Former White House advisor Steve Bannon was indicted by a federal grand jury Friday following his refusal to comply with a subpoena by the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol breach.
Attorney General Merrick Garland announced Bannon’s indictment, just days after the House Committee announced further subpoenas of Trump officials.
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Governor-elect Glenn Youngkin announced his transition steering committee and advisors on Wednesday. The group includes Republican legislators, Republican Party of Virginia officials, and the three previous Republican governors of Virginia. Former Democratic Governor Doug Wilder is also on the list; he aimed several attacks at opponent former Governor Terry McAuliffe during the campaign without ever endorsing Youngkin. The list also includes Sentara Chief of Staff Aubrey Layne, who was a cabinet official to both Governor Ralph Northam and McAuliffe.
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The Democratic Party defeat last Tuesday was followed by an even more ominous report on the job approval of the two leading Democrats.
Recall, last week, Democrats lost Virginia in a remarkable sweep. They lost assembly and senate seats in New Jersey – and almost lost the governorship. A Republican was elected city attorney in Seattle (that’s right, Seattle). They lost a Texas state legislative seat in a district which is 73 percent Latino. Republicans swept to victory in Long Island, while New York voters rejected three different Democratic referenda to make elections less secure.
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The Board of Supervisors voted unanimously to rename Jeb Stuart Road and Fort Johnston Road. The Board also directed staff to amend county naming standards and initiate renaming roads that include Confederate and segregationist names. In a November 3 meeting, Board Chair Phyllis Randall said the issue had been a long-time priority for her during a minor dispute with Supervisor Juli Briskman over who would second one of the motions.
“Having a name on a road school or structure is an honor that should be reserved for a very select few,” Randall said in a county press release.
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President Joe Biden and members of his staff are considering Terry McAuliffe for a position in the administration, according to a report from Punchbowl News.
The media outlet cited numerous, “high-level” sources and described that McAuliffe has not openly asked for a position.
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“History will figure that out on its own.” That is what Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) recently replied to Dr. Anthony Fauci, head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
In a heated congressional exchange, Fauci derided the idea that the COVID-19 pandemic was due to the leak of a dangerous virus, engineered in the Chinese Wuhan virology lab—and in part funded by U.S. health agencies, on the prompt of Fauci himself.
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More than half of state school board associations have distanced themselves from the national association after it sent a letter to President Joe Biden asking for federal intervention to investigate parents who protest at local meetings.
Of the 26 that have repudiated the letter, 11 have discontinued their membership with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) after Kentucky did so Wednesday.
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“We are still here” even though the election is over, about 150 parents reminded the Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS) school board outside its Tuesday meeting.
Concerned community members, parents, grandparents and students spoke out during the meeting to tell the school board that although Glenn Youngkin won the gubernatorial race last Tuesday, the problems at LCPS still remain.
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Prominent leaders of a Black Lives Matter group in New York City promised violence if Mayor-elect Eric Adams brought back the city’s anti-crime units.
“If he thinks that they’re going to go back to the old ways of policing, then we are going to take to the streets again,” Hawk Newsome, who co-founded Black Lives Matter of Greater New York, told the New York Daily News.
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Oak Park Elementary District 97 is teaching students so-called “critical race theory,” which argues that racism is to blame for differences in racial group performance, such as lower test scores by black students, or higher violent crime rates for blacks than whites.
In response to a Freedom of Information (FOIA) request by West Cook News, District 97 indicated it is teaching the critical race theory-centric “1619 Project,” which holds that the American Revolution was fought to preserve black slavery, Abraham Lincoln was a racist and that America’s wealth today is the result of black slavery.
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The defense team in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse requested a mistrial with prejudice, arguing that Assistant District Attorney Thomas Binger had acted in bad faith during the trial and engaged in prosecutorial misconduct.
When Binger told Kenosha Judge Bruce Schroeder that he had made his arguments in good faith, the judge said, “I don’t believe you.”
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Rejection used to be common for medical sociologist Thomas LaVeist when he tried to get his research published on the effects of racism on the health of black people. “Now,” said the 60-year-old dean of Tulane University’s School of Public Health & Tropical Medicine, “I have those same journals asking me to write articles for them.”
LaVeist’s experience illustrates the dramatic transformation in medical research, accelerating in the past few years. While few would dispute that black Americans are more prone to chronic health problems and have shorter life expectancies than whites, the medical community generally sought answers in biology, genetics and lifestyle. Research, like LaVeist’s, that focused on racism was frowned upon as lacking rigor or relevance, an amateurish detour from serious intellectual inquiry.
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A higher percentage of migrants were granted asylum under the Biden administration despite fewer applications filed during the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a new TRAC report released on Wednesday.
Asylum grants increased from 29% under former President Donald Trump to 37% during the Biden administration, according to data obtained by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC). Nearly 24,000 asylum decisions were made during the fiscal year 2021 when COVID-19 restrictions and shutdowns were in effect compared to 60,000 in the fiscal year 2020.
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The Department of Defense (DOD) said Wednesday that China and climate change were “equally important” threats to U.S. national security.
“We get paid to examine all the threats to our national security,” Defense Department press secretary John Kirby told reporters. “And I don’t know that it does anybody good to put some sort of relative analysis assessment on that. You’ve heard the secretary talk about the climate as a — a real and existential national security threat, and it is, not just to the United States, but to countries all over the world.”
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Teachers at Lyons Township High School will participate in a book study organized by a Black Lives Matter group, “Teaching for Black Lives.”
The group will train LT teachers on how to better incorporate “the truth about the breathtaking heroism of black communities in the face of injustice,” and how they can replace “eurocentric textbooks with a curriculum that centers the intersectional identities of black people.”
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Amidst public concerns of electoral irregularities in Pennsylvania, a recount will decide the outcome of the Commonwealth Court contest between Republican Drew Crompton and Democrat Lori A. Dumas.
Based on unofficial returns published by the Pennsylvania Department of State, Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas Judge Dumas now leads Superior Court Judge Crompton by 16,804 votes out of more than 2.5 million votes cast for either of the two. That’s a margin of about a third of one percent, within the 0.5 percent difference that prompts a recount under Pennsylvania’s Act 97 of 2004.
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After Tuesday’s recall petition filed against Loudoun County School Board (LCSB) Chair Brenda Sheridan, who represents the Sterling district, Loudoun County Public Schools remained noncommittal in the recall fight.
Notably, embattled LCPS Superintendent Scott Ziegler, who has refused to resign in the wake of a coverup of a 14-year-old girl’s rape by a biological boy wearing a dress, will not take a position on the recall efforts.
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