IRS Whistleblower Attorneys Hit Back at Hunter Biden Attorney over Leaking Accusations

IRS Whistleblower Gary Shapley’s legal team hit back on Friday against accusations from Hunter Biden’s attorney suggesting he had claimed to be a whistleblower to escape punishment over his own alleged misconduct. Biden attorney Abbe Lowell on Friday wrote to House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Jason Smith, suggesting Shapley and a second unnamed IRS agent of blowing the whistle “in an attempt to evade their own misconduct,” Axios reported. The “timing of the agents’ leaks and your subsequent decision to release their statements do not seem innocent.”

Read More

Vivek Ramaswamy Reacts to SCOTUS Ruling on Biden Administration’s Student Loan Forgiveness Program

GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy released a video statement Friday after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the Biden administration’s proposal to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions in student loan debt.

Read More

Biden Education Secretary Claims Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling ‘Takes Our Country Decades Backward’

Secretary of the U.S. Education Department Miguel Cardona reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the use of race in weighing college admissions with the claim the ruling “takes our country decades backward” because such discrimination based on the color of skin has served as “a vital tool that colleges have used to create vibrant, diverse campus communities.”

Read More

Supreme Court Strikes Down Biden’s Multibillion Dollar Student Loan Forgiveness Plan

In a landmark ruling with implications for the 2024 election, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 on Friday that the Biden administration does not have the authority to unilaterally cancel hundreds of billions in student loan debt. The ruling was a major rebuke of President Joe Biden’s political efforts to court young voters with large college debts, and sets a fresh battle ahead of the next presidential election. It also was the latest of several major court rulings that chided the administration for trying to impose regulatory powers that Congress did not give the executive branch.

Read More

New California Bill Would Make Social Media Platforms Liable for Harm Caused to Children

Parents of children who are harmed by the use of social media platforms are one step closer to holding those platforms accountable, thanks to a new bill passed by the California Assembly Judiciary Committee.

The bill was authored by State Senator Nancy Skinner (D-Berkeley) and is being sponsored by Attorney General Bonta.  

Read More

Former Mississippi Governor Points to Success of Legislation Leading State’s Fourth-Graders to Become Top Reading and Math Achievers

Former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant (R) is celebrating the “comeback story” of his state’s fourth graders, who ranked on 2022 national test scores as the nation’s top performers in reading, and second in math, following the enactment of literacy legislation he spearheaded that saved the state from its “dead-last ranking in the United States.”

Read More

Minnesota Lutheran Church Recites ‘Sparkle Creed,’ Professes Belief in ‘Non-Binary God’

A Lutheran church in Edina stood for the reading of the “sparkle creed” during a church service, according to a livestream available on its YouTube page.

“I believe in a non-binary god, whose pronouns are plural,” Pastor Anna Helgen said during Sunday’s service. “I believe in Jesus Christ, their child, who wore a fabulous tunic and had two dads.”

Read More

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University Reneges on Hosting Republican Event After ‘Doing Research’ on Group

Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University rescinded its agreement to host a College Republicans United convention “after doing research” on the group.

Richard Thomas, founder of the group, told The College Fix that the event was to be located at the university’s “Lower Hangar” at its Prescott, Arizona campus for three hours and cost a total of $630.00 for media, support and cleanup.

Read More

Environmental Activists Push to Cancel July 4th Fireworks Shows

Multiple fireworks shows slated for July 4th along Los Angeles’ coastline have been canceled in the wake of a county mandate that was initially spurred by environmental activists, according to the Los Angeles Times.

The L.A. Regional Water Quality Control Board implemented a firework permit rule in an effort to clamp down on pollutants from firework displays, which reportedly affect nearby water sources, the LA Times reported. The Coastal Environmental Rights Foundation (CERF) brought a lawsuit against Long Beach’s Big Bang on the Bay, alleging that a firework show in 2022 violated the Clean Water Act.

Read More

Commentary: Radical Green Groups Are Attacking American Energy Independence at the Source

by Daniel Turner   Although America’s energy producers are already under daily attack from the Biden administration, the eco-left is not content to limit their crusade to Washington DC. They are funding local groups in energy producing states to put in place endless hurdles to responsibly extracting energy. While the…

Read More

Pressure Grows on Judge to Reject Hunter Biden Plea Deal amid Evidence of DOJ Interference

Pressure is growing in congressional, legal and media circles for the federal judge in the Hunter Biden case to reject a plea deal that would spare the first son from serving prison time after evidence has emerged from two IRS whistleblowers that a more serious criminal tax case was sabotaged by the Justice Department.

“I don’t understand how any judge could bless this plea agreement now that all of this evidence of obstruction and DOJ and FBI wrongdoing has surfaced,” Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., told Just the News. “So I hope this judge does reject this, and then insists and demands on an honest investigation and an honest prosecution as well.”

Read More

YouTube Repeatedly Censors RFK Jr. as Democratic Leaders Demand Reinstatement of 2020 Censorship

The disputed 2020 election now appears in the rearview mirror for YouTube, which is now determining what users can see relevant to the next election.

The Alphabet-owned, video-sharing site and Google sibling has censored at least two videos, and may be throttling a third, featuring Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. shortly after ending a two-and-a-half-year ban on questioning the “integrity” of the last presidential election, saying it accomplished little relative to the potential harm it caused.

Read More

Florida Republicans Probe Whether Biden Admin Is Using Southern Poverty Law Center to Target Parents

Florida congressional Republicans demanded that the Biden administration answers whether it partnered with the Southern Poverty Law Center to label Moms for Liberty and other parental rights groups as “extremists.”

The designation comes after National Security Council counterterrorism director John Picarelli met with SPLC Intelligence Project Director Susan Corke earlier this year, the Florida Republicans, led by Sen. Marco Rubio, wrote in a letter Wednesday to Biden. 

Read More

Study Finds Abortion in First Pregnancy Linked to Increased Risk of Later Mental Health Problems

While a common abortion industry narrative claims restrictions on abortion cause mental health harms to women, a new study has found that abortion during a first pregnancy is associated with a greater incidence of mental health problems after the procedure than giving birth.

The study, conducted by Dr. James Studnicki, vice president and director of data analytics at the pro-life Charlotte Lozier Institute (CLI), and his colleagues, was published at the International Journal of Women’s Health.

Read More

Biden Admin to Use Former North Carolina Boarding School Campus to House Migrant Children: Report

The Biden administration is planning to use a former North Carolina boarding school campus to house hundreds of migrant children, according to CBS News.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ (HHS) Office of Refugee Resettlement will open the doors of what used to be the American Hebrew Academy in Greensboro, North Carolina, to house up to 800 migrant children between the ages of 13 and 17 who crossed the southern border illegally, according to CBS News, citing a U.S. official familiar with the plan. The facility is intended to serve as “influx care” to provide emergency housing, which HHS uses when it expects a surge in child migrant encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border.

Read More

Trump Leans Toward Skipping First GOP Primary Debate, Weighs Holding Counter Event: Report

Former President Donald Trump is leaning toward skipping the first presidential debate in August and holding a countering event instead, NBC News reported Wednesday.

Trump has reportedly been toying with not participating in the Republican National Committee’s (RNC) first two GOP primary debates due to his massive lead in the polls and recent spats with Fox News, the outlet broadcasting the August debate, according to NBC News. Several Trump advisers told NBC News that while the former president is leaning toward skipping the first debate, he hasn’t made a final decision but is exploring options for a competing event.

Read More

New Report on Minneapolis’ Southwest Light Rail Project Will Focus on Met Council Oversight of Contractors

The Office of the Legislative Auditor will release the second of two program evaluation reports as part of its 2023 audit of the Southwest light rail project on Wednesday morning.

The heavily scrutinized $2.76 billion extension of the Metropolitan Council’s light rail Green Line will span 14.5 miles between Minneapolis and Eden Prairie. It’s been under the microscope of legislators in both major parties since early 2022, when it was found to be more than $700 million over budget and four years behind its originally scheduled completion.

Read More

Trump, Biden Dominate Latest Granite State Poll, but Many Don’t Want to See a Re-Match

Former President Donald Trump has upped his support over Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in the Granite State and President Joe Biden leads his Democratic Party challengers by more than 50 percentage points, according to a new poll conducted by the Saint Anselm College Survey Center at the New Hampshire Institute of Politics.

But the latest poll also finds that a majority of New Hampshire voters believe a repeat of 2020 presidential candidates in 2024 would mark a “broken” U.S. political system.  

Read More

Commentary: ‘Bidenomics’ Are Leaving Americans Behind

“When you think about wages going up, when you think about inflation at its lowest by more than 50 percent than it was a year ago, that’s because of the work that this President has done.  And he’s going to continue to focus on what we can do to lower cost for the American people.  And so, that is incredibly important.”

That was White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre on June 26, outlining President Joe Biden’s views on the current state of the U.S. economy, which have seen a diminution of the purchasing power of American households as high inflation set in following the more than $6 trillion that was printed, borrowed and spent into existence for Covid coupled with the economic lockdowns and production halts—literally too much money chasing too few goods.

Read More

Biden Admin Uses Ukraine Aid Funds to Scope Out Cobalt Mining in Idaho

The Biden administration has begun using funds from a $40 billion Ukraine aid package Congress passed in 2022 to rebuild American manufacturing capacity and restock weapons and scope out critical mineral mining possibilities in Idaho, according to Defense News.

Pentagon planners hope the contracts awarded through Defense Production Act (DPA) authority will help break the U.S. industrial base’s dependence on China and Russia for critical minerals and expand production capabilities, the outlet reported. The Department of Defense (DOD) handed out the first contract from the $600 million fund Congress included the May 2022 package set aside for arming Ukraine in April, and in June used the funds to authorize cobalt exploration in Idaho.

Read More

Taxpayers to Give Prisoners $130 Million Worth of College Aid

An expansion of federal student aid for the 2023-2024 academic year will cost taxpayers $130 million per year in grants to prisoners for higher education, according to The Associated Press.

The Biden administration’s expansion of the taxpayer-funded federal Pell Grant program, a program for low-income college students, will give 30,000 prisoners a total of $130 million in student financial aid for the upcoming academic year, according to the AP. The expansion is part of the Second Chance Pell Experiment from the Biden administration that is testing the benefits of providing Pell Grants to prisoners in order to reduce recidivism, according to a Department of Education (DOE) press release.

Read More

Top Biden Immigration Adviser Has Numerous Ties to Groups That Want to ‘Abolish’ ICE

A senior Biden administration immigration policy adviser has a history of working with organizations that have advocated to “abolish” U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), according to documents from activist groups reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Ramzi Kassem, who joined the White House in 2022 as the senior policy advisor for immigration at the Domestic Policy Council, helped produce research reports with anti-ICE groups for the City University of New York’s Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility (CLEAR), a group he founded in 2009. He and his organization directly collaborated with, and still list as partners, several groups that have pushed to scrap ICE altogether as well as defund police departments.

Read More

Commentary: Does Anyone Buy That the Head of BlackRock Is ‘Ashamed’ of ESG?

The big news in energy this week is that BlackRock CEO Larry Fink says he is no longer using the term “ESG” in his business communications. Even more, Mr. Fink is now “ashamed” to be a participant in the debate on the issue. At least, that’s what he initially said on Sunday to an audience at the Aspen Ideas Festival, where he was a speaker.

“I’m ashamed of being part of this conversation,” Fink said as quoted by Axios. But almost as soon as he made the admission, Fink took it all back when pressed by his session’s moderator. “I never said I was ashamed,” he said, even though he had just actually said that very thing. “I’m not ashamed. I do believe in conscientious capitalism.”

Read More

Commentary: Looking for the Deep State

Allegations that the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Bureau of Investigation have been politicized and weaponized against Republicans are in the news. It is commonly acknowledged that most federal employees lean left and vote Democratic, but this is usually said to make little difference. Prior to the 2022 election, a survey by Government Executive magazine said federal workers preferred Democrats 47 percent to 35 percent in House races, and 37 percent to 33 percent for the Senate. 

Read More

Library Group’s ‘Intellectual Freedom’ Director Tells Libraries How to Censor Christian Story Hours

The American Library Association is offering guidance to public libraries on how to prevent events like an upcoming one by leading Christian children’s book publisher and marquee author Kirk Cameron, arguing they’re an attempt to “censor” or “silence” LGBTQIA library-users and their materials.

The guidance came from Deborah Caldwell-Stone, the association’s director of the Office for Intellectual Freedom, during a virtual library conference earlier this month.

Read More

Google Backs Down from Pride’ Drag Show After Employees Claim Discrimination Against Christians

Tech giant Google has reportedly distanced itself from a ‘pride month’ drag performance it had planned to sponsor in San Francisco after several hundred employees signed a petition expressing opposition to the event, arguing it discriminates against the Christian faith.

According to a report Tuesday at CNBC, a drag queen known as “Peaches Christ” was scheduled to perform at Beaux, an LGBTQ bar in San Francisco, at a “pride” event sponsored by Google.

Read More

LGBT Activists Say ‘We’re Coming For Your Children’ Chant Is Just ‘Misunderstood’

Several LGBT activists dismissed concerns about NYC Drag March participants chanting “We’re coming for your children” after a viral video of such an incident drew blowback this week, according to NBC News.

A video of NYC Drag marchers chanting “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children” garnered 5 million views on Twitter this week and considerable criticism from conservatives. A Tuesday NBC article claimed the phrase had been used at Pride events for years and that it’s intended to destigmatize the LGBT community and take the sting out of accusations of “grooming” children into various sexual identities.

Read More

Election Integrity Advocates Fight Against ‘Confusing’ Ranked-Choice Voting Pushed by Left

As ranked-choice voting gains momentum, election integrity advocates are fighting back over what the call a “confusing” voting system that they say would give the left more power.

Ranked-choice voting is an election process being introduced across the country, amid pushback from some states, including efforts to ban it.

Read More

Tucker Carlson Points Out the Irony of ‘Democracy’ Surrounding Ukraine-Russia War in Episode Seven of ‘Tucker on Twitter’

In the seventh episode of his newest production, “Tucker on Twitter,” former Fox News primetime host Tucker Carlson discussed the irony surrounding the topic of “democracy” regarding the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia.

Read More

Voters Sour on Biden on Wide Range of Issues in New Poll showing ‘Buyers Remorse’

The latest Harvard/Harris survey has delivered a strong mix of bad news to President Joe Biden, with much of the public appearing to disagree with him on key policy issues, expressing concerns about his age and fitness and raising skepticism about the Justice Department’s handling of former President Donald Trump’s criminal indictment.

Read More

Justice Department Watchdog Blames Jeffrey Epstein’s Death on Prison ‘Negligence, Misconduct’

Financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein’s 2019 death in a Manhattan federal jail cell was the result of “negligence” and “misconduct” on the part of the Bureau of Prisons, Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz said in a report Tuesday.

“Epstein’s injuries were more consistent with, and indicative of, a suicide by hanging rather than a homicide by strangulation,” the report also stated.

Read More

Homeland Agency Expanded Authority to Wage ‘Domestic Surveillance and Censorship,’ House Report Says

Secret documents obtained by the House Judiciary Committee show that a Department of Homeland Security agency “expanded its mission to surveil Americans’ speech on social media, colluded with Big Tech and government-funded third parties to censor by proxy, and tried to hide its plainly unconstitutional activities from the public,” according to an interim staff report released Monday night.

Read More

U.S. Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz Move to Defund ATF Director

Georgia Republican U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene and Florida Republican U.S. Rep. Matt Gaetz announced on Monday that they would attempt to use a congressional procedure to defund the office of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) director amid allegations that the agency has repeatedly exceeded its statutory authority.

Read More

Minnesota Moms for Liberty leader Pushes Back on ‘Hate Group’ Label

A Minnesota parent organization is pushing back after being labeled a “hate group” by the Southern Poverty Law Center in its annual “Year in Hate and Extremism Report.”

The center claims Moms for Liberty advances an “anti-student inclusion” and “antigovernment” agenda.

Read More

Commentary: To Unions, Organizing Time Is Fine When It’s on the Taxpayers’ Dime

Randi Weingarten, the powerful president of the American Federation of Teachers, hasn’t been a working teacher in more than a quarter of a century. 

Of the six years she spent teaching social studies, half of them appear to have been as a substitute. Yet despite the long absence from her short tenure in the classroom, the union leader described herself during a recent congressional hearing as being on leave from Brooklyn’s Clara Barton High School. 

Read More

Haley Names New Hampshire Campaign Co-Chairs as Presidential Politics Heats Up in the Granite State

Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley recently announced key additions to her presidential campaign in New Hampshire, the “building blocks of a winning campaign in the Granite State.”

Haley is among several GOP presidential hopefuls making the rounds in New Hampshire this week, including the party’s sparing frontrunners. 

Read More

‘Gender-Affirming’ Pediatricians Help Kill Maine Bill to Prohibit Children’s Social Transition at School Without Parental Consent

With the help of pediatricians from the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP), Democrats in the Maine House and Senate killed a bill Friday that would have prohibited public school staff from helping children to socially transition to another gender by allowing them to use new names and pronouns without written consent from parents.

LD 678 was defeated by house Democrats by a vote of 76-52, and by senate Democrats, 20-12.

Read More

Navy, Marine Corps Shelling Out Thousands to New Enlistees Amid Unrelenting Recruitment Slump

The Navy and Marine Corps are bumping up enlistment bonuses for people looking to fill highly technical occupations as the military battles to find sufficient numbers of new recruits.

The Marine Corps announced recruits joining the cyber and crypto operations enlistment field would get up to an extra $15,000 for the remainder of fiscal year 2023, the largest enlistment bonus currently being offered, according to a memo posted Monday. Service officials have attributed recent recruiting struggles to a historically low number of Americans who are both eligible to serve and express an interest, as well as intense competition and often better-paying, less demanding offers from the private sector.

Read More

Supreme Court Rules Against GOP in North Carolina Election Law Case

The Supreme Court on Tuesday ruled against North Carolina Republicans, who were fighting for a congressional map that would be in their favor.

The justices ruled 6-3, with Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett siding with the court’s three liberal members. 

Read More

Impeachment Talk Moves up GOP House Agenda After IRS Whistleblower Revelations, Durham Testimony

The Republican House agenda has in recent weeks been dominated by impeachment resolutions following testimony from former special prosecutor John Durham on the Russian collusion probe and IRS whistleblower revelations about the Hunter Biden investigation – with calls ranging from ousting Attorney General Merrick Garland to expunging the two impeachments President Trump received.

In addition to Garland, whom critics say runs a “two-tiered” justice system in America, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas is also a target – largely over his handling of record migration and its often overwhelming consequences from U.S. borders to the rest of the country.

Read More

Trump’s Lead Expanding, Ramaswamy Rising in Latest Morning Consult Poll

A new Morning Consult poll shows former President Donald Trump widening the gap against his closest competitors, while former Vice President Mike Pence and Ohio entrepreneur Vivek Ramaswamy make some noise among the crowded field of Republican Party presidential hopefuls.

Read More

REVIEW: Kari Lake’s New Book ‘Unafraid’ Is Chock Full of All the Juicy Details You’d Expect

Kari Lake released her new book, Unafraid: Just Getting Started, on Tuesday. The Arizona Sun Times was provided with a review copy in advance. In the book, which contains a forward by Donald Trump, Lake went over the bias she discovered while working in media, her race for governor, election fraud, and other issues like border security that she has championed.

Read More

Academics: Allowing Kids to Opt Out of Drag Storytime Is a ‘Dangerous Setback’ for Gay Rights

A pair of academics affiliated with York University in Canada believe that allowing parents to opt out their children from drag storytime events is a “dangerous setback for 2SLGBTQ+ human rights education.”

Writing in the Toronto Star, Beyhan Farhadi, a fellow at York’s Institute for Research on Digital Literacies, and “community educator”/York M.Ed student Joy Henderson say the Toronto School Board’s decision to allow opt-outs from the “family-friendly” activity “sends a message that [queer] rights are debatable.”

Read More

UN Takes Cues from Organizations That Seek to Censor Conservatives

by James Cohen   A United Nations (U.N.) policy proposal that outlines how to combat online “mis- and disinformation and hate speech,” including through demonetization, is informed by work from groups that actively push to censor conservative speech online. The policy brief, titled “Information Integrity on Digital Platforms,” is intended to help…

Read More

Mankato Mayo Clinic Workers Vote to Boot Union Officials

The majority of a unit of nursing support, clerical and environmental staff have voted to remove a union’s officials from power at Mankato Mayo Clinic.

Members of the unit signed the petition May 9 to oust American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 1856 union officials, according to a National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation news release. Mankato Mayo employee Melody Morris, with free legal aid from the foundation, filed the petition asking the National Labor Relations Board to hold a union decertification vote at the hospital. The majority of her coworkers supported the petition, the release said.

Read More