Joe Manchin Leaves Democratic Party

Joe Manchin

Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced Friday that he was leaving the Democratic Party and registering as an independent.

Manchin announced in November that he would not be seeking re-election for his senate seat, fueling rumors that the senator may be considering a gubernatorial or presidential run, according to Politico. Manchin, 76, who has served in the Senate since 2010 and was a member of the Democratic Party for decades, announced the decision on X, formerly known as Twitter, saying that he wanted to “bring the country together.”

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Ken Paxton Says FBI Should Be Dissolved Because of Corruption in the Agency

Steve Bannon and Ken Paxton

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on Wednesday said the FBI should be dissolved because he argues it is filled with corruption and political influence.

Paxton, who has been the subject of law enforcement investigations, including by the FBI, told former Trump adviser Steve Bannon that the federal agency should be dismantled because “it would be better to have nothing.”

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Reuters Anti-Trump Propaganda Begins in Pennsylvania

The global news organization Reuters claimed on Friday that women voters in Pennsylvania may now have second thoughts about voting for former President Donald Trump after he was convicted in the controversial New York hush money trial on Thursday.

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Supreme Court Unanimously Sides with NRA in First Amendment Case Against New York Official

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor

The Supreme Court unanimously held Thursday that the National Rifle Association (NRA) “plausibly alleged” that a New York official violated its First Amendment rights, finding that government officials cannot “use the power of the State to punish or suppress disfavored expression.”

The justices allowed the NRA to pursue its First Amendment claim against former superintendent of the New York Department of Financial Services (DFS) Maria Vullo, vacating a lower court ruling that found the NRA failed to show Vullo “crossed the line between attempts to convince and attempts to coerce.” They held that the gun rights group has a plausible case that Vullo “violated the First Amendment by coercing regulated entities to terminate their business relationships with the NRA in order to punish or suppress gun-promotion advocacy.”

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Public Schools Push ‘Climate Crisis’ Narrative, as Skeptics Try to Offer Other Perspectives

Paul Tice, senior fellow for the National Center for Energy Analytics

Paul Tice, senior fellow for the National Center for Energy Analytics, took the opinion pages of the Wall Street Journal to criticize the climate change curriculum in New Jersey public schools.

The educational materials, Tice explained, are not just found in sections of science courses, but in all school subjects. Districts are encouraged to insert lessons on climate change into English language arts and mathematics. In foreign language classes, students discuss the impacts of climate change “on the target language of the world.”

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UCLA Med School DEI Leader Accused of Major Plagiarism Refuses to Address Allegations

Natalie Perry

Another university diversity, equity, and inclusion administrator is facing allegations of plagiarism – but neither she nor her employer, the University of California at Los Angeles, has responded publicly to the report.

Natalie Perry, the leader of the Cultural North Star program at the UCLA School of Medicine, and UCLA did not answer multiple requests for comment from The College Fix since a recent investigation alleged she plagiarized large portions of her doctoral dissertation.

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Commentary: Civil Unrest and Radical Reappraisals are Shaping the Future of American Culture

Pro-Palestine Protesters at Ohio State University

Sometimes unexpected but dramatic events tear off the thin veneer of respectability and convention. What follows is the exposure and repudiation of long-existing but previously covered-up pathologies.

Events like the destruction of the southern border over the last three years, the October 7 massacre and ensuing Gaza war, the campus protests, the COVID-19 epidemic and lockdown, and the systematic efforts to weaponize our bureaucracies and courts have all led to radical reappraisals of American culture and civilization.

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Music Spotlight: MaRynn Taylor

MaRynn Taylor

When I met MaRynn Taylor at CMT’s Next Women of Country 2023, I knew I would love her music because I immediately loved her personality. And while I covered her at CRS and her music in my Christmas blog, I had not done a full feature on the songstress. When I learned her debut EP, Get To Know Me was being released at the end of May, I knew it was high time that I get to know her.

Taylor grew up in Rockford, Michigan, listening to country music. Although no one in her family was particularly musical, she was obsessed with artists like Hannah Montana, Carrie Underwood, and Taylor Swift.

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U.S. Economic Growth in First Quarter Worse than Previously Thought

Jerome Powell and Joe Biden (composite image)

The U.S. economy grew less than previously thought in the first quarter of 2024 amid a slowdown in consumer spending, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) announced Thursday.

Gross domestic product (GDP) was revised down in the first quarter from 1.6 percent to 1.3 percent year-over-year in a sign that the economy is not as strong as initial estimates indicated, according to a release from the BEA. Economists originally expected growth in the first quarter to be around 2.2 percent, more in line with the above trend growth seen in the third and fourth quarters of 2023, which were 4.9 percent and 3.4 percent, respectively.

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Justice Department Investigated Conservative ‘Moms for Liberty’ in Same Manner as KKK: Report

Moms for Liberty

The internal emails appeared to show that the DOJ pressured local officials at times to accept their help, including by using emails from doj.gov accounts to allegedly pester them when they did not show interest.

The Justice Department (DOJ) appeared to investigate a conservative parental rights group in the same manner that it investigated the Klu Klux Klan (KKK), according to a news report on Wednesday.

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Commentary: Abiding Child Abuse in Schools

Kids in the classroom

The stories of pedophile teachers not being held accountable for their abominable crimes are endless. In an in-depth piece, reporter Matt Drange investigates the issue and what he finds is positively revolting.

A case in North Carolina is typical. In Durham County, a student at Neal Middle School said her chorus teacher, Troy Pickens, had groped her, only disclosing a few years later that he’d raped her. James Key, the school’s principal, didn’t open an investigation until the child’s mother got involved, and even then, according to a subsequent civil suit that settled out of court, the principal “failed to report the groping allegation to law enforcement or child protective services, as required by state law.” Instead, Key allowed Pickens to resign, paving the way for him to remain in the field.

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New Report Details Just How Much Regulations Under Biden Have Cost Average Americans

Joe Biden

The Biden administration has set in motion a wave of new regulations that have already cost the U.S. more than $1 trillion, which equates to thousands of dollars per family, according to a new report from the Job Creators Network.

There have been $1.6 trillion in costs imposed from a total of 923 new federal regulations that have been finalized under President Joe Biden, with $1.2 trillion of those being put in place in just the past few months, according to the JCN. In just the first two years of the Biden administration, new regulations are estimated to have led to an average of almost $10,000 in added future and present costs to American households, which could jump to $60,000 if the trend continues across a two-term presidency.

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Elon Musk Reportedly Engaged in Campaign to Influence Elites Against Biden

Donald Trump and Elon Musk

Billionaires Elon Musk and Nelson Peltz are reportedly involved in an ongoing campaign in powerful networks to persuade influential business executives nationwide not to back President Joe Biden’s reelection effort, The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday.

Musk, who owns social media platform X, is a prominent critic of Biden and has faced many investigations stemming from the current president’s administration since purchasing the company, which was formerly called Twitter. Musk and others who share his political views have been organizing meetings to target Biden, according to individuals familiar with the discussions, the WSJ reported.

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Moderna and Pfizer Competing for HHS Bid on mRNA Vaccines for Bird Flu

Washington Examiner Moderna and Pfizer are each in the process of competing for federal contracts to build a national stockpile of mRNA vaccines targeted toward the new bird flu amid mounting concerns it may be spreading among humans. Sources familiar with the discussions between the pharmaceutical giants and the Department of Health and Human Services report that the agency…

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New Study Challenges ‘Myth’ That U.S. Has a Mass Incarceration Problem

Inmate in prison cell

Prison reform advocates have repeatedly pushed the notion that the U.S. has a mass incarceration problem, but a soon-to-be released Heritage Foundation study casts doubt on that claim.

Left-wing proponents of criminal justice reform claim that masses of individuals, including an unfair rate of minorities, are languishing in America’s country’s prisons, but they do not take into account the vast number of crimes that go unsolved or the number of criminals who avoid jail time, according to the report. The data show that any mass release of the U.S. prison population would result in a high number of individuals convicted of violent crimes being put back into American communities.

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American Tax Dollars Fund Laundry List of Left-Wing Books

People sitting under a transgender flag

American tax dollars are funding an array of book projects covering topics like “trans reproduction” and the “neglected queer history” of homosexuality in post-colonial Ireland, federal records show.

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) spends hundreds of thousands of tax dollars a year funding academics to write full-length books on a variety of subjects, according to grant records. While many of the books center on innocuous topics, like the history of criminal procedure in China or philosopher Immanuel Kant, others the NEH funded in 2023 and 2024 veer into left-wing topics.

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Migrants Insist on Crossing the Rio Grande into the United States Despite Increasing Deportations

Illegal migrants crossing Rio Grande

Despite the increasing deportations and operations of the United States and Mexico , migrants on the border of the Mexican Ciudad Juárez with the American El Paso insist on crossing the Rio Grande (Grande) border irregularly. This was confirmed by a report from the Spanish news agency EFE this day.

The situation escalated because last week the US authorities expelled 200 migrants who crossed through gate 40 of the wall and handed them over to the Mexican National Migration Institute (INM) in Ciudad Juárez, where it was announced that they would return them to Chiapas , the state of the southern border of Mexico , the outlet said.

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Commentary: China’s Land Purchases in U.S. Spark Outcry for Federal Solution

Smithfield Foods factory farm

Over the past two years, nearly half the states in America acted to scrutinize purchases of land linked to China and other foreign adversaries. Concerns focus primarily on national security threats from China, and they’re well-founded.

The federal government has no idea how much real estate Chinese entities own in the United States. The U.S. Department of Agriculture legally is required to track foreign ownership of agricultural land, but underestimates Chinese ownership by at least 50 percent.

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State of Oregon Attempts to Force Christian Ministry to Remove Christian Beliefs in Order to Receive Funding

71Five Ministries

The state government of Oregon enacted a new restriction on a Christian youth ministry group, withholding crucial funding on the condition that the group specifically hire non-Christians or people who otherwise don’t agree with the group’s beliefs.

As reported by Fox News, the group, 71Five Ministries, is struggling with a large budget deficit following the Oregon Department of Education’s decision to revoke its funding due to its Christian beliefs. The ministry filed a lawsuit against the state in March, with the support of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), declaring the state’s decision to be a violation of their First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Oral arguments in the case ended last week, and both sides are now waiting for the judge’s decision.

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Chinese Companies are Reportedly Camouflaging Themselves as U.S. Brands to Dodge Government Blacklist

Hesai Headquarters

A number of blacklisted Chinese companies have reportedly disguised themselves as American to operate inside the U.S. and evade penalties, The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday.

The U.S. government has taken several steps to crack down on Chinese firms that have been linked to the Chinese Communist Party and identified as potential threats to national security. But companies of concern, including Hesai Group, SZ DJI Technologies, BGI Group, Huawaei and ByteDance have operated or worked with American-based companies to sell products and services inside the U.S. without penalty, according to the WSJ.

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Commentary: Despite Warnings, Biden Admin Finalizes Rule That Could Cripple Many Offshore Oil Companies

Offshore Oil Platform

In June 2023, the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management proposed a rule that would require stricter financial assurance standards for oil companies operating in the Outer Continental Shelf. This costly rule became final on April 15, 2024, but in the 10 months since its initial proposal, BOEM did nothing to alleviate concerns for smaller companies that comprise of 76 percent of oil and gas operators in the Gulf. As a result, many of these companies could be forced out of business by extreme and unnecessary costs from this rule. The situation threatens an estimated 36,000 jobs, more than $570 million in federal government royalties, and $9.9 billion from our GDP.

Records obtained via the Freedom of Information Act show private meetings between Interior officials and representatives of the major oil companies as they cooperated on this rule. If you think that’s strange, you’re not alone. President Biden made clear in his campaign that he wanted to end oil and gas production on public lands. It’s baffling that Big Oil – among the administration’s most, if not the most, maligned businesses – would stand on the same side with environmental groups such as the Sierra Club who praised the rule. But needless government intervention makes strange bedfellows. Big Oil must think it won’t miss the small competitors the rule will drive from the market.

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Wind Developer will Keep More than Half of $300 Million Put Up for Offshore Project It Canceled

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy had vowed to fight “tooth and nail” to keep the $300 million the company put into escrow, but the agreement allows the state to keep $125 million.

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy says offshore wind developer Orsted will pay $125 million for canceling two projects.

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China’s Electric Vehicle Giant Claims to Have New Hybrid That Runs American Automakers Off the Road

BYD Car

China’s largest electric vehicle (EV) manufacturer, BYD, announced Tuesday that two of its new hybrid models have ranges that far exceed those of American competitors, The Wall Street Journal reported.

BYD’s chairman Wang Chuanfu claimed at an event in Xian, China, that the company was launching two new hybrid models that could go 2,100 kilometers, or 1,306 miles, on a single tank of gas and a full charge, according to the WSJ. The range is almost double the range of global hybrid competitors, which is around 1,100 km, or 683 miles, at the upper limit, and far exceeds the 700-mile range achieved by America’s longest-driving hybrid in 2023, the Lexus ES 300h.

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Commentary: America Should Pass Legislation Like Georgia’s ‘Agents of Foreign Influence’ Law

Ted Cruz

For once, I agree with the Washington Post – widely viewed as the newsletter of the deep state intel “community.”  I agree with their oft-repeated slogan that Democracy Dies in the Dark.  Now, if they could just move to apply that admonishment to countless issues that are now rising across the world.

This point came to me as I read the fear and loathing about a piece of new legislation in the nation of Georgia – not the RINO directed southern state but the country that borders the Black Sea.  Last week their Parliament passed legislation that required any NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) that received more than 20 percent of their funding from outside the country to register as “agents of foreign influence.”  As expected, the United States and its minions at the EU and NATO loudly condemned the legislation and demanded it be blocked.  In what has become the knee-jerk reaction of the “collective west,” there have been threats of retaliation, exclusion, and of course financial harm.

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European States’ Move to Recognize a Palestine Nation Adds to Biden’s Reelection Peace-Deal Efforts

Benjamin Netanyahu

More European countries’ recognition of Palestine as a sovereign, independent nation is increasing the challenges President Biden faces in trying to win reelection and broker a long-term peace deal between Israel and Palestinian-backed Hamas.

The developments have the potential to tip the scales in what is expected to be a tight presidential race between Biden and former President Donald Trump, with Biden’s Democratic Party possibly abandoning him for his support of longtime Middle East ally Israel.

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Trump Defense Plants Seeds of ‘Reasonable Doubt’ While Prosecutors Prop Up Cohen

Former President Donald Trump’s defense’s closing arguments in his so-called hush money trial on Tuesday were designed to plant seeds of reasonable doubt with the jury while the prosecution sought to prop up their key witness, Michael Cohen, who continues to be plagued by credibility issues.

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Trump Speaks as Jury Deliberates: ‘Mother Teresa Could Not Beat These Charges’

Former President Trump addressed the media on Wednesday as the jury in his hush money trial deliberates. “Mother Teresa could not beat these charges. These charges are rigged. The whole thing is rigged. The whole country’s a mess between the borders and fake elections and you have a trial like this where the judge is so conflicted he can’t breathe,” Trump said outside of the courtroom in New York. “It’s a disgrace and I mean that. Mother Teresa could not beat those charges but we’ll see how we do.”

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Home Prices Under Biden Hit Yet Another All-Time High

Home prices surged in March to another all-time high for the sixth month out of the last twelve, S&P Global announced Tuesday.

The Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, which measures home prices across the entire country, rose 6.5 percent year-over-year in March, matching the annual gain in February, according to S&P Global. The increase in the price of homes is higher than the general pace of inflation, which increased 3.4 percent year-over-year in April.

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Biden Received Sensitive Data, Briefings from Security Advisers via His Private Pseudonym Email

Joe Biden

While he was vice president, Joe Biden received sensitive communications via his private email accounts created under a fictitious identity, including foreign policy discussions with his national security adviser, schedules of meetings with Cabinet secretaries and a summary of at least one intelligence briefing to President Barack Obama, according to new emails obtained by Just the News.

The new memos were released by the National Archives over the Memorial Day holiday weekend under a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit brought by the Southeastern Legal Foundation on behalf of Just the News that sought emails that Biden received or transmitted as vice president using his [email protected] account.

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New Documentary Details Female Sexual Assault Survivor’s Story of Being Incarcerated with Trans Inmate

Female inmate

A sexual assault survivor gave an inside look at living in a female prison with male criminals identifying as transgender in a new documentary by the Independent Women’s Forum (IWF) released Tuesday.

The six-minute documentary, part of IWF’s “Cruel & Unusual Punishment: The Male Takeover of Female Prisons” series, focuses on the story of Evelyn Valiente, a sexual assault survivor and former inmate at the Central California Women’s Facility. Valiente, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity, was forced to share a housing unit with a male inmate identifying as a woman while serving time for killing someone in a shooting.

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