Month: August 2022

Texas School Board Approves Policy Requiring Educators to Use Students’ Gender at Birth, Removes CRT Books

Florida Capital Star Staff

A Texas school board approved a policy which requires educators to only recognize a student’s gender assigned at birth and bans the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) from the classroom during an Aug. 22 board meeting.

The Grapevine-Colleyville Independent School District Board in Grapevine, Texas, voted 4-3 to implement a policy which advises educators to only use students’ pronouns that correspond with their gender at birth. The policy also bans the teaching of CRT in the classrooms and requires books to be reviewed before entering the school library.

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Commentary: For Democrats and Due Process, It’s Now or Never

RealClearWire

The FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago represents the logical next step in the left’s ongoing effort to destroy Donald Trump. The raid also evinces Democrats’ spiral of worry: A successful Trump return, once unthinkable to them, is looking more possible by the day. To stop it, Democrats and their anti-Trump Republican allies are prepared to shred every last norm of American due process.

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Federal Judge Blocks Biden’s Attempt to Override State Abortion Law

Florida Capital Star Staff

James Hendrix, U.S. District Judge for the Northern District of Texas, temporarily blocked President Joe Biden’s attempt to force states to provide abortions in certain emergency situations in a Tuesday ruling, according to court documents.

Biden’s Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) issued guidance under the Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA), which requires hospitals that receive Medicare funding to provide emergency medical aid in an attempt to override state abortion bans. Hendrix halted the guidance and temporarily blocked the HHS from enforcing its interpretation of EMTALA.

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Taxpayers to Pay Billions After Biden ‘Forgives’ $10K to $20K in Student Loan Debt per Borrower

The Center Square

President Joe Biden announced Wednesday his administration would “forgive” $10,000 in federal student loan debt for those making less than $125,000 per year. The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget said the plan could cost taxpayers more than $200 billion.

The total income cap is expected to be higher for married couples, likely around double the $125,000 mark, though that has not been confirmed.

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Commentary: Racism to Achieve Diversity Harms All Americans

Florida Capital Star Staff

If you’ve navigated the thicket of microinstructions, hectoring, guilt-tripping, institutionalized resentment, establishment-generated misinformation, double standards, and bizarre new terminology, then welcome to the world of woke antiracism in America today.

One of the biggest absurdities spread by the woke antiracists is that white people must practice “allyship” and refrain from sharing their opinions on race relations with “people of color.” There is nothing wrong with listening as well as talking, but for white people to remain silent in the face of one of the most destructive movements in American history is negligent and cowardly.

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John Solomon’s Statement Regarding ‘Daily Beast’ Smear of His Coverage of Archives Memo

Florida Capital Star Staff

The Daily Beast, where I once worked, has provided a fresh example of the failing state of American journalism. The site’s media reporter is under the illusion I wrote a story to try to help a particular politician. That may be the standard at The Daily Beast today, but it is not my standard.

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Big Tech Colludes with Abortion Industry and Democrats to Discriminate Against Pregnancy Care Centers

Susan Berry, PhD

Yelp announced Tuesday it will add a “prominent consumer notice to crisis pregnancy center listings,” in order to distinguish the pro-life centers from abortion clinics.

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Federal Judge Questions Idaho Abortion Ban in Lawsuit Brought by Biden Administration: Updated

Susan Berry, PhD

UPDATE: Late Wednesday, Judge Lynn Winmill granted the Biden Department of Justice’s request for an injunction on Idaho’s abortion ban as it pertains to medical emergencies.

“The Court hereby restrains and enjoins the State of Idaho, including all of its officers, employees, and agents, from enforcing Idaho Code § 18-622(2)-(3) as applied to medical care required by the Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act (EMTALA),” Winmill wrote, adding the state is prohibited “from initiating any criminal prosecution against, attempting to suspend or revoke the professional license of, or seeking to impose any other form of liability on, any medical provider or hospital based on their performance of conduct that (1) is defined as an “abortion” under Idaho Code § 18-604(1), but that is necessary to avoid (i) “placing the health of” a pregnant patient “in serious jeopardy”; (ii) a “serious impairment to bodily functions” of the pregnant patient; or (iii) a “serious dysfunction of any bodily organ or part” of the pregnant patient.”

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FBI Whistleblowers Say Senior Officials Ordered Bureau Not to Investigate Hunter Biden Laptop

Florida Capital Star Staff

FBI whistleblowers allege that the Bureau’s leaders ordered agents not to investigate Hunter Biden’s laptop, according to a letter Wisconsin Republican Sen. Ron Johnson sent to Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz asking that he investigate the matter.

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Former Republican Governor Wins Florida Democratic Primary

Florida Capital Star Staff

Former Republican governor and current Democratic Rep. Charlie Crist of Florida has defeated Democratic Commissioner of Agriculture Nikki Fried in Florida’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, according to PBS News.

Crist won with 60.2% of the vote, as of 8 p.m. EST according to PBS, citing reporting from The Associated Press. Crist is now slated to face off as the Democratic candidate against Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida, alongside a slate of minor third party and write-in candidates, in the Nov. 8 general election.

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Baltimore Post Office Discovers 2020 Mail-In Ballots

Florida Capital Star Staff

More than two dozen Baltimore voters received their 2020 election ballots earlier this month after the U.S. Postal Service discovered a tray of undelivered mail nearly two years too late.

The Baltimore City Board of Elections is working to figure out why the ballots were delivered late. President Biden won the heavily-Democrat city by a landslide – about eight votes to every ballot cast for then-President Trump.

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House Republicans Vow to Investigate Anthony Fauci After Resignation

Florida Capital Star 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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Natural Gas Prices Hit 14-Year-High After Biden Signs Dems’ Climate Bill into Law

Florida Capital Star Staff

The price of U.S. natural gas futures reached its highest point since 2008 as gas demand continues to spike amid the worldwide energy crisis and the passage of the Democrats’ climate bill, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Natural gas futures for November, December and January each surpassed $10 per million British Thermal Units (BTUs) on Monday, reaching highs that have not been seen since 2008, according to the WSJ. High prices are largely due to the strong demand for gas in Europe amid uncertainty surrounding Russian natural gas flows, the WSJ reported; furthermore, the Democrats’ new climate bill includes regulations that will hike expenses for natural gas producers.

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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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Commentary: Authoritarian Democrats Love the Deep State

Florida Capital Star Staff

The unprecedented raid at Mar-a-Lago earlier this month has energized the Democratic Party’s embrace of authoritarianism. The real outrage, they say, is not that the raid happened but that people are disturbed by it. The messaging from top Democrats, Attorney General Merrick Garland, and FBI Director Christopher Wray is of a piece: Republican lawmakers risk inciting violence by questioning the raid and the bureaucrats who orchestrated it. Won’t someone please think of the unaccountable shadow government? 

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Teachers Union President Defends Minnesota School District That Will Lay Off White Teachers First

Florida Capital Star Staff

American Federation of Teachers (AFT) president Randi Weingarten defended a contract between Minneapolis Public Schools and the union which will fire white teachers over minority teachers, according to a Monday tweet.

The March contract between Minneapolis Public Schools and the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) includes a deal that fires teachers who are not a part of underrepresented populations first, instead of basing termination on seniority. Weingarten tweeted an article by Associated Press with a quote from Greta Callahan, the president of the teachers chapter of Minneapolis Federation of Teachers.

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Commentary: Americans Should Support Cryptocurrency to Improve America’s Economic Woes

Florida Capital Star Staff
Currency, cryptocurrency

The U.S. financial system is not working for too many Americans. We see it every day at the gas pump and grocery store with record-high inflation. We see it with empty store shelves and higher rents. We see it with high fees and slow transactions at the big banks – the same ones we taxpayers bailed out a little more than a decade ago. 

There’s an alternative that can help these systemic problems: cryptocurrency. 

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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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Critics Push Back as Biden Administration Uses Taxpayer Dollars to Grow Public Unions

The Center Square

The federal Office of Personnel Management is actively helping public unions recruit more members, and critics are calling it a major conflict of interest.

OPM recently released updates to FedScope, a public database of federal employees, that will allow union leaders to recruit those employees to grow their member rolls, and as a result, their coffers.

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Florida Christian School Administrator Will Not ‘Backpedal’ on ‘Human Sexuality’ Policies Reflecting Scripture

Susan Berry, PhD

A private Christian school in Valrico, Florida, has restated a policy that says students will be referred to only according to their biological sex, and that students who participate in LGBTQ lifestyles will be asked to leave the school.

NBC News reported last week it obtained an email, sent out from Administrator Barry McKeen at the Grace Christian School prior to the start of the school year, related to an “Important School Policy Point of Emphasis.”

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FBI Raid of Mar-a-Lago Was ‘Improper’: Dershowitz

Admin

Harvard Law School Professor Emeritus Alan Dershowitz said that the FBI’s search of Donald Trump’s Florida estate was incorrectly conducted.

Earlier in August, FBI agents with the Washington Field Office raided the former president’s Mar-a-Lago home seeking classified documents he may have removed from the White House. Reports subsequently emerged that Trump had already been served with a subpoena seeking classified records related to the investigation and had cooperated extensively with federal authorities.

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‘Unprecedented’: Judge Ruling Moves Trump Raid Affidavit One Step Closer to Release

The Center Square

Judge Bruce Reinhart on Monday released an order rejecting the Department of Justice’s argument that the affidavit used to justify a raid of former President Donald Trump’s Florida residence should remain entirely sealed, moving the document one step closer to potentially being released.

The federal government now has until Thursday to propose redactions and make any other arguments as to why the document should not be made public.

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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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Wall Street Journal Op-Ed: American Academy of Pediatrics Continues Defense of Youth Transgender Treatments While Other Nations Reject Them

Susan Berry, PhD

Pediatrician Dr. Julia Mason and Manhattan Institute fellow Leor Sapir warned in a Wall Street Journal op-ed that the leftwing media has championed a “deeply flawed” study published in the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) flagship journal, one that argues the surge in young people claiming to identify as transgender is not due to “social contagion,” a concept, therefore, that should not be cited by state legislatures to regulate puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries for youth.

The study, published in Pediatrics, was penned by child and adolescent psychiatrist Dr. Jack Turban, a controversial clinician-activist, who completed a fellowship at Stanford Medical Center and went on to specialize in helping gender dysphoric youth obtain puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and transgender surgeries.

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‘Psychologically Abusive’: Some Back-to-School Programs Dividing Students by ‘Gender, Culture, and Identity’

Admin

A back-to-school curriculum focused on social-emotional learning (SEL) lays the foundation for Critical Race Theory (CRT) by dividing children through the creation of identity charts, “getting to know you” questionnaires and classroom contracts, experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

A curriculum created by Facing History and Ourselves, a group that partners with more than 100,000 teachers to provide education resources to combat “racism, antisemitism and prejudice at pivotal moments in history,” has a five day back-to-school lesson plan that teaches kids about gender, culture and identity. The curriculum is based in SEL, which focuses on teaching students social skills for their emotional well-being but has been criticized for laying the groundwork for CRT in the classroom, as similar lesson plans based in SEL are growing in popularity across the country, experts told the DCNF.

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Commentary: Yes, It’s Harder to Win the Senate – But That’s Always True

Admin

“I think there’s probably a greater likelihood the House flips than the Senate.”

That was Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) on Aug. 18 at the Northern Kentucky Chamber of Commerce, handicapping the Nov. 2022 Congressional midterms, giving Republicans greater odds to win back the House than the Senate.

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Commentary: With a Lack of Empathy, Disregard for Social Norms and Rules, and Aggressive Tendencies, Is the Democratic Party Sociopathic?

Admin

Parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times . . . what madness, what fury can beget such unhappy and such fatal divisions? . . . This principle, however frivolous it may appear, seems to have been the origin of all religious wars and divisions. As no party, in the present age, can well support itself without a philosophical or speculative system of principles annexed to its political or practical one, we accordingly find, that each of the factions into which this nation is divided has reared up a fabric of the former kind, in order to protect and cover that scheme of actions which it pursues.

That profound sentiment comes right from the lips of the father of the Scottish Enlightenment himself, David Hume, circa 1742. It is chock full of insight for our own times. And the practical reason of that era formed the background context for the American founding, much as Scotland itself was the origin of the modern era by inventing, law, economics, science, technology, medicine and unleashing the power of the market.  

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Commentary: Enormous Amounts of Money Flow into the Bottomless Education Pit

Admin

Spurred by COVID panic, schools have been the recipient of ungodly sums of money. And it’s not as if the beast was starving before. To put things into perspective, the United States spends about $800 billion on national defense, more than China, Russia, India, the UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Germany, and Japan combined, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. America now spends even more on K-12 education, with an outlay of about $900 billion dollars a year, which includes an additional $122 billion from the COVID-related American Rescue Plan. 

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Democrat U.S. Senate Candidate John Fetterman Calls for ‘Prosecuting’ Oil, Grocery CEOs

Admin

Democratic Pennsylvania senatorial candidate and lieutenant governor John Fetterman called for prosecuting executives of oil and food companies in a Sunday guest column for local media outlet Times Leader.

Fetterman blamed executives of large oil and food companies for the high prices that Americans are experiencing at gas stations and grocery stores across the country, stating that he would “crack down” on CEOs to bring down costs, according to the opinion column. The senatorial candidate juxtaposed the record profits of companies like Chevron, Exxon and Tyson, a large food company, with the high prices of gas and basic necessities.

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Biden White House Facilitated DOJ’s Criminal Probe against Trump, Scuttled Privilege Claims: Memos

Admin

Long before it professed no prior knowledge of the raid on Donald Trump’s estate, the Biden White House worked directly with the Justice Department and National Archives to instigate the criminal probe into alleged mishandling of documents, allowing the FBI to review evidence retrieved from Mar-o-Lago this spring and eliminating the 45th president’s claims to executive privilege, according to contemporaneous government documents reviewed by Just the News.

The memos show then-White House Deputy Counsel Jonathan Su was engaged in conversations with the FBI, DOJ and National Archives as early as April, shortly after 15 boxes of classified and other materials were voluntarily returned to the federal historical agency from Trump’s Florida home.

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Dem-Appointed Judge Opens the Door to More Men Being Housed in Women’s Prisons

Admin

A Democrat-appointed federal judge opened the door to allowing more males to be housed in women’s prisons Tuesday by ruling that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) covers people with gender dysphoria.

Kesha Williams, a biologically male former inmate who identifies as a transgender woman, sued several people associated with the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center in Virginia for allegedly violating the ADA in their decision to house Williams with men, according to court documents. Judge Diana Gribbon Motz, a Clinton appointee, sided with Williams and rejected a lower court’s dismissal of the initial lawsuit.

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Homeland Security Cracks Down on Weapons Smuggling from Miami to Haiti, Caribbean

The Center Square

Homeland Security Investigations’ Miami Division has been cracking down on weapons and ammunition smuggling from Miami to Haiti and other Caribbean nations.

It also arrested a wanted Venezuelan involved in an alleged $1.2 billion international money laundering scheme.

HSI-Miami Special Agent in Charge Anthony Salisbury held a press conference with members of law enforcement from several agencies last week after they’d concluded a successful operation thwarting an illegal arms trafficking scheme.

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Columbus Teachers Start School Year on Picket Lines

Florida Capital Star Staff

Students in Ohio’s largest school district will begin classes Wednesday remotely after teachers rejected a final contract offer and voted to strike late Sunday night.

Columbus Education Association teachers were on the picket line at several school buildings Monday morning, the first day teachers were scheduled to report, after 94% of its members voted to strike for the first time since 1975.

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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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Federal Data: Retail Sales Remain Flat, Job Openings Decline

The Center Square

Retail sales did not meet expectations and the number of job openings declined in states around the country, newly released federal data show. 

The U.S. Census Bureau released data Wednesday showing retail sales remained unchanged for the month of July, despite expectations of a 0.1% increase. A drop in gas prices and auto sales helped fuel the decrease.

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Commentary: Ignoring the Study of War Is a Recipe for Disaster

Admin

Liberal bias in higher education extends to academics’ bias against teaching military history.

There are 299 programs in America that offer the MA and/or PhD in history according to the American Historical Association. But only 37 programs allow for specialization in military topics.

This trend is symptomatic of the left dominating universities. Leftists shun military and traditional political histories for post-modern critique in the discipline.

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January 6 Committee Hired Consultant Who May Have Conflict of Interest

Admin

The Jan. 6 Committee hired an investigative consultant who could have a major “conflict of interest,” watchdogs told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

Brian Young is a senior financial investigator at the consultancy Polar Solutions Inc and a contractor for the Jan. 6 Committee, according to his LinkedIn profile and an internal congressional document obtained by the DCNF. But he is also married to House Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms (SAA) Kim E. Campbell, the second most senior official in the SAA, which like the U.S. Capitol Police is being probed by the committee for security failures in connection to the Capitol riot.

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Citizens United Sues Biden Admin for Records on Election Executive Order

Admin

Citizens United filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit against the State Department and the Interior Department for records relating to President Joe Biden’s “Executive Order on Promoting Access to Voting.”

The conservative nonprofit submitted a FOIA request to the agencies on June 16 but did not receive a response within 20 working days as required, Citizens United stated.

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Commentary: Defensive Gun Uses in Month of July Show Protective Benefits of Second Amendment

Admin

I testified before Congress’ Joint Economic Committee last month in a hearing focused on “the economic toll of gun violence.”

Of course, there’s no doubt that gun violence imposes a tremendous cost on society, both financially and in far less readily calculable ways. How does one measure, for example, the mental and emotional toll of being shot?

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‘Taking Down a Landscape Business Owner’: Rep. Thomas Massie Sounds the Alarm on Viral IRS Training Video

Admin

Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky posted a video showing potential IRS agents training Friday and urged Americans to notice a billionaire wasn’t the target.

“Notice the scenario in this IRS recruiting program is ‘taking down a landscape business owner who failed to properly report how he paid for his vehicles,’ not ‘taking down a billionaire who uses the corporate jet for private trips,’” Massie posted.

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Commentary: The Democrat Push to Redefine Infertility

Admin

The Democrats continue to weaponize the administrative state, from the FBI’s raid on Mar-a-Lago to the vast expansion of the Internal Revenue Service.

Shortly after Congress voted, with no Republican support, to expand the IRS by 87,000 new employees, Democratic Reps. Adam Schiff and Judy Chu of California introduced a bill to use the IRS as a vehicle to redefine infertility.

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Another Pregnancy Care Center in Massachusetts Is Vandalized, Abortion Activists ‘Jane’s Revenge’ Takes Credit

Admin

In the latest attack on a pro-life organization, pro-abortion extremists spray-painted threatening messages and anarchist symbols outside a pro-life pregnancy center in Massachusetts late Wednesday or early Thursday, according to police.  Since last May, when a draft ruling was leaked indicating that the U.S. Supreme Court was going to overturn Roe v. Wade,  there have been about 94 attacks on pro-life facilities and churches.

Bethlehem House Inc. Pregnancy Care Center in Easthampton, 99 miles west of Boston, was targeted by pro-abort vandals, who splattered red paint across the white exterior of the facility. One message sprayed painted in black on the ground outside the center read: “If abortions aren’t safe, neither are you!”

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Younger Americans Identify as Independent More than Republicans, Democrats Combined

Admin

Younger Americans are still less willing to commit to one political party, newly released polling data shows.

Gallup released survey data Thursday showing that Millennials and Gen Z Americans are sticking with the “Independent” label. In fact, more of the surveyed Millennial and Gen Z Americans identify as Independent than as Republican and Democrat combined.

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Historic American Muscle Car Will Be Fully Electric by 2024

Admin

Dodge’s popular muscle cars, the two-door Challenger and four-door Charger, will be discontinued in 2023 and replaced in 2024 by a fully electric model, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

Dodge announced two new electric vehicles at the Dodge Speed Week event in Pontiac, Michigan, this week, according to a press release by Dodge parent company Stellantis. The first was the Dodge Hornet, a Compact Utility Vehicle that offered both a plug-in hybrid and traditional gas engine model, and the second was the battery-powered muscle car, the Charger Daytona SRT Concept, named in honor of the Charger Daytona, the first car to break 200 mph on a NASCAR track.

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Biden’s New Spending Bill Supersizes the EPA’s Budget

Admin

The Democrats’ massive climate spending package, which President Joe Biden signed into law on Tuesday, will give over $40 billion to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), just as the bill allocates almost $80 billion to expand the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).

The bill, dubbed the Inflation Reduction Act, includes $369 billion in total climate spending, and will give the EPA more than $40 billion in the current fiscal year to combat climate change, enforce environmental standards and secure “environmental justice,” according to a Congressional Research Service report. The EPA’s enacted budget for 2022’s fiscal year was about $9.5 billion, according to the agency figures, meaning the bill will more than quadruple the EPA’s current annual spending.

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