Senator Tim Kaine (D-Virginia) and Representative Rob Wittman (R-Virginia-01) announced the SHIPYARD Act to provide $21 billion to invest in the Navy’s four public shipyards, including Norfolk Naval Shipyard. The plan, announced Wednesday, would also provide $2 billion for new construction of private shipyards, and $2 billion to repair the Navy’s existing private shipyards.
Read More
Nothing is now stranger than the contemporary college campus.
Not too long ago, Americans used to idolize their universities. Indeed, in science, math, engineering, medicine and business, these meritocratic departments and schools often still remain the world’s top-ranked.
Read More
The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 553,000 last week as the economy continues to recover from the 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 April 17, when 566,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was revised up from the 547,000 jobless claims initially reported last week.
Read More
The massive soda company Coca-Cola is facing a challenge to its internal efforts to force diversity on law firms that are contracted to work for it, as reported by the Washington Free Beacon.
In January, Coca-Cola announced an initiative that would target law firms contracted to work on behalf of the company, wherein all firms would be hit with a 30 percent reduction in their overall payment unless 30 percent of that firm’s workforce was “diverse.” Of those 30 percent, 15 percent had to be black.
Read More
Republican governors across the U.S. are ramping up pro-life legislation as President Joe Biden continues to expand abortion access.
The newest pro-life laws have been signed this week in Arizona, Oklahoma, Montana, and Idaho.
Read More
U.S. Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and other Republicans are speaking out against President Joe Biden’s agenda, which has become increasingly more wide-ranging and expensive since he took office.
Biden addressed Congress and the nation Wednesday night, when he laid out a litany of aggressive gun control, taxes and spending proposals. He also spoke on the historic nature of his vice president’s race and gender, police reform, and the war in Afghanistan.
Read More
Republican Sen. Ted Cruz vowed to no longer accept campaign contributions from corporate political action committees and urged his colleagues to do the same.
Corporations have consistently attacked conservative values while expecting Republicans to grant them political favors, Sen. Ted Cruz wrote in a Wall Street Journal editorial Wednesday evening. The Texas senator said “woke CEOs” like Republicans until any sign of controversy is sparked online, causing them to run away.
Read More
The largest U.S. teachers unions increased contributions to mainly Democratic politicians in 2020 amid a heated national debate over when to reopen schools during the pandemic.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) political action committee (PAC) donated $1.6 million to candidates while the National Education Association’s (NEA) PAC contributed $371,000 to candidates, according to Federal Election Commission data analyzed by Roll Call. The contributions represented a 3,456% increase for the AFT and a 38% increase for the NEA compared to the organizations’ 2019 donations given over the same period.
Read More
Republican leaders are salivating over their prospects for retaking Congress in 2022. Populists need to be even more fired up about the primaries. Getting involved now is the only way to ensure an America-first victory. Some quality candidates are already in the fight.
There’s a reason Democrats in Congress and even Joe Biden immediately glommed onto hyperpartisan issues from the get-go. They saw the red wave in down-ballot races in 2020, and they know another tide is coming in 2022.
Read More
The term “Uncle Tim,” a play on the racist term “Uncle Tom” often used to deride African Americans perceived as working against their own racial interests, trended on Twitter Wednesday night after Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) gave his rebuttal to President Joe Biden’s joint address to Congress.
Country music star John Rich of “Big and Rich” blasted the microblogging site’s CEO Jack Dorsey over the trend:
Read More
Six of the seven GOP gubernatorial candidates met for a debate hosted by the Virginia Federation of Republican Women on Tuesday evening. Candidates answered questions about Dominion voting machines, Second Amendment rights, transportation, and funding law enforcement. Organizers said Pete Snyder had a prior engagement.
Larry O’Connor asked the candidates, “Amazon is king right now in northern Virginia if you didn’t know any better. How will we expect small businesses to survive when government regulations that make it difficult for them are thrown out the window for literally the richest man in the world? How do you plan to protect key real estate in northern Virginia from being swallowed up by one company as well?”
Read More
Virginia’s minimum wage is going up to $9.25 an hour on May 1. The change is the result of 2020 legislation, part of several pro-worker changes initiated by the Democrat-controlled General Assembly in 2020 and 2021. Advocates say the change will boost the economy by enabling more people to pay rent and spend money in Virginia businesses. But opponents say the increase violates free-market principles and will harm employers who have to increase their hourly compensation while dealing with a COVID-19 economy.
Read More
Alongside five-days-a-week in-person instruction, Albemarle County is planning to offer an optional all-virtual school for elementary, middle, and high school students for the 2021-2022 school year. The virtual school will have its own principal and teachers, according to an Albemarle County Public Schools (ACPS) press release.
“My recommendation will be that our school board approve this plan as the default unless, of course, circumstances materially change,” ACPS Superintendent Matthew Haas said in the press release.
Read More
There are a whole lot of things wrong in America, so many that it can often feel like fixing them is akin, as the old saying goes, to eating an elephant.
And, as the old saying goes, the way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time.
Read More
When the University of Denver hosted race-based gatherings for students, faculty and staff “to process the outcome” of the November election, a student filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights.
Christi Collins got a quick response from an enforcement attorney in OCR’s Denver office, and they scheduled a phone call. Then the attorney asked to postpone, and disappeared for two months. Their last contact was Feb. 22.
“At this time, OCR is evaluating your complaint, and I apologize for the delay and inconvenience,” Lori Welker wrote in the email, one of several communications Collins shared with Just the News. “I will be in touch when we have completed the evaluation.”
Read More
Stephen Miller, the former senior adviser to President Donald Trump, filed a lawsuit on Monday against the Biden Administration over its reparations to non-White farmers, pointing out that this constitutes discrimination against White farmers, as reported by The Hill.
The class-action suit was filed by the legal group founded by Miller, America First Legal (AFL), on behalf of the Agricultural Commissioner of Texas Sid Miller, and other plaintiffs. The suit targets a particular provision of Biden’s $1.9 trillion coronavirus stimulus bill which is set to distribute funds to “socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers,” ostensibly to make up for “systemic racism” and past oppression.
Read More
The first thing we have to accept about the culture war is that the Republican Party and the conservative movement have lost. As it is for a battered alcoholic with bottles clinking about his heels, the first step toward recovery is admitting we have a problem. Nowhere is this more evident than in the battle of the biological sexes, lost without a shot fired.
Read More
Catholic bishops may ask President Joe Biden to stop receiving communion if he continues to support and expand access to abortion in the United States, according to a leading bishop.
The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops will hold a national meeting in June where the bishops will decide whether to tell the president, and other high profile Catholic politicians, not to receive Communion at mass if they continue to publicly advocate for abortion, the Associated Press reported Wednesday.
Read More
Hunter Biden will be a guest lecturer at Tulane University for a course titled “Media Polarization and Public Policy Impacts” that focuses, in part, on “fake news.”
The son of President Joe Biden is one of nine guest speakers for the class, which focuses on “the current state of the media landscape in the United States and how media polarization, fake news, and the economics of the new business impact public policymaking in Washington, D.C.,” said Fox News, which first reported the story.
Read More
A newly released survey of students at over 500 colleges and universities who belong to Greek-letter fraternities and sororities found that the majority of students don’t feel comfortable publicly disagreeing with their professors on a controversial topic.
“Students who aren’t able to freely express ideas among professors or peers are unlikely to realize the full measure of what higher education has to offer,” Nathan Harden, editor of RealClearEducation, said. “Students are equally underserved by campuses where they don’t feel that their student organizations are treated equally or welcomed on campus. Fostering an environment where students are free to explore a diversity of ideas is one of the chief goals of the university – and this includes the right to form voluntary associations based on shared interests or beliefs.”
Read More
Target CEO Brian Cornell received a pay raise amid the pandemic last year, boosting his total compensation to 805 times the salary of a median Target employee, Axios reported.
Target paid Cornell $19.75 million in 2020, an increase of nearly $800,000 from the year before, regulatory filings showed, Axios reported. The average Target employee’s salary, meanwhile, was $24,535.
Read More
President Biden on Wednesday night delivered his first address before a joint session of Congress, but some people said that the speech was downright boring.
“Joe Biden has FULLY delivered on his promise to be boring and dull compared to Trump,” tweeted David Brody, host of The Water Cooler.
Read More
With the exception of the breakout of the Civil War at the onset of Lincoln’s presidency, the Biden administration’s first 100 days have been the most radical in American history.
The elite media would have Americans believe that President Biden is doing really well with a slight majority approval rating of 52 percent, according to a poll by ABC News and the Washington Post. But compare President Biden and his 52 percent with President Kennedy, who received 83 percent approval at this stage, or President Obama’s 69 percent approval.
Read More
The Texas sheriff picked to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement pushed back on the agency’s request to screen inmates through their database and detain them for possible deportation, Courthouse News reported.
President Joe Biden nominated Texas Sheriff Ed Gonzalez to lead Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Tuesday. Gonzalez opposed training deputies to use ICE’s database to screen inmates for their immigration status in February 2017, Courthouse News reported.
Read More
NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Even though they are only 23 and 22, the sister duo known as Presley and Taylor have been a part of the music business for over eight years. And even with the pair being reared in the town of Middlefield, Connecticut, they grew up in a household where Tammy Wynette, Alan Jackson, and Randy Travis played on a constant loop, and weekend trips to their grandparents meant family singalongs of Loretta Lynn standards.
Read More
Virginia had another record year for fatal drug overdoses in 2020. In 2019, Virginia had a record 1,627 fatal drug overdoses, but in 2020 that number spiked by 41.2 percent to 2,297, fueled by fentanyl overdoses, according to a fourth-quarter report from the Virginia Department of Health (VDH).
“The pandemic exacerbated drug deaths and last I checked, something like 40-plus states reported big increases in overdose deaths since the pandemic began,” VDH Statewide Forensic Epidemiologist Kathrin Hobron told The Virginia Star.
Read More
Federal authorities in New York on Wednesday raided former city Mayor and President Trump’s attorney’s Upper West Side apartment, as part of a criminal probe into his work in Ukraine, according to multiple news reports.
The investigators confiscated Rudy Giuliani’s electronic devices as part of a search warrant, according to the New York Times, which cited sources.
Read More
A recent study by Yale University indicates that if the Democratic Party continues overtly promoting “anti-racism” rhetoric, it could lead to a mass alienation of their own base in upcoming elections, as reported by the New York Post.
The study was conducted by Yale’s Micah English and Joshua Kalla, whose goals with the survey were to find out “how racial attitudes shape policy preferences in the era of Black Lives Matter and increasing liberal views on racial issues.” But, utilizing an online survey method, they soon found that issues based explicitly on race where less likely to galvanize the party’s base than issues based more on economics.
To determine this, the study asked voters about various issues such as student debt cancellation, the Green New Deal, universal healthcare, and legalizing marijuana, amongst others. These issues were presented in three different ways to various respondents: They were either framed around “racial justice,” framed as “economic justice,” or explained completely neutrally. Actual rhetoric from Democratic politicians was incorporated into each method of questioning, and the issues were all emphasized as being part of the Democratic Party’s platform.
Read More
As recently as last summer, few people outside academia had heard of critical race theory, whose central claim is that racism, not liberty, is the founding value and guiding vision of American society. Then, President Trump issued an executive order last September banning the teaching of this “malign ideology” to federal employees and federal contractors.
Trump’s ban was blocked by a federal judge in December and immediately revoked by Joe Biden upon occupying the White House in January. Since then, federal agencies and federal contractors have resumed staff training on unconscious bias, microaggressions, systemic racism and white privilege – some of the most common but also most disputed concepts associated with the four-decade-old academic theory.
Now critical race theory is about to face a major real-world test: a spate of lawsuits alleging that it encourages discrimination and other illegal policies targeting whites, males and Christians. But unlike Trump’s executive order, which ran into First Amendment problems by prohibiting controversial speech, the lawsuits name specific policies and practices that allegedly discriminate, harass, blame and humiliate people based on their race.
Read More
President Donald J. Trump’s last White House chief of staff told supporters at the April 24 House Freedom Fund reception and dinner at the president’s Palm Beach, Florida resort club Mar-A-Lago why they did not have to worry about House Minority Leader Kevin O. McCarthy (R-CA-23) taking the gavel in the next session of Congress.
“The House Freedom Caucus is choosing the next speaker,” said former North Carolina congressman Mark R. Meadows, as he returned to his seat after his remarks at the fundraiser for the House Freedom Fund’s political action committee–according to a political operative, who attended the event and heard the remark themselves.
Read More
The National Labor Relations Board will hold a hearing next month to investigate challenges levied by the union that attempted to organize Amazon warehouse workers in Alabama, according to CNBC.
National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) acting regional director Lisa Henderson will preside over the hearing on May 7 and has the power to order a new unionization election, CNBC reported.
The Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU) filed charges with the NLRB against Amazon on April 19, alleging that the company had intimidated and threatened employees throughout the election.
Read More
A group of Christian college students is suing the U.S. Department of Education, alleging that Title IX’s religious exemption allows federally-funded religious colleges and universities to discriminate against LGBTQ students.
The Religious Exemption Accountability Project filed the lawsuit in an Oregon federal court on March 29. The suit aims to prohibit any students from using federal tuition grants, student loans, and any other federal financial aid at post-secondary schools that uphold biblical beliefs on gender and sexuality.
“REAP’s lawsuit asserts the constitutional and basic human rights of LGBTQ+ students, seeking to end the sexual, physical and psychological abuses perpetrated under the religious exemption to Title IX at thousands of federally-funded schools, colleges and universities across America,” according to the organization’s website.
Read More
Former Secretary of State John Kerry on Monday vehemently denied providing Iranian foreign minister Javad Zarif with secret information about Israeli strikes on Iranian interests in Syria, an allegation which Republicans seized on to call for Kerry’s ouster from the Biden administration.
“I can tell you that this story and these allegations are unequivocally false. This never happened – either when I was Secretary of State or since,” Kerry tweeted in response to reports of his interactions with Zarif.
Iran International, a London-based outlet, and The New York Times reported that Zarif said in a secret audio recording that Kerry had informed him that Israeli forces had struck more than 200 Iranian targets in Syria.
Read More
Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) called China the “most sophisticated” actor of foreign countries subverting our biomedical research in last week’s Senate hearing on the topic. This follows the release of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (DNI) Annual Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community earlier this month. That assessment, cited by Sen. Burr, noted that “China will remain the top threat to US technological competitiveness as the CCP targets key technology sectors and proprietary commercial and military technology from US and allied companies and research institutions associated with defense, energy, finance, and other sectors.”
In the Senate hearing, panelists disclosed several disturbing cases of research theft by the CCP and its agents. Dr. Michael Lauer, Deputy Director for Extramural Research at the National Institutes of Health (NIH), testified that Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa, Florida, fired its CEO and five other senior people for connections to the Thousand Talents Program. Gary Cantrell, Deputy Inspector General for Investigations at the Office of Investigations of the Office of Inspector General (OIG) at the Department of Health and Human Services, provided in written testimony examples of two researchers who had been compromised with China ties as found by OIG fraud investigations.
Cantrell’s first example was a professor of internal medicine who led a team conducting autoimmune research at The Ohio State University and Pennsylvania State University. This professor pled guilty in late 2020 to making false statements to federal authorities to get $4.1 million in NIH grants and failing to disclose “his participation in a Chinese Talent Plan and his affiliation and collaboration with a Chinese university controlled by the Chinese government.”
Read More
The California Secretary of State’s Office confirmed Monday that it has received and verified enough signatures to trigger an election for the removal of Gov. Gavin Newsom from office.
Secretary of State Shirley N. Weber said Monday the threshold of verified signatures reported by counties had been met and exceeds the required amount of 1,495,709.
“A recall election will be held unless a sufficient number of signatures are withdrawn,” Weber said.
Read More
Going into this decennial reapportionment, it appeared that states’ congressional delegations were poised for widespread reshuffling of the deck. New York was on the cusp of losing two seats, while Texas and Florida were in a position to pick up three and two, respectively. Given the legislatures that control redistricting in these states, it seemingly offered substantial opportunities for Republicans to redraw the lines in ways that boosted their chances in the House significantly.
Instead, the reapportionment numbers announced by the U.S. Census Bureau on Monday were something of a wash. Only seven states lost seats while six gained seats.
There were notable outcomes here: California lost a seat for the first time in its history. Rhode Island – widely expected to be reduced to a single-member state – held onto its two House seats (in fact it wasn’t a terribly close shave). New York, even with COVID deaths pushing it toward a loss of two seats, lost just one.
Read More
A former official in the Obama administration was charged Tuesday with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars from a charter school he founded, and using the funds to help finance a luxury apartment in Manhattan.
Seth Andrew, who served in the Obama White House and Department of Education, was arrested on Tuesday and charged with wire fraud, money laundering, and making false statements to a financial institution in connection with a series of banking transactions he conducted in 2019.
Federal prosecutors allege that Andrew ripped off his own charter school organization, Democracy Prep Public Schools, to the tune of $218,005.
Read More
A Los Angeles-based jail reform group led by BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors spent nearly $26,000 for “meetings” at a luxury Malibu beach resort in 2019, according to campaign finance records reviewed by the Daily Caller News Foundation.
Reform LA Jails dropped $10,179 for “meetings and appearances” at the Calamigos Guest Ranch and Beach Club in Malibu, California, and another $15,593 at the Malibu Conference Center, a corporate conference facility owned by the resort, according to the records, which covered the time period between July and September 2019. Guests at the 200-acre resort, where rooms start at $600 a night, have exclusive access to a private five-acre strip of the Malibu coast.
The records show that the payments were made on behalf of the jail reform group by a consulting firm owned by Asha Bandele, a longtime mentor of Cullors and co-author of her 2018 biography, “When They Call You a Terrorist: A Black Lives Matter Memoir.”
Read More
I have been thinking a good deal recently about Arnold Toynbee’s much-quoted observation that “Civilizations die from suicide, not by murder.” As an historical proposition, I’d say that it was like the story of the curate’s breakfast egg. “I’m afraid you’ve got a bad egg, Mr. Jones!” “Oh no, my Lord, I assure you!” the curate replied. “Parts of it are excellent!”
And yet we all see the pertinence of Toynbee’s point. While there are, as a matter of historical fact, plenty of civilizations that succumb to invasion, occupation, and subjugation, there are also many that wither from within from a failure of self-confidence, of (for the Bergsonians out there) élan vital, of what your philosophy graduate student likes to call thumos: spirit, gumption, “heart,” manliness.
The fact that no one can even speak of “manliness” today without looking over his shoulder these days is an index that thumos is on the endangered species list (along, as it happens, with sperm counts in the Western world). Why this should be is a fraught question—something whose answer is “overdetermined” as our Freudian friends like to say.
Read More
In the weeks leading up to Gov. Tim Walz’s “pause” on youth sports, state officials were privately scrambling for evidence to support the restrictions, at times admitting that “there isn’t much,” emails released Monday reveal.
“Here’s the way it should work: There is data, then there is a decision, then there is communication,” Sen. Michelle Benson, R-Ham Lake, explained at a Monday Senate hearing. “It’s not, ‘We need a message. Go find me the data that matches it.’”
Benson and her Republican colleagues published a trove of emails between state health officials and members of Gov. Walz’s staff ahead of Monday’s informational hearing.
Read More
After backlash from Republican politicians and activists over the Virginia Mathematics Pathways Initiative (VMPI), Virginia Department of Education officials held a Zoom meeting to respond.
On Monday, VDOE Superintendent of Public Instruction James Lane said, “We’ve heard a lot of information shared in some sources with some information that’s just not accurate.”
Read More
It’s been over eight months since Richmond Mayor Levar Stoney removed the city’s Confederate monuments to storage. In a Monday City Council meeting, City Council Interim Chief of Staff Joyce Davis announced that the Organizational Development Standing Committee would hear a resolution about the disposition of the statues. A public hearing and city council vote on the resolution is expected May 10.
Read More
Attorney General Mark Herring’s office announced that major international law firm Nixon Peabody LLP will investigate the Office of the State Inspector General’s investigation of the Virginia Parole Board. The firm is required to send a report on the investigation to leading Virginia elected officials from both parties by June 15, 2021.
Read More
The race for the GOP nomination for the top Virginia positions is coming to an end, leading to a debate, tours, and a trip to Florida. In the Democratic primary, early voting has already begun, but big nominations are still rolling in.
Read More
Just over three months into his presidency, Joe Biden has been nothing if not active. Fresh off proposing two bills that could end up costing taxpayers $5 trillion over the next decade, the President is now proposing yet another $1.5 trillion spending package. This plan, intended to fund expanded childcare and education initiatives, would include huge tax hikes that would act as yet another sucker punch to a still-rebounding economy.
About the only tax increases the President hasn’t supported thus far arewealth taxes and financial transaction taxes. But just because the tax hikes in this package are less exotic doesn’t mean they wouldn’t prove to be harmful.
In keeping with Biden’s ongoing efforts to undo the 2017 tax reform law, the first tax increase proposed is the restoration of the top tax bracket to 39.6 percent, the level it was at before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) lowered the rate to 37 percent. The top individual rate isn’t the most influential piece of the tax code on economic growth — as the Tax Foundation estimated prior to the passage of the TCJA — but it’s also far from the only tax hike that Biden is proposing.
Read More
Mark Robinson knows a thing or two about the political appeal of voter ID. After all, he became North Carolina’s first ever African-American lieutenant governor last November running as a Republican who vowed to restore voter identification for the state’s elections.
And he won, even as the GOP’s top of the ticket fell to Democratic Gov. Roy Cooper.
So Robinson chafes when he hears national Democrats like Joe Biden and Stacey Abrams claim that asking for an ID to vote is as disenfranchising as the voter suppression tactics of the Jim Crow era.
Read More
The University of San Diego is formally reviewing a law professor who made a blog post critical of the Chinese Communist Party.
“If you believe that the coronavirus did not escape from the lab in Wuhan, you have to at least consider that you are an idiot who is swallowing whole a lot of Chinese cock swaddle,” wrote Professor Tom Smith on his blog The Right Coast. He later clarified that the reference was to the Chinese government, not the people in the country.
When he first published the March 10 post, the USD Law School placed him under investigation, citing complaints of bias. Now, the law school has sent his case to administration for a formal review.
Read More
Delayed diagnoses and missed screenings due to the coronavirus pandemic will likely result in increased cancer deaths, medical experts told the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“We have not yet seen the real impact of COVID-19 on cancer diagnosis and deaths,” warned Dr. Julie Gralow, executive vice president and chief medical officer of the American Society of Clinical Oncology. “Screening for cancer (mainly breast, cervical, and colon) clearly dropped dramatically early in the pandemic, which will likely contribute to a later stage at diagnosis due to the delay/omission of screening that will be seen in the future.”
Lawmakers, health officials, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) called on health care providers to cancel non-essential or routine appointments, surgeries, and procedures to preserve personal protective equipment and prevent the risk of spreading the coronavirus.
Read More
Four female athletes are appealing a ruling that dismissed their challenge to a policy that allows biological males to compete in female sports.
Selina Soule, Chelsea Mitchell, Alanna Smith, and Ashley Nicoletti will continue to challenge the Connecticut policy, represented by the Alliance Defending Freedom, the law firm announced Monday.
Read More
Top police organizations and unions will reportedly express concern to Attorney General Merrick Garland about his racism probe into the Minneapolis Police Department, according to The Wall Street Journal.
The groups are expected to confront Garland and other Justice Department (DOJ) officials about the investigations during a meeting Friday afternoon, the WSJ reported. While many of the groups’ leaders have endorsed various police reforms since George Floyd’s death last year, they worried a broad probe would be unproductive and hurt rank-and-file officers.
“We recognize that there needs to be more oversight, there needs to be some reform in place, but we need DOJ to work with us because there has to be buy-in from the line men and women who do this job,” David Mahoney, president of the National Sheriffs’ Association and sheriff of Dane County, Wisconsin, told the WSJ.
Read More