Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis named a new chief of staff on Thursday. James Utheimer, of Destin, will take over the position after current Chief of Staff Adrian Lukis resigns on October 1.
The DeSantis administration thanked Lukis for his work and leadership.
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School board members in Alachua County, who saw their salaries cut due to mandating masks in their schools against Governor DeSantis’ Executive Order 21-175, were repaid Thursday by the U.S. Department of Education (USDOE).
Funding for the payment comes from a new program established by the Biden Administration known as the Project to Support America’s Families and Educators grant program, or “Project SAFE.”
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Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich declared Friday he would take “all necessary actions” to investigate any irregularities uncovered by a state Senate-order audit of the November 2020 election in his state.
His comments on Twitter came as leaked copies of the draft audit flagged tens of thousands of ballots cast in the last election as suspect and requiring more investigation.
The drafts recommended the Republican attorney general take the lead investigating many of the issues, including a possible canvas of voters flagged as having problems.
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Florida House Representative, Webster Barnaby of Deltona, filed an abortion bill (HB 167) Wednesday, titled the “Florida Heartbeat Act” that, like Texas, would ban most abortions in the state, and allow lawsuits against doctors that violate the law.
The bill would require a physician to conduct tests for, and inform a woman seeking an abortion of, the presence of a detectable fetal heartbeat. If a heartbeat is present, the bill “prohibits a physician from knowingly performing or inducing an abortion, if the physician detects a fetal heartbeat for an unborn child, or fails to conduct a test to detect a fetal heartbeat.”
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From covering displaced refugees around the globe to the obstacles faced by protesters seeking change in America, freelance photojournalist Maranie Staab believes her camera can be a force for truth and social justice. The work of a “conflict photographer” often requires physical courage in places she has reported from, such as Africa and the Middle East. It certainly did so on Aug. 22, while Staab was covering demonstrations in Portland, Ore.
Members of the left-wing group antifa called her a “slut” and then demanded that journalists assembled to cover the protests “get the f— out.” Staab, a 2020 reporting fellow for the liberal Pulitzer Center, tried to calm the situation. She was assaulted. She told the Willamette Week that they grabbed her phone and smashed it. Then they threw her to the pavement and sprayed her with mace. The ugly assault on Staab (below) was filmed and distributed quickly online, resulting in widespread condemnation. “If we’re on a public street and a newsworthy event is occurring, you’re not going to tell me what I can and cannot film,” Staab told the weekly newspaper.
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Judge Monica Brasington of the 8th Judicial Circuit Court has issued a temporary injunction against the City of Gainesville’s COVID vaccine mandate. The decision indicates a slight, early victory for employees who are seeking to not receive the vaccine.
Brasington said in her ruling that the city did not provide ample evidence showing a vaccine mandate serves “a compelling interest through the least restrictive means.” She also said the city bears the burden of proof to determine that the mandate is in the best interest of the public.
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Earlier this month, the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) affirmed their support for teaching Critical Race Theory (CRT) in Florida’s public K-12 schools. The conference adopted Resolution 68 entitled “In Support of Critical Race Theory in Public K-12 Education.”
The resolution included language supporting the “basic tenents of CRT.”
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The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims increased to 351,000 last week as the economy continues to slowly recover from the coronavirus pandemic.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics figure released Thursday represents an increase in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending Sept. 11, when 335,000 new jobless claims were reported. That figure was revised up from the 332,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
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The federal government has “no authority” to tell Americans “what they can or cannot believe” when it comes to religious exemptions to vaccinations, the president of non-profit political advocacy group CatholicVote.org told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Thousands of Americans are seeking religious exemptions to vaccine mandates, citing reports that some of the vaccines were developed using aborted fetal cell lines, but pressure from activists, commentators and mandate-minded lawmakers suggests that the religious objections may face more serious inquisition in the coming weeks.
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U.S. methamphetamine-related deaths in adults between the ages of 18 to 64 nearly tripled from 2015 to 2019, according to a National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA).
The study found that the number of psychostimulant-related overdoses increased from 5,526 to 15,489, a roughly 180% jump, between 2015 and 2019. The number of people who said they used methamphetamine increased 43% over the same years.
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The construction industry is struggling to recover from the pandemic due to difficulties hiring workers and severe supply chain shortfalls, a report found.
Construction contractors project revenue to remain stagnant and below pre-pandemic levels over the next 12 months even as the economy-wide recovery continues, according to the report published Wednesday by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. While the Commerce Commercial Construction Index (CCI), which the Chamber measures on a quarterly basis, ticked up one point, it remained eight points below its early 2020 figure.
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Twenty House Republicans signed a letter to President Joe Biden Thursday demanding a public account of the military equipment lost in Afghanistan and the risks that it poses to the U.S., its allies and its interests.
The letter, led by North Carolina Rep. Ted Budd and obtained exclusively by the Daily Caller News Foundation, also laments the lack of public reports detailing how tax dollars were spent in the country throughout the two-decade war. Other signees included Reps. Brian Mast of Florida, Jody Hice of Georgia and Michelle Steel and Young Kim of California.
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A far-left group funded by radical billionaire George Soros submitted a letter to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) calling for Republicans to be murdered, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The group in question is Free Press, which is funded by Soros’s Open Society Foundation, as well as the Center for American Progress, the Tides Foundation, and other far-left organizations. Free Press, whose stated goal is to “reshape media” in the United States, submitted a letter signed by almost 5,000 of its members baselessly accusing the FCC of systemic racism.
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Facebook released its updated Content Distribution Guidelines on Thursday, shedding more light on how the tech giant decides what content it suppresses.
While Facebook has previously provided some details on the types of content that receive reduced distribution in Facebook’s News Feed, the updated guidelines are designed to provide clarity and accessibility, Director of Product Management Anna Stepanov announced in a blog post Thursday.
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Two Afghan refugees staying at Fort McCoy have been charged in separate incidents involving sexual assault of a minor and abuse. A grand jury charged Afghan refugees Bahrullah Noori and Mohammad Haroon Imaad on Thursday. Noori, 20, was charged with three counts of sexual assault of a minor, with one count of use of force. According to the indictment, the girls he assaulted at Fort McCoy “had not attained the age of 16 years and were at least four years younger than the defendant.”
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Florida will appeal a federal judge’s injunction prohibiting the state from enforcing its two-year-old “sanctuary cities” ban.
U.S. Southern District of Florida Judge Beth Bloom Tuesday released a 110-page ruling declaring portions 2019’s Senate Bill 168 are unconstitutional and that the measure was adopted by the state’s Republican-dominated Legislative with “discriminatory motives.”
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Bipartisan enthusiasm for election-reform legislation appeared solid at a Pennsylvania Senate State Government Committee hearing on Thursday, save for one part: video live-streaming of mail-in-ballot counting.
Elements of the bill, sponsored by Sen. David Argall (R-PA-Pottsville) and Sen. Sharif Street (D-PA-Philadelphia), have arisen largely from recommendations in a June 2021 report by the Senate Special Committee on Election Integrity and Reform. Argall and Street’s proposal excludes some of the ad hoc panel’s more contentious ideas, particularly enhanced voter-identification rules, which Rep. Seth Grove (R-PA-York) is spearheading in separate legislation. (While Gov. Tom Wolf [D] vetoed Grove’s bill in June, the representative has reintroduced it in light of the governor’s subsequent remarks in favor of a strengthened voter-ID requirement.)
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced on Thursday that the state of Florida purchased thousands of monoclonal antibody treatments directly from GlaxoSmithKline, a producer of the treatment.
The move by DeSantis bypasses a restriction placed by President Joe Biden’s administration, allowing the federal government to dictate allocations to each state and leave it to state leaders to ration it out among locations.
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Despite opposition from progressive lawmakers, the Democratic-led House passed $1 billion of funding for Israel’s Iron Dome on Thursday with the help of Republican votes.
Oregon Democratic Rep. Earl Blumenhaur, the presiding officer, deemed the bill passed with a simple voice vote but a request was made for a recorded yes or no vote.
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Demand for a key COVID-19 treatment has led to a nationwide shortage, and as President Joe Biden’s administration rations how much each state receives, some governors are pushing back over having to decide how to use their limited supplies.
Many states are warning their residents that the treatment may not be available, and some are discussing offering it only to unvaccinated individuals. On Tuesday, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, a Democrat, warned his states’ residents that there is “not going to be enough” of the treatment.
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U.S. District Judge of Miami, Beth Bloom, made a ruling on Tuesday to block parts of Florida law that bans cities from establishing their own “sanctuary policies” that are designed to protect undocumented migrants throughout the state.
The law in question stems from a piece of legislation from 2019 known as the Federal Immigration Enforcement Act, or SB 168, that Bloom believes is “discriminatory” and violated constitutional equal-protection rights.
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In January, 2001, America had a balanced budget, low debt, and was at peace. Here, briefly, is what lay ahead: war, financial crisis, civil unrest, massive growth of the federal government, and now severe inflation.
Never in the history of America has our government in its ineptitude created such a false economy, risking hundreds of years of hard work on unsound and unworkable economic policies. The Founders wisely relied on dispersion of power. They knew there would be dishonest and incompetent politicians but, in this case, the entire government is infected with deceptive leaders.
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Gilead Sciences announced in a press release Wednesday that its COVID-19 drug remdesivir reduces hospitalizations by 87% in high-risk patients.
The study consisted of 562 patients who were randomly given either remdesivir to a placebo. The company said that it saw an 87% reduction in hospitalizations after day 28, according to the press release. The trial was supposed to have over 1,000 subjects but the Gilead halted enrollment after other COVID-19 drugs became readily available.
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During a Senate hearing Tuesday, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas claimed the Biden Administration’s border policies are “working,” and have led to a drop of encounters at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Mayorkas was responding to Senator Josh Hawley (R-Mo.), who was grilling the DHS chief about the ongoing surge of illegal immigrants at the border during a Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee hearing on “Threats to the Homeland.”
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While Americans know that guns take many innocent lives every year, many don’t know that firearms also save them.
On May 15, an attacker at an apartment complex in Fort Smith, Ark., fatally shot a woman and then fired 93 rounds at other people before a man killed him with a bolt-action rifle. Police said he “likely saved a number of lives in the process.”
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Federal law enforcement agencies are purchasing surveillance drones from a Chinese company the Pentagon has said could pose a threat to national security, Axios reported.
The U.S. Secret Service purchased eight surveillance drones from Da Jiang Innovations (DJI), a company based in Shenzhen, China, in July, according to procurement records obtained by the industry publication IPVM and shared with Axios. The FBI had already bought 19 DJI drones days prior to the Secret Service’s purchase.
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Amazon, Facebook, Pfizer and 30 other major U.S. corporations have joined a coalition seeking to provide jobs and opportunities to Afghan refugees.
The companies announced that they would partner with the non-profit organization Tent Partnership for Refugees, a network of nearly 200 global businesses working to provide refugees with jobs worldwide, according to the announcement Tuesday. The coalition plans to help the refugees, who are fleeing Taliban-controlled Afghanistan, permanently resettle in the U.S. through economic integration.
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Scientists believe they have found physical evidence that an exploding space rock could have inspired one of the most infamous stories in the Bible, archaeologist Christopher R. Moore wrote, Yahoo News reported.
Scientists may have found proof of an icy space rock hurtling through the atmosphere at about 38,000 mph toward the ancient Biblical city Sodom, now called Tall el-Hammam, roughly 3,600 years ago, Moore wrote. The Bible describes the destruction of an urban center near the Dead Sea, with stones and fire falling from the sky.
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The state of Texas filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Biden Administration, over a mandate enacted in June dictating that “transgender” individuals must be referred to by their preferred pronouns and be allowed to use restrooms of their choice, Fox News reports.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, in a statement on the lawsuit against the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), said that “states should be able to choose protection of privacy for their employers over subjective views of gender.” Paxton declared that “this illegal guidance puts many women and children at risk. If the Biden administration thinks they can force states to comply with their political agenda, my office will fight against their radical attempt at social change.”
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President Biden’s job-approval rating has fallen six percentage points, to 43%, since August. The number is the lowest of his roughly eight-month presidency, and now for the first time, a majority, 53%, disapproves of his performance, according to a Gallup poll released Wednesday.
The poll was conducted from Sept. 1 to 17, after the U.S. military left Afghanistan in late August. The military’s departure after 20 years in the country included the chaotic evacuation of 120,000 people that was overshadowed by a suicide bomber killing 13 U.S. service members.
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Former President Donald Trump filed a $100 million lawsuit against The New York Times and his niece Mary Trump on Tuesday, alleging his confidential tax documents were improperly shared.
The lawsuit, which was filed in the New York Supreme Court, alleged that New York Times reporters Susanne Craig, David Barstow and Russell Buettner pressured Mary Trump to share the former president’s tax documents for an article they were working on in 2018, the Associated Press reported.
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After Gov. Doug Ducey (R), along with 25 other governors, sent a letter to the Biden Administration urgently requesting a meeting with President Joe Biden regarding the border crisis, the White House appears to be ignoring the governors’ plea.
“As chief executives of our states, we request a meeting with you at The White House to bring an end to the national security crisis created by eight months of unenforced borders,” that letter said. “The months-long surge in illegal crossings has instigated an international humanitarian crisis, spurred a spike in international criminal activity, and opened the floodgates to human traffickers and drug smugglers endangering public health and safety in our states. A crisis that began at our southern border now extends beyond to every state and requires immediate action before the situation worsens.”
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Amazon is handing out cash prizes and vehicles to its workers that receive the COVID-19 vaccine as part of a push to vaccinate more of its frontline employees.
The company announced on one of its Instagram pages Monday that five employees were awarded cars worth up to $40,000 dollars as winners of a vaccine sweepstakes.
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U.S. Representative Bob Gibbs (R-OH-07) on Tuesday introduced articles of impeachment against President Joe Biden, pointing to the ongoing border crisis and the chaotic Afghanistan withdrawal.
Reps. Andy Biggs (R-AZ-05), Brian Babin (R-TX-36), and Randy Weber (R-TX-14) announced their support of the measure and signed on as co-sponsors of the articles of impeachment.
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Florida Agriculture Commissioner Nikki Fried is weighing legal action against Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis over his appointment of Shawn Hamilton to the position of secretary of the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.
DeSantis and Fried have gone back and forth for weeks over an interpretation of the Florida Constitution related to the appointment power of the Florida Cabinet in comparison to the governor’s complete discretion of hiring and firing of secretaries.
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Florida State Rep. Paul Renner (R-FL-24) has been selected as the next Speaker of the Florida House of Representatives. Renner will succeed current Speaker Chris Sprowls (R-FL-65) when Sprowls’ term ends after the 2022 legislative session.
After being selected, Renner touted traditional conservative policies, and moving toward policies rooted in freedom rather than a vision of moving away from freedom.
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The Georgia State Election Board on Tuesday unanimously voted to dismiss an illegal voting complaint against Julie Blanchard, the wife of GOP U.S. Senate candidate Herschel Walker, for voting absentee from her husband’s home in Texas.
The Georgia Secretary of State’s Office recommended the dismissal following its investigation into the complaint, for which they found insufficient evidence to prove that Blanchard was ineligible to cast an absentee ballot from Walker’s Texas home in October 2020.
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Journalists who get into public spats with politicians may want to rethink their eagerness to pour salt into old wounds, at least in the middle of litigation.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals resurrected a defamation lawsuit by Rep. Devin Nunes against Ryan Lizza and Hearst Media, because the journalist called attention to his article on Nunes and illegal immigrant laborers after the California Republican sued.
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Many of the thousands of Haitians who have migrated to the Texas border city of Del Rio are reportedly being released elsewhere in the U.S.
Their release is being reported by the Associated Press based on information from two U.S. officials and appears to undercut the Biden administration’s public statements that the thousands in the camp faced immediate expulsion.
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Angelo Codevilla was many admirable things in his long, productive, and amazing life: an immigrant, a student-athlete, a naval officer, a scholar, a husband, a father, a foreign service officer, a Capitol Hill staffer, an adviser to senators and presidents, a distinguished author of great insight and foresight, and—above all things—a patriot. Although he had already accomplished a great deal in his 78 years and faced some recent health challenges, he was determined to overcome these and never abandoned the fight.
Angelo, who died Monday night, was a man of great energy and spirit, raring for the battle, and determined in every way he could to contribute to it.
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As a result of the 2020 census, Florida will gain one additional congressional seat, and Florida lawmakers will begin the process to redraw district lines in the upcoming fall committee weeks with the 2022 legislative session beginning in January.
“Prior to the start of the 2022 Regular Session the Legislature will hold interim committee meetings, at which time the committees that conduct the redistricting and reapportionment processes may meet,” according to the Florida Senate’s redistricting site.
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One of the key reasons I left the Democratic Party years ago was the atrocious way they treated black people.
I’m not just talking about “Jim Crow” or LBJ’s well-known patriarchal and racist use of the “n-word” to celebrate blacks voting Democratic forever in gratitude for his ultimately useless early “virtue signaling” called the “War on Poverty.”
(Notice any difference between South Central then and now?)
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The tens of thousands of Afghan refugees being imported into the United States by the Biden Administration are carrying numerous dangerous diseases in addition to the Chinese coronavirus, including malaria, measles, and tuberculosis, as reported by Breitbart.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) admitted to the influx of diseases through the Afghan arrivals in a statement on Monday, declaring that all of the refugees will be required to take the measles vaccine; however, there are still no measures in place to require them to receive a coronavirus vaccine.
According to the CDC press release, they had been “notified by public health departments of 16 measles cases among the evacuees.” Subsequently, they ordered that “evacuees who are in the United States are required to be vaccinated with MMR and complete a 21-day quarantine from the time of vaccination at U.S. ‘Safe Haven’ designated locations.”
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The United States should be at its pinnacle of strength. It still produces more goods and services than any other nation—China included, which has a population over four times as large. Its fuel and food industries are globally preeminent, as are its graduate science, computer, engineering, medical, and technology university programs. Its constitution is the oldest of current free nations. And the U.S. military is by far the best funded in the world. And yet something has gone terribly wrong within America, from the southern border to Afghanistan.
The inexplicable in Afghanistan—surrendering Bagram Air Base in the middle of the night, abandoning tens of billions of dollars of military equipment to the Taliban, and forsaking both trapped Americans and loyalist Afghans—has now become the new Biden model of inattention and incompetence.
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A medical professional who works for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is blowing the whistle on the federal government for pushing dangerous experimental vaccines on an unsuspecting public, calling the malfeasance “evil at the highest level.”
“You have the FDA, you have the CDC, that are both supposed to be protecting us, Registered Nurse Jodi O’Malley told Project Veritas founder and CEO James O’Keefe, “and everything that we’ve done so far is unscientific.”
The whistleblower works at Phoenix Indian Medical Center, an Arizona hospital run by the Indian Health branch of HHS, but perhaps not for long. After contacting O’Keefe, she recorded some of her HHS colleagues raising concerns about the COVID vaccines. Putting her faith in God, O’Malley said that after everything she had witnessed, she was willing to lose her job to expose the federal government’s counterproductive and destructive COVID policies.
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The U.S. Supreme Court announced Monday it would hear a case in December that directly challenges the landmark 1973 abortion case Roe v. Wade.
The high court set Dec. 1 as the date it would hear Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, which means a decision could be reached by June 2022.
This case features a challenge to a Mississippi law banning abortions after 15 weeks. The case especially addresses the constitutionality of abortion bans that take effect before a fetus would be viable outside the womb.
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A bipartisan group of 32 state attorneys general sent a letter to leading lawmakers in the House and Senate on Monday urging the passage of a series of antitrust bills targeting major technology companies.
The letter, led by attorneys general Phil Weiser of Colorado, Douglas Peterson of Nebraska, Letitia James of New York, and Herbert H. Slatery III of Tennessee, was addressed to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell. The attorneys general urged Congress to modernize federal antitrust laws and enhance consumer protections by passing a series of bills introduced in the House Judiciary Committee in June that target big tech companies.
“A comprehensive update of federal antitrust laws has not occurred in decades,” the attorneys general wrote. “The sponsors of these bills should be commended for working to ensure that federal antitrust laws remain robust and keep pace with that of modern markets.”
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Day by day, as the Biden Administration crashes into utter shambles and a cloud of dust reminiscent of 9/11, the Bidenization of America becomes more stark and horrifying.
I can remember no more pitiful words from a senior American government official in 65 years than Secretary of State Anthony Blinken’s complaint that the Taliban government in Kabul was disappointing in its lack of “inclusiveness.” (To be sure, that is not all it lacks, and that could hardly have been a surprise.)
Nor can I think of any diplomatic initiative by a senior American government official more certainly doomed to ludicrous failure than environment ambassador John Kerry’s recent trip to China requesting the collaboration of the People’s Republic in this administration’s hell-bent-for-leather assault on what it is trying to identify as climate change.
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Apple is reportedly working on iPhone technology capable of detecting and diagnosing depression, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The tech giant is developing the iPhone features to reliably detect and diagnose depression as well as cognitive decline, people familiar with the matter told the WSJ. The technology is being developed in partnership with researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) and pharmaceutical company Biogen.
The technology is in its early stages of development, according to the WSJ, but will collect data on iPhone users’ mobility and sleep patterns, physical activity, and other behaviors. However, researchers are still unsure whether they can create algorithms that reliably detect the mental health state of users.
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Most IRS guidance documents make for poor pleasure reading. Then again, most IRS guidance doesn’t effectively impose a retroactive tax on small business owners merely for having a family. IRS Notice 2021-49, issued on August 4, includes a bizarre interpretation of the law that will effectively raise taxes for business owners with close relatives, even if their family members have no involvement in the company.
A core goal of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act passed early on in the pandemic was to assist businesses in keeping employees on their payroll even as they dealt with the economic effects of lockdowns. Part of the plan was the Employee Retention Tax Credit (ERTC), which provides a tax credit against employer payroll tax liabilities.
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