Month: November 2023

Missouri Supreme Court Deals Blow to Republicans in Abortion Ballot Case

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Missouri Supreme Court ruled against Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft’s request to change the language of a proposed abortion amendment’s language Monday, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

An appeals court had ruled earlier this month that Ashcroft’s summaries of the amendment were “argumentative” and “politically partisan” because of his use of terms like “unborn child,” which the court considered “problematic.” Ashcroft appealed the decision to the state Supreme Court but the justices declined to hear his appeal, according to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

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American Express, Visa Plow Millions in Grants to Far-Left Groups Through Corporate Foundations

Minnesota Sun Staff

Charitable foundations funded by credit card companies and managed by their executives are pouring millions of dollars into liberal advocacy organizations, tax filings show.

The American Express Foundation and the Visa Foundation, philanthropic arms of two of the largest credit card companies in the world, gave grants to several major left-wing groups between 2019 and 2021. Executives from Visa and American Express sit on the boards of their respective foundations, both of which have taken millions from the corporations that established them.

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Commercial Real Estate Mortgages Nearly Double Delinquency Rate in a Single Year as Vacancies Climb

Minnesota Sun Staff

The commercial real estate sector is facing the possibility of a substantial number of bankruptcies that could ultimately hamper economic recovery and threaten the wounded banking industry, according to experts who spoke to the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Overall 30 day+ delinquencies on commercial mortgage-backed securities (CMBS), meaning the number of borrowers for commercial properties that failed to make a required payment in at least the last 30 days, increased from 2.96 percent from one year ago to 4.63 percent as of October, according to a report from market research group Trepp. The delinquencies are indicative of danger in the commercial real estate sector, as they indicate that many of those could become bankruptcies, threatening an already hurting banking industry and exacerbating any economic downturn, according to experts who spoke to the DCNF.

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Impeachment Inquiry Sharpens Focus on Millions in Loans to Biden Family

Just the News

There are red flags aplenty: Loan repayments between Joe Biden and his brother; millions in promissory notes between Hunter Biden and a Democrat-donating Hollywood lawyer; and debt deals from Ukraine to China. 

As the House impeachment inquiry heats up, investigators are increasingly focused on a trail of red ink that has become a recurring theme in evidence chronicling the first family’s finances.

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Commentary: Trump Is Winning Ballot Access Cases

Minnesota Sun Staff

The ongoing campaign by progressive activists to deny former President Trump a place on state ballots received yet another serious setback late Friday. After a weeklong bench trial, Denver District Court Judge Sarah Wallace issued a 102-page opinion in Anderson v. Griswold concluding that “Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment does not apply to Trump.” She ordered Colorado’s Secretary of State Jena Griswold to place his name on Colorado’s presidential primary ballot. This is the fourth state in three weeks to reject efforts to keep Trump off their ballots.

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Commentary: As Biden Turns 82, Reality Sets in as 2024 Approaches Rapidly with Trump Still Leading Polls

Minnesota Sun Staff

Another week, and amid more calls for President Joe Biden, who just turned 82, to step aside, former President Donald Trump is extending his lead in national polls over Biden for the 2024 election, with 46.6 percent for Trump to 45 percent for Biden in the latest average of polls taken by RealClearPolitics.com.

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Report: China Is Closing the Submarine Gap with the U.S.

Minnesota Sun Staff
USS Nevada, Ohio-class submarine

China is rapidly closing the gap in critical submarine capabilities that challenge decades of unmitigated U.S. dominance in the deep sea and could have critical implications in a Taiwan scenario, The Wall Street Journal reported.

In 2023, China put to sea a nuclear-powered attack submarine equipped for the first time with a noise-reducing pump-jet propulsion system, marking a major advance in submarine technology to match the way the U.S. equips its own submarines. The quieting systems will allow them to evade detection by American submarines and patrol aircraft, while construction on an “underwater great wall” of complex sensors will allow China to identify incoming enemy assets, Chinese military and academic texts say.

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After Fifth Circuit Ruling, Gulf Lease Sales Scheduled for December 20

The Center Square
Offshore Oil Platforms

After the  Fifth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals’ order last week, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management (BOEM) announced that it scheduled Lease Sale 261 in the Outer Continental Shelf in the Gulf of Mexico for December 20.

In September, a federal judge ruled the Biden administration must go through with offshore lease sales in the Gulf of Mexico by September 27 as originally planned and under original conditions. The Fifth Circuit concurred but amended the ruling, pushing back the lease sale date to November 8.

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Newly Released January 6 Video Recordings Raise Questions as Supreme Court Prepares to Hear Riot Cases

Just the News
Capitol Police converse w citizens in the capitol on Jan 6

Newly released footage from the January 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol riot is raising new questions about the events that transpired and the subsequent criminal charges as the U.S. Supreme Court is set to decide whether to hear the first two January 6 appeals. 

House Speaker Mike Johnson said Friday that he plans to release 44,000 hours of January 6 footage to the general public. The first batch containing about 90 hours of footage was released that day, and the remaining 44,000 hours are expected to be released over the next several months. Additionally, starting Monday, the House Administration Oversight Subcommittee will allow any U.S. citizen to review U.S. Capitol Police video footage from January 6 by scheduling an appointment to view the videos in person. 

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Argentina Makes History, Voters Deliver Clear Mandate with Election of Free Market Libertarian Javier Milei by Double-Digits

ADN America

Libertarian candidate Javier Milei of the “La Libertad Avanza” (Liberty Moves Forward) party, will become the president of Argentina on December 10. The free market capitalist obtained 55.86 percent of the votes, with 91.81 percent of the polling stations counted, a stunning victory for the right that resulted in the defeat of ruling party candidate Sergio Massa, who only garnered 44.13 percent of the votes.

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Elon Musk Announces Plan File ‘Thermonuclear’ Lawsuit Against Media Matters Alleging Misrepresentation to Readers and Advertisers

Minnesota Sun Staff

On Saturday, X owner Elon Musk announced that he would sue the left-wing publication Media Matters after the group smeared his social media site as anti-Semitic.

As reported by Breitbart, Musk declared in a post on the site, formerly known as Twitter, that “the split second court opens on Monday, X Corp will be filing a thermonuclear lawsuit against Media Matters and ALL those who colluded in this fraudulent attack on our company.”

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New IRS Guidelines for Electric Car Tax Credit ‘Recipe for Fraud,’ Tax Watchdog Warns

Just the News
EV Charging Station

New Internal Revenue Service (IRS) guidelines for the federal electric vehicle (EV) tax credit are a “recipe for fraud,” warns the head of the Tax Foundation.

Consumers will now be able to automatically claim the tax credit at the point of sale on new or used EV purchases, rather than wait to claim it on their tax return, according to the latest Treasury Department guidance.

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45 Republicans Vote Against Defunding Refugee Resettlement Head Salary over Missing Children, Abuse Allegations

The Center Square
Robin Dunn Marcos

Forty-five U.S. House Republicans voted with Democrats against an amendment to remove an agency head at the center of ongoing allegations of child abuse and neglect. 

After debate on Tuesday, U.S. Rep. Andy Biggs, R-Arizona, filed an amendment on Wednesday using the Holman Rule to remove Robin Dunn Marcos, director of the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR) in the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). Under the Biden administration, Marcos oversees ORR’s scandal-plagued Unaccompanied Children Program, which has funneled an unprecedented number of unaccompanied minors (UAC) into the U.S., arriving at the southern and northern borders. ORR is responsible for vetting sponsors and placing UACs in homes and facilities nationwide.

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Texas Attorney General Puts Critics, Biden, and Google in Crosshairs After Impeachment Win

Just the News

Two months after crushing a rushed effort to impeach him, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is plotting a dual tsunami designed to politically punish those in the Legislature who tried to remove him from office while putting Google, President Joe Biden and other liberal foes into his legal crosshairs.

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DeSantis, Haley, and Ramaswamy Among the 2024 GOP Presidential Hopefuls with Plans to Bolster the U.S. Navy

Minnesota Sun Staff
USS Crommelin

Several 2024 Republican primary candidates laid out their plans to strengthen and increase the size of the U.S. Navy if president in statements to the Daily Caller News Foundation after the third GOP debate moderators pressed contenders on the topic.

Some Republican candidates have criticized President Joe Biden for allowing the Navy to atrophy in recent years as China’s military threat to the U.S. grows, pledging to strengthen the fleet should they become president in comments to the DCNF. The 2024 hopefuls explained how they would overcome weaknesses in the industrial base, recruiting and overall strategy to reverse the Navy’s decline.

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Commentary: Flirtation with Evil Will Not End Well for the Progressive Left

Minnesota Sun Staff

Has the TikTok Left just jumped the shark?

Well, yes. Imagine seizing on Osama bin Laden’s 2002 “Letter to the American People” as a revelation to justify your wounded adolescent narcissism and historical ignorance? This past week, a bunch of videos from the Chinese owned data-hoovering and propaganda-peddling app took the meme-world by storm by showering some love on the defunct Islamic terrorist and kicking America in the process.  Quoth one fragile female as she brushed her teeth: “Trying to go back to life as normal after reading Osama bin Laden’s ‘Letter to America’ and realizing everything we learned about the Middle East, 9/11, and ‘terrorism’ was a lie.” Another client of this new experiment in juvenile mind control bleated that the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks taught her that America was a “plague on the entire world.”

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Jamie O’Neal And Ty Herndon Bring Us ‘Merry Christmas Baby’

Bethany Bowman

Two of the biggest voices from the early 2000s, Jamie O’Neal and Ty Herndon, have joined together to bring us the original Christmas song, “Merry Christmas Baby.” Last year, O’Neal put out a memorable Christmas record, Spirit & Joy, which I have added to my collection of favorite Christmas CDs.

This year, O’Neal released a deluxe edition of her holiday album, which includes the original song “Merry Christmas Baby” and a cover of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas.” Both songs follow the same theme of missing someone you love at Christmastime.

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Study: Life Expectancy Gap in the U.S. Favors Women over Men

Minnesota Sun Staff

A new study indicates that, on average, American men are dying about six years before their female counterparts.

According to Axios, the report was published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA). The study shows that the overall life expectancy gap between the two genders increased further in 2021, building off a trend that has been ongoing since 2011.

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Commentary: New Research Points to Dad’s Drinking as a Significant Factor in Fetal Alcohol Syndrome

Minnesota Sun Staff

Men drink more, are more likely to binge drink and are almost four times more likely to develop alcohol use disorder than women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Yet when it comes to diagnosing babies born with birth defects associated with alcohol consumption, such as fetal alcohol syndrome, historically only the mother’s drinking habits are taken into consideration.

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Analysis: The Unfinished Work Congress Is Leaving Behind as It Breaks for Thanksgiving

Admin

Both houses of Congress have adjourned for two weeks until after Thanksgiving even as major legislative work that must be completed before the year ends remains unfinished.

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Commentary: House Republicans Must Expose the Full Truth of January 6

Julie Kelly

On a near-daily basis, the Department of Justice announces new arrests related to the events of January 6. Authorities arrested a Minnesota man on Wednesday for allegedly obstructing law enforcement and other minor offenses; U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia Matthew Graves, appointed by Joe Biden in 2021, trumpeted the news on his office’s X account.

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Speaker Mike Johnson to Post More than 40,000 Hours of January 6 Footage Online

Just the News
January Six Riots

House Speaker Mike Johnson on Friday announced that he planned to post nearly all of the Capitol Hill security footage from the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot online for the public to view.

“When I ran for Speaker, I promised to make accessible to the American people the 44,000 hours of video from Capitol Hill security taken on January 6, 2021,” he said in a statement obtained by Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. “Truth and transparency are critical.”

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Faithful Catholic Colleges See ‘Unprecedented’ Enrollment Numbers, Financial Support

Minnesota Sun Staff
Catholic University of America

As most collegiate institutions grapple with disappointing enrollment, a slew of faithful Catholic colleges are reporting surprising enrollment numbers and financial support.

Their success is heralded by the Newman Guide, a list of higher education options consulted by Catholic parents throughout the world, as evidence of the positive impact that authentic Catholic education has upon society. The Newman Guide recognizes colleges that are determined to provide a thoroughly faithful Catholic education (and removes colleges from the list when they fall short).

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As Inflation Worries Investors, Wall Street Is Buying Up American Soil

Minnesota Sun Staff

Wall Street is moving to buy up U.S. farmland in hopes that it will be a safe bet to hedge against inflation and concerning economic conditions, according to Reuters.

Investment funds have accumulated over a million acres of farmland in the U.S., a small part of the 900 million acres in the U.S. but significant for the market when looking at the pace of acquisitions, according to Reuters. The move from investors is drawing the concern of some, including lawmakers, who see the quick constraint on supply as a barrier for the next generation of farmers who can’t buy at the elevated price.

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Minnesota Left-Wing School Board Member Wins DFL Primary for South Metro House Seat

Minnesota Sun Staff
Bianca Virnig

A progressive member of Rosemount-Apple Valley-Eagan School Board who cast the lone dissenting vote among her colleagues in March 2022 to end masking requirements for students won a competitive DFL primary contest on Thursday for a vacant south metro seat in the state legislature.

Bianca Virnig beat out three other candidates all competing to affix the Democratic-Farmer-Labor label next to their name on the Dec. 5 ballot for the House District 52B special election.

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Commentary: UN Undermines Parental Rights by Pushing Gender Ideology

Minnesota Sun Staff
UN General Assembly

On Dec. 10, the United Nations will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, a document drafted in the aftermath of World War II under the leadership of American first lady Eleanor Roosevelt.

Much has changed since then, including the world body’s understanding of children and of parental rights.

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Commentary: The Surprising Christian Values in ‘The Exorcist’

Minnesota Sun Staff

In his four-out-of-four review of William Friedkin’s The Exorcist, film critic Roger Ebert wrote that the picture “transcends the genre of terror, horror, and the supernatural.” However, Ebert did not address perhaps the most compelling element of the 1973 classic horror film: that buried deep within the gruesome story of a demon-inhabited 12-year-old girl is one of the most authentically theological films ever made.

The protagonist of The Exorcist is not, as one might expect, either the possessed Regan MacNeil or her mother, Chris (each of whom take up a majority of the screen time). After all, neither of them complete a character arc during the film.

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Christian, Pro-Life Groups Push to Reauthorize Biden’s ‘Reimagined’ AIDS Program Promoting Abortion

Minnesota Sun Staff

Several Christian organizations have supported full authorization of an AIDS relief program even though the money has gone to organizations that advocate more abortions abroad. 

In several public statements, President Joe Biden’s White House has called for promoting abortion abroad, frequently in references to the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, better known as PEPFAR. 

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Hunter Biden Kept Afloat with Millions from Father’s Democratic Donors After Foreign Money Dried Up

Just the News

When Hunter Biden’s foreign business deals began drying up amid his recovery from addiction and his father’s 2020 presidential campaign, he tapped a rich new source of money that has kept him afloat: Democratic supporters of Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, according to hundreds of pages of documents reviewed by Just the News.

Evidence gathered by federal and congressional investigators show Hunter Biden collected over $6 million since his father began running for the presidency in 2020. The assistance flowed predominantly from prominent Democratic donor and respected Hollywood lawyer Kevin Morris, whom the first son reportedly befriended at one of his father’s fundraising events, according to The New York Times. 

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More Unaccompanied Migrant Children Being ‘Resettled’ in Texas than Elsewhere

The Center Square
border surge

The greatest number of unaccompanied children (UACs) arriving at the U.S. border are being “resettled” in Texas.

UACs have been sent to all 50 states and two U.S. territories, including Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, according to data from the U.S. Health & Human Services Department (HHS) and Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), tasked with their oversight and care.

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Tucker Carlson Travels to Spain for Episode 40 of ‘Tucker on X’

Kaitlin Housler

In episode 40 of his newest production, “Tucker on X,” host Tucker Carlson traveled to Madrid, Spain, to attend a protest and sit down with the leader of the Vox political party, Santiago Abascal, described by the former Fox News anchor as “honest, principled, and completely unafraid.”

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