The quality of evidence for the FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) of COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months is drawing scrutiny from high-profile doctors and academics, some of whom are asking the White House not to pressure parents to vaccinate.
With CDC seroprevalence data from February finding 75% of minors had natural immunity, more attention is going to the risk/benefit calculation of vaccines for the age group at lowest risk from COVID.
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Tennessee’s Republican House leaders this week penned a letter to Governor Bill Lee (R) asking him to halt the rollout of COVID-19 vaccines for children under the age of five.
“Governor, the COVID-19 emergency has long passed in Tennessee,” the letter, penned by State Rep. Jason Zachary (R-District 14), said. “Based on the data in the FDA’s own 66-page report, there is no concrete basis for amended emergency authorization to vaccinate small children.”
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U.S. Sen. Roger Marshall (R-KS) and U.S. Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) released a video Monday detailing why they believe White House Chief Medical Advisor Dr. Anthony Fauci was involved with the Chinese government’s coronavirus cover up.
Both lawmakers have been working to uncover the origins of COVID-19 over the past two years.
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Comparing urban areas across America, Philadelphia and Pittsburgh have struggled to recover since the pandemic, showing lackluster economic performance with job levels still below pre-pandemic times.
That performance puts Pennsylvania’s two biggest cities about average in America, according to an analysis from the Brookings Institution on urban economic recovery since COVID-19.
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A peer-reviewed paper released on Friday shows large decreases in sperm counts among men after the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine, with the decline continuing for over five months in many cases.
The study, published in the medical journal Andrology, confirms that the mRNA shots have significant fertility risks for men, independent journalist Alex Berenson reported on his Unreported Truths Substack.
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Michigan’s governor, attorney general, and Department of Health and Human Services are on the hook for $200,000 in attorneys fees incurred from a lawsuit resolved by the state’s Supreme Court.
The Mackinac Center for Public Policy will collect the $200,000 after the state Supreme Court ruled against the government principals on Oct. 2, 2020, declaring Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s exercise of emergency powers under a 1945 law unconstitutional. The court’s ruling nullified every COVID-19 executive order issued by the governor after April 30, 2020.
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The Texas Republican Party has adopted a new platform, rejecting the certification of the 2020 presidential election results and declaring “that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”
The 40-page platform was adopted by the state GOP in Houston over the weekend for its biennial convention, The Hill reported.
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While the entire nation was devastated by mass unemployment claims during the COVID-19 pandemic, most states are well on the way to a full recovery.
Except in the Midwest.
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Since the pandemic hit and government relief attempted to ease the pain of economic shutdowns, concerns of taxpayer money being wasted or fraudulently obtained has been a pressing issue.
In Pennsylvania, the state may see a special prosecutor appointed to focus on cases related to unemployment fraud.
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The Internal Revenue Service has been under fire for delays and millions of backlogged returns, but now lawmakers are raising the alarm after the federal agency “destroyed” millions of Americans’ tax documents.
Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig this week asking for answers about why these records were destroyed.
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American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was paid nearly half a million dollars during the 2021-2022 school year, a report from Americans for Fair Treatment stated Wednesday. Weingarten raked in six-figures while simultaneously pushing for schools to stay shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.
With teacher’s union dues, Weingarten is paid $449,562, the Americans for Fair Treatment report stated. Weingarten’s salary is about seven times more than the average high school teacher makes as of 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor.
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I recently led a group of about 100 citizens to tour Israel for nearly two weeks. Before returning to the United States, all participants had to indicate their vaccination status and take a COVID-19 test for reentry.
Anxieties swept the group as Israeli testers swabbed them.
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The Tennessee-based Nurse Freedom Network is hosting a Healthcare Homecoming Saturday and Sunday, June 11 and June 12 that will focus in restoring patients’ rights and truth in medicine and will feature the world-renowned Dr. Peter McCullough.
The free event, held Saturday from 3 to 8 p.m. at The Shed, located at the Factory in Franklin, Tennessee and will include around two dozen speakers and entertain. A fundraising dinner with Dr. Peter McCullough that will support the Nurse Freedom Network will be held Friday from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Historic Maple Lawn in Brentwood.
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A researcher in Minnesota discovered shocking increases in death rates in the state, with year-over-year averages proving to be “astoundingly” high for younger age groups.
Researcher Marana Muse joined Liz Collin on her podcast once again to discuss her findings on death data, vaccines and COVID-19 testing in Minnesota.
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Recession worries are rising among economists as inflation continues at high levels.
A top Moody’s economist has predicted a recession could hit within the next two years, but others are saying it could happen sooner.
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Staffers in President Joe Biden’s White House are struggling to control public messaging and gain ground in the media amid internal dysfunction, according to a CNN report.
Tensions have arisen between older staffers and younger aides over media strategies, and staff believe they are unable to improve Biden’s public image or change their strategy, according to CNN. Staffers described conflict and frustration within the White House over their inability to put forward an effective communications strategy, CNN reported, citing multiple anonymous staff members.
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For two years and counting, the scientific and medical establishments have urged Americans at all risk levels to limit their exposure to the microbial world to effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19, rather than focus on protecting the vulnerable.
The unexpected surge of other pathogens starting last summer, however, has challenged the wisdom of frequent sanitizing, social distancing, remote work and education, and routine mask-wearing, especially applied to children.
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The U.S. economy added 390,000 jobs in May while the unemployment rate was largely unchanged at 3.6%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.
The number of unemployed people ticked up slightly to about 6 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report. Economists projected 328,000 Americans would be added to payrolls prior to Friday’s report, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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by Diana Girnita When the fear of getting COVID-19 was high and lock-down orders were in place, telehealth was an important resource, allowing patients to connect with doctors by live video, telephone, and remote patient monitoring without overcrowding hospitals and doctors’ offices. During this time of isolation and drastic increases in mental health challenges, telehealth services provided a lifeline of critical psychiatric and behavioral healthcare to people in need. Early in the pandemic, nearly half of all states and the federal government passed laws expanding access to telehealth. These changes allowed more providers to adopt this technology and, as a result, the United States went from having 43% of community health centers using telehealth before the pandemic to 98% just months into the pandemic. With innovation and quickly evolving technology, healthcare providers can deliver more high-quality services remotely, and our laws should make it easy to do so. Yet, as of last year, only eight states have made telehealth changes permanent. Congress passed the 2022 omnibus spending bill in March that extended federal telehealth provisions through September, the end of the 2022 fiscal year. The law covers telehealth visits, including video and audio-only visits, for Medicare patients. It also reinstated the CARES Act provision allowing high-deductible health plans (which…
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According to The Washington Post, Donald Trump told 30,573 lies over the course of his four years in office.
CNN nutshelled it with “The 15 most notable lies of Donald Trump’s presidency.”
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The college-going rate for Tennessee students after high school graduation has dropped from 63.8% for the Class of 2017 to 52.8% for the Class of 2021, according to a report from the Tennessee Higher Education Commission.
There has been a 9 percentage point drop since the Class of 2019, which matches a national trend where there was a 9.2% decline in freshman college enrollment from fall 2019 to fall 2021.
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As the school year draws to an end, American universities around the country are reinstating mask mandates.
The University of California Los Angeles sent out an email to its students on May 26, stating that its mask mandate “will go back into effect beginning Friday, May 27 and remain in place through Wednesday, June 15.”
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed original all-star panelist Crom Carmichael to the studio for another edition of Crom’s Crommentary.
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A Michigan public university retaliated against a Russian immigrant for telling others how she got a religious exemption from its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, evicting her from campus housing and putting a disciplinary record in her student file, according to her lawyers.
After Inara Ramazanova posted her requested and received exemption in a private Facebook group for similarly situated people nationwide, Oakland University deemed this “collusion or conspiracy” to help others evade its rules, the First Liberty Institute wrote to OU in a pre-lawsuit warning letter Thursday.
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President Joe Biden is planning to forgive $10,000 of student loan debt per borrower, according to a Friday report from The Washington Post.
Biden intended to announce the new student debt forgiveness plan at the University of Delaware’s graduation ceremony Saturday but postponed the decision after a school shooting in Uvalde, Texas on Tuesday, unnamed sources familiar with the issue told The Washington Post. The newest debt forgiveness plan would apply to Americans who in the year prior made under $150,000 and to married Americans who made under $300,000 in joint filings.
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According to a recent survey, over 1.2 million students have abandoned public schools in favor of other alternatives in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, where many public schools shut down in-person learning in favor of “remote” learning.
The Daily Caller reports that the survey, conducted by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), discovered that over 1,268,000 students have fled public schooling since March of 2020. Enrollment initially fell by 2.5 percent in the Fall 2020 semester when lockdowns first began in the spring of that year. The following year, schools that returned to in-person learning restored some of those numbers, while the schools that remained on virtual learning continued to see steep declines.
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Unvaccinated people develop much broader antibody immunity after being infected with COVID than people who have received the mRNA shots do, according to an NIH study. And the gap was large whether subjects had mild, moderate, or severe COVID infections.
The results of the study, which were highlighted by Alex Berenson on his Unreported Truths Substack, Daniel Horowitz at the Blaze, and Igor Chudov on his Substack newsletter, completely destroy the regime narrative that the shots provide stronger immunity than a natural infection, and may help explain why so many vaccinated Americans are now suffering from multiple COVID infections.
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Anyone who follows politics is accustomed to the overuse of the word “reform.” It is almost always depicted as a highly desirable goal that will sweep away bad precedents and usher in a new era of smarter government policy.
Reform is often a good and necessary thing. But there are few words left more open to interpretation. Reform, depending on who is suggesting the change, can mean entirely different things even when applied to the same issue. This is especially true when it comes to immigration.
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Ohio landlords moved a step closer to staying off the hook for tenants’ large unpaid utility bills after the House passed a bill Wednesday over objections from municipalities and utility organizations.
The bipartisan bill, House Bill 422, came as a way to change a longtime process in the state that holds people who have not contracted for service liable for unpaid debts.
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U.S Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently asked the public how COVID-19 misinformation “in the digital information environment” had affected health outcomes, trust in the healthcare system and “likelihood to vaccinate,” among other issues.
According to vaccine and healthcare policy experts who joined with Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita, the misinformation is coming from inside the house.
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The GOP-dominated Michigan Legislature approved $2.5 billion in far-ranging tax relief amid record 40-year-high inflation.
Meanwhile, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and Democrats pitched sending immediately $500 checks to working families. Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, characterized the plan as trying to “pay off” Michiganders for her COVID policies.
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This week, the United States officially hit the sad mark of one million COVID-19 deaths. The mainstream media coverage has detailed how this death toll has varied based on age, race, and vaccination status. However, it has conspicuously ignored how these COVID-19 deaths have occurred independently of differing state policies regarding economic and education restrictions.
Many Democrat-run states imposed severe restrictions in 2020 and 2021 that did nothing to stop the virus and much to harm small businesses and ordinary Americans. Job Creators Network called on policymakers to “flatten the fear” when it became clear the virus couldn’t be controlled by hiding at home or a big government response, yet we were ignored by blue-state officials. Any reckoning of the nation’s COVID response at one million deaths must incorporate these unforced errors that exacerbated the pandemic’s wrath.
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A U.S. congresswoman from Arizona has signed onto a letter with her House of Representatives colleagues demanding information from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) regarding the organization’s data collection during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I joined [Rep. Kelly Armstong (R-ND)]’s letter to CDC Director Walensky to demand answers about the CDC’s legal authority to obtain Americans’ location data. This violates the rights of Americans!” Rep. Debbie Lesko (R-AZ-08) said.
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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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Virongy Biosciences, Inc., which develops anti-viral drugs and viral diagnostics, is expanding after recently relocating to the newly-opened Northern Virginia Bioscience Center in Prince William County. The $471,000 expansion may create up to 70 new jobs, and the company will use the site to develop diagnostics aimed at COVID-19 variants and other viruses. The announcement received praise from state and local officials.
“Prince William County has emerged as a hub for the life sciences industry, offering the infrastructure, R and D assets, and talent to attract and retain innovative biotech firms like Virongy,” said Governor Glenn Youngkin said in a press release announcing the expansion.
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On Wednesday, Lawrence Tabak, the acting director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), confirmed during congressional testimony that officials at the NIH deliberately withheld crucial information about early genomic sequences of the COVID-19 virus on the orders of Chinese scientists.
As reported by the New York Post, Tabak told the House Appropriations subcommittee that the agency “eliminated from public view” all the data from the location of the virus’s origin, Wuhan, while adding that researchers can still access the information through a “tape drive.”
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More than 17,000 physicians and medical scientists have joined together in a “declaration” that demands an end to the COVID-19 medical emergency and accountability for those in the “corrupt alliance” of Big Tech, media, academics, and government who, they say, committed “crimes against humanity” by profiting from ineffective and dangerous COVID vaccines while banning early treatment drugs.
The statement, released Wednesday during a press conference of the Global COVID Summit, calls for a restoration of “scientific integrity, and a move to address the corrupt alliance’s “catastrophic decisions” which, the medical professionals assert, were orchestrated “at the expense of the innocent, who are forced to suffer health damage and death caused by intentionally withholding critical and time-sensitive treatments, or as a result of coerced genetic therapy injections, which are neither safe nor effective.”
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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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About 53,406 kids attending Detroit Public Schools Community District still must wear a mask through the end of the regular school year because of an agreement with a teacher’s union.
The last day of the regular school year is June 27. The union agreement ends June 30.
DPSCD Superintendent Dr. Nikolai Vitti said the Detroit Federation of Teachers still wants a mask mandate. In February, the state and counties dropped the requirement but left local decisions to each school.
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The U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) recognized Pierce County, Washington for its practices related to the chain of custody that helps track pick-up and chain of custody of vote-by-mail election ballots deposited in drop boxes.
Pierce County was an EAC “Clearie” Award winner in 2021 for outstanding innovations in elections for large jurisdictions. Having over 550,000 registered voters, Pierce County is Washington state’s second largest jurisdiction.
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Seven state attorneys general, and an eighth from Puerto Rico, have called upon President Joe Biden to fully cancel federal student debt estimated at more than $1.6 trillion.
The U.S. Education Department reports more than 43 million borrowers on average owe $37,000 in student loan debt. The USED already has forgiven $17 billion in student loan debt held by 725,000 borrowers since the beginning of the Biden administration.
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Virginia’s state employees must return to on-site work by July 5 unless they have a new telework agreement approved, according to Governor Glenn Youngkin’s new telework policy.
“After listening to the needs of Virginians, discussing solutions with agency heads across government, and closely monitoring the pandemic, we are excited to welcome our employees in-person this summer. We know that creative, innovative, and effective solutions for all Virginians occur with regular, in-person interaction by our incredible workforce here in the Commonwealth,” Youngkin said in a press release.
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Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, official guest host Grant Henry welcomed State Senator Joey Hensley to the newsmaker line to explain the nature of his acquired immunity bill, SB1982.
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As the COVID-19 pandemic winds down, Georgia’s governor Tuesday signed a bill into law banning state and local governments from requiring vaccine passports.
SB 345 bans “proof of any vaccination of any person as a condition of providing any service or access to any facility, issuing any license, permit, or other type of authorization, or performing any duty of such agency,” and says that state and local governments cannot “through any rule, regulation, ordinance, resolution, or other action … require that any person or private entity require proof of vaccination of any person as a condition of providing any service or access to any facility, or as a condition of such person or private entity’s performance of any regular activity by such person or private entity.”
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A federally funded program designed to assist Connecticut homeowners negatively impacted by COVID-19 is now available, Gov. Ned Lamont said.
The governor announced MyHomeCT, a new state program, is funded with $123 million in American Rescue Plan Act dollars that were received by the state’s Department of Housing. The program is being administered by the Connecticut Housing Finance Authority.
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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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As computer giant Apple considers bringing employees back to work in person while the COVID-19 pandemic winds down, some of those employees are worried that returning to work in person will make the company less diverse.
“Apple will likely always find people willing to work here, but our current policies requiring everyone to relocate to the office their team happens to be based in, and being in the office at least 3 fixed days of the week, will change the makeup of our workforce,” said an open letter written by employees. “It will make Apple younger, whiter, more male-dominated, more neuro-normative, more able-bodied, in short, it will lead to privileges deciding who can work for Apple, not who’d be the best fit.”
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Voters appear poised to clobber the party that brought us COVID lockdowns, mask and vaccine mandates, and inflation. Indeed, rising inflation has largely resulted from COVID-related disincentives to work, disrupted supply chains, and blowout spending, along with federal restrictions on oil and gas production. It’s perhaps surprising, therefore, that the Cook Political Report foresees Republican gains in the House of Representatives as being only “in the 15-25 seat range,” while its projections suggest that Democrats have at least a coin flip’s chance of holding the Senate.
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A shrinking gross domestic product could cost Georgia taxpayers and is likely to hurt middle-class Georgians in particular as the country appears headed toward a recession, a non-profit policy group said this week.
“The tab is coming due for all the reckless stimulus spending during the COVID-19 pandemic,” Erik Randolph, director of research for the Georgia Center for Opportunity, said in a statement. “The declining GDP in the first quarter is the strongest indicator yet that our nation is headed into a recession.”
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City health officials are “strongly” encouraging Minneapolis residents to put their face masks back on, regardless of vaccination status.
The Minneapolis Health Department said in a Thursday news release that residents should “wear masks in indoor public settings and businesses,” citing an increase in COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.
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