NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Taylor Hughes was born and raised in Lexington, Kentucky. Although she always loved music and did choirs and shows, her mother was an R & B singer was considered the musical one in the family.
Hughes was an athlete with a scholarship to attend college as a volleyball player when she blew her knee out her junior year of high school and the hope of attending college on a sports scholarship was over.
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Chinese authorities refused to share raw data on 174 early cases of Covid-19 with a World Health Organization team investigating the origins of the coronavirus pandemic, one of the scientists on the team told The Wall Street Journal.
According to The Journal, government authorities provided summaries of the coronavirus cases to the WHO team, but withheld raw data that could provide clues about how the virus transmitted early on in the pandemi
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On Inauguration Day, Joe Biden warned his appointees that a hostile workplace would not be tolerated in his administration, but that didn’t seem to make an impression on White House deputy press secretary TJ Ducklo, who reportedly threatened a journalist that very same day using “derogatory and misogynistic” language.
According to Vanity Fair, Ducklo threatened to “destroy” Tara Palmeri while she was working on story about his relationship with another reporter.
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The Chicago Teachers Union approved a deal with city officials that ensures an immediate return to in-person instruction, the union said Wednesday morning.
The teachers union approved the Chicago Public Schools’ (CPS) proposed plan to return to in-person classes in a 13,681-to-6,585 vote Wednesday morning, the union announced. In-person instruction was supposed to begin on Feb. 1, but was delayed after the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) voted to defy the city’s plan in January.
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The Lincoln Project was reportedly aware of allegations against co-founder John Weaver as early as June 2020, but pushed ahead with raising massive donations — and $50 million of these donations has gone to firms controlled by the Lincoln Project’s leaders.
Lincoln Project members were made aware of at least 10 allegations of harassment against Weaver in June 2020, the Associated Press reported. The group did not take action against Weaver as it continued its high-profile work combatting the re-election of former President Donald Trump and expressed shock in January over the allegations against its cofounder.
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There is nothing in this YouGov poll that should shock a soul.
First broken by Brandon Jarvis over at Virginia Scope, the YouGov poll (attached to the UK Economist) puts former DNC chairman and former Governor Terry McAuliffe in a commanding 43% lead over the rest of the Democrat field.
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Republican and Democratic legislators don’t often find common ground on pro-life issues in Virginia, but two pro-life bills passed the House of Delegates with unanimous support, and are likely to pass out of the Senate. HB 1950, introduced by lieutenant governor candidate Delegate Hala Ayala (D-Prince William) would develop a plan to create a Fetal and Infant Mortality Review Team in Virginia to collect better data about fetal and infant survival rates. HB 2111, introduced by House Majority Leader Charniele Herring (D-Alexandria), is similar, and establishes a task force to collect data to help create policies focused on improving maternal care. Both bills are now in committee in the Senate.
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House managers and Donald Trump’s defense team agreed Saturday to move to closing arguments for up to 4 hours in the Senate impeachment trial of the former president.
After closing arguments concluded, senators voted 57-43 to acquit Trump on the single article of impeachment charging Trump with incitement of insurrection.
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The Loudoun County Board of Supervisors postponed until March 2 a decision on local gun bans at a public hearing Wednesday night.
The BOS has been considering a ban for months. The current proposed ordinance would ban firearms and ammunition on county property, but the supervisors are also considering drafts with exemptions for concealed handgun permit (CHP) holders to carry concealed in parks despite the ban.
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With Trump-era immigration policies being reversed at a breakneck pace since the Biden Administration assumed power, the American public should understand that will mean more illegal aliens in the country, an uptick in migrant caravans from Central America, and federal support of sanctuary laws, just for starters.
Now comes an even more ominous threat: new anti-borders policies will allow entry to Middle Eastern terrorists committed to mayhem and even 9/11-scale attacks.
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Twitter CFO Ned Segal announced on Wednesday that former President Donald Trump would remain banned from his company’s platform even if he was reelected in the future.
Segal made the announcement during an appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box when the show’s host asked if the former president would be allowed back on the platform if he was reelected.
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Florida Governor Ron DeSantis slammed the Biden Administration Thursday after White House officials floated to the media that it was considering a travel ban to and from the Sunshine State because of coronavirus concerns.
The Miami Herald reported on Wednesday that the White House was looking at “domestic travel restrictions as COVID mutation surges in Florida.”
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President Joe Biden warned a bipartisan group of Senators Thursday that China “will eat our lunch” after speaking with Xi Jinping on Wednesday night, Reuters reported.
Biden discussed a range of issues with the Chinese leader, from “coercive and unfair” trade practices to reported human rights abuses against Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang and pro-democracy groups in Hong Kong as well as Taiwan, Reuters reported. U.S. and Chinese leaders have not spoken in over 11 months with the last call occurring on March 27 under the Trump administration.
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An all new LIVE STREAM of War Room: Pandemic starts at 9 a.m. Central Time on Saturday.
Former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon began the daily War Room: Pandemic radio show and podcast on January 25, when news of the virus was just beginning to leak out of China around the Lunar New Year. Bannon and co-hosts bring listeners exclusive analysis and breaking updates from top medical, public health, economic, national security, supply chain and geopolitical experts weekdays from 10:00 a.m. – 12:00 noon ET.
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I refuse to watch the impeachment trial as a matter of principle. To devote any attention to this charade would legitimize the corruption of our Constitution. Tuning in would be a tacit acceptance of the blizzard of BS that has buried the national discourse. At least since Donald Trump’s election in 2016, Democrats and their media allies have demanded that we view their smears and lies as high-minded pursuits of the truth. Consider:
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Twitter on Thursday locked conservative activist James O’Keefe, out of his account after he tweeted out a video that allegedly violates the platform’s rules—the same week the platform allowed a celebrated left-wing activist to dox a conservative journalist.
Meanwhile, O’Keefe’s watchdog group Project Veritas appears to have been permanently suspended from Twitter.
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More than a month after the siege on the U.S. Capitol, the Washington, D.C. medical examiner’s office says it does not know when it will reveal why Capitol Police Officer Brian Sicknick died after responding to the Jan. 6 melee.
“The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will release the cause and manner of death when this information is available,” spokesperson Cheryle Adams said in an email to Just the News.
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Governor Cuomo’s top aide admitted privately to Democrat lawmakers that the Cuomo administration withheld the number of COVID-19 nursing-home deaths in the state out of concern that the true numbers would “be used against us” by federal prosecutors, The New York Post reported Thursday night.
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Tax headaches have started early for American small businesses this tax season. States can help these employers and accelerate the economic recovery by clarifying that business expenses paid from Paycheck Protection Plan loans are fully tax-deductible, in-line with federal tax law.
The PPP is one of the most successful government programs in American history. It distributed $525 billion worth of forgivable loans to more than 5 million small businesses nationwide, supporting over 50 million jobs. Without the PPP, unemployment would have been far higher and the economic contraction much more severe. The PPP served as a bridge to get small businesses over the worst depths of the pandemic. Yet state tax rules threaten to undercut its success.
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About $1.1 trillion in coronavirus aid, including more than $120 billion for small businesses, has still not been spent, according to a memo Republicans are circulating on Capitol Hill.
The more than $1 trillion in unspent coronavirus relief funds represents a significant portion of the $4 trillion allocated by Congress as part of multiple 2020 stimulus packages, according to the Republican Study Committee (RSC) memo reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation. Of the $828 billion allocated for small business loans, about $123.7 billion has not been spent, according to Small Business Administration data.
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President Joe Biden’s new target for reopening schools is behind where United States schools already are in returning to in-person learning, data shows.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki said Tuesday that Biden’s school reopening plan calls for “most” schools to have in-person learning “at least” one day a week by the new president’s 100th day in office. Psaki also told reporters that Biden’s plan “is for all schools to reopen, to stay open, to be open five days a week, for kids to be learning.”
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College degrees aren’t the right solution for every high school graduate, but college graduates often get more community recognition than their counterparts who choose other paths.
“Our Community Salutes (OCS), is a national non-profit organization that recognizes and honors high school seniors (and their parents) who plan to enlist into the military following high school graduation,” founder and President Dr. Kenneth Hartman told The Virginia Star.
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The Virginia House of Delegates killed legislation that would have banned the Virginia Department of Health (VDH) staff from reaching out to minors about topics including sex, family matters, and unwanted pregnancy without parents’ permission. On Thursday, the Health, Welfare, and Institutions Committee voted to table SB 1235 after it passed in the Senate with narrow bipartisan support.
“This a parental rights [bill],” SB 1235 sponsor Senator Mark Peake (R-Lynchburg) said in subcommittee on January 28. “It just says that before anyone can contact our children anonymously, that they have to get parents permission.”
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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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The Democratically-controlled Senate spends thousands of collective hours conducting an impeachment trial against a president who is no longer president.
The acquittal is predetermined, as in the first impeachment effort a year ago—and known to be so to the Democratic prosecutors.
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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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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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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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YouTube deleted a pro-life news outlet’s channel for “violating our COVID-19 misinformation policy,” a spokeswoman told the Daily Caller News Foundation Wednesday.
LifeSite News announced the ban Wednesday morning, noting that it cut the site off from its 300,000 followers.
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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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On Feb. 14, sweethearts of all ages will exchange cards, flowers, candy, and more lavish gifts in the name of St. Valentine. But as a historian of Christianity, I can tell you that at the root of our modern holiday is a beautiful fiction. St. Valentine was no lover or patron of love.
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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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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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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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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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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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The author of a tweet introduced by Democrats at the Senate impeachment trial said Thursday her statement “we are bringing the Calvary” was a clear reference to a prayer vigil organized by churchgoers supporting Trump and not a call for military-like violence at the Capitol riot as portrayed by Rep. Eric Swalwell.
Jennifer Lynn Lawrence also said she believes the California Democrat and House impeachment manager falsified her tweet, adding a blue check mark to the version he introduced at the trial suggesting she was a verified Twitter user with more clout when in fact her Twitter account never had a blue check and has never been verified.
“I noticed when they put my tweet on the screen that all of a sudden my tweet had a blue checkmark next to it,” she said during an interview on the John Solomon Reports podcast. “… This way, if he entered that into congressional testimony, it’s a verified account, and it has, it could be applicable in law. Secondly, he wanted to show that my Twitter account had more gravitas than it actually did. He wanted to show that the president was trying to use me to bring in the cavalry.”
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Gubernatorial candidate Delegate Kirk Cox (R-Colonial Heights) announced a plan Wednesday to hold Big Tech accountable for protecting free speech. The plan expands regulation and enforcement with transparency requirements, bans on de-platforming elected officials, and $100,000-per-day fines for violating tech companies.
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One of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin’s first actions after confirmation has been to order a “60 day stand down” to combat extremism. This follows the widespread and mostly baseless establishment fantasy that “right-wing extremists” and “white supremacists” are running rampant and pose some immediate threat to the country.
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The pending military stand-down to address “extremism in the ranks” may bring results that go beyond what Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin expected to achieve, according to active duty service members who are scheduled to attend the mandatory sessions.
Austin on Friday ordered all uniformed and civilian leaders in the Defense Department to set aside a day soon to discuss “impermissible behaviors” related to extremism.
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In the 1960s, Moscow inaugurated special “ZiL Lanes” or “Chaika Lanes.” Named after the Soviet limousines reserved for high government officials (the ZiL was a copy of the ’63 Lincoln, the Chaika a copy of the ’56 Packard) these were roads that, like the limousines, were reserved for high government officials. ZiL Lanes allowed the Nomenklatura to whiz from the Kremlin to their country dachas in comfort, while their inferior comrades were stuck in jams on the Kutuzovsky Prospect. The Soviets built several ZiL Lanes, and the one along the Kutuzovsky Prospect is still in use today serving Putin’s pals.
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Carolyn Maloney (D-N.Y.), the chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, is demanding information from the alternative social media company Parler with regards to its finances, as reported by The Hill.
Maloney sent a letter to the tech company baselessly accusing Parler of having a role in the organization of the mostly peaceful protests that took place at the United States Capitol on January 6th. In the letter, she claims that “numerous Parler users have been arrested and charged for their roles, with the Department of Justice citing in several instances the threats that individuals made through Parler.”
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The Defense Department estimates the National Guard deployment at the Capitol through March 15 will cost nearly $483 million, in addition to $500 million it has already spent, Fox News reported Monday.
Approximately 26,000 National Guard troops from across the country were sent to Washington D.C. after the Jan. 6 riot at the Capitol. The number has gradually reduced, however there are still more than 7,000 troops guarding the Capitol building with plans to gradually decrease its presence through the end of March, to fewer than 3,000 troops, according to Fox News.
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Approximately a third of Americans say that they are unlikely to receive the coronavirus vaccine due to perceived safety concerns, according to an Associated Press poll released Wednesday.
While 67% of Americans said that they either planned to receive the vaccine or had already done so, 17% said that they were unlikely to receive it and 15% said that they were definitely not going to receive it, the poll showed. Among those who expressed vaccine hesitancy, the majority cited concerns over possible side effects and doubts over whether it was really safe, and nearly 40% said that they did not believe that they needed a vaccine.
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Fourteen Republican state attorneys general wrote a letter to the White House, informing the president they were reviewing all legal options over his decision to nix the Keystone XL Pipeline permit.
The officials told President Joe Biden they were writing to him “with alarm” and urged him to reconsider his Keystone XL Pipeline executive order in the letter sent Tuesday.
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Melissa Carone, the Michigan woman whose testimony during an election fraud hearing went viral, plans to run for a seat in Michigan’s House of Representatives.
Carone claims about widespread voter fraud were spoofed by Saturday Night Live, and after her testimony, she clarified that she was not drunk while speaking. She filed to run in Michigan’s 46th House district in the outskirts of metro Detroit.
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Two Republican senators on Tuesday blasted President Joe Biden for withdrawing a proposed rule that would require U.S. schools to disclose their partnerships with Confucius Institutes, which some U.S. officials and lawmakers have alleged serve as front groups for the Chinese Communist Party.
Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton and Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, both known as China hawks, criticized Biden on Tuesday following reports that the administration had withdrawn the rule, which the Trump administration proposed to the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on Dec. 31.
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Andrew Beam is from Cashiers, (pronounced Cash-ers) North Carolina in the Blue Ridge Mountain area. The son of a bluegrass picking preacher, Beam watched his dad at bluegrass festivals, church socials, and front porch get-togethers.
Although he picked up a guitar when he was five, he didn’t get serious about it until age 11.
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Senator Amanda Chase (R-Chesterfield), who is running for the GOP gubernatorial nomination, announced Tuesday that she is suing the Republican Party of Virginia (RPV). Chase has been critical of the RPV decision to hold a nominating convention since the decision was first announced in December. Now, after months of fractious debate in the RPV over that decision, Chase is suing, arguing that she is harmed by the RPV choosing a nominating method currently illegal under Executive Order 72, which bans large gatherings like an in-person convention.
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The Virginia General Assembly is considering three bills that would add legal protections for domestic workers in jobs like cleaning, landscaping, and childcare. The bills are focused on banning discriminatory practices, implementing safety standards, and requiring worker’s compensation insurance. Advocates say the current exemption for domestic workers dates back to racist Jim Crow legislation and should be removed, but opponents say the bills put more burdens on domestic workers and the people who hire them.
HB 2032, introduced by Delegate Wendy Gooditis (D-Clarke) adds “Domestic Service” as a category that would be included under current workplace safety and workers’ compensation law. Gooditis said that the bill makes domestic service subject to workplace safety standards, and that inspectors can require access.
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