Zuckerberg-Funded Pro-Amnesty Groups Sue Border Patrol over ‘Whipping’ Hoax

A coalition of far-left pro-amnesty groups has filed a lawsuit against the United States Border Patrol, reviving the debunked hoax that horseback agents were seen “whipping” illegal aliens back in September, Breitbart reports.

The lawsuit claims that the Border Patrol has demonstrated “physical abuse, racial discrimination, denial of basic necessities and medical treatment, and a complete failure to process asylum claims.” The only proof offered by the suit is the handful of photographs taken from the incident in September, which was debunked by the photographer himself as instead being captured in the moment that horseback agents were spinning their reins around in an effort to keep illegals away from their horses, rather than actually whipping them.

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Operation Lone Star Border Security Efforts Get Additional $38.4 Million In Funding

An additional $38.4 million of Texas taxpayer money has been allocated to fund border security efforts at the Texas-Mexico border. It’s money Texas shouldn’t have to spend, Gov. Greg Abbott said, but is because of President Joe Biden’s open border policies that have ushered into the state rampant trafficking of drugs, people and crime.

The money will provide additional funding for Operation Lone Star, which Abbott launched in March and go towards law enforcement, jail operations, and court administration costs. It brings the total PSO funding for Operation Lone Star to $74 million to date designed to assist border cities and counties.

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Amazon Disables Ability to Rate Books Sold in China at Chinese Government’s Request

Amazon stopped offering customer ratings and reviews of books sold in China at the request of the Chinese Communist Party, according to a Reuters investigation.

The Chinese government ordered Amazon to stop allowing customers to review books following less-than-perfect ratings of a collection of President Xi Jinping’s writings, Reuters reported, citing two people familiar with the matter. Amazon partnered with a state-owned firm called China International Book Trading Corp (CIBTC) and created a portal, which it called China Books, that promotes Chinese Communist Party material and forbids negative reviews.

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Commentary: When Envy Trumps Economics

President Joe Biden has seized on a winning message: tax the rich. He tweets incessantly, “Big corporations and the super wealthy have to start paying their fair share of taxes. It’s long overdue,” and claims his Build Back Better agenda “will be paid for by the wealthy paying their fair share.”

Instead of highlighting the few benefits of his Build Back Better Act, (H.R. 5376) his public positioning is about harming a particular group. Why? This message sells with three key constituencies he’s counting on to pressure Congress to vote yes.

Younger millennials and Gen Z who believe the uber-rich should not exist.
The working rich who believe taxing themselves is a solution to poverty and a source of economic growth.
The governing elites who want to accumulate more government control by enlarging the dependent class.
Younger Millennials and Gen Z: Being Rich Is Inherently Bad
A recent PEW research poll revealed that half of adults under 30 believe billionaires are bad for the U.S. One self-proclaimed “anticapitalist” Millennial and trust fund beneficiary summed it up this way: “I want to build a world where someone like me, a young person who controls tens of millions of dollars, is impossible.” Accordingly, wealth comes from exploitation. Giving their money away (or giving it to Washington to redistribute into a social justice plan) is making “reparations.”

Using this logic, the late Steve Jobs should have been prohibited from earning ridiculous amounts of wealth. Because of his ingenuity, however, millions of jobs have been created, young people have been inspired, and some of the greatest technology has been made available. Like Jobs, those who earn their billions through innovation (and experience many failures in their pursuit and on their own dime) reinvest it in the economy in ways the government could not. Moreover, their earnings are a result of what others were willing to pay them.

Working Rich: We’re Moral People
A 2019 letter penned by more than a dozen of the wealthiest Americans — including George Soros, heiress Abigail Disney, and Molly Munger, daughter of Berkshire Hathaway Vice Chairman Charlie Munger— stated, “it is our duty to step up and support a wealth tax that taxes us.” They believe America “has a moral, ethical and economic responsibility to tax our wealth more.” Mr. Biden’s allies on the Left share this opinion.

A “transfer of wealth” by taxing the rich is nothing short of legal theft. Government is not, and cannot be, altruistic. Government has nothing to give that it has not taken from another by force. With few exceptions, this type of help will erode self-reliance and the moral incentive of charitable action, leading to more government spending.

Ignored is that the free market has done more to break the cycle of poverty than any government program, as it empowers people and mends the nonfinancial, relational parts of society.

The wealthy could put their money to better use by directly donating to effective charitable causes, investing in local communities, or investing in expanding their businesses to serve more consumers and create more jobs. Moreover, there is nothing stopping billionaires from giving their wealth directly to the U.S. government. If they genuinely believe it is their “moral, ethical and economic responsibility,” there is no need to wait.

Governing Elites: We Like Being In Control
They say it’s about social or economic justice, but President Biden’s messaging is déjà vu from Obama-era calls to redistribute wealth, or Marxist accolades of redistribution as a form of economic justice. The increasing popularity of taxing the rich makes the job of government elites easier. President Biden even engages in shame-tweeting such as, “Those at the top have been getting a free ride at the expense of the middle class for far too long.” But the bureaucrats’ real reason to tax the rich is to snatch individuals’ birthrights of personal responsibility, a move toward a centralized system that deflates personal choices and violates personal rights.

Taken together, these ideas unfortunately resonate beyond younger millennials and Gen Z, the working rich, and the governing elites. Jumping onto the “tax the rich” bandwagon feels good because – why should the rich have that much money anyway?

Envy permeates this ideology. Yet economics trumps envy.

The actual tax burden will not fall on folks writing checks to the US Treasury. The rich will, for the most part, still be rich. It’s the middle- and working class who will pay dearly when high-income individuals respond to the tax hike by simply investing less, resulting in fewer job opportunities and lower wages.

Left to fend for their economic lives will be small-business owners. President Biden may consider them wealthy, but taxing these individuals more will decimate communities, as jobs are lost or not created, and wages and hours are cut.

There’s no question that taxing the rich is popular. Problem is, it’s also reckless.

Instead of highlighting the few benefits of his Build Back Better Act, (H.R. 5376) his public positioning is about harming a particular group. Why? This message sells with three key constituencies he’s counting on to pressure Congress to vote yes.

Younger millennials and Gen Z who believe the uber-rich should not exist.
The working rich who believe taxing themselves is a solution to poverty and a source of economic growth.
The governing elites who want to accumulate more government control by enlarging the dependent class.

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Commentary: The Great American Con

Gabriel: “Do you know the difference between a hustler and a good con man?”

Fitz: “No.”

Gabriel: “A hustler has to get out of town as quick as he can, but a good con man—he doesn’t have to leave

—Steven McKay, Diggstown

 The Kansas City Shuffle: Winston-Salem, NC, 1985

I was a 16-year-old kid out with my girlfriend on a Friday night. We were at the county fair, where we wandered a lane crowded by brightly lit booths advertising competitions of chance and skill. Carnies invited us to toss baseballs into milk jugs, shoot basketballs through hoops, and pop balloons with darts. They made the games seem easy, but I’d never had much luck at them. I couldn’t throw a ball fast enough at the pitching booth, or swing a mallet hard enough to ring the bell at the strongman game. Still, I really wanted to win a prize for my girlfriend.

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Commentary: U.S. Population Growth Just Hit an All-Time Low

Crowd of people walking in New York City near the subway

Population growth in the United States declined to an all-time low during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following a decade-long fertility slump, 2020 saw more people dying than being born in half of all US states. Early estimates suggest that the US population grew only 0.35 percent, the lowest rate ever recorded, and growth is expected to remain near flat this year, according to reporting from the Wall Street Journal.

WSJ writers Janet Adamy and Anthony DeBarros report, “With the birthrate already drifting down, the nudge from the pandemic could result in what amounts to a scar on population growth, researchers say, which could be deeper than those left by historic periods of economic turmoil, such as the Great Depression and the stagnation and inflation of the 1970s, because it is underpinned by a shift toward lower fertility.”

The Malthusian View of Population

This demographic news comes at a time when limiting family size is widely encouraged in the media. In July, Meghan Markle and Prince Harry won an award for their “enlightened decision” to limit themselves to two children. And in response to a recent Census Bureau report of low population growth over the last decade, the Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman wrote in a New York Times column that, “In fact, in a world of limited resources and major environmental problems there’s something to be said for a reduction in population pressure.”

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Trump-Backed Georgia Candidate Pushes to Eliminate Drop Boxes, Machine Voting in Elections

Georgia State Sen. Burt Jones (R), who has been endorsed by former President Trump, is running for lieutenant governor of his state on a platform of election integrity as he’s pushing for the elimination of drop boxes and a return to voting on paper ballots.

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Supreme Court Set to Convene Special Session on Vaccine Mandates

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court announced that it will hold a special session in roughly two weeks to hear oral arguments regarding the Biden Administration’s ongoing efforts to force vaccinations on private employees, federal contractors, and healthcare workers, according to Politico.

The special session will begin on January 7th, 2022, just several days ahead of the regularly-scheduled session set to begin on January 10th.

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Commentary: ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas’ Helped Make the Modern Santa – and Led to a Literary Whodunit

close-up of Santa Claus suit

The poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” better known by its opening line “‘Twas the Night before Christmas,” has a special place among Christmas traditions, right alongside hot chocolate, caroling and bright lights. It has also inspired the modern image of Santa Claus as a jolly old man sporting red and a round belly.

But this poem has been steeped in controversy, and debate still looms over who the true author is. Traditionally, Clement C. Moore – a 19th-century scholar at the General Theological Seminary in New York, where I work as a reference librarian – has been credited with writing the poem in 1822 for his children. Every December, library staff shares our multiple copies of the poem in an exhibit to celebrate the holiday season.

No matter who wrote it, the poem is a fascinating object that has shaped Christmases past, present – and maybe yet to come.

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Commentary: The Magnificent History of the Maligned and Misunderstood Fruitcake

Traditional fruitcake

Nothing says Christmas quite like a fruitcake – or, at the very least, a fruitcake joke.

A quip attributed to former “Tonight Show” host Johnny Carson has it that “There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.”

It’s certainly earned its reputation for longevity.

Two friends from Iowa have been exchanging the same fruitcake since the late 1950s. Even older is the fruitcake left behind in Antarctica by the explorer Robert Falcon Scott in 1910. But the honor for the oldest known existing fruitcake goes to one that was baked in 1878 when Rutherford B. Hayes was president of the United States.

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Another Key Inflation Index Hits 40-Year High

Inflation continues to soar throughout the U.S., with the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) price index increasing to the highest level in almost 42 years while consumer spending cools, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) reported Thursday.

The PCE, one of the Federal Reserves’ key inflation indicators when it aims for a 2% annual inflation rate, surged 5.7% in November on a year-over-year basis, a 0.6% jump from October, the BEA reported. November’s figure is the highest since 1982.

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Biden Admin Releases Almost 1,500 Classified Documents About JFK’s Murder

The Biden administration released 1,491 classified documents Wednesday regarding the assassination and subsequent investigation of former President John F. Kennedy.

The documents include filings from federal agencies and law enforcement authorities, including the CIA and FBI, as part of the federal government’s review of Kennedy’ assassination.

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Trump Ally Bernie Kerik Plans to Publicly Release January 6 Documents

Former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik will publicize the documents he is presenting to the Jan. 6 committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol, according to a letter from Keriks’s attorney, obtained by Just the News.

Committee Chairman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., subpoenaed Kerik to speak about his work with former President Donald Trump’s attorney Rudy Giuliani following the 2020 election with a focus on Jan. 5 and 6.

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Commentary: Carbon Offsets – Not Taxes or Emissions Caps – Are the Best Path to Carbon Neutrality

Carbon taxes, emissions caps, subsidies – these all seek to reduce atmospheric emissions of greenhouse gases, yet regularly meet criticism and opposition. Is there a more efficient solution to achieving climate balance? Not only is the answer yes, but the potential benefits could far outperform what other strategies hope to achieve.

Most solutions seek to reduce emissions –abruptly or over time– or attain carbon neutrality by utilizing renewable power sources, but increasingly we hear that carbon neutrality is not enough. We must find new technology and techniques to reduce greenhouse gases already in the atmosphere, which will require meaningful investments in research and development. One solution is voluntary carbon offsets.

Carbon offsets are certificates for purchase intended to counteract operational emissions or capture legacy emissions from the past. This is done by paying for a given quantity of CO2 to be neutralized through investment in offsetting projects or technology. Whether the certificates are directed towards conservation efforts, renewable energy, or carbon capture or removal, purchasing carbon offsets provides one party investor satisfaction and the other party an infusion of funding intended to finance a carbon-reduction strategy. When purchasing high quality offsets, these serve as a down payment and incubator toward the best climate solutions available in the laboratory or in the field.

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Jobless Claims Remain Near Record Lows

The number of Americans who filed new unemployment claims totaled 205,000 in the week ending Dec. 18, a new post-pandemic low.

The Labor Department figure shows an unchanged amount of claims from the previous week ending Dec. 11. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal estimated that claims would remain around last week’s reported level of 206,000, just above the lowest number in 52 years.

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Border Patrol Catch Potential Saudi Terrorist Entering Arizona Illegally from Mexico

A Saudi Arabian man described by a U.S. Border Patrol chief as a “potential terrorist” was apprehended attempting to enter the U.S. illegally near Yuma, Arizona. He was apprehended wearing a New York county ambulance jacket.

Yuma Sector Chief Border Patrol Agent Chris Clem announced the apprehension on Twitter with an accompanying blurred photo of the man.

“Yuma Sector agents apprehended a potential terrorist who illegally entered the U.S. from Mexico Thursday night,” Clem wrote. “The 21-year-old migrant from Saudi Arabia is linked to several Yemeni subjects of interest.”

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EPA Focused on Gender, Ethnic Diversity to Fill ‘Purged’ Advisory Posts

After the Environmental Protection Agency dumped advisers from regulated industries, the federal agency appears to have prioritized gender and ethnic diversity to replace them, EPA documents show. 

The U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia heard arguments Wednesday in the case of Young vs. EPA. The lead plaintiff in the case, Stanley Young, was ousted in March from the EPA’s Science Advisory Board weeks after President Joe Biden took office. 

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Commentary: The Brain May Use a Ton of Energy Because It’s ‘Leaking’

Your brain may be leaking … energy, according to a new study that may explain why your noggin consumes 20% of the energy needed to keep your body running.

The study researchers found that tiny sacs called vesicles that hold messages being transmitted between brain cells may be constantly oozing energy, and that leakage is likely a trade-off for the brain being ready to fire at all times, according to a new study published Dec. 3 in the journal Science Advances. 

“The brain is considered a very expensive organ to run,” said senior author Timothy Ryan, a professor of biochemistry at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City.

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John Fredericks NFL Picks Week 16: Bills, Ravens on the Ropes

Merry Christmas! In the infamous words of Gordon Gecco, “Money never sleeps!” Plus we have two Christmas Day games to bet on! Screw the CCP loving lib-tards who run the NBA! We have NFL football on Christmas! I had a topsy-turvey roller-coaster week 15: Red hot in early games, smoked like a cheap Saturday night cigar on late games, then came roaring back with the snake eyes deuce on Tuesday. Overall I went 8-6 ATS, bringing my season record to 76-55-2 ATS. That’s 22 games over .500. My season pre-playoff goal is 25 games over .500. I am within striking distance this week.

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DeKalb County GOP Chair Blasts Brad Raffensperger for Claiming Credit for Georgia’s High Ranking Election Security Scorecard

The Washington, D.C.-based Heritage Foundation this month ranked Georgia first on its election integrity scorecard, and Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger took credit. DeKalb County Republican Party Chair Marci McCarthy said this week, however, that Raffensperger was out of line to make such a statement. McCarthy wrote on the DeKalb County GOP’s website that Raffensperger “unilaterally weakened Voter ID protections and controls” and “did not strengthen them.”

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Commentary: Salvation Army’s Woke Descent Hurts Those It Serves

In regions like suburban Philadelphia, the Salvation Army’s red kettles at retail entrances are a timeless reminder of ordinary Americans’ philanthropic commitment to the less fortunate. Unfortunately, Salvation Army leaders have now dared to accuse these same Americans of participating in a “racist” society where “racial groups are placed into a hierarchy, with White or lighter-skinned people at the top.”

The organization’s “Let’s Talk About Racism” curriculum for its officers and soldiers has sparked national outrage for its admonition that white people “repent” for “racism” and for its belief that America “work[s] to keep White Americans in power.” Yet rather than admit that these woke ideas are not shared or supported by its donors or staff, the leadership of the Salvation Army has hidden its new effort from the public.

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Commentary: Five Times Campuses Ruined Holidays in 2021

two people with Santa hats looking at Christmas tree

Woke and leftist ideologies often target traditions and celebrations around holidays, particularly those that pertain to Christianity and American identity. 

With 2021 coming to an end, Campus Reform has compiled a list of the top five instances of colleges and universities ruining holidays on campus.

1. Colleges celebrate Valentine’s Day with ‘Sex in the Dark’

Multiple colleges hosted a question and answer “Sex in the Dark,” a virtual Q&A event with health experts, just in time for Valentine’s Day. 

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Indianapolis Administrator Fired After Leaking School District’s Social Justice Initiatives

An Indianapolis Public Schools (IPS) administrator was fired Monday for “sharing public files” with news outlets as well as recordings of a “Racial Justice Speaker Series” that was presented to students, according to a statement.

Tony Kinnett was fired from his job as District Science Coordinator & Instructional Coach for IPS for “Sharing that IPS recorded children in required racial justice sessions, not sending IPS the personal info of” two reporters, “quoting Dr. Payne’s racist comments to students” and for “sharing public files,” according to his Twitter.

Kinnett told the Daily Caller News Foundation that the HR team pulled him into several meetings that they repeatedly said were non-disciplinary, but he said at the meetings he was not allowed to speak freely, initially bring an attorney or record anything.

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Melania Trump Is Releasing Her Own Line of NFTs

Former first lady Melania Trump announced Thursday that she is launching her own line of non-fungible tokens (NFTs) and donating a portion of the proceeds to fund children’s programs.

NFTs are unique units of data, similar to trading cards, that are stored on the blockchain, a decentralized public ledger distributed across multiple servers. Conventionally, an NFT is similar to a deed of ownership corresponding to a particular item of media, like a piece of digital art.

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Commentary: Charity Constitutes a Robust Alternative to Government Welfare

People compiling donation boxes of food

It’s that time of year again, the time when Americans consume more than ever, but also the time when Americans give more than ever. Indeed, America’s generosity as a whole is actually quite extensive, with Americans giving $471 billion in 2020, an all time high. That’s more than what the vast majority of countries bring in for tax revenue. 80% of this is from individuals, according to Giving USA.

Americans, in general, are incredibly generous, with 25% of Americans volunteering every year. Converted to a dollar value, this is roughly $179 billion worth of work. Most of this charity comes from the rich, with 93% of households that make over $162,501 donating to charity and 91% of households that make over $125,001 donating to charity.

Since the government started the “War on Poverty” 56 years ago, it has spent $27 trillion on this effort. And yet, it was only the beginning 7 years when poverty rates went down. Why? Well, one likely explanation is that welfare has taught people not to work, as governmental welfare dependency statistics have shown. Indeed, 93% of welfare recipients rely on welfare for more than 2 years. Charity, on the other hand, is not guaranteed, so it encourages people to take responsibility and become self-sufficient.

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Commentary: Why I Stopped Donating to Harvard, My Alma Mater

The statue of John Harvard, seen at Harvard Yard

This year, for the first time since graduation some two decades ago, I did not donate to either of my alma maters. Like many of you, I have become disillusioned with the illiberalism on many college campuses and could no longer support them with an annual gift. While higher education has historically tipped to the political left, the gap has widened in recent decades. Analyzing data on faculty ideological leanings, the American Enterprise Institute reported that “in less than 30 years the ratio of liberal identifying faculty to conservative faculty had more than doubled to 5.” 

At Harvard, where I attended graduate school, the faculty political imbalance is particularly striking. According to a 2021 survey by The Harvard Crimson, the college newspaper, out of 236 faculty replies only 7 people said they are “somewhat” or “very conservative,” while 183 respondents indicated that they are “somewhat” or “very liberal.” A similar problem plagues my undergraduate college, Bowdoin. 

The absence of my meager donations won’t matter to the colleges I attended, each of which has billions of dollars in endowment money. But big alumni donors at some leading universities are using their influence to improve free thought and inquiry on college campuses. 

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More Americans Than Ever Before Have No Religious Affiliation

A new survey by the Pew Research Center shows that the number of American adults with no religious affiliation is on the rise and has reached its highest point yet, as reported by Fox News.

Pew’s new study, released on Tuesday, shows that those who identify as having no religious affiliation make up 29 percent of all American adults. The number was previously 23 percent in 2016 and 19 percent in 2011, a whole ten points lower than it is today.

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From Fauci to Big Tech, GOP Already Has Clear Investigative Targets If It Wins Back Congress

Ohio Republican Rep. Jim Jordan is the most likely candidate to take over the House Judiciary Committee if the GOP wins back Congress next year. Ask him what he wants to investigate and who he wants to subpoena, and he doesn’t hesitate. Not even for even a second.

“Fauci,” he told Just the News, referring to Dr. Anthony Fauci, the U.S. infectious disease specialist overseeing America’s pandemic response.

While the many conflicting messages and reversals of the pandemic response are ripe for investigation, Republicans like Jordan also want to press Fauci about why America was funding China’s bat research on coronaviruses at the Wuhan Institute of Virology through a U.S. nonprofit called EcoHealth Alliance and why NIH revived a dangerous form of experimentation known as gain of function in 2017.

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The Surprising Reason Religious Couples Are Less Likely to Get Divorced

Religious couples are less likely to get divorced despite marrying younger — a factor generally associated with higher divorce rates — because they are less likely to live together before marriage, according to the Institute for Family Studies (IFS).

For those who married in their twenties, cohabitation before marriage was associated with higher divorce rates for both religious and nonreligious couples, the study found. The study found no difference in divorce rates between religious and nonreligious couples who chose not to live together before marriage.

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Fauci Urges Americans to Disinvite Unvaccinated Family Members from Holiday Gatherings

National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) Director Dr. Anthony Fauci has urged Americans to disinvite unvaccinated family members from their holiday gatherings as the fast-spreading COVID-19 Omicron variant surges nationwide.

‘We’re dealing with a serious enough situation now that if there’s an unvaccinated person, I would say, ‘I’m very sorry, but not this time. Maybe another time when this is all over,” said Fauci in an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday night.

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Home Prices at 45-Year High, Pricing Many Buyers out of the Market

Home prices are at a 45-year high, pricing many buyers out of an historic seller’s market, new data published by CoreLogic show.

Annual home prices were 18% higher in October of this year than they were last October, and were also the highest recorded in the 45-year history of a Home Price Index published by the global property company.

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Top Harvard Professor Found Guilty of Lying About Payments From China

A prominent Harvard professor was found guilty Tuesday of lying about his ties to China, The Wall Street Journal reported.

Charles Lieber, a scientist in Harvard University’s chemistry and engineering departments, was found guilty on six counts of lying related to his work at the Wuhan University of Technology, the WSJ reported.

Lieber was first arrested by federal authorities in January 2020 and charged with making false statements regarding his participation in the Thousand Talents Plan, a Chinese recruitment program that aims to foster foreign academic talent. The Department of Justice (DOJ) alleged that Lieber was paid by the Wuhan University of Technology (WUT) “$50,000 USD per month, living expenses of up to 1,000,000 Chinese Yuan (approximately $158,000 USD at the time) and awarded him more than $1.5 million to establish a research lab at WUT.”

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Biden Says Fully Vaccinated Can Feel Free to Celebrate the Holidays, but Unvaccinated Face Hospitalization and Death

During a speech Tuesday afternoon, Joe Biden said fully vaccinated Americans should feel comfortable celebrating the holidays with their families, while warning unvaccinated Americans that they are at a higher risk of ending up in the hospital and dying. Biden repeatedly urged vaccine holdouts to get the jab, saying it is the patriotic duty of every American, and stressing that the shots are “free.”

Biden announced that starting next month, insurance will start covering at-home COVID tests, and the government will provide free tests to those who don’t have insurance. He also said the government would set up emergency testing sites in COVID hot spots around the country.

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California’s New Congressional Map Bolsters Its Democratic Majorities

Gavin Newsom

California’s citizen redistricting commission finalized a new congressional map late Monday that puts every Democratic incumbent in a seat that President Joe Biden won by at least 10 points.

The independent commission’s maps also put most of California’s Republican incumbents in more competitive districts. And while Democratic Reps. Alan Lowenthal and Lucille Roybal-Allard’s districts were merged to accommodate California losing a House seat, both are retiring in 2022.

“This is a good map for Democrats,” J. Miles Coleman, an associate editor at Sabato’s Crystal Ball, told the Daily Caller News Foundation, noting how the new map could even “put Trump-won seats in play, depending on the year.”

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Feds Say Gambling-Addicted Georgia Public School Teacher Stole $240,000

Federal officials say that a Columbus, Georgia public school teacher who was addicted to gambling stole $240,000 from various nonprofits as well as from one of her former employers. Trenna Denise Trice, 59, pleaded guilty to wire fraud Monday. This according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Georgia published this week.

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Pfizer’s Comirnaty Available Abroad, Not in U.S.

New York-based Pfizer has sold and shipped hundreds of millions of doses of its Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approved COVID-19 vaccine Comirnaty to the European Union (EU) despite saying last week that it is not being shipped in the United States. 

“Pfizer Inc. (NYSE: PFE) and BioNTech SE (Nasdaq: BNTX) today announced they will supply an additional 100 million doses of COMIRNATY®, the companies’ COVID-19 vaccine, to the 27 European Union (EU) member states in 2021,” Pfizer said in an April press release. “This announcement is a result of the European Commission’s (EC) decision to exercise its option to purchase an additional 100 million doses under its expanded Advanced Purchase Agreement signed on February 17, 2021. This brings the total number of doses to be delivered to the EU to 600 million.”

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Commentary: Abundant Evidence Shows Critical Race Theory Is in Our Schools

Mary Nicely, who is now second-in-command at the California Department of Education, went on her personal Facebook page this summer to denounce conservatives who oppose teaching critical race theory in schools as “yet another White right and education reformer distraction.”

Nicely also reposted a newspaper column in July defining critical race theory as a key used in law schools to expose racism in the legal system: “It is taught, if at all, in law school — not high school.”

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Durham Zeroes In on Clinton Campaign, Could Call Some Aides to Testify, Court Memo Reveals

Hillary Clinton’s team long fought to keep its ties to Christopher Steele’s dossier from public view, but Special Counsel John Durham is now making clear he has a strong interest in her campaign’s behavior during the Russia collusion probe. He is even suggesting some of her aides could be summoned as trial witnesses.

Durham’s earth-shaking revelation came inside a routine court filing this month in the case of Igor Y. Danchenko, a Russian analyst who was a primary source in 2016 for Steele’s now-infamous dossier. Danchenko has been charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI during the Russia collusion probe and has pleaded innocent.

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Commentary: The Glaring Similarities Between the Whitmer Kidnapping and January 6

As questions mount about the government’s animating role in the Capitol protest on January 6, the criminal case against the men charged with conspiring to “kidnap” Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020 continues to collapse.

Defense attorneys in the Whitmer case are carefully compiling evidence that depicts an elaborate tale of FBI entrapment; at least a dozen FBI informants were involved in the failed plot—equaling one FBI asset per defendant. FBI agents handling the informants directed every move. They funded training and reconnaissance trips, and even organized a “national militia” conference in Ohio in June 2020 to lure potential accomplices.

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Arizona Seizes Record Amount of Fentanyl, Now Cited as Leading Cause of Death of Young Americans

Fentanyl

Authorities in Arizona seized $9 million worth of fentanyl pills in the state’s largest bust of the illicit drug – enough, they said, to kill half the population of Arizona.

The bust comes after a nonprofit group cites fentanyl as the leading cause of death among Americans between the age of 18 and 45. Arizona and Texas attorneys general and governors vowed to fight what they called the “lawlessness of the Biden administration,” which they argue is enabling fentanyl to be brought into the U.S. through its open border policies.

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Commentary: The Flaw in Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying’s Proposal for the Future of Humanity

Bret Weinstein podcast

Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying, evolutionary biologists and visiting fellows at Princeton University, have written a fascinating new book, A Hunter-Gatherer’s Guide to the 21st Century, which Penguin Random House released in September.

The instant New York Times bestseller is riddled with interesting ideas and clever insights, ultimately arriving at a radical conclusion about how humanity must be governed in the future if we are to avoid civilizational collapse. However, the book’s concluding argument is built upon one fundamental economic fallacy, and to understand the flaw in the proposal is to understand how truly catastrophic the pursuit of Weinstein and Heying’s vision would be.

The Fear of Abundance

Weinstein and Heying’s fundamental claim is about the human propensity to seek economic growth, and the ultimate unsustainability of that goal.

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Over 160 Mediterranean Migrants Drowned from Shipwrecks in One Week

Two shipwrecks in the Mediterranean Sea resulted in more than 160 Europe-bound immigrants drowning over the weekend, according to the U.N.’s International Organization for Migration, the Associated Press reported.

At least 102 people died in a shipwreck off the coast of Libya on Friday, while 8 were rescued, a spokesperson for the International Organization for Migration said, the AP reported. The Libyan coast guard reportedly found at least 62 bodies after a separate boat capsized Saturday, and it intercepted a third ship transporting at least 210 migrants.

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Commentary: Saying Christians Fuel ‘Martyr Dreams of Being Ostracized’ During Christmas Ignores International Persecution

An opinion piece published in The Battalion, a student-operated newspaper at Texas A&M University, recently argued that the Christmas season is a time when conservative Christians “perpetuate their martyr dreams of being ostracized.”

“Winter is Coming,” penned by Abbie Beckley, is an opinion piece that takes a deeper drive into Christmas’ purported true meaning.

According to the author, the commercialization of the holiday is not necessarily a bad thing as she attributes that trend to the expansion of inclusivity.

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Georgia, 23 Other States File Lawsuit Against Head Start Vaccination, Mask Mandate

Georgia is again pushing back against the Biden administration’s COVID-19 mandates.

Georgia and 23 other states are asking the court to block the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Administration for Children and Families from requiring Head Start program staff, certain contractors and volunteers to wear masks and be fully vaccinated by Jan. 31.

Gov. Brian Kemp and Attorney General Chris Carr announced the court challenge against the Head Start vaccination and mask mandate Tuesday.

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Trump to Hold News Conference on January 6, 2022 to Discuss ‘Rigged’ 2020 Election

Former President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday that he plans to hold a news conference at Mar-a-Lago on January 6, 2022, the one year anniversary of the Capitol Hill riot.

In a statement, Trump said the real insurrection took place on November 3rd, not January 6, which was a “completely unarmed protest.” The former president  questioned why the partisan select committee is not exploring the reason his supporters were on Capitol Hill that day, which was to protest the “rigged” 2020 election.

Why isn’t the Unselect Committee of highly partisan political hacks investigating the CAUSE of the January 6th protest, which was the rigged Presidential Election of 2020? Does anybody notice that they want to stay as far away from that topic as possible, the numbers don’t work for them, or even come close.

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Top Republicans Pressure Manchin to Switch Parties

Republicans are upping their calls for West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin to switch parties after he said he would not vote for President Joe Biden’s domestic spending bill.

Texas Republican Sen. John Cornyn told Nexstar that he texted Manchin to encourage him to switch after he came out as a “no,” telling him, “Joe, if [Democrats] don’t want you we do.”

While Cornyn said he did not get a response, he said that Manchin switching would be “the greatest Christmas present I can think of.”

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Commentary: Biden’s Blind Spot on Democracy

President Biden’s Summit for Democracy hasn’t yet provoked the sort of debate about Biden’s relationship to his church that abortion has. But questions about the president’s adherence to church teaching may be as applicable to democracy as it is to a woman’s right to choose since, in both cases, Roman Catholicism has much to say. In the case of democracy, Americans used to view Rome, a hierarchical church that had a long history of cooperation with emperors and monarchs, as an arch opponent of the nation’s democratic politics. Until the 1960s, the perception may have been accurate, but today it is a relic of an earlier era in church history.

One question that emerged after the Summit for Democracy is whether Biden’s faith might explain the presence of nations who seem to lean more authoritarian than democratic. As the story in the New York Times put it, “It was no surprise that China and Russia were not included, but the administration was second-guessed for its decision to invite other countries with checkered human rights records, like the Philippines and Nigeria, while excluding NATO allies Turkey and Hungary, both led by rulers with authoritarian streaks.”

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Vernon Jones Says Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp Wants to Have It Both Ways on Buckhead as a Separate City

Georgia Governor Brian Kemp and members of his staff on Wednesday would not declare his stance on whether Buckhead should formally remove itself from crime-plagued Atlanta. The Georgia Star News specifically asked whether Kemp and members of his team have met or communicated with members of the Buckhead City Committee, including its leader, Bill White. We also asked whether Kemp and members of his team told White and other Buckhead City Committee members that they support the city of Buckhead.

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