DeSantis Leads Trump in Poll of Republican Voters

A straw poll at the Western Conservative Summit, an annual gathering of conservatives in Denver, showed Florida Governor Ron DeSantis ahead of former President Trump.

Members of the group were asked to select all candidates of potential GOP contenders that they would vote for. DeSantis beat out former President Donald Trump, getting 74% approval compared to Trump’s 71%.

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The Washington Post Calls Fulton County’s Absentee Ballot Chain of Custody Documentation ‘Shoddy’ and ‘Sloppy,’ Cites Georgia Star News Reporting

In a story this week, The Washington Post referred to Fulton County’s record-keeping of the chain of custody documentation of the absentee ballots deposited into drop boxes during the November 3, 2020, election “shoddy” and “sloppy.”

While the apparent goal of the story was to deliver “Four Pinocchios” to former President Donald Trump for what The Post called “baseless claims about ballot drop boxes in Fulton County, Ga,” it made arguments supporting claims of election irregularities.

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Commentary: Georgia Conducting Secret 2020 Ballot Review –– Keeping Plaintiffs in the Dark

After several Fulton County, Ga., poll monitors testified last year that boxes of mail-in ballots for Joe Biden looked liked they’d been run through a photocopy machine, state investigators quietly broke the seal on one suspicious box and inspected the hundreds of votes it contained for signs of fraud, RealClearInvestigations has learned exclusively.

At the same time, a key whistleblower told RCI that state investigators pressured her to recant her story about what she and other poll monitors had observed — what they called unusually “pristine” mail-in ballots while sorting through them during last November’s hand recount.

“I felt I was under investigation,” said Suzi Voyles, a longtime Fulton County poll manager whose sworn affidavits have been used by election watchdogs to sue the county for access to the ballots in question.

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Trump to Tour Border with Texas Governor Abbott

President Donald J. Trump prepares to sign a plaque placed along the border wall Tuesday, Jan. 12, 2021, at the Texas-Mexico border near Alamo, Texas.

Former President Donald Trump has accepted an invitation from Texas Governor Gregg Abbott to tour the ongoing crisis at the Southern border.

“The Biden Administration inherited from me the strongest, safest, and most secure border in U.S history and in mere weeks they turned it into the single worst border crisis in U.S history. It’s an unmitigated disaster zone,” Trump argued when announcing his upcoming visit.

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Wall Street Firm Blackstone Invests $6 Billion in Single-Family Homes

"For Rent" sign in window of building

Investment firm Blackstone Group acquired 17,000 single-family rental homes on Tuesday in a deal worth $6 billion.

Blackstone, an asset management firm that focuses on alternative investments, acquired Home Partners of America (HPA) along with its 17,000 home inventory, the firm announced in a statement Tuesday. Blackstone will continue HPA’s business model of offering its tenants rent-to-own lease agreements, which allow the tenant to purchase the rental property after a certain amount of time.

“The fundamental premise of the HPA platform is to provide residents with the opportunity to live in their chosen home with the option to purchase it,” Blackstone’s Real Estate Senior Managing Director Jacob Werner said in the statement. “We intend to build on that goal and expand access to homes across the U.S.”

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Critical Race Theory Presented Before Board of America’s Oldest Military Academy

In a recent livestream, a Virginia state official gave a presentation on why the far-left and anti-White teachings of Critical Race Theory should be encouraged at the oldest military academy in the United States, the Daily Caller reports.

Janice Underwood, who holds the title of Virginia’s “Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer,” spoke before a virtual gathering of the Board of Visitors at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI). In the lecture, Underwood promoted the racist writings of Robin DiAngelo, the author of the book “White Fragility.” She explicitly called for such “uncomfortable” ideas to be promoted at VMI, and said that such race-based thinking should be incorporated into “every single course” at the academy.

“Discomfort is to be expected,” Underwood continued, but encouraged the faculty to “lean into that discomfort. Walk towards the discomfort, not away.” She added that students at the academy must “engage in self-reflection and engage their own racial engagement and biases.”

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Police Departments in Multiple Major Cities Won’t Say If Gang Violence Is Increasing

Back of Police officers uniform

Police departments in several major cities would not say if gang violence in the region has increased in the last year, despite an overall increase in reports of violent crime.

Some police departments said the motive behind crimes isn’t always known while multiple others said they would not be able to provide any information unless a formal records request was submitted.

Over 1,600 violent crimes were recorded in 2021 and reported homicides were up 13% from last year in Washington, D.C., according to the Metropolitan Police Department (MPD). The MPD does not publicly report instances of gang-related activity or offenses.

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U.S. Supreme Court Rules Against NCAA on Payment for College Athletes

Paying college athletes has been a hotly debated topic for years, but now the U.S. Supreme Court has released a ruling on the issue.

A group of current and former student athletes brought the lawsuit against the National Collegiate Athletic Association, arguing that the organization violated antitrust laws when it prevented student athletes from accepting certain education-related benefits.

The case, filed in 2018, challenged the NCAA and the biggest conferences including the Pac-12, Big Ten, Big 12, SEC, and ACC. The Supreme Court ruled unanimously in favor of the students Monday, saying the NCAA could not deny those benefits, which could include things like “scholarships for graduate or vocational school, payments for academic tutoring, or paid posteligibility internships.”

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Democrats’ Sweeping Voting Bill Fails to Advance in the Senate

Senate Republicans stopped Democrats’ sweeping voting rights bill from advancing on the Senate floor Tuesday, unanimously voting against beginning its debate and therefore essentially killing it.

Though every Democrat voted to advance the bill, Republicans labeled it as nothing more than a power grab by the majority, with GOP leadership vowing to stop it. The bill, dubbed the “For the People Act,” received 50 votes in favor, but needed 60 to overcome a legislative filibuster.

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Commentary: China’s COVID Coup

Xi Jinping

It is time for Americans to contemplate the possibility that the United States may be surpassed as the world’s most influential country. The Chinese have just won the greatest strategic victory in the last 30 years since the disintegration of the Soviet Union. However it originated, the novel coronavirus was repressed within China by recourse to draconian measures but was deliberately permitted to infect the rest of the world, enabling China to exploit the blunderbuss Western lockdowns and make a giant leap towards economic preeminence in the world. 

This push toward Chinese economic preeminence was something widely predicted prior to the Trump era but clearly was not happening in the first three years of the Trump presidency, as unemployment nearly vanished in the United States, illegal immigration was almost completely stopped, and American economic growth soared, generated by an increasing workforce and sharp gains among the lowest 20 percent of income earners. Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic almost 16 months ago, however, the United States and the West generally have suffered a severe economic slowdown, vast increases in the money supply, and an epochal spike in unemployment.

Assuming the SARS-CoV-2 virus escaped accidentally, China must be credited for a remarkable coup of strategic improvisation in translating a public health crisis into a large economical and geopolitical advance at the expense of the West. The American indulgence in an entire summer of white-hating, statue-toppling, rioting, and denigration of American history, freedom, and values astonished the world. Moreover, it helped China propagate its message that democracy leads to chaos and waste and that the United States is an unreliable and unstable country. This argument is assisted by what appears to be the practice of the Biden regime of declaring American moral shortcomings to the world as Secretary of State Antony Blinken did in his unfortunate encounter with the Chinese foreign minister at Anchorage three months ago. 

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Commentary: Recent History Suggests FBI Involvement in January 6

Remember Christopher Steele?

The author of the infamous 2016 “dossier” was an impeccably credentialed former British intelligence officer who, we were assured, had the goods on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia. Nearly every major news and opinion outlet vouched for his reputation and reliable sources inside the Kremlin.

Steele frequently was described as an “ex-spy” in charge of a well-respected global consulting firm in London; he was alternatively a victim of Trump’s public taunts and a hero willing to risk his life and reputation to spare America the election of a Putin puppet.

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Kyrsten Sinema Reaffirms That She Will Not Support Abolishing the Filibuster

Arizona Democratic Sen. Kyrsten Sinema reaffirmed her opposition to abolishing the 60-vote Senate filibuster, rebuffing progressives who have decried the legislative rule and called for its removal.

Sinema argued that scrapping the Senate rule would erode “democracy’s guardrails,” writing in The Washington Post that doing so would lead the nation to “lose much more than we gain.”

“It’s no secret that I oppose eliminating the Senate’s 60-vote threshold,” Sinema wrote. “I held the same view during three terms in the U.S. House, and said the same after I was elected to the Senate in 2018.”

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Concerned Parents Arrested While Objecting to Critical Race Theory Teachings at School Board Meeting

Hundreds of concerned parents in Loudoun County, Virginia showed up a school board meeting to demonstrate their objection to teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) and multiple policies regarding transgender students in the school system. 

However, after numerous parents expressed their apprehensions to the school board members, the members immediately shut down discussion. Many parents continued to object, and at least two of the worried parents were arrested.

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Arizona State Rep. Shawnna Bolick Launches Campaign for Secretary of State

Shawnna Bolick

State Representative Shawnna Bolick (R-Phoenix) has launched a campaign to enter the growing field of candidates running for Arizona’s Secretary of State. 

The position has dramatically increased its statewide profile after many individuals expressed concerns over the handling of the November 2020 election.

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Arizona Lawmakers Approve Mandated Investigations into Mismatched Ballot Signatures

John Kavanagh

The Republican-controlled Arizona House of Representatives passed an amendment to an election integrity bill Monday that would require county attorneys or the state Attorney General’s office to investigate mismatched signatures on early voting ballots. 

The amendment to SB 1241 by Rep. John Kavanagh (R-District 23) is meant to protect the integrity of early voting, and Arizona’s elections as a whole according to the representative. 

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Medical Marijuana License Reserved for African American Farmer

A $50 million medical marijuana treatment center (MMTC) license will soon be reserved for an African American farmer after Florida’s Supreme Court upheld a 2017 law that included a provision designating such application to litigants in the Pigford vs. Glickman lawsuit from 1999.

The class action lawsuit accused the U.S. Department of Agriculture of discrimination against African American farmers when allocating farm loans and other financial assistance from 1981-1996, which was settled in favor of the farmers.

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Florida Chamber Releases Report Card for Lawmakers

Last week, the Florida Chamber of Commerce released their annual Legislative Report Card which reviews Florida’s lawmakers’ efforts during the legislative session and tabulates corresponding grade. The lawmakers’ grades are determined by alignment to Florida Chamber priorities and Where We Stand, another annual publication detailing the policy positions of the Florida Chamber heading into each legislative session.

For the 2021 Legislative Session, 88 lawmakers earned an “A” and 39 earned failing grades.

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