The University of Connecticut announced Thursday a change in its mask mandate from “required” to “recommended,” but said students, faculty, staff, and visitors would still be required to wear masks in all classes, labs, rehearsal rooms, and other spaces on the school’s campuses at least until April 1.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) told Fox News Channel host Tucker Carlson Thursday the media accusing him of “berating” students into removing their masks during a press conference are the true bullies for helping federal health officials over the past two years force children to wear cloth masks that have never been effective against the spread of COVID-19.
Appearing on Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, DeSantis responded to critics in the media who accused him of “berating” and “scolding” students who appeared with him during a press conference Wednesday, wearing masks.
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The U.S. Senate on Wednesday voted to strike down Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate targeting healthcare workers at federally funded facilities. The measure passed on a party-line vote of 49 to 44.
No Democrat senators voted with Republicans to repeal the mandate, but GOP senators were able to get the resolution through the Senate because six Democrats missed the vote, The Hill reported.
The bill was sponsored by Senator Roger Marshall (R-Kan.), who physician, and former military officer. Before voting began, Marshall argued that the CMS vaccine mandate is “not about public health or science.”
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On Monday, a federal appeals court ruled in favor of a group of Navy SEALs who defied the U.S. Navy’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate, dealing one of the biggest blows yet to the military mandate.
As reported by The Daily Caller, the court’s ruling was similar to a previous decision by a district judge in Fort Worth, Texas in January, who ordered a temporary halt to the Navy’s vaccine mandate while the case moved forward. The lawsuit was filed by a group of 35 Navy SEALs who all sought religious exemptions from being forced to take the vaccine.
The appeals court ruled that the Department of Defense failed to prove that the vaccine mandate served “‘paramount interests’ that justify vaccinating these 35 Plaintiffs against COVID-19 in violation of their religious beliefs.” The court noted that despite the Navy claiming to have a “compelling interest” in forcing all sailors to get vaccinated, it “undermined” its own mandate by preparing unvaccinated SEALs for deployment while the pandemic was still ongoing.
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While President Joe Biden proposed $22.5 billion in coronavirus-related spending this week, Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey (R) urged clarification of how the government has spent almost $6 trillion in earlier COVID relief.
Toomey joined 35 Senate colleagues in writing to Biden asking for a detailed explication of the disbursements made over the last two years which, the authors noted, amounted to the largest allotment of taxpayer money for one concern in American history.
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President Joe Biden boasted in his State of the Union address Tuesday his administration “will continue to combat the [COVID] virus as we do other diseases,” but Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) and numerous physicians say the suppression of early treatment by Biden and his political, media, Big Tech, and Big Pharma allies has already “cost hundreds of thousands of lives” in America.
Johnson said in a statement following the address Biden “seems oblivious to the harm his administration and policies have caused” Americans.
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Just before President Joe Biden visited Wisconsin on Wednesday, a U.S. Senator from the state released a scathing statement on the 46th president’s Tuesday night State of the Union address.
“In spite of President Biden’s inaugural speech promise that his number one goal was to heal and unify our nation, today, America is even further divided due to his mismanagement of the economy, our southern border, foreign policy, and COVID-19,” Senator Ron Johnson (R-WI) said in a statement.
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Despite promises from President Biden and top health officials that COVID-19 vaccines would prevent severe illness, death, and perhaps even transmission of the virus, data indicate that thousands of Americans are dying from the illness even after having been vaccinated.
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A government watchdog Tuesday took the next step in its battle to expose Chinese connections to the National Institute of Health (NIH).
“Empower Oversight filed an amended complaint today against the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in its Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation for documents related to a request by Chinese researchers to remove genetic sequences related to the SARS-CoV-2 virus from a database controlled by NIH,” that group said in a press release.
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RICHMOND, Virginia – As the legislature approaches its March 12 adjournment, legislators are working on budget negotiations, wrapping up their consideration of other bills, and continuing to return to pre-COVID-19 operations.
On Tuesday, the Senate Finance Committee advanced a number of bills from the House of Delegates, but at the beginning of the meeting Committee Chair Janet Howell (D-Fairfax) warned that the committee would add a financial contingency clause to several of the bills that aren’t currently funded in budget proposals. Health and Human Resources Subcommittee Chair Emmett Hanger (R-Augusta) presented the subcommittee’s report on many bills.
Addressing Howell, he said, “We had the issue that you referred to as you began the meeting where on a number of them, there was not an allocation of funds coming from the House. So, we’re going to have, obviously, resource issues as we enter conference in terms of whether or not we can support all these good ideas that we’re going to advance today with the clause.”
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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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Connecticut’s Democrat governor Monday made an awkward visit to meet and greet high school students after they finished their first day of classes wherein COVID-19 masks were optional.
“I’m doing good, I wanted to see what this first day was like,” Governor Ned Lamont (D) told one Glastonbury High School student as they shook hands.
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Members of the Tennessee Board of Medical Examiners said last week they won’t object if or when a primary care physician in the state prescribes ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine to treat COVID-19. Board members said this last Wednesday at a Senate Government Operations Committee meeting.
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A mother who has been arrested twice at Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) School Board meetings spoke to The Georgia Star News Monday.
“I am unhappy that our school board keeps violating constitutional rights of its constituents and that parent rights are being usurped each and every day by a power- and control-hungry Board of Education,” Karen Pirkle said. “I am devastated that my child was involved and they violently arrested me in front of her. I will continue to fight for my child no matter what. As a result of the board actions, my child will not longer attend GCPS schools, as they have now banned me from all school property which limits this parent’s right to drop off and pick up my child. I will continue to fight for my child and her rights.”
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After the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Friday recommended that 70 percent of the U.S. population can stop wearing masks to slow the spread of COVID-19, the Ohio Department of Health (ODH) is still unwilling to update Ohioans on the status of the pandemic.
When contacted by The Ohio Star to ask for the department’s professional opinion on whether Ohioans will soon be able to return to pre-pandemic life, ODH spokesman Ken Gordon declined to comment. The Star also noted that even Congress – which has had a mask mandate in place for two full years and threatened to fine members who refused to wear masks – finally made masks optional ahead of President Joe Biden’s Monday night State of the Union address.
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The House over the weekend lifted its COVID-19 mask mandate, ahead of President Biden’s State of the Union on Tuesday night in House chambers before a joint session of Congress.
The change, which makes masks optional, was announced Sunday by Capitol Physician Brian Monahan.
“Individuals may choose to mask at any time, but it is no longer a requirement,” he said in a letter to lawmakers, who are returning Monday to Capitol Hill.
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Wisconsin. Senator Ron Johnson (R) and Dr. Robert Malone wrote in an op-ed at The Federalist Thursday the “COVID cartel” – federal health agencies, Big Pharma, establishment media, and Big Tech – lied in order to scapegoat unvaccinated Americans in a campaign to divide the nation.
Johnson, who has spearheaded efforts to break the silencing of physicians and scientists on the issue of early treatment for COVID-19, and Malone, a pioneer in the development of mRNA technology, wrote Americans have been deceived for the sake of covering up government fraud and incompetence, while likely thousands have died unnecessary deaths.
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Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill this week that at least 35 organizations asked him to veto. Now health-care providers have liability protection from being sued by patients and family members over COVID-19-related injuries, deaths and refusal to try available treatment.
The new law provides liability protection to health-care providers that follow “government-issued health standards” that “include the CDC’s COVID-19 guidelines, which many say aren’t working,” the groups wrote in a letter to DeSantis. “Some medical professionals have stated that these CDC protocols have led to unnecessary medicines, ventilation and deaths.”
Shawn McBride, director of The American Freedom Information Institute, Inc. who led the 35-group coalition asking DeSantis to veto the bill, told The Center Square that while DeSantis “signed a bill that may allow CDC protocols to continue in some hospitals, we’ve laid the foundation to help more folks get to medical freedom.”
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A new bill would, if enacted into law, prohibit a Tennessee licensing board or disciplinary subcommittee from acting against a physician’s license based solely on the physician’s recommendations to a patient regarding treatment for COVID-19. The bill would also prohibit a pharmacy from blocking or attempting to block a patient’s access to COVID-19 treatments in certain circumstances.
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Senator Siobhan Dunnavant (R-Henrico) protested the plexiglass shields that surround senators’ desks on the senate floor.
“The first week we were here together, I shared with the body through Madam Clerk the data that shows that devices like these do not help mitigate the risk of COVID, and that they may indeed increase risk of COVID,” Dunnavant said in a floor speech. “There is no emergency order in place.”
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On Friday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) is allegedly set to announce an easing of mask restrictions on the national level.
Fox News reports that the updated guidelines will focus less on the overall number of cases, and will instead emphasize a community’s general risk of spreading the coronavirus. As such, current guidelines apply to individuals who live in communities with allegedly “substantial or high transmission.” The CDC claims, without evidence, that 95 percent of all counties in the United States qualify as “high transmission.”
The new guidelines will apparently not apply to most Americans, as the new criteria will factor in hospitalizations with the overall capacity of local medical facilities. CDC Director Rochelle Walensky has said that the new guidelines will focus more on “enhanced prevention efforts.”
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ALPHARETTA — Whistleblowers, some of whom have testified on Capitol Hill, told an audience in Alpharetta Thursday that the medical and pharmaceutical industries that treat COVID-19 have been corrupted. Organizers held this conference, COVID-19 Pharma Corruption: Your Life, Health, and Job, at Alpharetta’s Phase Family Learning Center.
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A Minnesota man says his wife, who is in dire need of a kidney transplant, is being denied treatment because she is not vaccinated against COVID-19.
Glenn Wilson transcribed an email from the M Health Fairview hospital system sent transplant patients, describing its guidelines for those patients to receive a transplant.
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In a Metro Nashville School Board (MNSB) meeting that turned heated Tuesday night, one of the school board members directed a curse towards parents.
Parents who attended the meeting – but were not allowed to speak – cheered when the board voted seven to one in favor of ending the school system’s mask mandate on March 21, when students return from their spring break.
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Vanderbilt University is concerned after four of its medical school students have committed suicide in less than two years.
“Vanderbilt University is committed to a culture of caring in which the well-being of all community members—our extraordinary students, the faculty who teach them, and the staff who play an immeasurable role in the success of this remarkable university—is enhanced and supported,” Vanderbilt said in a statement. “We strive to foster a culture of openness through brave dialogue, honest self-reflection, and willingness to invest in this incredible university by investing first in the mental health and wholeness of every member of the Vanderbilt family.”
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In response to a report that American truckers could follow the lead of their Canadian counterparts and clog parts of the I-95 Beltway near Washington, D.C., a Democrat congressman from Arizona has a solution for the potential peaceful protest.
“Perfect time to impound and give the trucks to small trucking companies looking to expand their business,” Representative Ruben Gallego (D-AZ-07).
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In a letter to the House Speaker and Senate President Friday, President Joe Biden extended the national COVID-19 emergency pandemic indefinitely.
“There remains a need to continue this national emergency,” Biden wrote.
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The two oral antiviral therapeutics developed by pharmaceutical companies Merck and Pfizer to treat mild to moderate cases of COVID-19 are readily available to patients in Tennessee as a part of an increased bi-weekly allocation program.
“This increase in allocations is something we have been anticipating for weeks,” Tennessee Department of Health Commissioner Dr. Lisa Piercey, MD, MBA, FAAP said in a statement. “Our goal has always been to increase access to these treatments by onboarding more pharmacies to maximize access to patients. We have seen a steady increase in allocations to the state and know many pharmacies and providers are eager to offer this treatment to help mitigate COVID-19 disease progression for those at risk of a severe outcome.”
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Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) introduced legislation Wednesday to protect a doctor’s right to treat patients and to reassert that the federal government’s agencies have no authority to restrict lawful prescribing or dispensing of FDA-approved or Right to Try drugs.
Johnson, who has spearheaded efforts to break the silencing of physicians and scientists on the issue of early treatment for COVID-19, joined with Sens. Mike Braun (R-IN) and Mike Lee (R-UT) to launch the Right to Treat Act to confirm that the doctor-patient relationship is at the center of treatment decision-making, and not the federal government.
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A political action committee is funding a series of trucker protests against COVD-19 restrictions in the U.S., mirroring efforts by Canadian truckers to lift the country’s vaccine mandates and rules.
The Great American Patriot Project (GAPP) launched a campaign Wednesday intended to organize and fund several truck convoys to begin in early March across the United States.
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A growing number of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck despite increasing wages, a newly released report found.
PYMNTS and Lending Club released the report, which says that 61% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck, an increase of 7 points since May 2021. The report also found 54% of Baby Boomers and seniors are living paycheck to paycheck.
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City leaders from Bexley, Whitehall, Worthington, and Columbus met with Columbus Public Health Commissioner Dr. Mysheika Roberts and Franklin County Health Commissioner Joe Mazzola recently to receive an update on the status of the spread of COVID-19 in the community, according to a statement by the city of Columbus.
Currently, each city has local orders in place requiring the wearing of face coverings indoors, however, Dr. Roberts reported that both COVID-19 transmission rates and hospitalizations have continued to decline dramatically. If current trends continue, each city expects to consider lifting local face covering requirements in the coming weeks, according to the press release.
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The former mayor of Stonecrest and a bookkeeper who administered COVID-19 relief funds to the town pleaded guilty in federal court this month to charges related to the theft of pandemic relief funds. Per federal rules, Stonecrest officials could only spend these relief funds on necessary expenditures related to the pandemic that occurred between March 2020 through December 2020. They include medical and public health expenses as well as grants to reimburse businesses for lost business during COVID-19.
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A Knox County Schools (KCS) parent group fighting the end of school mask mandates has filed an ethics complaint against three members of the school board, alleging they violated one of the board’s own policies and also appeared at a Knox County Commission meeting without giving adequate public notice.
Parent Amanda Collins, who chairs Knox County Schools Parent Advocates for School Safety (KCS PASS), said in a press statement KCS board members Betsy Henderson, Susan Horn, and Kristi Kristy violated the board’s policy when they submitted a proposal to the Knox County Commission to hire private attorneys to help in the board’s fight against a lawsuit over masks in schools.
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The general counsel of the Texas Public Policy Foundation told The Star News Network the legal theory behind the federal lawsuit filed by the foundation Wednesday on behalf of Representative Elizabeth Ann “Beth” Van Duyne and Texas Attorney General W. Kenneth Paxton petitions the court to strike down the Centers of Disease Control mask mandate on airplanes and public transit as unlawful and unconstitutional mitigation for the COVID-19 pandemic.
“Well, the basis is twofold,” said Robert Henneke, who is also the foundation’s executive director.
“First of all, there is no statutory authority for the Centers for Disease Control to command that all Americans have to wear a face mask covering when they travel,” Henneke said.
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Vitamin D deficiency was linked to worse health outcomes for COVID-19 patients, including higher risk of death, a new study found.
Israeli scientists from Bar-Ilan University and the Galilee Medical Center found a strong connection between vitamin D deficiencies and negative COVID-19 outcomes. The researchers were able to predict COVID-19 patients’ vitamin D status accurately based on the severity of the disease in a patient, according to the Feb. 3 study.
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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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One of the largest teachers unions in the country donated $2 million to the left-wing Senate Majority Political Action Committee in 2021 after the Democratic Party voted against reopening public schools, according to data from the National Republican Senatorial Committee provided to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
On March 6, 2021, Senate Democrats unanimously voted against a Republican amendment to the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that would have ensured school reopening dollars were allocated to education institutions prioritizing in-person learning. Schools that were working to provide in-person learning for students five days a week would have been given full funding under the bill, while those that were completely closed would only get 25% of its allocated funding.
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At a Pennsylvania House Appropriations Committee hearing on Thursday, the panel’s GOP majority grilled the state’s chief economic-development official on the damage inflicted by COVID-related business restrictions.
In March 17, 2020, Governor Tom Wolf (D) responded to the outbreak of the novel coronavirus by ordering the shuttering of all businesses he deemed “nonessential.” The commonwealth phased out most of the closures that summer, though capacity restrictions on restaurants and other gathering places continued into 2021. Republicans in the General Assembly attempted to end the shutdowns but did not have the two-thirds supermajority needed to override the governor.
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The Chairwoman of the Montgomery County School Board says she intends to keep her job after storming out of a meeting earlier this week and offering the position to speaker at the meeting.
“I have not resigned,” Sue Kass told The Virginia Star by email Thursday.
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Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal unveiled a bipartisan bill Wednesday aimed at curbing online harms to children.
The Kids Online Safety Act is the result of several hearings and a months-long investigation led by Blackburn and Blumenthal into how use of social media platforms affects teens and young children. If enacted, the bill would require social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable “addictive” product features and allow them to opt out of recommendation algorithms.
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The Biden administration plans to make yearly COVID shots mandatory for all Americans, including young children, a Food and Drug Administration executive told a Project Veritas undercover journalist on hidden camera.
In the sting video released on Tuesday, Christopher Cole, Executive Officer of Countermeasures Initiative for the FDA, said: “Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible.” According to Project Veritas president James O’Keefe, Cole has “over 20 years experience” at the FDA, and “claims to be directly involved in the approval process.”
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RICHMOND, Virginia – Governor Glenn Youngkin signed a school mask-optional bill into law from the steps of the capitol on Wednesday afternoon, hours after the House of Delegates approved his amendments adding an emergency clause and a March 1 effective date.
“Today, we are reestablishing, restoring power back from parents. We are also reestablishing our expectations that we will get back to normal, and this is the path, this is the path. So thank you all for coming. And now, we’re going to do a little work,” Youngkin told the crowd before signing the bill.
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Tennessee State Senator Ken Yager (R-Kingston) has filed a bill in the Tennessee General Assembly that he said would, if enacted into law, help school districts across Tennessee address ongoing staffing challenges.
The bill, SB 2702, would allow retired members of the Tennessee Consolidated Retirement System (TCRS) to seek reemployment as a K-12 teacher, K-12 substitute teacher, or as a K-12 bus driver. This, without the loss or suspension of the retired member’s TCRS benefits, Yager said in an emailed statement.
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Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is lifting the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and will not extend its mask requirement into March.
The Democratic mayor also says that as of Tuesday many businesses in the nation’s capital will no longer be required to check that customers have at least one dose of the vaccine before allowing them to enter. However, they will still be allowed to make such a request on their own, according to dcist.com.
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New York City recently fired nearly 1,500 municipal workers who failed to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, officials said Monday.
City officials said 1,430 workers were fired Friday and that the number represents less than 1% of the city’s 370,000-person workforce. The number was also far smaller than what they had predicted.
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Fifty-five federal agencies have issued rule changes to track employees and others who request religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Critics of the tracking say the practice is discriminatory against people of faith.
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The real pandemic in this country is one of growing fascism from our so-called political Left.
The far-Left Democratic Party doesn’t care about your essential freedoms—from speech and the free flow of ideas to freedom of assembly—particularly when those freedoms stand in the way of their pursuit of power.
This is the party, after all, who opposed Abraham Lincoln and stood in the way of integration well into the 1960s. Where Democratic hatred of freedom has become glaringly apparent in recent times is with their obsession with COVID vaccine mandates and mask mandates, most especially for school-aged children. This “pandemic” has exposed what is truly afoot here, fascist authoritarianism at its most potent and dangerous.
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The Senate has approved Governor Glenn Youngkin’s amendments to the recently passed school mask-optional bill. The amendments, which an aide said Youngkin sent to the Senate on Monday evening, include clauses making the bill take effect on March 1.
“As you can probably tell from my remarks, I would like this to take effect yesterday, but that’s not going to happen. And I do believe that we’re going to need a transition time for some of our Northern Virginia school districts and probably elsewhere in the state,” co-sponsor Senator Chap Petersen (D-Fairfax City) said on the Senate floor on Tuesday evening.
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Ingham County will spend $56.8 million in federal funding to recover from COVID-19. The spending will be divided into two phases.
Ingham County Controller Gregg Todd said the first round of spending ranged from June 2021 through May 2022, and aims to help those hit hardest by COVID.
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