Day: April 19, 2021

Commonwealth’s Attorney Deghani-Tafti Partners with Vera Institute of Justice

Eric Burk

The Vera Institute of Justice announced that Arlington County and Falls Church Commonwealth’s Attorney Parisa Dehghani-Tafti and St. Louis, Missouri Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner would be the first of ten new prosecutors in a program designed to provide support and training to cut criminal justice racial disparity by 20 percent.

“The Vera Institute of Justice will provide assistance with data analysis, staff training, community engagement, and policy support to expand the offices’ understanding of the criminal legal system’s history of racial injustice and guide them on a path toward a more equitable future,” a Vera Institute press release states.

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Commentary: Keep Nine to Keep the Independent Judiciary

Virginia Star Staff

Congressional Democrats have introduced legislation that would add four more justices to the U.S. Supreme Court, boosting the number of justices on the bench from nine to 13, as Democrat congressional leaders are going all-in on packing the Supreme Court.

This is just more evidence that the very slender, far-left Democrat majority intends to seize and maintain power using any tactic available, even if it means destroying the independence of the judicial branch of government.

Given that court packing is now actively in play, every GOP Senator and House Member along with any rational Democrat members of Congress must push back by cosponsoring the Keep Nine constitutional amendment by Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas), S.J. Res. 9, and Rep. Dusty Johnson (R-S.D.), H.J. Res. 11.

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BLM Blocks Stillwater Man from Getting Home, Police Intervene and Detain Him

Admin
BLM protest

When Black Lives Matter (BLM) blocked a Minnesota man from his home, police intervened — arresting the man.

BLM protested Saturday outside the home of a county attorney responsible for bringing charges against former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter, who recently shot Daunte Wright, apparently by accident. The protest was designed to pressure the attorney into upgrading Potter’s existing second-degree manslaughter charge to a murder charge.

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Trump’s Post-D.C. Plan Takes Shape with Rollout of America First Funding, Policy, Messaging Arms

Virginia Star Staff
Donald Trump smile

Nearly three months after Donald Trump’s departure from the White House, his plans for a politically active post-presidential role are coming into public focus

After a comparatively quiet first five weeks in Palm Beach, Fla., following a final five in Washington plagued by all sorts of chaos, Trump stirred up excitement in late February at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), where he addressed an enthusiastic crowd for 90 minutes about moving forward with the America First agenda. That plan is now moving into its operational stages, with the launch of a network of political funding vehicles and public messaging platforms.

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Fauci Admits Biden Administration is Flouting CDC Guidance in Border Facilities

Virginia Star Staff

White House chief medical adviser Anthony Fauci on Thursday conceded in a tense exchange with Louisiana Republican Rep. Steve Scalise that the Biden administration is violating major Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coronavirus guidelines by packing countless illegal immigrants into relatively small facilities without enforcing social distancing or masking measures. 

The CDC has aggressively pushed those guidelines over the past year, directing that Americans should work to remain six feet apart from each other in public spaces and wear face coverings when away from the home. 

Images from U.S. border facilities over the past several weeks, however, have shown little enforcement of those guidelines among illegal immigrants detained amid the current surge of unlawful migration at the southern border.

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Biden’s Court Packing Committee Contains an Army of Professors Open to Altering Supreme Court

Virginia Star Staff
Joe Biden walking with his administration, wearing masks

President Joe Biden unveiled a new commission to explore the possibility of packing the Supreme Court. Although the commission does contain some constitutional originalists, it is heavily staffed by legal professors with revisionist views on the nation’s top judicial body.

The Biden administration unveiled a “Presidential Commission on the Supreme Court of the United States,” which will “provide an analysis of the principal arguments in the contemporary public debate for and against Supreme Court reform” — including “the length of service and turnover of justices on the Court” and “the membership and size of the Court.”

Although the White House insists that the commission is meant to be “bipartisan,” several of its members — both right-leaning and left-leaning — appear to hold some degree of revisionist views on the Supreme Court.

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Medical Journal Forces Out Editor Who Questioned ‘Structural Racism,’ Professors Rejoice

Virginia Star Staff
Edward Livingston

A leading medical journal terminated an editor who questioned the existence of structural racism. His fellow medical professors expressed approval of the firing.

The American Medical Association wrote in a statement that it was “deeply disturbed” and “angered” by a recent Journal of the American Medical Association podcast that “questioned the existence of structural racism.” Though the organization claimed that “JAMA has editorial independence from AMA,” the statement added that “this tweet and podcast are inconsistent with the policies and views of AMA.”

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West Virginia Governor Will Not Veto Bill Banning Biological Males from Women’s Sports

Virginia Star Staff
West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice

The governor of West Virginia signaled that he will not veto a bill banning biological males from women’s sports.

Republican West Virginia Gov. Jim Justice discussed HB 3293 during a coronavirus briefing Wednesday saying that he would either “let it become law or sign it,” according to The Hill. The governor also said that he would “absolutely not” veto the bill, the publication reported.

“From the standpoint of how I feel about it personally… I just can’t possibly get through my head that it is the right thing for us at a middle school level or a high school level in our state for me not to support the bill,” Justice said, according to the Hill. “So, I do support the bill.”

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Commentary: Biden Intelligence Community Breaches Authority to Target the Right

Virginia Star Staff
Ben Sasse

The freshly reelected Republican senator from Nebraska had kind words this week for Joe Biden’s intelligence chiefs. “The American people are blessed to have an [intelligence community] as serious as ours,” Senator Ben Sasse said during Wednesday’s Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. He called the group, which included FBI Director Christopher Wray and CIA Director William Burns, “heroes” and wanted a chance to “say thank you” in front of the American people.

Sasse, who is supposed to act as a fierce skeptic not a fawning cheerleader of the world’s most powerful intelligence apparatus, singled out Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines for praise. “Your opening statement . . . was incredibly strong,” Sasse swooned.

Haines, the top deputy to former CIA Director John Brennan during the Obama Administration, undoubtedly marveled at winning such a groveling endorsement from a sitting Republican senator—or perhaps she internally laughed at winning over yet another reliable GOP dupe. (In fairness, most Republicans on the committee joined in Sasse’s praise for Haines.)

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Abbott Calls for Biden to Label Mexican Cartels as Terrorist Organizations as Texas Ranchers Fend off Criminals

The Center Square
Greg Abbott

Gov. Greg Abbott on Thursday sent a letter to President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris asking them to designate Mexican drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations.

The cartels are bringing terror into Texas communities, Abbott said in his fourth letter to the administration about the border crisis.

The cartels “smuggle narcotics and weapons into the United States to fund their illegal enterprises,” Abbott writes. “They force women and children into human and sex trafficking – enriching themselves on the misery and enslavement of immigrants. They murder innocent people, including women and children. These Mexican drug cartels are foreign terrorist organizations, and it is time for the federal government to designate them as such.”

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Andrew Yang Has Commanding Lead in NYC Mayoral Race, Poll Shows

Virginia Star Staff
Andrew Yang

Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang holds a commanding lead over his Democratic opponents in New York City’s mayoral race, according to a Thursday Data for Progress poll.

The poll found Yang with 26%, double the support of Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. City Comptroller Scott Stringer was third with 11% and MSNBC analyst Maya Wiley was fourth with 10%, while every other candidate had single-digit support.

Yang leads among virtually every demographic, according to the poll: black, Asian, Hispanic and white voters as well as men, women and voters with and without college degrees.

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Defund the Police Movement Contributed to Rise in Violence, Experts Say

The Center Square
Group of protestors

Calls to defund the police have once again been thrust into the national spotlight after a string of high profile police shootings, but data show the rallying cry for police reformers may not hold water.

After the death of Daunte Wright at the hands of police in Minnesota, U.S. Rep. Rashida Talib, D-Mich., made headlines this week for posting on Twitter: “No more policing, incarceration, and militarization. It can’t be reformed.”

Later in the week, Senate lawmakers blasted President Joe Biden’s Justice Department Civil Rights Division nominee Kristen Clarke after reports that she wrote an op-ed calling for defunding the police. Clarke pushed back, arguing that was not the point of her writing.

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Maxine Waters Shows up in Brooklyn Center, Tells Protesters to Get ‘More Confrontational’

Virginia Star Staff
Maxine Waters

U.S. Rep. Maxine Waters made a brief appearance Saturday night outside a police station in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota, where crowds have gathered for seven consecutive nights to protest the shooting of Daunte Wright.

Wright was killed last Sunday by former Brooklyn Center police officer Kim Potter, who has since been charged with manslaughter. Meanwhile, the murder trial of former Minneapolis officer Derek Chauvin in the death of George Floyd is scheduled to hold closing arguments Monday.

If Chauvin isn’t convicted, then “we know we’ve got to not only stay in the street, but we’ve got to fight for justice,” Waters said.

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Loudoun Parents Group Forms Fight for Schools PAC to Recall Most of the Loudoun School Board

Eric Burk

Loudoun Parents for Education (LPE) is launching a recall effort targeting six out of nine school board members as the latest in a conflict between parents and school leadership. On Tuesday, LPE launched the Fight for Schools PAC to engage in campaign-style efforts to change the school district, according to Fox News.

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