DFLers in the Minnesota House and Senate voted this month to transform American presidential elections by abandoning the Electoral College.
The Senate voted along party lines, 34-33, on Wednesday to pass an elections omnibus policy bill that includes a provision that would have Minnesota award its presidential electors to the candidate with the most votes nationwide. Republicans unsuccessfully tried to remove that language from the bill.
Read More
While members of the conservative think tank elite, outfitted in black tie and ball gowns, sat celebrating themselves in a Washington, D.C., ballroom listening to Dierks Bentley and popping off fireworks over the Potomac, their opponents in Minnesota were pre-registering 16- and 17-year-olds to vote, enacting “motor voter” laws, and establishing pop-up polling locations wherever they expected a balloting hotspot might be (think drop boxes on steroids).
While the Left is actually working to achieve generational political power, elites on the Right seem satisfied to simply celebrate . . . what? The latest white paper? The sold-out conference on how the Left is beating them in the political arena? Another record fundraising year where 60 percent of the funds go to promote the institution rather than on-the-ground efforts to implement the ideas? It’s usually all of the above.
Read More
One thing that I have learned by writing this column is that the country music that young people like (who are the biggest consumers of digital music) is not always the same as the music that I like.
But sometimes artists can bridge that gap. Twenty-two-year-old Conner Smith is such an artist. I know exactly why he is so popular with the younger set. But it was his writing ability that impressed me most. He is a gifted songwriter. He has been writing songs since age six. He scored his first publishing deal at age 16. Not only that, I also learned that he was born in the same town in East Tennessee where my children were born, Cleveland.
Read More
The quote from Tolstoy’s War and Peace is a useful way to begin addressing the Washington Post editorial board’s confident assertion that “’A collective national incompetence in government’” was at the root of the U.S.’s alleged failure vis-à-vis the coronavirus in 2020. According to the Post quoting from a recently released report (“Lessons from the Covid War”), “The United States started out ‘with more capabilities than any other country in the world,’ but “it ended up with 1 million dead.” Were he still around, one guesses Tolstoy would mock the conceit of the Post’s editorialists.
Read More
Democratic Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse has raised concern about the employment of Justice Clarence Thomas’ wife, though has introduced around two dozen bills touching on issues his wife works on as a consultant for Ocean Conservancy.
Whitehouse has criticized Justice Clarence Thomas for his wife’s consulting work for conservatives and communication with White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, sending a letter last year requesting Chief Justice Roberts ensure Thomas recuse himself from cases relating to Jan. 6. Yet his wife Sandra Whitehouse has worked since 2008 as a consultant and senior policy advisor for Ocean Conservancy, while Whitehouse has introduced at least 24 ocean-related bills and co-founded the Senate Oceans Caucus in 2011.
Read More
An English seminar class at Villanova University reportedly required students to read a play depicting a graphic sex scene between minors, one of whom identifies as transgender.
Jennifer Joyce teaches the Core Literature and Writing Seminar Class at Villanova, ENG 1975-020, titled Narratives of Belonging in Contemporary Irish Literature. The specific class is one of several options for students who are required to take the core seminar, though students may be forced to take the class if the other class options have been filled.
Read More
Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy instructed NBC’s Meet the Press host Chuck Todd in basic biological principles and the moderator’s claim that gender is “a spectrum.” “Under the age of 18, I think it’s perfectly legitimate to say that we won’t allow genital mutilation or chemical castration through puberty blockers,” Ramaswamy asserted to Todd on Sunday.
Read More
As former President Donald Trump’s social media platform soared to its best month ever, a growing number of Republicans in Congress are expressing concern that the Biden Securities and Exchange Commission may be slow-walking a compliance review to thwart a merger that could inject hundreds of millions of dollars into Truth Social from investors.
Read More
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) and the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation put the $229.1 billion California-based First Republic Bank into receivership today on May 1, while the FDIC also entered into a “purchase and assumption agreement” with JP Morgan-Chase Bank for the nation’s largest bank to assume First Republic’s assets as well as its $103.9 billion of deposits.
Another one bites the dust.
Read More
A 12-year-old Middleborough, Massachusetts school boy recently defended his First Amendment rights to his school committee after allegedly being sent home from school for making others feel unsafe by wearing a shirt that says, “There are only two genders.” A video of Liam Morrison’s confrontation of his school committee was reported Sunday at the Libs of TikTok Twitter account.
Read More
Federal regulators took ownership of the First Republic Bank and sold it to JPMorgan Chase on Monday, marking the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.
Read More
A new study reveals that 8 of the top 11 veterinary schools in the United States have begun implementing far-left race-based concepts such as Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI).
As Fox News reports, the website CriticalRace.org monitors the teaching of CRT in schools, and has recently expanded its criteria to include veterinary schools in addition to other forms of higher education. The survey reveals that four of the 11 schools have made it mandatory for students to undergo such training and curriculum, while eight have mandatory training for staff and faculty, and six have implemented DEI in their hiring processes. Furthermore, seven of the schools have tools in place for students to report “incidents of bias” or “violations of inclusivity” to school authorities.
Read More
A Georgetown University law professor who wrote a book arguing for then-President Trump’s impeachment believes that states can legally confiscate a million-dollar home and keep the full sale proceeds to pay $5 in back taxes. Some members of the Supreme Court found that a stretch.
Justices across the ideological spectrum gave Neal Katyal, solicitor general in the Obama administration, a hard time in oral arguments Wednesday in a case with far-reaching consequences for property rights in America, perhaps as consequential as its 2005 Kelo decision that set off a wave of eminent-domain reform across the country.
Read More
Almost 87 percent of Americans blame the federal government for the border crisis, according to a new poll conducted by the Trafalgar Group for Convention of States Action.
“With local and state government law enforcement resources overwhelmed by the large increase in illegal immigrants and asylum seekers needing assistance and increased drug cartel activity,” respondents were prompted, “do you believe it is the responsibility of states or the Federal government to handle these increased costs at the southern border?”
Read More
Moderna is under fire after financial records showed the biotech company’s CEO Stephane Bancel earned around $393 million in 2022 from stock options he exercised as he received a 50% raise.
Bancel, whose firm is known for producing the COVID-19 vaccine, received $1.5 million in 2022, an increase of 50% from 2021, and Moderna increased his target cash bonus, a March securities and exchange commission filing shows.
Read More
Star Tribune CEO and publisher Steve Grove has apologized for the “pain” caused by a cartoon that made some readers feel “targeted and mischaracterized.”
Mike Thompson’s debut cartoon for the paper featured a man telling his wife: “Broadcasting the Muslim call to prayer at all hours will make Minneapolis too noisy.”
Read More
Six years ago my husband and I moved our family of 10 to a five-acre hobby farm and a new lifestyle. Prior to this, we’d been living in an 1,100-square-foot brick home built in the 1940s near the boundary of St. Louis. I loved that house. It had a breakfast nook and an enclosed sunporch we referred to as the “Three Season Room.” When we bought it, I was five months pregnant with our first child. Over the next 11 years, we had a total of eight children—four of them in that very home as I was attended by a midwife. By the time our youngest kids, a set of identical twins, were born, it was clear we could no longer live in that house. We’d outgrown it.
Read More
We see it everywhere in American politics. One army general gave voice to the fear in a memorable simile, worrying that the country might collapse like “Mexico and the Central American countries” unless something was done to tamp down partisan passions and encourage unity. His comment went viral, and soon people across the country were talking about, and deploring, the possible “Mexicanization of American politics.”
The governing question, as one distinguished historian put it, is whether “American politics [has] become permanently ‘Mexicanized’?” Another commentator, considering “the Mexicanization of institutions,” defined it as a toxic situation in which “all party contests have the character of civil war.”
Read More
While U.S. oil and gas deals slowed considerably in the first quarter of 2023, industry players are poised to make significant investments in shale over the next year, according to Axios.
Oil and gas mergers and acquisitions fell to $14.8 billion in the first quarter, down 47% from the fourth quarter of 2022, according to a report from accounting firm KPMG. However, after a record-breaking year left companies flush with cash, producers will be incentivized to “secure inventory, create operational efficiencies and put their capital to work,” Mike Harling, energy sector lead partner at KPMG, told Axios.
Read More
President Joe Biden said on Friday at a reception in Washington for the Democratic National Committee that “MAGA Republicans” are the real threat facing the United States.
“The real problem is those MAGA Republicans,” he said, according to the New York Post. “MAGA Republicans are trying to take us backwards. But together, we’re not going to let them do it. Not an inch back.”
Read More
White House officials have reportedly embarked on a “strategy” to increase Kamala Harris’ appeal so she isn’t a liability on the Biden/Harris reelection campaign trail. While both Biden and Harris have seen abysmal approval ratings throughout their time in office, Harris appears to be the more unpopular of the two, with polling remaining stagnant in the high 30s.
According to Axios, Senior Biden adviser Anita Dunn has tasked White House political teams to schedule events featuring Harris promoting issues popular with their left-wing base. That means Harris will be talking a lot about infrastructure and “reproductive freedom” for the next year and a half.
Read More
A Missouri elementary school allowed a parent to read the transgender-promoting children’s book “I Am Jazz” to a second-grade class without first informing other parents, although state law requires school districts to notify parents beforehand about lessons on sexuality.
Webster Groves School District, located in the suburbs of St. Louis, allowed the parent to read “I Am Jazz” to the second graders in September as part of Clark Elementary School’s “Mystery Reader” program, where a family member surprises a child by reading to the class.
Read More