As more federal data show a major spike in inflation, another top federal official said the U.S. is in for more aggressive inflation for the rest of 2021.
Federal officials have been pressed to speak on rising inflation after \data released earlier this week showed that the all items index increased 5.4% over the last 12 months, the biggest spike since the 2008 financial crisis.
Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen commented on the rise in inflation, saying it would grow worse this year.
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Former Obama Administration’s Secretary for Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, announced on CNN’s “Out Front” that people who have chosen not get vaccinated should be limited in their movements, not be allowed to work and have limited or no access to children.
Sebelius said, “We’re in a situation where we have a wildly effective vaccine, multiple choices, lots available, free of charge, and we have folks who are just saying I won’t do it. I think that it’s time to say to those folks, it’s fine if you don’t choose to get vaccinated. You may not come to work. You may not have access to a situation where you’re going to put my grandchildren in jeopardy. Where you might kill them, or you might put them in a situation where they’re going to carry the virus to someone in a high-risk position.”
She continued, “That’s, I think the point where we are, is freedom is one thing, but freedom when you harm others like secondhand smoke and issues that we’ve dealt with very clearly in the past you can’t drive drunk. You can drink, but you can’t drive drunk because you can injure other people. You can’t smoke inside of a public place where you can give cancer to someone else in spite of their never having been a smoker.”
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Catherine Lhamon’s (right) work in President Barack Obama’s administration on Title IX issues may have won her praise from liberal groups and organizations representing alleged and confirmed victims of sexual assault, but it drew criticism from the ranking member of the Senate’s education committee.
President Joe Biden has nominated Lhamon to lead the federal Office for Civil Rights in the Department of Education, the same position she held under Obama. But Senate Republicans and due-process advocates have questioned her position on the rights of accused students.
Republican Senator Richard Burr said he is concerned that Lhamon “will charge ahead unraveling significant pieces of the previous administration’s Title IX rules.” He made the comments during a July 13 Senate Health, Education, Labor and Pension Committee meeting.
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Late last month, Montana ended its participation in the extended federal unemployment benefits program. No surprise this event was little noted in the national press, since Montana’s decision to exit the program had a direct effect on fewer than 20,000 people (the total unemployed population of Montana). Yet Montana’s decision had an enormous effect on the country as a whole.
Particularly for those inside the Beltway, it is easy to focus on Washington, D.C. as the only place where policymaking matters. And with an administration desperate to centralize power as it prints ever-growing piles of money with which it hopes to bribe or threaten states and localities, such an attitude is understandable. Recent developments in states like Montana far outside the beltway, however, show how national political innovations can be driven by states with smaller populations far from the beltway swamp and present conservatives with a path for political success.
While elections in Montana often are driven by local and idiosyncratic issues as well as personal relationships (understandable in a state with some of America’s least populated state house and senate districts), Montana is and has long been a very red state. The only Democratic presidential candidate since 1948 to win a majority here was Lyndon B. Johnson in his 1964 landslide win over Barry Goldwater. It is much easier to convince and move 1 million people in Montana than 332 million Americans. And yet by moving 1 million Montanans (or 800,000 South Dakotans) or 1.8 million Idahoans, the Right can often exercise an outsized influence on the national debate.
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Small business owners are continuing to have problems attracting new workers in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and are trying to entice them with new incentives, a new report from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce shows.
“Small businesses are bearing the brunt of the current worker shortage,” said Tom Sullivan, vice president of small business policy at the Chamber. “Many have given up on actively recruiting new workers as it is too hard to find skilled and experienced workers for their open positions.”
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Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) said he still expects Justice Department Special Counsel John Durham to release a damaging report on the FBI’s corrupt Russia investigation, and while it “may not be as broad as we want it to be,” it will lead to prison sentences for some former senior Obama officials.
Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, told reporter Sara Carter during her podcast Thursday that he still believes justice will be served. According to Carter, the congressman said that Durham’s report could come “as early as next week.”
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Multi-Grammy nominated duo and Opry members, Dailey & Vincent are one of the most popular bands in contemporary American music, embracing bluegrass, country, and gospel.
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A new study found that Minneapolis experienced the fifth-highest increase in homicides in the nation between 2019 to 2021.
The overall rankings were based on both a city’s current homicide rate and the change in its number of homicides across the last two years. Minneapolis landed in the 11th position overall, behind cities like New Orleans, Cincinnati, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Detroit, according to the WalletHub survey.
From the second quarter of 2019 to the second quarter of 2021, the city of lakes saw the fifth-highest increase in per capita homicides in the nation. In this time, Minneapolis endured the death of George Floyd, unprecedented levels of rioting, mass unemployment caused by COVID-19 lockdowns, and a political assault on its police department.
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Due to a severe statewide drought, Gov. Tim Walz sent a letter to U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, requesting assistance to aid Minnesota’s livestock producers by relieving the immediate impacts of drought on grazing land.
“Agriculture is the past, present, and future of Minnesota’s economy. We must do everything we can to address the challenges our farmers and ranchers are facing due to the severe drought conditions plaguing our state. That’s why I’m asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture for assistance,” Walz said in a statement. “The USDA’s ongoing support of Minnesota’s agricultural industry is well-recognized across the state, and with their continued assistance, our livestock producers will have a brighter outlook as we endure these harsh conditions and look forward to a thriving future.”
Walz supported implementing a plan to allow emergency haying and grazing on eligible Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) land counties experiencing Level D2 or greater drought conditions, reducing forage pressures on Minnesota’s livestock producers. The latest U.S. Drought Monitor update on July 8 reported nearly 40% of Minnesota is suffering under Level D2 or greater drought conditions.
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Few notice what is taught in school until it is too late. Today’s push for Critical Race Theory (CRT) is extraordinarily ambitious, and it is hard for defenders of traditional education to imagine anything more toxic than this theory that has seemingly burst on the scene.
But, as bad as it may seem, CRT is not thene plus ultra of pernicious radical ideology. It can get worse, and it is delusional to believe that just because a given idea is incredibly stupid and destructive, it is therefore impossible for something worse to come along. If that were true, today’s PC madness would have died out decades ago.
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Louisiana U.S. Sen. John Kennedy has introduced a bill to limit protections for social media companies that secretly leverage user data to promote divisive content.
Kennedy, a Republican, blasted Silicon Valley behemoths such as Facebook and Twitter for “provoking” platform users and blamed the “manipulative” business practice for causing unnecessary social conflict.
“Social media giants are using people’s data to manipulate them into spending more time on their sites, but the price is a more polarized America,” Kennedy said in a statement. “It’s time to stop rewarding platforms that use their algorithms to target users with content that plays on individuals’ emotions without their consent.”
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The late Kurt Vonnegut had a simple yet profound approach to writing. “When I write,” he said, “I simply become what I seemingly must become.”
Stephen Hunter, another great American writer, has a similar approach to his craft today. His process isn’t so much about writing prose or creating plot or conducting research. What really matters, he says, is that the book becomes your life, always either on your mind or in your subconscious.
As Hunter explained to me this week on my podcast, “Newt’s World,” writing has become a part of his normal life, like brushing his teeth.
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Border officials encountered nearly 190,000 migrants at the southern border in June, a 5% increase over May’s numbers, Customs and Border Protection (CBP) announced Friday.
There was a significant increase in the number of re-encounters in June, with 34% of individuals having at least one prior encounter in the past 12 months, compared to the average one-year re-encounter rate of 14% for Fiscal Years 2014-2019, the agency said in a statement.
“The large number of expulsions during the pandemic has contributed to a larger-than-usual number of migrants making multiple border crossing attempts,” CBP said. “Which means that total encounters somewhat overstate the number of unique individuals arriving at the border.”
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Just a day after White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki admitted that the Biden administration is colluding with Facebook to censor “misinformation,” Psaki advocated for even more online censorship.
During a Friday press briefing, she advised social media companies to “create robust enforcement strategies that bridge their properties and provide transparency about rules.”
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Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell tried to calm lawmakers’ fears about rising inflation but also said it would probably remain elevated for months to come.
Testifying before Congress this week, Powell said the Federal Reserve was willing to step in to address the situation, but that inflation should level out next year.
“As always, in assessing the appropriate stance of monetary policy, we will continue to monitor the implications of incoming information for the economic outlook and would be prepared to adjust the stance of monetary policy as appropriate if we saw signs that the path of inflation or longer-term inflation expectations were moving materially and persistently beyond levels consistent with our goal,” Powell said in his prepared testimony.
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On Thursday, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) was sued by a watchdog group after the agency failed to hand over requested documentation of communication between the government agency and the leaders of various teachers’ unions, Fox News reports.
The suit was filed by Americans for Public Trust (APT), a nonprofit based in Washington D.C. The group alleges that the documents they previously requested via the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) could prove that there was “undue political influence” expressed over the CDC by teachers’ unions, which ultimately dictated the CDC’s lockdown recommendations.
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After more than 50 Texas Democrats fled the state to avoid a special legislative session, three of the lawmakers tested positive for COVID-19.
After one member tested positive for the virus on Friday, two more lawmakers received additional positive test results on Saturday.
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California’s community college students are now required to fulfill an “ethnic studies” requirement in order to graduate.
On July 13, California’s Community Colleges Board of Governors announced that students seeking an associate degree must complete a three-unit semester or four-unit quarter class in ethnic studies. A task force will work to determine “the timing for implementation of the ethnic studies requirement as well as the definition of courses that will satisfy the requirement.”
“As the largest and most diverse system of higher education in the country, we have an opportunity to break down barriers to equity,” Board of Governors President Pamela Haynes said in the press release. “By building a faculty and staff that look like the students and communities we serve and by putting diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and anti-racism at the heart of our work, we can help create a system that truly works for all our students.”
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On Wednesday, a scientific organization announced that it was changing the names of two species of insects, due to the informal names allegedly being “racist,” the Daily Caller reports.
The Entomological Society of America (ESA) announced in a statement that it would end the use of the terms “gypsy moth” and “gypsy ant,” the colloquial names for the Lymantria dispar and the Aphaenogaster araneoides, respectively. The statement, issued by ESA President Michelle Smith, claimed that these names were offensive to the Romani people in Europe, who have been known as gypsies for centuries.
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Minnesota Democrats have called for Rep. John Thompson to resign nearly one year after his long history of alleged violence and domestic abuse became a topic of public discourse.
Thompson first achieved notoriety in August 2020 when he called for anti-police protesters to burn down the town of Hugo. Shortly after that incident, Alpha News unearthed and reported on his criminal record, which shows he has a history of domestic assault accusations. Despite this, the Minnesota DFL, Gov. Tim Walz and U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar upheld their endorsements of then-candidate Thompson.
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There’s nothing worse than when you’re having a bad day and come back to your car to find a parking ticket on your windshield. Except, maybe, if that ticket was for $100,000, and you got it for parking on your own property.
That’s what happened to Sandy Martinez, a resident of Lantana, Florida. Teaming up with attorneys at the libertarian-leaning Institute for Justice (IJ), she is suing the town over a parking violation fine assigned to her that totaled more than $100,000.
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Hamline University announced that they will be requiring students to be vaccinated against COVID before classes commence in the fall. The University’s President Fayneese Miller said, “We want, and need, to be together as a community. We value a sense of community at Hamline and all that entails, but to return to what we value and who we are, mandating a COVID-19 vaccine is necessary.” The announcement was made on Thursday with the expectation that students will be fully vaccinated before returning to campus in August.
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A Minnesota think tank released a new report this week exposing flaws in the state’s election system and recommending a number of possible reforms.
The “‘vote now, check later’ verification process” that Minnesota uses for same-day voter registrants has a number of “weaknesses,” according to the report.
Minnesotans who register to vote prior to Election Day are subjected to a verification process before their vote is counted. Same-day registrants go through the same verification process but only after the election.
“Their vote is counted,” the report says. “The county auditor runs the same verification using the Department of Public Safety database and the Social Security database. But if a problem is discovered, it is too late, because the vote has already been counted.”
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Wildly excessive federal spending is causing major inflation and shortages, which may lead to a recession and perhaps a financial crisis. Despite the evidence of inflation, Congress is proposing to spend $3.5 trillion on top of the $1.9 trillion COVID relief bill passed earlier this year and the intended $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. For comparison, federal revenue is only expected to be $3.8 trillion this year.
Evidently, the Democratic Party and President Joe Biden have adopted Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) to the peril of every American citizen. MMT, which is similar to Keynesian economics, says that the U.S. should not be constrained by revenues in federal government spending since the government is the monopoly issuer of the U.S. dollar. MMT is a destructive myth that provides cover for excessive government spending. And it’s not modern, since reckless government spending has been around for thousands of years.
Embracing MMT is similar to providing whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. We know the outcomes will not be good.
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Judge G. Michael Harvey sounded floored.
During a detention hearing this week for Robert Morss, arrested last month for his involvement in the Capitol protest, a federal prosecutor told Harvey she needed permission from the government before she could turn over to him a slice of video related to Morss’ case. Joe Biden’s Justice Department continues to seek pre-trial detention for people who protested Biden’s election on January 6; prosecutors want to keep Morss, an Army ranger and high school history teacher with no criminal record, behind bars until his trial can begin next year.
But assistant U.S. Attorney Melissa Jackson hesitated when Judge Harvey asked to see the footage captured by the U.S. Capitol Police surveillance system cited as evidence in government charging documents.
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The official Black Lives Matter organization is facing widespread criticism after releasing a statement in support of the Communist dictatorship in Cuba, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation issued its statement earlier this week, amidst the sudden grassroots protests that broke out in Cuba against the incumbent regime. In it, the organization claims, with no evidence, that “the U.S. government has only instigated suffering for the country’s 11 million, of which 4 million are black or brown.”
BLM further claims that the ongoing American embargo on Cuba, which has been in effect since the Cold War, is “at the heart of the crisis,” and went on to praise Cuba’s “strong medical care.” The far-left group’s rhetoric closely matches that of Cuba’s current dictator, Miguel Diaz-Canel, who explicitly blamed the United States for the protests.
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A retired FBI counterintelligence agent with longtime expertise in signature analysis tells Just the News that Hunter Biden signed an April 2019 Delaware computer repair shop receipt, adding fresh evidence that a controversial laptop turned over to the bureau with eye-popping emails about Ukrainian and Chinese business deals belonged to the president’s son.
Retired Special Agent Wayne A. Barnes, a 29-year FBI veteran who mastered signature analysis while unmasking Soviet spies during the Cold War, says the “R.H. Biden” signature — short for Robert Hunter Biden — on the receipt issued in spring 2019 from John Paul Mac Issac’s repair shop in Delaware matches those on documents known to have been signed by the president’s son, such as Social Security cards, driver’s licenses and other public documents.
“The signature on the computer repair store from April 2019 was signed by RHB,” Barnes wrote in a 24-page report commissioned by Just the News.
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Those who prattle on about democracy the most support it the least. “In America, if you lose, you accept the results,” said Joe Biden on Tuesday. Meanwhile, his fellow Democrats were conducting an undemocratic stunt to thwart the people’s will in Texas.
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Republican Reps. Ken Buck and Lance Gooden announced Friday the launch of the Freedom from Big Tech Caucus, a group of House Republicans working towards reining in major tech companies.
The caucus will focus on addressing anticompetitive and monopolistic practices by major tech companies, political censorship, and Big Tech’s relationship with China, Buck and Gooden announced in a statement. The caucus will also include Reps. Madison Cawthorn, Burgess Owens, and Paul Gosar, according to the announcement.
“Big Tech has abused its market power for decades, and Congress must act to hold these companies accountable and preserve the free market, promote competition and innovation, protect the freedom of speech, and foster a thriving digital economy,” Buck said in the statement.
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U.S. retail sales jumped in June, boosted by states widely loosening coronavirus restrictions and businesses returning to full capacity.
Retail sales increased 0.6% and totaled $621.3 billion in June, according to the Department of Commerce report released Wednesday. The monthly increase was driven by general merchandise, including food service, clothing, personal care, electronics and gasoline sales, the report showed.
“Sectors that were buoyed by the pandemic are slowing down a little bit, but not to a degree that I’d be concerned about,” Square economist Felipe Chacon told The Wall Street Journal. “Household finances have been bolstered by a few rounds of stimulus spending, so it bodes pretty well.”
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In a Thursday press conference, Press Secretary to President Joe Biden admitted that the White House is colluding with Facebook to censor content on the social media platform.
“We are in regular touch with the social media platforms and those engagements typically happen through members of our senior staff and also members of our COVID-19 team — given as Dr. Murthy conveyed, this is a big issue, of misinformation, specifically on the pandemic,” Psaki reportedly said
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Ever since the most blatant forms of racism and discrimination in America faded, what are called microaggressions have, in the view of leftist academics and social justice activists, taken their place. These are “a form of racism,” the slights and insults that, though subtle and small and typically unconscious, are insulting and harmful to their targets.
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Thousands of demonstrators in more than 40 cities and towns throughout Cuba have taken to the streets to protest 62 years of oppression. In a communist country that suppresses dissent, the recent wave of protests is the most significant grassroots stand against the dictatorship in more than three decades.
Since the end of the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the Cuban people have lived under the oppressive rule of the Castro dictatorship. Upon Raúl Castro’s recent retirement, his handpicked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel seized control of the Communist Party, Cuba’s only legal political party, and the presidency, in an election that was neither competitive, free, nor fair.
As the communist regime attempts to deflect blame for the state of unrest, basic goods and services are in short supply. The fact is Cuba is suffering from a severe economic crisis. Food is scarce, the health care system is overwhelmed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and electricity outages are a regular occurrence.
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Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) announced on Friday that officers with the agency encountered 188,829 persons attempting entry along the U.S. southern border in June alone.
The staggering June numbers demonstrate a continued rise in attempted illegal border crossings — June’s total represented a five percent increase over May.
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The Biden administration’s nominee to lead the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights told a Senate committee Tuesday that a year-old Title IX regulation does not require the presumption of innocence for students accused of sexual misconduct.
The claim drew bafflement from critics of Catherine Lhamon, who held the same job in the Obama administration’s second term.
In response to threats from Lhamon to pull their federal funding, colleges lowered evidentiary standards and enacted policies that treat accusers more favorably than accused students. Courts have been steadily reining in those practices, sometimes citing the pressure from Lhamon’s office as evidence of bias.
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Nina Turner and Shontel Brown, the two leading Democrats vying to fill a House seat that includes Cleveland, are tied with 33% support, a new poll shows.
The Aug. 3 special election will likely determine who will succeed Housing Secretary Marcia Fudge, who resigned the seat after getting confirmed in March. Though Turner, a close ally of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, entered the race as an overwhelming favorite, Democrats seeking a moderate alternative have lined up behind Brown in recent weeks.
Brown has been endorsed by House Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, Hillary Clinton, the Congressional Black Caucus and other high-profile members of the Democratic establishment, while Turner has the support of the “Squad” and other progressives.
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Governor Tim Walz signed an executive order on Thursday, banning the use of conversion therapy in Minnesota. The Minnesota Family Council called the order an example of “executive overreach” and said it was an attack on the constitutional rights of Minnesotans.
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A man set fire to a dumpster behind Stella’s Fish Cafe, in Minneapolis, which led to tens of thousands of dollars in damage. According to Bring Me the News, “security footage shows two men going into the alley area by Stella’s dumpsters around 3:04 a.m. on July 6. One man… was wearing a bulletproof vest.”
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How often during the last year of woke, have middle- and lower-class Americans listened to multimillionaires of all races and genders lecture them on their various pathologies and oppressions?
Million-dollar-a year university presidents virtue signal on the cheap their own sort of “unearned white privilege.”
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The push to create “equity” and more “social justice” in public schools in America’s largest state rests on this basic premise: “We reject ideas of natural gifts and talents,” declares the current draft of the California Math Framework, which also states that it rejects “the cult of genius.”
Informed by that fundamental idea, the 800-page Framework calls for the elimination of accelerated classes and gifted programs for high-achieving students until at least the 11th grade.
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The 10 Republican members of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee signed a letter Wednesday calling on President Joe Biden to withdraw his nominee to lead the Bureau of Land Management in a letter Wednesday over her involvement in a 1989 eco-terrorism incident.
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Republican Sens. Ron Johnson of Wisconsin and Chuck Grassley of Iowa sent a letter to the Justice Department Wednesday asking for more information regarding missing phones used by Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during the Russian collusion investigation.
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Republicans have argued for months that federal unemployment benefits are keeping Americans from going back to work, and a new survey seems to support that claim.
The survey from Morning Consult released Wednesday found that 1.8 million Americans have turned down jobs even though they were unemployed saying, “I receive enough unemployment benefits without having to work.”
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Millions of American families will begin to receive monthly cash payments Thursday as part of the $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package that President Joe Biden signed into law in March.
The payments are an expansion of the Child Tax Credit, and will continue for a year before requiring congressional renewal. As many as 90% of American families are eligible to receive hundreds of dollars a month for each child they have, and some experts believe that the policy could ultimately cut child poverty in half.
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims decreased to 360,000 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 slight increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending July 3, when 386,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 373,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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On Wednesday night, riots and protests erupted again after the city of Minneapolis and 7 Points Uptown decided to remove the “peace garden” where a memorial for Winston Smith was located. The garden, also known as Boogie World, was a second autonomous zone established in Minneapolis after a wanted man, Winston Smith, was shot and killed by U.S. Marshals on June 3.
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In Minneapolis, the staffing shortage for police officers has reached new lows. According to a statement by the head of the Minneapolis Police Department union, there are many days that are staffed well below the minimum requirement.
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The Minneapolis police cleared out the “peace garden” that has been located in Uptown on Wednesday morning. The garden, also known as Boogie World, has been located at Lake St. And Girard Ave. since the death of Winston Smith in early June.
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Los Angeles school teacher Glenn Laird has been a union stalwart for almost four decades. He served as a co-chair of his school’s delegation to United Teachers Los Angeles and proudly wore union purple on the picket line.
But Laird is now suing to leave UTLA and demanding a refund of the dues the union has collected since his resignation request. His turning point came in July 2020 when the union, the second largest teachers union in the country, joined liberal activists to demand that Los Angeles defund the police in response to Black Lives Matter demonstrations.
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Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer and Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, the chair of the Senate Budget Committee, announced a $3.5 trillion deal on their infrastructure reconciliation package late Tuesday.
The deal is the first step to beginning the reconciliation process, which Democrats hope will allow them to bypass a certain GOP filibuster and pass the plan on a party-line vote. The package includes an array of Democratic priorities that face near unanimous Republican opposition, including billions for child care, climate change and other forms of so-called human infrastructure, Schumer and Sanders said in a joint press conference Tuesday.
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