Category: National

Trump Justice Department Had Previously Been Investigating House Democrats for Corruption: Report

Georgia Star News Staff

Officials from President Donald Trump’s Department of Justice had reportedly been investigating House Democrats for possibly corruption, even going so far as to subpoena Apple for data from several members’ iPhones and other devices, as reported by ABC News.

The claim comes from an aide with the House Intelligence Committee, who anonymously told ABC that members of the committee had been notified of the subpoena by Apple last month. The request for metadata from their electronic devices had first been made back in February of 2018. Apple informed the members that, as of May of this year, the matter has been settled since President Trump is no longer in office.

Congressman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the committee, demanded on Thursday that an inspector general investigation be carried out to look into the claims. Schiff falsely claimed that “President Trump repeatedly and flagrantly demanded that the Department of Justice carry out his political will, and tried to use the Department as a cudgel against his political opponents and members of the media.” There is no evidence to support any of Schiff’s claims.

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Activists Look to the Future of Oil Pipelines Following Keystone XL Cancellation

Georgia Star News Staff
Anti Keystone XL pipeline citizens

After the cancellation of the Keystone XL Pipeline struck a blow to the oil industry, energy jobs activists are pushing back by warning of increased costs and touting the benefits of transporting oil via pipeline.

TC Energy Corporation announced on Wednesday that it was cancelling the Keystone XL Pipeline less than five months after President Joe Biden rescinded a vital permit for the pipeline. The cancellation ends an over 12-year battle by activists from both sides over the oil pipeline. The pipeline would have started in the Canadian province of Alberta ultimately ending in Nebraska.

In a statement François Poirier, President and CEO of TC Energy Corporation, expressed disappointment.

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Six Times in a Row, Becerra Refuses to Admit Partial Birth Abortion Is Illegal

Georgia Star News Staff
Baby boy sleeping

Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra repeatedly refused Thursday to acknowledge that partial birth abortion is illegal in the U.S.

Becerra falsely denied last month that there is an existing law banning partial birth abortion, apparently forgetting the law that he himself voted against. His denial sparked a backlash among conservatives and pro-life advocates and prompted multiple senators to question him about the Partial Birth Abortion Ban Act in hearings this week.

During Thursday’s hearing, Republican Montana Sen. Steve Daines asked Becerra whether partial birth abortion is illegal several times. Becerra repeatedly refused to address the question or acknowledge that partial birth abortion is illegal and emphasized that Roe v. Wade is the law of the land.

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$6 Trillion Biden Budget Formally Refers to Mothers as ‘Birthing People’

Georgia Star News Staff
Woman making a heart over her pregnant belly

Joe Biden’s proposed budget for the year 2022 was found to contain anti-scientific language that eliminates the concept of gender from the act of childbirth, according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The budget plan, which costs a record-breaking total of $6 trillion, dedicates over $200 million in healthcare spending for the purpose of reducing the “high rate of maternal mortality and race-based disparities in outcomes among birthing people,” despite providing no evidence to back up this assertion. The phrase “birthing people” replaces the more widely-known and correct term, which is “mother.”

The push to replace mother with “birthing people” is part of a broader effort to eliminate so-called “gendered language,” with the Left claiming that gender is merely a “social construct” and that there are more than two genders, even though both claims are false. This was made evident on Mother’s Day a month ago, where several Democrats and far-left organizations – including Congresswoman Cori Bush (D-Mo.) and the pro-abortion group NARAL – included the terminology “birthing people” in their respective Mother’s Day statements.

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Unvaccinated Students at New Hampshire High School Marked and Tracked at Prom

Georgia Star News Staff
Boy putting on a corsage on woman's wrist

Unvaccinated students who attended Exeter High School’s prom on Saturday were marked with numbers and contact traced throughout the course of the night, a school spokesperson told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Students attending the event “who were unable to provide a vaccination card because they did not have or share a card or had not completed the full vaccination process had a number written on their hand,” an Exeter High School spokesperson told the DCNF. The school divided the dance floor into three sections and asked dancing students to stop periodically in between songs in order for them to “raise their hands to determine who they were around,” the spokesperson said.

The students were made aware of the contact tracing procedures beforehand, and were also told to provide vaccination information ahead of the event, the spokesperson said. Any personal information obtained for the event, including vaccination status, was destroyed, according to the spokesperson.

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Rare Heart Inflammation Following COVID-19 Vaccination Sparks Emergency CDC Meeting

Georgia Star News Staff
Doctors working on patient

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will discuss reports of a rare heart inflammation following doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in an emergency meeting, it announced Thursday.

The emergency meeting, set to take place on June 18, will include updates on mRNA COVID-19 vaccine safety with a specific focus on rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, Scott Pauley of the CDC told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The risks and benefits of administering the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to adolescents and young adults will also be discussed, according to the meeting’s agenda.

The announcement comes following a presentation to the Food and Drug Administration by Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, confirming 226 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis in people under 30. These cases are more than twice what was expected under the FDA’s safety assessment for COVID-19 vaccines.

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Judge Halts Debt Relief Program for Farmers of Color After White Farmers Sue

Georgia Star News Staff

A federal judge Thursday afternoon suspended a loan forgiveness program that issues relief to farmers and agricultural workers of color.

Judge William Griesbach of Wisconsin’s Eastern District handed down a temporary restraining order after the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed a lawsuit in April. The group alleged in its announcement that President Joe Biden’s relief program was unconstitutional and that white farmers should have been included in the loan program.

“The Court recognized that the federal government’s plan to condition and allocate benefits on the basis of race raises grave constitutional concerns and threatens our clients with irreparable harm, said Rick Esenberg, WILL’s president and general counsel, in a press release Thursday. “The Biden administration is radically undermining bedrock principles of equality under the law.”

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Feds: Illegal Immigration Continued to Worsen in May

The Center Square
Temporary soft sided facilities are utilized to process noncitizen individuals, noncitizen families and noncitizen unaccompanied children as part of the ongoing response to the current border security and humanitarian effort along the Southwest Border in Donna, Texas, May 4, 2021.

The surge in illegal immigration at the southern border continues to worsen, May numbers show, as the Biden administration takes more criticism for its handling of the issue.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released new data on the crisis at the southern border, showing the federal law enforcement agency encountered 180,034 people attempting to illegally enter the country last month.

May’s numbers were a 1% increase from the previous month, but illegal immigration since Biden took office has soared.

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Peter Navarro: ‘St. Fauci’ and Others Have Blood on Hands after Blocking Trump Admin. from Distributing 60 Million HCQ Tablets

Georgia Star News Staff
Hydroxychloroquine tablets

It turns out that the anti-malaria drug former president Trump famously touted in March of 2020 as a promising treatment for COVID-19, would indeed have been a “game changer” if only it had been widely used.

Use of Hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus can increase survival rates by over 100 percent, according to a new study.

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Texas Governor Greg Abbott Announces Statewide Plan to Build Border Wall and Arrest Illegals

Georgia Star News Staff

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) announced on Thursday that the state of Texas will take action on its own to address the worsening border crisis, including by building its own border wall and taking extra steps to arrest illegal aliens who are released by federal border authorities, according to CNN.

Abbott made his announcement at a Border Security Summit with other Texas officials present, saying that he would dedicate $1 billion to border security and create his own task force to address the issue.

Abbott said that the efforts would build off of his disaster declaration that was issued last week, which directed Texas’s Department of Public Safety to more strictly enforce laws against criminal trespassing, smuggling, and human trafficking, while also allowing the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to crack down on “any child care facility that shelters or detains unlawful immigrants.”

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Hackers Steal Customer Information in McDonald’s Cyberattack

Georgia Star News Staff
McDonald's at sunset

Hackers obtained customer data from McDonald’s after breaching the company’s systems in the U.S., South Korea and Taiwan, according to The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. employees’ and franchisees’ contact information, seating capacity of U.S. locations and the dimensions of play areas at restaurants in the U.S were all exposed during the breach, McDonald’s said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. While McDonald’s said the hack didn’t cause disruptions at any of its locations, it vowed to launch an investigation into the breach and continue to invest in bolstering its cybersecurity protocol.

“McDonald’s will leverage the findings from the investigation as well as input from security resources to identify ways to further enhance our existing security measures,” the global fast food chain told U.S. employees in an internal message, according to the WSJ.

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Feds Subpoenaed Hunter Biden During 2016 Election, Raising Worry over Unpaid Taxes on Ukraine Work

Georgia Star News Staff

As the 2016 election kicked into full gear, Hunter Biden’s inner circle feared an impending federal criminal indictment of his long-time business partner might expose the then-vice president’s son to legal jeopardy because he had avoided paying taxes on income from the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings, according to emails on an abandoned laptop seized by the FBI.

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Keystone XL Pipeline Project Terminated, Developer Says

Georgia Star News Staff
Keystone XL Pipeline

The developer of the Keystone XL Pipeline announced that it was abandoning the contested project months after President Joe Biden revoked the pipeline’s federal permit.

TC Energy permanently canceled further construction of the pipeline after conducting a comprehensive review of its options alongside the Government of Alberta, Canada, which had been a project partner, according to the energy company’s announcement on Wednesday afternoon. The company noted that the project, which had been strongly criticized by environmental groups, was suspended on Jan. 20 after Biden issued an executive order revoking its permit.

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IG Report: President Trump Did Not Order the Park Police to Clear Out ‘Peaceful Protesters’ with Tear Gas for a Photo Op

Georgia Star News Staff

The Park Police did not clear protesters outside the White House last summer to make way for President Donald Trump’s photo opportunity,  according to a new report released by the Interior Department’s inspector general on Wednesday.

The report determined that Park Police were given permission to clear the park long before anyone even knew the former president had plans to walk over.

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Inflation Surges Five Percent, Largest Spike Since 2008

Georgia Star News Staff

The Consumer Price Index has increased 5% over the last 12 months, the fastest pace of inflation since August 2008, according to a Department of Labor report.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a common tool used to measure inflation, increased 0.6% between April and May, according to the Labor Department report released Thursday morning. Economists projected that the CPI increased by 0.5% and 4.7% over the 12-month period ending in May, according to The Wall Street Journal.

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Jobless Claims Drop to 376,000, Hit Another Pandemic Low

Georgia Star News Staff
Photo “Unemployment Insurance Claims Office” by Bytemarks. CC BY 2.0.

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 376,000 last week as the economy continues to recover from the coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending May 29, when 385,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was unrevised from the figure initially reported last week.

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Record Number of Americans Find Abortion ‘Morally Acceptable,’ Poll Finds

Georgia Star News Staff

A record number of Americans find abortion “morally acceptable” though American sentiment on the matter is sharply divided, a Gallup poll released Wednesday found.

Forty-seven percent of Americans find abortion acceptable, while 46% think abortion is wrong from a moral perspective, the poll found. The percentage of Americans who find abortion acceptable increased two points, the highest level of support Gallup has found since it began tracking the matter two decades ago.

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Nearly 200 Hospital Workers Will Be Fired in Houston If They Don’t Get Vaccinated

Georgia Star News Staff

Nearly 200 Houston hospital workers will be fired after a two-week suspension if they don’t comply with a vaccine requirement.

Houston Methodist President and CEO Dr. Marc Boom sent an email in April to employees saying that they must receive at least the first dose of the vaccine by June 7, or they would face suspension and termination.

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Biden Repeals Trump’s Attempted TikTok Ban, Replaces It with Order to Review Foreign Apps

Georgia Star News Staff

President Joe Biden revoked an executive order that sought to ban downloads of Chinese-owned apps like TikTok and WeChat in the United States, the White House announced Wednesday.

Instead, Biden directed the Commerce Department to evaluate software applications connected with foreign adversaries like China, and “take action, as appropriate,” according to the fact sheet the administration released. The previous slate of executive orders were signed by former President Donald Trump, one of which sought to ban TikTok completely in the U.S.

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Ohio Attorney General Sues to Make Google a Public Utility

Cooper Moran

A lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Ohio Attorney General David Yost aims to make Google a public utility, limiting the ways the search engine provides search results.

“Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google’s own products–that’s discriminatory and anti-competitive,” Yost said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access.”

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Illegal Border Crossings Surge to Highest Rates in Over 10 Years

Georgia Star News Staff
Illegal Aliens apprehended by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents with assistance from agents from Air and Marine Operations, Tucson Air Branch.

After less than 6 months, the number of illegal border crossings into the United States has spiked to a record not seen in well over a decade, according to Axios.

From October 1st, 2020, to May 31st of this year, almost 900,000 illegal aliens were stopped at the border by authorities. In the month of May, there were over 170,000 apprehensions of illegals, following the trends set by the months of March and April, which themselves marked 20-year highs in the number of illegal alien apprehensions.

Despite Joe Biden’s reversals of many of President Donald Trump’s successful immigration policies, the Border Patrol continues to turn away many illegals due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 virus. However, as Axios notes, illegals who are turned away for this particular reason often make several attempts to cross the border, with each failure counted as a separate rejection rather than a repeat offense, adding to the overall number.

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Biden Administration Threatens to Sue If Texas Governor Closes Migrant Detention Centers

Georgia Star News Staff

The Biden administration threatened to sue Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott if the state follows through with plans to stop working with the federal government to detain migrant minors, according to a letter from federal officials Monday.

Abbott issued a disaster declaration on May 31 that ordered all facilities operating on federal contracts to house migrants who entered the country illegally to close. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Abbott’s declaration illegally discriminates against the federal government’s 52 state-licensed facilities operating in Texas to house unaccompanied migrant minors.

“The May 31 Proclamation discriminates against the Federal government by targeting the licenses held only by those entities providing shelter to ‘unlawful immigrants or other individuals not lawfully present in the United States under a contract with the federal government,’” according to HHS.

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FBI Makes Messaging App for Assassins and Drug Dealers, Arrests 800 Users in Global Sting

Georgia Star News Staff
Woman holding iPhone

An international drug sting operation resulted in more than 800 arrests and 32 tons of drugs seized, the FBI and other top law enforcement agencies announced Tuesday.

The sting, titled Operation Trojan Shield, dates back to 2019 when the FBI and Australian Federal Police covertly developed the encrypted device company ANOM to replace two platforms that had been taken down by police, according to European Union law enforcement agency Europol. In search of a new encrypted software to use for communications, criminal gangs flocked to ANOM, which grew rapidly servicing more than 12,000 devices and 300 criminal syndicates across 100 countries.

“Encrypted criminal communications platforms have traditionally been a tool to evade law enforcement and facilitate transnational organized crime,” FBI Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Calvin Shivers said in a statement. “The FBI and our international partners continue to push the envelope and develop innovative ways to overcome these challenges and bring criminals to justice.”

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Sen. Blackburn Introduces Resolution Condemning Critical Race Theory in Schools

Cooper Moran

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Braun (R-IN) in introducing a resolution to condemn the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools. 

“Critical race theory has no place in American schools. The tenets of critical race theory are based in the destructive ideal of inherent racism and will teach our children to judge and self-segregate based solely on skin color,” Blackburn said. “Students should not be discriminated on the basis of race under any circumstances.”

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Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Teaching Critical Race Theory in Schools

Georgia Star News Staff
Young girl in pink long sleeve writing

A new poll shows that the majority of American voters are deeply opposed to having critical race theory (CRT) principles being taught in schools.

The survey, conducted by Competitive Edge Research for Parents Defending Education, also shows that people overwhelmingly prefer Capitalism to Socialism (61.8% to 31.4%), frown upon “cancel culture,” (62.7% to 10.6%) and believe the United States is headed “on the wrong track” (60.7% to 32.8%).

Additionally, more respondents had a negative opinion of Black Lives Matter, than had a positive opinion (48.1% to 44.4%).

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Senate Poised to Approve Billions for Well-Heeled Computer Chipmakers

Georgia Star News Staff
Computer mother board

The Democrat-led Senate is poised to approve as early as Tuesday a China security bill that will earmark billions in taxpayer subsidies to the well-heeled computer chip-making industry, which saw record profits last year and doled out millions in lobbying fees and political donations.

The $54 billion in subsidies for chipmakers inside the 1,445-page U.S. Innovation and Competition Act has some seeing an unnecessary corporate welfare program that could benefit such iconic brands as Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and increase the government’s reach over free market business.

“This bill will increase government’s influence over the private sector while weakening America by increasing our debt,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), one of the legislation’s fiercest critics. “Democrats love spending other people’s money and growing government. I have no idea why any Republican would want to help them do that.”

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Pension Bailout Agency Flagged for Contract Bribery, Fraud and Payments to Dead Americans

Georgia Star News Staff
American flag with handcuffs and $100 bills

This week’s Golden Horseshoe award goes to the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., the nation’s pension bailout agency that is still reeling from revelations its chief of contracting engaged in a bribery scheme that steered $4.8 million in fraudulent business to a vendor in return for more than $1 million in personal benefits.

The bribery scheme involving the now convicted director of PBGC’s Procurement Department was possible because the agency suffered from several vulnerabilities, including reduced competition among vendors, missing legal reviews and sole-source contracts that evaded bidding designed to get taxpayers the best bargain, the PBGC’s inspector general reported.

“His actions were enabled by internal control weaknesses; specifically, inadequate oversight of PD procurements and a lack of a control mechanism to ensure that PD sent all requisite contract actions for legal review,” the inspector general reported. “Although PBGC began requiring that more contract actions receive legal review after the PD Director resigned in February 2020, it does not have a mechanism to ensure PD complies with this requirement.”

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New York Psychiatrist Admits in Yale Lecture to Fantasizing About Shooting White People

Georgia Star News Staff
Aruna Khilanani

A psychiatrist from New York City went on a racist rant back in April in which she expressed her desire to kill White people simply because they are White, as heard in recently-revealed audio of the lecture, the New York Post reports.

The comments were made by Dr. Aruna Khilanani during a lecture to the Yale School of Medicine on April 6th. She said that she dreams of “unloading a revolver into the head of any White person that got in my way,” and that if she did so, she would leave the scene of the crime “with a bounce in my step.” She added that White people “make [her] blood boil,” and also believes that White people “are out of their minds and have been for a long time.”

The lecture was titled “The Psychopathic Problem of the White Mind.” During the speech, Khilanani talked about “learning objectives” such as “[setting] up White people’s absence of empathy towards black rage as a problem,” and also claiming that “White people are psychologically dependent on black rage.” These details, along with the full audio of the lecture, were posted online via Substack on Friday, by former New York Times editor Bari Weiss.

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Republicans Win Big in Texas Mayoral Races with Increased Latino Support

Georgia Star News Staff
Jim Ross Javier Villalobos, and Mattie Parker

Republicans swept Texas’ mayoral elections over the weekend, relying on increased Hispanic support to win in large and mid-sized cities alike.

In Forth Worth, a city of just over 1 million, 37-year-old Republican Mattie Parker cruised to victory against Democrat Deborah Peoples, making her the youngest mayor in the city’s history, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram reported. In McAllen, Texas, a border town of approximately 150,000 where 85% of residents are Hispanic, Republican Javier Villalobos became the first GOP mayor elected since 1997, Valley Central News reported.

Republicans were also victorious in Arlington, Texas, a suburb of 400,000 just outside Forth Worth. GOP candidate Jim Ross, a former police officer in the city, beat the Democratic candidate after campaigning on an anti-crime platform and earning endorsements from several police groups, according to the Star-Telegram.

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Former President Trump Calls on All Republican Lawmakers to Ban Critical Race Theory

Cooper Moran

Former President Trump urged Republicans “at every level” throughout the county to ban the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) education.

“Republicans at every level should move to immediately ban critical race theory in schools, and we should ban it in workplaces, we should ban it in our states, and we should ban in the federal government. And it should be done immediately,” Trump said while speaking at the North Carolina Republican Party state convention.

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Yellen Admits Inflation Is About to Surge But Says It Will Be ‘Plus For Society’s Point of View’

Georgia Star News Staff
Janet Yellen

Increased inflation could ultimately be a net positive for the U.S. economy and large government spending won’t overheat the economy, Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen told Bloomberg.

Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen, who previously chaired the Federal Reserve, said the central bank has been more concerned about inflation levels that are too low, according to Bloomberg. Increasing consumer prices could signal a return to normal, she said.

“We’ve been fighting inflation that’s too low and interest rates that are too low now for a decade,” Yellen told Bloomberg in an interview Sunday.

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Google ‘Diversity Head’ Posted Anti-Semitic Comments, Will Stay with Company

Georgia Star News Staff
Phone with Google search engine on screen

Google announced that it will remove its global lead for diversity strategy and research, Kamau Bobb, after a 2007 blog post in which he’d made antisemitic comments surfaced, Fox News reported.  Bobb will be reassigned to a STEM research role.

The reassignment comes after revelations that Bobb had previously authored a blog post that contained antisemitic statements.

In a 2007 blog post by Bobb titled “If I Were a Jew,” he wrote that Jewish people had an “insensitivity” to suffering and stated “If I were a Jew I would be concerned about my insatiable appetite for war and killing in defense of myself.” The post has since been removed, but is recorded here.

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Arizona Gains 66,000 New Taxpayers, Mostly from California

The Center Square
Phoenix, Arizona cityscape

Taxpayers are coming to Arizona from other states by the tens of thousands and bringing billions of dollars in annual earnings with them. 

The Internal Revenue Service released its annual migration statistics, a record of address changes by filers and their dependents between tax years. The data released in late May reflects changes from the 2018-2019 tax years, which symbolize moves that occurred between 2017 and 2018. Nationwide, 8 million people relocated to either another state or county. 

Arizona gained 218,736 new taxpayers in that time. Having lost 152,769, that’s a net gain of 65,967 exemptions from one tax year to the next. That’s nearly 1,000 more than the previous tax year.

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Supreme Court Denies Green Cards for Migrants Granted Temporary Protected Status

Cooper Moran

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an effort to allow migrants who have claimed temporary humanitarian relief from deportation to obtain permanent residency.

In an increasingly rare, unanimous decision, the court states that the country’s immigration laws prevent migrants who entered the country illegally and now have Temporary Protected Status (TPS) from seeking “green cards” to stay in the U.S. permanently

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Former Treasury Official Sentenced to Prison for Leaking Russia, Manafort Docs

Georgia Star News Staff
Paul Manafort

A former senior Treasury Department official was sentenced to six months in prison for leaking thousands of confidential reports on financial transactions related to people tied to former President Donald Trump and Russia, including former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, 42, pleaded guilty last year to a conspiracy charge. According to federal prosecutors, Edwards leaked the confidential documents to  BuzzFeed News reporter Jason Leopold. Leopold then shared thousands of suspicious activity reports with publications worldwide.

Court documents reveal that beginning in 2017, she leaked banking reports related to people being investigated in special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe of foreign interference in U.S. elections. The material included reports concerning Manafort, his business associate Rick Gates, the Russian Embassy and Maria Butina, among others.

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Migration Study Shows Big Cities Continue Losing Population During First Quarter

The Center Square
U-Haul truck

Americans in the first quarter of 2021 continued their 2020 pattern of moving from expensive, densely populated areas to warmer, more tax-affordable states, according to a new study from Updater Technologies.

Updater Technologies is an online platform that allows people to use a centralized hub for moving, including finding a moving company, connecting internet and utility services and updating their address. The company says the inbound and outbound data it uses is more reliable than tabulating mail forwarding forms because it captures fully completed permanent moves in real time. It also indexes cities and states based on population, since using raw numbers would skew toward the most populated areas based on sheer volume.

Out of roughly 300,000 household moves during the first quarter, only 16 states had a greater percentage of inbound moves than outbound: Nevada, South Carolina, Tennessee, Arizona, Florida, Texas, North Carolina, Colorado, Georgia and Maine.

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Trump Endorses Ted Budd for NC Senate Seat after Daughter-In-Law Lara Opts Against Running

Georgia Star News Staff
Donald Trump smiling

Former President Donald Trump on Saturday night offered his “complete and total endorsement” of Congressman Ted Budd for next year’s Senate race in North Carolina after his daughter-in-law Lara ended months of speculation by declining to run for the seat.

The Trumps made the surprise announcement at the state’s Republican convention. The former president said Budd had found out about the endorsement just minutes before the speech began.

Lara Trump said she was “saying no for now” to running for Senate in the state where she grew up but left open the possibility for the future. She said having two young children, ages 1 and 3, was a major consideration in her decision

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Utah School Board Member Arrested for Soliciting Child Pornography

Georgia Star News Staff
Joel-Lehi Organista

On Wednesday, a Utah school board member was arrested on charges of using social media to solicit child pornography from students, the Daily Caller reports.

The suspect is 29-year-old Joel-Lehi Organista, who had recently been elected to the Salt Lake City School Board after having previously taught at Horizonte High School. He faces eight felony counts of sexual exploitation of a minor. The authorities were led to him by a tip from the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which alleged that Organista had child pornography downloaded onto his Dropbox account. A subsequent search of his computer confirmed this, and Organista was arrested.

Following his arrest, he “admitted to having downloaded, viewed, and kept the images and videos containing child pornography.” One of his chief tactics was to use the social media app SnapChat to message children between the ages of 12 and 17, asking them for nude photos and other inappropriate material. He first started sending such messages and downloading such content in January, shortly after he became the youngest board member in the board’s history upon his election in January.

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Houston Methodist Hospital Sued by Nurses over Vaccine Mandate

Georgia Star News Staff
Houston Methodist Hospital

At least 117 nurses are suing their employer, Houston Methodist Hospital, in Texas’ largest city, over its COVID-19 vaccination mandate for workers, claiming they are being forced to be “human guinea pigs,” Fox News reported.

Jennifer Bridges, one of the nurses included in the suit, told “Fox News Primetime” on Wednesday that they are fighting for basic rights of workers. Her attorney Jared Woodfill V said they would otherwise be unemployed and could “face bankruptcy court” if unable to earn a living.

“This is very important. We’re basically fighting for everybody’s rights right now just to make our own decisions. Nobody should be forced to put something in their body if they are not comfortable with it — and lose their jobs over it,” said Bridges.

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California Ordered to Pay $2 Million in Legal Fees to Church that Violated Coronavirus Restrictions

Georgia Star News Staff
Inside of a church with stained glass and low lighting

After a lengthy court battle, the government of the state of California backed down in its efforts to enforce coronavirus restrictions on a church that continued hosting in-person worship services, and has now agreed in a settlement to pay the church’s $2 million worth of legal fees, Breitbart reports.

When the state repeatedly attempted to enforce strict capacity limits, mask mandates, and other “social distancing” requirements on the San Diego-based Pentecostal church, the church’s lawyers filed suit with the United States Supreme Court, winning all three suits. This ultimately led to lawyers on behalf of the state of California agreeing to the settlement, which was approved by a federal judge.

Responding to the settlement, an attorney with the Thomas More Society, a legal group that represents churches facing suppression of their First Amendment rights, pointed out that while businesses such as Costco were limited to 50 percent capacity, while churches were forced to stay as low as 25 percent, and sometimes even lower.

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Microsoft Blocks Images of Tiananmen Square Protests on Massacre Anniversary

Georgia Star News Staff
Woman on computer

Microsoft’s search engine Bing appeared to censor images of the protester who stood in front of a Chinese tank during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests.

A Bing Images search of “tank man” yielded no results and a prompt for the user to check their spelling as of Friday afternoon. However, an identical search on Google Images produced hundreds of results including many of the iconic moment.

The famous “tank man” photo was taken on June 5, 1989, one day after the 1989 massacre in which Chinese troops fired indiscriminately upon civilians demonstrating against the government, killing hundreds. The photo showed a Chinese protester, who has since become known as “tank man,” standing in front of a procession of Chinese tanks rolling through Tiananmen Square.

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Oklahoma Governor Weighs in on Former OU Volleyball Player Suing for Exclusion Over Conservative Views

Georgia Star News Staff
University of Oklahoma volleyball player Kylee McLaughlin

A spokeswoman for Republican Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt expressed support Friday for former University of Oklahoma volleyball player Kylee McLaughlin, who has accused the university of violating her First Amendment rights by excluding her from her volleyball team over her conservative views.

“Governor Stitt fully supports every individual’s right to freedom of speech and thought,” the governor’s communications director Carly Atchison told the Daily Caller News Foundation Friday afternoon. “It’s shameful that young people on college campuses, and in today’s world even K-12 classrooms, who dare dissent from the left’s agenda are being punished.”

McLaughlin is suing the Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, volunteer assistant coach Kyle Walton, and OU volleyball head coach Lindsey Gray-Walton for a minimum of $75,000, according to the lawsuit, saying that the school discriminated against her for expressing beliefs that “did not fit the culture” at OU. She formerly served as both a team captain and first team All-Big 12 player in 2018 and 2019, according to OU Daily.

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Manchin to Vote Against Bill Federalizing Elections, Dealing Major Blow to Democrats

Georgia Star News Staff
Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.V., declared Sunday he will oppose his party’s legislation to federalize how elections are conducted, dealing a severe blow to Democratic passage in the evenly divided Senate.

The For The People Act would among other things ban voter ID requirements, mandate mail-in voting options and begin registering voters at age 16. It has faced uniform Republican opposition.

In an op-ed published in the Charleston Gazette-Mail, Manchin declared the bill as too partisan and divisive.

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American Higher Education Has Deep Ties to EcoHealth Alliance, Wuhan Institute of Virology

Georgia Star News Staff
Person holding bottle of COVID Vaccine

Several American researchers have worked with the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance on coronavirus-related research, including gain of function research, dating back more than a decade, and emails reveal that several professors were in contact with Dr. Anthony Fauci during the early stages of the coronavirus pandemic. 

As the intelligence community commences its investigation into the origins of SARS-CoV-2, a series of scientific papers and studies belie a close relationship between American academia and the Wuhan lab, as well as EcoHealth Alliance, the multinational organization through which the NIH sent $600,000 to study the transmission of coronaviruses.  

What follows is a brief timeline of research publications on which university researchers collaborated with partners from the Wuhan Institute of Virology and EcoHealth Alliance. 

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High Court Hears Arguments on Tennessee’s School-Choice Program

The Center Square
ORNL Traveling Science Fair at the TN 4th Annual Tennessee STEM Innovation Summit and STEMx Event, Nashville, TN

Tennessee’s highest court heard arguments on a disputed school choice program.

Tennessee’s Education Savings Accounts (ESA) pilot program, approved by the state Legislature in 2019, would provide state-funded scholarships of about $7,100 to low-income students in Nashville and Memphis – home to the state’s two lowest-performing school districts. Students would be able to use the funds to attend nonpublic schools of their choice.

A district court ruled the program unconstitutional when the two counties sued the state to stop the program. The state Court of Appeals upheld that ruling, and the state Supreme Court agreed to hear the case.

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Inside Story on How the 1776 Commission Refused to be Canceled by Biden

Georgia Star News Staff
Joe Biden in the office

Despite being abolished by the Biden administration, the 1776 Commission established by President Trump to develop a patriotic education curriculum lives on.

The commission’s executive director, Matthew Spalding, told Just the News that the panel is staying operational despite losing its federal charter and shifting its focus to state and local education. A Web site and new social media presence are forthcoming.

“You can abolish a commission, you can take a report off the website, but you can’t erase history,” Spalding told the John Solomon Reports podcast in an episode that aired Wednesday.

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Music Spotlight: Devon Beck

Bethany Bowman

NASHVILLE, Tennessee-  When I listened to songs from Devon Beck’s first EP, One Sided Expectations, the first thing I thought was she sounds like an American version of Adele. Not only that, Beck’s songwriting ability is mature beyond her years and is reminiscent of the songs in Adele’s 21 album. I found out that Beck is just 18 years old and has only been performing for a little over two years.

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