the tavern’s operating and liquor licenses, ordering the place to temporarily shutter and slapping Flannery with a $2,000 fine.
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The latest snapshot of Wisconsin schools shows that kids are still not back to where they were before the coronavirus closed some schools for more than a year.
Wisconsin’s Department of Public Instruction on Thursday released the scores from the Forward Exam for elementary school kids, the ACT Aspire for freshmen and sophomores, and the ACT for high school juniors.
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A Cuyahoga County, OH court this week ruled in favor of a Pennsylvania resident employed in Cleveland who argued she did not need to pay taxes to that city for work she did from home during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The plaintiff, Dr. Manal Morsy, executive vice president at the Athersys biotechnology company who lives in the southeastern Pennsylvania town of Blue Bell, would commute to Cleveland and stay through her workweeks before COVID hit in 2020. Whenever she worked outside of Cleveland previously, she would receive income-tax refunds from the municipality. Pursuant to a state law passed in March 2020 which stated that work from home during the public emergency would be deemed to take place “at the employees principal place of work,” the city collect the municipal income tax from her employer without refunding it.
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State Senator Katie Muth (D-PA-Royersford) announced this week she will introduce legislation to toughen Pennsylvania’s anti-price-gouging law despite economists’ general skepticism about such efforts.
As currently written, the state’s 2006 Price Gouging Act prohibits any entity “within the chain of distribution of consumer goods or services” to sell those products at “an unconscionably excessive price” during an official “state of disaster emergency” or 30 days thereafter. The law defines such a price as “an amount equal to or in excess of 20% of the average price” in the affected region before the emergency declaration.
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State Representative Tim Twardzik (R-PA-Frackville) this week proposed legislation to lighten the burden of unemployment compensation (UC) on businesses that have seen major rate increases since COVID-19 hit in 2020.
Twardzik indicated his bill will be similar to legislation that state Senator David Argall (R-PA-Mahanoy City) has introduced in his chamber.
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President Biden on Saturday tested positive for COVID-19 again, the White House state in a statement.
A statement was from the White House physician and said the 79-year-old president tested positive “late Saturday morning” after multiple negative tests earlier in the week. He returned to in-person work Wednesday, after having tested positive days earlier. The situation of getting COVID soon after having already contracted the virus is frequently referred to as “rebound” COVID.
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Ohio’s largest city is not considering another mask mandate despite recommendations from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and a growing number of COVID-19 cases.
The city of Columbus has issued a mask advisory, urging masks indoors and in crowded places, despite vaccine statues, until further notice, Columbus Public Health spokeswoman Kelli Newman said.
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President Joe Biden tested positive for COVID-19 on Thursday morning, according to White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre.
“He is fully vaccinated and twice boosted and experiencing very mild symptoms. He has begun taking Paxlovid,” she said in a press release.
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A report released this week by Pennsylvania’s Independent Fiscal Office (IFO) indicates that 120,000 fewer residents are working or actively seeking work than in the year before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
The study showed the state’s labor force participate rate (LFPR) for those aged 16 and older to be 63 percent in May 2019 and to have declined to 61.9 percent one year later. That percentage has continued gradually decreasing — to 61.8 percent in May 2021 and to 61.7 percent two months ago.
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Gov. Ned Lamont (D) this week approved the Municipal Accountability Review Board’s (MARB) request to heighten state oversight of the city of West Haven which is alleged to have misspent COVID-19 relief money, but Republican lawmakers are arguing that the move falls short.
The state now deems West Haven a Tier IV municipality, subjecting it to the most rigorous financial scrutiny for which state law provides. This comes as a result of an audit MARB issued last month which detailed numerous fiscal-management problems the city has incurred. Earlier in April, a separate review by the Connecticut Office of Policy and Management found that the city misused nearly four-fifths of over $1 million in funds it received as part of COVID response efforts.
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Connecticut’s former Public Health Commissioner Renee Coleman-Mitchell filed a lawsuit this week against the state and the Department of Public Health, for Gov. Ned Lamont’s (D) decision to fire her in 2020.
Her lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court of Connecticut, alleges that Gov. Ned Lamont (D) dismissed her “simply on the basis that he did not prefer to have an older, African American female in the public eye as the individual leading the State in the fight against COVID-19.” The complaint argues that she is entitled to compensatory damages for violations of the anti-retaliation and anti-discrimination components of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as well as the state’s Fair Employment Practices Act.
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For the second time in three days, Silicon Valley giant Twitter has locked The Tennessee Star out of its account for posting a factual story.
The temporary ban comes less than a day after The Star’s account was unlocked. After its account was unlocked Sunday, The Star reposted the story that caused the account to be locked in the first place.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed former World Health Organization researcher and Wuhan virus whistleblower Dr. Li-Meng Yan, who told him about the actions of President Donald J. Trump saved American lives.
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The latest class of National Guardsmen trained to be nursing assistants in Wisconsin has graduated. But just how much work they will do remains to be seen.
Gov. Tony Evers on Thursday said 154 soldiers have now completed their Certified Nursing Assistant training.
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Although Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont (D) allowed the statewide school-mask mandate to end on Monday, the Hamden Board of Education (BOE) voted that evening to indefinitely extend its requirement.
The vote came down along party lines, with Republican BOE members Austin Cesare, Kevin Shea and Gary Walsh supporting the mandate’s cancellation; Board Chair Melissa A. Kaplan as well as fellow Democrats David Asbery, Siobhan Carter-David, Mariam Khan and Réuel Parks voted to keep it.
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Lawmakers in the Minnesota House passed legislation that will utilize funds from a budget surplus to award “bonus checks” to frontline workers throughout the state.
According to a release from legislators, 667,000 individuals in the state will qualify for up to $1,500 in bonus checks, including “responders, nurses, child care providers, janitors and so many others who have sacrificed their health during the COVID-19 pandemic.”
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“I cannot make a disease worse, and create fear out there,” says Dr. Angelique Coetzee, the South African doctor who discovered Omicron.
In an interview on Just the News Not Noise, Coetzee, chair of the South African Medical Association, described the pressure she faced from public health authorities worldwide to portray the now-dominant variant of COVID-19 as more severe than she was witnessing in real time.
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The University of Wisconsin system will lift its mask mandate for students and faculty in the coming weeks, according to a release from University of Wisconsin System President Tommy Thompson.
According to the statement, Thompson is working with each schools’ chancellor to remove the requirement “as soon as March 1 and no later than spring break.”
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Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Friday they are delaying their plan for Pfizer’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its coronavirus vaccine for children under five years old due to insufficient data on the efficacy of a third dose.
Pfizer announced February 1 FDA had asked the drug company, and its partner BioNTech, to submit data on a COVID vaccine series for babies as young as six months old and young children up until age five.
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Two years after COVID burst on the American scene, leading to lockdowns, school closures, mask and vaccine mandates, and trillions of dollars in emergency government spending, the question on many minds is: When will the emergency end?
The answer to that question is not an easy one. An examination of past emergencies does not resolve it. Rather, it is clear that emergency situations, including this one, may be understood through various lenses, yielding different perspectives on what the endpoint will be.
Take, by way of comparison, World War II, an emergency that had at least four distinct endings because it had at least four distinct faces:
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As the mid-term elections approach, a number of Democrat governors are now following in the steps of Republican Governors Ron DeSantis (FL) and Glenn Youngkin (VA) in support of dropping mask mandates.
Supported by their political and media allies, the governors of states, including New Jersey, Connecticut, Delaware, California, and Oregon are now announcing mask mandates in schools may be dropped soon, as the New York Times reported Tuesday.
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Approximately 70 members of the Wisconsin National Guard have completed their two-week certified nursing assistant (CNA) training and will be deployed to hospitals in the state.
According to a release from Governor Tony Evers, the individuals conducted their training at Madison College.
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Minnesota Governor Tim Walz signed a new law that aims to help first responders and frontline workers in the state.
The legislation, H.F. 1203, was authored by Senator Jeff Howe (R-Rockville) and passed the legislature with wide, bipartisan support.
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Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer on Saturday touted her record for “delivering for older Michiganders,” ahead of her State of the State address.
Seemingly, the governor ignored a recent report that demonstrated thousands of additional deaths in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities that were not reported by her administration’s Department of Health and Human Services.
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Multiple Michigan lawmakers are demanding answers to a report from the Michigan Office of the Auditor General that detailed thousands of additional COVID-related deaths in long-term care facilities across the state.
The analysis discovered more than 2,000 additional deaths than reported by Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s Department of Health and Human Services.
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The Republican Governors Association on Monday blasted Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer, after a new analysis detailed thousands of additional deaths in nursing homes and other long-term care facilities.
The Michigan Auditor General explained in a report that roughly 2,400 more individuals died from the virus than previously reported by state agencies.
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Wisconsin Governor Tony Evers will dispatch the National Guard to battle the surge of coronavirus cases in the state, according to a release from his office.
In their capacity, the National Guard members will work to address staffing shortages across the healthcare industry, expanding capacity at hospitals and nursing homes.
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Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN), a member of the Senate Banking and Foreign Relations Committees, joined 15 of his GOP colleagues in introducing the Coronavirus Origin Validation, Investigation, and Determination (COVID) Act of 2022, according to a Tuesday press release by Hagerty’s office.
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Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf will work with the federal government in order to address labor shortages in the healthcare sector amid another surge in coronavirus cases.
Wolf, who is partnering with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), will create “strike teams” to be sent to hospitals and long-term care facilities.
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A former Planned Parenthood president and public health professional argued in a Thursday op-ed for The Washington Post that the rise in cases of the Omicron coronavirus variant is not a reason to keep schools closed.
Dr. Leana Wen argued “both sides [of the school reopening debate] are wrong,” in her op-ed. “let’s agree that schools are essential and then work to reduce risk to get students back to in-person learning,” Wen wrote.
Wen called it “astounding” that governors in states like Texas, Georgia and Iowa are fighting against school mask mandates and that Florida’s surgeon general is discouraging testing in schools, attributing ” “low vaccine uptake among children” to “rampant right-wing disinformation.”
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The Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted Tuesday to move to remote learning Wednesday, citing concerns over safety amid the rise in COVID-19 cases, the union said in a press release.
The CTU’s elected House of Delegates voted in favor (88%) of a resolution to return to remote education amid the surge of COVID-19 cases and the rise of the Omicron coronavirus variant, citing a lack of safety guarantees, a union press release said. In the membership-wide vote, 73% of CTU’s members voted in favor of virtual learning, passing the two-thirds threshold required to enact the resolution.
The resolution outlines plans to work remotely until Jan. 18 or until the current COVID-19 wave falls below last year’s threshold for school closures, according to the resolution.
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Arizona Governor Doug Ducey on Tuesday pledged to continue in-person learning for students across the state, even if it requires unconventional methods.
Ducey created the Open for Learning Recovery Benefit program, which will provide financial assistance to families who may face unexpected barriers due to school closures.
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The coronavirus has reached remote Antarctica, striking most of the 25 Belgian staffers at a research station, despite all of them being fully vaccinated, passing multiple PCR tests, and quarantining before arrival.
Two thirds of the researchers working in Belgium’s Princess Elisabeth Polar Station have caught Covid, the Daily Telegraph reported, “proving there is no escape from the global pandemic.”
None of the cases are severe, according to the Telegraph. There are two emergency doctors at the station monitoring the situation.
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