Nearly Half of Los Angeles’ Homeless Budget Wasn’t Spent: Report

Homeless Person

Nearly half of Los Angeles, California’s $1.3 billion homelessness budget for fiscal year 2023-2024 wasn’t spent, according to the city Controller’s report.

Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia discovered that only $599 million had been spent, with an additional $195 million marked to be spent, and $512,690,810 million not marked for anything, according to the report. Recently, Los Angeles residents seem poised to approve Measure A, which would add a .5% county-level sales tax, with revenues going towards homeless programs, according to the unofficial election results count.

Read More

Operation Warp Speed Official Questions COVID Vaccine Purity, Worries ‘They May Ingrate’ into DNA

Lab Research

COVID-19 vaccine supporters are fond of sneering at public figures who have called for the Food and Drug Administration to pull or at least re-evaluate the safety of the increasingly unpopular therapeutics, such as Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cardiologist Peter McCullough and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

They might have a harder time caricaturing a former Centers for Disease Control and Prevention director who ran the agency when COVID vaccines were being developed, promoted vaccination and repeat boosting as recently as 2022 and promoted cloth face masks as “one of the most powerful weapons we have” against COVID, before vaccines were available.

Read More

Texas Orders State Agencies to Divest China Assets

Greg Abbott China

Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott sent a letter to state agencies ordering them to divest from “risky” investments from China, warning of security threats, according to a Thursday press release.

Abbott’s letter was aimed at preventing Texans from being exposed to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), according to the statement. The governor called for the agencies to fully divest from China as soon as possible, citing financial risk and Chinese “aggression” against the U.S.

Read More

Post-Election, Some States Have Already Started Focusing on Election Integrity

People Voting

Following the 2024 presidential election, some states are already focusing on implementing election security legislation, such as requiring proof of U.S. citizenship and reducing the time it takes to count ballots.

Republicans in Ohio, North Carolina, and Arizona are all zeroing in on election integrity following this month’s election, and ahead of newly-elected officials taking office next year.

Read More

California Doesn’t Have the Financial Capacity for Trump Resistance Lawsuits

Washington Examiner   The California Legislative Analyst’s Office projected a dismal fiscal outlook for the Golden State as Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) is anticipated to pour millions of dollars into fighting the Trump administration.  The non-partisan budget watchdog released an analysis this week showing that while the state has managed to reduce its budget…

Read More

Rays’ New Stadium Deal Paused, Tropicana Field Repair Initiative Fails

Tampa Bay Rays

After a wild week with three negative votes, the Tampa Bay Rays are a team without a permanent home and may have played their last innings in St. Petersburg.

The Tampa Bay Rays said a deal to build a $1.3 billion stadium in St. Petersburg is dead after two of their partners decided to defer votes on bond issues to fund the taxpayer part of the deal, about $600 million.

Read More

President-Elect Trump Unveils ‘Quantum Leap’ Plan to ‘Revolutionize’ American Living

President-elect Donald Trump said his incoming administration will work to “revolutionize” America’s standard of living by “building new cities, investing in transportation, lowering the cost of living for everyone, and modernizing public spaces across the country.”

Read More

Operation Warp Speed Official Questions COVID Vaccine Purity, Worries ‘They May Ingrate’ into DNA

COVID-19 vaccine supporters are fond of sneering at public figures who have called for the Food and Drug Administration to pull or at least re-evaluate the safety of the increasingly unpopular therapeutics, such as Health and Human Services secretary nominee Robert F. Kennedy Jr., cardiologist Peter McCullough and Florida Surgeon General Joseph Ladapo.

Read More

‘Serious Blow to Trust in Our Government’: Lawmakers Torch Wray, Mayorkas for Skipping Out on Hearing

Alejandro Mayorkas, Christopher Wray

Senate Republican and Democratic lawmakers joined together in a display of bipartisan condemnation of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and FBI Director Christopher Wray after the two declined to testify on Thursday before the Senate on global threats facing the U.S. homeland.

Mayorkas and Wray requested to move the annually-scheduled Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee (HSGAC) hearing to a classified setting, which would have broken with 15 years of precedence according to Democratic Michigan Sen. Gary Peters, Chairman of the HSGAC.

Read More

Commentary: Every State Needs a DOGE

US Map of DOGEs

For decades, Americans have been vaguely aware of the now $36 trillion millstone of federal debt around our collective necks. Historically, the abstraction of the national debt barely nudged the body politic to concern themselves with government spending.

The electorate largely ignored it. And so did too many of their representatives.

Read More

Commentary: John F. Kennedy – A Remembrance

Sixty-one autumns have passed since the assassination of John F. Kennedy that Friday, Nov. 22, a day that traumatized a generation of children and revealed the impermanence of their innocence. For many, it was their first rendezvous with death. It endured as a vivid remembrance even as other memories lapsed with the passage of age. Many of those children are now grandparents, having lived past the average American life expectancy in 1963. Others, like my father, are not here for the somber milestone. But until his own twilight, my father – like any Irish-Catholic child of that period – remained haunted by that afternoon, transfixed by what Kennedy meant at that time, and committed to imparting those reminiscences unto his three sons.

Read More

FEMA’s DEI Spending Under Scrutiny

FEMA on the ground after Hurricane Helene

The Federal Emergency Management Agency is facing scrutiny for its spending on diversity, equity and inclusion policies.

Lawmakers at a House Oversight Committee hearing Tuesday pressed FEMA head Deanne Criswell on FEMA’s DEI spending.

Read More