March 30, 2023 - The Minnesota Sun

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 Just the News

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The preprint, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, documented 20 errors that “exaggerated the severity of the COVID-19 situation” and three that “simultaneously exaggerated and downplayed” severity, while one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

Grand Jury Votes to Indict Trump in Stormy Daniels Hush Money Case

March 30, 2023 Just the News

A Manhattan grand jury has reportedly voted to indict former President Donald Trump over his alleged role in a payment to Stormy Daniels in 2016, making him the first former president to face criminal charges.

AG Merrick Garland Refuses to Investigate Nashville Shooting as Hate Crime

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 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.”

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

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023March 30, 2023 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.

Republican States Weigh Rejecting Federal Education Funds to Block Federal Interference

March 30, 2023March 29, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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…

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

March 30, 2023March 29, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

University Reimburses Students After Professor Forced Class to Purchase Woke Subscription

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.”

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.

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

March 30, 2023 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.