Ohio Democratic U.S. Senate nominee Representative Tim Ryan (D-OH-13) is projecting a pro-police stance as part of his platform while simultaneously voting to defund them.
On March 3, 2021, Ryan voted against a motion to condemn calls to defund, disband, or abolish the police while at the same time also voting to allow for the federal government to micromanage local police and potentially defund them.
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In recent years, Americans have heard some new theories about the world from progressive activists and academics. First, that “your truth” is what matters, not the truth; you can be whoever you say you are. Second, that there is no need to debate “the other side” or confront its ideas. And third, that using the language of the oppressed – no matter how privileged you are yourself – means that you don’t need to listen or think about what would really help people.
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Many American voters head into midterm elections wearied by political polarization. Subjects that might have merely led to an uncomfortable dinner table conversation yesterday are more likely to be relationship-ending today.
It’s often assumed that political positions come with a Democrat or Republican party label. But beneath many of the most divisive issues of our time – think the COVID-19 pandemic response, the 2020 election, and the overturning of Roe v. Wade – lies an issue that is neither red nor blue. Would you believe me if I said religious liberty is not actually a partisan issue?
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Georgia Democrat Sen. Raphael Warnock more than doubled his income after joining Congress, according to his financial disclosure records.
Most of Warnock’s income outside of his estimated $174,000 annual Senate salary comes from his book deal and the church in which has served as senior pastor for nearly two decades.
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Nathaniel Kaine, son of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.), has been appointed chief of staff for U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
Tim Kaine, the Democrats’ 2016 vice presidential nominee, serves on the Senate Armed Services and Budget committees, both of which are involved in funding and oversight for the border enforcement agency.
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Ohio’s 1st Congressional District Democrat nominee Greg Landsman used his official office to coordinate and introduce a partnership with a company where his wife works as an executive.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Landsman coordinated and introduced a partnership with 84.51 to retrieve data and identify areas of need in the area.
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The Democrat nominee for governor in Arizona once claimed that former President Donald Trump’s supporters were “neo-nazis.”
“[President Donald Trump] has made it abundantly clear he’s more interested in pandering to his neo-nazi base than being [President] for all Americans,” Secretary of State Katie Hobbs said on Twitter in 2017.
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A judgment has been levied against OH-1 Democrat nominee Greg Landsman for failure to pay his taxes on March 2.
Landsman, the sole owner of real estate company Landsman & Associates, received the judgement for failure to pay taxes related to his business.
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The Tennessee Star learned that the far-left Tennessee Education Association (TEA) is distributing the same mailed literature piece recently targeting Democrat voters and encouraging them to vote for Jeff Eby in the House District (HD) 69 Republican race and other August 4 Republican district primaries.
In addition to promoting Eby’s bid, the TEA mailed the same exact piece in the HD 13 and Senate District (SD) 9 Republican primaries.
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Tennessee 5th Congressional District candidate Kurt Winstead won’t say whether he voted for Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama in the 2008 Tennessee Democrat presidential preference primary.
The Tennessee Star reached out to Winstead’s campaign, asking if they could provide a comment as to whether Kurt Winstead voted for Clinton or Obama in 2008.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed California refugee and the creator of Tennvoterguide.com, Craig Huey, in studio to explain how the guide works and give his top picks for candidates in the even districts running for election.
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TN-5 candidate and retired Brigadier General Kurt Winstead’s past history of donating to Democratic Party candidates and causes in federal races has been well documented, and now, additional Democrat donations in Tennessee state races have been discovered.
A search of the Tennessee Online Campaign Finance website, which contains campaign finance reports dating back to at least 2000, shows that Winstead personally donated on at least seven occasions to Democratic campaigns.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed official guest host Aaron Gulbransen in-studio the strategic issue-free campaign of TN5 candidate General Kurt Winstead.
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AFSCME Local 1733 endorsed Democratic candidate JB Smiley, Jr. on Monday to be the next Tennessee governor.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest trade union of public employees in the United States. The group “believes that every person working to sustain their community deserves respect.”
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Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed SB 350 into law Friday which establishes Juneteenth Independence Day as an official, legal state holiday.
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Pennsylvania Democratic Lt. Gov. John Fetterman, the Democratic front-runner in the state’s U.S. Senate race, announced on Sunday he suffered a stroke over the weekend, but he is on his “way to a full recovery.”
Fetterman, 52, posted a video of himself with his wife, Gisele. He said he was not feeling well on Friday and at the urging of his wife, he went to the hospital.
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The Democratic Party’s hopes of gaining seats from redistricting have been crushed as court decisions and an increasingly aggressive GOP produced more Republican-friendly maps.
Democrats were initially optimistic that they could mitigate projected midterm losses in the House when it appeared they were poised to score wins in the redistricting process. However, the party’s hopes have been dashed after key losses in major states erased their redistricting advantage.
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Republicans dominated the voter turnout totals in the Williamson County May 3 primary elections.
According to the Williamson County government elections website, 20,550 total votes were cast countywide. 18,240 of those votes were cast in Republican primaries. 2,310 were cast in Democrat primaries.
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Oklahoma State University hosted “Drag Queen Story Hour” geared towards small children as young as two years old, just days after hosting its annual Dragonfly Drag Show.
As part of the school’s Pride 2022 campaign, two local drag queens read books “highlighting inclusion and acceptance” to the children and led “come-and-go craft” activities.
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A lot of Wisconsin parents are not happy with their local school boards. Conservative and Republicans candidates for school boards did well in their races Tuesday, many of them new challengers who unseated longtime incumbents.
“Last night was a great night for parents looking to take back control of their children’s education and for liberty-oriented candidates generally,” Eric Bott with Americans for Prosperity in Wisconsin told the Center Square.
The Wisconsin Republican Party said party-backed and conservative candidates won two-thirds of the races where they were active.
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Tuesday morning on The Tennessee Star Report, host Leahy welcomed official guest host Grant Henry in studio for another edition of Grant’s Rants.
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Analysis from election forecaster Sabato’s Crystal Ball released Thursday argues that Latino voters’ recent shift toward the Republican Party may not be permanent.
Former President Donald Trump performed better with Latinos in 2020 than he did in 2016, but there does not appear to be a long-term shift in the demographic’s voting habits, wrote political scientist Alan I. Abramowitz.
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No one ever said that the business of politics made good sense, but if you’re a politician, and the vast majority of your constituents — including a high percentage of those in your own party — no longer want you to represent them, shouldn’t you take their distaste as a hint and get the heck out of office?
Such is the case for notorious Donald Trump bashing RINO congresswoman Liz Cheney. As everyone knows by now, Cheney is the lone House representative from the huge but sparsely populated state of Wyoming, which means hers is the sole voice of every single Cowboy State resident and citizen in the lower chamber. Liz has never had an issue with winning elections in blood red Wyoming, which would seem to be an argument in her favor. But times and circumstances have changed markedly in the rocky mountain high plains and there’re hardly any folks there who hanker to send Cheney back to DC for another two years.
Yet onward Liz trudges. Because Cheney has fallen so far out of favor with conservatives and Republicans in her jurisdiction, she’s now relying on Democrats to try and (literally) save her seat. The optics alone are odd, but reality is even weirder. In a piece titled “Liz Cheney turns to Democrats to save her hide,” Tara Palmeri wrote at Politico:
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Metro Nashville Councilman and founding member of the Democratic Socialists of America – Middle Tennessee chapter Sean Parker posted an insensitive tweet Wednesday about rising gas prices.
When The Tennessee Star called Councilman Parker Thursday to ask his thoughts about soaring prices at the pump and its impact on Tennesseans, Parker declared he had no comment and abruptly ended the call.
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With President Joe Biden set to deliver his first State of the Union address on Tuesday night, it’s a good time to ask: How has Biden done as president and what is the actual state of our union?
According to the American people, things aren’t going great.
A CNN poll in early February asked Americans what they thought of Biden’s presidency and what he’s done right since entering office Jan. 20, 2021.
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With midterm elections this year, Ohio’s 2022 congressional redistricting plans are under scrutiny. The state lost one congressional district last year, bringing the total number down to 15.
The Ohio Supreme Court recently struck down new redistricted maps and gave the Ohio Redistricting Commission until Feb. 17 to draw new maps. As the deadline approached, the Commission decided they were at an “impasse” and negotiations came to a halt as of this writing.
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On Friday, Rock County’s current sheriff, Troy Knudson, announced he will not seek reelection, according to multiple reports. Knudson has been with the department for 33 years and has served as sheriff since 2019.
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The Ohio Supreme Court agreed with two Democrats on the Ohio Redistricting Commission and denied a motion from Attorney General Dave Yost to relegate the two to “friend of the court” status in ongoing legal challenges to new state legislative districts.
Commission co-chair Sen. Vernon Sykes, D-Akron, and House Minority Leader Allison Russo, D-Upper Arlington, called Yost’s motion an attempt to silence the two, who had voted against the original maps and ones reconfigured by order of the court.
“I am relieved to see that a fair process is continuing in the courts,” Russo said. “We spoke up for the people against unconstitutional maps, while the Attorney General tried to silence us. AG Yost should not have tried to put his thumb on the scale in this process. Now, we wait the court’s decision on the submitted maps and let the process play out with greater transparency.”
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Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer will step down from his post at the end of the court’s current term, according to a report from NBC News.
Breyer is one of the three remaining Democrat-appointed justices on the high court. Should he retire, it will present President Biden with an opportunity to appoint a liberal-leaning justice who could sit on the court for many years to come, and for the moment, preserve the 6-3 split between conservative-leaning and liberal-leaning justices.
Breyer, who is 83, is the oldest member of the court. He had faced consistent pressure from liberal groups to retire, especially following the death of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, whose passing allowed then-President Donald Trump to appoint Justice Amy Coney Barrett.
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It looks like bad blood is forming in the Republican race for governor, and the race hasn’t officially begun yet.
Assembly Speaker Robin Vos on Wednesday suggested that Kevin Nicholson not run for governor against Rebecca Kleefisch.
“If Kevin Nicholson is listening, you need to not run for governor,” Vos said at a political lunch meeting in Madison. “You need to be able to focus on something like 2024.”
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Members of the Shelby County GOP and the Shelby County Democratic Party have opted not to put up candidates to run for their local school board. Shelby County Administrator of Elections Linda Phillips relayed the news to The Tennessee Star on Tuesday.
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New polling from Axios and Generation Lab shows that Democrat college students are far more likely than their Republican classmates to refuse to date, work for, or even be friends with someone who voted for the other party’s presidential candidate.
71 percent of Democrats in college said they would not go on a date with someone who voted for the GOP presidential candidate. 41 percent would not shop at a business owned by the same. 37 percent would not be friends with someone who voted for that candidate, and 30 percent would not work for that person.
Republicans in college were far more tolerant of those with differing views. Though 31 percent said they would not go on a date with someone who voted for the opposing presidential candidate, only 7 percent said they would not work for or support a business owned by the same. 5 percent of Republicans in college said they would not be friends with someone who voted for the Democratic presidential ticket.
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On Friday, Democratic Wisconsin Gov. Tony Evers vetoed five bills restricting abortion that were passed by the Republican-majority state legislature.
“I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again today: as long as I’m governor, I will veto any legislation that turns back the clock on reproductive rights in this state—and that’s a promise,” Evers tweeted.
He said he firmly opposed all five bills, which would have restricted abortion by allowing third parties to pursue damage claims in cases of unwanted abortions and requiring more stringent reporting requirements on patients and providers, according to The Hill.
One of the bills, the Shield the Vulnerable Act, would have banned abortions performed on the basis of race, sex, or disability diagnosis of the unborn baby. It would have also allowed third parties such as a spouse, partner, or family member of a woman to bring damages to court if they did not want her to have the abortion, the news outlet reported.
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On Thursday, the state of Oklahoma filed a lawsuit to exempt members of the state’s National Guard from the nationwide coronavirus vaccine mandate, The Hill reports.
The suit, filed in federal court by Governor Kevin Stitt (R-Okla.) and Attorney General John O’Connor (R-Okla.), names Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin as defendants. The suit requests that the courts declare the national vaccine mandate for all members of the armed services to be unconstitutional, and thus enjoin the federal government from enforcing it on the Oklahoma National Guard; the suit also seeks to prevent the federal government from imposing its penalty for refusal to comply, which would include withholding federal funds from the state’s National Guard.
“This mandate ensures that many Oklahoma National Guard members will simply quit instead of getting a vaccine,” the suit reads in part, “a situation that will irreparably harm Oklahomans’ safety and security.”
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A Democrat-backed nonprofit intended to combat alleged “disinformation” paid large sums of money to organizations responsible for the Steele dossier, which advanced false claims regarding former President Donald Trump’s relationship with Russia.
The Democracy Integrity Project (TDIP) is nonprofit run by Daniel J. Jones, a former staffer of Democratic California Sen. Dianne Feinstein, that has received funding from prominent Democrat and left-wing donors, including George Soros.
The organization’s mission is to “educate the public on matters such as foreign election interference, global extremism, corruption, and coordinated disinformation,” according to filings with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).
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Congressional Democrats passed a $1.75 trillion social spending plan Friday, putting the bill’s fate in the hands of a deeply divided Senate.
The bill funds universal pre-kindergarten, climate change spending, Obamacare subsidies, an extension of the monthly child tax credit payment and more wide ranging spending items. House Republican Leader Kevin McCarthy spoke more than eight hours on the House floor overnight to delay the vote until Friday morning, but afterward it passed 220-213 along party lines with one Democrat opposed.
“We are very excited for what it does for the children, for the families,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said in a press conference after the bill’s passage.
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Rep. Ilhan Omar appeared to misuse the English language in an attempt to hit back at a Republican colleague.
On Wednesday Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado, a freshman member of Congress, took the opportunity to blast some of her colleagues after the House voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona and strip him of his committee assignments.
One of Gosar’s Twitter accounts had retweeted a doctored anime clip depicting him slaying Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, though according to House GOP Leader Kevin McCarthy he “didn’t see it before it posted.”
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ASouth Carolina congressman has introduced legislation to open a dozen new ports of entry in America, seeking to shift the burden of President Joe Biden’s border crisis from Texas to wealthy enclaves favored by Democrats like Martha’s Vineyard, New York’s trendy suburbs and Silicon Valley.
Rep. Ralph Norman, a Republican, said he introduced the Stop the Surge Act last week as a companion to similar Senate legislation sought by Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). It would require all future illegal aliens captured at the border to be shipped to the wealthy, liberal enclaves.
“All these prosperous areas that you see, you know, million dollar houses, let’s send them there,” Norman told John Solomon Reports podcast. “And let’s let them exercise what they claim to be compassion on illegals.
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The entire Democrat multi-trillion dollar socialist spending scam is bad for Americans, and bad for our economy. One particular provision that is especially terrible is their “IRS Surveillance” program, which would grant the government access to spy on nearly every Americans’ bank accounts. Their bill wants to use $80 billion of taxpayer funds to hire 85,000 more bureaucrats, nearly doubling the size of the IRS, to go through individuals’ personal banking information.
President Biden, and his colleagues in Congress, must have realized how unpopular this policy was with the American people, so they decided to make some “changes.” They created the impression they were raising the threshold in transactions individuals would need to hit before triggering the IRS to spy on their personal banking accounts.
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Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia reportedly opposed two pieces of his party’s spending package as negotiations over its price tag and reach continue to stall.
Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia’s opposition reportedly relates to the Democrats’ climate change and child tax credit provisions of the budget proposal. While the majority of his party lauded both programs, the 50-50 Senate means that any one Democratic senator could tank the bill, giving Manchin veto-like power while representing a rural, coal-producing state that voted for former President Donald Trump by almost 40 points in 2020.
Multiple reports surfaced Friday suggesting that the Clean Electricity Payment Program would likely be scrapped from the bill due to Manchin’s objections, part of Democrats’ attempt to fight climate change. Those backing the program, which would provide incentives for clean energy use while implementing fines and penalties for organizations continuing to rely on fossil fuels, see it as a fundamental piece of the Democrats’ agenda and key to reaching President Joe Biden’s goal of reducing U.S. emissions by 50% of what they were in 2005 by 2030.
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The House on Tuesday voted to lift the debt ceiling by $480 billion, temporarily averting widespread economic calamity after weeks of partisan gridlock and sending the bill to President Joe Biden’s desk.
The House briefly interrupted its weeklong recess to pass a rule governing debate for three separate bills to which the ceiling raise was attached. It passed on a party-line vote given Republicans continuing opposition to lifting the ceiling.
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Police in Fairfax County, Va. have erased the names of those arrested or charged with a crime from public crime reports to comply with a policy adopted in January by the Democrat-controlled county board to thwart federal immigration enforcement.
The Fairfax County Board of Supervisors’ “Trust Policy” prohibits “sharing any information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s citizenship and identify or locate someone” with unlawful immigrant status, according to local reports.
The lone Republican member of the board slammed Democrats for approving the policy leading to the wiping of names from public arrest data.
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West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin was once again at odd with his party Thursday evening, as fellow Democrat and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer laid into his GOP colleagues during a floor speech following a vote to approve legislation that would temporarily raise the debt ceiling.
“Republicans played a dangerous and risky partisan game, and I am glad that their brinksmanship did not work,” said Schumer, beginning a series of remarks that would target his colleagues across the aisle, including 11 of whom voted to end debate on the debt ceiling measure, allowing for the full vote to happen.
Manchin, who could be seen seated direct behind Schumer, as the New York lawmaker made his remarks, appeared at first to be shaking his head disapprovingly before placing his head in his hands.
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The White House is once again at odds with the senior senator from West Virginia.
Joe Manchin has made clear for months that the administration’s sprawling $3.5 trillion social spending package is too large, and just as progressives seemed to agree that the top-line number could be whittled down somewhat, the moderate Democrat drew another line in the sand, this one underscoring the Hyde Amendment.
The amendment represents a decades-long agreement by both parties that prohibits federal dollars from funding abortion, except in cases of rape, incest, or when the life of the mother is in danger. Manchin wants it included in the spending bill. The White House does not. Thus has emerged another obstacle to passing the president’s legislative agenda.
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Every so often we receive a comment to the effect that we are paranoid and should stop seeing a Communist under every bed, however, it appears that based on the views expressed by Prof. Saule Omarova, President Biden’s nominee for Comptroller of the Currency, our concerns about the takeover of the Democratic Party by Socialists and Communists have received some very solid confirmation.
Indeed, Omarova is so far out in Communism’s Left Field that Janet Yellen, Biden’s Treasury secretary (a garden variety liberal Democrat) raised concerns about her taking the post.
And Secretary Yellin’s concerns are amply justified.
In 2019, Omarova posted to Twitter in support of the “old USSR” where there was “no gender pay gap.” She attempted to do damage control after being criticized for it, but failed to fully condemn the Soviet Union.
Rep. Bennie Thompson, the Mississippi Democrat who chairs the congressional commission investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, has been a vocal critic of an event he deems an insurrection and offered his sympathy to the police officers injured that day. He’s even gone as far as to sue former President Donald Trump for responsibility for the melee.
But as a young African-American alderman in a small Mississippi community in 1971, Thompson placed himself on the opposite side, openly sympathizing with a secessionist group known as the Republic of New Africa and participating in a news conference blaming law enforcement for instigating clashes with the group that led to the killings of a police officer and the wounding of an FBI agent. Thompson’s official biography makes no reference to the separatist RNA.
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On Thursday, a 12-person federal jury found Tennessee State Senator Katrina Robinson (D-Memphis) guilty of four of five counts of wire fraud. Robinson was facing federal wire fraud charges after she was accused of using federal grant money awarded to a health care school – The Healthcare Institute – in which she operates.
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As the first year of a Biden presidency that has felt like a decade nears its end, only the most ardent Democratic partisans still insist that the country is on the right track. The rest of us are left to debate whether the rancid fruit of this regime is a result of incompetence or design. By analysis of this administration’s immigration agenda alone, the inescapable conclusion is that it is indeed the latter. The macabre consequences of this fact threaten to take America into one of the darkest chapters in its history.
These kinds of conclusions run contrary to the traditional American ethos. Those who grew up with Ronald Reagan’s “shining city on a hill” imagery or John F. Kennedy’s New Frontier vision experienced leadership that sought the best for America and its citizenry. In those eras, politicians from both major parties seemed to prioritize the good of the country; they only disagreed on the means to get us there.
Such notions seem quaint given today’s realities. Beneath the surface of Biden’s genial Uncle Joe schtick is an executive branch controlled by some of the most dogmatic left-wing apparatchiks ever seen in American politics. Among their witch’s brew of radical ideas, they have seized upon immigration as one of the quickest and most effective ways to transform the country to their vision.
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Pennsylvania Senate Democrats filed a legal challenge in Commonwealth Court against what they call an “overreaching” subpoena of election records containing personal information for nearly 7 million voters.
The lawsuit filed late Friday alleges Republican members of the Senate Intergovernmental Operations Committee – including Chairman Cris Dush, R-Wellsboro and President Pro Tempore Jake Corman, R-Bellefonte – broke the law when they issued a subpoena against the Department of State seeking the name, address, date of birth, driver’s license number and partial social security number of each and every resident that voted by mail or in person during the last two elections.
In a joint statement, the Democratic members of the committee – including Minority Leader Jay Costa, D-Pittsburgh; Minority Chairman Tony Williams, D-Philadelphia; Sen. Vince Hughes, D-Philadelphia; and Sen. Steve Santarsiero, D-Lower Makefield – said the consequences of the subpoena “are dire” and leave the personal information of residents in the hands of an “undisclosed third party vendor with no prescribed limits or protection.”
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On Wednesday, Tennessee Senator Bill Hagerty (R-TN) joined Senators Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Raphael Warnock (D-GA) in introducing the Keep Children and Families Safe From Lead Hazards Act. The bill which would direct the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to identify and remediate risk exposure to lead hazards, including lead wall paint and lead drinking water service lines, in Section 8 housing programs.
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