College Students Lack ‘Rudimentary’ Knowledge of History, Civics: Survey

College students lack a “rudimentary grasp” of American history and government, as displayed in a civic literacy assessment recently conducted by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni.

The 35-question survey, “Losing America’s Memory 2.0,” asked more than 3,000 students from all 50 states questions about history and government, including Senate term lengths and a quote from the Gettysburg Address, according to ACTA. The survey was conducted in June by College Pulse.

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Trump-Aligned Lawyer Who Exposed Fani Willis Affair and Stalled Georgia Election Case Says D.A. Caused Downfall: ‘She’s the One to Blame’

Ashleigh Merchant and Fani Willis in a courtroom (composite image)

The Georgia election case against former President Donald Trump and those who helped him contest the 2020 election results in the Peach State is almost certain to remain ongoing on Election Day, and the attorney who first surfaced evidence Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis was engaged in a romantic affair with her special counsel said on Sunday that Willis is “the one to blame” for the current state of the case.

Willis’ case against Trump is currently before the Georgia Court of Appeals, which will determine whether Judge Scott McAfee erred when he ruled that Willis’ relationship with Wade, a private defense attorney paid more than $650,000 for his work on the case, was not sufficient reason to disqualify her as the prosecutor in the case against the former president.

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Commentary: The Rise of the Red Fascists

Kamala Harris and Tim Walz

In the 1920s, a term was coined that is very appropriate for what is taking place in America today: red fascism. It was a term that likely originated with an Italian anarchist, Luigi Fabbri, who wrote in 1922 that “‘red fascists’ is the name that has recently been given to those Bolshevik communists who are most inclined to espouse fascism’s methods for use against their adversaries.” This description and behavior of course should not come as a surprise to anyone. Socialism is intrinsic to both communism and fascism, as both are movements of the left with a massive, oppressive, and powerful State central to achieving their goals.

Consider where we are right now in this country: some people have said that Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are the farthest left ticket ever run by the Democrat Party in this country’s history. That’s not quite correct. “Leftist” has lost some of its meaning because more traditional liberals are on the left. Harris and Walz are so far left they’re actually off the charts and into neo-Marxist territory. If for nothing else, their strong advocacy for the Green New Deal plants them firmly in that Marxism camp.

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Commentary: Cell-Phone Free Classrooms Will Unleash Student Success

Students on Cell Phones

Amid the many battles over how to improve American schools, it’s often forgotten that what’s taught in the classroom is but one component of ensuring that students receive a high-quality education; it’s also important to remove barriers to children’s learning.

And the idea to remove one major impediment – cell phones in K-12 schools – has gained significant traction over the past year, most recently in the Commonwealth of Virginia.

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Study Finds TikTok Manipulates Content to Favorably Promote Chinese Government

TikTok

TikTok uses an algorithm to promote content that puts the Chinese government in a favorable light in order to sway users’ views, according to a new study from the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI).

The study builds off a previous report from December that found the social media site likely promotes pro-China content, as the app faces bipartisan criticism over national security concerns. The app is already facing a potential ban in the United States if the Chinese parent company ByteDance doesn’t divest its shares of the platform on time.

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Authorities, Businesses Brace for up to 100,000 Pro-Palestine Protestors at Democratic Convention

Pro-Palestine Protest

Authorities and local businesses are bracing for thousands of pro-Palestine protestors to descend on the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, which kicks off on Monday.

Bracing for riots and looting, some businesses located downtown have already started boarding up windows and doors in preparation for potential protest violence as the convention begins. It’s not as if they haven’t been warned: Some anti-Israel protestors have compared their plans to the 1968 riots during the Democratic convention.

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Commentary: Harris, Walz Seek to Up-End True ‘Choice’ for Pregnant Women

Vice-presidential picks generally balance a ticket, but Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz as her running mate does anything but. And American Catholics and others who care about the poor and vulnerable should be alarmed.

Consider their attacks against their states’ life-affirming pregnancy care centers. For me, this issue is more than political. It’s personal. Like many Catholics across the country, I volunteer at our local pregnancy centers. I’m the medical director for the centers run by the Archdiocese of Miami and I read their fetal ultrasounds. Helping families and expectant mothers through my work there is one of the most rewarding ways in which I practice medicine.

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Food Stamp Costs Are on the Way Down but Still Far Higher than Pre-Pandemic Days

Grocery Shopping

The cost of food assistance in the U.S. has dropped from its peak during the pandemic, but is still 23% higher than it was during pre-pandemic times, according to the latest data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, what used to be called food stamps, peaked in costs December 2022 at $11.07 billion that month. That monthly cost dropped to $7.51 billion as of April 2024. There were about 41.6 million people collecting SNAP benefits as of April 2024.

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Grandmas in Chains: Harris Legacy of Pursuing Pro-Life Activists Set Stage for Wider Legal Fight

Heather Idoni

Defending the abortion industry helped define Vice President Kamala Harris as California attorney general, especially a controversial 2016 raid on pro-life activist David Daleiden to seize and suppress undercover videos of Planned Parenthood officials who thought they were talking to “laboratory wholesalers” in Daleiden’s sting.

Some of those videos, released years later at a congressional proceeding, show Planned Parenthood tried to preserve fetal tissue to sell for research and avoid prosecution by detaching extremities.

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Illegal Border Crossings Surpass 12.5 Million Since Biden-Harris Took Office

Illegal Immigrants

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released monthly border apprehension data on Friday, saying, “statistics show lowest southwest border encounters in nearly four years.” CBP also claimed illegal border crossings were down by 34% from June to July and the drop is due to a presidential proclamation issued in June.

Troy Miller, a senior official performing the duties of the CBP Commissioner, said  recent Biden-Harris policies led “to the lowest number of encounters along the southwest border in more than three years.”

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Free Speech May Be in the Crosshairs Under a Harris-Walz Administration

Tim Walz and Kamala Harris

A Kamala Harris presidency could be a disaster for free speech rights, civil liberties advocates told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

As vice president, a senator and California’s attorney general, Harris backed policies that imposed restrictions on speech, including by defending a law eventually struck down by the Supreme Court, which forced pro-life pregnancy centers to advertise abortions. On the campaign trail, Harris has indicated support for holding social media platforms “accountable” for “hate speech” and misinformation online.

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New Poll Shows Trump, Harris Tied in Wisconsin

Kamala Harris and Donald Trump

Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are tied in a new poll of Wisconsin voters.

In a head-to-head matchup between the Republican and Democratic nominees for president, the American Greatness/TIPP poll of likely and registered voters shows both Trump and Harris at 47% support.

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Georgia Reports Increased Revenues to Start Fiscal 2025

Georgia Capitol Money

With one month in the books, Georgia’s tax collections seemingly started the year on a positive note after ending last fiscal year with decreased collections.

Peach State officials said this week that total General Fund receipts for July, the first month of fiscal 2025, surpassed $2.5 billion. According to state numbers, that is an increase of 2.7%, or $66.3 million, over July 2023 in fiscal 2024, when net tax collections totaled nearly $2.5 billion.

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Tim Walz Gave Almost $100K in COVID-19 Funds to ‘Abortion Doula’ Trainers

Tim Walz

Presumptive Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz directed almost $100,000 in COVID-19 relief funds to an organization specializing in “abortion doula” services, state contracts show.

Walz, the governor of Minnesota, spent almost $2 billion in federal coronavirus relief funds without the approval of the state Legislature, using his emergency powers, according to the Minnesota-based outlet Alpha News.

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Commentary: Every Leading Large Language Model Leans Left Politically

LLMS

Large language models (LLMs) are increasingly integrating into everyday life – as chatbots, digital assistants, and internet search guides, for example. These artificial intelligence (AI) systems – which consume large amounts of text data to learn associations – can create all sorts of written material when prompted and can ably converse with users. LLMs’ growing power and omnipresence mean that they exert increasing influence on society and culture.

So it’s of great import that these artificial intelligence systems remain neutral when it comes to complicated political issues. Unfortunately, according to a new analysis recently published to PLoS ONE, this doesn’t seem to be the case.

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Amanda Kate Ferris’ New Album, ‘Rope the Wind,’ Is Out Now

Music Spotlight and 2X Texas radio chart-topping artist Amanda Kate Ferris has released her sophomore album, Rope the Wind, and it is available now.

Produced by Jimmy Ritchey, the 10-track project features songs by numerous acclaimed writers and artists, including GRAMMY-winners Hillary Lindsey, Liz Rose, and Lori McKenna, as well as ACM and CMA Entertainer of the Year Lainey Wilson and others.

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Former Health Officials Slam FDA Duplicity on ‘Puberty Blockers’ in Light of New Evidence

David Gortler

Former officials in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the Food and Drug Administration condemned what they described as the FDA’s duplicity in allowing off-label use of so-called puberty blockers while loudly condemning the use of far safer drugs to treat COVID-19.

“During the Trump administration, the media falsely accused us daily of ‘politicizing America’s public health agencies.’ Yet the same media is now silent on [Vice President Kamala] Harris and [President Joe] Biden’s FDA’s anti-science, purely political insanity,” Brian Harrison, former chief of staff at HHS and now a member of the Texas House of Representatives, told The Daily Signal in a written statement.

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Commentary: An Ancient Faith Grows in Modern Times

Eastern Orthodox Mass

As a journalist, it’s easy to turn around copy on any of the public policy and political debates of the day, but I struggle to write about religious issues in a meaningful way. My American Spectator columns detail the usual insanity in the California Capitol and Washington, DC, but what can I say about matters of faith, where my usual tool — reason — isn’t entirely useful?

I grew up Jewish, the son of a Nazi Holocaust survivor. Our religion was important, but I was raised in a secular home where religious observance didn’t reflect any deep expression of faith. That led me on a journey to try to make sense of this inexplicable world.

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Coalition of 15 States Sues Biden-Harris Regime over Plan to Force States to Provide Public Benefits to Illegals

illegal immigrant flights

A coalition of 15 states have filed suit against the Biden-Harris regime over its new rule that will require states to pay public benefits to illegal immigrants, including healthcare benefits.

The rule, which is set to go into effect on November 1, would force states “to expend limited resources on illegal immigrants,” said Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey in a press release Thursday.

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Hunter Biden’s Ex-Partner Cooperating in Bizarre Murder-for-Hire Prosecution, Court Records Show

Devon Archer, the former Hunter Biden confidant convicted of fraud in January, whose testimony to Congress transformed the congressional impeachment probe into alleged Biden family corruption, also is a cooperating witness in an unrelated federal murder-for-hire prosecution, according to court records.

Archer’s lawyers have used their client’s cooperation in the Vermont murder-for-hire case and the impeachment inquiry in Congress to successfully delay his sentencing last month in a securities fraud case, where he was convicted back in 2018.

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Polls Say Majority of Americans Want Troops Sent to Border and Oppose Illegal Immigration

Illegal Immigrants

Polls are consistently showing two key indictments on the Biden-Harris administration border policy: Americans not only overwhelmingly oppose illegal immigration but also want troops sent to the southern border and the border secure.

Two new recent polls support this trend, although polls have consistently shown that Americans overwhelmingly disapprove of Vice President Kamala Harris’ job as “border czar.”

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Tester Leads in Montana Senate Race That Could Determine Control of Chamber: Poll

Montana Senate Race

Sen. John Tester, D-Mont., is currently holding a narrow lead in the Montana Senate race, which could determine control of the chamber, according to a new survey conducted by pollster Scott Rasmussen’s Napolitan News Service.

The survey of registered voters, released on Thursday, found that Tester is ahead of his Republican challenger Tim Sheehy 49% to 44%.

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Report Says Trump Campaign to Counterprogram Democratic Convention Next Week

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

Former President Donald Trump’s presidential campaign is expected to send people into the field next week to counterprogram the Democratic convention, a campaign official told Fox News.

Presidential candidates usually keep a low profile during the nominating conventions of their opponents, but President Joe Biden broke with tradition last month by campaigning in Nevada during the Republican convention. However, Biden only made a couple stops because he contracted COVID-19.

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Supreme Court Declines Biden Administration Request to Enforce LGBTQ Title IX Protections

Students Holding Hands

The United States’ Supreme Court on Friday rejected a request from the Biden administration to enforce new protections for LGBTQ students that have been blocked in multiple conservative states.

The new federal rule was established under Title IX and was meant to protects students from discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity. The rule was unveiled in April, and took effect in some states in August.

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Presidential Race Swings Six Points in Two Weeks, Catapulting Trump to Lead and Ending Harris Surge

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris

Support in the presidential race has swung six points since the beginning of the month, catapulting former President Donald Trump back into a narrow lead after Vice President Kamala Harris had surged with her surprise entrance atop the Democrat ticket, according to a new poll released Friday.

The survey of 3,000 likely voters by Napolitan News and veteran pollster Scott Rasmussen showed Trump leading Harris 46% to 45%.

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Critics Blast Harris’ New ‘Price Control’ Plan

Kamala Harris

Vice President and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris is taking fire for her new “price-gouging” ban that critics say is little more than communism-style “price controls” where government heavily regulates industries.

Harris’ effort to address elevated consumer prices hits at a key pain point for Americans, but the details of how Harris plans to go about fixing that problem will be the subject of close scrutiny when she lays out the plan at a North Carolina rally Friday. Harris is expected to unveil a broader economic plan at the same rally, but so far there are few details on specifically how she will address inflation. Prices have risen more than 20% overall since she and President Joe Biden took office.

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Texas Files Lawsuit over Rule Pushing Businesses to Adopt ‘Transgender’ Policies

Ken Paxton

Republican Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit Thursday against the Biden administration’s Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) over an allegedly “unlawful” April policy rewrite that changed the definition of discrimination to include “gender identity.”

The EEOC updated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 to require both state and private employers to accommodate transgender employees by allowing men in women’s spaces, forcing the use of  “preferred pronouns” and ending sex-specific dress codes. Paxton and the Heritage Foundation are challenging the rewrite, arguing that it violates the Administrative Procedure Act and does not have sufficient standing as the original wording prohibits sex-based discrimination but does not mandate special accommodations for the sexes, according to the lawsuit.

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Tim Walz’s Administration Awarded Millions to Group That Fundraised for Organization Linked to Al-Qaeda

Tim Walz

Under Democratic Gov. Tim Walz, Minnesota awarded millions to an American Islamic association which later fundraised for a Muslim charity that collaborated with an al-Qaeda-linked organization.

The Minnesota Department of Health committed to giving the Islamic Association of North America well over $2 million in public health-related grants between 2020 and 2026, coinciding with Walz’s term as Minnesota governor, according to state spending records first reported by the Washington Examiner. The Islamic Association of North America, following Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attacks on Israel, held a fundraiser for Rahma Worldwide, a Muslim charity that has collaborated on a Gaza aid program with the Islamic Heritage Revival Society of Kuwait, an organization the U.S. government sanctioned for funding al-Qaeda and which U.S. intelligence officials believed to be part of a Hamas fundraising operation.

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Inflation Has Cost Georgia Families $27,000 Since 2021

Grocery Shopping

Republican lawmakers in Georgia are concerned about increases in inflation, as a recent report shows households have paid $27,427 more because of inflation since January 2021.

The average household in the state is spending $1,074 more per month to buy the same goods and services as in 2021, according to a July report from the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee.

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Commentary: Tim Walz’s Radical Education Record

Tim Walz

The National Educators Association, the largest teachers union in America, is “fired up” for Kamala Harris’s VP nominee, Tim Walz. “Gov. Walz is known as the ‘Education Governor,’” wrote NEA President Becky Pringle, “because he has been an unwavering champion for public school students and educators, and an ally for working families and unions. As a high school teacher and NEA member, Walz is committed to uplifting our public schools.”

The NEA’s endorsement should be worrisome for Americans who are actually concerned about the state of education in this country: for years, the NEA has put radical politics above children.

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Commentary: J.D. Vance’s Promise

JD Vance

“I will be a vice president who never forgets where he came from.”

Cast off by a drug-addled mother, raised by a discipline-demanding, f-bomb-wielding Mamaw, J.D. Vance’s inspirational story is one of lost potential reclaimed. If Vance is elected and remembers where he came from, this country has much to look forward to – because his redemptive story envelopes millions of Americans.

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Falling in Polls, RFK Jr. Allegedly Eyes a Deal with Trump or Harris, but Neither Seem Interested

RFK Speaking

Independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy has suffered a series of setbacks in recent weeks that seem to have him eyeing the exit ramp. He has since reportedly sought to cut a deal with either the Trump or Harris campaigns to trade an endorsement for a role in the administration, though neither camp has reportedly been receptive to such an offer.

While still the most influential of the third-party candidates, Kennedy has seen his support nearly cut in half since President Joe Biden left the Democratic ticket in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris. In the final RealClearPolitics polling average featuring Biden as a candidate, Kennedy earned 8.7% support. Former President Donald Trump led that lineup with 43.4% to Biden’s 39.2%. The Green Party’s Jill Stein earned 1.9% while independent Cornel West took 1.6%.

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ICE Finds Peruvian Gang Leader Wanted for 23 Murders After Border Officials Allowed Him into U.S.

ICE Officer

Federal immigration authorities on Wednesday arrested a Peruvian gang leader who is wanted in his home country for nearly two dozen murders.

Gianfranco Torres-Navarro, a 38-year-old Peruvian national who entered the United States unlawfully earlier this year, was arrested by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents on Wednesday in Endicott, New York, the agency confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation. The notorious gang leader has since been transported to the Buffalo Federal Detention Facility in Batavia, New York.

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Presidential Race Swings 6 Points in Two Weeks, Catapulting Trump to Lead and Ending Harris Surge

Support in the presidential race has swung six points since the beginning of the month, catapulting former President Donald Trump back into a narrow lead after Vice President Kamala Harris had surged with her surprise entrance atop the Democrat ticket, according to a new poll released Friday.

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Housing Costs Surge in July, Accounting for 90 Percent of Total Inflation

Home for sale

The cost of housing surged in July, accounting for nearly 90 percent of total inflation, according to the latest Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Price Index (CPI) data released Wednesday.

Shelter costs rose 5.1 percent year-over-year and 0.4 percent month-over-month, after rising 0.2 percent in June, the BLS showed. The 0.4 percent monthly increase was greater than Bank of America economists’ expectations of 0.3 percent, according to investment research firm Morningstar.

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Commentary: The Weird, Creepy, Surreal—and Dangerous—2024 Campaign

Kamala Harris, Tim Walz, Donald Trump, and JD Vance (composite image)

The already-long 2024 presidential campaign has become the strangest in modern history.

Here are ten unanswered questions that illustrate how and why we’ve entered this bizarro world:

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Kamala Harris to Roll Out First Major Economic Policy: ‘Price Controls’ for Food and Groceries

Family at grocery store

Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to roll out a proposal to impose a federal ban on supposed corporate “price-gouging” on food and groceries, according to The Hill.

Harris will announce the plan during a Friday speech detailing her economic agenda in North Carolina, where she will blame corporate consolidation and greed for the increased prices Americans are paying for their food and groceries, according to The Hill. The proposal to attribute inflation to corporate greed echoes a common refrain from the Biden administration, which has consistently tried to pin responsibility for inflation on price gouging instead of its massive spending agenda.

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Hackers’ Confab Shows Vulnerabilities in Election Machines Amid Testing Concerns Ahead of November

Hackers at a conference last weekend found numerous vulnerabilities in election machines while the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) confirmed that current voting systems to be used in the November election have not been tested by third parties for vulnerabilities.

While many vulnerabilities were found in election machines at the conference, Georgia is set to use outdated election machines for the November presidential election, and the EAC doesn’t have a standard testing process in place to search out vulnerabilities in election equipment.

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Montana Supreme Court Rules Minors Do Not Need Parental Consent for Abortions

Justice Laurie McKinnon

The Montana Supreme Court ruled against a law on Wednesday that requires parental consent for minors to obtain an abortion.

The ruling sides with Planned Parenthood, which challenged a 2013 statute called the “Parental Consent for Abortion Act of 2013,” according to the court ruling. Justice Laurie McKinnon, who delivered the court’s opinion, wrote in the ruling that the “classification created by the Legislature” violated a minor’s right “to control her body.”

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Commentary: 10 Things to Know About Tim Walz and His Ties to Communist China

Tim Walz

Vice President Kamala Harris’ selection of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz as her vice presidential candidate seems to be a case of ideological birds of a feather flocking together. In the wake of the selection, Walz has received considerable criticism for his deception and dissembling regarding his military service. He merits equally great criticism for his ties to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Here are ten things that you did not know about Tim Walz and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

First, Walz claimed that he was in the PRC during the June 4, 1989, Tiananmen Square Massacre. One of the authors interviewed him in 2014 when he made this statement, and he later repeated the same falsehood to the media. In reality, Walz did not enter China until September 1989, several months after the massacre. He entered China from Hong Kong as part of the WorldTeach program, which was sponsored by the Harvard Institute for International Development (HIID). HIID was known for being very pro-PRC and had trained many high-ranking Chinese officials. Later, HIID received many millions of dollars from the PRC.

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Most Law School Students Say Social Justice More Important Than Winning in Court: Poll

About two out of every three law school students believe social justice is more important than obtaining a winning result for a client, according to the results of a recent survey of current law school students conducted by the Buckley Institute.

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Trump Leads Harris in Key Battleground States: Poll

Donald Trump and Kamala Harris in front of The White House (composite image)

The RealClearPolitics polling average currently places all four states in Trump’s column in its “no toss ups” column.

Former President Donald Trump has carved out a lead over Vice President Kamala Harris in key battleground states, potentially signaling the end of a surge for the Democrat that occurred in the wake of President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race.

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