The Internal Revenue Service on Tuesday announced roughly $1 billion in penalty relief to those owing back taxes from 2020 and 2021, during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
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The U.S. natural gas industry is pushing back against the Biden administration’s regulations targeting gas-powered residential furnaces.
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The number of transgender services performed at Planned Parenthood clinics exploded over the past few years as the transgender medical industry became increasingly lucrative, according to data published by the organization’s regional branches.
Planned Parenthood first began providing hormone treatments for transgender patients in 2005, and since then 41 out of 49 regional branches have provided transgender services as of 2022. However, in just the last three years, Planned Parenthood has become dramatically more involved in the gender hormone industry.
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Mike Benz, the director of a nonprofit that advocates for free speech, is sounding the alarm on the European Union’s investigation into X, formerly known as Twitter, for what it claims are breakages of the multinational conglomerate’s hate speech laws.
Benz, an attorney and the executive director of the Foundation for Freedom Online (FFO), says that the EU’s plan is to force X into implementing a mandatory “disinformation compliance” service like NewsGuard. Such products have been termed “middleware.”
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Another mainstream pollster shows that Joe Biden’s job approval rating has plunged yet again, as voters increasingly turn against him due to numerous crises on his watch.
As reported by Fox News, the Monmouth University poll saw a mere 34% of respondents say that they approve of his performance as president thus far, with a staggering 61% disapproving. The issues on which Biden scored the lowest were inflation, with just 28% approving of his handling of it, and immigration, with 26%.
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The immigration court backlog increased by a whopping one million cases in a single year as the surge at the southern border continues, according to a new report from Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC).
The number of pending cases in U.S. immigration courts reached three million in November, marking a new record, TRAC, which analyzes data provided by the Executive Office of Immigration Review (EOIR), reported Monday. The backlog is expected to only worsen with the continued record flow of illegal immigration at the southern border.
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A Florida man pleaded guilty Monday to threatening to kill a Supreme Court justice, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Neal Brij Sidhwaney, 43, placed a call in July to the Supreme Court, leaving an “expletive-laden, threatening voicemail message” where he “repeatedly threatened to kill a specific Supreme Court Justice,” according to the DOJ. Sidhwaney revealed the justice he had threatened was Chief Justice John Roberts during a court-ordered psychological evaluation, Politico reported.
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President Joe Biden is not the Democrats’ biggest problem; they are. The greatest misperception in the 2024 presidential race is that Biden is causing Democrats’ poor performance. On the contrary, Biden is an effect. The real cause is that Democrats are wildly out of touch with America.
Biden’s bad polling numbers are well known. According to Real Clear Politics’ Dec. 18 average of national polling, Biden’s job approval rating is 40.8–56.0 percent; he trails former President Donald Trump in a head-to-head rematch 43.7 to 47.2 percent, and his favorability rating is 39.4–56.0 percent.
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Grammy-nominated and Dove Award-winning country artist Ty Herndon has released the deluxe edition of his highly acclaimed album, ‘Jacob’ which has two new tracks and four reimagined tracks.
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When Bishop Karl-Heinz Wiesemann asked priests, deacons, and lay pastoral workers in the German Diocese of Speyer to offer blessings for same-sex unions and remarried couples early last month, his letter made international news — and it should have. That’s because the Catholic Church believes same-sex unions are sinful and contrary to both the law of God and the laws of nature.
That teaching — that the sin of Sodom and Gomorrah is, in fact, a sin — has repeatedly put a Church hierarchy dedicated to “inclusion” and “solidarity” in a tight spot. Progressives both inside (men like Wiesemann and Fr. James Martin) and outside of the Church have repeatedly pressured Catholic leadership to offer some kind of legitimization to homosexual unions.
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A federal judge ordered the names of 177 associates of the late convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to be made public in 2024 with the unsealing of court documents.
The judge on Monday ordered the names to be unsealed in connection to a defamation case brought by Prince Andrew accuser Virginia Roberts Giuffre against Ghislaine Maxwell, Epstein’s former girlfriend who was sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex crimes.
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The trendy electric vehicle (EV) market could be in trouble as at least 18 EV and battery start-ups that went public in the last few years are running out of funds to operate, according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal.
The trouble in the industry follows rising costs and manufacturing issues as the companies fail to compete with top EV maker Tesla and traditional automakers, with the median stock of the 43 companies reviewed dropping 80% from its peak, losing tens of billions in collective value since the companies relatively recent inception, according to the WSJ. Of those 43 EV start-ups reviewed, five have already gone bankrupt or been acquired, including Lordstown Motors, Proterra and Electric Last Mile Solutions.
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Life is hard if you do not learn from your mistakes. With Covid, political leaders and public health authorities engaged in a series of missteps, miscalculations, and manias that amounted to an extreme overreaction to the disease.
First, statistical models overstated the risk of the disease by an order of magnitude. Then, even after these miscalculations became apparent, other extreme measures like lockdowns, mandatory masking, coercive vaccine mandates, and a million other indignities ensued. In the end, almost everyone got Covid, almost everyone survived, and, while the economic countermeasures increased our national debt by 30%, the economy soon recovered too.
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The Colorado Supreme Court on Tuesday determined that former President Donald Trump engaged in an insurrection against the United States via the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol Riot and was therefore ineligible to appear on the 2024 presidential ballot, Politico reported.
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Texas Republican Gov. Greg Abbott on Monday signed a measure to make illegal entry into the Lone Star State a state crime, giving state law enforcement a potentially pivotal tool to combat illegal immigration on its own amid perceived federal apathy.
The law, which is slated to take effect in March, would empower Texas law enforcement to arrest illegal entrants and grant judges the ability to order their deportation, CNN reported.
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On Monday, the European Union (EU) formally announced that it would be launching an investigation into X, the platform formally known as Twitter, over alleged violations of laws meant to crack down on free speech.
According to ABC News, the investigation will be the first one of its kind under new regulations passed by the 27-nation European bloc. In a post on X, European Commissioner Thierry Breton said in a statement that “Today we open formal infringement proceedings against @X” under the Digital Services Act.
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A federal appeals court on Monday rejected a bid from former White House chief of staff Mark Meadows to move his Georgia election case from state to federal court.
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Small business owners are pessimistic about the future of the economy, according to a new poll.
The National Federation of Independent Businesses released the polling data Tuesday, which shows that the group’s “Small Businesses Optimism Index” decreased slightly in November to 90.1, its 23rd straight month below the historical average of small business optimism.
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Harvard University scrubbed several web pages from the diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) department’s website, according to the web archive.
Two web pages, titled “Heritage Months and Identity Recognitions” and “Gender Identity and Pronouns at Harvard,” appear to have been deleted, according to the archives. Both links now route directly to the Diversity and Inclusion homepage.
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Following the resolution of the six-week United Auto Workers strike last month and the ensuing glut of news coverage, one could be forgiven for believing that private sector unions were experiencing a generational comeback the likes of which haven’t been seen since their halcyon days of the 1950s.
The reality, however, couldn’t be further from the truth: union participation in the private sector is now a tiny sliver of the overall employment picture in the United States. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the unionization rate of private-sector workers currently sits below 6% at just under 7 million workers nationwide – down from 17 million in 1950.
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Never before has so much ‘infrastructure’ been funded and so little built.
Unless, that is, you label Pete Buttegieg’s ‘paternity’ leave as ‘human infrastructure.’ Which, by the way, is exactly what the Biden administration did with its trillion dollar infrastructure boondoggle in 2021.
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The number of homeless people in the U.S. jumped 12 percent to more than 653,000 people as pandemic spending expired, the highest level on record since the counts started in 2007.
Figures released Friday provide a snapshot of the number of people in shelters, temporary housing and in unsheltered settings. The report found 653,100 people were experiencing homelessness on a single night in January 2023, a 12 percent increase from 2022. That figure of 653,100 people is equivalent to about 20 of every 10,000 people in the U.S.
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The Russian invasion of Ukraine, along with increased tensions in the Middle East and the Indo-Pacific region, has generated many debates. Debates about the stability of the international order, the cohesion of NATO, and many others. But for the United States, one significant debate regards the size and expansibility of the American defense industrial base. It’s a discussion that is well past due.
Last year, Under Secretary of Defense Colin Kahl testified to Congress that, “What the Ukraine conflict showed is that, frankly, our defense industrial base was not at the level that we needed it to be to generate munitions.” But the challenge with ammunition is more symptom than cause, in economic terms something of a “leading indicator.”
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In a poll of small business owners, 76 percent said that they had not seen an increase in sales during the holiday season as inflation and other economic conditions constrict consumers’ cash, according to Goldman Sachs.
Of small business owners surveyed, 55 percent said that their profit margins decreased this year, and a further 70 percent said that their own personal spending plans for their families were negatively impacted following their own assessment of the state of the economy, according to a poll by Goldman Sachs conducted from Dec. 1 to Dec. 8 of 337 small retail business owners. Consumer spending previously slowed in October as the Americans’ savings declined to $768.6 billion in the month, down from the over $1 trillion held in May and even further from the all-time high of almost $6 trillion held in April 2020.
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On Sunday night, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced it was closing international railroad bridges at two major ports of entry in Eagle Pass and El Paso, Texas, after a surge of over 4,000 people illegally entered over the last 48 hours.
CBP reported that agents apprehended nearly 3,000 illegal foreign nationals on Saturday and Sunday in the Eagle Pass area alone. Groups of 400 came through at a time, undeterred by border barriers erected by Gov. Greg Abbott through Operation Lone Star. Without OLS, little to no law enforcement presence would exist in the region, officials have explained, because Border Patrol agents have been tasked with processing people to release them into the country.
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The Homeland Security Department’s inspector general found that a border wall is the most effective way to curb illegal immigration, according to a newly released report obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute published a 2017 report last week from the Homeland Security watchdog, which found that in 25 border areas studied, a pedestrian fence, also known as a border wall, was the best solution to ending illegal immigration.
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Federal agents with Immigration and Customs Enforcement- Enforcement and Removal Operations (ICE-ERO) continue to remove violent criminals wanted in their home countries after they’ve fled to the U.S. to avoid going to prison.
In south Texas in the Rio Grande Valley, ICE ERO-Harlingen agents removed a Salvadoran national wanted by El Salvadoran authorities for human smuggling and illicit association.
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Florida Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis’ 2024 presidential campaign strategist Jeff Roe departed the governor’s super PAC following multiple other departures from the organization.
“I cannot in good conscience stay affiliated with Never Back Down (NBD) given the statements in the Washington Post today. They are not true and an unwanted distraction at a critical time for Governor DeSantis. I am resigning my position effective immediately,” Roe posted late Saturday evening on X, formerly Twitter.
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A Trump-appointed federal judge has temporarily halted removal proceedings for the Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery that began Monday, the Associated Press reported.
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House Homeland Security Committee Chairman Mark Green, R-Tenn., says he is “absolutely” going to bring articles of impeachment against Homeland Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas for his response to the southern border crisis.
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New York Post A majority of young Americans said they believe Israel should “be ended and given to Hamas,” according to a shocking poll. The survey, conducted THIS WEEK by Harvard-Harris polling, found 51% of Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 said they believed the long-term answer to the Israel-Palestinian conflict…
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Three years after federal regulators granted emergency use authorization to COVID-19 mRNA vaccines for older teens and adults, mainstream scientific research is confirming suppressed warnings from two years ago that the novel technology has a problem with “translation fidelity.”
Translation: it tends to make a bunch of wacky “off-target” proteins whose effects and severity are unknown.
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A new study released on Thursday by the Pew Research Center reveals that a rising number of Americans over the age of 65, the normal age for retirement, are heading back to work to earn higher wages.
According to Axios, the number of older Americans returning to the workforce has been consistently rising since the late 1980s, with one major decline during the Chinese Coronavirus pandemic. Some of the reasons for this increasing return to work include changes in Social Security law forcing older Americans to keep working even past 65 in order to receive their full benefits; additionally, there has been a shift away from pension plans that normally would force most Americans to retire by a certain age, in favor of 401(k) plans that allow for ongoing workforce participation.
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One agency in the Biden Administration has actively, albeit subtly, been turning to multiple groups funded by far-left billionaire George Soros in order to serve crucial roles in policy and enforcement.
According to Fox News, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has been pulling individuals from the same network of progressive advocacy groups for various positions, with these groups all being funded by Soros and a handful of other left-wing billionaires. One such group is Governing for Impact (GFI), which has been bankrolled by Soros’ notorious Open Society Foundation, and with which the administration has been working behind the scenes on key agenda items.
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According to the latest ABCs of School Choice – EdChoice’s comprehensive report about all matters pertaining to education freedom – policymakers in 40 states have debated 111 educational choice bills in 2023, 79 percent of which related to education savings accounts. (ESAs allow parents to receive a deposit of public funds into a government-authorized savings account with restricted, but multiple uses. Those funds can cover private school tuition and fees, online learning programs, private tutoring, community college costs, higher education expenses, and other approved customized learning services and materials).
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As the end of the year approaches, the IRS has announced its new late repayment penalty rate. The rate has climbed from around 3% two years ago to 8% today.
Most workers in the US are W-2 employees and have taxes deducted from their paychecks each pay period. However, if those employees claim more exemptions, the taxes deducted from each check decrease.
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The federal government spent $1,058,839,000,000 in the first two months of fiscal year 2024 — October and November — according to the Monthly Treasury Statement.
At the same time, according to the MTS, it collected $678,264,000,000 in taxes — thus running a two-month deficit of approximately $380,576,000,000.
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James Bennet, the former editorial page editor of The New York Times, has written a scathing column about his departure from the paper and criticizing the Times for what he sees as a shift away from its previous journalistic principles.
Bennet gave his version of the story of his departure in a 16,000-word article in The Economist, where he is currently a columnist. In the article, titled “When the New York Times lost its way,” he describes what he sees as the Times’ shift from traditional journalistic principles, according to The Daily Wire, and “courage,” to an “illiberal” philosophy of the news.
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The great classical scholar Edith Hamilton noted that the ancient Greeks frowned upon their Roman counterparts in regards to education. The former adopted public (government) schooling while the Romans left education to the family in the home. The snooty Greeks thought Romans were backward and unsophisticated. The Romans, of course, conquered the Greeks.
For most of the five centuries of the Republic, Romans were schooled at home where virtues of honor, character, and citizenship were emphasized. Not until the Republic’s last century or so did anything resembling government schooling emerge. Moreover, it was never so centralized, universal, and mandatory as it is in our society today. The English academic and cleric Teresa Morgan, in a 2020 paper titled “Assessment in Roman Education,” writes, “In no stage of its history did Rome ever legally require its people to be educated on any level.”
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A greater percentage of 2020 election cases brought by Republicans were won on merit than cases brought by Democrats, according to an analysis of more than 400 cases by The Amistad Project, an election integrity watchdog.
Republicans concerned about 2020 voting irregularities have been repeatedly called “election deniers” by Democrats and their media allies as GOP plaintiffs have brought legal challenges regarding how elections were conducted across the U.S.
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With the nation’s first primary state as a backdrop, former President Donald Trump took aim Saturday at Democrats’ urban strongholds, vowing to both secure and revitalize blue cities weary from years of violence and economic decay.
“We’re going to rebuild our cities into beacons of hope, safety, and beauty. It will be the greatest investment ever made,” Trump told a large, enthusiastic crowd in Durham, N.H.
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The Republican Party of Florida on Sunday suspended Chairman Christian Ziegler and called on him to resign during an emergency meeting as he faces demands to step down while officials investigate a rape allegation against him.
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Throughout history, the tyrannical abuse of governmental power has been a fearsome thing to behold. Wise men instituted laws in an effort to tame that abuse. The Constitution of the United States, for example, was framed in large part as a prophylactic against the coercive power of the state. The Framers witnessed the “long train of abuses and usurpations” perpetrated by the British crown and resolved to respond. The Constitution dealt with many other things, to be sure, but concern about tyrannical abuse of power by the government and its minions is patent from the opening paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence straight through the Constitution and its Amendments. The idea was that we Americans would live in a polity governed by “laws, not men.” That is to say, laws would be legitimately formulated, clearly defined, and administered impartially, so far as was humanly possible. How are we doing on that score?
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Existing home sales are on track for a dismal year, likely dropping 18% and on course for the worst year since at least 2008’s Great Recession and possibly the worst since 1995.
And while prices may soften in 2024, single-family homes will remain out of reach for many Americans, National Association of Realtors Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said Tuesday in the real estate organization’s annual summit.
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A new study from Pew Research Center reveals that 1 in 5 American teenagers are on social media websites “almost constantly.”
As reported by Axios, the Pew survey, an online poll with a sample size of 1,453 kids in the 13-17 age range, recorded a significant rise in social media use among that particular age group compared to a previous survey in 2014 and 2015.
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