Month: June 2021

Inflation is up 4.92 percent the past 12 months as of May, the most since July 2008’s 5.5 percent, according to data compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, amid a torrent of trillions of dollars of government spending, Federal Reserve money printing and a weakening dollar combined with the continued economic rebound led by reopening businesses from the 2020 Covid lockdowns.

The past three months alone, inflation has grown at an accelerated rate of 2 percent combined. If that trend were to hold up for the rest of the year, inflation would come closer to 8 percent.

In the month of May, price jumps in fuel oil at 2.1 percent and piped gas service at 1.7 percent offset a 0.7 percent drop in gasoline prices. In addition, new car prices grew 1.6 percent. Used cars and trucks grew at 7.3 percent again after a 10 percent jump in April. Apparel jumped 1.2 percent. And transportation services grew 1.5 percent after a 2.9 percent jump in April.

Rare Heart Inflammation Following COVID-19 Vaccination Sparks Emergency CDC Meeting

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention will discuss reports of a rare heart inflammation following doses of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines in an emergency meeting, it announced Thursday.

The emergency meeting, set to take place on June 18, will include updates on mRNA COVID-19 vaccine safety with a specific focus on rare reports of myocarditis and pericarditis, Scott Pauley of the CDC told The Daily Caller News Foundation. The risks and benefits of administering the mRNA COVID-19 vaccines to adolescents and young adults will also be discussed, according to the meeting’s agenda.

The announcement comes following a presentation to the Food and Drug Administration by Dr. Tom Shimabukuro, deputy director of the CDC’s Immunization Safety Office, confirming 226 cases of myocarditis/pericarditis in people under 30. These cases are more than twice what was expected under the FDA’s safety assessment for COVID-19 vaccines.

Judge Halts Debt Relief Program for Farmers of Color After White Farmers Sue

A federal judge Thursday afternoon suspended a loan forgiveness program that issues relief to farmers and agricultural workers of color.

Judge William Griesbach of Wisconsin’s Eastern District handed down a temporary restraining order after the conservative Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WILL) filed a lawsuit in April. The group alleged in its announcement that President Joe Biden’s relief program was unconstitutional and that white farmers should have been included in the loan program.

“The Court recognized that the federal government’s plan to condition and allocate benefits on the basis of race raises grave constitutional concerns and threatens our clients with irreparable harm, said Rick Esenberg, WILL’s president and general counsel, in a press release Thursday. “The Biden administration is radically undermining bedrock principles of equality under the law.”

Feds: Illegal Immigration Continued to Worsen in May

June 12, 2021June 12, 2021 The Center Square

Temporary soft sided facilities are utilized to process noncitizen individuals, noncitizen families and noncitizen unaccompanied children as part of the ongoing response to the current border security and humanitarian effort along the Southwest Border in Donna, Texas, May 4, 2021.

The surge in illegal immigration at the southern border continues to worsen, May numbers show, as the Biden administration takes more criticism for its handling of the issue.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection released new data on the crisis at the southern border, showing the federal law enforcement agency encountered 180,034 people attempting to illegally enter the country last month.

May’s numbers were a 1% increase from the previous month, but illegal immigration since Biden took office has soared.

Commentary: Letters from a D.C. Jail

This week, five Republican senators sent a letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland regarding his office’s handling of January 6 protesters. The letter revealed the senators are aware that several Capitol defendants charged with mostly nonviolent crimes are being held in solitary confinement conditions in a D.C. jail used exclusively to house Capitol detainees.

Joe Biden’s Justice Department routinely requests—and partisan Beltway federal judges routinely approve—pre-trial detention for Americans arrested for their involvement in the January 6 protest. This includes everyone from an 18-year-old high school senior from Georgia to a 70-year-old Virginia farmer with no criminal record.

It is important to emphasize that the accused have languished for months in prison before their trials even have begun. Judges are keeping defendants behind bars largely based on clips selectively produced by the government from a trove of video footage under protective seal and unavailable to defense lawyers and the public—and for the thoughtcrime of doubting the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential election.

Music Spotlight: Callista Clark

June 12, 2021June 11, 2021 Bethany Bowman

NASHVILLE, Tennessee- Callista Clark hails from a very musical family in Zebulon, Georgia. She grew up singing in her Granddad’s church with her family.

Peter Navarro: ‘St. Fauci’ and Others Have Blood on Hands after Blocking Trump Admin. from Distributing 60 Million HCQ Tablets

It turns out that the anti-malaria drug former president Trump famously touted in March of 2020 as a promising treatment for COVID-19, would indeed have been a “game changer” if only it had been widely used.

Use of Hydroxychloroquine to treat the coronavirus can increase survival rates by over 100 percent, according to a new study.

Texas Governor Greg Abbott Announces Statewide Plan to Build Border Wall and Arrest Illegals

Texas Governor Greg Abbott (R-Texas) announced on Thursday that the state of Texas will take action on its own to address the worsening border crisis, including by building its own border wall and taking extra steps to arrest illegal aliens who are released by federal border authorities, according to CNN.

Abbott made his announcement at a Border Security Summit with other Texas officials present, saying that he would dedicate $1 billion to border security and create his own task force to address the issue.

Abbott said that the efforts would build off of his disaster declaration that was issued last week, which directed Texas’s Department of Public Safety to more strictly enforce laws against criminal trespassing, smuggling, and human trafficking, while also allowing the Texas Health and Human Services Commission to crack down on “any child care facility that shelters or detains unlawful immigrants.”

Hackers Steal Customer Information in McDonald’s Cyberattack

Hackers obtained customer data from McDonald’s after breaching the company’s systems in the U.S., South Korea and Taiwan, according to The Wall Street Journal.

U.S. employees’ and franchisees’ contact information, seating capacity of U.S. locations and the dimensions of play areas at restaurants in the U.S were all exposed during the breach, McDonald’s said Friday, The Wall Street Journal reported. While McDonald’s said the hack didn’t cause disruptions at any of its locations, it vowed to launch an investigation into the breach and continue to invest in bolstering its cybersecurity protocol.

“McDonald’s will leverage the findings from the investigation as well as input from security resources to identify ways to further enhance our existing security measures,” the global fast food chain told U.S. employees in an internal message, according to the WSJ.

FBI Provides Final Briefing on Virginia Beach Mass Shooting, Says it Was Motivated by Perceived Workplace Grievances

June 12, 2021June 11, 2021 Eric Burk

In its final briefing on the Virginia Beach Municipal Center shooting, the FBI told the Virginia Beach Police Department (VBPD) that the shooter was motivated by perceived workplace grievances.

Virginia Employment Commissioner Says Commission on Track to Address Claims Backlog; Legislators Still Receiving High Volumes of Complaints

June 12, 2021June 11, 2021 Eric Burk

The Virginia Employment Commission (VEC) is on track to finish adjudicating outstanding unemployment insurance claims that were pending as of May 10th, Commissioner Ellen Hess said on Thursday. A settlement in a lawsuit against the VEC requires the backlog of 92,158 claims to be resolved by Labor Day.

“As of June 5, 66,966 claims remain in this effort,” Hess told the Commission on Unemployment Compensation, a joint commission with legislators from both chambers.

Feds Subpoenaed Hunter Biden During 2016 Election, Raising Worry over Unpaid Taxes on Ukraine Work

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 Virginia Star Staff

As the 2016 election kicked into full gear, Hunter Biden’s inner circle feared an impending federal criminal indictment of his long-time business partner might expose the then-vice president’s son to legal jeopardy because he had avoided paying taxes on income from the Ukrainian gas firm Burisma Holdings, according to emails on an abandoned laptop seized by the FBI.

Virginia Department of Health Nominated for Emmy for ‘Students for COVIDWISE’ Video

June 11, 2021June 11, 2021 Eric Burk

Call it the Emmy-nominated Virginia Department of Health (VDH) now. On Tuesday, the VDH announced that a short video advertising the state’s COVID-19 tracking app has been nominated for a regional Emmy and won a Silver Telly Award.

Commentary: This Isn’t Your Father’s Left-Wing Revolution

Starry-eyed radicals in the 1960s and 1970s dreamed that they either were going to take over America or destroy it.

One of their favorite psychodramatic mottos was “Change it or Lose it,” even as protests focused on drugs, music, race, class, sex, fashion—and almost anything and everything.

Keystone XL Pipeline Project Terminated, Developer Says

The developer of the Keystone XL Pipeline announced that it was abandoning the contested project months after President Joe Biden revoked the pipeline’s federal permit.

TC Energy permanently canceled further construction of the pipeline after conducting a comprehensive review of its options alongside the Government of Alberta, Canada, which had been a project partner, according to the energy company’s announcement on Wednesday afternoon. The company noted that the project, which had been strongly criticized by environmental groups, was suspended on Jan. 20 after Biden issued an executive order revoking its permit.

IG Report: President Trump Did Not Order the Park Police to Clear Out ‘Peaceful Protesters’ with Tear Gas for a Photo Op

The Park Police did not clear protesters outside the White House last summer to make way for President Donald Trump’s photo opportunity, according to a new report released by the Interior Department’s inspector general on Wednesday.

The report determined that Park Police were given permission to clear the park long before anyone even knew the former president had plans to walk over.

Inflation Surges Five Percent, Largest Spike Since 2008

The Consumer Price Index has increased 5% over the last 12 months, the fastest pace of inflation since August 2008, according to a Department of Labor report.

The Consumer Price Index (CPI), a common tool used to measure inflation, increased 0.6% between April and May, according to the Labor Department report released Thursday morning. Economists projected that the CPI increased by 0.5% and 4.7% over the 12-month period ending in May, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Jobless Claims Drop to 376,000, Hit Another Pandemic Low

Photo “Unemployment Insurance Claims Office” by Bytemarks. CC BY 2.0.

The number of Americans filing new unemployment claims dropped to 376,000 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 May 29, when 385,000 new jobless claims were reported. That number was unrevised from the figure initially reported last week.

Commentary: The Right Way to Modernize Infrastructure

June 11, 2021June 10, 2021 RealClearWire

Everything these days seems to count as infrastructure. Child care is infrastructure. Elder care is infrastructure. Even court-packing is infrastructure. But in a world where everything is infrastructure, nothing is infrastructure, and our existing infrastructure suffers as a result. Take, for example, President Biden’s recently revised American Jobs Plan, a $2 trillion boondoggle that prioritizes pretty much everything except for the roads, bridges, ports, and waterways that constitute actual infrastructure. The plan comes after we already appropriated $605 billion for infrastructure and transportation in the last three COVID-19 relief bills.

Commentary: As the U.S.-China Trade War Continues, Career Training Is America’s Best Defense

June 11, 2021June 10, 2021 RealClearWire

Amid the ongoing trade war between China and the United States, lawmakers are moving to pass a comprehensive new bill to boost economic competition, minimize reliance on China, and promote investment in the American workforce. With our economy beginning to recover, we need to focus on preparing young people to fill vital roles in the years ahead and decrease our reliance on tech and talent from abroad.

China has the world’s second-largest economy and a faster-growing and more lucrative tech industry that “is poised to come out ahead” of the U.S., according to an analysis by The Wall Street Journal last year. It’s winning the 5G race, contributes more to AI research, and because its population is so large, it has more data to feed to machine-learning and transportation technologies like self-driving vehicles.

If the U.S. wants to prevail in the tech race, we have to start with education. The pandemic has provided motivation for the U.S. to seek greater economic independence and bring jobs back to our shores. Career-oriented learning solutions can help fill these specialized jobs.

Fredericksburg City Council Considering Plastic Bag Tax

June 11, 2021June 10, 2021 Eric Burk

The Fredericksburg City Council directed city staff to prepare a draft ordinance for a five-cent single-use plastic bag tax. In its Tuesday meeting, most of the city council expressed support for the proposal, introduced by Council Member Kerry Devine.

“The reality is I hope this is a tax we never collect,” Devine told the Council.

Glenn Youngkin Inches Closer to Terry McAuliffe in New Poll

June 11, 2021June 10, 2021 Chris Butler

Virginia’s Republican gubernatorial nominee Glenn Youngkin is two points below former Democratic National Committee Chairman Terry McAuliffe in a new WPA Intelligence poll. This, according to an article that The Republican Standard published Thursday. The poll said Youngkin had 46 percent while McAuliffe had 48 percent.

Michael Bills and Clean Virginia Biggest Losers in Virginia Democratic Primary

June 10, 2021June 9, 2021 Eric Burk

Democrats nominated former governor Terry McAuliffe, Attorney General Mark Herring, and Delegate Hala Ayala (D-Prince William) for governor, attorney general, and lieutenant governor respectively. Progressive candidates lost both in those races, and down-ballot in the House of Delegates.

Commentary: China’s Vaccine Propaganda Is Maligning the U.S., Bribing the World

Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) approved China’s Sinovac vaccine for COVID-19, following its approval of China’s Sinopharm last month. The WHO can now distribute both vaccines through the COVID-19 Vaccines Global Access (COVAX) program, which distributes COVID-19 vaccine to the developing world. China is poised to export over one billion COVID-19 doses abroad in 2021 alone, according to Chinese state-run media outlet the Global Times.

Exploding Racial Preferences in K-12 Admissions Hurting Asian-American Students: Lawyer

Even if the Supreme Court agrees this week to hear a challenge to Harvard’s race-based admissions process and rules against the university, the battle may continue for much younger students, according to a litigant against racial preferences.

Record Number of Americans Find Abortion ‘Morally Acceptable,’ Poll Finds

A record number of Americans find abortion “morally acceptable” though American sentiment on the matter is sharply divided, a Gallup poll released Wednesday found.

Forty-seven percent of Americans find abortion acceptable, while 46% think abortion is wrong from a moral perspective, the poll found. The percentage of Americans who find abortion acceptable increased two points, the highest level of support Gallup has found since it began tracking the matter two decades ago.

Nearly 200 Hospital Workers Will Be Fired in Houston If They Don’t Get Vaccinated

Nearly 200 Houston hospital workers will be fired after a two-week suspension if they don’t comply with a vaccine requirement.

Houston Methodist President and CEO Dr. Marc Boom sent an email in April to employees saying that they must receive at least the first dose of the vaccine by June 7, or they would face suspension and termination.

Commentary: Rural Families Need Educational Choice Too

June 10, 2021June 9, 2021 RealClearWire

This school year started unlike any other for children across the country, many of whom began the year staring at a computer screen. Yet for the minority of students who were able to start the year at an independent school, their education was minimally impacted, with most continuing with in-person classes. It’s unfortunate that some students are being forced to go virtual for their education, with some public school districts refusing to reopen classrooms until the beginning of the next school year. What’s even more unfortunate is the reason for these decisions to keep classrooms closed may not be based on safety and science but sheer political influence.

Biden Repeals Trump’s Attempted TikTok Ban, Replaces It with Order to Review Foreign Apps

President Joe Biden revoked an executive order that sought to ban downloads of Chinese-owned apps like TikTok and WeChat in the United States, the White House announced Wednesday.

Instead, Biden directed the Commerce Department to evaluate software applications connected with foreign adversaries like China, and “take action, as appropriate,” according to the fact sheet the administration released. The previous slate of executive orders were signed by former President Donald Trump, one of which sought to ban TikTok completely in the U.S.

Ohio Attorney General Sues to Make Google a Public Utility

June 10, 2021June 9, 2021 Cooper Moran

A lawsuit filed on Tuesday by Ohio Attorney General David Yost aims to make Google a public utility, limiting the ways the search engine provides search results.

“Google uses its dominance of internet search to steer Ohioans to Google’s own products–that’s discriminatory and anti-competitive,” Yost said in a statement announcing the lawsuit. “When you own the railroad or the electric company or the cellphone tower, you have to treat everyone the same and give everybody access.”

Commentary: I Need an AR-15

I don’t need an AR-15 for hunting: It’s not even legal to take a deer with one in my state—the caliber is too small. I also don’t need an AR-15 for self-defense, though I’d want to have one if someone broke into my house. And I certainly don’t need one just because it’s a beautiful piece of engineering. I need an AR-15 because the government doesn’t want me to have one.

121 People Register to Speak at Loudoun County School Board Meeting

June 10, 2021June 9, 2021 Eric Burk

The public comment period at Tuesday’s Loudoun County Public School Board meeting lasted about three hours after 121 people registered to speak. Several factors contributed to the high participation, according to LCPS citizen reporter Julie Sisson.

“It was insane,” Sisson said. “A combination of the first in-person audience in over a year, the fact that LCPS suspended Tanner Cross after the last one and the court ruling in his favor had come out earlier that day, last meeting of the school year, and the SB was supposed to discuss Policy 8040 (rights of transgender students) but they pushed it back to Committee.”

Court Approves Emergency Injunction Reinstating Tanner Cross in Loudoun School Board Lawsuit

June 9, 2021June 8, 2021 Eric Burk

The Loudoun County Circuit Court ordered Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) to reinstate teacher Tanner Cross in a decision Tuesday. Cross is suing the Loudoun County School Board after he spoke at a school board meeting saying he would not use students’ preferred pronouns.

On Friday, the case had a lengthy hearing in the court where the defendants asked the court to dismiss the lawsuit; Cross’ team asked the court to issue a temporary injunction to allow him to return to work while the case proceeds.

Commentary: ‘Pristine’ Biden Ballots That Looked Xeroxed and Why a Judge Has Georgia Vote Fraud on His Mind

June 9, 2021June 8, 2021 RealClearWire

When Fulton County, Ga., poll manager Suzi Voyles sorted through a large stack of mail-in ballots last November, she noticed an alarmingly odd pattern of uniformity in the markings for Joseph R. Biden. One after another, the absentee votes contained perfectly filled-in ovals for Biden — except that each of the darkened bubbles featured an identical white void inside them in the shape of a tiny crescent, indicating they’d been marked with toner ink instead of a pen or pencil.

Adding to suspicions, she noticed that all of the ballots were printed on different stock paper than the others she handled as part of a statewide hand recount of the razor-thin Nov. 3 presidential election. And none was folded or creased, as she typically observed in mail-in ballots that had been removed from envelopes.

In short, the Biden votes looked like they’d been duplicated by a copying machine.

Illegal Border Crossings Surge to Highest Rates in Over 10 Years

Illegal Aliens apprehended by Tucson Sector Border Patrol agents with assistance from agents from Air and Marine Operations, Tucson Air Branch.

After less than 6 months, the number of illegal border crossings into the United States has spiked to a record not seen in well over a decade, according to Axios.

From October 1st, 2020, to May 31st of this year, almost 900,000 illegal aliens were stopped at the border by authorities. In the month of May, there were over 170,000 apprehensions of illegals, following the trends set by the months of March and April, which themselves marked 20-year highs in the number of illegal alien apprehensions.

Despite Joe Biden’s reversals of many of President Donald Trump’s successful immigration policies, the Border Patrol continues to turn away many illegals due to the ongoing threat of the COVID-19 virus. However, as Axios notes, illegals who are turned away for this particular reason often make several attempts to cross the border, with each failure counted as a separate rejection rather than a repeat offense, adding to the overall number.

Biden Administration Threatens to Sue If Texas Governor Closes Migrant Detention Centers

The Biden administration threatened to sue Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott if the state follows through with plans to stop working with the federal government to detain migrant minors, according to a letter from federal officials Monday.

Abbott issued a disaster declaration on May 31 that ordered all facilities operating on federal contracts to house migrants who entered the country illegally to close. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) said Abbott’s declaration illegally discriminates against the federal government’s 52 state-licensed facilities operating in Texas to house unaccompanied migrant minors.

“The May 31 Proclamation discriminates against the Federal government by targeting the licenses held only by those entities providing shelter to ‘unlawful immigrants or other individuals not lawfully present in the United States under a contract with the federal government,’” according to HHS.

Commentary: China Is the Big Winner from Our COVID Hysteria

The tidal wave of probability, circumstantial evidence of such mass and consistency that it is now almost irrefutable, that the novel coronavirus escaped from the Wuhan Institute of Virology, will alter China’s relationship with the world and particularly with the United States.

Accompanied as it is by the increasing volume of evidence that Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute for Allergy and Infectious Diseases—a post he has held for 37 years—and chief medical advisor to the president, went to unjustified lengths to deny that the coronavirus was anything but an unforeseeable escapee from a live food market, the unraveling story will ramify very widely. Seen as a whole, it has been an immense strategic victory for the People’s Republic of China. This victory is all the more remarkable because it was probably an extraordinary act of improvisation.

There is no reason to believe at this point that the Chinese authorities deliberately manufactured this virus and unleashed it mindless of the great damage it wrought among China’s civilian population. The great preponderance of evidence now is that the coronavirus was indeed manufactured, presumably for the purpose of enhanced research. As not infrequently occurs, it escaped, and while China imposed draconian measures to contain its spread among the Chinese population (and has never published believable figures about the extent of the harm that it did in China) it waited an unconscionable length of time before taking any measures to reduce its spread outside China.

FBI Makes Messaging App for Assassins and Drug Dealers, Arrests 800 Users in Global Sting

An international drug sting operation resulted in more than 800 arrests and 32 tons of drugs seized, the FBI and other top law enforcement agencies announced Tuesday.

The sting, titled Operation Trojan Shield, dates back to 2019 when the FBI and Australian Federal Police covertly developed the encrypted device company ANOM to replace two platforms that had been taken down by police, according to European Union law enforcement agency Europol. In search of a new encrypted software to use for communications, criminal gangs flocked to ANOM, which grew rapidly servicing more than 12,000 devices and 300 criminal syndicates across 100 countries.

“Encrypted criminal communications platforms have traditionally been a tool to evade law enforcement and facilitate transnational organized crime,” FBI Criminal Investigative Division Assistant Director Calvin Shivers said in a statement. “The FBI and our international partners continue to push the envelope and develop innovative ways to overcome these challenges and bring criminals to justice.”

Sen. Blackburn Introduces Resolution Condemning Critical Race Theory in Schools

June 9, 2021June 8, 2021 Cooper Moran

Senator Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) joined Senators Rick Scott (R-FL) and Mike Braun (R-IN) in introducing a resolution to condemn the teaching of Critical Race Theory (CRT) in K-12 schools.

“Critical race theory has no place in American schools. The tenets of critical race theory are based in the destructive ideal of inherent racism and will teach our children to judge and self-segregate based solely on skin color,” Blackburn said. “Students should not be discriminated on the basis of race under any circumstances.”

Poll: Americans Overwhelmingly Oppose Teaching Critical Race Theory in Schools

A new poll shows that the majority of American voters are deeply opposed to having critical race theory (CRT) principles being taught in schools.

The survey, conducted by Competitive Edge Research for Parents Defending Education, also shows that people overwhelmingly prefer Capitalism to Socialism (61.8% to 31.4%), frown upon “cancel culture,” (62.7% to 10.6%) and believe the United States is headed “on the wrong track” (60.7% to 32.8%).

Additionally, more respondents had a negative opinion of Black Lives Matter, than had a positive opinion (48.1% to 44.4%).

Senate Poised to Approve Billions for Well-Heeled Computer Chipmakers

The Democrat-led Senate is poised to approve as early as Tuesday a China security bill that will earmark billions in taxpayer subsidies to the well-heeled computer chip-making industry, which saw record profits last year and doled out millions in lobbying fees and political donations.

The $54 billion in subsidies for chipmakers inside the 1,445-page U.S. Innovation and Competition Act has some seeing an unnecessary corporate welfare program that could benefit such iconic brands as Intel, Qualcomm and AMD and increase the government’s reach over free market business.

“This bill will increase government’s influence over the private sector while weakening America by increasing our debt,” said Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wisc.), one of the legislation’s fiercest critics. “Democrats love spending other people’s money and growing government. I have no idea why any Republican would want to help them do that.”

Commentary: Benefits Under Biden’s ‘America Last’ Policies