Day: February 12, 2021

Virginia General Assembly Pushes Forward with Taxes on Forgiven PPP Loan Revenue

Eric Burk

The Virginia General Assembly is moving forward with legislation that would effectively make employers who received Paycheck Protection Plan (PPP) loans liable for state taxes. Bills that would practically exempt all income from the forgiven loans have been replaced with legislation that caps how much of the loan is exempt. Business advocates warn that the taxes could surprise the struggling businesses that the PPP loans were meant to help.

The bills bring Virginia’s tax code into conformity with the IRS; Virginia’s tax law doesn’t automatically change to match federal law, so state legislators pass tax conformity bills.

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Facebook Says New Algorithm Will ‘Reduce Political Content’ on News Feeds

Virginia Star Staff

Facebook announced on Wednesday the social media platform will in the coming weeks start limiting the amount of political content viewers see on their news feeds.

The company is aware that “people don’t want political content to take over their News Feed,” Product Management Director Aastha Gupta wrote in a blog post on the site.

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Commentary: Expose the False Narrative of the ‘1619 Project’ by Teaching Students About Federalism and the States

RealClearWire

A few weeks ago, the civics curriculum wars reached the White House: Donald Trump’s 1776 Commission published its first report on a Monday, and Joe Biden’s administration disbanded the group by Wednesday, the new president’s first day in office. The Commission’s first and only act, the 1776 Report, was a conservative response to the New York Times’s 1619 project, which it criticized by name. Its aim was to lay the foundation of a proper American civics education. The U.S. civics curriculum is subject to constant badgering from the Right and the Left, and as this latest White House drama shows, each side restating its narrative at the other accomplishes little. Conservatives are correct to care about America’s founding principles. But by tripping over tweaks to the curriculum, we miss a bigger opportunity to help the next generation act on one of those principles: federalism. Focus on national narratives comes at the expense of state-level knowledge and action.

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New Jobless Claims Increase to 793,000, Economists Expected 760,000

Virginia Star Staff

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims decreased to 793,000 last week as the economy continued to suffer the effects of the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, according to the Department of Labor.

The Bureau of Labor and Statistics figure released Thursday represented a decrease in the number of new jobless claims compared to the week ending Jan. 30, in which there were 812,000 new jobless claims reported. The number was revised up from the 779,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.

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Biden Administration Expects to Rely on Trump-Era Private Detention Facility to Hold Migrant Teenagers at the Border

Virginia Star Staff

A Trump-era temporary private facility for holding unaccompanied migrant teenagers will reopen at the southern border as the Biden administration anticipates it will be needed within the next two weeks.

The spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human (HHS) Administration for Children and Families declined to answer when asked how the Biden administration’s treatment of detained children would differ from conditions during the Trump administration and instead pointed to President Joe Biden’s executive order on reuniting separated families.

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Recall Effort Has the Signatures for a Vote on Gavin Newsom

Virginia Star Staff

Tom del Beccaro, leader in the ongoing effort to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom said they have reached the 1.5 million signatures needed to qualify for a statewide vote, Breitbart reports.

“EVERYONE: We have over 1.5 mill raw signatures but they are not all verified,” del Beccaro tweeted late Wednesday evening. “My message is that 1.5m sounds great but is NOT ENOUGH.” To ensure qualification we need 1.9 million.”

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Report: WHO COVID Investigator Is Recipient of Chicom Grant; Worked with Wuhan Lab for 18 Years

Virginia Star Staff

An influential member of the World Health Organization who claimed to have no conflicts of interest regarding China, has accepted research grants from the Chinese Communist Party and runs a U.S.-based research organization that been working with the Wuhan Institute of Virology for 18 years, the National Pulse reported.

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‘Mandalorian’ Actress Gina Carano Fired over Social Media Posts

Virginia Star Staff

Actress Gina Carano, who has a starring role in Disney’s Star Wars-themed series “The Mandalorian,” has been fired by Disney over her conservative views, according to Fox News.

The actress and former MMA fighter has frequently expressed conservative viewpoints on social media, ranging from pointing out voter fraud in the 2020 election to questioning certain government mandates related to the Chinese coronavirus pandemic.

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Joint General Assembly Committee Review of Circuit Court Judge Candidates Turns Explosive

Eric Burk

Judicial interviews with a joint meeting of the House Courts of Justice and Senate Judiciary Committee are normally calm formalities as legislators ask the judicial candidates perfunctory questions. But on Tuesday, a virtual meeting to interview 29 candidates for juvenile and domestic relations court, district court, and circuit court judges turned emotional.

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Virginia Woman Sentenced to Jail for Laundering Mexican Cartel Money

Peter D'Abrosca

A former business owner in Virginia has been sentenced to prison after pleading guilty to using that business to launder money for a dangerous Mexican cartel. 

“Ana Bella Sanchez-Rios, the former owner and operator of a Martinsville business used to launder more than $4.3 million in profits for an international drug cartel, was sentenced last week in U.S. District Court to 96 months in federal prison,” according to a press release from the Western District of Virginia. 

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