Tag: COVID-19

Wisconsin Senator Blasts CDC’s Rochelle Walensky Not Publicizing Adverse Vaccine Effects

Just the News

Wisconsin GOP Sen. Ron Johnson condemned Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) Director Rochelle Walensky for failing to substantively respond to inquiries into the agency’s monitoring of adverse COVID-19 vaccine effects.

Johnson initially wrote to Walensky in both June and July asking as to the agency’s methods for monitoring vaccine side effects. He received a reply on Sept. 2 in which Walensky largely discussed the use of the data mining method the CDC employed. She said the CDC used Empirical Bayesian (EB) data mining as its primary method and only used the proportional reporting ratio (PRR) to verify EB results.

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Biden Makes Surprising, Garbled Deficit Reduction Claim

Minnesota Sun Staff

President Joe Biden is being mocked after he made a garbled claim that he is reducing the deficit this year by one trillion, five hundred thousand dollars, with the number being especially awkward given the vast difference between trillions and hundreds of thousands.

“You know how much, how much I’m reducivethedefcit this year? One trillion, five hundred thousand!” Biden said during a Labor Day speech in Milwaukee, Wisc. It appears the president was attempting to say he’s “reducing the deficit this year.”

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Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Blames Abysmal U.S. Student National Test Scores on Trump

Susan Berry, PhD

The Biden education department announced Thursday that U.S. students’ plummeting scores in reading and math during the COVID-19 pandemic is all due to former President Donald Trump.

“Today’s data confirm the significant impact the prior Administration’s mismanagement of the pandemic has had on our children’s progress and academic wellbeing,” said Biden Education Secretary Miguel Cardona Thursday, following the report that U.S. students showed their steepest decline in decades in math and reading scores during the COVID school shutdowns.

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U.S. Life Expectancy Sees Largest Two-Year Decrease in 100 Years

Minnesota Sun Staff

Life expectancy across all groups in the U.S. has fallen 2.7 years from 2019 to 2021, the largest two-year decrease in 100 years, according to provisional data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released Wednesday.

Overall, life expectancy at birth fell to 76.1 years, with life expectancy declines driven primarily by the coronavirus pandemic and unintentional injuries including overdoses, with heart disease, liver disease and suicide representing smaller contributions, the CDC reported. While life expectancy is expected to increase slightly in 2022, it is unlikely to rise to pre-pandemic levels and CDC researchers are still waiting to see how the U.S. fares in an expected winter rise in death rates, according to Reuters.

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Budget Group: Student Loan Payment Deferments Cost Taxpayers $155 Billion, Benefits Doctors, Dentists More than Most

The Center Square

Estimates vary widely on how much President Joe Biden’s $10,000-20,000 per borrower cancellation of student loans will cost taxpayers, but a new analysis estimates the significant cost of a less-covered aspect of Biden’s plan.

When Biden announced the debt cancellation, he also announced an extension of student loan repayments “one final time” through Dec. 31 of this year. In March of 2020, then-President Donald Trump first suspended the repayments citing COVID-19. Since then, the suspension has been extended several times. Interest does not accrue while the payments are suspended.

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Commentary: Time to Turn Orwell into Fiction Again

Minnesota Sun Staff

Of all the creepy things that totalitarian regimes do, perhaps none is more creepy than their habit of encouraging children to inform on their parents to the regime.

Anyone who has read “1984” will remember the pathetic Tom Parsons, who winds up next to Winston Smith in The Ministry of Truth (read: prison) after his young daughter reported that he had muttered “Down with Big Brother” in his sleep.

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DHS Encouraged Children to Report Family to Facebook for Challenging U.S. Government COVID Claims

Minnesota Sun Staff

In the cartoon below, you will see the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) encourage a young female protagonist to report her “Uncle Steve” to Facebook for posting “disinformation”. 

DHS’s rationale? “Uncle Steve” posted that “Covid-19 is no worse than the flu”:

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New York Gov. Hochul Calls Remote Learning During Pandemic ‘A Mistake’

The Center Square

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul on Friday called it “a mistake” the state switched to remote learning in schools at the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic more than two years ago.

Hochul, a Democrat running to serve a full term in November, made her remarks during a wide-ranging speech at the University of Albany commemorating Women’s Equality Day. That included her calling on the Department of Labor to study the impact the coronavirus had on women in the workforce.

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Oversight Republicans Investigate Why DOE Hasn’t Spent COVID Relief Funds, Role of Teachers Unions

The Center Square

Oversight Republicans have launched an investigation into how the U.S. Department of Education has handled billions of COVID-19 relief dollars, raising the alarm about the major learning loss experienced by students.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to Department of Education Secretary Miguel Cardona demanding documents and answers as to why most of the money has reportedly remained unspent.

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Military Whistleblower Report Alleges COVID-19 Vaccine Illegally Administered

The Center Square

 A new whistleblower report signed by nine officers across five branches of the military claims the Department of Defense’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate is unlawful.

The report was sent to Congress urging an investigation into what it called illegal and fraudulent activity by the DOD. The memorandum was published by Liberty Council, a nonprofit legal group that in January maintained there was no legal COVID-19 vaccine available despite the U.S. Food and Drug Administration saying there was. 

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House Republicans Vow to Investigate Anthony Fauci After Resignation

Minnesota Sun Staff

On Monday, Republican members of the powerful House Oversight Committee announced their intentions to pursue investigations of Dr. Anthony Fauci when they reclaim the majority, even after Fauci announced his plans to step down in December.

As reported by The Daily Caller, Fauci will be leaving his positions at the White House, the National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in December, after spending 38 years in government. The 81-year-old Fauci said that he will remain active in public health to some degree, and that after leaving government he will enter the “next chapter” of his career.

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Pandemic Triggers 89 Percent Increase in U.S. Food Stamp Spending

The Center Square

Spending on food stamps has increased by $53.5 billion – an 89% increase – in the two pandemic years. By comparison, that’s how much the entire program cost in 2009 during the Great Recession.

Spending on the U.S. Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program grew 88.5% from $60.3 billion in 2019 to $113.8 billion in 2021. Spending on the SNAP program had previously peaked at $79.8 billion in 2013 before declining for the next six years.

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Catholic School Enrollment Surges After Government School COVID Lockdowns

Susan Berry, PhD

Enrollment in Catholic schools in the United States has risen for the first time in two decades after teachers’ unions worked with the Biden administration to keep government schools locked down during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The enrollment rise since last year by 3.8 percent, or 62,000 students, in Catholic elementary and secondary schools, is also the largest surge recorded in at least 50 years by the National Catholic Educational Association (NCEA), the Associated Press reported in February.

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30 Months into the COVID-19 Pandemic, at Least a Dozen States Are Under ‘Emergency’ Orders

Admin

In October 2020, the Michigan Supreme Court stripped Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of the unilateral powers she was using when she declared a state of emergency due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

Whitmer had been using a 1945 law – which was prompted by a three-day race riot in Detroit three years earlier – that had no sunset provision in it and didn’t require approval by the state legislature.

In May 2021, Whitmer told a news agency that if she still had that 1945 state-of-emergency law, she would use those powers, but not for anything related to a pandemic.

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Breaking: Fauci Announces Resignation from NIAID and Biden Administration

Peter D'Abrosca

The Chief Medical Advisor for President Joe Biden and head of the National Institute for Allergies and Infectious Disease (NIAID) who was also the face of the America’s COVID-19 response has announced that he will resign from those positions effective in December. 

“It has been the honor of a lifetime to have led the NIAID, an extraordinary institution, for so many years and through so many scientific and public health challenges. I am very proud of our many accomplishments,” Dr. Anthony Fauci said in his resignation announcement. “I have worked with – and learned from – countless talented and dedicated people in my own laboratory, at NIAID, at NIH and beyond. To them I express my abiding respect and gratitude.”

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New Government Spending Will Benefit Top Biden Adviser’s Consulting Clients

Minnesota Sun Staff

White House Senior adviser Anita Dunn has consulted for companies and trade groups that have benefited or stand to benefit from federal funding and is being forced to recuse herself from matters involving them, according to a financial disclosure.

Dunn has consulted through the public affairs firm SKDK during the past two years for the likes of Pfizer, AT&T, Micron and the American Clean Power Association, according to a filing reported on by CNBC Friday. Dunn, who founded the SKDK in 2004, is recused from working on issues related to past clients, a spokesman for the White House told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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COVID-Era High School Graduates Face Uncertain Futures in College

Minnesota Sun Staff

After nearly two years of unprecedented lockdowns, mandates, and other restrictions on daily life during the COVID-19 pandemic, hundreds of thousands of graduating high school students are preparing to head off to college without having learned nearly as much as they should have.

The Associated Press reports that such students are about to enter college significantly farther behind the academic standards of previous years, almost entirely due to the pandemic’s forced transition to “online learning,” a shortage of teachers, and mask and vaccine mandates that disrupted school life for millions of students across the country. Such students risk the possibility of being grossly underprepared for the level of work required by college, and could result in a massive spike in college dropouts in the coming years.

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Booming Jobs Report Masks Uptick in Men Leaving the Labor Force

Admin

Women’s employment increased markedly from June to July, but the total number of employed working-aged men actually dropped in that same time span according to a July jobs report released Friday.

There were 170,000 fewer employed men in July than June, whereas 349,000 more women were employed in July, according to Yahoo Finance. Women’s unemployment dipped to 3.1% in July from 3.3% in June while the same figure for men remained steady at 3.2% from June, the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ July 2022 Employment Situation report found.

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Americans Taking Side Gigs to Make Ends Meet amid Soaring Costs

Minnesota Sun Staff

The Labor Department’s newly released jobs report for July appeared to be good news for the economy — at first glance.

A dig below the surface, however, reveals a different picture: Americans, strapped for cash by inflation, taking on second jobs as families have less money to spend.

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Kentucky Senator Rand Paul Leads First Congressional Hearing on Gain-of-Function Research

Susan Berry, PhD

Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) begins the first congressional hearing on gain-of-function research Wednesday, attempting to determine whether the National Institutes of Health (NIH) used taxpayer funds for gain-of-function experiments at the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

“Before we even get to whether the virus came from a lab we have to explore were they doing gain of function research?” Paul told Fox News’ Brett Baier Tuesday.

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‘Misled the Public:’ Oversight Launches Investigation into Nursing Home COVID Deaths

The Center Square

Republicans on the Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Crisis and the House Oversight Committee have joined forces in an investigation over the thousands of nursing home deaths in New York state during COVID, saying New York Democrats ignored previous inquiries.

The controversy began in 2020 when thousands of New York nursing home residents died during the pandemic, drawing extra scrutiny to then-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s policy of sending elderly patients recovering from COVID-19 into nursing homes.

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Documents Reveal CDC, Big Tech Colluded to Promote Biden Administration’s COVID Propaganda

Susan Berry, PhD

Documents obtained by America First Legal (AFL) reveal “concrete evidence” of how the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) colluded with the social media giants to promote the Biden administration’s COVID-19 propaganda and censor Americans’ free speech, AFL reports.

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Jack Maxey: Hunter’s Laptop Reveals His Pre-COVID-19 Interest in Pandemic Tracker Metabiota

Neil W. McCabe

Neil W. McCabe, the national political editor of The Star News Network, interviewed Navy veteran and businessman Jack Maxey about his uncovering of Hunter Biden’s 2014 support of the San Francisco-based pandemic tracking and predictive analytics company Metabiota. Maxey said he was tipped off about Hunter and Metabiota by an American military intelligence operative.

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Fauci Says He Plans on Retiring When Biden Leaves Office

Admin

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the ubiquitous face of the country’s early pandemic response, says he’s retiring from public service at the end of President Biden’s term.

Fauci has spend over 50 years at the National Institute of Health, including roughly 40 as the director of National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

He told Politico about his plans to retire.

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Commentary: Study Provides More Evidence That School Mask Mandates Are Not Effective

Admin

A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that mask mandates did little to nothing to curb the spread of Covid-19. The latest research further undermines the controversial policy.

A new study analyzing a pair of schools in Fargo, North Dakota—one which had a mask mandate in place in the fall of the 2021-2022 academic year and one that did not—provides more evidence that mask mandates are ineffective public policy.

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Migrant Encounters at U.S.-Mexico Border Hit Another Historic High

Minnesota Sun Staff

The number of migrants encountered at the U.S.-Mexico border decreased in June, but remained at a historic high, according to numbers released by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) Friday.

CBP encountered 207,416 migrants at the southern border, a 14% decrease compared to May. There were 92,274 migrants immediately expelled under Title 42, the public health order activated during the COVID-19 pandemic, in June.

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Commentary: After 18 Months of Biden, We Have Yet to Hit Bottom

Minnesota Sun Staff

Next week will mark one and a half years since Joe Biden became president on Jan. 20, 2021. On July 20, every American should look within and ask: “Am I better off than I was 18 months ago?”

To Biden’s credit, the unemployment rate has fallen from 6.4% when he took office to 3.6% in June. Today’s figure is a notch higher than the 3.5% joblessness that Americans enjoyed in February 2020, thanks to President Donald Trump’s Republican tax cuts, deregulation, energy dominance, and other pro-growth initiatives.

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Commentary: The Feds Pile Up Vaccine ‘Adverse Event’ Reports as They Decry Scaremongering Elsewhere

Minnesota Sun Staff

Since the Food and Drug Administration authorized the first vaccines for COVID-19 in late 2020, the government and much of the media have insisted that the medicines developed in record time are safe and effective. Those who raised questions about them have been routinely dismissed as conspiracy theorists.

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Study: Natural Immunity Is 97 Percent Effective Against Severe COVID After 14 Months

Susan Berry, PhD

A study has found that natural immunity following COVID infection provides protection against severe illness that is superior to that imparted by the COVID vaccines.

In a preprint article published at MedRxiv, Qatar researchers revealed they found people who survived COVID-19 infection, and were not vaccinated, had outstanding protection against severe COVID disease or death from COVID.

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Chinese Officials Will Soon Strap Electronic Monitoring Bracelets to COVID Patients

Admin

Hong Kong’s Ministry of Health announced it will soon require COVID-19 patients to wear electronic monitors as the pandemic continues to spread throughout China, Chinese media reported Monday.

Beginning on Friday, Hong Kong will require COVID-19 patients in quarantine to wear electronic bracelets in order to prohibit them from visiting “high-risk” places, Lo Chung-mau, Hong Kong’s health minister told reporters, according to China’s i-Cable News. Lo is a cabinet member within the administration of Hong Kong’s new chief executive, John Lee, who allegedly won 99% of votes after enforcing Beijing’s National Security Law.

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Buddy Carter Commentary: Democrats’ Heads Are in the Clouds When It Comes to Lowering Drug Prices

Admin

Republicans have a plan to combat high prescription drug prices, without reverting to socialist price controls.

When I was a practicing pharmacist, I witnessed seniors trying to decide whether to pay for their medicine or pay for their groceries. I witnessed mothers crying because they couldn’t afford their children’s medicine.

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Ivy League Study: Boosters, COVID-19 ‘Rebounds’ Fuel Skepticism of Federal Narratives

Admin

As the nation’s most powerful and twice-boosted infectious disease doctor battles a COVID-19 “rebound” two weeks after testing positive, new research from the public health schools at Harvard and Yale suggests the boosted fared worse against the first Omicron subvariant than the non-boosted.

The FDA is so alarmed by the “waning effectiveness” of boosters, whose formulation is still based on the ancestral Wuhan strain, that it asked manufacturers Thursday to add a “spike protein component” from the fourth and fifth Omicron subvariants to this fall’s boosters.

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One Minnesota: Thousands Reported on Neighbors Using Tattle-Tale Hotline During Pandemic

Minnesota Sun Staff

A hotline set up by Gov. Tim Walz’s administration to monitor compliance with his 2020 stay-at-home order generated thousands of reports from Minnesotans who snitched on their neighbors for things like playing basketball in a park, walking their dogs, and throwing small parties.

The hotline was launched in March 2020 and law enforcement continued to monitor it until November, well after the stay-at-home order ended. In October 2020, it was used to alert authorities to a church service that didn’t fit with the governor’s “legal requirements.” This type of complaint was not uncommon.

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Convenience Most Common Reason for Abortions in Minnesota

Admin

The Minnesota Department of Health released two-years’ worth of abortion data Friday, correcting an abortion clinic’s 2020 reporting error.

The state reports that there were 10,339 abortions in 2020 and 10,136 abortions in 2021.

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Commentary: America Is More Fragile Than the Left Understands

Admin
American flag hanging in the fall time

The Left has been tempting fate since January 2021—applying its nihilist medicine to America on the premise that such a rich patient can ride out any toxic shock.

Our elites assume that all our nation’s past violent protests, all its would-be revolutions, all its cultural upheavals, all its institutionalized lawlessness were predicated on one central truth—America’s central core is so strong, so rich, and so resilient that it can withstand almost any assault. 

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West Point Graduates Sign Letter Challenging Leadership of Military Academy

Admin

Several retired U.S. military officers signed a letter written by “Concerned Graduates of West Point and The Long Gray Line,” which objects to mandatory vaccinations, CRT instruction, progressivism and other “woke” sentiments in the military academy.

“We wanted to challenge the leadership of the Academy and the Defense Dept on their WOKE actions, CRT, Diversity training and the other discrepancies in the Academy,” retired Army Maj. Gen. Paul Vallely, told the Epoch Times.

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Doctors Question Kids’ Vax as U.K. Research Shows Minuscule COVID-19 Risk

Admin

The quality of evidence for the FDA’s emergency use authorization (EUA) of COVID-19 vaccines for children as young as 6 months is drawing scrutiny from high-profile doctors and academics, some of whom are asking the White House not to pressure parents to vaccinate.

With CDC seroprevalence data from February finding 75% of minors had natural immunity, more attention is going to the risk/benefit calculation of vaccines for the age group at lowest risk from COVID.

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Peer-Reviewed Paper Shows Significant Fertility Risks for Men Who Get the Pfizer COVID Vaccine

Minnesota Sun Staff

A peer-reviewed paper released on Friday shows large decreases in sperm counts among men after the second dose of Pfizer’s mRNA COVID vaccine, with the decline continuing for over five months in many cases.

The study, published in the medical journal Andrology, confirms that the mRNA shots have significant fertility risks for men, independent journalist Alex Berenson reported on his Unreported Truths Substack.

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Texas GOP Adopts New Platform: Biden ‘Was Not Legitimately Elected’

Admin

The Texas Republican Party has adopted a new platform, rejecting the certification of the 2020 presidential election results and declaring “that acting President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. was not legitimately elected by the people of the United States.”

The 40-page platform was adopted by the state GOP in Houston over the weekend for its biennial convention, The Hill reported.

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IRS Destroyed 30 Million Tax Filing Documents, Lawmakers Demand Answers

The Center Square
Outside of IRS building

The Internal Revenue Service has been under fire for delays and millions of backlogged returns, but now lawmakers are raising the alarm after the federal agency “destroyed” millions of Americans’ tax documents.

Republicans on the House Oversight Committee sent a letter to IRS Commissioner Charles Rettig this week asking for answers about why these records were destroyed.

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Teachers’ Union Boss Raked In Massive Six-Figure Salary While Fighting to Close Schools

Admin
Randi Weingarten at AFGE

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten was paid nearly half a million dollars during the 2021-2022 school year, a report from Americans for Fair Treatment stated Wednesday. Weingarten raked in six-figures while simultaneously pushing for schools to stay shutdown during the COVID-19 pandemic.

With teacher’s union dues, Weingarten is paid $449,562, the Americans for Fair Treatment report stated. Weingarten’s salary is about seven times more than the average high school teacher makes as of 2021, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor.

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Data Researcher ‘Shocked’ at Death Rate Among Working-Age Minnesotans

Admin

A researcher in Minnesota discovered shocking increases in death rates in the state, with year-over-year averages proving to be “astoundingly” high for younger age groups.

Researcher Marana Muse joined Liz Collin on her podcast once again to discuss her findings on death data, vaccines and COVID-19 testing in Minnesota.

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‘A Source of Concern’: Jobs Growth Stalls, Unemployment Rises in May

Minnesota Sun Staff

The U.S. economy added 390,000 jobs in May while the unemployment rate was largely unchanged at 3.6%, according to Department of Labor data released Friday.

The number of unemployed people ticked up slightly to about 6 million, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) report. Economists projected 328,000 Americans would be added to payrolls prior to Friday’s report, The Wall Street Journal reported.

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White House Slowly Imploding over Biden’s Lackluster Messaging: Report

Minnesota Sun Staff

Staffers in President Joe Biden’s White House are struggling to control public messaging and gain ground in the media amid internal dysfunction, according to a CNN report.

Tensions have arisen between older staffers and younger aides over media strategies, and staff believe they are unable to improve Biden’s public image or change their strategy, according to CNN. Staffers described conflict and frustration within the White House over their inability to put forward an effective communications strategy, CNN reported, citing multiple anonymous staff members.

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COVID Restrictions Stunted Kids’ Immune Systems, Could Explain Surge of Other Illnesses: Scientists

Minnesota Sun Staff

For two years and counting, the scientific and medical establishments have urged Americans at all risk levels to limit their exposure to the microbial world to effectively reduce the spread of COVID-19, rather than focus on protecting the vulnerable.

The unexpected surge of other pathogens starting last summer, however, has challenged the wisdom of frequent sanitizing, social distancing, remote work and education, and routine mask-wearing, especially applied to children.

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Commentary: Expand Telehealth Permanently

RealClearWire

by Diana Girnita   When the fear of getting COVID-19 was high and lock-down orders were in place, telehealth was an important resource, allowing patients to connect with doctors by live video, telephone, and remote patient monitoring without overcrowding hospitals and doctors’ offices. During this time of isolation and drastic increases in…

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