Pro-Life Pregnancy Group Appeals to SCOTUS in Clash with New Jersey AG over ‘Unlawful’ Subpoena

First Choice Building

by Noah Slayter   An organization that operates pro-life pregnancy centers in New Jersey asked the U.S. Supreme Court to hear a case involving what the centers’ petition calls an “improper” and “unlawful” subpoena by state Attorney General Matthew Platkin. Alliance Defending Freedom, a Christian legal firm known as ADF, filed a petition with…

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Commentary: Big Labor State Politicians’ ‘Wall of Denial’ Is Starting to Crumble

California Illinois

For decades, cold, hard data from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) have shown that states like New Jersey, Illinois and California are paying a high price for allowing dues-hungry union bosses to continue getting workers fired for refusal to bankroll their organizations.

Year after year, far more taxpayers have been leaving forced-unionism states than moving into them.  And the average tax filer moving out of a forced-unionism state has reported having an adjusted gross income (AGI) on his or her IRS form that is substantially higher than the average for a tax filer moving into a forced-unionism state.

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2022 Election Disputes Continue to Wind Through U.S. Courts as 2024 Nears

While former Arizona GOP gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake continues with election-related lawsuits regarding irregularities in Maricopa County, there were also other issues during the 2022 midterm elections that occurred across the country.

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Commentary: There is a Good Reason Why Democrats are so Frightened of ‘Moms for Liberty’

For most Americans, “Mom” evokes images of kindness, courage, sympathy and love. Likewise, “liberty” calls up concepts like individual rights, freedom of expression, equality and justice. Yet, the perversity of the current political environment is such that a parental rights group whose name combines these two words has been demonized by Democrats, the corporate media and the reactionary left. Just recently, a New Hampshire Democrat denounced the group as “Assholes with casseroles,” the Hill ran a story titled, “Six reasons why Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization,” and the Southern Poverty Law Center added them to its Hate Map.

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10 States to Sue EPA for Not Updating Wood Stove Emission Standards

Ten states and a regional government clean air agency plan on suing the Environmental Protection Agency for allegedly failing to update emission standards for wood-burning stoves, allowing high-emission stoves to still be sold.

The mostly Democratic state attorneys general filed a notice of intent to sue the EPA last week.

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Commentary: Chris Christie Needs a Wide Lane to Run in 2024

I must admit, when former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie removed himself from the 2016 Republican presidential primary race very early in the contest, I thought we’d seen the last of his oversized run as a major influencer in the Grand Old Party.

Like with other Republican comers and goers in recent memory, Christie had, at one point at least, been considered the future of the post-Bush GOP, a semi-common man who wasn’t the least bit afraid to stand on a stage, look liberals in the eye, and tell it like it is. To make the newcomer’s phenomenon even more enticing, Christie appeared to enjoy the resistance. Unlike most Republicans who were more than content to take a verbal beating from the much more aggressive Democrats, Christie punched back, and for a few political moments, appeared to be a great possible candidate for president. It seemed like a “when” not “if” proposition.

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Blue State School Districts Shelled Out Thousands for Equity, Racial Literacy Trainings

Pennsylvania school districts are paying thousands in membership dues to the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education (GSE), which offers administrators trainings on identifying “microaggressions” and growing “racial literacy,” according to documents obtained through a public records request by the Daily Caller News Foundation.

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Blue States Suffer Largest Population and Tax Revenue Losses as Red States See Largest Gains, IRS Data Shows

Gavin Newsom

Even as Democratic governors such as California’s Gavin Newsom and Illinois’ J.B. Pritzker slam red state policies, their residents are fleeing in droves for Republican-controlled states.

IRS migration data released late last week shows that California lost more residents than any other state, with a net loss of nearly 332,000 people and more than $29 billion in adjusted gross income in 2021. The state with the second largest population loss is New York, which saw a net loss of over 262,000 residents and $24.5 billion in income. Illinois, meanwhile, suffered a net loss of 105,000 people in 2021 and $10.8 billion in income.

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Advocates Warn of ‘Desperate’ Movement to Undermine the Electoral College

An organization’s efforts to circumvent states’ rights are “getting desperate” as they try new ways to push their interstate compact through state legislatures, two pro-Electoral College advocacy groups told the Daily Caller News Foundation.

The National Popular Vote (NPV) is a group initiative to reform the U.S.’ two-step, Electoral College system by ensuring that the candidate with the most popular votes nationwide becomes the president. Now that NPV has enacted its interstate compact in all of the “easy,” bluer states as a standalone bill, it is getting creative to force the law through in swing states like Minnesota, Nevada, Michigan and Maine, Trent England of Save Our States and Jasper Hendricks of Democrats for the Electoral College told the DCNF.

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Commentary: Seperating Fact from Fiction

The State of New Jersey recently enacted a law that requires K–12 students to learn “information literacy.” Stated plainly, this is the skills to determine what’s true and what’s not. The law is allegedly the first of its kind in the nation.

The sentiment behind the legislation is admirable, but the law itself is vague and gives the NJ Department of Education broad authority to create these standards. Given the track record of the U.S. education establishment, this could be an epic mistake.

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Second New Jersey Republican Councilman Assassinated Within a Week

On Wednesday, a second Republican city councilman was gunned down in an overt act of political violence, just one week after another Republican city councilwoman was shot and killed outside her home.

As reported by the Washington Free Beacon, Milford councilman Russell Heller was attacked by a former employee in a parking lot outside of his office, and died from his injuries; his killer was later found dead of a suicide. One week prior, Sayreville councilwoman Eunice Dwumfour was shot and killed while sitting in her SUV outside of her home, just 15 miles away from where Heller was killed. Local police, who described Dwumfour’s assassination as a targeted attack, say that her killer is still at large.

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Sens. Ron Johnson, Roger Wicker Introduce Senate ‘No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act’

Wisconsin Senator Ron Johnson (R) and Mississippi Senator Roger Wicker (R) led 45 of their Republican colleagues in introducing the No Taxpayer Funding for Abortion Act, a measure that would permanently prohibit federal funding for abortion. Johnson and Wicker introduced the legislation Wednesday, a measure that would establish a “permanent prohibition on federal funding for abortion, replacing the current restrictions with a single, government-wide standard,” said a press release from Johnson’s office.

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Eighteen State AGs Voicing Support for New York Gun-Industry Liability Law

A coalition of 18 state attorneys general, all Democrats, on Wednesday submitted an amicus brief in support of New York’s firearms industry accountability law.

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Blue States Worry They Can’t Pay Out Retirement Benefits

Three high-profile Democratic governors are struggling to stabilize their states’ retirement programs due to a falling stock market and may have difficulties paying out benefits in the coming years, according to Politico.

Democratic California Gov. Gavin Newsom, Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Democratic New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, all of whom are considered potential candidates for the 2024 presidential race, have poured billions of dollars into their states’ pension funds, according to Politico. They may struggle to maintain their public images if they’re forced to raise taxes or make budget cuts to keep pension payments flowing.

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New Jersey Passes New Gun Control Law

New Jersey’s state Senate narrowly passed a new concealed carry gun control legislation Monday, with one Democratic lawmaker joining Republicans in saying it is unconstitutional, according to NJ.com.

The bill would require gun owners who seek a concealed carry permit to purchase liability insurance and take training courses, while also increasing permit fees and restricting guns in “sensitive places” like schools, public parks, courthouses, bars and private property, according to the legislation. The bill received bipartisan criticism, with Republican state Sen. Michael Testa calling the bill “absolutely wrong” and Democratic state Sen. Nicholas Sacco saying it is unconstitutional and will face legal challenges, according to NJ.com.

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Commentary: Americans Should Pay Close Attention to the FBI and Zero-Click

During the Trump administration, the FBI paid $5 million to an Israeli software company for a license to use its “zero-click” surveillance software called Pegasus. Zero-click refers to software that can download the contents of a target’s computer or mobile device without the need for tricking the target into clicking on it. The FBI operated the software from a warehouse in New Jersey.

Before revealing any of this to the two congressional intelligence committees to which the FBI reports, it experimented with the software. The experiments apparently consisted of testing Pegasus by spying — illegally and unconstitutionally since no judicially issued search warrant had authorized the use of Pegasus — on unwitting Americans by downloading data from their devices.

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Florida Set to Receive Part of a Nearly $400 Million Settlement from Google over Location-Tracking Probe

Google agreed to a $391.5 million settlement with 40 states after an investigation found that the tech giant participated in questionable location-tracking practices, state attorneys general announced Monday.

Connecticut Attorney General William Tong called it a “historic win for consumers.”

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Democratic Secretaries of State Warn ‘Independent State Legislature Theory’ Would Upend Elections

Thirteen Secretaries of State led by Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court in Moore v. Harper, a case that will have the court considering the “independent state legislature” theory.

The Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in Moore v. Harper in December, a case brought forth after the Republican-controlled North Carolina Legislature adopted a new congressional voting map based on 2020 Census results. A group of Democratic voters and nonprofit organizations alleged the map was a partisan gerrymander that violated the state constitution and challenged it in court, according to Ballotpedia.

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New Jersey to Become First State to Introduce Global Warming Curriculum in Public Schools

New Jersey is set to become the first state in the country that will mandate its public school students to learn about so-called “global warming,” with curriculum focusing on the subject being introduced in the 2022-2023 academic year.

According to ABC News, the effort was led by Tammy Murphy, the wife of Governor Phil Murphy (D-N.J.). In an interview on Thursday, the First Lady of New Jersey falsely claimed that “climate change is becoming a real reality.”

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Commentary: New Jersey Is Becoming a Hub of Education Entrepreneurship

When Ben Ashfield and Tammy Tiranasar couldn’t find their preferred educational environment for their two younger children, they decided to build it. Ben works in advertising and Tammy is an artist, but first and foremost they are entrepreneurial parents who want the best for their children. Last fall, the couple took over a vacated classroom space in Mountainside, New Jersey, and created The Village Electric as a full-day, colearning center for local children ages two to twelve, open five days a week. They launched with 45 kids and several teachers.

This year, their program continues to thrive, but Ben and Tammy aren’t content with creating just one alternative learning model that satisfies their family’s needs. They want their space to become an incubator for many other entrepreneurial parents and teachers who wish to build microschools and colearning communities of their own. 

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New Jersey’s Largest School District Mandates Masks for School Year

The largest school district in New Jersey is going ahead with plans to implement a mask mandate during the 2022-2023 school year, according to district policy.

Newark Public Schools in Essex County, New Jersey, is requiring students and educators to wear a mask on all school “locations and grounds” to combat COVID-19, according to the district policy. The school district also says educators and teachers should practice social distancing by remaining three feet away from one another, washing hands frequently and staying home if one has a fever of 100.4.

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New Study Shows Red States Handled COVID-19 Better Than Blue States

A new study by the Committee to Unleash Prosperity found that states led by Republicans did a better job than Democrat-led states at managing the coronavirus and keeping their states from slumping into an economic and social recession.

As reported by The Daily Caller, the three states that ranked the worst in mortality, economy, and schooling during the COVID pandemic were New Jersey, New York, and California, all of which had implemented some of the strictest lockdown measures in the nation. By contrast, the states that ranked the highest were Utah, Vermont, and Nebraska.

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New Jersey to Require Youngest Students to Be Indoctrinated in Gender Ideology

New Jersey will begin teaching its youngest students this fall that it is “normal” to “feel like you’re a boy even if you have body parts that some people might tell you are ‘girl’ parts.”

In June 2020, New Jersey LGBTQ activists, including abortion industry giant Planned Parenthood – now the second largest provider of transgender hormone treatments in the nation – praised Democrats for approving sex ed standards that indoctrinate young elementary students into the dogma that the science of biological sex is subservient to activist-invented gender ideology.

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NJ-7 Democrat Malinowski Under Investigation for Murky Financial Dealings, Also Benefited from Well-Timed Stock Trades

Incumbent U.S. Representative Tom Malinowski (D-NJ-07) appears to have financially benefited from exceptional timing during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Hill reported in 2021 that Malinowski previously faced two ethics complaints about his failure to report “trading roughly $1 million in stock in medical companies that were involved in responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.”

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Analysis: Florida Among the Top Governor’s Races to Watch This Year

Democrats four years ago rode a blue wave to governors’ mansions across the country, flipping Republican-held seats in the Midwest, Northeast and West alike.

Now, however, many of those governors face Republican challengers amid a political environment that looks potentially promising for the GOP, meaning that contentious races may lie ahead in some of the nation’s most pivotal battleground states. Republicans have already had two strong showings in states that lean Democratic, flipping the governor’s seat in Virginia and coming surprisingly close in New Jersey, a state that voted for President Joe Biden by 16 points in 2020.

Governors in less competitive states are also facing primary challengers from the left and right, making for multiple bitter, closely-followed primaries between candidates from different wings of the same party.

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Over Half of U.S. States Will Increase Their Minimum Wage in 2022

Over half of the states in the U.S. will institute a minimum wage increase in 2022, according to a report.

A total of 26 states will raise the minimum wage in 2022, with 22 of the states starting the pay hikes on Jan. 1, accordingto payroll experts at Wolters Kluwer Legal & Regulatory U.S.

“These minimum wage increases indicate moves toward ensuring a living wage for people across the country,” Deirdre Kennedy, senior payroll analyst at Wolters Kluwer, said in the report. “In addition to previously approved incremental increases, the change in presidential administration earlier this year and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic have also contributed to these changes.”

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State Attorney Generals Launch Investigation into Instagram’s Effects on Kids

Young person on Instagram

A bipartisan coalition of state attorneys general launched a probe into Instagram on Thursday to examine whether the company violated state-level consumer protection laws.

The states are investigating whether Meta (formerly known as Facebook), which owns Instagram, promoted the image-sharing platform “to children and young adults” despite being aware of its negative effects, according to statements from the attorneys general. The probe cites internal Facebook communications and research leaked by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen and published by The Wall Street Journal showing Meta was aware that use of Instagram could contribute to body image and mental health issues among teens.

“When social media platforms treat our children as mere commodities to manipulate for longer screen time engagement and data extraction, it becomes imperative for state attorneys general to engage our investigative authority under our consumer protection laws,” Republican Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said in a statement.

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Commentary: The Data Mining of America’s Kids Should Be a National Scandal

As U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland sat down for his first hearing before the House Judiciary Committee, denying a conflict of interest in his decision to investigate parents for “domestic terrorism,” there is a mother in the quiet suburb of Annandale, N.J., who found his answers lacking. And she has questions she wants asked at Garland’s hearing with the Senate Judiciary Committee this Wednesday.

On a recent Saturday night, Caroline Licwinko, a mother of three, a law school student and the coach to her daughter’s cheerleading squad, sat in front of her laptop and tapped three words into an internet search engine: “Panorama. Survey. Results.”

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‘The Time Has Come for ‘Gaytheism’:’ Library Promotes Radical, Anti-Christian Books

Rider University

Rider University is promoting a book in their online library that, according to the publication description, “Argues that homophobia will not be eradicated in the United States until religion is ended.”

“Slouching Towards Gaytheism: Christianity and Queer Survival in America,” written by W.C. Harris, a professor at Shippensburg University in Pennsylvania, can be found in Rider’s library research guide for “Christian and Religious Privilege.”

The “Christian and Religious Privilege” guide is a subcategory of Rider’s “Privilege and Intersectionality” web page.

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Walt Whitman Statue, a Target of Protests, to Be Removed From Center of Rutgers–Camden Campus

Rutgers University-Camden Walt Whitman statue

Rutgers University-Camden will remove a statue of the famous poet Walt Whitman from the center of campus as a result of activists’ petitions and a recommendation from a committee of scholars.

The statue of Whitman, featured prominently in the front courtyard of Camden’s Campus Center, will be “relocated to a historically relevant site on campus and contextualized,” interim Chancellor Margaret Marsh recently announced in an email to students and employees.

That new location has yet to be announced by campus officials.

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How Georgia’s Voting Law Compares to Seven Blue, Purple States’ Laws

Flag with ballot form

Democrats have repeatedly denounced the new Georgia election integrity law that requires IDs for absentee ballots, but seldom criticize blue states that have comparable laws on their books—or in some cases, laws making it more difficult to vote than in Georgia.

“Overall, the Georgia law is pretty much in the mainstream and is not regressive or restrictive,” Jason Snead, executive director of the Honest Elections Project, told The Daily Signal. “The availability of absentee ballots and early voting is a lot more progressive than what’s in blue states.”

Here’s a look at how the new Georgia election law stacks up to voting laws in Democrat-leaning blue states.

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