Day: November 4, 2021

University of Florida Professors Fighting School’s Testifying Pro Bono Order

Grant Holcomb

Three University of Florida professors are going to be fighting their employer’s order over testifying in a State of Florida election integrity law challenge. UF previously banned them altogether from testifying but backtracked their position and said they would permit the professors to testify if they remained unpaid.

“Prohibiting professors from giving standard expert testimony, and instead only allowing pro bono testimony, undermines their credibility as expert witnesses and chills their speech,” said the attorneys representing the professors.

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Florida CFO Jimmy Patronis Demands Refunds Amid Biden’s Border Settlements

Casey Owens

Florida’s Chief Financial Officer, Jimmy Patronis, gave an ultimatum to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland on Tuesday, demanding the Department of Justice to refund Floridians’ income taxes if they are used to pay out potential settlements to immigrant family members who were separated at the border.

As the $450,000-per-person settlements could amount to almost a billion dollars, Patronis’ proposal calls on the federal government to “not subsidize or incentivize illegal immigration.”

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Commentary: Youngkin Shock Win in Virginia Vote of No Confidence in Biden, Portends Red Wave for GOP in Congress in 2022

Florida Capital Star Staff

This is one of the greatest votes of no confidence in the 21st Century.

Against the destructive policies of President Joe Biden, a torrent of spending that has brought back memories of the 1970s — surging inflation as the middle class are taxed their savings at the grocery store and then scenes of American defeat overseas in Afghanistan that stranded hundreds of Americans and thousands of American allies, who now suffer under the tyranny of the Taliban.

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Private Payrolls Added 571,000 Jobs in October as Hiring Heats Up

Florida Capital Star Staff

Private firms’ payrolls increased by 571,000 in October, far exceeding experts’ expectations as hiring throughout the country heats up, according to a major employment report.

The 571,000 jobs added is a slight increase from the 523,000 jobs added in September, the ADP National Employment Report showed. The Dow Jones estimate predicted companies would add 395,000 jobs in October, CNBC reported.

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Biden Approval Rating Falls to 42 Percent

The Center Square

President Joe Biden’s approval rating has fallen to 42%, according to a new NBC News poll; his disapproval rating hit 54%, up 6 points from August.

The majority polled, 71%, including nearly half of registered Democrats, say the country is headed in the wrong direction. Republicans and Independents say the country is headed in the wrong direction, 93% and 70%, respectively, with 48% of Democrats saying the same.

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Facebook to Shut Down Facial Recognition System, Delete Scans of One Billion People

Florida Capital Star Staff

Facebook announced Tuesday it was shutting down its Face Recognition system and deleting the scans of over one billion people’s faces.

Jerome Pesenti, vice president of artificial intelligence at Facebook, announced the changes in a blog post Tuesday, citing the technology’s possible negative effects as well as regulatory uncertainty as reasons behind the decision.

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Fauci Staffers Flagged Potential Gain-of-Function Research at Wuhan Lab in 2016, Records Reveal

Admin
Anthony Fauci

Two subordinates of Dr. Anthony Fauci raised concerns in May 2016 that a taxpayer-funded grant may include gain-of-function experiments on bat coronaviruses at a Wuhan lab, but dropped the issue after nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance downplayed the concerns, documents obtained by the Daily Caller News Foundation show.

National Institutes of Allergies and Infectious Disease staffers Jenny Greer and Erik Stemmy told EcoHealth in a May 28, 2016, letter that a proposed grant “may include” gain of function research, according to documents obtained through a White Coat Waste Project information request. The letter requested EcoHealth provide its own “determination” as to whether its proposed experiments in Wuhan included gain of function research.

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Biden’s Commerce Secretary Is Trying to Shield a $42 Billion Broadband Funding Program from Public Eyes

Florida Capital Star Staff

Secretary of Commerce Gina Raimondo requested the inclusion of a provision in the bipartisan infrastructure bill shielding a $42 billion broadband funding program from public scrutiny, according to several people familiar with the matter.

The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, a $1.2 trillion piece of legislation that passed the Senate in August with significant bipartisan support and currently awaits a vote in the House, sets aside $42 billion in broadband deployment grants to be given to states and administered through guidelines issued by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA), a division of the Commerce Department.

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Commentary: ‘Let’s Go, Brandon’ Is the Vaccine We Needed

Florida Capital Star Staff

When Donald Trump was president, he was compared frequently to Hitler. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) told her Democratic colleagues that she wanted to see Trump “in prison.” Actor Robert De Niro said “F–k Trump” live on national television at the Tony Awards. The vulgar expression was met with enthusiastic applause. Fang-banging U.S. Representative Eric Swalwell (D-Calif.) compared Trump to Osama bin Laden.

These frequent expressions of irreverence and vulgarity from the Left not only were common but were celebrated when leveled at President Trump. After Biden was announced victor in the 2020 presidential election, comedian Kathy Griffin reposted the infamous photo of her holding a replica of Trump’s bloody severed head—a graphic image that had previously brought her career to a screeching halt when it was first published in 2017.

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Environmentalists Are Making Putin Stronger Than Ever

Florida Capital Star Staff

U.S. environmental policies pushed by the Biden administration and aimed at dramatically curbing domestic fossil fuel production have given Russian President Vladimir Putin more power on the world stage.

Since taking office, President Joe Biden has blocked domestic pipelines, ditched drilling projects, proposed sweeping regulations on the fossil fuel industry and attempted to ban oil and gas leases on federal lands while pledging to decarbonize the grid by 2035. But Biden has also turned to the Middle Eastern oil cartel the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and Russia, asking the countries to increase their production of oil and natural gas respectively.

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Music Spotlight: Juna N Joey

Bethany Bowman

NASHVILLE,  Tennessee – Even though Juna and Joey Defeo are just 16 and 19 years old, they have been singing together for quite a while. They got their affinity for music from their grandparents. Their paternal grandfather was an opera singer in Italy and their maternal grandfather was in a country band who played “pretty much anything with strings.”

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Florida Democrats Oppose, Criticize Special Session

Grant Holcomb

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) called a special session over President Joe Biden’s vaccine mandate and Florida Democrats are criticizing the effort. DeSantis has, numerous times, worked to ban mask mandates in Florida’s schools and vaccine mandates, and is seeking the Florida Legislature to codify those bans even further.

“I think that we need to be making sure that people are healthy and safe, and that they can go to work and that our economy is booming, and that businesses are able to do what they need to do,” said Florida State Sen. Lauren Book (D-FL-32).

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