Federal COVID-19 funds in Tennessee will not be used to combat COVID-19.
Instead, according to a press release from the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC), at least part of the $3.725 billion the state received from the American Rescue Plan will be spent on “water infrastructure.”
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Estimates vary widely on how much President Joe Biden’s $10,000-20,000 per borrower cancellation of student loans will cost taxpayers, but a new analysis estimates the significant cost of a less-covered aspect of Biden’s plan.
When Biden announced the debt cancellation, he also announced an extension of student loan repayments “one final time” through Dec. 31 of this year. In March of 2020, then-President Donald Trump first suspended the repayments citing COVID-19. Since then, the suspension has been extended several times. Interest does not accrue while the payments are suspended.
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Of all the creepy things that totalitarian regimes do, perhaps none is more creepy than their habit of encouraging children to inform on their parents to the regime.
Anyone who has read “1984” will remember the pathetic Tom Parsons, who winds up next to Winston Smith in The Ministry of Truth (read: prison) after his young daughter reported that he had muttered “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep.
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Georgia is giving more than $62.4 million in federal COVID relief money to groups fighting homelessness and housing insecurity worsened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The state is allocating American Rescue Plan and State Fiscal Recovery Fund dollars to the 20 projects receiving money.
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich (R) recently joined a coalition of 22 states in support of the religious liberty of Navy SEALs seeking exemption from universal COVID vaccination.
“It is absolute hypocrisy for an administration that purports to embrace diversity and inclusion to categorically dismiss the religious liberty and sincerely held beliefs of our most heroic service members,” Brnovich said in a press release. “Our Constitution and the brave men and women of our military are far more time proven than any COVID-19 vaccination.”
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The Virginia Department of Education is reminding families qualifying for free meals for students to apply for the program after pandemic-era federal provisions for free meals for all students expired at the end of the 2021-2022 school year, meaning that otherwise qualifying families could face charges for meals starting on the first day of school.
“School meals are important sources of nutrition for students and help reduce food insecurity in the Commonwealth,” Superintendent of Public Education Jillian Balow said in a Monday VDOE newsletter. “I urge all families to apply to determine if they qualify. Filling out an application is simple and takes less than 15 minutes.”
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In the cartoon below, you will see the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) encourage a young female protagonist to report her “Uncle Steve” to Facebook for posting “disinformation”.
DHS’s rationale? “Uncle Steve” posted that “Covid-19 is no worse than the flu”:
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New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday called it “a mistake” the state switched to remote learning in schools at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic more than two years ago.
Hochul, a Democrat running to serve a full term in November, made her remarks during a wide-ranging speech at the University of Albany commemorating Women’s Equality Day. That included her calling on the Department of Labor to study the impact the coronavirus had on women in the workforce.
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Oversight Republicans have launched an investigation into how the U.S. Department of Education has handled billions of COVID-19 relief dollars, raising the alarm about the major learning loss experienced by students.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona demanding documents and answers as to why most of the money has reportedly remained unspent.
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A new whistleblower report signed by nine officers across five branches of the military claims the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate is unlawful.
The report was sent to Congress urging an investigation into what it called illegal and fraudulent activity by the DOD. The memorandum was published by Liberty Council, a nonprofit legal group that in January maintained there was no legal COVID-19 vaccine available despite the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saying there was.
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Memphis-Shelby County Schools (MSCS) Superintendent says he will resign from his post amid controversy that led to an external investigation.
Dr. Joris Ray said he would resign after the full nine-member school board met in July with investigator Herman Morris, who was contracted to look into allegations that Ray had extra-marital affairs with employees of the school district.
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On Monday, Republican members of the powerful House Oversight Committee announced their intentions to pursue investigations of Dr. Anthony Fauci when they reclaim the majority, even after Fauci announced his plans to step down in December.
As reported by The Daily Caller, Fauci will be leaving his positions at the White House, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in December, after spending 38 years in government. The 81-year-old Fauci said that he will remain active in public health to some degree, and that after leaving government he will enter the “next chapter” of his career.
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Enrollment in Catholic schools in the United States has risen for the first time in two decades after teachers’ unions worked with the Biden administration to keep government schools locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The enrollment rise since last year by 3.8 percent, or 62,000 students, in Catholic elementary and secondary schools, is also the largest surge recorded in at least 50 years by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), the Associated Press reported in February.
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Spending on food stamps has increased by $53.5 billion – an 89% increase – in the two pandemic years. By comparison, that’s how much the entire program cost in 2009 during the Great Recession.
Spending on the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program grew 88.5% from $60.3 billion in 2019 to $113.8 billion in 2021. Spending on the SNAP program had previously peaked at $79.8 billion in 2013 before declining for the next six years.
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In October 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court stripped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of the unilateral powers she was using when she declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Whitmer had been using a 1945 law – which was prompted by a three-day race riot in Detroit three years earlier – that had no sunset provision in it and didn’t require approval by the state legislature.
In May 2021, Whitmer told a news agency that if she still had that 1945 state-of-emergency law, she would use those powers, but not for anything related to a pandemic.
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After Dr. Anthony Fauci announced that he will resign from his positions as Chief Medical Advisor to President Joe Biden and head of the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID), one U.S. Congressman from Arizona says Fauci will still be held accountable by a potential Republican Congress.
“Dr. Fauci is conveniently resigning from his position in December before House Republicans have an opportunity to hold him accountable for destroying our country over these past three years,” said Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05). “This guy is a coward.”
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The Chief Medical Advisor for President Joe Biden and head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID) who was also the face of the America’s COVID-19 response has announced that he will resign from those positions effective in December.
“It has been the honor of a lifetime to have led the NIAID, an extraordinary institution, for so many years and through so many scientific and public health challenges. I am very proud of our many accomplishments,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said in his resignation announcement. “I have worked with – and learned from – countless talented and dedicated people in my own laboratory, at NIAID, at NIH and beyond. To them I express my abiding respect and gratitude.”
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RICHMOND, Virginia — Governor Glenn Youngkin is directing $397 million in excess funds to be set aside for unspecified tax relief in 2023, as Virginia has $3.2 billion in excess cash — $2 billion in unplanned revenues plus Fiscal Year 2022 spending that was $1.2 billion less than planned.
“Today I formally report to the General Assembly that Virginia ended the fiscal year with a record general fund balance,” Youngkin said at a Friday morning joint meeting of the House of Delegates Finance and Appropriations Committees and the Senate Finance Committee.
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Standards of learning tests (SOL) for the 2021-2022 school year show improvement across most subjects from the previous academic year, but the administration is warning that there’s still an achievement gap compared to pre-COVID-19 levels. In a virtual press conference Thursday, Virginia Department of Education (VDOE) officials said that gap shows the impact of virtual learning.
“The research is becoming clearer and clearer: students whose schools were closed for in-person instruction suffered the most. Being in person for school matters,” Superintendent of Public Education Jillian Balow said.
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The Centers for Disease Control and Preventions on Wednesday announced changes to the country’s top public health agency, amid criticism about its response to COVID-19, monkeypox and other public health threats.
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The average length of stay for COVID-19 patients went up in the first quarter of 2022 according to the Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association (VHHA).
“What we saw in the Omicron wave was that those coming into hospitals were staying longer for their COVID hospitalization with an average length of stay of ten-and-a-half days,” VHHA Vice President of Data Analytics, David Vaamonde said during a Monday presentation of hospital and emergency department visit trends.
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The federal government handed out more than twice as much money in COVID-19 funeral reimbursements to Ohioans over the past seven months than it did from the beginning of the program in 2020 until January.
As of Aug. 1, FEMA has given more than $2.7 billion to fulfill 420,000 applications for help with funeral costs for pandemic-related deaths since Jan. 20, 2020. In Ohio, 18,860 of those have shared more than $122.2 million.
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White House Senior adviser Anita Dunn has consulted for companies and trade groups that have benefited or stand to benefit from federal funding and is being forced to recuse herself from matters involving them, according to a financial disclosure.
Dunn has consulted through the public affairs firm SKDK during the past two years for the likes of Pfizer, AT&T, Micron and the American Clean Power Association, according to a filing reported on by CNBC Friday. Dunn, who founded the SKDK in 2004, is recused from working on issues related to past clients, a spokesman for the White House told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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The President of the University of Arizona is still pushing COVID-19 precautions, despite the fact that even the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has significantly reduced its COVID-19 guidelines.
“The pandemic is not over … though our situation is much improved over the start of last academic year,” University of Arizona President Robert Robbins said in an interview with the school newspaper. “While transmission of COVID-19 remains persistent around the nation, we have successfully navigated the past two years with continued innovation, support and cooperation from students, faculty and staff. We have the tools to continue our success and we know how to use them.”
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich joined 22 other states this week in filing an amicus curiae brief at the appellate level opposing the Center for Disease Control’s attempt to continue a mask mandate on public transportation, which includes airplanes and buses. He sued the CDC over the requirement with 20 other attorneys general in March.
“Upholding the law is especially important during times of emergency,” he said in a statement. “Federal overreach is most often attempted under the guise of addressing a crisis.”
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FBI informants in the case of the alleged 2020 plot to kidnap Democratic Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer purportedly shared a hotel room and smoking weed with a target, the Detroit Free Press reported.
Adam Fox and Barry Croft Jr. are undergoing retrial on charges of planning to kidnap Whitmer from her vacation home in 2020 in response to her COVID-19 restrictions. They and two others were originally acquitted in April, with their defense arguing the FBI entrapped them, The Associated Press reported.
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After nearly two years of unprecedented lockdowns, mandates, and other restrictions on daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of graduating high school students are preparing to head off to college without having learned nearly as much as they should have.
The Associated Press reports that such students are about to enter college significantly farther behind the academic standards of previous years, almost entirely due to the pandemic’s forced transition to “online learning,” a shortage of teachers, and mask and vaccine mandates that disrupted school life for millions of students across the country. Such students risk the possibility of being grossly underprepared for the level of work required by college, and could result in a massive spike in college dropouts in the coming years.
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Attorney General Jason Miyares joined an amicus brief opposing the Biden administration’s ongoing lawsuit over the CDC’s mask mandate for interstate travel. A district court vacated the requirement, but the CDC appealed, and the Health Freedom Defense Fund v. Biden case is now in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit.
“Mask Mandates across the country have been lifted in virtually every aspect of daily life. For months, Americans have been traveling safely while making their own, autonomous decisions. The CDC mask mandate on public transportation, like air travel, is obsolete and no longer necessary – not to mention a clear example of federal overreach,” Miyares said in a press release.
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Women’s employment increased markedly from June to July, but the total number of employed working-aged men actually dropped in that same time span according to a July jobs report released Friday.
There were 170,000 fewer employed men in July than June, whereas 349,000 more women were employed in July, according to Yahoo Finance. Women’s unemployment dipped to 3.1% in July from 3.3% in June while the same figure for men remained steady at 3.2% from June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 2022 Employment Situation report found.
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The Labor Department’s newly released jobs report for July appeared to be good news for the economy — at first glance.
A dig below the surface, however, reveals a different picture: Americans, strapped for cash by inflation, taking on second jobs as families have less money to spend.
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A Tennessee trial court ruled Friday that Tennessee’s Education Scholarship Program can move forward.
A three-judge panel heard arguments earlier in the day from the American Civil Liberties Union and Southern Poverty Law Center. The two groups had asked the court to deliver an injunction against the pilot program.
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Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) begins the first congressional hearing on gain-of-function research Wednesday, attempting to determine whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) used taxpayer funds for gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.
“Before we even get to whether the virus came from a lab we have to explore were they doing gain of function research?” Paul told Fox News’ Brett Baier Tuesday.
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Citing a recent surge of COVID-19 cases across the country and in the Volunteer State, Tennessee State University (TSU) recently announced that it will continue to put COVID-19 safety protocols in place for the upcoming fall semester beginning on August 22nd.
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Tennessee State University (TSU) is facing backlash after some students have suggested there is a housing crisis ahead of the upcoming fall semester beginning on August 22nd.
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Republicans on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis and the House Oversight Committee have joined forces in an investigation over the thousands of nursing home deaths in New York state during COVID, saying New York Democrats ignored previous inquiries.
The controversy began in 2020 when thousands of New York nursing home residents died during the pandemic, drawing extra scrutiny to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s policy of sending elderly patients recovering from COVID-19 into nursing homes.
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A Virginia Hospital and Healthcare Association poll found that community violence and crime is the top public health concern for Virginia voters.
“In the public opinion survey from Mason-Dixon Polling and Strategy, 51 percent of respondents cited community violence and crime as the top public health concern for their families. Health care workforce shortages, which have been intensified as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, was the second most commonly cited public health concern with 25 percent of those polled listing it as their primary concern,” a VHHA release states.
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Documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL) reveal “concrete evidence” of how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) colluded with the social media giants to promote the Biden administration’s COVID-19 propaganda and censor Americans’ free speech, AFL reports.
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Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Navy veteran and businessman Jack Maxey about his uncovering of Hunter Biden’s 2014 support of the San Francisco-based pandemic tracking and predictive analytics company Metabiota. Maxey said he was tipped off about Hunter and Metabiota by an American military intelligence operative.
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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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A former high-ranking federal COVID-19 adviser admitted this week that she “knew” the coronavirus vaccines “were not going to protect against infection,” a stunning declaration that comes roughly 18 months after the shots were first rolled out to the general public.
Dr. Deborah Birx, an infectious disease expert and a regular presence at the Trump White House during the early days of the COVID-19 crisis, made the admission during an interview with Fox News’s Neil Cavuto on Friday.
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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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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) issued nationwide guidance on mask wearing as community COVID-19 spread levels increase, and included seven Tennessee counties in its assessment.
“COVID-19 Community Levels are a new tool to help communities decide what prevention steps to take based on the latest data,” according to the CDC. “Levels can be low, medium, or high and are determined by looking at hospital beds being used, hospital admissions, and the total number of new COVID-19 cases in an area.”
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Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ubiquitous face of the country’s early pandemic response, says he’s retiring from public service at the end of President Biden’s term.
Fauci has spend over 50 years at the National Institute of Health, including roughly 40 as the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
He told Politico about his plans to retire.
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A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that mask mandates did little to nothing to curb the spread of Covid-19. The latest research further undermines the controversial policy.
A new study analyzing a pair of schools in Fargo, North Dakota—one which had a mask mandate in place in the fall of the 2021-2022 academic year and one that did not—provides more evidence that mask mandates are ineffective public policy.
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All but one public university in Virginia are taking steps to address students’ tuition burden after a call to action from the governor.
Earlier this year, Glenn Youngkin requested that the commonwealth’s public universities reverse their planned tuition increases, citing inflation.
The University of Virginia (UVA) is the only public university not to announce a plan to reverse its tuition increase. NBC29 reports that UVA students will see a 4.7% tuition and fee increase, raising rates for first-year in-state students to $14,878 and $50,348 for out-of-state students.
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Next week will mark one and a half years since Joe Biden became president on Jan. 20, 2021. On July 20, every American should look within and ask: “Am I better off than I was 18 months ago?”
To Biden’s credit, the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.4% when he took office to 3.6% in June. Today’s figure is a notch higher than the 3.5% joblessness that Americans enjoyed in February 2020, thanks to President Donald Trump’s Republican tax cuts, deregulation, energy dominance, and other pro-growth initiatives.
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In response to this week’s news of the consumer price index rising to 9.1%, Republican U.S. Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio gave a blistering summation and offered direction to the Biden administration.
Portman said numbers provided for Ohio indicate residents are spending an additional $8,300 a year on energy needs, food and clothing. Jonathan Church at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, contacted by The Center Square, responded in an email for response to getting state-specific index numbers, “The CPI program does not produce state-level indexes.”
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The number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border decreased in June, but remained at a historic high, according to numbers released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Friday.
CBP encountered 207,416 migrants at the southern border, a 14% decrease compared to May. There were 92,274 migrants immediately expelled under Title 42, the public health order activated during the COVID-19 pandemic, in June.
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The Virginia Department of Health has eliminated a recommendation for asymptomatic COVID-19-exposed individuals in schools to quarantine. The updated COVID-19 guidance applies to K-12 education, child care, and camps, although individuals who test positive still need to isolate at home for at least five days.
“This revised guidance outlines that quarantine is no longer routinely recommended for asymptomatic individuals after exposure to COVID-19 infected individuals. In general masks are not routinely recommended in these settings, indoors or outdoors, except during isolation as specified below,” states the guidance, which applies to teachers, staff, and children.
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Since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first vaccines for COVID-19 in late 2020, the government and much of the media have insisted that the medicines developed in record time are safe and effective. Those who raised questions about them have been routinely dismissed as conspiracy theorists.
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