The Biden administration announced Wednesday it will cancel $415 million in student debt for nearly 16,000 borrowers who claim they were misled by for-profit colleges.
The loans for almost 16,000 former students will be canceled under a legal provision called the borrower defense to repayment, which allows students to have their debts erased if they prove a for-profit school defrauded them, the Department of Education (DOE) said in a press release.
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Blackstone Inc. bought out Preferred Apartment Communities and the 12,000 apartments it owned in the Southeast for $5.8 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Blackstone is one the world’s largest commercial property owners, and it purchased the Atlanta-based apartment owner with its largest fund, which raised more than $50 billion in the last five years, according to the WSJ.
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The Federal Aviation Administration on Tuesday announced it would retain sole authority to issue airworthiness certificates and perform any final inspections on Boeing’s 787 Dreamliner aircraft.
Meanwhile, two members of Congress, including Rep. Rick Larsen, D-Everett, have asked for an investigation into why the FAA decided not to penalize Boeing for fatal crashes involving its 737 MAX.
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The Chinese government’s Confucius Institutes have steadily disappeared from American college campuses following concerns from lawmakers, law enforcement and academic freedom groups about spying, censorship and propaganda. Florida even banned them in legislation last year.
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Lisa Hanson, a small business owner who was jailed for violating COVID-19 restrictions imposed by Governor Tim Walz, will run for a Minnesota Senate seat.
She will campaign in a new district that covers Freeborn County and parts of Mower, Faribault, Waseca, and Steele counties.
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A judicial panel has finalized the boundaries that will shape Minnesota politics for the next 10 years.
The five judges appointed to a special panel by the Minnesota Supreme Court released the state’s new legislative and congressional maps Tuesday. The process, known as redistricting, happens every 10 years after the census and puts every legislative seat in the state up for grabs.
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This is a bad year to have paid the International Olympic Committee $100 million for the right to put its iconic rings on your soda cans or shampoo bottles. But this is what the rarefied air of being a top Olympic sponsor buys you in 2022: The Winter Games are being played in an authoritarian state with an atrocious human rights record, and none of its underwriters are eager to play up their association in the important American market.
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Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn and Democratic Connecticut Sen. Richard Blumenthal unveiled a bipartisan bill Wednesday aimed at curbing online harms to children.
The Kids Online Safety Act is the result of several hearings and a months-long investigation led by Blackburn and Blumenthal into how use of social media platforms affects teens and young children. If enacted, the bill would require social media platforms to provide minors with options to protect their information, disable “addictive” product features and allow them to opt out of recommendation algorithms.
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A gun control activist and Black Lives Matter radical was arrested on Monday in the targeted shooting of Louisville, Kentucky mayoral candidate Craig Greenberg.
Quintez Brown was charged with attempted murder and four counts of wanton endangerment, after firing his gun inside Greenberg’s campaign office.
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Consumer spending surged in January amid soaring inflation, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday.
Retail sales grew 3.8% in January, far exceeding the 2.1% Dow Jones estimate, the Commerce Department announced Wednesday. January’s figure represents the largest monthly increase since March 2021 and a significant snapback from December 2021 when sales decreased by 2.5%.
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The Biden administration plans to make yearly COVID shots mandatory for all Americans, including young children, a Food and Drug Administration executive told a Project Veritas undercover journalist on hidden camera.
In the sting video released on Tuesday, Christopher Cole, Executive Officer of Countermeasures Initiative for the FDA, said: “Biden wants to inoculate as many people as possible.” According to Project Veritas president James O’Keefe, Cole has “over 20 years experience” at the FDA, and “claims to be directly involved in the approval process.”
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Parents and residents of San Francisco overwhelmingly voted to recall three school board members in the city’s first recall election since 1983.
Alison Collins, Faauuga Moliga and Gabriella Lopez all lost their positions on the governing body, as the “Yes” option to the recall question gained more than 70 percent in all three cases.
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Russia’s months of military movements and Biden’s “strategic communications campaign” are psychological operations intended to intimidate Ukraine, Europe, and the rest of the world.
There won’t be a big war any time soon. The Kremlin’s low-cost, high-impact campaign might succeed if some Western leaders, especially in the United States, can help Putin.
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In a new report released Wednesday at the Boston-based Pioneer Institute, one of America’s top education scholars provides reviews and grades for the nation’s leading civics programs.
At a time when the purpose of civics education grows increasingly polarized, and many organizations present rival resources, Dr. David Randall, author of “Learning for Self-Government: A K-12 Civics Report Card,” evaluated 15 leading civics programs and graded them on their effectiveness.
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Twitter Tuesday evening banned a well-known Twitter account called @DefiantLs, which posted screenshots pointing out left-wing hypocrisy.
The owner of the account, who has always been anonymous and remains so, said the account was banned for an alleged “ban evasion,” despite the fact that the account owner says he or she has “never had an account suspended so I’ve never had a ban to evade.”
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Wayzata Public Schools, located outside of Minneapolis, voted to end its mask mandates for students in kindergarten through 12th grade.
The district pointed to low coronavirus numbers, and 76 percent of their students have received the COVID-19 vaccine.
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National pro-life leaders and lawmakers committed themselves publicly on Valentine’s Day to protecting life not only by promoting pro-life legislation, but also by providing concrete service to mothers and their children, born and unborn.
The pro-life leaders joined with the Heritage Foundation to announce they are prepared for a post-Roe America, and to pledge their support for girls and women experiencing unexpected pregnancy.
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There are few more easily observable measures of the cost of everyday living than the price of gasoline at the pump. As has been widely reported, gas prices in the United States recently hit a seven-year high. The striking thing, however, is not just how high gas prices have gotten, but how fast and far they have risen.
Based on statistics from the U.S. Energy Information Administration—the statistical arm of the Department of Energy—weekly average retail prices for regular unleaded gasoline in the United States increased 94 percent in less than two years. Average gas prices rose from $1.77 per gallon during the week ending April 27, 2020, to $3.44 per gallon during the week ending February 7, 2022—nearly doubling in the process.
That was the largest percentage increase in gas prices within a two-year window since October of 2005, more than 16 years ago. In the election of 2006, Republicans—then the party in power—lost 30 House and six Senate seats, thereby losing control of both chambers, before losing the presidency two years later.
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President Joe Biden’s latest nominee to the Fed has faced criticism for embellishing her resume, but recently some economists have raised the possibility that her most famous research contains fatal flaws.
Lisa Cook, a professor of international relations and economics at Michigan State University, was nominated to serve on the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System on Jan 14. Three weeks later, on Feb. 5, an anonymous Twitter account pointed out a mistake in Cook’s 2014 paper, “Violence and economic activity: evidence from African-American patents, 1870-1940.”
The anonymous tweet sparked a flurry of blog posts criticizing Cook’s paper. Andrew Gelman, a statistics professor at Columbia University, compared Cook’s dataset with a more recent dataset from the Brookings Institution and said the results did not match. “Hey—this is a lot different!” wrote Gelman.
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Crowdfunding service GiveSendGo came back online Tuesday after a Sunday hack forced the site to temporarily shut down.
“Sunday evening, February 13th, GiveSendGo was attacked by malicious actors attempting to eliminate the ability of its users to raise funds,” the company said in a statement posted to Twitter, acknowledging the hack publicly for the first time and announcing that the site was back online.
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Wholesale prices jumped a full percentage point in January and 9.7 percent over last year, the Bureau of Labor Statistics said Tuesday, as inflation continues its rapid rise.
“On an unadjusted basis, final demand prices moved up 9.7 percent for the 12 months ended January 2022,” BLS said.
That increase comes after a 0.9% increase in November and a 0.4% increase in December.
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The George Washington University’s president publicly apologized Friday for a fall 2021 surveillance pilot program that tracked students’ and employees’ locations on campus without their consent.
“I write to inform you of a data analytics pilot program that took place on the university campus during the Fall 2021 semester, and to apologize on behalf of the university for the failure to inform you in advance of commencing this project,” Mark S. Wrighton wrote.
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Maryland state House Democrats proposed a constitutional amendment Monday enshrining abortion rights within the state, the Associated Press reported.
The proposal was introduced by state House Speaker Adrienne Jones, who said the Supreme Court “has allowed some of the most restricting abortion legislation we’ve seen in a generation,” according to the AP.
Jones appeared to refer to the Supreme Court’s decision to allow the Texas Heartbeat Act, which bans most abortions after six weeks, to stay in effect while the court considers whether the law is constitutional.
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Special Counsel John Durham’s investigation isn’t just imposing accountability for Hillary Clinton’s 2016 political trick to dirty up Donald Trump with the FBI; it’s also encroaching on the credibility of President Biden’s current chief foreign policy adviser and point man for the current Russia-Ukraine crisis.
National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was a senior adviser to Clinton’s 2016 campaign and, by his own admission, spread the word to reporters back then that Democrats believed Trump was colluding with Vladimir Putin to hijack the election and had a secret computer channel to the Kremlin. Neither proved true.
But long before that Russia collusion narrative crumbled like a stale Starbucks muffin, Sullivan gave sworn testimony to the House Intelligence Committee disputing that anything the Clinton campaign spread around Washington was misinformation.
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In the 15-minute time span before the joint session of Congress convened at 1:00 p.m. on January 6, 2021, two incidents that set the stage for the day’s ensuing chaos happened simultaneously.
First, a man named Ryan Samsel, after taking some sort of direction from Ray Epps, overran a thin line of police and metal racks in what would be the first official breach of Capitol grounds around 12:50 p.m. (Samsel was charged and has been incarcerated for more than a year; Epps faces no charges.) Joining Samsel were members of the Proud Boys and a still-unknown number of FBI informants.
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Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser is lifting the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate and will not extend its mask requirement into March.
The Democratic mayor also says that as of Tuesday many businesses in the nation’s capital will no longer be required to check that customers have at least one dose of the vaccine before allowing them to enter. However, they will still be allowed to make such a request on their own, according to dcist.com.
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New York City recently fired nearly 1,500 municipal workers who failed to comply with its COVID-19 vaccine mandate, officials said Monday.
City officials said 1,430 workers were fired Friday and that the number represents less than 1% of the city’s 370,000-person workforce. The number was also far smaller than what they had predicted.
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Fifty-five federal agencies have issued rule changes to track employees and others who request religious exemptions for the COVID-19 vaccine.
Critics of the tracking say the practice is discriminatory against people of faith.
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The real pandemic in this country is one of growing fascism from our so-called political Left.
The far-Left Democratic Party doesn’t care about your essential freedoms—from speech and the free flow of ideas to freedom of assembly—particularly when those freedoms stand in the way of their pursuit of power.
This is the party, after all, who opposed Abraham Lincoln and stood in the way of integration well into the 1960s. Where Democratic hatred of freedom has become glaringly apparent in recent times is with their obsession with COVID vaccine mandates and mask mandates, most especially for school-aged children. This “pandemic” has exposed what is truly afoot here, fascist authoritarianism at its most potent and dangerous.
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A petition by teachers nationwide pledging to teach Critical Race Theory (CRT) to students regardless of whether states pass laws against the practice has reached more than 8,000 signatures.
“From police violence, to the prison system, to the wealth gap, to maternal mortality rates, to housing, to education and beyond, the major institutions and systems of our country are deeply infected with anti-Blackness and its intersection with other forms of oppression,” the Zinn Education Project’s petition page says. “To not acknowledge this and help students understand the roots of U.S. racism is to deceive them — not educate them.”
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A bill to repay Minnesota’s federal Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund passed the Senate Monday and it will now travel to the House for consideration.
The bill, SF 2677, appropriates $2.3 billion from the state fiscal recovery federal fund and $408.5 million from the fiscal year 2022 general fund to the commissioner of employment and economic development.
The commissioner would repay the federal government outstanding loans and accrued interest within 10 days of the bill’s enactment. For the 2022 and 2023 calendar years, the base tax rate would be one-tenth of one percent.
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Nine families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting have reached a settlement in their case against the firearms maker Remington, according to several news reports Tuesday.
The settlement comes roughly seven years after the suit was filed, according to a court document filed Tuesday and reviewed by CNN.
Remington was the maker of the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre in which the lone shooter killed 20 children and six adults in Newtown, Connecticut.
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Drawing on research from a multimillion-dollar Mark Zuckerberg-linked initiative viewed as pivotal in the 2020 presidential election, 14 states carried by Joe Biden have appealed to him for billions of dollars more to secure elections for the next decade. But most of them have spent less than half their shares of previous federal funding to counter alleged Russian election meddling and other “threats” to election security.
The states’ letter to the president cites a report by the Election Infrastructure Initiative, a progressive nonprofit that estimates $53 billion in taxpayer money will be needed to ensure election security over the next decade.
The Election Infrastructure Initiative is an arm of the Center for Tech and Civic Life, which in 2020 distributed nearly $400 million in private grants – $350 million from Zuckerberg and his wife, Priscilla Chan – to local election offices in 48 states and the District of Columbia for the pandemic-challenged presidential election.
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Critical social justice’s (CSJ) march through America’s institutions is very nearly complete. CSJ, and its woke evangelists, easily penetrated and commandeered U.S. colleges and universities.
Even White House occupant Joe Biden speaks incessantly about “white supremacy.” The Department of Homeland Security tells us white domestic terrorism is the top threat to America.
Not to be left out, corporate America has proclaimed its total fealty to woke ideology. Leaked documents show companies like Coke imploring their employees to “be less white.” Raytheon—whose laser-guided bombs are disproportionally dropped on people of color—tells its white, straight, Christian, able-bodied, English-speaking employees to deconstruct their identities, “identify [their] privilege,” and “step aside” in favor of other identity groups. AT&T offers employees training that says racism is a “uniquely white trait,” telling white employees that they “are the problem.” It’s pure racism, of course. But not a single Fortune 500 CEO has spoken out against it. They’re too frightened to do so.
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With support from its Republican governor, Vermont is on a course to become the first state in the nation to guarantee a right to abortion and contraception in its constitution.
The Vermont House voted 107-41 for Proposition 5, a proposed amendment that would guarantee sexual and reproductive freedoms to Vermonters once it is placed on the ballot and voters give their support in November.
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Democrats are weighing whether to extend an individual stock trading ban to spouses of lawmakers.
The Ban Conflicted Trading Act “prohibits a Member of Congress or certain congressional officers or employees from (1) purchasing or selling specified investments, (2) entering into a transaction that creates a net short position in a security, or (3) serving as an officer or member of any board of any for-profit entity.”
The legislation in its current form would not apply to the spouses of lawmakers. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul has made headlines over the years with his millions of dollars in stock purchases, particularly with technology companies.
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Recent images from the Los Angeles railyards of a sea of cardboard wreckage, the remnants of thousands of stolen packages, have made national headlines. Union Pacific railroad said criminal rail theft in LA has increased by more than 2.5 times since December 2020. Yet while most media coverage focuses on this third-world scene, little has been made of the consequences for the small business sellers ripped off by this grand theft.
Whether it comes in the form of widescale package theft by criminal enterprises or organized smash-and-grab robberies at brick and mortar stores, theft has become a big problem for small businesses. A new survey finds that nearly all small business owners experienced an increase in theft in 2021.
This isn’t the shoplifting of your parent’s generation. Elaborate criminal networks steal and resell goods at below-market rates on internet marketplaces such as Amazon, Facebook, eBay, and Alibaba. The cost of lost inventory and ensuing cut-rate online competition puts tremendous pressure on small business margins that are already strained by the highest inflation in 40 years and severe supply chain disruptions.
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Border Patrol agents on Saturday morning saved the lives of an illegal immigrant family trapped in the Rio Grande River. The Biden administration has been publically silent on the daring rescue.
Del Rio Sector Border Patrol agents at about 7:40 a.m. saw what appeared to be a family attempting to cross the river, according to a Customs and Border Protection press release. As the group neared the U.S. border, the ground collapsed beneath them. The family struggled to swim as the current carried them downriver.
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The San Francisco 49ers team fell victim to a ransomware attack affecting key corporate operations, the team announced Sunday.
Hackers using BlackByte ransomware tools listed the San Francisco 49ers on a dark web site identifying the team as a target for extortion attempts, The Record reported. The team confirmed to The Record on Sunday that it had been the victim of a ransomware attack.
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An increasing number of Democrats believe Hillary Clinton should be investigated by special counsel John Durham in connection with her alleged involvement in manufacturing ties between 2016 presidential rival Donald Trump and the Russia, according to a recent survey.
The survey, by TechnoMetrica Institute of Policy and Politics, found 75% of respondents who follow the story think Clinton and her campaign advisers should be investigated for her role in so-called Russiagate, according to several news reports.
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A National School Boards Association (NSBA) executive reportedly knew about Attorney General Merrick Garland’s memorandum targeting concerned parents before it was published, according to new information obtained by Parents Defending Education.
Chip Slaven, then-interim executive director of the National School Boards Association (NSBA) knew about Garland’s memorandum that called on the FBI to “use its authority” against parents who threaten or use violence against public school officials, according to an email obtained by Parents Defending Education (PDE) through a public records request.
“I understand Chip knew about the U.S. AG Directives before they were published,” Alabama NSBA member Pam Doyle told Florida NSBA member Beverly Slough in an Oct. 5, 2021 internal email exchange. “So much for communicating with the BOD,” she added.
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Pfizer and the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) said Friday they are delaying their plan for Pfizer’s Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) for its coronavirus vaccine for children under five years old due to insufficient data on the efficacy of a third dose.
Pfizer announced February 1 FDA had asked the drug company, and its partner BioNTech, to submit data on a COVID vaccine series for babies as young as six months old and young children up until age five.
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Tea Party Patriots Action slammed members of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign and the media, after Special Counsel John Durham filed a motion that detailed Clinton’s team paid individuals to “infiltrate” servers in Trump Tower and the White House.
The filing comes after former President Donald Trump made similar statements in the past; however, members of the media quickly dismissed the claims.
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Who among us hasn’t made $1.5 million for sitting on an advisory board for two years? Not you? Come to think of it, me neither. Such money comes only to the well connected.
And “connected” is a good word to use in regard to Sarah Bloom Raskin, nominated last month by President Joe Biden to be Vice Chair for Supervision at the Federal Reserve System. Previously, from 2010 to 2014, she served as a Governor of the Fed, and then, from 2014 to 2017, she worked as Barack Obama’s Deputy Secretary of the Treasury.
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Four Senate Republicans announced bills they called the “Parent’s Bill of Rights.”
In a morning press conference, Sens. Justin Eichorn of Grand Rapids, Michelle Benson of Ham Lake, Paul Gazelka of East Gull Lake, and Roger Chamberlain of Lino Lakes announced the bills they said would increase school transparency.
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A well-known National Football League (NFL) sideline reporter who formerly worked for NBC has ditched her gig covering professional sports to join the campaign of a Minnesota gubernatorial candidate.
“Sports broadcaster Michele Tafoya will be joining my campaign as co-chairwoman! I’m excited to work with Michele & hope you’ll join us as we focus on saving Minnesota,” candidate Kendall Qualls announced Monday on social media.
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The Jan. 20 FBI raids on Feeding Our Future was just the latest escalation in a war between the state agency and two networks of nonprofits operating food giveaways to low-income children. The state Department of Education (MDE) has been battling Feeding Our Future and the related nonprofit Partners in Nutrition (aka Partners in Quality Care) in and out of court going back at least as far as 2017.
MDE oversees locally two federal government free-food programs, the Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) and the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP). Those two programs are meant to supplement the better-known school lunch program and provide meals to children at times they are not in class — after school and during summers, respectively.
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A U.S. district court judge has ruled that the libel lawsuit brought forward by former Gov. Sarah Palin (R-Alaska) against The New York Times should be thrown out.
The lawsuit was over a 2017 editorial from the Times, which Palin claimed linked her to the 2011 Arizona shooting that killed six people and wounded then-Rep. Gabby Giffords (D-Ariz.).
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Bill Gates is one of the world’s richest men, rightly recognized as a visionary who helped build a massive technology industry. He has moved into the world of philanthropy to pursue support for some notable causes. He also has a deeply troubling relationship with the Chinese regime.
No one can blame a corporate executive for being enticed by the Chinese market’s opportunities. From the earliest days of the internet, China, with approximately four times the population of the United States, has been seen as a lucrative market for the tech industry. You can bet Bill Gates saw it, too.
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Far-left Antifa radicals vandalized businesses and blocked traffic with barricades during a two-hour march down Lake Street in Minneapolis Friday night.
The march was infiltrated by independent photojournalist Rebecca Brannon, who said that Antifa-affiliated accounts had been posting about the “direct action” all week.
Brannon reports that a helicopter was circling overhead the entire time, but no police ever showed up during the two-hour occupation.
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