Month: March 2023

Trump Prosecutors Cross Perilous Rubicon, Now Face Test over Credibility, Consistency and Clock

Just the News

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg thrust America into uncharted political and legal waters when he secured a grand jury indictment against Donald Trump. Soon his team will face withering scrutiny that will test three crucial elements of his case: the credibility of his witnesses, the clock known as the statute of limitations and the consistency of his application of fraud law. The latter, which has received little media scrutiny, may prove prosecutors’ most Herculean challenge as the courts for both New York and the nation have a very clear and high-bar definition of what constitutes the act of defrauding, something that is assumed to be a central element of the hush money scandal.

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Minister Rips Biden Administration for Refusal to Condemn Nashville Shooting as ‘Hate Crime’ Against Christians

Susan Berry, PhD

A Presbyterian minister condemned the Biden administration’s refusal to denounce the Nashville school shooting as a “religious hate crime against Christians.” Rev. Patrick Mahoney, director of the Washington, D.C.-based Christian Defense Coalition, said in a statement Thursday that President Joe Biden and his administration’s failure to declare the shooting at the Covenant Christian school a hate crime against Christians “is deeply troubling and concerning.”

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Caravan of More than 1,000 Migrants Crosses into El Paso Illegally as Chaos Erupts in Mexico

Minnesota Sun Staff

A caravan of more than 1,000 migrants crossed illegally into El Paso, Texas, Wednesday as chaos erupted in recent days on the Mexican side in Juarez.

Agents apprehended the group, which was mostly comprised of Venezuelans, Wednesday, El Paso Border Patrol Chief Anthony Good said late Thursday. The incident follows chaos in Juarez, where nearly 40 migrants died Monday in a shelter fire.

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Commentary: Dethroning King Dollar

Minnesota Sun Staff

Joe Biden is dethroning King Dollar in real time. The US dollar’s financial dominance is under siege from a uniquely bad combination of foreign and domestic policies, and Americans should be deeply concerned by the fallout if the dollar loses its 80-year reign as the world’s reserve currency.

In just the past weeks, China conducted the first major LNG sale in renminbi instead of dollars, struck a major deal with Brazil to conduct trade in their own currencies, and just announced the sale of 65,000 tons of LNG to France denominated in yuan. This dovetails with the Biden administration’s inflationary policies and ham-handed sanctions on Russia that accelerated foreigners’ flight from the dollar at the very moment the world doubts if the dollar remains a safe and reliable store of value.

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Connecticut Archdiocese of Hartford Investigates Possible Eucharistic Miracle

Susan Berry, PhD

The Catholic Archdiocese of Hartford, Connecticut, issued a statement Tuesday about its ongoing investigation into a possible Eucharistic miracle that was reported at St. Thomas Church in Thomaston earlier in March.

Rev. Joseph Crowley, pastor of St. Thomas, announced on March 5 after the distribution of Holy Communion that a lay eucharistic minister had witnessed a possible miracle when the vessel holding the hosts showed more hosts had appeared.

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Commentary: The Post-Normal World After COVID

Minnesota Sun Staff

Like most polls, Gallup polls are usually paid advertisements for whomever commissions them and therefore deserving of as little attention. However, the indefatigable Sharyl Attkisson recently reported on the results of one such survey and that did draw my attention. Evidently, 47 percent of Americans say life will never go back to pre-pandemic normal. I was somewhat stunned! How could 53 percent be thinking we could go back? 

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Border Authorities Detail Smuggling Routes, Warn of Greater Surge in Chinese Illegally Crossing Into US

Minnesota Sun Staff

Border authorities in the U.S. are expecting a further increase in the number of Chinese migrants crossing illegally at the southern border, and have identified key ways they are entering the country, according to an internal U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) document exclusively obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The document, which was circulated via an internal email to CBP personnel, warns of more Chinese nationals entering the U.S. via the southern border due to a broader message from smugglers about routes into the country. The document details key smuggling routes, and notes that the Chinese nationals are entering in higher numbers due to religious persecution against the Christian faith.

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Kirk Cameron Welcomes Critics at His Library Events as ‘Opportunity’ to Change Their Mind

Just the News

Actor and author Kirk Cameron told Just the News that he welcomes his critics at the library events he’s holding for his national book tour as an “opportunity” to potentially change their mind.

“I hope that they all come to the events,” Cameron said following his “Brave Story Hour” book tour event at the Cleveland Park Library in Washington D.C. on Wednesday. “I will give you the red carpet treatment because we’re here not to cancel people, we’re here to love people. I don’t see people who oppose love, joy, peace, patience and kindness as enemies so much as an opportunity to maybe hear something that could change your mind.

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Commentary: The Energy Transition Is a Delusion Indeed

RealClearWire

The “energy transition” continues to receive thunderous applause from all the usual Beltway suspects, an exercise in groupthink fantasy amazing to behold. For those with actual lives to live and thus uninterested in silliness: The “energy transition” is a massive shift, wholly artificial and politicized, from conventional energy inexpensive (Table 1b and here), reliable, and very clean given the proper policy environment, toward such unconventional energy technologies as wind and solar power. They are expensive, unreliable, and deeply problematic environmentally in terms of toxic metal pollution, wildlife destruction, land use massive and unsightly, emissions of conventional pollutants, and in a larger context large and inexorable reductions in aggregate wealth and thus the social willingness to invest in environmental protection.

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Music Spotlight: Jaye Madison

Bethany Bowman

NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Doing what I do, I get sent a lot of artists to check out. A Facebook friend told me to check out the Jaye Madison band. I listened and they could absolutely sing. But normally I deal with PR representatives or managers. In a few days, I got contacted by 37-Media about this amazing new duo, Jaye Madison.  This time I really paid attention. Their song “Down” was unlike anything I had heard in a while. It wasn’t country, but it did have a rock/soul/R&B vibe and it was outstanding.

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Los Angeles, Cook Counties Post Biggest Population Losses in U.S. in 2022

Minnesota Sun Staff

The number of people who used to live in Los Angeles County and Cook County in Illinois continues to plummet.

Los Angeles County posted the largest population decline of all counties in the United States in 2022, falling by 90,704 and continuing a downward trend. It lost nearly twice that amount (180,394) in 2021, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Vintage 2022 estimates released Thursday.

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GOP Presidential Challenger Vivek Ramaswamy Calls ‘Politically Motivated’ Indictment of Trump ‘Dark Moment in American History’

M.D. Kittle

Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy is strongly condemning a New York Grand Jury’s indictment of former President Donald Trump, calling it a “dark moment in American history.” Thursday’s indictment follows a years-long investigation of Trump in connection with a $130,000 hush money payment to porn star Stormy Daniels who claims to have had an affair with Trump years ago. The payment was made in advance of the 2016 presidential election. Trump has denied the affair.

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Americans Continue to Flee Crime-Ridden Blue Cities for the Burbs and Red States, New Census Data Shows

Minnesota Sun Staff

Americans once again fled large cities for suburbs and Republican-led states in massive numbers from June 2021 to June 2022, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of U.S. Census data.

More than 800,000 people in total left the country’s large metropolitan areas, compared to 1.2 million the year before, in an ongoing trend sparked by the pandemic, according to the WSJ. Ten of the nation’s 25 largest metropolitan areas saw population loss, and most of the top cities that saw population gains were located in red states.

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Majority of Voters Say They’re Willing to Stop Buying Products from China to Counter CCP: Poll

Just the News

More than three-out-of-four American voters say they would be willing to stop buying products made in China in order to help counter the Chinese Communist Party and lessen the United States’ dependence on Chinese manufacturing, according to a poll released Thursday.

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‘Unacceptable Incompetence’: CDC Made Dozens of Basic Data Errors on COVID, Epidemiologists Find

Just the News
Sick person talking to CDC employee

The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) found itself hoist with its own petard by making 25 basic statistical and numerical errors related to COVID-19, particularly with regard to children, while purporting to expose COVID vaccine misinformation, according to an analysis led by University of California San Francisco epidemiologists.

The preprint, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, documented 20 errors that “exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation” and three that “simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed” severity, while one each was neutral or exaggerated vaccine risks.

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AG Merrick Garland Refuses to Investigate Nashville Shooting as Hate Crime

Minnesota Sun Staff

On Tuesday, Attorney General Merrick Garland refused to commit to using federal resources to investigate Monday’s shooting in Nashville as a hate crime, despite the perpetrator’s clear motivations against the Christian victims.

The Daily Caller reports that the Nashville Police Department discovered “writings” in Audrey Elizabeth Hale’s home after the shooting, which suggested a “calculated and planned” attack. Addressing these reports, Senator John Kennedy (R-La.) noted during a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing that the 28-year-old Hale “could have had collaborators.”

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‘Don’t Want to Get in the Way’: Pete Buttigieg Declines to Visit Site of Minnesota Fiery Train Derailment

Minnesota Sun Staff

Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said on Thursday that he will not visit a small Minnesota town that was evacuated after a Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) train derailed and caught fire earlier that morning.

Raymond, Minnesota, residents who live within a half mile from the derailment site were evacuated after approximately 22 cars derailed and four caught on fire around 1:00 a.m. CST. The train was carrying mixed freight including ethanol and corn syrup.

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National Archives Admits over 1,100 Biden Records Pages at Penn Office, Lacks Custody of Others

Just the News

The National Archives has admitted that approximately 1,170 pages of records from President Joe Biden’s time as vice president were found at the Penn Biden Center in November 2022, and the agency said it does not have custody of any records discovered at Biden’s homes in Delaware.

The America First Legal Foundation highlighted the revelation Thursday by publishing a letter that the National Archives sent to the conservative legal group in response to a Freedom of Information Act request.

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Republican States Weigh Rejecting Federal Education Funds to Block Federal Interference

Susan Berry, PhD

Republican states are beginning to consider rejecting federal funding for K-12 education in order to keep out federal interference in the form of the strings attached to the monies.

In February, Tennessee House Speaker Cameron Sexton said he had introduced a bill to create a task force to weigh the idea of the state rejecting the roughly $1.8 billion of federal monies it receives for K-12 education.

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Biden’s World Bank Pick Calls for ‘Trillions’ in Climate Spending

Minnesota Sun Staff

Ajay Banga, the former CEO of Mastercard that President Joe Biden has nominated to head the World Bank, told Axios Wednesday that both the bank and the private sector needed to spend “trillions” to combat both climate change and poverty.

Banga has been aggressively campaigning for the job, meeting with officials from 37 different governments in the past three weeks, Axios reported. The World Bank faces competing pressure from wealthy and developing countries over whether to focus on combatting climate change or poverty mitigation, but Banga said he does not view the two goals as inherently opposed to one another.

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GOP, Dems Have Entered the AI Arms Race Ahead of the 2024 Election

Minnesota Sun Staff

by Mary Lou Masters   Republicans and Democrats are entering an arms race to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in upcoming 2024 campaigns to complete simple, daily tasks previously accomplished by droves of interns, according to The New York Times. Both parties are racing to develop AI technology to carry out…

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Minnesota Governor Walz to Temporarily Relocate to Taxpayer-Funded $17,000 a Month Lakeside Mansion

Minnesota Sun Staff

Gov. Tim Walz and his family will temporarily relocate to a $17,000-a-month lakeside mansion later this year during renovations to the St. Paul governor’s residence.

The Minnesota Department of Administration entered into an 18-month lease agreement with MFM Properties II, LLC for a five-bedroom, 7,900-square foot home in Sunfish Lake.

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Commentary: Tennessee’s Private Schools Have Authority to Establish ‘Firearms Friendly’ Policies

Minnesota Sun Staff

In 2016 Tennessee passed two new statutes with bi-partisan support that addressed the issue of whether Tennessee’s private schools, both K-12 and “higher education,” could establish their own policies with respect to whether and to what extent civilian possession of firearms would be prohibited on their campuses. These laws are codified at Tennessee Code Annotated Sections 49-50-803 and 49-7-161.

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Commentary: Careful, The RESTRICT Act Could be Used to Censor Any Website in America, Not Just TikTok

Minnesota Sun Staff

S.686, the Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act or the appropriately titled “RESTRICT Act” could be used to censor any website in America, not just TikTok.

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Commentary: In the Mind of the Fervent Left, ‘Aiden’ Hale Was Driven by … Pronouns

Minnesota Sun Staff

Audrey Hale attended the Covenant School in Nashville as a child before returning Monday morning as Aiden Hale to murder three 9-year-olds, the principal, a substitute teacher, and a custodian.

In some dark but loud corners of the internet, it’s not about the children, the teachers, or the janitor. It’s about them — they/thems to be precise. More significantly, this multiple-victim public shooting, like all multiple-victim public shootings, becomes about blaming them. Who are they? Not us, not our side, not our tribe.

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University Reimburses Students After Professor Forced Class to Purchase Woke Subscription

Minnesota Sun Staff

Michigan State University (MSU) will reimburse students in a business course who were forced to purchase a subscription to the professor’s website which allegedly donated to Planned Parenthood, the New Guard reported.

Amy Wisner, a fixed-term faculty member at the MSU Broad College of Business who no longer appears on the university directory, required students in her Marketing Communication course to purchase a $99 subscription to her website, Patriarchy Rebellion. The university launched an investigation into the incident and confirmed in an email to the students, obtained by the New Guard, that a new professor will be teaching the course and that students will be reimbursed.

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GOP Presidential Candidate Ramaswamy: Department of Education’s Radical Gender Ideology Creates Psychopaths

M.D. Kittle

Republican Presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy blasted the U.S. Department of Education for creating “psychopaths” through gender ideology agendas while the nation’s schools are left unprotected from mass shooters like the one that terrorized a Nashville elementary school this week. 

“The real question is why this psychopath in Nashville was able to get into the school in the first place,” the Ohio entrepreneur and anti-woke crusader wrote in a tweet. “We protect green pieces of paper in a bank with more armed guards than we do our kids in schools … There’s more security at a random mall than in a public school.”

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D.C. Prosecutors Refused to Prosecute Two Out of Every Three Cases

Minnesota Sun Staff

Federal prosecutors in the Washington, D.C. U.S. attorney’s office declined to prosecute 67 percent of those arrested by the police in cases that would have been tried in the D.C. Superior Court in 2022, according to The Washington Post.

Matthew Graves, the District’s Biden-appointed U.S. attorney, said the office is prosecuting most violent felonies and that the cases most frequently dropped are gun possession, drug possession and burglaries, according to the Post. The local police chief has said officers aren’t to blame, and that every person they arrest needs to be taken off the city’s streets.

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Hospitals See 25 Percent Increase in Youth Admissions for Attempted Suicide, Self-Harm: Report

Minnesota Sun Staff

The number of children admitted to hospitals for suicidal behavior has soared, according to a new report by the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA).

An analysis of over 4 million hospitalizations found that pediatric stays for mental health issues increased by more than 25 percent from 2009 to 2019 for children aged 3 to 17, according to the analysis. Hospitalizations for self-harm and suicide saw a 30 percentage point increase, from 31 percent in 2009 to 64 percent in 2019.

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Commentary: BlackRock’s Larry Fink and the New Post-ESG Realism

RealClearWire

As regular as the turn of the seasons, each January sees Larry Fink, founder and CEO of BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, publish a lengthy letter on the state of the world and its implications for finance and investors. This year, January turned to February, and still no letter. Instead, February saw Tim Buckley, CEO of Vanguard, global number-two asset manager, give a groundbreaking interview explaining Vanguard’s decision late last year to quit the Net Zero Asset Managers (NZAM) initiative, which had been formed ahead of the 2021 Glasgow climate conference to reallocate capital in line with net zero emissions targets.

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DHS Heavily Redacted Disinformation Board Emails Despite Claiming Agency Had Nothing to Hide

Just the News

When the existence of the Disinformation Governance Board burst into public view, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said there was nothing sinister to hide and claimed the office was rooted in “best practices.”

A year later, Mayorkas’ department is refusing to let Americans see most of the legal justifications and talking points it created to defend the now-disbanded board from “blowback,” FOIA documents showed.

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Parental Rights in Education Bill Becomes Law After Dem Governor Declines to Veto

Minnesota Sun Staff

Democratic Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear let a bill that allows parents to challenge sexually explicit school materials become law without his signature on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 5, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Josh Calloway, lets parents file complaints over school materials that depict sexual acts “in an obscene manner” or are “patently offensive to prevailing standards.” The legislation passed the state Senate in February and then the state House on March 15 before Beshear allowed the bill to become law.

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Catholic League: Nashville Shooting Should Be Investigated as a ‘Hate Crime Against Christians’

Susan Berry, PhD

The president of the Catholic League said Tuesday that the Nashville school shooting “needs to be investigated as a hate crime against Christians” based on the report by the police chief that the transgender shooter held “some resentment for having to go to that school.” “The shooter, Audrey Hale, is a female who misidentified herself as a male,” wrote Bill Donohue, who heads the Catholic civil rights organization. “Her resentment against The Covenant School, a Christian school, is important given that Christianity teaches we are either male or female.”

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Poll: Only 38 Percent of Americans Believe in American Patriotism

Minnesota Sun Staff

A new poll by the Wall Street Journal has found that an alarmingly low percentage of Americans value patriotism and traditional American values.

As reported by Fox News, the WSJ/NORC poll showed that just 38 percent of respondents believe in the “importance of patriotism.” In the same poll in 1998, that number stood at 70 percent.

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Two Years Later, January 6 Video Footage Raises New Questions About Police and Prosecutors

Just the News

Two years after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, the issue of security footage is bedeviling law enforcement as federal prosecutors belatedly admit there is footage of some cops consorting with the riotous crowd and a retired Capitol Police executive divulges there are sizzle reels of all defendants inside the Capitol that were prepared for the FBI.

Retired Capitol Police Deputy Chief J.J. Pickett told Just the News on Monday that he is not certain whether federal prosecutors have turned over to Jan. 6 defendants the compilation videos made by his department of every person who entered the U.S. Capitol during the riot.

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School Libraries Across the Country Adding Books on Gender and White Supremacy

The Center Square

The Ann Arbor public school district has a book available in its pre-kindergarten library called “Introducing Teddy: a gentle story about gender and friendship.” The book is about a boy’s best friend and teddy, Thomas, who is sad because “he wishes he were a girl, not a boy teddy, but what only matters to both of them is that they are friends.”

School districts across the country purchased books in 2022 that cover controversial topics such as critical race theory, white supremacy and gender dysphoria.

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Drag Queen Performs Lap Dance on Student at North Carolina Technical College Pride Event with High Schoolers

Susan Berry, PhD

Forsyth Technical Community College’s Pride Festival organizers invited the high school students who attend schools on its campus to its event that featured drag queen performances, including one in which a drag queen is seen performing a lap dance on a person reported to be a student.

Libs of TikTok, which obtained the video of what appeared to be a drag queen performing a lap dance on a student, reported Tuesday “some parents were outraged that, although faculty members and campus police were present, no one attempted to ensure that underage students were prevented from participating in the drag event.”

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Commentary: Trump Again Defines National Priorities

Minnesota Sun Staff

Political observers and partisan activists debate whether Donald Trump or some other Republican candidate has the best chance of beating a Democratic rival in the 2024 presidential election. But earlier this month, Trump demonstrated that just as he did in 2016, he is raising campaign issues central to America’s future, issues that no other candidate is talking about. The latest flare-ups of what have been nearly eight years of relentless, orchestrated prosecution of Trump are a massive distraction but don’t change this reality.

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Commentary: Iowa U.S. Senator Joni Ernst Says Time Is Up for TikTok

Minnesota Sun Staff

Make no mistake about it, TikTok is an arm of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) propaganda machine living rent-free on the devices of 150 million Americans, and it’s putting our national security in jeopardy. This insidious app collects your data, surveils behavior, monitors user habits, and negatively influences our youth with an endless stream of addictive content.

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Commentary: It’s Time to End Mexican Cartels’ Reign of Terror

RealClearWire

Walking down long, ornate hallways, across a grand central courtyard adorned with a Pegasus-topped fountain, and through yet more corridors, our bipartisan delegation was guided to the offices of President Andrés Manuel López Obrador for what we hoped would be a timely and useful meeting for our nations. Since the enactment of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA), ongoing trade issues continue to flare up, and since the beginning of the Biden Administration our southern border with Mexico has deteriorated into a chaotic, dangerous, and lawless morass.

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Trump Says GOP Has ‘No Choice’ But to Embrace Ballot Harvesting

Just the News

Former President Donald Trump on Monday asserted that Republicans must embrace ballot harvesting in the states that permit the practice in order to win the next election.

“So for 2024, should Republicans embrace early voting, voting by mail, and embrace the tactics of the Democrats and follow the ballot harvesting laws of their respective states?” Fox News’ Sean Hannity asked in an interview that premiered Monday.

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New Kentucky Law Expands Definitions Related to the Use of School Resource Officers

The Center Square

Kentucky lawmakers hope they have already have taken steps that can help avoid a tragedy such as took place in Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday.

On Friday of last week, legislation was signed into law allowing parochial and other private schools to develop pacts with local law enforcement agencies or the Kentucky State Police to have school resource officers on their campuses. House Bill 540, sponsored by state Rep. Killian Timoney, R-Nicholasville, was signed by Gov. Andy Beshear.

In Tennessee on Monday, a shooting at Christian elementary school left three children, three adults and the shooter dead.

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Gov. Ron DeSantis Signs Legislation He Calls ‘Largest Expansion of School Choice in History of These United States’

Susan Berry, PhD

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a bill Monday in Miami that establishes an Education Savings Accounts (ESA) program under which every family in the state can receive up to $8,000 to cover education expenses outside of the public school system. “The state of Florida is number one when it comes to education freedom and education choice,” DeSantis said at a press conference.

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As Pentagon Struggles to Fill Military Requests, Funding Goes to Diversity, Critical Race Theory

The Center Square

The Pentagon is increasingly struggling to fill the weapons and equipment requests for the war in Ukraine. At the same time, taxpayer funds are going to pay for ongoing Diversity, Equity and Inclusion efforts in the military, most recently one controversial Pentagon official pushing anti-police and pro-critical race theory books at schools for the children of military families.

The New York Times recently highlighted the Pentagon’s manufacturing problem with a story headlined: “From Rockets to Ball Bearings: Pentagon Struggles to Feed War Machine.”

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TikTok Not the Only China-Controlled App Thriving in America: Report

Admin

The top four downloaded applications in the past 30 days in the U.S. Apple App Store and Google Play Store are owned by Chinese-tied companies, according to data from Apptopia analyzed by Axios.

While these Chinese-tied apps are thriving in the U.S., American apps are typically not permitted to operate in China due to the country’s strict censorship, according to Axios. China has over one billion internet users according to Statista, so the U.S. is missing out on a massive market while China has exclusive access to it.

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Nearly 40 Percent of Veterans Reported Concerns About Being Able to Pay Medical Bills

The Center Square

A new report from the National Center for Health Statistics found that nearly 40% of veterans reported concerns about being able to pay their medical bills. 

Overall, the report found that 12.8% of veterans aged 25-64 had problems paying medical bills, 8.4% had forgone medical care and 38.4% were somewhat or very worried about being able to pay their medical bills if they got sick or had an accident. 

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‘Radical Progressives’ Are ‘Targeting the Minds of Our Children,’ Senator Says

Admin

A state senator is attempting to keep drag queens away from Minnesota kids with a bill introduced at the Capitol.

Sen. Eric Lucero, R-St. Michael, has introduced SF 933 to classify drag queen performances as adult entertainment.

Lucero spoke to Liz Collin on her podcast about the bill and other topics from the legislative session.

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