A Georgia state senator this week responded to the newly-passed Senate Bill 202 voter reform measure with a bill of her own. Georgia State Sen. Sally Harrell (D-Atlanta) this week filed a bill that she said would give county election supervisors and local elections boards the option to allow out-of-precinct voting on Election Day.
Read More
Drop dead. That’s the Biden administration’s message to victims of criminal illegal immigrants in joint stipulations submitted to the Supreme Court this month. The stipulations dismiss petitions filed last year asking the court to review two sanctuary city cases.
More on those cases later. In the Democratic fairy tale, sanctuary policies signal to victims of crime who are in the country illegally that they can work with police without fear of deportation — improving public safety. Sanctuary cities, goes the story, are safe cities.
Read More
More than 850 criminals have been encountered at the U.S. border with Mexico this year, including 92 sex offenders and 63 gang members, a U.S. Border Patrol agent tweeted this weekend.
Included among “the copious amounts of groups being encountered” at the Rio Grande Valley, Hastings said, are “a Salvadoran man with a prior conviction for murder” along with 862 criminals, Chief Patrol Agent Brian Hastings tweeted.
Read More
RIO GRANDE VALLEY — The overcrowded Customs and Border Protection facility holding migrants in Donna, Texas, was not designed for long-term detention, National Border Patrol Council spokesman Chris Cabrera told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Customs and Border Protection (CBP) is holding migrants in overcrowded cells constructed from clear plastic curtains that contain a toilet, a water fountain and concrete benches, Cabrera told the DCNF on an exclusive tour near the border. Migrants are being held for long periods of time in a facility that was intended for short-term detention, Cabrera added.
Read More
As the debate regarding the future of the Senate filibuster heats up, a recent report has confirmed that the Democrats, who are now advocating for its abolition, utilized the procedural stalling tactic exponentially more times than the Republicans did over the course of 2020, as reported by Breitbart.
With the Senate evenly-divided at 50 Democrats and 50 Republicans, most legislation will not be able to pass without at least 60 votes in favor due to the filibuster. As such, Democrats – who technically maintain control with Vice President Kamala Harris able to serve as the tie-breaking vote – have begun advocating for eliminating the filibuster in order to rush through some of the most radical items on their agenda without any Republican support.
Read More
Bryant University in Smithfield, Rhode Island will close its Confucius Institute, according to an announcement by President Ross Gittell.
“After 15 years of values language and cultural programs provided through the Confucius Institute at Bryant University, we have chosen not to apply for continued funding at the expiration of the Confucius Institute contract,” Gittell wrote on March 22, “The university will evaluate changes that are taking place in China regarding U.S.-China Relations before making any future commitment.”
Gittell maintained that developing students’ “global mindset is a cornerstone of Bryant’s mission,” noting that the university will still offer “high quality business education through our curriculum offerings in Zhuhai [China].”
Read More
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said Monday that a mileage tax won’t be included in President Joe Biden’s infrastructure proposal.
Buttigieg told CNN anchor Jake Tapper the tax is “not part of the conversation about this infrastructure bill,” despite floating the idea of taxing people based on how far they drive last week.
Read More
The World Health Organization dedicated a little over one page to dismissing the lab leak theory at the very end of its 123-page COVID-19 origins report, according to a draft copy obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
The draft report stated that the only way to increase scientific knowledge surrounding the theory that COVID-19 leaked from a lab in Wuhan, China, would be to conduct “[r]egular administrative and internal review of high-level biosafety laboratories worldwide.”
Read More
A Hong Kong-based think tank suspected of working as a front group for the Chinese Communist Party has cultivated close ties to Historically Black Colleges and Universities and members of the Congressional Black Caucus since 2014.
The China-U.S. Exchange Foundation’s (CUSEF) outreach to the black community is part of a broad initiative to cozy up to prominent organizations in the U.S., including foreign policy think tanks and other elite universities.
CUSEF’s activities have drawn the attention of CIA Director William Burns, who testified at his Senate confirmation hearing last month that he cut ties with CUSEF when he was president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace out of concern over “Chinese influence operations.”
Read More
A far-reaching plan by the Biden administration, in conjunction with private companies, to create a so-called coronavirus passport is raising privacy and transparency concerns from people of all political stripes. The plan could force Americans to get vaccinated in order to attend sporting events, vacation on a cruise ship, or fly commercially.
On the left, long-time feminist activist Naomi Wolf is sounding privacy alarms. She told Fox News, “I am not overstating this. I can’t say it forcefully enough. This is literally the end of human liberty in the West, if this plan unfolds as planned.”
Read More
Hunter Biden and his business partner engaged in an effort to assist a fugitive Ukrainian oligarch indicted by his father’s administration, an effort that briefly captured the FBI’s attention and led one of the lawyers in the case to express concern that using the then-vice president’s son might backfire, according to emails, text messages and interviews.
Read More
Georgia is on its way to repealing a centuries-old citizens arrest law that currently allows citizens of the Peach State to detain others if a crime is committed in their presence “or within their immediate knowledge.”
Monday, HB 479 passed the Georgia Senate with a 52-1 vote. It will head back to the House where a Senate amendment giving business owners the right to detain suspected thieves will be voted open.
Read More
Georgia U.S. Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-GA-03) is co-sponsoring a bill that proposes to encourage businesses to head back to American shores. Ferguson said America needs this during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read More
A Georgia woman has admitted to creating a fake business and using it to receive funding from a federal COVID-19 small business relief program.
This, according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Georgia published this month.
Tracy Kirkland, 40, of Swainsboro, pled guilty to an Information charging her with wire fraud, said David H. Estes, Acting U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia.
“As described in court documents and testimony, in August 2020 Kirkland received a federally guaranteed loan for $66,400 under the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA) Economic Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) Program comprised of funds appropriated by the CARES Act,” the press release said.
Read More
The advocacy group “Fair and Just Prosecution” says the goal of progressive criminal justice reform is to create “a justice system grounded in fairness, equity, compassion, and fiscal responsibility.” Starting around 2016, this movement picked up momentum across the United States, primarily by funding candidates in county district attorney elections. There are now dozens of cities and counties with elected district attorneys that are enforcing massive shifts in prosecutorial conduct.
Reforms were needed. But so far, they have been a disaster.
While the most visible source of funding for these district attorney candidates is the notorious George Soros, the movement is much bigger than the agenda of one billionaire. It taps a core belief of progressives, that America’s criminal justice system is punitive and disproportionately targets nonwhite and low-income communities. It also taps into a sentiment shared by progressives and libertarians, that “victimless” crimes, primarily drug related, should not be crimes at all.
Read More
RealClear Opinion Research recently conducted a poll about Biden’s first 100 days in office. One of the questions asked was how important it was to get the pandemic under control and public satisfaction with results to date.
The timeline below shows total daily mentions of the pandemic across television news, showing that starting with December 31, 2020, CNN and MSNBC sharply reduced their coverage and have mentioned the pandemic this year far less than last year, while Fox News is largely mentioning it the same number of times each day.
Read More
After Duke University decided to end recruitment of freshmen by Greek and non-Greek selective living groups, nine fraternities decided to disaffiliate from the Interfraternity Council, and thus from the university itself.
Duke University has made several changes to Greek life since the hiring of former Tufts University dean of student affairs Mary Pat McMahon. McMahon is now the vice president and vice provost for student affairs at Duke.
McMahon collaborated with the Office of Undergraduate Education to create a new committee called the Next Generation Living and Learning 2.0 Committee in 2020. The committee seeks to “build a joyful and intentional 4-year residential experience that promotes growth, meaningful inclusion, and health, and that is distinctly Duke.”
Read More
President Ronald W. Reagan former advance and body man told the Star News Network he remembers where he was when he heard 40 years ago that President Ronald W. Reagan was shot.
James F. “Jim” Kuhn said he first met Reagan in October 1975.
“He was giving a speech at the Union Club in downtown Cleveland at a businessman’s gathering and the head of the group was the CEO of the company that I worked for in Canton, Ohio, and that’s how it all got started,” Kuhn said.
Read More
Last week, Kentucky was the first state legislature to pass a new program to fund students instead of systems this year. The proposal, House Bill 563, would allow eligible students to access scholarships to use at approved private education providers of their families’ choosing. But the Bluegrass State’s Democratic governor, Andy Beshear, blocked educational opportunities for thousands of children by vetoing the bill on Wednesday.
Kentucky requires a constitutional majority in both the House and Senate to override Beshear’s veto, and that vote is expected to happen Monday.
During his press conference announcing the decision, Beshear said that the bill “would greatly harm public education in Kentucky by taking money away from public schools and sending it to unaccountable private organizations with little oversight.”
Read More
Political activists who call for defunding police and ending what they call systemic racism used the banner of Black Lives Matter to raise tens of millions of dollars and launch a political action committee, according to the main organization’s “2020 Impact Report.”
The 42-page report declares victories in the election of two Democrats to the U.S. Senate in Georgia’s runoffs as well as three Democrats to the U.S. House from Texas, New York, and Missouri.
The report credits the new PAC for coordinating get-out-the-vote efforts. The main Black Lives Matter organization also entered the legislative fray for the first time while making generous grants to allied organizations.
Read More
There is absolutely no crisis at the southern border, and Trump caused it. Also Trump wanted small children to die at the border. I don’t. That’s just another reason people say I’m a good person.
Despite what you’ve heard, there is no surge of immigration. There’s just springtime, man. The fact that we need to open up military facilities to house this influx, well, that just shows what a fine job we are doing correcting Trump’s problems.
Read More
If there were ever a darling of the Canadian Country Airwaves, it would be Brett Kissel. Not only has the 30-year-old won numerous Canadian Country Music Association Awards, but he also has three number one hits and numerous top-tens on Canadian Radio.
But the main reason I wanted to interview him was because his music really is that good. His songs are all over the spectrum sonically but they resonate with the listeners.
Kissel admits that absolutely no one in his family is musical. “Not a grandpa, not a dad, an uncle, an auntie, nobody ever played music, period.”
The fact that he picked up a guitar, the fact that he can sing, the fact that he can write songs, and the fact that he moved to Nashville and made a go of it, is nothing short of remarkable.
Read More
Faced with ongoing state lockdowns and changing school restrictions last year, frustrated parents increasingly pulled their children out of public schools nationwide and found other educational options for their children, one of which was home-schooling.
According to a new U.S. Census Bureau Household Pulse Survey, a substantial increase in the number of parents who chose to home-school occurred in 2020 compared to 2019. The survey is the first data source to offer both a national and state-level look at the impact of COVID-19 on homeschooling rates, the report states.
Using a large, nationally representative sample of U.S. households, the survey found that home-schooling was notably higher than national benchmarks. It was conducted in phases to assess parental choices over different periods of the school year.
Read More
Students at Clemson University in South Carolina are calling on the school to ban Fox News conservative personality Tomi Lahren from a Turning Point USA conference set to take place on the campus on April 8.
Students say that Lahren’s past criticism of the Black Lives Matter organization disqualifies her from speaking at the university.
“We are committed to creating a more equal, fair and inclusive environment on our campus,” said the Clemson University College Democrats on March 11, “Statements made by Ms. Lahren, especially those concerning the Black Lives Matter movement, are divisive and hateful.”
Read More
A new Georgia voter integrity law that requires, among other things, voter ID on absentee ballots, has prompted talk that Major League Baseball and the Professional Golfers’ Association might cancel major events in the Peach State. And at least one major Hollywood director said he now wants nothing to do with Georgia.
Read More
A Georgia Institute of Technology professor accused of using the college’s J-1 Visa Program to “arrange for Chinese nationals to fraudulently obtain and maintain J-1 Visas” was arraigned in a federal court in Georgia, the Department of Justice announced on Wednesday.
Gee-Kung Chang, who was indicted by a grand jury on March 18, pleaded not guilty to charges of conspiracy to commit visa fraud, conspiracy to commit wire fraud, and wire fraud, according to a press release. Chang’s alleged co-conspirator, Jianjun Yu, was also arraigned, joining him in what U.S. Attorney Kurt Erskine called “The first step toward holding them accountable” for running a tightly orchestrated scheme that placed Chinese nationals at ZTE USA in New Jersey.
ZTE USA is a subsidiary of ZTE Corporation, a technology company partly owned by the Chinese Communist Party. On March 3, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Chinese Communist Party represents America’s “biggest geopolitical test of the 21st century.”
Read More
With the wave of executive orders and legislation coming from the Biden administration, and the cultural antics of his woke supporters, Biden’s war on fossil fuels has received insufficient attention. Yet energy is the lifeblood of our economy, and making traditional energy sources vastly more expensive is the single most destructive aspect of Biden’s policies. If this country does not successfully mobilize against these policies, the vast majority will experience a dramatic drop in their standard of living.
Supposedly the assault on fossil fuels — via regulation; cancellation of pipelines; concocting a huge, wholly imaginary “social cost of carbon”; taxes; and solar and wind mandates — is necessary to save the planet from imminent catastrophe produced by man-made global warming.
Read More
Left-wing activists groups are targeting the state of Georgia after Gov. Bill Lee (R) signed an election integrity bill into law last week.
One of the most high-profile targets of the boycotts is the Augusta National Golf Course, home to the Professional Golf Association’s (PGA) Masters Tournament, the most storied professional golf tournament in the United States.
Read More
Arkansas Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-Ark.) signed a bill into law on Thursday that banned so-called “transgender” athletes from competing in sports for women and girls, as reported by ABC News.
Hutchinson’s office released a statement addressing the new law, declaring that “this law simply says that female athletes should not have to compete in a sport against a student of the male sex when the sport is designed for women’s competition…I agree with the intention of this law. This will help promote and maintain fairness in women’s sporting events.”
Read More
Texts allegedly linking the U.S. Secret Service to Hunter Biden’s 2018 gun case were uncovered by the New York Post on Friday.
In a Jan. 29, 2019 text message, Biden reportedly wrote that his former sister-in-law turned girlfriend Hallie Biden stole the gun from the trunk of his car and told law enforcement authorities, including the Secret Service, that she disposed of it over fears Biden would use the gun to harm himself, the Post reported. The purported texts appear to contradict the Secret Service’s denial of involvement in the incident.
Read More
One of the scant few House Republicans who voted to impeach President Donald Trump last year is receiving backing from former Speaker of the House John Boehner ahead of a primary challenge from a pro-Trump candidate.
Boehner next week will appear at a Zoom fundraiser for Ohio Rep. Anthony Gonzalez, according to Politico. Gonzalez, who is up for reelection in 2022, was among the 10 Republicans in the House to vote to impeach Trump on charges of having “incited” the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Read More
Red states are leading economic growth in the U.S., a new report by the U. S. Commerce Department shows, with South Dakota, Texas and Utah reporting the highest growth.
The report is based on 2020 fourth quarter gross domestic product (GDP) data and February 2021 unemployment rates.
Real GDP increased in all 50 states and the District of Columbia in the fourth quarter of 2020. Real GDP for the U.S. as a whole increased at an annual rate of 4.3%. The percent change in real GDP in the fourth quarter ranged from 9.9% in South Dakota to 1.2% in the District of Columbia.
Read More
The Pentagon’s views on political violence following the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Capitol riots are not biased despite rank and file concerns, a Department of Defense (DoD) spokesman said.
Service members have expressed concerns regarding DoD’s different responses to the political turmoil in the summer of 2020 and the Capitol riot, believing that the Pentagon should take a balanced view on violence in both cases, according to McClatchy. A DoD spokesman said judgements are not based on the causes of political violence when providing military assistance to states and the federal government.
“If a request for assistance is received from state or federal authorities, the Department of Defense reviews it, and considers what support it can provide that would meet the requirements of the request,” Lieutenant Colonel (LTC) Chris Mitchell at DoD, told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “In doing so, the Department does not make distinctions or judgements about the events that led to the request.”
Read More
A lengthy column by a professor that critiques critical race theory and the concept of “whiteness” and “blackness” was removed by an online intellectual magazine after it generated controversy.
Alaric Naudé, a linguistics professor at Suwon Science College in South Korea and head professor of its English Department, said his essay “Blackness, Whiteness and Other Mythological Creatures” was removed by the UK-based online magazine Res Publica.
The publication bills itself as providing “an academic platform where ideas and concepts can be praised and challenged.” It did not respond to requests from The College Fix seeking comment on the matter.
Read More
Disney has announced that the beloved “National Treasure” film franchise will be rebooted into a TV series that will feature a young female DREAMer as its main character, as reported by Breitbart.
The new series will premiere on Disney’s exclusive streaming platform Disney+, with the show’s description declaring that the story will be told “from the point of view of Jess Morales, a twenty-year-old DREAMer who, with her diverse group of friends, sets off on the adventure of a lifetime to uncover her mysterious family history and recover lost treasure.”
“DREAMer” refers to the failed amnesty bill known as the DREAM Act, which Barack Obama tried to get passed through Congress while he was in office. When the bill could not garner bipartisan support to pass, he took the highly unconstitutional action of implementing most of the DREAM Act via executive order, which came to be known as the “Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals,” or DACA order. This order pledged to give blanket amnesty to illegal aliens who arrived in the United States as minors, and since the signing of the executive order, has become a legal and political football that has bounced from one court to another trying to determine its legality.
Read More
China has delayed the release of a World Health Organization report on the origins of the coronavirus pandemic as it reviews the document, according to a World Health Organization advisor.
A team of scientists led by the WHO was expected to release the report this week, after an investigation in Wuhan, the Chinese city where the first known cases of COVID-19 were found.
“Just received confirmation that release of the @WHO-organized int’l committee/Chinese gov’t report on #COVID19 origins has again been delayed, apparently as the Chinese side fights tooth & nail over each sentence. Anyone believe this compromise report can possibly be credible?” World Health Organization advisory committee member Jamie Metzl said Friday in a tweet.
Read More
A suburban Minneapolis theater company has cancelled a production of “Cinderella” because its cast was “too white.”
Chanhassen Dinner Theatres was scheduled to stage Roger & Hammerstein’s classic play later this year before its artistic director stepped in to criticise its lack of racial diversity, twincities.com reported.
“It was 98 percent white,” Michael Brindisi, the theater’s artistic director, told the Twin Cities Pioneer Press on Wednesday after looking at the actors who had been cast. “That doesn’t work with what we’re saying we’re going to do.”
Read More
Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) introduced a bill on Thursday seeking to ban critical race theory from being taught in the United States military, referring to such a practice as “anti-American,” as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
Senator Cotton said that such teachings, which essentially claim that America is an “inherently racist” country and that White people are automatically racist and “privileged,” would only “demoralize and divide” members of the armed forces. In his statement announcing the bill, Cotton declared that “our military’s strength depends on the unity of our troops and the knowledge that America is a noble nation worth fighting for.”
Read More
The CEO of Gallup has publicly warned President Joe Biden that approximately 42 million people south of Texas want to migrate into the United States.
In a blog post published on Wednesday, Jim Clifton, the chairman and CEO of the Gallup polling company, warned Biden as he and his administration struggle to deal with the surge of migration at the border:
Here are questions every leader should be able to answer regardless of their politics: How many more people are coming to the southern border? And what is the plan?
Read More
MISSOULA COUNTY, Mont. — A mountainous, 2,600-square-mile region with a population of approximately 119,600 does not seem like your prototypical setting for machine politics. Yet a recent audit of mail-in ballots cast there found irregularities characteristic of larger urban centers — on a level that could have easily swung local elections in 2020, and statewide elections in cycles past.
The Biden administration, the Democrat-controlled Congress, and the Democratic National Committee are collectively pressing to both nationalize, and make permanent, many of the extraordinary pandemic-driven voting measures implemented during the 2020 election —particularly mass mail-in voting.
Read More
Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel this week defended Georgia Senate Bill 202, which Democrats nationwide have described as a form of voter suppression. As The Georgia Star News reported Saturday, this new voter reform law requires the following:
Read More
A bill that bans counties and municipalities in Georgia from reducing their police department budgets by more than 5% has passed the Georgia Senate and will be sent back to the House.
Sen. Randy Robertson, R-Cataula, a law enforcement veteran, said the legislation, House Bill 286, is a response to local efforts to “defund the police.”
“I think everyone sees the things that are going on around our country right now related to law enforcement, and what this does is just guarantee the citizens of any community that they’re not caught up in the politics that revolves around policing and offers protection,” said Robertson, who sponsored the bill.
Read More
No one believes the Biden White House’s feeble attempt to blame the Trump administration for the current border crisis.
As the Biden administration unsuccessfully tries to deflect blame for the humanitarian disaster now occurring before America’s eyes, despite its directed media blackout, the administration is only succeeding at showing it knows it has a problem.
Read More
This past Thursday, President Joe Biden held the first press conference of his young presidency. There was a good deal of anticipation surrounding the presser since he had waited longer than any of his predecessors who held the office during the past 100 years to hold a formal, solo news conference. While I’m not always a fan of these events, I stopped my day to see what he would say and how he would say it.
Read More
Dr. Robert Redfield, former director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), cast doubt on the prevalent theory about the origins of the coronavirus, saying in an interview released Friday that he believes the virus escaped from a science lab in China.
“I do not believe this somehow came from a bat to a human,” Redfield told CNN’s Sanjay Gupta for a special on the virus that airs Sunday.
Read More
Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee on Friday signed a bill into law that will prohibit transgender students from playing on the team of the sex with which they identify, one of numerous such bills currently working their way through statehouses around the country.
Read More
USA TODAY Sports’ race and inclusion editor Hemal Jhaveri announced Friday she was fired after falsely saying an “angry white man” was responsible for Monday’s mass shooting in Boulder, Colorado.
“[I]t’s always an angry white man. Always,” Jhaveri said Monday evening before police revealed the shooter was 21-year-old Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa, a migrant from Syria.
Read More
The antics of the Democratic Party make it easy to lose sight of other enemies, especially those standing right beside us. The fog of political war conceals not only the foes in the field but also fake allies. Jane Timken’s case is illustrative.
Timken recently announced her plan to run for the Senate in 2022, following incumbent Ohio Republican Rob Portman’s recent decision not to seek reelection. She served as vice chairwoman of the Stark County Republican Party until becoming the first female chairwoman of the Ohio Republican Party in 2017. Timken resigned in February when Portman’s retirement presented her with a possible path to the Senate. High-profile praise from a few people in Donald Trump’s orbit has already come her way.
Read More
Social media companies have policed coronavirus-related content based on information from top health organizations, even as those organizations have contradicted themselves.
Facebook and Google instituted policies early in the pandemic restricting user content shared on their platforms to information that doesn’t contradict World Health Organization (WHO) and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) findings. However, the organizations have contradicted, backtracked or retracted their own findings throughout the pandemic.
Facebook’s policy states that the site “will debunk common myths that have been identified by the World Health Organization.” Shortly after coronavirus was declared a pandemic, Facebook announced its “Coronavirus Information Center,” which curates updates from “organizations such as the World Health Organization.”
Read More
California’s two U.S. Senators, both Democrats, are calling on President Joe Biden to ban the sale of gasoline-powered cars in the United States.
Sens. Diane Feinstein and Alex Padilla sent a letter to Biden urging him to “follow California’s lead and set a date by which all new cars and passenger trucks sold be zero-emission vehicles.”
Last September, California Gov. Gavin Newsom, who now faces a potential recall election, signed an executive order banning the sale of gasoline-powered cars in California by requiring all new cars and trucks being sold in the state to be zero-emission vehicles by 2035. Currently, electric vehicles account for less than 3 percent of all vehicle sales in the U.S.
Read More