Democrats currently have the lead in redistricting efforts with four states still working on new maps.
Forty states, 46 if the states that have one congressional district are included, have finished the process of drawing new maps for U.S. House of Representatives districts. Only Florida, Missouri, Louisiana, and New Hampshire have yet to finish their redistricting process.
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The most important duty of government is to provide for the security of its citizens. Providing that security is a complex enterprise. Its most obvious feature is military power: providing the surface naval, air, and space forces necessary to protect national interests. Of course, military power depends on economic power. In today’s security environment, that means maintaining the capability to provide for both the prosperity of American citizens as well the high tech weaponry necessary for modern warfare.
While the world’s attention is focused on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, we need to keep in mind that the People’s Republic of China is America’s foremost adversary. While the United States dominated the “third industrial revolution” based on computation and communications, China seeks to lead the “fourth industrial revolution” based on metadata and artificial intelligence. China’s grand strategy is focused on achieving that goal. For example, Beijing has employed its Belt and Road Initiative in combination with digital technology in order to integrate billions of people into China’s economic sphere.
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Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland admitted during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that there are biological research facilities in Ukraine that are under the control of the United States government.
In response to a question from Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.), Nuland said that any chemical or biological weapons release in Ukraine, would be the fault of the Russian invaders.
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Bipartisan members of the House Judiciary Committee sent a letter to the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Wednesday requesting an investigation into Amazon for alleged criminal obstruction of the committee’s probe into the tech giant.
The letter, sent to Attorney General Merrick Garland, alleged Amazon misled committee members and engaged in “potentially criminal conduct” during a 15-month investigation into competition in digital markets. The letter was signed by House Judiciary Committee Chair Democratic New York Rep. Jerry Nadler, Democratic Rhode Island Rep. David Cicilline, Republican Colorado Rep. Ken Buck, Democratic Washington Rep. Pramila Jayapal and Republican Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz.
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Job openings in the U.S. remained near their record high while the number of Americans who quit their jobs remained relatively unchanged.
The U.S saw 11.3 million job openings in January, down slightly from December’s revised 11.4 million, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Data provided by FactSet estimated job openings would dip to 10.9 million, according to CNBC.
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The governments of both Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) allegedly refused to answer phone calls from Joe Biden when he attempted to start up negotiations on the purchase of oil from the two energy-rich nations.
According to the New York Post, an anonymous Biden Administration official said that Biden’s attempts to reach Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the UAE’s Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed al Nahyan were deliberately ignored by both leaders.
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A national security correspondent for The New York Times said the media’s coverage of the Capitol Riot was “overblown” and that the events of Jan. 6, 2021 were “no big deal,” according to undercover video released Tuesday by Project Veritas.
NYT correspondent Matthew Rosenberg and his colleagues have described the reported presence of FBI plants among the rioters outside of the U.S. Capitol a year earlier as a “reimagining” of the “attack.” But in the Project Veritas video, which appears to have been recorded without his knowledge, Rosenberg paints a different picture and claims that “there were a ton of FBI informants amongst the people who attacked the capitol.”
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Des Moines this week suffered its first fatal school shooting – reigniting a controversy in the city after the district removed police officers from its schools last year.
Police say a group of teenagers in vehicles outside Des Moines’ East High School fired multiple rounds onto school property on Monday, killing a 15-year-old boy and critically wounding two female students who were bystanders. Six teenagers, some of them current Des Moines students, have been charged with first-degree murder.
The deadly drive-by shooting now hovers over the decision by Des Moines officials, along with about 30 districts across the country, to exile cops from schools. These moves were part of the “defund the police” movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. It’s a movement now reeling in the face of violent crime surging nationwide, punctuated by President Biden’s State of the Union vow last week to “fund the police.”
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Wisconsin gubernatorial candidate Dr. Scott Jensen on Tuesday announced former NFL player Matt Birk will run as Lieutenant Governor on his ticket.
Birk, who was born and raised in St. Paul, played multiple seasons for the Minnesota Vikings and was selected to the NFL Pro Bowl six different times.
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On Friday, a federal judge in Texas ordered the Biden Administration to stop its mass releasing of illegal alien minors into the country after they come across the southern border.
Breitbart reports that the ruling came from Judge Mark Pittman of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, who was appointed by President Donald Trump in 2019. Pittman’s order forbids the Biden Administration from releasing any more illegals by declaring them exempt from Title 42, an immigration policy first enacted by President Trump which allowed immigration authorities to immediately deport illegals after apprehending them. The policy was one of several strict immigration measures implemented shortly after the coronavirus outbreak, citing health concerns with regards to the high number of unhealthy people crossing the border and potentially spreading the disease even further.
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A former Title X family planning instructor who was trained by Planned Parenthood and then taught at sex ed conferences for teens told The Star News Network parents who are outraged to hear about sexualized curricula in schools should plan an organized grassroots effort that involves sound research and documentation.
In an extensive interview with The Star News Network, Monica Cline stressed parents with concerns about sexualized books available to their children in school should join with other like-minded parents and approach the situation with logic and sufficient research to make sound arguments to school boards.
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After nearly two weeks, the conflict between Russia and Ukraine continues with the Russian military steadily gaining ground and methodically taking control of key assets such as highways, bridges, airports, and power plants. As the Russians advance, they are also encircling and cutting off the main concentrations of the Ukrainian military. If those encirclements are completed, it could get ugly.
It’s into that cauldron that U.S. Representative Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) would plunge the United States. On “Face the Nation” last week Cheney was nothing short of bellicose calling for escalation across the board.
Cheney wants Biden to expand already sweeping sanctions and seize the Russian Central Bank’s foreign reserves. Weaponizing the dollar and the banking system in this way, she apparently fails to realize, carries with it risks to dollar-supremacy and the global dominance of American financial institutions. As other nations watch America use the dollar and important elements of the international banking infrastructure such as the SWIFT system as weapons, they will realize their own vulnerability and take steps to protect themselves from U.S.-dominated financial systems. China already offers alternatives and Biden’s actions are the best advertising for those systems they could ask for.
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Inspired by the traditional as well as the unconventional, The Wooks have established a distinctive sound through original songwriting, exceptional musicianship, and outside influences ranging from jam bands to Southern rock.
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Jury selection begins in a Grand Rapids courtroom Tuesday morning in the federal trial of four men accused of conspiring to kidnap Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer in 2020.
The long-awaited trial centers on the question of whether a loose band of misfits angry at pandemic lockdowns hatched a sinister plot to abduct Whitmer from her vacation cottage and possibly kill her—or if the foiled caper was yet another successful attempt by the Federal Bureau of Investigation to interfere in a election and sabotage Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.
Timing of the trial could not be worse for the scandal-plagued agency quickly losing the trust of the American people. Top FBI officials refuse to account for its role in the events of January 6, 2021, raising concerns even among some in Congress that FBI assets acted improperly before and during that day. The first trials of January 6 defendants start this month but the Justice Department has yet to make hundreds of thousands of FBI files available to defense attorneys.
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Just one year after refusing to negotiate with Venezuelan “dictator” Nicolas Maduro, President Biden appears to have changed course.
Democrats and Republicans have put pressure on Biden to cut off Russian oil imports over Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s escalating invasion of Ukraine. Russia and Venezuela are partners in several areas including oil. Putin and Maduro recently discussed increasing a “strategic partnership,” according to Reuters.
Reports of the negotiations preceded an expected announcement Tuesday morning by President Biden that the U.S. will ban oil imports from Russia.
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More than two million refugees have fled Ukraine since Russia invaded the country, according to data from the United Nations refugee agency released Monday.
The agency said as many as four million people might leave Ukraine as a result of the crisis, with more than one million fleeing in the first week of the attack.
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The White House has repeatedly suggested the private sector can boost oil supply amid surging gas prices, but industry groups have countered that the administration has placed hurdles for new drilling.
“There are 9,000 unused, approved drilling permits,” White House press secretary Jen Psaki told reporters Monday. “So I would suggest you ask the oil companies why they’re not using those if there’s a desire to drill more.”
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The U.S. trade deficit continued to grow in January as the import-export gap widened to a record high, The Wall Street Journal reported.
The trade deficit reached $89.7 billion in January, up $7.7 billion from December 2021’s $82 billion figure, the Census Bureau announced Tuesday. Economists surveyed by the WSJ predicted a January trade deficit figure of just $87.2 billion.
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Joe Biden is set to sign an executive order that will begin the process of regulating the trading of cryptocurrency, as crypto becomes a viable alternative for Russians seeking to avoid the impact of economic sanctions.
According to ABC News, at least two anonymous Biden Administration officials said that the order will be issued this week, and has allegedly been in the planning stage since before the Russian invasion of Ukraine in late February. The order will outline the various steps that government agencies, including the Treasury Department, are to take to begin the process of imposing regulations on the buying and selling of digital currencies.
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Minneapolis teachers are officially on strike, resulting in canceled classes for more than 28,000 students.
The Minneapolis Federation of Teachers announced the strike Monday evening after failing to reach a contract agreement with district leaders. The union voted to authorize the strike in late February, which was followed by a 10-day cooling-off period.
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President Joe Biden announced a ban on the importation of Russian oil, coal and gas as a response to the nation’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine just as gas prices in the U.S. reached a record high Tuesday.
Biden said Tuesday that the decision was intended to “inflict further pain” on Russian President Vladimir Putin and defund his war in Ukraine. He also acknowledged it would further raise the price of gasoline for Americans.
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Minnesota taxpayers will pay $157,000 in fiscal year 2023 from its special revenue fund to the Board of Nursing to join the Nurse Licensure Compact if SF 2302 becomes law.
The base of the appropriation is $6,000 in fiscal year 2024 and $6,000 in fiscal year 2025, according to the bill, which the Senate passed in a 35-32 vote Monday. A motion to re-refer the bill to the Civil Law and Data Practices Policy committee was struck down in a 31-36 vote.
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As Joe Biden’s approval numbers sink further into the sewer, the only thing he’s building back better is 1970s-style inflation. Up until Biden, most polls usually named Jimmy Carter as one of the weakest and most inept presidents we’ve ever had. That was until Biden showed up and said, “Hold my beer!” Which you have to know has brought so much joy to Carter. Heck, he probably has a set of “Let’s go Brandon!” PJs that he wears every night as he thanks God for the gift of Biden.
Fact is, this country is now being “led” by a man who absolutely will go down as one of the worst presidents in our history. In just over a year, Biden has brought inflation roaring back to levels not seen in 40 years, has destroyed our southern border as millions of illegal aliens, along with Chinese fentanyl, flood the country, and now we have been involved in two major international debacles with Afghanistan and Ukraine. The list could go on, but perhaps that’s too depressing.
Rest assured, however, it’s not going to get better. Biden is like the anti-Midas, turning everything he touches into crap.
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It took Russia’s naked aggression against Ukraine for Germany to admit that Donald Trump was right all along: Europe needs to stop relying on U.S. subsidies and spend more on its own defense.
In a stunning policy reversal, Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that Germany would do what Trump was long urging and commit at least two percent of GDP to defense spending.
That the United States has been subsidizing Europe’s defense is well known, thanks mainly to Trump’s harping on it. Another thing Trump thundered about, correctly, is that the United States also subsidizes Europe’s socialized healthcare. Pharmaceutical companies rely upon sky-high U.S. drug prices to render economically viable their ability to sell drugs in other countries. The United States thereby subsidizes socialized healthcare in the rest of the world, especially in the wealthiest European countries.
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The minimum wage is a sort of litmus test. And not only for economists. For social justice advocates, too.
Forget, for a moment, the economics of it. In essence, minimum wage legislation imposes compulsory unemployment on the poor, the unskilled, racial minorities, the young, the physically and even more so the mentally handicapped—the very people all men of good will most want to help. Before the advent of this law, the unemployment rate for white middle-aged people and black teens was just about the same. Now, the latter are unemployed at quadruple the rate of the former.
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The stock market dropped during early trading Monday after the U.S. benchmark oil index briefly touched its highest level since the Great Recession.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, an index measuring 30 major U.S. corporations, dropped 0.94% as of early Monday. The S&P index, which measures 500 of the largest publicly-traded companies, fell more than 0.93% while the NASDAQ, an index largely comprised of technology firms, declined 0.98%.
Late Sunday, the benchmark West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures hit more than $130 per barrel for the first time since July 2008. The index remained high on Monday, hovering above $118 per barrel, up more than 3%.
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U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said that NATO member countries have a “green light” to send fighter jets as military aid to Ukraine.
The United States is reportedly in talks with Poland to send U.S. planes to replace any Soviet-era fighter jets that Warsaw sends to Ukraine, according to The Wall Street Journal.
Sending planes to Ukraine “gets a green light,” Blinken told CBS News on Sunday.
“In fact, we’re talking with our Polish friends right now about what we might be able to do to backfill their needs, if, in fact, they choose to provide these fighter jets to the Ukrainians,” he said. “What can we do? How can we help to make sure that they get something to backfill the planes that they’re handing over to the Ukrainians? We’re in very active discussions with them about that.”
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Congress is demanding answers from a multinational British investment bank after American citizens’ accounts were frozen for running afoul of the Chinese Communist Party during the Hong Kong protests.
In a letter from the Congressional-Executive Commission on China (CECC) to HSBC Group Chief Executive Noel Quinn, Congress raised “questions and concerns” regarding “restrictions placed on the accounts of American citizens and the freezing of accounts of Hong Kong activists, independent media, and civic groups,” asking the second largest bank in Europe to “justify” why such actions were taken and if “actions were requested by Hong Kong authorities or officials from the People’s Republic of China” in the wake of the June 2020 National Security Law.
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It was an allegation that dogged Donald Trump for three years: a claim the Republican nominee-turned-president had a secret backdoor communications channel with the Kremlin. Repeated endlessly by the liberal media, the allegation was never true.
Now, Special Counsel John Durham is raising the tantalizing specter the FBI might never have investigated the claim during the height of the 2016 presidential election if the man who brought it to the bureau — Hillary Clinton campaign lawyer Michael Sussmann — had told the truth about its origins.
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The Texas Lieutenant Governor has stated his priority to eliminate tenure in an attempt to stop Critical Race Theory (CRT) from “poisoning the minds of the next generation.”
During a Feb. 18 press conference, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick argued that academia has been infiltrated by “tenured, leftist professors” and called for additional oversight methods to crack down on the controversial curriculum.
Patrick defined CRT as “an offshoot of critical legal studies, which is an offshoot of a socialist program (which says) that everything that happened in life is based on racism.”
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A public community college in California has funneled just under $200,000 to undocumented student programs, documents obtained by Campus Reform show.
The California Campus Catalyst Fund is a “grantmaking initiative” for undocumented students and their families attending California state schools such as Bakersfield College, a community college with over 2,000 undocumented students in attendance.
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Sometimes we need time to pass and distance to extend to gain fuller perspective on what we did not see contemporaneously from too close. Indeed, G-d tells Moses that no person can see His face (which I teach as meaning an up-close encounter) and live, but people can see the back of G-d’s head (which I teach as meaning a more distant previous encounter, growing ever more distant). See Exodus 33:18-23.
In their October 22, 2012, debate, Obama mocked GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney for expressing concern about Russia and Vladimir Putin:
Gov. Romney, I’m glad that you recognize that al Qaeda is a threat because a few months ago when you were asked what’s the biggest geopolitical threat facing America, you said Russia. The 1980s are now calling to ask for their foreign policy back because the Cold War’s been over for 20 years.
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A Russian prisoner of war claimed Moscow lied to soldiers before sending them to invade Ukraine.
Lieutenant Colonel Astakhov Dmitry Mikhailovich said soldiers were told Ukraine was “dominated by a fascist regime” and that “nationalists and Nazis had seized power,” according to a translation by the New York Post. He made the accusations during a media conference Thursday alongside two other captured Russian soldiers.
He explained that when he entered Ukraine and saw his favorite boxers, Ukrainians Oleksandr Usyk and Vasiliy Lomachenko, join the resistance, his doubts about the reasons for the invasion were amplified, the NYP reported.
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Researchers are churning out biased studies promoting medical gender transitions for children, often supported by pharmaceutical companies and activist organizations, and the media frequently promotes the conclusions uncritically.
A March 2021 National Institute for Health and Care Excellence comprehensive review of nine studies failed to find evidence that hormonal therapy and puberty blockers were helpful. The review pointed out common flaws in transgender treatment research, such as confounding variables and bias resulting from observational studies that lack control groups.
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Republicans in the Minnesota Senate continue to push their proposal to cut taxes in the state, pointing to the $9 billion surplus the state has amassed.
However, the forecast warned that “inflation and geopolitical conflict pose risk to the budget and economic outlook.”
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Minnesota State University Mankato announced Thursday it will establish a rural behavioral center this fall to increase access to behavioral health care for residents in outstate Minnesota, including residents of reservations.
The Minnesota Department of Health’s 2021 Rural Health Care in Minnesota Chartbook indicated 80% of the North Star State’s counties are mental health professional shortage areas.
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Two weeks ago, I provided a short-term prognosis for the Democratic Party. Assisted by the helpful Washington Times story, “Far Left Rejects Fears They Are Denting Democrats’ Midterm Hopes,” it seems clear the party’s various ideological factions in the short run have “little choice but to keep their progressive agenda, change their messaging, and hope to cut their losses.” I also noted how “the long-run is where things get really dicey for Democrats. . . .”
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The Star News Network and Stephen K. Bannon’s War Room Monday announced a strategic partnership to cover state, city and county news in battleground states ahead of the 2022 midterm elections.
“Our strategic partnership with The Star News Network will enable us to feature stories that highlight the hyper local nature of the precinct strategy, moms taking over school boards, and American patriots becoming election officials. The idea that everyday supporters of MAGA can become an increasingly powerful force within the Republican Party by engaging in the process of selecting committeemen has become a national movement,” Bannon said of the partnership.
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The best way to understand the current extraordinarily dangerous tragedy in Ukraine is to imagine a fight between a bear, a lion, and a bunny rabbit.
The bear of course is Russia, as President Ronald Reagan brilliantly evoked in his 1984 re-election commercial “The Bear.” As the narrator said:
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Going through Checkpoint Charlie into gloomy and dark, dank East Berlin was always frightening. The Wall itself was ominous, the guards were the fiercest looking on the planet, and the barbed wire and landmines were right there for everyone to see. All of us have seen jaw-dropping spy movies about the infamous Friedrichstrasse and what happened on the other side of it. They were commies, after all.
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The Internal Revenue Service is hiring 10,000 employees as part of an attempt to address a backlog of nearly 24 million tax returns, most of which are outstanding from the 2020 tax season.
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Space is definitely the high ground when it comes to many military, scientific and economic activities. As the world becomes more information-intensive, the ability to move data rapidly, reliably, and cheaply will be of enormous advantage. Governments, private companies, and scientific organizations are rushing to build large satellite constellations to enhance surveillance of the Earth, explore space, and improve the movement of data. Nations able to deploy robust space-based laser communications systems will reap military, scientific and commercial benefits.
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A joint federal and local law enforcement operation in Portland, Oregon, recently led to the largest single seizure of fentanyl in the state’s history, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
The March 1 seizure included around 150,000 counterfeit prescription pills containing fentanyl and 20 pounds of suspected bulk fentanyl, the DOJ said in a press release. The contraband reportedly had an estimated street value of around $4 million.
The drugs were confiscated as a result of the arrest of four drug traffickers, the DOJ said. The ringleader of the group, Ufrano Orozco Munoz, 27, was allegedly involved in a conspiracy to traffic fentanyl from Mexico and other areas for distribution and sale in Oregon.
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On Thursday, Iowa Governor Kim Reynolds (R-Iowa) signed a bill that will completely ban so-called “transgender” individuals from competing in girls’ and women’s sports, forcing them to remain with the teams of their actual biological gender.
The Hill reports that the bill, House File 2416, had previously passed the Iowa State House in February and was passed by the State Senate on Wednesday. Both chambers are controlled by Republican majorities.
The new law declares that “only female students, based on their sex, may participate in any team, sport, or athletic event designated as being for females, women, or girls.” The bill clearly defines “sex” as the “biological sex” listed on the individual’s birth certificate, and encompasses sports teams at all levels of school, community college, and college.
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A school district’s “Racial Equity Committee” has prevented members of the public from attending its previously public meetings for the first time since the governing body was created in 2016, according to reports.
A disabled Fort Worth, Texas, resident who tried to attend a Fort Worth Independent School District (FWISD) “Racial Equity Committee” (REC) meeting on Thursday was told he had to pull his vehicle “off of the district property” after trying to park in the parking lot of the school hosting the meeting.
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Until very recently, NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci was a fixture on cable news, but all of a sudden, he’s all but disappeared from public view.
This has not gone unnoticed on social media.
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Russell Brand sounds like Joe Rogan these days, or even Tucker Carlson.
The British comic came to fame stateside as the scene-stealing rocker in 2008’s “Forgetting Sarah Marshall.” Brand embraced a quasi-pundit status in the process, extolling socialism and smiting the West in books, documentaries and podcasts.
These days, his booming YouTube channel finds him questioning COVID-19 narratives, eviscerating the mainstream media and warning his 5 million-plus flock to question what they’re told. Always.
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Taxpayers could face a costly and lengthy path to justice as federal prosecutors work to convict one of the state’s most powerful politicians on corruption charges.
Prosecutors alleged in a 22-count indictment last week that former Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan, D-Chicago, used his elected office and political operations as part of a years-long criminal enterprise for personal gain. In addition to the criminal charges, the indictment also seeks the forfeiture of $2.8 million in alleged illegal profits from Madigan and his confidante, former state lawmaker and ComEd lobbyist Michael McClain. If convicted of the most serious charge, Madigan could face up to 20 years in prison.
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U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers in El Paso, Texas, in the last two weeks have intercepted multiple American women carrying fentanyl concealed in their private areas.
“It is tragic that people are willing to put themselves in these dangerous situations,” CBP El Paso Director of Field Operations Hector A. Mancha said in a statement. “This synthetic opioid is so powerful that if a package were to rupture inside the body, the consequences could be life threatening.”
On Feb. 24 a 31-year-old woman, who is a U.S. citizen, was carrying .394 pounds of fentanyl that she removed from her inside private parts after a pat down, where CBP officers at the Port of Ysleta felt something foreign in her private area during a secondary search, according to CBP.
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In light of the West’s united front against Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine, China will likely be forced to reexamine its plans for making Taiwan a part of the communist country, experts on the region told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“I think that the military planners in Beijing, as well as politicians in Beijing, have to be very concerned at a deeper level about their assumptions and plans regarding Taiwan,” David Sacks, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, told the DCNF. “The democratic world has really come together behind this and … the narrative would be very similar with a Chinese attack.”
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