In the early days of Russia’s war on Ukraine, President Joe Biden boldly declared he was ready to seize “ill-begotten gains” of the region’s oligarchs.
But in the years before Moscow twice invaded Ukraine, Democrats enriched themselves politically and personally from such oligarchs and businesses in the region while empowering Vladimir Putin with energy and technology deals that still haunt America today.
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A federal judge ruled Tuesday against the Biden administration’s attempt to halt certain Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deportations.
The ruling comes in response to a joint lawsuit filed by Republican Attorneys General from multiple states, including Arizona’s Mark Brnovich, Ohio’s Dave Yost, and Montana’s Austin Knudsen, against the Biden administration over its rollbacks on some deportations of noncitizens.
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“We have two parties… One is the Evil Party and the other is the Stupid Party… Occasionally the two parties get together to do something that’s both evil and stupid. That’s called bipartisanship.”
— M. Stanton Evans
The Stupid Party strikes again.
Just one short month ago, Republican leaders and strategists were salivating over the prospect of a GOP blowout in the approaching midterms, as Joe Biden lurched from disaster to disaster. The debacle of our withdrawal from Afghanistan, raging inflation, an uncontrolled invasion at the southern border, crushing vaccine and mask mandates, and the utter failure to control COVID as promised all contributed to an apparent death spiral in the polls for Biden. With even mainstream media outlets acknowledging that the president’s polling numbers had rapidly cratered to unprecedented lows (with no bottom in sight) only one year into a new administration, it appeared that all Republicans needed to do to win big in November was to stay out of the way while the Democrats self-destructed.
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As part of the hearings for her confirmation to the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson was asked by a Tennessee Senator to define the word “woman.”
Sen. Marsha Blackburn pressed Jackson for a definition, which the judge said she could not provide. The following is the transcript of the dialogue between the pair:
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The Star News Network National Political Editor, Neil W. McCabe spoke with Larry Cirignano of The Children First Foundation about why a pro-life movement is stalled in Washington, D.C. yet seeing growth in the states.
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New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu has unveiled his redistricting plan for the state’s two congressional districts.
This comes after Sununu, a Republican, promised to veto the GOP-controlled legislature’s approved redistricting plan.
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Mandy Van Gorp was confident that her employer of 18 years, Eli Lilly and Company, would treat her fairly when she objected to its company-wide COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The pharmaceutical giant had promised to exempt employees with valid health or religious objections to the policy and she believed she had had both.
Despite presenting a doctor’s note in support of her exemption, citing an auto-immune disease, the company denied her request for a medical exemption. To add injury to the insult she felt, she tested positive for COVID-19 the day after receiving her rejection letter. She then appealed for a six-month deferral on grounds of the positive test. Lilly also denied that request. When she then raised her religious concerns, Lilly said she had missed the application deadline – a deadline that had lapsed several weeks before Lilly replied to her initial accommodation request.
The “toughest night was when we were sitting at the dinner table and my 12-year-old was sobbing, hysterically begging me to get the vaccine so I could keep my job,” recalled Van Gorp, a 42-year-old sales representative and mother of three. “I had to explain that my choice was not about money and that I felt God was leading me not to follow a mandate. It’s hard to explain that to a 12-year-old.”
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On Tuesday, another Republican governor vetoed a popular bill passed by the state legislature that would have prohibited so-called “transgender” athletes from competing on sports teams of the opposite gender.
As reported by Axios, Utah Governor Spencer Cox (R-Utah) justified his veto by saying that “rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few.”
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On Tuesday, the Oklahoma House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed a bill to ban almost all abortions in the state, a bill that would be even more restrictive than Texas’s six-week ban.
Axios reports that the Oklahoma House passed HB 4327 by a margin of 78-19. The bill would ban any and all abortions, with the sole exception of abortions that must be carried out in order to save the life of the mother. The bill would also provide incentives for private citizens to sue anyone who is suspected of providing abortions or helping people get abortions, with rewards of up to $10,000 for each abortion that a suspect has performed.
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Two Democrat incumbent members of the U.S. House are running against each other in a primary for Illinois’ 6th Congressional district, leaving an opening for a possible Republican pickup in November.
Representatives Sean Casten and Marie Newman are set to face off in the June 28 Democrat primary.
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JPMorgan Chase chief executive Jamie Dimon told President Joe Biden he needs to produce a “Marshall Plan” to increase domestic energy production, Axios reported.
Dimon met with Biden on Monday, urging him to make plans for the government to increase domestic gas and other energy sources to offset soaring prices resulting from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Axios reported. Dimon reportedly informed the president and his top economic advisors that additional domestic energy production is necessary for securing both American and European energy security.
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Proposed legislation in the Minnesota Senate would establish a searchable public database on criminal sentences, if passed and signed into law.
The chief author of SF 3356, Sen. Mark Koran of North Branch, introduced the bill on Monday. Its co-sponsors as of Tuesday afternoon include President of the Senate David Osmek, Deputy Majority Leader Mark Johnson, and Sens. Andrew Mathews and Paul Utke.
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The Minnesota Freedom Fund supplied bail for a suspect who had been in custody on a felony charge after being arrested in a stolen vehicle in Bloomington. Three days after being bailed out by the organization, the man stole a vehicle in Minneapolis and crashed it into a building while trying to flee, charges say.
The controversial nonprofit bail fund, MFF, which raised over $40 million in celebrity-fueled donations during and after the George Floyd riots in 2020, has come under fire several times since then. The organization raised millions on the premise that it would bail out any peaceful protesters arrested at the time. But instead, the organization has repeatedly bailed out offenders with violent or lengthy criminal histories, some of whom have subsequently been charged with new crimes while out on bail, including murder, sex crimes and serious assaults.
One recent repeat offender bailed out by MFF is Ismail Mohamed Hussein, 23, of Minneapolis. In addition to having ten prior convictions since 2019, including felony charges of theft and first-degree burglary of an occupied dwelling, Hussein was arrested at least four times in just 23 days in January of this year.
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A coalition of nearly 40 national pro-life leaders sent a letter to the chairs of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee Monday specifying the radical pro-abortion record of Biden Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson.
Led by the Susan B. Anthony List (SBA List), the coalition’s letter was addressed to the committee’s chairman, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), and ranking member Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) as confirmation hearings began for Jackson, who was chosen by Biden following the announcement of his commitment to nominate a black woman to the nation’s highest court.
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In an election year that many are expecting to mirror the 2010 midterm GOP U.S. House landslide, Republicans in Texas are hoping to turn Texas’ 28th Congressional District in their favor.
Redistricting has made TX-28 a little more blue, but that hasn’t stopped the NRCC from targeting the Democrat incumbent for defeat.
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Obviously, a multitude of factors are at play, but if you had to pick one man most responsible for the massive increase in crime of all sorts in American cities over the past few years, from pervasive looting to assault (sexual or otherwise) to murder, it would be billionaire investor George Soros.
Through his Open Society Foundations—described as “the world’s largest private funder of independent groups working for justice, democratic governance, and human rights”—plus various other entities, sub-entities, and cutouts, Soros has financed the political campaigns of numerous district attorneys and attorneys general across the country.
All of them were leftists, working from a principle of minimal, if any, incarceration or bail in any but the most extreme situations—and often in what most of would assume was extreme. The perpetrator, most probably, they assume, is the product of a miserable childhood, and therefore worthy of more sympathy than the victim. That many who had equally miserable childhoods still are able to function as law-abiding adults is evidently of little consequence to these DAs and AGs.
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In a letter obtained by The Star News Network, four commissioners of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights express their “urgent concerns” to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland about the radical increase in violent crime in America, and ask him to direct the Department of Justice to escalate prosecutions of violent criminals.
U.S. Civil Rights Commissioners Peter Kirsanow (R), Gail Heriot (I), J. Christian Adams (R), and Stephen Gilchrist (R), wrote to Garland Thursday, “not on behalf of the Commission as a whole,” of their concerns about the significant rise in crime “that has affected our nation over the past two years.”
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As President Joe Biden prepares to go to Europe, we must recognize that, unless things change, there are likely to be two outcomes to the Russian war on Ukraine – and both are bad for America and the rule of law.
First, the terror campaign of destroying cities and killing women and children is having a devastating effect. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, out of compassion for his people, is talking more and more about a negotiated settlement. A negotiated settlement will clearly give Vladimir Putin most of what he wants. It will be a Russian victory – an expensive Russian victory, but a Russian victory.
A negotiated settlement with Russia winning will be a disaster for the rule of law. It will be a signal to dictators everywhere that with a weak American President and timid democracies, despots can attack their neighbors with virtual impunity.
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Houston Bernard draws upon his family’s rich country and rockabilly musical roots by bringing upbeat and relatable music with powerhouse vocals. His newest single, “Hangover,” is not to be missed.
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The Star News Network National Political Editor, Neil W. McCabe spoke to Congressional candidate for GA-10, Mike Collins about why he is running, the forgotten men and women of America, and bringing back the Trump economy.
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Confirmation hearings for D.C. Circuit Court Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, Joe Biden’s first U.S. Supreme Court nominee, began Monday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. During an event in Washington, D.C. on Monday morning, activists gathered to rally on behalf of the nominee who could be the first black woman seated on the nation’s highest court.
“It’s also, for so many of us, a moment that is personal,” Fatima Goss Graves, president and CEO of the National Women’s Law Center, told the crowd. “It is personal if you have ever been the only person sitting in a room. It is personal if you have ever wondered, ‘Is that for me?’” Over the past several weeks, Graves, a graduate of Yale Law school, has given dozens of interviews in support of Jackson’s nomination.
In a January column for CNN, Graves denounced “the current homogeneity of the legal profession and judicial system” and claimed “the perspective of White men has been treated as the default” in court proceedings.
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In just the last three weeks, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has significantly altered our national energy policy landscape and dramatically shifted the political dynamics around legislative priorities and political possibilities in Congress. The roiling of global oil markets, underpinned by an already tight supply situation from the post-pandemic economic awakening, has been driven by perceived risks of supply disruption caused by the Russian invasion. Risk premiums and a formal American embargo of Russian energy have sent prices skyrocketing and revealed, once again, that we have few good short-term options when faced with energy supply challenges. While our tools are limited today, the current moment may present an important window of opportunity to develop a policy approach that reduces this vulnerability and limits our exposure next time. This renewed attention to energy security combined with a focus on fighting energy inflation has the potential to galvanize a bipartisan policy pathway that would have been unthinkable as the year began.
The broad support that materialized in Congress and the White House for a ban on Russian oil and natural gas imports earlier this month is a case in point. Remarkably, widespread congressional support for the ban occurred despite already high gasoline prices, with oil prices well over $100 a barrel and gasoline averaging more than $4.30 a gallon across the nation.
As President Biden said when announcing the ban, “Americans have rallied to support the Ukrainian people and have made it clear we will not be part of subsidizing Putin’s war… This is a step that we’re taking to inflict further pain on Putin, but there will be costs as well here in the United States.”
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Challenging COVID-19 conventional wisdom has given some scientists their first meaningful interactions with journalists — and left them wary of the fourth estate, they told Hillsdale College’s Academy for Science and Freedom conference in D.C. last week.
Catherine Stein, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Ohio’s Case Western Reserve University, anonymously criticized the state’s COVID policy and personally contacted state lawmakers to share her skepticism, particularly on mask efficacy. “What blew my mind was the fear-mongering in the media,” she said.
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Economists across the U.S. expect ongoing inflation as the growth projections for the U.S. economy have plummeted, according to a newly released survey.
The National Association for Business Economics released a survey of 234 economic experts Monday that highlights major concerns about the U.S. economy. The report found inflation ranks as a top worry for economists.
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In an election year that many are expecting to mirror the 2010 midterm GOP U.S. House landslide, Republicans in Texas are hoping to turn Texas’ 28th Congressional District in their favor.
Redistricting has made TX-28 a little more blue, but that hasn’t stopped the NRCC from targeting the Democrat incumbent for defeat.
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Catholic Charities West Michigan will remain open after state officials agreed under court order to pay the nonprofit’s attorney’s fees and acknowledged that taking actions against the charity for its beliefs would violate the First Amendment.
Catholic Charities prioritizes placing children up for adoption or in foster care with a married mother and father. The group filed a lawsuit with the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) after Michigan officials gave the nonprofit the ultimatum to either close its adoption and foster care ministry or change its policy prioritizing a married mother and father to receive a child.
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The New York City Department of Education (DOE) is bracing for a potential massive loss in its budget after over 120,000 students and families have left the city’s public school system over the last five years.
The New York Post reports that the city’s Chancellor of Schools David Banks addressed the matter before the City Council’s Education Committee on Monday, warning that the decline in enrollment could negatively impact the system’s budget plans for the coming years.
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On Monday, the Republican governor of Indiana vetoed a bill that would ban so-called “transgenders” from competing in sports for the opposite gender.
As reported by ABC News, Governor Eric Holcomb (R-Ind.) vetoed the bill, HEA 1041, after it passed through both houses of the state legislature, despite previously voicing his support for the same bill last month. In his veto, Holcomb claimed that the bill “falls short” of implementing a policy that would be consistent at the statewide level, and thus would not be able to provide “fairness in K-12 sports.”
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The number of Americans who died due to alcohol-related causes skyrocketed in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the results of a new study.
Alcohol-related deaths rose roughly 25% from 2019 to 2020, according to a March 18 study conducted by researchers at the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism and published in The Journal of the American Medical Association.
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FEC records show that Republican Esther Joy King has a towering financial advantage over the entire field for Illinois’ Seventeenth Congressional district.
Democrat incumbent U.S. Representative Cheri Bustos has announced her retirement, making IL-17 an open seat race.
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Mark Lindquist, a Democrat running to represent MN-07 in the U.S. House of Representatives, announced on Sunday that he is suspending his campaign for Congress to travel to Ukraine to offer assistance.
According to a statement from the former candidate, he will begin by conducting humanitarian missions to help refugees. However, if allowed, Lindquist did not rule out taking up arms against Russia.
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First, COVID-19 disrupted classes in 2020, and now it’s teachers keeping kids out of class in 2022.
More than 29,000 Minneapolis students couldn’t attend class Monday as a teachers’ union strike entered its 10th school day.
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Senior Education Fellow at the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) Kerry McDonald told The Star News Network the time is ripe in America for greater innovation and entrepreneurship in providing new education models for parents exiting the government school system.
Many parents got an up-close look at what their children are learning in public schools for the first time during the pandemic school closures and subsequent remote learning, leading them to consider education alternatives.
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The biggest decision the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) is likely to make this year will be on mandated disclosure of information related to climate change and corporate environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals. The Commission has been working on the issue since early last year, and a new proposed rule is now scheduled to be released on March 21st. The contents of that rule will likely determine the future direction of “responsible” investing in the United States.
In March of last year, then-Acting Chair Allison Herren Lee issued a request for information on the matter, consisting of 15 questions and described as a response to the “demand for climate change information and questions about whether current disclosures adequately inform investors.” The questions covered a wide range of topics, from how to measure greenhouse gas emissions to how climate disclosures “would complement a broader ESG disclosure standard.”
When the SEC first issued guidance on climate change-related disclosures for public companies in 2010, the standards were fairly general and advisory, but the questions from last year’s request-for-information suggests that the agency’s leadership is considering a more aggressive and prescriptive framework.
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For the last five years, the Left—defined as the fusion of the mainstream media, Silicon Valley, the radical new Democratic Party, and the vestigial Hillary Clinton machine—has crafted all sorts of conspiracies to destroy their perceived conservative enemies.
Their method has focused on one major projection: alleging conspiracy on the part of others, which is a kind of confirmation of their own conspiracies to destroy their opponents in general, and Donald Trump in particular.
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Redistricting has caused a Kansas swing U.S. House district to tilt in partisan makeup towards the GOP.
Kansas’ Third Congressional district, long-considered a swing district, went from a D+4 partisan rating prior to redistricting to a R+3 according to Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight ratings system.
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Deep blue Washington State contains a U.S. House district that is being targeted for Republican pickup.
The National Republican Congressional Committee (NRCC) has announced that it is targeting Washington’s 8th Congressional District, which is currently represented by Democrat incumbent U.S. Representative Kim Schrier.
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Monday morning on ‘The Answer with Bob Frantz,’ host Frantz spoke with United States Congressman (R-OH) Jim Jordan about Hunter Biden’s laptop, Big Tech censorship, mainstream media, Ukraine, and Joe Biden’s continuing troubles.
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Federal prosecutors last week scored a big victory after a Washington, D.C., jury took less than three hours to find Guy Reffitt, the first January 6 defendant to stand trial, guilty on all counts.
The Justice Department’s winning streak might be short-lived, however. Prosecutors will have a tougher task with the trial starting Monday for Couy Griffin, the “Cowboys for Trump” leader arrested for his minor and nonviolent involvement in the Capitol protest on January 6.
Griffin was the subject of my very first article over a year ago on the Justice Department’s abusive prosecution of January 6 protesters in which, coincidentally, I asked the rhetorical question, “Where is the outrage over America’s political prisoners?” as official Washington was in a tizzy over Russian President Vladimir Putin’s imprisonment of his country’s star dissident.
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Republicans are stressing the need to closely review Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s record as the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin hearings on Monday for the first black woman nominated to the Supreme Court.
The GOP is already facing accusations of racism from outlets such as the Daily Kos, Slate and Vanity Fair for questioning whether Jackson should be confirmed.
Jackson has been criticized for her vehement defense of terrorism suspects as a public defender. She has also faced concerns over a paper she wrote in the 1990s criticizing “excessiveness” in punishments for sex offenders.
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The Biden administration backtracked on reports that it is resuming the federal oil and gas leasing program in light of a recent appeals court decision.
On Friday, Reuters reported that the Department of the Interior (DOI), the agency tasked with overseeing the leasing program, was planning to resume the previously-delayed program. But a DOI spokesperson pushed back on the report, saying it overstated the administration’s position that it would begin planning the next steps, not that it had already resumed the program.
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The Georgia Elections Board has approved a subpoena to secure evidence and testimony in an ongoing investigation into whether third-party liberal activists illegally gathered thousands of absentee ballots in the 2020 general election and a subsequent runoff that determined Democrat control of the U.S. Senate.
The vote was a major win for Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, who announced the investigation into alleged ballot harvesting in January and was seeking the subpoena authority to assist the probe.
The subpoena power will allow Raffensperger’s team to secure evidence about a whistleblower who alleged to an election integrity group that he participated in a large operation to gather ballots in which activists were paid $10 for each ballot they delivered.
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A contributing writer for ESPN recently argued in favor of diversity hiring for NCAA coaches but told Campus Reform that the standard should not apply for recruited athletes.
Richard Lapchick, who is a former professor of sports business management at the University of Central Florida, wrote on ESPN.com that the NCAA needs to increase gender and racial representation among coaches and other senior staff on athletics teams.
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Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has thrown the global energy market into a state of turmoil, forcing the U.S. and Europe to look for substitutes for Russian oil and gas. In that process, the Biden administration has turned to Iran as a potential supplier — just two months after effectively killing an Israeli pipeline project that would have supplied natural gas to Europe.
The administration’s decision to engage Iran, a decades-long adversary of the U.S., about supplying energy while opposing a close ally’s energy project is feeding concerns among experts that he rewards foes and punishes friends in the Middle East.
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Following student pushback against a Young Democratic Socialists of America (YDSA) flyer found at the University of California, San Diego, Campus Reform took a deep dive into what other progressive agendas the national student chapters supported.
In doing so, Campus Reform found that YDSA chapters across the country are demanding free tuition and debt forgiveness, advocating for the recognition of student employee unions, and pressing to take “community control” of police departments.
Additionally, these groups have recently hosted rallies, meetings, and book discussions on topics such as abortion, minimum wage, marijuana decriminalization, and Palestine.
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The Republican National Committee (RNC) launched a voter registration initiative at gas stations across the country, drawing attention to rising gas prices under President Joe Biden’s leadership.
“We are registering voters across the country who are tired of Biden’s Gas Hike!” the RNC said Monday on Twitter. “Coming to a gas station near you!”
The effort began with a Saturday event in Arizona, according to The Hill. “Arizonans are frustrated with paying the record-high gas prices we’ve seen recently, this is an issue that affects almost every single Arizonan,” said the communications director for Arizona’s RNC, Ben Petersen, according to The Hill.
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An activist group dedicated to targeting race-based “woke” policies in major American companies has set its sights on the credit card company American Express, with an ad blitz calling out the company’s recent emphasis on race-based hiring.
As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, the group Color Us United announced on Monday that it would be launching an ad campaign against American Express, spending up to $500,000 on the public relations blitz calling out the company’s “harmful woke policies,” and branding the company as “Un-American Express.”
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As Ukraine coverage blankets the news nonstop, I keep asking myself: are we really so gullible as to be hoodwinked by an administration and political class covering for their massive failures at home and abroad by mustering up a frenzy of dangerously jingoistic militarism? Not only have they escalated the situation and brought us to the brink of World War III but they have also imposed—and will continue to impose—senseless costs on an American economy already grinding to a halt.
I am not suggesting that any of Joe Biden’s major missteps, whether now or in the past, in any way excuse Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Ukraine invasion, which is in violation of international law and being conducted with reckless indifference to—indeed, the direct intent to inflict—civilian casualties. Although there is no question (details below) that Biden majorly provoked Putin, nothing Biden did stripped Putin of his agency in doing what he is now doing, much less did it demand he do it in the manner in which he is doing it.
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Newly introduced legislation would require think tanks and nonprofits to reveal whether they have significant funding from governments and political groups in Russia and China.
U.S. Rep. Lance Gooden, R-Texas, introduced the “Think Tank and Nonprofit Foreign Influence Disclosure Act” Thursday, which would require nonprofits and think tanks to disclose foreign donations over $50,000. The bill would require the U.S. Treasury Department to create a “publicly available in a searchable database information relating to such gifts and contributions received from foreign governments and political parties…”
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A new poll showed San Francisco voters overwhelmingly back the recall of District Attorney Chesa Boudin.
Roughly 68% of likely primary voters said they would vote to recall Boudin, including 64% of registered Democrats, according to a poll conducted by EMC Research. Nearly three out of four voters had an unfavorable opinion of Boudin, and 61% agreed he was “responsible for rising crime rates in San Francisco, especially burglaries and thefts.”
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