Month: April 2023

After Pushing to Shut Coal Plants Down, Biden Shells Out Millions for Green Projects in Coal Towns

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Biden administration announced hundreds of millions of dollars to support green energy projects in current and former coal towns Tuesday morning, as the administration continues to push policies that could run some coal plants out of business.

The funding includes $450 million from the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law to develop “clean energy demonstration projects” on current and former mining territory, which the administration projects will generate up to 90 gigawatts (GW) of clean energy, according to a White House fact sheet. Economic incentives in the president’s signature climate law, the Inflation Reduction Act, in concert with stricter environmental regulations could lead to roughly between 50 GW to 80 GW in coal-fired power plants going offline by 2030.

Read More

Commentary: Time for House to Join Senate, Reclaim Congress’ War Powers

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Senate voted overwhelmingly, and on a bipartisan basis, last week to repeal the obsolete 1991 and 2002 Iraq Authorized Use of Military Force resolutions by a vote of 66-30.

That is sound policy, as I previously wrote here. It’s time for the House of Representatives to debate the Senate-passed repeal, and while doing so, keep in mind the many reasons why it should repeal these vestigial AUMFs, given the current threat environment.

Read More

U.S. Manufacturing Hits New Low Under Biden

Minnesota Sun Staff

On Monday, a report revealed that, on Joe Biden’s watch, American manufacturing has reached its lowest point since the start of the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

According to the Washington Free Beacon, the Institute for Supply Management’s manufacturing index, known as PMI, hit its lowest point since May 2020, scoring just 46.3. If the extraordinary conditions of the pandemic are not taken into account, then it is the lowest level since 2009.

Read More

‘Let’s Go Brandon’ Rapper Releases Pro-Trump ‘Indicted We Stand’

Just the News

Loza Alexander, the rapper who jumped to No. 1 on the iTunes hip-hop charts for his anti-Biden hit song “Let’s Go Brandon,” rolled out “Indicted We Stand,” a new song in which he calls to “free Donald Trump” and “lock Joe Biden up.”

Alexander released his newest song Monday on YouTube, the same day former President Trump flew from his home in Mar-a-Lago, Florida, to New York City, where he will be arraigned Tuesday on charges related to hush money paid to adult film actress Stormy Daniels in 2016. 

Read More

Finland Officially Becomes 31st NATO Member

Minnesota Sun Staff

Finland officially became the 31st member of the NATO military alliance Tuesday, an event brought on by the shock of Russia’s aggression in eastern Europe, according to Reuters.

Finland and Sweden reversed a decades-long nonalignment policy after Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, beginning the process of seeking entry to the alliance that requires all members to come to the defense of any one attacked in May, Reuters reported. NATO members ratified Finland’s entrance on Thursday, sparking threats of “countermeasures” from Moscow.

Read More

Analysis: The RESTRICT Act Could Be Used to Shut Down Any App That Challenges the ‘Reported Result’ of an Election

Admin

The Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act (RESTRICT Act), S.686, contains language that could be used to shut down any website or app with more than 1 million users that challenges the “reported result of a Federal election” — threatening websites and apps that allow free speech on their platforms including Truth Social and Rumble, not just TikTok, the supposed reason for the legislation.

Read More

Embattled Gender Clinic Reportedly Refused to Remove Child’s Puberty Blocker Implant Despite Mother’s Pleas

Admin

The Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital pressured a 14-year-old boy’s mother to consent to a puberty blocker implant and, when his mental health drastically declined, refused to take it out, according to The Free Press.

Casey began experimenting with his gender identity at age 13 and had no prior history of gender confusion, but when he visited the center at age 14 for counseling he was rushed onto puberty blockers, his mother, Caroline, told The Free Press. Medical professionals downplayed the seriousness of the drug’s infertility risk and hyped up the risk of suicide in front of her child to pressure her to consent to the drugs, she told the outlet.

Read More

Two Federal Judges Refuse to Hire Clerks from Stanford Law After Far-Left Protests

Admin

In the aftermath of unruly protests by far-left activists at Stanford Law School, two federal judges have now publicly declared that they will not hire clerks from the law school.

According to the Daily Caller, U.S. Circuit Court judges James Ho and Elizabeth Branch said that they have imposed hiring moratoriums on law clerks from Stanford, after a protest in March saw law students and several faculty members shout down and ultimately chase out Judge Kyle Duncan, a Trump-appointed judge on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, at a Federalist Society event.

Read More

Minnesota’s Ban on Gun Permits for Young Adults is Unconstitutional, Judge Says

Admin

A federal judge ruled Friday that Minnesota’s policy of denying permits to carry to 18 to 20-year-olds is unconstitutional.

The case began with a June 2021 lawsuit filed by three gun-rights groups, including the Minnesota Gun Owners Caucus, on behalf of three adults under the age of 21.

Read More

Commentary: The Institutionalized Minds of Most Americans

Admin

I must have seen “The Shawshank Redemption” at least a hundred times. It was an ubiquitous staple of college life in the late 1990s, like “Friends” or The Dave Matthews Band. It’s the story of a young banker, Andy Dufresene (Tim Robbins), who tries to preserve his humanity and his hope while serving a life sentence after being wrongly convicted of the murder of his wife and her lover.

In the middle of the movie an elderly prisoner, Brooks Hatlen (James Whitmore), holds another inmate hostage at knifepoint. After Andy defuses the situation it is revealed that, after 50 years in prison, Brooks will be paroled. Brooks had spent his entire adult life in prison, and he didn’t want to leave, so he reasoned that by committing another crime he could remain in prison. While Brooks’ would-be victim surmises that Brooks is simply crazy, Andy’s best friend, “Red” Redding (Morgan Freeman), has a different explanation: “He’s just . . . just institutionalized.”

Read More

Commentary: The ‘Lower Energy Costs Act’ Could Be a Big Win for Americans

Admin

Before they scooted out of lawless and increasingly dangerous Washington, DC, for the Easter recess, the House of Representatives passed the most important energy legislation (emphasis on “energy”) Congress has considered in almost a decade.

The Lower Energy Costs Act is a buffet of various energy and permitting provisions ranging from an affirmation of the wisdom of exporting crude oil (which strengthens the United States’ own domestic oil and natural gas production) to a remedy for a nettlesome provision in the Clean Water Act that has given States a de facto veto over energy projects.

Read More

Biden Once Again Delays His Reelection Announcement

Admin

A reelection campaign announcement for President Joe Biden, that was previously expected to come in February and then pushed back to April, will not come any time soon, according to Axios.

Biden will delay announcing his run for a second term until the summer or fall, putting many top-Democrats with 2024 aspirations on standby, those close to the president told Axios. Though the president’s campaign announcement has been pushed back several times, there is no indication his reelection plans have changed.

Read More

College That Celebrated Student Riot Is Being Sued for Canceling Benefactor as Eugenics ‘Mastermind’

Just the News

A New England liberal arts college that celebrated a student riot that sent a professor to the emergency room then allegedly incentivized students to continue disrupting events, defamed one of its most famous sons to justify its unlawful removal of his family name from the campus chapel he paid to build, according to a lawsuit by his estate.

Though John Mead was a Civil War veteran, doctor, philanthropist and Vermont governor who promoted “clean energy,” women’s suffrage and the humane treatment of mental patients, Middlebury College falsely portrayed the alum as “the mastermind” of a eugenics movement that resulted in Vermont’s sterilization law long after his death.

Read More

Nikki Haley Visits Border, Delivers Her ‘Catch and Deport’ Plan to Solve Border Crisis

Admin

by Jennie Taer   Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations and 2024 Republican candidate Nikki Haley visited the U.S.-Mexico border Monday, delivering her proposal to solving the illegal immigration crisis. Haley proposed a mandatory E-Verify program for employers to ensure they’re not hiring illegal immigrants, firing 87,000 IRS agents to hire…

Read More

House GOP Looking to Punish Politicized Prosecutors by Stripping Them of Legal Immunity

Just the News

For months, House Republicans have decried the actions of leftist local prosecutors who free violent felons or prosecute political enemies like Donald Trump. Now they are beginning to rally around a solution that could inflict significant punishment on wayward district attorneys. Rep. Austin Scott (R-Ga.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Just the News that Republicans are considering turning the tables in a debate started by liberals a few years ago when they tried to eliminate the qualified immunity that protected police officers from lawsuits.

Read More

NBC News Uses Nashville Christian School Murders to Incite Sympathy for Transgenders

Susan Berry, PhD

NBC News published a report that appeared to use the horrific murders of three children and three adults at the hands of a transgender shooter to draw sympathy for transgender individuals with claims of “widespread fear” by “members of the LGBTQ community in Nashville” who say they received death threats in the wake of the shooting. Audrey Elizabeth Hale, a former student at the Christian Covenant School, stormed into the school last week, killing three nine-year-old children and three adults before she was shot and killed by police.

Read More

Attorneys General from 27 States Urge U.S. Congress Support ‘Right to Repair’ Law

Admin

Twenty-seven states’ attorneys general are asking Congress to pass Right to Repair legislation that they say will protect consumers, farmers and small businesses as inflation increases.

The bipartisan coalition’s letter said Right to Repair legislation targeted at automobiles, agricultural equipment and digital electronic equipment is about ensuring consumers have choices about where, when and at what cost they can get repairs, as well as ensuring small businesses can compete against original equipment manufacturers.

Read More

One Year Later, Still No Updates Regarding Five Late Term Aborted Babies Found in DC, Advocates Say

Admin

This week was the first anniversary of the discovery of over 100 aborted babies in Washington D.C., five of which were reported to be potential infanticides but police have given almost no information regarding the status of the investigation, according to pro-life advocates.

On March 25, 2022, 115 bodies of aborted babies were found in toxic waste containers from the Washington Surgi-Center in Washington, D.C. by Progressive Anti-Abortion Uprising (PPAU), five of them appeared to be late-stage, and looked to have been potentially left to die after a failed abortion attempt, according to Live Action. The bodies were turned over to the police but despite multiple calls for investigation into the clinic and circumstances surrounding the abortions, the city has failed to take any action according to several pro-life advocates that spoke with the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Read More

Ramaswamy: Taxpayers Shouldn’t Be Footing the Bill for Congress Members’ Hush Money Payoffs

Just the News

In voicing his opposition to former President Trump’s indictment, tech entrepreneur and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy noted that taxpayers have been paying millions to settle sexual harassment claims in Congress.

“If you want to talk about hush money for sexual indiscretions by politicians,” he tweeted Friday, “consider this: in the past 25 years, the Office of Congressional Workplace Rights has paid a staggering $18.2 million of *taxpayer dollars* to settle 291 cases of sexual harassment & other misconduct committed by members of Congress.

Read More

Border Patrol Union Signals Concern Over Proposed Biden Immigration Policy

Admin

The Biden administration’s proposed “Safe Third Country” agreement attempting to crack down on an expected surge in illegal immigration at the southern border has a major loophole that still allows migrants to be released into the country en masse, according to a document the National Border Patrol Council (NBPC) sent to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Daily Caller News Foundation exclusively obtained.

The policy, which was proposed in anticipation of the end of the Title 42 public health expulsion order on May 11, would make migrants seeking asylum that already passed through a safe country on the way to the U.S. ineligible for asylum. The Border Patrol union raised its concerns to DHS, asserting that the rule would still allow for “catch and release” because of loopholes, such as making a claim of credible fear to trigger the need for years-long adjudication, according to the NBPC response.

Read More

Left-Wing ‘Honor the Earth’ Ordered to Pay $750,000 in Sexual Harassment Lawsuit

Admin

Environmental group Honor the Earth will be required to pay $750,000 in damages to a former employee who accused the organization of failing to take her sexual harassment complaints seriously, a jury declared Thursday.

Honor the Earth was a leading opponent of the Line 3 pipeline replacement project. The group’s executive director, Winona LaDuke, is a prominent activist who has been showered with praise and accolades by the media, lawmakers, and the education establishment. LaDuke ran for vice president twice on the Green Party ticket.

Read More

Commentary: So Far, Biden’s Nominees Are a Display of Liberal Incompetence But Will Julie Su Surprise Us?

Admin

Julie Su, President Joe Biden’s pick to head the Department of Labor, is slated to testify before the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee on April 20. In the meantime, workers across the country might check out how other Biden nominees have fared.

Phillip Washington, Biden’s pick to head the Federal Aviation Administration, has withdrawn his name from nomination. The White House official attributed the action to “an onslaught of unfounded Republican attacks.” Those who watched his March 1 hearing have cause to wonder.

Read More

Commentary: Asian Voters Have Democrats Worried after Midterm Shift Toward Republicans

Admin

The marked shifts of Black and Hispanic voters away from the Democratic Party is something Americans for Limited Government Foundation (ALGF) has covered in depth, but new data shows Asian Americans are also abandoning the left.

The New York Times recently published analysis of voter turnout in the 2022 gubernatorial election in New York and showed New York City neighborhoods with a heavy Asian population shifted toward the GOP by 23 points compared to 2018. The Times analysis showed, it was the “largest electoral shift in Asian neighborhoods in the period from 2006 to 2022.” 

Read More

Winsome Sears Confronts Bill Maher Over School Drag Queens, Transitions

Admin

Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears told HBO host Bill Maher to “read more” about drag queens in schools and childhood gender transitions on “Real Time with Bill Maher” Friday night.

“Nobody’s talking about the opposite side of the equation, because we’re not finding that these children want to detransition and they can’t, they’re adults now,” Republican Lt. Gov. Winsome Sears said. “And unfortunately, the breasts were cut off, their parts were cut off.”

Read More

Review: New Book Shows ‘Greatness’ Only Took FDR So Far

Admin
President Franklin D. Roosevelt

Derek Leebaert writes interesting and provocative books. In The Fifty-Year Wound, he assessed the triumphs but also the costs of America’s Cold War victory, which included the growing and seemingly permanent influence in Washington of what President Eisenhower called the “military-industrial complex” and the “scientific-technological elite.” In Magic and Mayhem, Leebaert exposed the intellectual hubris and follies of our national security establishment in launching and fighting wars that we failed to win from Korea to Iraq and Afghanistan. Now, Leebaert in Unlikely Heroes, provides complex portraits of President Franklin Roosevelt and arguably his most important and influential New Dealers — Harry Hopkins, Harold Ickes, Frances Perkins, and Henry Wallace. It is a book that further undermines the conventional wisdom that Franklin Roosevelt was a great president.

Read More

Stanford Law Accreditation, Required Courses Under Scrutiny After Students Shut Down Judge

Just the News

Scrutiny of Stanford Law School is growing after it refused to discipline students for repeatedly disrupting a conservative federal appeals court judge and even pledged to prevent judges from identifying them by blurring their faces from a video it was paid to make.

House Education Committee Republicans asked the American Bar Association (ABA) in a Friday letter to investigate whether the school was out of compliance with ABA accreditation conditions based on its treatment of 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Kyle Duncan.

Read More

Commentary: The Bitter Fruit of Madness that has Poisoned a Generation

Admin

After the horrific massacre in Nashville, the Democratic Party is hellbent on feeding the malignant narcissism of the “trans community,” in which they see a reliable, perpetually aggrieved voter base and a tool with which to terrorize society.

This isn’t “Christian nationalism.” Virtually every institution is sending a message that murderous violence toward Christians is acceptable, or at least less bad than exposing the “trans community” to obloquy. Law enforcement is obstructing the release of the manifesto. Merrick Garland won’t call it a hate crime, and neither will Joe Biden, who apparently thinks this is all a big joke.

Read More

GOP Rep Demands State Department Rescue Chinese and American Christians Detained in Thailand

Admin

A Republican congressman is calling on the State Department to intervene on behalf of Chinese and American Christians detained by Thai police currently facing imprisonment in China, according to a letter obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Thai police arrested 63 members of the Shenzhen Holy Reformed Church, also known as the Mayflower Church, for overstaying their visas during an early morning raid in Pattaya, Thailand, on Thursday. They are now preparing to deport the Chinese congregants, along with two women from Texas who’d been visiting church members, back to China, where they face imprisonment and likely torture, ChinaAid, a Christian human rights group, told the DCNF.

Read More

Ex-Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson Says He’s Running for President

Just the News

Former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson said Sunday he has decided to run for president and plans on formally announcing his campaign in April. 

“My decision is, I’m going to run for president of the United States,” he told ABC News’ “This Week” during an interview. He said he will formally announce his campaign in his hometown of Bentonville, Arkansas, later this month.

Read More

Social Media ‘Troll’ Convicted of Election Interference for Posting Misleading Memes

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Justice Department announced Friday that a jury convicted social media “troll” Douglass Mackey over internet memes posted during the 2016 presidential election.

Legal experts raised concerns about the trial of the 33-year-old Mackey, who posted under the alias “Ricky Vaughn 99,” earlier this year on First Amendment grounds. The Department of Justice indicted Mackey in January 2021, claiming he conspired “to injure, oppress, threaten, or intimidate any person … in the free exercise or enjoyment of any right or privilege secured to him by the Constitution.”

Read More

63 Christians Face Deportation Back to China

RealClearWire

Influential members of Congress and top human rights advocates in Washington are urging the Biden administration to take immediate action to ensure the safety of a group of Chinese Christian dissidents and two Americans detained by Thai authorities Thursday.

The group of refugees, including 35 children and 28 adults, fled China in 2019 to escape persecution. They initially sought refuge in South Korea and then Thailand while seeking emergency asylum in the United States. But the U.S. State Department and Department of Homeland Security have declined to grant the church members emergency asylum, as it has done for many others, including tens of thousands of Ukrainians fleeing their war-ravaged countries, and the first group of Afghans airlifted into the United States amid the chaotic U.S. evacuation in August 2021.

Read More

Biden Admin’s Sweeping New Rules Would Let Green Groups Lease Federal Land Away from Oil, Ranching

Minnesota Sun Staff

The U.S. Department of the Interior (DOI) proposed new rules Thursday that would allow public land to be leased for conservation efforts, among other major changes to promote land health.

The proposal would expand land-health standards to the entirety of the 245 million acres managed by the Bureau of Land Management (BLM), prioritize the designation of Areas of Critical Environmental Concern (ACEC) and establish a leasing framework for private partners to perform climate restoration and mitigation efforts on public land, according to the DOI. The new rule would make proposed leases for conservation efforts a valid “use” of public land, similar to mining, ranching and other energy projects under the Federal Land Policy Management Act (FLPMA) of 1976, according to the BLM.

Read More

University of Minnesota Report: Evidence Doesn’t Support Claims of Ranked Choice Voting Advocates

Admin

There is little evidence to support the claims of ranked choice voting (RCV) advocates, according to a new report from the University of Minnesota.

Professor Larry Jacobs and PhD candidate Penny Thomas with the Humphrey School of Public Affairs said they have “carefully reviewed the track record” of RCV and it “fails to support four of the advocates’ promises for improvements over today’s system.”

Read More

Holy Week Starts Off with Lots of Palms – but Palm Sunday’s Donkey Is Just as Important to the Story

Minnesota Sun Staff

For the Catholic Church and many other Christian denominations, the Sunday before Easter marks the beginning of the most important week of the year – “Holy Week,” when Christians reflect on central mysteries of their faith: Christ’s Last Supper, crucifixion and resurrection from the dead.

Palm Sunday commemorates the story of Jesus’ triumphal entry into Jerusalem shortly before the Jewish holiday of Passover. According to the Christian Gospels, people lined the streets to greet him, waving palm branches and shouting words of praise.

Read More

California’s Reparations Plan Could Cost over $800 Billion

Minnesota Sun Staff

After economists estimated that California’s reparations plan could spend as much as $800 billion, the leader of the state’s “reparations task force” has refused to commit to such a staggering amount.

According to ABC News, the $800 billion figure would be paid to all black residents in the state in return for past historical circumstances such as slavery and segregation, as well as alleged “racism” in policing, incarceration rates, and housing.

Read More

Commentary: New Study Shows American Religious Divides

Minnesota Sun Staff

America is a diverse country. In most cities, you can find people from nearly every ethnic or racial background imaginable. This is becoming the case in rural areas as well. But America is host to a considerable amount of religious diversity as well. And while race relations are often the subject of considerable discussion, understanding interreligious relations is a necessary part of understanding the country as a whole.

Read More

Hundreds of Millions of COVID-19 Aid Never Reached K-12 School Districts: Report

Minnesota Sun Staff

More than $736 million of federal COVID-19 funds did not reach the K-12 schools and students it was meant for, with some states putting the money towards “slush funds” and “pet projects,” according to a March report by the National Opportunity Project.

In 2020, Congress gave $5.5 billion in COVID-19 aid to nonpublic schools with low-income students through its Emergency Assistance to Nonpublic Schools (EANS) program, according to a report by the National Opportunity Project. Of the aid, $736 million did not go to the schools with at least $157 million within 27 states going towards programs to teach video game coding and “I Got Vaxxed” competitions.

Read More

Psychiatrist Dr. Mark McDonald: ‘Transgenderism Is a Mental Illness,’ Murders at Nashville School ‘Should Surprise No One’

Susan Berry, PhD

Dr. Mark McDonald wrote that the deaths this week at a Nashville Christian school at the hands of a transgender former student are a “logical end point of transgenderism,” since “the response to it reveals an embrace of the denial of reality and inversion of morality that can produce only more of the same atrocities.” “Transgenderism is a mental illness,” the Los Angeles-based psychiatrist observed in his Dissident MD Substack column Thursday.

Read More

White House to Host ‘Roundtable on Affirming Transgender Kids’

Admin

The White House will host a “Roundtable on Affirming Transgender Kids” Friday as part of its observance of “Transgender Day of Visibility,” according to a fact sheet. The roundtable is part of a push from the administration to support transgenderism, including childhood medical transitions, in the wake of numerous red states restricting the procedures. The discussion will focus on the experiences of children who identify as transgender and their parents in states that have restricted child sex changes, according to the White House.

Read More

Trump Can Still Run for President and Serve Despite Indictment

Just the News

Despite his indictment, former President Donald Trump can continue his 2024 campaign for president and serve in office if he wins.

A Manhattan grand jury voted on Thursday to indict Trump. The Constitution does not contain any provision barring someone who has been indicted or even convicted from becoming president.

Read More

LGBTQ Activists Cancel ‘Trans Day of Vengeance,’ Blame Reaction to Nashville Shooting by Transgender as Causing a ‘Credible Threat to Life and Safety’

Susan Berry, PhD

The transgender activist coalition that was planning its “Trans Day of Vengeance” rally outside the Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., on Saturday has canceled its event in the wake of the reaction to the killing of three children and three adults at a Christian school Monday by a transgender shooter.

Read More

World Health Organization Puts CDC on Defense by Drastically Narrowing COVID Vax Recommendations

Just the News

The U.S. one-size-fits-all COVID-19 vaccine policy, which recommends “up to date” inoculation at all ages regardless of risk level and provides the basis for ongoing mandates in low-risk settings, has become an even bigger international outlier.

The World Health Organization’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization is removing “healthy children and adolescents” from its default recommendations for primary series and booster shots, according to an official “highlights” summary from its meetings the week of March 20.

Read More

Minnesota Gov. Walz, DFL Legislators Express Confidence on Gun Control Bills, Despite Slim Majority

Minnesota Sun Staff

Will a publicity push this week from Gov. Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison and former congresswoman turned gun control activist Gabby Giffords be enough to ensure that all 34 Democrats in the Minnesota Senate vote to pass a pair of high-profile and politically polarizing gun restriction bills on the floor this session?

Walz expressed optimism at a press conference Thursday that SF1116 and SF1117 will get the votes required from his DFL colleagues in the Senate that would then almost assuredly send both bills to his desk for signatures.

Read More

Commentary: For the Radical Left, Ideology Exempts Its Political Violence

Minnesota Sun Staff

A transgendered Tennessee mass shooter this week executed three adults and three nine-year-old children at a Nashville private Christian school. 

Supposedly she left behind her a manifesto justifying her mass murdering. As of this writing, law enforcement officials have declined to make the document public.

Read More