Georgia has awarded more than $5.6 million in grants to law enforcement agencies, state officials announced Friday.
The grants will fund law enforcement training programs. It is part of Gov. Brian Kemp’s larger effort to bolster public safety and reduce crime.
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Republican Vernon Jones announced last spring that he would run for governor of Georgia to unseat incumbent and fellow Republican Brian Kemp, but on Monday Jones announced he will depart that race to run for Congress. Jones posted the news on Facebook and Twitter. He then endorsed another Republican for governor.
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Georgia Democrat Stacey Abrams is facing criticism for posing for photos with school children while not wearing a COVID-19 mask.
In now-deleted Twitter posts, Abrams is seen seated on the floor without a mask while several children on each side are each wearing one.
Abrams, a Georgia gubernatorial candidate and nationally known Democrat politician, like other fellow, high-profile party members is being accused of being hypocritical about the mask mandates that many elected Democrats across the country have required people to wear during the pandemic.
Abrams has championed more stringent masking policies in schools, according to CNN.
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CNN is dying. Its president, Jeff Zucker, was just fired. (Or, rather, he “resigned.”) The network’s viewership is plummeting, and fewer than 500,000 people on average tuned in last month. Advertisers don’t send their dollars there much anymore, and the “stars” the network once had either have been removed for cause or caught up in sex or other scandals.
Chris “Fredo” Cuomo threatened to burn the place down after getting fired last year. Why does the parent company—AT&T, a telephone megacompany—put up with it? CNN is a drag on the parent company’s earnings, a thorn in its side, and a hit on its reputation. Wouldn’t a rational actor cancel the network altogether or sell it off and be done with it? With $150 billion in debt, no wonder AT&T decided to sell the ailing network to the Discovery Network. AT&T will no doubt benefit from getting out of politics.
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The upstart crowdfunding website GiveSendGo on Saturday restarted a funding drive in support of the Canadian trucker protests, quickly raising a massive $1 million just hours after the fund was dropped by the larger platform GoFundMe.
GoFundMe had cancelled the funding drive after it had raised a whopping $10 million, claiming that the protest itself had turned into a violent “occupation” and that it violated the company’s terms of service.
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The Small Business Administration-administered Paycheck Protection Program paid out millions of dollars to ineligible unions, according to a new report released by the Freedom Foundation.
The Freedom Foundation investigated the SBA’s database of PPP loans, and concluded approximately 226 loans totaling $36.7 million were distributed to labor unions and affiliated organizations. The first round of PPP loans explicitly states such entities were ineligible for the government funds prior to March 11, 2021.
“The Small Business Administration knew as early as July 2020 that Paycheck Protection Program loans were being approved for unions that weren’t eligible to receive the funds,” Maxford Nelsen, Freedom Fund director of Labor Policy, told The Center Square.
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Melinda Gates announced Wednesday that she is no longer giving the majority of her wealth to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and will instead focus on spreading her money to other philanthropic projects, The Wall Street Journal first reported.
Gates made the decision after her divorce from Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates in May 2021, the WSJ reported. The couple first pledged to donate most of their wealth to the joint Foundation in 2010.
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Representative Barry Loudermilk (R-GA-11) this week said his chamber’s recently passed America COMPETES Act does not hold China accountable for trade abuses and human rights violations, per the bill’s original intent. Loudermilk, in a podcast, said Speaker of House Nancy Pelosi (D-CA-12) and other members of the far Left hijacked the bill. Loudermilk said the Left then added what the congressman called a wish list of socialist items.
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Last March, President Joe Biden announced a goal of building 30,000 megawatts (MW) of offshore wind generation by 2030. Doing so will “strengthen the domestic supply chain and create good-paying union jobs,” according to the White House. It’s all part of the president’s executive order to “build a new energy economy that will create millions of new jobs.”
Except the executive order won’t accomplish this, not least because it rests on an assumption that endless green energy subsidies will produce boundless economic growth.
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A majority of Americans say they are not better off financially than they were a year ago, according to a new poll.
Gallup released the polling data Thursday showing that only 41% of Americans say they are financially better off than they were a year ago, when President Joe Biden took office.
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A coalition of three dozen Republican members of the U.S. House of Representatives has vowed to investigate the Biden Administration’s Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), after it has been reported that the agency has been building up a database of as many legal firearms purchases as possible.
According to the Washington Free Beacon, the investigation will be led by Congressman Michael Cloud (R-Texas), and will be backed by 35 other Republicans. The probe will focus on the ATF’s efforts to “sweep up records of every gun sale in America,” the group declared in a letter announcing their investigation. The ATF’s database currently contains over 920 million transaction records involving the sale of firearms within the United States; such a database not only violates Americans’ privacy rights, but would also be in violation of federal law forbidding the federal government from maintaining any semblance of a national firearms registry.
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Conservatives took critics to heart when they said, “build your own platforms,” in the wake of digital censorship claims.
Twitter competitors like Gab, Parler and now GETTR offer a “safe space” for those frustrated by the former’s inconsistent rules. The video platform Rumble, active since 2013 but experiencing a massive boost over the past year, is a haven for voices like conservative talker Dan Bongino recently silenced by Google-owned YouTube. And GiveSendGo.com lets clients denied access to GoFundMe crowdfund without compromising their values.
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Multiple news reports suggesting that a Travis County judge ruled that Texas’ Operation Lone Star is unconstitutional is “fake news,” Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s Office says.
To suggest the state’s border security measures are unconstitutional “is absolutely ludicrous and wrong,” Paxton told The Center Square.
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On Jan. 26, the group “White Coats 4 Black Lives,” an organization with a mission to “dismantle racism in medicine and fight for the health of Black people,” gave the University of Rochester’s School of Medicine & Dentistry its “Racial Justice Report Card.”
The result was nine “F” grades based on campus activity and administration policies during the 2020-2021 academic year.
Founded in 2014, White Coats 4 Black Lives has 75 chapters at universities across the nation and pushes the Black Lives Matter agenda within medical schools.
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Natural immunity from COVID-19 is broad and durable. The lowest risk group for COVID complications should get vaccines — and boosters, for those authorized — regardless of their health.
These statements came out of the CDC two days apart, illustrating the agency’s mixed messaging as ongoing research fails to show a meaningful effect on viral transmission from COVID interventions, especially in children.
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Do you trust the U.S. government? I don’t recommend it.
Consider what John Kirby, a spokesman for the Pentagon, said a couple of days ago at a press briefing. “We believe,” Kirby said, that Russia is planning to stage a fake attack by Ukrainian military or intelligence forces against Russian sovereign territory, or against Russian speaking people,” in order to justify an invasion of Ukraine. Kirby had lots of details: “We believe that Russia would produce a very graphic propaganda video, which would include corpses and actors that would be depicting mourners, and images of destroyed locations, as well as military equipment, at the hands of Ukraine or the West.”
Gosh. Should we be worried? Yes. But not necessarily for the reasons that Kirby and his puppet masters want you to be worried. The United States is sending troops and arms to aid Ukraine, so of course there needs to be an emergency to justify that action. John Kirby just outlined a scary scenario. But inquiring minds want to know: What’s his evidence for this dramatic claim?
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The COVID-19 vaccine exemption process in the Marine Corps gives no consideration to the faiths of individual soldiers and could hamper military readiness, according to Marines fighting the Pentagon’s vaccine mandate on religious grounds who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation anonymously out of fear of retribution.
As of Friday, 95% of active duty members of the Marine Corps were fully vaccinated, and another 2% were partially vaccinated, Department of Defense (DOD) spokesperson Maj. Charlie Dietz told the DCNF. A total of 334 Marines have been separated with a vaccine refusal discharge code. The Marine Corps has received 3,538 religious exemption requests, and only three were approved, out of 3,414 requests that were processed.
The Secretary of Defense issued a memorandum on Aug. 24, requiring that all service members be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 as a matter of readiness.
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Chief Financial Officer of San Diego State University’s (SDSU) Campanile Foundation, David Fuhriman, spoke to Campus Reform about the school’s decision to accept Bitcoin and cryptocurrency donations.
Fuhriman noted the push to expand SDSU’s donor base, explained how the donated funds will be used, and expressed optimism for the asset class.
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A Canadian movement of truckers protesting the country’s vaccine mandate has inspired a similar protest in the U.S., with a convoy expected to arrive at the nation’s capital next month. That movement, though, sparked controversy beyond its protest this weekend after a run-in with the popular online fundraiser, GoFundMe.
GoFundMe announced it would refund more than $10 million in donations to donors of the “Freedom Convoy” online fundraiser after threats of a fraud investigation from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. DeSantis threatened the investigation after GoFundMe reportedly froze the fundraising account Friday and said they would give the funds to another charity of Freedom Convoy’s choice.
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State University of New York at Fredonia Professor Stephen Kershnar has been relieved of his on-campus duties and “will not have contact with students” pending an investigation by the school, according to the popular Twitter page LibsofTikTok.
On Feb. 1, LibsofTikTok posted video footage of the Kershnar claiming that there is a moral justification for having sex with children as young as one-year-old, comparing it to “willing” participation in kickball.
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The Biden administration is experiencing an uptick of Chinese Communist Party (CCP) spokesmen channeling left-wing talking points aimed at discrediting American institutions.
Seeking to denounce a key Department of Justice (DOJ) counterintelligence program billed to “identify priority Chinese trade theft cases,” Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, invoked its domestic critics during a recent Jan. 18 presser.
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The top House Republican on a key oversight subcommittee has pushed a series of conflict-of-interest probes into the Biden administration over its ties to the renewable energy industry.
Republican South Carolina Rep. Ralph Norman, the ranking member on the Oversight Subcommittee on Environment, has probed leadership in the White House, Department of Energy (DOE) and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), demanding accountability for potential conflicts of interests since President Joe Biden took office more than a year ago. While committee Democrats haven’t cooperated with the investigations, Norman and Oversight Ranking Member James Comer have forged ahead.
“The people in the administrations have no regard for the office that they hold,” Norman told the Daily Caller News Foundation in an interview.
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Former President Donald Trump released a blistering attack Friday afternoon on former Vice President Mike Pence’s claims earlier in the day about the January 6, 2021 Joint Session of Congress over which Pence presided at which Electoral College votes submitted by the states were counted.
In a speech before the Florida Chapter of the Federalist Society in Orlando on Friday, Pence asserted, “There are those in our party who believe that as the presiding officer over the joint session of Congress, I possessed unilateral authority to reject Electoral College votes. And I heard this week that President Trump said I had the right to ‘overturn the election.’ President Trump is wrong. I had no right to overturn the election.” (emphasis added)
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Activists linked to a left-wing disinformation network are pressuring advertisers to cut ties with conservative news sites.
Check My Ads, a group started by Sleeping Giants co-founder and activist Nandini Jammi and advertising consultant Claire Atkin, bills itself as “Adtech’s first watchdog” and claims to “cut disinformation off at the source.” The organization attempts to curb the spread of what it deems misleading or hateful content by pressuring advertisers and ad exchanges to sever business relationships with certain news and commentary sites.
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Only a few years after “woke capitalism” was touted as the wave of the future, its supporters are getting a wakeup call of their own.
Just ask BlackRock CEO Larry Fink. The tone of his 2022 letter to CEOs is very different from his previous two, both of which pushed Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment criteria and “stakeholder capitalism” relentlessly. As far as Fink was concerned, ESG, “sustainability,” and the agenda for what we have termed “woke capital” would dominate the markets for years, while he and his $10 trillion asset management behemoth would, in turn, dominate them. Fink was to be king of the stakeholder world.
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Gov. Ned Lamont said he is proposing a package of legislative proposals that would provide for $336 million in tax relief for state residents.
The governor announced the first package of tax aid comes as the state has a projected $1.48 billion surplus in its operating budget. The surplus, Lamont said, enables the tax cuts to be built into the budget and will ensure the state’s Rainy Day Fund remains strong.
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The Republican National Committee (RNC) officially voted Friday to censure Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois for their continued criticism of former President Donald Trump and their participation in the Jan. 6 select committee investigating the Capitol riot.
The resolution passed during the RNC’s winter meeting in Salt Lake City, Utah, and it passed unanimously.
The resolution alleged that the roles of Cheney and Kinzinger on the committee amounted to “persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.” It also said that as a result, the RNC would “immediately cease any and all support of them as members of the Republican Party,” calling their actions “destructive” to the House of Representatives and the country.
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A new report from Victims of Communism gives several American tech companies a failing grade for their “complicity” with China and its human rights violations, an ongoing controversy for tech companies which often rely on the nation’s cheaper labor and large market to pad their profits.
The report examines Amazon, Apple, Dell, Facebook, GE, Google, Intel, and Microsoft on a range of issues, including to what degree they partner with China’s surveillance state and human rights violations.
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Did Hillary Clinton or the Democratic National Committee ever pay Michael Avenatti?
The question isn’t exactly new. It was at least hinted at as early as May 10, 2018. That day, Mark Penn, a former advisor to President Bill Clinton, published an op-ed in The Hill newspaper. At the time, the news was filled with the rantings of Avenatti, who gained his fame and notoriety representing former porn star Stormy Daniels. Daniels was claiming she was paid to cover up an affair with Donald Trump before he was elected president.
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The Biden administration was still unsure on basic parts of evacuation from Afghanistan hours before the Taliban seized control of Kabul, according to a leaked memo obtained by Axios.
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Industry groups and others are pushing back after a study found gas stoves contribute more to global warming than previously thought at a time when some elected officials are considering policies to limit natural gas connections.
The study, published in Environmental Science & Technology, found methane that leaks from natural gas stoves in U.S. homes has a climate impact equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions from about 500,000 gas-powered cars.
The study also tested emissions from stoves in homes. A Stanford news release that accompanied the study raised concerns about indoor air quality because of the levels of nitrogen oxides.
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Sixteen states again are challenging a federal COVID-19 vaccination mandate for health care workers who work at facilities that receive Medicare and Medicaid funding.
Friday’s filing in U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana comes after the issuance of final guidance on the mandate from the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid (CMS), arguing the guidance is an action that is reviewable.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled by 5-4 vote Jan. 13 against the original Louisiana challenge to the mandate and a similar Missouri filing.
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Jeff Bezos’ ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, is donating over $130 million to an organization that advocates for diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) principles to be taught in schools, Communities In Schools announced Thursday.
Communities In Schools, a national organization working to support student access to education and resources, announced the $133.5 million donation from Scott on Thursday. The investment is reportedly intended to broaden the efforts of the organization and expand its mission in schools across the country.
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In the intensifying great power contest between the United States and genocidal Communist China, it is imperative to devise a strategy for victory, not one for subservience and appeasement.
As Ronald Reagan proclaimed as he ended the myth of détente and commenced the drive for an irenic victory over the USSR’s evil empire: “We win, they lose.” Ultimately, through our nation and our allies’ perspicacious strategic and morally courageous policies, we won and the Soviets lost. (And all of this without so much as a “snowflake” of the “nuclear winter” the accommodating, appeasing domestic Left had virtually guaranteed would occur under the leadership of the “amiable dunce” and “nuclear cowboy,” “Ronald Ray-Gun.”)
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The U.S. economy recorded an increase of 467,000 jobs in January while unemployment increased to 4.0%, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) announced Friday.
Total non-farm payroll employment increased to 467,00 in January, according to the BLS, and the number of unemployed Americans increased to 6.5 million. Economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal projected the economy to have added 150,000 jobs in January and unemployment to have fallen to 3.9%.
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Federal officials in Atlanta have charged 22 people nationwide, including Georgia, with wire fraud conspiracy and other charges in an alleged scheme to obtain nearly $4 million in COVID-19 Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) loans. This, according to a press release that the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia published this week.
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The legal team for former Trump adviser Steve Bannon leveled explosive charges Friday night, accusing federal prosecutors of snooping on one of his defense lawyers and the FBI of misleading the grand jury through omissions.
In a motion filed in U.S. District Court where Bannon is charged with contempt of Congress for failing to comply with a subpoena for the Jan. committee, lawyers disclosed evidence the Justice Department and phone carriers turned over to them show prosecutors obtained phone and email records for defense lawyer Robert J. Costello.
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The chairwoman of the Gwinnett County Public Schools (GCPS) School Board has a long history of using Critical Race Theory (CRT) talking points on her TikTok page.
“I want to first acknowledge the land of the indigenous people,” Dr. Tarese Johnson said in a TikTok video last October. “I want to say to you all that Gwinnett County is the land of the Muskogee Creek and the [inaudible] Cherokee people.”
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The investigative journalist and author of Red-Handed: How American Elites Get Rich Helping China Win told The Star News Network the titans of capitalism on Wall Street are now the partners of the Chinese Communist Party.
“What China wants from Wall Street is access to Western capital with no questions asked, and unfortunately the biggest fans on Wall Street are prepared to give it to them,” said Peter Schweizer, who is the president and founder of the Government Accountability Institute and the host of The Drill Down podcast.
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Perhaps predictably, many public schools kicked off 2022 by switching back to remote learning — or canceling classes altogether — leaving frustrated parents across the country frantically searching for more consistent schooling options.
These past two school years of remote and hybrid learning, forced masking, and an intensified culture of unpredictability has pushed teachers, administrators, students, and parents to very edge. What began as a temporary interruption to student learning has become a vicious cycle of confusion, inconsistency and lost educational time.
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The House passed a China competition bill on Friday intended to improve the country’s ability to produce semiconductors and make the nation less reliant on China.
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The national debt hit another milestone this week, and experts are warning that continuing to increase federal spending will have dangerous consequences.
The federal national debt has now topped $30 trillion, marking a sharp rise since 2001, when it was about $5 trillion. The federal government surpassed $20 trillion in debt less than five years ago.
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It’s no secret that local newspapers have been dying. Since 2004, the United States has lost a quarter of its newspapers — 70 dailies and over 2,000 weeklies. This has been devastating for communities across the country who depend on these newspapers to stay informed and engaged. There are many factors causing this decline, but one of the main culprits, especially as of late, has been Big Tech.
There’s a term to describe the actions of massive corporations manipulating the levers of state power to dominate their markets and pad their bottom lines at the expense of others. It’s crony capitalism. Under this system, crony capitalists flood Washington, DC with campaign contributions, pay-to-play experts, and legions of lobbyists to shape the laws and regulations that govern their industries.
Sound familiar? If you have observed Big Tech’s movements within the halls of power in our nation’s capital over the past decade, you know exactly what I’m talking about. It’s said that if you whisper “Section 230” to yourself three times while walking through the Capitol, a Big Tech-funded lobbyist will suddenly appear to explain why changing even one word in the arcane law might trigger the apocalypse.
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From Paul Manafort to the Jan. 6 defendants, federal prosecutors and courts routinely seize passports and impose travel restrictions on those charged with or convicted of crimes to eliminate any flight risk.
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For the first time since then-Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell lowered the threshold to confirm a Supreme Court nominee from 60 votes to a simple majority, Democrats have a Senate majority.
Despite Democrats’ advantage being as slim as it can be in the 50-50 split chamber, their majority means that there is little Republicans can do to block anybody whom President Joe Biden nominates, assuming his party votes unanimously to confirm. Biden has also vowed to nominate a black woman, meaning his pick will likely be the first to ever serve on the Supreme Court.
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The Biden Administration’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS) admitted in a recent letter that it has not been keeping track of the number of illegal aliens who have been deported after initially being released into the country.
As reported by Breitbart, the DHS on Biden’s watch has reinstated the controversial open-borders policy of “Catch and Release,” where illegals who are apprehended at the border are promptly released into the nation’s interior. Over the last year, this practice has seen at least one million illegals released into the country after initially being detained.
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Sixteen women on the University of Pennsylvania swim team said their transgender teammate, Lia Thomas, should not be allowed to compete in the women’s category, The Washington Post reported.
The teammates sent a letter to the university and to Ivy League officials asking that they not take legal action against new NCAA rules which would block Thomas from competing in the 2022 championships, according to the Post. The women said they supported Thomas’s decision to live as a transgender woman, but they say “the biology of sex is a separate issue from someone’s gender identity.”
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After GoFundMe banned Canada’s Freedom Convoy of truckers from using its service, CloutHub has stepped in to fill the void.
“There is no more important movement for freedom across the American continent right now than the Freedom Convoy 2022,” CloutHub founder Jeff Brain said in a press release. “We are proud to support the Canadian Truckers and will help support the other Trucker movements popping up around the world to fight against unlawful mandates. CloutHub is where the world connects and organizes to take on the issues they care about, including defending liberty and freedom.”
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Georgia Governor Brian Kemp on Friday announced new grants for training for law enforcement officers, totaling more than $5 million.
The grants were dished out to state and local law enforcement agencies across Georgia, with the highest individual award, totaling approximately $1 million, given to the Georgia Public Safety Training Center.
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A new bill making its way through the Georgia General Assembly would, if enacted into law, remove provisions that keep election ballots and other election documents under seal — but only under certain conditions. The main sponsor, Representative Shaw Blackmon (R-Bonaire) did not return The Georgia Star News’ requests for comment Friday.
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